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Presented  to  the 

UNIVERSITY  OF  TORONTO 
LIBRARY 

by  the 

ONTARIO  LEGISLATIVE 
LIBRARY 

1980 


THE   CARSWELL    COMPANY    LIMITED 


•& 


MAR     3 


BLACKWOOD'S 


MAGAZINE. 


VOL.  CLVI. 


JULY— DECEMBER  1894. 


WILLIAM  BLACKWOOD  &  SONS,  EDINBUKGH; 

AND 

37  PATERNOSTER  HOW,  LONDON. 


1894. 
All  Rights  of  Translation  and  Republication  reserved. 


Af 

H 
Bfc 


BLACKWOOD'S 
EDINBURGH    MAGAZINE. 


No.  DCCCCXLV.  JULY    1894.  VOL.  CLYI. 


CONTENTS. 

WHO  WAS  LOST  AND  is  FOUND.     CHAPS,  v.-vin.,          ..  .  1 

SENOUSSI,  THE  SHEIKH  OF  JERBOUB,      .  .  .  .27 

PLACE-NAMES  OF  SCOTLAND.     By  JOHN  STUART  BLACKIE,        .         38 
MORE  ABOUT  THE  PREPARATORY  SCHOOL,  .  .  .45 

THE  PROTECTION  OF  WILD  BIRDS. 

BY  SIR  HERBERT  MAXWELL,  BART.,  M.P.,         55 
THE  RED  BODICE  AND  THE  BLACK  FLY.     BY  A.   CRAWSHAY,  .         66 
Six  WEEKS  IN  JAVA.     BY  COLONEL  SIR  H.  COLLETT,  .         78 

SIDE-LIGHTS  ON  THE  BATTLES  OF  PRESTON  AND  FALKIRK. 

BY  PROFESSOR  YEITCH,         98 

MEMORIALS  OF  OLD  HAILEYBURY.     BY  SIR  AUCKLAND  COLVIN,       107 
AGRICULTURE  TAXED  TO  DEATH,  .  .  .  .118 

IN  'MAGA'S'  LIBRARY,    .  .  .  .  .  .129 

THE  NEW  AFRICAN  CRISIS  WITH  FRANCE  AND  GERMANY,         .       145 
DESTRUCTIVES  AND  CONSERVATIVES,         .  .  .  .159 


EDINBURGH: 

WILLIAM   BLACKWOOD  &  SONS,  45  GEORGE  STREET, 
AND  37  PATERNOSTER   ROW,   LONDON. 

To  whom  all  Communications  must  be  addressed. 


BLACKWOOD'S 
EDINBURGH    MAGAZINE. 


No.  DCCCCXLVI.  AUGUST  1894.  VOL.  CLVL 


CONTENTS. 

THE  CAVALRY  ARM  OF  THE  BRITISH  SERVICE,  .  .  .169 

WHO  WAS  LOST  AND  is  FOUND.     CHAPS,  ix.-xii.,          .  .182 

ANCESTOR-RIDDEN.     A  PLAY  IN  ONE  ACT.     BY  O.  J.,  .       205 

THE  CONFESSION  OF  TIBBIE  LAW,  .  .  .  .213 

AN  OLD  "SEVENTY-FOUR"  FRIGATE.  BY  W.  W.  STORY,  .  222 
THE  PRETENDER  AT  BAR-LE-DUC.  BY  HENRY  W.  WOLFF,  .  226 
ONE  OF  A  REMARKABLE  FAMILY  :  GENERAL  R.  MACLAGAN,  R.E. 

BY  MAJOR  W.  BROADFOOT,  R.E.,       247 
THE  END  OF  THE  STORY.     FROM  UNPUBLISHED  PAPERS  OF  THE 

LATE  GENERAL  SIR  R.  CHURCH.  BY  E.  M.  CHURCH,  .  254 
A  LUCKY  DAY  IN  A  DEER-FOREST.  BY  G.  W.  HARTLEY,  .  272 
THE  LOOKER-ON,  ......  285 


EDINBURGH: 

WILLIAM   BLACKWOOD  &  SONS,  45  GEORGE  STREET, 
AND  37  PATERNOSTER   ROW,  LONDON. 

To  whom  all  Communications  must  be  addressed. 


BLACKWOOD'S 
EDINBUEGH    MAGAZINE 


No.  DCCCCXLVII.  SEPT.   1894.  VOL.  CLYI. 


CONTENTS. 

"THAT  DAMNABLE  COUNTRY."  BY  ALFRED  AUSTIN,  .  .  309 

WHO  WAS  LOST  AND  is  FOUND.  CHAPS,  xm.-xvi.,  .  .  325 

A  RECENT  VISIT  TO  HARRAR.  BY  WALTER  B.  HARRIS,  .  350 
LA  FEMME  DE  M.  FEUILLET,  .....  370 
THIRTY  YEARS  OP  SHIKAR. — CONCLUSION. 

BY  SIR  EDWARD  BRADDON,  387 

THE  DOUBLE-BEDDED  ROOM.  BY  AN  ELECTRICIAN,  .  .411 

A  QUITRENT  ODE.  BY  G.  W.  Y.,  .  .  .417 

A  NEW  SPORT.  BY  JOHN  BICKERDYKE,  .  .  .418 

NITCHEVO  :  A  FRAGMENT  OF  RUSSIAN  LIFE.  BY  G.  B.  STUART,  430 
THE  Loss  OF  H.M.S.  VICTORIA  :  AN  ANNIVERSARY  LAMENT. 

BY  REV.  EDW.  H.  HORNE,  435 
SESSION  OF  1894,  .  .  438 


EDINBURGH: 

WILLIAM   BLACK  WOOD  <fe  SONS,  45  GEORGE  STREET, 
AND  37   PATERNOSTER   ROW,   LONDON. 

To  whom  all  Communications  must  be  addressed. 


BLACKWOOD'S 
EDINBURGH    MAGAZINE 


No.  DCCCCXLVIIL        OCTOBER  1894.  VOL.  CLVL 


CONTENTS. 

THE  STREETS  OP  PARIS  FORTY  YEARS  AGO,      .  '  .  .  453 

THE  ACCESSION  OF  THE  NEW  SULTAN  OF  MOROCCO. 

BY  WALTER  B.  HARRIS,  467 

WHO  WAS  LOST  AND  is  FOUND.     CHAPS,  xvn.-xx.,       .  .  485 

FROM  WEIR  TO  MILL.     BY  "A  SON  OF  THE  MARSHES,"          .  510 

POETS  AND  GEOGRAPHERS.     BY  WILLIAM  GRESWELL,    .  .  515 

THE  SKELETON  HAND.     BY  LADY  AGNES  MACLEOD,    .  .  527 

THIRTY  YEARS  OF  THE  PERIODICAL  PRESS. 

BY  T.  H.  S.  ESCOTT,  532 

LEAVES  FROM  A  GAME-BOOK.     BY  GEORGE  MANNERS,  .  .  543 

THE  GOLFER  IN  SEARCH  OF  A  CLIMATE. 

BY  HORACE  G.  HUTCHINSON,  552 

FAREWELL  TO  BEN  VRACKIE.     BY  JOHN  STUART  BLACKIE,      .  571 

THE  NEW  AMERICAN  TARIFF,     .....  573 


EDINBURGH: 

WILLIAM   BLACKWOOD  &  SONS,  45  GEORGE  STREET, 
AND  37   PATERNOSTER   ROW,   LONDON. 

To  whom  all  Communications  must  be  addressed. 


BLACKWOOD'S 
EDINBURGH    MAGAZINE. 

No.  DCCCCXLIX.         NOVEMBER   1894.  VOL.  CLVI. 

CONTENTS. 

SOME  FRENCH  NOVELISTS,           .....  583 

A  HIDE  IN  HAKKALAND.     BY  E.  A.  IRVING,  .             .             .  600 

ROGER  BACON.     BY  SIR  HERBERT  MAXWELL,  BART.,  M.P.,     .  610 
WHO  WAS  LOST  AND  is  FOUND.     CONCLUSION,  .                         .624 

BRITISH  FORESTRY,          .                                                                 .  647 

HANNA,  MY  ABYSSINIAN  SERVANT.     BY  FRANCIS  SCUDAMORE,  663 

A  NOOK  OF  NORTH  WALES.     BY  RUSTICUS  URBANUS,             .  681 
SOME  THOUGHTS  ON  THE  WOMAN  QUESTION. 

BY  THE  AUTHOR  OF  'MoNA  MACLEAN,'  689 

AN  ETON  MASTER,          .  .  .  .  .693 

DENNY'S  DAUGHTER.     BY  MOIRA  O'NEILL,                     .             .  700 
CLUB-HOMES  FOR  UNMARRIED  WORKING  MEN. 

BY  WARNEFORD  MOFFATT,  701 

CHINA'S  REPUTATION-BUBBLE.     BY  COLONEL  HENRY  KNOLLYS,  714 


EDINBURGH: 

WILLIAM  BLACKWOOD  &  SONS,  45  GEORGE  STREET, 
AND  37  PATERNOSTER   ROW,   LONDON. 

To  whom  all  Communications  must  be  addressed. 


BLACKWOOD'S 
EDINBURGH    MAGAZINE. 

No.  DCOCCL.  DECEMBER  1894.  VOL.  CLVI. 


CONTENTS. 

A  FOREIGNER.     CHAPS,  i.-iv.,     .  727 
REMINISCENCES  OF  JAMES  ANTHONY  FROUDE — I. 

BY  JOHN  SKELTON,  C.B.,  LL.D.,   .                                      .  756 
CELIBACY  AND  THE  STRUGGLE  TO  GET  ON. 

BY  HUGH  E.  M.  STUTFIELD,  777 
THE  TOMB  OF  KING  JOHN  IN  WORCESTER  CATHEDRAL. 

BY  CHRISTIAN  BURKE,  791 

AN  EPISTLE  FROM  HORACE  ON  MR  GLADSTONE'S  NEW  TRANS- 
LATIONS,      ....                                      .  793 

INDOOR  LIFE  IN  PARIS,  .             .             .             .             .,            .  802 

FELICITY  BROOKE.     BY  THE  AUTHOR  OF  'Miss  MOLLY,'          .  818 

AN  ANCIENT  INN.     BY  J.  A.  OWEN,    ....  843 

IN  '  MAGA'S  '  LIBRARY,    ......  854 

THE  POSITION  OF  JAPAN.     BY  AN  EX-DIPLOMATIST,       .             .  878 

THE  COMING  STRUGGLE,              .....  889 

INDEX,     .                                                                 .                          .  904 


EDINBURGH: 

WILLIAM   BLACKWOOD  &  SONS,  45  GEORGE  STREET, 
AND  37  PATERNOSTER   ROW,  LONDON. 

To  whom  all  Communications  must  be  addressed. 


BLACKWOOD'S 
EDINBUBGH    MAGAZINE, 


No.  DCCCCXLV. 


JULY  1894. 


VOL.  CLYI. 


WHO    WAS    LOST    AND    IS    FOUND. 


CHAPTER  V. 


THE  footstep  came  slowly  up  the 
sloping  path.  The  holly  hedges 
were  high,  and  for  some  time  noth- 
ing more  was  visible  than  a  mov- 
ing speck  over  the  solid  wall  of 
green.  There  is  something  in  await- 
ing in  this  way  the  slow  approach 
of  a  stranger  which  affects  the 
nerves,  even  when  there  is  little 
expectation  and  no  alarm  in  the 
mind.  Mrs  Ogilvy  sat  speechless 
and  unable  to  move,  her  throat 
parched  and  dry,  her  heart  beating 
wildly.  "Was  it  he  1  Was  it  some 
one  pursuing  him  —  some  avenger 
of  blood  on  his  track  1  Was  it  no 
one  at  all  —  some  silly  messenger, 
some  sturdy  beggar,  some  one  who 
would  require  Andrew  to  turn  him 
away1?  These  questions  went 
through  her  head  in  a  whirl,  with- 
out any  volition  of  hers.  The  last 
was  the  most  likely.  She  waited 
with  a  growing  passion  and  sus- 
pense, yet  still  in  outward  sem- 

VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCXLV. 


blance  as  the  rose-bush  with  all  its 
buds  showing  white,  which  stood 
tranquilly  in  the  dimness  behind 
her.  It  was  growing  dark ;  or 
rather  it  was  growing  dim,  every- 
thing still  visible,  but  vaguely,  as 
if  a  veil  had  dropped  between  the 
eye  and  what  it  saw.  When  the 
man  came  out  at  the  head  of  the 
path,  detached  and  separate  from 
all  the  trees  and  their  shadows, 
upon  the  little  platform,  a  thrill 
came  over  the  looker-on.  He 
seemed  to  pause  there  for  a  moment, 
then  advanced  slowly. 

A  tall  big  man,  loosely  dressed 
so  as  to  make  his  proportions  look 
bigger :  his  features,  which  there 
would  not  in  any  case  have  been 
light  enough  to  see,  half  lost  in  a 
long  brown  beard,  and  in  the  shade 
of  the  broad  soft  hat,  partly  folded 
back,'  which  covered  his  head.  He 
did  not  take  that  off  or  say  any- 
thing, but  came  slowly,  half  re- 
A 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[July 


luctantly  forward,  till  he  stood  be- 
fore her.  It  seemed  to  Mrs  Ogilvy 
that  she  was  paralysed.  She  could 
not  move  nor  speak.  This  strange 
figure  came  into  the  peaceful  circle 
of  the  little  house  closing  up  for 
the  night,  separated  from  all  the 
world— in  silence,  like  a  ghost,  like  a 
secret  and  mysterious  Being  whose 
coming  meant  something  very  dif- 
ferent from  the  comings  and  goings 
of  the  common  day.  He  stood  all 
dark  like  a  shadow  before  the  old 
lady  trembling  in  her  chair,  with 
her  white  cap  and  white  shawl 
making  a  strange  light  in  the  dim 
picture.  How  long  this  moment 
of  silence  lasted  neither  knew.  It 
became  intolerable  to  both  at  the 
same  moment.  She  burst  forth, 
"Who  are  you,  who  are  you, 
man  1 "  in  a  voice  which  shook  and 
went  out  at  the  end  like  the  flame 
of  a  candle  in  the  air.  "  Have  you 
forgotten  me — altogether  ? "  he  said. 

"  Altogether  ?"  she  echoed,  pain- 
fully raising  herself  from  her  chair. 
It  brought  her  a  little  nearer  to 
him,  to  the  brown  beard,  the  shad- 
owed features,  the  eyes  which 
looked  dimly  from  under  the  deep 
shade  of  the  hat.  She  stood  for  a 
moment  tottering,  trembling,  recog- 
nising nothing,  feeling  the  atmos- 
phere of  him  sicken  and  repel  her. 
And  then  there  came  into  that 
wonderful  pause  a  more  wonderful 
and  awful  change  of  sentiment,  a 
revolution  of  feeling.  "Mother!" 
he  said. 

And  with  a  low  cry  Mrs  Ogilvy 
fell  back  into  her  chair.  At  such 
moments  what  can  be  done  but  to 
appeal  to  heaven  ?  "  Oh  my  Lord 
God  !  "  she  cried. 

She  had  looked  for  it  so  long, 
for  years  and  years  and  years,  an- 
ticipated every  particular  of  it :  how 
she  would  recognise  him  afar  off, 
and  go  out  to  meet  him,  like  the 
father  of  the  prodigal,  and  bring 
him  home,  and  fill  the  house  with 


feasting  because  her  son  who  had 
been  lost  was  found :  how  he 
would  come  to  her  all  in  a  moment, 
and  fling  himself  down  by  her  side, 
with  his  head  in  her  lap,  as  had 
been  one  of  his  old  ways.  Oh,  and 
a  hundred  ways  besides,  like  him- 
self, like  herself,  when  the  mother 
and  the  son  after  long  years  would 
look  each  other  in  the  face,  and 
all  the  misery  and  the  trouble  would 
be  forgotten  !  But  never  like  this. 
He  said  "  Mother,"  and  she  dropped 
away  from  him,  sank  into  the  seat 
behind  her,  putting  out  neither 
hands  nor  arms.  She  did  not  lose 
consciousness — alas!  she  had  not 
that  resource,  pain  kept  her  faculties 
all  awake — but  she  lost  heart  more 
completely  than  ever  before.  A 
wave  of  terrible  sickness  came  over 
her,  a  sense  of  repulsion,  a  desire  to 
hide  her  face,  that  the  shadows 
might  cover  her,  or  cover  him  who 
stood  there,  saying  no  more :  the 
man  who  was  her  son,  who  said  he 
was  her  son,  who  said  "  Mother  "  in 
a  tone  which,  amid  all  these  horrible 
contradictions,  yet  went  to  her  heart 
like  a  knife.  Oh,  not  with  sweet- 
ness !  sharp,  sharp,  cutting  every 
doubt  away ! 

"Mother,"  he  said  again,  "I 
would  have  sworn  you  would  not 
forget  me,  though  all  the  world 
forgot  me." 

"No,"  she  said,  like  one  in  a 
dream.  "Can  a  mother  forget 

her "  Her  voice  broke  again 

and  went  out  upon  the  air.  She 
lifted  her  trembling  hands  to  him. 
"  Oh  Robbie,  Eobbie !  are  you  my 
Robbie?"  she  said  in  a  voice  of 
anguish,  with  the  sickness  and  the 
horror  in  her  heart. 

"Ay,  mother,"  he  said,  with  a 
tone  of  bitterness  in  his  voice ; 
"  but  take  me  in,  for  I'm  tired  to 
death." 

And  then  a  great  compunction 
awoke  within  her  :  her  son,  for 
whom  she  had  longed  and  prayed 


1894." 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


all  these  years — and  instead  of  run- 
ning out  to  meet  him,  and  putting 
the  best  robe  on  him,  a  ring  on  his 
hand,  and  shoes  on  his  feet,  he  had 
to  remind  her  that  he  was  tired  to 
death  !  She  took  him  by  the  hand 
and  led  him  in,  and  put  him  in  the 
big  chair.  "  I  am  all  shaken,"  she 
said :  "  both  will  and  sense,  they 
are  gone  from  me  :  and  I  don't  know 
what  I  am  doing.  Eobbie,  if  ye  are 
Bobbie " 

"  Do  you  doubt  me  still,  mother1?" 
He  took  off  his  hat  and  flung  it  on 
the  floor.  Though  he  was  almost 
too  much  broken  down  for  resent- 
ment, there  was  indignation  in  his 
tone.  And  then  she  looked  at  him 
again,  and  even  in  the  dimness  re- 
cognised her  son.  The  big  beard 
hid  the  lower  part  of  his  face,  but 
these  were  Eobbie's  eyes,  eyes  half 
turned  away,  sullen,  angry — as  she 
had  seen  him  look  before  he  went 
away,  when  he  was  reproved,  when 
he  had  done  wrong.  She  had  for- 
gotten that  ever  he  had  looked  like 
that,  but  it  flashed  back  to  her 
mind  in  a  moment  now.  She  had 
forgotten  that  he  had  ever  been 
anything  but  kind  and  affectionate 
and  trusting,  easily  led  away,  oh, 
so  easily  led  away,  but  nothing 
worse  than  that.  Now  it  all  came 
back  upon  her,  the  shadows  that 
there  had  been  to  that  picture  even 
at  its  best. 

"  Eobbie,"  she  said,  with  falter- 
ing lips,  "  Eobbie,  oh,  my  dear !  I 
know  you  now,"  and  she  put  those 
trembling  lips  to  his  forehead.  They 
were  cold — it  could  not  feel  like  a 
kiss  of  love;  and  she  was  trembling 
from  head  to  foot,  chiefly  with 
emotion,  but  a  little  with  fear.  She 
could  not  help  it :  her  heart  yearned 
over  him,  and  yet  she  was  afraid 
of  this  strange  man  who  was  her 
son. 

He  did  not  attempt  to  return  the 
salutation  in  any  way.  He  said 
drearily,  "  I  have  not  had  bite  nor 


sup  for  twelve  hours,  nothing  but  a 
cup  of  bad  coffee  this  morning.  My 
money's  all  run  out." 

"  Oh,  my  laddie  ! "  she  cried,  and 
hurried  to  the  bell  but  did  not  ring 
it,  and  then  to  the  door.  But  be- 
fore she  could  reach  the  door,  Janet 
came  in  with  the  lamp.  She  came 
unconscious  that  any  one  was  there, 
with  the  sudden  light  illuminating 
her  face,  and  making  all  the  rest  of 
the  room  doubly  dark  to  her.  She 
did  not  see  the  stranger  sitting  in 
the  corner,  and  gave  a  violent  start, 
almost  upsetting  the  lamp  as  she 
placed  it  on  the  table,  when  with  a 
half  laugh  he  suddenly  said,  "  And 
here's  Janet  ! "  out  of  the  shade. 
Janet  turned  round  like  lightning, 
with  a  face  of  ashes.  "  Who's  that," 
she  cried,  "that  calls  me  by  my 
name  ? " 

"  We  shall  see,"  he  said,  rising 
up,  "if  she  knows  me  better  than 
my  mother."  Mrs  Ogilvy  stood  by 
with  a  pang  which  words  could  not 
describe,  as  Janet  flung  up  her  arms 
with  a  great  cry.  It  was  true  :  the 
woman  did  recognise  him  without 
a  moment's  hesitation,  while  his 
mother  had  held  back — the  woman, 
who  was  only  the  servant,  not  a 
drop's  blood  to  him.  The  mother's 
humiliation  could  not  be  put  into 
words. 

"Janet,"  she  said  severely,  master- 
ing her  voice,  "  set  out  the  supper 
at  once,  whatever  is  in  the  house. 
It  will  be  cold ;  but  in  the  mean- 
time put  the  chicken  to  the  fire  that 
you  got  for  to-morrow's  dinner  :  the 
cold  beef  will  do  to  begin  with  :  and 
lose  not  a  moment.  Mr  Eobert," — 
she  paused  a  moment  after  those 
words,  —  "Mr  Eobert  has  arrived 
suddenly,  as  you  see,  and  he  has 
had  a  long  journey,  and  wants  his 
supper.  You  can  speak  to  him 
after.  Now  let  us  get  ready  his 
food." 

She  went  out  of  the  room  before 
her  maid.  She  would  not  seem 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[July 


jealous,  or  to  grudge  Janet's  ready 
and  joyful  greeting.  She  went  into 
the  little  dining-room,  and  began 
to  arrange  the  table  with  her  own 
hands.  "  Go  you  quick  and  put  the 
chicken  to  the  fire,"  she  said.  Was 
she  glad  to  escape  from  his  presence, 
from  Robbie,  her  long  absent  son, 
her  only  child?  All  the  time  she 
went  quickly  about,  putting  out  the 
shining  silver,  freshly  burnished,  as 
it  was  Saturday;  the  fresh  linen,  put 
ready  for  Sunday ;  the  best  plates, 
part  of  the  dinner-service  that  was 
kept  in  the  dining-room.  "This 
will  do  for  the  cold  things,"  she 
said ;  "  and  oh,  make  haste,  make 
haste  with  the  rest ! "  Then  she 
took  out  the  two  decanters  of  wine, 
the  port  and  the  sherry,  which  no- 
body drank,  but  which  she  had 
always  been  accustomed  to  keep 
ready.  The  bread  was  new,  just 
come  in  from  the  baker's,  every- 
thing fresh,  the  provisions  of  the 
Saturday  market,  and  of  that  in- 
stinct which  prepares  the  best  of 
everything  for  Sunday  —  the  Sab- 
bath— the  Lord's  Day.  It  was  not 
the  fatted  calf,  but  at  least  it  was 
the  best  fare  that  ever  came  into 
the  house,  the  Sunday  fare. 

Then  she  went  back  to  him  in 
the  other  room  :  he  had  not  followed 
her,  but  sat  just  as  she  had  left 
him,  his  head  on  his  breast.  He 
roused  up  and  gave  a  startled  look 
round  as  she  came  in,  as  if  there 
might  be  some  horrible  danger  in 
that  peaceful  place.  "  Your  supper 
is  ready,"  she  said,  her  voice  still 
tremulous.  "  Come  to  your  supper. 
It  is  nothing  but  cold  meat  to  be- 
gin with,  but  the  chicken  will  soon 
be  ready,  Robbie:  there's  nothing 

here  to  fear " 

I  know,"  he  said,  rising  slowly  : 
"  but  if  you  had  been  like  me,  in 
places  where  there  was  everything 
to  fear,  it  would  be  long  before  you 
got  out  of  the  way  of  it.  How  can 
I  tell  that  there  might  not  be  some- 


body watching  outside  that  window, 
which  you  keep  without  shutter  or 
curtain,  in  this  lonely  little  house, 
where  any  man  might  break  in  ? " 

He  gave  another  suspicious  glance 
at  the  window  as  he  followed  her 
out  of  the  room.  "Tell  Janet  to 
put  up  the  shutters,"  he  said. 

Then  he  sat  down  and  occupied 
himself  with  his  meal,  eating 
ravenously,  like  a  man  who  had  not 
seen  food  for  days.  When  the 
chicken  came  he  tore  it  asunder 
(tearing  the  poor  old  lady's  heart 
a  little,  in  addition  to  all  deeper 
wounds,  by  the  irreverent  rending 
of  the  food,  on  which,  she  had  also 
remarked,  he  asked  no  blessing), 
and  ate  the  half  of  it  without 
stopping.  His  mother  sat  by  and 
looked  on.  Many  a  time  had  she 
sat  by  rejoicing,  and  seen  Robbie, 
as  she  had  fondly  said,  "devour" 
his  supper,  with  happy  laugh  and 
jest,  and  questions  and  answers,  the 
boy  fresh  from  his  amusements,  or 
perhaps,  though  more  rarely,  his 
work — with  so  much  to  tell  her,  so 
much  to  say, — -she  beaming  upon 
him,  proud  to  see  how  heartily  he 
ate,  rejoicing  in  his  young  vigour 
and  strength.  JSTow  he  ate  in 
silence,  like  a  wild  animal,  as  if  it 
might  be  his  last  meal ;  while  she 
sat  by,  the  shadow  of  her  head 
upon  the  wall  behind  her  showing 
the  tremor  which  she  hoped  she  had 
overcome,  trying  to  say  something 
now  and  then,  not  knowing  what  to 
say.  He  had  looked  up  after  his 
first  onslaught  upon  the  food,  and 
glanced  round  the  table.  "Have 
you  no  beer?"  he  said.  Mrs 
Ogilvy  jumped  up  nervously. 
"  There  is  the  table-beer  we  have 
for  Andrew,"  she  said.  "  You  will 
have  whisky,  at  least.  I  must 
have  something  to  drink  with  my 
dinner,"  he  answered,  morosely.  Mrs 
Ogilvy  knew  many  uses  for  whisky, 
but  to  drink  it,  not  after,  but  with 
dinner,  was  not  one  that  occurred 


1894.] 

to  her.  She  brought  out  the  old- 
fashioned  silver  case  eagerly  from 
the  sideboard,  and  sought  among 
the  shelves  where  the  crystal  was  for 
the  proper  sized  glass.  But  he 
poured  it  out  into  the  tumbler,  to  her 
horror,  dashing  the  fiery  liquid  about 
and  filling  it  up  with  water.  "I 
suppose,"  he  said  again,  looking 
round  him  with  a  sort  of  angry 
contempt,  "  there's  no  soda-water 
here?" 

"  We  can  get  everything  on  Mon- 
day, whatever  you  like,  my  —  my 
dear,"  she  said,  in  her  faltering 
voice. 

Afterwards  she  was  glad  to  leave 
him,  to  go  up-stairs  and  help  Janet, 
whose  steps  she  heard  overhead  in 
the  room  so  long  unused — his  room, 
where  she  had  always  arranged 
everything  herself,  and  spent  many 
an  hour  thinking  of  her  boy,  among 
all  the  old  treasures  of  his  child- 
hood and  youth.  It  was  a  room 
next  to  her  own — a  little  larger — 
"for  a  lad  has  need  of  room,  with 
his  big  steps  and  his  long  legs,"  she 
had  many  a  time  said.  She  found 
Janet  hesitating  between  two  sets 
of  sheets  brought  out  from.  Mrs 
Ogilvy's  abundant  store  of  napery, 
one  fine,  and  one  not  so  fine.  "  It's  a 
grand  day  his  coming  hame,"  Janet 
said.  "  Ye'll  mind,  mem,  a  ring  on 
his  finger  and  shoes  on  his  feet : 
it's  true  that  shoon  are  first  neces- 
saries, but  no  the  ring  on  his  finger." 

"Take  these  things  away,"  said 
Mrs  Ogilvy,  with  an  indignation 
that  was  more  or  less  a  relief  to 
her,  pushing  away  the  linen,  which 
slid  in  its  shining  whiteness  to 
the  floor,  as  if  to  display  its 
intrinsic  excellence  though  thus 
despised.  She  went  to  the  press 
and  brought  out  the  best  she  had, 
her  mother's  spinning  in  the  days 
when  mothers  began  to  think  of 
their  daughter's  "plenishing"  for 
her  wedding  as  soon  as  she  was 
born.  She  brought  it  back  in  her 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


5 


arms  and  placed  it  on  the  bed.  "  He 
shall  have  nothing  but  the  best," 
she  said,  spreading  forth  the  snowy 
linen  with  her  own  hands.  Oh ! 
how  often  she  had  thought  of  doing 
that,  going  over  it,  spreading  the 
bed  for  Robbie,  with  her  heart 
dancing  in  her  bosom  !  It  did  not 
dance  now,  but  lay  as  if  dead,  but 
for  the  pain  of  its  deadly  wounds. 

"And,  Janet,"  she  said,  "how it 
is  to  be  done  I  know  not,  but 
Andrew  must  hurry  to  the  town  to 
get  provisions  for  to-morrow.  It 
will  be  too  late  to-night,  and  who 
will  open  to  him,  or  who  will  sell 
to  him  on  the  Sabbath  morning,  is 
more  than  I  can  tell ;  but  we  must 
just  trust " 

"Mem,"  said  Janet,  "I  have 
sent  him  already  up  Esk  to  Johnny 
Small's  to  get  some  trout  that  he 
catched  this  afternoon,  but  could- 
na  dispose  o'  them  so  late.  And 
likewise  to  Mrs  Loanhead  at  the 
Knowe  farm,  to  get  a  couple  of 
chickens  and  as  many  eggs  as  he 
could  lay  his  hands  on.  You'll  not 
be  surprised  if  ye  hear  the  poor 
things  cackling.  We'll  just  thraw 
their  necks  the  morn,  I  maun  say 
again,  as  I  have  aye  said,  that  for 
a  house  like  this  to  have  nae  re- 
sources of  its  ain,  no  a  chicken  for 
a  sudden  occasion  without  flying  to 
the  neebors,  is  just  a  very  puir 
kind  of  thing." 

"And  what  would  become  of  my 
flowers,  with  your  hens  and  their 
families  about  ? " 

"  Flooers  ! "  said  Janet,  con- 
temptuously :  and  her  mistress 
had  not  spirit  to  continue  the 
discussion. 

"And  now,"  she  said,  "that  all's 
ready,  I  must  go  down  and  see  after 
my  son." 

"Eh,  mem,  but  you're  a  proud 
woman  this  night  to  say  thae  words 
again  !  and  him  grown  sic  a  grand 
buirdly  man ! " 

The  poor  lady  smiled — she  could 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[July 


do  no  more — in  her  old  servant's 
face,  and  went  down-stairs  to  the 
dining-room,  which  she  found  to  her 
astonishment  full  of  smoke,  and 
those  fumes  of  whisky  which  so 
often  fill  a  woman's  heart  with  sick- 
ness and  dismay,  even  when  there 
is  no  need  for  such  emotion. 
Kobert  Ogilvy  sat  with  his  chair 
pushed  back  from  the  table,  a 
pipe  in  his  mouth,  and  a  tumbler 
of  whisky-and-water  at  his  hand. 
The  whisky  and  the  food  had 
perhaps  given  him  a  less  hang- 
dog look,  but  the  former  had  not 
in  the  least  affected  him  other- 
wise, nor  probably  had  he  taken 
enough  to  do  so.  But  the  anguish 
of  the  sight  was  not  less  at  the  first 
glance  to  his  mother,  so  long  un- 
accustomed to  the  habits  of  even 
the  soberest  men.  She  said  nothing, 
and  tried  even  to  disguise  the  trouble 
in  her  expression,  heart- wrung  with 
a  cumulation  of  experiences,  each 
adding  something  to  those  that  had 
gone  before. 

"Your  room  is  ready,  Eobbie, 
my  dear.  You  will  be  wearied 
with  this  long  day — and  the  excite- 
ment," she  said,!  with  a  faint  sob, 
"  of  coming  home." 

"  I  do  not  call  that  excitement," 
he  said :  "  a  man  that  knows  what 
excitement  is  has  other  ways  of 

reckoning " 

"  But  still,"  she  said,  with  a  little 
gasp  accepting  this  repulse,  "it 
would  be  something  out  of  the 
common.  And  you  will  have  been 
travelling  all  day.  How  far  have 
you  come  to-day,  my  dear  ? " 

"  Don't  put  me  through  my  cate- 
chism all  at  once,"  he  said,  with  a 
hasty  wrinkle  of  anger  in  his  fore- 
head. "  I'll  tell  you  all  that  another 
time.  I'm  very  tired,  at  least,  whether 
I've  come  a  short  way  or  a  long." 

"  I  have  put  your  bed  all  ready 
for  you— Robbie."  She  seemed  to 
say  his  name  with  a  little  reluctance : 
his  bonnie  name!  which  had  cost 


her  so  keen  a  pang  to  think  of  as 
stained  or  soiled.  Was  it  the  same 
feeling  that  arrested  it  on  her  lips 
now? 

"Am  I  bothering  you,  mother, 
staying  here  a  little  quiet  with  my 
pipe  1  for  I'll  go,  if  that  is  what  you 
want." 

She  had  coughed  a  little,  much 
against  her  will,  unaccustomed  to 
the  smoke.  "  Bothering  me  ! "  she 
cried :  "is  it  likely  that  anything 
should  bother  me  to-night,  and  my 
son  come  back  1 " 

He  looked  at  her,  and  for  the 
first  time  seemed  to  remark  her 
countenance  strained  with  a  wistful 
attempt  at  satisfaction,  on  the  back- 
ground of  her  despair. 

"  I  am  afraid,"  he  said,  shaking 
his  head,  "there  is  not  much  more 
pleasure  in  it  to  you  than  to  me." 

"There  would  be  joy  and  bless- 
ing in  it,  Eobbie,"  she  cried,  forcing 
herself  to  utterance,  "if  it  was  a 
pleasure  to  you." 

"That's  past  praying  for,"  he 
replied,  almost  roughly,  and  then 
turned  to  knock  out  his  pipe  upon 
the  edge  of  the  trim  summer  fire- 
place, all  so  daintily  arranged  for 
the  warm  season  when  fires  were 
not  wanted.  Her  eyes  followed  his 
movements  painfully  in  spite  of 
herself,  seeing  everything  which  she 
would  have  preferred  not  to  see. 
And  then  he  rose,  putting  the  pipe 
still  not  extinguished  in  his  pocket. 
"  If  it's  to  be  like  this,  mother,"  he 
said,  "the  best  thing  for  me  will 
be  to  go  to  bed.  I'm  tired  enough, 
heaven  knows ;  but  the  pipe's  my 
best  friend,  and  it  was  soothing  me. 

Now  I'll  go  to  bed " 

.  "  Is  it  me  that  am  driving  you, 
Robbie  ?  I'll  go  ben  to  the  parlour. 
I  will  leave  you  here.  I  will  do 
anything  that  pleases  you " 

"  No,"  he  said,  with  a  sullen  ex- 
pression closing  over  his  face,  "  I'll 
go  to  bed."  He  was  going  without 
another  word,  leaving  her  standing 


1894.] 


transfixed  in  the  middle  of  the 
room — but,  after  a  glance  at  her, 
came  back.  "You'll  be  going  to 
church  in  the  morning,"  he  said. 
"I'll  take  what  we  used  to  call  a 
long  lie,  and  you  need  not  trouble 
yourself  about  me.  I'm  a  different 
man  from  what  you  knew,  but — it's 
not  my  wish  to  trouble  you,  mother, 
more  than  I  can  help." 

"  Oh,  Robbie,  trouble  me  !  "  she 
cried:  "oh,  my  boy  !  would  I  not 
cut  myself  in  little  bits  to  please 
you?  would  I  not I  only  de- 
sire you  to  be  comfortable,  my  dear 
— my  dear  !  " 

"You'll  make  them  shut  up  all 
these  staring  open  windows  if  you 
want  me  to  be  comfortable,"  he 
said.  "I  can't  bear  a  window  where 

any  d d  fellow  might  jump  in. 

Well,  then,  good-night." 

She  took  his  hand  in  both  hers. 
She  reached  up  to  him  on  tiptoe, 
with  her  face  smiling,  yet  con- 
vulsed with  trouble  and  pain. 
"  God  bless  you,  Robbie  !  God  bless 
you !  and  bless  your  home-coming, 
and  make  it  happier  for  you  and 
me  than  it  seems,"  she  said,  with 
a  sob,  almost  breaking  down.  He 
stooped  down  reluctantly  his  cheek 
towards  her,  and  permitted  her 
kiss  rather  than  received  it.  Oh, 
she  remembered  now  !  he  had  done 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


that  when  he  was  angered,  when  he 
was  blamed,  in  the  old  days.  He 
had  not  been,  as  she  persuaded  her- 
self, all  love  and  kindness  even  then. 

But  she  would  not  allow  herself  to 
stop  and  think.  Though  she  had 
herself  slept  securely  for  years,  in 
the  quiet  of  her  age  and  peaceful- 
ness,  with  little  heed  to  doors  and 
windows,  she  bolted  and  barred 
them  all  now  with  her  own  hands. 
"  Mr  Robert  wishes  it,"  she  said,  ex- 
plaining to  Janet,  who  came"  in  in 
much  surprise  at  the  sound.  "  He 
has  come  out  of  a  wild  country 
full  of  strange  chancy  folk  —  and 
wild  beasts  too,  in  the  great 
forests,"  she  added  by  an  after- 
thought. "  He  likes  to  see  that 
all's  shut  up  when  we're  so  near 
the  level  of  the  earth." 

"I'm  very  glad  that's  his  opinion," 
said  Janet,  "  for  it's  mine ;  no  for 
wild  beasts,  the  Lord  preserve  us  ! 
but  tramps,  that's  worse.  But  An- 
drew's not  back  yet,  and  he  will  be 
awfu'  surprised  to  see  all  the  lights 
out." 

"Andrew  must  just  keep  his 
surprise  to  himself,"  said  the  mis- 
tress in  her  decided  tones,  "  for 
what  my  son  wishes,  whatever  it 
may  be,  that  is  what  I  will  do." 

"  'Deed,  mem,  and  I  was  aye 
weel  aware  o'  that,"  Janet  said. 


CHAPTER  VI. 


The  next  day  was  such  a  Sunday 
as  had  never  been  passed  in  the 
Hewan  before.  Mrs  Ogilvy  did 
not  go  to  church :  consequently 
Sandy  was  not  taken  out  of  the 
stable,  nor  was  there  any  of  the 
usual  cheerful  bustle  of  the  Sunday 
morning,  the  little  commotion  of 
the  best  gown,  the  best  bonnet,  the 
lace  veil  taken  out  of  their  drawers 
among  the  lavender.  Nobody  but 
Mrs  Ogilvy  continued  to  wear  a 
lace  veil :  but  her  old,  softly  tinted 


countenance  in  the  half  mask  of 
a  piece  of  net  caught  upon  the 
nose,  as  was  once  the  fashion,  or 
on  the  chin,  as  is  the  fashion  now, 
would  have  been  an  impossible 
thing.  Her  long  veil  hung  softly 
from  her  bonnet  behind  it  or 
above  it.  It  could  cover  her  face 
when  there  was  need ;  but  there 
never  was  any  reason  why  she 
should  cover  her  face.  Her  faithful 
servants  admired  her  very  much  in 
her  Sunday  attire.  Janet,  though 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[July 


she  was  so  hot  a  church  woman,  was 
not  much  of  a  churchgoer.  Some- 
body, she  said,  had  to  stay  at 
home  to  look  after  the  house  and 
the  dinner,  even  when  it  was  a  cold 
dinner :  and  to  see  the  mistress  sit 
down  without  even  a  hot  potatie, 
was  more  than  she  could  consent  to : 
so  except  on  great  occasions  she 
remained  at  home,  and  Andrew  put 
a  mark  in  his  Bible  at  the  text,  and 
told  her  as  much  as  he  could  re- 
member of  the  discourse.  It  was  a 
"  ploy  "  for  Janet  to  come  out  to  the 
door  into  the  still  and  genial  sun- 
shine on  Sunday  morning,  and  see 
the  little  pony-carriage  come  round, 
all  its  polished  surfaces  shining,  and 
Sandy  tossing  his  head  till  every  bit 
of  the  silver  on  his  harness  twinkled 
in  the  sun,  and  Andrew,  all  in  his 
best,  bringing  him  up  with  a  little 
dash  at  the  door.  And  then  Mrs 
Ogilvy  would  come  out,  not  uncon- 
scious and  not  displeased  that  the 
old  servants  were  watching  for  her, 
and  that  the  sight  of  her  modest 
finery  was  a  "  ploy  "  to  Janet,  who 
had  so  few  ploys.  She  would  pin 
a  rose  on  her  breast  when  it  was  the 
time  of  roses,  and  take  a  pair  of 
grey  gloves  out  of  her  drawer,  to 
give  them  pleasure,  with  a  tender 
feeling  that  made  the  little  vanity 
sweet.  The  grey  gloves  were,  in- 
deed, her  only  little  adornment, 
breaking  the  monotony  of  the  black 
which  she  always  wore ;  but  Janet 
loved  the  lustre  of  the  best  black 
silk,  and  to  stroke  it  with  her  hand 
as  she  arranged  it  in  the  carriage, 
loath  to  cover  up  its  sheen  with  the 
wrapper  which  was  necessary  to 
protect  it  from  the  dust.  Nothing 
of  all  this  occurred  on  the  dull 
morning  of  this  strange  Sabbath, 
which,  as  if  in  sympathy,  was 
grey  and  cheerless— the  sky  with- 
out colour,  the  landscape  without 
sunshine.  Mrs  Ogilvy  came  out 
to  the  door  to  speak  to  Andrew  as 
he  ploughed  across  the  gravel  with 


discontented  looks  —  for  to  walk 
in  to  the  kirk  did  not  please  the 
factotum,  who  generally  drove.  She 
called  him  to  her,  standing  on  the 
doorstep  drawing  her  white  shawl 
round  her  as  if  she  had  taken  a 
chill.  "Andrew,"  she  said,  "I 
know  you  are  not  a  gossip ;  but  it's 
a  great  event  my  son  coming  home. 
I  would  have  you  say  little  about  it 
to-day,  for  it  would  bring  a  crowd 
of  visitors,  and  perhaps  some  even 
on  the  Sabbath  :  and  Mr  Eobert  is 
tired,  and  not  caring  to  see  visitors. 
He  must  just  have  a  day  or  two  to 
rest  before  everybody  knows." 

"I'm  no  a  man,"  said  Andrew,  a 
little  sullen,  "  for  clashes  and 
clavers :  you  had  better,  mem,  say 
a  word  to  the  wife."  Andrew  was 
conscious  that  in  his  prowl  for 
victuals  the  night  before  he  had 
spread  the  news  of  Ogilvy's  return, 
— "and  nae  mair  comfort  to  his 
mother  nor  ever,  or  I  am  sair  mis- 
taen" — far  and  wide. 

"  Whatever  you  do,"  Mrs  Ogilvy 
said,  a  little  subdued  by  Andrew's 
looks,  "  do  not  say  anything  to  the 
minister's  man." 

She  went  back,  and  sat  down  in 
her  usual  place  between  the  win- 
dow and  the  fireplace.  The  room 
was  full  of  flowers,  gathered  fresh 
for  Sunday ;  and  the  Bible  lay  on 
the  little  table,  the  knitting  and 
the  newspapers  being  carefully 
cleared  away.  She  took  the  book 
and  opened  it,  or  rather  it  opened 
of  itself,  at  those  chapters  in  St 
John's  Gospel  which  are  the  dear- 
est to  the  sorrowful.  She  opened 
it,  but  she  did  not  read  it.  She  had 
no  need.  She  knew  every  word 
by  heart,  as  no  one  could  do  by 
any  mere  effort  of  memory :  but 
only  by  many,  many  readings, 
long  penetration  of  the  soul  by 
that  stream  of  consolation.  It 
did  her  a  little  good  to  have  the 
book  open  by  her  side  :  but  she  did 
not  need  it — and,  indeed,  the  sacred 


«  Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


1894.] 

words  were  mingled  unconsciously 
by  many  a  broken  prayer  and 
musing  of  her  own.  She  had 
gone  to  her  son's  room,  to  the 
door,  many  times  since  she  parted 
with  him  the  night  before ;  but  had 
heard  no  sound,  and,  hovering 
there  on  the  threshold,  had  been 
afraid  to  go  in,  as  she  so  longed 
to  do.  What  mother  would  not, 
after  so  long  an  absence,  steal  in 
to  say  again  good -night  —  to  see 
that  all  was  comfortable,  plenty  of 
covering  on  the  bed,  not  too  much, 
just  what  he  wanted ;  or  again,  in 
the  morning,  to  see  how  he  had 
slept,  to  recognise  his  dear  face  by 
the  morning  light,  to  say  God  bless 
him,  and  God  bless  him  the  first 
morning  as  the  first  night  of  his 
return?  But  Mrs  Ogilvy  was 
afraid.  She  went  and  stood  out- 
side the  door,  trembling,  but  she 
had  not  the  courage  to  go  in.  She 
felt  that  it  might  anger  him — that 
it  might  annoy  him — that  he  would 
not  like  it.  He  had  been  a  long 
time  away.  He  had  grown  a  man 
almost  middle-aged,  with  none  of 
the  habits  or  even  recollections  of  a 
boy.  He  would  not  like  her  to  go 
near  him — to  touch  him.  With  a 
profound  humility  of  which  she 
was  not  conscious,  she  explained  to 
herself  that  this  was  after  all  "  very 
natural."  A  man  within  sight  of 
forty  (she  counted  his  age  to  a  day 
— he  was  thirty- seven)  had  for- 
gotten, being  long  parted  from 
them,  the  ways  of  a  mother.  He 
had  maybe,  she  said  to  herself  with 
a  shudder,  known — other  kinds  of 
women.  She  had  no  right  to  be 
pained  by  it — to  make  a  grievance 
of  it.  Oh  no,  no  grievance  :  it  was 
"  very  natural."  If  she  went  into 
the  parlour,  where  she  always  sat 
in  the  morning,  she  would  hear  him 
when  he  began  to  move :  for  that 
room  was  'over  this.  Meantime, 
what  could  she  do  better  than  to 
read  her  chapter,  and  say  her  prayers, 


and  bless  him — and  try  "to  keep 
her  heart"1? 

Many  many  times  had  she  gone 
over  the  same  thoughts  that  flitted 
about  her  mind  now  and  inter- 
rupted the  current  of  her  prayers, 
and  of  the  reading  which  was  only 
remembering.  There  was  Job, 
whom  she  had  thought  of  so  often, 
whose  habit  was,  when  his  sons 
and  daughters  were  in  all  their 
grandeur  before  anything  happened 
to  them,  to  offer  sacrifices  for  them, 
if,  perhaps,  in  the  carelessness  of 
their  youth,  they  might  have  done 
something  amiss.  How  she  had 
longed  to  do  that !  and  then  had 
reminded  herself  that  there  were  no 
more  sacrifices,  that  there  had  been 
One  for  all,  and  that  all  she  had  to 
do  was  but  to  put  God  in  mind,  to 
keep  Him  always  in  mind :  that 
there  was  her  son  yonder  some- 
where out  in  His  world,  and  maybe 
forgetting  what  his  duty  was.  To 
put  God  in  mind ! — as  if  He  did 
not  remember  best  of  all,  thinking 
on  them  most  when  they  were  lost, 
watching  the  night  when  even  a 
mother  slumbers  and  sleeps,  and 
never,  never  losing  sight  of  them 
that  were  His  sons  before  they  were 
mine  !  What  could  she  say  then, 
what  could  she  do,  a  poor  small 
thing  of  a  woman,  of  as  little  ac- 
count as  a  fly  in  the  big  world  of 
God  ?  Just  sit  there  with  her  heart 
bleeding,  and  say  between  the  lines, 
"In  my  Father's  house  are  many 
mansions  " — and,  "  If  a  man  love 
me,  my  Father  will  love  him,  and 
we  will  come  unto  him,  and  make 
our  abode  with  him  :  "  nothing  but 
"  my  Eobbie,  my  Eobbie  ! "  with 
anguish  and  faith  contending.  This 
was  all  mixed  up  among  the  verses 
now,  those  verses  that  were  balm, 
the  keen  sharpness  of  this  dear 
name. 

She  was  not,  however,  permitted 
to  remain  with  these  thoughts 
alone.  Janet  came  softly  to  the 


10 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[July 


door,  half  opening  it,  asking,  "  May 
I  come  in  ? "  "Oh,  who  can  pre- 
vent you  from  coming  in1?"  her 
mistress  said,  in  the  sudden  im- 
patience of  a  preoccupied  mind, 
and  then  softly,  "  Come  in,  Janet," 
in  penitence  more  sudden  still. 
Janet  came  in,  and,  closing  the 
door  behind  her,  stood  as  if  she 
had  something  of  the  gravest  im- 
portance to  say.  "What  is  it, 
woman,  what  is  it?"  Mrs  Ogilvy 
cried  in  alarm. 

"I  was  thinking,"  said  Janet, 
"Mr  Eobert  brought  nae  luggage 
with  him  when  he  came  last 
night." 

«No —  he  was  walking  —  how 
could  he  bring  luggage?"  cried  Mrs 
Ogilvy,  picking  up  that  excuse,  as 
it  were,  from  the  roadside,  for  she 
had  not  thought  of  it  till  this 
minute. 

"  That  is  just  what  I  am  saying," 
said  Janet :  "  no  a  clean  shirt,  nor 
a  suit  of  clothes  to  change,  and 
this  the  Sabbath-day !  " 

"  There  are  his  old  things  in  the 
drawer,"  said  Mrs  Ogilvy. 

"  His  auld  things ! — that  wouldna 
peep  upon  him,  the  man  he  is  now. 
He  was  shapin'  for  a  fine  figger  of 
a  man  when  he  went  away  :  but 
no  braid  and  buirdly  as  he  is 
now." 

Janet  spoke  in  a  tone  of  genuine 
admiration  and  triumph,  which  was 
balm  to  her  mistress's  heart.  His 
bigness,  his  looseness  of  frame,  had 
indeed  been  one  of  the  little  things 
that  had  vexed  her  among  so  many 
others.  "  Not  like  my  Bobbie,"  she 
had  breathed  to  herself,  thinking 
of  the  slim  and  graceful  boy.  But 
it  gave  her  great  heart  to  see  how 
different  Janet's  opinion  was.  It 
was  she  who  was  always  over- 
anxious. No  doubt  most  folk 
would  be  of  Janet's  mind. 

[  was  thinking,"  said  Janet, 
"  to  take  him  a  shirt  of  my  man's, 
just  his  best.  It  has  not  been  on 


Andrew's  back  for  many  a  day. 
'Deed,  I  just  gave  it  a  wash,  and 
plenty  of  stairch,  as  the  gentlemen 
like,  and  ironed  it  out  this  morn- 
ing. The  better  day  the  better 
deed." 

"On  the  Sabbath  morning !"  said 
Mrs  Ogilvy,  half  laughing,  half 
crying. 

"I'll  take  the  wyte  o't,"  said 
Janet.  "But  I  can  do  nae  mair.  I 
canna  offer  him  a  suit  of  Andrew's  : 
in  the  first  place,  his  best  suit, 
he  has  it  on:  and  I  wouldna  de- 
mean Mr  Robert  to  a  common 
man's  working  claes  j  and  then  be- 
sides  " 

"  If  you'll  get  those  he's  wearing, 
Janet,  and  brush  them  well,  that'll 
do  fine.  And  then  we  must  have 
no  visitors  to-day.  I  know  not 
who  would  come  from  the  toun 
on  the  Sabbath-day,  except  maybe 
Miss  Susie.  Miss  Susie  is  not  like 
anybody  else ;  but  oh,  I  would  not 
like  her  to  see  him  so  ill  put  on  ! 
Yet  you  can  never  tell,  with  that 
ill  habit  the  Edinburgh  folk  have 
of  coming  out  to  Eskholm  on  the 
Sunday  afternoon,  and  then  think- 
ing they  may  just  daunder  in  to 
the  Hewan  and  get  a  cup  of  tea. 
The  time  when  you  want  them 
least  is  just  the  time  they  are  like 
to  come." 

"  We'll  just  steek  the  doors  and 
let  them  chap  till  they're  wearied," 
said  Janet,  promptly.  "  They'll 
think  ye've  gane  away  like  other 
folk,  for  change  of  air." 

"I'm  loth  to  do  that— when  folk 
have  come  so  far,  and  tired  with 
their  walk.  Do  you  think,  Janet, 
you  could  have  the  tea  ready,  and 
just  say  I  have — stepped  out  to  see 
a  neighbour,  or  that  I'm  away  at 

the  manse,  or ?  I  would  be  out 

in  the  garden  out  of  sight,  so  it 
would  be  no  lee  to  say  I  was  out  of 
the  house." 

"If  it's  the  lee  you're  thinking 
of,  mem — I'm  no  caring  that,"  and 


1894.] 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


11 


Janet  snapped  her  fingers,  "  for  the 
lee." 

Neither  mistress  nor  maid  called 
it  a  lie,  which  was  a  much  more 
serious  business.  The  Scottish 
tongue  is  full  of  those  nuances, 
which  in  other  languages  we  find 
so  admirable. 

"  Oh,  Janet ! "  cried  Mrs  Ogilvy 
again,  between  laughing  and  crying, 
"  I  fear  I'll  have  but  an  ill  charac- 
ter to  give  you — washing  out  a  shirt 
on  Sunday  and  caring  nothing  for  a 
lee!" 

"  If  we  can  just  get  Andrew  aff 
to  his  kirk  in  the  afternoon.  I'll 
no  have  him  at  my  lug  for  ever  wi' 
his  sermons.  Lord,  if  I  hadna  kent 
better  how  to  fend  for  him  than  he 
did  himsel',  would  he  ever  have 
been  a  man  o'  weight,  as  they  say  he 
is,  in  that  Auld  Licht  meetin'  o'  his, 
and  speaking  ill  o'  a'  the  ither  folk  1 
Just  you  leave  it  to  me.  Bless  us 
a' !  sae  lang  as  the  dear  laddie  is 
comfortable,  what's  a'  the  rest  to 
you  and  me  ] " 

"  Oh,  Janet,  my  woman  ! "  said 
the  mistress,  holding  out  her  hand. 
It  was  so  small  and  delicate  that 
Janet  was  seized  with  a  compunc- 
tion after  she  has  squeezed  it  in  her 
own  hard  but  faithful  one,  which 
felt  like  an  iron  framework  in  com- 
parison. "  I  doubt  I've  hurt  her," 
she  said  to  herself;  "  but  I  was  just 
carried  away." 

And  Mrs  Ogilvy  was  restored  to 
her  musing  and  her  prayers,  which 
presently  were  interrupted  again 
by  sounds  in  the  room  overhead — 
Janet's  step  going  in,  which  shook 
and  thrilled  the  flooring,  and  the 
sound  of  voices.  The  mother  sat 
and  listened,  and  heard  his  voice 
speaking  to  Janet,  the  masculine 
tone  instantly  discernible  in  a  wom- 
an's house,  speaking  cheerfully, 
with  after  a  while  a  laugh.  His 
tone  to  her  had  been  very  different. 
It  had  been  full  of  involuntary  self- 
defence,  a  sort  of  defiance,  as  if  he 


felt  that  at  any  moment  something 
might  be  demanded  of  him,  excuse 
or  explanation — or  else  blame  and 
reproach  poured  forth  upon  him. 
The  mother's  heart  swelled  a  little, 
and  yet  she  smiled.  Oh,  it  was  very 
natural !  He  could  even  joke  and 
laugh  with  the  faithful  servant- 
woman,  who  could  call  him  to  no 
account,  whom  he  had  known  all 
his  life.  If  there  was  any  passing 
cloud  in  Mrs  Ogilvy's  mind  it 
passed  away  on  the  instant,  and  the 
only  bitterness  was  that  wistful 
one,  with  a  smile  of  wonder  accom- 
panying it,  "  That  he  could  think  I 
would  demand  an  account — me  ! " 

He  came  down-stairs  later,  half 
amused  with  himself,  in  the  high 
collar  of  Andrew's  gala  shirt,  and 
with  a  smile  on  his  face.  "  I'm  very 
ridiculous,  I  suppose,"  he  said,  walk- 
ing to  the  glass  above  the  mantel- 
piece ;  "but  I  did  not  want  to  vex 
the  woman,  and  clean  things  are 
pleasant." 

"  Is  your  luggage — coming,  Rob- 
bie 1 "  she  ventured  to  say,  while  he 
stood  before  the  glass  trying  to  fold 
over  or  modify  as  best  he  could 
the  spikes  of  the  white  linen  which 
stood  round  his  face. 

"How  much  luggage  do  you 
think  a  man  would  be  likely  to 
have,"  he  said  impatiently,  standing 
with  his  back  towards  her,  "who 
came  from  New  York  as  a  stowaway 
in  a  sailing-ship  1 " 

She  had  not  the  least  idea  what 
a  stowaway  was,  but  concluded  it 
to  be  some  poor,  very  poor  post, 
with  which  comfort  was  incom- 
patible. "  My  dear,"  she  said,  "  you 
will  have  to  go  into  Edinburgh  and 
get  a  new  outfit.  There  are  grand 
shops  in  Edinburgh.  You  can  get 
things — I  mean  men's  things — just 
as  well,  they  tell  me,  as  in  Lon- 
don." 

She  spoke  in  a  half -apologetic 
tone,  as  if  he  had  been  in  the  habit 
of  getting  his  clothes  from  London 


12 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[July 


and  might  object  to  a  less  fashion- 
able place  —  for  indeed  the  poor 
lady  was  much  confused,  believing 
rather  that  her  son  had  lived  ex- 
travagantly and  lavishly  than  that 
he  had  been  put  to  all  the  shifts  of 
poverty. 

"I've  had  little  luggage  this 
many  a  day,"  he  said, — "a  set  of 
flannels  when  I  could  get  them  for 
the  summer,  and  for  winter  any- 
thing that  was  warm  enough.  I've 
not  been  in  the  way  of  sending  to 
Poole  for  my  clothes."  He  laughed, 
but  it  was  not  the  simple  laugh 
that  had  sounded  from  the  room 
above.  "What  did  I  ever  know 
about  London,  or  anything  but  the 
commonest  life  ? " 

"Just  what  we  could  give  you, 
Robbie,"  she  said,  in  a  faltering 
tone. 

"Well!"  he  cried  impatiently. 
And  then  he  turned  round  and 
faced  her — Andrew's  collars,  not- 
withstanding all  his  efforts,  giving 
still  a  semi-ludicrous  air,  which  gave 
the  sting  of  an  additional  pang  to 
Mrs  Ogilvy,  who  could  not  bear 
that  he  should  be  ridiculous.  He 
confronted  her,  sitting  down  op- 
posite, fixing  his  eyes  on  her  face, 
as  if  to  forestall  any  criticism  on  her 
part.  "  I've  come  back  as  I  went 
away,"  he  said  with  defiance.  "I 
had  very  little  when  I  started,— I 
have  nothing  now.  If  you  had  not 
kept  me  so  bare,  and  never  ajpenny 
in  my  pocket,  I  might  have  done 
better :  but  nothing  breeds  nothing, 
you  know,  mother.  It's  one  of  the 
laws  of  the  world." 

"Robbie,  I  gave  you  what  I 
had,"  she  exclaimed,  astonished, 
yet  half  relieved,  to  find  that  it 
was  she  who  was  put  on  her 
defence. 

"Ay,  that's  what  everybody  says 
You  must  have  kept  a  little  more 
for  yourself,  however,  for  you  seem 
very  comfortable :  and  you  talk  at 
your  ease  of  a  new  outfit,  while  I've 


been  glad  of  a  cast-off  jacket  or  an 
old  pair  of  breeks  that  nobody  else 
would  wear." 

"  Oh  Robbie,  Robbie  ! "  she  cried 
in  a  voice  of  anguish,  "and  me 
laying  up  every  penny  for  you,  and 
ready  with  everything  there  was 
— at  a  moment's  notice  ! " 

"Well,  perhaps  it's  better  as  it  is," 
he  said:  "I  might  just  have  lost 
it  again.  You  get  into  a  sort  of 
a  hack -horse  way — just  the  same 
round,  and  never  able  to  get  out 
of  it — unless  when  you've  got  to 
cut  and  run  for  your  life." 

"Robbie!" 

"  I'll  tell  you  about  that  another 
time.  I  don't  know  what  you're 
going  to  do  with  me,  now  you've 
got  me  here.  I'm  a  young  fellow 
enough  yet,  mother — a  sort  of  a 
young  fellow,  but  not  good  for 
anything.  And  then  if  this  affair 
comes  up,  I  may  have  to  cut  and 
run  again.  Oh,  I'll  tell  you  about 
it  in  time  !  It's  not  likely  they'll 
be  after  me,  with  all  the  loose 
swearing  there  is  yonder,  and  ex- 
traditions, and  that  kind  of  thing ; 
but  I'm  not  one  that  would  stand 
being  had  up  and  examined — even 
if  I  was  sure  I  should  get  off :  I'd 
just  cut  and  run." 

"  Is  there  any  danger  ? "  she  said 
in  a  terrified  whisper. 

He  burst  out  laughing  again, 
but  these  laughs  were  not  good  to 
hear.  f'Of  what  do  you  think? 
That  they  might  hang  me  up  to 
the  first  tree?  But  till  it  blows 
over  I  can  be  sure  of  nothing— or 
if  any  other  man  turns  up.  There 
is  a  man  before  whom  I  would  just 
cut  and  run  too.  If  he  should  get 
wind  that  I  was  here  " — he  gave  a 
suspicious  glance  round.  "  And  this 
confounded  house  on  a  level  with 
the  ground,  and  the  windows  open 
night  and  day  ! " 

"Who  is  it?  Who  is  the  man?" 
she  said.  She  followed  every  change 
of  his  face,  every  movement,  every 


1894.] 

question,    with     eyes    large    with 
panic  and  terror. 

What  he  said  first,  he  had  the 
grace  to  say  under  his  breath  out 
of  some  revived  tradition  of  respect, 
"Would  you  be  any  the  wiser  if 
I  told  you  a  name — that  you  never 
heard  before  1 "  he  said. 

"No,  Eobbie,  no.  But  tell  me 
one  thing,  'is  it  a  man  you  have 
wronged  1  Oh  Eobbie,  tell  me,  tell 
me  that,  for  pity's  sake  !  " 

"  No  I  "  he  shouted  with  a  rage 
that  overcame  all  other  feelings. 
"  Damn  him  !  damn  him  !  it's  he 
that  has  never  done  anything  but 
hunt  and  harm  me." 

"  Oh,  God  be  thanked  ! "  cried 
his  mother,  suddenly  rising  and 
going  to  him.  "  Oh,  Eobbie,  my 
dear,  the  Lord  be  praised !  and  God 
forgive  that  unfortunate  person,  for 
if  it's  him,  it's  not  you  !  " 

He  submitted  unwillingly  for  a 
moment  to  the  arm  which  she  put 
round  him,  drawing  his  head  upon 
her  breast,  and  then  put  her  not 
ungently  away.  "  If  there's  any 
consolation  in  that,  you  can  take 
it,"  he  said  :  "  there's  not  much 
consolation  in  me,  any  way."  And 
then  he  reached  his  large  hand 
over  the  table  to  her  little  bookcase, 
which  stood  against  the  wall.  "  I 
can  always  read  a  book,"  he  said, 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


13 


"  a  story-book ;  it's  the  only  thing  I 
can  do.  You  used  to  have  all  the 
Scotts  here." 

"  They  are  just  where  they  used 
to  be,  Eobbie,"  she  said,  in  a  sub- 
dued tone.  She  watched  him,  still 
standing  while  he  chose  one ;  and 
throwing  himself  back  in  his  chair, 
began  to  read.  It  added  a  little 
sense  of  embarrassment,  of  confusion 
and  disorder,  to  all  the  heavier 
trouble,  that  he  had  thrown  himself 
into  her  chair,  the  place  in  which 
she  had  sat  through  all  those  years 
when  there  was  no  one  to  interfere 
with  her.  Glad  was  she  to  give  up 
the  best  place  in  the  house  to  him, 
whatever  he  might  please  to  choose; 
but  it  gave  her  a  feeling  of  dis- 
turbance which  she  could  not  ex- 
plain, not  being  even  aware  at  first 
what  it  was  that  caused  it.  She 
did  not  know  where  to  sit,  nor  what 
to  do.  She  could  not  go  back  to 
fetch  her  open  Bible,  nor  sit  down 
to  read  it,  partly  because  it  would 
be  a  reproach  to  him  sitting  there 
reading  a  novel — only  a  novel,  no 
reading  for  Sabbath,  even  though 
it  was  Sir  Walter's  ;  partly  because 
it  would  seem  like  indifference,  she 
thought,  to  occupy  herself  with 
reading  at  all,  when  at  any  moment 
he  might  have  something  to  say  to 
her  again. 


CHAPTER   VII. 


Perhaps  it  would  be  well  for 
Janet's  sake  not  to  inquire  into  the 
history  of  that  Sabbath  afternoon. 
Friends  arrived  from  Edinburgh,  as 
Mrs  Ogilvy  had  divined,  carefully 
choosing  that  day  when  they  were 
so  little  wanted.  There  were  some 
people  who  walked,  keeping  up  an 
old  habit :  the  walk  was  long,  but 
when  you  were  sure  of  a  good  cup 
of  tea  and  a  good  rest  at  a  friend's 
house,  was  not  too  much  for  a  robust 
walker  with  perhaps  little  time  for 


walking  during  the  week :  and 
some — but  they  kept  a  discreet  veil 
on  the  means  of  their  conveyance — 
would  come  occasionally  by  the 
wicked  little  train  which,  to  the 
great  scandal  of  the  whole  village, 
had  been  permitted  between  Edin- 
burgh and  Eskholm  in  quite  recent 
days,  by  the  direct  influence  of  the 
devil  or  Mr  Gladstone  some  thought, 
or  perhaps  for  the  convenience  of  a 
railway  director  who  had  a  grand 
house  overlooking  the  Esk  higher 


14 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[July 


up  the  stream.  It  may  well  be 
believed,  however,  that  nobody  who 
visited  Mrs  Ogilvy  on  Sunday 
owned  to  coming  by  the  train. 
They  could  not  resist  the  delights 
of  the  walk  in  this  fine  weather, 
they  said,  and  to  breathe  the  country 
air  in  June  after  having  been  shut 
up  all  the  week  in  Edinburgh  was 
a  great  temptation.  They  all  came 
from  Edinburgh,  these  good  folks  : 
and  there  was  one  who  was  an  elder 
in  the  Kirk,  and  who  said  that  the 
road  had  been  measured,  and  it  was 
little  more,  very  little  more,  than  a 
Sabbath-day's  journey,  such  as  was 
always  permitted.  Sometimes  there 
would  be  none  of  these  visitors  for 
weeks,  but  naturally  there  were  two 
parties  of  them  that  day.  Mrs 
Ogilvy,  out  in  the  garden  behind 
the  house,  sat  trembling  among 
Andrew's  flower-pots  in  his  tool- 
house,  feeling  more  guilty  than 
words  could  say,  yet  giving  Janet 
a  certain  countenance  by  remaining 
out  of  doors,  to  justify  the  statement 
that  the  mistress  just  by  an  extra- 
ordinary accident  was  out.  Eobert 
was  in  his  room  up-stairs  with  half 
a  shelf-full  of  the  Waverleys  round 
him,  lying  upon  his  bed  and  read- 
ing. Oh  how  the  house  was  turned 
upside  down,  how  its  whole  life  and 
character  was  changed,  and  falsity 
and  concealment  became  the  rule  of 
the  day  instead  of  truth  and  open- 
ness !  And  all  by  the  event  which 
last  Sabbath  she  had  prayed  for 
with  all  the  force  of  her  heart. 
But  she  did  not  repent  her  prayer. 
God  be  thanked,  in  spite  of  all,  that 
he  had  come  back,  that  he  that  had 
been  dead  was  alive  again,  and  that 
he  that  had  been  lost  was  found. 
Maybe— who  could  tell  ?— the  pro- 
digal's father,  after  he  had  covered 
his  boy's  rags  with  that  best  robe, 
might  find  many  a  thing,  oh  many 
a  thing,  in  him,  to  mind  him  of  the 
husks  that  the  swine  did  eat ! 
Meantime  Janet  gave  the  visitors 


tea,  and  stood  respectfully  and 
talked,  now  and  then  looking  out 
for  the  mistress,  and  wondering 
what  could  have  kept  her,  and 
saying  many  a  thing  upon  which 
charity  demands  that  we  should 
draw  a  veil.  She  had  got  Andrew 
off  to  his  kirk,  which  was  all  she 
conditioned  for.  She  could  not,  she 
felt  sure,  have  carried  through  if 
Andrew  had  been  there,  glowering, 
looking  on.  But  she  did  carry 
through;  and  I  am  not  sure  that 
there  was  not  a  feeling  of  elation 
in  Janet's  mind  when  she  saw  the 
last  of  them  depart,  and  felt  the  full 
sweetness  of  success.  The  sense  of 
guilt,  no  doubt,  came  later  on. 

"And  I  just  would  take  my 
oath,"  said  Janet,  "  that  they're  all 
away  back  by  that  train.  Ye 
needna  speak  to  me  of  Sabbath- 
day's  journeys,  and  afternoon  walks. 
The  train,  nae  doubt,  is  a  great  ease- 
ment. I  ken  a  sooth  face  from  a 
leeing  one.  They  had  far  ower 
muckle  to  say  about  the  pleesure  of 
the  walk.  They're  just  a'  away 
back  by  the  train." 

"Itfs  not  for  you  and  me  to 
speak,  Janet,  that  have  done  noth- 
ing but  deceive  all  this  weary  day  ! " 
"  Toots  ! "  said  Janet,  "  you  were 
out,  mem,  it  was  quite  true,  and 
just  very  uncomfortable — and  they 
got  their  rest  and  their  tea.  And 
I  would  have  gathered  them  some 
flowers,  but  Mrs  Bennet  said  she 
would  rather  no  go  back  through 
the  Edinburgh  streets  with  a  muckle 
flower  in  her  hands,  as  if  she  had 
been  stravaigin'  about  the  country. 
So  ye  see,  mem,  they  were  waur 
than  we  were,  just  leein'  for  show 
and  appearance — whereas  with  us 
(though  I  leed  none  —  I  said  ye 
were  oot,  and  ye  were  oot)  it  was 
needcessity,  and  nae  mair  to  be 
said." 

Mrs  Ogilvy  shook  her  head  as 
she  rose  up  painfully  from  among 
the  flower-pots.  It  was  just  self- 


1894.] 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


15 


indulgence,  she  said  to  herself.  She 
had  done  harder  things  than  to  sit 
in  her  place  and  give  her  acquaint- 
ances tea;  but  then  there  was  al- 
ways the  risk  of  questions  that  old 
friends  feel  themselves  at  liberty  to 
ask.  Any  way,  it  was  done  and 
over;  and  there  was,  as  Janet  assured 
her,  no  more  to  be  said.  And  the 
lingering  evening  passed  again,  oh 
so  slowly — not,  as  heretofore,  in  a 
gentle  musing  full  of  prayer,  not  in 
the  sweet  outside  air  with  the  peace- 
ful country  lying  before  her,  and 
the  open  doors  always  inviting  a 
wanderer  back  !  Not  so  :  Eobert 
was  not  satisfied  till  all  the  windows 
were  closed,  warm  though  the  eve- 
ning was,  the  door  locked,  the 
shutters  bolted,  every  precaution 
taken,  as  if  the  peaceful  Hewan 
were  to  be  attacked  during  the 
night.  He  caught  Andrew  in  the 
act  of  lighting  that  light  over  the 
door  which  had  burned  all  night 
for  so  many  years.  "  What's  that 
for?"  he  asked  abruptly,  stopping 
him  as  he  mounted  the  steps,  with- 
out which  he  could  not  reach  the 
little  lamp. 

"  What  it's  for  I  could  not  take 
it  upon  me  to  tell  you.  It's  just  a 
whimsey  of  the  mistress.  They're 
full  of  their  whims,"  Andrew  said. 

"  Mother,  what's  the  meaning  of 
this  1 "  Eobert  cried. 

She  came  to  the  parlour  door  to 
answer  him,  with  her  white  shawl 
and  her  white  cap — a  light  herself 
in  the  dim  evening.  It  was  per- 
haps too  dim  for  him  to  see  the 
expression  in  her  eyes.  She  said, 
with  a  little  drawing  of  her  breath 
and  in  a  startled  voice,  "  Oh, 
Eobbie ! " 

"  That's  no  answer,"  he  said,  im- 
patiently. "  What's  the  use  of  it  ? 
drawing  every  tramp's  attention  to 
the  house.  Of  course  it  can  be  seen 
from  the  road." 

"  Ay,  Eobbie,  that  was  my 
meaning." 


"A  strange  meaning,"  he  said, 
shrugging  his  shoulders.  "  You'd 
better  leave  it  off  now,  mother.  I 
don't  like  such  landmarks.  Don't 
light  it  any  more." 

Andrew  stood  all  this  time  with 
one  foot  on  the  steps  and  his  candle 
in  his  hand.  "  The  mistress,"  he 
said  darkly,  in  a  voice  that  came 
from  his  boots,  "has  a  good  right 
to  her  whimsey — whatever  it's  for." 

"  Did  we  ask  your  opinion  ? " 
cried  Eobert,  angrily.  "Put  out 
the  light." 

"You  will  do  what  Mr  Eobert 
bids  you,  Andrew,"  Mrs  Ogilvy 
said. 

And  for  the  first  time  for  fifteen 
years  there  was  no  light  over  the 
door  of  the  Hewan.  It  was  right 
that  it  should  be  so.  Still,  there 
was  in  Mrs  Ogilvy's  mind  a  vague, 
unreasonable  reluctance — a  failing 
as  if  of  some  visionary  hope  that 
it  might  still  have  brought  back 
the  real  Eobbie,  the  bonnie  boy 
she  knew  so  well,  out  of  the  dim 
world  in  which,  alas  !  he  was  now 
for  ever  and  for  ever  lost. 

Robert  talked  much  of  this  before 
he  went  up-stairs  to  bed.  Perhaps 
he  was  glad  to  have  something 
to  talk  of  that  was  unimportant, 
that  raised  no  exciting  questions. 
"You've  been  lighting  up  like  a 
lighthouse ;  you've  been  showing 
all  over  the  country,  so  far  as  I  can 
see.  But  that'll  not  do  for  me,"  he 
said.  "  I'll  have  to  lie  low  for  a 
long  time  if  I  stay  here,  and  no 
light  thrown  on  me  that  can  be 
helped.  It's  different  from  your 
ways,  I  know,  and  you  have  a  right 
to  your  whimseys,  mother,  as  that 
gardener  fellow  says — especially  as 
you  are  the  one  that  has  to  pay  for 
it  all." 

"Eobbie,"  she  cried,  "oh,  Eob- 
bie, do  not  speak  like  that  to  me  ! " 

"  It's  true,  though.  I  haven't  a 
red  cent;  I  haven't  a  brass  farth- 
ing :  nothing  but  the  clothes  I'm 


16 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[July 


standing  in,  and  they  are  not  fit  to 
be  seen." 

"  Bobbie,"  she  said,  "  I  have  to 
go  in  to  Edinburgh  in  the  morning. 
Will  you  come  with  me  and  get 
what  you  want?" 

"  Is  that  how  it  has  to  be  done  ? " 
he  said,  with  a  laugh.  "  I  thought 
you  were  liberal  when  you  spoke  of 
an  outfit ;  but  what  you  were  think- 
ing of  was  a  good  little  boy  to  go 
with  his  mother,  who  would  see 
he  did  not  spend  too  much.  No, 
thank  you :  I'll  rather  continue  as  I 
am,  with  Andrew's  shirt."  He  gave 
another  laugh  at  this,  pulling  the 
corners  of  the  collar  in  his  hand. 

Mrs  Ogilvy  had  never  allowed  to 
herself  that  she  was  hurt  till  now. 
She  rose  up  suddenly  and  took  a 
little  walk  about  the  room,  pretend- 
ing to  look  for  something.  One 
thing  with  another  seemed  to  raise 
a  little  keen  soreness  in  her,  which 
had  nothing  to  do  with  any  deep 
wound.  It  took  her  some  time 
to  bring  back  the  usual  tone  to  her 
voice,  and  subdue  the  quick  sting 
of  that  superficial  wound.  "  I  am 
going  very  early,"  she  said;  "it 
will  be  too  early  for  you.  I  am 
going  to  see  Mr  Somerville,  whom 
perhaps  you  will  remember,  who 
does  all  my  business.  There  was 
something  he  had  taken  in  hand, 
which  will  not  be  needful  now. 
But  you  must  do — just  what  you 
wish.  You  know  it's  our  old- 
fashioned  way  here  to  do  no  busi- 
ness on  the  Sabbath-day ;  but  the 
morn,  before  I  go,  I  will  give  you — 
if  you  could  maybe  tell  me  what 
money  you  would  want 1" 

"There's  justice  in  everything," 
he  said,  in  a  tone  of  good-humour. 
"  I  leave  that  to  you." 

Then  he  went  to  his  room  again, 
carrying  with  him  another  armful 
of  Waverleys.  Was  it  perhaps 
that  he  would  not  give  himself  the 
chance  of  thinking?  It  cheered 
his  mother  vaguely,  however,  to 


see  him  with  the  books.  It  was 
not  reading  for  the  Sabbath-day; 
but  yet  Sir  Walter  could  never 
harm  any  man  :  and  more  still  than 
that — it  was  not  ill  men,  men  with 
perverted  hearts,  that  were  so  fond 
of  Sir  Walter.  That  was  Eobbie 
— the  true  Eobbie  —  not  the|man 
that  had  come  from  the  wilds, 
that  had  come  through  crime  and 
misery,  that  had  run  for  his  life. 
She  left  him  a  packet  of  notes 
next  morning  before  she  went  to 
Edinburgh.  This  must  not  be  taken 
as  meaning  too  much,  for  it  was 
one-pound  notes  alone  which  Mrs 
Ogilvy  possessed.  She  was  glad  to 
be  alone  in  the  train,  having  stolen 
into  a  compartment  in  which  a 
woman  with  a  baby  had  already 
placed  herself.  She  did  not  know 
the  woman,  but  here  she  felt  she 
was  safe.  The  little  thing,  which 
was  troublesome  and  cried,  was  her 
protection,  and  she  could  carry  on 
her  own  thoughts  little  disturbed 
by  that  sound  :  though  indeed  after 
a  while  it  must  be  acknowledged 
that  Mrs  Ogilvy  succumbed  to  a 
temptation  almost  irresistible  to 
a  mother,  and  desired  the  woman 
to  "  give  me  the  bairn,"  with  a  cer- 
tainty of  putting  everything  right, 
which  something  magnetic  in  the 
experienced  touch,  in  the  soft  at- 
mosphere of  her,  and  the  frolement 
of  her  silk,  and  the  sweetness  of 
her  face,  certainly  accomplished. 
She  held  the  baby  on  her  knee 
fast  asleep  during  the  rest  of  the 
short  journey,  and  that  little  un- 
conscious contact  with  the  helpless 
whom  she  could  help  did  her  good 
also.  And  the  walk  to  Mr  Somer- 
ville's  office  did  her  good.  On  the 
shady  side  of  the  street  it  is  cool 
and  the  little  novelty  of  being  there 
gave  an  impulse  to  her  forces. 
When  she  entered  the  office,  where 
the  old  gentleman  received  her  with 
a  little  cry  of  surprise,  she  was 
freshened  and  strengthened  by  the 


1894.] 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


17 


brief  journey,  and  looked  almost  as 
she  had  looked  when  he  found  her, 
fearing  no  evil,  in  the  great  quiet  of 
the  summer  afternoon  two  days 
before.  He  was  surprised  yet  half 
afraid. 

"I  know  what  this  means,"  he 
said,  when  he  had  shaken  hands 
with  her  and  given  her  a  seat. 
"  You've  made  up  your  mind,  Mrs 
Ogilvy,  to  make  that  dreadful  jour- 
ney. I  see  it  in  your  face — and  I 
am  sorry.  I  am  very  sorry " 

"No,"  she  said;  "you  are  mis- 
taken. I  am  not  going.  I  came 
to  ask  you,  on  the  contrary,  after  all 
we  settled  the  other  day,  to  do 
nothing  more " 

"To  do  nothing  more  ! — I  cabled 
as  I  promised,  and  I've  got  the  man 
ready  to  go  out " 

"  He  must  not  go,"  she  said. 

"Well 1  think  it  is  maybe 

just  as  wise.  But  you  have  changed 
your  mind  very  quick.  I  will  not 
speak  the  common  nonsense  to  you 
and  say  that's  what  ladies  will  do  : 
for  no  doubt  you  will  have  your 
reasons — you  have  your  reasons ? " 

She  looked  round  her,  trembling 
a  little,  upon  the  quiet  office  where 
nobody  could  have  been  hidden, 
scarcely  a  fly. 

"Mr  Somerville,"  she  said,  "you 
were  scarcely  gone  that  day — oh, 
how  long  it  is  ago  I  know  not — it 
might  be  years! — you  were  scarce- 
ly gone,  when  my  son  came 
home." 

"What?"  he  cried,  with  a  ter- 
rifying sharpness  of  tone. 

Her  face  blanched  at  the  sound. 
"Was  it  an  ill  thing  to  do?  Is 
there  danger?"  she  cried;  and 
then  with  deliberate  gravity  she 
repeated,  "You  were  scarcely  gone 
when,  without  any  warning,  my 
Robbie  came  home." 

"  God  bless  us  all ! "  said  the  old 
gentleman.  "No;  I  do  not  know 
that  there  is  any  danger.  It  might 
be  the  wisest  thing  he  could  do — 

VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCXLV. 


but  it  is  a  very  surprising  thing  for 
all  that." 

"It  is  rather  surprising,"  she 
said,  with  a  little  dignity,  "that 
having  always  his  home  open  to 
him,  and  no  safeguards  against  the 
famine  that  might  arise  in  that 
land — and  indeed  brought  down  for 
his  own  part,  my  poor  laddie,  to  the 
husks  that  the  swine  do  eat — he 
should  never  have  come  before." 

"  That's  an  old  ferlie,"  saio}  Mr 
Somerville;  "but  things  being  so 
that  he  should  have  come  now — 
that's  what  beats  me.  There's 
another  paper  with  more  partic- 
ulars :  maybe  he  was  well  advised. 
It's  a  far  cry  to  Lochow.  That's  a 
paper  I  have  read  with  great  in- 
terest, Mrs  Ogilvy,  but  it  would  not 
be  pleasant  reading  for  you." 

"  But  is  there  danger  ? "  she  said, 
her  face  colouring  and  fading  under 
her  old  friend's  eye,  as  she  watched 
every  word  that  fell  from  his  lips. 

"Well,"  he  said,  "with  a  thing 
like  that  hanging  over  a  man's 
head,  it's  rash  to  say  that  there's  no 
danger  ;  but  these  wild  offeecials  in 
the  wild  parts  of  America — sheriffs 
they  seem  to  call  them — riding  the 
country  with  a  wild  posse,  and  a 
revolver  in  every  man's  hand  — 
bless  me,  very  unlike  our  sheriffs 
here  ! — have  not  their  eyes  fixed  on 
Mid-Lothian  nor  any  country  place 
hereaway,  we  may  be  sure.  They 
will  look  far  before  they  will  look 
for  him  here." 

"  But  is  it  him — him,  my  son — 
that  they  are  looking  for,  my  Kob- 
bie  1  "  she  said,  with  a  sharp  cry. 

"  I  think  I  can  give  you  a  little 
comfort  in  that  too — it's  not  him  in 
the  first  place,  nor  yet  in  the  second. 
But  he  was  there — and  he  was  one 
of  them,  or  supposed  to  be  one  of 
them.  Mistress  Ogilvy,"  said  the  old 
gentleman,  slowly  and  with  empha- 
sis, "  we  must  be  very  merciful.  A 
young  lad  gets  mixed  in  with  a  set 
of  these  fellows — he  has  no  thought 


18 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[July 


what  it's  going  to  lead  to — then  by 
the  time  he  knows  he's  so  in  with 
them,  he  has  a  false  notion  that  his 
honour's  concerned.  He  thinks  he 
would  he  a  kind  of  a  traitor  if  he 
deserted  them, — and  all  the  more 
when  there's  danger  concerned.  I 
have  some  experience,  as  you  will 
perhaps  have  heard,"  he  said,  after 
a  pause,  with  a  break  in  his  voice. 

"God  help  us  all!"  she  said,  put- 
ting out  her  hand,  her  eyes  dim 
with  tears.  He  took  it  and  grasped 
it,  his  hand  trembling  too. 

"  You  may  know  by  that  I  will 
do  my  very  best  for  him,"  he  said, 
"as  if  he  were  my  own."  Then 
resuming  his  business  tones,  "  I 
would  neither  hide  him  nor  put 
him  forward,  Mrs  Ogilvy,  if  I  were 
you.  I  would  keep  him  at  home 
as  much  as  possible.  And  if  the 
spirit  moves  him  to  come  and  tell 
me  all  about  it Has  he  told 


you 1 

"Something — about  not  being  one 
to  stand  an  examination  even  if  he 
should  get  off,  and  about  some  man 
— some  man  that  might  come  after 
him :  but  he  will  not  explain.  I 
said,  Was  it  a  man  he  had  wronged  1 
and  he  cried  with  a  great  No  !  that 
it  was  one  that  had  wronged  him." 

"  Ah  !  that'll  just  be  one  of 
them :  but  let  us  hope  none  of 
these  American  ruffians  will  follow 
Eobert  here.  No,  no,  that  could 
not  be;  but,  dear  me,  what  a  risk 
for  you  to  run  in  that  lonely  house. 
I  always  said  the  Hewan  was  a 
bonnie  little  place,  and  I  could 
understand  your  fancy  for  it,  but 
very  lonely,  very  lonely,  Mrs  Ogilvy. 
Lord  bless  us  !  if  anything  of  that 

kind  were  to  happen !  But  no, 

no ;  across  half  the  continent  and 
the  great  Atlantic — and  for  what 
purpose  1  They  would  never  follow 
him  here." 

"I  have  never  been  frighted  of 
my  house,  Mr  Somerville ;  and  now 


there  is  my  son  Robbie  in  it,  a  strong 
man,  bless  him  ! — and  Andrew  the 
gardener — and  plenty  of  neighbours 
less  than  half  a  mile  off — oh,  much 
less  than  half  a  mile." 

"Do  you  keep  money  in  the 
house  ? " 

"  Money !  very  little — just  enough 
for  my  quarter's  payments,  nothing 
to  speak  of — unless  when  William 
Tod  at  the  croft  conies  up  to  pay 
me  my  rent." 

"Then  keep  none,"  said  Mr 
Somerville;  "just  take  my  word  and 
ask  no  questions — keep  none.  It's 
never  safe  in  a  lonely  house ;  and 
let  in  no  strange  person.  A  man 
might  claim  to  be  Robert's  friend 
when  he  was  no  friend  to  Eobert. 
But  your  heart's  too  open  and  your 
faith  too  great.  Send  away  your 
money  to  the  bank  and  lock  up 
your  doors  before  the  darkening, 
and  keep  every  strange  person  at  a 
safe  distance." 

"  But,"  said  Mrs  Ogilvy,  "  where 
would  be  my  faith  then,  and  my 
peace  of  mind?  Nobody  has 
harmed  me  all  my  days  —  not  a 
living  creature — if  it  were  not  them 
that  were  of  my  own  house,"  she 
added,  after  a  moment's  pause. 
"  And  who  am  I  that  I  should  dis- 
trust my  neighbours? — no,  no,  Mr 
Somerville.  There  is  Eobbie  to 
take  care  of  me,  if  there  was  any 
danger.  But  I  am  not  feared  for 
any  danger — unless  it  were  for  him 
— and  you  think  there  will  be  none 
for  him?" 

"  That  would  be  too  much  to  say. 
If  he  were  followed  here  by  any 

of  those  ill  companions Mind 

now,  my  dear  lady.  You  say  Eobert 
will  take  care  of  you.  It  will  be 
far  more  you  that  will  have  to  take 
care  of  him." 

"  I  have  done  that  all  his  days," 
she  said,  with  a  smile  and  a  sigh ; 
"  but,  oh,  he  is  beyond  me  now — a 
big,  strong,  buirdly  man." 


1894.] 

They  were  Janet's  words,  and  it 
was  in  the  light  of  Janet's  admira- 
tion that  his  mother  repeated  them. 
"  I  am  scarcely  higher  than  his 
elbow,"  she  said,  with  a  more  gen- 
uine impulse  of  her  own.  "  And 
who  am  I  to  take  care  of  a  muckle 
strong  man." 

"  Mind  ! "  cried  the  old  gentle- 
man, with  a  kind  of  solemnity, 
"  that's  just  the  danger.  If  there's 
cronies  coming  after  him,  Lord  bless 
us,  it  may  just  be  life  or  death. 
Steek  your  doors,  Mrs  Ogilvy,  steek 
your  doors.  Let  no  stranger  come 
near  you.  And  mind  that  it  is  you 
to  take  care  of  Eobert,  not  him  of 
you." 

She  came  away  much  shaken  by 
this  interview.  And  yet  it  was 
very  difficult  to  frighten  her,  not- 
withstanding all  her  fears.  Already 
as  she  came  down  the  dusty  stairs 
from  Mr  Somerville's  office,  her 
courage  began  to  return.  Every- 
body had  warned  her  of  the  danger 
of  tramps  and  vagabonds  for  the 
last  twenty  years,  but  not  a  spoon 
had  ever  been  stolen,  nor  a  fright 
given  to  the  peaceful  inhabitants  of 
the  Hewan.  JSTo  thief  had  ever  got 
into  the  house,  or  burglar  tried  the 
windows  that  would  have  yielded 
so  easily.  And  it  could  not  be  any 
friend  of  Eobbie's  that  would  come 
for  any  small  amount  of  money  she 
could  have,  to  his  mother's  house. 
No,  no.  Violence  had  been  done, 
there  had  been  quarrels,  and  there 
had  been  bloodshed.  But  that  was 
very  different  from  Mr  Somerville's 
advices  about  the  money  in  the 
house.  Eobbie's  friends  might  be 
dangerous  men,  they  might  lead 
him  into  many,  many  ill  ways ;  but 
her  little  money  —  no,  no,  there 
could  be  nothing  to  do  with  that. 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


19 


She  went  home  accordingly  almost 
cheerfully.  To  be  delivered  from 
her  own  thoughts,  and  brought  in 
face  of  the  world,  and  taught  to 
realise  all  that  had  happened  as 
within  the  course  of  nature,  and 
a  thing  to  be  faced  and  to  be 
mended,  not  to  lie  down  and  die 
upon,  was  a  great  help  to  her. 
She  would  lock  the  doors  and  fasten 
the  windows  as  they  all  said.  She 
would  watch  that  no  man  should 
come  near  that  was  like  to  harm  her 
son.  To  do  even  so  much  or  so 
little  as  that  for  him,  it  would  be 
something,  something  practical  and 
real.  She  would  not  suffer  her  eye- 
lids to  slumber,  nor  her  eyes  to  sleep. 
She  would  be  her  own  watchman, 
and  keep  the  house,  that  nothing 
harmful  to  her  Eobbie  should  come 
near.  Oh,  but  for  the  pickle 
money !  there  was  no  danger  for 
that.  She  would  like  to  see  what 
a  paltry  thief  would  do  in  Eobbie's 
hands. 

With  this  in  her  mind  she  went 
back,  her  heart  rising  with  every 
step.  From  the  train  she  could  see 
the  back  of  the  Hewan  rising  among 
the  trees — not  a  desolate  house  any 
longer,  for  Eobbie  was  there.  How 
ill  to  please  she  had  been,  finding 
faults  in  him  just  because  he  was  a 
boy  no  longer,  but  a  man,  with  his 
own  thoughts  and  his  own  ways ! 
But  to  have  been  parted  from  him 
these  few  hours  cleared  up  a  great 
deal.  She  went  home  eagerly,  her 
face  regaining  its  colour  and  its 
brightness.  She  was  going  back 
not  to  an  empty  house,  but  to 
Eobbie.  It  was  as  if  this,  and  not 
the  other  mingled  moment,  more 
full  of  trouble  than  joy,  was  to  be 
the  mother's  first  true  meeting  with 
her  son  after  so  many  years. 


20 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[July 


CHAPTER   VIII. 


When  Mrs  Ogilvy  reached,  some- 
what breathless,  the  height  of  the 
little  brae  on  which  her  own  door, 
standing  wide  open  in  the  sunshine, 
offered  her  the  usual  unconscious 
welcome  which  that  modest  house 
in  its  natural  condition  held  out 
to  every  comer,  it  was  with  a 
pang  of  disappointment  she  heard 
that  Robert  had  gone  out.  For  a 
moment  her  heart  sank.  She  had 
been  looking  forward  to  the  sight 
of  him.  She  had  felt  that  to-day, 
after  her  short  absence,  she  would 
see  him  without  prejudice,  able  to 
make  allowance  for  everything,  not 
looking  any  longer  for  her  Robbie 
of  old,  but  accustomed  and  recon- 
ciled to  the  new — the  mature  man 
into  which  inevitably  in  all  these 
years  he  must  have  grown.  She 
had  hurried  home,  though  the  walk 
from  the  station  was  rather  too 
much  for  her,  to  realise  these  ex- 
pectations, eager,  full  of  love  and 
hope.  Her  heart  fluttered  a  little  : 
the  light  went  out  of  her  eyes  for 
a  moment;  she  sat  down,  all  the 
strength  gone  out  of  her.  But  this 
was  only  for  a  moment.  "To  be 
sure,  Janet,"  she  said,  "he  has 
gone  in  to  Edinburgh  to — see  about 
his  luggage.  I  mean,  to  get  himself 
some — things  he  wanted."  Janet 
had  a  long  face,  as  long  as  a  win- 
ter's night  and  almost  as  dark.  Her 
mistress  could  have  taken  her  by 
the  shoulders  and  shaken  her. 
What  right  had  she  to  take  it  upon 
her  to  misdoubt  her  young  master, 
or  to  be  so  anxious  as  that  about 
him— as  if  she  were  one  that  had  a 
right  to  be  "  meeserable  "  whatever 
might  happen? 

"  Could  he  not  have  gane  with 
you,  mem,  when  you  were  going  in 
yourseH" 

"He  was  not  ready,"  said  Mrs 


Ogilvy,  feeling  herself  put  on  her 
defence. 

"  You  might  have  waited,  mem, 
till  the  next  train " 

"If  you  will  know,"  cried  Mrs 
Ogilvy,  indignant,  "my  boy  liked 
best  to  be  free,  to  take  his  own 
way — and  I  hope  there  is  no  per- 
son in  this  house  that  will  gainsay 
that." 

"  Eh,  mem,  I'm  aware  it's  no  for 
me  to  speak  —  but  so  soon,  afore 
he  has  got  accustomed  to  being  at 
hame — and  with  siller  in  his  pouch." 

"What  do  you  know  about  his 
siller  in  his  pouch?"  cried  the 
angry  mistress. 

"I  saw  the  notes  in  his  hand. 
He's  aye  very  nice  to  me,;>  said 
Janet,  not  without  a  little  pleasure 
in  showing  how  much  more  at  his 
ease  Robert  was  with  her  than  with 
his  mother,  "and  cracks  about 
everything.  He  just  showed  me  in 
his  hand — as  many  notes  as  would 
build  a  kirk.  He  said  :  '  See  how 

liberal '"     Janet  stopped  here, 

a  little  confused;  for  what  Robert 
had  said  was,  "  See  how  liberal  the 
old  woman  is."  She  liked  to  give 
her  mistress  the  tiniest  pin-prick, 
perhaps,  but  not  the  stab  of  a  dis- 
respect like  that. 

"  I  wish  to  be  liberal,"  said  Mrs 
Ogilvy.  "  I  am  very  glad  he  was 
pleased  :  and  I  knew  he  was  going, 
— there  was  nothing  out  of  the  way 
about  it  that  you  should  meet  me 
with  such  a  long  face.  I  thought 
nothing  less  than  that  he  must  be 
ill  after  all  his  fatigues  and  his 
travels." 

"Oh,  no  a  bit 
Janet— "no  ill:  I 
fears  about  that." 

Mrs  Ogilvy  by  this  time  had 
quite  recovered  herself.  "  He  will 
have  a  good  many  things  to  do," 


of  him,"    said 
never  had  ony 


1894.] 

she  said.  "  He  will  never  be  able 
to  get  back  to  his  dinner.  I  hope 
he'll  get  something  comfortable  to 
eat  in  Edinburgh.  You  can  keep 
back  the  roast  of  beef  till  the  even- 
ing, Janet,  and  just  give  me  some 
little  thing :  an  egg  will  do  and  a 

cup  of  tea " 

"  You  will  just  get  your  dinner 
as  usual,"  said  Janet,  doggedly,  "  as 
you  did  before,  when  you  were  in 
your  natural  way." 

When  she  was  in  her  natural 
way !  It  was  a  cruel  speech,  but 
Mrs  Ogilvy  took  no  notice.  She 
did  not  fight  the  question  out,  as 
Janet  hoped.  If  she  shed  a  few 
tears  as  she  took  off  her  things  in 
her  bedroom,  they  were  soon  wiped 
away  and  left  no  traces.  Eobbie 
could  not  be  tied  to  her  apron- 
strings.  She  knew  that  well,  if 
Janet  did  not  know  it.  And  what 
could  be  more  natural  than  that  he 
should  like  to  buy  his  clothes  and 
get  what  he  wanted  by  himself, 
not  with  an  old  wife  for  ever  at  his 
heels?  She  strengthened  herself 
for  a  quiet  day,  and  then  the 
pleasure  of  seeing  him  come  back. 
But  it  was  wonderful  how  diffi- 
cult it  was  to  settle  for  a  quiet  day. 
She  had  never  felt  so  lonely,  she 
thought,  or  the  house  so  empty. 
It  had  been  empty  for  fifteen  years, 
but  it  was  long  since  she  had  felt 
it  like  this,  every  room  missing  the 
foot  and  the  voice  and  the  big 
presence,  though  it  was  but  two 
days  since  he  came  back.  But  she 
settled  herself  with  an  effort,  count- 
ing the  trains,  and  making  out  that 
before  five  o'clock  it  would  be  vain 
to  look  for  him.  He  would  have 
to  go  to  the  tailor's,  and  to  buy 
linen,  and  perhaps  shoes,  and  a 
hat — maybe  other  things  which  do 
not  in  a  moment  come  to  a  woman's 
mind.  No  ;  it  could  not  be  till  five 
o'clock,  or  perhaps  even  six.  He 
would  have  a  great  many  things  to 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


21 


do.  She  would  not  even  wonder, 
she  said  to  herself,  if  it  were  later. 
He  would,  no  doubt,  just  walk 
about  a  little  and  look  at  things 
that  were  new  since  he  went  away, 
There  were  some  more  of  these  stat- 
ues in  the  Princes  Street  Gardens. 
Mrs  Ogilvy  did  not  care  for  them 
herself,  but  Eobbie  would.  A 
young  man,  noticing  everything,  he 
would  like  to  see  all  that  was  new. 
A  step  on  the  gravel  roused  her 
early  in  the  afternoon — the  swing 
of  the  gate,  and  the  sound  of  the 
gradually  nearing  footstep.  Ah, 
that  was  him  !  earlier  than  she  had 
hoped  for,  knowing  she  would  be 
anxious,  making  his  mother's  heart 
to  sing  for  joy.  She  watched  dis- 
creetly behind  the  curtain,  that  he 
might  not  think  she  was  looking 
out  for  him,  or  had  any  doubts 
about  his  early  return.  Poor  Mrs 
Ogilvy  !  she  was  well  used  to  that 
kind  of  disappointment,  but  it 
seemed  like  a  blow  full  in  her  face 
now,  a  stroke  she  had  not  the  least 
expected,  when  she  saw  that  it  was 
not  Robbie  that  was  coming,  but  the 
minister — the  minister  of  all  people 
— who  had  the  right  of  old  friend- 
ships to  ask  questions,  and  to  have 
things  explained  to  him,  and  who 
was  doubtless  coming  now  to  ask 
if  she  had  been  ill  yesterday, — for 
when  had  it  happened  before  that 
she  had  not  been  in  her  usual  place 
in  the  kirk?  She  sat  down  faint 
and  sick,  but  after  a  moment  came 
round  again,  saying  to  herself  that 
it  would  have  been  impossible  for 
Robbie  to  get  back  so  soon,  and 
that  she  richly  deserved  a  disap- 
pointment that  she  had  brought  on 
herself.  When  Mr  Logan  came  in 
she  was  seated  in  her  usual  chair 
(she  had  moved  it  from  its  old  place 
since  Robert  seemed  to  like  that, 
placing  for  him  a  bigger  chair  out  of 
the  dining-room,  which  suited  him 
better),  and  having  her  usual  looks, 


22 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[July 


so  that  he  began  by  saying  that  he 
need  not  ask  if  she  had  been  un- 
well, for  she  was  just  as  blooming 
as  ever.  Having  said  this,  the 
minister  fell  into  a  sort  of  brown 
study,  with  a  smile  on  his  face,  and 
a  look  which  was  a  little  sheepish, 
as  if  he  did  not  know  what  more  to 
say.  He  asked  no  questions,  and 
he  did  not  seem  even  to  have  heard 
anything,  for  there  was  no  curiosity 
in  his  face.  Mrs  Ogilvy  made  a 
few  short  remarks  on  the  weather, 
and  told  him  she  had  been  in  Edin- 
burgh that  morning,  which  elicited 
from  him  nothing  more  than  a  "Dear 
me  ! "  of  the  vaguest  interest.  Not 
a  word  about  Robbie,  not  a  question 
did  he  ask.  She  had  been  alarmed 
at  the  idea  of  these  questions.  She 
was  still  more  alarmed  and  wonder- 
ing when  they  did  not  come. 

"  I  had  a  call  from  Susie— the 
other  day,"  she  said  at  last.  Was 
it  possible  that  it  was  only  on 
Saturday — the  day  that  was  now 
a  marked  day,  above  all  others,  the 
day  that  Bobbie  came  home  ! 

"  Ay  ! "  said  the  minister,  for  the 
first  time  looking  up.  "  Would  she 
have  anything  to  tell  you?  I'm 
thinking,  Mrs  Ogilvy,  Susie  has  no 
secrets  from  you." 

"I  never  heard  she  had  any 
secrets.  She  is  a  real  upright- 
minded,  well -thinking  woman.  I 
will  not  say  bairn,  though  she  will 
always  be  a  bairn  to  me " 

/'No,  she's  no  bairn,"  said  the 
minister,  shaking  his  head.  "  Two- 
and-thirty  well-chappit,  as  the  poor 
folk  say.  She  should  have  been 
married  long  ago,  and  with  bairns 
of  her  own." 

"  And  how  could  she  be  married, 
I  would  like  to  ask  you,"  cried  Mrs 
Ogilvy,  indignant,  "with  you  and 
your  family  to  look  after?  And 
never  mother  has  done  better  by  her 
bairns  than  Susie  has  done  by  you 
and  yours." 


"I  am  saying  nothing  against 
that.  I  am  saying  she  has  had  the 
burden  on  her  far  too  long.  I  told 
you  before  her  health  is  giving  way 
under  it,"  the  minister  said.  He 
spoke  with  a  little  heat,  as  of  a  man 
crossed  and  contradicted  in  a  state- 
ment of  fact  of  which  he  was  sure. 

"I  see  no  signs  of  that,"  Mrs 
Ogilvy  said. 

"  I  came  up  the  other  night,"  he 
went  on,  "to  open  my  mind  to  you 
if  I  could,  but  you  gave  me  no  en- 
couragement. Things  have  gone 
a  little  further  since  then.  Mrs 
Ogilvy,  you're  a  great  authority  with 
Susie,  and  the  parish  has  much  con- 
fidence in  you.  I  would  like  you 
to  be  the  first  to  know — and  per- 
haps you  would  give  me  your  ad- 
vice. It  is  not  as  to  the  wisdom  of 
what  I'm  going  to  do.  I  am  just 
fairly  settled  upon  that,  and  my 
mind  made  up " 

"You  are  going — to  marry  again," 
she  said. 

He  gave  a  quick  look  upward, 
his  middle-aged  countenance  grow- 
ing red,  the  complacent  smile  steal- 
ing to  the  corners  of  his  mouth. 
"  So  you've  guessed  that !  " 

"I  have  not  guessed  it — it  was 

very  clear  to  see both  from  her 

and  from  you." 

"  You've  guessed  the  person,  too," 
he  said,  the  colour  deepening,  and 
the  smile  turning  to  a  confused 
laugh. 

"There  was  no  warlock  wanted 
to  do  that;  but  what  my  advice 
would  be  for,  I  cannot  guess,  Mr 
Logan.  For,  if  your  mind's  fixed 
and  all  settled " 

"  I  did  not  say  just  as  much  as 

that;  but well,  very  near  it. 

Yes,  very  near  it.  I  cannot  see 
how  in  honour  I  could  go  back." 

"  And  you've  no  wish  to  do  so. 
And  what  do  you  want  with  ad- 
vice?" Mrs  Ogilvy  said. 

She  was  severe,  though  she  was 


1894.] 

thankful  to  him  for  his  preoccupa- 
tion, and  that  he  had  no  leisure  at 
his  command  to  ask  questions  or  to 
pry  into  other  people's  affairs. 

"  Me,"  he  said  ;  "  that's  but  one 
side  of  the  subject.  There's  Susie. 
It's  perhaps  not  quite  fair  to  Susie. 
I've  stood  in  her  way,  you  may  say. 
She's  been  tangled  with  the  boys 
— and  me.  There's  no  companion 
for  a  man,  Mrs  Ogilvy,  like  the 
wife  of  his  bosom;  but  Susie — I 
would  be  the  last  to  deny  it — has 
been  a  good  daughter  to  me." 

"It  would  set  you  ill,  or  any 
man,  to  deny  it ! "  cried  Mrs  Ogilvy. 
"And  what  are  you  going  to  do 
for  Susie,  Mr  Logan  1  A  sister  that 
keeps  your  house,  you  just  say 
Thank  you,  and  put  her  to  the  door ; 
but  your  daughter — you're  always 
responsible  for  her " 

"Till   she's    married,"    he 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


23 


giving  his  severe  judge  a  shame- 
faced glance. 

"  Have  you  a  man  ready  to  marry 
her,  then  1 "  she  asked,  sharply. 

"It's  perhaps  not  the  man  that 
has  ever  been  wanting,"  said  the 
minister,  with  a  half  laugh. 

"And  how  are  you  going  to  do 
without  Susie1?"  said  Mrs  Ogilvy, 
always  with  great  severity.  "  Who 
is  to  see  the  callants  off  to  Edin- 
burgh every  morning,  and  learn  the 
little  ones  their  lessons  1  It  will  be 
a  great  handful  for  a  grand  lady 
like  yon." 

"That's  just  a  mistake  that  is 
very  painful  to  me,"  said  Mr  Logan. 
"  The  lady  that  is  going  to  be — my 
wife " 

"  Your  second  wife,  Mr  Logan," 
said  Mrs  Ogilvy,  with  great  severity. 

"  I  am  meaning  nothing  else — 
my  second  wife — is  not  a  grand 
lady,  as  you  all  suppose.  She  is 
just  a  sweet,  simple  woman — that 
would  be  pleased  to  do  anything." 

"  Is  she  going  to  learn  the  little 
ones  their  lessons,  and  be  up  in  the 


morning   to   give   the    boys    their 
breakfasts  and  see  them  away?" 

Mr  Logan  waved  his  hand,  as  a 
man  forestalled  in  what  he  was 
about  to  say.  "There  is  no  need 
for  all  that,"  he  said — "  not  the  least 
need.  The  servant  that  has  been 
with  them  all  their  days  is  just 
very  well  capable  of  seeing  that 
they  get  off  in  time.  And  as  for 
the  little  ones,  I  have  heard  of  a 
fine  school — in  England." 

Mrs  Ogilvy  threw  up  her  arms 
with  a  cry.  "A  school — in  Eng- 
land ! " 

"  Which  costs  very  little,  and  is 
just  an  excellent  school — for  the 
daughters  of  clergymen  —  but,  I 
confess,  it's  clergymen  of  the 
other  Church  :  it  is  not  proved  yet 
if  a  Scotch  minister  will  be 
allowed " 

"A  thing  that's  half  charity," 
said  Mrs  Ogilvy,  scornfully.  "I 
did  not  think,  Mr  Logan,  that  you, 
that  are  come  of  well- ken t  folk, 
would  demean  yourself  to  that." 

"  She  says— I  mean,  I'm  told," 
said  the  poor  man,  "  that  it's  sought 
after  by  the  very  best.  The  Eng- 
lish have  not  our  silly  pride.  When 
a  thing  is  a  good  thing  and  freely 
offered " 

"  You  will  not  get  it,  anyway," 
said  Mrs  Ogilvy,  quickly.  "  You're 
not  a  clergyman  according  to  the 
English  way.  You're  a  Scotch 
minister.  But  if  all  this  is  to  be 
done,  I'm  thinking  it  means  that 
there  will  be  no  place  for  Susie  at 
all  in  her  father's  house." 

"She  will  marry,"  the  minister 
said. 

"  And  how  can  you  tell  that  she 
will  marry  ?  Is  she  to  do  it  whether 
she  will  or  not  1  There  might  be 
more  reasons  than  one  for  not 
marrying.  It's  not  any  man  she 
wants,  but  maybe  just  one  man." 

Mrs  Ogilvy  thought  she  was  well 
aware  what  it  was  that  had  kept 


24 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[July 


Susie  from  marrying.  Alas,  alas  ! 
what  would  she  think  of  him  now 
if  she  saw  him,  and  how  could  she 
bear  to  see  the  wonder  and  the  pain 
reflected  in  Susie's  face  ? 

"I  thought,"  said  Mr  Logan, 
rising  up,  "  that  I  would  have  found 
sympathy  from  you.  I  thought 
you  would  have  perceived  that  it 
was  as  much  for  Susie  I  was  think- 
ing as  for  myself.  She  will  never 
break  the  knot  till  it's  done  for  her. 
She  thinks  she's  bound  to  those 
bairns ;  but  when  she  sees  they  are 
all  provided  for  without  her " 

"  The  boys  by  the  care  of  a  ser- 
vant. The  little  ones  in  a  school 
that  is  just  disguised  charity " 

"  You're  an  old  friend,  Mrs  Ogilvy, 
but  not  old  enough  or  'dear  enough 
to  treat  my  arrangements  like  that." 

"  Oh,  go  away,  minister !  "  cried 
the  mistress  of  the  Hewan.  She 
was  beginning  to  remember  that 
Robbie's  train  might  come  in  at  any 
moment,  and  that  she  would  not  for 
the  world  have  him  brought  face  to 
face  with  Mr  Logan  without  any 
warning  or  preparation.  < '  Go  away ! 
for  we  will  never  agree  on  this  point. 
I've  nothing  to  say  against  you  for 
marrying.  If  your  heart's  set  upon 
it,  you'll  do  it,  well  I  know ;  but  to 
me  Susie  and  the  bairns  are  the 
first  thing,  and  not  the  second. 
Say  no  more,  say  no  more  !  for  we'll 
never  agree." 

"  You'll  not  help  me,  then?"  he 
said. 

"  Help  you  !  how  am  I  to  help 
you?  I  have  nothing  to  do  with 
it,"  she  cried. 

"  With  Susie,"  he  repeated.  "  I'll 
not  quarrel  with  you  :  you  mean 
well,  though  you're  so  severe.  There 
is  nobody  like  you  that  could  help 
me  with  Susie.  You  could  make 
her  see  my  position  —  you  could 
make  her  see  her  duty " 

"  If  it  is  her  duty,"  Mrs  Ogilvv 
said. 


She  could  scarcely  hear  what  he 
said  in  reply.  Was  that  the  gate 
again?  and  another  step  on  the 
gravel  ?  Her  heart  began  to  choke 
and  to  deafen  her,  beating  so  loud 
in  her  ears.  Oh,  if  she  could  but 
get  him  away  before  Eobbie,  with 
his  rough  clothes,  his  big  beard,  his 
air  of  recklessness  and  vagabond- 
ism, should  appear !  She  felt  her- 
self walking  before  him  to  the 
door/ involuntarily  moving  him  on, 
indicating  his  path.  I  think  he 
was  too  deeply  occupied  with  his 
own  affairs  to  note  this ;  but  yet  he 
was  aware  of  something  repellent 
in  her  aspect  and  tone.  It  was  just 
like  all  women,  he  said  to  himself : 
to  hear  that  a  poor  man  was  to  get 
a  little  comfort  to  himself  with  a 
second  wife  roused  up  all  their 
prejudices.  He  might  have  known. 

It  was  time  for  Robbie's  train 
when  she  got  her  visitor  away. 
She  sat  down  and  listened  to  his 
footsteps  retiring  with  a  great  re- 
lief. That  sound  of  the  gate  had 
been  a  mistake.  How  often,  how 
often  had  it  been  a  mistake  !  She 
lingered  now,  sitting  still,  resting 
from  the  agitation  that  had  seized 
upon  her  till  the  minister's  steps 
died  away  upon  the  road.  And  as 
soon  as  they  were  gone,  listened,  lis- 
tened over  again,  with  her  whole 
heart  in  her  ears,  for  the  others  that 
now  should  come. 

It  was  six  o'clock  past !  If  he 
had  come  by  this  train  he  must  have 
been  here,  and  there  was  not  an- 
other for  more  than  an  hour.  He 
must  have  been  detained.  He 
must  have  been  looking  about  the 
new  things  in  the  town,  the  new 
buildings,  the  things  that  had  been 
changed  in  fifteen  years,  things  that 
at  his  age  were  just  the  things  a 
young  man  would  remember;  or 
perhaps  the  tailor  might  be  altering 
something  for  him  that  he  had  to 
go  back  to  try  on,  or  perhaps 


1894.] 

It  would  be  all  right  anyway. 
What  did  six  o'clock  matter,  or  half- 
past  seven,  or  whatever  it  was  1  It 
was  a  fine  light  summer  night;  there 
was  plenty  of  time, — and  nobody 
waiting  for  him  but  his  mother, 
that  could  make  every  allowance. 
And  it  was  not  as  if  he  had  any- 
thing to  do  at  home.  He  had  noth- 
ing to  do.  And  his  first  day  in 
Edinburgh  after  so  many  years. 

She  was  glad,  however,  to  hear 
the  step  of  Janet,  so  that  she  could 
call  her  without  rising  from  her  seat, 
which  somehow  she  felt  too  tired 
and  feeble  to  do. 

"Janet,"  she  said,  "you  will  just 
keep  back  the  dinner.  Mr  Robert 
has  been  detained.  I've  been  think- 
ing all  day  that  perhaps  he  might 
be  detained,  maybe  even  later  than 
this.  If  we  said  eight  o'clock  for 
once?  It's  a  late  hour;  but  better 
that  than  giving  him  a  bad  dinner, 
neither  one  thing  nor  another, 
neither  hot  nor  cold.  Where  were 
you  going,  my  woman  1 "  Mrs 
Ogilvy  added  abruptly,  with  a 
suspicious  glance. 

"  I  was  just  gaun  to  take  a  look 
out.  I  said  to  mysel'  I  would  just 
look  out  and  see  if  he  was  coming : 
for  it's  very  true  you  say,  a  dinner 
in  the  dead  thraws,  neither  hot  nor 
cauld,  is  just  worse  than  no  dinner 
at  all." 

"  Just  bide  in  your  kitchen,"  said 
her  mistress,  peremptorily.  "  I'll  let 
you  know  when  my  son  comes." 

"Oh,  I'll  hear  soon  enough," 
Janet  said.  And  then  the  mother 
was  left  alone.  But  not  undis- 
turbed :  for  presently  Andrew's  slow 
step  came  round  the  corner,  with 
a  clanking  of  waterpots  and  the  re- 
freshing sounds  and  smell  of  water- 
ing —  that  tranquil  employment, 
all  in  accord  with  the  summer 
evening,  when  it  was  always  her 
custom  to  go  out  and  have  a  talk 
with  Andrew  about  the  flowers. 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


25 


She  did  not  feel  as  if  she  could 
move  to-night — her  feet  were  cold 
and  like  lead,  her  cheeks  burning, 
and  her  heart  clanging  in  her  throat. 
Nevertheless  the  bond  of  custom 
being  on  her,  and  a  strong  sense 
that  to  fulfil  every  usual  occupation 
was  the  most  satisfying  exercise, 
she  presently  rose  and  went  out, 
the  pleasant  smell  of  the  refreshed 
earth  and  thirsty  plants,  bringing 
out  all  the  sweetest  home  breath 
of  the  flowers,  coming  to  meet  her 
as  she  went  forth  to  the  open  door. 

"It's  very  good  for  them,  Andrew, 
after  this  warm  day." 

"  Ay,  it's  good  for  them,"  Andrew 
said. 

"You  will  mind  to  shut  up 
everything  as  soon  as  my  son  comes 
home,"  she  said. 

"  Oh  ay,"  said  Andrew,  "  there 
was  plenty  said  about  it  yestreen." 

"The  sweet-williams  are  coming 
on  nicely,  Andrew." 

"Ah,"  said  Andrew,  "they're 
common  things ;  they  aye  thrive." 

"They  are  very  bonnie,"  said 
Mrs  Ogilvy ;  "I  like  them  better 
than  your  grand  geraniums  and 
things." 

"  There's  nae  accounting  for 
tastes,"  Andrew  said,  in  his  gruff 
voice. 

By  this  time  she  felt  that  she 
could  not  continue  the  conversation 
any  longer,  and  went  back  to  her 
chair  inside.  The  sound  of  the 
flowing  water,  and  even  of  Andrew 
clanking  as  he  moved,  was  sweet  to 
her.  The  little  jar  and  clang  fell 
sweetly  into  the  evening,  and  they 
were  so  glad  of  that  refreshing 
shower,  the  silly  flowers  !  though 
maybe  it  would  rain  before  the 
morning,  and  they  would  not  need 
it.  Then  Andrew — though  nobody 
could  say  he  was  quick,  honest  man  ! 
— finished  his  task  and  went  in. 
And  there  was  a  great  quiet,  the 
quiet  of  the  falling  night,  though 


26 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[July 


the  long  light  remained  the  same. 
And  the  time  passed  for  the  next 
train.  Janet  came  to  the  door 
again  with  her  heavy  step.  "He 
will  no  be  coming  till  the  nine 
train,"  she  said;  "will  you  have 
the  dinner  up?"  "Oh  no,"  cried 
Mrs  Ogilvy ;  "  I'll  not  sit  down  to 
a  big  meal  at  this  hour  of  the  night. 
Put  out  the  beef  to  let  it  cool,  and 
it  will  be  supper  instead  of  dinner, 
Janet." 

"  But  you've  eaten  nothing,  mem, 
since " 

"  Am  I  thinking  of  what  I  eat ! 
Go  ben  to  your  kitchen,  and  do 
what  I  tell  you,  and  just  leave  me 
alone." 

Janet  went  away,  and  the  long 
vigil  began  again.  She  sat  a  long 
time  without  moving,  and  then  she 
took  a  turn  about  the  house,  look- 
ing into  his  room  for  one  thing, 
and  looking  at  the  piles  of  books 
that  he  had  carried  up-stairs.  There 
were  few  traces  of  him  about,  for 
he  had  nothing  to  leave  behind, 
— only  the  big  rough  cloak,  of  a 
shape  she  had  never  seen  before, 
which  was  folded  on  a  chair.  She 
lifted  it,  with  a  natural  instinct 
of  order,  to  hang  it  up,  and  found 
falling  from  a  pocket  in  it  a  big 


badly  printed  newspaper,  the  same 
newspaper  in  which  Mr  Somerville 
had  showed  her  her  son's  name.  She 
took  it  with  her  half  consciously 
when  she  went  down-stairs,  but  did 
not  read  it,  being  too  much  oc- 
cupied with  the  dreadful  whirl  of 
her  own  thoughts.  Nine  o'clock 
passed  too,  and  the  colourless  hours 
ran  on.  And  then  there  was  the 
sound  all  over  the  house  of  Andrew 
fulfilling  his  orders,  shutting  up 
every  window  and  door.  When  he 
came  to  the  parlour  to  shut  the 
window  by  which  she  sat,  his  little 
mistress,  always  so  quiet,  almost  flew 
at  him.  "  Man,  have  you  neither 
sense  nor  reason  ! "  she  cried.  It 
was  more  than  she  could  bear  to 
shut  and  bar  and  bolt  when  nobody 
was  there  that  either  feared  or 
could  come  to  harm.  No  one  dis- 
turbed her  after  that.  The  couple 
in  the  kitchen  kept  very  quiet, 
afraid  of  her.  Deep  night  came  on ; 
the  last  of  all  the  trains  rumbled  by, 
making  a  great  crash  in  the  distance 
in  the  perfect  stillness.  There  had 
been  another  time  like  this,  when 
she  had  watched  the  whole  night 
through.  And  midnight  came  and 
went  again,  and  as  yet  there  was 
no  sound. 


1894.] 


Senoussi,  the  Sheikh  oj  Jerboub. 


27 


SENOUSSI,  THE  SHEIKH  OF  JEEBOUB. 


WE  in  Western  Europe  are  in- 
clined to  regard  all  Moslems  as 
belonging  to  one  identical  religion. 
We  know  that  all  are  followers  of 
Mahomet,  and  we  do  not  trouble 
ourselves  to  inquire  whether  or 
not  this  great  and  growing  world 
of  Islam  is  broken  up  into  divisions 
and  sects.  And  yet  Mussulmans 
differ  on  points  of  doctrine  and 
observance  to  the  full  as  much 
as  Christians.  Sectarianism  is 
equally  rife.  The  disciples  of  the 
different  Mahomedan  creeds  mutu- 
ally distrust  each  other,  just  as  do 
Protestant  and  Roman  Catholic, 
Armenian  and  Greek. 

Moslems  are,  in  the  first  place, 
as  is  well  known,  divided  into 
two  great  branches,  Sunnis  and 
Shiahs,  the  latter  found  chiefly  in 
Persia.  But  as  offshoots  of  these 
two  main  divisions  there  are  a 
multitude  of  minor  confraternities, 
differing  little  as  regards  doctrine, 
but  differing  greatly  in  importance. 
These  sects  are  for  the  most  part 
creations  of  learned  ascetics,  each 
with  some  theological  theory  of 
his  own,  who  have  gone  abroad 
preaching  their  tenets,  and  draw- 
ing to  themselves  disciples  among 
races  easily  roused  to  religious  en- 
thusiasm. They  generally  prosper 
exceedingly  for  a  time.  A  local 
movement  rapidly  gains  strength 
among  emotional  superstitious 
people  such  as  are  found  in  Africa 
and  Western  Asia.  An  obscure 
priest,  gifted  with  originality  and 
resolution,  and  favoured  by  for- 
tune, will  from  time  to  time  shake 
the  whole  Mahomedan  world,  and 
create  for  himself  a  name  more 
lasting  than  that  of  the  great 
Mussulman  conquerors  of  the  past. 
The  founder  of  a  Moslem  sect 
generally  gives  to  it  his  name. 


Thus  in  Morocco  there  is  the  great 
Muley  Taib  order,  headed  by  the 
Sherif  of  Wazan.  In  Arabia  there 
is  the  order  of  Wahabees.  And 
the  Senoussi  confraternity  is  so 
called  after  its  spiritual  head, 
Sheikh  Mohamed  es  Senoussi  of 
Jerboub,  who  is  styled  .  "  El 
Mahdi." 

"  El  Mahdi "  can  best  be  trans- 
lated as  "the  guide."  Moslems 
generally  are  looking  for  the 
coming  of  a  prophet.  Sunnis  and 
Shiahs  agree  in  expecting  the 
appearance  of  a  Mahdi  or  Messiah. 
But  they  differ  as  to  the  manner 
of  his  manifestation.  Sunnis  be- 
lieve the  coming  Mahdi  to  be  a 
new  prophet.  Shiahs  hold  that 
he  will  be  an  Imam,  who  has  dis- 
appeared, but  who  will  reappear 
as  the  expected  Messiah.  There 
have  been  many  prophecies  as  to 
how  he  will  declare  his  divine 
mission,  as  to  marks  on  his 
body  by  which  he  will  be  known, 
as  to  his  parentage,  and  as  to  the 
result  of  his  appearance  on  earth. 
And,  since  so  much  difference  of 
opinion  exists  on  these  points,  it 
is  not  wonderful  that  adventurers 
have  more  than  once  since  the 
death  of  Mahomet  declared  them- 
selves to  be  the  Mahdi,  and  have 
induced  others  to  believe  in  them. 
Impostors  of  this  class  have  been 
especially  successful  in  North 
Africa,  where  nearly  all  Moslems 
belong  to  the  Sunni  division; 
but  in  this  country  the  name  of 
Mahdi  has  definitely  become  asso- 
ciated with  Mohamed  Ahmed  of 
Dongola,  the  boat  -  builder,  who 
wrested  the  Nile  provinces  from 
the  Khedive  in  spite  of  British 
protection,  under  whose  banners 
the  Arabs  fought  us  at  El  Teb, 
at  Abu  Klea,  and  at  M'Neill's 


28 


Senoussi,  the  Sheikh  ofJerboub. 


[July 


zeriba,  and  who  died  at  Omdur- 
manjust  as  the  Nile  Expedition- 
ary Force,  foiled  in  its  attempt  to 
save   Khartum,  retired  from   the 
Soudan.     Mohamed  Ahmed  chose 
a  singularly  auspicious  moment  for 
proclaiming  himself  Mahdi.     The 
rapacity  and  misgovernment  of  the 
pashas   in    the   Egyptian   Soudan 
had   inflamed   the   whole   popula- 
tion against  the  existing  regime. 
Discontent  had  long  been  smoul- 
dering  among  the  warrior  tribes 
that  Mehemet  AH   had  subdued. 
A  leader  and  head  was  all  that 
was  required  to  sweep  the  feeble 
representatives  of  the  Khedive  back 
to  the  Nile  delta.     And  when  the 
eloquent    and    astute     Mohamed 
Ahmed,  who,  before  he  became  in- 
toxicated by   success,  maintained 
the  austerity  and  asceticism  charac- 
teristic of  a  holy  man,   suddenly 
declared  himself  to  be  the  Mahdi, 
all   flocked   to   his   standard,   not 
merely     egged    on    by    religious 
enthusiasm,   but    stirred    by    the 
hope  of  gaining  freedom  from  an 
intolerable    tyranny.       Mohamed 
Ahmed,    although     apparently    a 
man   of   no   great   administrative 
capacity,  and  qualified  rather  for 
the  headship  of  a  religious  move- 
ment than  for  organising  a  mili- 
tary  power    or    creating    a    new 
government,  possessed  the  gift  of 
selecting   able  assistants   to   help 
him.      The    emirs    he    appointed 
were  resolute   and   efficient  men, 
and  at  once  the  most  remarkable 
and  ambitious   of   them   was  the 
Khalifa  Abdulla,  who,  on  his  de- 
cease, assumed  the  leadership  of 
the  dervish  cause,  and  who  now 
reigns  at  Omdurman  as  a  despotic 
sovereign  in  all  except  the  name. 
Mohamed  Ahmed  fulfilled  neither 
in  his  person  nor  in  the  manner  of 
the  manifestation  of  his  pretended 
mission   from   on  high,  the  main 
conditions  foretold  of  the  Mahdi 
according  to  the  Sunni  doctrines 
and  faith.   The  principal  attributes 


of  the  Mahdi  are,  from  the  Sunni 
point  of  view,  that  he  shall  be  of 
the  Sherifian  line,  that  he  shall  be 
proclaimed  against  his  will  and  at 
Mecca,  that  he  shall  cause  no 
strife  by  his  appearance,  and  that 
at  the  time  of  his  manifestation 
there  shall  be  no  Caliph.  None  of 
these  conditions  were  fulfilled  by 
Mohamed  Ahmed;  but  his  own 
name  and  that  of  his  parents 
corresponded  with  those  of  the 
Prophet  and  his  parents,  and  this, 
according  to  one  prophecy,  was  one 
of  the  signs  by  which  the  Mahdi 
would  be  known.  The  tribesmen 
of  the  Egyptian  Soudan,  however, 
the  Shilluks,  Baggaras,  Jaalin,  and 
Hadendowa,  knew  of  none  of  these 
things.  They  believed  vaguely  in 
the  coming  of  a  Mahdi,  and, 
when  this  mysterious  monk  set 
the  Khartum  government  at  de- 
fiance, and  with  his  disciples  beat 
the  troops  sent  out  to  crush  him, 
they  arose  as  one  man,  and  a 
wave  of  religious  fanaticism  spread 
abroad  such  as  had  not  been  known 
for  centuries.  Mohamed  Ahmed 
emerged  from  obscurity  to  find 
himself  not  merely  a  prophet,  but 
also  a  conqueror  and  king. 

But  while  this  strange  personage 
figured  for  a  few  months  among 
the  excitable  Arabs  on  the  Nile 
as  the  Mahdi,  there  was  living 
not  far  from  the  Egyptian  border 
another  holy  man  known  also 
to  his  followers  by  the  name  of 
Mahdi.  This  was  Mohamed  es 
Senoussi,  the  Sheikh  of  Jerboub, 
who,  when  Mohamed  Ahmed  pro- 
claimed himself,  was,  and  still  is, 
the  head  of  the  most  important 
Moslem  sect  in  Africa. 

This  sheikh  is  son  of  one  Mo- 
hamed ben  AH  ben  Senoussi,  a 
native  of  Algeria,  and  descended 
from  Fatma,  the  only  daughter  of 
Mahomet.  Mohamed  ben  AH  ben 
Senoussi  was  exiled  early  in  the 
century  by  the  Turks  from  Al- 
geria, and  sought  a  refuge  in  that 


1894.] 


Senoussi,  the  Sheikh  of  Jerboub. 


29 


hotbed  of  Mussulman  fanaticism, 
Morocco,  where  he  was  received 
into  the  Muley  Taib  order,  and 
where  he  soon  made  his  mark  as  a 
preacher  and  theologian.  After  a 
sojourn  of  a  few  years  in  Fez  and 
other  Moorish  cities,  he  deter- 
mined to  proceed  to  Mecca,  and 
he  preached  his  way  across  North 
Africa,  arousing  no  small  stir  in  the 
territories  he  traversed,  owing  to 
his  eloquence  and  erudition.  He  as- 
sumed the  role  of  a  reformer  striv- 
ing to  purge  the  Moslem  faith  of 
spurious  doctrines  grafted  on  the 
teachings  of  the  Prophet  after  his 
death.  He  spent  some  time  in 
Cairo,  where  he  vehemently  spoke 
against  the  civilising  processes  in- 
stituted by  Mehemet  AH,  and  he 
eventually  reached  Mecca.  In 
the  holy  city  his  preachings 
attracted  considerable  attention 
and  excited  strong  opposition.  He 
built  a  convent ;  but  he  failed,  ap- 
parently, to  gather  to  himself  many 
disciples,  and  he  resolved,  there- 
fore, to  seek  a  more  promising  field 
for  his  enterprise.  He  passed 
again  through  Egypt,  and  retired 
to  the  seclusion  of  the  hills  near 
ancient  Gyrene,  in  the  province  of 
Barka,  where,  with  the  Sultan's 
permission,  he  erected  a  convent 
or  zawia;  and  he  there  began  to 
gather  around  him  other  preachers, 
who  spread  his  doctrines  over  this 
mountain  tract,  who  built  other 
zawias,  and  who  spoke  and  taught 
in  his  name.  This  was  about 
1845 ;  and  from  this  period  the 
elder  Senoussi  may  be  said  to  have 
exchanged  the  role  of  apostle  and 
preacher  for  that  of  organiser  and 
head.  A  few  years  later  he  moved 
south  into  the  desert,  and  took  up 
his  residence  at  the  oasis  of  Jer- 
boub,  where  he  abode  for  the  rest 
of  his  days. 

Jerboub  lies  on  an  important 
caravan  route  from  north-western 
Africa  to  the  Nile  delta.  Remote 
from  civilisation,  absolutely  beyond 


the  control  of  either  the  Ottoman 
or  the  Egyptian  Government,  but 
not  so  far  withdrawn  from  the 
Mediterranean  as  to  prevent  pil- 
grims from  finding  their  way  thence 
should  they  wish  to  visit  the  sheikh, 
the  spot  selected  by  the  elder 
Senoussi  as  headquarters  of  the 
confraternity  he  was  founding  was 
singularly  well  fitted  for  the  pur- 
pose. Through  Jerboub  pass  great 
caravans  on  their  way  from.  Bar- 
bary,  from  Tripoli,  and  from  the 
populous  oases  of  the  central 
Soudan,  to  the  markets  of  Egypt. 
An  extensive  tract  of  date-bearing 
territory,  supporting  numbers  of 
inhabitants,  would  have  militated 
against  the  privacy  and  mysticism 
essential  to  a  holy  man.  Jerboub 
consists  of  a  great  zawia  and  noth- 
ing else.  No  stranger  can  come 
thither  unknown.  No  dweller  can 
withdraw  therefrom  without  his 
absence  being  noted  and  the  direc- 
tion taken  by  him  being  traced. 
No  small  judgment  and  foresight 
were  displayed  in  choosing  this 
little  secluded  oasis  for  a  sanc- 
tuary, and  its  selection  has  prob- 
ably not  been  the  least  of  the 
causes  that  have  given  to  the  re- 
markable Mussulman  revival  iden- 
tified with  the  name  of  Senoussi 
its  success  and  its  power. 

In  addition  to  inculcating  a  re- 
turn to  the  teachings  of  the  Koran 
pure  and  simple,  Senoussi  the 
elder  advocated  a  religious  form 
of  government,  under  which  the 
priesthood  would  be  recognised  to 
be  political  as  well  as  spiritual 
leaders.  This  principle  was  in- 
sisted upon  also  by  the  emissaries 
he  sent  out,  and  these  put  their 
theories  in  practice.  For  whenever 
they  founded  a  colony  in  some 
remote  outlandish  spot,  they  also 
created  a  civil  administration 
under  their  own  control.  They 
established  good  order  and  dis- 
cipline, and  instituted  a  settled 
government.  So  that  these  se- 


30 


Senoussi,  the  Sheikh  of  Jerboub. 


[July 


eluded  zawias  gradually  grew  into 
political  as  well  as  religious  centres. 
And  the  number  of  them  grew 
apace.  For  Senoussi  laid  special 
stress  on  the  building  of  zawias 
and  mosques  by  his  disciples 
wherever  they  went;  and  this  is 
the  reason  for  the  great  develop- 
ment in  the  number  of  these  con- 
vents that  has  taken  place  —  a 
development  still  going  on.  Se- 
noussi, however,  always  acknow- 
ledged the  Sultan  as  Caliph 
of  Islam,  declaring  him  to  be 
head  of  the  faith,  but  cunningly 
inserting  the  proviso  that  this  was 
dependent  on  adherence  to  the 
true  religion,  thus  enabling  him- 
self at  any  time  to  pronounce  the 
right  forfeited.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  although  the  present  Senoussi 
at  one  time  declared  the  Sultan  to 
be  no  longer  Caliph,  a  prolonged 
rupture  between  Jerboub  and  Con- 
stantinople does  not  appear  ever 
to  have  occurred.  A  peculiarity 
indeed  of  the  Senoussi  sect  is,  that 
stern  and  strict  as  are  the  tenets 
of  its  members,  the  doctrines  ad- 
mit of  considerable  elasticity. 
Many  examples  could  be  given  of 
this.  For  instance,  according  to 
the  teachings  and  spirit  of  the 
Koran,  the  fair  sex  should  be  held 
in  subjection  and  contempt.  But 
among  the  Tebus,  a  large  and 
powerful  tribe  south  of  Fezzan, 
the  emisaries  from  Jerboub  found 
the  women  not  only  to  be  intel- 
lectually superior  to  the  men,  but 
also  to  hold  a  social  position  utterly 
opposed  to  Moslem  ideas.  So  the 
Senoussi  preachers  preached  to  the 
women,  and  skilfully  won  them 
over  to  the  cause,  and  then  through 
female  influence  they  gained  over 
the  whole  tribe.  In  fact,  owing 
to  the  very  elasticity  of  its  doc- 
trines, the  sect  manages  to  absorb 
into  itself  other  minor  orders; 
and  this  peculiarity  has  tended  to 
greatly  expedite  its  extension. 
But  as  regards  infidels  the  rules 


of  the  order  are  very  severe, 
and  especially  towards  Christians, 
against  whom  the  Senoussi  priest- 
hood endeavour,  not  without  sue- 
to  inflame  their  flocks. 


cess, 


French  writers  attribute  the  de- 
plorable massacres  of  exploring 
missions  that  have  pushed  south- 
wards from  Algeria  and  Tunis 
entirely  to  the  fanaticism  stirred 
up  by  these  militant  monks ;  and 
in  this  theory  they  are  probably 
not  very  far  wrong. 

The  propaganda  emanating  from 
Jerboub  extended  in  an  extraor- 
dinary manner.  In  1859  the  name 
of  the  Sheikh  es  Senoussi  was  held 
in  respect,  not  only  among  the 
oases  of  Barka  and  the  neighbour- 
hood, but  far  to  the  south  in  the 
Soudan  among  the  negro  races 
peopling  the  vast  tracts  that  lie 
between  Khartum  and  Senegal. 
It  was  at  this  time  that  the  wan- 
dering Algerian  ascetic,  who  by 
the  force  of  personal  example,  and 
by  a  capacity  for  organisation,  and 
for  inspiring  enthusiasm  of  no 
common  order,  was  developing  a 
spiritual  and  temporal  power  over 
a  huge  area  of  wilderness  dotted 
with  widely  separated  but  rich  and 
thickly  inhabited  patches  of  oasis, 
died,  and  nominated  as  his  suc- 
cessor his  son,  Mohamed  es  Sen- 
oussi, the  present  Sheikh  of  Jer- 
boub. Before  his  death  he  appears 
clearly  to  have  hinted  that  his  son 
was  the  Mahdi,  and  the  Senoussi 
is  now  known  among  his  followers 
as  Mohamed  el  Mahdi,  although 
he  does  not  seem  ever  to  have 
claimed  a  right  to  the  title. 

During  the  two  decades  that 
elapsed  between  the  death  of  the 
founder  of  the  Senoussi  order  and 
the  date  of  Mohamed  Ahmed's 
appearance  as  chief  of  a  religious 
crusade  and  as  Madhi,  the  mosques 
and  zawias  of  the  confraternity 
centred  in  Jerboub  continued  to 
multiply.  All  the  more  important 
oases  scattered  over  the  desert  be- 


1894.] 


Senoussi,  the  Sheikh  of  Jerboub. 


31 


tween  the  Nubian  Nile  and  the 
land  of  the  wild  Tuaregs  became 
centres  of  Moslem  activity.  By 
means  of  caravans,  and  through 
the  instrumentality  very  largely 
of  slaves  liberated  by  the  influence 
of  the  Senoussi  priesthood,  and 
converted  into  emissaries  of  the 
sect,  the  important  kingdom  of 
Wadai,  west  of  the  Egyptian  pro- 
vince of  Darfur,  was  gained  over, 
and  its  Sultan  acknowledged  the 
spiritual  supremacy  of  the  Sheikh 
of  Jerboub.  These  emissaries 
pushed  westwards  into  Bornu  and 
to  the  territories  bordering  on 
Lake  Chad.  Fezzan  became  stud- 
ded through  its  whole  length  and 
breadth  with  zawias.  At  the  great 
caravan  centre,  Ghadames,  on  the 
confines  of  Tunis,  and  at  Ghat,  far- 
ther to  the  south,  convents  sprang 
up.  Among  the  Tuaregs  the 
Senoussi  propaganda  made  great 
way.  Zawias  were  built  in  Egypt, 
at  Dongola  and  at  Constantinople. 
Some  were  set  up  in  Asia.  In 
Morocco  disciples  of  the  sect  formed 
colonies  at  Fez,  at  Tetuan,  and 
even  at  Tangier.  So  that  at  the 
time  of  the  insurrection  in  the 
Egyptian  Soudan,  Mohamed  el 
Mahdi  was  the  most  important 
priest  in  North  Africa,  with  a  fol- 
lowing more  numerous  than  the 
Sherif  of  Wazan,  the  Moorish 
Pope,  could  lay  claim  to,  and  re- 
spected in  the  Sultan's  African 
dominions — Egypt  and  the  Egyp- 
tian Soudan  perhaps  excepted — far 
more  than  the  Caliph  himself. 

Nor  had  the  growth  of  this 
great  Moslem  revival  failed  to 
attract  some  attention  in  Europe. 
Rohlfs,  Haimann,  Philebert,  and 
others  wrote  of  it.  So  far  back 
as  1864  the  French  traveller  Du- 
veyrier  had — in  a  work  entitled 
'  Exploration  du  Sahara ;  les  Tou- 
aregs  du  Nord  '—drawn  attention 
to  it,  and  to  the  menace  that  it 
offered  to  the  French  empire  south 
of  the  Mediterranean.  In  later 


writings  the  same  author  has 
studied  its  development  exhaus- 
tively and  in  detail.  But  all  this 
time  the  Sheikh  es  Senoussi  dwelt 
in  seclusion  in  his  great  convent 
of  Jerboub,  unseen  save  by  the 
most  intimate  and  trusted  coun- 
sellers,  an  austere  and  mysterious 
divine,  invested  in  the  eyes  of  his 
disciples  with  a  special  holiness 
owing  to  the  retirement  in  which 
he  lived.  His  influence  was  being 
exerted  by  peaceful  means.  He 
made  no  open  claim  to  be  the 
Messiah.  He  was  undoubtedly 
descended  from  the  Prophet.  His 
blue  eyes  and  a  mark  between  his 
shoulders  were  signs  that  the  com- 
ing Mahdi  was  to  be  known  by. 
All  was  going  smoothly,  when  the 
other  and  militant  Mahdi  made 
his  appearance  on  the  Nile. 

The  existence  of  two  Mahdis  at 
the  same  time  was  clearly  impos- 
sible. To  a  people  gifted  with 
a  sense  of  humour,  the  situation 
would  have  had  many  elements  of 
the  ridiculous.  But  the  tribes  of 
the  Soudan  and  to  the  north  take 
things  seriously.  They  took  their 
Mahdis  very  seriously  indeed.  The 
Baggaras,  Jaalin,  and  other  dwel- 
lers in  the  Egyptian  provinces  ac- 
cepted the  ambitious,  daring,  ener- 
getic Mohamed  Ahmed  at  his  own 
valuation,  the  recluse  of  Jerboub 
being  without  a  following  in  these 
parts.  The  disciples  of  Senoussi 
remained  firm  in  their  religious 
opinions :  their  confidence  was  in 
no  way  shaken  that  their  vener- 
ated head  would  turn  out  to  be 
the  Mahdi,  and  they  regarded  the 
Dongola  boat -builder  as  an  im- 
postor. Mohamed  Ahmed,  with 
characteristic  effrontery,  wrote  to 
the  Sheikh  es  Senoussi,  appealing 
to  him  to  join  the  dervish  cause, 
and  nominating  him  one  of  his 
emirs.  To  be  patronised  in  this 
fashion  by  the  rival  Mahdi  must 
have  been  very  irritating  to  the 
Mahdi  of  Jerboub,  who,  however, 


32 

maintained  an  attitude  of  reserve, 
vouchsafing  no  reply  to  the  mis- 
sion. But  messengers  were  sent 
south  to  Wadai  and  neighbouring 
states,  where  the  people  acknow- 
ledged Senoussi,  warning  them 
against  the  false  Mahdi  who  was 
manifesting  his  pretended  mission 
by  slaughter  and  rapine,  and  who, 
on  the  pretext  of  regenerating  the 
world  by  force  of  arms,  was  merely 
gratifying  a  sordid  and  mundane 
ambition.  And  this  policy  of 
masterly  inactivity  on  the  part  of 
the  Mahdi,  who  seemed  for  a  while 
to  be  eclipsed,  succeeded.  For 
Mohamed  Ahmed  failed  to  make 
way  in  the  territories  of  the  Se- 
noussi sect,  and  his  death  left  the 
Sheikh  of  Jerboub  still  vaguely 
enjoying  the  character  of  Mahdi 
over  an  area  far  vaster  than  the 
Egyptian  Soudan.  Senoussi's  posi- 
tion was  perhaps  shaken  for  a 
time,  but  not  for  long;  and  now 
that  what  is  called  the  dervish 
movement  in  this  country  is  on 
the  decline,  it  seems  not  impossible 
that  the  influence  of  Jerboub  may 
gradually  spread  itself  over  the 
Nile  basin.  At  one  time,  indeed, 
it  seemed  as  if  an  open  conflict 
was  about  to  break  out  between 
the  dervishes  and  the  forces  of  the 
Senoussi  sect.  Major  Wingate 
tells  of  it  in  his  'Mahdi-ism  and 
the  Sudan.'  How  one  Abu  Gem- 
aizeh  came  from  Wadai  into  Dar- 
fur  with  a  large  army,  and  was 
known  as  Senoussi,  and  how  he 
prospered  for  a  while,  perform- 
ing miracles  and  gaining  victories, 
but  how  he  was  eventually  de- 
feated by  a  dervish  emir  and  died. 
The  Mahdi  of  Jerboub  appears 
never  openly  to  have  approved  of 
this  resort  to  arms ;  but  he  must 
have  been  aware  of  what  was  going 
on,  and  his  influence  in  Wadai  is 
such  that  the  invasion  of  dervish 
territory  would  scarcely  have  taken 
place  without  his  at  least  tacit 
consent.  The  collapse  of  Abu 


Senoussi,  the  Sheikh  of  Jerboub. 


[July 


Gemaizeh's  combinations  against 
the  dervishes  in  Darfur,  which 
took  place  in  1889,  ended  the 
matter.  And  although  since  that 
time  the  authority  of  Mohamed 
Ahmed's  successor  in  the  western 
provinces  of  what  was  formerly 
the  Egyptian  Soudan  has  been 
somewhat  unstable,  little  more 
has  been  heard  of  a  Senoussi 
movement  threatening  Omdur- 
man. 

While  the  result  of  Mohamed 
Ahmed's  crusade  has  merely  been 
to  substitute  for  the  oppressive  rule 
of  the  pashas  a  government  still 
more  tyrannical,  a  government 
based  at  the  outset  on  religious 
principles  but  now  degenerated 
into  a  mere  military  despotism ; 
while  the  pretended  divine  mis- 
sion of  the  Mahdi  of  Khartum 
has  converted  smiling  provinces 
into  a  wilderness,  and  has  deci- 
mated tribes  warlike  only  when 
driven  to  it  by  misrule,  and  when 
inspired  by  fanaticism, — the  spread 
of  the  doctrines  of  Senoussi  and 
the  extension  of  the  influence  of 
Jerboub  have  carried  into  most 
districts  touched  thereby  peace 
and  prosperity  in  their  train.  It 
is  impossible  not  to  draw  com- 
parisons between  the  consequen- 
ces that  have  resulted  from  these 
two  remarkable  Moslem  revivals, 
very  much  to  the  disadvantage  of 
the  dervish  movement.  For,  al- 
though the  tenets  of  the  Senoussi 
confraternity  favour  not  the  spread 
of  civilisation,  and  tend  to  dis- 
courage real  progress,  the  priests 
and  emissaries  of  the  order  en- 
deavour to  promote  agriculture 
and  encourage  thrift  in  the  dis- 
tricts where  they  are  at  work. 
By  opening  new  wells,  by  planting 
crops,  and  by  carefully  attending 
to  the  culture  of  the  date-palms 
which  form  the  main  wealth  of 
the  oases  of  North  Africa,  they 
have  created  new  centres  of  popu- 
lation, and  have  thereby  opened 


1894.] 


Senoussi,  the  Sheikh  ofJerboub. 


33 


up  fresh  routes  into  the  far  in-  preachers  of  the  Senoussi  doc- 
terior  absolutely  under  control  of  trines  and  confidential  emissaries 
the  order.  Under  the  influence  of  the  sheikh  are  drawn.  There 
of  these  preachers,  districts  like  are  a  considerable  number  of 
the  Jebel  Akhdar  hills  near  students,  and  as  soon  as  these 
Gyrene  are  regaining  a  prosperity  have  gained  the  necessary  ac- 
lost  since  the  early  days  of  the  quaintance  with  the  rules,  prin- 
Christian  era.  In  the  territories  ciples,  and  objects  of  the  order, 
acknowledging  the  spiritual  su-  they  go  abroad  to  enlighten  the 
premacy  of  Mohamed  es  Senoussi,  nomads  and  barbarians  dwelling 
the  title  given  to  him  of  Mahdi  beyond  the  area  of  Jerboub  in- 
has  no  terrors  for  the  people,  fluence,  and  to  win  them  to  their 
They  respect  him,  and  not  only  faith.  It  is  said  that  all  the 
him,  but  also  his  deputies,  and  preparations  exist  necessary  for 
the  situation  is  utterly  different  transporting  Mohamed  el  Mahdi, 
from  that  prevailing  on  the  Nile,  with  the  arms  he  is  supposed  to 
where  the  Khalifa  Abdulla  sways  have  at  command,  and  with  the 
by  the  power  of  the  sword,  treasure  with  which  he  is  credited, 
Mahdism  as  associated  with  the  away  from  the  seat  of  spiritual 
name  of  Mohamed  Ahmed  is  al-  government  to  some  fresh  refuge 
most  dead ;  Mahdism  as  it  might  in  the  desert,  should  danger 
be  associated  with  the  name  of  threaten.  Caravans  of  camels 
Mohamed  es  Senoussi  is  a  force  are  said  to  be  held  in  readiness 
dormant  at  present,  but  represent-  in  zawias  in  the  vicinity  of  Jer- 
ing  a  formidable  and  growing  boub,  destined  to  convey  to  a 
power.  A  mighty  religious  or-  place  of  safety  the  sheikh  and  all 
ganisation  it  was  before  Mohamed  that  he  possesses  worth  taking 
Ahmed  was  heard  of,  and  a  mighty  away.  But  estimates  that  French 
religious  organisation  it  remains.  writers  have  made  as  to  the  fight- 
Jerboub  itself  forms  a  religious  ing  strength  of  the  Senoussi  fol- 
capital,  and  includes  a  university  lowing  in  and  immediately  round 
of  the  order.  There  is  a  small  Jerboub,  of  the  great  collections 
walled  town  containing  a  mosque,  of  war  -  material  there  gathered 
containing  also  the  tomb  of  the  together,  and  of  wealth  amassed 
elder  Senoussi,  and  the  remainder  and  treasured  in  its  vaults,  would 
of  the  dwellings  are  devoted  to  seem  to  be  overdrawn, 
the  use  of  the  sheikh,  of  his  The  zawias  of  the  order  are  in 
chief  counsellors,  and  of  religious  isolated  districts,  as  already  stated, 
students.  It  is  said  to  include  centres  of  civil  as  well  as  of  re- 
great  stores  of  arms ;  but  this  does  ligious  government.  In  places  like 
not  seem  to  be  correct,  and  reports  Tripoli  and  Benghazi,  in  Fez  or  in 
as  to  the  existence  of  an  arsenal  Cairo,  a  zawia  is,  of  course,  merely 
within  its  gates  appear  to  be  a  convent  with  no  administrative 
wholly  unfounded.  If  Mohamed  functions  vested  in  its  chief.  At 
es  Senoussi  has  collected  war-  the  head  of  each  is  a  priest  called 
material  and  artillery,  as  some  the  mokaddem,  who  is  appointed 
writers  assert,  they  must  be  con-  directly  by  Sheikh  es  Senoussi. 
cealed  in  some  neighbouring  oasis  This  functionary  presides  over  the 
or  convent,  and  their  whereabouts  disciples  of  the  neighbourhood  as 
is  probably  known  only  to  the  regards  religious  matters,  inculcates 
most  trusted.  The  university  upon  them  their  duties,  performs 
serves  as  the  source  whence  the  observances,  initiates  new  dis- 

VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCXLV.  C 


Senoussi,  the  Sheikh  of  Jerboub. 


[July 


34 

ciples   into  the  mysteries  of   the, .,ated,  who  have  embraced  the  Mos- 
sect  and  acts  as  apostle  and  agent     lem  religion  according  to  the  teach- 

of   the 


of  the  sheikh.  In  important  places 
like  Ghadames  and  Murzuk  there 
are  several  zawias,  the  mokaddeni 


sect,  and  who  form 
devoted  adherents  of  the  Mahdi 
of  Jerboub.  Slave-trade  is  con- 

of  each  having  his  own  congrega-  trary  to  the  teachings  of  the  Ko- 
tion.  Learned  and  eloquent,  pious  ran ;  and  the  local  representatives 
and  earnest,  ever  practisers  of  what  of  the  Jerboub  Government  do 
they  preach,  the  presiding  priests  not,  perhaps,  openly  encourage  it. 
of  the  Senoussi  zawias  are  ideal  in-  But  they  certainly  take  advantage 

of  a  system  that  they  could  end  if 
they  wished  to  do  so ;  and  with  the 


struments  for  carrying  out  the  work 
of  the  hermit  of  Jerboub.     They 

possess    exactly   those    gifts    and     extension  of  the  Senoussi  propa- 
qualities  calculated  to  impress  the     ganda  the  traffic  in  human  beings, 
ignorant,  pliable,  superstitious  peo-     which  is  so  melancholy  a  feature 
pie  with  whom  they  come  in  con- 
tact.    In  oases  where  no  govern- 
ment exists,  there  is  attached  to 
each  zawia  a  vakil,  who  holds  a 
position  subordinate  to  the  mokad- 
dem,  but  who   is   responsible  for 
the  civil  administration.      The  va- 


kil rules  the  community,  levies 
taxes,  and  administers  justice.  He 
is  appointed  direct  from  Jerboub, 
with  which  he  is  in  constant  com- 
munication, and  whither  he  remits 
the  balance  of  revenue  derived 
from  taxation  after  local  expenses 
have  been  defrayed.  In  large 
oases  containing  many  zawias,  one 
mokaddem  is  especially  chosen  as 
chief  priest,  and  a  vakil  is  ap- 
pointed to  assist  him  in  civil  mat- 
ters. The  whole  system  is  care- 


in  the  social  conditions  of  the 
Dark  Continent,  has  certainly  not 
decreased  in  the  area  embraced. 

It  is  the  practice  at  the  different 
zawias  to  hospitably  entertain  for 
a  while  all  Moslem  strangers  who 
may  present  themselves,  to  greet 
them  cordially  and  treat  them  with 
friendliness,  and  thereby  to  gain 
their  confidence,  to  work  upon 
their  feelings,  and  to  endeavour  to 
enlist  them  as  disciples.  Senoussi 
and  his  followers  recognise  that 
worldly  methods  are  not  among 
the  least  effective  in  pushing  their 
influence.  The  tact  displayed  in 
small  matters  such  as  these  has 
aided  much  in  promoting  the 
cause  and  in  winning  converts. 
In  theory  the  tenets  of  the  order 


fully  organised ;  and  although  the     are    stern,    unbending,    and    em- 


Sheikh  es  Senoussi  and  his  chief 
counsellors  keep  a  watchful  eye 
over  its  working,  there  is  sufficient 
decentralisation  to  give  local  au- 
thorities a  sense  of  responsibility 
and  to  maintain  them  in  activity. 
The  Senoussi  zawias  have  gradu- 


blematic  of  Islam.  In  practice  the 
disciples  of  Senoussi  show,  in  many 
respects,  a  liberal-mindedness  and 
adaptability  to  circumstances  char- 
acteristic rather  of  the  least  big- 
oted of  Christian  Churches.  A 
religion  worked  on  these  jesuiti- 


ally  gained  almost  a  monopoly  of  cal  principles,  a  religion,  moreover, 
the  extensive  traffic  and  trade  that  that  promotes  prosperity,  should, 
connects  the  Negroid  states  of  Wa-  in  such  a  field  of  activity,  continue 
dai,  Bornu,  and  Borgo,  and  the  to  prosper, 
nominally  Turkish  province  of 
Fezzan,  with  the  Mediterranean 
coast.  Slaves  form  a  principal 


What  will  be  the  end  of  it  all  ? 
Will  this  mysterious  Mohamed  es 
x         Senoussi  proclaim  himself  Mahdi, 

article  of  commerce,  and  to  many  or  be  suddenly  openly  acclaimed 
zawias  large  numbers  of  negroes  as  such  by  his  vast  following? 
are  attached,  who  have  been  liber-  Will  he  follow  the  example  of 


1894.] 


Senoussi,  the  Sheikh  of  Jerboub. 


35 


Mohamed  Ahmed,  and  go  forth 
at  the  head  of  crowds  of  fanatical 
warriors  to  force  himself  upon 
those  who  do  not  believe  in  his 
name?  Or  will  he  continue  for 
the  rest  of  his  days  a  hermit  and 
recluse  in  his  desert  home  1  It  is 
said  that  he  meant  to  proclaim 
himself  Mahdi  in  1882,  but  that 
the  appearance  of  the  other  Mahdi 
made  him  hold  his  hand.  It  is  by 
no  means  certain  that  he  believes 
himself  to  be  the  Mahdi  at  all,  or 
that  he  has  any  intention  of  claim- 
ing the  title.  But  such  is  his 
hold  upon  his  followers  that,  were 
he  to  take  action,  were  he  to 
announce  himself  to  be  the  looked- 
for  Messiah,  they  would  almost 
certainly  acknowledge  him  as  such 
with  enthusiasm.  And,  were  a 
Jehad  or  religious  war  to  be  then 
preached  by  his  mokaddems,  the 
whole  of  North  Africa  might  be 
set  in  a  blaze,  and  the  consequences 
to  French,  British,  and  Turkish 
authority  in  this  part  of  the  world 
might  be  very  grave. 

At  present  the  Sheikh  of  Jer- 
boub certainly  possesses  far  more 
political  power  in  the  provinces  of 
Tripoli,  of  Barka,  and  of  Fezzan, 
which  are  marked  on  maps  as 
Ottoman  territory,  than  does  the 
Sultan.  The  authority  of  the 
Porte — although  the  name  of  the 
Sultan  is  respected  in  the  middle 
territories  of  North  Africa  far 
more  than  in  the  districts  that 
tasted  Egyptian  rule — really  ex- 
tends but  a  few  miles  inland  of 
Tripoli  and  Benghazi.  Turkish 
kaimakams  exist  here  and  there, 
but  only  on  suffrance.  It  has  been 
the  policy  of  Senoussi  to  maintain 
fairly  friendly  relations  with  Con- 
stantinople; and  the  Ottoman 
governors  of  Tripoli  and  Barka 
and  their  subordinates  have  no 
doubt  received  instructions  to 
avoid  all  cause  of  quarrel  with  the 
forces  of  the  confraternity.  Some 
imprudent  action  on  the  part  of 


the  representatives  either  of  the 
Porte  or  of  the  Sheikh  of  Jerboub 
might  possibly  bring  about  a  con- 
flict ;  but  the  chances  of  hostilities 
in  this  direction  are  small.  Pres- 
ents have  passed  between  Mo- 
hamed el  Mahdi  and  Abdul 
Hamid,  and  a  trusted  representa- 
tive of  the  sheikh  is  generally  to 
be  found  in  Stamboul.  As  long 
as  mutual  forbearance  guides  the 
dealings  of  the  rival  forces  in 
Turkey  in  Africa,  the  Senoussi 
movement  is  in  this  quarter  likely 
to  continue  in  the  main  a  religious 
one. 

Towards  the  Khedivial  Govern- 
ment Senoussi  has  shown  no  en- 
mity, nor  has  the  growth  of  British 
influence  and  authority  at  Cairo 
brought  about  any  change  of  atti- 
tude at  Jerboub.  In  the  long 
struggle  between  the  forces  of 
Egypt  and  those  of  Mohamed 
Ahmed  and  the  Khalifa  Abdulla, 
the  sheikh  appears  to  have  fav- 
oured the  Egyptian  rather  than  the 
dervish  cause.  But  this  probably 
is  attributable  more  to  hatred  of  a 
rival  Mahdi  and  his  works  than  to 
love  for  the  Khedivial  Government. 
On  Egypt  as  it  is,  and  on  Egypt 
as  it  was  before  the  Soudan  insur- 
rection, Senoussi  has  never  had  any 
hold,  nor  do  any  determined  efforts 
appear  to  have  been  made  to  push 
the  doctrines  of  his  sect  on  this 
side.  It  is  indeed  somewhat 
strange  that,  in  fields  so  promis- 
ing for  the  enterprise  of  emissaries 
from  Jerboub  as  were  Darfur  and 
Kordofan  before  Mohamed  Ahmed's 
appearance  as  Mahdi,  the  seeds  of 
the  new  religious  order  should  not 
have  been  more  generally  implant- 
ed. The  extraordinary  success  of 
the  Mahdi  of  Khartum  in  winning 
practically  the  whole  population  of 
the  Egyptian  Soudan  to  his  cause, 
shows  that  this  part  of  Africa  was 
ripe  for  the  development  of  a  reli- 
gious revival.  However,  Mahdism 
according  to  Mohamed  Ahmed  has 


36 

effectually  checked  the  spread  of 
Senoussi  influence  west  of  Wadai 
during  the  past  decade,  and  any 
attempt  to  develop  it  in  this  direc- 
tion by  a  resort  to  war  seems  im- 
probable. With  the  decline  of  the 
dervish  movement — a  decline  now 
rapidly  taking  place— the  recluse 
of  Jerboub  may  deem  it  desirable 
to  send  out  his  apostles  to  preach 
the  tenets  of  his  sect  in  the  lands 
once  swayed  by  the  Mahdi  of 
Khartum  and  his  Khalifa.  But 
the  work  will  be  carried  out  insidi- 
ously and  in  quiet,  rather  than  by 
deeds  of  violence  or  by  actions 
calculated  to  cause  stirring  events. 
Should,  however,  in  the  near  future 
the  Baggaras,  Jaalin,  Dinkas,  Shil- 
luks,  and  other  kindred  tribes  in 
the  Nile  basin  accept  the  Senoussi 
doctrines,  as  the  people  of  Wadai 
and  Bornu  have  accepted  them, 
the  Senoussi  confraternity  will  be- 
come a  power  more  formidable  to 
Egypt  than  was  the  dervish  move- 
ment when  at  its  height.  For  the 
Nile  delta  will  be  threatened  not 
only  from  the  south  down  the  nar- 
row valley  of  the  great  river,  but 
also  from  the  west,  and  at  uncom- 
fortably close  quarters. 

But  from  the  political  point  of 
view,  interest  in  the  future  of  the 
Senoussi  confraternity  is  centred 
more  especially  in  its  progress  south 
of  Tunis  and  Algeria,  and  in  the  re- 
lations between  this  formidable  re- 
ligious and  political  force  and  the 
French.  And  the  French  know 
it.  The  wardens  of  the  border- 
lands, where  French  outposts  look 
out  into  the  desert,  know  that  a 
wave  of  fanaticism,  spreading 
abroad  over  the  nomads  wander- 
ing beyond  the  sand-hills  and  the 
mirage,  may  bring  down  upon 
them  a  mighty  host,  and  may  com- 
pass much  evil.  To  the  apostles 
of  French  spread-eagleism  in  North 
Africa,  to  the  advocates  of  trans- 
Sahara  railway  communication,  to 
the  coveters  after  Ghadames,  Ghat, 


Senoussi,  the  Sheikh  of  Jerboub. 


[July 


and  other  places  which  the  Porte 
claims  as  Turkish  ground,  Senoussi 
is  somewhat  of  a  bogey.  They 
ascribe  it  to  the  machinations  of 
the  malevolent  monks  sent  forth 
from  Jerboub,  that  the  traveller 
who  penetrates  beyond  the  mili- 
tary cordon  that  marks  the  south- 
ern limit  of  French  administration 
carries  his  life  in  his  hand.  Even 
before  the  annexation  of  Tunis, 
the  hostility  of  the  Senoussi  con- 
fraternity was  much  dreaded  in 
Algeria,  and  the  absorption  of  that 
important  Moslem  territory  into 
the  French- African  empire  has  not 
tended  to  render  this  hostility  less 
acute.  The  restlessness  and  spas- 
modic enterprise  of  the  Algerian 
and  Tunisian  administrations  is  of 
a  character  to  excite  grave  sus- 
picions in  the  oriental  mind.  The 
people  of  the  interior  probably 
credit  the  French  with  designs 
that  they  do  not  entertain,  and 
that  they  could  not  put  in  execu- 
tion. Incidents  such  as  the  French 
claim  to  Tuat,  which  the  Sultan 
of  Morocco  maintains  is  his,  do 
not  tend  to  dispel  alarm  ;  and  the 
fact  that  the  Moorish  rights  to 
the  possession  of  this  oasis  are  of 
the  most  shadowy  character,  makes 
little  difference.  The  Tuaregs  are 
a  wild,  warlike,  and  numerous 
people,  of  a  kind  easily  arousable 
to  religious  fanaticism  by  skilful 
handling.  And  if  Senoussi  and 
his  disciples  get  these  nomads 
under  their  control,  and  stir  them 
up  to  deeds  of  violence,  there  may 
be  trouble.  Moreover,  the  name 
of  Senoussi  is  known  in  Morocco ; 
and  the  fact  that  the  founder  of 
the  confraternity  was  a  member 
of  the  Muley  Taib  order,  has  es- 
tablished a  kind  of  link  between 
these  two  sects.  A  religious  crus- 
ade against  French  authority  in 
North  Africa  started  by  Mohamed 
el  Mahdi  might  stir  the  Moors 
and  the  wild  Berber  tribes  of 
Morocco  to  make  war  on  their 


1894,] 


Senoussi,  the  Sheikh  of  Jerboub. 


37 


eastern   neighbours,    and    such    a 
movement  Muley  Hassan's  succes- 
sor would  be  powerless  to  check. 
At    Ghadames    the    French   may 
almost  any  day  come  into  conflict 
with   the   Senoussi    confraternity, 
for   they   are  displaying   military 
activity  in  that  quarter,  and  the 
place  is  said  to  be  devoted  to  the 
interests  of  the  Mahdi  of  Jerboub. 
That  the  forces  of  Islam  involved 
in  the  widespreading  ramifications 
of  the  Senoussi  sect  menace  the 
existence  of  French  authority  in 
North  Africa   it   would  be  exag- 
geration to  allege ;  that  they  even 
threaten  its  security  to  a  serious 
extent   may   not   perhaps   be  the 
case ;  but  that  they  oppose  a  bar- 
rier to  a  French  annexation  of  the 
great  tracts   intervening   between 
Senegal  and  Algeria  there  can  be 
no  question.     A  false  move  on  the 
part  of  the  Paris  Government,  of 
the  executive  in  Algiers  or  Tunis, 
or  even  of  some  subordinate  official 
on  the   southern    confines  of   the 
French    possessions,    might    of    a 
sudden   arouse   the   fanaticism  of 
the  dwellers  beyond  the  outposts, 
and  the  news  of  it  would  spread 
like  wildfire  over  the  Sahara  and 
the   Soudan.     Then   Mohamed    el 
Mahdi  might  think  his  time  was 
come,    might     proclaim    religious 
war,   and   might   bring   into  play 
the  vast   resources  placed  at  his 
command  by  the  strange  organisa- 
tion that  bears  his  name.    Senoussi 
has  shown  no  taste  for  strife.    The 
Mahdi  is  not  to  be  a  man  of  war. 
But  it   is  the  unexpected  which 
always   happens    in    these   lands, 
and  the  sheikh  may  find  some  day 
circumstances  too  strong  for  him. 
That  these  people  when  they  mus- 
ter under  the  banner  of  Islam  for 
fight  are  formidable  the  insurrec- 
tion in  the  Soudan  has  served  to 
show. 

It  does  not  by  any  means  neces- 
sarily follow  that  a  resort  to  arms 
on  the  part  of  the  Senoussi  con- 


fraternity should  be  preceded  by, 
or  should  involve,  a  proclamation 
by  the  recluse  of  Jerboub  that  he 
is  the  Messiah.  The  intentions, 
the  hopes,  and  the  views,  as  re- 
gards his  own  role  on  earth,  of 
Mohamed  el  Mahdi  are  not  known. 
But  it  must  be  confessed  that  this 
mysterious  personage  has  some 
excuse  for  believing  himself  to  be, 
as  his  father  said  he  was,  the 
Mahdi  whose  coming  is  expected. 
A  mystic  being  enshrouded  in  an 
atmosphere  of  saintliness,  dwelling 
in  a  convent  citadel  remote  from 
the  world ;  a  man  of  piety  and 
prayer,  who  has,  slowly  and  for  a 
long  time  unnoticed,  been  at  work 
regenerating  whole  races  by  means 
of  emissaries  quoting  a  few  simple 
religious  dogmas ;  a  man  given 
the  name  of  Mahdi,  but  not  claim- 
ing it ;  a  man,  moreover,  fulfilling 
many  of  the  conditions  that  the 
looked-for  Messiah  is  to  fulfil, — 
Senoussi  the  younger  may  really 
think  that  he  is  what  his  disciples 
hope  him  to  be.  Nor  does  it 
follow  that  the  assumption  by  the 
sheikh  of  Jerboub,  publicly  and 
without  reserve,  of  the  position  of 
Mahdi,  would  involve  grave  politi- 
cal consequences,  or  that  it  would 
greatly  extend  the  influence  of  his 
sect.  But  it  is  characteristic  of 
the  Moslem  faith  that  in  its  his- 
tory and  its  development  politics 
are  ever  blended  with  religion, 
and  that  it  is  when  the  imagina- 
tion and  emotions  of  its  disciples 
are  worked  on,  that  startling  and 
strange  events  occur.  Senoussi 
the  younger  has  for  more  than 
thirty  years  headed  a  great  re- 
ligious movement ;  he  has  reached 
the  afternoon  of  life,  and  evening 
is  stealing  upon  him :  if  he  be- 
lieves himself  to  be  the  Mahdi,  or 
if  he  intends  to  pose  as  such,  he 
should  be  up  and  doing.  Will  he 
be  gathered  to  his  fathers  a  pro- 
phet, or  will  he  sink  into  the  grave 
merely  a  high  priest  ? 


38 


Place-Names  of  Scotland. 


[July 


PLACE-NAMES     OF     SCOTLAND. 


"THE  face  of  a  country,"  says 
Joyce,  in  his  admirable  book  on 
Irish    place-names,    "is    a    book 
which,  if  it  be  deciphered  correctly 
and  read  attentively,  will  unfold 
more  than  ever  did  the  cuneiform 
inscriptions     of     Persia     or    the 
hieroglyphics   of    Egypt."      Very 
true  :  the  names  of  places,  like  the 
heraldic  signature  of  an  old  family, 
tell  their  story  through  long  ages, 
with   an  emphasis  to  which  only 
the  utterly  crude  and  unlettered 
can  remain  deaf.     Thus  Constan- 
tinople   tells    to     all     intelligent 
people  not  the  mere  story  of  the 
Turks  who  now  hold  it,  but  the 
story  of  the  Koman  Emperor  who, 
in  the  first  half  of  the  fourth  cen- 
tury, virtually  deserted  Rome,  and 
by  planting  himself  in  the  midst 
of  old  Greek  colonies,  changed  the 
empire  of  the  Latins  into  an  em- 
pire of  the  Greeks,  which  carried 
the  language  of  Plato  and  St  Paul 
through  a  whole  thousand  years  as 
a  living  bridge  betwixt  the   past 
and  the  present,  centuries  after  the 
classical  Latin  of  Cicero  and  Virgil 
had   fallen    into   ruin,    and    been 
changed  into  an  entirely  new  form 
by  the  genius  of  Dante  and  his 
Florentine     followers.       In     like 
manner  Adrianople,  in  spite  of  its 
Turkish  dress,  speaks  to  us  audibly 
now,  as  it  did  through  the  long 
course  of  the  middle  ages,  of  the 
Catholic-minded   omnipresence    of 
the  best  of  Roman  Emperors,  who 
ruled  a  mighty  empire  as  a  good 


landlord  does  his  estate,  by  living 
amongst  his  people,  and  caring  for 
them  individually  as  a  father  does 
for  his  children.  In  like  fashion 
Alexandria  in  Egypt  speaks  of 
Alexander  of  Macedonia,  and  the 
wonderful  military  romance  with 
which,  in  the  course  of  a  few  years, 
he  embraced  the  whole  East  as  far 
as  the  Jordan  with  a  sweep  of 
Hellenic  culture,  destined  in  due 
season  to  open  the  whole  world  to 
the  preaching  of  a  Christian  gos- 
pel in  the  language  of  the  heathen 
Greeks.  And  again,  the  name  of 
Ceesarea,  the  great  harbour  of  Pales- 
tine, gives  the  signal  to  the  rising 
power  of  Rome  in  the  East  from 
Augustus  Caesar  downwards,  the 
ejection  of  the  Hebrews  from  their 
old  sacred  capital  under  Titus,  and 
the  gradual  transformation  of  the 
western  half  of  the  old  civil  govern- 
ment of  Rome  into  an  ecclesias- 
tical monarchy  under  the  Pope. 

It  is  no  wonder,  therefore, 
especially  in  this  age  of  rapid 
movement  and  easy  travel,  that 
books  on  topographical  philology 
should  be  in  the  hands  of  tour- 
ists ;  and  Scotland  is  a  country 
in  this  respect  particularly  happy, 
in  being  able  to  number  such 
thorough  workers  as  Sir  Herbert 
Maxwell,  Mr  Johnston,  Professor 
Mackinnon,  and  Mr  MacDonald, 
as  her  guides  through  this  region 
of  interesting  localities  of  the  past. 
For  guides  are  certainly  required, 
and  hard  workers  too  ;  for  obvious 


1.  Scottish  Land-Names  :  their  Origin  and  Meaning.    By  Sir  Herbert  Maxwell. 
Edinburgh:  Blackwood  &  Sons,  1894. 

2.  Plaee-Names  of  Scotland.     By  the  Rev.  James  B.  Johnston,  B.D.,  Falkirk. 
Edinburgh:  Douglas,  1892. 

3.  Place-Names  of  Argyllshire.     By  Professor  Mackinnon,  in  the  '  Scotsman ' 
newspaper,  1888. 

4.  Place-Names  of  Strathbogie.     By  James  MacDonald,  F.S.A.  Scot.     Aber- 
deen :  Wylie,  1891. 


1894.] 


Place-Names  of  Scotland. 


39 


as  not  a  few  names  are  which 
stand  in  the  foreground  of  general 
history,  the  moment  we  descend 
into  local  designations,  we  find 
the  significance  of  local  names 
hidden  from  vulgar  view  by  a 
mask  through  which  only  a  curious 
historico  -  philological  eye  can 
pierce  ;  and  this  difficulty  is  found 
specially  in  Scotland,  a  country 
which,  from  the  time  of  the  Picts 
and  Scots  with  whom  the  Romans 
had  to  do,  has  been  occupied  by  a 
race  who  speak  a  language  now 
unintelligible  to  the  great  mass  of 
book  -  making  and  book  -  reading 
people  in  the  three  islands.  The 
language  is  Gaelic,  the  same  as 
the  dialect  of  the  Celtic  spoken  by 
our  brave  Highlanders  who  fought 
at  Waterloo,  and  who  preach  at 
Dingwall  and  Inverness,  with  a 
certain  infusion  of  the  cognate 
member  of  the  Celtic  family  in 
Wales,  and  a  close  tie  of  sister- 
hood with  the  Irish  of  the  present 
day.  In  addition  to  this,  there 
came  a  strong  linguistic  contagion 
from  the  north,  which,  while  it 
entirely  de-Celticised  Orkney  and 
Shetland,  left  not  a  few  distinct 
traces  of  its  action  in  the  Hebrides 
and  all  along  the  west  coast  of 
Scotland  and  of  England,  as  far 
south  as  the  Isle  of  Man.  In  the 
main,  however,  it  is  in  Gaelic,  the 
language  used  every  Sunday  by 
Christian  preachers  to  Christian 
people  in  the  regions  north  of 
Perth,  that  the  places  through 
which  the  Highland  tourist  passes 
tell  their  tale;  and  this  makes 
their  signature  as  unintelligible  to 
the  great  majority  of  travelling 
questioners  as  if  it  had  been 
Hebrew  or  Finnish  or  Chinese. 
But  there  is  a  certain  amount  of 
delusion  here,  natural  enough  no 
doubt  both  to  Englishmen  and 
Scotsmen,  brought  up,  as  they 
generally  are,  in  total  ignorance 
of  their  philological  surround- 


ings; the  fact  of  the  matter 
being,  that  in  dealing  with  Gaelic 
the  Englishman  or  Lowland  Scot 
is  dealing  with  a  sister  tongue, 
where,  without  pretending  to  any 
curious  philological  science,  he 
must  expect  to  find  evident  traces 
of  near  relationship.  When  a 
Scot  goes  across  the  German  Ocean 
to  Germany  or  Holland,  Norway 
or  Denmark,  he  must  be  very 
stupid  indeed  if,  in  every  shop- 
window  and  in  every  flying  news- 
paper, he  does  not  know  to  meet 
an  old  friend  in  a  new  dress. 
And,  though  the  relationship  of 
Gaelic  to  English  is  much  less 
close  than  the  tie  that  binds  Eng- 
lish to  German,  still  it  is  there, 
and  presents  itself  with  such  strik- 
ing features  of  family  likeness 
as  to  secure  recognition  without 
any  very  formal  introduction.  In 
what  class  of  words,  let  us  ask, 
should  we  expect  to  find  the 
original  identity  of  the  old  stock 
most  palpably  preserved1?  Of 
course,  in  words  of  the  most  com- 
mon and  necessary  use,  denoting 
things  and  persons  that  belong  to 
human  life,  from  the  cradle  to 
the  grave,  and  from  the  green 
meadow  to  the  hill- top,  —  things 
which  were  not  only  near  to  the 
eyes  and  native  to  the  life  of  the 
earliest  speakers,  but  which  are 
of  a  nature  the  very  last  possible 
to  be  affected  by  the  invasion  of 
strangers  or  the  whims  of  fashion, 
such  words  as  athar,  mathair, 
brathair — words  as  plainly  identi- 
cal with  the  Lat.  pater,  mater, 
and  frater,  as  the  Fr.  pere,  mere, 
and  frere.  Then  lift  up  your  eyes 
to  the  light  when  you  awake  from 
sleep,  and  you  see  solus,  the  light, 
plainly  the  Lat.  sol,  the  sun,  as 
opposed  to  the  dorchadas  or  dark- 
ness out  of  which  you  have 
stept.  You  leap  briskly  up,  and 
plant  your  foot  on  your  mother 
earth  —  talamh — Lat.  tellus,  and 


40 


Place- Names  of  Scotland. 


[July 


enjoy  the  freshness  of  the  green 
grass,  feur,  Lat.  vir-idis,  on  the 
Ion  —  Eng.  lawn,  a  word  immor- 
talised also  in  our  mighty  London 
— the  dun  or  fort  on  the  low 
ground  beside  the  Thames  —  and 
familiar  also  to  the  Welsh  ear  in 
llan,  seen  in  Lanark,  and  a  few 
other  Scottish  names.  You  then 
look  up  to  the  peak  of  the  lofty 
ben — Lat.  pinna — which  bounds 
your  view,  and  casting  your  eye 
around,  you  are  pleasantly  lost  in 
the  luxuriant  wealth  of  the  adja- 
cent forest — coille,  Lat.  silva,  Gr. 
v\rj,  and  the  graceful  leafage  of  the 
lady -birch  (beith)  —  betula.  You 
enter  the  pine-grove  behind  your 
cottage,  and  are  surprised  to  find 
that  both  this  grove  and  this  cot- 
tage assault  your  ears  under  the 
slightly  modified  form  of  craob  and 
tigh — Lat.  lignum.  Then,  if  you 
are  fond  of  bathing,  you  take  a  dip 
in  the  water  that  flows  through 
the  glen,  and  find  that  the  bath 
which  you  are  enjoying  means  in 
Gaelic  bath,  to  drown,  evidently 
the  same  as  the  Gr.  /?a7rr(o,  from 
which  comes  our  baptise.  Then 
you  ask  the  peasant  boy  whom  you 
meet  after  your  dip  what  is  the 
name  of  the  river,  and  what  is  the 
Gaelic  for  water:  the  river,  he 
says,  is  called  the  Esk,  and  the 
Gaelic  for  water  is  uisge.  ' '  Uisge  !  " 
you  say,  "that  sounds  very  like 
whisky;"  and  so  it  is  unquestion- 
ably, as  the  schoolmaster  may  tell 
jou—uisge-beatha,  the  full  Gaelic 
for  the  strong  drink  of  the  moun- 
tains, being  neither  more  nor  less 
than  a  compound  of  uisge,  water, 
and  beatha,  life,  evidently  the  Lat. 
vita—eau  de  vie,  as  the  French 
call  it.  But  what  is  uisge  ?  which 
appears  also  in  the  name  of  more 
than  one  Scottish  river.  The  Esk 
is  simply  uisge,  the  water,  the  old- 
est form  of  the  Lat.  aqua,  which 
appears  also,  probably,  in  the  Gr. 
A^cAwos:  and  if  further  you  happen 


to  have  been  at  Aberfeldy,  in  beau- 
tiful Perthshire,  singing  to  your- 
self "  The  Birks  of  Aberfeldy,"  in 
a  glen  where  no  birches  are  now 
to  be  seen,  you  will  certainly  have 
visited  the  rush  of  waters  to  the 
south  of  the  town  called  the  Falls 
of  Moness,  which  is  simply  a  de- 
scriptive name  composed  of  eas,  a 
modification  of  the  same  root,  and 
monadh,  a  high  brow — Lat.  mons 
— or  moine,  the  Gaelic  for  peats, 
which  are  generally  cut  from  the 
high  ground.  And  not  only  in  the 
Scottish  Highlands,  but  in  England 
also,  and  partially  over  all  Europe, 
you  will  find  that  the  names  of 
rivers  which,  for  obvious  reasons, 
chiefly  resist  change  of  time,  have 
a  Gaelic  or  very  old  Aryan  touch 
about  them.  This  appears  in  the 
familiar  name  of  the  Avon,  well 
known  to  all  devout  pilgrims  to  the 
land  of  Shakespeare,  which  is  only 
a  Celtic  softening  of  the  Lat. 
amnem,  and  which  appears  some- 
times curtailed  into  on  or  the 
simple  n.  Thus  in  France  we  have 
the  Garonne,  which  in  plain  Gaelic 
is  garb-abhuinn,  or  rough  water; 
and  probably  enough  the  final  n  in 
the  Seine,  the  Rhone,  and  the 
Rhine  has  the  same  origin. 

Another  common  name  for  river, 
both  in  England  and  Scotland,  is 
don,  from  Gaelic  doimhne,  deep, 
or  donn,  dark -brown,  which  ap- 
pears as  simple  Don  in  Aberdeen, 
anciently  called  Aberdon,  and  in 
England,  Doncaster,  with  the 
familiar  addition  of  caster,  or 
Roman  camp.  And  not  only  so, 
but  the  noble  Thames  itself,  like 
the  town  of  which  it  is  the  belt,  is 
of  Celtic  origin,  being  obviously 
identical  with  tamh,  Gr.  Sa/xao>, 
Eng.  tame,  from  which  also  the 
Highland  Tay,  as  contrasted  with 
the  roughness  of  the  Garry  and  the 
downflow  (taom,  Lat.  tumeo)  of 
the  Turn  m  el,  receives  its  signifi- 
cant designation. 


1894.' 


Place-Names  of  Scotland. 


41 


And  not  only  rivers,  but  wher- 
ever we  turn  our  eyes,  the  great 
features  of  the  country  and  the 
names  of  the  oldest  abodes  of 
"  food  -  eating  mortals  "  speak  to 
us,  in  language  strange  only  to 
those  who  are  unpractised  to  dis- 
cover an  old  friend  with  a  new 
face.  Ard,  Lat.  arduus,  meets  us 
everywhere ;  ach,  a  field,  Lat.  ager, 
Gr.  dypos ;  inver  and  aber,  Lat. 
infra,  at  the  confluence  of  rivers 
— like  Coblentz  from  confluentia. 
And  in  our  pedestrian  tours 
through  the  roadless  wilderness 
of  the  Bens,  whether  we  cross  a 
deep  pool  (linne,  Gr.  At/An/,  old 
Eng.  lin),  or  a  torrent  roaring  like 
a  bull  (the  Tarf,  Lat.  taurus,  Gr. 
ravpos),  or  a  rough  ridge  (drum, 
Lat.  dorsum),  or  slide  down  a 
sloping  brae  (sliabh,  Lat.  clivus), 
we  are  always  on  ground  where 
an  intelligent  young  prizeman  fresh 
from  Eton  or  Fettes  will  find  him- 
self as  much  at  home  as  if,  on  a 
benefit  night  at  Drury  Lane  or 
the  Lyceum,  he  were  to  behold  a 
fair  friend  paraded  in  old  English 
dress  to  play  the  part  of  Cordelia 
or  Lady  Macbeth  in  Shakespeare. 

So  far  well.  "Plain  sailing," 
you  will  say;  "but  are  there  no 
rocks,  no  shallows  ?  "  Certainly. 
The  one  great  difficulty  in  Gaelic 
is  the  same  as  in  English  to  all 
foreigners — the  pronunciation.  In 
other  languages,  as  Italian  and 
German,  if  you  know  how  to  spell 
a  word  you  know  how  to  pronounce 
it :  the  printed  word  indicates  the 
spoken  sound.  In  Gaelic  it  is  often 
otherwise — in  some  cases,  indeed, 
systematically  otherwise;  but  the 
irregularity  in  these  cases  is  sub- 
ject to  a  law,  which  a  discriminat- 
ing ear  can  lightly  comprehend. 
This  and  all  other  specialties  in 
the  practice  of  the  languages,  which 
age  after  age  have  left  their  traces 
on  Scottish  local  names,  will  be 
found  learnedly  discussed  in  the 


second,  third,  and  fourth  chapters 
of  Sir  Herbert  Maxwell's  masterly 
volume ;  but  for  popular  purposes, 
the  main  point  as  it  affects  the 
pronunciation  of  Gaelic  words  is 
simply  this  :  When  a  language  in 
a  fixed  literary  form  passes  into  a 
new  language,  under  foreign  in- 
fluences— such  as  Latin  when  it 
became  French — new  ears  and  new 
habits  of  articulation  combine  to 
give  the  old  word  a  new  form,  by 
a  process  which  may  best  be  com- 
pared to  the  change  which  a  rough 
chip  of  granite  suffers  when  its 
edges  are  smoothed  off  by  the  flow 
of  the  mountain  torrent,  or  the 
plash  of  the  ocean  wave.  This 
process,  as  observed  in  Gaelic, 
shows  itself  principally  in  three 
forms — simple  curtailment,  drop- 
ping of  initial  or  terminational 
affixes ;  shaving  or  softening  down 
a  rough  letter  into  its  cognate 
smooth;  or  last,  in  absolute  ex- 
trusion of  the  rough  letter,  with 
the  consequent  resolution  of  two 
syllables  into  one.  Thus,  exactly 
as  in  Italian  the  Lat.  laborem 
becomes  lavoro,  so  in  Gaelic,  b 
becomes  bh  =  v  in  the  flexion  of 
verbs  and  nouns;  and  generally 
this  h  is  used  in  Gaelic  not  merely 
for  softening  the  consonant  to 
which  it  is  appended,  but  for  ab- 
solute extrusion,  as  soirbheas,  pro- 
nounced soeras,  and  so  forth.  An- 
other familiar  example  is  gabhar, 
a  goat,  which,  as  it  appears  to  the 
eye,  is  plainly  a  softened  variety 
of  the  Lat.  caper,  a  goat;  but 
when  the  h  with  its  overwhelming 
smoothness  is  allowed  to  sweep 
away  the  labial  consonant  alto- 
gether, the  ear  finds  only  gour 
left,  as  in  Ardgour,  Kilgour,  and 
other  familiar  names  of  places  and 
persons,  in  which  it  requires  the 
practised  ear  of  a  philologer 
to  recognise  the  original  type. 
But  more  confounding  still  it  is 
when  the  extrusion  of  the  medial 


42 


Place-Names  oj  Scotland. 


[July 


consonant  between  two  vowels  is 
accompanied  with  the  dropping  of 
the  initial  consonant,  as  in  athar, 
father,  pronounced  aar,  where  as 
in  Ian,  for  plenus,  full,  the  initial 
p  altogether  disappears.  The 
levelling  influence  of  this  h  at 
the  end  of  a  word,  as  in  tigh,  a 
house,  pronounced  taoy,  from  Lat. 
tignum,  is  equally  felt.  A  still 
more  perplexing  change  on  the 
body  of  the  word  as  it  is  written 
appears  in  the  liberty  taken  by 
an  antecedent  vowel  or  consonant 
to  obliterate  the  initial  consonant 
of  a  word,  as  in  the  case  of  saor,  a 
carpenter,  which  when  preceded 
by  the  genitive  of  the  article 
becomes  taor,  familiar  to  the  Eng- 
lish ear  in  the  proper  name  of 
Macintyre,  the  son  of  the  car- 
penter. But  perhaps,  after  all,  it 
is  not  so  much  these  consonantal 
changes  and  extrusions  that  occa- 
sion difficulty  to  the  English  ear, 
as  the  peculiar  sounds  of  ao  and 
ui  diphthong,  and  the  utterly  un- 
English  ch.  For  these  he  will 
find  an  analogy  in  the  German  oe 
and  ue,  as  in  Goethe  and  Miiller ; 
and  the  true  sound  of  the  Gaelic 
in  this  case,  as  in  the  German,  he 
can  learn  only  by  practice.  As  to 
the  aspirated  form  of  k,  or  hard  c, 
as  it  appears  in  so  many  Highland 
lochs  and  lochans,  we  can  only  say 
that,  though  unknown  in  Latin, 
it  appears  in  Greek,  in  German, 
and  in  the  beautiful  musical  dialect 
of  English  commonly  called  Scotch; 
and  the  sooner  our  esteemed  big 
brother  besouth  the  Tweed  at- 
tunes his  ear  to  this  sound,  the 
better  not  only  for  his  sympathy 
with  the  Macs,  but  for  his  lin- 
guistic faculty  generally,  which  in 
this,  as  in  some  other  of  his 
peculiarities,  is  altogether  insular 
in  its  range,  and  pernicious  in  its 
exercise.  Let  him  understand 
that  this  Gaelic  ch,  like  the  Greek 
X,  is  not  a  rough  guttural,  as  it  is 


sometimes  called,  but  an  aspirated 
(spiro,  to  breathe)  or  smooth  form 
of  the  sharp  k  and  the  blunt  g, 
which  are  the  true  gutturals. 

So  much  for  the  peculiar  fea- 
tures of  the  Gaelic  species  of  the 
great  Aryan  family,  worked  out 
from  an  original  identity  by  the 
internal  varieties  to  which  all  lan- 
guages, when  left  to  themselves, 
without  any  foreign  interference, 
are  naturally  subject.  But  there 
is  a  borrowed  element  also  in  Gaelic 
which,  though  small  in  geograph- 
ical amount,  is  historically  of  great 
significance.  In  the  Hebrides, 
and  all  along  the  west  coast  of 
the  Highlands,  as  above  mentioned, 
the  Norse  element  asserts  itself  in 
local  names  with  unmistakable 
prominence  :  thus  uig,  Danish  vig, 
which  appears  in  Wick  and  Wig- 
town, is  the  familiar  Norse  name 
for  a  bay ;  ness,  a  nose  or  jutting 
promontory ;  fiord,  a  firth  or  inlet 
of  the  sea ;  and  oe,  an  island,  as  it 
occurs  in  lona,  and  elsewhere. 
Noticeable  also  in  this  region  is 
the  dale — German  theil,  English 
deal,  to  divide — a  part  or  portion  of 
land,  always  in  the  last  syllable  of 
the  name  ;  known  also  in  Gaelic  as 
dal,  but  always  as  the  initial  syl- 
lable, as  in  Dalnaspidal,  Dal- 
whinnie,  &c.,  &c.  But  Latin,  the 
language  of  the  Church,  the  great 
medieval  civiliser,  was  naturally 
much  more  powerful  than  the 
speech  of  the  sea-marauders,  over 
all  the  length  and  breadth  of  the 
hill  country,  where  the  original 
British  inhabitants  knew  to  hold 
their  ground ;  and  in  this  way  in 
the  language  of  common  inter- 
course not  a  few  words  became 
current  in  the  talk  of  Highlanders, 
borrowed  either  directly  from 
Latin,  the  language  of  the  Church, 
or  from  the  Norman -French  ele- 
ment of  our  English  tongue,  radi- 
cally one  with  the  speech  of  the 
Romans,  who  at  an  early  period 


1894.] 


Place-Names  of  Scotland. 


43 


had  planted  their  foot  on  French 
ground,  when  they  were  only  point- 
ing with  their  finger  to  the  more 
distant  isles  in  the  west.  Such 
words  manifestly  are  spiorad, 
spirit;  eaglais,  ecclesia;  priosann, 
a  prison ;  litrich,  a  letter ;  minis- 
trealech,  ministry;  leabhar,  liber; 
seomar,  camera,  chamber;  sagrart, 
sacerdos ;  pobull,  populus ;  reusan, 
reason ;  searmoin,  sermo — and  soon. 
But  what  chiefly  concerns  us  here 
is  the  word  kil,  which  appears  in  a 
large  number  of  sacred  places,  mani- 
festly the  Latin  cella,  a  shrine,  con- 
founded, in  our  insular  habit  of  pro- 
nouncing c  like  s  before  a  soft  vowel, 
with  sella,  a  seat.  This  kil,  in  the 
case  of  a  shrine  or  church,  appears 
in  more  than  a  score  of  familiar 
place-names  in  the  index  to  Sir 
Herbert  Maxwell's  valuable  book  : 
as  in  Kilbride,  the  Church  of  St 
Bridget;  Kilmalcolm,  the  Church 
of  the  shavelings  of  St  Columba 
(maol,  a  bare  poll) ;  l  and  Kilninian, 
either  from  Ninian,  the  founder  of 
the  Church  of  Whithorn  in  Gallo- 
way, or  from  Nennidius,  a  later 
saint,  a  follower  of  the  great  St 
Bridget  of  Ireland.  One  of  the 
most  famous  of  these  kils  is  Kil- 
ribhinn,  the  old  Gaelic  name  for 
St  Andrews,  but  in  nowise  sig- 
nifying what  it  seems  to  mean, 
when  printed  as  it  is  pro- 
nounced. Judging  by  the  ear 
only,  a  person  with  a  smattering  of 
Gaelic  might  say  that  it  meant 
the  Church  of  the  Virgin,  Ribhinn, 
Mary  of  course ;  but  the  moment 
an  appeal  is  made  from  the  ear 
to  the  eye,  Kilrigh  mhonadh  stands 
out  in  royal  dignity,  the  Church  of 
the  King's  muir,  now  St  Andrews. 
Originally,  before  the  bones  of  the 
great  Scottish  saint  were  brought 
by  Regulus  from  Greece,  in  the 


days  of  the  Picts  who  peopled  the 
east  coast  of  our  country  in  the 
oldest  times,  this  learned  city  re- 
joiced in  the  most  undignified  ap- 
pellation of  Muc  fioss,  the  PIG'S 
SNOUT  !  Instead  of  kil,  we  have 
sometimes  in  Scotland  eccles  from 
ecclesia,  Gr.  cK/cA^o-m,  as  in  Eccle- 
fechan,  Church  of  St  Vigean,  the 
birthplace  of  our  great  Scottish  pro- 
phet, Thomas  Carlyle.  Strange 
enough,  beside  this  eccles  we  have 
another  Greek  word  for  the  name  of 
the  Lord's  house  in  Scotland,  Kirk, 
but  so  curtailed  in  its  dimensions 
as  that  its  Greek  original,  KvpiaKo?, 
will  only  strike  the  eye  of  a  scholar. 
Of  the  Scottish  names  of  places 
commencing  with  this  so  thor- 
oughly naturalised  Greek  word, 
of  which  the  topographical  student 
will  find  at  least  half  a  hundred 
in  the  'Ordnance  Gazetteer,'  we 
shall  name  only  two  that  stand  out 
with  a  special  historical  signifi- 
cance, Kirkcudbright  and  Maiden- 
kirk.  The  first  of  these  bears  the 
stamp  of  one  of  the  most  famous 
holy  men  of  the  seventh  century,  a 
Northumbrian  by  birth,  but  whose 
name  stands  enshrined  in  the  Scot- 
tish memory,  not  only  by  the  mod- 
ern county  and  county-town  which 
bear  his  name  visibly  on  their 
front,  but  by  his  early  connection 
with  beautiful  Melrose,  and  his 
position  in  the  leading  Presby- 
terian church  of  the  west  end  of 
Edinburgh.  In  the  second  of 
these  Galloway  names  local  story 
has  stereotyped  the  memory  of  a 
beautiful  Irish  girl,  Madana,  in 
the  fifth  century,  consecrated  to 
the  service  of  God  by  the  famous 
St  Patrick  in  the  severe  monastic 
fashion  of  the  age.  Her  great 
beauty  had  attracted  the  amorous 
regards  of  a  Hibernian  noble  in 


1  Sir  Herbert,  in  excluding  the  first  I  from  the  word,  agrees  with  Johnston  here, 
translating  simply  ma,  our  Columba, — a  point  which  in  nowise  affects  the  his- 
torical significance  of  the  name. 


44 


Place-Names  of  Scotland. 


[July 


those  passionate  times,  and  he 
pursued  her  with  importunate 
attentions,  and  with  such  persis- 
tent entreaty,  that  to  escape  from 
his  importunity  she  was  obliged  to 
cross  the  water,  and  seek  a  home 
with  a  colony  of  chaste  sisters  in 
Wigtownshire.  But  even  here,  the 
story  goes  on  to  tell,  her  perse- 
cutor followed  her;  and  she,  to 
break  the  charm,  by  an  act  of  self- 
sacrifice,  put  the  question  directly 
to  her  admirer,  what  it  was  about 
her  that  so  enslaved  him  to  her 
track  ?  "  Your  bright  blue  eyes," 
was  the  reply.  "I  am  drawn  to 
them  irresistibly,  as  the  flower  is 
to  the  sun."  This  was  enough  for 
the  holy  maid.  Forthwith  she 
plucked  out  her  lovely  orbs,  and 
threw  them  at  her  persecutor's 
feet  on  the  ground,  and  was  for 
ever  free  from  his  unsanctified  ad- 
miration. 

Historical  allusions  of  this  patent 
kind  of  course  speak  for  them- 
selves as  plainly  as  Fort  William 
and  Fort  George  in  the  north 
certify  to  all  times  the  defences 
which  William  of  Orange  and 
our  Hanoverian  "wee  German 
lairdie"  were  obliged  to  set  up 
to  keep  down  the  fretful  feeling 
of  clanship  with  which  the  High- 
landers clung  to  the  abused  royalty 
of  the  Stuarts.  But  not  seldom 
in  the  names  of  old  centres  of 
medieval  life  allusions  occur  which 
require  the  patient  research  and 
the  discriminating  eye  of  men 
familiar  with  ancient  records  :  and 
as  Scotland  is  unfortunately  al- 
most a  blank  in  these  ancient 
annals  of  which  Ireland  boasts  so 
rich  a  store,  the  curious  in  local 
names  must  betake  himself  to 
family  charters,  and  local  or  general 
law  registers ;  and  these  occasion- 
ally, for  philological  purposes,  may 
become  as  slippery  as  for  purely 
legal  right  of  possession  they  are 


firm  ground  and  sure, — for  an  old 
charter  of  the  fifteenth  century 
may  not  always  agree  with  an 
older  one  of  the  fourteenth,  and 
both  the  one  and  the  other  may 
possibly  have  been  put  into  the 
law  Latin  of  the  period  by  scribes 
altogether  ignorant  of  the  language 
to  which  the  property  owed  its 
original  title.  In  such  cases,  even 
a  visitor  starting  on  such  in- 
quiries with  all  the  caution  that 
Sir  Herbert  so  strongly  accentu- 
ates in  his  first  lecture,  may  oc- 
casionally be  mistaken  ;  but  such 
instances  of  topographical  misin- 
terpretation from  documentary 
mistakes  are  quite  exceptional, 
and  in  ninety-nine  cases  out  of  a 
hundred  the  intelligent  tourist 
may  rest  with  perfect  satisfaction 
on  the  analysis  of  the  names  given 
in  the  index  to  the  book  on  '  Scot- 
tish Land-Names '  which  stands 
first  on  our  list.  Along  with  Sir 
Herbert,  however,  it  will  always 
be  wise  in  doubtful  cases  to  con- 
sult Mr  Johnston's  excellent  work ; 
for  in  topographical  philology,  as 
in  the  law  courts,  even  in  cases 
of  certainty,  two  witnesses  are 
always  better  than  one.  In  cases 
of  special  difficulty  belonging  to 
Argyllshire,  no  wise  topographer 
will  fail  to  call  into  court  a  man 
of  such  professional  skill  in  these 
matters  as  Professor  Mackinnon  \ 
and  the  like  deference  will  justly 
be  paid  to  Mr  MacDonald  in  all 
questions  of  places  belonging  to 
the  far  north  district  of  Strath- 
bogie  :  but  for  the  significance  of 
Scottish  topographical  names,  as 
well  as  for  large  views  on  topo- 
graphical philology  generally,  we 
know  no  book  which  we  can  more 
confidently  recommend  to  the  in- 
telligent Scottish  tourist  than  the 
work  of  the  learned  member  for 
Wigtownshire. 

JOHN  STUART  BLACKIE. 


1894.] 


More  about  the  Preparatory  School. 


45 


MOKE  ABOUT  THE  PREPARATORY  SCHOOL. 


"I  PROPOSE  in  this  paper  to 
deal  mainly  with  two  considera- 
tions :  how  the  home  training  can 
prepare  boys  for  the  temptations 
and  difficulties  of  school  life ;  and 
how,  when  the  boys  are  at  school, 
the  home  ties  can  be  kept  strong, 
and  the  home  influence  exerted  for 
good."  Most  delicately  and  most 
sensibly  does  Mrs  Creighton  deal 
with  her  subject  in  that  most 
charming  and  practical  of  peri- 
odicals, 'Mothers  in  Council.'  If 
every  mother  in  England  joined 
this  council,  and  carried  into  prac- 
tice many  of  its  precepts,  the  work 
of  the  preparatory  schoolmaster 
would  be  materially  lightened.  And 
if  in  Mrs  Creighton's  paper  we  de- 
tect some  impatience  of  the  exist- 
ence of  the  preparatory  school,  and 
here  and  there  a  faint  note  of  en- 
couragement to  parents  to  dispense 
with  this  intermediate  stage  be- 
tween home  life  and  public  school 
life,  we  readily  admit  that  if  all 
parents  were  as  highly  gifted  as  Mrs 
Creighton,  or  took  the  same  sen- 
sible view  of  the  responsibilities 
of  their  position  in  the  matter  of 
the  education  of  their  children,  the 
raison  d'etre  of  the  preparatory 
school  would  disappear.  And  with 
it  would  also  disappear  the  possi- 
bility of  the  home-educated  boy  of 
twelve  being  placed  at  a  dis- 
advantage, real  or  imaginary,  when 
called  upon  to  compete  against 
the  school  -  prepared  compeer  in 
scholarship  examinations  or  out- 
door pursuits.  Unfortunately,  all 
parents  are  not  by  nature  quali- 
fied to  educate  their  children  be- 
yond a  certain  standard  ;  and  even 
if  exactly  the  same  holds  good  as 
regards  schoolmasters,  the  latter, 
to  whom  teaching  is  a  trade,  have 
more  opportunities  of  correcting 
natural  deficiencies  by  practice; 


and  the  conscientious  member  of 
the  latter  class — for  there  is  con- 
science even  among  schoolmasters 
— will,  if  extended  practice  only 
serves  to  heighten  the  impression 
of  his  own  incompetence  to  teach, 
sever  his  connection  with  scho- 
lastic life. 

"What  are  you  thinking  of?" 
we  once  asked  a  man  who  was 
wrapped  in  deep  and  apparently 
painful  thought. 

"  I  am  thinking,"  was  the  quiet 
answer,  "whether  it's  I  who  am 
the  fool  or  that  boy." 

He  solved  the  question  later 
on  to  his  own  satisfaction,  and 
made  a  fortune  on  the  Stock 
Exchange. 

We  are  not  among  those  who 
regard  the  parents — qud  parents, 
we  may  be  allowed  to  insert — as 
"  their  natural  foes  "  ;  we  should 
neither  lay  it  down,  as  an  Ameri- 
can schoolmistress  did  the  other 
day,  as  the  first  rule  for  our  model 
school,  that  "  all  parents  should  be 
drowned,"  nor  should  we  endorse 
the  impertinent  remark  quoted  by 
Mrs  Creighton  as  emanating  from 
an  elementary  schoolmaster  that 
"there  is  nothing  the  average 
parent  knows  less  about  than  what 
is  good  for  the  child."  But  we 
will  plead  guilty  to  a  feeling  that 
here  and  there  a  parent  leaves  un- 
done much  that  he  or  she  might 
have  done  to  help  us,  or  even  does 
much  to  retard  our  work.  We 
make  liberal  allowances,  more 
liberal  in  some  ways  than  Mrs 
Creighton  does,  for  circumstances 
such  as  household  cares,  which 
must  occupy  more  time  in  one 
establishment  than  another,  large 
families  which  distract  a  mother's 
attention,  and  many  other  things 
besides;  but  as  we  contrast  boy 
with  boy  as  they  come  from  home, 


46 


More  about  the  Preparatory  School. 


[July 


we  often  feel  that  much  has  been 
left  undone  for  one  which  has  been 
done  for  another  in  the  way  of 
preparing  him  for  school  life. 

We  will  not  advert  to  the  ques- 
tion of  the  moral  preparation. 
There  the  ground  has  been  fairly 
cut  from  beneath  our  feet  by  Mrs 
Creighton,  and  we  could  not  hope 
to  rival  the  delicacy  of  touch  with 
which  she  has  handled  this  most 
important  subject.  Our  question 
rather  shall  be  this,  What  standard 
of  knowledge  is  required  of  boys 
who  come  to  a  preparatory  school  1 
By  the  schoolmaster,  we  answer,  a 
very  modest  standard.  Great  ex- 
pectations are  seldom  found  to 
exist  in  the  mind  of  the  teacher  of 
the  small  boy.  A  few  years'  ex- 
perience will  have  taught  him  that 
in  his  profession  great  expecta- 
tions are  synonymous  with  great 
delusions  and  precursors  of  great 
disappointments.  And  what  are 
the  attainments  of  the  ordinary 
urchin  of  nine  or  ten  ?  Commonly 
a  something  which  falls  short  of 
the  modest  expectation;  not  un- 
frequently  a  something  which 
might  be  termed  a  minus  quantity; 
here  and  there  a  delicious  surprise, 
a  something  to  vary  the  monotony 
and  make  the  life  of  a  school- 
master liveable.  Without  these 
occasional  surprises  the  existence, 
except  for  the  earthworm,  who  is 
content  to  let  things  slide,  and 
only  regards  boys  as  representing 
so  many  £  s.  d.  in  his  pocket, 
would  be  intolerable. 

First,  then,  in  the  matter  of 
religious  knowledge :  first  on  all 
grounds, — first  not  merely  because 
more  has  been  said  and  more  has 
been  written  lately  on  the  subject 
of  religious  instruction  in  schools 
than  about  any  other  one  branch 
of  education;  but  first,  perhaps, 
most  of  all,  because  we  strongly 
feel  that  religious  instruction  in 
some  form  should  be  the  earliest 
lesson  of  each  day.  And  of  re- 


ligious instruction  we  recognise 
two  distinct  sides — church-teach- 
ing and  knowledge  of  the  Bible; 
and  the  former  of  these,  at  all 
events,  it  is  a  mother's  province 
to  impart.  We  are  interested  to 
note  that  Mrs  Creighton  is  entirely 
with  us  in  this  matter;  and  we 
would  gladly  know  whether  this 
apparent  agreement  is  only  the 
accidental  result  of  the  circum- 
stance that  she  was  writing  to 
mothers  as  opposed  to  fathers  in 
council,  or  whether  she  feels  as 
strongly  as  we  do  that  a  boy 
must,  in  most  cases,  either  imbibe 
his  views  on  church  subjects  from 
a  woman  or  have  no  views. 

It  is  not  perhaps  the  case  that 
religion  actually  does  appeal  more 
to  the  feminine  mind  than  to  the 
masculine,  or  that  the  existence 
of  a  religious  feeling  is  more  neces- 
sary to  the  one  than  to  the  other ; 
it  is  rather  that  the  woman  has 
less  solid  work  to  occupy  her 
time  than  the  bread-winner,  and 
that  religious  observances  and 
church  services  seem  to  form  part 
of  her  daily  life.  And  we,  as  men, 
do  not  merely  tolerate  this  differ- 
ence, but  we  seem  to  expect  more 
religion — outward  religion,  at  all 
events — from  our  wives  and  sisters 
than  we  ever  dream  of  exacting 
from  ourselves.  It  is  a  sort  of 
shock  to  our  moral  nature  if 
women  in  the  upper  classes  are 
not  outwardly  more  religious  than 
we  ourselves  are ;  and  though  our 
animal  nature  may  admire,  we 
cease,  except  in  rare  cases,  to 
respect  a  woman  who  does  not 
wear  what  may  be  a  mere  garb 
of  religion.  We  do  not  condemn 
a  man  for  staying  away  from 
church  on  a  Sunday :  we  glance 
hurriedly  at  his  pew  to  see  if  he 
happens  to  be  present,  but  are 
prepared  to  find  that  he  is  absent. 
But  if  we  miss  his  wife,  we  at 
once  conclude  that  there  is  illness 
in  the  house,  or  that  she  is  away 


1894.] 


More  about  the  Preparatory  School. 


47 


from  home.  In  fine,  we  seldom 
fail  to  condemn  in  the  one  sex  a 
shortcoming  which  we  commonly 
condone  in  the  other. 

Another  marked  difference  be- 
tween the  religion  of  the  sexes 
is,  that  women  are  as  a  class  high- 
church  and  fond  of  ritual.  Men, 
on  the  other  hand,  even  good 
churchmen — as  we  accept  the  term 
— though  they  like  things  to  be 
done  decently  and  in  order,  are 
more  moderate,  and  if  anything 
anti-ritualistic.  It  may  be  that 
we  are  less  artistic  and  less  im- 
aginative, and  that  with  an  equal 
sense  of  decorum  we  care  less 
for  outward  form  and  adornment. 
To  a  man  a  new  coat  is  a  nuis- 
ance :  a  new  dress  has  a  lively 
fascination  for  a  woman.  So  the 
forms  and  ceremonies,  the  coloured 
stole,  the  changed  altar-cloth, 
things  which  attract  the  fair  sex, 
a  man  regards  with  an  indiffer- 
ence which  borders  rather  on 
contempt  than  irreverence.  We 
might  add,  that  if  a  woman  crosses 
herself  or  bows  to  the  altar  it 
does  not  strike  us  as  singular  or 
out  of  place;  similar  acts  on  the 
part  of  a  layman  arrest  our  atten- 
tion, and  we  instinctively  suspect 
a  motive. 

Further  it  may  be  said,  that  how- 
ever strongly  a  man  may  feel 
about  religion,  there  is  no  subject 
on  which  he  is  more  reticent  him- 
self or  more  disinclined  to  invite 
confidence  from  a  brother  layman. 
To  our  mind  the  scene  in  'Tom 
Brown,'  where  East  pours  out  his 
religious  difficulties  to  his  school- 
fellow, is  at  least  as  unnatural 
as  it  is  striking  and  original.  Ab- 
horrence of  uttering  or  listening  to 
anything  which  could  by  any  pos- 
sibility be  construed  into  cant, 
almost  seems  to  form  part  of  an 
Englishman's  character.  It  is 
only  on  rare  occasions  that  a 
clergyman  will  penetrate  this 
barrier  of  reserve,  and  then  only 


because  he  is  recognised  as  a  duly 
accredited  practitioner. 

All  this  may  sound  foreign  to 
our  subject,  but  it  may  serve  to 
emphasise  our  reiteration,  and — 
as  we  think,  though  we  may  be 
wrong — Mrs  Creighton's  opinion, 
that  it  is  from  the  mother  that  we 
must  claim  the  early  training  of 
her  children  in  church  matters. 
Only  in  rare  cases  will  the  child 
satisfactorily  learn  from  a  man  at 
school  what  it  is  so  natural  and  so 
simple  for  the  mother  to  teach 
at  home.  Honesty,  truthfulness, 
straightforwardness  —  all  these 
lessons  a  father  may  teach  and  a 
wise  father  will  teach,  but  church 
teaching  for  her  child  is  the 
mother's  privilege  and  duty.  And 
under  the  head  of  church  teaching 
we  would  include  such  things  as 
the  knowledge  of  some  short  form 
of  prayer  on  entering  and  leaving 
church ;  the  habit  of  reverence  in 
church  ;  the  knowledge — elemen- 
tary knowledge  indeed — that  it  is 
usual  to  kneel  during  the  prayers 
and  to  stand  at  certain  times  ;  an 
acquaintance  with  the  order  of 
morning  and  evening  prayer ;  the 
habit  of  giving  something  to  the 
offertory;  the  recollection  that 
baptism  is  a  sacrament,  that  the 
churchyard  is  holy  ground,  that 
loud  talking  on  the  way  to  and 
from  church  is,  if  not  wrong,  at 
least  unseemly ;  and  the  habit,  to 
come  nearer  home,  of  private 
prayer  and  of  private  reading  in 
the  Bible  at  night.  All  these 
things  are  better  learnt  as  a  lesson 
of  love  from  a  mother's  lips  than 
later  on  as  matters  of  school  dis- 
cipline; and  we  would  fain  hope 
that  such  lessons  as  the  former  are 
not  things  to  be  forgotten  at  the 
first  convenient  opportunity  like 
the  latter,  but  are  rather  sacred 
links  in  the  chain  of  memories 
that  bind  the  boy's  mind  to  his 
home.  We  may  even  go  beyond  the 
hope.  That  churchgoing  is  often 


48 


More  about  the  Preparatory  School. 


[July 


irksome  to  boys  is  a  misfortune 
partly  of  an  age  ever  restless  and 
impatient  of  restraint — more  so, 
perhaps,  of  their  sex.  To  the 
latter  it  is  a  repetition  of  Naa- 
man's  impatience.  "If  the  pro- 
phet had  bid  thee  do  some  great 
thing ! "  To  a  sex  intolerant  of 
activity,  mental  or  physical,  to  sit 
quiet  and  repeat  the  same  simple 
words  Sunday  after  Sunday  par- 
takes more  of  the  nature  of  a 
penance  than  a  service, — is  even  in 
some  cases,  and  to  some  natures, 
a  form  of  martyrdom  more  severe 
and  more  trying  than  any  physical 
pain.  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
take  many  a  man  who  will  occa- 
sionally make  an  excuse  to  stay 
away  from  church,  try  to  compel 
him  under  threat  of  a  lingering 
death  to  abjure  that  religion  which 
he  apparently  does  not  value  or 
practise,  hold  out  to  him  fair  pro- 
mises if  he  will  become  a  Moham- 
medan or  a  Brahmin — will  he  do 
it  ?  No ;  rather  death  or  bonds — 
anything  rather  than  give  up  that 
which  was  his  mother's  religion 
before  him,  and  which  he  learnt 
from  her  lips.  "If  our  God  and 
our  country  require,"  Englishmen, 
as  their  thoughts  float  back  to 
childhood's  days,  will  face  death 
with  as  steadfast  a  heart  as  ever 
did  Jephthah's  daughter. 

And  yet  we  may  be  told — for 
parents,  as  we  read  not  long  ago 
in  a  bishop's  address  on  this  very 
subject,  are  inclined  to  "put  off 
the  responsibility  of  the  religious 
teaching  more  and  more  on  others  " 
—the  perfect  schoolmaster,  if  there 
exists  such  an  individual,  will  teach, 
or  should  teach,  all  these  things. 
"But,"  said  the  same  speaker,  "the 
teaching  never  comes  with  the  same 
force  from  strangers'  as  from  the 
mother's  lips."  To  strangers,  at 
all  events— we  make  this  addition 
to  Mrs  Creighton's  words—"  most 
boys  will  not  say  much  about  their 
religious  feelings."  To  teach  for 


the  first  time  those  very  simple 
things  which  we  enumerated,  if 
not  exactly  beyond  a  master's  pro- 
vince, is  at  any  rate  beyond  what 
should  be  his  province.  Religious 
teaching  in  some  form  or  other  is 
clearly  part  of  a  preparatory  school- 
master's duty,  but  the  soil  he 
works  on  should  not  be  virgin 
ground  :  rather  is  it  his  office  and 
his  responsibility  to  cherish  the 
seedlings  of  home  growth.  Advice 
to  keep  up  a  habit;  occasional  re- 
minding not  to  drop,  or  encourage- 
ment to  continue,  this  or  that  prac- 
tice,— these  things  we  may  with 
justice  require  and  expect  of  the 
schoolmaster,  but  the  habits  and 
the  practices  themselves  should  be 
of  an  earlier  date. 

Even  a  little  more  than  this  we 
may  fairly  claim  of  the  parent, — 
such  a  thing,  for  instance,  as  a 
little  instruction  as  regards  the 
holy  days  of  the  Church;  why 
Easter  Day  and  Christmas  Day  are 
feasts,  and  what  events  they  com- 
memorate ;  why  a  little  difference 
should  be  made  between  Lent  and 
other  periods  of  the  year.  The 
most  sacred  days  of  the  Christian 
year,  as  it  happens,  most  small 
boys  spend  at  home;  and,  apart 
from  their  school  teaching,  a  fair 
proportion  of  the  rising  generation 
connect  Christmas  Day  with  little 
else  beyond  plum-pudding,  mince- 
pies,  and  turkeys,  and  regard  Good 
Friday  as  the  first  day  of  the  holi- 
days, and,  as  such,  "to  be  marked 
with  white  chalk."  This  is  no  ex- 
aggeration of  facts,  and  we  record 
it  rather  as  a  protest  against  the 
not  uncommon  cry  that  there  is 
a  decadence  in  the  religious  in- 
struction of  boys  in  higher-grade 
schools.  The  substitution  of  the 
word  "homes"  for  "schools"  would 
bring  us  nearer  to  the  truth. 

And  now  to  turn  to  secular  edu- 
cation. "  What  would  you  like  my 
boy  to  be  pushed  on  in  1 "  is  a  very 
common  and  a  very  pertinent 


1894.] 


More  about  the  Preparatory  School. 


49 


question.  The  spirit  of  the  British 
parent  will,  we  fear,  rise  up  in 
judgment  against  us  as  we  humbly 
suggest  a  thorough  grounding  in 
the  three  R's  —  Reading,  Biting, 
and  Bithmetic.  Modest  indeed  are 
our  requirements,  but  the  little 
we  would  have  known,  we  desire 
also  to  have  well  known.  "  Some 
men,"  shrewdly  remarked  the  Tich- 
borne  Claimant,  "have  plenty  of 
money  and  no  brains ;  others  have 
plenty  of  brains  and  no  money." 
We  would  prefer  our  small  capital, 
whether  of  brains  or  money,  to  be 
solidly  invested  in  something  after 
the  manner  of  Consols  or  any  other 
real  security,  rather  than  sprinkled 
over  South  American  high-divi- 
dend stocks.  In  the  investment 
of  both  the  one  or  the  other 
commodity  we  incline  to  sound- 
ness rather  than  showiness.  If 
the  British  parent  wants  a  more 
attractive  programme,  we  will  sug- 
gest that  he  should  borrow  from 
Miss  Cornelia  Blimber  the  time- 
tables designed  for  the  use  of 
Master  Paul  Dombey  : — 

"They  comprised  a  little  English, 
and  a  deal  of  Latin — names  of  things, 
declensions  of  articles  and  substan- 
tives, exercises  therein,  and  prelimin- 
ary rules — a  trifle  of  orthography,  a 
glance  at  ancient  history,  a  week  or 
two  at  modern  ditto,  a  few  tables,  two 
or  three  weights  and  measures,  and 
a  little  general  information.  When 
poor  Paul  had  spelt  out  number  two, 
he  found  he  had  no  idea  of  number 
one;  fragments  whereof  afterwards 
obtruded  themselves  into  number 
three,  which  slided  into  number  four, 
which  grafted  itself  on  to  number 
two.  So  that  whether  twenty  Romu- 
luses  made  a  Bemus,  or  hie  hcec  hoc 
was  troy-weight,  or  a  verb  always 
agreed  with  an  ancient  Briton,  or  three 
times  four  was  Taurus,  a  bull,  were 
open  questions  with  him." 

Or  shall  we  transport  our  inter- 
locutor back  to  Queen  Anne's 
reign  and  introduce  him  to  one  Mr 
Switterda  1— 

VOL.  CLVI. — NO.   DCCCCXLV. 


"Who  was  formerly  recommended 
by  the  late  King  William,  and  well 
known  by  their  Excellencies  my  Lord 
Sparkin  and  my  Lord  Methuen,"  and 
"  who  offers  a  very  easy  and  delight- 
ful Method  by  which  any  Person  of 
tolerable  Capacity  who  can  but  spare 
time  to  be  twice  a-week  with  him, 
and  an  Hour  at  a  time,  nay,  Children 
of  ten  Years  of  Age,  may  in  one  Year 
learn  to  speak  Latin  and  French 
fluently,  according  to  the  Grammar 
Bules,  and  to  understand  a  Classical 
Author." 

We  have  in  our  minds  yet  an- 
other time-table,  neither  borrowed 
from  fiction  nor  dating  from  Queen 
Anne,  but  exhibited  in  a  National 
School  some  twenty  years  ago. 
Thereon  the  master  had  proudly 
entered  "  English  Composition," 
and  it  was  with  a  somewhat  ag- 
grieved air  that  the  worthy  man 
pointed  out  to  the  Examiner — a 
voluntary,  not  one  of  those  awful 
potentates  H.M.  Inspectors — that 
his  pupils  had  not  been  tested  in 
that,  to  embryo  ploughboys,  highly 
important  subject. 

"  I  am  very  sorry,"  said  the 
offending  Examiner  ;  "  but,  eh — 
what  do  you  mean  exactly  by  Eng- 
lish Composition  1 " 

"  Oh,  sir  !  "  was  the  reply,  "  my 
boys  could  write  you  a  life  of  any 
famous  man.  We  make  an  especial 
point  of  style." 

So  a  life  of  Moses  was  given  as 
a  theme.  The  style,  to  judge  from 
the  first  boy's  essay,  was  laconic — so 
laconic  as  to  be  almost  misleading  : 

"Moses  broke  the  ten  command- 
ments, and  his  mother  made  an  ark 
of  bulrushes  and  put  him  in  it." 

It  was  all  true,  but  the  truth  did 
not  redeem  it  from  being  slightly 
libellous. 

Nor  have  we  to  go  far  afield  to 
find  a  companion  for  poor  little 
Paul  Dombey  in  a  small  boy  who 
— whether  at  school  or  at  home,  it 
matters  not — had  been  educated 
on  the  multiplicity  of  attainments. 
D 


50 

principle.  For  to  a  good-natured 
parson  not  so  many  years  ago  there 
came  a  neighbour  with  the  request 
that  the  parson  would  allow  the 
neighbour's  small  boy  of  ten  to 
come  to  his  study  and  do  some  ex- 
amination papers  in  his  presence. 

"  He's  a  sharp  boy  enough,"  said 
the  fond  father,  "and  he  can  do 
the  work  all  right.  But  the  regu- 
lations require  that  the  papers  shall 
be  done  in  the  presence  of  a  bene- 
ficed  clergyman,  who  will  send  them 
straight  up  to  the  Office.  Of  course 
you  won't  give  him  any  help — in 
fact,  he's  not  likely  to  want  any ; 
but  you  might  just  keep  him  up  to 
the  work,  and  see  that  he  spends  a 
proper  time  over  it.  The  people 
will  send  you  the  papers,  and  some 
sort  of  form  to  fill  up." 

The  parson  readily  consented : 
papers  and  form  to  fill  up  arrived 
in  due  course,  and  on  the  ap- 
pointed day  a  small  tallow-faced 
boy  of  eleven  was  duly  ushered 
into  the  study.  The  parson  gave 
young  hopeful  a  few  kindly  words 
of  encouragement,  arranged  him 
comfortably  at  the  table  with  a 
goodly  choice  of  pens,  and  taking 
up  a  book  himself,  prepared  for  a 
lengthy  spell  of  the  boy's  company. 
He  had  previously  cast  his  eye 
over  the  contents  of  the  paper, 
and  thought  it  well  suited  to  test 
a  boy's  powers,  and  to  occupy 
most  of  the  three  and  a  half  hours 
allowed  for  it.  It  was  a  fairly 
easy  paper  of  the  orthodox  type — 
some  miles  to  be  reduced  to  feet, 
gallons  to  be  added  to  pints,  Troy 
pounds  to  be  brought  to  cwts., 
pence  to  be  subtracted  from 
pounds,  some  decimal  and  some 
vulgar  fractions,  proportion,  prac- 
tice, a  room  to  be  papered,  a  yard 
to  be  paved,  the  rate  of  a  ship  to 
be  calculated,  &c.,  &c.  It  was 
lengthy,  there  being  in  all  some 
sixteen  questions  arranged  on  a 
graduating  scale— the  sort  of 
paper,  in  fact,  in  which  an  ordin- 


More  about  the  Preparatory  School. 


[July 


ary  boy  might  be  expected  to 
satisfy  the  examiners,  a  mathe- 
matical genius  to  make  up  for  any 
deficiency  in  other  subjects. 

The  parson  was  pleased  to  note 
that  his  young  protege  apparently 
lacked  neither  diligence  nor  enthu- 
siasm, but  plunged  at  once  into  his 
work  with  that  amount  of  snort- 
ing and  grunting  which,  coupled 
with  inkiness,  denotes  that  a  small  • 
boy  is  very  much  in  earnest. 
Scratch,  scratch,  scratch  went  his 
pen  without  cessation  for  fully 
half  an  hour  or  more  :  then  came 
a  pause  of  a  few  minutes,  and 
then,  as  the  parson  looked  up, 
there,  standing  at  his  elbow  with 
smiling  face  and  folded  paper,  was 
the  tallow-faced  boy. 

"  Well,  my  boy,  what's  the  mat- 
ter 1 "  quoth  the  parson,  cheerily. 

"  I  have  finished  it." 

"  Finished  !  Done  all  that  you 
can  do  ?  Oh  dear,  no  ! "  said  the 
parson,  mindful  of  his  promise  to 
keep  his  little  friend  up  to  the 
mark.  "  Don't  give  in,  my  boy ; 
try  again.  Sit  down  and  think  a 
bit,  and  you'll  soon  be  able  to  do 
some  more — there's  a  brave  boy." 

"  But,"  said  the  boy,  with  a  su- 
perior air,  "  I  have  done  it  all." 

"  Done  the  whole  paper  1 "  ex- 
claimed the  parson,  fully  awake  to 
the  fact  that  he  himself,  in  his  very 
best  day,  could  never  have  accom- 
plished so  stupendous  a  feat  with 
such  apparent  ease  and  rapidity. 
"What  makes  you  so  awfully 
clever?"  said  the  grandson  to 
Father  William,  in  that  quaint 
book,  '  Alice  in  Wonderland.'  And 
some  such  thought  passed  through 
the  parson's  mind  as  he  stared  at 
that  self-satisfied  and  tallow-faced 
boy.  The  fond  father  had  indeed 
said  that  the  boy  was  sharp  enough, 
but  sharp  enough  was  only  a  feeble 
description  of  that  youthful  pro- 
digy who  could  reel  off  those  six- 
teen questions  in  little  over  half 
an  hour. 


1894.] 


More  about  the  Preparatory  School. 


51 


"You've  really  done  every  single 
question  1 "  interrogated  the  parson 
once  more. 

"  Oh  dear,  yes,"  was  the  cheery 
reply. 

There  was  clearly  nothing  more 
to  be  said :  the  paper  was  accepted, 
and  the  boy  dismissed  with  a  re- 
minder that  the  Latin  paper  would 
be  forthcoming  at  the  same  hour 
on  the  following  day. 

And  the  parson  was  left  alone 
with  the  paper.  Strictly  speaking 
— for  so  said  the  regulations — he 
ought  to  have  sealed  the  paper  up 
at  once  and  despatched  it  to  Lon- 
don. But  a  spirit  of  envious  curi- 
osity had  possessed  his  soul.  Why 
or  how  came  it  that  his  neighbour 
should  be  blessed  with  such  a 
genius  in  his  son  1  Why  should  that 
man  above  all  men  be  the  sire  of  a 
"natum  tali  ingenio  prseditum  "  ? 
It  was  unofficial,  of  course,  but 
there  could  be  no  harm  in  peeping 
— just  one  peep.  He  peeped  once 
and  again,  and  lo  !  the  whole  con- 
tents of  Pandora's  chest  were  re- 
vealed to  him.  The  gay  young 
arithmetician  had  evidently  studied 
reduction  to  some  purpose,  and 
had  offered  a  practical  illustration 
of  its  value  by  at  once  reducing 
that  lengthy  paper  to  some  four  or 
five  questions.  Troy  pounds,  quarts, 
pints,  miles,  and  feet,  had  been  ac- 
curately added  together,  reduced 
to  farthings,  and  then  subdivided 
by  another  lot  of  farthings,  the 
result  of  the  addition  of  pounds 
and  shillings  which  had  figured  in 
Question  I.  In  the  decimal  ques- 
tion the  silly  little  points  and  a 
few  preliminary  noughts  had  been 
eliminated  as  obviously  inserted 
"only  to  annoy,"  and  the  other 
figures  had  then  been  added  to- 
gether, and  also  called  farthings, 
to  be  in  their  turn  divided  by 
another  lot  of  farthings,  the  result 
of  two  long  questions  in  vulgar 
fractions.  And  any  apparent  diffi- 
culty in  producing  this  fourth 


batch  of  farthings  had  been  ob- 
viated by  the  simple  process  of 
removing  the  line  between  the 
numerator  and  denominator,  and 
putting  it  into  what  was  clearly 

the  proper  place  for  it, — sic  J  2 

3 

(ans.)  The  room  had  been  papered 
by  some  half-dozen  itinerant  hay- 
makers, who  had  figured  in  the 
proportion  sum,  and  had  been 
added  to  some  stray  weeks  and 
days  from  the  same  sum,  and 
their  forces  had  been  further  re- 
cruited by  some  ounces  and  penny- 
weights assisted  by  some  odd  pence 
and  farthings,  which,  had  formed 
the  burden  of  the  practice  sum. 
Then  this  large  army  having  been 
raised  for  the  express  purpose  of 
papering  that  room,  had  by  some 
enchanter's  wand  been  miracu- 
lously converted  into  inches,  and 
in  that  form  left  to  the  mercy  of 
the  examiner  to  retain,  disen- 
chant, or  further  convert  to  feet 
and  yards,  as  he  might  feel  in- 
clined. The  time  that  the  ship 
occupied  in  reaching  some  given 
place  from  Liverpool  being  clearly 
a  problem,  had  to  rest  contented 
with  the  verbal  answer,  "Some- 
where about  a  week." 

In  short,  if  regarded  from  the 
standpoint  of  an  ingenious  if 
somewhat  reckless  circumvention 
of  difficulties,  the  result  was  a 
masterpiece.  The  perusal  of  this 
work  of  art  so  far  upset  the  moral 
equilibrium  of  the  parson,  that  on 
the  following  day  he  took  a  cur- 
sory glance  at  the  Latin  paper, 
the  execution  whereof  had  been 
equally  speedy.  The  answer  to 
the  first  question  amply  repaid 
his  inquisitiveness : — 

"What  are  the  three  concords 
in  Latin?  Give  examples." 

"  The  first  concord  is  when  you 
put  an  accusative  case ;  the  second 
concord  is  when  you  put  a  verb 
instead  of  an  accusative  case ;  and 
the  third  concord  is  when  you  don't 


52 


More  about  the  Preparatory  School. 


[July 


put  either  a  verb  or  an  accusative 
case." 

Example  of  them,  "Balbus 
murum  sedifieabat."  Poor  little 
mortal !  in  that  "  Balbus  murum 
sedificabat "  was  possibly  comprised 
his  whole  knowledge  of  the  Latin 
language :  it  was  his  stock-in- 
trade,  in  virtue  whereof  the  fond 
father  fancied  that  he  had  sired 
a  Latin  scholar,  just  as  the  phrase 
"  Pax  vobiscum "  was  the  one 
thing  which  qualified  Wamba  and 
Cedric  the  Saxon  to  play  the 
friar. 

Whether  poor  little  tallow-face 
passed  his  examination,  the  kindly 
parson  never  had  the  courage  to 
inquire.  We  trow  not,  for  alas ! 
ingenuity  of  that  stamp  is  too 
often,  like  virtue,  its  own  re- 
ward. 

But  with  all  due  sympathy  for 
Paul  Dombey  as  well  as  for  that 
tallow-faced  boy,  we  may  not 
utterly  and  altogether  condemn 
Miss  Blimber's  time-table  —  and 
that  for  the  simple  reason  that 
it  bears  an  irritatingly  ridiculous 
resemblance  to  the  curriculum  of 
a  preparatory  school,  and  that  on 
the  minds  of  a  good  many  boys 
as  they  leave  these  establishments 
much  the  same  effect  in  the  way 
of  confused  impressions  may  have 
been  produced  as  existed  in  the 
mind  of  Paul  Dombey.  We  can, 
however,  plead  extenuating  cir- 
cumstances, and  say  that  we  are 
obliged  to  be  subservient  to  those 
higher  powers  the  Public  Schools. 
And  some  of  these,  if  we  may 
judge  from  the  papers  set  in  their 
entrance  examinations,  apparently 
favour  an  olla  -  podrida  of  un- 
digested knowledge  in  preference 
to  a  few  subjects  thoroughly 
known.  Indeed,  if  the  preparatory 
schoolmaster  is  to  take  a  fair 
place  in  the  competition  -  wallah, 
he  too,  like  Miss  Blimber,  must 
be  a  "forcer"  rather  than  a 
teacher.  We  will  not,  then,  wholly 


condemn  either  Miss  Blimber  or 
that  governess  who  is  forced  to  a 
certain  extent  to  take  her  for  a 
model  by  the  circumstance  that 
she  is  bound  to  carry  out  the 
wishes  of — dare  we  use  the  ex- 
pression 1 — an  injudicious  parent. 
With  all  due  humility  we  venture 
to  offer  to  the  parent  and  gov- 
erness our  own  idea  of  what  we 
should  like  a  boy  of  nine  to  be 
able  to  do  : — 

1.  To  read  an  easy  book  articu- 
lately and  with  intelligence,  and 
to  be  able  to  point  out  the  parts 
of  speech  of  every  word  in  a  short 
given  passage. 

2.  To  write  a  bold  round  hand, 
crossing  t's  and  dotting  i's ;  and  to 
be  sufficiently  up  in  the  laws  of 
spelling  to  do  a  simple   piece  of 
dictation  with  not  more  than  two 
mistakes  in  ten  lines. 

3.  To    know    his    tables,    and 
to   be   able  to    do  multiplication, 
addition,  division,  reduction,  sub- 
traction. 

"  But,"  says  the  mother  with 
conviction,  "  my  child  knows  all 
that  already."  If,  madam,  you 
have  taught  him  yourself,  or  even 
constantly  examined  him  yourself, 
we  may  accept  your  conviction. 
But  if  your  conviction  is  only 
based  on  a  governess's  report, 
pray  try  the  following  test.  Go  to 
some  hard-hearted  man,  a  school- 
master for  choice,  and  ask  him  to 
give  you  two  papers, — one  a  piece 
of  dictation  (and  in  addition  to 
doing  that  dictation,  he  must  name 
what  parts  of  speech  each  word  in 
the  first  ten  lines  is),  the  other  an 
easy  arithmetic  paper.  Shut  the 
boy  up  in  a  room  with  yourself, 
away  from  the  governess ;  put 
yourself  on  your  honour  not  to 
give  any  help,  far  less  to  peep  at 
the  answers  like  our  friend  the 
parson;  and  then  send  the  result 
off  to  the  hard-hearted  man;  and 
if  he  be  an  honest  as  well  as  a 
hard-hearted  friend,  his  opinion 


1894.] 


More  about  the  Preparatory  School. 


53 


will   have    more   weight   with   us 
than  your  conviction. 

Another  objection  we  can  easily 
anticipate  is,  that  nothing  has  been 
said  about  history  or  geography. 
To  this  we  would  answer,  that  to 
an  intelligent  child  no  story-book 
has  such  a  fascination  as  the  his- 
torical story-book ;  that  the  name 
of  these  is  legion ;  and  that  if  the 
selection  be  judiciously  made,  the 
child  will  learn  more  about  history 
than  at  his  age  he  would  ever  ex- 
tract from  a  dry  manual.  And 
we  will  add,  that  short  historical 
stories  told  by  word  of  mouth — 
and  who  can  tell  stories  of  this  sort 
better  than  an  educated  woman  ! — 
often  make  a  more  lasting  impres- 
sion on  a  child's  mind  than  any- 
thing he  reads  himself.  It  may  be 
a  somewhat  lazy  form  of  acquiring 
knowledge,  but  not  unfrequently 
the  same  feeling  of  curiosity  which 
leads  a  man  to  look  at  the  last 
page  of  a  novel  for  the  denoue- 
ment, will  make  a  child  search  out 
the  original  story  of  which  he 
has  heard  the  outlines.  So-called 
curiosity  in  a  child  may  be  appe- 
tite for  legitimate  as  well  as  ille- 
gitimate knowledge. 

We  will  suppose  that  the  boy  has 
satisfied  the  hard-hearted  friend, 
and  that  the  mother  is  triumphant. 
"There,"  she  says,  "I  told  you 
so."  Well  and  good,  madam.  In 
the  first  place,  we  congratulate 
you  on  your  governess,  and  would 
recommend  you  to  raise  her  salary, 
and  to  do  anything  in  your  power 
to  retain  her  until  all  your  boys 
have  gone  to  a  preparatory,  or,  as 
we  really  do  not  want  to  press  that 
point,  a  public  school.  And  in  the 
second  place,  we  congratulate  you 
on  being  the  mother  of  a  distinctly 
intelligent  child.  We  may  tell 
you  that  our  experience  has  gene- 
rally been  that,  if  we  asked  a  boy 
to  write  down  the  grammatical 
name  of  each  word  in  six  lines  of 
an  easy  book,  he  has  indeed  picked 


out  a  few  stray  nouns  or  verbs, 
and  here  and  there  an  adjective, 
but  that  beyond  these  three  his 
ideas  have  been  so  extremely  vague 
that  he  might  as  well  at  once  have 
been  armed  with  a  pepper-pot  full 
of  the  terms  "  conjunction,"  "  ad- 
verb," &c.,  and  scattered  the  con- 
tents broadcast  over  his  paper. 
And  we  may  add  that  to  this  day, 
pace  Mason,  Morris,  and  other  cele- 
brities, we  have  never  unearthed 
an  English  grammar  which  was 
the  slightest  help  to  a  dull  boy. 

A  Harrow  master  has  for  some 
years  past,  with  the  view  of  en- 
couraging a  knowledge  of  history 
in  preparatory  schools,  offered 
prizes  for  competition,  and  sent 
round  a  series  of  papers  A,  B,  C. 
A  is  for  all  competitors,  but  only 
a  boy  who  answers  A  well  is 
offered  paper  B,  and  only  a  select 
few  who  satisfy  the  examiner  in 
B  arrive  at  the  dignity  of  having 
their  names  printed  and  circulated 
and  being  allowed  to  enter  the 
final  stage  C. 

Let  us  employ  the  same  system, 
and  now,  as  our  young  disciple  has 
passed  the  qualifying  stage  A,  we 
will  promote  him  to  B. 

Let  us  then  allow  in  our  B  a 
little  more  advanced  history,  com- 
prising the  names  and  dates  of  the 
kings  and  queens  of  England,  in 
itself  a  good  effort  of  memory; 
some  idea  of  the  causes  of  our 
great  wars,  as  well  as  the  names 
of  the  principal  battles  and  com- 
manders ;  and  let  all  this  be  done 
with  the  aid  of  a  historical  atlas, 
which  shall  have  not  a  great 
many  names  marked,  but  simply 
the  names  of  the  really  important 
places.  And  let  him  once  a-week 
give  on  paper  in  his  own  language 
his  ideas  of  some  great  man,  and 
let  not  the  style  be  quite  so  laconic 
as  that  of  our  author  of  "  The  Life 
of  Moses." 

In  geography,  too,  he  should  be 
able  to  put  together  one  of  those 


54 


More  about  the  Preparatory  School. 


[July 


admirable  piece-maps  of  England  ence,  who  talk  glibly  of  our  long 
and  of  Europe,  which  will  give  holidays  and  short  hours,  and  at 
him  an  idea  of  the  position  of  the  same  time  have  only  a  very 
counties  and  countries,  while  as  hazy  notion  of  what  our  work 
an  exercise  of  memory  he  may  really  is.  Briefly,  then,  we  may 
learn  the  capitals  of  each.  say  that  our  hours  of  work  are 
And  in  this  stage  B,  as  he  has  from  sunrise  to  sunset,  and  then 
now  mastered  the  elements  of  his  from  sunset  to  sunrise  —  not  all 
own  language,  let  him,  if  you  like,  teaching  hours,  we  grant  you,  but 
go  on  to  French  and  to  Latin,  and  hours  every  one  of  them  in  which 
if  he  really  knows  the  verbs  avoir  a  matron  may  come  and  rouse  us 
and  etre  in  the  one,  and  the  declen-  from  our  light  slumber  to  tell  us 
sions  in  the  other,  he  may  be  sent  that  Master  Dombey  has  got  the 
to  a  preparatory  school  with  the  croup,  or  Master  Toots  has  de- 
perfect  certainty  that  he  is,  if  not  veloped  a  rash.  Light  our  slumbers 
more  apparently  advanced,  at  any  always  are ;  for  on  the  shoulders 

of   the   preparatory  schoolmaster, 


rate  more  thoroughly  grounded 
than  nine  -  tenths  of  the  new- 
comers he  will  meet  there. 

And  it  follows  that  to  map  out 
all  that  would  come  under  the 
heading  C,  would  be  for  us  a  work 
of  supererogation. 

But — oh,  how  often  have  we 
been  asked  that  question  ! — which 
style  of  Latin  pronunciation,  the 
new  or  the  old,  do  you  recom- 
mend? There  was  a  time  when 
that  question  really  and  truly  did 
excite  our  expectations  and  raise 
our  hopes.  Now,  alas  !  habit  and 
inurement  dictate  an  evasive 
answer;  for  when  that  question 
is  asked,  we  have  an  inward  con- 
viction amounting  almost  to  a 


from  the  very  first  to  the  very  last 
hour  of  the  school  term,  rests  that 
anxious  responsibility — the  care  of 
other  people's  children,  for  each 
one  of  whom  he  has  to  take,  in 
the  absent  parent's  interest,  more 
thought  and  more  precautions  than 
any  man  would  ever  dream  of  tak- 
ing for  his  own  child.  We  are  as 
a  class  far  less  dependent  on  the 
parents  than  the  parents  as  a  class 
are  upon  us.  The  coal  strike  lately 
paralysed  the  industry  of  the  coun- 
try :  a  combined  strike  of  prepara- 
tory schoolmasters  would  have  an 
even  more  startling  effect.  We 
are  quite  willing  that  for  the 
whole  year  round  the  parents 


certainty,  that  when  young  hope-     should  have  the   full   and   undis 


puted  benefit  of  the  society  of  that 
vivacious   young   gentleman,"  who 


ful  comes  to  school,  the  extent  of 
his  Latin  knowledge  will  be  two 
declension^  badly  learnt  and  badly  even  now  bores  "them  so  intensely 

before   the   end  of   the  vacation. 

But  whereas   in   the   present   for 


taught.  Provided  the  boy  can 
transcribe  mensa  and  annus  with- 
out a  single  mistake,  both  he  and  some  two-thirds  of  the  year  they 

choose  to  employ  our  agency,  and 


his    instructors    may,    so    far 
we  are  concerned,  pronounce  the 


are  often  careful  to  impress  upon 


words  in  any  way  their  fancy  may  us  their  own  views  of  what  boys 

W    *        i,  should  know  when  they  leave  our 

L  that  we  are  a  sort  of  care,  we  in  our  turn  have  ventured 

on  the  tree  of  civilisation,  to  give  some  idea  of  what  we  should 

•tares  at  least  as  much  of  other  like  the  boys  to  know  when  they 

peoj      i  necessities  as  of  our  own  first  come  to  us  :— 


that,  like  Ginx's  babies, 
we  are  not  even  cordially  accepted 
by  the  real  authors  of  our 


"Semper  ego  auditor  tantum?     Nun- 


rauci  Theseide  Codri  ?  " 


1894.] 


The  Protection  of  Wild  Birds, 


55 


THE    PEOTECTION    OF    WILD    BIRDS. 


THERE  are  on  view,  at  the  pres- 
ent time  of  writing,  at  Mr  Row- 
land Ward's  well-known  estab- 
lishment in  Piccadilly,  the  only 
two  full-grown  specimens  of  Rhino- 
ceros simus,  the  so-called  white  or 
square -mouthed  rhinoceros,  that 
have  ever  reached  this  country. 
Second  only  in  size  among  terres- 
trial mammals  to  the  elephant, 
the  immense  and  grotesque  frames 
of  these  old-world  creatures  are 
built  up  and  sustained  by  grass 
of  the  field,  and  might  be  pressed, 
one  would  say,  into  the  service  of 
the  Vegetarian  Society  as  notable 
examples  of  the  result  of  a  purely 
herbivorous  diet.  But,  in  truth, 
there  is  a  special  melancholy  in- 
terest connected  with  these  colossal 
forms,  for  the  stuffed  skins  and 
the  skeletons  which  once  sustained 
them  are  all  that  any  of  us  shall 
henceforward  see  of  a  remarkable 
race  of  our  fellow-creatures.  If  it  is 
not  yet  true  that  the  white  rhino- 
ceros is  no  more,  he  is  all  but  no 
more.  It  is  believed  that  in 
south-western  Africa  there  exist 
no  more  of  this  species  than  may 
be  numbered  on  the  fingers  of  one 
hand.  Over  these 

"Annihilation  waves  his  dusky  wing  ;" 

they  must  fall  before  the  insatiate 
butchers  who,  under  the  griev- 
ous misnomer  of  sport,  persecute 
those  rare  and  brave  animals  which 
come  under  the  head  of  "big 
game,"  and  the  white  rhinoceros, 
once  so  plentiful  in  one  corner  of 
the  mysterious  continent  of  Africa, 
must  share  the  fate  of  the  Ameri- 
can buffalo,  and  disappear  before 
improved  firearms  and  explosive 
bullets.  The  sole  survivor  of  na- 
tive British  big  game  is  the  red- 
deer,  which,  though  still  plentiful 
in  the  Highlands  and  Islands  of 


Scotland,  has  there  sadly  deterior- 
ated in  weight  of  body  and  spread 
of  horn,  owing  to  the  inclement 
regions  in  which  alone  it  finds  a 
refuge.  Besides  these,  there  are 
but  two  spots  in  the  British  isles 
where  this  noble  beast  still  lingers 
unconfined — Exmoor  and  Killar- 
ney. 

Meanwhile,  those  of  us  at  home 
who  may  divert  their  thoughts 
from  clamant  social  and  political 
problems  are  beginning  to  be  con- 
cerned about  the  impoverishment 
of  our  less  imposing  native  fauna. 
We  feel  that  somehow  our  wild 
birds  ought  to  receive  better  pro- 
tection, but  we  differ  greatly 
among  ourselves  as  to  the  means, 
or  even  the  possibility,  of  effecting 
this.  It  is  not  from  neglect  that 
they  are  suffering,  but  contrari- 
wise from  over-abundant  attention 
of  several  kinds. 

Some  hold  the  simple  faith  that 
the  most  desirable  end  is  that  wild 
birds  should  be  protected  from  ex- 
termination in  their  native  haunts, 
so  far  as  that  is  consistent  with 
the  requirements  of  an  ever-in- 
creasing population.  Others  find 
a  somewhat  selfish,  if  sympathetic, 
solace  in  the  care  of  captives,  and 
content  themselves  with  observa- 
tion of  their  habits,  so  far  as  these 
may  be  watched  through  the  wires 
of  a  cage;  while  a  third,  and,  it 
is  to  be  feared  an  increasing,  class 
regard  stuffing  the  empty  skins  as 
the  only  method  of  preservation 
worth  attention.  It  may  be  of 
interest  to  examine  how  far  the  ob- 
jects of  these  three  classes  may  be 
reconciled  and  regulated,  consist- 
ently with  due  regard  to  the  liberty 
of  the  subject.  This  liberty  is 
sometimes  lost  sight  of  in  the 
anxiety  of  those  who,  with  the 
best  intentions,  promote  schemes 


56 

of  legislation  of  which,  while  they 
see  the  merits,  they  are  insen- 
sible to  the  defects.  The  diffi- 
culty of  legislating  on  some  sub- 
jects is  often  inverse  to  its 
importance,  illustrating  the  old 
adage — De  minimis  non  curat  lex 

the  law  cannot  concern   itself 

with  trifles. 

The  most  satisfactory  outcome, 
so  far,  of  awakening  interest  in 
our  native  birds,  is  the  solicitude 
shown  by  certain  landowners  and 
others  for  the  protection  of  harm- 
less or  beneficent  species,  and  this 
has  lately  taken  concrete  form  in 
the  establishment  of  the  Society 
for  the  Protection  of  Birds.  This 
society  held  its  second  annual 
meeting  last  February,  and  the 
principal  subject  of  discussion  was 
the  bill  to  amend  and  extend  the 
Wild  Birds  Protection  Act  (1 880). 
This  bill  has  been  introduced  in 
four  successive  sessions  of  Parlia- 
ment. In  the  first  two  of  these 
years  it  was  in  charge  of  Mr  A. 
Pease  and  Sir  Edward  Grey;  in 
the  last  two  it  has  fallen  to 
Mr  J.  Pease  and  myself  to  con- 
duct it.  In  its  original  form 
the  bill  made  penal  the  killing 
of  certain  species,  named  in  a 
schedule,  in  any  part  of  the 
United  Kingdom.  Now,  the  wis- 
dom of  Parliament  may  be  held  to 
be  beyond  dispute,  but,  if  one  may 
speak  and  live,  it  is  neither  omni- 
scient nor  infallible;  and  to  lay 
down  a  hard-and-fast  rule  in  this 
matter,  equally  applicable  to  every 
district — to  the  woodlands  of  War- 
wickshire and  the  crags  of  Caith- 
ness, the  heaths  of  Surrey  and  the 
bogs  of  Connemara — would  be  to 
bring  the  wisdom  of  Parliament 
into  very  hazardous  repute.  Not 
only  do  districts  vary  materially 

their  character  and  avifauna, 
but  some  of  the  species  named  for 
protection  under  the  bill  of  1892, 
though  exceedingly  rare  in  some 


The  Protection  of  Wild  Birds. 


[July 


counties  at  the  present  time,  would 
become,  if  strictly  preserved,  in- 
conveniently common.  Eagles, 
kites,  buzzards,  peregrine  falcons 
and  merlins,  harriers  and  ravens 
(all  of  which  were  named  in  the 
schedule  of  Sir  Edward  Grey's 
bill),  are  objects  almost  as  un- 
familiar in  English  rural  scenes  as 
the  proverbial  black  swan  was  to 
the  Roman  populace  in  classical 
times ;  but  were  it  made  penal  to 
molest  them,  the  air  itself  w6uld  be 
darkened  with  these  birds  of  ravin. 
Grouse  (the  solitary  species  that 
we  can  claim  as  the  exclusive  pro- 
perty of  the  British  Isles)  would 
become  very  scarce,  and  the  price 
of  English  partridges  would  rise 
far  beyond  the  means  of  thousands 
of  householders  who  are  able  under 
present  conditions  to  number  the 
little  brown  bird  among  the  occa- 
sional luxuries  of  their  fare.  We 
should  be  called  on  to  sacrifice  not 
only  the  interests  of  field-sport, 
but  the  presence  in  numbers  of 
beautiful  and  edible  birds,  in  order 
to  secure  that  of  birds  equally  or 
more  beautiful,  but  valueless  to 
our  comfort.  Nor  is  that  all. 
Pastoral  industry  in  these  islands 
is  maintaining  a  mortal  struggle 
with  foreign  competitors.  How 
would  it  be  with  hill -farmers 
if  they  were  commanded  under 
pains  and  penalties  to  abstain 
from  defending  their  lambs  from 
the  cruel  assaults  of  eagles  and 
ravens'?  Clearly  it  would  be  a 
gross  act  of  tyranny  to  enact 
such  a  law. 

Howbeit,  as  these  proposals 
have  been  abandoned,  it  avails 
not  to  discuss  them  further, 
though  it  seems  well  to  point  out 
some  of  their  objectionable  fea- 
tures, lest,  as  may  happen,  they 
should  some  day  be  laid  again 
before  the  House  of  Commons 
when  that  assembly  is  in  one  of 
its  melting  moods. 


1894.] 


The  Protection  of  Wild  Birds. 


57 


Seeing,  then,  that  Parliament  is 
a  machine  too  little  sensible  of 
local  peculiarities  to  be  used  for 
the  adjustment  of  local  regulation 
of  this  matter,  it  has  naturally 
occurred  to  those  anxious  to  effect 
some  protection  for  rare  or  inter- 
esting species,  to  intrust  county 
councils  with  powers  to  apply  for 
prohibitive  orders  in  favour  of 
such  birds  as  those  best  acquainted 
with,  and  most  directly  interested 
in,  the  various  localities  may  deem 
it  desirable  to  protect. 

So  far  every  one,  or  almost 
every  one,  seems  agreed ;  but  then 
arises  the  difficult  question,  "What 
form  of  prohibition  would  prove  at 
once  most  effective  and  least  op- 
pressive ?  The  bill  introduced  into 
the  House  of  Commons  last  year 
took  up  the  subject  ab  ovo,  and 
was  an  Egg  Bill  pure  and  simple. 
It  provided  that  county  councils 
should  obtain  power  from  the  Sec- 
retary of  State  in  England  or  the 
Secretary  for  Scotland,  and,  in 
Ireland  (where  there  are  no  county 
councils),  quarter  sessions  should 
obtain  power  from  the  Lord  Lieu- 
tenant, to  prohibit  the  taking  of 
eggs  of  named  species  within  the 
area  of  their  jurisdiction  or  any 
part  thereof.  The  bill  passed 
through  all  its  stages  in  the  Com- 
mons with  the  hearty  assent  of  all 
parties,  with  this  further  provision 
added  in  Committee,  that  powers 
should  be  afforded  in  like  manner 
to  prohibit  the  capture  or  destruc- 
tion, during  part  or  the  whole  of 
the  year,  of  such  species  as  the 
county  councils  should  select  for 
protection.  It  was  not  until  the 
measure  came  to  be  considered  in 
the  less  emotional  atmosphere  of 
the  House  of  Lords  that  practical 
objections  presented  themselves  to 
these  proposals.  Ornithologists  of 
undoubted  repute  had  been  con- 
sulted, and  expressed  the  discour- 
aging view,  which  has  since  been 


indorsed  in  the  '  National  Review ' 
for  April  1894,  by  Lord  Lilford, 
who  holds  a  very  high  place  in 
natural  science,  and  whose  opin- 
ion cannot  fail  to  carry  great 
weight : — 

"  Some  few  of  us  may  identify  birds, 
but  I  think  that  I  shall  meet  with  the 
support  of  all  conscientious  ornitholo- 
gists when  I  say  that  not  one  of  them 
would  swear  to  the  specific  identity  of 
any  British  bird's  egg,  without  having 
clearly  identified  the  parent  bird,  as 
he  or  she  left  the  nest  that  contained 
it." 

It  must  be  hoped  that  this  state- 
ment admits  of  some  modification, 
seeing  that  the  existing  laws  pro- 
hibit the  taking  of  eggs  of  certain 
species  classed  as  game — pheasants, 
grouse,  partridge,  &c. 

Professor  Newton  ably  illus- 
trated the  difficulty  of  identification 
at  the  meeting  of  the  Society  for  the 
Protection  of  Birds.  Among  many 
other  examples  he  took  that  of  the 
ruff,  a  beautiful  bird  once  plentiful, 
now  all  but  extinct  on  the  British 
shores.  He  placed  three  eggs  be- 
fore the  audience,  one  of  a  reeve 
(the  female  of  the  ruff),  another  of 
a  redshank,  and  a  third  of  a  lap- 
wing, and  showed  how  closely  they 
resembled  each  other,  arguing 
therefrom  that,  in  order  to  protect 
the  eggs  of  the  reeve,  those  of  the 
redshank  and  lapwing,  both  com- 
mon species,  must  be  made  taboo 
also.  What  would  then  become 
of  the  supply  of  plover's  eggs? 
This  evidence,  and  much  more  like 
it,  must  go  far  to  convince  the  ad- 
vocates of  legislation  that  there  is 
so  much  variability  in  the  eggs  of 
a  single  species,  and  so  much  re- 
semblance between  the  eggs  of 
different  species,  as  often  to  make  it 
impossible  even  for  experts  to  pro- 
nounce with  confidence  upon  their 
identity  :  how  much  more  would  it 
be  beyond  the  power  of  rural  con- 


58 

stables  or  gamekeepers  to  speak 
with  authority ! 

The  House  of  Lords  took  this 
view  last  year,  and  striking  out 
the  provision  for  protecting  the 
eggs  of  species,  substituted  one  for 
the  total  prohibition  of  all  egg- 
taking  in  such  areas  as  county 
councils  might  specify.  Further, 
they  refused  to  give  powers  to 
these  local  authorities  to  prohibit 
the  capture  or  destruction  of  cer- 
tain species  of  birds,  but  inserted 
a  clause  to  enable  them  to  add 
such  birds  to  the  schedule  of  the 
original  Act,  whereby  they  should 
be  protected  during  the  nesting 
season.  But  in  thus  avoiding  one 
set  of  objections,  another  set,  al- 
most as  fatal  to  the  intention  of 
the  promoters  of  the  bill,  had  to 
be  encountered.  If  the  protection 
of  areas  were  adopted  in  lieu  of 
the  protection  of  the  eggs  of  select- 
ed species,  it  would  follow  that  in 
order  to  preserve  the  nests  of  in- 
teresting, useful,  or  rare  birds, 
all  other  birds,  however  common 
or  however  mischievous,  breeding 
within  the  protected  area,  would 
be  brought  under  the  segis  of  the 
law. 

Two  or  three  instances  will  suf- 
fice to  show  the  absurd  results 
that  might  ensue.  Suppose  the 
County  Council  of  London,  in- 
spired with  the  laudable  desire  of 
protecting  the  nests  of  nightingales 
on  Wimbledon  Common,  were  to 
obtain  powers  to  declare  that  place 
a  protected  area,  it  would  forth- 
with become  illegal  to  take  the 
eggs  of  any  bird  within  defined 
limits.  It  happens  that  one  of 
the  most  hurtful  and  least  orna- 
mental birds  in  the  British  list— 
the  carrion  crow— breeds  in  that 
neighbourhood,  and  has  greatly  in- 
creased in  numbers  of  late  years, 
t  is  a  greedy  and  cruel  marauder, 
and  it  would  be  a  most  undesirable 
result  of  legislation  that  it  should 


The  Protection  of  Wild  Birds. 


[July 


be  allowed  to  multiply  unchecked. 
It  would  be  equally  unreasonable 
to  foster  unduly  the  common 
house  -  sparrow,  which  is  in  no 
danger  of  extinction,  and  does 
infinite  damage  in  villa  gardens; 
yet  both  these  species  would  be 
sacred  within  the  protected  area. 

Again,  —  suppose  the  County 
Council  of  Northumberland  were 
resolved  to  protect  the  kingfisher 
(and  who  but  collectors  or  school- 
boys would  find  it  in  their  hearts 
to  gainsay  such  a  merciful  pro- 
ject ?),  would  it  not  be  utterly  un- 
reasonable to  forbid  the  taking  of 
all  eggs  on  the  banks  of  streams 
frequented  by  kingfishers  ? 

Now,  take  a  case  from  a  more 
remote  portion  of  the  realm.  In 
Foula,  one  of  the  Shetland  Isles, 
and  one  or  two  other  remote  spots 
in  that  region,  there  still  exist 
colonies  of  the  great  skua  or 
bonxie.  The  rarity  of  their  eggs 
has  brought  them  into  great  de- 
mand with  collectors,  and  the 
natives  of  these  islands  derive  a 
good  profit  from  their  sale.  But 
the  skua  that  lays  these  golden 
eggs  is  in  some  danger  of  extinc- 
tion by  reason  of  the  indiscrimin- 
ate rapacity  of  the  islanders.  Who, 
indeed,  shall  blame  the  poor  fellows 
for  taking  advantage  of  this  means 
of  adding  to  their  slender  incomes? 
but  it  were  better,  in  their  own  in- 
terest, that  some  check  should  be 
set  upon  wholesale  robbery  of  the 
nests,  or  the  day  will  come  when 
the  source  of  profit  will  cease  al- 
together, and  the  British  fauna  be 
deprived  of  a  very  interesting  bird. 
Last  year,  it  is  said  that  not  a 
single  chick  was  hatched  in  Foula; 
every  egg  was  taken  and  sold  to 
collectors :  and  now  there  are  in 
the  islands  less  than  one  hundred 
pairs  of  bonxies  to  carry  on  the 
stock.  The  eggs  will  be  taken 
each  season,  and  some  day  bird- 
lovers  will  have  to  mourn  the  ir- 


1894.] 


The  Protection  of  Wild  Birds. 


59 


reparable  fact  that  the  bonxie  has 
shared  the  fate  of  the  great  auk. 
This  is  just  one  of  those  cases 
which  cause  people  to  look  to  the 
Legislature  to  do  something;  but 
it  is  also  one  of  those  cases  in 
which  the  protection  of  an  area 
would  be  impracticable,  or,  in  so 
far  as  it  might  prove  practicable, 
tyrannical.  It  would  probably  be 
impracticable,  or  next  door  to  im- 
practicable, because  of  the  diffi- 
culty of  enforcing  such  a  law  in 
so  remote  a  district  as  Foula ;  and 
it  would  certainly  be  tyrannical, 
because,  to  prohibit  all  egg-taking 
in  Foula,  where  the  annual  egg- 
harvest  is  essential  to  the  subsist- 
ence of  the  natives,  would  be  to 
inflict  a  grievous  hardship  on  the 
people. 

It  would  almost  seem,  therefore, 
as  if  the  alternative  means  of  pro- 
tection afforded  under  the  bill  in  its 
present  shape — the  protection  of 
species  and  the  protection  of  areas 
— were  equally  unworkable.  There 
remains  this  objection  common  to 
both  of  them,  that  the  persons 
who  are  at  the  root  of  the  mis- 
chief— the  professional  collectors 
— would  not  be  much  affected, 
and  the  offenders  most  easily  over- 
taken would  be  the  last  whom  any 
one  would  wish  to  punish.  So 
long  as  birds  persist  in  laying  at- 
tractive eggs  at  the  sweetest  season 
of  the  year,  so  long  will  bird-nest- 
ing prove  irresistible  to  school- 
boys, and  no  matter  how  the  pro- 
hibited species  or  prohibited  areas 
were  marked  off,  it  would  be  school- 
boys who  would  be  pounced  upon 
by  the  constable  or  gamekeeper. 
Experts  in  ornithology  are  not 
more  commonly  found  upon 
county  councils  than  in  other  as- 
semblies; it  would  not,  probably, 
be  the  rarest  and  most  valuable 
species  that  would  receive  atten- 
tion, but  familiar  song-birds — the 
thrush,  the  robin,  and  the  chaf- 


finch —  universal  favourites,  and 
deservedly  so,  but  absolutely  be- 
yond present  need  of  protection. 
To  such  as  these  we  are  under  no 
debt  which  may  not  be  cancelled 
by  a  supply  of  crumbs,  bones,  and 
kitchen  scraps  in  hard  weather ; 
because,  having  almost  wiped  out 
of  existence  the  sparrow-hawk  and 
others  of  their  enemies,  they  are 
present  with  us  in  far  greater  num- 
bers than  they  could  ever  have  been 
had  we  not  interfered  to  their  ad- 
vantage with  the  balance  of  nature. 
For  the  third  main  provision 
of  this  bill,  enabling  county  coun- 
cils, with  the  approval  of  the 
Secretary  of  State,  to  add  selected 
species  to  the  schedule  of  the  or- 
iginal Act,  thereby  affording  them 
a  close-time  in  the  breeding  season, 
there  is  more  to  be  said  ;  but  it 
must  be  admitted  that  this  would 
be  but  a  sorry  survival  from  what 
was  originally  an  Egg  Bill.  There 
is  little  doubt  that,  had  the  county 
councils  of  the  Scottish  Border 
counties  possessed  this  power,  they 
would,  during  the  plague  of  voles 
which  devastated  their  upland 
pastures  in  1891  and  1892,  have  de- 
creed the  preservation  of  kestrels 
and  owls  of  all  sorts,  nor  is  it  likely 
that  the  interests  of  game-pre- 
servers would  have  suffered  much 
under  the  edict.  It  is  true  that 
the  useful  kestrel  does  occasionally, 
in  individual  cases,  fall  into  de- 
praved habits,  and  frequent  the 
coops  where  young  pheasants  are 
being  reared.  Owls,  also,  are  not 
above  suspicion  in  that  respect. 
But  these  are  exceptions  to  the 
regular  habits  of  these  birds,  and 
the  good  they  effect  in  devouring 
vermin  immensely  outweighs  the 
mischief.  The  fox  is  treated  with 
consideration  by  game -preservers 
in  hunting  countries,  because  of 
his  service  to  the  noble  science : 
not  less  considerate  should  sports- 
men show  themselves  to  these 


60 

birds,  so  helpful  to  farmers;  for 
all  wild  sports  must  come  to  an 
end  unless  a  generous  system  of 
give  and  take  be  maintained  be- 
tween sportsmen  and  agricul- 
turists. It  is  a  platitude  often 
uttered  at  Agricultural  Society 
dinners,  that  the  interests  of  land- 
lord and  tenant  are  identical. 
This  is  as  far  from  being  the  case 
as  it  is  in  any  kind  of  barter  or 
commercial  transaction,  but  it  is 
quite  true  that  these  interests  are 
so  inextricably  interwoven  that  a 
good  understanding  between  par- 
ties is  essential  to  the  weal  of 
both. 

The  Departmental  Commit- 
tee appointed  by  the  Board  of 
Agriculture  to  inquire  into  the 
vole  plague  received  overwhelming 
evidence  in  support  of  the  good 
work  done  by  mouse-eating  birds  ; 
but  they  also  heard  a  great  deal 
more  than  was  proved  to  be  trust- 
worthy. The  origin  and  develop- 
ment of  the  scourge  of  voles  in 
Scotland  had  been  commonly  attri- 
buted to  the  destruction  of  birds 
of  prey  by  gamekeepers,  but  in 
the  course  of  the  inquiry  that  idea 
was  shown  to  be  utterly  unfounded. 
Not  only  do  the  chronicles  show 
that  from  the  earliest  times  of 
which  there  is  any  record,  long 
before  small-game-preserving  was 
carried  out  in  the  modern  sense, 
both  in  this  and  other  lands,  un- 
accountable swarms  of  small  ro- 
dents have  suddently  appeared  and 
disappeared  as  suddenly ;  but  when 
the  Committee  visited  the  plains 
of  Thessaly,  which  in  1892  and 
3  were  devastated  by  an  out- 
break of  voles,  they  found  that 
the  plague  had  arisen  in  the  pres- 
ence of  innumerable  kites,  buzzards, 
kestrels,  and  other  mouse-eatino- 
birds,  which  nobody  cares  to  mo- 
t  in  that  country.  Neverthe- 
less, the  presence  of  such  birds  in 
moderate  numbers  will  undoubted- 


The  Protection  of  Wild  Birds. 


[July 


ly  mitigate,  and  possibly  in  some 
cases  altogether  avert,  such  visita- 
tions. 

To  return  to  the  problem  of  how 
the  eggs  of  desirable  species  may 
be    protected   without    tyrannical 
interference  with  rural  liberty,  it 
must  be  confessed  that  the  right 
method    does    not    yet    seem    to 
have    been    devised ;    and    prob- 
ably   no     more     likely     solution 
of   the   difficulty  is   to   be   found 
than  that  suggested  by  Mr  Digby 
Pigott  in  a  recent  letter  to  the 
1  Times ' — namely,  that  landowners 
should  enjoy  as  much  right  to  pro- 
tect eggs  laid  on  their  ground  as 
they  have  to  protect  gooseberries 
growing  in  their  gardens.      That 
might  be  effective  in  a  few  isolated 
instances.     It  would  provide  some 
safeguard  for  the  only  two  eyries 
of  the  osprey  which  are  still  fre- 
quented in  the  Highlands  of  Scot- 
land, and  it  would  meet  the  views 
of  a  proprietor  of  one  of  the  West- 
ern Isles,  who,  being  laudably  anx- 
ious  to   preserve   the   eyrie   of  a 
pair  of  white -tailed  eagles  which 
breed  annually  on  his  land,  finds 
his    desire    frustrated    year   after 
year  by  the  eagerness  with  which 
the  eggs  are  sought  after,  owing 
to  the  high  price  given  for  them 
by   collectors.      Well-known   and 
well-marked   species  like   the  os- 
prey and  sea -eagle  might  benefit 
by  these  means,  but  less  conspicu- 
ous, though  to  the  naturalist  not 
less  interesting,  birds  would  hardly 
be  in  a  position  of  greater  security. 
Few  landowners  have  acquainted 
themselves  with   any  except   the 
most    conspicuous    birds    visiting 
their  woods  and  fields.     They  are 
scarcely,   as  a   class,   qualified   to 
administer  prohibitive  powers  in 
this  matter  with  discretion.    More- 
over, a  very  large  number  of  them 
are   absent   from    their  homes  at 
the  critical  season  of  the  year. 
In  addition  to  all  these  objec- 


1894.] 


The  Protection  of  Wild  Birds. 


61 


tions,  there  remains  the  physical 
difficulty  of  protecting  those  birds 
which  breed  in  solitary  or  desolate 
places.  Probably  no  British  bird 
undergoes  at  the  present  time 
more  unmerited  persecution  than 
the  red-legged  chough.  His  eggs 
bring  a  good  price,  and  so  does 
his  body,  dead  or  alive,  for  none 
makes  a  more  engaging  captive 
than  the  bird  of  St  Columba.  He 
is  already  under  the  shelter  of  the 
Act  of  1880 ;  but  inasmuch  as  his 
haunts  are  the  lonely  cliffs  of  the 
west,  the  law  is  practically  a  dead 
letter,  for  there  is  no  one  at  hand 
to  enforce  it.  The  result  is  that 
this  harmless  and  attractive  bird 
is  becoming  annually  more  scarce, 
and  is  in  proximate  danger  of  ex- 
tinction. And  if  it  has  proved 
thus  impossible  to  protect  the 
parent  birds,  how  much  more 
difficult  it  would  be  to  protect 
their  eggs.  Nesting  as  they  do 
on  the  same  rocks  as  their  vulgar 
cousins  the  jackdaws,  who  is  to 
restrain  the  hand  which  does  use- 
ful service  in  clutching  the  eggs 
of  the  daws  from  seizing  those  of 
the  choughs'? 

On  the  whole,  therefore,  it  would 
seem  that  all  these  benevolent 
schemes  are  foredoomed  to  failure, 
because  none  of  them  touches  the 
root  of  the  evil — the  professional 
collector.  Not  that  he  is  morally 
to  blame;  he  is  but  earning  his 
livelihood,  and  will  continue  to  do 
so  as  long  as  amateurs  are  so 
thoughtless  as  to  offer  long  prices 
for  British  specimens.  It  is  a 
loftier  ambition,  perhaps,  to  pos- 
sess a  complete  collection  of  the 
eggs  of  British  birds  than  to  be 
the  owner  of  volumes  of  damaged 
postage -stamps  :  the  associations 
connected  with  the  egg-cabinet  are 
more  romantic  than  those  of  the 
stamp- album  ;  but  it  does  not  fol- 
low that  one  pursuit  is  more  intel- 


lectual than  the  other.  The  in- 
stinct of  annexation  and  the  ex- 
citement of  competition  are  in 
most  cases  the  ruling  incentive. 
Science  must  be  served  by  com- 
plete collections  in  museums,  but 
most  private  cabinets  of  eggs  serve 
no  higher  purpose  than  recreation, 
and  for  one  amateur  oologist  who 
has  by  observation  contributed  a 
single  fact  to  the  knowledge  of 
natural  history,  there  are  hun- 
dreds who  affect  no  perceptible 
result  except  the  impoverishment 
of  the  native  fauna.  It  is  de- 
voutly to  be  wished  that  they 
would  direct  their  attention  to  old 
china  or  mineralogy. 

Even  more  mischievous  is  the 
eagerness  for  having  stuffed  speci- 
mens. It  is  a  just  joy  that  the 
owner  of  land  feels  when  he  has 
become  the  temporary  host  of 
some  rare  visitant,  which  has 
lighted  in  his  woods  or  on  his 
waters ;  and  if  he  is  a  true  lover 
-  of  nature,  the  very  last  act  he  will 
dream  of  is  to  aim  at  it  anything 
more  deadly  than  a  spy -glass. 
For  him  it  is  reward  enough  to 
record  the  fact,  with  satisfactory 
evidence  of  manner,  time,  and 
place.  This  ought  always  to  be 
done;  but  too  often  it  is  other- 
wise. The  eagle  draws  notice  to 
himself  by  his  noble  flight  and 
bearing;  the  bittern  is  betrayed 
by  his  resounding  boom ;  the  hoo- 
poe or  golden  oriole  are  irresistible 
in  their  gay  plumage  :  season  after 
season  one  has  to  read  of  the  cruel 
reception  awarded  to  such  strag- 
glers ;  and  it  is  deplorable  vanity, 
not  patriotic  pride,  with  which 
the  victims  are  afterwards  dis- 
played, as  if  their  fate  reflected 
lustre  on  the  local  magnate.  As 
long  as  this  is  so,  the  professional 
collector  will  be  on  the  alert,  and 
Lord  Lilford  has  drawn  timely 
attention  to  an  additional  incen- 
tive which  is  offered  to  him. 


62 

People  with  some  pretension,  it 
must  be  supposed,  to  serving 
science,  will  actually  pay  far  more 
for  specimens  of  certain  birds 
killed  in  Britain  than  for  those 
obtained  in  countries  where  they 
are  more  plentiful.  For  this  there 
is  not  a  shadow  of  excuse.  The 
skin  of  a  hoopoe  is  the  skin  of  a 
hoopoe,  whether  the  bird  be  certi- 
fied to  have  been  shot  in  Kent, 
where  it  is  an  exceedingly  rare 
visitant,  or  in  France,  where  it 
is  of  frequent  occurrence.  What 
reason,  therefore,  can  there  be  in 
offering  for  the  first  four  times 
the  price  that  is  given  for  the 
second?  But  such  are  the  ways 
of  amateur  collectors,  and  until 
they  become  more  intelligent  there 
will  always  be  found  folk  in- 
dustrious to  serve  them. 

Long  ago  John  Ruskin  sounded 
the  coronach  over  the  last  small 
white  egret  killed  in  England  in 
1840.  He  compared  its  feathers 
to  the  "  frostwork  of  dead  silver  " ; 
it  resembled  a  "  living  cloud  rather 
than  a  bird."  A  labouring  man 
bludgeoned  it  to  death,  rolled  it 
up  with  blood  and  black  mud  in 
his  handkerchief,  and  sold  it  to 
the  local  bird-stuffer.  What  penal 
enactment  could  have  saved  it1? 
Not  less  shameful  was  the  treat- 
ment dealt  out  to  another  beautiful 
summer  resident,  the  black  tern, 
which  Pennant  described  in  1769 
as  frequenting  parts  of  Lincoln- 
shire in  great  flocks,  and  almost 
deafening  him  with  their  clamour. 
As  late  as  1818,  Richard  Lubbock 
recorded  that  it  bred  in  myriads 
near  Acle,  in  Norfolk.  There  is 
silence  now  where  the  joyful  clam- 
our once  was  :  the  terns  have  been 
massacred.  The  last  pair  bred  at 
Button,  in  Norfolk,  in  1858 ;  their 
eggs  were  taken,  and  the  parent 
birds  were  shot. 

Colonel  Coulson  told  another 
sorrowful  story  at  the  meeting  of 


The  Protection  of  Wild  Birds. 


[July 


the  Society  for  the  Protection  of 
Birds  :— 

"A  few  months  ago  we  were 
visited  by  a  flock  of  twenty -four 
wild  swans.  They  descended  on  our 
wild  and  beautiful  Northumberland 
lakes,  but  barely  had  they  got  there 
when  the  cry  went  forth  announcing 
their  arrival,  and  everybody  who 
could  get  a  gun  went  out,  even  on 
Sunday  morning,  and  every  available 
day  was  spent  in  worrying  and  de- 
stroying these  poor  swans  until  there 
was  no  longer  any  trace  left  of  them." 

The  murder  of  these  four-and- 
twenty  peerless  birds  may  have 
afforded  a  spasm  of  triumph  to 
four -and -twenty  gunners;  but  if 
people  were  trained  to  see  in  a 
flight  of  wild  swans  one  of  the 
noblest  spectacles  in  animated 
nature,  enjoyment  of  a  far  purer 
and  more  lasting  kind  might  have 
been  shared  by  four-and-twenty 
thousand  Northumbrians. 

How  is  such  knowledge  to  be 
imparted?  Not  by  the  action  of 
Parliament,  but,  if  in  any  way, 
by  the  missionary  enterprise  of 
such  a  Society  as  that  for  the 
Protection  of  Birds.  It  exists 
for  the  purpose  of  persuading 
people  that  there  is  a  better  way 
of  receiving  winged  visitants  than 
with  powder  and  lead ;  that  it 
were  greatly  more  to  the  credit 
of  our  people  that  swans  should 
come  and  go  with  never  a  blood- 
stain on  their  spotless  plumes. 
Let  every  one  who  sighs  over  the 
destruction  of  harmless  animals 
become  a  member  of  this  excellent 
Society,  which  he  may  do  by  for- 
warding half-a-crown  to  the  secre- 
tary, Mrs  F.  E.  Lemon,  Hillcrest, 
Redhill,  Surrey. 

Besides  the  actual  slayers  and 
purchasers  of  the  slain,  there  re- 
mains a  very  numerous  class  of 
amateurs  who  contribute  in  some 
measure  to  the  molestation  of 
British  wild  birds,  though  not  in 


1894. 


The  Protection  of  Wild  Birds, 


63 


the  same  degree  to  the  extermina- 
tion of  rare  species  as  the  collec- 
tors of  eggs  and  skins.  This  is 
the  class  comprising  all  who  keep 
birds  in  cages, — from  the  owner 
of  the  well -tended,  scientifically 
ordered  aviary,  down  to  the  hum- 
ble householder  in  a  back  slum 
who  takes  pleasure  in  the  song 
of  a  caged  lark.  It  is  an  un- 
grateful task  to  speak  harshly  of 
any  member  of  this  class,  for  so 
keen  is  the  delight  afforded  by  the 
care  of  winged  captives  to  many  of 
those  whose  delights  are  few,  that 
to  secure  this  enjoyment  it  may 
seem  a  light  matter  to  deprive  even 
these,  the  freest  of  living  creatures, 
of  their  liberty.  Nevertheless,  it 
must  be  owned  that  in  order  to 
keep  up  the  enormous  supply  of 
cage  -  birds  called  for  in  this 
country,  a  vast  amount  of  suffer- 
ing is  brought  upon  the  fowls  of 
the  air.  It  may  be  admitted  at 
once  that  this  traffic  has  very  little 
effect  upon  the  numbers  of  really 
rare  birds  in  this  island.  The 
ranks  of  larks  and  finches  are  re- 
plenished by  each  annual  migra- 
tion; and  although  one  may  feel 
justly  indignant  when  the  pretty 
goldfinches  disappear  from  a  fav- 
ourite common,  to  reappear  in  very 
cramped  quarters  in  the  dealer's 
shop,  still  there  is  consolation  in 
the  thought  that  the  effect  on  .the 
general  stock  in  the  country  is 
hardly  appreciable.  The  instinct 
of  the  collector  when  he  comes 
upon  a  really  rare  bird  is  not  to 
catch  and  cage  it,  but  to  shoot  and 
skin  it. 

It  is  from  a  humanitarian  point 
of  view  that  the  matter  is  so 
sorrowful,  and  this  is  the  view 
which,  it  is  hoped,  some  of  those 
who  keep  cage-birds  may  be  in- 
duced to  realise.  These  persons, 
of  course,  consist  of  two  classes : 
first,  those  who  may  either  be  the 
masters  of  magnificent  and  well- 


managed  aviaries,  or  possess  no 
more  than  a  few  tame  pets,  which 
are  assiduously  and  intelligently 
tended,  with  ceaseless  regard  to 
their  comfort  and  habits ;  second, 
those  who  like  never  to  be  without 
cage-birds  in  their  houses,  but  keep 
them,  as  goldfish  are  kept  in  crystal 
globes,  merely  as  elegant  ornaments 
or  for  the  enjoyment  of  their  song. 
Persons  in  the  first  class  shall  have 
little  laid  to  their  charge  ;  indeed, 
experts,  such  as  Lord  Lilford,  who 
maintain  large  collections  of  living 
birds  at  great  expense,  are  per- 
forming a  service  to  science  which 
can  hardly  be  overestimated.  But 
it  is  incumbent  on  those  who  keep 
winged  creatures  in  captivity 
merely  for  their  own  amusement 
to  atone  by  sedulous  kindness  for 
this  insuperable  initial  objection  to 
the  practice,  that  it  involves  de- 
priving them  of  the  use  of  the 
special  faculty  distinguishing  birds 
from  all  other  warm-blooded  ani- 
mals— the  power  of  flight.  If  the 
enjoyment  of  life  to  all  animals 
consists  in,  or  depends  on,  the 
exercise  of  natural  faculties,  it  is 
difficult  to  see  how  birds,  forbidden 
to  exercise  their  distinguishing 
gift,  can  be  otherwise  than  un- 
happy. How  would  it  be  with  a 
pair  of  human  creatures  who,  hav- 
ing fallen  into  the  power  of  a  being 
of  immeasurably  greater  strength 
and  intelligence  than  themselves, 
should  be  lodged  and  fed,  caressed 
and  protected,  by  him  with  unceas- 
ing care,  but  should  nevertheless 
be  prisoners,  prohibited  from  travel 
or  visits  to  friends,  and,  in  order 
the  better  to  guard  against  their 
escape,  be  deprived  of  the  power 
of  articulate  speech  ?  Would  not 
every  reasonable  man  or  woman 
prefer  speedy  death  to  long  life 
under  such  conditions  1  Yet  this 
would  not  be  greater  punishment 
in  proportion  than  is  inflicted  on 
every  wild  bird  committed  to  cap- 


64 

tivity.  The  great  majority  of  birds 
are  more  or  less  subject  to  the 
seasonable  migratory  impulse  :— 
"Yea,  the  stork  in  the  heaven 
knoweth  her  appointed  times ;  and 
the  turtle  and  the  crane  and  the 
swallow  observe  the  time  of  their 
coming."  Who  shall  gauge  the 
amount  of  mute  misery  that  racks 
the  little  hearts  of  such  birds  as 
the  skylark  or  the  nightingale, 
when  obedience  to  this  imperious 
and  immemorial  influence  is  denied 
them  ?  "What  exile  from  his  coun- 
try has  ever  fretted  more  hope- 
lessly than  the  pair  of  snow-bunt- 
ings which  Bechstein  says  he  kept 
for  six  years  in  his  room  1  "  During 
the  night,"  he  says,  "they  seem 
very  uneasy,  hopping  and  running 
about  continually."  These  pretty 
little  birds  generally  languish  and 
die  in  captivity  from  heat ;  all  pos- 
sible precautions  that  may  be  taken 
to  keep  them  cool  are  but  trivial 
palliatives  to  creatures  which  natu- 
rally spend  the  summer  among  the 
icy  wastes  and  frozen  seas  of  the 
Arctic  circle.  To  keep  them  pent 
in  the  stuffy  atmosphere  of  a  town 
is  an  act  as  stupid  and  unfeeling 
in  its  degree  as  it  would  be  to 
export  children  from  Lochaber  to 
be  reared  in  Sierra  Leone. 

Such  reflections  as  these  seldom 
enter  the  heads  of  the  possessors 
of  caged  pets ;  but  it  does  not  re- 
quire a  very  elaborate  mental  effort 
to  realise  that  abundant  food,  al- 
though it  is  the  first,  is  not  the 
only  element  in  the  happiness  of 
bird-life.  The  merle  and  throstle, 
typical  grove-haunters,  delight  in 
the  cool  green  brake  and  lush 
woodland  grass;  the  skylark  and 
pipit  love  the  free  air  of  the  moor 
and  the  aunny  expanse  of  meadow : 
it  is  not  possible  to  suppose  that, 
hung  on  the  brick  wall  of  a  London 
mews,  or  confined  in  the  dreary, 
dusty  atmosphere  of  a  street,  they 
do  not  pine  to  regain  their  native 


The  Protection  of  Wild  Birds. 


[July 


scenes.  Lord  Lilford  says  he  has 
not  the  heart  to  grudge  to  hard- 
worked  men  and  women  the  acqui- 
sition of  a  goldfinch  or  a  linnet, 
because  of  the  intense  delight 
afforded  by  the  possession  of  such 
a  pet  to  people  pent  in  crowded 
quarters.  Well,  I  confess  my  sym- 
pathy is  with  the  bird.  The  de- 
light it  affords  its  captors  arises 
from  association  with  the  green- 
wood and  the  open  field,  dearer 
to  the  little  prisoner  than  to  its 
gaolers,  but  which  it  is  doomed  to 
see  never  more  —  surely  a  selfish 
delight  at  best.  The  simple  fact 
that  the  little  cages  in  which  sky- 
larks are  imprisoned  are  provided 
with  linen  tops,  to  prevent  these 
birds  injuring  their  heads  by  their 
irresistible  tendency  to  soar,  is 
full  of  painful  suggestion.  It  is 
tyranny  of  the  kind  that  would 
tether  a  child's  legs  to  prevent 
him  running  and  jumping. 

But  here  is  a  still  more  mourn- 
ful consideration.  Of  all  wild 
warm-blooded  animals,  birds  are 
least  subject  to  disease  while  at 
liberty.  Bechstein,  the  acknow- 
ledged authority  on  caged  birds, 
is  obliged  to  admit  that — 

"all  tame  animals  are  much  more 
subject  to  disease  than  wild  ones  ;  and 
birds  so  much  the  more,  as  they  are 
often  shut  up  in  very  small  cages, 
where  they  can  take  no  exercise." 

Pip,  rheum,  atrophy,  consump- 
tion, asthma,  disease  of  the  gland 
which  supplies  the  cosmetic  oil 
wherewith  the  bird  anoints  its 
feathers,  epilepsy,  diseases  of  the 
feet  and  pairing  fever,  are  some 
of  the  ills  to  which  birds  in  con- 
finement are  specially  liable  \  and 
although  owners  generally  exhibit 
plenty  of  anxiety  to  cure  the 
maladies  of  their  captives,  not 
one  in  fifty  possesses  the  requisite 
knowledge  of  their  wants  to  avert 
them.  Indeed,  no  amount  of  fore- 


1894.] 


The  Protection  of  Wild  Birds. 


65 


thought  avails  to  protect  some 
birds  from  disease  and  death, 
which  are  the  inevitable  con- 
sequence of  captivity  to  certain 
species.  Bechstein  declared  that 
with  every  attention  and  the 
greatest  care  he  had  never  known 
a  single  instance  of  a  golden  oriole 
surviving  captivity  more  than 
three  or  four  months.  Probably 
the  instinct  of  migration  is  so 
strong  in  these  and  other  birds, 
or  their  innate  longing  for  their 
natural  surroundings  of  foliage, 
herbage,  or  rocks  so  unconquer- 
able, that  they  succumb  to  what 
may  be  justly  described  as  a 
broken  heart. 

When  a  bird's  constitution  is 
so  strong,  or  his  spirit  so  stout, 
as  to  resist  the  depressing  effects 
of  imprisonment,  it  is  possible 
that  compensation  for  what  he 
has  lost  in  liberty  may  have  been 
made  in  part  by  security  and 
plentiful  food.  The  eagles  have 
been  driven  from  their  immemorial 
eyries  in  the  Galloway  hills.  The 
last  golden  eagles  were  destroyed 
there  about  1834,  the  last  ernes 
about  1862.  But  of  the  last- 
named  species  there  still  remains 
at  Cairnsmore  a  solitary  descen- 
dant. For  forty  years  this  bird 
has  been  chained  to  a  stake :  he 
eats,  he  sleeps,  he  keeps  his  health, 
yet  I,  for  one,  cannot  endure  the 
hate  that  burns  in  his  fierce  eye, 
and  his  hoarse  voice  seems  charged 
with  curses  on  tyrant  man,  who 
has  massacred  his  kindred  and 
condemned  him  to  ignoble  cap- 


tivity. It  must  be  left  to  each 
one  to  decide  for  himself  whether 
the  lot  of  this  bird  is  more  to  be 
desired,  or  more  creditable  to  his 
captors,  than  if  he  had  been  done 
to  death  with  the  others.  The 
eagle  is  not  of  a  nature  like  the 
daw  or  the  magpie  or  the  parrot, 
which  can  humble  themselves  to 
become  the  companions  of  man. 
There  is  a  long-standing  vendetta, 
dating  perhaps  from  the  days  of 
Ganymede,  between  the  king  of 
birds  and  the  lord  of  creation. 
Men  and  eagles  must  always 
be  enemies;  but  it  is  pleasant  to 
think  that,  in  some  parts  of  the 
Highlands,  means  have  been  found 
to  establish  an  honourable  truce 
between  them. 

There  is  no  writer  more  sym- 
pathetic with  his  subject  than 
Bechstein  :  he  was  filled  with  in- 
telligent affection  for  his  favour- 
ites, yet  even  he  could  not  disguise 
the  suffering  entailed  upon  ani- 
mated nature  by  the  traffic  in 
birds.  The  most  sorrowful  chap- 
ter in  his  book  is  that  which 
prescribes  the  methods  of  catching 
wild  birds.  The  true  lover  of 
birds  is  he  who  is  most  diligent 
in  acquiring  a  knowledge  of  their 
haunts  and  habits,  and  watching 
them,  aided  by  a  spy-glass,  in  the 
full  enjoyment  of  liberty.  It  is 
by  this  means  that  knowledge  of 
natural  history  may  be  added  to 
and  diffused,  which  is  only  hin- 
dered by  the  encouragement  of 
indiscriminate  collectors. 

HERBERT  MAXWELL. 


VOL.  CLVI. NO.  DCCCCXLV, 


66 


The  Red  Bodice  and  the  Black  Fly. 


[July 


THE    RED    BODICE    AND    THE    BLACK    FLY. 


IT  was  in  the  Highlands  —  no 
matter  where — that  the  following 
adventure  occurred. 

I  had  weathered  my  thirtieth 
birthday  heart  whole,  which  pheno- 
menon was  probably  due  to  the 
constant  pursuit  of  sport  from 
year's  end  to  year's  end ;  but  hints 
as  to  the  desirability  of  matrimony 
had  of  late  been  frequently  dropped 
by  would-be  well-wishers  of  both 
sexes,  till  at  last  my  oldest  male 
friend  tackled  me  seriously  on  the 
subject.  After  listening  patiently 
to  all  the  usual  arguments  in  fav- 
our of  "  settling  down,"  to  him  I 
replied :  "  My  dear  man,  I  have 
no  objection  whatever  to  marriage, 
but  there  are  the  hounds  to  be 
hunted  and  looked  after  all  winter; 
horse -shows,  dog -shows,  steeple- 
chase-riding, and  salmon-fishing  in 
the  spring;  trout -fishing,  racing, 
and  polo  in  the  summer ;  salmon- 
fishing,  shooting,  and  cub-hunting 
in  the  autumn  :  now,  how  on  earth 
can  a  fellow  find  time  to  discover 
and  make  up  to  a  girl  who,  after 
all,  might  refuse  him?  But  look 
here,"  I  added,  after  a  short  pause, 
"  if  you  will  select  the  young  lady, 
do  all  the  love-making,  and  arrange 
the  preliminaries  up  to  the  church 
door,  I'll  marry  her — there  now  !  " 
For  some  reason  or  other  he  smiled, 
but  I  was  left  in  peace  ever  after- 
wards to  "  gang  my  ain  gate  "  as  a 
hopeless  bachelor. 

This  conversation  took  place  at 
midsummer,  while  I  was  in  the 
act  of  packing  up  my  tackle  pre- 
paratory to  starting  on  a  trout- 
fishing  expedition  to  the  High- 
lands. 

For  three  consecutive  seasons 
a  certain  river  had  completely 
puzzled  me,  and  though  the  creel 
was  now  and  then  well  filled,  its 


contents  on  such  rare  occasions 
only  acted  as  an  incentive,  and 
stimulated  my  piscatorial  desires 
to  the  most  acute  pitch.  For  the 
fourth  time,  the  previous  summer, 
I  had  endeavoured  to  discover  the 
feeding  habits  of  the  grand  trout 
with  which  the  river  swarmed,  and 
with  sufficient  success  to  encourage 
me  to  make  a  fifth  attempt.  In 
addition  to  the  conviction  that 
there  were  very  heavy  trout  to  be 
caught  if  one  only  knew  how  to 
circumvent  them,  the  wild,  weird 
nature  of  the  river  itself  fascinated 
me.  Its  bottom  is  treacherous 
and  shifting;  and  in  some  places 
the  whole  of  the  powerful  current 
is  contracted  between  high  and 
perpendicular  cliffs,  so  that  deep 
rapid  pools  are  formed  between 
them ;  while  in  others  the  river  is 
broken  up  by  islands,  the  root- 
bound  banks  of  which  overhang 
mysterious  and  awful  -  looking 
eddies.  Scotch  fir  and  spruce 
fight  their  way  from  between  the 
crevices  in  the  cliffs ;  the  banks  of 
the  broader  streams  and  islands 
are  bordered  by  alder,  larch,  and 
hazel;  and  when  I  arrived,  the 
high  and  sharply  rising  mountains, 
which  flank  the  valley  on  either 
side,  had  just  received  the  first 
purple  tinge  of  heather  bloom. 
The  beauties  of  nature  and  high- 
class  angling  are  inseparable,  and 
the  wilder  and  the  more  romantic 
the  scenery,  the  more  exciting  and 
absorbing  is  the  sport  in  propor- 
tion; for  who  has  ever  caught 
either  trout  or  salmon  perfect  in 
quality  and  beauty  in  an  ugly 
country  ?  As  scenery  deteriorates, 
so  do  fish,  till  at  last  we  arrive  at 
"miller's  thumbs"  in  a  muddy 
roadside  duck -pond.  But  I  am 
digressing. 


1894.] 


The  Red  Bodice  and  the  Black  Fly. 


67 


My  latest  experiences  had  taught 
me  several  things :  firstly,  that  at 
midsummer  the  trout  rose  either 
at  noon  or  midnight,  and  frequently 
at  both  times ;  secondly,  that  the 
most  killing  flies  were  the  yellow 
dun  and  black  spider  by  day,  and 
the  partridge  hackle  and  black 
spider  by  night ;  and  thirdly,  that 
the  finest  tackle  was  in  all  cases 
necessary.  Though,  owing  to  the 
smoothness  of  its  bottom,  it  did 
not  always  appear  so,  the  current 
of  the  river  was  everywhere  very 
strong,  and  therefore  I  found  it 
advisable  to  use  a  well-oiled  check- 
less  reel  if  one  would  avoid  break- 
ages; for,  especially  in  the  deep 
black  hole  between  the  cliffs,  it 
was  often  impossible  to  see  fish 
rise,  as,  lying  near  the  surface, 
they  sucked  in  the  sunk  fly,  and 
then  perhaps  an  unexpected  and 
simultaneous  "  rug  "  by  a  brace  of 
pounders  would  leave  the  angler 
with  little  besides  his  rod  and 
running-line.  Another  novelty  in 
the  equipment  was  an  extra-sized 
landing  -  net  made  of  waterproof 
silk — for  that  substance  is  least 
likely  to  become  entangled  with 
the  flies,  especially  at  night ;  and 
this  on  an  iron  rim  was  attached 
to  a  stout  ash  staff  so  as  to  assist 
me  in  wading.  The  rod  I  had  de- 
signed for  the  river  was  a  13-foot 
single-handed  greenheart  with  one 
splice,  and  in  case  the  tackle  should 
be  seriously  injured  after  dark  a 
"  bull's  -  eye  "  was  not  forgotten. 
My  attendant,  William,  was  an 
expert  oarsman  who  at  one  time 
had  almost  laid  claim  to  champion- 
ship honours.  But  beyond  being 
a  faithful  servant,  this  was  his 
sole  qualification  as  a  gillie,  for 
he  had  never  seen  a  fish  caught 
with  rod  and  line  in  his  life  ;  and 
I  mention  his  accomplishment  be- 
cause, had  it  not  been  for  his  fine 
oarsmanship,  I  would  probably 
have  been  drowned  in  attempting 


to  cast  over  the  mighty  trout  the 
capture  of  which  was  destined  to 
change  the  whole  course  of  my 
life.  Local  gillies  there  were  in 
plenty, — Black  Hughs  and  Red 
Hughs,  Red  Sandies  and  Black 
Sandies,  and  Rodericks  and  Don- 
alds galore  of  every  size  and  colour, 
whose  business  it  was  to  pilot  visi- 
tors on  the  great  black  loch  twelve 
miles  long,  or  offer  them  sage  ad- 
vice on  the  banks  of  the  river 
which  flowed  from  it.  Half  a 
mile  from  the  loch  and  close  to 
the  river  my  quarters  were  situ- 
ated. I  had  engaged  the  best 
of  these  men  some  weeks  be- 
forehand, but  at  the  last  moment 
he  threw  me  over;  so  having,  as 
I  opined,  a  sufficient  knowledge 
of  the  loch,  and  being  conceited 
enough  to  believe  that  I  knew 
more  about  the  river  than  any 
one  else,  William  was  imported. 

Many  an  hour  had  I  pondered, 
many  a  pipe  had  I  smoked  during 
the  winter  evenings  over  the  mys- 
teries of  this  unconquerable  river, 
and  once  again  I  was  tucked  up  in 
a  "sleeper"  and  travelling  north- 
ward ;  and  I  did  dream  of  playing 
alligators  on  drawn  gut ;  of  quick- 
sands and  terrible  waterfalls  to- 
wards which  I  was  irresistibly 
drawn ;  of  rivers  without  bottoms, 
and  lakes  without  ends,  till  sud- 
denly a  shrill,  and,  as  it  seemed, 
familiar  whistle  awoke  me  to  the 
fact  that  the  train  was  wending 
its  way  through  the  Pass  of  Killie- 
crankie,  and  that,  so  far  as  rail 
was  concerned,  the  journey  was 
near  its  end. 

As  we  started  on  a  long  drive, 
after  quitting  the  train,  the 
creamy  -  looking  mists  were  just 
dispersing  up  the  mountain-sides 
under  the  influence  of  the  rising 
sun,  and  perhaps  the  most  lovely 
country  in  the  world  lay  before  us. 

I  am  a  violin-player,  and  so 
powerful  was  the  influence  of  the 


68 


The  Red  Bodice  and  the  Black  Fly. 


[July 


scenery  over  me,  that  it  was  im- 
possible to  deny  the  "cremona" 
an  opportunity  of  speaking.  As 
the  view  constantly  changed,  some 
old  Highland  air  applicable  to  the 
spot  we  were  passing  sprang  from 
the  brain  to  the  strings:  for 
instance,  while  within  sight  of  a 
cluster  of  thatched  cottages,  or  a 
cultivated  farm  on  the  hillside, 
"Auld  Robin  Gray,"  "Jessie  the 
Flower  of  Dunblane,"  and  "My 
Heart  is  sair  for  Somebody,"  rang 
from  the  king  of  all  instruments ; 
while  a  turn  in  the  road  through 
a  rocky  pass  would  suggest 
"Lochiel's  March"  or  "Charlie  i* 
my  Darling  "  ;  and  farther  on,  with 
the  half-way  roadside  inn  in  sight, 
could  one  resist  "Gillie  Callum," 
"Tullochgorum,"  "Mrs  M'Leod," 
and  other  blood-stirring  "  skirls  "  ? 
At  half-past  ten  we  arrived  at 
our  destination,  and  found  the 
hotel  empty,  for  by  that  time  in 
the  morning  all  the  visitors  were 
out  fishing,  either  on  the  loch  or 
the  river ;  so  having  accepted  the 
hospitable  dram  on  crossing  the 
threshold,  the  greenheart  was 
spliced,  and  all  speed  made  for 
the  deep  black  pool  between  the 
cliffs  previously  referred  to.  The 
weather  being  very  hot,  to  that 
particular  spot  I  had  pinned  my 
faith,  feeling  sure  that  at  mid-day 
trout  would  be  on  the  look-out  for 
fly  in  the  cool  shades.  As  we 
approached,  what  was  my  horror 
on  perceiving  a  bright  red  spot, 
like  a  danger-signal,  perched  on 
the  very  apex  of  the  cliff  over- 
hanging the  pool !  On  a  closer 
inspection  the  "danger-signal" 
proved  to  be  a  lady  who  was 
sketching,  and  so  vivid  was  the 
colour  of  her  bodice  that  its  reflec- 
tion could  be  seen  in  the  depths 
below.  The  back  of  the  sketcher 
alone  being  visible,  in  my  indigna- 
tion it  was  but  natural  to  con- 
clude that  she  also  wore  blue 


stockings,  spectacles,  and  a  wig ; 
for  I  had  travelled  four  hundred 
miles  to  fish  the  Cliff  Pool,  only  to 
find  every  trout  in  it  scared  by 
what  I  regarded  as  some  hideous 
apparition.  In  the  intense  heat 
it  was  of  no  use  fishing  the  open 
streams,  so  I  returned  in  the  worst 
of  tempers,  and  sulked  for  the 
rest  of  the  day  on  the  loch.  The 
next  three  days  were  passed  in 
exactly  the  same  manner,  and  I 
began  to  think  that  the  sketch, 
which  no  doubt  was  a  frightful 
daub,  would  never  be  finished. 

Now,  an  angler  who  would  do 
himself  and  his  water  justice  must 
be  absolutely  free  from  all  re- 
straint, for  his  movements  en- 
tirely depend  on  the  whims  of 
the  fish  —  he  should  feed  when 
they  do  not,  rest  when  they  do, 
and  be  at  hand  at  all  times,  never 
leaving  the  water-side  so  long  as 
a  chance  remains ;  consequently, 
what  with  fishing  the  river  at 
mid-day,  the  loch  in  the  afternoon 
and  evening,  watching  the  river 
at  night  (as  yet  there  had  been 
no  sign  of  the  night  rise),  and 
resting  in  the  morning  when  fish- 
ing in  the  river  was  useless,  I  was 
never  in  at  meal-times,  and  there- 
fore had  no  idea  who  the  other 
visitors  in  the  hotel  were  till  I 
met  them  at  the  five  o'clock  table 
d'hote  on  Sunday.  Arriving  some- 
what late  for  dinner  after  a  wander 
by  the  beloved  river,  I  felt  dimly 
conscious,  on  being  conducted  to  a 
seat,  that  there  was  something  red 
in  the  room,  and  presently  found 
myself  placed  opposite  to  that  red 
something.  Instantly  it  occurred 
to  me  that  at  last  I  was  face  to 
face  with  the  "  enemy  "  in  the  red 
bodice.  Anon  peeping  over  my 
soup-plate,  I  perceived  that  the 
hands  belonging  to  the  wearer  of 
the  objectionable  garment  were 
small  and  delicately  formed ;  so 
after  the  approved  manner  of  the 


1894.] 


The  Red  Bodice  and  the  Black  Fly. 


69 


clown  in  the  pantomime,  who,  hav- 
ing recently  stolen  a  leg  of  mutton, 
suddenly  discovers  the  baton  of  a 
policeman  under  his  nose,  my  gaze 
gradually  travelled  upwards  from 
her  hands  till,  instead  of  behold- 
ing, as  I  expected,  the  counte- 
nance of  a  starched  and  grim  "  blue 
stocking,"  my  eyes  met  those  of 
the  most  lovely  girl  I  have  ever 
seen.  To  me  the  shock  was  al- 
most galvanic.  Next  to  Miss 
"  Bed  Bodice  "  sat  her  father,  a 
handsome  old  clergyman,  and  the 
general  conversation  chancing  to 
turn  on  scenery  and  painting,  there 
could  no  longer  be  any  doubt  that 
the  young  lady  was  the  "  danger- 
signal  "  of  the  Cliff  Pool. 

Though  incompetent  to  do  justice 
to  the  subject,  I  will  attempt  to  de- 
scribe her  as  she  rose  to  leave  the 
table.  She  had  a  great  quantity  of 
dead-coloured  brown  hair,  growing 
low  on  the  broad  brows,  from  which 
it  was  simply  bound  back,  a  nose 
neither  Grecian  nor  Boman,  and 
a  complexion  clear  and  pale.  The 
upper  lip  was  perhaps  a  thought 
too  long ;  but  so  wonderfully  sen- 
sitive were  the  curves  of  the  mouth 
that  they  seemed  to  lend  to  her 
large  dreamy  hazel  eyes  an  expres- 
sion almost  mystical,  so  that  I 
feared  to  look  her  in  the  face. 
Her  voice  was  rich  and  musical, 
her  name  Nellie,  and  tall,  with  a 
beautifully  proportioned  figure  vera 
incessu  patuit  dea. 

I  love  beauty,  whether  visible 
in  scenery,  dogs,  horses,  women, 
or  fish ;  but  the  latter  were  upper- 
most in  my  mind  at  the  moment, 
and  it  seemed  that  the  only  chance 
of  getting  at  the  Cliff  Pool  would 
be  by  making  friends  with  his 
reverence  and  his  daughter,  and 
then  by  some  stroke  of  diplomacy 
persuading  her  to  paint  elsewhere. 
With  this  object  in  view,  I  regu- 
larly attended  every  meal  for  the 
next  few  days  (much  to  the  aston- 


ishment of  William,  who  could  not 
understand  such  a  change  of  pro- 
cedure), and  was  soon  on  the  best 
of  terms  with  the  father,  who  was 
not  only  a  charming  man,  but  as 
keen  on  fishing  as  a  schoolboy  out 
for  a  holiday.  One  morning,  while 
strolling  round  a  secluded  angle  of 
the  hotel,  I  found  the  young  lady 
in  the  act  of  assisting  her  father 
to  put  on  his  waders,  and  was 
about  to  retire  when  he  called  me 
back.  As  we  chatted  over  the 
fishing  prospects  of  the  day,  it 
was  impossible  not  to  observe  the 
graceful  simplicity  of  her  move- 
ments, as,  kneeling  down,  she 
buckled  on  her  father's  brogues, 
nor  the  evident  strong  affection 
between  father  and  daughter. 
Presently  handing  me  a  bunch  of 
trout -flies,  he  asked  my  opinion 
of  them,  and  after  a  critical  ex- 
amination, I  replied  that  they 
were  the  most  daintily  and  best 
tied  flies  I  had  ever  seen,  but  that 
perhaps  some  of  the  patterns  were 
not  quite  suitable  to  the  river. 

"Nellie,  do  you  hear  that?" 
said  the  old  gentleman,  with  a 
smile,  as  he  laid  one  hand  on  her 
glossy  hair;  then  turning  to  me, 
he  added,  "My  daughter  dresses 
all  my  flies."  How  often  since 
have  I  thanked  my  stars  that  I 
found  no  fault  with  those  flies  ! 

Away  trotted  the  happy  father 
over  the  bridge  in  order  to  fish, 
as  was  his  custom,  some  easily 
accessible  streams  from  the  oppo- 
site side  of  the  river ;  while  Nellie 
tripped  into  the  house,  but  soon, 
as  I  observed  from  a  coigne  of  van- 
tage, reappeared  laden  with  sketch- 
ing materials,  and  took  the  path 
down  the  near  bank  in  the  direc- 
tion of  the  Cliff  Pool.  Now,  if 
ever,  was  my  opportunity  to  come 
to  some  arrangement  with  the 
"  Danger- Signal "  as  to  the  covet- 
ed cast ;  so  having  given  her  half 
an  hour's  start,  I  collected  William 


TJie  Red  Bodice  and  the  Black  Fly. 


70 

and  the  tackle  and  deliberately 
followed.  When  within  sight  of 
the  red  bodice,  by  a  wave  of  the 
hand  I  signalled  William  to  turn 
off  to  the  right  down-stream  out- 
side the  plantation,  and  then  alone 
I  entered  the  shade  of  the  Scotch 
firs.  The  sound  of  footsteps  was 
rendered  inaudible  to  Nellie  by 
the  murmur  of  the  river,  and  as 
her  back  was  towards  me,  she  was 
quite  unconscious  that  any  one 
was  approaching.  In  a  soft  con- 
tralto voice  she  was  singing  "  Jock 
o'  Hazeldean  "  as  she  painted,  and 
this  was  followed  by  "  Comin' 
thro'  the  Rye."  Standing  motion- 
less within  a  few  paces  of  her,  who 
could  resist  remaining  in  conceal- 
ment till  the  last  rich  note  had 
ceased  to  vibrate?  Then  I  felt 
what  a  selfish  brute  I  was ;  for 
what  right  had  I  to  intrude  upon 
the  privacy  of  this  sweet  song- 
stress, or  interfere  with  her  hap- 
piness1? But  I  had  gone  too  far 
to  retreat,  and  could  now  only 
make  the  best  of  the  matter  by 
presenting  myself.  On  seeing  me, 
as  was  to  be  expected,  she  started 
violently. 

"Pardon  me,"  I  said,  "I  am 
most  awfully  sorry.  I  did  not 
intend  to  frighten  you — indeed  I 
did  not.  Do  forgive  me.  I  only 
wanted  to  ask  you  something,  if  I 
may." 

"Oh,  certainly,"  she  answered, 
smiling,  and  quickly  recovering 
herself,  but  glancing  rather  ner- 
vously (as  I  thought)  up-stream 
towards  her  father,  who  was 
within  sight. 

Seating  myself  on  the  edge  of 
the  cliff  a  few  yards  off,  I  con- 
tinued :  "  This  is  the  best  pool  in 
the  river;  would  you  mind  sit- 
ting a  little  farther  back,  because  " 
(pointing  downwards)  "  your  reflec- 
tion scares  the  trout  ? " 

A  ruder,  more  bungling  speech 


[July 


no  man  could  have  made.  Fancy 
bird,  beast,  or  fish  being  scared  by 
an  apparition  half  so  lovely ! 

"  I  am  so  sorry,"  she  answered ; 
"  but  why  did  you  not  tell  me  be- 
fore 1  I  have  never  seen  any  one 
attempt  to  fish  this  pool,  and  I 
did  not  think  it  was  possible1?" 

"Yes,"  I  said,  "it  is  very  diffi- 
cult, but  it  can  be  done,  —  but 
pray  do  not  move,"  I  added,  as 
she  was  about  to  rise,  "for  it  is 
too  late  to  do  any  good  to-day." 

After  conversing  on  other  topics 
as  long  as  propriety  allowed,  I 
took  my  leave,  only  hoping  that 
I  had  not  seriously  offended  her. 
Conscious  of  my  rudeness,  and 
feeling,  for  some  other  cause 
(which  I  did  not  then  under- 
stand), very  shy  and  uncomfort- 
able, both  dinner  that  night  and 
breakfast  next  morning  were 
avoided.  I  turned  out  William 
early  without  a  word  as  to  our 
destination,  which,  it  is  needless 
to  say,  was  the  Cliff  Pool;  and 
with  an  involuntary  sigh  on  pass- 
ing the  spot  from  which  Miss 

—  had  been  so  ruthlessly  driven, 
I  climbed  down  the  only  accessible 
route  to  the  water,  and  then  in 
the  shade  of  the  overhanging  rock 
awaited  the  movements  of  the  fish. 
About  eleven  o'clock  a  nose,  and 
then  another  and  another,  broke 
the  perfectly  smooth  dark  water, 
and  the  sport  began.  To  reach 
the  fish  up-stream  it  was  necessary 
to  wade  waist-deep,  supporting 
one's  self  the  while  with  one  arm 
round  any  convenient  root  or 
bough  —  for  the  current  was  tre- 
mendously strong.  The  black  fly 
did  its  deadly  work,  and  in  an 
hour  and  a  half  I  had  killed  ten 
splendid  fish,— six  of  f  Ib.  each, 
and  three  of  1  Ib.,  winding  up 
with  a  perfect  2  -  pounder.  He 
was  a  most  determined  fish,  and 
must  have  fought  for  quite  twenty 


1894.] 


The  Red  Bodice  and  the  Black  Fly. 


71 


minutes,  keeping  me  in  suspense 
up  to  the  last,  as  he  tried  again 
and  again  to  foul  the  fine  tackle 
among  the  roots  and  debris.  There 
were  still  one  or  two  heavy  fish 
rising  at  the  head  of  the  pool 
where  no  man  could  reach  them ; 
but,  well  pleased  with  the  contents 
of  the  creel,  I  went  ashore  and 
scrambled  up  the  cliff. 

About  thirty  yards  in  rear  of 
her  former  position  sat  Miss  Nellie, 
sketching,  but  she  no  longer  wore 
the  red  bodice.  Beside  her  lay 
what  was  evidently  the  original 
and  nearly  completed  painting, 
while  in  her  hands  she  held  an 
almost  blank  sheet  on  which  out- 
lines were  being  patiently  drawn. 
Instantly  it  struck  me  that  the 
alteration  in  her  position  had 
necessitated  a  change  in  the  whole 
picture ;  and  then  for  the  first  time 
I  fully  realised  how  by  brutal 
selfishness  I  had  not  only  driven 
away  the  real  and  greatest  charm 
of  the  Cliff  Pool,  but  had  also  put 
a  lovely  and  sweet-tempered  girl 
to  unnecessary  pain  and  trouble. 
Hat  in  hand  I  walked  up,  and 
without  a  word  turned  out  the  fish 
at  her  feet. 

"Oh!  oh/  what  beauties!  I 
am  so  glad,"  she  exclaimed,  while 
a  flush  like  a  rosy  cloud  at  sunset 
tinted  her  fair  face. 

"They  are  all  yours,"  I  an- 
swered ;  "  but  I  would  rather  not 
have  caught  them." 

"  Why  not  ? "  she  inquired,  look- 
ing up  at  me  with  that  mysti- 
cal expression  which  I  positively 
dreaded  to  encounter. 

"Because,"  I  blurted  out  awk- 
wardly, glancing  at  the  nearly 
finished  picture  beside  her,  and 
the  newly  commenced  drawing  in 
her  hands  —  "  because  I  would 
rather  never  throw  a  line  again 
than  that  you  should  not  sketch 
from  the  top  of  the  cliff,  and  dressed 


as  you  were  before.  I  have  been 
most  rude  and  inconsiderate,  and 
humbly  beg  your  pardon." 

The  flush  deepened  on  her  inno- 
cent countenance,  while,  dropping 
on  my  knees  (only  to  turn  over 
some  of  the  trout,  of  course),  I 
awaited  her  reply;  but  she  only 
said  simply,  "Indeed  there  is 
nothing  to  forgive." 

Looking  at  the  painting,  one 
could  not  but  be  struck  by  the 
wonderful  power  and  boldness  of 
the  colouring, — it  was  the  Cliff 
Pool  to  the  life. 

"You  must  finish  that"  I  con- 
tinued; "it  is  splendid." 

"  Do  you  think  so  1  well,  perhaps 
some  day  when  you  are  out  on  the 
loch,  or  after  you  have  gone  away, 
I  may  come  back  and  finish  it." 
And  so  we  parted. 

I  had  said  too  much  and  made 
matters  worse,  like  the  stupid 
blockhead  that  I  am ;  for  I  now 
felt  perfectly  certain  that  the  houri 
of  the  Cliff  Pool  had  been  fright- 
ened away  for  good  and  all,  unless 
by  some  ruse  she  could  be  tempted 
to  return.  The  next  day  she  was, 
as  I  expected,  on  the  opposite  bank 
with  her  father.  I  attacked  the 
Cliff  Pool,  killed  some  fine  trout, 
and  went  home  miserable ;  but 
after  much  thought  a  stratagem 
had  been  decided  upon. 

That  night  at  dinner  I  drew  an 
extremely  uninteresting  neighbour 
into  an  angling  conversation,  and 
took  particular  pains  to  inform 
him  several  times  in  the  most 
distinct  language  that  I  intended 
to  fish  the  loch  on  the  morrow. 
Glancing  furtively  at  Nellie,  I  felt 
sure  that  she  had  heard  enough; 
so  presently,  after  a  post-prandial 
pipe  with  her  dear  old  father,  I 
retired  to  bed,  but  not  to  sleep ; 
for  I  could  no  longer  disguise  from 
myself  the  fact  that  I  was,  to  say 
the  least  of  it,  uncomfortably  in 


72 


The  Red  Bodice  and  the  Black  Fly. 


[July 


love.  At  daybreak  the  unfortu- 
nate William  was  turned  out,  and 
having  launched  the  boat,  we 
pulled  to  the  loch ;  for  it  occurred 
to  me  that  if  the  boat  was  not 
taken  out,  any  one  might  conclude 
we  were  on  the  river.  Half  a  mile 
up  the  loch -side  the  boat  was 
beached  behind  a  conveniently 
projecting  promontory.  Then  we 
cut  across  country  to  the  Cliff 
Pool,  and  having  descended  the 
rocks,  snoozed  with  one  eye  open 
till  the  sun  was  high.  Only  five 
fish  were  bagged,  but  they  were 
all  heavy,  and  the  largest  and  last 
caught  scaled  nearly  1J  Ib.  Just 
as  he  was  lifted  in  the  landing- 
net,  I  saw  the  red  flash'  of  the 
"  danger  -  signal  "  on  the  water  ; 
and  climbing  up  the  cliff  as  usual, 
I  literally,  over  its  edge,  presented 
my  head  at  her  feet.  If  she  had 
been  frightened  before,  she  was 
terrified  this  time,  for  she  gave  a 
half-stifled  exclamation,  and  I  saw 
with  horror  that  she  was  actually 
fainting.  Instantly  I  dashed  off 
for  water,  and  compelled  her  to 
drink  some  out  of  the  cup  of  the 
flask,  when  she  soon  recovered. 
It  was  of  no  use  attempting  to 
apologise,  for  I  was  beyond  the 
pale  of  forgiveness ;  so  I  sat  down 
beside  her  in  mute  shame. 

Presently,  with  a  painful  effort, 
she  said,  "You — you  said  at  din- 
ner last  night  that  you  were  going 
to  fish  the  loch  to-day,  and  I  saw 
your  boat  was  out." 

"Yes,"  I  replied,  "so  it  was, 
and  I  have  been  on  the  loch  to- 
day." 

"  It  must  be  a  good  day  on  the 
loch,"  she  continued,  looking  sky- 
wards, while  the  soft  zephyrs 
ruffled  her  hair;  "why  did  you 
not  persevere  ? " 

"  I  changed  my  mind  because 
I  preferred  the  Cliff  Pool,  and 
because  —  and  because  I  wanted 


to  see  the  sketch  finished,"  was 
my  clumsy  answer. 

Now  Nellie's  skirt  was  made 
of  rough  blue  serge,  and  it  had 
gathered  a  considerable  quantity 
of  thistle-down  and  burrs,  and  the 
edge  of  the  skirt  lay  very  near  to 
me.  I  had  commenced  to  pick  off 
the  thistle-down,  when  she  said, 
"  Oh !  please  do  not  trouble ;  all 
that  will  easily  brush  off." 

Paying  no  attention  to  her  re- 
mark, I  continued  my  occupation 
with  great  contentment;  for,  for 
the  first  time  I  was  touching  some- 
thing belonging  to  Nellie,  and 
while  the  last  burr  was  being 
lingeringly  removed  I  said,  "I 
will  promise  you  faithfully  not 
to  come  near  the  river  to-morrow 
on  any  pretext  whatever.  An 
angling  club  is  coming  over  to 
hold  a  competition  on  the  loch, 
and  all  the  boats  have  been  re- 
quisitioned except  mine,  which, 
being  very  small,  is  considered 
dangerous;  so  I  shall  go  out  to 
see  the  fun."  And  then,  after 
the  trout  had  been  inspected,  I 
retired. 

Next  day  two  brakes  full  of 
anglers  arrived,  and  the  fleet  of 
boats  which  had  been  collected 
overnight  was  soon  dispersed  over 
the  loch.  William  and  I  slipped 
off  early.  It  was  a  breathless 
morning,  and  there  was  not  even 
a  cloud  to  darken  the  shining  sur- 
face of  the  water,  but  nevertheless 
the  trout  began  to  move ;  so,  stand- 
ing up  in  the  bows  with  the  finest 
tackle,  and  directing  the  expert 
William,  I  stalked  the  rises,  and 
began  picking  up  a  few  fish.  Pres- 
ently, observing  our  success,  several 
boats  visited  us,  and  the  boatmen, 
knowing  me  well,  asked  if  I  would 
give  their  employers  a  few  small 
flies,  for  the  equipment  of  the 
competing  anglers  was  of  the 
coarsest  description.  My  stock 


1894.] 


The  Red  Bodice  and  the  Black  Fly. 


73 


of  black  spiders  with  the  silver 
twist  was  running  very  low,  and 
as  yet  I  had  not  even  commenced 
night  fishing;  but  I  had  telegraphed 
for  more  flies,  and  could  not  refuse. 

I  took  the  usual  watch  by  the 
river  that  night,  and  from  certain 
indications  felt  sure  that  there 
would  be  a  rise  within  twenty- 
four  hours.  No  flies  had  come  by 
the  evening  mail,  and  nothing  re- 
mained in  the  book  which  could 
be  trusted  to.  Nellie,  and  only 
Nellie,  could  dress  the  flies  I 
wanted;  so  after  breakfast  next 
morning  I  presented  myself  before 
her  and  her  father.  "  I  want  to 
ask  your  daughter,  sir,  a  great 
favour,"  I  said.  "I  believe  that 
the  trout  will  rise  on  the  shallow 
above  the  bridge  to-night,  and 
having  given  all  my  spiders  away 
on  the  loch  yesterday,  I  have  no 
suitable  flies  left,  as  the  new  supply 

has  not  arrived.    Would  Miss 

be  so  very  kind  as  to  tie  me  a  few  ? 
I  have  all  the  materials." 

After  casting  an  inquiring  glance 
at  his  daughter,  he  replied,  "Oh 
yes,  I  am  sure  Nellie  will,  if  you 
will  give  her  a  pattern." 

"  Thank  you  very  much,"  I  an- 
swered, bowing  towards  her,  and 
adding,  "  Perhaps  you  will  be 
going  down  the  river  to  sketch 
presently  1  I  have  some  letters  to 
write,  and  could  follow  with  the 
fly-box  in  about  an  hour.  May  I  ? " 

The  answer  being  in  the  affir- 
mative, I  retired  jubilant  at  the 
success  of  my  diplomacy ;  for  I 
would  not  only  obtain  the  flies, 
but  also  an  interview  with  Nellie, 
with  her  father's  full  knowledge 
and  consent.  Of  course  I  wrote 
no  letters,  and  in  considerably  less 
than  an  hour  arrived  at  the  Cliff 
Pool. 

"Well,"  I  said,  as  I  sat  down 
beside  her,  "  I  have  not  frightened 
you  this  time,  have  1 1 " 


"  No,"  she  answered,  laughing 
merrily,  "  not  this  time." 

Then  we  set  to  work  on  the 
flies. 

Presently  I  said :  "I  want  to 
beg  your  pardon  for  something. 
The  first  morning  I  saw  you  here 
I  stood  close  behind  you  for  a 
considerable  time  while  you  were 
singing  '  Jock  o'  Hazeldean '  and 
'Comin'  thro'  the  Rye.'  It  was 
very  rude ;  but  I  love  music,  and 
your  voice  is  so  sweet.  Am  I  for- 
given ? " 

"  Yes,"  she  answered,  "  you  are 
forgiven ;  but  you  must  not  flatter 
me.  Give  me  the  wax,  please ; 
and  just  see  what  a  dreadful  tangle 
you  are  getting  the  silk  into  ! " 

So,  by  way  of  keeping  my  hands 
occupied,  I  discovered  some  par- 
ticles of  thistle  on  her  dress,  and 
felt  very  happy.  The  tiny  black 
spiders  with  the  silver  twist  and 
the  partridge  hackles  were  works 
of  art. 

During  the  afternoon  I  put  one 
of  my  finest  casts  together  with 
elaborate  care,  attaching  thereto 
two  black  spiders  with  an  inter- 
mediate partridge  hackle.  Then 
the  rod  was  overhauled  from  butt 
to  tip,  the  checkless  reel  oiled,  and 
the  tackle  complete,  placed  where 
I  could  get  at  it  at  any  moment. 

Night  came  at  last,  warm,  quiet, 
and  starry,  for  there  was  no  moon, 
and  I  took  up  my  old  post  below 
the  nearest  arch,  through  which  a 
view  of  the  shallows  above  could 
be  commanded.  There  were  several 
people  standing  on  the  bridge,  and 
amongst  them  I  recognised  the 
figures  of  Nellie  and  her  father. 
As  I  was  about  to  give  up  hope, 
he  came  running  towards  me  say- 
ing, "There  is  a  fish  as  big  as 
a  grilse  rising  above  the  third 
arch." 

"  I  see  him,"  I  answered,  and 
then  made  all  speed  for  William's 


74 


The  Red  Bodice  and  the  Black  Fly. 


[July 


room.  He  was  asleep,  and  I  shook 
him  by  the  shoulder. 

"William,"!  said,  "tumble  on 
some  clothes;  there  is  a  big  fish 
rising.  I  am  going  to  try  to 
wade  through  the  first  arch.  If 
I  cannot  do  it,  drop  the  boat 
back  and  pick  me  up.  Be  quick 
and  quiet." 

William  no  doubt  looked  upon 
me  as  eccentric;  but  he  was  al- 
ways up  to  time,  so  I  scrambled 
down -stairs,  seized  the  rod,  and 
hurried  back  to  the  river.  The 
wading  required  extreme  caution, 
for  it  was  necessary  to  enter  the 
arch  on  the  very  verge  of,  and 
within  the  suck  of,  the  swirling 
eddies  below.  My  progress  was 
very  slow,  and  when  half-way 
through  the  arch  the  current  was 
too  much  for  me,  and  it  was  only 
with  the  greatest  difficulty  that 
the  position  could  be  maintained. 
I  whistled,  and  was  most  thank- 
ful to  see  a  dark  object  approach- 
ing. Having  laid  the  rod  care- 
fully in  the  boat,  I  scrambled  in 
over  the  stern,  saying,  "Bow  for 
your  life."  Such  words  were, 
however,  unnecessary,  for  the 
sculls  were  being  dashed  through 
the  water  as  if  they  were  a 
couple  of  walking-sticks.  For  a 
few  moments  it  was  any  one's 
race,  so  to  speak;  but  gradually 
William  got  the  best  of  the 
"suck,"  and  we  emerged  above 
the  bridge.  Poor  fellow,  he  is 
gone  now,  and  I  do  not  think  in 
his  best  days  he  ever  made  a 
pluckier  spurt  "  between  the 
bridges."  We  were  now  in  easy 
water  close  to  the  bank,  and  I 
saw  the  great  fish  moving  just 
above  the  buttress  between  the 
second  and  third  arches;  so,  let- 
ting out  line,  I  began  to  try  the 
distance.  In  the  darkness  the 
reach  of  the  fly  could  only  be 
estimated  by  the  weight  of  line 


out  and  the  swing  of  the  rod; 
and  knowing  the  water  well,  I 
assumed  the  fish  to  be  nearly* 
twenty  yards  off.  The  first  cast 
in  a  diagonal  and  downward  direc- 
tion across  the  stream  produced  a 
heavy  wave  and  a  light  touch. 
With  a  little  more  line  the  throw 
was  immediately  repeated,  and  I 
held  him  fast.  If  the  fish  had 
bolted  down  through  the  bridge 
my  chances  would  have  been 
slender  indeed ;  but  fortune 
favoured  me  and  he  moved  up- 
stream, quietly  at  first,  and  then 
dashed  several  times  across  the 
river  and  back,  but  always  work- 
ing higher  up  after  each  run. 
Presently  he  sailed  straight  up 
the  river,  and  following  in  the 
boat,  we  were  soon  out  of  sight 
of  the  spectators  on  the  bridge. 
The  river  above  us  was  broad, 
with  a  gravel  bottom,  and  I 
feared  nothing  except  some  weeds 
near  the  opposite  bank.  The 
tactics  of  crossing  the  river  from 
side  to  side  were  repeated  many 
times,  but  at  last  I  was  sensible 
that  the  fish's  efforts  were  becom- 
ing weaker,  and  that  he  was  be- 
ginning to  come  to  me.  Gradually 
we  dropped  down  stream,  being 
careful  to  keep  well  below  the 
trout,  till  the  place  from  which 
we  had  started  was  reached,  and 
then  I  directed  William  to  let 
the  bow  of  the  boat  just  touch 
the  shingle,  so  that  in  case  of 
need  he  could  push  off  with  a 
single  stroke.  The  spectators  had 
collected  behind  me,  and  I  called 
to  one  of  the  hotel  servants  to 
bring  my  landing  -  net.  He 
promptly  returned  with  a  thing 
not  fit  to  land  roach  in.  "No, 
no,"  I  cried,  "  my  big  net — quick, 
it  is  hanging  up  in  the  hall." 
Then  I  heard  a  voice  say,  "  Bun, 
Nellie;  you  know  where  it  is," 
and  in  a  minute  or  two  there  was 


1894.] 


The  Red  Bodice  and  the  Black  Fly. 


75 


a  light  step  in  the  boat  and  the 
net  lay  beside  me. 

"Now,"  I  said,  "come  in  front 
of  me." 

"I  cannot,  I  cannot,"  she  an- 
swered. "I  have  never  landed 
such  a  fish." 

"  I  am  sure  you  can,"  I  replied ; 
"  only  do  exactly  what  I  tell  you. 
Kneel  down  and  put  the  net  in 
the  water  with  just  the  top  of  the 
rim  out — that's  right ;  now  a  little 
slanting — that  will  do;  keep  per- 
fectly steady  till  I  tell  you  to 
lift." 

The  fish  was  dead  beat,  and  not 
more  than  twenty  yards  off,  for  I 
could  now  see  the  black  line  of 
his  back  on  the  surface  of  the 
water  as  I  cautiously  wound  him 
in.  It  was  a  moment  of  intense 
excitement,  such  as  no  man  who 
has  ever  had  a  similar  experience 
could  ever  forget.  The  trout  was 
coming  down  the  stream  wide  of 
the  net,  but  an  old  trick  did  me 
good  service  in  the  hour  of  need. 
If  you  would  draw  a  fish  towards 
the  bank  without  disturbing  him 
do  not  increase  the  pressure,  but 
move  gently  back  yourself.  This 
piece  of  strategy  I  performed  by 
stepping  backwards  over  the  mid- 
thwart  of  the  boat,  and  now  the 
fish  was  in  line  with  the  landing- 
net.  Nearer  and  nearer  came  the 
broad  black  back.  "Now,"  I 
said,  and  the  next  moment  the 
great  trout  was  floundering  in  the 
bottom  of  the  boat.  "  Well  done ! 
I  knew  you  could  do  it,"  I  said, 
and  then  I  knocked  the  fish  on  the 
head  and  cut  the  gut  a  few  inches 
from  his  mouth,  leaving  the  fly 
therein.  Nellie  stood  on  the  bank 
beside  her  father;  and,  carrying 
the  fish  in  the  net,  I  joined  them. 
Together  we  entered  the  empty 
dining-room  of  the  hotel,  and  hav- 
ing hunted  for  lights,  the  scales, 
and  a  dish,  inspected  the  capture. 


The  back  of  the  trout  was  dark- 
green,  with  black  spots  ;  he  had 
three  rows  of  large  bright  red 
spots  on  his  sides,  which  were 
golden,  gradually  fading  into  sil- 
ver, below ;  his  shape  was  perfect, 
and  he  turned  the  beam  at  5  Ib. 
The  battle  had  lasted  an  hour  and 
a  half,  and  it  was  now  nearly  an 
hour  after  midnight.  After  the 
long  suppressed  excitement,  my 
hands  trembled  so  much  that  I 
could  scarcely  hold  the  weights. 
Nellie's  face  was  flushed,  and  her 
eyes  more  brilliant  than  ever. 
Her  enthusiastic  father  gave  me 
a  mighty  slap  on  the  back,  with 
this  remark,  "  Well  done,  boy ! 
well  done !  I  have  seen  and  per- 
formed many  difficult  angling  feats, 
but  I  never  met  any  one  who  could 
touch  you  either  in  fine  fishing  or 
perseverance." 

"  No,  sir,"  I  answered,  pointing 
to  the  fish,  "do  not  say  so.  I 
did  not  dress  that  fly,  nor  did  I 
land  the  trout :  I  have  to  thank 
your  daughter  for  both." 

"  Well,  well,"  he  replied,  glanc- 
ing at  my  dripping  garments,  "  you 
had  better  drink  a  glass  of  toddy 
and  turn  in." 

"  Yes,"  I  said,  "  as  soon  as  I 
have  packed  up  the  fish,  for  he 
will  be  preserved  with  the  fly  in 
his  mouth." 

The  praise  was  of  course  far 
more  than  I  deserved,  but  the 
source  from  which  it  came  made 
it  gratifying.  I  am  afraid  I  drank 
more  than  one  toddy  and  smoked 
innumerable  pipes  that  night  (or 
rather  morning),  for  sleep  was  im- 
possible, and  I  had  made  up  my 
mind  to  ask  his  reverence's  per- 
mission on  the  first  opportunity 
to  become  a  suitor  for  his  daugh- 
ter's hand.  He  came  down  to 
breakfast,  but  she  did  not,  hav- 
ing, as  he  told  me,  a  headache ;  so 
I  promptly  offered  to  accompany 


76 


The  Red  Bodice  and  the  Black  Fly. 


[July 


him  to  the  river,  and  there,  as  we 
were  putting  the  tackle  together, 
I  said  what  I  believe  is  usual  on 
such  occasions. 

He  replied,  "I  tell  you,  can- 
didly, I  have  liked  you  from  the 
first,  and  have  not  been  blind  to 
the  occurrences  of  the  past  three 
weeks.  I  love  my  daughter,  as 
you  know,  very  dearly,  and,  of 
course,  wish  to  see  her  happily 
married  :  provided,  therefore,  that 
your  worldly  position  is  such  as 
to  ensure  her  coaafort,  she  shall 
be  left  perfectly  free  to  decide  for 
herself." 

A  long  and  uninteresting  dis- 
cussion on  business  matters  then 
ensued,  which  need  not  be  re- 
peated here.  Suffice  it  to  say  that 
it  terminated  in  my  favour. 

"Then  I  have  your  leave,  sir, 
to  propose  to  your  daughter,"  I 
presently  said. 

"You  have,"  he  answered, 
gravely. 

"Where  shall  I  be  likely  to 
find  Miss  1"  I  inquired. 

"  Not  at  the  Cliff  Pool,  I  think," 
he  said,  with  a  smile,  "  for  the 
picture  of  that  place  is  finished ; 
but,"  he  added,  with  exasperat- 
ing deliberation,  "I  rather  fancy 
Nellie  said  something  about  com- 
mencing another  sketch  about  a 
mile  up  the  loch-side." 

"Which  side?"  I  asked,  impet- 
uously. 

"The  left  bank,  I  think,"  was 
the  answer;  and  then,  as  I  rose 
to  go,  he  looked  up  wistfully  in 
my  face  and  said,  "Should  she 
accept  you,  you  will  be  good  to 
my  girl,  will  you  not1?" 

There  was  something  very  touch- 
ing in  this  appeal,  and  in  the 
tone  of  his  voice.  I  answered, 
"  I  swear  to  you,  sir,  I  have  never 
loved  before,  and  would  do  mv 
best." 

"  Then  go,  and  my  good  wishes 


are  with  you,"  he  said,  in  a  voice 
which  trembled  with  emotion. 

Now,  I  have  a  harmless  wee 
black  doggie  named  "Laird." 
His  chief  characteristic  is  fidelity, 
and  his  greatest  accomplishment 
"  begging  "  and  sneezing  for  cakes 
or  whatever  he  may  want.  He 
never  notices  any  one  unless  they 
are  friends  of  mine,  and  was  of 
course  on  intimate  terms  with 
Nellie  and  her  father.  With 
Laird  at  my  heels  I  strode  along. 
The  road  along  the  loch -side  is 
almost  level,  so  that  one  can  see 
a  long  way  in  front;  and  when 
only  a  short  distance  had  been 
covered,  I  sighted  the  "Danger- 
Signal"  seated  on  a  rocky  pro- 
montory. Presently,  in  turning 
a  corner,  I  found  the  object  of  my 
search  had  suddenly  vanished,  and 
I  stood  still,  completely  at  fault. 
In  my  perplexity  I  decided  to 
consult  the  Laird. 

"Laird,  where  is  my  lovely, 
darling  Nellie  ?  where  is  she  ?  you 
must  find  her — I  cannot  live  with- 
out her.  Where  is  my  sweet 
angel?  Find  her,  Laird,  and  you 
shall  have  more  cakes  than  you 
can  ever  eat."  The  doggie  on 
hearing  the  word  "  cakes "  sat 
up  and  sneezed  violently  several 
times.  I  went  on,  "Nellie  has 
lots  of  cakes,— find  Nellie."  By 
way  of  reply  he  put  his  head  on 
one  side,  with  one  ear  up  and  the 
other  down,  winked  at  me  with 
both  eyes,  and  then  made  off  for 
the  bushes  above  the  road.  I  fol- 
lowed, and  not  ten  yards  off  sat 
Nellie  among  some  old  heather 
under  the  birks.  Seeing  me  ap- 
proaching, from  a  distance,  she 
had  naturally  in  her  nervous 
modesty  intended  to  conceal  her- 
self till  I  had  passed;  but  the 
Laird  had  upset  her  calculations. 
I  sat  down  at  her  knees,  while 
Laird,  curling  himself  up  against 


1894. 


The  Red  Bodice  and  the  Black  Fly. 


77 


her  dress  opposite,  peeped  slyly 
across  at  me  as  much  as  to  say, 
"Now  we  have  got  her  between 
us ;  it  is  all  right,  isn't  it  1 " 
Nellie  was  blushing  painfully  ; 
for  of  course  she  had  heard  every 
word  of  my  conversation  with  the 
dog,  and  knew  that  I  must  be 
aware  of  the  chief  cause  of  her 
confusion.  So  distressed  was  she, 
that  her  eyes  began  to  fill  with 
tears.  My  mouth  was  parched  as 
with  a  fever,  but  I  succeeded  in 
addressing  her  by  her  Christian 
name  for  the  first  time. 

"Nellie,  I  have  not  come  here 
without  your  father's  sanction : 
you  must  know,  at  any  rate  now, 
how  dearly  I  love  you.  Will  you 
marry  me  ? " 

The  pent-up  tears  ran  down  her 
face,  and  presently  I  heard  an  al- 
most inaudible  "  Yes  " ;  so  I  threw 
my  arms  round  her  and  drew  down 
her  pretty  head  on  to  my  shoulder. 


What  an  afternoon  that  was 
amongst  the  heather  ! 

As  I  write  this,  beautifully  pre- 
served with  the  fly  in  his  mouth, 
the  trout  stands  on  a  table  at  my 
right,  while  the  sketch  of  the  Cliff 
Pool  hangs  on  the  opposite  wall. 

We  revisit  our  happy  fishing- 
ground  every  summer,  and  never 
pass  the  Cliff  Pool  without  a  kiss, 
and  indeed  a  great  many  (Nellie 
is  pulling  my  hair,  and  says  I  have 
no  business  to  mention  all  those 
kisses — but  I  shall),  in  commemora- 
tion of  our  first  meeting. 

I  do  not  fish  quite  so  hard  as  I 
used  to ;  for  every  now  and  then 
I  find  myself  leaving  the  water 
when  Nellie  is  sketching  from  the 
bank  above,  and  then  dropping 
down  beside  her,  I  listen  to  the 
sweet  songs  of  Scotland  till  the 
tears  of  joy  spring  to  my  eyes. 
ARTHUR  CRAWSHAY. 


78 


Six  Weeks  in  Java. 


[July 


SIX   WEEKS    IN    JAVA. 


I  EXPERIENCED  so  much  diffi- 
culty in  obtaining  trustworthy  in- 
formation regarding  the  present 
means  of  travelling  in  Java,  and 
what  there  was  to  be  seen  there, 
that  perhaps  a  short  account  of  a 
visit  recently  made  to  that  island 
may  be  of  use. 

Except  a  '  Visit  to  Java '  by  Mr 
Basil  Warfold,  whose  personal  ex- 
periences appear  to  have  been  con- 
fined to  Batavia  and  Buitenzorg, 
I  know  of  no  book  in  the  English 
language,  though  there  are  several 
in  Dutch,  which  treats  of  Java  as  it 
exists  to-day ;  and  thus  it  has  come 
to  pass  that  this  most  interesting  of 
islands,  though  easily  accessible,  is 
usually  omitted  from  the  globe- 
trotter's programme. 

Mr  Boys,  an  Indian  civilian, 
lately  published  at  Allahabad 
an  excellent  little  essay  on  the 
Dutch  Administration  of  Java,1 
which  deserves  to  be  more  widely 
known  than  it  is ;  Miss  North,  in 
her  'Memories  of  a  Happy  Life,' 
gives  a  good  description  of  her 
tour  in  the  island;  and  Baron 
Donwes  -  Dekkar's  well  -  known 
novel,  *  Max  Havellaar,'  gives 
much  valuable  information  about 
Java :  but  none  of  these  books 
contains  the  detailed  information 
•require^  for  practical  travelling. 
The*  '  History  of  Java,'  in  two 
large  volumes,  by  Sir  Stamford 
Raffles,  published  early  in  the 
present  century,  still  remains 
the  standard  work  on  Java,  and 
is  a  mine  of  information  re- 
garding the  country  and  its  in- 
habitants ;  but  the  book  has  long 
been  out  of  print,  and  is  difficult 
to  procure,  though  it  should  cer- 


tainly be  read  by  any  intending 
visitor. 

Mr  A.  R.  Wallace  in  his  classical 
'  Malay  Archipelago '  has  a  chapter 
about  Java,  which  is  as  accurate 
and  delightful  as  his  writings  al- 
ways are ;  but  he  made  only  two 
short  excursions  into  the  interior, 
and  as  nearly  forty  years  have 
elapsed  since  his  visit,  his  descrip- 
tions necessarily  take  no  account 
of  the  present  facilities  for  travel. 
The  Dutch  are  energetic  rulers,  who 
fully  appreciate  the  advantages  of 
roads  and  railways,  and  in  this  re- 
spect there  is  probably  no  country 
in  the  East  which  has  more  changed 
during  recent  years  than  Java. 
Good  hotels  may  now  be  found  in 
nearly  every  place  where  the  ordi- 
nary traveller  wishes  to  stop,  and 
ladies  could  travel  from  one  end  of 
the  island  to  the  other  without  ex- 
periencing any  serious  discomfort. 

As  regards  climate,  the  towns 
on  the  sea-coast,  such  as  Batavia, 
Samarang,  and  Soerabaja,  are  al- 
ways hot,  with  the  moist  heat  of 
Calcutta  or  Singapore  in  July ;  but 
the  whole  of  the  interior  is  hilly, 
and  possesses  a  cool  and  pleasant 
climate.  It  is  very  remarkable  at 
what  low  elevations  in  Java  the 
stagnant  heat  of  the  plains  is 
exchanged  for  cool  fresh  breezes. 
At  Buitenzorg,  for  example,  which 
is  only  800  feet  above  the  sea,  the 
mornings  and  evenings  are  always 
cool,  and  the  climate  resembles 
that  of  Subathoo  in  the  Himalayas, 
which  is  situated  at  the  height  of 
4000  feet.  At  greater  elevations 
it  is,  of  course,  proportionately 
cooler;  and  on  Ardjoeno,  at  8000 
feet,  we  longed  for  fires  and  more 


i  Some  Notes  on  Java  and  its  Administration  by  the  Dutch.     By  H.  Scott 
Boys.     P10neer  Press.     Allahabad,  1892. 


1894.] 


Six  Weeks  in  Java. 


79 


blankets.  The  dry  season  in  Java 
commences  in  April,  and  the  most 
favourable  time  for  travelling  is 
from  the  beginning  of  that  month 
to  about  the  end  of  June.  July 
and  August  are  hot,  especially  in 
eastern  Java,  where  the  rainfall 
is  less  than  in  the  western  pro- 
vinces, and  where  drought  is  apt 
to  prevail  during  the  autumn.  In 
October  the  rainy  season  begins. 

Before  railways  were  constructed, 
travellers  had  to  hire  or  buy  their 
own  carriage,  and  to  drive  long 
distances  by  post  over  rough  moun- 
tain roads.  This  is  not  necessary 
now.  Much  of  the  travelling  is 
done  in  railways ;  and  where  post- 
ing is  resorted  to,  a  carriage  can 
always  be  hired  for  the  day's  jour- 
ney. Posting  is  expensive,  but  it 
is  a  delightful  way  of  seeing  the 
country,  and  we  quite  agreed  with 
Mr  Boys  that  few  of  the  pleasures 
of  travel  can  compare  with  bowl- 
ing along  a  good  road  through  the 
magnificent  scenery  of  the  Javan 
highlands  on  a  fresh  April  morn- 
ing. There  is  no  country  in  the 
East  which  can  boast  of  better 
roads  than  Java,  or  where  the 
carriages  and  system  of  posting 
are  so  good.  The  principal  roads 
are  divided  into  two  portions,  one 
of  which  is  metalled  and  strictly 
reserved  for  carriages,  and  the 
other,  usually  unmetalled,  is  used 
by  the  heavy  country  carts.  Both 
halves  of  the  road  are  maintained 
in  good  repair.  This  regulation 
works  well  in  practice,  and  is  cer- 
tainly economical,  as  it  saves  the 
carriage-road  from  being  cut  up  by 
the  wheels  of  the  clumsy  waggons, 
generally  drawn  by  oxen,  for  which 
speed  is  not  necessary. 

In  a  few  years  Java  will  possess 
a  railway  extending  from  Batavia 
on  the  west  to  Soerabaja  on  the 
east — that  is,  throughout  nearly  its 
entire  length.  At  present  the  diffi- 
culties of  construction  through  a 


hilly  country  leave  a  gap  of  over 
one  hundred  miles  between  Garoet 
and  Tjilatjap  on  the  southern  coast. 
The  journey  between  these  points 
is  somewhat  difficult,  and  requires 
arrangement  beforehand ;  we  there- 
fore found  it  most  convenient,  when 
leaving  the  western  for  the  central 
provinces,  to  return  to  Batavia  and 
go  by  sea  to  Samarang. 

The  train  service  in  Java  is  very 
regular  and  punctual,  and  even  an 
unlocked  portmanteau  appears  to 
be  quite  safe  in  the  luggage-vans. 
The  carriages  are  built  on  the 
American  plan,  which  ensures  good 
ventilation;  and  we  found  the 
second  class  sufficiently  comfort- 
able. The  speed  is  slow  accord- 
ing to  European  ideas,  and  the 
stoppages  prolonged  and  frequent; 
but  in  Java  no  one  is  in  a  hurry, 
and  as  the  scenery  is  always  in- 
teresting, small  delays  are  rather 
welcome  than  otherwise. 

The  cosmopolitan  port  of  Singa- 
pore is  the  most  convenient  start- 
ing point  for  Java,  as  weekly 
steamers  belonging  to  a  Dutch 
Company  run  thence  to  Batavia. 
The  British  India  Company's 
steamers  from  London  also  call 
at  Batavia ;  and  during  the  sugar 
export  season  a  steamer  sailing  to 
Soerabaja  may  usually  be  found  at 
Hong-Kong.  The  Dutch  vessels 
are  small,  but  well  found  and  com- 
fortable ;  and  the  food  provided  is 
liberal,  and  quite  good  endhgh  for 
ordinary  people.  We  sailed  ft-om 
Singapore  harbour  at  8  A.M.  on 
Wednesday  26th  April,  and  after 
a  pleasant  voyage  over  calm  seas 
studded  with  wooded  islands,  landed 
at  Batavia  at  3  P.M.  on  the  follow- 
ing Friday. 

Land  was  visible  nearly  the  whole 
way,  as,  after  passing  through  the 
archipelago  of  small  islands  which 
stretches  to  the  south  of  the  Ma- 
layan peninsula,  the  track  lies 
along  the  northern  coast  of  Suma- 


80 


Six  Weeks  in  Java. 


[July 


tra,  and  passes  through  the  narrow 
strait  separating  that  shore  from 
the  small  island  of  Banca,  famous 
for  its  tin  mines.  On  our  return 
voyage  the  steamer  stopped  here 
for  a  few  hours  to  land  passengers 
and  cargo,  and  the  view  of  the 
wooded  heights  rising  behind  the 
small  town  of  Mintok  was  very 
pleasing.  If  the  traveller  is  fortu- 
nate enough  to  get  clear  weather 
when  approaching  Batavia,  he  will 
enjoy  a  view  of  the  three  volcanic 
peaks  known  as  Gede,  Pangerango, 
and  Salak,  two  of  which  are  still 
more  or  less  active,  though  the 
small  clouds  of  steam  they  emit 
cannot  usually  be  seen  from  the 
sea. 

Batavia  is  the  capital  of  Java, 
but  in  commercial  importance  it  is 
closely  approached  by  the  more 
modern  port  of  Soerabaja.  The 
part  of  the  town  where  the  hotels, 
the  shops,  and  the  palatial  resi- 
dences of  the  Dutch  merchants  and 
officials  are  situated,  is  six  miles 
from  the  wharves  of  Tandjoeng 
Priok,  where  passengers  land  ;  but 
frequent  trains  run  between  the 
two  places,  and  within  an  hour 
after  leaving  the  ship  the  traveller 
ought  to  find  himself  at  his  hotel. 

We  stayed  at  the  Hdtel  des 
Indes,  a  very  comfortable  estab- 
lishment, the  proprietor  of  which 
speaks  English.  The  important 
matter  of  language  is  the  most 
serious  of  the  few  difficulties  to 
be  encountered  in  Javan  travel: 
Dutch  and  Malay  are  the  two 
languages  principally  used,  but  a 
knowledge  of  the  latter  is  the  most 
important,  as  it  is  understood  by 
all  the  servants  in  the  hotels,  and 
more  or  less  throughout  the  coun- 
try. It  is  also  the  native  language 
spoken  by  the  Dutch  residents, 
and  may  therefore  be  regarded  as 
the  lingua  franca  of  Java,  as  Urdu 
is  in  India.  We  had  provided  our- 
selves, while  at  Singapore  (through 


the  good  offices  of  the  manager  of 
the  Raffles'  Hotel),  with  a  Malay- 
speaking  Madrasee  "  boy,"  who  had 
also  a  practical  acquaintance  of 
English.  He  was  an  excellent  lad, 
quite  honest,  and  willing  to  put  his 
hand  to  any  kind  of  work,  includ- 
ing cooking.  We  never  ceased  con- 
gratulating ourselves  on  having 
secured  his  services;  and  indeed  it 
is  hard  to  say  how  we  could  have 
managed  without  him.  I  think 
that  our  plan  of  getting  a  servant 
at  Singapore  is  the  best.  There 
are,  of  course,  plenty  of  lads  to  be 
found  in  Batavia  who  can  speak 
Malay,  but  their  second  language 
is  pretty  sure  to  be  Dutch,  and 
Dutch  only,  which  would  not  be 
of  much  use  to  the  ordinary  Eng- 
lishman. 

The  principal  business  to  be 
done  at  Batavia  is  to  get  a  pass- 
port from  the  Dutch  Government 
with  permission  to  travel  through- 
out Java.  Local  passports  are 
also  issued,  but  these  are  not 
necessary  if  care  is  taken  to  ask 
for  a  general  passport.  This 
document  can  be  easily  obtained 
through  the  kind  offices  of  the 
English  consul.  The  only  places 
worth  visiting  in  Batavia  are  the 
Museum,  which  is  most  interest- 
ing, and  the  Zoological  Gardens, 
where  are  a  small  collection  of* 
local  birds,  two  ourangs  from  Bor- 
neo, and  some  monkeys  and  other 
animals  peculiar  to  the  Malayan 
islands.  Perhaps  the  most  novel 
sight  in  Batavia  can  be  obtained 
by  a  drive  through  its  brilliantly 
illuminated  streets  between  six 
and  eight  o'clock  in  the  evening, 
when  all  the  world  and  his  wife 
are  abroad,  and  the  shops  display 
their  varied  wares  in  the  most 
alluring  fashion. 

We  left  Batavia  for  Buitenzorg 
by  the  afternoon  train  on  the  day 
after  our  arrival :  the  journey  is 
about  an  hour,  and  the  rise  in 


1894.] 


Six  Weeks  in  Java. 


81 


elevation  is  less  than  800  feet, 
yet  in  this  short  space  one  passes 
from  oppressive  heat  to  a  cool 
climate.  The  line  traverses-  a 
highly  cultivated  country,  and  as 
Buitenzorg  is  approached,  glimpses 
are  caught  of  volcanic  peaks  tower- 
ing over  rich  tropical  vegetation. 
There  is  a  good  hotel  at  Buiten- 
zorg, which  is  a  pretty  little  town, 
with  shady  well-kept  roads,  and 
the  headquarters  of  the  Dutch 
Government  in  the  East  Indies. 
The  Governor-General  has  a  palace 
situated  in  the  famous  Botanical 
Garden,  and  approached  through 
a  grand  avenue  of  Kanari  trees 
(Canarium  commune),  with  their 
stately  trunks  entwined  by  creepers 
of  strange  and  beautiful  aspect. 
A  small  park  with  a  herd  of  fallow 
deer  lies  to  the  north  of  the  palace, 
and  is  remarkable  for  a  grove  of 
ancient  Waringin  (Ficus  sp.)  trees, 
with  their  boughs  and  roots  twisted 
and  knotted  in  a  most  extraordi- 
nary manner. 

The  neighbourhood  of  Buitenzorg 
furnishes  several  pretty  drives,  and 
as  the  traveller  will  probably  have 
to  wait  two  or  three  days  for  his 
passport,  he  cannot  do  better  than 
spend  the  time  here.  The  view 
from  the  verandah  of  the  hotel 
looking  towards  the  west  has  be- 
come celebrated  even  in  Java.  It 
comprises  luxuriant  tropical  vege- 
tation, a  foaming  river  tumbling 
over  big  black  rocks,  and  a  back- 
ground formed  by  the  jagged  peaks 
of  the  Salak  volcano. 

The  Botanical  Garden  may  per- 
haps somewhat  disappoint  the  ex- 
pectation of  the  unscientific  mind, 
as  more  attention  is  paid  therein 
to  the  requirements  of  botany 
than  to  the  picturesque.  But 
the  garden  possesses  more  named 
species  of  plants  than  any  other 
similar  establishment,  except  per- 
haps Kew;  and  its  collection  of 
palms,  all  growing  in  the  open 

VOL.  CLVT. NO.  DCCCCXLV. 


instead  of  being  crowded  under  a 
glass  roof,  is  certainly  unrivalled. 
The  plant-houses  are  poor,  and  not 
much  money  is  spent  on  them. 
The  orchids  also  are  in  the  open, 
and  there  is  nothing  at  Buitenzorg 
to  compare  with  the  orchid-house 
in  the  Calcutta  Gardens,  where 
ferns  and  foliage  plants  combine 
with  gorgeous  flowers  to  produce 
a  scene  of  vegetable  beauty  that 
is,  I  think,  unequalled.  But  as  a 
botanical  garden  for  the  scientific 
study  of  plants,  Buitenzorg  pos- 
sesses facilities  that  cannot  be 
enjoyed  elsewhere,  and  this,  it 
must  be  remembered,  is  the  end 
that  the  able  director,  M.  Treub, 
has  exclusively  set  before  himself, 
and  which  he  has  attained  to  a 
degree  that  has  earned  for  the 
Dutch  nation  the  gratitude  of 
botanists  all  the  world  over.  The 
garden  is  liberally  equipped  with 
the  necessary  facilities  for  study 
in  physiological,  systematic,  and 
economic  botany ;  and  the  Dutch 
Government  hospitably  invite 
botanists  of  all  nationalities  to 
avail  themselves  of  the  resources 
and  treasures  of  Buitenzorg.  This 
offer  has  been  freely  accepted,  and 
several  German,  Italian,  and  Eng- 
lish botanists  have  made  the  long 
journey  to  Java,  in  order  to  pro- 
secute original  investigations  into 
one  or  other  of  the  numerous 
botanical  problems  now  awaiting 
solution. 

A  visit  should  also  be  paid  to 
the  Government  experimental 
plantation,  about  two  miles  from 
the  hotel.  The  two  varieties  of 
coffee  (C.  arabica  and  C.  liberica) 
commonly  seen  in  cultivation, 
several  species  of  the  plants  pro- 
ducing gutta  -  percha,  mahogany- 
trees,  cardamoms,  and  numerous 
other  interesting  plants  possessing 
economic  value,  may  be  seen  there. 

We  left  Buitenzorg  by  railway 
on  the  morning  of  the  3d  May, 


82 


Six  Weeks  in  Java. 


[July 


and  arrived  at  Bandoeng,1  the 
capital  of  the  Preanger  Regency, 
the  same  afternoon.  The  scenery 
was  always  interesting,  and  some- 
times fine,  as  the  train  passed 
along  deep  ravines  draped  with 
tropical  vegetation  and  seamed 
with  waterfalls.  It  was  interest- 
ing to  note  the  dark -green  Nipa 
palms  (N.fruticans)  standing  with 
erect  fronds  in  marshy  hollows, 
and  to  remember  that  in  Tertiary 
ages  the  same  palm  grew  in  the 
Thames  valley  and  dropped  its 
fruit  into  the  muddy  waters. 
The  sugar  palm  (Arenga  sacchari- 
fera\  one  of  the  most  useful  of 
plants,  is  always  to  be  seen  grow- 
ing near  villages,  with  enormous 
bunches  of  berries  pendent  from 
its  lofty  stem.  This  palm  pro- 
duces at  the  bases  of  its  leaves  a 
black  fibre,  like  horse-hair,  which 
is  put  to  a  variety  of  uses,  and 
may  be  seen  covering  the  ridges 
of  the  native  huts  all  over  the 
island. 

Bandoeng  is  the  headquarters  of 
the  provincial  administration,  but 
except  a  drive  of  five  miles  to  the 
pretty  Dogo  waterfall  on  the  Lam- 
beng  road,  it  does  not  possess 
much  interest,  except  as  the  start- 
ing-point for  the  active  volcano 
of  Tangkoebanpraho.  This  rather 
alarming  name  is  the  Dutch  spell- 
ing of  the  Malay  words  signifying 
an  overturned  boat  (prao),  and  is 
given  to  the  mountain  on  account 
of  its  resemblance  to  a  long  flat- 
bottomed  boat  which  has  been 
upset.  It  is  about  twelve  miles 
north  of  Bandoeng,  and  is  well 
worth  a  visit.  The  crater  lies  on 
the  north  side  of  the  forest-covered 
mountain,  and  is  not  seen  from 


The  spelling  of  Javan  names,  which  are  generally  Dutch  forms  of  Malay 

wds    presents  difficulties.     Throughout  this  paper  the  spelling  of  the  Dutch 

I  map  has  been  adopted.     This  useful  map,  on  a  scale  of  1,950,000  (nearly 

m  miles  to  the  inch),  is  published  at  Amsterdam  (Dr  J.  Dornseiffen :  Seyffards 

Boekhandel,  1890),  and  can  be  bought  in  Batavia 


the  town.  We  left  the  hotel  at 
six  o'clock,  and  after  a  couple  of 
hours'  drive  arrived  at  Lambeng, 
where  we  mounted  ponies  and 
started  for  the  crater.  The  ponies 
one  gets  in  Java  are  as  a  rule 
sturdy  little  beasts,  and  up  to  any 
reasonable  weight.  The  saddles 
supplied  are  usually  native,  and 
not  very  comfortable.  Side-sad- 
dles I  never  saw.  Dutch  ladies 
seldom  ride.  The  path  passes  at 
first  through  cinchona  plantations, 
and  as  it  rises  from  the  plain  com- 
mands fine  views  of  the  fertile 
valley  and  of  the  mountain-ranges 
to  its  south.  The  cultivation  of 
the  cinchona  -  tree  is  one  of  the 
principal  industries  of  Java,  and 
the  chemical  process  adopted  by 
the  Dutch  for  the  preparation  of 
the  drug  is  said  to  produce  the 
best  sulphate  of  quinine  procur- 
able. This  is  carried  out  in  Hol- 
land, whither  the  bark  as  stripped 
from  the  trees  and  dried  is  ex- 
ported. Cinchona  plantations  are 
frequent  on  the  lower  hills  through- 
out Java,  and  the  trees  are  of  all 
sizes  from  mere  saplings  up  to  30 
feet  high.  The  price  of  quinine 
has  fallen  so  low  in  the  European 
markets  that  its  production  is  said 
to  barely  pay  the  expenses,  and 
most  of  the  cinchona  now  grown 
is  Government  property.  After 
about  an  hour's  ride  through  the 
cinchona  clearings,  the  path  enters 
the  forest  that  clothes  the  hill- 
sides up  to  the  very  edge  of  the 
crater.  The  trees,  and  the  shrubs 
of  which  the  undergrowth  is  com- 
posed, are  mostly  of  a  temperate 
type,  and  remind  one  of  the  vegeta- 
tion met  with  at  similar  heights  in 
the  Eastern  Himalaya.  The  com- 


Six  Weeks  in  Java. 


1894.] 

mon  bramble  of  tropical  highlands 
(Rubus  moluccanus)  is  abundant ; 
also  another  handsome  bramble 
with  five -parted  leaves  (R.  alpes- 
tris).  An  oak  (Quercus  javensis), 
bearing  large  flattened  acorns  an 
inch  and  a  half  in  diameter,  is  also 
common.  Pink  and  yellow  flowered 
balsams,  and  ginger  plants  (Hedy- 
chium),  with  tall  spikes  of  fragrant 
white  flowers,  light  up  the  forest 
shades,  and  frequent  tree-ferns 
spread  their  fronds  over  the  jungle. 
After  crossing  the  summit  of  the 
ridge  (6400  feet),  the  path  descends 
for  a  short  distance  on  the  northern 
side,  and  the  immense  twin  crater 
comes  into  view.  The  ordinary 
conception  of  a  volcanic  vent  is 
founded  on  the  inverted-cone  type 
of  crater.  But  the  craters  before 
us  are  vast  areas  of  desolation, 
lying  open  to  the  sky,  and  look 
more  like  the  effects  of  a  land- 
slip than  volcanoes.  They  are 
separated  by  a  raised  ridge  which 
is  easily  accessible,  and  whence  a 
near  view  of  their  surfaces  can 
be  obtained.  Their  united  length 
is  more  than  a  mile,  and  their 
breadth,  where  crossed  by  the 
ridge,  about  half  a  mile.  The 
whole  area  is  broken  up  into 
hillocks  and  hollows,  the  latter 
holding  pools  of  rain-water,  while 
on  the  former  innumerable  cracks 
and  small  cones  give  vent  to  steam 
and  sulphur  fumes.  Yellow  and 
white  are  the  prevailing  surface 
colours ;  and  the  blackened  foliage 
of  the  bushes  overhanging  the  pre- 
cipitous edges  of  the  crater  attest 
the  poisonous  nature  of  the  ex- 
haled gases.  It  is  difficult  to 
imagine  a  more  dreary  and  deso- 
late scene  than  this  spot  presents, 
a  real  Phlegrean  field,  in  marked 
contrast  to  the  wooded  slopes  and 
smiling  valley  below. 

We  left  Bandoeng  by  rail,  and  in 
three  hours  arrived  at  Garoet,  the 
present  eastern  terminus  of  the  line 


83 


from  Batavia.  During  the  journey 
we  passed  through  some  of  the 
finest  hill  scenery  in  Java,  and 
finally  descended  by  a  series  of 
zigzags  and  viaducts  into  a  broad 
plain,  green  with  rice-fields,  and 
dotted  with  clusters  of  thatched 
cottages.  It  is  curious  to  see  the 
rice  in  every  stage  of  development 
at  the  same  time.  In  temperate 
climates  agricultural  operations  are 
clearly  divided  by  the  seasons  into 
seed  -  time  and  harvest ;  but  in 
Java,  where  an  equable  tempera- 
ture prevails  throughout  the  year, 
there  are  no  such  divisions,  and 
we  often  saw  all  the  different 
stages  of  rice -culture  in  simul- 
taneous progress  even  in  adjoining 
fields.  In  one  buffaloes  were  pain- 
fully churning  up  the  soil  into 
liquid  mud ;  in  the  next,  women 
were  planting  out  the  seedlings 
which  had  been  raised  in  an  ad- 
joining nursery ;  while  in  a  third 
field  men  were  reaping,  and  the 
children  tying  up  the  ears  for 
transport  to  the  threshing-floor. 
Few  sights  are  more  picturesque 
than  a  Javan  peasant,  with  his 
rich  brown  skin  and  dark  -  blue 
waistcloth,  staggering  under  a 
load  of  tawny  golden  rice-sheaves ; 
and  in  the  evenings  strings  of 
these  men  are  to  be  met  with  on 
the  way  to  their  villages  from  the 
fields. 

Garoet  is  a  capital  place  to 
make  one's  headquarters  for  some 
days.  Several  interesting  excur- 
sions can  be  made  from  thence, 
and  the  climate  is  cool  and  pleas- 
ant. A  drive  of  three  miles  takes 
the  visitor  to  some  curious  hot 
springs  at  the  base  of  a  mountain, 
covered  with  the  weather-worn  re- 
mains of  an  ancient  lava-flow.  The 
springs  are  much  resorted  to  by 
people  suffering  from  skin-disease, 
who  appear  to  spend  hours  sitting 
under  the  gushing  spouts  of  hot 
water.  Another  drive  of  about 


84 


Six  Weeks  in  Java. 


[July 


eight  miles  may  be  taken  to  the 
Wanaradja  Lake,  a  picturesque 
sheet  of  water;  but  the  best  ex- 
cursion from  Garoet  is  to  the 
active  crater  of  the  Papindajan 
volcano,  8500  feet  above  the  sea. 
We  started  at  6.30  A.M.,  and  after 
two  hours'  drive  arrived  at  the 
village  of  Tjiseroepan,  where  we 
mounted  ponies.  The  path  for 
the  first  mile  is  through  cinchona 
plantations;  and,  after  passing 
along  the  edge  of  a  deep  ravine, 
crowded  to  the  brim  with  tree- 
ferns,  bamboos,  orchids,  and  other 
tropical  vegetation,  enters  a  forest, 
through  which  it  leads  directly 
into  the  floor  of  the  crater.  The 
character  of  the  forest  flora  bears 
a  general  resemblance  to  that 
found  at  similar  elevations  in 
the  Eastern  Himalaya.  The  path 
is  carpeted  with  violets,  butter- 
cups, and  dandelions,  and  a  little 
Himalayan  Pratia  (P.  begonice- 
folia)  with  purple  berries  is  com- 
mon on  the  grassy  banks.  In  the 
forest  undergrowth,  musscendas, 
large-flowering  melastomas,  two  or 
three  species  of  brambles,  arte- 
misias,  and  vaccinium  bushes  were 
abundant.  The  trees  are  lofty, 
and  as  an  example  of  the  moun- 
tain flora  in  equatorial  regions,  I 
do  not  think  that  this  forest  is 
surpassed  in  interest  anywhere  in 
Java.  The  crater  presents  much 
the  same  general  features  as  that 
of  Tangkoebanprao,  but  is  more 
interesting  from  the  greater  activ- 
ity of  the  subterranean  fires,  and 
from  the  fact  that  you  ride  right 
on  to  the  floor  through  a  gap  in 
the  walls.  There  is  no  prelimin- 
ary looking  down  from  above, 
but  you  step  at  once  from  the 
shade  of  the  forest  into  a  desolate 
plain,  enclosed  by  high  precipices 
of  splintered  rocks,  and  with 
clouds  of  steam  issuing,  with  a 
noise  like  the  working  of  an 
engine,  from  open  funnels  in  the 


ground.  The  generally  white  sur- 
face is  coloured  here  and  there 
with  bright  yellow  patches  of 
sulphur,  which  is  also  deposited 
in  the  form  of  acicular  crystals 
in  the  mouths  of  the  caverns 
whence  the  fumes  issue.  Numer- 
ous streams  of  hot  water,  quite 
clear,  but  with  a  strong  taste, 
have  cut  a  network  of  channels 
in  the  soft  sinter  of  the  floor ; 
and  in  several  places  the  sulphur 
crystals  have  consolidated  into 
pillars  four  or  five  feet  high,  that 
loom  large  through  the  thick  clouds 
of  drifting  vapours.  The  ground 
nearly  everywhere  is  more  or  less 
hot.  The  general  form  of  the 
crater,  as  seen  from  a  distance, 
resembles  a  huge  scar  in  the 
mountain-side,  but  when  viewed 
from  the  interior,  its  precipitous 
walls  show  that  it  is  really  a  pit 
broken  through  at  one  end. 

The  next  morning  we  left  our 
hotel  at  six  o'clock  for  the  curi- 
ous so-called  "milky  lake"  of 
Talaga  Bodas,  driving  first  for 
one  hour  along  a  shady  road  and 
through  several  villages,  and  then 
riding  up  the  hill  on  ponies  for 
three  hours.  The  path  is  very 
good  going  throughout,  and  passes 
several  plantations  of  teak -trees 
that  seem  to  be  common  in  this 
district. 

We  also  saw  much  rice,  coffee, 
and  cinchona  cultivation,  often 
separated  by  hedges  of  erythrina, 
the  "Indian  coral -tree."  The 
views  of  the  valley  and  distant 
mountain-ranges  as  the  path  as- 
cended were  very  beautiful.  After 
about  an  hour's  ride  we  passed 
over  some  open  grass-land,  where 
a  pretty  species  of  iria(XiphidiumM 
with  orange -coloured  flowers,  was 
growing  in  company  with  scattered 
tree-ferns  and  thickets  of  the 
common  English  bracken.  This 
fern  is  remarkable  for  its  wide 
distribution,  and  may  be  seen  in 


1894.] 


Six  Weeks  in  Java. 


85 


suitable  elevations  all  round  the 
tropical  zone,  imparting  every- 
where a  homelike  aspect  to  its 
surroundings.  The  path  then 
enters  a  forest  of  much  the  same 
character  as  that  on  the  flanks  of 
Papandajan,  but  possessing  taller 
tree-ferns  than  we  had  seen  else- 
where, some  attaining  a  height  of 
at  least  sixty  feet.  A  handsome 
fern  (Dipteris  Horsfieldii)  grows 
abundantly  in  shady  nooks,  and  is 
remarkable  from  its  large  deeply- 
lobed  fronds,  dark  -  green  above 
and  pale  -  coloured  below.  After 
a  couple  of  miles  through  the 
forest  we  emerged  on  the  shore 
of  a  small  oval  lake,  about  300 
yards  across,  filled  with  water 
of  a  dirty  milk-white  colour,  the 
surface  of  which  was  covered  with 
gas  -  bubbles  constantly  bursting 
up  from  below.  This  is  certainly 
the  crater  of  a  volcano  which 
may  be  regarded  as  still  partially 
active;  for  though  the  water  is 
cold,  the  bubbles,  and  the  steam 
which  escapes  from  cracks  on  its 
margin,  sufficiently  attest  its  ori- 
gin. The  walls  of  the  crater 
slope  steeply  down, and  are  covered 
with  vaccinium  and  other  common 
jungle  bushes.  The  lake  is  sup- 
plied by  the  drainage  from  the 
enclosing  hills,  and  the  overflow 
escapes  by  a  channel  cut  through 
the  gorge  into  the  valley  below. 
The  scene  is  quiet  and  peaceful, 
though  at  some  former  period  the 
now  thickly  wooded  hills  must 
have  presented  much  the  same 
desolate  appearance  as  the  Papan- 
dajan crater.  A  rough  path, 
used  by  wood-cutters,  passes  round 
the  lake,  and  though  difficult  to 
clamber  along  at  some  places,  is 
well  worth  exploring  from  the 
variety  in  the  points  of  view  to 
be  obtained  from  it. 

On  our  return  to  the  house 
where  we  had  hired  ponies,  the 
Javan  gentleman  to  whom  it  be- 


longed provided  tea  for  us,  and 
a  native  band  performed  some 
airs  on  the  curious  bamboo  instru- 
ments, and  sets  of  modulated 
gongs,  peculiar  to  Java  and  the 
adjacent  countries.  The  music 
produced  was  soft  and  pleasant. 

We  left  Garoet  the  next  morn- 
ing by  rail  at  6.30  A.M.,  and 
arrived  at  Tjiandjoer  at  12.20. 
There  is  a  good  refreshment-room 
at  this  station,  and  after  lunch  we 
drove  in  two  hours  to  Sindanglaja. 
This  place  is  the  "  hill  station  "  for 
western  Java  :  it  is  situated  at  an 
elevation  of  5000  feet  above  the 
sea,  and  the  climate  is  cool  and 
pleasant, — indeed  for  Java  it  may 
almost  be  called  bracing.  The 
village  is  on  a  spur  of  the  Gede 
volcano,  and  fine  views  of  that 
mountain  and  of  its  sister  peak, 
Panggerango,  are  obtained  from 
the  garden  of  the  hotel.  The 
Governor  -  General  has  a  house 
here,  and  the  public  are  admitted 
into  its  pretty  grounds,  which  con- 
tain many  trees  and  plants  brought 
from  the  neighbouring  mountains. 
Just  outside  the  gate  is  a  bath- 
house supplied  by  hot  water  from 
the  Gede  volcano. 

Several  excursions  can  be  made 
from  Sindanglaja,  and  we  stayed 
here  nearly  a  week  with  much 
enjoyment  and  benefit.  About 
four  miles  from  the  hotel,  on  an 
elevated  spur  of  Gede  called  Tji 
Bodas,  is  the  Government  "  moun- 
tain garden,"  containing  plants 
that  do  not  flourish  at  lower  eleva- 
tions. It  is  very  well  kept  up  by 
the  Dutch  gentleman,  Mr  Lefebre 
of  the  Buitenzorg  garden  staff, 
who  has  been  deputed  to  the 
charge  of  it.  The  extensive 
grounds  contain  quite  a  multitude 
of  interesting  plants  and  trees, 
including  a  series  of  the  several 
varieties  of  cinchona  used  in  culti- 
vation, some  tree-ferns,  and  several 
of  the  oaks  and  coniferous  trees 


86 


Six  Weeks  in  Java. 


[July 


peculiar  to  the  Malay  archipelago. 
We  spent  two  mornings  in  this 
garden  enjoying  the  fine  views 
and  the  fresh  cool  air.  There  are 
two  paths  to  Tji  Bodas  from  the 
hotel;  one  leaves  the  road  near 
Government  House,  and  the  other 
at  about  half  a  mile  down  the 
Buitenzorg  road :  either  affords  a 
delightful  walk  or  ride.  From 
the  latter  the  cone  of  Papandajan 
can  be  seen  on  a  fine  morning. 
There  is  much  cultivated  land 
round  Sindanglaja,  and  it  is 
curious  to  observe  the  mechanical 
scarecrows  which  the  ingenious 
Malayan  mind  has  evolved.  The 
natives  are  also  fond  of  keeping 
birds  in  cages.  Every  house  has  at 
least  two  or  three ;  but  instead  of 
hanging  against  a  wall,  the  cages 
are  hoisted  up  high  above  the  roofs 
on  bamboo  poles :  and  thus  the 
little  prisoners  obtain  fresh  air 
and  sunshine,  and  are  clear  of  the 
mosquitos  and  other  baneful  insects 
that  swarm  below. 

Another  excursion  (about  two 
hours  from  the  hotel)  is  to  the 
Tji  Burram  waterfalls,  in  a  deep 
glen  to  the  right  of  the  path  that 
leads  to  the  Gede  crater.  The 
route  passes  Tji  Bodas,  enters  the 
forest,  and  climbs  by  a  steep 
rough  track  up  the  mountain-side. 
A  tall  species  of  cypress  with  dark 
foliage  towers  supreme  among  the 
trees,  and  the  path  is  so  covered 
in  that  it  is  difficult  to  obtain 
views  of  the  country  below.  The 
tree-trunks  are  clothed  with  soft 
folds  of  moss,  and  filmy  ferns 
(Hymenophyllum),  the  latter  with 
large  fronds  of  exquisitely  delicate 
texture.  Among  the  branches 
overhead  rattan  palms  (Calamus) 
hang  in  long  loops,  throwing  out 
on  either  side  their  graceful  shiny 
leaves,  the  stalks  of  which  are 


prolonged  into  tails  that  look  like 
gigantic  whip -lashes.  The  falls 
are  situated  in  a  glen  full  of 
glorious  vegetation,  kept  moist 
with  the  spray  from  three  falls 
that  tumble  in  sheets  of  foam 
over  a  limestone  precipice.  The 
view  is  superb  in  its  combination 
of  foliage,  grey  precipices  with 
masses  of  golden  moss  and  ferns, 
and  falling  waters.  If  the  visit 
be  made  sufficiently  early,  and  the 
morning  be  fine,  the  spray  will 
be  coloured  by  rainbows.  After 
leaving  the  falls,  a  short  detour 
should  be  made  to  a  curious  cavern 
of  the  kind  common  in  limestone 
formations :  it  is  nearly  full  of 
water,  and  is  worth  the  short 
scramble  necessary  to  reach  it. 

Another  pleasant  drive  or  walk 
may  be  made  to  the  summit  of 
the  Megamendoeng  Pass,  called 
Poentjak,  on  the  Buitenzorg  road, 
about  three  miles  from  the  hotel. 
A  fine  view  is  obtained  from  near 
the  toll-bar,  and  a  short  walk 
through  the  forest  leads  to  a  small 
lake,  or  rather  mountain  tarn, 
called  Telaga  Warna,  evidently  an 
old  crater  like  that  at  Telaga 
Bodas.  The  return  from  the  lake 
should  be  made  by  another  path, 
which  descends  through  the  forest 
and  comes  out  on  the  road  about 
a  mile  below  the  toll-bar. 

But  the  most  important  excur- 
sion from  Sindanglaja  is  the  ascent 
of  Gede.  This  has  been  admir- 
ably described  by  Mr  Wallace,1  and 
as  local  circumstances  have  altered 
but  little  since  his  visit,  the  de- 
tails he  gives  still  hold  good.  The 
climb  was  beyond  my  walking 
powers,  but  I  made  careful  in- 
quiries as  to  distances  and  times, 
and  the  following  table  of  stages 
will  be  found  useful  by  any  one 
undertaking  the  expedition: — 


1  See  his  <  Malay  Archipelago,'  vol.  i.  p.  179. 


1894." 


Six  Weeks  in  Java. 


87 


1.  From  the  hotel  to  the  small 

plateau  above  the  Tji  Bvr- 
ram  waterfall,  two  hours. 
Ponies  can  be  ridden  up  to 
this  point. 

2.  To     Lebaksaat,     one     hour. 

There  are  the  remains  of  a 
hut  here. 

3.  To  Kandung  Badak  (Rhino- 

ceros field),  one  hour.  A 
habitable  hut,  but  in  bad 
repair,  here. 

4.  To  the  crater,  two  hours. 
The  best  plan  would  be  to  sleep 
at  the  Kandung  Badak  hut  (bed- 
ding and  food  being  taken),   and 
to    start    early    for   the   summit, 
whence  the  return  to  Sindanglaja 
can  be   made   the  same  day.     A 
good  chance  would  thus  be  secured 
of   obtaining   the  view  from    the 
crater  (9924  feet),  which  is  almost 
always  enveloped  in   clouds   soon 
after   sunrise.       If    an    ascent    of 
Panggerango   (8670   feet)    is  also 
made,    a   second   night    must    be 
spent  at  the   hut.     This   volcano 
is  now  extinct,  but  Wallace  con- 
siders   it    more    interesting    than 
Gede,  though  he  does  not  add  for 
what  reason.     The  ascent  of  either 
of  these  mountains  is  seldom  under- 
taken, and  as  no  attention  is  paid 
to  keeping  the  paths  open,   they 
soon  get  blocked  with  jungle  and 
fallen  trees.     But  the  trip  presents 
no  difficulties  to  a  good   walker, 
and  from  Wallace's  account  these 
volcano   summits  must  be  among 
the  most  interesting  in  the  island. 

From  Sindanglaja  to  Buitenzorg 
is  a  drive  of  twenty -four  miles 
through  charming  scenery  and  over 
an  excellent  road.  It  takes  about 
four  hours.  We  returned  from 
Buitenzorg  to  Batavia,  and  sailed 
at  9  A.M.  on  the  17th  May  in  a 
Dutch  coasting  steamer  for  Sema- 
rang  in  Central  Java.  The  steamer 
was  comfortable,  but  was  rather 
crowded,  as  in  addition  to  the 
ordinary  passengers  we  carried 


twenty  Dutch  young  ladies,  on 
the  way  to  their  homes  for  the 
holidays.  The  girls  were  in  high 
spirits,  and  kept  us  amused  with 
playing  games  and  singing  chorus 
songs  until  the  ship  became  a 
little  lively,  when  they  disappeared 
below.  The  Anglo-Indian  in  Java 
is  much  struck  by  the  manner  in 
which  the  Dutch  make  themselves 
at  home  in  their  Eastern  posses- 
sions, as  contrasted  with  our  habits 
in  India.  Few  fathers  of  families 
in  Java  think  it  necessary  to  send 
their  boys  and  girls  to  Holland 
for  education ;  and  it  is  common, 
even  in  Batavia,  to  see  troops  of 
little  pale-faced  children  creeping 
unwillingly  to  school.  The  Dutch 
ladies  also  seem  to  resign  them- 
selves quite  willingly  to  perpetual 
exile.  The  difference  is  no  doubt 
partly  due  to  the  superior  climate 
which  the  interior  of  Java  pos- 
sesses, as  compared  with  the  burn- 
ing plains  of  India ;  but  it  is  also 
in  some  degree  attributable  to 
the  sensible  manner  in  which  the 
Dutch  adapt  their  dress  and  daily 
habits  to  the  conditions  of  life  in 
the  tropics.  In  Java  the  Euro- 
peans seem  to  make  up  their 
minds  to  live  their  lives  there, 
while  in  India  we  are  all  birds  of 
passage. 

Early  the  next  morning  the 
steamer  anchored  off  the  port  of 
Tjeribon,  and  we  enjoyed  a  view 
of  the  fine  cone  of  the  Tjeribon 
volcano,  sweeping  up  in  grand 
curves  behind  the  low  hills,  and 
barred  with  masses  of  grey  clouds. 
Later  in  the  day  we  called  at  the 
ports  of  Tegal  and  Pekalongan, 
and  during  the  night  anchored 
off  Samarang.  Unfortunately  the 
morning  broke  thick  and  cloudy, 
and  we  thus  missed  seeing  the 
"glorious  view  of  the  five  vol- 
canoes "  described  by  Miss  North. 

Semarang  is  the  centre  of  much 
commercial  activity,  but  was  chief- 


88 


Six  Weeks  in  Java. 


[July 


ly  important  in  our  eyes  as  afford- 
ing access  to  the  temple  of  Boro- 
boedar  and  the  many  other  curious 
Hindu  and  Buddhist  ruins  in  the 
central  provinces.  The  town  was 
hot,  and  we  left  it  by  the  2  P.M. 
train  for  Amberawa,  where  we 
arrived  the  same  evening.  The 
ascent  into  the  hilly  country  com- 
mences almost  immediately  after 
leaving  the  coast ;  but  the  journey 
offered  no  novelties  except  a  few 
pepper  plantations  and  some  native 
burial  -  grounds,  which  contained 
the  largest  and  oldest  Plumiera 
trees  we  had  seen.  This  tree 
(P.  acutifolia)  bears  white  sweet- 
scented  flowers,  and  is  often  seen 
in  India  and  Burmah  planted  near 
temples.  In  Java  it  appears  to 
be  appropriated  for  cemeteries ; 
and  in  this  instance,  to  judge  from 
their  massive  trunks  and  thick 
gnarled  boughs,  the  trees  must  be 
of  great  age.  At  Amberawa,  the 
terminus  of  the  railway  branch, 
there  is  a  small  fort  occupied  by 
a  military  garrison.  It  is  a  pretty 
little  place,  provided  with  the  well- 
kept  and  shady  roads  always  to  be 
found  in  Dutch  settlements  in  the 
East. 

I  cannot  pretend"  to  express  an 
opinion  on  the  general  merits  of 
the  Dutch  system  of  government 
in  Java,  but  the  results  are  cer- 
tainly apparently  satisfactory,  for 
the  vast  native  population  seem 
contented  and  happy.  From  early 
dawn  until  late  in  the  evening,  the 
numerous  villages,  and  the  roads 
connecting  them,  are  thronged  with 
natives  coming  and  going,  and 
buying  and  selling.  The  people 
live  much  in  public;  and  the  poorer 
classes,  instead  of  eating  their 
meals  at  home  as  is  the  manner 
of  the  unsociable  Hindoo,  seem 
usually  to  breakfast  and  dine  at 
one  of  the  itinerant  cook-shops  to 
be  found  at  every  street  corner. 
More  exclusive  people  may  be  seen 


buying  the  small  packets  of  curry 
and  rice  wrapped  in  fresh  plantain 
leaves,  and  pinned  with  bamboo 
splinters,  which  are  intended  for 
home  consumption.  To  stroll  down 
a  village  street  and  watch  the 
culinary  operations  in  progress  at 
wayside  eating  shops,  was  an  un- 
failing source  of  amusement ;  and 
very  clean  and  appetising  they 
looked,  though  the  smell  was  occa- 
sionally somewhat  trying  to  the 
European  nose.  The  Javans,  like 
all  rice-eating  people,  are  fond  of 
pungent  and  evil-smelling  sauces ; 
and  equivalents  of  the  Burman 
gnapee  and  Japanese  bean  soy 
are  in  constant  requisition.  The 
natives,  and  especially  the  chil- 
dren, look  fat  and  healthy,  and 
appear  to  enjoy  life  under  easy 
conditions ;  though  they  are,  gener- 
ally speaking,  of  grave  demeanour, 
and  are  not  endowed  with  the  un- 
failing vivacity  which  distinguishes 
the  Burmans  and  Japanese.  Dur- 
ing the  six  weeks  that  we  spent  in 
the  island  we  did  not  see  half-a- 
dozen  beggars,  and  except  in  cities, 
certainly  not  that  number  of  police- 
men. The  conditions  of  life  for  the 
poor  who  dwell  within  the  tropics 
are  easy  as  compared  with  those  of 
northern  climates.  A  poor  man 
in  Java  requires  but  little  in  the 
way  of  clothing,  and  no  fuel  to 
keep  himself  warm,  while  a  bene- 
ficent nature  supplies  him  through- 
out the  year  with  an  abundance  of 
cheap  food.  These  circumstances 
may  fail  in  developing  the  highest 
forms  of  human  energy,  but  on  the 
other  hand,  for  the  persons  con- 
cerned, they  are  more  tolerable 
than  cold  and  hunger. 

While  at  Amberawa  we  called 
on  the  Dutch  Resident  to  obtain 
the  necessary  authority  for  a  visit 
to  the  Dieng  plateau,  which  we 
had  proposed  to  ourselves,  but 
did  not  succeed  in  carrying  out. 
We  found  that  the  Resident  was 


1894.] 

absent  in  the  district,  but  on  hear- 
ing of  our  wish  he  did  all  that 
was  possible  to  aid  us,  and  had  it 
not  been  for  bad  weather  we  should 
doubtless  have  accomplished  the 
expedition. 

The  Dieng  is  an  extensive  plateau 
at  an  elevation  of  about  6000  feet 
on  the  flanks  of  Mount  Prahoo.  It 
is  the  site  of  some  ruined  temples 
of  great  interest  and  antiquity, 
which  Mr  Fergusson  says  form 
a  good  introduction  to  the  more 
elaborate  structures  at  Boroboedar. 
We  did  not  succeed  in  getting 
there,  but  an  account  of  our  at- 
tempt, so  far  as  it  went,  may  be  of 
use  to  more  fortunate  travellers. 

We  left  Amberawa  in  a  carriage 
at  8  A.M.,  and  after  a  pretty  drive 
arrived  at  Temanogoeng  at  noon. 
The  road  was  hilly,  and  for  the 
steep  ascents  the  ponies  were  re- 
placed by  bullocks.  It  was  on  the 
trees  that  border  this  road  that 
we  saw  for  the  first  and  only  time 
the  curious  little  animals  known 
as  flying  lizards  (Draco  volans), 
which  are  only  found  in  these 
regions,  and  whose  strange  appear- 
ance is  supposed  to  have  been  the 
origin  of  the  dragon  of  the  medi- 
eval Eastern  imagination.  The 
reptile  is  like  an  ordinary  lizard, 
but  is  provided  with  folds  of  ex- 
tensible skin,  which  are  spread  out 
by  the  long  ribs,  and  enable  the 
animal  to  glide  through  the  air 
from  tree  to  tree  in  pursuit  of  the 
insects  on  which  it  preys.  When 
lying  prone  on  the  mottled  sur- 
face of  a  bough  it  is  an  excellent 
example  of  "  protective  resem- 
blance," as  it  is  most  difficult  to 
be  seen  unless  it  moves. 

Temanogoeng  is  a  small  village 
under  the  shadow  of  the  Sindoro 
and  Soembing  volcanoes.  It  seems 
quite  out  of  the  world,  and  we 
were  surprised  to  find  here  a  good 
hotel  kept  by  a  nice  old  woman 
of  Dutch -Javan  extraction,  who 


Six  Weeks  in  Java. 


89 


gave  us  excellent  accommodation. 
Javan  hotels  are  always  good,  and 
they  are  often  kept  by  the  class 
known  in  India  as  half-caste  or 
Eurasian,  a  somewhat  unjustly  con- 
temned race  in  British  possessions, 
but  who  appear  in  Java  to  be 
treated  with  as  much  respect  as 
the  whites.  At  two  o'clock  our 
carriage,  drawn  this  time  by  six 
ponies,  drove  up  to  the  hotel  with 
much  cracking  of  whips,  and  we 
started  for  Ngadiredjo,  a  village 
at  the  foot  of  the  hills,  and  the  end 
of  carriage  roads  in  this  direction. 
Though  it  was  against  the  collar 
the  whole  way,  the  ponies  main- 
tained a  good  pace,  being  urged 
thereto  by  the  wild  shouts  and 
incessant  cracking  of  whips  main- 
tained by  our  coachman  and  the 
two  ragged  boys  who  acted  as 
grooms,  and  who,  in  the  intervals 
of  running  alongside  the  ponies, 
clung  breathless  to  the  back  of  the 
carriage.  The  drive  was  quite 
exciting,  and  after  two  hours  we 
pulled  up  at  the  house  of  the 
native  official  on  whose  hospitality 
we  depended  for  food  and  shelter. 
Unfortunately  we  found  that  he 
also  was  absent  in  the  district,  and 
no  one  seemed  to  know  where  he 
was  or  when  he  might  be  expected 
to  return.  His  servants,  however, 
after  some  palaver,  arrived  at  the 
conclusion  that  we  were  people  of 
respectability,  and  made  us  fairly 
comfortable  for  the  night  in  the 
verandah  of  the  official  residence. 
The  next  morning  we  succeeded 
in  procuring  four  rather  weedy- 
looking  ponies,  and  started  for  the 
"Dieng  plateau,"  but  without 
having  any  clear  idea  where  we 
were  to  spend  the  night.  The 
road  climbed  for  several  miles  over 
bare  hills  ;  and  as  the  country  was 
particularly  uninteresting,  and  the 
weather  became  threatening,  we 
finally  abandoned  the  expedition 
and  returned  to  Temanogoeng.  It 


90 


Six  Weeks  in  Java. 


[July 


was  lucky  that  we  did  so,  for 
pouring  rain  came  on  which  would 
have  quite  prevented  our  reaching 
Dieng. 

The  next  morning  was  brilliantly 
fine,  and  at  seven  o'clock  we  started 
in  a  carriage  and  four  for  Mage- 
lang,  the  Dutch  military  head- 
quarters in  central  Java,  where 
we  arrived  at  10  A.M.  The  road 
lay  due  south,  down  the  valley  of 
the  Kali  Progo,  through  green 
rice-fields,  with  magnificent  ranges 
of  rugged  mountains  on  either 
hand.  The  principal  peaks  were 
Sundoo  and  Soembing  on  the  west, 
and  Merbaboe  and  the  active 
cone  of  Merapi,  crowned  with 
white  clouds,  on  the  east.  There 
is  a  marked  difference  in  the  aspect 
of  the  higher  mountains  in  central 
and  in  western  Java,  the  former 
being  bare  of  vegetation,  while  the 
latter  are  clothed  with  forest  to 
their  summits.  The  difference  is 
no  doubt  due  to  a  diminished  rain- 
fall, which  has  been  attributed 
to  the  proximity  of  Australia  to 
the  eastern  end  of  the  island. 

Magelang  is  a  pretty  little  town, 
possessing  a  fine  climate,  and  is  a 
favourite  quarter  with  the  Dutch 
officers;  but  there  is  nothing  to 
detain  one  there,  and  we  left 
in  the  afternoon  for  Boroboedar, 
where  we  arrived  after  a  three 
hours'  drive.  Here  we  found  a 
small  hotel,  kept  by  an  old  Ger- 
man who  had  formerly  served  in 
the  Dutch  army.  The  house  is 
within  a  hundred  yards  of  the 
central  entrance  to  the  great 
temple,  and  commands  fine  views 
of  the  romantic  scenery  that 
surrounds  it.  We  stayed  here 


three  days;  and  for  the  artist  or 
the  archaeologist,  or,  indeed,  for 
any  intelligent  being,  it  is  difficult 
to  imagine  a  more  delightfully 
retired  spot  in  which  to  rest  from 
the  fatigues  of  travel.  The  won- 
derful temple  of  Boroboedar  is 
conjectured  by  Fergusson l  to  have 
been  erected  in  the  seventh  cen- 
tury of  the  Christian  era,  the 
golden  age  of  Buddhism  in  Java, 
"just  when  the  Buddhist  system 
had  attained  its  greatest  develop- 
ment, and  just  before  its  fall. 
This  temple  thus  contains  within 
itself  a  complete  epitome  of  all  we 
learn  from  other  sources,  and  is  a 
perfect  illustration  of  all  we  know 
of  Buddhist  art  and  its  revival." 

The  temple  is  built  on  the  sum- 
mit of  a  commanding  hill,  and  has 
the  form  of  a  pyramid  with  its 
apex  removed.  Each  side  of  the 
base  measures  370  feet,  and  on 
the  upper  platform  are  placed  the 
seventy  -  two  small  shrines  (or 
dagobas),  each  with  a  seated 
statue  of  Buddha  in  it,  which 
formed  the  temple  proper.  In 
the  centre  of  these  rises  a  larger 
shrine,  now  empty,  but  which  no 
doubt  once  contained  relics  or  a 
statue.  Four  galleries,  or  pro- 
cession paths,  encircle  the  struc- 
ture, and  lead  to  the  upper  plat- 
form, where  a  grand  view  of  the 
fertile  plain  enclosed  by  rugged 
mountains  is  obtained. 

"It  is  not,  however,"  Fergusson 
writes,  "either  from  its  dimensions 
or  the  beauty  of  its  architectural  de- 
sign that  Boroboedar  is  so  remark- 
able, as  for  the  sculptures  that  line 
its  galleries.  These  extend  to  nearly 
5000  feet,  almost  an  English  mile, 


1  See  Fergusson's  '  History  of  Indian  and  Eastern  Architecture'  (London,  1876), 
pp.  637  to  662,  for  an  account  of  the  Javan  buildings,  and  for  an  interesting 
summary  of  Javan  history.  Another,  and  in  some  respects  fuller,  account  of  the 
Boroboedar  temple  may  be  found  in  his  'Handbook  of  Architecture.'  I  have 
borrowed  freely  from  both. 


1894.] 


Six  Weeks  in  Java. 


91 


and  as  there  are  sculptures  on  both 
faces  of  the  galleries,  we  have  nearly 
10,000  feet  of  bas-reliefs  ;  or,  if  we 
like  to  add  those  which  are  in  two 
storeys,  we  have  a  series  of  sculptures 
which,  if  arranged  consecutively  in  a 
row,  would  extend  over  nearly  three 
miles  of  ground.  Most  of  them  are 
singularly  well  preserved  ;  for  when 
the  Javans  were  converted  to  Mu- 
hamadanism  it  was  not  in  anger,  and 
they  were  not  urged  to  destroy  what 
they  had  before  reverenced :  they 
merely  neglected  them,  and,  except 
for  earthquakes,  these  monuments 
would  now  be  nearly  as  perfect  as 
when  they  were  first  erected." 

The  outer  face  of  the  basement 
is  extremely  rich  in  architectural 
ornaments  and  figure  sculptures, 
but  is  not  historically  important. 
The  first  enclosed  gallery  is  the 
most  interesting,  and  contains  on 
its  inner  wall  120  elaborate  bas- 
reliefs  portraying  scenes  in  the 
life  of  Buddha,  among  which  may 
be  recognised  his  marriage,  his 
domestic  happiness,  his  departure 
from  home  and  assumption  of  the 
ascetic  garb,  his  life  in  the  forest, 
and  his  preaching  in  the  deer-forest 
at  Benares,  —  scenes  which  have 
been  rendered  familiar  to  the 
English  reader  by  the  brilliant 
pages  of  Sir  Edwin  Arnold's 
'Light  of  Asia.'  In  the  three 
upper  galleries  Buddhism  is  rep- 
resented as  a  religion.  Groups 
of  Buddhas,  three,  five,  or  nine, 
are  repeated  over  and  over  again, 
mixed  with  representations  of 
saints  and  sages.  The  carvings 
have  been  executed  in  a  hard 
trachytic  rock,  and  if  the  cover- 
ing of  moss  and  lichens  is  scraped 
off,  the  finest  tracings  of  the 
artist's  chisel  are  still  to  be  dis- 
cerned. 

The  custom  of  placing  their 
temples  on  commanding  sites  is 
characteristic  of  the  Buddhists, 
and  Boroboedar  reminded  us  in 


this  respect  of  the  ruined  temples 
on  the  hill  at  Takht-i-Bahi  over- 
looking the  Eusofzai  plain  on  the 
North- West  frontier  of  India,  the 
builders  of  which  were  probably 
contemporaries  of  the  workmen 
who  carved  the  bas-reliefs  in  Java. 
We  are  accustomed  to  regard 
Buddhism  as  a  widely-spread  re- 
ligion even  in  these  days ;  but  the 
faith  is  now  in  its  decadence  as 
compared  with  the  golden  age 
which  witnessed  the  nearly  con- 
temporaneous erection  of  temples 
in  Afghanistan,  in  India,  and  in 
Java — countries  where  the  tenets 
of  Sakya  Muni  have  long  ceased 
to  hold  sway.  It  is  interesting, 
while  sitting  on  one  of  the  ruined 
dagobas,  with  the  fertile  plain 
spread  out  below  and  the  clouds 
of  steam  curling  up  from  Merapi, 
to  try  and  realise  the  scene  that 
Boroboedar  must  have  presented, 
say,  a  thousand  years  ago.  The 
clamour  of  populous  towns  then 
rose  from  the  plain,  and  the  slopes 
of  the  eminence  on  which  the 
temple  stands  were  thronged  with 
crowds  of  worshippers.  The  sculp- 
tured galleries,  now  black  with 
age,  then  shone  white  in  the  sun, 
decked  with  banners,  and  gay  with 
processions  of  richly  robed  monks 
engaged  in  the  stately  ritual  of 
Buddha.  But  the  scene,  faintly 
evoked,  soon  fades  into  realities, 
and  it  seems  impossible  to  realise 
that  the  grey  pile  before  us,  shat- 
tered by  earthquake  and  silent  in 
its  desolation,  has  once  been  the 
centre  of  busy  religious  life. 

Two  and  a  half  miles  from 
Boroboedar  is  the  temple  of  Men- 
doet,  conjectured  to  be  of  about 
one  hundred  years  later  date,  and 
of  extreme  interest  as  illustrating 
the  compromise  between  Hindu- 
ism and  Buddhism,  which  has 
many  examples  in  Java,  but  the 
want  of  which  leaves  a  gap  in  the 


92 


Six  Weeks  in  Java. 


[July 


history  of  architecture  in  India. 
No  one  can  doubt  as  to  the  purity 
of  the  Buddhism  in  the  temple  of 
Boroboedar;  but  at  Mendoet  two 
of  the  colossal  figures  are  distinct- 
ly Hindu,  and  it  might  be  fairly 
argued  that  the  temple  belongs  to 
either  religion.  The  temple  is 
forty-five  feet  square,  and  stands  on 
a  basement  raised  about  ten  feet. 
It  has  been  much  injured  by  earth- 
quakes, and  appears  likely  to  fall 
soon  into  a  heap  of  ruins.  Inside 
is  a  cell  with  a  roof  of  very  curious 
design,  described  by  Fergusson  as 
"  an  inverted  pyramid  of  steps,"  un- 
der which  are  seated  three  colossal 
images,  each  about  eleven  feet  high. 
The  centre  one  is  Buddha,  curly 
headed,  and  clad  in  a  diaphanous 
robe ;  and  the  two  other  colossi 
are  almost  certainly  intended  for 
the  Hindu  deities  Vishnu  and 
Siva.  Outside  the  entrance  is  a 
bas  -  relief  of  Lakhshmi,  eight- 
armed,  and  seated  on  a  lotus ;  and 
on  another  face  is  a  four-armed 
figure,  also  seated  on  a  lotus,  the 
stem  of  which  is  supported  by 
two  figures,  each  with  its  head 
composed  of  seven  hooded  snakes. 
Fergusson  compares  these  bas- 
reliefs  with  those  at  Karli  in 
India,  and  considers  them  to  be 
"as  refined  and  elegant  as  any- 
thing in  the  best  days  of  Indian 
sculpture."  It  is  a  pleasant  shady 
walk  to  Mendoet,  and  a  small 
bridge  near  the  temple  commands 
a  very  beautiful  view  of  the  Soem- 
bing  cone. 

We  left  Boroboedar  at  7  A.M. 
on  25th  May,  and  arrived  in  three 
hours  d,t  Djokjokarta,  a  large  town 
on  the  line  of  railway  to  Soera- 
baja.  Every  yard  of  the  country 
through  which  we  passed  was  cul- 
tivated, the  principal  crops  being 
sugar-cane  and  manihot.  Sugar  is 
the  staple  export  from  eastern 
Java ;  and  the  cane  -  fields,  with 


their  waving  plumes  of  silvery- 
grey  inflorescence,  form  a  charm- 
ing addition  to  the  landscape.  In 
India  the  cultivated  sugar-cane 
bears  no  flowers,  and  the  plants 
are  propagated  by  cuttings,  and 
even  in  Java  the  seeds  do  not 
mature.  Manihot  (M.  utilitissima) 
is  grown  on  dry  elevated  land  not 
suited  for  rice,  and  its  queer- 
shaped  tuberous  roots  are  seen 
in  every  bazaar.  From  these  the 
meal  known  as  cassava  is  prepared 
in  tropical  America,  and  tapioca 
for  the  European  market.  The 
manihot  is  a  handsome  plant,  with 
large  deeply-lobed  leaves ;  but  the 
raw  root  is  bitter,  and  more  or  less 
poisonous  until  the  juices  have 
been  expelled  by  pressure. 

The  temples  at  Brambanan  are 
quite  as  interesting  as  those  at 
Boroboedar,  and  are  most  con- 
veniently visited  by  an  excursion 
of  half-an-hour  by  rail  from  Djok- 
jokarta. There  is  no  hotel  at 
Brambanan,  and  no  refreshment 
of  any  kind  can  be  obtained  there  ; 
so  the  best  plan  is  to  bring  a 
luncheon-basket  and  spend  a  happy 
day  among  the  temples,  returning 
to  Djokjokarta  in  the  evening. 
Brambanan  has  two  distinct  groups 
of  temples,  known  respectively  as 
Loro  Jongram,  and  Chandi  Siwa 
or  the  thousand  temples.  Both 
groups  are  of  Hindu  character. 
The  former  is  considered  by  Fer- 
gusson to  be  the  older,  about  the 
ninth  century,  and  consists  of  six 
large  temples  surrounded  by  four- 
teen smaller  cells,  now  completely 
in  ruins.  The  buildings  and  their 
enclosure  walls  are  crowded  with 
sculptures,  including  some  gro- 
tesque figures  of  animals.  The 
other  group,  known  as  Chandi 
Siwa,  is  of  later  date,  but  is  the 
more  interesting.  It  consists  of  a 
great  central  temple  raised  on  a 
richly  ornamented  square  base,  and 


1894.] 


Six  Weeks  in  Java. 


93 


is  surrounded  by  a  multitude  of 
smaller  temples  238  in  number. 
Fergusson  writes : — 

"  The  central  building  is  richly  and 
elaborately  ornamented  with  carvings, 
but  there  is  a  singular  absence  of 
figure  sculpture,  which  renders  its 
dedication  not  easy  to  make  out. 
When  looked  at  closely,  it  is  evident 
that  Chandi  Siwa  is  neither  more  nor 
less  than  Boroboedar  taken  to  pieces 
and  spread  out,  with  such  modifica- 
tions as  were  necessary  to  adapt  it  to 
that  compromise  between  Buddhism 
and  Brahmanism  that  we  call  Jaina." 

Both  the  groups  of  temples  are 
within  a  walk  of  the  Brambanan 
railway  station,  but  it  is  advisable 
to  take  a  guide,  as  it  is  quite  pos- 
sible to  miss  the  ruins  in  the 
jungle  that  has  grown  up  about 
them. 

From  Djokjokarta  we  went  by 
railway  to  Soerakarta  (called  Solo 
in  the  time-tables),  a  large  town 
with  a  fort  and  military  garrison. 
A  native  prince  resides  here,  who 
still  maintains  some  semblance  of 
royalty,  and  possesses  a  palace 
which  is  shown  to  visitors.  Beau- 
tiful specimens  of  the  national 
sarong,  the  large  cloth  worn  as  a 
petticoat  by  the  Malays,  and  by 
Dutch  ladies,  can  be  obtained  here 
at  from  twenty  to  fifty  guilders 
each.  From  Soerakarta  we  travel- 
led straight  through  to  Soerabaja, 
a  twelve  hours'  railway  journey, 
and  a  weary  time  we  found  it 
in  spite  of  the  beautiful  scenery. 
Soerabaja  was  extremely  hot,  quite 
as  bad  if  not  worse  than  Batavia, 
and  without  the  advantage  of 
having  an  airy  and  well-arranged 
hotel.  The  city  is  the  Liverpool 
of  Java,  and  during  July  and 
August,  the  season  of  sugar  ex- 
port, the  small  harbour  is  full  of 
shipping.  The  streets  are  broad 


and  shady,  but  the  place  contains 
no  object  of  special  interest.  We 
left  it  the  day  after  arrival,  going  by 
rail  (three  hours)  to  Passoeroewan, 
a  pretty  town  with  a  much  cooler 
climate,  on  the  coast  opposite  the 
island  of  Madura.  An  excursion 
can  be  made  from  here  to  a  water- 
fall known  as  Blancoe  water,  with 
a  Hindu  temple  near  it.  Miss 
North  describes  the  place  as  pretty 
and  worth  seeing,  but  we  were  un- 
able to  visit  it. 

The  next  morning  at  7  A.M.  we 
started  for  Tosari  and  the  Bromo 
volcano.  A  drive  of  two  hours 
through  the  low  country,  present- 
ing the  scenery  characteristic  of  the 
ever-fertile  Javan  plains,  brought 
us  to  the  village  of  Paserpan  at 
the  foot  of  the  hills,  where  we  ex- 
changed our  carriage  for  a  sadoh.1 
After  another  hour's  drive  uphill 
we  arrived  at  Poespo,  the  present 
end  of  the  road,  where  we  pro- 
cured riding  and  baggage  ponies 
for  the  remainder  of  the  journey. 
During  the  ascent  frequent  views 
are  obtained  of  the  straits  of 
Madura  and  of  the  island.  The 
deep  blue  of  the  sea,  the  vivid 
green  of  the  rice-fields,  the  foliage 
of  the  trees  and  palms,  and  the 
grey  clouds  that  hung  in  long  bars 
across  the  sky,  combined  to  form 
pictures  of  tropical  beauty  such  as 
we  had  seldom  seen  even  in  Java. 
Immediately  after  leaving  Poespo 
the  forest  is  entered,  and  the 
rough  pathway  ascends  through 
it  by  steep  zigzags.  Coffee-bushes, 
covered  with  their  pretty  red  ber- 
ries and  white  flowers,  commenced 
at  about  4000  feet  elevation,  and 
continued,  mixed  with  occasional 
forest  -  trees,  until  we  reached 
nearly  the  level  of  Tosari.  The 
forest  was  extremely  picturesque, 
and  contained  the  usual  temperate 


1  The  cab  of  Java,  seen  everywhere  ;  drawn  by  one  or  two  ponies. 


94 


Six  Weeks  in  Java. 


forms  of  vegetation,  but  with  fewer 
and  smaller  tree-ferns  than  in 
western  Java.  Among  the  trees 
was  a  Casuarina  with  fine  dark 
foliage,  the  beef-wood  of  Austral- 
ian colonists,  crowning  the  hill- 
tops like  pine -woods  in  temper- 
ate latitudes.  An  Engelhardtia, 
a  tree  allied  to  our  walnut,  was 
also  common,  and  remarkable  for 
its  pendent  spikes  of  fruit,  some- 
times more  than  a  foot  long,  with 
pretty  pink-coloured  bracts.  The 
trunks  and  branches  of  these 
trees  were  often  completely  covered 
with  a  thick  growth  of  orchids, 
ferns,  and  a  lichen  (Usnea)  that 
formed  long  grey  streamers.  Occa- 
sional teak -trees  were  scattered 
about  the  forest,  of  insignificant 
size  as  compared  with  those  in 
Burmah,  but  bearing  beautiful 
panicles  of  flowers.  After  riding 
about  three  hours,  we  came  out  on 
open  hills  where  the  forest  had 
been  cleared  to  make  way  for 
fields  of  potatoes,  cabbages,  and 
Indian  corn,  and  in  half-an-hour 
more  we  arrived  at  the  Tosari 
Hotel.  This  place  is  6000  feet 
above  the  sea,  and  is  much  re- 
sorted to  during  the  dry  season 
by  the  families  of  the  Dutch  mer- 
chants and  officials  at  Soerabaja. 
In  this  respect  it  answers  to  our 
hill-stations  in  the  Himalaya ;  but 
the  visitors  all  live  at  the  hotel, 
and  one  misses  the  well-kept  roads 
and  trim  cottages  of  Mussoorie  or 
Darjeeling. 

Tosari  certainly  possesses  the 
advantage  of  being  cool,  but  other- 
wise the  climate  is  disagreeable. 
The  mornings,  and  occasionally  the 
evenings,  were  fine;  but  about 
noon  dense  clouds  of  cold  wet  mist, 
usually  accompanied  by  storms  of 
driving  rain,  swept  up  the  valleys, 
and  rendered  life  somewhat  of  a 
burden.  These  conditions,  how- 
ever, affected  the  Dutch  to  a  less 


[July 


degree  than  ourselves,  as,  like 
their  countrymen  throughout  Java, 
every  one  disappeared  soon  after 
the  mid-day  "  rice-table,"  and  went 
to  bed  {ill  they  woke  about  four 
o'clock  for  the  afternoon  tea.  The 
view  from  the  hotel  garden  over 
the  forest  -  clad  spurs  running 
steeply  down  to  the  plains,  with 
the  blue  sea  and  its  islands,  was 
superb,  but  could  only  be  en- 
joyed by  the  early  riser.  We 
made  several  delightful  rambles 
over  the  hills,  and  met  among  the 
flowers  many  old  friends  of  the 
Himalaya,  and  even  of  distant 
England.  The  temperate  char- 
acter of  the  mountain  flora  in  the 
tropics  suggests  questions  regard- 
ing the  geographical  range  of  plants 
that  do  not  concern  us  here ;  but 
it  was  pleasant  to  see  wild  straw- 
berries, St  John's  worts,  stitch- 
worts,  and  many  other  familiar 
plants,  growing  by  the  wayside  in 
eight  degrees  south  of  the  equator. 
During  our  few  days'  stay  here  I 
amused  myself  by  making  a  list 
of  the  Himalayan  flowers  which  I 
recognised,  and  it  amounted  to 
over  sixty  species. 

One  fine  morning,  on  climbing 
to  the  top  of  a  ridge,  we  caught 
sight  for  the  first  time  of  the 
truncated  cone  of  a  huge  volcano, 
towering  above  the  sea  of  clouds 
that  shrouded  its  flanks.  This  was 
the  famous  Smeroe,  12,000  feet 
high,  and  only  about  fifteen  miles 
distant  from  us  in  a  direct  line. 
The  air  was  so  clear  that  it  seemed 
as  if  we  could  see  every  stone 
on  the  crater's  edge.  We  were 
watching  this  scene,  and  speculat- 
ing how  long  it  would  be  before 
the  summit  became  hidden  by  the 
clouds,  when  suddenly  an  immense 
column  of  steam  and  black  ashes 
was  shot  up  into  the  blue  sky,  and, 
spreading  out  like  a  flat  cloud, 
drifted  away  to  leeward.  We 


1894.] 


Six  Weeks  in  Java. 


95 


afterwards  discovered  that  these 
sudden  eruptions  occurred  periodi- 
cally at  irregular  intervals,  vary- 
ing from  ten  to  forty-five  minutes, 
and  were  visible  from  a  distance  of 
over  fifty  miles.  The  explosions 
resemble  those  of  a  geyser,  and, 
like  them,  are  probably  due  to 
subterranean  accumulations  of 
steam.  The  ascent  of  Smeroe  is 
quite  practicable ;  but  as  the  ex- 
pedition required  five  days  from 
Tosari  there  and  back,  and  in- 
volved a  good  deal  of  rough  climb- 
ing, we  did  not  attempt  it,  but 
contented  ourselves  with  a  visit 
to  Bromo.  The  crater  of  this 
volcano,  like  that  of  Kilauea  in 
Hawaii,  consists  of  an  irregularly- 
shaped  outer  crater,  in  this  in- 
stance about  twenty  miles  round, 
with  smaller  and  more  recent 
craters  situated  at  one  end.  It  is 
probable  that  the  outer  crater  may 
be  due  to  subsidence  rather  than 
to  explosion,  but  either  theory 
seems  to  fit  the  facts.  The  floor 
of  that  at  Bromo  is  covered  with 
ash  in  the  form  of  coarse  sand,  in- 
stead of  with  lava  as  in  Hawaii. 

We  started  for  Bromo  at  half- 
past  five  in  the  morning,  and  two 
hours'  ride  over  a  good  track 
brought  us  to  the  edge  (7320  feet) 
of  the  outer  crater,  where  a  won- 
derful view  is  obtained  of  the  so- 
called  "Sea  of  Sand  "  (Dasa),  with 
the  singular  extinct  cone  of  Batok 
rising  from  its  midst.  The  crater, 
.which  is  now  active,  is  distin- 
guished as  Bromo  (7080  feet),  but 
it  is  hidden  from  view  at  this 
point  by  the  slopes  of  Batuk. 
The  descent  to  the  sandy  floor 
is  about  500  feet,  and  is  very 
steep.  It  affords  some  interest- 
ing sections  of  the  crater -wall, 
composed  of  nearly  vertical  sheets 
of  lava  and  scoriae,  that  must  have 
been  ejected  from  volcanic  vents 
existing  in  this  vicinity  ages  before 


the  present  system  of  craters  was 
formed.  From  the  bottom  of  the 
descent  the  route  crosses  the  sandy 
plain,  which  resembles  the  bed  of 
a  dried-up  lake,  and  passes  close 
under  Batuk,  whose  steep  sides 
have  been  cut  by  the  rain  into 
deep  vertical  furrows,  and  are  now 
covered  with  bushes.  The  summit 
must  originally  have  been  much 
higher  than  at  present,  and  the 
denudation  it  has  suffered  is  shown 
by  the  irregular  talus  formed  round 
the  base  of  the  cone.  We  left  our 
ponies  at  a  shed  to  the  east  of 
Batuk,  and  after  half -an -hour's 
climb  arrived  at  a  flight  of  steps 
leading  up  the  steep  sandy  side  of 
the  Bromo  crater.  This  is  an 
example  of  the  inverted-cone  type, 
and  is  about  600  yards  diameter 
at  the  rim,  and  300  or  400  feet 
deep.  At  the  bottom  are  some 
small  fumaroles  and  cracks  giving 
vent  to  steam,  and  the  sides  are 
streaked  with  bands  of  yellow 
sulphur.  Over  the  lower  slopes 
of  Bromo  large  amorphous  lumps 
of  vesiculated  scoriae  are  scattered 
that  appear  to  have  exuded  from 
cracks,  and  masses  of  similar  mate- 
rial, of  a  roughly  spherical  shape, 
occur  on  the  surface  of  the  "  Sea 
of  Sand."  The  sandy  plain  is 
almost  devoid  of  vegetation,  except 
a  volyqonum  and  some  grasses  and 

Jr       t/ 1/  o 

sedges ;  but  the  cracks  and  furrows 
on  Bromo  are  already  tenanted  by 
ferns,  a  vine,  a  bramble,  vaccinium 
bushes,  and  other  stragglers  from 
the  surrounding  forest. 

The  scene  from  the  top  of  Bromo 
is  grandly  weird,  and  not  even  the 
lake  of  surging  lava  at  Kilauea 
impressed  me  with  an  equal  sense  of 
the  forces  pent  up  within  the  appar- 
ently solid  globe  on  which  we  live. 
I  know  of  no  scientific  description 
in  the  English  language  of  the 
wonderful  system  of  craters,  over- 
lapping each  other  like  those  in 


96 


Six  Weeks  in  Java. 


[July 


the  moon,  to  be  seen  at  this  spot ; 
but  a  Dutch  friend  was  kind 
enough  to  translate  for  me  por- 
tions of  a  work1  on  the  plants 
and  volcanoes  of  this  district, 
which  appeared  to  be  very  well 
done.  From  the  hotel  to  the 
Bromo  crater  is  a  walk  of  about 
four  hours,  and  the  whole  excur- 
sion is  of  the  greatest  interest. 

We  left  Tosari  at  seven  o'clock 
the  next  morning  and  rode  to 
Djaboeng,  a  village  at  the  foot  of 
the  hills,  where  we  arrived  at 
2  P.M.,  and  got  sados  for  the  drive 
to  Malang.  The  path,  except  for 
a  few  rough  places,  is  good.  It 
passes  at  first  through  the  lower 
hills,  then  traverses  a  characteristic 
Javan  forest  with  tree-ferns  and 
waterfalls,  and  for  the  last  few 
miles  lies  through  coffee  planta- 
tions. Here  we  saw  the  berries 
being  picked;  the  girls  and  boys 
climbing  into  the  bushes,  and  the 
old  women  gathering  berries  on 
the  ground.  It  was  a  very  busy 
and  pretty  scene.  At  Djaboeng 
we  took  shelter  in  the  verandah  of 
a  Government  coffee  storehouse, 
thronged  with  natives  bringing 
their  quotas  of  berries,  which  the 
officials  weighed  and  paid  for.  The 
cultivation  of  coffee  in  Java  is  a 
Government  monopoly,  and  like 
certain  other  valuable  products, 
such  as  tea,  cinnamon,  pepper, 
&c.,  the  cultivators  are  obliged  to 
sow  at  least  one-fifth  of  their  hold- 
ings with  the  prescribed  crop,  the 
product  being  paid  for  at  fixed 
rates.  The  advantages  of  this 
system  appear  questionable ;  but 
Mr  Boys,  an  experienced  ob- 
server, who  paid  particular  atten- 
tion to  the  subject,  considers  that, 
on  the  whole,  the  results  are  bene- 
ficial. The  coffee  used  by  the 


Dutch  residents  is  prepared  as  an 
extract  with  cold  water,  which  is 
run  off  into  small  decanters  and 
served  with  sugar  and  hot  milk. 
A  very  little  of  the  extract  goes 
a  long  way ;  but  the  beverage  thus 
prepared  possesses  an  aroma  and 
freshness  of  flavour  that  is  superior 
to  the  coffee  one  gets  even  in 
France  or  Egypt. 

Malang  is  a  large  town  with  a 
military  garrison,  and  is  the  ter- 
minus of  the  railway  running 
south  from  Soerabaja.  It  is  situ- 
ated in  the  fertile  valley  of  the 
Brantas  river,  and  commands  fine 
views  of  the  volcanic  ranges  en- 
closing the  valley  on  the  east  and 
west.  An  excursion  should  be 
made  from  Malang  to  Singosari 
(half  -  an  -  hour  by  rail)  to  see  a 
Hindu  temple  and  some  curious 
statues,  assigned  by  Fergusson  to 
the  tenth  century. 

From  Malang  we  went  by  rail 
(one  and  a-half  hour)  to  Soekar- 
edjo,  a  roadside  station,  whence 
we  drove  (in  two  hours)  to  Prigen, 
a  small  sanitarium  possessing  a 
delightful  climate,  and  beautifully 
placed  on  the  elevated  plateau 
which  gives  rise  to  the  volcanic 
peaks  of  Ardjoeno  and  Penang- 
goengan. 

Many  pleasant  walks  and  rides 
may  be  taken  in  this  neighbour- 
hood, but  the  principal  attraction 
is  the  excursion  to  Lalidjiwa,  a 
small  house  8000  feet  above  the 
sea,  from  whence  the  ascent  of 
Ardjoeno,  and  of  its  sister  crater, 
Welirang,  may  be  accomplished. 
We  left  Prigen  on  ponies  at  7 
A.M.,  and  arrived  at  Lalidjiwa  at 
half-past  ten.  The  path  is  very 
steep,  but  ponies  can  be  ridden 
nearly  the  whole  way.  The  scenery 
is  most  beautiful,  but  presents  no 


1  Java.      Zune  gedante,  zun  plantentooi,   en  inwendige  bonw-door. 
Junghunh.     2  Deel. 


Fraus 


1894." 


Six  Weeks  in  Java. 


97 


particular  features  that  have  not 
been  already  described.  The  house 
is  on  a  plateau,  close  under  the 
Ardjoeno  peak,  and  was  built 
about  ten  years  ago  by  a  Scotch 
sugar-planter  who  has  since  left 
Java.  A  small  charge  is  made  for 
its  occupation,  and  there  is  suf- 
ficient furniture  in  it,  but  the 
visitor  has  to  bring  food  and  bed- 
ding. The  ascent  to  the  crater  of 
Ardjoeno  is  a  three  hours'  rough 
scramble  through  forest  and  over 
blocks  of  lava,  and  presents  no 
difficulties  for  a  good  walker.  The 
descent  takes  two  hours.  The 
Welirang  crater  requires  four 
hours  there  and  back.  Both  these 
volcanoes  are  now  extinct,  but 
in  the  latter  sulphur  fumes  still 
rise  and  deposit  crystals  on  planks 
which  are  placed  for  the  purpose 
over  the  crevices.  The  masses  of 
crystals  thus  obtained  sometimes 
attain  a  length  of  nearly  two  feet ; 
and  we  met  several  natives  carry- 
ing baskets  of  them  down  to  the 
plains  for  sale.  The  Ardjoeno 


flora  contains  the  temperate  plants 
usually  found  at  similar  eleva- 
tions, with  some  additions  not 
observed  before,  among  which  was 
a  small  geranium  (G.  ard/joense), 
closely  related  to  an  Australian 
species,  and  remarkable  as  the 
only  geranium  found  in  the  Malay 
archipelago. 

The  visit  to  Prigen  brought  our 
Javan  tour  to  an  end,  and  we  left 
the  hotel  at  5  A.M.  in  sados,  arrived 
at  the  Porong  railway  station  at 
half-past  six,  and  reached  Soera- 
baja  at  nine  o'clock.  The  same 
evening  we  sailed  in  a  Dutch 
steamer  for  Batavia,  calling  en 
route  at  the  small  island  of  Bawe- 
jan,  where  we  stayed  a  few  hours. 
This  is  of  volcanic  origin,  and  its 
hills  are  covered  with  dense  forest, 
giving  place  on  the  lower  slopes  to 
sugar-cane  and  other  cultivated 
crops.  On  the  third  day  we  landed 
at  Batavia,  whence  we  sailed  in 
the  weekly  steamer  to  Singapore, 
arriving  there  on  12th  June. 
H.  COLLETT. 


VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCXLV. 


98 


Side-lights  on  the  Battles  of  Preston  and  Falkirk. 


[July 


SIDE-LIGHTS  ON  THE  BATTLES   OF  PRESTON  AND   FALKIRK. 


CHARLES    EDWARD   had   landed 
at   Borrodale   in   Arisaig    in    the 
last   week    of    July    1745.       His 
hopes  of  support  from  the  French 
Government  had  been  greatly  dis- 
appointed, but  the  enthusiasm  and 
persistent  purpose  of  the  man  had 
led  to  this  bold — apparently  most 
hazardous — initial  step.    The  same 
qualities,   joined    to    considerable 
sagacity   and    insight,    and    great 
physical  endurance,  sustained  him 
to    the    last    through    many   dis- 
couragements,   led    him    even    to 
more  than  one  victory,  and  after 
the    final    disaster    of     Culloden, 
stood  him   in   good  stead   in   his 
wanderings  and  terrible  hardships. 
His  standard  had  been   unfurled 
in  the  vale  of  Glenfinnan,  at  the 
head  of  Loch  Shiel — a  banner  of 
red  silk  with  a  white  space  in  the 
centre  —  destined   to   draw  many 
hearts  to  it,  to  evoke  much  chiv- 
alrous  devotion,   to  be   identified 
for  a  time  with  heroism  and  vic- 
tory,  but   the  precursory  symbol 
of   the   wreck    of   many    a   noble 
life   and   the    ruin    of    many    an 
ancient     home.       Highland    clan 
after    clan    furnished   contingents 
for  the  enterprise.     At  length  he 
found   himself   strong   enough   to 
set  out  on  the  march  southwards. 
Sir  John  Cope  was  sent  with  per- 
emptory orders  to  intercept  him. 
Cope  got   as   far^  as   Dalwhinnie, 
within  sight  of  Corriearrick,  whose 
summit  the  Highlanders   had  al- 
ready  occupied    from    the    other 
side.     Instead,  however,  of  facing 
the  foe,  Cope  thought  it  prudent 
to  turn  to  the  right  and  march  on 
to    Inverness,    thus    leaving    the 
Prince  free  to  continue  his  march 


on  Edinburgh.     In  the  capital  in- 
ternal dissensions  prevailed.   There 
was  a  struggle  for  municipal  office. 
The  tradesmen  of  the  guilds  were 
much  more  interested  in  the  ques- 
tion as  to  who  should  be  Deacon, 
than   in   that   of   who   should    be 
King.1    No  proper  precautions  had 
been  taken  to  meet  the  emergency, 
and   Provost  Stuart  and   Captain 
Drummond,    of   opposite   political 
leanings,  did  not  work  in  harmony. 
The  result  was  that  no  competent 
force  was  sent  out  from  the  capi- 
tal to  stay  the  march  of  the  Pre- 
tender;   and  in  the  end,  Lochiel 
and  other  chiefs  with  900  High- 
landers contrived  to  enter  by  the 
Nether  Bow  Port  at  five  in  the 
morning.    The  citizens  were  asleep, 
and   the   city   was   now   at   their 
mercy.     The  valiant  Scottish  offi- 
cials  of   Bench   and  Bar,   to  say 
nothing  of  municipal  and  ecclesi- 
astical dignitaries,  had  almost  uni- 
versally  fled.       The   Highlanders 
might  do  as  they  chose,  but  here 
at  least  they  behaved  well.     The 
Prince   entered  Holyrood   in   the 
course  of  the  day  amid  great  en- 
thusiasm.     He  and  his  army  re- 
mained in  the  capital  until  Cope 
had  returned  from  Inverness,  and 
was  threatening  them  from  D  unbar 
on  the  east.     On  Friday  the  20th 
September  the  Prince,  at  the  head 
of  his  army,  set  out  from  Dudding- 
ston,  where  they  had  bivouacked 
during  the  night.      Cope  was  ad- 
vancing from  Dunbar.    The  Royal- 
ist army  reached  Preston  a  little 
after  noon.    At  first  Cope  drew  up 
his  line  fronting  the  west.     Find- 
ing the  Highlanders  passing  him  to 
the  south,  he  changed  his  position 


1  Chambers,  Rebellion,  1745,  vol.  i.  p.  95. 


1894.]          Side-lights  on  the  Battles  of  Preston  and  Falkirk. 


99 


so  as  to  front  southwards.  In  the 
morning  of  the  battle  he  returned 
to  his  first  position,  with  his  line, 
however,  facing  the  east.  He  had 
Cockenzie  and  the  sea  on  his  flank 
to  the  north.  On  the  south  of  his 
line  was  a  boggy  morass  traversed 
by  a  deep  ditch  or  drain,  that  made 
for  the  sea  by  the  east  of  Seton 
Castle.  The  Highlanders  lay  down 
for  the  night  in  an  open  stubble- 
field  to  the  west  and  south  of 
Cope's  position.  Towards  even- 
ing a  thick  mist  or  easterly  haar 
settled  down  on  land  and  sea. 
The  Prince,  along  with  his  offi- 
cers and  soldiers,  slept  under  the 
open  heaven  in  this  field  of  cut 
pease  —  a  sheaf  of  pease  -  straw 
serving  each  man  for  pillow. 
The  attack  was  to  be  made  in  the 
morning,  but  the  difficulty  for  the 
forces  of  the  Prince  was  how  to  get 
across  the  morass  and  ditch  with 
safety  and  without  exposure  to  un- 
returned  fire.  A  scheme  for  doing 
so  was  brought  to  Lord  George 
Murray  and  the  Prince,  in  the 
early  hours  of  the  night,  by  a  son 
of  Anderson  of  Whitborough,  a 
proprietor  in  Lothian.  It  was  at 
once  adopted,  and  it  was  resolved 
to  follow  his  guidance  through  the 
bog,  and  attack  the  Royalists  in 
the  early  morning.  The  force 
began  to  move  about  three  o'clock, 
some  three  hours  before  sunrise. 
Following  Anderson  in  dead 
silence,  they  stole  down  the  valley 
that  runs  through  the  farm  of 
Kingan  Head, — concealed  by  the 
darkness  of  the  night,  and,  as  day 
broke,  by  the  mist.  When  near- 
ing  the  morass,  they  were  dis- 
covered by  an  advance-guard  of 
dragoons;  but  they  were  able  to 
cross  and  form  on  the  firm  ground 
on  the  other  side  without  molesta- 
tion. Cope  was  meanwhile  riding 
in  hot  haste  from  Cockenzie,  where 
he  had  been  wakened  from  his 


sleep.  The  sun  had  now  risen,  and 
was  breaking  the  mist  into  cloudy 
masses  that  rolled  from  the  Firth 
on  their  right  to  the  fields  on  their 
left.  But  neither  army  could  be 
seen  by  the  other.  The  line  of 
the  Highlanders  hastily  formed  was 
somewhat  irregular,  but  advance 
to  the  attack  was  at  once  made. 
Before  they  got  half-way,  the 
sun  had  partly  dispelled  the  mist, 
and  displayed  the  glittering  array 
of  the  bayonets  of  the  Royalist 
line.  Lochiel  and  the  Camerons  led, 
and  pierced  impetuously  through  a 
fire  of  cannon  and  musketry.  No- 
thing could  withstand  their  onset. 
They  met  a  squadron  of  dragoons 
under  Colonel  Whitney,  who  panic- 
struck  merely  fired  a  few  shots  and 
fled.  The  famous  Colonel  Gardiner 
then  advanced  to  fill  the  place  of 
the  vanished  squadron,  but  his  cav- 
alry too  fled  in  panic  and  precipi- 
tation, much  to  their  leader's  grief. 
In  a  similar  manner  Hamilton's 
dragoons  on  the  left  flank  turned 
from  the  field  in  terror  before 
the  MacDonalds,  without,  it  is 
said,  even  firing  a  shot.  The  de- 
fenceless infantry  was  thus  left  to 
the  sweep  of  the  Highland  broad- 
sword and  the  thrust  of  the  dagger. 
As  was  their  custom,  the  High- 
landers when  within  range  fired 
one  volley  of  musketry,  then  threw 
away  their  pieces,  and,  having  the 
broadsword  in  the  right  hand  and 
target  and  dirk  in  the  left,  made  a 
torrent-like  rush  on  the  opposing 
line.  The  gleam  of  the  terrible 
steel  burst  through  the  smoke  of 
the  fire.  Receiving  the  thrust  of 
the  enemy's  bayonet  in  the  target, 
where  it  stuck,  each  man  cut  down 
his  fronting  foe.  The  assailants 
were  speedily  within  the  opposing 
line,  pushing  right  and  left  with 
sword  and  dagger.  The  battle  was 
decided  in  a  few  minutes.  What 
followed  was  mere  but  terrible  car- 


100  Side-lights  on  the  Battles  of  Preston  and  Falkirk.  [July 


nage,1 — made  by  broadsword  and 
the  scythe  -  headed  pole.  Though 
the  number  of  combatants  on 
either  side  was  not  great,  yet 
the  sun  has  rarely  shone  on  any 
battle-field  that  presented  a  more 
gory  or  ghastly  spectacle  than  that 
of  Preston  on  that  September 
Saturday. 

Sir  John  Cope,  after  in  vain 
trying  to  rally  the  dragoons,  who 
had  behaved  so  shamefully,  and 
boggling  on  horseback  amid  the 
lanes  of  Preston,  rode  from  the 
field  with  400  cavalry.  The  panic 
of  the  day  had  evidently  permeated 
him,  for  he  never  halted  until  he 
had  put  more  than  twenty  miles 
behind  him,  and  got  to  Lauder, 
where  he  halted  for  refreshment.2 
Thence  he  rode  to  Ooldstream,  and 
next  day  reached  Berwick,  carry- 
ing through  the  Lowlands  like  a 
flying  courier  the  first  news  of  his 
own  defeat. 

The  following  letters  were 
written  after  the  battle,  and  they 
contain  reports  of  eye-witnesses. 
They  do  not  add  materially  to  our 
information,  but  they  confirm  and 
illustrate  points  in  the  ordinary 
narrative.  They  are  of  interest  as 
the  resuscitation  of  the  feelings  and 
mood  of  mind  of  people  who  were 
living  at  the  time,  and  as  citizens 
eager,  even  personally  anxious,  for 
news  of  the  fight.  There  are,  fur- 
ther, picturesque  touches  in  them 
of  real  human  interest.  The  writer 
of  most  of  them  was  a  Mr  James 
Christie,  indicated  in  one  of  the 
letters  as  of  Durie,  in  Fife.  But  he 
was  now  living  at  Neidpath  Castle, 
by  the  Tweed,  about  a  mile  from 
Peebles.  The  ancient  castle  had 
been  let  to  strangers  after  the 
sudden  death  of  the  second  Earl 
of  March  in  1731,  when  his  son, 


afterwards  Duke  of  Queensberry, 
succeeded.  This  personage,  known 
as  "old  Q,"  preferred  the  joys 
of  London  to  the  simple  plea- 
sures of  the  scenery  of  the 
Tweed.  But  the  castle  itself  had 
not  as  yet  been  denuded  of  its 
furnishing  and  ancient  tapestry, 
and  the  old  trees  of  many  gener- 
ations stood  round  it  untouched. 
It  was  still  a  suitable  residence 
for  a  country  gentleman.  Mr 
Christie's  neighbour  and  friend, 
to  whom  the  letters  are  addressed, 
was  James  Burnett  of  Barns,  an 
adjoining  property,  the  represen- 
tative of  a  very  old  family  which 
was  still  in  the  full  enjoyment  of 
its  ancestral  lands.  His  descen- 
dant had  not  yet  begun  to  "  im- 
prove" the  estate  and  the  family 
off  the  roll  of  landed  gentry.  Mr 
Burnett  was,  I  rather  suspect,  like 
a  good  many  others  of  the  Low- 
land lairds,  a  Jacobite  at  heart, 
though  he  took  no  outward  part 
in  the  rising.  His  close  corre- 
spondent was  Mr  David  Beatt,  a 
teacher  of  writing  in  Edinburgh, 
and  an  ardent  Jacobite,  who  offici- 
ally proclaimed  King  James  the 
VIII.,  and  read  the  commission 
of  regency  in  favour  of  his  son 
Charles,  before  the  palace  of  Holy- 
rood  after  the  Prince's  entrance. 
The  Barns  family  were  evidently 
in  cordial  sympathy  with  Mr  Beatt 
and  his  views.  He  continued  to 
correspond  with  them  for  several 
years  after  Culloden.  From  one 
of  his  letters  we  learn  that  he  had 
one  interesting  pupil  in  1747.  The 
heroine,  Flora  Macdonald,  freed 
from  her  restraint  in  London,  came 
to  Edinburgh  for  instruction  in  pen- 
manship, a  part  of  her  education 
which  had  apparently  been  neglect- 
ed. Mr  Beatt  excuses  himself  for 


1  Compare  the  accounts  of  John  Home  and  R.  Chambers  in  their  respective 
Histories  of  the  Rebellion  in  1745. 

2  Report  of  Cope's  Trial,  p.  43. 


1894.1          Side-lights  on  the  Battles  of  Preston  and  Falkirk. 


101 


not  visiting  Barns  in  these  words 
(September  25,  1747) : — 

"  As  I  have  enter'd  with  Miss  Flory 
M'Donald,  who  waited  five  weeks  for 
my  return  to  Town,  and  who  needs 
very  much  to  be  advanced  in  her 
writing,  confines  me  to  daily  attend- 
ance, and  must  do  so  till  she  is  brought 
some  length  in  it,  which  obliges  me 
to  keep  the  Town  close." 

Mr  Christie  had  a  son  a  lieu- 
tenant in  Colonel  Murray's  Regi- 
ment, which  took  part  in  the  battle 
of  Preston.  He  writes  to  Mr 
Burnett  the  day  after  the  battle, 
under  date  "  Sunday  morning " 
(22d  September),  and  says : — 

"A  sentinel  of  Colonel  Murray's 
Regiment,  in  which  my  son  is  lieu- 
tenant, is  just  come  to  our  house 
[Neidpath],  and  is  a  little  wounded  in 
the  leg.  He  says  that  Colonel  Gaird- 
ner  and  Captain  Leslie  in  Murray's 
Regiment  are  killed,  and  'tis  said  that 
Cope  is  killed.  Many  of  the  dragoons 
are  killed.  Gairdner's  Dragoons  and 
the  men  were  not  to  blame.  Their 
horses  being  young,  and  the  High- 
landers throwing  up  their  plaids,  and 
the  sight  of  their  broadswords  so 
frightened  them  that  they  threw 
many  of  the  riders,  and  killed  many 
of  their  own  foot.  Many  of  the  dra- 
goons were  also  shot.  Hamilton's 
Horse  behaved  better.  My  son  John, 
he  says,  commanded  one  of  the  pla- 
toons of  his  own  regiment  in  the  rear 
of  his  own  regiment,  and  his  captain 
commanded  another  on  the  right. 
My  son  went  off  with  the  remaining 
part  of  the  dragoons  towards  Ber- 
wick, where  it  is  now  said  there  are 
six  thousand  Dutch  landed.  This 
man  says  that  they  were  but  three 
thousand  five  hundred,  and  the  High- 
landers nine  or  ten  thousand.  He 
says  they  stood  within  pistol-shot  of 
one  another  some  time,  and  neither 
horse  nor  foot  of  them  had  orders  to 
fire  one  shot,  but  did  it  of  their  own 
accord,  and  fired  but  one.  They  have 
thirteen  hundred  prisoners,  eight 
cannon,  and  all  the  baggage." 

John  Walker,  Lieut.  Christie's 
servant,  rode  to  Neidpath  from 


Preston  to  inform  the  father  of  the 
disappearance  of  his  son,  and  of  the 
fruitless  search  he  had  made  for 
him  on  the  field  (Sept.  23).  Wal- 
ker said  that  he  did  not  hear  that 
the  Dragoons  got  any  orders  to 
fire,  but  that  they  did  so  of  their 
own  accord, — some  of  them  five, 
three,  and  four  times,  others  only 
once.  There  is  no  account,  he 
says,  of  Cope. 

The  following  is  written  Sep- 
tember 23 — the  Monday  after  the 
battle.  The  servant  sent  out  for 
news  about  the  son  has  not  yet 
returned,  and  the  father  and 
family  are  "  still  in  great  pain  for 
Johnie."  Some  soldiers  had  come 
from  the  battle-field  on  Saturday  to 
Etlstoun  (Eddleston),  and  on  to 
Peebles  on  Sunday.  One  of  them, 
who  was  in  the  same  regiment  and 
company  with  young  Christie,  came 
up  from  Peebles  to  Neidpath 
Castle  on  the  same  day.  He 
reported  to  the  anxious  father 
that  the  Lieutenant  had  gone 
off  with  the  Dragoons,  believed 
to  be  for  Berwick  : — 

"  But  we  are  still  at  an  uncertainty 
about  Johnie  till  John  Ker  comes 
back.  The  young  man  said  that 
several  Highlanders  were  killed  by 
their  comrades,  and  that  the  High- 
landers still  fired,  and  charged  for 
about  two  hundred  yards,  as  they  (the 
Highlanders)  were  approaching  them ; 
that  he  saw  Colonel  Gairdner  fall,  and 
that  Lieutenant-Colonel  Clayton,  their 
Lieutenant-Colonel,  was  also  killed, 
and  that  he  saw  Captain  Leslie  fall 
upon  his  knee,  and  there  is  no  cer- 
tainty about  Cope.  He  seemed  to  be 
much  surprised  when  he  saw  the  num- 
ber of  Highlandmen,  for  he  was  made 
believe  that  they  were  not  above  three 
thousand.  The  young  man  said  that 
after  their  first  fire  the  Highlanders 
surrounded  them,  being  triple  their 
number,  and  that  the  Dragoons  fought 
as  well  as  possibly  they  could,  for 
their  horses  threw  many  of  them,  and 
killed  them  and  several  of  their  foot ; 
and  after  the  Dragoons  had  gone  a 
little  off,  three  or  four  troops  of  them 


102 


Side-lights  on  the  Battles  of  Preston  and  Falkirk. 


[July 


returned,  but  when  they  were  again 
attacked,  the  men  were  not  to  be 
blamed,  for  they  could  by  no  means 
get  their  horses  keeped  in  nor  to  hand, 
so  went  off  the  best  way  they  could. 

"  A  gentleman  who  saw  the  battle 
says  that  Cope's  army  fired  twice  be- 
fore we  came  off,  and  that  Cope's  men 
fired  too  soon  without  orders,  for 
their  officers  had  discharged  them  to 
fire  till  they  thought  it  a  proper  time. 
This  is  all  I  can  learn." 

The  excuse  here  about  the  raw- 
ness of  the  horses  may  pass  for 
what  it  is  worth ;  but  the  other 
statements  in  both  letters  about 
the  numbers  of  the  Prince's  forces 
are  gross  exaggerations.  Accord- 
ing to  trustworthy  authority,  the 
whole  troops  under  his  command 
amounted  to  2400.  Of  these  only 
about  1456  were  actually  engaged 
in  the  battle.  Cope's  army  reached 
2100,  but  the  whole  were  not  in 
action. 

Three  days  after  the  battle  we 
have  further  news  about  it.  Mr 
Christie,  anxious  about  his  son,  had 
sent  a  servant,  John  Ker,  to  Edin- 
burgh, to  ascertain,  if  possible,  cer- 
tain tidings  regarding  him.  Mr 
Christie  writes  to  Mr  Burnett 
(Tuesday,  24th  September  1745), 
giving  these  interesting  particulars 
about  the  battle  : — 

"  My  servant,  John  Ker,  came  here 
from  Edinburgh  betwixt  five  and  six 
last  night  (Monday,  23d  September). 
He  brought  me  a  letter  from  a  gentle- 
man there,  who  writes  me  that  he 
spake  with  one  Doctor  Hepburn,  who 
spoke  with  my  son  and  Generall  Folk 
[Fowke],  when  they  had  got  safe 
about  a  mile  from  the  field  of  battle,1 
and  that  Hepburn  was  very  well 
acquainted  with  my  son,  and  rode 
a  mile  with  them  towards  Dunbar, 
where  they  say  he  is  at  present  safe 
and  not  wounded.  This  makes  us  a 
little  more  easie.  My  son's  servant 
went  off  about  six  this  morning  from 
this  [Neidpath]  towards  Dunbar  and 
Berwick  in  quest  of  his  master.  The 


1  Corroborated  in  Cope's  Trial,  p.  73. 


gentleman  writes  me  that  on  Satur- 
day morning  the  two  armies  met  near 
Preston,  just  by  Colonel  Gairdner's 
house,  where,  after  a  fight  of  about 
twenty  minutes,  the  Highlanders  got 
the  most  compleat  victory  ever  was 
heard  of.  They  did  not  lose  30  men, 
and  they  killed  many  officers  and  300 
soldiers  and  took  1200  prisoners,  and 
amongst  the  killed  are  Captain  Eogers 
and  Captain  Stewart  of  Phisgill,  be- 
sides those  that  I  have  already  named 
to  you  in  the  inclosed,  and  the  Master 
of  Torphichan  is  much  wounded." 

Public  means  of  communication 
through  the  country  there  seems  to 
have  been  none — at  least  to  such 
an  outlying  district  as  Peeblesshire. 
People  resident  there  had  to  look  to 
exceptional  and  accidental  sources 
for  news.  "  Our  lasses,"  Mr  Chris- 
tie tells  us,  were  at  Peebles  yester- 
day (September  26),  where  they 
learned  from 

"a  gentleman  from  Edinburgh  that 
all  is  quiet  there,  and  the  officers  who 
are  prisoners  are  going  in  the  street 
on  their  parole,  and  that  the  Prince 
should  have  said  that  he  was  ready 
to  forgive  all  the  gentlemen,  clergy- 
men, and  others  who  took  arms 
against  him  as  volunteers,  providing 
they  would  beg  his  pardon,  and  do  so 
no  more ;  and  that  they  were  carry- 
ing up  what  they  wanted  to  the 
Castle,  and  no  opposition  made  by 
the  P.  [Prince]  or  the  Highlanders. 
A  great  many  more  Highlanders  are 
expected,  and  hundreds  of  them  com- 
ing in  every  day." 

Mr  Christie  heard  in  a  day  or 
two,  by  express  from  Lady  Cran- 
ston, that  his  son  the  lieutenant, 
and  her  son  George,  in  the  same 
regiment,  were  well  at  Berwick. 

The  Prince  at  length,  after  his 
gay  sojourn  in  Holy  rood,  resolved 
to  march  south  on  London.  It 
was  a  daring  enterprise,  and,  with 
the  materials  at  his  command, 
most  hazardous.  Still  it  was  quite 
in  the  line  of  his  temper  and 


1894.]          Side-lights  on  the  Battles  of  Preston  and  Falkirk.  103 


the  mood  which  had  led  him  to 
the  advance  on  Edinburgh  and  to 
victory  at  Preston.  The  Highland 
forces  proceeded  to  England  in 
three  divisions.  On  the  evening 
of  Friday,  1st  November,  a  portion 
under  the  Marquis  of  Tullibar- 
dine  set  out  from  Dalkeith  for 
Peebles.  Their  design  was  to 
march  up  the  Tweed  to  Moffat,  so 
as  to  reach  Carlisle.  The  contin- 
gent under  the  Prince  made  for 
Lauderdale,  and  the  third  division 
went  by  Galashiels,  Selkirk,  Haw- 
ick,  and  Mosspaul. 

The  western  division  under 
Tullibardine  arrived  at  Peebles 
on  the  evening  of  Saturday,  2d 
November : — 

"The  sun  was  setting  as  the  first 
lines  devolved  from  the  hills  which 
environ  the  place  on  every  side,  and 
throwing  back  a  thousand  threatening 
glances  from  the  arms  of  the  mov- 
ing band,  caused  inexpressible  alarm 
among  the  peaceful  townsmen,  who 
had  only  heard  enough  about  the 
insurrection  and  its  agents  to  make 
them  fear  the  worst  from  such  a  visit. 
*  There's  the  Hielantmen  !  there's  the 
Hielantmen ! '  burst  from  every 
mouth,  and  was  communicated  like 
wildfire  through  the  town." 

The  "  Hielantmen,"  however, 
behaved,  on  the  whole,  very  well. 
The  leader  certainly  imperatively 
demanded  payment  of  the  cess, 
but  asked  from  the  householders 
only  such  a  contribution  of  pro- 
visions as  they  could  afford.  The 
citizens  were,  however,  forced  to 
bake  and  kirn,  and  the  miller  was 
compelled  to  set  his  mill  agoing 
on  the  Sunday,  for  the  needs  of 
the  troops.1  The  mere  exaction  of 
food  was  comparatively  nothing, 
but  the  burghers  were  thus  com- 
pelled to  break  the  fourth  com- 
mandment ! 

On  leaving  Peebles,  this  western 
division  went  up  the  Tweed  val- 


ley by  Stobo  and  Tweedsmuir.  A 
detachment  of  it,  according  to 
what  seems  a  well-founded  tradi- 
tion, took  the  route  by  Traquair 
and  crossed  the  hills  to  Yarrow, 
making  their  way  to  Moffat  by 
St  Mary's  Loch  and  Moffatdale. 
Possibly  the  Highlanders  had  be- 
come aware  of  the  fact  that  one 
laird  near  Peebles,  who  had  been 
requisitioned  for  supplies,  had 
sent  his  horses  and  cattle  for 
safety  to  the  seclusion  of  Meg- 
gatdale,  which  lay  on  their  way. 
There  was  but  one  Jacobite  re- 
siding in  the  parish  of  Stobo  at 
the  time.  All  the  other  people, 
fearing  the  Highlanders,  had  with- 
drawn, and  hidden  their  horses 
and  cows.  This  solitary  believer 
in  the  Pretender  disdained  to  put 
his  cow  out  of  the  line  of  their 
march.  The  result  was,  that  not- 
withstanding his  belief  in  the 
trustworthiness  and  lofty  motives 
of  the  band,  his  cow  was  carried 
off  by  them — the  solitary  trophy 
from  the  parish  of  Stobo.  Sir 
David  Murray  of  Hillhouse,  where 
Stobo  Castle  now  stands,  was, 
however,  to  be  later  one  of  the 
most  marked  sufferers  from  his 
devotion  to  the  rebels,  saving  his 
head,  but  losing  his  fine  estate. 

Some  weeks  after  this,  disquiet- 
ing rumours  were  in  Peebles  to 
the  effect  that  the  report  of 
guns  apparently  firing  from  the 
Castle  in  Edinburgh  had  been 
heard  in  the  town.  But  a  mes- 
senger —  James  Nicholson  —  who 
was  in  Edinburgh  (1st  December), 
says  there  was  no  ground  for  the 
statement.  Three  to  four  thousand 
Highlanders  are  reported  as  being 
at  Perth.  This  was  probably  the 
contingent  under  Lord  Strathallan, 
who  did  not  succeed  in  getting 
south  to  join  the  Prince  on  his 
march  to  England.  This  failure 


1  R.  Chambers,  Rebellion,  1745,  vol.  i.  p.  210. 


104 


Side-lights  on  the  Battles  of  Preston  and  Falkirk. 


[July 


led  in  great  measure  to  the  aban- 
donment of  the  final  stroke  of  the 
enterprise  when  only  ninety -four 
miles  from  London. 

The  Prince  was  now  on  his  way 
back  from  Derby,  having  managed 
to  evade  the  Duke  of  Cumberland 
in  the  retreat — except  on  the  one 
occasion  when  Lord  George  Mur- 
ray, turning  on  the  pursuers,  made 
his  bold  back -stroke,  and  put  a 
party  of  the  assailants  to  flight. 
The  Prince  was  making  for  the 
north  to  recruit  his  somewhat 
shattered  following.  Under  date 
December  24,  Mr  Christie  writes 
to  Mr  Burnett — 

"As  the  Provost  of  Peebles  got 
a  letter  last  night  (23d)  from  the 
Prince's  army  acquainting  him  that 
they  were  to  be  at  Peebles  to-morrow, 
and  desired  that  the  town  might  have 
provisions  ready  for  them,  you  will 
therefore  excuse  us  if  we  don't  wait 
upon  you  to  dinner  to-morrow,  for 
we  cannot  leave  our  house." 

The  Highlanders  do  not  seem, 
however,  to  have  turned  up  on 
that  date,  as  on  December  25th 
Provost  Alexander  of  Peebles 
writes  that — 

"The  Highland  army  was  yester- 
night at  Lamington,  and  where  they 
go  is  not  well  known.  The  foot  were 
yesternight  at  Linlithgow  ;  the  horse 
rode  back  from  Haddington  to  Edin- 
burgh. Carlisle  is  besieged  by  the 
Duke  of  Cumberland,  and  briskly  de- 
fended by  the  garrison." 

The  destination  of  the  division 
of  the  forces  at  Lamington  seems 
to  have  been  changed  :  there  is  no 
evidence  of  their  having  turned 
aside  to  Peebles. 

The  battle  of  Falkirk  was  fought 
on  the  17th  January  1746  (old 
style,  or  28th  new).  The  various 
features  of  it  are  well  known. 
We  have  the  negligence  of  Gen- 
eral Hawley,  arising  from  his 
contempt,  constantly  expressed, 


for  the  Highlanders  and  their 
mode  of  warfare.  He  breakfasted 
and  spent  the  forenoon  with  Lady 
Kilmarnock,  away  from  his  troops. 
Thus  we  find  him  partly  taken  by 
surprise  as  Cope  was,  and  there 
was  the  repetition  in  great  meas- 
ure of  the  sudden  and  shameful 
flight  of  the  Dragoons  as  at  Pres- 
ton. The  Highlanders  properly 
claimed  the  battle,  though  the 
momentary  uncertainty  of  the 
issue,  and  the  valiant  stand  of 
a  portion  of  the  Royal  forces, 
prevented  them  following  it  up 
as  they  might  have  done. 

The  following  letter  is  of  interest 
as  from  an  eye-witness.  It  gives 
a  clear  and  succinct  account  of  the 
sharp  brief  struggle,  and  helps  us 
to  settle  one  or  two  points  some- 
what in  doubt.  It  is  dated  Edin- 
burgh, 23d  January,  but  bears  no 
signature.  It  was  probably  sent, 
in  the  first  instance,  to  Mrs  Bur- 
nett, Barns  himself  apparently 
being  from  home  : — 

[To  Mrs  Burnett  of  Barns.] 

"  MADAM, — When  your  last  came 
to  hand  I  happened  to  be  at  Falkirk 
out  of  curiosity  to  see  both  armys  and 
the  engagement,  if  any  should  happen ; 
and  as  the  accounts  in  the  newspapers 
are  very  lame  and  in  some  things  false, 
I  shall  give  you  a  short  account  of  the 
action,  as  near  the  truth  and  to  the 
best  of  my  memory,  in  the  great  hurry 
and  confusion  most  people,  as  well  as 
myself,  were  then  in. 

I  came  from  Borrowstoness  upon 
the  Friday  morning  to  Falkirk,  about 
8  o'clock,  and  saw  the  forces  belong- 
ing to  the  Government  regularly  en- 
camped upon  the  north  side  of  the 
town.  About  ten  of  the  clock  the 
Highland  army  was  seen  upon  the 
south  side  of  the  Torewood  with 
coulors  flying,  and  seemed  as  if  they 
had  been  marching  backwards,  but 
about  2  hours  after  they  were  espyed 
by  glasses,  upon  the  low  ground,  hav- 
ing taken  a  circuit  round  the  high  part 
of  the  wood,  and  were  then  marching 
on  the  straight  post-road  towards  Fal- 


1894.]          Side-lights  on  the  JBattles  of  Preston  and  Falkirk. 


105 


kirk.  General  Hawley  had  many 
informations  of  their  approach,  but 
could  not  be  prevailed  upon  to  march 
out  of  his  camp  till  about  2  of  the 
afternoon,  when  the  last  account 
came,  as  he  was  sitting  at  dinner  in 
the  town,  and  when  he  rose  in  great 
haste,  saying,  '  Come,  let  us  disperse 
this  mob.'  The  alarm  had  been  given 
in  the  camp  some  time  before,  and  the 
men  were  all  under  arms,  and  about 
half  an  hour  after  two  they  all  marched 
out  of  the  camp,  and  were  forming  the 
line  of  battle  fronting  to  the  west.  Ex- 
pecting the  Highland  army  to  come 
that  way,  but  perceiving  that  the 
Highlanders  took  their  route  more 
southerly,  they,  viz.  the  King's  army, 
faced  about  and  marched  in  great 
haste  up  the  hill  to  the  south-west 
of  Falkirk,  and  formed  the  line  of 
battle  upon  the  summit  fronting 
southwards.  By  this  time  the  High- 
landers were  likewise  forming  upon 
another  summit,  within  a  good  mus- 
ket-shot ;  but  neither  of  the  armys 
were  fully  formed,  when  Gardener's 
and  Hamilton's  Dragoons  began  the 
battle  by  falling  in  amongst  the 
Highlanders.  A  tempest  of  wind 
and  rain  blowing  incessantly  at  that 
instant,  that  no  body  could  either  see 
or  almost  keep  their  feet,  and  a  regi- 
ment of  foot,  said  to  be  Poulteney's, 
finding  that  the  fire  came  from  that 
quarter,  and  not  perceiving  that  the 
Dragoons  were  betwixt  them  and  the 
Highlanders,  kept  a  running  fire  did 
more  harm  to  the  Dragoons  than  the 
enemy.  And  in  an  instant  of  time 
the  Horse  broke  and  put  their  own 
left  wing  in  great  disorder.  I  was 
unluckily  situate  behind  the  centre 
of  the  army,  and  was  almost  trode 
down  by  the  flying  Dragoons  and 
horses  wanting  riders.  I  happened 
to  be  standing  on  foot  with  my  horse 
in  my  hand  at  the  time,  not  being 
able  to  keep  my  horse  back  with  the 
storm ;  and  before  I  could  retreat 
about  a  hundred  paces,  to  be  further 
from  the  shot  which  was  whistling 
about  my  ears,  the  Foot  were  broke, 
and  many  of  them  at  Falkirk  before 
me,  some  with  arms,  some  none.  I 
stopt  about  a  quarter  of  a  mile  to  the 
eastward  of  Falkirk  opposite  to  the 
Callendar  House,  being  informed  that 
General  Husk  had  rallied  two  regi- 
ments of  foot  and  was  making  a 


gallant  stand,  and  men  on  horseback 
were  sent  off  to  recall  the  flyers,  but 
to  no  purpose,  for  neither  horse  nor 
foot  would  return.  The  Highlanders, 
who  were  advancing  disorderly,  see- 
ing Husk's  men  draw  up  in  order, 
immediately  retreated  to  their  first 
ground  and  formed  themselves  in 
order  for  second  attack  ;  but  General 
Husk,  not  being  reinforced,  marched 
down  the  hill,  keeping  a  retreating 
fire  all  the  while,  which  retarded  the 
Highlanders  from  advancing  very 
much,  and  saved  the  most  part  of 
the  army  from  being  cut  to  pieces, 
and  gave  time  to  carry  off*  3  of  the 
smallest  of  the  train  of  artillery,  a 
great  deal  of  the  baggage,  and  some 
of  the  tents  from  the  camp  ;  and 
what  they  could  not  carry  off  they 
set  fire  to,  but  the  tents  being  wet 
did  not  consume  so  suddenly  but 
that  the  Highlanders,  who  were  close 
upon  them,  extinguished  a  great  deal 
of  the  tents  and  got  some  baggage. 
The  drivers,  upon  seeing  the  army 
fly  down  the  hill,  cut  off  the  draught- 
horses  from  the  artillery  and  covered 
waggons,  and  rode  clear  off  with  them, 
which  was  the  occasion  of  7  of  their 
best  pieces  being  left  behind,  which 
fell  in  the  Highlanders'  hands. 

"  The  flying  army  were  some  of 
them  at  Edinburgh  that  same  night 
before  8.  But  most  of  the  Dragoons 
and  foot  stopt  at  Linlithgow,  and 
came  next  day  to  Edinburgh.  I  can 
give  you  no  particular  accounts  either 
of  the  killed,  wounded,  or  prisoners, 
so  that  you  may  expect  that  afterwards 
with  more  certainty. 

"  Some  of  the  foremost  and  heaviest 
of  the  artillery  were  embogued  [stuck 
in  a  bog  or  moss],  and  none  of  them 
ever  got  up  the  hill  to  the  field  of 
battle. 

"  Since  writing  the  above,  I  am 
informed  that  the  Highlanders  have 
about  700  prisoners,  of  which  200 
militia,  and  amongst  them  5  minis- 
ters, who,  mistaking  their  trade,  had 
taken  the  sword  of  the  flesh  instead  of 
that  of  the  spirite.  There  are  like- 
wise 30  of  the  Argileshire  Campbels 
prisoners ;  the  others  are  all  mili- 
tary. 

"The  French  Brigades  keep  their 
outguards  at  Linlithgow,  and  the  mil- 
itary at  Corstorphin,  so  that  there  is 
but  10  miles  betwixt  them  The  main 


106 


Side-lights  on  the  Battles  of  Preston  and  Falkirk.  [July 


body  of  the  Highlanders  lye  at  Fal- 
kirk,  Bannockburn,  and  Stirling,  and 
are  bombarding  the  Castle  strenuously, 
and  natter  themselves  that  they  shall 
soon  carry  it ;  after  which  they  give 
out  they  are  to  attempt  this  place, 
where  the  main  body  of  the  military 
lye. 

"There  are  constant  desertions 
from  them  here  to'  the  Highlanders, 
notwithstanding  the  strict  discipline 
kept  here,  for  they  are  constantly 
whipping  them  for  the  loss  of  their 
arms  and  accoutrements,  and  this  day 
they  hung  up  four  for  desertion  in  the 
Grassmercate,  and  it's  said  as  many 
more  will  be  hanged  to-morrow  in  the 
same  place,  and  7  more  in  chains  at 
the  Gallolee.  You  may  transmit  this 
to  Barns,  after  you  peruse  it.  This  is 
wrote  in  great  haste,  which  you  will 
excuse." 

General  Hawley's  one  dominat- 
ing idea  was  that  the  rude  High- 
landers were  to  be  dispersed  by 
dragoons.  Hence  the  order  to 
them — some  700  or  800  in  all — 
to  charge  a  whole  army  of  8000 
foot  drawn  up  in  two  lines.  This 
was  a  fatal  blunder  in  tactics  ;  but 
it  appears  further,  from  the  letter 
now  printed,  that  the  order  was 
precipitately  given,  ere  either  of 
the  armies  was  fully  formed,  or 
the  movements  and  position  of  the 
Dragoons  were  properly  known 
even  on  their  own  side. 


This  was  the  last  success  of  the 
Prince.  We  know  what  rapidly 
followed, — the  march  to  the  north  ; 
the  futile  siege  of  Stirling  Castle 
by  the  way ;  the  stand  made  on 
the  plain  of  Culloden,  and  the 
disaster  of  that  dreadful  day. 
The  Pretender  episode  was  the 
last  rising  in  arms  in  Britain  that 
was  inspired  by  the  ideas  of  ab- 
stract justice,  the  divine  heredi- 
tary right  of  kings,  personal  loy- 
alty to  a  head  or  chief,  disinter- 
ested risk  and  sacrifice,  in  many 
cases  at  least,  of  life  and  estate. 
The  spirit  of  chivalry  was  its  re- 
deeming feature.  This  was  con- 
fronted with  a  strong  democratic 
belief  in  representative  govern- 
ment as  opposed  to  personal  rule, 
attachment  to  the  Protestant  suc- 
cession, and  the  contentment 
which  was  gradually  springing  up 
from  a  state  of  settled  trade  and 
commerce.  Hence,  though  the  issue 
of  the  contest,  as  it  turned  out, 
was  for  the  best,  it  did  not  deeply 
stir  the  national  heart;  and  we 
find  the  spirit  of  ballad  and  song, 
the  power  of  the  imaginative  ideal, 
sympathy  for  its  hero,  as  the  in- 
heritor of  "  the  old  Scottish  glory," 
nearly  wholly  on  the  side  of  the 
down-trodden  cause. 

J.  YEITCH. 


1894.] 


Memorials  of  Old  Haileybury. 


107 


MEMORIALS    OF    OLD    HAILEYBURY. 


PUBLIC  men  sometimes  direct 
that  their  papers  shall  not  be  given 
to  the  world  till  after  a  period  of 
years  dating  from  their  death. 
Time  tries  all;  and  before  the 
tribunal  of  a  later  day  they 
await  impartial  judgment.  But, 
with  the  years,  the  business  of 
review  accumulates ;  and,  when 
half  a  century  has  elapsed,  few 
but  the  most  eminent,  or  the  most 
notorious,  can  expect  to  have  es- 
caped oblivion.  The  brief  life  of 
the  East  India  College  of  Hailey- 
bury  dated  from  1809  to  1857, 
a  period  of  forty  -  eight  years. 
Thirty -six  more  have  gone  since 
the  gates  closed  on  the  last  stu- 
dent who  passed  from  between 
her  portals.  Eminence  she  could 
not  in  so  brief  a  span  obtain ; 
notoriety  she  may  have  hoped  to 
escape  :  on  what  ground  are  her 
chronicles  submitted  to  the  judg- 
ment of  a  later  generation  1  The 
only  plea  can  be  that,  like  the 
mothers  of  other  historic  figures, 
she  sent  out  into  public  life  not- 
able men,  whose  record  during 
eighty  years  or  more  of  not  the 
least  eventful  periods  of  the  history 
of  British  India,  filled  the  annals  of 
Leadenhall  Street,  and  of  its  suc- 
cessor in  Whitehall.  They  who  had 
held  the  reins  of  empire  in  India 
throughout  the  troubled  days  of 
the  first  sixty  years  of  this  cen- 
tury, whose  wills  had  moulded 
such  great  events,  and  whose 
hands  had  controlled  issues  so 
momentous,  had  all  passed  through 
the  Haileybury  quadrangle,  and 
had  submitted  themselves  to  the 
instruction  and  discipline  of  the 
Company's  College.  Among  the 
trivial  storm  and  stress  of  student 
life,  in  the  seclusion  of  Hailey 
Heath,  and  in  the  thin  atmos- 


phere of  the  college  lecture-rooms, 
somewhere,  somehow,  they  had 
received  that  impress  which  they 
were  to  bear  with  them  to  their 
graves.  The  contrast  between  the 
Alma  Mater  and  such  alumni  is, 
at  first  sight,  astounding.  Some 
may  think  that  their  achievements 
were  in  spite,  not  in  consequence, 
of  their  training ;  some  again, 
that  their  training  was  not  at 
Haileybury,  but  in  India.  Others 
will  remind  us  that,  if  among  the 
Civil  servants  of  the  Company 
there  were  some  great  and  many 
considerable  men,  there  were  also 
men  who  were  good  for  nothing. 
A  few  may  ask  whether  the  men 
turned  out  under  the  open  com- 
petition system  which  in  1855 
challenged,  and  in  1857  extin- 
guished Haileybury,  have  proved 
themselves  as  superior  in  ability, 
in  character,  and  in  resource,  to 
their  predecessors,  as  the  Univer- 
sities which  they  frequented,  and 
the  education  which  they  received, 
were  superior  to  the  teaching  of 
the  Company's  college. 

Before  passing  to  the  *  Memo- 
rials,' a  few  words  as  to  the  place 
of  Haileybury  in  the  economy  of 
the  East  India  Company  are  re- 
quired. If  we  are  to  try  rightly 
to  read  the  secret  of  Haileybury 
we  must  recall  the  days  in  which 
the  college  existed,  and  the  cir- 
cumstances of  the  lads  who  went 
there.  The  life  of  the  East  India 
College  (including  the  three  years 
during  which  the  college  was  at 
Hertford)  was  from  1806  to  1857; 
and  during  that  period  a  succes- 
sion of  amazing  events  had  oc- 
curred, with  extreme  rapidity, 
under  the  Company's  rule.  Nepal 
had  been  despoiled.  The  Pindaris 
had  been  dispersed;  the  Mahrattas 


108 


Memorials  of  Old  Haileybury. 


[July 


broken.  Lower  Burmah  had  been 
annexed.  Kabul,  violated,  had 
avenged  herself.  Sindh,  the  Pan- 
jab,  Oudh,  had  successively  passed 
under  the  Company's  dominion. 
Rarely  had  spring  succeeded  spring 
but  there  came  to  the  lads  in  the 
college  some  fresh  tale  of  peoples 
about  to  be  subjected,  and  brought 
within  the  field  of  their  future 
labours.  It  was  in  these  years, 
among  these  chances  and  changes, 
this  tumble  of  kingdoms,  this 
clash  of  arms,  these  whisperings 
of  diplomacy,  this  fashioning  of 
administration,  that  the  Hailey- 
bury  student  prepared  himself  for 
his  duties.  To  other  English  lads 
of  his  age  the  repeal  of  the  Corn 
Laws,  the  struggle  for  Reform,  the 
succession  of  Whig  to  Tory  or  of 
Tory  to  Whig,  spelt  history ;  to 
the  student  at  Haileybury  the 
abiding  subject  of  interest  was  the 
expansion  and  the  maintenance  of 
British  rule  in  India.  And  who 
was  the  Haileybury  student  1  If 
not  himself  son  or  grandson  of 
men  whose  praises  were  in  all 
mouths,  or  whose  names  were 
registered  in  the  most  stirring 
pages  of  Indian  history,  he  was 
pretty  sure  to  be  closely  akin 
to  them.  Nothing  that  was  pass- 
ing in  the  great  Indian  epic 
could  fail  to  be  of  vital  interest 
to  him.  Such  a  one  had  lost 
a  father  in  the  retreat  from 
Kabul.  A  brother  had  gone  down 
before  Khalsa  sabres  on  the  Sutlej. 
Another  had  been  treacherously 
murdered,  or  had  fallen  to  the 
knife  of  a  fanatic.  The  river  of 
Sindh,  the  Gangetic  flood,  the 
Persian  sands,  the  snows  of  the 
Himalaya,  the  forests  of  Bur- 
mah, the  valleys  of  Ceylon, — what 
region  in  India,  or  in  adjacent 
lands,  was  not  rich  with  the  blood 
of  Anglo-Indian  families?  Many 
a  Haileybury  lad  had  been  dan- 
dled as  a  child  in  arms  which  had 


helped  to  bind  a  province  to  the 
empire,  or  to  bring  savage  tribes 
into  subjection.  From  lips  which 
had  dictated  an  equal  code  of  law 
to  turbulent  soldiery  and  to  the 
patient  peasant,  or  for  long  years 
had  shaped  the  decrees  of  the 
Council  chamber,  he  may  have 
first  learned  the  lessons  of  self- 
reliance,  and  of  unquestioning 
self-sacrifice  to  duty.  His  people 
were  probably  still  in  India ;  and 
month  by  month,  week  after  week, 
letters  reached  him  full  of  Indian 
sketches,  of  incidents  of  Indian 
life,  —  the  salam  of  some  grey- 
headed old  bearer  to  the  Baba — 
his  brother's  first  tiger  —  the  re- 
turn of  a  daughter  from  England 
— a  few  dry  blades  of  grass  from  a 
grave.  Above  all,  from  his  ear- 
liest youth,  from  his  cradle  on- 
wards, the  name  of  the  Indian  had 
sounded  in  his  ears  as  the  name 
of  a  friend.  The  house  in  which 
he  lived  was  itself  frequently 
a  museum  of  Indian  art.  The 
Bhundela  shield,  the  Mahratta 
lance,  the  Rajput's  matchlock,  the 
Ghurka's  kukri,  the  coat  of  mail 
of  the  chivalrous  Sikh,  were  among 
the  trophies  on  the  walls.  The 
miniatures  of  the  Taj  Mehal  and 
the  Dewan-i-khas,  painted  by  cun- 
ning hands  in  Delhi,  were  en- 
shrined in  velvet  cases  in  the 
drawing  -  room.  Krishna,  azure- 
tinted,  marble  -  limbed,  played, 
standing  on  his  serpents,  upon  the 
pipe  for  him  ;  elephant-headed  Gan- 
esh,  the  grotesque,  the  kind,  the 
comfortable,  promised  protection. 
Sheets  of  talc,  with  their  portrait- 
ure of  creamy  steeds,  full  of  fat 
and  fire ;  the  humped  bullocks ;  the 
bedizened  elephants ;  the  swarthy 
whiskered  faces  surmounting  the 
garments  of  divers  brilliant  col- 
ours; the  clay  figures  of  household 
servants — the  gardener  with  his 
little  basket  of  vegetables,  the 
grass-cutter  with  his  big  bundle 


1894.] 


Memorials  of  Old  Ilaileylury. 


109 


of  grass,  the  syce  with  his  short 
fly-whisp,  the  khansamah  with  his 
long  account, — all  these  were  of 
his  daily  life.  As  each  fresh  box 
arrived  and  was  unpacked,  there 
was  diffused  into  the  atmosphere, 
and  there  passed  with  the  scent 
of  English  roses  into  his  nostrils, 
that  aroma  of  cinnamon,  of  san- 
dal, of  spice,  of  pepper  —  that 
aroma,  in  a  word,  of  the  East, 
which,  packed  with  Indian  fabrics, 
is  pleasant  and  pungent  to  the 
nose,  but  which,  diffused  among 
its  bazaars,  or  mingled  with  the 
vigour  of  its  animal  life  and  the 
decay  of  its  vegetable  matter,  is 
intolerable,  undefinable,  unquench- 
able. 

From  such  homes,  and  among 
such  occurrences  and  traditions, 
the  Haileybury  students  came  to- 
gether, to  compare  family  histories, 
to  speculate  on  passing  events, 
and  to  await  with  impatience  the 
hour  when  they  should  be  de- 
spatched to  take  their  share  in 
them.  Their  childhood  and  youth 
had  been  in  themselves  an  Indian 
education.  Haileybury  was  the 
last  chapter  in  a  training  which 
had  been  formed  non  tarn  in  ser- 
mone,  quam  in  gremio.  Hailey- 
bury gave  them  the  seal  of  their 
profession, — segregating  them,  at 
seventeen,  from  other  English 
youths,  and  setting  them,  not 
without  misgivings,  apart  from 
the  familiar  influences,  as  apart 
from  the  customary  occupations 
and  well  -  trodden  ways,  which 
were  henceforth  to  engage  their 
contemporaries.  The  one,  as  a 
rule,  looked  forward  to  a  life  of 
law,  medicine,  the  Church,  com- 
merce, or  country  pursuits;  the 
other,  only  to  the  business  of  gov- 
ernment. The  degree  in  which 
the  college  succeeded  in  finally 
hall-marking  him  and  in  equip- 
ping him  for  future  life,  is  the 
measure  of  its  usefulness,  and  its 


title  to  recognition.  So  far,  and 
no  farther,  may  it  commend  its 
pages  to  posterity.  With  these 
few  words  of  preface,  we  turn 
to  the  book  before  us. 

If  the  success  of  a  book  may  be 
conjectured  from  the  number  of 
those  who  are  bound  to  be  inter- 
ested in  it,  these  '  Memorials  '  will 
have  but  a  limited  circulation. 
The  number  of  old  Haileybury  men 
now  alive  is  believed  to  be  about 
three  hundred  and  fifty.  The 
book  is  divided  into  eight  main 
sections.  Of  these,  Sir  Monier 
Monier  -  Williams'  "  Reminiscen- 
ces," with  their  sketches  of  Pro- 
fessors of  whom  many  were  emi- 
nent in  English  thought,  will  alone 
appeal  to  a  general  audience.  The 
origin  of  the  college,  its  native 
literature,  a  long  and  rather  ir- 
relevant list  of  "persons  belong- 
ing to  the  Government  of  India," 
even  Miss  Harriet  Martineau's 
virginal  ecstasy  over  the  figure  of 
Malthus,  will  fail  to  tickle  the  ears 
of  the  public.  Mr  Percy  Wigram's 
"Lists  of  Students  Educated  at 
Haileybury  "  possess  interest  only 
for  those  survivors  for  whom  the 
'  Memorials  '  were  put  together. 
To  the  general  reader,  these  lists 
of  students,  occupying  251  of  a 
total  of  637  pages,  will  prove  im- 
possible. But  the  'Memorials,' of 
course,  are  not  for  the  general 
reader.  This  is  essentially  a  work 
of  a  Service — and,  what  is  much 
more  odious  in  the  eye  of  your  gen- 
eral reader,  of  an  Indian  Service. 
To  others  may  be  left  the  ungrate- 
ful task  of  pointing  out  errors  and 
omissions  ;  but,  if  only  for  the  sake 
of  the  reputation  of  Haileybury 
men,  it  is  to  be  regretted  that  in 
these  lists  accuracy  was  not  more 
regarded.  A  sheet  of  corrigenda 
has  indeed  been  circulated,  sub- 
sequently to  the  publication  of  the 
1  Memorials,'  but  it  is  still  very  far 
from  exhaustive.  To  many  old 


110 


Memorials  of  Old  Ilaileybury . 


[July 


Haileybury  men,  Mr  Wigram's  lists 
will  give  the  first  intimation  which 
has  reached  them  since,  on  leaving 
college,  they  separated  at  the  old 
Shoreditch  station  (now  itself  a 
thing  of  the  past),  of  the  career, 
and  too  often  of  the  death,  of 
many  of  their  contemporaries  and 
friends.  It  will  seem  to  them  a 
scroll  of  destiny,  a  roll-call.  Men 
who  were  last  seen  in  all  the  first 
vigour  of  manhood,  dead  in  the 
prime  of  morning ;  men  who  fought 
through  the  livelong  day,  fallen 
when  success  was  assured  them  ; 
some  promoted  to  great  honour; 
many  undistinguished ;  a  few,  hap- 
pily but  very  few,  deserters  or 
removed  with  ignominy.  Not 
many  years  can  elapse  before 
dates  still  happily  wanting  will 
be  filled  in,  and  the  lists  may 
be  then  closed.  With  this,  and 
with  the  removal  of  the  last 
name  from  the  pension-roll  of  its 
military  officers,  the  final  record 
in  the  archives  of  the  East  India 
Company  will  have  been  com- 
pleted, and  the  vaults  to  which 
they  are  consigned  may  be  then 
sealed  up  for  ever. 

The  "Mutiny  Services  of  Civ- 
ilians "  may,  with  more  confidence, 
be  commended  to  the  attention  of 
such  Englishmen  as  still  care  to  be 
told  how  their  countrymen  carry 
themselves  abroad  in  the  day  of 
disaster  and  in  the  hour  of  despair. 
Of  159  officers  there  mentioned,  it 
would  seem  that  thirty-two  were 
killed  in  those  fateful  days,  that 
six  were  wounded,  and  that  ten 
died  from  the  effects  of  exposure 
or  sickness, — forty-eight  in  all,  or 
considerably  more  than  a  quarter 
of  the  number.  Of  five  Thorn- 
hills,  three  perished.  Two  civil- 
ians gained  the  Victoria  Cross. 
Herwald  Wake  and  James  Colvin 
at  Arrah,  the  brothers  John  and 
James  Power  at  Mainpiiri,  Spankie 
at  Saharunpur,  M'Killop  at  Cawn- 


pur,  Tucker  at  Fatehpur,  Turnbull 
at  Bulandshahr,  Ricketts  at  Lud- 
hiana  —  these  among  many  are 
names  which  stand  foremost  in 
England's  annals  of  courage  and 
of  endurance.  Wherever  brave 
deeds,  a  fearless  carriage,  or  a 
noble  death  in  the  presence  of 
hopeless  odds  find  praise  on  the 
tongues  of  men,  these  names  will 
not  be  forgotten.  From  Mr  Col- 
vin, the  Lieutenant-Governor,  who 
died  because,  in  spite  of  the  solemn 
sentence  of  his  physicians,  he 
would  not  be  parted  from  the 
wreck  of  his  charge  in  the  sight 
of  subordinates  who  with  him 
were  breasting  the  crisis ;  to  young 
Galloway,  the  tale  of  whose  hero- 
ism is  briefly  told  in  the  ensuing 
paragraph,  —  these  all  in  their 
deaths,  as  others,  more  fortunate, 
in  their  lives,  showed  themselves 
worthy  of  the  great  traditions  in 
which  they  had  been  cradled,  the 
great  lesson  in  which  they  had 
been  instructed. 

"  Arthur  Galloway,"  runs  Mr  Wig- 
ram's narrative,  "was  Assistant  Magis- 
trate at  Delhi.  On  hearing  of  the  dis- 
turbances in  tjie  city  on  the  early 
morning  of  Monday,  May  11,  Gallo- 
way went  to  his  post  at  the  Treasury, 
and  only  quitted  it  for  a  time  to  pro- 
cure aid  from  the  main  guard  at  the 
Kashmir  gate,  as  the  Sepoys  of  the 
Treasury  guard  were  almost  in  a  state 
of  mutiny,  though  up  to  the  time  they 
had  not  attacked  him  or  broken  into 
the  strong  room.  The  officers  at  the 
gate,  deserted  by  their  men  and  many 
of  them  wounded,  could  give  no  assist- 
ance, and  Galloway  was  repeatedly 
urged  to  remain  and  take  his  chance 
with  them,  as  he  could  do  no  good  by 
returning  to  the  Treasury,  and  would 
certainly  lose  his  life.  He  said  he 
knew  what  the  result  would  be,  but 
it  was  his  duty  to  stick  to  his  post. 
He  did  so,  and  stood  on  guard  at  the 
Treasury  door,  armed  with  a  sword, 
one  solitary  Englishman,  among  a 
mass  of  infuriatad,  howling  Sepoys, 
who  soon  overpowered  and  cut  him 
down,  resisting  to  the  last." 


1894. 


Memorials  of  Old  Haileybury. 


Ill 


In  Arthur  Galloway,  as  in  all 
his  brothers  of  the  Civil  Service, 
Haileybury,  when  her   own   final 
moment  had   come,   at   "  the  last 
visitation    of    the    Chairman   and 
Court  of  Directors,"  on  that  chill 
7th  of  December  1857,  may  well 
have  found  comfort.     "  I  am  per- 
suaded,"  said  the    Chairman,   Mr 
Ross    Mangles    (whose    son    had 
gained   the  Victoria   Cross   for  a 
splendid  act  of  humanity  and  of 
valour),  "  that  it  is  to  the  enlarge- 
ment of  the  intelligence  imparted, 
and  to  the  stimulus  given  by  the 
education   they  have   received    at 
this   college,  that  those   members 
of  the  Civil  Service  in  India  who 
have  most  distinguished  themselves 
in  every  stage  of  public  life  may 
trace  their  character  and  habits  of 
feeling.     I  cannot  on  this  occasion 
refrain   from    alluding   to    a    still 
higher  honour  which  has  been  con- 
ferred upon  that  Service  during  the 
great  crisis  which  is  now  taking 
place   in   India.      I    would   speak 
humbly,    after    the   words    which 
have  fallen  from  the  lips  of  the 
Queen  with  regard  to  that  Service. 
She  has  coupled  them  in  her  Royal 
speech  with  their  military  brethren, 
and  they  well  deserve   to   be    so 
united,  for  they  have  stood  shoul- 
der to  shoulder  with  them  in  every 
scene  of  danger,  and  have  shown 
that  high  civil  moral  courage  which 
is  a  more  rare  and  a  more  valuable 
quality  than  mere  military  virtue, 
and   is,  I   trust,  common   to   our 
race."    Then,  after  passing  a  splen- 
did encomium  on  the  late  Lieuten- 
ant-Governor,  Mr  John  Colvin,  "  in 
whom  the  Government   of    India 
had  sustained  an  almost  irrepar- 
able loss,"  on  Sir  John  Lawrence, 
on    Sir   Robert    Montgomery,    on 
Wake,  on  Galloway,  and  on  others, 
he  exclaimed,  "  This  is  the  sort  of 
stuff  of  which  the  Civil  Service  in 
India  is  made  !    I  call  upon  you  to 
emulate   these   great    examples  !  " 


With  the  echo  of  these  words  and 
of  the  cheers  which  greeted  them 
ringing  in  her  ears  —  with  this 
viaticum  between  her  lips — Hail- 
eybury may  well  have  departed  in 
peace.  It  was  a -proud  "  Nunc 
Dimittis  "  ;  nor  was  the  tumult  of 
1857  an  incongruous  requiem  to 
the  college  whose  career  had  been 
contemporary  with  such  stormy 
and  eventful  times. 

With  the  extinction  of  Hailey- 
bury there  passed,  too,  from  the 
page  of  Indian  story  the  cotempo- 
rary  figure  of  the  "  Qui-hye."     He 
had  derived  his  name  more  parti- 
cularly  from    the    Bengal    Presi- 
dency ;  but  he  was,  in  truth,  not 
of  a  Province,  but  for  all  India. 
The  fire  of  Burke,  and  the  Bengal 
fire  of   Sheridan,   had   killed   the 
Nabob   of   the   previous    century. 
The    trial    of    Warren    Hastings 
was  the  trial,  not  of  a  man,  but 
of  a  system.     The  man  may  have 
been  acquitted;   the  system  per- 
ished.     Open    corruption,    greed 
without  conscience,  indolence  with- 
out  excuse,   the   rapacity   of   the 
Mahratta,  the  licentiousness  of  the 
Mogul,    fled    for   ever   from   high 
places  in  the  British  administra- 
tion of  India  before  the  thunders 
of   Burke.      The  eighteenth   cen- 
tury, with  the  Nabobs  who  "  were 
astounded  at   their  own  modera- 
tion," was  dismissed.    With  a  new 
century,  new  manners ;  and,  simul- 
taneously   with    Haileybury    and 
with   Addiscombe,   the    Qui-hye. 
In    type    he   was    one,    in    char- 
acter  multiform.      He  was   com- 
posed of  many  distinct  qualities, 
instinct   with    conflicting  virtues. 
With    Henry    Lawrence    he    was 
magnanimous     of    spirit    and    of 
a  high  courage.     With  Thorn ason 
he  was  shrewd  and   penetrating. 
With  Yule  he  was  a  mighty  hunter. 
With  Outram  he  was  chivalrous. 
With  Metcalfe  his  hospitality  was 
unbounded.   With  Donald  Macleod 


112 


Memorials  of  Old  Haileybury. 


[July 


his  guilelessness,  if  it  exposed  him 
to  the  designs  of  many,  endeared 
him  to  the  hearts  of  all.  But, 
in  truth,  it  is  not  necessary  to 
describe  him.  It  was  given  to 
the  Indian  Civil  Service  to  num- 
ber in  its  ranks  the  father  of 
England's  greatest  novelist;  and 
they  who  wish  to  see,  even  as  they 
moved  among  us,  the  Nabob  and 
the  Qui-hye,  need  but  study  the 
portraits,  limned  by  the  consum- 
mate hand  of  genius,  on  the  one 
page  of  Jos  Sedley,  on  the  other  of 
James  Binnie  and  Thomas  New- 
come.  Burke  killed  the  Nabob; 
Mangal  Pande  slew  the  Qui-hye. 
He  lies  beneath  the  debris  of  the 
Delhi  arsenal.  The  ingratitude  of 
his  brother,  the  Brahman ;  the  ruin 
of  half  a  century's  labour ;  divine 
despair ;  the  severance  of  the  vital 
ties  which  had  bound  him,  his  fore- 
bears and  his  children,  to  India 
and  its  people,  consumed  him  as 
with  fire.  His  body  died  with 
Haileybury,  with  Addiscombe,  with 
John  Company.  But  his  spirit  lives 
for  evermore  in  the  immortal  pages 
of  Thackeray. 

With  Sir  Monier  Monier- Wil- 
liams' "  Reminiscences,  "  we  pass 
to  a  more  cloistered  atmosphere. 
Sir  Monier  had  been  for  a  short 
time  a  student  in  Haileybury, 
entering  it  in  January  1840,  and 
leaving  it  during  the  course  of 
the  summer  term  of  1841,  at  the 
same  time  throwing  up  his  nomina- 
tion to  the  Indian  Civil  Service. 
But  from  1844  to  1857  he.  filled 
the  Sanskrit  chair  at  Haileybury, 
and  his  "  Reminiscences"  are  main- 
ly those  of  a  Professor.  Dealing  as 
they  do  with  such  familiar  names  as 
Malthus,  Empson,  Jones,  Stephen, 
and  Melvill,  these  pages  will  appeal 
to  a  far  larger  English  circle  than 
Mr  Danvers',  Mr  Wigram's,  or  Sir 
Steuart  Bayley's  pages.  But  they 
contain  comparatively  little  which 
is  special  to  Haileybury,  and  with 


little  modification  might  have 
formed  part  of  a  Dictionary  of 
Universal  Biography.  These  Prin- 
cipals and  Professors  were  mostly 
men  well  known  in  their  day,  who 
had  taken  part  in  one  or  other 
section  of  English  life,  where,  in 
fact,  their  record  lies.  Their  names 
are  familiar ;  their  lives  have  been 
written.  If  there  is  any  one  to 
whom  Sir  Monier's  pages  will  fur- 
nish information  regarding  them, 
it  is  probably  the  Haileybury 
civilian  himself.  To  him  the  pri- 
vate life  of  his  Professor  was  un- 
imaginable. That  any  one  so  set 
apart,  so  pillared  in  dignity,  and 
so  shrouded  in  an  almost  divine 
obscurity,  could  have,  in  the  vul- 
gar sense  of  the  word,  a  private 
life  at  all,  must  cost  him  some 
effort  to  realise.  To  the  student 
of  Haileybury,  with  few  exceptions, 
his  Professor  was  an  arrangement 
in  cap  and  gown,  from  whose 
mouth  at  certain  hours  on  cer- 
tain appointed  days  there  issued, 
as  from  an  oracle,  Sanskrit, 
Persian,  Telugu,  Arabic,  or  other 
strange  sounds ;  whose  business  it 
was  at  intervals  to  pass  or  to 
pluck  him ;  and  whom  he,  by  all 
lawful  and  by  some  unlawful 
means,  might,  Providence  per- 
mitting, circumvent.  To  find 
now  that  it  would  appear  that 
this  man  was  human, — that  if  you 
tickled  Stephen  he  would  laugh ; 
that  if  you  pinched  the  author 
of  these  "  Reminiscences  "  he  would 
bleed;  that  Malthus  had  organs, 
dimensions,  senses,  affections,  pas- 
sions ;  that  if  you  wronged  John- 
son, he  would  be  revenged, — will 
raise  a  smile  of  incredulity  on  the 
lips  of  more  than  one  grey-haired 
annuitant.  For  the  Professor, 
though  in  Haileybury,  was  of 
Haileybury  only  in  the  sense  that 
the  Napoleons  were  of  France, 
the  Csesars  of  Italy,  the  Great 
Mogul  of  Hindustan,  or  the  Great 


1894.] 


Memorials  of  Old  Haileybury. 


113 


Cham  of  Tartary.  He  bestrode 
the  college  like  a  Colossus ;  the 
stream  of  students  passed  unheed- 
ed between  his  legs ;  the  lads  pur- 
sued their  diversions,  the  Profes- 
sor his  problems.  The  aspirations, 
the  anxieties,  the  trials,  the  temp- 
tations of  the  youth  were  his  own, 
as  the  misery  of  the  plebs  was  the 
contribution  of  that  unconsidered 
section  of  society  to  the  story  of 
Imperial  Rome. 

Some  echo  of  the  old  student 
life  is  to  be  found  in  the  first 
chapter  of  the  "Reminiscences"; 
but  it  is  an  echo  reaching  us  from 
one  who  never  finished  his  time 
as  a  student,  and  was  for  thirteen 
years  a  Professor.  It  bears  to 
life  at  the  East  India  College  a 
resemblance  of  such  a  nature  as 
Aitchison's  '  Treaties  and  Engage- 
ments'  bear  to  the  events  of  In- 
dian history.  It  may  excite  in- 
terest or  provoke  curiosity;  it  is 
authentic ;  it  is  accurate ;  it  is 
unquestionable.  But  the  move- 
ment, the  grouping,  the  strange 
figures,  the  capricious  pleasures, 
the  wilful  indolence,  the  pouring 
of  most  ancient  Eastern  wine  into 
the  newest  of  Western  bottles,  the 
lost  language  of  the  local  life,  if 
(which  may  be  doubted)  it  were 
describable  at  all,  mayhap  might 
have  been  more  graphically  de- 
scribed by  other  though  less  worthy 
hands  than  those  of  the  kindly  and 
honoured  professor  who,  as  he 
himself  tells  us,  had  acquired 
among  the  students  the  sobriquet 
of  "  Solemn  Moneo."  Such  a 
one,  albeit  once  a  student,  can 
only  look  back  on  much  in  past 
student's  life  through  a  Profes- 
sor's fingers.  Sir  Steuart  Bayley 
aptly  says,  that  if  one  wished 
(which,  haply,  no  one  ever  will 
wish)  to  reconstruct  old  Hailey- 
bury  days,  he  should  turn  to  the 
pages  of  the  college  periodical, 
the  'Observer.' 

VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCXLV. 


"  The  local  colour  is,  of  course,  the 
principal  point.  From  the  papers 
dealing  with  the  local  slang,  with 
beaks,  pros,  Dis,  extra,  Eentals,  G*?, 
and  Gs,  with  gates  and  Solemn 
Moneos,  with  exams,  with  quad,  with 
A,  B,  C,  and  D,  a  complete  restora- 
tion of  the  life  and  times  of  a  Hailey- 
bury  student  might  be  reconstructed : 
we  learn  how  he  spent  his  time,  how 
he  *  vexed  the  souls  of  Deans,'  what 
he  thought  of  lectures,  and  of  the 
rules  under  which  he  lived,  of  the 
functions  and  appearance  of  Patience, 
Coleman,  Jones,  and  Lynes,  of  his 
breakfasts  and  his  dinners  and  his 
wine  -  parties,  his  assimilation  (suffi- 
cient for  purposes  of  parodying)  of 
the  Hitopadesa  and  the  Anwari 
Suheili,  his  assumption  of  knowledge 
of  the  world,  and  his  frequent  out- 
breaks of  indiscipline." 

This  is  excellently  put :  from 
its  words  there  reaches  us  the 
echo  and  the  odour  of  Haileybury 
days.  But  in  truth  the  old  order 
has  so  wholly  passed  away  that 
neither  reconstruction  nor  re- 
habilitation can  be  desired.  The 
college  was  neither  all  good  nor 
wholly  bad.  It  improved,  prob- 
ably, in  discipline  and  in  instruc- 
tion as  the  years  passed.  The  "  dis- 
tinguished Haileyburian  who  had 
returned  from  India  and  became 
an  M.P.,"  and  who  wrote  to  Sir 
Monier  Monier- Williams,  "when 
about  to  enter  Haileybury  as  a 
student,  a  letter  of  warning  advis- 
ing him  to  avoid  making  any 
friendship  except  with  the  pro- 
fessors," in  his  correspondent's 
judgment,  as  in  the  sight  of  all 
men,  wrote  himself  down  an  ass. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  pious 
worship  with  which  that  eminent 
publisher  and  most  worthy  man, 
the  late  Stephen  Austin,  regarded 
Haileybury,  even  to  the  very 
walls  of  the  college  (which  he  was 
mainly  instrumental  in  preserving), 
was  probably  peculiar  to  himself. 
There  were  elements  in  the  com- 
position of  the  college  which  were 


114 


Memorials  of  Old  Ilaileybury . 


[July 


fatal  to  perfectly  healthy  growth. 
Authority,  which  is  the  founda- 
tion of  discipline,  was  unstable. 
Sir  Monier  Monier -Williams  has 
indicated  the  forces  which  weak- 
ened authority.  The  chief  im- 
pediment arose  from  the  constant 
clashings  between  the  resolutions 
and  decisions  of  the  college  coun- 
cil (latterly  the  Principal,  the 
Dean,  and  two  Professors),  and 
the  judgment  and  wishes  of  the 
Court  of  Directors,  most  of  whom 
had  sons  or  relations  among  the 
students,  and  disapproved  of  any 
verdict  of  the  council  unfavourable 
to  their  nominees.  Principals, 
Professors,  and  students  were  alike 
appointed  by  the  directors.  The 
former  were  not  expected  to  ruin  a 
director's  son  or  nephew,  who  was 
the  prospective  holder  of  a  good 
appointment.  Then  the  lads  were 
too  young  to  be  left  in  the  large 
collegiate  liberties  conceded  to 
them.  The  previous  school  train- 
ing of  many  of  them  had  been 
defective.  There  were  but  few 
among  them  who  had  passed 
through  the  ranks  of  a  great 
public  school.  There  were  no 
students  of  more  advanced  age  to 
give  a  tone,  and  to  keep  in  their 
place  the  blackguard  and  the  cad. 
There  was  too  little  touch,  and 
there  were  no  intervening  links, 
between  the  student  and  the 
Professor.  The  students  had  no 
society  or  resource  or  control  of 
opinion  other  than  that  which 
their  own  ranks  furnished.  The 
tone  of  the  college,  too,  was 
sensibly  affected  by  its  isolation. 
There  hung  over  the  college  the 
consciousness  of  that  chilling  mist 
of  disfavour  and  distrust  through 
which  the  English  mind  ordinarily 
regards  the  unfamiliar,  the  other- 
laiidish,  especially  the  nominated 
servants  of  great  monopolies. 
Finally,  the  Civil  servants  of  the 
Company  never  wholly  emerged 


from  the  discredit  cast  upon 
them  by  the  invective  of  Burke, 
the  malignity  of  the  elder  Mill, 
and  the  romance  of  Macaulay. 

"  According  to  my  own  individual 
experience  as  student  [writes  Sir 
Monier  Monier- Williams],  the  mental 
training  which  I  gained  at  old  Hailey- 
bury  was  so  varied  and  excellent,  that 
nothing  at  all  equal  to  it — at  any  rate 
in  the  diversity  of  subjects  which  it 
embraced — was  to  be  had,  either  at 
the  Universities  or  elsewhere.  Many, 
too,  of  my  cotemporaries  and  fellow- 
students,  whose  opinion  on  this  sub- 
ject I  have  endeavoured  to  ascertain, 
are  ready  to  testify  that  they  learned 
more  during  their  two  years'  course 
of  study  at  the  East  India  College 
than  in  any  other  two  years  of  their 
lives." 

This  may  not  be  saying  much. 
Sir  Monier  Monier- Williams'  per- 
sonal testimony  is  rather  to  quan- 
tity than  to  quality.  The  sum  of 
the  matter  probably  is,  that  the 
subjects  of  education  were  too 
numerous,  and  that  facilities  of 
private  tuition  were  entirely  want- 
ing. Studious  lads  acquired  much, 
and  would  have  acquired  more  if 
there  had  been  any  means  of 
private  tuition.  Except  in  the 
case  of  such  lads,  the  instruction 
given  in  the  lecture-rooms  was  of 
little  avail,  and  the  majority  were 
not  studious.  Mr  Lockwood,  an 
old  Haileybury  man,  whose  views 
are  recorded  on  page  228,  points 
out  (the  Civil  Service  Commission- 
ers might  profit  by  the  hint)  that 
a  lad  destined  for  India  should 
"  give  a  good  deal  of  attention  to 
agriculture  and  land-surveying." 
With  rare  exceptions,  it  may  be 
added,  the  men  who  distinguished 
themselves  in  India  —  Halliday, 
Thomason,  Lawrence,  Oust,  Seton- 
Karr,  for  example — had  all  pro- 
fited by  the  instruction  of  Hailey- 
bury, and  had  achieved  distinction 
in  its  class-rooms.  Their  training, 


1894.] 


Memorials  of  Old  Haileybury. 


115 


if  completed  in  India,  had  cer- 
tainly commenced  in  Haileybury. 
To  Sir  Steuart  Bayley  has  fallen 
the  ungrateful  task  of  furnishing 
a  chapter  on  the  College  Literature 
(the  first  page  of  which,  by  the 
way,  is  wrongly  numbered  in  the 
list  of  contents).  That  the  college 
should  have  supported  a  periodical, 
appearing  at  fairly  regular  in- 
tervals from  1839  to  1857,  is 
proof  of  itself  that  the  lads  were 
not  wholly  given  to  beer  and 
skittles.  Sir  Steuart  has  dealt 
with  his  subject  in  a  sympathetic 
and  judicious  spirit,  and  he  has 
succeeded  in  conveying  a  very  just 
idea  of  the  subjects,  and  of  the 
quality  of  their  handling,  which 
are  to  be  found  in  the  '  Observer's ' 
pages.  Some  who  survive  will 
nevertheless  be  thankful  to  find 
that  their  grinning  skulls  and 
shallow  brain-pans  will  not  come 
under  the  notice  of  the  ana- 
tomist. Whom  the  gods  love,  die 
young.  To  others,  whose  allotted 
life  is  longer,  it  is  still  of  divine 
affection  granted  that  all  that 
they  have  written  in  their  youth 
shall  perish  so  soon  as  it  has 
seen  light.  It  is  they  only  whom 
the  gods  pursue  with  the  especial 
malignity  of  divine  fury  who  are 
confronted  in  later  years  with  the 
compositions  of  their  early  days. 
It  is  singular  that,  though  the  last 
number  of  the  Haileybury  'Ob- 
server' was  published  in  October 
1857,  there  is  no  allusion  to  the 
events  of  the  Mutiny — a  curious 
illustration  of  the  value  of  doubts 
as  to  the  occurrence  of  alleged  facts 
from  the  silence  of  those  who  were 
peculiarly  identified  with  them. 
Some  notice  is  due  to  the  illustra- 
tions, which  are  mostly  from  photo- 
graphs taken  by  Sir  Monier  Monier- 
Williams  in  the  last  years  of  the 
college.  Distinguishable  among  the 
student-group  opposite  page  48  is 
so  much  of  Mr  Wigram,  one  of 


the  joint-compilers  of  this  volume, 
as  could  appear  from  beneath  a 
hat  surpassing  in  proportions  the 
monstrous  "  mushroom  "  of  later 
Indian  hours. 

Any  one  who  has  so  far  followed 
this  article  may  perhaps  be  en- 
abled to  put  himself  at  the  point 
of  view  from  which  Haileybury 
appears  to  those  who  knew  it,  and 
who  learned  to  see  its  better  as  well 
as  its  weak  sides.  There  were  in- 
herent defects  in  its  constitution, 
and  the  atmosphere  which  sur- 
rounded it  was  not  altogether  kind- 
ly. Neither  instruction  nor  disci- 
pline were  possibly  of  the  best;  but 
either  might  have  been  very  much 
worse.  The  unique  value  of  the 
college  was  that  it  gathered,  as  into 
a  focus,  the  light  which  streamed 
from  India  on  the  lads  who  were 
to  pass  their  lives  in  the  Civil 
Service  there.  As  a  whole,  they 
formed  a  body  animated  by  the 
spirit  of  the  best  of  those  in  whose 
steps  they  were  to  follow,  and  de- 
sirous of  emulating  their  example. 
Lads  whom  no  such  influences 
could  touch  were  sure  to  be  bad, 
and  in  truth  were  among  the 
worst  of  "  bad  bargains."  There 
was  a  genius  loci,  in  its  way  no 
less  distinct  and  ennobling  than 
that  which  presides  over  a  great 
University.  The  young  men  who 
were  brought  together  learned, 
too,  at  Haileybury  one  another's 
character,  and  throughout  their 
career  relied  securely  on  the  know- 
ledge so  obtained.  It  proved  often 
in  after-life  not  the  least  valu- 
able lesson  acquired  there.  That 
so  many  Haileybury  men  should 
have  been  interested  in  reminis- 
cences of  their  college  as  to  justify 
the  publication  of  these  Memorials 
— that  there  should  be  still,  not 
an  annual  Indian  Civil  Service, 
but  an  annual  Haileybury,  dinner 
— is  evidence  of  the  hold  which 
the  East  India  College  established 


116 


Memorials  of  Old  Haileylury. 


[July 


on  the  affections  of  many  of  its 
old  students.  There  must  be  real 
strength  in  the  sentiment  which 
year  by  year  not  only  brings  many 
together  after  a  lifetime  of  separa- 
tion, but  many  more  who  but  for 
this  annual  function  would  prob- 
ably never  meet  at  all. 

The  years  since  1857  have  been 
years  of  internal  peace  in  India. 
The  men  of  the  competitive  sys- 
tem have  been  brought  up  in  less 
exciting  times  and  under  the  shad- 
ow of  more  ordinary  events.     Nor, 
had  it  been  otherwise,  would  the 
history  of  India  during  the  growth 
of    such   men    towards    manhood 
have  greatly  interested  them,  until 
they  had  made  up  their  minds  to 
enter    its    Civil    Service.       They 
come  from  all  corners  of  the  em- 
pire— from  London,  from  Quebec, 
from  Calcutta,  from  Malta,  maybe 
from  Australasia.     They  are  birds 
of     various    feather,    who     have 
nocked  together  from  widely  differ- 
ent nests.    To  them  India  has  been, 
with    rare    exceptions,    no   patri- 
mony ;  they  have  an  acquired,  not 
an   inherited,   interest   in  it.     To 
many   it  will  seem  that  nothing 
in   their    education    can   entirely 
compensate    for    the    absence    of 
that  high  sense  of  a  family  repu- 
tation to  be  guarded,  of  that  legacy 
of  kindly  rule  and  of  sympathetic 
relations  with   the  people,  which 
were  the  birthright  of  their  pre- 
decessors.    These,  though  he  may 
smile  or  sneer  at  them,  no  Civil 
Service    Commissioner    can    pro- 
vide.       In     attainments,    though 
not   in  self  -  reliance   or   force  of 
character,    the    rank    and   file   of 
the   competition   men    are   above 
the     level    of    their    Haileybury 
brothers.        But,   judged    by   the 
standard  of  success  in  life,  there 
is  nothing  to  choose  between  the 
first  flight  of  either  set  of  men. 
Thirty -eight   years   have    elapsed 
since  the  first  batch  of  competition 


men  reached  India.  They  were 
cotemporary  with  the  last  men  of 
Haileybury,  the  men  of  1855-57. 
In  the  years  1887  to  1892,  the 
last  of  the  Haileybury  and  the 
first  of  the  competition  men  were 
in  the  closing  years  of  their  Indian 
service.  In  that  period  four  of  the 
six  highest  appointments  open  to 
a  civilian  in  Upper  India  were  in 
the  hands  of  Haileybury  civilians. 
In  the  Presidencies  of  Madras  and 
Bombay  it  was  much  the  same. 
From  1809  to  1894,  when  the 
last  Haileybury  men  are  leaving 
India,  is  a  period  of  eighty-five 
years.  Competition  opened  her 
doors  in  1855;  so  that  she  has 
barely  entered  on  her  fortieth 
year,  and  more  extended  com- 
parison is  impossible. 

Take  another  and  a  higher 
standard  than  that  of  mere  success. 
Under  the  present  system  we  look 
for  greater  variety  of  antecedents, 
and  may  therefore  expect  a  larger 
range  of  view.  The  men  are 
drawn  from  a  wider  net;  and 
if  we  cannot  demand  the  tone 
and  temper  which  were  created 
by  the  family  traditions  of  the 
former  service,  we  may  hope,  on 
the  other  hand,  for  greater  freedom 
from  the  prejudices  and  from  the 
narrowing  influence  which  the  sys- 
tem of  nomination  from  among  a 
small  body  may  be  expected  to  ex- 
ert. The  spirit  of  English  political 
thought  should  have  freer  play. 
Among  men  who  are  drawn  from 
all  classes  of  Englishmen  but  the 
highest  and  the  lowest,  much 
should  be  seen  of  the  sympathy 
with  liberal  ideas  which  charac- 
terises our  middle  classes.  If  we 
look  for  this,  so  far,  among  the 
competition  men  we  may  meet  with 
some  degree  of  disappointment. 
With  the  lapse  of  time,  under 
British  rule  in  India,  the  method  of 
administration  must  inevitably  be 
modified.  The  base  must  be  further 


1894.' 


Memorials  of  Old  Haileybury. 


117 


strengthened.  "  Regere  imperio  " 
was  the  motto  of  the  Indian  Civil 
Service  from  its  birth  to  1857. 
Now,  education,  a  growing  press, 
greater  facilities  of  visiting  Europe, 
the  admission  of  natives  into  the 
Civil  Service,  the  opening  given 
by  the  Indian  bar,  closer  intimacy 
with  men  and  minds  in  England, 
have  made  that  motto  less  rigor- 
ously appropriate.  Is  it  not  the 
peculiar  business  of  the  civilian 
of  the  present  hour  to  weave  for 
himself  a  fresh  device?  It  must 
be  one  in  which  the  gradual 
changes  that  are  occurring  are 
recognised — one  in  which  govern- 
ment, not  indeed  by,  but  with, 
the  people,  rather  than  the  mere 
ruling  of  the  people,  rather  than 
mere  dominium,  will  be  indicated 
as  the  goal  to  be  attained.  He 
must  turn  from  the  old  adminis- 
trative roads,  not  because  in  their 
day  they  were  other  than  safe 
guides,  but  because  they  are  super- 
seded by  later  highways,  and  are 
commencing  to  be  so  crossed  and 
recrossed  by  a  network  of  inde- 
pendent paths  that  they  no  longer 
point  to  progress.  The  success  of 
the  competition  men  in  accomplish- 
ing this,  and  in  keeping  such  aims 
steadily  in  view,  will  be  the  mea- 
sure of  their  achievement — it  may 
be,  the  condition  to  them  of  life. 
There  are  many  to-day,  and  there 
will  be  more  to-morrow,  who  would 
gladly  welcome  the  destruction  of 
the  Indian  Civil  servant.  A  popu- 
lar Government,  based  on  general 
suffrage,  can  regard  with  but  little 
confidence  a  great  system  of  cen- 
tralised officialdom.  The  men  in 
women's  garments,  the  women  in 
men's  garments,  the  philosopher 


who  loves  mankind  in  general 
and  hates  his  neighbour  in  par- 
ticular, the  average  ass,  the  man 
with  a  fad,  the  demagogue  with  a 
following,  the  creature  of  senti- 
ment, the  enthusiast,  who  would 
rig  out  his  coloured  brothers  with 
a  pair  of  breeches  each  and  a 
ballot-box, — all  these  the  Indian 
civilian  may  count  as  his  enemies. 
Their  name  is  legion.  Between 
this  many-headed  adversary  and 
its  aims  he  alone,  and  he  so  long 
only  as  he  commands  regard,  in- 
terposes. He  will  fail  to  com- 
mand regard  if  he  fails  to  do  as 
much  justice  to  the  liberal  system 
under  which  he  enters  the  service 
as  did  the  Haileybury  man  to  his 
close  nomination.  He  cannot  do 
justice  to  that  liberal  system  till 
he  has  recognised,  and  has  accept- 
ed as  the  groundwork  of  his  new 
design  the  recognition,  that,  like 
India  herself  in  18.57,  he  must 
part  company  with  whatever  is  no 
longer  appropriate  or  possible;  that 
he  must  devote  his  efforts  more 
and  more  unreservedly  as  the  years 
pass  to  teaching  the  people  to  take 
an  active  and  intelligent  part  in 
the  conduct  of  their  own  affairs, 
and  must  in  the  same  degree  relax 
the  attitude  of  sole  authoritative 
rule.  If  he  clings  blindly  to  the 
administrative  scheme  of  the  old 
service,  when  the  conditions  no 
longer  exist  in  which  that  scheme 
could  operate,  without  doubt  he 
will  perish  miserably.  He  will 
not  be  shrivelled  by  Burke ;  Man- 
gal  Pande  will  not  murder  him  ; 
he  will  be  done  to  death  by  the 
elector  of  Finsbury. 

AUCKLAND  COLVIN. 


118 


Agriculture  Taxed  to  Death. 


[July 


AGRICULTURE    TAXED    TO     DEATH. 


Two  bills  are  now  before  Par- 
liament involving  the  most  serious 
dangers  to  the  landed  interest. 
By  the  Finance  Bill  the  duties 
payable  to  the  imperial  Exchequer 
on  death  are  multiplied  manyfold ; 
and  by  the  Local  Government 
Bill  for  Scotland  new  duties,  in- 
volving new  charges  on  land,  are 
created,  and  old  duties  are  placed 
in  new  hands  under  conditions 
which  make  increased  expenditure 
inevitable.  It  is  supposed  that 
these  measures  may  raise  little 
popular  opposition  because  they 
directly  attack  landowners,  a  class 
possessing  but  slender  power  at 
the  polls,  and  traditionally  de- 
tested by  the  dominant  political 
faction.  It  is  forgotten  that  the 
landed  interest  includes  much  more 
than  landowners,  that  tenants 
and  labourers  are  affected  in  an 
equal  or  even  superior  degree,  and 
that  the  proposals  of  the  Govern- 
ment are  not  only  unjust  in  them- 
selves, but  destructive  of  the  pros- 
perity of  every  family  living  by 
or  on  the  land.  Our  purpose  is  to 
examine,  with  the  utmost  brevity, 
the  existing  burdens,  imperial  and 


local,  upon  land,  to  show  how  and 
when  they  were  first  imposed,  and 
to  sum  up  the  effect  which  the  two 
bills  now  under  discussion  would 
have  if  passed  in  their  present  form. 

The  clearest  method  by  which 
we  can  state  and  prove  our  point 
is  to  give  details  of  the  taxation 
actually  paid  in  a  given  year  at 
the  commencement  of  the  present 
reign,  and  contrast  it  with  the  last 
year  available — 1893.  We  have 
received,  by  the  courtesy  of  those 
responsible  for  their  management, 
information  in  regard  to  estates 
situated  all  over  Scotland,  and 
shall  make  use  of  many  of  the 
details  given  a  few  pages  lower. 

In  the  first  instance  we  give  a 
comparative  table  of  the  outgoings 
on  an  estate  situated  in  the  north- 
east of  Scotland,  where  the  manage- 
ment has  been  on  a  large,  not  to 
say  a  princely  scale.  In  the  last 
40  years  the  total  expenditure  on 
improvements  to  land  and  houses 
has  been  £710,000.  The  estate  is 
now  practically  the  same  as  in  the 
year  of  contrast — 1839  ;  but  what 
little  difference  there  is,  is  in  the 
direction  of  contraction  of  area. 


COMPARISON  of  PUBLIC  and  PAROCHIAL  BURDENS  for  the  years  1839  and  1893. 
Class  I. — Imperial  Taxes. 
1839. 


1.  Property  and  income  tax, 

2.  Land  tax, 


£... 
320 


£320 


Class  II. — Parochial  Burdens. 

1.  Ministers'  stipends,    .  .  £3153 

2.  Churches  and  manse*,  .       735 

3.  Schoolmasters'  salaries,  .      540 

4.  Poor  rates,          .        .  Nil 


£4428 


Carry  forward,  £4748 


1893. 

•1.  Property  and  income  tax,     £1870 
2.  Land  tax,         ...         304 


-£2,174 


1.  Ministers'  stipends,    .        .  £2695 

2.  Churches  and  manses,         .     1094 

3.  Education  rate,  £1365 

Do.  paid  by  tenants,  1260 


4.  Poor  rates,        .        .     2198 
Do.  paid  by  tenants,  2080 


Carry  forward, 


2625 


4278 
£10,692 


1894.] 


Agriculture  Taxed  to  Death. 


119 


Class  III, — County  Assessments. 

1839. 
Brought  forward,     £4748 

1.  County  rates,  military  and 

parliamentary  road  as- 
sessments, rogue-money, 
rural  police,  &c.,  .  .  £358 

2.  Commutation  road  money,        228 


£5334 

The  property  and  income  tax  was 
imposed  in  its  present  form  by  Sir 
Robert  Peel  in  1842.  As  a  tax  on 
incomes  of  all  kinds,  whether  de- 
rived from  land  or  from  person- 
alty, there  is  no  need  to  enter  into 
detail.  The  Exchequer  wanted 
money,  and  it  placed  a  tax  on 
wealth,  and  landowners  had  no 
ground  for  complaint,  except  in 
so  far  as  the  tax  on  lands  is  levied 
on  gross  income,  and  that  on 
personalty  on  net  income.  Thus 
the  payment  on  account  of  income 
tax  on  the  estate  above  men- 
tioned in  1893  was  £1870,  being 
levied  on  the  gross  rental,  after 
deducting  land  tax  and  owner's 
rates — a  very  much  larger  sum 
than  the  landlord  ever  received  as 
income.  Sir  William  Harcourt 
now  proposes  to  remedy  in  part 
this  injustice.  He  says  : — 

"  It  is  obviously  just  that  if  real 
property  is  to  be  assimilated  in  bur- 
de'n  to  personalty  under  the  death 
duties,  it  has  a  claim  which  cannot  be 
neglected  to  be  relieved  from  the  ex- 
ceptional charge  which,  in  most  cases, 
it  bears  under  its  assessment  to  the 
income  tax.  The  fact  that  real 
estate  is,  as  a  general  rule  in  Great 
Britain,  assessed  upon  its  gross  and 
not  upon  its  net  income  has  long  been 
a  ground  of  complaint." 

Proceeding  on  these  lines,  the 
Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  pro- 
vides for  a  reduction  of  10  per 
cent  from  the  gross  rental.  This 
will  reduce  but  not  remove  the 
present  injustice. 


1893. 
Brought  forward,     £12,866 

1.  County  assessment,  police, 

registration  of  voters, 
lunacy,  roads  and  brid- 
ges, &c £2603 

2.  Police    assessment,     regis- 

tration of  voters,  roads 
and  bridges,  &c.,  paid 
by  tenants,  .  .  .  1180 

3,783 


£16,649 

Very  little  need  be  said  about 
the  land  tax.  It  originated  at  a 
very  early  period,  and  was  made 
permanent — subject  to  redemption 
— in  1798.  As  its  name  implies, 
it  is  exclusively  a  tax  upon  land, 
and  is  therefore  an  element  in 
any  comparison  between  the  taxa- 
tion of  land  and  money ;  but  in 
a  comparison  between  the  years 
about  1840  and  the  present  day 
no  change  has  to  be  noted. 
Ministers'  stipends,  though  appear- 
ing in  every  estate  account,  are 
not,  strictly  speaking,  a  burden  on 
the  rental,  because  teind  is  really 
a  separate  property  in  the  soil  of 
the  parish.  This,  and  the  item 
for  maintenance  of  churches  and 
manses,  are  ancient  heritable  obli- 
gations on  the  proprietor,  and  re- 
quire only  the  most  casual  notice, 
since  they  are  not  in  any  true 
sense  taxes. 

Schoolmasters'  salaries  amounted 
to  no  more  than  £540  in  1839, 
and  this  sum  had  increased  to 
£2625  in  1893  in  the  shape  of  edu- 
cation rates,  of  which  half  was 
paid  by  the  landlord  and  half 
by  the  tenant,  but  the  whole  out 
of  the  produce  of  the  land.  The 
obligation  on  the  heritors  to  pro- 
vide school  buildings  and  to  pay 
schoolmaster's  salary  originated 
in  very  early  times.  In  1616  the 
bishop,  with  consent  of  the  heri- 
tors and  commissioners,  was  auth- 
orised to  impose  a  tax  for  the 
school  on  every  plough  of  land. 


120 


Agriculture  Taxed  to  Death. 


[July 


In  1646  an  Act  was  passed  pro- 
viding for  the  foundation  of  a 
school  in  every  parish  at  the  ex- 
pense of  the  heritors,  but  the  prin- 
cipal Education  Act  before  the 
Union  was  that  of  1696.  This 
Act  requires  the  heritors  to  "  pro- 
vide a  commodious  house  for  a 
school,  and  settle  and  modify  a 
salary  to  a  schoolmaster  which 
shall  not  be  under  one  hundred 
merks  nor  above  two  hundred." 
The  cost  was  to  be  provided  by  a 
stent  laid  on  each  heritor  accord- 
ing to  his  valued  rent,  and  one- 
half  the  outlay  could  be  recovered 
by  him  from  the  tenants. 

So  things  went  on  till  1872, 
when  Parliament  determined,  on 
grounds  of  public  policy,  that 
school  attendance  should  be  com- 
pulsory; that  there  should  be  a 
school  board  in  every  parish ;  and 
that  the  ultimate  source  from 
which  the  necessary  money  was  to 
come  to  supplement  school  fees 
and  grants  was  a  rate  upon  the 
land.  This  rate  has  varied  with 
the  circumstances  of  each  parish. 
In  some  it  is  trivial ;  in  others  it 
is  crushing  in  its  severity ;  and  in 
a  few  it  has  grown  so  intolerable 
that  parochial  bankruptcy  ensued, 
and  the  Education  Department 
was  obliged  to  step  in  in  order  to 
prevent  the  schools  being  closed 
wholesale.  In  1893  there  are 
many  parishes  where  this  burden, 
this  new  rate  on  land  produce, 
exceeds  Is.  in  the  pound ;  while  in 
an  appreciable  number, — such  as 
Glenbucket,  in  Aberdeenshire ; 
Harris,  Glenelg,  and  North  Uist, 
in  Inverness  -  shire ;  and  several 
Shetland  parishes, — 2s.  and  over  is 
levied.  The  rates  to  meet  the 
expense  of  education  grew  to  the 
enormous  total  of  more  than  5s. 
in  the  pound  in  at  least  one  parish 
before  the  Scotch  Education  De- 
partment came  to  the  rescue  and 
took  over  both  the  burdens  and 


the  duties  of  distressed  school 
boards.  In  the  estate  which  has 
been  taken  as  an  example,  the 
burden  amounts,  in  some  parishes 
more,  in  some  less,  but  over  the 
whole  to  more  than  8d.  in  the 
pound. 

We  now  come  to  the  most  serious 
of  all  the  charges  that  have  been 
cast  upon  the  land  during  the  last 
half  -  century  ->—  the  poor  assess- 
ment as  levied  under  the  Act  of 
1845.  Before  the  passing  of  the 
Poor  Law  Act  of  that  year,  the 
primary  source  of  maintenance  for 
the  poor  was  church  collections. 
Compulsory  power  of  assessment 
was  indeed  given  by  an  old  Act 
of  the  Scottish  Parliament  passed 
in  1579;  but  no  instance  of  ad- 
vantage having  been  taken  of  this 
power  can  be  found  before  the 
year  1693.  Gradually  the  large 
urban  parishes  began  to  find  as- 
sessment necessary,  and  in  1820, 
out  of  the  885  parishes  in  Scot- 
land, 192  were  subjected  to  assess- 
ment, and  in  1839  this  number 
had  risen  to  238.  Still  it  is  in 
the  main  true  that  as  an  effec- 
tive principle  compulsory  assess- 
ment was  not  in  force  in  the  rural 
and  agricultural  districts  of  Scot- 
land until  after  1845.  The  Ke- 
port  of  the  Poor  Law  Commission 
in  1844  says — 

"Throughout  the  Northern  and 
Western  Highlands,  and  nearly  the 
whole  of  the  parishes  comprised  in 
the  Synods  of  Shetland,  Orkney, 
Sutherland,  and  Caithness,  Eoss, 
Glenelg,  Argyll,  and  Moray  —  em- 
bracing in  territorial  extent  almost 
one -half  of  Scotland  —  the  church 
collections,  with  such  small  sums  as 
may  accrue  to  the  kirk-session  from 
fees,  fines,  &c.,  aided  in  a  few  in- 
stances by  occasional  donations  from 
heritors  or  casual  visitors,  form  the 
only  public  fund  to  which  the  poor 
can  look  for  relief." 

Landlords  and  tenants,  therefore 
—in  other  words,  the  agricultural 


1894.] 


Agriculture  Taxed  to  Death. 


121 


interest  —  were  not  practically 
called  upon  to  contribute  a  rate  for 
the  relief  of  the  poor.  The  present 
rates,  whatever  they  are,  are  thus 
the  product  of  Victorian  legisla- 
tion. The  return  [No.  104]  pre- 
sented to  Parliament  by  the  Sec- 
retary for  Scotland  on  the  4th 
May  shows  what  is  the  effect 
of  this  new  burden.  The  varia- 
tion is  enormous, — far  more  con- 
siderable than  is  the  case  with 
education  rates.  Fifty  years  ago 
the  charge  on  every  parish  in  the 
Highlands,  and  on  the  vast  ma- 
jority of  rural  parishes  throughout 
Scotland,  was  nil;  now  it  varies 
from  as  little  as  3d.  to  as  much  as 
7s.  Parliament  sought  to  obtain 
a  national  good,  and  the  result  has 
been  that  in  some  cases  the  burden 
is  scarcely  felt,  while  in  others  it 
is  absolutely  ruinous. 

There  are  fifty-nine  parishes  in 
Scotland  where  the  poor  rate 
stands  at  2s.  in  the  pound  or 
over  ',  and  while  the  great  majority 
lie  in  the  Highland  counties,  in- 
stances can  also  be  adduced  in 
such  counties  as  Aberdeenshire, 
Banffshire,  and  Linlithgow.  The 
extreme  cases  in  1893  were  as 
follows : — 

s.  d. 

Argyllshire,  Kilbrandon,  .  4  1 
Inverness-shire,  Kilmuir,  .  4  9 
Ross-shire,  Barvas,  .  .74 
Zetland,  Walls,  .  .  7  4^ 


Out  of  the  twelve  parishes  in  Zet- 
land there  are  only  two  where  the 
poor  rate  is  less  than  4s.  in  the 
pound.  Instances  such  as  these  are 
rare ;  but  even  in  the  case  of  the 
estate  selected  for  illustration,  the 
average  rate  in  all  the  parishes 
concerned  is  Is.  2d.  in  the  pound, 
being  a  new  burden  within  the 
last  half -century  of  close  on  6 
per  cent  of  the  gross  nominal 
rental. 

The  county  rates,  consisting  of 
rogue-money  and  assessments  for 
certain  roads,  amounted,  in  1839, 
to  £586.  By  legislation  within 
the  last  fifty  years  the  burden  has 
increased  sevenfold,  and  now 
amounts  to  £3783.  Rogue-money 
was  first  authorised  by  an  Act 
passed  in  the  eleventh  year  of 
George  I.  for  "the  more  effectual 
disarming  the  Highlands  in  that 
part  of  Great  Britain  called  Scot- 
land." Notwithstanding  the  limi- 
tations in  the  title  of  the  Act, 
general  power  was  given  to  the 
freeholders  to  assess  themselves  in 
order  to  provide  funds  for  the  ap- 
prehension of  criminals  generally 
throughout  North  Britain.  Up  to 
fifty  years  ago  no  general  addition 
to  county  burdens  took  place,  but 
since  1840  the  following  statutes, 
which  have  imposed  successive 
burdens  upon  land,  have  been 
enacted  : — 


Name  by  which  Rate  is  Assessed. 

1.  County  General, 

2.  Police,   . 

3.  Registration  of  Voters,    . 

4.  Lunatic  Asylums,    . 

5.  Valuation,       .... 

6.  Other  Rates,  including  Sheriff 

Court-houses  and  Militia, 

7.  Contagious  Diseases  (Animals), 

8.  Roads  Rate,   . 

9.  Public  Health, 


Statute  of  Imposition. 


Highest  Rate  of 
Assessment  iu  1893. 


Viet. 


Viet. 


/  31    &   32 
1       1868 
/  20  &  21 
\      1857 

24  &  25  Viet.  c. 

20  &  21  Viet.  c. 

17  &  18  Viet.  c. 
/  23  &  24  Viet.  c. 
\  17  &  18  Viet.  c. 

41  &  42  Viet.  c. 

41  &  42  Viet.  c. 


c-    82'  |  2jd.,  Orkney. 

c-    72'J3|d.,Bute. 

Inconsiderable. 
2d.,  Peebles. 
Inconsiderable. 

Inconsiderable. 


83 

71 

91 

79 

106 

74 

51 


30  &  31  Viet.  c.  101 


Inconsiderable. 
.      19£d.,  Orkney. 

C  4|d.,  Linlithgow- 
'  \     shire. 


122 


Agriculture  Taxed  to  Death. 


[July 


Of  these  rates  the  first  six  were 
payable  wholly  by  owners,  and  the 
last  three  equally  by  owners  and 
occupiers  ;  but  by  the  Scotch  Local 
Government  Act  of  1889,  which 
placed  an  elective  body  under  the 
name  of  the  county  council  in  con- 
trol of  county  government  in  the 
room  of  the  old  Commissioners 
of  Supply,  owners  were  to  con- 
tinue to  pay  the  whole  of  the  rates 
which  they  had  up  to  that  date 
imposed  upon  themselves,  but  any 
excess  was  to  be  shared  equally 
between  them  and  occupying 
tenants.  It  is  interesting  to  note, 
before  leaving  this  branch  of  the 
subject,  as  illustrative  of  the  ten- 
dency to  extravagance  of  elective 
bodies,  that  though  county  coun- 
cils have  only  been  in  existence 
four  years,  there  is  already  a  strik- 
ing increase  in  the  grand  total  of 
their  expenditure.  In  twenty-six 
counties  there  has  been  an  increase, 
as  compared  with  the  taxation  in 
1889-90  under  the  old  regime,  in 
many  cases  of  very  serious  mo- 
ment, while  in  seven  only  is  there 
a  decrease,  and  that  of  trivial 
amount.  The  increases  range  up 
to  6 Jd.  in  Renfrew,  8d.  in  Peebles, 
and  Is.  in  Nairn  ;  while  the  largest 
decrease  is  a  fraction  under  2d.  in 
Caithness.  The  total  burden  for 
county  rates  varies  from  7d.  to 
Is.  lid.,  and  Is.  to  Is.  2d.  of 
every  pound  of  gross  rental  may 
be  accounted  a  fair  average. 
These  details  are  extracted  from 
a  paper  presented  to  Parliament 
by  the  Secretary  for  Scotland 
on  May  2  [No.  100]. 

The  instance  of  the  particular 
estate  which  has  formed  the  ground- 
work of  analysis  is  in  no  way  ex- 
treme :  it  is  situated  in  counties 
where  the  rate  is  not  excessive, 
and  fairly  illustrates  the  fact  that 
Victorian  legislation  has  multiplied 
many  fold  the  taxation  on  land  for 
the  purposes  of  county  government. 

Here,  again,  in  county  rates  as 


in  education  rates  and  as  in  poor 
rates,  Parliament  has  desired  to  do 
a  number  of  excellent  things  for 
the  wellbeing  of  the  people  and 
of  the  nation  at  large,  and  it  has 
done  them  at  the  expense  of  one 
interest — an  interest  now  beyond 
measure  depressed  and  small  in 
comparison  with  the  general  wealth 
of  the  country.  It  will  be  argued 
that  Parliament  has  not  thrown  the 
whole  burden  of  these  many  services 
on  the  land  or  real  estate,  having 
given  large  grants  in  aid  of  local 
taxation.  Yes,  but  from  what 
source  do  these  grants  come?  From 
the  National  Exchequer,  which, 
independently  of  the  rates  which 
I  have  been  detailing,  is  filled  as 
much  by  the  landed  interest  as  by 
any  other :  they,  landlords,  tenants, 
and  labourers,  drink  as  much  tea, 
smoke  as  much  tobacco,  consume 
as  much  beer,  pay  as  heavy  house 
duty,  as  corresponding  classes  in 
other  branches  of  life,  and,  as  Sir 
William  Harcourt  himself  admits, 
they  have  paid  a  heavier  income 
tax.  Reserving  the  question  of  the 
death  duties  for  the  moment,  the 
agricultural  interest  is  more,  and 
not  less,  heavily  taxed  than  other 
interests ;  yet  when  burdens 
amounting  to  several  shillings  in 
the  pound  on  gross  revenue,  and 
to  half  as  much  again  on  net 
income,  are  imposed,  it  is  thought 
to  be  an  answer  to  any  complaint 
to  say,  "  You  have  no  grievance, 
because  if  the  taxpayer  at  large — 
you  included — did  not  pay  some- 
thing towards  these  services,  you 
would  be  still  more  severely  op- 
pressed than  you  are." 

So  far,  we  have  dealt  solely  with 
one  great  estate.  In  order  to  prove 
that  this  is  no  peculiar  instance,  we 
summarise  the  information  placed 
at  our  disposal  in  regard  to  other 
estates,  situated  severally  in  the 
Western  Highlands,  in  Mid-Lothi- 
an, in  Ayrshire,  in  Wigtownshire, 
and  in  the  Hebrides. 


1894." 


Agriculture  Taxed  to  Death. 


123 


1.  Estate  in  the  Western  Highlands. 

1840.          1893. 

Poor,  .  ...  Nil  £307 
Education,  .  .  .  £40  204 
County  assessments,  .  227  432 


£267      £943 

The  land  rental  of  this  estate,  in 
spite  of  considerable  capital  out- 
lay, is  now  no  larger  than  sixty 
years  ago.  The  figures  given  are 
for  an  average  of  years,  and  the 
poor  and  education  rates  paid  by 
the  tenants  are  not  included.  If 
these  were  added,  the  whole  burden 
would  be  not  less  than  .£1500,  or 
six  times  the  amount  that  sufficed 
in  1840. 

2.  Estate  in  Ayrshire. 

1840.  1893. 

Poor,   ....     £144  £427 

Education,   .          .         .          33  251 

County  assessments,      .          68  572 

£245     £1250 

The  rental  of  this  estate  has  fallen 
one -eighth  since  1840,  but  the 
money  the  land  has  to  find  in 
discharge  of  public  duties  is  five 
times  greater. 

3.  Estate  in  Wigtownshire. 

1844.          1893. 

Poor,  ....  £673  £1528 
Education,  ...  83  968 
County  assessments,  .  380  1189 

£1136    £3685 

This  estate  affords  an  unusual  in- 
stance of  considerable  outlay  in 
the  maintenance  of  the  poor  be- 
fore the  Act  of  1845. 

4.  Estate  in  Mid-Lothian. 

1840.  1893. 

Poor,  .  .  .  .  £45  £184 
Education,  .  .  .  42  192 

County  assessments,      .         19  309' 

£106      £685 

The  increase  in  this  case  is  more 
than  sixfold. 


5.  Estate  in  the  Hebrides. 

1840.          1893. 

Poor,    .         .      ....  Ml  £1492 

Education,   .          .         .  £139  558 
County  and  district  as- 
sessments,         .         .  512  430 

£651     £2480 

The  poor  rental  in  this  case  has 
slightly  decreased  within  the  last 
half  century,  but  the  burdens 
have  increased  fourfold. 

These  instances  might  be  multi- 
plied without  number,  and  by  a 
selection  of  telling  cases  such  as 
could  be  found  in  many  Highland 
parishes,  augmentations  of  burden 
twice  as  severe  could  be  adduced. 
We  have  purposely  avoided  making 
use  of  extreme  examples,  since  the 
facts  here  given  prove  our  point 
over  and  over  again,  that  person- 
alty and  realty,  starting,  so  to 
speak,  fair  half  a  century  ago, 
have  not  since  met  with  equal 
treatment;  and  that  if  equalisa- 
tion is  to  be  the  order  of  the  day, 
it  is  the  agricultural  interest  that 
may  justly  cry  out  for  redress. 

Such  being  the  effect  of  recent 
legislation  on  landed  wealth,  it  is 
time  to  consider  what  the  result 
will  be  if  the  measures  now  before 
Parliament  become  law. 

The  Local  Government  (Scot- 
land) Bill  provides  for  the  abolition 
of  the  existing  parochial  board,  and 
the  establishment  in  its  place  of 
a  parish  council  in  every  parish, 
elected,  in  the  words  of  the  Secre- 
tary for  Scotland,  "  on  the  widest 
suffrage  that  exists."  By  this  bill 
as  introduced  every  householder, 
notwithstanding  total  failure  to 
pay  his  rates,  was  allowed  to  control 
by  his  vote  the  raising  and  expend- 
ing the  money  of  those  who  do 
pay.  Deferring  to  the  spirit  of 
an  amendment  by  Mr  Hozier,  the 
Secretary  for  Scotland  has  carried 
a  compromise  excluding  from  the 
franchise  those  who  are  more  than 
a  year  in  arrear  with  their  rates. 


124 


Agriculture  Taxed  to  Death. 


[July 


The  noisiest  section  of  Scotch 
Radicals  are  wildly  furious  with 
Sir  George  Trevelyan  for  desert- 
ing the  banner  on  which  they 
have  inscribed  the  strange  de- 
vice "  Representation  but  no  tax- 
ation ; "  and  it  may  be  that  they 
will  seriously  set  themselves  to 
wreck  the  bill,  or  that  the  com- 
promise may  prove  unworkable  in 
practice.  For  the  moment  an 
amendment,  which  will  appeal  to 
the  common-sense  of  every  house- 
holder of  honest  purpose,  has  been 
adopted.  This,  however,  is  not 
sufficient  to  avert  a  very  serious 
danger  arising  from  the  constitu- 
tion of  the  electorate,  as  the  fol- 
lowing argument  will  show. 

The  parish  council  is  to  exercise 
power  in  two  directions  :  first,  it  is 
to  assume  all  the  powers  and  duties 
of  parochial  boards,  and,  above  all, 
to  dispense  money  for  the  mainte- 
nance of  the  poor;  second,  it  is 
to  undertake  a  multitude  of  new 
duties  all  costing  money.  The 
latter  will  involve  a  certain  and 
considerable  burden  in  every 
county  in  Scotland ;  but  the  for- 
mer, in  the  poorer  parishes  where 
there  is  much  poverty  and  little 
wealth,  where  there  are  many 
mouths  and  little  scope  for  profit- 
able industry,  will  result  in  utter 
destruction  of  rich  and  poor  alike, 
— of  the  poor  because  of  the  de- 
moralisation attendant  on  the 
power  to  relieve  themselves  by 
dipping  their  hands  into  the  pro- 
duce of  the  rates;  of  the  rich — 
or,  to  speak  more  accurately,  of 
those  who  make  a  loyal  effort  to 
meet  their  many  obligations — be- 
cause the  balance  now  remaining 
after  the  discharge  of  very  oner- 
ous public  burdens  will  be  swept 
away.  Are  these  alarms  without  • 
foundation?  In  a  large  number 
of  parishes  where  the  population 
is  moderate,  wealth  large  in  pro- 
portion, and  plenty  of  employ- 
ment at  good  wages,  it  may  be 


that  they  are ;  but  Parliament  is 
legislating  for  Scotland,  not  only 
for  the  happier  districts  therein. 
Either  it  must  provide  for  the 
whole  of  Scotland  a  legislative 
scheme  which  will  work  every- 
where, or  it  must  safeguard  the 
weaker,  the  poorer,  and  more 
backward  districts  by  some  amend- 
ments or  provisions  peculiarly  ap- 
plicable to  them.  The  former  was 
the  opinion  of  Mr  J.  P.  B.  Robert- 
son, who,  when  Lord  Advocate  in 
the  Unionist  Ministry,  laid  it  down 
as  the  basis  of  his  scheme  for  the 
reform  of  local  government,  that 
it  "  must  be  applicable  to  the 
whole  of  Scotland,  and  it  must, 
therefore,  be  fitted  to  stand  the 
strain  of  the  various  social  and 
economic  conditions  which  extend 
from  the  English  border  to  the 
farthest  Hebrides." 

Examining  the  social  and  econo- 
mic conditions  which  exist  over 
many  of  the  northern  counties,  are 
the  alarms  we  have  expressed  with- 
out foundation  1 

The  answer  may  be  left  to  any 
one  who  will  take  the  trouble  to 
examine  the  condition  of  an 
average  Highland  parish.  Here 
is  the  account  given  of  parishes 
chosen  as  fair  examples  by  Lord 
Napier's  Commission  in  1883  : — 

Farr,  Sutherland. 

Gross  rental,  .         .          .  £10,337 
Paid  by  27  large  tenants,       9,656 


Balance  to  be  divided 
among  293  small  occu- 
pants, .  .  .  £681 

Of  these,  160  were  rented  below  £6, 
and  128  below  £2. 

Uig,  Lewis. 

Gross  rental,  .          .         .     £5229 
Paid  by  25  large  tenants,        3708 

Leaving  to  be  divided  be- 
tween 420  occupants,    .     £1521 
Of  these  last,  393  pay  under  £6  a- 
year. 

Since    this   report,    rents    have 


1894.] 


Agriculture  Taxed  to  Death. 


125 


been  reduced  on  large  farms  and 
small  plots  alike  from  30  to  50 
per  cent.  There  is  no  manufac- 
ture and  no  regular  home  trade  or 
occupation  for  the  people.  The 
landlord  and  the  dozen  or  two  large 
tenants  will  be  utterly  powerless 
to  influence  the  election  which 
must  result  in  a  council  desirous 
to  do  what  the  electorate  wishes 
— viz.,  generously  and  largely  to 
relieve  the  wants  of  the  mass  of 
their  constituents. 

In  these  parishes  the  poor  rates 
are  already  2s.  and  3s.  2d.  in  the 
pound  respectively.  To  predict 
that  they  will  grow  beyond  endur- 
ance when  90  per  cent  of  the  elec- 
tors are  existing  on  a  holding 
under  <£3  or  <£4  a-year  in  value,  is 
neither  hazardous  in  itself,  nor 
does  it  involve  any  attack  on  the 
worth  of  the  people  as  a  class.  They 
will  naturally  do  as  Parliament 
invites  them,  and  relieve  them- 
selves out  of  the  profits  of  their 
neighbours  until  the  last  penny  is 
exhausted.  The  idea  of  shame  in 
becoming  chargeable  to  the  parish 
has  already  almost  vanished,  and 
it  will  utterly  disappear  when 
Parliament  sends,  as  they  will  in- 
terpret it,  a  message  :  "  Choose 
men  to  relieve  the  poor  on  a  scale 
which  you  poor  men  deem  suit- 
able." 

Mr  J.  P.  B.  Robertson  wisely 
said  in  1889— 

"It  is  all-important  that  the  ad- 
ministration of  poor  relief  should,  in 
the  interests  of  the  people,  be  in  firm 
and  steady  hands  ;  and  one  of  the 
considerations  which  must  be  looked 
to,^  in  all  proposals  for  electing  paro- 
chial boards,  is  the  necessity  of  saving 
the  people  and  saving  the  parochial 
boards  from  their  being,  in  the  dis- 
charge of  their  invidious  and  delicate 
duties,  under  pressure  of  the  most 
creditable  sentiments." 

The  scheme  proposed  at  the 
conclusion  of  this  speech  provided 
for  the  election  of  the  board  half 


by  the  owners  and  half  by  occu- 
piers. Since  the  rate  is  divided 
in  this  manner,  it  does  not  seem 
an  unreasonable  proposition.  The 
alternative  is  to  provide  for  the 
exercise  of  drastic  powers  of  inter- 
ference and  control  by  the  Local 
Government  Board. 

In  addition  to  undertaking  all 
the  duties  of  the  old  parochial 
board,  the  new  councils,  elected  on 
the  "widest  suffrage  that  exists," 
have  power  to  spend  the  produce 
of  the  rates,  without  stint  or  limit, 
on  the  following  objects,  after  ob- 
taining, in  some  cases,  the  consent 
of  the  county  council  and  the 
board  : — 

(a)  To  provide  buildings  for  pub- 
lic offices  and  for  meetings 
or  other  public  purposes. 

(6)  To  provide,  maintain,  lay  out, 
and  improve  grounds  for 
public  recreation. 

(c)  To  acquire  land  for  the  fore- 

going objects. 

(d)  To  acquire  rights  of  way. 

(e)  To  execute  suitable  works. 
(/)  To  purchase  lands  compul- 

sorily  at  the  expense  of 

the  rates. 
(g)  To  acquire  land  compulsorily 

on  lease  for  allotments. 
(h)  To   levy    a   special   rate   to 

cover  the   expenses   thus 

incurred. 
(i)  To    borrow   money   on    the 

security     of    the    special 

rate. 

Others  will  arraign  the  policy  of 
conferring  these  powers  on  the 
new  councils.  The  object  of  this 
article  is  only  to  invite  those  who 
will  have  to  pay  the  piper  to  con- 
sider in  time  the  way  the  particu- 
lar class  of  wealth  they  possess  is 
being  treated  by  Parliament. 

The  second  measure  which  pro- 
mises shipwreck  to  the  landed  in- 
terest is  the  Finance  Bill  now 
working  its  tedious  way  through 
the  House  of  Commons.  This  bill 


126 


Agriculture  Taxed  to  Death. 


[July 


seeks  primarily  to  recast  the  death 
duties  in  their  application  to  land, 
and  enormously  to  augment  their 
severity.  Under  the  specious  guise 
of  equalisation,  it  aggravates  to  a 
point  beyond  bearing  the  existing 
inequality  of  burdens  taken  as 
a  whole  imposed  by  the  Imperial 
Parliament  on  real  as  compared 
with  personal  estate.  It  behoves 
us  to  use  the  utmost  brevity 
in  dealing  with  this  branch  of 
our  subject,  and  to  assume  that 
every  reader  knows  the  cardinal 
features  of  the  Chancellor  of  the 
Exchequer's  scheme,  so  far  as  it 
affects  land:  (1)  graduation  of 
probate — or,  as  it  will  be  called, 
estate  duty — until  a  maximum  of 
8  per  cent  is  reached,  every  sort 
of  property,  real  and  personal,  in- 
vested at  home  or  in  the  colonies 
being  aggregated  prior  to  assess- 
ment; (2)  the  payment  on  death 
on  the  capital  value  of  estates  of 
every  kind,  even  though  entailed, 
and  though  the  beneficiary  has  a 
life-interest  only ;  (3)  abolition  of 
privileges  hitherto  accorded  in  the 
case  of  real  property. 

We  need  not  dwell  on  the  origin 
of  the  death  duties.  A  trifling 
stamp  duty  on  probate  was  first 
imposed  in  1694;  the  principle  of 
progression,  according  to  the  value 
of  the  estate,  was  introduced  in 
1779;  and  in  1815  the  amount 
payable  to  Exchequer  was  substan- 
tially increased.  Legacy  duty  was 
first  imposed  in  1780,  and  in  1815 
was  placed  upon  its  present  scale, 
varying  from  1  per  cent  payable 
by  lineals  up  to  10  per  cent  by 
strangers  in  blood.  These  duties 
were  payable  on  personalty  only, 
and  it  was  not  till  1853  that 
duty  was  imposed  on  successions 
to  landed  estate.  Mr  Goschen 
made  in  1888  and  1889  the  last 
changes  that  have  to  be  recorded. 
He  increased  the  rates  of  suc- 
cession duty  payable  on  realty 


making  them  1J  per  cent  in  the 
case  of  lineals,  4J  in  that  of  col- 
laterals, and  so  on  up  to  11 J  in 
that  of  strangers  in  blood.  He 
also  imposed  a  new  duty  of  1  per 
cent  on  all  estates,  real  and  per- 
sonal, exceeding  £10,000.  The 
net  result  is  that  a  child  succeed- 
ing to  an  estate  over  £10,000  in 
value  pays,  if  it  be  in  free  per- 
sonalty, probate  duty  3  per  cent, 
and  estate  duty  1  per  cent — total, 
4  per  cent ;  if  it  be  in  real  estate, 
he  pays  succession  duty  1J  per 
cent,  and  estate  duty  1  per  cent — 
total,  2J  per  cent. 

Real    estate,   then,   now  enjoys 
the  following  privileges  : — 

1.  It  pays  in  the  case  of  lineals 
2J    per    cent    instead    of    4   per 
cent. 

2.  The  capital  value  of  the  suc- 
cession on  which  duty  is  paid  is 
calculated  according  to  the  age  of 
the  successor;  and  life-interest  in 
a  sum  being  always  less  than  the 
sum  itself,  duty  is  never  paid  on 
the  total  value. 

3.  Four  years  are  given  to  dis- 
charge  the   duty  by  instalments, 
without  interest. 

Why  were  these  last  conces- 
sions given?  Because  Mr  Glad- 
stone, for  the  first  time  imposing 
duty  on  succession  to  real  estate 
in  1853,  deemed  it  right,  and 
earnestly  argued  that  it  was  nec- 
essary to  treat  land  more  lightly 
than  personalty,  for  two  reasons — 
first,  because  land  bore  an  undue 
proportion  of  local  taxation,  and 
second,  because  an  analysis  of  the 
income-tax  schedules  proved  that 
the  profits  of  trade  were  not  taxed 
at  an  equal  rate  with  the  profits  of 
rent.  Where  the  former  paid  7d., 
the  latter — so  said  Mr  Gladstone 
—paid  9d. 

The  severity  of  local  taxation  in 
1853  was  as  nothing  to  what  it  has 
since  become,  yet  it  was  deemed 
sufficient  by  the  hero  of  Liberal 


1894.] 


Agriculture  Taxed  to  Death. 


127 


finance  to  require  an  important 
concession.  The  balance  therefore 
as  between  land  and  personalty  has 
been  that  the  former  has  provided 
year  by  year  in  ordinary  cases  from 
10  to  20  or  even  30  per  cent  of 
gross  revenue,  and  frequently  the 
moiety  of  net  revenue  in  the  form 
of  local  taxation,  and  has  paid  9d. 
in  the  pound  to  income-tax  when 
7d.  only  was  fairly  exigible.  On 
the  other  hand,  when  a  landed 
estate  passes  on  death  to  lineal 
descendants,  the  important  advan- 
tages already  named  as  to  amount 
and  time  of  payment  are  enjoyed. 
It  is  a  great  outrage  that  these 
last  should  be  abolished,  while  no 
redress  is  afforded  in  the  matter  of 
local  taxation. 

What,  then,  are  the  changes  pro- 
posed by  Sir  William  Harcourt's 
bill,  and  their  effect  ? 

1.  If  the  privilege  of  payment 
by  instalments  is  claimed,  it  is  to 
be  accompanied  by  3  per  cent  in- 
terest from  the  date  of  death. 

2.  Heirs  to  landed  estate  are  to 
pay  on   the  whole   capital  value, 
even  where  they  succeed  to  a  life- 
rent  only  under  entail,  and  cannot 
make  their  interest  absolute  with- 
out the  expensive  process  of  disen- 
tailing and  compensating  the  heirs. 
They  are  to  pay  on  a  capital  sum 
greatly  in   excess   of   that  which 
they  enjoy. 

3.  The   scale  of   duty  paid   on 
the  corpus  of  the  estate,  under  the 
name   of    estate   duty,    is    to    be 
placed   at   a   progressive    rate   of 
great  severity.     For  instance,  an 
estate  over  £50,000  would  pay  5 
per   cent,    and   over   £100,000    6 
per  cent  estate  duty,  besides  suc- 
cession duty  varying  from   1    per 
cent  by  lineals  to  10  per  cent  by 
strangers  in  blood. 

"The  golden  rule  of  all  Chan- 
cellors of  the  Exchequer,"  said  Mr 
Disraeli,  "  is  that  they  should  be- 
ware that  no  tax,  whatever  form 


it  may  take,  whether  that  of  a 
customs  duty,  an  excise  duty,  or  a 
direct  impost,  should,  in  its  nature, 
be  excessive."  The  tax  as  pro- 
posed by  Sir  William  Harcourt  in 
the  case  of  personal  as  well  as 
real  estate  stands  condemned  by 
this  axiom,  for  it  is  excessive. 
To  give  one  moderate  instance, 
brothers  and  sisters  taking  any- 
thing from  an  estate  with  a  gross 
value  in  excess  of  £50,000,  would 
have  to  pay  8  per  cent,  or  more 
than  three  years'  income.  This  is 
surely  an  excessive  sum  to  pay  out 
of  personalty.  But  in  the  case  of 
land  it  is  more  than  excessive,  it 
is  ruinous  and  intolerable.  A  man 
with  money  invests  and  enjoys  the 
fruits  of  every  penny  he  possesses. 
The  man  with  an  estate  will  be 
charged  his  6,  8,  10,  or,  in  the 
most  extreme  case,  it  might  be  18 
per  cent  on  the  capital  value  of 
his  pictures,  his  heirlooms,  his 
trees,  his  model  farm  -  steadings 
and  labourers'  cottages,  on  prop- 
erty of  many  kinds  which  brings 
in  no  effective  revenue.  Multi- 
tudes of  obligations  attach  to  the 
possession  of  land  from  which 
owners  of  Consols  are  exempt,  and 
the  brother  succeeding  to  a  landed 
estate  of  £50,000,  and  paying  8  per 
cent,  would,  unless  his  duty  to  his 
tenants,  labourers,  and  neighbours 
were  neglected,  be  disbursing,  not 
three  years',  as  in  the  case  of  per- 
sonalty, but  at  least  six  years'  free 
income.  In  the  case  of  the  largest 
proprietors,  where  agriculture  has 
suffered  least,  where  the  houses  are 
best,  where  the  tenantry  are  most 
prosperous,  the  outlay  on  things 
for  the  general  good  has  been  much 
larger  than  this  estimate  would  in- 
dicate, and  the  margin  for  personal 
expenditure  smaller. 

The  Duke  of  Richmond  told  the 
Royal  Commission  that  on  his 
Goodwood  estates  since  1873  he 
had  spent  upwards  of  £30,000  on 


128 


Agriculture  Taxed  to  Death. 


[July 


labourers'  cottages,  and  as  an  in- 
vestment his  expenditure  showed 
a  loss.  On  his  Scottish  estates  he 
has  expended  during  the  last 
fifteen  years  on  buildings  and 
improvements  £198,000,  besides 
granting  abatements  in  rent  of 
£286,000.  The  Duke  of  Devon- 
shire has  stated  that  on  his  vast 
family  estates  it  has  been  the  cus- 
tom to  expend  30,  50,  60,  or  70 
per  cent  on  local  purposes,  un- 
connected with  personal  or  family 
enjoyment.  In  these  cases,  the 
estates  being  very  large,  the  grad- 
uated duty  would  be  infinitely 
higher  than  that  taken  as  an 
example,  and  would  presumably 
amount  to  a  charge  of  1 1  per  cent 
in  the  case  of  collateral  succession. 
The  conclusion,  therefore,  at  which 
he  arrives,  that  the  new  duties 
would  be  equivalent  to  six,  ten,  or 
even  twelve  years'  income  available 
for  personal  or  family  expenditure, 
appears  well  within  the  mark. 
The  effect  must  be  that  landowners 
will  be  utterly  unable  to  discharge 
in  future  the  duty  they  have 
gladly  held  themselves  to  owe 
their  tenantry  and  neighbours. 
They  must  retrench,  and  as  they 
and  their  families  must  live,  the 
general  welfare  of  the  countryside 
will  be  affected.  The  Exchequer 
will  absorb  a  large  share  of  the 
revenue  of  every  estate  which 
now  forms  the  wage-fund  of  the 
district.  Landowners  will  indeed 
suffer ;  but  the  result  of  Sir  Wil- 
liam Harcourt's  Budget  will  be 
that  tenants  and  labourers  and 
agriculture  will  suffer  first  and  in 
the  hardest  measure. 

Night  after  night  the  Chancellor 
of  the  Exchequer  revels  in  taunt- 
ing landowners  with  a  desire  to 
escape  taxation.  We  would  ask, 
Are  the  facts  with  which  we  have 
been  furnished  from  several  of  the 
best-managed  estates  in  Scotland 
capable  of  disproof?  Are  the  re- 


turns of  burdens  on  land  just 
presented  to  Parliament  by  the 
Secretary  for  Scotland  fallacious  ? 
Are  landowners  and  tenants 
only  dreaming  that  they  receive 
periodic  visits  from  collectors  of 
county  rates,  of  school  -  rates,  of 
poor-rates,  and  of  income-tax,  on 
incomes  which  they  never  make  ? 
If  all  these  things  are  sad  and 
sober  realities,  we  submit  that 
the  new  legislation,  the  Finance 
Bill  with  its  new  taxes,  the  Local 
Government  Bill  with  its  new 
rates,  are  impolitic,  unjust,  and 
oppressive.  Every  penny  that 
landlord  or  tenant  derives  from 
land  ought  to  pay  a  full  and  equal 
share  with  other  wealth  to  the 
State,  but  not  more.  At  the  be- 
ginning of  this  reign  the  agri- 
cultural interests  were  fostered  by 
protection,  and  the  taxation  levied 
for  local  purposes  by  Imperial 
Acts  was  trifling.  Now,  agricul- 
ture, weighed  down  with  multi- 
plied burdens,  has  to  undersell  the 
free  produce  of  other  countries. 
It  is  a  farmers'  question,  for  they 
cannot  struggle  on  unless  there  be 
capital  to  put  into  the  land ;  it  is 
a  labourers'  question,  for  as  their 
wage-fund  goes  into  the  coffers  of 
the  State  they  will  gradually  be 
discharged;  it  is  a  question  for 
working  men  at  large,  for  farm- 
servants  will  drift  into  other  call- 
ings and  depress  wages.  Fair 
treatment,  neither  more  nor  less, 
is  wanted.  Agriculturists  honestly 
believe  they  now  suffer  from  ex- 
cessive taxation  as  compared  with 
other  classes;  Sir  William  Har- 
court  thinks  otherwise.  The  whole 
question  should  be  examined  by  a 
competent  Commission ;  and  until 
this  is  •  done,  the  most  strenuous 
opposition  should  be  given  at  all 
stages  and  at  every  opportunity  to 
those  sections  of  the  two  bills 
which  seek  to  lay  fresh  burdens 
on  the  produce  of  the  land. 


1894." 


In  c  Magats '  Library. 


129 


IN  'MAGA'S'  LIBRARY. 


THE  loan  collection  of  paintings 
in  the  first  Manchester  Exhibition 
came  as  a  revelation  of  the  rare 
treasures  in  our  picture-galleries. 
We  have  almost  ceased  to  be  sur- 
prised at  the  seemingly  inexhaust- 
ible stream  which  sets  annually 
towards  the  exhibitions  in  Bur- 
lington House.  Surely  much  the 
same  may  be  said  of  the  Letters 
and  biographical  Reminiscences 
with  which  we  have  been  inun- 
dated for  the  last  fifteen  or  twenty 
years.  We  must  pick  and  choose 
among  them  as  amongst  the  pic- 
tures :  the  portraits  are  not  all 
masterpieces  by  a  Titian  or  a 
Velasquez,  nor  are  the  sujets  de 
genre  invariably  gems  of  bright- 
ness from  domestic  interiors  by  a 
Yan  Ostade  or  a  Gerard  Dow. 
But  it  may  be  predicted  that  not 
a  little  of  this  exuberant  per- 
sonal literary  work  will  live  and  be 
read  or  consulted  for  one  reason 
or  another.  In  this  article,  as  it 
happens,  we  can  bring  together 
specimens  in  four  characteristic 
styles,  and  each  in  its  manner  is 
excellent.  There  are  the  highly 
dramatic  recollections  of  a  dis- 
tinguished soldier;  there  are  the 
letters  of  a  famous  London  wit 
and  man  of  fashion;  there  is  the 
bright  and  sparkling  correspond- 
ence of  a  lady  of  wit,  refinement, 
and  moderate  culture,  the  graceful 
and  gracious  hostess  of  salons  at 
home  and  abroad;  and,  finally, 
there  are  the  discreet  revelations 
of  a  veteran  diplomatist,  full  of 
valuable  materials  for  the  historian 
of  the  future. 

There  is  much  that  was  note- 


worthy in  the  adventurous  life  of 
that  dashing  cavalry  officer,  Sir 
Hope  Grant ;  but  nothing  perhaps 
has  impressed  us  more  than  his 
habit  of  keeping  regular  and  vol- 
uminous journals.1  In  overcrowd- 
ed transports,  in  pestilential  Chin- 
ese swamps,  in  beleaguered  can- 
tonments in  revolted  India  —  he 
chronicled  minutely  the  events  of 
each  day,  as  the  clerk  or  the 
tradesman  posts  up  his  ledgers. 
He  was  by  no  means  what  Cap- 
tain Costigan  calls  "  a  literary 
cyracter."  But  whatever  the  mo- 
tive for  the  pains  he  took,  his 
labours  have  borne  fruit  he  could 
scarcely  have  foreseen,  and  we 
feel  we  have  good  reason  to  be 
grateful  for  them.  We  have  no 
doubt  that  great  part  of  the  at- 
tractiveness of  these  volumes  is 
due  to  the  editing  of  Colonel 
Knollys,  who  has  recast  and  re- 
arranged selections  from  the  mass 
of  raw  material,  as  with  an  able 
running  commentary  of  his  own 
he  has  filled  in  the  missing  links 
of  the  history.  In  any  case,  the 
whole  of  the  thrilling  narrative  is 
instinct  with  spirit  and  colour,  and 
incidents  are  described  with  all 
the  graphic  picturesqueness  of  the 
observer  on  whom  they  made  a 
profound  impression.  No  man  can 
write  history,  and  especially  war 
history,  like  him  who  has  played 
his  part  in  the  scenes.  Necessarily 
he  throws  in  those  telling  touches 
which  escape  the  clever  literary 
artist;  nor  does  he  overlook  the 
by-play  and  even  the  suggestive 
trivialities  which  may  seem  be- 
neath the  dignity  of  the  solemn 
chronicler.  In  fact,  in  his  man- 


1  Life  of  General  Sir  Hope  Grant.  With  Selections  from  his  Correspondence, 
Edited  by  Henry  Knollys,  Colonel  (H.P.)  R.A.  Edinburgh  and  London:  Wm. 
Blackwood  &  Sons.  1894. 

VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCXLV.  * 


130 


In  '  Maya's '  Library : 


[July 


ner  of  narration  Grant  is  what 
Macaulay  would  have  been,  had 
Macaulay  enjoyed  similar  oppor- 
tunities. 

More  than  fifty  years  have 
elapsed  since  young  Grant  em- 
barked for  service  in  the  East. 
We  are  taken  back  to  other  times 
and  the  ancient  military  memories, 
for  he  sailed  as  brigade-major  to 
Lord  Saltoun,  a  distinguished 
Waterloo  man,  with  a  marked 
and  rather  eccentric  individuality, 
of  whom  many  good  stories  used 
to  be  told  in  the  north.  Grant 
owed  his  appointment  to  their 
common  passion  for  music.  Among 
the  furniture  of  the  young  officer's 
cabin  were  a  piano  and  a  violon- 
cello. The  chief  prided  himself  on 
his  performances  on  the  guitar, 
and  the  pair  used  to  indulge  in 
serenades,  to  the  astonishment  of 
the  sailors.  A  military  passenger 
by  the  present  flying  service  of  the 
P.  and  O.  would  scarcely  dream  of 
pianos  as  part  of  his  outfit.  But 
the  Belleisle,  74,  was  to  be  Grant's 
home  for  the  best  part  of  a  year. 
There  was  accommodation  on  board 
for  about  800 — half  as  many  again 
of  unfortunate  souls  were  huddled 
together  between  decks;  and  yet 
those  soldiers'  wives  had  deemed 
themselves  lucky  who  were  per- 
mitted to  follow  their  husbands' 
fortunes.  When  we  think  of  the 
fare  and  the  miserable  quarters, 
we  marvel  that  troops  who  had 
gone  through  such  an  ordeal  should 
have  disembarked  in  high  condi- 
tion and  eager  for  hard  fighting. 
But  the  seasoned  soldier  of  those 
days  was  uncommonly  tough,  and 
nothing  short  of  a  Walcheren  Ex- 
pedition seems  to  have  been  too 
much  for  his  stamina.  Grant  was 
even  less  of  an  orator  than  a 
writer.  There  is  a  telling  anecdote 
of  his  failing  to  make  himself  in- 
telligible when  he  tried  to  explain 
that  he  was  really  the  winner  in 


a  war-game  at  Aldershot,  when 
the  umpires  had  unanimously  pro- 
nounced against  him.  But  we 
cannot  help  thinking  he  had  much 
of  the  artistic  sensibility  of  his 
illustrious  brother,  the  President 
of  the  Academy.  For  he  seizes 
instinctively  upon  anything  pic- 
turesque or  characteristic,  and 
dashes  it  in  with  a  vigorous  real- 
ism which  profoundly  impresses 
the  imagination. 

The  first  Chinese  war  was  really 
an  armed  expedition  of  discovery. 
Then,  for  the  first  time,  the  de- 
tested foreigners  fairly  penetrated 
behind  the  veil  which  had  shrouded 
from  time  immemorial  the  eccen- 
tricities of  that  mysterious  empire. 
If  we  knew  comparatively  little  of 
them,  the  Chinese  people  knew 
absolutely  nothing  of  us.  They 
would  have  looked  with  super- 
stitious terror  to  the  contact  of 
their  venerabip  civilisation  with 
Western  barbarism,  had  they  not 
been  reassured  by  the  sublime  con- 
fidence of  the  mandarins,  who  had 
hitherto  disregarded  treaties  with 
impunity.  The  mandarins'  faith 
in  their  natural  defences  was  not 
surprising.  There  were  no  roads 
on  which  troops,  if  landed,  could 
march,  and  the  great  river  which 
led  to  the  capital  and  the  interior 
was  unnavigable,  or  at  least  it  was 
considered  only  practicable  for 
small  craft.  Surprise  following 
surprise  was  in  store  for  them, 
and  the  unconventional  fashion 
in  which  these  Europeans  made 
war  was  beyond  the  experiences 
of  their  listless  temperaments 
leavened  by  Buddhist  philoso- 
phy. The  mighty  Yang-tze-Kiang 
comes  down  in  perennial  flood, 
sweeping  in  a  succession  of  swift 
currents  among  a  labyrinth  of 
sand-banks  and  shifting  shoals. 
The  wondering  Celestials  had  the 
privilege  of  witnessing  one  of  the 
most  daring  feats  of  seamanship 


1894.] 


*  Life  of  General  Sir  Hope  Grant' 


on  record.  Seventy-three  British 
warships,  from  three-deckers  down- 
wards— by  a  strange  coincidence 
precisely  the  same  number  con- 
veyed the  troops  which  Grant 
commanded  in  the  second  war — 
were  seen  stemming  the  stream 
under  sail.  We  are  not  told 
whether  the  Admiral  secured 
the  assistance  of  native  pilots. 
The  Belleisle  and  another  vessel 
grounded,  but  both  were  soon 
afloat  again.  The  troops  got 
ashore  somehow,  in  spite  of  the 
strength  of  the  currents :  prob- 
ably the  Chinese  were  too  much 
taken  aback  promptly  to  oppose 
the  disembarkation.  But  then 
they  prepared  to  attack  in  Tartar 
fashion,  with  a  sonorous  clashing 
of  cymbals,  with  shouting,  and  an 
immense  display  of  tawdry  ban- 
ners. The  British  walked  up  to 
them  in  blazing  sunshine — "  trussed 
up  in  a  network  of  -  strangulation 
belts  and  thick  leather  stocks  " — 
and  in  five  minutes  the  position 
was  abandoned,  and  the  vociferous 
defenders  were  in  full  flight.  The 
city  of  Chin-Kiang  was  next  car- 
ried by  assault.  "  The  subsequent 
fate  of  the  defenders  was  a  cruel 
one.  Those  who  escaped  slaughter 
by  our  soldiers  for  the  most  part 
committed  suicide."  Nothing  can 
be  more  strikingly  illustrative  of 
the  strange  Chinese  idiosyncrasy. 
A  few  shot  and  shell  had  scared 
them  out  of  a  strongly  defensible 
position,  and  yet  when  the  fighting 
was  over  they  deliberately  sought 
death,  in  the  fear  that  a  worse  fate 
might  befall  them.  As  for  the 
miserable  non  -  combatants,  their 
terror  was  extreme.  In  their 
horror  at  what  might  happen  to 
them  at  the  hands  of  the  foreign 
devils,  many  women  were  slaugh- 
tered by  their  own  relations.  After 
describing  how  a  silken-clad  man- 
darin was  discovered  swinging  from 
a  beam  in  his  own  stable,  Sir 


131 

Hope,  by  way  of  relief,  tells  a 
pleasant  story.  The  Admiral  was 
strolling  through  the  town  in 
decidedly  unconventional  costume, 
when  the  master  of  one  of  the 
transports,  mistaking  him  for  a 
comrade,  unceremoniously  accosted 
him,  "  Well,  old  boy,  you've  come 
rather  late.  The  white's  all  gone, 
but  there  is  some  brown  left." 
In  defiance  of  severe  orders  against 
plundering,  they  had  been  looting 
a  storehouse  filled  with  sugar. 

Hong-Kong  fifty  years  ago  was 
a  very  different  place  from  what 
it  is  now  as  the  third  seaport  in 
the  empire.  "  It  was  a  recog- 
nised resort  for  pirates  and  land- 
marauders,  and  the  incessant  rob- 
beries were  outrageous.  I  never 
went  to  bed  without  a  loaded 
pistol  under  my  pillow."  But 
the  Spaniards  had  similar  troubles 
with  their  Malay  subjects  in 
Manila,  and  they  adopted  more 
summary  methods  of  repression. 
A  village  revolted,  and  the  gov- 
ernor sent  out  an  expedition,  which 
massacred  one  thousand  souls,  in- 
cluding women  and  children.  One 
of  the  native  regiments  expressed 
disapprobation  by  mutinying,  and 
forthwith  one  hundred  of  the 
mutineers  were  summarily  passed 
under  arms. 

Then  Sir  Hope  joined  his  regi- 
ment at  Cawnpore,  and  the  9th 
Lancers  were  to  the  front  in  all 
the  fighting  that  was  going  for- 
ward, from  the  first  Sikh  war  to 
the  stamping  out  of  the  Mutiny. 
At  Cawnpore  he  had  an  oppor- 
tunity of  observing  the  methods 
of  revenue  administration  in  the 
kingdom  of  Oude,  the  monarch's 
territory  coming  down  to  the 
opposite  bank  of  the  Ganges. 
He  was  roused  out  of  bed  one 
morning  by  the  report  of  cannon. 
"By -and -by  a  round-shot  came 
bounding  across,  and  lodged  un- 
der our  house,  followed  by  two  or 


132 


In  '  MagcCs '  Library  : 


[July 


three  other  projectiles.  Soon  we 
made  out  three  6-pounder  pieces, 
blazing  away  at  a  large  boat  in 
line  with  our  residence."  It 
was  only  the  king's  collectors  get- 
ting in  his  taxes,  and  taking  pot- 
shots at  the  warlike  and  impe- 
cunious peasants,  who  much  pre- 
ferred fighting  to  paying.  When 
the  cannonade  grew  hotter,  they 
took  to  the  water,  and  struck  out 
for  the  English  shore.  "  Ten  of  the 
fugitives  were  killed,  seven  were 
wounded,  and  only  three  reached 
the  bank,  so  severely  mauled  that 
their  escape  was  a  marvel.  Such 
was  the  rule  of  the  Oude  Govern- 
ment,"— which  certainly  was  doing 
its  best  to  provoke  annexation. 

Since  Olive  decided  for  battle  at 
Plassey,  the  English  Raj  had  never 
a  more  narrow  escape  than  in  the 
night  that  followed  the  drawn 
battle  of  Ferozeshah.  The  victory 
was  won  by  British  bluff,  and  by 
the  indiscipline  that  followed  suc- 
cess among  the  disorderly  Sikh 
levies.  Sir  Hope's  personal  ex- 
periences in  these  thrilling  times, 
though  he  was  not  actually  present 
at  the  three  days'  battle,  were  in- 
teresting and  sensational.  It  gives 
some  idea  of  the  encumbrances  of  an 
Indian  column  on  the  march,  when 
we  are  told  that  his  personal  trans- 
port consisted  of  six  camels,  of  two 
bullock-carts,  with  spans  of  four 
bullocks  each,  and  of  a  private 
cart  besides.  Sleep  was  made 
difficult  to  any  but  a  seasoned 
campaigner  by  the  bellowing  of 
tens  of  thousands  of  cattle  and  the 
groaning  of  innumerable  camels. 
He  does  not  say  much  of  Sobraon, 
though  he  was  in  the  thick  of 
the  charges, — possibly,  as  Colonel 
Knollys  suggests,  because  there 
he  had  nearly  made  shipwreck  of 
his  fortunes.  Yet  no  action  in  his 
career  is  more  characteristic  of  his 
sturdy  manhood  than  that  in  which 
he  assumed  an  unprecedented  re- 


sponsibility. His  colonel  had  gone 
drunk  into  action.  Grant  asked 
the  second  lieutenant  -  colonel  to 
put  their  superior  under  arrest. 
That  gentleman  angrily  declined 
the  invidious  duty.  "  So  early 
next  morning  I  went  to  the  colonel 
in  his  tent,  .  .  .  and  I  spoke  thus 
to  him.  'You  know  you  were 
very  drunk  yesterday,  sir,  when 
you  led  us  into  action.  I  have 
come  to  tell  you  that  if  you  do  not 
at  once  leave  the  regiment,  I  will 
now  put  you  under  arrest  and  report 
your  conduct.'  "  The  colonel,  not 
unnaturally,  took  the  initiative, 
and  it  was  Grant  who  went  under 
arrest,  charged  with  a  false  and 
calumnious  accusation.  There  was 
"a  great  to-do,"  followed  by  a 
court  of  inquiry,  and  Grant  had 
reason  to  congratulate  himself  on 
the  upshot  of  a  game  in  which  the 
honours  were  left  doubtful.  He 
was  quit  for  six  weeks  of  confine- 
ment, with  the  slow  torment  of 
harrowing  suspense.  He  had  a  good 
deal  in  common  with  Sir  Charles 
Napier,  who  had  come  up  from 
Scinde  at  the  head  of  a  corps 
d'armfa.  "  Sir  Charles  was  an 
extraordinary  looking  person,  — 
short,  slight,  and  with  a  handsome 
cast  of  countenance.  He  wore 
large  spectacles,  and  had  small 
eyes,  large,  dark  shaggy  eyebrows, 
an  aquiline  nose,  and  a  most  fear- 
ful quantity  of  grizzly  grey  whis- 
kers, beard,  and  moustache,  with 
hair  streaming  down  his  back." 
Like  Mr  Peggoty,  he  was  a  most 
agreeable  man  when  he  happened 
,  to  be  in  good  humour,  and  was 
fond  of  talking  about  the  diffi- 
culties he  had  surmounted.  He 
told  Grant  afterwards  that,  till  he 
was  sixty,  he  had  never  known 
what  it  was  to  be  out  of  poverty. 
As  a  general  officer,  with  a  wife 
and  daughter,  he  managed  some- 
how to  make  ends  meet  on  his  pay. 
When  he  landed  at  Bombay,  to 


1894.] 


*  Life  of  General  Sir  Hope  Grant? 


133 


take  command  of  a  division,  he 
had  only  a  couple  of  sovereigns  in 
his  pocket.  After  his  victory  at 
Meeanee  he  got  ,£60,000  of  prize- 
money,  and  subsequently,  as  Indian 
Commander-in-Chief,  he  drew  his 
£15,000  a-year.  But  not  even 
that  ample  income  could  bind  the 
fiery  old  man,  whose  very  aspect 
struck  superstitious  terror  into  the 
Sikhs,  to  a  decent  show  of  subordi- 
nation. Quarrelling  with  the  Gov- 
ernor -  General,  he  resigned  the 
lucrative  command,  and  so  Grant 
implies  that  it  was  Napier's  impet- 
uous temper  which  was  at  fault  in 
the  regrettable  feud  with  Outram. 
Passing  over  the  second  Sikh 
war,  with  the  terrible  Sikh  atroci- 
ties and  the  severe  retaliations,  we 
come  to  the  grand  drama  of  the 
Mutiny.  And  we  may  read  the 
chapters  which  vividly  depict  the 
scenes  with  pride  as  well  as  pleas- 
ure. Had  the  scattered  handfuls 
of  English  shown  a  less  uncom- 
promising front  everywhere,  they 
would  have  been  deserted  in  the 
dark  hour  of  their  extremity  by 
their  formidable  fighting  allies. 
Their  unflinching  courage  inspired 
the  conviction  that  they  could  not 
be  beaten,  and  relied  on  inexhaust- 
ible reserves.  Yet  Grant,  in  his 
simple  but  soldier- like  language, 
gives  all  the  excitement  of  a  sen- 
sational novel  to  his  narrative  of 
the  sieges  of  Delhi  and  Lucknow. 
Both  Sikhs  and  Goorkhas  were 
beginning  to  waver ;  each  day  was 
pregnant  with  new  anxiety,  as  ex- 
pected succour  was  delayed;  and 
perhaps  we  owe  our  triumph  to 
half-a-dozen  heroic  men,  who  had 
asserted  their  individual  ascend- 
ancy over  the  fierce  warriors  who 
followed  them  under  fire.  At 
Delhi  the  Sikh  Guides  and  the 
Goorkhas  did  noble  service.  Am- 
munition was  so  scarce  that  to 
load  the  heavy  guns  they  had  to 
pick  up  the  enemy's  round-shot 


and  return  them.  But  if  shot 
was  scarce,  beer  was  plentiful,  for 
all  the  agents  of  Bass  and  Allsopp 
made  a  merit  of  necessity,  and 
swamped  the  camp  in  the  liquor 
they  could  not  hope  to  sell.  Sir 
Hope  says  that  he  believes  he 
should  never  have  pulled  through 
had  not  the  Bass  given  new  vigour 
to  his  exhausted  frame.  The  duty 
was  incessant,  and  the  heat  in- 
tense. In  June,  "the  weather 
was  so  fearfully  hot  that  the  gun- 
ners could  not  handle  the  shot 
wherewith  to  load  the  guns."  The 
fighting  in  the  assaults,  and  the 
repelling  of  the  sorties,  was  at 
least  as  warm  as  the  weather. 
Grant  records  a  heroic  deed  of  his 
native  orderly.  "With  a  few  men 
he  had  charged  in  the  dusk  a 
strong  force  of  the  enemy.  His 
horse  had  fallen,  shot  through  the 
body.  "  I  was  in  rather  an  awk- 
ward predicament,  unhorsed,  sur- 
rounded by  the  enemy,  and  ignor- 
ant in  which  direction  to  proceed, 
when  my  orderly,  by  name  Hooper 
Khan,  rode  up  to  me  and  said, 
"  Take  my  horse :  it  is  your  only 
chance  of  safety."  Grant  refused 
the  noble  offer,  but  laid  hold  of 
the  tail  of  the  sowar's  horse,  and 
so  was  dragged  out  of  the  melee. 
And  the  trooper  refused  the  rupees 
which  his  grateful  officer  pressed 
upon  him.  Afterwards  there  was 
a  touching  scene,  when  on  an 
order  for  the  disarmament  of  the 
native  levies,  the  orderly,  in  melan- 
choly and  resentful  mood,  brought 
Grant  the  sword  he  had  used  so 
loyally ;  and,  we  are  glad  to  say, 
the  weapon  was  returned  to  him. 

The  mortality  from  disease  in 
the  siege  force  was  very  great, 
and,  thanks  to  the  heat  and 
malarious  damp,  the  injuries  from 
shot  for  the  most  part  proved 
fatal.  Among  the  early  victims 
to  cholera  was  Barnard,  the  Com- 
mander-in-Chief, and  his  burial, 


134 


In  '  Magcts '  Library. 


[July 


with  the  impressive  circumstances, 
reminds  us  of  that  of  Sir  John 
Moore.  "  We  were  unable  to  pro- 
cure a  coffin  for  him  :  the  funeral 
service  was  rapidly  though  rever- 
ently performed,  and  the  earth  was 
thrown  into  the  small  space  allotted 
to  him  as  quickly  as  possible,  for 
every  moment  we  expected  to  be 
obliged  to  turn  out  to  repel  an 
attack  by  the  enemy ;  but  peals  of 
musketry  and  the  roar  of  cannon 
paid  a  grander  tribute  to  poor  Sir 
Henry  than  the  usual  formal  dis- 
charge of  blank  cartridge."  Among 
the  most  dashing  leaders  of  ir- 
regular horse  to  whom  our  out- 
numbered countrymen  were  so 
greatly  indebted,  Hodson  has  fre- 
quent and  honourable  mention. 
Grant  gives  the  story  of  the  shoot- 
ing of  the  princes  as  it  was  told 
him  by  Hodson  himself.  He 
went  on  the  next  day  to  visit 
the  Great  Mogul  in  confinement. 
The  old  man,  who  had  been  coerced 
into  conniving  at  the  Mutiny,  had 
been  seized  and  carried  off  by 
Hodson  from  a  swarm  of  armed 
ragamuffins  —  an  act  of  extraor- 
dinary courage  and  coolness. 

"  He  was  an  old  man,  said  by  one 
of  his  servants  to  be  ninety  years  of 
age,  short  in  stature,  slight,  very  fair 
for  a  native,  and  with  "a  high-bred, 
delicate-looking  cast  of  features.  .  .  . 
It  might  have  been  supposed  that 
death  would  be  preferable  to  such 
humiliation,  but  it  is  wonderful  how 
we  all  cling  to  the  shreds  of  life. 
When  I  saw  the  poor  old  man,  he 
was  seated  on  a  wretched  charpoy  or 
native  bed,  with  his  legs  crossed  be- 
fore him,  and  swinging  his  body 
backwards  and  forwards,  with  an 
unconscious  dreamy  look.  I  asked 
him  one  or  two  questions,  and  was 
surprised  to  hear  an  unpleasant  vul- 
gar voice  answering  from  behind  a 
small  screen.  I  was  told  that  it  pro- 
ceeded from  his  begum  or  queen,  who 
prevented  his  replying,  fearful  lest  he 
should  say  something  which  might 
compromise  their  safety." 


But  we  must  not  linger  long- 
er among  those  thrilling  scenes, 
though  we  should  gladly  say  some- 
thing of  Grant's  adventures  when 
travelling  unprotected  through  a 
country  still  seething  in  turmoil 
and  infested  by  bands  of  fugitive 
rebels;  of  the  dashing  exploits  when, 
with  flying  columns  of  horse  and 
field-batteries,  he  followed  up  the 
scattered  forces  of  the  mutineers ; 
and  of  his  descriptions  of  those 
picturesque  and  lonely  forts  in  the 
jungle,  which  were  difficult  to  dis- 
cover without  local  guides,  and 
might  have  been  almost  impreg- 
nable had  they  been  resolutely 
defended,  being  generally  unap- 
proachable by  artillery  on  wheels. 

Nor  can  we  say  much  of  the 
second  China  war,  where  Sir  Hope 
not  only  showed  his  military  skill, 
but  his  shrewd  diplomacy,  in  out- 
manoeuvring and  yet  conciliating 
his  susceptible  French  colleague. 
To  Grant,  as  Colonel  Knollys  satis- 
factorily demonstrates,  is  due  the 
credit  of  the  plan,  which  saved  an 
incalculable  sacrifice  of  time  and 
life  by  taking  the  formidable  Peiho 
forts  in  rear.  The  capture  of  Pe- 
kin,  the  burning  of  the  Summer 
Palace,  the  treacherous  murder  and 
the  tortures  inflicted  on  our  coun- 
trymen, avenged  somewhat  ar- 
bitrarily by  that  fire-raising  and 
pillage,  are  all  graphically  related 
in  due  sequence.  But  two  episodes 
should  be  singled  out  for  notice. 
One  is  the  almost  miraculous  es- 
cape of  Lieutenant  Lumsden,  now 
Sir  Peter,  who  was  upset  in  a  yawl 
four  miles  out  at  sea.  He  held 
on  for  two  hours  to  the  bottom 
of  the  boat,  when  he  let  go  and 
struck  out  for  the  land.  "  Dark- 
ness came  on,  and  he  could  only 
trust  to  a  strong  wind  and  tide." 
He  floated  and  drifted  for  five  and 
a  half  hours,  when  at  last  he  felt 
ground  in  the  shallows,  and  then, 
by  way  of  restoring  the  circula- 


1894.] 


1  Correspondence  of  Mr  Joseph  Jekyll? 


tion,  he  walked  ten  miles  to  the 
camp.  The  other  episode  forcibly 
illustrates  the  anxieties  of  a  com- 
mander when  campaigning  in  such 
a  country  as  China.  English  and 
French  were  crowded  together  into 
the  small  town  of  Peh-tang,  which 
had  been  previously  cleared  of  its 
inhabitants.  As  the  town  was 
surrounded  by  pestilential  swamps, 
there  was  no  possibility  of  encamp- 
ing outside : — 

"  The  occupation  was  fraught  with 
the  most  fearful  risks  it  has  ever  fallen 
to  my  lot  to  encounter.  The  town  was 
very  small,  not  much  more  than  500 
yards  square,  and  in  it  were  crowded 
11,000  of  our  men,  exclusive  of  the 
French  force,  amounting  to  about 
6700  more,  and  about  4000  of  our 
horses,  mules,  and  ponies,  all  stored 
away  in  houses  and  in  narrow  lanes. 
The  buildings  were  almost  all  thatched, 
fires  burning,  dinners  cooking,  men 
smoking— in  fact,  all  the  accessories 
for  the  outbreak  of  a  blaze.  After 
the  storm,  the  weather  became  very 
hot,  and  the  thatched  roofs  as  dry  as 
tinder.  Had  a  spark  fallen  on  one  of 
them,  it  is  difficult  to  say  what  would 
have  been  the  result." 

Why  have  some  men  marvellous 
success  in  society,  beyond  their 
birth,  their  connections,  or  their 
apparent  abilities'?  Granted  that 
all  these  are  above  the  average, 
still  the  success  of  certain  fav- 
oured individuals  is  remarkable. 
It  might  seem  that  Joseph  Jekyll 
gave  himself  airs,  yet  we  believe 
there  is  no  affectation  in  his 
letters.1  Those  written  in  Eng- 
land are  addressed  to  his  sister-in- 
law,  who  was  one  of  the  Carlisle 
family,  and  to  her  he  would  never 
have  paraded  false  assumptions  of 
fastidiousness  or  untenable  preten- 
sions. We  may  take  it,  then,  that 
he  was  the  familiar  friend  and  con- 


135 

vive  of  George  IV.  and  his  royal 
brothers ;  that  two  of  the  princes 
gave  his  sons  a  standing  invitation 
to  their  tables,  and  that  Jekyll  the 
elder  could  pick  and  choose  with- 
out giving  offence  among  invita- 
tions ^  from  the  very  highest 
nobility.  Yet,  so  far  as  we  can 
judge,  though  bright  and  ready 
with  repartee,  he  was  by  no  means 
extraordinarily  gifted.  He  nursed 
his  wit  carefully,  as  was  the 
fashion  in  those  days,  and  some 
of  the  jokes  and  puns,  reported 
for  the  pleasure  of  his  corres- 
pondent, strike  us  as  scarcely 
worth  repeating.  But  his  man- 
ners probably  were  excellent;  he 
had  rare  tact,  and  having  quickly 
and  surely  established  his  social 
ascendancy,  he  speaks  of  all  and 
sundry  with  the  easy  confidence 
of  established  superiority.  He 
may  have  known  little  of  the  law 
by  which  he  got  the  best  part  of 
his  income  —  as  a  placeman  — 
but  he  had  a  fair  acquaintance 
with  books,  of  which  he  was  in- 
ordinately fond ;  and  so  he  formed 
a  sort  of  connecting-link  between 
the  dandy  aristocrat  and  the  lit- 
terateurs who  were  the  rage.  The 
best  proof  of  his  attainments  as 
scholar  and  bibliophile  is  that  the 
Abbe  Morellet,  when  ruined  by 
the  Revolution,  charged  him  to 
negotiate  the  sale  of  his  curious 
library.  His  own  criticisms  of 
the  books  of  the  day  are  slight 
and  perfunctory  in  the  extreme; 
nor  does  it  give  us  a  high  opinion 
of  the  soundness  of  his  judgment 
when  he  summarily  dismisses  Vic- 
tor Hugo's  'Notre  Dame'  as  un- 
intelligible nonsense.  Latterly, 
the  veteran  diner-out  said  that, 
like  old  Gilpin,  he  was  one  of  the 
odd  fellows  who  preferred  his  own 


1  Correspondence  of  Mr  Joseph  Jekyll  with  his  Sister-in-law,  Lady  Gertrude 
Sloane  Stanley,  1818-1838.  Edited  by  the  Hon.  Algernon  Bourke.  London: 
John  Murray,  1894. 


136 


In  '  Maga?s '  Library : 


[July 


society,  and  he  was  almost  as 
much  wedded  to  West  London  as 
"old  Q."  But  sitting  in  his  own 
chimney-corner  he  still  diligently 
gathered  in  gossip,  retailing  it  for 
the  benefit  of  his  sister-in-law  by 
marriage,  Lady  Gertrude  Sloane 
Stanley. 

That  correspondence  is  prefaced 
by  some  letters  written  to  his  father 
from  France  nearly  half  a  century 
before.  Young  Jekyll  had  gone 
to  Touraine  in  1775  to  perfect 
himself  in  French,  and,  with  his 
usual  social  luck,  found  himself 
received  at  once  by  the  very  6lite 
of  the  nobility  of  the  old  regime. 
There  are  strange  pictures  of  the 
state  of  the  smouldering  French 
volcano  in  these  pre-Revolutionary 
days.  He  met  courtiers,  parasites, 
and  mistresses  of  Louis  the  bien 
aime",  who  were  lavishing  their 
ill  -  gotten  wealth,  or  were  in 
receipt  of  handsome  pensions. 
Money  went  very  far  in  France 
at  that  time,  for  young  Jekyll 
could  live  like  a  gentleman  on 
four  louis  a-month.  Such  private 
chateaux  as  Chenonceau  were  sump- 
tuously fitted  up;  but  Chambord, 
a  royal  residence,  was  absolutely 
bare.  For  the  kings  still  followed 
the  barbarous  medieval  custom  of 
carrying  all  their  household  plen- 
ishing about  with  them.  Crime 
was  so  rife  in  the  good  city  of 
Paris,  that  half-a-dozen  corpses 
were  shown  most  mornings  in  the 
Morgue ;  and  nets  were  lowered 
each  night  from  the  Pont  Neuf  to 
catch  the  persons  thrown  over  by 
the  cut-throats.  Yet  the  punish- 
ments were  by  no  means  lenient, 
and  Jekyll  gives  a  horrible  de- 
scription of  how  he  had  seen  a 
criminal  broken  on  the  wheel, 
without  stirring  from  the  balcony 
of  his  own  apartment,  when  "Mon- 
sieur de  Paris  "  discharged  the  duty 
of  his  office  in  bag-wig  and  ruffles 
and  bien  poudre". 


Among  the  literary  men  he 
either  met  or  mentions  in  the 
London  letters  are  Byron  and 
Scott,  Moore,  Rogers,  and  Crabbe. 
The  Waverley  Novels  are  always 
noticed  as  they  come  out,  and  the 
brief  remarks  are  generally  saga- 
cious. He  had  met  Moore  at 
Bowood  or  elsewhere,  and  took  a 
great  fancy  to  him.  "Little 
Moore  has  amused  us  inexhausti- 
bly with  humour  all  the  day,  and 
his  tasteful  singing  of  an  evening. 
...  It  is  a  good  little  fellow, 
with  so  much  sense  and  talent, 
and  a  most  independent  spirit." 
Apropos  to  Moore's  biographies 
he  says:  "As  he  was  forced  to 
slur  Sheridan's  treachery  to  his 
party,  so  he  was  forced  to  slur 
Byron's  treachery  to  his  wife. 
But  what  can  a  man  do  who,  like 
the  Newgate  Calendar,  selects 
only  rogues  for  biography  1 "  There 
are  sundry  specimens  given  of 
Byron's  bitterness,  and  no  love 
was  lost  between  him  and  Rogers. 
"Lady  Blessington  recited  to  me 
most  dreadful  verses  by  Byron 
against  his  friend  R/ogers,  but 
will  not  publish  them,  or  the 
poet  must  plunge  into  the  Ser- 
pentine." That  was  after  Byron's 
death :  the  verses  subsequently 
appeared  in  'Fraser's  Magazine,' 
and  were  maliciously  shown  to 
Rogers  when  he  was  suffering 
from  the  death  of  a  favourite 
brother.  "  The  cleverness  of  the 
libel  almost  equals  its  bitterness 
and  cruelty,  especially  as  the  pub- 
lic believed  they  were  linked  in 
friendship."  As  to  Rogers,  at 
whose  breakfasts  Jekyll  was  a 
frequent  guest,  there  are  endless 
jokes  about  his  constitutional  ill- 
nature,  cadaverous  aspect,  &c. 
Tom  Moore  told  how  a  common 
friend  of  theirs  had  observed  that 
Rogers  lived  on  viper-broth,  as 
being  nutritious  for  persons  of 
weakly  habit.  Somebody  said  the 


1894.' 


*  Correspondence  of  Mr  Joseph  Jekyll.' 


137 


soup  must  be  expensive.  "No," 
was  the  reply,  "for  Rogers  finds 
his  own  venom."  Of  Crabbe  it 
is  said  that  in  private  he  over- 
acted simplicity  of  character. 
There  are  sundry  jokes  and  im- 
promptus by  Theodore  Hook,  the 
best  of  which  we  have  heard  be- 
fore ;  and  various  clever  epigrams 
by  Horace  Smith,  which  now  for 
the  first  time  appear  in  print. 

In  politics  there  is  an  interest- 
ing account  of  one  of  the  first 
speeches  delivered  by  Lord  Palin- 
erston,  and  with  the  popular  con- 
ceptions of  the  peculiar  talents 
of  that  brilliant  statesman,  the 
praise  bestowed  seems  exagger- 
ated. "Sturges  Bourne  said  to 
me  (and  he  is  a  most  competent 
critic)  that  he  thought  eloquence 
in  the  House  of  Commons  had 
expired  with  Canning,  but  that 
it  had  actually  and  positively 
revived  in  Palmerston."  If 
the  praise  were  well  deserved, 
his  genius  has  been  underrated. 
There  are  constant  notices  of  the 
disturbed  state  of  the  country  :  in 
1830  there  was  a  dangerous  move- 
ment among  the  masses;  riots 
and  disturbances  were  frequent, 
and  the  discontent  was  as  general 
as  the  distress.  Cobbett,  who  was 
industriously  throwing  fuel  on 
the  fires,  excites  JekylPs  burning 
indignation.  "The  miscreant  is 
read  in  every  cottage  where  the 
march  of  intellect  has  enabled 
them  so  to  do."  "Cobbett's  last 
number  is  high  treason,  and  his 
address  to  the  yeomanry  more 
atrocious  than  all  his  atrocities." 
But  indeed  the  existence  of  flag- 
rant and  irritating  abuses  gave 
too  good  reason  to  the  agitators, 
and  one  glaring  example  is  men- 
tioned of  the  waste  of  the  public 
money.  Even  Jekyll,  with  his 
personal  experiences  as  a  place- 
man, is  puzzled  to  guess  how  a 
certain  Mr  Cholmondeley  should 


have  left  his  son  £10,000  a-year, 
besides  bequests  of  £120,000  to 
be  distributed  in  charity.  The 
gentleman,  being  son  of  a  poor 
parson,  had  no  patrimony,  but  for 
long  he  had  been  Receiver-Gen- 
eral of  Excise.  So  the  nation 
had  made  most  munificent  pro- 
vision for  the  numerous  descend- 
ants and  connections  of  Pretyman, 
who  had  been  Pitt's  tutor,  and  for 
the  kinsfolk  of  Lord  Chancellor 
Eldon. 

Of  George  IY.  Jekyll  speaks 
with  the  gratitude  of  one  who  had 
been  his  "familiar"  for  forty-six 
years.  Yet  latterly  the  Nemesis 
of  his  vices  had  overtaken  the  old 
voluptuary,  and  his  last  years 
were  passed  in  a  lamentable  decay, 
which  could  only  be  mitigated  by 
enforced  asceticism.  "  The  corpse 
was  scarcely  cold  before  his  memory 
was  fiercely  assailed,"  and  on  the 
day  of  the  funeral  "the  'Times' 
published  a  tirade  of  the  most 
savage  and  atrocious  character." 
Almost  the  only  good  thing  we 
hear  of  the  much -hated  Duke 
of  Cumberland — Lady  Granville 
alludes  to  him  in  very  similar 
language — is,  that  almost  alone 
among  the  mourners  he  showed 
himself  genuinely  affected  at  his 
brother's  funeral  ceremony.  As 
for  King  William,  "instead  of 
gravity  and  silence  during  the 
procession  of  a  good  hour  and  a 
half,  he  talked  incessantly  and 
loudly  to  all  about  him,  so  that 
most  frivolous  things  were  over- 
heard. .  .  .  There  was  a  general 
impression  made  to  the  disadvan- 
tage of  his  understanding."  Sub- 
sequently we  are  told,  "William 
IV.  has  read  Smollett's  novels 
most  profitably,  and  plays  Tom 
Pipes  the  boatswain  to  the  admira- 
tion of  the  newspapers,  who  are 
ready  to  swear  he  can  make  his 
tea  with  tar-water."  As  for  the 
Duke  of  Cumberland,  nothing  could 


138 


In  'Maga's'  Library: 


[July 


exceed  his  unpopularity.  "That 
pious  prop  of  a  Protestant  religion 
has  not  yet  regained  any  popular- 
ity, and  it  is  said  that  the  King 
declares  if  he  stays  in  England, 
and  subjects  himself  to  any  insult 
from  popular  indignation,  he  can- 
not protect  him."  To  the  last  the 
letters  were  lively  as  ever;  and 
the  old  gentleman  writes  com- 
placently in  the  autumn  of  1833, 
"  I  am  in  high  feather  for  a  gentle- 
man who  on  the  23d  of  next 
January  will  complete  the  age  of 
eighty  years,  and  has  survived 
almost  all  his  contemporaries,  after 
a  happier  life  than  most  men  have 
experienced." 

We  can  do  little  more  than 
touch  on  the  charming  letters  of 
Lady  Granville,1  for  they  cover  a 
vast  extent  of  ground,  and  em- 
brace an  endless  variety  of  sub- 
jects. Politics,  personages,  and 
social  gossip  are  passed  in  rapid 
review,  and  it  is  of  their  very 
essence  that  they  are  delightfully 
inconsecutive  and  desultory.  There 
are  many  links  to  connect  them 
with  those  of  Jekyll.  Necessarily 
the  same  people  are  often  men- 
tioned, and,  in  particular,  both 
writers  had  a  common  object  of 
admiration  in  Lord  Morpeth,  after- 
wards, as  Earl  of  Carlisle,  the  most 
popular  of  all  Irish  Viceroys,  and 
still  remembered  in  Dublin  for  his 
famous  "beauty  dinners."  Jekyll 
always  mentions  him  with  unusual 
warmth ;  and  Lady  Granville  says 
of  her  favourite  nephew,  "  How 
anybody  exists,  anyhow,  anywhere, 
without  Morpeth,  I  do  not  know." 
For  those  letters  have  a  double 
charm  and  interest.  They  are  not 
only  lively  and  gossiping  annals  of 
the  day,  but  they  paint  the  writer's 
portrait  in  a  double  aspect;  and 


in  either  of  the  lights  she  reveals 
herself  unconsciously  to  singular 
advantage.  A  perfect  hostess,  she 
discharged  her  social  duties  with  a 
grace  which  effectually  concealed 
all  appearance  of  effort;  but  her 
real  pleasure  was  in  the  free  in- 
dulgence of  those  family  affections 
to  which  we  are  indebted  for  the 
copious  flow  of  correspondence.  A 
devoted  wife,  she  confides  repeat- 
edly to  her  sister  that  she  is  mar- 
ried to  the  best  man  in  the  world. 
To  that  sister  —  Lady  Morpeth, 
afterwards  Lady  Carlisle — she  un- 
bosoms herself  unreservedly  in  the 
intervals  of  her  gaieties ;  and  as  for 
her  brother,  the  Duke  of  Devon- 
shire, she  worships  him  with  a  fond 
adoration,  largely  mingled  with 
reverence.  We  are  never  suffered 
to  forget  that  "  Hart "  is  the  grand 
seigneur.  The  Lord  of  Chatsworth 
and  more  than  half-a-dozen  other 
magnificent  seats  was  doubtless 
flattered  to  the  top  of  his  bent, 
and  spoiled  into  selfishness  and 
lavish  self-indulgence.  Yet  we 
gather  from  these  letters  that 
there  must  have  been  a  great  deal 
of  good  in  the  Duke ;  and  probably 
had  he  been  born  a  younger  son, 
he  might  have  been  distinguished 
as  a  statesman,  as  he  was  as 
a  fastidious  viveur  and  the  cyno- 
sure of  the  most  exquisite  fash- 
ion. As  it  was,  with  the  mere 
weight  of  his  position  he  exer- 
cised no  little  influence  in  po- 
litical combinations,  and  possibly 
it  was  policy  as  much  as  the  ha- 
bit which  is  second  nature  which 
led  him  everywhere  to  keep  up  a 
sort  of  ceremonial  state.  For 
example,  once  when  he  went  on  a 
walking  expedition  in  the  Ober- 
land,  he  was  attended  by  his 
doctor,  a  couple  of  powdered  foot- 
men, and  another  member  of  his 


1  Letters  of  Harriet  Countess  Granville;  1810-1845.     Edited  by  her  Son,  the 
Hon.  F.  Leveson-Gower.     London:  Longmans  &  Co.,  1894. 


1894.] 


'  Letters  of  Harriet  Countess  Granville.' 


139 


suite,  all  got  up  to  pattern  in 
correct  pedestrian  costume.  By 
nature  Lady  Granville  was  not 
only  domestic  but  serious.  From 
the  whirl  of  dissipation  in  the 
Embassy  of  the  Rue  St  Honore, 
she  writes  to  her  sister  that  she 
has  been  reading  the  Bible  regu- 
larly with  notes.  "  I  always  liked 
serious  reading :  to  me  so  much 
more  light  in  hand  than  much  that 
is  called  lively."  She  often  quotes 
from  Mrs  Fry,  whose  life  of  active 
beneficence  she  seems  to  have 
envied :  of  all  her  Parisian  ac- 
quaintances there  was  none  she 
admired  so  much  as  Madame  de 
Broglie,  the  gifted  and  pious 
daughter  of  Madame  de  Stael. 
"She  is  really  an  angel.  Think 
of  a  very  beautiful,  still  young 
woman,  and  without  one  shade  of 
peculiarity,  no  cant,  no  humbug, 
passing  her  life  in  acts  of  charity 
and  thoughts  of  piety,  but  living 
in  the  world,  going  to  theatres, 
admired  and  praised  by  every- 
body." That  somewhat  wistful 
eulogium  is  a  conclusive  tribute 
to  Lady  Granville's  own  matronly 
virtues,  which  throw  out  shoots 
and  tendrils  in  many  directions, 
though  in  her  peculiar  circum- 
stances they  seldom  had  fair  play 
till  she  withdrew  from  the  world, 
when  death  had  deprived  her  of 
the  husband  she  adored.  She  was 
conscientious  and  seriously  minded, 
yet  a  woman  of  sparkling  esprit. 
In  her  pretty  feminine  touches 
and  the  playful  turns  of  her 
phrases,  she  constantly  reminds  us 
of  the  illustrious  mother  of  her 
friend  Madame  de  Broglie,  who 
stung  Napoleon  so  sharply  in  a 
war  of  pin-pricks  as  to  earn  the 
questionable  distinction  of  banish- 
ment from  France.  Many  of  her 
sketches  are  pleasantly  satirical, 
but  it  must  be  remembered  they 
were  written  in  sisterly  confidence, 
and  never  intended  for  general 


circulation.  Among  those  that 
come  to  us,  taking  them  at  random, 
there  is  that  of  the  bilious  dean, 
endeared  to  her  by  a  common 
sympathy,  because  both  were  sub- 
jected to  an  austere  regimen.  And 
that  other  of  the  French  baron, 
who  protested  against  being  con- 
sidered in  love  with  his  wife, 
though  he  was  constantly  follow- 
ing her  all  over  a  country-house, 
Le  style,  c'est  la  femme.  We  de- 
light in  that  constantly  recurring 
expression  of  "Lady  Morpeth," 
introduced  a  tort  et  a  tr avers  in 
the  middle  of  a  sentence,  as  if  she 
were  on  terms  of  distant  ceremony 
with  her  sisterly  confidante. 

Needless  to  say  that  throughout 
the  volumes  we  are  in  the  best  and 
most  brilliant  of  company.  Lady 
Granville,  through  her  husband  and 
herself,  was  related  to  the  elite  of 
the  English  peerage.  A  Whig 
aristocrat  of  the  aristocrats,  her 
husband  owed  his  high  diplomatic 
position  to  the  flattering  friend- 
ship of  George  Canning.  So  the 
premature  decease  of  the  illus- 
trious statesman  stunned  them 
with  a  crushing  sense  of  irretriev- 
able calamity.  Gratitude,  as  well 
as  natural  and  not  altogether  dis- 
interested regrets,  inspired  the 
sorrowful  tribute  to  his  memory  : 
"His  loss  has  so  deprived  the 
political  existence  of  his  friends 
of  its  spirit  and  its  charm,  that 
to  do  right  seems  to  me  the  only 
stimulus  and  object  left."  It  was 
not  without  reluctance  that  she 
first  accompanied  her  husband  to 
The  Hague,  and  afterwards  to 
Paris.  But  no  one  was  better 
fitted  to  do  the  honours  of  an 
English  salon  in  foreign  lands. 
She  did  not  much  like  the  Dutch- 
she  found  them  somewhat  triste, 
dull,  and  monotonous;  but  while 
at  The  Hague  we  have  a  remark- 
able example  of  her  quick  but 
incisive  study  of  character.  Young 


140 


In  '  Maga's '  Library : 


[July 


Mr  Wortley  would  have  felt  even 
more  uncomfortable  than  he  looked, 
had  he  known  how  searchingly  he 
was  being  analysed,  and  how 
cleverly  dissected,  by  the  hostess, 
while  she  was  doing  the  honours  of 
her  grand  ball.  At  Paris,  where 
she  reigned  supreme  for  long  years 
over  the  English,  she  was  sur- 
feited and  sated  with  a  succession 
of  gaieties.  But  she  ruefully  con- 
soles herself  for  having  to  dress 
and  go  out  to  dinner,  when  she 
would  very  much  rather  have 
stayed  quietly  at  home,  with  the 
thought  that  she  may  be  seated 
between  Thiers  and  Talleyrand, 
with  Pozzo  di  Borgo  and  Madame 
de  Lieven  for  her  vis-a-vis.  Talley- 
rand had  always  a  great  fascina- 
tion for  her.  She  felt  she  was 
being  humbugged,  but  was  at- 
tracted to  him  all  the  same.  One 
day,  after  long  acquaintance,  she 
writes :  "I  never  knew  before  then, 
as  Mr  Foster  says,  the  power  of  his 
charms.  First  of  all,  it  is  difficult 
and  painful  to  believe  that  he  is 
not  the  best  man  in  the  world, 
so  gentle,  so  kind,  so  simple  and 
so  grand.  One  forgets  the  past 
life,  the  present  look."  She  was 
no  great  worshipper  of  the  Duke 
of  Wellington,  whom  she  met  con- 
tinually, first  on  her  early  visits 
to  Paris,  and  afterwards  in  Eng- 
lish country-houses.  At  Paris 
there  were  lion -hunting  ladies, 
who  were  shamelessly  stalking 
the  hero,  and  he  is  said  not  to 
have  been  very  shy,  and  to  have 
swallowed  freely  their  doses  of 
flattery.  Apropos  to  his  inter- 
course with  Lady  Caroline  Lamb, 
it  is  written  :  "  No  dose  of  flattery 
is  too  strong  for  him  to  swallow 
and  her  to  administer."  But 
allowance  must  be  made  for  Lady 
Granville's  Whig  principles;  and 
her  admiration  increased  with  more 
intimate  acquaintance.  She  writes 
five  years  later  :  "  I  quite  love  the 


Duke  of  Wellington.  He  is  neither 
an  agreeable  man,  nor  in  my  eyes 
a  heros  de  roman ;  but  he  is  the 
most  unpretending,  perfectly  natu- 
ral, and  amiable  person  I  ever 
met  with."  The  Duke's  straight- 
forward and  soldierly  integrity 
always  contrasted  well  with  the 
statesmen  with  whom  Louis 
XVIII.  saw  himself  surrounded. 
The  Revolution  of  July  was  being 
prepared  for  him  from  the  day 
of  his  second  return.  There  was 
the  irrepressible  Fouche,  whom  he 
was  compelled  to  accept.  "Had 
he  had  him  last  time,  Puysegur 
is  convinced  it  would  have  pre- 
vented all  that  has  happened ;  but 
Mon.  De  Blacas  was  violent  against 
him,  and  carried  his  point."  "  Puy- 
segur thinks  Talleyrand  as  false 
as  hollow :  Chateaubriand  est  un 
bavard  et  ecrivain  boursoufle." 
There  is  an  amusing  anecdote  of 
Lord  Oastlereagh's  French,  which 
was  certainly  not  his  strong  point. 
"How  he  gets  on  I  cannot 
imagine.  He  called  out  to  the 
maUre  d'hotel:  'A  present,  mon- 
sieur, servez  la  diner.' "  There  was 
a  reception  about  that  time  at 
which  she  met  "Talleyrand  wad- 
dling out:  he  did  not  speak  to 
me,  so  I  had  only  the  satisfaction 
of  seeing  his  dirty,  cunning  face, 
and  long  coat.  After  him  came 
F.ouche,  a  little,  spare,  shallow, 
shrewd-looking  man,  who  seems 
to  unite  all  parties  in  one  com- 
mon feeling  —  horror  of  his  char- 
acter, and  the  policy  of  not 
betraying  it."  The  lady  sometimes 
etches  in  her  sketches  with  strong 
acids — as  when  she  says  bluntly 
that  Sir  Hudson  Lowe,  the  gaoler 
of  Longwood,  had  the  countenance 
of  a  devil.  En  revanche,  in  the 
very  next  page  we  hear  that  Lord 
and  Lady  Errol  have  the  faces 
of  angels,  and  look  as  if  they 
should  wear  wings  under  their 
chins.  The  young  Queen  Victoria 


1894.]     *  The  Diplomatic  Reminiscences  of  Lord  Augustus  Loftus.'    141 


in  1837  was  "found  perfect  in 
manners,  dignity,  and  grace." 
But  really  we  must  break  off, 
abruptly  as  we  began,  or  we 
might  go  on  dipping  and  quoting 
indefinitely. 

We  are  told  that  modern  diplo- 
macy has  been  revolutionised  by 
the  telegraph,  and  undoubtedly 
there  is  some  truth  in  that.  The 
tendency  now  is  to  shirk  personal 
responsibility,  and  to  seek  instruc- 
tions from  headquarters  in  each 
critical  emergency.  Yet  we  are 
reminded  by  this  second  series  of 
the  '  Reminiscences  of  Lord  Augus- 
tus Loftus'1  that  very  much  still 
depends  on  the  sagacity  and  tact 
of  the  Envoy.  If  he  have  genial 
tact  and  the  knack  of  working 
pleasantly  with  his  colleagues,  re- 
marks and  objections  are  received 
in  a  friendly  spirit,  even  when 
passions  are  at  fever -heat.  A 
word  spoken  softly  in  season  may 
throw  oil  upon  troubled  waters, 
and  suggestions  adroitly  insinuated 
may  avert  the  calamities  of  war. 
For  example,  when  the  Powers 
assembled  in  Congress  at  Berlin 
to  revise  the  intolerable  treaty  of 
San  Stephano,  England  and  Russia 
were  in  open  antagonism.  Had 
their  representatives  met  unpre- 
pared in  a  ring  of  neutrals,  the 
failure  of  the  Congress  would  have 
been  almost  a  foregone  conclusion. 
But  before  that,  Lord  Augustus 
chanced  to  meet  General  Ignatieff 
in  the  ante  -  chamber  of  M.  de 
Giers.  He  seized  upon  the  oppor- 
tunity in  a  chance  conversation 
with  a  very  unlikely  man  to 
help  him,  and  threw  out  the  sug- 
gestion that  Russia  and  England 
would  do  well  to  come  to  a  pre- 
liminary understanding.  The  re- 
sult bore  fruit  in  the  private  con- 


ferences between  Lord  Salisbury 
and  Count  Schouvaloff  which  for- 
tunately made  the  proceedings  at 
the  Congress  a  solemn  farce,  assur- 
ing arrangements  which  were  ac- 
cepted by  all  parties.  During  the 
seventeen  years  covered  by  these 
'Reminiscences,'  he  availed  him- 
self quietly  of  many  similar  occa- 
sions. But  the  first  duty  of  an 
Ambassador  is  discreet  self-suppres- 
sion, and  even  now  much  of  his  story 
is  necessarily  told  with  reserve. 
Nevertheless  there  are  many  most 
interesting  revelations;  and  few 
men  were  more  thoroughly  be- 
hind the  scenes  when,  through  the 
dramas  of  three  momentous  wars, 
the  stage  scenery  was  being  shifted 
in  Europe. 

The  four  first  years  of  the  seven- 
teen were  passed  in  a  position  of 
secondary  importance  at  Munich; 
but  even  in  easy-going  Bavaria  the 
minds  of  the  Germans  were  nearly 
as  much  excited  as  in  the  North. 
There  was  no  mistaking  the  warn- 
ings of  the  impending  storm,  and 
the  burning  "  question  of  the  Dan- 
ish Duchies  was  in  reality  the  pre- 
lude to  the  war  which  followed." 
There  was  a  succession  of  popular 
meetings  to  induce  the  king  to  put 
himself  at  the  head  of  50,000 
South  Germans,  and  lead  them 
into  Holstein  to  instal  the  right- 
ful heir,  Prince  Frederick  of  Aug- 
ustenburg.  But  the  musical  mon- 
arch, who  had  other  irons  in  the 
fire,  would  not  thrust  himself  be- 
tween the  Austrian  anvil  and  the 
Prussian  hammer.  When  Lord 
Augustus  returned  to  the  English 
Embassy  at  Berlin,  he  saw  at  once 
that  war  was  inevitable.  Already 
Bismarck,  in  a  confidential  des- 
patch to  his  German  allies,  had 
informed  them  that  "  the  outbreak 
of  a  serious  conflict  with  Austria 


1  The   Diplomatic    Reminiscences   of    Lord   Augustus   Loftus,    P.O.,    G.C.B. 
Second  Series.     1862-1879.     London  :  Cassell  &  Co.,  1894. 


142 


In  l  Maya's*  Library : 


[July 


was  only  a  question  of  time." 
Thenceforward  we  see  in  each 
chapter  of  the  first  volume  that 
Bismarck's  master-mind  and  iron 
will  controlled  everything.  Where 
he  did  not  directly  or  indirectly 
originate,  he  guided  the  course  of 
events.  Subtle  as  strong,  adroit 
and  unscrupulous,  he  had  the  best 
of  the  game  of  diplomacy  through- 
out. At  first,  realising  the  peril 
of  the  stake,  he  seems  to  have 
shrunk  from  precipitating  the  war 
with  Austria.  He  knew  that  war 
was  inevitable,  but  he  was  inclined 
to  wait.  He  would  have  been  con- 
tent to  annex  Schleswig-Holstein, 
which  would  have  given  Prussia 
important  naval  stations,  and  he 
would  have  paid  liberally  in  cash. 
When  he  saw  that  Austria  would 
listen  to  no  proposals  of  the  kind, 
he  was  resolved  to  fight  for  some- 
thing worth  the  having.  He  re- 
solved to  raise  the  whole  question 
of  the  suppresion  of  the  antiquated 
Confederation  and  of  the  military 
supremacy  of  Prussia  to  the  north 
of  the  Main.  The  king,  with  his 
old-fashioned  ideas  of  divine  right, 
was  slow  to  be  persuaded,  and  only 
reluctantly  yielded  when  irritated 
by  the  Austrian  rejection  of  his 
amicable  advances.  The  Chan- 
cellor had  a  free  hand,  and  he 
carried  his  resolution  into  effect. 
Lord  Augustus  relates  a  memor- 
able incident : — 

"  I  was  with  Count  Bismarck  late 
on  the  evening  of  June  15.  We  had 
been  walking  and  sitting  in  his  garden 
till  a  late  hour,  when,  to  my  astonish- 
ment, it  struck  midnight.  Count 
Bismarck  took  out  his  watch  and 
said,  '*  A  1'heure  qu'il  est,  nos  troupes 
sont  entries  en  Hanovre,  Saxe,  et 
Hesse  Cassell.'  He  added,  'The 
struggle  will  be  severe.  Prussia  may 
lose,  but  at  all  events  she  will  have 
fought  bravely  and  honourably.  If 
we  are  beaten,'  Count  Bismarck  said, 
'  I  shall  not  return  here.  I  shall  fall 
in  the  last  charge.  One  can  but  die 


once,  and  if  beaten  it  is  better  to 
die.'" 

Every  one  knows  that  the  seven 
weeks  were  over  before  the  neutrals 
had  time  to  think  or  interfere. 
Lord  Augustus  suggests  that  the 
result  might  have  been  different 
had  Austria  grasped  the  situation 
and  departed  from  her  traditions 
of  procrastination.  She  knew  that 
Italy  had  sent  an  envoy  to  Berlin 
to  arrange  an  alliance.  She 
learned  in  April  1866  that  a  for- 
mal treaty  was  signed.  Only  then 
did  she  offer  to  give  up  Venetia  in 
exchange  for  neutrality.  "  Had 
the  offer  been  made  before  the 
signature  of  the  treaty,  the  dis- 
trust then  entertained  of  Prussia 
would  probably  have  induced 
General  La  Marmora  to  accept  it. 
But  it  was  too  late,  and  he  was  too 
honourable  a  man  to  violate  his 
pledge."  The  result  was  that  Aus- 
tria parted  with  many  of  her  staun- 
chest  soldiers  to  fight  the  Italians, 
while  mutinous  Italian  regiments 
swelled  the  forces  of  Benedict. 
The  Prussian  artillerymen  were 
surprised  and  delighted  at  the 
murderous  effect  of  their  cannon- 
ade. Whole  ranks  of  the  enemy 
fell  prostrate.  As  it  proved  after- 
wards, the  fallen  were  Lombards 
and  Venetians,  who  had  no  mind 
to  be  killed  for  a  cause  they  de- 
tested. 

No  one  was  more  taken  aback 
by  the  sudden  cessation  of  hos- 
tilities than  the  Emperor  of  the 
French.  It  seems  to  have  been 
his  policy  to  create  a  moderately 
strong  Italian  confederation  which 
would  owe  him  gratitude  and  rely 
on  him  for  support,  and  to  set 
Central  Germany  by  the  ears.  No 
one  will  probably  ever  know  what 
actually  passed  between  him  and 
Bismarck  at  Paris  and  Biarritz. 
There  is  little  doubt  that  Bis- 
marck befooled  him  with  delusive 
promises,  which  he  had  neither  the 


1894.]    '  The  Diplomatic  Reminiscences  of  Lord  Augustus  Loftus.'     143 


power  nor  the  wish  to  keep.  Yet 
it  is  noteworthy  that  in  a  French 
despatch,  dated  in  1861,  and  pro- 
posing a  Congress  for  the  pacifi- 
cation of  Europe,  it  was  stated 
categorically  that  "France  had 
no  claim  to  make  for  herself." 
Be  that  as  it  may,  the  unification 
of  Italy  and  the  enormous  acces- 
sion of  strength  acquired  by  Prus- 
sia threw  the  minds  of  the  French 
into  a  natural  ferment.  The  Em- 
peror by  grace  of  a  plebiscite 
must  do  something  to  satisfy 
patriotic  excitement.  Thenceforth 
he  made  appeal  after  appeal  to 
Bismarck  for  political  compensa- 
tion and  territorial  concessions. 
Some  of  the  ever-fluctuating  de- 
mands were  simply  extravagant. 
When  he  asked  for  the  cession  of 
the  northern  banks  of  the  Upper 
Rhine,  comprising  several  of  the 
most  formidable  of  historical 
federal  fortresses,  Bismarck  had 
no  difficulty  in  answering  that 
German  sentiment  made  the  pro- 
posal inadmissible.  The  only  al- 
ternative was  the  annexation  of 
small  independent  States.  Thence 
arose  the  troublesome  Luxemburg 
business — though  Luxemburg  it- 
self was  an  almost  impregnable 
federal  fortress — which  Lord  Au- 
gustus had  a  considerable  share  in 
settling.  Then  came  the  famous 
secret  treaty  with  respect  to  Bel- 
gium, in  regard  to  disclosing  which 
Lord  Augustus  chanced  to  be  an- 
ticipated by  the  'Times.'  He 
fully  confirms  Bismarck's  version. 
The  treaty  was  drafted  in  foolish 
confidence  by  Benedetti,  though 
very  probably  at  the  dictation  of 
Bismarck.  As  to  who  was  re- 
sponsible for  the  French  war, 
Lord  Augustus  assures  us  that 
Bismarck  never  desired  it.  On 
the  contrary,  both  he  and  his  royal 
master  went  to  great  lengths  in 
the  way  of  reasonable  concession. 
He  says  that  the  French  preten- 


sions grew  steadily,  till  they  became 
aggressively  intolerable;  and  he 
declares  that  the  Ems  incident, 
used  with  such  calamitous  effect  in 
the  French  Chamber,  was  the  shame- 
less invention  of  imaginative  auda- 
city. Throughout  the  war  Eng- 
land's neutrality  was  regarded  with 
distrust,  if  not  with  resentment, 
by  both  the  combatants ;  and  Lord 
Stanley's  diplomatic  advances  for 
mediation  were  coldly  or  con- 
temptuously received.  From  which 
Lord  Augustus  draws  the  moral, 
that  we  are  generally  far  too  eager 
to  proclaim  our  neutrality.  We 
should  do  more  good  if  we  went 
on  the  golden  maxim  of  keeping 
silence,  leaving  it  to  be  inferred 
that  upon  occasion  we  should  be 
willing  to  strike  in.  And  if  France 
paid  a  terrible  penalty  for  her 
folly,  England  by  no  means  escaped 
scot-free.  She  lost  the  best  part 
of  the  fruits  which  had  very  inade- 
quately repaid  her  for  all  the  blood 
and  the  treasure  expended  in  the 
Crimea.  Before  the  Franco-Prus- 
sian war  broke  out,  Prince  Gorts- 
chakoff  had  paid  an  unofficial  visit 
to  Berlin.  Lord  Augustus  could 
learn  nothing  precise  at  the  time 
as  to  the  matters  in  discussion  be- 
tween the  Chancellors.  He  under- 
stood it  better  when,  before  the 
surrender  of  Paris,  Prince  Gorts- 
chakoff  repudiated  the  treaty  which 
had  guaranteed  the  neutrality  of 
the  Black  Sea.  Bismarck  wished 
that  his  too  astute  friend  had 
waited,  when  he  might  have  dealt 
with  him  as  he  had  dealt  with  the 
Emperor  of  France.  The  Germans 
then  had  more  on  their  hands  than 
they  could  well  manage,  and  Eng- 
land might  perhaps  make  trouble. 
But  England  in  her  isolation  was 
content  to  acquiesce,  and  so  the 
treaty  was  torn  up. 

Transferred  after  the  peace  from 
Berlin  to  St  Petersburg,  the  posi- 
tion of  Lord  Augustus  was  still 


144 


In  c  Magds '  Library. 


[July 


more  delicate.  Socially  he  was 
made  welcome  in  the  capital ;  per- 
sonally he  was  on  excellent  terms 
with  Prince  Gortschakoff  and  M. 
De  Giers,  and  the  Emperor  was 
not  only  invariably  affable,  but 
encouraged  him  to  speak  his  mind 
with  unreserve.  The  fact  re- 
mained that,  both  in  Europe  and 
Asia,  Russia  and  England  were 
invariably  antagonistic.  Prince 
Gortschakoff  used  courteous  lan- 
guage to  conceal  his  thoughts,  and 
answered  expostulations  with  pi- 
quant epigrams.  The  Emperor 
was  always  complaining  of  the 
unfriendly  mistrust  of  his  inten- 
tions displayed  by  the  English 
Cabinet  and  press.  On  one  occa- 
sion he  placed  Lord  Augustus  in 
sore  embarrassment  by  begging 
him  to  explain  a  satirical  cartoon 
in  '  Punch.'  Undoubtedly  the  mis- 
trust was  too  well  founded.  The 
discouraging  prospect  in  our  rela- 
tions with  Russia  is,  that  there 
seems  no  rational  possibility  of 
putting  them  on  a  satisfactory 
footing.  Lord  Augustus  is  opti- 
mistic in  the  extreme,  and  hopes 
good  things  for  the  future.  Un- 
fortunately, all  that  he  says  goes 
to  dispel  such  fond  illusions.  We 
regard  the  Czar  as  an  absolute 
autocrat;  but,  setting  Nihilism 
and  Socialism  aside,  there  are  other 
forces  which  even  his  authority 
cannot  control.  It  was  religious 
fanaticism  and  the  enthusiastic 
sentiment  of  Pan- Slavism  which 
forced  him  reluctantly  into  the 
last  Turkish  war.  Had  he  fol- 


lowed his  instincts,  he  would  never 
have  reared  a  barrier  of  free 
Danubian  and  Balkan  States  to 
block  any  future  advance  by  land 
on  Constantinople.  He  always  pro- 
tested that  he  did  not  covet  Con- 
stantinople —  a  declaration  which 
may  be  received  as  a  pious  opinion, 
and  taken  in  any  case  for  what 
it  is  worth.  For  Lord  Augustus 
acquits  the  Czar  and  his  War 
Ministers  of  any  deliberate  design 
of  aggressive  Asiatic  ambition. 
He  says  they  always  ridiculed  the 
idea  of  a  Russian  invasion  of  In- 
dia, and  that  may  be  very  true. 
The  fact  remains  that  they  are 
always  keeping  us  on  the  alert,  and 
forcing  us  into  vast  expenditure, 
by  stirring  up  troubles  among  the 
frontier  tribes  and  making  dan- 
gerous demonstrations.  The  ex- 
planation is,  according  to  Lord 
Augustus,  that  they  are  bound  to 
keep  their  enormous  army  in  good- 
humour.  Central  Asia  is  to  Rus- 
sia what  Algeria  was  to  France, 
and  aspiring  officers  covetous  of 
fame  and  advancement  are  not  to 
be  controlled.  They  might  be 
coerced  were  they  to  be  disgraced 
in  place  of  being  promoted  and 
decorated,  but  that  is  a  step  on 
which  neither  the  Czar  nor  his 
Ministers  dare  venture.  So  it 
seems  that  we  must  still  stand  on 
our  defence  on  the  fortified  line  of 
the  Indus,  with  Herat  and  the 
highlands  of  Afghanistan  as  out- 
lying bastions  which  may  be  be- 
trayed to  the  enemy  at  any  time 
or  carried  with  a  rush. 


1894.]        The  New  African  Crisis  with  France  and  Germany.  145 


THE  NEW  AFRICAN   CRISIS   WITH  FRANCE  AND   GERMANY. 


IT  appears  to  be  hardly  appreci- 
ated in  this  country  how  very 
serious  is  the  difficulty  with  Ger- 
many and  France  which  has  arisen 
over  the  Anglo-Congolese  agree- 
ment recently  concluded.  The 
Franco-German  war  arose  from  a 
less  serious  dilemma,  and  the  tone 
of  the  Ministerial  announcement 
read  in  the  French  Chamber — pre- 
viously carefully  prepared — proves 
that  France  considers  that  she  has 
very  serious  grounds  of  complaint, 
and  means  to  act  with  vigour  and 
decision  to  "  defend  her  rights " 
— even  should  that  involve  a  con- 
flict with  Great  Britain.  While 
France  has  thus  declared  before 
Europe  that  she  considers  the 
treaty  "null  and  void,"  and  has 
voted  without  discussion  a  sum  of 
£80,000  to  reinforce  her  posts  on 
the  Oubanghi,  and  has  ordered  the 
despatch  of  gunboats  to  support 
them,  the  attitude  of  the  authori- 
ties in  England  appears  to  be  one 
of  comparative  indifference.  The 
situation  has  evoked  remarkably 
little  discussion  in  Parliament,  and 
the  whole  British  press  unites  in 
scoffing  at  French  sensitiveness,  and 
in  asserting  without  investigation 
that  the  arguments  urged  in  the 
Continental  press  are  quite  value- 
less. It  is  well,  therefore,  that 
the  British  public  should  hear 
how  the  matter  really  stands, 
and  should  understand  that  the 
difference  is  one  which  has  arisen 
over  a  question  of  very  great  po- 
litical importance,  and  not  merely 
concerning  a  "  few  square  miles  of 
African  desert  or  swamp,"  so  that 
an  independent  public  opinion 
may  be  formed  on  the  matter, 
since  we  are  already  committed  to 
a  grave  international  crisis. 

VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCXLV. 


The  reasons  which  led  to  the 
conclusion  of  this  treaty  are  as 
follows :  Great  Britain  in  1890 
claimed  the  Nile  valley  as  part  of 
her  African  "  sphere  of  influence," 
Egypt  having  withdrawn  from  it. 
The  value  of  the  Nile  waterway, 
and  of  the  Sudan  as  a  recruiting- 
ground  and  a  territory  rich  in 
ivory  and  other  products,  was 
overshadowed  by  the  political  im- 
portance of  its  relation  to  Egypt 
and  the  Red  Sea  ports,  and  the 
predominant  influence  which  the 
Power  in  control  of  the  Upper 
Nile  would  necessarily  exercise  in 
the  Delta  provinces.  In  the  treaty 
with  Germany  (July  1, 1890)  Eng- 
land, as  we  have  said,  notified  her 
claims,  to  which  Germany  (having 
in  return  for  Heligoland  shut  her- 
self out  from  any  extension  north- 
wards) of  course  agreed.  France 
did  not  protest,  as  she  did  in  the 
matter  of  the  Zanzibar  protec- 
torate established  by  the  same 
treaty.  But  the  treaty  was  not 
with  France,  and  it  is  feasible  for 
her  to  argue  that  she  reserved  her 
rights ;  and  as  there  was  no  idea  of 
a  British  occupation  of  the  Nile 
valley,  it  was  not  imperative 
upon  her  to  raise  any  disclaimer, 
since  she  was  not  a  party  to 
the  treaty.  Great  Britain,  then, 
having  excluded  Germany  and 
Italy  from  the  Nile  valley  by 
treaty,  found  that  King  Leopold 
had  despatched  an  expedition 
thither  from  the  Congo  State,  and 
had  occupied  certain  points  on  the 
Nile.  The  king  was  fully  justi- 
fied in  doing  this,  for,  anterior  to 
the  German  treaty,  an  agreement 
had  been  drawn  up,  signed,  and 
ratified,  between  himself  and  Sir 
William  Mackinnon  (President  of 


146 


The  New  African  Crisis  with  France  and  Germany :         [July 


the  Imperial  British  East  Africa 
Company),    by    which    access    to 
the  Nile  was    permitted  to   him, 
in   return   for   the    cession   of    a 
strip      of      territory      connecting 
the   north    of    Lake    Tanganyika 
with   the   British    sphere.      Lord 
Salisbury,    however,    forbade    the 
Company    to    acquire     sovereign 
rights,    as   representing   England, 
though   he   had   no   objection    to 
their  acquiring  a  lease  of  a  priv- 
ate nature  purely  as  a  Company. 
For,  as  now  appears,  Germany  in 
the  treaty  of  1890  expressly  stip- 
ulated  that   her    frontier    should 
march    with     the     Congo    State. 
"  The  British  Government,"  says 
the  « Cologne  Gazette '  (15th  June), 
"strove    with    great    persistency 
in  1890  to  obtain  the  cession  of 
a  strip  of   country  in   this  same 
region,    and    Germany   absolutely 
refused  it,  as  involving  a  serious 
detriment   to  her   Colonial   inter- 
ests."     Lord    Salisbury's   veto  to 
the   Company,    however,    did   not 
cancel  the  right  the  king  had  ac- 
quired under  the  agreement  of  ex- 
tending  towards   the    Nile.      No 
sooner,    however,    had    the    king 
(availing  himself  of  our  assertion 
that  we  would    "  raise  no  objec- 
tion" if  he  went  to  Lado)   acted 
on   the   implied  permission,   than 
he  was  met  by  protests  from  the 
Foreign  Office.      Lord  Kimberley 
in  his  letter  to  Mr  Hardinge  (re- 
cently published  as  a  Blue-book) 
states    officially    that    these    pro- 
tests were  made  and  renewed  from 
time  to  time.     The  king,  however, 
preferred  not  to  show  his  hand, 
but   temporised,    and    meanwhile 
pushed  on  his  forces  into  Equa- 
toria.     This,  then,   was  the  posi- 
tion  in   the   beginning   of    1894. 
We  had  spent  two  years  in  vacil- 
lating as  to  whether  or   not   we 
would   retain    Uganda,    and    had 
sent  up  a  commissioner  to  acquire 


information  on  the  spot,  at  a  cost 
which   would   have   gone   a    long 
way  towards  ,  occupying  the  Nile 
Valley.     The  information  was  not 
required, — even  the  basis  on  which 
the  Commissioner  formed  his  con- 
clusions was  not  accepted,  for  the 
railway   is   not   to  be  made,  and 
(subsequent  to  the  receipt  of  his 
despatches  in  England)  a  policy  of 
extension  into  Unyoro  was  adopted 
contrary  to  his   recommendations. 
Having  thus  continued  absolutely 
inactive,  and  having  done  nothing 
whatever     to     substantiate     our 
claims  in  the  Nile  Valley  between 
1890   and    1894,    when   the  com- 
mander   in    Uganda    could    with 
ease  have  done  what  was  required 
at    small    cost,    the    Government 
suddenly   awoke   to   find    that    a 
large      French      expedition     had 
massed  at  Abiras  (junction  of  the 
Welle  and  Mbomu  rivers),  and  its 
destination    was    apparently    the 
Nile  Valley.      Something  had  to 
be  done,  unless  we  were  to  be  con- 
tent to  see  our  assertion  of  suze- 
rainty in  the  Nile  Valley  set  aside, 
and  France,  our  rival  in  Egypt, 
obtain   possession  of  the  Hinter- 
land of  Egypt.     A  forward  policy 
— the  despatch  of  an  expedition 
from  Uganda — would  not  be  tol- 
erated by  the  Radical  supporters 
of  Government,  and  so  once  more, 
as  in  the  case  of  East  Africa  and 
Uganda,  a  timid  compromise  had 
to  be  accepted  to  save  a  few  thou- 
sand pounds, — and  it  has  landed 
us  in  a  serious  quarrel  with  France, 
and  a  difficulty  with  Germany  and 
Turkey.    Such  are  Radical  methods 
of  economy ! 

King  Leopold  was  supposed  to 
be  in  effective  occupation  up  to 
Lado.  It  was  decided  to  reverse 
our  policy,  withdraw  our  protests, 
and  ask  his  assistance  to  secure 
our  sovereign  rights.  Since  it  was 
England  herself  who  had  laid 


1894.]        The  New  African  Crisis  with  France  and  Germany.  147 


down  the  principle  that  effective 
occupation     could     alone     confer 
sovereign    rights   in   Africa,    and 
since  Government  was  too  timid 
to  effectively  occupy  the  district, 
there  was  in  fact  no  other  course 
open;    and   those   who,    like    the 
writer,  are  anxious  to  see  British 
supremacy   maintained    over    the 
Sudan,  had  cause  to  congratulate 
themselves  that  Government  had 
found  a  means — however  unsatis- 
factory in  itself — of  declaring  be- 
fore Europe  our  sovereignty  over 
the  Sudan,  and  our  determination 
to  hold  it  against  French  aggres- 
sion.    King  Leopold  had  to  choose 
between  a   French   alliance   or   a 
British.    Already  the  French  dele- 
gates had  arrived  in   Brussels  to 
negotiate    regarding     the     Congo 
State  boundaries  in  this  direction, 
and  it  had  practically  been   con- 
ceded by  France  that  the  matter 
should  be  settled  by  arbitration. 
Suddenly,  without  apparent  reason, 
negotiations  were  broken  off,  and 
the    French     delegates     returned 
much  incensed   to  Paris.     A  few 
days  afterwards  the  Anglo-Congo 
agreement  was   published,    and  it 
became   evident  that  France  had 
been   fooled   by  King  Leopold, — 
his  negotiations  had  been  delusive, 
and  while  playing  with  France  he 
had  in  reality  been  negotiating  a 
treaty    with   England   in   the  op- 
posite   sense.     Naturally    France 
was   furious,    and   denounced  the 
treaty  as   "null  and  void."     The 
sum    voted    to   reinforce   the   ex- 
pedition   on   the   spot    (£80,000) 
was    sufficient    to    occupy    Lado. 
Two   gunboats    (with   six   smaller 
craft)  were  ordered  for  the  Congo, 
and  it  was  decided  to    construct 
a   telegraph.     Monteill — the   best 
man   the   French    have — was   ap- 
pointed   to    the    command,    with 
orders    to   defend   French    rights, 
and   reconquer  any   places  where 


they  had  been  invaded.  The  tone 
of  the  debate  and  the  unopposed 
vote  showed  that  France  really 
meant  business,  and  that  her 
amour  propre  had  been  very 
deeply  wounded.  This  we  ex- 
pected, and  it  was  the  more  neces- 
sary that  the  treaty,  which,  it  had 
been  foreseen,  would  give  rise  to 
a  serious  crisis,  should  have  been 
framed  with  extreme  care,  so  as 
to  be  unassailable.  We  need  not 
have  violated  any  French  rights 
by  this  agreement, — all  we  meant 
to  do  was  to  score  a  very  signal 
diplomatic  victory,  and  checkmate 
French  ambitions  and  the  probable 
scheme  of  French  extension  over 
the  Nile  Valley  and  Abyssinia  to 
Obock  on  the  lied  Sea.  The  cards 
were  in  our  hands,  but  we  could 
hardly  have  played  them  worse ! 

1.  To  begin  with,  we  alienated 
Germany  by  introducing  the  ques- 
tion of  a  lease  of  the  strip  be- 
tween Tanganyika  and  British 
East  Africa.  This  acquisition 
was  quite  unnecessary ;  we  already 
possessed  rights  of  free  transit 
along  it,  with  no  differential  treat- 
ment, &c.  Lord  Salisbury  had  al- 
ready condemned  the  scheme,  and 
we  now  know  that  it  involved  a 
breach  of  faith  with  Germany,  who 
in  1890  had  made  it  a  sine  qua 
non  that  her  frontiers  should  be 
coincident  with  those  of  the  Congo 
State.  It  is  needless  to  point  out 
that  the  "Cape  to  Cairo"  clap- 
trap is  a  mere  sentimental  jargon, 
which  means  that  Great  Britain 
desires  to  possess  the  central  line 
through  the  length  of  Africa ;  bub 
this  line  never  can  be  a  commer- 
cial highway.  The  commercial 
watershed  radiates  to  the  east 
and  west.  A  private  lease  to  a 
Company  is  one  thing,  and  it  is 
quite  a  different  thing  to  a  first- 
class  European  Power.  But  grant- 
ed that  for  some  inscrutable  reason 


148  The  New  African  Crisis  with  France  and  Germany.        [July 


the  Foreign  Minister  was  bent 
upon  the  acquisition  of  this  strip 
of  country,  what  reason  was  there 
that  Germany,  whose  interests 
were  affected,  should  have  been 
kept  in  ignorance  of  the  matter, 
and  that  the  treaty  should  only 
be  sprung  upon  her  as  un  fait 
accompli?  Tt  was,  to  say  the 
least,  grossly  discourteous,  in  view 
of  what  had  passed  in  1890;  and 
although  it  is  obvious  that  it  was 
necessary  to  keep  the  treaty,  as 
regards  the  northern  lease,  a  pro- 
found secret  until  its  completion, 
there  was  no  reason  whatever  for 
not  informing  Germany  that  we 
were  in  process  of  negotiation 
with  the  Congo  State  for  a  lease 
of  this  southern  strip,  and  consult- 
ing her  upon  it.  As  it  is,  we  have 
quite  needlessly  exasperated  Ger- 
many, and  we  have  no  option  but 
to  withdraw  from  the  untenable 
position  we  have  taken  up  and  ac- 
knowledge our  error. 

Germany,  however,  must  not 
overlook  the  fact  that  she  re- 
cently was  herself  guilty  of  a 
not  very  friendly  act  towards  us 
(though  by  no  means  so  dis- 
courteous as  this  of  ours) ;  and 
this  proves  that  we  cannot  count 
on  her  support  in  Africa  at  the 
present  moment.  For  having  got 
us  to  waive  in  her  favour  our 
claims  in  the  Niger  region,  she 
transferred  what  we  had  aban- 
doned to  France,  the  very  Power 
she  knew  that  we  thought  we 
were  warding  off  by  the  cession 
to  Germany.  It  would  appear  as 
though  our  diplomats  hardly  ap- 
preciated the  reasons  why  Germany 
sets  such  value  upon  the  contact 
of  her  possessions  with  the  Congo 
State,  or  they  would  surely  not 
have  attempted  this  fiasco,  and 
replied  to  Germany's  protest  by 
a  "  most  unsatisfactory  "  rejoinder, 
which  has  necessitated  something 


like  an  apology.  She  foresees  that 
when  the  king  dies  the  State  will 
be  disintegrated,  and  probably  the 
Powers  contiguous  to  it  will  share 
in  its  appropriation.  Moreover, 
the  existence  of  her  East  African 
possessions  depends  upon  the  trade 
— principally  the  ivory  trade — and 
if  Great  Britain  acquired  a  strip 
of  country  with  sovereign  rights, 
cutting  off  the  Congo  State  from 
German  territory,  the  whole  of 
the  ivory  and  other  trade  from  the 
west  would  be  diverted  to  British 
East  Africa,  especially  when  the 
railway  is  built.  It  is  therefore 
a  matter  of  vital  importance  to 
Germany,  nor  will  she  be  satisfied 
until  we  have  withdrawn  our  pre- 
tensions. 

2.  As  regards  France.  It  was 
a  tactical  blunder  not  to  have  fore- 
seen the  argument  which  France 
has  put  forward,  and  which  the 
'  Times  '  in  a  leading  article,  which 
looks  as  though  it  had  been  inspired 
by  high  authority,  vaguely  inti- 
mates that  we  may  find  to  be  a 
valid  one,  in  which  case  the  whole 
treaty  will  be  valueless.  The 
Congo  State  was  created  in  1885 
by  the  Powers  of  Europe,  and  the 
Act  which  gave  it  birth  was  the 
Berlin  Act  of  that  year  (February 
1885).  Its  frontiers  had  been 
carefully  delimited  and  laid  down 
in  treaties  concluded  by  "  The  As- 
sociation "  with  various  European 
Powers.  The  Congo  being  thus  a 
State  of  artificial  creation,  depend- 
ing for  its  existence  upon  the  recog- 
nition of  the  Great  Powers,  France 
maintains  that  it  had  no  compe- 
tency to  step  beyond  the  boundaries 
accurately  defined  by  treaty,  and 
that  any  such  act  of  self -extension 
is  wholly  illegal  in  itself,  and  may 
even  jeopardise  the  existence  of 
the  State,  since  that  depends  upon 
the  mutual  observance  of  the 
pledges  and  guarantees  undertaken 


1894.]        The  New  African  Crisis  with  France  and  Germany.  149 

that  the  4th  degree  N.  lat.  forms 
the  northern  frontier  of  the  State 
only  so  far  as  long.  30°.     Prior  to 
this  extension,  however,  our  treaty 
with  Germany  of  July  1890  had 
notified   to    Europe    that    Great 
Britain   claimed    exclusive    influ- 
ence east  of  long.  30°.     The  bulk 
of  the     territory,     however,    now 
leased  to  the  Congo  State  lies  to 
the  west  of  long.  30°,  and  extends 
to  long.  25°.     France  has  a  per- 
fectly legitimate  ground  for  con- 
sidering  this  a   violation   by  the 
Congo   State    of    her    treaty    of 
April    29,     1887,    by   which    the 
State    was    not    to   exercise   any 
politique  north  of  lat.  4°  (west  of 
long.    30°).     She  would   probably 
be    within  her   rights  in   ousting 
the  forces  of  the  State   from   all 
country  north  of  lat.  4°  (and  west 
of  long.  30°),   and  she  will  claim 
that  this  is  a  matter  which  she 
has   a   right   to   settle    with   the 
State  without  reference  to  us,  for 
by  this  view  our  lease  is  founded 
on  a  trespass  if  the  State   is  in 
occupation,    and   is    therefore   in- 
valid.    For  our  reversionary  right, 
being  founded  on  a  trespass,  would 
not  hold.     If  the  State  is  not  in 
occupation,  we  have  no  claim  which 
France  will  admit  to  lease  at  all, 
and  her   prior   occupation   would 
be   valid   against    us.      The   case 
for  France   appears  a  strong  one 
in  this  matter,  and  is   borne  out 
by    the    spirit    of    the     treaties. 
France   may  thus  urge   the   viol- 
ation of  the  Franco-Congo  treaty 
of  1887  as  a  reason  for  attacking 
the  Congo  forces  west  of  long.  30°. 
But  she  can  urge  no  such  reason 
for  crossing  that  parallel  of  long- 
itude, and  ousting  them  from  the 
Nile  Valley.     East  of  that  degree 
our  lessee  violates  no  treaty,  and 
the     only     question   at     issue   is, 
whether  the  extension  was   com- 
petent qud  Congo  State.     Here  it 


at  its  initiation,  and  that  such  ac- 
tion would  moreover  be  a  breach 
of    its    neutrality.      The    Congo 
State  itself,  in  its  treaty  with  Bel- 
gium, defined  its  own  frontiers  as 
"  founded    upon    treaties,"    quite 
apart   from   the    areas    to   which 
neutrality  or  other  clauses  should 
apply.     This  was  dated  February 
23,  1885   (vide  Af.  No.  4,  1885, 
p.    246).      France,  on  August    1, 
1885,     similarly     recognised     the 
treaty    limits    of    the    State,    and 
King    Leopold    as    its    sovereign 
repeated  on  that  date  the  bound- 
aries in  a  declaration  to  all  the 
Powers.      Those   treaties    limited 
the  State  on  its  north-east  frontier 
to  the  intersection  of  the  4th  de- 
gree N.  lat.  and  the  30th  E.  long. 
What  right,   asks   France,   has   a 
State  so  constituted  to  extend  be- 
yond its  assigned  limits  1     And  if 
in    territory    beyond    those    neu- 
tralised limits  its  forces  come  into 
collision  with  those  of  a  contiguous 
Power,  what  becomes  of  its  neu- 
trality ?     Its  existence  depends  on 
its  recognition  by  the  Powers.     It 
was  a  political  creation,  born  of  in- 
ternational treaties,  bound  to  neu- 
trality.   Beyond  the  limits  assigned 
by  those  treaties  it  has  no  legal  or 
political   right   of    extension,    nor 
is  it  conceivable  that  the  Powers 
would  have  created  by  their  own 
act   a   rival   in  the   scramble  for 
Africa.     We  must  admit  that  this 
argument  is  a  strong  one.      Ger- 
many, however,  in  her  treaty  with 
"The  Association,"  recognised  its 
power  to  cede  territory  (the  con- 
verse of  extension)  and  safeguarded 
her  interests  in  such  a  contingency. 
(Af.  No.  4,  1885,  p.  263.) 

If  it  be  conceded  that  the  Congo 
State  could  legitimately  extend 
east  of  long.  30°,  France  could 
not  claim  that  lat.  4°  should  be 
its  northern  frontier  east  of  that 
parallel,  for  the  definition  is  clear 


150 


The  New  African  Crisis  witli  France  and  Germany.         [July 


is  essential  that  we  should  main- 
tain our  rights.  It  is  thus  obvi- 
ous that  a  foolish  mistake  was 
made.  Any  arrangements  con- 
cluded should  not  have  been  with 
King  Leopold  as  sovereign  of  the 
Congo  State,  nor  with  the  Congo 
State,  and  therefore  subject  to 
the  limitations  and  disabilities  of 
the  State,  but  (in  default  of  our 
own  occupation)  with  King  Leo- 
pold as  an  individual.  He  could 
then  have  been  simply  our  agent, 
a"nd  any  assistance  afforded  to 
him  by  individuals  in  the  service 
of  the  Congo  State  would  have 
been  a  matter  for  private  arrange- 
ment. 

Great  Britain,  as  we  have  said, 
protested  originally  against  the 
"aggression"  of  the  Congo  State 
in  what  we  had  declared  to  be  our 
sphere  of  influence.  It  suits  us 
now  to  suddenly  withdraw  those 
protests,  and  recognise  the  aggres- 
sion as  a  useful  factor  for  our  own 
ends.  But  until  we  know  whether 
the  protests  were  in  any  way 
based  on  the  present  French  argu- 
ment, it  is  impossible  for  the 
public  to  know  the  extent  of  our 
inconsistency.  Was  not  this  argu- 
ment also  used  by  us  against  the 
extension  of  the  Congo  State  to 
the  east  of  the  Luapula  river  1  If 
our  Government  had  acted  in  a 
straightforward  and  courageous 
manner, — had  taken  Uganda  at 
once,  when  secured  for  it  without 
bloodshed  or  cost  by  the  British 
East  African  Company,  instead  of 
hesitating  for  two  years,  while 
other  nations  advanced,  —  there 
would  never  have  been  any  need 
for  this  unfortunate  and  most 
clumsy  treaty,  which  has,  with 
good  cause,  exasperated  Germany 
and  enraged  France,  while  our 
present  attitude  cannot  fail  to 
make  an  enemy  of  our  one  ally, 
King  Leopold.  Uganda  was  ours. 


The  Company's  officers  had  estab- 
lished peace  in  place  of  anarchy, 
a  force  of  excellent  and  cheap 
soldiery  had  been  secured,  of  whose 
admirable  qualities  Lord  Kimber- 
ley  spoke  enthusiastically  on  June 
11,  in  reply  to  Lord  Salisbury 
and  Lord  Stanmore.  But  Mr 
Labouchere  was  right  when  he 
said  that  a  "  Liberal "  Ministry 
spelt  disaster  in  Africa,  and  had 
always  produced  a  crisis  and  a 
fiasco  in  that  country.  The  Com- 
pany, who  had  secured  the  peace- 
ful occupation  of  Uganda,  who,  at 
the  expense  of  its  own  capital 
resources,  had  intervened  "  in  the 
nick  of  time  "  to  prevent  a  horrible 
civil  war,  uncontrolled  by  any 
central  Power,  and  had  thereby 
saved  the  English  and  French 
missionaries,  and  a  state  of  things 
which  would  have  necessitated 
European  interference,  has  been 
hounded  as  though  it  had  com- 
mitted a  gross  indiscretion  in 
going  to  Uganda.  The  inevitable 
fracas  between  the  rival  negro 
factions,  when  it  did  at  last  come, 
was  controlled  by  the  Company's 
agents,  and  resulted  in  a  minimum 
loss  of  life,  and  a  peaceful  settle- 
ment;  and  this  matter  disposed 
of,  the  Company  was  available,  if 
granted  the  assistance  they  had 
been  led  to  expect  in  the  construc- 
tion of  a  railway,  to  carry  out  the 
Government  wishes  with  regard 
to  the  Nile  Valley,  without  cost 
to  the  nation,  and  before  the 
present  difficulties  had  arisen. 
But  Government  "reserved  their 
action"  in  1892.  What  that  re- 
servation meant  we  now  know — 
two  years  of  vacillation ;  the  sys- 
tematic discrediting  of  the  Com- 
pany, so  as  to  buy  them  out  cheap ; 
the  replacement  of  Captain  Lugard 
and  his  officers  by  those  who  have 
not  borne  the  burden  of  the  task ; 
the  adoption  of  a  policy  of  disinte- 


1894.]        The  New  African  Crisis  with  France  and  Germany.  151 

vile's  action  in  hoisting  our  flag 
at  Wadelai,  did  not  raise  from 
France  any  indignant  protest  on 
behalf  of  Ottoman  rights,  because 
she  still  thought  that  her  own  ad- 
vance would  anticipate  any  effec- 
tive occupation  on  our  part.  It 
is,  moreover,  capable  of  proof  that 
the  Egyptian  Sudan  provinces  ex- 
tended to  within  some  seventy 
miles  of  Abiras  (where  the  French 
expedition  is), — the  extreme  cor- 
ner of  Zandeh  having  been  ac- 
quired by  Egypt  by  purchase  about 
1877.  The  French  expedition  has 
been  laboriously  transferred  above 
the  rapids  in  the  direction  of  this 
old  Egyptian  frontier,  and  if  we 
are  not  mistaken,  it  has  already 
invaded  the  Ottoman  rights  it 
holds  to  be  of  so  inviolable  a 
nature.  The  argument,  therefore, 
as  applied  by  France,  is  not  worthy 
of  serious  consideration.  She  has, 
in  fact,  excluded  herself  from  oc- 
cupying any  part — north  or  south 
of  Fashoda — by  this  argument  of 
Turkey's  prior  claim.  It  was  ad- 
vanced apparently  with  a  view  to 
reopening  the  Eastern  question; 
and  that  it  was  preferred  by  astute 
French  diplomatists  to  the  more 
valid  line  we  have  indicated,  de- 
notes the  gravity  of  the  crisis, 
since  it  is  apparent  that  France 
desires  to  complicate  the  issues  by 
combining  them  with  European 
politics,  and  securing  thereby  the 
co-operation  both  of  Germany  and 
Turkey  against  us. 

But  let  us  briefly  examine  what 
Turkish  claims  are  worth.  It  is 
popularly  supposed  that  Egypt,  on 
the  advice  of  Great  Britain,  aban- 
doned the  Sudan  by  proclamation. 
The  Khedive  did  sign  an  Arabic 
proclamation  in  January  1884 
(though  its  official  publication  is 
very  doubtful),  but  the  English 
translation  furnished  to  the  British 
Foreign  Office,  and  published  in 


gration  in  East  Africa,  by  which 
Uganda  alone  is  declared  a  Pro- 
tectorate, and  is  to  be  left  "  in  the 
air,"  unconnected  by  a  railway  with 
the  coast ;  the  neglect  to  deal  with 
the  slavery  question  and  other 
matters  for  which  the  opportunity 
is  ripe; — and  now  a  treaty  to 
endeavour,  by  a  smart  trick,  to 
recover  the  ground  lost  during  the 
two  years  of  indecision,  a  treaty 
which  has  set  both  Germany  and 
France  against  us,  and  brought  us 
perilously  near  to  war  ! 

France's  second  argument  as 
against  this  treaty  is,  that  it 
violates  the  rights  of  Turkey  and 
Egypt.  On  what  grounds,  we  may 
ask,  does  France  pose  as  the  cham- 
pion of  Turkish  rights  ?  The  role 
ill  befits  her,  since,  as  the  'Pre- 
curseur '  remarks,  she  has  set  those 
rights  aside  by  seizure  of  Algeria 
and  Tunis,  while  even  now  she 
covets  Tripoli.  The  '  Times '  adds 
the  important  point  of  Obock,  an- 
nexed by  France  without  reference 
to  Turkish  rights.  M.  Hanotaux 
announced  with  great  effect  that 
Turkey  had  lodged  a  protest, — 
a  statement  which  proved  to  be 
not  in  accord  with  fact.  Turkish 
claims,  "whatever  they  may  be," 
are  reserved  by  Great  Britain 
under  the  treaty,  —  though  ap- 
parently by  an  after-thought,  in  a 
despatch  of  later  date.  Does  not 
the  very  fact  of  France's  indigna- 
tion at  the  conclusion  of  this 
treaty  prove — if  proof  were  neces- 
sary other  than  the  presence  of 
Monteill's  expedition  —  that  she 
herself  intended  to  violate  these 
supposed  rights  by  occupying  the 
country?  The  French  press  has 
long  been  urging  the  protection 
of  "French  rights"  in  the  Nile 
Valley,  and  the  anticipation  of 
Great  Britain.  Sir  Edward  Grey's 
statement  that  "  Lado  is  in  the 
British  sphere,"  and  Colonel  Col- 


152  Tlie  New  African  Crisis  with  France  and  Germany.        [July 


our  Blue-books,  and  conformable 
to  our  own  peremptory  suggestions, 
is  not  correct.  The  Arabic  text, 
by  a  slight  alteration,  reserves 
sovereign  rights,  and  makes  the 
proclamation  a  grant  of  autonomy 
to  the  old  hereditary  sheikhs  with- 
in Khedivial  frontiers.  In  this 
way  the  Khedive  evaded  an  act 
which  would  have  given  the  Sultan 
the  legal  right  to  depose  him,  for 
breach  of  the  express  conditions  of 
his  tenure  of  Egypt.  Later,  when 
claims  were  put  forward  for  the 
arrears  of  pay  of  Sudanese  soldiery 
from  Equatoria,  British  officials  in 
the  name  of  Egypt  repudiated  any 
responsibility  for  the  Sudan,  but 
Tigrane  Pasha  in  a  later  despatch 
reaffirmed  Egyptian  claims,  being 
in  fact  bound  to  do  so — however 
illogically — for  the  reason  given. 
All  this  is,  however,  beside  the 
point,  for  it  is  too  preposterous  to 
argue  that  a  Power  which  has 
withdrawn  from  the  exercise  of 
any  control  for  a  period  of  nine 
years,  and  has  abandoned  its  gov- 
ernors and  its  garrisons  to  their 
fate,  can,  by  virtue  of  any  mere 
ipse  dixit  on  paper,  claim  to  exer- 
cise at  any  moment  its  sovereign 
rights,  to  the  exclusion  of  any 
Power  which  is  in  a  position  to 
effectively  occupy  and  reclaim  the 
province.  The  territory  for  this 
period  has  been  in  the  hands  of 
the  Mahdi,  and  the  scene  of  an- 
archy and  barbarism  and  of  inde- 
pendent conquest  which  threat- 
ened the  existence  of  Egypt  itself, 
while  as  regards  the  southern 
province  (with  which  we  are  con- 
cerned), it  is  separated  from  the 
Egyptian  frontier  by  1000  miles 
of  country  in  the  possession  of  a 
hostile  Power,  and  is  therefore 
wholly  beyond  the  control  of 
Egypt.  Egypt  would,  however, 
have  a  more  tenable  claim  to  the 
northern  province  if  she  now  for- 


mulated her  rights  to  Khartum 
and  Fashoda  before  any  European 
Power  came  upon  the  scene,  and 
simultaneously  announced  her  in- 
tention of  at  once  re-establishing 
those  claims  by  effective  control. 

Such  are  the  main  arguments 
put  forward  by  France.  Irrespec- 
tive of  the  mistakes  to  which  we 
have  alluded,  the  treaty  need  not 
violate  any  French  rights.  It  was  r 
to  be  expected  that  an  assertion 
of  our  rights,  supported  by  effec- 
tive occupation  (by  proxy),  would 
be  most  unwelcome  to  France,  the 
more  so  as  being  a  complete  sur- 
prise, and  as  effectually  frustrat- 
ing her  ambitions.  Had  she  taken 
advantage  of  our  mistakes  in  de- 
tail, and  urged  that  our  occupa- 
tion was  not  valid,  her  case  would 
have  been  stronger  than  the  one 
she  has  chosen  to  adopt — with  a 
good  reason,  however,  for  her 
choice. 

3.  There  are  in  this  treaty  ap- 
parently no  provisions  made  re- 
garding the  claims  which  may  be 
preferred  by  King  Leopold's  heirs 
for  money  expended  in  the  terri- 
tory leased,  for  its  development  or 
improvement.  Since  France  claims 
to  be  the  heir  by  purchase  of  the 
Congo  State,  she  would  become 
the  king's  executor,  and  will  claim, 
under  this  treaty,  to  take  immedi- 
ate possession  of  the  territory  and 
assets  on  behalf  of  the  king's  heirs, 
on  the  death  of  the  king ;  and  in 
this  capacity  it  would  devolve  upon 
her  to  surrender  the  lease.  Sup- 
posing she  surrenders  it,  she  will 
then  present  the  bill.  The  cost 
will  not  be  minimised,  and  we 
shall  find  we  could  have  effec- 
tually occupied  the  country  our- 
selves, on  both  banks  of  the  Nile, 
for  less  than  what  it  will  thus 
eventually  cost  us  to  lease  a 
part  of  it — the  more  so  that  for 
very  shame  we  cannot  do  less  on 


1894.]        The  New  African  Crisis  with  France  and  Germany.  153 


the  right  bank  than  the  Belgians 
do  on  the  left.  But  France — qud 
France,  and  independent  of  her 
position  as  the  king's  heir  —  re- 
pudiates our  right  to  lease  the 
country  at  all,  and  has  troops 
on  the  spot  to  make  good  her 
position.  Hence  we  can  foresee 
a  disagreeable  dilemma  ahead. 
But  even  if  the  lease  were  duly 
surrendered,  claims  for  "tenant's 
improvements"  are  certain  to 
be  preferred,  and  where  will  the 
Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  of  the 
day  obtain  the  sum?  In  result, 
therefore,  the  lease  becomes  a  per- 
manent cession,  and  that — if  the 
French  right  of  preference  is  exer- 
cised— to  the  very  Power  (France) 
which  we  have  been  at  all  these 
pains  to  exclude ! 

It  would  also  be  interesting  to 
know  how  the  Government  view 
of  the  reading  of  the  Brussels 
Act — a  strained  construction  in- 
vented to  embarrass  the  East 
African  Company — would  apply 
to  this  lease.  It  is  now  main- 
tained that  duties  are  not  leviable 
at  the  coast  on  entering  the  "  con- 
ventional basin  of  the  Congo," 
but  on  the  frontiers  of  each  state 
within  the  area.  Would  King 
Leopold  then  have  the  right  to 
demand  free  transit  from  the 
frontier  of  the  leased  province, 
and  the  power  to  levy  import  and 
export  duties  on  that  frontier? 
The  point  will  be  an  important 
one  when  the  railway  is  made. 
And  further,  who  is  responsible 
for  the  due  fulfilment  of  the 
pledges  under  the  Brussels  Act 
in  the  leased  territory,  King  Leo- 
pold or  ourselves?  It  is  obvious 
that  a  host  of  analogous  questions 
might  be  raised,  of  which  appar- 
ently the  framers  of  this  treaty 
took  no  note. 

4.  The  "British  sphere"  has 
always  been  supposed  to  extend 


to  Wady  Haifa,  the  confines  of 
Egypt.  Sir  Edward  Grey,  how- 
ever, recently  declined  to  state 
how  far  it  extended,  and  when 
pressed,  he  denied  that  Khartum 
was  included  in  our  sphere ! 
Hence  the  presumable  limit  is 
Fashoda, — the  farthest  point  col- 
oured British  in  the  map  presented 
to  Parliament.  From  Lado  to 
Fashoda  in  the  leased  territory  is 
impassable  swamp  and  sudd.  Be- 
yond lie  the  commercially  rich 
and  valuable  countries  which  are 
also  the  immediate  Hinterland  of 
Egypt  and  the  Suakim  coast. 
Khartum,  the  capital  and  trade 
emporium  of  the  Sudan,  on  the 
junction  of  the  White  and  Blue 
Nile,  and  Berber,  the  objective  of 
the  railway  from  the  Bed  Sea,  are 
included  in  this  province.  Lord 
Salisbury,  in  the  Anglo-German 
treaty  of  1890,  specifically  put 
forward  British  claims  "as  far  as 
the  confines  of  Egypt,"  and  it  was 
to  be  expected  that  these  would 
now  have  been  strongly  reiterated, 
since  they  form  the  only  rational 
ground  for  the  conclusion  of  this 
treaty  at  all.  Except  on  the  hy- 
pothesis that  we  mean  to  hold  the 
whole  Nile  Valley,  our  recent 
action  is  too  inane  and  foolish  for 
words !  Yet  it  has  been  denied 
officially  that  Khartum  is  in  our 
sphere  !  The  only  alternative  was 
that,  as  the  protecting  Power  in 
Egypt,  we  should  at  once  reassert 
the  lapsed  claims  of  Egypt  as  far 
south  as  Fashoda;  but  we  have 
not  done  this  either.  What,  then, 
is  to  prevent  France  from  claim- 
ing this  country,  either  by  occupy- 
ing it  herself  at  once,  or  by  leasing 
it  in  turn  to  King  .Leopold,  or  for 
the  matter  of  that  to  the  Mahdi 
himself,  since  we  ourselves  have 
by  this  treaty  created  the  novel 
and  most  dangerous  precedent  of 
claiming  sovereign  rights  over  a 


154  The  New  African  Crisis  with  France  and  Germany.         [July 


country  of  which  we  have  never 
been  in  effective  possession,  with 
the  power  of  leasing  it  to  a  third 
party  while  it  was  yet  occupied 
by  a  hostile  force?  By  drawing 
our  line  at  Fashoda,  we  have  in 
fact  opened  the  way  for  a  paper 
annexation  of  all  the  Northern 
Sudan  by  any  other  Power.  The 
French  objective  will  doubtless  be 
Dem  Suliman,  on  a  navigable  trib- 
utary of  the  Bahr  el  Gazal :  the 
latter  river  is  also  navigable,  and 
a  main  affluent  of  the  Nile  at 
Fashoda.  This  point  is  only  some 
320  miles  from  the  present  position 
of  the  French  force. 

5.  This  leads  us  to  the  last 
point  on  which  we  shall  touch  in 
our  examination  of  the  treaty 
itself.  Our  ostensible  reason  for 
selecting  King  Leopold  as  our 
lessee  was,  that  he  was  supposed 
to  be  in  actual  effective  occupa- 
tion. We  desired  to  utilise  this 
position  as  against  the  advance  of 
France.  To  do  so  it  was  necessary 
that  the  king  should  transfer  to 
us  the  treaties  concluded  in  the 
territory,  and  so  put  us — as  lessors 
— in  effective  occupation,  and  this 
transfer  should  have  taken  place, 
proformd,  before  the  actual  com- 
pletion of  the  treaty,  and  should 
have  been  stated  in  the  body  of 
the  treaty  as  the  basis  on  which 
the  lease  was  negotiated.  For  our 
rights  accrue  solely  in  virtue  of 
prior  occupancy  by  our  lessee,  and 
we  have  no  other  claim  which  is 
valid  against  France.  The  lease 
to  the  king  is  merely  as  a  life- 
tenant, — the  treaties  are  the  pro- 
perty in  perpetuity  of  the  sov- 
ereign Power.  Only  by  thus  ac- 
quiring the  treaties  could  we  claim 
the  right  to  lease  at  all.  But 
though  we  presume  that  such  a 
transfer  must  have  been  made, 
there  is  no  mention  anywhere  of  it. 


The  article  in  this  Magazine 
last  month  ("Imperial  Interests 
in  East  Africa")  insisted  on  the 
danger  lest  a  cause  of  quarrel 
arising  in  East  Africa  should  pre- 
cipitate a  war  in  Europe.  It  was 
written  before  the  Anglo -Congo 
treaty  was  published,  and  it  pointed 
out  the  delicacy  and  the  peril  of 
this  Nile  Valley  question.  It  sug- 
gested an  arrangement  with  King 
Leopold,  but  the  arrangement  has 
been  so  clumsily  made  that  already 
the  warning  is  more  than  justified. 

We  will,  in  conclusion,  examine 
two  other  matters  which  have  an 
important  bearing  on  the  question 
— viz.,  the  French  claim  of  the 
right  of  pre-emption  in  the  Congo 
State,  and  the  position  in  Abys- 
sinia. 

I.  The  French  right  of  prefer- 
ence in  the  Congo  State  accrues 
in  virtue  of  an  agreement  made 
by  Colonel  Strauch  on  behalf  of 
the  "  International  Association  of 
the  Congo  "  (now  the  Congo  State) 
on  April  23,  1884,  as  an  act  of 
defence  against  the  Anglo-Portu- 
guese treaty  of  that  year  (February 
1884),  which  threatened  the  exist- 
ence of  the  infant  State.  It  runs 
as  follows : — 

"The  International  Association  of 
the  Congo,  in  the  name  of  the  free 
stations  and  territories  which  it  has 
established  on  the  Congo  and  in  the 
Valley  of  the  Niadi-Kwilu,  formally 
declares  that  it  will  not  cede  them 
to  any  Power,  under  reserve  of  the 
special  conventions  which  might  be 
concluded  between  France  and  the 
Association  with  a  view  to  settling 
the  limits  and  conditions  of  their 
respective  action.  But  the  Associa- 
tion, wishing  to  afford  a  new  proof 
of  its  friendly  feeling  towards  France, 
pledges  itself  to  give  her  the  right 
of  preference,  if  through  any  unfore- 
seen circumstances^  the  Association 
were  one  day  led  to  realise  its  pos- 
sessions." l 


1  The  Congo  State  (H.  M.  Stanley),  p.  388. 


1894.]        The  New  African  Crisis  with  France  and  Germany.  155 


The  italics  are  ours.  From  this  it 
is  obvious  that  the  right  of  prefer- 
ence is  not  one  which  accrues  on 
the  death  of  the  king  (who  had 
not  even  at  that  time  formally  be- 
come sovereign  of  the  State),  but 
only  in  the  event  of  the  possessions 
of  the  State  being  realised.  It  is 
also  to  be  noted  that  this  declara- 
tion was  made  prior  to  the  Berlin 
Act,  which  took  no  cognisance  of  it. 
France,  on  the  other  hand,  main- 
tains that  the  king  is  debarred 
from  bequeathing  the  State  to  Bel- 
gium or  any  other  Power  under 
this  agreement,  the  more  so  that 
King  Leopold  in  his  declaration 
to  the  Powers,  of  August  1,  1885, 
expressly  stated  that  "the  union 
between  Belgium  and  the  Congo 
State  would  be  exclusively  per- 
sonal" (to  himself).  The  king, 
however,  on  April  22,  1887,  had 
notified  to  France,  as  his  interpre- 
tation of  the  meaning  of  the  letter 
of  Colonel  Strauch,  quoted  above, 
that  the  right  of  preference  of 
France  could  not  be  opposed  to 
Belgium,  since  he  (Leopold)  was 
King  of  Belgium ;  but  Belgium, 
in  turn,  must  respect  the  French 
right  of  pre-emption.  France  ap- 
pears to  have  taken  no  exception 
to  this  view  at  the  time,  but  merely 
to  have  acknowledged  the  king's 
letter  on  the  same  date  without 
comment.  The  king's  argument 
was,  of  course,  that  he  and  Belgium 
were  one  and  inseparable,  and  in 
virtue  of  this  contention  he  after- 
wards made  a  will  bequeathing  the 
State  to  Belgium,  which  thereupon 
subsidised  the  State. 

But  these  contentions  are  be- 
side the  point.  France  maintains 
that  the  State  being  an  artificial 
creation,  incapable  of  initiating 
acts  affecting  its  own  existence 
and  extension  (or  even,  according 
to  France  and  Germany,  of  leasing 
a  small  strip  of  territory)  without 
the  recognition  of  the  signatory 


Powers  which  gave  it  birth,  it 
follows  that  an  agreement  such  as 
this,  giving  reversionary  rights  to 
France,  is  invalid  and  ultra  vires, 
unless  recognised  by  all  the 
Powers.  It  has  never  been  so 
recognised,  and  it  is  highly  im- 
probable that  those  with  contigu- 
ous possessions — especially  Eng- 
land and  Germany — would  consent 
to^the  appropriation  by  France  of 
this  vast  territory  on  so  shadowy 
a  title.  France  urges  that  the 
lease  of  the  strip  between  Tangan- 
yika and  British  East  Africa  vio- 
lates her  rights  of  pre-emption. 
But,  as  we  have  seen,  these  rights 
do  not  apply  to  this  area;  and, 
moreover,  the  lease  being  only 
current  so  long  as  the  State  is 
independent  or  a  colony  of  Bel- 
gium, it  lapses  ipso  facto  if  French 
rights  of  pre-emption  are  ever 
exercised. 

II.  A  final  word  regarding 
Abyssinia;  for  we  firmly  believe 
that  the  indignation  of  France  at 
her  exclusion  from  the  Nile  Valley 
is  based  upon  the  fact  that  she  is 
thereby  frustrated  in  her  desire  to 
extend  her  dominion  across  Africa 
to  Obock  on  the  Red  Sea.  The 
Italians  concluded  a  treaty  with 
King  Menelik  of  Abyssinia,  and 
notified  (in  accordance  with  the 
Berlin  Act)  to  the  Powers  that  he 
had  accepted  their  protectorate. 
The  treaty  was  published  in 
Italian.  France,  having  herself 
some  experience  of  such  "diplo- 
macy "  with  savage  kings,  sent  to 
Abyssinia  to  see  the  text  in  the 
native  language.  It  was  merely 
an  agreement  between  equals,  and 
did  not  confer  the  powers  which 
Italy  claimed.  This  was  explained 
to  the  king,  and  he  thereupon  ex- 
pelled all  Italian  subjects  from  his 
dominions,  diverted  his  trade  from 
Massawah  to  the  French  port  of 
Obock,  began  to  buy  rifles,  &c.,  from 
the  French  with  which  to  protect 


156  The  New  African  Crisis  with  France  and  Germany.         [July 


his  independence,  and  wrote  letters 
to  the  sovereigns  of  Europe  de- 
nouncing the  Italian  treaty,  their 
style  suggesting  French  assistance. 
He  has  now  repaid  all  moneys  lent 
him  by  the  Italians  under  that 
treaty.  He  has  dug  wells  and  put 
posts  along  his  road  to  the  fron- 
tiers of  the  French  possessions  at 
Obock,  and  the  French  have  done 
the  same  for  200  miles  to  meet 
him.  He  commands  a  very  large 
and  very  brave  and  well-armed 
army,  which  has  proved  almost  in- 
vincible against  Mahdists,  Egyp- 
tian troops  (with  white  officers), 
and  all  Sudanese  tribes  alike,  and 
which  has,  moreover,  proved  too 
powerful  for  any  force  the  Italians 
can  bring  against  it.  Whatever 
be  her  relations  with  the  King  of 
Abyssinia,  Italy,  however,  claims 
exclusive  influence  in  the  country 
as  regards  any  other  European 
nation.  Her  claims  have  been 
duly  notified  and  her  treaty  pub- 
lished and  accepted,  and  she  has 
spent  vast  sums  in  the  country. 
France,  however,  poses  as  the 
king's  champion,  and  repudiates 
the  Italian  protectorate,  and  she 
has  betrayed  great  indignation  at 
the  recent  Anglo  -  Italian  treaty 
delimiting  British  and  Italian 
frontiers  in  the  neighbourhood  of 
Harrar.  Meanwhile  British  diplo- 
macy has  irritated  the  Abyssinians 
against  us,  and  aided  the  French 
aims.  By  our  treaty  of  1884  Bo- 
gos  was  restored  to  Abyssinia,  and 
free  trade  to  Massawah  guaranteed ; 
and  we  have  set  this  aside,  and 
encouraged  Italy  to  annex  both 
Bogos  and  Massawah.  Nor  did 
we  please  Italy  by  our  futile  in- 
terference in  December  1887.  The 
cost  of  her  operations  has  been  so 
enormous  to  Italy,  that  the  cession 
or  sale  to  France  of  her  claims  in 
Abyssinia  in  the  near  future  would 
not  be  a  surprising  event.  We 


may  add  that  a  private  Russian 
expedition  is  now  about  to  start 
from  Berbera.  Its  destination  is 
the  Shilluk  country  on  the  Nile 
opposite  Lado. 

Space  forbids  us  to  go  into 
greater  detail  on  this  question. 
Enough  has  probably  been  said  to 
prove  that  French  intrigue  has 
been  very  busy  and  very  success- 
ful in  Abyssinia.  Taken  in  con- 
junction with  the  advance  from 
the  west  towards  the  Nile  Valley, 
the  inference  is  irresistible  that 
France  intended  to  establish  an 
empire  from  coast  to  coast.  She 
already  possesses  a  coast  area  along 
the  Red  Sea,  with  an  excellent  har- 
bour at  Tajjurah,  opposite  Aden. 
It  is  needless  to  point  out  the 
importance  of  such  a  strategic 
position,  and  the  effect  on  our 
communications  through  the  Red 
Sea,  if  France  realised  her  objects. 
It  might,  moreover,  be  possible  for 
France  to  set  the  Abyssinian  army 
in  motion  against  the  Mahdi,  to 
support  her  advance  from  the 
west.  They  would  only  be  too 
glad  to  kill  dervishes  for  a  con- 
sideration, as  they  are  reported  to 
have  done  for  us  in  October  1885. 
If  she  thus  swept  the  Mahdi  out 
of  the  Sudan,  Khartum  and  the 
frontiers  of  Egypt  would  be  in 
her  hands.  In  that  case  we  may 
make  up  our  minds  to  pack  up  our 
traps  and  leave  Egypt,  not  because 
we  consider  our  task  concluded, 
and  with  the  honour  and  dignity 
of  a  great  Power  who  has  achieved 
a  great  enterprise,  but  because  our 
position  has  been  made  untenable 
by  France,  and  the  blindness  and 
ineptitude  of  the  present  Govern- 
ment will  have  compelled  us  to 
retreat  with  humiliation  and  dis- 
honour. If  France  became  para- 
mount in  the  Sudan,  with  power 
to  levy  unlimited  numbers  of 
black  regiments,  composed  of  as 


1894.]        The  New  African  Crisis  with  France  and  Germany.  157 


good  fighting  material  as  can 
be  found  when  drilled  and  discip- 
lined, the  balance  of  power  in 
Western  Asia  would  be  altered  if 
it  should  be  found  feasible  to  pour 
these  levies  into  Asia  Minor. 

From  all  this  it  is  apparent  that 
the  issues  are  very  serious,  the 
crisis  a  very  grave  one,  and  our 
mistakes  not  few.  Germany,  as 
we  have  seen,  is  very  justly  ex- 
asperated, and  in  consequence  of 
our  mistakes  France  has  some 
valid  arguments  against  us.  She 
is,  moreover,  naturally  more  irri- 
tated at  our  attempt  to  assist 
the  Congo  State  to  violate  her 
treaties  than  if  we  had  ourselves 
gone  in  and  taken  the  country. 
Sir  Edward  Grey  stated  that  the 
French  Government  had  given  no 
undertaking  not  to  invade  the 
leased  territory  pending  discussion 
with  Great  Britain  of  the  points 
at  issue.  This  means,  of  course, 
that  if  she  does  not  advance  on 
Dem  Suliman  towards  the  North- 
ern Sudan,  she  will  at  least  attack 
and  oust  the  Congo  State  forces 
north  of  the  4th  degree — setting 
aside  Turkish  rights  on  the  pre- 
cedent of  our  initiative.  As  we 
are  pledged  to  King  Leopold,  and 
he  is  merely  our  lessee,  such  action 
will  be  an  overt  act  of  hostility 
towards  England,  at  any  rate  east 
of  long.  30°.  West  of  long.  30° 
there  appears  no  course  open  to  us 
but  to  acknowledge  that  our  lease 
to  the  Congo  State  is  in  violation 
of  the  treaty  between  France  and 
the  State.  In  the  actual  valley  of 
the  Nile  (east  of  long.  30°),  it  is 
essential  that  we  should  substanti- 
ate our  claims,  defend  our  rights, 
and  fulfil  our  pledges  to  King 
Leopold  (whom  we  have  placed 
in  an  awkward  position)  by  at 
once  sending  an  expedition  into 
the  country  from  Uganda.  This 
portion  was  leased  to  the  king, 


and  not  to  the  Congo  State.  As 
regards  the  Northern  Sudan,  we 
can  only  preserve  it  from  French 
occupation  by  at  once  reconquer- 
ing it  from  Egypt  as  a  base,  or 
by  constructing  the  Suakim-Berber 
railway  and  occupying  it  in  our 
own  right  from  that  base  on  the 
Red  Sea.  There  is  no  doubt  that 
the  latter  course  would  be  in- 
finitely preferable,  for  the  rule  of 
Egypt  is  detested  in  the  Sudan, 
and  an  attempt  to  re-establish  it 
would  meet  with  the  combined 
hostility  of  Mahdists  and  tribes 
alike  ;  whereas  British  rule  would 
probably  be  welcomed  and  assisted 
by  the  tribes  as  a  relief  from  the 
oppression  of  the  Mahdi.  It  could 
therefore  be  established  at  a  less 
cost  and  with  less  bloodshed. 
Moreover,  if  we  held  the  Sudan 
up  to  Wady  Haifa  as  a  British 
possession,  we  should  completely 
safeguard  our  position  in  Egypt, 
for  that  country  would  not  then 
be  tenable  by  any  other  Power. 
If,  however,  we  occupy  the  Sudan 
as  an  Egyptian  province,  our 
tenure  is  dependent  only  on  our 
occupation  of  Egypt,  and  ceases 
with  that  occupation.  We  argue, 
in  fact,  that  a  British  occupation 
of  the  Nile  Valley  above  Wady 
Haifa  would  be  a  final  solution 
to  French  intrigue  in  Egypt. 

These  views  may  appear  "ad- 
vanced," but  we  are  face  to  face 
with  a  very  grave  crisis.  It  is  no 
longer  a  question  of  the  expendi- 
ture of  a  few  thousand  pounds  to 
occupy  Lado  as  it  was  two  years 
ago,  but  of  averting  a  contingency 
which  may  cost  us  many  millions 
and  many  lives.  This  is  not  the 
place  to  enlarge  upon  the  great 
benefits  to  British  trade,  or  the 
real  blow  to  the  worst  forms  of 
slave-trade  which  are  now  at 
stake.  The  former  was  ably  dealt 
with  in  a  recent  paper  read  by 


158 


The  New  African  Crisis  with  France  and  Germany.        [July 


Mr  Wylde  before  the  Manchester 
Chamber  of  Commerce.  The  latter 
can  be  gauged  from  Father  Ohr- 
walder's  accounts1  and  Gordon's 
and  Gessi's  books. 

A  Brussels  paper  of  June  16 
states  that  King  Leopold's  forces 
have  never  effectively  occupied 
either  Lado  or  Wadelai,  but  only 
pushed  reconnaissances  to  those 
places,  whence  they  were  driven 
back  by  the  attacks  of  the  der- 
vishes. Our  claims,  as  we  have 
emphatically  stated,  depend  in  the 
event  upon  effective  occupation, 
and  it  is  a  new  proof  of  the  hap- 
hazard way  and  lack  of  informa- 
tion with  which  this  treaty  was 
framed,  that  its  very  raison  d'etre 
is  now  found  to  be  chimerical; 


while  the  news  affords  but  a  new 
argument  for  immediate  action  on 
the  spot  ourselves. 

Such,  then,  is  the  dilemma  in 
which  the  present  Government's 
policy  has  landed  us,  and  such  is 
the  cost  of  the  parsimonious  regime 
which  two  years  ago  grudged  a  few 
thousand  pounds  to  hold  Uganda, 
and  disregarded  the  urgent  repre- 
sentations of  those  who  had  local 
knowledge,  and  who  proved  the 
necessity  of  at  once  occupying 
Equatoria  at  a  merely  nominal 
cost.  The  alternative  is  to  "  eat 
dirt  "  with  dishonour,  and  to  stand 
by  and  see  the  whole  Nile  Valley, 
to  the  frontiers  of  Egypt,  pass 
into  the  hands  of  France,  and  our 
final  ejection  from  Egypt  assured. 


Wingate's  Ten  Years  with  the  Mahdi. 


1894.] 


Destructives  and  Conservatives. 


159 


DESTRUCTIVES  AND  CONSERVATIVES. 


THE  position  of  the  Government 
at   the   present    moment     abund- 
antly justifies  all  the  predictions 
concerning  the  progress  of  public 
business    which   were  uttered   by 
political  writers  at  the  commence- 
ment of  the  session.     The  public 
were   then   given   to    understand 
that   there   were    three    measures 
which   the  Ministry  certainly  in- 
tended    to     carry     through     the 
House  of  Commons  before  Parlia- 
ment  was    prorogued  —  three   at 
least — the  Registration  Bill,   the 
Evicted   Tenants   Bill,     and     the 
Welsh      Disestablishment       Bill. 
These  stood  first,  and  constituted 
the  fixed  programme  from  which 
there.,  was   to   be    no    departure. 
Next  to   these   came   the   Scotch 
Local  Government   Bill   and   the 
Scotch       Disestablishment      Bill, 
which  were  represented  as  having 
strong  claims  on  the  Government, 
and   fair  prospects  of   being  sent 
up  to  the  Lords  before  the  session 
was   concluded.     Then   came   the 
Local  Yeto  Bill,  the  Equalisation 
of   Rates    Bill,    and    such    other 
"  pretty    little    tiny    kickshaws " 
as   William    Cook  might   see   his 
way  to  serving  up.     On  the  top 
of  them  all   we   were  to  have   a 
highly  sensational  Budget,  which 
would,    it   was    believed,     impose 
such  heavy  additional  burdens  on 
an  already  overburdened  interest 
as  to  call  for  the  most  strenuous 
opposition  on  the  part  of  the  Con- 
servatives ;  and  all  this  work  was 
to  be  accomplished  in  little  more 
than  four  months  with  a  majority 
of  only  twenty-six,   liable  at  any 
moment  to  be  reduced  to   seven- 
teen.    We  have  now  reached  the 
beginning  of  July.      The  Budget 
Bill  is  still  in  Committee,  and  only 
one   of   the    leading   Government 


measures  has  been  read  a  second 
time. 

Ministers    have    not    yet    an- 
nounced their  intentions  with  re- 
gard to  the  arrears  of  legislation. 
But  if  they  are  to  carry  through 
the  Commons  any  other  measure 
of  importance  after  the  Budget  is 
disposed  of, 'it  can  only  be  by  an  un- 
sparing application  of  the  closure, 
or  by  a  supplementary  session  in 
the  autumn.    It  is  generally  under- 
stood that  they  have  abandoned  all 
idea   of   the  latter,  and  are  very 
unwilling  to  have  recourse  to  the 
former.       Yet    if    their    financial 
business   is  not  concluded  before 
the    middle    of    July,    and    they 
neither   gag   the  House  of   Com- 
mons in  August  nor  assemble  it 
again   in    November,    they   must 
throw  over  their  whole  programme 
to  another  year ;  and  this,  it  now 
seems  likely,  is  what  they  are  pre- 
pared to  do.     Whether  in  that  case 
a  dissolution  would  take  place  at 
once,  or  be  deferred  till  next  April 
or  May,  is  a  point  with  regard  to 
which  every  succeeding  day  brings 
its  fresh  crop  of  rumours.     Min- 
isters may  be  of  opinion  that,  with 
the  Budget  in  one  hand  and  Con- 
servative obstruction  in  the  other, 
they  may  cut  as  good  a  figure  be- 
fore the  public  as  they  are  likely 
to  do  at  any  other  time  ;  and  it  is 
quite  upon  the  cards,  therefore,  that 
they  may  resolve  on  a  dissolution 
when  the  Budget  is  once  out  of 
danger.       But    of    a   Government 
which   is  at  the  mercy  of   every 
petty    clique    in    the    House    of 
Commons,    and    obliged   to    twist 
and  double  like  a  hare  before  the 
greyhound,  it  is  waste  of  time  to 
attempt  to   calculate   the   course. 
It  is   enough  that  they  are  now 
where  we  always  said  they  neces- 


160 


Destructives  and  Conservatives. 


[July 


sarily  must  be  by  the  middle  of 
the  session;  that  the  bubble  has 
burst,  and  that  the  sessional  pro- 
gramme is  discovered  to  be  a 
heartless  hoax. 

The  victims  of  it — the  English 
Radicals,  the  Irish  Home  Rulers, 
and  the  Welsh  Liberationists  — 
may  make  the  best  of  a  bad  job, 
patch  up  the  concern,  and  resolve 
to  give  the  Government  another 
chance.  But  what  will  the  nation 
at  large  be  saying  all  the  time  3 
What  the  Government  require  is 
a  great  accession  of  strength.  It 
will  be  useless  for  them  to  come 
back,  after  a  general  election,  with 
only  the  same  majority  which  they 
possess  now ;  and  it  is  difficult  to 
suppose  that  their  career  during 
the  last  two  years  can  have  made 
the  public  think  any  better  of 
them  than  they  did  before.  It 
is  no  wonder,  therefore,  that 
they  dislike  the  prospect  of  a 
dissolution  ;  and  at  this  mo- 
ment the  prevailing  opinion  seems 
to  be  that  they  will  prorogue 
Parliament  in  August,  without 
passing  any  more  of  their  bills, 
and  trust  to  something  turning  up 
in  their  favour  before  the  New 
Year.  They  are  in  desperate 
straits  ;  and  there,  for  the  present, 
we  will  leave  them.  We  have  said 
enough  in  previous  articles  in  ex- 
posure of  their  weakness,  insincer- 
ity, and  trickery ;  of  their  breaches 
of  faith ;  of  their  clumsy  and  slip- 
shod measures;  of  their  sacrifices 
of  honour  and  dignity  to  the 
sweets  of  office;  and  of  their 
contempt  for  parliamentary  pre- 
cedents. We  may  on  this  occa- 
sion, perhaps,  look  a  little  further 
forward,  and  consider  what  the 
Unionist  party  has  to  offer  to  the 
country  should  the  verdict  of  the 
constituencies  put  an  end  to  the 
existing  mockery,  and  with  what 
degree  of  cordiality  a  Conservative 
programme  is  likely  to  be  received. 


And  here  we  may  pause  for  a 
moment  to  point  out  that  the  word 
Conservative  is  wide  enough  to 
cover  both  Liberal  and  Conserva- 
tive Unionists,  as  distinguished 
from  Destructives,  by  which  name 
the  motley  host  of  Parnellites,  Dis- 
senters, Teetotallers,  Puritans,  and 
Levellers  who  support  Lord  Rose- 
bery's  Administration  may  most 
fitly  be  described.  By  the  word 
Conservative,  then,  we  would 
henceforth  be  understood  to  mean 
both  the  followers  of  the  Duke  of 
Devonshire  and  the  followers  of 
Lord  Salisbury.  The  policy  of  the 
Liberal  Unionists  is  a  Conservative 
policy  in  the  broadest  sense  of  the 
term.  Mr  Chamberlain  himself 
defines  true  Liberalism  to  be  that 
"which  endeavours  to  found  the 
great  institutions  of  the  country 
upon  the  firm  basis  of  the  welfare 
and  contentment  of  every  class  in 
the  community."  If  this  is  true 
Liberalism,  it  is  certainly  true  Con- 
servatism. The  final  cause  of  Con- 
servatism is  the  maintenance  of 
the  national  institutions;  and  if 
they  do  not  rest  on  the  welfare  and 
contentment  of  the  people,  they 
cannot  be  maintained  at  all.  The 
Destructives,  on  the  other  hand, 
are  determined  to  destroy  these  in- 
stitutions— the  Church,  the  House 
of  Lords,  and  the  territorial  aristo- 
cracy— on  a  priori  grounds ;  and 
to  facilitate  the  process,  they  resist 
every  attempt  at  improving  or  re- 
forming them,  for  fear  it  should 
tend  to  make  the  people  too  well 
contented  with  them.  We  shall 
offer  no  further  apology,  therefore, 
for  distinguishing  the  two  parties 
into  which  the  country  is  now 
divided  as  Conservatives  and  De- 
structives. 

It  will  be  expected  here,  per- 
haps, that  we  should  make  some 
reference  to  the  fact  that  Mr 
Chamberlain  is  not  himself  in 
favour  of  the  principle  of  Estab- 


1894.] 


Destructives  and  Conservatives. 


161 


lishment.  But  it  is  quite  evident 
that  he  holds  the  contrary  opinion 
merely  in  an  abstract  form,  and 
is  not  in  any  way  prepared  to 
reduce  his  theory  to  practice, 
if  by  doing  so  he  is  likely  to 
endanger  the  entente  cordiale  of 
which  he  is  so  warm  a  supporter. 
It  may  be  remembered,  also,  that 
Lord,, Palm erston  always  voted  for 
Mr  Locke  King's  and  Mr  H.  Berke- 
ley's resolutions  in  favour  of  parlia- 
mentary reform,  merely  to  acknow- 
ledge the  principle  —  though  he 


Now  the  first  thing  to  be  im- 
pressed on  the  working  classes  of 
Great  Britain  is  the  fact  that  what 
the  Conservative  party  can  do  for 
them,  the  party  now  in  office  can- 
not. This  was  clearly  brought 
out  by  Mr  Chamberlain  in  his 
speech  at  Bradford  on  the  2d  of 
June  last.  "  I  have  said  enough 
to  show  you  that,  in  spite  of  Lord 
Rosebery's  sneers,  there  is  plenty 
for  Unionists  to  do,  plenty  which 
we  are  willing  and  able  to  do, 
inasmuch  as  we  are  not  hampered 
by  the  necessity  for  breaking  up 
the  empire,  and  for  mending  and 
ending  every  one  of  our  institu- 
tions,- You  cannot  expect  to  get 
these  social  reforms,"  he  adds, 
"  from  the  Gladstonian  party, 
because,  even  if  they  are  well 
disposed  towards  them,  it  is  abso- 
lutely impossible  for  men  com- 
mitted as  they  are  to  all  these 
political  and  constitutional  changes 
to  give  any  attention  to  social 
and  constructive  reform."  These 
words  sound  the  keynote  of  the 
argument  which  ought  to  be  con- 
tinually addressed  to  the  working 
men  of  Great  Britain.  Mr  Cham- 
berlain enumerates  four  questions 
on  which  the  Unionists  would  be 
prepared  to  legislate  immediately, 
uninterrupted  by  schemes  for 
abolishing  the  constitution  and 

VOL.  CLVI. NO.  DCCCCXLV. 


dividing  the  empire  —  schemes 
which  would  do  the  working  man 
no  earthly  manner  of  good. 
These  are :  Employers'  Liability 
the  Dwellings  of  the  Poor,  Old 
Age  Pensions,  and  the  Immigra- 
tion of  Pauper  Aliens.  He  de- 
clared that  the  Employers'  Liabil- 
ity Bill  introduced  by  the  present 
Government  would  only  have  given 
compensation  in  three  cases  out  of 
ten,  and  would  have  left  the 
working  man  to  the  chances  of 
litigation. 


principle  of  the  Unionist  party,  be- 
cause  I  have  had  the  opportunity  of 
talking  with  the  leaders  of  the  Con- 
servative  party  on  the  subject— our 
PrinciPle  >.  *hat  e™ry  man  should 


of  litigation  and  without  wasting 
money.  If  you  will  give  us  your 
support,  that  is  one  of  the  first  ques- 
tions to  which  the  attention  of  the 
Unionist  party  will  be  given." 

The  second  boon  which,  speak- 
ing for  Conservatives  and  Union- 
ists alike,  Mr  Chamberlain  offers 
to  the  people,  is  a  great  extension  of 
the  Artisans  Dwellings  Acts  passed 
by  Lord  Beaconsfield's  Government 
in  1875  and  in  1879,  the  greatest 
step  in  the  right  direction  which 
has  hitherto  been  taken.  He  pro- 
nounces the  extension  of  these  Acts 
to  be,  as  it  certainly  is,  a  thoroughly 
Tory  proposition.  It  is  so  in  two 
ways :  because,  first  of  all,  it 
would  carry  still  further  the  pro- 
visions of  the  Acts  aforesaid, 
giving  "  larger  powers  to  muni- 
cipalities and  local  authorities  to 
deal  with  great  areas — crowded  and 
insanitary  areas  —  in  their  midst, 
and  to  clear  the  ground  for  the 
provision  of  a  better  class  of 
dwellings;"  and  secondly,  be- 
cause it  would  also  apply  to  the 
dwellings  of  the  English  poor 
the  principle  already  applied  by 


162 


Destructives  and  Conservatives. 


[July 


the  Irish  Land  Act  of  1887  to  the 
Irish  peasant,  so  that  by  a  similar 
process  of  State  assistance  the 
artisan  should  be  enabled  to  be- 
come the  owner  of  his  house. 
The  Unionist  Government  con- 
ferred this  "enormous,  this  un- 
paralleled boon  "  upon  the  Irish  ; 
and  why  should  it  not  be  con- 
ferred upon  the  English  by  the 
same  hands?  On  the  third  pro- 
posal— namely,  old  age  pensioners 
— Mr  Chamberlain  only  repeats 
what  has  been  said  several  times 
by  the  Conservative  leaders,  by 
Lord  Salisbury  and  Sir  Michael 
Hicks-Beach — namely,  that  in  the 
matter  of  outdoor  relief  we  ought 
to  distinguish  between  the  thrifty 
and  industrious  poor,  whose  failure 
to  provide  for  their  old  age  has 
been  due  to  no  fault  of  their  own, 
and  the  lazy  loafer  who  has  never 
done  a  good  day's  work  in  his  life. 
Some  reform  of  the  Poor  Law 
based  on  this  distinction  is  likely 
to  be  among  the  first  things  un- 
dertaken by  a  Conservative  Gov- 
ernment. Of  Mr  Chamberlain's 
fourth  article  —  some  restriction, 
namely,  upon  the  influx  into  this 
country  of  pauper  aliens — we  are 
also  warranted  in  saying  that  it  is 
one  which  meets  with  the  approval 
of  the  Conservative  leaders.  In 
regard  to  the  hours  of  labour, 
which  Mr  Chamberlain  would  also 
include,  there  might  be  more  dif- 
ference of  opinion.  But  it  is  a 
question  on  which  the  Destructives 
are  quite  as  much  divided  as  their 
opponents ;  and,  what  is  more,  it 
is  one  on  which  the  working  classes 
themselves  are  by  no  means  unan- 
imous. But  the  four  measures  we 
have  already  named  will,  we  have 
good  reason  to  believe,  be  taken 
into  immediate  consideration  by 
the  next  Conservative  Ministry. 
They  will  ensure  compensation 
without  litigation  to  every  work- 
ing man  injured  in  his  employer's 
service.  They  will  secure  him  a 


decent  house,  and  help  him  to  be- 
come the  owner  of  it.  They  will 
provide  for  his  old  age  by  a  better 
system  than  the  workhouse;  and 
they  will  relieve  him  from  the 
competition  of  that  crowd  of 
foreign  paupers  whom  we  have  no 
right  to  support  while  our  own 
countrymen  are  starving. 

We  have  quoted  from  this 
speech  of  Mr  Chamberlain,  not 
because  we  necessarily  agree  with 
everything  contained  in  it,  or  be- 
lieve that  all  his  suggestions  could 
be  adopted  off-hand  without 
mature  consideration;  nor  yet 
because  we  suppose  him  to  have 
exhausted  the  programme  of  social 
improvement  to  be  expected  from 
Conservatives :  but  because  it 
points  to  a  great  truth,  which  all 
recent  history  illustrates — namely, 
that  measures  of  this  nature  can 
only  be  carried  out  by  a  political 
party  which  considers  the  objects 
of  them  to  be  of  primary  import- 
ance in  themselves,  and  does  not 
subordinate  them  to  political  and 
ecclesiastical  revolutions  which 
must  necessarily  block  the  way  for 
years.  Between  1874  and  1879 
Lord  Beaconsfield's  Government 
passed  fifteen  measures  for  the 
amelioration  of  the  labouring  poor, 
and  was  publicly  thanked  for  them 
by  the  labour  representatives  in 
the  House  of  Commons.  When 
Mr  Gladstone  came  into  power  in 
1880,  the  process  stopped.  When 
Lord  Salisbury  took  office  in  1886 
it  was  renewed;  and  when  Mr 
Gladstone  returned  again  in  1892 
it  was  again  abandoned.  Surely 
these  facts,  if  no  other,  should 
come  home  to  the  minds  and  hearts 
of  the  working  classes. 

In  referring  to  the  probable 
policy  of  the  next  Conservative 
Administration,  we  are  not  speak- 
ing altogether  without  knowledge. 
In  his  own  views  in  regard  to 
Employers'  Liability,  Mr  Chamber- 
lain declares  that  he  is  already 


1894.] 


Destructives  and  Conservatives. 


163 


assured  of  the  support  of  the  Con- 
servative leaders.  With  regard  to 
the  dwellings  of  the  poor,  old  age 
pensions,  and  alien  paupers,  pro- 
posals almost  identical  with  those 
of  Mr  Chamberlain  have  been  sub- 
mitted to  the  Duke  of  Devonshire 
and  Lord  Salisbury,  and  by  them 
approved.  They  will,  in  all  prob- 
ability, constitute  the  immediate 
business  of  the  next  Tory  Govern- 
ment, and  be  to  them  what  Home 
Rule  was  to  Mr  Gladstone.  But 
the  programme  of  social  reform 
sanctioned  by  the  leaders  of  the 
present  Opposition  extends  con- 
siderably further  than  the  mea- 
sures above  mentioned.  Their 
attention  will  probably  be  direct- 
ed to  some  important  modifica- 
tions in  the  present  system  of 
London  municipal  government,  in- 
cluding, perhaps,  the  creation  of 
several  subordinate  municipalities, 
possibly  coextensive  with  the  met- 
ropolitan boroughs,  and  expressly 
intended  for  the  protection  of 
local  interests  and  local  influence, 
now  too  often  swamped  in  the 
London  County  Council.  The 
Rotherhithe  election  and  many 
other  indications  seem  to  show 
that  London  is  ripe  for  such  a 
change.  Lord  Salisbury  and  the 
Duke  of  Devonshire  may  be  ex- 
pected also  to  take  up  that  long- 
agitated  and  much-needed  reform 
of  local  taxation,  which  shall  com- 
pel personal  property  to  bear  its 
fair  share  of  the  local  burdens. 
They  will  probably  introduce 
measures  for  the  equalisation  of 
rates  and  the  division  of  the  cost 
of  public  improvements  among  the 
various  interests  concerned  on  fair 
and  equitable  terms,  without  ex- 
torting money  beforehand  for  ad- 
vantages which  may  never  accrue. 
Here,  then,  we  have  seven  great 
measures  of  social  and  adminis- 
trative reform  which,  if  we  are  not 
mistaken,  will  form  the  programme 
of  the  next  Conservative  Cabinet : 


Employers'  Liability;  Labourers' 
Dwellings;  Reform  of  the  Poor 
Law,  so  as  to  relieve  outdoor  re- 
lief from  the  various  objections, 
both  moral  and  economical,  now  at- 
taching to  it,  combined  with  State 
assistance  in  aid  of  old  age  pen- 
sions ;  a  check  placed  upon  pauper 
immigrants,  whose  numbers  would 
be  largely  increased  by  Home 
Rule ;  decentralisation  of  Metro- 
politan government ;  the  equit- 
able rating  of  personal  property ; 
and  the  readjustment  of  local  bur- 
dens and  local  expenditure  through- 
out the  Metropolis.  When  do  the 
working  classes  expect  to  get  such 
measures  as  these  from  the  Destruc- 
tives,— men  who  live  only  for  ruin 
and  rapine,  and  who  would  scorn  to 
devote  whole  sessions  to  measures 
of  mere  practical  utility?  Again 
we  repeat,  that  if  the  Conservative 
leaders  promise  these  things,  they 
may  be  relied  upon  to  do  them. 
The  Gladstonian  leaders  will  pro- 
mise anything  they  are  asked  to 
promise  ;  but  that  is  only  carrying 
coals  to  Newcastle,  already  some- 
what overstocked  with  Radical 
commodities.  Nothing  will  come 
of  that  process  while  Home  Rule 
and  Disestablishment  are  alive. 
But  the  Conservatives  will  have 
their  hands  free  to  carry  out  these 
useful  measures ;  and  of  their 
anxiety  and  their  ability  to  do  so 
they  gave  abundant  proof  when 
they  were  last  in  office.  The 
people  of  this  country  have  the 
choice  before  them.  They  know 
best  whether  the  measures  we  have 
enumerated  are  what  they  want  or 
not.  The  Conservative  policy  does 
not  deal  in  blazing  questions,  food 
for  Hyde  Park  demonstrations,  and 
fustian  rant.  But  if  what  the 
working  man  wants  is  plenty, 
comfort,  and  security,  "to  eat  what 
he  plants  in  safety  under  his  own 
vine,"  this  programme  is  the  one 
that  he  will  certainly  prefer.  It 
may  be  deficient  in  that  healthy 


164 


Destructives  and  Conservatives. 


[July 


hatred  of  all  who  are  better  off 
than  himself,  which  is  the  whole 
duty  of  man  in  the  Radical  eye. 
It  may  be  ignoble  enough  to  seek 
rather  to  extinguish  class  ani- 
mosities than  to  fan  them.  But  it 
will  make  the  British  workman 
a  happy  man,  which  Home  Rule, 
Disestablishment,  death  duties, 
and  the  like  will  never  do.  The 
Conservative  leaders  may  well  say 
to  the  English  people  in  the  words 
of  Sir  Robert  Peel,  "  Do  not  lightly 
refuse  these  offers."  The  merit  of 
them  is,  that  they  are  capable  of 
being  fulfilled  at  once.  It  is  a 
cash  transaction.  Place  the  Con- 
servatives in  power,  and  the  money 
will  be  told  down.  No  waiting 
for  something  or  somebody  else, 
— till  a  church  has  been  robbed 
here,  or  a  senate  sent  adrift  there. 
These  social  boons  will  be  a  first 
charge  on  the  Conservative  estate, 
and  take  precedence  of  everything 
else. 

The  Gladstonian  party  were 
obliged  for  very  shame  to  com- 
plete the  work  of  their  prede- 
cessors in  the  matter  of  parish 
councils.  But  if  we  compare 
with  the  above  the  three  dis- 
tinctive notes  of  the  Radical 
party  at  present,  we  shall  see 
that  the  working  man  has  very 
little  reason  to  wish  for  its  con- 
tinuance in  office.  The  ultimate 
object  of  Home  Rule  is  the  ex- 
propriation and  consequent  ex- 
patriation of  the  Irish  aristocracy, 
a  policy  well  worthy  of  the  De- 
structive party.  This  means  the 
disappearance  from  the  island  of 
the  great  mass  of  the  Irish  country 
gentlemen  and  noblemen,  the  clos- 
ing of  their  country  houses,  and 
the  abandonment  of  the  soil  to 
a  population  of  squatters.  The 
English  and  Scotch  peasantry 
know  very  well  what  this  would 
signify  in  Great  Britain.  They 
know  well  enough  what  a  demand 


for  labour  is  created  by  the  Hall, 
the  Castle,  or  the  Abbey,  and  what 
a  number  of  people  would  be 
thrown  out  of  work  if  they  were 
closed.  The  same  thing  would 
happen  in  Ireland.  The  land 
could  not  support  all  the  extra 
population  thrown  upon  it;  and 
what  would  be  their  natural  re- 
source? Why,  England,  to  be 
sure,  as  she  has  always  been.  The 
Irish  labourer  would  flock  across 
the  Channel  in  five  times  larger 
numbers  than  we  have  ever  wit- 
nessed before,  and  pull  down  the 
price  of  labour  in  every  town  and 
village  in  the  kingdom.  What  is 
the  use  of  stopping  pauper  immi- 
gration in  one  direction,  if  we 
create  a  fresh  stream  of  it  in 
another  1 

But  we  are  threatened  with 
something  still  worse.  What 
Home  Rule  would  do  for  Ireland, 
it  seems  only  too  probable  that 
democratic  finance  will  do  for 
England.  It  is  impossible  to  read 
the  speech  of  the  Duke  of  Devon- 
shire at  Buxton  on  the  13th  of 
June,  without  feeling  that  we  are 
within  sight  of  a  social  revolution, 
likely  in  the  long-run  to  be  scarcely 
less  disastrous  than  the  effects  even 
of  agricultural  depression.  The 
Duke  told  his  audience  that  if 
Sir  William  Harcourt's  Budget 
passed  in  its  present  form,  the 
long  -  standing  relations  between 
his  own  family  and  their  friends, 
neighbours,  and  tenantry  on  the 
Yorkshire  and  Derbyshire  estates 
must  undergo  a  great  change ;  that 
the  sums  annually  expended  by 
himself  and  his  predecessors  on 
local  objects  must  be  seriously 
curtailed,  if  not  entirely  with- 
drawn ;  that  Chats  worth  and  Bol- 
ton  must  be  shut  up ;  and,  in 
short,  that  all  those  things  which, 
in  the  neighbourhood  of  a  great 
landed  proprietor,  tend  to  beautify 
and  enliven  English  country  life,  to 


1894.] 


Destructives  and  Conservatives. 


165 


sweeten  the  intercourse  between 
high  and  low,  to  encourage  local 
trades  and  handicrafts,  to  give 
employment  to  the  poor,  and  to 
exercise  a  wholesome  influence  on 
the  rich,  will  be  swept  away  at 
one  blow.  "  Hoc  Ithacus  velit  :  " 
but  is  this  what  the  British  people 
want1? 

We  say  that  this  disastrous  con- 
summation is  what  we  are  threat- 
ened with.  The  Conservatives  are 
doing  their  best  to  avert  it;  and 
the  amendment  to  the  6th  clause 
of  the  Budget  proposed  by  Mr 
Balfour,  and  accepted  by  the  Gov- 
ernment, on  the  15th  of  June,  may 
perhaps  go  some  way  in  that  direc- 
tion; and  it  still  remains  to  be 
seen  whether  the  hands  of  the 
House  of  Lords  are  so  completely 
tied  upon  money  bills  as  it  has 
been  customary  to  suppose.  In  a 
letter  written  by  the  Duke  of  Rut- 
land to  the  editor  of  the  'Standard/ 
and  published  in  that  journal  on 
the  14th  of  June,  we  are  reminded 
of  a  statement  made  by  Mr  Glad- 
stone in  1861 — namely,  that  the 
House  of  Lords  had  never,  so  far 
as  he  knew,  "  surrendered  the  right 
of  altering  a  bill,  even  though  it 
touch  a  matter  of  finance."  And 
Mr  Gladstone  went  on  to  say : 
"  If  I  might  say  for  my  own  part, 
though  anxious  to  vindicate  the 
privileges  of  this  House  against 
the  House  of  Lords  where  need 
may  arise,  yet  I  think  the  House 
of  Lords  is  right  and  wise  in 
avoiding  any  formal  surrender  of 
the  power  even  of  amendment  in 
cases  where  it  might  think  it  jus- 
tifiable even  to  amend  a  bill  relat- 
ing to  finance."  The  public  are 
greatly  indebted  to  the  Duke  of 
Rutland  for  calling  attention  to 
this  statement.  But  we  have  no 
intention  of  pursuing  the  subject 
any  further.  We  only  wished  to 
point  out,  or  to  help  others  to 
point  out,  to  the  working  classes 


that  the  operation  of  Home  Rule 
in  Ireland,  and  of  the  new  death 
duties  in  Great  Britain,  tend  very 
much  to  the  same  end,  and  this  an 
end  which  would  be  distinctly  in- 
jurious to  all  the  classes  who  live 
either  by  manual  labour  or  local 
trade. 

Now  let  us  take  the  third  lead- 
ing note  of  the  Government  policy, 
Disestablishment.  What  can  the 
working  man  ever  hope  to  gain  by 
that?  Of  course,  if  the  tithes 
were  taken  from  the  Church  and 
given  to  the  landowner,  the  labour- 
er might  suppose  that  rents  would 
be  reduced  and  wages  increased. 
But  he  ought  to  know  by  this  time 
that  any  such  settlement  is  im- 
possible. The  tithes  would  be 
devoted  to  public  purposes,  and 
neither  the  landlord  nor  the  tenant 
would  be  a  whit  the  better  for  it. 
The  clergy  would  be  all  the  poorer, 
while  nobody  else  would  be  any 
the  richer.  The  rector  or  vicar 
who  had  hitherto  spent  a  large 
part  of  his  income  in  charity 
would  be  unable  to  do  so  any 
longer,  and  the  working  man  would 
have  lost  one  benefactor  without 
having  gained  another.  The  relief 
to  the  rates  from  a  portion  of  the 
tithes  being  devoted  to  local  pur- 
poses would  be  very  trifling,  and 
whatever  it  was  it  would  not 
benefit  those  from  whom  no  rates 
are  collected.  Add  to  this  that, 
little  or  much,  it  would  be  expend- 
ed on  objects  to  which  the  labour- 
er is  totally  indifferent;  and  we 
think  we  have  said  enough  to 
show  that  he  would  be  a  loser 
rather  than  a  gainer  by  the  spolia- 
tion of  the  Church  of  England: 
for  of  course  he  must  understand 
this,  that  the  process,  once  begun 
in  the  Welsh  bishoprics,  would 
speedily  be  extended  to  the  Eng- 
lish. 

Let  him,  then,  place  the  two 
programmes  side  by  side,  and  com- 


166 


Destructives  and  Conservatives. 


[July 


pare  what  he  has  to  expect  from 
the  success  of  the  Radicals  with 
what  he  is  likely  to  obtain  by  the 
success  of  the  Conservatives,  and 
we  will  cheerfully  leave  the  issue 
to  himself. 

It  seems  to  be  assumed  by  a 
certain  class  of  Radical  declaimers 
that  "  the  English  democracy,"  as 
the  phrase  runs,  is  one  homo- 
geneous body,  animated  throughout 
by  the  same  sentiments,  and  dis- 
tinctly hostile  to  the  existing 
order  of  society.  Absurd  as  such 
a  theory  is,  it  is  either  held  or 
assumed  for  party  purposes  by 
men  of  education  and  intelligence ; 
though  notably  rather  by  men  of 
the  cloister  and  the  gown,  than 
by  men  of  the  world  who  know 
much  about  the  country.  Not 
long  ago  the  head-master  of  one 
of  our  great  public  schools,  writing 
a  letter  to  the  'Times'  on  the 
subject  of  Disestablishment  and 
the  Welsh  Church,  declared  the 
new  democracy  would  rise  in  its 
wrath  and  sweep  away  the  English 
Establishment  as  well,  if  the 
Church  in  Wales  was  still  main- 
tained. The  silliness  of  this  lan- 
guage is  only  equalled  by  the  igno- 
rance which  it  displays  of  the 
actual  state  of  opinion.  What 
and  where  is  this  new  democracy 
which  is  to  do  these  great  things  ? 
Why,  much  more  than  half  of  it 
is  decidedly  Conservative ;  and  its 
centres  are  our  large  towns.  This 
is  the  new  democracy,  which  re- 
turned a  Conservative  majority  for 
Great  Britain  at  the  two  last  gen- 
eral elections,  and  has  given  no 
evidence  of  having  changed  its 
mind  since.  This  democracy  is  com- 
posed of  many  different  strata, 
and  represents  a  wide  variety  of 
interests.  It  is  no  more  unani- 
mous or  homogeneous  than  the 
bourgeoise  or  the  aristocracy.  To 
expect  this  new  democracy,  for- 
sooth, to  rise  in  its  majesty  as  one 


man  to  sweep  away  anything  what- 
ever, is  one  of  the  most  ludicrous 
ideas  that  ever  took  possession  of 
the  brain  of  a  flimsy  pedant.  The 
"  new  democracy "  are  no  more 
likely  to  combine  for  any  one 
object  than  the  whole  nation  is. 
But  at  present  they  have  certainly 
a  strong  leaning  in  one  direction, 
and  that  is  towards  Conservatism. 
Such  nonsense  as  Dr  Perceval's  is 
all  very  well  in  the  mouths  of 
illiterate  demagogues  and  tub  ora- 
tors. We  may  laugh  at  it  in  them. 
But  scholars  must  blush  to  hear  it 
uttered  by  a  scholar. 

Very  erroneous  ideas  prevail 
about  the  English  working  classes, 
distinguishing  them  for  the  mo- 
ment from  the  Scotch,  by  those 
who  suppose  it  to  be  a  law  of 
nature  that  the  toilers  should  be 
at  war  with  the  thinkers,  and  that 
every  labouring  man  must  be  a 
Radical  at  heart.  We  have  al- 
ready noticed  the  evidence  to  the 
contrary  supplied  by  the  two  last 
general  elections,  so  persistently 
ignored  by  Radical  theorists.  But 
apart  from  that,  why  should  the 
present  generation  of  working  men 
be  necessarily  hostile  to  Conser- 
vatism 1  Our  towns  and  villages 
are  divided  into  parties  just  as 
the  whole  nation  is.  In  each 
there  will  be  found  a  section  of 
the  inhabitants,  sometimes  a  ma- 
jority, sometimes  only  two  or 
three  individuals,  discontented 
with  what  exists.  As  no  human 
institution  can  ever  be  perfect, 
this  is  inevitable.  It  always  has 
been  so  in  the  past,  and  always 
will  be  so  in  the  future,  however 
near  we  may  approach  to  the 
golden  age.  But  to  confound  this 
sporadic  discontent,  which  springs 
up  as  naturally  as  weeds  among 
the  corn,  with  that  widespread 
sense  'of  injustice  and  oppression 
which  constitutes  a  real  danger  to 
society,  is  to  fall  into  a  grave 


1894.] 


Destructives  and  Conservatives. 


167 


error,  which,  if  statesmen  and 
legislators  are  misled  by  it,  may 
be  disastrous.  It  would  be  news 
to  us  that,  among  either  the  arti- 
sans or  the  peasantry  of  Great 
Britain,  any  such  feeling  as  this 
last  existed.  We  do  not  mean  to 
say  that  early  in  the  present  cen- 
tury, when  the  factory  question 
first  came  to  the  surface,  there  was 
not  a  very  bitter  feeling  between 
employers  and  employed  in  some 
of  our  great  centres  of  industry. 
But  although  the  old  controversy 
between  labour  and  capital  still 
survives,  nobody  will  pretend  to 
say  that  it  is  still  marked  by  any 
of  that  personal  animosity  which  is 
represented  in  the  pages  of  '  Sybil.' 
In  the  rural  districts  there  have 
been  periods  when  a  very  angry 
feeling  prevailed  among  the  agri- 
cultural labourers  ;  but  that  was 
roused  by  the  introduction  of 
machinery,  and  was  chiefly  direct- 
ed against  the  farmers.  The  peas- 
antry have  quarrelled  with  the 
farmers,  and  the  farmers  have 
quarrelled  with  their  landlords. 
But  there  has  been  no  feud  be- 
tween the  landlords  and  the  peas- 
antry. In  some  of  the  most  recent 
reports  of  the  Assistant  Agricul- 
tural Commissioners  there  is  evi- 
dence to  show  that  the  labourers 
in  England  fully  appreciate  the 
position  of  the  gentry,  understand 
the  losses  they  have  endured  and 
the  sacrifices  they  have  made,  and 
thoroughly  sympathise  with  them. 
Again,  there  has  been  no  hostility 
of  any  kind  between  the  peasantry 
and  the  clergy.  The  clergy  have 
done  nothing  to  injure  or  to  irri- 
tate them,  even  though  we  allowed, 
what  is  scandalously  false,  that 
they  had  done  nothing  to  benefit 
them.  Neither  in  towns  nor 
country,  therefore,  would  it  be 
natural  to  expect  any  of  •  that 
violent  class  feeling — beyond  what 
is  directly  stirred  up  by  Noncon- 


formist agitators — which  by  many 
very  superior  persons  is  alleged  to 
prevail  in  them.  If  we  can  find 
no  reason  a  priori  why  such  feel- 
ings should  exist,  still  less  do  we 
find  any  signs  of  them  in  contem- 
porary facts.  Discontented,  dis- 
affected men,  longing  for  extensive 
changes  and  social  revolution,  do 
not  usually  vote  for  Conservatives. 
Yet  this  is  what  a  large  majority 
of  the  English  working  classes  do. 
We  do  not  anticipate,  therefore, 
that  the  "  new  democracy "  will 
rise  up  en  masse  of  its  own  accord 
and  destroy  the  British  Constitu- 
tion. Three  centuries  of  kindly 
relations  between  class  and  class 
leave  an  impression  behind  them 
which  is  not  to  be  effaced  in  a 
day.  But  at  the  same  time  we 
are  never  permitted  to  forget  even 
for  a  moment  that  we  have  a  new 
force  to  reckon  with  at  the  present 
day  unknown  to  our  forefathers, 
and  that  is  agitation.  By  the  use 
of  this  machinery  small  but  reso- 
lute minorities  are  enabled  to 
exercise  a  degree  of  influence  out 
of  all  proportion  to  the  real  amount 
of  public  opinion  by  which  they 
are  supported.  By  noisy  demon- 
strations attended  by  large  crowds, 
which  can  be  collected  at  a  few 
hours'  notice,  they  acquire  among 
the  thoughtless  part  of  the  nation 
a  reputation  for  power  and  popu- 
larity which  they  do  not  really  pos- 
sess, and  contrive  to  impress  upon 
the  same  unreflecting  class  a  vague 
kind  of  idea  that  it  is  useless  to 
resist  them.  Behind  all  this  noise, 
all  these  numbers,  all  this  fiery 
indignation,,  there  must,  they 
think,  be  some  amount  of  truth. 
Whether  there  really  is  any  or 
not,  they  are  too  indolent  to  in- 
quire ;  and  in  this  way  a  kind  of 
spurious  public  opinion  is  gen- 
erated, which  it  is  difficult  to  dis- 
tinguish from  the  genuine,  and  is 
made  to  pass  for  such  so  often 


168 


Destructives  and  Conservatives. 


[July  1894. 


that  the  difference  between  them 
is  forgotten.  Agitation  is  now 
reduced  to  a  system  and  raised 
to  the  dignity  of  a  profession. 
And  this  is  the  new  power,  and 
not  the  new  democracy  itself, 
which  Conservatives  really  have 
to  fear. 

They  have  to  fear  it  more  es- 
pecially for  this  reason,  that  it 
is  a  force  with  which  they  are 
not  well  qualified  to  cope.  Agi- 
tation is  not  their  rdle ;  yet  it 
is  difficult  to  fight  the  agitators 
except  with  their  own  weapons. 
It  is  their  business  to  show  that 
no  good  thing  can  come  out  of  the 
Conservative  party ;  to  blacken 
every  boon  which  they  offer  to  the 
people ;  and  to  declare  that,  if 
they  ever  pass  any  measure  for 
the  benefit  of  the  labouring  class, 
they  are  only  seeking  to  betray 
them  with  a  kiss.  It  is  the  poison 
thus  instilled  into  the  minds  of 
that  numerous  class  who  hold  the 
destinies  of  England  in  their 
hands,  which  is  the  only  thing 
likely  to  operate  against  their 
cordial  reception  of  the  new  Con- 
servative programme.  And  we 
fear  it  is  to  the  natural  common- 
sense  and  love  of  fair-play  to  be 
found  in  Englishmen  of  all  classes 
that  we  must  look  for  an  antidote, 
rather  than  to  anything  which 
Conservatives  themselves  can  do 
to  counteract  the  evil.  The  hope- 
ful sign,  on  the  other  hand,  is  this, 
that  both  north  and  south  of  the 
Tweed  there  are  evidently  large  sec- 
tions of  the  population  which  are 
proof  against  this  system  of  false- 
hood, and  that  more  than  half  the 
working  men  have  begun  to  find 
out  that  the  Radicals  have  been 
only  making  cat's  paws  of  them. 


As  for  such  flaring  demonstra- 
tions as  the  Leeds  Conference,  we 
do  not  believe  for  a  moment  that 
a  single  convert  will  be  made  to 
the  Gladstonian  party  by  so  trans- 
parent a  device  as  this.  The 
House  of  Lords  has  just  saved 
the  people  from  two  great  dangers  : 
it  has  secured  for  them  an  oppor- 
tunity of  speaking  their  minds 
freely  on  certain  great  questions 
in  which  they  are  deeply  interested, 
and  has  assisted  to  complete  the 
work  of  local  government  begun 
and  nearly  finished  by  the  pre- 
vious Administration.  And  for 
this,  forsooth,  those  who  figure  as 
the  people's  friends  demand  their 
condign  punishment.  What  the 
House  of  Lords  has  done  is  not 
to  injure  the  demos,  but  to  dis- 
credit the  demagogue.  Hinc  illce 
lacrymce.  But  there  is  nothing 
to  be  feared  from  this  kind  of 
thunder,  as  harmless  as  Mons 
Meg  herself.  It  is  the  daily  work 
of  slander  and  calumny  which  is 
carried  on  by  the  emissaries  of 
Radicalism  in  every  pot-house  in 
the  kingdom  which  constitutes  our 
real  danger,  and  not  the  unwieldy 
and  antiquated  weapons  fired  off 
by  Sir  W.  Lawson  and  Mr  Labou- 
chere.  It  is  this  creeping,  crawl- 
ing, but  ubiquitous  agitation  which 
will  come  between  the  working 
man  and  the  real  practical  benefits 
intended  for  him,  if  anything  can 
have  that  effect.  All  that  Con- 
servatives can  do  is  to  try  to 
brush  away  the  lies  as  fast  as 
they  are  spun.  They  cannot  pelt 
the  Radicals  back  again  with  their 
own  mud.  But  they  may  hold 
aloft  the  Conservative  banner,  and 
take  care  that  the  people  under- 
stand what  is  written  upon  it. 


Printed  by  William  Blackwood  and  Sons. 


BLACKWOOD'S 
EDINBUKGH     MAGAZINE. 


No.  DCCCCXLVI. 


AUGUST  1894. 


VOL.  CLVI. 


THE    CAVALRY    ARM    OF    THE    BRITISH    SERVICE. 


SINCE  the  days  when  Ziethen 
and  Seidlitz  contributed  so  bril- 
liantly to  the  victories  of  Frederick 
the  Great,  the  cavalry  arm  has 
undergone  considerable  vicissitude. 
Quarter  of  a  century  ago  the  con- 
viction was  all  but  universal  that 
there  was  no  longer  any  metier  for 
cavalry  on  the  battle-field.  At 
every  field- day,  in  every  newspaper, 
the  cavalry  was  told  that  its  sun 
had  set  for  ever ;  and  it  was  little 
wonder  that  under  pressure  so 
powerful  the  mounted  arm  came 
to  distrust  its  own  potentialities. 
But  under  the  test  of  actual  battle 
the  theories  of  the  pessimists  went 
to  water ;  and  at  Mars-la-Tour  the 
charges  of  Bredow's  brigade  and  of 
the  1st  Guard  Dragoons  proved 
triumphantly  what  results  well-led 
and  well-disciplined  cavalry  could 
accomplish,  even  in  the  most  un- 
favourable conditions,  and  against 
infantry  still  unshaken.  The  great 
fact  came  then  to  be  realised,  that 
the  very  intensity  of  the  infantry 

VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCXLVI. 


struggle  creates  moments  of  crisis, 
when  the  influence  of  control  no 
longer  has  sway,  and  when,  in  spite 
of  the  fire  of  breechloading  rifles, 
the  bravest  infantry,  if  assailed  at 
the  right  moment,  may  be  ridden 
over  like  a  flock  of  sheep.  Mars- 
la-Tour  created  a  revolution  in  the 
estimate  of  the  cavalry  arm  held 
by  the  Great  Powers  of  continental 
Europe.  Since  that  memorable 
day  they  have  been  unanimous  in 
the  conviction  that  an  adequate 
force  of  highly  trained  cavalry  is 
absolutely  indispensable  to  the 
safety  and  success  of  a  modern 
army  in  the  field,  and  they  are 
exerting  earnest  and  continuous 
effort  to  perfect  the  efficiency  of 
their  mounted  arm  in  every  detail. 
The  approaching  cavalry  man- 
oeuvres, which  are  to  be  held  this 
year  for  the  first  time  under  the 
independent  command  and  direc- 
tion of  the  inspector  -  general  of 
cavalry,  may  advantageously  direct 
the  attention  of  the  country  to 


170 


The  Cavalry  Arm  of  the  British  Service. 


[Aug. 


sundry  questions  of  great  import- 
ance alike  to  its  protective  and  its 
financial  interests.  It  is  proposed 
in  this  article  to  inquire  whether 
the  cavalry  arm  of  our  military 
service  has  attained  and  continues 
to  maintain  the  standard  of  effi- 
ciency demanded  by  the  require- 
ments of  modern  war,  and  there- 
fore justifies  its  existence  as  a  very 
costly  item  in  the  annual  Army 
Estimates.  If  such  inquiry  shall 
result  in  the  demonstration  that 
the  standard  of  efficiency  in  the 
cavalry  is  below  that  undoubtedly 
attained  by  the  other  arms,  it 
seems  eminently  proper  to  deter- 
mine to  what  extent  this  is  so, 
and  to  attempt  to  ascertain  on 
whom  rests  the  blame  for  the  in- 
jury inflicted  on  the  country  in 
being  burdened  with  an  unduly 
large  charge  for  an  inferior  produc- 
tion. 

In  the  consideration  of  this  sub- 
ject, it  may  be  useful  to  the  gen- 
eral reader  to  be  briefly  told  what 
is  the  raison  d'etre  of  cavalry  in 
modern  war.  Its  role  is  twofold  : 
on  the  march,  and  on  the  battle- 
field. On  the  march  its  cavalry 
are  the  eyes  with  which  an  army 
sees,  and  the  ears  with  which  it 
hears.  From  the  beginning  of  an 
advance  the  cavalry  is  out  in  its 
front  and  on  its  flanks,  at  once 
protecting  and  informing  the 
army,  which  marches  safely  and 
trustingly  within  the  screen  which 
it  affords.  The  information  which 
the  zeal  and  the  forwardness  of 
the  cavalry  gathers  and  sends  in 
has  the  advantage  over  that  fur- 
nished by  spies,  in  that  it  is  fur- 
nished by  professional  soldiers 
who,  because  of  their  superior 
intelligence  and  conversance  with 
the  features  of  war,  are  capable  of 
forming  an  opinion  as  to  its  value. 
As  the  advance  proceeds,  the  cav- 
alry divisions  which  precede  the 


respective  armies  presently  come 
into  collision;  and  it  is  the  cav- 
alry which  has  succeeded  in  de- 
feating that  of  the  enemy  that 
thenceforth  will  achieve  important 
successes  in  gaining  intelligence. 
"  Then  only,"  in  the  words  of  Yon 
der  Goltz,  "will  individual  officers 
and  small  detachments  be  able  to 
penetrate  to  the  enemy.  A  supe- 
rior strength  of  advance-cavalry 
is  master  of  the  situation,  the 
superiority  not  wholly  consisting 
in  numbers,  but  also  in  a  just 
proportion  of  efficiency  and  num- 
bers; and  the  weaker  cavalry 
must  accept  the  fate  of  being 
driven  back  upon  its  main  body, 
to  which  it  becomes  rather  an  en- 
cumbrance instead  of  an  advan- 
tage." 

Valuable  as  are  the  services  of 
the  cavalry  while  acting  as  the 
eyes  and  ears  of  an  army,  its  tac- 
tical duties  on  the  battle-field  are 
not  of  less  importance.  These 
may  be  briefly  summed  up  as  fol- 
lows :  To  endeavour  to  gain  the 
flank  or  rear  of  the  enemy,  with 
intent  to  gain  information  and 
create  a  diversion :  to  assist  and 
support  any  movement  of  the 
other  arms  made  with  the  object 
of  outflanking  the  enemy  :  to  pre- 
vent, retard,  or  give  timely  notice 
of  any  attempt  of  this  nature 
made  by  the  enemy :  to  push  for- 
ward detachments  along  the  roads 
by  which  reinforcements  to  the 
enemy  may  be  expected,  to  give 
early  notice  of  the  approach  of 
such,  and  to  harass  and  impede 
them  should  they  appear.  It  may 
be  added  that,  as  in  the  province 
of  strategy,  so  in  the  sphere  of 
tactics  must  the  hostile  cavalry 
be  overthrown  before  any  useful 
end  can  be  obtained.  The  raison 
d'etre  of  cavalry,  then,  may  be 
shortly  summed  up  as  follows : 
(1)  To  carry  out  its  strategic  and 


1894. 


The  Cavalry  Arm  of  the  British  Service. 


171 


tactical  role  as  generally  outlined 
above;  and  (2)  to  everpower  and 
paralyse  the  enemy's  cavalry. 

The  necessity  to  an  army  of  to- 
day of  a  sufficiently  numerous  and 
powerful  cavalry  force  having  been 
thus  indicated,  the  reader  may 
fairly  desire  to  ask  for  a  definition 
of  the  characteristics  which  con- 
stitute a  perfectly  efficient  cavalry. 
The  succinct  reply  is,  that  a  cavalry 
force  may  be  held  to  possess  all  the 
necessary  attributes  whose  men 
and  horses  are  physically  fit  in  all 
respects  for  the  cavalry  service — 
the  men  good  riders  and  the  horses 
thoroughly  trained ;  which  is 
equipped  in  the  most  serviceable 
manner  ;  which  is  commanded  and 
led  by  competent  officers  and 
leaders  thoroughly  known  to  their 
men,  by  whom  they  have  been  in- 
structed and  trained  in  peace-time, 
and  in  whom  they  have  full  confi- 
dence ;  which  is  possessed  of  an 
organisation  lending  itself  most 
readily  to  the  kind  of  work  re- 
quired in  war,  and  requiring  no 
radical  changes  on  mobilisation ; 
and,  finally,  which  has  been 
thoroughly  trained  and  instructed 
in  all  the  duties  it  may  be  called 
upon  to  undertake  in  war  by  the 
officers  who  will  lead  and  com- 
mand it. 

The  first  two  of  these  attributes 
are  simply  the  ordinary  require- 
ments of  every  reasonably  efficient 
fighting  body.  But  some  comment 
is  worth  being  made  on  the  three 
latter,  since  in  their  fulfilment  a 
principle  is  involved  which  is 
peculiar  to  this  arm,  and  which  is 
to  it  what  fire-power  is  to  the  other 
arms,  yet  which  is  habitually  dis- 
regarded in  the  preparation  of  our 
cavalry  for  war.  It  is  an  un- 
questioned fact — proved  by  history 
and  testified  to  by  leaders  of  ex- 
perience in  the  most  recent  Con- 
tinental wars  —  that  when  two 


cavalry  forces  of  fairly  equal 
strength  engage,  victory  will  cer- 
tainly belong  to  the  side  which 
possesses  the  higher  morale.  No 
one  who  cares  to  picture  in  im- 
agination the  conditions  of  a 
cavalry  combat  can  fail  instinc- 
tively to  recognise  that  in  it  this 
quality  must  exercise  a  far  more 
powerful  influence  than  in  any 
other  kind  of  fight.  What,  then, 
are  the  elements  which  go  to  con- 
stitute this  morale  ?  They  are 
various  and  they  are  cumulative. 
The  leader  must  be  known  and 
trusted  by  his  men.  The  character 
and  value  of  each  individual  man 
must  be  known  to  the  leader  by 
virtue  of  the  latter's  experience  in 
the  training  and  instruction  of  the 
former.  The  superior  officers  must 
be  possessed  of  tried  and  acknow- 
ledged competence  to  command. 
An  organisation  must  exist  which 
shall  keep  close  together  in  action 
men  who  have  been  trained  and 
instructed  together  in  peace-time. 
A  spirit  of  mutual  confidence  must 
pervade  all  ranks,  accompanied 
by  the  highest  discipline  and  an 
individual  and  collective  resolution 
to  conquer  or  die. 

While  a  high  standard  of  morale, 
engendered  by  a  sound  organisa- 
tion and  a  careful  system  of  train- 
ing and  instruction,  must  imbue 
the  whole  body  when  acting  to- 
gether, this  thorough  military  edu- 
cation is  calculated  to  inspire  in 
the  individual  non-commissioned 
officer  and  private  trooper  the 
noble  virtues  of  self-command  and 
self-reliance.  In  one  of  the  most 
important  duties  of  cavalry — the 
service  of  reconnaissance — the  ex- 
perience may  befall  a  small  scout- 
ing party,  consisting  mayhap  only 
of  a  corporal  and  two  men — nay, 
it  may  occur  to  one  lone  man — to 
be  isolated  in  the  midst  of  dangers, 
extrication  from  which  can  be  ac- 


172 


The  Cavalry  Arm  of  the  British  Service. 


[Aug. 


complished  by  the  acuteness,  intui- 
tion, and  self-reliance  impressed  by 
thorough  training  in  peace-time. 
Morale  in  the  collective  body,  and 
self-reliance  in  the  individual,  are, 
then,  the  qualities  which  it  is  of 
paramount  importance  to  develop 
and  maintain  in  the  cavalry  arm, 
and  this  essential  result  can  be  at- 
tained only  by  the  sedulous  culti- 
vation of  the  specific  attributes 
which  have  been  detailed  above. 

We  come  now  face  to  face  with 
the  more  particular  inquiry  which 
it  is  the  object  of  this  article  to 
discuss  :  Does  the  British  cavalry 
fulfil  these  essential  requirements 
of  modern  war? 

It  is  not  intended  to  dispute 
that  the  class  of  man  and  horse 
furnished  to  our  cavalry  service  is 
sufficiently  good,  although  there  is 
obvious  room  for  improvement  as 
regards  the  ages  of  both  men  and 
horses,  especially  of  the  latter.  It 
may  be  granted  that,  in  a  volun- 
teer army  organised  on  the  prin- 
ciple of  short  colour -service  and 
large  reserves,  it  is  quite  possible 
to  keep  up  an  efficient  cavalry 
force  with  the  material  at  disposal. 
The  same  remark  holds  good  as  to 
equipment.  If  it  is  the  fact  that 
our  cavalry  has  failed  to  reach  and 
maintain  the  standard  of  efficiency 
attained  by  the  other  arms  of  the 
service,  the  blame  does  not  lie  alto- 
gether at  the  door  of  the  taxpayer. 
Discussing  the  question  on  the 
basis  of  the  characteristics  which 
go  to  constitute  an  efficient  cav- 
alry, we  have  dealt  with  men, 
horses,  and  equipment;  and  we 
now  proceed  to  consider  whether 
the  commanders  and  leaders  of  our 
cavalry  are  sufficiently  competent. 

There  unfortunately  is  a  very 
widespread  feeling  of  doubt  and 
uncertainty  on  this  point  among 
those  best  qualified  to  judge. 


Whatever  qualifications  the  supe- 
rior officers  of  cavalry  may  pos- 
sess as  a  body,  it  is  quite  certain 
that  they  appear  to  have  signally 
failed  to  impress  the  highest  mili- 
tary authorities  with  their  use  as 
members  of  the  staff.  In  the  head- 
quarter staff"  of  H.R.H.  the  Com- 
rnander-in-Chief,  not  a  single  cav- 
alry officer  is  to  be  found,  although 
in  that  staff  every  other  branch  of 
our  military  service,  inclusive  of 
the  militia,  yeomanry,  and  volun- 
teers, has  its  specific  representa- 
tive in  the  shape  of  a  deputy 
adjutant -general.  The  inspector- 
general  and  the  assistant  adju- 
tant-general of  cavalry  do  not 
belong  to  the  headquarter  staff. 
In  war  the  purveyance  of  intelli- 
gence would  chiefly  devolve  on  the 
cavalry  arm ;  yet  in  the  Military 
Intelligence  Department  there  is 
no  officer  of  cavalry.  In  the  dis- 
trict staff  of  the  United  Kingdom 
only  one  colonel  of  cavalry  is  em- 
ployed, and  it  is  by  a  mere  chance 
that  he  is  serving  in  a  district 
command  in  which  cavalry  is  com- 
prised. It  would  seem  that  the 
British  cavalry  arm  is,  to  use  a 
familiar  expression,  "no  man's 
child,"  the  result  being  that  there 
is  a  total  lack  of  a  uniform  system, 
that  commanding  officers  are  mostly 
left  to  their  own  devices,  and  that, 
as  regards  the  cavalry,  "  go-as-you- 
please  "  is  the  order  of  the  day. 

The  impending  cavalry  manoeu- 
vres in  Berkshire  will  be  the  fifth 
of  a  consecutive  series  in  which 
several  regiments  have  been 
brought  together  for  manoeuvre 
purposes.  But  can  any  experi- 
enced soldier  who  has  watched 
the  working  of  the  cavalry  through- 
out this  series  of  manoeuvres  ven- 
ture to  assert  that  those  of  last 
year  showed  the  least  improvement 
in  any  respect  on  the  first  of  the 
series  in  1890?  On  the  contrary, 


1894.] 


The  Cavalry  Arm  of  the  British  Service. 


173 


it  appeared  to  many  that  there  was 
a  decided  falling-off.  Excuses  may 
be  found  in  the  lack  of  supervision 
and  in  other  causes  for  the  defects 
in  organisation  and  training  which 
manifest  themselves  in  regiments 
isolated  in  provincial  quarters. 
But  surely  we  have  a  right  to  ex- 
pect that  in  a  station  such  as  Alder- 
shot,  where  there  is  every  facility 
of  ground,  and  where  three  regi- 
ments (for  some  months  in  the  year 
four  or  five  regiments)  are  quar- 
tered in  the  same  camp,  some 
marked  improvement  should  mani- 
fest itself — some  real  training  and 
preparation  for  war.  The  Alder- 
shot  brigade  has  been  under  the 
same  supervision  fof  the  last  four 
and  a  half  years,  during  which  time 
no  regiment  has  belonged  to  the 
command  for  a  shorter  period  than 
two  years.  Yet  it  is  a  notorious 
fact  that  throughout  that  time 
matters  have  gone  backward  rather 
than  forward,  and  that,  if  at  any 
time  during  the  period  named  a 
German  cavalry  general  had  gone 
down  to  inspect  that  brigade  with 
the  same  thoroughness  as  he  would 
have  inspected  one  of  his  own,  he 
would  have  found  it  unfit  for  its 
duties  in  war,  because  of  its  organic 
want  of  uniformity  in  training  and 
instruction.  During  the  greater 
part  of  the  period  in  question  the 
Aldershot  division  was  commanded 
by  a  distinguished  soldier,  who, 
having  himself  experience  of  the 
mounted  arm,  could  not  but  have 
realised  that  his  cavalry  brigade 


Officers. 

Highest  establishment        24  2 

Lowest  establishment  M  n 

The  establishment  in  officers,  war- 
rant and  non-commissioned  officers, 
and  units  (4  squadrons)  is  the  same 


was  the  one  weak  spot  in  his  other- 
wise most  efficient  command,  and 
whose  greatest  among  his  many 
merits  perhaps  was,  that  by  dint 
of  his  own  personal  exertions  he 
was  able  to  prevent  actual  de- 
terioration in  the  cavalry  arm  of 
the  division. 

At  manoeuvres,  at  Aldershot,  at 
the  Ourragh,  and  elsewhere,  faults 
and  mistakes  are  readily  observ- 
able, which  prove  beyond  possibil- 
ity of  doubt  that  methodical  train- 
ing and  instruction  in  correct 
principles  by  brigadiers,  command- 
ing and  staff  officers  of  the  cavalry 
are  the  exception  rather  than  the 
rule.  It  is  an  unfortunate  but 
unquestionable  fact  that  our  cav- 
alry officers  as  a  body  are  not  so 
competent  as  they  should  be, 
having  regard  to  the  immensely 
increased  requirements  of  cavalry 
in  modern  war.  But  that  this  is 
owing  in  some  measure  to  causes 
over  which  only  the  very  superior 
officers,  as  for  instance  the  In- 
spector-General, have  any  power 
of  control — and  that  only  by  the 
pressure  of  their  advice — we  pro- 
pose to  prove  in  proceeding  now 
to  the  consideration  of  organis- 
ation. 

There  are  31  regiments  of  cavalry 
in  the  British  service,  of  which  20 
are  on  home  service.  These  20 
are  organised  in  no  less  than  six 
different  establishments.  Let  us 
take  two  regiments,  one  in  the 
highest  establishment,  one  in  the 
lowest : — 


Horses. 

410 

280 


3.    Corpls. 

24  32        545 

it  ii         315 


horses.     In  the  regiment   on   the 
highest  establishment  1   major,  1 

_ f captain,  3  subalterns,-  2  troop-ser- 
in each  regiment.  The  difference  geant-majors,  6  sergeants,  and  8 
is  in  the  number  of  men  and  corporals  are  maintained  to  super- 


174 


The  Cavalry  Arm  of  the  British  Service. 


[Aug. 


vise  a  squadron  strength  of  140 
men  and  103  horses.  In  the  regi- 
ment on  the  lowest  establishment 
exactly  the  same  supervising 
strength  is  maintained  over  78 
men  and  70  horses.  Of  the  horses 
in  both  categories  a  considerable 
proportion  are  more  or  less  un- 
trained, and,  of  course,  unequal  to 
field-service;  and  in  this  respect 
the  regiment  on  the  smaller  estab- 
lishment is  obviously  much  more 
heavily  burdened  than  is  that  on 
the  higher.  As  regards  the  men 
of  the  former,  there  has  to  be  de- 
ducted from  the  given  total  those 
employed  as  officers'  servants, 
band,  storemen,  young  horsemen, 
&c. ;  and  this  done,  we.  arrive  at 
the  astounding  fact  that  in  a 
squadron  of  a  regiment  on  the 
lowest  establishment  a  staff  of 
21  officers  and  non-commissioned 
officers  is  maintained  to  supervise, 
train,  and  instruct  about  40  avail- 
able men,  nearly  one-half  of  whom 
are  probably  recruits.  In  no  less 
than  7  of  the  20  cavalry  regi- 
ments in  Great  Britain  and  Ire- 
land does  this  state  of  things 
exist.  How  then  can  any  of  these 
7  regiments  be  possibly  said  to 
possess  an  organisation  which 
lends  itself  most  readily  to  the 
kind  of  work  required  in  war, 
and  which  needs  to  undergo  no 
radical  change  on  mobilisation? 
And  so  from  this  condition  of 
emaciated  exhaustion  a  regiment 
moves  up  the  long  ladder  of  suc- 
cessive establishments,  till  in  the 
course  of  years  it  arrives  at  the 
topmost  rung.  By  then  the  cap- 
tain has  probably  become  a  squad- 
ron-leader, the  subaltern  a  captain, 
the  sergeant  a  sergeant-major,  the 
corporal  a  sergeant ;  and  under 
what  a  system  of  organisation  and 
training  have  they  been  prepared 
to  fulfil  duties  which  fall  to  their 
lot,  now  that  for  the  first  time 


they  really  can  attain  to  some 
similarity  to  the  conditions  of  ser- 
vice in  the  field  ! 

What  happened  in  1882,  when 
but  a  single  brigade  and  one  regi- 
ment of  divisional  cavalry  were 
required  for  service  in  Egypt, 
ought  to  have  been  sufficient  warn- 
ing (if  that  were  required)  of 
the  state  of  chaos  in  which  our 
cavalry  organisation  is  allowed  to 
stagnate.  As  the  lesson  seems  to 
have  been  neglected  or  forgotten 
by  the  authorities,  and  perhaps 
never  brought  fully  home  to  the 
comprehension  of  the  general  pub- 
lic, it  may  not  be  inapposite  to 
recapitulate  what  then  occurred. 
Three  squadrons  of  the  House- 
hold Brigade  were  sent  out, — not 
seemingly  a  very  severe  call 
on  three  whole  regiments,  yet 
some  difficulty  was  experienced  in 
the  matter  of  horses.  The  three 
regiments  chosen  to  constitute  the 
line-brigade  were  found,  as  they 
stood,  to  be  quite  unfit  for  service, 
by  reason  of  deficiencies  as  regard- 
ed alike  officers,  men,  and  horses. 
The  remainder  of  the  cavalry  had 
to  undergo  extensive  depletion  in 
order  that  a  single  brigade  for  the 
field  should,  after  a  fashion,  be 
made  up.  No  fewer  than  28 
officers  had  to  be  withdrawn  from 
their  duties  and  attached  to  the 
regiments  for  service,  one  of  which 
had  actually  to  borrow  3  captains 
and  11  subalterns.  Volunteers  to 
fill  the  ranks  had  to  be  called  for 
from  all  quarters;  in  the  first 
reinforcements  21  regiments  were 
represented,  and  one  regiment 
alone  had  to  part  with  no  fewer 
than  200  of  its  trained  horses. 
Will  any  one  with  the  smallest 
acquaintance  with  military  de- 
tails, not  to  speak  of  knowledge  of 
cavalry  requirements  in  the  field, 
pretend  to  hold  that  our  cavalry 
brigade  in  the  Egyptian  campaign 


I 


1894.] 


The  Cavalry  Arm  of  the  British  Service. 


175 


was  fit  to  confront  a  well-trained 
and  homogeneous  brigade  of  Con- 
tinental cavalry,  flooded  as  it  was 
with  officers  and  men  who  had 
never  been  together  before  the  day 
of  embarkation,  every  fraction  of 
the  force — commander,  staff,  regi- 
ments, regimental  officers,  non- 
commissioned officers,  and  men — 
all  strange  one  to  the  other1? 
After  such  an  all-round  conscrip- 
tion, how  could  real  discipline 
exist,  either  in  the  brigade  on 
service  or  in  the  attenuated  regi- 
ments at  home1?  No  doubt,  had 
occasion  demanded,  since  no  pro- 
per reserve  remained  available  to 
supply  the  waste  of  men  and  horses 
at  the  front,  the  original  expedient 
would  have  been  had  recourse  to, 
of  sending  out  reinforcements  im- 
provised by  levying  in  scraps  and 
handfuls  on  regiments  already 
well  milked  of  the  best  men  of 
their  scanty  numbers. 

Closely  linked  with  that  of 
organisation  is  the  important 
question  of  supervision.  This  at 
present  is  all  but  solely  provided 
for  by  the  appointment  of  two 
inspector-generals  of  cavalry,  one 
for  the  United  Kingdom  and  one 
for  India.  These  general  officers 
are  charged  only  with  the  duty  of 
inspecting  and  reporting  to  the 
respective  adjutant-generals.  They 
have  no  responsibility  whatsoever 
in  respect  of  the  due  efficiency  of  the 
cavalry  service,  that  responsibility 
being  vested  entirely  in  the  gene- 
ral officers  commanding  districts. 
These  for  the  most  part  belong  to 
the  infantry,  and  their  staffs  chiefly 
consist  of  infantry  officers.  The 
habitual  complement  is  a  colonel 
on  the  staff  commanding  artillery, 
and  another  commanding  engin- 
eers. Just  as  in  the  headquarter 
staff  in  Pall  Mall  the  cavalry  arm 
is  unrepresented,  so  in  the  district 
staffs  there  is  no  such  appoint- 


ment as  that  of  colonel  on  the 
staff  for  cavalry,  even  where,  as 
in  each  of  the  Eastern,  the  North- 
western, and  the  Dublin  and  Cork 
districts,  there  are  included  in  the 
command  two  cavalry  regiments. 
The  general  commanding  a  district, 
surrounded  as  he  is  by  superior 
officers  belonging  to  every  other 
branch  of  the  service,  has  at  his 
side  no  adviser  of  the  cavalry  arm. 
It  is  true  that  of  the  district  com- 
manders and  their  chief  staff  offi- 
cers one  or  two  may  be  by  chance 
themselves  cavalry  officers.  This 
casual  circumstance,  however,  when 
it  occurs,  does  not  in  the  least 
degree  tend  to  afford  to  the 
cavalry  within  the  command  a 
continuous  organised  supervision 
and  the  maintenance  of  a  uniform 
system  of  training  and  instruction. 
The  Home  district  furnishes  a 
striking  example  of  the  absence 
of  adequate  cavalry  supervision. 
Within  its  very  restricted  area 
there  are  quartered  no  fewer  than 
four  regiments  of  that  arm,  yet 
there  is  not  an  officer  belonging  to 
it  on  the  staff  of  the  general  com- 
manding. And  this  is  an  illustra- 
tion of  the  normal  state  of  things 
in  the  case  of  an  arm  of  the  service 
which  has  been  shown  to  require 
more  than  any  other  the  mainten- 
ance of  a  thoroughly  uniform  sys- 
tem of  training  and  instruction, 
supervised  by  the  most  competent 
and  experienced  officers. 

A  vivid  illustration  has  been 
given  of  the  chronic  boycott  of 
the  cavalry  arm  on  the  part  of 
the  military  authorities  acting  in 
apparent  combination.  Another 
illustration  may  be  apposite — that 
of  the  inevitable  result  of  the 
policy,  in  case  of  a  sudden  outbreak 
of  war.  A  "  paper  "  cavalry  divi- 
sion is  being  hastily  mobilised. 
Divisional  commander,  brigadiers, 
colonels,  adjutant-general,  brigade- 


176 


The  Cavalry  Arm  of  the  British  Service. 


[Aug. 


majors,  and  staff  officers  meet  on 
duty  for  the  first  time.  Those  who 
should  know  each  other's  military 
character  and  capabilities  most  in- 
timately are  total  strangers  in  the 
military  sense.  Leaders  alike  and 
units  are  associated  for  the  first 
time,  when  they  are  called  upon  to 
take  the  field.  What  in  such  con- 
ditions is  the  likelihood  of  that 
"  rapid  mutual  understanding  "  de- 
scribed by  one  of  the  greatest  of 
modern  cavalry  chiefs  as  the  most 
necessary  attribute  of  cavalry  in 
war  ?  That  understanding  is  all 
the  less  probable  when  it  becomes 
evident  that,  owing  to  the  lack  of 
adequate  uniformity  and  supervi- 
sion, the  regiments  brought  to- 
gether are  utterly  dissimilar  in  the 
character  and  amount  of  peace- 
training  which  they  have  received. 
In  such  circumstances,  where  is 
likely  to  be  found  the  crowning 
cavalry  essential  of  high  and  con- 
fident morale  ?  The  answer  must 
be  :  In  the  ranks  of  our  enemy,  of 
whatever  Continental  nationality 
he  may  be,  for  he  knows  its  value, 
and  has  ensured  it  in  peace-time  ; 
but  absent  from  us,  for  we  have 
neglected  and  despised  it. 

It  may  be  contended  that  the 
inspector  -  general  of  cavalry  has 
been  appointed  expressly  to  see  to 
it  that  a  uniform  system  of  train- 
ing and  instruction  is  maintained 
throughout  the  cavalry  service. 
But  apart  from  the  fact  already 
mentioned,  that  his  functions  are 
purely  advisory,  it  is  simply  im- 
possible, zealous  and  experienced 
officer  though  he  is,  that  from  his 
office  in  London  he  can  bring  to 
bear  on  each  separate  regiment 
all  over  the  kingdom  such  a  con- 
tinual and  watchful  influence 
as  will  effectually  ensure  this 
result.  All  that  he  can  do  is 
to  rely  on  what  he  sees  at  his 
periodical  inspections,  the  exact 


date  of  which  is  known  to  all  con- 
cerned long  in  advance.  No  pe- 
riodical reports  are  furnished  to 
him  of  the  work  done  by  regiments 
during  the  year,  all  responsibility 
in  regard  to  such  matters  vesting 
entirely  in  the  general  officers  com- 
manding districts,  between  whom 
and  commanding  officers  of  regi- 
ments no  intermediary  cavalry  au- 
thority exists.  In  India  the  same 
system  has  prevailed  for  the  past 
few  years,  under  an  inspector- 
general  of  exceptional  capacity 
and  energy,  who  has  strained  every 
nerve  to  improve  our  cavalry  in 
the  East.  But  although  by  the 
influence  of  his  commanding  ability 
and  strong  personality  this  strenu- 
ous officer  accomplished  much,  it 
is  impossible  to  say  that  the 
cavalry  throughout  India  is  up  to 
the  standard  required  by  modern 
war.  Had  the  Emperor  Napoleon 
realised  his  dream  and  brought  all 
Europe  under  his  sway,  as  well 
might  he  have  stationed  his  most 
able  cavalry  general  at  Berlin  or 
Vienna  and  expected  him  to  ensure 
uniform  instruction  and  training 
at  the  Curragh  on  one  hand  and  in 
the  Urals  on  the  other. 

Finally  we  come  to  the  crucial 
question  :  Is  our  cavalry  thorough- 
ly trained  and  instructed  in  all 
the  duties  it  may  be  called  upon 
to  undertake  in  war?  Have  its 
leaders  that  intelligence  and  know- 
ledge of  war  on  a  large  scale  laid 
down  by  Von  der  Goltz  as  abso- 
lutely essential  to  cavalry  officers 
of  the  present  day,  if  they  are  to 
render  that  service  to  the  other 
arms  which  is  the  justification  of 
their  military  existence  ?  Are  its 
non-commissioned  officers  and  men 
so  trained  and  practised  in  peace- 
time as  to  fit  them  for  moving 
independently  in  an  enemy's 
country  in  small  groups  far  from 


1894.1 


The  Cavalry  Arm  of  the  British  Service. 


177 


any  direction  or  support1?  Are 
the  commanders  of  its  formed 
bodies,  from  the  division  to  the 
squadron,  so  trained  and  practised 
in  handling  their  troops  and  read- 
ing the  ground  as  to  make  certain 
their  ready  seizure  of  that  "  resol- 
ute initiative  "  which  is  so  essential 
to  success  in  a  cavalry  encounter, 
and  upon  which  its  ability  to  fulfil 
its  duty  in  relation  to  the  other 
arms  almost  wholly  depends  !  Do 
the  troops  possess  that  mobility, 
alert  manoeuvring  power,  and 
measured  governed  speed,  which 
alone  can  make  them  efficient  and 
intelligent  instruments  under  the 
guidance  of  a  master-hand?  To 
any  candid  observer  of  our  cavalry 
at  work  in  masses  by  itself  in  the 
manoeuvres  of  1890,  1891,  1892, 
and  with  the  other  arms  in  1893, 
the  painful  truth  must  have  forced 
itself  home  that  it  is  sadly  lacking 
in  each  and  all  of  the  specified 
requirements.  And  this  not  by 
reason  of  indifferent  material,  but 
simply  owing  to  a  faulty  organisa- 
tion, a  want  of  competent  leaders, 
and  the  utter  absence  of  a  uniform, 
rigorous,  and  energetic  system  of 
training  and  instruction. 

If  what  has  been  said  is  in  the 
main  true,  it  is  important  to  in- 
quire into  the  causes  to  which  such 
a  state  of  affairs  is  owing. 

It  is  a  fact  which  the  bitterest 
pessimist  cannot  deny,  that  al- 
though our  army  as  a  whole  can- 
not be  said  to  have  kept  quite 
abreast  of  our  Continental  neigh- 
bours, nevertheless  our  infantry 
and  artillery  services  during  the 
past  fifteen  years  have  made  great 
progress  in  the  right  direction. 
To  what  cause,  it  may  be  asked, 
is  this  improvement  mainly  due? 
The  answer  is :  To  the  exertions 
of  Lord  Wolseley,  Sir  Redvers 
Buller,  and  Sir  Evelyn  Wood  at 
home;  of  Lord  Roberts  and  Sir 


George  Greaves  in  India,  and  of  the 
earnest  men  who  have  worked  with 
them,  have  the  marked  advances 
in  the  efficiency  of  the  infantry 
and  artillery  arms  in  chief  measure 
been  brought  about  in  the  course 
of  recent  years.  But  unfortunately 
the  reforming  influences  have  not 
been  brought  to  bear  on  the  cav- 
alry arm ;  and  to  their  compara- 
tive absence  may  be  traced  the 
main  cause  of  the  continuance  to 
this  day  of  the  imperfections  on 
which  we  have  found  it  necessary 
to  dwell. 

Lord  Wolseley  has  been  the 
leading  spirit  of  our  recent  mili- 
tary reforms.  Up  to  the  time 
when  he  obtained  independent 
command,  although  he  doubtless 
recognised  to  the  full  the  need 
that  existed  for  reform  in  all 
branches,  he  was  not  in  a  posi- 
tion to  bring  such  influence  to 
bear  as  would  gain  him  a  hearing ; 
and  his  'Soldier's  Pocket -Book' 
lets  us  into  the  secret  that,  al- 
though he  regarded  the  cavalry 
as  a  highly  important  arm,  he  had 
not  studied  the  details  of  its  re- 
quirements with  the  same  minute- 
ness as  he  had  devoted  to  the 
other  branches  of  the  service.  The 
countries  in  which  he  conducted 
his  earlier  campaigns  were  of 
such  a  nature  as  to  preclude  the 
use  of  cavalry ;  and  when  he  was 
in  a  position  from  his  own  ex- 
perience in  more  recent  cam- 
paigns to  urge  on  the  authorities 
measures  of  reform  as  regarded 
the  infantry  and  artillery,  he  was 
not  impressed  in  the  same  degree 
with  the  necessity  for  correspond- 
ing reforms  in  the  cavalry.  He 
had  gathered  round  him  certain 
officers,  whose  value  he  had  learned 
to  appreciate  in  connection  with 
their  own  particular  arms,  and 
it  is  not  surprising  that  when  his 
mantle  fell  upon  them  the  cavalry 


178 


The  Cavalry  Arm  of  the  British  Service. 


[Aug. 


remained  and  still  remains  in- 
adequately reformed.  It  is  true 
that  in  the  circle  of  his  habitual 
followers  there  were  two  or  three 
officers  of  cavalry,  and  one  of 
them,  Sir  Herbert  Stewart,  had 
given  promise  both  of  will  and 
capacity  to  devote  himself  to  the 
reform  of  the  arm  which  he  loved 
and  ornamented,  when  he  died  of 
his  wounds  in  the  Bayuda  desert. 
It  remained  that  no  man  whose 
influence  could  sway  the  leading 
army  reformers  was  left  to  bring 
home  to  their  minds  the  true 
nature  of  the  cavalry  service,  and 
to  guide  them  in  the  direction  of 
its  reorganisation ;  and  so  all  that 
has  been  done  in  this  way  is  but 
a  pale  reflection  of  some  reforms 
introduced  into  the  other  arms — 
such,  for  instance,  as  improvement 
in  musketry  instruction.  But  it 
would  be  ungrateful  indeed  on  the 
part  of  the  cavalry  service  to  for- 
get its  indebtedness  to  Sir  Evelyn 
Wood,  through  whose  instrumental- 
ity was  accomplished  the  institu- 
tion of  annual  cavalry  manoeuvres. 
Beform  in  the  other  branches 
of  the  service  has  meant  the  selec- 
tion of  the  most  capable  men  for 
important  posts  in  command,  and 
on  the  staff.  In  the  cavalry  it 
must  be  said  that  the  feebleness 
of  reforming  agencies,  and  the 
attitude  of  indifference  on  the  part 
of  the  reformers,  has  still  left  wide 
open  the  door  of  favouritism.  It 
is  a  melancholy  fact  that  when 
in  this  arm  an  important  post  falls 
vacant,  there  immediately  arises 
the  cry,  "  What  a  capital  billet  for 
So-and-so ! "  The  question  is  re- 
garded as  subordinate,  "  Is  So-and- 
so  the  best  man  for  the  place?" 
Under  such  a  system  individual 
effort  to  attain  efficiency  has  ob- 
viously its  marked  discourage- 
ments. It  must  be  added  that 
the  superior  cavalry  officers  are  by 


no  means  free  from  responsibility 
for  the  misfortune  that  the  cavalry 
has  not  had  its  due  share  in  the 
military  revival.  When  efforts 
have  been  made  in  this  direction, 
they  have  been  too  often  discoun- 
tenanced ;  the  standpoint  has 
been  asserted  that  in  the  British 
cavalry  there  is  no  room  for  im- 
provement; and  a  species  of  "stand 
off ! "  attitude  is  but  too  common. 

It  is  now  proposed  briefly  to  in- 
dicate how  the  faults  and  short- 
comings which  we  have  endeav- 
oured to  expose  may  be  remedied. 

I.  It  is  suggested  that  the  cav- 
alry depot  at  Canterbury  be  abol- 
ished, and  that  the  present  number 
of  31  cavalry  regiments  may  be 
reduced  to  28.  That  the  men  and 
horses  so  rendered  available  be 
distributed  throughout  the  19 
regiments  on  home  service,  at 
the  Cape,  and  in  Egypt,  in  such 
proportions  as  shall  bring  7  regi- 
ments up  to  the  full  war-strength 
laid  down  in  the  'Field -Service 
Manual '  of  1888  (viz.,  666  men  and 
456  troop  -  horses  per  regiment) ; 
and  the  remaining  12  to  a  strength 
of  not  less  than  550  privates  and 
400  horses  —  all  the  above  to  be 
thoroughly  trained  men  and  horses, 
fit  to  take  the  field.  That  to  11 
of  the  regiments  at  home  a  squad- 
ron be  attached — consisting  of  re- 
cruits, remounts,  and  a  sufficient 
number  of  trained  soldiers  to  serve 
as  young  horsemen  and  take  part 
in  the  training  of  recruits — to  con- 
stitute the  depot  for  its  own  regi- 
ment and  for  one  of  the  11  regi- 
ments on  foreign  service.  That 
to  the  remaining  6  regiments  at 
home  a  depot  troop  (or  half  squad- 
ron) be  attached  for  the  recruits, 
remounts,  &c.,  of  its  own  regiment. 

It  is  calculated  that  more  than 
sufficient  men  will  be  available 
for  these  purposes.  Putting  each 
depot  squadron  at  the  strength  of 


1894. 


The  Cavalry  Arm  of  the  British  Service. 


179 


80  horses,  and  each  depot  troop  at 
40,  the  total  number  of  horses 
required  for  the  above-stated  ser- 
vice will  be  roughly  9100.  The 
number  of  horses  at  present  on 
the  strength  of  the  cavalry  else- 
where than  in  India  is  7720. 
There  will  therefore  be  required 
1380  additional  horses,  the  cost 
of  which  will  probably  be  more 
than  met  by  the  saving  effected 
in  the  proposed  reduction  of  regi- 
ments and  Canterbury  depot. 

II.  It  is  further  suggested  that 
the   7    strong   regiments    forming 
the  cavalry  division  for  immediate 
service   should    consist   of   the    3 
regiments  at  Aldershot  next  for 
foreign     service,    the    Household 
regiment    at    Windsor,    and    the 
3    regiments   last    returned    from 
foreign    service,   to    be    quartered 
respectively  at  Hounslow,   Brigh- 
ton,  and   Canterbury.      The   four 
outlying  quarters  named  are  sug- 
gested  because  of  their  compara- 
tive proximity  to  Aldershot,  where 
their  respective  occupants  would 
assemble  annually  for  manoeuvres 
under    the    inspector  -  general    of 
cavalry,  in  combination  with   the 
Aldershot  brigade.     Normally  the 
2     regiments     at     Windsor     and 
Hounslow   would  form   a  brigade 
in  the  Home  district,  and  the   2 
at  Brighton   and   Canterbury  an- 
other in  the  South-eastern  district. 
Of  the  remainder  of  the  cavalry 
at  home  the  2  regiments  at  Col- 
chester and  Norwich  would  form 
a  brigade  in  the  Eastern  district, 
the    2    in   Albany   and    Knights- 
bridge  a  London   brigade,   the   2 
in    Manchester     and    Preston     a 
brigade  in  the  North-western  dis- 
trict,   the  2  in  Dublin  a  brigade 
in  that  district,  and  the  2  in  the 
south  of  Ireland  a  brigade  in  the 
Cork  district. 

III.  To  supervise  and  command 
these  seven  brigades,  it  is  proposed 


that  a  colonel  of  cavalry  should 
be  attached  to  the  staff  of  the 
general  commanding  each  district 
in  which  a  cavalry  brigade  is 
quartered.  The  duties  of  this 
officer  would  be  analogous  to  those 
of  the  artillery  and  engineer  staff- 
colonels;  and  the  yeomanry  brig- 
ades in  the  districts  where  they 
exist  would  also  be  under  his  com- 
mand and  supervision.  His  prin- 
cipal duty  would  consist  in  acting 
as  the  cavalry  adviser  to  the  dis- 
trict general,  and  in  thoroughly 
supervising  the  uniform  system  of 
training  and  instruction  which  will 
presently  be  recommended.  The 
regiments  should  be  brought  to- 
gether in  brigade  at  least  once  a- 
year,  and  worked  under  the  colonel 
in  command.  Objections  may  be 
raised  to  the  extra  expense  in- 
curred in  making  these  seven  new 
appointments  to  the  staff.  But 
a  large  economy  will  have  been 
effected  by  the  reduction  recom- 
mended, and  it  is  a  question 
whether  it  is  necessary  to  main- 
tain so  large  a  number  of  regi- 
mental districts.  One  thing  is 
certain,  that  the  cavalry  is  en- 
titled to  claim  an  equal  right  to 
adequate  supervision  and  repre- 
sentation on  the  staff  with  other 
arms  of  the  service. 

IY.  A  thorough  uniform  system 
of  interior  squadron  organisation 
should  be  maintained,  whereby 
the  same  non-commissioned  officers 
and  men  would  be  kept  together, 
having  regard  as  well  to  interior 
economy  as  to  duties  in  the  field. 
The  essential  cavalry  requirements 
of  morale  and  self-reliance  would 
thus  be  greatly  fostered ;  and  it  is 
all  -  important  that  non-commis- 
sioned officers  and  men,  who  have 
been  trained  together  in  peace- 
time, should  find  themselves  in 
the  same  relative  position  when 
in  presence  of  the  enemy. 


180 


The  Cavalry  Arm  of  the  British  Service. 


[Aug. 


V.  Instead  of  regiments  being 
allowed  to  follow  the  haphazard 
method  of  training  which  now 
prevails,  under  a  new  order  of 
things  there  should  be  prescribed 
a  thoroughly  uniform  system  of 
training  and  instruction.  The 
present  regulations  as  to  "squad- 
ron training  "  stand  in  great  need 
of  amendment.  To  any  practical 
cavalry  soldier  the  endeavour  to 
cram  the  whole  military  education 
of  the  trooper  into  a  period  of 
twenty-eight  days  is  nothing  short 
of  ridiculous.  Regular  periods  of 
instruction  should  be  fixed  and 
maintained,  the  work  done  in 
each  period  being  carefully  pre- 
pared, supervised,  and  reported 
on  by  the  staff  -  colonel  charged 
with  this  duty.  The  yearly  course 
would  be  somewhat  as  follows : 
During  the  winter  months,  squad- 
ron instruction  in  reconnaissance 
service,  outposts,  other  detached 
duties,  and  equitation.  In  the 
spring,  squadron  drill  and  man- 
03uvre,  musketry,  setting-up  drill, 
sword  or  lance  competition.  In 
the  early  summer,  regimental  drill 
and  manoeuvre,  practice  of  recon- 
naissance and  outposts  by  schemes. 
Later  in  the  season,  instruction  in 
brigade  and  with  the  other  arms. 

VI.  If  the  work  as  sketched 
above  of  thoroughly  improved 
training  and  instruction  be 
carried  out  under  a  properly  con- 
stituted organisation,  one  of  the 
great  results  will  be  to  bring  to 
light  and  remedy  what  is  now  de- 
fective. That  is  a  duty  the  post- 
ponement of  which  would  be  at 
once  dangerous  and  unpatriotic. 
The  nations  are  in  disquiet,  and 
there  are  lurid  clouds  on  the  polit- 
ical horizon.  The  time  has  come 
for  casting  aside  flattering  myths 


and  hoary  illusions.  Nothing  can 
be  so  unsafe  as  to  lean  on  obsolete 
and  occasionally  unwarrantable 
prestige.  It  is  true  that  the 
British  cavalry  has  a  creditable 
past,  but  it  still  labours  under  a 
legacy  of  hereditary  faults.  It 
still  disregards  the  lessons  to  be 
learnt  from  cavalry  which  for 
decades  has  been  straining  every 
effort  to  reach  the  perfection  which 
can  be  approached  only  by  labo- 
rious industry,  steadfast  devotion, 
and  high  intelligence.  In  the  face 
of  warnings  which  he  who  runs 
may  read,  it  still  gives  inadequate 
heed  to  uniformity  of  pace  and 
attention  to  "direction" — the  very 
essentials  of  combined  action  in 
cavalry  tactics.  The  tradition  still 
clings  to  the  British  cavalry  of 
undisciplined  and  headlong  reck- 
lessness in  the  field — of  all  faults 
the  most  ruinous.  Wellington 
considered  his  cavalry  in  the  Pen- 
insula so  inferior  to  that  of  the 
French,  jrom  want  of  order,  that 
he  was  reluctant  to  use  it  unless 
when  in  superior  strength  ;  and  he 
said,  speaking  of  Waterloo  :  "  Na- 
poleon had  his  cavalry  in  order; 
mine  would  gallop,  but  could  not 
preserve  their  order."1  It  was  this 
gallant  but  undisciplined  propen- 
sity to  get  out  of  hand  which  in  the 
battle  of  Waterloo,  as  the  issue  of 
a  single  charge,  reduced  Lord  Ux- 
bridge's  splendid  division  of  heavy 
cavalry  to  a  single  squadron.  The 
wild  gallop  of  the  "  Third  Light " 
through  the  heart  of  the  Khalsa 
camp  in  the  evening  dusk  of 
Ferozeshah,  like  the  charge  of  the 
Light  Brigade  down  the  north 
valley  of  Balaclava,  "was  mag- 
nificent, but  it  was  not  war." 
Kinglake  innocently  expresses  his 
admiration  of  the  prolongation  of 


1  'Wellington,'  by  G.  Lathom   Browne.     Wellington  Despatches,  2d  series, 
vol.  iii.  p.  353. 


1894.] 


The  Cavalry  Arm  of  the  British  Service. 


181 


front  in  Scarlett's  heavy  cavalry 
charge,  occasioned  by  the  circum- 
stance that  "  the  two  ranks  which 
had  begun  the  advance  were  con- 
verted by  degrees  into  one." 

It  is  delegation  of  responsibility 
which  gives  to  the  German  army 
its  extraordinary  power  and  effici- 
ency. Surely  a  readiness  to  as- 
sume and  bear  responsibility  is  not 
a  gift  exclusively  belonging  to  the 
German  race.  Let  it  be  understood 
among  the  regimental  officers  of 
our  cavalry  that  each  in  his  par- 
ticular station  shall  be  held  indi- 
vidually and  directly  responsible 
for  the  fighting  efficiency  of  his 
men,  and  emulation  will  be  stimu- 
lated, and  the  very  elements  which 
now  seem  hindrances  will  become 
its  foremost  support.  Let  an 
officer  feel  that  his  career  is  really 
dependent  on  the  quantity  and 
quality  of  his  work,  and  he  will 
devote  to  it  all  his  energies.  The 
most  pressing  desideratum  in  our 
cavalry  is  the  extension  of  re- 


sponsibility, and  the  making  of 
every  officer  the  tactical  as  well 
as  the  disciplinary  leader  of  his 
men.1  Officers  who  are  unfit  for 
their  position,  either  from  inapti- 
tude for  the  cavalry  service  or 
because  of  lack  of  energy,  must 
be  resolutely  dispensed  with.  Re- 
ports on  efficiency  made  by  quali- 
fied and  responsible  officers  can 
no  longer  be  ignored,  as  they  so 
frequently  are  under  the  present 
system.  Let  a  vigorous  and  de- 
termined effort  be  made  to  force 
the  drones  from  the  hive — to  get 
rid  of  cynical  ind inference  on  the 
one  hand  and  self-sufficient  com- 
placent satisfaction  with  the  ex- 
isting state  of  things  on  the  other. 
Let  us  adopt  sound  principles  and 
awake  to  our  necessities ;  then 
our  cavalry  will  attain  the  aim 
set  before  all  branches  of  our 
army  by  its  most  zealous  re- 
formers—  to  make  up  for  small 
numbers  by  the  highest  attainable 
efficiency. 


Tactics  and  Organisation,'  by  Captain  Maude. 


182 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[Aug. 


WHO    WAS    LOST    AND    IS    FOUND. 


CHAPTER   IX. 


WHEN  one  struck  on  the  big 
kitchen  clock,  with  an  ominous 
sound  like  a  knell,  Janet,  trying  to 
reduce  her  big  step  to  an  inaudible 
footfall,  came  "ben"  again.  She 
found  her  mistress  sitting  still  idly 
as  if  she  were  dead,  the  lamp  burn- 
ing solemnly,  not  the  sound  even  of 
a  breath  in  the  room.  "  No  stocking 
in  her  hands,  not  even  reading  a 
book,"  Janet  said.  For  a  moment, 
indeed,  with  a  quick  impulse  of 
fear,  the  woman  thought  that  Mrs 
Ogilvie  had  died  in  the  new  catas- 
trophe. "  Oh,  mem,  mem  ! "  she 
cried,  and  in  an  instant  there  was 
a  faint  stir. 

"Well,  Janet,"  Mrs  Ogilvy  said 
in  a  stifled  voice. 

"  Will  ye  sit  up  longer  ?  A'  the 
trains  are  passed,  and  long  passed. 
He  will  be  coming  in  the  morn- 
ing; he  must  just — have  missed 
the  last." 

"  I  am  not  going  to  my  bed  just 
yet,"  the  mistress  said. 

"But,  mem,  you  will  be  worn 
out.  You  have  just  had  no  meat 
and  no  sleep  and  no  rest,  and 
you'll  be  weariet  to  death." 

"And  what  would  it  matter  if 
I  was  ? "  she  answered,  with  a  faint 
smile. 

"Oh,  dinna  say  that;  how  can 
we  tell  what  may  be  wanted  of 
you,  and  needing  a'  your  strength?" 

Mrs  Ogilvy  roused  herself  at 
these  words.  "And  that's  quite 
true,"  she  said.  "  You  have  more 
sense  than  anybody  would  expect ; 
you  are  a  lesson  to  me,  that  have 
had  plenty  reason  to  know  better. 
But,  nevertheless,  I  will  not  go  to 
my  bed  yet — not  just  yet.  I  can 
get  a  good  sleep  in  this  chair." 

"  With  the  window  open,  mem, 


in  the  dead  of  the  night,  after  all 
Mr  Eobert  said ! " 

"Do  you  call  that  the  dead  of 
the  night  1 "  said  the  mistress. 
And  the  two  women  looked  out 
silenced  in  the  great  hush  and  awe 
of  that  pause  of  nature  between  the 
night  and  the  day.  It  was  like  no 
light  that  ever  was  on  sea  or  land, 
though  it  is  daily,  nightly,  for 
watchers  and  sleepless  souls.  It 
was  lovely  and  awful — a  light  in 
which  everything  hidden  in  the  dark 
came  to  life  again,  like  the  light 
alone  of  the  watchful  eyes  of  Him 
who  slumbereth  not  nor  sleeps. 
They  felt  Him  contemplating  them 
and  their  troubles,  knowing  what 
was  to  come  of  them,  which  they 
did  not,  from  the  skies — and  their 
hearts  were  hushed  within  them : 
there  was  silence  for  a  moment, 
the  profound  silence  that  reigned 
out  and  in,  in  which  they  were 
as  the  trees. 

Then  Mrs  Ogilvy  started  and 
cried,  "What  is  that?"  Was  it 
anything  at  all  1  There  are  sounds 
that  enhance  the  silence,  just  as 
there  are  discords  that  increase  the 
harmony  of  music — sounds  of  insects 
stirring  in  their  sleep,  of  leaves 
falling,  of  a  grain  of  sand  losing 
its  balance  and  rollipg  over  on  the 
way.  Janet  heard  nothing.  She 
shook  her  head  in  her  big  white 
cap.  And  then  suddenly  her  mis- 
tress gripped  her  with  a  force  that 
no  one  could  have  suspected  to  be 
in  those  soft  old  hands.  "Now, 
listen !  There's  somebody  on  the 
road,  there's  somebody  at  the 
gate  ! " 

I  will  not  describe  the  heats  and 
chills  of  the  moment  that  elapsed 
before  the  big  loose  figure  appeared 


1894.] 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


183 


on  the  walk,  coming  on  leisurely, 
with,  a  perceptible  air  of  fatigue. 
"Ah,  you're  up  still,"  he  said,  as 
he  came  within  hearing.  Janet 
had  flown  to  open  the  door  for 
him,  undoing  all  the  useless  bars, 
making  a  wonderful  noise  in  the 
night.  "I  could  have  stepped  in 
through  the  window,"  he  said. 
"You've  walked  from  Edinburgh," 
cried  Janet  ;  "  you  must  be  wanting 


some  supper. 


I  would  not  ob- 


ject to  a  little  cold  meat,"  he 
said,  with  a  laugh.  His  tone  was 
always  pleasant  to  Janet.  His 
mother  stood  and  listened  to  this 
colloquy  within  the  parlour  door. 
She  must  have  been  angry,  you 
would  say,  jealous  that  her  maid 
should  be  more  kindly  used  by 
her  son  than  she,  exasperated  by 
his  heedless  selfishness.  She  was 
none  of  all  those  things.  Her 
heart  was  like  a  well,  a  fountain 
of  thankfulness  welling  up  before 
God :  her  whole  being  over- 
flooded  with  sudden  relief  and 
sweet  content. 

"  How  imprudent  with  that 
window  open — in  the  middle  of 
the  night;  how  can  you  tell  who 
may  be  about?"  were  the  first 
words  he  said,  going  up  himself 
to  the  window  and  closing  it  and 
the  shutters  over  it  hastily.  "  I'm 
sorry  I'm  late,"  he  said  afterwards. 
"  I  missed  the  last  train,  and  then 
I  think  I  missed  the  road.  I've 
been  a  long  time  getting  here. 
These  confounded  light  nights ; 
you've  no  shelter  at  all,  however 
late  you  walk." 

"You  will  be  tired,  my  dear." 
He  had  brought  in  an  atmosphere 
with  him  that  filled  in  a  moment 
this  little  dainty  old  woman's  room. 
It  was  greatly  made  up  of  tobacco, 
but  there  was  also  whisky  in  it  and 
other  odours  indiscriminate,  the 
smell  of  a  man  who  had  been 
smoking  all  day  and  drinking  all 
day,  though  the  latter  process  had 


not  affected  his  seasoned  senses. 
Of  all  things  horrible  to  her  this 
was  the  most  horrible :  it  made 
her  faint  and  sick.  But  he  was,  of 
course,  quite  unconscious  of  any 
such  effect,  nor  did  he  notice  the 
paleness  that  had  come  over  her 
face. 

"Yes,  I  am  tired,"  he  said; 
"Janet's  suggestion  was  not  a  bad 
idea.  I  have  not  walked  so  far  for 
years.  A  horse  between  my  legs, 
and  I  would  not  mind  a  dozen 
times  the  distance;  but  I've  got 
out  of  the  use  of  my  own  feet." 
He  spoke  more  naturally,  with  a 
lighter  heart  than  he  had  shown 
yet.  "  I  have  not  had  a  bad  day. 
I  looked  up  some  of  the  old  howffs. 
Nobody  there  that  remembered  me, 
but  still  it  was  a  little  like  old 
times." 

"  Wouldn't  you  be  better,  Rob- 
bie, oh  my  dear,  to  keep  away  from 
the  old  howffs  1 "  she  said,  trembling 
a  little. 

"  It  was  to  be  expected  that  you 
would  say  that.  If  you  mean  for 
the  present  affair,  no ;  if  you  mean 
for  general  good  behaviour,  perhaps 
yes ;  but  it  is  early  days.  I  may 
surely  take  a  little  licence  the  first 
days  I  am  back.  There  are  some 
of  your  new  clothes,"  he  added, 
tossing  down  a  bundle,  "  and  more 
will  be  ready  in  a  day  or  two.  I've 
rigged  myself  out  from  head  to  foot. 
But  I  wouldn't  have  them  sent 
out  here.  I'm  not  too  fond  of  an 
address.  I  promised  to  call  for 
them  on  Saturday." 

The  poor  mother's  heart  was 
transfixed  as  with  a  sudden  arrow. 
This,  then,  would  be  repeated  again; 
once  more  she  would  have  to  watch 
the  day  out  and  half  the  night 
through — and  again,  no  doubt,  and 
again. 

"There's  Janet  as  good  as  her 
word,"  he  said,  as  the  sound  of 
her  proceedings  in  the  next  room 
became  audible.  And  he  ate  an 


184 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[Aug. 


immense  meal  in  the  middle  of  the 
night,  the  light  growing  stronger 
every  moment  in  the  crevices  of 
the  shutters.  I  don't  know  what 
there  is  that  is  wholesome,  almost 
meritorious,  in  the  consumption  of 
food.  Mrs  Ogilvy  forgot  the  smell 
of  the  tobacco  and  the  whisky  in 
the  pleasure  of  seeing  the  roast- 
beef  disappear  in  large  slices 
from  his  plate.  "  It  was  a  pleasure 
to  see  him  eating,"  she  said  after- 
wards to  Janet.  Yes,  it  is  some- 
how wholesome  and  meritorious. 
It  implies  a  good  digestion,  not 
spoiled  by  other  pernicious  things  ; 
it  implies  (almost)  an  easy  mind 
and  a  peaceful  conscience,  and 
something  like  innocence  in  a  man. 
A  good  meal,  not  voracious,  as  of  a 
creature  starving,  but  eaten  with 
good  appetite,  with  satisfaction, — 
it  is  a  kind  of  certificate  of  morality 
which  many  a  poor  woman  has 
hailed  with  delight.  They  have 
their  own  way  of  looking  at  things. 

And  thus  the  evening  and  the 
morning  made  a  new  day. 

The  next  day,  before  she  left  her 
room,  Mrs  Ogilvy  took  the  news- 
paper, which  she  had  laid  carefully 
aside,  and  read  for  the  first  time — 
locking  her  door  first,  which  was  a 
thing  she  had  scarcely  done  all  her 
life  before — the  story  of  the  crime 
which  had  thrown  a  shadow  over 
her  son,  and  had  made  him  "  cut 
and  run,"  as  he  said,  for  his  life. 
She  had  to  read  it  three  or  four 
times  over  before  she  could  make 
out  what  it  meant,  and  even  then 
her  understanding  was  not  very 
clear.  For  one  thing,  she  had  not, 
as  was  natural,  the  remotest  idea 
what  "  road  agents  "  were.  Merci- 
fully for  her  :  for  I  believe,  though 
I  know  as  little  as  she,  that  it 
means,  not  to  pat  too  fine  a  point 
upon  it,  highwaymen,  neither  more 
nor  less.  A  party  of  these  men 
— she  thought  it  must  mean  some 
kind  of  travelling  merchants;  not 


perhaps  a  brilliant  career,  but  no 
harm  in  it,  no  harm  in  it ! — had 
been  long  about  the  country,  a 
country  of  which  she  had  never 
heard  the  name,  in  a  half -settled 
State  equally  unknown,  and  at 
length  had  been  traced  to  their 
headquarters.  They  had  been 
pursued  hotly  by  the  Sheriff  for 
some  time.  To  Mrs  Ogilvy  a 
sheriff  meant  an  elderly  gentleman 
in  correct  legal  costume,  a  person 
of  serious  importance,  holding  his 
courts  and  giving  his  judgments. 
She  could  not  realise  to  herself  the 
Sheriff-Substitute  of  Eskshire  riding 
wildly  over  moss  and  moor  after 
any  man ;  but  no  doubt  in  America 
it  was  different.  It  was  proved 
that  the  road  agents  had  sworn 
vengeance  against  him,  and  that 
whoever  met  him  first  was  pledged 
to  shoot  him,  whether  he  himself 
could  escape  or  not.  The  meeting 
took  place  by  chance  at  a  roadside 
shanty  in  the  midst  of  the  wilds, 
and  the  Sheriff  was  shot,  before  his 
party  had  perceived  the  other,  by  a 
premeditated  well  -  directed  bullet 
straight  to  the  heart.  Who  had 
fired  it?  The  most  likely  person 
was  the  leader  of  the  band,  of 
whom  the  Western  journalist  gave 
a  sensational  history,  and  to  secure 
him  was  the  object  of  the  police; 
but  there  were  half-a-dozen  others 
who  might  have  done  it,  and  whom 
it  was  of  the  utmost  importance  to 
secure,  if  only  in  the  hope  that  one 
of  them  might  turn  Queen's  evi- 
dence. (I  don't  know  what  they 
call  this  in  America,  nor,  indeed, 
anything  but  what  I  have  heard 
vaguely  reported  of  such  matters. 
The  better  instructed  will  pardon 
and  rectify  for  themselves.)  Among 
these,  but  at  the  end — heaven  be 
praised,  at  the  end  !  —  was  the 
name  of  Robert.  The  band  had 
dispersed  in  different  directions  and 
fled,  all  but  one,  who  was  killed. 
When  she  had  got  all  this  more 


1894.] 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


or  less  distinctly  into  her  mind,  she 
read  the  story  of  the  captain  of  the 
band,  Lewis  or  Lew  Winterman, 
with  a  dozen  aliases.  He  was  a 
German  by  origin,  though  an  Amer- 
ican born.  He  spoke  English 
with  a  slight  German  accent.  He 
was  large  and  tall  and  fair,  of  great 
strength,  and  very  ingratiating 
manners.  He  had  gone  through 
a  hundred  adventures  all  told  at 
length.  He  had  ruined  both  men 
and  women  wherever  he  took  his 
fatal  way.  He  was  a  hero  of  rom- 
ance, he  was  a  monster  of  cruelty. 
Slaughter  and  bloodshed  were  his 
natural  element.  He  was  known 
to  have  an  extraordinary  ascendancy 
over  his  band,  so  that  there  was 
nothing  they  would  not  do  while 
under  his  influence  :  though,  when 
free  from  htm,  they  hated  and 
feared  him.  Thus  every  man  of  the 
party  was  the  object  of  pursuit,  if 
not  for  himself,  yet  in  hopes  of 
finding  some  clue  to  the  whereabouts 
of  this  master  ruffian,  whose  gifts 
were  such  that,  though  he  would 
not  recoil  from  the  most  cold-blood- 
ed murder,  he  could  also  wheedle 
the  bird  from  the  tree.  Mrs 
Ogilvy  carefully  locked  this  dread- 
ful paper  away  again  with  trem- 
bling hands.  It  took  her  a  little 
trouble  to  find  a  safe  place  to  which 
there  was  a  lock  and  key,  but  she 
did  so  at  last.  And  when  she  went 
down-stairs  it  was  with  a  feeling 
that  Mr  Somerville's  prayer  to  steek 
her  doors,  and  Robbie's  concern  for 
the  fastening  of  all  the  windows, 
were  perhaps  justified ;  but  what 
would  bring  a  man  like  that  over 
land  and  sea — what  would  bring 
him  here  to  the  peaceful  Hewan^ 
No,  no ;  it  was  not  a  thing  for  any 
reasonable  person  to  fear.  There 
were  plenty  of  places  in  the  world 
to  take  refuge  in  more  like  such  a 
man.  What  would  he  do  here  1 — 
he  could  find  nothing  to  do  here. 
America,  Mrs  Ogilvy  had  always 

VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCXLVI. 


185 

heard,  was  a  very  big  place,  far  big- 
ger than  England  and  Scotland  and 
Ireland  put  together.  He  must 
have  plenty  of  howffs  there.  And 
if  not  America,  there  was  Germany, 
which  they  said  he  came  from,  or 
other  places  on  the  Continent,  far, 
far  more  likely  to  have  hiding-holes 
for  a  criminal  than  the  country 
about  Edinburgh.  No,  no.  No, 
no.  Therefore  there  was  no  fear. 

When  Eobert  came  down-stairs, 
which  was  not  till  late,  he  was  a 
little  improved  in  appearance  by 
a  new  coat,  but  not  so  much  as 
his  mother  had  hoped.  She  was 
disappointed,  though  in  face  of 
the  other  things  this  was  such  a 
very  small  matter.  He  was  just  a 
backwoodsman,  a  bushman,  what- 
ever you  call  it,  still.  He  had  not 
got  back  that  air  of  a  gentleman 
which  had  been  his  in  his  youth — 
that  most  prized  and  precious  thing, 
which  is  more  than  beauty,  far 
more  than  fine  clothes  or  good 
looks.  This  gave  her  a  pang :  but 
then  there  were  many  things  that 
gave  her  a  pang,  though  all  sub- 
sided in  the  thought  that  he  was 
here,  that  he  had  come  back  guilt- 
less and  uninjured  from  Edinburgh, 
notwithstanding  the  anxiety  he  had 
given  her.  But  was  it  not  her  own 
fault  that  she  was  anxious,  always 
imagining  some  dreadful  thing  1 
After  his  breakfast  (again  such  an 
excellent  breakfast,  quite  unaffected 
by  his  late  hours  or  his  large  sup- 
per !)  he  came  to  her  into  the  par- 
lour with  the  '  Scotsman,'  which 
Janet  had  brought  him,  in  his  hand. 
"  I  thought  you  would  like  to 
hear,"  he  said,  carefully  closing  the 
door  after  him.  "  You  remember 
that  man  I  mentioned  to  you?" 

"  Yes,  Robbie,"— she  had  almost 
said  the  man's  name,  but  refrained. 

"  There  is  no  word  of  him,"  he 
said.  "  That  was  one  thing  I  was 
anxious  about.  There  are  places 
where  —  communications  are  kept 

N 


186 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[Aug. 


up.  I  had  an  address  in  Edin- 
burgh to  inquire." 

"  What  has  he  to  do  with  Edin- 
burgh ?  "  she  cried  in  dismay. 

"  Nothing  ;  but  there's  a  kind  of 
a  communication,  everywhere.  No- 
thing has  been  heard  of  him.  So 
long  as  nothing  is  heard  of  him  I 
can  breathe  free.  There's  no  reason 
he  should  come  here " 

"  Come  here  !  For  what  would 
he  come  here?" 

"  How  can  I  tell  1  If  you  knew 
the  man " 

"  God  forbid  I  should  ever  know 
the  man,"  she  cried  with  fervour. 

"I  say  Amen  to  that.  But  if 
you  knew  him,  you  would  know 
it's  the  place  that  is  least  likely 
which  is  the  place  where  he  ap- 
pears." 

"  It  may  be  so,"  Mrs  Ogilvy  said ; 
"  but  a  place  like  this — a  small  bit 
house  deep  in  the  bosom  of  the 
country,  and  nothing  but  quiet 
country-folk  about — 

"What  is  that  but  the  best  of 
places  for  a  hunted  man  ?  He  said 
once  that  if  I  ever  came  home 
he  would  come  after  me — that  it 
was  just  the  place  he  wanted  to  lie 
snug  in,  where  nobody  would  think 
of  looking  for  him.  You  think  me 
a  fool  to  be  so  anxious  about  the 
bolts  and  the  bars ;  but  the  room 
might  be  empty  one  moment,  and 
the  next  you  might  look  round, 
and  he  would  be  there." 

Though  it  was  morning,  before 
noon,  and  the  safety  of  the  full  day 
was  upon  the  house,  with  its  open 
windows,  he  cast  a  doubtful  suspi- 
cious glance  round,  as  if  afraid  of 
seeing  some  one  behind  him  even 
now. 

"Robbie,"  said  Mrs  Ogilvy, 
"  there  is  no  man  that  has  to  do 
with  you,  were  he  good  or  bad,  that 
I  would  close  my  doors  upon,  ex- 
cept the  shedder  of  blood.  He 
shall  not  come  here." 

"There  is  nothing  I  can  refuse 


him,"  cried  the  young  man.  "I 
would  say  so  too.  I  say  Curse 
him ;  I  hate  his  very  name.  He's 
done  me  more  harm  than  I  can  ever 
get  the  better  of.  I've  seen  him  do 
things  that  would  curdle  your  blood 
in  your  veins ;  but  him  there  and 
me  here,  standing  before  each  other 
— there  is  nothing  I  can  refuse 
him  ! "  he  cried. 

"Robbie,  you  will  think  I  am 
but  a  poor  old  woman,"  said  his 
mother,  with  her  faltering  voice. 
"  I  could  not  stand  up,  you  will 
think,  to  any  strange  man ;  but 
the  shedder  of  blood  is  like  nothing 
else.  It  shall  never  be  said  of  me 
that  I  harboured  a  shedder  of 
blood." 

"Oh,  mother !  how  can  you  tell 
— how  can  you  tell  ? "  he  cried, 
"  when  I  that  know  tell  you  that 
I  could  not  refuse  him  anything. 
I  am  just  his  slave  at  his  chariot- 
wheels." 

"  But  I  am  not  his  slave,"  said 
Mrs  Ogilvy,  with  a  glitter  of  spirit 
in  her  eyes.  "I  can  face  him,  though 
you  may  not  think  it.  He  shall 
never  come  here  ! " 

He  flung  himself  down  into  a 
chair,  and  put  the  newspaper  be- 
tween her  and  himself,  making  a 
semblance  of  reading.  But  this  he 
could  not  keep  up  :  the  stillness, 
and  the  peace,  and  the  innocence 
about  him  affected  the  man,  who, 
whatever  he  was  now,  had  been 
born  Robbie  Ogilvy  of  the  Hewan. 
He  made  a  stifled  sound  in  his 
throat  once  or  twice  as  if  about  to 
speak,  but  brought  forth  no  certain 
sound  for  some  five  minutes,  when 
he  suddenly  burst  forth  in  a  high 
but  broken  voice,  "What  would 

you  say  if  I  were  to  tell  you 1 " 

and  suddenly  stopped  again. 

"What,  Robbie?"  she  said, 
quivering  like  a  leaf. 

"  Nothing,"  he  replied,  looking 
up  with  sudden  defiance  in  her 
face. 


1894.] 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


187 


And  there  was  a  silence  again  in 
the  room — the  silence  of  the  sweet 
morning  :  not  a  sound  to  break  the 
calm  :  the  birds  in  the  trees,  the 
scent  of  the  roses  coming  in  at  the 
window — there  was  no  such  early 
place  for  roses  in  all  Mid-Lothian — 
and  the  house  basking  in  the  sun, 
and  the  sun  shining  on  the  house, 
as  if  there  was  no  roof-tree  so  be- 
loved in  all  the  basking  and  breath- 
ing earth.  Then  the  voice  of  the 
little  old  lady  uplifted  itself  in  the 
midst  of  all  that  peace  of  nature — 
small,  like  her  delicate  frame ;  low 
— a  little  sound  that  could  have 
been  put  out  so  easily,  —  almost, 
you  would  have  said,  that  a  sudden 
breath  of  wind  would  have  put  it 
out. 

"Kobbie,  my  son,"  she  said, 
"there  is  nothing  you  could  tell 
me,  or  that  any  man  could  tell  me, 
that  would  put  bar  or  bolt  between 
you  and  me.  What  is  yours  is 
mine,  if  there  is  any  trouble  to 
bear ;  and  thankful  will  I  be  to 
take  my  share.  There  is  no  ques- 
tion nor  answer  between  you  and 
me.  If  you've  been  wild  in  the 
world,  my  own  laddie,  I've  been 
here  on  my  knees  for  you  before 
the  Lord.  Whatever  there  is  to 
tell,  tell  it  to  Him,  and  He  will 
not  turn  His  back  upon  you.  Then, 
do  you  think  your  mother  will  1 
But  that's  not  the  question — not 
the  question.  My  house  is  my 
own  house,  and  I  will  defend  it 
and  my  son,  and  all  that  is  in  it — 
ay,  if  it  were  to  the  death  ! " 

He  looked  at  her  for  a  moment, 
half  impressed ;  but  the  glamour 
soon  went  out  of  Eobert's  eyes. 
The  reality  was  a  very  quiet  feeble 
old  woman,  with  the  strength  of  a 
mouse,  with  a  flash  of  high  spirit 
such  as  he  knew  of  old  his  mother 
possessed,  and  a  voice  that  shook 
even  while  it  pronounced  this  de- 
fiance of  every  evil  thing.  Short 
work  would  be  made  with  that. 


He  could  remember  scenes  in  which 
other  old  women  had  tried  to  pro- 
tect their  belongings,  and  short 
work  had  been  made  with  them. 
He  had  never,  never  laid  a  finger  on 
one  himself.  If  he  had  ever  dared 
to  make  his  penitence,  and  could 
have  disentangled  his  own  story 
from  that  of  those  among  whom  he 
was,  it  might  have  been  seen  how 
little  real  guilt  there  ever  was  in 
his  disorderly  wretched  life;  but 
he  could  not  disentangle  it,  even 
to  himself:  he  felt  himself  guilty 
of  many  things  in  which  he  had 
had  no  share.  Even  in  the  confu- 
sion of  the  remorse  that  sometimes 
came  upon  him,  he  believed  himself 
to  have  executed  orders  which  were 
never  given  to  him.  The  only 
thing  he  was  not  doubtful  about 
was  where  these  orders  came  from, 
and  that  if  the  same  voice  spoke 
them  again  suddenly  at  any  mo- 
ment, it  would  be  his  immediate 
impulse  to  obey. 

And  after  this  he  took  up  the 
'  Scotsman,' — that  honest  peaceable 
paper,  with  its  clever  articles,  and  its 
local  records,  and  consciousness  of 
the  metropolitan  dignity  which  has 
paled  a  little  in  the  hurry  and  flash 
of  the  times — the  paper  that  goes 
to  every  Scotsman's  heart,  whatever 
may  be  his  politics,  throughout  the 
world,  which  everywhere,  even  in 
busy  London,  compatriots  will  offer 
to  each  other  as  something  always 
dear.  Wild  as  his  life  had  been, 
and  distracted  as  he  now  was,  the 
sight  and  the  sound  of  the  '  Scots- 
man '  was  grateful  to  Eobert  Ogilvy. 
The  paper  in  his  hands  not  only 
shielded  his  face  from  observation, 
but  gradually  calmed  him  down, 
drew  back  his  interest,  and,  wonder 
of  wonders,  occupied  his  mind. 
He  had  himself  said  he  could  al- 
ways read.  After  this  scene,  with 
its  half  revelation  and  its  overmas- 
tering dread,  he  in  a  few  minutes 
read  the  '  Scotsman '  as  if  there  had 


188 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[Aug. 


been  neither  crime  nor  punishment  bing  and  aching  with   the  energy 

in  the  world.    And  Mrs  Ogilvy  had  of  that  outburst,   and   how  much 

already  taken  up  her  knitting ;  but  less    quickly   the   high    tide   died 

what  was  in  her  heart,  still  throb-  down,  I  will  not  venture  to  say. 


CHAPTER  x. 


Robert  went  in  again  to  Edin- 
burgh a  few  days  later,  with  re- 
sults very  similar.  Mrs  Ogilvy 
once  more  waited  for  him  half 
through  the  night :  but  she  sat 
with  her  window  closed,  and  with 
a  book  in  her  hand,  reading  or  mak- 
ing believe  to  read,  and  with  no 
longer  any  passion  of  tears  or  panic 
in  her  heart,  but  a  vague  misery,  a 
thrill  of  expectation  she  knew  not 
of  what,  of  bad  or  good,  of  danger 
or  safety.  He  came  in  always, 
sometimes  a  little  earlier,  sometimes 
a  little  later,  with  a  kind  of  regu- 
larity which  she  had  to  accept, 
which,  indeed,  she  accepted,  with- 
out remonstrance  or  complaint.  The 
atmosphere  about  him  was  always 
the  same,  tobacco  and  whisky,  to 
both  which  things  the  little  fra- 
grant feminine  house  was  getting 
accustomed,  to  which  she  consented 
with  a  pang  indescribable,  but 
which  had  no  consequences  to  make 
any  complaint  of,  as  she  acknow- 
ledged with  thankfulness.  When 
he  did  not  go  to  Edinburgh,  he 
remained  quietly  enough  in  the 
house,  doing  nothing,  saying  not 
very  much,  taking  his  walks  in  the 
darkening,  when  it  was  quite  late, 
and  consequently  keeping  her  in  a 
sort  of  perennial  uneasiness,  only 
intensified  on  those  occasions  when 
he  went  to  Edinburgh.  On  no 
evening  was  she  sure  that  he  might 
not  come  in,  in  a  state  of  alarm, 
bidding  her  extinguish  every  light, 
and  watching  from  the  chinks  of  the 
window  lest  some  one  clandestine 
might  be  roaming  round  the  house  ; 
or  that  he  might  not  appear  with 
another  at  his  elbow,  the  man 


whom  he  hated  yet  would  obey, 
the  shedder  of  blood,  as  she  called 
him ;  or,  finally,  that  he  might 
never  come  back  at  all, — that  the 
man  who  had  so  much  influence 
over  him  might  sweep  him  away, 
carry  him  off,  notwithstanding  all 
his  unwillingness.  It  is  not  to  be 
supposed  that  much  comfort  now 
dwelt  in  the  Hewan,  in  the  con- 
stant contemplation  of  so  many 
dangers.  Yet  everything  was  more 
or  less  as  before.  The  mistress  of 
the  house  gave  no  external  sign  of 
trouble.  To  anxious  eyes,  had 
there  been  any  to  inspect  her,  there 
would  have  appeared  new  lines  in 
her  countenance  ;  but  no  eyes  were 
anxious  about  her  looks.  She  pur- 
sued her  usual  habits,  as  careful 
as  always  of  the  neatness  of  her 
house,  her  dress,  her  garden,  every- 
thing surrounding  her.  Her  visi- 
tors still  came,  though  this  was 
her  hardest  burden.  To  them  she 
said  nothing  of  her  son's  return. 
He  withdrew  hurriedly  to  his  room 
whenever  there  was  the  smallest 
sign  of  any  one  approaching ;  and 
few  of  them  were  of  his  time. 
The  neighbourhood  had  changed  in 
fifteen  years,  as  the  face  of  the  coun- 
try changes  everywhere.  There  were 
plenty  of  people  in  the  neighbour- 
hood who  knew  Eobert  Ogilvy,  but 
these  were  not  of  the  kind  who  go 
out  in  the  afternoon  to  tea.  The 
habit  had  not  begun  when  he  left 
home.  There  were  wives  of  his 
own  contemporaries  among  the 
ladies  who  paid  their  visits  at  the 
Hewan,  but  Eobert  was  not  ac- 
quainted with  them.  Of  those 
whom  he  had  known  of  old,  the 


.1894.] 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


189 


elder  ladies  were  like  his  mother, 
receiving  their  little  company,  not 
going  forth  to  seek  it,  and  the 
younger  ones  married,  bearing 
names  with  which  he  was  not  ac- 
quainted, or  perhaps  gone  from  the 
countryside  altogether.  "I  know  no- 
body, and  nobody  would  know  me," 
he  said;  which  was  a  great  mistake, 
however,  for  already  the  rumour  of 
his  return  had  flashed  all  over  the 
neighbourhood,  and  was  hotly  dis- 
cussed in  the  parish,  and  half  of  the 
visitors  who  came  to  the  He  wan  came 
with  the  determination  of  ascertain- 
ing the  truth.  But  they  ascertained 
nothing.  He  was  never  visible, 
his  mother  looked  "just  in  her 
ordinary,"  the  house  seemed  undis- 
turbed and  unchanged.  Sometimes 
a  whiff  of  tobacco  was  sensible  to 
the  nostrils  of  some  of  the  guests; 
but  when  one  bold  woman  said  so, 
Mrs  Ogilvy  had  answered  quietly, 
"  There  is  at  present  a  great  deal  of 
smoke  about  the  house,"  with  a 
glance,  or  so  the  visitor  thought, 
at  her  rose-trees,  which  Andrew 
fumigated  diligently  against  the 
greenfly  in  that  simple  way.  The 
greenfly  is  a  subject  on  which  all 
possessors  of  gardens  are  kin.  The 
questioner  determined  that  she 
would  have  it  tried  that  very  even- 
ing on  her  own  rose-bushes,  for  Mrs 
Ogilvy 's  buds  were  uncommonly 
vigorous  and  clean ;  and  so  the 
smell  of  tobacco  ceased  to  be  dis- 
cussed or  perceived,  being  accounted 
for. 

This  secrecy  could  not,  of  course, 
have  been  maintained  had  Mrs 
Ogilvy  taken  counsel  with  any  one, 
or  opened  her  mind  on  the  subject. 
It  could  not  have  been  maintained, 
for  instance,  had  Mr  Logan,  the 
minister,  been  in  his  right  mind.  I 
do  not  know  that  she  would  have 
naturally  consulted  on  such  a  sub- 
ject her  legitimate  spiritual  guide. 
But  the  intimacy  between  the 
families  was  such  that  it  could  not 


have  been  hid.  Even  had  the  boys 
been  at  home  instead  of  going  to 
Edinburgh  every  day,  some  large- 
limbed  rapid  lad  would  no  doubt 
have  darted  into  the  house  with  a 
message  from  Susie  at  an  inoppor- 
tune moment,  and  found  Robert. 
Susie  herself  was  the  only  person 
now  whom  Mrs  Ogilvy  half  dreaded, 
half  hoped  for.  The  secret  could 
not  have  been  kept  from  her — that 
would  have  been  impossible ;  and 
from  day  to  day  her  coming  was 
looked  for,  not  without  a  rising  of 
hope,  not  without  a  thrill  of  fear. 
In  other  circumstances  Mrs  Ogilvy 
would  have  been  moved  to  seek 
Susie,  to  discover  how  she  was 
bearing  the  complications  of  her 
own  lot.  Susie  was  the  only  crea- 
ture for  whom  Mrs  Ogilvy  longed  : 
the  sight  of  her  would  have  been 
good  :  the  possibility  of  unburden- 
ing her  soul,  even  if  she  had  not 
done  it,  would  have  been  a  relief, 
to  the  imagination  at  least.  Her 
complete  separation  from  Susie  for 
the  time,  which  was  entirely  acci- 
dental, was  one  of  the  most  curious 
circumstances  in  this  curious  and 
changed  life. 

If  she  did  not  see  Susie,  however, 
she  saw  the  woman  who  was  about 
to  change  Susie's  life  and  circum- 
stances still  more  than  her  own 
were  changed, — the  lady  from  Eng- 
land who  carried  an  indefinable 
atmosphere  of  suspicion  about  with 
her,  as  Eobbie  carried  that  whiff  of 
tobacco.  Mrs  Ainslie  took  upon 
her  an  air  of  unwarrantable  in- 
timacy which  the  mistress  of  the 
Hewan  resented.  "  I  thought  you 
would  have  come  to  see  me,"  the 
visitor  said,  in  a  tone  of  flattering 
reproach. 

"  I  go  to  see  nobody,"  said  Mrs 
Ogilvy,  "except  old  friends,  or 
where  I  am  much  needed.  It's  a 
habit  of  mine  that  is  well  known." 

"  But  you  must  excuse  me,"  said 
the  other,  "  for  not  knowing  all  the 


190 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[Aug. 


habits  of  the  people  here  "  (as  if  Mrs 
Ogilvy  of  the  Hewan  had  been  but 
one  of  the  people  here  !).  And  then 
she  made  a  pause  and  put  her  head 
on  one  side,  and  regarded  the  old 
lady,  now  impenetrable  as  a  stone 
wall,  with  cajoling  sweetness. 
"  He  has  told  you  ! "  she  said. 

"If  you  are  meaning  the  min- 
ister  " 

"  Oh,  why  should  we  play  at  hide- 
and-seek,  when  I  am  dying  for  your 
sympathy,  and  you  know  very  well 
whom  I  mean  ?  Who  could  I  mean 

but And  oh,  dear  Mrs  Ogilvy, 

do  wish  me  joy,  and  say  you  think 
I  have  done  well " 

"Upon  your  marriage  with  the 
minister  ? " 

"  Oh,"  cried  the  lady,  holding  up 
her  hands,  "don't  crush  me  with 
your  minister  !  I  think  it's  pretty. 
I  have  no  objections  to  it :  but  still 
you  do  call  him  Mr  Logan  when 
you  speak  to  him.  Poor  man  !  he 
has  been  so  lonely  ever  since  his 
poor  wife  died.  And  I — I  have 
been  very  lonely  too.  Can  any  one 
ever  take  the  same  place  as  a  wife 
or  a  husband.  We  are  two  lonely 
people " 

"  Not  him,"  said  Mrs  Ogilvy;  "  I 
can  say  nothing  for  you.  Very  good 
company  he  has  had,  better  than 
most  of  the  wives  I  see.  His 
own  daughter,  just  the  best  and 
the  kindest — and  that  has  kept  his 
house  in  such  order — as  it  will  take 
any  strange  woman  no  little  trouble 
to  do." 

"  Oh,  don't  think  I  shall  attempt 
that,"  said  the  visitor.  "  I  have 
promised  to  be  his  wife,  but  not  to 
be  his  drudge.  Poor  Susan  has 
been  his  drudge.  Not  much  wonder 
therefore  that  she  could  not  be  much 
of  a  companion  to  him.  One  can't, 
my  dear  Mrs  Ogilvy,  be  busy  with 
a  set  of  children,  and  teaching  the 
a  b  c,  all  day,  and  then  be  lively  and 
amusing  to  a  man  when  he  comes 
in  tired  at  night." 


"  I  have  nothing  to  say  to  it  one 
way  or  another,"  said  Mrs  Ogilvy. 
"I  wish  you  may  never  rue  it,  neither 
him  nor  you,  and  that  is  just  all 
that  will  come  to  my  lips.  If  she 
is  a  lively  companion  or  not,  I  can- 
not say,  but  my  poor  Susie  has 
been  a  mother  to  these  bairns  ;  and 
what  he  will  do  with  the  little  ones 
turned  out  of  the  house,  and  Susie 
turned  out  of  his  house " 

"You  are  so  prejudiced!  The 
little  girls  will  be  far  better  at 
school  —  and  Susie  is  going  to 
marry,  which  she  should  have  done 
ten  years  ago.  Her  father  has  no 
right  to  keep  a  girl  from  making 
a  happy  marriage  and  securing  the 
man  of  her  heart." 

"  And  where  is  she  to  get,"  said 
Mrs  Ogilvy,  with  a  slight  choke  in 
her  throat,  "  what  you  call  the  man 
of  her  heart?" 

"  Oh,  my  dear  lady,  you  that 
have  known  Susie  all  through, 
how  can  you  ask?  He  proposed 
to  her  when  she  was  twenty,  and 
I  believe  he  has  asked  her  every 

year  since " 

"So  he  has  told  you  that  old  story; 
but  he  had  not  the  courage,  know- 
ing a  little  more  than  you  do,  to 
speak  to  me  of  the  man  of  her 
heart.  Oh  no,  he  had  not  the  bold- 
ness to  do  that !  And  is  Susie 
aware  of  the  happiness  you  are  pre- 
paring for  her,  her  father  and  you  ? " 
the  old  lady  said,  grimly. 

"  Mr  Logan,"  said  the  lady,  "  has 
a  timidity  about  that  which  I  don't 
understand.  I  tell  him  he  is 
frightened  for  his  daughter.  It  is 
as  if  he  felt  he  had  jilted  her." 

"Indeed,  and  it  is  very  like 
that,"  Mrs  Ogilvy  said. 

"  He  thought  you,  perhaps,  dear 
Mrs  Ogilvy,  as  such  a  very  old 
friend,  would  tell  her, — and  then, 
when  he  found  that  you  were  dis- 
inclined to  do  it,  he well,  I  fear 

he  has  shirked  it  again.    Nothing  so 
cowardly  as  a  man  in  certain  circum- 


1894.] 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


191 


stances.  I  believe  at  the  last  I 
will  have  to  do  it  myself." 

"Nobody  could  be  better  quali- 
fied  " 

"Do  you  really  think  so?  I'm 
so  glad  you  are  learning  to  do  me 
justice.  It's  all  for  her  good — you 
know  it  is.  To  marry  and  have 
children  of  her  own  is  better  than 
acting  mother  to  another  person's 
children.  Oh  yes,  they  are  her 
own  brothers  and  sisters  now ;  but 
they  will  grow  up,  and  if  Susie 
does  not  marry,  what  prospect  has 
she?  Those  who  really  love  her 
should  take  all  these  things  into 
account." 

Mrs  Ainslie  spoke  these  sensible 
words  with  many  little  gestures  and 
airs,  which  exasperated  the  older 
woman  perhaps  all  the  more  that 
there  was  nothing  to  be  said  against 
the  utterance  itself.  But  at  that 
moment  she  heard  a  step  that  she 
knew  well  upon  the  gravel  outside, 
and  of  all  people  in  the  world  to 
meet  and  divine  who  Robert  was, 
and  publish  it  abroad,  this  inter- 
loper, this  stranger,  who  had  awak- 
ened a  warmer  feeling  of  hostility 
in  Mrs  Ogilvy's  bosom  than  any 
one  had  done  before,  was  the 
last.  She  sat  breathless,  making 
no  answer,  while  she  heard  him 
enter  the  house :  he  had  been  in 
the  garden  with  his  pipe  and  his 
newspaper — for  it  was  still  morn- 
ing, and  not  an  hour  when  the 
He  wan  was  on  guard  against  visit- 
ors. His  large  step,  so  distinctly  a 
man's  step,  paused  in  the  hall.  Mrs 
Ogilvy  raised  her  voice  a  little,  to 
warn  him,  as  she  made  an  abstract 
reply. 

"  It's  rare,"  she  said,  "  that  we're 
so  thankful  as  we  ought  to  be — to 
them  that  deal  with  us  for  our 
good." 

"Do  you  hear  that  step  in  the 
passage  1 "  cried  Mrs  Ainslie.  "  Ah, 
I  know  who  it  is.  It  is  dear  James 
— it  is  Mr  Logan,  I  mean.  I  felt 


sure  he  would  not  be  long  behind 
me.     Mayn't  I  let  him  in  ? " 

She  rose  in  a  flutter,  and  rushing 
to  the  door  threw  it  open,  with  an 
air  of  eager  welcome  and  arch  dis- 
covery ;  but  recoiled  a  step  before 
the  unknown  personage,  lar^e,  silent, 
with  his  big  beard  and  watchful  as- 
pect, who  stood  listening  and  un- 
certain outside.  "  Oh  !  "  she  cried, 
and  fell  back,  not  without  a  start  of 
dismay. 

Mrs  Ogilvy's  pride  did  not  toler- 
ate any  denial  of  her  son,  who  stood 
there,  making  signs  to  her  which  she 
declined  to  notice.  "This  is  my 
son,"  she  said,  "the  master  of  the 
house.  He  has  just  come  back 
after  a  long  time  away." 

»0h  — Mr  Ogilvy!"  the  lady 
faltered.  She  was  anxious  to  please 
everybody,  but  she  was  evidently 
frightened,  though  it  was  difficult 
to  tell  why.  "  How  pleased  you 
must  be  to  have  your  son  come 
back  at  last !  " 

He  paused  disconcerted  on  the 
threshold.  "  I  did  not  mean  to — 
disturb  you,  mother  —  I  did  not 
know  there  was  anybody  here." 

"  Don't  upbraid  me,  please,  with 
coming  at  such  untimely  hours," 
she  cried.  Mrs  Ain^lie  was  in  a 
flutter  of  consciousness,  rubbing 
her  gloved  hands,  laughing  a  little 
hysterically,  but  more  than  ever 
anxious  to  please,  and  instinctively 
putting  on  her  little  panoply  of 
airs  and  graces.  "  I  had  business. 
I  had  indeed.  It  was  not  a  mere 
call  meaning  nothing.  Your  mother 
will  tell  you,  Mr  Ogilvy—  "  She 
let  her  veil  drop  over  her  face,  with 
a  tremulous  movement,  and  almost 
cringed  while  she  flattered  him, 
with  little  flutterings  and  glances 
of  incomprehensible  meaning. 

The  woman  was  trying  to  cast 
her  spells  over  Robbie!  There 
flew  through  Mrs  Ogilvy's  mind  a 
sensation  which  was  not  all  dis- 
« The  woman "  was 


192 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found, 


[Aug. 


odious  to  her ;  but  she  was  a  well- 
looking  woman,  and  not  an  ignor- 
ant one,  knowing  something  of  the 
world ;  and  Robert,  with  his  big 
beard  and  his  rough  clothes,  had 
given  Mrs  Ogilvy  the  profoundly 
humiliating  consciousness  that  he 
had  ceased  to  look  like  a  gentle- 
man •  but  the  woman  did  not  think 
so.  The  woman  made  her  little 
coquettish  advances  to  him  as  if  he 
had  been  a  prince.  This  was  how 
his  mother  interpreted  her  visitor's 
looks  :  she  thought  no  better  of  her 
for  this,  but  yet  the  sensation  was 
soothing,  and  raised  her  spirits, — 
even  though  she  scorned  the  woman 
for  it,  and  her  son  for  the  hesitating 
smile  which  after  a  moment  began 
to  light  up  his  face. 

"  However,"  said  the  lady,  hur- 
riedly, "unless  you  wish  for  the 
minister  on  my  heels,  perhaps  I 
had  better  go  now.  Not  you 
will  not  be  persuaded,  indeed? 
You  are  more  hard-hearted  than  I 
expected.  So  then  there  is  noth- 
ing for  it  but  that  I  must  do  it 
myself.  There,  Mr  Ogilvy !  You 
see  we  have  secrets  after  all — 
mysteries !  Two  women  can't 
meet  together,  can  they,  without 
having  something  tremendous,  some 
conspiracy  or  other,  for  each  other's 
ears?" 

"  I  did  not  say  so,"  said  Robert, 
not  unresponsive,  though  taken  by 
surprise. 

"Oh  no,  you  did  not  say  so; 
but  you  were  thinking  so  all  the 
same.  They  always  do,  don't  they? 
Gentlemen  have  such  fixed  ideas 
about  women."  She  had  overcome 
her  little  tremor,  but  was  more 
coquettish  than  ever.  While  she 
held  his  mother's  hand  in  hers,  she 
held  up  a  forefinger  of  the  other 
archly  at  Robert.  "  Oh,  I've  had  a 
great  deal  of  experience.  I  know 
what  to  expect  from  men." 

She  led  him  out  after  her  to  the 
door  talking  thus,  and  down  to- 


wards the  gate ;  while  Mrs  Ogilvy 
stood  gazing,  wondering.  It  was 
one  of  her  tenets,  too,  that  no  man 
can  resist  such  arts ;  but  the  anger 
of  a  woman  who  sees  them  thus 
exerted  in  her  very  presence  was 
still  softened  by  the  sensation  that 
this  woman,  so  experienced,  still 
thought  Robbie  worth  her  while. 
He  came  back  again  in  a  few 
minutes,  having  accompanied  the 
visitor  to  the  gate,  with  a  smile 
faintly  visible  in  his  beard.  "  Who 
is  that  woman  ? "  he  said.  "  She  is 
not  one  of  your  neighbours  here  ? "  - 

"What  made  you  go  with  her, 
Robbie?" 

"Oh,  she  seemed  to  expect  it, 
and  it  was  only  civil.  Where  has 
she  come  from?  and  how  did  you 
.pick  such  a  person  up?" 

"  She  is  a  person  that  will  soon 
be — a  neighbour,  as  you  say,  and  a 
person  of  importance  here.  She 
is  going  to  be  married  upon  the 
minister,  Robbie." 

"The  minister  !"  he  gave  a  low 
whistle — "that  will  be  a  curious 
couple  ;  but  I  hope  it's  a  new  min- 
ister, and  not  poor  old  Logan,  whom 
I — whom  I  remember  so  well.  I've 
seen  women  like  that,  but  not 
among  ministers.  I  almost  think 
I've — seen  her  somewhere.  Old 
Logan !  But  he  has  a  wife," 
Robert  said. 

"  He  had  one ;  but  she's  been 
dead  these  ten  years,  and  this  lady 
is  new  come  to  the  parish,  and  he 
has  what  you  call  fallen  in  love 
with  her.  There  are  no  fules  like 
old  fules,  Robbie.  I  like  little  to 
hear  of  falling  in  love  at  that  age." 

"  Old  Logan  ! "  said  Robert  again. 
There  were  thoughts  in  his  eyes 
which  seemed  to  come  to  sudden  life, 
but  which  his  mother  did  not  dare 
investigate  too  closely.  She  dreaded 
to  awaken  them  further  ;  she  feared 
to  drive  them  away.  What  mem- 
ories did  the  name  of  Logan  bring  ? 
or  were  there  any  of  sufficient  force 


1894.1 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


to  keep  him  musing,  as  he  seemed 
to  do,  for  a  few  minutes  after.  But 
at  the  end  of  that  time  he  burst 
into  a  sudden  laugh.  "  Old  Logan ! " 
he  said ;  "  poor  old  fellow !  I 
remember  him  very  well.  The 
model  of  a  Scotch  minister,  steady- 
'going,  but  pawky  too,  and  some 
fun  in  him.  Where  has  he  picked 
up  a  woman  like  that?  and  what 
will  he  do  with  her  when  he  has 
got  her  1  I  have  seen  the  like  of 
her  before." 

"  But,  Bobbie,  she  is  just  a  very 
personable,  well-put-on  woman,  and 
well-looking,  and  no  ill-mannered. 
She  is  not  one  I  like, — but  I  am 
maybe  prejudiced,  considering  the 
changes  she  will  make ;  and  there 
is  no  harm  in  her,  so  far  as  we  have 
ever  heard  here." 

"  Oh,  very  likely  there  is  no 
harm  in  her ;  but  what  has  she  to 
do  in  a  place  like  this?  and  with 
old  Logan  !  "  He  laughed  again, 
and  then,  growing  suddenly  grave, 
asked,  "  What  changes  is  she  going 
to  make  ? " 

"  There  are  always  changes,"  said 
Mrs  Ogilvy,  evasively,  "when  a 
man  marries  that  has  a  family,  and 
everything  settled  on  another  foun- 
dation. They  are  perhaps  more  in 
a  woman's  eyes  than  in  a  man's ; 
I  will  tell  you  about  that  another 
time.  But  you  that  wanted  to  be 
private,  Robbie — there  will  be  no 
more  of  that,  I'm  thinking,  now." 

"Well,  it  cannot  be  helped,"  he 
said,  crossly;  "what  could  I  do? 
Could  I  refuse  to  answer  her? 
Private  ! — how  can  you  be  private 
in  a  place  like  this,  where  every 


193 

fellow  knew  you  in  your  cradle? 
Two  or  three  have  spoken  to  me 
already  on  the  road " 

"I  never  thought  we  could  keep 
it  to  ourselves — and  why  should 
we?"  his  mother  said. 

He  answered  with  a  sort  of  snort 
only,  which  expressed  nothing,  and 
then  fell  a-musing,  stretched  out  in 
the  big  chair,  his  legs  half  away 
across  the  room,  his  beard  filling  up 
all  the  rest  of  the  space.  His  mother 
looked  at  him  with  mingled  sensa- 
tions of  pride  and  humiliation — a 
half-admiration  and  a  half-shame. 
He  was  a  big  buirdly  man,  as  Janet 
said ;  and  he  had  his  new  clothes, 
which  were  at  least  clean  and  fresh  : 
but  they  had  not  made  any  trans- 
formation in  his  appearance,  as  she 
had  hoped.  Was  there  any  look  of 
a  gentleman  left  in  that  large  bulk 
of  a  man  ?  The  involuntary  question 
went  cold  to  Mrs  Ogilvy's  heart. 
It  still  gave  her  a  faint  elation,  how- 
ever, to  remember  that  Mrs  Ainslie 
had  quite  changed  her  aspect  at  the 
sight  of  him,  quite  acknowledged 
him  as  one  of  the  persons  whom  it 
was  her  mission  in  the  world  to 
attract.  It  was  a  small  comfort, 
and  yet  it  was  a  comfort.  She 
took  up  her  stocking  and  composed 
herself  to  wait  his  pleasure,  till  he 
should  have  finished  his  thoughts, 
whatever  they  were,  and  be  dis- 
posed to  talk  again. 

But  when  his  voice  came  finally 
out  of  his  beard  and  out  of  the 
silence,  it  was  with  a  startling 
question :  "  What  do  you  mean 
to  do  with  me,  mother,  now  I  am 
here?" 


CHAPTER   XI. 


They  sat  and  looked  at  each  shawl  and  her  white  cap,  its  natural 
other  across  the  little  area  of  the  occupant  and  mistress.  Her  stock- 
peaceful  room.  He,  stretching  half  ing  had  dropped  into  her  lap,  and 
across  it,  too  big  almost  for  the  she  looked  at  him  with  a  pathos 
little  place.  She,  in  her  white  and  wistfulness  in  her  eyes  which 


194 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


were  scarcely  concealed  by  the 
anxious  smile  which  she  turned 
upon  him.  They  were  not  equal 
in  anything,  in  this  less  than 
in  other  particulars  —  for  he  was 
indifferent,  asking  her  the  question 
without  much  care  for  the  answer, 
while  she  was  moved  to  her  finger- 
ends  with  anxiety  on  the  subject, 
thrilling  with  emotion  and  fear. 
She  looked  at  him  for  her  inspira- 
tion, to  endeavour  to  read  in  his 
eyes  what  answer  would  suit  him 
best,  what  she  could  say  to  follow 
his  mood,  to  please  him  or  to  guide 
him  as  might  be.  Mrs  Ogilvy  had 
not  many  experiences  that  were 
encouraging.  She  had  little  con- 
fidence in  her  power  to  influence 
and  to  lead.  If  she  could  know 
what  he  would  like  her  to  say,  that 
would  be  something.  She  had  in 
her  heart  a  feeling  which,  though 
very  quiet,  was  in  reality  despair. 
She  did  not  know  what  to  do  with 
him  —  she  had  no  hope  that  it 
would  matter  anything  what  she 
wanted  to  do.  He  would  do  what 
he  liked,  what  he  chose,  and  not 
anything  she  could  say. 

"My  dear,"  she  said,  "when 
this  calamity  is  overpast,  and  you 
have  got  settled  a  little,  there 
will  be  plenty  of  things  that  you 
could  do." 

"  That's  very  doubtful,"  he  said  ; 
"  and  you  have  not  much  faith  in  it 
yourself.  I've  been  used  to  do 
nothing.  I  don't  know  what  work 
is  like.  Do  you  think  I'm  fit  for 
it  1  I  had  to  work  on  board  ship, 
and  how  I  hated  it  words  could 
never  tell.  I  was  too  much  of  a 
duffer,  they  said,  to  do  seaman's 
work.  They  made  me  help  the 
cook — fancy,  your  son  helping  the 
cook ! " 

"  It  is  quite  honest  work,"  she 
said,  with  a  little  quiver  in  her 
voice — "  quite  honest  work." 

He  laughed  a  little.  "  That's  like 
you,"  he  said ;  "  and  now  you  will 


[Aug. 


want  me  to  do  more  honest  work. 
I  will  need  to,  I  suppose."  He 
paused  here,  and  gave  her  a  keen 
look,  which,  fortunately,  she  did 
not  understand.  "  But  the  thing  is, 
I'm  good  for  nothing.  I  cannot  dig, 
and  to  beg  I  am  ashamed.  I've 
done  many  things,  but  I've  not 
worked  much  all  my  life.  I  will 
be  left  on  your  hands — and  what 
will  you  do  with  me?"  He  was 
not  so  indifferent,  after  all,  as  when 
he  began.  He  was  almost  in  earn- 
est, keeping  his  eye  upon  her,  to 
read  her  face  as  well  as  her  words. 
But  somehow  she,  who  was  so 
anxious  to  divine  him,  to  discover 
what  he  wished  her  to  say — she 
had  no  notion,  notwithstanding  all 
her  anxiety,  what  it  was  he  desired 
to  know. 

"  My  bonnie  man ! "  she  said, 
"it's  a  hard  question  to  answer. 
"What  could  I  wish  to  do  with  you 
but  what  would  be  best  for  your- 
self? I  have  made  no  plan  for 
you,  Eobbie.  Whatever  you  can 
think  of  that  you  would  like — or 
whatever  we  can  think  of,  putting 
our  two  heads  together — but  just, 
my  dear,  what  would  suit  you 
best " 

"But  suppose  there  is  nothing  I 
would  like  —  and  suppose  I  was 
just  on  your  hands  a  helpless 
lump— 

"  I  will  suppose  no  such  thing," 
she  said,  with  the  tears  coming  to 
her  eyes ;  "  why  should  I  suppose 
that  of  my  son  ?  No,  no  !  no,  no  ! 
You  are  young  yet,  and  in  all  your 
strength,  the  Lord  be  praised ! 
You  might  have  come  back  to  me 
with  the  life  crushed  out  of  you, 
like  Willie  Miller;  or  worn  with 
that  weary  India,  and  the  heat  and 
the  work,  like  Mrs  Allender's  son 
in  the  Glen.  But  you,  Eobbie " 

"  What  would  you  have  done 
with  me,"  he  repeated,  insisting, 
though  with  a  half -smile  on  his 
face,  "if  it  had  been  as  bad  as 


1894.] 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


195 


that — if  I  had  come   to   you  like 
them?" 

"Why  should  we  think  of  that 
that  is  not,  nor  is  like  to  be  ?  Oh  ! 
my  dear,  I  would  have  done  the 
best  I  could  with  a  sore  heart.  I 
would  just  have  done  my  best,  and 
pinched  a  little  and  scraped  a  little, 
and  put  forth  my  little  skill  to 
make  you  comfortable  on  what 
there  was." 

"  You  have  every  air  of  being 
very  comfortable  yourself,"  he  said, 
looking  round  the  room.  ' '  I  thought 
so  when  I  came  first.  You  are 
like  the  man  in  the  proverb — the 
parable,  I  mean — whose  very  ser- 
vants had  enough  and  to  spare,  while 
his  son  perished  with  hunger." 

She  was  a  little  surprised  by 
what  he  said,  but  did  not  yet  at- 
tach any  very  serious  meaning  to  it. 
"  I  am  better  off,"  she  said,  "  than 
when  you  went  away.  Some  things 
that  I've  been  mixed  up  in  have 
done  very  well,  so  they  tell  me.  I 
never  have  spent  what  came  in  like 
that.  I  have  saved  it  all  up  for  you, 
Bobbie." 

"Not  for  me,  mother,"  he  said; 
"  to  please  yourself  with  the  thought 
that  there  was  more  money  in  the 
bank." 

"  Bobbie,"  she  said,  "  you  cannot 
be  thinking  what  you  are  saying. 
That  was  never  my  character.  There 
is  nobody  that  does  not  try  to  save 
for  their  bairns.  I  have  saved  for 
you,  when  I  knew  not  where  you 
were,  nor  if  I  would  ever  see  you 
more.  The  money  in  the  bank  was 
never  what  I  was  thinking  of.  There 
would  be  enough  to  give  you,  per- 
haps, a  good  beginning — whatever 
you  might  settle  to  do." 

"  Set  me  up  in  business,  in  fact," 
he  said,  with  a  laugh.  "That  is 
what  would  please  you  best." 

"  The  thing  that  would  please  me 
best  would  be  what  was  the  best  for 
you,"  she  said,  with  self-restraint. 
She  was  a  little  wounded  by  his  in- 


quiries, but  even  now  had  not  pene- 
trated his  meaning.  He  wanted 
more  distinct  information  than  he 
had  got.  Her  gentle  ease  of  living, 
her  readiness  to  supply  his  wants, 
to  forestall  them  even — the  luxury, 
as  it  seemed  to  him  after  his  wild 
and  wandering  career,  of  the  long- 
settled  house,  the  carefully  kept 
gardens,  the  little  carriage,  all  the 
modest  abundance  of  the  humble  es- 
tablishment, had  surprised  him.  He 
had  believed  that  his  mother  was  all 
but  poor — not  in  want  of  anything 
essential  to  comfort,  but  yet  very 
careful  about  her  expenditure,  and 
certainly  not  allowing  him  in  the 
days  of  his  youth,  as  he  had  often 
reflected  with  bitterness,  the  indul- 
gences to  which,  if  she  had  been  as 
well  off  as  she  seemed  now,  he 
would  have  had,  he  thought,  a 
right.  What  had  she  now?  Had 
she  grown  rich  ?  Was  there  plenty 
for  him  after  her,  enough  to  exempt 
him  from  that  necessity  of  working, 
which  he  had  always  feared  and 
hated1?  It  was,  perhaps,  not  un- 
reasonable that  he  should  wish  to 
know. 

"I  told  you,"  he  said,  after  a 
short  interval,  "  that  I  was  good  for 
nothing.  If  I  had  stayed  at  home, 
what  should  I  have  been  now  ?  A 
Writer  to  the  Signet  with  an  office 
in  Edinburgh,  and,  perhaps,  who 
can  tell,  clients  that  would  have 
come  to  consult  me  about  where  to 
place  their  money  and  other  such 
things."  He  laughed  at  the  thought. 
"  I  can  never  be  that  now." 

"No,"  she  said,  in  tender  sym- 
pathy with  what  she  was  quick  to 
think  a  regret  on  his  part.  "  No, 
Bobbie,  my  dear ;  I  fear  it's  too  late 
for  that  now." 

"  Well !  it's  perhaps  all  the  bet- 
ter :  for  how  could  I  tell  them  what 
to  do  with  their  money,  who  never 
had  any  of  my  own  ?  No ;  what  I 
shall  do  is  this  :  be  a  dependent  on 
you,  mother,  all  my  life;  with  a  few 


196 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  found. 


[Aug. 


pounds  to  buy  my  clothes,  and  a 
few  shillings  to  get  my  tobacco,  and 
a  daily  paper,  now  that  the  '  Scots- 
man' comes  out  daily — and  some 
wretched  old  library  of  novels,  where 
I  can  change  my  books  three  or  four 
times  a-week :  and  that's  how  Eob 
Ogilvy  will  end,  that  was  once  a 
terror  in  his  way — no,  it  was  never 
I  that  was  the  terror,  but  those  I 
was  with,"  he  added,  in  an  under- 
tone. 

Mrs  Ogilvy 's  heart  was  wrung 
with  that  keen  anguish  of  helpless- 
ness which  is  as  the  bitterness  of 
death  to  those  who  can  do  nothing 
to  help  or  deliver  those  they  love. 
"  Oh,  my  dear,  my  dear,"  she  said, 
"  why  should  that  be  so  1  It  is  all 
yours  whatever  is  mine.  It's  not  a 
fortune,  but  you  shall  be  no  depen- 
dent— you  shall  have  your  own  : 
and  better  thoughts  will  come — and 
you  will  want  more  than  a  library  of 
foolish  books  or  a  daily  paper.  .You 
will  want  your  own  honest  life,  like 
them  that  went  before  you,  and 
your  place  in  the  world — and  oh, 
Eobbie  !  God  grant  it !  a  good  wife 
and  a  family  of  your  own." 

He  got  up  and  walked  about, 
with  large  steps  that  made  the 
boards  creak,  and  with  the  laugh 
which  she  liked  least  of  all  his  utter- 
ances. "  No,  mother,  that  will 
never  be,"  he  said.  "  I'm  not  one 
to  be  caught  like  that.  You  will 
not  find  me  putting  myself  in 
prison  and  rolling  the  stone  to  the 
mouth  of  the  cave." 

"Eobbie!"  she  cried,  with  a 
sense  of  something  profane  in  what 
he  said,  though  she  could  scarcely 
have  told  what.  But  the  conver- 
sation was  interrupted  here  by 
Janet  coming  to  announce  the 
early  dinner,  to  which  Eobert  as 
usual  did  the  fullest  justice.  What- 
ever he  might  have  done  or  said  to 
shock  her,  the  sight  of  his  abundant 
meal  always  brought  Mrs  Ogilvy's 
mind,  more  or  less,  back  to  a  certain 


contentment,  a  sort  of  approval. 
He  was  not  too  particular  nor 
dainty  about  his  food :  he  never 
gave  himself  airs,  as  if  it  were  not 
good  enough,  nor  looked  contemp- 
tuous of  Janet's  good  dishes,  as  a 
man  who  has  been  for  years  away 
from  home  so  often  does.  He  ate 
heartily,  innocently,  like  one  who 
had  nothing  on  his  conscience,  a 
good  digestion,  and  a  clean  record. 
It  was  not  credible  even  that  a 
man  who  ate  his  dinner  like  that 
should  not  be  one  who  would  work 
as  well  as  eat,  and  earn  his  meal 
with  pleasure.  It  uplifted  her 
heart  a  little,  and  eased  it,  only  to 
see  him  eat. 

Afterwards  it  could  scarcely  be 
said  that  the  conversation  was  re- 
sumed ;  but  that  day  he  was  in  a 
mood  for  talk.  He  told  her  scraps 
of  his  adventures,  sitting  with  the 
'  Scotsman '  in  his  hand,  which  he 
did  not  read  —  taking  pleasure  in 
frightening  her,  she  thought;  but 
yet,  after  leading  her  to  a  point 
of  breathless  interest,  breaking  off 
with  a  half-jest — "  It  was  not  me, 
it  was  him."  She  got  used  to  this 
conclusion,  and  almost  to  feel  as  if 
this  man  unknown,  who  was  always 
in  her  son's  mind,  was  in  a  manner 
the  soul  of  Eobert's  large  passive 
body,  moving  that  at  his  will. 
Then  her  son  returned  with  a  sud- 
den spring  to  the  visitor  of  the 
morning,  and  to  poor  old  Logan 
and  the  strangeness  of  his  fate. 
"  She's  like  a  woman  I  once  saw 
out  yonder " — with  a  jerk  of  his 
thumb  over  his  shoulder  —  "a 
singer,  or  something  of  that  sort, 
— a  woman  that  was  up  to  any- 
thing." 

"  Don't  say  that,  my  dear,  of  a 
woman  that  will  soon  be  the  min- 
ister's wife." 

"  The  minister's  wife  !  "  he  said, 
with  a  great  explosion  of  laughter. 
And  then  he  grew  suddenly  grave. 
"  Old  Logan,"  he  said,  with  a  sort 


1894.' 


Who  was  Lost,  and  is  Found. 


197 


of  hesitation,  "  had — a  daughter,  if 
I  remember  right." 

"  If  you  remember  right !  Susie 
Logan,  that  you  played  with  when 
you  were  both  bairns — that  grew 
up  with  you — that  I  once  thought 

a  daughter  !     Well  I  wot,  and 

you  too,  that  he  had  a  daughter." 
"  Well,  mother,"  he  said,  sub- 
dued, "  I  remember  very  well,  if 
that  will  please  you  better.  Susie  : 
yes,  that  was  her  name.  And 
Susie — I  suppose  she  is  married 
long  ago?" 

"  They  are  meaning,"  said  Mrs 
Ogilvy,  with  an  intonation  of  scorn, 
"  to  marry  her  now." 

"  What  does  that  mean  —  to 
marry  her  now1?  Do  you  mean 
she  has  never  married  —  Susie  1 
And  why?  She  must  be  old 
now,"  he  said,  with  a  half  laugh. 
"  I  suppose  she  has  lost  her  looks. 
And  had  no  man  the  sense  to  see 
she  was — well,  a  pretty  girl — when 
she  was  a  pretty  girl  ? " 

"If  that  was  all  you  thought 
she  was  ! "  said  Mrs  Ogilvy — even 
her  son  was  not  exempted  from  her 
disapproval  where  Susie  was  con- 
cerned. She  paused  again,  how- 
ever, and  said,  more  softly,  "It  has 
not  been  for  want  of  opportunity. 
The  man  that  wants  her  now  wanted 
her  at  twenty.  She  has  had  her 
reasons,  no  doubt." 

"  Reasons — against  taking  a  hus- 
band ?  I  never  heard  there  were 
any — in  a  woman's  mind." 

"  There  are  maybe  more  things 
in  heaven  and  earth — than  you  just 
have  the  best  information  upon," 
she  said. 

She  thought  it  expedient  after 
this  to  go  up-stairs  a  little,  to  look 
for  something  Janet  wanted,  she 
explained.  Sometimes  there  were 
small  matters  which  affected  her 
more  than  the  greater  ones.  The 
early  terrible  impression  of  him  was 
wearing  a  little  away.  She  had  got 
used  to  his  new  aspect,  to  his  new 


voice,  to  the  changed  and  altered 
being  he  was.  The  bitterness  of  the 
discovery  was  over.  She  knew  more 
or  less  what  to  expect  of  him  now, 
as  she  had  known  what  to  expect 
of  the  boyish  Robbie  of  old ;  and, 
indeed,  this  man  who  was  made 
up  of  so  many  things  that  were 
new  to  her  had  thrown  a  strange  and 
painful  light  on  the  Robbie  of  old, 
whom  during  so  many  years  she 
had  made  into  an  ideal  of  all  that 
was  hopeful  and  beautiful  in  youth. 
She  remembered  now,  yet  was  so 
unwilling  to  remember.  She  was 
very  patient,  but  patient  as  she 
was,  there  were  some  things,  some 
little  things,  which  she  found  hard 
to  bear ;  as  for  instance  about  Susie 
— Susie  :  that  she  was  a  pretty  girl, 
but  must  be  old  now,  and  had 
probably  lost  her  looks, — was  that 
all  that  Robert  Ogilvy  knew  of 
Susie?  It  gave  her  a  sharp  pang 
of  anger,  in  spite  of  her  great 
patience,  in  spite  of  herself. 

It  took  her  some  time  to  find 
what  Janet  wanted.  She  was  not 
very  sure  what  it  was.  She  opened 
two  or  three  cupboards,  and  with 
a  vague  look  went  over  their  con- 
tents, trying  to  remember.  Per- 
haps it  was  nothing  of  importance 
after  all.  She  went  down  again 
to  the  parlour  at  last,  to  resume 
any  conversation  he  pleased,  or  to 
listen  to  whatever  he  might  tell 
her,  or  to  be  silent  and  wait  till 
he  might  again  be  disposed  to 
talk;  passing  by  the  kitchen  on 
her  way  first  to  tell  Janet  that  she 
had  forgotten  what  it  was  she  had 
promised  to  get  for  her  :  but  if  she 
would  wait  a  little,  the  first  time 
she  went  up-stairs, — and  then  the 
mistress  returned  to  her  drawing- 
room  by  the  other  way,  coming 
through  the  back  passage.  She 
had  not  heard  any  one  come  to 
the  front  door. 

But  when  she  went  into  the 
room  she  saw  a  strange  sight.  In 


198 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[Aug. 


the  doorway  opposite  to  her  stood 
a  familiar  figure,  which  had  always 
been  to  Mrs  Ogilvy  like  sunshine 
and  the  cheerful  day,  always  wel- 
come, always  bringing  a  little 
brightness  with  her — Susie  Logan, 
in  her  light  summer  dress,  a  soft 
transparent  shadow  on  her  face 
from  the  large  brim  of  her  hat, 
every  line  of  her  figure  express- 
ing the  sudden  pause,  the  arrested 
movement  of  a  great  surprise  and 
wonder, — nothing  but  wonder  as 
yet.  She  stood  with  her  lips  apart, 
one  foot  advanced  to  come  in,  her 
hand  upon  the  door  as  she  had 
opened  it,  her  eyes  large  with 
astonishment.  She  was  gazing  at 
him,  where  he  half  sat,  half  lay, 
in  the  great  chair,  his  long  legs 
stretched  half  across  the  room,  his 
head  laid  back.  He  had  fallen 
asleep  in  the  drowsy  afternoon, 
after  the  early  dinner,  with  the 
newspaper  spread  out  upon  his 
knee.  He  had  nothing  to  do, 
there  was  not  much  in  the  paper : 
there  was  nothing  to  wonder  at 
in  the  fact  that  he  had  fallen 
asleep.  His  mother,  to  whom  it 
always  gave  a  pang  to  see  him 
do  so,  had  explained  it  to  herself 
as  many  times  as  it  happened  in 
this  way;  and  there  sprang  up 
into  her  eyes  the  ready  challenge, 
the  instant  defence.  Why  should 
he  not  sleep  ?  He  had  had  plenty, 
oh  plenty,  to  weary  him ;  he  was 
but  new  come  home,  where  he 
could  rest  at  his  pleasure.  But 
this  warlike  explanation  died  out 
of  her  as  she  watched  Susie's  face, 
who  as  yet  saw  nobody  but  this 
strange  sleeper  in  possession  of  the 
room.  The  wonder  in  it  changed 
from  moment  to  moment;  it  changed 
into  a  gleam  of  joy,  it  clouded  over 
with  a  sudden  trouble  :  there  came 
a  quiver  to  her  soft  lip,  and  some- 
thing liquid  to  her  eyes,  more 
liquid,  more  soft  than  their  usual 
lucid  light,  which  was  like  the 


dew.  There  rose  in  Susie's  face  a 
look  of  infinite  pity,  of  a  tender- 
ness like  that  of  a  mother  at  the 
sight  of  a  suffering  child.  Oh, 
more  tender  than  me,  more  like  a 
mother  than  me  !  said  to  herself 
the  mother  who  was  looking  on. 
And  then  there  came  from  Susie's 
bosom  a  long  deep  sigh,  and  the 
tears  brimmed  over  from  her  eyes. 
She  stepped  back  noiselessly  from 
the  door  and  closed  it  behind  her ; 
but  stood  outside,  making  no  fur- 
ther movement,  unable  in  her  great 
surprise  and  emotion  to  do  more. 

There  Mrs  Ogilvy  found  her  a 
moment  after,  when,  closing  softly, 
as  Susie  had  done,  the  other  door 
upon  the  sleeper,  she  went  round 
trembling  to  the  little  hall,  in  which 
Susie  stood  trembling  too,  with  her 
hand  upon  her  breast,  where  her 
heart  was  beating  so  high  and  loud. 
They  took  each  other's  hands,  but 
for  a  moment  said  nothing.  Then 
Susie,  with  the  tears  coming  fast, 
said  under  her  breath,  "  You  never 
told  me  ! "  in  an  indescribable  tone 
of  reproach  and  tenderness. 

Mrs  Ogilvy  led  her  into  the  other 
room,  where  they  sat  down  to- 
gether. "  You  knew  him,  Susie, 
you  knew  him  1 "  she  said. 

"  Knew  him  ! — what  would  hin- 
der me  to  know  him  ? "  Susie  re- 
plied, with  the  same  air  of  that 
offence  and  grievance  which  was 
more  tender  than  love  itself. 

"  Oh,  me  !  I  was  not  like  that," 
the  mother  cried.  She  remembered 
her  first  horror  of  him,  with  horror 
at  herself.  She  that  was  his  mother, 
flesh  of  his  flesh,  and  bone  of  his 
bone.  And  here  was  Susie,  that 
had  neither  trouble  nor  doubt. 

"  To  think  I  should  come  in 
thinking  about  nothing — thinking 
about  my  own  small  concerns — and 
find  him  there  as  innocent !  like  a 
tired  bairn.  And  me  perhaps  the 
only  one,"  said  Susie,  "  never  to 
have  heard  a  word !  though  the 


1894.] 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found 


199 


oldest  friend — I  do  not  mind  the 
time  I  did  not  know  Bobbie,"  she 
cried,  with  that  keen  tone  of  in- 
jury; "it  began  with  our  life." 

Here  was  the  difference.  He 
too  had  admitted  that  he  remem- 
bered her  very  well — a  pretty  girl ; 
but  she  must  be  old  now,  and  have 
lost  her  looks.  Susie  had  not  lost 


her  looks  ;  it  was  he  who  had  lost 
his  looks.  Mrs  Ogilvy's  heart  sank, 
as  she  thought  how  completely 
those  looks  were  lost,  and  of  the 
unfavourable  aspect  of  that  heavy 
sleep,  and  the  attitude  of  drowsy 
abandonment  in  the  middle  of  the 
busy  day.  But  Susie  was  conscious 
of  none  of  these  things. 


CHAPTER  XII. 


The  day  after  this  was  one  of  the 
days  on  which  Eobert  chose  to  go 
to  Edinburgh,  which  were  days  his 
mother  dreaded,  though  no  harm 
that  she  could  specify  came  of 
them.  He  had  not  seen  Susie  on 
that  afternoon,  but  was  angry  and 
put  out  when  he  heard  of  her  visit, 
and  that  she  had  seen  him  asleep 
in  his  chair.  "You  might  have 
saved  me  from  that,"  he  said, 
angrily  ;  "  you  need  not  have  made 
an  exhibition  of  me."  "  I  did  not 
know,  Eobbie,  that  she  was  there." 
"  It  is  the  same  thing,"  he  cried  : 
"  you  keep  all  your  doors  and  win- 
dows open,  in  spite  of  everything  I 
say.  What's  that  but  making  an 
exhibition  of  me,  that  am  some- 
thing new,  that  anybody  that 
likes  may  come  and  stare  at  ? " 
She  thought  he  had  reason  for  his 
annoyance,  though  it  was  no  fault 
of  hers  :  and  it  pleased  her  that  he 
should  be  angry  at  having  been 
seen  by  Susie  in  circumstances  so 
unfavourable.  Was  not  that  the 
best  thing  for  him  to  be  roused  to 
a  desire  to  appear  at  his  best,  not 
his  worse  1  He  went  to  Edinburgh 
next  day  in  the  afternoon,  after  the 
early  dinner.  There  was  no  ques- 
tion put  to  him  now  as  to  when  he 
should  be  back. 

During  that  afternoon  Susie  came 
again,  and  was  much  disappointed 
and  cast  down  not  to  see  him. 
Perhaps  it  was  well  that  Susie's 
first  sight  of  him  had  been  at  a 


moment  when  he  could  say  or  do 
nothing  to  diminish  or  spoil  her 
tender  recollection.  None  of  those 
things  that  vexed  the  soul  of  his 
mother  affected  Susie.  The  matur- 
ity of  the  man,  so  different  from 
the  boy ;  the  changed  tone ;  the 
different  way  of  regarding  all  around 
him  ;  the  indifference  to  everything, 
— all  these  were  hidden  from  her. 
The  only  thing  unfavourable  she 
had  seen  of  him  was  his  personal 
appearance,  and  that  had  not  struck 
Susie  as  unfavourable.  The  long, 
soft,  brown  beard,  so  abundant  and 
well  grown,  had  been  beautiful  to 
her;  his  size,  the  large  development 
of  manhood,  had  filled  her  with  a 
half  pride,  half  respect.  Pride  ! 
for  did  not  Eobbie,  her  oldest 
friend,  more  or  less  belong  to  Susie 
too.  She  had  dreamt  already  of 
walking  about  Eskholm  with  him, 
happy  and  proud  in  his  return,  in 
the  falsification  of  all  malicious 
prophecies  to  the  contrary.  He 
was  her  oldest  friend,  her  play- 
fellow from  her  first  recollection. 
There  was  nothing  more  wanted 
to  justify  Susie's  happy  excite- 
ment —  her  satisfaction  in  his 
return. 

"  And  he  is  away  to  Edinburgh, 
and  has  never  come  to  see  us ! 
That  is  not  like  Eobbie,"  she  cried, 
with  a  trace  of  vexation  in  her  eyes. 

"Susie,  I  will  tell  you  and  no 
other  the  secret,  if  it  is  a  secret 
still.  He  had  fallen  into  ill  com- 


200 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[Aug. 


pany,  as  I  always  feared,  in  that 
weary,  far  America." 

"  How  could  he  help  it  1 "  cried 
Susie,  ready  to  face  the  world  in 
his  defence,  "  young  as  he  was, 
and  nobody  to  guide  him." 

"  That  is  true ;  and  we  that  live 
in  a  quiet  country,  and  much 
favoured  and  defended  on  every 
side,  we  know  nothing  of  the  law- 
lessness that  is  there.  You  will 
read  even  in  the  very  papers,  Susie  : 
they  think  no  more  of  drawing  a 
pistol  than  a  gentleman  here  does 
of  taking  his  stick  when  he  goes 
out  for  a  walk." 

Susie  nodded  her  head  in  ac- 
quiescence, and  Mrs  Ogilvy  went 
on  :  "  Where  that's  the  custom, 
harm  will  come.  Men  with  pistols 
in  their  hands  like  that,  that  some- 
times go  off,  even  when  it's  not  in- 
tended, as  you  may  also  read  in 

the  papers  every  day Oh, 

Susie !  it  happened  that  there  was 
an  accident.  How  can  we  tell  at 
this  long  distance,  and  so  little  as 
we  know  their  manners  and  their 
ways,  the  rights  of  it  all,  and  what 
meaning  there  was  in  it,  or  if  there 
was  any  meaning !  But  a  shot 
went  off,  and  a  man  was  killed.  I 
am  used  to  it  now,"  said  Mrs 
Ogilvy,  her  lip  quivering,  her 
face  appealing  in  every  line  to  the 
younger  woman  at  her  side  not — 
oh!  not — to  condemn  him;  "but 
at  the  first  moment  I  was  as  one 
that  had  no  more  life.  The  stain 
of  blood  may  be  upon  my  son's 
hand." 

"No,  no!"  cried  Susie.  "No, 
I  will  not  believe  it — not  him,  of 
all  that  are  in  the  world  ! " 

"  God  bless  you,  my  bonnie 
dear,  that  is  just  the  truth  !  But 
the  shot  came  out  of  the  band,  he 
among  them.  There  is  another  man 
that  was  at  the  head  who  is  likely 
the  man.  And  he  is  like  Eobbie, 
the  same  height,  and  so  forth.  And 
he  has  kept  hold  of  him,  and  kept 


fast  to  him,  and  never  let  him 
go." 

"  I  am  not  surprised,"  said  Susie, 
very  pale,  and  with  her  head  high. 
"For  Robbie  would  never  betray 
him.  He  would  never  fail  one 
that  trusted  in  him." 

"  And  the  terror  in  his  heart  is 
— oh,  he  says  little  to  me,  but  I  can 
divine  it ! — the  terror  in  his  heart  is 
that  this  man  will  come  after  him 
here." 

"  From  America  ! "  said  Susie  ; 
"so  far,  so  far  away." 

"It  is  not  so  far  but  that  you  can 
come  in  a  week  or  a  fortnight,"  said 
Mrs  Ogilvy  ;  "  you  or  me  would  say, 
impossible  :  but  naturally  he  is  the 
one  that  knows  best.  And  he  does 
not  think  it  is  impossible.  He  makes 
us  bolt  all  the  windows  and  lock 
the  doors  as  soon  as  the  sun  goes 
down.  Susie,  this  is  what  is  hang- 
ing over  us.  How  can  he  go  and 
see  his  friends,  or  let  them  know  he 
is  here,  or  take  the  good  of  coming 
home — with  this  hanging  over  him 
night  and  day  1 " 

The  colour  had  all  gone  out  of 
Susie's  face.  She  put  an  arm  round 
her  old  friend,  and  gave  her  a  trem- 
bling almost  convulsive  embrace. 
"  And  you  to  have  this  to  bear  after 
all  the  rest !  " 

"  Me  ! "  said  Mrs  Ogilvy ;  "  who 
is  thinking  of  me  1  It  is  an  ease  to 
my  mind  to  have  said  it  out.  You 
were  the  only  one  I  could  speak  to, 
Susie,  for  you  will  think  of  him 
just  as  I  do.  You  will  excuse  him 
and  forgive  him,  and  explain  it  all 

within  yourself as  I  do — as  I 

must  do." 

"  Excuse  him  ! "  cried  Susie  ; 
"  that  will  I  not !  but  be  proud  of 
him,  because  he's  faithful  to  the  man 
in  trouble,  whoever  he  may  be  ! " 

Mrs  Ogilvy  did  not  say,  even  to 
Susie,  that  it  was  not  faithfulness 
but  panic  that  moved  Robert,  and 
that  all  his  anxiety  was  to  keep  the 
man  in  trouble  at  arm's  -  length. 


1894.] 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


Even  in  confessing  what  was  his 
problematical  guilt  and  danger,  it 
was  still  the  first  thing  in  her 
thoughts  that  Bobbie  should  have 
the  best  of  it  whatever  the  position 
might  be.  They  were  walking  up 
and  down  together  on  the  level  path 
in  front  of  the  house — now  skirting 
the  holly  hedges,  now  brushing  the 
boxwood  border  that  made  a  green 
edge  to  the  flowers.  Susie  had  come 
with  perplexities  of  her  own  to  lay 
before  her  friend,  but  they  all  fled 
from  her  mind  in  face  of  this  greater 
revelation.  What  did  it  matter 
about  Susie?  Whatever  came  to 
her,  it  would  be  but  she  who  was 
in  question,  and  she  could  bear  it 
— but  Eobbie  !  Me  !  who  is  think- 
ing of  me  1  she  said  to  herself,  as 
Mrs  Ogilvy  had  said  it,  with  a  proud 
contempt  of  any  such  petty  subject. 
It  was  not  the  spirit  of  self-sacrifice, 
the  instinct  of  unselfishness,  as 
people  are  pleased  to  call  such  senti- 
ments. I  am  afraid  there  was  per- 
haps a  little  pride  in  it,  perhaps  a 
subtle  self-confidence  that  whatever 
one  had  to  fear  in  one's  own  person, 
what  did  it  matter?  one  would  be 

equal  to  it.  But  Eobbie What 

blood  could  be  shed,  what  ordeal 
dared  to  keep  it  from  him  ! 

"You  will  feel  now  that  I  am 
always  ready,"  said  Susie,  "to  do 
anything,  if  there  is  anything  to 
do.  You  will  send  for  me  at  any 
moment.  If  it  were  to  take  a  mes- 
sage, if  it  were  to  send  a  letter, 
if  it  were  to  go  to  Edinburgh  for 
any  news,  if  it  were  to— hide  the 
man——" 

"Susie!" 

"And  wherefore  not?  it's  not  ours 
to  punish.  I  know  nothing  about 
him :  but  to  save  Bobbie  and  you, 
or  only  to  help  you,  what  am  I 
caring]  I  would  put  my  arm 
through  the  place  of  the  bolt,  like 
Catherine  Douglas  for  King  James. 
And  why  should  I  not  hide  a  man 
in  trouble  ?  Them  that  went  before 

VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCXLVI. 


201 

us  have  done  that,  and  more  than 
that,  for  folk  in  trouble,  many  a 
day." 

"But  not  for  the  shedder  of 
blood,"  said  Mrs  Ogilvy. 

"They  were  all  shedders  of 
blood,"  cried  Susie ;  "  there  was  not 
one  side  nor  the  other  with  clean 
hands — and  our  fore-mothers  helped 
them  all,  whichever  were  the  ones 
that  were  pursued :  and  so  would  I 
any  man  that  stood  between  you 
and  peace.  If  he  were  as  bad  a 
man  as  ever  lived,  I  would  help 
him  to  get  away." 

"  We  must  not  go  so  far  as  that, 
Susie.  We  will  hope  that  nothing 
will  need  to  be  done.  Bobbie  and 
me,  we  will  just  keep  very  quiet  till 
all  this  trouble  blows  over.  I  have 
a  confidence  that  it  will  blow  over," 
said  Mrs  Ogilvy,  with  a  shadow  in 
her  eyes  which  belied  her  words. 

"  Certainly  it  will,"  cried  Susie, 
with  an  intensity  of  assent  which, 
though  she  knew  so  little,  yet 
comforted  the  elder  woman's  heart. 

And  Susie  once  more  left  her 
friend  without  saying  a  word  of 
the  anxieties  which  were  becoming 
more  and  more  urgent  in  her  own 
life.  She  had  not  yet  been  told 
what  was  the  true  state  of  the' case, 
but  many  alarms  had  filled  her 
mind,  terrors  which  she  would  not 
acknowledge  to  herself.  It  did  not 
seem  credible  that  she  should  be 
dethroned  from  her  own  household 
place,  which  she  had  filled  so  long, 
to  make  way  for  a  stranger,  "a 
strange  woman,"  as  Susie,  like  Mrs 
Ogilvy,  said ;  nor  that  the  children 
should  be  taken  out  of  her  hands, 
and  her  home  be  no  longer  hers. 
But  all  other  apprehensions  and 
alarms  had  been  confusedly  deep- 
ened and  increased,  she  could 
scarcely  tell  how,  by  the  sudden 
interference  of  her  father  in  be- 
half of  an  old  lover  long  ago  re- 
jected, whose  repeated  proposals 
had  become  the  jest  of  the  family, 


202 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[Aug. 


a  man  whom  nobody  for  years  had 
taken  seriously.  Mr  Logan  had 
suddenly  taken  up  his  cause,  and 
pressed  it  hotly  and  injudiciously, 
filling  Susie  with  consternation  and 
indignant  distress.  The  minister 
had  naturally  employed  the  most 
unpalatable  arguments.  He  had 
bidden  her  to  remember  that  her 
time  was  running  short,  that  she 
had  probably  outstayed  her  mar- 
ket, that  a  wooer  was  not  to  be 
found  by  every  dykeside,  and  that 
at  her  age  it  was  no  longer  possible 
to  pick  and  choose,  but  to  take 
what  you  could  get.  Exasperated 
by  all  this,  Susie  had  rushed  to  her 
friend  to  ask  what  was  the  inter- 
pretation of  it.  But  the  appear- 
ance of  Robert  had  driven  every 
other  thought  out  of  her  mind,  and 
now  again,  more  than  ever,  his 
story,  the  danger  he  was  in,  the 
reason  why  his  return  was  not  pub- 
lished abroad  and  rejoiced  in.  To 
Susie's  simple  and  straightforward 
mind  this  was  the  only  point  in  the 
whole  matter  that  was  to  be  de- 
plored. She  found  no  fault  with 
Bobbie's  appearance,  with  his  mid- 
day sleep,  with  the  failure  of  his 
career — even  with  the  ill  company 
and  dreadful  associations  of  which 
Mrs  Ogilvy's  faltering  story  had 
told  her.  She  was  ready  to  wipe 
all  that  record  out  with  one  tear  of 
tenderness  and  pity.  He  had  been 
led  away;  he  had  come  back. 
That  he  had  come  back  was  enough 
to  atone  for  all  the  rest.  But  there 
should  be  no  secret,  no  concealing 
of  him,  no  silence  as  to  this  great 
event.  She  accepted  the  bond,  but 
it  was  heavy  on  her  soul,  and  went 
home,  her  mind  full  of  Robert, 
only  vexed  and  discouraged  that 
she  must  not  speak  of  Robert,  for- 
getting every  other  trouble  and  all 
the  changes  that  seemed  to  threaten 
herself.  Me  !  who  is  caring  about 
me  ?  Susie  said  to  herself  proudly, 
as  Mrs  Ogilvy  said  it.  These 


women  scorned  fate  when  it  was 
but  themselves  that  were  threatened 
by  it. 

When  she  was  gone,  Mrs  Ogilvy 
continued  for  a  while  to  walk 
quietly  up  and  down  the  little 
platform  before  the  door  of  her 
peaceful  house.  She  had  almost 
given  up  her  evenings  out  of  doors 
since  Robert's  return,  but  to-night 
her  heart  was  soothed,  her  fears 
were  calmed.  Susie  could  do  noth- 
ing to  clear  up  the  situation.  Yet 
to  have  unbosomed  herself  to  Susie  • 
had  done  her  good.  The  burden 
which  was  so  heavy  on  herself, 
which  was  Robbie  in  his  own  per- 
son, the  most  intimate  of  all,  did 
not  affect  Susie.  She  was  willing 
to  take  him  back  as  at  the  same 
point  where  he  had  dropped  from 
her  ken.  There  was  no  criticism 
in  her  eyes  or  her  mind, — nothing 
like  that  dreadful  criticism,  that 
anguish  of  consciousness  which  per- 
ceived all  his  shortcomings,  all  the 
loss  that  had  happened  to  him  in 
his  dismal  way  through  the  world, 
which  was  in  his  mother's  mind. 
That  Susie  did  not  perceive  these 
things  was  a  precious  balm  to  Mrs 
Ogilvy's  wounds.  It  was  her  ex- 
acting imagination  that  was  in 
fault,  perhaps  nothing  else  or  little 
else.  If  Susie  were  pleased,  why 
should  she,  who  ought  to  be  less 
clear-sighted  than  Susie,  be  so  far 
from  pleased  ?  Nothing  could  have 
so  comforted  her  as  did  this.  She 
was  calmed  to  the  bottom  of  her 
heart.  Robbie  would  be  very  late 
to-night,  she  knew ;  but  what  harm 
was  there  in  that,  if  it  was  an 
amusement  to  him,  poor  laddie  ? 
He  had  no  variety  now  in  his 
life,  he  that  had  been  accustomed 
to  so  much.  She  heard  Andrew 
come  clanking  round  from  the 
back  -  garden  with  his  pails  and 
his  watering-pots.  She  had  not 
assisted  at  the  watering  of  the 
flowers,  not  since  the  day  of  Rob- 


1894.] 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


203 


bie's  return,  but  she  did  so  this 
calm  evening  in  the  causeless  relief 
of  her  spirit.  "  But  I  would  not  be 
so  particular,"  she  said,  "Andrew; 
for  it  will  rain  before  the  morning, 
or  else  I  am  mistaken."  "  It's  very 
easy,  mem,  to  be  mistaken  in  the 
weather,"  said  Andrew  ;  "  I've 
thought  that  for  a  week  past." 
"  That  is  true ;  it  has  been  a  by- 
ordinary  dry  season,"  his  mistress 
said.  "  Just  the  ruin  of  the  coun- 
try," said  the  man.  "Oh,"  cried 
she,  "  you  are  never  content !  " 

But  she  was  content  that  night, 
or  as  nearly  content  as  it  was  pos- 
sible to  be  with  such  a  profound  dis- 
turbance and  trouble  in  her  being. 
She  had  her  chair  brought  out,  and 
her  cushion  and  footstool,  her  stock- 
ing and  her  book,  as  in  the  old 
days,  which  had  been  so  short  a 
time  before  and  yet  seemed  so  far 
off.  It  was  not  so  fine  a  night  as 
it  had  usually  been,  she  thought 
then.  The  light  had  not  that  opal 
tint,  that  silvery  pearl-like  radiance. 
There  was  a  shadow  as  of  a  cloud 
in  it,  and  the  sky,  though  showing 
no  broken  lines  of  vapour,  was  grey 
and  a  little  heavy,  charged  with 
the  rain  which  seemed  gathering 
after  long  drought  over  the  longing 
country.  Esk,  running  low,  wanted 
the  rain,  and  so  did  the  thirsty 
trees,  too  great  to  be  watered  like 
the  flowers,  which  had  begun  to 
have  a  dusty  look.  But  in  the 
meantime  the  evening  was  warm, 
very  warm  and  very  still,  waiting 
for  the  opening  up  of  the  fountains 
in  the  skies.  Mrs  Ogilvy  sat  there 
musing,  almost  as  she  had  mused  of 
old:  only  instead  of  the  wistful 
longing  and  desire  in  her  heart  then, 
she  had  now  an  ever-present  ache, 
the  sense  of  a  deep  wound,  the 
only  partially  stilled  and  always 
quivering  tremor  of  a  great  fear. 
Considering  that  these  things  were, 
however,  and  could  not  be  put 
away,  she  was  very  calm. 


She  had  been  sitting  here  for 
some  time,  reading  a  little  of  her 
book,  knitting  a  great  deal  of  her 
stocking,  which  did  not  interfere 
with  her  reading,  thinking  a  great 
deal,  sometimes  dropping  the  knit- 
ting into  her  lap  to  think  the  more, 
to  pray  a  little — one  running  into 
the  other  almost  unconsciously — 
when  she  suddenly  heard  behind 
her  a  movement  in  the  hedge.  It 
was  a  high  holly  hedge,  as  has  been 
already  said,  very  well  trimmed, 
and  impenetrable,  almost  as  high 
as  a  man.  When  a  man  walked 
up  the  slope  from  the  road,  only 
his  hat,  or  if  he  were  a  tall  man,  his 
head,  could  be  seen  over  it.  The 
hedge  ran  round  on  the  right  hand 
side  to  the  wall  of  the  house,  shut- 
ting out  the  garden,  which  lay  on 
the  other  slope,  as  on  the  left  it  en- 
circled the  little  platform,  with  its 
grass-plot  and  flower- borders  and 
modest  carriage -drive  in  front  of 
the  Hewan.  It  was  in  the  garden 
behind  that  green  wall  that  the 
sound  was,  which  a  month  ago 
would  not  have  disturbed  her, 
which  was  probably  only  Janet 
going  to  the  well  or  Andrew  put- 
ting his  watering-cans  away.  Mrs 
Ogilvy,  however,  more  easily  star- 
tled now,  looked  round  quickly, 
but  saw  nothing.  The  light  was 
stealing  away,  the  rain  was  near; 
it  was  that  rather  than  the  evening 
which  made  the  atmosphere  so  dim. 
The  noise  had  made  her  heart  beat 
a  little,  though  she  felt  sure  it  was 
nothing;  it  made  her  think  of  going 
in,  though  she  could  still  with  a  slight 
effort  see  to  read.  It  was  foolish 
to  be  disturbed  by  such  a  trifle. 
She  had  never  been  frightened  be- 
fore:  a  step,  a  sound  at  the  gate, 
had  been  used,  before  Robert  came 
back,  to  awaken  her  to  life  and  ex- 
pectation, to  a  constantly  disap- 
pointed but  never  extinguished 
hope.  That,  however,  was  all  over 
now :  but  at  this  noise  and  rustle 


204 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


among  the  bushes,  which  was  not  a 
footstep  or  like  any  one  coming, 
her  heart  stirred  in  her,  like  a  bird 
in  the  dark,  with  terror.  She  was 
frightened  for  any  noise.  This  was 
one  of  the  great  differences  that 
had  arisen  in  herself. 

She  turned,  however,  again,  with 
some  resolution,  to  her  former  oc- 
cupations. It  was  not  light  enough 
to  see  the  page  with  the  book  lying 
open  on  her  knee.  She  took  it  in 
her  hand,  and  read  a  little.  It  was 
one  of  those  books  which,  for  my 
own  part,  I  do  not  relish,  of  which 
you  are  supposed  to  be  able  to  read 
a  little  bit  at  a  time.  She  addressed 
herself  to  it  with  more  attention 
than  usual,  in  order  to  dissipate 
her  own  foolish  thirl  of  excite- 
ment and  the  disturbance  within 
her.  She  read  the  words  carefully, 
but  I  fear  that,  as  is  usual  in  such 
cases,  the  meaning  did  not  enter 
very  clearly  into  her  mind.  Her 
attention  was  busy,  behind  her 
back  as  it  were,  listening,  listening 
for  a  renewal  of  the  sound.  But 
there  was  none.  Then  through 
her  reading  she  began  to  think  that, 
as  soon  as  she  had  quite  mastered 
herself,  she  would  go  in  at  her 
leisure,  and  quite  quietly,  crying 
upon  Janet  to  bring  in  her  chair 
and  her  footstool ;  and  then  would 
call  Andrew  to  shut  the  windows 
and  bar  the  door,  as  Robbie  wished. 
Perhaps  a  man  understood  the  dan- 
gers better,  and  it  was  well  in  any 
case  to  do  what  he  wished.  She 
would  have  liked  to  rise  from  her 
seat  at  once,  and  go  in  hurriedly 
and  do  this,  but  would  not  allow 
herself,  partly  because  she  felt  it 
would  be  foolish,  as  there  could  be 
no  danger,  and  partly  because  she 
would  not  allow  herself  to  be  sup- 
posed to  be  afraid,  supposing  that 


[Aug. 

there  was.  She  sat  on,  therefore, 
and  read,  with  less  and  less  con- 
sciousness of  anything  but  the 
words  that  were  before  her  eyes. 

When  suddenly  there  came  al- 
most close  by  her  side,  immediately 
behind  her,  the  sound  as  of  some 
one  suddenly  alighting  with  feet 
close  together,  with  wonderfully 
little  noise,  yet  a  slight  sound  of 
the  gravel  disturbed :  and  turning 
suddenly  round,  she  saw  a  tall  figure 
against  the  waning  light,  which  had 
evidently  vaulted  over  the  hedge, 
in  which  there  was  a  slight  thrill 
of  movement  from  the  shock.  He 
was  looking  at  his  finger,  which 
seemed,  from  the  action,  to  have 
been  pricked  with  the  holly.  Her 
heart  gave  a  great  leap,  and  then 
became  quiet  again.  There  was 
something  unfamiliar,  somehow,  in 
the  attitude  and  air;  but  yet  no 
doubt  it  was  her  son — who  else 
could  it  be? — who  had  made  a 
short  cut  by  the  garden,  as  he  had 
done  many  a  time  in  his  boyhood. 
Nobody  but  he  could  have  known 
of  this  short  cut.  All  this  ran 
through  her  mind,  the  terror  and 
the  reassurance  in  one  breath,  as 
she  started  up  hastily  from  her 
chair,  crying,  "  Robbie  !  my  dear, 
what  a  fright  you  have  given 
me.  What  made  you  come  that 
way?" 

He  came  towards  her  slowly,  ex- 
amining his  finger,  on  which  she 
saw  a  drop  of  blood  :  then  envelop- 
ing it  leisurely  in  the  handkerchief 
which  he  took  from  his  pocket, 
"I've  got  a  devil  of  a  prick  from 
that  dashed  holly,"  he  said. 

And  then  she  saw  that  he  was 
not  her  son.  Taller,  straighter,  of 
a  colourless  fairness,  a  strange  voice, 
a  strange  aspect.  Not  Robbie, 
not  Robbie !  whoever  he  was. 


1894.] 


Ancestor-ridden. 


205 


ANCESTOR-RIDDEN. 
A    PLAY    IN    ONE    ACT. 


Persons. 


A  PHILOSOPHER'S  SON. 
A  POLITICIAN'S  NEPHEW. 


A  POET'S  GRANDDAUGHTER. 
A  NOVELIST'S  NIECE. 


The  scene  is  laid  in  a  desert  island,  supposed  to  be  out  of  the  beaten 
track:  a  foreground  of  coral  strand;  a  background  of  feathery  palm  ; 
a  sound  of  surf. 

SCENE  I.  —  POET'S  GRANDDAUGHTER  discovered  silting  damp  and  di- 
shevelled, drawing  of  her  gants  de  Suede,  to  dry  them  in  the  sun. 


Poet's  Granddaughter.  Well,  I 
was  certain  that  mounting  wave 
would  roll  me  shoreward  soon, 
and  here  I  am.  But  I  must  quote 
no  more ;  no  more  poetry  or  even 
poetastery  for  me.  Let  me  forget 
that  there  is  such  a  thing.  What 
I  have  gone  through  all  these 
years  (for  I  don't  mind  admitting 
on  a  desert  island,  where  there's 
no  one  to  hear,  that  I'm  no 
chicken),  what  I  have  suffered, 
from  the  fact  of  having  a  poet 
for  my  grandfather!  Grand  old 
man,  still  alive,  still  writing 
poetry.  How  tired  I  used  to  get 
of  the  Society  jargon,  "  Oh,  let  me 
introduce  you  to  Miss  Blank, 
granddaughter  of  the  poet  Blank, 
you  know."  "Ah!  really,  how 
interesting !  I  daresay  you  write 
poetry  yourself  now,  don't  you?" 
I  was  expected  to  lisp  in  numbers 
in  the  nursery.  But  I  didn't; 
and  let  me  say  once  for  all  that  I 
detest  poetry,  always  did — can't 
make  head  or  tail  of  it,  never 
could.  I  am  Al  at  tennis,  and 
I  can  ride  across  country,  and  I 
am  a  splendid  swimmer,  or  I 
shouldn't  be  here;  but  poetry, 
bah  !  and  intellectual  forebears  ! 


what  a  nuisance  they  are !  A 
man  used  to  be  pitied  long  ago  if 
he  hadn't  a  grandfather.  I  think 
he's  to  be  envied.  I  have  been 
heavily  handicapped  by  mine  all 
these  years.  There  was  no  living 
him  down.  Metaphorically  speak- 
ing, he  has  clung  round  my  neck 
like  the  Old  Man  of  the  Sea.  I 
could  stand  it  no  longer,  so  I  have 
put  myself  out  of  reach  of  civili- 
sation, have  kissed  my  hand  to 
sweetness  and  light,  made  my 
curtsey  to  culture,  to  "Shake- 
speare and  the  musical  glasses," 
and  here  I  am,  ready  to  descend 
to  any  level  of  primeval  unintel- 
lectuality.  I  pine  to  dig  for 
"  pignuts,"  and  to  tear  the  native 
oyster  from  its  bed,  and  forget  my 
ancestors. 

Enter  NOVELIST'S  NIECE,  young, 
smart,  chic,  fin-de-siecle. 

Novelist's  Niece.  Dear  me,  I  had 
no  idea  the  island  was  inhabited. 
I  got  the  P.  &  0.  steamer  to  drop 
me  out  with  my  box  in  the  dingy, 
and  to  land  me  on  this  island,  which 
isn't  marked  in  the  chart.  I  left 
my  trunk  on  the  other  side  of  the 


206 


A  ncestor-ridden. 


[Aug. 


island,  and  have  walked  across 
through  a  lovely  ravine.  Are  you 
one  of  the  aborigines  ? 

P.  G.  Yes,  I  am  — at  least, 
that  is,  I  intend  to  be.  May 
I  ask  what  has  led  you  to  come 
here? 

N.  N.  The  wear  and  tear  of 
social  life — the  demands  made  on 
one  —  the  treadmill  of  Fashion  — 
the  rush,  the  roar,  and  the  rattle ; 
but  chiefly  because  I  have  an  aunt 
— a  witty  aunt,  Madame  Bonmot. 
I  daresay  you  have  heard  of  her ; 
every  one  has.  She  has  written 
an  amusing  Society  novel,  and  her 
conversation  bristles  with  epigrams. 
Now,  I  have  no  sense  of  humour — 
none — I  never  said  a  witty  thing 
in  my  life ;  but  because  Madame 
Bonmot  happens  to  be  my  aunt,  I 
am  credited  with  brilliancy,  and 
find  myself  looked  upon  as  a  sort 
of  Court  jester  or  chartered  buffoon. 
If  I  utter  a  feeble  platitude  about 
the  weather,  I  hear  voices  say- 
ing, "How  like  Madame  Bonmot ! " 
When  I  enter  a  room,  I  am  con- 
scious of  a  suppressed  titter  run- 
ning through  the  company,  ready 
to  break  into  a  laugh.  People 
prepare  to  listen  to  my  brilliant 
sallies,  my  ready  repartees  and 
witticisms,  and  prepare  in  vain. 
I  want  to  be  smart,  up  to  date, 
but  not  witty  or  humorous.  The 
near  kinship  of  Madame  Bonmot, 
however,  condemns  me  to  an  in- 
heritance of  wit  and  humour ;  and 
to  escape  from  this  I  have  forsworn 
everything,  and  have  come  to  this 
island  "to  toss  with  tangle  and 
with  shells,"  and  to  return  to  prim- 
itive savage  ways.  Savages  have 
no  sense  of  humour,  have  they  1 
or,  at  best,  it's  only  very  elemen- 
tary. They  do  mimic,  I'm  afraid — 
and  I  am  so  tired  of  imitations  of 
self  and  friends  ;  but  savages  don't 
do  it  for  fun,  that's  one  comfort. 
Heigho !  how  jolly  it  is  to  find  a 
place  where  you  may  be  as  dull  as 


ditch-water  !  You  never  heard  of 
my  aunt  Madame  Bonmot,  did 
you? 

P.  G.  Never ;  don't  be  the  least 
alarmed.  Did  you  ever  hear  of 
the  poet  Blank  1  I'm  his  grand- 
daughter, and  I  am  fleeing  from 
society  solely  on  account  of  his  un- 
dying name  and  fame,  and  from  the 
horrible  intellectual  atmosphere  of 
his  home.  People  won't  forget 
that  I  am  his  granddaughter,  and 
he's  only  a  poet.  Now  if  he  were 
a  prize-fighter  there  might  be  some- 
thing to  be  proud  of.  Muscle  I 
admire ;  brute  force  I  adore.  But 
intellect,  that  miserable  abnormal 
development  of  simple  animal  in- 
stinct ! — what  a  waste  the  use  of 
intelligence  has  been,  and  is  !  And 
how  ineffably  sad  it  is  to  reflect 
that  the  glorious  savage,  who  once 
ran  wild,  is  now  degraded  through 
centuries  of  mismanagement  into 
the  literary  man  to  be  met  with 
in  any  London  drawing-room  !  It 
is  simply  preposterous  ! 

N.  N.  I  never  heard  of  your 
grandfather,  so  we  are  quits.  It's 
rather  odd,  isn't  it,  that  we  should 
both  have  come  to  this  island  to 
escape  from  an  ancestor?  I  feel 
better  already.  Don't  you?  There's 
nothing  so  depressing  as  being 
thought  brilliant.  Now,  if  my 
aunt  had  only  been  smart  and 
chic,  I  should  have  been  proud  of 
the  connection.  But  to  be  racy 
and  humorous,  and  clever  and 
witty,  it  bores  me.  I  like  to  take 
things  au  grand  se'rieux,  even  to 
the  hang  of  a  skirt.  You  may 
wonder  why  I  have  come  to  a 
desert  island  if  I'm  a  slave  to 
Fashion ;  but  I  have  a  trunk  full 
of  things  with  me,  and 

P.  G.  Oh,  you  won't  want 
them.  We  must  divest  ourselves 
of 

N.  N.  Not  of  clothing  ! 

P.  G.  Not  exactly,  but  of  modern 
ideas. 


1894.] 


A  ncestor-ridden. 


207 


Enter  PHILOSOPHER'S  SON. 

Philosopher's  Son.  Hullo,  whom 
have  we  here  1  A  picnic  party  1 

P.  G.  and  N.  N.  No ;  two  vic- 
tims of  heredity  who  have  flown 
here  to  avoid  reflected  glory  and 
falling  mantles,  and  who  are  re- 
solved to  return  to  pristine  ignor- 
ance and  innocence  step  by  step 
hand  in  hand. 

P.  G.  I  have  got  to  live  down  a 
grandfather. 

N.  N.  And  I  an  aunt. 

P.  S.  "Fact  is  stranger  than 
fiction,"  as  Bacon  says.  I  also 
am  escaping  from  the  toils  of  an 
ancestor.  My.  father  is  a  born 
metaphysician,  author  of  'The 
Ratiocination  of  Co-ordinate  Syn- 
cretisms,' and  I  am  expected  to 
live  up  to  this.  Now,  I  put  it  to 
you  if  that's  not  rather  hard  on 
a  fellow.  I  don't  go  in  for  the 
sort  of  thing.  I'm  a  sportsman, 
fond  of  shooting,  fishing,  hunting ; 
all  for  the  open  air,  and  book- 
larning  be  hanged !  What's  the 
good  in  it  alii  What  comes 
of  study  but  round  shoulders 
and  pasty  faces  ?  I  remember  as 
a  boy  kicking  over  the  traces 
when  I  was  asked  what  a  conjunc- 
tion was.  Fancy  expecting  a 
fellow  to  know  what  a  conjunction 
was ! 

N.  N.  Are  you  the  man  who 
once  found  a  friend  reading  a 
book  called  '  Dant,'  and  wondered 
what  ailed  him  that  he  should  do 
this  thing?  You  must  be  his 
cousin,  if  not  himself. 

P.  S.  No,  hang  it  all !  I  tell  you 
my  kith  and  kin  are  clever  intel- 
lectual people ;  that's  where  the 
trouble  is.  Now,  if  my  father 
were  a  good,  stupid,  worthy  old 
fox-hunting  squire,  with  muddy 
gaiters  and  a  whiff  of  the  stable 
about  him,  how  I  should  revere 
him,  how  proud  I  should  be  of 
him  !  But  a  philosopher  ! — bah  ! 


hang  up  philosophy,  unless  phil- 
osophy can  put  a  calf  to  one's  leg. 
Muscle  and  sinew  are  the  only 
things  worth  cultivating.  Mind  ! 
— faugh  !  I'm  sick  of  mind,  and 
that's  why  I'm  here. 

P.  G.  Let  us  shake  hands.  I've 
suffered  from  a  poetic  grandsire, 
which  is  nearly  as  bad  as  a  phil- 
osophic father.  I  am  so  glad  you 
are  one  with  us  in  entering  a  pro- 
test against  the  March  of  Intellect 
with  a  capital  M  and  a  capital  I. 

P.  S.  Yes,  I'm  turning  my 
back  on  progress,  civilisation,  and 
the  garnered  wisdom  of  the  ages — 
so  many  tons  of  chopped  logic 
done  up  in  stacks,  so  many  sacks 
of  wool  gathered  by  the  five  wits 
of  generations  of  deep  thinkers. 
No  good  to  me  any  of  it.  Man 
is  an  animal,  and  should  behave 
himself  as  such,  that's  what  I  say. 
What  does  he  gain,  by  knowledge  1 
Nothing  Why,  Scripture  is  dead 
against  book-learning.  All  I  ask 
for  is  plenty  of  biceps,  calves,  and 
liberty  to  kill  something.  This 
island  ought  surely  to  prove  a 
stepping-stone  in  the  right  direc- 
tion, and  help  to  bridge  over  the 
distance  between  us  and  pre- 
historic man. 

Enter  POLITICIAN'S  NEPHEW. 

Politician's  Nephew  (aside). 
Seems  to  me  my  desert  island  is 
inhabited,  and  by  clothed  and  cul- 
tured humanity  too.  This  is  a 
pity.  I  had  hoped  to  have  found 
myself  far  from  man  as  a  talking 
reasoning  being.  (Aloud.)  I  hope 
I  don't  intrude.  The  fact  is,  I 
thought  this  was  a  desert  island. 

Omnes.  We  all  thought  that. 

P.  S.  Are  you,  like  the  rest  of 
us,  fleeing  from  reflected  glory, 
abandoning  ancestor-worship,  and 
seeking  to  wipe  out  the  stigma  of 
inherited  genius  by  a  resumption 
of  primordial  usages  1 

P.  N.    I  am.     I  have  an  uncle 


208 


Ancestor-ridden. 


[Aug. 


in  Parliament.  I  won't  say  what 
his  politics  are,  or  whether  I  belong 
to  his  party  or  not.  It  wouldn't 
interest  you.  It  doesn't  interest 
me.  You  have  no  idea  what  it  is 
to  have  an  uncle  in  Parliament, 
and  on  the  wrong  side  too.  I 
haven't  said  which  side  that  is, 
have  I  ?  Well,  I've  suffered  from 
that  unruly  member,  my  uncle, 
considerably.  I  assure  you  I  can't 
go  anywhere  without  having  him 
paraded  before  me — either  held  up 
to  vilification,  or  else  extolled  as 
one  doing  yeoman  service  (good 
old  phrase  !)  to  the  Cause.  I  am 
identified  with  him.  His  opinions 
are  supposed  to  be  my  opinions. 
I  overhear  whispered  snatches 
of  conversation  —  "  Nephew  of 
member  for  Byteshire,  stood  for 
Barkshire  in  '85;  very  able  man 
the  uncle ;  nephew  very  like  him ; 
you  remember  that  speech  of  his 
in  the  great  debate  on  the  Better- 
ment Bill.  He  managed  to  secure 
a  majority  in  favour  of  retaining 
the  depreciation  -  of  -  the  -  sovereign 
clause  in  that  bill,"  and  so  on. 
I  am  called  upon  to  air  my  uncle's 
views  on  all  subjects,  and  I  am 
supposed  to  be  ready  to  enter  the 
lists  with  any  champion  of  the  op- 
posite party.  Now  it  so  happens 
that  politics  are  my  pet  aversion. 
I  detest  the  party  questions,  the 
intrigues,  cabals,  machinations, 
and  popularity-bidding  attitude  of 
the  body  politic,  and  I  long  for  a 
return  to  the  bare  simplicity  of 
savage  life.  In  fact,  I  should 
even  prefer  to  go  a  step  further 
back,  and  to  fall  into  the  portion 
of  apes  and  missing  links;  but  this 
I  may  find  difiicult. 

N.  N.  This  is  really  amusing. 
We  are  all  here  to  escape  from  the 
woful  burden  of  hereditary  talent. 

P.  G.  Yes,  I  am  simply  longing 
to  dig  for  "  pignuts "  with  these 
nails  of  mine,  and  "to  scare  the 
haggard  from  the  rock."  I  am 


not   sure    that    I    know    what    a 
haggard  is.     Do  you? 

N.  N.  As  a  beginning  to  our 
degringolade,  I  mean  to  forswear 
the  use  of  speech,  and  to  make 
little  clucking  noises  like  this — 
tchuk,  tchuk  ;  savages  always  do. 

P.  S.  We  might  invent  a  lan- 
guage analogous  to  that  which 
Garner  tells  us  is  in  use  among  the 
Simian  tribes.  But  no ;  that  would 
mean  an  effort  of  brain,  and  there 
must  be  nothing  of  that  kind 
amongst  us.  To  invent  even  a 
very  low  structure  of  language,  to 
adapt  even  the  queerest,  most 
primitive  clucking  sound  to  our 
needs,  would  involve  some  waste 
of  brain-tissue,  some  process  of  the 
intellectual  faculties.  And  this  is 
not  to  be  thought  of.  But  (turn- 
ing to  POLITICIAN'S  NEPHEW)  how 
did  you  get  here  ? 

P.  N.  Oh,  I  borrowed  my  uncle's 
yacht  (rather  mean  of  me  !).  He 
was  busy  haranguing  his  constitu- 
ents ;  so  I  came  off,  resolved  to 
land  on  the  first  desert  island  that 
should  present  itself ;  and  this  one 
rose  in  mid -ocean,  as  if  on  purpose. 
But  how  did  you  effect  a  landing  1 

P.  S.  I  was  ballooning  with  a 
friend,  ready  to  drop  down  on  the 
first  desert  island  that  should  turn 
up,  and  I  descended  by  a  parachute 
half  an  hour  ago.  I  told  my  friend 
not  to  wait.  And  now  tell  me, 
pending  the  discovery  of  "pig- 
nuts," "haggards,"  and  shell-fish, 
what  arrangements  have  been 
made  about  feeding1? — grazing  I 
hope  to  be  able  to  call  it  ere  long, 
for  I  quite  expect  we  shall  all  be 
down  upon  all-fours,  like  Nebu- 
chadnezzar, before  we  are  done 
with  this  experiment. 

N.  N.  My  trunk,  which  is  lying 
on  the  other  side  of  the  island,  is 
well  stocked  with  tinned  meats, 
biscuits,  and  other  comestibles. 
Shall  we  go  over  and  unpack  it  ? 
[Exeunt  omnesj] 


1894.] 


A  ncestor-ridden. 


209 


SCENE  II. — A  week  has  elapsed.      Same  island.     PHILOSOPHER'S  SON 
and  NOVELIST'S  NIECE  sitting  on  log  of  driftwood. 


N.  N.  I  don't  find  that  we  are 
forgetting  the  use  of  language,  or 
making  any  appreciable  retrogres- 
sion ;  do  you  1 

P.  S.  No;  our  crablike  move- 
ments towards  a  lower  plane  have 
not  been  productive  of  much  re- 
sult as  yet.  I  am  constantly  ana- 
lysing the  movement  and  asking 
myself,  "  Am  I  a  lower  animal  to- 
day than  I  was  yesterday  ? "  and 
the  answer  is  doubtful.  My  calves 
are  certainly  no  bigger  round  than 
they  were  ;  but  that  may  possibly 
be  the  result  of  "  pig-nuts  "  and 
insufficient  nourishment.  I  don't 
feel  any  tendency  to  burrow  or  to 
hibernate,  which  is  regrettable. 
You,  my  dear  lady,  will  find  it  an 
easier  matter  than  I  to  return  to  a 
state  of  nature — pardon  the  phrase. 
You  see  your  aunt,  after  all,  is  not 
known  beyond  a  narrow  circle  of 
intimes,  whereas  the  author  of 
'The  Ratiocination  of  Co-ordin- 
ate Syncretisms '  is  a  writer  of 
European  celebrity,  and  his  son 
naturally  finds  himself  tram- 
melled at  every  backward  step 
by  the  intricacy  of  his  brain 
convolutions,  and  the  tremendous 
displacement  of  grey  matter. 
To  think  oneself  back  into  beast 
is  a  deal  harder  than  to  move 
upwards  into  man.  Now  your 
aunt 

N.N.  (indignantly}.  What  about 
my  aunt?  You  are  making  a 
great  mistake  in  supposing  she  is 
not  on  a  par  with  your  father. 
Why,  her  one  novel  was  the  clev- 
erest book  of  its  day,  she  herself 
quite  the  wittiest  woman  in  Eng- 
land, and  owing  to  her  marriage 
to  Mons.  Bonmot,  she  has  a  dash 
of  French  piquancy  and  espieglerie 
to  add  to  her  sparkling  qualities. 
I  can't  allow  her  powers  of  mind 


to  be  called  in  question.     Now,  as 
for  <  The  Bat 


Enter  POLITICIAN'S  NEPHEW  and 
POET'S  GRANDDAUGHTER. 

P.  N.  What  are  you  two  quar- 
relling about?  And  in  words 
too  !  Surely  tooth  and  claw  would 
have  been  more  seemly  under  the 
circumstances. 

N.  N.  We  find  we  are  not  de- 
scending the  scale  rapidly  enough. 
Hereditary  instincts,  some  trick  in 
the  blood,  accretions,  growths  of 
centuries,  time  -  honoured  tradi- 
tions, inherited  prejudices,  ances- 
tral idiosyncrasies,  impede  us,  keep 
us  back  from  "  ranging  down  the 
lower  track"  towards  prehistoric 
man. 

P.  G.  Haven't  you  succeeded  in 
throwing  your  aunt  to  the  winds 
yet? 

N.  N.  And  what  have  you  done 
with  your  grandfather  ?  I  think 
you  have  given  yourself  too  much 
concern  as  to  his  far-reaching  in- 
fluence. I  don't  believe  any  one 
reads  him  nowadays.  He's  quite 
out  of  date. 

P.  G.  (firing  up).  You  are  quite 
mistaken.  He  is  one  of  the  im- 
mortals, and  will  live  for  ever  in 
the  hearts  of  posterity.  The  true 
poet  is  for  all  time,  and  can  lay 
the  touch  of  healing  and  balm  on 
the  Weltschmerz  as  long  as  men 
must  work  and  women  weep.  The 
stuff  poets  are  made  of  is  woven 
in  the  loom  of  God.  But  your 
politician,  your  philosopher,  and 
your  novelist,  can  be  turned  out 
by  machinery  at  so  much  a 
dozen. 

P.  S.  Hold!  'The  Rat 

N.  N.  Hang  the  Rat !  How  I 
wish  Madame  Bonmot  was  here 


210 


A  ncestor-ridden. 


[Aug. 


to  laugh  at  you  all !  What  funny 
things  she  would  have  said  and 
written  about  you  ! 

P.  S.  I  will  be  heard!  My 
father's  name  is  much  better 
known  than  that  of  any  of  your 
pseudo-intellectual  clique.  Philo- 
sophy from  her  lofty  altitudes 
looks  down  in  calm  and  abiding 
serenity  on  the  poetical  or  political 
aberrations  of  mankind.  There- 
fore, all  hail,  Philosophy ! 

P.  N.  You  are  wrong  there.  A 
knowledge  of  the  political  situa- 
tion, and  of  the  principles  that 
underlie  the  actions  of  statesmen, 
outweighs  all  other  knowledge. 
The  politician  marshalling  his 
facts  (a  vast  array  emerging  from 
the  fastnesses  of  ancient  history, 
and  joining  issue  with  the  forces 
that  are  moulding  the  problems  of 
history  in  process  of  formation), 
and  passing  them  in  review  before 
him,  deduces  from  a  study  of  them 
a  sound  policy.  Through  the  long 
night  of  watching  he  hears  human 
nature  knocking  at  the  hundred 
gates  of  citadels  erected  by  man's 
craft,  guile,  and  selfishness,  against 
brother  man,  —  citadels  destined 
to  fall  and  crumble  away  at  the 
trumpet-blast  of  Liberty,  Frater- 
nity, and  Equality.  And  in  the 
clear  light  of  that  day  which  will 
dawn,  the  airy  nothings  of  the 
poet's  dream  will  vanish  like  the 
morning  dew,  and  the  shadowy 
speculations  of  the  metaphysician 
yield  themselves  up  as  vapour  to 
the  sun.  My  uncle 

N.  N.  My  aunt 

P.  N.  Will  you  kindly  allow  me 
to  finish  what  I  was  saying  ? 

N.  N.  Certainly  not.  Your 
uncle  can't  hold  a  candle  to  my 
aunt. 

P.  G.  Can  we  not  keep  our 
tempers,  and  admit  that  poets, 
philosophers,  novelists,  and  politi- 
cians have  each  their  place  in  this 
world's  economy  ? 


P.  N.  I  suspect  we  are  all 
rather  run  down  from  want  of 
food,  and  may  get  on  to  each 
other's  nerves.  "  Pig-nuts,"  especi- 
ally when  you  don't  find  them,  are 
not  sustaining  ;  and  "  haggards  of 
the  rock  "  are  tasteless  when  raw, 
for  the  very  obvious  reason  that 
you  can't  go  within  two  yards  of 
them. 

P.  S.  It  has  just  occurred  to  me 
that  in  running  away  from  one 
progenitor,  we  are  bumping  up 
against  another.  Reaction  is  the 
principle  that  governs  mankind. 
Don't  you  suppose  the  first  think- 
ing man  had  nearly  as  great  a 
contempt  for  his  huge  Caliban 
of  a  root-grubbing  father  as  we 
have  for  our  highly  organised  in- 
tellectual parents  ?  Give  us  back 
the  cave-dweller  with  the  canine 
tooth  and  prehensile  toes,  and 
what  would  happen  ?  Progressive 
desire,  putting  forth  her  hand, 
hauls  the  creature  up  inch  by 
inch,  age  after  age,  to  the  full 
stature  of  the  perfect  man.  In- 
dividual interludes  of  the  ape  and 
tiger  in  humanity  there  will  be, 
but  the  race  keeps  mounting  on 
and  ever  on  towards  the  divine. 

P.  N.  Are  you  quoting  from 
'The  Ratiocination  of  Co-ordinate 
Syncretisms'?  for  if  you  are,  I 
must  open  fire  with  one  of  my 
uncle's  addresses  to  his  constitu- 
ency. It  began — 

"Primrose  League,  Primrose  League, 
Primrose  League,  onward  ; 

Plump  in  the  ballot-box  fell  the  six 
hundred." 

This  was  the  text  of  his  speech ; 
but  I  don't  wish  to  drift  into  party 
politics  or  to  rouse  any  ill-feeling, 
and  so  I  won't  tell  you  the  lines 
on  which  he  laid  down  his  appeal. 
I  wish  you  could  hear  him  speak — 
he's  quite  a  Demosthenes.  I  must 
get  you  in  the  next  time  he's  on 
for  a  debate.  Ah !  I  am  forget- 


1894.] 


A  ncestor-ridden. 


211 


ting  our  isolated  position.  Strange 
how,  now  we  are  out  of  it,  one 
longs  to  be  in  it,  to  know  "  who's 
in,  who's  out,  who  loses  and  who 
wins."  If  the  G.O.M.  retires  soon, 

I  shouldn't  wonder  if 

P.  G.  For  a  speechless  prehistoric 
undeveloped  male  biped,  you  have 
a  wonderful  power  of  monopolising 
the  conversation.  It's  impossible 
to  get  a  word  in  edgeways.  But 
I  feel  it  is  due  to  my  grandfather 
to  interrupt  you,  and  to  tell  you 
that  I  have  felt  lately  poetic  utter- 
ances in  my  bosom  struggling  to 
free  themselves,  and  I  cannot  stem 
the  torrent  of  my  inspiration  any 
longer.  (Moans  out : — ) 

I  dreamt  the  world  was  square, 
And  went  lurching  through  the  air 
At  a  strange  lop-sided  pace, 
Deranging  Time  and  Space. 
Our  corners  cut  the  stars, 
We  shaved  a  slice  off  Mars ; 
But  no  one  seemed  to  care, 
For  all  was  on  the  square, 
And  it  was  share  and  share 
As  we  hurtled  through  the  air. 
But  the  people  were  so  dull, 
So  large  and  square  of  skull ; 
And  I  longed  to  get  away 
From  the  squareness  of  the  day  ; 
And  I  hid  my  face  in  fright 
From  the  squareness  of  the  night. 
So  then  I  woke,  and  found 
That  the  world  was  nearly  round ; 
And  I  knew  my  way  about — 
Could  wander  in  and  out ; 
And  I  shouted,  "  I  am  glad," 
For  a  square  world  drives  me  mad. 

I  dreamt  the  world  was  long, 
And  everything  went  wrong. 
The  times  were  out  of  joint, 
Sans  object,  aim,  or  point. 
The  times  were  out  of  shape  • 
From  length  there's  no  escape. 
And  we  fell  away  through  space, 
With  a  weird  dactylic  grace. 
But  the  people  were  so  long, 
So  lean  and  brown  and  strong. 


The  days  went  slowly  by, 
I  knew  both  how  and  why  ; 
But  the  nights  were  just  a  flash, 
A  dot  and  then  a  dash. 
So  then  I  woke,  and  found 
That  the  world  was  nearly  round 
And  the  moon's  familiar  face 
Was  flooding  all  the  place ; 
And  I  cried  aloud,  "  I'm  glad," 
For  a  long  world  makes  me  mad. 

I  dreamt  the  world  was  narrow, 
Like  edge  of  plough  or  harrow  ; 
It  went  skating  through  the 

spheres, 

With  a  clipping  sound  of  shears. 
There  seemed  scarcely  any  room 
For  the  cradle  or  the  tomb. 
And  we  clung  along  the  edge, 
Like  birds  upon  a  ledge. 
But  the  people  were  so  keen, 
So  cutting  in  their  spleen. 
There  was  neither  day  nor  night, 
But  a  cold  blue  steely  light; 
And  I  said,  "  This  must  be  hell," 
And  loosed  my  hold  and  fell. 
So  I  woke,  and  then  I  found 
That  the  world  was  nearly  round ; 
There  was  earth  and  air  and  sea, 
All  just  as  there  should  be ; 
And  I  shouted,  "  I  am  glad," 
For  a  strait  world  makes  me  mad. 

N.  N.  Strait  world!  Strait- 
jacket,  /  think. 

P.  N.  This  may  merely  be  the 
result  of  mal-nutrition.  Yet,  on 
the  other  hand,  it  may  be  inherited 
genius  which  will  out. 

N.  N.  I  should  willingly  risk 
being  thought  brilliant  if  only  I 
could  get  safely  out  of  this  island. 
Even  dulness  palls  after  a  time. 

P.  S.  It  is  strange  how  passages 
from  'The  Ratiocination  of  Co- 
ordinate Syncretisms '  keep  crop- 
ping up  in  my  mind.  If  you  had 
asked  me  when  I  landed,  I  should 
have  said  I  had  never  read  the 
book.  Now,  I  seem  almost  to 
know  it  by  heart.  Listen  to  this  : 
"  The  stream  of  absolute  Truth, 


212 


Ancestor-ridden. 


[Aug. 


which  takes  its  rise  in  a  region 
lying  beyond  the  boundaries  of 
Conditioned  Thought,  passes  by 
caves  honeycombed  by  Memory. 
There,  sweeping  out  the  ddbris,  it 
bears  on  its  surface  masses  of 
flotsam  and  jetsam,  which  the 
traveller  on  the  banks,  snatching 
at,  bears  some  fragment  aloft, 
crying,  'A  poor  thing,  but  mine 
own ; '  and  alas !  the  fact  is,  it  is 
somebody  else's." 

N.  N.  I  don't  follow  you ;  and, 
oh  dear,  if  I  wasn't  so  faint  and 
empty  and  hungry,  I  should  try 
and  tell  you  some  of  Madame 
Bonmot's  witty  sayings.  The  only 
one  I  can  think  of  is  called  forth 
by  my  present  sufferings.  Dinner 
was  late  one  day,  and  an  old 
Scotchman  who  was  there  said  to 
the  hostess,  "  *  Mem,  I  am  aware 
of  a  prodigious  sinking  and  gnaw- 
ing at  the  pit  o'  my  stamach ;  ye 
ken  it's  like  the  Spartan  boy.' 
'Then, 'said  Madame  Bonmot,  'if 
it  is,  it'll  not  be  the  first  time  the 
Fox  and  the  Pitt  have  met  in 
opposition.'"  It  was  very  ready. 

P.  N.  I  defy  you  to  tell  another. 
What  becomes  of  all  the  good 
things  that  are  said  to  have  been 
said?  One  reads  in  novels  of 
sparkling,  brilliantly  sustained 
conversations,  audacious  repartees, 
piquant  replies  ;  but  rarely,  if  ever, 
are  these  given  verbatim.  Hum- 
our and  wit  are  very  perishable 
articles,  and  don't  travel  well. 

N.  N.  Wait  till  I  introduce  you 
to  my  aunt,  and  then 


P.  N.  I  don't  know  how  it 
strikes  you,  but  I  think  we  are 
all  getting  very  prosy.  We  have 
attained  to  the  stupidity  of  "  the 
grey  barbarian"  without  shaking 
off  the  conventionality  of  "the 
Christian  cad."  What  do  you  say 
to  our  hailing  the  first  om  — 
steamer  I  mean,  and  returning  to 
our  ancestors  1 

P.  G.  Do  let  us!  I  shall  be 
glad  that  you  should  all  have  an 
opportunity  of  buying  my  grand- 
father's poems. 

N.  N.  You  have  only  to  men- 
tion that  you  have  met  Madame 
Bonmot's  niece  to  ensure  a  wel- 
come everywhere. 

P.  N.  There's  nothing  like  hav- 
ing a  friend  at  Court  and  an  uncle 
in  Parliament. 

P.  S.  I  must  get  my  father  to 
bring  out  a  new  edition  of  the 


P.  N.  Hi  !  there's  a  steamer 
bearing  down  on  us,  perhaps  sent 
in  search  of  us  by  - 

P.  G.  My  grandfather  the 
poet. 

N.  N.  Or  by  my  aunt  the 
novelist. 

P.    S.    Or    by    my    father 
sage. 

P.    N.    Or    by    my    uncle 
member. 

Omnes.  After  all,  ancestors  have 
their  uses,  and  we  must  not  be 
too  hard  on  them.  Where  should 
we  be  without  them?  Echo  an- 
swers, "Simply  nowhere." 

O.  J. 


the 
the 


1894.] 


The  Confession  of  Tibbie  Law. 


213 


THE    CONFESSION    OF    TIBBIE    LAW. 


THE  minister  was  in  his  study 
preparing  his  sermon  for  the  com- 
ing Sunday — at  least,  he  would 
have  said  he  was  preparing  it  if 
anybody  had  asked  him  what  he 
was  doing.  The  table  was  strewn 
with  loose  sheets  of  paper  and  one 
or  two  big  books  of  reference. 
The  minister  was  reposing  in  an 
exhausted  attitude  on  the  sofa, 
which  being  rather  short,  forced 
him  to  hang  his  feet  over  the  end, 
and  display  the  soles  of  his  boots. 
Next  Sunday  would  be  only  the 
fifth  since  Mr  Morton  had  come 
to  the  parish.  He  was  a  young 
man  of  talent,  and  had  come  full 
of  hope  and  confidence,  nothing 
doubting  of  his  power  to  waken 
up  the  sleepy  farmers  and  farm- 
labourers  with  his  cultured  elo- 
quence, and  fill  their  minds  with 
entirely  new  light.  But  he  had 
not  hitherto  met  with  the  appreci- 
ation or  the  notice  he  expected. 
He  had  been  warned  by  some  of 
his  elders  that  many  of  the  old 
people  would  be  averse  to  new 
ideas,  but  they  had  not  seemed 
in  the  least  roused  or  interested 
by  anything  he  said,  not  even 
shocked.  He  would  have  liked 
to  shock  them.  He  had  quoted 
Herbert  Spencer  and  Matthew 
Arnold,  and  had  been  listened 
to  with  perfect  serenity ;  he  had 
praised  Keble's  'Christian  Year' 
and  the  'Lyra  Anglicana,'  and 
had  spoken  patronisingly  of  Car- 
dinal Newman,  but  the  congrega- 
tion had  preserved  its  usual  stolid 
demeanour.  Perhaps  his  new  par- 
ishioners had  never  even  heard  of 
the  distinguished  persons  he  al- 
luded to.  It  was  disgusting  ! 

But  this  afternoon  Mr  Morton 
felt  better.  He  had  mixed  for 
once  in  intelligent  society ;  he  had 


sat  in  a  drawing-room  which  was 
full  of  sweetness  and  light;  he 
had  partaken  of  food  which  ap- 
pealed to  the  cultured  sense.  In 
other  words,  he  had  been  to 
luncheon  with  Sir  George  and 
Lady  Cunningham,  who  were  the 
largest  landowners  in  the  parish, 
and  were,  besides,  a  pleasant,  intel- 
ligent young  couple.  Mr  Morton 
raised  himself  a  little  on  the  sofa 
to  survey  his  study.  It  was  not 
an  uncomfortable  room  by  any 
means ;  and  when  the  manse  had 
been  renovated  after  the  late  min- 
ister's death,  this  study  had  been 
pronounced  by  the  heritors  who 
paid  for  it  to  be  "perfect  —  a 
model  of  convenience."  Perhaps, 
from  an  aesthetic  point  of  view, 
it  still  left  something  to  be  desired. 
There  was  a  new  Brussels  carpet 
on  the  floor  to  replace  the  old 
drugget;  it  was  a  sober  carpet, 
and  had  a  complicated  geometrical 
pattern  in  mustard-colour  on  a 
sage-green  ground.  The  old  red 
flock  paper  had  been  taken  from 
the  walls,  and  the  new  one  was  of 
a  crushed  strawberry  tint ;  the 
doors,  shutters,  and  mantelpiece 
were  painted  to  match,  and  relieved 
with  panels  of  chocolate-brown. 
House-painters,  when  left  to  follow 
their  own  taste,  seem  fond  of  choco- 
late-brown. The  purple  leather 
sofa  and  arm-chair,  being  per- 
fectly good,  had  been  left  as  they 
were.  It  was  all  much  more  com- 
fortable than  anything  the  minister 
had  been  accustomed  to,  but  some- 
how the  tout  ensemble  was  not 
exhilarating.  He  lifted  his  eyes 
once  more  to  the  chocolate-brown 
cornice,  and  heaved  a  sigh  as  he 
turned  again  to  his  sermon.  There 
was  to  be  a  good  deal  of  specula- 
tion in  this  next  sermon  upon  the 


214 


The  Confession  of  Tibbie  Law. 


[Aug. 


possible  future  of  the  human  race, 
and  upon  whether  life  was  worth 
living,  and  there  should  be  poetry 
in  it,  of  a  depressing  and  pessi- 
mistic nature.  Lady  Cunningham 
might  very  likely  go  to  church, 
and  she  at  least  was  a  cultivated 
person,  and  would  understand.  It 
would  really  be  worth  while  to 
buy  a  dictionary  of  quotations,  if 
those  people  were  to  be  at  home 
all  the  autumn. 

Before  he  had  made  up  his  mind 
to  begin  work,  the  door  opened, 
and  the  old  housekeeper  thrust  in 
her  head.  Mr  Morton  had  thought 
himself  fortunate,  when  he  arrived, 
in  being  able  to  retain  the  services 
of  the  housekeeper  who  had  been 
with  his  predecessor.  She  was  a 
respectable  elderly  woman  who 
understood  her  work,  but  she  did 
not  understand,  and  indeed  had 
no  patience  with,  the  refinements 
which  the  new  minister  would 
have  liked  to  introduce,  and  her 
manner  seemed  to  him  familiar,  if 
not  insolent.  He  dared  not  find 
fault,  nor  even  hint  his  disappro- 
val, but  he  writhed  inwardly  when 
she  dashed  into  his  room  without 
knocking,  or  banged  the  door  to 
with  her  foot. 

"There  a  woman  seekin'  ye," 
she  said,  briefly. 

"Did  you  tell  her  I  was  en- 
gaged?" 

"  I  telt  her  ye'd  likely  be  sweer 
to  come,"  returned  the  housekeeper. 
"  That's  her  gude-mither,  auld  Tib- 
bie Law,  that's  -deem',  an'  she  was 
speirin'  what  way  Mr  Henderson 
never  came  to  put  up  a  bit  prayer. 
They  couldna  gar  her  ken,  puir 
body,  that  he's  awa' ;  but  her 
gude-dochter  thinks  she'll  maybe 
be  content  wi'  you." 

This  was  not  a  summons  that 
was  flattering  to  Mr  Morton's 
vanity,  and  he  took  credit  to 
himself  for  the  calm  and  dignified 
tone  in  which  he  signified  his 


willingness  to  go  and  see  his  aged 
parishioner,  "  as  soon  as  he  could 
make  time  to  do  so."  The  house- 
keeper withdrew  with  this  mes- 
sage, and  the  minister  sat  down 
again  to  his  sermon.  Mr  Morton 
hated  visiting;  it  was  a  duty  he 
had  always  shrunk  from,  even 
when  his  work  had  been  in  a 
town,  and  here  in  the  country  it 
was  fifty  times  worse.  For  one 
thing,  the  distances  were  so  great. 
He  kept  no  horse  or  pony,  and 
could  not  have  managed  it  if  he 
had;  he  had  to  trust  entirely  to 
his  own  legs,  which,  though  long, 
were  more  adapted  for  hanging 
over  the  end  of  the  sofa  than  for 
taking  rough  country  walks.  In 
town  he  had  been  accustomed  to 
take  the  air  in  omnibuses  and 
tramway  cars ;  here  he  had  to 
tramp  long  miles  through  the 
mud,  and  then  be  scolded  by  his 
housekeeper  for  bringing  so  much 
of  it  in  on  his  boots.  Besides,  the 
receptions  he  had  met  with  had 
not  always  been  very  cordial.  He 
found  the  farmers  distrustful  and 
taciturn,  their  wives  uninterest- 
ing ;  and  as  to  their  daughters, 
his  conscience  did  not  permit  him 
to  talk  much  to  young  ladies,  lest 
he  should  awaken  hopes  which 
might  never  be  realised.  Then 
the  poor  people  were  certainly 
very  thick-headed  and  ignorant, 
and  would  never  understand  him. 
True,  he  had  not  as  yet  made 
their  acquaintance  :  there  was 
time  enough  for  that.  Mr  Mor- 
ton dipped  his  pen  in  the  ink,  and 
tried  to  forget  the  interruption  he 
had  just  met  with,  but  somehow 
his  ideas  refused  to  come.  He 
had  a  tender  conscience,  as  has 
been  seen,  and  a  kind  heart,  and 
he  could  not  put  away  the  thought 
of  the  poor  old  woman  who  had 
sent  for  him.  How  sad  it  would 
be  if  she  were  to  die  without  the 
aid  of  his  ghostly  counsel ! — how 


1894. 


The  Confession  of  Tibbie  Law. 


215 


he  would  reproach  himself  !  True, 
he  had  already  paid  one  visit  to- 
day, and  could  not  reasonably  be 
expected  to  do  more ;  but  a  pas- 
tor's time  belongs  to  his  flock,  and 
he  was  ready  to  sacrifice  himself. 
In  another  half -hour  he  was  in 
the  village,  where  he  soon  found 
out  Tibbie  Law's  cottage.  It 
stood  a  little  apart,  and  had  once 
had  a  garden,  the  remains  of  which 
gave  the  cottage  a  picturesque  look. 
The  white  rose  and  the  honey- 
suckle which  grew  on  each  side  of 
the  door  had  not  been  pruned  for 
years,  and  covered  the  low  red- 
tiled  roof  with  their  interlaced 
branches  and  clusters  of  blossom ; 
while  amongst  the  loose  cracked 
flagstones  near  the  door  some  blue 
columbines  and  lupins  still  flour- 
ished, in  company  with  an  old  tin 
can,  a  broken  milk -strainer,  and 
an  iron  pot  half  full  of  potatoes, 
in  which  a  hen  and  two  chicks 
were  picking.  The  inmates  of 
the  cottage  seemed  to  be  fond  of 
flowers,  for  a  pot  of  geraniums 
stood  in  front  of  each  of  the  small 
windows,  and  more  than  answered 
the  purpose  of  blinds,  for  the  room 
was  so  dark  that  the  minister 
when  he  first  came  in  could  dis- 
tinguish nothing  except  the  tall 
figure  of  Tibbie's  daughter-in-law, 
who  moved  forward  to  meet  him, 
a  little  child  clinging  to  her  skirts. 
When  his  eyes  got  accustomed  to 
the  darkness,  he  could  see  that  the 
room,  though  small,  had  little  of 
the  bareness  of  poverty :  it  was 
close,  untidy,  and  crowded  with 
unnecessary  things.  The  large 
mahogany  chest  of  drawers  was 
piled  with  a  loaf  of  bread,  two 
cheeses,  and  some  evil  -  smelling 
compound  in  an  earthenware  bowl. 
There  were  also  two  arm-chairs, 
which  looked  as  if  they  had  once 
seen  better  days.  One  was  placed 
near  the  fire  to  receive  the  ban- 
nocks as  they  were  taken  off  the 


girdle  ;  the  other  seemed  intended 
for  the  accommodation  of  visitors, 
and  was  drawn  close  to  the  box- 
bed,  to  which  the  woman  now 
directed  Mr  Morton  by  a  move- 
ment of  her  hand. 

"  She's  sleepin',  surely,"  said  the 
daughter  -  in  -  law.  "  She's  gleg 
enough  whiles.  Are  ye  sleepin', 
gude-mither  ?  here  the  minister  to 

ye-" 

Mr  Morton  stepped  nearer,  and 
looked  at  the  figure  in  the  bed. 
It  was  a  small  old  face,  so  curi- 
ously puckered  with  wrinkles  that 
the  skin  looked  like  crumpled 
parchment ;  the  eyes  were  dim  and 
glassy;  but  when  the  old  woman 
roused  herself  on  hearing  her 
daughter's  speech,  the  film  sud- 
denly cleared  away,  and  they  shone 
out  so  black  and  piercing  as  al- 
most to  startle  the  visitor.  She 
held  out  a  claw -like  hand,  while 
the  sharp  eyes  peered  into  his 
face. 

"  I  hope  you  do  not  suffer 
much,"  he  said,  not  knowing  what 
to  say,  and  feeling  rather  embar- 
rassed by  her  scrutiny  of  him. 
The  old  woman  either  did  not 
hear,  or  did  not  think  the  question 
worth  replying  to. 

"  Ou  ay,"  she  said,  indifferently, 
letting  her  head  fall  back  upon  the 
pillow.  "Sit  doun  —  sit  doun. 
What's  the  use  o'  you,  Eelen,  that 
ye  dinna  tak  awa'  the  cats  frae 
aneath  the  minister?" 

Mr  Morton  jumped  up  ner- 
vously— he  had  a  horror  of  cats. 
One  had  jumped  off  the  chair  as 
he  was  going  to  sit  upon  it,  and 
Helen,  approaching  negligently, 
carried  away  two  half-grown  kit- 
tens which  had  also  been  reposing 
in  the  depths  of  the  arm-chair. 
This  incident  disturbed  Mr  Mor- 
ton so  much  that  he  did  not  know 
what  to  do  or  say  next,"  and  he  sat 
down  again  in  silence.  He  felt 
that  he  was  not  fulfilling  the  duties 


216 


The  Confession  of  Tibbie  Law. 


[Aug. 


of  his  calling,  and  apparently  the 
same  idea  occurred  to  Tibbie,  for 
she  murmured,  "Mr  Henderson, 
he  was  a  fine  man — eh !  what  a 
gude  man  that  was  !  mony's  the 
prayer  he's  putten  up — ay,  he  was 
grand  o't." 

"  I  am  quite  ready  to  engage  in 
prayer,"  said  Mr  Morton,  stiffly, 
"if  you  wish  it."  He  had  once 
put  together  a  form  of  prayer  suit- 
able for  sick  persons,  adapted  from 
various  liturgies,  and  this  he  now 
made  use  of,  though  he  felt  that  it 
was  quite  thrown  away  upon  his 
two  auditors,  who  paid  no  more 
attention  to  him  than  did  the  cats 
or  the  hens.  Then  he  moved  for- 
ward, to  take  leave  of  the  sick 
woman. 

"  Ye're  for  awa'  ?  "  she  said,  as 
she  gripped  his  hand  again — "  weel, 
I  thank  ye  for  your  call,  and  your 
bit  prayer.  It'll  maybe  be  heard 
abune.  The  Lord,  He  hears  a' 
thing,  ye  ken." 

Mr  Morton  took  this  for  dis- 
missal, and  tried  to  draw  his  hand 
away,  but  the  aged  fingers  did  not 
relax  their  grasp,  the  piercing  eyes 
still  shone  full  into  his. 

"  If  a  body  had  made  a  cove- 
nant," said  Tibbie,  slowly  and  with 
an  effort — "wi'  ane  ye  ken  o' — if 
he  had  gotten  a  power  ower  me 
like — couldna  you  now,  that's  a 
minister,  maybe  gar  him  let  me 
gang  free  ? " 

"She  must  be  mad,"  thought 
Mr  Morton  in  bewilderment.  "  I 
ought  never  to  have  been  brought 
here,"  he  said  reproachfully  to 
Helen,  who  seemed  to  be  watch- 
ing the  scene  attentively  and 
without  surprise,  and  who  made 
no  reply.  "What  does  she 
mean?"  he  cried  at  length,  im- 
patiently. "  Whom  is  she  speak- 
ing of?  Can  you  not  answer?" 

"  I  daurna  name  him,"  said 
Helen,  doggedly,  as  she  stooped  to 
turn  one  of  the  bannocks  on  the 


chair.  "He's  aye  willint  to  ac- 
cept o'  an  invitation." 

Tibbie  sighed  deeply.  "  It  was 
nae  sic  awfu'  thing  I  did,"  she 
said ;  "  whiles  I  think  that — but 
oh  !  it's  been  a  sair,  sair  burden 
and  bondage  to  me  this  mony  a 
year." 

"  And  what  did  you  do  ?  "  said 
Mr  Morton. 

"  I  milket  a  tether,"  said  Tibbie, 
solemnly. 

"  You— did  what  ?  " 

The  old  woman  sighed  wearily. 

"It  was  lang  syne,"  she  said, 
"  when  my  gudeman  wrocht  at  the 
farm  o'  Drumhead.  It  was  near 
about  the  New  Year  time,  and  the 
kye  were  late  o'  calvin',  an'  the 
grieve's  wife  wouldna  gie  us  wer 
pint  o'  milk,  an'  me  wi'  a  sick 
bairn  !  an'  I  was  mad  at  her.  And 
I  e'en  gaed  awa'  to  the  byre  an' 
I  took  doun  the  coo's  band,  the 
hendmost  ane,  an'  drawed  it  like 
as  I  was  milkin',  andb  I  turned  it 
east,  an'  north,  an'  west,  an'  south, 
and  aye  as  I  turned  it  I  ca'ed  upon 
the  name  o' " 

"Well?  "said  Mr  Morton. 

"  The  de'il,  ye  ken,"  said  Tibbie, 
in  a  frightened  whisper. 

The  minister  shuddered.  In 
spite  of  his  disbelief  in  a  personal 
devil,  he  felt  a  creeping  horror  of 
this  old  hag  who  thus  avowed  her 
dealings  with  the  powers  of  evil. 
The  woman  was  mad,  of  course, — 
yet  how,  in  the  nineteenth  century, 
were  such  ideas  possible  ? 

"And  I  would  ken  frae  you," 
Tibbie  continued,  holding  him  fast 
as  he  made  a  feeble  effort  to  escape, 
"  does  that  gie  him  the  power  ower 
me  for  ever  ? " 

"  No — no,"  stammered  Mr  Mor- 
ton ;  "  compose  yourself."  He 
freed  his  hand  from  her  grasp 
and  turned  indignantly  to  Helen. 
"  Have  you  no  control  over  her  ? " 
he  demanded.  "  Is  it  possible  that 
you  too  believe  all  this — this  non- 


1894.] 


The  Confession  of  Tibbie  Law. 


217 


sense?"  He  would  have  used  a 
stronger  expression  if  he  could  have 
thought  of  one  in  his  agitation. 

"  I  dinna  ken,"  said  Helen,  look- 
ing down.  "  She's  terrible  uneasy 
— naebody  can  get  sleepit  for  her. 
Ye'll  no  can  bide  then1?"  as  Mr 
Morton  made  a  frantic  dive  after 
his  hat,  which  had  rolled  upon  the 
floor  amongst  the  poultry. 

"  My  time  is  valuable,"  replied 
the  minister,  when  he  had  secured 
it.  "I  have  stayed  too  long  al- 
ready. Best  assured  I  will 

No,  I  will  not  promise  to  come 
back,"  he  said  mentally.  "  I  will 
pray  for  you,"  he  concluded  aloud, 
as  he  left  the  cottage. 

Next  time  Mr  Morton  met  the 
village  doctor  he  asked  him  whether 
he  had  seen  Tibbie  Law,  and  what 
he  thought  of  her  state.  The 
doctor  answered  that  the  old 
woman  was  dying — not  a  doubt 
of  it ;  that  she  had  been  dying  for 
months,  and  showed  wonderful 
strength  to  have  kept  alive  so  long 
in  that  unhealthy  cottage  and  with 
insufficient  nourishment.  He  did 
not  consider  her  insane — indeed  he 
seemed  surprised  at  the  question ; 
and  as  Tibbie  had  evidently  not 
spoken  to  him  of  her  supposed 
crimes,  Mr  Morton  did  not  feel 
justified  in  betraying  her  confi- 
dence. He  could  not  put  her  out 
of  his  thoughts,  do  what  he  might ; 
her  weird  old  face  haunted  him, 
and  he  felt  that  to  pacify  his  own 
conscience  he  must  do  something 
for  her.  He  went  home  and  de- 
sired his  housekeeper,  Bell  Gillies, 
to  go  at  once  to  Tibbie  Law's  cot- 
tage with  presents  of  food  and 
money.  Bell  remonstrated  in  her 
usual  emphatic  manner. 

"It's  vera  weel  to  veesit,"  she 
said,  "an'  it's  vera  weel  to  pray, 
an'  nae  wastry  there;  but  ance 
fling  awa'  siller,  an'  ye'll  rue  it. 
There  Thamas  Callum  lyin'  wi'  a 
hert  trouble,  an'  there  auld  Mar- 

VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCXLVI. 


get  Beatoun  lyin'  wi'  the  rheuma- 
tisms, an'  there  a  heap  o'  bairns 
keepit  frae  the  schule  wi'  the  rush- 
fever,  an'  ye'll  be  for  .giein'  them 
a'  siller,  nae  doot — an'  whaur  '11  ye 
land  syne  1 " 

The  minister  could  not  but  ad- 
mit to  himself  that  there  was 
force  in  Bell's  argument,  but  dig- 
nity required  that  he  should  pay 
it  no  apparent  attention.  But  he 
made  it  his  business  to  find  out 
Thamas  Callum  and  Marget  Bea- 
toun, whose  names  he  now  heard 
for  the  first  time ;  and  in  attend- 
ing to  those  sufferers  he  soon 
found  out  others,  for  there  was 
much  sickness  in  the  parish.  Mr 
Morton  became  rather  popular 
with  his  poorer  neighbours.  "  He's 
nae  preacher,  puir  body — but  oh  ! 
he's  a  kind  heart,"  was  the  gen- 
eral verdict.  Bell,  however,  be- 
came rather  indignant  on  his  ac- 
count, and  thought  it  her  duty 
to  prevent  his  being  preyed  upon 
on  all  sides. 

"Here  that  lang  useless  Ellen 
Law  back  again  !  "  she  said,  burst- 
ing into  his  room  one  day,  "  seekin' 
a  drap  broth  to  her  gude-mither. 
I  just  telt  her  we've  nae  broth — 
does  the  wife  think  we're  made  o' 
meat  ? " 

"No  broth?"  said  Mr  Morton; 
"  then  send  something  else." 

"  We  dinna  hae  onything  else." 

"Nothing  else?"  repeated  Mr 
Morton,  sitting  upright;  "surely 
I  have  fowls?"  He  had  just 
heard  a  cock  crowing  outside, 
which  suggested  this  brilliant 
idea. 

"Fowls!"  said  Bell.  "Troth, 
she  can  just  kill  her  ain  fowls. 
She  got  a  clockin'  hen  frae  me 
this  spring." 

"Isabella,"  said  Mr  Morton, 
"supply  the  woman  with  a  fowl, 
and  leave  me.  I  am  engaged." 

"He's  a  thrawn  deevil,  that," 
muttered  Bell  between  her  teeth 


218 


The  Confession  of  Tibbie  Law. 


[Aug. 


as  she  retreated.  " '  Supply  the 
woman,'  quo'  he.  I'll  supply  her 
wi'  a  steekit  door,  or  maybe  a 
besom-handje,  gin  she  come  here 
again."  She  hastened  to  make 
this  determination  known  to 
Helen  Law,  who  replied  in  suit- 
able terms.  Mr  Morton  heard 
the  raised  voices  of  the  two 
women,  and  resolved  to  put  a 
stop  to  their  dispute.  He  threw 
the  door  open  impetuously,  and 
dashing  out,  desired  the  younger 
Mrs  Law  to  retire  at  once,  if  she 
had  got  what  she  wanted. 

"  I've  gotten  naething,"  returned 
Helen,  sulkily,  "forbye  unceevil 
language." 

"  It's  hersel'  that's  unceevil,  an' 
ye've  nae  ither  thing  to  gie  her," 
retorted  Bell. 

Mr  Morton  looked  at  her  majes- 
tically. 

"  Where  is  the  game,"  said  he, 
"  which  you  told  me  had  been  sent 
me  yesterday  ? " 

Bell,  with  an  upward  glance  and 
groan,  as  of  one  who  appealed  to 
Heaven  for  patience,  dived  into 
the  scullery,  and  brought  out  a 
large  hare,  which  Sir  George  Cun- 
ningham's keeper  had  left  at  the 
manse  the  day  before.  She  flung 
it  down  on  the  table,  and  Mr  Mor- 
ton signed  to  Helen  to  take  it  up 
and  be  gone.  "And  I  will  not 
have  this  repeated,  remember,"  he 
added,  as  he  shut  the  door  after 
her,  and  applied  himself,  as  best 
he  might,  to  soothing  the  injured 
feelings  of  his  housekeeper,  who 
was  eloquent  in  her  reproaches, 
and  pathetic  over  the  hare-soup 
that  might  have  been. 

But  Bell  might  have  spared  her 
lamentations,  for  late  in  the  evening 
Helen  Law  returned  bringing  back 
the  hare.  She  burst  into  the  kit- 
chen without  knocking,  and  threw 
down  the  hare  as  she  went,  brushing 
unceremoniously  past  Bell  in  her 
haste  to  reach  the  study.  Here 


she  paused  for  an  instant  to  knock, 
and  presented  herself  before  the 
astonished  eyes  of  Mr  Morton,  who 
was  reposing  in  his  arm-chair  with 
his  feet  upon  the  mantelpiece,  and 
a  copy  of  '  Robert  Elsmere '  in  his 
hand. 

"  I  brought  back  thon  cutty," 
said  Helen,  with  breathless  abrupt- 
ness. "My  gude-mither's  no'  for 
it.  She  winna  hear  tell  o'  siccan 
a  beast — it's  no  canny — she  winna 
hae't  in  ower  her  door.  An'  she 
bade  me  say  ye  maun  come  yersel', 
or  e'er  the  muckle  de'il  gets  a  grip 
o'  her." 

"  But — but  this  is  intolerable  ! " 
cried  Mr  Morton,  starting  to  his 
feet,  and  rubbing  his  hair  in  his 
nervous  irritation  until  it  bristled 
over  his  head  in  somewhat  uncleri- 
cal  fashion.  "I  —  I  can't  have 
these  interruptions.  Hang  it,  I 
— I  don't  allow  females  in  my 
study — using  that  sort  of  language 
too ! " 

"  I  mean  nae  offence,"  returned 
Helen,  sullenly,  hanging  her  head 
a  little,  but  not  retreating.  "  I 
speak  the  words  my  gude-mither 
has  pitten  i'  my  mooth.  And,  'deed, 
I  canna  bide,  or  she'll  be  doin'  her- 
sel' or  the  bairns  a  mischief.  Are 
ye  no  comin',  then  ?  " 

"  To-night  1  certainly  not,"  said 
Mr  Morton,  recovering  some  of  his 
dignity  as  he  saw  a  prospect  of 
getting  rid  of  his  visitor. 

"  If  your  relative  is  worse,  I  will 
come  to-morrow — that  is,  if  I  can 
make  it  convenient." 

Helen  paused  to  find  words  with 
which  to  urge  her  request.  She 
was  habitually  silent,  more  from 
indolence  perhaps  than  modesty, 
but  when  her  feelings  were  once 
stirred,  she  could  speak  strongly 
and  to  the  point. 

"  The  auld  wife  is  deein',"  she 
said.  "She'll  be  awa',  I  doubt, 
gin  the  morn  come,  an'  wha  kens 
whaur  she'll  be  syne  1  I  hae  little 


1894.] 


The  Confession  of  Tibbie  Law. 


219 


gudewill  to  her  —  mony's  the  ill 
word  she's  gien  me  an'  gien  the 
bairns,  but  I'm  no  sae  keen  as 
some  folk  to  see  her  gang  to  the 
pit  afore  my  very  e'en.  She  cries 
out  about  the  flames  o'  hell — I 
wish  ye  heard  her  !  " 

Mr  Morton  again  almost  tore 
his  hair  with  irritation,  "Ignor- 
ant creatures  ! "  cried  he.  "  There 
is  no  such  place  as  hell.  How 
often  must  I  tell  you  so1?  Can 
you  not  even  remember  my  sermon 
of  last  Sunday — no,  two  Sundays 
back — in  which  I  pointed  out  that 
Gehenna,  or  the  pit  of  Tophet, 
rendered  'hell'  in  our  version, 
was  nothing  more  nor  less  than  a 
receptacle  for " 

"  I  ken  naething  about  your 
sermons,"  interrupted  Helen,  with 
much  truth.  "But  it's  time  I 
was  awa'.  If  ye  maun  hae  plain 
words,"  she  said,  turning  again  on 
her  way  to  the  door,  "my  gude- 
mither  has  been  a  witch  in  her 
day,  gude  forgie  her !  Ony  way, 
that's  what  she  says,  puir  body. 
An'  the  de'il  is  come  for  his  ain, 
it's  like.  An'  we  thocht,  if  you 
was  resistin'  him,  he  would  maybe 
flee  frae  you,  but  he  winna  flee 
frae  hiz." 

Helen  had  left  the  room,  and 
was  already  walking  with  swift 
strides  down  the  road  before  Mr 
Morton  had  had  time  to  recover 
his  presence  of  mind.  Ignorance 
like  this  at  the  present  day,  and 
in  a  Lowland  parish — after  all  the 
enlightenment  he  had  poured  upon 
it  too  —  was  inconceivable.  To 
exorcise  the  devil  was  clearly  no 
part  of  his  pastoral  duty,  "and 
what's  more,"  thought  Mr  Morton, 
"I  am  not  going  to  do  it."  He 
said  this  aloud  by  way  of  reviving 
his  courage,  which,  to  say  the 
truth,  had  failed  him  a  little,  as 
he  looked  out  at  the  black  autumn 
evening,  and  listened  to  the  wail- 
ing wind.  He  did  not  believe  in 


the  devil,  nor  in  witches — not  he. 
Still,  if  Tibbie's  daughter-in-law 
really  wanted  him  so  much  to 
come,  she  ought  to  have  waited 
his  pleasure,  and  not  gone  off  in 
that  unmannerly  way.  He  had  a 
great  mind  not  to  go  the  next 
day  either.  It  would  show  those 
people  that  they  ought  to  conduct 
themselves,  when  on  their  death- 
beds, in  a  more  becoming  manner. 
Mr  Morton  went  to  bed,  where  he 
tried  in  vain  to  get  a  moment's 
rest  of  mind  or  body.  Again  and 
again  he  told  himself  that  his 
nervous  restlessness  was  folly, 
that  the  old  woman  was  evidently 
delirious  and  in  no  fit  state  to 
receive  a  clergyman's  visit,  and 
that  he  had  done  well  to  refuse  to 
go.  Yet  he  could  not  sleep,  and 
striking  a  light,  he  went  into  the 
study,  and  took  from  the  shelves 
an  old  book,  a  treatise  on  demon- 
ology  and  witchcraft,  which  he  re- 
collected to  have  seen  there.  With 
this  volume  as  a  companion  he 
passed  a  troubled  night.  The 
stories  fascinated  him  in  spite  of 
himself.  Some  were  grotesquely 
horrible,  others  ludicrous,  but  all 
were  told  with  evident  good  faith. 
Mr  Morton  could  not  but  admit 
to  himself  that  the  Church  of 
Scotland  had  a  good  share  both 
of  superstition  and  cruelty  in  the 
witch-burning  days.  However,  he 
became  interested  in  the  situation, 
and  wondered  what  further  tale  of 
horror  Tibbie  Law  had  to  unfold. 
Nothing  but  absolute  bodily  fear 
prevented  him  from  getting  up 
and  hastening  to  her  cottage.  But 
calmness  and  reason  returned  with 
the  daylight,  and  he  breakfasted 
at  his  usual  hour,  and  with  toler- 
able composure,  before  starting 
for  the  village. 

Helen  Law  opened  the  door  to 
him,  looking  haggard  and  untidy. 
She  showed  no  emotion  of  any 
kind  at  seeing  him. 


220 


The  Confession  of  Tibbie  Law. 


[Aug. 


"She's  mair  quieter -like,"  she 
said  in  answer  to  his  question; 
"she's  sleepin'  e'enow.  She  has 
an  awfu'  strength;  she'll  maybe 
last  twa-three  days  yet."  And 
with  a  sigh  which  Helen  did  not 
attempt  to  disguise,  she  turned  to 
her  household  duties. 

Mr  Morton  sat  in  the  arm-chair 
and  watched  the  sleeper,  half  re- 
lieved to  find  he  was  still  in  time, 
and  half  irritated;  for,  after  all, 
no  one  seemed  to  want  him.  The 
clock  on  the  wall,  with  its  quaint 
china  face  and  weights  hanging 
from  long  chains,  ticked  on  aggres- 
sively, and  sometimes  gave  a  loud 
click,  as  if  vainly  attempting  to 
strike  the  hour.  The  hens  scraped 
and  made  querulous  clucking  mur- 
murs under  his  chair ;  the  cats  on 
the  hearth-rug  awoke  one  by  one 
and  stretched  themselves,  and  still 
the  minister  sat  on.  The  foul  air 
of  the  cottage  oppressed  his  senses 
unconsciously,  and  he  felt  no  in- 
clination to  stir.  At  last  Helen 
set  down  her  broom,  and  having 
unpinned  her  gown  and  twisted  up 
her  hair,  she  bent  over  the  bed 
and  listened. 

"  Na,  she'll  no  dee  yet,"  she  said 
shortly,  in  answer  to  Mr  Morton's 
look. 

"  Dee  ? "  The  old  woman's  shrill 
voice  rang  through  the  room,  start- 
ling them  both.  "  Hoo  can  I  dee 
wi'  siccan  a  wecht  on  my  mind  1 " 
She  sat  up  and  stretched  out  her 
hands  as  if  to  push  something  away 
from  her.  "  Siccan  a  wecht ! " 
she  repeated. 

The  minister  bent  over  her  com- 
passionately. "  If  you  have  a  bur- 
den on  your  mind,"  he  said,  "  bet- 
ter confess  it;  it  would  relieve 
you.  Tell  me  what  you  have 
done,"  he  said  again,  raising  his 
voice  a  little ;  but  Tibbie  continued 
silent. 

"Is  she  so  weak?"  he  said  to 
Helen.  "  Can  you  not  rouse  her  ? " 


Helen  shook  up  the  pillow  and 
touched  her  on  the  shoulder.  Tib- 
bie moaned  a  little,  and  murmured 
something.  They  stooped  to  hear 
what  it  was. 

"  He's  putten  the  fear  o'  deith 
on  me,"  she  said  faintly,  with 
trembling  lips. 

"Who?"  But  the  old  woman 
only  gazed  with  terrified  eyes  into 
a  dark  corner  of  the  room. 

"  She  aye  thinks  she  sees  him," 
said  Helen. 

"You  do  not  pretend  to  tell 
me,"  said  Mr  Morton,  "  that  Satan 
ever  appeared  to  you  in  bodily 
form?"  He  made  an  effort  to 
speak  severely,  for  it  was  not  fitting 
that  he  should  have  his  nerves 
shaken  by  old  women,  and  Tibbie 
seemed  somewhat  cowed  by  his 
indignant  tone. 

"  Eh  me,  I  dinna  ken,"  she 
moaned,  "  but  oh  !  I  never  hae  an 
ache  or  an  ail  but  I  think  I  see  the 
tail  o'  him — waes  me  that  I  gae 
him  the  power  !  " 

"Did  you  give  him  a  writing 
signed  with  your  own  blood  ? "  in- 
quired Mr  Morton  suddenly, 
prompted  by  the  recollection  of 
the  tales  he  had  been  reading  the 
night  before.  He  said  it  almost 
involuntarily;  the  words  sounded 
so  strange  to  himself  that  they 
made  his  heart  beat.  Tibbie  raised 
herself  on  her  elbow,  and  even  the 
apathetic  Helen  looked  at  him  in 
surprise. 

"  Na,"  said  Tibbie,  looking  full 
at  him  at  last.  "What  gars  ye 
speir  that  at  me  ? " 

"  If  you  did  not,"  said  Mr  Mor- 
ton, "  the  devil  has  no  power  over 
you  whatever."  And  flushing  all' 
over  with  excitement — for  he  felt 
that  he  risked  everything  by  this 
desperate  statement,  made  in  a 
moment  of  temptation — or  was  it 
inspiration  ? — he  proceeded  to  re- 
late the  history  of  a  young  man 
who,  in  selling  himself  to  the  Evil 


1894.' 


The  Confession  of  Tibbie  Law. 


221 


One,  had  unfortunately  bound  him- 
self by  the  condition  above  men- 
tioned, and  how,  though  he  got 
free  in  the  end,  it  cost  a  great 
deal  of  trouble,  and  the  prayers  of 
many  pious  ministers,  to  rescue 
the  document,  without  which  the 
devil  was  powerless  to  claim  his 
victim.  Tibbie  listened  with  great 
attention  and  reviving  hope. 

"  Is  this  the  truth  ye're  telling 
me  1 "  she  asked,  after  considering 
a  little. 

"  It  is  all  printed  in  a  book, 
which  I  have  at  the  manse,"  he 
answered  readily,  for  he  had  ex- 
pected the  question. 

"  Aweel,  gin  that  be  sae,"  said 
Tibbie  as  if  to  herself,  "  I'll  maybe 
win  free  yet.  I'm  sure  enough  he 
never  socht  nae  writin'." 

"  I  marvel  at  that,"  observed 
Helen. 

"  Ye're  aye  marvellin',  ye  gowk  ! 
He  kent  fine  he  wouldna  hae  got- 
ten it.  I'm  no  sae  simple  as  yon 
lad.  But  he  would  hae  gotten 
back  the  writin',  an'  a',"— and  Tib- 
bie's black  eyes  now  dwelt  upon 
Mr  Morton  with  an  infinite  con- 
fidence which  touched  him,  while 
his  conscience  began  to  prick  him 
for  the  deception  he  had  put  upon 
her.  However,  surely  in  this  case, 
he  thought,  the  end  justified  the 
means.  He  would  now  hear  Tib- 
bie's story,  which  he  was  curious 
to  do,  and  in  the  course  of  it  he 
would  impart  such  religious  in- 
struction as  could  not  fail  to  be 
profitable  to  his  penitent. 


"And  now,"  said  he  with  an 
air  of  command  which  he  had  not 
ventured  to  assume  before,  "I 
think  it  would  be  only  right  for 
you  to  make  a  full  confession  to 
me  of  all  that  you  have  done." 

"Ay,  lad?"  said  Tibbie,  drily. 
"An'  what  way  would  I  do 
that?" 

"  Because  it  would  do  you  good," 
replied  Mr  Morton,  with  impa- 
tience. "It  would  relieve  your 
mind,  surely?" 

"No'  a  grain,"  said  Tibbie. 
"I've  no'  dune  muckle  ill,  an' 
I'm  sair  wearied."  She  sighed, 
letting  her  head  drop  on  the  pil- 
low. After  a  while  she  laughed 
softly  to  herself.  "  I'm  that  prood 
to  think  he  canna  get  a  grip  o' 
me,"  she  murmured,  but  so  low 
that  they  could  hardly  catch  the 
words. 

"She'll  sleep  easier  now,"  said 
Helen;  and  they  both  sat  silent, 
listening  to  the  long-drawn  breaths. 
They  grew  fainter,  and  Helen  rose 
and  bent  over  the  sleeper.  By- 
and-by  she  turned  to  the  minister, 
an  awe-struck  look  upon  her  face. 
"I  doubt,"  she  said,  "that  she's 
e'en  slippet  awa  ! " 

"  Gone  1 "  cried  Mr  Morton,  pale 
and  agitated.  "It  cannot  be! 
She  must  not  die  yet !  I — I  have 
deceived  her !  I  had  much  to  in- 
struct her  in — to  explain " 

But  Helen  held  up  her  hand — 
something  in  her  look  made  him 
stop  short.  "She'll  ken  it  a' 
yonder,"  she  said. 


222  An  Old  "Seventy- Four"  Frigate.  [Aug. 


AN  OLD  "SEVENTY-FOUR"  FKIGATE. 

AH  yes,  my  friend,  I  am  nothing  now 

But  a  battered  old  Seventy-Four — 
No  Youth  at  the  helm,  and  Hope  at  the  prow, 

As  once  in  the  days  of  yore ; — 
In  the  gallant  old  days,  now  gone,  now  dead, 

When  I  was  so  young,  strong,  free, 
With  my  sails  all  spread  and  my  flag  at  my  head 

Ready  to  brave  any  sea, 
Any  storm,  any  danger,  if  only  it  led 

To  Glory  and  Victory. 

Ah,  those  were  the  glorious  days  of  old 

That  I  never  again  shall  know  ! — 
Dear  days,  that  were  once  so  glad  and  bold 

In  the  young,  brave  long  ago, — 
When  the  winds  were  my  playmates,  the  sea  my  bride, 

And  over  the  billows  in  joy  and  pride 

Unfearing  I  used  to  ride ; — 
Dear  days,  that  are  now  so  dead  and  cold, 
For  which  Time's  funeral  bells  have  tolled 

Their  dirges  of  sorrow  and  woe. 

I  am  nothing  now  but  a  shattered  old  hulk 

With  not  even  a  sail  or  mast, 
Laid  up  in  the  dock  to  rot  and  to  sulk, 

And  to  brag  of  the  days  that  are  past. 
There  is  only  one  gun,  an  old  cracked  one, 

That  is  left  me  here  on  my  deck, 
From  which  hot  shot  in  the  days  that  are  not 

I  fired  from  this  shattered  old  wreck. 
Despoiled  and  bereft,  and  with  nothing  left, 

I  am  kept  here,  who  knows  why, 
Save  to  tell  the  old  tales  till  my  memory  fails 

Of  the  glorious  days  gone  by, — 
Of  the  battles  I  fought,  of  the  din  of  war, 
Of  the  times  of  peace,  of  the  voyages  far 

Into  many  a  sea  and  clime 
That  I  made  in  the  good,  old,  well-rigged  time, 

When  life  was  without  a  care, 
And  I,  in  my  strength  and  prime. 

Now,  far  away  to  the  tropic  isles, 

Where  the  love-birds  of  Paradise  flash  through  the  air, 
And  the  year's  long  summer  sleeps  lingering  there, 

And  the  deep  blue  heaven  smiles, — 
Now,  to  the  North  where  the  icebergs  high 
Topple  all  flashing  against  the  sky, 
Or  into  the  seas  at  their  bases  lashing, 
Splitting,  fall  with  a  sudden  crashing, 

And  the  white  gulls  startled  fly. 


1894.]  An  Old  " Seventy-Four"  Frigate.  223 

Ah  then,  on  the  world  how  gladly  I  went, 

With  a  craving  of  wild  unrest; 
No  doubt,  no  question  my  spirit  oppressed, 

But  on,  with  my  sails  all  trimmed  and  bent, 
Joyous  I  sailed,  and  this  wretched  old  hull 
Was  ready  to  lie  in  the  tropic's  lull, 

When  the  winds  were  all  asleep, 
Or  the  tempest  and  storm  unfearing  to  breast 

When  they  roused  their  revel  to  keep. 

You  may  laugh  if  you  choose,  and  scorn  and  abuse 

Those  good  old  sailing  days — 
You  may  boast  of  your  steam  and  your  wheels  and  your  screws, 

And  all  your  new-fangled  ways; 
But  for  beauty  and  grace  you  must  take  second  place, 

However  your  use  you  praise. 
Ah  yes !    for  a  braver  and  gallanter  sight 

On  the  ocean  you  never  will  find 
Than  an  old  three-master,  its  canvas  white 

All  rounded  out  to  the  wind, — 
Not  hammering,  panting  along  the  sea 

With  a  ceaseless  splashing  and  noise, 
But  almost  flying,  bending,  careening, 
Now  up  erect,  now  sideways  leaning, 

With  an  ever-shifting  poise. 
Ah,  that  was  sailing !    ah,  that  was  living ! 

How  we  went  in  those  days !   how  we  went ! 
The  winds  from  heaven  their  impulse  giving, 

And  we  joying  in  what  they  sent ! 
How  we  played  with  the  storm  and  laughed  with  the  tempest, 

As  under  their  pressure  we  bent, 
The  wild  seas  leaping,  and  rushing,  and  sweeping 

Over  our  decks  and  sides; 
Our  sharp  prow  lifting  high  up,  and  cleaving 
The  dark  blue  billows  before  it  heaving, 

As  over  them  bravely  it  rides; 
Or  downward  stooping  and  into  them  swooping, 

As  greenly  they  yawned  beneath, 
Into  their  deep  black  caverns  scooping, 

With  a  foam-bone  in  its  teeth, — 
While  above,  at  the  mast-head  flying  free, 

And  playing  with  the  wind, 
Streamed  the  good  old  flag,  and  after  us  sweeping 

Came  the  following  gulls,  their  orbed  wings  dipping 
In  the  foam-fringed  edge  of  the  billows  upleaping 

In  the  rustling  wake  behind. 

How  we  used  to  speed  o'er  the  summer  seas 

With  hearts  so  happy  and  light, — 
Our  full  sails  strained  by  the  steady  breeze, 

And  scarcely  a  cloud  in  sight ! 
All  the  long  fresh  day  how  we  sped  away, 


224  An  Old  "  Seventy- Four  "  Frigate.  [Aug. 

With  never  a  dream  of  care — 
All  the  moonlight  night,  so  clear  and  bright, 

With  its  few  large  stars  and  rare  ! 
Singing  and  laughing,  and  jesting  and  chaffing, 

Not  knowing  how  happy  we  were  ! 
Ah  !    then  we  lived,  we  lived,  my  boy ! 
Life  was  not  then  a  remembered  joy; 
But  we  lived  in  the  Present,  and  wide  eyed  Hope 
Had  the  key  of  the  Future,  and  promised  to  ope 

New  Joys  in  the  Life  before. 

And  we  panted  for  more  and  more, 
Never  content,  though  we  wildly  spent 

Of  the  Present's  abundant  store, 
Scarcely  knowing  how  happy  Life  was,  as  it  went, 

Till  the  voyage  of  Youth  was  o'er; — 
For  'tis  only  at  last,  looking  back  at  the  Past 

And  its  dear  sweet  long-ago, 
With  its  careless  joys,  and  its  brief  annoys, 
How  happy  we  were  we  know ! 

Now  ! — ah  now  ! — but  'tis  useless  to  sigh 

For  the  dear  old  days  gone  utterly  by, 

The  glad  old  time  of  my  strength  and  prime, 

That  only  in  dreams  I  see, — 
As  afar  they  sleep  in  the  distance  deep 

Of  my  fading  memory. 
Here  all  alone,  life's  voyages  done, 
Its  banners  and  sails  and  masts  cut  down, 

Everything  but  the  old  timbers  gone, 
Useless  and  hopeless  I  lie 

In  the  narrow  dead  dock  of  Age, 

And  silently  wait  till  the  fiat  of  Fate 

Turn  over  Life's  last  sad  page, 
Open  wide  with  its  key  this  prison  gate 

And  set  me  free  from  this  cage; 
And  I  hear  the  stern  cry  sounding  low  but  clear- 
Break  up  the  old  hulk,  throw  its  fragments  away ! 
Iwas  a  good  old  ship,  perhaps,  as  you  say 
But  'tis  useless  now,  it  has  had  its  day, 

It  only  encumbers  us  here! 

But  even  here,  when  the  guns  on  the  shore 
Peal  out,  I  can  feel  the  old  battle's  roar 
Sounding  again,  that  I  never  more, 

While  life  remains,  shall  forget, 
When  out  on  the  sea  the  enemy 

In  my  fighting  trim  I  met ! 
Ah !  my  old  hulk,  each  shotted  gun 
Then  pealed  in  a  thundering  unison, 

And  I  seem  to  hear  them  yet ' 

Flashing  and  crashing,  the  balls 'come  dashing 

Un  their  savage  errand  of  death 


1894.]  An  Old  " Seventy- Four"  Frigate.  225 

Through  sails,  yard,  mast,  coming  thundering  past 

And  sweeping  the  decks  beneath. 
Ah  !  the  wild  shrill  cries,  and  the  agonies 
Of  the  wounded — the  decks  all  red 
With  the  blood  of  the  dying  and  dead  ! 
The  living  all  firing  and  loading — 
The  guns  in  flashes  exploding — 
And  the  fierce  wild  courage  and  cry 
As  the  balls  told  sternly  their  terrible  tale, 
Sweeping  the  decks  with  their  iron  hail, 
Tearing  through  masts  and  yard  and  sail, 
As  they  crashed  relentlessly  by; 
Till  after  what  seemed  like  months  had  passed, 
Though  they  were  but  moments — at  last — at  last 
The  enemy's  flag  was  struck  from  the  mast, 

To  our  wild  cry — Victory ! 

Ah  !  my  friend,  what  am  I,  that  am  bragging  so 
Of  the  time  that  is  dead  and  gone1? 
What  am  I  now — from  stern  to  prow, 
But  a  wretched  old  hulk,  razeed,  cut  down, 
With  not  even  one  old  cracked  gun1? — 
That  never  again  will  feel  the  strain 
Of  the  wind  in  my  swelling  sails, — 
Never  freely  careening,  and  swinging,  and  leaning, 
Speed  over  the  bounding  main. 
Never  ! — ah,  never  again  ! 

Even  now  while  I  tell  these  old-world  tales, 
Though  you  listen  with  deference  due 
To  age,  old  age, — there's  a  hidden  smile 
Lurks  under  that  deference  all  the  while, 

And  a  smile  of  pity  too. 
Still,  while  I  am  telling,  my  heart  keeps  swelling 

With  thoughts  of  the  days  I  knew, 
Till  I  almost  seem  to  feel  those  gales 
Blowing  again  in  my  swelling  sails, 

As  once  they  used  to  do. 

But  pardon  ! — pardon  ! — I'll  say  no  more ; 
I'm  a  poor  old  hulk,  and  the  days  of  yore, 
With  all  their  gladness  and  reckless  madness, 

For  me  are  utterly  o'er  ! 

And  perhaps  even  you,  if  you're  honest  and  true, 
Will  confess  that  this  prattle  of  voyage  and  battle 

Is  simply  a  tedious  bore, 
Or  at  best  must  seem  like  the  idle  dream 

Of  a  bragging  old  "Seventy-Four." 

W.   W.  STORY. 


226 


The  Pretender  at  Bar-le-Duc. 


[Aug. 


THE    PRETENDER    AT    BAR-LE-DUC. 


"TiiE  Pretender  Charles  Ed- 
ward resided  here  three  years  in  a 
house  which  is  still  pointed  out." 
So  you  may  read  in  "Murray," 
under  the  head  of  "Bar-le-Duc." 
The  information  is,  as  it  happens, 
not  altogether  accurate.  For,  in  the 
first  place,  the  "Pretender"  who 
"resided"  at  Bar  was  not  "Charles 
Edward  "  at  all.  In  the  second,  so 
little  is  "the  house  still  pointed 
out "  that,  on  my  first  visit  to  Bar, 
in  August  1890,  I  could  actually 
not  find  a  soul  to  give  me  even 
the  vaguest  information  as  to 
its  whereabouts.  "Cela  doit  etre 
dans  la  Haute  Ville  " — "  Cela  doit 
etre  dans  la  Basse  Ville" — "Eh  bien, 
moi  je  n'en  sais  rien."  Why  should 
they  know  about  the  Pretender1? 
There  were  no  thanks,  surely,  due 
to  him.  While  in  the  town,  he 
had  given  himself  intolerable  airs, 
had  put  the  town  to  no  end  of  ex- 
pense and  all  manner  of  trouble, 
and  in  the  end  had  slunk  away 
without  so  much  as  a  word  of 
thanks  or  of  farewell,  leaving  a 
heavy  score  of  debts  to  be  paid — 
and,  up  in  a  neat  cottage  on  the 
brow  of  the  picturesque  hill,  for 
which  some  one  else  had  to  pay  the 
rent,  one  pretty  little  Barisienne 
disconsolate,  betrayed,  disgraced. 
There  was,  in  fact,  but  one  man 
belonging  to  the  town  who  had 
taken  the  trouble  to  trace  the 
house  from  the  description  given  in 
the  local  archives — M.  Yladimir 
Konarski — and  he  was  away  on 
his  holiday.  There  was  nothing, 
then,  for  me  to  do  but  to  go  home 
with  an  empty  note-book,  quoad 
Bar,  and  return  in  1891  to  resume 
my  inquiry. 

Even  to  us  Englishmen  the  first 
Pretender  is  not  a  particularly 
attractive  personage.  But  he  is  a 


historical  character.  And  about 
his  doings  at  Bar  thus  far  very 
little  has  been  made  known. 
With  the  help  of  M.  Konarski's 
notes,  of  the  local  and  other  ar- 
chives, freely  placed  at  my  disposal 
(including  those  of  the  Foreign 
Office  on  the  Quay  d'Orsay),  I 
have  managed  to  gather  together 
sufficient  historical  crumbs  to 
make  up  a  fairly  substantial  loaf 
— all  the  information  on  the  sub- 
ject, I  suppose,  that  is  to  be  got. 
And,  at  any  rate  as  a  secondary 
side- chapter  to  our  national  history 
at  an  important  epoch,  perhaps  the 
account  which,  within  the  limits  of 
a  magazine  article,  I  shall  be  able 
to  give,  may  prove  of  passing 
interest  to  more  besides  those 
staunch  surviving  Jacobites  who 
still  from  time  to  time  "play  at 
treason  "  in  out-of-the-way  places. 

What  sent  the  Pretender  to  Bar 
every  schoolboy  knows.  We  had 
fought  with  France  and  were,  in 
1713,  about  to  conclude  peace. 
Our  Court  had,  as  a  Stuart  MS. 
in  Paris  puts  it,  showed  itself  ex- 
tremely "  chatouilleuse  et  suscep- 
tible" with  respect  to  the  counte- 
nance given  to  James.  Louis 
XIV.,  we  were  aware,  had  ex- 
pressed his  desire  to  render  to  the 
Pretender's  family  " de  plus  grands 
et  plus  heureux  services "  than  he 
had  yet  been  able  to  give.  And 
so,  very  naturally,  before  engaging 
to  suspend  hostilities,  we  insisted 
that  James  should  be  turned  out 
of  France.  Once  we  were  about 
it,  we  might  as  well  have  asked  a 
little  more,  and  pressed  for  his  re- 
moval to  a  farther  distance.  The 
Hanoverian  Court  was  anxious  to 
see  him  in  papistical  Italy — best  of 
all,  at  Rome.  That  would,  M.  de 
Kobethon  avows,  do  for  him  en- 


1894.] 


The  Pretender  at  Bar-le-Duc. 


227 


tirely  at  home.  However,  in  1713 
we  took  a  different  view,  and,  as 
Lorraine  lay  particularly  handy 
and  convenient,  from  the  French 
point  of  view,  being  near,  and, 
though  nominally  an  independent 
duchy,  entirely  under  the  French 
thumb,  to  Lorraine  James  was 
sent.  There  was  some  talk  of  his 
going  to  Nancy.  He  himself  did 
not  at  first  fancy  Bar-le-Duc.  He 
feared  that  he  might  find  it  slow. 
The  French  king  believed  that  in 
a  big  town  like  Nancy  he  would 
be  safer.  However,  in  the  end 
Bar  was  decided  upon;  and,  al- 
lowing for  the  interruptions 
caused  by  very  frequent,  and  often 
prolonged,  visits  to  LuneVille,  to 
Com  mercy,  and  to  Nancy — as  well 
as  to  Plombieres,  and  one  or  two 
sly  expeditions  to  Paris  and  St 
Germains — in  the  interesting  and 
picturesque  little  capital  of  the 
Barrois  did  the  Chevalier  remain, 
hatching  schemes,  writing  de- 
spatches to  the  Pope,  qud  king, 
moreover  making  love  to  his  name- 
less fair  one,  and  beguiling  the  time 
with  the  games  of  the  period,  until 
the  Fata  Morgana  of  rather  hoped- 
for  than  anticipated  success  lured 
him  on  that  unhappy  expedition 
into  Scotland. 

James  tries  to  make  a  serious 
hardship  of  his  "exile"  at  Bar. 
But  he  might,  without  much 
trouble,  have  fixed  upon  a  very 
much  worse  place.  If  roads  were 
bad,  and  if  the  surrounding  woods 
swarmed  with  brigands,  whom 
special  chasse-coquins  were  retained 
to  keep  in  awe,  that  was  a  dis- 
qualification common  to  all  Lor- 
raine— the  after-effect  of  French 
ravages  and  French  occupation. 
Leave  that  out  of  account,  and  Bar 
must  have  been  attractive  enough. 


Its  situation  is  remarkably  pictur- 
esque. The  castle -hill  rises  up 
steeply,  all  but  isolated  from  the 
surrounding  heights,  above  the 
smiling  valley  of  the  Ornain,  with 
delightfully  green  and  tempting 
side-valleys  curling  around  it,  as 
natural  fosses,  on  either  side.  In 
James's  day  the  hill  was  still 
crowned  with  the  old  historic 
castle,  built  in  the  tenth  century 
— the  castle  in  which  Mary  Queen 
of  Scots,  bright  with  youthful 
beauty,  and  radiant  with  happi- 
ness, delighted  with  her  cheer- 
ing presence  the  gay  Court  of 
her  cousin  and  playmate,  Charles 
III.,  fresh  to  his  coronet,  as 
she  was  to  the  crown  which 
decked  her  head;  for  she  was 
then  newly  married  to  Francis  II., 
newly  crowned  Queen  of  France 
at  Rheims.  The  daughter  of 
Marie  de  Lorraine,  brought  up 
in  Lorraine  Conde,  she  reckoned 
herself  a  Lorraine  princess,  and 
as  a  Lorraine  princess  the  Lor- 
raines  have  ever  regarded,  and 
idolised,  her.  To  the  memory 
of  this  unhappy  queen,  round 
which  time  had  gathered  a  bright 
halo  of  romance,  not  least  was 
due  that  hearty  welcome  which 
the  Lorraines  readily  extended  to 
her  exiled  kinsman.  Most  pic- 
turesque must  the  castle  have  been 
in  olden  days,  when  those  seven- 
teen medieval  towers  (removed  by 
order  of  Louis  XIV.  in  1670)  still 
stood  round  about  it  like  sturdy 
sentries,  each  laden  with  historic 
memories.  Even  now  the  view  of 
the  hill  is  pleasing  enough — with 
its  winding  roads,  its  steep  steps, 
its  antique  clock-tower,  its  terraced 
gardens  and  rambling  lanes,  the 
quaint  church  of  St  Peter  1  topping 
the  southern  summit  with  its  tower 


1  The  church  encloses,  in  addition  to  one  of  the  "true"  pebbles  with  which 
was  stoned,  says  M.  Bellot-Herment,  the  chronicler  of  Bar,  "  St  Etienne,  curt  de, 
Gamaliel,  bourg  du  diocese  de  Jerusalem,'"  that  boldly  original  sculpture  from  the 


228 


The  Pretender  at  Bar-le-Duc. 


[Aug. 


flattened  to  resist  the  wind,  with 
those  delightfully  green  and  shady 
Paquis  just  beyond,  densely  wood- 
ed with  trees — the  Paquis  which, 
with  their  paslemaile,  formed  the 
favourite  resort  of  James  while 
at  Bar,  and  in  the  shady  seclu- 
sion of  which  he  spun  his  web 
of  deceiving  flattery  round  the 
guileless  heart  of  the  girl  whom  he 
betrayed.  Only  to  please  him,  we 
read  in  the  archives,  it  was  that 
the  town  council  put  up  benches 
in  that  shade,  which  cost  the  town 
nine  livres. 

At  James's  time  Bar-le-Duc, 
though  declining,  was  still  a  rather 
considerable  provincial  capital,  the 
chef-lieu  of  the  largest  bailliage 
in  Lorraine.  And  in  that  little 
"  West  End  "  of  the  Haute  Ville, 
where  a  cluster  of  Louis-Quatorze 
houses  still  stand  in  decayed 
grandeur,  to  recall  past  fashion- 
ableness,  the  nobility  of  the  little 
Barrois,  locally  always  a  powerful 
and  influential  body, — the  Bassom- 
pierres,  the  Harau  courts,  the 
Lenoncourts,  the  Stainvilles,  the 
Romecourts,  —  had  their  town- 
houses;  and  there  also  dwelt  the 
pick  of  the  bureaucracy,  all  ready 
to  pay  their  court  to  the  Stuart 
"king,"  to  whom  even  the  French 
envoy  reckoned  it  "an  honour" 
to  be  introduced. 

Lorraine  was  at  the  time  slowly 
but  steadily  recovering  from  the 
havoc  wrought  upon  it  by  French 
and  Swedes,  Croats  and  Germans, 
Cravates  (local  brigands)  and 
Champenois  peasants,  and  all  that 
"omnium  bipedum  sceleratissima 
colluvies,"  which  had  again  and 
again  overrun  the  duchy,  robbing, 
burning,  pillaging.  Leopold,  re- 
stored by  the  Treaty  of  Ryswick  to 


his  duchy — in  which,  as  duke,  his 
father  had  never  set  foot — had  been 
on  the  throne  getting  on  for  sixteen 
years.  And  what  with  the  ex- 
cellent counsels  of  that  best  of 
Chancellors,  Irish  Earl  Carling- 
ford,  and  his  own  intuitive  wisdom 
and  enlightened  and  paternal  des- 
potism, Lorraine  was  becoming 
populous  and  prosperous,  happy 
and  contented,  once  more.  Leo- 
pold earned  himself  a  name  for  a 
shrewd  and  prudent  ruler.  His 
brother-in-law,  Philip  of  Orleans 
(the  Regent),  said  of  him,  that  of 
all  rulers  of  Europe  he  did  not 
know  one  who  was  his  superior  "  en 
experience,  en  sagesse,  et  en  poli- 
tique"  And  Voltaire  has  immor- 
talised his  virtues  by  saying  :  "II 
est  a  souhaiter  que  la  derniere  pos- 
terite'  apprenne  qu'un  des  plus  petits 
souverains  de  V Europe  a  ete  celui 
qui  Jit  le  plus  de  bien  a  son  peuple." 
In  fact,  he  was  the  very  ruler 
whom  Lorraine  at  that  juncture 
wanted.  "  Je  quitter ais  demain 
ma  souverainete  si  je  ne  pouvais 
faire  du  bien"  he  said.  Under 
his  father,  that  brilliant  general, 
Charles  V.,  he  had  given  proof  of 
his  pluck  and  prowess  at  Temes- 
war,  of  his  military  ability  before 
Ebersburg.  But  in  Lorraine,  he 
knew,  the  one  thing  needful  was 
peace.  And  with  a  dogged  de- 
termination which  was  bound  to 
overcome  all  difficulties,  though 
the  stars  in  their  courses  seemed 
to  be  fighting  against  him,  that 
peace  he  managed  to  preserve,  in 
the  midst  of  a  raging  sea  of  war 
all  round,  which  had  drawn  all 
neighbouring  countries  into  its 
whirl.  He  did  it  —  it  is  worth 
recording,  because  it  materially 
affected  James's  position  at  his 


chisel  of  the  great  Lorraine  artist,  Ligier  Richier,  whom  we  so  undeservedly 
ignore,  the  famous  "  Squelette,"  the  mere  name  of  which  frightened  Dibdin  away, 
as  he  himself  relates.  Durival  terms  this  sculpture  "  une  affreuse  beaute"— but 
"  "  it  undoubtedly  is. 


1894.] 


The  Pretender  at  Bar-le-Duc. 


229 


Court — by  as  adroit  balancing 
between  the  two  great  belligerent 
Powers  of  the  Continent  as  ever 
diplomatist  managed  to  achieve. 
Born  and  bred  in  Austria,  allied 
to  the  Imperial  family  by  the 
closest  ties  of  blood — his  mother 
was  an  archduchess — trained  in 
Austrian  etiquette,  an  officer  in 
the  Austrian  army,  beholden  to 
Austria  for  many  past  favours, 
and  keenly  alive  to  the  fact  that 
for  any  favours  which  might  yet 
be  to  come  he  must  look  exclu- 
sively to  the  Court  of  Vienna,  in 
his  leanings  and  prepossessions  he 
was  entirely  Austrian.  But  under 
his  father  and  great-uncle  history 
had  taught  his  country  the  severe 
lesson  that  without  observing  the 
best,  though  they  be  the  most 
obsequious,  relations  towards 
France,  at  whose  mercy  the  coun- 
try lay,  no  independent  Lorraine 
was  at  all  possible.  Accordingly, 
almost  Leopold's  very  first  act  as 
Duke  was  to  send  M.  de  Cou- 
vange  to  Paris,  to  solicit  on  his  be- 
half the  hand  of  "  Mademoiselle," 
the  Princess  of  Orleans.  Her 
hand  was  gladly  accorded.  There 
was  a  tradition — with  a  very  ob- 
vious object — at  Paris  in  favour  of 
Lorraine  marriages.  This  was  the 
thirty-third,  and  there  remained 
a  thirty-fourth  to  conclude,  the 
ill-starred  marriage  of  Marie  An- 
toinette. King  James  II.  and  his 
Queen  attended  the  wedding  at 
Fontainebleau,  and  Elizabeth  Char- 
lotte became  one  of  the  best  of 
wives,  and  best  and  most  popular 
of  Lorraine  duchesses,  bearing  her 
husband  no  less  than  fourteen 
children.  Balancing  between  Aus- 
tria and  France,  maintaining  his 
private  relations  with  the  one, 
giving  way  in  everything  to  the 
other,  was  Leopold's  prudent 
maxim  throughout  his  reign.  So 
long  as  he  adhered  to  that,  he  felt 
safe.  Whenever  he  departed  from 


it,  he  found  himself  getting  into 
mischief. 

Leopold  has  been  much  abused 
by  our  writers  and  politicians,  as 
if  he  had  been  a  deliberate  anti- 
English  plotter  and  Jacobite  ac- 
complice. It  is  but  fair  to  him  to 
explain  why  he  afforded  the  Stuart 
prince  such  liberal  hospitality. 
The  real  fact  is,  that  he  could  not 
help  himself.  He  was  bound  to. 
France  demanded  it,  and  he  could 
not  refuse — nor  yet  refuse  to  make 
his  hospitality  generous  and  lavish. 
There  was  the  additional  attrac- 
tion, indeed,  of  a  show  of  import- 
ance, of  a  little  implication  in 
diplomatic  negotiations  and  play- 
ing a  part  in  European  high  poli- 
tics, which  to  Leopold  must  have 
been  strongly  seductive.  A  good 
deal  is  also  said  about  denomina- 
tional motives,  which  must  have 
helped  Leopold  both  with  the  Curia 
and  with  the  Imperial  Court,  with 
both  of  whom  he  was  anxious  to 
stand  well.  The  Pope — it  is  true, 
under  pressure  from  James — sub- 
sequently thanked  Leopold  in  a 
special  brief,  "  ample  et  bien  ex- 
prime"  for  the  proof  of  attach- 
ment which  he  had  rendered  to 
the  Church  by  his  reception  of  the 
banished  prince,  the  emblem  to 
all  Europe  of  the  Church  of  Rome 
under  persecution.  Leopold  was 
an  exceptionally  devout  Roman 
Catholic.  He  heard  mass  reli- 
giously every  day,  spent  an  hour 
in  prayer  after  dinner,  and  "  adored 
the  Sacrament"  every  evening. 
He  had  revived  Charles  III.'s 
stringent  provisions  against  Pro- 
testants, interdicting  all  public 
worship  and,  in  theory  at  any 
rate,  declaring  Protestantism  a 
crime  deserving  of  hanging.  In 
his  excessive  zeal  he  would  not 
even  allow  the  Cistercian  monks 
of  Beaupre  to  retain  in  their 
service  a  Protestant  shepherd, 
though  they  pleaded  hard  that 


230 


The  Pretender  at  Bar-le-Duc. 


[Aug. 


he  was  the  best  shepherd  whom 
they  had  ever  had.     So  zealous  a 
believer  was  of  course  a  man  after 
the  very  heart  of  the  widow  and 
son  of  that  "Jort  bon  homme"  as 
Archbishop   Le   Tellier    scomngly 
termed  James  II.,  who  had  "  sacri- 
ficed three  kingdoms  for  a  mass." 
To  himself,  on  the  other  hand,  it 
seemed  something  of  a  sacred  act 
to  open  his  house  to  the  "  Woman 
persecuted  by  the  dragon."     But 
all  this  was  but  as  dust   in   the 
balance  by  the  side  of  the  com- 
pelling necessity  of  French  dicta- 
tion,   doubly   compelling    at   that 
particular   period.      For   Leopold 
had  been   playing  his  own  game 
of  late.     Things  had  gone  against 
France  in  the  field,   and  he  had 
put  his  money  on  the  other  horse. 
He  was  always  after  a  fashion  a 
gambling    and    speculative    ruler, 
willing  to  stake  almost  his  very 
existence  on  the  roulette  of  high 
politics.     At  that  moment  he  was 
flattering  himself  with  hopes  that 
the  Congress  of  Utrecht  would  do 
something  for  him.     Both  Austria 
and    England   had    privately  pro- 
mised— at    least    some    of    their 
statesmen   had — that   he  was   to 
have  a  seat  at  the  Congress  table. 
That    would    add    immensely    to 
his  dignity   and   prestige.      Then 
he  was  to  have  a  slice  of  the  Low 
Countries.     To  ensure  this  result, 
he  was  "casting  his   bread  upon 
the  waters"  with  a  vengeance — 
spending  money  wholesale,  bribing 
English,  and  Dutch,  and  Austrian 
statesmen  with  the  most  profuse 
generosity  —  more       particularly 
Marlborough,  in  whom  he  appears 
to  have  retained  a  belief  through- 
out, who  most  faithlessly  "sold" 
him,  and  who  cost  him  a  fortune. 
At  the  time  in  question  our  great 
general  had  been  favoured  with  a 
fresh  mark  of  favour  from   Leo- 
pold— a  magnificent  carosse,  horsed 
with   six    splendid    dapple-greys 


(Leopold  was  a  great  horse-fan- 
cier) hung  with  most  costly  trap- 
pings. All  this — which  proved  in 
the  event  to  have  been  entirely 
thrown  away — very  naturally  gave 
umbrage  to  France.  And  Louis 
XIV.  had  not  missed  his  oppor- 
tunity of  letting  Leopold  know 
that  a  score  was  being  marked  up 
against  him.  Therefore  when  Louis 
said,  Receive  James,  Leopold  had 
no  choice  but  to  receive  him.  His 
letters  and  despatches  make  this 
perfectly  clear.  There  is  a  good 
deal  of  talk  about  the  Chevalier's 
"estimable  qualities,"  how  the 
Duke  and  Duchess  admire  him, 
how  happy  they  are  that  he  has 
not  gone  to  Aix-la-Chapelle.  And 
no  doubt  Leopold  proved  a  very 
valuable  friend  to  the  exile.  But 
every  now  and  then,  through  all 
this  polite  buncombe,  out  comes 
the  frank  admission  that  all  is 
done  "to  please  the  king."  And 
we  know  how  promptly  and  un- 
hesitatingly Leopold's  hospitality 
was  withdrawn,  once  French  pres- 
sure ceased,  in  1716.  To  our- 
selves, by  receiving  an  exiled  Pre- 
tender into  his  neutral  realm,  as 
we  have  received  many  such,  Leo- 
pold never  dreamt  that  he  was 
giving  cause  for  legitimate  um- 
brage. 

And,  to  be  fair,  he  never  appears 
to  have  afforded  to  James  the 
slightest  encouragement  for  a  for- 
cible assertion  of  his  claims.  His 
counsel  was  all  the  other  way.  It 
was  the  French,  it  was  the  Che- 
valier's own  followers  at  home,  it 
was  Roman  Cardinal  Gualterio, 
who  countenanced,  and  occasion- 
ally urged,  warlike  measures.  Car- 
dinal Gualterio,  more  in  particular, 
prodded  the  Catholic  prince  con- 
siderably, in  the  interest  of  his 
Church,  arguing  that  "il  falloit 
hazarder  quelque  chose  et  tneme 
affronter  le  sort,  ce  qui  ne  se  fait 
pas  sans  risque."  Leopold,  on  the 


1894.] 


other  hand,  was  all  dissuasion. 
He  wanted  James  to  keep  near 
England,  in  order  to  be  handy  in 
the  event  of  his  being  recalled — 
which  he  seems  to  have  thought  a 
likely  contingency.  When  James 
began  to  talk  of  armaments  and 
invasions,  Leopold  dwelt  upon  the 
difficulties,  the  all-but-hopelessness 
of  such  a  move.  When,  in  June 
1714,  shortly  before  Queen  Anne's 
death,  James  wrote  from  Plom- 
bieres  that  he  must  go  into  Eng- 
land, since  he  learnt  that  his  rival, 
the  Electoral  Prince  of  Hanover, 
had  gone  there,  Leopold,  who  was 
admirably  informed  from  Hanover, 
through  his  brother,  the  Elector- 
Archbishop  of  Treves,  sent  a 
message  back  post-haste  with  the 
trustworthy  tidings  that  George 
was  neither  gone  nor  going.  The 
reasons  which  led  George's  father 
to  forbid  his  visit  read  a  little 
strange  at  the  present  day.  In  the 
first  place,  there  was  that  Hano- 
verian economy — which,  it  is  true, 
was  ostensibly  disclaimed.  In  the 
second,  the  Prince  was  not  to  be 
received  in  England  as  heir-pre- 
sumptive— so  that  he  would  not 
really  better  his  chances  by  going. 
Moreover,  the  Elector,  "  connois- 
sant  I'humeur  brusque  et  fort  em- 
portee  de  son  fils,  apprehendoit 
beaucoup  qu'il  ne  se  rendit  odieux 
aux  anglais."  Lastly,  and  mainly, 
he  was  afraid  of  dropping  between 
two  stools,  if  he  were  to  stake  his 
son's  chances  too  decidedly  on  the 
English  succession.  It  was  quite 
on  the  cards,  he  thought,  that  "  par 
un  effet  des  resolutions  que  I'incon- 
stance  de  la  nation  y  a  rendues  si 
ordinaire"  the  British  nation  would 
chasser  its  next  sovereign  as  it  had 
diasse  its  last-but-one.  And  then, 
where  would  his  son  be1  For  if 
his  son  went  to  England,  it  was 
much  to  be  feared  that  his  brother, 
who  had  been  not  quite  rightfully 
excluded  from  the  succession, 


The  Pretender  at  Bar-le-Duc. 


231 


might  make  good  his  claim  to 
Hanover.  And  there  would  George 
be,  out  in  the  cold  !  So  his  father 
was  resolved  to  play  a  waiting 
game. 

The  first  difficulty  which  James 
found  himself  confronted  with,  and 
which  Leopold  had  to  overcome  for 
him,  was  the  procuring  of  a  pass- 
port. Such  credential  was  at  the 
time  absolutely  indispensable,  for 
Europe  was  swarming  with  bad 
characters,  and  even  in  carefully 
locked  and  watched  Bar-le-Duc, 
Leopold  advises  King  Louis  that, 
with  "  a  fourth  company  of  his 
regiment  of  guards  "  added  to  the 
local  force,  besides  twenty-five  che- 
vaux-legers  and  twenty-five  gardes- 
du-corps  to  act  as  escort,  he  can 
answer  for  the  Pretender's  safety 
only  against  attacking  parties  of 
not  more  than  fifty  or  a  hundred 
at  the  outside,  which,  he  says, 
ought  to  be  borne  in  mind,  "si 
armies  ce  mettoient  en  campagne" 
Queen  Mary  only  expresses  what 
every  one  felt  when  she  says  that 
it  is  to  be  apprehended  "  que  quel- 
que  mediant  en  se  servissent  de 
^occasion  pour  faire  un  mediant 
coup"  She  accordingly  begs  the 
commnote  of  Chaillot  to  pray  for 
"the  king's"  safety. 

In  1714  the  Emperor,  who  was 
the  principal  sovereign  to  be  peti- 
tioned, would  not  make  out  a  pass- 
port for  James.  In  1713  he  raised 
no  difficulty.  Indeed,  at  Leopold's 
instance  he  was  obliging  enough  to 
supplement  his  passport  with  a 
special  letter  of  commendation  very 
kindly  worded.  And  he  carefully 
avoided  treading  on  corns  either 
way  by  not  naming  James  in  the 
document — for  all  of  which  Leo- 
pold takes  great  credit.  But  it 
appears  that  plenty  more  poten- 
tates besides  the  Emperor  had  to 
be  solicited.  And  the  two  Elec- 
tors, of  Hanover  and  of  Branden- 
burg, were  obdurate  in  their  re- 


232 


The  Pretender  at  Bar-le-Duc. 


[Aug. 


fusal.  It  was  a  ticklish  matter, 
for  without  their  safe  -  conduct 
James  might  be  attacked.  If  the 
safe -conduct  were  to  be  waited 
for,  the  Emperor  would  of  a  surety 
take  offence,  as  if  his  own  pass- 
port were  judged  insufficient.  Leo- 
pold, being  great  on  etiquette,  took 
the  last-named  to  be  the  greater 
danger,  and  advised  running  the 
risk — more  particularly  since  he 
had  been  advised  by  his  envoy 
in  London,  Baron  Forstner,  that 
Queen  Anne  had  privately  granted 
what  amounted  to  a  passport  to 
her  brother  for  going  into  Lor- 
raine. That  was  taken  to  settle 
the  matter,  and  James  put  himself 
en  route. 

It  was  on  the  22d  of  February 
1713  that  he  reached  Bar,  closely 
guarded  and  travelling  incognito, 
on  which  account  an  official  recep- 
tion in  Bar  was  out  of  the  question, 
though  the  French  artillery  at 
Toul  had  fired  a  salute.  The 
council  were  under  strict  injunc- 
tions to  omit  nothing  which  might 
conduce  to  their  visitor's  safety, 
or  minister  to  his  comfort,  or 
that  was  conventionally  due  to  a 
crowned  head.  Accordingly,  we 
find  them  in  their  next  sitting,  on 
the  25th  February,  passing  a  whole 
string  of  votes  and  resolutions  hav- 
ing reference  to  his  arrival  and  his 
safety  in  the  town.  The  police 
and  chasse-coquins  are  forthwith 
put  on  the  alert,  sentries  are 
placed  at  all  corners,  and  to  ac- 
commodate them  a  whole  number 
of  new  sentry-boxes  are  put  up. 
The  authorities  are  directed  to 
question  every  stranger  coming 
into  the  town  carefully,  and  if 
there  should  appear  to  be  any- 
thing suspicious  about  any  one, 
rigorously  to  detain  him  and  re- 
port the  case  at  once  by  express 
courier  to  Luneville.  Iron  grilles 
are  put  up.  All  the  postern-gates 
are  walled  up,  so  is  one  of  the 


principal  gates,  and  so  is — in  spite 
of  sanitary  considerations — a  main 
sewer  passing  through  the  wall. 
Soldiers  were  a  good  deal  less 
squeamish  in  those  days  than  they 
are  now,  and  sewers  had  served 
for  many  a  surprise  in  the  Thirty 
Years'  War.  The  remaining  ten 
gates  are  to  be  carefully  watched, 
and  never  opened  before  5  A.M., 
nor  left  open  after  8  P.M.  Billets 
are  issued  for  the  overflow  of 
James's  suite,  which  appears  to 
have  been  numerous,  and  stable- 
room  is  bespoken  for  his  horses. 
James  evidently  was  an  inconven- 
ient visitor  to  house.  For  he 
would  have  all  his  large  appara- 
tus of  Court  and  Household  close 
to  him  —  chamberlains,  kitchen, 
kennel,  and  all.  Miss  Strickland 
praises  his  habitual  economy.  His 
doings  in  Lorraine  do  not  bear 
out  that  praise.  From  the  Nairne 
MSS.  in  the  British  Museum 
(which  give  a  full  list)  we  know 
that  in  1709  and  1710  his  house- 
hold included  above  120  persons, 
from  the  secretaries  down  to  the 
grooms'  helper,  drawing  salaries 
of  from  12  to  675  livres  per  men- 
sem. There  was  the  Comptroller, 
Mr  Bous,  who  retailed  the  anec- 
dotes of  the  Court  to  Lady  Mid- 
dleton ;  a  clerk  of  the  green  cloth, 
a  yeoman  baker,  a  yeoman  confec- 
tioner, a  yeoman  of  the  chaundry, 
Jeremiah  Browne,  "  Esq.,"  master 
cook,  a  water  -  carrier,  and  a 
scourer.  There  are  yeomen's  scul- 
lery assistants,  confessors  and 
chaplains,  a  doctor,  a  "  chyrur- 
gien,"  and  an  apothecary,  a  "  ride- 
ing  purveyor"  and  a  "chaiseman," 
"Lady  Maclane,  laundress,"  pur- 
suivants, and  necessary  women — 
all  that  belongs  to  a  royal  house- 
hold. And  the  whole  establish- 
ment cost  "19,412  Istrs  per  men- 
sem." All  these  people  did  not  go 
to  Bar,  but  a  good  many  did. 
And  there  were  a  crowd  more,  for 


1894.] 


The  Pretender  at  Bar-le-Duc. 


233 


whom  the  town  had  to  provide. 
For  we  read  in  the  Macpherson 
Papers  that  all  " Peacock's  family" 
— i.e.,  all  Protestant  refugees  who 
had  been  at  "Stanley,"  i.e.,  at 
St  Germains — had  followed  the 
Chevalier  to  Bar.  There  was  not 
one  of  them  left.  So  writes  the 
Queen.  And  the  Duke  states 
quite  independently  of  this,  that 
the  Chevalier  is  surrounded  with 
Protestant  exiles.  Altogether 
James's  Court  ran  up  a  goodly 
bill,  which  it  was  disappointing 
to  the  town  afterwards  to  find 
that,  though  incurred  by  express 
order  of  the  Duke,  the  burgesses 
were  expected  to  meet  out  of 
their  own  funds.  To  enable  them 
to  do  so,  Leopold  allowed  the 
council  to  appropriate  the  deniers 
of  the  Octroi  to  their  involuntary 
hospitality. 

The  more  or  less  Protestant  col- 
ouring given  to  the  refugee  estab- 
lishment was  scarcely  palatable  to 
the  very  orthodox  population  of 
Bar.  But  James  was  playing,  not 
to  the  Bar  pit,  but  to  the  English 
gallery.  "  Downs  or  Leslie  should 
at  once  go  there,"  we  have 
O'Rourke  writing  to  Middleton 
early  in  1713.  Leslie  did  go  soon 
after,  and  the  Chevalier,  as  his 
advocates  take  credit,  prevailed 
upon  the  Duke  to  relax  his  rigid 
rule  in  one  instance,  and  allow 
Protestant  service  in  an  upper 
room  in  James's  house.  That  was 
in  the  "Rue  Neve."  The  upper 
room,  which,  we  read,  was  just 
over  James's  own  apartment,  can- 
not have  been  large.  So  it  is  to 
be  feared  that  the  service  was  not 
over  well  attended.  But  it  was 
enough  to  save  appearances,  and 
to  give  the  Jacobites  of  England 
a  shadow  of  reason  for  declaring, 
as  they  did,  that  James  really  was 
a  Protestant.  James  himself  spoke 
very  differently.  "He  would  ra- 
ther abandon  all  than  act  against 

VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCXLVI. 


his  conscience  and  his  honour." 
He  protested  over  and  over  again 
that  "  all  the  crowns  in  the  world 
would  not  make  him  change  his 
religion." 

Thanks  to  King  Louis'  perpet- 
ual   ordering     and    countermand- 
ing, when  James  got  to  Bar  the 
chateau  was  bare  and  uninhabit- 
able, and  for  a  few  days  the  Pre- 
tender had  to  be  content  with  the 
same  rather  humble  house  which 
he  was  destined  subsequently  to 
occupy  for  a  considerable  time,  in 
the  "Rue  des  Tanneurs" — Num- 
ber  22,   Rue  Neve,  it  is  now — a 
plain,  square,  three-storeyed  build- 
ing (counting  the  upper  range  of 
rooms,    which   is  very  low,    as   a 
storey).     This  is  described  as  at 
the  time  "  the  principal  house  "  in 
the  town,  the  property  of  one  of 
the  most  distinguished  residents, 
Councillor  of  State  M.   Marchal. 
It   has   eight   windows    frontage, 
facing   severally   the    Rue    Neve 
and  the    Rue  des   Pressoirs,   and 
abutting  width-ways  on  the  very 
narrow  passage  Rue  St  Antoine. 
A   few   days   later,   however,    we 
find    the    Chevalier    safely   estab- 
lished in  the  chateau,  and  there  on 
the  9th  of  March  he  receives  the 
Duke  of  Lorraine  and  his  brother 
Frangois,  Abbe  of  Stavelot,  with 
an  amount   of   circumstance   and 
scrupulous     weighing     of     prece- 
dences   which    is    described    with 
rather  amusing  minuteness  in  the 
'  Gazette  de  France.'     Not  to  hurt 
James's  feelings — to  whom  royal 
honours  could  not  be  openly  shown 
out   of   consideration    for    Queen 
Anne — Leopold   ordered   that   he 
himself   should    not    be    received 
with  the  usual  ceremonial,  troops 
under  arms,   and  councillors  pre- 
senting addresses.     But  the  Lor- 
raines  are  a  devotedly  loyal  popu- 
lation.     They  would  not  be  for- 
bidden.    The  whole  population  of 
the   town    and    its    surroundings 
Q 


234 


The  Pretender  at  Bar-le-Duc. 


[Aug. 


crowded  into  the  streets  to  receive 
the  ruler  of  the  land  with  shouts 
of  welcome.  James  being  the  re- 
sident, played  the  host  at  Bar. 
There  was  a  dinner,  a  supper,  and  a 
long  private  talk  in  the  chateau, 
with  the  result,  we  read,  that  the 
two  princes  at  once  became  fast 
friends.  James,  we  know,  though 
wanting  in  most  of  the  qualities 
which  are  regarded  as  specifically 
manly,  was  a  good-looking  and 
agreeable  fellow  enough.  As  for 
Leopold,  with  his  experience  of 
Courts,  and  his  kind  and  consider- 
ate disposition,  he  could  not  very 
well  prove  otherwise  than  a  pleas- 
ant companion  and  a  kind  patron. 

The  striking  difference  very  ap- 
parent in  the  characters  of  host 
and  guest  may  have  helped  to  draw 
them  together  all  the  more  closely. 
James  was  in  his  ordinary  mood 
anything  but  mirthful.  References 
to  him  are  frequent  in  the  corre- 
spondence as  being  "  terribly  sad," 
or  else  "  very  pensive,  which  is  his 
ordinary  humour,"  "  tres  serieux  et 
reserve,"  so  much  so  that  "rien  ne 
Vauoitpd  tirerde  laprofonde  melan- 
colie  ou  il  e'toit,"  and  so  on.  Yet 
he  could  be  merry,  too,  and  more 
in  particular  he  loved  a  dance.  At 
one  ball,  given  in  the  Palace  at 
Lune'ville,  we  read  that  he  managed 
particularly  to  ingratiate  himself 
with  the  ladies  who  were  past  their 
first  bloom,  by  an  undoubtedly 
chivalrous  attention.  They  wanted 
badly  to  dance,  but  dared  not, 
while  the  Duchess  was  sitting. 
And  the  Duchess  considered  her- 
self too  much  of  a  matron  to  foot 
it  with  the  young  ones.  James, 
however,  made  her.  He  would 
take  no  refusal.  The  dead  room 
became  reanimated  once  more,  and 
many  an  aging  heart  in  its  night- 
thoughts  blessed  the  gallant  pre- 
tendant. 

Reporting  himself  after  his  visit 
to  Bar,  as  in  duty  bound,  to  King 


Louis,  Leopold  declares  himself 
" char  me  de  I' esprit,  de  la  sagesse, 
de  la  douceur  et  des  manieres  gra- 
cieuses  de  M.  le  Chevalier  de  Saint 
Georges"  The  'Journal  de  Ver- 
dun,' drawing  its  information,  of 
course,  from  official  sources,  an- 
nounces that  after  their  first  en- 
counter the  two  princes  "  se  sep- 
arerent  extremement  satis/alts  I'un 
de  Vautre"  in  "  parfaite  amitie  bien 
cimentee."  Of  James  it  will  have 
it  that  he  is  "d'un  caractere  si  doux, 
si  affable,  et  si  populair,  qu'il  s'est 
bientot  acquis,  de  tout  ceux  qui  ont 
eu  Vhonneur  de  la  voir,  le  respect  et 
la  veneration  dus  a  sa  vertu  et  a  sa 
naissance" 

Leopold  gone,  the  time  passed, 
on  the  whole,  quietly  at  Bar. 
There  were  occasional  frights, 
when  some  suspicious  stranger  had 
been  seized.  On  another  occasion 
there  is  some  talk  of  a  "  poisoned 
letter,"  sent  in  an  ingenious  fash- 
ion. To  Louis,  we  find,  the  Duke 
appeared  a  little  too  forward  in 
warning  James  of  these  dangers, 
as  if  he  wanted  to  frighten  his 
guest  into  quitting  Lorraine.  To 
vary  the  little  episodes,  there  was 
the  famous  coequre,  who  so  much 
amused  Queen  Mary  Beatrice's 
companions  with  his  odd  manners 
and  his  "thou"-ing.  The  spirit 
had  moved  him,  as  we  know,  to 
inform  James  that  he  was  to  rule 
over  England,  in  which  country 
there  were  plenty  of  well-wishers 
to  support  him.  Were  money 
wanted,  he  said  that  his  friends 
would  readily  combine  to  raise 
some  millions.  They  did  not, 
welcome  as  the  money  would  have 
been  to  James,  whom  we  find  con- 
tinually complaining  of  want  of 
funds.  In  the  cipher  despatches 
the  common  burden  is,  that  "Mr 
Parton"  will  not  "deliver  the 
goods."  There  is  another  pro- 
phetic person  to  encourage  the 
Chevalier,  a  nun  of  the  "  Monas- 


1894.] 

tere  de  Sainte  Marie  del  Roma," 
near  Montevallo,  accredited  by 
her  superior,  who  writes  to  the 
Marquis  Spada  that  her  pro- 
phecies have  never  failed  to  come 
true.  If  he  escapes  the  many 
traps  set  for  him  in  1715,  says 
the  nun,  James  will  certainly  be- 
come King  of  England.  Occa- 
sionally also  there  are  little  tiffs 
between  English  visitors  and  Bar- 
isien  residents.  What  English, 
Scotch,  and  Irish  there  were  there, 
we  do  not  know  for  certain,  but 
there  were  a  goodly  number,  and 
not  all  of  the  best  manners.  Noel, 
who  is  a  good  historian  on  Lor- 
raine things,  but  a  little  at  fault 
on  English,  will  have  it  that  among 
these  people  was  "  Lord  Chatham, 
qui  devint  plus  tard  si  ce'lebre" 
Occasionally  there  was  a  visitor 
coming  on  the  sly  with  news — 
such  as  the  Duke  of  Berwick, 
whose  visits  were  at  one  time 
frequent — or,  towards  the  end  of 
the  sojourn,  the  banished  Lord 
Bolingbroke,  and  "Le  Comte  de 
Peterborough "  travelling  under 
the  pseudonym  of  "  Schmit."  Marl- 
borough  did  not  come  himself,  but 
he  sent  an  aide-de-camp  on  a 
confidential  mission  to  Luneville, 
overflowing  with  pleasant  words, 
and  through  him  he  begged  parti- 
cularly to  be  well  and  promptly 
advised  on  the  Chevalier's  move- 
ments, since  "  Le  salut  d'Angle- 
terre "  might  depend  upon  this. 
The  Duke  of  Lorraine  was  not  par- 
ticularly impressed  with  James's 
followers,  especially  after  Lord 
Middleton  was  gone.  "  Ce  ne  sont 
que  des  gens  d'un  caractere  fort 
mediocre,"  he  writes.  They  talk 
about  things  which  affect  their 
chief  with  the  utmost  freedom. 
In  Mr  Higgons,  who  had  suc- 
ceeded Lord  Middleton,  he  could 
discern  no  merit  whatever.  As 
for  Lord  Middleton,  he  found  him 
11  fort  reserve  et  voulant  dominer 


The  Pretender  at  Bar-le-Duc. 


235 


seul."  He  gives  him  credit  for 
capacity  and  zeal,  but  censures 
him  as  being  " timide  et  irresolu" 
All  the  rest,  he  says,  are  "de 
jeunes  gens  qui  ne  pouuoint  souffrir 
ce  Milord,  et  qui  auoint  eu  Vim- 
prudence  de  dire  a  Luneville  qu'il 
etoit  si  fort  hay  en  Angleterre  que 
les  plus  zelez  partisans  de  leur 
Maitre  auoint  temoigne  qu'ils  ne 
feroint  jamais  rien  pour  ces  in- 
terests tant  qu'il  Vauroit  auprez  de 
luy"  All  these  men  evidently 
have  very  little  knowledge  of  what 
is  going  on  at  home,  he  says. 
There  is  no  one  in  whose  judg- 
ment the  Pretender  might  repose 
any  faith  except  it  be  the  Earl  of 
Oxford  or  Lord  Bolingbroke. 

On  the  whole,  the  Chevalier's 
life  at  Bar,  though  perhaps  a  little 
monotonous,  can  scarcely  have  been 
unpleasant.  He  made  friends  with 
the  local  haute  volee,  asking  them 
to  dinner,  and  being  asked  back — 
and  borrowed  money  from  them 
whenever  he  could.  His  especial 
friends  were  the  Marquis  de  Bas- 
sompierre,  from  whom  he  borrowed 
15,000  livres,  which  the  Duke 
repaid  in  1719,  and  M.  de  Bous- 
selle.  A  good  deal  of  time  the 
Chevalier  spent  in  his  closet,  with 
Nairne,  or  Higgons,  or  Middleton, 
concocting  plans  and  dictating 
long  memorials  to  the  Pope,  or  else 
to  Cardinal  Gualterio,  advocating 
the  canonisation  of  Bellarmine, 
recommending  proteges  for  places 
which  they  never  got,  and  insist- 
ing on  his  right  to  nominate 
bishops  to  Irish  sees,  the  names 
of  which  he  could  not  spell.  At 
off-times  he  played  reversi,  boston, 
and  ombre,  and  occasionally  petit 
palet,  which  is  an  aristocratic  form 
of  chuck-farthing.  Then  there 
was  the  pleasure  of  the  chase,  of 
which  we  know  from  Father 
Leslie  that  James  was  a  tolerably 
keen  votary.  In  Lorraine  the 
diversion  of  venerie  was  held  in 


236 


The  Pretender  at  Bar-le-Duc. 


[Aug. 


high  estimation.  From  "le  haut 
puissant  messire"  Jean  de  Ligni- 
ville's  most  amusing  disquisitions 
on  "La  Meutte  et  Vdnerie"  we 
learn  that  the  district  about  Bar 
was  "tres  boisd"  and  well  stocked 
with  game  of  every  description, 
which,  local  chroniclers  say,  James 
was  frequently  occupied  in  hunt- 
ing. Lorraine  and  English  hunt- 
ing were  not  then  as  far  apart  in 
their  general  features  as  one  might 
be  tempted  to  assume.  English 
kings  had  more  than  once  sent 
presents  of  English  hounds  to  Lor- 
raine dukes — Charles  III.  received 
from  James  I.  a  present  of  eighty 
harriers  at  a  time.  And  more 
than  one  Lorraine  grandee  came 
over  to  hunt  and  shoot  here.  Lig- 
niville  himself,  the  Duke's  Grand 
Ve'neur  (under  Charles  IV.),  had 
frequently  hunted  in  England, 
and  expressed  himself  especially 
delighted  with  the  sport  in  which 
he  had  joined  in  Yorkshire.  On 
the  whole,  he  appears  to  have  con- 
sidered English  hounds  superior 
to  French  —  less  eager  at  first, 
but  with  more  stay  in  them  — 
and  he  was  proud  of  having  re- 
ceived presents  of  some  from  the 
Prince  of  Wales  of  his  time 
(Charles  I.),  from  "Milord  de  Hee," 
and  from  "  Milord  Howard."  But 
a  cross  between  English  and  French 
hounds  he  seems  to  have  regarded 
as  the  ne  plus  ultra  of  excellence. 
"  Puss  "  was  very  much  persecuted 
in  the  valley  of  the  Meuse,  fur- 
nishing by  its  exceptional  swift- 
ness and  skill  in  swimming  almost 
too  good  sport,  "contre  montant 
I'eaue  tellement  viste  que  les  chiens 
ne  le  pouuoint  pas  aborder." 
James's  hunting  sometimes  led 
him  into  adventures,  and  on  one 
occasion  nearly  saddled  his  host 
with  a  diplomatic  difficulty.  Rid- 
ing hard,  he  once  got  to  the  little 
town  of  Ligny  at  nightfall,  some 
eight  miles  from  Bar.  Ligny  was 


a  vassal  territory  belonging,  under 
the  Duke  of  Lorraine,  to  Montmor- 
ency,  Duke  of  Luxemburg.  The 
Duke  of  Luxemburg,  being  a 
rather  big  vassal,  was  in  conse- 
quence also  a  very  troublesome 
one,  and  his  own  officers  and  the 
Lorraine  Court  were  continually 
at  loggerheads.  To  James,  com- 
ing from  Bar,  with  fifty  Lorraine 
gens  d'armes,  besides  his  suite, 
the  maire  resolutely  refused  to 
open  the  gates,  and  furnish  lodg- 
ings for  the  night,  grounding  his 
refusal  upon  a  decision  of  the 
Parliament  of  Paris  passed  in  the 
year  1661.  The  Lorraines  were 
quite  prepared  for  a  siege  and  an 
assault.  However,  James  deemed 
it  better  to  leave  things  alone, 
and  so  the  company  rode  half  a 
mile  farther,  to  a  little  village 
called  Velaine,  where  they  spent 
a  most  uncomfortable  night.  Soon 
we  have  Montmorency  complain- 
ing to  King  Louis  of  the  assumed 
tlnouuelles  entreprises  de  M.  le 
Due  de  Lorraine  sur  mon  comte* 
de  Ligny."  Leopold  revenged 
himself  by  imprisoning  about  a 
dozen  maires  of  the  Ligny  county, 
on  the  plea  of  their  having  failed 
to  furnish  the  requisite  waggons, 
and  in  the  end  bought  Montmor- 
ency out  with  the  sum  of  2,600,000 
francs. 

All  this,  however,  was  not 
enough  excitement  for  James.  In 
one  of  his  letters  he  plaintively 
calls  Bar  his  "  Todis  "—by  which 
of  course  he  means  "  Tomis." 
"Tomis,"  as  a  matter  of  course, 
suggested — besides  the  tristia,  of 
which  we  have  plenty — the  ars 
amatoria.  And  to  it  the  Chevalier 
devoted  not  a  few  of  his  unoccupied 
hours.  If  local  tradition  speaks 
true,  he  differed  very  materially 
in  his  prosecution  of  this  art  from 
his  father,  of  whom  Catherine 
Sedley  said  that  on  what  principle 
he  selected  the  ladies  of  his  heart 


1894.] 


The  Pretender  at  Bar-le-Duc. 


237 


she  could  never  make  out.  None 
of  them  were  good-looking,  and  if 
any  of  them  had  wit  he  had  not 
the  wit  to  find  it  out.  And  Mary 
of  Modena,  his  wife,  added  that 
although  he  was  willing  to  give  up 
his  crown  for  his  faith,  he  could 
never  muster  sufficient  resolution 
to  discard  a  mistress.  His  son 
was  in  both  respects  far  more  of  a 
man  of  the  world.  It  was  in  the 
green  bosquets  of  those  Paquis, 
his  favourite  lounging-place,  that 
James  first  discovered  his  human 
jewel.  To  house  her  suitably,  he 
took — at  somebody  else's  cost — a 
cottage  on  the  brow  of  the  hill, 
where  the  view  is  delightful  and 
the  air  magnificent.  You  can  still 
approximately  trace  the  site,  high 
up  in  the  Rue  de  1'Horloge,  above 
the  Rue  St  Jean,  a  little  below 
the  neglected  terrace  in  the  Rue 
Chave'e — which  is  well  worth  visit- 
ing for  its  prospect.  As  the  house 
stood  with  its  back  to  the  hill  and 
facing  only  the  open  space,  there 
must  have  been  absolute  privacy. 
But,  after  moving  down  to  the 
Lower  Town,  James  found  the 
ascent  by  those  Quatre  -  vingt 
Degres  a  trifle  laborious.  The  steps 
lead  almost  straight  up  from  his 
house  to  the  cottage,  describing 
just  enough  of  an  angle  to  take  in 
the  humble  building,  marked  by  a 
tablet,  in  which  Marshal  Oudinot 
was  born.  A  more  convenient 
arrangement  could  scarcely  have 
been  desired.  But  the  steps  were 
sadly  "sales  et  delabre's."  Not  to 
inconvenience  James  in  his  amours, 
the  town  council  readily  voted 
the  requisite  sum  for  putting  them 
into  proper  repair. 

When  September  came  on,  James 
found  the  air  on  the  castle-hill 
"trop  vif."  Although  his  mother 
generally  reports  that  "  il  se  porte 
bien,"  it  is  to  be  feared  that  his 
constitution  was  none  of  the 
strongest.  We  read  in  one  of 


D'Audriffet's  despatches  "  que  sa 
sante  estoit  toy  jours  fort  delicate." 
He  has  had  a  "fluxion  "  in  the  eye. 
He  has  "weak  lungs."  "He  is 
evidently  very  poorly,"  writes 
D'AudrifFet  to  Louis.  He  finds 
himself  "  alter e  par  Vintemperie  du 
terns"  He  takes  the  waters  of 
Plombieres  four  times  "  for  his 
health,"  and  wants  to  take  those 
of  Aix-la-Chapelle.  He  talks  of 
going  to  a  warmer  climate — Spain 
or  Italy,  or  specifically  Venice. 
But  he  can  now  obtain  no  fresh 
passport  from  the  Emperor.  Then 
he  goes  to  have  a  look  at  Saint 
Mihiel,  likewise  in  the  Barrois, 
only  a  few  miles  from  Koeurs,  in 
which  another  Prince  of  Wales, 
young  Edward,  spent  his  young 
years  of  exile  in  company  with 
his  mother,  Queen  Margaret,  from 
1464  to  1471.  But  he  does  not 
like  the  idea  of  living  in  the 
Benedictine  Abbey.  So  the  Duke 
orders  the  town  council  to  get 
ready  once  more  M.  MarchaPs 
convenient  house  below,  to  which 
the  Chevalier  insists  that  a  second 
house  adjoining  shall  be  added, 
belonging  to  M.  de  Romecourt, 
besides  a  portion  of  one  belonging 
to  M.  Lepaige,  with  a  kitchen 
specially  built,  and  a  "  garde- 
manger,"  a  new  door,  and  sundry 
other  conveniences,  to  say  nothing 
of  the  hiring  of  further  accommo- 
dation for  his  horses,  his  kennel, 
his  gens  de  ve'nerie,  his  guards, 
some  of  his  suite  —  all  of  whom 
and  all  of  which  he  wants  very 
near  him,  and  all  of  which,  con- 
sequently, costs  the  town  a  good 
deal  of  money.  M.  de  Romecourt's 
house  is  a  complete  match  to  M. 
Marchal's,  but  smaller,  bringing 
up  the  frontage  to  thirteen  win- 
dows. 

But  James  was  not  always  at 
Bar,  nor  yet,  when  away,  only  at 
Plombieres.  Duke  Leopold  was 
constantly  inviting  him  to  Lune- 


238 


The  Pretender  at  Bar-le-Duc. 


[Aug. 


ville,  and  sometimes  to  Nancy, 
and  arranging  most  magnificent 
fetes  in  his  honour.  Leopold  could 
do  things  handsomely  when  he 
chose.  Even  when  James  stayed 
three  whole  weeks,  there  was 
something  new  provided  every  day 
to  amuse  him — "  les  plaisirs  de  la 
Cour  dtoint  entremeU  de  repas,  de 
collations,  de  bals,  de  concerts,  de 
Come'die,  de  promenades,  de  chasse, 
defeux  d' artifice,  etc.,  mais  chaque 
jour  tout  etoit  nouveau." 

To  give  James  a  right  royal 
reception,  Leopold  spared  neither 
trouble  nor  money.  He  always 
made  a  point  of  going  to  meet  his 
guest — to  Batelemont,  to  Houde- 
mont,  or  to  Gondrecourt.  To 
enable  the  Court  to  enter  with 
proper  spirit  into  all  the  magnifi- 
cence prepared,  we  read  in  the 
official  despatches  that  in  April 
1713,  on  the  occasion  of  James's 
first  visit,  the  Duke  directed  that 
two  quarters'  salaries,  in  arrear 
since  1711,  should  be  paid  to  the 
officers  of  his  household. 

Even  more  brilliant  than  the 
fetes  given  at  Luneville  were 
those  to  which  James  was  invited 
at  the  Chateau  of  Commercy,  the 
seat  of  the  Prince  de  Vaudemont. 
Vaudemont  was  rich  and  generous. 
He  had  occupied  high  positions  in 
the  army  and  the  administrative 
service  both  of  Austria  and  of 
Spain.  He  was  a  man  pre-emi- 
nently prudent  in  counsel.  Our 
William  III.  had  discovered  that, 
and  had  frequently  sought  his 
opinion,  more  particularly  while 
the  Treaty  of  Ryswick  was  under 
consideration.  To  James  the 
Prince  became  a  most  valuable 
friend  and  confidant — more  espe- 
cially at  that  critical  juncture, 
when  the  Pretender's  great  aim 
was  to  get  away  unobserved  from 
Lorraine.  In  his  splendid  castle 
of  Commercy,  set  off  by  magnifi- 
cent gardens  and  sheets  of  water 


throwing  Versailles  into  the  shade, 
the  "Damoiseau"  of  Commercy 
gave  fetes  the  description  of  which 
baffled  Court  chroniclers  of  the 
period,  and  after  which,  in  the 
words  of  the  'Gazette  de  Hollande,' 
James  found  himself  constrained 
to  go  back  to  Bar  in  self-defence, 
"pour  s'y  delasser,  pour  ainsi  dire, 
de  la  fatigue  des  plaisirs  contin- 
uels."  There  was  such  a  fete  in 
June  1713,  arranged  on  a  pecu- 
liarly lordly  scale,  in  which  a 
chorus  of  Pelerins  de  Saint  Jacques 
were  brought  in  —  appropriately 
hailing  from  "  L'Isle  de  Cythere," 
and  provided  with  passports  from 
the  goddess  Venus — whose  special 
object  seems  to  be  to  say  pretty 
things  to  James  : — 

"Vous  gagnez  tous  les  cceurs,  tout  le 

monde  gemit 
De  voir  un   Roy   d'une   bonte"    si 

rare, 
Et    brillant    de    l'e"clat   de   toutes   les 

vertus 

Loin  des  Etats  qui  lui  sont  dus. 
Mais  nous  verrons  un  jour  cette  triple 

couronne 
Qu'ont  port<$  si  longtems  vos  Illus- 

tres  Ayeux, 

Sur  votre  chef  tombes  des  Cieux. 
Le  me"rite,  le  sang,  les  Loix,  tout  vous 

la  donne ; 

Laissez  le  soin  de  soutenir  ces  droits 
Au  Dieu  qui  dans  ses  mains  porte  le 
coeur  des  Hois." 

Then  a  curious  supper  was 
given.  The  twenty -four  most 
illustrious  guests  present  sat  down 
at  two  tables, — the  ladies  at  one, 
the  gentlemen  at  the  other.  Each 
person  was  served  with  an  equal 
portion,  "  tous  en  vaisselle  de  fay- 
ance,  jusqu'aux  manches  des  cou- 
teaux." 

"Et  dans  ce  sobre  repas 
Chacun  n'eut  que  vingt-sept  plats." 

In  all,  to  these  twenty  -  four 
people  648  plats  were  served. 
The  great  joke  of  the  meal  was, 
that  strict  silence  was  enjoined. 


1894.] 


The  Pretender  at  Bar-le-Duc. 


239 


"  Mais  on  avoit  oublie  d'en  bannir 
les  JRis."  So  people  soon  began 
to  laugh,  and  then  the  men  ac- 
cused the  ladies  of  breaking  the 
rule,  and  the  ladies  retorted,  and 
that  put  an  end  to  Trappism.  On 
another  occasion,  in  July  1714, 
when  James  spent  a  fortnight  at 
Commercy —  while  his  sister  was 
slowly  dying — the  Prince,  in  the 
course  of  an  even  more  brilliant 
fete,  entertained  his  guests  with 
sham-fights,  the  siege  of  a  castle, 
and  other  incidents  of  military 
operations,  for  which  the  services 
of  a  French  army-corps  stationed 
in  the  neighbourhood,  at  Troussay, 
under  the  command  of  M.  de  Ruf- 
fey,  were  impressed. 

Mary  of  Modena  must  have  felt 
the  removal  of  her  only  son  — 
her  only  child,  since  the  Princess 
Louise,  "  la  Consolatrice,"  was  dead 
— very  keenly.  She  declared  that 
she  had  no  one  to  open  her  heart 
to.  This  was  not  to  be  understood 
quite  literally,  for  we  find  the 
Queen-Dowager  pouring  out  her 
confidences  very  effusively  to  her 
chere  mere  and  the  sisters  at  Chail- 
lot,  whose  journals,  in  fact,  supply 
the  main  records  of  Mary's  doings. 
But,  no  doubt,  she  missed  James 
much.  Once,  after  his  banishment 
— in  July  1714,  when  James  rushed 
secretly  to  Paris,  to  consult  with 
the  king  about  the  steps  to  be 
taken  in  view  of  Queen  Anne's  im- 
pending death,  and  was  sent  away 
" fort  pen  satisfait " — she  had  seen 
him  for  an  hour  or  two  in  the 
night.  Very  naturally,  she  wished 
to  visit  him  at  Bar,  more  particu- 
larly as  her  doctors  had  advised 
her  to  try  the  waters  of  Plombieres. 
Bad  health  and  abnormally  wet 
weather  delayed  her  execution  of 
this  project.  This  was  just  about 
the  time  of  the  death  of  Queen 
Anne,  when  Leopold  felt  as  if  he 
were  politically  walking  on  eggs. 
He  had  given  so  much  umbrage  in 


England  already,  that  every  fur- 
ther offence  was  to  be  carefully 
avoided.  If  the  Queen,  as  was  to 
be  anticipated,  in  going  to  Plom- 
bieres, were  also  to  visit  Luneville, 
that  must  of  a  certainty  give  rise 
to  misunderstandings.  So  he  sends 
officers  and  messengers  to  inquire 
and  dissuade,  as  diplomatically  as 
he  can.  The  Queen  had  been  so 
ill  as  to  be  given  up,  and  he  did 
not  wish  to  hurt  her.  But  he  had 
above  all  things  to  think  of  him- 
self. 

On  very  different  grounds  the 
tidings  of  the  Queen's  impending 
visit  also  fluttered  the  good  people 
of  Bar  not  a  little.  They  had 
never  entertained  a  queen.  So  on 
the  13th  of  July  we  find  the  heads 
of  the  town  council  carefully  in- 
quiring of  the  Marquis  de  Gerbe- 
villers,  the  governor  of  the  district, 
what  is  the  proper  ceremonial  to 
be  observed.  Thereupon  a  deputa- 
tion is  named,  and  a  present  of  16 
Ib.  of  dragees  and  forty-eight  pots 
de  confitures  is  voted,  besides  a 
feuillade  of  wine  for  distribution, 
and  a  special  vin  d'honneur,  to  be 
presented  to  the  royal  visitor  by 
the  Marquis  de  Bassompierre,  on 
behalf  of  the  town. 

The  Queen's  visit  really  did 
not  take  place  till  spring  1715. 
That  was  again  a  most  incon- 
venient time  for  the  Duke  of  Lor- 
raine, on  much  the  same  grounds. 
He  had  just  made  up  that  nasty 
tiff  with  the  English  Court,  arising 
out  of  the  publication  of  the  Pre- 
tender's manifesto.  King  George 
was  at  length  going  to  receive  his 
envoy,  M.  de  Lambertye.  At  such 
a  juncture  the  classical  "  pig  among 
roses  "  would  have  been  ten  times 
more  welcome  to  nervous  Leopold 
than  Mary  of  Modena  and  her  son 
at  his  Court.  So  he  writes  to 
Louis,  begging  him  for  heaven's 
sake  to  stop  the  Queen  from  com- 
ing, and  despatches  Baron  Forstner 


240 


The  Pretender  at  Bar-le-Duc. 


[Aug. 


post-haste  to  Bar  to  remonstrate 
with  the  Chevalier.  Neither  at- 
tempt proved  successful — but  the 
Queen's  visit  did  not  do  much 
harm.  Her  ill-health  again  came 
in  as  a  special  providence,  detain- 
ing her  till  after  Whitsuntide. 
She  set  out  incognita  with  what  is 
represented  as  a  very  modest  train 
— namely,  four  coaches-and-six,  one 
littiere,  and  quelques  chaises.  The 
Duke  had  the  good  grace  to  re- 
ceive her  with  a  most  hearty  wel- 
come. He  sent  the  Marquis  de 
Bassompierre,  her  son's  great 
friend,  to  meet  her  at  Chalons. 
Her  son  met  her  at  Mou tiers,  on 
the  border  of  the  Barrois.  For 
safety  the  forests  were  stocked 
with  numbers  of  soldiers.  On  the 
22d  of  June,  Mary  made  her  entry 
into  Bar,  putting  up  in  James's 
house  in  the  Rue  des  Tanneurs. 
The  local  grandees  and  the  town 
council  turned  out  in  force  to  re- 
ceive her,  the  Marquis  de  Bassom- 
pierre presenting  the  dragees  and 
the  vin  d'konneur,  while  the  bailli, 
M.  de  Gerbevillers,  did  the  honours 
on  behalf  of  the  Duke,  whose  Great 
Chamberlain  he  was.  On  the  25th 
Mary  and  James  proceeded  to  Com- 
mercy,  where  everybody  expresses 
himself  and  herself  delighted  with 
cette  sainte  JReine.  On  the  18th  of 
July  the  Queen  arrived  at  Nancy, 
where  the  Duke  and  Duchess  were 
staying.  James  was  at  that  time 
in  the  midst  of  plotting.  "  Milord 
Drummond  "  had  come  from  Eng- 
land to  confer  with  him.  Ferrari 
put  in  one  of  his  suspicious  appear- 
ances, to  the  bewilderment  and 
annoyance  of  the  French  envoy. 
An  Irish  priest  who  talked  indis- 
creetly about  a  grand  coup  a  faire 
was  seized  and  kept  under  arrest. 
Couriers  were  rushing  frantically 
to  and  fro.  Something  was  "up." 
And  Lord  Stair,  at  Paris,  we  find, 
knew  of  it.  But  the  Queen  did 
not  seemingly  take  a  very  hope- 


ful view  of  things.  She  thanked 
the  Duke  very  pathetically 
for  his  kindness  to  James.  It 
needed  generosity,  she  avowed, 
.  to  interest  oneself  on  behalf  of 
a  Prince  "forsaken  by  all  the 
world."  Her  gratitude  would  be 
"  eternal."  The  Duchess  was  most 
attentive.  Both  days  that  the 
Queen  was  at  Nancy  she  fore- 
stalled her  in  calling,  surprising 
her  at  her  toilet.  At  Luneville, 
the  Duchess  had  offered  with  her 
own  hands  to  make  the  Chevalier's 
bed.  From  Nancy  Mary  Beatrice 
proceeded  to  Plombieres  vid  Bar, 
returning  to  St  Germains  on  the 
22d  of  August.  The  waters  had 
not  done  her  much  good. 

A  brief  space  is  due  to  those 
rather  curious  negotiations  which 
were  carried  on  while  James  was 
at  Bar,  to  find  the  Chevalier  a 
suitable  wife.  According  to  Miss 
Strickland  this  was  rather  a  ro- 
mantic affair.  James  was  dying 
to  marry  his  cousin,  the  Princess 
d'Este,  while,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  Princess  Sobieska  and  Madem- 
oiselle de  Yalois  were  both  dying 
to  marry  him.  In  truth,  there 
was  no  dying  on  either  side,  and 
the  wooing  originated,  not  in 
James's  feeble  affections,  —  which 
were  probably  occupied  to  the  full 
extent  of  their  capacity  with  that 
young  lady  on  the  hill, — but  in  the 
fertile  brain  of  his  scheming  and 
restless  host.  Miss  Strickland,  I 
ought  to  say,  rather  overrates  the 
position  of  the  Princess  Sobieska, 
who  eventually  did  marry  the 
Chevalier;  and  if  there  was  any 
romance  in  her  affection,  she  lived 
to  be  cured  of  it.  Being  the 
daughter  only  of  an  elective  king, 
a  parvenu  among  royal  person- 
ages, she  was  looked  upon  as  a 
princess  rather  by  courtesy  than 
of  right.  Even  to  James,  down  in 
the  world  as  he  was,  Leopold — in 
a  manner  her  kinsman — did  not 


1894.] 


The  Pretender  at  Bar-le-Duc. 


241 


dare  to  propose  her  except  as  a 
pis  aller,  when  all  hopes  elsewhere 
were  extinguished.  His  first  pro- 
posal was  an  Austrian  archduchess. 
He  evidently  thought  the  sugges- 
tion one  which  would  do  him 
credit.  It  would  be  a  downright 
good  "  Catholic  "  match.  It  was 
bound  to  help  the  Chevalier,  and 
it  might  be  agreeable  to  the  Em- 
peror, and  so  secure  him,  Leopold, 
very  much  on  the  look-out  for  fa- 
vours as  he  was,  gratitude  in  two 
influential  quarters.  The  mere 
moral  effect,  he  says,  of  an  alliance 
entered  into  by  the  premier  dyn- 
asty of  Europe  with  the  outcast 
Stuart  prince  must  prove  im- 
mensely to  James's  advantage. 
But  there  was  money,  too — which 
James  particularly  wanted — much 
money,  heaped  up  in  the  Hofburg. 
James  eventually  assented — though 
with  nothing  seemingly  of  eager- 
ness, for  it  took  him  some  months 
to  grasp  the  full  meaning  of  the 
idea.  The  proposal  was  made  in 
March  1714  —  long  before  the 
Princess  Sobieska  was  thought  of ; 
and,  as  Leopold  reports  with  un- 
mistakable satisfaction,  it  was  assez 
goute  at  Vienna.  Only,  the  Prin- 
cess asked  for  —  the  younger 
daughter  of  the  late  Emperor — 
was  very  young,  in  fact,  a  child  in 
the  nursery,  and  the  marriage 
could  not  possibly  take  place  for 
some  considerable  time.  So,  the 
Emperor  thought,  the  matter  had 
best  be  kept  quiet.  Nothing 
daunted,  rather  encouraged,  Leo- 
pold, with  James's  approval,  re- 
turned to  the  charge  in  June.  If 
the  younger  archduchess  was  too 
young,  very  well,  let  it  be  the 
elder,  Elizabeth,  who  was  at  that 
time  heir-presumptive  to  the  crown. 
For  Maria  Theresa,  the  reigning 
Emperor's  daughter,  was  not  yet 
born.  Vienna  took  time  to  con- 
sider. James's  appetite  grew  keen, 
and  in  July  we  find  him  plying  the 


Emperor  with  two  memorials, 
drawn  up  with  the  help  of  Nairne. 
So  elated  did  he  grow  over  his 
supposed  brilliant  prospects,  that 
he  returned  very  cold  answers  in- 
deed to  Cardinal  Gualterio's  well- 
meant  representations  in  favour  of 
a  union  with  another  lady — was  it 
the  Princess  d'Este,  Gualterio's 
own  countrywoman  ?  There  was 
no  money  in  that  quarter.  Ac- 
cordingly James  haughtily  pro- 
nounces the  marriage  "pas  fais- 
able."  But  he  pushes  his  suit  at 
Vienna.  It  must  be,  he  urges  in 
his  first  memorial,  altogether  to 
the  Emperor's  interest  that  the 
Archduchess  Elizabeth  should  be 
married  to  "  une  personne  qui  ait 
asses  de  naissance  et  d'autres  bonnes 
qualites  per  sonnelles  pour  estre  choisi 
apres  lui  a  remplir  sa  place  "  Such 
a  person  James  considers  himself 
to  be.  And  he  puts  his  case  in 
this  way.  Either  the  English 
crown  will  fall  to  him  or  it  will 
not.  If  it  does,  well,  then,  there 
he  is,  a  most  desirable,  wealthy, 
and  influential  nephew-in-law.  If 
it  does  not,  there  he  is  again,  the 
fittest  person  in  the  world  to  suc- 
ceed to  the  Imperial  crown.  In 
the  second  memorial,  issued  shortly 
after,  he  presses  some  further 
points.  Hanover  must  not  be  al- 
lowed to  grow  too  powerful.  In- 
deed, as  a  Protestant  Power,  it  is 
too  "formidable  "  already,  and  the 
"  Due  d'Hannovre  "is  "  un  redout- 
able  Rival"  But,  "  il  est  certain 
qu'il  \l'empereur~\  a  moins  a  appre- 
hender  de  V  Angleterre  sans  le  Due 
d'Hannovre  que  de  le  Due  d'Han- 
novre sans  VAngleterre"  There- 
fore —  the  reasoning  does  not 
seem  quite  clear — James  ought  to 
be  supported ;  or  else,  certainly,  the 
Due  d'Hannovre  should  be  made 
to  forego  one  of  the  two  crowns — 
either  Hanover  or  England  :  a  pro- 
posal which  James  pronounces  per- 
fectly "  juste  et  nullement  imprac- 


242 


The  Pretender  at  Bar-le-Duc. 


[Aug. 


ticable."      The  proposal  does  not, 
however,    "  fetch "   the    Emperor, 
who  goes  on  procrastinating.  How- 
ever, Louis  XIV.  gets  wind  of  it, 
though    he    was    not     meant   to, 
through    D'Audriffet,    and    grows 
uneasy,  throwing  all  the  cold  water 
that    he    can    upon    the    scheme. 
Meanwhile  in  England  things  go 
against     the     Chevalier.       Queen 
Anne  dies,  King  George  succeeds, 
and,   in   spite   of   James's   solemn 
protest,  addressed  to  the  Powers  in 
English,   French,  and  Latin,  Eng- 
land seems  perfectly  content.     Af- 
ter this  it  is  not  surprising  to  find 
Leopold,   when  James    returns  to 
the  subject  of  his  marriage,  shak- 
ing  his  head  discouragingly,  and 
pointing  out  that  the   Chevalier's 
matrimonial  value  has   fallen  ap- 
preciably   in     the    market.      He 
must  no  longer  look    "  so    high." 
Besides,  the  Emperor  will  not  care 
to  embroil  himself  by  such  a  mar- 
riage   with    the     Government    of 
King  George,  with  which  he  has 
struck   up  a  friendship   which,   in 
Louis  XIY.'s  words,   promises  to 
prove    alike    "  solide    et  sincere." 
Now,    there  is  the  Princess   Sobi- 
eska  !       Leopold    thinks   that   he 
could  manage  that.     Through  her 
mother  she  is  a  niece  of  the  Em- 
press  Eleanor.      Therefore,    to   a 
certain    extent,    James   will    still 
secure  the  Hapsburg  interest.     As 
for  marrying  the  Archduchess,  that 
is   out   of    the   question.      James 
does  not  see  it.     He  goes  on  harp- 
ing upon   the  Archduchess  Eliza- 
beth, and  worrying  poor  Leopold 
to  resume  negotiations. 

Leopold  found  worry  of  a  more 
serious  sort  besetting  him,  on  ac- 
count of  James,  in  a  different  quar- 
ter. To  satisfy  France  was  all 
very  well.  But  what  in  this  mat- 
ter satisfied  France  offended  Eng- 
land. Now,  England  itself  was 
very  little  to  the  Duke  of  Lorraine. 
Louis  XIV.  kept  assuring  him  that 


English    complaints    and    remon- 
strances  should   have    "point   de 
suite"  and  that  he  would  see  him 
through   the   business.       He   had 
"  nothing    to    fear."       However, 
the  remonstrances  went  on.     Two 
bishops  made  themselves  ridiculous 
by  very  indiscreet  and  officious  in- 
terference.    The  Duke  judges  that 
this  "  n'estoit  qu'une  grimace  de  la 
Cour   d'Angleterre."     But  after  a 
time  he  grows  irritable,  and  recalls 
his  envoy — quite  as  much  in  dis- 
gust as  for  economy.     That  does 
not  mend  matters — no  more  does 
the  Duke's  letter,  written  at  the 
French  king's  suggestion  for  com- 
munication to  Prior.    D'Audriffet's 
despatch  of   3d   May  1714  shows 
that  Leopold  at   that   time  quite 
expected  that  he  might  be  made  to 
give  effect  to  the  English  demand. 
Meanwhile     Queen     Anne      dies. 
James  issues  his  proclamation,  at 
which  George  and  our  Parliament 
take  needlessly  great  offence,  and 
an  icy  coldness  springs  up  between 
the  two  Courts — just  under  cir- 
cumstances which  make  a  coldness 
appear  least  acceptable  to  Leopold. 
For   however   little   Queen   Anne 
might  have  had  it  in  her  power  to 
cross  him,  her  successor  is  Elector 
of   Hanover   as  well  as    King  of 
England,    fast    friends    with    the 
Emperor,  and  has  a  great  say  in 
the   bestowal   of  ecclesiastical  pa- 
tronage   in    Germany,    for    which 
Leopold,  on  behalf   of  his   "near 
and  dear  relations,"  has  an  insati- 
able   appetite.       Accordingly    he 
grows  uncomfortable.     He  notices 
with  alarm,   so  the  letters  show, 
that    George   takes   an  unusually 
long  time  advising  him  of  the  late 
Queen's  death,  and  when  the  advice 
comes,  it  says  nothing  about  his 
own  succession.     Anxious  to  make 
up  the  breach,  Leopold  at  once  de- 
spatches a  special  envoy,  Lamber- 
tye,  to  present  his  congratulations. 
To  the  Duke's  dismay  George  will 


1894.] 

not  receive  him.  Leopold,  how- 
ever, bids  him  stay  where  he  is, 
and  addresses  to  the  king  his  well- 
known  memorial,  which  must  cer- 
tainly be  pronounced  dignified  in 
tone  and  j ust  in  substance.  James's 
proclamation,  Leopold  shows,  was 
issued  without  any  knowledge  or 
consent  on  his  part.  Privately, 
he  causes  it  to  be  explained  that 
he  is  simply  obeying  dictatorial 
orders  from  Versailles.  But — "  on 
a  beau  leur  dire"  writes  de  Bosque, 
D'Audriffet's  substitute,  on  the 
31st  of  October,  "  que  la  f ranee 
a  vn  pouuoir  arbitraire  sur  le  Due 
de  Lorrain  et  ses  Etats,  cela  ne  les 
contente  plus"  The  poor  Duke 
grows  most  uncomfortable.  How- 
ever, in  January  the  matter  is 
made  up,  and  King  George  con- 
sents to  receive  Lambertye  at  last 
— at  the  very  time  when  Queen 
Mary  Beatrice  threatens  once  more 
to  trouble  relations  just  settling 
down  again,  with  her  visit  to 
Luneville.  In  any  case  Lamber- 
tye's  mission  did  not  bring  Lor- 
raine any  good — except,  says  Noel, 
it  be  the  importation  of  a  new 
variety  of  potato,  which  he  brought 
from  England,  and  which  proved 
much  superior  to  the  old  Lorraine 
sort. 

If  our  statesmen  had  little  right 
to  call  upon  Leopold  to  expel 
James,  they  had  of  course  every 
reason  to  be  vigilant.  And  they 
do  not  appear  to  have  failed  often 
in  that  duty.  To  be  quite  fair, 
James's  followers,  on  the  whole, 
made  the  task  pretty  easy  for 
them.  They  were  always  plotting, 
but  at  the  same  time  also  always 
letting  out  their  secret, — a  tippler 
talking  in  his  cups ;  an  officer  con- 
fiding intelligence  to  his  sweet- 
heart ;  a  bungling  conspirator 
boasting  in  very  big  words.  Long 
before  October  1715,  when  the 
great  "invasion"  at  length  took 
place,  we  have  references  to  some 


The  Pretender  at  Bar-le-Duc. 


243 


intended  move.  All  is  promptly 
reported  to  England,  and  to  Paris, 
where,  after  his  arrival  at  his  post, 
Stair,  when  not  engaged  in  smug- 
gling goods  for  his  friends,  spares 
neither  pains  nor  money  to  obtain 
the  very  best  and  most  prompt  in- 
telligence. 

At  length,  after  much  posting 
backwards  and  forwards  of  trusted 
but  untrustworthy  messengers  and 
confidants,  after  more  than  one 
false  alarm,  and  one  very  provok- 
ing act  of  treachery  (on  the  part 
of  a  bankrupt  banker),  after  much 
dissuasion  from  the  Duke  of  Lor- 
raine, who  seems  to  have  exhausted 
all  his  powers  of  reasonable  argu- 
ment in  vain,  after  stealthy  visits 
said  to  have  been  paid  by  Boling- 
broke  and  Ormonde  to  Bar,  and 
by  Mar  to  Commercy,  the  great 
move  takes  place.  To  the  end 
Leopold  appears  to  have  considered 
James's  recall  by  the  spontaneous 
act  of  the  English  nation  a  prob- 
able contingency.  Now  he  warns 
him  that  a  Hanoverian  king  on 
the  English  throne  will  play  his 
game  far  more  effectively  than  he 
himself  possibly  can  by  taking  up 
arms — that,  in  the  face  of  the  un- 
popularity which  the  foreign  ruler 
is  sure  to  bring  upon  himself,  if 
left  alone,  James  will,  by  raising 
the  flag  of  rebellion,  only  be  cut- 
ting his  own  throat.  However, 
James  will  not  hear.  Becoming 
prudent,  at  any  rate,  as  the  time 
for  action  draws  nearer,  both 
the  Chevalier  and  his  friends 
grow  close  and  uncommunica- 
tive, so  as  to  extract  complaints 
even  from  D'Audriffet,  who,  hav- 
ing been  previously  let  into  all 
the  harmless  little  secrets  of  the 
plot  at  first  hand,  now  finds  him- 
self reduced  to  coaxing  intelli- 
gence out  of  "une  personne  at- 
tachee  au  Chevalier  de  St  George, 
qui  est  de  mes  amies"'  However, 
in  October,  just  before  the  depar- 


244 


The  Pretender  at  Bar-le-Duc. 


[Aug. 


ture  actually  takes  place,  Leopold 
confides  to  him  that  James  has 
expressed  himself  resolved  to  take 
his  fortune  into  his  own  hand. 
He  has  been  advised  from  England 
and  Scotland  that  circumstances 
will  never  be  more  favourable.  If 
he  misses  this  chance,  he  will  have 
no  other.  "  C'est  tout  gagner  ou 
tout  perdre." 

The  final  escape  of  James  was, 
on  the  whole,  managed  with 
secrecy  and  some  skill,  though 
things  went  a  little  untowardly. 
Stair,  who  was  sparing  no  pains 
to  keep  the  Chevalier  watched  to 
his  every  step,  was  a  little  de- 
ceived, partly  by  that  false  infor- 
mation which  Bolingbroke  says 
that  he  purposely  gave  him,  partly 
by  the  diplomatic  bearing  of  the 
E/egent  and  Torcy,  who  were  both 
secretly  befriending  the  Chevalier. 
Certainly  Stair  got  his  correct  in- 
telligence too  late  to  be  of  much 
use,  and  so  sent  to  Chateau  Thierry 
to  have  James  seized  after  the  bird 
had  flown.  Cadogan  in  Brussels 
was  better  informed.  He  had 
stationed  a  "  gentleman  from 
Mecklenburgh,"  M.  de  Pless,  at 
Nancy,  ostensibly  to  attend  the 
Academy,  really  to  play  the  spy 
upon  the  Chevalier.  A  letter 
from  the  Regent  to  D'Audriffet 
shows  that  the  object  of  his  mis- 
sion was  perfectly  understood  in 
the  French  capital.  The  news  of 
the  Chevalier's  departure  comes  out 
through  the  indiscretion  of  some 
one  in  the  secret  arriving  from 
Commercy — and  immediately  Pless 
takes  formal  leave  of  the  Duke, 
and  hurries  without  a  moment's 
delay  off  to  Brussels,  where  Ca- 
dogan has  a  courier  ready,  who, 
but  for  provokingly  prolonged  con- 
trary winds,  would  have  reached 
England  in  excellent  time. 

Finding  the  Chevalier's  mind 
made  up,  Leopold,  wishing  to  be 
kind  to  the  last,  sends  his  protege 


as  a  parting  gift,  along  with  an 
affectionate  valedictory  letter,  the 
acceptable  present  of  27,000  louis 
in  gold,  which  James  at  once  stows 
away  in  his  private  strong-box. 
This,  we  read,  he  always  carried 
about  with  him,  placing  it  under 
his  bed  at  night,  and  allowing  no 
one  to  come  near  it.  How  he 
managed  to  transport  it,  when 
riding  on  horseback  from  St 
Malo  to  Dunkirk,  we  are  not 
told. 

It  is  well  known  that  James 
started  from  Commercy  on  the 
28th  of  October  1715  in  disguise. 
But  the  precise  manner  of  his 
escape,  as  related  in  the  '  Gazette 
de  Hollande,'  on  what  professes  to 
be  trustworthy  evidence,  has  been 
strangely  ignored  in  England.  It 
explains  why,  for  a  full  fortnight 
after  James's  disappearance,  news- 
papers still  go  on  reporting  his 
supposed  doings  in  Lorraine.  The 
escape  was  of  course  abetted  by 
the  Prince  de  Vaudemont,  who,  to 
make  it  possible,  invited  a  large 
company  to  Commercy  for  the 
day  appointed,  to  hunt  in  his 
forests.  James  went  out  to  hunt, 
and  James  apparently  came  back 
in  the  evening.  But  the  James 
who  returned  was  not  the  real 
Stuart  prince,  but  a  follower  of  his, 
who  bore  a  striking  resemblance 
to  his  master,  and  had  more  than 
once  been  mistaken  for  him.  Who 
this  gentleman  was  I  have  not 
been  able  to  trace.  With  this 
man  James  had  exchanged  clothes, 
unseen  by  any  one,  out  in  the 
forest.  And  so,  as  the  Due  de 
Villeroy  writes  to  Madame  de 
Maintenon  (the  letter  is  in  the 
Paris  MSS.),  "II  partit  mister- 
ieusement  de  Commerci  en  chaise 
roulante,  vestu  du  violet  en  Eccles- 
lastique,  avec  un  petit  colet,  malgre 
la  vigilance  des  Espions,  sans  qu'ils 
ayent  pu  auoir  ni  vent  ni  nouuelles 
de  son  depart,  que  deux  ou  trois 


1894." 


The  Pretender  at  Bar-le-Duc. 


245 


jours  apres  sa  sortie."  The  Chev- 
alier pursued  his  journey,  care- 
fully avoiding  highroads,  reaching 
Peterhead  safely  in  the  end, 
though  after  much  travelling 
backwards  and  forwards,  taking 
pains  to  elude  Stair's  spies,  who 
were  placed  at  all  important  points. 
At  Nonancourt  he  narrowly  missed 
being  caught,  as  we  know,  by  Cap- 
tain Douglas  and  two  other  emis- 
saries, evidently  what  Bunyan  calls 
"ill-favoured  ones."  For  the  im- 
pression became  general  in  France 
— over  which  the  editor  of  'The 
Annals  of  the  Earls  of  Stair,'  Mr 
Murray  Graham,  grows  exceed- 
ingly indignant — that  these  men 
were  assassins  retained  to  destroy 
the  Chevalier  by  Lord  Stair,  whose 
passports  they  carried,  and  who 
promptly  came  to  their  rescue 
when  they  were  brought  before 
the  Grand  Prevot  de  la  Haute 
Normandie.  Very  probably  they 
looked  cut-throats.  One  of  them 
was  armed.  And  as  cut-throats, 
not  spies,  the  maitresse  de  la  poste 
cautioned  James  against  them, 
helping  him  off,  to  save  his  life, 
in  a  disguise  and  with  a  guide 
provided  by  herself.  As  supposed 
cut-throats  they  were  seized  by 
the  police,  and  as  cut-throats  they 
were  brought  before  the  judge. 
Stair's  interference  probably  saved 
their  lives.  But  all  his  explana- 
tions and  all  his  protestations  could 
not  for  a  long  time  remove  from 
the  mind  of  the  French  people  the 
impression  that  the  men  were 
assassins.  The  Regent,  we  hear, 
released  them  without  inquiry, 
simply  to  avoid  scandal. 

How  the  Chevalier's  enterprise 
ended  we  all  know.  He  does  not 
appear  to  have  been  particularly 
attentive  to  his  late  host,  the  Duke 
of  Lorraine.  On  the  24th  of 
October  he  sent  him  a  formal  fare- 
well; but  on  the  7th  November 
we  have  the  Duke  stating  as  a 


grievance  that  he  is  without  news. 
During  November  we  find  people 
in  Paris  growing  remarkably  con- 
fident. On  the  2d  of  December 
Lord  Stair  complains  that  "  les 
plus  sages  a  la  Cour  "  are  just  again 
beginning  to  treat  the  Chevalier 
as  Pretender.  Until  two  days  be- 
fore he  was  "  King  of  England  " 
to  every  one  in  Paris,  "  et  tout  le 
monde  avoit  leve  le  masque"  There 
was  not  a  single  Frenchman,  hav- 
ing any  connection  with  the  Court, 
who  so  much  as  set  foot  in  Stair's 
house.  Everybody  thought  that 
the  Stuart  cause  was  about  to 
triumph.  But  the  1 1th  of  January 
1716  saw  James  back  at  Gravelines, 
" d'ou  il  repassa  en  Lorraine"  say 
the  MSS.  in  the  Archives  Nation-, 
ales.  Miss  Strickland  will  have  it 
that  he  went  to  Paris,  where  Bol- 
ingbroke  advised  him  to  go  straight 
into  Lorraine,  without  first  asking 
leave  of  the  Duke — which  advice 
he  did  not  follow.  Independent 
Lorraine  sources  state  that  he 
passed  through  Lorraine,  "  courant 
la  poste  a  9  chevaux."  As  he  had 
left  all  his  goods  and  chattels  at 
Bar-le-Duc,  that  seems  the  more 
likely  version.  Before  his  depar- 
ture Duke  Leopold  had  assured 
the  Chevalier  that  his  dominions 
would  always  be  open  to  him,  and 
that  he  "pourroit  compter  sur  luy 
en  tout  ce  qui  en  pourroit  dependre" 
In  March,  however,  under  altered 
circumstances,  we  find  him  advis- 
ing Queen  Mary  Beatrice,  "  for 
the  second  time,"  that  he  cannot 
again  receive  her  son  into  his 
duchy.  The  Chevalier  himself 
seems  to  have  taken  the  first  warn- 
ing. For  we  read  in  the  '  Gazette 
de  Hollande '  that  his  Domestiques 
et  Equipages  were  removed  from 
Bar  to  Paris  in  February.  Ac- 
cording to  M.  Konarski  (I  have 
not  verified  the  entry  in  the  ar- 
chives, but  it  is  doubtless  correct), 
James  left  Bar  on  the  9th  of 


246 


The  Pretender  at  Bar-le-Duc. 


[Aug. 


February — "sans  adresser  ses  re- 
merciments  et  ses  adieux  au  due 
Leopold,"  says  Noel ;  "  comme  un 
escroc  vulgaire"  says  M.  Konarski. 
"Ne  se  contentant  par  de  V argent  que 
Leopold  lui  donnait,  il  emprunta  des 
sommes  assez  fortes  aux  seigneurs  et 
partit  sans  les  rembourser."  The 
sum  of  15,000  francs  paid  to  his 
friend  M.  de  Bassompierre,  which 
appears  in  the  official  accounts,  is 
only  one  such  debt.  "Cette  in- 
gratitude de  la  part  du  Chevalier 
de  Saint  Georges"  adds  Noel,  "  in- 
dignait  toute  la  Cour."  People 
spoke  to  Leopold  about  it.  "  Gen- 
tlemen," said  the  Duke,  "  you 
forget  that  this  Prince  is  in 
misfortune,  and  that  he  was  a 
king." 

If  the  direct  benefits  which 
the  hospitality  extended  to  James 
brought  to  Lorraine  were  less  than 
nil,  the  indirect  were  scarcely  more 
valuable.  No  doubt,  the  Chevalier 
having  set  the  example,  not  a  few 
Roman  Catholics  from  the  United 
Kingdom,  so  Noel  relates,  sought 
the  same  hospitable  refuge.  Others 
came — among  them  both  Noel  and 
Marchal  name  the  elder  Pitt  — 
to  take  advantage  of  the  new 
Academy  opened  by  Leopold,  and 
rapidly  blossoming  into  greatness 
under  such  distinguished  masters 
as  Duval  and  Vayringe.  Some 
of  these  men  brought  plenty  of 
money  with  them,  and  their  liberal 
fees  went  to  swell  acceptably  the 
professors'  receipts.  But  the  num- 
ber of  impecunious  persons,  more 
particularly  Irish,  who  flowed  to 
the  Lorraine  Court  to  prey  upon 
Leopold's  generosity,  seems  to  have 
been  even  larger.  "Nous  regor- 
geons  d'Irlandais"  writes  the 
Duke's  friend  Bardin  in  1719 — 
Irlandais  who  evidently  boasted 
but  little  money  and  less  gratitude. 
Bardin  complains  of  an  excep- 
tionally bad  case  of  the  latter  sort. 
Leopold  mildly  replies,  "  I  helped 


him,  not  for  his  sake,  but  for  my 
own." 

In  1749,  when  the  Due  faineant, 
Stanislas  Leszinski,  "  simple  gentil- 
homme  lithuanien,"  was  holding 
his  gay  little  Court  at  Luneville, 
with  Voltaire  and  Madame  du 
Chatelet  to  lend  brilliancy  to  it, 
and  Madame  de  Boufflers  to  pre- 
side as  elderly  Venus,  we  read  that 
the  whole  company  were  deeply 
touched  when  the  great  French 
writer,  as  was  his  wont,  read  out 
aloud  his  just  concluded  chapter 
on  the  Stuarts,  in  the  '  Siecle  de 
Louis  XV.'  Everybody  had  a 
regret  for  the  hardly  used  dynasty. 
Scarcely  had  Voltaire  closed  his 
book  when  in  rushed  a  messenger, 
bringing  the  tidings  that  James's 
son,  Charles  Edward,  doubly  an 
exile  after  the  failure  of  his  rebel- 
lion of  1745,  had,  on  the  demand 
of  the  English  Government,  been 
seized  at  Paris  on  leaving  the 
Opera.  "  Oh  heaven  !  "  exclaimed 
Voltaire,  "  is  it  possible  that  the 
king  can  suffer  such  an  indignity, 
and  that  his  glory  can  have  been 
tarnished  by  a  stain  which  all  the 
water  of  the  Seine  will  not  wash 
away  !  "  The  whole  company  was 
moved.  Voltaire  retired  gloomily 
into  his  own  room,  threw  down  his 
MS.  into  a  corner,  and  did  not 
take  the  work  up  again  till  he 
found  himself  amid  the  more 
prosaic  surroundings  of  Berlin. 
Very  shortly  after  Charles  Edward 
himself  knocked  at  Stanislas'  door. 
What  he  did  during  the  nearly 
three  years  that  he  was  a  refugee 
at  Luneville  it  seems  impossible 
to  ascertain.  The  French  State 
Papers  are  silent  —  at  Luneville 
not  a  tradition  has  survived.  His 
doings  evidently  were  not  con- 
sidered worth  recording.  The 
drama  of  Stuart  kingship  was 
played  out.  The  dream  had  come 
to  an  end. 

HENRY  W.  WOLFF. 


1894.] 


One  of  a  Remarkable  Family. 


247 


ONE     OF     A     REMABKABLE     FAMILY. 


GENERAL    ROBERT    MACLAGAN,    R.E. 


A  WIDE  circle  of  family  and 
friends,  together  with  numerous 
societies,  religious,  charitable,  and 
scientific,  have  to  mourn  the  loss 
of  General  Robert  Maclagan,  R.E., 
who  died  in  London  on  April  22, 
in  his  seventy-fourth  year.  In  his 
life  and  conduct  he  was  as  modest 
as  he  was  hardworking  and  trust- 
worthy. Amongst  his  friends 
many  were  persons  of  distinction, 
whilst  the  family  to  which  he  be- 
longed may  fairly  be  termed  re- 
markable, and  has  for  more  than 
one  generation  commanded  the  re- 
spect and  esteem  of  their  fellow- 
citizens  in  Edinburgh.  Hence  we 
believe  that  a  short  account  of  the 
General's  kindred  and  services  will 
interest  a  number  of  our  readers. 

Maclagan's  most  intimate  friend, 
the  late  Sir  Henry  Yule,  calculated 
that  Scotland  supplied  one-third  of 
the  officers  of  the  Bengal  Engin- 
eers, and  that  of  the  Scotsmen  a 
third  came  from  Aberdeenshire. 
He  was  generally  accurate,  but  we 
think  Edinburgh  cannot  have  been 
far  behind  the  northern  county, 
for  even  in  this  notice  three  men 
are  mentioned  who  came  from  the 
capital  or  its  neighbourhood  — 
Richard  Baird  Smith,  Henry  Yule, 
and  Robert  Maclagan. 

The  first  was  born  at  Lasswade 
on  the  last  day  of  1818,  and  went 
to  India  in  1836.  When  he  died 
in  1861,  after  a  "career  crowded 
with  brilliant  service,"  he  was 
Master  of  the  Mint  in  Calcutta, 
C.B.,  and  A.D.C.  to  the  Queen. 

Henry  Yule  was  born  at  Inver- 
esk  in  1820,  appointed  to  the  Ben- 
gal Engineers  in  1838,  and  died 


in  1889.  His  career  in  India  was 
sufficiently  distinguished,  but  his 
reputation  is  world-wide  as  a  geo- 
grapher and  man  of  letters.  He 
received  on  his  deathbed  the  com- 
pliment of  election  by  the  Academie 
des  Inscriptions  et  Belles  Lettres  as 
corresponding  member,  and  thanked 
them  in  a  few  touching  Latin  words, 
the  last  sentence  being,  "  Cum 
corde  pleno  et  gratissimo  moriturus 
vos,  illustrissimi  domini,  saluto.n 
Whereon  "D.  M.,"  in  the  'Aca- 
demy' of  March  29,  1890,  at  the 
end  of  some  appropriate  verses, 
remarked  : — 

"  '  Moriturus  vos  saluto,' 

Breathes  his  last  the  dying  scholar, 
And  the  far-off  ages  answer, 
'  Immorlales  te  salutant. '  " 

Robert  Maclagan,  third  son  of 
the  late  Dr  David  Maclagan,  was 
born  at  Edinburgh  on  December 
14,  1820.  Dr  David  began  life  as 
a  surgeon  in  the  army,  and  served 
under  Wellington  in  the  Penin- 
sular War.  He  retired  in  1816, 
and  commenced  private  practice 
in  Edinburgh,  where  he  had  the 
rare  honour  of  being  President  of 
the  College  of  Surgeons,  and  also 
of  the  College  of  Physicians.  He 
lived  on  intimate  terms — we  quote 
from  the  *  Scotsman  ' x  —  with 
"  James  Abercromby,  the  Hom- 
ers, Jeffrey,  Cockburn,  Murray, 
Ivory,  Fullerton,  John  Allen  of 
Holland  House,  Daniel  Ellis, 
Charles  Maclaren,  the  Gibson- 
Craigs,  sire  and  sons."  He  be- 
longed to  the  Established  Church 
of  Scotland,  was  a  warm  advocate 
of  civil  and  religious  liberty,  and 


1  June  8,  1865. 


248 


One  of  a  Remarkable  Family : 


[Aug. 


was  a  faithful  but  kind  father. 
And  he  is  not  yet  forgotten. 
Some  of  our  readers  can  doubtless 
recall  a  picture  of  father,  mother, 
and  seven  sons  marching  with 
scrupulous  regularity  and  solem- 
nity every  Sunday  to  St  George's 
Church ;  and  those  who  relieved 
the  tedium  of  proceedings  with  a 
little  play  still  remember  the  awe 
with  which,  as  backsliders,  they 
received  his  disapproving  glance. 
His  sons  all  grew  to  man's 
estate.  The  eldest,  Sir  Douglas, 
we  need  scarcely  say,  does  many 
things  well.  Not  to  mention  his 
professional  attainments,  he  is  an 
archer,  an  angler,  and  a  sportsman 
of  repute ;  a  man  of  highly  culti- 
vated mind,  a  poet,  and  a  sweet 
singer.  He  too  has  held  the  offices 
of  president  of  ^both  the  great 
medical  colleges,  is  surgeon  of  the 
Queen's  Bodyguard,  and  a  profes- 
sor in  the  Edinburgh  University. 
In  1887  he  was  knighted  in  recog- 
nition of  his  eminent  position  and 
of  his  valuable  public  services. 
The  second  son,  Philip  Whiteside, 
who  died  at  Berwick-on-Tweed  in 
1892,  was  first  an  army  surgeon  ; 
he  was  an  enthusiastic  botanist, 
and  devoted  to  good  works,  where- 
by he  gained  the  affectionate  re- 
spect of  his  neighbours.  Passing 
Robert  (the  subject  of  this  notice), 
the  next  son  was  David,  who  for 
many  years  managed  various  insur- 
ance companies  ;  he  wrote  '  The 
History  of  St  George's  Church 
from  1814  to  1873,'  and  'The 
Life  of  Sheriff  Cleghorn,'  and  was 
prominent  in  connection  with  the 
Patriotic  Fund  at  the  time  of  the 
Crimean  War.  The  fifth  son,  Wil- 
liam Dalrymple — miles  olim  inter 
Indos — is  now,  after  a  career  as 
brilliant  as  it  is  unusual,  Arch- 
bishop of  York,  Primate  of  Eng- 
land and  Metropolitan.  John 
Thomson,  the  sixth  son,  after 
some  service  in  India,  is  now,  we 


believe,  Foreign  Mission  Secretary 
to  the  Church  of  Scotland ;  whilst 
James  M'Grigor,  the  youngest  son, 
was  for  a  time  in  the  Indian  med- 
ical service,  and  afterwards  became 
officer  of  health  for  Hexham  and 
Haltwhistle  :  he  died  in  1891. 

And  now,  before  passing  from 
family  detail,  it  is  interesting  to 
note  that  the  Dalrymples  of  Lang- 
lands  and  Orangefield  in  Ayrshire 
were  ancestors  both  of  Robert 
Maclagan  and  of  his  wife  Patricia 
Gilmour.  One  of  these  Dal- 
rymples and  his  connection  the 
Earl  of  Glencairn  were  patrons  of 
Robert  Burns,  by  whom  the  Rev. 
William  Dalrymple  is  mentioned 
in  several  satires,  always  with 
respect.  This  worthy  pastor,  who 
with  his  father-in-law  held  be- 
tween them  continuous  charge  of 
the  parish  church  of  Ayr  for  the 
extraordinary  period  of  a  hundred 
and  twenty  years,  baptised  both 
Robert  Burns  and  Sir  Douglas 
Maclagan. 

So  much  for  family  history.  The 
subject  of  our  sketch  was  educated 
at  the  High  School  and  Univer- 
sity of  Edinburgh,  and  afterwards 
at  Addiscombe,  where  his  career 
was  specially  distinguished.  We 
get  a  glimpse  of  him  and  of  his 
father,  who  was  present  at  the 
public  examination,  in  a  letter, 
their  joint  production,  to  the  home 
in  Edinburgh.  It  is  commenced 
by  the  younger  man  :  "  We  have 
just  returned  from  Addiscombe : 
everything  is  now  over,  and  Rob- 
ert Maclagan,  Esq.,  rejoices  in 
the  power  of  adding  H.E.I.C.S. 
to  his  name,  as  well  as  calling 
himself  an  Engineer  officer."  His 
father,  supplementing  this,  has  re- 
corded with  justifiable  pride  the 
encomiums  passed  by  the  Governor, 
Sir  Ephraim  Stannus,  and  the 
compliments  paid  by  Colonel 
Pasley,  R.E.,  who  "expressed  to 
me  the  pleasure  he  would  have  in 


1894.] 


General  Robert  Maclagan,  R.E. 


249 


Robert  being  under  his  command 
at  Chatham.  .  .  .  Robert  has 
just  gone  to  perform  his  duties  as 
chairman  of  the  cadets'  festival  in 
a  most  respectable  coffee-house  in 
Piccadilly." 

After  two  years  at  Chatham, 
Maclagan  arrived  in  India  at  the 
end  of  1841 — an  anxious  time,  for 
affairs  in  Afghanistan  were  not 
prospering,  though  the  extent  of 
our  disasters  was  not  then  known. 
Lord  Ellenborough,  who  succeeded 
Lord  Auckland  on  February  28, 
1842,  was  at  once  confronted  with 
the  bad  news,  and  decided  to  re- 
cover our  prestige  and  then  to 
withdraw  from  that  country.  By 
the  end  of  the  year  these  objects 
were  in  great  measure  attained ; 
and  the  Governor  -  General  pro- 
ceeded to  Firozpur  to  welcome 
the  returning  forces.  Nothing 
that  ceremony  or  display  could 
add  was  wanting  on  the  occasion. 
An  army  of  reserve  was  formed, 
which  Maclagan  was  ordered  to 
join.  He  was  employed  preparing 
and  decorating  boat-bridges  on  the 
Sutlej,  over  which  the  army  passed 
in  safety,  but  the  works  were  car- 
ried away  by  a  flood  within  a 
week. 

When  the  camp  was  broken  up, 
Maclagan  was  employed  road- 
making  on  the  southern  slope  of 
the  Himalaya,  and  experienced 
the  pleasure,  not  to  be  fully  ap- 
preciated save  by  those  who  have 
for  a  time  been  deprived  of  it,  of 
seeing  pure  streams  flow  through 
undulating  land.  He  described 
his  sensations  thus  :  "  This  morn- 
ing's march  was  about  nine  miles, 
and  I  crossed,  for  the  first  time  in 
India,  a  little  clear  burn,  with  stony 
bed.  The  pleasant  sound  of  its 
ripple,  with  the  fine  scenery  before 
me,  made  me  feel  at  home,"  &c. 

He  was   not   allowed   to  enjoy 


such  prospects  long,  for  in  May 
1843  he  was  posted  to  the  Delhi 
canals  under  Captain  W.  E. 
Baker,  whom  he  accompanied  in 
August  to  the  dry  and  thirsty 
region  of  Sind,  then  ruled  by  the 
able  but  eccentric  Sir  Charles 
Napier.  Baker,  afterwards  Sir 
William,  was  a  great  geologist, 
who  inspired  his  assistants  with 
some  of  his  own  zeal,  and  Maclagan 
seems  to  have  been  an  apt  pupil. 
He  suffered,  however,  from  fever, 
and  in  1845  was  obliged  to  ap- 
ply for  transfer  to  the  North- 
West  Provinces,  whither  Baker 
had  preceded  him.  Sir  Charles 
wrote  kindly  :  "  I  am  very  sorry 
to  lose  you,  and  still  more  for  the 
reason.  I  do  hope  your  health 
will  recover  in  India,  and  no  word 
of  mine  shall  be  wanting  if  I  can 
serve  you."  But  these  plans  were 
altered  owing  to  the  outbreak  of 
war  with  the  Sikhs.  Maclagan 
was  appointed  assistant  field -en- 
gineer and  ordered  to  Firozpur,  for 
which  place  he  set  forth,  but  was 
halted  at  Bahawalpur  to  await  Sir 
0.  Napier,  who  was  to  be  second  in 
command  of  the  army  of  the  Sutlej. 
Whilst  there,  news  of  the  battles 
of  Miidki,  Firozshah,  and  Sobraon 
arrived,  first  in  that  mysterious 
way  whereby  in  the  East  it  is  so 
rapidly  transmitted,  but  afterwards 
it  was  confirmed  by  letters.  When 
Napier  arrived  they  pushed  on  to 
Lahore,  pausing  at  Firozpur  to  see 
the  captured  Sikh  guns.  Carriages 
were  sent  to  bring  the  party  in. 
"The  first  is  a  large  coach,  once 
Runjeet  Singh's,  a  regular  hackney- 
coach,  panels  green  and  yellow. 
This  team  urged  by  a  couple  of 
postilions."  The  other  a  palkee- 
garry,1  in  which  "  the  mules  [were] 
driven  four  -  in  -  hand.  About 
twenty  miles  more  in  three  stages 
to  our  camp  at  Lahore,  where  I 


1  A  palankin  coach — i.e.,  like  a  palankin  on  \vheels. 
VOL.  CLVI. NO.  DCCCCXLVI. 


250 


One  of  a  Remarkable  Family  : 


[Aug. 


left  Sir  Charles's  party  and  pro- 
ceeded to  the  Engineer  camp."  l 

Napier  arrived  on  March  3, 
1846,  and  two  days  later  Gough 
reviewed  the  army  prior  to  its  re- 
turn to  our  own  provinces.  Vis- 
count Hardinge,  who  was  present 
on  the  occasion  as  private  secre- 
tary to  his  father,  has  described 
the  scene.2  After  mentioning  the 
various  regiments  on  parade  and 
their  recent  losses  in  action,  he 
has  recorded  that  the  Governor- 
General  approached  the  gallant 
50th,  "the  dirty  half-hundred," 
and  presenting  their  old  com- 
mander, told  them  how  proud  he 
was  of  their  behaviour  in  the  late 
battles,  where  they  had  lost  300 
killed  and  wounded.  The  men 
received  Napier  with  deafening 
cheers,  which  were  taken  up  and 
repeated  by  every  regiment  on  the 
ground.  Sir  Charles  was  so  over- 
come that  his  speech  failed,  and  he 
could  only  wave  his  hand  in  ac- 
knowledgment. His  dress  was  re- 
markable— a  pith  helmet,  a  native 
leather  jacket,  and  breeches  and 
long  boots.  It  was,  moreover,  be- 
lieved that  this  costume  had  never 
been  changed  since  his  arrival  in 
camp. 

When  the  main  body  of  our 
troops  had  marched,  Maclagan  was 
attached  to  the  force  which 
was  left  in  occupation,  and  was 
employed  on  the  defences  of  Lahore 
in  case  of  attack  by  the  Sikh  army. 
When  Napier  heard  this,  he  gave 
our  young  engineer,  to  whom  he 
had  evidently  taken  a  fancy,  the 
following  characteristic  advice  : — 

"  Well,  take  my  word  for  it,  Mac- 
lagan,  you'll  have  fighting  here  before 
long.  We  English  are  bold  and  brave 
in  battle,  and  can  carry  everything 
before  us  then,  but  we  are  too  easily 


lulled  into  a  sense  of  security  when 
the  fighting  is  over.  Here  you  may 
be  in  peace  and  quiet  without  a 
thought  of  danger  ;  enjoying  all  your 
comforts — take  a  glass  of  beer — and 
all  that  sort  of  thing,  and  the  blow 
may  come  down  like  a  sledge-hammer. 
It's  my  opinion  they'll  attempt  to  sur- 
prise you  in  Lahore.  I've  been  re- 
ceiving information  daily  chiefly 
through  moonshees,  natives,  and 
others,  and  it's  my  opinion  that  will 
be  the  case.  Look  now  at  the  Sikh 
army  that  has  been  disbanded.  There 
may  be  150,000  of  them,  and  they're 
all  armed  ;  having  probably  120  or 
130  pieces  of  cannon.  There  are  70, 
Sir  Henry  tells  me,  in  this  place — 
open,  exposed  to  view — besides  those 
that  may  be  concealed.  Well,  these 
men  have  all  dispersed  for  the  present. 
Are  they  at  all  more  friendly  disposed 
towards  us  than  they  were,  think  ye  1 
And  the  others  that  have  been  enter- 
tained here  —  do  ye  think  they  can 
be  highly  pleased  with  6  Es.  a-month, 
instead  of  12,  with  golden  bracelets 
and  all  that  ?  Don't  fancy  for  a  mo- 
ment that  they've  all  settled  down 
permanently  in  quiet.  They'll  watch 
your  proceedings  here,  and  it's  my  be- 
lief they'll  attempt  to  surprise  you. 
And  the  only  way  to  be  prepared  is 
to  keep  every  man  drilled  at  his  pro- 
per post,  and  to  have  constant  exami- 
nation of  the  state  of  your  defences. 
And  in  as  far  as  in  you  lies,  Maclagan, 
you  look  to  this.  You  take  the  advice 
that  I  can  give  you  from  my  experi- 
ence. I  can't  be  talking  in  this  way  to 
Col. ,  an  officer  of  rank  and  ex- 
perience. He  would  only  put  his 
tongue  in  his  cheek.  But  I  do  to  you. 
You  are  young,  and  may  be  guided  by 
my  experience.  .  .  .  When  I  was  in 
the  north  of  England,  Nottingham 
was  to  be  attacked  at  the  same  time 
with  Sheffield.  It  was  not  attacked  ; 
and  on  the  trials  it  came  out  that  the 
only  reason  of  this  was  that  they  had 
seen  we  were  on  our  guard.  I  was 
prepared  on  every  point,  and  had 
every  man  trained  at  his  proper  post ; 
and  that's  the  only  way  to  avoid  con- 
fusion and  disaster  at  the  time  of  an 


1  These  extracts  are  from  Maclagan 's  diary. 

2  Rulers  of  India.     Viscount  Hardinge,  by  his  son  Charles,  Viscount  Har- 
dmge  (Clarendon  Press),  p.  130. 


1894.] 


General  Robert  Maclagan,  JK.E. 


251 


attack.  If  you  are  on  your  guard  in 
that  way,  though  it  be  in  the  dark, 
every  man  will  know  his  place  and 
immediately  be  at  it ;  and  if  not,  you 
will  be  surprised  :  they  will  be  rush- 
ing in  all  directions  and  in  confusion  ; 
then  every  man  will  run  to  the  front 
and  fire,  not  knowing  where.  But  do 
your  utmost  to  have  everything  in 
order  and  prepared  for  such  an  event ; 
and  increase  your  own  exertions,  if  you 
see  any  tendency  to  carelessness  and 
disregard  of  danger.  .  .  .  I'll  be  com- 
ing back  some  day  to  let  you  out. 
There  will  be  plenty  for  you  to  do 
here.  Now's  the  time  for  you  to  dis- 
tinguish yourself." 

No  attack,  however,  was  made, 
and  Maclagan  having  continued 
to  suffer  from  fever,  was  sent  to 
Simla,  where  he  met  many  emi- 
nent men.  Besides  the  Governor- 
General,  Lord  Hardinge,  and  the 
Commander-in-Chief,  Lord  Gough, 
the  names  of  Henry  Lawrence, 
Robert  Napier,1  Henry  Marion 
Durand,  Herbert  Edwardes,  and 
others  are  found  in  his  diary.  He 
also  attracted  the  attention  of 
James  Thomason,  Lieut.-Governor 
of  the  North- West  Provinces,  by 
whom  he  was  chosen  to  be  Prin- 
cipal of  a  college  to  be  established 
at  Riirki  for  the  preparation  of 
young  men  as  civil  engineers. 
The  wisdom  of  the  selection  was 
justified,  and  to  this  day  Mac- 
lagan's  arrangements,  with  but 
slight  modification,  are  in  force  at 
the  Thomason  College. 

Riirki  was  then  a  specially 
interesting  station  as  headquar- 
ters of  the  Ganges  Canal ;  but  in 
India,  work  seldom  goes  on  long 
without  interruption.  In  1848 
the  second  Sikh  war  broke  out, 
and  Maclagan  was  desired  to 
march  a  corps  of  beldars  (diggers) 
to  the  scene  of  action.  Verily, 
the  mistakes  which  are  made 
even  by  persons  of  experience  are 


astounding.  To  send  such  men 
to  oppose  the  warriors  of  the 
Khalsa,  who  had  fought  us  as  we 
had  never  in  India  at  any  rate 
been  resisted  before,  was  to  ex- 
pect the  lamb  to  fight  the  lion. 
Fortunately  for  the  coolies,  they 
were  stopped  when  almost  within 
touch  of  our  army,  and  on  their 
way  home  they  heard  the  sound 
of  the  guns  at  Chilianwala. 

In  1852  Maclagan  returned  to 
England  on  leave,  having  visited 
Egypt,  Palestine,  Syria,  Constanti- 
nople, Athens,  and  Venice.  After 
a  short  rest,  he  was  deputed  to 
America  to  study  her  systems  of 
education,  travelling  out  with  Sir 
Charles  Lyell,  the  eminent  geol- 
ogist, who  introduced  him  to  Mr 
Ticknor  and  other  celebrities  on 
arrival  at  Boston.  He  met  Long- 
fellow, Lowell,  Dana,  Sumner,  Asa 
Gray,  Prescott,  and  Agassiz;  and 
all  was  new  and  mostly  delightful. 
Journeying  to  Montreal,  he  seemed 
much  impressed  with  the  business 
qualities  and  chaff  of  a  gentleman 
who  travelled  in  "  Ross's  Premium 
Soap  "  ;  and  on  his  return  to  Bos- 
ton he  went  to  church  one  Sunday 
at  the  Sailor's  Bethel,  and  has  thus 
described  the  scene  and  perform- 
ance,: "  Behind  the  pulpit  a  large 
picture  of  a  vessel  in  a  stormy  sea 
off  a  rocky  coast — flag  Bethel.  An 
angel  high  up  in  the  clouds,  an 
anchor  in  another  part  of  the  sky. 
.  .  .  The  whole  service,  prayer 
and  preaching,  very  melancholy  :  " 
the  prayer  in  extravagant  lan- 
guage, bad  grammar,  and  to  the 
accompaniment  of  excited  move- 
ment of  body  and  head ;  the 
preaching  having  to  do  with  every- 
thing save  the  text,  and,  when 
discoursing  about  the  elect  on 
whose  account  the  world  was 
saved  from  destruction,  containing 
such  language  as  :  "  God  would 


1  Afterwards  first  Lord  Napier  of  Magdala. 


252 


One  of  a  Remarkable  Family: 


[Aug. 


have  destroyed  the  whole  world, 
but  Moses  came  out  and  stood 
right  in  the  way,  and  held  up 
those  tremendous  hands  of  his, 
&c.,  &c.  And  so  God  said,  '  Well, 
Moses,  you  must  just  have  your 
way.' "  After  more  irrelevant  and 
irreverent  discourse,  the  pastor  re- 
marked, "I  must  haul  in  here; 
if  I  go  on,  I  shall  break  loose  !  " 

Next  day  happened  to  be  the 
4th  of  July,  in  honour  of  which 
occasion  there  was  a  parade  of 
the  available  military  force,  which 
prudence  and  due  regard  for  inter- 
national considerations  forbid  us 
to  describe.  The  declaration  of 
independence  was  read,  and  a 
good  speech  was  made,  in  which 
all  that  could  be  said  for  America, 
and  little  or  nothing  offensive  to 
other  nations,  were  combined. 

Maclagan  visited  and  was  much 
pleased  with  the  Military  Academy 
at  West  Point,  where  he  made 
acquaintance  with  Colonel  Lee. 
The  situation  is  described  as  most 
desirable,  and  the  students  as 
being  soldierly  and  smart. 

On  returning  home,  he  was  pro- 
moted in  1854  to  be  captain,  and 
next  year  he  married  Patricia,  fifth 
daughter  of  Patrick  Gilmour,  Esq. 
of  the  Grove,  Londonderry.  They 
left  England  in  1855,  arriving  in 
India  at  the  end  of  the  year,  and 
went  to  Rurki,  where  college  work 
was  resumed  and  continued  till  it 
was  interrupted  by  the  Mutiny. 

Though  that  station  escaped  the 
horrors  of  the  crisis,  yet,  with 
Meerut  and  Delhi  at  no  great 
distance,  the  situation  was  suffici- 
ently serious,  and  demanded  effici- 
ent precaution.  Baird  Smith  was 
the  senior  officer,  bold  and  saga- 
cious, whilst  under  him  Maclagan 
was  most  useful,  always  maintain- 
ing a  calmness  which  was  of  im- 
mense value.  The  workshops  were 
made  defensible,  and  accommoda- 
tion in  them  was  provided  for 


women  and  children;  and  here 
were  born  Baird  Smith's  daughter 
and  Maclagan's  eldest  son.  The 
garrison,  though  containing  but 
ninety  Europeans,  some  of  whom 
were  civilians,  patrolled  the  coun- 
try round,  and  restored  confidence 
to  the  wavering.  Captain  Mac- 
lagan's  firmness,  and  his  kindness 
to  those  in  distress,  have  made  a 
lasting  impression  on  persons  who 
were  present,  amongst  whom  Mrs 
Baird  Smith  and  Lady  Chesney 
have  recently  referred  to  these 
qualities  in  terms  of  deserved  ad- 
miration. The  former  has  re- 
marked that  his  "resolution,  his 
sleepless  care  for  all,  and  his  special 
tender  care  for  all  who  were  left 
most  lonely,  are  hardly  to  be  de- 
scribed " ;  and  that  his  conduct 
then  is  an  unfading  light  in  her 
memory  of  a  time  of  sore  distress. 
The  capture  of  Delhi,  however, 
soon  restored  tranquillity :  the  Col- 
lege was  reopened,  and  work  went 
on  as  usual  till  1861,  when  Mac- 
lagan  was  appointed  to  the  Punjab 
as  chief  engineer,  and  was  pro- 
moted to  be  Lieut.-Colonel.  He 
held  this  appointment  till  he  re- 
tired in  January  1879,  with  the 
exception  of  some  periods  of  leave, 
when  his  place  was  taken  by 
Colonel  Alexander  Taylor.  During 
these  eighteen  years,  many  import- 
ant works  were  completed,  whilst 
others  were  commenced.  Railways 
and  canals  have  greatly  altered  the 
condition  of  the  country,  mostly 
for  the  better  ;  whilst  many  minor 
works  of  much  use  and  conveni- 
ence were  constructed.  Within 
the  same  period  some  noteworthy 
events  occurred,  with  which  Gen- 
eral Maclagan  was  more  or  less 
concerned,  of  which  we  may  men- 
tion the  reception  of  Amir  Sher 
Ali  Khan  of  Kabul  in  1869;  the 
visit  of  H.R.H.  the  Duke  of  Edin- 
burgh to  Lahore  in  1870 ;  the 
death  of  Sir  Henry  Durand,  Lieut.- 


1894.] 


General  Robert  Maclagan,  R.E. 


253 


Governor  of  the  Punjab,  at  the 
close  of  the  same  year;  the  cere- 
monies connected  with  the  visit 
of  H.R.H.  the  Prince  of  Wales  in 
1876;  and  the  war  with  Afghan- 
istan in  1878. 

Before  the  General  left  Lahore, 
the  native  members  of  the  P.W. 
Department  established  a  prize  or 
scholarship  to  preserve  his  memory 
in  the  Punjab,  a  circumstance 
which  afforded  him  much  grati- 
fication. 

On  return  to  England  he  joined 
many  religious  and  scientific  so- 
cieties, and  contributed  articles  to 
various  periodicals.  In  concert 
with  Colonel  Yule  he  wrote  a 
Memoir  of  General  Sir  W.  E. 
Baker ;  and  he  was  engaged  on  a 
Life  of  Akbar,  which  we  may  hope 
to  see  published  hereafter. 

General  Maclagan  was  greatly 
interested  in  the  Royal  Indian 
Engineering  College  at  Cooper's 
Hill,  of  which  his  brother-officer 
Sir  Alexander  Taylor  is  President, 
and  he  was  rarely  absent  on  prize- 
day,  when  the  successful  students 
are  nominated  to  the  Indian  P.W. 
Department.  He  attended  many 
ceremonies,  of  which  some  were 
public,  others  private :  amongst 
them  we  may  mention  the  service 
in  Westminster  Abbey  on  the 
occasion  of  the  Queen's  Jubilee 
(June  21,  1887),  various  garden- 
parties  at  Marlborough  House, 
and  a  visit  to  Edinburgh  in  April 
1890,  when  his  name  was  enrolled 
amongst  the  Honorary  Doctors  of 
Laws,  as  an  old  alumnus  of  whom 
the  University  was  most  justly 
proud.  The  degree  was  at  the 
same  time  conferred  on  Sir  John 
Fowler,  Bart.,  the  eminent  civil 


engineer,  and  on  James  Anthony 
Froude,  the  historian  and  man  of 
letters,  whose  vivid  imagination 
and  beauty  of  style  have  acquired 
for  him  so  distinguished  a  position 
amongst  the  authors  of  this  cen- 
tury. 

Other  ceremonies  of  a  different 
nature  became  more  frequent  as 
time  went  on :  old  friends  and 
comrades  died,  and  Maclagan  was 
most  particular  in  paying  to  them 
the  last  token  of  respect.  Sir 
Robert  Montgomery,  the  successor 
of  Sir  John  Lawrence  in  the  Pun- 
jab, died  in  1888  ;  Sir  Henry  Yule 
died  in  1889 ;  followed  in  a  fort- 
night, on  January  14,  1890,  by 
Lord  Napier  of  Magdala,  whose 
funeral  at  St  Paul's  was  an  impres- 
sive public  spectacle,  and  a  signal 
testimony  of  national  regard. 

General  Maclagan  had  fair 
health  till  Christmas  1892,  when 
he  suffered  from  bronchitis  and 
congestion  of  a  lung,  and  it  may 
be  questioned  whether  he  ever  fully 
recovered  from  this  illness.  He 
spent  next  summer  at  Lochearn- 
head,  where  he  was  again  taken  ill. 
After  a  time  he  was  removed  to 
Edinburgh,  and  later  to  London, 
with  the  view  of  wintering  abroad ; 
but  his  strength  was  unequal  to 
the  fatigue  of  a  long  journey, 
and  he  went  instead  to  Tor- 
quay. There,  after  a  period  of  un- 
certainty, unfavourable  symptoms 
were  developed,  and  he  returned 
to  London,  where  he  died  in  per- 
fect peace,  leaving  to  his  family 
and  friends  the  satisfaction  of 
retaining  in  their  thoughts  and 
affections  the  memory  of  his  use 
ful,  unselfish,  and  blameless  life. 
W.  BROADFOOT. 


254 


The  End  of  the  Story. 


[Aug. 


THE    END    OF    THE    STORY. 
FROM    UNPUBLISHED    PAPERS    OF   THE    LATE    GENERAL    SIR   R.    CHURCH. 


AFTER  the  capture  and  execu- 
tion of  Giro  Annichiarico,  related 
in  November  1892  of  this  Maga- 
zine, Francavilla  regained  its 
normal  condition  as  a  quiet  little 
country  town.  The  crowds  who 
had  gathered  from  the  country 
round  dispersed  to  their  own 
homes ;  no  traces  remained  of  the 
ghastly  scene  in  the  little  Piazza ; 
the  churches,  there  and  every- 
where, resounded  with  Te  Deums  ; 
the  gates  of  the  cities  were  adorned 
with  triumphal  arches  ;  the  troops 
had  a  couple  of  days'  holiday,  and 
then  escorted  the  General  and  a 
company  of  his  friends  (among 
whom  was  his  brother,  come  from 
Florence  to  pay  him  a  visit) 
from  place  to  place  in  the  pro- 
vince. They  were  welcomed  every- 
where with  speeches  and  shouting, 
presented  with  the  freedom  of  the 
city  here,  with  a  sword  of  honour 
there. 

Still  stragglers  from  the  brig- 
ands were  found  by  the  peasants, 
and  brought  in  from  caves  and 
forests;  and  there  are  curious 
stories  of  such  captures,  of  which 
one  shall  be  related  here. 

Two  officers  were  returning  from 
Taranto  to  Lecce  one  night.  A  dark 
and  stormy  night  it  was,  and  very 
glad  were  they  to  see  the  twink- 
ling of  a  light  at  no  great  distance, 
as  they  were  crossing  the  plain  not 
far  from  Manduria,  famous  for  its 
holy  well,  "della  Madonna  di 
Misericordia."  Also,  we  are  told, 
"  the  inhabitants  of  Manduria  are 
distinguished  for  their  love  of 
order,  urbanity,  and  hospitality." 
The  twinkling  light  led  them  to 
a  poor  little  masseria;  but  poor 
though  it  was,  the  two  officers 
were  glad  of  shelter.  So  they  put 


their  horses  into  the  stable  and 
entered  the  house.  The  only  in- 
habitants were  an  old  man  and 
his  little  granddaughter.  An 
"old  old  man,"  bent  and  bowed, 
with  a  queer  brown  face,  all 
seamed  and  crossed  with  wrinkles, 
who  regarded  the  uninvited  guests 
with  small  favour,  muttering  to 
himself  and  shaking  his  head,  as 
he  shot  furtive  glances  at  them 
out  of  his  little  ferrety  eyes  •  and 
after  informing  the  officers  that 
he  had  nothing  to  give  them  to 
eat,  and  no  beds  to  offer  them,  he 
threw  a  log  on  the  hearth,  lay 
down  on  a  heap  of  straw  in  one 
corner  of  the  room,  where  the 
child  was  already  asleep,  and  ap- 
peared to  follow  her  example. 

The  young  officers  took  it  very 
coolly,  shook  streams  of  water 
from  their  hats  and  cloaks,  pulled 
a  bench  in  front  of  the  fire,  de- 
voured such  refreshment,  in  the 
shape  of  bread  and  sausage  and 
wine,  as  they  had  with  them,  and 
then  pulled  out  their  cigars  and 
prepared  to  make  a  night  of  it.  An 
hour  had  passed,  when  the  door  of 
the  masseria  was  pushed  open,  and 
another  guest,  after  standing 
silently  for  a  moment  on  the 
threshold,  came  forward  and  joined 
himself  to  their  company.  He 
was  very  tall,  with  a  muscular  sin- 
ewy frame,  showing  great  strength 
and  activity,  gaunt,  brown,  with 
dark  glittering  eyes  which  re- 
minded the  officers  of  those  of  a 
hungry  wolf,  and  hands  dispropor- 
tionately large,  even  for  his  great 
height.  Also,  one  finger  was 
wanting  on  the  right  hand.  All 
this  the  officers  were  able  to  note 
as  he  shook  his  long  brown  cloak 
and  slouched  hat,  before  putting 


1894.] 


The  End  of  the  Story. 


255 


them  on  again.  They  saw  also 
that  he  carried  a  carbine,  and  that 
in  his  belt  were  stuck  three  pistols 
and  a  curved  and  curiously  em- 
bossed hunting-knife ;  while  round 
his  neck  and  on  his  breast  were 
hung  several  relics,  a  small  black 
cross,  a  silver  death's-head,  and  two 
figures  of  the  Madonna,  embroid- 
ered in  crimson  silk. 

The  officers  glanced  at  one  an- 
other :  they  did  not  like  this  ap- 
parition ;  but  what  was  to  be  done  1 
They  were  far  away  from  head- 
quarters, there  were  no  other  in- 
habitants of  the  masseria  than  a 
feeble  old  man  and  a  child.  Be- 
sides, they  had  no  commission  to 
arrest  suspicious  wayfarers,  and  it 
was  by  no  means  certain  whether 
a  whistle  might  not  fill  the  house 
with  armed  confederates,  if  they 
showed  mistrust  of  the  stranger. 

So  it  seemed  best  to  salute  him, 
to  make  way  for  him  on  the  bench, 
and  to  take  out  fresh  cigars.  The 
stranger  returned  their  civilities, 
and  remarks  upon  the  weather  fol- 
lowed, while  the  thunder  growled, 
the  lightning  came  in  fitful  flashes, 
and  the  rain  pattered  steadily  on 
the  roof.  Presently  the  stranger 
tried  a  new  topic.  "  Signori  miei," 
he  asked,  while  his  wild  glittering 
eyes  seemed  to  gleam  from  under 
his  slouched  hat  in  a  way  to  make 
one  shudder,  "do  you  know  Gen- 
eral Giorgio  ? " 

The  officers  turned  and  looked  at 
him  at  this  unexpected  question. 
"  SI,  signore,"  answered  they. 

"  Ah,  he  is  a  fine  man  ! "  The 
mysterious  stranger  kept  his  face 
in  the  shadow  of  his  hat,  but 
"  held  them  with  his  glittering 
eye"  as  he  spoke.  "He  has  rid 
the  country  of  robbers,  and  we 
travel  in  safety  by  night  and  by 
day," 

"  Signore,  do  you  know  General 
Giorgio?" 

"  Oh  yes ;  but  perfectly !  In  fact, 
I  am  in  his  service." 


If  these  had  not  been  young  offi- 
cers, new  to  their  work,  they  would 
have  recognised  by  the  silver 
death's-head  round  his  neck,  and 
the  curious  characters  traced  on 
his  long  black-handled  knife,  that 
this  was  no  follower  of  General 
Church,  but  a  guapo,  a  brigand, 
and,  worst  of  all,  one  of  the  sect 
of  the  Decisi.  But  as  it  was, 
though  they  doubted  whether  any 
amount  of  sheep's  clothing  would 
make  him  anything  but  a  wolf, 
there  was  the  possibility,  they 
thought,  of  his  being  a  gendarme 
in  disguise  returning  from  some 
secret  mission  to  headquarters, 
like  themselves.  At  any  rate,  it 
seemed  best  to  accept  the  state- 
ment. 

"Signori,"  he  said,  "when  next 
we  meet  I  hope  you  will  bear  wit- 
ness that  you  found  me  busy  in 
the  General's  service."  To  this 
they  answered  with  a  gesture,  and 
the  stranger  went  on  :  "  Yes,  yes, 
I  have  done  good  service  against 
Giro  Annichiarico.  Ah,  his  time 
is  over  now  !  Eighteen  years  he 
was  king  of  these  provinces  and 
more,  but,  per  Santo  Diavolo,  his 
head  is  off  at  last,  and  his  reign  is 
over  !  Che  briccone  !  what  a  rascal ! 
and  now  we  are  free,  thanks  to 
General  Giorgio.  And  I  have 
served  him  so  well !  Ah,  when 
we  meet  at  headquarters  you  will 
see,  you  will  see  ! " 

They  made  some  reply  to  this, 
and  the  conversation  dropped. 
Now  and  then  one  or  another 
threw  a  fresh  log  on  the  hearth, 
and  lit  a  fresh  cigar.  Now  and 
then  the  two  officers  made  some 
remark  to  each  other  in  French, 
but  otherwise  they  sat  still  and 
silent,  till  the  crowing  of  the  first 
cock  made  them  all  start. 

"It  will  soon  be  daybreak. 
What  kind  of  night  is  it  now? 
The  thunder  has  ceased,"  said  one 
of  the  young  men,  rising ;  and,  fol- 
lowed by  his  comrade,  he  went  to 


256 


The  End  of  the  Story. 


[Aug. 


the  door,  opened  it,  and  stepped  out- 
side. It  was  still  raining,  and  "dark 
as  a  wolfs  throat,"  and  they  return- 
ed to  the  fire  to  wait  till  daylight. 
But  where  was  their  strange  com- 
panion ?  They  had  left  him  sitting 
on  the  bench,  staring  at  the  smoul- 
dering fire,  cigar  in  mouth,  carbine 
in  hand.  They  stirred  the  logs 
till  flames  shot  up  and  lighted  the 
room.  They  seized  a  splinter,  and, 
using  it  as  a  torch,  searched  every 
corner.  He  was  not  there  !  Yet 
the  room  possessed  but  one  door, 
and  its  only  window  was  but  a  few 
inches  square,  and,  moreover,  full 
fifteen  feet  from  the  ground.  They 
looked  in  vain  for  a  ladder,  or  even 
a  chair  to  mount  by,  and  the  bench 
stood  exactly  where  they  had  left 
it.  As  to  the  old  massaro,  he  was 
snoring  on  his  heap  of  straw,  and 
there  was  not  a  cupboard  or  chest, 
or  corner,  which  offered  any  chance 
of  concealment. 

"  What  do  you  think  about  it  ? " 
asked  one,  with  an  involuntary 
shudder. 

"  Per  Bacco  !  I  don't  know  what 
to  think,"  answered  his  companion, 
gloomily.  "  Brigands  in  flesh  and 
blood  are  all  very  well,  but  as  to 
this— 

>  "  Since  Giro  is  dead,  upon  my 
word  I  think  it  was  the  devil 
himself,"  said  the  other.  "  Could 
any  mortal  have  escaped  in  such  a 
fashion?" 

They  went  to  the  door  again 
and  looked  out.  The  rain  had 
ceased,  and  a  faint  grey  ness  showed 
that  dawn  was  on  its  way.  Every 
now  and  then  a  gust  of  wind  shook 
the  trees,  bringing  down  a  shower 
of  drops.  Otherwise,  everything 
was  still  and  quiet. 

"  Let  us  leave  this  place,"  said 
the  two  young  officers.  "  Rolct, 
amico  !  "  to  the  sleeping  massaro  ; 
"  wake  up  and  tell  us  our  way  to 
Lecce." 

The  old  man  got  up  and  came 
forward,  glancing  timidly  round 


him,  and  hurried  off  to  fetch  the 
horses.  The  little  girl  crept  after 
him,  and  both  listened  with  fright- 
ened eyes  as  the  officers  told  the 
adventure  of  the  night.  Then  ex- 
claiming, "  O  Madonna,  protect 
us  !  It  was  doubtless  the  devil 
himself.  If  he  should  return? 
0  poveri  noi  !  "  the  massaro  seized 
the  child  by  the  hand  and  hurried 
off  into  the  woods  which  stretched 
like  a  belt  round  his  house,  leav- 
ing the  two  young  men  staring 
after  him  in  amazement !  How- 
ever, as  there  was  no  use  pursuing 
him  down  unknown  paths,  they 
saddled  their  horses,  took  the 
widest  road,  and  arrived  at  Lecce 
in  safety  in  time  for  breakfast. 

Presently  they  were  summoned 
to  General  Church's  room,  and 
found  him,  map  spread  on  table, 
ready  to  listen  to  their  report, 
which  they  gave,  winding  up  with 
a  full  account  of  the  night's  ad- 
venture, and  an  inquiry  as  to 
whether  the  mysterious  stranger 
was  really  in  the  General's  service. 

The  General  leaned  back  in  his 
chair  andjaughed.  "  Why,  gentle- 
men," said  he,  "don't  you  know 
the  meaning  of  the  death's-head? 
Have  you  never  seen  the  black- 
handled  dagger  of  the  Decisi,  with 
emblems  inscribed  on  the  blade  ? 
Well,  you  never  saw  the  papers 
and  things  found  at  Grottaglia 
and  San  Marzano,  so  how  should 
you  ?  That  fellow,  from  your  de- 
scription, must  be  Occhio  Lupo  of 
the  seventeen  Murders  —  a  nice 
name,  is  it  not? — and  you  must 
go  after  him.  Come  to  me  at 
sundown  for  instructions,  and  each 
of  you  provide  a  dozen  men.  You 
won't  want  more,  now  that  Giro  is 
dead." 

When  they  returned,  General 
Church  showed  them  on  his  map 
that  there  were  two  roads  which 
reached  the  masseria  from  Lecce, 
and  directed  that  each  of  the 
officers  should  take  one,  with  his 


1894.' 


The  End  of  the  Story. 


257 


little  company  of  men,  and  reach- 
ing the  fringe  of  wood  that  sur- 
rounded the  house,  at  two  o'clock 
in  the  morning,  should  take  up 
their  positions  on  either  side  of 
the  door  in  silence,  and  wait  there 
till  the  crowing  of  the  cock. 

"  But  if  the  fellow  has  not  dared 
to  come  back  to  the  same  place, 
General  1 " 

"  He  will,  and  he  will  leave  it 
as  soon  as  the  first  cock  crows.  I 
know  the  ways  of  those  gentry," 
answered  their  chief.  "  Only 
mind  that  your  men  make  no 
noise  of  any  kind." 

So  said,  so  done.  And  sure 
enough,  as  soon  as  the  first  cock 
began  to  crow  the  door  of  the 
masseria  opened,  and  the  dull 
glimmer  of  light  within  showed  a 
dark  figure  stepping  swiftly  and 
silently  across  the  threshold.  But 
half-a-dozen  strong  arms  were 
round  him,  and  in  a  moment  he 
was  thrown  to  the  ground  and 
securely  chained,  his  evil  eyes 
glancing  from  one  to  another,  till 
he  saw  the  faces  of  his  companions 
of  the  night  before.  Then  an 
angry  gleam  and  an  oath  showed 
that  he  recognised  them,  but  he 
said  not  a  word  more. 

"And  now,  friend  massaro, 
what  have  you  to  say  for  your- 
self? Harbouring  brigands  in 
your  masseria,  eh  ?  You  will  come 
along  with  us  to  Lecce,  and  see 
what  General  Giorgio  has  to  say 
to  you." 

The  old  massaro  threw  himself 
on  his  knees,  and  the  child  wept 
piteously,  turning  with  clasped 
hands  from  one  officer  to  the 
other,  and  entreating  pardon  for 
her  povero  nonno,  her  dear  nonno, 
until  the  young  men  consented  to 
hear  the  old  man's  story. 

"  He  harbour  the  robbers  ?  But 
no,  no,  the  Madonna  knew  better 
than  that !  It  was  true  that  this 
bad  man  had  taken  shelter  in  his 
house  at  night ;  but  what  then  1 


How  could  he,  a  poor  old  man, 
help  it,  if  such  a  one  opened  the 
door  and  walked  in?  Could  he 
drive  him  out  by  force  1  See  then, 
let  the  gentlemen  ask  the  little 
one,  if  what  he  said  was  not  true." 
Ah  yes,  but  it  was  true,  and' the 
Madonna  knew  it.  And  the  child 
chimed  in,  bringing  to  the  rescue 
a  pair  of  artless  blue  eyes,  and 
many  pretty  gestures  of  appeal 
and  coaxing,  which  quite  softened 
the  hearts  of  the  two  young  officers. 
But  how  did  Occhio  Lupo  escape  1 
Let  the  massaro  tell  that,  and 

then 

Certainly  he  would  tell  all.  To 
such  kind  signori  it  was  a  pleasure 
to  tell  everything !  The  signori 
thought  he  was  asleep  ;  but  no,  not 
exactly  asleep — on  the  contrary, 
he  appeared  to  sleep,  from  fear, 
and  thus  he  could  see  what  hap- 
pened. The  signori  went  to  the 
door — well.  And  opened  it — well. 
And  returned  to  find  the  guapo 
gone?  Had  the  signori  happened 
to  turn  their  heads,  they  would 
have  seen  that  he  followed  at  their 
heels,  so  close  that  at  the  moment 
they  stepped  outside,  just  at  that 
moment  he  stepped  outside  too, 
and  slipped  into  the  shadow,  so 
that  when  they  returned,  the  door 
that  shut  them  in  shut  him  out ! 
He,  the  old  massaro,  prayed  for 
the  good  gentlemen  to  all  the 
saints,  when  he  saw  the  wolf-eye 
creeping  behind  them — so — with 
his  carbine  in  his  hand.  For,  you 
understand,  there  might  have  been 
a  shot  from  the  carbine,  a  blow 
from  the  dagger — but  why  speak 
of  those  things,  when  it  was  past, 
and,  blessed  be  the  Madonna,  they 
were  safe  ? 

"  And  the  kind  signori  will  not 
hurt  the  poor  nonno?"  cried  the 
child,  clinging  to  him,  and  turning 
her  pale  little  wistful  face  towards 
the  questioners. 

"  No,  little  one,  we  will  not  hurt 
him.  But  see  here,  friend,  you 


258 


The  End  of  the  Story. 


[Aug. 


may  get  your  neck  into  the  noose 
if  you  don't  give  up  the  habit  of 
harbouring  assassins ;  so  be  warned. 
Now  let  us  march  ! " 

The  two  officers  returned  with 
their  captive  to  headquarters, 
where  of  course  he  was  tried  by 
the  Military  Commission,  and  met 
with  the  fate  which  his  name 
shows  that  he  deserved.  There 
was  no  longer  any  difficulty  in 
finding  people  who  would  witness 
to  his  crimes,  now  that  his  chief 
was  dead  ;  and  he  was  taken  to  a 
village  where  one  of  his  most  atro- 
cious murders  had  been  committed, 
and  there  shot,  behaving  like  the 
hardened  ruffian  he  was  to  the 
last.  "Ah!"  said  he  to  Colonel 
Bentz,  shaking  his  head  and  grind- 
ing his  teeth,  as  the  place  of  his 
doom  came  in  sight,  "if  I  could 
only  burn  the  whole  village ! " 
When,  according  to  custom,  the 
coffin  which  had  been  carried  be- 
fore him  as  a  condemned  criminal 
was  laid  on  the  ground  beside  him, 
he  shuffled  round  it  in  spite  of  his 
irons,  in  an  uncouth  dance,  called 
for  a  glass  of  brandy,  and  grumbled 
when  wine  was  given  him  instead. 
A  priest  came  near,  holding  forth 
the  crucifix  :  the  wretch  spat  upon 
it,  pouring  forth  a  flood  of  oaths 
and  foul  language.  Then  turning 
to  the  soldiers,  who  stood  with 
levelled  carbines,  he  said,  "I  go 
then.  It  is  my  turn.  Good.  I 
have  killed  seventeen  and  more, 
and  it  is  only  fair  that  I  should 
die  for  that.  I  had  thought  I 
could  venture  on  one  more  night 
in  the  masseria ;  but  never  mind, 
I  can  die  as  well  as  others  have 
done.  So  now  let  us  go, — addio, 
addio,  addio/"  and  the  words 
were  cut  short  by  a  volley  which 
laid  him  dead  on  the  ground,  the 
last  of  the  captains  of  the  Decisi, 
if  not  the  worst. 

For  the  next  two  years  General 
Church  lived  at  Lecce  as  com- 
mandant of  the  province  of  Apulia. 


Lecce,  which  for  some  years  had 
lost  its  old  reputation  for  gaiety 
and  light-heartedness,  again  be- 
came "one  of  the  pleasantest 
cities  of  Italy."  He  "  enjoyed  the 
agreeable  society  and  splendid 
hospitality  of  the  inhabitants  of 
the  provinces  of  Bari  and  Otran- 
to."  "Not  a  single  murder  or 
robbery  took  place  during  this 
time."  He  was  flattered  and  feted, 
the  Government  gave  him  thanks, 
and  promised  him  rewards  which 
never  came.  His  brother  writes, 
"Richard  is  promised  a  post  of 
great  honour  and  eminence,  so 
now  his  fortune  is  made ; "  and  a 
little  later,  "  He  has  not  yet  got 
his  reward,  but  before  long  (entre 
nous)  we  shall  have  a  Marquess 
in  the  family  with  a  fine  estate ! 
So  attached  are  the  people  to  him 
that  his  recall  would  cause  a  rebel- 
lion. Will  you  believe  that  such 
has  been  the  state  of  the  country 
for  years  under  the  sway  of  the 
terrible  brigand  and  his  band,  that 
many  people  have  not  ventured 
outside  their  doors,  and  even  the 
Sindaco  of  the  place  and  the  In- 
tendente  of  the  province  had  not 
ventured  outside  the  gates  of  the 
city?" 

Meanwhile  the  General  has  ex- 
pended his  own  little  fortune,  and 
has  borrowed  a  large  sum  from 
his  devoted  brother,  in  paying  his 
soldiers,  and  returning  the  hos- 
pitalities offered  him,  but  is  unable 
to  get  from  the  Government  even 
his  arrears  of  pay. 

The  work  was  done,  and  done 
well.  But  as  to  paying  the  work- 
men, that  was  another  matter. 
And  as  time  went  on,  and  other 
claims  were  pushed  to  the  front, 
the  Government  was  glad  to  for- 
get old  promises,  and  throw  aside 
their  no  longer  needed  instrument. 
Even  during  this  period  of 
General  Church's  prosperity  there 
might  be  heard  the  grumbling  of 
the  coming  storm.  It  was  im- 


1894.] 


The  End  'of  the  Story. 


259 


possible  that  it  should  be  other- 
wise. He  was  a  foreigner,  set  in 
a  high  place,  over  the  heads  of 
native  governors :  this  of  itself 
would  naturally  cause  jealousy  and 
dislike.  He  was  uncompromising, 
determined  to  do  his  work  in  his 
own  way,  to  hold  to  his  rights — 
very  likely  a  bit  arrogant  in  as- 
serting them,  very  likely  not  so 
courteous  as  prudence  would  dic- 
tate towards  those  whom  he  dis- 
liked and  thought  badly  of. 

Two  stories  will  illustrate  his 
methods  of  dealing  with  those 
who  were  not  worthy  of  respect 
or  trust. 

There  was  a  certain  Government 
spy  in  Lecce,  Don  Luigi  Gentili, 
who  for  years  had  lived  and  grown 
rich  by  his  infamous  trade.  Every- 
body detested  him,  but  everybody 
feared  him  too  much  to  show  it. 
He  was  almost  as  powerful  in  the 
city  as  Giro  Annichiarico  himself. 
His  mode  of  action  was  equally 
simple  and  ingenious.  He  merely 
sailed  with  the  stream.  When 
King  Ferdinand  reigned,  Gentili 
furnished  him  with  lists  of  the 
disaffected  people  who  were  on 
the  side  of  Napoleon.  When 
Ferdinand  gave  place  to  Joseph 
Buonaparte,  Gentili  was  equally 
ready  with  lists  of  those  who  were 
plotting  to  get  the  old  Govern- 
ment back.  The  same  game  was 
played  under  Murat;  and  when 
Murat  was  shot,  and  Ferdinand 
IV.  of  Naples  came  back  as  Fer- 
dinand I.  of  the  Two  Sicilies,  who 
so  ready  with  protestations  of  ser- 
vice as  Don  Luigi  Gentili  1  And 
each  Government  in  turn  seems 
to  have  accepted  his  services,  and 
paid  for  them  too !  The  Govern- 
ment registers  revealed  this  fact 
on  inspection.  "  Most  extraordin- 
ary papers  they  were,"  says  General 
Church.  "  Long  lists  of  the  most 
respectable  people  of  the  neigh- 
bourhood were  found,  denouncing 
them  as  favourers  of  first  one 


party,  then  another,  year  by  year, 
month  by  month ;  and  subjoined 
were  the  punishments  inflicted — 
shooting,  fines,  imprisonment  for 
years — and  the  records  of  money 
received,  from  whichever  Govern- 
ment was  in  power,  for  informa- 
tion given.  His  own  receipts,  in 
his  own  handwriting,  bore  witness 
against  him.  More  than  a  hundred 
families  had  suffered  from  the  in- 
fernal calumnies  of  this  wretch  ! " 

Don  Gentili  was  a  great  ally  of 
the  Intendente  of  Lecce,  a  timid 
man,  and  no  friend  to  General 
Church,  who  got  him  displaced 
and  recalled  to  Naples ;  also  he 
was  a  member  of  half-a-dozen 
secret  societies,  which  would  ac- 
count for  the  respect  shown  to 
him  by  the  same  Intendente  and 
other  authorities.  Some  time  be- 
fore this  date,  when  the  General 
first  came  to  visit  Lecce,  Gentili 
had  tried  to  stir  up  the  people  to 
attack  the  troops  on  their  way 
from  one  city  to  another, — thus,  as 
he  put  it,  "  freeing  the  country, 
driving  back  the  foreigner,  and 
establishing  the  Salentine  Repub- 
lic." The  idea  was  responded  to 
with  acclamation,  and  a  body  of 
armed  citizens  were  placed  in  am- 
bush on  the  Bari  road,  the  day 
the  General  was  expected  to  enter 
Lecce.  Perhaps  it  was  as  well  for 
them  that  he  happened  to  come  in 
by  a  different  road,  so  no  harm 
was  done !  Then  Don  Gentili 
went  off  to  the  authorities  and 
denounced  several  people  as  hav- 
ing been  concerned  in  a  plot  to 
attack  the  royal  troops — and  was 
duly  paid  for  the  information  by 
the  Government. 

"  The  fellow  deserves  hanging," 
said  the  General,  pulling  his 
moustache,  and  pacing  the  room 
perplexedly,  as  he  listened  to  all 
these  details.  "Yes,  the  world 
would  be  well  rid  of  him,  no 
doubt.  But  then,  there  are  pro- 
bably half-a-dozen  nearly  as  bad  \ 


260 


The  End  of  the  Story. 


[Aug. 


and  he  has  a  wife,  you  say,  and  a 
whole  tribe  of  children.  What 
is  to  become  of  them  1  Can't  we 
keep  him  out  of  doing  any  more 
mischief  without  going  to  extrem- 
ities? If  I  send  him  before  the 
court,  he  is  doomed.  Suppose  he 
is  banished,  and  put  under  sur- 
veillance for  the  present,  so  as  to 
give  him  a  chance  of  mending  his 
ways'?"  So  Don  Luigi  Gentili 
was  sent  to  Barletta,  out  of  his 
own  province,  and  with  stern 
warnings  and  threatenings  if  he 
should  venture  to  leave  the  place 
without  express  permission  from 
headquarters  ;  and  for  a  short  time 
he  kept  quiet  enough.  But  he 
had  a  friend  in  the  displaced 
Intendente  of  Lecce,  the  Mar- 
chese  Pietracatella,  now  living 
at  Naples,  and  brooding  over  his 
displacement,  which  he  set  down 
as  the  work  of  the  meddlesome 
Englishman. 

One  fine  day  King  Ferdinand, 
in  his  state  carriage,  was  taking 
his  usual  drive  along  the  Chiaja. 
The  four  fat  horses  pranced  solemn- 
ly along,  conducted  by  the  gorgeous 
coachman  in  royal  livery.  The 
lazy,  good-humoured,  self-indulgent 
King  sleepily  returned  the  saluta- 
tions of  passers-by.  The  sky  was 
blue,  the  sea  was  blue,  the  air 
was  golden,  dazzling;  early  sum- 
mer made  the  Chiaja  of  Naples 
into  an  earthly  Paradise;  bright- 
eyed,  bare -legged  boys  played 
moro,  sellers  of  macaroni  and 
lemonade  cried  their  wares  at 
every  corner,  flower-girls  showed 
their  white  teeth  in  ready  smiles 
when  likely  customers  came  by, 
—all  was  pleasure,  ease,  light, 
colour,  movement,  amusement. 
Suddenly  King  Ferdinand  rubbed 
his  eyes;  a  respectable  -  looking 
man,  dressed  in  black,  darted  for- 
wards, seized  the  handle  of  the 
carriage-door  with  one  hand,  and 
waved  a  paper  with  the  other, 
wildly  gesticulating  and  exclaim- 


ing, "  Giustizia,  Maestct — giustizia, 
giustizia ! "  The  carriage  was 
stopped.  The  King  ordered  a 
lackey  to  open  the  door.  He  was 
fond  of  posing  as  the  father  of 
his  people,  when  it  did  not  entail 
too  much  trouble  ;  and  in  his  best 
"Re  di  lazzaroni"  manner,  " Eb- 
bene,  amico,"  he  said,  "chevolete? 
Parlate,  parlate." 

Upon  this  Gentili  fell  upon  his 
knees,  seizing  the  King's  hand 
and  kissing  it  effusively,  while  he 
poured  forth  most  lamentable  com- 
plaints against  General  Giorgio, 
who  was  persecuting  an  unfortu- 
nate gentleman  of  Lecce  to  death  ! 
The  King  shook  his  head  at  this. 
11  How  ?  how  1  Persecuted  by 
Giorgio  !  Can't  believe  it ;  can't 
believe  it.  I  know  Giorgio  well, 
too  well  to  believe  that  he  would 
persecute  one  of  my  people ! " 
Gentili,  still  on  his  knees,  swore 
by  everything  in  heaven  and  earth 
that  he  spoke  the  bare  truth,  and 
that  he  and  his  innocent  family 
would  die  of  want  unless  his 
Majesty  would  interfere  to  pro- 
tect them  from  this  grasping 
foreigner.  "  Well,  well,"  said  the 
King,  "  give  me  your  paper — the 
matter  shall  be  seen  to ; "  and 
taking  the  petition,  Ferdinand 
ordered  the  lackey  to  shut  the 
door,  and  the  carriage  drove  away, 
leaving  Gentili,  with  clasped  hands, 
invoking  blessings  on  the  head  of 
the  father  of  his  people. 

A  few  days  later  the  petition 
reached  General  Church,  having 
been  forwarded  to  him  by  the 
Minister  of  Justice,  Tommasi,  and 
accompanied  by  a  request  that  he 
would  explain  what  it  all  meant. 
The  General's  reply  is  characteris- 
tic. "  I  am  not  a  little  surprised," 
he  says,  "at  hearing  from  your 
Excellency  that  Don  Luigi  Gentili 
is  at  Naples,  he  having  been  placed 
by  my  orders  at  Barletta,  under 
surveillance.  I  shall  be  happy  to 
give  your  Excellency  information 


1894.] 


The  End  of  the  Story. 


261 


about  the  man  when  I  hear  that 
he  has  returned  to  Barletta.  Till 
then  you  will,  I  am  sure,  under- 
stand that  to  do  so  would  derogate 
from  the  respect  due  to  the  alter 
ego  with  which  his  Majesty  has  in- 
vested me." 

On  the  next  Council  day  the 
King  inquired  what  reply  had 
been  received  from  General  Gior- 
gio, and  the  letter  was  produced 
and  read  aloud.  "Let  me  read  it 
myself,"  said  Ferdinand  ;  and  hav- 
ing done  so,  he  threw  it  on  the 
table,  and  a  frown  gathered  on  the 
royal  brow.  The  white  -  haired 
Marchese  Circatella  next  took  it 
up,  put  on  his  spectacles,  read  it 
through,  and  put  it  down  in  silence. 
Then  the  Cavaliere  Luigi  di  Medici 
took  the  missive,  read  it  aloud, 
glanced  at  his  companions,  and 
observed  deferentially,  "It  is  very 
well  written,  Sire  !  "  and  the  others 
chimed  in  assenting  to  this  fact, 
though  observing  that  perhaps  the 
General  was  a  little — a  little — the 
English  were  a  stiff-necked  race  ! — 
doubtless  he  might  have  replied 
differently,  since  the  query  was 
made  in  his  Majesty's  behalf,  yet 
— "  Yet,  knowing  the  General  as  I 
do,"  quoth  old  Circatella,  "  I  say, 
depend  upon  it  he  won't  give  in  ! " 

"  And  after  all,  he  has  right  on 
his  side,"  put  in  De  Medici. 

The  King's  little  fit  of  temper  had 
gone  by ;  he  laughed  and  rubbed 
his  hands  in  easy-going  fashion, 
— "  What  a  fuss  about  nothing  ! 
What  have  you  to  say,  Tom- 
masi  ? " 

"  I  say,  your  Majesty,  that  the 
General  saved  Apulia." 

"  Yes,  yes,  quite  true.  I  know  I 
owe  him  half  my  kingdom ;  but  he 
might  have  sent  me  an  answer." 

"  The  English  are  fierce  and  in- 
tractable, but  they  are  honourable, 
and  hold  fast  to  their  friends," 
said  the  old  Marchese. 

"  Well,  well,  we  have  had  enough 
of  it,"  said  the  King.  "Tommasi 


had  better  write  and  tell  Giorgio  I 
never  doubted  he  had  done  right 
about  that  fellow.  I  only  asked 
for  information." 

So  Tommasi  wrote  again,  but  to 
no  purpose.  Naturally  General 
Church  felt  that  he,  being  on  the 
spot,  knew  a  great  deal  more  of 
the  intrigues  and  malpractices 
which  had  been  going  on  for  years 
than  did  the  Government  at 
Naples.  Besides,  he  felt  the  ne- 
cessity for  making  his  authority 
felt,  so  he  replied  thus  :  "  I  beg  to 
inform  your  Excellency  that  I  am 
perfectly  well  aware  that  it  was 
his  Majesty  who  required  informa- 
tion ;  but  no  information  can  be 
obtained  from  me  till  Gentili  is 
sent  back  to  Barletta.  What  will 
people  think  if  a  person  of  Gentili's 
character  can  set  at  defiance  the 
authority  of  the  Crown  1  It  would 
be  no  less,  since  the  alter  ego  was  in- 
trusted to  me  by  his  Majesty  him- 
self. I  think  your  Excellency  will 
see  that  either  this  man  must 
leave  Naples  or  I  must  beg  leave 
to  resign  the  command  with  which 
I  am  at  present  intrusted."  This 
settled  the  matter,  and  a  few  days 
later  the  General  received  an  of- 
ficial despatch  informing  him  that 
Gentili  had  been  sent  back  to  Bar- 
letta, and  also  the  following  letter 
from  Prince  Zurlo  : — 

"  Caro  Amico, — I  congratulate 
you.  Your  firmness  has  broken 
up  the  plot.  This  affects  the  secu- 
rity of  every  household  in  the  pro- 
vince, for  those  who  have  been  in- 
jured by  this  infamous  man  will 
now  venture  to  witness  against 
him." 

As  to  Don  Luigi  Gentili,  he  had 
better  have  trusted  to  the  General's 
clemency,  and  kept  quiet  in  his 
banishment,  for  now  he  was  hand- 
ed over  to  the  royal  courts  of 
Naples,  and  sent  to  the  galleys  for 
ten  years. 

The  second  story  relates  the  fate 
of  Maestro  Longo,  tailor  and  citi- 


262 


The  End  of  the  Story. 


[Aug. 


zen  of  Lecce, — a  very  good  tailor, 
but  a  very  bad  citizen  !  It  was 
an  evil  day  for  Maestro  Longo 
when  he  dropped  the  tape  and 
scissors  and  took  to  politics,  at- 
tended meetings  of  the  secret  so- 
cieties, and  stuck  a  stiletto  in  his 
belt.  He  never  murdered  any- 
body, but  he  talked  as  if  he  were 
ready  to  slay  the  whole  Govern- 
ment !  He  had  a  ready  tongue, 
and  loved  to  use  it  in  furious  de- 
clamation. The  applause  of  the 
rabble  was  sweet  to  him,  and  much 
more  sweet  the  feeling  that  his 
betters  were  afraid  of  him.  So  he 
talked  mysteriously  in  corners, 
gave  it  to  be  understood  that  he 
was  on  intimate  terms  with  the 
chiefs  of  banditti,  was  always  a 
principal  speaker  at  patriotic  meet- 
ings, gave  weekly  receptions  at 
Lecce,  and  insisted  on  the  young 
gentlemen  of  the  place  attending 
them,  if  they  valued  their  safety  ; 
and  it  shows  how  great  was  the 
fear  caused  by  these  secret  socie- 
ties that  his  noble  customers  dared 
not  disobey  his  mandate !  The 
then  Intendente  was  a  special 
patron  of  the  tailor,  and  fed  his 
arrogance  by  treating  him  famil- 
iarly, until  Maestro  Longo  gave 
himself  airs  as  the  most  important 
person  in  the  town. 

But  this  glory  ended  when  Gen- 
eral Church  took  up  his  quarters 
at  Lecce.  His  coming  was  herald- 
ed by  a  grand  ball,  where  Maestro 
Longo  appeared,  swaggering  among 
the  best ;  but,  alas !  times  had 
changed,  and  before  long  he  found 
himself  taken  up  by  a  couple  of 
tall  youths,  and  fairly  tossed  out 
of  window— by  which  means  the 
poor  little  man  broke  his  arm. 

"It  would  be  quite  a  pity  to 
harm  the  fellow.  We  must  teach 
him  to  attend  to  his  trade,"  said 
General  Church  to  a  group  of 
young  gentlemen  of  Lecce,  who 
were  paying  their  respects.  "  He 
is  a  good  tailor,  is  he  not  ? " 


"  None  better,  your  Excellency. 
Did  your  Excellency  ever  hear  of 
the  tailor  and  the  Marchese's  pan- 
taloons 1  No  ?  Then,  con  rispetto, 
you  must  know  that  the  Marchese 
Pietracatella  one  day  sent  for  his 
friend  Maestro  Longo,  who  arrived 
with  scissors  and  tape  to  take  his 
patron's  order,  and  found  that 
patron  lying  on  his  bed,  much  in 
need  of  some  new  diversion.  *  Have 
you  ever  seen  me  dance  1 '  said  the 
Marquis.  'It  is  something  worth 
seeing,  my  friend.  I  believe  I 
could  dance  down  any  man  in  the 
Two  Sicilies.'  And  springing  off 
his  bed,  he  began  a  tarantella  to 
his  own  whistling,  snapping  his 
fingers,  springing  half-way  to  the 
ceiling,  whisking  round  faster  and 
faster,  until  at  last  he  sank  pant- 
ing on  a  chair.  *  Give  me  one 
minute  to  recover  my  breath, 
Longo,'  said  he,  '  and  then  you 
shall  measure  me  for  a  pair  of 
pantaloons.'  c  Certainly,'  said  the 
tailor  •  '  but  first  it  is  my  turn. 
I  have  waited  for  your  Excellency 
— it  is  only  fair  that  you  should 
wait  for  me ;  and,  in  truth,  I 
flatter  myself  I  can  do  better  than 
that ! '  So  he  began  to  dance,  and 
went  on  dancing  as  if  he  was  be- 
witched !  The  Marchese  begged 
him  to  stop,  ordered  him  to  stop, 
stamped,  swore,  threatened :  still 
the  tailor  danced  on  to  his  own 
whistling,  serenely  ignoring  his 
patron's  anger,  until  in  despair 
Pietracatella  called  his  servants 
to  put  the  fellow  out.  But  for 
months  after  the  Marchese  had  to 
wear  his  old  clothes,  for  the  angry 
tailor  flatly  refused  to  make  him 
new  ones,  and  the  other  tailors  of 
the  town  dared  not  disoblige 
Maestro  Longo  ! " 

"  Look  here,  gentlemen,"  said 
the  General,  when  he  had  done 
laughing.  "  I  have  determined 
to  give  a  ball  at  my  house  every 
Monday  during  my  stay  here.  I 
am  afraid — I  am  really  very  much 


1894." 


Tlie  End  of  the  Story. 


263 


afraid — that  this  will  clash  with 
the  weekly  ball  which  I  under- 
stand is  given  by  Maestro  Longo. 
But  pray  observe  that  you  are 
perfectly  at  liberty  to  take  your 
choice  and  go  where  you  will.  I 
would  not  interfere  with  the  tailor 
for  worlds  !  Only,  unhappily,  it 
will  be  quite  impossible  for  you 
to  be  in  two  places  at  once,  and 
you  will  clearly  understand  that 
it  is  at  your  own  choice  to  attend 
one  or  the  other — not  both." 

The  young  men  looked  at  one 
another,  laughed,  and  declared 
that  they  had  not  the  least  inten- 
tion of  entering  Maestro  Longo's 
house  in  future  except  as  cus- 
tomers, but  they  hoped  to  attend 
the  General's  receptions. 

The  next  day  the  tailor  received 
a  summons  to  wait  on  the  General. 
Softly  and  sadly  he  went,  with 
his  arm  in  a  sling,  and  meekly  he 
sat  in  the  anteroom  for  a  consider- 
able time  before  he  was  admitted 
to  the  great  man's  presence.  The 
General  fixed  his  keen  blue  eyes 
on  the  round,  little,  black-eyed 
person,  who  fidgeted  and  bowed 
nervously,  and  expressed  his  desire 
to  serve  his  Excellency. 

"  Measure  me  for  a  coat,  Signore 
Sarto,  if  you  please,"  said  General 
Church. 

"Uniform  or  plain1?  But  pardon 
me,  your  Excellency,  I  have  not 
brought  my  measure.  With  per- 
mission, I  will  run  and  fetch  it, 
though  indeed  " — and  he  shook  his 
head  mournfully  and  looked  at  his 
arm — "an  accident,  your  Excel- 
lency. Poco,  poco,  but  for  the 
moment  it  causes  me  difficulty." 

"No  hurry,  Maestro  Longo. 
Let  us  talk  of  something  else. 
Though  you  have  never  worked 
for  me,  I  have  a  pretty  long 
account  to  settle  with  you,  I  find," 
said  the  General,  locking  the  door 
as  he  spoke,  and  seating  himself 
in  an  old-fashioned  armchair.  The 
tailor's  ruddy  face  grew  pale,  and 


his  teeth  positively  chattered. 
Down  he  went  on  his  knees,  pro- 
testing that  he  was  a  guiltless 
man,  a  good  citizen. 

"I  believe,  as  far  as  I  know, 
you  have  never  committed  a  mur- 
der ;  so  much  the  better  for  you," 
said  the  General.  "  Get  up.  Now 
tell  the  truth,  for  you  will  gain 
nothing  by  lying." 

"It  is  true  that  I  have  been 
guilty ;  but  I  will  tell  your  Excel- 
lency all.  I  throw  myself  on  your 
Excellency's  mercy,"  gasped  the 
poor  little  man. 

"Good,  so  far.  Get  up,  and 
answer  my  questions.  And  mind, 
you  must  alter  your  ways,  if  you 
don't  want  to  spend  some  years  in 
the  galleys.  You  have  become 
uncommonly  expert  of  late  with 
the  small  sword,  I  hear.  How 
many  stilettoes  have  you  on  your 
premises  1 " 

"0,  your  Excellency  knows 
everything  !  Pardon,  pardon,  and 
my  life  shall  be  devoted  to  serve 
you." 

"  Look  here,  my  friend.  I  hap- 
pen to  know  that  you  have  the 
diplomas  of  the  Filadelfi  and  the 
Patrioti  Europei.  Lucky  for  you 
that  you  have  had  nothing  to  do 
with  the  Decisi  !  Now,  how  many 
men  have  you  in  your  squadron 
of  Filadelfi?" 

"  Sixty,  Signore  Generale." 

"  All  armed  1 " 

"Si,  signore." 

"How  many  altogether  in 
Lecce?" 

"About  300." 

"  All  armed  ? " 

"  But  no,  signore,  only  about 
half." 

"  Any  assassins  among  them  ?  " 

"  Not  to  my  knowledge,  sig- 
nore." 

"  Under  what  supreme  authority 
do  you,  or  rather  did  you,  act  ? " 

"Under  the  Salentine  Re- 
public." 

"  Your  own  rank  1 " 


264 


The  End  of  the  Story. 


[Aug. 


"Prefect  of  the  city  of  Lecce. 
Your  Excellency  knows  that  is 
the  same  as  Intendente." 

"Have  you  a  diploma  as  pre- 
fect?" 

"Si,  Signore  Generale" 

"  What  do  you  aim  at  1 " 

"  Equality,  your  Excellency. 
No  man  to  have  more  land  than 
another." 

"Very  good.  And  now,  Sig- 
nore Sarto" — the  General's  eyes 
twinkled  in  spite  of  himself, — 
"pray,  what  was  your  fancy  for 
giving  those  weekly  balls  ?" 

Poor  Maestro  Longo  hung  his 
head,  and  looked  like  a  boy  caught 
in  an  apple-tree  and  brought  face 
to  face  with  the  head-master.  He 
cast  piteous  looks  at  the  General, 
and  stammered  out,  "  I — I  wanted 
to  —  to  break  the  pride  of  the 
gentry,  Signore  Generale" 

"And  did  many  of  them  come 
to  your  balls?" 

"A  good  many,  especially  — 
that  is " 

"  Well,  go  on.    Especially 1 " 

"  When  the  invitations  were 
signed  by  me  —  with  four  dots 
after " 

"  Four  dots  !  What  does  this 
mean  ? " 

"  They  were  bound  to  comply — 
else " 

"  Speak  out,  man ;  else  what  ? " 

In  a  very  low  voice,  and  with 
eyes  fixed  on  the  ground,  the  tailor 
finished  his  sentence.  "  It  meant 
— they  would  die,  your  Excel- 
lency." 

There  was  a  pause,  long  enough 
for  the  last  remains  of  courage  to 
ooze  out  of  the  tips  of  the  poor 
tailor's  fingers.  He  stood,  limp, 
pale,  and  shaking,  with  the  feel- 
ing that  two  stern  eyes  were  fixed 
upon  him,  that  lies  were  of  no 
avail,  and  that— O  heavens  !  if  he 
should  have  to  leave  his  pleasant 
house,  his  admiring  friends,  his 
chats  on  the  Piazza,  his  speechify- 
ings  at  meetings,  for  the  galleys  ! 


Presently  the  questions  began 
again. 

"Who  paid  the  expenses  of 
these  balls?" 

"  The  Government,  Signore  Gen- 
erate— that  is,  the  Salentine  Re- 
public. The  money  was  raised  by 
— by  forced  contributions." 

"  Did  you  collect  the  money  ? " 

"  Per  Dio,  no,  no,  no,  your  Ex- 
cellency !  I  had  nothing  to  do 
with  it,  and  it  went  to  the  Di- 
rectory." 

"  Where  is  your  muster-roll  ? " 

"  In  a  priest's  house  in  Surbo." 

"Is  Major  Farini  your  supe- 
rior ? " 

"In  the  military  line,  si,  sig- 
nore.  I  am  the  superior  in  the 
civil  line." 

"  How  many  officers  of  the  Reale 
Corona  Regiment  belong  to  you  ? " 

"Twelve  or  fourteen." 

"Any  other  regiment?" 

"Not  to  my  knowledge,  your 
Excellency." 

"Now,  Maestro  Longo,  attend 
to  me.  Can  I  depend  on  your 
good  conduct  in  future?" 

"  O,  your  Excellency,  pardon 
me,  save  me !  I  swear  you  shall 
have  no  cause  of  complaint  against 
me!" 

"Will  you  go  back  to  your 
tailoring,  and  keep  your  fellows 
to  their  proper  work?" 

"  SI,  si,  signore." 

"  Will  you  go  round  to  all  the 
gentlemen  you  have  insulted,  and 
ask  pardon,  one  by  one,  for  your 
former  insolence  ? " 

"  I  will,  signore,  I  will,  and 
gladly  ! " 

"  Will  you  give  your  associates 
clearly  to  understand  that  these 
secret  societies  must  be  broken 
up?" 

"  They  are  so  already,  your  Ex- 
cellency; and  in  truth  the  majority 
of  people  are  delighted  at  it,  and 
feel  safe  under  your  Excellency's 
protection." 

"  And  are  you  of  that  opinion  ?  " 


1894.] 


The  End  of  the  Story. 


265 


"Ah,  signore,  I  am  a  reformed 
man  !  I  am  yours  for  the  rest  of 
my  life." 

"If  that  is  so,  you  need  fear 
nothing  for  the  past,  and  I  am 
sure  you  will  find  tailoring  a  much 
more  profitable  trade  than  sword- 
exercise.  But  you  must  hand  over 
all  your  weapons  to  Colonel  Bentz, 
and  all  your  papers  to  me." 

"  Per  r  amor  di  Dio  /  but  there 
is  enough  to  hang  us  all ! " 

"Signore  Sarto,  you  will  please 
to  understand  that  I  am  not  ad- 
mitting you  to  a  capitulation.  I 
am  giving  you  commands,  which 
you  will  disobey  at  your  peril." 

Poor  Maestro  Longo  was  crushed 
again.  "  Certainly,  certainly,"  he 
murmured.  "  My  life  is  in  your 
Excellency's  hands.  I  will  give 
up  all,  all.  I  trust  to  your  Ex- 
cellency's generosity." 

Thereupon  the  General  unlocked 
the  door,  and  desired  two  officers 
to 'go  with  Maestro  Longo  to  his 
house  and  seize  all  his  arms  and 
papers.  It  was  a  wonderful  find  ! 
Six  hundred  stilettoes,  260  stand 
of  firearms,  were  handed  over  to 
the  military  authorities,  and 
Maestro  Longo  himself  brought 
the  papers,  books,  and  diplomas; 
and  what  was  his  joy  and  relief 
when  he  saw  them  blazing  in  the 
grate,  while  he,  with  tape  and 
scissors,  was  employed  in  measur- 
ing the  General  for  two  new  uni- 
form coats  and  several  pairs  of 
pantaloons  ! 

Two  years  later,  a  family  letter 
from  Naples  says :  "I  expect 
Richard  here  in  about  a  month. 
He  has  been  selected  by  the  King 
for  an  important  commission  in 
the  island  of  Sicily,  a  most  honour- 
able and  flattering  appointment." 
A  very  unfortunate  appointment 
for  the  General  it  turned  out,  as 
we  shall  see;  though  at  the  time 
it  was  considered  a  matter  of  con- 
gratulation. "  You  speak,  my  dear 

VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCXLVI. 


General,  of  returning  to  England," 
says  the  Minister  De  Medici. 
"You  don't  expect  me  to  agree 
to  that,  I  hope.  You  may  leave 
the  province  of  Lecce  perhaps,  but 
the  King  counts  on  you  for  another 
mission.  .  .  .  You,  who  are  so 
attached  to  the  King  and  your 
other  friends,  will  surely  put  by 
the  thought  of  going  away,  out 
of  kindness  to  both."  And  again, 
"You  will  see  in  the  new  com- 
mission destined  to  you  by  his 
Majesty  a  striking  proof  of  his 
affection  and  confidence.  Let  me 
be  the  first  to  congratulate  you." 
While  Sir  William  a  Court,  British 
Minister  to  the  Court  at  Naples, 
writes,  "I  was  very  glad  to  hear 
from  De  Medici  that  you  were 
to  be  sent  to  assume  the  com- 
mand at  Palermo.  It  is  an 
honourable  thing  for  you,  and  I 
hope  will  be  attended  with  solid 
advantage." 

When  King  Ferdinand  was  in 
exile  in  Sicily  he  had  been  ready 
to  promise  anything — civil  liberty, 
reduced  taxation;  had  flattered 
the  Carbonari,  and  promised  ob- 
livion for  all  past  offences  against 
the  law ;  but  at  the  same  time, 
when  the  Sicilian  Parliament  re- 
fused to  give  him  as  much  money 
as  he  asked  for,  he  sold  the 
Communal  lands ;  and  when  the 
Parliament  protested  against  this 
infraction  of  the  old  Sicilian  Con- 
stitution, he  put  several  of  the 
members  into  prison.  When  he 
was  brought  back  to  his  kingdom, 
"having  learnt  nothing  and  for- 
gotten nothing,"  he  had  a  heavy 
bill  to  pay  to  his  Austrian  allies, 
who  had  put  him  there,  and  that 
of  course  meant  fresh  taxation  to 
his  already  overburdened  people. 
"There  are  fresh  difficulties  at 
Palermo,"  writes  Sir  W.  a  Court, 
April  1819.  "Another  regiment 
was  sent  off  in  a  hurry  yesterday. 
The  King's  journey  is  postponed 


266 


TheEndof  the  Story. 


[Aug. 


sine  die.  The  Hereditary  Prince 
returns  as  Viceroy  to  Palermo  as 
soon  as  the  Emperor  (of  Austria) 
is  gone."  But  apparently  it  was 
thought  wiser  that  the  Hereditary 
Prince  should  keep  out  of  the 
way;  and  in  the  following  year 
General  Naselli,  a  Neapolitan,  was 
appointed  Lieut. -General  of  Sicily 
— a  post  equivalent  to  that  of 
Viceroy — and  General  Church  to 
have  command  of  the  troops.  The 
chestnuts  were  in  the  fire,  and  it 
was  convenient  that  foreign  fingers 
should  pull  them  out ! 

General  Church  pressed  for  per- 
mission to  take  with  him  his  own 
foreign  troops,  well  known  and 
trusty,  as  he  was  aware  that  no 
dependence  was  to  be  placed  on 
the  Sicilians ;  but  this  was  not 
allowed.  They  were  wanted  at 
Naples;  but  they  should  be  sent, 
he  was  assured,  early  in  the  au- 
tumn. Before  that  time  the  re- 
volution in  Sicily  was  over,  and 
the  General  in  prison. 

He  reached  Palermo  July  5th, 
and  found  "  the  force  in  Palermo 
quite  insufficient  for  garrisoning 
that  city,  and  the  discipline  of  the 
troops  lax.  No  military  system 
whatever,  no  public  place  of  pa- 
rades, no  regular  mode  of  trans- 
mitting orders.  The  officers  always 
dressed  in  plain  clothes,  and  were 
scattered  in  different  lodgings  in 
and  out  of  the  town.  Nothing 
like  military  regularity  was  to  be 
seen  in  Palermo.  A  spirit  of  in- 
subordination reigned  in  several  of 
the  corps,  and  all  of  them  were  in 
some  degree  infected  with  Car- 
bonarism."  Palermo  was  crowded 
for  the  great  national  festival,  the 
Feast  of  Santa  Rosalia,  which 
lasts,  we  are  told,  five  days ;  and 
just  as  it  began,  a  despatch  from 
Naples  brought  the  news  of  the 
revolt  there,  of  the  new  constitu- 
tion for  the  kingdom  of  the  Two 
Sicilies.  The  sailors  of  the  boat 
landed,  all  with  tricolour  cockades 


in  their  hats ;  and  in  a  few  min- 
utes, as  if  by  magic,  all  the  crowd 
in  the  streets  had  mounted  the 
tricolour,  instead  of  the  royal 
white  ribbon,  and  were  cheering 
for  the  Constitution,  Liberty,  In- 
dependence. 

In  July  1820,  the  'Constitu- 
tional Journal '  of  Naples  pub- 
lishes an  article  giving  an  account 
of  what  happened.  It  laments 
the  excesses  which  took  place,  but 
throws  all  the  blame  on  the  "  fool- 
ish and  stupid  conduct  of  General 
Church,  a  stranger  to  us  by  birth 
and  feeling,  who  tore  from  the 
breast  of  a  peaceful  citizen  the 
yellow  ribbon.  The  tumult  would 
not  have  occurred  but  for  his  folly 
and  imprudence." 

This  yellow  ribbon  was  added  to 
the  tricolour  as  the  sign  of  inde- 
pendence. The  General  replies : 
"  It  is  a  fable,  an  absolute  falsity. 
Never  did  prudence  so  abandon 
me  that  I  should  risk  my  life 
among  the  infuriated  mob."  "  It 
was  my  singular  fate,"  he  adds, 
evidently  smarting  under  the  sense 
of  failure  and  injustice,  "  that  pre- 
cisely what  I  did  to  fulfil  my  duty 
is  imputed  to  me  as  a  crime,  and 
the  pride  and  honour  of  a  soldier 
cruelly  wounded  for  the  first  time 
in  my  life."  And  he  gives  his 
own  account  of  what  took  place. 

At  8  o'clock  P.M.,  July  14,  the 
Viceroy,  General  Naselli,  sent  to 
General  Church  with  news  of  the 
revolution  and  new  constitution 
at  Naples.  u  My  first  act  was 
to  tender  my  resignation  to  the 
Viceroy,  who  refused  it,  begging 
me  not  to  abandon  him  in  so 
critical  a  position,  until  the  arrival 
of  his  successor,  General  Fardelli, 
who  had  been  appointed  by  the 
revolutionary  Government."  Gen- 
eral Church  consented  to  with- 
draw his  resignation,  but  begged 
for  definite  orders.  Getting  none, 
and  finding  that  his  officers  were 
"  all  thunderstruck  at  the  pros- 


1894.] 


The  End  of  the  Story. 


267 


pect  of  affairs,  and  indifferent  to 
anything  but  their  own  safety," 
he  went  home,  desiring  Marshal 
O'Ferris,  chief  of  the  staff,  to  call 
on  the  Viceroy  at  six  next  morn- 
ing, and  request  definite  orders  in 
writing.  These  proved  to  be  "  to 
announce  to  the  troops  the  King's 
acceptance  of  the  new  constitution, 
and  to  order  them  to  wear  the 
tricolour  cockade,  as  worn  by  his 
Majesty  and  the  royal  family." 
The  troops  were,  however,  for- 
bidden to  add  the  yellow  ribbon 
for  the  independence  of  Sicily. 

The  orders  were  given  out,  and 
at  10  A.M.  all  functionaries,  mili- 
tary and  civil,  went  in  state  to 
the  Cathedral  Church  to  assist  at 
the  great  national  festival  of  Santa 
Rosalia.  The  streets,  the  Piazza, 
the  Cathedral  itself,  were  crowded 
with  people  wearing  the  four- 
coloured  ribbon,  and  shouting  for 
liberty  and  independence,  but 
there  was  no  disturbance ;  and 
the  service  over,  all  went  their 
way,  to  meet  again  at  the  Palace 
of  the  Senate  that  evening  accord- 
ing to  custom,  and  see  the  fire- 
works and  processions  from  the 
windows. 

At  first  all  went  well.  The 
Viceroy,  the  generals,  the  magis- 
trates, and  their  friends  chatted 
together  and  watched  the  crowds 
coming  and  going,  with  singing 
and  laughter,  bandying  of  jests 
and  shouting,  under  the  soft,  star- 
lit July  night.  But  presently 
there  was  a  rush  and  a  tumult, 
the  crowd  swayed  and  parted;  a 
noisy  procession,  headed  by  a  num- 
ber of  non-commissioned  officers 
and  soldiers,  marched  into  the 
Piazza,  stopping  under  the  palace 
windows,  waving  their  hats,  and 
shouting,  "Viva  I'  Independenza  di 
Siciliaf  Viva  la  Liberia!  Viva 
Robespierre  !  "  Then  they  marched 
on,  the  people  following  and  join- 
ing in  the  cry,  out  into  the  Cassaro, 
the  principal  street  of  Palermo. 


The  Viceroy  looked  uneasy.  "This 
conduct  on  the  part  of  soldiers  is 
infamous !  It  will  lead  to  mis- 
chief," said  he,  addressing  General 
Church ;  and  as  soon  as  the  Piazza 
was  clear,  he  took  leave  and  went 
home  with  his  guard  of  honour. 
Most  of  the  other  guests  slipped 
away,  and  Generals  Church  and 
Coglitore  and  Lieutenants  Quan- 
del  and  De  Nitis  were  left  alone. 

General  Church  proposed  to  fol- 
low the  procession,  and  order  the 
soldiers  back  to  barracks.  General 
Coglitore  demurred  to  this,  as  use- 
less and  dangerous ;  but  when  his 
friend  replied,  "It  can't  be  helped. 
It  is  my  duty.  We  had  better 
show  the  people  that  we  share  their 
pleasure,"  he  agreed  to  the  plan, 
and  the  four  soldiers  went  out  to- 
gether. They  reached  the  thronged 
and  brightly  lighted  Cassaro,  and 
found  some  difficulty  in  making 
their  way.  The  soldiers  had  been 
the  instigators  of  these  riotous  pro- 
ceedings, and  General  Church  con- 
trived to  approach  one  of  the  non- 
commissioned officers,  and  asked 
him  to  "  tell  his  comrades  not 
to  make  so  much  noise,  to  conduct 
themselves  with  more  regularity, 
and  when  they  had  reached  the 
end  of  the  street  to  return  to  their 
quarters ;  adding  that  I  had  no  ob- 
jection to  their  sharing  the  general 
joy  on  the  last  night  of  the  festival, 
but  that  the  manner  in  which  they 
were  acting  might  lead  to  disturb- 
ances." This  had  no  effect.  The 
soldiers  moved  on,  the  crowds 
closed  round,  the  four  officers  were 
pushed  and  hustled,  and  threatened 
with  death,  unless  they  would  join 
the  popular  cry.  General  Church 
consented  to  cry,  "  Viva  il  Re ! 
Viva  la  Costituzione  / "  but  as  to 
anything  else,  in  spite  of  General 
Coglitore's  advice,  "  Jamais  !  "  said 
the  sturdy  Briton.  c '  Pas  unmotf" 

The  tumult  rose  higher,  daggers 
were  brandished,  cries  arose  of 
"  Down  with  them  !  Death  to  all 


268 


The  End  of  the  Story. 


[Aug. 


tyrants !  Kill  them  !  away  with 
them  !  "  Fortunately  General  Oog- 
litore's  carriage  was  waiting  at  the 
entrance  of  the  Piazza,  and,  extri- 
cating themselves  from  the  crowd, 
they  managed  to  reach  it  and  jump 
in,  though  not  before  General  Cog- 
litore  had  been  wounded  by  a 
dagger,  and  General  Church  half 
stunned  by  a  stone.  Off  they  drove, 
full  speed,  followed  by  execrations, 
threats,  showers  of  stones,  and  beat- 
ing with  their  swords  those  who 
climbed  upon  the  carriage.  I  have 
before  me  an  old  print  representing 
the  scene :  the  open  carriage,  the 
coachman  whipping  up  his  horses, 
the  mob  clinging  on  or  following 
with  brandished  daggers  and  up- 
lifted stones ;  the  occupants  of  the 
carriage  in  their  cocked-hats;  while 
at  a  little  distance  stands  another 
carriage  and  pair,  and  coachman, 
with  the  utmost  placidity  ! 

After  a  while  they  distanced 
their  foes,  and  stopped  to  hold  a 
consultation.  General  Coglitore 
went  to  his  sister's  house,  prom- 
ising to  send  disguises  to  his 
friends;  but  they  heard  no  more 
of  him.  In  fact,  he  was  forced  to 
remain  in  hiding  for  several  days, 
and  could  do  nothing  for  them. 
They  were  close  to  a  small  fort, 
and  a  house  by  the  roadside  was 
inhabited  by  an  artilleryman. 
Lieutenant  De  Nitis  borrowed 
this  man's  clothes  and  went  to 
Palermo.  Church  and  Quandel 
took  refuge  in  the  fort,  which 
stood  on  a  rising  ground,  above 
the  sea,  and  consisted  of  a  loop- 
holed  wall,  and  open-rail  gate, 
without  even  a  lock.  The  ar- 
tilleryman stood  sentinel,  and  the 
officers,  still  in  dress  costume, 
took  shelter  within. 

So  the  night  passed,  and  the 
summer  morning  broke  blue  and 
golden.  People  began  to  pass  to 
their  business,  singing  and  whist- 
ling; fishing-boats  came  out  from 
the  neighbouring  villages,  but 


would  not  come  near,  in  spite  of 
signals,  for  fear  of  the  sanita 
(health  officer).  Groups  came 
from  Palermo,  and  the  fugitives 
could  hear  them  shouting  infor- 
mation about  what  happened  in 
the  town,  and  threats  as  to  what 
they  would  do  to  General  Giorgio 
when  they  caught  him.  Once 
some  lads  ran  up  the  slope,  look- 
ing everywhere  round  the  battery, 
but  not  into  it.  The  two  officers 
gave  themselves  up  for  lost,  and 
determined  to  sell  their  lives 
dearly.  They  crouched  close  to 
the  wall ;  and  after  a  good  deal  of 
shouting  to  a  group  of  men  on  the 
road  below,  the  lads  ran  away,  and 
the  fugitives  could  breathe  again. 
At  last  an  officer  in  plain  clothes 
came  to  them,  saying  that  a  gun- 
boat, sent  by  General  Naselli, 
was  on  its  way  to  rescue  them. 
It  soon  appeared,  but  dared  not 
land,  for  a  throng  of  people  as- 
sembled on  the  shore,  evidently 
watching  its  movements.  At  that 
moment,  most  fortunately,  a  little 
fishing-skiff  slowly  passed  beneath 
the  rock  on  which  the  fort  was 
built,  and  immediately  the  two 
officers  sprang  over  the  parapet 
and  into  the  boat,  "much  to 
the  terror  of  the  poor  fisherman, 
whom  we  obliged  to  row  us  to  the 
gunboat,  where  we  found  De 
Nitis  awaiting  us." 

The  gunboat  carried  the  Vice- 
roy's orders  that  General  Church 
should  be  taken  to  Trappani.  The 
General,  on  the  contrary,  wished 
to  return  to  Palermo,  and  try  his 
authority  with  the  troops  there. 
He  persuaded  Captain  La  B/occa 
to  wait  a  while,  and  sent  letters  by 
a  sailor  to  General  Naselli;  but 
the  man  came  back,  reporting  that 
the  troops  had  fraternised  with  the 
populace,  that  he  had  had  great 
difficulty  in  gaming  admittance  to 
the  palace,  and  that  the  Viceroy 
had  ordered  him  to  go  back  at 
once  and  tell  General  Church  that 


1894.] 


The  End  of  the  Story. 


269 


it  was  impossible  for  him  to  write, 
and  that  the  gunboat  must  in- 
stantly proceed  to  Trappani. 

"The  man  is  quite  right,  Gen- 
eral," said  De  Nitis,  in  French. 
"  I  was  in  the  town  this  morning, 
and  the  people  were  in  a  state  of 
fury.  It  is  useless  to  expect  any 
help  from  the  troops ;  there  is  no 
confidence  to  be  placed  in  them. 
They  would  have  given  you  up 
to  the  mob,  had  you  been  in 
Palermo." 

Meanwhile  the  sailors  were  get- 
ting up  the  anchor  and  putting  out 
to  sea;  whereat  General  Church 
seems  to  have  lost  his  temper,  and 
rated  the  Captain  soundly,  calling 
him  a  traitor,  and  declaring  that 
he  meant  to  throw  the  fugitives 
into  the  sea. 

"I  am  not  a  traitor,  General," 
said  Captain  La  Rocca;  "I  am 
your  friend.  I  dare  not  disobey 
my  orders,  which  are  to  go  to 
Trappani ;  and  I  can  give  you  no 
better  proof  of  my  fidelity  than 
the  assurance  that  I  and  my  crew 
have  left  our  wives  and  families 
in  Palermo,  in  danger  of  being 
murdered,  in  order  to  save  your 
life!" 

So  to  Trappani  they  went,  but 
found  no  welcome  there.  The 
Commandant  told  them  that  the 
soldiers  openly  declared  their  in- 
tention of  deserting  as  soon  as 
they  got  outside  their  barracks; 
that  the  officers  had  set  free  and 
brought  into  their  vendita  (club) 
certain  Carbonari  from  the  pro- 
vince of  Lecce  who  had  been  con- 
demned for  murder  by  the  Military 
Commission  there  of  two  years  ago, 
and  whom  "the  misguided  clemency 
of  the  Government "  had  exiled  to 
Sicily.  They  sailed  on  to  Marsala, 
where  they  were  most  hospitably 
received  by  a  Mr  Wodehouse,  who 
had  a  house  near  the  sea,  on  the 
outskirts  of  the  town.  He  ordered 
wine,  and  food,  and  ammunition 
to  be  got  ready  for  provisioning 


their  boat,  and  brought  them  all 
home  to  dine  with  him,  assuring 
them  they  need  fear  nothing  either 
for  themselves  or  for  him  :  for  in 
the  first  place,  the  people  of  Mar- 
sala owed  him  too  much  to  wish 
to  offend  him ;  and  in  the  second, 
he  had  workmen  enough  to  defend 
his  house  against  the  whole  popu- 
lation !  He  wanted  them  to  re- 
main with  him  a  day  or  two ;  but 
before  dinner  was  over,  a  messen- 
ger from  Palermo  brought  the 
news  that  the  galley-slaves  had 
been  set  free,  and  that  the  troops 
had  quarrelled  with  the  people,  and 
were  fighting  them  in  the  streets. 
Upon  this  the  General  thought  he 
saw  a  chance  of  recalling  the  sol- 
diers to  their  allegiance,  and,  in 
spite  of  all  remonstrance,  insisted 
upon  hurrying  off  with  the  gun- 
boat in  the  direction  of  Palermo. 
This  was  on  the  evening  of  the 
17th  July. 

On  the  way  they  called  at 
Trappani,  but  were  received  with 
threats  that  the  fort  would  fire  on 
the  gunboat  if  she  came  closer. 
So  they  went  on  their  way,  till  at 
dawn  they  came  to  the  point  of 
S.  Vito.  Here  were  three  gunboats 
and  an  armed  boat  at  anchor. 
Quandel  was  sent  to  parley  with 
them,  and  returned  with  the  cap- 
tain, who,  in  answer  to  the  usual 
inquiry  how  things  were  going  at 
Palermo,  said  all  was  lost.  The 
galley-slaves  were  let  loose,  the 
Viceroy  had  fled,  the  Palermitans 
had  armed  a  number  of  boats,  and 
no  one  was  allowed  to  land.  Then, 
turning  to  Captain  La  Rocca, 
"  Your  boat  is  under  my  orders," 
said  he. 

"  I  was  under  your  orders,"  was 
the  answer;  "but  having  been 
sent  on  a  special  service  by  the 
Viceroy  and  General  Staiti,  I  can 
obey  no  orders  but  theirs,  or  those 
of  his  Excellency  here,  for  whose 
safety  I  am  answerable." 

The   other   captain   scowled  at 


270 


The  End  of  the  Story. 


[Aug. 


this  reply,  and  getting  into  his 
little  boat,  took  a  hasty  leave  and 
returned  to  his  gunboat. 

"I  don't  like  his  manner,"  said 
La  Rocca,  "  and  those  sailors  are 
mostly  Palermitans.  We  are  much 
better  without  them." 

While  they  were  discussing  what 
was  best  to  be  done,  they  sud- 
denly observed  that  the  gunboats 
had  left  their  moorings,  and  were 
approaching  them — in  fact,  were 
but  forty  yards  away.  The  sailors 
seized  their  oars,  muttering  Tradi- 
mento,  and  began  to  row  as  hard 
as  they  could.  The  other  side 
shouted  to  them  to  stop,  or  every 
one  of  them  should  be  cut  to  pieces ; 
but  the  brave  fellows  took  no  notice 
of  the  threats.  They  were  out- 
numbered three  to  one,  says  the 
General :  no  blame  could  be  at- 
tached to  them  if  they  yielded  to 
so  superior  a  force,  and  to  give  up 
their  stranger  guests  would  ensure 
them  personal  safety  and  large 
rewards.  However,  they  entered 
into  the  race  gleefully,  shout- 
ing defiance  at  their  pursuers, 
while  every  epithet  that  Sicilian 
wit  or  rage  could  invent  was 
bandied  from  one  to  the  other. 
"  Trust  us,"  they  cried,  in  answer 
to  the  General's  words  of  en- 
couragement; "those  are  rascals, 
traitors,  Carbonari !  We  have 
better  hearts,  and  God  will  be  on 
our  side.  We  will  sooner  die  than 
give  you  up ; "  and  they  rowed  with 
all  their  might  out  of  the  line  of 
fire,  for  they  had  no  idea  that  their 
foes  happened  to  be  short  of  am- 
munition. 

It  had  been  a  perfectly  still 
morning,  hot  and  clear  as  July 
should  be,  but  very  exhausting  for 
the  oarsmen ;  and  now  a  breeze 
sprang  up,  and  they  hoisted  their 
sails,  cheerily  exclaiming  that 
theirs  was  the  fastest  sailing-boat 
in  Sicily,  and  that  they  should 
soon  leave  the  others  behind.  So 
it  proved,  and  after  three  hours' 


chase  the  enemies  slackened  sail, 
gave  up,  and  returned  home,  and 
with  great  joy  Captain  La  Rocca 
and  his  men  refreshed  themselves 
with  Mr  Wodehouse's  excellent 
wine :  then  came  thanks  and  mu- 
tual congratulations,  and  a  few 
hours  of  much-needed  sleep. 

On  July  23  they  reached  Naples, 
entering  the  Mola  with  the  King's 
colours  flying  from  the  mast. 
What  did  they  find  ?  "  The  Gov- 
ernment overturned,  the  King  and 
Prince  prisoners  in  their  palace,  the 
tricolour  flag  waving  everywhere. 
Our  boat  was  boarded  by  officers 
of  the  port,  and  the  King's  colours 
struck  by  them.  An  immense  mob 
was  collected  on  the  Mola,  exceed- 
ingly attentive  to  everything  going 
on  in  the  port,  and  apparently 
directing  all  the  movements  there. 
An  awning  over  our  boat  (the  sun 
being  very  hot)  fortunately  kept 
the  persons  in  her  from  being 
easily  seen.  In  an  hour  Major 
Staiti  came  with  orders  to  confine 
me  in  the  Castel  dell'  Ovo,  to  which 
I  was  conveyed  by  water."  There 
he  remained  four  months,  no  charge 
being  preferred  against  him. 

"  I  admire  the  spirit  of  rectitude 
which  brought  you  here,"  writes 
Sir  W.  a  Court,  "  and  lament  your 
imprudence  in  committing  your- 
self into  your  enemies'  hands.  In 
revolutionary  times  the  spirit  of 
reason  and  justice  is  hushed. 
Why  did  you  not  go  on  board  the 
English  frigate  in  the  bay  ?  How 
can  I  serve  you  1  I  have  no  power 
or  influence  now.  I  am  assured 
you  are  in  personal  safety  ;  but  is 
the  present  Government  master  of 
the  country  1 "  And  again,  "  The 
Parliament  is  composed  of  a  set 
of  Carbonari,  over  whom  neither 
the  Prince  nor  his  Ministers  have 
any  more  influence  than  you  or  I. 
I  know  not  what  advice  to  give 
you.  It  appears  to  me  that  you 
are  more  closely  watched  than 
formerly.  I  was  myself  stopped 


1894.] 


The  End  of  the  Story. 


271 


by  the  sentinel  the  other  day,  and 
only  released  by  the  sergeant.  It 
is  an  infamous  business  altogether. 
Campochiaro  himself  says  he  is 
ashamed  of  it." 

In  September  a  protest,  signed 
by  nineteen  English  nobles  and 
gentry  resident  at  Naples,  entreats 
Sir  W.  a  Court,  as  accredited 
Minister  of  England,  to  obtain 
the  liberation  of  their  fellow- 
countryman,  who  has  been  in 
prison  nine  weeks  without  any 
accusation  of  any  sort  being 
brought  against  him.  This,  they 
say,  is  "an  act  of  injustice  on  the 
part  of  the  Government  of  a  king- 
dom to  whose  prosperity  General 
Church  is  universally  admitted  to 
have  essentially  contributed.  The 
steady  principles  of  loyalty  and 
honour  which  have  distinguished 
him ;  his  tried  firmness  and  mod- 
eration upon  all  occasions,  especi- 
ally in  the  late  commotions  in 
Sicily ;  his  watchful  attention 
over  the  tranquillity  of  the  pro- 
vinces under  his  command ;  the 
successful  measures  he  adopted  to 
suppress  a  system  of  defalcation 
in  the  public  revenues, — claim  re- 
spect from  every  candid  mind, 
and  the  peculiar  hardship  of  his 
case  calls  in  the  strongest  manner 
for  the  support  and  protection  of 
his  country."  This  protest  was 
forwarded,  accompanied  by  a  pro- 
test of  Sir  W.  a  Court's  own,  in 
which  he  points  out  that  though  a 
Commission  had  been  appointed  to 
inquire  into  the  affair,  nothing 
had  been  done.  And  in  the  month 
of  November  a  family  letter  says  : 
"  Richard  is  still  in  prison,  though 
his  liberation  or  trial  has  been  de- 
manded officially  and  unofficially. 
The  Commission  appointed  last 
August  of  ten  civil  judges  and  ten 
generals  gave  no  opinion.  The 
Committee  appointed  by  Parlia- 
ment declared  that  he  had  done 
his  duty ;  yet  he  remains  in  prison. 
He  bears  his  change  of  circum- 


stances with  great  philosophy. 
He  lost  everything  at  Palermo — 
furniture,  books,  papers,  &c. — but 
the  Government  refuse  even  to  give 
him  his  pay;  besides,  he  has  in- 
curred a  debt  of  £3000  in  provid- 
ing clothes,  &c.,  for  his  troops." 

The  fact  was,  the  Carbonari 
ruled  in  Naples,  and  the  Govern- 
ment was  powerless.  A  letter 
(undated,  but  evidently  of  this 
time)  from  Sir  W.  a  Court  says : 
"  Your  affair,  you  may  depend  on 
it,  is  drawing  to  a  close — that  is 
to  say,  if  the  Carbonari  do  not 
overpower  the  Government  and 
the  well-meaning  part  of  the  com- 
munity to  prevent  your  release. 
Campochiaro  has  promised  to  de- 
mand an  interview  with  the  De- 
puties expressly  for  this  purpose." 
At  last  he  was  released,  and  the 
story  may  wind  up  with  a  letter 
from  Frederick,  Duke  of  York, 
and  Commander  -  in  -  Chief,  dated 
March  7,  1822:  "On  the  3d  in- 
stant I  received  with  great  satis- 
faction your  letter  with  its  en- 
closures, and  I  lose  no  time  in 
congratulating  you  upon  the  result 
of  an  investigation  which,  if  cor- 
rectly conducted,  could  indeed  be 
no  other  than  honourable  to  you, 
and  such  as  would  do  justice  to 
the  spirit  and  zeal  with  which  you 
had  discharged  your  duty  under 
very  trying  circumstances.  I 
never  doubted  that  your  conduct 
had  on  this  occasion  been  consis- 
tent with  the  character  which  you 
have  always  maintained." 

So  ended  this  chapter  in  General 
Church's  history ;  and  if  it  seems 
rather  a  dull  ending  to  a  dashing 
story,  he  had  at  least  plenty  of 
opportunity  in  later  life  to  make 
his  mark  during  the  wars  which 
made  Greece  free — Greece,  which 
became  the  country  of  his  adop- 
tion, and  where  he  finished  his 
days  in  peace  and  honour  fifty 
years  later. 

E.  M.  CHURCH. 


272 


A  Lucky  Day  in  a  Deer-forest. 


[Aug. 


A    LUCKY    DAY    IN    A    DEER-FOREST. 


DURING  the  year  1893  red-deer 
and  the  places  where  they  abide 
were  a  good  deal  in  evidence.  A 
Commission,  biassed  as  regards  the 
majority  of  its  members  from  its 
birth,  was  appointed  to  inquire 
into  matters  connected  with  them, 
and  it  made  many  laborious  jour- 
neys and  compiled  much  inter- 
esting information.  The  stalking 
season  was  an  unusually  good  one : 
it  began  well  and  ended  well,  and 
about  the  middle  of  it  the  famous 
Glen  Quoich  stag  was  slain,  and 
many  people  who  knew  little  about 
forests,  and  less  about  the  Inquisi- 
tion sitting  on  them,  were  inter- 
ested in  the  twenty-pointer.  The 
present  writer  has  more  than  once 
had  the  privilege  of  giving  in  these 
pages  an  account  of  days  when 
everything  went  awry  in  the  forest; 
when  the  mist  was  always  low  and 
the  wind  always  wrong,  and  stags 
seemed  to  be  clad  in  invisible 
armour,  impervious  to  an  express 
bullet.  He  trusts  that  he  will 
not  be  harshly  judged,  or  set  down 
as  a  praiser  of  himself  if  —  once 
in  a  while — he  shows  a  pleasant 
reverse  to  the  picture. 

One  sunny  morning  last  October 
a  big  wood  in  Easter  Ross  was 
being  driven  for  deer.  A  good 
many  men  were  walking  through 
it  in  a  more  or  less  regular  line ; 
not  beating  it  minutely,  as  for 
pheasants  or  rabbits,  but  —  an 
ignoramus  might  think  —  in  a 
casual  and  indifferent  way.  Four 
men  with  rifles  commanded  as  many 
of  the  most  likely  passes,  leading 
from  the  wood  to  the  hill,  and  with 
one  of  the  latter  was  a  lady. 

"  Yes — you  have  been  very  un- 
lucky, but  never  mind ;  this  is 
the  third  time,  and  the  third  time 
is  always  fortunate.  Besides,  I'm 
going  too." 


It  was  once  our  privilege  to 
hear  three  ladies  simultaneously 
make  such  an  announcement. 
They  were  all  young  and  beauti- 
ful, and  the  question  was,  How 
would  they  allot  themselves1?  There 
were  four  passes  to  watch  that  day 
also,  and  four  men  to  do  it,  and 
yet  every  one  of  those  dames  went 
with  the  present  writer.  It  would 
be  a  never-ending  source  of  con- 
gratulation and  happiness  to  that 
individual  if  he  could  by  any 
means  persuade  himself  that  they 
"  kept  company "  with  him  that 
chilly  day  because  they  liked  him 
best.  Alas  !  they  were  quite  frank 
in  what  they  said ;  they  made  no 
foolish  attempt  to  conceal  the 
truth.  The  top  pass  was  a  very 
good  one,  but  it  was  a  high  one, 
exposed  to  any  wind  that  chose  to 
blow  into  it  almost,  and  they  said 
they  did  not  intend  to  catch  colds. 
The  next  place  and  its  occupier 
was  rejected  for  the  same  reason. 
And  to  get  at  the  outlook  occupied 
by  the  third  rifle  it  was  necessary 
to  go  up  a  ride  in  a  steep  face, 
covered  with  exceedingly  rank 
heather,  trying  to  people  encum- 
bered with  petticoats.  And  so 
the  lowest  and  easiest-got-at  place 
was  chosen,  and  they  took  the 
man  who  happened  to  be  in  it 
with  what  equanimity  they  might. 

The  departure  of  that  martyr 
must  have  been  a  touching  sight 
to  witness  :  he  went  first,  conceal- 
ing his  emotions.  Then  followed 
a  keeper  with  the  rifle,  and  then — 
at  irregular  intervals,  discussing 
many  things — came  the  three  fair 
dames.  But  lest  perchance  any 
of  these  ladies  should  read  this 
account,  and  be  dissatisfied  with 
what  has  been  said  about  them, 
we  hasten  to  add  that  no  three 
daughters  of  Eve  could  possibly 


1894.] 


A  Luck1}/  Day  in  a  Deer-forest. 


273 


have  behaved  better  than  they  did 
during  the  whole  of  that  day. 
Any  desire  to  sally  forth  in  white 
petticoats  and  yellow  jackets  and 
flamingo  -  coloured  parasols  was 
checked  by  the  knowledge  and 
experience  of  one  of  them,  and 
no  doubt  by  an  innate  sense  of 
propriety  in  all.  We  reached  the 
pass,  we  established  the  three  in 
a  kind  of  nest  in  the  very  long 
heather,  and  then  we  judiciously 
moved  a  dozen  yards  away,  and 
sat  alone.  If  no  stags  came  out 
at  that  particular  place — and  none 
did  come — it  was  not  owing  to 
any  indiscretion  on  the  part  of 
the  covey.  If  occasionally  a  plain- 
tive voice  was  heard  through  the 
heather,  announcing  that  its  owner 
was  cold,  or  stiff,  c.nd  wanted  to 
jump  about  and  warm  herself,  a 
bit  of  stick  judiciously  thrown  in 
among  the  lot  always  brought 
silence;  and  a  very  small  bit  of 
chocolate  apiece  was  the  only  re- 
ward given  for  four  or  five  hours' 
patient  waiting.  And  so  it  was 
with  no  demur  at  all,  but  with 
cheerful  confidence  born  of  expe- 
rience, that  a  year  later  we  climbed 
to  a  higher  pass  in  the  same  great 
wood.  Indeed  our  companion  was 
no  ignoramus  about  deer  and  their 
ways;  she  was  herself  capable  of 
doing  a  hard  day's  work  in  a  real 
forest,  and  stopped  to  look  at  the 
view,  when  going  up  a  steep  hill- 
side, as  seldom  as,  or  seldomer  than, 
most  others  of  her  sex  with  whom 
we  are  acquainted.  It  was  much 
to  be  hoped  that  her  presence 
would  bring  a  change  in  the  luck, 
for  a  change  was  greatly  needed. 
Barking  roe  had  alarmed  deer  one 
day,  and  spoilt  a  certain  chance. 
A  little  clump  of  bushes  between 
us  and  a  good  stag,  and  a  danger- 
ous slant  of  wind,  had  been  too 
much  for  us  another :  after  some 
hours  of  patient  waiting  within 
rifle-shot,  we  had  to  give  it  up.  But 
the  luck  was  to  be  broken  to-day. 


So  we  sat  in  the  pleasant  sun- 
light, on  the  warm  side  of  the 
hill.  To  the  south  lay  the  Moray 
Firth,  backed  by  the  Grampians : 
nearer  at  hand  was  the  Black  Isle ; 
the  sun  shining  on  its  scores  of 
crofters'  houses  made  their  white- 
washed gables,  all  standing  in  the 
same  direction,  look  like  so  many 
tents.  In  the  immediate  fore- 
ground, stretching  down  to  the 
rapid  Orrin,  was  the  great  wood 
out  of  which  our  prey  was  to 
come.  It  was  a  beautiful  pass ; 
the  wood,  thick  below,  thinned 
out  here  into  scattered  stunted 
trees,  and,  supposing  the  deer 
came  where  they  were  expected 
to  come,  it  would  be  the  fault  of 
the  man  and  not  his  weapon  if 
they  all  got  safely  away.  For  a 
long  time  nothing  was  to  be  seen 
or  heard ;  then  three  or  four  roe 
made  their  appearance,  and  stood 
some  hundred  yards  below  the 
watchers.  They  were  suspicious 
and  uneasy,  and  uncertain  what 
to  do;  they  stood  quite  motion- 
less with  pointed  ears,  listening. 
Finally  they  decided  that  the 
wood  they  had  come  out  of  was 
safer  than  the  open  hill,  and  they 
went  back  into  it.  At  last  we 
heard  a  shot  or  two,  and  the  far 
faint  cry  of  the  beaters,  and  then  a 
gillie  came  and  said  we  must  shift 
our  ground  and  take  up  another 
position.  Here  again  we  waited 
an  hour  or  two,  and  lunched. 

When  the  line  came  up  to  us 
the  second  time  we  learned  that 
we  had  been  moved  too  soon,  We 
heard  —  without  much  surprise, 
indeed,  but  with  great  s6rrow — 
that  an  hour  after  we  had  left 
the  first  watching-place  two  good 
stags  had  come  out  of  the  wood, 
and  had  stood  for  a  long  time  just 
in  the  very  place  where  they  were 
expected  to  stand,  within  easy 
shot  of  our  pass.  It  was  no  good 
saying  anything — though  we  said 
it — and  it  was  no  use  blaming  the 


274 


A  Lucky  Day  in  a  Deer-forest. 


[Aug. 


gillie — though  we  did  blame  him  : 
he,  poor  man,  had  sinned  with  the 
best  intentions,  and  was  as  much 
put  out  as  any  one  by  the  catas- 
trophe. But  John  Burns,  the 
head -keeper,  said  that  there  was 
something  uncanny  in  the  air,  and 
that  it  was  no  good  going  out 
after  deer  any  more.  And  he  was 
confirmed  in  his  opinions  by  the 
way  in  which  we  were  again  done 
the  following  day.  On  a  bit  of 
green  on  the  moor,  which  had  once 
been  worked  by  some  long  ago  dead 
and  forgotten  man,  we  saw  a  stag. 
When  we  got  within  shot  of  the 
green  the  stag  had  disappeared. 
But,  on  the  very  spot  on  which 
he  had  been  standing,  sat  a  huge 
rabbit.  One  of  its  ears  stuck  up 
and  one  lay  down,  and  there  was  a 
something  in  the  expression  of  its 
countenance  which  told  us  we  were 
looking  at  no  ordinary  beast.  No 
doubt  those  possessed  of  that  sixth 
sense  we  sometimes  hear  of  would 
have  been  able  to  make  out  behind 
it  the  shadowy  form  and  horns  of 
a  stag. 

"We  must  go  and  shoot  par- 
tridges to-morrow,"  said  Mr  Burns. 

These  proceedings  took  place  on 
a  big  shooting  which  was  not  a 
regular  forest,  and  then  we  changed 
our  ground  and  made  a  long  jour- 
ney westward  to  a  district  where 
stalking  is  made  a  daily  business 
and  not  a  mere  interlude;  where 
ladies  come  sometimes,  but  not 
very  often;  where  pheasants  and 
partridges  are  quite  unknown,  and 
grouse  are  left  undisturbed,  and 
even  ptarmigan  are  very  seldom 
attacked.  Thirty -four  miles  by 
road  and  six  by  water  took  us 
into  a  country  very  different  to 
that  we  had  left  behind  on  the 
coast :  it  would  be  difficult  to  find 
a  greater  contrast  than  that  be- 
tween the  house  we  left  in  the 
morning  and  its  far-away  lodge 
where  we  slept  at  night. 

There  are  three  lodges  in  Monar  : 


one  of  them  is  never  occupied — 
has,  we  believe,  never  been  slept 
in  since  it  was  built  some  forty 
years  ago  save  by  a  passing  tramp, 
who  even  in  this  solitary  country 
sometimes  makes  his  appearance. 
It  is  a  somewhat  eerie  -  looking 
place  on  a  gloomy  day,  lying  in 
the  middle  of  a  small  thick  fir- 
wood  close  to  the  loch-side,  with 
no  other  habitations  near ;  bearing 
perhaps  some  resemblance  to  that 
"  lonely  lodge  "  where  the  Heir  of 
Lynne  repaired,  when  all  his  gear 
was  spent  and  all  his  hope  gone. 

This  is  the  middle  lodge.  That 
on  the  east  side  is  a  cheery  little 
house,  in  which  a  man  might  live 
all  the  year  round,  and  be  very 
comfortable.  But  when  you  get 
to  the  third  house,  away  to  the 
westward,  you  leave  behind  all 
luxuries  as  far  as  outdoor  arrange- 
ments go — all  gravel  walks,  and 
flower-beds,  and  trees,  except  a 
few  stunted  things  just  round  the 
building.  There  is  a  boat-house 
and  a  venison  larder,  and  in  place 
of  flowers  and  suchlike  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  the  house  is  orna- 
mented during  the  stalking  season 
by  many  skins  of  stags,  hanging 
on  fences  and  bushes  to  dry.  The 
loch  in  high  water  comes  pretty 
close  to  the  front  door.  It  is  in 
the  very  heart  of  deer-forests,  and 
is  as  solitary  a  place  as  it  would 
be  easy  to  find.  On  any  night  in 
October  you  will  hear  the  long- 
drawn-out  roar  which  stags  make 
at  this  season — sometimes  mourn- 
ful, sometimes,  we  have  heard  men 
say  who  have  listened  to  both,  as 
like  the  roar  of  a  lion  as  any  sound 
can  be.  In  winter  there  is  plenty 
of  company  round  about  —  hun- 
dreds of  hinds  come  down  here  for 
shelter  and  grass ;  they  are  never 
shot  or  disturbed,  and  in  gratitude 
for  the  consideration  shown  them 
they  send  out  in  the  spring,  not 
only  to  their  own  forest  but  to 
all  the  forests  round,  hundreds  of 


1894.] 


A  Lucky  Day  in  a  Deer-forest. 


275 


young  stags.  If  there  was,  at  any 
rate  in  very  bad  weather,  some- 
thing sombre  about  the  place,  it 
never  affected  the  spirits  of  those 
who  live  there  during  the  first 
autumn  months.  To  a  stalker  it 
was  an  ideal  home;  and  for  our 
part  we  associate  that  little  loch- 
washed,  wind-swept,  weather-beaten 
building  with  the  happiest  days  we 
have  ever  spent.  In  such  a  place, 
if  anywhere,  a  man  can  for  a  time 
shake  off  his  troubles  and  forget 
unpleasant  things. 

To  this  lodge,  then,  one  dull 
October  evening  we  came  across 
the  hill,  and  we  met  there  an  old 
friend  whose  record  of  sport  dur- 
ing the  previous  week  had  been  at 
once  our  admiration  and  our  envy. 
Our  friend  that  day  had  killed 
two  stags,  and  we,  under  Murdoch 
Macphail's  skilful  guidance,  had 
the  same.  One  of  them  was  per- 
fectly black  with  rolling  in  the 
peat-hags  :  he  really  looked  more 
like  a  great  bear  on  the  yellow 
hillside  than  a  red-deer.  It  would 
be  wearisome  to  give  an  account 
of  each  day's  sport ;  we  both  had 
ample.  The  weather  was  toler- 
able, the  wind  fairly  favourable, 
and  neither  of  us  came  in  any 
night  "clean."  And  so  we  pass 
on  to  the  last  day  of  the  season. 

High  up  above  the  lodge  there 
is  a  great  rock,  or  rather  cliff, 
called  "  Creagan  Dhu,"  below 
which  at  this  time  of  the  year, 
if  the  wind  is  right,  there  is  often 
a  stag.  There  was  one  on  the 
eventful  morning  of  which  we  are 
giving  an  account ;  but  he  was 
not  in  a  very  good  place,  and  we 
decided  to  move  the  deer  to  the 
rifle  instead  of  carrying  out  the 
reverse  process.  So  Angy,  an- 
other of  Macphail's  sons,  went  up 
to  the  top  and  round  to  let  them 
have  his  wind,  and  we  took  up 
our  position  above  the  line  which, 
when  shifted  from  their  quarters 
here,  they  generally  took,  and 


patiently  waited,  sitting  close  to- 
gether, so  as  to  be  able  to  talk  in 
whispers.  Far  below  us  stretched 
the  dull  yellowish  flat,  through 
which  a  river,  so  sluggish  in 
places  as  almost  to  turn  on  itself, 
wound  and  twisted  to  the  big  lake. 
Loch  Monar  and  the  long  chain  of 
the  Gedd  lochs  in  Pait  wore  a  sul- 
len, lead-coloured  appearance ;  and 
around  us  for  very  many  miles, 
as  far  as  the  eye  could  see  in  every 
direction,  stood  up  the  great  brown 
solemn  hills.  Angy  did  his  work 
properly;  and  at  last  .the  deer 
arrived  —  a  string  of  hinds  and 
calves  first,  trotting  along  with  the 
delicate  high  action  which  always 
makes  one  think  of  King  Agag.  The 
oldest  and  most  experienced  hind 
led  the  company :  her  long  ears 
were  well  pointed  forward;  she 
moved  as  if  she  was  stepping  on 
eggs.  The  wind,  which  blew  fair 
on  her  tail,  told  her  of  danger 
behind  :  she  peered  eagerly  in 
front,  but  did  not  pay  much  at- 
tention to  what  was  above,  and 
never  noticed  the  two  grey -clad 
figures  sitting  so  motionless  among 
the  old  grey  stones.  Then  passed 
out  more  hinds,  and  after  them 
the  stag;  he  ambled  leisurely 
along,  looking  rather  bored  at 
having  to  leave  the  comfortable 
shelter.  Yet  other  hinds  appeared, 
quite  close,  and  they  saw  us,  and, 
after  one  frightened  look  to  make 
sure,  bolted.  The  stag,  who  was 
a  good  way  farther  down  the  hill, 
saw  them  galloping,  and  instead 
of  making  off  too — as  a  wise  beast 
would  have  done — stopped  for  a 
moment,  looking  up  towards  us. 
And  then — without  any  suffering 
accompanying  the  act — he  died: 
one  tremendous  shock,  and  his 
troubles,  if  he  had  any,  and  his 
life,  came  to  an  end. 

As  he  rolled  over  and  over  down 
the  hill,  a  second  stag  came  in  sight, 
some  thirty  yards  below  the  first. 
All  the  hinds  were  wildly  bolting 


276 


A  Lucky  Day  in  a  Deer-forest. 


[Aug. 


now,  but  they  were  bolting  in 
every  direction;  and  though  this 
stag  knew  well  enough  that  things 
were  wrong,  he  had  been  round 
the  corner  of  the  rock  when  the 
shot  was  fired,  and  had  not  a  good 
idea  of  where  it  came  from,  and 
was  not  sure  which  lot  of  deer  to 
follow.  So  he  too,  undecided,  came 
to  a  halt,  wildly  staring  about. 

There  are  some  people  who  tell 
you  that  enough  is  as  good  as  a 
feast,  and  that  one  stag  in  a  day 
should  satisfy  the  most  greedy 
sportsman ;  but  such  folk  forget 
that  every  day  does  not  give  its 
quota, — wrong  winds  and  mists, 
and  perhaps  a  temporary  scarcity 
of  deer,  account  for  many  blanks. 
Perhaps  such  a  moralist  would 
find  it  hard  to  carry  out  his 
theories,  if  he  sat  on  a  hillside 
with  a  rifle  in  his  hand,  and  was 
capable  of  using  it.  This  second 
stag  offered  a  fair,  almost  broad- 
side, shot,  and  he  too  parted  with 
his  life  as  quickly  and  painlessly 
as  his  brother.  Then  we  went 
down  to  look  at  them  :  the  first 
was  a  pretty  eight  -  pointer,  and 
was  found  later  to  weigh  exactly 
fifteen  stone ;  the  second  had  also 
eight  points,  but  was  not  so  heavy. 

There  is — if  the  doer  of  deed 
be  a  novice — something  a  little 
solemn  in  going  up  to  a  great 
animal  which  he  has  killed.  A 
few  moments  earlier  and  the  deer, 
if  it  had  been  unable  to  get  from 
you— if  it  had  been  cornered  in 
any  way — would  almost  have  died 
with  fear  at  your  approach.  Now 
you  can  put  your  hand  on  his 
shaggy  sides,  and  touch  his  horns, 
and  pull  straight  his  long  cold 
grey -brown  legs.  Some  people 
say  they  never  shoot  a  stag  with- 
out a  feeling  of  regret.  It  is  a 
hateful  thing  to  shoot  a  hind 
which  has  a  calf,  and  if  many 
hinds  have  to  be  killed  this  must 
sometimes  happen  even  with  the 
greatest  care.  For  our  part  we 


experience  no  great  satisfaction  in 
shooting   even    the    most    barren 
hind.     But  the   measure  of  such 
folk's  sorrow  is  to  be  not  unfairly 
gauged  by   what    they    do  after- 
wards,   and   by   the   hatred   with 
which  they  look  on  a  stag   they 
have   missed.      For   ourselves  we 
have  never  spared  a  stag — a  good 
stag — from    any  motives   of   com- 
miseration ;  if  he  has  got  off  un- 
scathed it  was   to  the  hand  and 
eye   of   the    rifleman   he   was  in- 
debted, not  to  any  pity  of   heart. 
The  fight  is  not  an  unequal  one : 
the  deer,  in  a  wild  state  at  any 
rate,  does  not  use  his  arms  in  it ; 
but  the  cunning  and  subtlety  and 
strength   which    he    sets    against 
you  often  turn  the  balance  in  his 
favour.       It     is     otherwise    with 
smaller  beasties ;  sometimes — once 
in  a  day's  shoot — it  is  a  satisfaction 
to  us  to  spare  a  rabbit.      He  is 
sitting   amongst    his    rushes;    we 
catch  sight  of  him  just  in  time  to 
avoid  putting  him  up.     There  is 
something  touching   in   the  little 
creature's  appearance ;  his  ears  are 
set  as  far  back  as  possible ;  noth- 
ing but  a  roller  could  press  him 
nearer  to  the  ground  than  he  is 
now;  his  eyes,  if  they  are  to  be 
seen,  have  something  appealing  in 
them.     We  let  him  sit,  and  go  on, 
and  say  nothing  about  his  affairs, 
hoping  that  the  beaters  on  either 
side  did  not  notice  the  short  inter- 
view, dimly  conscious  that  perhaps, 
after  all,  one  has  done  something 
to  be  a  little  ashamed  of^     Is  it 
quite  honest,  for  instance,  when  a 
friend  asks  you  to  come  and  shoot 
his  rabbits,  that  you  should  know- 
ingly spare  even  one  in   a  day? 
Perhaps — in  some  far  distant  age 
— when  things  have  got  mixed  and 
reversed,  and  rabbits  walk  about 
with  Maxim  guns  on  their  shoul- 
ders to  prey  on  man,  it  may  be 
accounted  for  some  good  to  a  small 
shivering  creature  that  he,  in  his 
time   and   opportunity,   was   soft- 


1894.] 


A  Lucky  Day  in  a  Deer-forest. 


277 


hearted  enough  to  spare  even  one 
thing  that  was  in  his  power. 

We  said  just  now  that  a  stag 
does  not  fight  mankind  with  his 
arms — which  are  his  horns.  This 
is  true  when  he  is  in  a  wild  state ; 
when  he  is  in  a  tame  state  he  will 
sometimes  fight  you  to  the  death 
— to  your  death.  For  if  you  go 
into  a  paddock  or  enclosure  where 
there  is  a  savage  tame  stag  kept 
for  breeding  or  any  purpose,  and 
you  are  unprovided  with  a  gun  or 
rifle,  your  death  is  certain.  If 
Scotland  was  paved  with  gold  a 
foot  thick,  and  we  could  have  it 
all  for  passing  unarmed  through 
such  a  place,  we  should  think  the 
reward  very  poor  compared  with 
the  service  asked.  To  follow  a 
wounded  tiger  into  cover  or  crawl 
into  a  bear's  den  to  shoot  him 
there  would  be  much  less  risky ; 
you  might  conceivably  escape 
them,  but  you  would  be  a  doomed 
man  if  once  caught  in  the  quarters 
of  such  a  deer.  There  is  another 
peculiarity  about  these  animals — 
they  will  sometimes  injure  you 
after  they  are  dead.  One  of  our 
host's  sons  came  down  during  this 
particular  stalking  season  with  a 
cut  on  his  right  hand.  By  long 
practice  he  had  taught  himself  to 
jam  open  his  Henry  rifle,  get  the 
empty  case  out  and  another  cart- 
ridge in,  with  wonderful  quick- 
ness. That  a  hole  should  be  cut 
in  the  palm  of  his  hand  by  con- 
stantly carrying  out  this  opera- 
tion was  to  him  a  matter  of  in- 
difference ;  speed  was  wanted,  and 
the  hand  had  to  take  care  of  itself. 
And  other  little  cuts  and  scratches 
were  acquired  during  his  scrambles. 
Then,  from  handling  deer — prob- 
ably their  horns — some  subtle  sub- 
stance got  into  the  small  wounds, 
and  he  was  fortunate,  though  he 
hardly  thought  so  at  the  time,  in 
getting  through  a  sharp  attack  of 
blood-poisoning  with  no  greater 
loss  than  giving  up  some  shooting 


engagements  and  staying  for  a  few 
days  in  bed. 

To  be  in  possession,  before  half- 
past  nine,  of  two  stags,  is  to  be  in 
possession  also  of  a  large  amount 
of  positive  happiness, — happiness 
to  be  added  to  indefinitely  when 
you  think  of  the  possibilities  of  a 
day  begun  so  well.  The  deer- 
pony  men  had  been  spying  us  from 
the  lodge,  and  were  soon  on  their 
way,  but  long  before  they  arrived 
we  were  high  up  on  the  mountain 
above,  on  the  blunt  rounded  ridge 
which  runs  up  to  the  stony  top  of 
Spiegen.  We  had  spied  a-  good 
stag  in  Oorrie  Hallie  in  the  morn- 
ing. The  great  bend  in  the  moun- 
tain had  long  cut  him  off  from  us, 
but  when  we  came  in  sight  of  the 
place  he  was  still  there,  and  our 
proceedings  at  "  the  Rock  "  all  un- 
known to  him.  So  we  got  high  up 
on  the  huge  grey  stony  saddle,  and 
prepared  to  come  down  on  the  top 
of  him,  and  just  then  we  heard  a 
rifle-shot.  To  get  at  the  man 
who  fired  it — our  lodge  companion 
— would  have  meant  several  thou- 
sand feet  of  up  and  down,  and  a 
good  bit  of  glen  to  cross,  but  the 
sound  came  in  a  quicker  way. 
Macphail  thought  the  report  might 
disturb  our  deer,  so  we  ran,  squint- 
way,  across  the  face  of  the  corrie, 
still  keeping  high,  so  as  to  have 
command  of  the  ground,  and  to  be 
able  to  cut  them  off  if  the  start 
made  them  make  for  the  Sanctuary 
— Strath  Mhulich — which  lay  in  a 
bare  tarn-filled  glen  on  the  right. 

Easy  and  graceful  were  the 
movements  of  two  out  of  that 
party  of  three  as  they  passed 
along  the  hillside.  For  the  hun- 
dredth time  we  admired  the  ele- 
gance with  which  a  man  used  all 
his  life  to  steep  hills  can  run  on 
them.  Farquhar  Macphail  is  not 
a  very  young  man;  some  would 
call  him  old ;  many  at  his  time  of 
life  would  think  that  they  had 
earned  a  right  to  sit  in  their  gar- 


278 


A  Lucky  Day  in  a  Deer-forest. 


[Aug. 


dens  and  smoke  their  pipes,  and 
talk  of  what  they  had  done.  With 
beautiful  ease  he  ran  along  the 
steep,  sharp-pointed,  stone-covered 
ground ;  he  never  seemed  to  hurry, 
and  seldom  cared  to  use  his  stick, 
which  stuck  for  the  most  part  out 
behind  him,  wagging  like  a  tail. 
This  writer  flatters  himself  that  if 
the  occasion  arose  he  could  run 
down  a  pretty  steep  hillside  in  a 
way  which  would,  at  any  rate,  ex- 
tort the  admiration  of  people  who 
did  not  know  very  much  about 
good  hill-work.  But  when  he  has 
been  toiling  after  Macphail,  either 
up  or  down,  he  has  always  felt  as 
if  he  was  a  very  poor  copy  of  an 
admirable  picture — that  he  accom- 
plished with  more  or  less  difficulty 
and  clumsiness  what  the  other  did 
with  no  difficulty  at  all.  Angy 
came  trotting  along  contentedly 
behind :  we  always  felt  thankful, 
when  out  with  that  boy  or  his 
brother  Murdoch,  that  they  had  a 
good  heavy  double-barrelled  rifle 
on  their  shoulders  to  carry  in 
addition  to  themselves  ;  they  have 
the  blood  and  the  teaching  of  their 
father,  and  less  than  a  third  of  his 
years.  There  is  always  a  great 
difference  between  a  fairly  good 
amateur  and  a  first-class  hill-man ; 
witness  Swiss  guides :  you  may 
fancy  when  you  are  roped  on  to 
them,  and  do  a  hard  day's  work 
with  them,  that  you  are  nearly  as 
good  as  they.  It  is  when  you  are 
off  the  rope,  and  watch  them  un- 
hampered, that  you  see  the  differ- 
ence. 

Macphail  was  right;  when  we 
were  able  to  see  the  place  where 
the  deer  had  been,  we  saw  the  place 
only — they  had  disappeared.  So 
we  had  to  go  on  too — hurrying  a 
little  more  now,  keeping  a  very 
sharp  look-out  below,  lest  we 
should  run  into  them  :  there  were 
great  swells  and  rounded  dips  in 
the  ground,  and  often  it  was  im- 
possible to  see  many  yards,  but  we 


hit  off  the  right  place;  the  deer 
were  coming  up,  squinting  along 
for  the  corrie.  On  a  little  farther, 
and  then  there  was  the  quick  sit- 
ting down,  the  hurried  question 
and  answer,  the  whipping  of  the 
rifle  out  of  its  cover — so  much 
easier  when  it  is  a  hammerless  ; 
the  shoving  two  spare  cartridges 
into  Angy's  ready  hand — in  case 
of  need.  Then,  fifty  yards  of  care- 
ful slipping  down  the  wet  hillside, 
and  we  were  in  position,  and  with- 
in fifty  yards  of  the  stag.  And  he 
too  went  down ;  the  gods  were  on 
our  side  that  day.  He  got  a 
second  bullet  and  then  a  third,  and 
then  he  was  ours.  Three  stags  be- 
fore eleven  o'clock. 

When  you  have  crawled  or 
slipped  into  the  place  from  which 
to  take  the  shot  and  raise  the  rifle 
to  fire  there  are  two  frames  of 
mind  in  which  to  be  in.  To  think 
within  oneself,  "I  hope  I  shall 
hit  him  ! "  is  one.  The  other  is 
the  best;  it  is  to  clench  one's 
teeth,  and  grip  the  rifle  hard  and 
say,  "By  Jupiter  !  I'll  get  a  bullet 
into  you  somewhere,  anyhow  !  "  If 
the  stag  drops  instantaneously  to 
the  shot,  you  cannot  do  better  than 
put  another  into  him  as  speeo^ly 
as  may  be.  For  he  is  very  likely 
only  grazed,  stunned  for  a  mo- 
ment, and  if  nothing  more  is  done 
to  stop  him,  may  be  off  and  away, 
and  never  seen  again.  A  deer 
shot  in  the  heart  seldom  drops  at 
once  ;  but  his  movements  then  tell 
any  one  who  has  had  a  little  ex- 
perience that  he  is  safe.  A  bul- 
let through  the  head  or  neck,  or 
through  the  backbone,  is  of  course 
instantly  fatal,  and  the  deer  will 
fall  at  once ;  but  so  he  will  if  he 
is  just  grazed  on  the  point  of  the 
shoulder  or  on  the  back,  and  the 
beast  is  none  the  worse  for  these 
wounds.  How  often  has  the  man 
who  writes  this  stormed  and 
raged  —  we  might  use  stronger 
words  —  at  himself,  for  not  doing 


1894.' 


A  Lucky  Day  in  a  Deer-forest. 


279 


what  he  knew  he  ought  to  have 
done;    for    leaving   a   well-begun 
bit  of  work  unfinished,  and  losing 
it  all  when  it  was  within  his  power 
to    complete    it    with    certainty ! 
The   most   experienced    men   will 
sometimes  make  mistakes  when  a 
stag  first  tumbles  over;    will  say 
"  All  right !  "  when  it  is  all  wrong. 
You  get  your  chance,  and  the  deer 
falls  and  lies  where  he  fell :  but, 
if  the  ground  is  steep,  a   wriggle 
or  a  kick  may  lift  him  over  some 
stone  which  is  keeping  him,  or  out 
of  some  small  hollow,  and  he  may 
roll  for  hundreds  of  yards  more ; 
if  the  place  is  not  actually  precipi- 
tous the  fall  and  the  bullet  com- 
bined may  do  him  no  great  harm, 
and,  after    cautiously  descending, 
and  carefully  peering  into  this  or 
that  hole  or  corner  for  your  dead 
or  dying  stag,  you  may  suddenly 
hear    an    impatient     exclamation 
from  the  stalker,  and  the  snapping 
open  of  a  glass,  and  then  realise, 
with  a  disgust  that  is  hard  to  de- 
scribe, that  your  deer  has  pulled 
himself  together,  and  is  off — a  mile 
away — never  to  be  seen   by  you 
again.     This  is  a  maddening  inci- 
dent in  a  day's  work,  and  it  can 
often   be  avoided :    if   your   stag, 
however  bad  he  may  seem,  show 
any  signs  of  feebly  struggling  to 
his  feet  on  to  his  legs,  shoot  him 
again;  another  loud  crack,  where 
there  has  been  already  one  or  more, 
does  not  do  much  harm,  and  if  you 
get  the  ball  into  the  neck  or  ribs, 
the  venison  is  little  the  worse.    We 
once  had  hold  of  a  stag's  foreleg, 
and  thought  he  was  dead,  and  the 
knife  was  just  at  his  throat  when 
he  gave  such  unmistakable  signs  of 
life  that — we  confess  it — we  fled 
out  of  his  way.     That  stag  went 
far,   and  it  was  good  luck  alone 
which  let  us  get  at  him  again.     We 
have  heard  of  a  deer  going  off  with 
the  knife  actually  in  his  throat, 
and  never  a  one  of  the  two  of  them 
ever  being  seen  again. 


We  heard  a  shot  now,  on  the 
opposite  south  face,  and  then  a 
second,  and  then  a  third.  A  care- 
ful search  with  the  glass  showed 
that  our  neighbour  had  also  been 
fortunate,  and  had  finished  his 
stag  up  on  the  skyline,  close  to 
the  Attadle  march,  and  then  we 
knew  that  there  was  at  any  rate 
one  other  man  in  the  world  who  at 
that  particular  moment  was  happy. 
A  curious  little  natural  phenom- 
enon had  been  in  evidence  between 
these  two  points  a  few  days  before. 
The  same  man  fired  a  shot,  and 
immediately  heard  another,  as  it 
were  an  echo,  from  the  other  side 
of  the  glen.  He  was  afraid  he 
might  have  disturbed  deer  his 
host  was  after,  and  on  meeting 
the  latter  at  night  said  so.  "Oh!" 
said  the  other,  "  but  I  fired  first." 
The  truth  was  that  they  had  fired 
simultaneously,  and  the  time  it 
took  the  sound  to  travel  made  each 
think  he  had  been  the  first  to  pull 
the  trigger.  It  was  something  of 
a  coincidence  that  when  only  two 
people  were  out  over  a  vast  extent 
of  country,  firing  only  two  or  three 
cartridges  each,  the  identical  mo- 
ment should  have  been  chosen  by 
both  of  them  for  these  shots. 

There  had  been  a  heavy  fall  of 
snow  during  the  previous  day,  and 
the  high  ground  was  quite  white ; 
in  some  places  the  steep  smooth 
slopes  were  difficult  to  walk  on, 
and  here  and  there  dangerous. 
Far  up — just  where  the  hanging 
mist  and  snow  ran  into  one  an- 
other, so  that  it  was  difficult  to 
say  where  either  began,  lay  a  good 
stag  :  to  get  at  him  from  above  it 
was  necessary  to  climb  nearly  to 
the  top  of  sharp-peaked,  over  three 
thousand  feet  high,  Spiegen.  So 
we  set  our  faces  to  the  hill  and 
plodded  steadily  up, — passing  the 
place  where  a  day  or  two  before 
we  had  killed  a  royal,  and  found 
when  we  got  to  him  that  his  four 
brow -antlers  were  broken  short 


280 


A  Lucky  Day  in  a  Deer-forest. 


[Aug. 


off,  by  a  fall,  or  by  a  fence  when 
the  horn  was  green;  passing  an- 
other place  where  things  had  gone 
badly  instead  of  well,  and  a  good 
stag  had  gone  away  with  a  bullet 
in  him,  and,  after  giving  us  a  weary 
hunt  for  many  hours,  had  disap- 
peared altogether  from  our  ken. 
As  we  toiled  up,  the  snow,  from 
merely  powdering  the  sharp-edged 
stones,  covered  them,  and  made 
them  difficult  to  cross ;  it  was 
sometimes  a  couple  of  feet  deep. 
The  storm  had  not  driven  the 
ptarmigan  down ;  here  and  there 
their  dismal  croak  was  to  be  heard 
through  the  mist,  and  once  or  twice 
Angy  stopped  to  have  a  shy  at  a 
covey  crouching  some  fifteen  or 
twenty  yards  away.  Most  stalkers 
have  wonderful  stories  to  tell  of 
the  execution  they  have  at  times 
done  among  these  birds ;  but  we 
have  never  seen  any  killed  by  their 
sticks  or  stones. 

We  came  right  down  above  the 
deer ;  the  stag  was  still  lying,  and 
we  got  within  some  hundred  and 
fifty  yards  of  him,  as  near  as  the 
ground  would  allow.  Some  one 
else  in  past  days  had  seen  deer  in 
the  same  place,  and  had  made  the 
same  stalk,  and  had  chosen  the 
same  position  that  we  did  for  the 
shot,  for  on  a  stone  in  front  of  us 
were  lying  four  empty  cartridge- 
cases.  Was  it  a  good  or  evil 
omen?  we  wondered  if  they  had 
done  their  work. 

The  stag  was  lying  just  as  we 
had  seen  him  at  first :  only  the 
tops  of  his  horns  were  visible  out 
of  the  hole  in  which  he  had  settled 
himself;  but  his  kind  is  seldom 
quiet  long  at  this  time  of  the  year, 
and  we  confidently  expected  to  see 
him  soon  get  up.  Our  watching- 
place  was  a  somewhat  exposed 
one ;  we  were  just  out  of  the  deep 
snow,  but  had  taken  plenty  of  it 
away  with  us  in  shoes  and  knicker- 
bockers, and  we  all  hoped  for  a 
speedy  termination  to  the  stalk. 


"He'll  very  soon  be  up,"  said 
Macphail.  Half  an  hour  passed, 
and  the  stag  still  lay;  an  hour 
passed — an  hour  and  a  half  all  but 
passed,  and  still  that  provoking 
beast  sat  in  his  hole.  How  we  all 
hated  him  !  Once  indeed  he  stood 
up,  and  showed  he  was  a  deer,  and 
not  a  couple  of  withered  sticks,  as 
we  were  beginning  to  fear ;  but  he 
was  down  again  in  the  same  bed  in 
a  moment.  What  was  to  be  done  ? 
Setting  aside  the  cold,  it  does  not 
do  to  wait  long  at  this  time  of  the 
year  for  any  stag  unless  he  is 
something  quite  out  of  the  common. 
Just  as  a  fisherman — on  a  river 
where  salmon  are  plentiful  and 
taking  well — will  not  allow  an 
impudent  ten-pounder  to  sulk  and 
put  off  much  time,  so  now  it  was 
not  advisable,  when  stags  were 
many  and  days  short,  to  bear 
patiently  a  very  long  delay.  Yet 
it  was  difficult  to  know  what  we 
should  do  :  it  was  impossible  to 
get  nearer,  and  equally  hopeless  to 
fire  at  a  pair  of  horns.  In  such 
emergencies  we  have  tried  various 
experiments,  such  as  whistling 
softly,  or  pitching  stones  down  the 
hill.  Such  plans  sometimes  work. 
But  deer  have  a  nasty  habit  of 
listening  attentively,  till  they  get 
to  know  exactly  where  the  strange 
sounds  come  from,  and  then  bolt- 
ing all  of  a  sudden,  without  giving 
the  opportunity  of  anything  but  a 
hopeless  flying  shot.  And  so  we 
waited  on,  trying  to  keep  one  hand 
warm  by  clasping  the  thick  of  the 
thigh,  and  the  other  tight  in  a 
pocket.  After  the  first  hour  we 
were  all  three  pretty  cold,  and  the 
luxury  of  stamping  or  beating  one's 
self,  or  indeed  moving  anything  but 
one's  eyes,  was  out  of  the  question. 
At  last — one  hour  and  five-and- 
twenty  minutes  after  we  had  taken 
up  our  places — the  enemy  played 
into  our  hands.  The  hinds  got 
up,  and  walked  slowly  up  the  hill 
till  they  passed  well  within  a  hun- 


1894.] 


A  Lucky  Day  in  a  Deer-forest. 


281 


dred  yards  of  us,  and  then  the 
stag  —  seemingly  reluctant  even 
then — got  up  and  followed  them. 
He  was  a  light-coloured  big-bodied 
stag,  with  long  narrow-set  horns, 
and  he  stood  within  seventy  yards 
of  us.  And — we  missed  him ;  it 
was  certainly  the  nearest  and  the 
easiest  chance  we  had  that  season, 
and  we  missed  him — first  with  one 
barrel,  and  then  with  the  other. 
Then  a  change  came  over  the 
feelings  of  the  responsible  member 
of  that  party ;  the  sun,  which  had 
been  shining  in  a  sickly  way  be- 
fore, seemed  to  die  out  and  leave 
the  world  all  grey  and  cold  and 
dim :  the  thought  of  the  three 
already  slain  deer  gave  him  no 
consolation ;  he  felt — both  inside 
and  out  —  like  a  refrigerator. 
When  Mr  Briggs  missed  his 
Royal,  Leech  has  shown  us  how 
the  forester  threw  up  his  arms 
in  despair,  and  though  we  are 
not  told  what  he  said,  we  can 
guess  some  of  it.  We  have  never 
had  the  ill  fortune  to  be  out  with 
a  man  who  whispers,  "Mind  you 
hit  him !"  when  you  are  just  about 
to  fire,  or  makes  disagreeable  re- 
marks when  you  miss.  To  a 
young  stalker  advice  of  this  kind 
is  not  only  useless  but  most  harm- 
ful, as  tending  to  make  him  nerv- 
ous,— of  course  he  will  hit  if  he 
can.  Macphail  is  not  of  that 
kidney :  if  he  feels  vexed  at  a 
good  chance  being  lost  he  never 
shows  it;  he  takes  a  miss  most 
philosophically.  On  this  occasion 
he  watched  the  deer  carefully  for  a 
long  time,  and  when  he  had  satis- 
fied himself  that  it  was  untouched, 
he  shut  up  his  glass,  and  muttered, 
half  to  himself,  with  a  little  sigh, 
"  A  big  brute  ! "  That  was  all. 

The  running  commentary  Mac- 
phail would  make  when  following 
with  his  glass  a  wounded  stag 
was  sometimes  amusing,  always 
instructive.  "  Lying  down,"  he 

VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCXLVI. 


would  say,  getting  into  a  com- 
fortable position  for  the  spying. 
"  Up  again — going  on — going  east 
—  standing  —  going  east  —  lying 
down — up — going  east — looking 
back — looking  back  still — looking 
back  —  going  on."  If  our  own 
glass  was  spoiled  with  damp,  as 
was  often  the  case,  it  was  with 
great  anxiety  we  used  to  listen 
to  these  remarks.  The  lying  down 
was  satisfactory  (a  wounded  stag 
will  sometimes  lie  and  get  up 
again  twenty  times  within  a  few 
hundred  yards),  but  the  "  going 
east"  brought  temporary  despair 
to  one's  heart. 

For  missing  this  stag  we  had  no 
excuse  to  make  except  the  cold ; 
there  was  no  grass  waving  about 
before  the  sights,  and  no  smoke 
came  back  into  the  shooter's  face, 
for  the  wind  took  that  away  as 
soon  as  made.  It  is  not  easy  to 
see  how  any  great  improvement 
can  now  be  made  in  sporting 
rifles  ;  a  hammerless  ejecting — if 
one  does  not  mind  the  click — 
modern  express  is  very  nearly  a 
perfect  weapon.  But  with  pow- 
der there  is  more  scope ;  and  one 
or  other  of  the  new  smokeless  and 
comparatively  noiseless  materials 
will  probably  soon  altogether  take 
the  place  of  the  honest  black  stuff 
which  has  played  so  prominent  a 
part  in  gunnery  for  so  many  cen- 
turies. There  is  a  great  advan- 
tage in  using  a  chemical  powder 
in  a  rifle,  for  on  still  muggy  days 
the  reek  of  the  other  hangs  about 
in  a  thick  cloud,  and  often  pre- 
vents a  second  barrel  being  got  in. 
The  writer's  rifle  was  a  double 
•450,  and  it  made  a  report  which 
could  be  recognised  from  other 
reports  —  so  he  was  told  —  at  a 
great  distance.  Our  host's  eldest 
son  shot  with  a  '320,  and  he 
gained  a  great  deal  by  being  able 
to  use  such  a  small  bore.  The  dif- 
ference in  weight,  which  amounts 
T 


282 

to  a  good  many  pounds,  need  not 
be  considered  much,  for  very  few 
sportsmen  carry  their  own  rifles. 
It  was  in  the  light  report,  and  in 
the  comparative  absence  of  smoke, 
that  the  advantage  came  in.  Fir- 
ing this  small  weapon  —  he  con- 
stantly used  it  for  rooks — made  so 
little  noise  that  deer  paid  scant 
attention  to  it ;  the  sound  was  lost 
at  once  if  there  was  any  wind,  or 
any  turns  and  corners  in  the  hill. 
Whereas  a  450  is  heard  far  and 
wide,  and  puts  everything  for 
a  great  distance  round  on  the 
alert,  if  it  does  not  shift  them 
altogether.  A  -320  is  a  very 
pretty  weapon,  and  quite  as  deadly 
as  the  larger  kind  if  it  is  used 
properly :  the  disadvantage  is  — 
the  smaller  shock  its  bullet  gives, 
and  the  absolute  necessity  there  is 
for  holding  it  very  straight.  A 
deer  which  is  wounded  by  a  -320 
bullet  and  all  but  secured,  would 
be  almost  certainly  secured  if  it 
had  been  hit  in  the  same  place  by 
the  heavier  ball.  Our  friend  also 
used  solid  instead  of  expanding 
bullets,  and  an  indifferent  shot 
working  with  this  arm  and  ammu- 
nition would  be  sure  to  wound  and 
lose  a  good  many  deer  in  the 
course  of  the  season. 

We  all  silently  watched  our  stag 
till  we  could  watch  him  no  longer. 
He  disappeared  in  the  remote 
mosses  on  the  Achnashellach 
march.  Then  we  had  a  solemn 
drink,  and  started  again. 

It  was  a  subject  of  almost 
nightly  debate  at  the  little  lodge 
what  its  inmates  should  drink. 
The  cellar  at  Strathmore  is  an  un- 
pretentious-looking apartment;  but 
it  contained  an  ample  supply  of 
very  good  champagne,  and  it  may 
be  set  down  to  the  credit  of  the 
two  men  who  jointly  possessed  the 
key  that  they  sometimes  rose 
superior  to  temptation,  and  did 
not  drink  any  of  it,  thus  showing 
that  there  is  something  in  the 


A  Lucky  Day  in  a  Deer-forest. 


[Aug. 


theory  which  asserts  that  true 
sportsmen  are  self-denying  beings. 
There  are  some  men  "so  con- 
stituted "  that  it  makes  little  dif- 
ference to  them  what  they  drink 
or  how  much  of  it ;  but  mere  or- 
dinary mortals  have  to  take  more 
care  of  themselves,  and  will  find 
that  a  bottle  of  champagne  at 
dinner,  and  the  usual  allowance 
of  whisky  before  going  to  bed — 
which  latter  in  this  country  may 
be  called  a  necessity — are  not  con- 
ducive to  good  shooting  with  a 
rifle  the  next  day. 

After  our  last  stopping  -  place 
had  been  left  far  behind,  and  be- 
come an  indistinguishable  dot  on 
the  huge  face,  hope  again  revived 
in  our  breast.  When  we  had  run 
down  into  Tollachurin  and  crossed 
its  burn,  and  got  round  the 
shoulder  of  the  mountain  called 
Scurr  na  Conbhaire,  we  all  felt 
warmer  and  better,  and  willing  to 
forget  the  hours  passed  in  the 
misty  bivouac.  The  day  was  not 
so  very  old;  the  wind  was  still 
good ;  there  would  no  doubt  be 
stags  somewhere  on  before  us, — 
there  might  be  balm  in  Gilead  yet. 

There  was  a  stag  before  us : 
we  came  on  him  of  a  sudden, 
peering  at  us  from  the  sky-line, 
round  the  shoulder  of  the  hill. 
Perhaps  for  a  shot  of  this  kind, 
when  a  man  cannot  sit  down  and 
fire  from  his  knees,  as  he  would 
for  a  chance  below,  the  best  plan 
is  to  stand  boldly  up  and  shoot 
from  the  shoulder.  To  sit  down  on 
very  steep  ground,  with  nothing 
but  the  atmosphere  behind  you, 
and  fire  uphill  is  a  poor  game, 
as  any  one  who  tries  it  will  find 
out.  Angy,  however,  on  the  spur 
of  the  moment,  acted  as  the  some- 
thing behind,  and  with  his  support 
— a  support  which  must  always 
under  such  circumstances  be  an 
unreliable  one — and  with  the  rifle 
wobbling  about  and  a  general 
feeling  of  insecurity  attending  us, 


1894.] 


A  Lucky  Day  in  a  Deer-forest. 


283 


we  fired  at  the  stag  and  hit  him 
— low  be  it  said — in  the  haunch. 
(It  was  the  only  one  we  did  so 
hit.)  The  poor  beast  made  off,  and 
then  there  was  a  mighty  hunt : 
he  could  go  far  faster  than  any 
of  us,  and  he  did  it.  This  was 
the  way  of  the  chase,  which  passed 
along  the  slippery  green  hillside, 
cut  into  every  now  and  then  by 
mighty  scoops,  in  which  were 
burns.  First — a  good  way — the 
stag.  Then  Macphail,  nipping 
along  like  a  chamois,  balancing 
himself  on  anything  he  chose  to 
balance  himself  on,  and  never 
making  a  false  step.  Then  the 
rifleman,  a  middling  third,  doing 
his  best;  every  now  and  then 
going  an  imperial  cropper  on  some 
unusually  steep  bit,  and  coming 
to  on  the  top  of  a  stone,  with  a 
sensation  as  if  his  heart  had  been 
driven  into  his  stomach,  and  found 
its  new  abode  too  small  for  it. 
Decency  forbade  Angy  to  pass  the 
latter,  so  he  was  fourth.  To  cut 
short  what  might  be  made  a  long 
story,  we  got  another  bullet  into 
the  deer  as  he  was  climbing  out  of 
one  of  the  great  water  -  courses, 
and  crippled  him  terribly,  but 
still  he  went  on.  We  missed  him 
then,  first  with  both  barrels  and 
then  with  one,  and  finally  managed 
to  hit  him  again,  and  so  finished 
him.  It  was  a  wild  business 
while  it  lasted ;  and  it  looked  at 
one  time  as  if  he  would  get  away 
from  us  and  down  the  moun- 
tain, and  have  done  us  after  all. 
It  was  a  bad  place  to  lose  a 
wounded  stag  in ;  there  were  holes 
about  which  it  would  take  days  to 
examine,  whence  our  hurry  and 
anxiety  to  keep  him  in  view.  He 
cost  as  many  cartridges  —  and 
more  —  as  the  three  other  deer. 
When  a  man  is  streaming  with 
perspiration,  panting  like  a  cab- 
horse,  with  a  heart  jumping  like 
a  steam-engine,  it  is  not  easy  to 
hold  a  rifle  straight. 


So  this  fourth  stag  died,  and  we 
were  left  about  four  o'clock  high 
up  on  Scurr  na  Conbhaire  with 
Macphail  and  three  cartridges,  for 
Angy  was  despatched  to  drag  the 
deer  down  into  the  valley  below, 
where  a  pony  could  get  at  it,  and 
the  hillside  was  so  steep  and  smooth 
he  could  easily  do  this  alone. 

We  went  on  for  another  hour, 
keeping  high  and  ever  round,  till 
we  got  above  the  wild  glen  which 
runs  up  to  Balloch,  called  Oruithin, 
where  Achnashellach  and  Monar 
meet,  and  where,  at  the  foot  of 
the  hill  opposite  Ben  Tharsin,  we 
hoped  to  see  deer.  There  were  a 
great  many  deer  between  us  and 
the  Balloch ;  but  the  wind  blew 
wrong  here,  and  they  soon  found  us 
out,  and  went  scampering  up  into 
the  snow  towards  the  Bowman's 
Pass  and  the  "Hill  with  Eleven 
Steps,"  to  write  the  name  of 
which,  in  Gaelic,  would  take  some 
minutes,  and  fill  half  a  page  of 
Maga.  It  was  getting  late  now, 
and  raining  heavily,  and  daylight 
would  be  soon  changing  into  dusk. 
Far  away  down  below  us  were  a 
good  many  hinds  and  a  fine  stag, 
and  though  the  wind  was  queer 
and  uncertain,  we  decided  to  try 
for  them.  At  the  beginning  of  a 
day  the  sight  of  these  deer  and 
their  position  would  have  necessi- 
tated the  holding  of  a  council  of 
war,  and  much  debate,  and  per- 
haps a  good  deal  of  waiting  to  see 
if  they  would  move  into  a  better 
place ;  but  there  was  no  time  for 
this  now,  and  the  stalk  had  to  be 
made  and  the  shot  fired  in  less 
than  an  hour,  if  at  all.  The  stag 
was  in  a  very  unsettled  state, 
driving  off  small  rivals  which  kept 
coming  round  the  herd,  and  run- 
ning his  hinds  up  and  down  the 
face,  trying  to  herd  them,  just  as 
a  sheep-dog  will  his  flock.  We 
had  to  make  the  stalk  from  the 
side  instead  of  coming  right  down, 
and  the  deer  were  sometimes  for 


284 


A  Lucky  Day  in  a  Deer-forest. 


[Aug. 


a  time  above  us.  There  was  some 
rapid  delicate  manoeuvring  on  our 
part,  a  good  deal  of  shifting  of 
ground  on  theirs,  and  at  last,  just 
before  six  o'clock,  we  got  the 
chance,  and  shot  the  stag  through 
the  heart.  The  second  one  killed 
in  the  morning  weighed  only  a 
little  over  thirteen  stones,  and  he 
pulled  down  the  average,  which  for 
the  five  deer  was  14  stones  7  Ib. 

It  is  wonderful  how  indifferent  a 
man  becomes  to  time  and  distance 
in  a  forest.  On  a  hot  August  day, 
when  lazy  with  a  good  long  tramp, 
it  is  an  exertion  to  go  a  couple  of 
hundred  yards  up  a  steep  bit  of 
hill  to  a  point.  But  in  a  forest  at 
the  same  time  in  the  evening  one 
thinks  nothing  of  as  many  thousand 
feet :  either  your  sport  has  been 
good,  and  you  wish  to  add  to  it, 
or  it  has  been  indifferent,  and  you 
wish  to  retrieve  the  day.  After 
shooting  grouse,  too,  or  any  Low- 
land game,  no  one  thinks  of  walk- 
ing six  or  eight  or  ten  miles  home ; 
but  this  again  must  often  be  done 
after  stalking,  and  if  the  road 
back  is  rough  and  the  night  dark, 
the  tramp  is  sometimes  rather  a 
dismal  one.  There  are  some  minor 
troubles  in  life  which  are  so  ag- 
gravating that  when  they  beset  us, 
and  stick  persistently  to  us  for  a 
long  time,  they  almost  make  us 
cry  with  vexation.  Any  one  who 
has  had  to  come  down  an  im- 
mensely long  Alpine  moraine  in  a 
bad  light,  or  many  thousands  of 
feet  of  hill  which  is  just  not  suffi- 
ciently steep  to  be  dangerous,  will 
know  what  we  mean.  The  pleas- 
ure of  the  day  is  past,  and  its  excite- 
ment; you  have  conquered  your 
peak,  or  perhaps  it  has  beaten  you, 
and  now — jaded  and  weary — you 
have  to  go  on  for  hours  downward, 
till  your  knees  ache  with  the  burden 
so  continuously  put  upon  them. 

So  it  is  here  :  you  set  your  foot 
on  what  you  think  is  a  stone,  and 


it  turns  out  to  be  a  hole.  You 
are  willing  to  step  into  a  pool  of 
water  which  seems  a  foot  below 
you,  but  it  is  three  feet  below  you, 
as  you  know  when  you  have  suf- 
ficiently recovered  from  the  un- 
expected shock  to  climb  out  of  it. 
You  rejoice  on  getting  on  to  a  nice 
smooth  slope,  but  it  is  a  slope  up- 
hill, and  seems  to  tilt  and  jar  you 
all  over.  You  tumble  into  a  great 
peat-hag,  landing  on  the  bank 
opposite  on  your  chest,  and  bite 
your  tongue,  and  drive  all  the 
wind  out  of  your  body,  and  wish 
you  were  dead — yes — if  you  had 
shot  fifty  stags.  And  if  you  have 
shot  none — if  you  have  only  a  sor- 
rowful tale  of  misses  to  relate  when 
you  get  in — what  a  fate  is  yours  ! 
But  Monar  is  well  provided  with 
pony-tracks,  and  one  is  never  long 
in  striking  one  somewhere,  and  once 
on  a  path,  even  in  a  dark  night,  it 
is  always  possible  to  get  along. 

We  reached  the  lodge  in  an 
hour  and  a  half,  and  found  that 
our  companion  there  had  also  had 
fine  sport.  Indeed,  when  we  got 
down  into  the  low  country,  and 
added  up  the  scores  for  the  two 
lodges  for  the  last  few  days  to  our 
host,  his  kind  face  assumed  for  a 
little  a  somewhat  severe  expres- 
sion. But  only  for  a  little  :  none 
knew  better  than  he  the  tempta- 
tions to  which  his  poor  children  in 
the  wilderness  had  been  exposed ; 
no  one  could  enter  more  sympa- 
thetically into  all  our  hopes  and 
fears  and  anxieties  than  he — him- 
self a  keen  stalker — did ;  and  for- 
giveness was  soon  meted  out. 

The  next  day  we  bade  adieu  to 
a  long  line  of  stalkers  and  gillies, 
who  set  then  their  melancholy  faces 
towards  their  respective  abodes  in 
the  forest,  and  prepared  to  possess 
their  souls  with  what  patience  they 
might  during  the  dreary  coming 
winter  and  long  fruitless  spring. 
G.  W.  HARTLEY. 


1894.] 


The  Looker-on. 


285 


THE    LOOKER-ON. 


IT  is  common  to  say  that  it  is 
the  bystander  who  sees  most  of 
the  game;  and  there  is  so  much 
wisdom  in  the  elastic  proverb  that 
it  may  be  accepted  as  at  least  one 
of  those  half-truths  to  which  we 
often  pin  our  faith,  more  strongly 
than  to  better  established  axioms. 
There  is  a  kind  of  bystander  who 
plumes  himself  on  seeing  behind 
the  scenes,  and  knowing  the  des- 
sous  des  cartes,  the  often  small 
strings  which  pull  the  wires  of 
fate.  But  this  is  a  dangerous 
assumption,  and  is  very  apt  to 
seduce  the  rash  looker-on  into 
false  conclusions  and  prophecies 
unwarranted  by  any  after  fulfil- 
ment. We  make  no  such  pre- 
tension on  our  part.  The  summer 
is  nearly  over,  the  season  is  end- 
ing in  that  rush  and  whirl  of 
clashing  engagements  and  festivi- 
ties, too  many  for  even  the  capacity 
of  those  skilful  persons  born  to 
amuse  themselves,  who  make  a 
business  of  it,  and  dovetail  their 
engagements  like  a  clever  mosaic. 
Very  soon  the  picture-galleries 
will  be  emptied,  the  great  actors 
will  leave  the  stage  clear  for 
humbler  performers.  Already  the 
annual  consumption  of  brown  paper 
has  begun,  and  shutters  are  being 
closed  in  the  noble  purlieus  of 
Belgravia,  even  in  the  stony  seren- 
ity of  South  Kensington.  A  sense 
of  dust,  of  shabbiness,  of  fatigue, 
is  in  the  air — although  nothing  is 
really  shabby  but  the  minds  of 
the  elegant  crowd,  not  its  dresses 
certainly,  nor  even  its  ardour  in 
the  pursuit  of  pleasure.  One 
thing  is  undeniably  shabby,  and 
that  is  Parliament,  where  the  un- 
fortunate persons  who  rule  us  get 
greyer  and  greyer;  and  the  time 
seems  ever  nearer  approaching 


when  the  professional  politician 
will  become  a  necessity,  as  he  has 
already  become  in  most  other 
countries.  Such  sessions  as  we 
have  had  lately  are  scarcely  pos- 
sible except  for  those  to  whom 
they  are  a  trade.  "  Six  weeks ! 
few  of  my  constituents  have  so  long 
a  holiday  as  that,"  said  lately  to 
us  a  member  of  this  class,  whose 
hard  -  working  steadiness  at  his 
profession  would  have  been  most 
praiseworthy  and  admirable  had 
his  profession  been  that  of  making 
shoes,  or  even  of  writing  books 
and  newspaper  articles,  and  not  of 
governing  a  great  empire. 

The  season,  however,  is  over; 
even  members  of  Parliament  will 
get  free  one  time  or  another,  and 
those  people  who  are  affected  by 
the  rush  of  the  season  have  time 
now  to  pause  a  little  and  think 
what  they  have  been  about.  There 
is  a  list  of  marriages  as  long  as 
one's  arm  in  the  columns  of  the 
papers  which  concern  themselves 
with  these  subjects.  Things  have 
been  done  which  cannot  be  un- 
done ;  dreadful  lights  of  publicity 
have  been  thrown  into  unlooked- 
for  places,  betraying  much  that 
makes  the  heart  sick  ;  reputations 
have  been  made,  mildly  or  fool- 
ishly, here  and  there;  they  have 
been  ruined  wantonly  in  other 
places.  But  in  the  meantime  it 
is  all  over.  The  world  withdraws 
to  talk  over  its  feats,  to  give  the 
coup  de  grdce  to  the  fallen  in  the 
small  talk  of  the  country-houses, 
and  prove  to  itself  that  those  who 
have  risen  instead  of  falling  have 
done  so  by  petty  arts,  and  may  be 
comfortably  dissected  another  day. 
The  painters  take  back  their  pic- 
tures, the  briefless  barristers  close 
their  chambers,  which  it  has  been 


286 


The  Looker-on.  [Aug. 


so  little  use  to  keep  open,  moral- 
ising sadly  over  the  shame  and 
pity  it  is  that  some  people  should 
be  killed,  or  nearly  killed,  by  over- 
work, and  some  have  nothing  or 
next  to  nothing  to  do.  Why 
should  this  be,  and  is  there  nothing 
that  can  ever  equalise  it?  It  is 
the  hard  fate  of  educated  men 
that  they  cannot  believe  in  trades- 
unions,  or  take  the  matter  into 
violent  hands,  and  try  to  rectify 
it  by  force  as  the  ignorant  do. 

One  of  the  most  curious  facts 
about  the  season,  formally  so 
called,  is  the  small  number  of 
people  who  are  really  affected  by 
it,  and  the  immense  number  of 
people  who  pretend  to  be  —  nay, 
are  really  somehow  moved  by  the 
back  turn  of  its  tide,  and  obey  its 
laws,  though  under  circumstances 
totally  different,  and  conditions  of 
their  own.  We  heard  lately  of  a 
large  Scottish  commercial  town 
which  must  be  entirely  unaffected 
by  any  flux  or  reflux  of  Society, 
where  everybody  was  on  the  wing 
— everybody  was  already,  with  the 
first  and  finest  flight  of  the  great 
world,  going  away.  And  a  very 
sensible  thing  too :  flying  from 
the  dust  and  smoke  of  the  town 
to  country  retreats  and  good  air, 
and  green  trees,  even  though  the 
head  of  the  house  must  plod  back 
wearily  to  town  and  business  every 
day — but  not  one  that  would  occur 
if  it  were  not  the  fashion.  In 
a  very  different  kind  of  region, 
in  a  little  English  country  town, 
buried  in  woods  and  tranquil 
fields,  the  same  exodus  takes 
place.  Amidst  our  quiet  gardens, 
and  surrounding  woods,  and  all  the 
glory  of  the  August  weather,  a  be- 
lated ^  family  finds  itself,  like  the 

hermit  in  the  wilderness,  alone 

or  like  a  man  in  a  forsaken  club, 
in  those  deserts  which  form  the 
parish  of  St  James.  The  season 
is  over,— how  simple  a  one  !  with 


no  riotous  enjoyment, — and  every- 
body has  gone  away.  Thus  the 
rule  of  Society,  which  carries  off 
tired  revellers,  to  save  their  lives, 
from  town  and  its  breathless  rush 
of  occupation,  affects  the  quiet 
population  everywhere,  even  in 
places  where  it  would  do  a  great 
deal  better  to  enjoy  itself  at  home 
while  home  is  beautiful,  and  go 
away  when  all  is  dull  and  dreary 
under  November  skies. 

In  this  respect  Society  is  wiser 
than  its  humble  imitators  :  for 
Town  is  never  so  good  to  live  in  as 
in  May  and  June  ;  and  when  the 
smart  people,  as  they  call  them- 
selves (heaven  forbid  that  we  should 
brand  any  of  our  fellow- creatures 
with  such  a  name  !),  have  done  all 
that  flesh  and  blood  can  do  in  the 
way  of  racketing,  it  is  home  they 
go — as  many  of  them  as  have  homes 
to  go  to — to  refresh  themselves  in 
the  natural  and  genuine  way : 
whereas  the  small  people  leave 
home  when  it  is  at  its  best,  and 
make  themselves  uncomfortable  in 
seaside  lodgings  or  Swiss  hotels. 
Thus  Society,  being  more  ex- 
perienced in  the  methods  of  en- 
joying itself,  and  having  (in  some 
cases)  more  money  and  resources 
for  enjoyment,  does  better,  and, 
in  reality,  more  sensibly,  than 
those  who  follow  its  usages  more 
or  less  servilely,  without  under- 
standing the  moral  of  them — or 
at  least  the  meaning  of  them,  for 
no  moral  is  necessarily  involved. 
Imitation  is  always  subject  to  this 
drawback  —  for  in  the  first,  the 
example,  there  is  usually  a  certain 
meaning,  whereas  in  the  copy  the 
letter  remains,  but  the  spirit,  not 
being  understood,  is  very  apt  to 
steal  away. 

The  three  months  of  the  season 
are  certainly  the  time  in  which  our 
world  is  seen  at  its  best,  if  it  is  not 
precisely  the  best  time  to  study  its 
character  and  understand  its  ways. 


1894.]  The  Looker  on. 

The  foreigner,  in  one  meaning  of 
the  word, — that  is  to  say,  the  visi- 
tor from  foreign  countries  who  is 
not  of  the  cosmopolitan  class,  not 
"smart"  himself,  nor  of  high  de- 
gree (and  this  is  the  class  which 
writes,  which  describes  what  it 
sees,  often  under  very  strange 
lights),  —  generally  comes  later, 
when  London  is  "empty,"  as  we 
say,  when  the  great  'Arry  rules 
supreme,  and  when  the  sights  he 
sees  are  characteristic,  perhaps,  of 
the  lower  developments  of  life,  but 
not  of  England  on  any  general 
scale.  We  met  not  very  long  ago 
a  most  accomplished  French  lady, 
who  was,  we  found,  actually  better 
"  up,"  as  we  say,  in  English  litera- 
ture than  ourselves ;  but  who,  in 
some  strange  failure  of  information, 
was  visiting  London  in  August,  and 
going  about  with  the  liveliest  in- 
terest from  one  public  place  to 
another,  in  full  confidence  that 
she  was  studying  English  Society. 
The  restaurants,  she  declared, 
were  so  amusing,  so  instructive ! 
And  so,  no  doubt,  they  would  be ; 
but  the  difference  in  the  view 
thus  afforded  to  a  stranger  of 
English  life  is  one  not  of  degree 
but  of  kind. 

'Arry,  for  example,  is  provincial 
to  the  last  degree,  though  he  may 
never  be  out  of  hearing  of  Bow 
Bells.  But,  notwithstanding  all  the 
efforts  of  the  new  generation,  the 
slang,  and  the  gossip,  and  the  nar- 
rowness of  those  smart  circles  which 
revolve  round  each  other,  and  be- 
come oblivious,  for  the  time,  of 
everything  else,  the  great  character- 
istic of  Society  is  that  it  is  not  pro- 
vincial. The  great  people  and  the 
fine  people,  and  even  the  people 
who  would  only  like  to  be  fine 
and  to  be  great — ending  in  that 
indefinite  fringe  of  the  educated 
classes  which  sometimes  comes 
out  of  nothing,  but  yet  is  un- 
questionable in  its  position,  more 


287 


than  mere  education  makes  it  in 
any  other  country — come  from  all 
the  corners  of  the  island,  and  are 
English,  Scotch,  Irish,  and  of  all 
intermediate  shades  of  northern 
and  of  western,  full  of  varied  indi- 
vidualities of  race,  though  blended 
into  one,  and  for  the  time  ac- 
knowledging no  difference.  The 
Frenchman,  like  that  distinguished 
visitor,  M.  Max  O'Rell,  can  em 
ploy  his  power  of  generalisation, 
and  mark  down  his  subjects  in 
little  subdivisions,  when  he  has  only 
'Arry  to  deal  with,  and  the  good 
shopkeepers  of  Clapham  and  Isling- 
ton ;  but  these  are  methods  which 
would  not  be  possible  at  what  he 
would  call  the  West  End,  where 
the  inhabitants  are  not  Londoners 
but  Britishers,  with  interests  and 
connections  and  partialities  spread- 
ing far  beyond  the  circles  of  any, 
even  the  greatest  of  towns.  This 
is  exactly  the  contrary  of  those 
which  a  recent  clever  writer  in  an 
evening  paper  attributes  to  the 
American,  whose  "  I  am  from  Bos- 
ton," "I  am  from  New  York," 
denotes,  he  says,  their  most  cher- 
ished individuality.  If  this  is  true, 
it  is  a  sort  of  voluntary  bondage, 
like  the  Chinese  shoe  crippling  the 
gait  of  the  free  man.  (But,  by 
the  by,  it  is  only  women  that  are 
compelled  to  this  slavery.)  Few, 
very  few,  will  say,  "  I  am  a  Lon- 
doner." The  roots  of  Society  are 
struck  deep  into  the  soil.  It  be- 
longs to  everywhere :  it  is  Eng- 
lish, even  though  our  dear  coun- 
trymen from  Scotland,  and  the 
Irishman,  who  often  is  the  delight 
of  Society,  may  rebel  against  that 
convenient  nomenclature  which 
embraces  all.  It  is  almost  im- 
possible to  be  provincial  in  the 
midst  of  a  world  which  comes 
from  all  the  sources  of  the  race, 
and,  indeed,  that  is  one  reason 
for  the  extremely  droll  views  of 
English  Society  which  are  given 


288 

by  so  many  foreign  writers.  The 
Parisian  is  Parisian  above  all,  like 
the  American ;  but  no  one,  or  at 
least  a  very  small  proportion  of 
people,  are  Londoners  above  all. 
We  are  all  representative,  even 
when  it  is  without  knowing  it, 
keeping  very  firm  hold  of  the  ties 
of  nature,  yet  always  modifying 
them  with  the  other,  the  general, 
the  broader  bond. 

At  the  same  time,  granting 
this  superiority,  we  fear  it  must 
be  allowed  that  almost  all  the 
great  scandals  that  occur  from 
time  to  time  —  and  we  suppose 
always  must  occur  as  long  as  the 
world  continues — come  to  us  from 
Society,  from  among  "the  best 
people."  The  scum  mounts  to  the 
top,  people  say,  and  whether  this 
is  true  or  not,  the  other  is  sadly 
evident, — that  a  kind  of  licence, 
a  kind  of  freedom,  is  permitted 
amid  the  rush  and  sweeping  cur- 
rent of  social  life  at  the  high 
tide,  which  make  many  things  pos- 
sible, and  which  have  certainly 
deteriorated  the  tone  of  Society  in 
general.  Things  are  not  with  us 
as  they  were  when  the  Queen  was 
young  and  held  a  sway  more  in- 
timate, more  immediate,  over  the 
habits  of  her  age.  We  have  come 
back  to  the  fashions  of  her 
Majesty's  early  reign,  not,  we 
think,  with  very  much  advantage 
to  the  grace  of  costume,  for  the 
early  Victorian  was  not  a  beauti- 
ful mode,  in  dress  at  least.  But 
we  wish  it  might  be  possible  to 
return  to  the  early  Victorian  epoch 
in  dignity  and  self-restraint.  It 
would  be  ridiculous  to  assert  that 
even  that  age  was  wholly  pure; 
but  it  was  very  different  from  this. 
We  should  not  have  been  asked 
then  to  discuss  in  a  periodical  the 
edifying  question  whether  or  not 
young  girls  should  be  made  ac- 
quainted with  all  the  temptations 
which  curse  the  lives  of  young  men, 


The  Looker-on.  [Aug. 

in  order  to  be  able  to  judge  which 
had  escaped  best,  and  which  they 
might  most  safely  marry,  as  has 
been  recently  done.  We  should 
not  have  heard  of  horrible  bar- 
gains between  man  and  wife,  of 
tolerations  and  compliances  enough 
to  make  the  hair  stand  upright  on 
every  honest  head;  or  even  to 
hear  that  gentlemen  talk  among 
themselves  of  who  is  "honest," 
and  not  to  be  assailed,  among  the 
ladies  of  their  class,  and  who  is 
not — with  a  large  inference  even 
in  the  exception — as  men  do  in 
French  novels,  and  as  they  used 
to  do  in  the  last  century. 

Ah !  if  the  Queen  had  been  but  al- 
ways young  :  if  our  Sovereign  Lady 
had  been  always  happy,  always  at 
the  head  of  her  own  Court,  always 
exercising  that  wise  control  in 
Society  as  in  other  regions !  but 
that  is  to  wish  for  the  impossible. 
As  it  is,  the  scandals  are  more 
rife,  they  reach  the  public  ear 
more  easily, — they  seem  to  form,  as 
they  did  not  before,  a  sort  of 
horrible  standard  of  morals  in 
which,  if  the  real  step  into  guilt 
is  not  always — perhaps,  let  us  hope, 
not  often — taken,  at  least  all  the 
preliminaries  are  familiar  and  un- 
condemned.  The  Looker-on  is 
old-fashioned,  he  is  perhaps  pre- 
judiced ;  but  it  seemed  to  him  the 
other  day,  in  the  great  calamity 
that  overshadowed  France,  that 
the  presumptuous  message  of  con- 
dolence of  a  famous  actress,  ad- 
dressed to  the  lady  who  has  held 
with  so  much  dignity  and  nobility, 
for  some  years,  the  first  place  in 
France,  was  an  intolerable  piece 
of  impertinence,  as  well  as  an 
evidence  how  completely  all  bonds 
were  loosened.  This  was  made 
ridiculous  indeed  by  a  second  ad- 
vertisement of  the  sympathy  of  an- 
other, not  even  illustrious,  actress 
and  her  coadjutors ;  but  even  the 
irony  of  the  second  intimation  did 


1894.] 


The  Looker-on. 


289 


not  do  away  with  the  harm  of  the 
first.  That  was  in  France,  it  is 
true;  but  were  there  not  names 
attached  to  congratulations  on  our 
own  side  of  the  Channel  which 
would  not  have  been  received  in 
such  a  place  when  the  Queen  was 
young?  These  incongruities  are 
not  consoling  features  in  the 
records  of  a  period.  There  is 
something  of  which  the  poet  has 
said,  that — 

"  Seen  too  oft,  familiar  with  her  face, 
We  first  endure,  then  pity,  then  em- 
brace." 

Is  it  not  very  hard,  very  old- 
fashioned,  to  speak  of  such  a  thing 
as  vice  in  connection  with  the 
name  of  a  pretty  and  attractive 
woman,  especially  when  she  has 
outlived  it,  and  is  no  longer  young 
enough  to  be  naughty?  But  we 
did  not  think  so  when  the  Queen 
was  young,  and  the  royal  white- 
ness brooked  no  such  shadow  near ; 
and  toleration  of  this  description 
is  very  dangerous,  even  possibly 
fatal  to  the  common  weal.  The 
young  ladies  who  are  invited  to 
inquire  into  the  possible  iniquities 
of  the  young  men,  and  who  know 
that  there  are  some  women,  idols 
of  society,  whose  story  everybody 
knows  yet  everybody  forgives, 
may  learn  various  lessons  there- 
from— which  are  not  those  which 
their  instructors  desire  to  teach. 
Such  lessons  are  not  for  the  pure 
in  heart,  who,  heaven  be  praised  ! 
are  very  largely  in  the  majority, 
and  who  are  invincibly  ignorant 
and  will  not  be  taught.  But  this 
is  not  the  case  with  all;  and  we 
are  certainly  doing  our  utmost  in 
every  silly  and  every  philosophical 
way,  in  the  chatter  of  the  Dodos 
and  the  solemn  absurdity  of  the 
Evadnes,  as  well  as  by  newspaper 
reports  and  high-flown  discussions, 
to  recommend  and  indicate  to  the 
steps  that  are  inclined  to  stray 


where  the  wrong  path  is  and  how 
it  tends.  This  may  be  an  enlight- 
ened thing  to  do,  but  it  is  neither 
safe  nor  seemly,  and  no  credit  to 
us  in  any  way. 

It  is  impossible  to  look  on  at 
the  common  life  which  flows  about 
us  with  all  its  vagaries  without 
remarking  the  much  talk  about 
women,  and  their  rights  and  dis- 
abilities, with  which  the  air  is  full. 
It  is  very  noisy  and  often  very 
silly  talk,  and  it  is  in  a  great 
degree  fictitious,  and  intended  for 
the  amusement  and  excitation  of 
the  very  large  feminine  audience 
for  which  enterprising  newspapers, 
and  even  magazines,  have  now 
learnt  that  they  must  largely 
provide.  As  sporting  articles  are 
specially  interesting  to  men,  so 
papers  upon  women  and  upon 
their  work  and  missions  and 
wrongs  are  found  specially  attrac- 
tive to  the  other  half  of  humanity. 
Whether  they  agree  or  disagree, 
women,  in  this  generation  at  least, 
love  to  read  about  themselves  ;  and 
the  subject,  though  beginning,  we 
hope,  to  pall  upon  the  better  in- 
tellects, is  always  attractive  to  the 
mass,  which — when  its  special  in- 
terest is  not  the  fashions,  and  the 
many  discussions  of  that  endless 
subject  which  find  place  in  the 
papers  of  to-day — is  more  than 
anything  else  drawn  to  the  con- 
sideration of  its  own  gifts  and 
graces,  as  specially  seen  in  its 
attitude  towards  its  partner  in 
life.  All  this  is  no  doubt  part  of 
the  defective  education  of  the  past, 
and  of  the  fact  that  a  generation 
or  two  ago  women  had  many  real 
and  galling  disabilities,  and  were 
held  under  an  actual  subjection 
(by  law,  if  only  now  and  then  in 
fact)  which  was  sometimes  very 
cruel  and  unjust,  and  always 
highly  offensive  to  feminine  pride. 
Women  who  take  up  this  subject 
are  like  the  Irish  orators  who  have 


290 


The  Looker-on. 


[Aug. 


wrought  us  so  much  woe  —  they 
grow  hot  over  wrongs  that  have 
long  ceased  to  be,  and  argue  as 
they  might  have  done  before  there 
was  any  Married  Women's  Pro- 
perty Act  or  other  amelioration, 
just  as  Messrs  Redmond,  &c.,  rave, 
as  if  the  Government  of  Ireland 
was  now  as  in  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury. To  both  a  certain  amount 
of  indulgence  may  be  given,  on  the 
ground  that  their  grievances  did 
once  exist,  and  that  people  often 
do  not  awake  to  a  due  sense  of 
what  they  have  suffered  until  the 
suffering  is  past.  But  there  is  a 
limit  to  this  indulgence,  and  neither 
women  nor  Irishmen  can  claim  it 
for  ever. 

It  is,  however,  the  natural  effect 
of  belated  enthusiasm  and  a  fine 
subject  for  eloquence  —  which  is 
never  so  easy  or  so  warm  as  in 
denunciation  of  a  grievance  which 
is  over — and  a  ready  audience  anx- 
ious to  hear,  and  delighted  to  dis- 
cuss a  theme  which  is  so  useful  in 
conversation,  that  the  Woman- 
question,  as  the  penny-a-liner  calls 
it,  should  proceed  to  new  develop- 
ments. The  young  ladies  who  are 
so  tall,  taller  than  ever  women 
were  before,  the  new  type  pro- 
duced by  athletics  (which  it  is  a 
pity  do  not  have  the  same  effect 
upon  their  brothers),  the  daughters 
who  revolt,  and  demand  latch-keys, 
and  to  go  to  music-halls  of  an  even- 
ing— the  girls  who  are  to  examine 
into  all  the  antecedents  of  their 
lovers,  and  to  be  taught  for  this 
purpose  what  everything  means — 
are  the  last  and  newest  thing.  The 
latter,  we  believe,  is  the  newest  of 
all ;  and  it  is  apparently  the  con- 
viction of  one  very  clever  writer 
(should  we  say  Woman- writer?  and 
if  we  said  so,  what  would  it  mean  1 
— a  plea  to  excuse  her  weakness  be- 
cause she  was  only  a  woman,  or  a 
claim  of  the  highest  superiority  ?) 
that  to  corrupt  the  mind  of  the 


girls  by  unnecessary  and  most  un- 
savoury knowledge  is  the  best 
corrective  for  the  other  kinds  of 
corruption,  which — not  to  excuse 
them,  heaven  knows  ! — are  yet  at 
least  seldom  the  result  of  voluntary 
evil-intention,  as  this  would  be,  but 
of  temptation,  weakness,  excite- 
ment, and  all  the  other  dread  and 
terrible  forces,  which  the  Apostle 
calls  (but  Apostles  are  not  much 
thought  of  in  these  days)  the  law 
in  the  members  warring  against 
the  law  of  the  mind,  and  which 
made  even  the  austere  Paul  cry 
out  to  be  delivered  from  the  body 
of  this  death.  The  girls,  heaven 
be  praised  !  are  to  a  very  great 
degree  safe  from  these  temptations 
and  struggles.  Would  it  be  well 
that  they  should  enter  into  the 
tainted  atmosphere  of  their  own 
free  will,  or  by  the  will  of  their 
instructors,  in  order,  in  cold  blood, 
to  dissect  and  survey  that  body  of 
death  1 

This  question  is,  we  believe, 
being  discussed  at  the  present 
moment  in  a  sufficiently  known 
periodical,  and  that  it  should  even 
be  mooted  is  one  of  the  most  curi- 
ous moral  problems  of  the  time. 
Mr  Stead's  so  -  called  revelations 
were  not  so  bad  as  this,  for  he  at 
least  sounded  his  trumpet  before 
him,  that  innocent  spectators  might 
get  out  of  his  way,  before  he  dragged 
his  semi-fictitious  monster  through 
the  streets.  Madame  Sarah  Grand, 
we  presume,  thinks  that  method 
a  mistake.  Her  idea  is  that 
the  young  women  should  gather 
round,  and  that  able  lecturers 
should  expound  to  them  the  nature 
of  the  monster,  and  all  about 
it.  It  is  the  highest  morality,  we 
are  told,  which  inspires  this  quest 
into  the  possibilities  of  immor- 
ality— which  was  what  Mr  Stead 
also  professed.  And  we  do  not 
doubt  the  good  faith  of  these  curi- 
ous fanatics.  There  are  niceties 


1894.] 


The  Looker-on. 


291 


of  vice  invented  in  the  confessional 
which  would  astonish  the  dissolute 
— and  the  very  height  of  conscious 
(too  conscious)  cleanness  seems  to 
give  sometimes  an  interest,  a  cu- 
rious daring — Who's  afraid  1 — to 
the  investigation  of  things  unclean. 
Every  one  that  doeth  evil  hateth 
the  light,  neither  cometh  to  the 
light,  lest  his  deeds  should  be  re- 
proved, says  the  highest  of  autho- 
rities— which  is  the  natural  instinct 
even  of  the  ill-doer :  but  the  new 
reformers  would  like  to  drag  that 
culprit  into  the  light,  that  the 
innocent  might  understand  those 
deeds  which  vice  itself  desires  to 
cover  over.  We  have  had  some 
experience  already  of  this  strange 
fancy  of  the  unimpeachably  virtu- 
ous for  dabbling  among  filth,  but  it 
has  never  come  quite  so  far  as  this 
before.  Everything  is  progressive  : 
we  wonder  whether  it  might  not 
perhaps  presently  be  thought  a 
great  thing  to  expose  the  young 
ladies,  walking  home  with  their 
latch-keys  from  the  music-halls,  to 
the  insults  of  the  streets  (as  indeed 
it  would  be  difficult  to  guard  them 
entirely  from  them),  in  order  that 
their  beautiful  demeanour  should 
strike  awe  into  the  ungodly  youth 
that  might  pursue  them.  This 
would  be  almost  more  reasonable 
than  the  other.  We  remember  to 
have  heard  of  a  lady  walking  home 
at  night  by  some  accident  alone, 
who,  being  accosted  in  Piccadilly, 
turned  upon  the  man  who  addressed 
her  with  one  forcible  and  expressive 
word  "  Idiot ! "  which,  it  is  to  be 
hoped,  quenched  him  for  ever :  and 
then  our  girls  are  as  strong  as,  or 
perhaps  stronger  than,  the  young 
men,  and  might  as  easily  knock 
an  impertinent  person  down  as 
transfix  him  with  a  word  or  angelic 
look,  according  to  the  old  formulas. 
We  may,  perhaps,  come  to  that 
before  next  season.  We  have  only 
advanced  in  this  to  the  urgent 


necessity  of  training  the  young 
women  in  the  ways  of  wickedness. 
But  further  developments  are  pos- 
sible. There  might  even  be  some- 
thing very  exciting  and  attractive 
in  the  formation  of  a  new  Police, 
composed  of  the  immaculate,  the 
herculean  young  women  who  are 
bigger  than  most  of  our  soldiers 
and  in  perfect  training,  for  the 
purification  of  the  Haymarket  and 
other  such  regions,  and  the  rescue 
of  the  weaker  stripling  who  is  there 
so  often  led  astray.  The  first  ap- 
pearance of  this  white  band  would 
undoubtedly  produce  a  great  effect. 

There  is,  however,  if  we  may 
dare  to  say  it,  something  a  little 
old-fashioned  in  the  idea  of  this 
pursuit  of  knowledge.  It  is  a  go- 
ing back  upon  a  state  of  society 
which  has  been  supposed  inferior 
to  our  own.  Pamela,  for  instance, 
was  not  at  all  ignorant  in  this 
point  of  view,  and  the  most  timid 
and  trembling  maiden  who  ever 
cried,  Unhand  me,  villain !  showed, 
by  the  very  fact  of  her  readily 
excited  alarm,  a  consciousness 
which  we  have  been  trying  ever 
since  to  banish,  and  with  great 
success.  Yet  Pamela  is  not  a 
heroine  whom  we  esteem  nowa- 
days. She  is  no  longer,  like  Lady 
Somebody's  stick,  the  support  of 
virtue,  but  shocks  the  nineteenth- 
century  reader,  to  whom  even  the 
exquisite  Clarissa,  with  her  broken 
heart  and  pathetic  despair,  is  not 
a  possible  heroine. 

There  is,  however,  one  point  in 
which  we  have  evidently  made 
great  progress.  Madame  Grand 
and  her  disciples  seem,  after  all, 
though  they  do  not  say  it,  to  have 
a  great  confidence  in  the  improved 
education  of  men  :  they  instinct- 
ively expect  these  much-belied  per- 
sonages to  be  gentlemen;  and  in 
this  lies  an  extraordinary  differ- 
ence between  them  and  the  French 
writers,  whose  treatment  of  the 


292 


The  Looker-on. 


[Aug. 


subject  is  so  much  more  easy. 
Gyp  does  not  expect  her  heroes  to 
be  gentlemen  ;  she  expects  them  to 
behave  like  beings  without  honour 
or  respect  for  any  law,  human  or 
divine,  and  to  take  every  advan- 
tage of  ignorance  or  folly  or  incau- 
tious daring  on  the  other  side.  It 
is  a  high  testimony  to  the  English- 
man, though  Madame  Grand  does 
not  love  him,  that  she  is  quite  sure 
of  him  in  this  respect.  The 
naughty  husband  of  Evadne,  whom 
that  tremendously  superior  young 
woman  treats  with  such  high- 
handed absurdity,  is  a  preux 
chevalier,  full  of  honour  and  faith- 
fulness to  his  promise.  It  is  not 
intentional,  but  it  is  all  the  greater 
as  a  testimonial  for  that.  He  is 
by  far  the  most  high-minded,  the 
most  self-controlled  person  in  the 
book,  which  would  be  such  a  clever 
book,  with  its  queer  touch  of 
genius,  if  it  were  not  so  school- 
girlish  and  full  of  such  superficial 
skipping  and  floating  over  the  pro- 
blems of  mankind.  But  it  is  a 
curious  feature  of  the  times  that  a 
woman  with  such  a  programme 
gets  a  following — nay,  even  indeed 
forms  a  new  Party,  save  the  mark  ! 
to  clear  up  along  with  other  sages  all 
the  difficulties,  political  and  other- 
wise, of  the  world.  A  new  Party  ! 
which  probably  these  visionaries 
think  is  one  of  the  features  of  the 
Time,  and  shows  what  moral  pro- 
gress we  are  making,  and  will  soon 
embrace  all  that  is  worth  thinking 
of  in  the  world.  So  Laurence 
Oliphant  thought  too,  who  was  a 
man  of  the  world,  and  knew  better 
than  all  these  wise  men  and  women 
put  together— but  who  also,  alas  ! 
was  strong  on  the  Sex -question, 
and  thought  it  was  the  lever  which 
should  lift  the  universe.  What  a 
happy  thing  it  is  that  Christianity 
knows  no  Sex-question,  and  that 
our  religion,  at  least  for  those 
who  are  not  too  superior  to  believe 


in  it,  is  for  men  and  women  alike, 
and  does  not  inquire  which  is 
which ! 

But  the  Woman-question,  and 
the  Sex-question,  and  all  their  de- 
tails, are  invaluable  to  the  littera- 
teur, using  the  word  not  in  its 
highest  sense  \  and  again  we  are 
led  to  remark  what  an  immense, 
what  an  incalculable  audience  of 
women  the  popularity  of,  at  all 
events,  the  first  of  these  questions 
involves.  "  I  should  like,"  said  an 
eminent  journalist  who  has  now 
developed  into  a  yet  more  eminent 
official  and  ruler  of  the  world — "  I 
should  like  the  paper  to  be  as 
popular  with  the  ladies  of  the 
family  as  with  the  men, — I  should 
like  it  to  be  looked  for  in  the 
drawing-rooms,  and  to  call  forth 
as  much  interest  there  as  the 
sporting  news  or  the  price  of 
stocks  do  elsewhere."  That  emin- 
ent person  has  had  his  wish,  we 
do  not  doubt.  The  paper  which 
once  was  his  care  describes  the 
toilets  at  every  great  social  gather- 
ing, which  is  the  other  way  of 
satisfying  the  women,  besides  and 
in  competition  with  the  Woman- 
question.  There  is  no  particular 
fault  to  be  found  with  this.  It  is 
just  as  elevating  information  to 
hear  how  the  princesses  were 
dressed,  as  to  be  told  how  many  runs 
Mr  Fry  made,  or  what  wickets  fell 
to  the  incomparable  bowling  of  Mr 
Bathurst.  But  it  is  more  or  less 
a  new  thing,  and  therefore  more 
open  to  remark.  And  it  leads  to 
the  conclusion,  either  that  the 
feminine  audience  has  much  in- 
creased, or  that  it  has  grown  so 
much  in  importance  that  its  tastes 
must  be  consulted,  and  due  provi- 
sion made  for  them,  which  is,  in  its 
way,  perhaps  an  even  more  curious 
sign  of  the  times  than  the  subjects 
themselves  which  are  treated  for 
its  amusement  or  pleasure.  It 
has  often  been  said  that  it  is  wo- 


1894.1  The  Looker-on, 

men  who  read  (as  well  as  so  often 
write)  the  novels;  but  it  is  only 
within  the  last  few  years  that  the 
preponderance  of  the  feminine 
reader  has  been  acknowledged  in 
the  newspaper  and  the  popular 
periodical.  If  this  has  advan- 
tages in  occupying  and  interesting 
a  very  large  audience,  it  certainly 
has  its  inconveniences  and  draw- 
backs too.  But  there  are  hopeful 
signs,  we  think,  that  the  women 
are  beginning  to  get  sick  of  the 
Woman- question,  which  is  a  con- 
summation most  devoutly  to  be 
wished.  That  the  other  kind  of 
women  should  ever  be  tired  of  the 
fashions  is  a  thing  not  to  be  hoped 
for,  perhaps  not  even  to  be  de- 
sired, for  the  fashions  are  a  great 
resource.  They  have  their  moral 
uses  which  are  not  to  be  despised. 

A  totally  different  kind  of  liter- 
ature has  lately  been  honoured 
in  a  most  admirable  and  inter- 
esting way,  and  by  a  class  per- 
haps not  usually  much  addicted  to 
paying  honours  of  that  kind,  in 
the  banquet  given  the  other  day — 
nominally  to  the  American  fleet, 
really  to  the  great  American  writ- 
er, of  whom,  to  our  shame  be  it 
spoken,  a  great  many  of  us  had 
never  heard,  until  the  depths  of 
the  two  services  were  moved  at  his 
coming,  and  English  soldiers  and 
sailors  arose  as  one  man  to  wel- 
come and  applaud  Captain  Mahan. 
This  was  a  very  remarkable  event, 
far  more  interesting  than  most  of 
those  mutual  civilities  between  the 
two  great  Anglo-Saxon  empires  (to 
speak  like  the  Press)  which  come 
to  nothing,  and  so  often  mean  no- 
thing but  claptrap,  and  an  occasion 
for  some  clever  speaker  or  writer 
to  exhibit  himself.  It  was  pretty 
to  see  how  the  American  admiral 
and  officers  took,  with  real  or  pre- 
tended naivety  the  compliment  to 
themselves;  and  how  the  usual  blast 


293 


of   trumpets  about  the  advantage 
of  drawing  the  bonds  of  kindred 
closer  was  received  demurely  on  all 
sides :  though  everybody  knew  very 
well  that  admiral  and  fleets  and 
the  great  Columbia  had  nothing  to 
do   with  the   matter,   but  only   a 
book   and  its  author.     Literature 
does  not  get  very  much  credit  in 
our  day— perhaps  it  rarely  has  in 
any  days,  except  as  a  useful  syco- 
phant, important  occasionally  for 
the  services  it  could  render  in  an 
emergency.     But  the  respect  paid 
to  Captain   Mahan  was  purely  a 
homage   to   literature,  more  than 
any  amount  of  busts  or  memorials. 
We  think  better  of  the  men  who 
gave  that  unadulterated  homage, 
that   being    no   students   for   the 
most   part,   or  specially  given   to 
reading,  it  was  in  them  so  to  ap- 
preciate and  so  to  honour  a  great 
book.     We  do  not  know  anything 
like  it  as  an  evidence  of  respect  to 
the  writer.      The  tribute  got  up 
last    year   to    Zola,    in    the   dull 
season,  when  the  cat  was  away,  so 
to  speak,  and  the  mice  were  free  to 
gambol  at  their  will,  was  a  very 
feeble  as  well  as  absurd  perform- 
ance,  rousing   more  wonder  than 
sympathy,  and  more  laughter  than 
either.       Captain    Mahan   was    a 
very  different  kind  of  hero,   and 
very  different  were  they  who  car- 
ried his  name  to  the  skies — men 
who  were  not  given  to  literature, 
of   many   of    whom    a   superficial 
looker-on  would  have  been  tempted 
to  say  that  they  never  opened  a 
book  ;   yet  here  for  a  book  they 
stood  up  in  enthusiasm,  proclaim- 
ing it  to  all  the  echoes.     Our  re- 
spected Commander-in-Chief  is  not 
a  literary  character,   but  he  was 
there  in  genuine  admiration  for  a 
literary  production.     We  do  not 
know    when    we    have    seen    all 
round  such  an  admirable  demon- 
stration of  what   true  fame   is — 
fame,   we  add  with  a  blush,  not 


294 


The  Looker-on. 


[Aug. 


given  by  us  of  the  literary  craft, 
who  assume  to  ourselves  in  gen- 
eral the  right  of  dispensing  it,  but 
by  practical  men,  not  great  read- 
ers, not  writers  at  all.  It  is  sig- 
nificant that  no  literary  honours, 
properly  so  called,  were  given  to 
Captain  Mahan.  The  Society  of 
Incorporated  Authors  did  not  send 
him  a  deputation,  nor  did  the 
dignified  Athenaeum  elect  him  an 
honorary  member.  No  tribute 
was  offered  to  him  (as  perhaps 
was  natural)  by  the  worshippers 
of  Zola.  We  were  silent,  we  who 
love  to  represent  ourselves  as  the 
chief  trumpeters  of  Fame.  Per- 
haps he  was  all  the  better  pleased. 
We  freely  forgive  Captain 
Mahan  for  being  an  American 
— nay,  we  like  it :  it  is  pleasant 
to  find  in  a  more  or  less  antag- 
onist force  a  man  whose  book 
can  rouse  our  honest  sailors  and 
soldiers,  not  much  given  that  way, 
to  enthusiasm ;  but  for  a  great 
deal  of  the  Americanism  which 
is  now  current  we  have  little 
patience.  For  instance,  London 
and  Paris,  with  perhaps  a  limited 
extension  in  favour  of  Vienna,  are 
the  capitals  of  the  world.  We 
permit  geographical  details  in 
respect  to  these  cities.  There  is 
no  harm  in  speaking  of  the  Boule- 
vards, and  of  Piccadilly,  or  even 
of  the  Bois  and  the  Row,  in  books  ; 
but  if  Liverpool,  Manchester,  and 
Glasgow  were  to  parade  their 
streets  in  literature — as  if  anybody 
cared  ! — we  should  quickly  inform 
these  presumptuous  towns  that 
they  were  assuming  an  importance 
that  did  not  belong  to  them.  But 
we  are  expected  to  listen  com- 
placently while  we  are  told  within 
what  limits  of  ridiculous  streets 
New  York  gentility  may  dwell, 
and  whereabouts  in  Boston  it  is 
permitted  to  a  man  who  respects 
himself  to  take  a  house.  What 
can  any  man  (or  woman)  in  his 


senses  care  for  East  Sixty-fifth 
Street  ?  We  allow  the  mention  of 
Broadway,  or  perhaps  of  Beacon 
Street;  they  are  symbols,  the  one  of 
noise  and  traffic,  the  other  of  that 
exclusiveness  which  the  true 
American  loves.  Otherwise,  what 
are  these  unknown  localities  to 
English  readers?  Yet  a  clever 
writer  has  lately  been  discoursing 
upon  them  in  a  clever  evening 
paper,  for  our  instruction,  as  if  they 
were  a  subject  of  universal  human 
interest. 

American  novels  are  a  different 
matter :  they  are,  of  course,  in- 
tended for  their  own  native  audi- 
ence in  the  first  place,  and  we 
hear  of  the  dangers  which  exist 
at  the  corner  of  Fifth  Avenue 
and  Twenty-third  Street  with  an 
unblenching  brow  ;  but  we  are  in- 
sulted by  such  details  in  an  Eng- 
lish paper — as  if,  we  repeat,  any- 
body cared  !  There  are  some  won- 
derful things  in  these  same  Ameri- 
can novels  about  the  grandeur  of 
the  upper  classes,  which  fill  us 
with  amaze  and  admiration.  We 
have  dukes,  &c.,  of  our  own,  on 
whose  pretensions  (in  a  general 
way  very  mild  and  modest  to  the 
common  eye)  our  American  friends 
comment  very  angrily;  but  these 
are  nothing  to  the  pretensions  of 
that  aristocracy  which  dwells 
between Alas  !  the  Looker- 
on  has  not  the  best  of  memories, 
and  forgets  exactly  what  are  the 
numbers  of  the  streets  between 
which  fashion  ordains  that  the 
New-Yorker  should  dwell.  How 
fine,  how  admirably  fine,  that  aris- 
tocracy is,  may  be  seen  in  Mr 
Marion  Crawford's  book,  '  Kather- 
ine  Lauderdale.'  The  hero  of  that 
work,  an  extremely  unfortunate 
young  man,  cannot  possibly  marry 
because  all  he  has  to  reckon  upon 
is  about  £1500  a -year.  His 
mother  has  an  income  of  .£3000 ; 
but  she  could  not  maintain  herself 


1894." 


The  Looker-on. 


295 


as  a  lady  and  retain  her  little 
luxuries  if  his  young  wife  was 
added  to  her  household,  so  she 
divides  the  income  with  her  son, 
in  order  that  if  the  young  lady  can 
make  up  her  mind  to  face  starva- 
tion she  may  do  so  at  her  own 
risk.  We  wish  all  our  sons  and 
daughters  had  £1500  a -year  to 
begin  upon ;  but  then  we  are  only 
modest  English  folk.  Mr  Crawford, 
by  the  way,  is  far  happier  and 
better  (in  art  of  course  we  mean, 
not  in  fact)  when  he  is  not  upon 
American  soil. 

What  a  good  thing  it  is  for  the 
Looker-on  that  *  Marcella,'  and  the 
'  Rubicon,'  and  a  number  of  other 
highly  popular  works,  came  out 
before  the  season  !  He  can  only 
report  how  rueful  those  persons 
look  who  have  been  learning  poli- 
tical economy  and  the  social  ques- 
tion from  the  first  work,  and  how 
indignant  those  who  have  been 
deluded  into  the  other.  "No, 
no,"  says  one  friend,  shaking  his 
head ;  "  when  I  want  to  study 
these  subjects  the  British  Museum 
is  open,  and  there  are  all  manner 
of  text-books; "  and  we  have  heard 
a  lady  impertinently  ask  concern- 
ing the  second,  of  which  sex  the 
author  wore  the  costume?  whether, 
in  short,  not  to  put  too  fine  a  point 
upon  it,  he  was  in  petticoats, 
or  the  other  things?  We  pause, 
however,  to  note  that  in  *  Mar- 
cella' there  is  one  admirable 
piece  of  description,  which,  in  dis- 
cussion of  the  very  different  objects 
of  the  book,  among  which  the  art 
of  literature  is  not  included,  seems 
to  have  escaped  notice.  It  is  the 
description  of  a  winter  night  in 
cold  white  moonlight  and  black 
shadow,  and  a  poacher  setting  his 
traps.  It  is  so  fine  as  to  induce 
this  Looker-on  to  believe  that  if 
Mrs  Humphry  Ward  would  shut 
all  her  books  and  forget  all  her 
philosophies,  she  might  do  some- 


thing worthy  of  a  real  reputation 
in  literary  art. 

In  the  long  preponderance  of 
the  domestic  and  philosophical 
novel,  and  especially  in  the  new 
development  of  Sex-literature,  with 
its  manifold  indecencies,  there  has 
arisen  a  great  desire  among  many 
highly  superior  persons,  as  well  as 
others  of  a  humbler  kind,  for  ad- 
venture and  incident  —  nay,  for 
Gaboriau  and  Boisgobey  as  an  an- 
tidote. These  readers  now  do  not 
require  to  go  so  far  afield.  We 
need  not  say  anything  of  our 
heaven-born  detective,  who  is  al- 
ways sure  of  his  audience,  and 
who  sometimes  is  as  good  as 
the  Frenchmen,  though  sometimes 
much  the  reverse  ;  but  the  new 
brand  of  historical  adventures  is 
startling,  and  in  some  cases  as 
good  as  they  are  new.  Mr  Stan- 
ley Weyman  is  a  great  gain  to 
literature.  He  has  a  few  faults, 
which  the  Looker-on  has  no  space 
to  indicate ;  but  for  a  wholesome 
story,  full  of  the  picturesque,  of 
interest,  and  excitement,  and  life, 
there  have  been  few  things  better 
than  that  episode  in  the  life  of 
the  Sieur  de  Marsac,  which  he 
has  published  under  the  excellent 
title  of  'A  Gentleman  of  France.' 
Neither  Quentin  Durward  nor 
D'Artagnan  need  be  ashamed  of 
their  successor,  though  he  is  a 
graver  man  than  either,  and  less 
of  the  usual  hero  of  romance. 
We  reserve  our  judgment  upon 
the  c  Raiders,'  though  it  is  more  a 
book  of  the  season  than  any  of 
the  others,  and  has  made  a  great 
impression  upon  the  world  of 
readers.  We  think,  and  are  sorry 
to  think,  that  if  '  Kidnapped  '  had 
not  been  written,  this  very  clever 
book  would  probably  never  have 
come  into  existence.  One  curious 
thing  let  us  note  in  this  connection, 
and  that  is — that  the  very  broadest 
and  most  obstinate  of  Scotch  in  no 


296 


The  Looker-on. 


[Aug. 


way  seems  to  hinder  the  English 
reader  nowadays.  Sir  Walter's 
Scotch  was  very  different  from  Mr 
Crockett's,  and  even  from  Mr 
Barrie's,  and  indeed  afforded  but 
few  occasions  for  stumbling. 
Both  these  young  writers  are  fond 
of  dialect,  and  think,  we  presume, 
that  it  gives  piquancy  to  say  e'e 
instead  of  eye,  and  awa'  instead 
of  away — which,  after  all,  is  not 
Scotch,  but  simply  dialect — with 
many  things  much  more  objection- 
able. It  is  not,  however,  with 
this  peculiarity  that  we  are  at 
present  concerned,  but  with  the 
much  more  curious  fact  that  it  is 
in  England  that  these  books  have 
attained  their  reputation.  Mr 
Barrie  is  a  man  of  genius  of  whom 
every  Scotsman  has  a  right  to  be 
proud.  But,  strange  to  say,  it  is 
only  Scotsmen,  generally  so  keen 
to  appropriate  every  honour,  whom 
we  have  heard  to  doubt  this  fact. 
There  is  no  doubt  on  the  question 
on  the  other  side  of  the  Tweed 
among  those  who  have  any  right 
to  express  an  opinion;  but  his 
countrymen  hesitate,  nay,  some- 
times declare  that  they  see  little 
in  him.  It  is  just  Thrums,  they 
say,  and  not  Mr  Barrie — delight- 
ful conclusion  !  And  we  have  re- 
marked that  Mr  Barrie  does  not 
appear  on  the  bookstalls  in  his  own 
country — which  are  consecrated  to 
Miss  Annie  S.  Swan:  one  of  the 
queerest  instances  we  know.  These 
are  things  which  perhaps  do  not 
call  for  solemn  notice,  but  fill  the 
soul  of  the  Looker-on  with  admira- 
tion and  amaze.  We  wonder  if 
anything  of  the  kind  occurred 
with  Sir  Walter— if  the  Edinburgh 
audience  hesitated  while  the  Lon- 
don one  leaped  to  the  feet  of  the 
Great  Magician !  We  think  not, 
from  all  we  have  heard,  but  only 
a  contemporary  would  know. 

There  is  not  very  much  to  be 


said  of  the  theatre  :  it  has  set  up 
a  new  way  of  instructing  the 
world,  which,  after  all,  is  not  a 
new  way,  but  one  largely  adopted 
at  all  times  in  that  peculiar  col- 
lege of  morals,  and  almost  neces- 
sary, indeed,  to  its  broad  and 
sudden  effects,  —  the  method  of 
teaching  people  to  be  good  by 
showing  them  how  bad  some 
people  can  be.  It  has  come  to  be 
a  foregone  conclusion,  not  to  be 
wondered  at  when  France  is  the 
origin  of  so  many  of  our  dramas, 
that  the  badness  must  necessarily 
be  of  one  kind,  and  that  a  woman 
with  a  guilty  secret,  or  an  evil 
past,  or  an  almost  overwhelming 
temptation  to  transgress  her  mar- 
riage vows,  is  the  only  heroine  pos- 
sible. Shakespeare,  we  remember, 
did  not  find  it  so,  nor  even,  we 
think,  at  the  other  end  of  the 
scale,  does  Ibsen,  though  he  has 
now  become  the  tutelary  genius  of 
the  English  stage.  Nora  of  the 
'  Doll's  House,'  if  we  remember 
rightly,  had  no  lover.  Her  guilt, 
which  developed  her  soul,  and 
showed  her  for  how  little  she 
counted  personally  in  the  ideas 
of  her  husband  and  other  belong- 
ings, had  nothing  to  say  to  the 
seventh  commandment.  But  the 
seventh  commandment  has  a  per- 
ennial charm  for  the  theatre.  It 
is  all  the  decalogue  for  the  French ; 
it  means  everything,  —  the  only 
active  interest  that  is  in  life.  The 
curious  thing  is,  that  while  we 
have  heard  some  excellent  per- 
sons demur  and  regret  that  they 
had  taken  a  daughter  to  see 
"Faust,"  that  most  universally 
known  of  stories,  they  should 
cheerfully — or  rather,  mournfully 
and  sympathetically — attend  upon 
the  "Second  Mrs  Tanqueray."  We 
by  no  means  demand  that  a  play 
should  have  a  moral  object  and 
meaning;  but  this  is  a  play  sol- 
emnly introduced  to  the  world  on 


1894.]  The  Looker-on. 

that  ground  :  and  we  wonder  what 
its  object  is — to  prove  to  the  world 
that  guilt  never  can  be  forgotten, 
nor  a  sinner  reclaimed  ?  There 
have  been  two  or  three  French 
novels  lately  written  with  a  simi- 
lar purpose.  One  we  remember 
called  'Un  Prejuge*,'  in  which  a 
man  marries  a  woman  of  that 
notably,  exceptionally  pure  char- 
acter which  in  many  French  novels, 
and  in  some  of  our  own  ('Tess,' 
for  example,  the  story  of  a  Pure 
Woman),  distinguishes  in  a  spe- 
cial degree  ladies  who  have  gone 
astray.  In  the  French  book  there 
was  no  publicity  attaching  to  the 
previous  fall ;  nobody  knew  —  it 
was  only  prejudice  which  could 
consider  the  woman  as  any  the 
worse.  But  that  prejudice  rises 
up  in  the  mind  of  the  husband, 
destroying  his  happiness.  She  is 
a  suffering  martyr,  with  no  han- 
kerings after  evil ;  but  he  cannot 
forget  it.  It  is  a  thing  which 
cannot  be  got  over  in  any  way, 
not  even  by  the  aforesaid  ex- 
treme beauty  of  character  or  the 
most  immaculate  virtue.  It  is 
well  to  fence  the  pure  with  every 
barrier,  and  to  allow  no  toleration 
of  guilt;  but  is  not  this  going 
rather  too  far  for  a  moral  1  It  is 
better,  in  our  opinion,  to  have  no 
moral  at  all. 

Beside  this  tendency  towards 
plays  of  pretension,  which  are 
literary  as  well  as  dramatic, — 
which  involves  many  failures  and 
much  inflated  sentiment  and  strain 
after  the  impossible, — there  is  the 
same  dread  reign  of  burlesque  al- 
ways going  on  which  gives  to  the 
vacant  mind  a  kind  of  enjoyment 
not  easily  to  be  appreciated  by 
those  who  do  not  understand  it; 
and  the  same  broad  farce,  which 
is  at  least  human,  of  which  c  Char- 
ley's Aunt '  is  the  amusing  repre- 
sentative. But  even  in  that  light 
line  the  past  season  has  produced 

VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCXLVI. 


297 


no  special  sensation.  There  has 
been  nothing  new.  Mr  Barrie,  not 
content  with  one  reputation,  has 
made  a  second  essay  in  another; 
but  it  is  not  yet  clear  whether 
the  '  Professor's  Love-story '  is  to 
make  any  decisive  mark  or  not. 
The  mark,  at  least,  will  not  be  of 
the  highest  kind.  We  want  a 
heaven  -  born  Dramatist  greatly. 
There  are  many,  and  they  are 
very  well  paid — which  is  no  small 
matter;  but  no  one  apparently 
has  yet  appeared  who  is  of  the 
first  order,  or  who  can  use  with- 
out abusing  the  licence  allowed 
to  the  stage.  Nor  does  even 
the  appearance  of  Madame  Sarah 
Bernhardt  arouse  the  wild  and 
exceedingly  silly  enthusiasm  by 
which  all  decent  persons  were 
startled  a  few  years  ago.  She  is 
received  with  calm,  she  is  no 
longer  apparently  a  sensation,  as 
she  was  in  her  own  person  as  well 
as  in  her  performances.  We  are 
less  fresh,  perhaps,  in  our  feelings, 
perhaps  we  are  a  little  ashamed  of 
that  outburst ;  also  perhaps  society 
has  been  too  busy  to  trouble  itself 
about  the  great  actress.  There 
are  so  many  princesses  in  the  field 
that  there  is  no  room  for  the  lion, 
or  even  for  the  lioness — a  more 
exciting  individuality.  Indeed  we 
think  that  in  the  past  year  or  two 
the  extending  ranks  of  royalty 
must  have  taken  a  great  deal 
from  the  race  of  lions.  Society 
is  flat  where  there  is  not  a  flash 
of  the  purple  for  a  half  -  hour 
or  so ;  and  people  who  feel  them- 
selves left  out  in  the  cold  without 
the  chance  of  a  smile  from  a  Royal 
— or  even  Serene — Highness,  are 
not  disposed  to  receive  as  a  com- 
pensation even  the  bon  mot  of  a 
wit,  much  less  the  reserve  of  an 
author,  a  painter,  or  any  other 
celebrity — who  expects,  instead  of 
amusing  them,  to  be  admired  in 
his  own  person. 

u 


298 


The  Looker-on. 


[Aug. 


The  pictures  are  a  great  thing 
in  the  life  of  the  world.     It  is  not 
perhaps  that  we  admire  them  very 
much  or  that  we  buy  them,  which 
would   be   a   satisfactory  way   of 
showing   interest,   but^  that   they 
are  a  precious  something  to  talk 
about,   especially   when   they   are 
new,    and     everybody     recollects 
them  more  or  less.     The  practice 
of  arranging  special  little  exhibi- 
tions which   are   not  merely  pic- 
tures,   but   mean   something,    has 
now  taken  firm  hold  among  the 
customs  of  the  time.     Stuart  ex- 
hibitions, Tudor  exhibitions,  and 
the  like,  cannot  last  for  ever.    We 
wonder  who  the  inventive  genius 
is  who  finds  out  new  things  which 
will  "  take  "  to  show.    The  Graf  ton 
Galleries  are  pretty  rooms,  answer- 
ing all  the  requirements  which  our 
advanced  and  fastidious  tastes  be- 
gin  to   demand  in  an  exhibition 
—luxurious   furnishing,  moderate 
size,  so  as  not  to  tire  the  visitors, 
and   appropriate    decoration.      In 
all   these   points,   except   that   in 
the  hot  weather  they  were  very 
hot,  and  therefore  presumably  de- 
fective in  ventilation,  they  are  all 
that   is   to   be    desired ;    and   the 
show,  as  everybody  knows,  is  one 
of  portraits,  somewhat  fictitiously 
nominated  Fair  Women — in  those 
advertisements  with  which  nowa- 
days everybody  attempts  to  attract 
the  crowd.     The  crowd  on  a  June 
afternoon   was   scarcely   less    fair 
than  the  pictures,  perhaps  rather 
more  so ;    for   even   Sir   Joshua's 
colours  fade,  but  the  complexions 
of   a   number    of   young  English- 
women in  their  pretty  modes  and 
fashions  show  no  sign  of  the  pos- 
sibility  of   such   an   event.      The 
living  beauties  were  on  the  whole 
more  attractive  than  they  of  the 
past.     The  exhibition   had  taken 
the  fancy,  it  was  evident,  of  the 
beau    monde.      Ascot    could    not 
have    shown    prettier   dresses,    or 


a  Drawing-Hoom  more  beautiful 
people ;  and  as  there  were  many 
there  in  whose  fair  faces  might  be 
traced  a  hereditary  resemblance  to 
the  faces  on  the  walls,  the  whole 
scene  acquired  an  additional  at- 
traction. As  we  have  said  of  the 
readers  of  the  time,  we  may  say 
of  the  spectators.  The  women 
were  again  in  the  majority.  They 
had  come  in  bands,  drawn  by 
that  charm  of  beauty  which  is 
always  so  attractive  to  women, 
to  wander  among  the  beautiful 
shadows  of  their  predecessors,  not 
perhaps  without  an  unconscious 
comparison,  which  was  by  no 
means  to  their  own  disadvantage. 
It  was  a  pretty  sight. 

We  hesitate  to  say  a  word  of 
cold  criticism  on  such  a  charm- 
ing show ;  but  if  anything,  it  was 
perhaps  a  little  monotonous.  As 
many  men  would  have  been  still 
less  interesting.  The  ladies  re- 
deemed it  by  their  difference  of 
costume,  their  silken  petticoats, 
hoops  and  ornaments.  But  yet 
with  all  these  adventitious  helps, 
it  was,  as  we  say,  a  little  monot- 
onous. From  Holbein  to  Sir 
Thomas  Lawrence — nay,  still  fur- 
ther, to  our  own  day — the  suc- 
cession went  on ;  from  the  little 
schoolgirl  in  the  corner  of  the  first 
room  with  a  gentle  vacant  face, 
who,  it  was  a  little  shock  to  hear, 
was  Lady  Jane  Grey,  to  her  Maj- 
esty herself  in  all  the  bloom  of  the 
newest  Court  paint.  The  faces 
which  caught  the  attention  of  the 
Looker-on  were  not  always  the 
most  beautiful.  We  know  the 
fair  ladies  of  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds 
almost  too  well.  They  are  always 
delightful.  Still,  we  pass  them 
with  a  nod  of  recognition,  even 
that  sweet  little  girl  with  her 
little  coats  kilted,  who  stands 
against  the  dim  blue  in  a  mile  of 
canvas,  with  her  pretty  half-con- 
scious look  as  if  she  had  been 


1894.]  The  Looker-on, 

doing  something  amiss,  and  hoped 
• — yet  did  not  much  mind  whether 
or  not — that  we  didn't  know. 
Here  is  a  plain  honest  face  look- 
ing steadily  at  us  with  the  name 
of  Allan  Ramsay  upon  it — not  a 
painter  who  is  often  to  be  in- 
spected, nor  yet  a  great  painter, 
but  capable  of  doing  good  work — 
and  representing  a  living  interest- 
ing woman,  as  we  are  glad  to  see 
for  the  sake  of  his  father's  name ; 
and  of  course  there  is  the  beauti- 
ful Duchess  of  Devonshire,  and 
other  Duchesses  of  Devonshire  not 
so  beautiful,  and  Lady  Hamilton, 
ever  fair,  and  many  sirens  who  in 
other  days  have  led  men's  hearts 
astray.  How  calmly  we  stand  in 
the  midst  of  them  now !  while 
their  grand-daughters  raise  faces 
still  more  fair  to  the  pictured 
images  with  the  powdered  locks 
and  fictitious  emblems  which  once 
were  the  world's  delight ! 

It  is  curious,  however,  to  re- 
cognise, as  we  do  for  the  hundredth 
time,  that  the  great  beauties  cele- 
brated as  such  are  often  less  beauti- 
ful in  fact  than  those  whose  names 
have  no  celebrity  at  all.  Our  Scots 
Mary,  for  one,  would  never  be  selec- 
ted out  of  a  collection  like  this  as 
a  Queen  of  Hearts — and,  to  add  a 
name  which  it  is  rather  disrespect- 
ful to  place  by  that  of  a  mon- 
arch, neither  would  Nell  Gwynn, 
though  we  are  accustomed  to  think 
of  her  as  one  of  the  types  of  the 
winning  and  fascinating.  It  is 
evident  that  these  ladies  had  some- 
thing beyond  which  was  more 
than  beauty  —  that  indefinable 
gift  of  charm,  which  makes  all 
the  difference.  It  is  curious  in- 
deed to  contrast  some  of  these 
portraits  with  the  characters  which 
we  know  more  or  less  in  history 
— Anne  of  Austria,  for  instance, 
the  large,  solid,  fair  woman,  big 
enough  to  overshadow  half  a  king- 
dom. Was  this  she  who  loved  the 


299 


airy,  graceful  Buckingham,  and 
sent  him  a  mission  we  know  of, 
of  which  the  leader  was  a  certain 
D'Artagnan,  a  gentleman  of  Gas- 
cony  1  And  that  robust  Venetian 
woman,  with  an  arm  which  could 
fell  an  ox,  was  she  the  romantic 
Queen  of  Cyprus,  the  daughter  of 
St  Mark,  who  held  her  fantastic 
Court  at  Asolo  amid  all  the 
twittering  of  the  love-songs?  As 
we  make  the  round,  gleams  of 
romance  shine  out  on  every  side. 
There  is  the  lovely  Miss  Linley, 
whom  Sheridan  carried  off  in  a 
post-chaise  from  the  midst  of  all 
her  adorers.  She  does  not  look 
by  any  means  so  lovely  on  the 
canvas  as  she  does  in  the  ima- 
gination. Queen  Henrietta  Maria 
looks  small  and  sad  and  ineffec- 
tive, with  those  long,  exquisite, 
waxen  fingers,  without  any  bones 
in  them,  which  Vandyke  en- 
dowed all  his  sitters  with.  Sir 
Joshua  was  not  in  this  respect 
fortunate  in  the  quality  of  his 
sitters,  though  they  have  every 
other  gift  that  Art  can  give  them. 
They  were  rarely  of  any  note, 
save  for  beauty  and  rank ;  they 
have  no  stories ;  there  is  little 
record  of  character  or  meaning  in 
their  beautiful  faces.  We  our- 
selves, more  cognisant  of  these 
latter  qualities  than  of  art,  prefer 
the  "  beautiful  Duchess  of  Devon- 
shire" in  that  picture  where  she 
has  a  triumphant  baby  in  her  lap, 
babbling  and  shouting  so  that  all 
the  world  might  hear.  This  is 
what  we  will  allow  to  be  the 
literary,  what  the  French  call  the 
anecdotal,  point  of  view. 

Might  it  be  permissible,  we 
wonder,  for  the  Looker-on  to  inter- 
pose one  word  of  respectful  re- 
monstrance to  his  Sovereign  1  Her 
Majesty  is  here,  as  in  every  collec- 
tion of  portraits  the  greatest  lady 
in  the  land  must  be.  There  is  a 
young  slim  maiden  raising  her 


300 


The  Looker-on. 


[Aug. 


eyes  to  heaven,  in  the  act  of 
taking  the  coronation  oath,  which 
is  not  a  masterpiece  of  art,  yet  is 
suggestive,  and  conveys  a  sensible 
impression  of  that  royal  lady  with 
the  queenly  eyes  whom  elder  peo- 
ple remember  —  blue  eyes,  well 
opened,  full  of  light,  taking  in 
with  instinctive  faculty  every- 
thing around;  too  great  for  shy- 
ness or  shrinking,  too  completely 
assured  of  supremacy  to  be  proud 
— royal  eyes  which  we  remember 
with  a  certain  overawed  sensa- 
tion, which  lingers  still,  far  away 
through  the  mists  of  youth,  throw- 
ing everything  else  into  the  shade. 
Sir  George  Hayter  was  not  a  great 
painter,  yet  we  forgive  him  for 
that  look.  But,  alas !  our  royal 
Liege,  and  God  save  her  Majesty  ! 
The  art  of  portraiture  is  a  great 
English  art.  We  may  not  be  su- 
preme in  any  other  field,  but 
there  is  no  nation  in  the  world 
which  can  beat  us  in  this — not, 
above  all,  Germany,  in  its  present 
development.  Will  the  Queen 
never  give  us  the  satisfaction  of 
seeing  her  portrait  by  an  English 
hand  before  we  die  1  Let  us  not 
say  a  word  against  the  Herr  von 
Angeli.  He  who  paints  royalty 
every  day  ought  to  do  it  well  by 
this  time :  but There  are  half- 
a-dozen  English  names  we  could 
mention  who,  we  are  sure,  would  do 
it  better,  and  leave  us  an  image 
which  would  be  worth  pointing 
out  to  our  great-grandchildren  as 
that  of  a  great  English  Queen. 
Herr  von  Angeli  is  too  particular, 
perhaps,  about  the  orders  and  the 
jewels  to  understand  the  full  im- 
portance of  the  royal  countenance. 
It  is  curious  how  this  natural 
and  national  gift  for  portraits 
comes  out,  after  the  passage  of  a 
century  or  more,  as  the  one  great 
distinguishing  faculty  of  the  Eng- 
lish school.  We  cannot  indeed 
claim  Professor  Herkomer's  won- 


derful portrait  of  Miss  Grant  as 
the  work  of  an  Englishman,  though 
it  will  always  be  classified  as  of 
the  English  school.  But  there  is 
another  portrait  which  suggests 
itself  as  more  or  less  the  rival 
and  pendant  to  that  admirable 
piece  of  painting,  the  "portrait 
of  a  lady,"  by  Mr  Orchardson, 
in  the  Royal  Academy's  exhibi- 
tion in  Burlington  House.  The 
admirable,  forcible  painting,  the 
lively  character  in  the  face,  the 
subjection  of  every  accessory  to 
the  one  great  object  of  the  por- 
trait-painter's art,  the  record  of 
an  individual  being,  all  tend  to- 
wards this  end  with  noble  effect. 
Mr  Orchardson  is  not  a  portrait- 
painter,  and  there  is  something  in 
the  yellowish  tones  of  this  picture, 
and  a  peculiar  management  of  the 
background,  which  link  it,  though 
so  true  a  transcript  of  life,  to  those 
scenes  of  imagination  in  which  he 
has  so  often  distinguished  himself. 
It  is  "  an  Orchardson,"  distinctly 
and  before  anything  else — which 
probably  is,  though  we  would  not 
make  so  bold  as  to  assert  it,  a 
drawback.  But  it  is  at  the  same 
time  a  captivating  portrait — one 
of  those  which  stand  out  among  a 
hundred  lifeless  canvases  as  in- 
stinct with  the  very  glow  of  exist- 
ence,— no  portrait,  but  a  woman. 
The  lady  is  not  beautiful — not  so 
handsome  as  Mr  Herkomer's  model 
— but  with  a  buoyant  vivacity  in 
her  look  and  air  which  is  extremely 
fascinating,  though  not  a  touch  be- 
yond the  modesty  of  nature.  It 
would  be  a  constant  problem  what 
she  was  just  going  to  say  did  we 
live  in  the  same  room  with  that 
young  lady.  We  should  be  tempt- 
ed in  some  twilight  hour  to  startle 
her  with  a  sudden  clap  of  our 
hands,  and  cry,  Speak,  then,  and 
have  it  out  !  And  yet  the  pres- 
ence is  not  too  great  —  not  like 
that  of  a  dazzling  lady  in  a  yellow 


1894.]  The  Looker-on. 


301 


gown,  against  a  red  curtain,  on 
the  wall  opposite,  whose  size  and 
urgency  are  such  that  she  would 
fill  any  room,  however  big,  and 
push  the  Looker  -  on  out  of  it, 
breathing  all  the  air,  taking  up 
all  the  space. 

Much  cannot  be  said  in  this  ex- 
hibition of  the  pictures  into  which 
imagination  and  fancy  enter,  or 
ought  to  enter.  It  would  be  un- 
kind to  speak  of  the  Sir  Percival, 
holding  a  cup  evidently  contain- 
ing a  black  draught,  or  something 
equally  horrible,  in  his  hands,  and 
making  faces  over  it,  while  the 
buxom  person  by  his  side  encour- 
ages him  to  drink ;  or  of  the 
loathly  lady,  in  hues  of  Berlin 
wool,  who  holds  the  magic  crystal 
in  her  hand,  but  certainly  cannot 
be  gratified  by  the  sight  if  she 
sees  herself  therein ;  or  for  the 
unfortunate  Lady  of  Shallott,  en- 
tangled in  the  green  and  purple 
threads  of  her  web,  which  are  so 
truly  magic  that  they  must  have 
come  out  of  the  loom  on  purpose 
to  intercept  her.  Nor  does  Mr 
Poynter's  Serene  Hours,  under 
arches  evidently  made  for  the  uses 
of  a  theatre,  and  against  a  blue 
canvas  very  little  resembling  a  sky, 
tempt  us  to  linger.  Never  on  sea 
or  shore  were  there  such  hours  as 
these,  except  in  tapestry  or  scene- 
painting,  which  indeed  is,  perhaps, 
what  a  great  decorative  artist 
wishes,  and  not  any  such  trumpery 
as  life.  The  few  pictures  which 
linger  in  our  mind  are  of  the  very 
rudeness  of  life,  and  perhaps  charm 
us  all  the  more  by  the  contrast. 
There  is  a  picture  (but  we  think 
it  is  in  the  New  Gallery,  not  the 
Academy)  which  pulls  us  up 
sharply  in  the  midst  of  a  mildly 
interested  lounge,  in  which  no 
keen  sensation  is.  It  is  of  a  small 
sea-going  craft  bearing  down  upon 
us,  with  a  rattle  of  cordage  and 
a  swish  of  tremendous  progress 


through  the  salt  tumultuous  water 
— a  bit,  only  the  bow  and  half  a 
crowded  deck,  of  a  brown  weather- 
worn brig  or  smack,  but  coming 
along  upon  the  crest  of  the  wave 
with  the  velocity  and  passion  of 
doom.  What  is  it?  The  sea  is 
not  so  terrible  that  the  brows  of 
these  brown  sea-dogs  should  be 
so  strained  with  anxiety ;  but  how 
the  boat  comes  on  !  so  that  we  put 
up  our  hands  to  keep  it  off — not 
to  run  us  down  into  the  churned 
wave  under  the  keel.  There  are 
some  dolls'  heads  bobbing  about 
in  front,  which  had  better  be  away, 
in  proof  that  this  is  the  Mermaid's 
Rock  upon  which  the  doomed  ship 
is  about  to  dash  and  split  asunder. 
The  rush  of  that  vessel  is  a  thing 
to  see  in  one's  dreams.  It  brings 
with  it  a  rush  of  suggestions — a 
sudden  touch  of  the  tragic  among 
all  the  mild  things  that  move  no 
man. 

Is  this  perhaps,  however,  not 
the  object  of  art1?  Is  it  anecdot- 
ical  as  the  French  say,  an  effort 
rather  of  a  literary  than  of  a  pic- 
torial kind1?  This  is  a  question 
that  may,  perhaps,  have  to  be 
argued  out  one  of  these  days,  but 
not  by  a  Looker-on.  We  are  old- 
fashioned,  we  admit.  We  go  away 
with  our  breath  a  little  affected, 
and  sit  down  in  a  corner  (one  ex- 
cellent point  in  these  luxurious 
galleries  is  that  there  are  so  many 
delightfully  upholstered  places  on 
which  to  sit  down),  and  dash  as  it 
were  the  spray  out  of  our  eyes, 
and  calm  ourselves  with  the  arti- 
ficial and  conventional.  We  per- 
ceive dimly  that  this  is  perhaps  an 
argument  for  keeping  that  strong 
passion  of  life  and  tragedy  and 
disaster  out  of  paint.  Perhaps 
we  ought  not  to  seek  suggestion 
of  any  marked  kind,  sensation, 
emotion,  in  a  picture,  but  only 
calm  images,  tranquillising  scenes, 
which  go  no  deeper  than  the  can- 


302 


The  Looker-on.  [Aug. 


vas,  without  any  moral  perspective 
nor  even  too  much  of  the  other 
kind.  This  is  what  our  greatest 
painters  certainly  seem  to  aim  at, 
and  it  is,  of  course,  much  more 
probable  that  they  are  right  than 
that  we  are  right.  Sir  Edward 
Burne-Jones,  who  is  one  of  the 
great  masters,  sends  us  the  image 
of  a  pair,  interlaced  with  clasping 
arms,  in  dark  blues  and  greens  of 
most  inconvenient  drapery,  among 
the  ruins.  Since  it  is  right  to 
believe  that  complexions  of  olive 
pallor,  and  limbs  that  have  no 
bondage  of  bone  but  can  twist  as 
they  will,  are  lovely  things,  we 
agree  respectfully  that  this  is  love- 
ly. Perhaps  it  is  the  right  kind  of 
thing  to  ornament  a  princely  wall 
— walls,  as  we  all  know,  being 
flat,  and  the  arts  of  illusion 
which  make  them  open  into  fresh 
scenes,  or  even  suddenly  to  a  bit 
of  stormy  sea,  inappropriate  to  the 
steady  and  solid  requirements  of  a 
house  intended  to  stand  quite  fast 
and  shelter  life,  instead  of  attempt- 
ing to  mimic  it.  There  is  a  great 
deal  to  be  said  for  this  point  of 
view.  We  could  not,  it  is  an  un- 
doubted matter  of  fact,  get  the 
sensation  of  a  sea  running  high, 
and  a  ship  about  to  dash  upon  the 
rocks,  in  any  calm  dwelling-place, 
in  the  drawing-room  or  the  dining- 
room,  where  the  only  clash  is  that 
of  knives  and  forks.  The  true 
decorative  art  is  that  which  binds 
the  wall  together,  not  that  which 
makes  cuts  and  rents  in  it,  exhib- 
iting glimpses  of  things  which  pre- 
vent you  from  eating  your  dinner 
in  peace.  There  is,  we  repeat,  a 
good  deal  in  this  point  of  view, 
and  happily  it  is  not  for  us  to 
fight  it  out. 

If  it  was,  however,  carried  to 
the  bitter  end,  it  would  deprive  us 
of  the  pleasure  of  such  a  bit  of 
sunshine  as  the  "Autumn  Blue" 
of  Mr  Tuke,  with  its  ruddy  figures 


standing  up  against  sea  and  sky, 
with  all  the  advantages  of  the 
nude  without  any  of  its  drawbacks. 
The  figure  in  front  climbing  back 
into  the  boat,  with  its  play  of 
vigorous  shoulders  and  submerged 
colour,  is  admirable,  and  the  im- 
pression of  natural  strength, 
health,  and  enjoyment  in  the 
boundless  freedom  of  open  air  and 
open  sea,  delightful.  The  sea  is 
strongly  represented  this  year. 
Mr  Henry  Moore  and  Mr  Brett 
are  both  in  excellent  form.  Some- 
times the  former  is  a  little  cold, 
with  too  profuse  a  use  of  indigo. 
Sometimes  the  latter  is  so  blue,  so 
blue !  in  such  bright  tones  of 
cobalt  that  we  think  we  are  at  an 
Eton  cricket -match,  and  that  all 
the  boys  have  been  turned  into 
waves  and  wavelets  in  the  colours 
of  the  school :  but  the  whiff  of  the 
gale  in  the  one,  and  the  exquisite 
repose  of  the  shore  in  the  other, 
are  above  praise.  Landscapes 
(sea-scapes  is  a  foolish  word)  are 
always,  or  almost  always,  a  safe 
subject  in  our  exhibitions.  It  is, 
perhaps,  that  the  imagination,  in 
which  we  are  not  so  strong,  is  less 
necessary  there  —  while  we  are 
strong  in  those  qualities  of  a  clear 
eye,  a  patient  observation,  and  that 
love  of  nature  which  is  perhaps 
more  characteristic  of  the  English 
race  than  of  any  other.  We  remem- 
ber the  curious  and  amused  deliver- 
ance of  a  French  lady  much  given 
to  classification,  as  the  French  are, 
on  a  walk  she  had  taken  with  an 
English,  or  rather  Scotch,  relative. 
"She  sees  things  I  don't  see," 
cried  this  lively  observer,  half 
amused,  half  impatient.  "She 
calls  upon  me  to  look  at  this  and 
that.  I,  for  my  part,  don't  care 
to  look  at  this  and  that.  I  want 
to  get  there,  where  we  are  going." 
It  is  perhaps  because  we  have  a 
national  faculty  for  seeing  the  ob- 
jects in  our  way,  and  a  national 


1894.] 


The  Looker-on. 


303 


love  for  them  which  shows  in  the 
most  unlikely  subjects,  that  the 
landscapes  are  always  safe,  more 
or  less.  There  are  so  many  that 
we  are  confused  among  them  ;  and 
yet  wherever  we  turn  a  weary  eye, 
the  chances  are  that  it  will  light 
upon  something  that  will  soothe 
and  cheer  it,  perhaps  of  not  im- 
portance enough  to  prompt  a  glance 
at  the  catalogue,  where  we  might 
possibly  find  a  new  name,  but  al- 
ways soothing,  comforting,  in  the 
midst  of  more  ambitious  claims. 
Mr  Leader,  who  was  a  little  while 
ago  praised  to  the  skies,  is  now 
su ffe ring  in  the  cold  shade  with 
ungrateful  comments  upon  his 
wet  roads  and  glistening  puddles. 
He  has  here  a  big  picture  of  Wor- 
cester Cathedral,  which  catches 
one's  eye  whether  we  will  or  not. 
The  rain  certainly  is  well  over 
there ;  there  are  no  puddles.  "The 
rose  has  been  washed,  just  washed 
in  a  shower."  Church  and  river- 
bank  and  trees  and  sky  are  clean 
and  clear  almost  beyond  the  possi- 
bilities of  cleanness;  but  the  at- 
mosphere is  so  fresh,  the  clear 
shining  after  rain  so  conspicuous, 
that  even  against  our  will  our  eyes 
turn  back  to  it  like  a  child's  to  the 
lamp.  It  is  full  of  air  and  light. 

There  is  another  portrait  in  the 
New  Gallery  which  will  last  in 
our  memory  among  the  recollec- 
tions of  this  year.  It  is  a  portrait 
of  Mr  Forbes  Robertson  by  Mr 
Glazebrook,  a  name  which  has  not 
yet  attained  to  universal  recogni- 
tion. It  is  an  admirable  piece  of 
painting,  so  strong  and  true  and 
living  that  it  throws  everything  else 
about  it  into  the  shade.  The  pose, 
the  tone,  are  excellent,  and  the 
effect  of  restrained  energy  and 
vitality  extraordinary.  The  effect 
is  almost  that  of  a  living  man  full 
of  power  and  purpose  sitting  among 
a  roomful  of  shadows.  Whenever 
a  face  thus  gleams  upon  us,  the 


place  is  lighted  up.  There  is  in 
one  of  the  smaller  rooms  a  little 
picture  of  a  Dutch  fisherman,  by 
Mr  Sherwood  Hunter,  small,  and 
in  a  corner,  and  with  a  title  and 
motif  which  have  become  a  little 
common  in  the  long  interval  since 
Millet  took  and  exhausted  them. 
It  is  called  the  Angelus  ;  but  that 
does  not  matter.  It  is  one  of  those 
which  our  Looker-on  takes  down 
from  the  wall  and  carries  away 
with  him  for  the  private  picture- 
gallery  in  his  mind,  where  are 
stored  many  various,  perhaps  not 
all  beautiful,  things. 

But  this  is  a  great  deal  about 
pictures.  If  they  are  not  the  most 
important  things  in  the  summer, 
they  are  among  those  w^hich  it  is 
most  tempting  to  discuss,  and  upon 
which  we  can  all  let  loose  an 
opinion.  One  piece  of  personal 
experience  pleases  us  in  this  con- 
nection, which  we  cannot  but  add. 
It  is  usual  to  say  that  our  Eng- 
lish exhibitions  are  much  inferior 
to  the  French;  and  coming  fresh 
from  the  Paris  salons  we  were 
prepared  to  find  it  so.  But  we 
have  changed  our  opinion,  for 
so  much  as  that  is  worth.  The 
salon  of  the  Champs  Elysees  might 
by  a  partial  critic  be  considered 
even  a  little — worse  than  our  own 
Academy ;  the  salon  of  the 
Champs  de  Mars,  a  little,  but  only 
a  little,  better.  In  all  there  is  the 
same  rule,  which,  indeed,  prevails 
in  all  work  with  which  the  imagina- 
tion and  the  mind  have  anything 
to  do.  There  are  acres  of  medioc- 
rities, very  respectable,  very  dis- 
respectable,  as  the  case  may  be — 
and  a  good  picture  here  and  there. 
We  fear  that  the  same  rule  holds 
good,  more  or  less,  even  in  the 
carefully  weeded  collections  of  the 
greatest  national  galleries.  Art 
is  long.  It  is  sometimes  not  a 
good  angel  to  those  who  devote 
their  lives  to  it.  In  other  crafts, 


304 

excellence  of  training,  honesty  of 
purpose,  tell  for  a  great  deal — al- 
most for  everything ;  but  in  those 
fantastic  arts  which  we  hold  the 
highest  it  is  not  so,  or  only  to  a 
very  small  degree.     The  painter, 
the  writer,  may  have  gone  through 
the  finest  education,  and  may  be 
the  most  devoted  workman  in  the 
world ;  yet  he  will  be  passed  at  a 
gallop  by  some  little  scrub  who  has 
nothing  to  recommend  him  but  a 
spark  of  that  unchancy  thing  called 
genius,  which  comes  from  nobody 
knows  where,   and  which  he  has 
picked  up  in  some  odd  corner  no- 
body knows  how.     A  great  many 
clever   people  of  late   have   been 
very  anxious  to  disprove  the  ex- 
istence of  this  Will  -  o'  -  the  -  wisp, 
upon  which  no  one  can  calculate. 
Genius,  pooh !  it  is  heredity,  it  is 
development,   it   is  the  gradually 
growing    tendencies    of    ordinary 
nature.     It  would  be  a  good  thing 
to  put  these  doctrines  to  a  scientific 
test,    and   try   whether    by   some 
elaborate  system  of  Conservatories 
and    scientific    methods    a    thing 
which  is  so  simple  could  not  be 
produced.      In  so  many  cases  it 
does  not  fall  to  the  hands  which 
by  every  rule  ought  to  be  sure  of 
it — which  is  a  lamentable  thing  to 
be  compelled  to  say. 

Outside,  in  the  bigger  world  of 
life  and  movement,  what  wonder- 
fully varied  events  have  marked 
the  progress  of  the  season.  No- 
thing could  be  more  dramatic  than 
the  contrast  which  the  same  day, 
or  at  least  the  same  week,  pre- 
sented to  the  world  in  two  great 
countries. 

"  A  wedding  and  a  funeral, 
A  christening  and  a  burial," 

are  the  very  types  of  vicissitude 
m  every  claptrap  effusion  —  but 
seldom  does  Fate  so  point  the 
actual  lesson.  In  our  country 


The  Looker-on.  [Aug- 

there  occurred  the  joyful  birth  of 
an    heir     to    a    long  -  established 
throne,  the  third  in  direct  succes- 
sion behind  the  Queen — a  very  un- 
usual thing  to  be  witnessed  by  a 
royal,  or  indeed  any  other,  parent. 
For  our  own  part  we  are  not  so 
very  sure,  though  we  are  aware  it 
is  in  harmony  with  the  general  feel- 
ing, and  especially  with  heraldic 
and  genealogical  principles,  that  the 
event  is  so  much  more  triumphant 
because    the   Duchess    of    York's 
baby   is   a  boy.     It   is   not   very 
respectful  to  the  Queen,  for  one 
thing,   to  insist   upon  this  point. 
Her  Majesty  has  been,  and  is,  by 
far  the  most  successful  sovereign 
of  her  race — more  honoured,  more 
wise,  more  full  of  sense  and  spirit, 
to  say  nothing  of  other  qualities, 
than  any  of  them.    For  George  III. 
the  country  has  always  retained  a 
kindness ;   but   he   was  a   wrong- 
headed  old  gentleman,  though  we 
have    forgotten    all    that   in    the 
sadly  conciliatory  fact  which  over- 
comes all  prejudices,  of  his  mourn- 
ful and  pathetic  end.     But  there 
can  be  no  doubt  that  of   all  the 
House  of  Brunswick  her  Majesty 
is    the    noblest    example    of   the 
race,     and    that    her     reign    has 
been  more  free  than  any  other  of 
misfortune   of   any   kind.       None 
of    us     are    very    sure    whether 
the  plunge   of   a   new    succession 
may  not  be  a  plunge  among  the 
lions,   into  the  waves  of  a  much 
more  uneasy  and  dangerous  time, 
when  the  influence  of  the  Queen's 
personality  is  no   longer  here  to 
overawe  and  to  defend.       There- 
fore the  chance  of  a  new  Victoria 
would  not  have  been   one   to  be 
despised,   notwithstanding  all  our 
triumph   over  a  boy.      But   that 
sentiment  is  all  but  universal,  and 
is  wholly  independent  of  facts  or 
the  inferences  of  history.     And  it 
is  a  picturesque  event,  besides  all 
its  other  advantages.     Our  kings 


1894.] 


The  Looker-on. 


305 


to  be  stand  visible  almost  in  a 
crowd,  three  of  them  awaiting 
their  turn.  It  is  a  thing  which 
has  never  happened  before,  except, 
we  presume,  in  Germany,  where 
the  present  Crown  Prince  must 
have  begun  before  his  old  iron 
great-grandfather  had  ceased  to 
be.  At  all  events  it  has  never 
before  happened  in  these  isles. 

And  that  day  or  next  day,  we 
forget  the  exact  date,  the  blow 
was  struck  which  filled  our  neigh- 
bour's house  with  horror  and  with 
mourning.  We  are  not  loved  in 
France, — indeed  it  would  scarcely 
be  too  much  to  say  that  we  were 
hated.  We  have  no  doubt  that 
had  some  fool  or  knave  thought 
of  saying  that  there  was  joy  in 
England  over  M.  Carnot's  assassin- 
ation, there  is  not  a  Frenchman 
on  the  boulevards  but  would  have 
believed  it.  And  yet  no  rustic 
neighbour  in  a  village  could  have 
been  more  truly,  more  sincerely 
sorry  than  we  were,  both  for  the 
victim  and  for  the  country  which 
had  such  a  sudden  loss  to  bear. 
The  feeling  was  as  true  as  it  was 
widely  spread.  Carnot  was  not  a 
great  man,  nor  impressive  to  the 
imagination  in  any  way.  Nay, 
there  was  something  about  the 
solemnity  of  his  respectability  and 
his  look,  more  grave  than  ever  man 
was,  which  tempted  such  pro- 
fane wits  as  Gyp  to  make  fun  of 
the  President.  Was  that  look — 
perhaps  like  the  not  very  dissimi- 
lar look  of  Charles  I. — the  look  of 
premonition  and  fate  to  come,  upon 
which  persons  seeking  an  effect 
have  so  often  remarked  ?  Nothing 
could  be  more  terrible  in  sudden- 
ness and  swift  relentless  speed  of 
operation.  The  decorations  in  all 
the  streets,  the  multitude  with 
more  or  less  heart  but  much  noise 
shouting  Vive  Carnot!  to  all  the 
winds  :  the  flags  flying,  the  bands 
blaring :  and  in  a  moment  the 


swift  death  at  the  throat  of  the 
object  of  all  this  triumph.  Noth- 
ing could  be  more  tremendous 
nor  unlocked  for, — the  superficial 
popular  joy  turned  into  most  mad 
indignation,  fury,  and  terror — all 
or  almost  all  that  was  fictitious 
swept  away,  and  the  world  sud- 
denly brought  face  to  face  with 
the  event  most  interesting,  most 
exciting  to  it — the  awful  pheno- 
menon of  the  death  of  a  strong 
man  in  the  midst  of  his  life. 

And  for  what  end?  If  it  had 
been  hoped  to  throw  France  out 
of  gear,  to  disarrange  the  ma- 
chinery of  the  State,  and  throw 
the  order  of  the  government  into 
chaos,  none  of  these  things  hap- 
pened. A  hundred  years  ago  it 
might  have  done  so.  But  France, 
which  was  then  swept  by  rude 
tumultuous  passions,  is  now  of  a 
different  temper.  That  great  na- 
tion ever,  as  her  neighbours  were 
pleased  to  say,  so  excitable,  so 
fickle,  so  open  to  assaults  of 
passion,  has  now  put  on  another 
aspect.  She  is  digne  to  her 
fingers'- ends,  as  M.  Carnot  was, 
who  was  the  impersonation  of 
worth  and  a  befitting  attitude,  as 
M.  Dupuy  was  when  he  sat 
sublimely  quiet  among  the  morsels 
of  the  flying  bomb,  and  imposed 
that  demeanour  of  calm  on  the 
swift  conception,  swift  compre- 
hension of  a  chamber  full  of  ex- 
citable Frenchmen.  With  the  ad- 
mirable intelligence  which  is  their 
special  grace  the  Deputies  there 
perceived,  even  though  some  of 
them  were  wounded  and  some  of 
them,  no  doubt,  afraid,  that  this 
was  the  fit  way  in  which  that 
abominable  attack  was  to  be  re- 
ceived. We  fear  a  collection  of 
phlegmatic  English  in  the  House 
of  Commons  would  not  have  main- 
tained such  a  noble  attitude. 
There  would  have  been  a  great 
deal  of  noise  and  tumult,  members 


306 


The  Looker-on. 


[Aug. 


jumping  from  their  seats,  outcries 
of  all  kinds,  shouts  to  the  officials, 
and,  to  know  what  it  meant,  wild 
appeals  to  the  Speaker,  who  can 
remedy  everything.  The  Speaker 
himself,  no  doubt,  would  have  sat 
tight:  but  the  scene  would  pro- 
bably not  have  been  at  all  digne. 
France,  however,  is  so  nowadays 
— perhaps  with  a  pleasant  touch 
of  consciousness  that  she  is  afford- 
ing the  most  noble  of  all  spectacles 
to  the  world,  which  suits  her,  and 
increases  her  conviction  that  this 
and  no  other  is  the  right  way, — 
an  idea  which  would  probably  not 
move  in  the  least  our  ruder  race. 
And  thus  while  we  christen  our 
baby  with  quiet  state,  and  rejoice 
in  the  restoration  of  the  young 
mother's  healthj  the  new  President 
takes  his  seat,  and  over  calamity 
as  overjoy  the  even  tide  of  common 
life  closes  serene.  Everything  is 
changed,  and  nothing,  except  one 
house  desolate,  and  one  young 
fool  the  more  in  a  French  prison, 
proud  of  the  blood-stain  on  his 
hands  and  the  mad  childish  mis- 
chief he  has  done. 

It  is  the  most  curious  and  piti- 
ful thing  to  see  how  young  all 
these  mad  idiots  are.  Twenty  is 
about  the  average  age  —  an  age 
irresponsible,  enlightened  by  no 
experience,  incapable  of  seeing  be- 
yond its  own  small  horizon,  or  of 
understanding  the  great  principles 
by  which  the  world  has  swung  on, 
to  the  knowledge  of  men,  through 
more  than  twice  as  many  centuries 
as  these  ignorant  lads  have  years. 
What  is  all  that  to  them  ?  They 
are  not  restrained  by  any  sense  of 
the  greatness  of  either  the  moral 
or  physical  powers  about  them,  or 
the  pitiful  smallness  of  themselves. 
They  are  like  children  setting  fire 
to  a  house  for  the  delightful  blaze 
it  would  make,  breaking  their  toys 
to  see  how  they  are  made.  Nothing 
can  be  more  instructive  or  more 


sad  than  this  exhibition  of  remorse- 
less youth,  incapable  of  any  larger 
conception.  It  is  educated,  as  it 
believes :  it  can  combine  chemicals, 
and  make  a  tin  kettle  into  an  in- 
strument of  death  and  destruction. 
It  has  no  relation  to  the  ignorant 
clown  who  cannot  read.  It  can 
read,  it  can  write,  it  can  speechify, 
and  it  believes  can  dominate  the 
world.  Poor  flies  that  the  hand 
brushes  away  !  but  not  before  their 
paltry  sting  has  carried  the  poison 
of  the  dunghill  to  some  sensitive 
veins. 

We  say  that  there  is  much  that 
is  pitiful,  almost  pathetic,  in  this 
terrible  ignorance  of  boyhood, 
which  makes  so  much  mischief  in 
this  generation ;  but  it  is  the  same 
thing,  without  that  excuse,  which 
has  been  wrecking  America,  and 
in  all  probability  will  leave  inefface- 
able marks  on  our  own  statute- 
book  and  life.  Ignorance,  not 
anything  that  can  be  put  to  rights 
in  the  board  schools,  which  has 
little  to  do  with  the  arts  of  read- 
ing and  writing, — that  ignorance 
which  comes  from  want  of  thought, 
from  want  of  experience,  from  the 
absence  of  all  wide  knowledge  of 
life.  The  fundamental  knowledge 
of  what  can  be  done,  and  what  can- 
not be  done,  which  is  the  founda- 
tion of  at  least  worldly  wisdom, 
is  a  thing  which  it  is  very  difficult 
to  teach.  It  is  a  knowledge  ac- 
quired in  his  own  individual  sphere 
by  every  man  who  knows  a  handi- 
craft or  possesses  a  trade.  He 
knows  what  iron  can  do,  and  what 
wood  can  do,  and  laughs  frankly 
at  the  theorist  who  ignorantly 
thinks  they  can  be  put  to  uses  in- 
compatible with  their  character. 
But  who  is  to  make  him  see  that 
equal  capacity  and  incapacity  is 
in  everything ;  that  money,  for  in- 
stance, which  he  and  his  master 
both  think  to  be  the  root  of  all 
good  instead  of  evil,  will  run  only 


1894." 


The  Looker-on. 


307 


in  its  own  channels,  rand  cannot 
be  forced  into  rills  that  will  irri- 
gate every  garden,  by  any  force 
of  State  :  and  that  destruction  and 
waste  never  can  mend  or  heal. 
All  these  are  blank  to  a  great 
many  people,  who  know  very  well 
how  to  write  and  to  read,  but  who 
read  only  the  productions  of  people 
as  ignorant  as  themselves,  and  who 
think  with  them  that  governments 
can  do  whatever  they  please,  and 
that  happiness  is  in  the  gift  of 
the  State.  They  know  well  that 
wood  cannot  do  the  work  of  iron, 
or  bricks  stand  without  mortar, 
which  are  things  of  which  know- 
ledge comes  by  practice  •  but  not 
that  the  rich  man  has  as  great  a 
right  to  the  protection  of  the  law 
as  the  poor  man,  or  that  human 
nature  had  already  gone  through 
a  prodigious  circle  of  experiments 
and  experiences  before  this  present 
generation  began. 

Who  shall  teach  us  to  under- 
stand these  things?  The  result 
is  often  not  very  encouraging. 
The  thing  that  hath  been  is  that 
that  shall  be.  The  world  rolls 
round  in  morals  as  in  physics, 
one  circle  going  after  another,  one 
force  now  in  the  ascendant,  now 
another,  but  all  rolling  to  a  similar 
balance,  doing  and  undoing.  It  is 
the  very  character  and  specialty 
of  this  mysterious  world  that 
nothing  is  complete  in  it,  nothing 
permanent,  everything  to  be  done 
over  and  over  again,  and  those 
convulsions  which  seem  to  rend 
earth  and  heaven  asunder  continu- 
ally pieced  up  again,  making  on 
the  whole  but  little  difference, 
though  everybody  engaged  in  them 
believed  that  they  were  to  change 
the  face  of  the  universe.  It  is 
not  a  hopeful  point  of  view  :  per- 
haps in  some  ways,  after  all,  ignor- 
ance is  best. 

But  it  is  unpleasant  to  reflect 
how  rampant  ignorance  is  in  our 


enlightened  days.  Fin  de  siecle, 
and  most  of  us  so  clever  that  we 
don't  know  how  to  bear  ourselves 
— "  I  am  so  seeck,  I  am  so  clevare," 
as  the  famous  scene-painter  was 
reported  to  say :  and  yet  Ignorance 
almost  in  possession,  almost  king 
of  the  world,  and  only  that  un- 
thinking, stupid  thing  a  bullet,  as 
people  say,  between  us  and  destruc- 
tion. The  story  in  the  papers, 
how  those  shots  at  Featherstone 
saved  a  whole  countryside  from 
rapine  and  destruction,  is  too  dread- 
ful to  think  of.  We  hope  it  is 
not  true.  But  it  is  evident  that  a 
volley  or  two  saved  the  situation' 
at  Chicago.  One  brute  force  must 
be  confronted  with  another  as 
long  as  the  world  wags  on. 

Speaking  of  France,  however, 
which  the  Looker-on  turns  to  with 
a  sigh  of  relief,  feeling  himself 
able  there  to  comment  at  his 
ease,  irresponsible  and  involved  in 
nothing,  it  is  very  curious  to  see 
how  the  late  and  indeed  existing 
wave  of  Bonapartism  which  has 
swept  over  the  country  should  be 
dropping  away  without  even  the 
ghost  of  a  result.  Everybody 
now  who  knows  anything  about 
French  literature  or  art  must  have 
remarked  this  strange  revival — 
produced  by  nothing  that  we  know 
of,  except  some  caprice  of  the 
national  mind.  Taine  not  a  gen- 
eration, scarcely  half  a  generation 
ago,  and  other  philosophers,  did 
their  best  to  quench  even  the 
tradition  of  Napoleon,  that  legend 
of  genius  and  glory,  from  the  mind 
of  their  country — an  unpatriotic 
effort,  we  think.  Perhaps  it  is  in 
the  revulsion  of  these  cold  teach- 
ings that  there  has  rushed  back 
into  the  press  such  countless  de- 
tails not  only  about  the  great 
Emperor,  but  him  also  whom  it 
was  once  the  highest  chic  to  call 
Napoleon  le  Petit.  Perhaps  it  was 
the  terrible  and  tragic  sketch  of 


308 


The  Looker-on. 


[Aug.  1894. 


the  last  Bonaparte  in  the  DMcle, 
a  picture  so  hotly  contested,  and 
proved,  we  think,  in  its  details  to 
be  untrue,  but  revealing  such  a 
depth  of  hopeless  anguish  in  the 
unfortunate  man,  who  had  himself 
powdered  and  painted,  not  to  show 
the  misery  of  his  countenance  to 
his  soldiers,  and  rode  with  them 
like  a  wooden  image  stupefied  with 
suffering  —  which  helped  to  pro- 
duce the  revulsion  in  his  favour. 
We  almost  wish  it  had  been  true ; 
for,  though  paint  and  powder  are 
not  heroic,  that  triste  and  silent 
figure,  all  sham  without,  all  pain 
'and  anguish  within,  is  as  deeply 
impressive  as  anything  we  know. 
But  whatever  the  reason  is,  there 
can  be  no  doubt  as  to  the  fact. 
French  papers,  French  magazines, 
have  been  for  a  year  back  running- 
over  with  Napoleon, — sometimes 
he  of  Austerlitz  and  Wagram,  of 
Moscow  and  Waterloo ;  sometimes 
he  of  Ham  and  of  Sedan,  unroyal 
memories.  Private  reminiscences, 
diaries,  letters,  of  people  worth 
listening  to  and  of  people  not 
worth  listening  to,  have  sent  a 
wave  of  sympathy  through  France, 
even  for  the  last  days  of  that 
Empire  which  brought  her  so  little 
glory, — for  the  awful  suspense  of 
Fontainebleau  and  St  Cloud  which 
the  downfall  of  Sedan  threw  into 
despair.  The  strange  thing  is  that 


this  wonderful  spontaneous  (appar- 
ently) wave  of  public  emotion  seems 
to  be  passing  away  without  even 
an  effort  to  take  advantage  of  it. 
"  In  France  everything  is  possible 
to  youth,"  said  Count  de  Monta- 
lembert,  speaking  of  that  Prince, 
then  a  child,  who  perished  (under 
our  care,  as  we  must  always  reflect 
with  a  pang)  among  the  Zulus. 
There  are  young  princes  of  the 
blood  now,  and  they  have  never 
even  tried  to  make  a  clutch  at  the 
reins, — never  an  attempt,  however 
desperate,  to  make  it  apparent 
that  there  were  still  heirs  to  the 
Napoleons.  The  adventure  at 
Ham  was  but  a  sorry  business, 
and  all  the  world  laughed  at  it — 
but  it  was  the  first  step  to  an  un- 
thought  -  of,  incredibly  unlikely, 
but  for  a  long  time  to  all  appear- 
ance tolerably  stable  throne.  The 
youths  of  the  family  do  not  seem 
to  have  even  that  amount  of 
courage  and  enterprise  now.  One 
respectable  President  has  succeeded 
another  without  an  emeute  or  a  cry. 
We  have  fallen  upon  an  age  of 
mediocrities,  and  parmi  les  aveugles 
le  borgne  est  roi. 

We  wonder  what  other  strange 
things  the  Looker-on  may  have  to 
witness  and  to  record  as  the  year 
passes  on.  Let  us  hope  he  will 
have  nothing  more  to  do  than  to 
chronicle  small-beer. 


Printed  by  William  BlacJcwood  and  Sons. 


BLACKWOOD'S 

EDINBUEGH    MAGAZINE. 


No.  DCCCCXLVII.        SEPTEMBER  1894. 


VOL.  CLVI. 


"THAT     DAMNABLE     COUNTRY." 


SUCH  was  the  description — "this 
damnable  country" — given  of  Ire- 
land, now  many  generations  ago, 
by  an  English  statesman  to  his 
superiors  in  London  concerning  the 
land  he  had  been  sent  awhile  to 
administer ;  and  the  same  phrase, 
or  the  same  sentiment  in  different 
words,  has  been  re-echoed  hun- 
dreds of  times  since,  by  politicians 
and  non-politicians  on  each  side  of 
the  Channel,  respecting  the  island 
"  lying  a-loose,"  as  Campion  the 
historian  in  the  reign  of  Elizabeth 
has  it,  "  on  the  west  ocean."  That 
damnable  country !  Far  be  it 
from  me  to  add  the  very  smallest 
stone  to  the  colossal  cairn  of  con- 
troversy that  has  recently  been 
raised  over  the  Irish  Question.  I 
went  to  Ireland — I  am  ashamed  to 
say,  for  the  first  time — this  spring, 
and  I  returned  from  it  with  the 
feeling  that  it  is  anything  rather 
than  damnable.  Indeed,  I  some- 
times find  myself  almost  wishing 
that  the  intervening  seasons  would 

VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCXLVII. 


pass,  that  it  might  again  be  May, 
and  I  might  anew  be  gathering 
thrift  amid  the  landward  -  flying 
foam  of  Loop  Head,  listening  to 
the  missel-thrushes  shrilling  in  the 
gardens  of  Tourin  or  the  woods  of 
Dromana,  watching  the  smiles  and 
tears  of  fair  fitful  Killarney,  losing 
myself  in  the  gorse-covered  clefts 
of  matchless  Glengariff,  or  dazzled 
and  almost  blinded  by  the  bound- 
less bluebell  woods  of  Abbey  Leix. 
I  do  not  willingly  allow  that  Ire- 
land is  lovelier  still  than  England, 
but  it  is.  One  has  said  with 
.^Eneas,  only  too  often,  when  Spring 
came  round,  Italiatn  petimus? 
Yet  are  not  Bantry  Bay  and 
Clon-Mac-Nois  as  beautiful,  and 
as  hallowed  by  the  past,  even 
as  the  Gulf  of  Spezia  and  the 
cyclopean  walls  of  Soral  But 
then  I  went  to  Ireland,  not  in 
the  pursuit  of  angry  polemics,  to 
which  I  feel  I  can  add  nothing 
new,  but  in  search  of  natural 
beauty  and  human  kindliness. 


310 


That  Damnable  Country." 


[Sept. 


Nowhere  have   I   ever  met   with 
more  of  either. 

First  impressions  are  a  sort  of 
premonitory  experience;  and  as 
the  sun  sank  lower  in  a  cloudless 
sky  over  a  surgeless  sea,  I  could 
not  gaze  on  the  tender  sinuosities 
of  the  Wicklow  Mountains,  or  turn 
to  the  Hill  of  Howth,  Ireland's 
Eye,  and  the  more  distant  Lambay 
Island,  without  a  sense  of  rising 
gladness  that  I  was  at  last  to  set 
foot  on  a  land  that  greets  one  with 
so  fair  and  feminine  a  face. 

The  most  indulgent  imagination 
could  hardly  cast  a  halo  over  the 
unloveliness  of  Dublin;  and  not 
even  the  most  gracious  and  agree- 
able hospitality  could  make  regret 
prevail  over  anticipation  as  I 
turned  my  face  westward.  But 
the  gorse,  the  pastures,  and  the 
streams  of  Kildare  would  have 
made  me  forget  the  most  attractive 
of  cities,  though  I  was  well  aware 
I  was  passing  through  perhaps  the 
least  beautiful  part  of  Ireland.  A 
couple  of  mornings  later  I  was 
driving  on  an  outside  car,  balanced 
on  the  other  side  by  a  congenial 
companion,  towards  Athlone, 
where  we  were  to  take  train  for 
the  coast  of  Clare.  The  driver 
assured  us  that  he  could  easily 
traverse  the  distance  in  an  hour 
and  twenty  minutes,  so  I  gave 
him  an  hour  and  forty.  I  had 
quite  forgotten,  in  the  exhilaration 
of  a  new  experience,  that  accuracy 
is  not  a  Celtic  gift,  and  that  time 
is  computed  long  or  short,  accord- 
ing as  it  is  thought  you  wish  it  to 
be  the  one  or  the  other.  More- 
over, the  Irish  mile  is  a  fine 
source  of  confusion  when  distances 
are  computed.  In  one  county  a  mile 
means  a  statute  mile,  in  another  it 
means  an  Irish  mile ;  and  though 
you  may  recollect  that  it  takes 
fourteen  of  the  first  to  make  eleven 
of  the  second,  it  does  not  at  all 
follow  that  your  local  conductor 


will  do  so.  My  companion,  who 
knew  something  of  the  road, 
suddenly  asked  me  from  under  her 
umbrella  (for  it  was  raining  in  the 
most  approved  Irish  manner)  what 
time  it  was,  and  on  getting  her 
answer,  she  rejoined  we  had  still 
three  miles  to  cover,  and  only 
eighteen  minutes  to  do  it  in.  The 
wish  to  oblige,  and  native  hopeful- 
ness of  temperament,  made  the 
driver  exclaim,  "  Oh,  we'll  do  it ! " 
and  straightway  he  imparted  to 
his  horse  an  alertness  of  which  I 
should  not  have  thought  it  capable. 
Watch  in  hand,  I  saw  us  trot 
through  the  streets  of  Athlone  at 
a  rattling  pace,  and  we  had  both 
made  up  our  minds  that  the  train 
was  caught.  But  again  that 
curious  vagueness  of  mind  and 
happy-go-lucky  indiscipline  of  char- 
acter came  into  play ;  and  though 
we  really  were  just  in  time,  he 
drove  past  the  entrance  to  the 
station,  and  did  not  discover  his 
mistake  till  too  late.  It  then 
turned  out  that  he  had  never  been 
to  Athlone  before,  and  had  not 
the  faintest  notion  where  the 
station  was.  I  have  observed  that 
most  travellers  in  such  circum- 
stance fume,  fret,  and  objurgate. 
We  laughed  consumedly,  though 
we  were  well  aware  that  Athlone 
is  scarcely  a  place  in  which  to 
spend  several  hours  pleasantly,  and 
that  now,  instead  of  arriving  at 
Kilkee  at  half -past  three,  we  could 
not  get  there  till  after  nine.  Per- 
haps our  good-humour  was  due  in 
some  measure  to  the  fact  that, 
some  three  miles  away,  was  a 
house  where  we  knew  we  could 
consume  the  inevitable  interval 
agreeably  enough;  and  we  were 
soon  making  for  it.  But  Irish 
hospitality  does  not  understand 
the  mere  "  looking-in-on-us  "  which 
satisfies  so  many  English  people; 
and  we  were  bidden,  indeed  irre- 
sistibly commanded,  to  pass  the 


1894.] 


That  Damnable  Country.'" 


311 


night  with  the  hosts  we  had  thus 
surprised.  We  were  amply  repaid, 
in  more  ways  than  one,  for  our 
equanimity ;  for  the  next  day  was 
as  fine  as  the  previous  one  had  been 
morose,  and  so  we  started  on  our 
wanderings  in  search  of  striking 
scenery,  in  sunshine  instead  of  in 
storm. 

I  am  told  Kilkee  is  "  a  fashion- 
able watering-place."  Happily 
watering-places  and  fashion  mean 
something  different  on  the  west 
coast  of  Ireland  from  what  they 
signify  on  the  south  coast  of  Brit- 
ain, or  one  need  scarcely  have  bent 
one's  steps  towards  Kilkee  even 
in  order  to  see  Loop  Head  and  the 
Cliffs  of  Moher.  Even  at  the 
height  of  its  season,  for  I  suppose 
it  has  one,  Kilkee  must  be  what 
those  who  resort  to  Eastbourne  or 
Bournemouth  would  call  a  very 
dull  little  place.  You  can  get  out 
of  any  part  of  it  in  two  or  three 
minutes,  to  find  yourself  on  the 
undenizened  cliffs  that  form  the 
westernmost  barrier  between  this 
Realm  and  the  Atlantic.  If 
there  were  any  strangers  in  the 
place  in  the  early  days  of  May 
save  ourselves,  I  did  not  observe 
them.  We  were  the  sole  occu- 
pants of  a  large,  old-fashioned, 
and  quite  comfortable  enough  inn, 
which  the  local  taste  for  high- 
sounding  words  would  probably 
wish  one  to  call  a  hotel.  It 
takes  its  name  from  Moore's  Bay 
on  which  it  stands.  You  observe 
by  various  little  indications  that 
the  standard  of  comfort,  conveni- 
ence, and  refinement  is  lower  by 
a  few  inches  than  in  England; 
but  why  should  it  not  be  ?  I  pity 
the  people  who  travel  through  the 
world  with  their  own  weights  and 
measures,  their  own  hard-and-fast 
rule  of  how  things  should  look, 
and  how  they  should  be  done.  If 
you  have  to  sit  with  the  door  open 
because,  should  you  not  do  so,  the 


smoke  and  dust  of  the  turf  fire 
would  be  blown  all  over  the  house, 
is  that  such  a  hardship  to  folks 
who  have  got  nothing  to  do  but  to 
be  pleasant  and  enjoy  themselves  1 
If  the  green  Atlantic  water,  the 
blackly  towering  cliffs,  the  vast  ex- 
panse of  rising  and  rolling  emerald 
down,  the  soft  insinuating  air,  and 
the  sense  of  freedom  and  "a way- 
ness,"  do  not  compensate  you  for 
the  lack  of  hot  water  in  your 
sleeping  chamber  and  for  a  certain 
friendly  irregularity  in  the  service, 
go  not  to  Clare  or  Galway,  but 
follow  your  own  trite  footsteps  to 
Brighton,  Nice,  or  Cannes.  We 
for  our  part  thought  Kilkee,  its 
lean  chickens,  its  imperfect  soda- 
bread,  and  its  lack  of  vegetables 
(all,  of  course,  save  the  national 
potato)  absolutely  delightful.  How 
the  winds  must  blow  and  bellow 
sometimes,  and  the  waves  rear 
and  plunge  and  toss  their  iron- 
gray  manes  along  and  over  that 
crenelated  coast  !  The  word 
"over"  is  no  figure  of  speech,  for 
there  are  times  when  the  foam  is 
flung,  by  waves  indignant  at  the 
first  check  they  have  met  with  for 
two  thousand  miles,  high  over  the 
foreheads  of  the  loftiest  crags  and 
far  inland  on  to  the  stunted  grass 
of  the  gray-green  downs.  There 
is  a  peculiar  pleasure  in  watching 
how  gentle  the  strong  can  be,  how 
strong  the  gentle ;  and  when  we 
got  to  Kilkee,  there  seemed  at 
first  almost  a  caressing  touch  in 
the  dimpling  green  water,  as 
though  it  had  the  soothing  stroke 
of  a  soft  and  velvety  hand.  But 
as  we  pushed  on  to  the  bolder 
bluffs  and  towards  the  open  sea, 
even  on  that  comparatively  wind- 
less May  sundown,  the  waves, 
when  challenged  or  interfered  with, 
waxed  black  and  angry,  swirled 
round  and  round  in  great  sinuous 
troughs  and  coils,  and  then  rushed 
and  raced  with  imperative  fury 


312 


" That  Damnable  Country" 


[Sept. 


through  the  jagged  channels  made 
for  them  by  the  millions  of  domi- 
neering breakers  that  had  for  cen- 
turies preceded  them,  and  forced  a 
way  somehow,  somewhere,  through 
the  granite  barriers.  We  stood 
hushed  by  the  splendour  and  son- 
orous terror  of  it,  and  like  Xeno- 
phon's  Ten  Thousand,  I  cried  out 
at  length,  ®aAao-<ra  !  ©dXaoro-a  !  as 
though  I  had  never  seen  the  Sea 
before.  Neither  the  Yorkshire 
nor  the  Devonshire  cliffs  can  show 
anything  comparable  in  stern 
beauty  and  magnificence  with  the 
west  coast  of  Ireland.  Their 
billows  are  baby  billows,  mere 
cradles  rather,  swaying  and  swing- 
ing for  a  child's  or  a  lover's  lulla- 
by, when  paragoned  with  these 
monsters  of  the  real  deep,  these 
booming  behemoths,  never  fixed  nor 
crystallised,  and  therefore  never 
extinct, — charging  squadrons  of 
ocean-horses,  coming  on  ten  thou- 
sand strong,  glittering  and  gleam- 
ing in  all  the  panoply  of  serried 
onset,  and  then  broken  and  lost  in 
the  foam  and  spume  of  their  own 
champing  and  churning.  Turn 
the  headland,  which  mayhap  now 
fronts  leeward,  and  all  those  war- 
like waves  seem  like  dolphins  at 
peace  and  play.  Their  very  backs 
subside,  and  you  see  nothing  but 
indescribably  green  water,  green 
of  a  green  you  have  never  seen 
before,  pearly,  pellucid,  the  mirror, 
not  of  eternity,  but  of  whatever 
tender  mood  of  the  moment.  Look 
round  !  look  wide  !  look  far  !  your 
eye  will  meet  nothing  but  the 
lonely  and  uncompromising  gaze 
of  Nature.  This  it  is  that  gives 
one  the  sense  of  "awayness"  of 
which  I  spoke.  Is  it  not  the  duke 
in  "Measure  for  Measure"  who 
says— 

"  For  I  have  ever  loved   the   life  re- 
moved "  ? 

Here  indeed  he  might  have  got  it, 


far  more  effectually  than  in  any 
cloister  that  was  ever  reared. 
England  nowhere  now  gives  one 
quite  this  sensation.  Should  you 
get  beyond  the  smoke  of  the  loco- 
motive, you  will  with  difficulty 
evade  the  shadow  of  the  tourist. 
But  even  by  this  all-penetrating 
person  some  of  the  most  beautiful 
parts  of  Ireland  are  forgotten  and 
spared. 

A  road  that  for  the  most  part 
follows  the  wavering  coast -line 
was  made  from  Kilkee  to  Loop 
Head  in  the  dark  days  of  the 
still  remembered  Famine,  and  the 
driver  of  our  car  told  me  he  had 
helped  to  make  it.  He  was  com- 
municative enough  in  answer  to 
questions  put  to  him ;  but  in  his 
case,  as  in  many  another  later  on, 
I  observed  little  of  that  loquacious 
gaiety,  and  still  less  of  the  spon- 
taneous humour,  which  we  are 
educated  to  expect  from  Irish 
companionship.  Of  course,  my 
experience  was  limited  and  im- 
perfect; but  I  found  myself  once 
remarking,  no  doubt  with  a  touch 
of  extravagance,  that  it  must  be  a 
very  dull  Englishman  who  finds 
Irish  people  particularly  lively. 
Doubtless  they  are  more  amiable 
in  the  social  sense ;  but  I  cannot 
put  aside  the  impression  that  sad- 
ness is  the  deepest  note  in  the 
Irish  character.  They  remind  one 
of  what  Madame  de  Stael  said 
of  herself,  "  Je  suis  triste,  mais 
gai."  Under  provocation  or  stimu- 
lus they  become  both  loquacious 
and  merry ;  nor  need  the  provoca- 
tion be  very  forcible.  But  they 
readily  fall  back  again  into  the 
minor  key,  and  much  of  their  wit 
springs  from  their  sensibility  to 
the  tearfulness  of  things.  "You 
can  talk  them  into  anything,"  said 
one  of  themselves  to  me ;  and  I 
think  it  is  still  more  true  that 
they  can  talk  themselves  into  any- 
thing— for  the  moment  at  least. 


1894.] 


"  That  Damnable  Country" 


313 


They  are  sad,  but  not  serious. 
Indeed  their  want  of  what  an 
Englishman  means  by  seriousness 
is  very  noticeable ;  and  they  shift 
"  from  grave  to  gay,  from  lively  to 
severe,"  with  astonishing  mobility. 
It  is  the  profound  sadness  of  their 
character  which  makes  them  so 
sociable,  since  in  companionship, 
and  most  of  all  in  voluble  talk, 
they  for  a  time  escape  from  it. 
A  person  of  high  seriousness  re- 
quires no  one  to  help  him  to  be 
gravely  cheerful,  and  his  spirits 
are  never  depressed  by  solitude. 
It  is  in  society,  rather  than  in 
solitude,  that  he  is  conscious  of 
being,  or  at  least  of  seeming, 
morose.  The  gaiety  of  a  sad 
person  is  always  demonstrative, 
exuberant,  almost  noisy ;  for  he 
wants  others  to  see  how  tremen- 
dously happy  he  has  suddenly  be- 
come. Again  removed  from  ' '  wine 
and  women,  mirth  and  laughter," 
he  relapses  into  the  passive  gloom 
natural  to  one  who  is  conscious  of 
a  mystery  which  is  too  congenial 
to  him  for  him  to  try  or  to  want 
to  solve  it.  The  Irishman  sees 
into  his  native  mist,  but  not 
through  it.  He  is  best  under- 
stood when  you  watch  him  abid- 
ing within  the  influence  of  brown, 
barren  bog,  of  unapproachable 
peaks,  and  of  the  wail  of  home- 
less waves.  Though  otherwise  but 
little  akin  to  the  island  of  the 
lotos -eaters,  Ireland  is  withal  a 
land  where  it  seems  always  after- 
noon. In  their  normal  movements 
the  Irish  are  much  quieter  than 
the  English.  I  am  speaking,  of 
course,  of  peasants,  not  of  politi- 
cians, nor  yet  of  folk  huddled  so 
closely  together  in  streets  that 
they  irritate  each  other  all  day 
long.  The  very  children  in  Ire- 
land do  not  shout  as  English 
children  do.  Both  young  and  old 
stand,  or  sit,  or  gaze,  well  content 
to  do  so  :  being  alive  —  I  might 


almost  say,  waiting  for  life  to 
come  to  an  end — seeming  occupa- 
tion enough  for  them.  Ebullitions 
and  explosions  of  gaiety,  of  course, 
they  have;  and  these  are  so  vol- 
canic, that  they  perforce  attract 
much  attention.  But  I  think 
people  fail  to  observe  that,  like 
to  volcanoes  generally,  their  nor- 
mal condition  is  one  of  quietude. 
They  have  irregular  impulses,  but 
they  have  no  settled  purpose. 
How  can  they  have,  in  a  world 
they  do  not  profess  or  care  to 
understand  ? 

"  Their  soul  proud  Science  never  taught 

to  stray 
Far  as  the  solar  walk  or  Milky  Way." 

They  know  their  own  cabin, 
their  own  patch  of  "  lazy  "  pota- 
toes, their  own  boat  and  fishing- 
nets,  their  eternal  dependence  on 
the  forces  of  Nature,  their  eternal 
feud  with  people  who  they  think 
do  nothing  for  them,  yet  claim  a 
share  in  the  fruit  of  their  labours ; 
the  imperfectly  understood  theories 
of  a  pastor  who,  perhaps,  is  him- 
self imperfectly  instructed  in  the 
dogmas  he  affirms,  and  that  there 
is  something  called  Ireland  whose 
lot  they  believe  is,  and  has  im- 
memorially  been,  as  hard  as  their 
own.  Truth  to  tell,  in  ordinary 
moments,  and  when  some  one  does 
not  come  and  "  talk  them  into  " 
indignation,  they  bear  its  sup- 
posed wrongs  very  patiently,  just 
as  they  patiently  bear  their  own. 
When  not  stimulated  by  profes- 
sional agitators  they  ask  little,  they 
expect  little,  from  life.  They  are 
not  indociles  pauperiem  pati.  In- 
deed poverty  seems  natural,  and 
even  congenial,  to  them.  Life 
is  not  to  them,  as  to  English- 
men or  Scotsmen,  a  business  to 
conduct,  to  extend,  to  render  pro- 
fitable. It  is  a  dream,  a  little  bit 
of  passing  consciousness  on  a  rather 
hard  pillow, — the  hard  part  of  it 


314 


"  That  Damnable  Country" 


[Sept. 


being  the  occasional  necessity  for 
work,  which  spoils  the  tenderness 
and  continuity  of  the  dream.  A 
little  way  before  you  get  to  Loop 
Head,  there  is  a  series  of  seaward- 
jutting  rocks  of  low  elevation, 
which  have  been  christened  The 
Bridges,  for  the  waves  have  bur- 
rowed under  them,  so  that  they 
stand  arched  in  mid-air.  At  the 
extreme  point  we  saw  a  young 
fellow  in  knee  -  breeches,  blue 
woollen  stockings,  short  jacket, 
and  Mercury  hat  —  the  only  hu- 
man thing  visible,  save  ourselves, 
whether  seaward  or  landward  — 
gazing  apparently  at  the  waves. 
"  I  wonder  what  he  comes  here 
for,"  said  my  companion. 

"  Ask  him, "  I  said,  and  she 
did  so. 

"I've  coom  to  see  the  toomb- 
ling,"  he  said. 

The  "  toombling  "  was  the  plung- 
ing and  shattering  of  the  breakers, 
and  looking  at  them  was  occupa- 
tion enough  for  this  letterless  lad. 
A  potential  poet,  some  one  perhaps 
will  say  ?  But  no.  A  poet,  to  be 
of  much  account,  must  understand, 
must  find  or  put  a  meaning1  in,  in- 
animate things ;  and  this  boy,  typi- 
cal of  his  race,  was  asking  no  ques- 
tions, much  less  finding  harmonious 
answers  to  them.  He  was  only 
gazing  at  the  "  toombling  "  he 
could  not  control,  any  more  than 
he  and  his  can  control  the  wilful 
seasons,  the  fiat  that  brought  them 
here,  that  will  take  them  away,  and 
that  deals  so  austerely  with  them 
in  the  interval. 

^  Such,  at  least,  was  the  explana- 
tion I  offered  of  his  being  there, 
and  the  cause  of  it.  Perhaps  we 
found  reason,  in  some  degree,  to 
modify  our  conclusion  a  few  min- 
utes later;  for,  seeking  to  return 
to  the  point  where  we  had  left  our 
car,  we  passed  through  a  gap  in  a 
loose  stone-wall,  and  saw  sitting 
under  it,  just  to  the  right  of  us,  a 


bare-headed,  bare -legged  peasant 
girl  of,  I  daresay,  some  eighteen 
years  of  age,  just  as  unoccupied 
as  the  youngster  we  had  left  pon- 
dering at  the  waves,  but  looking 
by  no  means  so  unhappy.  On  her 
face  was 

"  The  bloom  of  young  desire,  and  purple 
light  of  love," 

and  her  eyes  seemed  to  sparkle 
with  amorous  mischief.  Possibly 
she  was  the  cause  of  his  having 
gone,  in  vexation  of  spirit,  to  look 
on  the  "  toombling,"  and  so  make 
himself  yet  more  miserable,  like 
many  another  tantalised  swain  be- 
fore him,  by  communicating  his 
ephemeral  sorrow  to  the  perma- 
nent indifference  of  Nature. 

Within  three  miles  of  Loop 
Head,  we  were  told,  no  flower 
will  grow  save  the  pink  sea-thrift ; 
and  I  can  well  believe  it.  It  is 
a  sort  of  Hinterland  to  the  ocean, 
within  whose  influence  it  lies; 
and,  though  the  sea  has  not  actu- 
ally annexed  it,  it  permits  no  law 
save  that  of  its  own  blusterous 
barrenness  to  rule  there.  The 
Coast  -  Guard  Station  represents 
the  indomitable  audacity  and  im- 
perious usurpation  of  man ;  but  at 
Loop  Head,  though  he  can  build 
walls,  and  take  and  record  ob- 
servations, he  can  do  no  more. 
He  can  grow  nothing  for  his  own 
sustenance;  and  on  many  a  wild 
winter  night,  if  he  ventures  out-of- 
doors,  he  has  to  crawl  on  hands 
and  knees  under  the  protection  of 
the  walls  of  the  small  herbless 
enclosure,  lest  he  should  be  blown 
and  battered  against  the  barriers 
of  his  own  raising.  From  the 
lighthouse  one  gets  a  commanding 
view  of  the  estuary  of  the  Shannon. 
Looking  southward,  one  descries, 
if  dimly,  Kerry  Head,  Brandon 
Mount,  and  the  hills  of  Dingle 
promontory,  with  the  summits  of 
Macgillicuddy's  Keeks  darkly  be- 


1894." 


"  That  Damnable  Country." 


315 


hind  them.  Northward  lie  the 
mountains  of  Connemara,  and  the 
islands  of  Aran  well  out  to  sea. 
A  little  way  below  the  Coast- 
Guard  Station,  there  is  what  you 
may  call  either  a  little  island  or 
a  huge  rock,  separated  from  the 
mainland  by  a  narrow  but  terrific 
chasm.  An  enterprising  engineer 
thought  a  few  years  ago  he  would 
like  to  throw  a  bridge  across  it, 
and  he  persevered  in  his  task  for 
about  half  the  distance.  He  then 
wearied  either  of  the  labour  or  the 
cost,  and  the  intended  communica- 
tion thus  stops  short  mid-way  over 
the  profound  black  gap  and  the 
tormented  waters.  Last  year, 
however,  a  derrick  was  pushed 
across,  and  a  small  party  landed 
for  the  day,  leaving  behind  them 
a  couple  of  goats.  One  we  could 
still  descry  calmly  grazing,  but  the 
other  has  either  died  or  been  blown 
out  to  sea.  On  the  dark  narrow 
ledge  on  each  side  of  the  rocky 
chasm,  all  the  way  down  innumer- 
able puffins  were  congregated,  as 
restless  in  their  flight,  and  as 
melancholy  in  their  cry,  as  the 
waters  over  which  they  skim,  or 
into  which  they  fitfully  dive  and 
awhile  disappear. 

It  takes  some  time  to  get  be- 
yond the  impression  of  such  a 
scene,  even  though  one  may  have 
left  it,  visually,  behind ;  and  I 
could  still  hear  those  pairing  sea- 
birds,  and  still  see  the  sweeping, 
swirling  coils  of  strandless  water 
running  in  and  out  of  the  black 
honeycombed  abysses,  until  the 
bay  and  village  of  Carrigaholt, ' 
and  the  hamlets  of  Cross  and  Kil- 
baha,  obliterated  the  reminiscence 
by  stimulating  the  senses  to  re- 
ceive fresh  sights  and  sounds.  I 
was  greatly  surprised  at  finding  so 
many  National  Schools  in  so  wild 
and  poorly  populated  a  district  as 
that  between  Loop  Head  and  Kil- 
kee ;  and  I  noticed  that,  almost  in 


every  instance,  an  older,  meaner,  and 
thatched  building  had  been  super- 
seded by  a  new,  larger,  and  more 
commodious  one  of  stone  and  slate. 
In  the  afternoon  of  the  follow- 
ing day  we  crossed  the  Shannon 
from  Kilrush  to  Tarbert,  and  had 
occasion  to  note  how  a  river, 
nobler  and  more  inviting  in  its 
proportions  than  any  English 
stream,  be  it  Thames,  or  Severn, 
or  Mersey,  showed  neither  sail 
nor  funnel,  and  is  practically 
neglected  by  the  commerce  of  the 
world.  The  modern  rhetorician, 
primed  with  statistics,  and  ani- 
mated by  conventional  convictions, 
might  doubtless  produce — and,  for 
anything  I  know  of,  may  fre- 
quently have  produced — a  strik- 
ing effect  on  the  platform  by 
dwelling  on  this  conspicuous  fact, 
and  out  of  it  manufacturing 
another  Irish  grievance.  But  I 
think  I  can  perceive  that,  in  pres- 
ence of  the  many  painful  pheno- 
mena and  perplexing  problems 
that  owe  their  origin  to  high- 
pressure  enterprise  and  material 
development,  it  is  gradually  be- 
coming pardonable  to  hint  that 
Civilisation,  as  properly  under- 
stood, is  not  necessarily  identical 
with  huge  cities,  countless  fac- 
tories, and  interminable  goods- 
trains.  I  am  aware  that  the 
English  ideal  of  life  is,  or  has 
been  till  quite  recently,  that  every 
man,  woman,  and  child  should 
get  as  much  work  out  of  himself 
as  he  possibly  can,  and  should 
in  turn  get  as  much  out  of  the 
machines  that  he  produces.  In 
a  word,  according  to  their  view, 
existence  was  given  us  in  order 
that  we  may  be  perpetually  active, 
and  by  our  activity  go  on  increas- 
ing what  is  called  the  wealth  of 
the  world.  Of  course,  as  it  is 
only  fair  to  add,  there  underlies 
this  theory  the  further  doctrine 
or  belief  that,  by  the  operation 


316 


" That  Damnable  Country" 


[Sept. 


thus  described,  Man  will  best  ex- 
pand his  intellect  and  most  surely 
improve  his  morals. 

An  examination  of  the  sound- 
ness of   this  view,  to  be  of   any 
value,  would  require  no  little  time 
and  demand  no  little  space;  and 
this  is  not  the  moment  for  it  in 
any  case.     But  one  cannot  travel 
in  Ireland  without  perceiving  that 
this  so-many-horse-power  and  per- 
petual-catching-of-trains  theory  of 
life  is  not  one  that  is  accepted  by 
the   Irish  people;    and  I  do  not 
think  it  ever  will  be.     Their  re- 
ligion, their  traditions,  their  chief 
occupations,    their    temperament, 
all  of  which  I  suppose  are  closely 
allied,   are    opposed    to   it.      The 
saying,  "  Take  it  aisy ;  and  if  you 
can't  take  it  aisy,  take  it  as  aisy 
as  you  can,"  doubtless  represents 
their  theory  of  life;    and,  for  my 
part,  if  it  were  a  question  either 
of  dialectics  or  of  morals,  I  would 
sooner  have  to  defend  that  view 
of    existence   than   the   so -many- 
horse-power  one.      So  far  from  a 
wise  man  getting  all  he  can  out 
of  himself  in  one  direction,  he  will, 
it  seems  to  me,  rigidly  and  care- 
fully abstain  from  doing  so  in  the 
interests  of  that  catholic  and  har- 
monious   development   which    re- 
quires that  he  should  get  a  little 
out  of  himself  in  every  direction. 
One  would  not  like  to  assert  that 
the  bulk  of  the  Irish  people  are 
"harmoniously  developed."      But 
neither,  if  I  may  be  permitted  to 
say   so,    are    the   English   or   the 
Scotch  people;  and  as,  in  reality, 
all  three  probably  err  by  lob-sided 
activity  or  lob-sided  inactivity,  it 
still  remains  to  be  seen  whether 
too  much  perpetual  -  catching  -  of- 
trains,  or  too  much  taking-it-aisy, 
is,  on  the  whole,  the  wiser  course, 
and  the  less  insane  interpretation 
of  the  purport  and   uses  of  life. 
I  fear  I  am  not  an  impartial  judge; 
for,  when  I  continually  hear  the 


Irish  upbraided  with  sitting  on 
gates  or  walls  and  doing  nothing, 
I  remember  that  some  of  us  in 
England  likewise  sit  on  gates  and 
walls  and  do  nothing,  and  are 
greatly  addicted  to  that  pastime. 
But  whether  taking-it-aisy,  or  for 
ever  trying  to  beat  the  record,  be 
the  best  use  to  make  of  life,  cer- 
tain it  is  that  the  English,  speak- 
ing generally,  hold  the  one  theory, 
and  the  Irish,  speaking  generally, 
hold  the  other,  and  manifest  little 
or  no  intention  of  abandoning  it. 
Unfortunately,  Englishmen  are 
not  satisfied  with  being  allowed 
to  hold  their  own  view  of  life. 
For  the  life  of  us  we  cannot  help 
trying  to  force  it  on  the  accept- 
ance of  other  people ;  and  if  they 
prove  recalcitrant,  we  at  once  re- 
gard them  as  inferior,  because 
they  are  different  from  ourselves. 
Our  religion,  our  manners,  our 
morals,  our  way  of  conducting 
business,  our  pace,  our  goal,  are 
ours,  and  therefore  must  be  the 
best.  No  doubt  it  is  this  master- 
ful narrowness  that  makes  us  an 
imperial  and  a  conquering  race. 
But  should  we  not  do  well  to  in- 
terpret parcere  subjectis  as  includ- 
ing some  consideration  for  the 
conceptions  of  life  and  duty  enter- 
tained by  the  peoples  we  have 
annexed?  Failing  to  do  so,  we 
find  ourselves  baffled  all  the  same. 
There  is  a  feminine  power  of  pas- 
sive resistance  in  the  Celtic  race 
which  all  our  masculine  Saxon 
imperiousness  has  not  overcome. 
The  Virgilian  curis  acuens  mor- 
talia  corda  applies  but  imperfectly 
to  the  majority  of  the  Irish  people, 
who  quietly  refuse  to  be  prodded 
and  sharpened  into  exertion  be- 
yond a  certain  point,  let  heaven 
send  them  what  cares  and  diffi- 
culties it  may.  No  doubt,  an 
agricultural  people  always  take 
life  more  easily  than  a  manufac- 
turing people.  One  cannot  well 


1894.] 


That  Damnable  Country" 


317 


live  habitually  in  the  presence 
and  within  the  influence  of  Nature 
without  imbibing  and  finally  imi- 
tating something  of  her  deliberation 
and  serene  patience.  Man  may 
increase  the  pace  of  his  machine- 
made  wheels  and  pistons,  but  he 
cannot  compel  or  induce  Nature 
to  go  any  faster.  Neither,  beyond 
a  certain  point  which  is  soon 
reached,  can  he  force  her  to  be 
more  wealth  -  producing,  as  the 
most  recent  results  of  high  farm- 
ing plainly  show.  The  bulk  of 
the  Irish  people  are  bred  on  and 
wedded  to  the  soil,  the  air,  the 
seasons,  the  weather,  mist,  hail, 
sunshine,  and  snow;  and  famil- 
iarity and  co-operation  with  these 
help  to  deepen  that  pious  Chris- 
tian fatalism  which  is  innate  in 
their  temperament.  Therefore 
they  work  in  moderation,  and  with 
long  rests  between  whiles, — rest, 
perhaps,  not  absolutely  needed  by 
the  physical  frame,  but  akin  to 
that  passiveness  which  Wordsworth 
somewhere  calls  wise.  Compare 
an  ordinary  English  or  Scotch  with 
an  ordinary  Irish  railway  station, 
and  the  contrast  is  most  striking. 
In  the  latter  there  is  a  total  ab- 
sence of  fuss,  bustle,  expedition, 
and  of  a  desire  to  get  the  trains 
off  as  summarily  as  possible.  Even 
the  railway  porters  are  of  opinion 
that  there  is  plenty  of  time  be- 
tween this  and  the  Day  of  Judg- 
ment in  which  to  get  life's  rather 
unimportant  business  done,  after  a 
fashion. 

After  leaving  Kilkee,  I  was  so 
anxious  to  get  to  Killarney,  and 
to  get  there  quickly,  in  order  that 
we  might  enjoy  the  sharp  and  sud- 
den contrast  between  the  barren 
grandeur  of  Clare  and  the  leafy 
loveliness  of  Kerry,  that,  had  it 
not  been  for  the  foregoing  re- 
flections, prompted  by  the  splen- 
did but  sailless  Shannon,  I  might 
perhaps  have  been  impatient  at 


the  railway  dispensation  which 
forbade  us  to  get  farther  that 
night  than  Tralee.  But  abiding 
by  the  true  traveller's  motto — 

* '  Levius  fit  patientia 
Quidquid  corrigere  estnefas," 

— I  am  sure  Horace  learned  that 
little  bit  of  wisdom,  not  in  Rome, 
but  at  his  Sabine  farm — we  con- 
gratulated ourselves  on  the  easy- 
goingness  which  permitted  us  to 
have  tea  and  a  couple  of  hours  at 
Listowel,  to  saunter  towards 
sundown  by  the  banks  of  the 
salmon  -  haunted  Feale,  and  to 
gaze  at  what  is  left  upon  its  banks 
of  the  last  stronghold  that  held 
out  against  Elizabeth  in  the  Des- 
mond insurrection. 

Spring  never  arrayed  herself  in 
beauty  more  captivatingly  child- 
like than  on  the  mid-May  morn- 
ing when  we  arrived  at  Killarney. 
She  had  been  weeping,  half  in 
play,  half  for  petulance  ;  but  now 
she  had  put  all  her  tears  away,  or 
had  glorified  what  was  left  of  them 
with  radiating  sunshine.  Was 
it  April  ?  Was  it  May  ?  Was  it 
June  ?  It  seemed  all  three.  But 
indeed  every  month  keeps  reminis- 
cences of  the  one  that  precedes, 
and  cherishes  anticipations  of  the 
one  that  is  to  follow  it. 

"  Fresh   emeralds    jewelled    the    bare 

brown  mould, 
And   the   blond   sallow  tasseled  itself 

with  gold ; 
The  hive  of  the  broom  brimmed  with 

honeyed  dew, 
And  Springtime  swarmed  in  the  gorse 

anew. " 

There  is  no  such  gorse  in  wealthy 
Britain  as  enriches  the  vernal 
season  in  Ireland.  I  had  come  to 
that  conclusion  from  what  I  had 
seen  in  King's  County,  in  West 
Meath,  and  in  Clare  itself;  but 
they  in  turn  seemed  poor  in  this 
opulent  flower  compared  with  the 
golden  growth  all  about  Mahony's 


318 


"  That  Damnable  Country." 


[Sept. 


Point  and  many  another  open 
space  near  Killarney  Lake.  Yet, 
at  the  same  time,  here  was 

"June  blushing  under  her   hawthorn 
veil." 

For  Ireland  is  the  land  of  the 
white  as  well  as  of  the  black 
thorn.  But  indeed  of  what  wild 
flower  that  grows,  of  what  green 
tree  that  burgeons,  of  what  shrub 
that  blossoms,  are  not  the  shores 
and  woods  and  lanes  and  meadows 
of  Killarney  the  home?  Such 
varied  and  vigorous  vegetation 
I  have  seen  no  otherwhere;  and 
when  one  has  said  that,  one  has 
gone  far  towards  awarding  the 
prize  for  natural  beauty.  But 
vegetation,  at  once  robust  and 
graceful,  is  but  the  fringe  and 
decoration  of  the  loveliness  of  that 
enchanting  district.  The  tender 
grace  of  wood  and  water  is  set  in 
a  framework  of  hills,  now  stern, 
now  ineffably  gentle,  now  dimp- 
ling with  smiles,  now  frowning 
and  rugged  with  impending  storm, 
now  muffled  and  mysterious  with 
mist,  only  to  gaze  out  on  you 
again  with  clear  and  candid  sun- 
shine. Here  the  trout  'leaps, 
there  the  eagle  soars,  and  there 
beyond  the  wild  deer  dash  through 
the  arbutus  coverts,  through  which 
they  have  come  to  the  margin  of 
the  lake  to  drink,  and,  scared  by 
your  footstep  or  your  oar,  are 
away  back  to  crosiered  bracken 
or  heather-covered  moorland.  But 
the  first,  the  final,  the  deepest  and 
most  enduring  impression  of  Kil- 
larney is  that  of  beauty  unspeak- 
ably tender,  which  puts  on  at 
times  a  garb  of  grandeur  and  a 
look  of  awe  only  in  order  to 
heighten,  by  passing  contrast,  the 
sense  of  soft  insinuating  loveliness. 
How  the  missel -thrushes  sing,  as 
well  they  may  !  How  the  streams 
and  runnels  gurgle  and  leap  and 
laugh!  For  the  sound  of  jour- 


neying water  is  never  out  of  your 
ears,  the  feeling  of  the  moist,  the 
fresh,  the  vernal,  never  out  of 
your  heart.  My  companion  agreed 
with  me  that  there  is  nothing 
in  England  or  Scotland  as  beauti- 
ful as  Killarney,  meaning  by  Kil- 
larney its  lakes,  its  streams,  its 
hills,  its  vegetation ;  and  if  moun- 
tain, wood,  and  water,  harmonious- 
ly blent,  constitute  the  most  per- 
fect and  adequate  loveliness  that 
Nature  presents,  it  surely  must  be 
owned  that  it  has,  all  the  world 
over,  no  superior.  I  suppose  there 
is  a  time  when  tourists  pass  through 
Killarney.  Happily  it  had  not 
commenced  when  we  were  there. 
But  I  gathered  that  they  come 
for  but  a  brief  season;  and  a 
well  -  known  resident  and  land- 
owner, to  whom  we  were  indebted 
for  much  that  added  to  the  inevi- 
table enjoyment  of  our  visit,  told 
me  that  he  had  in  vain  tried  to 
provide  himself  with  a  few  neigh- 
bours, by  maintaining  and  even 
furnishing  some  most  attractive 
and  charmingly  placed  dwellings 
on  his  estate.  It  is  so  far  away, 
so  remote  from  London.  And 
then — it  is  Ireland. 

To  portray  scenery  by  language 
is  not  possible,  often  as  the  feat 
has  been  attempted  in  our  time. 
The  utmost  one  can  do  is  to  con- 
vey an  impression  of  beauty,  or 
grandeur,  or  picturesqueness  ;  and 
one  could  but  use  familiar  epithets 
and  adjectives  to  but  little  purpose, 
were  one  to  attempt  to  depict  in 
words  what  one  saw  on  Long 
Island,  at  Muckross  Abbey,  at  Tore 
Waterfall,  in  the  Lower  Lake, 
the  Upper  Lake,  the  Long  Range, 
or  what  one  gazed  out  on  at  Glena 
Cottage,  where  we  found  tea  and 
Irish  slim  -  cakes  provided  for  us 
in  a  sitting-room  silently  eloquent 
of  the  taste  and  refinement  of  its 
absent  mistress.  Equally  futile 
would  it  be  to  try  to  describe  the 


1894.] 


" That  Damnable  Country" 


319 


eight  hours'  drive  from  Killarney 
to  Glengarriff  by  Kenmare  Bay. 
I  can  only  say  to  everybody,  "  Do 
not  die  without  taking  it."  As 
for  Glengarriff,  I  scarcely  know 
how  any  one  who  goes  there  ever 
leaves  it.  For  my  part,  I  have 
been  there  ever  since.  It  is  a 
haven  of  absolute  beauty  and 
perfect  rest. 

I  came  to  the  conclusion  at  last 
that  the  reason  why,  though  Ire- 
land is  more  beautiful  still  than 
Britain,  it  is  less  travelled  in  and 
less  talked  about,  is  that  it  has 
never  produced  a  great  poet,  a 
great  painter,  or  even  a  great 
novelist, — I  mean  one  who  has 
sung  or  depicted  the  beauties  of 
Ireland  so  as  to  excite  general 
enthusiasm  about  them.  Carent 
vate  sacro.  The  crowd  have  not 
been  bewitched  into  going  to  Ire- 
land ;  and  indeed,  if  they  went,  the 
crowd  would  never  discover  loveli- 
ness for  themselves,  or  at  least 
never  apprehend  its  relation  to 
other  loveliness.  I  hope  I  shall 
not  give  offence  to  a  race  I  greatly 
admire,  if  I  say  that  Irishmen  do 
not  seem  to  love  Ireland  as  Eng- 
lishmen love  England,  or  Scotch- 
men Scotland.  If  Tom  Moore 
had  only  loved  Ireland  as  a  poet 
should  love  his  native  land,  he 
might  have  brought  its  extra- 
ordinary charm  home  to  the  world, 
and  made  its  beauty  universally 
known.  I  am  sure  the  Yale  of 
Cashmere  is  not  lovelier  than 
Innisfallen  and  all  that  surrounds 
it ;  but  for  want  of  intimate  affec- 
tion he  wrote  of  both  in  precisely 
the  same  strain  and  style,  insen- 
sible to  local  colour,  local  form, 
local  character,  and  in  each  case 
satisfying  himself  and  asking  us 
to  be  satisfied  with  vague  dulcet 
adjectives  and  melodious  general- 
ities. But  in  truth  I  doubt 
whether  the  Irish  are  a  poetical 
people,  in  the  higher  sense.  They 


have  plenty  of  fancy,  but  little  or 
110  imagination ;  and  it  is  imagina- 
tion that  gives  to  thought,  feeling, 
and  sentiment  about  a  country  a 
local  habitation  and  a  name.  The 
Irish  are  both  too  inaccurate  and 
too  sad  to  produce  poetry  of  the 
impressive  and  influencing  sort. 
The  groundwork  of  the  highest 
imagination  is  close  attention  to 
and  clear  apprehension  of  the  fact, 
which  imagination  may  then,  if  it 
chooses,  glorify  and  transfigure  as 
it  will.  To  the  typical  Irishman 
of  whom  I  am  speaking,  the  fact, 
the  precise  fact,  seems  unimport- 
ant. He  never  looks  at  it,  he 
never  grasps  it ;  therefore  he  ex- 
aggerates or  curtails, — the  state- 
ment he  makes  to  you,  and  indeed 
the  one  he  makes  to  himself,  being 
either  in  excess  or  in  diminution 
of  the  reality.  I  am  aware  that, 
according  to  the  habitual  concep- 
tion of  many  persons,  perhaps  of 
most,  exaggeration  and  imagination 
are  one  and  the  same  thing,  or 
at  any  rate  closely  akin.  There 
could  not  be  a  more  complete 
error.  Not  only  are  they  not  akin, 
they  are  utterly  alien  to  each 
other.  Fancy  exaggerates  or  in- 
vents. Imagination  perceives  and 
transfigures. 

Equally  common  is  the  belief, 
more  especially  in  days  when  pes- 
simism is  a  creed  with  some  and 
a  fashion  with  others,  that  poetry 
and  sadness  are  not  only  closely 
but  inseparably  related  ;  and  up  to 
a  certain  point,  and  within  a  cer- 
tain range  of  poetry,  but  neces- 
sarily a  lower  and  a  narrower  one, 
that  is  true.  Much  beautiful 
lyrical  and  elegiac  verse  do  we 
owe  to  sadness  ;  but  it  is  unequal 
to  the  task  of  inspiring  and  sus- 
taining the  loftier  flights  of  the 
poetic  imagination.  The  Athen- 
ians were  not  sad.  The  Italians 
are  not  sad.  The  Germans  are  not 
sad.  The  English  are  not  sad. 


320 


That  Damnable  Country." 


[Sept. 


They  are  serious,  which  is  a  totally 
different  thing;  and,  as  I  have 
ventured  to  assert,  the  Irish 
character,  though  sad,  is  notice- 
ably wanting  in  seriousness.  Be  it 
observed  too,  in  passing,  that  seri- 
ous people  are  accurate — I  mean, 
of  course,  as  far  as  human  infir- 
mity will  permit.  But  as  regards 
poetry  and  sadness,  did  not  Eurip- 
ides long  ago  say,  in  "The  Sup- 
pliants," that  it  is  well  the  poet 
should  produce  songs  with  joy;  and 
did  he  not  ask  how,  if  the  poet  have 
it  not,  he  can  communicate  delight 
to  others  ?  The  joy  here  spoken  of 
is  not  a  violent  or  spasmodic  joy, 
which  is  own  brother  to  sadness, 
but  a  serene  and  temperate  joy, 
such  as  Tennyson  had  in  his  mind 
when  he  wrote  concerning  the 
poet — 

"He    saw    through    life    and    death, 

through  good  and  ill, 
He  saw  through  his  own  soul." 

I  was  again  struck  by  the  supe- 
riority of  Irish  scenery  to  its  rep- 
utation, when,  passing  round  from 
west  to  south,  I  found  myself  on 
the  Blackwater.  What  English- 
man has  not  seen  Warwick  Castle, 
and  to  whom  are  its  romantic  posi- 
tion and  imposing  aspect  not  house- 
hold talk?  How  many  English- 
men have  seen,  or  even  heard  of, 
Lismore?  To  my  surprise  and 
shame,  I  suddenly  discovered  that 
Lismore — concerning  which,  I  will 
be  bound  to  say,  most  persons,  if 
interrogated,  would  reply,  "  Lis- 
more? Lismore?  It  belongs  to 
the  Duke  of  Devonshire,  does  it 
not?" — is  much  more  beautiful 
than  Warwick,  and  almost  as 
picturesque.  It  was  my  good  for- 
tune to  spend  several  days  in  a 
most  charming  and  hospitable 
house,  whose  spacious  grounds 
slope  gradually  down  to  the  Black- 
water,  where  that  noble  stream  is 


a  quarter  of  a  mile  broad ;  passing 
on  one  side  the  ruined  Castle  of 
Tourin,    and    on    the    other   the 
woods  of  Dromana,  through  which 
I  galloped — as  only  Irish   horses 
will  gallop  over  rough  and  uneven 
ground — for  the  better  part  of  two 
hours,  without  coming  to  the  end 
of   them.      What   strikes  one   in 
Ireland     is     the     abundance     of 
everything,    the    "lots   to  spare," 
what  Irish  people  call  "lashins." 
Flower  -  garden,    kitchen  -  garden, 
pleasure-garden   alike,   are  invari- 
ably much  larger  in  Ireland  in  pro- 
portion to  the  size  of  the  domain 
than  in  England.     An  Irish  acre 
is  about  the  very  least  anybody 
apparently  has  ever  troubled  him- 
self to  enclose  for  vegetables  and 
fruit;    and  frequently   this  hand- 
some allowance  is  exceeded  where, 
from  the  domestic  conditions,  you 
would  have  thought  it  considerably 
in  excess  of  the  needs  of  the  family. 
This  superfluous  and  prodigal  as- 
signment of  space  frequently  leads 
to  a  good  deal  of  untidiness ;  but 
Irish  people  seem  to  prefer  waste 
places   and    neglected   corners    to 
prim    parsimoniousness.      But    it 
must  not  be  supposed  that  all  estab- 
lishments  in   Ireland   are   untidy 
and   uncared-for.      I   saw  several 
gardens,  not  only  near  Dublin, — 
like  Lady  Ardilaun's  beautiful  one 
of  St  Ann's  at  Clontarf,— but  in 
the  most  remote  and  rustic  parts 
of  Ireland,  that  would  hold  their 
own  against  the  best-kept  ones  in 
England.     In  the  grounds  of  the 
house  on  the  Blackwater  to  which 
I  have  alluded,  I  found  the  most 
effective  spring-garden  I  ever  saw, 
— the  Irish  climate  being  peculiar- 
ly favourable  to  spring  and  early 
summer    gardening,    where    man 
seconds  with  any  pains  the  bounty 
and   geniality   of    Nature.       One 
must   go    to    the    most    favoured 
spots  in  the  south  of  Devonshire 
to   meet,   in   England,   with  such 


1894.] 


"  That  Damnable  Country." 


321 


flowering  -  shrubs,  such  rhododen- 
drons, such  out-door  azaleas  as 
abound  all  over  the  west,  the 
south,  and  even  the  east  of  Ireland. 
At  the  same  time,  with  Irish  gar- 
dens and  gardening,  as  with  most 
other  Irish  things,  "  taking-it-aisy  " 
is  the  general  law.  The  result  is 
far  from  being  always  disastrous, 
where  neglect  and  unkemptness 
have  not  been  carried  too  far. 
Many  a  fair  and  precious  flower 
is  coddled  and  "  titivated "  out 
of  existence  in  these  trim  and 
orderly  days  ;  and  I  shrewdly 
suspect  that  the  greater  part  of 
the  old-fashioned  herbaceous  plants 
which  have  recently  come  into 
favour  with  all  of  us,  and  which 
had  died  out  in  most  parts  of 
England,  have  been  brought  over 
from  Irish  gardens,  where  they 
have  always  flourished  undisturbed 
and  unsuperseded.  I  can  say  for 
myself  that  I  am  indebted  to  the 
sister  island  for  several  new,  other- 
wise old,  herbaceous  flowers ;  for, 
as  we  all  know,  Irish  people  are 
never  happier  than  when  they  are 
giving  what  they  have  got. 

I  wish  this  love  of  flowers,  which 
educated  folk  in  Ireland  exhibit 
in  so  marked  a  manner,  was  felt 
by  its  peasantry.  Could  their 
whitewashed  cottages  but  have 
little  gardens  in  front  of  them, 
instead  of  what  they  call  "the 
street,"  which  consists  of  a  dung- 
hill-tenanted bit  of  roughly-paved, 
and  not  always  paved,  ground 
that  abuts  on  the  road ;  could 
they  be  got  to  plant  creepers 
against  their  walls,  to  cherish  a 
climbing  rose,  to  embower  their 
porches  in  honeysuckle,  Ireland 
would,  as  if  by  enchantment,  be 
an  utterly  transformed  country  to 
travel  in.  But  just  as  its  people, 
in  many  respects  so  gifted,  have 
little  imagination,  so  have  they 
little  feeling  for  beauty.  After 
leaving  the  country  of  the  Black- 


water,  I  found  a  warm  welcome 
in  Queen's  County  from  one  who 
is  indeed  a  Lady  Bountiful,  and 
well  known  as  such,  and  who 
is  doing  her  utmost  to  get  the 
peasantry  to  understand  the  charm 
and  the  refining  influence  of 
flowers,  just  as  she  has  employed 
almost  every  known  method  for 
adding  to  the  grace  and  dignity, 
as  well  as  to  the  material  comfort, 
of  their  lives.  If  she  succeeds,  as 
I  fervently  hope  she  may,  she  will 
indeed  have  been  a  benefactress  to 
the  people  among  whom  she  lives, 
and  who,  I  could  perceive,  are  not 
insensible  to  her  large,  catholic,  and 
unostentatious  interest  in  them. 
I  had  always  imagined  that  Kent 
has  no  superior  as  a  home  for 
wild-flowers.  But  all  that  I  know 
at  home  of  floral  woodland  beauty 
fades  into  insignificance  when  com- 
pared with  the  miles  on  miles  of 
bluebells,  under  secular  timber  of 
every  kind,  through  which  she  led 
me  on  the  evening  of  my  arrival. 
At  last  I  saw  Fairy  Land,  not  with 
the  mind's  eye  but  with  the 
bodily  vision;  and  not  for  days 
did  the  colour  of  that  seemingly 
endless  tract  of  wildwood  hya- 
cinths fade  from  the  retina.  Here 
again  was  another,  and  perhaps 
the  most  surprising,  instance  of 
the  lavishness,  the  abundance  of 
everything  in  Ireland,  of  which  I 
have  spoken,  and  the  complete 
ignorance  of  Englishmen  of  what 
Ireland  has  to  show  them  in  the 
way  of  natural  and  cultivated 
beauty,  which  they  are  supposed, 
and  not  unjustly,  to  love  so 
dearly. 

No  country  is  beautiful  through- 
out, but  I  cannot  agree  with  the 
opinion  I  have  heard  expressed  so 
frequently  that  the  centre  of  Ire- 
land is  ugly.  For  my  part,  I  have 
yet  to  see  an  ugly  country  where 
it  still  remains  country ;  and  I 
cannot  understand  how  any  rural 


322 


"  That  Damnable  Country" 


[Sept. 


tract  can  be  otherwise  than  en- 
chanting to  the  eye  that  has  ample 
colour  in  the  foreground  and  the 
middle  distance,  and  boasts  a 
mountain  horizon.  Alike  in 
Queen's  County,  in  King's  County, 
and  in  Westmeath,  the  Slieve 
Bloom  Mountains  are  rarely  out 
of  sight;  and  I  observed  more 
than  once,  in  the  light  and  shade 
of  their  ample  folds,  effects  of 
colour  such  as  I  had  hitherto  seen 
only  in  Italy.  I  spent  a  delightful 
morning,  wandering  tracklessly 
and  aimlessly  over  a  portion  of 
the  Bog  of  Allen,  which  strongly 
reminded  me  of  the  wetter  portions 
of  the  Yorkshire  moorlands  famil- 
iar to  my  childhood.  But  apart 
altogether  from  the  glamour  of 
association,  I  saw  in  its  colour  and 
and  its  character,  in  its  heather, 
its  bog-cotton,  its  bilberry  leaves 
and  blossoms,  an  effective  and 
unusual  contrast  to  the  golden 
gorse,  to  the  patches  of  green  oats, 
to  accidental  clumps  of  timber, 
and  to  the  irregular  barrier  of 
purple  hill-land  in  the  immaterial 
distance.  It  was  pleasant  to  pay 
a  visit  to  a  property  in  that  part 
of  Ireland,  the  owner  of  which 
was,  for  thirty  years  of  his  man- 
hood, engaged  in  administering  the 
affairs  of  many  millions  of  her 
Majesty's  subjects  in  India,  and 
who,  now  that  in  the  course  of 
nature  he  has  come  into  his  in- 
heritance, spends  his  days,  his 
pension,  and  his  savings  in  im- 
proving "  the  old  home "  and  de- 
veloping his  estate,  instead  of 
hanging  about  London  Clubs  and 
trying  to  extract  diversion  out 
of  the  hackneyed  amusements  of 
society.  Will  those  who  come 
after  him  do  the  same?  Let  us 
hope  so;  for  what  Ireland  most 
wants  is  the  presence,  the  love, 
and  the  encouragement  of  its  own 
children.  I  found  the  majority  of 


landowners  with  whom  I  talked  in 
favour  of  the  compulsory  sale  and 
purchase  of  holdings ;  and  when  I 
asked  if  they  did  not  think  this 
would  finally  deplete  Ireland  of 
its  rural  gentry,  which  would  be  a 
culminating  curse  to  it,  they  one 
and  all  expressed  the  opinion  that 
it  would  have  no  such  effect,  since 
the  expropriated  landlords  would 
retain  the  house,  the  demesne,  and 
what  we  call  in  England  the  home 
farm,  and  would  live  on  excellent 
terms  with  the  farmers  and  the 
peasantry,  once  the  burning  ques- 
tion of  the  tenure  of  land  was 
extinguished. 

It  has  frequently  been  said  to  me, 
when  extolling  the  extraordinary 
beauty  and  natural  charm  of  Ire- 
land, "  But  what  a  climate  !  It 
rains  incessantly."  This  asser- 
tion is  one  of  the  exaggerations 
incidental  to  ignorance  or  to  very 
partial  knowledge.  Most  persons 
of  my  acquaintance  who  live  habit- 
ually in  London  abuse  the  Eng- 
lish climate,  which,  I  humbly  ven- 
ture to  assert,  is  the  best  climate 
in  the  world.  The  climate  is  good, 
though  the  weather  may  some- 
times be  bad ;  just  as  in  Italy  and 
kindred  countries,  the  weather  is 
generally  good,  but  the  climate  is 
usually  the  reverse  of  pleasant, 
being  almost  either  excessively  hot 
or  excessively  cold,  or,  thanks  to 
conflict  between  sun  and  wind, 
both  one  and  the  other  at  the 
same  time.  I  cannot  well  con- 
ceive of  an  agreeable  climate  with- 
out a  certain  amount  of  rain. 
Londoners,  who  do  not  like  to 
have  their  hats  injured  or  their 
boots  dirtied,  and  to  whom  the 
beauty  of  Nature,  as  not  being 
within  sight,  is  a  matter  of  com- 
plete indifference,  consider  the 
weather  good  when  the  pavements 
are  clean  and  the  sky  cloudless. 
But  that  is  a  characteristically 


1894.] 


"  That  Damnable  Country" 


323 


narrow  view  of  the  matter.  It 
may  be  that  Ireland  has  too  much 
of  a  good  thing  in  respect  of  rain. 
But  there  is  a  quality  of  mercy  in 
Irish  showers,  which  are,  for  the 
most  part,  of  the  soft  sort  sent  by 
southerly  or  westerly  breezes.  We 
had  abundant  sunshine  at  Killar- 
ney ;  but  I  remember  greatly  en- 
joying a  tramp  in  the  rain  one 
wet  morning  up  to  Aghadoe  and 
Fossa.  I  cannot  understand  why 
people  abuse  rain  as  they  do.  It 
is  one  of  the  most  beautiful,  as 
well  as  one  of  the  most  precious, 
of  Nature's  gifts.  Watch  it  be- 
ginning to  fall  on  the  silvery 
water,  making  delicate  fretwork  of 
the  dinted  surface,  which,  as  the 
rain  comes  faster,  becomes  a  sheet 
of  dancing  diamonds.  Then  the 
watery  spears  slacken,  and  grad- 
ually cease  to  fall,  and  the  lake 
resumes  its  silvery  serenity  as 
though  nothing  had  happened.  I 
say  it  rained  that  morning,  and  on 
into  the  early  part  of  the  after- 
noon ;  and  what  a  goodly  sight 
were  the  young  children,  the  girls 
especially,  making  haste  home- 
ward from  school,  with  bare  legs  and 
bare  heads,  save  that  some  of  the 
girls  cowled  the  latter  with  their 
picturesque  shawls,  lest  they  should 
be  caught  in  another  shower  !  It 
might  have  rained  all  day,  for  any- 
thing I  cared,  after  the  comfort  I 
had  gleaned  from  the  stockingless 
legs  and  unbonneted  heads  that 
went  withal  with  comely  garments 
and  well-washed  faces ;  and  I  came 
to  the  conclusion  that  Irish  rain  is 
warm  as  an  Irish  welcome,  and 
soft  as  an  Irish  smile.  But  by 
three  o'clock  —  in  Ireland  the 
children  leave  school,  I  observed, 
at  that  early  hour  —  the  clouds 
melted  into  thin  air;  and  what 
Killarney  then  was  for  hour  on 
hour,  till  the  gloaming  deepened 
into  starlight,  I  shall  never  forget, 


but  should  vainly  struggle  to  de- 
scribe. 

No  eulogy  of  the  attractions  of 
Ireland  would  be  complete  that  did 
not  bear  grateful  testimony  to  the 
hospitality  of  its  people,  the  ex- 
ample of  which  seems  to  be  imi- 
tated even  by  those  who  go  to  live 
there  only  for  a  time.  On  first 
arriving  at  Dublin,  anxious  as  I 
was  to  push  on  into  the  interior, 
I  could  not  well  reject  the  grace- 
ful welcome  that  kept  me  a  willing 
prisoner  for  several  days  in  a 
comely  home,  surrounded  by  a 
beautiful  garden  and  exquisite 
grounds,  not  far  from  the  Vice- 
regal Lodge ;  and  on  reaching  the 
Capital  again  on  my  way  home- 
ward, it  was  difficult  to  get  away 
from  the  hearty  hospitality  of  the 
brilliant  soldier,  himself  an  Irish- 
man, who  had  just  published  the 
first  instalment  of  that  important 
biography  on  which  he  has  for 
years  been-  working,  amid  a  thou- 
sand distractions  of  public  duty, 
private  friendship,  and  social  in- 
tercourse, with  characteristic  ten- 
acity; and  the  popularity  of  which, 
added  to  the  distinction  its  author 
has  won  as  an  active  and  success- 
ful soldier,  justifies  one  in  enroll- 
ing him  among  those  quibus  deorum 
munere  datum  est — the  original,  it 
will  be  remembered  only  says,  aut 
— -facere  scribenda,  et  scribere  le- 
genda. 

My  parting  exhortation,  there- 
fore, naturally  is — "  Go  to  Ireland, 
and  go  often."  It  is  a  delightful 
country  to  travel  in.  Doubtless 
the  Irish  have  their  faults ;  I  sup- 
pose we  all  have.  Ireland  never 
had,  like  England,  like  most  of 
Scotland,  like  France,  like  Ger- 
many, like  Spain,  the  advantage 
of  Roman  civilisation  and  Roman 
discipline,  by  which  their  inhabit- 
ants are  still  influenced  far  more 
than  they  dream  of.  Ireland,  no 


324 


That  Damnable  Country* 


[Sept. 


doubt,  is  a  little  undisciplined ;  for 
it  has  remained  tribal  and  pro- 
vincial, with  the  defects  as  with 
the  virtues  of  a  tribal  and  clannish 
race.  But  the  only  way  to  enjoy 
either  countries  or  people  is  to 
take  them  as  they  are,  and  not, 
when  you  travel,  to  carry  your  own 
imprimatur  about  with  you.  There 
is  no  true  understanding  without 
sympathy  and  love,  and  Ireland 
has  not  been  loved  enough  by  Eng- 
lishmen, or  by  Irishmen  either. 
The  direst  offence,  however,  against 
the  duty  they  owe  each  other 
would  be  to  sever  or  weaken  the 
tie  that  subsists  between  them; 
and  I  cannot  help  thinking  it 
might  be  insensibly  but  effectually 
strengthened,  and  rendered  more 
acceptable  to  both,  if  Englishmen 
would  but  make  themselves  more 
familiar  with  the  charm  of  Irish 
scenery  and  Irish  character. 
I  have  said  the  Irish  seem  to  be 


somewhat  deficient  in  a  sense  of 
beauty.  Yet  I  noticed  one  ges- 
ture, one  attitude,  as  common  as 
the  gorse  itself,  the  gracefulness 
of  which  would  be  observed  if 
one  met  with  it  even  in  Italy  or 
Greece.  As  you  drive  along  the 
rudest  parts  of  Ireland,  there  will 
come  to  the  open  doorway  of  a 
ling-thatched  hut  a  woman,  bare- 
headed, bare-footed,  very  quiet  and 
patient  of  mien,  and  she  will  raise 
her  hand,  and  with  it  shade  her 
eyes,  while  she  gazes  on  you  as 
you  pass.  Then  she  will  return 
to  the  gloom  of  her  narrow  home. 
When  I  think  of  Ireland,  now 
that  I  have  visited  it,  I  seem  to 
see  a  solitary  figure,  that  emerges 
at  moments  from  a  settled  twi- 
light of  its  own  to  gaze,  but 
with  shaded  eyes,  at  the  excessive 
glare  and  questionable  march  of 
English  progress. 

ALFRED  AUSTIN. 


1894.] 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


325 


WHO    WAS    LOST    AND    IS    FOUND. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 


FOR  a  moment  Mrs  Ogilvy's  heart 
sank  within  her.  There  was  some- 
thing in  the  moment,  in  the  hour, 
in  that  sudden  appearance  like  a 
ghost,  only  with  a  noise  and  energy 
which  were  not  ghost-like,  of  this 
man  whom  at  the  first  glance  she 
had  taken  for  Robbie,  which  chilled 
her  blood.  Then  she  reminded 
herself  that  a  similar  incident  had 
befallen  her  before  now.  A  tramp 
had  more  than  once  made  his  way 
into  the  garden,  and,  but  for  her 
own  lion  mien,  and  her  call  upon 
Andrew,  might  have  robbed  the 
house  or  done  some  other  unspeak- 
able harm.  It  was  chiefly  her  own 
aspect  as  of  a  queen,  protected  by 
unseen  battalions,  and  only  con- 
scious of  the  extraordinary  temerity 
of  the  intruder,  that  had  gained 
her  the  victory.  She  had  not  felt 
then  as  she  felt  now :  the  danger 
had  only  quickened  her  blood,  not 
chilled  it.  She  had  been  dauntless 
as  she  looked :  but  now  a  secret 
horror  stole  her  strength  away. 

"  I  think,"  she  said,  with  a  little 
catching  of  the  breath,  "  you  have 
made  a  mistake.  This  is  no  public 
place,  it  is  my  garden ;  but  if  you 
have  strayed  from  the  road,  I  will 
cry  upon  my  man  to  show  you  the 
right  way — to  Edinburgh,  or  wher- 
ever you  may  be  going." 

"Edinburgh's  not  good  for  my 
health.  I  like  your  garden,"  he 
said,  strolling  easily  towards  her; 
"but  look  here,  mother,  give  me 
something  for  my  scratch.  I've 
got  a  thorn  in  my  hand." 

"You  will  just  go  away,  sir," 
said  Mrs  Ogilvy.  "Whoever  you 
may  be,  I  permit  no  visitor  here  at 
this  late  hour  of  the  night.  I  will 
cry  upon  my  man." 

VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCXLVII. 


"I'm  glad  you've  got  a  man 
about  the  place,"  said  the  stranger, 
sitting  down  calmly  upon  the 
bench  and  regarding  her  little 
figure  as  she  stood  before  him,  with 
an  air  half  of  mockery,  half  of 
kindness.  "  It's  a  little  lonely  for 
an  old  lady.  But  then  you're  all 
settled  and  civilised  here.  None 
the  better  for  that,"  he  continued, 
easily;  "snakes  in  the  grass,  thieves 
behind  the  door." 

"  I  have  told  you,  sir,"  said  Mrs 
Ogilvy,  trembling  more  and  more, 
yet  holding  her  ground,  "that  I 
let  nobody  corne  in  here,  at  this 
hour.  You  look  like — like  a  gen- 
tleman : "  her  voice  trembled  on  the 
noiseless  colourless  air,  in  which 
there  was  not  a  breath  to  disturb 
anything  :  "  you  will  therefore  not, 
I  am  sure,  do  anything  to  disturb 
a  woman — who  lives  alone,  but  for 
her  faithful  servants — at  this  hour 
of  the  night." 

"You  are  a  very  plucky  old 
lady,"  he  said,  "  and  you  pay  me  a 
compliment.  "I'm  not  sure  that 
I'm  a  gentleman  in  your  meaning, 
but  I'm  proud  that  you  think  I 
look  like  one.  Sit  down  and  let 
us  talk.  There's  no  pleasure  in 
sitting  at  one's  ease  when  a  lady's 
standing :  and,  to  tell  the  truth,  I'm 
too  tired  to  budge." 

"I  will  cry  upon  my  man 
Andrew " 

"Not  if  you're  wise,  as  I'm  sure 
you  are."  The  stranger's  hand 
made  a  movement  to  his  pocket, 
which  had  no  significance  for  Mrs 
Ogilvy.  She  was  totally  unac- 
quainted with  the  habits  of  people 
who  carry  weapons ;  and  if  she  had 
thought  there  was  a  revolver  within 
a  mile  of  her,  would  have  felt  her- 

Y 


326 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[Sept. 


self  and  the  whole  household  to  be 
lost.  "  It  will  be  a  great  deal  bet- 
ter for  Andrew,"  said  this  man, 
with  his  easy  air,  "  if  you  let  him 
stay  where  he  is.  Sit  down  and 
let's  have  our  talk  out." 

Mrs  Ogilvy  did  not  sit  down, 
but  she  leant  trembling  upon  the 
back  of  her  chair.  "  You're  not  a 
tramp  on  the  roads,"  she  said, 
"that  I  could  fee  with  a  supper 
and  a  little  money — nor  a  gentle- 
man, you  say,  that  will  take  a  tell- 
ing, and  refrain  from  disturbing  a 
woman's  house.  Who  are  you 
then,  man,  that  will  not  go  away, 
— that  sit  there  and  smile  in  my 
face?" 

"I'm  a  man  that  has  always 
smiled  in  everybody's  face, — if  it 
were  the  whole  posse,  if  it  were 
Death  himself,"  he  replied.  "  Mo- 
ther, sit  down  and  take  things 
quietly.  I'm  a  man  in  danger  of 
my  life." 

A  shriek  came  to  her  lips,  but 
she  kept  it  in  by  main  force.  In  a 
moment  the  vague  terror  which 
had  enveloped  her  became  clear, 
and  she  knew  what  she  had  been 
afraid  of.  Here  was  the  man  who 
was  like  Eobbie,  who  was  Kobbie's 
leader,  his  tyrant,  whose  influence 
he  could  not  resist — provided  only 
that  Eobbie  did  not  come  back  and 
find  him  here  ! 

"Sir,"  she  said,  trembling  so 
that  the  chair  trembled  too  under 
the  touch  of  her  hand,  but  stand- 
ing firm,  "you  are  trying  to 
frighten  me — but  I  am  not  feared. 
If  it  is  true  you  say  (though  I  can- 
not believe  it  is  true),  what  can  I 
do  for  you  ?  I  am  a  peaceable  per- 
son, with  a  peaceable  house,  as  you 
see.  I  have  no  hiding-places,  nor 
secret  chambers.  Where  could  I 
put  you  that  all  that  wanted  could 
not  see?  Oh,  for  the  love  of  God, 
go  away !  I  know  nothing  about 
you.  I  could  not  betray  you  if — if 
I  desired  to  do  so." 

"You  would  never  betray  any- 


body," he  said,  quite  calmly.  "  I 
know  what  is  in  a  face.  If  you 
thought  it  would  be  to  my  harm, 
though  you  hate  me  and  fear  me, 
you  would  die  before  you  would 
say  a  word." 

"  God  forbid  I  should  hate  you !" 
cried  Mrs  Ogilvy,  with  trembling 
white  lips.  "Why  should  I  hate 
you? — "but  oh,  it  is  late  at  night, 
and  you  will  get  no  bed  any  place 
if  you  do  not  hurry  and  go  away." 

"  That's  what  I  ask  myself,"  he 
said,  unmoved.  "  Why  should  you 
hate  me,  if  you  know  nothing  about 
me? — that  is  what  surprises  me. 
You  know  something  about  me, 
eh  1 — you  have  a  guess  who  I  am  ? 
you  are  not  terrified  to  death  when 
a  tramp  comes  in  to  your  grounds, 
or  a  gentleman  strays  :  eh  ?  You 
call  for  Andrew.  But  you  haven't 
called  for  Andrew — you  know  who 
lam?" 

"  I  know  what  you  are  not,"  she 
cried,  with  the  energy  of  despair. 
"You  are  no  vagrant,  nor  yet  a 
gentleman  astray.  You  would  have 
gone  away  when  I  bid  you,  either 
for  fear  or  for  right  feeling,  if  you 
had  been  the  one  or  the  other.  I 
know  you  not.  But  go,  for  God's 
sake  go,  and  I  will  say  no  word  to 
your  hurt,  if  all  the  world  were 
clamouring  after  you.  Oh,  man, 
will  ye  go?" 

She  thought  she  heard  that  well- 
known  click  of  the  gate, — the  sound 
which  she  had  listened  for,  for 
years — the  sound  most  unwished 
and  unlooked  for  now — of  Robbie 
coming  home.  He  saw  her  mo- 
mentary pause  and  the  holding  of 
her  breath,  the  almost  impercept- 
ible turn  of  her  head  as  she  listened. 
It  had  now  become  almost  dark, 
and  she  was  not  much  more  than  a 
shadow  to  him,  as  he  was  to  her ; 
but  the  whiteness  of  her  shawl  and 
cap  made  her  outline  more  distinct 
underneath  the  faintly  waving 
shadows  of  the  surrounding  trees. 
The  stranger  settled  himself  into 


1894.] 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


327 


the  corner  of  the  bench.  He  watch- 
ed her  repressed  movements  and 
signs  of  agitation  with  amusement, 
as  one  watches  a  child.  She  would 
not  betray  him — but  even  in  the 
dimness  of  the  evening  air  she  be- 
trayed herself.  Her  eagerness,  her 
agitation,  were  far  more,  he  judged 
rightly,  being  a  man  accustomed  to 
study  the  human  race  and  its  ways, 
than  any  chance  accident  would 
have  brought  about.  She  was  a 
plucky  old  lady.  A  vagrant  would 
have  had  no  terrors  for  her,  still 
less  a  gentleman  —  a  gentleman  ! 
that  name  that  the  English  give 
such  weight  to.  Her  appeal  to  him 
as  being  like  one  had  gone  deep 
into  his  soul. 

"I  will  do  better,"  he  said, 
"mother,  than  seek  a  bed  in  any 
strange  place;  you  will  give  me 
one  here." 

"  I  hope  you  will  not  force  me — 
to  take  strong  measures,"  she  said, 
with  consternation  which  she  could 
scarcely  conceal.  "  There  is  a  con- 
stable— not  far  off.  I  will  have  to 
send  for  him,  loath,  loath  though  I 
would  be  to  do  so,  if  ye  will  not  go 
away." 

The  stranger  laughed,  and  made 
again  that  movement  towards  his 
pocket.  "  You  will  have  to  provide 
then  for  his  widow  and  his  orphans  : 
and  a  country  constable  has  always 
a  large  family,"  he  said. 

"  Man,"  cried  the  little  lady  with 
passion,  "  will  ye  mock  both  at  the 
law  and  at  what  is  right?  Then  you 
shall  not  mock  at  me.  I  will  put 
you  forth  from  my  door  with  my 
own  hands." 

"Ah,"  he  said,  startled,  "that's 
a  different  thing."  He  was  moved 
by  this  extraordinary  threat.  Even 
in  her  agitation  Mrs  Ogilvy  felt 
there  must  be  some  good  in  him, 
for  he  was  visibly  moved.  And  she 
felt  her  power.  She  went  forward 
undaunted  to  take  him  by  the  arm. 
When  she  was  close  to  him  he  put 
out  his  hand,  and  smiled  in  her 


face,  not  with  a  smile  of  ridicule 
but  of  appeal.  "  Mother,"  he  said  ; 
"  is  it  the  act  of  a  mother  to  turn  a 
man  out  of  doors  to  the  wild  beasts 
that  seek  his  life — even  if  he  has 
deserved  it,  and  if  he  is  not  her 
son?" 

There  came  from  her  strained 
bosom  a  faint  cry.  A  mother,  what 
is  that  1  The  tigress  that  owns  one 
cub,  and  would  murder  and  slay  a 
thousand  for  it,  as  men  sometimes 
say — or  something  that  is  pity  and 
help  and  love,  the  mother  of  all 
sons  through  her  own  ?  Her  hand 
dropped  from  his  shoulder.  The 
sensation  that  she  would  have  done 
what  she  threatened,  that  he  would 
not  have  resisted  her,  made  her  in- 
capable even  of  a  touch  after  that. 

"Besides,"  he  said  in  another 
tone,  having,  as  he  perceived,  gained 
the  victory,  "I  have  come  to  tell 
you  of  your  son." 

A  swift  and  sudden  change  came 
over  Mrs  Ogilvy's  mind.  He  did 
not  know,  then,  that  Robbie  had 
come  back.  He  had  come  in  ignor- 
ance, not  meaning  any  harm,  mean- 
ing to  appeal  to  her  for  help  for 
Eobbie's  sake.  And  she  was  in  no 
danger  from  him,  though  Eobbie 
was.  She  might  even  help  him 
secretly,  and  do  her  son  no  harm. 
If  only  a  good  Providence  would 
keep  Eobbie  late  to-night. 

"  Sir,"  she  said,  "  I  can  do  noth- 
ing against  you  with  my  son's  name 
on  your  lips ;  but  if  you  are  in 
danger  as  you  say,  there  is  no 
safety  for  you  here.  I  have  friends 
coming  to  see  me  that  would 
wonder  at  you,  and  find  out  about 
you,  and  would  not  be  held  back 
like  me.  I  cannot  undertake  for 
what  times  they  might  come,  morn- 
ing or  night :  and  their  first  question 
would  be,  Who  is  that  you  have 
in  your  house?  and,  What  is  he 
doing  here?  You  would  not  be 
safe.  I  have  a  number  of  friends 
— more  than- 1  want,  more  than  I 
Want — if  there  was  anything  to 


328 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[Sept. 


hide.  But  if  you  will  trust  your- 
self to  me,  I  will  find  a  good  bed 
for  you,  and  a  safe  place,  where 
my  word  will  be  enough.  I  will 
send  my  woman-servant  with  you. 
That  will  carry  no  suspicion :  and 
I  will  come  myself  in  the  morning 
to  see  what  I  can  do  for  you— 
what  you  want,  if  it  is  clothes  or 
if  it  is  money,  or —  -  Ah !  I  think 
I  heard  the  click  of  that  gate,— 
that  will  be  somebody  coming. 
There  is  a  road  by  the  back  of  the 
house — oh,  come  with  me  and  I 
will  show  you  the  way  ! " 

For  a  moment  he  seemed  inclined 
to  yield ;  but  he  saw  her  extreme 
agitation,  and  his  quick  perception 
divined  something  more  than  alarm 
for  him  behind. 

"I  think,"  he  said,  stretching 
himself  out  on  the  bench,  "  that  I 
prefer  to  take  the  risks  and  to  stay. 
If  I  cannot  take  in  a  parcel  of 
your  country  folks,  I  am  not  good 
for  much.  You  can  say  I  am  a 
friend  of  Rob's.  And  that  is  true, 
and  I  bring  you  news  of  him — eh  ? 
Don't  you  want  to  hear  news  of 
your  son?" 

She  heard  a  step  on  the  gravel 
coming  up  the  slope,  slow  as  it 
was  now,  not  springy  and  swift  as 
Robbie's  once  was,  and  her  anguish 
grew.  She  took  hold  of  his 
arm  again,  of  his  hand.  "  Come 
with  me,  come  with  me,"  she 
cried,  scarcely  able  to  get  out  the 
words,  "  before  you  are  seen ! 
Come  with  me  before  you  are 
seen ! " 

He  was  so  carried  away  by  her 
passion,  of  which  all  the  same  he 
was  very  suspicious,  that  he  per- 
mitted her  to  raise  him  to  his 
feet,  following  her  impulse  with  a 
curious  smile  on  his  face,  perhaps 
touched  by  the  feeling  of  the  small 
old  soft  hand  that  laid  hold  upon 
his  —  when  Janet  with  her  large 
solid  figure  filling  the  whole  frame- 
work of  the  door  suddenly  appeared 
behind  him.  "  Will  I  bring  in  the 


supper,  mem  1 "  Janet  said  in  her 
tranquil  tones,  "for  I  hear  Mr 
Robert  coming  up  the  road :  and 
you're  ower  lang  out  in  the  night 
and  the  falling  dew." 

The  stranger  threw  himself  back 
on  the  bench  with  a  loud  laugh 
that  seemed  to  tear  the  silence 
and  rend  it.  "So  that's  how  it 
is!"  he  said.  "You've  got  Rob 
here — that's  how  it  is  !  I  thought 
you  knew  more  than  you  said. 
Dash  you,  old  woman,  I  was  begin- 
ning to  believe  in  you !  And  all 
the  time  it  was  for  your  precious 
son ! " 

Mrs  Ogilvy  took  hold  of  the 
back  of  her  chair  again  to  support 
her.  Here  was  this  strange  man 
now  in  possession  of  her  poor  little 
fortress.  And  Robbie  would  be 
here  also  in  a  moment.  Two  law- 
less broken  men,  and  only  she 
between  them,  a  small  old  woman, 
to  restrain  them,  to  conceal  them, 
to  feed  and  care  for  them,  to  save 
their  lives  it  might  be.  She  felt 
that  if  the  little  support  of  the 
chair  were  taken  from  her  she 
would  drop.  And  yet  she  must 
stand  for  them,  fight  for  them,  face 
the  world  as  their  champion.  She 
felt  the  stranger's  reproach,  too, 
thrill  through  her  with  a  pang  of 
compunction  over  all.  Yes,  it  had 
been  not  for  his  sake,  not  for  pity 
or  the  love  of  God,  but  for  her 
son's  sake,  for  the  love  of  Robbie. 
She  was  the  tigress  with  her  cub, 
after  all.  Her  heart  spoke  a  word 
faintly  in  her  own  defence,  that 
it  was  not  to  betray  this  strange 
man  that  she  had  intended,  but  to 
save  him  too  :  only  also  to  get  him 
out  of  her  way,  out  of  Robbie's 
way;  to  save  her  son  from  the 
danger  of  his  company,  and  from 
those  still  more  apparent  dangers 
which  might  arise  from  his  mere 
presence  here.  She  did  not  say  a 
word,  however,  except  faintly,  with 
a  little  nod  of  her  head  to  Janet, 
"  Ay,  —  and  put  another  place." 


1894.] 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


329 


The  words  were  so  little  distinct 
that,  but  for  her  mistress's  look 
towards  the  equally  indistinct 
figure  on  the  bench,  Janet  would 
not  have  understood.  With  a  little 
start  of  surprise  and  alarm  she  dis- 
appeared into  the  house,  troubled 
in  her  mind,  she  knew  not  why. 
"  Andrew,"  she  said  to  her  husband 
when  she  returned  to  the  kitchen, 
"I  would  just  take  a  turn  about 
the  doors,  if  I  were  you,  in  case 
ye  should  be  wanted."  "Wha 
would  want  me?  and  what  for 
should  I  turn  about  the  doors  at 
this  hour  of  the  nicht  ? "  "  Oh,  I 

was  just  thinking "  said  Janet : 

but  she  added  no  more.  After  all, 
so  long  as  Mr  Eobert  was  there, 
nothing  could  happen  to  his 
mother,  whoever  the  strange  man 
might  be. 

There  was  silence  between  the 
two  outside  the  door  of  the  Hewan 
— silence  through  which  the  sound 
of  Robbie's  slow  advancing  step 
sounded  with  strange  significance. 
He  walked  slowly  nowadays  —  at 
least  heavily,  with  the  step  of  a 
man  who  has  lost  the  spring  of 
youth :  and  to-night  he  was  tired, 
no  doubt  by  the  long  day  in 
Edinburgh,  and  going  from  place 
to  place  seeking  news  which,  alas  ! 
he  would  only  find  very  distinct, 
very  positive,  at  home.  While  Mrs 
Ogilvy,  in  this  suspense,  almost 
counted  her  son's  steps  as  he  drew 
near,  the  other  watcher  on  the 
bench,  almost  invisible  as  the  soft 
dimness  grew  darker  and  darker, 
listened  too.  He  said  "  Groggy  1 " 
with  a  slight  laugh,  which  was  like 
a  knife  in  her  breast.  She  thought 
she  smelt  the  sickening  atmosphere 
of  the  whisky  and  tobacco  come 
into  the  pure  night  air,  but  said 
half  aloud,  "  No,  no,"  with  a  sense 
of  the  intolerable.  No,  no,  he  had 
never  given  her  that  to  bear. 

And  then  Robbie  appeared 
another  shadow  in  the  opening  of 
the  road.  He  did  not  quicken  his 


pace,  even  when  he  saw  his  mother 
waiting  for  him  :  his  foot  was  like 
lead — not  life  enough  in  it  to  dis- 
turb the  gravel  on  the  path. 

"  You're  late,  Robbie." 

"I  might  have  been  later  and 
no  harm  done,"  he  said,  sulkily. 
"Yes,  I'm  late,  and  tired,  and 
with  bad  news  which  is  the  worst 
of  all." 

"  What  bad  news  1 "  she  cried. 

Robbie  did  not  see  the  vague 
figure,  another  shadow,  in  grey  in- 
distinguishable garments  like  the 
night,  which  lay  on  the  bench.  He 
came  up  to  her  heavily  with  his 
slow  steps,  and  then  stopped  and 
said,  with  an  unconscious  dramatic 
distinctness,  "That  fellow — has 
come  home.  He's  in  England,  or 
perhaps  even  in  Scotland,  by  now  : 
and  the  peace  of  my  life's  gone." 

"  Oh,  Robbie,"  cried  his  mother 
in  anguish,  wringing  her  hands ; 
and  then  she  put  her  hands  on  his 
shoulders,  trying  to  impart  her  in- 
formation by  the  thrill  of  their 
trembling,  which  gave  a  shake  to 
his  heavy  figure  too.  "Be  silent, 
be  silent ;  say  no  more  !  " 

"  Why  should  I  say  no  more  1  I 
expected  you  would  feel  it  as  I  do : 
home  was  coming  over  me,  the 
feeling  of  being  here — and  you — 
and  Susie.  But  now  that's  all  over. 
You  cannot  get  away  from  your  fate. 
That  man's  my  fate.  He  will  turn 
me  round  his  little  finger, — he  will 
make  me  do,  not  what  I  like, 
but  what  he  likes.  It's  my  fault. 
I  have  put  myself  in  his  power.  I 
would  go  away  again,  but  I  know  I 
would  meet  him,  round  the  first  cor- 
ner, outside  the  door."  And  Robert 
Ogilvy  sighed — a  profound,  deep 
breath  of  hopelessness  which  seemed 
to  come  from  the  bottom  of  his 
heart.  He  put  his  heavy  hand  on 
the  chair  which  had  supported  his 
mother.  She  now  stood  alone,  un- 
supported even  by  that  slight  prop. 

"  You  will  come  in  now,  my  dear, 
and  rest.  You  have  had  a  hard 


330 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[Sept. 


day  :  and  everything  is  worse  when 
you  are  tired.  Janet  has  laid  your 
supper  ready ;  and  when  you  have 
rested,  then  we'll  hear  all  that  has 
happened — and  think,"  she  said, 
with  a  tremor  in  her  voice,  "  what 
to  do." 

She  did  not  dare  to  look  at  the 
stranger  directly,  lest  Eobbie  should 
discover  him ;  but  she  gave  a  glance, 
a  movement,  in  his  direction,  an  ap- 
peal— which  that  close  observer  un- 
derstood well  enough.  She  had 
the  thought  that  her  son  might 
escape  him  yet — at  which  the  other 
smiled  in  his  heart,  but  humoured 
her  so  far  that  he  did  not  say  any- 
thing yet. 

"  It  is  easy  for  you,"  said  Robbie, 
with  another  profound  sigh,  "to 
think  what  you  will  do  —  you 
neither  know  the  man,  nor  his 
cleverness,  nor  the  weak  deevil  I 
am.  I'll  not  go  in.  That  craze  of 
yours  for  all  your  windows  open 
— they're  not  shut  yet,  by  George  ! 
and  it's  ten  o'clock  and  more — takes 
off  any  feeling  of  safety  there 
might  be  in  the  house.  I  shall  sit 
here  and  watch  for  him.  At  least  I 
can  see  him  coming,  here." 

"  Eobbie,  oh  Robbie  !  come  in, 
come  in,  if  you  would  not  kill 
me  ! " 

"  Don't  take  so  much  trouble,  old 
lady,"  said  the  stranger  from  the 
bench,  at  the  sound  of  whose  voice 
Robbie  started  so  violently,  taking 
up  the  chair  in  his  hand,  that  his 
mother  made  a  spring  and  placed 
herself  between  them.  "I  see 
what  you  want  to  do,  but  you  can't 
do  it.  It's  fate,  as  he  says;  and 
he'll  calm  down  when  he  knows  I 
am  here.  So,  Bob,  you  stole  a 
march  on  me,"  he  said,  raising  him- 
self up.  He  was  the  taller  man, 
but  Robbie  was  the  heavier.  They 
stood  for  a  moment  —  two  dark 
shadows  in  the  night — so  near  that 
the  whiteness  of  Mrs  Ogilvy's 
shawl  brushed  them  on  either  side. 

"You're    here,   then,    already!" 


Robbie  held  the  chair  for  a  moment 
like  a  weapon  of  offence,  and  then 
pitched  it  from  him.  "  What's 
the  good  1  I  might  have  known,  if 
there  was  an  unlikely  spot  on  the 
earth,  that's  where  you  would  be 
found." 

"You  thought  this  an  unlikely 
spot?  Why,  you've  told  me  of  it 
often  enough,  old  fellow :  safety 
itself  and  quiet;  and  your  mother 
that  would  feed  us  like  fighting 
cocks.  Where  else  did  you  think  I 
would  come  1  The  t'other  places  are 
too  hot  for  us  both.  But  I  say,  old 
lady,  I  should  not  mind  having  a 
look  at  that  supper  now:  we've 
only  been  waiting  for  Rob,  don't 
you  know?" 

Mrs  Ogilvy,  in  her  anguish,  made 
still  another  appeal.  She  said,  "For 
one  moment  listen  to  me.  I  don't 
even  know  your  name ;  but  there's 
one  thing  I  know — that  you  two 
are  safest  apart.  I  am  not,  sir, 
meaning  my  son  alone,"  she  said 
with  severity,  for  the  stranger  had 
given  vent  to  a  short  laugh,  "nor 
for  the  evil  company  that  I  have 
heard  you  are.  I  am  speaking  just 
of  your  safety.  You  are  in  more 
danger  than  he  is,  and  there's  more 
chance  they  will  look  for  you  here 
than  elsewhere.  If  it  was  to  save 
your  life,"  she  added,  after  a  pause 
to  recover  her  voice,  "  even  for 
Robbie,  no,  I  would  not  give  up 
a  young  man  like  you  to  what  you 
call  your  fate.  But  you're  safest 
apart :  if  you  think  a  moment  you 
will  see  that.  I  will,"  cried  the 
little  indistinguishable  whiteness 
between  the  two  men,  "  take  it  in 
my  hands.  You  shall  have  meat, 
you  shall  have  rest,  you  shall  have 
whatever  you  need  to  take  you — 
wherever  may  be  best ;  not  for  him, 
but  for  you.  Young  man,  in  the 
name  of  God  listen  to  me — it's  not 
that  I  would  harm  you  !  The  farther 
off  you  are  from  each  other  the  safer 
you  are— both.  And  I'll  help— I'll 
help  you  with  all  my  heart." 


1894.] 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


331 


"  There's  reason  in  what  she  says, 
Bob,"  said  the  stranger,  in  an  easy 
voice,  as  if  of  a  quite  indifferent 
matter.  "  The  old  lady  has  a  great 
deal  of  sense.  You  would  have 
been  wise  to  take  her  advice  long 
ago  while  there  was  time  for  it." 

She  stood  between  them,  her 
hands  clasped,  with  a  forlorn  hope 
in  the  newcomer,  who  was  not  con- 


temptuous of  her,  like  Eobbie — who 
listened  so  civilly  to  all  she  said. 

"But,"  he  added,  with  a  laugh, 
"  what's  safety  after  all  1  It's  death 
alive ;  it's  not  for  you  and  me.  The 
time  for  a  meal  and  a  sleep,  and  then 
to  face  the  world  again — eh,  Bob  ? 
that's  all  a  man  wants.  Let's  see 
that  supper.  I  am  half  dead  for 
want  of  food." 


CHAPTER   XIV. 


Eobert  had  led  the  way  sullenly 
into  the  dining-room.  He  had 
made  as  though  he  would  not  sit 
down  at  table,  where  the  other 
placed  himself  at  once  unceremoni- 
ously, pulling  towards  him  the  dish 
which  Janet  had  just  placed  on  the 
table,  and  helping  himself  eagerly 
— waiting  for  no  grace,  giving  no 
thanks,  nor  even  the  tribute  of 
civility  to  his  entertainers,  as  Mrs 
Ogilvy  remarked  in  passing,  though 
her  mind  was  full  of  other  and 
more  important  things.  "I'm  too 
tired,  I  think,  to  eat ;  I'll  go  to 
bed,  mother,"  Robbie  said.  Mrs 
Ogilvy  seized  the  chance  of  separat- 
ing him  from  the  other  with  rapture. 
She  ventured — it  was  not  always 
she  could  do  so  —  to  give  him  a 
good-night  kiss  on  his  cheek,  and 
whispered,  "I  will  send  you  up 
something,"  unwilling  that  he 
should  suffer  by  so  much  as  a 
spoilt  meal. 

"  What !  are  you  going  to  leave 
me  in  the  lurch,  Bob  ?  steal  another 
march  on  me,  now  I've  thrown 
myself  like  an  innocent  on  your 
good  faith  1  That's  not  like  a  Ion 
camarade.  I  thought  we  were  to 
stick  to  each  other  for  life  or  death." 

"  I  never  bargained — you  were  to 
come  here  and  frighten  my  mother." 

"No,  no,"  she  cried;  "no,  no," 
with  her  hand  on  his  arm  patting 
it  softly,  endeavouring  to  lead  him 
away. 

"Your  mother's  not  frightened, 


old  boy.  She's  full  of  pluck,  and 
we're  the  best  of  friends.  It's  you 
that  are  frightened.  You  think  I've 
got  hold  of  you  again.  So  I  have, 
and  you're  not  going  to  give  me 
the  slip  so  soon.  Sit  down  and 
don't  be  uncivil.  I  never  yet  got 
the  good  of  a  dinner  by  myself." 

Mrs  Ogilvy  held  her  son's  arm 
with  her  hand.  She  felt  the  thrill 
in  him  turning  towards  his  old 
comrade,  though  he  did  not  move. 
Perhaps  the  pressure  of  her  hand 
was  too  strong  on  his  arm.  A 
woman  does  not  know  exactly  how 
far  to  go.  An  added  hair's-breadth 
is  sometimes  too  much. 

"I  don't  want  to  be  uncivil," 
said  Robbie,  after  a  moment's  hesi- 
tation. "After  all,  I  think  I'll  try 
to  eat  a  morsel,  mother ;  I'm  in  my 
own  place.  And  you  asked  him  in, 
I  suppose ;  he's  in  a  manner  your 
guest " 

"If  you  think  so,  Robbie 

Her  hand  loosened  from  his  arm. 
Perhaps  if  she  had  been  firm  at 
that  moment, — but  she  had  already 
been  fighting  for  a  long  time ;  and 
when  a  woman  is  old  she  gets  tired. 
Her  legs  were  trembling  under  her. 
She  did  not  feel  as  if  she  could 
stand  many  minutes  longer.  She 
did,  however;  while  Robbie,  with 
an  air  of  much  sullenness  and  re- 
luctance, took  his  place  at  the  table, 
and  secured  the  remains  of  the  dish 
which  his  friend  had  nearly  emptied. 
Robert  held  his  place  as  host  with 


332 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[Sept. 


an  air  of  offended  dignity,  which 
would  have  touched  his  mother 
with  amusement  had  her  mind  been 
more  free.  But  there  was  no 
strength  in  him;  already  he  was 
yielding  to  the  stronger  personality ; 
and  as  he  ate  and  listened,  though 
in  spite  of  himself,  it  was  clear  that 
one  by  one  the  reluctances  gave  way. 
Mrs  Ogilvy  did  not  pretend  to  take 
part  in  the  meal.  It  was  prepared  for 
Eobbie,  as  was  always  the  case  when 
he  went  to  Edinburgh  and  returned 
late.  She  remained  in  the  room 
for  a  time,  sometimes  going  to  the 
kitchen  to  see  what  more  could  be 
found  to  replenish  the  table, — for 
the  stranger  ate  as  if  he  had  fasted 
for  a  twelvemonth,  and  Robbie  on 
his  part  had  always  an  excellent 
appetite.  How  it  did  not  choke 
them  even  to  swallow  a  morsel  in 
the  situation  of  danger  in  which 
they  were,  bewildered  her.  And 
greater  wonders  still  arose.  As  she 
went  and  came,  the  conversation 
quickened  between  them;  and  when 
she  came  back  the  second  time  from 
the  kitchen,  Eobbie  was  leaning 
back  in  his  chair,  his  mouth  open 
in  a  great  peal  of  laughter,  his 
countenance  so  brightened  and 
smoothed  out,  that  for  the  first 
time  since  his  return  Mrs  Ogilvy's 
heart  bounded  with  a  recognition  of 
her  bright-faced  smiling  boy  as  he 
had  been,  but  was  no  more.  His  face 
overcast  again  for  a  moment  at  the 
sight  of  her,  as  if  that  was  enough 
to  damp  all  pleasurable  emotion; 
and  when  she  had  again  looked 
round  the  table  to  see  if  anything 
was  wanted,  the  mother,  with  a 
little  movement  of  wounded  pride, 
left  them.  She  went  into  her 
parlour,  and  sat  down  in  the  dark, 
in  the  silence,  to  rest  a  little. 
If  her  overstrained  nerves  and  the 
quick  sensation  of  the  wound  of 
the  moment  brought  a  tear  or  two 
to  her  eyes,  that  was  nothing.  Her 
mind  immediately  began  to  plan 
and  arrange  how  this  dangerous 


stranger  could  be  got  away,  how 
his  safety  could  be  secured.  I  pre- 
sume that  Mrs  Ogilvy  had  forgotten 
what  his  crime  was.  Is  it  not  im- 
possible to  believe  that  a  man  who 
is  under  your  own  roof,  who  is 
like  other  men,  who  has  smiled 
and  spoken,  and  shown  no  bar- 
barous tendency,  should  be  a  mur- 
derer ?  The  consciousness  of  that 
had  gone  out  of  her  mind.  She 
thought,  on  the  contrary,  that  there 
was  good  in  him  :  that  he  was  not 
without  understanding,  even  of  her- 
self, an  old  woman,  which  was, 
Mrs  Ogilvy  was  aware,  unusual 
among  young  men.  He  had  no 
contempt  for  her,  which  was  what 
they  generally  had,  even  Robbie  : 
perhaps — it  was  at  least  within  the 
bounds  of  possibility — he  might  be 
got  to  do  what  she  suggested.  She 
searched  into  all  the  depths  to  find 
out  what  would  be  the  best.  To 
provide  a  place  for  him  more 
private  than  the  He  wan,  a  room 
in  a  cottage  which  she  knew,  where 
he  would  be  made  quite  comfort- 
able ;  and  then,  after  great  thought 
taken,  where  would  be  the  best 
and  safest  refuge,  to  get  him  to 
depart  thither,  with  money  enough 
— money  which,  with  a  faint  pang 
to  lose  it  for  Robbie,  she  felt  would, 
be  well-spent  money  to  free  him  for 
ever  from  that  dangerous  companion. 
Mrs  Ogilvy  thought,  and  better 
thought,  as  she  herself  described 
the  process  :  where  would  be  the 
safest  place  for  him  to  go?  How 
would  one  of  the  Highland  isles 
do,  or  the  Isle  of  Man,  or  perhaps 
these  other  islands  which  she  be- 
lieved were  French,  though  that 
would  most  likely  make  no  differ- 
ence— Guernsey  or  Jersey,  or  some 
of  these?  She  was  strongly,  in 
her  mind,  in  favour  of  an  island. 
It  was  not  so  easy  to  get  at,  and 
yet  it  was  easy  to  escape  from 
should  there  be  any  pursuit.  She 
thought,  and  better  thought,  sit- 
ting there  in  the  dark,  with  the 


1894.] 

window  still  open,  and  the  air  of 
the  night  blowing  in.  The  wind 
was  cold  rather ;  but  her  mind  was 
so  taken  up  that  she  scarcely  felt 
it.  It  is  when  the  mind  is  quite 
free  that  you  have  time  to  think 
of  all  these  little  things. 

While  she  was  sitting  so  quiet 
the  conversation  evidently  warmed 
in  the  other  room,  the  voices  grew 
louder,  there  were  peals  of  laughter, 
sounds  of  gaiety  which  had  not 
been  heard  there  for  many  a  day. 
Mrs  Ogilvy's  heart  rose  in  spite  of 
herself.  She  had  not  heard  Eobbie 
laugh  like  that — not  since  he  was 
a  boy.  God  bless  him  !  And,  oh, 
might  she  not  say,  God  bless  the 
other  too,  that  made  him  laugh  so 
hearty  ?  He  could  not  be  all  bad, 
that  other  one  :  certainly  there  was 
good  in  him.  It  was  not  possible 
that  he  could  laugh  like  that,  a 
man  hunted  for  his  life,  if  he  had 
his  conscience  against  him  too. 
She  began  to  think  that  there  must 
be  some  mistake.  And  so  great 
are  the  inconsistencies  of  human 
nature,  that  this  mother  who  had 
repulsed  the  stranger  with  almost 
tragic  passion  so  short  a  time  ago, 
sat  in  the  dark  soothed  and  almost 
happy  in  his  presence — almost  glad 
that  her  Eobbie  had  a  friend.  She 
heard  Janet  come  and  go,  with  a 
cheerful  word  addressed  to  her, 
and  giving  cheerful  words  in  return 
and  advice  to  the  young  men  to  go 
to  their  beds  and  not  sit  up  till  all 
the  hours  of  the  night.  After  one 
of  these  colloquies  Eobbie  came  into 
the  room  where  Mrs  Ogilvy  was. 
"  Are  you  here,  mother  ? "  he  said, 
"  sitting  in  the  dark  without  a 
candle — and  the  window  still  open. 
I  think  it  is  your  craze  to  keep 
these  windows  open,  whatever  I 
may  say." 

"  It  can  matter  little  now,  Eob- 
bie— since  he's  here." 

"  Oh,  since  he's  here  !  and  how 
about  those  that  may  come  after 
him  1  But  you  never  will  see  what 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


333 


I  mean.  There  is  more  need  than 
ever  to  bar  the  doors."  He  closed 
the  window  himself  with  vehe- 
mence, and  the  shutters,  leaving 
her  in  total  darkness.  "  I  will  tell 
Janet  to  bring  you  a  light,"  he 
said. 

"  You  need  not  do  that :  I  will 
maybe  go  up-stairs." 

"  To  your  bed — as  Janet  has 
been  bidding  us  to  do." 

"I'll  not  promise,"  said  Mrs 
Ogilvy;  "I've  many  things  to 
think  of." 

"  Never  mind  to-night ;  but 
there's  one  thing  I  want  of  you, 
— your  keys.  Janet  says  the  mis- 
tress locks  everything  up  but  just 
what  is  going.  There  is  next  to 
nothing  in  the  bottle." 

"  Oh,  Eobbie,  my  man,  it's 
neither  good  for  him  nor  for  you ! 
It  would  be  far  better,  as  Janet 
says,  to  go  to  your  beds." 

"  It  is  a  pretty  thing,"  said  Eob- 
bie, "  that  I  cannot  entertain  a 
friend,  not  for  once,  and  he  a 
stranger  that  has  heard  me  boast 
of  my  home  ;  and  that  you  should 
grudge  me  the  first  pleasant  night 
I  have  had  in  this  miserable  dull 
place." 

"  Oh,  Eobbie  ! "  she  cried,  as  if  he 
had  given  her  a  blow.  And  then 
trembling  she  put  her  keys  into 
his  hand,  groping  to  find  it  in 
the  dark.  He  went  away  with  a 
murmur,  whether  of  thanks  or 
grumbling  she  could  not  tell,  and 
left  her  thus  to  feel  the  full  force 
of  that  flying  stroke.  Then  she 
picked  herself  up  again,  and  al- 
lowed to  herself  that  it  was  a  dull 
place  for  a  young  man  that  had 
been  out  in  the  world  and  had 
seen  much.  And  it  was  natural 
that  he  should  be  pleased  and  ex- 
cited, with  a  man  to  talk  to.  Al- 
most all  women  are  humble  on  this 
point.  They  do  not  hope  that 
their  men  can  be  satisfied  with 
their  company,  but  are  glad  that 
they  should  have  other  men  to  add 


334 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[Sept. 


salt  and  savour  to  their  life.  It 
gave  Mrs  Ogilvy  a  pang  to  hear  her 
gardevin  unlocked,  and  the  bottles 
sounding  as  they  were  taken  out : 
but  yet  that  he  should  make  merry 
with  his  friend,  was  not  that 
sanctioned  by  the  very  Scripture 
itself?  She  sat  there  a  while  try- 
ing to  resume  the  course  of  her 
thoughts;  but  the  sound  of  the 
talk,  the  laughing,  the  clinking  of 
the  glasses,  filled  the  air  and  dis- 
ordered all  these  thoughts.  She 
went  softly  up-stairs  after  a  while  ; 
but  the  sounds  pursued  her  there 
almost  more  distinctly,  for  her  room 
was  over  the  dining-room, — the  two 
voices  in  endless  conversation,  the 
laughter,  the  smell  of  their  tobacco. 
You  would  have  said  two  light- 
hearted  laddies  to  hear  them,  Mrs 
Ogilvy  said  to  herself:  and  one 
of  them  a  hunted  man,  in  danger 
of  his  life !  She  did  not  sleep 
much  that  night,  nor  even  go  to 
bed,  but  sat  up  fully  dressed,  the 
early  daylight  finding  her  out  sud- 
denly in  her  white  shawl  and  cap 
when  it  came  in,  oh  !  so  early,  reveal- 
ing the  whole  familiar  world  about, 
— giving  her  a  surprise,  too,  to  see 
herself  in  the  glass,  with  her  candle 
flickering  on  the  table  beside  her. 
It  was  broad  daylight  —  but  they 
would  not  see  it,  their  shutters 
being  closed  —  before  the  sounds 
ceased,  and  she  heard  them  stum- 
bling up-stairs,  still  talking  and 
making  a  great  noise  in  the  silence, 
to  their  rooms;  and  then  after  a 
while  everything  was  still.  And 
then  she  could  think. 

Then  she  could  think  !  Oh,  her 
plan  was  a  very  simple  one,  involv- 
ing little  thought,— first  that  house 
down  the  water,  on  the  very  edge 
of  the  river,  where  Andrew's  brother 
lived.  It  was  as  quiet  a  place  as 
heart  could  desire,  and  a  very  nice 
room,  where  in  her  good  days,  in 
Robbie's  boyhood,  in  the  time  when 
there  were  often  visitors  at  the 
Hewan,  she  had  sent  any  guest  she 


had  not  room  for.  Down  the  steep 
bank  behind  on  which  the  Hewan 
stood,  you  could  almost  have  slid 
down  to  the  little  house  in  the 
glen.  There  would  be  very  little 
risk  there.  Robbie  and  he  could 
see  each  other,  and  nobody  the 
wiser ;  and  then,  after  he  was  well 
rested,  he  would  see  the  danger  of 
staying  in  a  place  like  the  Hewan, 
where  anybody  at  any  moment  might 
walk  up  to  the  door.  And  then 
the  place  must  be  chosen  where  he 
should  go.  If  he  would  but  go  quiet 
to  one  of  the  islands,  and  be  out  of 
danger !  Mrs  Ogilvy 's  mind  was 
very  much  set  on  one  of  the  islands ; 
I  cannot  tell  why.  It  seemed  to  her 
so  much  safer  to  be  surrounded  by 
the  sea  on  every  side.  If  he  would 
consent  to  go  to  St  Kilda  or  some 
place  like  that,  where  he  would  be 
as  safe  as  a  bird  in  its  nest.  Ah  ! 
but  St  Kilda  —  among  the  poor 
fisher-folk,  where  he  would  have 
no  one  to  speak  to.  A  chill  came 
over  her  heart  in  the  middle  of  her 
plans.  Would  he  not  laugh  in  her 
face  if  she  proposed  it  1  Would  he 
go,  however  safe  it  might  be  ?  Did 
he  care  so  much  for  his  safety  as 
that  ?  She  wrung  her  hands  with 
a  sense  of  impotence,  and  that  all 
her  fine  plans,  when  she  had  made 
them,  would  come  to  nothing.  She 
might  plan  and  plan;  but  if  he 
would  not  do  it,  what  would  her 
planning  matter1?  If  she  planned 
for  Robbie  in  the  same  way,  would 
he  do  it  1  And  she  had  no  power 
over  this  strange  man.  Then  after 
demonstrating  to  herself  the  folly  of 
it,  she  began  her  planning  all  over 
again. 

In  the  morning  there  were  the 
usual  pleasant  sounds  in  the  house 
of  natural  awakening  and  new  be- 
ginning, and  Mrs  Ogilvy  got  up  at 
her  usual  hour  and  dressed  herself 
with  her  usual  care.  She  saw,  when 
she  looked  at  herself  in  the  glass, 
that  she  was  paler  than  usual.  But 
what  did  that  matter  for  an  old 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


1894.] 


woman?  She  was  not  tired — she 
did  not  feel  her  body  at  all.  She 
was  all  life  and  force  and  energy, 
thrilling  to  her  finger-points  with 
the  desire  of  doing  something — the 
ability  to  do  whatever  might  be 
wanted.  She  would  have  gone  off 
to  St  Kilda  straight  without  the 
loss  of  a  moment,  if  her  doing  so 
could  have  been  of  any  avail.  But 
of  what  avail  could  that  have  been  ? 
The  early  morning  passed  over  in 
its  usual  occupations,  and  grew  to 
noon  before  there  was  any  stirring 
up-stairs.  Then  Janet,  who  had  no 
responsibility,  who  had  always  kept 
her  old  footing  with  Robbie  as  his 
old  nurse  who  might  say  anything 
and  do  anything — without  gravity, 
laughing  with  him  at  herself  and 
her  old  domineering  ways,  yet 
sometimes  influencing  him  with 
her  domineering  more  than  his 
mother's  anxious  love  could  do — 
Janet  went  boldly  up-stairs  with 
her  jugs  of  hot  water,  and  knocked 
at  one  door  after  another.  Mrs 
Ogilvy  then  heard  various  stirrings, 
shouts  to  know  what  was  wanted, 
openings  of  doors,  Robbie,  large 
and  heavy,  though  with  slippered 
feet,  going  into  his  companion's 
room,  and  the  loud  talk  of  last 
night  resumed.  Nearly  one  o'clock, 
the  middle  of  the  day.  Alas  for 
that  journey  to  St  Kilda,  or  any- 
where !  When  the  day  was  half 
over,  how  was  any  such  enterprise 
to  be  undertaken?  And  if  the 
police  were  after  him — the  police  ! 
in  her  honourable,  honest,  stainless 
house — how  was  he  to  get  away, 
to  have  a  chance  of  escape  ?  in  his 
bed  and  undefended,  sleeping  and 
insensible  to  any  danger,  till  one 
of  the  clock.  It  must  have  been 
two  before  Robbie  showed  down- 
stairs. He  was  a  little  abashed, 
not  facing  his  mother — looking,  she 
thought,  as  if  his  eyes  had  been 
boiled. 

"  We  were  a  little  late  last  night," 
he  said.     "'I'm  sorry,  but  it's  noth- 


335 


ing  to  look  so  serious  about.    Lew's 
first  night." 

"Robbie,"  she  said,  "it's  noth- 
ing. I'm  old-fashioned.  I  have 
my  prejudices.  But  it  was  not 
that  I  was  thinking  of.  Is  he  in 
danger  of  his  life  or  no  ? " 

Robbie  blanched  a  little  at  this, 
but  shook  himself  with  nervous 
impatience.  "  That's  a  big  word 
to  use,"  he  said. 

"  It  was  the  word  he  used  to  me 
when  he  came  upon  me  last  night. 
If  he  is  in  danger  of  his  life,  he  is 
not  safe  for  a  moment  here." 

"  Rubbish  ! "  said  Robbie  ;  "  why 
is  he  not  safe  1  It  is  as  out  of  the 
way  as  anything  can  be.  Not  a 
soul  about  but  your  village  people, 
who  don't  know  him  from  Adam, 
nor  anything  about  us,  good  or  bad. 
I  am  just  your  son  to  them,  and  he 
is  just  my  friend." 

11  If  that  were  so !  It  is  not  a 
thing  I  know  about :  it  is  only 
what  you  have  told  me,  him  and 
you.  He  said  he  was  in  danger  of 
his  life." 

'  "  He  was  a  fool  for  his  pains ; 
but  he  always  liked  a  sensation, 
and  to  talk  big " 

"Then  it  is  not  true?" 

She  looked  at  him,  and  he  at 
her.  He  was  pale,  too,  with  the 
doings  of  last  night,  but  a  quick 
colour  flashed  over  his  face  under 
her  eyes.  "  I  am  not  going  to  be 
cross-examined,"  he  said.  Then 
after  a  pause:  "It  may  be  true, 
and  it  mayn't  be  true — if  they're 
on  his  track.  But  he  doesn't 
think  now  that  they  are  on  his 
track." 

"  He  thought  so  last  night, 
Robbie." 

"What  does  it  matter  about 
last  night?  You're  insufferable — 
you  can  imagine  nothing.  There 
is  a  difference  between  a  man  when 
he's  tired  and  fasting,  and  when 
he's  had  a  good  rest  and  a  square 
meal.  He  doesn't  think  so  now. 
He's  quite  happy  about  us  both. 


336 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[Sept. 


He  says  we'll  pull  along  here 
famously  for  a  time.  You  so 
motherly  (he  likes  you),  and  Janet 
such  a  good  cook,  and  the  whisky 
very  decent.  He's  a  connoisseur, 
I  can  tell  you ! — and  nobody  here 
that  has  half  an  idea  in  their 

heads " 

"You  may  he  deceived,  there," 
said  Mrs  Ogilvy,  suddenly  resent- 
ing what  he  said — "you  may  be 
deceived  in  that,  both  him  and 

you " 

"Not  about  the  cook  and  the 
whisky,"  said  Eobbie,  with  a  laugh. 
"  In  short,  we  think  we  can  lie  on 
our  oars  a  little  and  watch  events. 
We  can  cut  and  run  at  any  mo- 
ment if  danger  appears." 
"  You  say  '  we/  Eobbie  1 " 
"  Yes,"  he  said,  with  a  moment- 
ary scowl,  "  I  said  '  we.'  Of  course, 
I'm  in  with  Lew  as  soon  as  he 
turns  up.  I  always  said  I  was. 
You  forget  the  nonsense  I've  talked 
about  him.  That's  all  being  out  of 
sight  that  corrupts  the  mind.  Lord, 
what  a  difference  it  makes  to  have 
him  here  ! " 

She  looked  a  little  wistfully  at 
the  young  man  to  whom  her  own 
love  and  devotion  mattered  noth- 
ing. He  calculated  on  it  freely, 
took  advantage  of  it,  and  thought  no 
more  of  it — which  was  "  quite  nat- 
ural "  :  she  quieted  all  possibilities 
of  rebellion  in  her  own  mind  by 
this.  "But,  Eobbie,"  she  said,  "if 
he  is  in  danger.  I'm  not  one  to 
advise  you  to  be  unfaithful  to  a 
friend — oh,  not  even  if —  But 
his  welfare  goes  before  all.  If  it's 
true  all  I've  heard — if  there's  been 
wild  work  out  yonder  in  America, 

and  he's  blamed  for  it " 

"Who  told  you  that?" 
"  Partly   Mr    Somerville   before 
you  came,  Eobbie,  and  partly  your- 
self—and partly  it  was  in  a  news- 
paper I  read." 

"A  newspaper  ! "  he  cried,  almost 
with  a  shout.  "If  it  has  been  in 
the  newspapers  here ' 


"  I  did  not  say  it  was  a  news- 
paper here." 

"  I  know  what  it  was,"  said 
Eobbie,  with  a  scornful  laugh. 
"  You've  been  at  a  woman's  tricks. 
I  thought  you  were  above  them. 
You've  searched  my  pockets,  and 
you've  found  it  there." 

"  I  found  it  lying  with  your 
coat,  in  no  pocket :  and  I  had  seen 
it  before  in  Mr  Somerville's  hands. 
You  go  too  far — you  go  too  far  ! " 
she  said. 

"Well,"  he  said  with  bravado, 
"  what  does  a  Yankee  paper  matter  1 
— nobody  reads  them  here.  Any- 
how," he  added,  "  Lew  and  I,  we're 
going  to  face  it  out.  We'll  stay 
where  we  are,  and  make  ourselves 
as  comfortable  as  we  can.  Danger 
at  present  there's  none.  Oh,  you 
need  not  answer  me  with  supposing 
this  or  that ;  I  know." 

Mrs  Ogilvy  opened  her  lips  to 
speak,  but  said  no  word.  She  was 
perhaps  tempted  to  suggest  that  it 
was  her  house,  her  money,  her  life 
and  comfort,  of  which  these  two 
men  were  disposing  so  calmly ;  but 
she  did  not.  After  all,  she  said  to 
herself,  it  was  not  hers,  but E/obbie's ; 
everything  that  was  hers  was  his. 
She  had  saved  the  money  which 
he  might  have  been  spending  had 
he  been  at  home — which  he  might 
have  been  extravagant  with,  who 
could  tell  ? — for  him.  And  should 
she  grudge  him  the  use  of  it  now  ? 
If  he  was  right,  if  all  was  safe,  if 
there  was  no  need  for  alarm,  why, 

then Her   peace   was   gone ; 

but  had  she  not  all  these  years 
been  ready  to  sacrifice  peace,  com- 
fort, life  itself — everything  in  the 
world — forEobbie's  sake  1  And  now 
that  he  had  been  brought  back  to 
her  as  if  it  were  out  of  the  grave, — 
"  this  thy  son  was  dead,  and  is  alive 
again ;  he  was  lost,  and  is  found," — 
what  was  there  more  to  say  ?  That 
father  who  ran  out  to  meet  his  son, 
who  fell  upon  his  neck,  and  clothed 
him  in  the  best  garment,  and  would 


1894." 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


337 


not  even  listen  to  his  confession  into  the  monotony  of  home,  was 
and  penitence — perhaps  when  the  not  so  happy  in  him  as  he  had 
prodigal  had  settled  back  again  hoped  to  be. 


CHAPTER   XV. 


There  followed  after  this  a  period 
which  was  the  most  terrible  of  Mrs 
Ogilvy's  life.  It  had  not  the 
anguish  of  that  previous  time  when 
Eobert  had  disappeared  from  his 
home ;  but  in  pain  and  active  dis- 
tress, and  the  horrors  of  fear  and 
anxiety,  it  was  sometimes  almost  as 
bad  —  sometimes  worse  than  that. 
When  she  looked  back  on  it  after, 
it  seemed  to  her  like  a  nightmare, 
the  dream  of  a  long  fever  too 
dreadful  to  be  true.  The  happi- 
ness of  having  her  son  under  her 
own  roof  was  turned  into  torture, 
though  still  remaining  in  its  way 
a  kind  of  terrible  happiness ;  for 
did  not  she  see  him  day  by  day 
falling  into  all  that  was  to  her 
mind  most  appalling  —  the  habits 
of  such  a  life  as  was  odious  and 
terrible  to  the  poor  lady,  with  all 
her  traditions  of  decent  living,  all 
her  prejudices  and  delicacies  ?  His 
very  voice  had  changed;  it  was 
more  gay  and  lively  at  times  than 
she  had  ever  known,  and  this  gave 
her  a  pang  of  pleasure  often  in 
the  midst  of  her  trouble.  Indeed 
there  were  times  when  even  the 
noise  of  the  two  young  men  in  the 
house  affected  her  mind  with  a  cer- 
tain pleasure  and  elation,  and  grati- 
tude to  God  that  she  was  there  to 
make  their  life  possible,  to  make  it 
comfortable,  to  give  them  occasion 
for  the  light-heartedness,  though 
she  could  not  understand  it,  which 
they  showed.  But  these  were 
evanescent  moments,  and  her  life 
day  by  day  was  a  kind  of  horror 
to  her,  as  if  she  were  herself  affected 
by  the  careless  ways,  the  profane 
words,  the  self-indulgence,  and  dis- 
regard of  everything  lovely  and 
honest  and  of  good  report,  which 


she  seemed  to  be  encouraging  and 
keeping  up  while  she  looked  on 
and  suffered. 

The  situation  is  too  poignant  to 
be  easily  recorded.  One  has  heard 
of  a  wife  oppressed  and  disgusted 
by  a  dissipated  husband ;  one  has 
heard  of  the  horrors  of  a  drunkard's 
home.  But  this  was  a  different 
thing.  So  far  as  any  one  in  the 
house  was  aware,  these  young  men 
were  not  drunkards.  There  were 
no  dreadful  scenes  in  which  they 
lost  control  of  themselves  or  the 
possession  of  their  senses.  Was 
it  almost  worse  than  that1?  Mrs 
Ogilvy  felt  as  if  she  were  being 
put  through  the  treatment  which 
some  people  suppose  to  be  a  cure 
for  that  terrible  weakness,  the 
mixture  of  intoxicating  spirit  with 
every  meal  and  every  dish.  Her 
very  cup  of  tea,  the  old  lady's 
modest  indulgence,  seemed  to  be 
flavoured  from  the  eternal  whisky 
bottle  which  was  always  there,  the 
smell  and  the  sight  of  which  made 
her  sick,  made  her  frantic  with 
suppressed  misery.  They  meant 
no  harm,  she  tried  to  explain  to 
herself.  It  was  a  habit  of  their 
rough  life,  and  the  much  exer- 
cise and  fatigue  to  which  they 
subjected  themselves,  for  good  or 
for  evil,  in  the  far-away  place  from 
which  they  had  come,  the  out- 
skirts of  civilisation.  They  were 
not  capable  of  understanding  what 
it  was  to  her  to  see  her  trim  dining- 
room  always  made  disorderly  (as 
she  felt)  by  that  bottle,  the  atmos- 
phere flavoured  with  it,  its  presence 
always  manifest.  The  pipes,  too : 
her  mantelpiece,  always  so  nicely 
arranged  with  its  clock,  its  flower- 
vases,  its  shells  and  ornaments,  was 


338 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[Sept. 


now  encumbered  and  dusty  with. 
pipes,  with  ashes  of  cigars,  with 
cans  and  papers  of  tobacco  :  how 
they  would  have  laughed  had  they 
known  what  a  vexation  this  was ! 
or  rather  Bobbie  would  have  been 
angry — he  would  have  said  it  was 
one  of  her  ridiculous  ways — and 
only  the  other  would  have  laughed. 
It  is  a  little  hard  to  have  your  son 
speak  of  your  ridiculous  ways  be- 
fore another  man  who  is  indulgent 
and  laughs.  But  still  the  pipes 
were  nothing  in  comparison  with 
that  other  thing  —  the  bottle  of 
whisky  always  there.  What  would 
the  grocer  in  Eskholm  think,  from 
whom  she  got  her  supplies,  when, 
instead  of  the  small  discreet  bottle 
at  long  intervals — for  not  to  have 
whisky  in  the  house,  the  old- 
fashioned  Scotch  remedy  for  so 
many  things,  would  have  seemed  to 
Mrs  Ogilvy  almost  a  crime — there 
were  gallon  jars,  she  did  not  like 
to  ask  Andrew  how  many,  sup- 
plied to  the  Hewan  1  The  idea  that 
it  was  not  respectable  cut  into  her 
like  a  knife.  And  it  would  be 
thought  that  it  was  Robbie  who 
consumed  all  that, — Robbie,  who 
was  known  to  be  there,  yet  never 
had  been  seen  in  Eskholm,  or 
taking  his  walks  like  other  sober 
folk  on  Eskside. 

And  they  turned  life  upside 
down  altogether,  both  in  and  out 
of  the  house.  They  rarely  went 
out  in  daylight,  but  would  take 
long  walks,  scouring  the  country 
in  the  late  evening,  and  come  home 
very  late  to  sit  down  to  a  supper 
specially  prepared  for  them,  as  on 
the  first  day  of  the  stranger's  ap- 
pearance. He  had  affected  to  think 
it  was  the  ordinary  habit  of  the 
house,  and  approved  of  it  much,  he 
said.  And  they  sat  late  after  it, 
always  with  a  new  bottle  of  whisky, 
and  went  to  bed  in  the  daylight  of 
the  early  summer  morning,  with 
the  natural  consequence  that  they 
did  not  get  up  till  the  middle  of 


the  day,  lacerating  Mrs  Ogilvy's 
mind,  doing  everything  that  she 
thought  most  disorderly  and  wrong. 
She  never  went  to  bed  until  they 
had  come  in  and  she  had  seen  them 
safely  established  at  their  supper. 
And  then  she  would  go  quietly  up- 
stairs, but  not  to  rest,  for  her  room 
was  over  the  dining-room,  as  has 
been  said,  and  the  noise  of  their 
talk,  their  jokes  and  laughter,  kept 
sleep  from  her  eyes.  She  was  not 
a  very  good  sleeper  at  the  best.  It 
could  scarcely,  she  said  to  herself, 
be  considered  their  fault.  And 
sometimes  the  sound  of  their  cheer- 
ful voices  brought  a  sudden  sense 
of  strange  happiness  with  it.  Men 
that  are  ill  men,  that  have  done 
dreadful  things,  could  not  laugh  like 
that,  she  would  sometimes  feel  con- 
fident— and  Robbie  gay  and  loud, 
though  all  that  she  had  once  hoped 
to  be  refinement  had  gone  out  of 
his  voice  :  this  had  something  in  it 
that  went  to  her  heart.  If  he  was 
happy  after  all,  what  did  anything 
else  matter  ?  His  voice  rang  like  a 
trumpet.  There  was  no  sound  in  it 
of  depression  or  dejection.  He  had 
recovered  his  spirits,  his  confidence, 
his  freedom.  The  heavy  dulness, 
which  was  his  prevailing  mood  be- 
fore the  stranger  appeared,  was 
gone.  Then  he  had  been  disconten- 
ted and  miserable,  notwithstanding 
the  thankfulness  he  expressed  to 
have  escaped  from  the  dominion  of 
his  former  leader.  But  now  he  was, 
or  appeared  to  be,  happy,  hugging 
his  chains,  delighted,  as  it  seemed, 
to  return  to  his  bondage.  It  was 
not  likely  that  this  change  could 
be  a  subject  of  gratification  to  his 
mother;  and  yet  his  altered  tone, 
his  brightened  aspect,  the  sound  of 
his  laughter,  gave  her  something 
that  was  almost  like  happiness. 
But  for  this,  perhaps,  she  could  not 
have  borne  as  she  did  the  transfor- 
mation of  her  life. 

The  two  young  men  sometimes 
went  to  Edinburgh,  as  Robbie  had 


1894.] 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


339 


been  in  the  habit  of  doing  before 
the  other's  arrival.  They  went  in 
the  morning  and  returned  late  at 
night,  the  much  disturbed  and 
troubled  household  sitting  up  for 
them  to  give  them  their  meal  and 
secure  their  perfect  comfort.  After 
the  first  time  Mrs  Ogilvy,  though 
her  heart  was  always  full  of  anxiety 
for  their  safety,  thought  it  best  not 
to  appear  when  they  returned.  They 
had  both  gibed  at  her  anxiety,  at 
the  absurdity  and  impossibility  of 
her  sitting  up  for  them,  and  her 
desire  to  tie  her  son  to  her  apron- 
strings.  Robbie  was  angry,  indig- 
nantly accusing  her  of  making  him 
ridiculous  by  her  foolish  anxiety. 
Poor  Mrs  Ogilvy  had  no  desire  to 
tie  him  to  her  apron-strings.  It 
was  not  foolish  fondness,  but  terror, 
that  was  in  her  heart.  She  had  a 
fear — almost  a  certainty — that  one 
time  or  other  they  would  not  come 
back,  —  that  they  would  hear  bad 
news  and  not  return  at  all,  but  de- 
part again  into  the  unknown,  leav- 
ing her  on  the  rack. 

But  though  she  did  not  appear, 
she  sat  up  in  her  room  at  the  win- 
dow, watching  for  the  click  of  the 
gate,  the  sound  of  their  steps  on 
the  path,  the  dark  figures  in  the 
half  dark  of  the  summer  night. 
They  had  means  of  getting  news, 
she  knew  not  how,  and  came  back 
sometimes  elated  and  noisy,  some- 
times more  quiet,  according  as  these 
were  bad  or  good.  And  then  she 
heard  Janet  bustling  below  bring- 
ing their  supper,  asking,  in  the  per- 
emptory tones  which  amused  them 
in  her.  if  they  wanted  anything 
more,  if  they  could  not  just  get  what 
they  wanted  themselves,  and  let  a 
poor  woman,  that  had  to  be  up  in 
the  morning  to  her  work,  get  to  her 
bed.  Sometimes  Janet  held  forth 
to  them  while  she  put  their  supper 
on  the  table.  "  It's  fine  for  you  twa 
strong  buirdly  young  men,  without 
a  hand's  turn  to  do,  to  turn  day 
into  nicht  and  nicht  into  day  — 


though,  losh  me !  how  ye  can  pit 
up  with  it,  just  jabbering  and  read- 
ing idle  books  a'  the  day,  and  good 
for  nothing,  is  mair  than  I  can  tell. 
But  me,  I'm  a  hard-working  woman. 
I've  my  man's  breakfast  to  get  ready 
at  seeven,  and  the  house  to  clean 
up,  and  to  keep  the  whole  place  like 
a  new  pin.  Bless  me,  if  ye  were  to 
take  a  turn  at  the  garden  and  save 
Andrew's  auld  bones,  that  are  often 
very  bad  with  the  rheumatism,  or 
carry  in  a  bucket  of  coals  or  a  pail 
of  water  for  me  that  am  old  enough 
to  be  your  mother,  it  would  set  you 
better.  Just  twa  strong  young  men, 
and  never  doing  a  hand's  turn — no  a 
hand's  turn  from  morning  to  nicht." 

"  There's  truth  in  what  she  says, 
Bob — we  are  a  couple  of  lazy  dogs." 

"  I  was  not  just  made,"  said  Bob- 
bie, who  was  less  good-humoured 
than  his  friend,  "to  hew  wood  and 
to  draw  water  in  my  own  house." 

"It  would  be  an  honour  and  a 
credit  to  you  to  do  something,  Mr 
Robert,"  said  Janet,  with  a  touch  of 
sternness.  "  Eh,  laddie  !  the  thing 
that's  maist  unbecoming  in  this 
world  is  to  eat  somebody's  bread 
and  do  nothing  for  it — no  even  in 
the  way  of  civeelity — for  here's  the 
mistress  put  out  of  everything.  She 
has  no  peace  by  night  or  by  day. 
Do  ye  think  she  is  sleepin',  with 
you  making  a'  that  fracaw  coming 
in  in  the  middle  of  the  nicht,  and 
your  muckle  voices  and  your  muckle 
steps  just  making  a  babel  o'  the 
house  1  She's  no  more  sleepin'  than 
I  am :  and  my  opinion  is  that  she 
never  sleeps — just  lies  and  ponders 
and  ponders,  and  thinks  what's  to 
become  of  ye.  Eh,  Mr  Robert,  if 
you  canna  exerceese  your  ain  busi- 
ness, whatever  it  may  be " 

Then  there  was  a  big  laugh  from 
both  of  the  young  men.  "  We  have 
not  got  our  tools  with  us,  Janet," 
said  the  stranger. 

"  I'm  no  one  that  holds  very 
much  with  tools,  Mr  Lewis,"  said 
Janet.  "  Losh  !  I  would  take  up 


340 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[Sept. 


just  the  first  thing  that  came,  and 
try  if  I  couldna  do  a  day's  work 
with  that,  if  it  were  me." 

Mr  Lewis  was  what  the  house- 
hold had  taken  to  calling  the 
visitor.  He  had  never  been  credit- 
ed with  any  name,  and  Eobert  spoke 
to  him  as  Lew.  It  was  Janet  who 
had  first  changed  this  into  Mr 
Lewis.  Whether  it  was  his  sur- 
name or  his  Christian  name  no- 
body inquired,  nor  did  he  give  any 
information,  but  answered  to  Mr 
Lewis  quite  pleasantly,  as  indeed 
he  did  everything.  He  was,  as 
a  matter  of  fact,  far  more  agreeable 
in  the  house  than  Eobbie,  who, 
quiet  enough  before  he  came,  was 
now  disposed  to  be  somewhat  impe- 
rious and  exacting,  and  show  that 
he  was  master.  The  old  servants, 
it  need  scarcely  be  said,  were  much 
aggrieved  by  this.  "He  would  just 
like  to  be  cock  o'  the  walk,  our  Rob- 
bie," Andrew  said. 

"  And  if  he  is,  it's  his  ain  mother's 
house,  and  he  has  the  best  right," 
said  Janet,  not  disposed  to  have 
Robert  objected  to  by  any  one  but 
herself.  "  He  was  aye  one  that 
likit  his  ain  way,"  she  added  on 
her  own  account. 

"  That's  the  worst  o'  weemen 
wi'  sons,"  said  Andrew;  "they're 
spoilt  and  pettit  till  they  canna  tell 
if  they're  on  their  heels  or  their 
head." 

"A  bonnie  one  you  are  to  say  a 
word  against  the  mistress,"  cried 
Janet ;  "  and  weemen,  says  he  !  I 
would  just  like  to  ken  what  would 
have  become  of  ye,  that  were  just  as 
bad  as  ony  in  your  young  days,  if 
it  hadna  been  for  the  mistress  and 
me?" 

But  on  the  particular  evening  on 
which  Janet  had  bestowed  her  ad- 
vice on  the  young  men  in  the  din- 
ing-room, they  continued  their  con- 
versation after  she  was  gone  in  an- 
other tone.  "That  good  woman 
would  be  a  little  startled  if  she 
knew  what  work  we  had  been  up 


to,"  said  Lewis ;  "  and  our  tools, 
eh,  Bob?"  They  both  laughed 
again,  and  then  he  became  suddenly 
serious.  "All  the  same,  there's 
justice  in  what  she  says.  We'll 
have  to  be  doing  something  to  get 
a  little  money.  Suppose  we  had  to 
cut  and  run  all  of  a  sudden,  as  may 
happen  any  day,  where  should  we 
get  the  needful,  eh  1 " 

"  There's  my  mother,"  said  Rob- 
ert;  "  she'll  give  me  whatever  I 
want." 

"  She's  a  brick  of  an  old  woman ; 
but  I  don't  suppose,  eh,  Bob  1  she's 
what  you  would  call  a  millionaire." 
Lew  gave  his  friend  a  keen  glance 
under  his  eyelids.  His  eyes  were 
keen  and  bright,  always  alive  and 
watchful  like  the  eyes  of  a  wild 
animal ;  whereas  Robbie's  were  a 
little  heavy  and  veiled,  rather  fur- 
tive than  watchful,  perhaps  afraid 
of  approaching  danger,  but  not 
keeping  a  keen  look-out  for  it,  like 
the  other's,  on  every  side. 

"ISTo,"  said  Robert,  with  a  curious 
brag  and  pride,  "  not  a  millionaire 
— just  what  you  see — no  splendour, 
but  everything  comfortable.  She 
must  have  saved  a  lot  of  money 
while  I  was  away.  A  woman  has 
no  expenses.  And  I'm  all  she  has  ; 
she'll  give  me  whatever  I  want." 

"You  are  all  she  has,  and  she'll 
give  you — whatever  you  want." 

"Yes;  is  there  anything  won- 
derful in  that  1  You  say  it  in  a 
tone " 

"We're  not  on  such  terms  as  to 
question  each  other's  tones,  are 
we  1 "  said  Lew.  "  Though  I'm  idle, 
as  Janet  says,  I  have  always  an  eye 
to  business,  Bob.  Never  mind 
your  mother;  isn't  there  some  old 
buffer  in  the  country  that  could 
spare  us  some  of  his  gold?  The 
nights  are  pretty  dark  now,  though 
they  don't  last  long— eh,  Bob  ? " 

There  was  more  a  great  deal  than 
was  open  to  a  listening  ear  in  the 
tone  of  the  question.  And  Robert 
Ogilvy  grew  red  to  his  hair.  "  For 


189-1." 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


341 


God's  sake,"  he  cried,  "  not  a  word 
of  that  here  —  in  my  own  place, 
Lew  !  If  there's  anything  in  the 
world  you  care  for " 

"Is  there  anything  in  the  world 
I  care  for  1 "  said  the  other.  "  Not 
very  much,  except  myself.  I've 
always  had  a  robust  regard  for  that 
person.  Well  —  I'm  not  fond  of 
doing  nothing,  though  your  folks 
think  me  a  lazy  dog.  Janet's  eyes 
are  well  open,  but  she's  not  so  clever 
as  she  thinks.  I'm  beginning  to 
get  very  tired,  I  can  tell  you,  of  this 
do-nothing  life.  I'd  like  to  put  a 
little  money  in  my  pocket,  Rob. 
I'd  like  to  feel  a  little  excitement 
again.  We'll  take  root  like  potatoes 
if  we  go  on  like  this." 

Mr  Lewis's  talk  was  sprinkled 
with  words  of  a  more  energetic  de- 
scription, but  they  waste  a  good  deal 
of  type  and  a  great  many  marks  of 
admiration.  The  instructed  can  fill 
them  in  for  themselves. 

"  I  don't  think  we  could  be  much 
better  off,"  said  Eobbie,  with  a  cer- 
tain offence;  "plenty  of  grub,  and 
good  of  its  kind — you  said  that  your- 
self— and  a  safe  place  to  lie  low  in. 
I  thought  that  was  what  you  wanted 
most." 

"So  it  was,  if  a  man  happened 
always  to  be  in  the  same  mind.  I 
want  a  little  excitement,  Bob.  I 
want  a  good  beast  under  me,  and 
the  wind  in  my  face.  I  want  a 
little  fun — which  perhaps  wouldn't 
be  just  fun,  don't  you  know,  for 
the  men  we  might  have  the  pleasure 
of  meeting " 

"If  those  detective  fellows  get 
on  the  trail  you'll  have  fun  enough," 
Robert  said. 

"  I — both  of  us,  if  you  please,  old 
fellow  :  we're  in  the  same  box.  The 
captain — and  one  of  the  chief  mem- 
bers of  the  gang.  That's  how 
they've  got  us  down,  recollect.  You 
never  knew  you  were  a  chief  mem- 
ber before— eh,  Bob  ?  But  I  don't 
like  that  sort  of  fun.  I  like  to 

VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCXLVII. 


hunt,  not  to  be  hunted,  niy  boy. 
And  I'm  very  tired  of  lying  low. 
Let's  make  a  run  somewhere — eh? 
I  like  the  feeling  of  the  money  that 
should  be  in  another  man's  pocket 
tumbling  into  my  own." 

"  It'll  not  do— it'll  not  do,  Lew, 
here;  I  won't  have  it,"  cried  Robbie, 
getting  up  from  his  supper  and 
pacing  about  the  room.  "  I  never 
could  bear  that  part  of  it,  you  know. 
It  seems  something  different  in  a 
wild  country,  where  you  never  know 
whose  the  money  may  be,  got  by 
gambling,  and  cheating,  and  all 
that,  and  kind  of  lawful  to  take 
it  back  again.  No,  not  here.  I'll 
give  myself  up,  and  you  too,  before 
I  consent  to  that." 

"  I've  got  a  bit  of  a  toy  here  that 
will  have  something  to  say  to  it  if 
any  fellow  turns  out  a  sneak,"  said 
Lew,  with  that  movement  towards 
his  pocket  which  Mrs  Ogilvy  did 
not  understand. 

"  Does  this  look  like  turning  out 
a  sneak1?"  said  Robbie,  looking 
round  with  a  wave  of  his  hand. 
"  You've  been  here  nearly  a  month  : 
has  any  one  ever  said  you  were  not 
welcome  1  Keep  your  toys  to  your- 
self, Lew.  Two  can  play  at  that 
game ;  but  toys  or  no  toys,  I'm  not 
with  you,  and  I  won't  follow  you 

here.  Oh,  d it,  here/  where 

there's  such  a  thing  as  honesty, 
and  a  man's  money  is  his  own ! " 

"My  good  fellow,"  said  the 
other,  "but  for  information  which 
you  haven't  to  give,  and  which  I 
could  get  at  any  little  tavern  I 
turned  into,  what  good  are  you? 
You  never  were  any  that  I  know 
of.  You  were  always  shaking  your 
head.  You  didn't  mind,  so  far  as 
I  can  remember,  taking  a  share  of 
the  profits;  but  as  for  doing  any- 
thing to  secure  them  !  I  can  work 
without  you,  thank  you,  if  I  take 
it  into  my  head." 

"  I  hope  you  won't  take  it  into 
your  head,"  said  Robbie,  corning 


342 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[Sept. 


back  to  the  tablo  and  resuming  his 
chair.  "Why  should  you,  when  I 
tell  you  I  can  get  anything  out  of 
my  mother  ?  And  with  right  too," 
he  continued,  "for  I  should  have 
been  sure  to  spend  it  all  had  I 
been  at  home ;  and  she  only  saved 
it  because  I  was  not  here.  There- 
fore the  money's  justly  mine  by  all 
rules.  It  isn't  that  I  should  like 
to  see  you  start  without  me,  Lew, 
or  that  I  wouldn't  take  my  share, 
whatever  —  whatever  you  might 
wish  to  do.  But  what's  the  good, 
when  you  can  get  it,  and  begged 
to  accept  it,  all  straight  and  square 
close  at  hand  ? " 

"  For  a  squeamish  fellow  you've 
got  a  good  stiff  conscience,  Bob," 
said  Lew,  with  a  laugh.  "  I  like 
that  idea, — that  though  it's  bad  with 
an  old  fogey  trotting  home  from 
market,  it  ain't  the  same  with  your 
mother.  In  that  way  it  would  be 
less  of  a  privilege  than  folks  would 
think  to  be  near  relations  to  you 
and  me,  eh  ?  I've  got  none, 
heaven  be  praised  !  so  I  can't  prac- 
tise upon  'em.  But  you,  my 
chicken !  that  the  good  lady  waits 
up  for  at  nights,  that  she  would 
like  to  tie  to  her  apron-strings " 

"  It's  my  own  money,"  said  Rob  ; 
"  I  should  have  spent  it  twice  over 
if  I  had  been  at  home." 

And  presently  they  fell  into  their 
usual  topics  of  conversation,  and  this 
case  of  conscience  was  forgotten. 

Meanwhile  Mrs  Ogilvy  fought 
and  struggled  with  her  thoughts 
up-stairs.  She  had  all  but  divined 
that  there  had  been  a  quarrel,  and 
had  many  thoughts  of  going  down, 
for  she  was  still  dressed,  to  clear  it 
up.  For  if  they  quarrelled,  what 
could  be  done?  She  could  not 
turn  Lewis  out  of  her  house — and 
indeed  her  heart  inclined  towards 
that  soft-spoken  ruffian  with  a  most 
foolish  softness.  He  might  perhaps 
scoff  a  little  now  and  then,  but  he 
was  not  unkind.  He  was  always 
ready  to  receive  her  with  a  smile 


when  she  appeared,  which  was 
more  than  her  son  was,  and  had  a 
way  of  seeming  grateful  and  defer- 
ential whether  he  was  really  so  or 
not,  and  sometimes  said  a  word 
to  soothe  feelings  which  Rob- 
bie had  ruffled,  without  appearing 
to  see,  which  would  have  spoiled 
all,  that  Robbie  had  wounded  them. 
Of  the  two,  I  am  afraid  that  Mrs 
Ogilvy  in  her  secret  heart,  so  far 
down  that  she  was  herself  uncon- 
scious of  it,  was  most  indulgent  to 
Lew.  Who  could  tell  how  he  had 
been  brought  up,  how  he  had  been 
led  astray  ?  He  might  have  been 
an  orphan  without  any  one  to  look 

after  him,  whereas  Robbie Her 

heart  bled  to  think  how  few  ex- 
cuses Robbie  had,  and  yet  excused 
him  with  innumerable  eager  pleas. 
But  the  chief  thing  was,  that  life 
was  intolerable  under  these  condi- 
tions :  and  what  could  she  do,  what 
could  she  propose,  to  mend  them  ? — 
life  turned  upside  down,  a  constant 
panic  hanging  over  it,  a  terror  of 
she  knew  not  what,  a  'sensation 
as  of  very  existence  in  danger. 
What  could  be  done,  what  could 
any  one  do  1  Nothing,  for  she  dared 
not  trust  any  one  with  the  secret. 
It  was  heavy  upon  her  own  being, 
but  she  dared  not  share  it  with  any 
other.  She  dared  not  even  reveal 
to  Janet  anything  of  the  special 
misery  that  overwhelmed  her :  that 
it  was  possible  the  police  might 
come — the  police  ! — and  watch  the 
innocent  house,  and  bring  a  war- 
rant, as  if  it  were  a  nest  of  criminals. 
It  made  Mrs  Ogilvy  jump  up  from 
her  seat,  spring  from  her  bed,  when- 
ever this  thought  came  back  to  her. 
And  in  the  meantime  she  could  do 
nothing,  but  only  sit  still  and  bear 
it  until  some  dreadful  climax 
came. 

She  had  a  long  struggle  with 
herself  before  she  permitted  herself 
the  indulgence  of  going  in  to  Edin- 
burgh to  see  Mr  Sornerville,  who 
was  the  only  other  person  who 


1894.] 

knew  anything  about  it.  After 
many  questions  with  herself,  and 
much  determined  endurance  of  her 
burden,  it  came  upon  her  like  an 
inspiration  that  this  was  the  thing 
to  do.  It  would  be  a  comfort  to 
be  able  to  speak  to  some  one,  to 
have  the  support  of  somebody  else's 
judgment.  It  is  true  that  she  was 
afraid  of  leaving  her  own  house 
even  for  the  little  time  that  was 
necessary ;  but  she  decided  that  by 
doing  this  early  in  the  morning 
before  the  young  men  were  up,  she 
might  do  it  without  risk.  She 
gave  Janet  great  charges  to  admit 
no  one  while  she  was  away.  "  No- 
body— I  would  like  nobody  to  come 
in.  Mr  Robert  is  up  so  late  at 
night  that  we  cannot  expect  him 
to  get  up  early  too ;  but  I  would 
not  like  strange  folk  who  do  not 
know  how  late  he  has  to  sit  up 
with  his  friend,  to  come  in  and  find 
him  still  in  his  bed  at  twelve  o'clock 
in  the  day.  There's  no  harm  in  it ; 
but  we  have  all  our  prejudices,  and 
I  cannot  bide  it  to  be  known.  You 
will  just  make  the  best  excuse  you 
can " 

"You  may  make  your  mind  easy, 
mem,"  said  Janet ;  "  I  will  no  be 
wanting  for  an  excuse." 

"  So  long  as  you  just  let  nobody 
in,"  said  her  mistress.  Mrs  Ogilvy 
had  never  in  her  life  availed  herself 
even  of  the  common  and  well-un- 
derstood fiction,  "Not  at  home," 
to  turn  away  an  unwelcome  visitor ; 
but  she  did  not  inquire  now  what 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


343 


it  was  that  Janet  meant  to  say. 
She  went  away  with  a  little  light- 
ening of  her  heavy  heart.  To  be 
able  to  speak  to  somebody  who  was 
beyond  all  doubt  and  incapable  of 
betraying  her,  of  perhaps  having 
something  suggested  to  her,  some 
plan  that  would  afford  succour,  was 
for  the  moment  almost  as  if  she 
had  attained  a  certain  relief.  It 
was  July  now,  the  very  heat  and 
climax  of  the  year.  The  favoured 
fields  of  Mid-Lothian  were  begin- 
ning to  whiten  to  the  harvest ;  the 
people  about  were  in  light  dresses, 
in  their  summer  moods  and  ways, 
saying  to  each  other,  "  "What  a 
beautiful  day — was  there  ever  such 
fine  weather?" — for  indeed  it  was 
a  happy  year  without  rain,  without 
clouds.  To  see  everybody  as  usual 
going  about  their  honest  work  was  at 
once  a  pang  and  a  relief  to  Mrs 
Ogilvy.  The  world,  then,  was  just 
as  before — it  was  not  turned  upside 
down  ;  most  people  were  busy  doing 
something ;  there  was  no  suspension 
of  the  usual  laws.  And  yet  all  the 
more  for  this  universal  reign  of  law 
and  order,  which  it  was  a  refresh- 
ment to  see — all  the  more  was  it 
terrible  to  think  of  Eobbie,  lawless, 
careless  of  all  rules,  wasting  his  life 
— of  the  two  young  men  whom  she 
had  left  behind  her,  both  in  the 
strength  of  their  manhood,  doing 
nothing,  good  for  nothing.  These 
two  sensations,  which  were  so 
different,  tore  Mrs  Ogilvy 's  heart 
in  two. 


CHAPTER   XVI. 


Mr  Somerville  was  engaged 
with  another  client,  and  it  was  a 
long  time  before  Mrs  Ogilvy  could 
see  him.  She  had  to  wait,  tremb- 
ling with  impatience,  and  dismayed 
by  the  passage  of  time,  following 
the  hands  of  the  clock  with  her 
eyes,  wondering  what  perhaps 
might  be  happening  at  home.  She 


was  not,  perhaps,  on  the  face  of 
things,  a  very  strong  defensive  force, 
but  she  had  got  by  degrees  into  the 
habit  of  feeling  that  safety  depended 
more  or  less  upon  her  presence. 
She  might  have  perhaps  a  little 
tendency  that  way  by  nature,  to 
think  that  her  little  world  depended 
upon  her,  and  that  nothing  went 


344 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[Sept. 


quite  right  when  she  was  away; 
bat  this  feeling  was  doubly  strong 
now.  She  felt  that  the  little  house 
was  quite  undefended  in  her  ab- 
sence, that  all  the  doors  and  win- 
dows which  she  could  not  bear  to 
have  shut  were  now  standing  wide 
open  to  let  misfortune  come  in. 

"When  she  did  at  last  succeed  in 
seeing  Mr  Somerville,  however,  he 
was  very  comforting  to  her.  It  was 
not  that  he  did  not  see  the  gravity 
of  the  situation.  He  was  very  grave 
indeed  upon  the  whole  matter.  He 
did  not  conceal  from  her  his  con- 
viction that  Robert  stood  a 
much  worse  chance  if  he  were 
found  in  the  company  of  the  other 
man.  "  "Which  is  no  doubt  unjust," 
he  said,  "for  I  understood  you  to 
say  that  your  son  had  a  great  repug- 
nance to  this  scoundrel  who  had 
led  him  astray."  Mrs  Ogilvy  re- 
sponded to  this  by  a  very  faltering 
and  doubtful  "  Yes."  Yes  indeed— 
Eobbie  had  said  he  hated  the  man ; 
but  there  was  very  little  appearance 
on  his  part  of  hating  him  now — 
and  Mrs  Ogilvy  herself  did  not 
hate  Lew.  She  hated  nobody,  so 
that  this  perhaps  was  not  wonder- 
ful, but  her  feeling  towards  the 
scoundrel,  as  Mr  Somerville  called 
him,  was  more  than  that  abstract 
one.  She  felt  herself  his  defender, 
too,  as  well  as  her  son's.  She  was 
eager  to  save  him  as  well  as  her 
son.  To  ransom  Robbie  by  giving 
up  his  companion  was  not  what 
she  thought  of. 

I  do  not  know  whether  she  suc- 
ceeded in  conveying  this  impression 
to  Mr  Somerville's  mind.  But  yet 
it  was  a  relief  to  her  to  pour  out  her 
heart,  to  tell  all  her  trouble ;  and  the 
old  lawyer  had  a  sympathetic  ear. 
They  sat  long  together,  going  over 
the  case,  and  he  insisted  that  she 
should  share  his  lunch  with  him,  and 
not  go  back  to  the  Hewan  fasting 
after  the  long  agitating  morning. 
Even  that  was  a  relief  to  Mrs 
Ogilvy,  though  she  was  scarcely 


aware  of  it,  and  in  her  heart  be- 
lieved that  she  was  very  impatient 
to  get  away.  But  the  quiet  meal 
was  grateful  to  her,  with  her  kind 
old  friend  taking  an  interest  in  her, 
persuading  her  to  eat,  pouring  out 
a  modest  glass  of  wine,  paying  all 
the  attention  possible  in  his  old- 
fashioned  old-world  way.  She  was 
very  anxious  to  get  back,  and  yet 
the  tranquil  refection  gave  her  a 
sense  of  peace  and  comfort  to  which 
she  had  been  long  a  stranger.  There 
were  still  people  in  the  world  who 
were  kind,  who  were  willing  to 
help  her,  who  would  listen  and 
understand  what  she  had  to  bear, 
who  believed  everything  that  was 
good  about  Robbie, — that  he  had 
been  "led  away,"  but  was  now 
anxious,  very  anxious,  to  return 
to  righteous  ways.  Mrs  Ogilvy 's 
heart  grew  lighter  in  spite  of  her- 
self, even  though  the  news  was 
not  good — though  she  ascertained 
that  there  was  certainly  an  Ameri- 
can officer  in  Edinburgh  whose 
mission  was  to  track  out  the  fugi- 
tives. "He  must  not  stay  at  the 
Hewan — it  would  be  most  dangerous 
for  Robert :  you  must  get  him  to 
go  away,"  the  old  gentleman  said. 

"If  I  could  but  get  him  to  do 
that !  but,  oh,  you  know  by  your- 
self how  hard  it  is  for  the  like  of 
me,  that  never  shut  my  doors  in  my 
life  to  a  stranger,  to  say  to  a  man, 
Go  ! — a  man  that  is  a  well-spoken 
man,  and  has  a  great  deal  of  good  in 
him,  and  has  no  parents  of  his  own, 
and  never  has  had  instruction  nor 
even  kindness  to  keep  him  right." 

"  Mrs  Ogilvy,  he  is  a  murderer," 
said  Mr  Somerville,  severely. 

"Oh,  but  are  you  sure  of  that? 
If  I  were  sure  !  But  a  man  that  sits 
at  your  table,  that  you  see  every  day 
of  his  life,  that  does  no  harm, 
nor  is  unkind  to  any  one — how  is 
it  possible  to  think  he  has  done 
anything  like  that?" 

"But,  my  dear  lady,"  said  Mr 
Somerville,  "it  is  true." 


1894.] 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


345 


"Oh,"  cried  Mrs  Ogilvy,  "how 
little  do  we  know,  when  it  comes  to 
that,  what's  true  and  what's  not 
true  !  He's  not  what  you  would  call 
a  hardened  criminal,"  she  said,  with 
a  pleading  look. 

"It's  not  a  small  matter,"  said 
the  lawyer,  "to  kill  a  man." 

"  Oh,  it  is  terrible !  I  am  not 
excusing  him,"  said  Mrs  Ogilvy, 
humbly. 

These  young  men  had  disturbed 
all  the  quiet  order  of  her  life.  They 
had  turned  her  house  into  something 
like  the  taverns  which,  without 
knowing  them,  were  Mrs  Ogilvy 's 
horror.  Nobody  could  tell  what  a 
depth  of  shame  and  misery  there 
was  to  her  in  the  noisy  nights,  the 
long  summer  mornings  wasted  in 
sleep ;  nor  how  much  she  suffered 
from  the  careless  contempt  of  the 
one,  the  angry  criticism  of  the 
other.  It  was  her  own  boy  who 
was  angrily  critical,  treating  her  as 
if  she  knew  nothing,  and  made  the 
other  laugh.  One  of  these  scenes 
sprang  up  in  her  mind  as  she  spoke, 
with  all  its  accessories  of  despair. 
But  yet  she  could  not  but  excuse 
the  stranger,  who  had  some  good 
in  him,  who  was  not  a  hardened 
criminal,  and  make  her  fancy  picture 
of  Eobert,  who  had  been  "  led 
astray."  The  sudden  realisation  of 
that  scene,  and  the  terror  lest  some- 
thing might  have  happened  in  the 
meantime,  something  from  which 
she  might  have  protected  them, 
seized  upon  her  once  more  after  her 
moment  of  repose.  She  accepted 
with  trembling  Mr  Somerville's 
proposal  to  come  out  to  the  Hewan 
to  see  Robbie,  and  to  endeavour  to 
persuade  him  that  his  friend  must 
be  got  away.  "It  is  just  some 
romantic  notion  of  being  faithful  to 
a  friend,"  said  the  old  gentleman, 
"  and  the  prejudice  which  is  in  your 
mind  too,  my  dear  mem,  in  favour 
of  one  that  has  taken  refuge  in  your 
house — but  you  must  get  over  that, 
in  this  case,  both  him  and  you.  It 


is  too  serious  a  matter  for  any 
sentiment,"  said  Mr  Somerville, 
very  gravely. 

In  the  meantime  things  had  been 
following  their  usual  routine  at  the 
Hewan.  The  late  breakfast  had 
been  served ;  the  three  o'clock  din- 
ner, arranged  at  that  amazing  hour 
in  order  to  divide  the  day  more  or 
less  satisfactorily  for  the  two  young 
men,  had  followed.  That  the  mis- 
tress should  not  have  come  home 
was  a  great  trouble  and  anxiety  to 
Janet,  but  not  to  them,  who  were 
perhaps  relieved  in  their  turn  not 
to  have  her  anxious  face,  trying  so 
hard  to  approve  of  them,  to  laugh 
at  their  jests  and  mix  in  their  con- 
versation, superintending  their  meal. 
"  Where's  your  mother  having  her 
little  spree?"  said  the  stranger. 
"In  Edinburgh,  I  suppose,"  said 
Robbie.  "Eh!  Edinburgh?  that's 
not  very  good  for  our  health,  Bob. 

She  might  drop  a  word "  "  She 

will  never  drop  any  word  that  would 
involve  me,"  said  Robert.  "  Well, 
she's  a  brick  of  an  old  girl,  and  pluck 
for  anything,"  said  the  other.  And 
then  the  conversation  came  to  a 
stop.  Their  talk  was  almost  un- 
intelligible to  Janet,  who  was  of 
opinion  that  Mr  Lewis's  speech  was 
too  "high  English"  for  any  honest 
sober  faculties  to  understand.  Mrs 
Ogilvy's  presence,  though  all  that 
she  felt  was  their  general  contempt 
for  her,  had  in  fact  a  subduing  in- 
fluence upon  them,  and  the  mid-day 
meal  was  generally  a  comparatively 
quiet  one.  But  when  that  little 
restraint  was  withdrawn,  the  after- 
noon stillness  became  as  noisy  as  the 
night,  and  their  voices  and  laughter 
rose  high. 

It  was  while  they  were  in  full 
enjoyment  of  their  meal  that  cer- 
tain visitors  arrived  at  the  Hewan 
— not  unusual  or  unfamiliar  visi- 
tors, for  one  of  them  was  Susan 
Logan,  whose  visits  had  lately  been 
very  few.  Susie  had  been  more 
wounded  than  words  could  say  by 


346 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[Sept. 


Robbie's  indifference.  He  had 
been  now  more  than  a  month  at 
home,  but  he  had  never  once  found 
his  way  to  the  manse,  or  showed 
the  slightest  inclination  to  renew 
his  "friendship,"  as  she  called  it, 
with  his  old  playfellow.  Susie, 
whose  fortunes  and  spirits  were 
very  low,  who  was  now  aware  of 
what  was  in  store  for  her,  and 
whose  mind  was  painfully  occupied 
with  the  consideration  of  what  her 
own  life  was  to  be  when  her  father's 
second  marriage  took  place,  was 
more  than  usually  susceptible  to 
such  an  unkindness  and  affront, 
and  she  had  deserted  the  Hewan 
and  her  dearest  friend  his  mother, 
though  it  was  the  moment  in  her 
life  when  she  wanted  support  and 
sympathy  most.  "  He  shall  never 
think  I  am  coming  after  him,  if  he 
does  not  choose  to  come  after  me," 
poor  Susie  had  said  proudly  to  her- 
self. And  Mrs  Ogilvy,  without  at 
all  inquiring  into  it,  was  glad  and 
thankful  beyond  measure  that  Susan, 
whom  next  to  her  son  she  loved 
best  in  the  world,  did  not  come. 
She,  too,  wanted  sympathy  and 
support  more  than  she  had  ever 
done  in  her  life,  but  in  her  present 
fever  of  existence  she  was  afraid  lest 
the  secrets  of  her  house  should  be 
betrayed  even  to  the  kindest  eye. 

Susie  was  accompanied  on  this 
occasion  by  Mrs  Ainslie,  her  future 
stepmother,  a  very  uncongenial  com- 
panion. It  was  not  with  her  own 
will,  indeed,  that  she  made  the 
visit.  It  had  been  forced  upon  her 
by  this  lady,  who  thought  it  "  most 
unnatural"  that  Susie  should  see 
so  little  of  her  friends,  and  who  was 
anxious  in  her  own  person  to  secure 
Mrs  Ogilvy's  countenance.  They 
did  not  approach  the  house  in  the 
usual  way,  but  went  up  the  brae 
through  the  garden  behind,  which 
was  a  familiarity  granted  to  Susie 
all  her  life,  and  which  Mrs  Ainslie 
eagerly  desired  to  share.  The  way 
was  steep,  though  it  was  shorter 


than  the  other,  and  the  elder  lady 
paused  when  they  reached  the  level 
of  the  house  to  take  breath. 
"  Dear !  the  old  lady  must  have 
company  to-day.  Listen !  there 
must  be  half-a-dozen  people  to 
make  so  much  noise  as  that.  I 
never  knew  she  entertained  in  this 
way." 

"She  does  not  at  all  entertain, 
as  you  call  it,  Mrs  Ainslie  :  though 
it  may  be  some  of  Robbie's  friends." 
Susie  spoke  with  a  deeper  offence 
than  ever  in  her  voice ;  for  if  Rob- 
bie was  amusing  himself  with 
friends,  it  was  more  marked  than 
ever  that  he  did  not  come  to  the 
manse. 

"Entertain  is  a  very  good  word, 
Miss  Susie,  let  me  tell  you,  and  I 
shall  entertain  and  show  you  what  it 
means  as  soon  as  your  dear  father 
brings  me  home." 

"  I  shall  not  be  there  to  see, 
Mrs  Ainslie,"  said  Susie,  glad  to 
have  something  which  justified  the 
irritation  and  discomfort  in  her 
mind. 

"Oh  yes,  you  will,"  said  the 
lady.  "  You  shan't  make  a  stolen 
match  to  get  rid  of  me.  I  have  set 
my  heart  on  marrying  you,  my 
dear,  like  a  daughter  of  my  own." 

To  this  Susie  made  no  reply; 
and  Mrs  Ainslie  having  recovered 
her  breath,  they  walked  together 
round  the  corner,  which  was  the 
dining-room  corner,  with  one  win- 
dow opening  upon  the  shrubbery 
that  sheltered  that  side  of  the 
house.  Susie's  rapid  glance  dis- 
tinguished only  that  there  were 
two  figures  at  table,  one  of  which 
she  knew  to  be  Robbie ;  but 
her  companion,  who  was  not  shy 
or  proud  like  Susie,  took  a  more 
deliberate  view,  and  received  a 
much  stronger  sensation.  Im- 
mediately opposite  that  side  win- 
dow, receiving  its  light  full  on  his 
face,  sat  the  mysterious  inmate  of 
Mrs  Ogilvy's  house,  the  visitor  of 
whom  the  gossips  in  the  village  had 


1894.] 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


347 


heard,  but  who  never  was  seen 
anywhere  nor  introduced  to  any 
visitor.  Mrs  Ainslie  uttered  a  sup- 
pressed exclamation  and  clutched 
Susie's  arm ;  but  at  the  same  time 
hurried  her  along  to  the  front  of 
the  house,  where  she  dropped  upon 
one  of  the  garden  benches  with  a 
face  deeply  flushed,  and  panting 
for  breath.  The  dining-room  had 
another  window  on  this  side,  but 
the  blinds  were  drawn  down  to 
keep  out  the  sunshine.  This  did 
not,  however,  keep  out  the  sound 
of  the  voices,  to  which  she  listened 
with  the  profoundest  attention,  still 
clutching  Susie's  arm.  "  My  good- 
ness gracious !  my  merciful  good- 
ness gracious  !  "  Mrs  Ainslie  said. 

Susie  was  not,  it  is  to  be  feared, 
sympathetic  or  interested.  She 
pulled  her  arm  away.  "  Have  you 
lost  your  breath  again?"  she  said. 

Mrs  Ainslie  remained  on  the 
bench  for  some  time,  panting  and 
listening.  The  voices  were  quite 
loud  and  unrestrained.  One  of 
them  was  telling  stories  with  names 
freely  mentioned,  at  which  the 
other  laughed,  and  at  which  this 
lady  sitting  outside  clenched  her 
fist  in  her  light  glove.  After  a 
minute  Susie  left  her,  saying,  "I 
will  go  and  find  Mrs  Ogilvy,"  and 
she  remained  there  alone,  with  the 
most  extraordinary  expressions  go- 
ing over  her  face.  Her  usual  little 
affectations  and  fine-ladyism  were 
gone.  It  must  have  been  an  ex- 
pressive face  by  nature;  for  the 
power  with  which  it  expressed 
deadly  panic,  then  hatred,  then  a 
rising  fierceness  of  anger,  was  ex- 
traordinary. There  came  upon  her 
countenance,  which  was  that  of  a 
well-looking,  not  unamiable,  but 
affected,  middle-aged  woman  in  or- 
dinary life,  something  of  that  snarl 
of  mingled  terror  and  ferocity  which 
one  sees  in  an  outraged  dog  not  yet 
wound  up  to  a  spring  upon  his 
offender.  She  sat  and  panted,  and 
by  some  curious  gift  which  belongs 


to    highly  -  strained    feeling   heard 
every  word. 

This  would  not  have  happened 
had  Mrs  Ogilvy  been  at  home — the 
voices  would  not  have  been  loud 
enough  to  be  audible  so  clearly  out 
of  doors ;  for  the  respect  of  things 
out  of  doors  and  of  possible 
listeners,  and  all  the  safeguards  of 
decorum,  were  always  involved  in 
her  presence.  Also,  that  story 
would  not  have  been  told;  there 
was  a  woman  in  it  who  was  not  a 
good  woman,  nor  well  treated  by 
Lew's  strong  speech :  therefore 
everything  that  happened  after- 
wards no  doubt  sprang  from  that 
visit  of  Mrs  Ogilvy's  to  Edinburgh ; 
and,  indeed,  she  herself  had  fore- 
seen, if  not  this  harm,  which  she 
could  not  have  divined,  at  least 
harm  of  some  kind  proceeding  from 
the  self-indulgence  to  which  for 
one  afternoon  she  gave  way. 

"  No,  Miss  Susie,  the  mistress  is 
no  in,  and  I  canna  understand  it. 
She  went  to  Edinburgh  to  see  her 
man  of  business,  but  was  to  be 
back  long  before  the  dinner.  The 
gentlemen — that  is,  Mr  Eobert  and 
his  friend — are  just  at  the  end  o't, 
as  ye  may  hear  them  talking.  I'll 
just  run  ben  and  tell  Mr  Robert 
you  are  here." 

"Don't  do  that  on  any  account, 
Janet.  Mrs" Ainslie  is  with  me, 
sitting  on  the  bench  outside,  and 
she  has  lost  her  breath  coming  up 
the  hill.  Probably  she  would  like 
a  glass  of  water  or  something. 
Don't  disturb  Mr  Eobert.  It  is  of 
no  consequence.  I'll  come  and  see 
Mrs  Ogilvy  another  day/' 

"  You  are  a  sight  for  sore  een 
as  it  is.  The  mistress  misses  ye 
awfu',  Miss  Susie  :  you're  no  kind 
to  her,  and  her  in  trouble." 

"  In  trouble,  Janet !  now  that 
Robbie  has  come  home  ! " 

"  Oh,  Miss  Susie,  wherever  there 
are  men  folk  there  is  trouble ;  but 
I'll  get  a  glass  of  wine  for  the 
lady." 


348 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[Sept. 


Janet's  passage  into  the  dining- 
room  to  get  the  wine  was  signalised 
by  an  immediate  lowering  of  the 
tone  of  the  conversation  going  on 
within.  She  came  out  carrying  a 
glass  of  sherry,  and  was  reluctantly 
followed  by  Eobert,  who  came 
into  the  drawing-room,  somewhat 
down-looked  and  shame-faced,  to  see 
his  old  companion  and  playmate. 
Janet,  for  her  part,  took  the  sherry 
to  Mrs  Ainslie,  who  had  drawn  her 
veil,  a  white  one,  over  her  face,  con- 
cealing a  little  her  agitated  and  ex- 
cited countenance.  The  lady  was 
profuse  in  her  thanks,  swallowed 
the  wine  hastily,  and  gave  back 
the  glass  to  Janet,  almost  pushing 
her  away.  "  Thanks,  thanks  very 
much;  that  will  do.  Now  leave 
me  quiet  a  little  to  recover  myself." 

"  Maybe  you  would  like  to  lie 
down  on  the  sofa  in  the  drawing- 
room  out  of  the  sun.  The  mistress 
is  no  in,  but  Mr  Eobert  is  there 
with  Miss  Susie." 

"  IsTo,  thanks ;  I  am  very  well 
where  I  am,"  said  Mrs  Ainslie,  with 
a  wave  of  her  hand.  The  conver- 
sation inside  had  ceased,  and  from 
the  other  side  of  the  house  there 
came  a  small  murmur  of  voices. 
Mrs  Ainslie  waited  until  Janet  had 
disappeared,  and  then  she  moved 
cautiously,  making  no  sound  with 
her  feet  upon  the  gravel,  round 
the  corner  once  more  to  the  end 
window.  Cautiously  she  stooped 
down  to  the  window  ledge  and 
looked  in.  He  was  still  seated 
opposite  to  the  window,  stretching 
out  his  long  legs,  and  laying  back 
his  head  as  if  after  his  dinner  he 
was  inclined  for  a  nap.  His  eyes 
were  closed.  He  was  most  per- 
fectly at  the  mercy  of  the  spy,  who 
gazed  in  upon  him  with  a  fierce 
eagerness,  noting  his  dress,  his 
thickly  grown  beard,  all  the  pecu- 
liarities of  his  appearance.  She 
even  noticed  with  an  experienced 
eye  the  heaviness  of  his  pocket, 
betraying  something  within  that 


pocket  to  which  he  had  moved  his 
hand  without  conveying  any  know- 
ledge to  Mrs  Ogilvy.  All  of  these 
things  this  woman  knew.  She  de- 
voured his  face  with  her  keen  eyes, 
and  there  came  from  her  a  little 
unconscious  sound  of  excitement 
which,  though  it  was  not  loud,  con- 
veyed itself  to  his  watchful  ear. 
He  opened  his  eyes  drowsily,  said 
something,  and  then  closed  them 
again,  taking  no  more  notice.  Lew 
had  dined  well  and  drank  well; 
he  was  very  nearly  asleep. 

She  crept  round  again  to  the 
front  and  took  her  seat  on  the 
bench,  again  pulling  down  and  ar- 
ranging the  white  veil,  which  was 
almost  like  a  mask  over  her  face. 
Susie  and  Robert  came  out  to  her 
a  few  minutes  after,  she  leading, 
he  following.  "  If  you  will  come 
in  and  rest,"  said  Robert,  "  my 
mother  will  probably  be  back  very 
soon." 

"  Oh  no,  it  is  best  for  us  to  get 
home,"  said  Mrs  Ainslie.  "  Tell 
your  dear  mother  we  were  so  sorry 
to  miss  her.  You  were  very  merry 
with  your  friend,  Mr  Robert,  when 
we  came  up  to  the  house." 

"My  friend?"  said  Robbie, 
startled.  "Yes — I  have  a  friend 
in  the  house." 

"All  the  village  knows  that," 
said  the  lady,  "  but  not  who  he  is. 
Now  I  have  the  advantage  of  the 
rest,  for  I  saw  him  through  the 
window." 

Robert  was  still  more  startled 
and  disturbed.  "  We're — not  fond 
of  society  —  neither  he  nor  I.  I 
was  trying  to  explain  to  Susie ; 
but  it  sounds  disagreeable.  I — 
can't  leave  him,  and  he  knows  no- 
body, so  he  won't  come  with  me." 

"Tell  him  he  has  an  acquaint- 
ance now.  You  will  come  to  see 
me,  won't  you  ?  I've  been  a  great 
deal  about  the  world,  and  I've  met 
almost  everybody — perhaps  you,  Mr 
Robert,  I  thought  so  the  other  day, 
and  certainly — most  other  people : 


1894." 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


349 


you  can  come  to  see  me  when  you 
go  out  for  your  night  walks  that 
people  talk  of  so.  Oh,  I  like  night 
walks.  I  might  perhaps  go  out  a 
bit  with  you.  Dark  is  very  long 
of  coming  these  Scotch  nights,  ain't 
it  1  But  one  of  these  evenings  I'll 
look  out  for  you."  She  paused 
here,  and  gave  him  a  malicious 
look  through  her  veil.  "  I'll  look 
for  you,  Mr  Robert — and  Lew." 

Eobert  stood  thunderstruck  as 
the  ladies  went  away.  Susie's 
eyes  had  sought  his  with  a  wistful 
look,  a  sort  of  appeal  for  a  word 
to  herself,  a  something  to  be  said 
which  should  not  be  merely  formal. 
But  Eobbie  was  far  too  much  con- 
cerned to  have  a  thought  to  spare 
for  Susie.  She  had  not  heard  Mrs 
Ainslie's  last  words  :  if  she  had 
heard  them,  she  would  have  cared 
nothing,  nor  thought  anything  of 
them.  What  could  this  woman  be 
to  Robbie  1  was  she  trying  to  charm 
him  as  she  had  charmed  the 
innocent  unconscious  minister  1 
Susie  turned  away  indignantly,  and 
with  a  sore  heart.  She  saw  that 
she  was  nothing  to  her  old  com- 
rade, her  early  lover;  but  yet 
she  did  not  know  how  entirely 
she  was  nothing  to  him,  and  how 
full  his  mind  was  of  another  inter- 
est. He  hurried  back  into  the 
dining  -  room  with  panic  in  his 
soul.  Lew  lay  stretched  out  on 
his  chair  as  Mrs  Ainslie  had  seen 
him ;  the  warm  afternoon  and  the 
heavy  meal  had  overcome  him ; 
his  long  legs  stretched  half  across 
the  room;  his  head  was  thrown 
back  on  the  high  back  of  his  chair. 
His  eyes  were  shut,  his  mouth  a 
little  open.  More  complete  rest 
never  enveloped  and  soothed  any 
fat  and  greasy  citizen  after  dinner. 
Robert  looked  at  him  with  mingled 
irritation  and  admiration.  It  is  true 
that  there  was  no  thought  of  peril 
in  the  outlaw's  mind  —  this  long 
interval  of  quiet  had  put  all  his 
alarms  to  sleep — but  he  would  have 


been  equally  reckless,  equally  ready 
to  take  his  rest  and  his  pleasure, 
had  he  been  consciously  in  the 
midst  of  his  foes. 

"  Lew,"  said  Robert,  shaking  him 
by  the  shoulder,  and  speaking  in  a 
subdued  voice  very  different  from 
the  noisy  tones  which  had  betrayed 
them,  —  "  Lew,  wake  up  —  there's 
spies  about  —  there's  danger  at 
hand." 

"Eh  ! "  cried  the  other.  He  re- 
garded his  friend  for  an  instant 
with  the  half-conscious  smile  of  an 
abruptly  awakened  sleeper.  The 
next  moment  he  had  shaken  him- 
self, and  sat  up  in  his  chair  awake 
and  intelligent  to  his  very  finger- 
points.  "  Spies  —  danger  —  what 
did  you  say?" 

His  hand  stole  to  his  pocket 
instinctively  once  more. 

"Oh,  there's  no  occasion  for 
that,"  said  Robert.  "  All  that  has 
happened  is  this, — there  is  a  woman 
here — that  knows  you,  Lew — 

"A  woman — that  knows  me!" 
Perhaps  it  was  genuine  relief,  per- 
haps only  bravado  to  reassure  his 
comrade — "  Well,  Bob,  the  question 
is,  is  she  a  pretty  one  ? " 

"  For  heaven's  sake,"  cried  Robert, 
"  be  done  with  nonsense  —  this  is 
serious.  She's  —  not  a  young 
woman.  I've  heard  of  her  :  she's  a 
stranger,  but  has  got  some  influence 
in  the  place.  She  saw  you  as  she 
passed  that  window." 

"  I  thought  I  saw  some  one  pass 
that  window  —  it's  a  devil  of  a 
window,  a  complete  spy-hole." 

"  And  she  must  have  recognised 
you.  She  invited  me  to  come  to  see 
her  when  we  were  out  on  one  of  our 
night  walks, — and  to  bring  Lew." 

Lew  gave  a  long  whistle :  the 
colour  rose  slightly  on  his  cheek. 
"  We'll  take  her  challenge,  Bob,  my 
fine  fellow,  and  see  what  she  knows. 
Jove  !  I've  been  getting  bored  with 
all  this  quiet.  A  start's  a  fine 
thing.  We'll  go  and  look  after  her 
to-night." 


350 


A  Recent  Visit  to  Harrar. 


A    RECENT    VISIT    TO    HARRAR, 


[Sept. 


Now  that  amid  the  European 
scramble  for  Africa  prominent 
notice  has  been  attracted  to 
Harrar  and  its  surrounding  dis- 
tricts, some  account  of  a  journey 
recently  made  there  by  the  writer 
may  not  be  inopportune.  While 
no  little  mention  has  been  made 
pro  and  con  of  the  annexation  of 
Harrar  by  Italy,  so  far  but  little 
or  no  account  of  what  advantages, 
or  disadvantages,  the  country  offers 
to  Europeans,  whether  Italian  or 
French,  has  appeared.  The  Eng- 
lish travellers  who  in  recent  years 
have  been  tempted  to  push  into 
that  remote  corner  of  Africa,  ex- 
cept in  pursuit  of  sport  in  Somali- 
land,  have  been  so  few  and  far 
between  that  the  country  remains 
almost  a  terra  incognita.  Yet 
at  one  time  Harrar  was,  for  a 
period  at  least,  a  spot  that  at- 
tracted some  little  attention,  for 
it  was  the  goal  of  Burton's  first 
explorations,  when  still  a  subal- 
tern at  Aden,  and  to  him  belongs 
the  honour  of  having  been  the  first 
European  to  reach  that  city.  This 
was  in  1854.  A  year  later  hap- 
pened one  of  those  tragedies  that 
unfortunately  have  recurred  too 
often  in  the  vicinity  of  Aden, 
either  in  the  Yemen  or  in  the 
Somali  country;  for  a  small  ex- 
pedition organised  by  the  Govern- 
ment of  Bombay  for  the  explora- 
tion of  Somaliland  came  to  a  disas- 
trous end,  and  of  the  four  officers 
in  charge,  Lieutenant  Stroyan  was 
killed,  and  Lieutenants  Burton  and 
Speke  wounded,  in  a  night  attack. 
The  two  latter  escaped,  together 
with  Lieutenant  Herne,  in  a  native 
boat,  and  crossed  to  Aden.1  It 
was  through  this  sad  misadven- 


ture that  the  British  Government 
ever  came  to  hold  any  jurisdiction 
over  Somaliland,  for  in  punish- 
ment of  this  act  of  treachery  a 
blockade  was  enforced  along  that 
coast,  which  entirely  put  a  stop  to 
the  trade  of  Berbera  and  other 
ports  during  the  season  of  1855-56. 
In  order  to  realise  how  serious  a 
matter  this  meant  for  the  natives 
of  the  Somali  coast,  a  few  words 
are  necessary. 

The  Somalis  are,  one  and  all, 
a  wandering  people,  whose  sole 
means  of  livelihood  are  their 
flocks  and  herds  and  the  products 
thereof,  such  as  ghee — preserved 
butter — &c. ;  and  as  they  engage 
in  no  agricultural  pursuits,  they 
obtain  many  of  the  necessaries 
of  life  from  extraneous  sources. 
These  necessaries  consist  for  the 
most  part  of  dates  and  rice ;  and 
before  the  running  of  steamships 
between  the  African  ports  and 
Aden,  their  sole  means  of  obtain- 
ing supplies  was  by  the  trade  of 
the  native  craft — buggalows,  they 
are  called.  Owing  to  the  regularity 
of  the  monsoons,  there  gradually 
sprang  up  at  Berbera  a  great 
winter  fair,  lasting  several  months, 
the  boats  coming  down,  principally 
from  the  Persian  Gulf,  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  north  -  east  mon- 
soon, and  returning  as  soon  as  the 
weather  broke  and  the  south-west 
monsoon  commenced.  So  regular 
became  this  institution  of  a  winter 
fair — and  it  still  exists — that  the 
Somalis  from  all  over  the  great 
districts  they  inhabit  would  collect 
their  produce  during  the  summer, 
and  bring  it  down  to  Berbera  as 
the  north-east  monsoon  began, 
when  exchange  of  goods  became 


1  See  '  What  Led  to  the  Discovery  of  the  Source  of  the  Nile.' 
Speke.     William  Blackwood  &  Sons:   1864. 


By  Captain 


1894. 


A  fiecent  Visit  to  JIarrar. 


351 


the  order  of  the  day — the  native 
craft  taking  away  such  products 
as  the  Somalis  offered  in  exchange 
for  the  necessaries  of  life,  of  which 
a  sufficient  stock  would  have  to  be 
laid  in  to  maintain  existence  dur- 
ing the  spring  and  summer.  To 
be  entirely  cut  off  from  this  trade 
must  have  completely  shaken  the 
country  from  end  to  end,  and  the 
blockade  instituted  by  the  British 
Government  was  so  successful  as 
to  prevent,  as  has  above  been 
stated,  the  great  winter  fair  of 
1855-56.  It  is  as  well,  in  cases  of 
this  sort,  not  to  look  too  closely 
into  the  results  of  such  an  action, 
for  the  distress  must  necessarily 
have  been  appalling,  and  to  remem- 
ber only  the  treachery  that  caused 
its  institution,  and  the  beneficial 
results  that  have  accrued  from  it 
— and  these  are  very  great.  Before 
raising  the  blockade,  the  assistant 
Political  President  at  Aden,  Cap- 
tain (now  Sir)  R.  L.  Playfair, 
visited  Berbera,  and  carried  out  a 
treaty  with  the  Habr  Awal  tribe, 
ensuring  due  respect  to  British 
subjects,  certain  rights  of  trade, 
and  a  clause  for  the  delivering 
up  of  such  as  violated  the  treaty. 
These  conditions  were  ratified  by 
Lord  Canning,  then  Viceroy  of 
India,  on  January  23,  1857. 

This,  then,  was  the  real  com- 
mencement of  British  influence  in 
Somaliland,  and  though  instituted 
by  vigorous  means,  the  benefits  that 
have  resulted  have  been  most  satis- 
factory. England,  through  the  In- 
dian Government,  has  kept  such 
guard  over  the  coast,  and  so  pro- 
tected the  interests  of  the  natives, 
that  to-day  the  country  exhibits  a 
wonderful  example  of  response  to 
British  influence  ;  while  a  policy  so 
beneficial  to  the  natives  has  been 
throughout  carried  on — such,  for 
instance,  as  the  veto  on  the  impor- 
tation on  arms,  and  the  exceedingly 
heavy  duties  on  spirits — that  little 
or  no  trouble  is  experienced  in 


keeping  peace  amongst  some  of 
the  wildest  and  most  warrior-like 
of  all  the  many  peoples  of  Africa. 
But  no  code  of  laws,  no  manner  of 
legislation,  could  possibly  have  led 
to  the  results  now  existing  had  not 
the  Indian  Government  been  most 
careful  in  selecting  the  two  or 
three  English  officers,  whose  duty 
it  is  not  only  to  watch  events  in 
Somaliland,  but  to  act  as  consul, 
judge,  arbitrator,  or  in  any  other 
capacity  that  may  be  necessary; 
and  the  writer  can  speak  from 
experience  of  the  immense  moral 
influence  exercised  by  the  Political 
Residents  of  the  Indian  Govern- 
ment at  Zeilah,  Berbera,  and  Bul- 
har — and  speak  too  for  more  than 
their  moral  influence, — for  their 
popularity  also ;  while  the  fact 
that  one  is  an  Englishman  is  suf- 
ficient passport  to  travel  in  almost 
perfect  security  all  over  the  coun- 
try. The  writer's  nationality  led 
him  to  receive  a  pleasant  reception 
during  the  whole  of  his  journey, 
together  with  an  amount  of  confi- 
dence and  trust  such  as  he  has 
experienced  in  no  other  part  of 
the  world. 

With  these  few  words  as  to 
Somaliland  in  general,  some  account 
will  now  be  given  of  the  writer's 
personal  experiences. 

At  early  dawn,  after  some  six- 
teen hours'  passage  from  Aden,  we 
sighted  the  low  coral-reefs  that  lie 
off  the  port  of  Zeilah,  and  render 
so  difficult  its  navigation.  Then 
as  we  proceeded  the  white  town 
rose  into  view,  for  so  low  is  the 
coast  on  which  it  is  situated  that 
one  sees  only  the  white  houses 
standing  up  as  it  were  upon  the 
horizon.  A  long  way  from  the 
shore  we  dropped  anchor,  and  leav- 
ing Abdurrahman,  my  ever-faith- 
ful Arab  servant,  to  follow  with 
my  baggage,  I  was  rowed  ashore, 
and  a  few  minutes  later  found  my- 
self being  kindly  welcomed  by  the 
assistant  Political  Resident,  Mr 


352 


A  Recent  Visit  to  JIarrar. 


[Sept. 


Prendergast  Walsh,  who  was  good 
enough  to  put  me  up  during  the  day 
or  two's  stay  necessitated  at  Zeilah 
in  collecting  my  little  caravan. 

The  town  of  Zeilah  offers  but 
few  attractions  for  the  traveller, 
beyond  the  picturesqueness  of  its 
mixed  population  of  Somali,  In- 
dian, and  Arab,  with  a  few  Jews. 
The  streets  are  clean,  the  houses 
high  and  whitewashed,  the  larg- 
est belonging  to  Indian  and  Arab 
merchants,  whom  trade  with  the 
interior  has  enticed  to  this  other- 
wise very  unattractive  spot.  The 
Somalis  themselves  do  not  inhabit 
houses,  being  satisfied  with  small 
huts  of  mats  or  thatch,  the 
very  acme  of  heat  and  discomfort ; 
and  their  quarter  lies  at  the 
back  of  the  town,  where  caravans 
of  camels  congregate,  bringing 
down  coffee  from  Harrar,  and 
taking  back  a  general  cargo  of 
European  and  extraneous  goods. 
Although  Somalis  are  to  be  seen 
any  day  in  Aden,  it  is  not  until 
one  meets  them  on  their  native 
soil,  and  in  large  numbers,  that 
one  can  gain  a  satisfactory  idea  as 
to  their  personality.  The  men,  as 
a  rule,  are  tall  and  well-built,  their 
limbs  long  and  lithe.  The  features 
are  purely  Semitic,  a  strange  fact 
when  their  absolute  blackness  is 
taken  into  account,  and  they  pre- 
sent none  of  the  characteristics  of 
the  negro.  By  nature  they  are 
alternately  docile  and  savage, 
nearly  always  merry,  and  habitu- 
ally idle.  Even  in  busy  Aden 
they  work  as  little  as  possible,  and 
then  do  no  manual  work,  for  their 
inherent  pride  forbids  that.  Cab- 
driving,  boat-manning,  and  groom- 
ing are  the  general  crafts  of  the 
Aden  Somali.  In  the  interior  of 
his  own  country  his  principal  oc- 
cupation is  plundering  and  cattle- 
lifting,  at  which  latter  pursuit  he 
is  said  to  be  unparalleled  in  skill. 
In  religion  they  are  all  Moham- 


medans. The  great  peculiarity 
of  the  Somali  is,  however,  his  hair, 
— for,  contrary  to  the  custom  of 
most  races  professing  Islam,  he 
does  not  shave  his  head,  but 
allows  his  locks  to  run  wild.  Nor 
is  his  hair  the  wool  of  the  negro, 
for  instead  of  growing  in  one  dense 
cluster  all  over  his  head,  as  is  the 
case  of  the  Galla,  for  instance,  it 
tangles  into  long  cords,  not  unlike 
those  of  a  poodle,  which,  parted 
over  his  forehead,  hang  down  on 
either  cheek,  often  projecting  al- 
most as  far  as  his  shoulders. 
Not  content  with  the  show  of 
hair  that  nature  and  neglect  en- 
sures him,  he  plasters  his  head 
with  a  peculiar  light  clay,  which 
has  the  effect  of  bleaching  its 
blackness  to  a  light-reddish  hue; 
and  a  Somali  in  a  new  tobe  —  as 
their  winding-sheet  of  a  garment 
is  called  —  and  a  freshly  clayed 
head  is  the  very  acme  of  dandyism. 
From  the  cool  shade  of  Mr 
Walsh's  verandah  I  watched  my 
little  caravan  of  three  camels  set 
out  the  second  morning  after  my 
arrival  at  Zeilah.  It  is  the  custom 
of  the  Englishman  travelling  in 
Somaliland  to  bring  out  an  enor- 
mous camp  equipment,  which, 
besides  the  expense  it  ensues,  ne- 
cessitates a  large  number  of  camels 
and  men,  of  whom  it  is  difficult  to 
say  which  is  the  greater  bother; 
for  although  the  Somali  is  tractable 
enough,  and  his  camel  almost  more 
so,  all  provisions  for  the  journey, 
both  for  man  and  beast,  have  to 
be  taken  from  the  coast.  There- 
fore the  larger  one's  caravan  is,  so 
much  the  larger  does  the  amount 
of  fodder  and  rations  become,  en- 
tailing a  proportionate  increase  of 
trouble  and  management.  With 
three  camels  I  found  myself  amply 
supplied.  One  carried  skins  for 
water,  and  the  other  two  bore  my 
scanty  baggage  and  small  tent, 
while  a  mule  for  myself  and  another 


1894.] 


A  fiecent  Visit  to  Harrar. 


353 


for  my  Arab  servant  completed 
the  caravan.  Six  natives  accom- 
panied me,  of  whom  one  or  two 
words  must  be  written.  The  first 
was  the  aban  or  guide,  who  acts 
as  a  safe  -  conduct.  Himself  the 
son  of  a  rich  Somali  family  of  the 
Esa  tribe,  through  whose  territory 
my  journey  lay  until  reaching  the 
Abyssinian  frontier  —  that  is  to 
say,  for  some  hundred  and  fifty 
miles — he  acted  as  guide,  at  the 
same  time  his  presence  being 
security  for  my  person.  Without 
an  aban,  travelling  in  Somaliland 
is  impossible.  Two  Somali  boys, 
one  of  whom,  Mairanu  by  name, 
spoke  also  Galla,  Harrari,  and 
Arabic,  were  taken  as  servants. 
While  Mairanu  acted  as  interpreter, 
we  used  Arabic  as  a  medium  of 
communication.  The  remaining 
five  men  were  Somali  soldiers,  or 
police  in  the  employ  of  her  Majes- 
ty's Government.  All  walk,  as  it  is 
considered  infra  dig.  for  a  Somali 
to  ride  unless  his  position  or  illness 
necessitates  it.  The  same  custom 
exists  in  Abyssinia  to  a  great  ex- 
tent,— King  Menelek  himself  often 
marching  barefoot  with  his  army. 

Crossing  arid  plains  for  a  few 
miles,  we  camped  for  the  night 
near  a  few  thorn-trees,  at  a  spot 
where  water  is  procurable,  —  for 
Zeilah  possesses  no  wells  of  fresh 
water,  all  the  supply  having  to 
be  brought  from  this  spot.  The 
wells  here  are  sunk  in  the,  at  that 
time,  dry  bed  of  a  river ;  but  al- 
though there  was  no  running 
water,  from  the  manner  in  which 
the  soil  was  torn  up  one  could 
see  that  after  the  rains  a  complete 
change  must  come  about,  and  that 
what  was  now  a  sandy  valley  must 
become  a  roaring  torrent.  Our 
camp  was  picturesque  enough  : 
my  one  little  tent,  pink  in  the 
bright  firelight  against  the  black- 
ness of  the  sky — for  there  was  no 
moon;  while  over  the  camp-fires 


squatted  my  men,  cooking  their 
supper  and  laughing  the  while, 
every  now  and  again  one  or 
another  bursting  into  song.  I 
had  hoped  to  have  made  an  early 
start,  but  one  soon  learns  that, 
whoever  it  may  be  who  proposes 
in  Somaliland,  it  is  one's  aban  who 
disposes  ;  and  it  was  therefore  ten 
o'clock  before  our  water-skins  had 
been  filled  and  tied  on  to  the  back 
of  the  moaning  camels  and  a  start 
made. 

As  we  proceeded  the  plain  be- 
came clear  of  bush,  its  place  being 
taken  by  long  rank  grass,  burned 
up  and  dry  with  the  heat  of  the 
sun.  About  five  in  the  afternoon 
we  halted  at  a  spot  called  Agar- 
weina,  though  why  it  should  have 
a  name  at  all  was  not  very  appa- 
rent, as  there  was  nothing  to  dis- 
tinguish it  from  the  surrounding 
plain.  Here  we  did  not  pitch  the 
tent,  as  there  being  no  water  we 
determined  to  push  on  during  the 
night,  so  lighting  a  camp-fire  we 
laid  ourselves  down  to  sleep. 

There  is  no  need  to  describe 
here  the  many  camps  at  which  a 
night  was  spent  on  the  road  from 
Zeilah  to  the  highlands,  for  the 
dreary  monotony  of  the  scene  re- 
peated itself  with  never-ending 
weariness ;  and  except  that  here 
one  found  high  jungle  along  the 
sandy  river-beds,  and  there  jagged 
hills  of  desolate  bare  rock,  the 
hundred  and  fifty  miles  of  road 
over  the  Somali  plains  may  be 
said  to  present  little  beyond  an 
appearance  of  thirsty  desert  and 
tangled "  jungle.  The  latter  in 
some  places,  however,  added  not 
a  little  to  the  comfort  of  travel, 
for  there  at  least  one  found  shelter 
from  the  scorching  rays  of  the 
sun,  while  the  vegetation,  cool 
and  green,  was  a  change  that  must 
be  experienced  to  be  appreciated. 
With  the  exception  of  a  few  Som- 
alis  in  charge  of  flocks  and  herds 


354 


A  fiecent  Visit  to  Harrar. 


[Sept. 


and  camels,  we  saw  no  human 
being;  but  animal  life  there  was 
in  plenty,  from  the  varieties  of 
partridge,  francolin,  bustard,  and 
guinea-fowl  that  abounded,  to  the 
lion  that  stole  a  sheep  from  our 
camp  one  night ;  from  the  ugly 
wart-hog  to  the  graceful  "dig-dig" 
(Neotranus  saltianus),  the  smallest 
of  all  the  antelope  tribe.  The 
pleasantest  part  of  the  day  was 
without  doubt  when,  an  hour  or 
two  before  sunset,  the  air  was 
sufficiently  cool  to  make  walking 
bearable ;  and  then  with  my  rifle 
in  my  hand  and  Mairanu  with  a 
shot-gun,  we  would  stroll  about, 
now  stalking  some  antelope  or 
gazelle,  now  putting  up  a  flock  of 
guinea-fowl  from  the  long  grass ; 
and  it  was  seldom  indeed  that  we 
were  not  able  to  rejoice  of  an 
evening  over  a  good  supper  of 
fresh  meat.  There  is  probably 
no  country  in  the  world  that  offers 
such  attractions  to  the  sports- 
man as  Somaliland,  and  from  the 
large  quantities  of  game  that  I 
saw  there  myself  one  can  imagine 
what  bags  can  be  made  by  those 
who  give  up  their  entire  time  for 
a  couple  of  months  or  so  to  this 
noble  pursuit.  But  I  had  other 
objects  in  view,  and  the  weather 
being  extremely  hot — it  was  dur- 
ing March  and  April  that  I  crossed 
the  plains — I  made  sport  a  second- 
ary consideration ;  yet  in  spite  of 
this  I  was  able  to  return  to  the 
coast  with  a  few  trophies  that  I 
shall  always  treasure — things  that 
in  themselves  might  be  despised 
by  great  hunters,  but  which  never- 
theless it  is  not  every  one's  lot  in 
life  to  obtain  an  opportunity  of 
bagging.  Foremost  amongst  these 
are  the  horns  of  the  lovely  oryx, 
one  of  the  most  beautiful  of  all 
the  antelopes. 

Often  we  suffered  from  want  of 
water — not  absolutely  from  thirst, 
for  we  were  able  to  carry  ample 


supply  in  our  fourteen  water-skins 
to  quench  that ;  but  in  the  hot 
dusty  climate  one  longed  to  wash, 
though  it  was  only  about  every  se- 
cond day  that  such  a  luxury  was 
to  be  thought  of,  and  more  rarely 
still  that  water  was  to  be  found  in 
sufficient  quantities  to  allow  of  a 
bath.  Although  I  speak  of  the 
plains,  it  must  not  be  thought  that 
this  part — Somaliland — lies  alto- 
gether on  the  dead  level ;  for  as 
we  proceeded,  a  series  of  obser- 
vations with  boiling-point  tubes 
showed  that,  little  as  one  appreci- 
ated the  fact,  we  were  ascending, 
and  that  by  no  means  slightly. 
Three  days  out,  we  had  reached  an 
altitude  of  almost  exactly  two 
thousand  feet  above  the  sea-level, 
the  road — stone-strewn  as  usual — 
here  lying  along  the  ridges  of  un- 
dulating barren  hills,  here  follow- 
ing the  dry  course  of  some  sandy 
river  -  bed.  The  third  day  we 
crossed  the  beds  of  the  rivers 
Elam-boala  and  the  Dega-hardani, 
of  which  the  latter  in  the  rainy 
season  eventually  reaches  the  sea, 
though  with  but  very  few  excep- 
tions all  the  Somali  rivers  are 
exhausted  by  the  strip  of  desert 
skirting  the  coast.  Here  it  was 
that  for  the  first  time  vegetation 
other  than  the  interminable  thorny 
mimosa  became  apparent,  both 
banks  of  the  rivers  bearing  a  fringe 
a  few  hundred  yards  in  width  of 
jungle,  in  which  a  low -growing 
variety  of  euphorbia  and  aloes,  all 
ablaze  with  scarlet  and  orange 
flowers,  predominated,  while  above, 
the  forest-trees  were  hung  in  fes- 
toons of  creepers.  On  the  east 
bank  of  the  Dega-hardani  are  the 
remains  of  a  fortress  built  by  the 
Egyptians  during  their  occupa- 
tion of  this  country,  of  which  I 
shall  have  more  to  say.  The  ob- 
ject of  this  wayside  fort  was  to 
protect  their  trade  from  the  plun- 
dering Gadabursi  tribe,  whose 


1894. 


A  Recent  Visit  to  Harrar. 


355 


country  at  this  place  approaches 
the  road.  At  one  spot  only  on 
the  whole  road  to  the  mountains 
does  the  country  change  its  aspect 
— namely,  at  Araweina,  where  high 
conical  hills,  ending  in  precipitous 
peaks,  rise  abruptly  from  the  val- 
ley. They  are,  however,  destitute 
of  all  vegetation,  and  beyond  their 
peculiar  form  add  no  attractive 
feature  to  the  scene. 

At  the  next  camping-ground  be- 
yond Araweina  we  met  with  events 
that  nearly  put  a  stop  to  my  jour- 
ney. Although  it  is  well  within 
the  limits  of  British  protected 
Somaliland,  the  Abyssinians  have 
wandered  from  their  frontier  at 
Jildessa,  and  arrived  at  this  spot, 
— Biyo  Koboba, — where  they  have 
erected,  on  the  summit  of  a  high 
conical  hill  overlooking  the  river, 
a  fort.  With  that  cool  impudence 
that  the  Abyssinians  know  so  well 
how  to  make  use  of,  they  ventured 
to  stop  my  onward  journey  with 
a  show  of  force,  and  this  at  a  spot 
many  miles  inside  the  radius  of 
British  protection.  In  charge  of 
the  fort  was  an  Armenian  of  the 
name  of  Tcherkis,  one  of-  those 
upstarts  who  hold  office  in  the 
government  of  King  Menelek ;  and 
although  he  was  not  present  at 
the  time  of  my  arrival  at  Biyo 
Koboba,  he  had  sent  orders  to  his 
Soudanese  soldiers,  some  ten  in 
all,  to  obstruct  my  further  pas- 
sage, together  with  that  of  Count 
Salambeni,  the  late  Italian  Agent- 
General  in  Abyssinia,  who  was  a 
day  or  two  behind  me  on  the  road. 
No  Englishman  had  been  to  Harrar 
since  Major  Hunter's  visit  some 
ten  years  previously,  so  the  Abys- 
sinians, on  their  conquest  of  the 
place  and  the  surrounding  country, 
had  received  no  manner  of  check 
to  their  impertinent  annexation 
of  British  territory.  It  is  true 
the  matter  had  been  made  mention 
of  in  letters  to  King  Menelek; 


but  the  Abyssinians  had  assured 
the  Aden  Government  that  the 
fort  was  built  solely  for  the  pro- 
tection of  trade;  that  it  was  not 
a  permanent  outpost ;  and  that 
they  claimed  no  authority  over  the 
surrounding  country.  In  spite  of 
their  protestations,  the  first  Eng- 
lishman to  pass  along  the  road  was 
forbidden  to  proceed.  On  my  re- 
porting the  case  officially  at  Aden 
— and  it  was  an  excellent  test 
case — the  Abyssinian  Government 
apologised  for  having  stopped  me 
— not  very  successfully  managed, 
as  will  be  seen — and  promised  that 
the  governor  of  the  fort — the  said 
Tcherkis  —  should  be  punished. 
Apologies  don't  cost  much,  and 
promises  in  Abyssinia  still  less, 
so  in  all  probability  Tcherkis  still 
remains  at  Biyo  Koboba.  After 
all,  no  punishment  they  could 
bestow  upon  him  could  exceed 
existence  in  so  dreary  a  spot  with 
no  one  as  companions  but  a  few 
Soudanese  negroes. 

I  was  forced  to  remain  two 
days  at  Biyo  Koboba,  when,  find- 
ing that  my  provisions  were  run- 
ning out,  and  that  no  fodder 
existed  in  the  neighbourhood  for 
my  camels,  I  determined  to  push 
on.  This  I  did  the  third  night 
at  midnight,  and  though  this  was 
done  with  the  knowledge  of  the 
Soudanese  and  Abyssinian  soldiers, 
they  offered  no  resistance.  Count 
Salambeni  and  his  party,  who  had 
overtaken  me,  left  too  at  the  same 
time,  we  undertaking  to  bear  all 
responsibility  for  so  doing  on  our 
arrival  at  Harrar.  The  two  days' 
delay  was,  however,  a  great  an- 
noyance, not  only  as  our  pro- 
visions for  man  and  beast  were 
not  estimated  with  an  allowance  for 
an  extra  two  days'  stoppage,  and, 
as  it  was,  we  had  been  two  days 
longer  on  the  road  than  I  had 
hoped  ;  but  another  cause  of  worry 
was  that  every  day  the  weather 


356 


A  Recent  Visit  to  Harrar. 


[Sept. 


was  becoming  hotter,  and  though 
I  had  nothing  to  fear  in  that  way 
on  my  journey  to  Harrar,  I  had 
to  consider  my  return  from  that 
town  to  the  coast  by  the  same 
road,  when  in  all  probability  water 
would  be  more  scarce  than  it  was 
now,  and  the  heat  far  more  in- 
tense. Therefore  the  rest  at  Biyo 
Koboba  was  by  no  means  a  pleas- 
ure, though  the  sport  was  good, 
and  if  our  camels  went  on 
short  fare,  our  men  did  not.  One 
event  happened  which  varied  the 
monotony  of  the  time.  One  of 
Count  Salambeni's  Arab  soldiers 
quarrelled  at  the  wells  with  a 
Somali  woman,  and  eventually 
struck  her.  The  affair  having 
reached  the  ears  of  our  Somalis 
in  camp,  the  man  was  set  upon,  and 
only  escaped  with  his  life  to  the 
protection  of  Count  Salambeni's 
tent.  On  the  affair  being  re- 
ported to  him  a  summary  court- 
martial  was  held,  and  the  soldier 
received  a  good  thrashing  at  the 
hands  of  Count  Salambeni's  ser- 
vants, being  at  the  same  time 
fined  a  dollar,  which  was  given  to 
the  dusky  lady  in  the  case,  who 
dried  her  tears  and  went  away 
in  high  glee.  Had  Count  Salam- 
beni  not  taken  summary  measures 
in  the  matter,  there  is  little  doubt 
his  Arab  would  have  lost  his  life, 
for  the  Somali  is  a  veritable  fiend 
when  his  blood  is  up. 

Four  or  five  hours  from  Biyo 
Koboba,  and  just  as  dawn  was  be- 
ginning to  show,  we  were  stopped 
by  a  band  of  men,  one  of  whom, 
mounted  on  a  small  pony,  an- 
nounced that  he  was  Tcherkis,  and 
that  he  brought  orders  that  we 
were  to  return  at  once  to  the  fort 
until  the  permission  of  the  Graz- 
match  Banti,  governor  of  Harrar, 
should  arrive  for  us  to  proceed. 
I  was  tired  and  feverish,  and  the 
night  air  was  cold,  and  had  Tcher- 
kis been  King  Menelek  himself  I 


should  have  refused  to  go  back. 
I  knew  that  I  was  in  British 
territory,  and  that  neither  Tcher- 
kis nor  the  Abyssinian  Govern- 
ment that  employed  him  had  any 
right  to  stop  me,  so  I  consigned 
him  to  other  and  warmer  regions, 
and  proceeded.  Not  so,  however, 
Count  Salambeni,  for  he  was 
bound  on  many  accounts  to  keep 
on  good  terms  with  the  autho- 
rities, especially  as  he  intended 
remaining  a  long  time  at  Harrar. 
So  bidding  me  adieu,  he  turned 
back  to  Biyo  Koboba,  I  pitching 
my  tent  at  a  dreary  spot  called 
Dalli  -  malli,  on  the  borders  of 
a  dry  stream-bed,  which  in  rainy 
weather  flows  across  a  flat  plain, 
broken  only  by  coarse  grass,  a 
few  mimosa  trees,  and  enormous 
ant  -  heaps,  some  at  least  ten 
and  twelve  feet  in  height.  A 
few  shrubs  grew  along  the  edge 
of  the  river-bed,  and  under  these 
I  found  a  little  shelter  from  the 
sun,  amusing  myself  by  watching 
the  gorgeous  flocks  of  birds  that 
seemed  to  inhabit  this  inhospitable 
spot.  Of  all  sizes  and  colours 
they  were,  from  the  metallic  blue, 
now  turquoise,  now  sapphire,  of  a 
variety  of  starling  to  diminutive 
butterfly-looking  creatures  of  rain- 
bow hues. 

Proceeding  to  Kotto  the  same 
afternoon,  we  pushed  on  by  night, 
and  sunrise  found  us  ascending  a 
steep  stony  hill  by  the  vilest  of 
roads.  However,  the  view  from 
the  top  was  reassuring,  for  the 
horizon  to  the  south  was  bounded 
by  the  welcome  sight  of  the  high- 
lands of  the  Galla  country — Gara 
(Mount)  Gondodo  standing  out  far 
above  the  rest.  Finding  quite  a 
number  of  the  Esa  tribe  grazing 
their  flocks  and  herds  at  this  spot, 
we  stopped  to  obtain  a  drink  of 
ewe's  milk.  The  Somali  sheep  is 
a  small  animal,  with  black  head 
and  a  heavy  tail,  containing  fatty 


1894.] 


deposit,  on  which  he  is  said  to  be 
able  to  subsist  for  nourishment 
when  the  grazing  is  not  sufficient 
to  sustain  strength,  or  when  on  the 
march  in  search  of  new  pastures. 
Of  a  night  the  flocks  and  herds 
are  driven  into  "  zarebas  "  of  thick 
thorn -bushes,  in  which  they  are 
protected  from  the  attacks  of  wild 
beasts.  At  this  particular  en- 
campment there  was  no  water  to 
be  found  in  the  neighbourhood, 
and  the  natives  sustained  life  by 
drinking  milk,  while  the  heavy 
dew  at  night  sufficiently  damped 
the  grass  to  allow  the  goats  and 
sheep  to  exist  without  drinking. 
Within  the  thorn  "zareba"  one 
finds,  too,  the  little  mat-huts  of  the 
natives,  scarcely  large  enough  to 
creep  underneath,  but  judged  by 
them  sufficient  protection  from  the 
cold  and  dew  at  night  and  the 
sun  by  day.  Probably  all  the 
world  over  there  is  scarcely  a  more 
simple  life  lived  than  that  of  the 
up-country  Somalis.  A  common 
sight  all  along  the  road  had  been 
their  graves,  and  often  for  days 
together  this  was  the  only  sign  we 
saw  that  the  country  was,  or  had 
been,  inhabited.  The  graves  gener- 
ally consist  of  a  square  enclosure, 
with  loose  stone  walls  about  a  foot 
in  height,  in  the  centre  of  which  a 
pile  of  stones  marks  the  resting- 
place  of  the  deceased.  Often  ex- 
ceedingly large  blocks  of  stones 
are  laid  above  the  actual  grave, 
in  order,  no  doubt,  to  prevent  the 
hyenas,  with  which  the  country 
abounds,  from  scratching  up  the 
bodies.  The  only  noticeable  fact 
about  these  cemeteries  was  that 
the  graves  all  possessed  on  the 
north  side  a  small  addition,  evi- 
dently corresponding  to  the 
mihrab  of  a  mosque,  pointing 
toward  Mecca — for  the  natives  are 
one  and  all  Moslems. 

It  was  here  that  a  change  be- 
came   apparent    in    the   country, 

VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCXLVII. 


A  fiecent  Visit  to  Harrar. 


357 


and  from  a  knoll  above  my  camp 
one's  eyes  wandered  over  a  forest 
of  trees — only  the  mimosa,  but 
none  the  less  impressive.  Away 
and  away  it  stretched,  rising  and 
falling  in  gentle  undulations,  until 
it  sank  into  the  hazy  distance 
somewhere  near  the  spot  where  the 
mountains  rose  like  a  great  bar- 
rier to  bound  the  horizon.  It  was 
a  scene  of  strikingly  wild  desola- 
tion— this  great  forest,  uninhabited 
by  man,  and  sheltering  the  lion  and 
the  elephant  and  hundreds  of  other 
varieties  of  animal  life.  Below 
me,  at  my  feet,  in  an  open  glade, 
grazed  a  little  herd  of  antelope, 
yellow  against  the  dark  soil.  So 
serene  and  quiet  they  looked,  that 
I  sat  watching  them,  forbearing 
the  temptation  to  go  and  stalk 
them ;  for  our  camp  was  well  sup- 
plied with  venison,  and  I  could 
not  bear  the  thought  of  being  the 
messenger  of  death  in  a  scene  so 
perfectly  tranquil  and  peaceful. 
On  arrival  at  camp,  however,  I 
found  my  men  so  keen  for  sport 
that,  seeking  another  direction,  I 
shouldered  my  shot-gun,  and 
brought  back  an  extra  feed  for 
the  men  in  the  shape  of  "  dig-dig  " 
— the  tiny  gazelle — and  guinea- 
fowl,  though  the  latter  the  Somalis 
refused  to  eat,  it  being  contrary 
to  their  customs  to  eat  fowl,  or 
even  eggs,  though,  curiously 
enough,  the  flesh  of  the  great 
bustard  is  permissible. 

Leaving  at  midnight,  we  reached 
Artu  the  following  morning  soon 
after  sunrise.  A  stream  of  water 
runs  through  the  valley  here, 
though  its  temperature  is  by  no 
means  a  refreshing  one,  some  of 
the  pools  being  as  hot  as  190° 
Fahr.  These  springs  are  much 
resorted  to  by  the  Somalis,  and 
quite  a  number  were  seated  neck- 
deep  in  the  cooler  places.  It  was 
here  at  Artu  that  I  caught  my 
only  glimpse  of  a  lion,  a  very  rare 
2  A 


358 


A  decent  Visit  to  Harrar. 


[Sept. 


sight  by  day;  but  apparently  he 
had  become  gorged  upon  the  car- 
cass of  a  gazelle  and  overslept  him- 
self in  the  open.  Our  meeting 
was  not  satisfactory  on  either  side, 
for  he  appeared  quite  as  fright- 
ened of  me  as  I  was  of  him ;  for 
a  20-bore  shot-gun  is  no  match 
for  the  king  of  beasts,  though,  as 
was  the  case,  he  be  still  young.  I 
was  too  frightened  to  run  away, 
so  the  lion  did  it  before  me,  and 
sauntered  into  some  jungle  near 
by.  As  soon  as  he  was  out  of 
sight  I  became  very  brave,  and, 
calling  my  men  together,  we  beat 
out  the  jungle — it  was  only  a 
small  patch — with  the  result  that 
Leo  came  forth,  only  to  disappear 
into  impenetrably  thick  wood  near 
by,  and  too  far  away  to  allow  of 
my  firing  at  him.  It  is  not  every- 
body who  has  seen  a  wild  lion, 
and  I  am  proud  of  the  episode; 
but  next  time  I  should  like  to 
know  beforehand  exactly  where 
he  is  and  what  he  is  going  to  do, 
for  I  imagine,  had  the  king  of 
beasts  been  hungry  or  evilly  in- 
clined, I  might  not  have  reached 
Harrar  after  all. 

From  Artu  to  Jildessa,  the 
frontier  of  the  Galla  and  Somali 
countries,  the  road  was  more  in- 
teresting, the  low  hills  being 
highly  wooded  with  trees  and 
jungle,  and  there  being  far  more 
signs  of  life  than  we  had  as  yet 
come  across.  All  sorts  and  varie- 
ties of  birds,  including  gaudy  par- 
rots, screeched  overhead,  flying 
from  tree  to  tree,  like  jewels  in 
their  dazzling  brightness,  their  hues 
equalled  only  by  the  long  clusters 
of  scarlet  and  orange  aloe-blossom 
which  shot  upright  from  the  up- 
turned spikes.  As  we  proceeded 
the  forest  increased  in  size,  the 
trees,  other  now  than  the  everlast- 
ing mimosa,  stretching  their  bran- 
ches far  and  wide,  while  here  and 
there  the  great  euphorbia  —  the 


candelabra  tree  —  shot  its  spikes 
high  amongst  the  deep  green  foli- 
age above.  So  shady  was  it  in 
places  that  the  undergrowth  ceased 
altogether,  and  we  could  catch 
glimpses  of  expanses  of  green- 
sward, on  which  grazed  gazelle  and 
"  dig-dig "  innumerable,  though 
the  larger  varieties  of  antelope 
seemed  one  and  all  absent. 

Then  flocks  and  herds  came  in 
sight,  and  then  people;  and  sud- 
denly turning  a  corner  in  the  forest 
we  cajne  upon  the  village  of  Jil- 
dessa, nestling  on  a  hillside  on 
the  very  edge  of  the  forest — the 
great  sandy  river-bed,  threaded  by 
a  stream  of  running  water,  stretch- 
ing away  before  it.  A  few  minutes 
later  I  dismounted  in  the  shady 
market-place,  to  be  surrounded  by 
a  crowd  of  amused  but  polite 
Gallas. 

Almost  more  noticeable  than  the 
change  of  scenery  in  leaving  the 
Somali  country  for  that  of  the 
Galla  race  is  the  change  in  the  in- 
habitants, for  the  two  have  little 
in  common  beyond  their  colour.  It 
has  been  shown  already  how  the 
Somali  leads  the  life  of  a  nomad, 
engaging  in  no  agricultural  pur- 
suits ;  never  building  for  himself  a 
fixed  abode ;  contented  to  exist 
upon  the  produce  of  his  flocks,  his 
herds,  and  his  camels.  In  every 
respect  the  Galla  is  opposed  to 
this,  for  he  inhabits  villages  of 
well-built  huts,  around  which  tracts 
of  cultivated  country  extend, 
neatly  terraced  and  irrigated,  and 
is  heart  and  soul  a  tiller  of  the 
soil.  Of  the  two  the  Galla  is  cer- 
tainly preferable.  He  lacks  the 
fire  and  impetuosity  of  the  Somali, 
but  he  is  steadier  and  less  impres- 
sionable. In  manner  he  is  calmer 
and  in  life  more  simple ;  in  fact, 
the  Galla  character  is  one  that  ap- 
peals from  the  first  moment  to  one 
that  comes  into  contact  with  it.  In 
appearance  he  differs  greatly  from 


1894.] 


A  Recent  Visit  to  Harrar. 


359 


the  native  of  the  plains.  While 
the  Somali's  features  point  to  a 
Semitic  origin,  the  Galla  tends 
more  toward  the  negro,  both  in 
face  and  build,  for  he  is  thicker- 
limbed  and  altogether  more  heavily 
built.  But  it  must  be  by  no  means 
understood  that  the  Galla  is  a  mild 
race,  for  several  explorers,  pene- 
trating the  inner  portions  of  their 
country,  have  found,  on  the  con- 
trary, that  they  are  warlike  and 
ready  to  resist  with  arms  any  en- 
croachment of  the  white  man. 
But  certainly  those  who  live  in 
the  more  immediate  surroundings 
of  Harrar  are  of  a  most  friendly 
and  hospitable  disposition;  and 
the  Italians,  should  they  annex, 
as  has  been  proposed,  the  Har- 
rar district,  would  find  little  or 
nothing  to  trouble  the  institution 
of  their  jurisdiction,  which  would 
to  the  Galla  be  infinitely  more  ac- 
ceptable than  that  of  the  present 
Abyssinian  Government. 

A  few  words  must  be  written 
as  to  the  appearance  of  the  Galla. 
In  colour  he  is  very  dark,  though 
a  reddish  -  brown  tinge  shows 
through  his  blackness.  His  hair 
he  allows  to  grow  long,  but  in- 
stead of  hanging  on  either  side  of 
his  head  in  long  cords,  as  is  the 
case  with  the  Somalis,  it  stands 
out  all  round  like  a  halo,  its  jetty 
woolly  blackness  all  the  more  ap- 
parent from  the  polish  which,  in 
the  form  of  grease,  the  owner 
applies.  The  hair  seems  to  rise 
straight  up  from  the  forehead  in  a 
wall  of  some  three  or  four  inches, 
and  from  there  spreads  out  in  a 
solid,  almost  dense,  mass  over  the 
head,  the  surface  being  thick  and 
woolly.  A  few  carved  hair-pins 
and  an  ostrich-feather  often '  add 
to  the  native's  appearance  a  touch 
of  dandyism.  Fine  pleasant-look- 
ing fellows  they  are,  with  many  of 
the  innate  good  manners  of  the 
oriental,  and  all  the  best  traits  of 


the  savage.  My  experience  of 
them  was  only  of  a  few  weeks' 
duration,  it  is  true,  but  in  that 
space  one  learned  to  appreciate 
their  good  points,  and  to  discern 
that,  as  a  race,  they  were  a  far  more 
satisfactory  people  than  the  So- 
malis. 

Jildessa,  where  we  first  came  in 
contact  with  the  Galla,  is  a  large 
village,  the  houses  consisting  for 
the  most  part  of  oblong  thatch  and 
mat  buildings,  with  some  show  of 
size  and  cleanliness,  while  not  a 
few,  with  conical  roofs,  pointed  to 
Abyssinian  origin ;  though,  in  spite 
of  Jildessa  forming  the  frontier  of 
the  Abyssinian  domain  in  Galla- 
land,  the  natives  of  that  country 
are  few  and  far  between,  the  gov- 
ernor of  the  place  being  an  Arab 
of  the  Yemen,  and  formerly  cook 
to  the  German  consul  at  Aden. 
He  had  wearied  of  culinary  life, 
and  made  his  way  to  Harrar, 
where  he  was  eventually  appointed 
Governor  of  Jildessa  and  inspec- 
tor of  customs — a  post,  however, 
not  much  .  to  be  envied,  as  the 
place  is  a  hotbed  of  fever,  and  the 
society,  to  say  the  least  of  it,  dull 
for  an  educated  man.  Nearly  all 
the  huts — for  they  are  little  more 
—  are  surrounded  by  hedges  of 
dried  thorny  branches,  forming  a 
"  zareba "  into  which  the  cattle 
and  flocks  and  herds  are  driven  of 
a  night.  The  largest  of  these  za- 
rebas  is  occupied  by  a  few  Govern- 
ment huts,  and  here  it  is  that  the 
caravans,  coming  up  or  down  the 
road,  as  the  case  may  be,  discharge 
their  merchandise  for  taxation  and 
change  their  camels — for  the  Somali 
camels  and  camel -drivers  cannot 
proceed  into  the  Galla  country 
and  vice  versa,  each  race  preserv- 
ing the  caravan  rights  for  its  own 
country. 

Here,  again,  difficulties  were 
put  in  my  way  about  proceeding  to 
Harrar,  and  a  two  days'  delay  was 


360 


A  Jtecent  Visit  to  Harrar. 


[Sept. 


the  result.  However,  this  was 
rather  a  pleasure  than  otherwise, 
for  I  found  the  Arab  governor  a 
particularly  pleasant  fellow,  and 
he  regaled  me  and  my  men  with 
Ayssinian  beer,  goat -flesh,  and 
excellent  honey,  while  the  local 
market  produced  durra  —  millet 
in  quantities  for  our  camels. 

There  was  but  one  drawback  to 
Jildessa  as  I  saw  it— the  inde- 
scribably sad  fact  that  famine  and 
disease  were  rife,  and  the  popula- 
tion literally  starving.  Such  sights 
as  I  saw  there  it  has  fallen  to  my 
lot  to  witness  in  no  other  portion 
of  the  globe,  and  the  pitiable  state 
of  famine  must  be  seen  to  be  real- 
ised. The  children,  covered  with 
skin  disease,  their  little  arms 
shrunk  to  nothing,  while  their 
stomachs  were  swollen,  were  al- 
most devilish  in  their  hideousness, 
while  old  age  in  a  similar  state 
was  unspeakably  awful.  The  de- 
tails of  what  I  saw  would  only  dis- 
tress, and  could  do  no  good,  so  I 
shall  pass  it  over.  Suffice  it  to 
say  that  the  starving  children — ay, 
and  men  and  women  too — picked 
up  the  undigested  grains  of  millet 
from  the  dung  of  the  caravan  ani- 
mals for  food. 

Count  Salambeni  and  his  party 
overtook  me  at  Jildessa,  but,  ow- 
ing to  the  large  quantity  of  mer- 
chandise, were  not  able  to  proceed 
the  following  day — for  permission 
had  meanwhile  arrived  for  us  to 
continue  our  journey.  Wishing  to 
leave  Jildessa  as  soon  as  possible, 
I  pushed  on  the  next  morning, 
arranging  to  wait  a  day  higher  up 
in  the  mountains  for  Count  Salam- 
beni. This  I  did,  owing  to  the 
prevalence  of  fever  and  sickness 
at  the  frontier  village. 

So,  accordingly,  early  the  third 
morning,  a  start  was  made,  Count 
Salambeni's  Italian  companion, 
Signor  Rosa,  accompanying  me,  in 
order  to  move  half  their  camp  with 


the  two  or  three  camels  they  had 
been  able  to  obtain,  and  then  send 
back  for  the  rest  of  the  equipage, 
with  which  Salambeni  remained. 
For  the  first  few  miles  our  road 
lay  along  the  broad  river-bed, 
until,  in  fact,  we  had  followed 
the  water -course  to  the  spot 
where  it  emerges  from  the  moun- 
tains. Here  we  entered  a  rocky 
defile,  up  which  we  toiled  by 
bad  roads,  now  on  this  side  and 
now  on  that.  As  we  proceeded 
the  country  became  more  and 
more  beautiful.  Dense  vegetation 
swathed  the  mountain-sides,  from 
above  which  the  candelabra  tree 
thrust  its  long  spikes  high  into  the 
air.  At  one  spot,  where,  amidst 
tangled  vegetation  and  ferns,  a 
waterfall  tumbled  and  splashed 
into  a  deep  green  pool,  we  bathed. 
What  a  luxury  it  was  that  cold 
fresh  bath,  after  the  weary  days  of 
desert  travelling  !  Then  on  again, 
the  valley  opening  out  the  while, 
here  cultivated  in  carefully  built 
terraces,  here  clad  in  virgin  forest. 
Up  and  up,  it  seemed  as  though 
the  ascent  was  endless ;  but  tiring 
as  it  was,  every  moment  of  every 
hour  was  a  joy  and  a  delight.  No 
longer  the  sandy  and  stony  plains : 
here  were  mountain-tops  rearing 
their  forest-  or  rock-clad  summits 
high  into  the  azure  sky  ;  here  were 
trees  that  shaded  us  from  the  sun's 
hot  rays;  and  everywhere  was 
water,  tumbling  and  babbling  in 
streamlets  and  waterfalls,  whose 
banks  glowed  with  strange  flowers 
of  brilliant  colours.  The  air  was 
full  of  the  music  of  birds  and  in- 
sects, and  one  lived  and  breathed 
again  after  the  weary  seventeen 
days  of  desert ;  for  with  the  delays 
at  Biyo  Koboba  and  Jildessa,  we 
had  taken  that  period  in  crossing 
Somaliland.  Under  some  huge 
sycamore-trees,  the  grandest  I  have 
ever  seen  in  my  life,  we  rested 
a  while  and  ate  our  lunch.  All 


1894.] 

around  us  extended  the  valley. 
Gentle  little  humped  kine  were 
grazing  in  the  open  patches,  goats 
browsed  on  the  edge  of  the  jungle, 
and  the  peasant  tilled  his  soil.  It 
was  a  scene  of  strange  peace  and 
quiet.  Above  us,  on  an  eminence, 
was  a  village,  the  circular  houses, 
with  the  typical  pointed  thatch 
roof,  standing  out  in  relief  against 
the  mountain-tops  beyond.  Near 
the  village  stood  an  old  tower,  a 
fortress  built  by  the  last  indepen- 
dent sovereign  of  Harrar,  but  now 
used  as  a  residence  by  a  Galla 
family,  who  welcomed  us  within, 
and  took  us  on  to  the  roof  to  see 
the  view.  Far  below  us,  down  the 
valley,  lay  the  plains  of  Somali- 
land,  stretching  away  into  a  hazy 
horizon.  One  could  trace  the  river- 
courses  by  their  jungle  -  fringed 
banks,  looking  like  serpents  crawl- 
ing on  the  yellow  sand. 

An  hour's  ride  and  we  camped 
for  the  night  at  the  village  of  Bel- 
awa,  a  lovely  spot  on  the  steep 
mountain-side,  where  openings  in 
the  jungle  allowed  extensive  culti- 
vation in  terraces.  The  people 
received  us  kindly,  accompanying 
me  on  an  hour  or  two's  shooting, 
and  bringing  us  big  jars  of  milk 
and  a  young  goat.  Then  as  night 
came  on  we  lit  a  huge  bonfire,  and, 
with  Mairanu  as  interpreter,  sat 
and  chatted  and  smoked  and 
laughed  to  the  accompaniment  of 
the  howls  of  the  hyenas  and  the 
yelping  jackals. 

We  spent  the  following  day  at 
Belawa,  hoping  that  Count  Salam- 
beni  would  catch  us  up  there ;  but 
evening  coming  on,  and  there 
being  no  signs  of  him,  we  gave 
orders  for  an  early  start  the  next 
morning.  However,  what  with 
one  delay  after  another,  it  was 
nearly  ten  o'clock  before  we  got 
off. 

Our  road  was  even  more  lovely 
than  it  had  been  the  previous  day. 


A  Recent  Visit  to  Harrar. 


361 


At  times  the  path  literally  tun- 
nelled through  the  jungle,  in  which 
every  now  and  then  a  clear  space 
allowed  our  vision  to  travel  into 
deep  valleys  below  us,  framed  in 
a  foreground  of  tangled  creepers. 
We  reached  the  summit  of  the 
mountains  in  a  few  hours,  and  at 
an  altitude  of  8200  feet  above  the 
sea-level  sought  the  shade  of  some 
spruce-trees,  and  rested  ourselves 
and  our  mules  while  waiting  for 
our  camels  to  catch  us  up.  Here, 
curiously  enough,  at  this  great 
altitude  we  found  a  quantity  of 
fossil  marine  shells.  From  this 
spot  to  Harrar,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  a  steep  decline  of  a  few 
hundred  feet,  our  road  lay  on  the 
level  plateau,  the  richness  of  which 
must  be  seen  to  be  appreciated. 
Cultivated  fields  of  dark-red  soil, 
enclosed  in  hedges  of  jasmine; 
great  tracts  of  green  grazing  land ; 
stream -beds  and  marshes  full  of 
strange  wading-birds ;  cattle  and 
horses  and  mules,  flocks  and  herds, 
villages  and  human  life, — all  added 
to  a  scene  of  apparent  prosperity, 
for  every  sign  of  the  famine  was 
absent  here.  Away  across  the 
plateau  rose  high  mountain-peaks, 
those  on  the  left  crowned  by  Gara 
Gondodo  with  its  strange  flat  peak. 
On  over  the  cultivated  lands  and 
pastures  we  went,  until  the  soil 
changes  in  hue  from  deep  red  to 
sandy  yellow,  and  then  amongst 
gardens  and  groves  of  coffee  and 
bananas,  until  one  of  our  Gallas 
a  little  way  ahead  and  above  us 
cries  "  Harrar  ! "  We  pressed  our 
mules  on,  and  there,  at  long 
length,  lay  the  city  before  us. 

Before  I  continue  my  personal 
experiences  and  impressions  of 
Harrar,  some  short  account  of  its 
history  is  necessary. 

Originally  an  independent  State, 
as  Harrar  grew  into  a  centre  of 
trade  natives  of  Arabia  found 
their  way  thither,  and  a  caravan 


362 


A  Recent  Visit  to  Harrar. 


[Sept. 


route  was  opened  to  the  coast. 
The  mixture  of  Galla  and  Arab 
blood,  with  no  doubt  a  taint  of 
other  extraneous  countries,  pro- 
duced the  present  race  of  Harraris, 
who  in  language,  dress,  customs, 
and  habits,  differ  from  the  sur- 
rounding Galla  people  ;  nor  do 
they  to  any  extent  in  these  par- 
ticulars point  to  an  Arab  origin. 
In  time  there  arose  a  ruling  family 
in  the  city,  the  Sultanate,  or  what- 
ever one  likes  to  call  it,  remaining 
in  the  family,  though  not  neces- 
sarily a  son  succeeding  his  father. 
This,  as  is  well  known,  is  a  custom 
to-day  in  practice  amongst  oriental 
peoples. 

In  time  the  reports  of  Harrar's 
trade  in  ivory,  gold,  and  spices 
reached  Egypt;  and  the  Khedive 
Ismail,  under  the  pretence  of  intro- 
ducing troops  to  attack  Abyssinia 
from  the  south,  gained  possession 
of  the  place.  In  1881,  when  affairs 
nearer  home  occupied  all  the  avail- 
able resources,  and  the  attention 
of  the  allied  Egyptian  and  English 
officials  at  Cairo,  it  was  decided,  on 
the  advice  of  the  British,  that  the 
Egyptians  should  abandon  Harrar, 
and  accordingly  Radwan  Pasha 
was  sent  thither  to  carry  out  the 
evacuation.  His  staff  was  j  oined  by 
Major  Hunter,  assistant  Political 
Resident  at  Aden,  and  Harrar 
was  abandoned,  Radwan  Pasha 
with  the  Egyptian  troops  and  an 
enormous  number  of  fellahin  pro- 
ceeding to  the  coast.  It  was  then 
that  an  opportunity  for  Great 
Britain  extending  its  influence 
over  the  rich  plateau  arose,  Egypt 
volunteering  to  cede  its  rights  to 
England.  But  on  Major  Hunter's 
report  reaching  the  Indian  Govern- 
ment it  was  decided  not  to  do  so, 
and  a  member  of  the  former  rul- 
ing family  was  reinstated  on  the 
throne.  But  his  reign  was  not  to 
be  a  long  one,  for  a  few  years  later 
the  Abyssinians,  under  the  leader- 


ship of  Menelek,   King  of  Shoa, 
who  had  succeeded  King  John  as 
Negus  of  Abyssinia,  marched  south 
and  invested  Harrar.     Without  a 
blow  being   struck   the   city  was 
handed  up    to    the    Abyssinians, 
who,    as    is    the    usual    practice 
with     them,    set     about    cutting 
down   the   coffee -groves   for  fire- 
wood, and   destroying  everything 
that  added  to  the  natural  wealth 
of   the    country.      The    Abyssini- 
ans are   dwellers  in  thatch  huts, 
and  stone  houses  are  to  them  un- 
known, with  the  exception  of  some 
of  their  churches;   and  Menelek, 
who  had  never  previously  seen  a 
town,  is  said,  when  first  he  caught 
a  glimpse  of  Harrar,  to  have  de- 
sired to  turn  back  into  Shoa,  ter- 
rified to  attack  so  strong  a  posi- 
tion.    But  the  advice  of  his  com- 
panions gained  the  day,  and  com- 
plete success,  without  any  blood- 
shed, followed  their  steps.     With 
the  exception  of  a  few  Greek  shop- 
keepers, there  were,  I  believe,  no 
Europeans  in  Harrar  at  the  time. 
Abyssinian  misrule  soon  made  it- 
self felt.     The  town  paid  a  heavy 
indemnity,  the  subterranean  gran- 
aries were  used  as  cesspools,  and 
all  that  the  Egyptians  had  done 
for  the  place  was  soon  destroyed. 
It  was  a  case  of  from  bad  to  worse ; 
and  although  the  few  Europeans 
and  natives  of  India  who  reside 
at  Harrar  to-day  manage  to  keep 
up  a  considerable  trade  with  the 
coast,  it  is  in  no  ways  owing  to 
the  Abyssinian  Government,  who, 
so  long  as  money  is  to  be  made 
and  occupation  and  loot  found  for 
the  soldiers,  is  contented  to  allow 
things  generally  to  decay.     Some 
of  the  coffee-groves  have  been  re- 
planted, but  many  remain  to  this 
day  to  tell  of  the  havoc  and  de- 
struction of  the  conquering  forces. 
But  one  item  of  trade  has  received 
a    push    from    this    conquest    of 
Harrar  by  a   Christian   people — 


1894.] 


A  Recent  Visit  to  ffarrar. 


363 


namely,  drink ;  and  to-day  almost 
every  alternate  shop  in  the  better 
quarters  of  the  town  is  full  from 
floor  to  ceiling  of  every  variety 
of  spirits.  In  the  days  of  its 
Mohammedan  rulers  such  was  un- 
known, the  tenets  of  their  religion 
forbidding  the  drinking  of  wine ; 
and  although  no  doubt  the  Turks 
and  Egyptian  officials  did  not  keep 
strictly  to  the  letter  of  the  law, 
drink -shops  did  not  exist.  This 
may  be  said  to  be  the  sole  advan- 
tage to  trade  gained  by  the  con- 
quest of  Harrar  by  the  Christian 
Abyssinians. 

The  city  is  finely  situated,  and, 
as  one  sees  it  for  the  first  time 
from  the  road  on  the  plateau,  re- 
mark ably  picturesque.  It  lies  upon 
an  elevation  in  the  plateau,  slight 
undulating  hills  surrounding  it, 
while  to  the  south-west  higher 
land  forms  a  background  of  green 
to  the  yellow  town.  The  most 
remarkable  feature  of  the  place 
is  the  large  circular  Abyssinian 
church  with  which  its  highest 
point  is  crowned,  and  near  which 
stands  an  old  minaret,  for  where 
the  church  now  is  formerly  stood 
the  principal  mosque  of  the  place. 

Passing  on  between  hedged 
gardens,  now  in  sight  of  the  city 
before  us,  now  through  tunnels  of 
high  sand -banks  and  vegetation, 
we  at  length  reached  a  long  open 
road  leading  directly  to  one  of  the 
gates  of  the  city.  It  is  at  the  side 
of  this  wide  track  that  the  spring 
and  stream  are  from  which  water 
is  drawn  for  the  city.  Here  long 
strings  of  camels  come  down, 
loaded  with  water-skins,  which  are 
filled  by  hand  and  carried  by  the 
camels  back  to  the  town. 

It  is  from  near  this  spot  that 
one  obtains  one's  first  view  of  the 
crumbling  walls  of  the  town,  sadly 
in  want  of  repair,  yet  probably 
sufficient  to  resist  any  attack  upon 
the  place  by  the  Gallas,  whose 


arms  consist  entirely  of  spears. 
These  walls  are  built  of  stone  and 
mortar,  formed  of  the  yellow  sand 
of  the  country,  which  gives  to 
the  whole  town  a  curious  golden 
tone. 

Arrived  at  the  gate,  our  arms 
were  confiscated  by  the  Abyssinian 
guard  of  objectionable  soldiery,  and 
we  were  told  to  wait  until  per- 
mission arrived  for  us  to  enter. 
So  we  dismounted  from  our  mules, 
and  seated  ourselves  under  what 
shade  a  small  thatch  roof  project- 
ing from  the  gateway  was  able  to 
afford  us.  Meanwhile  a  motley 
crowd  gathered  round  us — Somalis, 
Gallas,  Harraris,  Abyssinians,  an 
Arab,  and  a  couple  of  natives  of 
India,  who,  though  polite  enough, 
were  led  by  curiosity  to  push  so 
closely  upon  us  that  the  Abyssinian 
guard  had  to  resort  to  blows  with 
long  sticks  to  keep  them  back. 
One  and  all  wore  the  appearance 
of  hunger  and  sickness,  and  it  was 
easy  to  see  that  the  famine  was 
making  itself  severely  felt  in  the 
city. 

At  length,  after  an  hour's  delay, 
the  Grazmatch  Banti  sent  to  say 
we  might  enter  the  town.  This 
keeping  us  waiting  at  the  gate  for 
that  period  was  merely  a  piece 
of  typical  Abyssinian  swagger,  for 
the  Governor's  house  was  only  five 
minutes'  walk  from  the  gate,  and 
in  double  that  time  the  reply  ought 
to  have  been  brought  to  the  guard 
to  allow  us  to  pass.  However,  it 
was  amusing  enough  to  watch  the 
crowd  all  eager  to  catch  a  view 
of  the  strangers,  the  excitement 
shared  by  the  children  and  dogs, 
who  pushed  their  way  through  the 
mass  of  humanity  to  the  front 
row  to  obtain  a  nearer  look. 

Mounting  our  mules  once  more 
we  proceeded  to  the  custom-house, 
a  great  open  yard  surrounded  on 
three  sides  by  an  arcade  and  rooms, 
and  here  my  baggage  was  exam- 


364 


A  Recent  Visit  to  Harrar. 


[Sept. 


ined.  It  must  have  been  curiosity 
rather  than  the  hope  of  discovering 
contraband  that  induced  the  ex- 
tremely dirty  Turk  in  charge  to 
strew  my  belongings  wholesale  on 
the  ground ;  but  Abdurrahman 
and  I  managed  to  pack  them  up 
again,  though  my  clothing  was 
much  soiled,  more  by  the  in- 
spector's fingers  than  the  sandy 
soil. 

One  must  visit  the  remoter  quar- 
ters of  the  world  to  meet  with  true 
hospitality  and  kindness,  such  as 
I  received  from  Mr  and  Mrs 
Felter,  an  Italian  trader  and  his 
wife  residing  at  Harrar,  who, 
though  they  had  never  seen  me  or 
known  me  even  by  name,  had  sent 
their  servant  to  meet  me  with  a 
polite  little  note  asking  me,  nay, 
insisting  on  it,  that  I  should  be 
their  guest  during  my  stay  at 
Harrar.  Their  kind  offer  I  readily 
accepted,  and  the  great  charm  of 
my  stay  in  that  place  was  the  com- 
pany of  Mr  Felter  and  his  wife — 
to  say  nothing  of  a  pretty  little 
child  some  two  years  of  age.  I 
found  my  host  and  hostess  full  of 
a  store  of  interesting  knowledge, 
and  they  were  able  to  help  me 
much  in  gaining  what  information 
I  required,  and  in  giving  me  the 
benefit  of  their  excellent  advice  as 
to  my  plans.  So  I  passed  my  days 
in  their  hospitable  house,  while 
the  old  Italian  agency,  the  best 
residence  in  the  town,  had  been 
put  at  my  disposal,  and  very  nice 
I  found  it.  Such  attentions  as 
these  on  the  part  of  foreigners 
are  all  the  more  marked,  from  the 
fact  that  they  are  often  absent  in 
the  case  of  Englishmen  residing 
abroad. 

There  is  little  of  beauty  to  be 
seen  in  Harrar,  the  houses  having 
no  pretensions  to  architecture,  and 
the  one  or  two  old  mosques  that 
may  at  one  time  have  been  orna- 
mental having  either  fallen  into 


sad  decay  or  else  given  place  to 
Abyssinian  churches,  of  which  an 
extremely  large  example  dominates 
the  whole  town.     The  building  is 
modern,  having  been  erected  since 
the   annexation   of   the   place   by 
King  Menelek.     In  form  it  is  cir- 
cular, an  open  arcade  surrounding 
the  whole,  inside  which  are  two 
divisions,   each  within  the  other, 
and  both  forming  circles.      Close 
to  the  church  is  an  old  minaret, 
once    pertaining    to    the    mosque 
which  stood  here.     The  whole  is 
enclosed  in  a  wall  of  stone   and 
native  cement.      In  front  of  the 
entrance  of  the  church  is  a  large 
open  space,  one  side  of  which  is 
given  up  to  houses  and  a  shop  or 
two,  the  others  being  respectively 
occupied  by  the  residence  of  the 
governor,    the    Grazmatch    Banti, 
and    the    barracks.      Both    these 
latter  buildings  are  in  a  wretched 
state    of    repair,    though    Banti's 
house  may  at  one  time  have  been 
not  only  comfortable  but  almost 
luxurious,  for  it  formed  the  resi- 
dence   of    one    of    the   Egyptian 
officials.     Leading  from  this  square 
at  the  south-west  corner  is  a  steep 
narrow    street,    with    shops    and 
houses  on  both  sides.     Like  nearly 
every  building  in  Harrar,  these  are 
of  only  one  storey  in  height,  and 
built  of  the  native  orange-coloured 
cement  of  the  country.     The  shops 
are  owned  by  a  few  Greeks,  Arabs, 
and   Hindoos,   and  all  and   every 
sort  of  article  can  be  obtained  in 
them — from  Manchester  cottons  to 
very  inferior  French  brandy,  from 
corkscrews  to  tins  of  sardines.     At 
the  lower  corner  is  a  cafe,  kept  by 
an  old  Turk  who  refused  to  leave 
Harrar  when   the   Egyptians    va- 
cated the  place.     In  front  of  the 
small  house  is  a  verandah  of  trellis 
covered    with    vines,    where    one 
could  sit  and  watch  the  open-air 
market  being  carried  on  immedi- 
ately in  front  of  one,  for  this  steep 


1894.] 

street  of  shops  leads  to  a  large 
open  space,  where  the  country 
produce  is  brought  for  sale.  Of 
all  the  sights  of  Harrar,  this,  per- 
haps, is  the  most  interesting,  and 
one  could  never  tire  of  watching 
the  strange  medley  of  peoples  that 
collected  there  to  do  their  various 
business.  Galla  countrymen  with 
their  enormous  growth  of  hair, 
spear  in  hand,  sauntered  idly  in 
every  direction;  while  their  women, 
with  elaborate  coiffures  that  it 
would  probably  be  beyond  a  pro- 
fessional Parisian's  power  to  repro- 
duce, attended  to  the  business  of 
selling  their  grain  and  market  pro- 
duce. How  these  ladies  of  the 
Galla  tribes  manage  to  arrange 
their  hair  in  such  strange  designs 
always  puzzled  me ;  and  as  I  had 
no  opportunities  of  seeing  the  pro- 
cess, I  am  still  in  the  dark.  Cer- 
tainly they  possess  none  of  those 
useful  contrivances  in  hair-pins 
resorted  to  by  the  ladies  of  Eng- 
land, and  yet  the  result,  if  not  as 
pretty,  was  certainly  more  start- 
ling. Many  wore  over  the  centre 
of  the  forehead  three  stiff  little 
horns  of  twisted  hair,  each  ending 
in  a  sort  of  tassel.  The  two  out- 
side horns  pointed  right  and  left, 
and  the  centre  one  straight  out, 
and  all  three  were  stiff,  and,  appar- 
ently, not  subject  to  barometrical 
changes,  as  are  the  coiffures  at 
home  ;  for  I  had  an  opportunity  of 
witnessing  the  results — or  rather 
the  absence  of  results — upon  these 
wonderful  capillary  arrangements 
of  a  shower  of  rain,  and  after  a 
good  damping  I  found  the  decora- 
tions did  not  uncurl  or  hang  flab- 
bily over  the  forehead,  as  is  some- 
times the  case  at  home  in  similar 
circumstances.  As  for  the  rest  of 
the  hairdressing,  it  seems  to  con- 
sist of  tiny  plaits  of  hair  drawn 
close  to  the  skin  and  running 
about,  always  in  parallel  lines," 
over  the  head,  ending  often  in  an 


A  fiecent  Visit  to  Harrar. 


365 


enormous  bunch  of  wavy  blackness 
where  one  would  look  for  the 
chignon. 

The  Harrari  women,  on  the  con- 
trary, dress  their  hair  in  an  ex- 
tremely picturesque  manner — two 
what  I  believe  ladies  call  buns 
projecting  slightly  on  either  side 
of  the  head  behind  the  ears,  with 
a  simple  straight  parting  across 
the  top.  Their  dress,  too,  is  neat 
and  pretty — a  single  long  garment 
with  drooping  sleeves,  the  upper 
part  of  which  is  dull  red,  the  lower 
dark  blue.  It  is  girded  at  the 
waist  with  a  band ;  but  the  folds 
of  the  upper  portion  of  the  cos- 
tume overhang  it,  so  that  one  can- 
not see  of  what  it  consists.  The 
neck  is  "cut  square,"  and  edged 
with  narrow  embroidery.  The 
red  portion  of  the  dress,  back  and 
front,  runs  into  a  point  over  the 
blue.  Sandals  or  bare  feet  com- 
plete a  picturesque  costume,  which 
is  generally  adorned  with  a  few 
flowers,  often  worn  in  the  hair. 
Added  to  this,  that  the  Harrari 
lady  is,  as  a  rule,  extremely  good 
looking,  with  a  good  figure,  and 
though  dark,  with  by  no  means 
a  black  complexion.  The  whole 
makes  a  rather  good  tout  ensemble. 
But  there  are  other  strange  figures 
to  be  seen  in  the  Harrar  market 
— natives  of  India,  Yemen  Jews, 
Greeks,  Turks,  Egyptians,  negroes 
from  the  Soudan,  Abyssinian  sol- 
diers in  their  tobes  of  scarlet  and 
white,  Arabs  and  Somalis,  —  all 
forming  as  strange  and  as  pictur- 
esque a  scene  as  one  could  wish  to 
see. 

For  the  first  few  days  I  became 
almost  a  resident  at  the  Turkish 
cafe,  for  the  old  man  who  kept  it 
spoke  Arabic  fluently,  as  did  most 
of  those  who  resorted  there;  but 
from  the  fourth  day  I  was  obliged 
to  avoid  the  market,  and  even 
when  possible  the  town.  An 
Abyssinian  army  had  arrived  from 


366 


A  Recent  Visit  to  Harrar. 


[Sept. 


a  raid  in  the  Ogaden  Somali  coun- 
try, and  probably  they  brought 
the  disease  that  was  to  run  havoc 
through  the  town.  It  was  a  mere 
rumour  at  first — no  one  quite  be- 
lieved it;  but  with  terrible  sud- 
denness its  truth  was  proved. 
Cholera  had  broken  out.  A  sort 
of  stillness  seemed  to  settle  over 
the  town,  and  people  stood  con- 
versing in  the  street-corners  ;  then 
as  the  truth  became  doubly  certain, 
processions  of  Harraris  bearing 
wands  of  flowers,  and  singing, 
passed  through  the  streets,  pray- 
ing for  the  termination  of  the 
disease,  while  solemn  service  was 
held  in  the  Abyssinian  church. 
But  death  was  on  the  wing,  and 
first  singly,  then  by  tens,  and  finally 
almost  by  hundreds,  the  people 
died.  The  warm  still  nights  rang 
with  the  cries  of  the  mourners, 
and  the  firing-off  of  guns  from  the 
roofs  of  the  houses — an  Abyssinian 
practice;  and  dawn  brought  no 
relief,  for  long  strings  of  corpses 
were  carried  out  to  be  buried,  or 
thrown  into  the  pits  which  had  to 
be  dug.  The  population,  already 
sickened  and  weak  with  famine, 
died  with  terrible  rapidity;  and 
often  corpses  lay  about  the  streets, 
while  half-starving  wretches,  all 
bones  and  skin,  too  weak  or  ill  to 
move,  lay  groaning  beside  them. 
A  city  with  cholera  rife  in  it  is  a 
sight  beyond  description.  There 
seems  to  be  ever  present  a  terrible 
desire  to  do  something  to  stop  the 
endless  death,  and  no  knowing 
what  to  do ;  and  fear  and  anxiety 
and  the  ever-present  death  add  to 
the  horrors.  No  one  speaks  aloud, 
silently  they  thread  the  streets, 
and  the  only  sound  is  that  of  wail- 
ing and  chanting. 

So  of  a  morning  we  used  to  ride 
out  to  the  gardens  round  the 
town  and  spend  the  days  there, 
watching  the  irrigation  of  the 
coffee- trees,  and  now  and  then 


shooting.  Once  or  twice  we  made 
longer  excursions,  the  most  inter- 
esting of  which  was  to  Lake  Hara- 
miya,  distant  some  eight  miles 
from  the  city.  It  is  a  large  ex- 
panse of  water,  swarming  with 
wild  geese  and  ducks  and  all 
kinds  of  water-fowl ;  but  the  sur- 
rounding scenery  lacks  trees,  and 
from  a  little  distance  the  lake 
resembles  a  great  marsh.  The 
fever  I  had  caught  in  the  Yemen 
had  been  on  me  more  or  less 
since  I  left  the  coast,  Abdurrah- 
man had  been  prostrate  since  our 
arrival  at  Harrar,  and  I  felt  a 
keen  longing  to  leave  the  horrid 
sights  of  the  cholera-stricken  town. 
One  of  my  Somali  boys,  too,  caught 
the  cholera,  and  died  a  few  hours 
after  I  left  the  city.  Poor  boy,  I 
hated  going  away  and  leaving  him, 
though  he  was  in  good  hands  ;  but 
I  was  obliged  to  take  the  oppor- 
tunity of  Abdurrahman  and  myself 
being  free  from  fever,  and  the 
still  greater  chance  of  having 
found  three  camels,  for  all  the 
country  people  had  fled  when  the 
news  of  the  disease  became  a 
certainty.  So  I  left  the  poor 
fellow  at  death's  door,  and  I  believe 
he  only  lived  some  two  or  three 
hours. 

At  length,  after  eleven  days' 
stay,  I  quitted  the  town  one  after- 
noon, my  camels  having  preceded 
me  by  a  few  hours.  It  was  with  a 
sense  of  unutterable  relief,  mixed 
with  anxiety  for  the  host  and 
hostess  who  had  shown  me  so  much 
kindness,  that  I  passed  out  of  the 
gate.  But  I  was  yet  to  have  one 
more  view  of  the  horrors,  for  corpses 
were  being  buried  in  the  great 
pits* —  horrid  distorted  corpses  — 
while  near  by  a  dozen  or  so  starving 
natives  were  fighting  for  the  flesh 
of  a  dead  ox,  which  had  died  a 
natural  death  and  been  dragged 
out  of  the  town  to  decay.  Above 
their  heads  hovered  a  couple  of 


1894.] 


A  Recent  Visit  to  Harrar. 


367 


vultures  waiting  for  their  share  in 
the  feast.  Sick  and  dizzy  I  spurred 
on  my  mule,  and  a  few  minutes 
later  was  threading  the  jasmine- 
hedged  lanes  of  the  gardens,  free 
of  Harrar  and  its  terrors.  How 
brightly  the  sun  shone ;  how 
sweetly  the  birds  sang  :  all  around 
was  peace  and  happiness,  and  the 
past,  so  near,  seemed  like  a  night- 
mare, while  the  present  was  the 
awaking  to  find  it  all  a  dream. 
Yet  my  troubles  were  scarcely  at 
an  end,  for  the  same  night  I  was 
taken  ill  with  a  violent  attack  of 
fever,  being  delirious  for  some 
hours.  Fortunately,  the  attack 
came  on  near  an  Abyssinian  village, 
and  I  was  carried  into  a  hut  and 
there  treated  by  a  native  doctor — 
who  had  been  educated  in  Jerusa- 
lem— to  the  local  cure  for  fever — 
namely,  by  having  bucket  after 
bucket  of  cold  water  poured  over 
me ;  and  certainly  it  was  efficacious, 
for  by  nine  o'clock  I  was  able  to 
get  to  sleep.  It  was  the  last 
attack  I  had  before  reaching  the 
coast.  Pushing  on,  the  next  morn- 
ing we  arrived  at  Jildessa,  and 
almost  by  forced  marches  crossed 
the  plains  again  to  Zeilah.  Though 
I  had  expected  to  find  greater 
heat  on  my  downward  journey 
than  I  had  done  proceeding  to 
Harrar,  the  exact  contrary  was 
the  case,  and  once  or  twice  we 
had  refreshing  showers  of  rain, 
and  nearly  every  day  a  cloudy 
sky.  Travelling  was  therefore  very 
pleasant,  and  as  our  camels  were 
good  we  made  excellent  progress. 
There  was  but  one  noticeable 
change  in  the  country — the  advent 
of  great  herds  of  "aoul,"  an 
antelope  much  resembling  the 
"  springbok  "  of  South  Africa.  As 
far  as  one  could  see  over  the  plains 
as  we  neared  Zeilah,  grazed  enor- 
mous quantities  of  this  pretty 
antelope ;  nor  did  I  find  him  diffi- 
cult stalking,  and  the  camp  was 


well  provided  with  food.  At 
length,  early  one  morning/the  white 
houses  of  Zeilah  shimmered  over 
the  sandy  plain,  and  an  hour  or  two 
later,  to  my  great  delight,  I  found 
myself  in  Mr  Prendergast  Walsh's 
most  comfortable  house,  enjoying 
first  a  bath,  then  clean  clothes,  and 
lastly  an  excellent  breakfast. )  You 
who  live  in  comfort  at  home  do 
not  know  what  luxury  these  things 
are  to  the  weary,  travel -stained 
wanderer. 

The  following  day  I  witnessed  a 
sight  as  interesting  as,  and  more 
picturesque  than,  any  I  had  seen 
during  the  whole  journey.  The 
king  of  the  Black  Esa  Somalis,  one 
of  the  wildest  and  furthest  removed 
of  all  the  tribes,  had  died,  and  a  suc- 
cessor had  been  chosen.  The  form 
of  coronation — though  such  a  term 
ill  applies  to  the  native  custom — 
was  the  shaving  of  the  head  of  the 
new  monarch  under  a  certain  holy 
tree.  Although  the  tribe  in  ques- 
tion inhabits  the  highlands  far  up 
country,  the  scene  of  this  ceremony 
is  near  Zeilah,  about  equidistant 
from  that  town  and  the  French 
port  of  Jibuti.  The  representa- 
tives of  both  nations  had  been 
attempting  to  persuade  the  king 
after  the  ceremony  to  proceed  on 
a  visit  to  their  own  town,  and  up 
to  the  last  moment  it  was  uncer- 
tain whether  he  and  his  black 
hordes  would  go  to  Jibuti  or 
Zeilah.  However,  Mr  Prender- 
gast Walsh's  great  tact  and  ex- 
perience in  dealing  with  Somalis 
won  the  day,  and  the  visit  of  the 
king  took  place  in  great  state. 
From  an  early  hour  one  could  see 
a  dense  mass  of  people,  a  black 
patch  on  the  yellow  sand,  approach- 
ing the  town,  and  we  watched  with 
interest  the  slow  marching  of  the 
Black  Esa.  But  there  were  other 
things  to  think  of  besides  the  poli- 
tical significance  of  the  king's  visit 
for  his  comrades  were  said  to  num- 


368 


A  Recent  Visit  to  Harrar. 


[Sept. 


ber  several  thousand  men,  not  one 
of  whom  probably  had  ever  seen  a 
town,  much  less  a  white  man,  be- 
fore; and  this  horde,  armed  with 
spears,  savages  as  they  were,  might 
not  prove  altogether  a  pleasant  ad- 
dition to  Zeilah's  little  population. 
Another  difficulty  presented  itself. 
No   ^omali    is    allowed   to   carry 
weapons  inside  the  town,  and  would 
these  wild  savages  put  up  with  be- 
ing disarmed  ?  and  if  so,  how  was 
the  process  to  be  carried  out?  How- 
ever, as  it  turned  out,  everything 
passed  off  most  satisfactorily,  each 
native  on  his  entry  giving  up  his 
spear  to  the  custody  of  the  police, 
to  be  returned  to  him  the  next  day. 
At  length,  seeing  that  the  king 
was   approaching,  Mr  Walsh  and 
I  sauntered  out  to  the  large  open 
space  near  a  mosque  and  tomb,  for 
there  the  official  reception  was  to 
take  place.    A  stranger  sight  never 
met  man's  eyes.    Thousands  of  coal- 
black  men,  most  of  them  carrying, 
as    well   as   their   hide   shields,   a 
couple  of  spears,  danced  as  they 
approached.     A  scarcity  of  cloth- 
ing displayed  the  lithe  limbs  of  the 
Somalis,  accentuated  by  their  wild 
gesticulations,  as,  turning  and  leap- 
ing in  every  direction,  they  brand- 
ished their  spears  above  their  heads. 
In  the  centre  of  this  dense  mass  of 
whirling  humanity  rode  the  king, 
his  bare  head  shaded  from  the  sun 
by  a  white  umbrella.     By  his  side 
rode  a  few  of  the  native  merchants, 
&c.,  of  Zeilah,  who  had  gone  out  to 
meet  him.     Unlike  the  Gadabursi 
and   other   tribes,  the  Black  Esa 
possess   no   horses,  and,  with  the 
exception  of  the  new  king,  they 
were  all  on  foot.     About  four  hun- 
dred yards  from  us  the  whole  body 
drew  up  into  a  solid  mass,  then,  at 
a  given  signal,  charged,  stopping 
again  some  thirty  or  forty  yards 
nearer   with    a    sudden   stamping 
movement,    which    literally   made 
the  ground  shake  under  our  feet. 


Then  a  dozen  or  so  of  the  warriors 
emerged  from  the  ranks  and  per- 
formed wild  devilish  dances,  grad- 
ually working  their  way  back  to 
the  troops,  until,  just  as  suddenly 
as  before,  the  whole  host  advanced. 
The  sight  of  these  strange  long- 
haired, half-naked  savages  rushing 
over  the  yellow  sand,  their  spear- 
points  forming  a  blaze  of  light  over 
their  heads,  was  one  that  can  never 
be  forgotten. 

We  waited  at  the  steps  of  the 
mosque,  where  the  king  dismounted, 
and  received  from  Mr  Walsh,  on 
behalf  of  the  Indian  Government, 
a  handsome  sword  and  a  rich  suit 
of  green  and  gold  Arab  clothing. 

It  was  an  interesting  experience 
to  watch  the  crowds  in  the  streets 
wondering  at  all  they  saw,  for 
never  before  had  they  been  in  a 
town  ;  but  this  only  is  due  to  them, 
that  not  one  occasion  arose  that 
called  for  rebuke,  and  during  the 
day  they  spent  there  no  disorder 
of  any  sort  occurred — a  fact  that 
speaks  not  only  for  the  innate 
manners  of  the  Somali,  but  also  for 
the  excellent  arrangements  of  the 
only  Englishman  in  Zeilah,  Mr 
Prendergast  Walsh. 

I  have  in  this  article  merely 
stated  my  own  experiences  in  the 
country,  which,  though  they  may 
possess  no  particular  interest,  may 
help  to  throw  light  upon  that  por- 
tion of  Africa  which  is  now  likely 
to  become  a  subject  of  contention 
among  the  European  Powers. 
The  political  part  of  the  question 
I  do  not  touch  upon,  for  it  is  a 
subject  that  requires  knowledge  as 
to  the  existing  treaties  both  of 
Berlin  and  Brussels,  which,  unfor- 
tunately, I  do  not  possess. 

However  it  is  apparent  whether 
it  would  be  advantageous  to  Eng- 
land to  allow  Italy's  annexation, 
or  to  permit  the  country  in  time 
to  lapse  into  the  hands  of  the 
French;  and  there  can  be  little 


1894.] 


A  Recent  Visit  to  Harrar. 


369 


doubt  that  Italy  as  a  neighbour 
in  the  Gulf  of  Aden  would  be  in 
every  way  satisfactory.  The  French 
already  possess  ,  territory  at  the 
west  end  of  that  gulf,  Obock  and 
Jibuti  being  their  principal  ports  ; 
and  from  the  manner  in  which 
their  Government  have  carried  on 
its  affairs  there,  one  can  safely  say 
that  difficulties  of  a  serious  nature 
would  arise  were  their  frontier  to 
touch  our  own.  The  French  have 
found  to  their  own  cost  the  rotten- 
ness of  their  system,  for,  intent 
upon  making  money,  they  allowed 
to  be  imported  into  the  country 
of  the  Donakil  tribes,  adjoining 
these  ports,  large  quantities  of 
arms,  ammunition,  and  drink,  with 
the  result  that  they  are  in  con- 
stant dread  of  an  organised  attack 
upon  their  garrisons,  which  have 
had  to  be  strengthened  accordingly. 
At  the  English  ports  on  the  Somali 
coast  no  rifles  or  ammunition  are 
allowed  to  be  imported,  and  such 
a  heavy  duty  is  placed  upon  spirits 
as  to  render  it  unprocurable  to 
the  native.  The  benefit  of  this  is 
most  apparent,  and  I  believe  I  am 
right  in  saying  that  there  are  only 
some  four  resident  British  officials 
in  the  whole  of  Somaliland,  pro- 
tected by  a  few  score  of  native 
and  Arab  police.  This  fact  speaks 
more  than  any  words  of  mine  could 
do  as  to  the  excellence  of  our 
policy,  where  a  whole  country  like 
Somaliland  can  be  held  at  peace, 


and  friendly  to  the  British,  by 
four  men,  whose  posts  are  in  towns 
several  days'  journey  apart,  with 
no  telegraphic  communication  of 
any  sort,  and  only  a  weekly  ser- 
vice of  steamers.  There  can  be 
little  doubt  that  should  Italy  take 
possession  of  Harrar,  the  British 
port  of  Zeilah,  which  commands  the 
road,  will  also  be  ceded,  and  re- 
ciprocal arrangements  be  entered 
into  between  Italy  and  England 
as  to  the  veto  on  the  importation 
of  arms  and  the  heavy  duties  on 
spirits.  There  is  also  little  doubt 
that,  should  Italy  annex  the  coun- 
try, the  existing  regulations  will 
be  maintained,  while  the  vast  in- 
crease that  will  accrue  from  the 
opening  up  of  the  rich  Harrar 
plateau,  and  the  unexplored  ter- 
ritory behind  it,  will  give  a 
fresh  stimulus  to  our  already 
very  considerable  trade  at  Aden. 
Nor  are  the  interests  of  Italy  in 
any  way  in  opposition  to  our  own 
in  the  East;  and  the  fact  that  a 
friendly  Power  held  a  large  terri- 
tory as  near  Aden  as  the  opposite 
African  coast,  would  help  to  keep 
secure  in  our  hands  the  road  to 
India.  These  are  but  a  few  of 
the  advantages  that  would  accrue 
were  Italy  to  annex,  as  is  to  be 
hoped  will  be  the  case,  the  Harrar 
district,  and  if  England  cedes  to 
her  the  western  end  of  our  Somali- 
land  Protectorate. 

WALTER  B,  HARRIS. 


370 


La  Femme  de  M.  Feuillet. 


[Sept. 


LA    FEMME    DE    M.    FEUILLET. 


IP  we  were  to  deal  with  Madame 
Feuillet's  book  in  accordance  with 
its  attractions  and  our  inclinations, 
we  should  transfer  it  almost  en  bloc 
to  the  pages  of  Maga;  but  that  being 
unfortunately  impossible,  we  must 
do  with  it  the  best  we  can.  She 
is  one  of  those  French  feminine 
writers  whose  instinctively  play- 
ful charm  of  style  gives  piquancy 
to  each  subject  she  touches.  And 
the  variety  of  the  matter  in  the 
Volume  is  infinite.  A  singularly 
retentive  and  tenacious  memory 
gives  freshness  and  point  to  all  the 
recollections  of  childhood  and  girl- 
hood. We  see  the  survivals  of 
the  pre  -  Revolutionary  order  of 
things,  in  that  picturesque  old 
country  of  the  Norman  Cotentin, 
which  lay  between  its  falaises  and 
its  forests  far  aside  from  the  centres 
of  political  agitation.  Whether 
all  her  sketches  of  quaint  originals 
are  strictly  true  to  the  life,  we 
may  be  content  to  leave  to  herself 
and  her  conscience.  At  all  events 
they  are  impressive  as  the  rough 
Bretons  of  Balzac,  and  realistic  as 
the  elaborated  studies  of  Zola. 
Troyon  and  Millet,  and  the  French 
Salvators,  never  did  greater  justice 
to  the  Bruyeres  and  the  smiling 
rural  landscapes  —  to  the  dark 
foliage  of  sombre  woodlands  hang- 
ing over  the  lonely  pools ;  and 
then — by  way  of  contrast — when 
Madame  goes  on  her  travels,  we 
have  the  soft  green  slopes  of  the 
Jura,  the  walnut  groves  and  spread- 
ing chestnuts  that  are  mirrored  in 
the  Lake  Leman,  and  the  orange- 
gardens  that  clothe  the  rocks  of 
the  Riviera.  There  are  the  gloomy 
Norman  chdteaux  of  which  she  was 


an  involuntary  occupant,  with  the 
shadowy  corridors  haunted  by  ghosts 
and  hung  with  mouldering  tapes- 
try. Those  sketches  of  scenery 
and  strikingly  romantic  sites  are 
always  admirable.  Then  a  change 
comes  over  the  spirit  of  her 
dreams,  when  the  girl  is  married 
to  a  celebrated  man  and  goes 
abroad  into  the  great  world.  There 
is  gay  life  in  the  provinces  :  there 
is  the  passing  whirl  of  dissipation 
in  the  elite  of  fashionable  and  in- 
tellectual society  at  Paris.  There 
are  amusing  descriptions  of  the 
Court  gaieties  at  Compiegne,  Fon- 
tainebleau,  and  in  the  Tuileries, 
given  chiefly  in  a  series  of  letters 
from  her  marvellously  spirituel 
husband.  To  tell  the  truth,  and  it 
is  much  to  say  for  Madame  Feuillet, 
her  husband's  letters  are  to  us  the 
least  taking  part  of  the  book.  It 
is  true  he  wrote  them  to  amuse 
and  cheer  his  wife,  who  was  left 
to  vegetate  with  her  little  ones  in 
rustic  solitude.  But  Madame  is 
invariably  brilliant,  and,  we  were 
going  to  say,  invariably  lively. 
That,  however,  would  give  a  false 
impression  of  a  life  in  which  the 
lights  were  darkened  by  heavy 
shadows.  Sometimes,  in  her  darker 
moods  of  deep  depression,  sorrow 
or  a  morbid  sentimentality  gets 
the  better  of  her :  like  Job,  she 
would  curse  the  day  of  her  birth ; 
with  the  Psalmist,  would  wish  she 
had  never  been  born.  But  these 
melancholy  moods  never  last  very 
long,  and  she  remembers  that  such 
an  event  as  the  loss  of  a  father  is 
a  calamity  that  comes  in  the  course 
of  nature,  and  for  which  Nature 
offers  cbnsolation  within  easy 


Quelques  ann^es  de  ma  vie.     Par  Mme.  Octave  Feuillet.      Paris  :    Calmann 
L6vy,  1894. 


1894.' 


La  Femme  de  M.  Feuillet. 


371 


reach.  Really,  her  temperament 
is  essentially  buoyant;  and  she 
needed  all  her  elasticity  of  spirits. 
She  made  a  love  -  match  :  she  al- 
most leaped  into  her  cousin's  arms 
when  he  presented  himself,  and 
she  never  ceased  to  admire  and 
adore  him.  But  her  Octave,  with 
all  his  genius  and  his  fame,  was  an 
exceedingly  hard  bargain.  This 
bright  and  bewitching  mondaine 
found  herself  mated  with  an  in- 
spired lunatic,  with  susceptible 
nerves  and  an  impressionable  tem- 
perament. In  his  eccentricities, 
his  nervous  imaginings,  and  the 
caprices  of  his  perverse  fancies,  he 
was  the  exact  counterpart  of  our 
own  Sage  of  Chelsea.  But  if  he 
was  not  always  more  considerate, 
he  was  far  more  tenderly  affection- 
ate. So  Madame  in  her  intellect, 
manners,  and  methods  closely 
resembled  Mrs  Carlyle.  She  was 
much  more  clever  than  was  gener- 
ally suspected,  though  all  her  world 
had  admired  her  esprit.  In  this 
sparkling  and  incisive  volume  she 
shows  that  in  a  somewhat  differ- 
ent style  she  might  have  rivalled 
her  husband  in  literature.  But, 
with  some  self-restraint,  she  dis- 
ciplined herself  to  find  pleasure  in 
indulging  those  caprices  which  at 
first  she  had  difficulty  in  tolerating. 
After  all,  thanks  to  her  high 
spirits  and  complacent  disposition, 
she  must  have  had  a  happy  time 
of  it  on  the  whole.  She  had  no 
serious  griefs  against  her  husband, 
who  was  much  more  an  enemy  to 
himself  than  to  her.  Those  spirits 
of  hers  would  go  up  on  the  slightest 
provocation :  her  susceptibility  to 
sunshine  and  serenity  is  reflected 
on  every  page  of  her  book,  and  there 
are  no  end  of  good  and  humorous 
stories  which  assuredly  lose  noth- 
ing by  the  manner  of  telling. 

The  "Quelques"  in  the  title  gives 
rather  a  false  impression  of  time, 
for  the  memoirs  begin  soon  after 


her  birth  in  1832,  and  are  carried 
forward  to  the  collapse  of  the 
Commune.  Indeed  she  goes  back 
with  the  family  romance  to  the 
sanguinary  dramas  of  the  Revolu- 
tion. Madame  Feuillet,  nee  Dubois, 
especially  on  the  maternal  side,  was 
born  a  Legitimist  of  the  Legitim- 
ists. Losing  her  mother  early,  she 
had  been  brought  up  by  an  eccen- 
tric grand-aunt,  one  of  the  most 
remarkable  of  the  many  remark- 
able characters  she  sketches. 
Mademoiselle  de  Sainte  -  Suzanne 
had  been  a  famous  beauty.  As  a 
girl  she  had  saved  her  father  from 
the  guillotine.  He  had  been  shut 
up  by  the  Reds  in  a  provincial 
State  prison,  at  a  time  when  sus- 
picion was  virtually  a  sentence  of 
death.  One  morning  his  daughter 
mounted  her  horse  and  set  out 
from  their  chdteau  of  Trecceur :  it 
was  painted  afterwards  by  Feuillet 
in  more  than  one  of  his  novels,  and 
doubtless  suggested  the  title  of  his 
4  Julie  de  Trecceur.'  She  went  out 
on  her  mission  with  a  single  at- 
tendant. "Wearing  now  the  tri- 
colour and  again  the  white  cock- 
ade, crossing  the  scenes  of  recent 
battles,  and  sleeping  out  in  the 
fields  at  night,  the  maiden  made 
her  way  to  Nantes,  and  sought 
an  audience  of  the  Revolutionary 
commissioners.  Hoche  was  then 
the  chief  of  the  tribunal  and  of 
the  army.  She  was  ushered  into 
a  room  where  they  were  seated  at 
table :  the  gallant  general  was 
dazzled  with  her  beauty,  and  list- 
ened sympathetically  to  her  pitiful 
tale.  Then  he  got  up,  seized  her 
hand,  and  exclaimed,  "  Citoyenne, 
I  have  a  little  daughter  myself  :  I 
pray  God  that  one  day  she  may  be 
like  you.  Your  father  is  free ; " 
and  he  warmly  embraced  her.  The 
other  commissioners  applauded, 
and  insisted  that  Mademoiselle 
should  dine  with  them.  As  it  was 
a  penitential  season,  in  spite  of 


372 


La  Femme  de  M.  Feuillet. 


[Sept, 


their  free -thinking  opinions  they 
even  promised  that  she  should 
have  Lenten  fare.  Mademoiselle,  in 
the  circumstances,  could  not  choose 
but  to  consent ;  but  as  the  Repub- 
lican autocrats  had  a  reputation 
for  libertinism,  and  she  was  ap- 
parently afraid  that  the  embrass- 
ades  might  go  round,  she  insisted 
that  her  servant  should  stand  be- 
hind her  chair.  She  retraced  the 
dangerous  route  in  safety;  but 
when  she  handed  the  order  of 
liberation  to  her  father's  gaolers, 
the  heroine  was  so  exhausted  that 
she  utterly  broke  down. 

When  she  received  her  little 
grand-niece  under  her  roof,  she  had 
grown  up  into  respectable  spinster- 
hood.  She  looked  after  the  affairs 
of  the  estate  and  the  farm,  and 
had  lost  her  looks  and  her  feminine 
softness,  though  retaining  her  gen- 
erous and  warm  heart.  Then 
there  was  a  case  of  ludicrous 
misapprehension.  The  last  thing 
of  which  the  child  would  have 
dreamed  was,  that  the  venerable 
woman  she  called  grandmother 
could  possibly  contemplate  matri- 
mony. So  when  a  veteran  soldier 
and  ex- colonel  of  the  regiment  of 
Conde  turned  up  at  the  chdteau, 
although  the  precocious  little  girl 
suspected  he  came  as  a  suitor,  she 
fancied  that  his  designs  were 
directed  on  herself.  Accordingly 
she  listened  in  mortal  apprehen- 
sion when  her  grand- aunt  said 
solemnly  she  had  a  secret  to  con- 
fide to  her,  and  in  intense  relief  she 
was  surprised  into  reluctant  con- 
sent when  the  venerable  chdtelaine 
hesitatingly  announced  her  own  ap- 
proaching nuptials.  The  blushing 
betrothed  broke  out  in  peals  of 
nervous  laughter  when  she  learned 
that  her  little  charge  had  credited 
her  with  the  intention  of  matching 
a  fully  told  seventy  with  seven; 
and  so  all  passed  off  tolerably 
pleasantly. 


Mademoiselle  de  Sainte-Suzanne, 
who  had  now  become  Madame  de 
Quigny,  never  got  on  very  well 
with  her  grand  -  niece's  father. 
The  lady  was  home-keeping  and 
frugal,  though  she  was  free  with 
unpretentious  hospitality.  M.  Du- 
bois,  on  the  contrary,  delighted 
in  provincial  gaieties  :  he  filled  the 
stables  with  horses,  and  clothed  his 
servants  in  showy  liveries.  The 
old  lady  was  frank  to  a  fault ;  the 
young  man  was  silent  and  re- 
served. But  in  one  matter  at 
that  time  they  were  cordially 
agreed,  and  that  was  their  de- 
votion to  the  Legitimate  cause. 
We  are  reminded  that  after  the 
revolution  of  1830,  the  Norman 
and  Breton  nobles  long  remained 
loyal.  "When  the  king,  Charles 
X.,  made  the  melancholy  journey 
which  took  him  into  exile,  he 
passed  before  the  avenues  of  Tre- 
cceur :  it  was  then  that  Madame 
de  Quigny,  her  people  and  her 
family,  went  to  kneel  on  the  pass- 
ing of  the  king,  to  receive  his  last 
farewell.  Madame  de  Quigny  left 
the  group,  and  followed  the  royal 
cortege  to  Cherbourg."  A  year 
later  there  were  arrangements  for 
a  rising  in  La  Vendee.  M.  Du- 
bois  in  a  single  night  sent  2000 
muskets  to  the  Duchesse  de  Berri. 
His  beautiful  wife  helped  to  pack 
the  cases,  and  when  she  was  re- 
minded of  the  danger  of  being 
implicated  in  a  treasonable  con- 
spiracy, she  exclaimed  that  it 
would  delight  her  to  die  for  her 
king.  The  unseasonable  slip  of 
the  amorous  Duchess  did  much  to 
chill  that  generous  enthusiasm,  and 
gave  rise  to  a  good  deal  of  domes- 
tic friction.  M.  Dubois  became 
more  politically  indifferent,  and 
once  he  recalled  his  little  daughter 
to  discretion  and  the  convenances 
when  he  caught  her  spitting  on 
a  caricature  of  the  Citizen  King. 
But  the  ladies  of  his  house  were 


1894.] 


La  Femme  de  M.  Feuillet. 


373 


still  sentimentally  devoted,  and 
she  remembers  her  mother  making 
her  kiss  a  medallion  of  Henry  V., 
which  was  worn  round  the  neck 
as  a  sacred  relic. 

Much  of  her  time  was  passed 
in  a  dilapidated  old  chdteau  near 
St  L6,  where  her  mother,  though 
always  an  invalid,  could  in- 
dulge in  the  pleasures  of  the 
town.  Boxes  arrived  periodically 
from  the  Parisian  modistes;  and 
Madame  Feuillet  remembers  one 
dress  in  particular — a  glittering 
vision  of  pearl  broideries  and  sil- 
ver lace — which  so  powerfully  im- 
pressed her  childish  fancy  that, 
when  it  was  displayed  on  a  stand 
to  take  out  the  creases,  she  stooped 
to  salute  it  as  if  it  had  been  a  per- 
son of  quality.  In  fact,  nothing 
is  more  pleasant  in  the  book  than 
the  consistent  development  of  the 
child  into  the  girl,  and  the  girl 
into  the  woman.  She  was  always 
serious  and  thoughtful,  yet  gay 
and  light-hearted ;  her  religion  was 
constantly  at  war  with  the  world 
and  the  devil  and  her  passions — 
or  rather,  her  tastes  were  often 
clashing  with  her  principles.  There 
is  a  quaint  and  humorous  descrip- 
tion of  the  manner  in  which  Ma- 
dame Dubois  used  to  be  carried 
to  the  evening  entertainments. 
There  was  an  antique  sedan-chair 
that  had  once  been  gorgeously  de- 
corated with  cupids  and  roses, 
though  time  had  spoiled  the  com- 
plexions and  faded  the  colours. 
It  was  borne  by  the  beadle  and 
sacristan  of  the  cathedral,  who 
hurried  out  to  the  chdteau  when 
released  from  duty.  The  little 
girl,  as  a  reward  for  being  good, 
was  sometimes  allowed  to  accom- 
pany it.  It  was  preceded  by  a 
servant  carrying  a  lantern,  which 
lighted  up  the  ball  dress,  and  with 
its  reflection  made  the  diamonds 
irradiate  the  gloom.  "  So  bal- 
anced in  her  palanquin,  this  beau- 

VOL.  CLVI. NO.  DCCCCXLVII. 


tiful  being  made  me  think  of  the 
sultanas  of  the  fairy  tales  as  they 
walked  about  in  their  enchanted 
gardens." 

Such  moments  of  dissipation 
were  comparatively  rare,  but  the 
church  ceremonies  were  a  never- 
failing  source  of  excitement.  Not 
that  they  were  unmixed  pleasure 
by  any  means,  for  there  were 
prayers  in  excess,  and  a  super- 
fluity of  sermons.  Still  the  little 
devotee  was  profoundly  impressed 
by  the  splendour  of  the  ceremonial 
and  the  fervour  of  the  worshippers, 
for  the  Cotentois  of  those  days 
were  almost  as  pious  as  the  Bre- 
tons. When  she  fasted  she  some- 
times envied  the  fowls,  free  to 
pick  up  the  corn  in  the  yard ;  but 
she  consoled  herself  by  thinking 
that  her  sufferings  were  expiating 
her  terrible  sins.  Indeed,  in  the 
solemn  misereres  of  a  Good  Friday, 
as  she  knelt  under  the  black  vaults 
of  the  chapel,  she  was  crushed 
down  beneath  the  weight  of  her 
guilt.  When  the  congregation 
around  her  were  raising  their 
heads,  her  forehead  was  still  buried 
in  the  dust.  "  *  I  have  so  much 
to  atone  for,'  I  said  to  myself." 
Then  we  hear  of  the  first  rude 
shock  to  her  faith.  With  over- 
strained nerves,  after  leaving  the 
church  and  its  interminable  ser- 
vices, they  used  to  visit  the  chapel 
of  the  dead.  There,  above  the 
open  altar,  representing  the  yawn- 
ing tomb,  was  suspended  the  image 
of  the  bleeding  Saviour.  Nothing 
could  be  more  solemnising.  On 
either  side  stood  an  infant  of  the 
choir,  with  the  wings  of  an  angel, 
and  holding  a  blazing  torch,  "severe 
and  motionless  as  the  image  of 
death."  But  "once  I  fancied  I 
recognised  in  one  of  those  angels  a 
small  boy  who  brought  us  butter 
on  the  Saturdays ;  in  another,  a 
little  fellow  who  went  in  for  rear- 
ing squirrels  in  a  hovel  at  one  end 
2  B 


374 


Femme  de  M.  Feuillet. 


[Sept. 


of  the  village.  .  .  .  Later,  when  I 
realised  that  the  angels  with  the 
wings  and  the  funeral  torches 
were  the  same  little  scamps,  dirty 
and  frolicsome,  whom  I  used  to 
meet  along  the  roads,  my  faith 
had  wellnigh  received  a  deadly  in- 
jury." Nor  did  the  washing  of 
the  feet  of  children  who  repre- 
sented the  twelve  apostles  tend  to 
reassure  her.  The  washing  was 
symbolical  of  spiritual  purifica- 
tion, and  she  was  scandalised 
by  the  greed  with  which  the 
regenerated  sinners  precipitated 
themselves  on  the  cakes  which  her 
grand-aunt  provided.  As  for  the 
little  outcast  who  played  the  part 
of  Judas,  he  sometimes  took  his 
unpleasant  role  too  seriously. 
Then  she  would  bring  him  cakes 
under  an  old  nut-tree,  when  he 
seemed  inclined,  like  his  prototype, 
to  suspend  himself  to  the  branches. 
"Come,  my  little  fellow,"  she 
would  say,  "take  comfort.  Next 
year  it  will  be  your  turn  to  have 
your  feet  washed.  You  won't  al- 
ways be  Judas."  There  was  one 
pious  observance  to  which  she  per- 
sonally objected.  Her  maternal 
grandmother  kept  open  house  for 
the  clergy,  and  of  a  Sunday  there 
were  generally  about  a  dozen  of 
priests,  sitting  "ranged  like  so 
many  rooks  "  round  the  table.  A 
very  unattractive  lot  they  were, 
but  Mademoiselle  was  expected  to 
kiss  each  in  turn.  As  for  her  first 
communion,  it  was  to  be  celebrated 
by  a  solemn  divorce  from  the  dolls 
that  were  the  delight  of  her  heart  ; 
and  then  there  was  a  scene  like 
Rachel  weeping  for  her  children. 

But  after  she  had  formally  re- 
nounced such  childish  things,  she 
fell  among  other  snares  and  vani- 
ties. No  one  had  ever  spoiled  her 
by  praising  her  looks  ;  and,  in  fact, 
she  had  gone  in  the  family  by  the 
name  of  the  little  blackamoor.  One 
day  a  gentleman,  who  was  a  favour- 


ite  playmate,  and  who  used  to  put 
her  through  a  course  of  gymnastics, 
caught  her  in  his  arms  as  usual. 
"Instead  of  rubbing  my  ears,  as 
he  generally  did  when  he  wished 
to  show  his  satisfaction,  he  looked 
at  me,  and  giving  me  a  kiss — '  Tu 
serasjolie,'  he  said.  I  scarcely  un- 
derstood that  word  'jolie,'  and 
nevertheless  it  interested  me.  I 
often  repeated  it  during  the  day, 
and  for  the  first  time  I  thought  of 
looking  at  myself  in  the  glass.  I 
arranged  a  scaffolding  of  chairs 
and  foot-stools,  and  got  up  in  front 
of  the  mirror.  I  was  only  half 
satisfied  with  my  examination." 
She  liked  her  eyebrows  and  the 
nose  and  mouth  well  enough,  but 
came  quickly  to  the  obvious  con- 
clusion that  she  was  abominably, 
and  even  ridiculously,  dressed.  To 
do  her  justice,  she  laid  the  lesson 
to  heart :  she  never  neglected  any 
subsequent  opportunities  of  correct- 
ing the  fault,  and  in  after-life,  when 
she  had  carte  blanche  with  the  mod- 
istes, received  well-merited  praises 
for  her  exquisite  taste.  She  had 
every  encouragement  to  persevere, 
for  the  ugly  duckling  was  rapidly 
developing  into  the  graceful  cygnet, 
and  numerous  admirers  conspired 
with  her  mirror  to  tell  her  she  was 
endowed  with  no  ordinary  fascina- 
tions. In  1850  Prince  Louis  Na- 
poleon made  an  official  tour  through 
Normandy.  M.  Dubois,  as  Mayor 
of  St  L6,  was  bound  to  welcome 
the  President  of  the  Republic. 
He  did  not  dislike  the  duty,  for 
he  was  a  man  of  the  world,  and 
by  that  time  his  monarchical  con- 
victions had  weakened.  But  the 
feelings  of  his  wife  were  very 
different.  She  looked  011  with 
horror  and  disgust  at  the  weav- 
ing of  garlands  and  the  display  of 
decorations.  Insult  was  added  to 
injury  when  the  Mayor's  beautiful 
daughter  was  to  be  charged  with 
presenting  a  bouquet  to  the  for- 


1894.] 


La  Femme  de  M.  Feuillet. 


375 


sworn  usurper.  At  the  same  time 
she  was  somewhat  flattered,  and 
her  religion  commanded  resigna- 
tion. But  when  her  daughter, 
carried  away  by  the  excitement, 
amid  the  roar  of  the  guns  and  the 
shouts  of  the  populace,  burst  out 
with  a  "  Vive  Napoleon  ! "  her  feel- 
ings were  too  much  for  her.  "At 
the  same  instant  I  felt  a  sharp  pain 
on  the  cheek  :  an  invisible  hand 
had  struck  me.  I  understood  it 
all  when,  turning  round,  I  saw  my 
mother.  '  Too  much  enthusiasm,' 
she  said  bitterly,  and  seizing  me 
by  the  arm,  she  dragged  me  back 
into  the  house."  All  the  same,  at 
the  ball  of  the  evening,  la  belle 
came  forward  to  offer  the  flowers, 
which  she  did  with  a  pretty  little 
prepared  speech. 

"'Mademoiselle,'  replied  the  Prince, 
'your  flowers  are  charming.  They 
give  me  great  pleasure,  and  I  would 
gladly  thank  you  by  embracing  you 
with  my  whole  heart ;  but  I  am  afraid, 
— you  are  a  little  too  big,  it  seems 
to  me.'  And  he  looked  round,  as  if 
he  sought  some  encouragement  among 
the  gentlemen  of  his  suite.  M.  de 
Nieuwerkerke  was  the  only  one  who 
appeared  to  give  him  any.  Look- 
ing first  at  the  bouquet  and  then  at 
me,  he  said  loudly,  'These  are  very 
beautiful  flowers.  But  there  are 
also  before  you  very  beautiful  eyes, 
Monseigneur.' 

"  Decidedly  Monseigneur  wanted 
decision,  and  he  did  not  kiss  me. 
He  entered  the  ball  to  repeated  cries 
of  '  Vive  Napoleon ' ;  but  this  time  I 
had  no  merit  whatever  in  remaining 
silent,  for  I  was  a  little  hurt  that  this 
Prince,  for  whom  I  had  suffered  so 
much  during  the  day,  recompensed  me 
with  so  cold  a  return." 

However,  his  Highness  made 
some  atonement  on  taking  leave. 
He  asked  the  Mayor  to  fetch  his 
daughter,  when  he  presented  her 
with  a  spray  of  diamonds. 

"  '  Mademoiselle,  you  gave  me  yes- 
terday a  charming  bouquet,  and  to- 


day I  return  you  one  of  the  flowers.' 
My  joy  was  s°  great  and  my  grati- 
tude so  profound,  that  I  nearly 
compromised  a  second  time  my 
mother's  politics.  *  Ah,  the  beautiful 
diamonds  ! '  I  exclaimed, — '  thanks, 
Monseigneur,  thanks  ! '  The  Prince 
was  going  to  drive  off.  He  looked 
at  me  and  began  to  laugh,  but  with 
a  laugh  that  strained  the  chest.  The 
carriage  went  on,  and  at  the  turn  of 
the  street,  in  spite  of  the  crowd,  in 
spite  of  the  troops  who  surrounded 
him,  the  Prince  again  turned  his  head 
towards  me  ;  then  he  made  me  a  sign 
with  the  hand,  as  much  as  to  say,  I 
am  pleased  with  your  happiness." 

Among  all  the  dreams  of  the 
future  she  was  fond  of  indulging, 
it  certainly  never  occurred  to  her 
that  before  very  long  she  would 
be  received  as  a  welcome  guest 
among  the  familiars  of  the  master 
of  France. 

Nevertheless  that  was  speedily  to 
be  brought  about,  and  in  a  very 
natural  way.  Proposals,  more  or 
less  eligible,  had  been  frequent 
enough,  when  one  morning  her 
father  touched  the  too  familiar 
subject  of  "  Quelqu'un  qui  t'aime 
et  a  demande  ta  main."  "  Encore, 
mon  Dieu ! "  was  the  careless  an- 
swer. But  this  time  the  offer 
came  as  a  surprise,  for  she  had 
scarcely  seen  her  cousin  Octave 
Feuillet,  and  had  only  danced  with 
him  once  or  twice.  And  on  these 
occasions  it  would  appear  that  his 
fluent  eloquence  had  failed  him. 
Nevertheless  she  gave  a  half  as- 
sent, merely  asking  time  for  reflec- 
tion. 

" '  Not  too  long,'  said  my  father  ; 
'  and  may  God  inspire  you  ! ' 

"  God  inspired  me  that  same  night 
and  made  me  find  my  cousin  charming. 
I  seemed  to  see  him  again  at  those 
three  balls  where  he  danced  with  me 
when  he  came  from  Paris,  with  his 
beautiful  face  and  his  beautiful  figure, 
his  elegance,  the  distinction  of  his 
features,  the  silken  curls  of  his  hair, 
and  his  rather  haughty  bearing  when 
he  entered  a  salon  in  the  middle  of  a 


376 


La  Femme  de  M.  Feuillet. 


[Sept. 


group  of  those  insignificant  young 
fellows  whom  we  called  *  ces  messieurs' 
.  .  As  for  him,  he  talked  well  and 
he  wrote  well.  Already  he  had  a 
great  reputation  among  literary  men, 
and  his  romances  and  poetry  had 
made  a  great  noise  in  the  world. 
And  it  was  I  who  was  to  be  the  wife 
of  this  poet,  of  this  gentleman !  I 
could  not  believe  in  such  a  piece  of 
good  fortune." 

The  fame  of  the  poet  had 
dazzled  her  fancy,  and  he  paid 
her  devoted  and  chivalrous  homage. 
She  was  to  live  to  learn  that  all 
is  not  gold  that  glitters,  and  that 
many  a  famous  man  succeeded 
fairly  in  hiding  his  weaknesses 
from  all  except  his  wife  or  his 
valet.  But  could  she  have  cast 
the  horoscope  of  her  checkered 
future,  she  would  doubtless  have 
accepted  it  all  the  same,  for  at 
least  Feuillet  was  never  guilty  of 
the  unpardonable  sin  of  disdaining 
the  love  of  the  woman  who  had 
wedded  him  •  and  she  loved  to 
bask  in  the  sunshine  of  his  glory. 
The  first  formal  meeting  of  the 
betrothed  couple  was  ludicrous 
enough.  The  whole  household 
stood  on  tiptoe  of  expectation. 

"When  I  heard  the  ring  at  the 
bell,  which  made  a  cry  resound 
through  all  the  house,  I  was  so  over- 
come by  the  new  rdle  assigned  to  me, 
that,  losing  all  thought  for  the  conven- 
ances,  all  desire  of  pleasing  my  cousin, 
I  made  a  rush  for  one  of  the  windows 
and  rolled  myself  up  like  a  mummy 
in  the  curtains.  I  should  have  parle- 
mente*  from  behind  those  curtains, 
which  would  certainly  have  given  me 
some  confidence,  had  not  my  father 
unrolled  me  like  a  metre  and  thrown 
me  into  the  arms  of  my  cousin,  who 
seemed  not  unnaturally  somewhat 
surprised  at  his  reception." 

Notwithstanding,  the  soupirant 
showed  more  presence  of  mind 
than  on  many  subsequent  occa- 
sions,— notably  when  he  was  can- 
vassing for  the  votes  of  the  Aca- 
demy. He  paid  his  fair  fiance'e 


many    pretty     compliments,    was 
prodigal   of   happy    promises    for 
the  future,  and  presented  his  fu- 
ture mother-in-law  with  a  copy  of 
verses,  which  are  somewhat  mawk- 
ishly French  in  their  florid  senti- 
ment.     But  he   was   not  a  very 
lively  lover,  and  he  gave  his  be- 
trothed   fair    warning.       "Some- 
times   when    I    was    sewing,    he 
spoke  of  his  childhood   saddened 
by  the  death   of   his   mother,    of 
the    nervous    sensibility    existing 
from  his  earliest  years."     For  ex- 
ample, having  once  hit  his  brother 
on  the  head  with   a   pebble   em- 
bedded in  a  snowball,  he  thought 
of  expiating  his  undying  remorse 
by  secluding  himself  for  life  under 
the  rules  of  La  Trappe.     In  fact, 
he  actually  made  up  his  little  bun- 
dle  and   started   for   the  nearest 
convent   of    the   Order,    but   was 
caught    before    he    had    covered 
many  kilometres.     All  his  youth- 
ful recollections  were  melancholy. 
His  father  meant  him  for  diplom- 
acy,  but  the  bent  of  his  literary 
genius  was  irresistible.    His  father 
feared  he  would  turn  Bohemian; 
and  as  a  sagacious  way  of  avert- 
ing that  discreditable  catastrophe, 
he   refused   to   see   his    son    and 
stopped    his    allowance   for   three 
years.     Young  Octave  went  pen- 
niless to  Paris,   and  took  up  his 
quarters  in  a  garret  in  the  rook- 
eries of  the  Latin  Bohemia.     He 
slaved   over   books   like   a   horse, 
but  he  did  not  live  like  a  hermit. 
"The    great    distraction    of    the 
young    litterateur    was    dancing : 
who  would  have  believed  it  ? "    He 
passed   his   free   evenings   at   the 
students'  balls,  and  danced  till  he 
dropped  with  exhaustion.     Above 
all,   he  was   passionately  fond  of 
the   masked   balls   at  the   OpeVa. 
Once,    that   he   might   pay  for  a 
costume   of  pierrot,    he   took   his 
watch  to  the  mont  de  pittd;  but 
the   watch   had   belonged    to   his 


1894.] 


mother,  and  remorse  soon  suc- 
ceeded the  intoxication  caused  by 
possessing  a  little  ready  money. 
Returning  to  his  garret,  he  swore 
to  renounce  the  dress  and  the  ball, 
and  to  go  back  on  the  morrow 
to  reclaim  the  watch.  "  I  passed 
the  night,"  he  told  me,  "with  the 
eyes  fixed  on  the  ten  francs  I  had 
got  from  the  pawnbrokers,  my 
heart  throbbing,  my  eyes  full  of 
tears ;  asking  myself,  as  the  hours 
went  on,  if  I  should  have  courage 
to  let  them  go  without  running  to 
the  fete."  It  gives  an  idea  of  his 
literary  ardour,  and  of  the  dire 
extremities  to  which  it  had  reduced 
him,  that  the  once  petted  son  of 
an  opulent  family  should  be  "  in- 
toxicated "  by  the  possession  of  a 
ten -franc  piece.  So,  when  the 
Man  of  the  first  youthful  enthusi- 
asm had  gone  by,  he  had  those 
alternate  moods  of  elation  and 
depression  of  which  his  wife  was 
to  have  sad  experience.  And  so 
the  toiling  student  and  the  pas- 
sionate frequenter  of  the  Closerie 
de  Lilas  was  to  be  distracted  in 
after -years  between  battling  for 
his  fame  and  the  Circean  seduc- 
tions of  the  gaieties  of  Compiegne. 
The  married  life  of  the  young 
couple  began  under  gloomy  aus- 
pices. It  was  arranged  that  they 
were  to  keep  house  with  the  elder 
Feuillet.  We  have  already  got  a 
glimpse  of  that  queer  old  gentle- 
man's character  in  his  discreet 
methods  of  dealing  with  his  prodi- 
gal son.  The  extravagances  of  the 
father,  on  the  principles  of  hered- 
ity, go  far  to  explain  the  son's 
eccentricities.  The  presentation  of 
the  bride  was  characteristic,  and 
no  ways  encouraging.  M.  Feuillet 
was  in  the  habit  of  keeping  his 
bed,  where  he  studied  and  expati- 
ated on  the  Stoic  philosophy — for 
he  was  not  only  a  pagan  but  a 
pessimist.  When  Octave  made  the 
presentation  in  form,  he  remained 


La  Femme  de  M.  Feuillet. 


377 


impassible  under  his  cap  of  fur, 
looking  like  one  of  Rembrandt's 
Israelitish  money-lenders.  Then 
he  addressed  the  bright  young  girl : 
"  You  won't  amuse  yourself  much 
here  ;  but  I  hope  you  know  already 
that  life  is  no  perpetual  fete.  Un- 
luckily, your  father  and  mother 
have  spoiled  you."  He  went  on 
to  recommend  her  to  prosecute  her 
studies,  scolding  her  violently  for 
a  mistake  in  spelling  made  in  the 
letter  she  had  written  him  on  the 
day  of  her  betrothal.  The  hotel 
was  in  keeping  with  the  mood 
of  its  master.  It  was  vast  and 
sombre : — 

"  When  you  entered,  you  felt  you 
were  setting  foot  in  a  church,  and 
the  vestibule  to  the  grand  staircase 
echoed  like  the  vaulted  roof  of  a 
cloister.  The  tall  and  narrow  win- 
dows were  darkened  by  trailing  ivy 
and  vine-leaves  ;  the  family  portraits 
on  the  walls  could  be  but  dimly  dis- 
tinguished ;  the  faded,  tattered,  and 
dusty  furniture  dated  from  the  mere- 
tricious days  of  the  First  Empire  ;  the 
lustres  were  covered  with  cobwebs, 
and  the  mirrors  had  ceased  to  reflect." 

It  seems  all  in  harmony  with 
those  gloomy  surroundings  that  the 
marriage  was  brought  off  at  mid- 
night. If  M.  Octave  had  had  the 
buoyant  humours  of  a  Rabelais,  he 
might  have  brightened  the  estab- 
lishment and  cheered  his  bride. 
As  it  was,  and  as  we  said,  he  was 
another  Carlyle — morbidly  suscep- 
tible to  all  depressing  influences, 
and  painfully  sensitive  to  the  most 
trivial  disturbance.  It  was  she 
who  had  to  do  the  cheering ;  and 
as  she  passed  from  sad  revelation 
to  revelation,  her  elastic  spirit  was 
sorely  overtaxed.  Her  husband's 
nerves  were  all  on  the  surface,  and 
his  actions  were  governed  by  the 
fancies  which  he  imagined  he  was 
powerless  to  control.  He  could 
never  bring  himself  to  travel  by 
rail  ;  consequently  they  posted 
everywhere,  at  an  enormous  ex- 


378 


La  Femme  de  M.  Fvuillet. 


[Sept. 


penditure  and  an  extravagant 
waste  of  time.  When  she  was 
ordered  afterwards  to  the  Riviera 
for  her  health,  he  found  it  impos- 
sible to  accompany  her.  That  it 
was  absolutely  fancy  was  shown 
later,  when,  with  a  tremendous 
effort,  he  summoned  courage  to 
break  the  spell,  and  took  railway 
to  Paris  in  company  of  his  phys- 
ician. He  could  not  endure  to 
hear  strange  voices  in  the  house ; 
he  could  neither  think  nor  write 
when  strangers  paid  visits.  "In 
vain  did  I  put  mattresses  behind 
the  doors,  speak  low  as  if  I  were 
at  confession, — the  terrible  invalid 
divined  everything,  heard  every- 
thing, and  sent  his  servant  into 
our  gatherings  to  tell  the  visitors 
to  take  their  departure."  So  that 
at  last  she  warned  all  their  friends 
away,  and  resigned  herself  to  pass 
her  days  in  solitude.  When  she 
was  confined,  he  spent  whole  hours 
at  her  bedside,  his  head  buried  in 
his  hands,  and  crying  like  a  child. 
When  they  made  flying  trips  to 
Paris  they  were  continually  chang- 
ing their  abode,  and  more  than 
once  left  comfortable  apartments 
because  he  could  not  tolerate  the 
noise  of  the  omnibuses.  But  when 
he  sought  for  peace  and  rest  in 
the  country,  it  was  changing  the 
frying-pan  for  the  fire.  He  would, 
if  he  could,  have  proscribed  all 
the  poultry  and  hushed  the  songs 
of  the  song-birds  and  the  twitter- 
ing of  the  swallows.  He  waged  a 
war  of  extermination  against  the 
owls  who  hooted  in  the  old  gar- 
den of  his  chdteau ;  but  when,  by 
steady  pistol-practice,  he  had  sup- 
pressed or  scared  them,  he  was  still 
disturbed  by  moans  and  cries  from 
the  more  distant  gardens  of  the 
Prefecture.  So  Madame  went  on 
a  mission  to  the  Preset  to  explain 
the  circumstances  and  entreat  his 
co-operation.  The  courteous  ofii- 
cial  was  delighted  to  oblige  so  il- 


lustrious a  man  of  letters  as  M. 
Feuillet,  and  his  unfortunate  owls 
were  ruthlessly  sacrificed. 

She  had  dreamed  of  Paris  as 
the  earthly  paradise,  and  her  first 
visit  to  it  was  in  a  belated  honey- 
moon. Thanks  to  her  husband's 
nerves,  instead  of  taking  the  train 
they  travelled  in  a  ponderous  fam- 
ily berline,  furbished  up  for  the  oc- 
casion. It  was  dragged  by  a  team 
of  ten  horses  through  the  ruts  on 
the  stiff  Norman  coteaux.  The  re- 
miniscences of  the  journey  read  as 
if  they  dated  from  the  days  of  the 
Valois.  One  of  the  inns  in  which 
they  slept  was  a  vrai  coupe-gorge  ; 
in  another  the  beds  were  so  short 
that  sleep  was  out  of  the  ques- 
tion ;  in  a  third  they  stood  so 
high  that  they  had  to  be  scaled  by 
a  movable  flight  of  steps ;  in  a 
fourth  she  passed  a  day  in  the 
kitchen,  where  the  local  notables 
were  stupefying  themselves  with 
cider.  Again,  they  had  to  shift 
their  quarters  from  lodgings  in  the 
small  hours  because  the  worthy 
landlady  was  taken  in  labour. 
"  We  imagined  that  the  joiner  " — 
he  combined  two  trades — "  was 
murdering  his  wife.  Not  at  all ;  it 
was  his  wife  who  was  confined. 
'  Malheureux  / '  shouted  my  hus- 
band through  the  door,  '  you  ought 
to  have  warned  us.'  f  Monsieur,  it 
has  completely  taken  us  by  sur- 
prise,' he  replied."  At  Paris  her 
husband  hurried  her  off  to  the 
theatre  to  see  Rachel. 

"  She  gave  me  the  fever.  I  dreamed 
of  nothing  but  the  great  tragedienne 
in  her  peplum  or  crowned  with  the 
golden  vine-leaves.  When  alone  in 
my  room  and  before  my  cheval-glass, 
I  tried  to  drape  myself  like  her  in  my 
scarves,  and  to  walk  with  her  slow 
and  solemn  step.  I  met  her  one  day 
at  Jules  Janin's,  to  whom  my  hus- 
band presented  me.  She  wore  her 
Indian  shawl  like  the  antique  peplum. 
I  admired  her  more  than  ever.  As 
for  me,  she  must  have  thought  me 


1894.] 


La  Femme  de  M.  Feuillet. 


379 


intolerably  stupid,  for  when  she  ad- 
dressed me  I  blushed  up  to  the  eyes 
and  said  nothing." 

We  hear  nothing  more  then  of 
Janin,  the  formidable  critic  ;  but 
she  had  a  cruel  disillusioning  in 
the  case  of  Alfred  de  Musset. 

"I  saw  him  for  the  first  time, 
drinking  a  bock  at  the  cafe  of  the 
Eegency.  As  we  passed  before  the 
cafe,  my  husband  touched  my  arm, 
saying,  '  Look,  that  is  Musset ! '  I 
sought,  among  the  drinkers  sitting 
round  the  small  tables  in  the  open 
air,  the  fine  and  ethereal  poet  I  had 
figured  to  myself,  but  saw  nothing 
save  the  ugly  drinkers  of  the  estam- 
inet.  Alas  !  he  was  one  of  them,  the 
Musset  of  my  dreams.  There  he  sat 
over  his  bock,  with  the  flushed  face 
and  the  expressionless  eye.  Two  or 
three  years  afterwards  I  sat  at  dinner 
by  the  side  of  this  melancholy  wreck. 
.  .  .  Musset  had  the  same  dead  eye. 
Dead  was  his  thought,  too.  Not  a 
word  did  he  utter  during  the  meal, 
and  after  dinner  he  went  to  sleep." 

Her  husband,  with  his  fond  re- 
collections of  Bohemian  gaieties  en 
garcon,  insisted  on  taking  her  to 
an  Ope"ra  ball  after  a  dinner  at 
Champeaux'.  The  dinner  at  the 
restaurant  she  thoroughly  enjoyed, 
on  to  the  strawberries,  big  as  her 
fist,  which  were  served  at  the  des- 
sert ;  and  she  made  the  purchase 
of  a  tortoise  which  had  escaped 
the  saucepans  to  go  straying  about 
the  walks.  But  even  after  wine 
and  liqueur  the  masked  ball  causes 
her  serious  misgivings,  and  the 
conscience  of  the  little  Norman 
devotee  pricked  her  when  she  put 
on  the  velvet  mask.  The  provin- 
cial folks  and  the  priests  had 
always  told  her  that  wearing  a 
mask  was  a  deadly  sin.  With 
sore  searchings  of  heart  she  per- 
petrated the  crime,  but — 

"  It  was  a  very  different  thing  when 
I  found  myself  at  the  Op6ra  in  the 
middle  of  the  multitude,  pushed  about, 


hustled,  accosted,  scandalised  by  the 
jests  I  heard  and  the  liberties  taken 
around  me.  I  hid  myself  at  the  back 
of  the  box,  and  shut  my  eyes,  that  I 
might  not  see  those  sinful  ladies,  the 
pierrots,  the  savages,  the  Turks, 
throwing  their  legs  above  the  heads 
of  their  partners,  and  those  partners, 
&c.,  who  in  their  turn  raised  the  feet 
up  to  the  nose  of  their  partners.  The 
spectacle  made  me  think  of  hell,  and 
I  fancied  I  had  fallen  into  it." 

At  last  she  broke  down  in  tears 
behind  her  mask.     "  My  husband, 
seeing  that,   took   me   home,   but 
did  not  seem  over-pleased.    '  What 
an   absurd    little    provincial    you 
are  ! '  he  said,  in  putting  me  into 
the  fiacre.     I  was  much  mortified, 
but  felt  that  my  mortification  was 
well  deserved,   and  I   begged  his 
pardon."     She  took  very  kindly  in 
course  of  time  to  the  life  of  the 
fashionable  world;    but  then,  by 
way  of  relief,  she  was  delighted  to 
go  back  to  St  Lo — to  the  mend- 
ing of  dishclouts  and  the  darning 
of  window-curtains.      As  for  her 
husband,  he  detested   the   place; 
he  felt  himself  a  prisoner  at  large 
in  the  gloomy  paternal  mansion; 
and  he  was  doomed  to  carry  on 
his   work    under    difficulties   that 
oppressed     him     as     insuperable. 
Like  Balzac,  he  would  have  loved 
to  inspire  himself  for  his  romantic 
visions  with  costly  oriental  tapes- 
tries and    rare   articles   de   vertu. 
His  cabinet  was  above  the  coach- 
house, in  which  reposed  the  famous 
berline.     He  chose  it  as  being  far 
removed  from  his  father's  apart- 
ments, who  was  shrieking  day  and 
night    in    the    agonies    of    gout. 
"  How   could  you  have  me  work 
here  ? "  he  would  exclaim  in  hope- 
less   prostration.     "How    can    I 
dream    of  the  graces  of  the  gay 
world   in   this   den   of    a   ruined 
Bohemian  ?     I    feel    that,    to   do 
justice  to  my  inspirations,  to  paint 
my   heroines    as   they   should   be 
painted,  I  ought  to  be  living  under 


380 


La  lemme  de  M.  Feuillet. 


[Sept. 


hangings  of  satin."  She  would 
gently  remind  him  that  in  the  days 
when  he  made  love  to  her  he 
dreamed  wistfully  of  the  very  life 
of  seclusion  they  were  leading. 
But  he  was  cursed  with  the  self- 
tormenting  temperament  which  is 
too  often  the  accompaniment  of 
a  brilliant  imagination.  "'Tis 
strange,"  he  answered,  "but  as 
for  me,  the  dream  realised  becomes 
often  the  misery." 

However,  though  at  the  cost  of 
severe  straining  of  the  nerves, 
some  of  his  best  work  was  done  in 
the  loft  over  the  coach-house.  He 
read  the  manuscripts  aloud  to  his 
wife  and  her  mother  before  sending 
them  on  to  M.  Buloz,  to  be  passed 
through  the  'Revue  des  Deux 
Mondes.'  It  was  the  ladies  who 
saved  the  life  of  the  'Tillage,' 
with  which  he  was  so  disgusted  as 
to  think  of  burning  it.  As  it 
proved,  the  public  appreciated  it 
very  differently,  and  few  of  his 
romances  were  more  admired. 
We  are  not  told  if  the  ladies  ever 
ventured  to  offer  suggestions. 
But  it  is  a  characteristic  cachet  of 
his  work,  and  a  chief  cause  of  his 
popularity  with  refined  readers, 
that  he  touched  subjects  which 
more  than  verged  on  the  scabreux 
with  a  rare  originality  of  lightness 
and  delicacy.  When  they  got 
leave  of  absence  from  the  cross- 
grained  old  philosopher,  they  went 
on  tours  in  the  neighbouring  de- 
partments, the  range  being  neces- 
sarily limited  by  Feuillet's  aversion 
to  the  rail.  Some  of  the  Breton 
sketches  by  Madame  are  especially 
charming,  and  the  little  adventures 
de  voyage  are  recorded  with  play- 
ful humour.  In  memory  at  least, 
the  menu  of  the  Breton  auberge 
was  only  matter  for  laughter,  and 
we  do  not  hear  that  Octave  made 
a  grievance  of  it,  though  it  would 
have  upset  Carlyle's  digestion  for 
a  twelvemonth. 


"  One  ought  to  have  been  terribly 
hungry  to  attack  the  omelette  of  hard- 
boiled  eggs  and  the  fricassee  of  rooks. 
We  could  not  even  make  it  up  with 
the  bread.  The  bread  was  of  black 
buckwheat,  hard,  and  smelling  of 
leather,  for  it  was  kept,  as  a  rule,  in 
the  bottom  of  a  cupboard  with  the 
boots.  At  Plestin  I  saw  it  taken  out 
of  the  bed  of  the  innkeeper,  who  had 
kept  it  warm  under  his  blankets." 

Near  the  old  episcopal  and  col- 
legiate town  of  St  Pol-de-Leon,  the 
St  Andrews  of  the  bleak  Breton 
seaboard,  they  drove  right  into  the 
middle  of  a  fete.  Casks  of  cider 
were  broached  before  the  cottages, 
beside  tables  loaded  with  rustic 
delicacies.  Dancing  was  going 
forward  vigorously,  and  the  tra- 
vellers stopped  to  look  on.  Soon 
a  singularly  handsome  young  peas- 
ant, wearing  a  costume  d*  opera — 
the  old  Armoric  dress  —  stepped 
out  of  the  circle  and  approached 
with  a  respectful  salute.  "Ma- 
dame, the  comrades  and  myself, 
desiring  to  do  the  strangers  honour, 
entreat  you  to  lead  the  dance." 
Madame  blushed,  and  would  have 
excused  herself  on  the  score  of 
ignorance,  but  the  Breton  courte- 
ously insisted,  undertaking  to  be 
her  teacher;  and  so  "we  walked 
together  to  the  tall  Maypole, 
around  which  we  revolved  for  the 
rest  of  the  day,  swaying  ourselves 
gently,  as  if  we  had  been  cradled 
by  the  waves." 

Soon  afterwards  they  were  to 
shift  their  quarters  from  St  L6 
to  the  capital.  A  great  manager 
and  a  famous  actor  had  made  a 
descent  upon  the  quiet  Norman 
chateau.  The  visit  was  like  the 
splash  of  stones  in  a  stagnant 
pool,  and  animated  the  successful 
novelist  with  new  ideas  and  ambi- 
tions. The  novelist's  personal  ser- 
vices were  in  request  to  superin- 
tend the  dramatising  of  his  stories, 
and  he  had  the  assurance  of  liberal 
pecuniary  recompense.  He  went 


1894.' 


La  Femme  de  M.  Feuillet. 


381 


off  at  once  with  his  new  friend, 
walking  up  the  hills  and  singing 
in  the  gaiety  of  his  heart,  and  his 
wife  followed.  The  excitement  of 
the  change  was  exhilarating,  but 
it  soon  palled.  He  had  to  pass 
whole  days  in  the  theatres,  till 
the  feverish  nerves  were  in- 
tolerably fretted.  Mademoiselle 
Fargueil,  who  figured  in  the  lead- 
ing parts,  was  even  more  nervously 
sensitive  than  himself :  she  was 
always  losing  temper  and  throw- 
ing up  her  roles,  resuming  them  in 
tears,  and  spitting  blood  by  way 
of  interlude.  Many  a  time  did  he 
wish  himself  back  in  the  shed 
with  the  old  berline ;  nor  can  we 
doubt  that  it  was  the  unflagging 
courage  of  his  wife  which  enabled 
him  to  endure  and  persevere. 
There  were  six  weeks  of  painful 
preliminaries  before  his  l  Dalila ' 
was  produced.  Then  the  triumph 
was  complete. 

"  All  the  most  brilliant  society  of 
Paris  was  sparkling  in  the  blaze  of 
the  lustres,  clapping  their  hands  and 
calling  for  the  author.  The  hall  was 
shaken  with  the  shouts,  with  the 
bravos.  I  felt  myself  proud,  my  heart 
beat  to  bursting  of  my  breast.  I 
asked  if  such  moments  ought  not  to 
repay  me  for  the  many  evil  hours. 
.  .  .  As  to  Lapecaire  "  (the  manager), 
"  he  fell  on  my  husband's  neck  weep- 
ing ;  and  I  imagine  that  Fargueil  did 
the  same,  when  he  went  to  compliment 
her  in  her  box  ;  for  when  I  embraced 
him  in  my  turn,  I  observed  upon  his 
coat  the  marks  of  a  pair  of  powdered 
arms,  which  must  have  been  those  of 
the  Princess  Falconieri." 

That  last  is  a  delightfully  feminine 
touch.  By  a  strange  and  sinister 
coincidence,  all  Feuillet's  most 
remarkable  triumphs  were  suc- 
ceeded by  some  stroke  of  mis- 
fortune, and  consequently  by  a 
fit  of  horrible  depression.  He 
came  home  from  the  triumph  of 
c  Dalila '  to  find  a  telegram  an- 
nouncing his  father's  sudden 


death.  He  lamented  the  philo- 
sopher, and  possibly  his  conscience 
pricked  him,  for  the  old  gentle- 
man had  made  himself  an  insup- 
portable nuisance.  "  He  was  in- 
dignant with  himself  for  having 
left  the  old  man,  with  not  having 
held  his  hand  in  his  dying  mo- 
ments. He  reproached  himself 
with  his  glory,  and  cursed  those 
who  had  torn  him  away  to  con- 
quer it  from  his  life  of  sacrifices 
and  duties.  His  cries  and  his  sobs 
rent  my  heart ;  I  was  at  his  knees 
without  being  able  to  calm  him." 
But  these  keen  impressions  were 
naturally  fugitive.  Feuillet  had 
already  drunk  to  delirium  of  the 
intoxicating  cup,  and  after  a  fort- 
night decently  devoted  to  mourn- 
ing, he  hurried  his  wife  back  to 
the  scene  of  his  glory.  Thence- 
forth, to  all  intents,  he  was  the 
Parisian,  though  she  often  kept 
house  in  the  country,  in  care  of 
the  children  and  the  chickens.  At 
Paris  their  first  connection  with 
the  Court  was  in  making  the  ac- 
quaintance of  the  two  governesses 
of  the  little  Prince.  There  is  a 
capital  story  of  their  going  to  a 
first  reception  with  the  rather 
formal  Madame  Bizot. 

"As  we  put  off  our  cloaks  in  the 
antechamber,  we  rubbed  up  against 
an  old  shaggy  water  -  spaniel,  all 
muddy,  who  seemed  disposed  to  go 
with  us  into  the  salons.  We  fancied 
he  was  Madame  Bizot's  dog,  and 
honoured  him  accordingly.  We  are 
announced  ;  the  dog  walks  in  first,  his 
tail  in  the  air,  proudly  shaking  his 
tufts  of  hair.  I  present  my  husband ; 
Madame  Bizot  makes  us  take  our 
seats  before  a  great  fire  surrounded 
by  a  dozen  of  persons.  Madame  de 
Brancion  is  there,  with  her  austere 
face.  The  sharp  profile  of  Madame 
Brunet  is  shadowed  on  the  wall.  I 
see  that  she  makes  signs,  pointing  to 
the  dog,  who  has  made  himself  com- 
fortable on  the  rug,  snarling  at  those 
who  try  to  warm  their  feet.  They 
all  endure  the  animal  with  respect : 


382 


La  Femme  de  M.  Feuilkt. 


[Sept. 


they  look  at  him  and  they  look  at 
us,  and  I  can't  understand  it.  ... 
All  at  once  Madame  Brunet,  unable 
to  keep  quiet  any  longer,  asks,  'Whose 
is  the  dog?'  'Madame  Bizot's,  of 
course,'  says  my  husband.  'Not  at 
all,  monsieur,'  answers  Madame  Bizot ; 
'surely  he  is  yours.'  'Oh,  madame, 
you  will  allow  me  to  doubt  that.' 
'  What !  the  dog  does  not  belong  to 
you,  and  I  tolerated  him  here  ?  But 
then,  how  comes  he  here?  Who 
brought  him  in?'" 

Whereupon  the  hostess  snatched 
up  a  pair  of  tongs,  and  the  un- 
lucky spaniel,  after  playing  at 
cache -cache  under  the  furniture, 
finally  makes  a  bolt  of  it  through 
the  open  door. 

Madame  Bizot  had  her  apart- 
ments in  the  Tuileries,  and  Ma- 
dame Feuillet  had  gone  to  make  a 
morning  call. 

"Madame  received  me  in  a  salon 
hung  with  tapestry.  Through  a  half- 
open  door  I  heard  a  child's  voice  : 
it  was  that  of  the  Prince  Imperial, 
who  was  playing  in  the  next  room. 
Soon  we  heard  the  noise  of  a  saw  and 
a  hammer,  and  as  I  listened,  Madame 
Bizot  led  me  quietly  to  the  door  of 
that  room.  '  Look,'  she  said,  speaking 
low  and  opening  the  door  a  little 
wider.  Then  I  saw  the  Emperor 
seated  on  the  carpet,  and  making  toys 
for  his  son." 

That  reminds  us  of  a  very  simi- 
lar scene,  mentioned  in  the  lately 
published  Memoirs  of  De  Meneval, 
when  the  Greater  Emperor  was 
seen  in  his  cabinet  among  his  war- 
maps  amusing  the  King  of  Rome, 
who  was  busy  with  a  box  of  bricks. 

M.  and  Madame  Feuillet  were 
to  have  many  opportunities  of 
seeing  the  Emperor  and  Empress 
in  moments  of  unceremonious  un- 
reserve. Her  introduction  to  Com- 
piegne  was  on  an  invitation  to  as- 
sist at  the  first  representation  of 
the '  Jeune  Homme  Pauvre.'  There 
was  a  stag-hunt  on  a  rainy  day  : — 

"  I  got  out  of  the  carriage  to  walk 
and  warm  my  feet.  ...  In  the 


middle  of  the  quiet  which  sur- 
rounded me  I  heard  noisy  shouts 
of  laughter.  They  came  from  a 
clearing  enclosed  by  fir  saplings  which 
half  concealed  a  cabin  in  the  shade  of 
a  great  oak.  Before  the  door,  women 
were  stamping  in  their  little  boots, 
and  slapping  each  other's  hands  to 
bring  back  the  circulation  :  they  it 
was  who  were  laughing  so  heartily. 
In  the  middle  of  the  group  a  short 
man,  wearing  the  three-cornered  hat 
and  coat,  Louis  Quinze,  was  feeding 
a  bluish  flame  in  a  vase  standing  on 
a  tripod  :  the  man  was  the  Emperor. 
It  seemed  to  me  he  was  more  ani- 
mated than  usual :  this  halt  in  the 
woods,  this  punch  he  was  brewing  for 
the  women,  this  return  to  a  free  life, 
seemed  to  have  rejuvenated  him  ;  he 
was  charming  in  his  rustic  sovereignty. 
After  admiring  him  from  above  the 
enclosures,  I  slipped  away  without 
being  seen." 

It  is  well  known  that  no  mem- 
ber of  the  Imperial  family  made 
her  salons  more  agreeable  than  the 
clever,  gifted,  and  eccentric  Prin- 
cesse  Mathilde.  It  may  be  almost 
said  of  her  that  she  alone  could 
afford  to  hold  the  convenances  and 
principles  alike  in  contempt : — 

"  She  received  us  with  affectionate 
kindness  ;  her  salon  was  a  salon  of 
the  artist  Princess  and  of  tres  grande 
dame,  which  greatly  pleased  me. 
There  one  saw  all  the  intellect  of 
Paris  ;  the  men  of  letters,  the  artists 
who  had  made  themselves  famous ; 
the  princes  and  ambassadors  of  every 
nation.  .  .  .  Each  of  her  dinners  was 
a  triumph  for  her.  I  see  her  still, 
entering  with  her  stately  bearing, 
with  her  statuesque  arms,  her  flow- 
ing train,  the  triple  strings  of  pearls 
displayed  on  her  superb  bosom.  I 
see  her  sitting  as  if  enthroned  before 
the  golden  eagle  which  stretched  his 
wings  over  the  fruits  and  flowers  of 
the  Imperial  table." 

There  Madame  often  met  the 
wife  of  Bazaine.  "  Who  could 
have  told  me  then  that  this  same 
little  Marechale,  gay  as  any  bird, 
nibbling  at  the  tartines,  by  my 
side,  would  one  day  have  so  mel- 


1894.] 


ancholy  a  destiny  ? "  But,  indeed, 
the  same  reflection  might  have 
been  made  of  many  of  the  favoured 
Imperial  guests  who  are  passed 
in  lively  review  through  the  sun- 
shine which  preceded  the  eclipse. 
Emile  Augier,  although  they  were 
rivals  in  the  affections  of  the  play- 
goers, became  Feuillet's  fast  friend, 
and  several  of  his  letters  are  pub- 
lished. And  there  is  an  epigram- 
matic compliment  of  his  which  was 
written  in  Madame  Feuillet's  al- 
bum :  "  Cornme  on  vous  aimerait 
trop,  si  on  n'aimait  pas  assez  votre 
mari." 

If  Feuillet  involuntarily  worried 
his  wife,  he  was  both  fond  and 
proud  of  her ;  and  to  do  him  simple 
justice,  as  we  have  said,  he  ap- 
parently gave  her  carte  blanche 
with  the  modistes.  She  was  in- 
vited to  a  grand  dinner  at  the 
palace,  and  had  given  all  her  mind 
to  devise  a  bewitching  toilet. 
She  finally  trusted  much  to  the 
taste  of  the  fashionable  dress- 
maker, and  had  a  terrible  disillu- 
sioning when  the  dress  came  home. 
In  material  and  make  it  might 
have  been  meant  for  her  grand- 
mother. She  was  in  despair,  for 
something  must  be  done,  and  she 
had  barely  twenty  hours  at  her 
disposal.  Next  morning  she  was 
up  at  daybreak,  and  was  driven  to 
the  Hue  de  la  Paix,  to  the  abode 
of  an  artist  already  illustrious. 
It  was  no  other- than  the  immortal 
Worth,  who,  though  he  could 
scarcely  have  realised  his  future 
autocracy,  had  already  begun  to 
give  himself  airs. 

"  What  do  you  want  1 "  demand- 
ed the  concierge. 

"  Monsieur  Worth." 

"Still  in  bed.  Come  back  at 
mid-day." 

She  forced  the  consigne ;  she 
climbed  the  stairs ;  she  sent  in 
her  card  by  a  sleepy  servant ;  and 
in  a  quarter  of  an  hour  a  gentle- 


La  Femme  de  M.  Feuillet. 


383 


man  came  down,  wearing  an  ele- 
gant dressing-gown,  but  with  his 
ambrosial  locks  unbrushed.  "M. 
Worth  courteously  begs  me  to  go 
into  Madam e's  room  :  she  is  still 
in  bed,  but  desires  to  give  me  some 
advice."  Madame  was  all  smiles 
and  goodness. 

"  '  We  shall  be  glad  to  do  something 
for  you.  Your  name,  your  graceful 
style,  encourage  us.  This  evening 
you  shall  have  your  dress.' 

"  l  Ah,  merci,  madame  ! '  and  in  my 
gratitude  I  seize  the  charming  hand 
that  was  hanging  over  the  satin 
counterpane.  All  the  time  M. 
Worth,  leaning  on  one  of  the  bed- 
posts, was  dreaming  of  the  marvel- 
lous work  he  was  about  to  under- 
take." 

The  inspirations  of  his  genius  did 
not  fail  him. 

"But  as  it  was  necessary  to  try 
oil  the  dress  repeatedly,  and  as  I 
lived  a  long  way  off,  I  was  obliged  to 
install  myself  at  the  Worths'  for  the 
day. 

"  The  night  fell :  the  solemn  mo- 
ment was  to  sound.  They  lighted 
the  lustres  in  the  chamber  of  Madame 
Worth,  and  superb  dressers  pro- 
ceeded to  attire  me.  They  would 
have  put  powder  upon  my  shoulders 
and  rouge  upon  my  cheeks  ;  but  that 
saddened  me,  and  I  liked  myself  better 
without  these  embellishments. 

"  When  all  was  in  readiness,  they 
summoned  the  supreme  judge.  Worth 
appeared,  and  after  having  flattened 
down  with  his  hand  a  bow  which  was 
wanting  in  grace,  he  expressed  his 
satisfaction." 

So  did  her  husband,  and  so  did 
some  of  the  guests  at  the  dinner, 
who  paid  her  many  pretty  compli- 
ments on  the  ravishing  costume, 
where  the  floating  clouds  of  vapor- 
ous tulle  were  bound  by  the  girdle 
of  the  Goddess  of  Beauty.  Thence- 
forward Madame  Feuillet  and  the 
Worths  were  in  close  relations  of 
business  and  friendship,  though 
she  does  not  indulge  our  curiosity 
with  the  bills.  When  we  are  on 


384 

the  subject  of  dresses  and  festivities, 
we  may  recall  an  amusing  incident 
at  a  great  ball  at  Cherbourg  given 
to  the  English  fleet.  Madame  had 
dressed  for  it  magnificently,  d  la 
Ophelia. 

"  I  went  to  the  ball,  enchanted  to 
find  myself  so  beautiful.  The  Prefet 
Baron  Pron  came  to  tell  me  that  the 
Duke  of  Somerset,  perched  on  a  plat- 
form with  the  English  officers,  had 
asked  that  I  should  be  presented  to 
him.  With  some  emotion  I  took  the 
Pref  et's  arm  and  went  to  the  platform 
where  the  Duke  disappeared  among 
the  flags  and  the  wreaths.  Horror  ! 
mounting  the  steps  of  this  sort  of 
throne,  I  see  emerging  under  the 
tulle  flounces  of  my  petticoat,  and 
under  the  trimmings  of  silvery  foliage, 
the  tips  of  my  feet,  still  wearing 
their  slippers.  I  had  forgotten  to  put 
on  my  shoes.  And  these  slippers 
were  frightful :  red  morocco  with 
enormous  bows.  The  whole  of  the 
British  fleet  had  their  eyes  on  them  : 
it  was  all  over  with  my  glory. 
Quickly  I  drop  the  arm  of  the 
Prdfet,  hurrying  down  the  steps  and 
running  to  lose  myself  in  the  crowd. 
And  that  was  how  I  was  presented  to 
the  Duke  of  Somerset." 

That  digression,  in  due  chrono- 
logical order,  leads  on  to  another. 
The  admiral  commanding  at  Cher- 
bourg, like  most  other  men,  was 
eager  to  pay  court  in  an  honest 
way  to  the  fascinating  Madame 
Feuillet.  He  took  her  on  board 
the  Alabama  and  presented  her  to 
Captain  Sems  (sic).  The  captain, 
who  looked  very  like  the  first 
Napoleon,  received  them  in  the 
middle  of  his  collection  of  chrono- 
meters, and  they  had  a  pleasant 
visit.  So  it  was  with  deep  interest 
that,  at  a  dance  the  next  day,  she 
listened  to  a  confidential  communi- 
cation from  her  admirer  the  ad- 
miral. He  had  intelligence  from 
the  Admiralty  of  the  great  fight 
that  was  to  come  off  between  the 
Southern  cruiser  and  the  Kear- 
sage.  He  offered  to  take  her  in 


La  Femme  de  M.  Feuillet. 


[Sept. 


his  private  boat  to  see  the  fight 
from  a  safe  position.  Needless  to 
say,  she  jumped  at  the  invitation, 
though  her  humanity  had  after- 
wards some  reason  for  regret. 
They  saw  the  Alabama  getting  up 
her  steam,  and  were  saluted  by  the 
officers  who  had  welcomed  them 
the  day  before.  They  saw  the 
whole  course  of  the  action,  and 
notwithstanding  the  terrible  can- 
nonade, neither  vessel  seemed  for 
a  time  to  have  suffered  much  dam- 
age. "  Of  a  sudden  the  Alabama 
shuddered,  .  .  .  the  pitiless  enemy 
continued  to  fire,  but  the  Alabama 
replied  no  longer.  Soon  her  masts 
and  her  funnels  flew  up  in  frag- 
ments in  the  air."  Then  she  went 
down,  stern  foremost.  The  ad- 
miral's party  were  half-way  back 
in  their  boat,  "  when  we  saw  a 
sort  of  raft  surmounted  by  a  human 
head.  We  soon  saw  that  the  raft 
was  a  hen-coop  to  which  a  man,  or 
rather  a  fragment  of  a  man,  was 
tied :  the  legs  were  gone  from  the 
living  corpse.  It  was  horrible  to 
see.  They  picked  up  the  poor 
wretch  and  stretched  him  in  one 
of  the  boats,  but  he  was  no  sooner 
laid  down  than,  uttering  a  piteous 
cry,  he  expired." 

To  glance  back,  there  is  an 
interesting  account  of  Feuillet's 
canvass  for  election  to  the  Aca- 
demy, when  he  made  the  acquaint- 
ance for  the  first  time  of  some  of 
the  most  distinguished  French 
statesmen  and  litterateurs.  It  is 
all  narrated  in  letters  to  his  wife, 
who  was  then  living  at  St  L6. 
The  correspondence  begins  with 
a  characteristic  remark  which  is 
more  than  half -apologetic.  Where 
is  the  consistency  of  the  man  who 
had  once  sought  for  happiness  in 
seclusion  ?  "  I  have  come  to  the 
conclusion  that  there  is  no  really 
perfect  happiness  for  the  man  who 
does  not  take  the  trouble  to  attain 
the  degree  of  consideration  for 


1894.] 


La  Fetnme  de  M.  Feuillet. 


385 


which  he  was  intended."  So  on 
that  principle  Feuillet  went  to 
work,  hunting  up  and  courting 
the  electors.  Thiers  promised 
warm  support  at  once.  Calling 
on  that  grand  seigneur  the  Due  de 
Broglie,  who,  however,  was  ex- 
tremely civil,  the  weak  nerves  of 
the  debutant  were  nearly  too  much 
for  him.  He  was  almost  as  much 
overcome  in  the  antechamber  of 
Guizot.  "I  should  never  have 
recognised  him.  He  is  very  short, 
but  fresh  and  upright.  II  a  encore 
1'ceil  superbe,  mais  sans  durete" 

In  the  evening  he  went  to  look 
up  Lamartine. 

"  I  enter  :  I  see  many  overcoats  in 
the  antechamber ;  I  shudder  at  the 
idea  of  finding  all  my  competitors 
assembled  with  the  great  man,  and  it 
seems  to  me  I  am  ready  to  die  of 
shame.  Monsieur  Feuillet — *  Mon- 
sieur qui  1 '  exclaims  in  strong  and 
impatient  tones  the  immortal  old 
man.  ...  I  swear  to  you,  my  dar- 
ling, that  to  face  such  situations  and 
to  come  out  without  white  hair,  one 
should  have  a  fine  dose  of  composure." 

Lamartine  led  him  apart  to  a  sofa, 
put  him  at  his  ease,  and  paid  him 
a  happily  turned  compliment.  "He 
has  a  magnificent  forehead,  nose, 
eyes,  and  eyebrows,  all  pregnant 
with  genius."  Feuillet  did  a 
double  stroke  of  business  with 
M.  Sacy  of  the  '  Debats.'  He 
promised  to  endeavour  to  temper 
the  sarcastic  criticisms  of  Jules 
Janin,  who,  according  to  Feuil- 
let, had  always  showed  a  perverse 
mechanceti  when  it  was  a  question 
of  any  of  his  novels  or  plays. 
Feuillet  was  duly  admitted  to  a 
fauteuil  with  all  the  honours,  and 
the  distinction  gave  his  energies  a 
new  stimulus.  He  had  fallen,  we 
are  told,  into  a  profound  discour- 
agement as  to  his  future  labours, 
saying  that  his  brain  was  emptied 
and  his  inspiration  gone.  The 
critics  had  come  near  to  flaying 


him  alive.  The  favourable  notices, 
though  they  were  in  the  great  ma- 
jority, gave  him  but  passing  plea- 
sure :  those  that  were  unfavourable 
caused  him  lasting  and  intolerable 
pain.  Yet  only  one  of  his  stage 
pieces  was  a  failure. 

"  I  shall  never  forget,"  says  his 
wife,  "  the  night  after  the  representa- 
tion. He  walked  up  and  down  his 
room  like  a  maniac,  refusing  all  my 
consolations,  and  swearing  to  abandon 
his  career.  I  finished  by  aggravating 
his  pains  in  seeking  to  soothe  them, 
and  I  left  him,  hoping  he  would  find 
rest  in  solitude.  But  from  my  room 
I  heard  him  still  walk  and  sigh ;  and 
I  suffered  so  much  myself  in  assisting 
at  his  martyrdom  through  the  wall, 
that  at  last  I  took  refuge  on  the  stair- 
case, where  I  passed  the  rest  of  the 
night." 

We  have  lingered  with  Madame 
Octave,  so  shall  dismiss  very  briefly 
her  husband's  letters  from  the  Im- 
perial residences,  which  fill  the  con- 
cluding chapters.  She  was  living 
quietly  with  their  family  in  the 
country,  and  he  kept  her  minutely 
informed  of  all  that  was  going  on. 
The  lively  letters  are  full  of  gossip 
— the  record  of  a  continual  round 
of  frivolities  and  Court  fooleries. 
For  the  romance- writer  and  dram- 
atist had  turned  courtier,  and  had 
become  a  favourite  with  both  Em- 
peror and  Empress.  He  was  a 
frequent  and  familiar  guest  at 
Compiegne,  and  in  1867  he  re- 
ceived the  appointment  of  librarian 
at  Fontainebleau.  Excitement 
and  satisfaction  in  Court  favour 
had  pretty  nearly  cured  his  nerves : 
he  writes  when  he  had  taken  up 
his  abode  at  Fontainebleau,  "  Re- 
assure yourself,  dear  little  friend. 
No  nerves,  notwithstanding  the 
belfry  which  is  immediately  above 
my  head.  I  am  devoted  to  bel- 
fries. But  this  one  has  chimed  in 
the  ears  of  the  Duchessed'Etampes, 
of  Diana  de  Poitiers,  of  Gabrielle 
d'Estrees."  In  spite  of  the  excite- 


386 


La  Femme  de  M.  Feuillet. 


[Sept. 


ments  of  such  associations  to  the 
historical  romance,  he  appears  to 
have  been  incorrigibly  idle.  As  in 
the  case  of  Madame  d'Arblay 
when  in  waiting  on  Queen  Char- 
lotte, the  public  and  posterity  lost 
what  his  Imperial  patrons  gained. 
Once  the  Emperor  politely  ex- 
pressed his  apprehensions  on  the 
subject,  inquiring  whether  Feuillet 
could  do  any  work.  "  Yes,  Sire," 
answered  the  courtier.  "  Men- 
songe :  n'importe,"  was  the  conde- 
scending reply.  Sometimes  the 
Emperor  spoke  to  him  more  seri- 
ously, consulting  him  about  the 
currents  of  popular  feeling,  and 
the  new  political  reforms  he  was 
decided  to  introduce.  Sometimes 
he  asked  him  to  make  a  selection 
of  instructive  books,  and  once  in 
his  turn  he  gave  the  librarian  some 
valuable  archaeological  information 
when  he  took  him  to  the  site  of 
one  of  Caesar's  camps.  But  gener- 
ally it  was  a  ceaseless  whirl  of 
gaiety, — state  dinners,  dances,  re- 
ceptions, plays,  charades — in  which 
Feuillet  often  designed  the  tab- 
leaux and  costumes — andthepetits 
jeux  innocents  in  which  the  Em- 
press delighted.  There  was  nothing 
pleased  her  more  than  impromptu 
picnics  in  the  Forests, — there  is  a 
pleasant  picture  of  the  dignified 
Italian  ambassador,  in  a  tight- 
buttoned  and  decorated  frock-coat, 
scrambling  after  her  Majesty  over 


the  rocks ;  and  Feuillet  congratu- 
lates himself  on  escaping  the  cas- 
ualties that  were  common,  in  the 
shape  of  sprains  and  strains.  Yet 
from  time  to  time  we  get  sinister 
glimpses  of  the  dark  clouds  that 
were  gathering  on  the  political 
horizon.  Notably,  a  deadly  gloom 
fell  on  the  palace  of  Fontainebleau, 
when  there  was  scarcely  an  affec- 
tation of  his  usual  gaiety,  and  the 
Empress  had  a  violent  attack  of 
nerves,  on  the  day  when  young 
Cavaignac  refused  to  accept  a  prize 
from  the  hands  of  the  Prince  Im- 
perial. The  volume  ends  abruptly 
with  a  postscript : — 

"Three  years  have  passed  since 
those  days  of  fetes.  We  have  gone 
through  the  war  and  the  Commune." 

Visiting  the  blackened  ruins  of 
the  Tuileries  : — 

"In  the  midst  of  the  chaos,  our 
tearful  eyes  looked  for  the  masters  of 
the  place  who  had  been  our  friends, 
sought  the  brilliant  phantoms  and 
poetic  elegancies  of  a  past  that  had 
been  the  envy  of  all  the  nations. 
Nothing  of  it  left  but  the  black  gulf, 
over  which  glimmered  a  few  strag- 
gling stars.  It  was  a  world  which 
had  vanished." 

And  so  the  curtain  comes  down 
on  this  '  Comedie  Humaine,'  whose 
tragic  ddnoilment  is  matter  of 
history. 


1894.] 


Thirty  Years  of  Shikar. — Conclusion. 


387 


THIRTY  YEAES  OF  SHIKAE. — CONCLUSION. 


DURING  my  fifteen  years  in  Oudh 
I  enjoyed  a  fair  amount  of  sport 
other  than  that  of  the  Terai.  My 
official  duties  while  I  was  in  that 
province  involved  a  six  months' 
tour  through  the  twelve  districts 
into  which  Oudh  was  divided,  and 
into  every  portion  of  them,  where 
there  might  be  an  office  or  dis- 
tillery to  inspect  or  a  jheel  to 
shoot  over.  Every  year  I  rode  and 
drove  a  distance  of  about  3000 
miles ;  and  this  nomadic  life  gave 
me  opportunities  of  visiting  all  the 
best  shikar  country,  whatever  the 
distance  from  my  headquarters 
might  be.  Unfortunately  for  me, 
I  could  not  always  ensure  being 
first  in  the  field  at  every  point. 
It  frequently  happened  that  other 
men,  similarly  inclined  with  my- 
self, arrived  before  me,  and  got  the 
first  and  best  of  the  shooting. 
These  rivals  sallied  forth  from 
every  district  sudder  station,  many 
of  them  from  many  quarters,  and, 
single  -  handed,  I  could  not  cope 
with  them  in  the  race;  so  went 
the  cream  of  the  shooting  to  them, 
and  the  skim  to  me  who  followed. 

But  when  fortune  was  good 
enough  to  smile  upon  me,  I  made 
fairly  good  bags  of  snipe  between 
November  and  March  while  the 
season  lasted.  I  did  not  expect 
to  beat  that  Kanchrapara  record 
of  51 1  couple  :  20  couple  satisfied 
me,  and  when  I  reached  30  couple 
I  considered  that  there  was  nothing 
left  to  wish  for  immediately  in  the 
way  of  snipe.  And  very  frequently 
I  shared  the  good  things  of  the 
jheel  with  friends  who  came  from 
Lucknow  or  elsewhere  to  join  my 
camp ;  and  a  possible  big  bag  for 
a  single  gun  became  a  very  modest 
one  for  three  or  four. 

Fairly  good  quail -shooting  was 


to  be  had  in  the  wheat  and  grain 
fields,  and  in  dry  grass  cover  of  a 
certain  kind,  from  December  to 
April ;  but  in  this  branch  of  sport 
the  shooter  had  to  compete  with 
the  man  of  nets — the  native  who 
caught  the  birds  alive  for  the 
quaileries  of  Anglo-Indians.  And 
one  may  well  pardon  the  pur- 
chasers of  these  netted  fowl;  for 
when  in  the  summer  solstice  the 
Anglo -Indian  is  a  close  prisoner 
within  the  kus-kus  tattied  walls, 
and  below  an  ever-swinging  pun- 
kah ;  when  his  eye  cannot  bear 
the  light  of  mid-day,  and  his  jaded 
appetite  cannot  tolerate  the  gram- 
fed  mutton  or  gun-bullock  beef  of 
his  healthier  days — the  quail,  round 
and  tender,  served  in  a  vine-leaf 
wrapper,  comes  as  an  appetising 
delicacy,  and  saves  that  man  from 
sheer  starvation.  The  teal  or  wild 
duck,  similarly  kept  and  fattened 
in  a  tealery,  is  another  possible 
article  of  food  when  the  luxurious 
Anglo-Indian  feels  that  without 
some  tremendous  tonic  he  is  un- 
equal to  the  consumption  of  a  roast 
butterfly-wing.  Oh,  they  are  truly 
a  luxurious  people,  those  Anglo- 
Indians,  as  so  many  Englishmen 
believe !  Even  if  they  have  not 
as  everyday  incidents  of  their  daily 
life  the  plashing  of  cool  fountains, 
the  waving  of  fans  by  ox-eyed 
houris,  and  other  delights  of  the 
kind  commonly  credited  to  them, 
they  have  quail  and  teal  as  afore- 
said, and  the  splashing  of  the  water 
upon  the  tatties,  and  much  dis- 
turbance of  moistened  air  by  wav- 
ing punkahs,  and  rheumatism  in- 
cidental to  that  artificial  moisture, 
and  prickly  heat,  and  mosquitoes, 
and  white  ants  in  that  final  stage 
of  their  existence  when,  rising  from 
the  floor  on  ephemeral  wings,  they 


Thirty  Years  of  Shikar.— Conclusion. 


388 

knock  against  and  fall  upon  or  into 
everything,  and  shed  their  wings 
everywhere  before  they  perish. 
All  those  delectable  things,  and 
others  of  much  the  same  sort,  are 
given  to  the  Anglo-Indian,  and  yet 
he  does  not  understand  that  his 
life  is  full  of  delight  and  sensuous 
joys  ('Arabian  Nights'  passim), 
and  allows  thoughts  of  furlough 
and  the  decline  of  the  rupee  to 
cast  their  shadow  upon  him. 

Those  white  ants,. by  the  way, 
if  not  sportive  themselves,  are  the 
cause  of  sport  to  others — the  crows 
and  kites,  to  wit.  They  are  not 
intellectual  things,  even  to  the 
moderate  level  of  the  elephant, 
and  in  the  absence  of  any  restrain- 
ing instinct  they  often  swarm  out 
of  their  earthen  homes  while  it 
is  yet  light ;  and  while  they  are 
fluttering  in  the  air  seeking  for 
something  to  knock  their  heads 
against,  the  birds  of  prey  assemble, 
and  swooping  hither  and  thither 
among  the  insect  battalions,  devour 
them  wholesale.  This  comes  by 
way  of  just  retribution  to  the 
white  ant,  in  that  that  insect 
shares  with  Time  the  discredit  of 
being  edax  rerum.  It  devours  the 
beams  and  roof,  and  walls  and 
floor,  and  mats  and  furniture  of 
the  Indian  household.  It  is  said 
to  have  devoured  the  rupees  in  a 
Government  collectorate — that  is, 
the  native  treasurer  alleged  that 
this  had  happened  when  his  balance 
in  hand  showed  a  considerable 
deficit. 

Revenons  &  nos  cailles.  In  Oudh 
the  gunnist  was  satisfied  with  the 
moderate  bags  of  quail  that  came 
to  him  in  the  ordinary  course. 
He  did  not  resort  to  the  em- 
ployment of  call-birds,  as  is  the 
fashion  of  the  Punjab,  where  these 
decoy-birds  are  put  down  over- 
night to  attract  all  the  wild  quail 
within  earshot.  Bags  of  50  and 
100  brace  are  the  consequence  of 


[Sept. 


this  practice :  we  in  Oudh  were 
satisfied  with  15  to  30  brace  that 
fell  to  us  haphazard  in  the  course 
of  much  patient  beating  of  cover, 
and,,  after  two  or  three  years' 
modest  shooting  of  this  kind,  I 
only  shot  quail  when  they  rose 
from  my  path  to  a  snipe  jheel,  or 
when,  during  the  last  hour  of  the 
day,  five  to  ten  brace  were  to  be 
got  out  of  the  grain  or  wheat  fields 
close  to  my  tent. 

Hares,  black  and  grey  partridges, 
and  (in  the  Transgogra  districts) 
florikan,  were  occasionally  to  be 
got  in  small  numbers,  arid  of 
larger  game  antelope,  neelghai, 
and  hog-deer. 

Black-buck  (antelope)  shooting  I 
found  very  fascinating  for  a  time. 
It  is  a  form  of  shikar  that  gener- 
ally exercises  all  one's  patience, 
and  accuracy  of  hand  and  eye, 
and  frequently  exercises  all  one's 
muscles.  Native  shikaris  stalk 
them  from  behind  a  cow  with 
eminent  success ;  but  it  is  not 
given  to  every  European  to  be 
competent  to  manage  an  Indian 
cow,  and  I  never  tried  that  method. 
I  have  shot  them  from  behind  my 
horse,  with  rifle  rested  upon  the 
saddle,  but  mostly  I  followed  them 
on  foot;  and  I  think  the  more 
open  attack,  when  made  with  due 
caution,,  is  the  more  efficacious. 
My  plan  was  that  of  oblique 
attack.  When  I  sighted  a  black- 
buck  at  a  distance,  I  walked 
straight  for  it,  until  it  took  notice 
of  me  (say  at  200  yards'  distance)  ; 
then  I  faced  slightly  away  from 
it,  and  walked  for  a  point  that 
lay  a  hundred  yards  to  right  or 
left  of  it :  when  for  a  few  moments 
it  resumed  grazing,  I  made  a  crab- 
like  advance  that  brought  me 
something  nearer  to  it  on  a  direct 
line,  but  always  with  averted  face ; 
and  when  that  black-buck  started,  I 
brought  my  rifle  (hitherto  held  con- 
cealed behind  me)  to  the  present,  and 


1894.] 


Thirty  Years  of  Shikar. — Conclusion. 


389 


fired  a  snapshot,  aimed,  for  choice, 
at  a  point  just  behind  the  shoulder. 
I  found  that  I  succeeded  better 
with  this  snapshooting  at  a  run- 
ning buck  than  with  the  more 
deliberate  sighting  of  a  standing 
one  ;  and,  at  any  rate,  I  succeeded 
so  well  in  my  judgment,  that  I 
sickened  myself  of  black -buck 
shooting  on  any  large  scale.  I  be- 
came blase  as  to  this  form  of  sport 
after  killing  twenty-two  buck  in 
three  consecutive  days.  I  might 
possibly  have  escaped  from  this 
feeling  but  for  the  result  of  the 
third  day  of  those  three ;  albeit, 
on  the  second,  suspicion  whispered 
within  me  that  I  was  converting 
myself  into  the  meat-purveyor  for 
the  villagers  round  about.  But 
on  the  evening  of  that  third  day, 
when  the  carcasses  of  eight  black- 
buck  and  a  doe  (killed  by  a  bullet 
that  first  penetrated  and  killed  a 
buck) — nine  carcasses  in  all — were 
hanging  from  the  branches  of  trees 
around  my  tent,  I  felt  that  I 
was  a  butcher  undisguised,  and 
that  my  slaughtering  hand  had 
converted  that  tranquil  grove  into 
a  butcher's  shambles.  From  that 
time  out  I  never  made  a  business 
of  pursuing  them,  but  shot  them 
only,  one  at  a  time,  when  I  or 
my  followers  wanted  venison. 

And  however  ardently  the  Brit- 
on's longing  to  kill  something  may 
burn  in  one's  breast  —  however 
much  one  may  "see  red" — one 
may  well  be  spared  the  pain  of  see- 
ing some  of  the  black-buck's  death 
agonies.  It  is  well  enough  when 
the  animal  falls  dead  at  the  first 
shot ;  but  when  it  flies  before  one 
on  legs  broken  by  ill-directed  bul- 
lets, running  011  the  stumps  of  those 
shattered  limbs,  the  sight  is  apt  to 
sicken  one,  and  bring  shame  upon 
one's  handiwork. 

As  for  neelghai,  I  was  wild  to 
kill  one  when  I  went  to  Oudh,  if 
only  because  I  had  never  as  much 

VOL.  CLVI. NO.  DCCCCXLVII. 


as  seen  one  in  Deoghur.  But  very 
little  neelghai  went  a  long  way 
with  me  in  every  sense :  as  meat 
it  was  only  a  partial  success  when 
none  other  was  to  be  had;  as  an 
object  for  the  rifle  it  was  only 
preferable  to  that  domestic  buffalo 
which  I  killed,  in  that  it  could  be 
killed  for  nothing;  as  a  creature 
to  be  ridden  down  it  was,  when, 
after  its  habit,  it  got  into  heavy 
tussocky  ground  and  swamp,  and 
the  thick-growing  reed,  distinctly 
a  disappointment,  and,  moreover, 
a  disappointment  that  caused  me 
one  or  two  heavy  falls.  I  gave  up 
neelghai  after  killing  two  or  three 
of  them. 

This  animal  known  as  neelghai 
(or  blue  cow)  in  Oudh,  and  deemed 
by  Hindoos  of  that  province  to  be 
sacred,  as  one  of  the  bovine  tribe, 
was  known  in  Deoghur  as  Ghoraroz, 
and  counted  by  the  local  Hindoos 
as  one  of  the  deer  species,  which 
it  was  lawful  to  kill  and  eat, — as 
a  fact  it  is,  I  suppose,  one  of  the 
antelopes.  This  divergence  of 
views,  entertained  by  Hindoos  of 
different  localities,  is  nothing,  as 
an  anomaly,  compared  with  the 
varying  treatment  extended  by 
Hindooism  universally  to  different 
members  of  the  bovine  kind :  on 
the  one  hand,  the  veneration  for 
the  cow,  which  makes  that  animal's 
life  something  sacred,  and  only 
permits  of  the  twisting  of  the 
venerated  creature's  tail ;  on  the 
other  hand,  the  general  practice  at 
the  Doorjah  Poojah,  and  on  other 
occasions,  of  sacrificing  buffaloes 
to  the  gods  by  beheading  them 
before  the  altars. 

Among  the  game  (?)  that  I  per- 
mitted myself  to  shoot,  or  shoot 
at,  during  my  wanderings  in  the 
Oudh  districts,  were  alligators — 
the  ghurrial,  or  long-nosed  saurian, 
whose  prey  was  fish,  and  the  mug- 
gur,  whose  prey  was  man  or  cow, 
or  any  animal  that  it  could  catch, 
2C 


Thirty  Years  of  Shikar.— Conclusion. 


390 

with  fish  on  fast  days.  Neither  of 
these  is  of  attractive  appearance, 
but  I  think  the  latter  is  the  most 
repulsive  member  of  the  animal 
creation.  Of  the  muggur  it  may 
be  said,  indeed,  monstrum  horren- 
dum  informe;  all  the  epithets 
signifying  forms  of  ugliness  may 
be  fairly  applied  to  this  brute: 
shapelessness  is  the  main  charac- 
teristic of  its  blunt  head,  the 
bloated  carcass,  and  those  legs 
that,  curtailed  of  their  fair  pro- 
portions, are  merely  flappers. 
When  it  lies  stretched  along  the 
ooze  or  sand  of  a  river  bank,  or  by 
some  stagnant  pool,  it  may  well  be 
taken  for  a  harmless,  if  hideous 
and  very  dirty  log,  but  it  is  not 
harmless  or  as  useful  as  that  dere- 
lict timber,  and  its  disposition  is 
evil  as  its  body.  Yet  has  that 
monstrous  form  something  in  it 
which  is  precious  to  somebody, 
even  as  the  tess  ugly  toad  is  said 
to  bear  a  jewel  in  its  head.  There 
is  a  portion  of  the  internal  struc- 
ture of  the  muggur  which  is  greed- 
ily seized  upon  by  natives  as  a 
charm,  whenever  the  muggur  is 
given  over  into  the  native's  hands 
for  autopsy. 

When  I  corrected  the  term 
"shooting"  into  "shooting  at" 
muggurs,  I  did  so  advisedly,  be- 
cause shooting  seems  to  convey  the 
idea  of  bagging  the  creature  shot, 
and  this  is  by  no  means  the  ordin- 
ary result  of  firing  at  an  alligator ; 
for,  as  far  as  my  experience  goes, 
the  alligator  is  never  to  be  seen 
save  in  the  water  or  on  the  edge 
of  it,  and  even  when  it  is  lying 
asleep  on  a  sand  or  niud  bank 
some  feet  from  the  water,  no  bullet 
that  does  not  paralyse  it  on  the 
instant  will  prevent  it  from  lum- 
bering (the  word  gliding  would 
convey  the  idea  of  too  graceful 
movement)  into  its  aqueous  home. 
A  bullet  in  that  point  where  the 
head  and  body  join,  and  where  a 


[Sept. 


neck  would  be  if  this  saurian  had 
a  neck,  will  stop  an  alligator, 
and  it  is  by  such  a  shot  that  I 
have  killed  and  bagged  them. 

Muggurs  and  ghurrials,  with  an 
occasional  wild  goose,  were  the  only 
things  I  had  to  shoot  what  time 
I  went  down  the  Ganges  in  a 
small  covered  boat  to  visit  certain 
trade  registration  posts  on  the 
Oudh  frontier.  Alligators  abound- 
ed there :  small  ones  were  to  be 
seen  by  the  score  on  the  churs 
and  sand-pits,  and  every  now  and 
then  a  big  one — a  muggur  of  16 
feet,  or  a  ghurrial  of  20  feet — was 
to  be  observed,  all  of  them  with 
noses  pointed  towards  the  river, 
and  most  of  them  doubtless  much 
more  wide  awake  than  they  looked. 
There,  upon  the  sand,  these  reptiles 
basked  in  the  genial  warmth  of  a 
December  mid-day  sun,  and  there 
I  now  and  again  killed  and  landed 
one. 

But  the  place  for  shooting  at 
them  was  the  bridge  of  boats  across 
the  Gogra,  on  the  Bharaich  road. 
I  have  stood  on  that  bridge  (not 
at  midnight)  and  fired  at  twenty 
or  thirty  of  them  within  the  hour ; 
but  always  I  had  to  take  them  as 
they  rose  out  of  the  depths,  and 
when  they  presented  only  their 
heads  as  targets.  Over  and  over 
again  I  have  seen  them  sink  in 
response  to  my  shot,  and  the  clear 
water  of  the  river  incarnadined  by 
what  might  well  have  been  their 
life's  blood;  but  only  once  did  I 
bag  one  in  that  way,  and  then  I 
succeeded  as  a  consequence  of  bad 
shooting.  I  hit  a  ghurrial  on  the 
projecting  jaw  instead  of  in  the 
head :  instead  of  sinking  in  the 
water  to  die,  it  emerged  upon  the 
bank,  and  there  was  disposed  of  by 
a  shot  in  the  vital  spot. 

But  the  shikar  of  each  year  from 
1863  to  1876  (save  1869,  when  I 
was  home  on  sick-leave)  to  which 
I  always  looked  forward  with  the 


1894.] 


Thirty  Years  of  Shikar. — Conclusion. 


391 


keenest  interest  and  anticipation 
of  enjoyment  was  that  of  the 
Terai.  Would  that  I  had  kept 
some  sort  of  diary  in  those  days, 
to  which  I  could  refer  at  this 
juncture,  for  my  memory,  chal- 
lenge it  as  I  may,  utterly  declines 
to  serve  me  in  some  particulars 
that  might  be  deemed  worthy  of 
mention.  By  a  process  of  exhaus- 
tive analysis  I  can  affirm  that  I 
made  thirteen  expeditions  into 
that  region,  and  I  arrive  at  that 
positive  result  by  a  process  which 
is  as  simple  as  exhaustive,  for  I 
went  to  the  Terai  regularly  every 
season  from  1853  to  1876 — save 
that  of  1869,  when  I  was  not  in 
India.  Then,  as  I  usually  spent 
from  four  to  six  weeks  there,  I 
make  out  with  tolerable  accuracy 
that  I  gave  in  the  aggregate  some 
sixteen  months  to  the  pursuit  of 
tigers  thereaway  ;  but  when  I  try 
to  recall  the  total  number  of  tigers 
killed  on  those  occasions,  I  am 
utterly  at  a  loss.  I  can  remember 
that  in  1863  I  got  ten,  and  I 
suppose  that  score  remains  indel- 
ibly fixed  in  my  mind  because  at 
the  time  it  seemed  to  me  highly 
satisfactory  for  a  novice  in  the 
Terai  methods;  but  I  cannot  fix 
any  total  for  any  subsequent  year, 
and  can  only  say  in  that  regard 
that  the  annual  total  was  more 
than  once  below  ten,  and,  indeed, 
as  low  as  five  or  six. 

Another  point  as  to  which  my 
memory  will  not  be  jogged  to  any 
purpose  is  as  to  my  companions  in 
some  of  those  thirteen  expeditions. 
Two  or  three  times  I  went  out 
alone,  but  even  as  to  ten  or  eleven 
occasions  I  cannot  make  up  my 
parties ;  and  in  addition  to  those  I 
have  already  named  as  my  com- 
panions of  the  Terai,  I  can  only 
think  of  Colonel  M'Bean,  chief 
of  the  Lucknow  commissariat,  E. 
J.  Lugard,  aide-de-camp  to  the 
General  commanding  the  Lucknow 


Division,  Westmorland,  R.E.,  and 
Mitchell  (who  was  doing  India 
with  Sir  William  Ffolkes).  But 
then  some  whom  I  have  named  were 
with  me  more  than  once, — Peters, 
for  instance,  three  times,  and  Jacky 
Hills  even  more  frequently. 

My  memory  is  green  enough, 
however,  when  I  think  of  the 
pleasant  life  and  splendid  sport 
that  it  was  my  good  fortune  to 
enjoy  so  often  under  the  shadow  of 
the  Nepaul  hills ;  and  although, 
doubtless,  the  more  agreeable  feat- 
ures of  those  jaunts  are  most  pro- 
minent in  my  reminiscences,  I  can 
without  difficulty  recall  those  that 
may  be  regarded  as  drawbacks, 
and,  having  arrayed  all  the  dis- 
agreeable characteristics  before  my 
mind's  eye,  I  should  even  now  be 
glad  to  encounter  them  all  for  the 
sake  of  one  more  month  after 
tiger. 

For  many  of  the  minor  trials  of 
Terai  sport  not  yet  mentioned  the 
intelligent  elephant  is  directly  or 
indirectly  responsible.  It  is  weary 
work  riding  one,  whether  on  pad 
or  howdah  (pad-riding  being  the 
easier  of  the  two),  for  eight  or  ten 
hours  at  a  stretch ;  and  starting 
from  our  camp  at  10  A.M.,  it  often 
happened  that  our  home-coming 
was  delayed  till  8  P.M.  Perhaps 
we  had  to  travel  eight  or  ten 
miles  to  reach  the  swamp  where 
our  day's  work  was  to  be  com- 
menced. Possibly  we  were  drawn 
away  from  camp  by  a  tiger's  trail 
or  something  incidental  to  the 
business  in  hand  which  drove  that 
camp  out  of  our  minds ;  or,  worst 
of  all,  it  chanced  now  and  again 
that  we  lost  our  way  in  the  forest. 

With  what  gruesome  import  the 
announcement  fell  upon  my  ear 
that  the  way  was  lost  when,  being 
benighted  in  those  trackless  forests, 
we  were  ten  miles  from  our  tents 
and  dinner  and  bed,  and  some 
unknown  distance  from  any  other 


Thirty  Years  of  Shikar.— Conclusion. 


392 

human  habitation  !  But  our  guide 
would  impart  this  intelligence  with 
as  full  a  measure  of  apathy  as  if 
he  had  told  us  that  the  day  was 
Monday,  or  something  equally  im- 
material. "Rasta  bool  gya "  ("I 
have  forgotten  the  road")  would 
he  say;  and  euphonious  though 
that  brief  sentence  be,  it  came 
upon  one  as  sadly  discordant 
when  surrounded  on  every  side 


[Sept. 


tion;  one  can  only  shoot  on  one 
side  with  any  effect ;  and  a  lively 
tiger  may  possibly  join  the  party 
seated  there.  This  last  objection 
to  the  pad  is  all  the  more  prob- 
able by  reason  of  the  fact  that  the 
sportsman  cannot  shoot  all  round  : 
for,  supposing  that  man  to  be 
right-handed  and  only  able  to 
shoot  from  his  right  shoulder,  he 
would  be  unable,  without  shifting 


by  unmeasured  miles  of  forest-  his  position  on  the  pad,  to  fire  at 

a  tiger  close  to  him  on  his  right 
hand  ;  and  if  he  hurriedly  attempt- 
ed to  shift  his  position,  he  might 
very  well  fall  to  the  ground,  there 
to  try  conclusions  with  the  tiger. 

These  considerations  necessitate 
the  employment  of  the  howdah,  in 
which  it  behoves  one  to  stand  as 
long  as  there  is  any  chance  of  a 
shot.  In  my  first  season  in  the 
Terai  I  lost  a  tiger  through  non- 
observance  of  this  ordinance.  I 
had  been  beating  down  a  long 
water-course  in  the  forest  for  an 
unconscionable  time,  as  it  seemed 
to  me,  without  seeing  the  tiger  I 
was  after.  I  had  passed  through 
the  more  likely  cover  in  that  nar- 
row channel,  which,  dry  as  it  was 
at  that  season,  did  not  greatly 
promise  tigers ;  and  being  in  very 
patchy  grass,  I  thought  I  might 
safely  sit  down.  Hardly  had  I 
seated  myself,  when  a  tiger  got  up 
in  front  of  me,  and,  before  I  was 
on  foot  to  deal  with  it,  the  beast 
was  away  in  the  forest  on  my  left, 
never  to  be  seen  again  that  day. 
I  was  alone  on  that  occasion; 
there  was  no  second  gun  on  the 
alert  while  I  lazied,  and  so  it  was 
entirely  due  to  my  own  remissness 
that  my  bag  of  that  year  was  ten 
instead  of  eleven. 

Laziness  of  this  sort  is  palliated, 
if  not  excused,  by  the  tiring  effect 
of  long  standing  in  a  howdah. 
Few  howdahs  are  boarded  at  the 


trees  that  in  their  sameness 
mocked  all  attempt  at  identifica- 
tion, and  by  their  denseness  of 
foliage  high  overhead  shut  out  the 
light  of  guiding  stars.  I  have 
spent  a  night  in  one  of  those 
forests,  and  had  an  opportunity  of 
learning  that  not  going  home  till 
morning  may  on  occasion  be  a  very 
painful  experience. 

Then  that  howdah,  that  bed  of 
Procrustes,  in  which  one  can 
neither  sit  nor  stand  with  any 
approach  to  reasonable  ease,  and 
in  which  a  recumbent  attitude  is 
impossible!  Its  advantages  are 
— (1)  that,  standing  in  it,  a  man 
can  shoot  on  every  side  of  him  : 
(2)  that  it  is  convenient  for  the 
carriage  of  the  occupant's  para- 
phernalia,— his  guns  on  racks  on 
either  side;  his  ammunition  in  a 
trough  in  front;  his  other  re- 
quisites in  leathern  pockets  here 
and  there  on  the  sides  of  the 
machine,  or,  as  to  that  bee-blanket, 
on  his  seat:  and  (3)  that  in  the 
hinder  compartment  an  attendant 
can  sit  or  stand  to  hold  that  mon- 
ster umbrella  over  his  head,  or, 
when  quick  loading  is  required, 
take  from  his  hand  the  gun  just 
fired  and  re-charge  it.  Those  are 
the  advantages  ;  otherwise  the 
howdah  is  an  abomination. 

The  great  merit  of  the  pad  is  its 
easiness  compared  with  the  how- 
dah; but  seated  upon  that,  with 
an  attendant,  one  can  only  carry 
a  second  gun  and  some  am  muni- 


bottom,    so   as   to   admit   of    any 
choice  of  foothold,  and,  even  when 


1894.] 


Thirty  Tears  of  Shikar. — Conclusion. 


393 


they  are  boarded,  he  who  stands 
in  them  finds  it  expedient,  both 
for  general  comfort  (or  some  ap- 
proximation thereto)  and  accuracy 
of  shooting,  to  stand,  as  a  latter- 
day  Colossus,  with  extended  limbs 
and  wide-stretched  feet  that  rest 
(if  there  can  be  rest  in  a  howdah) 
upon  the  plates  or  foot-frames  on 
either  side  at  the  bottom  of  the 
howdah. 

Then  the  howdah  becomes  a  posi- 
tive nuisance  two  or  three  times 
a-day,  or  perhaps  all  day  long,  by 
inclining  over  on  one  side,  until  it 
seems  likely  to  topple  off  the  ele- 
phant. When  these  symptoms 
make  their  first  appearance  (possi- 
bly half  an  hour  after  one  has 
started)  a  halt  is  cried,  and  the 
whole  strength  of  the  company  is 
enlisted  to  restore  that  howdah  to 
its  equilibrium,  but  mostly  in  vain : 
mostly  it  is  as  obdurate  as  Humpty 
Dumpty  in  regard  to  being  set  up 
again,  and  proceeds  to  cant  over 
within  five  minutes  of  the  opera- 
tion that  aimed  at  its  rectification. 
Another  halt,  and  another  wrest- 
ling with  ropes  and  inexorable 
fate;  another  ephemeral  balance, 
and  another  diversity,  and  so  da 
capo  until  the  inevitable  final  step, 
when  a  man  hangs  on  to  the  upper 
side  of  the  howdah  as  a  compen- 
satory balance,  and  stops  there. 
Sometimes  two  men  are  required 
for  this  service,  when  they  are 
suggestive  of  those  footmen  who 
hung  on  at  the  back  of  the  State 
coach  of  the  early  Georgian  era. 

And  this  erratic  conduct  on  the 
howdah's  part  is  encouraged  by 
the  elephant's  action  when  labour- 
ing through  heavy  swamp.  When 
the  elephant  is  up  to  its  girths  in 
tenacious  mud,  it  heels  over  on  its 
right  side  to  extricate  its  left  hind- 
leg,  and  that  gymnastic  effort  being 
completed,  heels  over  on  its  left 
side  to  get  its  right  hind-leg  clear : 
so  it  rolls  heavily  from  side  to 


side,  like  a  Channel  steamer  in  a 
choppy  sea,  with  frequent  disar- 
rangement of  its  gear.  The  effect 
upon  its  passengers  may  be  left  to 
the  imagination ;  but,  in  order  to 
pile  up  the  agony  of  the  situation, 
I  may  add  that  sometimes  one  or 
more  tigers  may  be  skirmishing 
around  the  swamp  -  disabled  ele- 
phant, and  much  more  on  a  level 
with  the  riders  of  that  animal  than 
would  be  the  case  on  firmer  ground. 
But  any  disadvantage  arising  from 
this,  and  from  any  unusual  diffi- 
culty of  shooting,  must  be  regarded 
as  fully  compensated  by  the  ele- 
phant's inability  to  bolt.  As  for 
shooting  from  an  elephant,  there 
is,  in  my  opinion,  but  one  way  of 
doing  this — viz.,  to  sight  one's  ob- 
ject clearly,  let  the  eye  direct  the 
hand  in  levelling  the  gun  or  rifle, 
without  looking  at  sights  or  bar- 
rels, and  pull  the  trigger  on  the 
instant  that  the  weapon  touches 
the  shoulder.  It  is  impossible  to 
take  deliberate  aim  at  anything 
from  an  elephant,  because  that 
beast  is  never  still  by  any  chance  : 
even  when  it  is  standing  at  halt 
there  is  about  it  a  continuous 
motion — a  sort  of  ground -swell 
— which  is  just  as  certain  a  hin- 
drance of  a  long  aim  as  the  rougher 
jolting  that  characterises  its  lum- 
bering progress. 

Lastly,  as  connected  with  the 
trials  of  the  flesh  and  temper  that 
come  with  elephants,  let  me  say  a 
word  for  (I  mean  against)  the 
mahouts.  Many  natives  with 
whom  the  Anglo-Indian  has  to  do, 
more  especially  in  the  hot  weather, 
are  aggravating.  The  punkah- 
walla  who,  on  a  sultry  night  of 
June,  having  clutched  the  punkah 
rope  with  his  toe,  stretches  him- 
self out  at  length  in  the  verandah, 
and,  lulled  by  the  vain  imagining 
that  so  he  will  pull  the  punkah, 
goes  to  sleep,  is  of  this  class ;  so  is 
the  cook  who  strains  his  master's 


Thirty  Years  of  Shikar.— Conclusion. 


394 

soup  through  a  much  kerosened 
lamp-cloth  or  some  more  obnoxious 
medium ;  so,  too,  is  the  bearer,  or 
other  custodian  of  a  master's  pro- 
perty, who,  in  regard  to  some  in- 
dispensable chattel  lost  within  the 
last  twelve  hours,  swears  by  all 
his  gods  that  no  such  chattel  ever 
existed  or  that  it  was  satisfactorily 
disposed  of  years  ago, — all  these 
people,  and  others  of  their  kind, 
are  very  irritating  at  times,  but 
none  of  them  so  persistently  so  as 
mahouts  of  an  inferior  class. 

Some  elephant-drivers  take  an 
interest  in  their  work,  even  in  the 
work  of  beating  tigers  out  of  their 
lairs,  but  they  are  the  minority. 
The  majority  are  inspired  by  the 
one  ruling  idea  of  shirking  all  work 
that  can  any  way  be  avoided. 
Because  it  is  less  toilsome  to  sit  on 
the  pad  and  drive  with  a  casual 
touch  of  their  heel,  they  will  sit 
there,  although  they  lose  all  con- 
trol over  their  elephants  that  they 
possess  when,  sitting  on  the  neck 
with  their  feet  in  the  stirrups  and 
their  knees  pressed  against  the 
elephant's  ears,  they  urge  their 
mounts  forward.  Because  it  is  less 
troublesome  to  spend  the  day  with- 
out encountering  a  tiger,  they  will 
break  line  at  the  most  important 
juncture,  and  possibly  allow  a 
tiger  to  head  back  and  escape 
when  a  few  minutes  more  of  per- 
sistent effort  in  close  line  would 
have  seen  that  tiger  driven  into 
the  open  and  probably  killed.  Be- 
cause it  is  easier  driving  in  the 
light  cover  where  the  tiger  may 
not  be  expected,  they  will  scrupu- 
lously avoid  the  denser  patches  in 
which  it  should  be  looked  for. 
And  for  these  and  other  reasons, 
the  task  of  controlling  these  un- 
disciplined men — keeping  them  in 
something  like  an  effective  line  and 
getting  them  to  beat  in  likely  places 
— is  one  of  frequent  strain  and 
travail  that  may  well  try  the  most 


[Sept. 


Job-like  patience  and  drive  the 
meekest  of  masters  to  objurgation. 
I  always  endeavoured  on  these  ex- 
peditions to  enlist  the  sympathies 
of  the  mahouts  in  my  cause — to 
give  a  co-operative  tinge  to  it, 
by  the  promise  of  so  much  per 
tiger  head  in  addition  to  the  or- 
dinary buksheesh ;  but  this  did  not 
seem  to  affect  their  conduct  in  the 
slightest  degree. 

And  as  to  any  risk  to  be  run, 
the  mahout  who  sits  in  his  proper 
place  on  the  elephant's  neck  is  a 
good  deal  safer  than  appearances 
might  lead  one  to  imagine.  As 
long  as  his  elephant  keeps  upon  its 
feet  he  is  secure  enough :  a  tiger 
cannot  reach  him  from  the  front 
over  the  elephant's  head,  or  ordin- 
arily on  either  flank,  because  the 
elephant's  ears  cover  his  legs.  It  is 
true  that  one  of  Yule's  mahouts 
had  his  leg  smashed  by  a  tiger 
that  charged  from  behind  his  ele- 
phant's shoulder,  and  caught  his 
leg  when  the  elephant's  ear  flapped 
forward  for  an  instant ;  but  this 
was  a  quite  unique  incident,  as  far 
as  my  experience  is  concerned,  and 
I  know  of  no  other  exception  to 
the  general  rule  above  laid  down. 

When,  in  spite  of  many  ob- 
stacles presented  by  elephants  and 
mahouts,  a  tiger  is  killed,  there 
yet  remains  a  difficulty  to  be  coped 
with — viz.,  that  of  padding  the 
tiger.  There  lies  the  beautiful 
monarch  of  the  forest  shorn  of 
that  mighty  strength  that  ani- 
mated him  an  hour  ago,  and  harm- 
less now  as  the  bleating  lamb :  a 
gujbag  or  some  such  missile  has 
been  thrown  upon  the  stretched- 
out  body,  and  the  dull  thud  it  made 
upon  the  corpse  was  unattended  by 
any  sound  from,  or  motion  of,  that 
stricken  form.  It  is  dead ;  and, 
in  order  that  it  may  be  stripped  of 
its  black-barred  robe,  it  has  to  be 
carried  into  camp  upon  one  of  the 
pad  elephants, — so  now  descend 


1894.] 


Thirty  Years  of  Shikar. — Conclusion. 


395 


from  your  elephants,  you  mahouts 
and  attendants  of  the  more  stal- 
wart sort,  and  pad  that  tiger. 

Hie  labor,  hoc  opus  est.  A  full- 
grown  male  tiger  requires  a  good 
deal  of  lifting.  I  have  seen  four- 
teen men  putting  their  shoulders 
to  this  work,  or  pretending  to 
do  so,  without  immediately  placing 
the  tiger  high  enough  for  the  two 
or  three  men  mounted  on  the  pad 
to  secure  it.  I  remember  how, 
with  one  of  these  larger  brutes, 
Gream,  the  athlete,  and  Jacky 
Hills,  the  robust,  and  I  were  pro- 
minent among  the  workers,  and 
how,  taking  up  my  position  on  the 
pad,  I  hauled  vigorously  upon  the 
rope  which  we  had  passed  round 
the  tiger,  and  continuing  to  haul 
with  too  persistent  vigour  when 
the  tiger  had  slipped  from  the 
noose  I  hauled  upon,  went  over 
headlong  on  the  off-side ;  and  even 
now  I  can  recall  the  heat  of  that 
operation. 

When  one  comes  to  lifting  a 
dead  tiger,  one  becomes  fully 
aware  of  its  weight;  so  does  one 
arrive  at  due  appreciation  of  its 
strength  after  once  feeling  that 
fore-arm,  which  is  one  splendid 
mass  of  steel -like  muscle.  Then 
one  understands  how  the  tiger  in 
his  prime  can  throw  a  bullock 
over  its  shoulder  and  canter  away 
with  it.  Then,  too,  one  may  well 
come  to  pooh-pooh  the  claim  of  the 
lion  to  be  styled  the  king  of  beasts. 
But  however  interesting  may  be 
the  study  of  the  tiger  in  this  par- 
ticular phase  once  or  so,  it  palls 
after  a  time  :  lifting  it  is  peculiarly 
hard  and  hot  work,  and  it  is  dirty 
work  also,  and  is  sometimes  made 
particularly  exasperating  by  the 
Idches  of  the  elephant  selected  for 
the  carriage  of  the  tiger.  For  that 
intellectual  beast  is  required  to 
kneel  to  receive  its  freight,  and  to 
kneel  long  enough  to  allow  that 
freight  to  be  hoisted  on  to  the  pad 


and  fastened  on ;  and,  as  often  as 
not,  it  will  rise  at  the  critical 
moment,  just  when  the  tiger  has 
been  raised  to  the  edge  of  the  pad, 
and  tumble  the  tiger  and  some  of 
its  lifters  on  to  the  ground,  and 
so  bring  about  the  status  quo  ante. 
The  elephant  has  wonderful  intel- 
ligence in  some  utterly  useless 
directions.  It  will,  for  example, 
pick  up  a  pin  with  its  trunk,  and, 
I  daresay,  with  sufficient  encour- 
agement would  swallow  that  pin, 
and  convert  its  interior  economy 
into  a  pin-cushion ;  but  I  have 
never  known  one  direct  its  talents 
to  the  simplification  of  tiger- pad- 
ding, although  I  have  seen  many 
devote  their  minds  and  bodies  to 
the  unnecessary  duty  of  adding  to 
the  difficulties  of  that  operation. 

And  when  at  last  the  tiger  is 
padded,  the  elephant  has  to  be 
reckoned  with ;  for  as  likely  as 
not  it  will  for  the  next  hour  or 
so,  after  seeing  that  tiger  hoisted 
and  tied,  imagine  tigers  in  every- 
thing it  sees  and  every  sound  it 
hears.  It  is  well  at  such  a  time 
to  approach  an  elephant  with  con- 
siderable caution,  and  from  the 
front,  lest  it  make  itself  disagree- 
able. Poor  K.  B.  found  this  out 
on  one  occasion,  when,  after  help- 
ing to  pad  a  tiger,  he  ran  after  my 
elephant  to  mount  by  the  tail ;  for 
the  elephant,  hearing  him  coming 
from  the  rear,  necessarily  assumed 
that  he  was  a  tiger,  and  kicked 
out  at  him  with  such  force  and 
precision  as  sent  him  flying  for 
some  yards. 

This  tiger-padding  was  such  a 
nuisance  to  my  mind  that  when  I 
could  have  my  own  way,  and  it 
was  practicable,  I  left  a  man  with 
a  spare  elephant  behind  to  remove 
the  skin,  and  bring  that  into  camp, 
leaving  the  carcass  where  it  fell. 

The  shikari  who  hunts  the  tiger 
in  the  Terai  has  to  be  prepared 
for  many  blank  days — not  a  few 


396 


Thirty  Years  of  Shikar. — Conclusion. 


[Sept. 


days,  indeed,  so  blank  that  not 
a  shot  is  fired;  for  while  there 
is  any  chance  of  a  tiger  in  the 
neighbourhood  the  signal  to  shoot 
at  anything  is  withheld.  Many 
such  days  have  I  spent  in  driving 
through  swamp  or  stretches  of  dry 
grass,  or  the  broken  cover  of  forest- 
glades  and  nullahs,  when  sambhur 
with  magnificent  heads  and  fine 
horned  cheetul  have  got  up  at  my 
elephant's  feet  to  tempt  me;  and 
the  black  partridge  and  jungle 
fowl  have  flaunted  around  me  to 
beguile;  and  at  every  turn  game 
seemed  plentiful  as  never  they 
were  in  the  most  favoured  spot 
when  I  might  shoot  at  them.  On 
many  a  day  have  I  resisted  these 
temptations  with  a  stoicism  that 
would  have  set  up  a  dozen  of  those 
old-time  philosophers  with  St  An- 
thony thrown  in,  and  without  any 
reward  in  the  shape  of  tiger  or 
panther.  From  before  noon  till 
nightfall  I  have  pounded  along 
through  every  sort  of  cover,  al- 
ways hoping,  but  hoping  vainly, 
and  never  once  relaxing  the  iron 
rule,  "cease  firing." 

Very  curious  are  the  chances  of 
tiger-shooting  sometimes.  In  my 
first  season  in  the  Terai,  Lugard 
and  I  marched,  shooting  as  we 
went,  for  a  camping-ground  on  the 
edge  of  a  swamp  wherein  tigers  had 
been  often  found.  We  reached  our 
tents  in  the  evening,  and  ill-tidings, 
always  quick  of  travel,  met  us  be- 
fore we  descended  from  our  ele- 
phants. The  Nawab  Moosvomood- 
owlah  (uncle  of  the  ex -king  of 
Oudh)  had  that  day  beaten  our 
swamp  thoroughly,  and  got  noth- 
ing. It  was  melancholy  news,  and 
a  poor  appetiser  for  our  dinner. 
But  when  the  next  day  dawned 
there  was  nothing  for  it  but  to 
try  that  swamp  again,  on  the  off- 
chance  that  the  tiger  which  had 
not  come  into  it  yesterday  might 
be  there  to-day ;  and  so,  after  break- 


fast, and  an  hour  or  two  of  office 
work  for  me,  we  started.  The 
swamp  was  as  to  the  greater  part 
clear  water,  surrounded  on  three 
sides  by  open  country ;  but  along 
the  edge  next  to  the  forest  there 
was  a  strip  of  heavy  grass,  and  that 
we  beat  from  end  to  end  without 
a  glimpse  of  tiger.  Then,  acting 
upon  information  received  (as  the 
mysterious  police  -  constable  ob- 
serves), I  formed  the  elephants 
into  a  crescent-line  and  made  a 
cast  through  the  jungle  that  aimed 
at  beating  down  a  certain  nullah 
towards  the  swamp.  It  was  not  a 
very  hopeful  business,  for  up  in  the 
forest  a  tiger  when  started  may 
just  as  well  go  one  way  as  another. 
There  was  the  possibility  that  the 
thick  grass  that  was  standing  in 
the  nullah  might  tempt  a  tiger  to 
seek  shelter  there,  and  that  possi- 
bility resolved  itself  into  a  cer- 
tainty. There  was  a  tiger  in  it : 
more  than  that,  there  were  four 
tigers  in  it,  all  of  which  were 
driven  out  into  a  comparatively 
clear  space,  where  cover  of  any 
kind  was  slight  and  scattered. 
Four  —  a  tigress  and  three  cubs 
more  than  half  grown.  How  the 
tigress  got  away  immediately  upon 
our  sighting  it  I  cannot  say  now, 
any  more  than  I  could  then.  It 
was  as  phenomenal  an  object  to 
me  as  was  young  Jo  Willet  to  his 
father.  I  looked  at  it,  and  there  it 
was ;  and  I  looked  at  it  again,  and 
there  it  wasn't.  Nor  can  I  under- 
stand why  it  so  promptly  deserted 
its  offspring  —  for  mostly  a  tiger 
will  fight  for  its  cubs  as  long  as 
they  are  with  their  mother,  even 
though  they  be  fully  grown.  But 
the  maternal  instinct  was  weak 
in  that  tiger :  clannishness  it  felt 
nothing  of.  It  disliked  the  situa- 
tion, and  left  the  scene  and  the 
cubs  before  a  shot  could  be  fired  at 
it.  The  cubs  did  what  they  could 
to  make  things  lively :  they  never 


1894.] 


Thirty  Years  of  Shikar. — Conclusion. 


397 


attempted  to  follow  their  mother, 
but  sought  with  creditable  courage 
to  defend  their  ground.  Charging 
an  elephant  here  and  there,  they 
fought  while  life  and  strength  were 
in  them,  and  died  with  their  faces 
to  the  foe.  That  day  my  record  of 
two  tigers  was  broken,  and  one  of 
three  substituted. 

Again,  in  that  same  season,  it 
happened  that  Westmorland  and  I 
were  encamped  by  the  edge  of  that 
same  swamp,  and  while  we  were 
making  leisurely  preparations  for 
a  start,  Moosvomoodowlah's  host 
descended  upon  our  ground  and 
beat  over  it.  He  beat  it  in  vain, 
and  not  a  shot  was  fired  by  his 
party  to  rouse  the  forest  echoes  or 
the  forest  king;  so  he  came  and 
went,  he  and  his,  and  we  watched 
his  line  of  elephants  until,  tiger- 
less,  they  disappeared  from  view. 
What  was  to  be  done?  As  we 
were  there  primarily  to  try  that 
swamp,  it  was  evident  that  we 
ought  to  give  time  to  any  tiger 
that  might  be  of  a  mind  to  come 
down  out  of  the  forest ;  so  we  gave 
time  and  delayed  our  start.  Then 
we  started,  and  when  three-fourths 
of  the  cover  had  been  beaten  a  tiger 
was  seen  moving  ahead  of  us.  It 
was  going  for  the  forest  as  fast  as 
it  could,  but  I  managed  to  head  it 
off,  and  inside  of  a  hundred  yards 
it  stood  at  bay.  One  shot  full  in 
the  chest  killed  it  —  a  fine  male 
tiger,  too  heavy  for  rapid  flight 
through  the  thick  grass,  and  too 
summarily  disposed  of  to  give  it  a 
chance  of  fighting.  So  had  that 
swamp  given  to  me  four  tigers  that 
year,  and  of  the  remaining  six, 
three  were  killed  one  by  one  on 
three  separate  occasions  in  another 
swamp. 

I  have  mentioned  how  I  lost 
a  tiger  during  that  first  expe- 
dition, as  the  consequence  of  being 
seated  in  my  howdah  when  I 
should  have  been  standing.  Some 


years  later  I  lost  another  through 
a  misfire  of  my  gun.  Those  tigers 
that  I  might  have  shot,  but  did 
not,  naturally  dwell  in  my  mind 
more  fixedly  than  any  of  those  I 
killed ;  and  the  two  just  referred 
to,  and  that  one  which  upset  Bul- 
rampore's  elephant,  have  always 
been  remembered  by  me  as  the 
largest  by  far  of  their  species. 

There  was  something  else  to 
think  of  in  respect  of  that  tiger 
which  a  misfire  lost  to  me.  It 
was  said  by  local  authorities  to  be 
a  creature  of  infinite  wariness, — 
almost,  I  may  say,  of  mystery. 
Rumour  had  it  that  no  strategy 
would  avail  against  the  cunning  of 
this  beast,  and  so,  when  I  set  out 
for  its  particular  haunt,  I  was  put 
very  much  upon  my  mettle,  and 
brought  all  my  mind  to  bear  upon 
the  method  of  attack.  Its  favourite 
lair  was  at  the  junction  of  a  large 
swamp,  with  a  strip  of  heavy  grass 
cover,  and  a  nullah  that  ran  at 
right  angles  to  it.  The  forest 
came  down  to  the  edge  of  the 
swamp  everywhere,  save  along  the 
valley  where  that  nullah  mean- 
dered, and  unless  the  tiger  made 
for  the  clear  water  of  the  swamp, 
it  was  bound  to  take  a  line  for  the 
forest,  either  up  the  grass  cover  or 
more  directly. 

I  laid  my  plans  with  infinite 
care :  Peters,  Shipton,  Smith,  and 
Maunsell,  I  posted  on  every  line 
of  retreat,  save  that  by  which  I 
approached  the  swamp  from  the 
forest.  I  emerged  with  half-a-dozen 
elephants  in  line  exactly  at  the 
right  point,  and  immediately  saw 
the  tiger  move  from  the  swamp 
edge  up  the  grass  valley,  that  pro- 
mised now  to  be  the  valley  of  death 
for  it.  I  pushed  on  after  it  full  of 
confidence,  and  after  a  burst  of  a 
hundred  yards  or  so,  saw  it  just 
below  me  :  there  it  was  in  a  place 
where  there  was  no  cover  to  con- 
ceal it  •  missing  it  was  an  impossi- 


398 


Thirty  Years  of  Shikar. — Conclusion. 


[Sept. 


bility.  It  was  hardly  probable 
that,  being  hit,  it  would  move 
twenty  yards  farther,  though  it 
might  make  a  fight  here  and  there 
about  this  spot.  Presto  !  the  trig- 
ger was  pulled ;  there  was  no  re- 
port; before  I  could  try  the  left 
barrel  the  tiger  was  gone :  then  a 
shot  or  two  came  from  Maun  sell  at 
the  head  of  the  valley,  and  the 
tiger  was  away  into  the  forest.  It 
was  assumed  when  such  a  tiger 
was  killed  in  this  swamp  in  the 
following  year  that  it  was  this  one, 
and  that  Maunsell  had  hit  it  be- 
cause there  was  a  bullet  hole  in 
the  tiger's  ear. 

But  when  that  crafty  tiger, 
favoured  by  fortune,  escaped  from 
beneath  my  gun,  and  from  before 
the  guns  of  my  companions,  there 
yet  remained  untried  a  consider- 
able portion  of  the  swamp  in  which 
it  had  been  found.  To  deal  with 
this  in  the  most  effective  manner, 
I  formed  a  line  that  should  sweep 
through  a  long  stretch  of  forest, 
and,  emerging  at  the  far  end  of 
the  swamp,  drive  into  the  open 
any  four-footed  animal  that  fell  in 
our  way.  It  was  just  possible,  I 
thought,  that  the  tiger  we  had 
just  lost  might  be  so  circumvented, 
or,  if  not,  that  then  another. 
Smith  I  posted  as  "  stop  "  in  the 
open  on  the  far  side  of  the  swamp, 
and  he  was  sent  off  to  his  post 
by  way  of  the  chord  before  we 
started  with  the  line  by  way  of 
the  arc.  There  we  dived  into 
the  labyrinth  of  trees  and  under- 
growth, Shipton  at  the  end  of 
the  line  farthest  away  from  the 
swamp  and  somewhat  ahead  of 
the  rest  of  us,  so  that  he  should, 
when  the  proper  time  arrived, 
debouch  upon  the  open  as  a  second 
stop.  Smith,  left  there  to  solitude 
and  his  own  reflections,  might 
well  have  thought  that  tiger-shoot- 
ing, as  I  was  conducting  it  then, 
was  a  snare  and  a  delusion.  For 


about  an  hour  he  neither  saw  nor 
heard  anything  of  us  :  during  all 
that  time  no  gun-shot  came  from 
the  forest  to  bid  him  hope  that 
a  tiger  was  afoot,  or  give  him  as- 
surance that  we  were  yet  in  the 
neighbourhood.  Then  he  saw  the 
elephants  emerge  from  among  the 
trees,  spread  across  the  'grass  and 
reed  cover  of  the  swamp  at  its 
far  end,  and  beat  with  crescent 
line  towards  him.  Not  long  had 
he  now  to  wait  in  uncertainty  as 
to  the  nature  of  our  sport.  When 
the  line  was  yet  some  eighty  yards 
from  his  post  a  tiger  broke  imme- 
diately in  front  of  him,  and  was 
neatly — too  neatly — killed  with 
one  shot.  So  did  it  come  about 
that  he  who  saw  nothing  of  the 
beat,  in  the  sense  of  taking  part 
in  it,  shot  the  tiger,  and  we  who 
saw  all  the  beat,  saw  nothing  of 
the  tiger  until  it  lay  stretched 
dead  upon  the  ground  before  the 
elephant  of  the  more  fortunate 
stop.  But,  after  all,  I  believe  that 
I  found  quite  as  much  pleasure 
in  the  successful  crowning  of  my 
tactical  efforts  by  another,  as  I 
should  had  I  killed  that  tiger  my- 
self. Mine  was  the  glory  of  put- 
ting Smith  in  the  right  place,  and 
so  beating  over  a  mile  or  two  of 
country  that  the  tiger  was  driven 
out  in  front  of  him  as  I  had 
designed.  This  second  tiger  of 
that  swamp  was,  like  that  which 
escaped,  a  male,  but  younger  and 
of  less  massive  proportions  than 
the  first. 

I  have  spoken  of  my  preference 
for  a  smooth-bore  as  the  weapon 
with  which  tigers  are  most  effec- 
tively dealt  with  at  close  quarters. 
I  will  now  give  an  illustration  in 
point.  It  happened  one  afternoon 
that,  as  Jacky  Hills,  Combe,  Den- 
son,  and  I  were  returning  to  our 
camp  after  a  blank  day,  we  sighted 
a  tiger  quietly  strolling  across  a 
plain  ahead  of  us.  There  was  no 


1894.] 


Thirty  Years  of  Shikar. — Conclusion. 


399 


cover  on  the  plain  except  a  few 
scattered  bushes,  none  of  which 
would  have  effectually  screened 
anything  larger  than  a  hare ;  but 
half  a  mile  beyond,  a  small  hill 
rose  a  propos  of  nothing  out  of  the 
plain,  and  on  that  hill  and  round  it 
there  was  shelter  for  bigger  game. 
The  tiger,  catching  sight  of  us 
immediately  after  we  viewed  it, 
made  for  that  hill  at  an  amble. 
We  pursued  at  the  best  pace  of 
which  an  elephant  is  capable  when 
it  isn't  bolting — my  companions 
following  it  in  a  direct  line,  I 
making  for  the  right,  where  the 
hill  sloped  into  tall  grass  cover. 
I  chose  my  line  wisely ;  for  the 
tiger,  avoiding  the  steeper  portion 
of  the  hill,  and  scared  by  those 
who  followed  in  his  track,  came 
out  upon  a  low  unwooded  spur  on 
my  side  and  gave  me  an  80-yard 
shot.  For  this  shot  I  used  a  light 
rifle  about  the  size  of  a  carbine, 
and  hit  the  tiger  hard  just  behind 
the  shoulder ;  but  no  second  shot 
was  practicable  to  me  then,  for 
the  tiger  rolled  over  on  the  farther 
side  of  the  spur  into  a  patch  of 
long  grass  that  screened  it  from 
sight.  Then,  my  companions  hav- 
ing come  up,  we  invested  the 
cover,  drove  the  tiger  to  bay  and 
killed  it.  I  think  all  four  of  us 
fired  at  it  then,  certainly  three  of 
us  did,  and  lo  !  when  we  came  to  ex- 
amine the  dead  animal  there  were 
but  two  bullet  holes — one  of  my 
rifle  shot,  the  other  full  in  and 
not  behind  the  shoulder,  which 
had  to  be  credited  to  one  of  us 
four.  It  was  apparent  that  only 
one  of  us  had  dealt  the  tiger  its 
death-wound.  Two  or  three  must 
have  missed  it.  But  the  question 
was,  Who  had  hit  it  1 

Jacky  Hills  promptly  decided 
that  it  could  only  be  he  who 
should  bear  this  palm.  "  There  is 
no  other  weapon  in  camp  save  my 
express,"  he  said,  "that  could  so 


have  smashed  the  shoulder  and 
summarily  killed  the  tiger."  He 
confidently  anticipated  the  verdict 
that  should  be  given  upon  the  in- 
quest, and  we  postponed  argument 
until  after  the  post-mortem.  We 
were  still  seated  at  dinner,  while 
K.  B.  directed  the  autopsy,  with 
special  instructions  from  Hills  to 
look  for  pieces  of  a  shattered  cop- 
per tube  in  the  carcass.  We  had 
just  lighted  our  pipes,  when  K.  B. 
came  to  us  with  his  report,  and 
that  report  gave  unequivocal  con- 
tradiction to  Jacky's  theory.  ISTo 
copper  tubing  had  been  found 
anywhere  in  the  tiger;  but  in 
the  ghastly  shoulder  wound  they 
had  come  upon  a  flattened  spher- 
ical bullet,  and  the  only  spher- 
ical bullet  fired  was  that  of  my 
smooth-bore,  a  very  old  friend,  with 
barrels  worn  to  the  thinness  of 
notepaper. 

Not  but  that  Hills'  express  was 
on  occasion  effective  enough  with 
his  accurate  eye  and  hand  to  direct 
it.  I  particularly  remember  how 
he  killed  a  tiger  with  one  shot, 
and  that  a  very  long  one  for  tiger- 
shooting,  say  150  yards  or  more. 
His  express  rolled  that  tiger  over 
like  a  rabbit. 

Hills,  as  became  an  officer  of  the 
Royal  Engineers,  brought  a  certain 
amount  of  science  to  bear  upon 
our  Terai  expedition.  He  reported 
to  somebody  (I  think  his  gun- 
smith) upon  the  behaviour  of  his 
express  and  ammunition,  and  he 
devoted  himself  at  odd  times  to 
the  preparation  of  a  sketch-map 
that  should  have  been  a  perennial 
joy  to  him,  inasmuch  as,  by  fre- 
quent alteration  of  its  topography, 
he  was  continually  improving  it  as 
a  work  of  art,  if  not  as  a  guide. 
In  that  variable  chart  the  many 
nameless  swamps  and  lakes  and 
camping-grounds  of  the  Terai  were 
differentiated  by  a  nomenclature 
that  was  of  a  historical  turn.  That 


Thirty  Years  of  Shikar.— Conclusion. 


400 

chart  was  a  diary  of  events  as  well 
as  a  record  of  localities. 

My  highest  record  of  tigers 
killed  in  one  beat  was  four,  and 
that  was  achieved  when  I  was  the 
only  shooter  present,  and  had  no 
companion  to  act  as  stop  in  flank 
or  front  or  rear,  or  protect  any  but 
the  one  point  that  I  commanded. 
From  the  khubber  (intelligence) 
that  had  been  brought  in  there  was 
every  reason  to  believe  that  two 
or  three  tigers  might  be  put  up 
either  in  a  long  narrow  stretch  of 
tree  and  reed  and  cane  jungle  in 
the  forest,  or  in  the  grass  cover  of 
a  light  swamp  which,  continuing 
the  former,  extended  into  the  open 
country.  Obviously,  the  course  to 
be  adopted  was  to  carefully  beat  the 
forest  strip  into  the  open  grass,  so 
that  any  tigers  in  the  former  might 
be  sent  forward  into  the  latter, 
where  I  might  reasonably  expect 
to  give  a  good  account  of  them. 
Of  course,  if  they  broke  right  or 
left  of  the  line,  and  took  to  the 
forest,  they  would  be  irretrievably 
lost ;  and  in  view  of  circumventing 
a  flank  movement  of  that  sort,  I 
posted  shikaris  on  high  trees  on 
either  side,  with  instructions  to 
shout  at  any  tiger  that  headed 
their  way.  It  was  questionable 
whether  this  shouting  would  have 
*had  the  desired  effect;  but,  at  all 
events,  the  chances  were  in  favour 
of  my  scouts  seeing  the  tigers 
escaping  into  the  forest,  and  letting 
me  know  the  worst  betimes. 

Then  I  formed  line  to  beat  the 
jungle,  and  as  the  jungle  abounded 
in  cane  as  well  as  sundry  other 
thorny  flora,  I  took  the  centre,  so 
that  I  could  the  better  see  that 
the  line  was  kept;  so,  also,  that 
my  example  might  encourage  the 
mahouts  on  either  hand  to  force 
their  way  through  the  heaviest 
patches.  Then  followed  a  bad 
half-hour,  during  which  my  time 
was  fully  occupied  in  objurgation 


[Sept. 


and  entreaty  addressed  to  the  ma- 
houts, and  tearing  my  way  through 
interlaced  sprays  and  branches 
that  bristled  with  countless  barbs. 
There  are  British  boys  who  have 
realised  that  the  cane  can  be  pain- 
ful in  its  application,  but  they 
only  know  it  in  its  dried  state, 
when  freed  from  the  fish-hook-like 
thorns  that  grow  upon  it  when  it 
trails  its  long  stems  about  its 
forest  haunt.  In  its  natural  state 
it  seizes  upon  the  man  who  comes 
in  contact  with  it,  and  rends  his 
flesh  and  his  clothes,  even  though 
the  latter  be  an  ordinary  thorn- 
resisting  material  such  as  I  used 
to  wear.  On  this  occasion  there 
was  a  good  deal  of  rending  after 
this  fashion;  but  if  our  line  was 
not  mathematically  correct,  it, 
happily,  did  not  become  wholly 
disorganised,  and  so  we  swept 
along  until  more  than  three-fourths 
of  that  cane-brake  had  been  tra- 
versed. As  yet,  no  scout  to  right 
or  left  had  signalled  the  "gone 
away."  Then  I  came  upon  fresh 
footprints  in  the  moist  earth  that 
told  of  a  tiger  afoot,  and  heading 
for  the  grass  cover,  as  had  been 
designed.  Now  I  began  to  look 
confidently  for  an  interview  with 
at  least  that  one  tiger,  and,  spurt- 
ing the  line  through  as  much  of 
the  forest  cover  as  intervened,  we 
came  out  upon  the  open  with  every 
reason  to  believe  that  a  tiger  was 
in  the  grass  that  fronted  us. 
Rallying  the  line  so  as  to  sweep 
this  cover  from  side  to  side,  I 
started.  There  was  no  fussund 
to  disconcert  my  plans.  There 
was  every  chance  of  that  tiger 
holding  to  the  grass,  if  I  could 
only  intercept  its  retreat  by  the 
way  it  had  come  there.  It  might 
very  well  break  back,  but  would 
hardly  take  to  the  open  on  ahead 
or  on  either  hand ;  so  I  looked  to 
the  organisation  of  the  line,  and 
took  up  my  position  in  the  centre 


1894.] 


Thirty  Years  of  Shikar. — Conclusion. 


401 


of  it.  Then  forward,  the  thirty 
elephants  making  thirty  tracks  in 
the  long  grass  as  nearly  parallel 
as  could  be  managed,  and,  after 
five  minutes'  steady  advance,  a 
tiger  afoot  within  twenty  yards  of 
me.  The  waving  grass  told  me  so 
much,  although  the  tiger  that 
caused  the  motion  remained  un- 
seen. But  scarcely  had  I  realised 
this  when  it  became  obvious  that 
more  tigers  than  one  were  making 
the  grass  wave  above  their  paths. 
Two  there  were  certainly,  possibly 
three.  Then  I  felt  that  I  had  my 
work  cut  out,  and  must  be  prompt 
of  action.  I  did  not  wait  until 
one  of  the  tigers  showed  itself :  I 
fired  at  the  nearest  of  them,  or  at 
the  spot  where  the  long  grass  said 
it  was,  and  fired  with  effect.  For 
a  moment  it  seemed  as  if  the  grass 
swarmed  with  tigers.  That  at 
which  I  had  fired  blundered  for- 
ward and  away  from  me,  evidently 
hard  hit ;  another  charged  for  the 
elephant,  a  tusker,  next  to  that  I 
rode;  and  two  others  seemed  to 
threaten  an  attack  upon  different 
points  of  my  line.  All  was  hub- 
bub and  commotion ;  elephants 
trumpeted,  and  prepared  for  im- 
mediate and  precipitate  flight. 
Fortunately  my  elephant  (which 
was  unattacked)  stood  reasonably 
firm,  and  enabled  me  to  turn  the 
tide  of  battle.  The  tiger,  or  I 
should  say  tigress,  that  charged 
the  tusker,  I  dropped  before  it 
brought  its  charge  home;  then  I 
went  for  the  two  nearly  full-grown 
cubs  that  were  careering  hither 
and  thither  in  a  lost  sort  of  way, 
albeit  they  drove  the  elephants 
before  them.  Those  I  settled  with 
three  or  four  shots,  and  then  I  re- 
formed my  line,  and  followed  the 
trail  of  the  first  tiger ;  but  not  far 
had  we  to  go  in  pursuit  of  it. 
There,  within  a  hundred  yards  of 
the  spot  where  it  had  received  my 
first  shot,  it  lay  in  the  throes  of 


death.  So  were  the  four  —  the 
whole  family — killed  in  what  was 
indeed  a  mauvais  quart  d'heure 
for  them.  It  took  very  much 
longer  to  pad  them. 

As  regards  a  tiger's  charge  upon 
a  line  of  elephants,  it  was  a  matter 
of  frequent  observation  in  my  ex- 
periences that  a  tiger  would,  as  a 
rule,  select  a  tusker  for  this  pur- 
pose when  another  selection  was 
not  forced  upon  it.  I  suppose  that 
the  white  tusks  make  their  wearer 
prominent  among  its  fellows,  and 
so  distract  the  tiger's  attention 
from  the  untusked  animals.  It  is 
also  noticeable  that  tigers,  when 
roused  in  detached,  or  semi- 
detached, covers,  such  as  I  have 
described  above,  will  frequently 
hold  to  their  ground  after  being 
disturbed,  with  equal  obstinacy 
and  stupidity.  At  such  times 
they  will  as  likely  as  not  break 
through  or  charge  a  line  of  ele- 
phants over  and  over  again  rather 
than  take  to  their  heels,  and  the 
only  explanation  that  I  can  find 
for  this  imbecile  behaviour  is  that 
they  have  been  caught  napping, 
and,  as  it  were,  have  got  out  of 
bed  on  the  wrong  and  unreasoning 
side. 

But  the  shikari  profits  by  the 
tiger's  unreason.  Hume  and  his 
two  companions  of  the  55th  may 
remember  how,  in  about  the  last 
beat  of  our  expedition  of  1868,  we 
killed  either  two  or  three  tigers  in 
cover  such  as  this ;  and  Peters  will 
not  have  forgotten  the  last  tiger 
that  was  killed  when  he  and  I 
were  out  early  in  the  season  of 
1876 — killed  as  it  was  through  its 
stubborn  attachment  to  the  cover 
in  which  we  found  it. 

And  there  was  no  adequate 
reason  for  that  tiger's  objection  to 
move  on.  The  stretch  of  grass  in 
which  we  found  it  was  of  such  ex- 
tent that  a  tiger  could  easily  have 
emerged  from  it  into  the  open 


Thirty  Years  of  Shikar. — Conclusion. 


402 

at  several  points  without  being 
observed,  or  it  could  have  retreated 
by  way  of  a  blind  nullah  that  ran 
athwart  the  cover.  Nor  was  there 
any  consideration  of  the  sun's  heat 
to  bid  the  tiger  pause,  for  it  was 
on  a  February  day,  or  early  day 
of  March,  we  found  it,  when  yet 
awhile  there  was  no  whisper  in 
the  air  of  that  passionate  warmth 
which  should  embrace  all  north- 
west India  in  two  months'  time. 

In  fact,  all  the  ordinary  chances 
favoured  that  tiger.  The  weather 
was  cool ;  the  nullah  was  a  covered 
way  to  a  sanctuary.  The  area 
of  thick  grass  cover  was  equal  to 
a  beating  capacity  of  fifty  ele- 
phants at  least,  and  we  had  seven. 
Good  strategy,  and,  still  more, 
good  luck,  turned  the  scale  in  our 
favour. 

It  was  only  upon  the  off-chance 
of  finding  a  tiger  that  we  had  at- 
tacked that  broad  plain  of  grass ; 
no  khubber  had  led  us  there  any 
more  than  to  any  other  locality ; 
no  footprints  guided  us  or  bade  us 
hope  :  there  was  the  high  grass  in 
which  tigers  are  sometimes  found, 
and  might  be  this  time  come  upon, 
and  so  we  entered  it,  our  line  of 
seven  elephants  making  a  ridicu- 
lously inadequate  show  as  it  spread 
itself  out  to  do  the  work  of  seven 
times  seven. 

Not  far  had  we  advanced  in  this 
skeleton  formation  when  an  ele- 
phant trumpeted  :  not  that  it  had 
seen  the  tiger  yet  awhile  perhaps, 
but  because  it  had  smelt  a  tiger 
just  ahead,  where  a  cow  not  long 
since  killed  lay  stretched  upon 
the  ground.  Clearly  a  tiger  had 
been  here  very  recently,  and  the 
certainty  of  this  cheered  us  on  our 
way.  But  no  amount  of  cheering 
could  give  such  solidity  to  our  line 
of  seven  elephants  as  would  ensure 
that  tiger  being  kept  in  front  of 
us,  if  it  was  minded  to  break  back 
through  our  scattered  units.  We 


[Sept. 


did  our  best  to  cover  the  ground, 
the  mahouts  working  with  some 
approach  to  earnestness ;  and  when 
we  had  advanced  with  infinite  cau- 
tion about  a  hundred  yards  beyond 
that  "  kill,"  we  were  rewarded  by 
the  view -halloo  that  told  us  the 
tiger  was  afoot,  and,  so  far,  ahead 
of  us.  But  it  was  nowhere  near 
Peters  or  myself,  and  did  not 
remain  in  front  of  us  any  longer 
than  suited  its  convenience.  When 
we  were  nearing  the  end  of  the 
heavy  cover  the  tiger  turned  and 
went  through  our  line,  still  unseen 
by  us  who  hoped  to  shoot  it ;  and 
then  for  about  an  hour  that  beast 
dodged  us  backwards  and  forwards 
through  that  cover,  giving  no 
chance  to  either  of  the  guns,  and 
never,  I  believe,  showing  itself  to 
anybody.  And  thus,  evasive,  cow- 
ardly to  the  last,  it  died  when  it 
was  making  for  that  nullah,  where- 
by, in  all  probability,  safety  and 
freedom  were  to  be  won.  Luck- 
ily, I  was  guided  by  signs  made 
by  mahouts  to  the  left  of  our  line 
when  the  tiger  headed  nullah- 
wards,  and  was  in  time  to  inter- 
cept it.  There,  some  ten  yards 
from  me,  and  about  the  same  dis- 
tance from  the  nullah,  the  wav- 
ing grass  told  me  where  the  tiger 
was  sneaking  through  the  cover. 
I  fired  the  right  barrel  of  my 
smooth-bore,  aiming  where  I  judged 
the  tiger  to  be,  and  was  sure  I  had 
hit  it,  although  the  only  apparent 
result  was  that  the  tiger  slackened 
its  pace,  that  had  been  little  better 
than  a  crawl  when  I  fired.  Then 
I  gave  it  the  benefit  of  the  doubt, 
and  my  second  barrel  and  the 
second  bullet  killed  it  stone  dead. 
I  never  saw  it  until  I  looked  down 
upon  it  lying  dead  at  my  ele- 
phant's feet,  and  it  had  died  per- 
versely mute,  and  without  one 
single  sign  of  standing  upon  the 
defensive  from  first  to  last.  It 
had  not  even  uttered  a  grunt  or 


1894.] 


Thirty  Years  of  Shikar. — Conclusion. 


403 


moan  when  hit  by  my  bullets, 
and  yet  it  was  a  healthy,  well- 
conditioned  tiger,  rather  over 
than  under  the  average  as  to 
size. 

That  was  the  last  tiger  that  fell 
to  my  gun,  and  my  gun  very  nearly 
fell  to  that  tiger— that  is  to  say,  it 
went  very  nigh  to  bursting  in  my 
hands,  as  a  consequence  of  a  bullet 
having  slipped  out  of  its  cartridge 
some  distance  up  the  barrel,  when 
the  barrels  were  held  downwards 
from  my  howdah.  I  was  unaware 
of  what  had  occurred,  or  that 
anything  had  occurred,  to  the 
weapon,  until,  in  the  following 
month,  I  took  it  to  an  English  gun- 
smith to  be  cleaned  up.  He  told 
me  that  the  barrel  had  bulged 
almost  to  bursting-point,  a-nd  that, 
if  I  had  continued  shooting  with 
it  in  its  then  state,  it  must  most 
assuredly  have  burst. 

That  chance  of  a  bullet  slipping 
is  the  one  objection  that  has  to  be 
set  against  the  advantages  of  a 
smooth-bore  for  tiger-shooting  at 
close  quarters.  Experts  in  the 
matter  of  ball  ammunition  hold 
that  one  may  not  put  a  wad  over 
a  bullet  as  one  does  over  shot,  or 
turn  the  top  of  the  cartridge  over 
to  secure  the  bullet.  The  only 
method  they  approve  is  that  of 
pinching  round  the  cartridge  just 
above  the  bullet — a  half-hearted 
expedient  that  is  by  way  of  a  com- 
promise of  the  turning  -  down 
method,  and  which,  when  the 
operator  who  pinches  is  a  native 
Indian,  is  apt  on  occasion  to  have 
a  result  as  unsatisfactory  as  that 
above  noted. 

In  the  course  of  those  thirteen 
Terai  expeditions  I  assisted  in  the 
execution  of  many  panthers  and 
bears ;  but  although  these  animals 
helped  to  swell  the  annual  bag, 
and  so  were  acceptable  enough 
when  they  came  in  one's  way,  we 
never  made  a  business  of  pursuing 


them.  Indeed  I  have  on  more 
than  one  occasion  allowed  bears 
to  go  scot-free,  when  they  might 
have  been  shot  easily  enough, 
because  firing  at  them  was  re- 
motely likely  to  scare  a  tiger,  and 
so  lose  to  me  the  nobler  quarry. 
In  fact,  panthers  and  bears  that 
provided  me  with  excellent  sport 
in  those  Deoghur  days  when  I  met 
them  on  fairly  even  terms — they 
and  I  on  foot — were,  I  found,  very 
tame  shooting  from  elephants.  A 
tiger,  assisted  by  the  imbecility  of 
one  or  more  elephants,  did  now 
and  again  make  things  lively  for 
a  time,  and  introduce  a  quite 
sufficient  leaven  of  danger  into 
the  amusement.  But  even  when 
a  panther  showed  fight,  as  on  some 
occasions  a  panther  did,  it  could 
hardly  persuade  the  elephants  to 
take  it  seriously;  and  as  for  the 
bears,  they  behaved  in  the  presence 
of  the  elephant  with  the  pusillan- 
imity of  buck-rabbits.  Our  aver- 
age bag  of  panthers  was  about  five, 
of  bears  three. 

Nor  did  we,  to  swell  our 
season's  record,  give  ourselves  up 
to  python-shooting.  I  shot  two 
or  three  in  my  thirteen  years,  and 
so  many  or  more  I  could  have 
shot  on  one  day  in  one  particular 
locality — a  dismal  swamp  where 
trees  of  the  mangrove  habit  cast 
their  gloom  upon  the  water,  and 
rank  grass  and  sedge  festered  in 
the  slime ;  an  unwholesome  and 
eminently  uninviting  spot,  fore- 
sworn of  tigers,  but  dear  to  the 
python,  which  were  to  be  seen 
there  of  great  size  and  unusual 
number.  There  it  was  that  I 
witnessed  from  a  coign  of  vantage 
the  imperceptible  movement  by 
which  the  snake  makes  its  pro- 
gress. As  I  stood  in  my  howdah, 
I  saw  a  monster  python  uncoil 
itself  from  a  large  fallow-deer  just 
below  me ;  then,  as  I  brought  my 
gun  up  to  my  shoulder,  the  python's 


Thirty  Years  of  Shikar.— Conclusion. 


404 

head  was  lost  to  my  view  in  dense 
reeds,  while  its  tail  was  yet  con- 
cealed in  the  cover  where  the  deer 


[Sept. 


tioned  as  to  hunting  elephants,  he 
was  enjoined  not  to  molest  or  annoy 
them  in  any  way.  And  so  one  went 


made  an  imperfect  S  curve  was 
exposed.  I  could  have  shot  it  in 
that  exposed  part  easily  enough, 


lay    and  as  much  of  its  body  as     there  at  first  in  fear  and  trembling, 

/•__j_   d    ,„„„     lest  some  beast  of  a  wild  elephant 

should    abuse    its    privilege,    and 
force  upon   one  a   breach  of   the 

and  fully  intended  shooting,  but  peace  and  the  permit  which  might 
it  seemed  that  this  was  now  sta-  lead  to  the  exclusion  of  British 
tionary,  and  therefore  that  noth-  sportsmen  from  the  Terai  there- 
ino-  was  to  be  lost  by  my  waiting  after.  It  was  not  my  evil  fortune 
an&d  watching.  I  was  making  to  stumble  across  one,  although 

over  and  over  again  I  came  upon 


what  might  prove  to  be  a  valuable 
observation  in  natural  history,  so 
I  waited,  with  my  attention  never 
relaxing  for  one  moment,  with  my 
eyes  glued  to  that  massive  coil  of 
sheeny  mosaic  and  marvellous  col- 
our-harmony ;  and  while  I  watched, 
with  eyes  agape,  behold  !  an  empty 

space  where  the  python  had  been,     to  elephants,  and  closely  conserved 
The  reptile  had  been  gliding  on-     as  to  its  timber ;  and  economic  de- 
velopments other  than  these  most 
discounte- 


fresh  traces  of  them. 

As  a  fact,  the  whole  of  this 
Nepalese  Terai  was  a  close  pre- 
serve, into  which  Jhung  Baha- 
dhoor would  have  preferred  that 
none  but  himself  should  enter.  It 
was  rigorously  preserved  in  regard 


ward  always  while  I  watched  it, 
and  only  when  its  tail  vanished 
into  the  reeds  where  I  thought  its 
head  still  rested  did  I  become 
aware  of  this.  I  avenged  myself 
and  an  outraged  natural  history 
directly  afterwards  by  killing 
another  python,  upon  which  I 
wasted  no  scientific  observation. 
A  smaller  python  that,  but  still 
large  enough,  when  slung  across  a 
fair-sized  elephant,  to  dangle  on 
both  sides  nearly  to  the  ground. 
Wild  elephants  abounded  in  the 
Terai,  as  did  they  throughout  the 
long  stretch  of  forest  and  hill  and 
valley  lying  between  the  Himalaya 
and  the  plains  of  the  North-  West 
Provinces.  But  while  in  the  Dhoon 
Terai  (which  is  British  territory) 
elephant  -  hunting  was  permissible 
to  British  subjects  upon  licence, 
no  one  but  Jhung  Bahadhoor  or 
his  agents  was  allowed  to  hunt 
elephants  in  the  Nepaul  Terai. 
The  permit  that  sanctioned  one's 
entrance  upon  Nepalese  territory 


primitive  ones  were 
nanced,  if  not  prohibited.  Now 
and  then  the  splendid  forests  yield- 
ed a  fair  revenue.  In  one  season 
I  was  told  that  a  million  sterling 
had  been  realised.  But  the  timber 
was  not  sold  every  season,  and  the 
Nepaul  Exchequer  would  have 
come  off  very  badly  in  the  lean 
years  of  the  Terai  when  the  forests 
yielded  next  to  nothing,  if  it  had 
not  drawn  upon  internal  and  more 
permanent  supplies. 

It  was  no  doubt  Jhung  Baha- 
dhoor's  policy  to  discourage  human 
settlement,  and  even  temporary 
human  habitation,  as  well  as  com- 
mercial and  industrial  enterprise  : 
in  short,  his  design  was  to  restore 
the  Terai  entirely  to  its  primeval 
state.  Such  a  restoration,  how- 
ever complete,  would  not  have 
been  an  operation  of  very  striking 
magnitude  at  any  time,  and  would 
have  been  barely  noticeable  in  the 
days  when  I  knew  the  Terai,  and 


stated  this  disability  in  very  sue-     when,  as  I  have  already  observed 


cinct  terms.     The   holder   of  the 
permit,  however,  was  not  only  cau- 


that  country   was  mostly  an  un- 
peopled wilderness.     A  portion  of 


1894.] 


Thirty  Years  of  Shikar. — Conclusion. 


405 


the  Terai  that  I  knew  only  as 
Nepalese  territory  had  formerly 
belonged  to  Oudh,  and  had  at- 
tracted some  amount  of  settlement, 
but  the  scattered  hamlets  ceded  to 
Nepal  decayed  under  the  blight  of 
Katmandu  rule,  and  for  the  most 
part  had  been  long  since  aban- 
doned. In  the  broad  belt  of  coun- 
try between  the  hills  and  the 
Oudh  frontier  cultivation  was  con- 
spicuously absent.  Here  and  there 
an  isolated  patch,  hoe-turned  for 
seed,  suggested  Crusoe's  agricul- 
tural method  and  much  of  Crusoe's 
solitude.  But  nowhere  had  civi- 
lisation gained  the  slightest  advan- 
tage in  the  contest  with  primordial 
forces.  And  the  inhabitants  (when 
there  were  any)  seemed  to  be  as 
utterly  miserable  as  the  denizens 
of  Martin  Chuzzlewit's  Eden. 
Poor  joyless  wretches,  life  had  for 
them  no  lingering  hope,  and  but 
one  desire — medicine  !  They  came, 
the  halt,  the  lame,  the  blind,  and 
the  sick  of  many  maladies,  and 
asked  us  white  men  to  heal  them. 
They  demanded  of  us  immediate 
cure  of  chronic  and  deep  -  seated 
disease,  restoration  of  sight  to 
empty  eye-sockets,  and  prompt  re- 
lief from  the  palsy  of  age.  Unhappy 
sufferers  from  many  ills,  they  con- 
fidently regarded  the  sahib  as  a 
mysterious  combination  of  the 
pool  of  Bethesda  and  the  fountain 
of  Rejuvenescence.  They  believed 
in  us,  who  were  at  the  best  only 
amateur  physicians,  as  though  we 
had  been  so  many  Galens;  and 
Shipton,  as  a  trained  doctor,  was  as 
a  veritable  .ZEsculapius  to  them,  and 
enjoyed  quite  an  extensive  practice 
that  brought  him  the  only  guer- 
don he  sought — the  consciousness 
of  having  somewhat  relieved  the 
pangs  of  suffering  humanity.  I 
always  carried  a  medicine  -  chest 
with  my  camp  equipage,  but  my 
attempts  at  healing  had  to  be  re- 
stricted to  the  commoner  forms  of 

VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCXLVII. 


disease    of    which    I    understood 
something. 

Jhung  Bahadhoor's  objection  to 
people  in  his  Terai  preserve  was 
logical  enough.  Elephants  are  shy 
of  man;  and  man  —  the  Indian 
cow-herd  especially  —  makes  the 
conservation  of  forests  more  diffi- 
cult than  it  need  be  by  his  habit 
of  setting  fire  to  the  dry  grass  in 
view  of  hastening  the  aftermath. 
So  that  his  cattle  may  obtain  the 
young  grass,  sprung,  phcenix-like, 
out  of  the  ashes,  he  will  destroy 
millions  of  seedlings  and  saplings, 
and  do  infinite  damage  to  the 
larger  trees ;  for  when  in  the  hot 
weather  the  careless  herd  starts  a 
fire  of  this  sort,  neither  he  nor 
any  other  can  say  whither  it 
shall  stray,  or  when  or  where 
it  shall  burn  itself  out.  One  of 
the  frequent  incidents  of  a  forest 
beat  in  April  and  May  is  that  of 
stumbling  within  the  circuit  of  a 
forest  fire ;  and  it  is  one  that  gives 
the  elephant  another  opportunity 
of  exhibiting  its  intelligence. 
When  it  happens  that  the  line  of 
fire  intercepts  the  line  of  advance, 
there  is  but  one  satisfactory  way 
of  meeting  the  situation — viz.,  to 
mark  a  weak  spot  in  the  line  of 
fire,  and  push  through  that  point 
into  the  blackened  and  cooling 
tract  over  which  the  fire  has 
passed.  It  is  useless  retreating  in 
front  of  it,  and  may  be  just  as 
vain  to  retrace  one's  steps  in  the 
hope  of  turning  its  flank,  so  it 
remains  to  make  a  dash  through 
the  blaze.  There  the  line  of  fire 
creeps  rapidly  along  the  ground, 
licking  with  fiery  tongues  the  grass 
beneath  and  the  leaves  and  branches 
within  its  reach  ;  and  there  is  a 
crackling  as  it  advances  like  unto 
that  of  rifle  and  pistol  shots,  and 
clouds  of  smoke  that  dim  the  sun ; 
but  the  blaze  is  not  of  equal  volume 
through  the  line :  here  and  there 
are  breaks  where  the  combustible 

2D 


Thirty  Years  of  Shikar.— Conclusion. 


406 

material  is  scantier  than  elsewhere, 
and  by  one  of  these  less  ardent  pas- 
sages one  heads  one's  way.  Then 
it  is  that  the  "  cussedness  "  of  the 
elephant  occasionally  makes  diffi- 
culties that  reflect  discredit  on  its 
intellectual  capacity;  and  one  is 
thoroughly  well  pleased  when  the 
gauntlet  has  been  run  with  no 
worse  contingencies  than  a  smashed 
howdah  and  half-a-dozen  contu- 
sions caused  by  various  boltings  of 
one's  sagacious  mounts. 

The  forest  fires,  particularly 
those  on  the  hillsides,  are  at  night 
magnificent  spectacles.  Seated  in 
the  open  after  dark  to  enjoy  the 
cool  breezes  from  the  Himalaya, 
we  were  occasionally  treated  with 
pyrotechnic  displays  not  unworthy 
of  the  Crystal  Palace.  Ravines 
and  gullies  coursed  with  lambent 
flames  from  crown  to  foot  of  far- 
off  hills  ;  outlines  of  distant  ranges 
were  traced  as  by  myriads  of  lights 
from  point  to  point;  and,  nearer 
at  hand,  the  forest  trees  rose  out 
of  a  crimson  sea.  It  was  a  gala 
sight  to  look  upon,  but  bad  for 
the  timber  that  Jhung  Bahadhoor 
prized. 

I  do  not  know  that  this  Mayor 
of  the  Nepaul  Palace  took  any 
interest  in  tiger-shooting  himself, 
or  objected  to  the  sahibs  killing 
such  tigers  as  his  territory  pro- 
vided. I  never  heard  of  his  be- 
ing out  after  them, — possibly  he 
found  it  tame  work  after  relation 
killing,  of  which  folks  said  he  had 
done  enough  to  satiate  Saturn 
himself;  or  he  may  have  put  it 
aside  because  of  its  interference 
with  elephant  -  hunting.  It  was 
said  that  one  of  his  regiments 
had  tiger-skin  facings,  and  another 
facings  provided  by  the  panther, 
but  I  never  heard  how  or  by 
whom  the  tigers  and  panthers 
required  for  this  sartorial  purpose 
were  obtained.  They  may  have 
been  netted  as  were  those  which 


[Sept. 


Jhung  Bahadhoor  laid  down  in 
the  path  of  the  Duke  of  Edin- 
burgh, and,  later  on,  of  the  Prince 
of  Wales. 

Once  I  came  upon  Jhung  Baha- 
dhoor's  elephant  -  catching  camp, 
and  discovered  what  training  by 
the  Kheddah  mahouts  could  do  in 
the  way  of  developing  an  elephant's 
speed  and  brute  force.  The  first 
sign  of  this  camp  that  greeted  us 
was  a  flying  squadron  of  young 
elephants  that  rapidly  overhauled 
us  as  we  jogged  along  towards 
our  tents,  and  passed  us  as  though 
our  elephants  had  been  standing 
still.  Those  were  the  greyhounds 
of  the  Kheddah,  whose  work  it  was 
to  hunt  down  and  ring  in  the  wild 
ones ;  and  until  I  saw  them  there, 
I  dreamed  not  of  the  possible 
agility  of  the  elephant.  But  a 
more  phenomenal  animal  of  the 
Royal  stud  awaited  me  in  Jhung's 
camp  when  we  came  to  it ;  one  of 
the  fighting  elephants  employed  to 
coerce  the  captured  wild  ones — a 
very  nightmare  of  a  beast,  fitted 
only  for  a  zoological  Inferno. 

There  it  stood,  heavily  fettered 
fore  and  aft,  with  its  brow  resting 
against  the  trunk  of  a  tree,  and  I 
fancy  the  brow  of  that  elephant 
and  the  trunk  of  that  tree  were  of 
equal  intellectual  capacity.  Not 
in  the  direction  of  pin-lifting  had 
this  giant  been  trained  :  its  mind 
had  been  left  untutored ;  every 
effort  had  been  directed  to  the 
development  of  its  muscles,  and 
there  it  stood,  leaning  against  that 
greenwood  post,  as  different  an 
animal  from  the  ordinary  elephant 
as  is  the  champion  dray-horse  from 
the  rocking-steed  of  the  nursery, 
or  as  Sandou,  the  trained  athlete 
and  lifter  of  grand  pianos,  ele- 
phants, and  similar  unconsidered 
trifles,  from  the  fat  boy  of  the 
caravan.  I  felt  some  respect  for 
the  animal :  there  was  nothing 
pretentious  about  it  ;  no  one 


1894.] 


Thirty  Years  of  Shikar. — Conclusion. 


407 


claimed  for  it  the  wisdom  of 
Solomon,  or  any  wisdom  what- 
ever. With  becoming  modesty  it 
confined  its  limited  mental  power 
to  the  solution  of  the  only  problem 
that  presented  itself — i.e.,  was  that 
object  against  which  it  had  leaned 
for  several  hour's  another  elephant, 
or  was  it,  the  leaner,  really  an- 
other tree.  I  respected  it  for  that 
retiring  virtue,  and,  considering  it 
physically,  was  lost  in  admiration 
of  its  strength  and  symmetry. 
Jumbo  was  as  a  corpulent  Berk- 
shire hog  compared  with  that  war- 
rior of  the  Terai. 

We  just  missed  a  share  in  one 
of  the  elephant  hunts  of  Jhung's 
foresters,  and  perhaps  it  was  as 
well  we  did,  for  the  man  who 
joins  in  an  expedition  of  that  kind 
can  form  no  idea  when  or  where 
the  chase  will  terminate.  Nor  is 
there  any  attempt  to  give  ease  to 
him  who  rides.  Howdahs,  foot- 
boards, soft  rugs,  and  umbrellas 
should  be  hated  and  avoided  by 
the  elephant-hunter,  who  has,  in- 
deed, to  scorn  delights  and  live 
laborious  days  if  he  would  be  in 
at  the  capture  of  the  quarry. 
Clinging  on  to  a  small  pad  by  his 
eyebrows,  or  elseways  as  he  can, 
he  has  to  belabour  his  elephant 
with  a  mace  whenever  the  pace 
slackens ;  and  the  holding  on,  and 
the  urging  along,  occupy  his  time 
and  attention  so  fully  that  the 
meal  he  carries  in  his  wallet  be- 
comes a  movable  feast  in  a  double 
sense,  and  the  pipe  he  would  fain 
fill  and  light  is  forbidden  by  uncon- 
genial circumstances,  and  the  last 
condition  of  that  man  is  worse 
than  the  first,  in  proportion  to  the 
square  or  cube  of  the  distance 
travelled.  And  the  hunt,  when 
finished,  may  come  to  an  end 
dozens  of  miles  from  everywhere. 
Then  it  may  well  be  that  the 
novice  in  elephant  -  hunting  ex- 
claims against  the  cruelty  of  fate, 


and  arrives  at  a  drivelling  con- 
dition in  which  he  would  give 
any  number  of  kingdoms  for  a 
restaurant — ay,  even  for  a  beer- 
house ! 

By  arguments  such  as  are  here 
given,  I  have  always  sought  to 
console  myself  for  that  disappoint- 
ment in  regard  to  our  going  after 
wild  elephants. 

I  did  not  set  any  particular  store 
by  skins  and  horns  as  trophies  of 
my  Terai  shooting,  but  one  living 
trophy  that  I  brought  away  with 
me  I  valued  exceedingly.  This 
was  a  tiger  cub,  one  of  three  that 
I  came  upon  in  a  patch  of  grass 
cover,  and  the  best  tempered  of 
the  party,  as  far  as  I  could  judge 
by  a  few  minutes'  inspection  and 
handling.  The  mother  of  these 
three  got  away  unseen  just  as  I 
entered  the  grass,  but  the  ele- 
phants soon  winded  the  cubs,  and 
I  approached  the  spot  where  they 
were  marked  down  full  of  hope  that 
there  would  one  or  two  fair- sized 
tigers  present  themselves.  But 
there  were  only  the  three-month- 
old  cubs  deserted  by  a  mother  that 
proved  to  be  utterly  insensible  to 
the  most  ordinary  maternal  obliga- 
tions. For  when  I  came  upon 
those  cubs,  I  counted  upon  the 
tigress  mother  as  mine.  It  seemed 
as  if  I  had  only  to  exercise  due 
patience  and  strategy  to  secure 
this  result.  I  retired  from  the 
field  leaving  the  cubs  intact,  leaving 
also  scouts  to  watch  the  tigress's 
movements  if  it  reappeared.  I 
gave  the  tigress  ample  time  to  re- 
cover its  nerve  and  maternal  in- 
stincts, and,  finally,  I  attempted 
by  cautious  approach  and  circum- 
vallation  to  catch  the  whole  family 
together  ;  but  in  vain  —  there, 
when  I  returned  to  the  spot,  were 
the  three  cubs  only.  I  repeated 
this  performance  again  and  yet 
again,  with  the  one  unvarying  con- 
sequence ;  and  then,  as  the  day 


408 


Thirty  Years  of  Shikar. — Conclusion. 


[Sept. 


was  closing  in,  I  made  my  selec- 
tion of  the  amiable  cub,  and  carried 
it  off  in  my  arms,  leaving  the 
other  two  for  their  parent.  Next 
day  I  returned  betimes  to  the 
scene,  and  having  carefully  cut  off 
the  tigress's  retreat,  closed  in  upon 
its  lair.  Alas,  only  emptiness  was 
there !  The  tigress  had  carried 
off  its  two  remaining  cubs  into 
space,  to  be  seen  no  more  by  me 
that  year,  at  all  events. 

The  cub  that  I  carried  off  grew 
in  strength  and  grace  for  some 
months  as  the  pet  of  my  house- 
hold. Never  but  on  one  occasion 
did  its  amiability  fail  it,  even  for 
a  moment,  and  then  we  had  our 
first  and  last  struggle  for  supre- 
macy. My  pet  was  about  five 
months'  old  when  this  crisis 
occurred,  and  a  sofa -cushion  was 
the  bone  of  contention.  My  pet, 
stretched  at  length  upon  a  couch, 
was  bored  for  want  of  a  plaything ; 
it  took  the  cushion  and  worried  it, 
and  it  worried  until  its  own  tem- 
per suffered  as  much  from  the 
rough  treatment  as  my  cushion, 
and  then  I  intervened,  and  my 
pet  and  I  had  a  short  encounter, 
in  which  the  victory  was  mine. 
Thereafter,  that  splendid  tom-cat 
gave  no  trouble  to  anybody  :  al- 
ways loose  about  the  house,  it  was 
my  constant  companion  and  my 
first-born's  plaything;  and  there 
was  reason  to  hope  that  thus  it 
would  reach  maturity — tractable 
and  trustworthy  even  as  a  full- 
grown  tiger.  But  this  was  not  to 
be  :  when  it  was  about  ten  months' 
old  it  died  of  some  mysterious  ail- 
ment which  proved  incurable,  in 
spite  of  all  the  healing  art  of  vets 
and  doctors. 

I  tried  a  panther  as  a  pet,  with 
less  success  on  the  side  of  amia- 
bility and  more  on  the  side  of 
health.  That  beast  grew  to  be 
tame  enough  by  fits  and  starts,  but 
suffered  from  occasional  lapses  in- 


to savagery;  and  when  it  fought 
with  me  or  any  visitor  of  mine,  it 
had  no  gentlemanly  instincts  in 
favour  of  fair -play.  It  would 
stalk  any  of  us,  coming  upon  us  by 
surprise  from  behind  the  chairs  or 
from  under  the  table,  until  it  be- 
came a  matter  of  surprise  when  it 
did  not  stalk  us,  and  that  pet  stood 
generally  regarded  as  an  unmiti- 
gated nuisance.  Then  I  gave  it 
to  a  rajah  for  a  small  zoological 
collection,  and  saw  no  more  of  it. 

My  Indian  menagerie  included 
two  or  three  bears ;  but  these  ani- 
mals, however  sweet-tempered  they 
may  be,  are  not  adapted  to  the 
home-life  of  the  ordinary  pet.  I 
am  aware  that  children  have  war- 
rant for  believing  that  bears  can 
be  accustomed  to  the  use  of  chairs 
and  beds  and  tables,  and  so  forth. 
Thus  are  they  and  we  instructed 
by  the  tale  of  the  three  bears; 
but,  though  it  be  rank  heresy  to 
question  this  teaching,  I  must  say 
that  I  regard  the  presence  of  one 
bear  (let  alone  three)  in  a  domestic 
interior  as  incompatible  with  the 
survival  of  any  furniture  whatever, 
unless  it  be  of  cast-iron  and  the 
strongest  of  metal  work.  This 
much  I  say,  speaking  from  ex- 
perience. 

As  for  deer  and  antelope,  &c., 
I  suppose  I  did  no  more  than 
follow  the  Anglo-Indian  fashion 
made  and  provided  in  regard  to 
the  keeping  of  these  animals.  The 
average  Anglo-Indian  domicile  is, 
as  often  as  not,  a  partially-equipped 
Noah's  ark.  In  the  compound  are 
to  be  found,  as  a  matter  of  course, 
goats  and  sheep,  and  the  sahib's 
dogs,  and  the  mangy  foundlings  of 
the  bazaar,  and  cows  from  whose 
milk  the  memsahib  fondly  hopes 
to  draw  supplies  of  cream  and 
butter,  and  horses  and  poultry  of 
sorts,  and  teal  and  ojuail  and 
pigeons.  And  to  the  ordinary 
collection  there  are  frequently 


1894.] 


Thirty  Years  of  Shikar. — Conclusion. 


409 


added  pea-fowl  and  monkeys,  and 
deer  and  cranes  of  sorts,  and  other 
of  the  commoner  creatures  of  the 
wilds,  and,  more  rarely,  a  wolf 
(chained  up  to  an  empty  cask)  or 
panther,  or  any  other  beast  of  the 
forest  or  fowl  of  the  air  that  the 
collector  can  get  hold  of.  One 
enthusiast  I  remember  rejoiced 
in  the  possession  of  an  Ornitho- 
rhynchus  paradoxus  (or  duck- 
billed platypus),  which  was  very 
precious  to  him  as  such,  although 
it  was  really  quite  a  different 
creature.  And  to  all  the  live- 
stock, domestic  or  otherwise,  col- 
lected in  the  Anglo-Indian  com- 
pound, have  to  be  added  the 
inevitable  crows  and  kites  and 
mynas,  and  other  birds  of  Indian 
station  life. 

I  suppose  the  Anglo-Indian  who 
becomes  an  amateur  Jamrack  does 
so  very  much  for  the  sake  of  occu- 
pation, or  to  extend  the  narrowly 
restricted  horizon  of  his  home-life 
from  May  to  October.  Monotony 
hangs  pall-like  over  his  environ- 
ment during  that  term,  and  the 
dead  level  of  the  plains  that  sur- 
round him  is  exactly  typical  of  the 
flatness  of  his  daily  life  outside  the 
work  of  his  kutcherry.  Nor  can 
it  be  truthfully  said  that  the  aver- 
age official  life,  the  preparation  of 
the  sacred  rneqsha,  the  report  on 
the  Gangetic  dolphin,  or  the  an- 
nual statistics  of  the  how-not-to-do- 
it  department,  is  always  deliriously 
varied.  Children  who  call  him 
father  may  not  continuously  glad- 
den the  heart  and  make  endless 
variety  in  the  life  of  this  unfortu- 
nate— the  climate  forbidding  that 
they  should  share  his  exile.  So  do 
Anglo-Indians  take  an  interest  in 
animals  that  are  not  exactlv  what 
they  see  everywhere  and"  every 
day,  and  every  hour  of  the  day : 
I  have  known  them  wildly  excited 
by  the  first  appearance  of  the  bull- 
frogs that  come  in  with  the  burst 


of  the  monsoon,  and  absolutely  in- 
toxicated by  the  dtbut  of  the 
water-wagtail — the  herald  of  the 
cold  weather.  And  for  much  the 
same  reason  one  does  curious  things 
in  the  way  of  time-killing  :  thus, 
for  two  years,  I  acted  as  secretary 
of  the  Lucknow  Race  Club,  and 
for  a  much  longer  time  as  manager 
of  an  amateur  theatrical  company, 
and  I  cannot  understand  that  any 
sane  man,  being  free  to  live  his 
own  life,  would  have  accepted 
either  of  those  honorary  situations 
while  any  other  employment  — 
stone-breaking  or  otherwise — was 
open  to  him. 

My  experiences  as  secretary  of 
the  Lucknow  Race  Club  were  in 
some  sort  of  a  sporting  nature,  as 
were  my  experiences  as  an  owner 
or  part  owner  of  race-horses,  but 
I  do  not  desire  to  recall  the  latter, 
and  for  the  former — well,  they  are 
another  story. 

Only  in  one  district  of  Oudh  (in 
the  Transgogra  country)  did  I  see 
machans  used  for  tiger- shooting, 
and  there  the  idea  seemed  to  pre- 
vail that  any  branch  of  a  tree 
that  would  carry  a  man  was  good 
enough  for  a  machan,  however  close 
to  the  ground.  I  only  saw  one 
tiger  killed  in  that  district  by 
machan  shooting,  and  on  that 
occasion,  a  lady  being  of  the  party, 
the  machans  were  ten  feet  or  less 
from  the  ground.  There  were 
four  guns  out  (Mrs  A.,  who  shared 
her  husband's  machan,  being  a 
spectator  only)  •  and  a  tiger,  if 
so  inclined  and  not  prevented  by 
a  bullet,  could  have  reached  any 
one  of  the  occupants  of  the  four 
machans  erected  for  us.  The  only 
sense  of  using  those  raised  posi- 
tions was  in  the  fact  that  so  there 
was  less  chance  of  the  tiger  seeing 
and  being  frightened  off  by  one  of 
us  to  the  detriment  of  another. 
It  was  with  rather  the  guilt-laden 
consciousness  of  the  assassin  that 


410 


Thirty  Years  of  Shikar. — Conclusion. 


[Sept. 


I,  as  one  of  four,  lay  in  wait  for 
that  tiger. 

But  mine  was  not  to  be  the 
assassin's  hand.  At  first,  when 
the  line  of  coolies  had  shouted 
and  drummed  and  horned  their 
way  into  earshot  of  our  ambus- 
cade, it  seemed  as  if  the  tiger 
would  head  my  way ;  but  the  pro- 
cession of  wild  things  flying  before 
the  beaters  included  not  the 
forest  king.  First,  with  wary  step 
and  safety -seeking  eye,  the  jackal 
emerged,  crossed  the  glade  in 
front  of  me,  and  was  gone  into 
the  jungle  behind.  Then  patter, 
patter,  patter  upon  the  fallen 
leaves,  what  is  it  that  approaches 
so  noisily — an  elephant?  No;  a 
peacock  !  Clumsy  of  foot,  as  harsh 
of  note,  this  worthy  attendant 
upon  the  Olympian  shrew  fol- 
lowed the  jackal.  Then  a  heavily 
antlered  stag  stepped  forth,  and 
sniffing  danger  in  the  air,  sped 
on.  But  the  tiger  came  not ;  and 
then,  bang,  bang,  and  a  roar  on  my 
left,  told  me  that  another  gun  than 
mine  had  opened  fire  upon  it.  But 
we  all  shared  in  the  finish  when, 
on  elephants,  we  pushed  the  tiger 
out  of  the  patch  of  heavy  under- 
growth into  which  it  had  taken 
refuge  and  killed  it. 

And  again  I  went  after  tigers 
in  that  district  when  the  native 
shikari  in  charge  of  affairs,  ignor- 
ing machans,  sought  to  place  the 
shooters  upon  the  forks  of  saplings 
and  upon  low -hanging  branches 
where  security  was  not  to  be 
dreamed  of,  and  shooting  was  an 
impossibility.  Once,  in  our  several 
beats,  I  permitted  myself  to  be 
located  in  a  sapling  fork,  but  only 
to  immediately  quit  that  coign 
of  disadvantage  as  soon  as  the 
shikari's  back  was  turned.  My 


position  would,  indeed,  have  been 
unendurable  for  more  than  a  few 
minutes.  I  could  only  stand  on 
one  foot  at  a  time.  I  could  only 
remain  upon  my  perch  at  all  by 
holding  on  with  at  least  one  hand  ; 
and  if  I  had  had  occasion  to  fire 
my  gun,  it  must  have  been  fired 
pistol  fashion,  with  the  one  hand 
not  immediately  employed  in  keep- 
ing myself  aloft.  And  all  this 
torture  and  crippling  for  an  eleva- 
tion of  about  half  the  height  that 
a  full-grown  tiger  can  reach  from 
the  ground  without  jumping.  I 
came  down  from  that  perch  forth- 
with, and  for  the  remainder  of 
that  day  ascended  no  other.  It 
has  to  be  added  that,  as  far  as 
tigers  were  concerned,  no .  machan 
or  substitute  therefor  was  required 
on  that  occasion,  for  from  first  to 
last  no  tiger  made  an  appearance 
to  any  of  us. 

And  now,  reluctantly  enough, 
I  bring  these  reminiscences  to  a 
close.  It  required  something  of 
an  effort  to  commence  my  narra- 
tive. It  calls  for  a  greater  effort 
to  write  "Finis,"  to  drop  the  cur- 
tain and  put  out  the  lights. 
Memories  that  had  long  slumbered 
have  been  awakened,  and  will  not 
at  once  be  lulled  to  rest  again. 
Delights  that  had  been  put  away 
as  unattainable  have  returned  to 
my  imagination  as  temptations 
difficult  of  resistance.  The  good 
sport  and  the  good-fellowship  that 
went  with  my  shikar  of  thirty' 
years  challenge  me  to  renew  that 
past  and  live  the  old  life  again. 
What  a  good  time  it  was  !  What 
good  fellows  were  they  who  helped 
to  make  it  so !  But  to  talk  of 
living  that  life  again — that  way 
madness  lies. 

E.  BRADDON. 


1894.] 


The  Double-bedded  Room. 


411 


THE    DOUBLE-BEDDED    ROOM. 


SOME  of  us  said  that  our  friend 
Cecil  Wake  was  the  most  nervous 
man  they  had  ever  known.  And 
yet  his  health  seemed  always  good, 
although  the  susceptibility  of  his 
temperament  was  such  that  it 
appeared  as  though  the  wear  and 
tear  of  existence  must  soon  prove 
too  much  for  him.  He  was  tem- 
perate— very  temperate — and  yet 
the  amount  of  twitching  that  his 
facial  muscles  underwent  when  he 
was  moved  and  excited,  made  one 
fear  that  the  next  thing  he  would  do 
must  be  to  weep.  Circumstances 
that  did  not  affect  other  men 
produced  an  amount  of  moisture, 
especially  in  the  corner  of  his 
right  eye,  which  soon  culminated 
in  an  actual  tear  -  drop,  always 
hastily  brushed  away  before  it  fell. 
The  Germans,  in  whose  country 
he  had  been  for  some  years  of  his 
youth,  have  a  saying  of  such  a 
man  that  "he  is  built  near  the 
water."  Now  emotion  on  certain 
occasions  is  always  permissible, 
even  to  the  male  sex.  When,  for 
instance,  a  favourite  daughter  or 
niece  is  married,  the  "God  bless 
you  ! "  uttered  by  the  master  of  the 
deserted  home  is  apt  to  be  gut- 
turally,  and  even  chokingly, — nay, 
often  inarticulately,  —  expressed. 
Perhaps  it  has  been  observed  by 
those  who  do  not  go  down  them- 
selves to  the  sea  in  ships,  but  who 
like  to  see  a  ship  launched  for  the 
purposes  of  those  who  intend  to  in- 
flict on  themselves  such  discomfort, 
that  when  the  said  ship  is  launched, 
men  among  the  crowd  of  witnesses 
of  the  operation  blow  their  noses, 
and  their  eyes  become  watery. 
Cecil  Wake's  always  became  watery 
on  such  occasions.  The  cheering 
of  the  men  on  board  of  a  ship  of 
war,  the  march  past  of  troops, 


even  the  hurrying  of  firemen  to  a 
conflagration,  made  his  vision  very 
misty.  Some  said  that  this  was 
to  the  credit  of  his  heart — others 
said  it  was  not  to  the  credit  of  his 
nerves.  Did  he  ride  1  Yes,  some- 
times, and  well.  The  successful 
termination  of  a  fox-hunt  and  the 
tragic  death  of  the  fox  were  events 
which  were  alleged  by  gossips  to 
produce  much  the  same  effect  upon 
him  as  the  above-mentioned  cases 
of  marriage,  launching,  cheering, 
or  fire  -  extinguishing  ;  but  then 
fox-hunting  takes  place  when  the 
air  is  cold  and  eyes  are  apt  to  be 
moist  from  intense  sympathy  with 
an  east  wind.  Nothing  tangible 
on  the  nerve  subject  could  be 
fairly  deduced  from  such  evidence. 
What  are  nerves  ?  Nobody  knows. 
Husbands  swear  that  they  are 
rubbish.  Wives  declare  that  their 
whole  being  consists  of  nothing 
else.  What  is  certain  is  that  they 
sometimes  show  themselves,  or 
rather  their  influence  shows  itself, 
all  of  a  sudden.  A  danger  is 
laughed  at  and  defied;  but  in  a 
moment,  although  the  danger  may 
not  be  there,  the  mere  imagination 
that  it  is  present  makes  us  feel 
uncomfortable.  The  boldest  men 
are  not  always  quite  sure  of  them- 
selves. One,  a  general,  who  had 
faced  fire  over  and  over  again, 
laughed  at  the  idea  that  he  could 
feel  anxious  when  taken  down  a 
steep  ice  toboggan  slope.  "  Me  ? 
No,  never  felt  nervous  in  my  life;" 
and  he  took  his  place  in  front  of 
the  person  who  was  to  steer  him 
down  the  ice.  But  he  had  hardly 
seated  himself  before  he  felt  an 
irresistible  impulse  not  to  go  for- 
ward, but  to  hang  back.  "  Stop 
one  moment, — are  you  quite  sure 
you  can  steer  ? "  was  the  question 


412 


The  Double-bedded  Room. 


[Sept. 


in  which  his  nerves  unexpectedly 
betrayed  themselves.  We  truly  do 
not  know  what  is  going  on  within 
us,  and  it  would  not  surprise  any 
doctor  to  be  told  confidentially  by 
any  one  that  a  discovery  had  been 
made  that  the  nerves  were  giving 
way.  Imagination  has  a  great 
responsibility  in  these  matters. 
Men  of  little  imagination  are  not 
"given  to  give  way."  So,  if  you 
have  to  do  anything  which  is  try- 
ing, and  require  an  assistant  or 
companion,  don't  take  a  man  en- 
dowed with  imagination.  Look 
rather  for  a  fool  than  a  clever 
man.  At  all  events,  do  not  at- 
tempt anything  risky  with  a  man 
who  thinks  too  much. 

All  these  sapient  thoughts  arise 
because  of  Cecil  Wake,  who,  al- 
though an  excellent  fellow,  thought 
too  much.  Perhaps  it  was  because 
of  this  that  he  had  become  better 
than  any  barometer  for  telling  a 
change  in  weather.  Snow  always 
gave  him  headache — thunder  al- 
ways gave  him  headache;  but  he 
bore  these  afflictions  uncomplain- 
ingly. But  we  knew  in  summer 
from  an  extra  twitch  about  his 
mouth  that  we  should  have 
thundery  weather.  In  winter  snow 
faithfully  followed  the  same 
signals.  We  discovered  another 
peculiarity  in  him,  and  some  of  his 
friends  declared  that  they  had 
found  a  treasure  in  him  at  last, 
because  he  had  one  gift  that  could 
be  usefully  employed  for  money. 
He  was  a  marvellous  water-finder. 
For  this  he  employed  the  time- 
honoured  instrument,  the  hazel 
fork.  He  held  the  two  ends  of 
the  hazel  between  his  thumb  and 
forefinger,  the  fork  turned  down- 
wards, and  whenever  he  came  any- 
where near  running  water  the  fork 
end  of  the  hazel  rose  in  the  air; 
and  the  stick  not  only  did  this, 
but  twisted  and  turned  in  his  hand 
as  though  in  an  agony.  It  made 


his  arms  ache,  he  said,  and  he 
described  the  sensation  as  espe- 
cially unpleasant  along  the  nerves 
and  muscles  of  the  forearms.  In 
an  African  desert  he  would  have 
been  invaluable ;  and  we  often  told 
him  that  one  of  the  African  com- 
panies should  give  him  a  salary 
and  employ  him  to  find  water  in 
dry  places.  When  he  walked  with 
us,  often  and  often  he  has  told  us 
that  water  ran  somewhere  far 
down  under  his  feet.  We  believed 
him  or  disbelieved  him  as  we  liked, 
for  it  was  only  when  we  knew 
that  a  stream  was  close  at  hand 
that  we  could  test  him.  He  had 
also  a  sensation  when  placed  near 
certain  metals.  Whether  all  this 
arose  from  magnetism  or  from 
some  electrical  affinities,  we  were 
not  wise  enough  to  determine.  To 
electricity  I  ascribed  his  sensitive- 
ness ;  others  called  it  by  other 
names.  At  all  events,  there  it 
was,  a  most  palpable  fact,  showing 
itself  with  a  power  so  strong  that 
if,  for  instance,  he  grasped  our 
wrists,  we  became  aware  of  a  force 
running  into  our  being;  and  it 
lifted  hazel  -  twigs  in  our  hands 
when  he  was  thus  holding  us,  so 
that  we  felt  the  wood  pressing  it- 
self against  our  fingers  if  we  re- 
sisted the  impulse  given  to  it  by 
him  through  our  bodies. 

Why  should  persons  formed 
exactly  alike  as  far  as  the  mere 
presence  of  blood,  bone,  sinew,  and 
nerves  is  concerned,  be  so  variously 
affected?  If  there  be  such  great 
forces  at  work,  why  do  they  not 
pervade  all  sentient  flesh?  We 
ask  many  questions,  but  the  true 
replies  are  not  as  yet  vouchsafed 
to  us ;  perhaps  they  will  never  be. 
There  will  always  be  creatures 
whose  eyes  see,  and  ears  hear, 
what  is  unknown  to  the  many. 
The  presence  of  influences  in  the 
world  around  us  will  thrill  through 
those  who,  endowed  with  ethereal 


1894.] 


The  Double-bedded  Room. 


413 


qualities,  feel  things  which  most  of 
us,  fashioned  with  more  earthly 
substance,  failed  to  discern. 

Notwithstanding  his  exquisite 
susceptibility,  Wake  was  a  pleasant 
companion,  and  did  not  take  amiss 
any  amusement  afforded  to  his 
grosser  comrades  by  his  peculiar- 
ities. He  was  fond  of  making 
excursions  on  foot  through  the 
Swiss  highlands;  and  one  com- 
panion only  was  what  he  asked 
and  generally  obtained,  for  we  all 
liked  him,  and  he  was  easily 
pleased.  Content  with  almost 
anything  except  constant  noise 
or  stormy  weather,  he  would  plod 
along,  singing  sometimes  to  him- 
self, and  full  of  interest  in  all  he 
saw.  The  only  circumstance  that 
made  him  seem  at  all  unreason- 
able was  in  the  matter  of  accom- 
modation at  an  inn.  The  hotels 
were  often  crowded ;  but  however 
full  they  might  be,  Wake  always 
insisted  on  having  a  room  to  him- 
self. He  said  he  could  not  sleep 
with  another  person  snoring  in 
another  bed,  however  remote,  in 
the  same  room. 

This  unreasonable  apprehension 
was  especially  aggravating  when  I 
was  with  him  on  one  of  these 
excursions,  for  I  am  an  excellent 
walker,  and  an  excellent  sleeper, 
and  feel  certain  that  I  never  snore. 
People  don't  who  lie  on  their 
side  and  not  on  their  back,  and 
I  know  that  I  never  lie  on  my 
back ;  and  if  ever  disagreeable,  I 
am  only  disagreeable  when  I  am 
awake.  But  this  assertion  had 
no  influence  with  Cecil  Wake. 
We  had  arrived  late  and  hungry 
at  an  inn,  and  were  shown  a  room 
where  there  were  two  beds,  the 
one  with  its  back  to  the  side  of 
the  room  where  was  the  window, 
and  the  other  placed  with  its  head 
the  other  way,  and  near  the  door. 
There  was  a  considerable  interval 
between  the  beds.  Wake  told  the 


landlord  he  wanted  a  room  to 
himself,  however  small.  Excellent 
as  Swiss  hotels  are,  they  cannot 
contain  more  rooms  than  they  do 
contain,  and  the  landlord  said  he 
could  not  give  another  unless  he 
gave  his  own,  and  that  he  could 
not  do,  for  he  had  a  wife  and  I 
don't  know  how  many  children 
sleeping  there.  So  there  was  no 
help  for  it,  and  the  landlord  re- 
tired. I  told  Wake  that  I  feared 
there  was  no  avoiding  the  incon- 
venience, and  that  he  must  allow 
me  a  bed,  and  that  I  promised 
not  to  snore.  But  although  he  at 
first  made  no  demur,  and  although 
I  had  my  bag  carried  up  to  the 
room,  he  presently  began  to  look 
so  unhappy — so  ridiculously  put 
out  and  twitchy — that  I,  to  whom 
it  was  a  matter  of  perfect  indiffer- 
ence whether  I  slept  in  a  bed  or 
on  a  sofa,  said  that  I  had  made 
up  my  mind  not  to  plague  him  by 
my  presence,  and  that  I  would  go 
down  and  sleep  on  a  couch  I  had 
observed  in  the  dining-room  of  the 
hotel,  which  we  had  passed  as  we 
came  in  before  mounting  the  stairs. 
He  thanked  me  effusively,  and  al- 
though I  thought  him  rather  self- 
ish I  shook  his  hand  and  wished 
him  pleasant  dreams.  He  said 
that  he  would  not  act  thus  were  it 
not  that  he  felt  that  he  himself 
would  be  an  annoyance  to  me  ;  for 
unless  he  slept  well,  his  restless- 
ness would  be  sufficient  to  keep  us 
both  awake. 

"Besides,"  he  added,  to  my 
astonishment,  "there  are  very 
peculiar  influences  at  work  here, 
and  especially,  as  it  seems  to  me, 
in  that  part  of  the  room  where 
your  bed"  (indicating  the  one  near 
the  door)  "  is  placed,  and  I  would 
much  rather  that  no  friend  of 
mine  slept  there.  I  cannot  tell 
you  what  it  is,  but  it  is  palpable — 
palpable,"  he  repeated,  with  a  sigh 
and  a  shudder,  "  and  I  shall  cer- 


414 


The  Double-bedded  Room. 


[Sept, 


tainly  take  the  bed  near  the  win- 
dow, where  I  can  get  fresh  air." 

I  said,  "  Nonsense,  old  man ; 
thunder  in  the  air,  and  on  your 
nerves,  as  usual.  Nice  clean  bed — 
what's  the  matter  with  it  ? "  But 
as  I  said  this,  a  draught  coming 
from  the  door  blew  out  my  candle, 
and  made  his  nicker  so  that  he 
shaded  it  with  his  hand,  causing 
the  shadow  of  the  hand  to  fall  on 
that  side  of  the  room  where  the 
door  and  the  bed  were,  and  I 
looked,  and  while  I  was  speaking 
the  shadow  of  his  fingers  above 
the  bed  seemed  to  make  them 
point  on  the  wall  at  something, 
and  underneath  the  shadow  of 
them  the  bed  appeared  to  my 
fancy  to  be  shining  in  an  odd  way. 
Waves  of  phosphorescence,  like 
that  seen  in  the  sky  when  it  is  lit 
by  auroral  light,  floated  over  it, 
and  illuminated  the  white  sheets. 
I  hastily  lit  my  candle  again  at 
his,  and  repeating  my  "good- 
night," went  out  at  the  door,  an 
odd  chilly  sensation  passing  down 
my  back  as  I  did  so.  I  found  the 
couch  in  the  dining-room,  lay 
down  on  it,  put  my  plaid  over  my 
legs,  and  was  soon  sound  asleep. 

During  the  early  hours  of  morn- 
ing there  must  have  been  a  storm 
which  failed  to  wake  me.  As  it 
came  nearer,  however,  I  became 
half  -  conscious,  and  my  thoughts 
taking  pleasant  shapes,  made  me 
in  my  dream  imagine  myself  at 
breakfast  with  Wake,  preparatory 
to  a  start  for  a  mountain  ramble. 
I  saw  before  me  on  the  clean  table- 
cloth the  low  glass  jar  of  the  in- 
evitable Swiss  honey,  and  my 
mouth  seemed  filled  with  the  ex- 
cellent bread-and-butter,  and  I 
lifted  to  my  lips  the  cup  of  cafe 
au  lait,  but  a  sudden  jar  made  me 
drop  the  cup,  and  with  a  start  I 
awoke.  A  loud  peal  of  thunder 
shook  the  hotel,  and  I  lay  on  my 
back  thinking  what  would  happen 


were  the  lightning  to  strike  the 
house.  The  position  of  Wake's 
room  immediately  over  the  dining- 
room  occurred  to  me.  I  ran  over 
in  my  mind  the  construction  of 
the  place,  its  verandahs,  and  its 
many  windows  under  the  tall  roof 
which  had  a  great  gable.  I  won- 
dered if  there  was  a  lightning- 
conductor,  and  thought  how  the 
chimney  was  placed,  and  if  the 
stories  of  bolts  coming  down  chim- 
neys were  true.  Pah  !  what  non- 
sense !  Why  should  I  have  such 
ideas  1  Let  me  go  to  sleep  again. 
What  did  it  matter,  one  thunder- 
storm or  more  among  the  Alps, 
which  were  always  re-echoing  such 
concerts?  Then  I  looked  round 
me,  and  I  saw  the  door  I  had  en- 
tered by  slowly  opening,  and  in 
another  moment  Wake's  face  ap- 
peared, then  his  body  followed, 
clothed  in  his  dressing-gown. 

"Are  you  here,  D ?"  he 

asked. 

"Yes,  yes,  here  I  am,  quite  com- 
fortable," I  replied,  thinking  lazily 
that  he  might  have  suddenly  be- 
come uneasy  about  my  accommoda- 
tion. "  Here  I  am,  woke  by  this 
beastly  thunderstorm.  I  suppose 
it  woke  you  1 " 

He  came  to  me  without  answer- 
ing, and  by  a  night-light  I  had 
kept  burning  I  saw  that  he  looked 
much  disturbed. 

"  Never  mind  me  now,"  I  said  ; 
"  I  am  all  right.  What  is  it  that 
has  disturbed  you?" 

He  was  silent  a  moment,  and 
then  said  in  quick  whispered  tones, 
"  I  want  you  to  come  with  me." 

"Where  to?"  I  asked. 

"  Up  to  my  room.  I  wish  to 
see  if  you  see  what  I  see  there. 
Come  at  once." 

I  was  still  feeling  very  lazy,  but 
felt  that  he  was  in  earnest,  and 
rolled  out  of  the  sofa  with  a  grunt, 
saying,  "  All  right,  old  man  ;  any- 
thing to  please  you."  Then  as  I 


1894.] 


The  Double-bedded  Room. 


415 


followed  his  retreating  figure,  I 
asked,  "  But  what  is  it  1 " 

"  Never  mind,  come — come,"  he 
said,  and  we  re-entered  the  bed- 
room. 

He  had  a  candle  burning  beside 
the  bed  he  had  occupied,  the  one 
near  the  window.  The  other  bed, 
next  the  door,  had  evidently  re- 
mained untouched.  There  was  no 
sign  of  any  pressure  on  the  pillow, 
nor  was  there  any  disturbance  of 
the  blankets  and  sheets.  As  I 
passed  to  the  interior  of  the  room 
I  again  felt  chilly  for  a  moment. 
We  approached  the  window,  which 
was  seamed  with  the  beating  rain. 
Wake  faced  round  and  asked  me 
to  look  at  the  bed  near  the  door. 

"  Can  you  see  anything  there  1 " 
he  asked, 

"  Why,  no,  the  bed  —what  do 
you  mean?"  I  replied. 

"  Wait,"  he  said,  "  for  the  next 
flash,  and  then  tell  me  what  you 
see,  keeping  your  eyes  on  the  bed," 
he  added  excitedly,  but  in  a  low 
and,  as  it  appeared  to  me,  fear- 
struck  voice. 

We  waited,  but  not  for  long,  for 
very  soon  a  fierce  light  beat  in 
again,  as  the  lightning  ran  down, 
illumining  every  corner  of  the 
room,  and  showing  the  white  un- 
ruffled bed  most  distinctly. 

"  Now  —  and  now  —  there  !  " 
Wake  exclaimed. 

"  Well,  all  is  dark,  except  for 
your  candlelight,  which  seems 
weak  and  yellow  enough  after 
that  flash,"  I  said  loudly  ;  for  the 
thunder  had  pealed  out  as  soon  as 
the  flash  disappeared,  and  rolled  on 
with  its  reverberations  as  though 
the  sound  would  never  cease. 

"  Look  at  them — you  must  see 
that  group  around  him,"  Cecil 
said.  "No  —  you  don't.  Well, 
wait  till  the  next  flash." 

"What  is  it?"  I  asked;  and 
feeling  a  little  faint,  which  I  had 
hardly  ever  felt  before,  I  sat  down 


on  the  bed  on  which  he  had  re- 
posed. He  sat  down  on  it  also, 
seating  himself  more  towards  its 
foot,  as  I  had  placed  myself  next 
the  pillows.  His  body  was  thus 
between  me  and  the  other  bed. 
He  took  my  hand,  then  seeing  that 
I  rather  shrank  from  this  childlike 
treatment,  he  put  his  hand  on  my 
arm,  and  said,  "Hush — do  wait, 
and  see  again  if  you  see  nothing." 

So  we  watched,  the  rain  making 
its  noise  against  the  window.  I 
whispered,  "  Do  you  see  anything 
that  you  keep  on  telling  me  to 
watch,  and  looking  so  oddly  always 
at  the  corner  1 " 

"  Yes,  I  see  them  still,  but 
fainter,"  he  replied. 

Then  came  another  blinding 
flame  of  blue  light,  and  I — I,  look- 
ing at  that  empty  bed,  saw  upon 
it  the  form  of  a  man,  and  around 
him  was  gathered  a  group  of 
figures,  half-seen,  but  lighted  with 
the  light  that  had  filled  the  room 
with  the  flash,  and  had  gone  again 
— there  it  was,  lingering  still  on 
that  form  in  the  bed,  and  lighting 
up  the  side  of  the  figures  around 
him.  The  figure  on  the  bed  was 
that  of  a  dead  man,  but  although 
the  corpse  was  phosphorescent, 
under  the  half-closed  lids  the  eyes 
gleamed  as  though  their  blind  orbs 
were  of  living  fire.  The  glow  com- 
ing from  him  seemed  to  be  the 
radiance  that  lighted  the  sorrowing 
group  that  gazed  down  upon  him. 
As  I  looked  the  apparition  became 
fainter  and  fainter,  until  the  little 
yellow  candle-flame  was  all  that 
lit  the  room,  and  the  bed  again 
was  empty,  and  the  white  sheets 
lay  close  up  to  the  pillow  next  the 
wall  as  though  nothing  had  ever 
been  there.  I  now  felt  my  arm 
aching  where  Wake's  hand  was  on 
it,  and  I  moved  it  and  gently  dis- 
placed his  hand  with  my  disen- 
gaged one,  and  said,  "Wake,  I 
thought  I  saw  a  group  of  men 


416 


The  Double-bedded  Room. 


[Sept. 


around  a  body  in  that  bed,  but  it 
must  be  some   odd   effect  of  the 


"I  am  sorry  I  called  you,"  he 
said,  amiably. 

lightning  playing  tricks  with  re-         "Oh,  we  had  best  not  talk  of 
flections  from  that  mirror  ! "  the  effect  of  light  we  thought  we 

saw,  and  it's  of  no  use  to  mention 
it  to  others,"  I  replied. 
"  Why  1 "  he  asked. 
"Simply,"!  said,  "because  no- 
body will  believe  us." 

We  left  the  hotel,  and  I  think 
it  must  have  been  at  least  a  week 


You  think  so?"  he  said,  with 
a  sad  smile  that  softened  the 
twitching  of  the  corners  of  his 
mouth.  "Well,  if  you  stay,  you 
may  see  it  again, — I  see  it  now." 
"  But  I  don't,  and  it's  all  non- 
sense," -I  said  desperately,  deter- 
mined not  to  give  in ;  "  but  I'll  tell 


afterwards  that  in  another  hotel 


you  what  it  is,  Cecil,  I'll  not  leave     we  came  upon  a  number  of  an  old 


the  room.  Give  us  a  hand  with 
your  own  bed.  I'll  take  the  feath- 
ered cushion  thing  and  a  blanket, 
and  lie  near  you  until  morning,  and 
that  bed  may  take  care  of  itself. 
I  agree  so  far  with  you  that  I 
won't  sleep  in  it." 


illustrated  newspaper  in  the  read- 
ing-room. Cecil  had  it  in  his 
hand,  and  gave  it  to  me,  pointing 
with  his  finger  at  a  paragraph 
which  read  thus  : — 

"We  regret  to  learn  that  a  sad 

O  _ 


The  storm  was  moving  farther     accident  took  place  last  Wednesday 


away.  There  were  some  fainter 
flashes,  but  I  saw  nothing  of  our 
strangely  lit  companions,  and  after 
tossing  about  on  the  improvised 
bed  on  the  floor,  and  seeing  Cecil 
still  half -raised  on  his  pillows 
and  gazing  still  at  bed  No.  2, 1  be- 
came unconscious  of  storm,  Cecil, 
or  phantoms,  and  slept  till  the 
morning  light,  and  the  boot's 
cheerful  "Seeks  Ukr"  and  double 
knock  warned  us  to  prepare  for 
our  day's  work.  Cecil  rose,  and 
we  went  together  down  to  the 
dining-room,  both  very  silent,  and 
wondering  if  anything  would  be 
asked  by  host  or  waiters  about  our 


at  — gen,  the  particulars  of  which 
have  cast  a  gloom  over  the  place,  and 
have  so  affected  the  amiable  host  of 
the  — hoff,  that  he  has  shut  up  his 
house  a  full  fortnight  before  the 
usual  end  of  the  season,  which  has 
always  filled  full  his  hospitable  and 
excellent  place  of  entertainment  and 
healthy  lodging.  Mr  G.,  an  English 
gentleman,  who  was  travelling  alone, 
was  carried  into  the  hotel  during  a 
thunderstorm,  struck  dead  by  light- 
ning, which  damaged  also  a  little 
part  of  the  house,  close  to  which  he 
was  standing  under  the  shelter  of  a 
chestnut-tree.  The  body  was  placed 
on  a  bed,  and  means  were  tried  to 
produce  sensibility,  but  without  avail. 
His  brother  has  arrived  from  Eng- 
land, and  the  corpse  will  probably 


night's  rest.     We  breakfasted,  the     be  buried  at  —gen,  his  brother  think- 

host    came   and    wished   us   good 

morning,    and    gave    information 

about  our  route,  and  spoke  of  the 

storm,  but  of  nothing  else,  and  I 

turned  to  Cecil  after  he  had  gone, 

saying  that  I  could   not   explain 

the  night's  vision,  but  thought  we 

must   have  eaten  something  that 

had  produced  a  disagreement  in  our 

digestions  and  an  agreement  in  our 

symptoms.     He  was  still  excited 


ing  that  the  carriage  to  England  of 
the  gentleman's  body  is  unnecessary, 
although  he  has,  it  is  said,  a  fine 
estate  in  that  country,  and  might  have 
expected  to  have  ended  his  life  amid 
English  'home  and  comfort,'  and  to 
have  rested  with  his  ancestors." 

I  put  down  the  paper. 

The  place  mentioned  was  that 
where  Cecil  Wake  had  caused  me 
to  see  what,  I  still  try  to  think, 


and  nervous,  and  looked  as  though     was  an  effect  of  his 
he  had  not  slept  at  all.  ation  ! 


own  imagm- 


AN  ELECTRICIAN. 


1894.]  A  Quitrent  Ode.  417 


A    QUITKENT    ODE. 

"THIRTY  to-day?"     Well,  be  it  so— 

"Would  I  the  years  were  twenty?"     No. 

"  /  loved  you  well  at  twenty"     Then 

Myself  had  scarcely  doubled  ten. 

Since  when,  I've  toiled  and  failed  and  fought, 

Hoped  and  regretted,  learned  and  taught; 

So  having  won  to  man's  estate, 

Why  should  I  weary  of  my  mate? 

I  ask  no  marvel  of  surprise, — 

Flushed  cheeks  or  unacquainted  eyes ; 

Nor  holds  there  any  spell  for  me 

In  ignorant  simplicity. 

Let  the  peach  apple  hang,  though  rife 

With  fragrant  juices ;   mine,  the  wife 

Who  brings  me,  wholesome,  fair,  and  good, 

The  ripened  fruit  of  womanhood ; 

Who  crowns  my  measure  to  the  lip 

With  fit  and  full  companionship. 

Mere  homage  to  the  girl  I  owe; 

I  need  the  woman  that  I  know. 

A  sober  strain,  dear ;   one  that  fits 
With  sobered  hearts  and  sobered  wits. 
Yet  take  my  gift  of  Easter  flowers, 
White  harbingers  of  sunnier  hours. 
Gone  is,  and  gone  with  lingering  Lent, 
"The  winter  of  our  discontent." 
Remember  how  narcissus  grew 
Where  planets,  summer-fraught  with  dew, 
Watched  Glion,  and  in  swathes  among 
Lush  meadows  misty  fragrance  hung 
— Not  sweeter  than  your  breath. 

Oh  there, 

With  such  enchantment  in  the  air, 
— Ay,  here  or  there,  by  night  or  day, 
So  all  the  world  were  far  away, 
Our  thirty  years  methinks  might  prove 
Thirty  good  reasons  why  to  love. 

G.  W.  Y, 


418 


A  New  Sport. 


[Sept. 


A    NEW    SPORT. 


WHILE  some  people  may  be  in- 
clined to  deny  that  sea-fishing  is 
in  any  sense  a  sport,  others  per- 
haps hold  the  opinion  that  it  is  a 
very  fine  sport  indeed,  but  not 
new;  so  that  the  title  I  have 
chosen  is  liable  to  be  assailed  for 
very  opposite  reasons.  It  is  not, 
however,  of  ordinary  sea-fishing, 
which  needs  long  coarse  lines, 
heavy  leads,  a  multitude  of  hooks, 
and  the  various  appurtenances  of 
the  professional  fisherman,  that  I 
am  about  to  write,  but  rather  of 
angling  in  salt-water  very  much 
as  it  is  followed  in  our  rivers  and 
lakes,  with  certain  comparatively 
trifling  modifications  in  the  way  of 
tackle,  and  variations  in  the  matter 
of  bait. 

We  should  have  to  go  back  a 
long  way  to  determine  who  was 
the  first  man  to  discover  the  ad- 
vantages of  the  rod  for  this  sport. 
The  most  primitive  form  of  sea- 
fishing  was  doubtless  done  from 
the  shore,  and  more  particularly 
from  rocks  rising  out  of  deep 
water.  The  Goth,  Pict,  or  Scot 
who  stood  on  some  rocky  pro- 
minence and  cast  out  his  stone- 
weighted  line,  must  have  found 
that  his  hook  fouled  the  seaweed 
beneath  him,  and  a  pole  of  some 
kind,  to  prevent  the  recurrence  of 
this  mishap,  was  very  quickly  de- 
vised. On  the  abrupt,  rugged 
coasts  of  Scotland,  Ireland,  York- 
shire, Devon,  and  Cornwall,  long 
rods  of  some  kind  or  other  have 
been  used  from  time  immemorial. 

But  sea-fishing  does  not  become 
a  sport  merely  because  a  rod  is 
involved.  When,  however,  we 
find  that  skilful  anglers  come  down 
to  the  coasts,  and  in  places,  at 
times,  and  generally  under  con- 
ditions when  professional  fisher- 


men would  fail,  manage  to  make 
heavy  baskets  of  fish  by  means  of 
fine  tackle  and  the  skill  with  which 
they  use  it,  then  I  think  it  may 
be  said  that  a  branch  of  sea-fishing 
has  been  created  which  may  reason- 
ably be  termed  a  sport. 

The  professional  fisherman  does 
most  of  his  line-fishing  during  the 
night  or  at  early  morning,  and  the 
fish  take  little  notice  of  his  coarse 
lines  in  the  semi -darkness.  In 
the  daytime  he  is  more  successful 
when  the  sea  is  rough  than  dur- 
ing calm,  sunny  weather.  The 
troubled  surface  checks  the  flow 
of  light,  and  the  wave-motion, 
where  the  sea  is  not  too  deep, 
stirs  up  the  bottom  and  slightly 
thickens  the  water.  In  bright 
sunlight,  after  a  spell  of  fine 
weather,  when  the  surface  is  like 
one  sheet  of  plate-glass  and  the 
eye  can  see  down  several  fathoms, 
the  professional  will  tell  you  that 
the  fish  are  shy  and  unapproach- 
able. But  the  salt-water  angler 
knows  better;  and  by  using  fine 
tackle,  and  lulling  the  suspicions 
of  the  fish  by  a  judicious  distribu- 
tion of  ground-bait,  he  may  half 
fill  his  boat,  to  the  great  amaze- 
ment of  the  professional. 

I  well  remember  how,  one 
sunny  August  day,  a  friend  and 
I  walked  down  to  a  little  quay  at 
the  head  of  Loch  Inchard,  carry- 
ing pike-rods  in  our  hands.  The 
gillie  who  was  waiting  for  us  said 
so  positively  the  rods  were  worse 
than  useless,  that  my  friend  went 
back  and  left  his  at  home.  There 
were  three  hand-lines  of  the  usual 
kind  in  the  boat ;  and  during  the 
two  hours  we  were  actually  fishing 
my  friend  worked  two  of  these 
and  the  gillie  the  third,  thus 
having  six  hooks  between  them. 


1894.' 


A  New  Sport. 


419 


I,  on  the  other  hand,  had  a  piece 
of  tackle  known  as  a  "pater- 
noster," made  of  single  salmon- 
gut  and  bearing  a  couple  of  hooks  ; 
and  this  I  used  with  rod  and  reel 
much  as  if  I  was  perch -fishing. 
The  loch  was  full  of  fish,  and  we 
had  a  really  fine  take  of  large 
whiting,  grey  gurnets,  and  plaice ; 
but  the  two  hooks  of  the  pater- 
noster caught  more  than  the  six 
hooks  of  the  hand-lines,  and  the 
gillie  frankly  admitted  that  he 
had  been  mistaken  in  his  views 
on  the  subject.  That  fine  tackle 
should  on  one  occasion  prevail 
over  coarse  proves  little,  but  I 
could  give  similar  instances  with- 
out number.  Mr  Cholmondeley 
Pennell  tells  me  that,  some  twenty 
or  thirty  years  ago,  he  and  the 
late  Frank  Buckland  were  sea- 
fishing  in  a  boat  off  Plymouth. 
In  a  little  craft  not  far  distant 
were  some  persons  similarly  en- 
gaged. Mr  Pennell  alone  fished 
with  rod  and  fresh-water  tackle, 
and  his  take  exceeded  not  only 
those  of  Frank  Buckland  and  the 
boatman,  but  also  those  of  the 
people  in  the  second  boat. 

The  literature  of  angling  is  very 
large.  Tzaak  Walton's  '  Compleat 
Angler '  has  alone  run  into  over  a 
hundred  editions,  and  there  have 
been  five  and  six  hundred  other 
works  published;  but  nearly  all 
these  related  to  fresh-water  fishing. 
In  1801  was  published  Dr  Brooke's 
'Art  of  Angling,'  which  dealt  to 
some  extent  with  rock -fishing. 
Later  on  we  had  a  useful  book  by 
Captain  Lambert  Young,  entitled 
1  Sea-Fishing  as  a  Sport,'  and  Mr 
Wilcock's  important  work,  *  The 
Sea-Fisherman.'  But  it  was  not 
until  1887,  when  my  little  hand- 
book, entitled  'Angling  in  Salt 
Water,'  was  published,  that  fishing 
in  the  sea  with  fine  tackle,  and  very 
much  according  to  the  methods 
used  by  fresh-water  anglers,  was 


exhaustively  considered.  I  may 
be  pardoned,  perhaps,  for  quot- 
ing a  few  lines  from  the  pre- 
face : — 

"  The  subject  of  this  little  work  is 
sea-fishing — or  rather,  sea-angling — 
for  pleasure,  as  opposed  to  sea-fishing 
for  profit ;  and  apart  from  any  value 
attaching  to  the  information  given,  if 
my  endeavours  have  the  effect  of  send- 
ing more  anglers  to  the  sea,  and  re- 
lieving the  strain  on  our  over-fished 
rivers  and  lakes,  I  shall  not  have 
written  in  vain.  .  .  .  This  book  will,  I 
hope,  show  that  angling  of  a  superior 
kind  is  to  be  obtained  in  the  sea,  and 
possibly  in  a  few  years  the  very  limited 
number  of  persons  who  angle  in  salt- 
water may  be  considerably  increased." 

My  expectations  have  been 
abundantly  realised.  There  is  not 
a  pier  or  jetty  jutting  out  from 
the  shore  of  the  United  Kingdom 
where  the  sea-angler  is  not  to  be 
found,  though  I  fear,  owing  to  the 
steamboat  traffic  at  most  of  those 
places,  the  majority  of  the  fish 
have  been  driven  away,  and  he 
catches  but  little.  My  little  book 
made,  indeed,  many  converts,  and 
was  followed  by  a  work  very  much 
on  the  same  lines  so  far  as  the 
practical  information  went,  but 
with  the  addition  of  a  very  useful 
guide  to  the  principal  places  on 
the  coast — I  mean  '  Sea- Fishing  on 
the  English  Coasts,'  by  Mr  F.  G. 
Aflalo.  A  smaller  book,  written 
by  an  enthusiast,  but  dealing 
chiefly  with  hand -lines,  was  Mr 
Frank  Hudson's  '  Sea-Fishing  for 
Amateurs.' 

The  first,  and,  so  far  as  I  know, 
for  many  years  the  only,  society 
of  sea  -  anglers  was  the  "  Rock 
Fishers' "  angling  club  of  Aberdeen. 
But  in  the  early  spring  of  1893  a 
"British  Sea -Anglers'  Society" 
was  formed,  of  which  Sir  Edward 
Birkbeck,  Bart.,  is  the  president. 
It  includes  among  its  supporters 
Lord  Brassey,  Lord  St  Levan,  Sir 
Harald  G.  Hewett,  Bart.,  Sir 


420 


A  New  Sport. 


[Sept. 


George  B.  Sitwell,  Bart,  M.P., 
Sir  Albert  Rollit,  M.P.,  Captain 
Lambert  Young,  Mr  R.  Biddulph 
Martin,  M.P.,  Mr  H.  Cholmondeley 
Pennell,  Mr  T.  A.  Dorrien-Smith, 
Mr  J.  C.  Wilcocks,  Mr  W.  Senior 
(of  the  'Field'),  Mr  S.  Harwood 
(of  '  Land  and  Water '),  Mr  R.  B. 
Marston  (of  the '  Fishing  Gazette'), 
Mr  A.  W.  Blakey  (of  the  'Angler '), 
and  a  number  of  other  gentlemen 
interested  in  sea -fishing.  The 
chief  burden  of  the  undertaking 
was  borne  by  Mr  F.  G.  Aflalo,  who 
was  elected,  and  has  since  acted  as, 
honorary  secretary.  The  society 
was  from  the  first  a  success,  and 
within  a  few  months  the  subscrib- 
ers numbered  nearly  two  hundred. 
It  may,  perhaps,  be  asked,  What 
can  a  society  of  this  kind  do? 
The  committee  aim,  I  believe,  at 
establishing  branches  in  all  parts 
of  the  kingdom,  with  boats  and 
competent  men.  This,  of  course, 
is  a  work  both  of  time  and  money. 
Then  there  are  to  be  correspond- 
ing members  at  different  sea-coast 
towns,  who  will  give  information 
as  to  the  migrations  of  sea -fish, 
the  best  periods  to  visit  the  lo- 
cality, the  best  men  to  employ,  and 
so  forth.  All  the  information 
which  is  obtained  is  filed  and 
ready  for  reference  at  the  office  in 
London,  No.  66  Hay  market.  Ar- 
rangements are  being  made  with 
different  hotel  -  keepers  to  charge 
members  of  the  society  a  fixed 
tariff,  and  certain  of  the  railway 
companies  have  already  agreed  to 
carry  the  members  at  reduced  fares. 
So  far  as  my  experience  goes, 
some  of  the  best  sea-fishing  to  be 
obtained  anywhere  in  the  United 
Kingdom  is  off  the  coasts  of  Scot- 
land and  the  outlying  islands,  and 
I  hope  the  time  will  come  when 
anglers  living  in  the  South  will  be 
able  to  make  their  journey  North 
on  more  reasonable  terms  than 
those  which  at  present  prevail.  I 


think  the  success  of  the  British 
Sea- Anglers'  Society  and  the  books 
which  have  been  written  on  what 
I  believe  I  correctly  term  a  "new 
sport"  are  proof,  if  one  were 
needed,  that  sea -fishing  in  its 
higher  branches  has  taken  a  great 
hold  on  the  minds  of  a  large  sec- 
tion of  the  angling  community. 
First-rate  fresh -water  fishing  is 
becoming  more  difficult  of  attain- 
ment every  day,  and  it  is  only  the 
few  who  can  afford  to  pay  large 
sums  for  salmon  -  rivers  in  the 
North,  and  trout  -  streams  in  the 
South,  who  may  reckon  on  obtain- 
ing good  sport.  Men  often  spend 
their  summer  holiday  in  Scotland, 
devoting  perhaps  £50  or  more  to 
travelling,  hotel,  and  incidental 
expenses.  They  fish  hotel  waters, 
and  catch  perhaps  half-a-dozen 
salmon,  often  not  so  many. 

There  are  not  in  Northern  seas 
any  fish  (except  big  sea  -  trout, 
which  in  certain  places  may  be 
caught  in  salt-water)  affording  the 
same  sport  as  that  given  by  sal- 
mon. But  in  the  warmer  seas  on 
the  south,  west,  and  east  coasts  of 
England  we  have  in  the  bass  a 
fish  which,  though  very  difficult 
to  catch,  gives  almost,  if  not  quite, 
as  great  sport  when  hooked  as 
does  the  king  of  the  river ;  while 
the  pollack  and  coal-fish — better 
known  in  Scotland  as  lythe  and 
saithe — take  the  fly  most  greedily 
at  times,  and  give  very  fine  sport 
indeed.  In  using  the  word  "  fly  " 
in  connection  with  sea-fish,  I  do 
not  refer  to  the  imitation  of 
natural  winged  insects  such  as 
are  the  death  of  trout,  but  rather 
to  the  various,  more  or  less  gaudy, 
combinations  of  tinsel,  fur,  and 
feather  which,  without  much  doubt, 
represent  in  the  water  a  small  fish 
or  some  marine  insect. 

Sea-fish  most  readily  take  what 
we  are  pleased  to  term  artificial 
flies,  when  they  are  feeding  on  fry 


1894. 


A  New  Sport. 


421 


of  various  kinds,  mostly  herring 
and  sprat,  several  of  which  may 
be  included  in  the  generic  term 
"  whitebait "  ;  and  the  best  fly  is, 
without  much  doubt,  one  which 
most  closely  resembles  those  silvery 
little  fish.  I  had  such  a  fly  dressed, 
which  was  very  successful  with  a 
billet  on  the  Yorkshire  coast  (billet 
is  the  local  name  for  the  young 
of  the  coal -fish,  or  saithe,  which 
vary  from  1  to  3  Ib.  in  weight). 
The  body  of  the  fly  was  rather 
fat,  and  covered  with  broad  silver 
tinsel.  Tail  and  under-wing  were 
of  peacock  herle,  and  over-wing 
two  white  strips  from  a  swan's 
wing;  the  legs  rather  long  pea- 
cock herle.  With  this  fly  I  had  a 
really  remarkable  take  of  fish, 
casting  from  the  rocks.  A  shoal 
of  billet  had  driven  the  whitebait 
(called  on  that  part  of  the  coast 
soil  or  sile),  and  I  worked  my  fly 
just  as  I  would  for  sea -trout. 
Darkness  and  a  rising  tide  drove 
me  from  the  spot,  but  in  the  short 
space  of  three-quarters  of  an  hour 
I  had  landed  over  half-a-cwt.  of 
fish.  That  is  not  an  everyday 
occurrence,  of  course. 

Looking  at  the  fact  that  the 
herring-fry  have  bluish-greenbacks, 
and  silvery  sides  and  belly,  it 
might  be  better  to  reverse  the  fly 
above  described  by  placing  the 
white  wing  where  the  legs  usually 
go,  and  using  long  pieces  of  pea- 
cock herle  to  represent  the  back 
of  the  little  fish.  The  more  ordin- 
ary sea-fly,  which  has  been  used 
for  many  years,  has  a  white  wool 
body  and  a  white  wing ;  but  mack- 
erel, to  capture  which  it  is  chiefly 
intended,  do  not  take  it  nearly  so 
eagerly  as  they  do  a  strip  of 
mackerel-skin,  which,  if  properly 
cut,  looks  like  a  small  fish  swim- 
ming through  the  water.  Strips 
of  skin  cut  from  the  side  of  the 
grey  gurnard  are  used  for  the  same 
purpose. 

VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCXLVII. 


Though  the  mackerel  is,  per- 
haps, of  all  marine  fish  the  one 
which  is  generally  deemed  the 
most  ready  to  take  a  fly,  so  far 
as  my  experience  goes  it  is  not  to 
be  caught  in  numbers  by  ordinary 
casting  with  the  fly-rod.  As  a 
rule,  mackerel  are  some  little  dis- 
tance under  the  surface,  and  the 
best  way  to  catch  them  is  to  trail 
behind  the  boat  a  single  hook  on 
which  is  a  strip  of  mackerel-skin. 
A  lead  fixed  to  the  line  some  dis- 
tance above  the  bait  is  required  to 
sink  the  tackle. 

Casting  with  the  rod  in  fresh- 
water fashion  is  of  little  use  except 
when  the  mackerel  are  every  now 
and  again  breaking  the  surface  as 
they  hunt  the  shoals  of  small  fry 
about.  If  we  could  follow  such 
surface-feeding  mackerel,  it  would 
be  an  easy  matter  to  catch  a  large 
number ;  but  if  the  fish  chance  to 
appear  close  to  the  boat,  they  are 
gone  again  in  less  than  a  quarter 
of  a  minute,  to  reappear  perhaps  a 
hundred  yards  away.  Tenby  Bay 
was  alive  with  these  fish  one 
sunny  morning  towards  the  end 
of  August.  The  shoals  were 
breaking  the  water  in  all  direc- 
tions, chasing  the  herring  -  fry. 
But  though  a  little  Welsh  boy 
and  I  did  our  best  to  get  within 
casting  distance,  I  do  not  suppose 
that  I  was  able  to  place  my  fly 
over  the  mackerel  half-a-dozen 
times.  But  each  cast  produced  a 
fish. 

There  are  several  records  of 
herrings  being  taken  with  the 
artificial  fly  both  in  the  sea-lochs 
of  Scotland  and  Ireland.  I  have 
never  yet  had  the  good  fortune  to 
come  upon  herrings  when  thus 
disposed.  It  is  when  they  are 
crowding  into  the  narrow  inlets 
of  the  sea  in  autumn,  and  are 
in  shallow  water,  that  the  fly- 
fisher  has  his  opportunity. 

Almost  any  summer's  evening 
2  E  ' 


422 


A  New  Sport. 


[Sept. 


the  little  fish  known  as  cuddies, 
which  are  the  young  of  the  saithe 
and  lythe,  take  the  fly  right 
greedily,  and  make  up  in  numbers 
what  they  lack  in  size  and  strength. 
The  fish  affording  the  best  sport 
with  fly,  so  far  as  my  experience 
goes,  are  pollack,  coal -fish,  and 
bass;  but,  like  trout,  the  largest 
specimens  somewhat  disdain  so 
small  a  lure  as  the  imitation  white- 
bait. Still  the  pollack,  or  lythe, 
of  4  or  5  lb.,  is  a  strong  fish,  and 
on  the  fly-rod  the  angler  will  have 
no  little  difficulty  in  preventing 
his  descent  to  some  stronghold 
among  rocks  and  weeds. 

The  largest  bass  are  not  com- 
monly found  in  considerable  shoals. 
What  are  known  as  "  school-bass  " 
— fish  averaging  from  2  to  5  lb. — 
afford  the  fly -fisher  the  best  pos- 
sible sport  to  be  obtained  in  the 
sea.  When  these  are  hunting  the 
herring-fry  and  breaking  the  water, 
the  gulls  screaming  overhead  and 
sharing  the  whitebait  banquet,  a 
fly  cast  judiciously  into  the  middle 
of  the  shoal  will  often  work  great 
execution.  The  fish  are  not  less 
game  than  sea -trout,  and  would 
compare  favourably  with  Salmo 
trutta,  were  they  only  as  useful  on 
the  table  as  they  are  sport-giving 
in  the  sea.  The  mention  of  sea- 
trout  reminds  me  that  those  fish 
occasionally,  and,  more  rarely,  the 
salmon,  rise  to  a  fly  in  salt-water. 
The  farther  north  we  go,  the  more 
complacent  in  this  respect  are  the 
Salmonidce.  Like  many  other  sea- 
fish,  they  enter  the  sea-lochs  to 
feed  on  the  herring-fry,  and  in 
the  brackish  water  of  many  es- 
tuaries are  commonly  fished  for 
with  the  artificial  fly.  In  Kyles 
of  Durness  and  Tongue,  in  Suther- 
land, and  in  the  fjords  of  Nor- 
way, it  is  a  regular  practice  to 
angle  for  sea-trout  in  salt-water ; 
but  the  lure  commonly  used  is  a 
sand-eel,  blue  phantom,  or  other 


spinning  bait.  I  discussed  the 
whole  subject  of  sea- trout  fishing 
in  salt-water  in  two  articles  which 
were  published  in  the  'Field/ 
November  12,  1887,  and  March 
3,  1888. 

The  capture  of  salmon  in  the 
sea  with  artificial  fly  is,  as  I 
have  indicated,  a  somewhat  rare 
occurrence;  but  in  the  Fleet,  be- 
tween Dornoch  and  Golspie,  in 
Sutherland,  they  are  commonly 
fished  for  in  this  manner  during 
the  first  few  hours  of  the  rising  -, 
tide.  In  July  1888  a  very  re- 
markable take  of  salmon  was 
made  by  Sir  John  H.  Morris, 
K.C.S.L,  in  the  large  inlet  of  the 
sea  known  as  Loch  E/oag.  Into 
it  flows  the  most  prolific  salmon- 
river  of  the  island  of  Lewis — 
possibly  of  the  United  Kingdom. 
There  had  been  a  spell  of  dry 
weather,  and  the  salmon  had  been 
unable  to  ascend  the  river.  It 
was  ten  days  before  the  fish 
showed  any  inclination  to  take 
the  fly.  Sir  John  Morris  and  his 
friends  were  fishing  for  sea-trout 
when  they  caught  the  first  salmon, 
and  finding  that  these  fish  were 
inclined  to  rise,  they  changed  their 
flies  and  fished  for  them  very 
carefully,  with  the  result  that 
sixty  were  killed  in  a  week  by 
five  rods.  The  fly  used  on  the 
first  day  was  a  wasp  tied  on  No. 
5  hook,  but  later  on  larger  flies 
were  used  with  equal  success. 
But  the  salmon  is  nothing  if  not 
eccentric,  so  it  is  not  surprising 
to  hear  that  none  were  killed  in 
Loch  E/oag  before  or  since.  I 
am  indebted  to  Sir  John  Morris 
for  these  particulars,  so  the  facts 
stated  are  unquestionable. 

I  am  inclined  to  regard  coal- 
fish,  or  saithe,  as  a  freer  riser 
than  the  lythe.  On  the  west 
coast  of  Ireland  it  has  long  been 
the  custom  to  row  out  in  the 
evening  with  great  bamboo  poles, 


1894.] 


A  New  Sport. 


423 


to  the  ends  of  which  are  fastened 
stout  lines  baited  with  a  rough 
woollen  fly ;  and  the  saithe  are 
often  taken  by  dozens.  The  cod 
is  hardly  a  fish  which  one  would 
deem  of  particular  interest  to  the 
fly-fisher,  but  he  will  take  the 
fly  none  the  less  if  it  is  only  sunk 
within  a  foot  or  two  of  his  capa- 
cious maw.  In  fact,  there  is 
nothing  in  the  way  of  a  bait, 
natural  or  artificial,  which  a  cod 
will  not  take.  He  does  not  rise 
in  the  ordinary  sense,  as  will  bass, 
lythe,  saithe,  and  mackerel ;  but  it 
frequently  happens  that  when  no 
fish  are  near  the  surface  and  the 
angler  is  sinking  his  fly,  he  will 
hook  a  codling  or  cod.  And 
should  he  allow  his  lure  to  reach 
the  bottom,  it  may  even  attract  a 
lovely  haddock  or  gurnet.  I  say 
lovely ;  for  when  taken  fresh  out 
of  the  sea,  these  fish  are  decked  in 
hues  unseen  by  those  whose  know- 
ledge of  the  inhabitants  of  the 
sea  is  limited  to  the  exhibition  on 
a  fishmonger's  slab.  So  much  for 
fly-fishing ;  but  I  may  add  that 
the  fly-fisher  should  study  the 
tides  and  the  habits  of  the  fish, 
and  that  those  conditions  which 
are  unfavourable  on  a  fresh- water 
loch — e.g.,  clear  calm  water  and 
bright  sunlight — are  almost  equally 
unfavourable  on  salt-water,  though 
sea-fish  are  comparatively  unedu- 
cated. 

I  suppose  it  will  be  generally 
considered  that  the  next  highest 
branch  of  sea-fishing  is  spinning  a 
natural  or  artificial  bait.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  if  natural  bait  is 
used,  it  need  not  spin ;  but  if  the 
water  be  clear  and  the  day  bright, 
the  spinning  motion  doubtless  adds 
to  the  attractiveness  of  the  lure. 
Those  who  have  caught  mackerel 
on  a  rod  and  line,  will  never  again 
use  the  heavy  hand-lines  and  leads, 
weighing  2  Ib.  or  more,  which  are 
favoured  by  the  professional  fisher- 


man. Those  great  leads  are  used 
to  keep  the  line  down  when  the 
boat  is  sailing  briskly.  By  jour- 
neying a  little  slower  through  the 
water,  a  smaller  lead  will  suffice  to 
sink  the  bait,  a  rod  and  reel  can 
be  used,  and  wet  hands  and  aching 
back  avoided.  Fewer  fish  will  be 
caught,  because  less  ground,  or 
rather  water,  will  be  covered,  but 
pleasurable  sport  takes  the  place 
of  arduous  labour. 

Since  fresh-water  angler^  have 
taken  to  sea-fishing,  I  have  noticed 
that  some  of  the  professional  fisher- 
men have  not  been  too  proud  to 
adopt  the  methods  of  the  amateurs. 
For  instance,  in  the  Bristol  Chan- 
nel the  Welsh  fishermen  almost 
invariably  use  two  yards  or  so  of 
silkworm  gut  at  the  end  of  their 
mackerel  -  lines,  and  gut  snoods 
have  replaced  flax  on  the  whiting- 
lines  of  many  of  the  south-coast 
fishermen.  The  fish  caught  trail- 
ing or  spinning  are  much  the  same 
as  those  which  take  the  fly — bass, 
lythe,  saithe,  and,  if  we  fish  close 
enough  to  the  bottom,  gurnet, 
haddock,  and  cod.  Often  when 
mackerel-fishing,  and  the  breeze  has 
almost  died  away,  our  lines  have 
sunk  until  the  lead  has  been  gently 
bumping  over  the  sandy  bottom. 
Then  has  come  the  sullen  resist- 
ance of  heavy  cod,  or  the  fierce 
tugs  of  some  gorgeous  red  gurnet, 
with  wing-like  fins  fringed  with 
iridescent  colours,  making  a  pleas- 
ant variety  to  the  great  heap  of 
silvery  mackerel. 

Sometimes  the  sea-angler  will 
take  his  stand  on  some  rocky  head- 
land, and  by  using  tackle  almost 
identical  with  that  required  for 
pike — casting  out  his  spinning-bait 
some  thirty  or  forty  yards,  and 
drawing  it  quickly  in — catches  one 
or  more  splendid  hard -fighting 
bass.  But  more  often,  perhaps, 
he  will  cast  in  vain ;  for  the  bass 
is  only  exceeded  in  shyness  by  the 


424 


A  New  Sport. 


[Sept. 


grey  mullet,  a  fish  which  is  infin- 
itely more  difficult  to  catch  than 
either  trout  or  salmon. 

There  are  few  forms  of  angling 
more  exciting  than  whiffing,  rail- 
ing, or  trailing,  as  it  is  variously 
called,  for  large  lythe.  Of  course, 
if  the  line  be  of  a  size  suitable  for 
a  washerwoman's  use,  and  the 
hooks  and  baits  be  in  proportion, 
the  fish  must  be  big  indeed  which 
cannot  be  hauled  in  hand  over 
hand.  But  such  tackle  as  that  is 
useless  unless  the  water  be  very 
rough  or  somewhat  coloured,  or 
the  fishing  be  done  during  the 
obscurity  of  late  evening,  when 
lythe  are  well  on  the  feed,  and  un- 
observant of  lines  however  thick. 
Though  I  would  recommend,  both 
as  a  means  of  hooking  numbers  of 
large  fish  and  bringing  them  to  boat 
after  they  have  taken  the  bait,  a 
very  much  finer  line  than  this, 
nevertheless  that  line  must  be  so 
strong  as  to  withstand  the  first 
rush  of  the  fish  in  its  attempt  to 
reach  its  lair  among  the  seaweed. 
There  are  few  things  more  excit- 
ing than  the  first  pull  of  a  big 
pollack.  It  is  as  if  a  thunderbolt 
had  struck  the  top  of  the  rod  and 
beaten  it  down  on  to  the  water. 
If  it  were  a  salmon,  there  would  be 
one  gallant  rush  at  no  great  depth, 
and  we  would  yield  line  to  him  in 
his  first  endeavour  to  get  free.  But 
with  a  pollack  it  is  different.  His 
first  great,  and  practically  only, 
effort  is  in  the  nature  of  a  dive 
headlong  down  to  the  bottom ;  and 
if  unchecked,  not  only  is  he  a  lost 
fish  from  the  angler's  point  of 
view,  but  with  him  must  go  a  cer- 
tain quantity  of  tackle,  and  much 
valuable  time  will  be  lost  in  re- 
pairs. Single  gut,  even  of  the 
stoutest,  is  all  too  weak  for  large 
lythe-fishing  off  a  rocky  and  weedy 
coast. 

^  The    salmon    and    trout    fisher 
rightly     praises      the     charming 


branches  of  angling  which  he  most 
favours,  by  reason,  in  a  measure, 
of  the  magnificent  scenery  into 
which  they  take  him.  The  mere 
word  "  salmon  "  to  him  brings  back 
memories  of  snow-capped  moun- 
tains, rolling  moorlands,  foaming 
torrents  swirling  amid  great 
boulders  and  rocks,  and  of  excit- 
ing encounters  with  the  king  of 
fish,  with  all  their  anxieties,  fears, 
and  joys.  But  the  surroundings 
of  the  lythe-fisher  are  hardly,  if  at 
all,  less  beautiful.  He  is  being 
rowed,  maybe,  along  the  irregular 
shores  of  some  calm  inlet  of  the 
sea  on  the  coast  of  Sutherland. 
The  salt-water  loch  is  broken  up 
by  rocky  islets  on  which  sea-birds 
nest,  and  lichens  deck  the  masses 
of  grey  gneiss.  Cloud  -  topped 
mountains  rise  on  the  mainland, 
and  at  this  distance  seem  to  be 
coming  almost  sheer  down  to  the 
water -edge.  The  heather  is  all 
aglow  with  flower.  Red-deer  are 
feeding  in  inaccessible  spots  on  the 
mountain-side.  The  water  is  alive 
with  guillemots,  puffins,  and  razor- 
bills, while  great  herring  and  black- 
backed  gulls  are  screeching  over- 
head. The  smooth  round  head  of 
a  seal  appears  above  the  surface, 
and  the  beautiful  creature  gazes  at 
us  for  a  moment  through  its  soft 
brown  eyes,  and  then  disappears. 
Now  and  again  there  is  a  hissing 
sound  as  three  porpoises,  which 
are  feeding  on  the  herrings,  show 
their  round  backs  and  blow. 
Solan-geese  are  taking  great  aerial 
dives  with  closed  wings,  causing 
the  water  to  boil  as  they  strike  it, 
and  coming  up,  sometimes  with, 
but  more  often  without,  a  fish 
in  their  sharp-edged  beaks.  The 
sun  is  nearing  the  horizon  to  the 
north-westward,  and  the  moun- 
tain-sides are  lit  up  with  ever- 
changing  colours — now  gold,  now 
purple,  now  orange.  Truly  the 
surroundings  are  all  that  the  heart 


1894.] 


A  New  Sport. 


425 


of  man  could  desire.  And  the 
sport  1 

There  are  two  rods  over  the 
stern  of  the  little  boat  which 
Donald  is  rowing  with  such  care 
along  the  edge  of  those  weed- 
fringed  rocks.  Presently  there  is 
a  shriek  of  the  reel,  and  one  of 
these  all  but  disappears  overboard. 
But  we  are  on  the  alert,  and  have 
a  hand  upon  it  before  it  is  too  late. 
How  that  fish  fights  to  regain  the 
position  he  foolishly  left  to  seize 
that  little  brown  eel  which  passed 
his  lair ! 

"  A  good  fish,  Donald  !  " 

"  Oh  ay,  a  good  fushe  ! "  And 
presently  the  clip  is  brought  into 
requisition,  and  a  beautiful  crea- 
ture, with  eyes  bright  and  soft 
and  brown  as  those  of  the  seal, 
is  lifted  into  the  boat.  Others 
follow,  some  larger,  a  few  smaller ; 
and  not  until  it  is  almost  too  dark 
for  us  to  safely  thread  our  way 
among  the  narrow  channels,  does 
Donald  turn  the  boat's  head  to- 
wards the  little  stone  quay  at  the 
head  of  the  loch. 

But  lythe  and  mackerel  fishing 
apart,  it  must  be  confessed  that 
the  basket  is  more  often  better 
filled  when  we  fish  with  natural 
bait  near  the  bottom  than  with 
fly  or  spinner.  The  largest  bass 
of  all,  great  fellows  weighing  some- 
times as  much  as  15  lb.,  will  not 
often  have  anything  to  say  to  a 
twopenny-halfpenny  little  bit  of 
feather  and  tinsel.  The  patri- 
archal fish  haunt  the  coast  near 
the  mouths  of  harbours  and  estu- 
aries, where  refuse  of  all  kinds 
affords  them  food.  Indeed,  if  you 
would  catch  them,  you  would  be 
well  advised  not  to  be  over-nice  in 
the  matter  of  baits.  There  are 
few  things  more  tempting  for  a 
big  bass  than  a  great  lump  of  ray's 
liver  which  has  been  kept  for  a 
day  or  two,  nor  are  these  fish 
averse  to  the  interiors  of  chickens 


and  rabbits.  They  will  take  a 
whole  herring  or  pilchard  as  it  is 
lying  on  the  bottom  of  the  sea, 
but  in  that  case  there  must  be  no 
weight,  for  the  bass  goes  off  and 
gorges  it  before  the  angler  strikes, 
and  if  he  feels  any  resistance  from 
lead  or  otherwise  he  at  once  drops 
the  bait.  These  great  bass  are 
also  very  partial  to  that  quaint 
creature  known  to  fishermen  as 
the  squid,  and  many  are  caught 
on  long  lines  baited  with  pieces 
of  squid  and  laid  along  rocky 
shores. 

Well  do  I  remember  one  calm 
starlight  night,  when  a  little  Welsh 
lad  and  myself  were  in  a  boat 
within  twenty  yards  of  some  beet- 
ling cliffs,  against  which  a  slight 
swell  was  breaking.  We  were 
using  very  coarse  hand-lines,  and 
hoping  to  catch  some  monster  con- 
gers which  were  known'  to  abound 
at  this  particular  spot;  and  the 
eels  gave  us  good  sport,  though  we 
did  not  get  any  very  great  ones. 
Suddenly  my  line  was  torn  nearly 
out  of  my  hand,  and  in  a  second  a 
fish,  which  could  not  have  been 
much  under  20  lb.  in  weight,  was 
lashing  the  surface  into  foam,  just 
as  any  fresh-run  salmon  sometimes 
does  when  the  rank  barb  of  the 
hook  sinks  deeply  into  some  tender 
place.  The  sea  was  full  of  phos- 
phorescence that  night,  and  this 
creature,  as  it  lashed  and  beat 
about  in  a  sort  of  glowworm  bath, 
was  a  beautiful  sight.  No  other 
fish  that  swims  in  the  sea,  except 
perhaps  the  salmon,  would  be  so 
tigerish.  Alas  !  it  is  always  the 
largest  which  are  lost,  if  anglers 
are  to  be  believed.  The  Welsh 
lad  who  was  with  me  had  never 
before  seen  such  a  thing  as  this. 
He  would  have  cared  little  for  a 
conger-eel  of  20  lb.,  knowing  them 
right  well;  but  this  thing,  which 
struggled  and  kicked  wildly,  and 
seemed  to  almost  foam  at  the 


426 


A  New  Sport. 


[Sept. 


mouth  like  a  mad  dog,  caused 
consternation. 

"  Gaff  him  quickly  ! "  I  cried,— 
"gaff  him!" 

But  the  lad  only  stood  and 
stared,  and  presently  the  hook 
came  away,  the  water  grew  still, 
and  a  few  sparks  of  phosphores- 
cent light  on  the  surface  of  the 
water  were  alone  left  to  tell  the 
story. 

This  leads  me  to  another  great 
fish  which  was  lost,  but  not  by  me. 
Not  far  from  the  spot  where  we 
fished  that  night  were  some  pro- 
jecting rocks  on  which  bass-fishers 
frequently  took  their  stand,  and  in 
the  grey  light  of  early  morning 
sometimes  —  but  not  often  —  en- 
joyed rare  sport.  Their  bait  was 
commonly  skate's  liver,  and  they 
would  use  a  float  tackle.  Sitting 
quietly  there,  one  could  times  and 
oft  see  great  bass  swimming  by, 
but  stopping  to  rub  their  noses 
among  the  weeds  as  they  picked 
up  some  such  inconsiderable  trifle 
as  a  baby  crab.  Well,  to  come  to 
this  big  fish.  One  of  these  anglers 
happened  upon  a  shoal  of  large 
grey  mullet.  Perhaps  it  was  the 
king  of  all  the  shoal  that  took  the 
piece  of  odorous  ray's  liver.  The 
angler  struck,  and  for  a  second 
saw  the  fish,  which  was  near  the 
surface.  It  could  not  have  been 
less  than  12  lb.,  he  says,  but  it 
went  straight  away  among  the 
rocks  until  every  inch  of  line  was 
off  his  reel,  and  then  in  a  second 
broke  the  stout  trace  of  plaited 
gut.  Let  no  one  suppose  that 
little  skill  is  required  in  sea-fish- 
ing. Clever  indeed  is  he  who 
can  catch  large  grey  mullet. 

Sometimes  these  fish  will  follow  a 
ship  right  into  dock,  feeding  greed- 
ily on  the  vegetable  growths  with 
which  its  bottom  is  covered.  All 
kinds  of  bait  have  been  tried  for 
them  without  much  success,  in- 
cluding boiled  cabbage  and  fat 


pork.  Occasionally  they  are  taken 
with  a  fly,  particularly  if  a  gentle 
— which  is  the  angler's  name  for 
the  larvse  of  the  blue -bottle — is 
placed  on  the  hook.  One  of  the 
best  -  known  baits  is  a  live  rag- 
worm,  a  sort  of  marine  centipede. 
A  clever  method  of  catching  mul- 
let was  described  in  the  '  Fishing 
Gazette'  some  years  ago.  An 
angler  had  observed  that  when  he 
threw  bread-crumbs  into  a  certain 
piece  of  water,  mullet  came  to  the 
surface  and  fed  on  them ;  so  he 
thereupon  buoyed  a  very  fine  line 
with  fragments  of  cork,  placed 
small  hooks  along  it  at  intervals 
and  baited  them  with  bread-paste. 
Having  set  this  line,  he  sprinkled 
his  bread-crumbs  to  act  as  a  sort 
of  ground-bait,  or,  to  speak  more 
correctly,  surface-bait,  and  the  fish 
came  to  his  call,  and  some  were 
captured.  It  must  be  confessed, 
however,  that  the  best  bait  for 
grey  mullet  has  yet  to  be  dis- 
covered. In  this  connection  I 
may  point  out  that  the  amateur 
sea-fisher  may  in  the  not  far  dis- 
tant future  discover  new  baits 
which  will  be  of  the  greatest  ad- 
vantage to  the  sea-fisherman.  A 
considerable  sum  of  money  has 
been  spent  at  the  Marine  Labora- 
tory at  Plymouth  in  the  endea- 
vour to  find  some  artificial  bait 
which  will  replace  mussels,  lugs, 
and  other  natural  baits  of  the 
fisherman ;  but,  so  far,  no  success 
has  attended  the  efforts  of  the 
chemist  who  investigated  the  ques- 
tion. 

On  the  east  coast  of  England, 
south  of  Yorkshire,  there  comes  a 
great  run  of  codling  inshore  in  the 
autumn,  and  then  one  may  see 
fifty  or  more  men  standing  on  the 
shore  and  catching  these  little  fish 
by  means  of  what  are  known  local- 
ly as  "  throw-out "  lines.  These 
are  hardly  machines  which  com- 
mend themselves  to  enthusiastic 


1894.] 


A  New  Sport. 


427 


sportsmen.  They  consist  mainly 
of  a  considerable  length  of  line, 
from  which  a  dozen  or  more  hooks 
project,  and  terminated  by  a  heavy 
lead.  Beyond  the  lead  is  a  piece 
of  finer  line  about  two  yards  in 
length,  at  the  end  of  which  is  a 
button,  used  for  slinging  out  the 
affair  seaward.  Having  arranged 
the  whole  of  the  line  loosely  on 
the  shore,  the  fisherman  baits  his 
hooks,  tying  on  his  mussels,  if 
they  are  using  any,  for  the  purpose. 
He  next  places  the  button  in  a 
cleft  cut  at  the  end  of  a  broom- 
stick, swings  the  lead  to  and  fro 
once  or  twice  pendulumwise,  and 
with  a  mighty  heave  sends  it  out 
to  sea,  much  as  a  rocket  leaves  a 
life-saving  apparatus — the  button, 
of  course,  slipping  from  the  cleft 
at  the  end  of  the  stick.  Any  one 
would  naturally  suppose  that  with 
these  thirteen  or  more  hooks  a 
large  number  of  fish  would  be 
caught ;  but  my  experience  is,  that 
the  angler  fishing  with  an  ordinary 
two -hook  paternoster  will  catch 
many  more  fish  than  can  be  taken 
on  a  throw-out  line.  The  reason 
probably  is  this  :  The  angler's  line 
is  fine,  and  this  enables  a  much 
smaller  lead  to  be  used  than  the 
one  on  the  throw-out  line.  The 
fish,  when  it  seizes  the  bait,  very 
often  pulls  the  lead  a  short  dis- 
tance, and  the  person  holding  the 
rod  at  once  feels  the  bite,  strikes, 
and  hooks  the  fish.  With  a  hand- 
line,  the  fish  has  something  com- 
paratively unresisting  to  pull 
against  in  its  struggles,  and  thus 
frequently  wrenches  the  hook  out 
of  its  mouth.  Where  the  rod  is 
used,  the  yielding  top  gives  to  the 
pull  of  the  fish,  and  a  very  lightly 
hooked  codling  will  be  brought  on 
shore.  I  have  seen  twelve  fish 
landed  by  a  person  using  a  rod 
and  two  hooks,  while  men  who 
were  standing  on  either  side  of 
the  angler  and  working  two  throw- 


out  lines,  each  bearing  fifteen 
hooks,  only  caught  two  or  three 
codlings  between  them.  In  the 
earlier  portion  of  this  paper  I 
gave  other  instances  of  many  more 
fish  being  caught  on  the  rod  than 
on  the  hand-line. 

In  angling  for  small  sea-fish  the 
rod  is  particularly  serviceable. 
That  estimable  little  member  of 
the  Pleuronectidce,  the  sand -dab, 
which,  when  the  sole  has  become 
extinct,  will  have  to  take  its 
place,  may  be  caught  by  the  dozen 
on  many  sandy  shores  by  those 
who  fish  with  light,  fresh -water 
tackle.  I  never  saw  the  useful- 
ness of  a  rod  for  sea-fishing  more 
clearly  demonstrated  than  in  Tenby 
Bay,  where  this  particular  fish 
abounds.  The  water  there  is  shal- 
low, and  the  current  is  not  strong ; 
but  the  local  fishermen  use  hand- 
lines  bearing  heavy  leads,  suitable 
for  fishing  a  tideway.  These  little 
fish  are  delicate  biters.  The  hand- 
liner  will  probably  feel  nothing 
until  the  sand-dab  has  swallowed 
the  bait  and  is  struggling  to  get 
rid  of  it.  The  angler,  on  the  other 
hand, — and  by  angler  I  mean  more 
particularly  him  who  uses  rod  and 
line, — who  fishes  with  the  lightest 
lead  the  current  will  allow,  feels 
the  slightest  interference  with  the 
bait,  and  will  catch  almost  every 
fish  that  bites. 

Not  as  evidence  of  my  own  par- 
ticular skill,  but  merely  of  the 
superiority  of  the  rod  over  the 
hand-line,  I  may  shortly  describe 
one  particular  afternoon's  fishing 
I  had  not  far  from  a  little  bay  on 
the  Bristol  Channel,  called  Water- 
winch.  I  was  in  a  boat,  and  had 
with  me  two  rods,  on  both  of 
which  were  light  paternoster  tackle. 
About  a  hundred  yards'  distance 
there  soon  came  a  professional 
fisherman  with  two  customers,  a 
father  and  his  little  son.  The 
three  were  using  hand-lines,  but 


428 


A  New  Sport. 


[Sept. 


were  catching  nothing.  Almost 
immediately  I  lowered  my  tackle 
into  the  water  I  began  to  hook 
fish;  and  so  freely  did  the  sand- 
dabs  and  large  plaice  bite  that  I 
was  unable  to  attend  to  more  than 
one  rod,  while  the  man  who  was 
with  me  was  fully  occupied  in 
opening  mussels.  Witnessing  my 
good  fortune,  the  people  in  the 
other  boat  came  nearer,  but  still 
they  caught  nothing.  Again  they 
moved,  with  similar  results;  and 
seeing  how  very  grieved  and  puz- 
zled they  were,  I  begged  of  them 
to  put  their  boat  as  near  mine  as 
could  possibly  be  done  without  the 
two  little  craft  bumping  together. 
This  they  did,  thanking  me  pro- 
fusely, quite  believing  that  the 
secret  lay  in  my  having  chosen  a 
particularly  good  spot.  But  even 
then  they  were  no  more  successful 
than  they  had  been.  In  a  very 
few  hours'  fishing  my  bag  con- 
sisted of  six  dozen  flat-fish,  while 
in  the  boat  which  lay  alongside 
me  not  half-a-dozen  were  taken. 
It  is  only  fair  to  say  that  the 
hand-lines  used  by  these  people 
were  particularly  unsuited  for  the 
purpose.  I  have  no  doubt  that  if 
they  had  used  my  tackle,  even 
omitting  the  rod,  they  would  have 
had  a  very  fair  afternoon's  sport. 

Many  of  the  harbours  on  the 
east  coast  are  frequented  by  that 
most  excellent  of  fish,  the  cucum- 
ber-smelt, which  is  a  true  smelt, 
and  member  of  the  Salmonidce 
family.  It  may  be  distinguished 
from  the  atherine  or  sand-smelt 
by  the  adipose  or  fatty  fin.  Hand- 
lines  would  be  quite  out  of  the 
question  for  these  fish,  which  may 
be  often  caught  in  considerable 
quantities  on  exactly  the  same 
tackle  as  the  fresh-water  fisher- 
man uses  for  roach, — two  or  three 
hooks,  however,  being  more  deadly 
than  one.  Another  plan  is  to 
make  up  a  tiny  paternoster — that 


is  to  say,  terminate  a  piece  of  fine 
gut  with  a  pistol-bullet — and  place 
along  it  at  intervals  four  or  five 
roach-hooks  baited  with  fragments 
of  ragworm  or  uncooked  shrimps. 
This  is  lowered  among  the  smelts, 
which  will  feed  all  the  more 
eagerly  if  they  are  ground-baited 
with  pounded  shrimps,  herring,  or 
other  food  in  which  they  delight. 

This  reference  to  pounded 
shrimps  reminds  me  that  the  ele- 
vation of  sea-fishing  to  a  fine  art 
has  led  to  the  introduction  on  our 
coasts  of  the  fresh -water  fisher- 
man's method  of  collecting  fish 
and  bringing  them  on  the  feed — a 
practice,  by  the  way,  which  has 
prevailed  in  other  countries  for 
many  years.  It  is  no  uncommon 
thing  now  for  sea-anglers  to  smash 
up  a  number  of  crabs,  pieces  of 
herring,  and  other  fish-food,  place 
the  mixture  in  a  net,  weight  it 
with  stones,  and  sink  it  by  means 
of  a  light  line  at  the  spot  where 
the  fishing  is  carried  on.  For  the 
purpose  of  collecting  fish  there  is 
nothing  so  sure  as  the  interiors  of 
pilchards,  which  give  off  a  quantity 
of  oil. 

Since  I  first  commenced  to  sea- 
fish,  one  of  the  greatest  improve- 
ments which  has  been  brought 
about  in  tackle  is  in  connection 
with  the  rod.  At  one  time  I 
deemed  it  almost  impossible  to 
use  a  rod  along  with  a  weight  of 
over  half  a  pound,  but  now  the 
sea -fisherman  can  use  a  weight 
of  2  Ib.  or  more  witi&rat  being 
obliged  to  have  recourse  to  even  a 
hand-line.  The  rod  is,  in  a  sense, 
a  lever,  and  the  longer  the  rod  the 
more  powerful  the  leverage  on  the 
angler's  hands  and  wrists.  Two 
Ib.  at  the  end  of  an  eighteen-feet 
rod  would  feel,  and  would  be,  an 
enormous  and  quite  unmanageable 
weight.  But  reduce  the  rod  to 
six  feet,  having  in  lieu  of  the 
ordinary  end  ring  a  miniature 


1894. 


A  New  Sport. 


429 


block  through  which  the  line  may 
run  with  the  least  possible  amount 
of  friction,  and  we  are  at  once 
able  to  fish  with  a  2-lb.  lead.  Sea- 
fishermen  should  bear  in  mind  that, 
given  a  certain  depth  of  water  and 
a  certain  speed  of  current,  a  stout 
line  will  always  require  a  much 
heavier  lead  to  keep  it  on  the 
bottom  than  one  finer.  By  using 
running  tackle  and  rod,  which 
enable  him  to  play  his  fish,  the 
angler  can  dispense  with  very 
coarse  strong  tackle,  and,  as  a 
natural  consequence,  is  enabled  to 
use  leads  of  moderate  weight. 

I  have  endeavoured  in  this  short 
paper  to  take  a  broad  view  of 
sea-fishing  as  a  sport,  and  have 
touched  upon  as  many  branches 
of  it  as  was  possible  within  reason- 
able limits  of  space ;  but  I  cannot 
help  feeling  that  there  are  neces- 
sarily many  omissions,  some  of 
importance.  This  new  sport  has 
a  great  future  before  it.  It  is  as 


different  from  the  methods  of  the 
professional  fisherman  as  fly-fishing 
for  salmon  is  from  the  salmon-fish- 
ing as  pursued  by  our  great-grand- 
fathers. It  is,  in  a  sense,  a  new 
branch  of  angling,  and  therefore 
we  know  at  present  comparatively 
little  about  it.  As  population, 
anglers,  and  river-pollution  all  in- 
crease, fresh -water  fishing  worth 
the  having  must  necessarily  be- 
come more  difficult  of  attainment. 
We  may  do  well,  therefore,  to  find 
out  to  the  full  the  sport  the  sea  is 
likely  to  afford  us.  The  salmon 
and  sea -trout  angler,  too,  is  re- 
minded that  in  time  of  drought, 
when  rivers  are  streamlets  and 
streamlets  dry  beds,  a  turn  at  the 
sea -loch,  or  round  yon  rocky 
point,  may  yield  better  sport  than 
the  gloomy  contemplation  of  a 
book  of  salmon-flies,  or  the  thin 
streak  of  water  which  winds  its 
tortuous  way  among  the  boulders. 
JOHN  BICKERDYKE. 


430 


Nitchevo :  A  Fragment  of  Russian  Life. 


[Sept. 


NITCHEVO: 


.  i 


A   FRAGMENT    OP    RUSSIAN    LIFE. 


IT  was  a  few  weeks  before 
Christmas.  The  pope  of  Nitch- 
vorad  was  thinking  already  of  his 
tithes  —  the  geese,  and  the  pig, 
and  the  sacks  of  apples — and  per 
haps  of  the  New  Year's  dinner  up 
at  the  Castle;  his  wife,  the  popadia, 
was  wishing,  in  her  usual  dumb 
patient  fashion,  that  the  holy 
season,  with  certain  contingencies 
pertaining  to  it,  were  well  over. 

It  had  been  an  open  winter,  so 
far,  at  Nitchvorad  ;  but  now  the 
frost  seemed  to  be  strengthening, 
and  the  low  blanket  clouds,  full 
of  snow,  were  hanging  in  the  fir- 
tops,  ready  to  empty  themselves 
in  a  few  hours.  The  popadia 
stumped  to  and  fro  between  the 
kitchen  and  the  wood-shed,  bring- 
ing in  fuel  for  the  ovens.  Her 
husband  had  told  the  boys  to  help 
their  mother,  but  none  of  them 
had  attended  to  his  orders :  the 
best  that  could  be  said  for  the 
parson's  boys  was,  that  in  holi- 
day-time one  saw  very  little  of 
them. 

Suddenly  there  was  a  rallying 
and  a  scuffling  on  the  street  side 
of  the  house,  a  jingling  of  bells, 
a  clatter  of  horses'  feet  sharply 
turning  the  corner,  where  the  ice 
from  the  pool  round  the  midden 
splintered  like  glass.  The  Count's 
servant  jumped  off  the  box-seat  of 
the  Count's  own  droschky,  and 
would  have  half  thumped  the 
pope's  door  down  with  his  fists, 
had  not  the  pope  himself,  rushing 
from  his  seat  by  the  oven,  ap- 
peared in  an  instant  on  the  door- 
step. The  little  desolate  street 
alive  with  darting  black  eyes, 


the  shock  black  heads  of  the  par- 
son's boys  protruding  from  every 
unexpected  cranny :  it  was  not  a 
common  thing  for  the  Count's 
carriage  to  stop  at  their  door,  and 
for  once  there  was  something  to 
stare  at. 

"Jump  in,  jump  in  !"  cried  the 
Countess,  as  the  pope  came  bowing 
and  smiling  to  the  carriage  door. 
"  The  Count  has  visitors,  come 
for  the  horse-fair,  and  they  have 
all  sat  down  to  skat.  They  began 
to  play  at  eight  last  evening,  and, 
save  for  supper  and  for  breakfast, 
they  have  not  moved  yet.  My 
husband  said,  '  Fetch  the  pope, — 
he  will  enjoy  the  fun ; '  and  I  can 
give  you  five  minutes  to  make 
your  packet.  Ask  the  popadia  to 
put  together  your  things  for  a 
couple  of  nights,  for  the  snow  is 
coming,  and  you  will  not  mind 
being  kept  a  bit  at  the  castle,  eh  ? 
Ah !  there  you  are,  Sophia  Petro- 
vitch;  a  hundred  greetings  to  you," 
as  the  popadia  appeared  in  the 
passage.  "  You  will  spare  us  your 
husband  for  a  short  visit  1  You 
have  plenty  of  sons  to  look  after 
you  —  how  many  1  Ah  !  eleven  : 
that  is  a  brave  family ;  and  you 
will  soon  make  up  your  dozen,  if 
I  don't  mistake,"  rattled  on  her 
ladyship  the  Counfess  with  ready 
wit,  and  in  a  shrill  voice  which 
carried  half-way  down  the  street. 

The  pope  was  bustling  about, 
struggling  into  his  Sunday  kaftan, 
stuffing  things  into  a  bag  and 
pulling  them  out  again  in  his  ex- 
citement, bawling  at  his  wife,  who 
in  the  inner  room  was  hastily 
putting  a  few  stitches  and  apply- 


A  Russian  colloquialism  signifying  "JSTimporte,"  "Nothing  matters." 


1894.] 


Nitclievo :  A  Fragment  of  Russian  Life. 


431 


ing  a  brush  to  garments  that  were 
not  in  general  use. 

"  Here,  Sophia  Petrovitch,  there 
is  candle-grease  on  my  sleeve.  Lend 
me  thy  gaiters,  mine  are  all  spat- 
tered with  mud.  If  thou  hast  an 
iron  handy,  just  pass  it  over  these 
spots,  and  smooth  out  the  silk  hand- 
kerchief. Come  !  come  !  how  slow 
thou  art,  while  the  Countess 
waits  !  I  might  be  a  widower — 
God  forbid  it! — with  a  wardrobe 
all  so  unready  in  an  emergency. 
Where  is  thy  fur  cap  ?  it  is  better 
than  mine,  and  no  one  will  see 
thee." 

The  popadia  worked  with  a  will, 
her  broad  sallow  face  showing  no 
sign  of  emotion.  In  five  minutes 
the  pope  was  brushed,  dressed, 
packed,  stepping  into  the  carriage 
beside  the  Countess,  his  wife  hand- 
ing his  little  leather  wallet  to  the 
footman  with  her  own  hands. 

"  Bah  !  not  inside,"  shrieked  the 
Countess,  as  the  man  would  have 
put  the  modest  luggage  on  the 
front  seat ;  "  the  smell  of  leather 
and  of  grease  makes  me  sick !  I 
would  not  have  it  near  me  for  ten 
roubles ; "  and  the  servant  swung  it 
carelessly  to  the  box-seat  by  the 
long  broken  strap  which  the  po- 
padia had  not  had  time  to  sew 
afresh. 

"Home!"  cried  the  Countess; 
then  with  an  afterthought,  "  Good- 
bye, Sophia  Petrovitch ;  good  luck 
to  you  in  making  up  your  dozen  : " 
and  with  a  peal  of  laughter  at  her 
own  sprightliness,  the  lady  leaned 
back  among  her  furs,  and  the 
carriage  drove  away. 

The  popadia  went  back  into 
the  house  and  shut  the  front  door. 
A  little  soft,  light  snow,  like  eider- 
down, had  blown  into  the  passage, 
a  precursor  of  the  downfall  that 
was  due.  Sophia  Petrovitch  sat 
down  in  her  husband's  chair  by  the 
oven — the  one  seat  in  the  house 
that  was  really  snug  and  warm — 


and  let  her  hands  drop  on  her 
knees  for  full  ten  minutes  without 
moving.  The  unexpected  bustle  of 
the  Countess's  visit  and  her  hus- 
band's departure  had  shaken  her, 
and  a  little  red  spot  came  on  each 
of  her  prominent  cheek  -  bones. 
Outside,  the  sky  seemed  to  be  bend- 
ing nearer  and  nearer  with  its 
weight  of  snow.  Everything  was 
very  still,  for  the  boys  had  rushed 
off  again  to  their  lairs,  to  rejoice 
over  the  disposal  of  the  "little 
father  "  for  the  next  two  days.  The 
popadia  almost  fancied,  as  she  sat 
alone  in  the  house,  that  she  could 
feel  the  great  earth  plunging  round 
on  its  course — a  strange  sensation 
that  had  come  to  her  once  or  twice 
of  late,  and  made  her  grasp  at  the 
chair-arms  or  at  any  thing  that  came 
handy  while  it  lasted.  Then  the 
Countess's  reiterated  words  came 
back  to  her.  The  baby  that  was 
to  come  at  Christmas-time  was  the 
thirteenth,  not  the  twelfth,  though 
she  had  not  seen  fit  to  correct  her 
ladyship. 

There  were  eleven  boys,  to  be 
sure,  belonging  to  the  pope's 
family,  ranging  from  sturdy,  un- 
tamable Alexander,  of  nearly  six- 
teen, to  the  pair  of  eleven-months' 
twins  in  the  box-cradle  behind  the 
stove ;  but  Tinka,  the  pretty  blue- 
eyed  girl — the  only  blue-eyed,  fair- 
skinned  child  in  all  the  swarthy, 
shock-headed  crew — had  died  five 
years  before,  just  as  she  was  be- 
ginning to  fill  the  place  of  friend 
and  assistant  to  the  poor  patient 
mother,  who  had  never  known 
what  it  was  to  be  befriended  or 
assisted  in  her  life. 

Tinka  was  the  eldest  of  the 
family.  She  had  faded  away  be- 
fore the  Countess  came,  as  a  bride, 
to  the  Castle ;  and  as  no  one  in 
Nitchvorad  went  in  for  such  sen- 
timentality as  decorating  graves, 
the  remembrance  of  the  little  girl 
had  passed  from  all  men's  minds. 


432 


JVitchevo :  A  Fragment  of  Russian  Life. 


[Sept. 


Even  the  pope  himself  rattled 
over  her  name,  when  he  read  the 
prayer  for  the  dead,  as  though  he 
had  no  recollection  of  the  family 
to  which  she  belonged. 

Sophia  Petrovitch  sighed  a  little 
as  she  thought  of  the  prospect 
before  her. 

The  snow  was  falling  steadily 
now,  in  small  close  flakes.  In  a 
few  hours  the  roads  would  be  im- 
passable and  dangerous  if  the  wind 
rose  and  drove  it  into  drifts  before 
the  frost  froze  it  to  an  even  sur- 
face. If  old  Marco va  Marcovitch 
was  to  come  to  her,  as  the  pope  in 
his  hurry  had  suggested  — rather 
out  of  a  desire  to  leave  himself 
more  free  than  from  any  special 
solicitude  about  his  wife — Alex- 
ander must  fetch  her  at  once,  be- 
fore nightfall  and  the  increasing 
snowfall  rendered  her  coming  im- 
possible. But  to  catch  Alexander, 
and  to  coerce  him  into  doing  any- 
thing that  might  be  of  use  to  any- 
body else,  was  a  task  beyond  the 
feeble  power  of  the  popadia.  Per- 
haps Boris,  the  third  boy,  might 
be  amenable  to  her  wishes,  pro- 
vided his  elder  brothers  did  not 
jeer  him  out  of  countenance ;  and 
old  Marcova  had  better  come — at 
once — if  this  weakness  were — 
"  Dear  Virgin,  Holy  Mother,  and 
blessed  St  Joseph,  thou  protector 
of  all  poor  women  on  whom  the 
burden  of  housekeeping  falls  heav- 
ily, keep  this  deadly  faintness 
back  until  old  Marcova  comes ! " 

Boris,  who  was  lurking  in  the 
region  of  the  wood-stack  behind 
the  house,  agreed  in  his  happy-go- 
lucky  fashion  to  fetch  the  old 
nurse  as  soon  as  he  had  com- 
pleted the  sparrow-trap  which  he 
was  constructing  out  of  forked 
twigs  and  bits  of  slate,  to  take 
advantage  of  the  imminent  snow- 
fall ;  and  his  mother,  creeping  back 
to  the  living  -  room,  where  the 
twins  were  roaring  lustily  from 


their  cradle-box,  felt  a  little  com- 
forted that  her  weakness  had  been 
a  passing  indisposition,  and  that 
Marcova  would  be  with  her  before 
night  was  far  advanced.  It  was 
only  three  hours  later,  when  Boris 
and  his  brethren  straggled  in  to 
supper,  wrangling  over  their  rye- 
bread  and  cabbage  soup  like  a 
flock  of  shrieking  starlings,  that  it 
transpired  that  the  boy  had  for- 
gotten the  popadia's  message  al- 
together in  the  enthusiasm  of  his 
afternoon's  sport.  It  was  too  late 
then  to  do  anything;  indeed  no 
one  thought  of  repairing  the  omis- 
sion, any  more  than  of  apologising 
for  it.  Only  the  popadia  felt  as 
if  some  prop  on  which  she  had 
been  leaning  had  snapped  under 
her ;  but  she  said  nothing,  for  there 
was  none  to  listen. 

Presently,  when  all  the  boys 
were  asleep,  even  the  twins  quiet 
for  a  brief  interval,  the  popadia 
crept  to  bed,  missing  with  an 
unwonted  feeling  of  tenderness 
the  hearty  snores  of  her  consort, 
which  generally  gave  evidence  of 
his  unruffled  conscience  and  un- 
disturbable  digestion  for  an  hour 
or  so  before  the  house-mother  man- 
aged to  slip  into  her  place  beside 
him.  To-night  the  tired  woman  fell 
into  a  broken  sleep,  disturbed  by 
dreams  of  confusion  and  distracting 
cross-purposes  :  that  long  broken 
strap  which  kept  slipping,  slipping 
through  her  numbed  fingers  had 
the  pope's  little  wallet  at  the  end 
of  it ;  but  when  at  last  she  drew 
it  up,  she  found  nothing  but  a 
crying  infant  dangling  just  out  of 
reach,  and  some  one  shrieked  with 
high-bred  company  laughter,  like 
the  Countess,  and  cried  in  her  ear 
with  shrill  importunity,  "  How 
can  you  make  up  the  dozen,  if 
there  are  really  thirteen?"  It 
was  repeating  the  word  "  thirteen," 
fateful  out  of  very  meaninglessness 
to  all  Russians,  that  the  popadia 


1894.' 


Nitchevo :  A  Fragment  of  Russian  Life. 


433 


woke  at  last,  to  find  that  a  new 
morning  had  come,  in  outward 
appearance  very  much  like  the  old 
night,  but  filled  to  the  brim  afresh 
with  work  and  responsibilities, 
care  and  toil  and  pain. 

"Ah, the  thirteenth!"  murmured 
Sophia  Petrovitch,  stuffing  back 
her  tumbled  hair  into  her  woollen 
cap  and  tying  it  more  firmly  under 
her  chin,  so  as  to  cover  her  ears ; 
"it  is  the  thirteenth  child  that 
often  steals  away  the  life  of  the 
mother.  For  me,  I  should  not 
complain  but  for  the  pope."  She 
had  reached  this  point  before  in 
the  same  train  of  thought,  and  had 
stopped  short ;  it  was  one  that  she 
dared  not  pursue.  For  the  Rus- 
sian pope  there  is  no  second  mar- 
riage permissible  in  the  event  of 
the  popadia's  death,  and  very  few 
parish  priests  can  afford  to  keep  a 
servant  in  place  of  a  wife,  who 
requires  no  wages.  Heaven  help 
the  family  where  the  wife  and 
mother  is  cut  off  untimely ! 

Up  at  the  Castle  time  was  pass- 
ing joyously.  There  was  some 
sfa-playing ;  but  the  Count  had 
made  this  easy  for  the  pope  by 
handing  him  an  envelope  with 
notes  in  it,  which  the  priest  had 
been  delighted  to  pocket.  There 
had  been  a  visit  to  the  horse-fair 
too,  where  the  stranger  guests  had 
listened  with  amusement  to  the 
pope's  cautious  chaffering  in  their 
interest;  and  from  time  to  time 
there  had  been  adjournments  to 
immense  meals  of  game  and  meat, 
and  sweets  and  wine,  very  differ- 
ent from  the  parsonage  fare — a 
fixed  quantity  of  black  bread, 
and  unsavoury  vegetable  soup, 
which  had  to  be  stretched  round 
to  meet  the  requirements  of  the 
pope's  increasing  family.  The 
Countess's  sharp  impertinent  eyes 
watched  the  poor  parson's  shame- 
faced greediness  of  appreciation 
with  scarcely  veiled  insolence.  Yet, 


in  her  way,  she  liked  him,  wished 
him  to  enjoy  his  stay,  and  gave 
him  the  advantage  of  any  tit-bits 
and  warm  corners  that  she  could — 
partly  out  of  careless  good-nature, 
and  partly  to  satisfy  the  super- 
stitious disquiet  of  a  thoroughly 
irreligious  character  brought  into 
proximity  with  what,  in  Russia, 
passes  for  a  spiritual  power.  It 
salved  the  Countess's  conscience 
to  fill  the  pope's  plate  and  glass : 
in  a  day  or  two  the  wrinkles  in 
his  furrowed  cheeks  would  be 
perceptibly  lessened,  and  such  a 
result  would  go  to  the  credit  side 
of  her  ladyship's  moral  account, 
debited,  to  her  occasional  mental 
inconvenience,  with  many  a  ne- 
glected mass  and  scamped  con- 
fession. It  was  not  often  that 
the  lady  of  the  Castle  did  anything 
for  anybody  besides  herself,  but 
the  comfortable  assurance  that  the 
priest  was  having  a  good  time 
diffused  a  glow  of  satisfaction 
through  her  which  was  eminently 
pleasing. 

It  was  late  in  the  evening  of 
the  second  day  that  a  message 
came  from  Nitchvorad  to  summon 
the  pope  to  the  village.  Somehow 
the  Countess  received  it  first,  sit- 
ting in  her  easy-chair  in  the  yellow 
drawing-room  after  dinner;  while 
the  gentlemen,  in  the  inner  room, 
were  cutting  for  partners  at  cards. 
The  lady's  face  was  rather  white 
and  scared  as  she  whispered  to  her 
husband,  and  they  both  glanced 
anxiously  at  the  pope,  who,  over- 
come with  the  warmth  and  the 
pleasant  after-effects  of  an  excel- 
lent meal,  had  fallen  asleep  in  a 
corner  of  the  sofa,  waiting  his  turn 
to  cut  in  when  required.  Some 
orders  were  given,  and  a  carriage 
hastily  prepared.  The  pope  was 
roused,  and  his  host  hurriedly  in- 
formed him  of  the  summons  that 
had  come  :  one  of  his  parishioners, 
a  woman,  was  very  ill,  and  desired 


434 


Nitchevo :  A  Fragment  of  Russian  Life. 


[Sept. 


the  last  consolations  of  Holy 
Church.  They  almost  pushed  him 
across  the  hall  to  the  carriage  door, 
in  their  eagerness  to  get  him  off; 
for,  puzzled  with  the  sudden  awak- 
ening and  the  but  half-explained 
recall  to  duty,  he  was  fain  to 
linger,  rubbing  his  eyes  and  ask- 
ing a  dozen  questions  which  no 
one  seemed  inclined  to  answer. 
It  was  the  Count  himself  who 
wrapped  him  in  a  big  fur  cloak 
and  shut  the  carriage  door.  The 
footman,  looking  frightened  and 
sulky,  took  his  place  on  the  box- 
seat,  with  a  last  word  of  direction 
from  his  master.  Then  the  car- 
riage rolled  heavily  away  in  the 
snowy  darkness,  and  the  Castle 
party  looked  at  each  other  with 
sighs  of  relief. 

"It  was  the  best  thing  to  do," 
averred  the  Countess,  picking  up 
her  novel,  which  had  fallen  on 
the  floor.  "There  would  have 
been  a  scene  and  all  that,  and 
he  will  find  it  out  fast  enough." 

"Was  he  fond  of  her?"  some 
one  asked  —  a  stupid  question 
enough,  had  he  stopped  for  a  mo- 
ment to  consider;  but  one  often 
says  these  sort  of  things  to  make 
conversation  when  matters  are  for 
a  moment  a  little  uncomfortable. 

"Oh,  it  will  be  a  real  misfor- 
tune, poor  fellow  ! "  replied  the 
Count,  snuffing  the  wax  candles 
on  the  card-table.  "  He  may  not 
remarry,  as  you  know ;  and  there 
are,  of  course,  about  twenty  chil- 
dren. Baron,  will  you  deal  ? " 

"  A  dozen — a  dozen  exactly ;  do 
not  exaggerate,"  murmured  the 
Countess  in  the  next  room. 

Two  or  three  of  the  villagers, 
and  some  of  the  pope's  boys,  were 
hanging  about  the  doorway  as  the 
Count's  carriage  drove  up.  The 
poor  shamefaced  young  footman 
got  down  from  the  box,  and 


muttered  his  explanation  at  the 
window.  Ere  it  was  half-way 
through,  the  pope,  with  starting 
eyes,  had  flung  himself  out  of  the 
carriage  and  into  the  house,  crash- 
ing against  an  open  door  and 
overturning  a  stool  as  he  rushed 
through  the  living-room  to  the 
bedroom  beyond.  But  the  noise 
did  not  startle  the  popadia,  where 
she  lay  white  and  still  on  the  bed, 
her  long,  long  day's  work  over  at 
last.  A  peasant  woman — not  old 
Marcova,  but  a  neighbour  sum- 
moned in  terrified  haste  by  Alex- 
ander—  pushed  a  little  shabby 
bundle  of  flannel  at  him,  with  a 
vague  instinct  of  consolation.  The 
twins  from  their  box  shouted  lusti- 
ly; the  whispering  group  about  the 
door  crept  nearer  to  have  a  glimpse 
of  the  death-chamber;  even  the 
young  footman  from  the  Castle, 
who  felt  he  had  played  a  some- 
what important  role  in  the  catas- 
trophe, determined  to  have  just 
one  peep,  so  as  to  report  to  the 
maidservants  at  supper  how  the 
popadia  had  looked. 

But  the  pope  saw  nothing : 
with  a  terrible  cry  he  flung  him- 
self across  the  bed  where  his  wife 
lay.  "Oh,  little  mother!  little 
mother  !  who  will  care  for  us  now 
that  thou  art  gone1?" 

There  was  no  voice,  nor  any 
that  answered,  for  the  question 
was  indeed  unanswerable.  By- 
and-by  they  brought  the  pope  the 
vodka-bottle,  and  he  drank,  and 
fell  into  an  uneasy  slumber,  while 
the  women  creaked  about  the 
room,  attending  to  the  puling 
infant,  and  whispering  with  sup- 
pressed enjoyment  of  the  situa- 
tion; but  the  popadia  lay  white 
and  unmoved  in  their  midst,  for 
to  her  neither  husband,  children, 
nor  neighbours  mattered  any 
longer.  G.  B,  STUART. 


1894.]      The  Loss  of  H. M.S.  Victoria:  an  Anniversary  Lament.       435 

THE  LOSS  OF  H.M.S.  VICTORIA. 
AN  ANNIVERSARY  LAMENT,  JUNE  22,  1894. 


DEEP,  buried  deep, 
In  calm  untroubled  sleep, 
Beneath  the  waves  they  loved,  our  brothers  lie. 

Ear  down,  alone, 
Each  severed  from  his  own, 
They  rest  in  peace,  whose  duty  was — to  die. 

Shall  we  forget, — 
While  graves  with  tears  are  wet, — 
The  men  who  filled  for  us  an  ocean  grave? 

Or  much  condemn 
The  Chief  who  died  with  them, 
And  sacrificed  the  life  he  would  not  save; 

Who,  when  he  erred, 
Pronounced  his  own  death-word, 
And  left  a  name,  at  least  among  the  brave? 


ii. 

Are  poets  gone  ? 
Shall  Lycidas1  alone 
Deserve  the  poet-shroud  of  Milton's  tears : 

Or  they  who  died 
Sunk  low  with  England's  pride2 
Share  Cowper's  fame,  and  cheat  the  jealous  years? 

— The  months  have  sped  : 
What  prophet-voice  has  said 
In  living  words,  their  memory  shall  not  die  ? 

Can  none  to-day 
A  worthy  tribute  pay 
To  England's  loss,  and  England's  bitter  cry; 

And  shall  no  soul 
Words  into  music  roll, 
And  utter  forth  a  dirge,  for  all,  for  aye? 


1  Drowned  in  the  Irish  Channel,  2  The  Royal  George. 


436  The  Loss  of  II. M.S.  Victoria:  [Sept. 

in. 

O  fatal  skill 
Devising  ways  to  kill ! 
Too  sure  that  ram  to  strike  through  steel  and  all! 

More  hope  had  they 
On  whom  in  battle-fray 
The  dreaded  phalanx  of  the  Greeks  might  fall. 

All  forms  of  death 
Out  short  the  struggling  breath 
Of  those  brave  souls,  who,  as  in  stress  of  fight, 

Were  overborne, 
By  whirling  engines  torn, 
Or  dragged  in  darkness  down,  from  life  and  light. 

Yet  short  their  pain : 
And  till  they  rise  again 
The  sea  shall  guard  the  curtain  of  their  night. 

IV. 

They  sank  to  rest; 
And  on  their  bosom  pressed 
The  many-fathomed  ocean's  weary  weight; 

They  rose  to  fame; 
For  in  their  death  their  name 
Shall  ever  stand  with  England's  honoured  great. 

Nor  mean  their  tomb  : — 
Where  Solitude  and  Gloom, 
Twin-spectres,  fill  the  spaces  dim  and  vast, 

Where  none  may  gaze, 
Nor  careless  hand  upraise 
To  stir  the  sleeping  forms  whence  life  has  past — 

There  close  they  lie, 
With  all  their  panoply, 
In  peaceful  glory  wreathed,  while  earth  shall  last. 

v. 

The  storms  may  rave 
Above  that  lonely  grave, 
The  waves  may  roar  and  lash  themselves, .  in  vain ;    t 

For  far  below, 

The  wrecks  of  long  ago  ^ 

Rest  undisturbed  where  night  and  stillness  reign. 

Above  their  head, 
Men  think  not  of  the  dead, 
But  toil  and  danger  face,  the  ocean  o'er, 

Till  comes  the  day 
When  each  must  pass  away, 
As  passed  those  brothers,  to  the  unknown  shore, 

Where  all  is  peace, 
Where  surface-discords  cease, 
And  silence  broods,  till  time  is  known  no  more. 


1894.1  an  Anniversary  Lament.  437 


VI. 

In  that  last  hour, 
When  the  almighty  power 
Of  that  Great  Chief  above  shall  signal  make, 

With  sudden  dread, 
The  sea  shall  yield  her  dead, 
And  all  that  sleep  in  ocean  deep  shall  wake. 

No  error  then — 
No  orders  strange  to  men 
Who  here  with  honest  earnest  hearts  have  striven 

But  each  shall  know, 
And  judge,  his  life  below, 
And  to  each  soul  its  meed  of  praise  be  given ; 

For  God  above, 
In  His  prevailing  love, 
To  erring  men  has  opened  highest  heaven. 


VII. 

All  held  their  breath 
When  those  sad  words  of  death 
Were  flashed  the  waves  beneath,   "  Victoria  gone,"- 

And  kindness  owed, 
With  ready  hand  bestowed, 
On  those  who  husband  lost,  or  sire,  or  son. 

And  if  with  tears 
Were  mingled  secret  fears 
Of  fate  deserved,  or  blame  we  could  not  hide : 

— Respect  the  dead  ! 
Let  no  harsh  word  be  said 
Of  him,  who  cannot  now  the  doubt  decide  : 

For  this  we  know, 
Nor  need  we  farther  go — 
One  brave  soul  erred  where  all  were  brave — and 

EDW.    H.    HORNE. 


VOL.  CLVI.— NO.  DCCCCXLVII.  2  F 


438 


Session  of  1894. 


[Sept. 


SESSION    OF    1894. 


THE  defeat  of  the  Evicted  Ten- 
ants Bill  on  the  14th  of  August, 
and  the  withdrawal  of  the  Eight 
Hours  Bill  on  the  next  day,  were 
appropriately  followed  by  the  Min- 
isterial Whitebait   dinner,    which 
took  place  on  the  evening  of  the 
15th.      That   the  revival   of    the 
banquet    scandalised    the    saints, 
may  easily  be  believed.     But  after 
their    long    and    stormy    voyage, 
"  rolled  to  starboard,  rolled  to  lar- 
board," Ministers,  no  doubt,  felt 
that  they  had  a  right  to  take  their 
ease  in  their  inn,  and  to  make  up 
with  champagne  and  burgundy  for 
the  very  small  beer  to  which  they  had 
lately  been  accustomed.     The  ses- 
sion was  virtually  over.     All  talk 
of   prolonging   it   into   September 
had   died    away.       Ministers    had 
apparently  made  up   their  minds 
that   of    the    two    evils   between 
which  they  had  to  choose — the  sac- 
rifice of  certain  measures  to  which 
they  nominally  stood  pledged,  and 
the  prolongation  of  the  session  a 
second    time    so    far    beyond    its 
usual  limits — the   latter  was   the 
greater ;  and  they  wisely  resolved 
to  cut  a  knot  which  they  found  it 
impossible  to  untie,  and  terminate 
parliamentary  business  at  an  early 
date.     This  is  how  the  situation 
presents  itself  to  the  cursory  spec- 
tator.    But  there  is  a  good  deal 
more   behind   it,    which    must   be 
dragged  into  the  light  of  day  be- 
fore we  can  give  a  clear  view  of 
the  session  which  has  just  closed. 
When  we  speak  of  the  Government 
having   resolved   on   this   or  that 
course  of  action,  we  must  not  be 
understood  to  mean  that  the  result 
was  due  to  any  sudden  or  even 
recent   determination.      The    two 
alternatives  must  have  been  before 
them  even  as  long  ago  as  when 
they  framed  the  Queen's  Speech. 


We  have  maintained  all  along  that 
if  they  had  really  been  in  earnest 
about  placing  any  of  their  measures 
on  the  Statute  Book  before  Parlia- 
ment was  prorogued,  they  would 
never  have  acted  as  they  did.  They 
have  had  two  strings  to  their  bow 
throughout ;  and  what  occurred 
during  the  last  few  weeks  of  the 
session  abundantly  confirms  what 
we  wrote  at  the  very  beginning 
of  it. 

Parliament,  after  a  recess  of  only 
a  few  days'  duration,  reassembled 
on  the  12th  of  March  1894.  They 
had  at  that  time  been  sitting  with 
very  brief  intervals  from  the  be- 
ginning of  February  1893,  and  the 
fatigue  had  told  severely  on  both 
sides  of  the  House.  It  was  felt  to 
be  impossible  that  the  experiment 
should  be  repeated,  and  it  was 
thought  probable  therefore  that 
Government  would  undertake  no 
more  than  could  be  conveniently 
performed  between  the  middle  of 
March  and  the  middle  of  August. 
Never  was  a  greater  mistake. 
When  the  Queen's  Speech  ap- 
peared it  was  found  to  be  loaded 
to  the  brim  with  measures  of  a 
most  contentious  character,  some 
of  which  would  have  required,  even 
under  ordinary  circumstances,  a 
whole  session  to  themselves ;  how 
much  more  so  when  the  House  was 
already  worn  out  with  a  session  of 
exorbitant  length,  separated  only 
by  a  few  days  from  the  one  just 
commencing,  and  when  Govern- 
ment had  in  their  pocket  a  Budget 
of  so  monstrous  and  mischievous  a 
character  as  must  certainly  mon- 
opolise more  than  half  the  time 
they  had  at  their  command.  And 
so  it  proved :  the  Finance  Bill 
occupied  the  whole  time  of  the 
House  from  the  16th  of  April  to 
the  17th  of  July.  With  this 


1894.] 


Session  0/1894. 


439 


prospect  before  them,  what  could 
be  the  intention  with  which  ex- 
perienced statesmen  represented 
her  Majesty  as  recommending  to 
the  attention  of  Parliament  a 
list  of  ten  measures,  of  which 
seven  at  least  were  of  first-class 
importance,  while  two  out  of  the 
seven  involved  a  fundamental 
change  in  the  constitution;  all 
this  work  presumably  to  be  com- 
pleted by  a  jaded  Parliament  in 
a  short  session,  of  which  three- 
fifths  was  to  be  occupied  with  a 
sweeping  financial  revolution ! 

The  outburst  of  astonishment, 
incredulity,  and  ridicule  which  this 
announcement  immediately  pro- 
voked was  not  lost  upon  Ministers, 
who  found  it  necessary  to  descend 
a  little  from  the  high  ground 
they  had  assumed,  and  to  put  a 
somewhat  different  colour  on  the 
Queen's  Speech.  So  Lord  Rose- 
bery,  with  his  usual  felicity,  chris- 
tened the  policy  of  the  Govern- 
ment a  policy  of  indication.  The 
mention  of  these  measures,  he  said, 
did  not  imply  that  Government 
meant  to  carry  them  ;  they  merely 
"indicated"  a  tone  of  thought,  a 
general  bias,  in  a  particular  direc- 
tion. Unhappily,  however,  this 
shadowy  policy  proved  substantial 
enough  to  cause  very  considerable 
delay  in  the  proceedings  of  the 
House  of  Commons.  The  Welsh 
Liberationists  did  not  at  all  like 
being  told  that  Disestablishment 
was  only  something  towards  which 
the  party  might  be  gravitat- 
ing. The  Scotch  Nonconformists 
thought  the  same.  The  English 
Radicals  had  to  swallow  a  similar 
explanation,  which  they  did  with 
very  wry  faces ;  and  when  the  end 
came  it  was  found  that  of  the 
whole  number  of  measures  enume- 
rated in  the  Speech  from  the 
Throne,  only  two  retained  a  spark 
of  vitality.  Registration  Bills, 
Scotch  and  Welsh  Disestablish- 
ment Bills,  Local  Yeto  Bills,  Evic- 


ted Tenants  Bills,  Factories  Bills, 
Conciliation  Bills,  had  all  perished 
in  the  crush,  and  only  the  Equalis- 
ation of  Rates  Bill  and  the  Scotch 
Local  Government  Bill  were  found 
to  have  survived  the  ordeal. 

At  the  end  of  July  eight  or  ten 
nights  in  hand  would  have  been 
invaluable  to  the  Government. 
They  might,  in  that  case,  have 
been  saved,  if  they  wished  it,  from 
the  necessity  of  invoking  the  clos- 
ure, and  time  enough  might  have 
been  found  for  the  adequate  con- 
sideration of  the  Evicted  Tenants 
Bill,  and  the  elaboration  of  some 
compromise  which  the  Unionist 
party  could  accept.  These  eight 
or  ten  nights  they  might  have  had, 
and  more  too,  could  they  have 
stooped  to  anything  so  common- 
place as  cutting  their  coat  accord- 
ing to  their  cloth.  Four  whole 
nights  were  given  up  to  the 
Registration  Bill ;  three  to  the 
Conciliation  Bill;  one  to  Welsh 
Disestablishment ;  half  a  one  was 
thrown  away  on  the  statement  of 
public  business,  made  so  needlessly 
aggressive  by  Sir  William  Har- 
court, — when  an  hour  in  ordinary 
cases  would  have  been  sufficient; 
and,  as  a  necessary  consequence, 
as  much  more  was  obliged  to  be 
devoted  to  the  debate  on  the 
closure  resolution,  which  never 
need  have  occurred  at  all  had 
Government  managed  their  busi- 
ness in  a  practical  manner  with  a 
view  to  actual  legislation,  and  not 
with  an  ulterior  object  which  is 
now  universally  recognised. 

For,  after  all,  was  "  actual  legis- 
lation "  what  they  really  wanted  ? 
One  is  obliged  to  criticise  their 
conduct  partly  on  the  supposition 
that  it  was,  and  partly  on  the  sup- 
'position  that  it  was  not.  Did  they 
wish  the  Evicted  Tenants  Bill  to 
pass  the  Lords  ?  We  have  already 
answered  this  question.  They  did 
not  care.  That  we  believe  to  be 
the  true  state  of  the  case.  If 


440 


Session  o/1894. 


[Sept. 


they  passed  the  bill  in  its  original 
form,  they  satisfied  the  Irish.  If 
the  House  of  Lords  threw  it  out, 
they  had  a  new  cry.  One  result 
was  almost  as  useful  as  the  other. 
But  our  own  impression  is  that  of 
the  two  they  preferred  the  latter. 
And  the  whole  course  of  the 
session  seems  to  show  that  they 
have  been,  and  are  still,  playing 
for  a  good  Radical  cry  in  England, 
just  holding  the  Irish  in  hand  the 
while  by  as  much  as  will  keep 
body  and  soul  together.  Whether 
their  allegiance  will  stand  the 
strain  much  longer,  or  share  the 
fate  of  Duncan  M'Girdie's  mare, 
is  a  question  we  need  not  enter  on 
at  present. 

It  is  absolutely  necessary  to  put 
these  things  carefully  on  record 
before  they  are  forgotten,  since 
that  no  House  of  Commons  has 
ever  experienced  such  treatment 
from  any  Government  before  from 
the  Revolution  downwards.  Every 
party  in  turn  except  one  has  been 
used  as  a  catspaw,  and,  if  we  do 
not  mistake,  has  found  the  chest- 
nuts scalding  hot.  In  return  for 
their  complaisance,  Government 
has  given  them  "  a  bias  "  to  chew, 
like  a  quid  of  tobacco  to  stay 
the  pangs  of  hunger.  They  have 
not  seemed  to  find  it  a  very 
palatable  process;  and  when  the 
time  comes  for  repeating  it,  as 
come  it  must,  since  Government 
can  only  do  one  thing  at  a  time, 
we  shall  watch  the  effect  with 
curiosity.  Ministers  may  con- 
gratulate themselves  on  their  tem- 
porary success  in  silencing  the 
discordant  sections.  But  they 
have  only  been  laying  up  for 
themselves  a  store  of  trouble  in 
the  future.  It  is  quite  clear  from 
the  discontent  which  broke  out 
again  during  the  last  few  days 
of  Supply,  that  the  Ministerial 
arrangements  for  next  session  are 
in  danger  of  serious  interruption. 
The  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer 


will  find  himself  confronted  with 
three  distinct  parties,  all  clamour- 
ing for  precedence  —  the  Welsh 
Liberationists,  the  Irish  National- 
ists, and  the  English  Radicals. 
The  Welsh  have  been  promised  the 
first  place,  and  have  only  refrained 
from  open  opposition  on  that  un- 
derstanding. But  the  other  two 
parties  seem  evidently  prepared  to 
contest  it  with  them,  and  to  de- 
mand priority  for  a  new  Eviction 
Bill  and  a  declaration  of  war 
against  the  Lords.  Sir  W.  Har- 
court  has  five  months  to  con- 
sider how  best  he  can  reconcile 
these  rival  claimants,  or  which  he 
can  prefer  without  provoking  the 
open  hostility  of  the  others.  They 
have  all  threatened  it :  and  our 
own  opinion  is  that  they  will  keep 
their  word. 

One  party,  certainly,  has  been 
heavily  bribed,  and  has  got  good 
value  for  its  silence.  We  mean 
the  Ultra-English  Radicals  repre- 
sented by  Mr  Labouchere.  But 
even  they  are  not  satisfied.  They 
have  got  the  death  duties.  But 
that  is  only  an  instalment.  Sir 
W.  Harcourt  is  not  suspected  of 
any  sneaking  tenderness  for  Lord 
Rosebery.  But  his  language  on 
the  subject  of  the  House  of  Lords 
will  have  to  be  different  next 
session,  if  he  is  to  retain  the  con- 
fidence of  this  suspicious  clique. 

The  Radicals  must  always  be 
exposed  to  disappointments  of  this 
kind  as  long  as  they  retain  for 
their  leaders  men  whose  secret 
sympathies  are  all  with  the  ex- 
isting order  of  society,  as  Sir- 
William  Harcourt's  are  very  well1 
known  to  be.  That  he  will  go  all 
lengths  if  it  is  absolutely  necessary 
to  the  retention  of  office  is  no 
doubt  equally  certain.  But  he 
will  go  no  farther  than  he  need, 
and  no  faster  than  he  can  help. 
At  the  age  of  sixty- seven  a  cynical 
patrician,  imbued  with  all  the  in- 
stincts and  sympathies  of  his  own 


1894.] 


Session  of  '1894. 


441 


class,  cannot  be  expected  to  be 
very  much  in  love  with  democracy, 
or  very  much  in  earnest  about 
destroying  established  institutions. 
That  he  should  profess  great  zeal 
in  the  cause  is  essential  to  his 
safety ;  but  it  is  in  the  secret  hope 
that  it  will  fail.  Indeed  he  and 
Mr  Labouchere  remind  us  of  no 
one  so  much  as  Jem  Ratcliffe 
and  Mr  Sharpitlaw  in  the  '  Heart 
of  Mid-Lothian.'  Sir  William  Har- 
court  has  taken  service  with  the 
Radicals,  but  he  has  no  goodwill 
to  the  job,  and  he  has  to  be  kept 
up  to  the  collar  pretty  tightly  by 
the  Sharpitlaws  below  the  gang- 
way. He  can  fool  his  own  party  to 
the  top  of  their  bent  by  passing 
measures  which  the  House  of  Lords 
will  reject;  and  then,  when  they 
do  reject  them,  he  can  make 
additional  capital  out  of  his  well- 
feigned  indignation  at  seeing  the 
will  of  the  people  overidden. 

The  Radicals,  however,  have 
given  him  a  taste  of  their  quality, 
which  no  doubt  he  has  taken  well 
to  heart.  No  sooner  had  he  be- 
come leader  of  the  House  of 
Commons  than  he  was  defeated 
on  the  Address,  and  told  to  take 
it  back  again  and  write  a  new 
one.  When  a  man  meekly  sub- 
mits to  have  his  nose  pulled,  it 
does  not  augur  well  for  his 
success  in  any  very  arduous  un- 
dertaking. But  Sir  W.  Harcourt 
was  given  to  understand  pretty 
plainly  that  he  would  have  to 
undergo  the  operation  a  second 
time,  and  take  back  his  Budget 
as  well,  if  he  didn't  obey  his  mas- 
ters. This  is  the  secret  of  the 
death  duties.  A  vigorous  back- 
handed blow  at  the  landed  pro- 
prietors would  secure  the  support 
of  the  Radicals  for  his  financial 
scheme,  and  this,  if  successful, 
would  wipe  out  the  moral  effect 
of  his  defeat  on  the  Address. 
Something  had  to  be  done  also  to 
dwarf  in  the  public  eye  the  loss 


of  the  Registration  and  Disestab- 
lishment Bills;  and  having  this 
task  laid  upon  him,  we  would  not 
deny  that  he  piloted  the  bill 
through  the  House  with  some 
boldness  and  dexterity.  But  what 
may  redound  to  his  credit  for  the 
moment  as  a  parliamentary  tac- 
tician will  lower  his  reputation 
for  life  as  an  English  statesman. 
It  has  not  hitherto  been  the  cus- 
tom for  English  Ministers  to  force 
measures  upon  Parliament  to  serve 
a  temporary  purpose  which  they 
knew  could  not  stand  the  test  of 
experience,  and  were  certain,  there- 
fore, to  be  repealed  or  remodelled 
at  no  distant  date.  What  Mr 
Gladstone's  successor  has  really 
done  is  to  plunge  our  whole  finan- 
cial system  into  the  direst  con- 
fusion, and  to  leave  to  his  own 
successor  a  legacy  of  difficulties 
which  he  had  neither  the  resolu- 
tion nor  the  ability  to  face  him- 
self. The  death  duties  cannot 
possibly  remain  upon  their  present 
footing  ;  and  to  undo  the  mischief 
of  which  Sir  William  Harcourt 
has  been  guilty  will  cost  far  more 
trouble  than  would  have  sufficed 
to  find  the  money  by  some  other 
means.  There  is  no  ingenuity, 
no  economic  science,  displayed  in 
Sir  W.  Harcourt's  way  of  raising 
the  wind.  It  is  perfectly  simple. 
The  victorious  general  who  levies 
a  requisition  on  a  conquered  town 
has  just  as  much  right  to  call 
himself  a  great  financier. 

The  Budget  Bill  was  read  a  first 
time  in  the  House  of  Lords  on  the 
19th  of  July,  a  second  time  on  the 
26th,  and  a  third  time  on  Monday 
the  30th.  It  is  not  our  business 
on  this  occasion  to  discuss  the 
provisions  of  the  measure  one  by 
one.  That  has  already  been  done 
once  for  all  in  an  article  which  we 
published  last  May,  and  which  was 
the  first  criticism  that  laid  bare  with 
startling  plainness  the  gross  un- 
fairness of  the  Bill.  With  regard 


442 


Session  c/1894. 


[Sept. 


to  the  spirit  of  the  Bill  and  its 
effect  upon  the  landed  interest,  we 
will  merely  quote  the  opinion  of 
the  gentleman  who  is  the  leader 
of  the  Radical  Party  in  the 
House  of  Commons.  Both  Sir 
William  Harcourt  himself  and 
Lord  Farrer  and  Lord  Herschell 
in  the  House  of  Lords  denied  that 
it  would  inflict  any  injury  on  the 
landed  proprietor.  So  far  from 
this,  the  Government  contended 
that  the  additional  burden  of 
taxation  had  been  laid  upon  the 
shoulders  best  able  to  bear  it. 
This  was  for  the  public.  What 
passed  in  private  between  the 
Government  and  the  Radicals — 
what  the  bribe  was  which  induced 
them,  not  only  to  support  the 
Budget,  but  to  condone  all  the 
other  delinquencies  of  which  the 
Government  had  been  guilty — we 
may  learn  from  their  somewhat 
over-candid  friend,  Mr  Labouchere, 
who  let  out  the  truth  in  the  peri- 
odical of  that  name,  which  in 
this  particular  instance  undoubt- 
edly deserves  it.  "There  are," 
says  he,  "  a  vast  number  of  squires 
whose  estates  are  so  heavily 
charged  with  mortgages  and 
settlements  that  they  have  hardly 
been  able  to  make  two  ends  meet 
since  the  fall  in  the  economic 
value  of  land.  The  death  dues 
will  be  the  last  straw  that  will 
break  their  backs."  And  he 
thinks  this  will  be  for  the  advan- 
tage of  the  community,  because 
such  men  could  not  do  justice  to 
their  estates.  But  these  men, 
and  many  others  not  in  quite 
such  desperate  plight,  were  strug- 
gling on  in  hopes  of  better  times, 
and  undergoing  many  privations 
rather  than  tear  themselves  from 
their  ancestral  acres  and  sever 
their  long  hereditary  connection 
with  the  tenants  who  farmed 
them.  These  men,  with  estates 
varying  from  £5000  to  £8000 
a-year,  were  the  backbone  of  the 


landed  aristocracy ;  and  it  is  cer- 
tainly not  for  the  advantage  of 
the  community  that  they  should 
now  see  all  hope  of  maintaining 
their  position  cut  away  from  them. 
Many  generous  traditions,  much 
liberal  refinement,  many  kindly 
relations  and  humanising  in- 
fluences, will  perish  with  them. 
But  they  have  one  fault.  Sir  W. 
Harcourt  has  passed  the  age  of 
indiscretion,  and  did  not  imitate 
that  thoughtless  youth,  Lord  Rose- 
bery,  by  revealing  the  real  motive 
of  his  Budget.  But  it  seems  to 
have  been  closely  akin  to  what 
the  Prime  Minister  assigned  as 
his  sole  reason  for  disestablishing 
the  Scotch  Kirk.  The  squires  are 
Conservative ! 

To  destroy  the  power  of  the 
landed  aristocracy  has  been  the 
aim,  either  secret  or  avowed,  of  the 
Radical  party  ever  since  the  days  of 
Mr  Cobden,  who  did  not  scruple  to 
confess  that  this  was  one  of  the 
principal  objects  which  he  pro- 
posed to  himself  in  the  repeal  of 
the  Corn  Laws.  It  is  idle  to 
argue  the  question  at  this  time 
of  day.  Habemus  confitentem 
reum.  But  an  interesting  con- 
stitutional question  arose  during 
the  debate  on  the  Budget  relating 
to  the  powers  of  the  House  of 
Lords  in  the  matter  of  money 
bills.  The  Duke  of  Rutland  was 
the  first  to  call  attention  to  the 
popular  error  on  this  subject. 
The  House  of  Lords,  he  said,  had 
never  surrendered  their  legal  right 
to  amend  money  bills ;  and  when 
the  question  came  to  be  considered 
by  the  Peers,  it  was  admitted  that 
the  Duke's  contention  was  correct. 
Lord  Salisbury  stated  that  though 
he  had  no  intention  of  moving 
any  amendment  to  the  Budget,  he 
thought  it  highly  desirable  that 
the  rights  of  the  House  of  Lords  in 
this  respect  should  be  kept  alive, 
and  gave  an  excellent  reason  for 
thinking  so,  which  we  shall  notice 


1894.] 


Session  0/"1894. 


443 


in  a  few  minutes  when  we  come  to 
the  third  reading  of  the  Finance 
Bill.  But  on  its  introduction  he 
pointed  out  that  the  right  actually 
had  been  exercised  on  two  occasions 
during  the  present  century,  and 
once  within  his  own  experience. 
The  two  precedents  here  referred  to 
were  the  amendment  to  Mr  Glad- 
stone's Budget  in  1860  rejecting 
that  part  of  it  which  provided  for 
a  repeal  of  the  Paper  Duties,  and 
the  Duke  of  Wellington's  amend- 
ment to  Mr  Canning's  Corn  Bill, 
not  in  1826  but  in  1827.  In  a 
letter  written  by  the  first  Lord 
Colchester  to  the  Duke  of  Welling- 
ton, May  31,  1827,  will  be  found 
a  very  full  and  clear  account  of 
the  position  of  the  House  of  Lords 
on  financial  questions.  He  quotes 
the  resolution  of  the  House  of 
Commons  in  1678  which  had, 
he  said,  governed  all  subsequent 
cases,  and  he  had  no  doubt  that 
the  Duke's  amendment  to  the 
Corn  Bill  came  within  the  scope 
of  that  resolution.  Yet  the  Duke 
of  Wellington  persevered  with  his 
amendment,  and  carried  it  by  a 
majority  of  eleven.  The  sky  did 
not  fall.  A  resolution  of  the  House 
of  Commons  has  not  by  itself  the 
force  of  law ;  and  if  that  House 
has  never  departed  from  the  resolu- 
tion of  1678,  as  Lord  Colchester 
declared,  the  House  of  Lords  in 
their  turn  have  never  acknow- 
ledged it.  In  1861  Mr  Gladstone, 
as  quoted  by  the  Duke  of  Rutland, 
declared  that 

"By  no  proceeding  has  that  House 
ever  surrendered,  as  far  as  I  know, 
the  right  of  altering  a  bill,  even 
though  it  touch  a  matter  of  finance. 
If  I  might  say  for  my  own  part, 
though  anxious  to  vindicate  the 
privileges  of  this  House  against 
the  House  of  Lords  where  need 
may  arise,  yet  I  think  that  the 
House  of  Lords  is  right  and  wise 
in  avoiding  any  formal  surrender  of 
the  power  even  of  amendment  in 
cases  where  it  might  think  it  justi- 


fiable to  amend  a  bill  relating  to 
finance." 

And  these  last  words  bring  us  to 
the  important  practical  question 
mooted  by  Lord  Salisbury  on  the 
third  reading,  and  the  pregnant 
answer  to  it  given  by  Lord  Her- 
schel.  We  see  that  Lord  Salis- 
bury and  Mr  Gladstone  are  in 
exact  accordance  on  this  point : — 

"I  do  not,  therefore,  in  the  least 
degree  dispute  the  wisdom  of  the 
accepted  practice  that  this  House 
should  not  interfere  with  the  fin- 
ances of  the  year.  At  the  same 
time,  I  think  it  very  important, 
in  view  of  the  changes  that  have 
come  over  the  Constitution,  and  the 
proceeding  and  the  authority  of  the 
House  of  Commons,  that  we  should 
rigidly  adhere  to  our  legal  powers, 
whatever  they  may  be.  It  is  neces- 
sary to  call  attention  to  the  fact 
that  the  difference  between  the  legal 
rights  of  the  House  of  Commons  and 
its  moral  authority  is  of  the  widest 
possible  character.  The  legal  rights 
of  the  House  of  Commons  are  equally 
strong,  if  they  are  exercised  by  a 
majority  or  a  single  vote.  They 
are  in  all  circumstances  the  same, 
but  the  moral  authority  of  the  House 
of  Commons  varies  infinitely  with 
the  circumstances  of  the  case." 

He  proceeded  to  say  : — 

"  I  deal  with  this  matter  because 
there  is  a  constant  tendency  in  the 
popular  mind  to  confuse  the  moral 
authority  and  the  legal  authority 
of  the  House  of  Commons.  I  repeat 
that  the  legal  authority  is  as  great 
if  represented  by  a  single  vote,  while 
the  moral  authority  varies  with  the 
circumstances.  On  this  ground  I 
attach  very  great  importance  to  the 
preservation  intact  of  the  legal  pre- 
rogatives and  rights  of  the  House  of 
Lords,  because  we  do  not  know  when 
it  may  be  expedient  to  insist  on  them 
and  to  exercise  them.  I  quite  under- 
stand the  necessity  of  exercising  any 
such  powers  with  great  reserve  and' 
circumspection ;  but  we  know  not 
when  they  may  be  wanted,  and  I 
earnestly  protest  against  any  attempt 
to  diminish  them." 


444 


Session 


The  distinction  between  the 
legal  and  the  moral  authority  of 
the  House  of  Commons  is,  as  Lord 
Salisbury  says,  too  often  over- 
looked. The  legal  authority  of 
both  Houses  is  the  same.  The 
House  of  Lords  has  the  same  legal 
right  to  reject  a  bill  as  the  House 
of  Commons  has  to  pass  it.  Ex- 
actly the  same,  neither  more  nor 
less.  But  when  we  quit  this  well- 
defined  ground  for  one  less  capable 
of  definition,  the  claims  of  the  two 
Houses  become  different.  The 
moral  authority  of  the  House  of 
Lords  depends  on  the  character 
of  its  members  :  the  statesman- 
ship, the  experience,  the  know- 
ledge, the  sagacity,  the  patriotism, 
by  which  it  has  usually  been  dis- 
tinguished. The  moral  authority 
of  the  House  of  Commons  depends 
upon  a  sanction  which  may  be  in- 
finitely weightier  than  the  above, 
or  not  'more  than  equal  to  it,  or 
perhaps  at  times  even  inferior : 
that  is  public  opinion.  When 
there  is  a  great  and  manifest  pre- 
ponderance of  public  opinion  at 
the  back  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, the  House  of  Lords  has 
nothing  to  set  against  it,  and 
must  of  course  give  way.  But 
as  this  preponderance  grows  less 
and  less  till  it  dwindles  almost  to 
nothing,  in  the  same  proportion 
does  the  authority  of  the  House  of 
Lords  revive,  and  its  right  and  its 
duty  to  exercise  a  vigilant  super- 
vision over  the  proceedings  of  the 
House  of  Commons  become  more 
and  more  pronounced  and  binding. 
And  this  right  and  this  duty  have 
both,  as  Lord  Salisbury  says,  ac- 
quired fresh  value  and  significance 
from  recent  changes  in  the  Con- 
stitution, and  also  and  especially 
in  the  procedure  of  the  repre- 
sentative Chamber.  The  present 
is  no  time  for  allowing  any  of  the 
legal  powers  of  the  House  of  Lords 
to  lapse  by  default.  They  may  be 
required  any  day,  not  only  in  de- 


[Sept. 

fence  of  established  institutions, 
but  in  defence  of  those  very  liber- 
ties of  which  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, once  proud  to  be  the  guar- 
dian, now  threatens  to  be  the  hang- 
man. 

When  the  point  is  reached  at 
which  the  voice  of  the  House  of 
Commons  ceases  to  possess  any 
moral  authority  either  equal  to  or 
greater  than  that  of  the  Upper 
House,  is  a  question  which,  as 
Lord  Herschel  says,  it  may  not 
be  very  easy  to  determine.  But 
every  one  knows  there  is  such  a 
point.  According  to  a  well-worn 
metaphor,  we  cannot  say  exactly 
where  the  Thames  ceases  to  be  a 
fresh -water  river  and  begins  to 
taste  of  the  sea.  But  we  know 
very  well  that  it  is  fresh  at  Rich- 
mond and  salt  at  Gravesend  ;  and 
we  know  very  well  that  a  majority 
of  eighty  does  represent  public 
opinion  in  sufficient  strength,  and 
that  a  majority  of  one  does  not. 
At  what  intermediate  point  the 
same  conclusion  may  be  safely 
drawn  will  depend  upon  circum- 
stances. But  Lord  Herschel 
allows  that  the  right  of  the  House 
of  Lords  to  disregard  the  action  of 
the  House  of  Commons  is  in  pro- 
portion to  the  weakness  of  the 
majority  by  which  that  action 
is  taken.  If  the  House  of  Lords 
makes  a  mistake  about  this  in- 
termediate point,  the  error  can 
only  be  detected  by  an  appeal  to 
the  people,  who  in  that  case  w$l 
take  care  that  no  suql^  ^mistake 
occurs  a  second  time.  "If  the 
noble  Marquis  says  that  a  small 
majority  [in  the  Commons]  gives 
the  House  [of  Lords]  a  greater 
right  to  interfere,  that  is  a  matter 
which  must  be  settled  according 
as  the  country  is  or  is  not  at  the 
back  of  the  House  of  Commons." 
Precisely  :  that  is  what  Lord  Salis- 
bury says  too. 

Lord  Salisbury's  speech  is  addi- 
tionally valuable  for  his  reference 


1894.] 


Session  0/189 4. 


445 


to  the  changes  which  have  taken 
place  in  the  character  and  pro- 
ceedings of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, clearly  indicating  that  the 
abuse  of  the  closure  which  enables 
Government  to  trample  all  opposi- 
tion under  foot,  and  the  presence 
in  the  House  of  Commons  of  men 
so  careless  of  its  traditions,  its 
dignity,  and  the  final  cause  of  its 
existence,  as  to  applaud  this  out- 
rage, may  call  upon  the  House  of 
Lords  at  no  distant  date  to  play 
a  very  different  part  in  the  work- 
ing of  the  Constitution  from  that 
with  which  for  many  years  past 
it  has  been  satisfied. 

In  the  debate  on  the  second 
reading  of  the  Evicted  Tenants 
Bill,  Lord  Salisbury  recurred  to 
this  topic  in  language  so  well 
worthy  of  a  great  statesman  that 
we  quote  it  entire.  "Surely  it 
does  not  make  any  difference  in 
our  duty  whether  we  are  likely  to 
lengthen  or  to  abbreviate  the  exis- 
tence of  this  House.  The  institu- 
tions of  this  country  and  the 
traditions  of  centuries  have  left 
a  great  power  in  our  hands. 
Whether  it  is  abstractedly  the 
best  or  not  is  no  matter  or  ques- 
tion for  us  in  the  exercise  of  our 
duty  to  judge.  It  is  our  business 
to  perform  a  duty  that  has  been 
placed  in  our  hands  according  to 
our  conscience."  England  expects 
every  man  to  do  his  duty.  And 
she  expects  the  House  of  Lords  to 
do  tne  same.  When  the  country 
desires  to  \ar,ge  its  institutions, 
it  will  doubtless  do  so.  Till  then 
those  who  are  called  on  to  admin- 
ister them  must  be  faithful  to 
their  trust,  and  allow  none  of  the 
rights  transmitted  to  them  to 
lapse  through  carelessness  or  cow- 
ardice. If  the  nation  is  really 
unwilling  to  acquiesce  in  the 
power  now  exercised  by  the  Peers, 
nothing  which  the  House  of  Lords 
can  either  do  or  refrain  from  doing 
could  prolong  their  existence  many 


years.  And  for  the  sake  of  any 
such  brief  inglorious  interval,  it 
is  surely  not  worth  while  to  aban- 
don their  post,  or  descend  to  any 
course  of  action  unworthy  of  their 
high  station  and  their  splendid 
history. 

After  the  conclusion  of  the 
Budget  came  the  "  Ministerial 
statement"  with  regard  to  the 
future  course  of  public  business. 
It  was  received  with  a  burst  of 
laughter.  On  the  18th  of  July 
Sir  William  Harcourt  gravely  in- 
formed Parliament  that  fifteen 
bills  still  remained  to  be  discussed 
and  carried,  besides  a  hundred 
votes  in  supply,  and  that  he 
hoped  Parliament  might  be  pro- 
rogued before  the  end  of  August. 
The  shouts  of  derision  with  which 
this  statement,  delivered  with 
intrepid  gravity,  was  received  by 
those  who  heard  it,  were  natural 
enough.  But  it  was  no  laughing 
matter.  Even  with  the  help  of 
the  closure  it  was  evidently  im- 
possible to  get  through  half  the 
work  which  the  Chancellor  of  the 
Exchequer  had  so  glibly  sketched 
out :  all  the  rest  was  moonshine. 
Part  of  the  scheme  was  to  bs 
carried  by  a  coup  de  main ;  the 
other  half  was  sheer  impertinence. 
Sir  William  scored  right  and  left, 
combining  a  gross  outrage  with  a 
gratuitous  insult.  For  it  was 
nothing  less  than  this  to  solemnly 
ask  the  House  of  Commons  to 
listen  to  an  elaborate  calculation 
every  syllable  of  which  the  Min- 
ister who  delivered  it  knew  to  be 
absolute  humbug. 

Two  days  after  the  statement 
was  made  Sir  Michael  Hicks- 
Beach  moved  the  adjournment  of 
the  House  to  call  attention  to  this 
extraordinary  proceeding  on  the 
part  of  the  Government,  and  the 
Opposition  were  forced  to  discuss 
it  as  if  it  had  been  meant  serious- 
ly. On  this  occasion  three  speeches 
were  delivered  —  one  by  Sir  M. 


446 


Session  0/1894. 


[Sept. 


Hicks-Beach,  the  other  by  Mr  A. 
J.  Balfour,  and  the  third  by  Mr 
Chamberlain — which  shattered  the 
defence  to  atoms.  Sir  William 
Harcourt  was  convicted  of  garbled 
statistics,  and  of  trifling  with  the 
House  of  Commons  in  a  manner 
which,  twenty  or  thirty  years  ago, 
would  have  elicited  groans  and 
hisses.  Answering  Sir  Michael 
Hicks -Beach  in  regard  to  the 
average  number  of  days  devoted 
to  Supply  during  the  last  seven 
years,  he  picked  the  two  years 
which  suited  himself  and  left  out 
the  others  altogether.  The  absurd- 
ity of  such  a  dodge  is  no  less  re- 
markable than  its  dishonesty,  for 
it  was  certain  to  be  exposed  by  the 
very  first  speaker  who  should  get 
up  from  the  Opposition  benches. 
It  was  exposed,  in  fact,  even  sooner 
than  that.  Mr  Jesse  Collings 
couldn't  contain  himself.  "  What 
nonsense  is  this1?"  he  cried  out,  as 
he  listened  to  the  Minister's  arith- 
metic. As  Chancellor  of  the  Ex- 
chequer, we  are  to  presume  that 
Sir  W.  Harcourt  can  do  sums  in 
simple  addition  and  division.  On 
that  hypothesis,  the  contempt  for 
his  audience  which  he  scarcely 
attempted  to  disguise  on  the  20th 
of  July  last  must  be  something  un- 
fathomable. 

Parliament  had  not  long  to 
wait  for  the  disclosure  of  the 
Government's  intentions  regard- 
ing the  Evicted  Tenants  Bill. 
Martial  law  was  proclaimed  in  the 
House  of  Commons  on  the  31st  of 
July ;  and  it  was  immediately 
announced  by  the  Unionist  leaders 
that  they  must  decline  on  those 
conditions  to  take  any  part  in  the 
debate,  and  that  while  the  Com- 
mittee lasted  they  should  with- 
draw from  their  places  in  the 
House.  As,  however,  the  action 
of  the  Opposition  in  proclaiming 
what  is  called  "a  secession"  has 
been  somewhat  misunderstood,  it 
may  be  well  to  point  out  in  what 


it  differed  from  other  parliamen- 
tary incidents  of  the  same  kind, 
which  are  not  in  the  best  odour 
with  political  historians. 

The  secession  of  the  Tory  opposi- 
tion in  1740  and  the  secession  of 
the  Whig  opposition  in  1797,  to 
which  Mr  Balfour  referred,  were 
based  on  the  allegation  that  the 
Parliament  of  the  day  was  so  com- 
pletely subservient  to  the  Prime 
Minister  that  it  was  useless  for 
his  opponents  to  resist  him,  or  to 
attempt  to  defeat  what  they  be- 
lieved to  be  a  mischievous  policy. 
They  were  still  at  liberty  to  con- 
vert the  House  of  Commons  if 
they  could,  and  to  criticise  the 
measures  of  Government  as  vigor- 
ously and  exhaustively  as  they 
chose.  The  question  was  once 
raised  in  Johnson's  hearing, 
whether  it  was  worth  while  to 
take  pains  in  speaking  to  the 
House  of  Commons  when  you  were 
certain  to  produce  no  effect.  It 
was  Burke,  we  think,  who  said, 
"  Though  not  one  vote  is  gained,  a 
good  speech  has  its  effect ;  though 
a  bill  which  has  been  ably  opposed 
passes  into  law,  yet  in  its  progress 
it  is  modelled,  it  is  softened  in  such 
a  manner,  that  we  see  plainly 
the  Minister  has  been  told  that  the 
members  attached  to  him  are  so 
sensible  of  its  injustice  or  ab- 
surdity from  what  they  have 
heard,  that  it  must  be  altered. 
Johnson  added,  "  Though  we  can- 
not out-vote  them,  we  will  out-argue 
them.  They  shall  not  do  wrong 
without  its  being  shown,  both  to 
themselves  and  to  the  world." 
This  is  the  special  and  legitimate 
function  of  an  Opposition,  and  it 
is  clearly  they,  and  not  the  Govern- 
ment, who  must  determine  in  any 
particular  case  how  much  time  will 
be  required  to  discharge  it  properly. 
It  is  not  for  the  accused  to  dictate 
to  the  accuser  how  long  it  ought  to 
take  him  to  complete  his  case.  As 
long  as  these  rules  are  observed, 


1894.] 


Session  of  1894. 


447 


and  the  Opposition  left  free  to  do 
its  duty,  it  is  doubtful  perhaps 
whether  secessions  are  likely  to 
produce  much  effect.  But  such 
was  not  the  position  in  which  the 
Unionist  leaders  found  themselves 
a  month  ago.  Wyndham  and 
Pulteney,  Fox  and  Grey,  might 
speak  at  what  length  they  liked, 
and  their  followers  continue  the 
debate  for  as  many  hours  as  they 
thought  fit.  But  this  is  just  what 
the  present  Opposition  were  for- 
bidden to  do.  They  were  de- 
prived of  the  opportunity  of  ful- 
filling the  obligations  which  the 
Constitution  imposes  on  them,  and 
of  making  that  impression  on 
Parliament  to  which  Burke  refers. 
All  that  Fox  and  Pulteney  com- 
plained of  was  that  they  had  an 
impenetrable  majority  to  deal  with, 
deaf  to  reason  and  common-sense. 
They  seceded  because  their  argu- 
ments were  ineffectual :  Mr  Balfour 
and  Mr  Goschen,  because  they  were 
not  allowed  to  argue.  In  the  two 
former  instances  the  Opposition 
abandoned  their  case.  In  the 
last  they  were  debarred  from 
stating  it.  The  difference  is  im- 
mense; and  the  decision  at  once 
taken  by  the  Opposition  leader 
and  his  colleagues  was  dignified, 
honourable,  and  effective.  The 
abuses  of  the  closure  system  can 
be  brought  home  to  the  public 
mind  in  no  other  way.  But  we 
must  never  confound  the  secession 
of  1894  with  those  which  took 
place  in  the  reign  of  George  the 
Third  and  George  the  Second. 

The  second  reading  of  the  bill 
was  moved  in  the  House  of  Lords 
by  Lord  Spencer  on  the  13th  of 
August :  and  by  this  time  it  was 
known  that  all  attempts  at  com- 
promise had  failed.  By  resolutely 
refusing  every,  even  the  most 
reasonable,  amendment,  to  which 
it  is  known  that  the  Anti-Parnell- 
ites  would  have  assented,  Mr 
Morley  made  it  impossible,  as  no 


doubt  he  intended  to  do,  for  the 
House  of  Lords  to  accept  it.  And 
when  the  division  was  taken  at 
midnight  on  the  14th,  only  30 
Peers,  out  of  279  present,  were 
found  ready  to  support  the  Gov- 
ernment. Of  the  bill  itself 
enough  has  been  already  said. 
It  was  a  measure  for  evicting 
the  innocent,  in  order  to  reward 
the  guilty ;  for  placing  a  premium 
on  lawlessness  and  roguery,  and 
a  price  on  the  head  of  every 
honest  man;  for  teaching  the 
ill  -  disposed  classes  in  Ireland 
that  they  could  go  to  no  length 
which  some  Parliament  or  other 
might  not  be  found  to  condone : 
for  making  evictions  impossible, 
and  rent  consequently  irrecover- 
able ;  for  destroying  all  confidence 
in  the  law,  all  faith  in  parliamen- 
tary pledges,  and  all  security  for 
life,  property,  or  liberty.  If  a 
landlord  chose  to  farm  his  own 
land,  he  might  have  been  turned 
out  of  it  on  the  demand  of  any 
former  tenant.  And  if  a  sitting 
tenant  refused  to  go  out  to  oblige 
a  protege  of  the  League,  his  fate 
would  have  been  sealed.  Mr  "W. 
Redmond  plainly  stated  that  un- 
less the  tenants  were  restored,  and 
the  "  land-grabbers  " — i.e.,  the  sit- 
ting tenants  —  turned  out,  there 
would  be  a  "  recrudescence  of 
disturbance  "  in  Ireland.  He 
feared  that  this  winter  there  would 
be  "bad  work "  in  Ireland.  One 
of  the  Irish  speakers  said  that  the 
sitting  tenants  would  be  forced  to 
retire  by  the  pressure  of  public 
opinion.  But  how  does  rural 
public  opinion  operate  in  Ireland  ? 
said  Lord  Salisbury ;  "  by  dragging 
a  man  out  of  bed  and  shooting  at 
his  legs."  This  is  what  Mr  O'Brien 
means  by  the  quiet  action  of  pub- 
lic opinion  "  without  any  disturb- 
ance." Even  Mr  Morley  himself 
appealed  to  the  argumentum  ad 
baculum.  "  If  evil  results  follow," 
he  said,  "  from  the  rejection  of  the 


448 

bill,  the  country  will  know  where 
the  shame  and  the  crime  rest." 
The  Irish  are  quick  at  taking 
hints,  and  a  hint  from  a  Minister 
of  the  Crown  is  not  likely  to  be 
neglected. 

We  have  summarised  in  the 
above  paragraph  the  principal 
points  in  the  House  of  Lords'  de- 
bate, which,  for  close  reasoning, 
commanding  eloquence,  and  strong 
common  -  sense,  has  rarely  been 
equalled  even  in  that  assembly. 
But,  as  the  Duke  of  Argyll  well 
said,  "if  every  member  of  this 
House  were  to  speak  for  a  month, 
we  should  still  find  some  new 
monstrosity  to  expose."  We  may 
briefly  refer,  however,  to  one  or 
two  points  brought  out  in  the  de- 
bate with  special  and  conspicuous 
clearness.  One  is,  the  hollow  pre- 
tence that  the  sitting  tenant  could 
not  be  turned  out  without  his  own 
consent.  Mr  Morley  took  great 
credit  to  himself  for  this  saving 
clause.  But  what  was  the  value 
of  it.  We  have  already  quoted 
Lord  Salisbury's  opinion.  But  the 
Duke  of  Devonshire  perhaps  placed 
the  position  of  the  sitting  tenant, 
such  as  it  would  have  been  under 
this  bill,  in  the  clearest  light. 
Tinder  the  existing  law  he  may  be 
an  object  of  great  hostility.  He 
may  be  denounced  as  "a  land- 
grabber,"  and  exposed  to  personal 
violence.  But  there  is  this  much 
in  his  favour.  If  the  League  force 
him  to  go  out,  they  cannot  force 
the  old  tenant  in.  The  landlord  is 
not  obliged  to  take  him.  But  under 
this  bill  he  would  have  had  no 
option.  As  the  Duke  remarked, 
the  landlord  was  left  out  of  the 
transaction  altogether.  The  matter 
was  to  be  settled  between  the  old 
and  new  tenant  and  the  arbitra- 
tor ;  and  what  they  decided  on  the 
landlord  must  agree  to.  Hence, 
whatever  inducement  the  League 
may  have  now  to  boycott,  maim, 
or  murder  an  obnoxious  tenant, 


o»  0/1894. 


[Sept. 


would  under  this  bill  have  been 
doubled,  since  if  the  farm  were 
vacated  their  own  man  would  im- 
mediately step  into  it.  The  Duke 
also  spoke  strongly  about  the  ap- 
plication of  the  closure  in  the 
Lower  House  as  having  destroyed 
the  last  chance  of  any  compromise. 
But  his  own  speech  was  quite 
enough  to  destroy  the  bill  without 
the  additional  argument  derived 
from  the  closure. 

The  Marquis  of  Salisbury  warned 
the  House  of  Lords  that  other  con- 
tracts besides  those  relating  to 
land  would  be  subjected  to  the 
same  process  if  the  bill  passed. 
"  The  feeling  will  very  soon  spread 
that  anybody  who  has  a  right  to 
anything,  and  who  uses  any  pro- 
cess of  law  to  recover  it,  is  liable  to 
the  thunders  that  are  denounced 
against  the  evictor  and  the  land- 
grabber."  Moreover,  what  moral 
would  those  occupiers  and  pur- 
chasers in  Ireland, who  had  hither- 
to paid  their  rents  and  instalments 
with  punctuality,  have  necessarily 
drawn  from  the  new  Act  of  Parlia- 
ment ?  Why,  that  they  had  been 
fools  for  their  pains,  of  course. 
As  for  exceptional  legislation,  that 
is  a  dangerous  doctrine  to  rely  upon. 

"  We  have  heard,"  said  Lord  Salis- 
bury, "a  good  deal  of  exceptional 
legislation  in  our  time  ;  and  by  this 
time  we  know  what  it  means.  When 
the  Irish  Church  was  abolished  we 
were  told  that  it  was  purely  an  ex- 
ceptional Act,  and  could  not  affect 
any  other  Church.  But  already  the 
Church  of  England  in  Wales  and 
the  Scottish  Church  are  formally 
threatened,  and  not  obscure  prepar- 
ations are  going  on  against  those 
Churches.  Later  on  we  had  the  Irish 
Land  Bill,  and  again  we  were  told 
that  it  was  a  thoroughly  exceptional 
measure.  Already  that  law  has  found 
its  way  to  the  crofters  of  Scotland, 
and  is  demanded  by  the  farmers  of 
Wales,  while  I  have  heard  sugges- 
tions of  applying  it  to  the  farmers  of 
England." 

That  the   natural  consequences 


1894.] 


Session  0/1894. 


449 


of  our  actions  will  not  always 
follow  them  is  the  favourite  asser- 
tion, perhaps  the  honest  delusion, 
of  many  revolutionary  reformers 
and  their  credulous  dupes.  The 
argument  is  as  old  as  creation,  and 
began  with  the  father  of  sophistry. 
"And  the  serpent  said  unto  the 
woman,  Ye  shall  not  surely  die." 
To  the  number  of  illustrations 
offered  by  Lord  Salisbury  we  might 
add  the  abolition  of  Church  rates. 
We  were  told  that  the  Dissenters 
would  be  quite  satisfied  with  that. 
Church  rates  were  abolished,  and 
the  claim  on  the  churchyards  fol- 
lowed immediately.  The  conces- 
sion of  the  Burials  Bill  was  once 
more  to  terminate  the  controversy, 
and  it  was  immediately  succeeded 
by  the  cry  for  Disestablishment ! 

Lord  Rosebery  charged  Lord 
Salisbury  with  levity.  When  he 
himself  can  speak  with  half  the 
gravity,  half  the  dignity,  which  dis- 
tinguished the  noble  Marquis's  re- 
marks on  the  duty  of  a  great  and 
powerful  assembly  like  the  House 
of  Lords,  or  rise  with  half  as  much 
success  to  the  height  of  that  great 
argument  which  is  always  before 
us  when  the  House  of  Lords  is  at 
issue  with  the  House  of  Commons, 
he  may  perhaps  be  listened  to  when 
he  accuses  an  opponent  of  frivolity. 
Another  time,  however,  we  hope 
he  will  choose  his  instances  more 
carefully  ;  for  we  fail  to  see  what 
proof  of  want  of  seriousness  is 
supplied  by  a  reference  to  Irish 
intimidation.  If  it  is  not  a  serious 
thing  to  be  dragged  out  of  bed  and 
shot  at,  perhaps  Lord  Rosebery 
will  tell  us  what  is.  We  fancy  we 
know  what  he  would  say  :  his  own 
position  in  the  Ministry. 

When  he  rose  to  reply,  he  was 
evidently  smarting  under  the 
Duke  of  Argyll's  innuendo  to  the 
effect  that  it  was  by  no  means 
certain  whether  the  noble  Earl 
was  the  head  of  the  Government 
or  not.  We  understand  the  Prime 


Minister's  irritation.  He  has 
attained  the  great  object  of  his 
ambition,  only  to  find  himself 
playing  second  fiddle  in  his  own 
Government.  It  was  perhaps 
cruel  to  remind  him  of  it.  But 
it  had  the  effect  which  possibly 
the  Duke  intended.  In  sporting 
phraseology,  it  drew  him ;  and,  to 
the  great  satisfaction  of  his  tor- 
mentors, he  snapped  and  yelped  to 
their  heart's  content.  It  was  dif- 
ficult to  read  the  whole  debate, 
however,  without  being  a  little 
sorry  for  him.  He  had  no  one  to 
help  him.  The  Lord  Chancellor's 
speech  did  him  no  good  at  all. 
Lord  Spencer's  was  in  better 
taste,  and  more  moderate  and  con- 
ciliatory in  tone.  But  there  was 
little  in  it.  And  Lord  Balfour's 
speech  passed  a  wet  sponge  over  it. 
It  was  too  much  to  expect  from 
Lord  Rosebery  to  stand  up  by 
himself  against  such  men  as  Lord 
Balfour,  the  Duke  of  Argyll,  Lord 
Ashbourne,  Lord  Lansdowne,  the 
Duke  of  Devonshire,  and  Lord 
Salisbury.  Allowance  must  be 
made  for  the  little  display  of 
petulance  with  which  he  wound 
up  the  debate. 

His  position  is  a  very  peculiar 
one.  With  one  exception,  we  have 
never  had  a  Prime  Minister  for 
a  hundred  years  without  a  com- 
manding majority  in  one  House 
of  Parliament  or  the  other.  The 
one  exception  was  Mr  Canning  : 
and  the  trial  killed  him.  Lord 
Rosebery's  lieutenant  in  the  House 
of  Commons  has  only  a  feeble  ma- 
jority kept  up  by  the  Irish  Brigade. 
Lord  Rosebery  personally  has  none 
at  all.  In  the  House  of  Lords 
he  is  utterly  powerless,  and  he 
has  more  than  once  in  set  terms 
acknowledged  Lord  Salisbury's 
leadership  :  perhaps  under  the  cir- 
cumstances as  wise  a  thing  as  he 
could  do.  The  poor  man  is  not 
upon  a  bed  of  roses :  and  his  use 
of  the  word  "  temporary  "  in  speak- 


450 


Session  of  IBM. 


[Sept. 


ing  of  his  own  situation  was  not 
perhaps  without  significance. 

In  Committee  on  the  Eight 
Hours  Bill  on  the  14th  of  August 
an  amendment  in  favour  of  local 
option  was  carried  by  Mr  D.  A. 
Thomas,  which  caused  the  with- 
drawal of  the  bill  on  the  following 
day.  And  all  that  now  remained 
to  be  settled  were  the  Equalisa- 
tion of  Rates  Bill  and  the  Scotch 
Local  Government  Bill.  Of  the 
first,  Lord  Salisbury  said  that  he 
believed  it  did  rough-and-ready 
justice,  and  that  he  accepted  it 
as  a  step  towards  the  more  com- 
plete centralisation  of  the  rating 
system, — a  subject  of  vast  import- 
ance, which  it  is  impossible  to  dis- 
cuss now.  The  bill  may  deserve 
Lord  Salisbury's  description.  But 
the  justice  which  it  does  is  not  only 
rough,  but  raw  ;  not  only  ready, 
but  random.  It  is  ill  mixed  and 
ill  cooked.  In  numerous  instances 
the  poor  will  be  taxed  for  the 
benefit  of  the  rich,  and  small 
tradesmen  for  the  relief  of  owners 
of  property.  However,  it  has  been 
swallowed  at  last,  and  we  have 
no  more  to  say  about  it. 

The  Scotch  Local  Government 
Bill  will  no  doubt,  in  the  dearth  of 
greater  things,  be  proclaimed  as 
a  great  ministerial  success.  All 
parishes  are  to  have  councils,  elec- 
tions, meetings,  debates,  buildings 
to  meet  in,  clerks  to  record  the 
wisdom  of  councillors,  budgets, 
new  rates,  and  the  right  to  con- 
tract debts  for  the  future  to  pay. 
Sir  George  Trevelyan  is  enthusi- 
astic— so  enthusiastic  that  he  has 
insisted  on  a  special  parish  register 
and  a  special  election  through  all 
Scotland  on  the  first  Tuesday  in 
April,  in  order  that  the  country 
he  rules  may  not  lose  a  day  of  the 
happiness  he  has  prepared  for  it, 
and  may  revel  in  the  delights  of 
the  57  clauses  of  his  Act  from 
the  earliest  possible  moment.  In 
vain  was  it  pointed  out  that  in- 


dulgence of  this  fad  meant  an 
extra  charge  on  the  rates  of 
£40,000;  in  vain  that  Scotland, 
having  got  on  without  parish 
councils  for  1894  years,  might 
wait  a  few  months  longer,  and 
start  fair  at  the  natural  date,  De- 
cember 1895.  Sir  George  Trevel- 
yan would  listen  to  nothing  :  like 
a  child  with  a  new  toy,  he  insisted 
on  its  instant  use,  and  is  going  to 
force  his  councils  into  being  at  a 
cost  to  the  unhappy  ratepayer  of 
an  unnecessary  outlay  equivalent 
to  X5000  for  every  month  of  pre- 
mature existence. 

This  Act  is  not  an  original 
achievement ;  it  is  a  subordinate 
part  of  the  Local  Government  Act 
which  was  passed  by  the  Unionist 
Government  in  1889,  and  which 
is  everywhere  styled  in  the  new 
statute  as  the  principal  Act. 
When  Mr  J.  P.  B.  Robertson, 
then  Lord  Advocate,  brought  for- 
ward a  general  scheme,  his  concep- 
tion was  the  formation  of  paro- 
chial boards,  popularly  elected,  to 
take  the  place  of  the  existing 
boards  ;  the  constitution  of  county 
councils,  with  subordinate  district 
councils,  to  take  the  place  of  Com- 
missioners of  Supply  and  road 
committees ;  and  a  central  Scottish 
tribunal,  to  deal  with  the  details 
of  private  bill  legislation.  The 
second  branch,  being  the  most  im- 
portant of  the  three,  alone  became 
law;  and  it  has  remained  for  Sir 
George  Trevelyan  to  frame  an  Act 
which  is  to  work  as  an  appendage 
to  this  original  and  principal 
Act  of  1889 — to  be  in  harmony 
with  it,  and  at  the  same  time 
largely  to  follow  the  lines  of  the 
English  Act  of  last  session. 

Statesmen  of  both  parties  have 
succumbed  to  the  prevailing  idea 
that  nobody  can  do  anything 
except  as  the  elected  representa- 
tive of  other  people.  County 
government  in  Scotland  was 
admirably  conducted ;  there  was 


1894.] 


Session  0/1894. 


451 


no  delay,  no  waste,  no  friction : 
similarly,  parochial  boards  have 
discharged  their  difficult  duties  in 
a  perfectly  satisfactory  manner ; 
there  are  no  allegations  of  injus- 
tice, no  abuses  cry  aloud  for  re- 
dress. Furbher,  there  has  been  no 
widespread  or  articulate  desire  on 
the  part  of  anybody  to  get  the 
management  of  the  concerns  of 
either  counties  or  parishes,  there 
has  been  nothing  in  the  nature 
of  general  class  prejudice  or  hos- 
tility. It  is  a  cardinal  doctrine 
and  prime  necessity  in  the  case  of 
every  elected  body  that  those  who 
have  the  privilege  of  election  and 
management  should  have  the  pain 
of  providing  the  money.  Mr  J.  P. 
B.  Robertson  laid  it  down  as  a 
general  principle  "that  the  ad- 
ministration of  rates  should  be  in 
the  hands  of  those  who  provide 
them."  In  his  series  of  bills  in 
1889  he  saw  this,  and,  like  a 
statesman,  provided  for  it :  Sir 
George  Trevelyan  in  1894  has 
been  made  to  see  it,  but,  like  a 
politician,  refuses  to  provide  for 
it.  In  the  Act  which  was  passed  in 
1889,  the  heritors  who  found  the 
whole  cost  of  county  government 
were  to  continue  to  provide  a 
similar  sum,  but  any  new  outlay  in 
excess  of  that  previously  incurred 
was  to  be  defrayed  generally  by  the 
electing  ratepayers.  Similarly,  in 
the  bill  reforming  parochial  boards, 
management  was  given  to  those 
who  paid  the  rates.  Tenants  paid 
half  the  rates,  so  they  were  to 
have  half  the  representation  ; 
landlords  the  other  half,  so  they 
were  to  be  similarly  represented. 
But  the  new  Act  provides  that 
the  whole  parish  council  shall  be 
elected,  in  Sir  George  Trevelyan's 
words,  "by  the  widest  franchise 
that  exists."  The  many  who  pay 
rates  on  a  merely  nominal  sum 
will  have  the  power,  and  will 
surely  use  it,  to  raise  whatever 
they  require,  at  the  expense  of  the 


few,  who  will  be  utterly  defence- 
less. In  an  article  in  the  July 
number  of  this  Magazine,  refer- 
ence was  made  to  certain  typical 
parishes  where  the  division  of 
wealth  is  such  that  in  the  matter 
of  poor  -  law  expenditure  a  very 
few  will  have  to  provide  whatever 
it  may  be  the  good  pleasure  of  the 
many  to  exact.  The  obvious  dan- 
ger, ruin  to  the  wealthy  and  de- 
moralisation to  the  poor,  has  been 
urged  by  the  Opposition  and  not 
denied  by  the  Government.  Sir 
Charles  Pearson  and  Mr  Graham 
Murray  in  the  one  House,  and 
Lord  Balfour  of  Burleigh  in  the 
other,  sought  to  provide  a  partial 
remedy  by  securing  an  appeal 
against  reckless  relief  to  the  Lo- 
cal Government  Board,  supporting 
their  position  from  arguments  that 
have  been  put  forward  in  these 
columns;  but  their  amendments 
were,  somewhat  strangely,  held 
not  to  be  sufficiently  germane  to 
the  bill,  and  were  ruled  out  of 
order.  It  has  been  in  order  to 
turn  literally  upside  down  and  in- 
side out  the  parochial  boards  and 
the  Board  of  Supervision,  who  be- 
tween them  have  administered  the 
poor-law;  but  it  has  not  been  com- 
petent to  provide  for  an  appeal 
against  abuse  from  the  new  coun- 
cils to  the  new  Board.  However 
dangerous  may  be  the  new  Act, 
however  certain  that  it  will  require 
early  amendment  to  prevent  abuse, 
we  entertain  no  doubt  that  the  Con- 
servatives of  Scotland  will  follow 
Lord  Balfour's  advice,  and  will  do 
their  best  to  carry  out  its  provisions 
in  such  a  spirit  as  to  contribute 
with  all  their  power  to  success. 

So  ends  the  session  of  1894, — a 
session  that  will  long  be  memor- 
able for  the  introduction  of  an 
entirely  new  method  into  the  con- 
duct of  parliamentary  business; 
namely,  the  preparation  of  measures 
intended  for  distribution  among 


452 


Session  of  1894. 


[Sept.  1894. 


the  various  groups  of  which  the 
House  of  Commons  is  composed, 
merely  as  a  token  of  goodwill, 
and  not  as  any  preliminary  to 
immediate  legislation.  The  system 
is  decidedly  a  vicious  one,  because 
it  prejudges  questions  before  the 
nation  at  large  has  well  considered 
them ;  because  it  adopts  suggestions 
while  it  is  still  uncertain  whether 
public  opinion  will  ever  sanction 
them ;  and  because  it  stimu- 
lates spurious  demands  which,  if 
successfully  passed  off  as  genuine, 
may  lead  to  disastrous  conse- 
quences. A  further  objection  to 
the  system  is  that  it  wastes  the 
time  of  the  House  of  Commons  by 
useless  or  irregular  discussions, 
which  in  such  circumstances  are 
certain  to  arise  at  short  intervals  ; 
while  it  necessarily  excites  hopes 
destined  never  to  be  realised,  and 
ending,  of  course,  in  disappoint- 
ment, distrust,  and  disaffection. 
Of  this  we  had  abundant  proof 
during  the  last  week  that  Parlia- 
ment was  sitting.  It  cannot  be 
for  the  interests  of  parliamentary 
government  that  such  should  be 
the  relations  between  the  Ministry 
and  the  House  of  Commons.  But 
still  worse  is  the  element  of  un- 
reality thus  introduced  into  the 
proceedings  of  Parliament,  no  one 
knowing  what  is  meant  seriously 
and  what  is  not,  and  an  impres- 
sion being  created  that  the  final 
cause  of  all  legislation  is  not  the 
public  good,  but  the  safety  of  the 
Ministry.  It  is  disrespectful  to 
the  House  of  Commons  and  in- 
jurious to  the  Crown.  Yet  it  may 
be  almost  a  necessary  condition 
when  the  Ministerial  party  is  com- 
posed exclusively  of  independent 
groups,  each  bent  on  the  attain- 
ment only  of  its  own  object,  and 
there  is  no  solid  homogeneous 
majority  with  sufficient  confidence 


in  the  general  policy  of  the  Cabinet 
to  allow  it  a  free  hand.  This  alone 
is  a  sufficient  reason  for  a  speedy 
dissolution  of  Parliament,  with  a 
view  to  exchanging  the  present 
state  of  parties  for  one  more  in 
accordance  with  the  principle  of 
parliamentary  government.  We 
are  threatened  next  session  with 
something  worse  than  a  repetition 
of  the  last ;  and  the  narrow  escape 
from  defeat  at  the  hands  of  the 
Irish  members  which  the  Govern- 
ment experienced  on  the  17th  of 
last  month,  shows  what  they  have 
got  to  expect  from  them  when  the 
conflict  is  renewed  next  year. 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that 
all  the  evil  of  the  Evicted  Tenants 
Bill  dies  with  it.  The  fact  re- 
mains that  it  has  been  brought  in 
by  the  Ministers  of  the  Crown, 
who  have  promised  to  introduce 
it  again.  The  moral  effect  which 
Lord  Balfour  of  Burleigh  and 
other  speakers  in  both  Houses 
predicted  from  the  passing  of  the 
bill  must  follow,  we  fear,  in  some 
measure  from  even  the  attempt  to 
pass  it,  and  then  this  result  will 
in  turn  be  converted  into  a  fresh 
argument  in  favour  of  a  new  bill. 

The  extent  to  which  the  Gov- 
ernment has  trifled  with  the  House 
of  Commons,  and  forced  it  into  a 
position  which  must  leave  on  the 
popular  mind  a  very  poor  idea  of 
its  efficiency;  the  utterly  uncon- 
stitutional recklessness  with  which 
the  Opposition  were  silenced  on 
the  most  important  question  of 
the  day ;  and  the  novel  spectacle 
of  "a  secession,"  which  was  the 
fitting  answer  to  this  outrage,  are 
the  other  conspicuous  notes  of 
the  session  which  has  just  closed. 
Few  and  evil  have  been  its  days ; 
wrong  and  robbery  its  fruits;  truck- 
ling and  tyranny,  by  turns,  its 
instruments. 


Printed  by  William  Blackwcod  and  Sons, 


BLACKWOOD'S 
EDINBUKGH     MAGAZINE. 


No.  DCCCCXLYIII.         OCTOBER  1894. 


VOL.  CLVI. 


THE   STREETS   OF  PARIS  FORTY  YEARS  AGO. 


THE  changes  which  have  come 
about  during  the  last  forty  years 
in  the  aspect  of  the  streets  of  Paris 
have  been  vastly  more  marked 
than  those  which  have  occurred 
in  London  within  the  same  period. 
The  two  main  reasons  of  the  differ- 
ence are  :  firstly,  that  London  set 
to  work  to  modify  its  ways  at  a 
much  earlier  date  than  Paris,  and 
that  Paris  still  retained,  at  the 
commencement  of  the  fifties,  many 
remainders  of  ancient  sights  and 
customs,  and  still  presented  many 
characteristics  of  past  days,  which, 
on  this  side  of  the  Channel,  had 
faded  out  long  before;  secondly, 
that,  when  transformation  did  at 
last  begin  in  Paris,  it  was  far  more 
sudden  and  violent,  far  more  uni- 
versal and  radical,  than  the  mild 
gradual  variations  we  have  intro- 
duced in  London,  and  that,  in 
consequence  of  the  utterness  of 
that  transformation,  an  entire  city 
was  virtually  swept  away  and  a 
new  one  put  in  its  place.  The 

VOL.  CLVI. NO.  DCCCCXLVIII. 


Paris  of  the  First  Empire  was  still 
visible  in  1850,  almost  unaltered 
its  essential  features ;  old 


in 


houses,  old  roadways,  old  vehicles, 
old  cheapnesses,  old  particularities 
of  all  sorts,  had  been  faithfully 
preserved,  and  struck  both  the  eye 
and  the  pocket  of  the  new-comer 
as  signs  of  another  epoch.  It  was 
not  till  Haussmann  began,  in  1854, 
the  reconstruction,  not  only  of  so 
many  of  the  buildings  of  Paris, 
but — what  was  far  more  grave — of 
its  conditions,  and  practices,  and 
order  of  existence,  that  the  relics 
of  former  life,  former  manners, 
and  former  economies  found  them- 
selves successively  crushed  out, 
and  that  the  brilliant  extravagant 
Paris  of  Napoleon  III.  was  evolved , 
from  the  ruins. 

At  the  commencement  of  the 
Second  Empire  Paris  was  still  a 
city  of  many  mean  streets  and  a 
few  grand  ones ;  still  a  city  of  rare 
pavements,  rough  stones,  stagnant 
gutters,  and  scarcely  any  drainage  ; 

2G 


454 


The  Streets  of  Paris  Forty  Years  Ago. 


[Oct. 


still  a  city  of  uncomfortable  homes, 
of  varied  smells,  of  relatively 
simple  life,  and  of  close  intermix- 
ture of  classes.  This  last  element 
—the  intermixture  of  classes — ex- 
ercised particular  influence  on  the 
look  of  the  streets  as  on  the  home 
contacts  of  the  inhabitants,  and 
needs  to  be  borne  always  in  mind  in 
endeavouring  to  reconstitute  the 
former  aspects  of  the  place.  Of 
course  there  were,  in  those  days  as 
always,  certain  quarters  of  the 
town  which  were  tenanted  exclus- 
ively by  the  poor;  but  the  great 
feature  was  that  the  poor  were  not 
restricted  to  those  special  quarters ; 
they  lodged  everywhere  else  as 
well,  wherever  they  found  them- 
selves in  proximity  to  their  work, 
in  the  most  aristocratic  as  in  the 
lowest  districts.  In  almost  every 
house  in  the  fashionable  parts  of 
Paris  the  successive  floors  were 
inhabited  by  a  regular  gradation 
of  classes  from  the  bottom  to  the 
top ;  over  the  rich  people  on  the 
first  and  second  floors  were  clerks 
and  tradespeople  en  chambre  on 
the  third  and  fourth,  and  workmen 
of  all  sorts  on  the  fifth  and  sixth. 
Thorough  mingling  of  ranks  under 
the  same  roof  was  the  rule  of  life : 
all  the  lodgers  used  the  same  stairs 
(in  those  days  back  staircases 
scarcely  existed) ;  all  tramped  up 
and  down  amidst  the  careless  spill- 
ings  and  droppings  of  the  less  clean 
portion  of  the  inmates.  The  most 
finished  of  the  women  of  the  period 
thought  it  natural  to  use  the  same 
flight  as  the  dirty  children  from 
above  them ;  a  lady  going  out  to 
dinner  in  white  satin  did  not  feel 
shocked  at  meeting  a  mason  in 
white  calico  coming  in ;  nodding 
acquaintances  between  fellow-lodg- 
ers were  formed  when  time  had 
taught  them  each  other's  faces. 
The  effect  of  this  amalgamation  in 
the  houses  stretched  out  naturally 
into  the  streets,  where,  in  conse- 


quence of  the  nearness  of  their 
homes,  the  various  strata  of  the 
population  of  each  quarter  were 
thrown  together  far  more  promis- 
cuously than  they  are  now.  The 
workers  have  no  place  in  the  new 
houses,  which  are  built  for  the  rich 
alone;  they  have  been  driven  to 
the  outskirts,  instead  of  being 
spread,  more  or  less,  over  the 
whole  town :  the  classes  and  the 
masses  live  now  entirely  apart,  in 
districts  remote  from  each  other, 
and  the  growing  hate  of  the  masses 
for  the  classes  has  been  consider- 
ably stimulated  by  the  separation. 
A  totally  altered  social  relation- 
ship, a  far  less  friendly  attitude 
and  feeling  between  the  top  and 
the  bottom,  has  resulted  from  the 
expulsion  of  so  many  of  the  poor 
from  their  old  homes. 

The  good  streets  of  Paris  forty 
years  ago  were  therefore  far  more 
generally  representative  than  they 
are  to-day.  They  exhibited  the 
various  components  of  the  com- 
munity with  more  abundance,  more 
accuracy,  and  a  truer  average ; 
universal  blending  was  their  nor- 
mal condition.  The  stranger  learnt 
more  from  them  in  a  day  about 
types  and  categories  than  he  can 
now  learn  in  a  week,  for  in  the 
present  state  of  things  there  are, 
in  one  direction,  regions  where  a 
cloth  coat  is  never  beheld,  and,  in 
another,  districts  where  a  blouse 
is  almost  unknown.  And  when  to 
this  former  medley  of  persons 
and  castes  we  add  the  notable 
differences  of  dress,  of  bearing, 
of  occupations  of  the  passers-by 
from  those  which  prevail  in  the 
rich  quarters  now,  the  contrast  of 
general  effect  may  easily  be  im- 
agined. Forty  years  are  but  an 
instant  in  the  history  of  a  nation, 
and  yet  the  last  forty  years  have 
sufficed  to  produce  an  organic 
change  in  the  appearance  of  the 
streets  of  Paris. 


1894.] 


The  Streets  of  Paris  Forty  Years  Ago. 


455 


The  change  extends  to  every- 
thing— to  the  houses,  the  shops, 
the  public  and  private  carriages, 
the  soldiers,  the  policemen,  the 
hawkers'  barrows,  and  the  aspect 
of  the  men  and  women.  Nearly 
everything  has  grown  smarter,  but 
everything  without  exception  has 
grown  dearer.  Whether  the  for- 
mer compensates  for  the  latter  is 
a  question  which  every  one  must 
decide  for  himself  according  to  his 
personal  view. 

The  shops  were  of  course  in- 
ferior to  what  they  are  now.  The 
show  in  the  windows — the  montre, 
as  the  French  call  it — was  less 
brilliant  and  less  tempting.  They 
were,  however,  the  prettiest  of 
their  time  in  Europe;  and  all  that 
they  have  done  since  has  been  to 
march  onward  with  the  century, 
and,  amidst  the  general  progress 
of  the  world,  to  keep  the  front 
place  they  held  before.  Stores,  in 
the  English  sense,  have  never  be- 
come acclimatised  in  Paris  (though 
several  attempts  have  been  made 
to  introduce  them),  mainly  because 
the  cooks  refuse  to  purchase  food 
in  places  where  they  can  get  no 
commission  for  themselves ;  but 
the  growth  of  the  Bon  Marche 
and  the  Louvre,  which  has  been 
entirely  effected  within  the  last 
forty  years,  supplies  evidence 
enough  that  in  Paris,  as  in  Lon- 
don, the  tendency  of  the  period — 
outside  the  cooks — is  towards  com- 
prehensive establishments,  where 
objects  of  many  natures  can  be 
found  at  low  prices  under  the 
same  roof.  Potin,  the  universal 
grocer,  supplies  even  an  example 
of  success  in  spite  of  the  cooks. 
Yet,  notwithstanding  the  compe- 
tition of  the  new  menageries  of 
goods,  most  of  the  shop  windows 
on  the  Boulevards  and  in  the  B/ue 
de  la  Paix  seem  to  indicate  that  the 
commerce  inside  is  still  prosperous. 
Certain  sorts  of  shops  have,  it  is 


true,  entirely,  or  almost  entirely, 
disappeared,  partly  from  the  gen- 
eral change  of  ways  of  life,  partly 
from  the  absorption  of  their  busi- 
ness by  larger  traders.  For  in- 
stance, I  believe  I  am  correct  in 
saying  that  there  is  not  now  one 
single  glove-shop  left  in  Paris  (I 
mean  a  shop  in  which  gloves  alone 
are  kept,  as  used  to  be  the  case 
in  former  times).  The  high-class 
special  dealers  in  lace,  in  cachemire 
shawls,  in  silks,  have  melted  away. 
At  the  other  end  of  the  scale  the 
herboristes,  who  sold  medicinal 
herbs,  have  vanished  too ;  the 
rotisseurs,  who  had  blazing  fires 
behind  their  windows,  and  sup- 
plied roast  chickens  off  the  spit, 
have  abandoned  business;  even  the 
hot-chestnut  dealer  of  the  winter 
nights  is  rarely  to  be  discovered 
now.  Specialities,  excepting  jewel- 
lery, are  ceasing  to  be  able  to  hold 
their  own ;  emporiums  are  choking 
them.  Measuring  the  old  shops 
all  round — in  showiness,  in  variety 
of  articles,  in  extent  of  business — 
they  were  incontestably  inferior  to 
those  of  to-day,  though  not  more 
so  than  in  any  other  capital. 

The  look  of  the  private  carriages 
was  also  far  less  bright.  They 
were  less  well  turned  out;  the 
horses  were  heavier ;  the  servants 
were  often  badly  dressed ;  the  driv- 
ing was,  if  possible,  more  careless. 
French  carriages  (like  French 
plates  and  knifes)  have  always 
been  more  lightly  made  than  those 
of  England,  and  at  that  time  the 
difference  was  more  marked,  be- 
cause English  carriages  were  more 
massive  than  now.  The  omnibuses 
and  cabs  were  dirty  and  uncom- 
fortable; ancient  shapes  still  ex- 
isted, and,  certainly,  they  did  not 
aid  to  adorn  the  streets. 

In  general  terms  it  may  be  said 
that,  in  Paris  as  everywhere  else — 
but  more  perhaps  in  Paris  than 
elsewhere — there  was,  in  compari- 


456 


The  Streets  of  Paris  Forty  Years  Ago. 


[Oct. 


son  with  to-day,  less  smartness, 
less  alertness,  less  hurry,  and  of 
course  less  movement,  for  the  popu- 
lation was  much  smaller,  and  the 
city  was  still  limited  by  the  octroi 
wall.  The  relative  absence  of 
bustle  produced,  however,  no  dul- 
ness  :  the  streets  were  not  so  noisy, 
not  so  crowded,  not  so  business- 
like as  they  have  become  since ; 
but  I  think  it  is  quite  true  to  say 
that  they  were  as  bright.  The 
brightness  came  from  one  special 
cause,  from  a  spring  of  action  pro- 
per to  the  time,  which  produced  an 
aspect  unlike  that  of  other  days. 
The  great  peculiarity,  the  strik- 
ing mark  and  badge,  which  distin- 
guished the  streets  of  then  from 
the  streets  of  now,  were  supplied 
by  a  something  which  was  nation- 
ally proper  to  the  France  of  the 
period,  by  a  something  which  none 
of  us  will  see  at  work  again  in  the 
same  form — by  the  type  of  the 
Paris  women  of  the  time. 

The  question  of  the  influence  of 
women  on  the  aspect  of  out-of-door 
life  has  always  occupied  the  atten- 
tion of  travellers.  I  have  discussed 
it — and,  especially,  the  comparative 
attractiveness  of  European  women 
of  different  races  and  epochs — with 
many  cosmopolitan  observers,  in- 
cluding old  diplomatists  from  vari- 
ous lands,  who,  as  a  class,  are  ex- 
perienced artistes  en  femmes  and 
profound  students  of  **  the  eternal 
feminine,"  and  I  have  found  a 
concordancy  of  opinion  on  two 
points :  one,  that  the  women  of 
Paris  have  always  stood  first  as  re- 
gards open-air  effect  (the  Viennese 
are  generally  put  second,  though 
lengths  behind);  the  other,  that 


not  their  home  manner  but  their 
outdoor  maintien,  not  their  social 
action  in  private  but  their  physi- 
cal effect  in  public,  that  concern  us 
here. 

The  results,  to  the  eye  of  the 
passer-by,    were   admirable;    and 
so  were  the  processes  by  which  the 
results  were  reached.     The  period 
of  Louis  Philippe  had  been  essen- 
tially honest  and  respectable;    it 
had     discouraged     vanities     and 
follies;  it  had  encouraged  moder- 
ation and  prudence ;  it  had  reacted 
on  the  whole  organisation  of  the 
life    of    the    time,    and,    amongst 
other   things,    on   women's    dress. 
It  was  a  season  of  economy,   of 
frank  acceptance  of  the  fruits  of 
small  money,  and  of  an  astonishing 
handiness    in    making    the    most 
out  of  little.     When  we  look  back 
(with  the  ideas  of  to-day)  to  the 
conditions   of    expenditure   which 
prevailed   then,   it  is   difficult   to 
believe   that,    with    such    limited 
resources,  the  woman  of  the  time 
can  have  won  such  a  place  in  the 
admiration  of   the   world.      I  am 
certainly  not  far  wrong  in  affirm- 
ing that  the  majority  of  the  women 
of  the  upper  classes  who  ambled 
about  the  streets  in  those  days  had 
not  spent  ten  pounds  each  on  their 
entire  toilette,   every  detail  of  it 
included.      The   tendency   of  the 
epoch  was    towards    extreme    re- 
finement,    but     towards     equally 
extreme  simplicity  as  the  basis  of 
the    refinement.      There    was    no 
parade  of  stuffs,  or  colours,  or  of 
faqons;    there   was   scarcely   any 
costly  material ;  but  there  was  a 
perfume   of   high-breeding   and  a 
daintiness  of   small  niceties  that 


at  no  time  within  living  memory     were  most  satisfying  to  the  critical 
have  they  contributed  so  largely,     beholder.      Finish     not     flourish, 
so  exclusively  indeed,  to  that  effect 
they  did  half  a   century  ago. 


Their  performance  indoors  is  not 


distinction  not  display,  grace  not 
glitter,  were  the  aims  pursued. 
The  great  ambition—  indeed,  the 


, 

included  in  the  present  matter  ;  it     one  ambition—  was  to  be  comme  il 
is  not  their  talk  but  their  walk,    faut;    that  phrase  expressed  the 


1894.] 


The  Streets  of  Paris  Forty  Years  Ago. 


457 


perfection  of  feminine  possibilities 
as  the  generation  understood  them. 
And  they  were  comme  il  faut! 
Never  has  delicate  femininity 
reached  such  a  height,  never  has 
the  ideal  "  lady  "  been  so  consum- 
mately achieved.  That  ideal  (by 
its  nature  purely  conventional) 
has  never  been  either  conceived  or 
worked  out  identically  in  all  coun- 
tries simultaneously ;  local  variety 
has  always  existed;  the  Russian 
lady,  the  German  lady,  the  English 
lady,  the  French  lady — I  mean,  of 
course,  women  of  social  position 
— have  never  been  precisely  like 
each  other :  the  differences  are 
diminishing  with  facilities  of  com- 
munication and  more  frequent 
contacts,  but  they  still  exist  per- 
ceptibly, and  half  a  century  ago 
were  clearly  marked.  The  French 
lady  of  the  time  was  most  distinct- 
ly herself,  not  the  same  as  the  con- 
temporaneous lady  of  other  lands, 
and  the  feeling  of  the  judges  to 
whom  I  have  already  referred  was 
that,  out  of  doors,  she  beat  them 
all.  I  personally  remember  her  (I 
was  young  then,  and  probably 
somewhat  enthusiastic)  as  a  dream 
of  charm,  and  feminine  beyond 
anything  I  have  seen  or  heard  of 
since. 

Conceive  the  effect  she  produced 
in  the  streets !  Conceive  the 
sensation  of  strolling  in  a  crowd 
in  which  every  woman  had  done 
her  utmost  to  be  comme  il  faut ; 
in  which,  as  a  natural  result, 
a  good  many  looked  "  born " ; 
in  which  a  fair  minority  might 
have  carried  on  their  persons  the 
famous  lines  inscribed  on  one  of 
the  arabesqued  walls  of  the  Al- 
hambra,  "  Look  at  my  elegance ; 
thou  wilt  reap  from  it  the  benefit 
of  a  commentary  on  decoration." 
The  fashions  of  the  time  aided  in 
the  production  of  the  effect  sought 
for ;  they  were  quiet,  simple,  sub- 
dued ;  and  they  were  so  because 


the  women  who  adopted  them  had 
the  good  sense  to  take  calm,  sim- 
plicity, sobriety  for  their  rules. 

Alas  !  the  expression  comme  il 
faut  has  disappeared  from  the 
French  language,  just  as  the  type 
and  the  ideas  of  which  I  have 
been  speaking  have  disappeared 
from  French  life.  Something  very 
different  is  wanted  now.  None 
but  old  people  know  the  ancient 
meaning  of  comme  il  faut ;  if  the 
young  ones  were  acquainted  with 
it  they  would  only  scorn  it.  As 
the  '  Figaro '  observed  some  years 
ago,  "  la  femme  comme  il  faut  est 
remplacee  par  la  femme  comme  il 
en  faut."  When  the  streets  were 
peopled  by  the  "  femme  comme  il 
faut,"  it  was  a  privilege  and  a 
lesson  to  walk  in  them. 

And  yet,  if  she  could  be  called 
to  life  again,  the  streets  of  to-day 
would  only  laugh  at  her.  Paris 
has  grown  accustomed  to  another 
theory  of  woman,  and  would  have 
no  applause  to  offer  to  a  revival  of 
the  past.  The  eye  addicts  itself 
to  what  it  sees  each  day,  mistakes 
mere  habit  for  reasoned  preference, 
and  likes  or  dislikes,  admires  or 
contemns,  by  sheer  force  of  con- 
tact ;  but  surely  it  will  be  owned, 
even  by  those  who  are  completely 
under  present  influences,  that  the 
principles  of  dress  and  bearing 
which  were  applied  in  Paris  in  the 
second  quarter  of  the  century  had 
at  all  events  a  value  which  has 
become  rare  since.  Women  at- 
tained charm  without  expense,  but 
with  strong  personality,  for  the 
reason  that  they  manufactured  it 
for  themselves,  and  did  not  ask 
their  tailor  to  supply  it.  It  was 
a  delicious  pattern  while  it  lasted, 
and  while  it  corresponded  to  the 
needs  of  a  time ;  but  the  time  has 
passed,  the  pattern  has  become 
antiquated,  and,  in  every  way, 
Paris  has  lost  largely  by  the 
change. 


458 


The  Streets  of  Paris  Forty  Years  Ago. 


[Oct. 


Unhappily  there  was  a  fault  in 
this  attractive  picture;  but  as  it 
was  a  fault  common  to  all  Europe 
then,  and  was  in  no  way  special 
to  the  French,  it  did  not  strike 
the  foreign  spectator  of  those  days, 
because  he  was  accustomed  to  it 
everywhere.  The  fault  was  that 
it  was  the  fashion  to  look  insipid  ! 
The  portraits  of  the  period  testify 
amply  to  the  fact,  for  they  depict 
the  least  expressive  looking  genera- 
tion that  ever  had  itself  painted. 
Both  ringlets  and  flat  bandeaux 
lent  their  aid  successively  to  the 
fabrication  of  the  air  of  weak- 
ness. The  Parisienne,  with  all  her 
natural  vivacity,  could  not  escape 
from  the  universal  taint :  in  com- 
parison with  what  she  has  been  at 
other  times  and  is  to-day,  there  was 
about  her  a  feebleness  of  physiog- 
nomy, a  suppression  of  animation, 
and  even,  in  certain  highly  de- 
veloped cases,  an  intentional  as- 
sumption of  languid  imbecility. 
But  at  that  time  no  one  perceived 
this ;  we  were  all  (men  as  well  as 
women)  determined  to  give  our- 
selves an  appearance  of  impassive- 
ness,  because  we  regarded  it  as 
one  of  the  essential  foundations  of 
the  comme  il  faut.  We  see  now 
how  fatuous  we  looked  then ;  but 
at  the  moment  we  were  blind  to 
our  own  weakness,  and  simply  be- 
held in  placidity  of  movements  and 
of  countenance  an  indispensable 
adjunct  of  distinction. 

And  yet,  with  all  this  putting 
on  of  a  puerility  that  did  not  be- 
long to  them,  and  was  in  utter 
contradiction  to  their  nature,  I 
repeat  that  those  women  stood 
entirely  apart.  Not  only  had  they 
admirable  finish  of  detail  in  every- 
thing that  composed  them,  but 
they  possessed,  furthermore,  what 
they  called  la  maniere  de  s'en  servir. 
Their  handling  of  themselves  was 
most  interesting  to  study.  What 
a  spectacle  it  was,  for  instance,  to 


see  one  of  them  come  out  on  a 
damp  day,  stop  for  half  a  minute 
beneath  the  doorway  while  she 
picked  up  her  skirts  in  little 
gathers  in  her  left  hand,  draw  the 
bottom  tight  against  the  right 
ankle,  and  start  off,  lifting  the 
pleats  airily  beside  her !  Both 
the  dexterity  of  the  folding  and 
the  lightness  of  the  holding  were 
wonderful  to  contemplate :  no 
sight  in  the  streets  was  so  in- 
tensely Parisian  as  that  one.  I 
imagine  that,  at  this  present  date, 
there  is  not  a  woman  in  the  place 
who  could  do  it.  The  science  is 
forgotten.  The  putting  on  of  the 
shawl  or  mantle  was  another  work 
of  art,  so  skilfully  was  it  tightened 
in  so  as  to  narrow  and  slope  down 
the  shoulders,  as  was  the  fashion 
then. 

And  if  the  higher  strata  con- 
tributed in  this  degree  to  the  for- 
mation of  the  outdoor  picture,  al- 
most as  much  must  be  said  of  the 
share  of  adornment  of  the  streets 
which  was  furnished  by  many  of 
the  women  of  the  lower  classes, 
especially  by  what  still  remained  of 
that  delightful  model,  the  grisette. 
The  grisette  was  dying  out  at  the 
beginning  of  the  Second  Empire, 
but  bright  examples  of  her  still 
survived,  and  it  was  impossible  to 
look  at  them  without  keen  ap- 
preciation of  their  strange  attrac- 
tiveness. It  must  be  remembered 
that  the  grisette  constituted  a  type, 
not  a  class ;  that  she  was  a  grisette 
because  of  what  she  looked  like, 
not  because  of  what  she  was.  She 
was  rather  generally  well-behaved, 
and  always  hard-working.  She 
was  a  shop-assistant,  a  maker  of 
artificial  flowers,  a  sempstress  of  a 
hundred  sorts,  but  it  was  not  her 
occupation  that  made  her  a  grisette; 
she  became  one  solely  by  the  clothes 
she  chose  to  put  on,  and  by  the 
allure  she  chose  to  give  herself. 
The  grisette  of  Louis  Philippe's 


1894.] 


The  Streets  of  Paris  Forty  Years  Ago. 


459 


time  (which  was  the  epoch  of  her 
full  expansion)  wore  in  the  sum- 
mer— the  true  season  to  judge  her 
— a  short  cotton  or  muslin  dress, 
always  newly  ironed,  fresh,  and 
crisp  ;  a  silk  apron ;  a  muslin  fichu; 
a  white  lace  cap  trimmed  with  a 
quantity  of  flowers ;  delicate  shoes 
and  stockings  (buttoned  boots  for 
women  were  just  invented,  but  the 
grisette  would  have  thought  her- 
self disgraced  for  ever  if  she  had 
come  out  either  in  boots  or  a 
bonnet);  and  on  Sundays  straw 
kid  gloves  with  the  one  button  of 
the  period.  With  her  sprightly 
step,  the  buoyant  carriage  of  her 
head,  her  usually  slight  figure  and 
pretty  feet,  she  lighted  up  the 
streets  like  sunshine,  and  spread 
around  her  an  atmosphere  of 
brightness.  She  had  even — in  cer- 
tain cases  at  all  events — a  distinc- 
tion of  her  own,  which  was  curious 
and  interesting  to  observe.  She, 
too,  did  her  little  best  to  be  comme 
il  faut,  for  that  was  the  rule  of 
the  time,  and  really,  in  a  sort  of  a 
way,  she  sometimes  got  very  near 
it.  Of  course,  the  girls  who  com- 
posed the  class  of  grisettes  were 
unequal  in  their  capacities  and  in 
the  results  they  achieved.  Some 
grew  almost  ladylike  (though  al- 
ways with  a  slight  savour  of  what, 
in  Spain,  is  so  expressively  called 
"salt"),  while  others  never  lost 
the  look  and  manners  of  their 
origin.  But  all  resisted,  with  fair 
success,  the  influence  of  surround- 
ing insipidity,  and  maintained,  I 
think  I  may  say  alone,  amidst  the 
universal  assumption  of  apathy, 
the  sparkle  proper  to  the  Gallic 
race.  Alas  !  the  Hausmannising 
of  Paris  gave  the  last  push  to  the 
fall  of  the  grisette.  She  vanished 
with  the  narrow  streets,  the  pav- 
ing-stones, and  the  cheapnesses 
that  had  made  her  possible,  and 
though  she  lingered  for  a  while, 
under  other  names,  in  some  of  the 


provincial  towns  (especially  in  Bor- 
deaux, where  I  saw  white  caps 
and  flowers  as  late  as  1858),  no 
more  was  perceived  of  her  in  Paris. 
The  damage  done  to  the  streets 
by  her  disappearance  was  irremedi- 
able :  they  are  almost  more  changed 
by  it  than  by  all  else  together. 

Of  the  men  of  the  time  I  have 
nothing  to  say,  except  that  most  of 
them  simpered  and  thought  them- 
selves delightful. 

The  first  place  was  taken  by  the 
women,  so  I  have  put  them  first. 
The  second  place  in  the  effect  of 
the  streets  belonged,  I  think,  to 
the  itinerant  traders  of  the  mo- 
ment, most  of  whom  have  faded 
out  of  being. 

The  twenty  thousand  men  who 
lived  by  keeping  the  inhabitants 
supplied  with  water  were  cer- 
tainly the  most  practically  useful 
of  all  the  vanished  workers  of  that 
time,  and  they  were  omnipresent, 
for  their  casks  and  buckets  formed 
an  element  of  the  view  in  every 
street.  Water  was  not  laid  on 
into  the  houses ;  it  was  carried  up 
each  day  to  every  flat,  even  to  the 
sixth  floor,  when  there  was  one, 
by  a  member  of  the  corporation  of 
the  porteurs  d'eau.  Dressed  in- 
variably in  dark -green  or  blue 
velveteen,  they  tramped  heavily 
and  slowly  up  the  staircases,  with 
a  load,  carried  from  a  shoulder 
bar,  of  two  great  metal  pails  full 
to  the  brim.  Worthy  fellows 
they  generally  were,  strong  as 
buffaloes,  plodding  on  an  unending 
treadmill.  I  often  asked  myself 
whether  they  ever  thought.  In 
the  streets  their  casks  on  wheels 
(hand  -  dragged)  stood  at  every 
door,  and  children  used  to  watch 
with  delight  the  perfect  unbroken 
roundness  of  the  arched  stream  of 
water  which,  when  the  plug  was 
drawn,  rushed  out  of  the  cask, 
through  a  brass-lined  hole,  into 
the  bucket  which  stood  below  it 


460 


The  Streets  of  Paris  Forty  Years  Ago. 


[Oct. 


in  the  roadway.  The  stream  was 
exactly  like  a  curved  staff  of  glass, 
and  so  absolutely  smooth  that  it 
seemed  motionless.  The  porteurs 
d'eau  have  gone,  like  the  grisettes  ; 
they  have  been  replaced  by  pipes. 
But  while  they  still  existed,  while 
the  question  of  what  was  to  be- 
come of  them  if  their  work  was 
suppressed  was  being  discussed,  the 
population  almost  took  their  side, 
and,  from  habit,  appeared  to  prefer 
the  old  buckets  to  the  new  pipes. 
Those  water-carriers  had  existed 
for  centuries  ;  they  were  a  com- 
ponent part  of  the  life  of  Paris; 
it  seemed  both  cruel  and  ungrate- 
ful to  take  their  bread  away,  for 
the  sake  of  a  so-called  progress 
which  very  few  persons  under- 
stood, and  of  which  nobody  felt 
the  need;  so  the  philanthropic 
cried  out  against  the  change.  I 
remember  being  asked  to  go  to  a 
meeting  of  protestation  got  up  by 
a  lady,  who  canvassed  all  her 
friends.  But  the  buckets  were 
eradicated  all  the  same,  only  the 
extinction  was  effected  gradually ; 
the  men  found  other  work,  and 
when  the  community  became,  at 
last,  acquainted  with  the  advan- 
tages of  "constant  supply,"  it 
ceased,  thanklessly,  to  mourn  over 
the  giants  in  velveteen,  and  won- 
dered, indeed,  how  it  could  ever 
have  endured  them. 

The  chiffbnniers,  again,  have  lost 
their  trade — at  least  it  has  become 
so  totally  modified  that  they  no 
longer  pursue  it  in  its  ancient 
form.  The  waste  and  dirt  from 
every  house  used  to  be  poured  out 
into  the  street,  before  the  front 
door,  each  evening  at  nine  or 
ten  o'clock,  and  the  chiffbnnier, 
with  his  lantern  and  his  hook  in 
his  hands  and  his  basket  on  his 
back,  arrived  at  once  and  raked 
the  heaps  over,  to  see  what  he 
could  find  in  them.  But  it  be- 
came forbidden  either  to  throw 


the  refuse  into  the  street  or  to 
bring  it  out  at-  night.  It  was 
prescribed  that  it  should  be  carried 
down  in  the  early  morning  in  a 
box,  which  is  placed,  full,  at  the 
door,  and  is  emptied  before  nine 
o'clock  into  the  dust-carts  which 
go  round  each  day.  The  chiffbn- 
niers, therefore,  have  no  longer 
the  opportunity  of  picking  over 
the  dirt,  for  it  has  ceased  to  offer 
itself  in  an  accessible  form  :  they 
have,  for  the  most  part,  to  carry 
on  their  trade  after  the  refuse  is 
discharged  from  the  carts  at  the 
depots,  and,  consequently,  have 
almost  disappeared  from  the 
streets.  They  cannot  be  regarded 
as  a  loss,  for  they  were,  of  neces- 
sity, dirty  and  bad  smelling,  and 
looked,  as  they  prowled  about  with 
their  dull  lantern  in  the  dark,  like 
spectres  of  miserable  evilness.  But, 
all  the  same,  they  were  thoroughly 
typical  of  old  Paris. 

There  were  in  those  days  a  quan- 
tity of  vagrant  traders  about  the 
streets,  charlatans,  marchands  am- 
bulants,  and  Jaiseurs  de  tours; 
the  police  were  merciful  to  them, 
and  allowed  them  to  carry  on 
their  business  almost  in  liberty. 
Two  of  them  were  celebrated  :  an 
open-air  dentist  whose  name  I  have 
forgotten,  and  Mangin — "1'illustre 
Mangin,"  as  he  called  himself — the 
pencil-seller.  ALLParis  knew  those 
two.  >  ?,  Q  , 

The  dentist  drove  about  in  a 
four  -  wheeled  cart  of  gorgeous 
colours,  with  a  platform  in  front 
on  which  operations  were  per- 
formed. Immediately  behind  the 
platform  were  an  organ  and  a 
drum,  which  instruments  were 
played,  together  or  separately,  by 
a  boy,  and  always  irrespectively  of 
each  other.  Their  use  was  to  drown 
the  yells  of  the  patients.  I  saw 
that  dentist  frequently  at  the  en- 
trance of  the  Avenue  Gabriel  in 
the  Champs  Elyse"es ;  but  although 


1894.] 


The  Streets  of  Paris  Forty  Years  Ago. 


461 


there  was  invariably  an  excited 
crowd  listening  to  his  eloquence 
and  contemplating  his  surgery,  I 
never  felt  tempted  to  stop  to  hear 
or  watch  him,  because,  with  the 
disposition  to  neglect  opportunities 
which  is  proper  to  youth,  I  failed 
to  see  the  amusement  of  staring  at 
people  having  their  teeth  drawn  in 
public.  I  am  sorry  now  that  I  was 
so  fastidious,  for  I  missed  a  curious 
spectacle,  and  am  unable  to  de- 
scribe it  here.  The  show  was 
evidently  attractive  to  a  portion 
of  the  mob,  for  there  were,  each 
time  I  passed,  many  rows  of 
people  applauding  the  dentist 
when  he  declared  (in  flowery 
words,  I  was  assured)  that  he 
never  hurt  any  one,  and  applaud- 
ing his  victims  still  more  when 
they  shrieked.  I  think  he  charged 
five  sous  (twopence-halfpenny)  for 
dragging  out  a  tooth  ;  which  proves 
that,  as  I  have  already  observed, 
prices  were  lower  in  those  days 
than  they  are  now. 

But  if  I  shunned  the  dentist  I 
never  missed  a  chance  of  listening 
to  Mangin,  who  really  was  a  pro- 
digious fellow.  It  was  said  that 
he  had  taken  a  university  degree, 
and  the  varied  knowledge  which 
he  scattered  about  in  his  unceasing 
speeches  gave  probability  to  the 
rumour.  Anyhow,  whatever  had 
been  his  education,  his  outpour  of 
strange  arguT  ,-iit,  his  originality 
and  facility,  his  spirit  of  a  propos, 
his  rapidity  of  utterance,  and, 
above  all,  the  perpetual  newness 
of  his  fancies,  were  positively  start- 
ling. Of  course  his  talk  was  often 
vulgar;  but  it  must  be  remembered 
that  it  was  addressed  to  a  street 
mob,  most  of  whose  members  loved 
coarseness.  Like  the  dentist,  he 
paraded  about  the  town  in  a  cart, 
but  his  vehicle  was  dark,  and  had 
a  high  back.  Also,  like  the  den- 
tist, he  had  an  organ  and  a  drum, 
but  they  were  only  used  in  the  in- 


tervals of  nis  discourses.  He  had 
a  day  and  an  hour  for  each  quarter 
of  the  town,  and  was  always  awaited 
by  an  eager  crowd.  The  spot  where 
I  habitually  saw  him  was  in  the 
roadway  by  the  side  of  the  Made- 
leine. He  was  then  a  man  of 
about  forty-five,  with  a  great  brown 
beard,  pleasant-looking,  thick.  He 
wore  a  huge  brass  helmet,  with 
immense  black  feathers,  and  a 
scarlet  cloak,  which  he  called  his 
toga.  His  unhesitating  command 
of  words,  his  riotous  fertility  of 
subjects  and  ideas,  were  such  that, 
though  I  listened  to  him  frequently, 
I  never  heard  him  make  the  same 
observation  twice.  He  did  assert 
continually  that  he  was  a  descen- 
dant of  Achilles,  and  that  he  wore 
that  gentleman's  uniform,  but  that 
declaration  formed  no  real  part  of 
his  speeches ;  it  was  a  mere  oflicial 
indication,  and  had  in  it  none  of 
the  character  of  an  argument.  I 
think  I  may  say  that  his  harangues 
were  absolutely  fresh  each  day.  I 
do  not  pretend  to  remember  more 
than  a  few  of  the  phrases  I  have 
heard  him  utter,  but  I  can  give  a 
fair  general  idea  of  his  style,  in- 
cluding some  of  his  own  words. 
Here  is  an  example : — 

"Ladies,  gentlemen,  children,  ene- 
mies, and  friends ! — Buy  my  pencils. 
There  are  no  other  pencils  like  them  on 
earth  or  in  the  spheres.  Listen !  They 
are  black  !  You  imagine,  of  course,  in 
the  immensity  of  your  ignorance — it 
is  wonderful  how  ignorant  people  are 
capable  of  being,  especially  about 
pencils — that  all  pencils  are  black. 
Error !  Criminal  error !  Error  as 
immense  and  as  fatal  as  that  of  Mark 
Antony  when  he  fell  in  love  with 
Cleopatra.  All  other  pencils  are 
grey  !  Mine  alone  possess  the  merit 
of  being  truly  black.  They  are  black, 
for  instance,  as  the  hair  of  Eve. 
Here  I  pause  to  observe  that  it  is  a 
general  mistake  to  suppose  that  Eve 
was  a  fair  woman.  She  was  as  dark 
as  if  she  had  been  born  in  the  Sahara, 
of  Sicilian  parents.  I  was  in  the 


462 


The  Streets  of  Paris  Forty  Years  Ago. 


[Oct. 


Garden  of  Eden  with  her,  and  I  ought 
to  know.     I  was,  in  that  stage  of  my 
transmigration,   the  original    canary 
bird,  and  looked  at  her  as  I    flew 
about.     I  was  saying  that  my  pencils 
are  black.     Listen !     They  are  black, 
not  only  as  the  hair  of  Eve,  but  black 
as  that  hideous  night  after  the  earth- 
quake of  Lisbon ;  black  as  the  ex- 
pression of  countenance  of  Alexander 
the  Great  (you  are  aware,  of  course, 
that  he  was  an  irritable  person)  when 
he  found  there  was  no  sugar  in  his 
coffee;    black    as    the  waves  which 
gurgled  over  Phaethon  when  he  fell 
headlong  into  the  Po ;  black  as  your 
sweet  complexion  might  be,  my  dear  " 
(to  a  girl  in  the  crowd),  "  if  it  did  not 
happen  to  be,  on  the  contrary,  as  pink 
as  my  toga,  as  white  as  my  soul,  as 
transparent  as  the  truth  of  my  words. 
But  blackness — friends,  enemies,  and 
children — is    only    one    of    the    ten 
thousand    excellences     of    my    un- 
approachable pencils.     They  are  also 
unbreakable,  absolutely  unbreakable. 
See !     Watch !     I  dash  this  finely  cut 
pencil-point  on  to  this  block  of  massive 
steel.     The  strength  of  my  arm  is 
such  (I  inherit  it,  with  other  classi- 
cal peculiarities,  from  my  ancestor, 
the  late  Achilles)  that  I  dent  the  steel  ; 
but  I  cannot  break  the  point.     You 
smile !     It  wounds  me  that  you  smile, 
for  thereby  you  imply  a  doubt,  just  as 
Solomon  smiled  while  he  wondered 
which  of  the  two  women  was  the 
mother  of  the  baby.     Come  up  and 
verify  the  fact  if  you  do  not  believe. 
There  is  the  mark  on  the  steel ;  there 
is    the    pencil  -  point.     The  point  is 
sharpened,  not  blunted,  by  the  fierce- 
ness of  the  blow.     One  sou,  five  cen- 
times, for  a  single  pencil !     Ten  sous, 
fifty  centimes,  for  a  dozen !    At  those 
prices  I  give  them  away,  out  of  pure 
love  of  humanity.     Ten  sous  a  dozen ! 
Who    buys?     Yes,    you,    sir?    Yes. 
One  dozen,  or  two  dozen,  or  ten  dozen  1 
Very  good,  two  dozen.     You  see,  my 
children,   that    the    entire    universe 
comes  to  buy  my  pencils.  This  gentle- 
man, who  has  just  taken  two  dozen, 
has  travelled  straight  from  the  cele- 
brated island  of  Jamaica  (where  hum- 
ming-birds are  cultivated  on  a  vast 
scale  in  order  to  distil  from  them  the 
sugar  they  contain)  for  the  express 
purpose  of  obtaining  a  supply.     He 
heard  of  them  out  there— I  mention 


for  the  information  of  such  of  you  as 
may  not  be  acquainted  with  the  geo- 
graphy of  the  oceans,  that  Jamaica  is  on 
the  coast  of  China,  and  therefore  very 
distant — and  he  has  travelled  half-way 
round  the  world  to  come  to  me  to-day. 
Don't    blush,   sir,    at  my  revelation 
of  the  grandeur  of  your  act.     It  is  a 
noble  act,  sir  ;  well  may  you — and  I — 
be  proud  of  it.    Yes,  my  little  beauty, 
two  dozen  1    You,  my  child,  have  not 
arrived     by     steamer,     railway,     or 
balloon  from  the  celestial  waters  of 
Pekin,  where  the  population  is  born 
with  pigtails,  and  feeds  exclusively  on 
its  own  finger-nails,  which  are  grown 
very  long  for  the  purpose — you  have 
arrived    only  from    the    heights    of 
Montmartre  ;  but  your  merit  also  is 
great,  for  you  have  faith  in  my  pen- 
cils.    Who  else  has  faith  in  my  pen- 
cils 1      Black,   unbreakable,   easy    to 
cut,  easy  to  suck,  easy  to  pick  your 
teeth  with,  easy  to  put  behind  your 
ear,  easy  to  carry  in  your  pocket,  de- 
lightful to  make  presents  with.    Who 
buys  my  pencils  to  offer  them  to  her 
he  loves  ?    Yes,  young  man.    Good  ! 
Strike  the  drum,  slave;    strike  the 
fulminating  drum,  the  very  drum  that 
resounded  at  the  taking  of  Troy — 
it  was  sent  to  the  relations  of  Achilles 
by  Ulysses,  and  has  come  down  as  an 
heirloom  in  the  family — in  honour  of 
this  noble  youth,  this  brilliant  French- 
man, this  splendid  subject  of  the  Em- 
peror.    He  offers  my  pencils  to  her ! 
I  drink  to  her  !    At  least  I  would  if  I 
had  anything  to  drink.      Ten    sous 
for  twelve  of  such  pencils  as  mine  ! 
It's  absurd  !    It  pains  my  heart  to  sell 
them.     I  have  to  tear  myself  away 
from  them  as  the  wild  horses  of  Attila 
tore  his  prisoners  to  pieces.     The  boy 
who  does  not  buy  my  pencils  is  des- 
tined to  a  life  of  misery ;  he  will  be 
kept  in    on    Sundays ;    he    will    be 
brought  up  principally  on  dry  bread, 
but  butter  and  jam  will   be   danced 
goadingly  before  his  eyes.     When  he 
becomes  a  man  he  will  fail  in  every- 
thing   he  attempts,  and   will  suffer 
from  many  hitherto  unknown  diseases. 
His  horse,  if  he  has  one,  will  possess 
a  tail  like  a  rolled-up  umbrella,  and 
knees  the   shape  of    seventy  -  seven. 
His  cook  will  put  hairs  into  his  soup. 
As  for  the  girl  who  does  not  buy  my 
pencils,  her  fate  will  be  more  awful 
still.     Never  will  she  find  a  husband  ! 


1894.] 


The  Streets  of  Paris  Forty  Years  Ago. 


463 


What,  girls,  you  hear  the  fearful  fate 
that  awaits  you,  and  you  do  not  rush 
up  instantly  to  buy?  Eush,  if  you 
wish  to  be  mothers  !  Eush,  if  you 
long  to  be  happy,  beautiful,  and  rich  ! 
That's  right ;  two,  three,  four,  who 
long  to  be  happy,  beautiful,  and  rich. 
The  more  pencils  you  buy,  the 
happier,  the  more  beautiful,  and  the 
richer  you  will  be.  How  many  shall 
we  say  ?  Twenty  dozen  each  ?  I 
make  a  reduction  for  all  quantities 
over  ten  dozen.  What?  One?  One? 
One  single  pencil?  For  one  sou? 
And  you  expect  to  be  happy,  beauti- 
ful, and  rich  for  one  sou?  Even  in 
this  glorious  land  of  France,  even  in 
this  country  of  delights,  that  result  is 
impossible,  quite  impossible.  Take  a 
dozen  at  all  events  ;  even  then  you 
will  only  be  relatively  happy,  moder- 
ately beautiful,  and  not  at  all  rich. 
Joy,  loveliness,  and  wealth  increase 
with  pencils.  Yes,  sir,  two  dozen. 
To  you,  sir,  I  do  not  promise  hand- 
someness, but  I  predict  success,  es- 
pecially with  ladies.  My  pencils 
render  men  irresistible  with  women. 
Now  that  you  have  them  in.  your 
hand,  try  the  effect  on  that  tall  girl 
next  to  you ;  it  will  be  visible  at 
once.  Ten  sous  a  dozen  !  Who  buys  ? 
I  pause.  I  take  needed  rest,  but  only 
for  an  instant.  Slave,  sound  the 
roaring  drum,  revolve  the  handle  of 
the  pealing  organ,  in  order  to  divert 
the  admiring  crowd  while  I  repose." 

And  he  proceeded  to  suck  liquorice. 

I  have  given  this  speech  at  some 
length,  because  it  paints  not  only 
a  man  but  a  situation.  How  ut- 
terly other  from  the  conditions  of 
to-day  must  have  been  the  state 
of  the  streets  of  Paris  when  it  was 
possible  to  shout  out  all  that 
twenty  yards  from  the  Boulevard, 
and  to  go  on  shouting  every  day, 
without  being  arrested  by  the 
police  as  a  nuisance. 

When  Mangin  disappeared  (his 
eclipse  occurred,  so  far  as  I  can 
remember,  somewhere  about  1856) 
he  left  vacancy  behind  him.  He 
was,  like  Napoleon,  unreplaceable. 

Another  curious  artist,  of  whom 
I  often  heard,  had  gone  out  of 


sight  before  my  time.  He  painted 
portraits  at  fairs  and  in  the  streets, 
and  a  placard  at  the  door  of  his 
booth  bore  in  large  letters  the 
inscription : — 

PORTRAITS  ! 
PORTRAITS  ! 

RESSEMBLANCE  FRAPPANTE,      2  francs. 
RESSEMBLANCE  ORDINAIRE,       1  franc. 
AIR  DE  FAMILLE,  50  centimes. 

It  seems  that  the  air  defamille 
was  the  most  largely  ordered  of 
the  three  degrees  of  likeness,  and 
that  scarcely  anybody  went  to  the 
expense  of  a  ressemblance  frap- 
pante.  This  man,  it  seems,  made 
no  speeches;  but  the  wording  of 
his  advertisement  was  worth  much 
talking. 

One  more  exhibitor  will  I  de- 
scribe— a  juggler.  He  came  every 
Tuesday  afternoon  to  the  south- 
east corner  of  the  Place  de  la 
Madeleine,  just  outside  the  shop 
where  Flaxland,  the  music-dealer, 
is  now  established ;  and  there,  in 
his  shirt-sleeves,  he  conjured  and 
played  tricks.  I  remember  only 
one  of  his  devices,  but  that  one 
sufficed  to  make  him  a  sight  of 
the  time.  He  asked  the  crowd 
for  pennies  (pieces  of  two  sous,  I 
mean) ;  he  put  five  of  them  into 
his  right  hand,  played  with  them, 
tossed  them  a  few  times  in  the 
air,  and  then  suddenly  flung  them 
straight  up  to  a  height  which 
seemed  above  the  house-tops.  He 
watched  them  intently  as  they 
rose,  and,  as  they  turned  and  be- 
gan to  fall,  he  opened  with  his  left 
hand  the  left  pocket  of  his  waist- 
coat, and  held  it  open — about  two 
inches,  I  should  think.  Down 
came  the  pennies,  not  loose  or 
separated  from  each  other,  but  in 
what  looked  like  a  compact  mass. 
Fixedly  he  gazed  at  them,  shifting 
his  body  slightly,  very  slightly,  to 
keep  right  under  them  (he  scarce- 


464 


The  Streets  of  Paris  Forty  Years  Ago. 


[Oct. 


ly  had  to  move  his  feet  at  all),  and 
crash  came  the  pile  into  the  pocket 
of  his  waistcoat !  He  repeated  the 
operation  with  ten  pennies,  and, 
finally,  he  did  it  with  twenty ! 
Yes,  positively,  with  twenty  !  It 
almost  took  one's  breath  away  to 
hear  the  thud.  Never  did  he  miss 
• — at  least,  never  did  I  see  him 
miss — and  never  did  the  pennies 
break  apart  or  scatter;  they  stuck 
to  each  other  by  some  strange  at- 
traction, as  if  they  had  become 
soldered  in  the  air.  There  was 
evidently  something  in  the  manner 
of  flinging  that  made  them  hold 
steadily  together.  After  wonder- 
ing each  time  at  the  astounding 
skill  of  the  operation,  I  always 
went  on  to  wonder  what  that 
waistcoat  could  be  made  of,  and 
what  that  pocket  could  be  lined 
with,  to  enable  them  to  support 
such  blows.  The  force,  the  dex- 
terity, and  the  precision  of  the 
throwing — to  some  sixty  feet  high, 
so  far  as  I  could  guess — and  the 
unfailing  exactness  of  the  catch- 
ing, were  quite  amazing  :  the 
pennies  went  up  and  came  down 
in  an  absolutely  vertical  line.  The 
juggler  was  said  to  have  made  a 
good  deal  of  money  by  the  pro- 
ceeding ;  people  talked  about  it, 
went  to  see  it,  and  gave  francs  to 
him.  He,  too,  had  no  successor. 

There  were  plenty  of  other 
mountebanks  of  various  sorts 
about,  but  they  had  no  wide- 
spread reputations,  and  did  not 
count  as  recognised  constituents 
of  the  street -life  of  the  time. 
Mangin,  the  dentist,  and  that  jug- 
gler held  a  place  amongst  the 
public  men  of  their  day — like  Pere 
coupe  toujours,  who  had  sold  hot 
galette  for  half  a  century  in  a  stall 
next  door  to  the  Gymnase  Theatre; 
like  the  head-waiter  at  Bignon's 
(in  the  Chausse'e  d'Antin  days,  of 
course),  whose  name  I  am  un- 
grateful enough  to  have  forgotten ; 


like  the  superlatively  grand  Suisse 
of  that  date  at  the  Madeleine, 
who  was  said  to  have  been  chris- 
tened Oswald,  because  the  washer- 
woman, his  mother,  like  many 
others  of  her  generation,  had  gone 
entirely  mad  over  Corinne.  How 
long  ago  all  that  does  seem  !  And 
how  utterly  other  than  the  Paris 
of  to-day ! 

The  Champs  Elysees  too — which 
represented  then  the  concentrated 
essence  of  the  life  of  the  streets — 
how    changed    they    are !     Then, 
everybody  went  there ;  all  classes 
sat   or  strolled   there.     Now,  the 
place   is    half    deserted    in    com- 
parison to  what  it  was,  although 
the  lower  part  was  then  a  desert 
of  dust  or  mud,  according  to  the 
weather,   while   now  it   is   a  real 
garden ;    and    the   upper   portion 
was  bordered,  at  many  points,  by 
grass-fields,  in  which  I  have  seen 
cows    feeding.      The   planting   of 
the  lower  half  (the  trees  of  course 
were  old)  was  effected  somewhere 
about  1856,  with  the  stock  of  a 
Belgian  horticulturist,  which  was 
bought   en  bloc   for   the    purpose. 
It   constituted    one   of   the   most 
charming     improvements     of    the 
Haussmann  period,  for  it  gave  a 
look  of   delightful  greenness  and 
prettiness   to   what    had    been    a 
gravelly    waste.     And    yet,    not- 
withstanding their  beautification, 
the   Champs    Elysees,    as   a   pub- 
lic   resort,    have    not    maintained 
the    comprehensively    representa- 
tive character  they  possessed  forty 
years  ago.    They  have  been  affected 
partly  by  the  caprices  of  fashion, 
but,  like  all  the  rest  of  western 
Paris,  their  composition  and  their 
aspect  have  been  altered  mainly 
by  the  almost  total  separation  of 
the  various  strata  of  inhabitants 
of  which  I  have   already  spoken. 
It  must  be  remembered  that,  in 
the  days  of  which  I  am  telling, 
the  women   of   the   lower  classes 


1894.] 


The  Streets  of  Paris  Forty  Years  Ago. 


465 


were,  in  great  part,  ornamental, 
and  that  not  only  were  they  worthy 
— many  of  them,  at  all  events — to 
take  a  place  in  the  crowd  which 
assembled  every  summer  evening 
between  the  Place  de  la  Concorde 
and  the  Bond  Point,  but  that 
their  presence  bestowed  a  special 
character  on  the  effect  of  the 
crowd,  for  it  proved  that  all  the 
layers  of  population  had  learnt  to 
mix  naturally  together  in  open-air 
union.  The  mixture  did  not  shock 
the  patrician  eye,  and  it  pleased 
the  plebeian  heart;  it  did  some- 
thing to  soothe  and  satisfy  the 
self-respect  and  consciousness  of 
rights  of  a  considerable  section  of 
the  people,  and  led  them  to  look 
with  a  certain  friendliness  on  the 
rich.  In  the  Champs  Elysees  the 
mingling  was  more  complete  even 
than  in  the  streets,  for  the  double 
reason  that  it  had  more  space  to 
show  itself,  and  that  the  act  of 
sitting  down  side  by  side,  which 
was  impossible  elsewhere,  seemed 
to  bestow  a  certain  intimacy  on  it. 
Aristocracy  lost  nothing;  demo- 
cracy gained  a  good  deal ;  a  politi- 
cal effect  of  utility  was  achieved. 

In  those  days  everything  came 
to  pass  in  the  Champs  Elysees. 
Everybody  went  there  to  behold 
everybody  else.  All  processions 
paraded  there — so  much  so,  indeed, 
that  one  of  the  first  stories  I  heard 
on  my  arrival  in  Paris  was  that, 
when  the  end  of  the  world  was 
announced  for  some  day  in  May 
1846,  an  enterprising  speculator 
set  up  trestles  and  planks  under 
the  trees,  and  offered  to  let  out 
standing-room,  at  five  sous  a-head, 
"  to  view  the  end  of  the  world  go 
by."  The  certainty  that  every- 
thing was  to  be  seen  there — from 
the  funeral  of  the  earth  to  the 
wedding  -  party  of  an  oyster  -  girl 
going  out  to  dine  at  a  restaurant 
at  Neuilly  —  was  sufficient  of 
course  to  bring  together  all  the 


starers  of  Paris  (and  there  are  a 
good  many  of  them).  The  true 
difference  between  the  starers  of 
then  and  the  starers  of  now  is 
that  in  those  times  the  Champs 
Elysees  were  regarded,  not  only  as 
the  centre  of  Paris,  but  as  a  spot 
to  live  in,  whereas  now  they  have 
become  a  simple  passing  place,  like 
any  other — merely  one  of  the  ways 
that  lead  to  the  Bois.  The  Bois 
itself  was  a  tangle  of  disorder, 
with  few  paths  through  it,  and  was 
accessible  through  a  sort  of  lane 
turning  out  of  the  present  Avenue 
Victor  Hugo,  which  was  then  a 
narrow  road  called,  if  I  remember 
right,  the  Route  de  St  Cloud.  There 
was  no  Avenue  du  Bois  de  Boul- 
ogne, nor  any  other  Avenues  round 
the  Arch  of  Triumph  (except,  of 
course,  the  Avenue  de  Neuilly) ; 
the  Champs  Elysees  existed  alone, 
and  gained  naturally  in  import- 
ance by  their  oneness.  It  was  not 
till  the  late  fifties  that  the  Bois 
was  laid  out  as  it  is  now,  and  that 
the  lakes  were  dug.  When  that 
was  done  the  world  began  to  go 
out  there,  and  ceased  to  stop  in 
the  Champs  Elysees. 

The  Boulevards,  again,  were  far 
more  important  features  in  the  life 
of  the  place  than  they  are  to-day  : 
then,  life  was  a  good  deal  concen- 
trated ;  to-day,  it  is  thoroughly 
spread  out.  The  building  changes 
which  have  been  effected  in  the 
Boulevards  have  been  enormous, 
but  the  modifications  in  their  social 
aspect  have  been  greater  still. 
Very  few  of  the  ancient  land- 
marks survive  in  them ;  but  the 
crowd  is  even  more  altered  than 
the  houses.  The  chosen  lounging 
spots  are  not  the  same,  and  even 
the  art  of  lounging  has  itself  as- 
sumed another  character.  An  ac- 
quaintance I  made  on  my  first  visit 
to  Paris  proposed  to  me  seriously 
to  teach  me  la  maniere  de  jldner, 
and  spoke  of  it  with  reverence,  as 


466 


The  Streets  of  Paris  Forty  Years  Ago. 


[Oct. 


if  it  were  a  science  of  difficult  ac- 
quirement, needing  delicate  atten- 
tion and  prolonged  study.  He  told 
me  he  had  passed  his  life  (which 
had  been  a  long  one)  in  the  careful 
application  of  the  highest  principles 
of  lounging,  that  he  had  explored 
its  secrets  in  many  countries,  and 
that  he  had  arrived  at  the  conclu- 
sion that  there  are  only  two  capitals 
where  it  is  carried  to  its  noblest 
possibilities  —  Madrid  and  Paris. 
He  put  Naples  third,  but  with  the 
express  reserve  that  the  lounging 
there  is  simply  animal,  and  has  no 
elevation  in  its  composition.  He 
did  admit,  however,  that  in  Madrid 
and  Naples  the  entire  population 
knows  instinctively  how  to  lounge, 
while  in  Paris  the  faculty  is  limited 
to  the  educated.  To-day  it  is  in 
Paris  itself  that  the  lounging  has 
lost  "  elevation  "  ;  it  has  become  as 
"  animal  "  as  at  Naples,  but  with- 
out the  excuse  of  the  sun  which, 
there,  bestows  so  much  justification 
on  its  animality.  Parisians  no 
longer  lounge  with  the  sublime 
contentment  which  was  so  essen- 
tially characteristic  of  the  process 
forty  years  ago.  In  those  days 
the  mere  fact  of  being  on  the 
Boulevard  sufficed  not  only  to  fill 
the  true  fldneur  with  a  soft  religious 
joy,  but  aroused  in  him  a  highly 
conscious  sentiment  of  responsibil- 
ity and  dignity :  he  seemed,  as  he 
strolled  along,  to  be  sacrificing  to 
the  gods.  Alas !  it  is  the  mere 
material  act  of  lounging,  without 
adoration  for  the  sacred  place  where 


the  act  is  performed,  which  satisfies 
the  actual  mind.  The  distinction 
between  the  two  conditions,  be- 
tween the  "  elevation "  of  the  one 
and  the  "animality"  of  the  other, 
is  self-evident  and  lamentable.  If 
my  old  friend  were  not  dead  already, 
the  sight,  assuredly,  would  kill  him. 
He  declared — and  it  was  an  opinion 
generally  held  then — that,  for  a 
true  Parisian,  the  only  portion  of 
the  Boulevard  which  was  really  fit 
for  the  due  discharge  of  the  holy 
duty  of  lounging  was  the  little 
space  between  the  Rue  du  Helder 
and  the  Rue  Lepelletier,  which, 
with  fond  memories  of  other  days, 
he  persisted  in  calling  by  its  former 
momentary  name  of  "  Boulevard 
de  Gand"  (for  the  reason  that, 
during  the  Hundred  Days,  Louis 
XVIII.  ran  away  to  Gand).  The 
bottom  of  the  steps  of  Tortoni 
formed  the  hallowed  central  spot. 
When  I  first  saw  Paris,  that  spot 
inspired  me,  under  the  guidance  of 
my  old  friend,  with  a  certain  awe ; 
but  I  must  add  that  the  awe  did 
not  last,  and  that  the  more  I 
knew  of  the  spot  the  less  I  re- 
vered it. 

It  has  been  said  of  French  Gov- 
ernments that  "plus  Qa  change,  plus 
c'estla  meme  chose; "  but,  however 
true  that  may  be  of  Ministries,  it 
is  absolutely  untrue  of  outdoor 
Paris,  which  has  altered  so  totally 
that  it  has  ceased  to  be  the  same 
at  all.  Perhaps  it  might  be  a  good 
thing  for  France  if  the  Government 
were  to  change  as  completely. 


1894.] 


The  Accession  of  the  New  Sultan  of  Morocco. 


467 


THE    ACCESSION    OF    THE    NEW    SULTAN    OF    MOROCCO. 


So  purely  imaginary  have  been 
more  than  half  the  reports  of  what 
has  been  taking  place  during  the 
last  two  or  three  months  in  Mor- 
occo, and  in  many  cases  so  abso- 
lutely removed  from  the  truth, 
that  in  justice  to  the  Moorish 
Government  and  people,  as  well 
as  from  the  fact  that  the  subject 
is  one  that  can  scarcely  fail  to 
interest,  an  account  of  what  actu- 
ally has  happened  will  not  be  out 
of  place. 

It  will  no  doubt  be  remembered 
that  last  year  Mulai  el  Hassen  led 
his  summer  expedition  from  Fez 
to  Tafilet,  and  thence  returned  to 
Morocco,  crossing  the  Atlas  Moun- 
tains in  the  middle  of  winter.  The 
journey  in  every  particular  was  a 
dangerous  and  trying  one.  Such 
wild  tribes  as  the  Beni  Mgild  and 
Ait  Yussi  had  to  be  passed  through, 
and  when  safely  traversed  the  Sul- 
tan found  himself  in  the  desert 
surrounded  by  the  most  ferocious 
of  the  Berber  tribes,  who  had  to 
be  appeased  with  presents  of  money 
and  clothes.  Although  as  a  matter 
of  fact  no  opposition  was  put  to 
his  progress,  he  must  necessarily 
have  been  during  the  whole  expe- 
dition in  a  state  of  great  anxiety, 
for  had  the  Berbers  amalgamated 
to  destroy  him  and  his  vast  army, 
they  could  have  done  so  with  the 
greatest  ease.  Food  was  only  pro- 
curable in  small  quantities ;  barley 
in  the  camp  reached  a  price  that 
rendered  it  unprocurable  except  by 
the  richer  classes ;  while  added  to 
this  the  summer  heat  in  the  Sahara 
caused  havoc  among  the  soldiers. 

Tafilet  was  reached  in  October, 
and  a  halt  of  three  weeks  made 
there.  The  writer  of  these  lines 
travelled  to  that  spot  from  Mor- 
occo City  in  disguise,  and  was  for 


ten  days  in  the  Sultan's  camp. 
It  is  needless  here  to  enter  into 
any  details ;  suffice  it  to  say  that 
Mulai  el  Hassen's  camp  was  pitched 
on  the  desert  sand  near  a  spot 
called  Dar  el  baida,  to  the  east  of 
the  oasis  of  Tafilet,  and  that  he 
was  surrounded  by  an  army  and 
camp  -  followers  numbering  prob- 
ably forty  thousand  men.  I  saw 
the  Sultan  several  times  during 
his  residence  in  the  camp,  and  was 
struck  with  the  remarkable  change 
that  had  taken  place  in  his  appear- 
ance. His  bearing  was  as  dignified 
as  ever,  but  his  black  beard  was 
streaked  with  grey,  his  complexion 
was  sallow,  and  the  lines  of  age 
showed  themselves  under  his  eyes. 
For  over  two  years  previously  I 
had  not  seen  him,  and  when  last 
I  had  watched  him  he  was  still  a 
young-looking  man :  now  old  age 
had  set  its  indelible  mark  upon  his 
countenance.  The  fire  of  his  eye 
was  gone;  his  head  drooped  slightly 
upon  his  chest;  he  looked  like  a 
man  tired  and  weary.  No  doubt 
he  was.  Anxiety  was  always 
present.  News  had  reached  him 
that  fighting,  and  most  serious 
fighting,  was  occurring  between 
the  Spaniards  and  the  Riff  tribes 
at  Melilla;  there  was  a  constant 
fear  of  assassination,  and  a  still 
more  constant  dread  of  his  whole 
camp  being  eaten  up  by  the 
Berbers.  Added  to  this  his  health 
was  ailing,  and  winter  fast  coming 
on.  Affairs  delayed  him  at  Tafilet, 
and  before  he  left  that  spot  at  the 
end  of  November,  although  during 
the  day  the  sun  still  beat  down 
with  almost  tropical  heat,  render- 
ing life  in  a  tent  insufferable,  by 
night  the  cold  was  extreme,  and 
frosts  of  almost  nightly  occurrence. 
Before  the  army  lay  a  three  weeks' 


468 


The  Accession  of  the  New  Sultan  of  Morocco. 


[Oct. 


march  to  Morocco  City,  over  desert 
and  mountain,  through  wild  tribes 
where  dangers  were  many  and  food 
scarce.  What  wonder  that  Mulai 
el  Hassen  suffered  !  Yet  the  worst 
trials  were  before  him  after  he 
left  Tafilet :  as  he  approached  the 
Glawi  pass  over  the  Atlas — the 
lowest  there  is,  and  that  at  an 
altitude  of  over  8000  feet  above 
the  sea-level — the  cold  increased, 
soldiers,  mules,  horses,  and  camels 
died  of  exposure.  Snow  fell  and 
covered  the  camp,  and  only  by 
forced  marches  were  the  remnants 
of  the  great  horde  dragged  out 
from  the  deathly  grip  of  the  rocks 
and  snows  of  the  Atlas  Mountains 
to  the  plains  below. 

I  saw  Mulai  el  Hassen  and  his 
army  enter  Morocco  City — for  I 
had  returned  thither  a  few  days 
before  them.  What  was  notice- 
able at  Tafilet  was  doubly  apparent 
now.  The  Sultan  had  become  an 
old  man.  Travel  -  stained  and 
weary,  he  rode  his  great  white 
horse  with  its  mockery  of  green- 
and-gold  trappings,  while  over  a 
head  that  was  the  picture  of  suffer- 
ing waved  the  imperial  umbrella 
of  crimson  velvet.  Following  him 
straggled  into  the  city  a  horde  of 
half-starved  men  and  animals,  try- 
ing to  be  happy  that  at  last  their 
terrible  journey  was  at  an  end,  but 
too  ill  and  too  hungry  to  succeed. 

Mulai  el  Hassen  found  no  peace 
at  Morocco  City.  Affairs  at 
Melilla  had  become  strained,  and 
no  sooner  had  his  Majesty  reached 
the  capital  than  a  Spanish  Embassy 
under  General  Martinez  Campos 
proceeded  to  Morocco.  How  it 
ended  is  well  known.  It  added  to 
the  enormous  expenses  of  the  Sul- 
tan's summer  expedition  —  which 
must  have  cost  him  nearly  a 
million  sterling  —  a  debt  to  the 
Spanish  Government  of  twenty 
million  pesetas,  at  the  same  time 
necessitating  the  Sultan  to  aban- 


don his  idea  of  remaining  in  his 
southern  capital,  and  forcing  upon 
him  a  long  march  to  Rabat  and 
Fez,  and  an  intended  expedition 
to  the  Riff  to  punish  the  tribes 
who  had  caused  the  disturbance 
there.  Fez  was  never  reached,  the 
expedition  never  took  place,  and 
Mulai  el  Hassen's  entry  into  Rabat 
was  in  a  coffin  at  the  dead  of 
night. 

Having  briefly  sketched  the 
events  preceding  the  Sultan's 
death,  reference  must  now  be 
made  to  those  who  played  import- 
ant parts,  for  better  or  for  worse, 
in  the  days  that  followed. 

With  regard  to  the  succession 
to  the  throne  of  Morocco,  no  regu- 
lar custom  or  law  exists.  While 
the  new  Sultan  must  be  a  relation 
of  the  late  one,  he  need  not  neces- 
sarily be  a  son,  but  is  appointed  by 
his  predecessor,  and  if  approved 
of,  acknowledged  by  those  in  whose 
power  the  making  of  Sultans  lies, 
— that  is  to  say,  by  the  viziers  and 
powerful  Shereefs.  Should  the 
Sultan  name  no  successor,  it  is 
these  who  choose  the  man  they  may 
think  suitable  to  fill  the  post. 

Of  the  great  Shereefian  families 
of  Morocco  that  of  Mulai  el  Hassen 
is  not  the  most  important,  for  the 
founder  of  his  dynasty,  rising  in 
Tafilet,  seized  the  power  from  the 
more  holy  and  reverend  family  of 
the  direct  descendants  of  Mulai 
Idris,  the  founder  of  the  Moorish 
empire,  who  was  the  son  of  Ab- 
dullah el  Kamil,  himself  a  grandson 
of  Hassan,  who  with  Huseyn  was 
the  son  of  Fatima,  Mohammed's 
daughter.  While  the  Fileli  dyn- 
asty to-day  holds  the  throne,  the 
reverence  paid  to  the  Fileli  Shereefs 
is  not  to  be  compared  with  that 
bestowed  upon  Mulai  Idris  I.  and 
II.,  one  of  whom  lies  buried  in  the 
town  bearing  his  name  in  Zarahoun 
near  Fez,  while  the  second  is  patron 
saint  of  the  northern  capital  itself, 


1894.] 


The  Accession  of  the  New  Sultan  of  Morocco. 


469 


where  he  lies  interred  in  a  gorgeous 
tomb. 

Again,  the  family  of  the  Shereefs 
of  Wazan  obtains  far  greater  re- 
spect than  that  of  the  Sultan,  and 
the  tombs  of  Mulai  Abdullah 
Shereef  and  Sid  el  Haj  el  Arbi 
are  places  of  daily  pilgrimages. 
In  order,  therefore,  to  obtain  the 
succession  to  the  throne  of  a  new 
Sultan,  the  aid  and  influence  of 
both  the  Shereefs  of  Mulai  Idris 
and  Wazan  have  to  be  brought  to 
bear  upon  the  question,  as  should 
either  party  refuse  to  acknowledge 
the  candidate,  so  powerful  are 
their  followings  that  it  is  quite 
possible,  more  than  probable,  that 
a  civil  war  would  be  the  result. 
That  a  Shereef  of  Wazan  could 
come  to  the  throne  is  practically 
impossible.  The  two  heads  of  the 
family,  sons  of  the  late  Grand 
Shereef,  are  French  protected  sub- 
jects ;  while  what  affects  still  more 
the  native  population  is  the  ex- 
istence of  an  ancient  proverb  which 
states  that  no  Wazan  Shereef  can 
rule  as  Sultan,  but  that  no  Sultan 
can  rule  without  the  support  of 
the  Wazan  Shereef.  It  is,  in  fact, 
a  defensive  alliance  between  the 
two  great  families. 

Not  so,  however,  with  the 
Shereefs  of  Mulai  Idris,  who 
reside  almost  entirely  in  Fez,  and 
whose  influence  there  is  very  great. 
That  a  Drisite  Shereef  would  have 
been  ready  to  ascend  the  throne 
were  it  offered  to  him  is  only  too 
probable,  but  fortunately  it  was 
not  offered.  In  spite  of  their  im- 
mense sanctity,  the  old  adage  that 
a  prophet  hath  no  honour  in  his 
own  country  holds  good  in  Fez, 
where  amongst  the  city  people 
they  are  considered  as  little  above 
ordinary  mortals.  All  their  influ- 
ence, and  it  is  very  extensive, 
lies  amongst  strangers  and  in 
the  country  districts,  where  being 
seldom  seen  or  heard,  all  kinds  of 

VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCXLVIII. 


romance   as   to   their    marvellous 
powers  are  rife. 

Therefore  it  will  be  seen  that, 
powerful  as  are  the  families  of 
Wazan  and  Mulai  Idris,  it  was 
practically  out  of  the  question, 
unless  civil  war  broke  out,  that  a 
member  of  either  should  be  put  up 
as  candidate  for  the  throne.  And 
had  such  an  event  happened,  want 
of  funds  would  have  no  doubt 
crushed  the  rebellion  before  any 
very  serious  results  would  have 
occurred.  There  remained,  then, 
only  the  members  of  the  late 
Sultan's  family  who  could  succeed. 
Of  these,  four  had  always  been 
considered  as  likely  candidates. 
First,  Mulai  Ismain,  a  brother  of 
Mulai  el  Hassen,  who  for  a  long 
time  was  viceroy  in  Fez.  He  is  a 
man  past  middle  age,  of  a  quiet 
gentle  manner,  fanatical,  and  given 
to  literary  pursuits,  and  while  pos- 
sessing very  considerable  influ- 
ence, and  still  more  popularity, 
by  no  means  a  man  to  push  him- 
self forward — in  fact,  it  was  always 
said,  on  the  best  authority,  that 
he  had  no  desire  whatever  of  suc- 
ceeding to  the  throne.  Certainly 
Mulai  Ismain  seemed  the  most 
probable  successor  to  his  brother, 
though  every  year  lessened  the 
likelihood  of  this  by  adding  years 
to  the  age  of  the  Sultan's  favourite 
son,  Mulai  Abdul  Aziz,  the  present 
Sultan.  Although  it  was  known 
that  this  boy  was  being  trained 
by  Mulai  el  Hassen,  so  that  in  the 
event  of  his  own  death  he  might 
come  to  the  throne,  his  extreme 
youth  for  a  time  rendered  it  ex- 
ceedingly improbable  that  he  could 
succeed;  and  had  Mulai  el  Hassen's 
death  taken  place  only  a  year  or 
two  ago,  Mulai  Abdul  Aziz,  instead 
of  becoming  Sultan,  would  have 
been  merely  an  obstacle  to  who- 
ever had  succeeded — an  obstacle 
that  most  likely  would  have  been 
removed  by  assassination  or  secret 
2  H 


470 


The  Accession  of  the  New  Sultan  of  Morocco. 


[Oct. 


murder.  Fortunately,  Mulai  el 
Hassen  lived  sufficiently  long  to 
see  his  favourite  son  reach  the  age 
of  sixteen — for  all  reports  as  to  his 
being  only  twelve  are  false.  So 
great  was  his  father's  desire  that 
he  should  succeed,  that  during  his 
lifetime  he  endowed  his  son  with 
very  considerable  wealth  and  pro- 
perty, and  towards  the  end  of  his 
life,  since  his  return  from  Tafilet, 
made  it  clearly  apparent  what  was 
his  desire  in  the  event  of  his  death, 
by  bestowing  on  him  nearly  all 
the  prerogatives  of  the  Sultanate. 
Mulai  Abdul  Aziz  is  the  son  of 
a  Circassian  wife  of  Mulai  el  Has- 
sen, a  lady  of  great  intelligence  and 
remarkable  ability,  who,  though  no 
longer  in  her  first  youth,  was  able 
to  maintain  to  the  day  of  his 
death  a  most  singular  and  no  doubt 
beneficial  influence  over  Mulai  el 
Hassen.  Her  European  extrac- 
tion and  her  education  abroad,  her 
general  knowledge  of  the  world, 
and  her  opportunities  for  watching 
the  Court  intrigues,  rendered  her 
of  more  service  to  the  late  Sultan 
than  any  of  his  viziers.  She  accom- 
panied him  always  upon  his  long 
and  tedious  marches,  and  there  can 
be  no  doubt  that  even  in  his  deal- 
ings with  the  European  Powers 
her  advice  was  always  asked  and 
generally  taken  by  the  Sultan. 
The  affection  Mulai  el  Hassen  be- 
stowed upon  her  was  also  shared 
by  her  son,  Mulai  Abdul  Aziz,  who, 
with  the  tender  anxiety  of  both 
an  affectionate  father  and  mother, 
was  brought  up  in  a  far  more  sat- 
isfactory manner  than  is  general 
with  the  sons  of  Moorish  poten- 
tates. While  his  elder  brothers, 
of  whom  more  anon,  were  left  to 
run  wild  and  to  lead  lives  of  cruelty 
and  vice,  Abdul  Aziz  was  the  con- 
stant companion  of  his  parents, 
who,  both  intent  that  he  should 
one  day  be  Sultan  of  Morocco,  lost 
no  opportunity  of  educating  him, 


to  the  best  of  their  abilities,  to  fill 
the  post. 

The  other  candidates  who  may 
be  said  to  have  had  a  chance  of 
succeeding  to  the  throne  were 
Mulai  Mohammed,  the  late  Sultan's 
eldest  son,  by  a  slave  wife,  who 
has  held  the  post  of  viceroy  in 
Morocco  City  for  a  considerable 
time,  and  whose  vicious  life  has 
estranged  him  from  the  affections 
of  the  people.  This  is  the  "  one- 
eyed  decapitator"  of  whom  the 
papers  were  so  fond  of  speaking 
during  the  recent  crisis.  Really 
the  Englishman  who  invented  the 
name  deserves  popularity  to  the 
same  extent  as  he  gave  publicity 
to  his  brilliant  imagination,  for 
the  complimentary  title  is  of  purely 
English  invention.  Unfortunately 
Mulai  Mohammed  never  possessed 
the  power  of  decapitating  any 
one,  and  had  he  ventured  to 
have  done  so,  would  have  long 
ago  been  securely  confined  in  pris- 
on. Vicious  and  immoral  he  was 
to  an  extent  that  surpasses  de- 
scription, but  beyond  this  his  sins 
were  no  greater  than  those  of  the 
ordinary  Moorish  official.  At 
times  he  was  most  lavish  and 
generous  —  often  with  other  peo- 
ple's money ;  and  although  his 
open  immorality  estranged  him 
from  any  affection  on  the  part  of 
the  people,  he  still  possessed  a 
certain  amount  of  popularity  from 
his  exceedingly  unprincely  conde- 
scension. On  the  whole,  Mulai 
Mohammed  is  a  very  undesirable 
young  man ;  but  even  his  lax  mor- 
ality scarcely  merits  the  outpour- 
ings of  hatred  and  contempt  that 
have  been  heaped  upon  him  by  the 
English  press. 

The  remaining  possible  candidate 
to  the  throne  was  Mulai  el  Amin, 
another  brother  of  the  late  Sultan, 
a  pleasant,  middle-aged  man,  who 
would  scarcely  have  been  capable 
of  the  amount  of  dignity  iiecessi- 


1894.] 


The  Accession  of  the  New  Sultan  of  Morocco. 


471 


tated  by  the  position,  as  he  pos- 
sessed a  temperament  too  affable 
and  condescending. 

It  will  be  seen,  therefore,  that 
not  only  was  Mulai  Abdul  Aziz 
his  father's  candidate,  but  that  by 
his  training  and  bringing  up,  in 
spite  of  his  youth,  he  was  by  far 
the  most  likely  to  perform  with 
any  degree  of  success  the  arduous 
duties  of  the  position.  Again,  his 
father  and  mother's  care  had  kept 
him  free  from  the  immoral  life 
usually  led  by  boys  of  his  age,  and 
he  came  to  the  throne  untainted 
by  the  vices  of  the  country. 

But  one  point  more  remains  to 
be  touched  upon  before  referring 
to  the  events  that  have  absolutely 
been  taking  place  since  the  late 
Sultan's  death  early  in  June  — 
namely,  a  few  words  as  to  the  viz- 
iers and  officials  by  which  his  Sher- 
eefian  Majesty  was  surrounded. 

The  only  members  of  the  Moor- 
ish Government  who  enjoyed  access 
to  the  person  of  their  Sultan  were 
some  half-a-dozen  viziers,  through 
whom  the  entire  business  of  the 
country  was  carried  on.  These 
were  respectively  the  Grand  Vizier, 
the  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs, 
the  Lord  Chamberlain,  another 
vizier  answering  to  our  Home 
Secretary,  the  Master  of  the  Cere- 
monies, and  the  Minister  of  War. 
With  these  exceptions,  no  one  was 
able  to  gain  the  confidential  ear 
of  the  Sultan ;  and  should  by  any 
chance  his  Majesty  listen  to 
others,  woe  betide  them,  whoever 
they  might  be,  did  they  attempt 
in  any  way  to  injure  the  position 
of  these  courtiers,  who  would  be 
able,  without  the  information  ever 
reaching  the  Sultan,  to  revenge 
themselves  as  they  might  desire 
upon  the  man  who  informed  his 
Majesty  of  their  evil  doings.  Men- 
tion need  be  made  only  of  those 
who  have  played  important  parts 
in  the  history  of  the  last  two 


months.  These  are  respectively 
Sid  el  Haj  Amaati,  the  Grand 
Vizier,  Sid  Mohammed  Soreir, 
the  Minister  of  War,  and  Sid 
Ahmed  ben  Moussa,  the  Hajib  or 
Chamberlain.  Between  the  two 
former  —  who  are  brothers,  and 
members  of  the  powerful  Jamai 
family,  which  had  already  given 
another  Grand  Vizier  before  Haj 
Amaati  was  appointed,  namely, 
Sid  Mukhtar  Jamai  —  and  Sid 
Ahmed  ben  Moussa,  the  Hajib, 
there  had  always  existed  a  rivalry 
and  hatred  only  to  be  found 
amongst  oriental  peoples.  Sid 
Ahmed  himself  is  the  son  of  a 
Grand  Vizier,  the  late  Sid  Moussa, 
who  for  many  years  was  the  able 
and  trusted  adviser  of  the  Sultans 
Sidi  Mohammed  and  Mulai  el 
Hassen. 

While  the  Jamai  brothers 
prided  themselves  on  their  great 
and  powerful  family,  they  scoffed 
at  Sid  Moussa  and  his  family  as 
upstarts,  for  his  father  was  a  slave. 
But  to  such  an  extent  did  Mulai 
el  Hassen  bestow  his  confidence 
on  both  the  Grand  Vizier  and  the 
Hajib,  that  they  were  scarcely 
able  to  do  one  another  harm  in 
his  Majesty's  eyes.  Haj  Amaati 
had  risen  suddenly  to  his  post, 
and  his  success  with  the  Sultan 
no  doubt  caused  much  envy  and 
hatred  in  the  heart  of  Sid  Ahmed. 
Two  years  ago  Haj  Amaati,  on  the 
resignation  of  the  F'ki  Sinhaji,  be- 
came Grand  Vizier,  though  at  that 
time  probably  not  more  than  thirty 
years  of  age.  His  elder  brother 
had  for  a  long  time  held  the 
powerful  and  lucrative  post  of 
Minister  of  War,  and  with  his 
support  to  back  him,  Haj  Amaati 
commenced  a  career  of  amassing 
wealth  by  every  possible  means. 

The  power  and  influence  pos- 
sessed by  a  Grand  Vizier  in  Mor- 
occo is  almost  incredible.  Every 
official  in  the  whole  country  is 


472 


The  Accession  of  the  New  Sultan  of  Morocco. 


[Oct. 


under  him ;  no  one  can  com- 
municate with  the  Sultan  except 
through  him.  In  his  hands  lie  the 
disposal  of  the  various  governor- 
ships— one  should  say  the  sale 
of  the  various  governorships — and 
the  dismissal  of  all  officials.  In 
the  hands  of  an  unscrupulous 
man  there  is  every  opportunity 
of  "black-mail,"  and  of  this  Haj 
Amaati  took  an  advantage  un- 
paralleled in  Moorish  history.  He 
robbed  the  Sultan  and  bought 
and  sold  appointments,  and  in  the 
two  years  that  he  was  Grand 
Vizier  he  amassed,  in  addition  to 
his  already  considerable  fortune,  a 
sum  of  nearly  £150,000  !  That  is 
to  say,  he  managed  to  ensure  for 
himself,  and  entirely  by  illicit 
means,  an  income  of  no  less  than 
about  £70,000  a-year,  and  this  in 
an  open  and  unblushing  manner. 
So  certain  was  he  of  his  position 
and  influence  that,  soon  after  the 
Sultan's  arrival  at  Morocco  City 
on  his  return  from  Tafilet,  he 
attempted  to  oust  from  favour 
Sid  Ahmed,  the  Chamberlain,  who, 
of  all  the  Court,  was  on  the  most 
intimate  terms  with  and  the  most 
trusted  servant  of  the  Sultan.  For 
a  time  he  was  successful :  Sid  Ah- 
med lost  favour,  and  it  seemed 
that  his  dismissal  was  certain. 
Shortly  before  Mulai  el  Hassen 
left  Morocco  City  he  was,  how- 
ever, reinstated  in  his  Majesty's 
regard;  and  by  the  manner  in 
which  Mulai  el  Hassen  appeared 
to  leave  nearly  everything  in  his 
hands,  there  is  little  doubt  that 
he  repented  of  having  distrusted 
him  at  all.  This  incident  in- 
creased the  hatred  between  Haj 
Amaati  and  Sid  Ahmed,  and  even 
had  the  late  Sultan  lived,  one  or 
other  would  have  been  obliged 
to  go,  as  affairs  at  Court  became 
too  strained  to  continue  in  that 
condition. 

The  late   Sultan   left   Morocco 


City  in  May,  accompanied  by  his 
whole  court,  his  army,  and  the 
governors  of  southern  Morocco 
and  their  troops,  in  order  to 
punish  certain  revolutionary  tribes 
in  the  district  of  Tedla,  to  the 
north-east  of  Morocco  City :  thence 
it  was  his  Majesty's  intention  to 
proceed  to  Rabat,  where  the 
northern  army  was  to  join  him, 
and  the  entire  forces  were  to  pass 
on  to  Mequinez  and  Fez,  punishing 
en  route  the  tribes  of  Zimour  and 
Beni  Hassen,  whose  depredations 
and  fighting  had  caused  his 
Majesty  very  considerable  anxiety 
ever  since  his  departure  from  Fez, 
a  year  previous. 

Mulai  el  Hassen  was  ill  when 
he  left  the  southern  capital.  The 
anxiety,  the  heat  of  the  desert, 
and  the  intense  cold  on  his  jour- 
ney to  and  from  Tafilet,  had  weak- 
ened a  constitution  already  impaired 
by  an  affection  of  the  liver  and 
kidneys.  Those  who  accompanied 
him  on  his  departure  from  Morocco 
tell  how  the  life  and  vigour  had 
seemed  to  have  left  him.  His 
parting  with  Mulai  Abdul  Aziz, 
who  had  left  the  capital  previous 
to  his  father,  proceeding  to  Rabat, 
was  said  to  have  been  a  most  touch- 
ing one,  and  his  favourite  son  rode 
out  of  the  capital  with  all  the 
pomp  and  paraphernalia  of  a  Sul- 
tan. No  doubt  it  was  purposely 
done  by  Mulai  el  Hassen,  who 
seems  to  have  felt  his  end 
approaching,  and  considered  this 
the  most  subtle  means  of  exhibit- 
ing to  his  people  his  desire  that 
Abdul  Aziz  should  succeed  him. 

By  slow  marches,  necessitated 
by  the  immense  number  of  men 
and  animals  accompanying  him, 
the  Sultan  reached  the  district  of 
Tedla,  and  there  fell  ill. 

At  daybreak  it  was  the  custom 
of  Mulai  el  Hassen  to  leave  the 
enclosure  of  canvas  in  which  his 
tents  were  pitched  and  proceed  on 


1894.] 


The  Accession  of  the  New  Sultan  of  Morocco. 


473 


foot  to  his  office-tent,  where  he 
would  transact  business  until  gen- 
erally about  nine  or  ten  o'clock, 
when  he  would  retire  within,  not 
appearing  again  until  the  cool  of 
the  afternoon. 

For  several  days  after  the  ar- 
rival of  the  camp  in  the  region  of 
Tedla,  at  a  spot  called  Dar  bou 
Zeedou,  a  halt  was  called;  and 
although  the  Sultan  from  time  to 
time  visited  his  office-tent,  it  was 
generally  known  that  he  was 
unwell.  After  the  2d  of  June 
the  Sultan  did  not  leave  his  en- 
closure; and  although  the  report 
was  general  that  he  was  seriously 
indisposed,  reassuring  messages 
were  given  by  the  Hajib,  Sid  Ah- 
med, who  had  the  entree  to  the 
Sultan's  tent,  and  his  Majesty  was 
pronounced  to  be  getting  on  to- 
ward recovery.  During  the  after- 
noon of  Wednesday,  June  6, 
Mulai  el  Hassen  died,  Sid  Ahmed 
alone  being  present,  the  man  who 
throughout  his  life  had  been  his 
most  confidential  and  trusted  fol- 
lower. Before  his  death  he  had 
spoken  freely  to  Sid  Ahmed,  and 
had  made  him  swear  a  solemn 
oath  to  support  the  succession  of 
Mulai  Abdul  Aziz,  and  never  to 
desert  him  as  long  as  either  of 
them  lived.  His  Shereefian  Ma- 
jesty also  left  papers  stating  his 
desire  that  his  favourite  son  should 
succeed  him,  and  private  letters 
to  Abdul  Aziz  himself. 

But  besides  the  question  of  the 
succession,  there  were  others  as 
momentous,  if  not  more  so,  to  be 
considered.  The  camp  was  placed 
within  the  district  of  the  Tedla 
regions,  against  whom  the  Sultan 
had  intended  to  wage  war;  and 
the  fact  that  he  was  dead,  and 
that  the  camp  would  be  left  with- 
out any  leader,  would  bring  down 
an  attack  of  the  tribes  and  the 
sacking  of  the  entire  camp,  if  not 
the  murder  also  of  the  viziers  and 


officials.  Nor  was  the  army  to  be 
trusted :  Mulai  Abdul  Aziz  was 
at  Rabat,  still  some  eight  days' 
fast  marching  distant,  and  in 
those  eight  days  who  knew  what 
course  events  might  take !  A 
hurried  meeting  of  the  viziers  was 
called ;  an  oath  of  secrecy  taken ; 
the  drums  were  beaten  for  a  start 
to  be  made;  and,  to  every  one's 
astonishment  and  surprise,  orders 
were  given  for  a  move,  the  reason 
affirmed  being  that  the  Sultan  had 
sufficiently  recovered  to  travel. 
The  palanquin  which  always  ac- 
companied his  Majesty  was  taken 
into  the  enclosure;  the  Sultan's 
body  was  placed  within,  the  doors 
closed,  and,  amidst  the  obeisances 
and  acclamations  of  the  camp,  all 
that  remained  of  Mulai  el  Hassen 
set  out  for  Rabat. 

Not  a  soul  knew  of  the  Sultan's 
death  except  the  viziers  and  a  few 
of  the  slaves  and  tent  -  pitchers, 
whose  mouths  were  sealed,  know- 
ing that  death  would  ensue  if  they 
told. 

The  river  Um  er-Rebia  was 
crossed,  and  a  halt  called  on  its 
right  bank,  near  a  spot  known  as 
the  Brouj  Beni  Miskin.  Mean- 
while messengers  had  been  secretly 
sent  to  Rabat  to  announce  the 
Sultan's  death  and  the  accession 
of  Mulai  Abdul  Aziz,  to  support 
whom  the  viziers  had  all  sworn. 

The  following  day  an  early  start 
was  made,  the  dead  Sultan  still 
being  carried  in  the  usual  position, 
with  the  flags  and  insignia  of  the 
Sultanate  preceding  him.  As  they 
passed  along,  the  tribes-people  are 
said  to  have  kissed  the  palanquin, 
and  one  or  two  people  of  import- 
ance to  have  been  allowed  to  see 
the  Sultan  within,  whose  ill-health 
was  given  as  an  excuse  for  his  not 


At  the  middle  of  the  day  a  halt 
was  called  for  his  Majesty  to  take 
breakfast,  a  tent  pitched,  the  palan- 


474 


The  Accession  of  the  New  Sultan  oj  Morocco. 


[Oct. 


quin  carried  within,  and  food  and 
green  tea  cooked,  taken  into  the 
tent,  and  brought  out  again  as  if  it 
had  been  tasted  by  the  Sultan. 

As  yet  no  one  knew  besides  the 
viziers  and  the  handful  of  slaves 
that  Mulai  el  Hassen  was  dead. 
The  military  band  played  outside 
his  tent,  and  all  the  usual  customs 
which  were  carried  out  when  he 
lived  were  continued.  But  in  a 
hot  climate  like  that  of  Morocco 
in  June  a  secret  of  this  sort  can- 
not be  long  kept,  and  on  their 
arrival  in  camp,  after  a  ten  hours' 
march,  on  Thursday,  June  7,  it 
was  announced  that  the  Sultan 
was  dead,  and  that  messengers  had 
left  the  day  before  for  the  capitals, 
announcing  the  accession  of  Mulai 
Abdul  Aziz.  The  proclamation 
called  upon  the  people  and  soldiers 
to  follow  the  desire  of  their  de- 
ceased master,  and  to  support  the 
viziers  in  their  intention  of  seeing 
Mulai  Abdul  Aziz  succeed. 

The  news  fell  like  a  thunder- 
bolt upon  the  camp.  It  was  true 
that  by  the  concealment  of  the 
Sultan's  death  they  had  escaped 
from  Tedla;  but  there  still  re- 
main dangers  almost  equally  as 
great.  Would  not  the  tribes  of 
Shaouia,  through  which  they  had 
yet  to  pass  en  route  to  Rabat, 
pillage  the  camp,  for  there  was 
plenty  to  loot  there?  And  even 
if  they  refrained  from  doing  so, 
could  the  horde  of  ill -fed,  ill- 
clothed,  and  ill -paid  soldiers  be 
trusted  1 

The  camp  split  up  into  a  hun- 
dred parties,  each  distrustful  of 
the  other,  though  all  intent  upon 
one  object,  a  retreat  to  the  coast. 
Each  tribe  represented  in  the 
camp  collected  its  forces,  and 
marched  in  a  band  together  and 
camped  together,  not  fearing  so 
much  any  general  outbreak  as  an 
attack  on  the  part  of  members  of 
some  other  tribe,  between  whom 


there  may  have  been  some  long- 
standing feud,  only  prevented  by 
fear  of  the  Sultan  from  bursting 
into  warfare. 

By  forced  marches  the  camp 
and  the  army  proceeded  to  Rabat, 
constantly  hampered  by  the  sur- 
rounding tribes,  who,  too  timid  to 
attack  so  large  a  force,  contented 
themselves  and  satisfied  their  love 
of  plunder  by  cutting  off  and  rob- 
bing every  straggler  who  happened 
to  lag  behind.  The  poor  soldiers 
they  killed  for  their  rifles,  and,  if 
they  possessed  none,  out  of  pure 
devilry.  Many  of  the  troops  took 
advantage  of  the  lack  of  order 
and  government  to  run  away  and 
return  to  their  homes — whence 
they  had  been  taken  by  a  system- 
less  conscription  to  starve  in  the 
Sultan's  service,  or  gain  a  pre- 
carious livelihood  by  theft. 

Meanwhile  Abdul  Aziz  had  been 
proclaimed  in  Rabat,  and  letters 
were  sent  in  all  directions  an- 
nouncing his  accession  to  the 
throne.  In  no  period  of  modern 
Moorish  history  had  there  been 
a  week  of  such  suspense  as  then 
ensued.  The  Sultan  was  a  boy, 
separated  from  his  Ministers  and 
viziers  by  a  long  distance,  in  tra- 
versing which  they  ran  a  great 
danger  of  being  plundered  and 
murdered.  Had  such  an  event 
occurred,  and  Mulai  Abdul  Aziz's 
supporters  been  killed,  his  reign 
must  have  terminated  at  once, 
for  the  treasury  would  have  fallen 
into  other  hands,  and  another 
Sultan  been  proclaimed. 

With  all  possible  speed  the  army 
marched  towards  the  coast,  bearing 
their  now  loathsome  burden  of  the 
Sultan's  body  with  them.  There 
was  a  terrible  mockery  in  the 
whole  thing,  —  the  decomposing 
corpse  borne  in  royal  state  with 
the  Shereefian  banners  waving  be- 
fore it,  with  the  spear-bearers  on 
either  side,  and  the  troop  of 


1894.] 


The  Accession  of  the  New  Sultan  of  Morocco. 


475 


mounted  body-guard  and  askars 
on  foot. 

On  Thursday,  July  12,  Rabat 
was  reached,  and  a  halt  called  some 
little  distance  outside  the  city. 
The  state  of  the  Sultan's  body 
was  such  as  to  render  a  public 
funeral  impossible,  so  in  the  dark- 
ness of  the  night  a  little  procession 
of  foot- soldiers,  with  only  a  single 
Shereef  attending,  one  and  all 
bearing  lanterns,  set  out.  A  hole 
was  bored  in  the  town  walls,  for 
seldom,  if  ever,  is  a  corpse  carried 
into  the  gate  of  a  Moorish  city, 
and  surrounded  by  this  little  band, 
Mulai  el  Hassen,  Sultan  of  Mor- 
occo, was  laid  to  his  last  rest  in 
the  mosque  covering  the  tomb 
of  his  ancestor,  Sidi  Mohammed 
ben  Abdullah. 

At  dawn,  as  the  people  bestirred 
themselves  to  witness  the  funeral, 
it  became  known  that  all  was  over ; 
and  amidst  the  acclamations  of  the 
populace  and  the  sounds  of  the  Sul- 
tan's band,  Mulai  Abdul  Aziz  was 
led  forth,  the  great  crimson-and- 
gold  umbrella  waving  over  him, 
surrounded  by  his  father's  viziers, 
and  mounted  on  his  father's  white 
horse,  and  proclaimed  Sultan. 

Those  who  saw  the  spectacle 
described  it  to  me.  The  boy's  eyes 
were  filled  with  tears,  for  his  love 
for  his  father  was  intense,  and 
report  says  that  it  was  only  by 
force  that  he  was  persuaded  to 
mount  the  horse  and  be  pro- 
claimed. A  touching  story  was 
recounted  to  the  writer  by  one 
who  witnessed  the  episode.  On 
his  return  to  the  palace  the  mosque 
where  his  father  had  been  buried 
the  previous  night  was  passed. 
Leaving  the  procession,  Mulai  Ab- 
dul Aziz  proceeded  alone  to  the 
door,  and,  weeping  copiously,  dis- 
mounted and  entered  to  do  his 
last  homage  to  his  father  and  his 
Sultan. 

The  news  of  the  Sultan's  death 


had  reached  Casablanca  on  the 
coast  on  Saturday  by  a  mounted 
express,  and  thence  two  mounted 
men  galloped  to  Rabat,  a  distance 
of  fifty-nine  miles,  in  six  and  a  half 
hours,  over  an  abominable  road. 
A  steamer  was  on  the  point  of 
leaving  that  port  for  Tangier,  and 
her  Britannic  Majesty's  Minister 
received  the  news  shortly  after 
11  A.M.  on  Sunday  morning,  a 
worthy  record  of  fast  travelling. 
He  was  the  first  to  obtain  the  in- 
formation, and  immediately  in- 
formed his  colleagues  of  what  had 
taken  place.  A  special  meeting  of 
the  European  Ministers  was  called 
on  Monday  morning,  after  which 
the  British  Minister,  Mr  Satow, 
reported  the  information  to  Sid  el 
Haj  Mohammed  Torres,  the  Sul- 
tan's vizier  resident  at  Tangier. 
By  mid-day  on  Monday  the  news 
was  general  in  Tangier,  and 
anxiety  was  depicted  on  every 
face  as  to  what  would  be  the  re- 
sults of  so  serious  an  occurrence. 
Not  a  few  predicted  a  general 
massacre  of  the  Europeans,  which 
of  everything  that  might  occur  was 
the  least  probable.  It  is  true  that 
the  tribes  around  Tangier  dis- 
liked their  governor,  and  might 
make  some  sort  of  attempt  to 
assassinate  him ;  but  their  com- 
mon-sense gained  the  better  of 
them,  and,  on  consideration,  they 
realised  that  any  such  course 
would  in  the  end  but  mean  misery 
and  imprisonment  and  even  death 
to  themselves,  while  by  adopting 
an  exemplary  bearing  they  might 
so  gain  the  favour  of  the  new 
Sultan  that  their  grievances  would 
be  heard  and  attended  to.  At  the 
same  time  they  virtually  threw  off 
the  jurisdiction  of  the  Basha,  each 
village  electing  a  local  sheikh,  who 
would  be  responsible  for  the  con- 
duct of  those  under  him.  So  suc- 
cessful was  this  action  that,  so  far 
from  the  country  becoming  in  any 


476 


The  Accession  of  the  New  Sultan  of  Morocco. 


[Oct. 


way  disturbed,  things  improved  in 
every  manner,  cattle  robberies 
ceased,  and  an  unusual  period  of 
calm  ensued,  that  spoke  not  a  little 
for  the  credit  of  those  to  whom 
it  was  due.  The  Moors  have  a 
proverb,  and  it  is  a  very  true  one, 
that  safety  and  security  can  only 
be  found  in  the  districts  where 
there  is  no  government  —  that  is 
to  say,  where  the  government  is  a 
tribal  one. 

In  talking  over  the  crisis  on 
that  eventful  Monday  on  which 
we  received  the  news  of  the  Sul- 
tan's death,  one  could  not  help 
feeling  at  what  an  exceedingly 
opportune  moment  it  had  oc- 
curred, as  far  as  the  general  peace 
of  the  country  was  concerned. 
For  two  or  three  years  the  har- 
vests had  been  very  bad ;  but  this 
summer  had  proved  sufficient  to 
repay  the  tribes  and  country- 
people  for  a  period  almost  of  star- 
vation, and  throughout  the  whole 
country  the  wheat  and  barley 
crops  were  magnificent.  Harvest- 
ing had  already  commenced,  and 
every  one  was  engaged  in  getting 
in  the  crops.  To  the  Moor  wheat 
is  life.  The  country  -  people  eat 
little  or  nothing  else,  every  one 
grinding  in  his  own  house,  or  tent, 
as  the  case  may  be,  his  own  flour. 
To  lose  the  crops  would  mean 
famine,  and  the  Moor  knows  what 
famine  means.  At  all  costs,  at 
all  hazards,  the  outstanding  crops 
must  be  got  in — Sultan  or  no  Sul- 
tan. So-  instead  of  taking  up  their 
arms  to  pay  off  old  scores  and  to 
commence  new  ones,  the  peasant 
went  forth  on  his  errand  of  peace 
and  gathered  in  his  harvest.  "  The 
Sultan  was  dead,"  they  said,  "  and 
his  son  had  been  proclaimed : 
everything  was  ordained  by  God 
— but  the  harvest  must  be  got  in." 
Had  Mulai  el  Hassen's  decease  oc- 
curred at  any  other  period  than 
that  at  which  it  did,  months  of 


bloodshed  and  plundering  would 
have  been  the  result. 

In  spite  of  the  opinion  of  most 
people,  I  was  firmly  convinced 
that,  for  the  present  at  least,  no 
serious  incidents  would  occur.  So 
strong  was  my  conviction,  that  on 
Tuesday  morning  I  left  Tangier 
for  Fez,  accompanied  by  a  Moorish 
youth,  myself  in  Moorish  clothes. 
We  were  both  mounted  on  good 
horses,  and  hampered  ourselves 
with  absolutely  no  baggage  of  any 
sort.  Alcazar  was  reached  the 
following  morning.  The  town  was 
in  a  state  of  considerable  alarm ; 
most  of  the  Jews  had  already  fled 
to  Laraiche,  and  the  officials  were 
half  expecting  an  attack  on  the 
part  of  the  mountaineers.  The 
following  morning,  that  of  the  Eid 
el  Kelir,  the  great  feast  of  the 
Moorish  year,  I  reached  Wazan, 
where,  at  all  events,  I  should  learn 
from  an  authoritative  source  as  to 
what  was  likely  to  occur.  I  found 
there  that  the  news  of  the  Sultan's 
death  was  already  known,  while  I 
was  able  to  confirm  that  of  Mulai 
Abdul  Aziz's  accession. 

It  must  be  remembered  how  im- 
portant a  part  Wazan  and  its 
Shereefs  play  in  Moorish  politics. 
That  the  Great  Shereef  of  Wazan 
should  fail  to  acknowledge  the  ac- 
cession of  a  Sultan  would  mean 
that  100,000  of  their  followers 
would  do  the  same,  and  that  all 
the  mountaineers  to  the  north- 
east of  Morocco  would  rise  in  a 
body. 

I  was  received  as  an  old  friend  by 
the  Shereef,  in  whose  house  I  once 
lived  for  eight  months,  and  was 
present  at  the  afternoon  court,  at 
which,  being  the  Eid  el  Kebir^  or 
great  feast,  all  the  Shereefs  were 
present,  together  with  the  princi- 
pal men  of  the  town.  The  scene 
was  a  most  picturesque  one :  the 
gaily  decorated  room,  leading  by 
an  arcade  of  Moorish  arches  into 


1894.] 


The  Accession  of  the  New  Sultan  of  Morocco. 


477 


a  garden,  one  mass  of  flowering- 
shrubs,  amongst  which  a  fountain 
played  with  soft  gurgling  sound — 
the  large  group  of  Shereefs  in  holi- 
day attire  of  soft  white  wool  and 
silk,  the  great  silver  trays  and  in- 
cense -  burners,  and  long  -  necked 
scent-bottles, — all  formed  an  ideal 
picture  of  oriental  life.  The  one 
topic  of  conversation  was  what  had 
taken  place,  the  Sultan's  death, 
and  the  accession  of  Mulai  Abdul 
Aziz.  It  was,  in  fact,  a  sort  of 
council  of  war  or  peace — happily 
the  latter ;  and  as  we  drank  green 
tea,  flavoured  with  mint  and  ver- 
bena, out  of  delicate  little  cups, 
the  Shereef  made  his  public  de- 
claration of  adherence  to  Mulai 
Abdul  Aziz, — a  few  words  uttered 
in  the  expressionless  way  that 
Moors  of  high  degree  affect,  words 
simple  in  themselves,  but  meaning 
perhaps  his  life  and  his  throne  to 
Mulai  Abdul  Aziz. 

Throughout  the  whole  crisis  the 
action  of  the  Shereefs  of  Wazan  is 
highly  to  be  commended.  Their 
every  endeavour  was  to  ensure 
peace  and  tranquillity,  and  in  this 
the  Moorish  Government  owes  a 
debt  that  it  will  be  difficult  ever 
to  pay  to  Mulai  el  Arbi  and  his 
brother  Mulai  Mohammed. 

This  is  not  the  place  to  talk  of 
the  charms  of  Wazan,  but  as  I  left 
the  little  city,  nestled  in  groves  of 
olives  and  oranges,  early  the  next 
morning,  it  was  with  a  feeling  of 
regret  that  I  could  not  stay  longer ; 
but  I  wanted  to  be  in  Fez.  If 
anything  occurred  it  would  be 
there.  So  I  pushed  on  with  my 
journey,  and  after  a  thirteen  hours' 
ride  under  a  hot  sun,  put  up  for 
the  night  at  a  village  overlooking 
the  river  Sebou.  Here  bad  news 
met  us  :  the  neighbouring  tribes  of 
Mjat,  who  are  Berbers,  Hejawa, 
and  Sherarda,  were  up  in  arms, 
with  the  intention  of  taking  ad- 
vantage of  the  opportunity  to  wipe 


out  old  scores.  Already  a  small 
skirmish  had  taken  place,  and  the 
morrow  threatened  to  dawn  with 
further  fighting,  which  would  en- 
tirely block  the  road  to  Fez,  and 
also  the  road  I  had  passed  over 
the  day  before  from  Wazan. 

At  daybreak  armed  bands  of 
horsemen  could  be  seen  scouring 
the  country,  and  it  was  not  until 
the  afternoon  that  we  learned  that 
the  three  tribes  in  question  had 
met  and  decided  to  postpone  any 
hostilities  until  after  the  harvest 
had  been  gathered  in.  I  set  out 
at  once,  and  the  following  day  be- 
fore noon  reached  Fez  in  safety. 
So  insecure  were  the  roads  reported 
to  be,  that  we  met  not  a  single 
caravan  en  route,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  one,  whose  camel  -  drivers 
appeared  to  be  very  much  more 
afraid  of  us  three  horsemen  than 
we  were  of  them.  At  eleven  we 
entered  Fez  —  myself _,  a  Shereef 
who  had  accompanied  me,  and  my 
native  servant. 

Meanwhile  the  new  Sultan  still 
remained  at  Eabat,  and  a  time  of 
immense  activity  was  passing  at 
the  Court,  couriers  without  number 
leaving  daily  with  letters  announc- 
ing the  accession  of  Abdul  Aziz  to 
the  throne  for  every  part  of  the 
kingdom  ;  and  though  it  was  ex- 
ceedingly important  that  his  She- 
reefian  Majesty  should  proceed  as 
quickly  as  possible  to  Fez,  it  was 
found  impossible  for  him  to  make 
an  immediate  start,  so  great  was 
the  press  of  business. 

By  this  time  Europe  was  being 
flooded  with  so-called  information 
as  to  what  was  taking  place.  The 
"one-eyed  decapitator"  was  re- 
ported by  three  daily  papers  of 
the  same  date  to  have  raised  a 
rebellion  in  Morocco,  to  have  or- 
ganised an  army  of  20,000  men  in 
Fez,  and  to  have  been  imprisoned 
at  Rabat;  while  a  most  pathetic 
and  graphic  account  appeared  in 


478 


The  Accession  of  the  New  Sultan  of  Morocco. 


[Oct. 


nearly  all  the  London  papers  of 
the  funeral  of  Mulai  el  Hassan, 
at  which  every  pomp  was  observed, 
and  at  which  all  the  members  of 
the  consular  body  at  Rabat  were 
officially  present !  It  was  wit- 
nessed, the  informant  said,  by  the 
entire  population !  whereas  the 
funeral  was  secretly  carried  out 
in  the  dead  of  night,  only  a  few 
soldiers  accompanying  the  body  to 
its  grave ! 

The  news  of  the  late  Sultan's 
death  had  been  received  in  Fez  on 
the  evening  of  Tuesday,  June  12, 
in  a  letter  addressed  to  Mulai 
Omar,  his  son,  by  the  viziers. 
The  viceroy  at  once  imparted  the 
news  secretly  to  the  governor,  and 
criers  were  sent  throughout  the 
town  calling  the  people  together 
to  hear  a  Shereefian  letter  read  in 
the  mosque  of  Bou  Jeloud.  Sus- 
pecting nothing  of  great  import- 
ance —  for  this  is  the  ordinary 
custom  of  making  known  a  decree 
— the  people  sauntered  in. 

Meanwhile  Mulai  Omar  had 
caused  to  be  drawn  up  the  paper 
acknowledging  the  new  Sultan, 
and  headed  the  list  with  his  own 
signature,  the  second  to  sign  being 
Mulai  Ismain,  who  had  been  con- 
sidered by  many  to  be  the  most 
likely  candidate  to  the  throne. 

As  soon  as  the  mosque  was  full, 
the  doors  were  closed,  and  the  an- 
nouncement of  the  Sultan's  death 
made  known,  together  with  the 
proclamation  of  the  accession  of 
his  son.  As  the  letter  was  con- 
cluded, the  Basha  of  the  town 
arose  and  said,  "If  any  one  has 
anything  to  say,  let  him  speak." 
Not  a  word  was  uttered,  and  in 
perfect  silence  the  lawyers  drew 
up  a  document  to  be  forwarded  to 
Mulai  Abdul  Aziz  announcing  the 
readiness  of  Fez  to  accept  him  as 
their  sovereign.  Intense  indigna- 
tion reigned  amongst  the  audience 
in  the  mosque.  They  felt  that 


they  had  been  tricked  into  giving 
their  consent  without  the  oppor- 
tunity of  discussing  the  affair ;  but 
escape  was  impossible,  and  a  mur- 
mur of  discontent  would  have 
meant  their  going  straight  to 
prison,  for  the  doors  were  closed 
and  a  strong  guard  in  readiness. 

What  was  the  real  state  of 
feeling  in  Fez  it  is  very  difficult 
to  say,  but  it  is  doubtful  whether 
they  would  have  at  once  accepted 
Mulai  Abdul  Aziz  had  not  the 
authorities  obtained  their  signa- 
tures in  the  manner  they  did.  In 
all  probability  they  would  have 
bargained  with  him,  offering  to 
receive  him  should  they  be  free 
from  certain  taxes — the  octroi,  for 
instance — for  a  certain  length  of 
time,  if  not  for  ever.  Of  all  the 
inhabitants  of  Morocco  there  are 
none  more  grasping,  more  coward- 
ly, and  more  given  to  intrigue, 
than  the  people  of  Fez.  Their 
meanness  is  proverbial,  and  while 
they  give  themselves  airs  over 
every  one  else's  head,  they  are  de- 
spised and  hated  by  the  remainder 
of  the  population.  Given  up  to 
every  vice,  they  go  about  the 
streets  covering  their  hands  for 
fear  of  sunburn  and  muttering 
their  prayers,  talking  of  their  im- 
portance and  bravery,  yet  fright- 
ened by  a  spider  or  a  mouse.  The 
women  of  any  of  the  other  cities 
of  Morocco  could  defeat  the  men 
of  Fez.  However,  whatever  may 
have  been  the  ideas  of  the  inhabit- 
ants of  Fez  as  to  the  advisability 
of  the  succession  of  Mulai  Abdul 
Aziz,  their  allegiance  had  been 
given,  and  there  was  now  no 
drawing  back. 

By  this  time  the  news  had  spread 
throughout  the  entire  country,  and 
Hiyaina,  a  neighbouring  Arab  tribe 
to  Fez,  came  in  considerable  force, 
some  400  horses,  and  commenced 
petty  robberies  just  outside  the 
town  walls.  The  scare  amongst 


1894.] 


The  Accession  of  the  New  Sultan  of  Morocco. 


479 


the  effeminate  Fezzis  was  amusing 
to  witness.  Trade  became  at  a 
standstill,  and  they  secured  them- 
selves within  their  houses  under 
lock  and  key,  leaving  the  authori- 
ties and  the  strangers  in  the  city 
to  settle  with  the  wild  tribesmen. 
However,  the  affair  came  to  nought 
in  the  end ;  for  the  very  Arabs 
who  had  come  with  a  possible  idea 
of  looting  Fez  were  bribed  into 
the  Government  service  to  keep 
the  roads  open  for  caravans  —  a 
most  important  point,  as  scarcely 
any  wheat  or  barley  existed  in  the 
capital,  and  any  lengthened  delay 
in  the  arrival  of  the  grain-bearing 
camels  from  the  country  would 
mean  famine  and  revolution. 

On  Wednesday,  June  20,  a  de- 
putation left  Fez  for  Rabat  to 
bear  an  address  of  welcome  to  the 
Sultan,  a  document  magnificently 
illuminated.  On  the  24th,  the 
first  letter  written  in  the  new 
Sultan's  name,  with  all  his  titles 
and  dignities,  was  received.  It 
announced  his  accession  to  the 
throne,  and  called  upon  the  people 
to  be  obedient.  Its  receipt  was 
honoured  by  an  almost  endless 
salute  from  the  artillery  in  the 
palace  square. 

On  Monday,  June  25,  the  Sul- 
tan left  Rabat  for  Mequinez  and 
Fez,  travelling  through  the  tribe 
of  Beni  Hassen,  which,  together 
with  their  neighbours  the  Berbers 
of  Zimour,  had  already  sworn  al- 
legiance. 

At  Tangier  things  were  proceed- 
ing quietly.  The  French  Govern- 
ment sent  a  man-of-war  and  an 
armed  despatch  -  boat,  while  the 
English  were  contented  with  the 
presence  of  the  Bramble,  a  small 
gunboat  from  Gibraltar.  The  Por- 
tuguese and  Spanish  both  sent 
vessels  of  kinds.  An  act  of  gross 
stupidity  on  the  part  of  the  com- 
mander of  one  of  the  latter  nearly 
caused  an  unpleasant  disturbance 


in  the  country.  The  Isla  de  Luzon 
was  sent  by  the  Spanish  Govern- 
ment to  the  coast.  Now  the  first 
town  down  the  Atlantic  coast  of 
Morocco  is  the  almost  deserted 
and  entirely  ruinous  Arzeila,  a 
place  of  absolutely  no  importance, 
and  where  there  is  no  harbour  of 
any  sort.  For  some  reason  known 
only  to  the  adventurous  Spanish 
commander,  he  was  pleased  to 
come  to  anchor  and  to  fire  a 
salute  of  twenty-one  guns  in  the 
roadstead,  which  Arzeila  had  no 
means  of  returning,  for  neither 
cannon  nor  powder  are  to  be 
found ;  and  as  never  in  the  memory 
of  man  had  any  vessel  of  any  sort 
ever  approached  the  place,  the  few 
inhabitants  were  filled  with  con- 
sternation and  terror,  which  was 
only  increased  when  a  boat  was 
noticed  coming  ashore.  There  was 
no  doubt  about  the  question  in  the 
minds  of  the  natives — a  European 
invasion  was  taking  place  !  A  few 
stayed  to  see  what  was  going  to 
happen ;  the  greater  part  fled, 
spreading  here,  there,  and  every- 
where the  news  of  the  invasion  of 
Moorish  territory  by  the  Chris- 
tians. Meanwhile  the  water-kegs 
which  had  been  sent  on  shore  in 
the  boats  were  filled,  and  the 
officer  in  charge,  having  taken 
coffee  in  the  house  of  a  certain 
Jew  who  calls  himself  Spanish 
Consular  Agent,  returned  to  his 
ship,  and  the  man-of-war  departed, 
steaming  away  just  as  volunteers 
began  pouring  in  from  every  direc- 
tion to  prevent  the  infidels  landing 
their  troops.  Before  night  some 
2000  mountaineers  and  tribesmen 
had  assembled  in  the  neighbour- 
hood. For  a  time  the  wild  reports 
that  were  circulated  in  Tangier 
caused  a  little  anxiety;  but  soon 
it  became  known  that  the  whole 
scare  was  due  to  either  the  ignor- 
ance or  wilful  stupidity  of  the 
commander  of  the  Isla  de  Luzon 


480 


The  Accession  of  the  New  Sultan  of  Morocco. 


[Oct. 


in  saluting  and  sending  a  boat 
ashore  at  Arzeila,  which  is  a  closed 
port,  not  to  say  a  picturesque  ruin. 
On  July  1,  Mulai  Abdul  Aziz 
reached  Mequinez  from  Rabat, 
having  en  route  prayed  at  the 
tomb  of  Mulai  Idris  I.,  in  Zara- 
houn,  who  lies  interred  on  the 
steep  slope  of  the  mountain  above 
the  Roman  ruins  of  Volubilis. 
Although  his  Majesty  entered 
Mequinez  at  an  extremely  early 
hour,  long  before  he  was  expected, 
he  was  accorded  an  enthusiastic 
reception. 

At  court  affairs  were  fast  pro- 
ceeding to  a  stage  which  must  end 
tragically.  Mulai  Abdul  Aziz,  it 
is  true,  was  firmly  on  the  throne, 
but  the  boy  Sultan  was  only  an 
item  in  the  palace.  The  hatred 
and  jealousy  of  the  viziers  amongst 
themselves  was  a  public  secret,  and 
all  watched  anxiously  for  the  ter- 
mination of  the  crisis  which,  in 
spite  of  every  outward  and  visible 
show  of  accord,  it  was  well  known 
must  soon  arrive. 

The  fact  that  Sid  Ahmed  ben 
Moussa  had  been  chosen  by  Mulai 
Abdul  Aziz  as  almost  his  sole 
adviser  had  stirred  the  hearts  of 
the  rival  Jamai  viziers,  the  brothers 
Haj  Amaati  and  Sid  Mohammed 
Soreir,  to  their  very  depths.  Those 
who  do  not  know  the  Moors  are  ill 
acquainted  with  the  strength  of 
their  passions ;  and  there  is  no 
saying  to  what  extent  their  hatred 
and  jealousy  might  not  carry  them. 
No  one  could  have  been  better 
aware  of  this  than  Sid  Ahmed 
himself,  the  most  faithful  and  de- 
voted follower  the  Sultan  could 
possess,  whose  mixed  blood  of  Arab 
and  negro  strain  gave  him  all  the 
force  and  cunning  of  the  former 
and  all  the  fidelity  of  a  slave. 
^  On  Tuesday,  July  10,  at  the 
sitting  of  the  morning  Court,  Haj 
Amaati  and  Sid  Mohammed  Soreir, 
the  Grand  Vizier  and  Minister  of 
War,  were  dismissed,  the  return 


of  their  seals  being  demanded. 
Both  must  have  realised  that  their 
end  was  practically  come ;  and  as 
they  mounted  their  mules  and 
rode  away  from  the  palace,  they 
were  ruined  men. 

The  dismissal  of  Ministers  in 
Morocco  is  a  very  different  affair 
to  what  it  is  in  Europe.  It  means 
disgrace,  and  more  than  that,  the 
almost  certain  confiscation  of  all 
their  property — if  not  imprison- 
ment. The  immense  pride  in- 
herent in  a  Moorish  official  of  high 
degree  renders  all  the  more  de- 
grading his  fall ;  while  the  intense 
jealousy  and  hatred  felt  for  the 
unscrupulous  officials,  to  whom  all 
injustice  and  taxation  is,  often 
very  rightly,  accredited,  prevent 
any  sympathy  on  the  part  of  the 
public.  The  man  to  whom  every 
one  had  to  bow  and  cringe  had 
fallen ;  no  longer  was  his  wrath  to 
be  feared ;  and  the  feelings  of  the 
populace,  pent  up  for  so  long, 
burst  forth.  No  name  was  too 
bad  for  the  late  Grand  Vizier,  110 
crime  too  fearful  not  to  have  been 
committed  by  him. 

A  sort  of  stupor  fell  over  the 
Court.  No  one  knew  what  would 
happen  next.  This  dismissal  of 
two  of  the  most  powerful  men,  if 
not  the  two  most  powerful,  in  the 
entourage  of  the  Sultan,  was  so 
sudden  and  so  far  removed  from 
the  usual  course  adopted  by  a 
new  Sultan,  that  all  held  their 
breath,  awaiting  a  future  the  de- 
tails of  which  they  were  not  even 
able  to  guess  at.  Terror  reigned 
amongst  the  officials ;  wild  reports 
were  heard  on  every  side  as  to  who 
was  to  be  the  next  to  fall;  and 
expectation  on  the  part  of  those 
who  had  nothing  to  fear,  and  terror 
on  that  of  those  whose  position 
rendered  them  liable  to  a  similar 
fate,  was  rife.  The  names  of  Sid 
Ali  Misfiwi  and  Sid  Mfadhoul 
Gharnit,  the  Foreign  Minister, 
were  on  every  one's  mouth,  yet 


1894.] 


The  Accession  of  the  New  Sultan  of  Morocco. 


481 


wrongly,  for  up  to  the  time  of 
writing  these  lines  they  enjoy  the 
confidence  of  their  sovereign  and 
Sid  Ahmed. 

It  was  no  secret  whence  the 
blow  had  been  struck,  for  no 
sooner  were  the  posts  of  Grand 
Vizier  and  Minister  of  War  va- 
cated than  they  were  filled,  the 
former  by  Sid  Ahmed  himself,  the 
second  by  his  brother  Sid  Said; 
while  to  the  Chamberlainship, 
which  Sid  Ahmed  had  left  to  fill 
the  still  higher  position,  another 
brother  was  nominated.  Sid  Ah- 
med thus  obtained  an  overwhelm- 
ing majority  in  the  surroundings 
of  the  Sultan,  for  the  three  most 
confidential  positions  were  annexed 
by  himself  and  his  two  brothers. 

The  following  Friday,  July  13,— 
unlucky  combination  of  day  and 
number,  —  Haj  Amaati  and  Sid 
Mohammed  Soreir  were  seized  in 
their  houses  and  thrown  into  pri- 
son. Although  it  had  been  thought 
possible  that  such  a  course  might 
be  pursued,  the  actual  event  caused 
an  unparalleled  excitement.  The 
work  of  arrest  was  quickly  but 
roughly  done,  but  such  are  the 
ways  of  the  Moors.  The  Basha  of 
Mequinez,  with  a  small  band  of 
troops,  proceeded  to  the  Grand 
Vizier's  house  first,  and,  gaining 
admittance,  announced  his  errand. 
The  horror  of  the  situation  must 
have  been  fully  appreciated  by  the 
vizier,  for,  giving  way  to  one  of 
those  violent  fits  of  rage  to  which 
he  was  prone,  he  attempted  to 
resist,  and  a  soldier  in  his  employ 
drew  his  sword  upon  the  Basha. 
In  a  minute  both  were  seized,  but 
not  before,  in  the  struggle,  Haj 
Amaati's  rich  clothes  had  been 
torn  to  shreds.  Four  ropes  were 
fastened  to  his  neck,  each  held  by 
a  soldier ;  and  dressed  only  in  his 
shirt,  he  was  dragged  through  the 
streets,  amidst  the  derisive  laughter 
and  the  curses  of  the  people,  to  the 
prison.  The  very  crowd  that  now 


rejoiced  in  his  degradation  had 
bowed  low  to  him  only  a  day  or 
two  before,  as  he  passed  through 
the  streets  to  and  from  the  palace. 
An  incident  is  worthy  of  mention, 
as  showing  the  feelings  of  the 
Moors.  As  he  was  paraded  along, 
a  common  askari,  one  of  the  riff- 
raff of  Morocco,  passed.  "  God  ! " 
he  cried,  "why,  the  infidel  has  a 
better  fez  than  mine ! "  and  with 
these  words  he  lifted  the  turban 
and  cap  off  the  vizier's  head 
roughly,  placing  his  own  filthy 
head-gear  in  its  place. 

And  the  crowd  laughed  and 
jeered ! 

As  soon  as  Haj  Amaati  was 
confined  in  jail,  Sid  Mohammed 
Soreir  was  arrested  ;  but  with  far 
more  pluck  and  courage,  he  fol- 
lowed his  captor  without  resist- 
ance, and  entered  prison  like  a 
gentleman. 

Wild  rumours  spread  all  over 
the  town  as  to  the  reasons  of  the 
imprisonment  of  the  viziers,  and 
it  was  generally  stated  that  a  plot 
had  been  discovered  by  which  the 
Sultan  and  Sid  Ahmed,  the  new 
vizier,  were  to  have  been  assassin- 
ated that  very  day,  en  route  to 
mid- day  prayers.  But  whatever 
may  have  been  the  truth  of  this 
assertion,  the  fact  remains  that 
no  attempt  was  made,  and  Mu- 
lai  Abdul  Aziz  was  driven  in  his 
green -and -gold  brougham  to  the 
mosque,  surrounded  by  his  Court. 
Both  his  Majesty  and  Sid  Ahmed 
looked  extremely  nervous,  and 
every  possible  precaution  was 
taken  to  prevent  assassination. 
During  the  afternoon  a  lesser 
vizier,  who  acted  as  amin  el  as- 
kar,  or  paymaster  of  the  troops, 
Sid  el  arbi  Zebdi,  was  seized  and 
imprisoned.  This  but  added  to  the 
terror  of  the  remaining  officials, 
who  had  escaped,  but  dreaded  a 
like  fate. 

I  had  the  opportunity  the  same 
evening  of  discussing  the  course 


482 


The  Accession  of  the  New  Sultan  of  Morocco. 


[Oct. 


events  had  taken  with  two  men, 
who  hold  in  different  ways  almost 
the  highest  positions  in  Morocco. 
One  was  himself  a  vizier,  the  other 
far  above  all  fear  of  arrest.  They 
both  told  me  the  same  tale ;  but,  in 
spite  of  the  high  authority  on  which 
I  heard  it,  I  do  not  think  it  is  to  be 
credited,  and  in  my  opinion  it  was 
the  officially  agreed  upon  story, 
that  was  to  give  justice  to  the 
arrest  of  such  important  members 
of  the  Sultan's  court. 

I  was  told  that  both  the  viziers 
in  question  had  addressed  letters 
to  Mulai  Ismain  in  Fez,  and  to 
Mulai  Mohammed  in  Morocco 
City,  the  young  Sultan's  uncle 
and  brother  respectively,  inviting 
them  to  seize  the  opportunity  of 
attempting  the  throne,  and  offer- 
ing all  their  large  fortune  and  in- 
fluence in  the  event  of  their  doing 
so.  These  letters,  it  was  said, 
were  intercepted  and  the  plot  dis- 
covered. 

Although  both  the  viziers  in 
question  were  quite  capable  of 
such  a  plot,  I  cannot  believe 
that  either  pursued  the  course 
stated  above.  To  a  Moor  a  docu- 
ment of  any  sort  is  a  far  more  im- 
portant thing  than  to  us,  and  any 
one  who  is  acquainted  with  the 
Moors  knows  how  extremely  diffi- 
cult it  is  to  obtain  any  kind  of 
matter  in  writing.  Had  such  an 
idea  as  that  stated  above  entered 
the  minds  of  Haj  Amaati  and  his 
brother,  and  had  they  formulated 
any  conspiracy  to  that  effect,  they 
would  never  have  been  so  foolish 
as  to  commit  themselves  to  writ- 
ing, and  any  communication  with 
the  two  Shereefs  in  question  would 
have  been  made  with  the  aid  of  a 
trusted  envoy.  It  was  easy  to  see 
that  one  of  my  informants  at  least 
discredited  the  story  he  was  telling 
me,  which  he  only  knew  from 
official  sources.  My  own  opinion 
is  this,  that  the  whole  affair  was 


the  result  of  Sid  Ahmed's  jealousy, 
and  that  he  was  actuated  no  doubt 
also  by  a  feeling  that  the  course 
he  pursued  was  the  safest  in  the 
Sultan's  interests — for  by  remov- 
ing his  own  two  most  danger- 
ous enemies,  he  at  the  same  time 
would  find  further  scope  for  his 
influence  and  policy.  That  the 
viziers  deserved  their  fate  none 
can  deny.  Haj  Amaati  had  im- 
poverished the  whole  country  by 
his  enormous  and  insatiable  greed 
and  black -mail,  and  his  brother 
had  deprived  the  soldiery  of  a 
very  considerable  portion  of  their 
pay. 

Immediately  the  arrests  were 
made  the  entire  property  of  both 
— together  with  that  of  Sid  el  arbi 
Zebdi — was  confiscated,  and  their 
houses  at  Fez  seized.  Haj 
Amaati  had  just  completed  the 
building  in  the  capital  of  a  palace 
second  to  none  there  in  size  and 
decoration,  a  block  of  buildings 
rising  high  above  the  level  of  the 
other  houses,  which  will  be  an 
eternal  landmark  of  the  vizier's 
rise  and  fall.  It  had  been  com- 
pleted only  during  his  absence  in 
the  south  with  the  Sultan,  and  so 
much  pride  did  the  vizier  take  in 
this  new  palace  that  he  had 
ordered  all  the  decorations  in 
stucco  and  mosaic,  of  which  the 
Moors  are  perfect  masters,  to  be 
draped  with  linen,  so  that  none 
should  see  the  general  effect  before 
himself.  A  rope  attached  to  these 
curtains  would  allow  the  entire 
drapery  to  fall,  when  the  every 
beauty  of  the  decoration  would 
be  exposed.  Within  a  week  of 
realising  this  dream  of  orien- 
tal fancy,  he  was  cast  into  a 
dungeon,  and  his  house  and  all 
his  wealth  confiscated  to  the 
Sultan. 

With  the  fall  of  the  two  viziers 
it  became  more  apparent  than  ever 
that  Sid  Ahmed  meant  to  be 


1891] 


The  Accession  of  the  New  Sultan  of  Morocco. 


483 


master  of  the  whole  situation ;  but 
he  was  wise  enough  not  to  attempt 
alone  what  could  be  done  equally 
well,  and  very  probably  better, 
with  the  advice  of  trusted  advisers. 
There  were  two  people  at  the 
Court  in  whose  hands  might  lie 
the  power  of  treating  him  as  he 
had  treated  the  others.  These 
two  were  respectively  the  Circas- 
sian mother  of  the  Sultan,  and 
Sidi  Mohammed  el  Marani,  an  in- 
fluential Shereef,  who  had  married 
the  sister  of  Mulai  el  Hassen,  and 
into  whose  hands  a  considerable 
part  of  the  upbringing  of  Mulai 
Abdul  Aziz  had  been  intrusted. 
Both  must  be  conciliated,  for  over 
the  Sultan  both  held  great  influ- 
ence— go  great,  in  fact,  that  should 
Sid  Ahmed's  conduct  in  any  way 
displease  them,  their  united  power 
might  easily  persuade  the  Sultan 
to  dismiss  him.  Not  for  this 
reason  alone,  however,  did  Sid 
Ahmed,  as  it  were,  invite  these 
two  to  join  him  in  a  sort  of  council 
of  regency,  for  he  knew  fully  well 
the  ability  of  both  and  their  devo- 
tion to  his  lord  and  master. 

In  the  hands  of  these  three 
persons  the  welfare  of  Morocco  lies. 
But  before  entering  upon  any  con- 
jectures as  to  the  future,  the  history 
of  past  events  must  be  continued 
up  to  date. 

On  Thursday,  July  19,  a  start 
was  made  from  Mequinez  towards 
Fez,  the  army  and  the  governor  of 
the  tribes  and  their  escorts  having 
camped  the  previous  night  a  slight 
distance  outside  the  town  near  the 
Fez  road. 

Two  events  worthy  of  mention 
had  meanwhile  taken  place  at  Fez — 
first,  the  behaviour  of  Mulai  Omar, 
the  Sultan's  brother  and  viceroy ; 
and,  secondly,  the  fact  that  the 
enkas,  or  local  taxation  upon  all 
goods  sold,  had  been  removed,  to- 
gether with  the  octroi  at  the  city 


With  regard  to  the  former  a 
few  words  must  be  said.  Mulai 
Omar,  who  had  been  left  as  vice- 
roy by  Mulai  el  Hassen,  whose 
son  he  was  by  a  slave  wife,  is  a 
young  man  of  extremely  vicious 
and  degenerate  habits,  nearly  black 
in  colour,  and  with  an  expression 
as  ugly  as  it  is  revolting.  While 
beyond  his  immorality  no  actual 
charge  of  crime  can  be  laid  to  his 
door,  he  may  be  said  to  be  incap- 
able of  filling  the  position  he  held, 
and  to  want  discretion  and  com- 
mon-sense. 

It  appears — and  I  knew  of  the 
event  at  the  time — that  on  his 
learning  of  the  death  of  his  father, 
he  sent  to  the  Jewish  silversmiths, 
by  whom  all  Government  work  is 
done,  and  ordered  one  of  their 
number  to  make  him  a  seal.  Now 
in  Morocco  a  seal  is  an  exceedingly 
important  object,  and  no  one  uses 
a  seal  of  office  unless  it  is  actually 
presented  to  him  by  the  Sultan. 
So  far  the  story  is  generally  known, 
but  here  my  version  —  the  true 
version  —  differs,  for  while  the 
European  press  harped  upon  the 
fact  that  Mulai  Omar  wished  to 
make  himself  a  seal  with  the  in- 
scription of  Sultan  upon  it,  the 
fact  was  that  the  seal  was  to  bear 
Mulai  Abdul  Aziz's  name,  and 
that  the  reason  of  Mulai  Omar's 
ordering  it  to  be  made  was  not  in 
order  to  stamp  documents  himself 
as  Sultan,  but  probably  to  have  in 
his  possession  a  means  of  forging 
letters  supposed  to  have  come  from 
Court.  Whether  his  idea  was  by 
this  to  make  the  best  of  the  short 
period  that  remained  to  him  as 
Viceroy  to  amass  money,  or  whether 
in  case  of  any  outbreak  or  dis- 
turbance on  the  part  of  the  pop- 
ulation to  be  able  to  forge  concil- 
iatory or  other  letters  that  would 
keep  them  quiet  until  his  brother's 
arrival,  it  is  impossible  to  say. 
But  whatever  may  have  been  the 


484 


The  Accession  of  the  New  Sultan  of  Morocco. 


[Oct. 


desire,  the  result  in  the  suspicious 
eyes  of  his  brother  was  this — that 
he  had  attempted  by  some  means 
to  usurp  the  throne. 

However,  the  seal  was  never 
made.  The  Jew  artificer,  know- 
ing the  penalty  that  would  meet 
him  at  the  hands  of  the  Sultan 
were  he  even  the  innocent  in- 
strument in  this,  fled  and  sought 
the  protection  of  an  influential 
member  of  the  Government,  and 
the  affair  was  knocked  on  the 
head  at  once. 

A  second  charge  was  also  laid 
at  Mulai  Omar's  door — that  of 
having  ordered  the  music  of  the 
drums  and  pipes  to  cease  on  the 
occasion  of  the  announcement  of 
Mulai  Abdul  Aziz's  succession  to 
the  throne.  On  the  players  re- 
fusing, his  highness  sent  a  slave, 
who  enforced  silence  by  splitting 
up  the  drums  with  a  dagger.  For 
this  act  of  treason  he  was  after- 
wards punished  by  having  the 
flesh  of  his  hand  sliced,  the  wound 
filled  with  salt,  and  the  whole 
hand  sewn  up  in  leather.  It  is 
a  common  belief  that  this  punish- 
ment causes  mortification  to  set 
in,  and  that  the  hand  decomposes ; 
but  such  is  not  the  case,  for  by 
the  time  the  leather  wears  off  the 
wound  is  healed,  the  result  being 
that  the  hand  is  rendered  useless, 
and  remains  closed  for  ever.  It 
is  a  punishment  not  often  in  use, 
but  is  sometimes  done  in  cases  of 
murder  or  constant  theft,  as,  with- 
out in  any  way  injuring  the  health 
of  the  man,  it  prevents  his  com- 
mitting the  crime  a  second  time, 
or  for  the  hundredth  time,  as  the 
case  may  be.  It  is  a  punishment 
that  cannot  be  applied  except  by 
the  Sultan's  orders. 

It  was  no  doubt  on  account  of 
these  offences  that  letters  were 
received  by  Mulai  Omar  from  the 
Sultan,  forbidding  him  to  leave  his 
house,  and  placing  him  under  sur- 


veillance— a  course  that  was  sup- 
plemented on  his  brother's  ar- 
rival by  chains  upon  his  legs. 
Meanwhile  his  Majesty  had  been 
pleased  to  treat  his  brother,  Mulai 
Mohammed,  in  Morocco  City,  in 
the  same  manner. 

As  to  the  remitting  of  the  local 
taxes  and  octroi  in  Fez,  but  little 
need  be  said.  Certain  unfriendly 
remarks  had  been  overheard  regard- 
ing the  new  Sultan,  and  the  gen- 
eral tone  of  the  Fez  people  was 
not  satisfactory.  Fearing  that 
any  outbreak  might  occur,  and 
knowing  that  the  avaricious  in- 
habitants were  open  to  no  persua- 
sion except  money,  the  Amin  Haj 
Abdesalam  Makri,  the  Chancellor 
of  the  Exchequer  of  Fez,  on  his 
own  authority,  remitted  this  most 
unpopular  tax,  which  is  contrary 
to  Moorish  law.  It  turned  the 
tide,  and  the  Fez  citizen,  finding 
himself  a  few  dollars,  or  a  few 
pence,  the  richer,  changed  front, 
and  was  loud  in  his  acclamations 
of  the  new  Sultan.  The  charm  of 
the  situation  was,  however,  that 
as  soon  as  the  Sultan  had  safely 
entered  Fez,  and  was  thus  securely 
upon  the  throne,  he  instituted  once 
again  the  tax,  and  the  population 
rose  on  the  morning  of  Tuesday, 
July  24,  to  find  the  tax-gatherers 
returned  to  their  accustomed 
haunts. 

On  Saturday,  July  21,  Mulai 
Abdul  Aziz  made  his  State  entry 
into  Fez,  with  the  pomp  and  gor- 
geousness  with  which  the  Moors 
know  so  well  how  to  adorn  such 
pageants.  Proceeding  at  once  to 
the  tomb  of  his  ancestor  Mulai 
Idris,  he  took  the  oath  of  the 
constitution,  and  a  few  minutes 
later  the  great  gates  of  the  white 
palace  closed  upon  Mulai  Abdul 
Aziz,  Sultan  of  Morocco. 

So  did  Mulai  el  Hassen  die  and 
Mulai  Abdul  Aziz  succeed. 

WALTER  B.  HARRIS. 


1894.] 


Who  ivas  Lost  and  is  Found. 


485 


WHO    WAS    LOST    AND    IS    FOUND. 


CHAPTER   XVII. 


IF  Mrs  Ogilvy  had  been  at 
home,  it  is  almost  certain  that 
none  of  these  things  could  have 
happened  —  if  she  had  not  been 
kept  so  long,  if  Mr  Somerville's 
other  client  had  not  detained 
him,  and,  worst  of  all,  if  she 
had  not  been  beguiled  by  the 
unaccustomed  relief  of  a  sympa- 
thetic listener,  a  friendly  hand 
held  out  to  help  her,  to  waste 
that  precious  hour  in  taking  her 
luncheon  with  her  old  friend. 
That  was  pure  waste — to  please 
him,  and  in  a  foolish  yielding  to 
those  claims  of  nature  which  Mrs 
Ogilvy,  like  so  many  women, 
thought  she  could  defy.  To-day, 
in  the  temporary  relief  of  her 
mind  after  pouring  out  all  her 
troubles — a  process  which  for  the 
moment  felt  almost  like  the  re- 
moval of  them — she  had  become 
aware  of  her  own  exhaustion  and 
need  of  refreshment  and  rest. 
And  thus  she  had  thrown  away 
voluntarily  a  precious  hour. 

She  met  Susie  and  Mrs  Ainslie 
at  her  own  gate,  and  though  tired 
with  her  walk  from  the  station, 
stopped  to  speak  to  them.  "  We 
found  the  gentlemen  at  their  din- 
ner," Mrs  Ainslie  said,  her  usual 
jaunty  air  increased  by  a  sort 
of  triumphant  excitement,  "and 
therefore  of  course  we  did  not  go 
in;  but  I  rested  a  little  outside, 
and  the  sound  of  their  jolly  voices 
quite  did  me  good.  They  don't 
speak  between  their  teeth,  like  all 
you  people  here." 

"My  son — has  a  friend  with 
him, — for  a  very  short  time,"  Mrs 
Ogilvy  said. 

"Oh  yes,  I  know  —  the  friend 
with  whom  he  takes  long  walks 

VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCXLVIII. 


late  in  the  evening.  I  have  often 
heard  of  them  in  the  village,"  Mrs 
Ainslie  said. 

"  His  visit  is  almost  over — he  is 
just  going  away,"  said  Mrs  Ogilvy, 
faintly.  "I  am  just  a  little  tired 
with  my  walk.  Susie,  you  would 
perhaps  see — my  son  1 " 

"I  saw  Robbie — for  a  minute. 
We  had  no  time  to  say  anything. 
I — could  not  keep  him  from  his 
dinner — and  his  friend,"  Susie  said, 
with  a  flush.  It  hurt  her  to  speak 
of  Robbie,  who  had  not  cared  to 
see  her,  who  had  nothing  to  say  to 
her.  "We  are  keeping  you,  and 
you  are  tired  :  and  me,  I  have  much 
to  do  —  and  perhaps  soon  going 
away  altogether,"  said  Susie,  not 
able  to  keep  a  complaint  which 
was  almost  an  appeal  out  of  her 
voice. 

"  She  will  go  to  her  own  house, 
I  hope,"  cried  Mrs  Ainslie ;  "  and 
I  hope  you  who  are  a  friend  of 
the  family  will  advise  her  for  her 
good,  Mrs  Ogilvy.  A  good  hus- 
band waiting  for  her  —  and  she 
threatens  to  go  away  altogether, 
as  if  we  were  driving  her  out. 
Was  there  ever  anything  so  silly 
—and  cruel  to  her  father — not  to 
speak  of  me " 

"Oh,  my  dear  Susie!  if  I  were 
not  so  faint  —  and  tired,"  Mrs 
Ogilvy  said. 

And  Susie,  full  of  tender  com- 
punction and  interest,  but  daring 
to  ask  nothing  except  with  her 
eyes,  hurried  her  companion  away. 

Mrs  Ogilvy  went  up  with  a 
slow  step  to  her  own  house.  She 
was  in  haste  to  get  there — yet 
would  have  liked  to  linger,  to 
leave  herself  a  little  more  time 
before  she  confronted  again  those 
2i 


486 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[Oct. 


two  who  were  so  strong  against 
her  in  their  combination,  so  care- 
less of  what  she  said  or  felt. 
She  thought,  with  a  sickness  at 
her  heart,  of  those  "jolly  voices" 
which  that  woman  had  heard. 
She  knew  exactly  what  they  were 
— the  noise,  the  laughter,  which  at 
first  she  had  been  so  glad  to  hear 
as  a  sign  that  Bobbie's  heart  had 
recovered  the  cheerfulness  of 
youth,  but  which  sometimes  made 
her  sick  with  misery  and  the 
sense  of  helplessness.  She  would 
find  them  so  now,  rattling  away 
with  their  disjointed  talk,  and  in 
her  fatigue  and  trouble  it  would 
"turn  her  heart."  She  went  up 
slowly,  saying  to  herself,  as  a  sort 
of  excuse,  that  she  could  not  walk 
as  she  once  could,  that  her  breath 
was  short  and  her  foot  uncertain 
and  tremulous,  so  that  she  could 
not  be  sure  of  not  stumbling  even 
in  the  approach  to  her  own  house. 

It  was  a  great  surprise  to  her  to 
see  that  Robbie  was  looking  out 
for  her  at  the  door.  Her  alarm 
jumped  at  once  to  the  other  side. 
Something  had  happened.  She 
was  wanted.  The  fact  that  she 
was  being  looked  for,  instead  of 
pleasing  her,  as  it  might  have  done 
in  other  circumstances,  alarmed 
her  now.  She  hurried  on,  not 
lingering  any  more,  and  reached 
the  door  out  of  breath.  "  Is  any- 
thing wrong?  has  anything  hap- 
pened?" she  cried. 

"  What  should  have  happened  1 " 
he  answered,  fretfully ;  "  only  that 
you  have  been  so  long  away. 
What  have  you  been  doing  in 
Edinburgh?  We  thought,  of 
course,  you  would  be  back  for 
dinner." 

"  I  could  not  help  it,  Robbie.  I 
had  to  wait  till  I  saw — the  person 
I  went  to  see." 

"  And  who  was  the  person  you 
went  to  see  ? "  he  said,  in  that  tone 
half  -  contemptuous,  as  if  no  one 


she  wished  to  see  could  be  of 
the  slightest  importance,  and  yet 
with  an  excited  curiosity  lest  she 
might  have  been  doing  something 
prejudicial  and  was  not  to  be 
trusted.  These  inferences  of  voice 
jarred  on  Mrs  Ogilvy's  nerves  in 
the  weariness  and  over-strain. 

"It  is  of  no  consequence,"  she 
said.  "Let  me  in,  Robbie — let 
me  come  in  at  my  own  door  :  I  am 
so  wearied  that  I  must  rest." 

"  Who  was  keeping  you  out  of 
your  own  door  ? "  he  cried,  making 
way  for  her  resentfully.  "You 
tell  me  one  moment  that  every- 
thing is  mine — and  then  you  re- 
mind me  for  ever  that  it's  yours 
and  not  mine,  with  this  talk  about 
your  own  door." 

Mrs  Ogilvy  looked  up  at  him 
for  a  moment  in  dismay,  feeling 
as  if  there  was  justice,  some- 
thing she  had  not  thought  of,  in 
his  remark ;  and  then,  being  over- 
whelmed with  fatigue  and  the  con- 
flict of  so  many  feelings,  went  into 
her  parlour,  and  sat  down  to  re- 
cover herself  in  her  chair.  There 
were  no  "jolly  voices"  about,  no 
sound  of  the  other  whose  move- 
ments were  always  noisier  than 
those  of  Robbie ;  and  Robbie  him- 
self, as  he  hung  about,  had  less 
colour  and  energy  than  usual — or 
perhaps  it  was  only  because  she 
was  tired,  and  everything  around 
took  colour  from  her  own  mood. 

"Is  he  not  with  you  to-day?" 
she  said  faintly. 

"  Is  he  not  with  me  ? — you  mean 
Lew,  I  suppose  :  where  else  should 
he  be  ?  He's  up-stairs,  I  think,  in 
his  room." 

"  You  say  where  else  should  he 
be,  Robbie?  Is  he  always  to  be 
here?  I'm  wishing  him  no  harm 
— far,  far  from  that ;  but  it  would 
be  better  for  himself  as  well  as  for 
you  if  he  were  not  here.  Where 
you  are,  oh  Robbie,  my  dear, 
there's  always  a  clue  to  him  :  and 


1894.] 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


487 


they  will  come  looking  for  him — 
and  they  will  find  him — and  you 
too — and  you  too  ! " 

"  What's  the  meaning  of  all  this 
fuss,  mother— me  too,  as  you  say  1 " 

"Well,"  said  Mrs  Ogilvy,  "it  is 
perhaps  not  extraordinary  —  my 
only  son;  but  I've  no  wish  that 
harm  should  come  to  him — oh,  not 
in  this  house,  not  in  this  house ! 
If  he  would  but  take  warning  and 
go  away  where  he  would  be  safer 
than  here !  I've  been  in  Edin- 
burgh to  ask  my  old  friend,  and 
your  father's  friend,  and  your 
friend  too,  Robbie,  what  could  be 
done — if  there  was  anything  that 
could  be  done." 

"You  have  gone  and  betrayed 
us,  mother ! " 

"I  have  done  no  such  thing!" 
cried  Mrs  Ogilvy,  raising  herself 
up  with  a  flush  of  indignation — 
"  no  such  thing  !  It  was  Mr 
Somerville  who  brought  me  the 
news  first,  before  you  appeared  at 
all.  He  was  to  hurry  out  to  that 
weary  America  to  defend  you — or 
send  a  better  than  himself :  that 
was  before  you  came  back,  when 
we  thought  you  were  there  still, 
and  to  be  tried  for  your  life.  I 
was  going — myself,"  she  said,  sud- 
denly faltering  and  breaking  down. 

"You  would  not  have  gone, 
mother,"  said  Robbie,  with  a  cer- 
tain flash  of  self-appreciation  and 
bitter  consciousness. 

"  Ay,  that  I  would  to  the  ends 
of  the  earth  !  You  are  my  Robbie, 
my  son,  whatever  you  are — and 
oh,  laddie,  you  might  be  yet — every- 
thing that  you  might  have  been." 

"  Not  very  likely,"  he  said,  with 
a  half  groan  and  half  sneer.  "  And 
what  might  I  have  been?  A  re- 
spectable clod,  tramping  to  kirk 
and  market — not  a  thought  in  my 
head  nor  a  feeling  in  my  heart — 
all  just  habit  and  jog-trot.  I'm 
better  as  I  am." 

"  You  are  not  better  as  you  are. 


You  are  just  good  for  nothing  in 
this  bonnie  world  that  God  has 
made — except  to  put  good  meat 
into  you  that  other  folk  have 
laboured  to  get  ready,  and  to  kill 
the  blessed  days  He  has  given  you 
to  serve  Him  in,  with  your  old 
books,  and  your  cards,  and  any 
silly  things  that  come  into  your 
head.  I  have  seen  you  throwing 
sticks  at  a  bit  of  wood  for  hours 
together,  and  been  thankful  some- 
times that  you  were  diverting  your- 
selves like  two  bairns,  and  no  just 
lying  and  lounging  about  like  two 
dogs  in  the  warmth  of  the  fire. 
Oh,  Robbie,  what  it  is  to  me  to 
say  that  to  my  son!  and  all  the 
time  the  sword  hanging  over  your 
heads  that  any  day,  any  day  may 
come  down  ! " 

"  By  Jove,  the  old  girl's  right, 
Bob  ! "  said  a  voice  behind.  Lew 
had  become  curious  as  to  the  soft 
murmur  of  Mrs  Ogilvy's  voice, 
which  he  could  hear  running  on 
faintly,  not  much  interrupted  by 
Robbie's  deeper  tones.  It  was  not 
often  she  "  preached,"  as  they  said 
—  indeed  she  had  seldom  been 
allowed  to  go  further  than  the 
mildest  beginning;  but  Rob  had 
been  this  time  caught  unprepared, 
and  his  mother  'had  taken  the 
advantage.  Lew  came  in  softly, 
with  his  lips  framed  to  whistle, 
and  his  hands  in  his  pockets. 
He  had  already  picked  his  com- 
rade out  of  a  sudden  Slough  of 
Despond,  caused  by  alarm  at  the 
declaration  of  the  visitor,  which,  to 
tell  the  truth,  had  made  himself 
very  uneasy.  It  would  not  do  to 
let  the  mother  complete  the  dis- 
couragement :  but  this  adventurer 
from  the  wilds  had  a  candid  soul ; 
and  while  Robert  stood  sullen,  beat 
down  by  what  his  mother  said,  yet 
resisting  it,  the  other  came  in  with 
a  look  and  word  of  acquiescence. 
"  Yes,  by  Jove,  she  was  right ! "  It 
did  not  cost  him  much  to  acknow- 


488 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[Oct. 


ledge  this  theoretical  justice  of  re- 
proof. 

"The  difficulty  is,"  he  added 
calmly,  "to  know  what  to  do 
in  strange  diggings  like  these. 
They're  out  of  our  line,  don't  you 
know.  I  was  talking  seriously  to 
him  there  the  other  day  about 
doing  a  stroke  of  work :  but  he 
wouldn't  hear  of  it — not  here,  he 
said,  not  in  his  own  country.  Ask 
him  ;  he'll  tell  you.  I  don't  under- 
stand the  reason  why." 

Mrs  Ogilvy,  startled,  looked  from 
one  to  another :  she  did  not  know 
what  to  think.  What  was  the 
stroke  of  work  which  the  leader 
had  proposed,  which  the  follower 
would  not  consent  to  1  Was  it 
something  for  which  to  applaud 
Robbie,  or  to  blame  him  1  Her 
heart  longed  to  believe  that  it  was 
the  first — that  he  had  done  well 
to  refuse  :  but  she  could  only  look 
blankly  from  one  to  another,  un7 
informed  by  the  malicious  gleam 
in  Lew's  eyes,  or  by  the  spark  of 
indignant  alarm  in  those  of  Robbie. 
Their  meaning  was  quite  beyond 
her  ken. 

"  If  you  will  sit  down,"  she  said, 
"  both  of  you,  and  have  a  moment's 
patience  while  I  speak.  Mr  Lew, 
I  am  in  no  way  your  unfriend." 

"  I  never  thought  so,"  he  said  : 
"on  the  contrary,  mother.  You 
have  always  been  very  good  to 
me." 

He  called  her  mother,  as  another 
man  might  have  called  her  madam, 
as  a  simple  title  of  courtesy  ;  and 
sometimes  it  made  her  angry,  and 
sometimes  touched  her  heart. 

"But  I  have  something  to  say 
that  maybe  I  have  said  before,  and 
something  else  that  is  new  that  you 
must  both  hear.  This  is  not  a  safe 
place  for  you,  Mr  Lew — it  is  not 
safe  for  you  both.  For  Robbie,  I 
am  told  nobody  would  meddle  with 
him — alone ;  but  his  home  here 
gives  a  clue,  and  is  a  danger  to 


yOU — and*  to  have  you  here  is  a 
danger  for  him,  who  would  not  be 
meddled  with  by  himself,  but  who 
would  be  taken  (alack,  that  I  should 
have  to  say  it !)  with  you." 

"  I  think,  Bob,"  said  Lew,  "  that 
we  have  heard  something  like  this, 
though  perhaps  not  so  clearly  stat- 
ed, before." 

He  had  seated  himself  quite 
comfortably  in  the  great  chair 
which  had  been  brought  to  the 
parlour  for  Robbie  on  his  first 
arrival,  —  and  was,  as  he  always 
was,  perfectly  calm,  unruffled,  and 
smiling.  Robbie  stood  opposite  in 
no  such  amiable  mood.  His  shaggy 
eyebrows  were  drawn  down  over 
his  eyes  :  his  whole  attitude,  down- 
looking,  shifting  from  one  foot  to 
the  other,  with  his  shoulders  up  to 
his  ears,  betrayed  his  perturbation 
and  disquiet.  Robbie  had  been 
brought  to  a  sudden  stop  in  the 
fascination  of  careless  and  reckless 
life  which  swept  his  slower  nature 
along  in  its  strong  current.  Such 
a  thing  had  happened  to  him  before 
in  his  intercourse  with  Lew,  and 
always  came  uppermost  the  moment 
they  were  parted.  It  was  the  sud- 
den shock  of  Mrs  Ainslie's  announce- 
ment, and  his  friend's  apparently 
careless  reception  of  it,  which  had 
jarred  him  first :  and  then  there 
was  something  in  the  name  of 
mother,  addressed  to  his  own 
mother  by  a  stranger — which  he 
had  heard  often  with  quite  different 
feelings,  sometimes  half  flattered 
by  it — which  added  to  his  troubled 
sense  of  awakening  resistance  and 
disgust.  Was  he  to  endure  this 
man  for  ever,  to  give  up  everything 
for  him,  even  his  closest  relation- 
ship1? All  rebellious,  all  unquiet 
and  miserable  in  the  sudden  strain 
against  his  bonds,  he  stood  listen- 
ing sullenly,  shuffling  now  and  then 
as  he  changed  from  one  foot  to  an- 
other, otherwise  quite  silent,  meet- 
ing no  one's  eye. 


1894.] 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


489 


"Well,"  said  Mrs  Ogilvy,  her 
voice  trembling  a  little,  "  I  am  per- 
haps not  so  very  clear;  but  this 
other  thing  I  have  to  say  is  some- 
thing that  is  clear  enough  and  new 
too,  and  you  will  know  the  meaning 
of  it  better  than  me.  I  have  been 
to-day  to  the  gentleman  who  was 
the  first  to  tell  me  about  all  this — 
and  who  was  to  have  sent  out — to 
defend  my  son,  and  clear  him,  if  it 
was  possible  he  should  be  cleared. 
Listen  to  me,  Robbie !  That  gen- 
tleman has  told  me  to-day — that 
there  is  an  American  officer  come 

over  express  to  inquire It 

will  not  be  about  Robbie  —  they 
will  leave  him  quiet — think,  Mr 
Lew  !— it  will  be  for- " 

"For  me,  of  course,"  he  said, 
lightly.  "Well !  if  there's  danger 
we'll  meet  it.  I  like  it,  on  the 
whole — it  stirs  a  fellow's  blood. 
We  were  getting  too  comfortable, 
Bob,  settling  down,  making  our- 
selves too  much  at  home.  The 
next  step  would  have  been  to  be 
bored — eh  ?  won't  say  that  process 
hadn't  begun." 

"Sir,"  said  Mrs  Ogilvy,  "you 
will  not  say  I  have  been  inhospit- 
able, or  grudged  you  whatever  I 
could  give " 

"Never,  mother,"  he  said. 
"You've  been  as  good  as  gold." 
He  had  risen  from  his  seat,  and 
begun  to  walk  about  with  an  alert 
light  step.  The  news  had  roused 
him ;  it  had  stirred  his  blood,  as  he 
said.  "We  must  see  about  this  exit 
of  yours — subterraneous  is  it? — 
out  of  the  Castle  of  Giant  Despair 
— no,  no,  out  of  the  good  fairy's 
castle,  down  into  the  wilds.  You 
must  show  me  this  at  once,  Bob. 
If  there's  a  Yank  on  the  trail  there's 
no  time  to  be  lost." 

"  There  is  perhaps  no  time  to  be 
lost — but  not  for  him,  only  for 
you.  My  words  are  not  kind,  but 
my  meaning  is,"  cried  Mrs  Ogilvy. 
"It  is  safest  for  you  not  to  be 


with  him,  and  for  him  not  to  be 
with  you.  Oh,  do  not  wait  here 
till  you're  traced  to  the  house, 
till  ye  have  to  run  and  break  your 
neck  down  that  terrible  road,  but 
go  while  everything  is  peaceable ! 
Mr  Lew,  you  shall  have  whatever 
money  you  want,  and  what  clothes 
we  can  furnish,  and  —  and  my 
blessing — God's  blessing." 

"  Don't  you  think,"  he  said, 
turning  upon  her,  "  you  are  un- 
dertaking a  little  too  much  ?  God's 
blessing  upon  a  fellow  like  me — 
that  has  committed  every  sin  and 
repented  of  none,  that  have  sent 
other  sinners  to  their  account,  and 
wronged  the  orphan,  and  all  that. 
God's  blessing ! " 

He  was  standing  in  the  middle 
of  the  room,  in  which  he  was  so 
inappropriate  a  figure,  with  his 
back  to  the  end  window,  which 
was  towards  the  west.  It  was 
now  late  in  the  afternoon,  and  the 
level  rays  pouring  in  made  a  broad 
bar  across  the  carpet,  and  fell  upon 
one  side  of  his  form,  which  par- 
tially intercepted  its  light  and 
cut  it  with  his  tall  outline.  Mrs 
Ogilvy  put  her  hands  together 
with  a  cry. 

"What  is  that?  What  is  it? 
Is  it  not  just  the  blessed  sun  that 
He  sends  upon  the  just  and  the 
unjust — never  stopping,  whatever 
you  have  done — His  sign  held  out 
to  you  that  He  has  all  His  bless- 
ings in  His  hand,  ready  to  give, 
more  ready  than  me,  that  am  a 
poor  creature,  no  fit  to  judge  ?  Oh, 
laddie — for  you're  little  more — see 
to  Him  holding  out  His  hand  ! " 

He  had  turned  round,  with  a 
vague  disturbed  motion,  not  know- 
ing what  he  did,  and  stood  for  a 
moment  looking  at  the  sunshine 
on  the  carpet,  and  his  own  figure 
which  intercepted  it  and  received 
the  glory  instead.  For  a  moment 
his  lip  quivered ;  the  lines  of  his 
face  moved  as  if  a  wind  had  blown 


490 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[Oct. 


over  them ;  his  eyes  fixed  on  the 
light,  as  if  he  expected  to  see  some 
miraculous  sight.  And  then  he 
gave  a  harsh  laugh,  and  turned 
round  with  a  shrug  of  his  shoul- 
ders. "It's  pretty,"  he  said, 
"  mother,  as  you  put  it :  but 
there's  no  time  to  enter  into  all 
that.  I've  perhaps  got  too  much 
to  clear  up  with  God,  don't  you 
know,  to  do  it  at  a  sitting;  but 
I'll  remember,  for  your  sake,  when 
I've  time.  Eh?  where  were  we 
before  this  little  picturesque  in- 
cident 1  You  were  saying  I  should 
have  money — to  pay  my  fare,  &c. 
Well,  that's  fair  enough.  Make 
it  enough  for  two,  and  we'll  be 
off,  eh,  Bob?  and  trouble  her  no 
more." 

But  Robbie  did  not  say  a  word. 
It  was  not  any  wise  resolution 
taken ;  it  was  rather  a  fit  of  tem- 
per, which  the  other,  used  to  his 
moods,  knew  would  pass  away. 
Lew  gave  another  shrug  of  his 
shoulders,  and  even  a  glance  of  con- 
fidential criticism  to  the  mother, 
as  if  she  were  in  the  secret  too. 
"  One  of  his  moods,"  he  said,  nod- 
ding at  her.  "  But,  bless  you  ! 
when  one  knows  how  to  take  him, 
they  don't  last."  He  touched  her 
shoulder  with  a  half  caress.  "  You 
go  and  lie  down  a  bit  and  rest. 
You're  too  tired  for  any  more. 
We'll  have  it  all  out  to-night,  or 
at  another  time." 

"  I  am  quite  ready  now — I  am 
quite  ready,"  she  cried,  terrified 
to  let  the  opportunity  slip.  He 
nodded  at  her  again,  and  waved 
his  hand  with  a  smile.  "Come 
along,  Bob,  come  along ;  let  us 
leave  her  in  quiet.  To-night  will 
be  soon  enough  to  settle  all  that— 
to-night  or — another  time."  He 
took  Rob  by  the  arm,  and  pushed 
his  reluctant  and  half  -  resisting 
figure  out  of  the  room.  Robert 
was  sullen  and  indisposed  to  his 
usual  submission. 


"  Let  me  go,"  he  said,  shaking 
off  the  hand  on  his  arm ;  "do 
you  think  I'm  going  to  be  pushed 
about  like  a  go-cart  ? " 

"If  you're  a  go-cart,  I  wish 
you'd  let  me  slip  into  you,"  said 
the  other.  It  was  not  a  very 
great  joke,  but  Robert  at  another 
moment  would  have  hailed  it  with 
a  shout  of  laughter.  He  received 
it  only  with  a  shrug  of  his  shoul- 
ders now. 

"I  wish  you'd  make  up  your 
mind  and  do  something,"  he  said. 

"  I  have  :  the  first  thing  is  to  see 
who  that  woman  is " 

"  A  woman !  when  you've  got 
to  run  for  your  life." 

"Do  you  think  I  mean  any 
nonsense,  you  fool?  She's  not  a 
woman,  she's  a  danger.  Man 
alive,  can't  you  see?  She'll  have 
to  be  squared  somehow.  And 
look  here,  Bob,"  he  said  suddenly, 
putting  his  arm  through  that  of 
his  friend's,  who  retained  his  re- 
luctant attitude — "  don't  sulk,  you 
ass :  ain't  we  in  the  same  boat — 
get  all  you  can  out  of  the  old 
girl.  We'll  have  to  make  tracks, 
I  suppose  —  and  a  lot  of  money 
runs  away  in  that.  Get  every- 
thing you  can  out  of  her.  She 
may  cool  down  and  repent,  don't 
you  see?  Strike,  Bob,  while  the 
iron's  hot.  The  old  girl " 

"Look  here,  I'll  not  have  her 
called  names;  neither  mother,  as 
if  you  had  any  right  to  her — nor 
— nor  any  other.  We've  had 
enough  of  that.  I'll  not  take  any 
more  of  it  from  you,  Lew  ! " 

"  Oh,  that's  how  it  is  ! "  said  the 
other  coolly,  with  a  sneer.  "Then 
I  beg  to  suggest  to  you,  my  friend 
Bob,  that  the  respectable  lady 
we're  talking  of  may  repent ;  and 
that  if  you're  not  a  fool,  and  won't 
take  more  energetic  measures, 
you'll  strike,  don't  you  see,  while 
the  iron  is  hot." 

Rob  gave  his  friend  a  look  of 


1894.] 

sullen  wrath,  and  then  disengaged 
his  arm  and  turned  away. 

"You'll  find  me  in  Andrew's 
bower,  among  the  flower -pots," 
Lew  called  after  him,  and  whist- 
ling a  tune,  went  off  behind  the 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


491 


house  to  the  garden,  where  in  the 
shade  Andrew  kept  his  tools  and 
all  the  accessories  of  his  calling. 
He  had  no  good  of  his  ain  tool- 
house,  since  thae  two  were  about, 
Andrew  complained  every  day. 


CHAPTER    XVIII. 


The  Hewan  was  very  quiet  and 
silent  that  afternoon.  Mrs  Ogilvy 
perhaps  would  not  have  recognised 
the  crisis  of  exhaustion  at  which 
she  had  arrived,  had  it  not  been 
for  the  remarks  of  the  stranger 
within  her  doors,  the  unwelcome 
guest  whom  she  was  so  anxious  to 
send  away,  and  who  yet  had  an 
eye  for  the  changes  of  her  counte- 
nance which  her  son  had  not.  He 
took  more  interest  in  her  fatigue 
than  Robbie,  who  did  not  remark 
it  even  now,  and  to  whom  it  had 
not  at  all  occurred  that  his  mother 
should  want  care  or  tenderness. 
She  had  always  given  it,  in  his  ex- 
perience ;  it  did  not  come  into  his 
mind.  But,  tutored  by  Lew,  Mrs 
Ogilvy  felt  that  she  could  do  no 
more.  She  went  to  her  room,  and 
even,  for  a  wonder,  lay  down  on 
her  bed,  half  apologising  to  herself 
that  it  was  just  for  once,  and  only 
for  half  an  hour.  But  the  house 
was  very  quiet.  There  was  no 
noise  below  to  keep  her  watchful. 
If  there  were  any  voices  at  all,  they 
came  in  a  subdued  murmur  from 
the  garden  behind,  where  perhaps 
Robbie  was  showing  to  his  friend 
the  breakneck  path  down  the  brae 
to  the  Esk,  which  nobody  had  re- 
membered during  the  many  years 
of  his  absence.  It  had  been  his 
little  mystery  which  he  had  de- 
lighted in  as  a  boy.  There  was 
no  gate  opening  on  it,  nor  visible 
mode  of  getting  at  it.  The  little 
gap  in  the  hedge  through  which  as 
a  boy  he  had  squeezed  himself  so 
often  was  all  concealed  by  subse- 


quent growth,  but  Robert's  eyes 
could  still  distinguish  it.  Mrs 
Ogilvy  said"  to  herself,  "  He  will 
be  showing  him  that  awful  road — - 
and  how  to  push  himself  through." 
She  felt  herself  repeat  vaguely  "  to 
push  himself  through,  to  push  him- 
self through,"  and  then  she  ceased 
to  go  on  with  her  thoughts.  She 
had  fallen  asleep;  so  many  times 
she  had  not  got  her  rest  at  night — 
and  she  was  very  tired.  She  fell 
asleep.  She  would  never  have 
permitted  herself  to  do  so  but  for 
these  words  of  Lew.  He  was  not 
at  all  bad.  They  said  he  had  taken 
away  a  man's  life — God  forgive 
him  ! — but  he  saw  when  a  woman 
was  tired — an  old  woman — that  was 
not  his  mother  :  may  be — if  he  had 

ever  had  a  mother And  here 

even  these  broken  half-words,  that 
floated  through  her  brain,  failed. 
She  fell  asleep — more  soundly  than 
she  had  slept  perhaps  for  years. 

The  thoughts  that  passed 
through  the  mind  of  the  adven- 
turer in  his  retreat  in  Andrew's 
tool  -  house  could  not  have  been 
agreeable  ones,  but  they  are  out 
of  my  power  to  trace  or  follow. 
Women  are  perhaps  more  ready 
to  see  their  disabilities  in  this  way 
than  men.  A  man  will  sometimes 
set  forth  in  much  detail,  as  if  he 
knew,  the  fancies,  evanescent  and 
changeful  as  a  dream,  of  a  girl's 
dawning  mind,  putting  them  all 
into  rigid  lines  of  black  and  white. 
Perhaps  he  thinks  the  greater  com- 
prehends the  less :  but  how  to 
tell  you  what  was  the  course  of 


492 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


reflections  and  endless  breaks  and 
takings  up  of  thought  in  the  mind 
of  a  man  who  had  a  career  to  look 
back  upon,  such  as  that  of  Lew,  is 
not  in  my  power.  I  might  repre- 
sent them  as  caused  by  sudden 
pangs  of  remorse,  by  dreadful  ques- 
tions whether,  if  he  had  not  done 
this  or  that !  by  haunting  recol- 
lections of  the  look  of  a  victim,  or 
of  the  circumstances  of  the  scenes 
in  which  a  crime  had  been  com- 
mitted :  by  a  horrible  crushing 
sense  that  nothing  could  recall 
those  moments  in  which  haste  and 
passion  had  overcome  all  that  was 
better  in  him.  I  do  not  believe 
that  Lew  thought  of  any  of  these 
things :  he  had  said  he  repented 
of  nothing — he  thought  of  nothing, 
I  well  believe,  but  of  the  present, 
which  was  hard  enough  for  any 
man,  and  how  he  was  to  get 
through  it.  It  was  a  situation 
much  worse  than  that  of  yester- 
day. Then  he  had  still  continued 
to  wonder  at  his  absolute  safety,  at 
the  extraordinary,  almost  absurd 
fact,  that  he  was  in  a  place  where 
nobody  had  ever  heard  of  him, 
where  his  name  did  not  convey  the 
smallest  thrill  of  terror  to  the 
feeblest.  He  had  laughed  at  this, 
even  when  he  was  alone,  not  with- 
out a  sense  of  injury,  and  convic- 
tion that  the  people  around  must 
be  "  born  fools  "  :  but  yet  a  comfort- 
able assurance  of  safety  all  the 
same— safety  which  had  half  be- 
gun to  bore  him,  as  he  said.  But 
now  that  situation  had  altogether 
changed.  There  was  a  woman  in 
this  place,  even  in  this  place,  who 
knew  him,  to  whose  mind  it  had 
conveyed  a  thrill  that  he  should 
be  here.  And  there  was  a  man  in 
Scotland  who  had  arrived  to  hunt 
him  down.  His  being  had  roused 
up  to  these  two  keen  points  of 
stimulation.  They  seemed  to  a  cer- 
tain degree  to  set  him  right  with 
himself,  a  man  not  accustomed  to 


[Oct. 

feel  himself  nobody :  and  in  the 
second  place,  they  roused  him  to 
fight,  to  that  prodigious  excitement, 
superior  perhaps  to  any  other  kind, 
which  flames  up  when  you  have  to 
fight  for  your  life.  I  suggest  with 
diffidence  that  these  were  probably 
the  thoughts  that  went  through 
him,  broken  with  many  admix- 
tures which  I  cannot  divine.  I 
believe  that  at  that  moment  less 
than  at  any  other  was  he  sorry  for 
the  crimes  that  he  had  committed. 
He  had  no  time  for  anything  in 
(what  he  would  have  called)  the 
way  of  sentiment.  He  had  quite 
enough  to  do  thinking  how  to  get 
out  of  this  strait,  to  get  again  into 
safety,  and  safety  of  a  kind  in 
which  he  should  be  less  hampered 
than  here.  There  was  the  old 
woman,  for  instance,  who  had 
been  kind  to  him,  whom  he  did 
not  want  to  shock  above  meas- 
ure or  to  get  into  trouble.  He 
resolved  he  would  not  take  refuge 
in  any  place  where  there  was  an 
old  woman  again,  unless  she  were 
an  old  woman  of  a  very  different 
kind.  Mrs  Ogilvy  was  quite 
right  in  her  conviction  that  there 
was  good  in  him.  He  did  not 
want  to  hurt  her,  even  to  hurt 
her  feelings.  In  short,  he  would 
not  have  anything  done  to  vex  her, 
unless  there  was  no  other  way. 

But  though  I  cannot  throw 
much  light  on  his  thoughts,  I  can 
tell  you  how  he  spent  the  after- 
noon, to  outward  sight  and  con- 
sciousness, Robert  Ogilvy,  before 
the  arrival  of  this  companion,  had 
discovered  that  he  could  arrange 
himself  a  rude  sort  of  a  lounging- 
place  by  means  of  an  old  chair 
with  a  broken  seat,  and  some  of 
the  rough  wooden  boxes,  once 
filled  with  groceries,  &c.,  which 
had  been  placed  in  the  tool-house 
to  be  out  of  the  way,  and  in  which 
Andrew  sometimes  placed  his  seed- 
lings, and  sometimes  his  strips  of 


1894.] 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


493 


cloth  and  nails  and  sticks  for  tying 
up  his  flowers.  Lew  had  natu- 
rally edged  his  friend  out  of  this 
comfortable  place.  The  seat  of 
the  chair  was  of  cane-work,  and 
still  afforded  support  to  the  sitter, 
though  it  was  not  in  good  repair ; 
and  the  boxes  were  of  various 
heights,  so  that  a  variety  of  levels 
could  be  procured  when  he  tired 
of  one.  His  meditations  were  pro- 
moted by  smoke,  and  also  by  a 
great  deal  of  whisky-and-water,  for 
which  he  took  the  trouble  to  dis- 
arrange himself  periodically  to  ob- 
tain a  fresh  supply  from  the  bottle 
which  it  disturbed  Mrs  Ogilvy  to 
see  so  continually  on  the  table  in 
the  dining-room.  It  would  have 
been  more  convenient  to  have  it 
here — and  it  was  seldom  that  Lew 
subjected  himself  to  an  inconveni- 
ence; but  he  did  in  this  case,  I 
am  unable  to  tell  why.  It  must 
be  added  that  this  constant  re- 
freshing had  no  more  effect  upon 
him  than  as  much  water  would 
have  had  on  many  other  people. 
And  those  little  pilgrimages  into 
the  dining-room  were  the  only 
sound  he  made  in  the  quiet  of  the 
house. 

Robbie  had  gone  out,  to  chew 
his  cud  of  very  bitter  fancy.  His 
thoughts  were  not  so  uncomplicated, 
so  distinguishable,  as  those  of  his 
stronger-minded  friend.  He  had 
been  seized  quite  suddenly,  as  he 
had  been  at  intervals  ever  since 
he  fell  under  Lew's  influence,  with 
a  revulsion  of  feeling  against  this 
man,  to  whom  he  had  been  for  this 
month  past,  as  for  years,  with 
broken  intervals,  before,  the  chose, 
the  chattel,  the  shadow  and  echo. 
It  was  perhaps  the  nature  of  poor 
Robbie  to  be  the  chose  of  some- 
body, of  any  one  who  would  take 
possession  of  him  except  his  natural 
guides :  but  there  was  a  strain  of 
the  fantastic  in  his  spirit,  as  well 
as  an  instinct  for  what  was  lawful 


and  right,  which  had  made  him  in- 
sufferable among  the  strange  com- 
rades to  whom  he  had  drifted,  yet 
never  was  strong  enough  to  sever 
him  from  their  lawless  company. 
He  had  never  himself  done  any 
violent  or  dishonest  act,  though  he 
was  one  of  the  band  who  did,  and 
had  doubtless  indirectly  profited 
by  their  ill-gotten  gains.  Perhaps 
refraining  himself  from  every  prac- 
tical breach  of  law,  it  gave  him  a 
pleasure,  an  excitement,  to  see  the 
others  breaking  it  constantly,  and 
to  study  the  strange  phenomena 
of  it  1  I  suggest  this  possible  ex- 
planation to  minds  more  philo- 
sophical than  mine.  Certainly 
Bobbie  was  not  philosophical,  and 
if  he  was  moved  by  so  subtle  a 
principle,  was  quite  unaware  of  it. 
He  was  in  a  tumult  of  disgust  on 
this  occasion  with  Lew,  and  every- 
thing connected  with  him — with 
all  the  trouble  of  hiding  him,  of 
securing  his  escape,  of  keeping 
watch  and  ward  for  his  sake,  and 
of  getting  money  for  him  out  of 
the  little  store  which  his  mother 
had  saved  for  him,  Robbie,  and 
not  for  any  stranger.  This  piquant 
touch  of  personal  loss  perhaps  did 
more  than  anything  else  to  in- 
tensify his  sudden  ill -humour, 
offence,  and  rebellion.  He  strayed 
out  to  see  if  the  gap  could  be 
passed,  if  the  deep  precipitous 
gully  down  the  side  of  the  hill 
gave  shelter  enough  for  a  hurried 
escape.  As  he  wandered  down 
towards  the  little  stream,  his  eyes 
suddenly  became  suspicious,  and 
he  saw  a  pursuer  behind  every 
tree  and  bush.  He  thought  he 
saw  a  man's  hat  in  the  distance 
always  disappearing  as  he  followed 
it :  he  thought  even  that  the  little 
girls  playing  beyond  in  the  open 
looked  at  him  with  significant 
glances,  pointing  him  out  to  each 
other — and  this  indeed  was  not  a 
fancy ;  but  there  was  nothing  dan- 


494 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[Oct. 


gerous  in  the  indication — "  Eh,  see 
yon  man  !  that's  the  lady's  son  at 
the  Hewan" — which  these  young 
persons,  not  at  all  conspirators, 
gave. 

In  the  evening,  as  it  began  to 
grow  dark,  the  two  men  as  usual 
went  out  together.  It  means  al- 
most more  than  a  deadly  quarrel, 
and  the  substitution  of  hate  for 
love  or  liking,  to  break  a  habit 
even  of  recent  date;  and  Robert 
had  hated  Lew,  and  longed  to  be 
delivered  from  him,  a  dozen  times 
at  least,  without  anything  follow- 
ing. They  went  out  very  silent 
at  first,  very  watchful,  not  miss- 
ing a  single  living  creature  that 
went  past  them,  though  these  were 
not  many.  They  had  both  the 
highly  educated  eyes  of  men  who 
knew  what  it  was  to  be  hunted, 
and  were  quick  to  discover  every 
trace  of  a  pursuer  or  an  enemy. 
But  the  innocent  country-road  was 
innocent  as  ever,  with  very  few 
passengers,  and  not  one  of  them 
likely  to  awaken  alarm  in  the  most 
nervous  bosom.  The  silence  be- 
tween them,  however,  continued 
so  long,  and  it  was  so  difficult  to 
make  Robbie  say  anything,  that 
his  companion  began  at  last  to  ask 
questions,  already  half  answered 
in  previous  conversations,  about 
the  visitor  who  had  recognised 
him.  "  Somebody  who  has  not 
been  very  long  here  —  a  stranger 
(like  myself),  but  likely  to  form 
permanent  relations  in  the  place 
(not  like  me  there,  alas  !),"  said 
Lew.  "Not  to  put  too  fine  a 
point  upon  it,  she's  going  to  marry 
the  minister.  That's  so,  ain't  it  ?  " 
Lew  said. 

"  That's  what  it  is,  so  far  as  I 
know." 

"Look  here,"  he  went  on, 
"there's  several  things  in  that 
to  take  away  its  importance.  In 
the  first  place,  it  could  not  be  in 


the  first  society  of  Colorado — the 
creme  de  la  creme,  you  know — that 
she'd  meet  me." 

To  this  Robert  assented  merely 
with  a  sort  of  groan. 

"  From  which  it  follows,  that  if 
she  is  setting  up  here  in  the  odour 
of  sanctity,  it's  not  for  her  interests 
to  make  a  fuss  about  my  acquaint- 
ance." 

"  She  might  give  you  up,  to  get 
rid  of  you,"  Robert  said,  curtly. 

"  Come  now,"  said  his  com- 
panion ;  "  human  nature's  bad 
enough,  but  hanged  if  it's  so  bad 
as  that." 

"Oh,  I  thought  you  were  of 
opinion  that  nothing  was  too 
bad " 

"  Hold  hard  !  "  said  Lew.  "  If 
you  mean  to  carry  on  any  longer 
like  a  bear  with  a  sore  head,  I  pro- 
pose we  go  home." 

"  It's  as  you  like,"  Robert  said. 

"  Bob,"  said  the  other,  "  mutual 
danger  draws  fellows  together :  it's 
drawn  you  and  me  together  scores 
of  times.  We're  lost,  or  at  all 
events  I'm  lost,  if  it  turns  out 
different  now." 

"  Do  you  think  I'm  going  to 
give  you  up  ? "  said  Rob,  almost 
with  a  sneer. 

"  No,  I  don't,"  said  Lew,  calmly. 
"  You  haven't  the  spirit.  Your 
mammy  would  do  it  like  a  shot, 
if  it  wasn't  for — other  things." 

"What  other  things  T'  cried 
Rob,  fiercely. 

"  Well,  because  she's  got  a  heart 
— rather  bigger  than  her  spirit,  and 
that's  saying  a  great  deal  :  and 
because  she  believes  like  an  Arab 
— and  that's  saying  a  great  deal 
too — in  her  bread  and  salt." 

"  Look  here  ! "  cried  Rob,  look- 
ing about  him  for  a  reason,  "  I 
don't  mean  to  stand  any  longer 
the  way  you  speak  of  my  mother. 
Whatever  she  is,  she  is  my  mother, 
and  I'll  not  listen  to  any  gibes  on 


1894.] 

that  subject  —  least  of  all  from 
you." 

"  What  gibes  ?  I  say  her  heart 
is  greater  even  than  her  spirit.  I 
might  say  that" — and  here  Lew 
made  something  like  the  sign  of 
the  Cross,  for  he  had  queer  frag- 
ments of  religion  in  him,  and  some- 
times thought  he  was  a  Roman 
Catholic  — "  of  the  Queen  of 
heaven." 

"You  call  her  mother,"  cried 
Hob,  angrily. 

"  I  should  like  to  know,"  said 
his  companion,  whose  temper  was 
invulnerable,  "  where  I  could  find 
a  better  name." 

"And  old  girl,"  cried  Rob,  work- 
ing himself  into  a  sort  of  fury, 
"  and — other  names." 

"  I  beg  your  pardon,  old  fellow ; 
there  I  was  wrong.  It  don't  mean 
anything,  you  know.  It  means 
dear  old  lady ;  but  I  know  it's  an 
ugly  style,  and  comes  from  bad 
breeding,  and  I'll  never  do  it 
again." 

A  sort  of  grunt,  half  satisfied, 
half  sullen,  came  from  Rob,  and 
his  companion  knew  the  worst  was 
over.  "Let's  think  a  little,"  he 
said — "  you're  grand  at  describing 
— tell  me  a  bit  what  that  woman  is 
like." 

Rob  hesitated  for  some  minutes, 
and  then  his  pride  gave  way. 

"  She's  what  you  might  call  all 
in  the  air,"  he  said. 

"Yes?" 

"  But  looks  at  you  to  see  if  you 
think  her  so." 

"That's  capital,  Bob." 

"  She  has  a  lot  of  fair  hair — 
dull-looking,  it  might  be  false,  but 
I  don't  think  somehow  it  is — and 
no  colour  to  speak  of,  but  might 
put  on  some,  I  should  say.  She 
looks  like  that." 

Lew  put  his  arm  within  Rob's 
as  if  accidentally,  and  gave  forth 
a  low  whistle.  "  If  that's  her,"  he 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


495 


said,  "  and  she's  going  to  marry  a 
minister — I  should  just  think  she 
would  like  to  get  me  out  of  the 
way." 

"  But  why,  then,  should  she  ask 
you  to  come  and  see  her  ? — for  she 
had  seen  you  on  the  sly,  and  that 
was  enough." 

"  There's  where  the  mystery 
comes  in :  but  you  never  know 
that  kind  of  woman.  There's  al- 
ways a  screw  loose  in  them  some- 
where. She  repents  it,  perhaps,  by 
now.  Let's  make  a  round  by  her 
house,  wherever  it  is,  and  perhaps 
we'll  see  her  through  a  window,  as 
she  saw  me." 

"It's  close  to  the  village — it's 
dangerous — don't  think  of  it,"  said 
Rob. 

"  Dangerous  ! "  cried  the  other  : 
"  what's  a  man  for  but  to  face 
danger — when  it  comes  ?  I'm  twice 
the  man  I  was  last  night.  I  smell 
the  smell  of  gunpowder  in  the  air. 
I  feel  as  if  I  could  face  the  worst 
road,  ten  minutes'  start,  and  fifty 
mile  an  hour." 

If  this  trumpet -note  was  in- 
tended to  rouse  Rob,  it  was  suc- 
cessful. His  duller  spirit  caught 
the  spark  of  excitement,  which 
moved  it  only  to  the  point  of 
exhilaration  and  drove  the  last 
mist  away.  They  went  on,  always 
with  caution,  always  watchful, 
through  a  corner  of  the  little 
town  where  the  houses  were  al- 
most all  closed,  and  the  good 
people  in  bed.  No  two  innocent 
persons,  however  observant,  were 
they  the  finest  naturalists  or  scien- 
tific observers  in  the  world,  ever 
saw  so  much  in  a  dark  road  as 
these  two  broken  men.  They  saw 
the  very  footsteps  of  the  few 
people  who  came  towards  them  in 
the  darkness,  darker  here  with 
the  shadow  of  the  houses  than  in 
the  open  country,  but  not  im- 
portant enough  to  have  lights  :  and 


49G 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[Oct. 


could  tell  what  manner  of  people 
they  were  —  honest,  meaning  no 
harm,  or  stealthy  and  prepared 
for  mischief — though  they  never 
saw  the  faces  that  belonged  to 
them.  "There's  one  that  means 
no  good,"  Lew  said.  There  was 
no  man  in  the  world  who  had  a 
greater  contempt  for  a  petty  thief. 
"I've  half  a  mind  to  warn  some 
one  of  him." 

"For  goodness'  sake,  make  no 
disturbance,"  said  the  (for  once) 
more  prudent  Rob. 

Presently  they  came  to  Mrs  Ain- 
slie's  house,  a  little  square  house, 
with  its  door  close  to  the  road,  but  a 
considerable  garden  behind.  There 
was  light  in  the  windows  still,  but 
no  chance  of  seeing  into  the  interior 
behind  the  closed  blinds.  "Let's 
risk  it,  Bob ;  let's  go  and  pay  our 
call  like  gentlemen,"  said  Lew. 

"You  don't  think  of  such  a 
thing  !  "  cried  Robert,  holding  him 
back.  This  was  perhaps  one  of 
the  things  that  bound  Lew's  fol- 
lowers to  him  most.  Sometimes 
the  excitement  of  risk  and  dar- 
ing got  into  his  veins  like  wine, 
and  then  the  youngest  and  least 
guarded  of  them  had  to  change 
roles  with  the  captain  and  re- 
strain him.  But  whether  Rob 
could  have  succeeded  in  doing  so 
can  never  be  known,  for  at  the 
moment  there  were  sounds  in  the 
house,  and  the  door  was  opened, 
and  a  conversation,  begun  inside, 
was  carried  on  for  a  minute  or 
two  there.  The  pair  who  appeared 
were  the  minister  and  Mrs  Ainslie. 
He  all  dark,  his  face  shaded  by 
his  hat :  she  in  a  light  dress,  and 
with  a  candle  in  her  hand,  which 
threw  its  light  upon  her  face. 
She  was  saying  good-night,  and 
bidding  her  visitor  take  care  of 
the  corner  where  it  was  so  dark. 
"There  is  what  your  people  call  a 
dub  there,"  she  said,  with  one  of 


those  shrill  laughs  which  cut  the 
air — and  she  held  the  candle  high 
to  guide  her  visitor's  parting  steps. 
He  answered,  in  a  voice  very  dull 
and  low-pitched  after  hers,  that  he 
was  bound  to  know  every  dub  in 
the  place ;  and  so  went  off,  bid- 
ding her,  if  she  went  to  Edinburgh 
in  the  morning,  be  sure  to  be  back 
in  good  time. 

She  stood  there  for  a  moment 
after  he  was  gone,  and  held  up  her 
candle  again,  as  if  that  could  pierce 
instead  of  increasing  the  darkness 
around  her,  and  looked  first  in  one 
direction,  then  in  the  other.  Then 
she  stood  for  a  second  minute  as  if 
listening,  and  then  slightly  shak- 
ing her  head,  turned  and  went  in 
again.  If  she  could  have  seen  the 
two  set  faces  watching  her  out 
of  the  darkness,  within  the  deep 
shadow  of  the  opposite  wall !  Lew 
grasped  Rob's  arm  as  in  a  vice, 
and  with  the  other  hand  sought 
that  pocket  to  which  he  turned  so 
naturally  :  while  Rob  followed  the 
movement  in  a  panic,  and  got  his 
hand  upon  that  which  already 
had  half  seized  the  revolver. 
"  You  wouldn't  be  such  an  idiot, 
Lew ! " 

"If  I  gave  her  a  bullet,"  said 
the  other  in  the  darkness,  "  it 
would  be  the  least  of  her  deserts, 
and  the  cheapest  for  the  world." 
Their  voices  could  not  have  been 
audible  to  Mrs  Ainslie,  turning  to 
shut  her  door,  but  something  must 
have  thrilled  the  air,  for  she  came 
out,  and  looked  up  and  down 
again.  Was  she  as  fearless  as  the 
others,  and  fired  with  excitement 
too  ?  And  then  the  closing  of  the 
door  echoed  out  into  the  stillness, 
— not  the  report  of  the  revolver, 
thank  heaven  !  She  had  shown  no 
signs  of  alarm  :  but  the  two  men, 
as  they  went  away,  trembled  in 
every  limb — Rob  with  alarm  and 
excitement,  and  the  sense  that 


1894.] 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


497 


murder  had  been  in  the  air;  his 
companion  with  other  feelings 
still. 

It  was  very  late  when  Mrs 
Ogilvy  woke,  and  then  not  of  her- 
self, but  by  Robbie's  call,  whom 
she  suddenly  roused  herself  to  see 
standing  in  the  dark  by  her  bed- 
side. It  was  quite  dark,  not  any 
lingering  of  light  in  the  sky,  which 
showed  how  far  on  in  the  night  it 
was.  She  sprang  up  from  her  bed, 
crying  out,  "What  has  happened 
— what  have  I  been  doing  1 "  with 
something  like  shame.  "Have  I 
been  sleeping  all  this  time1?"  she 
cried  with  dismay. 

"Don't  hurry,  mother — you  were 
tired  out.  I'm  very  glad  you  have 
slept.  Nothing's  wrong.  Don't 
get  up  in  a  hurry.  I  should  like 
to  speak  to  you  here.  I've — got 
something  to  say." 

"What  is  it,  Robbie? — whatever 
it  is,  my  dear,  would  you  not  like 
alight?" 

"  No.  I  like  this  best.  I  used 
to  creep  into  your  room  in  the 
dark,  if  you  remember,  when  I  had 
something  to  confess.  I  had  al- 
ways plenty  to  confess,  mother." 

"Oh,  my  Robbie,  my  dear,  my 
dear ! " 

She  stretched  out  her  hands  to 
him  to  touch  his,  to  draw  him 
near :  but  he  still  hung  at  a  little 
distance,  a  tall  shadow  in  the  dark. 

"  It  is  not  for  myself  this  time. 
It  is  Lew :  he  was  very  much 
touched  with  what  you  said  to- 
day. He'll  go,  I  believe — whether 
with  me  or  not.  I  might  see  him 
away,  and  then  come  back.  But 
the  chief  thing  after  all,  you  know, 
is  the  money.  You  said  you  would 
give  him " 

"  Oh,  Robbie,  God  be  praised! — 
whatever  he  required  for  his  pas- 
sage, and  to  give  him  a  new  be- 
ginning; but  you'll  not  leave  me 
again,  not  you,  not  you  !  " 


"  I  did  not  say  I  would,"  he  said, 
with  a  querulous  tone  in  his  voice. 
"  His  passage !  He  wouldn't  go 
back  to  America,  you  know." 

"No,  my  dear,  I  did  not  sup- 
pose he  would.  I  thought — one 
of  the  islands,"  said  Mrs  Ogilvy, 
in  subdued  tones. 

"  One  of  the  islands !  I  don't 
know  what  you  mean"  (and,  in- 
deed, neither  did  she),  "unless  it 
were  New  Zealand,  perhaps — that's 
an  island :  but  you  would  not 
banish  him  there,  mother.  Lew 
thinks  he  might  go  to  India.  He 
might  begin  again,  and  do  better 
there." 

"India  —  that  is  far,  far  away 
— and  a  dear  passage,  and  all  the 
luxuries  you  want  there.  Robbie, 
I  would  not  grudge  it  for  myself 
— it  is  for  you,  my  dear." 

"If  he  had  plenty  of  money,  it 
would  be  his  best  chance." 

Mrs  Ogilvy  slid  softly  off  the 
bed,  where  she  had  been  listening. 
She  was  as  generous  as  a  princess 
— as  princesses  used  to  be  in  the 
time  of  the  fairy  tales;  but  it 
startled  her  that  this  stranger 
should  expect  "  plenty  of  money  " 
from  her  hands.  "  How  could  we 
give  him  that  ? "  she  said  :  "  and 
whatever  went  to  him,  it  would  be 
taken  from  you,  Robbie.  If  you 
will  fix  on  a  sum,  I  will  do  every- 
thing I  can.  I  do  not  grudge 
him,  no,  no.  My  heart  is  wae  for 
him.  But  to  despoil  my  only  son, 
my  one  bairn,  for  a  stranger.  It 
is  not  just,  it  is  not  what  I  should 
do— 

"Would  you  give  him  a  thou- 
sand pounds,  mother  ? " 

"A  thousand  pounds  !"  she  cried 
with  a  shriek.  "Laddie,  are  ye 
wild? — the  greatest  part  of  what 
you  will  have — the  half,  or  near 
the  half,  of  all.  I  think  one  of 
us  is  out  of  our  senses,  either  you 
or  me ! " 


498 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[Oct. 


CHAPTER    XIX. 


Mrs  Ainslie,  who  is  a  person 
with  whom  this  history  is  little 
concerned,  and  whose  character 
and  antecedents  I  have  no  desire 
to  set  forth,  had  been  moved,  by 
the  suddenness  and  unexpected- 
ness of  her  vision  through  the 
dining-room  window  of  the  Hewan, 
to  commit  what  she  afterwards  felt 
to  be  a  great  mistake.  Hitherto, 
after  the  experience  gained  in  a 
hundred  adventures,  she  had  found 
the  role  which  she  had  chosen  to 
play  in  the  rustic  innocence  of 
Eskholm  not  a  difficult  one.  No 
one  suspected  her  of  anything  but 
a  little  affectation,  a  little  absurd- 
ity, and  a  desire  to  be  believed  a 
fine  lady,  which,  if  it  did  not  de- 
ceive the  better  instructed,  yet 
harmed  nobody.  Society,  even  in 
its  most  obscure  developments — 
and  especially  village  society — is 
suspicious,  people  say.  If  so — of 
which  I  am  doubtful — then  it  is 
generally  suspicious  in  the  wrong 
way;  and  there  was  nobody  in 
Eskholm  who  had  the  least  sus- 
picion of  Mrs  Ainslie's  anteced- 
ents, or  imagined  that  she  could 
be  anything  but  what  she  professed 
to  be,  an  officer's  widow.  Military 
ladies  are  allowed  to  be  like  their 
profession,  a  little  pushing  and 
forward,  not  meek  and  mild  like 
the  model  woman.  She  knew  her- 
self, of  course,  how  much  cause  for 
suspicion  there  was ;  and  she  saw 
discovery  in  people's  eyes  who  had 
never  even  supposed  any  inquiry 
into  the  truth  of  her  statements 
to  be  called  for  :  and  thus  she  was 
usually  very  much  on  her  guard, 
notwithstanding  the  apparent  free- 
dom of  her  manners  and  lightness 
of  her  heart.  But  the  sudden 
sight  of  an  old  comrade  in  the 
very  midst  of  this  changed  and 
wonderful  life  of  respectability 


which  she  was  living,  had  startled 
her  quite  out  of  herself.  Lew  !  in 
the  midst  of  respectability  even 
greater  than  her  own,  in  the 
Hewan,  the  abode  of  all  that  was 
most  looked  up  to  and  esteemed ! 
The  surprise  took  away  her  breath ; 
and  with  the  surprise  there  came 
a  flood  of  recollections,  of  remem- 
bered scenes — oh !  very  much  more 
piquant  than  anything  known  on 
Eskside ;  of  gay  revelry,  movement, 
and  adventure,  fun  and  freedom. 
That  life  which  is  called  "  wild " 
and  "  gay"  and  "fast,"  and  so  many 
other  misnomers,  and  which  looks 
in  general  so  miserable  to  the 
lookers-on,  has  no  doubt  its  charms 
like  another,  and  the  excitements 
of  the  past  look  all  pure  dash  and 
delight  to  the  people  who  have  for- 
gotten what  deadliest  of  all  ennui 
lay  behind  them.  There  flashed 
upon  this  woman  a  sudden  thought 
of  a  gay  meeting  like  those  of  old, 
full  of  reminiscence,  and  mutual 
inquiry,  what  has  become  of  Jack 
and  what  has  happened  to  Jill, 
and  of  laughter  over  many  a  sport 
and  feat  that  were  past.  It  did 
not  occur  to  her  at  the  moment 
that  to  hear  what  had  happened 
to  Jack  and  Jill  would  probably 
be  dismal  enough.  She  thought 
only,  amid  the  restraints  of  the 
present  life  in  which  no  fun  was, 
what  fun  to  see  one  of  the  old  set 
again,  and  to  ask  after  everybody, 
and  hear  all  that  had  been  going 
on,  all  at  her  ease,  and  without 
fear  of  discovery  in  the  middle  of 
the  night.  She  divined  without 
difficulty  that  Lew  was  here  in 
hiding  for  no  innocent  cause,  and 
that  Mrs  Ogilvy's  long  -  vanished 
son,  who  was  mysteriously  known 
to  have  returned,  but  who  had 
never  showed  himself  openly,  was 
in  some  compromising  way  in- 


1894.] 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


499 


volved  with  him,  and  keeping 
him  out  of  sight.  She  understood 
now  the  stories  about  the  long 
night-walks  of  the  two  gentlemen 
at  the  Hewan  of  which  she  had 
heard :  and  her  well-worn  heart 
gave  a  jump  to  think  of  a  jovial 
meeting  so  unexpected,  so  refresh- 
ing, in  which  she  could  renew  her 
spirit  a  little  more  than  with  all 
the  preparations  necessary  for  her 
future  part  of  the  minister's  wife. 
It  would  be  a  farewell  to  the  past 
which  she  could  never  have  dared 
to  anticipate,  and  the  thought  gave 
an  extraordinary  exhilaration,  as 
well  as  half-panic  which  was  part 
of  the  exhilaration,  to  her  mind. 
It  was  as  if  a  stream  of  life  had 
been  poured  into  her  veins — life, 
which  was  not  always  enjoyable, 
but  yet  was  living,  according  to 
the  formula  of  those  to  whom  life 
has  probably  more  moments  of 
complete  dulness  and  self-disgust 
than  to  the  dullest  of  those  half- 
lives  which  they  despise. 

But  when  Mrs  Ainslie  got  home, 
and  began  to  reflect  on  the  matter, 
she  saw  how  great  a  mistake  she 
had  made.  If  she  knew  him,  so 
did  he  also  know  her  and  all  her 
antecedents.  It  had  given  her  a 
thrill  of  pleasure  to  think  of  meet- 
ing him,  and  talking  over  the  past; 
but  it  was  equally  possible  to  her 
to  betray  him,  in  her  new  role  as 
a  respectable  member  of  society : 
and  she  knew  that  she  would  not 
hesitate  to  do  so,  should  it  prove 
necessary.  But  it  was  equally 
possible  that  he  might  betray  her. 
It  did  not  take  her  more  than  five 
minutes'  serious  thinking,  when  the 
first  excitement  of  the  discovery 
was  over,  to  show  her  that  to  dis- 
close herself  to  Lew,  and  put  in 
his  hands  a  means  of  ruining  her, 
or  of  holding  her  in  terror  at 
least,  was  the  last  thing  that  was 
to  be  desired.  Lew  in  Colorado, 
or  as  a  chance  exile  from  that  para- 


dise, ready  to  disappear  again  into 
the  unknown,  was  little  dangerous, 
and  a  chance  meeting  with  him 
the  most  amusing  accident  that 
was  likely  to  befall  her.  But  Lew 
in  England,  or,  still  worse,  Scot- 
land, at  her  very  door,  ready  on 
any  occasion  to  inform  her  new 
friends  who  she  was  or  had  been, 
was  a  very  different  matter.  She 
owned  to  herself  that  she  had 
never  done  anything  so  mad  or 
foolish  in  her  life.  On  the  eve 
of  becoming  Mr  Logan's  wife,  of 
being  provided  for  for  the  rest  of 
her  life,  of  being  looked  up  to  and 
respected,  and  an  authority  in  the 
place — and  by  one  foolish  word  to 
throw  all  this,  which  was  almost 
certainty,  into  the  chaos  of  risk 
and  daily  danger,  at  the  mercy  of 
a  man  who  could  spoil  everything 
if  he  pleased,  or  could  at  least 
hold  the  sword  over  her  head  and 
make  her  existence  a  burden  to 
her !  What  a  thing  was  this 
which  she  had  done  !  When 
she  saw  Mr  Logan  to  the  door 
on  that  evening,  her  aspect  was 
more  animated  and  bright  than 
ever,  but  her  heart  in  reality  was 
quaking.  It  was  foolish  of  her 
to  take  the  candle ;  but  it  was 
her  habit,  and  it  would  have  been 
remarked,  she  thought  in  her 
terror,  if  she  had  not  done  it : 
and  then  she  stood  and  looked  up 
and  down,  still  with  that  light  in 
her  hand — thankful  that  at  least 
the  minister  was  gone,  that  he 
would  not  meet  these  visitors  if 
they  came :  then  with  relief  mak- 
ing up  her  mind  that  they  would 
not  come — that  Lew,  if  he  were  in 
hiding,  would  be  as  much  afraid 
of  her  as  she  of  him. 

She  had  a  disturbed  night,  full 
of  alarm  and  much  planning  and 
thinking,  sitting  up  till  it  was 
almost  daylight,  in  terror  that  the 
visit  which  she  had  been  so  foolish 
as  to  invite  might  be  paid  at  any 


500 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[Oct. 


unlawful  hour.  And  when  the 
next  morning  came,  it  was  ap- 
parent to  her  that  she  must  do 
something  at  once  to  provide 
against  such  a  danger,  to  save  her- 
self from  the  consequences  of  her 
foolishness.  How  it  had  been 
that  an  adventuress  like  this  had 
managed  to  secure  for  her  daughter 
the  most  respectable  of  marriages 
in  respectable  Edinburgh,  is  a  ques- 
tion into  which  I  cannot  enter.  It 
had  not  been,  indeed,  Mrs  Ainslie's 
doing  at  all.  The  girl,  who  knew 
none  of  her  mother's  disreputable 
secrets,  had  made  acquaintance  in 
a  foreign  hotel  with  some  girls  of 
her  own  age,  who  had  afterwards 
invited  her  to  visit  them  in  Edin- 
burgh. Such  things  are  done  every 
day,  and  come  to  harm  so  seldom 
that  it  is  scarcely  worth  taking  the 
adverse  chances  into  consideration. 
And  there,  in  the  shelter  of  a  most 
respectable  family,  the  most  re- 
spectable of  men  had  fallen  in  love 
with  Sophie.  It  was  all  so  rapid 
that  examination  into  the  position 
of  the  Ainslies  was  impossible. 
Sophie  had  no  money :  her  father 
had  been  killed  in  some  campaign 
in  India  which  happened  to  co- 
incide with  the  date  of  her  birth. 
She  was  pretty,  and  not  anything 
but  good  so  far  as  her  upbringing 
had  permitted.  I  give  this  brief 
sketch  in  hot  haste,  as  indeed  the 
matter  was  done — for  Mrs  Ainslie 
had  announced  that  she  had  only 
come  to  Eskholm  for  a  few  weeks, 
and  was  going  "  abroad "  again 
immediately.  Perhaps  it  was  the 
acquisition  of  a  son-in-law  so  abso- 
lutely correct  as  Mr  Thomas  Blair 
— dear  Tom,  as  his  mother-in-law 
always  called  him — that  put  into 
her  head  the  possibility  of  be- 
coming herself  an  unexceptionable 
member  of  society,  furnished  with 
all  possible  certificates  by  marry- 
ing Mr  Logan.  At  all  events,  it 


was  her  son-in-law  to  whom  she 
now  betook  herself  after  many 
thoughts,  with  that  skill  of  the 
long  -  experienced  schemer  which 
is  capable  of  using  truth  as  an 
instrument  often  more  effectual 
than  falsehood.  She  went  to  him 
(he  was  a  lawyer)  with  all  the 
candour  of  a  woman  who  has  made, 
with  grief  for  her  neighbour,  a 
dreadful  discovery,  and  who  in  the 
interests  of  her  neighbour,  not  in 
her  own — for  what  could  she  have 
to  do  with  anything  so  wicked 
and  terrible  1 — thinks  it  necessary 
to  reveal  what  she  has  seen.  In 
this  way  she  made  Mr  Blair  aware 
of  the  circumstances  of  her  visit 
at  the  Hewan,  and  the  man  she 
had  seen  there.  She  told  him  that 
she  had  been  present  at  the  trial 
of  this  man  in  America — it  was 
one  of  her  frank  and  simple  state- 
ments, which  were  so  perfectly  can- 
did and  above  board,  that  she  had 
lived  in  various  parts  of  America 
after  her  husband's  death  —  for 
various  terrible  crimes.  She  had 
seen  him  in  court  for  days  together, 
and  could  not  be  mistaken  in  him  : 
and  the  idea  that  so  excellent  a 
person  as  Mrs  Ogilvy  had  such  a 
man  in  her  house  was  too  dread- 
ful to  think  of.  What  should  she 
do  1  Should  she  warn  Mrs  Ogilvy  ? 
But  then  no  doubt  he  was  in  some 
way  mixed  up  with  Mrs  Ogilvy's 
son,  who  had  lately  returned  home 
in  a  mysterious  and  unexpected 
way.  Mr  Blair  was  much  in- 
terested by  the  story.  He  sym- 
pathised fully  in  the  dreadful 
dilemma  in  which  the  poor  lady 
found  herself.  He,  too,  knew  Mrs 
Ogilvy,  and  remembered  Robbie 
in  his  youth  perfectly  well.  He 
was  always  a  weak  fellow,  ready 
to  be  led  away  by  any  one.  No 
doubt  her  idea  was  quite  right. 
And  then  he  smote  his  hand  upon 
his  leg,  and  gave  vent  to  a  whistle. 


1894.] 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


501 


"  What  if  it  should  turn  out  to  be 
this  Lew  Smith  or  Lew  Wallace  or 
something,  for  whom  there  was  a 
warrant  out,  and  a  detective  from 
America  on  the  search  ! " 

"  Lew — that  is  exactly  the  name 
—I  had  forgotten — his  other  name 
I  don't  remember.  He  was  spoken 
of  as  Lew " 

"And  you  could  swear  to  this 
fellow  ?  You  are  sure  you  could 
swear  to  him  1 " 

"Swear!  oh,  with  a  clear  con- 
science !  But  don't  ask  me  to,  dear 
Tom.  Think  what  it  is  for  a 
delicate  woman — the  publicity,  the 
notoriety !  Oh,  don't  make  me 
appear  in  a  court :  I  should  never, 
never  survive  it !  "  she  cried. 

"  Oh,  nonsense,  mamma  ! "  The 
respectable  son-in-law  was  so  com- 
pletely innocent  of  all  suspicion 
that  he  had  adopted  his  wife's 
name  for  her  mother.  "But  I 
allow  it's  not  pleasant  for  a  lady," 
he  said  :  "  perhaps  you  won't  be 
wanted  —  but  you  could  on  an 
emergency  swear  to  him." 

"  If  it  was  of  the  last  necessity," 
she  said,  trembling,  and  her  trem- 
bling was  very  real.  She  said  to 
herself  at  the  same  moment,  No ! 
never !  appear  in  an  open  court 
with  Lew  opposite  to  me, — never  ! 
never  !  She  was  one  of  the  many 
people  in  the  world  who  think, 
after  they  have  put  the  match  to 
the  gunpowder,  that  there  is  still 
time  to  do  something  to  make  it 
miss  fire. 

Tom  Blair  was  very  sympathetic 
with  the  woman's  tremors  who 
could  not  appear  in  a  public  court, 
and  yet  would  do  so  if  it  was  ab- 
solutely necessary.  He  bade  her 
go  home  to  Sophie  and  have  some 
lunch,  and  that  he  would  himself 
return  as  early  as  he  could,  and 
tell  her  if  he  heard  anything. 
And  Mrs  Ainslie  went  to  the 
Royal  Crescent,  where  the  pair 

VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCXLVIII. 


were  established,  and  admired  the 
nice  new  furniture,  and  the  man 
in  livery  of  whom  Sophie  was  so 
proud.  But  she  did  not  wait  to 
hear  what  news  dear  Tom  would 
bring  home.  She  left  all  sorts  of 
messages  for  him,  telling  of  en- 
gagements she  had,  and  things  to 
be  done  for  Mr  Logan.  She  could 
not  face  him  again :  and  it  began 
to  appear  a  danger  for  her,  though 
she  had  great  confidence  in  her 
powers  of  invention,  to  be  ques 
tioned  too  closely  by  any  one  ac- 
customed to  evidence,  who  might 
turn  her  inside  out  before  she 
knew.  And,  indeed,  her  mind 
was  very  busy  working,  now  that 
she  had  put  that  match  to  the 
gunpowder,  to  prevent  it  going  off. 
She  went  into  a  stationer's  shop 
on  the  way  to  the  station,  and  got 
paper  and  an  envelope,  and  wrote, 
disguising  her  hand,  an  anonymous 
letter  to  Mrs  Ogilvy,  bidding  her 
get  her  guest  off  at  once,  for  the 
police  were  after  him.  This  was  a 
work  of  art  with  which  Mrs  Ains- 
lie was  not  at  all  unacquainted,  and 
she  flattered  herself  that  the  post- 
mark "  Edinburgh  "  would  quench 
all  suggestions  of  herself  as  its 
author.  If  he  only  could  get 
away  safe  without  compromising 
any  one,  that  would  be  so  much 
better.  She  did  not  want  to  be 
hard  upon  him.  Oh,  not  at  all. 
She  had  been  silly,  very  silly,  to 
think  of  a  meeting :  but  she  bore 
him  no  malice.  If  he  had  the 
sense  to  steal  away  before  any  one 
went  after  him,  that  would  be  far 
the  best  and  the  safest  of  all. 

She  went  home  to  her  house, 
and  there  proceeded  with  her  pre- 
parations for  her  marriage,  which 
had  been  going  on  merrily.  She 
spent  the  afternoon  with  her 
dressmaker,  an  occupation  which 
pleased  her  very  much.  She  was 
not  a  needlewoman,  she  could  not 
2  K 


502 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[Oct. 


make  anything  that  was  wanted 
for  herself — but  she  could  stand 
for  hours  like  a  lay  figure  to  be 
"  tried  on."  That  did  not  weary 
her  at  all ;  and  this  process  made 
the  time  pass  as  perhaps  nothing 
else  could  have  done.  Mr  Logan 
once  more  spent  the  evening  with 
her,  and  she  had  again  a  time  of 
dreadful  anxiety,  in  the  fear  that 
still  Lew  might  appear,  might 
meet  the  minister  at  the  door,  and 
rouse  a  thousand  questions.  For 
the  first  time  it  began  to  appear 
possible  to  her  that  her  marriage 
might  not  come  off  after  all.  She 
might  never  wear  these  new  dresses 
— all  dove-colour  and  the  softest 
semi-religious  tints — as  Mr  Logan's 
wife.  She  might  have  to  set  out 
on  the  world  again,  and  get  her 
living  somehow,  instead  of  being 
safe  for  the  rest  of  her  days.  In- 
stinctively she  began  to  scheme 
for  that,  as  well  as  for  the  direct 
contrary  of  that,  and  in  the  same 
breath  arranged,  in  her  mind,  for 
the  packing  of  the  new  dresses 
and  their  transfer  to  the  capacious 
cupboards  in  the  manse,  and  for 
sending  them  back  to  the  dress- 
maker if  she  should  have  to  turn 
her  back  on  the  manse  and  fly. 
She  did  not  feel  sure  now  which 
thing  would  come  to  pass. 

But  once  more  the  evening 
passed  and  nobody  came.  She 
stood  for  some  time  at  her  door 
after  the  minister  left :  but  this 
time  in  the  darkness,  without  any 
candle,  listening  earnestly  for  any 
step  or  movement  in  the  night; 
but  no  one  came.  Had  he  taken 
fright  and  gone  away  at  once? 
That  was  the  thing  most  to  be 
desired,  but  from  that  very  fact 
the  most  unlikely  to  have  hap- 
pened. It  was  too  good  to  be 
true ;  and  Lew  was  not  the  man  to 
be  challenged  and  not  to  accept 
the  challenge — unless  he  were  ar- 


rested already  !  That  was  always 
possible,  but  that  too  was  almost 
too  good  to  be  true.  And  then 
there  was  the  chance  that  he 
might  say  something  about  her, 
that  he  might  spoil  her  fortune 
without  doing  any  good  to  his 
own.  If  she  harmed  him,  it  was 
for  good  reasons,  to  save  herself ; 
and  also,  a  plea  not  to  be  despised, 
to  save  poor  good  old  Mrs  Ogilvy  : 
but  he,  if  he  did  so,  would  do  it 
only  out  of  revenge,  and  without 
knowing  even  that  it  was  she  who 
had  betrayed  him.  All  that  night 
and  the  next  day  she  was  in  a 
great  state  of  nervous  excitement, 
not  able  to  keep  quiet.  She  went 
to  the  manse,  and  she  came  back 
again,  and  could  not  rest  any- 
where. Apparently  nothing  had 
happened  ;  for  if  there  had  been  a 
raid  of  the  police,  however  private, 
and  an  arrest  effected  at  the 
Hewan — and  she  knew  Lew  would 
not  tamely  allow  himself  to  be 
taken  —  some  news  of  it  must 
have  oozed  out.  It  would  be 
strange  if  it  passed  off  without 
bloodshed,  she  said  to  herself.  She 
would  have  understood  very  well 
that  movement  of  his  hand  to  his 
pocket  which  Mrs  Ogilvy  beheld 
so  quietly  without  knowing  at  all 
what  it  meant.  However  care- 
fully he  might-  be  entrapped,  how- 
ever sudden  the  rush  might  be 
upon  him,  Lew,  who  always  had 
his  wits  perfectly  about  him, 
would  have  time  to  get  at  his 
revolver.  She  knew  so  much 
better  than  any  one  what  must 
happen,  and  yet  here  she  was  a 
mile  off  and  knowing  nothing.  She 
fluttered  out  and  in  of  the  manse 
in  the  afternoon  in  her  excitement, 
very  gay  to  all  appearance,  and 
talking  a  great  deal. 

"You  are  in  excellent  spirits 
to-day,  my  dear,"  said  the  minister, 
who  was  delighted  with  her  gaiety. 


1894.] 

"But  I  hope  the  leddy  be-na 
fey,"  was  what  his  old  experienced 
cook,  who,  not  able  to  tolerate  a 
new  mistress,  was  leaving,  said. 

"  You  used  to  pay  visits  in  the 
evening  before  I  came  on  the 
scene,"  she  said  to  her  elderly 
lover.  "  You  used  to  go  and  see 
your  ladies  :  now  confess — I  know 
you  did." 

"I  don't  know  what  you  mean 
by  my  ladies,"  said  the  minister, 
who  was,  however,  flattered  by 
the  imputation.  "I  have  never 
had  any  lady,  my  dear,  till  I  met 
you." 

"That  is  all  very  well,"  she 
replied,  "  but  we  know  what  pas- 
toral visits  mean.  You  don't  go 
and  see  the  men  like  that.  Now 
there  is  Mrs  Ogilvy,  who  was,  you 
told  me,  your  oldest  friend.  You 
never  go  near  her  now.  You  used 
to  go  there  at  all  times — in  the 
afternoons,  and  in  the  evenings, 
and  sometimes  to  supper " 

"  My  dear,  I  have  wanted  to 
see  nobody  but  you  for  a  couple 
of  months  past,"  the  minister  said. 

"Let  us  go  back  to  the  old 
customs,"  she  said.  "I  want  a 
bit  of  change  to-night.  I  have 
got  the  fidgets  or  something.  I 
can't  sit  still.  I  want,  if  you 
understand  what  that  is,  or  if 
you  won't  be  shocked,  a  bit  of  a 
spree." 

"  Oh,  I  understand  what  it  is," 
said  Mr  Logan,  with  a  laugh; 
"but  I  am  much  shocked,  and 
when  you  come  to  the  manse  you 
must  not  speak  any  more  of  a 
bit  of  a  spree." 

"I  shan't  want  it  then  per- 
haps," she  said,  with  a  look  that 
flattered  the  foolish  man.  "  But, 
for  the  present  moment,  what  do 
you  say  to  walking  up  to  the 
Hewan  after  supper? — and  then 
perhaps  we  shall  see  something  of 
Mrs  Ogilvy 's  two  mysterious  men." 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


503 


"You'll  not  do  that,  surely 
you'll  not  do  that,  papa ! "  cried 
Susie.  "  Mrs  Ogilvy's  men  are 
just  her  son  Robbie,  whom  we  all 
know,  and  some  friend  of  his. 
They  are  not  mysterious — there  is 
nothing  at  all  to  find  out — and 
it  would  vex  her  if  we  tried  to 
find  out,"  she  cried  in  a  troubled 
tone. 

"  You  shall  just  come  too,  to 
punish  you  for  your  objections, 
Susie.  Come,  come !  I  have 
taken  one  of  my  turns  to-night. 
I  can't  keep  still.  Let  us  go. 
The  walk  will  be  delightful,  and 
then  it  will  amuse  me  to  find  out 
the  mysterious  men.  I  shouldn't 
wonder  if  I  knew  one  of  them. 
I  always  know  somebody  wherever 
I  go.  Now,  are  you  going  to 
humour  me,  James,  or  are  you 
not?  I  shall  take  the  last  train 
to  Edinburgh,  and  go  to  a  theatre 
or  somewhere  to  blow  away  my 
fidgets,  if  you  won't  come." 

"We  must  just  humour  her, 
Susie,"  said  the  minister. 

"  Do  so  if  you  like,  papa,"  said 
Susie;  "but  not  me.  I  have 
plenty  to  do  at  home." 

"  She  thinks  Mr  Maitland.  may 
perhaps  look  in,  to  ask  for  the 
hundredth  time  if  she  will  fix  the 
day.  That's  always  amusing — a 
man  after  you  like  that ;  but  make 
her  come,  James,  make  her  come. 
I  want  her  to  come  with  us  to- 
night." 

"  I  tell  you  we  will  just  have  to 
humour  her,  Susie,"  Mr  Logan 
said.  He  was  charmed,  and  yet 
he  was  a  little  troubled  too  by  the 
vivacity  of  his  betrothed.  When 
she  was  "at  the  manse,"  as  he 
said,  she  must  be  made  to  under- 
stand that  nocturnal  expeditions 
like  this  were  not  in  an  elderly 
bridegroom's  way.  But  at  all 
events,  for  once  she  must  be  hu- 
moured to-night. 


504 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[Oct. 


CHAPTER   XX. 


Mrs  Ogilvy  rose  from  her  bed 
after  the  little  conversation 
which  had  roused  her  more 
effectually  than  anything  else 
could  have  done,  more  than  half 
ashamed  of  having  slept,  and  a 
little  feverish  with  her  sudden 
awakening  and  Robbie's  strange 
demand :  and  though  it  was  late 
—  more  like,  indeed,  the  proper 
and  lawful  moment  for  going  to 
bed  than  for  getting  up  and  mak- 
ing an  unnecessary  toilet  in  the 
middle  of  the  night — put  on  her 
cap  again,  and  her  pretty  white 
shawl,  and  went  down-stairs.  She 
had  put  on  one  of  the  fine  em- 
broidered China  crape  -  shawls 
which  were  for  the  evening,  and, 
to  correspond  with  that,  a  clean 
cap  with  perfectly  fresh  ribbons, 
which  gave  her  the  air  of  being  in 
her  best,  more  carefully  dressed 
than  usual.  And  her  long  sleep  had 
refreshed  her.  When  she  went 
into  the  dining-room,  where  Janet 
was  removing  the  remains  of  the 
supper  from  the  table,  she  was 
like  an  image  of  peace  and  white- 
ness and  brightness  coming  into 
the  room,  to  which,  however  care- 
fully Janet  might  arrange  it,  the 
two  men  always  gave  a  certain 
aspect  of  disorder.  Mrs  Ogilvy 
had  tried  to  dismiss  from  her  face 
every  semblance  of  agitation.  She 
would  not  remember  the  request 
Bobbie  had  made  to  her,  nor  think 
of  it  at  all  save  as  a  sudden  im- 
pulse of  reckless  generosity  on  his 
part  to  his  friend.  The  two  young 
men,  however,  were  not  equally 
successful  in  composing  their  faces. 
Robbie  had  his  pipe  in  his  hand, 
which  he  had  crammed  with  to- 
bacco, pushing  it  down  with  his 
thumb,  as  if  to  try  how  much  it 
would  contain ;  but  he  did  not 
light  it :  and  even  Lew,  usually 


so  careless  and  smiling,  looked 
grave.  He  it  was  who  jumped 
up  to  place  a  chair  for  her.  Janet 
had  so  far  improved  matters  that 
the  remains  of  the  meal  were  all 
cleared  away,  and  only  the  white 
tablecloth  left  on  the  table. 

"  I  think  shame  of  myself,"  said 
Mrs  Ogilvy,  "to  have  been  over- 
taken by  sleep  in  this  way  :  but  it 
is  very  seldom  I  go  in  to  Edin- 
burgh, and  the  hot  streets  and  the 
glaring  sun  are  not  what  I  am  used 
to.  However,  perhaps  I  am  all  the 
better  of  it,  and  my  head  clearer. 
I  doubt  if,  when  it's  at  its  clearest, 
it  would  be  of  much  service  to  you 
— men  that  both  know  the  world 
better  than  I  do,  though  you  are 
but  laddies  to  me." 

"  Yes ;  I  think  we  know  the 
world  better  than  you  do,"  said 
Lew.  "We've  been  a  bit  more 
about.  This  is  a  sweet  little  place, 
but  you  don't  see  much  of  life ;  and 
then  you're  too  good,  mother,  to 
understand  it  if  you  saw  it,"  he 
said. 

"You  are  mistaken,  Mr  Lew,  in 
thinking  there  is  little  life  to  be 
seen  here :  everywhere  there  is 
life,  in  every  place  where  God's 
creatures  are.  Many  a  story  have 
I  seen  working  out,  many  a  thing 
that  might  have  been  acted  on  the 
stage,  many  a  tragedy,  too,  though 
you  mightn't  think  it.  The  heart 
and  the  mind  are  the  same  wher- 
ever you  find  them — and  love,  that 
is  the  grandest  and  most  terrible 
thing  on  this  earth,  and  death,  and 
trouble.  Oh,  I  could  not  tell  you 
in  a  long  summer  day  the  things  I 
have  seen ! " 

"Very  different  from  our  kind 
of  things,  mother,"  said  Lew,  with 
a  laugh.  "  I  don't  suppose  you've 
seen  anything  like  the  fix  we're  in 
at  present,  for  instance  :  the  police 


1894.] 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


505 


on  our  heels,  and  not  a  penny  to 
get  out  of  the  way  with — and  in 
this  blessed  old  country,  where 
you've  to  go  by  the  railway  and 
pay  for  all  your  meals.  These 
ain't  the  things  that  suit  us,  are 
they,  Bob?" 

Robert  was  standing  up,  lean- 
ing against  the  securely  closed  and 
curtained  window.  The  night  was 
very  warm,  and  the  windows  being 
closed,  it  was  hot  inside.  His  face 
was  completely  in  shade,  and  he 
made  no  reply,  but  stood  like  a 
shadow,  moving  only  his  hand 
occasionally,  pressing  down  the 
tobacco  in  the  over-charged  pipe. 

"I  have  told  you,  Mr  Lew," 
Mrs  Ogilvy  said,  with  a  slight 
quiver  in  her  voice,  "that  what- 
ever money  you  may  want  for  your 
journey,  and  something  to  give  you 
a  new  start  wherever  you  go,  you 
should  have,  and  most  welcome — 
oh,  most  welcome  !  I  say,  not  for 
my  Robbie's  sake,  but  out  of  my 
own  heart.  Oh,  laddie,  you  are  but 
young  yet !  I  have  said  it  before, 
and  I  will  say  it  again — whatever 
you  may  have  done  in  the  past, 
life  is  always  your  own  to  change 
it  now." 

"We  will  consider  all  that  as 
said,"  said  Lew,  with  the  move- 
ment of  concealing  a  slight  yawn. 
"You've  been  very  kind  in  that 
as  in  everything  else,  putting  my 
duty  before  me ;  but  there's  some- 
thing more  urgent  just  at  present. 
This  money — we  must  go  far,  Bob 
and  I,  if  we're  to  be  safe " 

"Not  Bobbie,  not  Robbie!" 
she  cried. 

"  We  must  go  far  if  we're  to 
be  safe,  not  back  where  we  were. 
It's  a  pity  when  a  place  becomes 
too  hot  to  hold  you,  especially 
when  it's  the  place  that  suits  you 
best.  We'll  have  to  go  far.  I 
have  my  ideas  on  that  point ;  but 
it's  better  not  to  tell  them  to 
you :  for  then  when  you  are  ques- 


tioned you  can't  answer,  don't  you 
see." 

"  But  Robbie — is  not  pursued. 
Robbie,  Robbie  !  you  will  never 
leave  me  !  Oh,  you  will  not  leave 
me  again,  and  break  my  heart ! " 

Robbie  did  not  say  a  word  :  his 
face  was  completely  in  the  shadow, 
and  nothing  could  be  read  there 
any  more  than  from  his  silent 
lips. 

"  Going  far  means  a  deal  of 
money  ;  setting  up  again  means  a 
deal  of  money.  If  we  were  to 
open  a  bank,  for  instance,"  said 
Lew,  with  a  short  laugh — "  a  most 
respectable  profession,  and  just  in 
our  way.  That's  probably  what 
we  shall  do  —  we  shall  open  a 
bank ;  but  it  wants  money,  a  deal 
of  money — a  great  deal  of  money. 
You  would  like  to  see  your  son 
a  respectable  banker,  eh?  Then, 
old  lady,  you  must  draw  your 
purse-strings." 

"I  do  not  think,"  said  Mrs 
Ogilvy,  "  that  Robbie  would  do 
much  as  a  banker — nor  you  either, 
Mr  Lew.  You  would  have  to  be 
at  office-desks  every  day  and  all 
the  day.  To  me  it  would  seem 
natural,  but  to  you  that  have 
used  yourselves,  alack !  to  such 

different  things And  then  it 

is  not  what  you  call  just  money 
that  is  wanted.  It  is  capital ; 
and  where  are  you  to  find  it  ?  Oh, 
my  dear  laddies,  in  this  you  know 
less,  not  more,  than  me.  You 
must  get  folk  to  trust  in  you  by 
degrees  when  you  have  showed 
yourselves  trustworthy.  But  a 
bank  at  once,  without  either  char- 
acter— alack,  that  I  should  say  it ! 
— or  capital.  Oh  no,  my  dears, 
oh,  not  a  bank,  not  a  bank,  what- 
ever you  do  !  " 

"You  must  trust  us,  mother 
— we  know  what  we're  talking 
about :  a  bank — which  is  perhaps 
not  just  exactly  the  kind  of  thing 
you  are  thinking  of — is  the  only 


506 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[Oct. 


thing  for  Bob  and  me  ;  but  we 
must  have  money,  money,  money," 
he  said,  tapping  with  his  hand 
upon  the  table. 

"Capital,"  said  Mrs  Ogilvy, 
with  a  confident  air  of  having 
suggested  something  quite  dif- 
ferent. 

"  It's  the  same  thing,  only  more 
of  it;  and  as  that  lies  with  you 
to  furnish,  we  shall  not  quarrel 
about  the  word." 

"  There  is  some  mistake,"  said 
Mrs  Ogilvy,  with  dignity.  "  I 
have  never  said,  I  have  never 
promised.  Mr  Lew,  I  found  out 
to-day  what  was  the  passage-money 
of  the  farthest  place  you  could  go 
to,  and  I  have  got  the  siller  here 
in  the  house." 

The  dark  figure  at  the  window 
stirred  a  little,  raising  a  hand  as 
if  in  warning :  the  other  listened 
with  a  sudden,  eager  gleam  in  his 
eyes,  leaning  forward.  It  made 
his  face  shine  to  hear  of  the 
money  in  the  house. 

"  Yes,"  he  said,  joyfully,  "  that's 
something  like  speaking.  I  love  a 
practical  mind.  You  have  got  it 
here  in  the  house?"  There  came 
a  certain  tigerish  keenness  into  his 
look,  as  if  he  might  have  snatched 
at  her,  torn  it  from  her.  The 
shadow  against  the  window  stirred 
a  little,  but  whether  in  sympathy 
with  the  keen  desire  of  the  one, 
or  touched  by  the  aspect  of  the 
other,  it  was  impossible  to  tell. 
Meanwhile  Mrs  Ogilvy,  suspect- 
ing nothing,  saw  nothing  to  fear. 

"It  is  in  the  house.  I  got  it 
even  in  English  notes,  that  you 
might  have  no  trouble.  There 
will  be  a  hundred  pounds,"  said 
Mrs  Ogilvy.  She  spoke  with  a 
little  pride,  as  of  one  announcing 
a  great  thing,  a  donation  almost 
unparalleled,  but  which  yet  she 
gave  like  a  princess,  not  grudging. 
"  And  thirty  besides,"  she  added, 
with  a  little  sigh,  "  that  when  you 


get  there  you  may  not  be  without 
a  pound  in  your  pocket.  I  give 
it  you  with  all  my  heart,  Mr 
Lew.  Oh,  if  the  money,  the  poor 
miserable  siller,  might  maybe  be 
the  means  of  calling  you  back  to 
a  steady  and  to  an  honest  life ! " 

Lew  said  nothing  in  reply :  his 
hungry  eyes,  lighted  up  by  such 
a  gleam  of  covetousness,  gave  one 
fiery  glance  at  Robbie  standing, 
as  it  seemed,  imperturbable,  im- 
movable, in  the  shade.  Then  he 
began  to  beat  out  a  tune  on  the 
table  with  his  fingers :  but  he 
made  no  other  answer,  to  Mrs 
Ogilvy's  great  surprise. 

"  I  believe,"  she  said,  with  hesi- 
tation, "that  will  pay  a  passage 
even  to  India ;  but  if  you  should 
find  that  it  will  need  more " 

He  went  on  with  his  tune,  beat- 
ing on  the  table,  half  whistling  to 
accompany  the  beats  of  his  fingers. 
Something  of  the  aspect  of  a  fierce 
animal,  lashing  its  tail,  working 
itself  up  into  fury,  had  come  into 
his  usually  smiling  pleasant  looks, 
though  the  smile  was  still  on  his 
face. 

"  I  fear,"  he  said,  with  the  gleam 
in  his  eyes  which  she  began  to  per- 
ceive with  wonder,  "  that  it  is  not 
enough.  They  will  be' of  no  use  to 
us,  these  few  shillings.  I  thought 
you  would  have  done  anything  for 
your  son ;  but  I  find,  mother,  that 
you're  like  all  the  mothers,  good 
for  everything  in  words,  but  for  a 
little  less  in  money.  You  will  have 
to  give  us  more  than  that " 

Mrs  Ogilvy  was  much  surprised, 
but  would  not  believe  her  ,ears. 
She  said  mildly,  "I  have  told  you, 
Mr  Lew  :  it  is  not  for  my  son,  but 
chiefly  out  of  a  great  feeling  I  have 
for  yourself,  poor  laddie,  that  have 
nobody  to  advise  you  or  lead  you 
in  a  better  way." 

"You  may  preach  if  you  like," 
he  said,  with  a  laugh,  "  if  you're 
ready  to  pay;  but  no  preaching 


1894.] 

without  paying,  old  lady.  Come, 
let's  look  at  it  a  little  closer. 
Here  are  you  rolling  in  money, 
and  he  there,  your  only  son,  sent 
out  into  the  world " 

"  Not  Bobbie,"  she  cried,  with  a 
gasp,  "  not  Robbie  !  I  said  it  was 
for  you " 

"  We  do  not  mean  to  be  parted, 
however,"  he  said.  "You  must 
double  your  allowance,  mother, 
and  then  see  how  much  you  can 
add  to  that." 

She  looked  at  her  son,  clasping 
her  hands  together,  her  face,  amid 
the  whiteness  of  her  dress,  whiter 
still,  its  only  colour  the  eyes,  so 
bright  and  trustful  by  nature,  look- 
ing at  him  with  a  supreme  but  voice- 
less appeal.  Whether  it  touched 
him  or  not,  could  not  be  seen :  he 
stirred  a  little,  but  probably  only 
as  a  relief  from  his  attitude  of 
stillness — and  his  face  was  too  deep 
in  the  shade  to  betray  any  expres- 
sion for  good  or  for  evil. 

Then  Mrs  Ogilvy  rose  up  tremb- 
ling to  her  feet.  She  said,  clasp- 
ing her  hands  again  as  if  to 
strengthen  herself,  "I  have  been* 
very  wishful  to  do  all  to  please 
you — to  treat  you,  Mr  Lew,  as  if 
you  were — what  can  I  say  ? — not 
my  own  son,  for  he  is  but  one — 
but  like  the  son  of  my  friend.  But 
I  have  a  duty — I  am  not  my  own 
woman,  to  do  just  what  I  please. 
I  have  a  charge  of  my  son  before 
the  Lord.  I  will  give  you  this 
money  to  take  you  away,  for  this 
is  not  your  place  or  your  home, 
and  you  have  nothing  ado  here. 
But  my  son :  Robbie,  all  I  have  is 
yours — you  can  have  it  all  when 
you  like  and  how  you  like,  my 
own  boy.  But  not  to  go  away 
with  this  man.  If  you  will  forsake 
your  home,  let  it  be  well  considered 
and  at  another  time.  To  take 
you  away  with  this  man,  fleeing 
before  the  pursuer,  taking  upon 
you  a  shame  and  a  sin  that  is  not 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


507 


yours No  !    I  will  not  give 

you  a  penny  of  your  father's  money 
and  my  savings  for  that.  No,  no  ! 
— all,  when  you  will,  in  sobriety 
and  judgment,  but  nothing  now." 

Her  smallness,  her  weakness, 
her  trembling,  were  emphasised  by 
the  fact  that  she  seemed  to  tower 
over  Lew  where  he  sat,  and  to 
stand  like  a  rock  between  the  two 
strong  men. 

"  You're  a  plucky  old  girl,"  said 
her  antagonist,  with  a  laugh — "I 
always  said  so — game  to  the  last : 
but  we  can't  stand  jabbering  all 
night,  don't  you  know.  Business 
is  business.  You  must  fork  out  if 
you  were  the  Queen,  my  fine  old 
lady.  Sit  down,  for  there's  a  good 
deal  to  say." 

"  I  can  hear  what  you  have  to 
say  as  I  am,  if  it  is  anything 
reasonable,"  Mrs  Ogilvy  said.  She 
felt,  though  she  could  scarcely  keep 
that  upright  position  by  reason  of 
agitation  and  fear,  that  she  had  an 
advantage  over  him  as  she  stood. 

He  sprang  to  his  feet  before  she 
knew  what  was  going  to  happen, 
and  with  two  heavy  hands  upon 
her  shoulders  replaced  her  in  her 
chair.  I  will  not  say  forced  her 
back  into  it,  though  indeed  that 
was  how  it  was.  She  leaned 
back  panting  and  astonished,  and 
looked  at  him,  but  did  not  rise 
or  subject  herself  to  that  violence 
again. 

"I  hope  I  did  not  hurt  you — I 
didn't  intend  to  hurt  you,"  he  said  : 
"  but  you  must  remember,  mother, 
though  you  treat  us  as  boys,  that 
we're  a  pair  of  not  too  amiable 
men — and  could  crush  you  with 
a  touch,  with  a  little  finger,"  he 
added,  looking  half  fiercely,  half 
with  a  jest,  into  her  eyes. 

"No,"  she  said  very  softly, 
"you  could  not  crush  me  —  not 
with  all  your  power." 

"Give  that  paper  here,  Bob,' 
said  his  chief. 


508 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


[Oct. 


Robert  scarcely  moved,  did  not 
reveal  himself  in  any  way  to  the 
light,  but  with  a  faint  stir  of  his 
large  shadow  produced  a  folded 
paper  which  had  been  within  the 
breast  of  his  coat.  Lew  took  it 
and  played  with  it  somewhat 
nervously,  the  line  of  white  like 
a  wand  of  light  in  his  hands. 

"You  are  rolling  in  wealth,"  he 
said. 

She  made  as  if  she  had  said 
"  No  ! "  shaking  her  head,  but  took 
no  other  notice  of  the  question. 

"We  have  reason  to  suppose 
you  are  well  off,  at  least.  You 
have  got  your  income,  which  can't 
be  touched,  and  you  have  got  a  lot 
of  money  well  invested." 

She  did  not  make  any  reply, 
but  looked  at  him  steadily,  mark- 
ing every  gesture. 

"  It  is  this,"  he  said,  "  to  which 
Bob  has  a  natural  right.  I  think 
we  are  very  reasonable.  We  don't 
want  to  rob  you,  notwithstanding 
our  great  need  of  money  :  you  can 
see  that  we  wish  to  use  no  vio- 
lence, only  to  set  before  you  what 
you  ought  to  do." 

"I  will  not  do  it,"  said  Mrs 
Ogilvy. 

"  We'll  see  about  that.  I  have 
been  thinking  about  this  for  some 
time,  and  I  have  taken  my  meas- 
ures. Here  is  a  list  which  we 
got  from  your  man — the  old  fogey 
you  threatened  us  with  —  or  at 
least  from  his  man.  And  here  is 
a  letter  directing  everything  to 
be  realised,  and  the  money  paid 
over  to  your  son.  You  will  sign 
this " 

"  From  my  man — you  are  mean- 
ing Mr  Somerville  ? "  Mrs  Ogilvy 
looked  at  the  paper  which  had 
been  thrust  into  her  hand,  bewil- 
dered. "  And  he  never  said  a  word 
of  it  to  me  ! " 

"Don't  let  us  lay  the  blame 
where  it  isn't  due,"  said  the  other, 
lightly:  "from  his  man.  Pro- 


bably  the    respectable   old   fogey 
never  knew " 

"Ah!"  she  cried,  "the  clerk 
that  was  Bobbie's  friend !  Then 
it  was  Robbie  himself " 

"Robbie  himself,"  said  Lew,  in 
the  easiest  tone,  "as  it  was  he  who 
had  the  best,  the  only,  right  to  find 
out.  Now,  mother,  come  !  execute 
yourself  as  bravely  as  you  have 
done  the  other  things.  Sign,  and 
we'll  have  a  glass  all  round,  and 
part  the  best  friends  in  the  world. 
When  you  wake  in  the  morning 
you'll  find  we've  cleared  out." 

"It  was  Robbie,"  she  said  to 
herself,  murmuring,  scarcely  audi- 
ble to  the  others,  "  it  was  Robbie 
— Robbie  himself."  She  took  no 
notice  of  the  paper  which  was 
placed  before  her.  All  her  mind 
seemed  occupied  by  this.  "  Rob- 
bie— it  was  Robbie,  my  son." 

"Who  should  it  be  but  Bob? 
Do  you  think  that  information 
would  have  been  furnished  to  me  ? 
What  did  I  know  about  it?  It 
was  Bob,  of  course ;  and  don't 
you  think  he  was  quite  right? 
Come !  here's  pen  and  ink  ready. 
Sign,  and  then  it  will  be  all  over. 
It  goes  against  me,  mother,  to  ask 
anything  you  don't  like — it  does, 
though  you  mayn't  believe  me. 
Now,  one  moment  and  the  thing 
will  be  done." 

He  spoke  to  her,  coaxing  her, 
as  to  a  child,  but  there  was  a 
kindling  devil  in  his  eye.  Robbie 
never  raised  his  head  or  opened 
his  mouth,  but  he  made  to  his, 
comrade  an  imperative  gesture  with 
his  hand.  The  tension  was  becom- 
ing too  much  to  bear. 

"Come,  mother,"  said  Lew, 
"  sign — sign  ! " 

This  time  she  did  not  rise  up  as 
before.  She  had  a  faint  physical 
dread  of  provoking  his  touch  upon 
her  person  again;  but  she  lifted 
her  head,  and  looking  at  him,  said 
steadily,  "No," 


1894.] 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. 


509 


«  No  ? — you  say  this  to  us  who 
could — kill  you  with  a  touch?" 

"I  will  not  do  it,"  she  said. 

"  Do  you  know  what  you  are 
saying,  old  woman  1 — tempting  me, 
tempting  him,  to  murder?  You 
needn't  look  to  the  door :  there  is 
not  a  soul  that  could  hear  you — 
Andrew's  fast  asleep,  and  you 
wouldn't  call  him,  to  bear  witness 
against  your  son." 

"No,"  she  said,  "I  would  not 
call  him  to  bear  witness — against 
— my  son." 

"Sign!  sign!  sign!"  cried  Lew; 
"  do  you  think  we'll  wait  for  you 
all  night?" 

"  I  will  not  sign." 

"  Old  woman !  you  wretched 
old  fool,  trusting,  I  suppose,  to 
that  fellow  there !  Better  trust 
me  than  him.  Look  here,  no 
more  of  this.  You  shall  sign 
whether  you  will  or  not."  He 
seized  her  hand  as  he  spoke,  thrust 
the  pen  into  it,  and  forced  it  upon 
the  paper.  Her  little  wrist  seemed 
to  crush  together  in  his  big  hand. 
She  gave  a  faint  cry,  but  no  more. 
Her  fingers  remained  motionless 
in  his  hold.  He  was  growing  red 
with  impatience  and  fury,  his  eyes 
fierce,  his  mouth  set.  She  looked 
up  at  him  for  a  moment,  but  said 
not  a  word. 

"Will  you  do  it?  will  you  do 
it  ? — at  once  ! — when  I  tell  you." 

"No." 

He  let  her  hand  go  and  seized 
her  by  the  shoulders.  He  had  by 
this  time  forgotten  everything  ex- 
cept that  he  was  crossed  and  re- 
sisted by  a  feeble  creature  in  his 
power.  And  in  this  state  he  was 
appalling,  murder  in  his  eye,  and 
an  ungovernable  impulse  in  his 


mind.  He  seized  her  by  her 
shoulders,  the  white  shawl  crump- 
ling in  soft  folds  not  much  less 
strong  to  resist  than  the  flesh 
beneath  in  his  hands,  and  shook 
her,  violently,  furiously,  like  a  dog 
rather  than  a  man. 

"  Do  what  I  tell  you,  woman ! 
Sign!" 

"  No." 

She  thought  that  she  was  dead. 
She  thought  it  was  death,  her 
breath  going  from  her,  her  eyes 
turning  in  their  sockets.  Next 
moment  a  roar  of  rage  seemed  to 
pass  over  her  head,  she  was  pushed 
aside  like  a  straw  flung  out  of  the 
fiery  centre  of  the  commotion,  the 
grip  gone  from  her  shoulders,  and 
she  herself  suddenly  turned  as  it 
were  into  nothing,  like  the  chair 
at  which  she  clutched  to  support 
herself,  not  knowing  what  it  was. 
She  had  a  vision  for  a  moment 
of  Robbie,  her  son,  standing  where 
she  had  stood,  tearing  and  tear- 
ing again  in  a  hundred  pieces  a 
paper  in  his  hands,  while  Lew 
against  the  opposite  wall,  as  if  he 
too  had  been  dashed  out  of  the 
way  like  herself,  stood  breathing 
hard,  his  eyes  glaring,  his  arm  up. 
Next  moment  she  was  pushed  sud- 
denly, not  without  violence,  thrust 
out  of  the  room,  and  the  door 
closed  upon  her.  All  was  dark 
outside,  and  she  helpless,  broken, 
bleeding  she 'thought,  a  wounded, 
lacerated  creature,  not  able  to 
stand,  far  more  unable  in  the 
tumult  and  trouble  of  body  and 
soul  to  go  away,  to  seek  any 
help  or  shelter.  She  dropped 
down  trembling  upon  her  knees, 
with  her  head  against  that  closed 
door. 


510 


From  Weir  to  Mill. 


[Oct. 


FROM    WEIR    TO    MILL. 


ONLY  a  mile  at  the  most  is  it 
from  one  to  the  other;  but  to 
those  who  know  that  bit  of  wind- 
ing woodland  river  well,  it  is  a 
mile  teeming  with  wild  life,  finned, 
furred,  and  feathered.  In  that 
short  stretch  I  have  seen  nearly 
all  the  fauna  of  a  southern  county. 
For  good  reasons,  doubtless,  but 
known  only  to  themselves,  wild 
creatures  will  not  leave  certain 
places,  whilst  others  they  will  not 
even  visit.  For  forty-five  years  I 
have  visited  this  mile  of  water 
and  water-meadows,  and  wandered 
through  the  trees  that  border  the 
streams.  Creatures  can  be  seen 
there  that  you  might  look  for  in 
vain  elsewhere. 

There  is  a  mystery  about  this 
partiality  that  no  one  can  explain, 
for  the  roads  and  paths,  as  also  the 
meadow  tracks,  are  well  used  by 
people  all  the  year  round ;  yet  in 
the  grey  of  the  morning,  or  after 
the  sun  has  gone  down,  if  you 
know  where  to  stand  and  how  to 
keep  quiet,  three  of  our  most  astute 
animals,  the  fox,  the  otter,  and  at 
rare  seasons  the  badger,  will  pass 
within  a  few  yards  of  you. 

And  these  creatures  seem  ever 
ready  to  take  advantage  of  any 
alteration  made  by  man  for  their 
benefit,  though  it  may  have  been 
made  all  unwittingly  by  him. 
They  locate  here,  and  they  will 
not  leave  their  surroundings. 
When  they  are  forced,  however, 
by  various  circumstances  over 
which  they  have  not  the  least 
control,  to  shift  their  quarters, 
they  adapt  their  ways  of  living 
to  the  places  they  frequent,  not 
from  choice  but  from  necessity. 

For  three  months,  early  in  the 
morning  and  late  in  the  evening, 
have  I  lately  visited  that  run  of 


the  river  Mole  from  weir  to  mill, 
just  to  get  some  fresh  facts  about 
the  wild  things  living  there.  One 
day  in  coming  along,  after  a  heavy 
gale,  I  was  greeted  by  "Ah,  he's 
down  at  last;  'twas  the  biggest 
beech  on  this  ere  place ;  that  ere 
last  flood  settled  him.  I've  noted 
as  he's  bin  tottery  like  fur  sum 
time  ;  massy  o'alive,  the  pity  on  it ! 
There  he  lays,  blockin'  up  the  river, 
an'  the  top  on  him  lopping  in  the 
medder  tother  side.  A  lot  o'  things 
lived  in  him,  an'  about  him  ;  an' 
the  critters  '11  miss  him  sore,  tell  'ee. 
They  gets  out  o'  their  homes  same 
as  we  does  at  times.  A  couple  o' 
yaffles  got  young  uns  thear,  near 
flying — I'd  seen  'em  out  shinnin' 
round  the  limbs  ;  but  the  jar  o'  the 
fall  has  killed  'em,  poor  things." 
The  woodpecker's  home  a  hole  in 
the  great  stem  showed,  being  above 
the  water,  and  the  old  birds  were 
creeping  and  moping  round,  know- 
ing full  well  that  it  was  all  up  with 
them. 

"An'  them  'ere  bellus  bream," 
continued  old  John,  "wunt  know 
how  to  take  it — it  was  theer  reglar 
swimmin'  place ;  backards  and  for- 
rards  under  that  ere  old  beech  they 
went :  they're  bound  to  drop  down 
the  river  now,  to  find  a  fresh  swim 
arter  this.  Then  some  who  comes 
to  fish  this  stream  will  be  sayin' 
there  ain't  no  bream  here.  The 
critters  has  to  shift ;  an'  'tis  a  very 
good  job  as  ivry  ' cuckoo '  don't 
know  the  ways  o'  them,  and  whear 
they  gits  to." 

John  is  as  conservative  as  his 
so-called  betters  in  these  matters. 

It  is  three  o'clock  in  the  morn- 
ing in  the  middle  of  summer, 
and  we  are  in  one  of  the  lush 
meadows  that  border  each  side  of 
the  river.  The  rooks  in  the  lime 


1894.] 


From  Weir  to  Mill. 


511 


avenue  have  not  wakened  up  yet 
properly.  Only  a  few  gabbles, 
croaks,  and  shriller  notes  from 
the  young  branchers,  let  you  know 
that  it  will  not  be  long  before 
they  are  all  wide  awake  for  the 
day. 

It  is  a  warm  dewy  morning,  the 
vegetation  is  drenched  with  moist- 
ure ;  the  sun  will  be  well  up  be- 
fore the  yellow  irises  and  the 
marsh-marigolds  open  out.  The 
fish  take  up  most  of  our  thoughts, 
however.  We  know  of  some  very 
large  chub  and  dace  that  have 
their  hovers  in  and  among  the 
submerged  roofs  of  some  large 
pollard  willows  that  lean  out  from 
the  bank  over  the  water. 

Some  folks  say  that  fish  are 
silly  and  devoid  of  the  instinct 
given  to  other  creatures,  but  such 
have  never  fished  or  they  would 
have  known  better.  These  large 
chub  and  dace  know  something 
too  much  for  me,  at  any  rate ;  for 
try  how  or  where  I  would,  not 
one  of  the  large  ones  have  I  cap- 
tured. The  great  white  lips  of 
the  chub  showed  as  they  rose  and 
sucked  in  chafer,  beetle,  or  cater- 
pillar that  had  fallen  from  the 
trees  into  the  water,  and  the 
quick  dace  made  their  darts  at 
the  provender  on  the  water,  but 
not  a  rise  or  a  dart  from  either 
did  I  ever  get,  worth  mentioning. 
Large  fish  that  have  lived  long 
have  all  their  wits  about  them. 
One  small  island  close  to  shore, 
which  in  the  season  was  white 
with  snowdrops,  was  a  favourite 
place  for  perch  in  passing  on  their 
way  to  deeper  water  above.  It 
had  a  course  of  clear  water,  with 
a  bottom  of  golden  sand — a  perch- 
swim  if  ever  there  was  one;  but 
not  a  fish  was  hooked  there,  for 
this  reason  —  the  creatures  had 
been  feeding  on  the  shallows,  and 
were  going  that  way  home  to  a 
deep  hole  by  the  side  of  the  weir. 


If  the  fish  would  bite,  all  well  and 
good;  if  not,  it  mattered  little 
to  a  naturalist,  for  there  was 
plenty  to  see  there.  The  heron 
would  rise  from  his  stand  where 
he  had  been  fishing ;  moor-hens 
flit  in  and  out,  flirting  their  tails ; 
and  now  and  then  you  would  get 
a  sight  of  that  hideling  the  land- 
rail or  corn-crake.  You  would 
hear  him  in  any  case.  More  than 
once  have  I  seen  fine  specimens  of 
the  domestic  cat,  very  full  of  some- 
thing, where  they  would  not  be 
expected  to  be ;  and  one  morning 
I  was  fortunate  enough  to  meet 
with  a  wild  bred  house-cat — that 
is,  one  of  a  lot  of  kittens  littered 
far  from  any  house.  Unless  they 
got  shot  or  trapped,  these  wild 
litters  do  become  wild  in  the  full 
sense  of  the  word,  and  they  grow 
large.  When  this  is  the  case  they 
are  mistaken  at  times  for  the  real 
wild  cat,  but  one  feature  alone 
will  at  all  times  distinguish  them  : 
the  genuine  but  at  the  present 
time  very  rare  wild  cat  has  a 
thick  bushed -out  tail,  which  the 
ordinary  house  cat,  or  domestic 
cat  that  has  run  wild,  never  has. 
When  met  with,  the  wild  things 
are  always  eager  to  get  away,  if 
by  chance  they  are  cornered  :  un- 
less you  have  a  gun  or  a  good  dog 
with  you  that  can  bite  hard  and 
hold  fast,  you  had  best  let  them 
alone. 

The  sun  is  well  up  over  the 
hills  that  rise  on  either  side  of 
the  beautiful  Holmesdale  valley, 
and  light  mists  float  over  the  tops 
of  the  firs  that  cover  the  sides  of 
the  warren.  Box-Hill  shows  clear, 
the  light  clouds  of  vapour  having 
drifted  up  from  the  valley  and 
over  the  hill.  The  cattle  rise  up 
from  their  resting-places  in  the 
meadows  and  begin  to  feed;  and 
the  rooks  have  now  returned 
with  food  for  their  families  of 
"  branchers,"  that  will  not  be  shot 


512 


From  Weir  to  Mill. 


[Oct. 


this  year.  If  noise  is  with  them 
an  expression  of  pleasure,  they  are 
certainly  rejoicing  over  their  early 
meal.  The  heave-jars  left  their 
chafer-hunting  just  when  we  first 
entered  the  meadows  to  fish  :  they 
are  now  resting  somewhere  on  the 
limbs  or  branches  of  the  fine  oaks 
around  us — not  as  other  birds  rest, 
but  lengthways,  in  a  line  with  the 
limb  or  branch  the  birds  squat  on, 
so  as  to  be  invisible  from  below 
and  quite  secure  from  harm  above 
it.  The  last  late  owl  has  gone 
home  to  the  farm  at  the  foot  of 
the  hill.  I  call  him  late,  for  the 
sun  is  high  up  now,  and  it  will 
be  very  hot  before  long.  Where 
these  grand  vermin  -  hunters  are 
protected,  they  show  great  confi- 
dence, coming  out  to  hunt  directly 
the  sun  is  down  a  little,  and  con- 
tinuing to  do  so  until  the  farm 
hands  take  their  horses  out  to 
work  in  the  morning.  The  mouse- 
hunters,  the  white  or  barn  owls, 
come  out  earlier  and  hunt  later 
than  do  the  wood  or  brown  owls. 
These  fine  birds  are,  happily,  now 
valued  here  as  much  as  they  were 
at  one  time  detested.  The  grim 
superstitions  that  have  for  cen- 
turies clung  to  them,  like  their 
own  feathers,  have  at  last  fallen 
from  them,  thanks  to  the  plead- 
ings of  many  a  naturalist. 

Bird -music  sounds  above  and 
around  us,  for  this  has  not  been  a 
forward  season;  the  weather  has 
for  the  time  of  year  been  damp 
and  chill.  Now  that  there  is 
every  appearance  of  fine  settled 
weather,  the  feathered  songsters 
seem  to  know  it,  and  the  river- 
side rings  with  the  songs  of  black- 
birds, thrushes,  and  blackcaps. 
The  chatter  of  the  sedge-warblers 
comes  in  between.  The  music 
floats  up  and  down  and  over  the 
water,  like  the  films  of  mist  that 
yet  rise  from  it ;  larks  ring  out 
their  glad  notes  as  they  circle 


round  far  above  us ;  while  the 
tree-pipit,  not  willing  to  be  out  of 
it  all,  rises  from  his  twig,  mounts 
up,  and  comes  to  it  again,  singing 
merrily  as  he  floats  down.  In 
between — for  there  is  not  a  break 
— you  hear  the  notes  of  other 
songsters, — the  bright  little  song 
of  the  chaffinch,  also  the  scolding 
of  white-throats,  and  the  soft  little 
songs  of  the  willow  wrens  ;  whilst 
ever  and  anon  the  greenfinches 
call  "  breeze — breeze." 

This  favoured  bit  of  woodland 
river  is  one  of  those  bird  paradises 
that  can  be  found  close  to  home. 
And  what  can  be  more  beautiful 
than  these  meads,  meadows,  and 
fine  park-lands  dotted  over  with 
noble  trees  ?  The  valley  of  Holmes- 
dale  is  before  us,  and  the  hills  are 
above  and  around  us.  A  man  I 
once  knew  said  to  me,  "I  have 
been  in  many  lands,  but  you  have 
shown  me  one  of  the  fairest  sights 
I  have  ever  seen."  Yet  it  is  only 
one  out  of  thousands  to  be  found 
at  any  time  in  fair  weather  or 
foul,  in  summer  or  in  winter,  quite 
accessible  too,  round  and  about 
our  Surrey  hills. 

As  we  stand  thinking,  all  the 
life-giving  odours  from  trees  and 
plants  come  to  us  and  then  leave 
us  for  a  time,  as  the  light  air  left 
them.  Swallows  dash  under  the 
arches  of  the  grey  bridge,  and  the 
sand-martins  flit  like  butterflies 
from  their  holes  in  the  banks  :  all 
is  full  of  joyous  life.  Even  the 
voices  of  the  rooks  are  in  har- 
mony :  they  fall  in  like  the  chant- 
ing of  black  friars.  The  whole 
surroundings,  if  we  set  on  one  side 
the  unrivalled  beauty  of  the  scen- 
ery, are  full  of  interest,  for  they 
have  historical  records  of  their 
own. 

Religious  establishments  once 
flourished  near  the  Mole,  with 
these  monks  and  friars;  and  the 
great  of  this  world,  as  well  as 


1894.] 

many  a  poor  pilgrim,  have  walked 
by  the  roads  and  paths  that  led 
by  devious  ways  over  the  hills 
and  under  the  hills,  through  woods 
and  over  heaths,  at  last  to  the 
ford  of  the  Pilgrims'  Way,  on 
right  away  into  Kent. 

Even  the  mills  have  records  of 
their  own.  Some  of  the  millers 
will  certainly  not  be  forgotten  yet 
awhile.  I  can  recollect  so  many 
that  have  gone  before,  that  it 
makes  me  feel  very  old.  Good 
men  and  true  were  some  of  these 
old  millers,  but  fiercely  conserva- 
tive and  cantankerous  on  all  that 
pertained  to  fish, — the  pike,  perch, 
carp,  bream,  roach,  dace,  and  trout, 
to  say  nothing  about  the  fine  sil- 
ver eels  that  the  river  was  and  is 
still  noted  for.  Eels  of  3,  4,  and 
6  Ib.  weight  I  have  known  to  be 
taken  from  the  weir  and  the  trap 
of  the  mill  below.  If  you  had 
work  to  do  at  the  mill-houses  you 
were  hospitably  treated ;  but  if 
the  miller  or  his  men  knew  you 
had  a  fishing-line  in  your  pocket, 
woe  betide  you !  The  fish  were 
for  the  miller  or  for  his  landlord's 
sport,  if  he  wanted  a  day's  fish- 
ing, but  for  no  one  else.  Some 
of  them  at  that  time  were  called 
"men  of  their  inches,"  which 
meant  that  in  the  settlement  of 
a  matter  they  did  not  require 
any  one  to  help  them;  they  did 
not  appeal  to  the  law.  As  they 
would  not  always  give  permission 
to  fish  when  asked  to  do  so,  some 
— that  is,  two  or  three  that,  like 
their  "  betters,"  were  also  men  of 
their  inches — fished  fairly  at  times 
without  it. 

The  weir  is  left  behind,  and  we 
have  made  our  way  to  the  mill- 
pool  where  the  river  above  makes 
its  way  over  and  through  the 
sluices  into  the  pool  below.  Tench 
and  fine  carp  once  had  their  home 
here  with  other  fish ;  and  we  can 
assure  our  readers  that  river  carp 


From  Weir  to  Mill. 


513 


and  tench  are  very  different  from 
muddy  pond  fish  of  the  same 
species.  But  it  is  no  use  coming 
here  now  to  tempt  those  carp,  5 
and  7  Ib.  in  weight,  with  a  small 
fresh-dug  new  potato,  or  an  amber- 
heart  cherry  fresh  from  the  tree, 
the  hook  being  inserted  in  it  while 
the  cherry  was  held  by  its  stem, 
so  that  the  fingers  did  not  come 
in  contact  with  the  fruit.  When 
all  was  ready  the  stem  was 
pulled  out  and  the  bait  dropped 
in.  If  our  old  gardener  friend, 
whose  most  bitter  foes  were  haw- 
finches, because  they  ground  up 
his  marrer-fats,  could  provide  us 
with  a  pod  of  his  most  "  pertick- 
lers,"  as  he  called  them,  it  would 
be  no  use  now.  Yet  a  fine  green 
pea,  or  for  that  matter  a  couple, 
is  a  deadly  lure  for  a  large  carp. 
If  you  wish  to  catch  fish  you  must 
know  how  they  feed.  The  carp 
family  feed  heads  down  and  tails 
up  as  a  rule  :  they  pick  the  bait  off 
the  bottom  and  rise  with  it.  As 
they  are  to  a  great  extent  vegetable 
feeders,  and  have  throat  teeth,  all 
our  fishing  readers  will  understand 
my  meaning  here. 

Now  for  the  reason  why  it  is 
of  no  use  fishing,  at  the  present 
time,  in  the  stretch  of  water  above 
mentioned.  Otters,  those  highly 
sagacious  beasts,  are  there  in 
numbers. 

The  bleak  have  left  off  rising 
for  the  midges  that  fall  in  small 
clouds  on  the  water ;  the  shadows 
of  the  trees  are  dark  and  dim,  a 
dull  tawny  hue  is  all  that  the  set- 
ting sun  has  left  behind  it,  and  the 
river  mist  is  curling  over  it. 

Hark  !  what  is  that  mysterious 
sound?  —  something  like  a  deep 
whistle  mixed  with  hissing.  It  is 
answered  more  faintly  higher  up. 
It  is  the  otters'  dinner  call ;  they 
are  answering  each  other  as  they 
come  down  the  river — not  a  couple 
but  three  or  four  of  them.  Small 


514 


From  Weir  to  Mill. 


[Oct. 


heaps  of  large  seals  and  bits  of  fish 
Dories  have  been  found  for  a  long 
time  now  by  those  who  know 
where  to  look.  Until  they  must 
shift,  the  otters  have  their  own 
way  here,  and  they  have  had  the 
large  fish  on  their  spawning-beds 
and  in  their  submerged  root  sanctu- 
aries; and  eels  are  now  scarce. 
Who  can  wonder  at  it !  Recently 
the  otters  have  drawn  as  close  to 
man  and  his  works  as  rats.  Lead- 
ing from  the  bridge  that  spans  the 
tumbling  bay  of  the  pool,  rushing 
floods  have  washed  the  path  away. 
This,  some  time  back,  was  remedied 
by  fixing  railway-sleepers,  in  the 
most  solid  manner,  so  as  to  form 
a  platform  from  the  pool  bridge 
to  the  fields  beyond.  One  moon- 
light night,  a  wanderer  crossing 
from  the  fields  saw  what  he  at 
first  sight  took  to  be  three  of  the 
mill  cats  at  play,  cutting  high 
jinks :  directly  he  reached  the 
platform,  he  saw  at  once  they 
were  otters.  All  this  close  to  the 
mill-house,  and  where  people  are 
passing  day  and  night !  Even  the 
miller  laughed  and  was  incredulous 
when  he  was  told  that  they  were 
close  to  him.  But  he  does  not 
smile  now,  for  not  only  have  they 
cleared  off  all  the  large  fish,  but 
they  have  had  the  moor-hens  and 
rabbits  as  well,  to  say  nothing 
about  the  water-voles.  It  used  to 
be  said  that  this  water  smelt  of 
fish ;  the  scent  has  now  left  it,  for 
a  time  at  any  rate. 

I  know  where  they  come  from, 
and  where  they  go  :  their  roads 
overland  are  only  a  few  feet  from 
the  river  above  to  the  pool  below ; 
to  this  they  most  pertinaciously 
cling.  Some  of  our  readers  may 
wonder  how  it  is  that  they  are  not 
killed  off.  Those  who  have  tried 
to  do  this,  either  with  gun  or  trap, 
have  met  with  but  little  success ; 
for  they  do  not  know  how  to  go 
about  it,  and  those  who  do  know 


keep  their  mouths  shut.  It  is  too 
great  a  treat  to  see  a  fine  dog  otter 
come  whistling  down  the  river, 
head  up,  rush  up  his  favourite 
tunnel  out  on  the  grass,  and  pass 
in  front  of  you  down  into  the 
pool ;  and  this  is  what  they  have 
done  and  are  doing  still,  for  their 
tracks  are  as  visible  as  those  of 
sheep  to  people  that  understand 
them. 

I  used  to  think  that  it  was  not 
possible  that  the  otters  would 
make  themselves  at  home  like 
barn-rats,  but  I  have  found  lately 
that  I  was  mistaken  :  one  is  always 
learning,  where  wild  life  is  con- 
cerned. 

From  the  nature  of  the  locality 
and  the  depth  of  this  water,  the 
fiercest  and  most  eager  pack  of 
otter-hounds  could  not  hunt  them  j 
this  the  otters  know,  and  they  act 
on  it.  When  their  old  haunts 
came  to  grief  by  the  great  trees 
falling,  and  taking  down  the  banks 
with  them,  they  shifted  their  quar- 
ters, and  there  they  have  increased, 
and  still  flourish.  A  change  of 
habitat  does  good  at  times  to 
beasts  as  well  as  men.  In  the 
case  of  the  otters  it  has  been  to 
their  advantage,  but  how  long  this 
may  continue  one  is  not  able  to 
say.  Wild  creatures  are  capricious 
at  times  in  their  movements. 

If  they  get  at  the  fowls  and 
ducks,  something  will  be  said  and 
something  done  for  their  thinning 
off. 

How  far  the  otters  wander  in 
the  dead  of  winter  their  trails 
and  seals  plainly  show.  They  are 
watched  for,  but  the  watchers  have 
been  a  little  before  or  a  little  after 
the  time  :  so  much  the  better  for 
our  friends.  The  otters  belong 
to  that  very  astute  family  that 
includes  the  weasels;  and  these, 
we  know,  we  never  catch  sleep- 
ing. 

A  SON  OF  THE  MARSHES. 


1894.] 


Poets  and  Geographers. 


515 


POETS    AND     GEOGRAPHERS. 


THAT  there  should  exist  any 
close  connection  between  Poetry 
and  Geography,  and  any  close  reci- 
procity between  poets  and  geogra- 
phers, may  appear  somewhat  para- 
doxical, especially  in  the  ears  of 
those  who  have  limited  Geography 
to  a  very  narrow  sphere,  and  have 
been  generally  accustomed  to  re- 
gard it  as  the  most  dismal  of  all 
dismal  studies.  How,  indeed,  may 
they  exclaim,  can  the  austere 
race  of  cosmographers  sit  comfort- 
ably by  the  side  of  the  genus 
irritabile  vatum  ?  Can  they  in- 
spire them  with  any  new  enthu- 
siasm, or  add  a  single  bay-leaf  to 
the  crown  that  encinctures  their 
foreheads?  What  ad  vantage  th  it 
a  man  if  he  has  cultivated  a  close 
acquaintance  with  the  equator? 
If  he  has  followed  the  longitudes 
southwards  or  northwards  1  If  he 
has  been  near  the  magnetic  pole  ? 
If  he  has  set  foot  in  Timbuctoo  ? 
Or,  indeed,  if  he  has  seen  the  hid- 
den sources  of  the  Nile  itself  ?  Is 
it  possible  for  a  man  to  be  a  better 
poet  because  he  is  a  geographer, 
or  is  it  even  worth  while  for  a 
literary  man  to  read  much  about 
travellers'  tales  and  the  mysteries 
of  Geography  ?  A  great  deal  of  the 
low  esteem  in  which  Geography  has 
been  held  in  England,  a  country 
which  has  produced  more  sailors, 
travellers,  and  explorers  than  any 
other  nation  in  Europe,  must  be 
attributed  to  ideas  of  our  literary 
men  on  the  subject.  Amongst 
others,  no  man  openly  expressed  a 
more  cynical  disdain  of  travel  and 
travellers  than  the  great  Dr  John- 
son. "These  books,"  quoth  he, 
"pointing  to  three  large  volumes 
of  voyages  to  the  South  Sea  which 
were  just  come  out,  who  will  read 
them  through  ?  A  man  had  better 


work  his  way  before  the  mast  than 
read  them  through;  they  will  be 
eaten  by  rats  and  mice  before  they 
are  read  through.  There  can  be 
little  entertainment  in  such  books ; 
one  set  of  savages  is  like  another." 
And,  on  another  occasion,  when 
poor  Boswell  told  him  that  he  had 
been  in  conversation  with  Captain 
Cook,  and  had  caught  the  enthu- 
siasm of  curiosity  and  adventure 
to  such  a  degree  that  he  felt  a 
strong  inclination  to  go  with  him, 
Johnson  exclaimed,  "Why,  sir,  a 
man  does  feel  so,  till  he  considers 
how  very  little  he  can  learn  from 
such  voyages." 

Still,  it  may  be  maintained  with 
a  great  show  of  justice  that  Geo- 
graphy has  long  served  the  pur- 
poses of  a  handmaid  to  the  Ars 
Poetica.  Four  hundred  years  ago 
Columbus,  the  great  pilot-major  of 
the  western  world,  the  dreamer, 
the  enthusiast,  tore  aside  the  veil 
of  ages,  and  stood  in  the  full  light 
of  an  astonished  word  as  the  hier- 
arch  of  the  new  science  of  Geo- 
graphy. If  there  ever  was  a  poet- 
geographer  it  was  the  great  Col- 
umbus. Even  before  his  day, 
when  Prince  Henry  of  Portugal 
had  established  a  naval  college 
and  erected  an  observatory  at 
Sagres,  the  immediate  result  of 
which  was  to  lead  the  Portuguese 
sailors  far  south  to  the  Cape  of 
Storms,  the  renaissance  of  Geo- 
graphy had  begun.  Slowly,  step 
by  step,  the  great  school  of  obscur- 
antists, classicists,  Dominican  friars, 
and  the  Orders  who  monopolised  all 
learning,  were  compelled  to  give 
way  to  the  new  light.  Plato's 
Atlantis  was  sighted,  the  mythical 
Antilia  sprang  into  literal  and 
magnificent  realisation,  the  New 
World  rose  into  being  with  the 


516 


Poets  and  Geographers. 


[Oct. 


freshness  and  innocence  of  Eden 
upon  it,  and  Geography,  before  the 
lust  of  gold  bewildered  and  de- 
graded men's  thoughts,  came  to  be 
almost  an  cTricm;//,^  ap^LTCKTOVLKr], 
and  the  study  of  princes.  The 
"  card"  of  the  adventurous  mariner, 
pricking  his  way  from  point  to 
point  in  doubt  and  gloom,  through 
storm  and  tempest,  to  some  hither- 
to unknown  region  in  the  far  west, 
possessed  a  magic  charm  for  even 
the  most  unimpressionable  savans 
of  the  day;  whilst  the  bronzed  hero 
of  adventure  himself,  who,  like  the 
crew  in  Coleridge's  "  Ancient  Mar- 
iner," had  burst  for  the  first  time 
into  some  "  Silent  Sea,"  was  the 
cynosure  of  all  ages,  and  held  his 
audience  spell-bound  with  the  tale 
of  his  travels.  Not  unfrequently, 
like  our  own  Sir  Francis  Drake, 
he  was  the  honoured  friend  of 
royalty. 

Geography,  in  these  days,  was 
no  grinning  skeleton  of  facts,  no 
hard  matter  of  aggregated  science, 
no  worn  out,  plagiarised,  and  much 
travestied  deity ;  but  she  sat,  beau- 
tiful muse,  clothed  in  magical  and 
diaphanous  vesture,  half-revealed, 
radiant,  full  of  beauty  and  colour, 
halting  at  the  pearly  gates  of  En- 
terprise, and  beckoning  men  on, 
westwards  and  eastwards,  to  the 
shores  of  Far  Cathay  and  rich 
El  Dorados.  Hand-in-hand  with 
her  sat  Urania,  the  meek  muse  of 
Astronomy,  who  had  led  men  to 
the  stars,  and,  by  reading  the 
stars,  had  taught  them  to  read 
the  face  of  the  habitable  globe,  and 
know  Geography  herself. 

At  the  present  time  we  pay 
too  little  attention  to  the  muse, 
and  forget  that  there  was  any 
romanticism  in  the  progress  of 
the  science.  She  seems  to  have 
perished  with  her  own  triumphs. 
We  are  content  to  say  that  there 
has  been  a  mythopoeic  age  in  the 
history  of  Geography,  and  in  the 


laborious  unfolding  of  God's  great 
world.  Wonder  has  ceased,  science 
has  stepped  in.  Instead  of  the 
ancient  mariner's  primitive  "card," 
we  have  a  few  instruments,  a 
table  of  logarithms,  Admiralty 
soundings,  and  a  nautical  guide : 
all  else  seems  superfluous.  We 
have  tracked  Ariel  to  his  lair,  we 
have  weighed  the  ocean,  sounded 
its  mighty  depths,  analysed  its 
ooze,  learned  its  currents,  sur- 
veyed its  coasts  to  the  remotest 
bays.  The  only  myth  we  can 
furbish  up  is  that  of  the  great 
sea-serpent;  and  those  men  who 
"  occupy  their  business  in  great 
waters "  have  little  wonder  and 
small  admiration.  The  legend  of 
the  impious  Dutchman  is  but  an 
allegory.  Those  picturesque  charts 
of  continents,  traced  and  illumin- 
ated with  wondrous  empires,  mon- 
strous animals,  fabled  cities,  like 
that  which  Salvation  Yeo,  in 
'  Westward  Ho,'  is  represented  as 
showing  to  a  wondering  Devon 
crowd,  has  given  place  to  Mer- 
cator's  Projection,  on  an  accurate 
and  most  scientific  scale.  Geo- 
graphy is,  therefore,  construed  by 
some  to  be  simply  a  collection  of 
dead  bones  in  a  valley  of  death. 
There  is  no  rhythm  in  a  logarithm, 
no  music  of  the  spheres  in  even 
the  most  perfect  spherical  pro- 
jection. Whether  this  is  such  as 
it  ought  to  be — whether  it  is  right 
to  strip  that  once  radiant  divinity 
of  all  her  flesh,  colour,  and  rai- 
ment, and  assign  her  no  shrine 
worthy  of  habitation — is  another 
question.  Great  Pan  is  dead  !  is 
the  cry  we  utter  over  past  pagan- 
ism ;  yet  as  a  source  of  inspira- 
tion, and  an  ever-fertile  subject- 
matter  for  poets  and  sculptors, 
Great  Pan  and  the  classic  myths 
have  an  enduring  life,  as,  indeed, 
the  late  Poet  Laureate  has  demon- 
strated to  us  abundantly.  May 
not  Geography,  therefore,  simply 


1894.] 


Poets  and  Geographers. 


517 


as  the  muse  of  a  mythopceic  age, 
still  live  and  inspire  song.  The 
epic  of  Geography  is  still  to  be 
written. 

Possibly  we  may  now  read  the 
muse  in  a  new  and  different  light, 
a  light  both  warm  and  diffusive; 
we  may  cover  her  with  some  con- 
secrated vestment  and  bring  flesh 
upon  the  dead  bones.  Speaking 
according  to  a  wide  interpretation 
of  the  term,  Geography  may  be 
regarded  as  a  history,  a  science, 
and  an  art. 

As  a  history,  Geography  means 
the  story  of  the  unfolding  of  the 
features  of  the  great  earth,  the 
opening  up  of  fertile  river- valleys, 
the  exploration  of  deserts,  the 
traversing  of  mighty  wastes  of  sea, 
the  labours  of  pioneers,  and  the 
world-wide  tasks  of  men  travelling 
with  their  lives  in  their  hands, — 
Othello's  adventurous  career  re- 
peated again  and  again, — the  ter- 
rors of  the  ice-blast,  the  shafts  of 
the  tropic  sun,  the  wiles  of  savage 
foes.  As  time  goes  on,  it  is  the 
story  of  reclamation  and  develop- 
ment; how,  from  primeval  bar- 
barism and  primeval  forest-gloom, 
there  springs  into  sight  the  wealth 
of  some  happy  Acadian  village, 
fair  orchards,  and  the  bounty  of 
waving  miles  of  golden  corn. 

As  a  science,  Geography  points 
with  her  magic  wand  not  only  to 
the  terrestrial  but  to  the  celestial 
globe.  She  teaches  us  to  read  the 
secrets  of  things  above  and  things 
below,  of  the  movements  of  the 
stars  no  less  than  the  dark  genesis 
of  some  deep  ocean-current,  of  the 
cradle  of  the  winds,  of  the  birth  of 
the  clouds,  of  the  falling  of  grate- 
ful showers,  of  the  roaring  of  the 
mighty  trade-winds,  of  the  thunder- 
ous fury  of  the  devastating  hurri- 
cane; she  tells  us  why  the  stag- 
nant pools  are  foul,  why  the  breath 
of  sweet-lipped  morn  is  fragrant, 
why  the  morning  mists  are  formed, 

VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCXLVIII. 


why  the  skies  are  clear ;  she  lec- 
tures to  us  on  the  economy  of  the 
ocean,  the  equipoise  of  the  ele- 
ments, the  ever-surging  mutations 
from  pole  to  pole.  What  is 
Shelley's  "Ode  to  the  West  Wind," 
when  he  traces  its  wild  spirit 
moving  everywhere,  but  a  beauti- 
ful geographical  description1?  — 

"Thou    who    did'st   waken    from   his 

summer- dreams 

The  blue  Mediterranean  where  he  lay, 
Beside  a  pumice  isle  in  Baise's  bay, 

Thou 

For  whose   path    the    Atlantic's    level 

powers 
Cleave  themselves  into  chasms,  while 

far  below 
The    sea-blooms   and   the   oozy  woods 

which  wear 

The  sapless  foliage  of  the  ocean,  know 
Thy  voice." 

As  a  science  Geography  involves 
many  and  deep  considerations ; 
she  treats  of  general  laws  as  well 
as  particular  and  descriptive  man- 
ifestations. She  is  the  spirit  of 
kosmos  acting  upon  chaos,  reduc- 
ing the  world's  phenomena  to  order 
and  arrangement. 

As  an  art  Geography  implies, 
inter  alia,  the  technical  skill  of 
the  map-maker,  the  moulding  in 
relief  of  mountain  -  ranges  and 
hills,  the  scarred  ravines,  the  deep- 
sunk  river-valleys,  the  blue  levels 
of  the  sea  and  lakes — in  fact,  a 
human  replica  of  the  features  of 
the  earth.  It  may  be  that  the  art 
of  map-making  is  only  just  in  its 
infancy;  and,  as  it  has  been  the 
ambition  of  sculptors  to  carve  the 
human  form  divine,  so  it  may  be 
the  desire  of  geographers  yet  un- 
born to  represent,  according  to  the 
rules  of  some  plastic  art,  the  linea- 
ments of  ancient  Earth  herself. 
At  a  glance  we  might  then  view 
our  country  laid  out  according  to 
its  various  elevations,  terraces, 
plateaux,  and  valleys,  according 
to  scale  and  the  surveyors'  calcu- 
lation. 

2L 


518 


Poets  and  Geographers. 


[Oct. 


Read,  therefore,  in  the  light  of 
a  history,  science,  and  an  art,  the 
muse  of  Geography  may  lead  us 
far  afield ;  and  Geography,  in  such 
a  full  sense,  may  become  so  vast 
a   subject   as   to   lie    beyond    the 
reach      of      the     ordinary     man. 
Human  life  might   be  insufficient 
to    enable    us   to  grasp  the    sub- 
sidiary sciences   which  are   really 
necessary  for  this    eTrio-rrJ//-^  apx1" 
rexTOj/iKrj,   which,   after  all,  is  the 
study  of  nature  writ  large  every- 
where.    Must  we  really  know  all 
about  the  laws  of  storms,  winds, 
currents,    the    ebb    and    flow    of 
tides,     climatology,     meteorology, 
the  variations  of   heat   and   cold, 
to  say  nothing  of  the  science  of  the 
muse   Urania?      No,  we  may  an- 
swer, it  is  not  necessary  for  the 
ordinary  geographer  to  aim  at  this 
encyclopedia  of   knowledge.     For 
the  present  such  a  definition  would 
be  far  too  wide  and  vague  to  be 
accepted  by  any  one.     It  may  be 
sufficient  to  point  out   here  that 
Geography,  if  it  does  not  require 
an    accurate    knowledge    of    the 
physical   sciences,   at  any  rate  it 
recruits  largely  from  them,  and  is 
indebted  deeply  to  them.     Its  pro- 
vince is  being  enlarged  and  its  in- 
terpretation is  becoming  wider.  No 
longer  can  a  geographer  be  a  mere 
collector  of  names  or  facts,  little 
better  than  a  philatelist  infected 
with    a   stamp    mania,    nor   Geo- 
graphy  simply    a    department   of 
the  statistician's  art.     The  Earth 
is  full  of  colour  and  ripeness,  her 
surface  an  ever -varying  and  poet- 
ical rendering  of   mighty  forces; 
her   operations   are    too    sublime, 
her  whispers   too   mysterious,    to 
leave  the  imagination  unimpressed 
and  the  heart  of  man  untouched. 
In  these  latter  days  we  have  come 
closer  to  nature,  and  the  horizon 
of   the   poet    has   ever   "widened 
with    the    process    of    the    suns." 
Instead    of    lingering,    more    apis 


Matinee,  along  the  hedgerows  and 
heather-slopes  of  his  own  father- 
land, the  poet,  following  the  ex- 
pansion of  the  geographical  science, 
has  taken  the  wings  of  the  morn- 
ing and  gone  to  the  uttermost 
parts  of  the  earth.  "  Moving 
incidents  by  flood  and  field "  be- 
came part  of  his  stock -in- trade; 
and,  borne  on  the  mighty  trade- 
winds,  he  could  anchor,  like  a 
sprite  of  air,  in  a  tropic  nook. 
Therefore  a  great  poet  and  travel- 
ler, like  Camoens,  could  shake  the 
dust  of  an  ungrateful  country  from 
off  his  feet,  and,  with  the  stately 
flight  of  the  albatross,  sweep  past 
distant  points  of  earth,  and  re- 
plenish his  verse  with  endless 
imagery.  Invoking  the  Oape  of 
Storms,  the  discovery  of  which 
brought  such  lustre  upon  the 
Portuguese  name,  Camoens  could 
write — 

"  I  am   that  hidden,  mighty  head  of 

land, 
The  Cape  of  Tempests,  fitly  named 

by  you, 
Which   Ptolemy,    Mela,    Strabo  never 

fand, 

Nor  Pliny  dreamt  of,  nor  all  sages 
knew." 

If  we  examine  general  influences 
and  tendencies  closely  we  shall  find 
that,  although  there  has  arisen  in 
England  no  poet-geographer  like 
Camoens  to  chant  an  epic  of  com- 
merce and  adventure  in  stately 
verse  for  a  nation  like  ourselves, 
who  have  done  so  much  for  Geo- 
graphy, there  has  never  been  want- 
ing, malgre  Dr  Johnson,  a  keen 
appreciation  of  Geography  as  an 
inspiring  department  of  human 
knowledge.  It  was  greater  at 
some  times  than  at  others.  In 
the  Tudor  days  there  occurred 
the  great  renaissance  of  Geogra- 
phy. Such  men  as  Lord  Bacon, 
Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  John  Milton, 
together  with  many  others,  were 
cosmographers  as  well  as  poets. 


1894.] 


Poets  and  Geographers. 


519 


In  the  eighteenth  century  Bishop 
Berkeley,  with  his  prophetic  vision 
of  'The  Rise  of  Empire  and  of 
Arts,'  was  a  most  remarkable  in- 
stance of  a  poet-geographer  in  the 
widest  and  most  comprehensive 
sense. 

Afterwards  we  know  that  the 
muse  of  Geography  suffered  a  period 
of  obscure  neglect,  until,  indeed, 
we  descend  to  the  ampler  reign 
of  Queen  Victoria,  resembling  the 
"  spacious  times  "  of  Queen  Eliza- 
beth, and  Geography  is  almost  born 
again.  The  national  ambition  to 
explore  the  hidden  fountains  of  the 
Niger  in  North-west  Africa,  and 
to  lay  bare  the  fountains  of  the 
Nile  in  Equatorial  Africa,  as  well 
as  the  heroic  efforts  of  our  sailors 
and  explorers  to  find  the  North- 
west Passage  and  to  penetrate  to 
the  North  Pole,  provide  in  them- 
selves a  page  of  adventure,  un- 
paralleled in  any  other  age  or 
country,  and  testify  to  a  second 
renaissance  of  Geography.  In  the 
history  of  England  the  muse  of 
Geography  deserves  to  be  enshrined 
as  the  tenth  muse. 

Yet  how  long  did  the  effete 
school  of  classicists,  obscurantists, 
and  mere  formal  imitators  of  an- 
cient models  ignore  the  wider 
spirit  and  more  ample  range 
which  geographical  knowledge 
gave.  Pope's  Pastorals,  Addison's 
Italy,  breathe  a  narrow  world,  dif- 
ferent from  the  wider  landscapes 
of  Shelley  or  Wordsworth.  The 
pedantry  of  imitators  cramped 
their  genius  and  bound  them  to 
narrow  ways.  We  long  to  ex- 
patiate in  an  ampler  region  and 
draw  breath  in  an  atmosphere 
more  congenial  to  our  national 
instincts,  where  the  great  element- 
ary features  of  the  universe,  "  the 
common  sun,  the  air,  the  skies," 
are  restored  to  us.  True  it  might 
be  that,  according  to  the  old  clas- 
sicists, whilst  Clio  showed  her 


open  roll  of  paper,  Euterpe  held 
her  flute,  and  Melpomene  flourished 
her  sword,  there  was  no  symbol, 
such  as  a  chart  or  a  map,  given 
by  the  ancients  to  the  genius  of 
exploration  and  discovery.  But 
was  Geography  destined  never  to 
be  a  muse?  Was  she  alone  to 
be  debarred  from  the  springs  of 
Castaly?  Was  the  poet's  vision 
to  end  with  the  sweep  of  the 
longitudes  southwards  to  dark- 
ness, chaos,  and  perhaps  sweltering 
spaces  of  molten  sea,  as  many  of 
the  ancients  thought  ?  In  an  age 
of  discovery,  could  the  narrow 
hypotheses  of  Mela,  Strabo,  and 
Ptolemy  satisfy  mankind  ?  If,  in- 
deed, we  were  so  bound  to  the 
landscapes  and  seascapes  of  the 
ancients,  we  might  well  retire 
into  cold  and  frozen  obscurity  in 
the  north;  and  be  in  reality  Britons 
toto  penitus  orbe  divisi. 

It  may  be  worth  while,  there- 
fore, to  trace  in  a  few  particular 
instances  the  magic  influences  of 
the  muse  of  Geography  upon  some 
of  our  great  poets,  and  see  how 
they  utilised,  to  the  aggrandise- 
ment of  their  art,  the  revelations 
borne  in  upon  them  from  wider 
spheres  of  travel. 

The  stories  of  national  adven- 
ture in  regions  outside  Europe 
fell  upon  the  ever-attentive  ear  of 
our  great  Shakespeare,  and  lent 
wings  to  his  fancy.  What  things 
in  heaven  and  earth  did  not 
Shakespeare  touch  upon?  The 
intrepid  "  Portingals "  who  had 
sailed  with  Ferdinand  Magelhaens 
had  brought  back  strange  tales  of 
Patagonia  and  the  inhabitants  of 
those  stormy  latitudes, — their  vast 
size,  uncouth  appearance,  their 
manners,  customs,  and  an  account 
of  their  god  Setebos.  So  in  the 
"  Tempest " — that  most  imagina- 
tive and  descriptive  play,  in  which 
Shakespeare  sweeps  the  latitudes 
for  his  similes,  at  any  rate  from  the 


520 


Poets  and  Geographers. 


[Oct. 


West  Indies  to  Patagonia — Cali- 
ban confesses  the  magic  authority 
of  Prospero : — 

"  His  art  is  of  such  power, 
It  would  control  my  dam's  god,  Setebos, 
And  make  a  vassal  of  him." 

— Act  i.  sc.  ii. 

To  the  Bermudas  in  the  same 
play  Shakespeare  expressly  alludes. 
These  islands  were  reported  to  be 
the  habitations  of  furies  and  mon- 
sters, who  could  stir  up  mighty 
hurricanes  and  overwhelm  the  hap- 
less mariner.  The  Spanish  sailors 
had  called  them  the  isles  of  devils, 
Sir  Walter  Raleigh  had  termed 
them  "a  hellish  sea  for  thunder, 
lightning,  and  storms,"  and  in 
1609  Gates  and  Somers  were 
wrecked  on  them  in  the  Sea  Ven- 
ture. Evidently  Shakespeare  must 
have  had  these  incidents  in  mind 
when  he  wrote — 

"  Safely  in  harbour 
Is  the  king's  ship  ;  in  the  deep  nook, 

where  once 
Thou   call'dst    me   up   at  midnight  to 

fetch  dew 

From  the  still-vext  Bermoothes,  there 
she's  hid." 

—Tempest,  Act  i.  sc.  ii. 

Ariel  is  the  airy  sprite  that  has 
a  congenial  abode  amidst  these 
elements  of  unrest,  as  able 

"Tony, 

To  swim,  to  dive  into  the  fire,  to  ride 
On  the  curl'd  clouds." 

In  later  times  the  character  of 
the  Bermudas  was  redeemed  by 
the  kind  and  more  clement  usage 
travellers  received  there.  Sir 
George  Somers  bore  witness  to  it 
that  it  was  "the  most  plentiful 
place  I  ever  came  to  for  fish  and 
fowl,"  and  an  old  author  of  the 
'Historye  of  the  Bermudaes' 
quaintly  described  them  as  "  being 
in  an  equal  elevation  with  that  of 
the  Holy  Land,  and  in  particular 
very  near  with  the  very  city  of 
Jerusalem,  which  is  a  clime  of  the 


sweetest  and  most  pleasing  temper 
of  all  others."  Henceforward,  the 
group  is  veritably  the  abode  of 
angels,  as  once  it  was  the  den  of 
devils.  They  were  the  true  For- 
tunatse  Insulse  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  where  the  blest  living 
might  wander  in  fair  elysian  fields. 
Andrew  Marvell,  inspired  by  their 
beauty,  went  into  raptures  over 

"This  eternal  spring, 
Which  here  enamels  everything," 

"  In  the  remote  Bermudas  wide, 
In  ocean's  bosom  unespied." 

As  a  refuge  from  religious 
persecution  at  home  the  Ber- 
mudas were  indeed  inexpressibly 
grateful.  There  lay,  indeed,  the 
island  of  Eleutheria,  where  Liberty 
had  the  free  use  of  her  wings, 
and  there  the  persecuted  refugee 
might  wander  unmolested  in  meads 
of  asphodel  in  an 

"Isle  so  long  unknown, 
And  yet  far  kinder  than  our  own, 
Safe    from    the    storms    and   prelates' 
rage." 

Waller,  also,  described  the  place 

thus — 

"So  sweet  the  air,   so   moderate   the 

clime, 
None  sickly   lives,    or   dies  before  his 

time  ; 
Heaven    sure   has   kept    this   spot    of 

earth  uncurst 
To  show  how  all  things  were  created 

first." 

In  Bermuda,  also,  the  poet-phil- 
osopher, Bishop  Berkeley,  carried 
away  by  his  inspiring  vision  of 
1  The  Rise  of  Empire  and  of  Arts,' 
wished  to  found  the  St  Paul's 
College  (1724)  from  architectural 
designs  in  Italy  as  a  centre  whence 
light  might  be  spread  westward  to 
the  continent  of  America,  and  the 
torch  of  learning  handed  on,  as 
in  the  Aa^,7raSo<£opia  of  the  Greeks. 

In  our  own  century  Thomas 
Moore  inherited  the  inspiration 
and  the  dream  drawn  from  the 
Bermudas,  and  being  appointed 


1894.] 


Poets  and  Geographers. 


521 


registrar  of  the  Court  of  Admir- 
alty in  1803,  sung  of 

"  Those    leafy   isles    upon    the    ocean 

thrown, 
Like    stars    of    emerald    o'er   a   silver 

zone." 

Here  were  the  lands 

"Which  bards  of  old  with  kindly  fancy 

placed 
For    happy    spirits    in    the    Atlantic 

waste." 

The  Bermudas,  therefore,  are  a 
striking  instance  of  islands  which, 
both  in  the  mythopceic  age  of 
geographical  exploration  as  well 
as  during  subsequent  periods  of 
more  exact  knowledge  and  thor- 
ough investigation,  inspired  the 
minds  of  poets.  There  is  no  tract 
of  land  so  dreamy  or  so  fascinating 
as  an  island,  bathed  in  distant 
tropic  light,  self-contained,  blest 
in  its  solitude,  and  rich  in  great 
ocean's  gifts.  It  is  the  very  place 
whither  the  sprite  in  Milton's 
"Comus"  flies:— 

-."  To  the  ocean  now  I  fly, 

And  those  happy  climes  that  lie 
Where  Day  never  shuts  her  eye.  .  .  . 
There  I  suck  the  liquid  air, 
All  amidst  the  gardens  fair 
Of  Hesperus." 

And  it  was  upon  the  great  Milton, 
of  whom  Wordsworth  wrote — 

"  Thou  hadst  a  voice  whose  sound  was 

like  the  sea, 
Pure  as  the  naked  heavens,  majestic, 

free  " — 

that  the  tales  of  explorers  and  the 
romance  of  geography  had  their 
greatest  influence.  He  too  had 
the  power  of  assimilating  what  he 
heard,  and  of  making  it  all  tribu- 
tary to  his  genius.  Listen  to  this 
passage,  which  recalls  the  efforts  of 
our  navigators  to  find  the  North- 
east Passage  past  the  Vaigatz 
strait  and  the  mouth  of  the  river 
Ob.  On  such  an  adventure  Wil- 


loughby  and  Chancellor  were 
bound,  destined  never  to  re- 
turn : — 

"As  when  two  Polar  winds,  blowing 

adverse 

Upon  the  Cronian  sea,  together  drive 
Mountains  of  ice,  that  stop  the  imagined 

way 

Beyond  Petsora  eastward,  to  the  rich 
Cathaian  coast.  The  aggregated  soil, 
Death,  with  his  mace  petrific,  cold  and 

dry, 
As  with  a  trident,  smote,  and  fix'd  as 

firm 
As  Delos,  floating  once  ;    the  rest  his 

look 
Bound  with   Gorgonian  rigour  not  to 

move." 

The 

"argosies  with  portly  sail, 
Like  seigniors  and  rich  burghers  of  the 
flood," 

which  Shakespeare  alludes  to  in 
"The  Merchant  of  Venice,"  pro- 
vide Milton  also  with  a  magnifi- 
cent simile,  replete  with  geogra- 
phical associations : — 

"As  when  far  off  at  sea  a  fleet  descried 

Hangs  in  the  clouds,  by  equinoctial 
winds 

Close  sailing  from  Bengala,  or  the  isles 

Of  Ternate  and  Tidore,  whence  mer- 
chants bring 

Their  spicy  drugs ;  they,  on  the  trad- 
ing flood, 

Through  the  wide  Ethiopian  to  the 
Cape 

Ply  stemming  nightly  towards  the 
Pole  ;  so  seemed 

Far  off  the  flying  fiend." 

But  the  most  splendid  geogra- 
phical description  which  Milton 
gives  us  is  when  he  takes  Adam 
to  the  hill  "  of  Paradise  the  high- 
est," from  which  the  hemisphere 
of  earth  could  be  seen  in  clearest 
ken,  "  stretched  out  to  the  amplest 
reach  of  prospect."  This  is  a  fit- 
ting opportunity  for  the  poet  to 
ransack  old  and  new,  to  draw 
from  the  romantic  and  imagina- 
tive accounts  of  the  sixteenth  and 


522 


Poets  and  Geographers. 


[Oct. 


seventeenth  century,  no  less  than 
from  the  pages  of  classic  lore. 
With  what  a  sweep  he  takes  us 
—  the  sweep  of  an  exuberant 
fancy  replenished  with  all  the  El 
Dorados  of  ancient,  or  modern 
times : — 

"  Not  higher  that  hill,  nor  wider  look- 
ing round, 

Whereon,  for  different  cause,  the  temp- 
ter set 

Our  second  Adam,  in  the  wilderness, 
To  show  him  all  earth's  kingdoms,  and 

their  glory — 

His  eye  might  there  command  wher- 
ever stood 

City  of  old  or  modern  fame,  the  seat 
Of  mightiest  empire,  from  the  destined 

walls 

Of  Cambalu,  seat  of  Cathaian  Cham, 
And     Samarcand    by     Oxus,    Temir's 

throne, 
To    Paquin,    of    Sinsean    kings ;    and 

thence 

To  Agra,  and  Lahor,  of  Great  Mogul, 
Down  to  the   Golden   Chersonese ;   or 

where 

The  Persian  in  Ecbatan  sat,  or  since 
In  Hispahan ;   or  where   the   Russian 

Czar 

In  Moscow ;  or  the  Sultan  in  Bizance, 
Turchestan-born  ;  nor  could  his  eye  not 

ken 
The   empire   of  Negus   to  his   utmost 

port 

Ercoco,  and  the  less  maritime  kings, 
Monbaza,  and  Quiloa  and  Melind, 
And    Sofala   (thought   Ophir),    to   the 

realm 

Of  Congo,  and  Angola  farthest  south  ; 
Or  thence  from  Niger  flood  to  Atlas 

Mount, 
The  kingdoms  of  Almanzor,   Fez  and 

Sus, 

Morocco  and  Algiers  and  Tremisen  ; 
On  Europe  thence,   and  where  Rome 

was  to  sway 
The  world ;  in  spirit,  perhaps,  he  also 

saw 

Rich  Mexico,  the  seat  of  Montezume, 
And  Cusco  in  Peru,  the  richer  seat 
Of  Atabalipa,  and  yet  unspoil'd 
Guiana,  whose  great  city  Geryon's  sons 
Call  El  Dorado." 

This  passage  may  be  taken  as 
a  poetical  summary  of  the  geo- 
graphical knowledge  of  Milton's 


age.  Europe  had  not  yet  emanci- 
pated itself  from  the  mythopceic 
age,  and  travellers'  tales  gave  poets 
gorgeous  colouring  for  their  word- 
pictures.  Indeed  the  reality  of 
the  new  discoveries  was  sufficient 
to  inspire  them.  It  may  be  noted 
in  Milton's  description  how  prom- 
inent a  part  the  "  dark  continent " 
of  Africa  takes.  Then,  as  always, 
vague,  shadowy,  and  mysterious; 
great  cities,  great  empires  thrown 
broadcast  on  the  map  with  a  lavish 
hand !  The  empire  of  Negus ! 
What  elements  of  ruthless  power 
wielded  by  a  dusky  potentate  does 
it  not  call  up  1  And  the  range  of 
the  seer's  eye  from  Niger  flood  to 
Atlas  Mount !  What  a  magnifi- 
cent picture  of  space  !  There  was 
the  desert  truly  !  But  what  might 
there  not  be  in  those  dim  latitudes 
and  longitudes  far  beyond  the 
tract  of  burning  Saharas  1  The 
romance  of  geographical  discovery 
in  North-west  Africa  lasted  well 
into  the  nineteenth  century,  when 
Timbuctoo,  so  long  the  object  of 
travellers  of  every  nation,  was 
handed  down  by  rumour  as  a  city 
full  as  gorgeous  and  rich  as  the 
seat  of  Montezume.  Mombaza, 
Quiloa,  and  Melind  are  familiar 
names  to  us  now  at  the  close  of 
the  nineteenth  century;  but  it  is 
only  recently  that  we  have  realised 
the  existence  of  these  places  to 
which  Milton  allotted  such  a  great- 
ness. That  they  were  great  may 
be  assumed  from  the  descrip- 
tions of  Portuguese  and  other  tra- 
vellers. Sofala  (thought  Ophir) 
has  received  a  great  deal  of  at- 
tention of  late  from  the  fact  of 
the  Mashunaland  expedition  and 
Mr  Theodore  Bent's  discoveries 
amongst  the  ancient  ruins  of  Zim- 
babwe. Here,  indeed,  would  seem 
to  have  existed  some  ancient  seat 
of  civilisation,  gold-mines,  forts, 
houses,  and  rich  treasure  -  trove, 
whither  King  Solomon's  ships  may 


1894/ 


Poets  and  Geographers. 


523 


have  steered  during  the  time  of 
the  Jews'  prosperity.  In  these 
regions  the  pickaxe  of  the  miner 
is  at  work  bringing  to  light  veins 
of  wealth  every  day.  Congo,  also, 
has  acquired  a  new  significance  of 
late,  and  the  "realm  of  Congo," 
to  use  Milton's  words,  is  the 
"  Congo  Free  State "  of  to-day. 

Here  lies  a  country  vast  in  ex- 
tent, only  half  explored,  traversed 
at  rare  intervals  by  the  feet  of 
adventurous  traders  and  pioneers, 
and  full,  so  it  is  believed,  of  end- 
less possibilities,  larger  and  more 
magnificent  than  the  narrow  strip 
of  shore  to  which  the  Portuguese 
gave  the  high-sounding  title  of  the 
Empire  of  Congo.  Mombassa  is 
also,  as  we  see,  another  old  name 
with  a  new  significance.  It  is  the 
headquarters  of  modern  missionary 
enterprise,  and  the  starting-place 
of  a  contemplated  railway  to  the 
great  Nyanza  beyond,  and  the 
point  whence  British  enterprise 
may  turn  with  renewed  vigour  to 
assail  the  problems  of  Central 
Equatorial  Africa.  Realms,  there- 
fore, that  were  vague,  shadowy, 
and  indistinct  in  Milton's  day, 
romantic  enough  for  the  purpose 
of  the  poet,  may  spring  into  re- 
newed life  and  activity.  Our 
blind  Teiresias  would  seem  to  have 
discerned  with  the  eye  of  prophecy 
the  realm  of  Congo  and  the  king- 
dom of  Mombassa. 

To  Milton  the  whole  theory  of 
Physical  Geography,  the  movements 
of  the  stars,  and  the  influences 
of  the  seasons,  were  a  congenial 
and  fascinating  study.  In  Book 
x.,  "  Paradise  Lost,"  he  propounds, 
in  the  fashion  of  the  poet-geo- 
grapher, a  theory  of  Physical  Geo- 
graphy magnificent  in  its  con- 
ception : — 

"The  sun 
Had  first  his  precept  so  to  move,  so 

shine, 
As  might  affect  the  earth  with  cold  and 

heat 


Scarce  tolerable,  and  from  the  north  to 

call 
Decrepit   winter,    from    the    south    to 

bring 
Solstitial  summer's  heat.     To  the  blank 

moon 
Her  office  they  prescribed :  to  the  other 

five 

Their  planetary  motions  and  aspects, 
In  sextile,  square,  and  trine,  and  op- 
posite, 

Of  noxious  efficacy,  and  when  to  join 
In   synod    unbenign :    and    taught   the 

fix'd 
Their    influence     malignant    when    to 

shower, 
Which  of  them  rising  with  the  sun,  or 

falling, 
Should  prove  tempestuous  :  to  the  winds 

they  set 
Their   corners,  when   with   bluster   to 

confound 
Sea,  air,  and  shore ;  the  thunder  when 

to  roll 
With  terror  through   the   dark  aerial 

hall. 
Some  say  he  taught   his   angels   turn 

askance 
The  poles  of  earth,  twice  ten  degrees 

and  more, 
From  the  sun's  axle,  they  with  labour 

push'd 
Oblique  the  centric  globe.     Some  say, 

the  sun 
Was  bid  turn  reins  from  the  equinoctial 

road 
Like  distant  breadth  to  Taurus  with  the 

seven 

Atlantic  sisters,  and  the  Spartan  Twins, 
Up  to  the  Tropic  Crab  ;  thence  down 

amain 

By  Leo,  and  the  Virgin,  and  the  Scales, 
As  deep  as  Capricorn,  to  bring  in  change 
Of  seasons  to  each  clime :  else  had  the 

spring 
Perpetual  smiled  on  earth  with  vernant 

flowers, 
Equal  in  days  and  nights,   except   to 

those 

Beyond  the  polar  circles  ;  to  them  day 
Had  unbenighted  shone,  while  the  low 

sun, 
To  recompense   his   distance,  in   their 

sight 
Had  rounded  still  the  horizon,  and  not 

known 
Or  East  or  West,  which  had  forbid  the 

snow 

From  cold  Estotiland,  and  south  as  far 
Beneath  Magellan." 


524 


Poets  and  Geographers. 


[Oct. 


In  the  elucidation  of  his  theories 
of  the  universe,  Milton  not  only 
charms  the  ear  with  his  stately  and 
musical  rhythm,  but  rivets  the 
attention  of  the  reader  upon  dry 
physical  facts,  giving  them  a 
wonderful  colouring  of  his  own. 
It  is  an  extract  worthy  of  his 
magnificent  poem,  and  he  resembles 
Lucretius  in  his  power  to  deal  with 
abstruse  matters  in  majestic  verse. 
To  the  geographer's  pictures  he  is 
always  deeply  indebted.  Satan 
dilated  stands  "like  Teneriffe  or 
Atlas  unremoved."  Uriel  is  borne 
on  the  bright  beam  whose  point 
bore  him  downwards  "  to  the  sun, 
now  fallen  beneath  the  Azores." 
The  description  itself  of  Eden  and 
the  delicious  fragrance  thereof  is 

"As  when  to  those  who  sail 
Beyond  the  Cape  of  Hope,  and  now  are 

past 
Mozambique,  off  at  sea  north-east  winds 

blow 

Sabcean  odours  from  the  spicy  shores 
Of  Araby  the  Blest." 

The  fig-tree  whose  leaves  Adam 
and  Eve  used  as  a  covering  was 

"  Not  that  kind  for  fruit  renowned, 
But  such  as,  at  this  day,  to  Indians 

known, 
In  Malabar  or  Deccan. 

Such  of  late 

Columbus  found  the  American,  so  girt 
With  feathered  cincture." 

The    fruit    that    Eve    carries    to 
Adam  is — 

"Whatever  Earth,  all-bearing  Mother, 

yields 
In  India  East  or  West." 

Had  Milton  lived  in  the  days  of 
South  Pacific  discovery,  he  would 
surely  have  seized  upon  the  idea 
of  the  bread-fruit  tree  and  made 
capital  out  of  this.  Lord  Byron,  in 
his  beautiful  and  descriptive  poem 
of  "The  Island,"  which  indeed  is 
throughout  a  notable  instance  of 


the  great  tribute  poets  owe  to  geo- 
graphers and  explorers,  paints  his 
"Island  Eden,"  and  the  "Tropic 
afternoon  of  Toobenai." 

"The  cava  feast,  the  yam,  the  cocoa's 

root, 
Which  bears  at  once  the  cup,  the  milk 

and  fruit ; 
The    bread  -  tree,    which   without    the 

ploughshare,  yields 
The    unreaped   harvest    of   unfurrow'd 

fields, 

And  bakes  its  unadulterated  loaves 
Without    a    furnace    in     unpurchased 

groves." 

There  is  one  most  remarkable 
instance  of  the  inspiration  poets 
can  sometimes  receive  from  the 
muse  of  Geography,  and  this  is 
"  The  Ancient  Mariner  "  of  Samuel 
Taylor  Coleridge,  one  of  the  most 
beautiful  and  fantastic  creations  of 
the  poetic  art.  The  poem  is  said 
to  have  hung  upon  an  incident 
mentioned  in  Shelvocke's  voyages 
to  Cape  Horn  and  the  South  Seas. 
Captain  Shelvocke  and  Clipperton 
were  placed  in  command  of  two 
ships  by  merchants  of  Bristol ; 
but,  unfortunately,  the  expedition 
was  badly  conducted,  and  did  not 
succeed.  In  his  book  Shelvocke 
described  the  weird  ocean  scenery 
of  Patagonia  (the  home  of  the  god 
Setebos)  and  Cape  Horn ;  how  the 
navigators  experienced  such  ex- 
treme cold  when  driven  into  the 
latitude  of  61°  30'  S.,  that  a  sailor 
fell  with  benumbed  fingers  from 
the  mainsail,  and  was  drowned. 

"  In  short,  one  would  think  it  im- 
possible that  anything  could  subsist 
in  so  rigid  a  climate  ;  and  indeed  we 
all  observed  that  we  had  not  the  sight 
of  one  fish  of  any  kind  since  we  were 
come  southward  of  the  Straights  of 
Le  Mair." 

"And  now  there  came  both  mist  and 

snow, 

And  it  grew  wondrous  cold  ; 
And  ice,  mast-high,  came  floating  by 
As  green  as  emerald. 


1894/ 


Poets  and  Geograpliers. 


525 


And   through   the    drifts,    the    snowy 

clifts, 

Did  send  a  dismal  sheen  ; 
Nor   shapes    of    men,    nor   beasts    we 

ken, — 
The  ice  was  all  between." 

"  Not  one  seabird,  except  a  discon- 
solate black  albatross,  who  accom- 
panied us  for  several  days,  hovering 
about  us  as  if  he  had  lost  himself." 

"  At  length  did  cross  an  albatross, 
Through  the  fog  it  came ; 
As  if  it  had  been  a  Christian  soul, 
We  hail'd  it  in  God's  name." 

The  curse  came  upon  the  ship 
when — 

"Hatley,  the  second  captain,  ob- 
serving, in  one  of  his  melancholy  fits, 
that  this  bird  was  always  near  us,  im- 
agined from  its  colour  that  it  might 
be  some  ill  omen.  That  which,  I 
suppose,  induced  him  the  more  to 
encourage  his  superstition  was  the 
continued  series  of  contrary  tempes- 
tuous winds  which  had  oppressed  us 
ever  since  we  had  got  into  this  sea. 
But,  be  that  as  it  would,  he,  after 
some  fruitless  attempts,  at  length  shot 
the  albatross,  not  doubting,  perhaps, 
that  we  should  have  a  fair  wind  after 
it." 

"And  I  had  done  a  hellish  thing, 
And  it  would  work  'em  woe." 

If  Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge  had 
followed  Dr  Johnson's  advice,  he 
would  never  have  spent  his  time 
in  reading  books  of  travel  and  of 
voyages  to  the  South  Seas,  and,  in 
all  probability,  would  never  have 
produced  the  great  gem  of  all  his 
poetry. 

Ruskin,  in  his  c  Scenes  of  Tra- 
vel,' remarks  that  the  charts  of 
science  fail  in  the  poetical  or  pic- 
torial representation  of  general 
physical  features.  Roughly  speak- 
ing, we  recognise  general  contrasts 
and  apprehend  the  attributes  of 
the  zones ;  but  the  poet's  and  the 
painter's  hand  must  fill  up  the 
details.  We  have  to  imagine  our- 
selves aloft,  flying  with  the  migra- 
tory horde  of  birds,  and  looking 


down  upon  the  variegated  mosaic 
of  the  earth's  surface.  Yonder  are 
the  Alps,  there  are  the  Apennines, 
below  are  "ancient  promontories 
sleeping  in  the  sun ;  here  and  there 
an  angry  spot  of  thunder,  a  grey 
stain  of  storm,  moving  upon  the 
burning  field" — in  the  south  "a 
great  peacefulness  of  light,  Syria 
and  Greece,  Italy  and  Spain,  laid 
like  the  pieces  of  a  golden  pave- 
ment into  the  sea-blue."  Towards 
the  north  are  deeper  shadows 
and  dark  forests,  till  the  "earth 
heaves  into  mighty  masses  of 
leaden  rock  and  heathy  moor,  bor- 
dering into  a  broad  waste  of  gloomy 
purple,  that  belt  of  field  and  wood, 
and  splintering  into  irregular  and 
grisly  islands  amid  the  northern 
seas,  beaten  by  storms  and  chilled 
by  ice-drift." 

This,  indeed,  is  the  prose-poetry 
of  Geography.  It  is  the  modern 
spirit  breathing  over  and  spirit- 
ualising all  aspects  of  nature. 

Some  of  the  finest  portions  of 
the  great  Tennyson's  poetry  are 
beautiful  geographical  descriptions. 
Listen  to  the  "Land  of  Lotos- 
Eaters"— 

"  A  land  of  streams !  some,  like  a  down- 
ward smoke 

Slow- dropping  veils  of  thinnest  lawn, 
did  go  ; 

And  some  thro'  wavering  lights  and 
shadows  broke, 

Rolling  a  slumbrous  sheet  of  foam 
below. 

They  saw  the  gleaming  river  seaward 
flow 

From  the  inner  land :  far  off,  three 
mountain-tops, 

Three  silent  pinnacles  of  aged  snow.  .  .  . 

The  charmed  sunset  linger'd  low 
adown 

In  the  low  west ;  through  mountain 
clefts  the  dale 

Was  seen  far  inland,  and  the  yellow 
down 

Border'd  with  palm,  and  many  a  wind- 
ing vale 

And  meadow,  set  with  slender  galin- 
gale." 


526 


Poets  and  Geographers. 


[Oct. 


In  "  Enoch  Arden  "  the  passage 
beginning — 

"The  mountain  wooded  to  the  peak, 
the  lawns 

And  winding  glades  high  up  like  ways 
to  Heaven, 

The  slender  coco's  drooping  crown  of 
plumes, 

The  lightning  flash  of  insect  and  of 
bird, 

The  lustre  of  the  long  convolvuluses 

That  coiled  around  the  stately  stems, 
and  ran 

Ev'n  to  the  limit  of  the  land,  the 
glows 

And  glories  of  the  broad  belt  of  the 
world, 

All  these  he  saw;  but  what  he  fain 
had  seen 

He  could  not  see,  the  kindly  human 
face 

Nor  ever  hear  a  kindly  voice,  but 
heard 

The  myriad  shriek  of  wheeling  ocean- 
fowl, 

The  league-long  roller  thundering  on 
the  reef, 

The  moving  whisper  of  huge  trees  that 
branch'd 

And  blossom'd  in  the  zenith,  or  the 
sweep 

Of  some  precipitous  rivulet  to  the  wave, 

As  down  the  shore  he  ranged,  or  all 
day  long 

Sat  often  in  the  seaward-gazing  gorge, 

A  shipwrecked  sailor,  waiting  for  a  sail : 

No  sail  from  day  to  day,  but  every  day 

The  sunrise  broken  into  scarlet  shafts 

Among  the  palms  and  ferns  and  pre- 
cipices ; 

The  blaze  upon  the  waters  to  the  east, 

The  blaze  upon  his  island  overhead  ; 

The  blaze  upon  the  waters  to  the  west ; 

Then  the  great  stars  that  globed  them- 
selves in  Heaven, 

The  hollower- bellowing  ocean,  and  again 

The  scarlet  shafts  of  sunrise — but  no 
sail"— 

has  justly  been  quoted  as  one  of 


the  truest  and  most  beautiful  de- 
scriptions possible  of  a  tropical 
island.  Dwellers  in  the  West 
Indies  have  often  appropriated 
this  extract,  and  applied  it  to 
Dominica,  with  its  green  slopes, 
shining  rivers,  and  lofty  peak  of 
Morne  Diabloten.  It  is  difficult, 
indeed,  to  realise  that  Tennyson 
had  never  seen,  as  he  elsewhere 
describes  them — 

"  Breadths  of  tropic  shade  and  palms  in 
cluster,  knots  of  Paradise." 

Can  there  be,  therefore,  a  great 
chasm  between  Poetry  and  Geo- 
graphy, as  of  two  distinct  studies, 
irreconcilable  with,  and  distinct 
from,  one  another  1  Nay,  may  not 
the  muse  of  Geography  be  the  chief 
auxiliar  of  the  poetic  art  1  If,  from 
the  descriptions  of  geographers 
and  travellers,  Shakespeare  has 
evolved  his  wonderful  and  match- 
less creation  of  Ariel,  the  sprite  of 
air,  Coleridge  the  story  and  curse 
of  "  The  Ancient  Mariner,"  Milton 
his  most  magnificent  similes  from 
nature,  Tennyson  his  most  striking 
and  beautiful  descriptive  pieces, 
who  shall  say  that  Geography  her- 
self deserves  not  to  be  enshrined  as 
the  tenth  muse  ?  Geography  as  an 
exact  science  may  be  distasteful, 
and  Geography  as  a  compendium  of 
bare  names  and  places  in  foreign 
lands  an  unworthy  study ;  but 
when  the  poet  has  come  and  cast 
around  these  names  and  places 
"the  consecration  and  the  poet's 
dream,"  these  very  names  and 
places  become  for  us  living  and 
inspiring  creations. 

WILLIAM  GEESWELL. 


1894.] 


The  Skeleton  Hand. 


527 


THE    SKELETON     HAND. 


I  AM  about  to  relate  some  events 
which  took  place  in  the  early  part 
of  this  century,  in  a  remote  little 
fishing  village  on  the  south  coast 
of  Devonshire.  The  occurrences 
are  in  themselves  so  remarkable 
that  they  have  been  well  known 
to  the  present  generation  of  in- 
habitants; but  as  things  get  al- 
tered in  oral  transmission  through 
many  persons,  it  has  been  thought 
well  to  place  this  record  in  writing. 

Near  the  village  of  Jodziel,  in  a 
pretty  little  cottage  on  the  top  of 
the  bright  red  sandstone  cliff  which 
overhangs  the  village,  lived  two 
maiden  sisters,  the  Misses  Rutson. 
Their  father,  a  sea-captain,  had 
died  a  year  before  the  events  I 
am  about  to  relate  occurred. 
Their  mother  had  died  in  giving 
birth  to  the  younger  sister,  Anne, 
who  was  now  a  most  beautiful  girl 
of  eighteen.  The  Misses  Rutson 
were  very  devotedly  attached  to 
one  another,  and  were  much  be- 
loved by  the  village  neighbours. 
The  hamlet  being  a  very  seques- 
tered one,  they  seldom  saw  any 
one  from  the  outer  world  except 
occasionally  sailors,  who  would 
stroll  along  the  cliff  from  Ply- 
mouth or  from  other  fishing  vil- 
lages along  the  coast.  In  the 
autumn  of  1813  a  pressgang 
visited  South  Devon  and  made 
their  headquarters  for  some  time 
in  the  village  of  Jodziel.  The  cap- 
tain, a  certain  Captain  Sinclair  by 
name — a  coarse  brutal  fellow  in  ap- 
pearance— was  very  much  struck 
by  the  extraordinary  beauty  of 
Miss  Anne.  He  forced  himself 
upon  her,  and  continued  paying 
her  the  most  distasteful  atten- 
tions, which  the  gentle  girl  did  her 
very  utmost  to  check,  but  in  vain. 
The  day  before  Captain  Sinclair 


left  Jodziel,  he  made  a  formal  offer 
of  marriage  to  Miss  Anne,  which 
in  the  presence  of  her  sister  she 
immediately  and  decisively  de- 
clined. Captain  Sinclair  flew  into 
the  most  violent  passion,  swore 
he  had  never  been  thwarted  yet 
by  any  woman,  and  that  she 
should  belong  to  him  or  never 
marry  at  all.  Anne  was  so  much 
upset  by  the  terrible  scene,  and 
by  Captain  Sinclair's  outrageous 
language,  that  her  sister  was  very 
glad  when  an  invitation  from  an 
aunt  residing  in  London  gave 
Anne  a  few  weeks'  much-needed 
change.  Mrs  Travers  was  the 
only  near  relative  remaining  to 
the  Misses  Rutson,  and  owing  to 
various  circumstances  the  sisters 
had  seen  but  little  of  their  aunt, 
though  with  Maurice  Travers,  her 
only  son,  they  were  better  ac- 
quainted. Maurice's  regiment  had 
been  quartered  for  the  summer  of 
1813  at  Plymouth,  and  he  had 
frequently  been  over  to  see  his 
cousins,  and  many  a  pleasant  sum- 
mer day  had  they  spent  wander- 
ing along  the  beautiful  Devonshire 
coast.  Miss  Rutson  had  not  been 
slow  to  perceive  that  stronger  at- 
tractions than  those  of  mere  scenery 
brought  the  young  officer  so  con- 
stantly to  their  cottage,  and  she 
was  not  therefore  very  much  sur- 
prised at  receiving  one  morning, 
about  three  weeks  after  Anne's 
departure  from  home,  a  letter  an- 
nouncing her  engagement  to  her 
cousin,  Maurice  Travers,  and  her 
immediate  return  to  Jodziel.  It 
was  decided  that  the  marriage 
should  take  place  early  in  the 
following  May,  and  I  will  now 
quote  one  or  two  passages  from 
Miss  Rutson's  diary  at  this  time. 
"  May  1. — Such  a  horrid  meet- 


528 


The  Skeleton  Hand. 


[Oct. 


ing  we  have  just  had.  Anne  and 
I  had  been  for  a  stroll  along  the 
shore  when  we  noticed  a  little  boat 
which  lay  drawn  up  under  a  rock 
at  some  distance,  when  Anne's 
eyes,  which  are  keener  than  mine, 
caught  sight  of  the  name  painted 
in  gold  letters.  '  Ah,  sister,  come 
away,'  she  cried;  'it  is  a  boat 
from  the  Raven.  I  thought 
Captain  Sinclair  was  not  to  be  in 
these  waters  again ;  he  told  me  he 
was  to  sail  for  the  West  Indies 
last  month.'  We  turned,  and  were 
hurriedly  retracing  our  steps  to- 
wards the  house  when  we  heard 
a  cry  of  Stop  !  I  looked  at  Anne ; 
she  was  deadly  white.  '  Run  on 
quick,'  I  cried;  'I  will  speak  to 
him.'  My  heart  was  beating  so 
fast  I  could  run  no  longer;  be- 
sides, I  felt  it  might  be  well 
to  hear  what  Captain  Sinclair 
had  to  say,  so  I  drew  myself 
together  and  waited.  Presently 
he  appeared  clambering  up  the 
side  of  the  cliff,  his  swarthy  face 
purple  with  excitement.  '  Where 
is  she  ? '  he  gasped.  '  I  have  come 
back  to  fetch  her ;  I  could  not  sail 
without  her,  my  own  beautiful 
Anne  ! '  '  Recollect  yourself,  sir,' 
I  cried  indignantly.  'How  dare 
you  speak  of  my  sister  in  this  free 
manner !  She  has  told  you  most 
clearly,  and  that  in  my  presence, 
that  she  looks  on  your  pursuit  of 
her  as  odious,  and  she  begs,  both 
for  her  own  sake  and  yours,  that 
you  will  never  attempt  to  see  her 
again.'  '  Do  you  think  I  will  be 
daunted  by  such  a  speech  from  a 
foolish  girl1?'  he  answered  scorn- 
fully; fno,  no,  she  shall  be  mine 
yet,  whether  she  will  or  no.' 
'You  are  mistaken,'  I  replied  as 
calmly  as  I  could ;  '  next  Monday 
she  marries  our  first  cousin,  Mau- 
rice Travers,  and  will  be  at  peace 
from  your  hated  persecutions.' 

"I  shall  never  forget  his  scowl 
of  fury  as  he  turned  from  me  and 


dashed  down  the  cliff,  shouting  as 
he  did  so,  '  She  shall  be  mine  ! ' 
When  I  got  home,  feeling  very 
nervous  and  shaken,  who  should  I 
find  just  starting  out  to  seek  me 
but  Maurice,  who  had  come  three 
days  earlier  than  we  expected 
him.  An  hour  before  I  should 
have  felt  very  cross  at  having  my 
last  quiet  hours  with  Anne  so 
much  curtailed,  but  now  I  was 
only  too  thankful  to  feel  we  had  a 
protector  near  us.  He  went  out 
after  hearing  my  story,  but  could 
see  no  trace  of  either  boat  or  its 
owner. 

"  May  2. — To  my  great  relief  the 
Raven,  with  Captain  Sinclair  on 
board,  has  left  Plymouth  this  morn- 
ing for  the  West  Indies.  Maurice 
had  business  at  Plymouth,  and  he 
took  the  opportunity  of  making 
inquiries  concerning  the  Raven, 
which  was,  he  found,  in  the  very 
act  of  putting  to  sea.  I  feel,  oh, 
so  thankful  and  relieved. 

"  May  4.  —  How  shall  I  ever 
begin  to  write  the  events  of  this 
most  dreadful  day !  Such  a  bril- 
liant sunshiny  morning,  quite  like 
summer,  and  my  darling  came 
down  looking  like  one  of  the 
sweet  white  roses  which  were 
just  coming  into  bloom  around 
the  windows.  I  plucked  a  beau- 
tiful spray  of  them,  and  she  put 
them  in  her  white  satin  waistband 
just  before  starting  for  church.  I 
have  those  roses  by  me  now  as  I 
write,  but,  O  my  darling !  where 
are  you  ?  The  wedding  was  a  very 
quiet  one.  After  the  ceremony 
we  had  the  clergyman  and  doctor, 
with  their  wives  and  their  chil- 
dren, to  lunch,  and  presently  Anne 
rose  and  said  she  would  go  and 
change  her  dress.  I  was  going  to 
follow  her,  but  she  stopped  me 
with  one  of  her  sweet  kisses  and 
said,  '  Let  me  have  a  few  moments 
alone  in  the  old  room  to  say  good- 
bye to  it  all.'  I  let  her  go — when 


1894.] 


The  Skeleton  Hand. 


529 


did  I  ever  thwart  her  in  anything  ? 
She  went,  and  Maurice  began  romp- 
ing with  the  children,  and  we  ladies 
cut  slices  of  wedding-cake,  to  be 
taken  round  to  village  favourites 
next  day,  and  still  Anne  did  not 
call.     Once,  indeed,  I  had  fancied 
I  heard  her  voice ;   but  when   I 
had  gone  up-stairs  her  door  was 
locked,  and  she  had  not  answered 
my  gentle  tap,   so  I  came  down 
again,  not  wishing  to  intrude  upon 
her  privacy.     At  length,  however, 
Maurice    became    impatient,    and 
said   I    must    go   and    fetch    her 
down,  or  they  would  never  be  in 
time  to  catch  the  coach  at  Ply- 
mouth.   The  door  was  still  locked. 
When  I  got  up-stairs  I  knocked, 
first  gently,  then  more  loudly.     I 
was   not   frightened   at   first,    for 
there  was  a  door-window  in  the 
room  leading  down  a  little  flight 
of   steps   into  the  garden,   and  I 
thought  she  had  gone  down  these 
to  take  a  last  look  at  her  flowers, 
so   I   called   to   Maurice    to    run 
round  to  the  garden,  for  she  must 
be  there.     I  remained  listening  at 
the  bedroom  door,  which  in  a  mo- 
ment or  two  flew  open,  and  Mau- 
rice, with  a  very  disturbed  face, 
stood  before  me.      '  She   has  evi- 
dently been  in  the  garden,'  he  said, 
*  for  the  door  on  to  the  outside 
steps  was  open ;  but  there  is  no 
one  there  now.'     I  made  no  an- 
swer, but  flew  past  him  into  the 
bedroom.     It  needed  but  a  glance 
to    show    my    darling    had    gone 
straight   through   the   room  ;   her 
gloves     and     handkerchief    were 
thrown  on  a  chair  by  the  window, 
and  her  pale-blue  travelling-dress 
lay  undisturbed  upon  the  bed.     I 
ran  hastily  through  the  room  and 
garden,    which   was    empty ;    the 
gate  on  to  the  cliff  was  ajar,  and 
we  noticed  (but  not  till  later)  that 
there  must  have  been  a  struggle 
at  the  spot,  for  some  of  the  lilac 
boughs  were  torn  down,  as  if  some 


one  had  held  fast  by  them  and 
been  dragged  forcibly  away.  Mau- 
rice and  the  rest  of  the  party  fol- 
lowed me  on  to  the  cliff,  for  the 
alarm  had  now  become  general ; 
for  a  little  while  we  ran  wildly, 
calling  her  dear  name,  but  pres- 
ently Maurice  came  to  me,  and 
drawing  my  arm  within  his  own, 
led  me  back  towards  the  house. 
'  Some  one  must  be  here  to  receive 
her  when  she  comes  home,'  he  said 
gently,  and  here  his  lips  grew 
white.  '  It  might  be  well  to  have 

her  bed  ready  in  case '    He  was 

out  of  the  room  without  finishing 
his  sentence.  It  was  needless ; 
the  same  horrible  fear  had  already 
seized  on  me.  The  cliff,  the  ter- 
rible cliff;  I  cannot  go  on  writing, 
my  heart  is  too  heavy. 

"  Twelve  o'clock. — They  have 
come  back,  and,  O  God !  the  only 
trace  of  her  is  the  spray  of  white 
roses  I  picked  for  her  this  morn- 
ing. They  were  found  on  the  top 
of  the  cliff  about  half  a  mile  from 
here.  I  think  they  are  a  message 
from  my  darling  to  me,  for  they 
were  not  trampled  on  or  crushed ; 
she  must  have  taken  them  care- 
fully and  purposely  from  her  belt ; 
they  shall  never,  never  leave  me. 

"May  11. — It  is  a  week  since 
that  dreadful  day,  and  not  the 
smallest  clue  to  her  disappearance. 
Poor  Maurice  is  half  mad  with 
grief  •  he  has  sought  for  her  high 
and  low,  and  spent  all  the  little 
sum  destined  for  their  wedding 
journey  on  these  vain  researches. 
Now  he  wanders  along  the  cliff  up 
and  down,  up  and  down,  the  whole 
of  the  long  day,  and  then  he  comes 
and  sits  opposite  to  me  with  his 
elbows  on  his  knees,  till  I  tell  him 
it  is  time  for  bed,  when  he  goes 
without  a  word ;  but  I  hear  him 
pacing  his  room  half  the  night. 

"  May  31. — Maurice  has  had  to 
join  his  regiment  for  foreign  ser- 
vice. I  am  glad :  he  would  have 


530 


The  Skeleton  Hand. 


[Oct. 


gone  mad  had  he  remained  inactive 
here. 

"  Sept.  3. — I  have  been  very  ill, 
but  Patty  assures  me  there  has  not 
been  a  trace  of  any  clue  during  my 
long  time  of  blessed  unconscious- 
ness, and  now  the  terrible  aching 
void  is  again  here.  O  my  darling, 
my  darling,  come  back  ! 

"  Sept.  6. — Why  should  I  go  on 
writing  1  my  life  henceforth  is  only 
waiting." 

After  this  comes  a  long  break  of 
fully  twenty  years  in  the  diary; 
then  in  an  aged  and  trembling  char- 
acter occurs  the  following  entry  : — 

"May  4,  1835.— I  don't  know 
what  impels  me  once  more  to  pen 
this  diary;  possibly  this  wild 
hurricane  of  wind  which  is  making 
the  house  rock  like  a  boat  has 
upset  me,  but  I  feel  so  glad  and 
satisfied,  as  if  my  long  waiting 
were  nearly  over.  I  have  just 
been  up-stairs  to  see  that  all  is  in 
order  for  my  darling.  We  have 
kept  everything  aired  and  pre- 
pared for  her  these  thirty  years, 
so  that  she  should  find  all  com- 
fortable when  she  comes  home  at 
last.  My  poor  darling,  she  will 
only  find  Patty  and  me  to  welcome 
her.  Let  me  think,  this  is  nearly 
twenty  years  ago  since  we  heard 
of  Maurice's  death  at  Waterloo. 
Oh  what  a  fearful  crash  !  and  how 
that  rumbling  noise  goes'  on  sound- 
ing as  if  the  cliff  had  given  way." 

Here  the  diary  abruptly  termin- 
ates ;  but  the  remainder  of  the 
tragic  story  is  yet  told  in  that 
little  Devonshire  village.  The 
violence  of  the  storm  had  in  very 
truth  caused  a  subsidence  in  the 
cliff,  and  in  doing  so  had  brought 
to  light  a  skeleton  on  which  yet 
hung  some  tattered  remnants  of 
what  had  once  been  white  satin, 
and  from  whose  bony  fingers  rolled 
a  tarnished  wedding-ring.  The 
bones  were  collected  with  tender 
care  and  brought  to  the  house  of 


the  unhappy  sister.  She  received 
them  without  much  apparent  sur- 
prise, directed  they  should  be  laid 
on  "Miss  Anne's  bed  up-stairs," 
and  as  soon  as  the  men  had  left 
the  house,  went  and  laid  herself 
upon  the  bed  also,  where  her  faith- 
ful maid  Patty,  coming'  to  see 
after  her  an  hour  later,  found  her 
stone-dead,  and  held  tight  in  her 
dead  grasp  was  a  pair  of  white 
gloves  and  a  lace  pocket-handker- 
chief. 

The  two  sisters  were  laid  to  rest 
in  one  grave,  and  it  was  not  till 
after  the  funeral  was  over  that 
it  was  discovered  that,  through 
some  inadvertence,  one  of  the 
skeleton  hands  had  not  been  placed 
in  the  coffin  with  the  rest  of  the 
body. 

At  first  there  was  some  talk  of 
reopening  the  grave,  but  the  old 
maid  Patty  entreated  so  earnestly 
to  be  allowed  to  retain  the  hand 
that  she  at  last  succeeded  in  carry- 
ing her  point.  A  glass  case  was 
made  by  Mrs  Patty's  order,  and 
in  it  the  poor  hand  was  placed ; 
and  when  Mrs  Patty  went  down 
to  the  inn  to  spend  her  last  re- 
maining years  with  her  daughter 
the  landlady,  the  case  was  placed 
on  a  shelf  close  to  the  old  woman's 
seat,  and  many  a  time  would  she 
recount  the  sad  story  to  the  sailors 
who  frequented  the  village  inn. 

In  the  spring  of  1837  a  larger 
number  than  usual  were  gathered 
round  the  fireside  of  the  Blue 
Dragon.  A  fearful  storm,  accom- 
panied by  violent  gusts  of  hail, 
swept  round  the  house.  Suddenly 
the  door  burst  open,  and  a  young 
man  entered,  half  dragging,  half 
supporting  an  old  man,  bent  and 
shrunk  with  age  and  infirmity. 
"Here  you  are,  sir,"  he  said  to 
the  old  man ;  "  this  is  the  Blue 
Dragon.  You  won't  find  a  snugger 
berth  between  here  and  Plymouth;" 
so  saying,  he  thrust  the  old  man 


1894] 


The  Skeleton  Hand. 


531 


into  a  chair  by  the  fire,  and  con- 
tinued, half  aside  to  the  company, 
"Found  the  old  cove  wandering 
about  the  cliffs,  and  thought  he 
would  be  blown  over,  so  offered  to 
guide  him  here.  I  think  he  is  a 
little "  and  he  tapped  his  fore- 
head significantly.  The  rest  of  the 
party  turned  round  curiously  to 
gaze  at  the  stranger,  who,  seeming 
to  wake  from  some  reverie,  pro- 
ceeded to  order  something  hot  both 
for  himself  and  his  self -constituted 
guide.  The  hot  gin  -  and  -  water 
seemed  further  to  rouse  him,  and 
he  began  asking  a  few  questions 
concerning  the  country  and  neigh- 
bourhood ;  but  in  the  very  act  of 
speaking  his  attention  was  sud- 
denly arrested  by  the  sight  of  the 
glass  case  and  skeleton  hand.  He 
sprang  from  his  chair  with  a  savage 
cry  of  mingled  terror  and  dismay. 
"The  hand,"  he  cried,  "the  hand  ! 
why  does  it  point  at  me  1  I  never 

meant,  O  God ! "  and  he  fell 

down  in  a  fit,  rolling  and  gasping 
on  the  floor,  and  shrieking  wildly 
at  intervals,  "The  hand,  the  hand ! " 
They  raised  the  wretched  man  from 
the  floor  and  laid  him  on  a  bed, 
whilst  the  doctor  was  hurriedly 
summoned.  Meanwhile  the  suf- 
ferer continued  disjointed  mutter- 
ings,  till,  becoming  exhausted,  he 
sank  into  a  stupor.  On  the  doc- 
tor's arrival,  however,  he  once  more 
roused  himself,  and  asked  in  a 
quieter  and  more  composed  manner 
whose  the  hand  was.  On  being 
told,  he  trembled  violently,  but 
said :  "I  am  Captain  Sinclair ;  I 
knew  the  wedding-day  j  I  told  my 
ship  to  sail  without  me  from  Ply- 


mouth, saying  I  would  rejoin  her 
at  Falmouth.  I  meant  to  bring 
Anne  with  me ;  I  hid  in  the  gar- 
den, she  came  into  it  alone,  I 
rushed  forward,  threw  a  shawl  I 
had  ready  over  her  head,  and  car- 
ried her  away;  she  resisted  with 
all  her  might,  but  I  was  a  strong 
man,  and  her  cries  were  stifled  by 
the  shawl.  Of  course  I  could  not 
get  along  very  fast,  and  presently 
I  heard  voices  of  those  in  search 
of  her.  She  heard  them  also,  and 
made  another  frantic  effort  to  free 
herself.  My  strength  was  nearly 
exhausted,  but  mad  with  rage  and 
disappointment,  I  drew  my  knife 
from  my  belt  and  stabbed  her  to 
the  heart,  crying  fiercely,  '  I  have 
kept  my  oath,  you  shall  never  be 
another's.'  Then  I  hurled  the 
body  down  the  cliff,  where  I  saw 
it  catch  in  a  crevice  of  the  rock. 
O  God  ! "  he  cried,  shuddering  and 
covering  his  face  with  his  hands, 
"I  see  it  now, — that  dreadful 
scene,  the  blue  waves  dancing  be- 
neath the  brilliant  sunshine,  and 
that  white  shapeless  mass  caught 
in  the  frowning  cliff  with  one  arm 
sticking  stiffly  upwards.  I  rolled 
down  one  or  two  stones,  endeavour- 
ing to  conceal  it ;  and  when  I  left 
the  spot,  all  I  could  see  was  a  hand 
pointing  at  me."  Here  the  miser- 
able wretch  broke  off  with  a  deep 
groan.  In  a  moment  more  he 
sprang  up  with  another  wild  shout 
of  "The  hand,  the  bloody  hand  !" 
and  so  shrieking,  his  body  fell  life- 
less to  the  ground.  .  .  .  The  skel- 
eton hand  in  the  adjoining  room 
was  dropping  blood. 

AGNES  MACLEOD. 


532 


Thirty  Years  of  the  Periodical  Press. 


[Oct. 


THIRTY    YEARS    OF    THE    PERIODICAL    PRESS. 


A  BOOK  about  himself  by  a 
journalist,  giving  as  little  promin- 
ence as  possible  to  newspapers,  is 
much  the  same  thing  as  a  treatise 
on  strategy  avoiding  the  actual 
topic  of  war.  If  Lord  Wolseley 
were  to  tell  us  the  story  of  his  life, 
but  studiously  to  refrain  from  all 
mention  of  such  incidents  as  the 
Ashantee  campaign,  the  defeat  of 
Arabi  Pasha,  and  the  Nile  expedi- 
tion, he  would  be  performing  a  feat 
analogous  to  that  accomplished  by 
the  veteran  publicist,  Mr  G.  A. 
Sala,  in  the  two  volumes  he  has 
recently  published  through  Messrs 
Cassell,  under  the  title  'Things 
I  have  Seen,  and  People  I  have 
Known.'  If  a  regard  for  the  eti- 
quette of  his  calling  had  caused  Mr 
Sala  to  draw  the  veil  of  anonymity 
over  his  long  connection  with  a 
well  -  known  London  newspaper, 
one  might  have  understood  this 
reserve.  But  seeing  that  these 
volumes  are  dedicated  to  the  pro- 
prietor of  the  print  in  question, 
this  hypothesis  is  inadmissible. 
Not  even  as  it  has  affected  the 
appearance  of  the  London  streets 
he  knows  so  well,  has  Mr 
Sala  anything  to  tell  us  of  the 
extraordinary  and  sustained  de- 
velopment of  cheap  newspapers 
which  has  followed  the  repeal 
of  the  paper  duty.  The  last, 
and  indeed  the  only,  reference 
to  his  employment  as  an  active 
"  daily  "  journalist,  is  to  be  found 
towards  the  close  of  the  second 
volume,  in  a  chapter  entitled 
"Under  the  Stars  and  Stripes," 
where  he  casually  mentions  that 
he  happened  to  be  in  the  United 
States  about  the  period  of  the 
great  Civil  War;  but  the  direct 
influence  of  American  upon  Eng- 
lish journalism  during  Mr  Sala's 


lifetime,  and  the  very  remarkable 
products  and   movements   in   the 
English  periodical  press  since  his 
return  to  his  own  country  after 
witnessing   the   struggle    between 
North  and  South,  have   no  place 
in    these   pages.      Before   he   has 
completed      his     autobiographical 
task,   Mr  Sala  will  doubtless  fill 
these  voids.     Meanwhile  the  pres- 
ent contributor  to  *  Maga,'  having 
some  professional  knowledge  of  the 
periodical  press  during  a  section  of 
the  period  covered  by  Mr  Sala's 
wider  experience,  may  offer  a  few 
remarks  on  certain  topics  not  as 
yet  touched  by  this  veritable  Ulys- 
ses of  London  journalism.     A  fair 
amount  of  industry,   and,  thanks 
to  the  public's  kindness,  of  modest 
success,  has  been  condensed  into 
the   space    of    rather   more   than 
a   quarter   of   a  century,  through 
which  it  has  been  my  lot  to  labour 
in  certain  departments  of  the  lit- 
erary calling.     This  period  has  co- 
incided with  a  notable  increase  in 
the  activity  and   in  the   number 
of  those  representing  English  jour- 
nalism ;  with  the  disappearance  of 
not  a  few  old  newspaper  friends; 
with  the  genesis  of  many  crops  of 
fresh  newspaper  favourites.    It  has 
also  embraced  a  considerable  and 
highly  practical  acquaintance,  not 
exclusively  with  metropolitan,  but 
provincial    journalism,    and    espe- 
cially the  journalism  of  Scotland, 
as  well.     Some  of  the  fruits  thus 
gathered   I   may  perhaps,  by  the 
editorial  courtesy,  be  privileged  to 
place   before   the   readers   of    the 
most  historic  of  all  our  periodicals. 
I,  at  least,  have  reason  to  speak 
well  of,  and  feel  grateful  to,  that 
"land   beyond  the  Tweed,"  some 
slight  connection  with  which,  by 
family  descent,  the  Christian  name 


1894.] 


Thirty  Tears  of  the  Periodical  Press. 


533 


of  "Hay"  suggests  that  I  may 
claim ;  for  it  was  a  present  Scotch 
professor,  my  respected  and  valued 
friend,  Professor  John  Nichol,  of 
Glasgow,  who,  then  being  in  the 
habit  of  passing  a  portion  of  the 
"summer  term"  for  educational 
purposes  at  Oxford,  by  receiving 
me  as  his  pupil,  helped  me  to- 
wards the  "  class  "  assigned  to  me 
in  the  "final"  schools  in  1865. 
He  it  was  also  who  equipped  me 
with  the  single  letter  of  literary 
introduction  to  Professor  David 
Masson,  then  editor  of  'Mac- 
millan's  Magazine,'  which  was  ab- 
solutely my  sole  "  stock-in-trade  " 
when,  after  having  taken  my 
degree,  I  came  to  London  fresh 
from  Oxford,  and  began  the  career 
that  lasted  uninterruptedly  till  a 
failure  of  bodily  health  forced 
upon  me  a  long  season  of  inactiv- 
ity, and  that  now,  on  the  gradual 
restoration  of  my  energies,  is,  by 
the  blessing  of  Providence,  being 
resumed.  It  would  scarcely  be  an 
exaggeration  to  say  that,  at  the 
time  now  spoken  of,  outside  the 
*  Times  '  office,  with  which  I  have 
never  had  any  professional  rela- 
tions, the  dominating  spirits  and 
the  chief  powers  of  the  London 
press  were  importations  from  the 
other  side  of  the  Tweed. 

My  first  editor,  although  at  the 
time  he  became  such  unknown  to 
me  even  by  name,  was  an  Aber- 
donian,  Douglas  Cook,  who,  living 
in  the  Albany,  conducted  the  lit- 
erary business  of  his  journal,  and 
personally  instructed  his  contrib- 
utors in  his  chambers  near  the  end 
of  the  first  corridor.  The  novels 
of  George  Lawrence  were  at  this 
date  in  the  height  of  a  then  not  too 
healthy  popularity.  The  passion 
of  love,  so-called,  and  its  course,  as 
presented  in  the  fictions  of  the  Guy 
Livingstone  school,  suggested  to 
me  my  first  essayistic  theme,  under 
the  title  of  "  Broken  Hearts";  and 

VOL.  CLVI.— NO.  DCCCCXLVIII. 


when,  with  a  trembling  hand,  I 
opened  the  next  number  of  the 
*  Saturday  Review/  I  found  my 
maiden  production  had  its  place 
among  the  social  "  middles  "  of  the 
new  number,  as  I  think  it  was  then 
customary  to  designate  these  arti- 
cles. My  personal  introduction  to 
this  very  remarkable  man  was  due 
less  to  the  composition  of  my  own 
which  he  had  printed  than  to  the 
friendly  services  of  the  late  Rev. 
W.  Scott,  of  Hoxton,  the  some- 
time editor,  I  believe,  of  'The 
Christian  Remembrancer,'  himself 
permanently  retained  on  the 
'Saturday'  staff,  and,  as  I  have 
heard,  a  colleague  of  its  chief, 
in  its  weekly  production.  This 
accomplished  clergyman  knew  of 
me,  not  directly,  but  through  the 
good  offices  of  his  son,  Mr  Clement 
Scott,  with  whom  I  had,  and  have 
retained,  a  friendly  acquaintance 
that  began  under  the  roof  of  the 
late  Tom  Hood.  Vividly  distinct 
though  my  memory  of  Douglas 
Cook  is,  he  is  really  better  known 
to  me  by  reputation  than  by  his 
own  personality.  I  was  received 
at  the  weekly  levees  of  his  writers, 
held,  I  think,  every  Tuesday,  and 
was  occasionally  directed  to  send 
him  something  about  which,  as 
often  as  not,  he  expressed  him- 
self favourably.  With  a  host  of 
others,  as  nameless  as  I  myself 
then  was,  I  was  invited  to  the 
annual  'Saturday'  dinner  at  Green- 
wich ;  but  I  can  only  recall  one  of 
these  banquets,  at  which  I  chanced 
to  occupy  a  seat  between  the  late 
Mr  T.  Collett  Sandars  and  Sir 
James  Fitzjames  Stephen,  though 
of  neither  of  these  gentlemen  had 
I  then,  as  I  since  have  enjoyed, 
private  social  knowledge.  Mr  Cook 
himself  was  credited  with  a  full 
share  of  the  perfervid  tempera- 
ment of  the  Scot :  I  saw  but  little 
of  him,  and  never  became  one  of 
his  important  contributors,  but 

2M 


534 


Thirty  Years  of  the  Periodical  Press. 


[Oct. 


found  him  uniformly  considerate 
and  kindly  in  his  actions,  if  oc- 
casionally ungracious  in  his  man- 
ner. Mr  Cook's  special  friend  and 
confidant  was  the  late  rector  of 
Tintagel  in  Cornwall,  where  he 
himself  often  stayed;  and  from 
that  gentleman  I  have  heard  be- 
fore now,  more  than  I  ever  had 
any  opportunity  of  observing, 
about  the  editorial  methods,  and 
the  minute  oversight,  exercised 
not  merely  from  week  to  week, 
but  from  hour  to  hour,  by  this 
memorable  combination  of  the 
journalist  and  the  Epicurean,  who 
deserves  a  place  in  the  history  of 
the  press  by  the  side  of  Barnes 
and  Black,  among  the  great  editors 
of  the  century. 

The  'Daily  Telegraph'  was,  I 
think,  in  the  year  I  made  my 
del)ut  in  London,  the  best  known 
and,  with  the  exception  of  the 
'  Standard,'  the  only  representative 
of  the  penny  press;  for  the  days 
of  the  reduction  in  price  of  the 
paper  whose  first  editor  was 
Dickens,  and  still  more  of  the  great 
organ  of  Palmerston  and  fashion, 
were  yet  far  distant.  Even  in  the 
case  of  the  'Standard,'  its  exist- 
ence as  a  penny  morning  news- 
paper was  imperfectly  realised  by 
some  of  the  stoutest  adherents  in 
the  provinces  of  the  Tory  cause.  It 
must  have  been  many  years  later 
than  this  that  a  Cornish  country 
gentleman,  I  think  Mr  Bulteel, 
asked  me,  as  one  who  knew  the 
gossip  of  the  town,  whether  Gif- 
fard's  newspaper  really  published 
a  morning  edition.  The  then 
editor  of  the  'Standard,'  Mr 
Thomas  Hamber,  attached  at 
least  as  much  importance  to  the 
'Morning  Herald,'  issued  at  the 
price  of  threepence  from  Shoe 
Lane,  as  to  the  more  low-priced 
champion  of  the  Conservative 
cause ;  while  I  can  well  recollect  a 
kinsman  of  my  own,  the  late  Mr 


Trehawke  Kekewich,  at  that  time 
member  for  South  Devon,  men- 
tion to  me  as  an  instance  of  the 
downward  tendency  of  latter-day 
Conservatism,  that  side  by  side 
with  the  threepenny  'Herald,' 
one  "could  get  the  'Standard,' 
with  rather  more  news  in  it,  for 
a  penny."  Among  the  evening 
press  of  London,  in  the  pre-'  Pall 
Mall  Gazette'  days,  the  prints 
which  after  sundown  had  the 
greatest  vogue  were  'The  Even- 
ing Star,'  the  special  expon- 
ent, like  its  morning  issue,  of 
Mr  Bright  and  the  Manchester 
School,  'The  Evening  Standard,' 
'  The  Globe,'  and  '  The  Sun' ;  while 
the  only  post  -  meridian  journal 
taken  in  at  dining-houses  and  res- 
taurants, like  Simpson's,  was  the 
'  Express,'  a  rechauffe,  as  to  actual 
intelligence,  of  the  matutinal  'Daily 
News,'  but  furnished  out  with 
original  leading  articles.  The 
'  Daily  Telegraph,'  originally 
issued,  some  years  earlier,  on  a 
very  humble  scale  from  a  little 
printing-office  in  the  W.C.  dis- 
trict, had  but  recently  become 
domiciled  in  Peterborough  Court, 
Fleet  Street.  Here  again  the  pre- 
vailing influences  that  impressed 
the  aspirant,  who,  equipped  with 
an  introductory  letter  from  the 
aforementioned  friend,  Tom  Hood, 
sought  admission  to  the  editorial 
sanctum,  were  Scotch.  Very 
Scotch  indeed  was  the  porter, 
who  suspiciously  eyed,  and  reluc- 
tantly consented  to  announce,  the 
new  -  comer  after  the  entrance- 
wicket  was  passed.  Not  less 
Scotch,  again,  was  the  represen- 
tative of  the  conductor -in -chief, 
whom  on  most  occasions  I  saw. 
The  principal  vicegerent  of  Mr, 
not  yet  Sir  Edward,  Lawson,  was 
a  son  of  Leigh  Hunt,  Mr  Thorn- 
ton Hunt.  A  greater  contrast 
than  this  gentleman  presented, 
with  his  semi-military  dress  and 


1894.] 


Thirty  Years  of  the  Periodical  Press. 


535 


manner,  his  indomitable  will, 
keen  insight,  and  astonishingly 
prompt  judgment  on  the  topics 
of  the  day,  to  the  traditional  pic- 
tures of  his  father,  the  "Harold 
Skimpole"  of  'Bleak  House,'  it 
is  impossible  to  conceive.  The 
Messrs  Lawson  had  delegated  to 
this  most  highly  qualified  gentle- 
man much  of  the  editorial  control 
of  their  paper.  With  him,  accord- 
ingly, as  a  leader-writer  aspirant, 
I  had  to  deal  when  Tom  Hood's 
introduction  secured  me  the  entree 
of  Peterborough  Court;  but  the 
first  of  the  two  or  three  articles 
ever  written  by  me  for  that  journal 
was  after  a  consultation  with  Mr 
Thornton  Hunt's  right-hand  man, 
— like  Douglas  Cook,  an  Aberdon- 
ian, — the  late  James  Macdonell, 
who  of  several  topics  submitted 
by  me  chose  that  of  the  dangers 
of  the  London  streets,  then  ren- 
dered appropriate  by  a  newly  pub- 
lished report  of  the  annual  acci- 
dents there.  Starting  with  a  para- 
phrase of  Juvenal's  description  of 
the  Roman  thoroughfares,  I  pro- 
duced something  which  appeared 
the  next  morning  in  the  leading 
columns  of  the  great  Fleet  Street 
newspaper. 

James  Macdonell,  whose  know- 
ledge of  French  politics,  letters, 
and  thought  probably  exceeded 
that  of  any  other  man  of  his 
standing,  had  not  at  the  date  now 
spoken  of  been  long  in  London; 
Alexander  Russel,  of  the  'Scots- 
man,' when,  some  years  later, 
on  Macdonell's  commendation,  I 
made  his  acquaintance,  lamented 
to  me  that  the  proprietors  of 
the  metropolitan  print  had  got 
hold  of  his  most  brilliant  young 
recruit,  and  caused  him  to  leave 
the  Edinburgh  office,  where,  or 
possibly  at  Newcastle-on-Tyne,  his 
journalistic  career  began.  James 
Macdonell  was  not  a  man  to  be 
forgotten  by  those  whose  privilege 


it  was  to  know  him  well.  The  pro- 
fessional connection  of  the  present 
reviewer  with  Peterborough  Court 
did  not  last  long,  though  his  friendly 
relations  with  Mr  Thornton  Hunt's 
assistant,  and  even  with  the  recipi- 
ent of  Mr  G-.  A.  Sala's  dedication, 
— who,  together  with  the  late  W.  H. 
Pater,  as  also  my  revered  and  be- 
loved friend  A.  W.  Kinglake,  was 
one  of  the  foremost  to  call  upon 
me  the  first  day  after  my  illness, 
some  years  ago,  that  I  was  able  to 
leave  my  room,  and  to  congratulate 
me  on  the  slow  beginnings  of  re- 
covery,— survived  the  incident  of 
this  relationship.  The  morning 
newspaper  means  all-night  work 
for  those  engaged  on  its  produc- 
tion. My  domesticated  existence 
was  just  beginning,  and  I  was, 
consequently,  not  prepared  to 
accept  a  professional  offer,  which 
would  not  have  left  much  of  my 
society  for  the  young  bride,  as  she 
then  was,  to  whose  combined  good 
sense  and  high  courage  the  writer 
of  these  lines  has  since  been  so 
deeply  indebted.  During  several 
parliamentary  sessions  in  the 
earlier  seventies,  especially  while 
the  debates  on  the  Public  Wor- 
ship Bill  were  going  forward,  it 
was  my  lot,  long  of  course  after 
this,  to  occupy  a  seat  in  that  por- 
tion of  the  "  press  gallery "  re- 
served for  commentators  on  politi- 
cal events,  close  to  the  reserved 
and  thoughtful,  yet  ever  bright 
and  amiable,  presence  of  James 
Macdonell,  who  had  not  then 
joined,  as  later  in  his  life  he  did, 
the  editorial  staff  of  the  'Times,' 
and  by  whose  premature  death 
the  English  press  sustained  the 
greatest  loss  that  has  befallen  it 
within  my  recollection. 

In  these  days  Mr  Sala  himself, 
though  an  assiduous  contributor 
to  the  famous  broadsheet,  where 
his  genius  has  found  such  justly 
appreciated  exercise,  was  to  me 


536 


Thirty  Years  of  the  Periodical  Press. 


[Oct. 


only  a  name,  though  a  very  mighty 
one;  but  at  the  little  house  in 
South  Street,  Brompton,  where 
the  younger  Hood,  on  leaving  the 
War  Office,  and  assuming  the 
editorship  of  '  Fun,'  then  lived,  I 
met  weekly,  in  addition  to  the  late 
T.  W.  Robertson,  and  the  vigor- 
ously surviving  Mr  W.  S.  Gilbert 
— whose  presence  and  conversation 
showed  in  these  days  all  that 
possession  of  sheer  intellectual 
power  of  which  since  then  the 
public  has  seen  so  many  sustained 
illustrations — some  of  the  most 
valued  members  of  Mr  Levy- 
Lawson's  staff,  especially  the 
writer  of  the  burlesque  sporting 
sketches  then  appearing  in  '  Fun ' 
as  from  "  Nicholas,"  W.  J.  Prowse, 
who,  in  his  vivid  presentment  of 
that  broken-down  old  Cockney 
reprobate,  created  a  character  and 
a  type  of  which  Thackeray  need 
not  have  been  ashamed,  in  addi- 
tion to  being  a  consummately  ver- 
satile, varied,  and  ready  leader- 
writer.  Prowse  was  also  the  author 
of  many  really  exquisite  occasional 
verses  in  the  manner  of  Praed.  One 
of  these  compositions,  appearing  in 
'Fun'  not  so  very  long  before 
his  premature  death,  contained  a 
pathetic  presentiment  of  the  issue 
of  the  disease  that  secretly  had 
already  laid  its  hand  upon  him. 
The  lines  in  question  were  those 
beginning — 

"  I  am  only  nine-and-twenty  yet, 
Though  young,  experience  makes  me 


So  how  on  earth  can  I  forget 
The  memory  of  my  lost  old  age  ? 

Of  manhood's  prime  let  others  boast, 
It  comes  too  late,  or  goes  too  soon; 

At  times  the  fate  I  envy  most 
Is  that  of  slippered  pantaloon." 

There  are  probably  among  the 
readers  of  '  Maga  '  some  who  will 
have  read,  and  been  struck  by, 


these  lines  in  a  little  collection 
of  their  author's  literary  remains, 
published  some  years  ago.  They 
attracted  the  attention  of  many 
at  the  time;  among  others,  of  so 
skilled  a  critic  and  consummate 
performer  in  that  department  of 
belles  lettres  as  Mr  Arthur  Locker, 
as  well  as  of  Prowse's  warm  per- 
sonal friend  and  professional  col- 
league, James  Macdonell  himself. 

Another  regular  writer  for  the 
'  Daily  Telegraph,'  constantly  vis- 
ible at  this  time,  was  Godfrey 
Turner,  in  every  way  a  first-rate 
specimen  of  that  "good-all-round" 
journalist,  whom  the  minute  sub- 
division of  labour  in  newspaper 
offices  threatens  to  improve  off  the 
face  of  Fleet  Street.  Indepen- 
dently of  the  many  excellent  and 
amiable  qualities  of  him  who  bore 
it,  the  name  of  this  departed  friend 
is  memorable  to  the  present  writer 
for  reasons  that  may  not  be  with- 
out a  certain  special  interest  to 
'  Maga's '  readers. 

In  1866  there  came  the  demand 
for  an  inquiry  into  the  alleged 
conduct  of  Governor  Eyre  during 
the  suppression  of  the  Jamaica 
negro  insurrection  of  the  previous 
year.  Godfrey  Turner  had  been 
despatched  by  his  newspaper  to 
watch  the  proceedings ;  while,  by 
a  coincidence  that  may  be  briefly 
glanced  at,  his  colleague  from  the 
'  Standard '  was  a  gentleman  with 
whom,  much  subsequently  to  this 
period,  I  was  destined  to  have  the 
most  intimate,  the  most  friendly, 
and  the  most  useful  of  journalistic 
relations— Mr  W.  H.  Mudford, 
the  present  controller  of  the  Shoe 
Lane  establishment.  On  his  re- 
turn from  the  West  Indies,  God- 
frey Turner,  after  the  manner  of 
the  period  and  of  the  fraternity, 
was  entertained  at  a  dinner  of 
London  litterateurs,  given  in  an 
almost  improvised  structure  under 
the  arches  of  Ludgate  Hill  Station, 


1894.] 


Thirty  Years  of  the  Periodical  Press. 


537 


and  provided  by  the  since  cele- 
brated caterers,  Spiers  &  Pond, 
who,  however,  at  the  era  now  re- 
ferred to,  were  only  known  as 
struggling  but  enterprising  re- 
formers of  the  railway  refresh- 
ment system  at  and  near  the  Lon- 
don termini.  On  entering  the 
building  I  was  at  once  impressed 
by  the  appearance  of  the  gentle- 
man already  located  in  the  presi- 
dential chair ;  noticeable  anywhere 
would  have  been  his  broad  and 
high  forehead,  his  clean-cut  fea- 
tures, his  clear  penetrating  grey 
eyes,  while  a  certain  breeziness  of 
manner,  that  seemed  to  diffuse 
itself  throughout  the  apartment, 
proclaimed  that  he  was  no  mere 
hackneyed  habitue  of  the  con- 
tiguous regions  of  damped  paper 
and  printing-ink.  Accompanying 
the  information  with  a  rapid  nar- 
rative of  his  career  in  the  Royal 
Navy,  and  subsequently  in  Edin- 
burgh, James  Macdonell  whispered 
to  me  that  our  chairman  of  the 
evening,  then  only  upon  the  thres- 
hold of  a  vigorous  and  comely 
middle  age,  was  James  Hannay, 
very  generally,  though  inaccur- 
ately, identified  with  the  editor 
of  the  <  Pall  Mall  Gazette.'  After 
dinner,  on  the  occasion  of  pro- 
posing the  health  of  the  guest  of 
the  evening,  Hannay,  more  suo, 
delivered  an  admirable  oration  of 
about  three-quarters  of  an  hour's 
length,  denouncing  the  "  trumpery 
distinction,"  as  he  called  it,  "drawn 
by  pretentious  blockheads  between 
journalism  and  literature.  Both," 
he  said,  "  were  affluents  or 
effluents  of  one  and  the  same 
mighty  stream,  and  both  flowed 
forth  from  the  same  historic  foun- 
tain-head— namely,  the  Greek  and 
Latin  classics."  The  speaker  then 
went  on  to  say  that  "if  we  knew 
more  of  the  acta  diurna  and  the 
prsetor's  edicts  of  the  Romans,  we 
should  doubtless  find  them  very 


respectable  specimens  of  morning 
papers  in  the  days  before  printing 
was  invented ; "  while,  as  for  the 
alleged  novelty  of  special  descrip- 
tive   correspondents,    he    pointed 
out    that    "  some    centuries    be- 
fore the  Christian  era,  a  certain 
Greek    gentleman    named    Xeno- 
phon  acted  in  that  capacity  to  ten 
thousand    Greeks   at   the   seat  of 
war,   and    subsequently  published 
his  letters,   as   also   W.  H.   Rus- 
sell had  done,   in  a  book    called 
'  The  Anabasis ' ;  nor  was  he  quite 
certain  that  *  the  Yenusian '  him- 
self might  not  have  accepted  an 
engagement    to    contribute    occa- 
sional sketches   of   the   campaign 
during  that  conflict  in  which  he 
had  borne  a  part,  and  which  at 
Philippi  ended  with  such  disaster 
for    the     country    gentlemen    of 
Italy,"  as  to  overpower  the  speaker 
with  emotion  by  the  mere  mention 
of  it.     Finally,  having  proved  in- 
geniously that  "  when  he  hymned 
the  praise  of  the  Bandusian  fount, 
Horace,    with    bardic    prevision, 
must  have  forecast  the  qualifying 
influence    of    a    slight   admixture 
of   'mountain-dew,'"  this  surpris- 
ingly accomplished  specimen  of  the 
naval  litterateur,  on  the  occasion 
I  first   beheld   him,   called   for   a 
"quaigh"    of    "  Usquebagh,"    and 
the  company  broke  up, — not,  how- 
ever, before  the  then  doyen  of  the 
London  press,  John  Oxenford,  the 
accomplished     scholar,    who    was 
dramatic  critic  of  the  '  Times,'  de- 
livered   a    few    terse    and    blunt 
remarks  in  praise  of  Turner,  that 
were  a  striking  contrast  to  Han- 
nay's  flowing  and  polished  periods, 
the  simple  burden  of  these  obser- 
vations being  that  "  whether  Gov- 
ernor  Eyre   flogged   the  Jamaica 
women,    or   the    Jamaica   women 
flogged  Governor  Eyre,  was  a  mat- 
ter of  small  importance  compared 
with  the  safe  return,  covered  with 
his  tropical  laurels,  of   the  even- 


538 


Thirty  Years  of  the  Periodical  Press. 


[Oct. 


ing's  guest."  The  other  incident 
just  referred  to  was  Hannay's 
kind  request  that  I  might  be  in- 
troduced to  him,  not  because  he 
had  any  previous  knowledge  of  my 
name  or  family,  but  for  no  other 
reason  than  that  he  had  heard  of  me 
as  a  young  Oxford  man  who  had 
taken  a  fair  degree,  and  whom  he 
wished  to  befriend  in  his  literary 
career. 

James  Hannay,  having  been  suc- 
ceeded in  the  editorship  of  the 
'Edinburgh  Courant,'  immediately 
by  Mr  F.  Espinasse,  more  lately 
by  Mr  J.  Scot-Henderson,  was  at 
this  period  established  in  a  roomy 
old  house,  a  portion  of  whose  ex- 
terior suggested  the  remnant  of  a 
feudal  castle,  in  one  of  the  streets 
between  Tavistock  and  Euston 
Squares ;  his  pen  was,  more  busily 
and  acceptably  than  many  others 
of  the  staff,  employed  on  the  c  Pall 
Mall  Gazette/  then  under  the  able 
editorship  of  Mr  Frederic  Green- 
wood. I  am  violating  no  con- 
fidence when  I  say  that  much  later 
than  this,  Mr  Greenwood,  now  a 
very  old  friend  and  editor  of  mine, 
told  me  that  he  never  published 
an  article  of  Hannay's  which  failed 
to  make  its  mark  immediately  and 
most  appreciably  with  the  public. 
At  Hannay's  house  I  was  a  not 
infrequent  visitor.  Mr  Greenwood 
I  did  not,  so  far  as  I  remember, 
ever  meet  there ;  but  there  was  a 
certain  number  of  devoted  per- 
sonal adherents  and  even  hench- 
men of  my  host,  with  whom  I  did 
first  become  acquainted  beneath 
his  hospitable  roof,  all  of  them 
active  and  more  or  less  conspicuous 
figures  in  London  letters  at  this 
epoch,  —  especially  J.  P.  Steele, 
M.D.,  a  brother  Scot  of  Han- 
nay's, a  former  contributor  to  the 
1  Courant,'  but  at  this  time  attached 
to  the  staff  of  the  'Lancet,'  not 
confining  his  journalistic  industry 
to  purely  professional  themes, 


and 


a  well-informed  and  effective 
writer  on  the  politics  of  Germany 
and  France,  in  the  language  and 
literature  of  both  of  which  he  was 
fairly  proficient.  Since  then  Dr 
Steele,  who  never  lost  his  love  for 
what  he  rhetorically  called  "  the 
spirit  of  practice,"  has  returned  to 
his  old  profession  as  medical  man 
in  Rome,  while  acting  regularly 
or  occasionally  as  correspondent  of 
the  ( Daily  News '  at  that  capital. 

Among  the  well-known  litte'ra- 
teurs  of  this  period  for  whom 
James  Hannay  kept  almost  open 
house,  and  who  in  turn  at  their 
own  abodes  did  not  fail  to  perform 
the  same  hospitable  duty  towards 
him,  in  addition  to  his  special  ally 
and  counsellor,  the  polyglottic  J. 
P.  Steele,  M.D.,  were  the  late 
Henry  Savile  Clarke,  then  one  of 
Messrs  Cassell's  editors,  and  a 
happy  writer  of  occasional  verse 
for  innumerable  journals,  of  whom, 
as  his  colleague,  the  scholarlike  W. 
Moy  Thomas,  I  have  only  the  most 
pleasant  and  grateful  memories ; 
Mr  Francis  Espinasse,  the  biogra- 
pher of  Voltaire,  who  had  been 
his  host's  successor  in  the  editorial 
.chair  of  the  'Courant,'  who  still 
labours  successfully  for  the  en- 
lightenment of  the  public;  a  Mr 
Andrew  Gordon,  a  grandson,  I  be- 
lieve, of  the  mighty  John  Wilson, 
'Maga's'  Christopher  North,  and 
possessing,  like  Hannay  himself, 
certain  nautical  affinities  or  rela- 
tionships ;  Mr  T.  E.  Kebbel,  then, 
as,  I  am  glad  to  say,  at  the  present 
time,  an  active  writer  on  the  Con- 
servative press,  with  a  wide  and 
accurate  knowledge  of  political  his- 
tory; a  welcome,  but,  as  resident 
in  Scotland,  only  a  rare  visitor  in 
Tavistock  Square  was  the  late  Mr 
Patrick  Alexander,  who  then  ex- 
ercised his  real  genius  for  parody, 
by  astonishingly  powerful  carica- 
tures of  Carlyle's  literary  manner. 

In  the  journalistic  London  of  the 


1894.] 


Thirty  Years  of  the  Periodical  Press. 


539 


present  year  of  grace,  it  is  prob- 
able that  there  are  no  such  in- 
stitutions as  James  Hannay's  un- 
conventional receptions  eight-and- 
twenty  years  ago,  or  as  the  Friday 
suppers  already  mentioned  of  Tom 
Hood,  in  Brompton.  The  truth 
is,  that  the  province  of  Bohemia 
has  no  longer  a  place  on  the  map 
of  socio-literary  London.  The  con- 
stantly increasing  high  pressure 
under  which  all  journalism  is 
now  done,  the  increasing  severity 
of  competition  in  the  journalistic 
market,  have  coincided  with,  and 
to  some  extent  have  themselves 
produced,  an  abolition  of  the  old 
caste  limits  of  journalism  as  a 
profession.  The  regular  writers 
of  newspapers  are  to  be  found 
everywhere,  are  taken  from  every 
professional  pursuit,  and  from 
every  social  level,  —  from  the 
"  court "  regions  of  Belgravia  or 
Mayfair  ;  from  the  camp-followers 
of  Woolwich  or  Aldershot ;  from 
the  chaste  groves  of  artistic 
Hampstead,  as  well  as  from  dig- 
nitaries of  the  Imperial  Law 
Courts,  or  highly  placed  officials 
of  Whitehall  or  Westminster. 

Mr  Sala  has  something  to  say 
of  the  departed  tavern-life  of  Lon- 
don ;  but  he  does  not  notice,  or,  it 
may  be,  would  blush  to  mention, 
one  of  these  metropolitan  haunts 
of  the  muses'  votaries,  which  rather 
more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century 
since  enjoyed  great  popularity, 
and  which  may  even  have  been 
visited  by  so  "  august "  a  presence 
as  that  of  Mr  Sala's.  "  Stone's," 
in  one  of  the  streets  abutting  up- 
on the  Haymarket,  was  a  distinct 
survival  of  the  coffee-house  system 
of  Steele's  or  Addison's  London, 
before  the  days  of  club -life. 
Brought  into  popularity  by  the 
notice  of  the  Mayhews,  Captain 
Mayne  Reid,  the  late  William 
Jerrold,  and  others,  this  old-fash- 
ioned and  well-conducted  haunt — 


reminding  the  northern  visitor,  on 
a  smaller  scale,  of  that  extraor- 
dinary emporium  of  luncheon  com- 
modities in  Glasgow,  known,  if 
memory  rightly  serves,  as  Lang's — 
was  at  certain  hours  of  the  day, 
to  all  practical  purposes,  not  less 
exclusive  than  a  club,  and  was  in 
effect  frequented  by  much  the 
same  gentlemen  who,  later  on, 
nearer  the  small  hours,  would  be 
found  in  that  portion  of  the  cen- 
tral room  at  Evans's  in  Covent 
Garden,  reserved,  as  Mr  Green  in- 
formed his  patrons,  for  private 
conversation  parties,  and  occupied 
nightly  by  the  most  prominent 
figures  of  Fleet  Street  and  Black- 
friars.  Of  Stone's,  it  is  safe  to  say 
that  in  its  character  of  the  house 
of  call  of  a  literary  coterie  it  has 
gone  the  way  of  the  original  Sav- 
age Club,  revived  by  name  to-day 
under  the  guise  of  a  fashionable 
assembly  as  the  Reunion,  the  Tem- 
plar's Club,  and  a  host  of  other 
unpretentious  abodes  of  good-fel- 
lowship, which  were  the  latter-day 
successors  of  Thackeray's  homes  of 
harmony.  The  Garrick  Club,  in- 
deed, at  the  era  now  recalled,  was 
domiciled  in  its  present  house, 
but  of  it  I  was  not  as  yet  a  mem- 
ber. The  only  other  institution 
of  any  considerable  pretensions  to 
comfort  was  the  Arts  Club,  then, 
and  for  many  years  afterwards, 
occupying  that  most  picturesque- 
ly constructed  and  furnished  man- 
sion at  the  corner  of  Tenter- 
den  Street,  Hanover  Square, 
where,  during  the  sixties,  the  hand- 
some, gracious,  and  amiable  pre- 
sence of  the  artist,  Mr  Field  Tal- 
ford,  used  to  diffuse  its  agreeable 
influences,  and  where  Charles 
Dickens,  with  my  still  surviving 
friend  Mr  Marcus  Stone,  of  the 
Royal  Academy,  was  a  not  infre- 
quent apparition.  Since  these  days, 
literary  London  has  added  club  to 
club  :  there  is  certainly  a  Junior 


540 


Thirty  Tears  of  the  Periodical  Press. 


[Oct. 


Garrick,  there  may  be  a  Garrick 
minimus  natu ;  there  are  aestheti- 
cally furnished  haunts  of  culture, 
science,  letters,  or  art,  in  Saville 
Bow  and  its  vicinage.  If  the 
great  editors  of  the  morning  dailies 
are  too  busy  or  too  exalted  to  dine 
out  much,  the  names  of  some  mem- 
bers of  their  staff  are  sure  to  be 
seen  in  the  list  of  the  company  at- 
tending the  fashionable  banquets 
of  the  preceding  night ;  thus  it  has 
come  about  that  artists  do  not 
wear  their  velvet  coats  out  of  their 
studios,  and  that  if  the  journalist, 
of  whatever  degree,  retains  any 
sympathies  with  the  life  depicted 
by  Henri  Murger,  he  divests  him- 
self of  it  as  he  puts  on  his  dress- 
coat,  and  inserts  a  gardenia  in  his 
button-hole.  In  T.  W.  Robertson's 
first  play,  at  whose  initial  presen- 
tation I  "assisted,"  the  dropping 
of  Tom  Stylus's  pipe  from  his 
pocket,  as  he  took  out  his  hand- 
kerchief, was  hailed  by  an  expert 
audience  as  a  special  touch  of 
Bohemian  knowledge,  showing  the 
playwright's  shrewd  observation  of 
the  actualities  of  life  :  the  incident, 
if  produced  for  the  first  time  to- 
day, would  be  hissed  as  an  anach- 
ronism, and  Tom  Stylus  himself,  in- 
stead of  borrowing  the  half-crown 
to  pay  the  cab  to  his  hostess's 
mansion  in  Grosvenor  Square, 
would  drive  thither  in  his  well- 
appointed  brougham,  and,  as  likely 
as  not,  might  give  the  vacant  seat 
in  his  coupe  to  a  friendly  bishop, 
or  his  near  neighbour  the  Presi- 
dent of  the  Royal  College  of 
Physicians. 

Other  changes  not  less  strongly 
defined  than  these  have  been  con- 
summated in  the  literary  world, 
well  within  the  last  half  of  that 
period  now  exhibited  to  us  by  Mr 
G.  A.  Sala.  It  is  sometimes,  but, 
as  shall  presently  be  shown,  in- 
correctly, said,  that  the  ubiquity 
of  London  papers  has  left  no  place 


for  the  provincial  press  :  the  truth 
is,  that  the  "  very  newest  journal- 
ism," as  it  is  called,  of  the  capital, 
is,  in  its  essence,  mainly  of  pro- 
vincial origin.  When  this  review- 
er first  knew  literary  London  pro- 
fessionally, 'The  Owl,'  that  herald 
of  the  society  journals  of  a  sub- 
sequent epoch,  was  probably  in 
existence ;  but  as  he  had  then  no 
acquaintance  with  its  brilliant 
writers,  was  not  a  matter  of  in- 
terest, and  was  therefore  one  of 
ignorance  to  himself  personally. 
Adequate  justice  has  not  yet  been 
done  to  the  wide  -  reaching  and 
posthumous  influence  first  of  Lau- 
rence Oliphant,  especially  through 
works  like  *  Piccadilly  '  or  '  Altiora 
Peto,'  and  of  Kinglake  afterwards, 
upon  the  best  contributors  to  the 
periodical  press  during  the  last 
half  -  century.  The  delicacy  of 
touch,  the  exquisitely  bred  irony, 
the  pregnantly  suggestive  satire 
animating  every  page  of  '  Eothen,' 
have  inspired  much  that  is  least 
banal  in  all  latter-day  descrip- 
tive writing,  and  especially  have 
infused  into  such  graceful  work  as 
that  of  Lady  Currie,  our  present 
ambassadress  at  Constantinople — 
popularly  known  by  her  nom  de 
guerre  of  Violet  Fane — the  pecu- 
liar bitter-sweet  flavour  that  ren- 
ders her  work  not  less  agreeable  to 
the  literary,  than  are  olives  to  the 
physical,  palate ;  while  most  of  the 
higher  class  of  narrative  and  de- 
scriptive prose  in  journals  circu- 
lating among  the  cultivated  classes 
distinctly  recall  the  modes  of 
thought  and  diction  first  shown  v 
to  the  public  in  Kinglake's  gem- 
like  classic  "  from  the  East."  The 
terms  on  which  this  accomplished 
stylist  found  himself  with  Print- 
ing House  Square  and  its  denizens 
varied  at  different  epochs  of  his 
long  career ;  but  if  the  best  nar- 
rative writing  in  the  'Times,'  as 
elsewhere,  were  placed  in  the  cru- 


1894.] 


Thirty  Years  of  the  Periodical  Press. 


541 


cible  of  a  searching  analysis,  it 
would  be  found  that  the  power 
exercised  by  the  admirable  prose 
style  of  the  historian  of  the  Crim- 
ean War  upon  contemporary  pens 
was  not  less  marked  than  the  in- 
fluence of  Gibbon  or  Bolingbroke 
upon  Macaulay,  or  of  the  great 
Whig  historian  himself  upon  the 
polemical  methods  and  language  of 
the  leading  journal  a  generation 
since. 

During  a  considerable  portion 
of  the  years  now  passed  in 
review,  my  connection  with  the 
periodical  press  in  some  parts  of 
England  was  only  less  close 
than  it  was  with  the  periodical 
press  in  London.  The  extinct 
'Edinburgh  Courant,'  founded, 
oddly  enough,  by  no  less  a  person 
than  Daniel  Defoe,  had  been  pur- 
chased by  a  West  of  England 
speculator,  Charles  Wescombe,  who 
had  also  acquired  the  London 
'  Globe  ' :  its  then  editor  was  Mr  J. 
Scot-Henderson,  whose  name  has 
been  already  mentioned  here,  under 
whose  direction  I  furnished,  to  my 
own  profit,  not  less,  I  trust,  than  to 
the  pleasure  of  my  trans-Tweedine 
patrons,  a  weekly  leading  article,  as 
well  as  a  weekly  report  of  London 
doings.  This  connection  of  mine 
continued,  very  agreeably  to  me 
at  least,  under  more  than  one 
dynasty  of  conductors — the  last 
1  Courant '  editor  with  whom  I  had 
dealings  being  the  late  James 
Mure,  subsequently  her  Majesty's 
Consul  in  the  Balearic  Islands. 
Like  his  predecessor  Hannay,  this 
gentleman  had  in  earlier  life  been  a 
sailor ;  but  there  ended  all  resem- 
blance between  the  two.  A  more 
kindly,  genial,  and,  at  heart,  re- 
fined journalist  than  James  Mure 
never  crossed  the  threshold  of  that 
famous  New  Club  in  Edinburgh, 
my  slight  knowledge  of  which 
arises  only  from  his  hospitality.  As 
a  leader-writer  on  the  staff  of  the 


'  Standard,'  this  editor  of  the  '  Cou- 
rant' had  received  from  Thomas 
Hamber  no  imperfect  training. 
His  amiable  and  equable  temper 
and  uniformly  genial  manner  may 
have  concealed  from  some  the  sa- 
gacity and  shrewdness  that  were 
prime  elements  in  his  character. 
A  Westminster  boy  during  one  of 
the  best  periods  in  the  existence 
of  St  Peter's  College,  James  Mure 
carried  away  with  him  as  much 
classical  knowledge  before  he  set- 
tled down  to  newspaper  work  as 
James  Hannay  acquired  in  the 
midst  of  such  work  itself;  while 
the  correctness  of  his  taste  and 
the  chivalry  of  his  heart  were 
worthy  of  his  descent  from  the 
accomplished  baronet  of  Caldwell, 
the  historian  of  Greek  literature, 
whose  work,  considering  he  per- 
formed it  when  as  yet  Grote  had 
not  written  and  Grote's  data  were 
not  forthcoming,  is  a  miracle  of 
scholarship  and  research.  Other 
Conservative  newspapers  out  of 
London  complimented  me  by  re- 
quisitioning my  services.  The 
'Yorkshire  Post,'  then  under  the 
control  of  John  Ralph,  of  con- 
siderable academic  standing,  had 
as  its  business  manager  the  saga- 
cious Abel  Nadin,  and  as  its 
assistant  editor,  Mr  E.  J.  Good- 
man. To  these  my  name  had 
been  mentioned  favourably,  either 
by  James  Hannay  or  by  some  of 
those  known  to  me  through  him, 
and  for  some  years  I  doubled  my 
duties  to  the  'Edinburgh  Courant' 
by  work  of  the  same  kind,  and  to 
the  same  amount,  for  the  Leeds 
Conservative  organ.  The  'Man- 
chester Courier '  was  at  this  time 
owned  by  the  Messrs  Sowler,  and 
edited  by  the  late  Mr  Francis 
Hitchman. 

Some  practical  experience, 
therefore,  of  the  provincial  press 
qualifies  me  to  express  an  opinion 
as  to  its  influences  of  late  upon  the 


542 


Thirty  Years  of  the  Periodical  Press. 


[Oct. 


journalism  of  London.  The  first, 
in  order  of  time,  of  the  sixpenny 
society  papers  of  to-day  has  been 
the  'World,'  and  the  germ  of 
this  very  successful  enterprise  is 
assuredly  to  be  found  above  all 
things  in  Laurence  Oliphant's 
'Owl.'  The  late  Mr  Edmund 
Yates  had  anticipated  the  society 
gossip  of  his  own  newspaper  in 
the  weekly  column  of  town  talk, 
contributed  during  several  years  to 
the  deceased  '  Morning  Star,'  under 
the  signature  of  the  "Flaneur." 
This,  though  exceedingly  bright 
and  readable,  was  in  its  essence 
nothing  more  nor  less  than  a 
specimen  of  "our  own  London 
correspondent's"  best  work,  as 
presented  in  a  hundred  provincial 
broadsheets.  The  "new  journal- 
ism" in  effect  does  little  else 
than  amplify,  embellish,  and,  in 
point  of  literary  style  perhaps, 
improve  those  elements  of  gossip 
and  local  chat,  which  from  time 
immemorial  have  been  the  chief 
attractions  of  the  country  news- 
paper to  its  readers,  whether  in  the 


cottage  or  the  hall,  whether  in 
the  village  alehouse  or  the  borough 
institute.  Instead,  therefore,  of 
the  power  exercised  by  the  jour- 
nals published  within  the  sound  of 
Bow  Bells  upon  the  newspaper 
literature  of  provincial  capitals 
having  been  fatal  to  local  devel- 
opments, one  ought  in  all  fairness 
to  recognise  that  the  appetite 
gratified  by  the  "new,"  or  "so- 
ciety," journalism  of  the  Metro- 
polis at  this  close  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  is  essentially  of  the 
bourgeois  kind,  and  is  in  fact 
identical  with  that  for  which 
country  editors  have  long  found  it 
advantageous  to  cater.  If,  as  is 
surely  the  case,  the  conversation 
and  the  interests  of  "smart"  so- 
ciety in  London  have  a  decided 
taint  of  provincialism,  this  quality 
shows  itself  nowhere  more  con- 
spicuously than  in  the  columns  and 
contents  of  those  hebdomadals 
that,  falsely,  as  moral  optimists 
might  hope,  affect  to  be  its  special 
organs. 

T.  H.  S.  ESCOTT. 


1894.] 


Leaves  from  a  Game-Book. 


543 


LEAVES    FROM     A     GAME-BOOK. 


SOME  sportsmen  decry  the  habit 
of  keeping  a  game-book ;  but  I  be- 
lieve the  only  objection  they  can 
urge  to  it  is  the  fear  that  it  may 
make  a  gun  a  little  over-zealous 
for  his  score,  and  so  induce  per- 
haps a  little  occasional  wildness  in 
his  shooting. 

Let  us  by  all  means,  and  in  the 
most  decided  manner,  discourage 
anything  which  could  in  any  way 
add  to  the  already  sufficient  ele- 
ment of  danger  always  more  or  less 
in  existence  in  the  shooting-field. 
But  that  the  fact  of  a  man  keep- 
ing a  daily  record  of  his  day's 
shooting  is  likely  to  cause  him  to 
indulge  in  rash  and  dangerous 
shots,  I  will  not  admit  for  a  mo- 
ment. 

Personally,  I  have  been  accus- 
tomed to  shoot  where  the  gun's 
individual  score  was  kept  and  re- 
corded. Surely  here,  if  anywhere, 
there  was  sufficient  inducement  for 
a  little  "speculative  shooting,"  just 
to  be  at  the  top  of  the  poll.  But, 
as  the  old  proverb  says,  "  the  proof 
of  the  pudding  is  in  the  eating ; " 
and,  judging  by  this  standard,  I 
have  never  known  the  shooting- 
field  to  be  turned  into  a  miniature 
battle-field  through  the  eagerness 
of  any  member  of  the  party  to 
loose  off  his  piece  on  the  chance  of 
adding  one  to  the  score. 

It  is  unfortunately  true  that 
some  men  are  totally  unable  to  see 
that  a  loaded  gun  contains  any  ele- 
ment of  danger.  They  walk  sub- 
limely on,  blissfully  unconscious  of 
the  fact  that,  during  the  last  ten 
minutes,  their  loaded  barrels  full- 
cocked,  with  death  lurking  in  them, 
have  some  twenty  times  passed 
across  the  bodies  of  those  walking 
in  front  of  them,  or  behind  them, 
as  the  case  may  be. 


I  have  seen  an  eminent  diplo- 
matist, in  cold  blood  and  in  open 
ground,  fire  shots  which  routed 
two  Cabinet  Ministers,  who  fortu- 
nately saw,  and  made  tracks  just 
in  time.  These  are  the  men  who 
add  to  the  delightful  sport  of 
shooting  just  that  suspicion  of 
danger,  that  delicate  flavouring  of 
risk,  without  which  every  sport  is 
deemed  tame. 

To  our  mind,  one  of  the  plea- 
santest  parts  of  a  day's  shooting 
is  the  comparison  of  it  with  the 
records  of  other  days  on  the  same 
beat  in  past  years.  What  pleasant 
recollections  it  brings  up  !  What 
delightful  reminiscences  of  the 
past ! 

And  often  when  shooting  is  all 
over,  and  guns  are  carefully  put 
away  until  another  season  comes 
round,  I  take  up  my  little  game- 
book,  and  run  my  eye  through  it. 
How  it  freshens  up  the  memory, 
and  revives  the  recollection  of 
pleasant  days  spent  in  some  remote 
and  now  almost  forgotten  part  of 
Scotland  !  Of  course,  occasionally, 
a  tinge  of  melancholy  will  come 
over  you  as  you  run  against  the 
name  of  some  dear  friend  who  has 
long  since  fired  his  last  shot ;  but 
then,  after  all,  in  this  workaday 
world  of  ours,  it  does  a  man  good 
to  indulge  in  such  solemn  thoughts 
occasionally. 

My  game-book  commences  when 
I  was  about  seventeen  years  of 
age,  and  almost  the  first  entry,  I 
am  sorry  to  say,  brings  up  most 
disagreeable  recollections,  instead 
of  the  pleasant  ones  I  have  pre- 
mised. 

It  conjures  up  a  big  Leicester- 
shire turnip-field  of  very  thick, 
thousand-headed  turnips,  and  a 
bright  September  morning,  A 


544 


Leaves  from  a  Game-Book. 


[Oct. 


line  of  three  or  four  guns  walking 
through,  with  a  mounted  groom 
skirmishing  on  the  right.  Some- 
thing brown  moves  in  front  of 
me.  With  the  rash  impetuosity 
of  youth  I  raise  my  gun  to  the 
shoulder.  "Hare,  sir,  in  front," 
insinuatingly  whispers  my  loader, 
the  head-keeper's  own  "adlatus," 
and  whom  of  course  I  trusted  im- 
plicitly. Upon  receiving  this  in- 
formation from  such  an  authority, 
I  instantly  fired.  There  was  con- 
siderable commotion  amongst  the 
turnips  in  the  immediate  vicinity, 
but  no  trace  of  poor  pussy.  It 
was  a  curious  circumstance,  though, 
that  almost  immediately  after  I 
had  fired,  the  mounted  groom  had 
given  a  "  tally-ho,"  and  my  loader 
had  developed  a  bad  cough.  My 
spirits  fell  considerably,  and  my 
heart  was  beating  fast  as  I  neared 
the  road,  in  which  was  seated  my 
host  (and  the  Master  of  Hounds). 
However,  he  said  nothing.  But 
as  the  head-keeper  approached  me, 
I  felt  sick  with  apprehension.  Of 
course  he  was  delighted.  "  A  bad 
job  that,  sir  !  a  werry  bad  job  !  "  he 
said  confidentially ;  "  but  I'll  take 
a  spade  the  first  thing  in  the 
morning,  and  put  it  out  of  the 
way,  poor  thing  !  "  Then  he  told 
me  (he  could  scarcely  conceal  his 
indecent  delight)  how  the  groom 
had  seen  it  turn  right  over,  and 
with  difficulty  drag  its  way  to  the 
wood. 

Needless  to  say,  I  scarcely  hit 
a  partridge  all  the  rest  of  that  day, 
and  had  not  the  spirit  to  fire  at 
any  more  hares — nor  did  I  play  a 
very  good  knife  and  fork  at  lun- 
cheon-time. This  in  Leicester- 
shire, too !  Why,  I  was  almost 
worse  than  a  murderer ! 

Not  until  after  dinner  did  I  ven- 
ture to  approach  the  Master,  and 
nervously  to  inform  him  that  I 
had  a  confession  to  make — that  I 

believed  I  had  shot  a  .     My 

tongue    could     at     the     moment 


scarcely  form  the  word,  and  even 
at  this  distance  of  time  my  pen 
refuses  to  write  the  word  which 
would  brand  me  with  such  infamy. 
My  host,  the  Master,  was  kindness 
itself.  He  sympathised  with  my 
real  and  evident  distress,  and,  to 
use  his  own  words,  said,  "  Why, 
I've  done  the  same  myself ! " 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  I  do  not 
believe  the — say,  "  animal " —  was 
touched.  Its  body  was  never 
found,  and  therefore,  strong  though 
the  evidence  might  be  against  me, 
I  could  never  be  convicted  of  its 
murder. 

Let  us  throw  a  veil  over  this, 
almost  the  only  unpleasing  chap- 
ter in  my  history,  and  turn  over 
a  new  leaf.  The  next  page  reveals 
a  farmhouse  in  a  beautiful  part 
of  Perthshire,  and  recalls  a  small 
bachelor  party.  I  wake  early  my 
first  morning,  and  step  out  to  enjoy 
the  bracing  mountain-air.  I  find 
the  farmer,  an  old  Highlander, 
putting  the  finishing  touch  to  a 
stack,  and  with  his  men  celebrat- 
ing the  event  in  the  usual  manner. 
In  a  gush  of  kindly  feeling  he  in- 
vited the  Sassenach  stranger  to 
partake  of  some  real  mountain- 
dew.  I  had  never  been  in  Scot- 
land till  the  day  before,  and  was 
unused  to  their  early  morning 
ways  and  beverages.  I  thought 
it  really  was  some  delicious  moun- 
tain spring-water,  and  taking  the 
glass  he  gave  me,  wished  him  luck 
— and  drained  it.  I  only  hope 
they  were  looking  the  other  way. 
I  did  my  best  not  to  betray  my 
feelings,  but  the  agony  I  suffered 
in  pouring  that  vile  stuff  down  my 
throat  and  into  an  empty  stomach 
was  something  to  remember.  How 
I  staggered  back  to  the  farm  I 
know  not;  but  I  can  remember 
that  the  remainder  of  my  party 
were  highly  amused  at  my  experi- 
ence, and  inexperience. 

Another    page    recalls    a    very 
melancholy    gentleman    who   was 


1894.] 


Leaves  from  a  Game-Book. 


545 


an  amateur  photographer.  His 
spirits  were  like  a  barometer,  and 
varied  according  as  his  photo- 
graphs came  out  well  or  ill.  If 
well,  he  was  in  the  highest  spirits, 
and  everything  was  couleur  de  rose. 
If  ill,  he  was  down  in  the  lowest 
depths.  There  was  nothing  worth 
living  for,  and  so  on.  He  lived 
about  ten  miles  from  the  station, 
the  road  being  parallel  with  the 
railway  all  the  way,  and  within 
a  few  yards  of  it.  He  was  a 
very  nervous  man,  and  having  a 
very  smart  pair  of  steppers,  used 
to  suffer  extreme  mental  anguish 
in  driving  in  to  the  station.  He 
always  had  the  door  of  his  bus 
open,  so  that  should  anything 
occur,  at  any  rate  he  could  drop 
himself  out  of  it  at  once.  Poor 
man !  he  did  look  so  unhappy. 
I  always  felt  for  him  very  much, 
and  hoped  his  photographs  might 
come  out  well. 

Turning  over  a  page,  we  come  to 
an  entry  which  brings  back  to  me 
two  amusing  stories. 

The  first  is  of  a  man  who  paid 
something  like  a  thousand  a-year 
for  a  length  of  salmon  -  fishing. 
Day  after  day  that  devoted  fisher- 
man went  out  —  but  never  a  fish 
did  he  rise.  Finally  he  gave  it  up 
in  disgust,  and  told  his  cook  he 
might  have  a  try  if  he  liked.  The 
cook  did  have  a  try,  and  imme- 
diately landed  a  magnificent  fish. 
The  next  day  saw  the  master  at 
work  again ;  and  this  time  with 
better  results. 

The  other  story  was  about  Mrs 
Langtry,  who  was  just  in  the  zenith 
of  her  beauty,  and  had  been  stay- 
ing in  the  neighbourhood.  The 
fisherman  was  asked  one  day  what 
he  thought  of  her.  After  much 
inward  cogitation,  he  replied  very 
deliberately,  "Eh,  but  she's  a  fine 
lassie  " ;  and  then,  with  a  burst  of 
pent-up  pride,  "but  I'm  supposin' 
you've  no  seen  my  Jennie  ! " — 
alluding  to  his  slut  of  a  wife. 


The  next  entry  that  claims  our 
attention  was  at  Dunira,  a  charm- 
ing place  in  the  Crieff  district,  for 
many  years  rented  by  Lord  Chan- 
cellor Cairns,  and  still  occupied  by 
his  son.  It  was  a  very  wet  night 
when  I  arrived,  and  the  porter  at 
Crieff  had  taken  especial  pains  to 
so  place  my  portmanteau  on  the  top 
of  the  "  machine  "  as  to  enable  as 
much  moisture  as  possible  to  enter. 
The  result  was — dinner-time,  and 
no  shirt  fit  to  put  on.  Lord  Cairns's 
wardrobe,  however,  proved  equal  to 
the  strain  thus  put  upon  it. 

The  next  day  we  had  a  very 
wild,  rambling  sort  of  shoot,  get- 
ting capercailzie,  roe-deer,  wood- 
cock, and  grouse,  amongst  other 
things.  The  capercailzie  were 
driven  off  the  top  of  a  hill,  while 
the  guns  were  posted  in  the  valley 
below.  We  blazed  away,  keeping 
up  a  tremendous  fire  as  they  sailed 
over  our  heads,  so  high  up  that 
they  looked  more  like  sparrows 
than  capercailzie.  But  in  spite  of 
the  heavy  fire,  and  caring  nothing 
for  choke-bores  and  No.  3  shot, 
most  of  them  continued  their 
journey  uninjured,  and  apparently 
with  their  equanimity  unruffled. 

This  was  the  first  place  at  which 
I  had  ever  seen  a  roe-deer.  These 
graceful  creatures  are  a  great  charm 
to  a  place,  as  they  leap  up  from 
a  bracken  bed  and  bound  lightly 
away  into  the  wood. 

The  next  place  I  went  to  was 
one  of  the  most  charming  houses 
in  Scotland,  placed  in  the  midst 
of  most  beautiful  and  romantic 
scenery.  Nature  would  almost 
seem  to  have  surpassed  herself  in 
making  this  spot  attractive.  In 
one  place  a  large  loch  ;  one  side 
of  it  a  grim  impenetrable -looking 
forest — a  real  forest — none  of  your 
trimly  kept  English  woodlands ; 
the  other  side  consisting  of  a 
rugged  ridge,  green  with  rough 
scrub,  and  apparently  descending 
sheer  down  into  the  water.  Then 


546 


Leaves  from  a  Game-Book. 


Oct. 


a  river,  in  one  place  its  deep 
amber  -  coloured  water  swirling 
swiftly  along,  with  many  a  cur- 
rent and  eddy;  a  little  farther, 
and  it  descends  with  clamorous 
roar  into  a  sort  of  seething  cal- 
dron, where,  a  mass  of  feathery 
foam,  it  hisses  and  bubbles,  and 
then,  as  if  ashamed  of  its  riotous 
behaviour,  more  placidly  resumes 
its  wayward  course  again. 

We  were  not  living  in  the 
"mansion-house"  itself,  but  in  a 
little  shooting-lodge  adjacent.  All 
sorts  of  troubles  befell  us  here,  for 
the  house  and  its  appointments 
were  of  the  "  Tommiebeg  shoot- 
ing "  order.  One  night  we  had 
no  dinner  because  the  kitchen- 
range  had  fallen  in  bodily.  The 
boiler  was  always  going  wrong, 
and  there  was  no  plumber  within 
thirty  miles.  As  for  the  chairs, 
it  was  extremely  dangerous  to 
attempt  to  sit  on  one  until  it 
had  been  tested.  Indeed,  when 
the  owner  came  over  to  luncheon 
one  day,  and  was  asked  to  sit 
down,  before  doing  so  he  carefully 
examined  his  own  chair  to  see  if 
it  was  a  sound  one. 

Another  great  difficulty  was 
with  the  keeper.  His  face  was 
a  featureless,  expressionless  sort 
of  ball  of  flesh.  The  back  of  his 
head  was  just  the  same.  Right  on 
the  top  of  his  head  was  a  short, 
sandy  tuft  of  hair.  It  was  really 
almost  impossible  to  tell  whether 
you  were  talking  to  the  back  or 
front  of  him ;  at  least  so  our 
hostess  always  declared.  His  face 
certainly  was  less  like  the  ordin- 
ary human  visage  than  that  of 
any  other  man  I  have  come  across. 

The  moors  were  for  shooting 
purposes  a  long  way  off,  and  often 
we  had  to  go  on  ponies  nine  weary 
miles  up-hill.  Then  at  the  end 
of  the  day  we  had  to  descend  the 
nine  weary  miles  again,  and  by 
the  time  we  arrived  at  the  lodge 
we  were  wellnigh  shaken  to  pieces. 


But  once  on  the  top  of  the  hill 
the  prospect  was  magnificent,  and 
with,  the  fresh  crisp  mountain  air 
meeting  you  as  you  reached  the 
summit,  a  man  must  have  been 
hard  to  please  if  he  was  not  con- 
tent. Here  I  was  lucky  enough 
to  secure  my  first  ptarmigan,  and 
very  pleased  I  was.  One  day,  too, 
we  had  a  hare-drive,  and  bagged 
over  two  hundred  hares.  But 
poor  little  pussy  comes  lolloping 
up  so  confidingly,  that  it  seems 
almost  like  butchery  to  shoot  her, 
and  at  the  end  of  the  day  you 
half  feel  as  if  a  second  Glencoe 
massacre  had  taken  place,  and  you 
were  one  of  the  perpetrators  of  it. 

And  now  I  come  to  one  of  the 
most  delightful  shoots  I  have  ever 
taken  part  in. 

Murtly  Ohace  will  always  bring 
up  in  my  mind  the  pleasantest  of 
recollections.  I  can  recall  no  place 
where  you  can  get  a  more  varied 
bag  or  enjoy  yourself  more.  Many 
a  pleasant  day  have  I  spent  in 
Murtly  Chace  and  Murtly  Bog, 
and  the  genial  companionship  of 
its  then  tenant.  Though  it  is 
now  a  good  many  years  ago  since 
I  first  shot  "the  Bog,"  I  can  re- 
collect even  now  how  the  snipe 
flew  that  day.  I  also  recall  to 
mind  how  a  great  legal  luminary 
was  almost  in  tears  at  the  number 
of  shots  he  had  fired  without  any 
satisfactory  results. 

The  great  charm  of  Murtly 
Ohace  is  the  variety  of  shooting 
you  get.  You  never  know  what 
will  get  up  next.  One  moment 
you  are  walking  through  a  wood. 
A  rabbit  may  jump  up  and  be 
down  a  hole,  unless  you  are  sharp 
—  or  a  roe  -  deer  may  bound  off 
through  the  bracken.  Or  you  may 
suddenly  become  conscious  of  a 
slight  rustling  among  the  fir-trees. 
You  look  up  just  in  time  to  see  an 
old  cock  capercailzie  sailing  away. 
Then  you  emerge  from  the  wood  into 
a  bit  of  open  moor,  with  here  and 


1894.] 


Leaves  from  a  Game- Book. 


547 


there  some  stunted  growth.  A  whirr 
of  wings — and  a  brace  of  grouse 
are  up  and  away  before  you  have 
even  made  out  their  whereabouts. 
A  little  farther,  and  a  blue  hare 
will  be  up  and  going,  until  a  shot 
from  your  neighbour  lays  her  low. 
Then  you  come  to  a  marshy  bit  of 
ground.  A  flock  of  peewit  will 
get  up,  and  circle  round  with  their 
plaintive  note.  Then  a  duck  will 
rise  with  his  stately  flight,  getting 
higher  and  higher,  until  a  well- 
directed  shot  brings  him  down 
with  a  splash  among  the  sedgy 
reeds.  Then  that  pretty  little  bird 
the  teal  betrays  its  existence,  and 
a  couple  of  snipe  dart  off,  simul- 
taneously zigzagging  a  heavenward 
course — their  tell-tale  voice  betray- 
ing their  whereabouts  long  after 
they  are  out  of  sight.  Straight 
through  the  boggy  ground  we  go, 
into  a  strip  of  moor  again,  where 
we  flush  a  noisy  old  cock-pheasant 
and  a  very  wild  covey  of  par- 
tridges. 

Then  also  by  great  good  luck 
we  might  see  a  golden-plover  or  a 
landrail.  This  with  black-game, 
which  you  are  certain  to  come 
across,  makes  a  variety  of  thirteen 
head  of  game ;  and  there  are  not 
many  places  in  these  islands  where 
you  can  beat  that. 

A  man  is  not  likely  to  forget 
his  first  stalk.  To  this  day,  all 
the  circumstances  connected  with 
it  are  as  fresh  in  my  mind  as  if 
it  took  place  only  yesterday,  in- 
stead of  some  fourteen  years  ago. 
It  was  not  a  regular  forest,  but 
ground  bordering  on  one  of  the 
great  deer-forests;  and  when  the 
head-keeper  sent  into  me  the  first 
thing  in  the  morning  to  say,  "  The 
wind  was  right,  and  would  I  like 
to  come  out  and  try  and  get  a 
stag  1 " — needless  to  say  I  was  out 
of  bed  in  a  minute,  and  in  a  state 
of  considerable  if  subdued  excite- 
ment. How  well  I  can  remember 
the  sudden  turn  the  keeper  gave 


me,  when, — after  tramping  some 
miles,  and  sweeping  the  ground 
with  our  glasses  in  all  directions, 
and  seeing  nothing,  we  had  almost 
given  up,  —  suddenly  he  fell  to 
the  ground  as  though  he  was 
shot,  motioning  to  me  to  do  the 
same.  Then,  creeping  forward  on 
his  stomach  till  he  could  use  his 
glass,  he  informed  me  in  an  excited 
whisper  that  there  were  "  three  fine 
fat  beasts." 

Then  for  the  next  half-hour  I 
had  a  fine  time  of  it.  Now  I  was 
legging  it  down  the  mountain-side 
as  hard  as  I  could  go — then  I  was 
creeping  breathlessly  and  painfully 
up-hill — now  cautiously  worming 
my  bedraggled  body  through 
oozing  peat-holes  and  over  jagged 
rocks — then  off  again,  harder  than 
ever.  Then,  all  this  time,  my 
heart  was  thumping  against  my 
breast  at  the  idea  of  the  awful 
moment  when  I  should  have  to 
pull  the  trigger.  In  fact,  the  ex- 
citement of  the  thing  was  so  in- 
tense that  I  should  have  been 
much  relieved  had  it  been  all 
over. 

However,  on  this  occasion  my 
nerves  were  not  destined  to  be  so 
severely  tested,  for,  horrible  to  re- 
late, we  suddenly  found  ourselves, 
when  within  about  three  hundred 
yards  of  our  prey,  confronted  by 
two  miserable  sheep.  The  sheep 
were  only  some  half-dozen  yards 
away,  and  our  quarry  out  of  sight ; 
so  there  we  lay  glaring  at  the 
sheep,  not  daring  to  move.  There 
was  just  a  hope,  but  a  very  faint 
one,  that  the  sheep  might  move 
quickly  on  and  commence  browsing 
again.  But  no.  It  was  not  to  be. 
After  staring  at  us  uneasily  for 
two  or  three  minutes,  which  seemed 
like  days,  they  both  said  "ba-a," 
and  scampered  off.  We  were  off 
and  away  too — but  too  late  to  get 
a  shot  on  that  occasion.  Still,  I 
had  tasted  the  delights  of  stalking, 
and  very  proud  and  happy  I  felt, 


548 


Leaves  from  a  Game-Book. 


[Oct. 


and  very  much  relieved,  for  I 
should  certainly  have  missed  had 
I  had  to  fire. 

Then  the  charm  of  being  alone 
in  those  vast  solitudes !  You 
seem,  as  it  were,  to  be  making 
friends  with  Nature.  The  simple 
majesty  of  some  of  these  solitary 
places — the  rocky  gorges,  and  in- 
accessible corries,  which  sometimes 
do  not  see  the  human  form  from 
year's  end  to  year's  end,  the  grim 
frowning  mountain,  with  its  beet- 
ling precipices  and  avalanche  of 
boulders,  its  rugged  peaks  and 
fantastic  shapes,  —  all  this  must 
impress  even  the  least  impression- 
able mind.  For  myself,  I  could 
sit  there  for  hours  gloating  over 
the  beauty  and  solemnity  of  the 
scene. 

But  the  shadows  are  lengthen- 
ing. The  western  heavens  are 
tinging  the  purple  of  the  heather 
with  a  rich  golden  hue — the  dark- 
ening forces  of  advancing  night 
are  mustering,  warning  us  that 
we  must  be  getting  on  our  home- 
ward way,  if  we  do  not  want  to 
spend  a  night  on  the  hill.  Thus 
ended  my  first  stalk,  which  I  shall 
ever  remember. 

The  next  day  records  the  slaugh- 
ter of  the  only  wild-goose  it  has 
ever  been  my  fortune  to  put  in 
the  bag.  There  were  sceptics — 
too  lazy  to  venture  out  on  that 
awful  day  (for  it  was  a  real  soft 
day),  too  jealous  to  give  me  credit 
for  my  prowess — who  asserted  that 
it  was  a  tame  one  belonging  to  a 
farmer  close  by.  But  that  did  not 
prevent  them  from  eating  it  when 
it  appeared  on  the  table,  described 
as  a  "wild-goose"  in  the  bill  of 
fare. 

But  all  good  times  must  have 
an  ending,  and,  alas !  the  day 
came  when  I  had  to  leave  for 
the  south,  and  say  good-bye  to  all 
my  good  friends,  keepers,  and 
gillies,  till  another  year  should 
come  round  again. 


It  was  the  1st  of  October,  and 
I  determined  to  have  a  run  through 
the  woods  first,  and  get  a  pheasant 
or  two  if  possible  before  I  started. 
I  shall  never  forget  the  sight  pre- 
sented to  our  eyes  as  we  looked 
out  of  our  windows  that  lovely 
October  morning.  The  first  snow 
had  fallen  during  the  night,  and 
the  peaks  of  the  mountains  were 
just  tipped  with  snow,  giving  a 
thoroughly  wintry  aspect  to  the 
scene,  and  contrasting  strongly 
with  the  valley  below,  bathed  in 
golden  sunshine,  and  clothed  here 
with  the  sober  russet  of  autumn, 
there  with  its  more  gorgeous  rai- 
ment of  red  and  orange  and 
yellow. 

Back  again  to  the  always  enjoy- 
able but  more  monotonous  English 
country-house  shooting  :  the  steady 
tramping  through  the  turnips,  the 
stereotyped  pheasant-shoot,  or  pos- 
sibly the  more  exciting  partridge- 
drive. 

I  turn  over  a  leaf  and  recall  an 
amusing  incident  with  a  hare.  It 
was  one  of  those  harrowing  scenes, 
which  occasionally  will  occur,  when 
a  hare  will  not  die,  but  endeavour 
to  escape,  painfully  dragging  its 
crippled  leg  along.  A  friend  who 
had  wounded  it,  seeing  it  would 
escape,  set  off  in  pursuit,  and 
having  no  dog  and  no  stick,  took 
the  remaining  cartridge  out  of  his 
gun,  and  rashly  proceeded  to  bang 
the  poor  beast  over  the  head.  To 
his  intense  astonishment  and  dis- 
comfiture, the  weapon  snapped  in 
the  neck  like  glass.  Anything 
more  amusing  than  the  poor 
man's  face  I  never  saw :  his 
look  of  abject  bewilderment  as 
he  stood  over  the  at  last  defeated 
and  prostrate  hare,  with  the  stock 
in  one  hand  and  barrel  in  the 
other,  looking  at  each  alternately, 
the  very  picture  of  despair. 

Some  guns  are  very  delicate  in 
the  neck,  and  I  once  knew  one 
broken  in  the  act  of  loading  by  an 


1894.] 


Leaves  from  a  Game-Book. 


549 


experienced  loader  during  a  par- 
tridge-drive. 

An  interesting  adventure  with 
a  hare  was  once  witnessed  in  Suf- 
folk. A  small  gorse  on  a  sandy 
heath  had  been  shot,  and  a  wound- 
ed hare  was  getting  away.  To 
put  the  poor  beast  out  of  its 
misery  a  noble  sportsman,  re- 
nowned for  his  humanity,  pursued 
it.  But  the  hare  went  as  fast  as 
he  did,  and  finding  he  was  unable 
to  gain  on  it,  every  now  and  then 
the  intrepid  sportsman  would  stop 
and  take  a  pot-shot  at  it.  After 
some  ten  or  a  dozen  shots  had 
been  fired  in  vain,  he  called  a  halt, 
and  cut  a  thick  stick,  and  proceed- 
ed to  hunt  that  hare  in  earnest. 
He  was  now  nearly  a  mile  away, 
and  the  rest  of  the  shooting-party 
were  interested  spectators,  odds 
being  freely  offered  in  favour  of 
the  hare.  After  an  exhibition  of 
considerable  skill  on  the  part  of 
both  performers,  the  hare  at  length 
was  worsted,  and  the  proud  and 
happy  sportsman  returned,  very 
hot,  but  with  his  quarry  in  his 
hand. 

Some  men  who  are  passionately 
fond  of  shooting,  but  wretchedly 
bad  shots,  never  appear  to  take  an 
aversion  to  it  on  that  account.  On 
the  contrary,  they  seem  to  take  a 
delight  in  religiously  firing  both 
barrels  on  every  opportunity,  even 
adding  a  third  on  occasions.  If 
by  any  chance  they  should  happen 
to  hit  anything,  they  do  not  ex- 
hibit any  signs  of  indecent  delight, 
but  quietly  pick  it  up  without  a 
word  and  then  continue  as  usual — 
firing  perhaps  some  two  hundred 
shots  without  touching  a  feather. 
One  sportsman  of  this  kidney  was 
given  to  uttering  an  Italian  oath 
whenever  he  missed.  As  this  was 
whenever  he  fired,  his  loader  had 
ample  opportunities  of  picking  up 
a  considerable  store  of  Italian 
oaths.  This  loader  was  a  great 

VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCXLVIII. 


burly  north  -  countryman,  with  a 
decided  Yorkshire  burr,  and  not 
at  all  the  man  you  would  expect 
to  be  an  Italian  scholar.  It  be- 
came quite  a  stock  joke  to  induce 
any  stranger  to  say  to  the  loader, 
"  I  understand  you  talk  Italian." 
"  Oh  yes,  sir,"  replied  the  York- 
shireman,  and  immediately  fired 
off  a  string  of  Italian  oaths  strong 
enough  to  make  your  hair  stand  on 
end. 

Another  entry  brings  up  recol- 
lections of  a  most  delightful  day's 
shooting — but  over  very  disagree- 
able ground.  We  were  duck-shoot- 
ing in  a  Suffolk  bog.  In  one  place 
the  bog,  which  was  very  wet,  had 
drainage  grips  cut  in  it,  which  you 
floundered  into,  sometimes  up  to 
the  middle,  before  you  knew  where 
you  were. 

It  was  while  we  were  going  over 
this  ground  that  I  suddenly  heard 
a  splash  and  an  "  ugh,"  just  behind 
me.  Looking  round,  I  saw  my 
loader,  or  rather  the  upper  part  of 
his  body,  the  lower  part  of  him 
being  in  the  grip.  But  he  was  of 
a  cheerful  disposition,  and  being 
very  fond  of  sport,  relieved  his 
feelings  by  saying,  "Well,  sir,  I've 
shot  with  you  in  England,  I've 
shot  with  you  in  Scotland,  and  I've 
shot  with  you  in  Ireland — but  I've 
never  shot  with  you  in  such  a 
place  as  this  ! "  It  is  a  most  dis- 
agreeable feeling  getting  into  one 
of  these  places,  for  you  never  know 
how  deep  they  are,  and  as  you  are 
sinking  in,  dreadful  stories  recur 
to  your  mind  of  people  getting 
submerged  before  assistance  could 
reach  them. 

On  the  same  ground,  one  year 
while  flapper-shooting  in  August, 
I  was  attacked  by  some  most  ven- 
omous insects.  For  three  days  or 
so  I  scarcely  felt  anything — but 
then  for  ten  days  I  suffered  the 
most  acute  tortures.  Curiously 
enough,  at  the  time  I  noticed  a 
2  N 


550 


Leaves  from  a  Game- Book. 


[Oct. 


good  many  rather  large  gnats 
about,  but  they  did  not  seem  to 
trouble  me,  so  I  took  no  notice  of 
them.  A  local  lad,  however,  who 
was  carrying  my  cartridges,  seemed 
to  be  troubled  by  them,  for  he  tied 
his  head  up  in  his  pocket-handker- 
chief. When  he  emerged  from  it 
again,  it  is  hardly  exaggeration  to 
say  that  I  scarcely  knew  him  for 
the  same  boy,  he  was  so  bitten  and 
swollen.  But,  in  my  case,  the 
poison  did  not  seem  to  act  for 
three  or  four  days.  The  only 
other  time  I  have  ever  suffered  in 
the  same  way  was  on  a  trip  up  the 
Dart  in  a  steam-launch.  The  best, 
and  indeed  the  only,  thing  to  as- 
suage the  inflammation,  I  dis- 
covered, was  absolute  abstention 
from  anything  alcoholic. 

Some  hosts,  over-anxious  to  pro- 
vide their  friends  with  a  good 
day's  sport,  utterly  lose  their  heads, 
rampage  wildly  about  the  place, 
dismissing  their  keepers  wholesale, 
upbraiding  the  beaters,  and  gener- 
ally making  every  one  uncomfort- 
able. 

On  one  occasion  my  host,  who 
was  a  rather  hot-blooded  irritable 
man,  was  about  to  shoot  a  covert 
he  had  only  recently  bought.  He 
had  his  ideas  as  to  how  it  should 
be  taken.  So  had  his  keeper.  The 
two  went  at  it  hammer  and  tongs, 
and  called  each  other  every  sort  of 
name.  Then  the  son  came  up,  a 
man  of  about  forty.  His  way  of 
doing  it  was  quite  different  to  both 
his  father's  and  the  keeper's.  The 
whole  matter  was  thrashed  out 
again:  the  keeper  got  sulky;  the 
master  was  annoyed;  the  guns 
out  of  temper;  and  a  nice  day's 
shooting  entirely  spoilt. 

Somebody  must  be  responsible 
for  the  arrangements.  Surely  it 
is  much  the  best  course  to  make 
one  man  so;  then  if  things  go 
wrong,  you  know  at  once  whose 
the  responsibility  is. 


Of  course,  in  small  shoots  these 
matters  are  of  no  great  conse- 
quence, but  in  large  ones  the  head- 
keeper  must  be  possessed  of  all 
the  qualities  required  for  a  suc- 
cessful general.  He  must  have 
thought  out  his  battle-field  be- 
forehand, and  anticipated  every 
move  on  the  part  of  the  enemy ; 
he  must  have  carefully  elaborated 
his  arrangements  beforehand;  he 
must  see  that  his  lieutenants  are 
properly  acquainted  with  their 
duties ;  his  orders  must  be  pre- 
cise and  intelligible ;  and  his  head 
must  be  kept  cool  and  clear.  Any 
little  slip  will  make  the  day  a 
failure  instead  of  a  success :  a 
precious  hour  may  be  wasted  by 
luncheon  going  to  the  wrong  place, 
or  a  very  trifling  error  may  send 
the  birds  all  wrong. 

It  was  said  of  the  late  Lord 
Cardigan  that  on  one  occasion  he 
was  extremely  angry  with  his 
keeper  when  very  little  game  was 
found  in  a  certain  plantation. 
After  blowing  him  up  sky-high, 
the  choleric  master  ordered  him  to 
beat  through  another  wood  which 
he  pointed  out,  promising  instant 
dismissal  if  satisfactory  results 
were  not  obtained. 

"But,  my  lord,"  urged  the 
keeper — but  he  was  interrupted 
by  Lord  Cardigan  :  "Not  a  word, 
sir ;  obey  my  orders  at  once ! " 
Terrified,  the  wretched  man  slunk 
off,  and  the  wood  was  duly  beat 
up  to  the  guns.  There  was  scarce- 
ly a  head  of  game  in  it.  Limp 
and  dejected,  the  unfortunate 
keeper  now  came  up ;  and  when 
his  lordship  had  said  all  he  had 
to  say,  and  was  compelled  to  stop 
for  want  of  breath,  the  poor  man 
meekly  pleaded,  "But,  my  lord, 
it's  not  your  wood  at  all — only  you 
told  me  to  beat  it." 

Another  old  shooting -story  is 
told  of  the  same  eccentric  peer. 

He  always  used  to  shoot  annu- 


1894.] 


Leaves  from  a  Game-Book. 


551 


ally  at  the  same  place  in  Northamp- 
tonshire. The  woods  were  difficult 
ones  to  beat  well,  being  rambling 
and  hollow,  necessitating  the  use  of 
a  large  number  of  "  stops."  These 
stops  were  always,  as  is  generally 
the  case,  small  boys.  But  this 
particular  year  to  which  we  are 
alluding  the  case  was  different. 
Lord  Cardigan's  quick  eye  noticed 
that  instead  of  the  small  boys  the 
stops  were  grown-up  men.  This 
struck  him  so  much  that  he  asked 
the  keeper  why  it  was  so,  saying 
that  it  must  come  very  expensive. 
The  keeper  is  said  to  have  replied, 
"  Well,  you  see,  my  lord,  your  lord- 
ship shot  the  boys  down  rather  close 
last  year" 

As  I  turn  over  the  pages  of  my 
little  game-book,  innumerable  are 
the  recollections  which  crowd  in  on 
my  brain,  and  I  should  fill  a  fair- 
sized  volume  were  I  to  relate  the 
half  of  them. 

One  more  story,  however,  of  a 
day's  partridge  -  driving  late  in 
September,  I  cannot  resist  putting 
on  paper,  in  the  belief  that  it  will 
be  of  interest  and  amusement. 
We  had  been  shooting  over  the 
same  ground  three  weeks  previ- 
ously in  very  hot  weather.  As 
everybody  knows,  walking  a  turnip- 
field  on  a  hot  day  in  September  is 
very  hard  work,  and  so  a  gallant 
Guardsman  found  it.  He  was 
clothed  in  a  nice  rich  brown  - 
coloured  suit,  which  excited  at 
once  the  admiration  and  envy  of 
us  all.  But  waxing  very  warm 
during  the  morning's  work,  this 
gallant  son  of  Mars  took  off  his 
waistcoat  and  gave  it  to  his  loader 
to  hold.  The  loader  slung  it  across 
the  belt  of  his  cartridge-bag,  and 
at  the  end  of  the  morning  the 
waistcoat  was  missing.  A  search 
was  made,  but  in  vain.  You  might 
as  well  hope  to  find  the  proverbial 
needle  in  a  bundle  of  hay  as  a 


waistcoat  in  one  of  three  or  four 
big  turnip-fields.  The  owner  of 
the  waistcoat  was  much  distressed 
at  his  loss,  and  had  to  endure  a 
good  deal  of  chaff  in  consequence. 
Three  weeks  later  another  shoot- 
ing-party came  down,  and  among 
them  was  a  brother  officer  of  the 
owner  of  the  lost  waistcoat.  To- 
wards the  end  of  the  day  on  which 
the  same  beat  was  again  shot  over, 
a  partridge-drive  was  taking  place. 
I  thought  I  saw  a  fine  hare  squat- 
ting a  little  way  in  front  of  the 
bold  Grenadier.  He,  from  his 
attitude,  evidently  saw  it  too — for 
all  through  that  drive  he  was  in  a 
state  of  complete  readiness.  The 
beaters  came  on — other  hares  ad- 
vanced and  retired  —  partridges 
were  on  the  wing — but  still  that 
hare  remained  there,  and  even  let 
the  beaters  pass  close  to  it  without 
stirring.  Then  the  gallant  Guards- 
man saw  his  opportunity.  Nimbly 
he  leapt  the  fence — stealthily  he 
advanced  upon  the  unsuspecting 
foe — while  all  of  us  admired  his 
energy  and  the  grace  of  his  move- 
ments. He  got  nearer  and  nearer, 
and  the  hare  never  moved.  At  last 
he  got  right  up  to  it,  and  as  the 
reader  will  probably  by  this  time 
have  surmised,  picked  up — not  a 
fine  heavy  hare,  but — the  waistcoat 
so  cruelly  divorced  from  its  accom- 
panying coat  and  knickerbockers. 

Finally,  in  conclusion,  I  recom- 
mend all  sportsmen  who  have  never 
done  so  to  keep  a  game-book.  It 
will  make  a  very  pleasant  volume 
to  turn  to  in  later  days,  besides 
being  useful  as  a  reference. 

Lord  Beaconsfield,  though  no 
sportsman,  expressed  himself  as- 
tonished when  he  was  shown  Lord 
Malmesbury's  game-book  at  Heron 
Court,  and  was  loud  in  admiration 
of  the  patience  and  method  dis- 
played in  the  compilation  of  it. 
GEORGE  MANNERS. 


552 


The  Golfer  in  Search  of  a  Climate. 


[Oct. 


THE    GOLFER    IN    SEARCH    OF    A    CLIMATE. 


IT  is  surely  fair  to  presume 
that  no  golfer  goes  abroad  for  the 
winter  with  any  object  other  than 
to  seek  a  climate  for  himself  or 
some  member  of  his  household. 
A  man  of  much  experience  told 
the  writer  that  he  knew  no  woman 
"  whose  health  permitted  her  to 
live  in  the  home  which  her  hus- 
band provided  for  her."  Be  this 
as  it  may,  it  is  certain  that  the 
British  householder  is  occasionally 
driven  to  exchange  the  hardships 
of  coal  famines  and  London  fogs 
for  the  sometimes  greater  severi- 
ties of  the  winter  of  the  south 
of  France.  We  say  "  sometimes 
greater  severities "  advisedly,  for 
fresh  in  our  memory,  at  the  mo- 
ment of  writing,  is  the  winter  of 
1893-94,  which  saw  20°  of  frost, 
on  the  Fahrenheit  thermometer, 
in  such  resorts  of  the  British  cli- 
mate-hunter as  Pau  and  Biarritz. 
The  truth  is,  the  weather  of  the 
Basses  Pyrenees  is  not  to  be  re- 
lied on.  Now  and  again  a  winter 
is  uninterruptedly  delightful ;  but 
these  are  exceptions  occurring  in 
a  series  of  winters,  of  which  each 
will  comprise  one  or  more  cold 
"  snaps  "  of  a  week  or  two.  The 
merit  of  the  climate  is  that  the 
cold  "  snaps "  are  brief,  and  that 
when  the  sun  shines  the  heavens 
delight  you  with  a  more  than 
British  blueness.  While  it  lasts, 
however,  the  cold  is  more  severe 
than  the  cold  of  an  ordinary 
winter  at  home;  it  takes  you 
more  by  surprise,  by  reason  of 
the  suddenness  of  its  attack ;  it 
takes  you  at  a  disadvantage,  be- 
cause coal-fires  are  hard  to  come 
by,  and  it  is  difficult  to  heat  the 
houses  to  the  degree  of  British 
home-warmth.  If  it  should  catch 
you  unawares  without  warm  win- 


ter clothing,  it  is  more  than  likely 
to  search  out  weak  joints  in  your 
harness. 

No  doubt  the  Riviera  is  better. 
On  the  warm  days  of  the  Basses 
Pyrenees  the  habitues  will  deny 
it.  Gathering  themselves  together 
on  the  terrace  before  the  Gassion 
at  Pau,  and  gazing  at  the  snow- 
clad  Pic  du  Midi,  or  on  the  plage 
at  Biarritz  admiring  the  tumbling 
breakers,  they  will  fall  to  con- 
gratulating one  another  as  proudly 
as  if  the  glorious  sunshine  were 
the  creation  of  their  own  efforts. 
"  What  the  deuce  does  a  fellow 
want  to  go  to  the  Riviera  for, 
when  he  can  get  such  weather  as 
this  here  ? "  But  when  the  storm- 
cone  is  hoisted,  and  the  scud 
comes  racing  up  over  the  lower- 
ing sky  from  the  sea,  with  a  fall- 
ing glass  and  falling  thermometer, 
they  will  bethink  themselves  in  si- 
lent or  in  profane  sorrow,  accord- 
ing to  their  manner,  of  the  blue 
Mediterranean  and  the  palm-trees 
of  Cannes. 

For  there,  too,  they  might  be 
playing  golf  as  well,  in  a  sense, 
as  at  Pau  or  Biarritz.  In  a  sense, 
far  better,  for  at  Cannes  it  is 
an  easier  game  to  play — a  game 
with  fewer  difficulties;  a  shorter 
course,  with  fewer  of  "  those 
horrid  bunkers  " ;  a  very  gentle- 
manly style  of  golf,  in  fact — so 
gentlemanly  as  to  be  almost  lady- 
like. The  ladies  golf  there,  zeal- 
ously, under  the  gracious  patron- 
age of  the  Russian  Grand  Duke ; 
and  since  the  train  now  stops  to 
set  down  golfers  at  La  Napoule, 
the  course  is  easy  of  access.  To 
the  plain  golfer  of  the  east  of  Fife 
there  may  seem  to  be  a  little  too 
much  of  grace  and  of  high  digni- 
ties about  it;  but,  after  all,  golf 


1894.] 


The  Golfer  in  Search  of  a  Climate. 


553 


levels  non  -  golfing  distinctions. 
There  is  no  law  of  hereditary 
precedence  about  getting  into  the 
hole. 

But  at  Cannes,  no  less  than 
elsewhere  on  the  Riviera,  the 
golfer  who  is  compelled  to  take 
thought  about  the  temperature 
must  be  especially  watchful  in 
the  sunset  hours.  From  four  to 
six  is  the  time  of  danger,  when 
the  air  strikes  most  chilly  on  the 
tender  chest  or  lung.  Later,  the 
temperature  rises  again.  More- 
over, when  it  is  dark  the  golfer 
will  naturally  wrap  his  tweeds 
about  him,  whereas  the  sunset, 
in  its  gay  beauty,  insidiously  in- 
vites him  to  go  unprotected. 
Nevertheless,  when  all  is  said, 
Cannes  is  a  better  wintering  - 
place,  regarding  the  winter 
months  strictly,  than  the  golf 
resorts  of  the  Basses  Pyrenees ; 
and  since  there  is  golf  there — of 
such  quality  as  one  may  at  least 
be  grateful  for  on  the  Riviera — 
it  may  be  said  at  once  that  the 
winter  campaign  of  the  climate- 
hunting  golfer  can  nowhere  else 
be  as  well  begun.  The  accommo- 
dation, as  everybody  knows,  is  ex- 
cellent, even  if  it  be  rather  dear ; 
but  when  it  includes  such  a  meas- 
ure of  warmth  and  sunshine,  per- 
haps it  is  not  excessive.  So  for 
December  and  January  the  golfer 
will  do  well  at  Cannes,  and  by 
early  February  he  may  be  be- 
thinking himself  of  a  change  of 
quarters  —  not  a  change  for  the 
better,  so  far  as  the  quarters  go, 
but  a  change  to  better  golf.  About 
the  first  of  February  the  climate 
of  Pau  is  becoming  trustworthy. 

If  a  man  is  in  a  hurry,  on  leav- 
ing the  Riviera,  to  arrive  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  the  French 
Atlantic  seaboard,  the  train  ser- 
vice between  Marseilles  and  Bor- 
deaux is  one  of  the  best  in  France. 
It  is  more  interesting,  however, 


and  in  point  of  distance  shorter, 
to  crawl  along  from  Toulouse, 
beside  the  upper  waters  of  the 
Garonne,  and  to  come  down  on 
Pau  through  the  Hautes  Pyrenees. 
Here  you  may  pass  by  Luchon, 
may  branch  off  to  Bigorre,  may 
find  yourself  in  the  neighbourhood 
of  Lourdes,  where  they  will  per- 
form any  miracle  upon  you,  even 
to  the  extent  of  curing  you  of 
missing  short  putts. 

In  Pau  you  will  find  a  quality 
of  softness  in  the  atmosphere 
which  even  the  greater  warmth 
of  Cannes  did  not  supply.  You 
will  dwell,  most  probably,  in  one 
of  those  great  and  good  hotels,  the 
Gassion  or  the  France,  which  stand 
on  the  high  terrace  from  which  you 
look  out  over  the  rushing  Gave  and 
away  on  over  numberless  billows 
of  foothills,  rising  higher  and 
higher  till  they  lead  the  eye  to 
the  shining  snow -peaks  of  the 
Pyrenees,  culminating  in  the  lofty 
isolation  of  the  Pic  du  Midi.  Or 
— there  is  always  an  alternative — 
for  a  week  the  whole  landscape 
may  be  wrapped  in  haze,  and  you 
may  have  no  visible  evidence  of  a 
mountain  within  a  thousand  miles 
of  you.  By  preference,  however, 
let  us  take  the  more  pleasing  al- 
ternative. Then,  after  the  "  little 
breakfast,"  which  you  will  supple- 
ment, if  you  are  wise,  with  some- 
thing certainly  not  less  solid  than 
an  ceuf  a  la  coque,  you  will  stroll 
along  the  terrace,  westward,  past 
the  famous  Chateau  Henri  IV., 
whose  wonderful  tapestries  you 
will  reserve  for  the  consolation 
of  your  eyes  on  a  weeping  day, 
when  the  vent  du  sud  has  brought 
a  curtain  of  rain  to  shroud  from 
you  the  beauties  of  the  Pyrenees. 
And  so  you  win  your  way  into  the 
wood  on  the  hillside,  and  along  its 
winding  footway,  which  gives  lovely 
peeps  of  the  mountains  between  the 
tree- steins,  down  to  the  links  on 


554 


The  Goljer  m  Search  of  a  Climate. 


[Oct. 


the  level  plain  of  Billeres.  Here 
you  find  a  club-house  more  pic- 
turesque than  most  of  the  build- 
ings designed  or  adapted  for  such 
uses,  with  a  verandah,  and  a  bal- 
cony opening  from  the  ladies'  club- 
rooms  above.  At  a  little  distance 
is  Lloyd's  club-making  shop,  sur- 
rounded by  a  mass  meeting  of 
the  unemployed  caddies,  who  will 
clamour  in  pleasant  Bearnaise  for 
your  custom.  Among  these  sa- 
botted  and  berretted  oiseaux1 — 
many  of  them  sad  rascals,  it  is 
too  likely,  in  the  degeneracy  in- 
evitable in  those  of  the  lower 
humanity  who  consort  with  the 
golfer  or  the  horse  —  are  to  be 
found  some  sterling  good  players. 
The  plain  of  Billeres  lies  low,  on 
a  level  almost  with  the  river  Gave. 
South  of  the  river  the  lower  ranges 
of  the  Pyrenees  begin  to  rise  im- 
mediately. Doubtless  it  is  by 
reason  of  its  situation  that  it  is  so 
peculiarly  windless.  The  golfer, 
starting  on  his  round  from  the 
club-house,  and  playing  out  for 
the  first  hole  or  two  along  the  side 
of  the  river — into  it,  if  he  pull  his 
ball — recognises  at  once  this  pe- 
culiar quality.  There  is  a  peace 
in  the  atmosphere — a  peace  which 
is  inexpressibly  soothing  to  the 
irritated  nerves  (no  man  ought  to 
lose  his  temper  or  to  miss  short 
putts  at  Pau),  but  a  peace  which 
is  not  altogether  wholesome  to  one 
who  comes  direct  from  the  golf- 
links  of  our  keen  east  coast. 
However,  the  judiciously  spent 
interval  at  Cannes  will  have  pre- 
pared the  system  for  a  grateful 
assimilation  of  the  peace.  The 
quality  of  the  golf  is  in  harmony 
with  the  soothing  conditions  of 
the  climate.  The  lies  are  excellent, 
the  turf  more  beautiful  than  we 
are  accustomed  to  find  it  in  links 
which  do  not  skirt  the  sea, — won- 


derfully beautiful  when  we  con- 
sider that  we  are  out  of  our  own 
country,  which  is  the  best  turf- 
producer  in  the  world.  Until  we 
come  to  the  four  last  holes,  the 
absence  of  hazard  assists  the 
general  suggestion  of  this  all-per- 
vading peace.  The  verdant  plain 
is  dotted  with  occasional  thorny 
bushes,  at  which,  when  our  ball 
gets  into  them,  we  should  swear 
in  any  other  climate.  There  are 
some  bluff  escarped  faces,  with 
the  holes  perched  on  plateaux 
above  them ;  there  is  a  hole 
among  apple-trees ;  and,  having 
accomplished  these,  we  drive  over, 
or  into,  the  plot,  valuable  from 
its  gutta-percha  deposits,  of  a 
peasant  of  the  country;  and  so, 
over  another  field,  fenced  by  high 
hedges,  back  again  to  the  smiling 
plain  and  the  glancing  river.  De- 
spite the  comparative  absence  of 
hazard  in  these  first  fourteen  holes, 
they  are  not  to  be  done  in  a  very 
low  score,  for  they  are  long,  though 
there  is  a  certain  sameness  in  their 
features  or  lack  of  feature.  The 
last  four  holes  amply  atone  for 
this — they  are  full  of  expression. 
For  the  first  of  them  you  may  go 
straight,  if  you  please,  over  Lloyd's 
shop,  over  several  other  outhouses, 
over  the  mass  meeting  of  the 
oiseaux,  over  a  branch  of  the 
Gave — but  you  will  need  to  be  a 
greater  than  Douglas  Holland  to 
carry  them  all.  Nevertheless, 
over  this  branch  of  the  Gave  you 
must  go,  or  give  up  the  hole  and 
all  the  honours  pertaining  to  it. 
If  you  face  at  right  angles  to  the 
direct,  heroic  line  to  the  hole,  you 
may  cross  the  river  with  a  half 
iron -shot;  but  the  bolder  and 
nearer  you  drive  to  the  straight 
line  the  shorter  will  be  your  ap- 
proach stroke.  For  the  last  hole 
of  all  you  again  cross  this  limb  of 


1  A  plural  of  oisif,  often  in  use  in  old  provincial  French  ="  loafers.' 


1894." 


The  Golfer  in  Search  of  a  Climate. 


555 


the  Gave,  with  a  full  iron-shot — a 
distance  much  the  same  as  that  of 
the  St  Andrews  short  hole  going 
out.  The  two  holes  intermediate, 
the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth, 
bristle  with  brambles,  while  the 
latter,  in  addition,  presents  pecul- 
iar facilities  for  a  visit  to  the 
river. 

By  all  which  efforts  you  have 
well  earned  your  dejetiner,  well 
cooked  and  served  in  the  club- 
house, and  thereafter,  a  smoke 
in  the  shade  of  the  verandah, 
with  the  unequalled  panorama  of 
the  Pyrenees  before  you.  Here 
you  will  discuss  the  bad  luck 
which  attended  you  on  your 
round,  and  when  your  friends  are 
weary  of  this  theme,  you  will  be 
told  the  story  of  the  foundation 
of  the  club  —  how,  with  the  im- 
mortal exception  of  Blackheath, 
it  is  the  most  ancient  golf-club, 
south  of  the  Tweed,  in  all  the 
world  as  known  to  the  moderns. 
The  writer  having  claimed  an 
uncle  as  one  of  the  original 
founders  of  the  club  at  Pau,  a 
waggish  friend  informed  him  that 
it  was  rare  to  meet  a  man  whose 
uncle  had  not  founded  the  Pau 
Golf -Club.  The  truth  is,  that  a 
little  colony  of  Scottish  and  Eng- 
lish gentlemen  finding  themselves 
at  Pau,  sorely  in  need  of  occupa- 
tion, and  with  the  plain  of  Billeres 
before  their  eyes,  betook  them- 
selves to  golf  as  naturally  as 
ducks  to  water,  and  established 
the  club  which  now  nourishes  so 
pleasantly.  In  the  club  parlour 
hangs  a  picture  of  three  surviving 
founders — Archdeacon  Sapte,  Col- 
onel Hutchinson,  and  Major  Ponti- 
fex — to  whose  likenesses  the  golfer 
will  turn  grateful  eyes. 

Inured  by  the  training  of 
Cannes  to  the  atmosphere  of 
peace,  and  invigorated  by  the  de"- 
jetiner,  the  golfer  may  again  tempt 
fortune  among  the  buissons,  the 


escarpments,  the  apple-trees,  the 
hedges,  and  the  ramifying  Gave. 
Only,  on  his  return  from  this 
afternoon  round,  let  him  beware, 
for  here  too,  as  on  the  Riviera, 
the  sunset  hours  are  the  most 
treacherous.  He  may  walk  home- 
ward again  through  the  grove,  or, 
more  likely,  may  prefer  to  drive 
in  one  of  the  closed  hack-carriages 
which  he  will  find  in  attendance. 
For  the  homeward  walk  is  up-hill, 
and  this  is  not  the  "  caller  "  air  of 
the  kingdom  of  Fife.  In  the  English 
Club  he  may  find  whist  or  games  of 
greater  hazard,  or  billiards,  either 
French  or  English,  or  literature 
equally  polyglot.  He  will  find 
multitudes  of  his  compatriots  — 
always  a  consideration  to  the  Eng- 
lish innocent  abroad — and  many 
fellow-countrymen  of  the  original 
immortal  "  Innocents." 

The  climate  throughout  Febru- 
ary is  nearly  sure  to  be  a  joy  to 
him.  If  he  please,  he  may  vary 
his  golf  by  hunting  with  the  Pau 
hounds,  who  probably  show  the 
best  sport  of  any  pack  out  of 
England.  He  may  make  expedi- 
tions into  the  Pyrenees,  with  the 
object  of  shooting  izards  —  the 
Pyrenean  chamois  —  who  are  an 
elusive  quarry.  If  he  be  excep- 
tionally fortunate,  he  may  even 
achieve  the  glory  of  shooting  a 
bear.  But  by  the  end  of  February 
it  is  likely  that  he  will  begin  to 
find  the  peace  rather  too  much  for 
him.  A  disinclination  to  a  second 
round,  which  he  had  never  known 
in  the  keen  air  of  Scotland,  will  be 
beginning  to  warn  him  that  the  too 
kindly  climate  is  relaxing  his  ener- 
gies. He  will  sigh  for  a  keen  breeze 
to  revive  his  vigour,  and  will  listen, 
with  the  ear  of  longing,  to  the  fre- 
quent dictum  of  the  habitue  of  Pau, 
that  "it  always  blows  a  gale  at 
Biarritz."  He  bethinks  him  that 
it  would  be  good  for  his  lungs,  good 
for  his  muscles,  good  for  his  ap- 


556 


The  Golfer  in  Search  of  a  Climate. 


[Oct. 


petite,  good,  finally,  for  his  golf,  to 
taste  once  more  the  flavour  of  a 
gale — and  the  final  consideration 
decides  him.  The  journey  is  not  a 
great  one.  Three  hours  or  so,  ac- 
cording to  the  caprices  of  the  train- 
service,  should  take  him  to  Bayonne, 
whence  a  further  train  voyage,  or 
a  drive  of  something  over  three 
miles,  will  land  him  at  Biarritz 
and  the  caves  of  JEolus.  In  the 
j^Eolian  qualities  he  may  chance  to 
be  disappointed — the  bags  of  all 
the  winds  are  not  always  opened 
at  Biarritz,  as  the  reports  which 
he  heard  at  Pau  had  seemed  to 
indicate — but  he  is  not  likely  to 
fail  to  notice  a  salutary  ozone-laden 
breath  off  the  sea,  which  is  refresh- 
ment after  the  great  peace  of  the 
plain  of  Billeres.  He  may  even 
comment  on  this  to  a  habitue  of 
Biarritz,  and  in  that  case  will  be 
answered  by  an  "  Oh,  Pau  !  My 
dear  fellow,  one  cannot  breathe 
there,"  which  should  induce  reflec- 
tion on  human  nature  and  on  the  in- 
estimable blessing  of  contentment 
with  one's  lot.  At  Biarritz  he  will 
find  hotels  as  good  as  those  at  Pau, 
and  somewhat  cheaper.  Indeed 
he  will  recognise  that  his  expenses 
— other  things,  such  as  his  thirst, 
being  equal — have  been  in  a  de- 
creasing scale  with  each  move, — 
Pau  cheaper  than  Cannes,  Biarritz 
cheaper  again  than  Pau.  There  is 
satisfaction  in  this,  as  in  the  more 
generous,  more  free  air  that  he  in- 
hales gratis.  He  will  repair  to  the 
club  of  his  compatriots,  which  he 
will  find  similar  to  that  of  Pau, 
though  smaller;  and  again,  in  its 
designation,  he  may  note  a  sugges- 
tion of  greater  liberality.  At  Pau 
it^was  the  "  English  "  Club— here, 
with  appreciation  of  the  delicate 
susceptibilities  of  an  island  adjacent 
to  England,  it  is  yclept  the  "  Brit- 
ish" Club;  in  which  name  the 
Scotsman  too  may  have  enough 
Caledonian  patriotism  to  rejoice. 


In  place  of  the  snow-clad  Pyrenees, 
his  view  shows  him  a  tumbling  race 
of  white-crested  billows — as  fine  a 
sea  as  any  on  the  Atlantic  Coast. 
He  will  mount  an  open  fly -^-with  the 
mental  observation  that  the  flies  of 
Pau  were  like  the  plain  of  Billeres 
itself,  shut  in — and  be  driven  a 
short  mile,  up-hill,  to  the  golf  links. 
He  will  reverse  the  order  of  the 
going  which  was  his  habit  at  Pau. 
There  he  habitually  walked  to  the 
links,  and  drove/rom  them,  because 
they  were  down-hill  from  the  town. 
Here  he  will  by  preference  drive 
to  them,  and  walk  down — always 
choosing  to  walk  in  the  direction 
of  the  less  resistance.  Moreover, 
in  the  more  vigorous  air  he  will 
find  the  walking  less  fatiguing.  At 
the  same  time  he  will  reflect,  if  he 
be  wise,  that  the  climate  of  Biar- 
ritz, which  he  may  trust  now  that 
it  is  March,  was  scarcely  to  be  de- 
pended on,  equally  with  that  of 
Pau,  in  February. 

From  the  high  ground,  if  the 
day  be  clear,  he  may  still  see  the 
Pyrenees  and  the  Pic  du  Midi, 
but  at  so  great  a  distance  that  his 
driver,  who  would  preferably  talk 
Basque,  tells  him  in  French,  which 
he  has  a  difficulty  in  understand- 
ing, that  it  would  promise  better 
for  the  weather  if  the  snow-clad 
peaks  were  not  visible.  The  club- 
house he  will  find  to  be  a  building 
of  less  glory,  beauty,  and  comfort 
than  that  of  Pau,  though  answer- 
ing its  purpose  adequately. 

The  links  of  Biarritz  and  of  Pau 
do  not  compare  well ;  they  are  too 
dissimilar.  While  the  features  of 
the  latter  are  their  length,  their 
flatness,  the  excellence  of  their 
lies,  and  their  comparative  im- 
munity from  hazards,  the  links  of 
Biarritz  are  remarkable  for  their 
boldness,  their  undulations,  and 
their  numerous  difficulties,  which 
are  not  always  avoided  when  the 
ball  lies  on  what  ought  to  be  the 


1894.] 


The  Golfer  In  Search  of  a  Climate. 


557 


good  green  of  the  course.  The 
putting-greens  themselves  are  good 
enough ;  it  is  the  green  between 
the  holes  which  might  be  better. 
In  compensation,  as  it  were,  for 
its  greater  difficulty,  the  Biarritz 
course  is  considerably  shorter  than 
that  of  Pau,  and,  in  consequence, 
it  is  an  easier  course  to  the  good 
golfer — a  course  which  the  good 
golfer  will  accomplish  in  fewer 
strokes  than  he  would  require  at 
Pau.  On  the  other  hand,  for  the 
weak  or  erratic  golfer  it  will  be 
found  more  difficult,  by  reason  of 
the  vileness  of  the  lies  on  parts  of 
the  course,  and  by  reason  of  the 
ubiquity  of  hazard.  Wherefore 
Biarritz  may  be  said  to  be  the 
better  school  for  golf — a  school  in 
which  the  golfer  must  learn,  per- 
force, to  play  all  his  clubs ;  where- 
as at  Pau,  in  a  way  of  speaking, 
he  might  play  all  round  with  his 
putter,  always,  however,  excepting 
from  this  statement  the  last  four 
holes.  The  golfer  whose  ball 
cleaves,  like  the  serpent,  to  the 
earth  will  make  no  way  at  Biarritz. 
The  drives  must  be  good,  carrying 
shots,  the  iron  approaches  must 
pitch  well  up  to  the  hole.  Con- 
sider, for  example,  the  second  hole, 
and  tremble.  The  well-struck  tee- 
shot  will  put  you  within  ironing 
range  of  the  hole.  Others  have 
ironed  there  before  you,  so  your 
troubles  may  be  complicated  by 
an  evil  lie.  Without  that  compli- 
cation they  are  sufficient.  First 
there  is  a  hedge,  then  a  road,  and 
then  another  hedge,  and  the  hole 
is  just  beyond  the  second  hedge. 
These  troubles  do  not  face  you 
fairly,  but  slant  away  from  you, 
running  up  close  beside  the  hole, 
so  that  you  have  to  pitch  the  ball 
"  like  a  poached  egg,"  as  Mr  Alfred 
Lyttelton  puts  it,  to  get  at  all 
near  the  hole.  And  you  dare  not 
harden  your  heart  and  resolve  to 
be  past,  for  if  you  are  much  past — 


five-and-twenty  yards  past — you 
are  over  the  edge  of  a  tremendous 
sea-cliff  hundreds  of  feet  high,  and 
both  ball  and  hole  are  irretriev- 
able. When  you  have  putted  out 
this  hole  successfully,  you  tee  off 
on  the  edge  of  the  chasm  which  is 
a  famous  feature  of  Biarritz  links. 
The  sea  thunders  away  at  the 
chasm's  floor,  and  across  it,  from 
brink  to  brink,  you  must  go,  for 
disaster  is  fatal,  and  there  is  no 
way  round — no  way,  at  least,  that 
is  worth  the  going.  But,  after  all, 
the  chasm  should  be  appalling  only 
to  the  very  faint-hearted,  or  the 
very  feeble.  A  stout  half  iron- 
shot  would  send  the  ball  across. 
It  is  only  the  frowning  aspect  of 
the  sheer  cliffs  that  makes  it 
terrible,  and  in  point  of  difficulty 
it  is  not  a  circumstance  to  the 
approach  to  the  second  hole. 

In  the  inception  of  golf  at 
Biarritz,  nine  holes  were  the  ex- 
tent of  the  course.  Latterly  it 
has  been  enlarged  to  eighteen,  and 
the  new  nine  are  still  a  little  "in 
the  rough."  These  are  those  holes 
of  which  the  Pau  golfer  asked, 
aghast,  "What!  d'you  call  this  a 
golf  links?  I  call  it  a  grouse- 
moor  ! " 

The  covert  is  being  worn  away ; 
there  is  scarcely  heather  enough 
now  to  give  a  very  good  screen  for 
a  covey,  but  there  is  enough  to 
give  a  very  bad  lie  for  a  golf-ball. 
Still,  what  is  education  but  a  series 
of  adversities  ?  In  the  keener  air 
of  Biarritz  the  golfer  is  equal  to 
"  howking  "  a  ball  out  of  a  lie  be- 
fore which  he  would  have  sat  down 
and  wept  in  the  midst  of  the  great 
peace  of  the  plain  of  Billeres.  The 
grouse -moorish  holes  are  full  of 
interest ;  indeed,  of  the  entire 
course  of  the  Biarritz  links  one 
may  say  that  there  is  not  a  stroke 
which  is  without  its  special  inter- 
est ;  and  that  is  a  deal  to  say 
— more  than  one  can  say  of  Pau, 


558 


The  Golfer  in  Search  of  a  Climate. 


[Oct. 


though  there  the  lies  are  so  much 
better.  On  the  older  half  of  the 
course  the  turf  is  as  good  as  is  to 
be  found  on  any  links  which  are 
not  of  the  real  seaside  sort.  The 
principal  hazards  are  hedges, 
ditches,  roads,  bunkers  in  which 
there  is  real  sand,  as  if  the  links 
were  of  the  seaside  quality,  and 
deep  holes  which  the  golfer  calls 
punch-bowls,  and  which,  one  is 
told,  were  gravel -pits  in  their 
original  purpose.  There  is  no 
symptom  of  gravel  in  them  now. 
When  it  is  said  that  these  links 
are  not  of  the  real  seaside  kind 
there  appears  need  of  a  word  of 
explanation,  since  the  Atlantic 
thunders  beside  them,  and  often 
swallows  an  erratic  golf -ball. 
These  links  are  truly  enough  be- 
side the  sea,  but  they  are  not  sea- 
side links  in  the  golfer's  sense — 
not  seaside  links  in  the  sense  in 
which  the  links  of  St  Andrews, 
Prestwick,  Westward  Ho,  Sand- 
wich, and  the  rest  of  them  are  so 
called.  All  these  famous  links  occur 
near  the  estuary  of  some  river,  and 
undoubtedly  are  the  work  of  what 
geologists  call  alluvial  deposit, 
aided  by  the  action  of  the  wind  in 
blowing  up  sand-dunes ;  so  that  all 
their  turf  is  short  and  springy, 
with  its  roots  in  sand.  Biarritz 
links  are  not  like  these.  Their 
turf  is  of  the  consistency  of  down 
turf, — very  similar  in  soil,  only 
without  the  chalk,  to  the  East- 
bourne links,  which  also  are  close 
beside  the  sea,  and  yet  are  not  sea- 
side links  according  to  the  golfer's 
phrase.  Nevertheless,  they  are 
sufficiently  good  for  the  golfer 
to  disport  himself  thereon  with 
pleasure  and  with  profit — profit 
primarily  to  his  golf,  and  second- 
arily to  his  health,  which,  after 
all,  is  a  consideration. 

For,  though  he  will  not  find 
himself  in  so  unredeemed  a  cave 
of  ^Eolus  as  his  friends  at  Pau 


would  have  had  him  believe,  he 
will  yet  meet  with  plenty  of  brac- 
ing breezes  to  freshen  his  energies 
after  the  relaxation  of  the  climate 
of  Pau.  He  will  find  a  refreshing 
dejedner  quite  good  enough  for  the 
hungry  golfer,  if  he  be  careful  in 
the  ordering  of  it  beforehand,  in 
the  club-house;  he  will  find  in 
Willie  Dunn  a  very  obliging  and 
fairly  efficient  clubmaker ;  and,  un- 
less he  be  a  dweller  on  the  highest 
branches  of  the  golfing  tree,  he 
will  find  more  than  his  match  in 
one  or  two  of  the  bigger  caddies. 
The  quickness  with  which  even 
the  least  of  these  little  urchins 
picks  up  the  duties  incidental  to 
the  honourable  profession  of  club- 
carrying  is  strong  testimony  to  the 
alert  intelligence  of  their  nation, 
and  they  show  an  aptitude  for 
playing  the  game  which  is  charac- 
teristic of  so  athletic  and  game- 
loving  a  race  as  the  Basques. 
Sunday  is  their  great  practising 
day.  Though  the  liberal-minded 
golfer  will  sometimes  so  far  forget 
his  insular  scruples  as  to  play  on 
the  Sabbath,  yet  the  majority 
willingly  take  this  one  holiday  out 
of  seven.  The  flags  are  not  set 
out,  so  that  a  forecaddie  is  a  ne- 
cessity. The  club-house,  however, 
is  open,  and  a  few  indefatigable 
spirits  pursue  the  game.  Never- 
theless the  links  are  for  the  most 
part  vacant,  and  the  caddies,  some- 
times with  their  female  relatives 
in  attendance,  emulate  the  week- 
day example  of  their  masters. 
Many  will  be  playing  with  clubs 
of  their  own  manufacture  —  a 
springy  shaft  thrust  into  a  block 
of  wood  for  the  head ;  and  even 
with  these  rude  weapons  they 
make  better  practice  than  is  often 
achieved  by  the  masters.  They 
have  begun  at  the  right  age,  and 
it  may  be  that  a  future  champion 
is  studying,  in  sabots  and  berret, 
on  the  links  of  Biarritz. 


1894.] 


The  Golfer  in  Search  of  a  Climate. 


559 


Both  at  Pau  and  Biarritz  the 
golfer  will  find  fairly  good  short 
links  for  ladies.  At  Pau,  after 
the  first  of  April — absit  any  kind 
of  suspicion  of  omen  from  the  in- 
auspicious date — ladies  are  allowed 
to  play  on  the  long  links  after  four 
o'clock;  but  at  Biarritz  this  high 
privilege  is  only  accorded  by 
special  leave  of  the  committee. 
At  Biarritz,  as  at  Pau,  the  golfer 
may  vary  his  regular  occupation 
by  hunting.  It  is  not  the  hunt- 
ing of  Leicestershire,  for  the 
country  presents  an  alternative  of 
very  small  fields  and  immense 
sandy-floored  pine-forests,  but  it 
may  serve  as  a  change.  The 
month  of  March  is  rather  late  for 
any  sport  in  the  way  of  shooting ; 
but  fair  trout-fishing  may  be  ob- 
tained by  a  little  "roughing  it" 
in  the  way  of  sleeping  in  rude 
hostelries  in  the  neighbourhood  of 
Irun.  But  always  there  are  inter- 
esting expeditions  to  be  made  into 
the  beautiful  Pyrenean  country — 
to  Cambo,  or,  across  the  Spanish 
border,  to  Fontarabia,  or  San  Se- 
bastian; and  if  the  golfer  have  a 
turn  for  military  history,  he  may 
study  on  the  spot  the  scene  of 
much  of  Wellington's  masterly 
strategy  in  the  Peninsular  war. 
He  may  play  tennis,  if  it  pleases 
him,  in  the  oldest  tennis-court  in 
the  world — the  model  of  all  our 
tennis-courts — the  trinquet-court, 
as  it  is  called,  at  Bayonne.  But, 
above  all,  he  will  not  fail  to  visit 
St  Jean  de  Luz,  and  to  take  his 
golf  clubs  with  him,  for  there  too 
is  a  golf  links.  It  is  only  of  nine 
holes,  of  later  inception  than  the 
Biarritz  links,  and  not  equal  to 
these  in  excellence;  nevertheless, 
it  makes  an  amusing  change  in 
the  middle  of  a  month's  golf. 
There  is  no  club-house  on  the 
links,  so  the  golfer  who  has  come 
over  by  road  or  train  will  do 
wisely  to  take  dejeuner  at  the 


Hdtel  d'Angleterre,  which  is  all 
on  his  way  from  the  station  to 
the  links.  He  will  find  caddies 
who  stand  in  need  of  much  in- 
struction in  the  game,  and  their 
education  is  rendered  the  more 
troublesome  by  the  circumstance 
that  their  language  is  the  undi- 
luted Basque.  The  St  Jean  de 
Luz  links,  though  they  are  small, 
are  by  no  means  of  the  sort  which 
a  man  can  play  over  with  a  putter. 
The  tee-shots  require  to  be  driven 
with  a  good  length  of  carry,  for 
the  ground  undulates  steeply,  and 
there  is  no  run  on  the  ball.  One 
tee-shot  presents  features  like  those 
of  the  Biarritz  chasm.  The  chasm, 
in  fact,  embraces  a  far  wider  arc 
of  sea,  if  one  drive  at  all  straight 
for  the  hole,  but  affords  a  better 
chance  of  circumnavigation  by  the 
inland  route. 

Towards  the  end  of  March  the 
golfer  will  find  days  at  Biarritz  in 
which  a  solar  topee  is  a  grateful 
style  of  head-dress,  though  the 
sun's  rays  strike  with  less  power 
than  in  the  frying-pan  of  the  plain 
of  Billeres.  Nevertheless,  they  will 
scorch  him  sufficiently  to  make  him 
think  with  some  regret,  tempered 
by  a  wholesome  memory  of  certain 
days  when  the  British  March  is 
lion-like,  of  the  keener  breezes  of 
the  East  Neuk  of  Fife.  The  whole- 
some memory,  however,  will  give 
him  pause  before  he  takes  passage 
for  London  in  the  Peregrine  or 
Hirondelle  from  Bordeaux,  or  pur- 
chases a  through  ticket  vid  Paris. 
Then  a  friend  will  not  do  him  a 
bad  turn  if  he  suggest  to  him  that 
there  is  such  a  place  as  Dinard, 
and  within  three  or  four  miles  of 
it  the  links  named  St  Briac,  which 
are  better  than  any  he  has  yet 
tried  in  France.  The  sea-coast  of 
Brittany  is  surely  a  good  half-way 
house  for  the  golfer  about  April, 
between  the  ardent  sun  of  the 
Basses  Pyrenees  and  the  east 


560 


The  Golfer  in  Search  of  a  Climate. 


[Oct. 


winds  of  Great  Britain.  The 
course  to  Dinard,  however,  is  not 
too  clearly  marked,  unless  the 
golfer  be  fortunate  enough  to  hit 
on  a  good  forecaddie  in  the  person 
of  some  one  who  has  already  made 
the  journey  from  Biarritz.  The 
indicateur  points  to  Bordeaux  in- 
flexibly as  the  first  stage.  After 
that  there  is  a  puzzling  choice 
between  going  by  way  of  Paris, 
by  way  of  Tours,  or  by  way  of 
Nantes.  Other  things  being  equal, 
and  Paris  possessing  no  pressing 
attractions,  the  last  line  —  vid 
Nantes — is  certainly  the  best.  It 
is  also  the  cheapest.  It  is  a  safe 
rule  to  travel  with  in  France,  that 
you  save  money  whenever  you 
avoid  Paris. 

A  second  safe  rule  is  to  avoid, 
if  possible,  night  travelling  on  any 
except  the  great  arterial  lines  of 
France.  Bordeaux  to  Nantes 
scarcely  falls  within  this  category, 
though  the  train-service  is  good, 
and  the  golfer  will  do  wisely  to 
accomplish  the  journey  by  day- 
light. With  this  view  he  will 
spend  a  night  at  Bordeaux,  where 
an  excellent  opera-house  will  per- 
haps have  attractions  for  him.  We 
may  indicate  to  the  golfer  that  he 
will  find  an  excellent  restaurant 
attached  to  the  H6tel  de  Bayonne ; 
but  as  for  his  lodging  we  are  at  a 
loss  to  give  him  counsel,  for  a 
hotel  which  will  meet  his  British 
requirements  is  hard  to  come  by. 
However  it  is  but  for  a  night,  and 
that  a  short  one,  for  he  must  be  in 
the  train  by  8.25  the  next  morning, 
to  get  through,  with  any  comfort, 
to  Nantes.  This  hour  means  an 
earlier  start  than  would  appear, 
for  the  French  railway  companies 
have  a  masterly  way  of  setting 
down  their  station  where  it  best 
suits  the  main  purposes  of  the  line, 
without  any  very  studious  regard 
for  landing  the  traveller  conveni- 
ently near  his  hotel.  Thus,  at 


Biarritz  he  will  have  driven  more 
than  two  miles  to  the  station,  and 
again  the  same  fate  will  overtake 
him  at  Bordeaux,  with  the  aggra- 
vation of  cobble-stoned  streets  to 
drive  over.  Nantes  is  but  little 
better.  Here  he  will  arrive  a  few 
minutes  after  five,  after  a  journey 
through  a  stale  and  uninteresting 
country,  gradually  exchanging  the 
land  of  the  vineyard  for  the  land 
of  the  apple-orchard.  At  Nantes, 
the  Hotel  de  France  is  good.  They 
understand  the  arts  of  cooking,  of 
comfort,  and  of  charging.  There 
are  those  who  prefer  the  Hotel  des 
Voyageurs,  where  the  last  art  is 
not  practised  in  so  great  perfec- 
tion, though  still  they  are  adepts 
at  the  minor  ones.  Certainly  the 
rattle  of  the  carriages,  which  seems 
almost  night  long,  on  the  cobbles 
of  the  great  square  at  Nantes  be- 
fore the  H6tel  de  France,  is  a 
trial  to  the  wearied  nerves  of  the 
traveller. 

The  next  morning  the  start, 
sufficiently  early  still,  is  not  so  in- 
tolerable as  from  Bordeaux.  The 
9.20  train,  going  by  way  of  Redon, 
will  bring  the  golfer  to  Dinard  in 
the  course  of  the  day — late  for 
dinner  certainly ;  too  late  for  din- 
ner probably,  but  the  exact  hour  de- 
pends on  the  varying  arrangements 
of  the  local  train-services.  There 
is  a  merit,  which  the  golfer  will 
now  begin  to  recognise,  if  he  did 
not  so  before,  in  these  trains  of 
France :  they  are  not  rapid,  but 
they  arrive  with  a  wonderful  exact- 
ness. The  great  locomotives  re- 
semble the  "  mills  of  God,"  in  the 
slowness  and  the  exceeding  sure- 
ness  of  their  grinding.  The  dis- 
tance from  Nantes  to  Dinard  is 
roughly  about  half  that  between 
Nantes  and  Bordeaux,  yet  the 
journey,  as  will  be  seen,  takes 
longer.  In  truth,  on  this,  the  last 
day  of  his  pilgrimage,  the  golfer 
will  spend  as  much  time  out  of 


1894/ 


The  Golfer  in  Search  of  a  Climate. 


561 


the  train  as  in  it.  At  Redon  he 
will  have  an  hour  or  so  in  which 
to  breakfast.  At  Rennes  he  will 
have  yet  longer,  and  may  inspect 
the  big  town,  and  see  multitudes 
of  soldiery.  At  Dol  he  will  spend 
an  unprofitable  half-hour;  and  at 
Dinan,  where,  probably,  he  will 
dine,  he  may  be  interested  in  see- 
ing the  quaint  nooks  of  what  is 
perhaps  the  most  typical  and  pic- 
turesque town  of  old  Brittany. 

The  links  on  which  the  men  of 
Dinard  play  golf  are  not  precisely 
at  Dinard.  They  are  nearer  the 
town  of  St  Briac,  and  are  more 
strictly,  though  still  not  exactly, 
known  as  the  St  Briac  links.  In 
point  of  fact  they  are  between 
St  Briac  and  St  Lunaire.  If,  in 
Dinard,  you  ask  a  cab-driver  how 
far  it  is  to  le  golf,  he  will  tell  you 
"eight  kilometres."  This,  after 
deduction  for  cab-driver's  measure- 
ment and  conversion  into  English, 
means  about  four  miles.  In  the 
season  your  cab-driver  will  charge 
you  some  six-  francs  for  taking  you 
there  and  back,  by  which  is  meant 
that  he  will  not  do  it  for  less :  if 
you  were  to  pay  him  on  the  scale 
of  his  first  demand,  without  mar- 
chander-iug  with  him,  you  would 
not  do  the  journey  without  the 
expense  of  gold.  In  winter  he 
will  take  you  there  and  back  for 
three  francs.  Even  this  moderate 
expense  is  unnecessary  thrice  in 
the  week,  for  a  diligence  runs  on 
alternate  week-days,  starting  soon 
after  one.  Thus  it  will  be  seen 
that  the  ordinary  golfer  of  Dinard 
is  a  one-round  man  :  it  is  possible, 
however,  to  stir  him  up  to  a  better 
sense  of  his  duty  in  grasping  golf- 
ing opportunity. 

The  golfer  need  not  stay  in 
Dinard.  There  is  a  hotel  almost 
at  the  first  tee — within  a  quarter 
iron-shot  of  the  golf  club-house. 
Commonly  it  is  closed  in  winter, 
but,  for  a  party  of  golfers,  no 


doubt  they  would  open   it  for   a 
month.     Or  again  there  is  a  better 
hotel  nearer  St  Lunaire,   about  a 
mile — a  short  mile — from  the  club- 
house.     This   latter  hotel   is  ab- 
solutely on  the  ladies'  links,  so  the 
members    of    the    golfer's    family 
ought  to  be  well  satisfied,  if  they 
too  play  golf.      In  Dinard  there 
are  more  varied  delights — a  nice 
social   club,   very    good   gravelled 
lawn-tennis   courts,   a  certain   so- 
ciety, and  shops.    There  is  boating, 
too,  in   the   mouth  of    the   river. 
But  it  is  possible  to  boat  at  St 
Lunaire;   and,   after  all,   a  small 
party,  sufficient  unto  itself  forits  so- 
ciety, might  find  in  the  unrestraint 
of  the  out-of-town  hotels   charms 
which  would  more  than  compensate 
for    the  dear  delights  of  Dinard. 
The  golfer  would  find  himself  in- 
stalled among  the  sand-hills,  with 
golf  links  all  around  him,  with  an 
unimpeded  view  of  a  bluer  than 
British    sea    and   a    bolder   than 
British  coast,  with  just  a  stretch 
of  dunes   for  his  children  to  run 
over    before    they    come    to    the 
pleasant  sea-sands  —  dunes  inade- 
quately clad  with  the  bent -grass 
out    of   which    the   skylarks   will 
arise,  and  wind  their  way  up  to 
heaven  to  sing  a  song  of  thankful- 
ness for  Brittany.     It  is  not  with- 
out  purpose   that   we   call    these 
sand-hills  inadequately  clad  with 
the  bent-grass.      In  a  heavy  gale 
of   late  1893,  the  sand  was  torn 
off  them  and  strewed  in  a  thick 
bunkery    mattress    over    all    the 
ladies'   links.       Previously,    these 
ladies'  links  had  been  the  best  of 
all  such  places  reserved  for  ladies 
which  the  writer  has  seen.     Since 
the  storm,  parts  of  them  are  ruined, 
temporarily — and  it  is  difficult  to 
say  what  chance  there  is  of  their 
recovery.      The  remainder,  which 
was  protected   by  sand-hills  clad 
with  a  closer  garment,  has  escaped, 
and  is  as  good  as  ever. 


562 


The  Golfer  in  Search  of  a  Climate. 


[Oct. 


If  the  golfer  stay  in  Dinard  his 
first  drive  to  the  links  will  charm 
him  by  the  views  it  unfolds  to  him 
of  the  sea,  studded  with  the  many 
islets  which  make  this  coast  so 
hard  of  navigation.  Stretching  to 
Cape  Frehel  he  will  see  all  the  arc 
of  the  beautiful  bay  with  its  in- 
finite indentations.  His  golfing 
soul  will  receive  the  peculiar  in- 
spiration, which  Pau  and  Biarritz 
alike  had  failed  to  give,  of  ap- 
proaching his  golfing  business 
over  land  which  is  real  links,  real 
sand-hills,  real  bunkers.  Quite  un- 
expectedly he  will  find  himself 
beside  the  club-house,  for  it  lies 
cunningly  sheltered  from  the  east 
by  a  rising  bank  of  ground,  and 
all  the  way  from  Dinard  the  east 
wind  has  been  at  the  golfer's 
back. 

He  will  find  the  accommodation 
of  the  club-house  ample,  if  not 
luxurious ;  for  though  no  luncheon 
can  be  obtained  without  previous 
orders,  he  may  make  up  for  this  at 
the  hotel  close  by — if  it  be  open. 
He  can  always  get  tea,  however, 
after  the  afternoon  round;  and 
for  the  most  part  he  will  fall  in 
with  the  native  manner,  and  con- 
tent himself  with  one  after-dejedner 
round.  A  balcony  outside  the 
first-floor  club-room  is  a  good  look- 
out place  whence  he  can  watch 
the  incoming  couples  and  the  trials 
and  sorrows  of  most  of  the  round. 

And,  let  it  be  said  at  once,  this 
course  on  which  he  looks  out  is 
something  altogether  different  from 
Pau  or  Biarritz.  It  has  claims  to 
be  considered  a  first-class  links. 
It  is  links — really  sandy  ground, 
too  sandy  since  the  storm  of  last 
year,  which  has  visited  parts  of  it 
with  only  a  little  less  severity  than 
that  with  which  it  visited  the 
ladies'.  Moreover,  the  rain  has 
beaten  upon  it  and  the  wind 
blown  upon  it  until  between 
them  they  have  worked  little 


holes  in  the  putting-greens,  which 
now  look  small-pocked.  But  the 
spring  growth  is  putting  all  this, 
which  is  a  winter  vexation,  to 
rights  again ;  and,  winter  or  sum- 
mer, there  is  not  a  hole  on  the 
course  which  is  without  its  in- 
terest. The  worst  hole  is  the 
last,  as  happens  curiously  often 
on  golf  links,  yet  its  faults  are  all 
negative — it  is  too  featureless.  At 
present  the  links  are  too  short. 
They  might  be  much  bettered  in 
the  laying  out.  It  may  be  said 
that  there  is  no  good  attempting 
to  lay  out  a  first-class  course  when 
so  few  of  the  golfers  are  even 
third  class ;  but,  on  the  other 
hand,  one  cannot  expect  to  attract 
a  better  kind  of  golfer  unless  the 
course  be  laid  out  for  the  best. 
In  the  long-run  it  never  pays  to 
cater  for  incapacity — it  is  no  real 
kindness  even  to  the  incapable. 

Nevertheless,  taken  as  they  are, 
the  links  are  good — the  best  in 
France,  so  far  as  France  as  a  land 
of  golf  is  yet  exploited.  They  have 
characteristics,  too,  which  suggest 
the  golf  links  of  the  North.  Often 
there  is  a  keenness  in  the  air  which 
may  inspire  the  golfer  by  its  like- 
ness to  that  which  has  grown  only 
too  familiar  to  him  on  links  of  the 
British  east  coast ;  the  sea  of  the 
Channel  looks  as  if  it  belonged  to 
the  piece  of  water  which  beats  on 
the  shores  by  Bembridge  and  Hay- 
ling  Island ;  all  appearances  con- 
spire to  remind  him  that  he  is 
drawing  nearer  home. 

The  links  are  divided  into  two 
parts  by  the  rib  of  ground  which 
shelters  the  club-house.  It  is  not 
until  the  sixth  hole  that  one  comes 
in  front  of  the  club-house,  and  com- 
mences to  play  over  the  expanse 
stretching  westward  from  it.  Of 
this  earlier  part,  the  second  hole 
and  the  fifth  are  so  good  that  it 
is  difficult  to  name  better  holes 
on  any  links.  Indeed,  it  is  easier 


1894. 


The  Golfer  in  Search  of  a  Climate. 


563 


and  briefer  to  name  the  holes 
which  are  inferior  :  thus,  the  first 
is  of  little  interest,  beyond  the 
chance  of  hitting  a  Frenchman  or 
his  wife,  if  the  drive  be  far  enough 
across  the  rib  to  reach  the  road. 
The  third  hole  is  rather  flat  and 
unprofitable,  and  we  have  already 
given  scant  praise  to  the  last.  Of 
the  rest,  no  one  can  be  called  any- 
thing but  good,  and  some,  notably 
the  eleventh,  are  excellent.  One 
selects  the  eleventh  for  special 
praise  by  reason  of  its  length,  for 
it  needs  a  drive  and  a  good  long 
cleek-shot  to  reach  it.  This  is 
about  the  greatest  length  of  any 
hole  on  the  course.  Most  of  them, 
in  all  other  respects  admirable, 
err  on  the  side  of  being  too  short 
— err  in  being  of  that  worst  of 
lengths,  a  drive  and  iron.  Both 
drive  and  iron-shot,  however,  are 
full  of  interest,  the  sand-bunkers 
lying  in  wait  for  topped  tee-shots, 
and  the  holes  being  well  guarded 
by  hazards  of  bunker  or  whin. 
The  twelfth,  again,  is  a  very  good 
hole.  It  is  perched  out  on  a  cor- 
ner abutting  the  sea.  A  very  long 
tee-shot  will  reach  it ;  but  he  who 
would  attempt  it  in  one  carries 
his  fate  in  his  hands,  for  if  he  fail 
to  hit  a  very  good  ball,  he  will  be 
lost  among  the  rocks  of  the  shore. 
The  safer  way  is  to  the  left,  in- 
land. It  is  a  path  of  roses  in  the 
season,  for  the  little  white  low- 
growing  blossoms  cluster  in  the 
sandy  soil;  but  a  bed  of  roses  is 
too  soft  lying  for  the  golfer's  com- 
fort. Excellent,  again,  is  the  four- 
teenth hole,  and  yet  more  so  the 
sixteenth,  both  of  which  require 
a  very  justly  played  second  to  find 
the  green.  The  seventeenth  is  one 
of  the  shortest  short  holes,  and 
one  of  the  best  on  any  green, 
perched  up  at  a  quarter  iron-shot 
distance,  with  a  steep  sandy  face 
on  the  near  side,  so  that  you  must 
be  up ;  the  putting-green  itself  at  a 


gentle  slope  up  away  from  you, 
and  rather  heavy  with  sand,  so 
that  if  you  play  a  well-lofted  or 
well-cut  stroke  you  can  stop  the 
ball  close  to  the  hole,  though  it 
be  only  two  yards  beyond  the 
face  of  broken  sand.  It  is  a  very 
cleverly  planted  little  hole. 

There  are  too  many  "  blind " 
approaches.  This,  however,  could 
perhaps  not  be  avoided  in  view  of 
the  undulating  nature  of  the  whole 
ground — and,  after  all,  it  is  only 
the  stranger  whose  ignorance  is 
thus  handicapped.  The  course  is 
rather  too  short,  rather  too  sandy, 
and  the  putting-greens  rather  in 
need  of  more  attention  than  the 
club  is  able  to  give  them;  but, 
taken  for  all  in  all,  they  are  the 
best  links  in  France,  and  from  the 
whole  number  of  links  in  Great 
Britain  it  is  doubtful  if  one  could 
name  a  dozen  to  be  placed  on  a 
list  of  merit  before  them.  More- 
over, there  are  many  links  in  Great 
Britain  which  are  less  accessible 
from  its  metropolis,  for  St  Malo 
is  within  eleven  hours  of  South- 
ampton, and  St  Malo  is  divided 
from  Dinard  only  by  an  estuary, 
across  which  the  ferry-boats  run 
half-hourly. 

Should  "  staleness  "  overtake  the 
golfer,  he  may  spend  an  interesting 
day  or  two  in  a  visit  to  Mont  St 
Michel,  which  is  a  place  unlike 
almost  any  other.  He  will  find 
the  Breton  caddie  as  quick  and 
pleasant  as  the  specimens  which 
are  grown  in  the  country  of  the 
Bearnais  or  the  Basques;  and  he 
may  read,  if  he  be  a  pious  English- 
man, sad  omens  of  the  times  in  the 
fact  that  Freemantle,  the  club  pro- 
fessional, has  abandoned  his  orig- 
inal calling  as  professor  of  cricket 
to  turn  professor  of  golf,  which  he 
practises,  as  well  as  professes,  with 
a  success  that  is  altogether  praise- 
worthy. 

Without   going    into   historical 


564 


The  Goljer  in  Search  of  a  Climate. 


[Oct. 


details,  it  may  be  sufficient  to  say 
that  there  are,  in  the  neighbour- 
hood of  the  French  coast,  certain 
islands  named  the  "Channel  Is- 
lands," belonging  to  England,  and 
of  which  the  most  considerable 
is  Jersey — Jersey,  where  the  pears 
and  the  cabbage -stalk  walking- 
sticks  come  from.  Jersey  is  a 
very  good  halting  -  place  on  the 
way  from  Dinard  to  England. 
The  crossing  from  Jersey  to  Eng- 
land is  commonly  very  much 
dreaded;  indeed,  we  have  heard 
a  sailor  say  that  he  had  been  all 
round  the  world  and  had  never 
been  sea-sick  except  when  cross- 
ing from  Southampton  to  Jersey. 
Nevertheless,  it  is  quite  possible 
to  be  sea-sick  on  this  passage 
without  having  been  all  round 
the  world,  and  again  it  is  quite 
possible  to  make  the  passage  on  a 
sea  as  smooth  as  a  pond.  He  that 
ventures  abroad  must  take  his 
chance,  and  at  all  events  one  has 
a  better  chance  in  breaking  up 
the  crossing  into  little  bits  than 
in  taking  it  all  on  one  voyage. 
As  the  golfer,  having  embarked 
at  St  Malo,  gets  clear  out  into 
the  open  sea,  it  may  happen  that 
a  stranger  will  refer  to  his  golf-, 
clubs  as  an  excuse  for  addressing 
him  with  the  information  that  if 
he  will  cast  his  eye  eastward  along 
the  coast,  beyond  the  cluster  of 
houses  which  forms  the  watering- 
place  of  Parame,  he  will  see  a 
stretch  of  ground  which  are  the 
Parame  golf  links.  The  stranger 
will  express  surprise  that  a  golfer 
should  be  leaving  Dinard  without 
paying  them  a  visit.  The  golfer 
will  reply  that  he  had  indeed 
heard  of  them — had  heard  that  in 
order  to  achieve  such  a  visit  it 
would  be  necessary  for  him  to 
take  a  train  from  St  Servan,  and, 
after  reaching  Parame,  to  drive 
yet  four  miles  farther,  in  any  con- 
veyance that  he  might  find,  and 


that  the  conclusive  piece  of  infor- 
mation given  to  him  was  to  the 
effect  that  the  Parame  links  were 
not  a  sufficient  reward  for  so  much 
trouble.  To  this  the  stranger  will 
reply,  that  these  observations  are 
due  to  the  jealousy  which  the  peo- 
ple of  Dinard  feel  towards  the 
people  and  attractions  of  St  Malo 
and  St  Servan;  that  there  is  an 
excellent  auberge  at  the  edge  of 
the  Parame  links,  where  one  can 
get  a  very  fair  dejeuner  ;  and  that 
the  links,  though  sandy,  are  by 
no  means  such  as  Dinard  detrac- 
tors would  describe  them.  The 
"though  sandy"  is  a  saving  con- 
cession which  dispels  the  gently 
rising  regrets  of  the  golfer  who 
had  left  the  links  of  Parame  un- 
visited,  and  he  is  able  to  devote 
himself  with  a  free  heart  to  the 
task  of  grappling  with  all  the 
demons  of  sea  -  sickness.  These 
are  in  their  highest  spirits  and 
best  energy  in  the  ever  -  vexed 
neighbourhood  of  those  rocks  the 
"Minquiers" — "Minkies"  in  the 
mouth  of  the  English  tar — which, 
in  days  of  less  perfect  chartography, 
were  a  harvest-field  of  death  to  the 
sailors  of  these  coasts  and  islands. 
The  French  name  of  the  western- 
most of  these  rocks,  signifying 
"the  reaper,"  is  full  of  a  very 
grim  meaning.  By  this  time  the 
eye  of  the  golfer,  if  he  be  able  to 
lift  it,  may  discern  the  whole  ex- 
tent of  the  southern  coast-line  of  • 
the  little  island,  even  to  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  the  golf  links,  which, 
it  needs  not  to  say,  will  be  to  him 
its  chief  attraction. 

St  Helier,  where  the  golfer  will 
probably  stay,  is  a  town  which  has 
no  less  than  three  daily  papers,  so 
there  can  be  no  question  of  its 
prosperity.  It  rejoices  in  the  ut- 
most freedom  of  trade,  so  that  a 
man  can  smoke  and  drink  at  ex- 
traordinarily low  prices;  and  no 
custom-house  official  invades  the 


1894.] 


The  Golfer  in  Search  of  a  Climate. 


565 


sanctity  of  his  portmanteau  in  a 
search  for  dynamite  or  Tauchnitz 
editions.  Nevertheless,  he  will 
find  himself  again  in  a  land  where 
they  speak  his  native  tongue,  in  a 
land  of  English  newspapers  and 
cookery,  and  of  penny  stamps.  In 
the  town  there  is  a  good  club ;  but 
to  reach  the  golf  links  it  is  best  to 
make  use  of  the  railway  which 
runs  eastward  along  the  coast  to 
Grouville.  There  are  trains  about 
once  an  hour,  and  though  they 
stop  at  intervals  so  frequent  as  to 
remind  the  golfer  of  the  "  Metro- 
politan and  District,"  they  achieve 
the  journey  in  twenty  minutes. 
The  platform  of  the  station  is  but 
the  distance  of  a  short  putt  from 
the  golf  club-house,  which  is  as 
comfortable  as  could  be  wished. 
The  new-comer  is  beset  by  the 
usual  horde  of  small  banditti,  each 
impressing  him  with  their  individ- 
ual merits  as  carriers  of  clubs. 
Some  of  them  talk  the  two  lan- 
guages, but  most  seem  to  under- 
stand English  better,  and  will 
stare  with  some  amazement  at  the 
golfer  demanding,  as  he  infallibly 
will  on  coming  from  the  Continent, 
his  petit  Jer.  It  will  take  him  some 
two  or  three  rounds  to  realise,  after 
his  late  experiences  of  caddies  of 
the  sabotted  and  berretted  kind, 
that  it  is  possible  for  these  British 
urchins  to  understand  the  meaning 
of  the  "light  iron."  Recollection 
will  be  brought  back  to  him  by 
gentler  means  if  he  happen  to  fall 
upon  one  of  the  bilingual  kind. 
Under  either  guise,  however,  and 
in  whatever  tongue  they  speak  of 
it,  these  little  boys  of  Jersey  know 
something  about  the  game.  They 
understand  its  details  and  its  spirit. 
In  fact,  the  golfer  will  not  long 
have  been  at  Jersey  before  he  will 
have  discovered  himself  to  be  in  a 
land  where  they  have  the  tradi- 
tions— the ' '  doctrine, "  golfice  speak- 
ing— as  they  have  it  not  in  any  of 

VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCXLVIII. 


the  places,  save  Pau,  of  his  ear- 
lier pilgrimage.  Partly,  no  doubt, 
this  impression  is  conveyed  by 
the  sound  of  the  English  tongue, 
which  seems  more  suited  than  the 
gay  accents  of  France  to  the  stern 
purposes  of  Scotland's  game;  but 
partly,  too,  it  is  due  to  the  fact 
that  golf  has  a  more  serious  hold 
on  the  inhabitant  of  Jersey  than 
on  the  sojourner  of  Cannes,  Biar- 
ritz, or  Dinard.  At  these  latter 
places  it  is  a  new  thing ;  it  has  not 
yet  impressed  the  local  devotees 
with  a  sense  of  its  gravity.  But 
in  Jersey  they  have  been  playing 
golf  for  years  and  years,  and  not 
been  playing  it  badly.  Vardon, 
who  has  made  a  good  show  in  the 
professional  competitions  of  Eng- 
land and  Scotland,  lived  and 
learned  on  the  Jersey  links;  and 
has  a  brother,  less  known  to  fame, 
who  is  his  equal.  The  amateur 
talent  is  on  a  far  higher  level  than 
on  any  Continental  golf  links. 
Pau  may  perhaps  equal  it — cer- 
tainly will  not  surpass  it — during 
its  winter  season;  but  in  Jersey 
the  golfer  is  resident  and  indigen- 
ous, in  Pau  he  is  only  imported 
and  migratory. 

In  point  of  fact,  Jersey,  as  a  land 
of  golf,  has  the  respectability  and 
conservatism  which  comes  of  age 
alone.  Golf  was  played  at  Jersey 
while  Westward  Ho,  Wimbledon, 
Blackheath,  and  Pau  were  the 
only  golf-clubs  in  existence  south 
of  London ;  wherefore  the  golfer 
will  not  be  surprised  to  find  him- 
self in  a  country  where  the  best 
traditions  and  manners  of  the 
game  are  reverently  cherished  and 
observed.  He  will  find  himself  in 
a  climate  differing  little  from  that 
of  Dinard,  for  though  the  Jersey 
winter  is  mild,  the  spring  east 
wind  can  nip  shrewdly.  In  the 
twenty  minutes  which  the  train 
takes  to  go  the  very  few  miles  to 
the  course,  he  will  have  opportunity 
2  o 


566 


The  Golfer  in  Search  of  a  Climate. 


[Oct. 


for  observing  pear-trees  in  fine 
bloom,  cabbages  with  stalks  like 
barge-poles,  and  cows  of  the  true 
Jersey  breed,  on  the  landward  side 
of  the  track.  Seaward  he  may 
see  a  jagged  rock-field,  leading  out 
towards  those  "Minquiers,"  in 
whose  neighbourhood  he  may  have 
confided  so  many  secret  sorrows 
to  the  sea,  and  finally  the  coast  of 
France,  dim  and  low-lying  in  the 
distance.  On  close  approach  to 
the  club-house,  the  castle  of  Mont 
Orgueil  will  come  in  view,  like  a 
Mont  St  Michel  in  miniature. 

The  links,  less  bold,  and  with 
less  picturesque  views  of  bold  sea- 
scape than  those  of  Dinard,  are 
nevertheless  of  the  right  sandy 
soil  and  of  far  better  lies.  This 
latter  quality  is,  no  doubt,  largely 
due  to  their  greater  age  as  golf 
links;  for  of  all  known  rollers, 
beaters,  and  levellers  of  the 
ground,  none  is  so  good  as  the 
human  foot,  in  sufficient  frequency. 
The  grass  grows  nice  and  short, 
and  the  driver,  where  required, 
may  be  taken  for  the  second  shot. 
But  this  will  not  often  be  needful, 
for  the  course  is  short.  Most  of 
the  holes  are  of  the  length  of  a 
drive  and  cleek  or  iron  shot. 
Most  of  them  should  be  done  in 
four.  There  is  no  lack,  however, 
of  occasions  for  increasing  this 
ideal  figure,  and  these  occasions 
often  take  the  vexatious  form  of 
banks  of  loose  sand  lying  up  just 
before  the  holes — the  unkindest  of 
all  aggravations.  For  one  can  en- 
dure a  bunker  :  there  it  is,  and  it 
is  one's  own  fault  if  one  get  into 
it ;  but  this  loose  sandy  abomina- 
tion hardly  presents  itself  in  the 
form  of  a  difficulty  to  be  carried, 
so  that  one  is  almost  prone  to  lay 
its  existence  to  the  charge  of 
envious  gods.  One  feels  that  in 
the  intention  of  the  green  com- 
mittee it  is  a  bank  of  grass; 
whereas  you  find  yourself  lying 


on  it  in  a  niblick  hole.  This 
arraignment  will  hold  against  the 
course  as  a  general  whole;  it  is 
not  altogether  an  easy  course, 
although,  or,  perhaps,  one  should 
rather  say  because,  its  hazards  are 
ill-defined.  There  are  scrubby 
whins  in  places,  also  ill- defined, 
but  these  are  not  so  troublesome 
as  outlying  sand.  Indeed,  almost 
all  the  sand  is  outlying.  There  is 
scarcely  a  real  sand-bunker,  in  the 
clean-cut  St  Andrews  sense,  on  the 
links.  At  the  first  hole  there  is 
no  sand;  you  drive  over  patchy 
whins,  and  after  a  further  struggle 
with  the  mashie  you  are  there. 
The  second  hole  is  good  golf ;  the 
first  drive  perfectly  simple,  the 
second  endangered  by  a  fort,  if  the 
ball  be  pulled,  by  a  bunker — one 
of  the  best  on  the  links — if  it  be 
short,  and  by  a  steep  bank  beyond 
the  hole  if  it  be  strong.  The  fort 
again  presents  itself  as  a  hazard 
for  the  tee-shot  to  the  fourth.  A 
pull  into  it  loses  the  hole  as  fatally 
as  a  visit  to  the  station-master's 
garden  at  St  Andrews.  On  the 
right  lies  the  sea-shore,  and  the 
stretch  of  good  ground  between  is 
mighty  narrow.  Moreover,  from 
the  corner  of  the  fort  to  the  beach 
runs  a  road,  by  which  men  have 
hauled  sand  and  seaweed,  making 
big  ruts,  and  it  needs  a  stout  shot 
to  carry  it.  The  second  shot  is 
almost  equally  hazardous,  the  hole 
lying  near  the  sea-beach,  and  rifle- 
butts  threatening  a  pulled  ball  with 
heavy  penalties.  Then  follow  two 
holes  which  Holland  would  reach 
with  comfort.  Therefore  they 
should  be  threes.  But  those  who 
are  not  Hollands  are  apt  to  press 
to  reach  them,  and  with  the  aid  of 
a  shallow  bunker,  just  before  the 
former  hole,  and  a  keen  plateau 
green,  are  likely  enough  to  turn 
one  of  the  possible  threes  into  a 
five.  The  seventh  is  the  longest 
hole.  It  cannot  be  reached  in  two, 


1894.] 


The  Golfer  in  Search  of  a  Climate. 


567 


and  is  a  very  sound  hole  in  five. 
The  eighth  and  ninth  are  the  nor- 
mal drive  and  iron-shot.  The  tenth 
is  aggravated  by  a  railway  on  the 
right  hand  to  catch  a  heeled  tee- 
shot,  or,  again,  to  catch  the  devious 
approach,  for  the  hole  is  very  near 
the  wire  fence.  One  could  play 
from  the  railway  with  ease  j  but 
the  wisdom  of  the  Legislature  has 
ordained  that  a  ball  wandering 
thither  should  be  treated  as  lost. 
Next  is  a  "blind"  short  hole. 
And  here  let  it  be  said  at  once 
that  there  are  too  many  blind  shots 
on  this  excellent  links  of  Jersey, 
and  let  it  be  said  without  prejudice 
to  any  objector  who  says  that  this 
is  only  when  the  tee  is  in  a  certain 
place,  and  so  forth.  That  may  be 
true,  but  one  has  to  speak  of 
courses  as  one  finds  them,  and  not 
as  they  are  arranged  perhaps  for 
certain  weeks  during  the  year,  or 
at  special  meeting  times.  After 
this,  one  comes  to  a  long  hole 
which  sometimes  is  set  upon  a  high 
place,  upon  which  it  is  almost  im- 
possible to  persuade  the  ball  to 
remain — too  high  a  test  of  golf,  in 
fact.  From  this  elevation,  or  a 
neighbouring  one,  you  drive  off, 
often  into  the  middle  of  a  football- 
match,  and  begin  describing  the 
letter  Z  as  you  zigzag  backwards 
and  forwards,  playing  holes  of  a 
drive  and  cleek  shot,  or  drive  and 
mashie  shot,  until  the  end. 

If  the  spring  is  early,  the  golfer 
may  find  the  links  covered  with 
wild  -  flowers  and  low  -  growing 
thyme,  among  which  the  bees  will 
be  buzzing  and  humming.  The 
numbers  of  bumble-bees  so  struck 
some  golfer  that  he  presented  the 
club  with  the  "Bumble-bee" 
medal,  which  is  one  of  its  per- 
manent challenge  prizes.  Amongst 
the  thyme  the  lies  are  very  toler- 
able, but  scarcely  first-rate,  and 
the  nature  of  the  ground,  just  a 
little  too  sandy,  aggravates  the 


difficulty.  A  good  shot  some- 
times misses  its  reward,  and  finds 
its  resting-place  in  a  sandy  pocket 
which  has  no  right  to  exist.  No 
doubt  it  is  good  practice  to  have 
to  play  out  of  these  sandy  drifts, 
but  a  better  definition  of  hazard 
is  to  be  desired.  Over  these  links 
of  Grouville  broods,  as  has  been 
said,  a  portion  of  the  spirit  of  the 
classic  saint  of  golf ;  nevertheless, 
in  bigness  and  diversity  of  in- 
cident they  do  not  compare  with 
the  links  of  Dinard,  whose  out- 
lines you  can  almost  make  out, 
on  a  clear  day,  when  rain  is  com- 
ing. Neither  is  their  beauty  on 
the  same  grand  scale.  It  is  all 
quieter,  more  peaceful,  more 
homely. 

After  you  have  "  done "  the 
golf  links,  you  have  fairly  well 
"done"  the  island.  The  other 
Channel  Islands  offer  good  sea- 
fishing  ;  but  the  coast  off  Jersey 
is  shoal,  and  fish  are  as  scarce 
at  St  Helier  as  at  most  seaside 
places.  One  cannot  go  on  eating 
the  big  pears  for  ever,  nor  all 
the  year  round,  and  the  joy  of 
walking  with  a  long  cabbage- 
stalk  for  a  stick  is  one  that  palls. 
But  you  can  go  in  a  boat,  or 
walk  at  low  tide,  to  the  fort 
named  the  Hermitage,  opposite 
the  Grand  Hotel ;  you  may  have 
a  look  over  the  Gorey  castle  j  you 
may  even  take  the  Great  Western 
Railway  and  run  out  to  visit  St 
Aubin  and  Corbiere.  And  when 
you  have  done  these  things,  you 
will  be  filled  with  a  sense  of  sat- 
isfaction that  they  are  accom- 
plished and  are  not  to  do  again. 
But  if  the  golfer  be  a  flower- 
lover,  his  eyes  and  heart  may 
have  a  feast  of  beauty  and  in- 
terest in  the  wild-flowers  which 
he  may  find  in  walks  or  drives 
over  the  island,  or  in  masses  in 
the  shops  of  the  market-women. 

Amongst  those  who  live  on  an 


568 


The  Golfer  in  Search  of  a  Climate. 


[Oct. 


island  you  reasonably  expect  to 
find  a  certain  insular  prejudice, 
especially  when  the  island  of  their 
habitation  is  so  small  an  one  as 
Jersey.  Nevertheless,  even  among 
the  conservative  golfing -men  of 
Jersey  you  may  have  heard  it 
said,  in  whispers,  that  the  Guern- 
sey links  were  better.  It  has 
happened  to  few,  perhaps,  to  have 
even  heard  that  golf  was  played 
in  Guernsey ;  but  such  ignorance 
is  merely  due  to  the  local  prejudice 
of  those  who  live  in  our  greater 
island. 

Apart  from  the  golf,  it  is  plea- 
sant to  make  a  half-way  house  of 
Guernsey  on  the  way  home.  Your 
boat  from  Jersey  starts  at  ten 
minutes  to  eight,  if  you  choose 
the  Southampton  route ;  at  twenty 
minutes  past  eight,  if  you  elect  to 
travel  by  Weymouth.  Either  hour 
is  too  early.  You  realise  it  more 
distinctly  when  you  find  yourself, 
after  a  hurried  breakfast,  on  an 
unsympathetic  sea,  and  by  the 
time  you  have  reached  Guernsey — 
a  run  of  an  hour  and  a  half — you 
are  quite  ready  to  be  at  the  end 
of  your  journey.  You  cannot 
escape  Guernsey.  All  the  boats 
from  Jersey  to  England  call  there, 
and  take  on  board  a  few  passengers, 
and  an  extraordinary  number  of 
baskets  filled  with  fruit  or  flowers 
or  vegetables  for  the  home  market. 
Will  it  be  believed  that  thirty-two 
miles  of  glass-houses  for  the  grow- 
ing of  early  tomatoes,  potatoes, 
and  other  products  were  put  up 
in  the  course  of  last  year  alone  ? 

As  an  unsupported  statement  it 
will  not  be  believed  :  the  writer  is 
not  prepared  to  vouch  for  it,  though 
it  has  been  given  him  as  a  sober 
fact  of  statistics.  But  so  soon  as 
ever  the  visitor  finds  himself  out- 
side the  houses  of  Peter's  Port, 
and  on  his  road  to  the  golf  links, 
he  will  be  prepared  to  accept  any 
statement  whatsoever  with  regard 


to  the  extent  of  glass  on  the  island. 
A  waggonette  conveys  the  golfer, 
at  fixed  and  extraordinarily  low 
charges,  to  the  scene  of  his  joys 
and  sorrows,  some  three  miles  from 
the  town;  and  after  a  mile  or  so 
has  been  traversed,  he  will  find 
himself  driving  on  a  road  which 
might  easily  be  thought  to  have 
the  sea  close  on  either  side  of  it, 
so  continuous  is  the  glint  of  the 
sun  off  the  perpetual  glass-houses. 
At  the  present  rate  of  progress  it 
may  readily  be  computed  how  soon 
the  island  will  be  converted  into 
one  immense  Crystal  Palace,  and 
shortly  before  that  era  there  will 
be  a  very  heavy  premium  on 
straight  driving.  On  reaching  the 
club-house,  which  supplies  all  that 
the  simple  soul  of  the  golfer  should 
require,  you  will  be  surrounded  by 
a  troop  of  caddies  clamouring  a 
chorus,  in  which  shrill  voices  of 
little  girls  will  bear  a  part.  It  is 
a  discovery,  on  the  part  of  the 
Guernsey  golfer,  that  the  girl- 
caddie  gives  more  attention  to 
your  needs,  more  sympathy  to 
your  misfortunes,  than  that  most 
savage  of  all  wild  animals,  as  Plato 
calls  him,  the  boy.  It  is  a  sig- 
nificant fact,  which  should  not 
be  overlooked  by  advocates  of 
women's  rights.  If  a  small  girl  is 
competent  to  be  a  golf-caddie,  of 
what  may  not  the  grown  woman 
be  capable  ? 

These  caddies,  the  male  and  the 
female  alike,  speak  of  preference 
a  language  of  which  you  may  say 
with  equal  truth  that  it  is  French 
or  English  ;  for  neither  French- 
man nor  Englishman  can  under- 
stand it.  They  can  understand 
your  English,  however,  and  can 
answer  you  in  a  form  of  that 
language  which  is  within  the  com- 
prehension of  the  simple.  The 
first  use  which  they  will  make  of 
this  means  of  communication  is  to 
tell  you  that  you  have  to  walk 


1894.] 


The  Golfer  in  Search  of  a  Climate. 


569 


nearly  half  a  mile  to  the  first  tee. 
This  is  the  more  annoying,  because 
the  walk  is  over  ground  which  is 
clad  in  whins,  looking  as  if  they 
were  providentially  put  there  for 
the  trial  of  the  golfer's  soul.  But 
the  commoner  is  of  a  stiff-necked 
generation,  whether  he  be  called 
potwalloper,  or  squatter,  or  "par- 
ishioner," which  is  his  title  in 
Guernsey — a  title  which  gives  him 
an  interest  in  those  whins,  and  the 
right  of  pasturing  his  cattle.  With 
the  true  instinct  of  the  commoner, 
he  puts  as  much  value  on  the  whin- 
bushes  as  if  they  bore  Jersey  pears. 
And  the  second  use  which  the 
caddie  will  make  of  his  power  of 
communicating  with  his  master, 
will  be  to  tell  him  that  he  is  not 
allowed  to  play  his  ball  out  of  the 
whins  into  which  he  has  topped  it 
off  the  first  tee.  This  is  fiendishly 
exasperating,  but  the  rule  has  to 
be  observed — lose  one  and  drop 
behind.  Then  you  drive  into  the 
big  high -perched  bunker  before 
the  hole,  and  have  doubts  of  your 
enjoyment  of  the  Guernsey  links. 
The  doubts  soon  vanish.  When 
you  have  given  up  the  hole,  and 
are  at  peace  again,  you  find  your- 
self looking  out  over  a  most  glori- 
ous seascape,  which  extends  to 
three-quarters  of  your  horizon. 
The  cliffs  are  bold  and  rugged, 
and  rocks  in  the  sea  relieve  its 
blue,  and  break  it  into  foam.  The 
golf-course  sweeps  down  from  you, 
and  then  away  up  on  your  right 
hand,  in  a  fine  natural  curve  of 
beauty.  The  highest  bends  are 
crowned  by  great  outcropping 
boulders  of  grey  rocks  as  big  as 
a  church;  smaller  slabs  jut  from 
the  tops  of  lower  hills,  here  and 
there  forming  a  natural  imitation 
of  Stonehenge,  but  they  are  so 
grouped  together  that  straight 
driving  will  avoid  them.  Your 
hazards  are  varied  by  whins,  with 
the  blighting  rule  attaching  to 


them;  by  sand  -  bunkers ;  by  the 
sea  and  its  beach,  on  the  north ; 
by  a  huge  walled  enclosure  on  the 
highest  ground  of  all,  an  enclosure 
enclosing  emptiness.  It  is  said 
that  it  was  the  encampment  of 
the  Russian  troops,  our  allies  who 
came  to  govern  Guernsey  for  us 
in  1815,  when  all  the  British 
troops  that  we  could  spare — and 
a  few  more  perhaps — were  busy 
trying  to  catch  "the  little  cor- 
poral." Since  then  we  have 
changed  friends,  have  stood  shoul- 
der to  shoulder  with  France,  and 
our  front  towards  Sebastopol. 
From  that,  again,  it  is  something 
of  a  jump  to  the  recent  demon- 
stration at  Toulon;  yet  the  wall 
still  stands,  square  and  huge  and 
grey,  on  the  height  of  the  bare 
links,  like  a  Russian  column  on 
the  steppes.  All  which  historical 
facts  and  reflections  are  of  less 
importance  to  the  golfer  than  that 
if  his  ball  go  into  the  enclosure  it 
has  to  be  considered  as  lost. 

This,  again,  is  an  exasperation ; 
but  before  the  wall  is  reached, 
and  afterwards,  the  character  of 
the  golf  offers  charming  compen- 
sations. The  lies  are  perfect :  St 
Andrews  cannot  furnish  anything 
to  compare  with  them.  The  holes 
are  full  of  interest,  and  each  has 
its  individual  interest.  There  is 
no  tautology,  and  there  is  but 
one  cross.  The  putting-greens  are 
natural,  and  excellent.  There  are 
many  "blind"  holes  which  will 
bother  the  visitor,  but  they  are  of 
no  account  to  the  habitue,  who 
could  find  his  way  round  in  the 
dark.  For  in  Guernsey  the  habitue 
is  a  very  ardent  golfer,  though  golf  is 
a  very  late  invention  in  the  island. 
The  ardour  is  not  confined  to  a 
sex,  for  the  ladies  play  at  large 
over  the  long  links.  As  in  the 
neighbouring  Jersey,  there  is  no 
ladies'  links ;  but  whereas  at 
Jersey  ladies  only  play  golf  under 


570 


The  Golfer  in  Search  of  a  Climate. 


[Oct. 


sufferance,  and  pain  of  being  passed 
at  every  putting-green,  at  Guernsey 
they  golf  on  terms  of  something 
like  equality.  They  have  tea  in 
the  drawing-room  of  the  club.  In- 
structed by  their  discovery  of  the 
capacity  of  the  feminine  intellect 
for  golf  -  caddying,  the  Guernsey- 
men  have  given  the  lady  golfer  a 
recognised  position. 

The  visitor,  if  he  admit  the  as- 
sumption that  the  male  golfer  is 
the  nobler  animal,  will  see  reason 
in  the  difference  of  treatment  of 
ladies  in  the  two  islands  respec- 
tively. The  Jersey  links  are  often 
athrong  with  golfers,  and  the 
course  crosses  frequently.  In 
Guernsey  golfers  are  few,  com- 
paratively, and  there  is  room  and 
to  spare  for  every  one. 

Of  course,  to  a  golfer  who  is  play- 
ing badly  the  scene  of  his  sorrow 
cannot  be  a  pleasant  one ;  but  it 
is  inconceivable  that  to  any  other 
than  him  the  links  of  Guernsey 
can  give  anything  but  the  purest 
joy.  They  are  so  bold  and  breezy. 
The  great  rock  -  masses  springing 
straight  out  of  the  green  hill-crests 
are  wonderfully  charming  in  effect. 
They  are  just  the  sort  of  rocks  which 
we  see  in  the  Biblical  pictures  illus- 
trating the  phrase,  "  the  shadow 
of  a  great  rock  in  a  weary  land ; " 
or  again  such  as  we  see  in  illus- 
strated  books  of  African  travel,  so 
that  our  fancy  involuntarily  looks 
for  a  lion  waiting  on  the  top  of 
them  for  his  prey  to  pass  below. 
But  there  are  no  lions  in  Guernsey; 
were  it  not  so,  golfers  would  be 
even  fewer. 

If  the  golfing  pilgrim  be  not 
delighted  with  the  links  of  Guern- 
sey, he  must  be  very  hard  to  please. 
True,  the  drive  out,  whether  all 
the  way  by  waggonette,  or  by  a 


complex  connection  of  waggonette 
and  electric  tram,  is  troublesome ; 
but  what  worthy  golf  links  is  not 
intolerably  hard  of  access?  The 
electric  car  itself  may  be  a  novelty. 
There  is  but  one  other  which  we 
know  in  connection  with  a  golf 
links  —  at  Portrush,  namely  ; 
and  it  only  connects  with  the 
Giant's  Causeway.  The  wire  of 
the  Portrush  cars  runs  close  to  the 
ground,  and  the  incautious  golfer 
may  receive  a  shock.  At  Guern- 
sey the  wire  is  overhead;  there 
are  no  such  risks. 

These  Channel  Islands  extend 
to  the  migratory  golfer  the  right 
hand  of  most  liberal  hospitality. 
There  is  a  pleasant  social  club  at 
Peter's  Port,  of  which  he  may  be 
made  a  temporary  member.  The 
sea-fishing  is  excellent ;  the  views, 
the  flowers,  and  the  vegetables  are 
lovely;  alcohol  and  tobacco  are  very 
cheap  :  what  can  the  golfer  lack  to 
make  him  happy?  If  he  need  a 
change,  he  may  even  try  golf  in 
Alderney,  where  there  is  a  soldiers' 
links,  which  abound  in  incident. 

Beyond  this,  on  the  road  to 
England,  are  no  more  links,  for 
as  yet  they  play  no  golf  on  the 
Casquettes.  Four  hours  in  the 
steamer  will  bring  the  golfer  with- 
in the  Needles,  with  a  store  of 
sunny  golfing  reminiscences  which 
will  fill  with  envy  the  souls  of 
those  who  have  golfed  through 
the  British  winter.  He  will  have 
served  as  one  item  the  more  to 
convince  the  foreigner  of  the 
inveterate  lunacy  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  race;  but  he  will  have 
spent  months  of  a  perpetual 
spring  at  his  favourite  pastime, 
and  learned  how  to  ask  for  the 
"  light  iron  "  in  French. 

HORACE  G.  HUTCHINSON. 


1894.1  Farewell  to  Ben  Vrackie.  571 


FAREWELL  TO  BEN  VEACKIE. 

NEXT  to  Lochnagar,  immortalised  by  Lord  Byron's  juvenile  Muse,  and 
Ben  Muic-dhui,  with  the  other  heights  that  separate  Strath  Spey  from 
Deeside  in  the  region  of  Braemar,  there  is  perhaps  no  Highland  Ben, 
not  even  lofty  Nevis,  whose  name  is  more  familiar  to  the  northern 
tourist  than  Ben  Vrackie.  Standing  as  it  does  in  the  central  county 
of  picturesque  Scotland,  and  looking  loftily  upward  with  a  distinct 
peak  that  cannot  be  ignored,  it  strikes  the  eye  of  every  traveller  who 
moves  from  the  fair  town  of  Perth  to  the  breezy  heights  of  Kingussie, 
through  the  gay  village  of  Pitlochrie,  along  the  sounding  bank  of  the 
Tummel  and  the  Garry,  familiar  .to  the  ear  of  every  lover  of  Scottish 
song.  Though  not,  like  the  heights  that  overhang  Stirling,  looking  down 
on  the  fields  where  Scotland  so  manfully  asserted  its  political  indepen- 
dence, it  stands  historically  connected  with  Bruce  in  the  farmhouse  of 
Killie  Brochan,  which  the  tourist  passes  on  his  course  westward  by 
Bonskeid  to  the  Queen's  View  at  Loch  Tummel.  Our  royal  hero  in 
his  course  westward,  after  the  Battle  of  Methven  in  1306,  is  said  to 
have  rested  here,  and  in  the  wood  on  the  brae-side — Coille  (Gaelic 
for  wood) — got  his  hunger  satisfied  by  a  plate  of  brochan — Gaelic,  Irish 
and  Scotch,  for  pottage.  As  for  the  name  of  the  mountain  itself,  the 
word  Breac  in  Gaelic  signifies  brindled  or  spotted,  and  the  name  of  the 
mountain  expresses  the  alternate  stripes  of  white  and  black  which  the 
structure  of  the  rocky  Ben  presents  in  the  time  of  snow.  The  snow 
can  lie  continuously  only  on  a  more  smooth  and  unbroken  surface. 
The  Latin  term  Braccata,  with  which  the  Romans  designated  the 
northern  parts  of  Italy  peopled  by  a  Celtic  race,  seems  to  contain  the 
same  root — naturally  enough  from  the  striped  or  tartan  garments  worn 
by  the  inhabitants. 

FAKE  thee  well !   thou  proud  Ben  Vrackie, 

Shooting  high,  and  ranging  far; 
With  the  strong  breeze  sweeping  round  thee 

From  the  Bens  that  bound  Braemar. 
Though  my  frail  old  foot  may  never 

Climb  thy  rocky  steep  again, 
Three  brave  summers  I  have  known  thee, 

Known  and  loved  thee  not  in  vain ! 

Not  with  vacant  gaze  unfruitful, 

Stout  old  Ben,  I  part  from  thee ; 
'     But  with  thoughts  of  lofty  kinship 

Which  thy  vision  stirred  in  me, — 
Thoughts  of  great  men :   songful  David, 

Caesar  strong,  and  Plato  wise ; 
Sword  of  Bruce,  and  spear  of  Wallace, — 

Proud  thoughts  cousined  with  the  skies. 


572 


Farewell  to  Ben  Vrackie.  [Oct. 

Praised  be  God!   no  race  of  crouching 

Slaves  is  bred  on  Highland  hills, 
'Neath  the  sweep  of  snow-capped  mountains, 

Gusty  glens,  and  tumbling  rills. 
Not  a  race  of  fondled  children, 

Basking  'neath  a  Southern  sun, 
Sleeping  half  the  day,  and  thankful 

When  their  span  of  work  is  done; 

But  a  race  of  men  strong-hearted,— 

Deedful,  daring,  fearless  men, 
Finding  dear  delight  in  wrestling 

With  the  storms  that  shake  the  Ben,— 
Men  for  every  chance  well  bucklered, 

That  man  may  meet  beneath  the  sky  ; 
And  for  every  prize  the  noblest 

Bravely  sworn  to  do  or  die ! 

Such  were  they  who  made  proud  Edward 

Pay  presumption's  lawful  meed, 
When  he  marched  with  bristling  legions 

To  enslave  the  Scottish  Tweed. 
Many  wives  and  many  mothers 

Then  his  folly  taught  to  mourn, 
When,  like  dust,  his  thousands  fled 

From  kilted  Scots  at  Bannockburn. 

Such  were  they  who,  when  the  Stuart 

Yoked  our  conscience  to  his  own, 
Rose,  and  with  loud  voice  denounced  him 

Traitor  to  his  Scottish  throne; 
Rose,  and,  to  make  sure  our  sacred 

Right  to  read  the  book  of  God, 
At  Drumclog  and  Airs  Moss  freely 

Dewed  with  martyrs'  blood  the  sod. 

Fare  thee  well !  thou  proud  Ben  Vrackie, 

Thou,  and  all  that  share  thy  lot, — 
Foaming  Tummel,  rustling  Garry, 

Tom  na  Monaghan's  kindly  cot.1 
Fare  thee  well !  and  when  I  travel, 

R/ambling  near,  or  wandering  far, 
May  thy  lofty  peak  go  with  me 

Surely  as  a  guiding  star ! 

J.  S.  BLACKIE. 


1  A  cottage  on  a  torn  or  knoll,  on  the  extreme  west  of  Pitlochrie,  where  a  road 
on  the  right  hand  passes  up  to  Ardvrackie,  This  cottage  and  the  adjacent  lofty 
mansion  belong  to  Miss  Molyneux,  a  lady  well  known  in  the  neighbourhood 
for  her  wealth  of  female  graces  and  kindly  hospitality. 


1894.] 


The  New  American  Tariff. 


573 


THE    NEW    AMEEICAN    TAEIFF. 


IN  December  1892,  a  few  days 
after  the  Presidential  election  in 
the  United  States  had  resulted  in 
the  victory  of  the  Democrats,  we 
were  enabled  to  present  to  our 
readers  a  history  of  American 
tariff  policy  and  legislation,  an 
account  of  the  election  contest 
that  had  just  closed,  and  an  out- 
line of  the  changes  likely  to  be 
effected  by  the  incoming  adminis- 
tration.1 We  pointed  out  that  the 
performance  of  the  Democratic 
party  would  not  come  up  to  the 
expectations  raised  by  the  circus 
bills;  that  no  one  need  expect 
even  the  appearance  of  a  free- 
trade  tariff;  that  no  sudden 
changes  would  be  made ;  that  the 
Democratic  party  was  too  shrewd 
to  withdraw  suddenly  the  props 
from  industries  that  had  been 
created  by  the  Republican  system ; 
that  a  panic  would  be  the  result 
if  this  were  done ;  that  time  would 
be  given  for  the  withdrawal  of 
capital  from  the  industries  likely 
to  be  effected  by  change;  that  a 
considerable  reduction  of  duties 
would  in  the  end  be  made  on 
goods  not  competing  with  Ameri- 
can manufactures;  and  that  fur- 
ther reductions  would  be  made 
on  articles  supposed  to  be  over- 
protected,  and  on  articles  entering 
largely  into  consumption  by  the 
poor. 

We  resume  the  discussion  of  an 
always  interesting  subject  for  the 
purpose  of  showing  that  this  fore- 
cast has  in  the  main  been  fulfilled ; 
of  placing  once  more  before  the 
public  the  circumstances  surround- 
ing the  new  legislation;  and  of 
giving  a  general  view  of  the 
"  Wilson  Bill  "—as  the  new  Tariff 
Act  is  called — and  its  bearing  on 


external  commerce.  The  readers 
of  the  former  article  will  see  that, 
as  nearly  two  years  have  elapsed 
since  the  Presidential  election,  our 
forecast  of  prudential  slowness  of 
movement  has  been  sufficiently 
exact.  Of  course  the  elections  did 
not  in  America  place  power  in  the 
hands  of  a  new  administration  at 
once.  Months  had  to  elapse  be- 
fore the  new  President  was  inau- 
gurated. Other  months  had  to 
elapse  before  Congress  could  be 
called.  In  the  meantime  the  ac- 
tivities of  the  country  were  para- 
lysed by  the  mandate  which  had 
been  menacingly  issued  by  the 
people  for  wholesale  changes  in 
policy.  Operations  extending  over 
any  but  the  briefest  time  were  not 
entered  upon.  The  menaced  man- 
ufacturers ceased  to  be  active. 
Workmen  began  to  be  discharged. 
Contracts  ceased  in  many  instances 
to  be  filled.  Strong  banks  began 
to  pursue  conservative  lines  on 
loaning,  and  weak  banks  suc- 
cumbed. The  weakness  of  the 
silver  legislation  revealed  itself  in 
a  universal  want  of  confidence  in 
the  silver  currency.  Those  who 
had  national  currency  in  paper 
would  not  part  with  it.  Wages 
could  not  in  many  cases  be  paid  by 
some  of  the  richest  corporations  in 
America.  Not  alone  the  internal 
circumstances  of  the  country  con- 
tributed to  this  result.  The  vin- 
dictive policy  of  the  M'Kinley  Bill, 
which  had  threatened  in  turn  the 
domestic  and  colonial  commerce 
of  every  nation  in  Europe,  pro- 
voked its  natural  results.  The 
Foreign  Creditor,  acting  with  the 
relentless  force  of  a  natural  law, — 
as  capital  always  acts  in  inter- 
national relations, — returned  upon 


1  "  The  Presidential  Elections  in  America,"  Blackwood's  Magazine,  Dec.  1892. 


574 


The  New  American  Tariff, 


[Oct. 


the  hands  of  the  United  States  the 
gold-bearing  securities  in  which 
perfect  confidence  could  no  longer 
be  placed  ;  and  the  gold-borrowing 
nation  was  forced  to  recognise  the 
fact  that  it  could  not  with  impuni- 
ty become  a  pirate  to  its  creditors. 
A  winter  followed  of  such  distress 
that  the  pangs  of  its  poverty  pene- 
trated the  remotest  recesses  of  the 
country,  and  awakened  in  many 
serious  minds  the  terrors  foretold 
in  Scripture  of  a  great  tribulation. 
Finally  Congress  met ;  the  Wilson 
Bill  was  prepared  and  presented ; 
it  was  discussed  at  length  with 
much  bitterness  and  some  scenes  of 
disturbance ;  and  has  at  length, 
after  several  revisions,  been  brought 
forth  a  complete  legislative  meas- 
ure. 

Two  points  may  be  noticed  be- 
fore we  proceed  to  deal  directly 
with  the  effects  of  the  bill. 

The  first  point  is  political,  and 
regards  the  United  States  itself. 
Those  who  in  this  country  have 
been  snared  by  the  cant  of  catch- 
ing phrases  concerning  "  Federal " 
government,  may  look  with  alarm, 
if  not  with  positive  terror,  to  this 
example  of  a  Government  in  which 
the  Popular  Will,  though  over- 
whelmingly expressed,  is  yet  made 
powerless  for  many  months  (in 
this  case  for  two  years)  by  the 
rigidity  of  a  written  constitution. 
Twice  in  our  own  recent  political 
history,  in  1874  and  in  1880,  such 
sweeping  popular  votes  had  the 
effect  of  placing  power  almost  im- 
mediately in  the  hands  of  the  men 
in  whom  the  country  had  expressed 
confidence.  But  in  the  United 
States  such  expression  was  vain. 
The  second  point  is  commercial, 
and  affects  all  the  world,  the 
United  States  included.  It  will 
be  seen  that  the  uncertainty  which 
has  prevailed  regarding  the  tariff 
has  affected  not  merely  the  manu- 
factures, the  imports  and  exports 
of  the  United  States,  but  also  the 


manufactures  and  imports  and  ex- 
ports of  other  nations  as  well. 
And  this  disturbance  has  been  pro- 
longed for  so  long  a  period  that 
though  the  Wilson  Bill  is  now  a 
legislative  measure,  we  are  asked 
by  those  who  are  opposed  to  it  in 
America  to  bear  witness  to  the 
fact  that  State  elections  already 
show  a  reaction  against  the  Demo- 
crats, and  that  the  new  tariff  will 
not  outlast  its  framers  and  their 
four  years  of  power.  In  effect 
this  means  that  the  financial  and 
commercial  world  is  to  be  treated 
to  four  years  more  of  experiment 
after  1896,  with  the  assurance 
that  the  reactionists  will  return 
bringing  seven  other  M'Kinleys 
with  them.  If  the  powers  of  com- 
bination in  Europe  are  exhausted, 
and  the  kings  of  capital  have  lost 
their  genius  for  finance,  may  we 
not  venture  to  express  a  hope  that 
there  may  be  found  in  the  widest- 
extended  empire  the  world  has 
ever  seen  some  resource  in  a  union, 
if  not  of  hands  and  hearts,  at  least 
of  policy  and  purses,  against  this 
systematic  revolt  on  the  part  of 
America  against  the  commerce  of 
the  world  ? 

The  Wilson  Bill  was  committed 
to  the  committee  of  the  whole 
House  of  Representatives,  from 
the  Committee  of  Ways  and  Means, 
by  Mr  Wilson  of  Virginia,  on  De- 
cember 19,  1893.  It  was  alleged 
in  the  Committee's  report  that  the 
American  people  had  decided  that 
the  existing  tariff  was  wrong  in 
principle  and  unjust  in  operation. 
The  power  of  taxation  had  no  law- 
ful or  constitutional  exercise  except 
for  providing  revenue  for  the  sup- 
port of  Government :  this  proposi- 
tion, it  may  be  observed,  was  in 
contradiction  of  two  of  the  best- 
known  decisions  of  the  United 
States  Supreme  Court  in  support 
of  a  protection  tariff. 

"  So  many  private  interests,"  says 
this  very  remarkable  report,  "have 


1894.] 


The  New  American  Tariff. 


575 


been  taken  into  partnership  Math  the 
Government,  so  many  private  enter- 
prises now  share  in  the  rich  prerog- 
ative of  taxing  seventy  millions  of 
people,  that  any  attempt  to  dissolve 
this  illegal  union  is  necessarily  en- 
countered by  an  opposition  that  rallies 
behind  it  the  intolerance  of  monopoly, 
the  power  of  concentrated  wealth,  the 
inertia  of  fixed  habits,  and  the  honest 
errors  of  a  generation  of  false  teach- 
ing." 

This,  indeed,  was  "  comfortable 
doctrine,"  but  the  "  Glory,  Halle- 
lujahs/" of  a  pious  Democracy  had 
hardly  been  uttered  when  the  fol- 
lowing sentences  burst  on  their 
startled  ears : — 

"  The  bill  on  which  the  Committee 
has  expended  much  patient  and  anx- 
ious labour  is  not  offered  as  a  complete 
response  to  the  mandate  of  the  Ameri- 
can people.  It  no  more  professes  to 
be  purged  of  all  protection  than  to  be 
free  of  all  error  in  its  complex  and 
manifold  details.  However  we  may 
deny  the  existence  of  any  legislative 
pledge  or  the  right  of  any  Congress  to 
make  such  pledge  for  the  continuance 
of  duties  that  carry  with  them  more  or 
less  acknowledged  protection,  we  are 
forced  to  consider  that  great  interests 
do  exist,  whose  existence  and  pros- 
perity it  is  no  part  of  our  reform  either 
to  imperil  or  to  curtail." 

If  the  long  delay  in  bringing  in  a 
measure  justified  our  forecast  as  to 
time,  this  language  fully  justifies 
our  forecast  as  to  the  smallness  of 
the  "  free  trade  "  revival  that  was 
to  follow.  That  the  Wilson  Bill 
should  be  denounced  by  the  most 
vigorous  of  the  Democratic  daily 
papers  as  a  fraud  on  the  public, 
which  had  issued  its  "  mandate  " 
in  November  1892,  was  not  very 
remarkable.  In  the  Democratic 
"platform"  of  1892  we  may  read 
as  follows:  "We  denounce  Re- 
publican protection  as  a  fraud,  a 
robbery  of  the  great  majority  of 
the  American  people  for  the  bene- 
fit of  the  few.  .  .  .  We  denounce 
the  M'Kinley  tariff  as  the  cul- 
minating atrocity  of  class  legisla- 


tion." And  when  this  declaration 
of  1892  is  followed  in  1894  by  this 
other  declaration  in  the  report  on 
the  Wilson  Bill — "  But  in  dealing 
with  the  tariff,  as  with  every  other 
long-standing  abuse  that  has  inter- 
woven itself  with  our  social  or 
industrial  system,  the  legislator 
must  always  remember  that,  in 
the  beginning,  temperate  reform 
is  safest,  having  in  itself  the  '  prin- 
ciple of  growth ' "  — it  is  obvious 
that  a  sense  of  humour  is  required 
to  appreciate  the  situation  !  The 
great  American  joke  is  never 
played  out. 

The  gentlemen  of  the  minority 
on  the  Committee  put  forth,  of 
course,  the  legend  on  the  other 
side  of  the  shield.  They  pointed 
out  that  this  new  tariff  would 
deprive  the  country  at  once  of 
174,000,000  of  revenue  at  a  time 
when  the  latest  figures  available 
proved  that  the  revenue  was  only 
$2,000,000  above  the  expenditures. 
This  was  indeed  a  point  to  which 
the  majority  had  addressed  them- 
selves, as  they  had  stated  that 
they  looked  to  the  increase  of  com- 
merce to  make  up  the  loss  of  rev- 
enue, and  also  that  they  intended 
to  bring  in  measures  of  internal 
revenue  taxation — an  income-tax 
among  other  things — to  recoup  the 
treasury.  The  Republicans  also 
pointed  out  that  "  the  larger  part 
of  the  burden  of  taxation  is  trans- 
ferred from  foreigners  and  borne 
by  our  own  citizens" — this  being 
an  old  and  favourite  theory  of  the 
Republican  party.  Naturally,  the 
Republicans  also  pointed  out  that 
the  Democratic  bill  falsified  the 
Democratic  pledges,  and  was  a  dis- 
tinct abandonment  of  the  "man- 
date of  the  people."  That  the  Re- 
publicans should  take  advantage  of 
the  obvious  failure  of  the  Demo- 
crats to  fulfil  their  election  pledges 
was  only  natural.  But  the  plea 
did  not  carry  much  weight  in  the 
House,  though  it  will  have  its 


576 


The  New  American  Tariff. 


[Oct. 


effect  on  the  next  elections.  To 
catch  the  Republicans  bathing, 
and  to  steal  their  clothes,  is  not 
a  policy  which  can  be  permanently 
successful. 

The  political  aspect  of  the  bill 
having  been  thus  presented,  in  a 
manner,  we  trust,  sufficiently  clear, 
the  purely  business  character  of  it 
may  be  indicated  in  a  general  way. 
The  bill  has  been  "reported"  at 
various  stages,  as  it  came  from  the 
House  Committee,  as  it  emerged 
from  the  House  of  Representatives, 
as  it  was  reported  from  the  Senate 
Committee,  as  it  was  placed  before 
a  joint  committee,  and  as  it  has 
been  finally  passed.  Each  stage 
witnessed  a  change  in  its  features. 
A  few  examples  will  suffice.  Thus, 
the  Wilson  Bill,  by  means  of  the 
majority  report  of  the  House  Com- 
mittee, recommended  the  freedom 
of  iron  and  coal  as  the  basis  of 
modern  industry.  The  Republican 
minority  protested  that  this  con- 
cession was  given  to  manufacturers 
at  the  cost  of  the  mines  and  the 
railways.  The  item  of  iron  and  its 
manufactures  finally  appeared  in 
the  bill  as  passed  in  the  House  of 
Representatives,  at  from  10  to  35 
per  cent  ad  valorem,  instead  of  the 
specific  duty  of  so  much  per  pound, 
as  under  the  M'Kinley  Bill  of  1890 
and  the  tariff  of  1883.  It  emerges 
finally  subject  to  a  mixed  specific 
and  ad  valorem  schedule,  the  ad 
valorem  duties  showing  in  some 
cases  an  increase  to  45  per  cent, 
though  there  is  still  a  general  re- 
duction of  the  specific  duties  on 
articles  of  common  use,  as  com- 
pared with  the  M'Kinley  Bill. 

Wool  was  also  put  on  the  free 
list  in  the  original  bill,  the  old 
duty  not  having  been,  in  the 
opinion  of  the  Democratic  major- 
ity, beneficial  in  its  operation,  and 
a  revival  of  woollen  industry  being 
expected  under  a  regime  of  free 
wool.  The  Advocatus  Diaboli  of 


the  Republican  minority,  however, 
contended  that  as  experience  had 
shown  that  the  woollen  manufac- 
turers of  the  United  States  needed 
30  to  40  per  cent  to  protect  them 
during  many  years,  they  would 
necessarily  collapse  when  the  duty 
was  removed.  The  item  came  into 
the  original  bill  at  from  15  to  40 
per  cent  ad  valorem,  instead  of 
the  high,  mixed,  specific,  and  ad 
valorem  duty  under  the  Act  of 
1890.  The  classification  and  con- 
ditions of  import  were  also  changed, 
and  the  reduction  of  the  duty  was 
spread  over  a  period  of  years,  end- 
ing in  1900 — reminding  us  of  the 
Irishman's  way  of  cutting  off  his 
dog's  tail  a  little  at  a  time  "to 
make  it  aisy  for  the  baste  !  "  The 
item  finally  emerges  on  the  free 
list,  and  the  authorities  have  de- 
cided that  wool  will  not  have  to 
be  re-exported  and  re-entered  in 
order  to  obtain  the  benefit  of  the 
new  duty.  The  Canadian  border 
would  have  been  made  use  of,  by 
arrangement,  in  such  a  case,  as  is 
sometimes  done  in  the  case  of 
liquors  that  have  remained  too 
long  in  bond,  on  which  duty 
would  have  to  be  paid  at  once 
if  the  goods  were  not  re-entered. 
Books  still  remain  at  25  per 
cent  ad  valorem  under  the  be- 
neficent influence  of  the  printers' 
unions,  who  had  power  also  to 
prevent  copyright,  except  on  the 
condition  of  printing  in  the  United 
States ;  and  the  rule  which  allowed 
books  in  foreign  languages  to  come 
in  free,  while  English  books  were 
taxed,  has  been  invidiously  re- 
tained. Sugar  has  been  made 
more  free  by  the  abolition  of  the 
domestic  bounty  given  by  the 
M'Kinley  Bill ;  but  it  is  not  quite 
easy  to  say  how  an  ad  valorem 
duty  (with  specifics  in  addition) 
of  40  per  cent  is  going  to  be  of 
any  advantage  to  any  but  the 
local  producer,  who  can  afford  to 


1894.] 


The  New  American  Tariff. 


577 


smile  at  the  abolition  of  his  direct 
bounty  if  he  gets  an  indirect  one. 
This  sugar  question  has  of  course 
been  one  of  the  burning  questions 
of  United  States  politics  for  many 
years;  and  the  charge  that  the 
Sugar  Trust  has  actually  pur- 
chased the  votes  of  Senators  in 
order  to  maintain  the  higher  rates 
of  duty,  is  the  one  that  renders 
the  bill  as  passed  so  very  objec- 
tionable alike  to  Democrats  who 
are  free-traders  and  to  Democrats 
who  are  not. 

There  was  of  course  a  struggle 
over  the  cotton  duties.  These 
duties  were  under  the  original  bill 
greatly  reduced ;  whereupon  the 
Advocatus  Diaboli  of  the  minority 
declared  that  the  new  scale  of 
duties  would  destroy  the  cotton 
industry  of  America,  "and  again 
place  the  American  market  under 
the  control  of  the  English  manu- 
facturer," who  would  of  course 
proceed  to  put  up  the  price  of 
spool  cottons  when  he  had  had 
the  satisfaction  of  sketching  the 
ruins  of  American  factories  from 
the  broken  arches  of  Brooklyn 
Bridge  !  At  this  point,  no  doubt, 
the  British  manufacturer's  sense 
of  humour,  and  his  knowledge  of 
business,  will  combine  to  render 
him  less  hopeful  of  such  a  pictur- 
esque and  profitable  pastime. 

The  general  characteristics  of 
British  trade,  as  it  is  likely  to 
be  affected  by  the  new  tariff,  may 
be  very  briefly  indicated  by  means 
of  the  Annual  Trade  Returns  for 
1893,  the  latest  published.  Our 
imports  from  the  United  States 
have  shown  much  fluctuation,  as 
the  following  table  will  show : — 


Exports  to  United  States. 


Imports  from  United  States. 


1889 
1890 
1891 
1892 
1893 


£95,461,475 

97,283,340 

104,409,050 

108,186,317 

91,783,847 


1889 
1890 
1891 
1892 
1893 


£43,878,934 
46,340,012 
41,066,147 
41,412,006 
35,715,274 


The  aggregate  trade  thus  shows  a 
noticeable  falling  off;  the  most 
remarkable  decrease  in  our  exports 
having  taken  place  in  wool  and 
woollen  goods,  yarns,  silk  manufac- 
tures (a  decrease  from  £1,155,417 
in  1889  to  £301,107  in  1893), 
metals,  glass  manufactures,  cloth- 
ing, hardware,  and  like  articles  of 
purely  domestic  produce.  But  the 
trade  is  still  so  very  large  that  the 
application  of  a  new  tariff  which 
will  last  till  1896,  and  after  that 
date  as  long  as  Congress  may  take 
to  prepare  a  new  one,  cannot  fail 
to  be  a  matter  of  the  most  serious 
consequence  to  this  country. 

There  are  some  broad  general 
features  of  the  tariff  which  need 
to  be  more  particularly  dwelt  up- 
on, and  which  lend  themselves  to 
more  satisfactory  treatment. 

In  the  first  place,  the  loss  of 
revenue  under  this  bill  is  admitted ; 
had  it  followed  the  lines  of  the 
Democratic  Convention,  and  of 
the  original  bill,  there  would  have 
been  a  greater  deficit  than  is  now 
threatened.  A  larger  importation 
will,  of  course,  even  with  reduced 
duties,  give  a  good  revenue.  The 
pension  system,  which  was  in- 
creased year  after  year  for  the 
express  purpose  of  consuming  a 
revenue  which  was  too  great  to 
be  handled,  may  be  reduced  in 
cost ;  and  other  internal  taxes 
will  be  laid  on.  The  income-tax, 
for  which  elaborate  provisions  are 
made,  and  which  goes  into  opera- 
tion after  January  1,  1895,  will 
no  doubt  add  largely  to  the 
national  revenue  after  the  first 
experiments  have  given  some  de- 
gree of  skill  to  those  who  are  to 


578 


The  New  American  Tariff. 


[Oct. 


collect   it.     The  minority  do  not 
tackle  this  part  of  the  scheme. 

In  the  next  place,  the  great 
change  in  the  bill  is  in  the  sub- 
stitution of  ad  valorem  duties  for 
the  mixed  and  specific  duties  of 
the  tariffs  of  1883  and  1890. 
This  duty  has  been  adopted  with 
a  particular  regard,  we  are  told, 
for  the  poorer  classes.  Twice  in 
the  history  of  the  United  States 
the  ad  valorem  system  was  im- 
posed—i.e.,  in  1842  and  1846-61. 
The  two  parties  have  always 
divided  in  regard  to  it.  The  tariff 
of  1842  was  distinctly  protective, 
and  specific  duties  were  mixed 
with  ad  valorem  duties.  The  tariff 
of  1846-61  was  Democratic,  and 
though  it  adopted  an  ad  valorem 
scale,  it  yet  maintained  a  pro- 
tection of  from  20  to  40  per  cent, 
which  in  those  days  was  high  pro- 
tection. The  discussion  will  no 
doubt  continue,  as  there  are  no 
elements  of  finality  in  it ;  and  the 
change  from  the  specific  to  ad 
valorem  now  will  so  change  the 
character  of  the  statistics  that  the 
discussion  of  tariff  questions  in 
the  United  States  will  increase 
the  number  of  inmates  in  the 
lunatic  asylums. 

Thirdly,  the  article  relating  to 
reciprocity  provisions  in  the  Act 
of  1890,  under  which  the  Presi- 
dent made  agreements  and  pro- 
claimed them,  is  to  be  wholly 
done  away  with.  In  June  1892,1 
and  in  December  1892,2  we  had 
occasion  to  call  attention  to  the 
peculiar  character  of  these  agree- 
ments as  they  bore  on  the  most- 
favoured-nation  clauses  of  treaties 
in  which  this  country  is  interested. 
It  is  with  pleasure  we  notice  that 
the  majority  report  says — 

"This  section  has  brought  no  ap- 
preciable advantage  to  American  ex- 
porters ;  it  is  not  in  intention  or  effect 


a  provision  for  reciprocity,  but  for 
retaliation.  [We  pointed  this  out  in 
December  1892.]  It  inflicts  penalties 
upon  the  American  people  by  making 
them  pay  higher  prices,  for  these 
articles  of  the  fiscal  necessities  of 
other  nations  compel  them  to  levy 
duties  upon  the  products  of  the 
United  States,  which  in  the  opinion 
of  the  President  are  reciprocally  un- 
equal and  unreasonable.  Under  the 
provisions  of  this  section,  Presiden- 
tial proclamations  have  been  issued 
imposing  retaliatory  duties  upon 
Jive  articles  (sugar,  molasses,  tea,  cof- 
fee, and  hides)  when  coming  from 
certain  countries.  These  proclama- 
tions have  naturally  led  to  ill  feeling 
in  the  countries  thus  discriminated 
against,  and  to  diplomatic  correspon- 
dence in  which  it  has  been  claimed, 
with  apparent  justice,  that  such  dis- 
criminations were  in  violation  of  our 
solemn  treaty  obligations." 

In  expressing  in  December  1892 
our  hope  that  the  new  regime  in 
America  would  have  more  respect 
for  "  the  opinion  of  Christendom," 
we  had  these  proclamations,  agree- 
ments, and  treaties  in  view. 

It  must  be  kept  in  mind  that 
though  many  reductions  have 
been  made  on  the  lines  we  have 
indicated,  the  new  tariff  is  a 
distinctly  Protective  Tariff.  The 
average  rate  of  duties  imposed 
on  dutiable  importations  in  1892 
was  48.71  per  cent.  The  rate 
that  would  have  been  imposed 
under  the  duties  in  the  original 
Wilson  Bill  would  have  been  30.31 
cent, — a  protection  which  seems 
high,  and  a  source  of  revenue 
which  seems  certain.  This  rate 
has  now  been  raised.  In  view  of 
the  fact  that  this  30  per  cent  aver- 
age— which  in  the  case  of  particu- 
lar lines  of  manufactured  goods 
amounts  of  course  to  very  much 
more — stands  in-  the  way  of  the 
foreign  exporter,  we  may  accept 
with  many  "grains  of  salt"  the 


"Colonies,  Tariffs,  and  Treaties,"  Blackwood's  Magazine,  June  1892. 
'The  Presidential  Elections  in  America,"  Blackwood's  Magazine,  Dec.  1892. 


1894.] 


The  New  American  Tariff. 


579 


statements  made  by  the  opponents 
of  the  bill,  that  the  English  manu- 
facturer is  going  to  dominate  the 
American  market;  that  the  growth 
of  any  sort  of  sugar-cane  or  beet 
in  the  United  States  will  be  im- 
possible ;  that  free  salt  will  trans- 
fer the  New  England  markets  to 
England  and  Canada;  that  free 
flax  and  hemp  will  transfer  that 
industry  from  America  to  India ; 
that  the  reduction  of  the  silk 
duties  will  remove  all  manufac- 
tures to  France,  Germany,  and 
Japan;  and  that  free  coal  would 
destroy  the  value  of  the  coal  de- 
posits of  thirty-one  States  of  the 
American  Union.  We  have  seen, 
of  course,  that  the  financial  fabric 
of  the  United  States  is  a  frail 
structure.  It  is  hardly  possible 
to  believe  that  after  a  century 
of  protection  the  manufacturing, 
mining,  and  agricultural  indus- 
tries of  the  United  States  are  at 
the  mercy  of  the  effete  monarchies 
and  experimental  Republics  of 
Europe,  even  with  a  wire  fence  of 
30  per  cent  to  protect  them. 

Again,  an  attempt,  feeble  enough 
indeed,  but  well  meant,  has  been 
made  to  encourage  that  long-suffer- 
ing, and  always  delicate,  national 
industry — native  shipping.  This  is 
attempted  in  two  ways.  In  the 
first  place,  it  is  provided  that  all 
articles  of  foreign  production  im- 
ported for  the  construction  and 
equipment,  or  repair,  of  vessels 
built  in  the  United  States  for  for- 
eign account,  or  for  the  purpose 
of  being  employed  in  the  foreign 
trade,  including  the  trade  between 
the  Atlantic  and  the  Pacific  ports 
of  the  United  States,  may  be  im- 
ported in  bond ;  and  upon  proof 
that  such  articles  have  been  used 
for  the  purpose  mentioned,  no 
duty  shall  be  paid  on  them.  In 
the  second  place,  it  is  provided 
that  a  discriminating  duty  of  10 
per  cent  shall  be  placed  on  all 
goods  imported  in  vessels  not  of 


the  United  States,  unless  such 
vessels  are  entitled  to  enter  the 
ports  of  the  United  States  on 
equal  terms  with  the  vessels  of 
the  United  States  by  treaty  or 
by  Act  of  Congress.  The  free 
importation  of  foreign  articles  for 
building  and  equipment  and  repair 
may  indeed  be  a  valuable  conces- 
sion, and  may  be  of  service  in  the 
building  of  ships ;  but  inasmuch 
as  the  United  States  has  treaties, 
giving  most-favoured  or  national 
treatment,  with  almost  every 
Power  in  the  world  possessing 
ships  in  foreign  trade,  the  10  per 
cent  discriminating  duty  will  have 
no  other  obvious  effect  than  that 
of  increasing  the  number  of  such 
treaties,  if  there  are  any  nations 
now  not  entitled.  But  the  singu- 
lar manner  in  which  American 
public  men  have  interpreted  trea- 
ties in  times  very  recent,  may 
make  us  feel  that  perhaps  this 
clause  of  the  new  tariff  may  afford 
encouragement  at  least  to  ofiicial 
ingenuity. 

The  income-tax  feature  of  the 
new  tariff  is  one  that,  like  all  the 
features  of  the  scheme,  requires 
time  for  development.  In  the 
meantime  it  is  one  of  the  most 
noticeable  parts  of  the  scheme.  It 
has  been  hitherto  supposed  by 
most  American  writers  on  politi- 
cal economy  that  no  income-tax 
would  again  be  placed  on  Ameri- 
can citizens  till  the  system  of  pro- 
tection had  so  stimulated  the 
development  of  American  natural 
resources,  and  so  increased  home 
manufactures,  that  importation 
would  largely  cease,  the  revenue 
from  customs  fall  off,  and  some 
new  form  of  taxation  would  be- 
come imperative.  The  last  in- 
come-tax in  the  United  States  was 
imposed  during  the  pressure  of 
war  expenditure.  It  was  a  gradu- 
ated tax  extending  from  5  to  7  J-  and 
10  per  cent,  according  to  income. 
It  was  altered  from  time  to  time 


580 


The  New  American  Tariff. 


[Oct. 


according  to  the  year's  needs,  be- 
ginning at  3  per  cent  and  5  per 
cent  in  1863;  running  up  to  5 
and  10  per  cent  in  1866 ;  declin- 
ing to  5  per  cent  in  1867-70 ;  and 
still  further  declining  to  2J  per 
cent  in  1871-73,  at  which  date  it 
ceased  altogether.  The  total  in- 
come from  this  source  (including 
personal  and  corporate  taxes)  was 
$347,220,897  in  ten  years.  The 
present  rate  is  2  per  cent ;  and  it  is 
calculated  that  about  $30,000,000 
can  be  collected  in  this  way.  The 
calculations  made  concerning  this 
tax  have  revealed  some  very  curi- 
ous things  concerning  this  para- 
dise of  labour  and  land  flowing 
with  whisky  and  wages;  as,  for 
example,  that  31,500  persons  own 
more  than  half  the  total  wealth  of 
the  country,  and  that  the  number 
of  persons  and  corporations  hav- 
ing incomes  of  more  than  $4000 
is  not  more  than  85,000.  If  we 
assume  that  the  85,000  are,  say, 
heads  of  families — there  are  no 
figures  as  to  the  corporations — of, 
say,  five  persons  each,  then  we 
find  that  out  of  a  population  usu- 
ally put,  since  1891,  for  public 
discussion,  at  70,000,000,  only 
425,000  persons  enjoy  the  direct 
benefit  of  incomes  over  $4000.  It 
seems  incredible,  in  view  of  all  we 
sometimes  hear  about  American 
prosperity. 

The  general  characteristics  of 
American  trade  during  the  year 
ending  June  30,  1893,  show  a 
number  of  abnormal  conditions. 
These  may  be  briefly  indicated. 
The  imports  from  Europe  show  an 
increase  of  $66,821,624.  Of  this 
increase,  $26,558,888  came  from 
Great  Britain.  The  domestic 
exports  to  Europe  decreased 
$189,106,919.  Of  this  sum 
$78,991,774  consists  of  the  de- 
creased trade  with  Great  Britain. 
The  increased  import  from  Great 
Britain  is  qualified  by  the  fact 
that  a  large  part  of  the  increase 


was  in  items  free  of  duty,  the 
dutiable  articles  —  i.e.,  manufac- 
tures—  being  deterred  by  the 
M'Kinley  tariff'.  The  decreased 
export  to  England  was  mainly  in 
bread  -  stuffs.  The  movement  of 
gold  was  the  most  remarkable 
feature.  We  have  indicated  in  an 
earlier  part  of  this  article  the  fact 
that  a  borrowing  nation  cannot 
pursue  the  role  of  a  predatory  pic- 
aroon among  its  creditors.  This 
lesson  was  taught  the  United 
States  in  1893.  The  total  ex- 
ports of  gold  to  Europe  ran  up 
from  $59,952,285  in  1889,  to 
$108,680,844  in  1893;  and  im- 
mediately from  $50,195,327  in 
1892  to  $108,680,844  in  1893— a 
very  startling  jump  in  one  year. 
Nothing  on  the  face  of  things 
.accounts  for  it.  The  excess 
of  exports  over  imports  was 
$202,875,686,  and  in  the  nature 
of  things  a  considerable  import  of 
gold  ought  to  have  taken  place. 
But  the  reverse  was  the  case. 
The  export  of  gold  to  Great  Brit- 
ain jumped  from  $6,508,060  in 
1892  to  $21,415,797  in  1893,  and 
to  France  and  Germany  there 
were  like  increases.  There  were 
no  unusual  disturbances  in  the 
London  money-market  to  call  for 
a  demand  for  gold.  Nevertheless 
the  demand  for  gold  on  the  United 
States  was  peremptory  and  per- 
sistent. The  truth  is,  that  capital 
invested  in  the  United  States  and 
in  American  securities  was  sud- 
denly withdrawn  owing  to  want 
of  confidence.  "American  Gov- 
ernment and  railroad  securities," 
says  the  official  statistician,  "  have 
been  sent  to  this  country  in  large 
blocks  to  be  sold,  while  foreign 
investors  have  made  limited  pur- 
chases in  our  stock  and  invest- 
ment markets,  except  when  the 
conditions  were  such  as  to  offer 
a  special  inducement  to  taking 
chances — that  is,  in  a  time  of  dis- 
tress bordering  upon  panic."  That 


1894.] 


The  New  American  Tariff. 


581 


so  complete  a  breakdown  should 
have  taken  place  in  American 
securities  may  serve  as  a  warning 
against  a  fiscal  policy  which  tends 
to  produce  want  of  confidence  and 
a  desire  for  reprisals  on  the  part 
of  creditor  nations. 

Those  who  are  now  joining  in 
the  insensate  outcry  against  the 
House  of  Lords  in  this  country, 
for  a  perfectly  legitimate  exercise 
of  a  well-understood  part  of  the 
functions  of  its  office  —  i.e.,  the 
amendment  or  rejection  of  meas- 
ures which  in  their  judgment 
may  not  have  received  sufficient 
consideration  from  the  public — 
would  do  well  to  consider  the 
present  and  late  attitude  of  the 
American  Senate.  This  body, 
theoretically  the  elect  of  the 
elect,  but  practically  the  partisan 
choice  of,  in  many  cases,  purchased 
legislatures,  delayed  for  months 
the  settlement  of  the  Currency 
Question  upon  which  the  public 
issued  its  "  mandate,"  sternly 
enough,  in  November  1892,  and 
for  a  considerable  time  delayed, 
and  have,  in  part,  and  in  charac- 
ter also,  altered  the  Tariff  Bill 
of  the  House  of  Representatives, 
passed  in  that  House  after  weeks 
of  anxious  and  careful  debate. 
This  same  body  has  within  a  few 
months  rejected  the  President's 
nominee  for  the  Supreme  Court 
of  the  country,  at  the  dictation 
of  one  of  the  most  objectionable 
of  the  "Boss"  senators,  and  so 
maltreated  the  President's  nominee 
for  the  post  of  American  Minister 
to  Italy  that,  after  being  finally  con- 
firmed in  his  appointment,  he  re- 
signed the  office  in  disgust.  It  will 
be  well  for  those  who  think  that  the 
British  House  of  Lords  is  a  body 
with  an  imperfect  organisation,  to 
remember  that  it  is  a  body  with 
splendid  and  patriotic  traditions, 
and  that  in  all  its  history  it  has 
never  thwarted  the  public  will  as 

VOL.  CLVI. NO.  DCCCCXLVIII. 


badly,  as  needlessly,  and  as  often 
as  the  American  Senate  has  done 
within  a  period  so  short  as  to  be 
within  the  memory  of  the  most 
casual  reader  of  the  journals, 

The  question  may  now  be  briefly 
discussed,  How  long  is  this  new 
tariff  likely  to  last?  The  chief 
speakers  on  each  side  have  ap- 
pealed to  the  future;  those  who 
are  in  doubt  as  to  results  al- 
ways do.  Mr  Reed,  of  Maine, 
ex-Speaker,  a  man  of  much  ability, 
concluded  his  remarks,  his  ora- 
tion, against  the  Wilson  Bill  as 
follows  : — 

"  We  know,  my  friends,  that  before 
this  tribunal  we  all  of  us  plead  in 
vain.  Why  we  fail  let  those  answer 
who  read  the  touching  words  of  Abra- 
ham Lincoln's  first  inaugural,  and  re- 
member that  he  pled  in  vain  with 
these  same  men  and  their  predeces- 
sors. Where  he  failed  we  cannot 
hope  to  succeed.  But  though  we  fail 
here  to-day,  like  our  great  leader  of 
other  days  in  the  larger  field,  before 
the  mightier  tribunal  which  will  finally 
and  for  ever  decide  this  question  we 
shall  be  more  than  conquerors ;  for 
this  great  nation,  shaking  off  as  it 
has  once  before  the  influence  of  a 
lower  civilisation,  will  go  on  to  fulfil 
its  high  destiny  until  over  the  South, 
as  well  as  over  the  North,  shall  be 
spread  the  full  measure  of  that  amaz- 
ing prosperity  which  is  the  wonder 
of  the  world." 

On  the  other  hand,  Mr  Wilson 
of  Virginia,  the  sponsor  of  the 
new  tariff,  concluded  as  follows  : — 

"  This  is  not  a  battle  over  percent- 
ages, over  this  or  that  tariff  schedule  ; 
if  is  a  battle  for  human  freedom.  As 
Mr  Burke  truly  said,  every  great 
battle  for  human  freedom  is  waged 
around  the  question  of  taxation.  .  .  . 
The  men  who  had  the  opportunity  to 
sign  the  Declaration  of  Independence, 
and  refused  or  neglected  because 
there  was  something  in  it  which  they 
did  not  like— thank  God  there  were 
none  such  ;  but  if  there  had  been, 
what  would  be  their  standing  in  his- 
tory to-day?  If  men  on  the  battle- 
2  p 


582 


The  New  American  Tariff. 


[Oct.  1894. 


field  at  Lexington  or  at  Bunker  Hill, 
from  some  ground  of  personal  or  local 
dissatisfaction,  had  thrown  away  their 
weapons,  what  think  you  would  have 
been  their  feelings  in  all  the  remain- 
ing years  of  their  lives  when  the 
Liberty  Bell  rang  out  on  every  re- 
curring anniversary  of  American  in- 
dependence ?  This  is  a  roll  of  honour. 
This  is  a  roll  of  freedom  ;  and  in  the 
name  of  honour  and  in  the  name  of 
freedom  I  summon  every  Democratic 
member  of  this  House  to  inscribe  his 
name  upon  it." 

The  next  Presidential  election 
will  have  to  settle  between  these 
two  gentlemen  and  the  great  par- 
ties they  represent.  A  reference 
to  the  history  of  American  tariffs 
will  show  how  long  each  has  lasted. 
Thus  :— 

The  tariff  of  1842,  Protectionist, 
lasted  four  years. 

The  tariff  of  1846,  Democratic 
and  less  protective,  but  still  main- 
taining high  duties,  lasted  till 
1857,  or  eleven  years. 

The  tariff  of  1857,  still  more 
Democratic  and  less  Protectionist 
by  25  per  cent,  lasted  four  years. 

The  tariff  of  1861,  Republican 
and  Protectionist,  was  made  more 
Protectionist  in  1862  and  1864, 
and  lasted  in  its  protective  form 
till  1870,  or  nearly  ten  years  in  all. 

The  tariff  of  1870  and  1872,  re- 
duced and  Democratic,  lasted  till 
1875,  in  all  five  years. 

The  Protectionist  tariff  of  1875 
lasted  till  1883,  or  eight  years. 

The  tariff  of  1883,  moderately 
Protectionist,  lasted  till  1890,  or 
seven  years. 

The  tariff  of  1890,  extremely 
Protectionist,  anti- European,  and 
Republican,  lasted  till  1894,  or 
four  years. 

It  will  thus  be  observed  that 
history  affords  no  promise  of  per- 
manence in  the  matter  of  Ameri- 
can tariffs.  The  present  tariff  has 


opposed  to  it  the  whole  Republican 
party :  the  manufacturers  as  a 
class ;  the  labour  organisations  as 
a  class ;  the  anti-European  element 
as  a  class ;  the  silver  States  and 
the  men  who  control  them ;  the 
corporations  that  will  have  to  pay 
income-tax;  and  the  unclassified 
series  of  interests  and  industries 
which,  as  even  the  Democratic  re- 
port on  the  bill  confesses,  have 
grown  up  under  the  influences 
of  the  Protectionist  system.  Mr 
Cleveland,  to  whose  personal  popu- 
larity much  of  the  enthusiasm  that 
brought  about  the  American  vic- 
tory was  due,  having  filled  the 
office  for  two  terms,  will  be  unable, 
unless  the  political  history  record 
of  the  country  is  broken,  to  accept 
a  nomination  for  a  third  term  in 
1896.  Mr  Wilson,  whose  name  is 
now  so  prominent  as  the  responsi- 
ble author  of  the  new  tariff,  seems 
to  be  a  man  of  precarious  health. 
And  all  the  signs  seem  to  point  to 
a  reaction  towards  Protection  in 
1896.  It  must  be  remembered 
that  the  reaction  will  not  need  to 
be  great  in  the  case  of  a  country 
having  still  a  protective  duty  of 
more  than  30  per  cent  on  the 
average.  But  even  the  Protection- 
ists in  the  United  States  may  be 
expected  not  to  ignore  the  sharp 
lessons  of  experience ;  and  we  may 
assume  that  no  further  attempts 
will  be  made  to  ruin  the  trade  of 
other  countries,  to  dissever  the 
American  colonies  of  European 
nations  from  the  parent  States,  to 
force  a  silver-based  currency  upon 
the  reluctant  countries  of  Europe, 
and  to  insolently  parade  a  policy 
of  enmity  and  of  defiance  of  not 
merely  the  power  and  the  riches  of 
the  great  commercial  nations  of  the 
world,  but  of  the  indignation  which 
an  offended  civilisation  can  feel, 
and  the  punishment  it  can  inflict. 


Printed  by  William  Blackwood  and  Sons. 


BLACKWOOD'S 

EDINBUKGH    MAGAZINE, 


No.  DCCOCXLIX.         NOVEMBER  1894. 


VOL.  CLVI. 


SOME    FRENCH    NOVELISTS. 


IT  is  surely  high  time  that 
healthily  constituted  mortals,  of 
whom,  despite  the  demonstrations 
of  a  Tolstoi,  Zola,  Bourget,  and 
Ibsen,  some  isolated  specimens 
may  yet  be  supposed  to  exist, 
should  rise  in  arms  against  the 
growing  encroachments  of  disease, 
mental  and  physical,  upon  the 
subjects  of  fiction.  We  are  tired 
of  the  uninterrupted  society  of 
dipsomaniacs,  morphinists,  and 
epileptics;  weary  of  the  neures- 
thenic  heroes  and  their  scrofulous 
lady  -  loves  who  have  so  often 
been  forced  down  our  throats  of 
late  years ;  and  dead  sick  of  those 
mysterious  hereditary  blood-curses 
without  which,  as  some  of  these 
learned  gentlemen  would  have  us 
believe,  no  self-respecting  family 
can  possibly  exist  in  these  fin 
de  siecle  days.  With  a  yearn- 
ing that  is  almost  pain  we  have 
come  to  long  for  the  sight  of  a 
hale,  hearty  young  woman,  devoid 
of  manias  or  nerves,  gifted  with 

VOL.  CLVI.— NO.  DCCCCXLIX. 


an  unimpaired  digestion,  and  with 
nothing  more  constitutionally  mor- 
bid about  her  inclinations  than  a 
comprehensible  desire  to  make  her 
lover  as  wretched  as  possible  be- 
fore she  accepts  the  inevitable  fore- 
gone conclusion  of  being  happy 
with  him.  Why  should  disease 
necessarily  be  more  interesting 
than  health,  and  deformity  more 
fascinating  than  well-grown  limbs 
and  a  straight  backbone  1  We  are 
not  all  born  physicians,  whose  mis- 
sion it  is  to  gauge  the  depth  of 
every  wound,  and  lay  bare  the 
infirmities  of  each  running  sore ; 
although  of  late  the  demarcation 
line  which  used  to  divide  doctors 
from  novelists  seems  to  have  got 
somewhat  vague,  and  it  has  be- 
come the  fashion  nowadays  to  put 
scientific  labels  on  many  things 
which,  in  the  happy  days  of  our 
ignorant  youth,  used  to  be  ex- 
plained in  less  complex  fashion. 
Thus  in  a  recent  lecture  which  it 
was  our  good  fortune  to  attend,  it 
2Q 


584 


Some  French  Novelists. 


[Nov. 


was  decidedly  startling  to  be  in- 
formed by  a  learned  German  pro- 
fessor that  Hamlet  was  now  known 
to  have  been  a  confirmed  neures- 
thenic,  and  Ophelia  a  striking 
example  of  that  form  of  mental 
disease  known  to  science  as  nym- 
phomania  (N.B. — It  would  be  in- 
teresting to  know  whether  Shake- 
speare himself  was  aware  of  these 
facts :  or  is  it  possible  that  our 
greatest  poet  was  in  the  same  pre- 
dicament as  Monsieur  Jourdain, 
who  talked  prose  without  know- 
ing it  ?) ;  while  the  learned  Italian 
master  Lombroso  has  lately  been 
at  great  pains  to  demonstrate  that 
from  certain  evidence  contained  in 
some  passages  of  the  "Inferno," 
Dante  was  undoubtedly  addicted 
to  epileptic  fits,  although  it  can- 
not as  yet  be  conclusively  decided 
whether  the  particular  form  of 
the  disease  from  which  he  suffered 
is  to  be  designated  as  hystero- 
epilepsia  or  genuine  epilepsy. 

What  indeed  is  to  become  of 
poetry  and  art,  if  our  favourite 
heroes  and  heroines  of.  romance  are 
thus  ruthlessly  to  be  subjected  to 
pathological  analysis,  and  their 
most  delicate  feelings  and  passions 
brutally  laid  bare  by  the  dissecting- 
knife  ?  We  live  in  daily  terror  of 
being  told  that  all  the  tears  weakly 
shed  over  the  woes  of  Romeo  and 
Juliet  were  but  wasted  sympathy, 
since  these  misguided  young  people 
were  really  suffering  from  a  rather 
acute  attack  of  some  repulsive 
disease  with  a  long  Latin  name  ;  or 
of  learning  that  Katherine  the 
Shrew's  bad  temper  was  solely 
due  to  a  touch  of  liver  complaint, 
which  might  have  been  far  more 
easily  and  pleasantly  cured  by  a 
dose  of  Carlsbad  salts  than  by  the 
brutal  treatment  of  a  conjugal 
bully. 

First    and     foremost     amongst 


those  who  might  not  inaptly  be 
described  as  pathological  or  noso- 
logical  bards  stands,  of  course, 
the  prolific  Monsieur  Zola,  who, 
having  scarcely  completed  the  long 
dreary  series  of  the  Rougon- 
Macquart  novels,  has  just  launched 
upon  the  world  a  fresh  cargo  of 
disease,  under  the  ensign  of 
'Lourdes,'1 — a  remarkable  work 
which,  scarcely  issued  from  the 
printer's  press,  has  achieved  the 
melancholy  distinction  of  being  put 
on  the  Index. 

It  had  been  with  a  sigh  of  dis- 
tinct relief  that,  at  the  conclusion 
of  the  work  entitled  '  Dr  Pascal,' 
we  had  mentally  assisted  at  the  de- 
struction of  the  R/ougon-Macquart 
annals  ;  and  as  we  beheld  Madame 
Felicite  Rougon  (to  our  mind  the 
one  sensible  and  sympathetic  per- 
son in  the  whole  book),  with  her 
own  frail  fingers,  withered  and 
bloodless  with  extreme  old  age, 
yet  strong  with  the  power  of  a 
tenacious  resolve,  crush  down  into 
the  roaring  flames  the  papers  that 
represented  her  erudite  son's  life- 
work,  we  could  not  forego  a 
feeling  of  sneaking  admiration 
for  the  spirited  old  matron,  and 
would  even  have  been  delighted, 
had  circumstances  permitted,  to 
lend  her  a  helping  hand  in  the 
work  of  wholesale  destruction.  It 
was  an  unspeakable  comfort  to  im- 
agine that  these  odious  Rougon- 
Macquart  annals,  which  had  taken 
their  author  no  less  than  the 
quarter  of  a  century  to  compile, 
existed  no  more,  and  that  on  his 
own  solemn  assurance  we  should 
never  more  be  called  upon  to 
renew  acquaintance  with  any  one 
of  the  unsavoury  members  of 
this  ill-starred  family.  But  our 
hopes  of  a  fresh  departure,  which 
might  possibly  indicate  the  return 
to  more  natural  and  wholesome 
lives,  were  rudely  dispelled  by 


Lourdes,  par  Emile  Zola.     Paris:  Charpentier,  1894. 


1894.] 


Some  French  Novelists. 


585 


the  perusal  of  the  first  half-dozen 
pages  of  'Lourdes,'  bearing  in 
upon  us  the  melancholy  convic- 
tion that  we  had  here  but  ex- 
changed the  frying-pan  for  the 
fire  —  since  for  a  dozen  invalids 
served  up  to  us  in  previous  vol- 
umes, we  find  them  here  bristling 
by  scores.  And,  verily,  what  more 
fortunate  opportunity  for  gratify- 
ing his  pet  propensities  could 
Monsieur  Zola  have  found  than 
the  famous  express  -  train  from 
Paris  to  Lourdes,  the  so-called 
train-blanc,  which  yearly  in  the 
month  of  August  conveys  to  the 
miraculous  .grotto  a  wholesale  and 
miscellaneous  assortment  of  human 
misery  in  quest  of  relief?  Blind 
people  and  dumb,  paralytics  from 
birth  or  from  accident,  victims  of 
dissipation  or  of  hereditary  dis- 
ease, sybarites  whose  sad  afflic- 
tions have  been  chiefly  brought 
about  by  a  mistaken  desire  to 
make  one  stomach  do  the  work  of 
two,  and  others  who  have  never 
yet  known  what  it  is  to  feel 
otherwise  than  weary  or  famished, 
— are  here  all  swept  along  by  the 
same  current,  all  actuated  by  one 
identical  impulse,  the  hope  of  dis- 
covering in  the  obscure  Pyrenean 
village  the  answer  to  those  riddles 
which  have  hitherto  baffled  sci- 
ence. What  a  glorious  field  for 
research  !  what  a  rich  harvest  here 
to  be  gleaned  of  mouldering  and 
putrefied  fruits !  and  needless  to 
say  that  Monsieur  Zola  seizes 
upon  the  occasions  thus  presented 
with  all  his  customary  energy 
and  relish  for  the  repulsive, — for 
it  is  melancholy  to  have  to  recog- 
nise with  a  kind  of  shuddering 
admiration  that  this  gifted  artist's 
greatest  and  highest  flights  of 
genius  are  ever  inspired  by  the 
dunghill  or  the  charnel  -  house. 
The  sight  of  a  twelve-antler  stag, 
in  the  full  pride  of  its  virile  and 
vigorous  beauty,  will  leave  him 
unmoved,  as  something  insignifi- 


cant and  commonplace ;  but  show 
him  the  carcass  of  a  dead  dog,  de- 
voured by  maggots  and  in  the  last 
stage  of  putrefaction,  and  straight- 
way his  inspiration  will  take  fire, 
and  for  the  glorification  of  this 
rotten  hound  he  will  discover  such 
brilliant  metaphors,  such  surpris- 
ing and  novel  depths  of  hue  and 
shade,  as  effectually  to  dazzle 
and  delight  the  ignorant,  and  even 
to  bewilder  momentarily  the  crit- 
ic's equanimity. 

So  likewise  in  'Lourdes'  it  is, 
of  course,  with  the  most  repulsive 
forms  and  branches  of  disease  that 
we  are  chiefly  called  upon  to  deal ; 
and  in  the  long  weary  journey, 
occupying  upon  paper  alone  126 
pages  of  small  -  printed  type,  we 
are  spared  none  of  the  loathsome 
details  which  must  necessarily  ac- 
company the  transport  of  three 
hundred  more  or  less  afflicted 
persons,  when  forcibly  compressed 
in  midsummer  into  the  narrow 
limits  of  a  train.  Our  eyes  are 
forced  to  probe  their  most  hidden 
and  repulsive  sores,  our  ears  are 
lacerated  with  their  shrieks  and 
groans,  and  our  olfactory  organs  are 
repeatedly  offended  by  the  sugges- 
tion of  perfumes  more  potent  than 
sweet.  Having  once  landed  the 
weary  and  disgusted  reader  at  the 
terminus  station,  Monsieur  Zola 
resumes  his  well-known  documen- 
tary style,  and  gives  us  in  full 
not  only  the  entire  history  of  the 
so-called  miraculous  springs  of 
Lourdes,  and  of  the  subsequent 
net  of  intrigue,  deception,  mystery, 
and  speculation  woven  around  the 
little  mountain  village;  but  he 
likewise  forces  down  our  throat 
all  the  official,  sanitary,  and 
domiciliary  arrangements  intro- 
duced of  late  years  for  the  recep- 
tion of  the  pilgrims  forming  part 
of  this  gigantic  picnicing  party. 
Crushed  down  and  overshadowed 
beneath  this  overwhelming  mass 
of  historical,  statistical,  scientific, 


586 


Some  French  Novelists. 


[Nov. 


and  theological  information,  there 
is,  it  is  true,  a  thin  vein  of  ro- 
mance, which,  like  a  feeble  thread 
of  water  meandering  aimlessly 
through  the  vast  rocky  bed  in- 
tended for  a  giant  cascade,  asserts 
its  thin  puny  voice  from  time  to 
time,  without,  however,  succeeding 
in  arousing  any  serious  interest. 
This  is  the  tale  of  the  loves  of 
Pierre  and  Marie,  an  ethereal, 
vapoury  young  couple,  who  seem 
to  have  nothing  stronger  than  rose- 
water  in  their  veins,  and  to  be 
considerably  less  encumbered  by 
their  mortal  coils  than  a  pair  of 
transparent-winged  butterflies  who 
live  upon  sunshine  and  dew. 
Marie  has  been  afflicted  since 
childhood  by  an  inexplicable  para- 
lytic complaint,  and  Pierre,  de- 
spairing of  ever  being  able  to  wed 
the  only  woman  he  can  love,  has 
meanwhile  become  a  priest.  They 
meet  again  at  Lourdes,  where 
Marie  has  come  with  a  last  de- 
spairing hope  of  there  recovering 
the  use  of  her  limbs  through  the 
Virgin's  intercession ;  and  Pierre, 
who  has  lost  his  faith  as  a  Catholic 
priest,  makes  his  own  spiritual 
conversion  dependent  upon  Marie's 
cure.  She  regains  her  health  in 
consequence  of  one  of  those  strong 
nervous  revulsions  for  which 
science  has  as  yet  no  precise  label ; 
but  the  corresponding  miracle  in 
Pierre's  spiritual  state  does  not 
take  place,  for  he  has  been  con- 
vinced by  a  medical  friend  that 
Marie's  cure  was  solely  due  to 
natural  causes.  Pierre  has,  how- 
ever, the  courage  and  self-denial 
to  conceal  his  convictions  from 
Marie,  and  suffers  her  to  go  on 
believing  that  a  miracle  alone  has 
restored  her  lost  health.  At  the 
conclusion  of  the  book  we  see 
Pierre's  return  to  Paris  after  a  five 
days'  absence,  bereft  of  his  last  il- 
lusion, yet  with  no  other  choice  but 
to  go  on  preaching  a  creed  he  has 
ceased  believing  in,  but  which  pity 


and  compassion  for'  his  fellow- 
creatures  prevent  him  from  openly 
disowning : — 

"  Of  his  whole  journey  there  re- 
mained to  Pierre  but  a  mighty  com- 
passion overflowing  from  his  heart, 
and  leaving  it  wounded  and  bruised. 
,  .  .  He  had  seen  thousands  of  those 
poor  creatures  praying,  sobbing,  im- 
ploring the  Almighty  to  have  com- 
passion on  their  sufferings  ;  and  he 
had  wept  and  sobbed  along  with 
them,  keeping  within  him,  like  a  raw 
flesh-wound,  the  lamentable  frater- 
nity of  all  their  woes.  Nor  could  he 
think  of  these  poor  creatures  without 
burning  with  the  desire  to  relieve 
them.  What  indeed  if  the  old  simple 
faith  110  longer  sufficed,  if  in  retrac- 
ing our  footsteps  backwards  there 
was  danger  of  going  astray,  would  it 
then  be  necessary  to  close  the  grotto, 
to  preach  other  objects  of  effort, 
another  sort  of  patience?  But  his 
compassion  rebelled  at  the  sugges- 
tion. No,  no  !  It  were  a  crime  to 
close  the  dream  of  their  heaven  to 
those  sufferers  of  soul  and  body, 
whose  sole  alleviation  it  was  to  kneel 
down  midst  the  splendour  of  wax- 
lights,  rocked  by  the  dreamy  lullaby 
of  the  chanted  hymns.  He  himself 
had  not  committed  the  crime  of  un- 
deceiving Marie.  He  had  sacrificed 
himself  in  order  to  leave  to  her  the 
joy  of  her  delusion,  the  divine  con- 
solation of  having  been  cured  by  the 
Virgin.  "Where,  then,  could  be  the 
man  so  cruel  as  to  prevent  the 
humble  from  believing,  to  destroy 
in  them  the  consolation  of  the  super- 
natural 1  .  .  .  No,  no  !  We  have  not 
the  right  to  discourage  any  one. 
Lourdes  must  be  tolerated,  as  we 
tolerate  a  fiction  which  is  necessary 
to  life." 

In  these  and  similar  passages 
the  author  sums  up  his  impres- 
sions of  Lourdes  and  its  pilgrim- 
age; for  who  can  doubt  that  the 
writer  has  more  or  less  identified 
himself  with  his  hero  Pierre? 
But  if,  as  he  tells  us,  the  whole 
significance  of  the  wonder  -  place 
rests  but  upon  a  flimsy  illusion  in 
the  mind  of  the  ignorant,  which 
it  were  mere  wanton  cruelty  to 


1894.] 


Some  French  Novelists. 


587 


dispel  —  why,  then,  may  we  ask, 
does  this  high-minded  philanthrop- 
ist apparently  defeat  his  own  ends 
by  trumpeting  forth  to  the  world 
at  large  the  true  secret  of  this 
pious  but  necessary  fraud  1  Why, 
indeed,  but  for  the  patently  pro- 
saic fact  that  the  yellow -backed 
volumes  containing  these  "  secret " 
impressions  have  already  been 
issued  in  an  edition  of  forty  thous- 
and copies. 

Although  Monsieur  Edouard 
Rod  can  scarcely  be  called  a 
cheerful  writer,  yet  it  is  a  de- 
cided relaxation  to  turn  to  one  of 
his  thoughtful  and  refined  works, 
after  the  overloaded  mechanism 
and  scientific  pedantry  of  a  Zola. 
Here  we  find  no  straining  after 
effect,  —  none  of  those  dramatic 
tricks  or  carefully  prepared  sur- 
prises to  which  the  author  of 
'  L'Assommoir '  owes  most  of  his 
success,  and  which  are  often  al- 
most as  fatiguing  to  the  reader 
as  one  feels  that  they  must  have 
been  to  the  writer  who  invented 
them.  The  great  difference  be- 
tween Monsieur  Rod's  method  and 
that  of  most  other  contemporary 
novelists  is  that  he  somehow  con- 
trives to  convey  the  impression 
that  he  writes  rather  from  a  sense 
of  deep  conviction,  and  in  order 
to  satisfy  personal  predilection, 
than  with  any  thought  of  the 
public  to  whom  his  work  is  ultim- 
ately to  be  addressed.  He  is, 
moreover,  one  of  the  few  French 
writers  who  understand  how  to 
handle  the  delicate  topic  of  illicit 
love  as  it  should  be  treated — that 
is  to  say,  boldly  and  straightfor- 
wardly, without  either  ignoring  its 
existence  as  a  powerful  arbitrator 
of  human  fate,  or  falling  into  the 
opposite  error  of  exalting  every  vul- 
gar infatuation  of  the  senses  into 
something  unconditionally  sublime. 


In  '  La  Vie  privee  de  Michel 
Teissier,'  published  about  a  year 
ago,  M.  Rod  gave  us  the  his- 
tory of  an  eminent  politician,  who, 
in  the  zenith  of  his  political  suc- 
cess, married  to  a  wife  whom  he 
has  loved  sincerely,  and  who  has 
done  nothing  to  forfeit  his  affec- 
tion, abandons  her  and  his  position 
in  order  to  marry  another  woman, 
to  whom  he  has  unfortunately  be- 
come attached,  almost  without 
any  fault  of  his  own  or  of  hers. 
Blanche  Esteve  is  no  corrupted 
Circe,  who  has  tried  to  lure  away 
a  married  man  from  the  path  of 
duty ;  neither  are  they  guilty,  in 
the  common  sense  of  the  word,  of 
aught  but  of  having  loved  each 
other  unawares,  and  they  would 
have  been  willing  enough  to  make 
the  sacrifice  of  their  unfortunate 
passion,  in  order  to  avoid  inflict- 
ing pain  on  Michel's  unconscious 
wife,  had  not  Susanne  herself,  by 
surprising  their  secret,  virtually 
compelled  her  husband  to  choose 
between  her  and  Blanche.  He 
decides,  although  with  a  heavy 
heart,  upon  leaving  his  wife  and 
children  ;  and  by  taking  advantage 
of  the  facilities  now  offered  of 
obtaining  a  divorce,  he  regains 
his  liberty  and  marries  Blanche. 
The  last  chapter  of  this  simple 
but  melancholy  little  tale  shows 
the  new-married  couple  setting  off 
for  England  on  a  rather  dreary 
honeymoon  trip,  weighed  down 
by  the  sense  of  having  destroyed 
a  domestic  hearth,  without  the 
counterbalancing  conviction  of 
having  gained  for  themselves  an 
unalloyed  guarantee  of  bliss  in 
exchange. 

M.  Rod's  new  novel,  entitled 
'La  Seconde  Vie  de  Michel  Teis- 
sier,' *  takes  up  the  story  eight 
years  later.  When  living  at 
Clarens  with  Blanche,  Michel  re- 
ceives the  news  that  Susanne,  his 


1  La  Seconde  Vie  de  Michel  Teissier.     Paris  :  Perrin  et  Cie.,  1894. 


588 


Some  French  Novelists. 


[Nov. 


first  wife,  has  suddenly  succumbed 
to  an  attack  of  aneurism.  Ever 
since  their  marriage  Michel  and 
Blanche  had  led  a  restless  wander- 
ing life,  like  a  pair  of  exiles  flit- 
ting about  from  place  to  place, 
without  fixed  home  or  occupation, 
and  with  nothing  remaining  to  do 
now  but  to  go  on  loving  each  other 
to  the  end  of  the  chapter,  without 
obstacle  or  opposition. 

"  They  had  now  realised  in  its  en- 
tirety the  dream  for  which  they  had 
yearned  in  those  bygone  days  when 
they  had  despaired  of  ever  overcoming 
the    obstacles  accumulated   between 
themselves  and  their  love,  that  dream 
of  an  isolated  intimacy  which  is  that 
of  all  lovers.     Without  crossing  the 
ocean  they  had  shut  themselves  up  in 
a  desert  island  ;  they  could  live  there 
unmolested    by  irksome    ties,    since 
there  were  none  that  they  had  .not 
cast  off ;  without  duties  towards  any 
one,  since  they  had  extricated  them- 
selves from  all  duties  ;  living  one  for 
the  other,  belonging  one  to  the  other, 
having  made  of  their  love  the  supreme 
object  of  their  life  as  of  their  every 
thought.      They    grazed    the    world 
without  being  drawn  into  its  move- 
ments, separated  from  those   others 
by   something  more   insurmountable 
than  space,  existing  and  being  able  to 
exist  but  for  themselves,  themselves 
alone.     At  first  a  sort  of  curiosity  at- 
tached to  their  steps  ;  they  had  eluded 
it  by  shutting  themselves  up  in  their 
English  cottage,  and  now  it  no  longer 
threatened  to  trouble  them.      Their 
names  in  a  hotel  register  now  passed 
unnoticed.       People    hardly  remem- 
bered that  Michel  Teissier  had  been 
the  instigator  and  leader  of  a  great 
movement   of    opinion.    .    .    .    These 
were  forgotten  incidents,  and  he  him- 
self was  but  a  man  who  had  disap- 
peared. 

"Did  Teissier  suffer  from  this  eclipse? 
It  would  have  been  hard  to  say.  He 
appeared  to  regret  nothing ;  he  did 
not  complain  ;  he  could  even  on  occa- 
sion speak  with  absolute  detachment 
of  his  former  interests.  But  there 
was  buried  within  him  a  man  of  ac- 
tion, who,  reduced  to  idleness,  must 
have  had  his  hours  of  weariness,  mo- 
ments of  suffering  ;  and  it  was  these 


moments,  no  doubt,  which  he  sought 
to  cheat  by  his  continual  flittings, 
whose  pretext  was  always  insufficient, 
even  when  he  took  the  trouble  to  find 
one.     A  whole  portion  of  himself — 
that  portion  which  in  his  first  life  had 
been  the  most  strongly  developed,  the 
active,  energetic,  combative  being — 
now    remained    unemployed  ;    while 
that  second  being,  the  man  of  senti- 
ment, long  neglected,  now  reigned  su- 
preme. He  could  not,  he  must  not,  now 
do  aught  but  love,  without  diversion, 
without  obstacle.     The  champion,  ac- 
customed to  the  vast  arena  of  public 
debate,  had  no  longer  an  adversary 
to  trample  under  foot ;  the  orator  of 
powerful  voice,  of  commanding  ges- 
ture, was  now  reduced  to  perpetual  sil- 
ence ;  the  dexterous  leader  had  no  more 
party  to  organise,  to  guide,  to  mould, 
as  a  sculptor  forms  the  obedient  clay ; 
the  man  of  generous  intentions  had 
no  more  ideals  to  realise,  none  more 
to  follow  up  ;  the  ambitious  man  had 
no  longer  an  object  for  his  ambition. 
He  avoided  thinking  of  these  things, 
but  when  he  did  think  of  them  he  was 
seized  with  bitterness.     Having,  like 
most  orators,  the  habit  of  clothing  his 
thoughts    in    pictorial   language,   he 
would  then  compare  himself  to  a  pro- 
prietor who,  possessed  of  vast  domains, 
rich  with  waving  golden  harvests  and 
ripening  vines,  should  have  renounced 
all  these  in  order  to  shut  himself  up 
in  a  little  garden,  where  he  cultivated 
flowers,   only  flowers  ;   or  else,  with 
yet    more    cutting  irony,   he   would 
liken  himself  to  a  tragedian  accus- 
tomed to  the  applause  of  great  scenes, 
who  should  have  renounced  his  parts 
in  order  to  warble    incessantly  the 
same  romance  in  a  feeble  tenor  voice." 

And  Blanche  herself  is  not  happy, 
for  she  suffers  when  reading  on 
her  husband's  brow  the  thoughts 
he  dare  not  confess,  and  her 
sufferings  are  all  the  greater  from 
the  consciousness  of  the  inferiority 
of  her  sacrifice  as  compared  to  his. 
For  his  sake  she  has  had  to  break 
no  precious  chain,  has  renounced 
no  sacred  bonds  of  affection.  She 
did  not  tell  herself  that  true  love 
disdains  any  such  debtor  and 
creditor  account;  but  rather  she 
brooded  over  these  things,  finding 


1894.] 


Some  French  Novelists. 


589 


in  them  a  reason  for  loving  him 
the  more,  and  of  incessantly  dread- 
ing the  arrival  of  some  chance 
which  should  raise  up  to  life  again 
the  buried  past. 

It  is  at  this  juncture  of  the 
situation  that  Michel  receives  a 
telegraphic  despatch  to  inform 
him  that  his  first  wife  Susanne  is 
dead.  Hitherto,  during  the  last 
eight  years,  the  news  he  had  re- 
ceived of  his  two  daughters,  Annie 
and  Lawrence,  had  been  but  spar- 
ing, for  he  had  deemed  it  wiser,  for 
their  sake  as  well  as  for  his  own, 
to  abstain  from  direct  communi- 
cations, and  the  rare  letters  of 
Mondet,  his  old  friend,  were 
mainly  confined  to  laconic  bulletins 
regarding  the  health  and  educa- 
tion of  his  children,  for  this  old 
friendship  too  had  been  wrecked 
in  the  stupendous  tempest  which 
had  made  such  havoc  of  his  life. 
But  now  this  death  changes  every- 
thing, and  Michel  abruptly  realises 
that  he  will  have  henceforward  to 
resume  a  father's  duties.  But  will 
these  long-neglected  daughters  be 
now  inclined  to  accept  him  as  a 
parent?  and,  above  all,  how  can 
they  be  induced  to  accept  Blanche 
as  a  step-mother  1  His  heart  filled 
with  painful  misgivings,  Teissier 
hastens  to  the  little  town  where 
his  first  wife  had  settled  down 
since  her  enforced  widowhood, 
while  in  no  less  agonised  suspense 
Blanche  awaits  his  return. 

The  meeting  between  father  and 
daughters  is  well  described  : — 

"  There  are  some  situations  in  life 
so  inextricably  complicated  as  to  be- 
wilder the  most  lucid  intelligence  :  it 
was  in  vain  that,  left  alone  tossing 
restlessly  in  his  improvised  bed, 
Michel  asked  himself  how  he  should 
accost  his  daughters,  what  words  he 
should  say  to  them,  in  what  manner 
he  should  look  at  them.  He  could 
find  nothing.  All  the  phrases  he 
prepared  struck  him  as  being  weak 
and  awkward.  He  rejected  them, 
arranging  others  that  were  no  better, 


and  so  on  and  on,  till  in  this  delusive 
pastime  he  felt  the  words  begin  to  lose 
all  sense,  and  thought  got  drowned  in 
delirious  combinations. 

"  '  I  shall  reflect  to-morrow,'  he  said 
to  himself,  '  when  I  have  slept ;  for 
sleep  I  must.'" 

But  when  the  morrow  came,  he 
found  it  no  easier  to  arrange  his 
thoughts,  and  it  was  almost  with 
terror  that  he  prepared  to  meet 
his  daughters : — 

"  At  last  they  entered,  one  behind 
the  other,  and  stopped  at  two  paces 
from  the  door. 

"  Annie,  who  was  nearly  eighteen, 
was  tall,  of  elegant  stature,  with  pale 
and  somewhat  sickly  complexion,  her 
pallor  accentuated  by  her  black  dress  ; 
her  face,  without  being  beautiful,  was 
sweet  and  delicate,  lighted  up  by 
magnificent  eyes,  although  just  now 
swollen  by  tears.  She  was  panting 
with  emotion,  whilst  behind  her, 
Lawrence,  about  two  years  her  junior, 
prettier,  darker,  of  more  robust  ap- 
pearance, her  eyes  obstinately  lowered, 
had  an  attitude  at  once  frightened 
and  defiant. 

" '  My  poor,  dear  little  ones  ! '  ex- 
claimed Michel ;  and  he  advanced  to- 
wards them  with  outstretched  hands, 
as  he  broke  down  sobbing. 

"  There  was  nothing  prepared,  noth- 
ing discordant  in  his  exclamation  or 
in  his  movement.  The  tears  had 
flowed  spontaneously  from  his  heart, 
bursting  with  anguish  since  so  many 
hours,  and  now  melting  at  sight  of 
the  irresistibly  pathetic  attitude  of 
the  two  orphans.  He  did  not  say  to 
himself  that  he  had  not  the  right  to 
weep  for  the  defunct,  and  that  his 
tears  might  appear  questionable  ;  he 
had  wept  before  reflecting,  in  one  of 
those  moments  when  calculations  are 
as  nought,  when  the  strongest  cease 
to  be  masters  of  themselves.  And 
yet  what  could  he  have  found  more 
eloquent  than  those  very  tears? 
Neither  did  they,  the  two  mourners, 
who  had  just  now  been  dreading  his 
sight,  seek  to  analyse  the  cause  of 
his  tears.  They  did  not  ask  them- 
selves why  and  by  what  right  he 
caine  to  weep  with  them ;  they  merely 
saw  that  he  wept,  and  feeling  them- 
selves alone,  abandoned,  and  wretched, 


590 


Some  French  Novelists. 


[Nov. 


they  did  not  resist  the  impulse  that 
pushed  them  into  his  arms." 

By-and-by,  however,  these  in- 
stinctive embraces  give  way  to  a 
less  congenial  state  of  things.  So 
long  as  father  and  daughters  con- 
tinue to  weep  locked  in  each 
other's  arms,  there  is  no  con- 
sciousness of  any  barrier  between 
them;  but  when  after  a  time 
words  have  got  to  take  the  place 
of  tears,  the  feeling  of  constraint 
comes  back  with  tenfold  force.  It 
seems  equally  impossible  to  allude 
to  a  past  which  has  contained  such 
painful  family  events,  as  to  make 
plans  for  a  future  which  must 
necessarily  include  that  other  wo- 
man who  has  taken  their  mother's 
place,  Weighed  down  by  the  con- 
sciousness of  his  false  position, 
Teissier  becomes  embarrassed  and 
awkward,  the  girls  shy  and  mis- 
trustful. With  some  reluctance 
Annie  and  Lawrence  consent  to 
accompany  their  father  back  to 
Montreux.  Annie,  the  more  gentle 
and  reasonable  of  the  two,  shows 
herself  willing  to  make  the  best  of 
the  situation;  but  the  more  impetu- 
ous younger  sister  steadily  declines 
to  regard  her  step-mother  in  any 
other  light  than  that  of  an  enemy, 
and  turns  a  deaf  ear  to  her  sister's 
arguments  when  she  says — 

"'We  should  not  judge  others  by 
ourselves,  but  must  try  to  understand 
them.  .  .  .  What  she  has  done  is 
dreadful :  I  think  so,  too,  like  your- 
self. She  has  been  ungrateful  to 
mamma,  who  was  so  good  to  her.  She 
has  been  selfish.  She  has  evaded  all 
her  duties — that  is  true.  But ' 

"The  young  girl's  voice  took  a 
deeper  accent. 

"  'How  she  must  have  loved  in  order 
to  do  so  much  harm  to  those  who  had 
done  none  to  her  !  and  how  she  must 
have  suffered  from  it  later  !  For  she 
was  not  bad,  Lawrence,  I  assure  you. 
I  remember  her  quite  well  when  she 
used  to  come  to  our  house  formerly  in 
Paris.  .  .  .' 

"Lawrence  had  scarcely  listened, 


and  wearily  was  undoing  her  heavy 
plait  before  the  mirror. 

"  'All  that  can  make  no  difference,' 
she  retorted,  in  a  cutting  voice.  '  I 
do  not  care  to  know  whether  this 
woman  is  good  or  bad.  I  detest,  I 
despise  her,  and  I  should  be  ashamed 
of  being  happy  in  her  house.  I  do 
not  wish  to  believe  that  she  has  loved. 
She  was  selfish,  ambitious,  bad — that 
is  all.  She  is  an  intrigante,  a — 
"  Annie,  on  her  side,  interrupted — 
"  'You  forget  that  she  is  our  father's 
wife,'  she  said,  firmly.  '  By  this  title, 
at  least,  she  has  claims  on  our  con- 
sideration. Let  us  wait  to  know  her 
before  judging  her  so  severely.'" 

True  to  these  warlike  protesta- 
tions, Lawrence  accosts  her  step- 
mother with  sullen  defiance  and  a 
scarcely  veiled  impertinence,  which 
all  the  latter's  tact  and  patience 
prove  unavailing  to  disarm.  At 
every  step  of  their  new  life  its 
false  position  is  brought  home  to 
all  concerned,  and  ever  more  and 
more  is  forced  upon  Blanche  the 
melancholy  conviction  that  the 
harm  done  in  the  past  can  never 
more  be  undone,  and  must  perforce 
continue  to  blight  the  life  of  an 
innocent  younger  generation.  An 
attachment  has  sprung  up  between 
Annie  and  the  son  of  Teissier's 
successor  or  leader  of  his  political 
party,  a  man  of  stern  inflexibility, 
who  refuses  to  countenance  a 
union  with  the  daughter  of  a  man 
whose  private  character  has  sus- 
tained such  an  irretrievable  blot ; 
and  it  is  Blanche's  worst  punish- 
ment to  be  obliged  to  inflict  on 
her  gentle  patient  step-daughter 
the  wound  which  is  ultimately  to 
prove  fatal : — 

"...  Cold  drops  were  standing 
on  Blanche's  forehead.  Was  this, 
indeed,  the  moment,  after  such  a 
terrible  shock,  to  pursue  to  its  bitter 
end  the  necessary  explanation  ?  And 
yet  how  was  it  possible  to  leave  this 
child  to  nourish  vain  hopes  that 
would  strengthen  in  her  tender  heart 
a  futile  sentiment,  and  only  prepare 
for  her  fresh  pain  in  the  future  ? 


1894.] 


Some  French  Novelists. 


591 


" '  These  difficulties,'  she  said,  with 
a  great  effort,  'would  proceed  from 
his  father.  .  .  .' 

"And  then,  as  Annie's  clear  eyes 
were  fixed  upon  her,  she  turned  away 
her  own  as  she  continued — 

"  *  You  know  it,  there  are  things 
in  your  father's  former  life — in  our 
past ' 

"  It  was  impossible  for  her  to  pro- 
ceed. 

"'Yes,  I  know,'  returned  Annie, 
gravely.  '  But  I  have  never  thought 
it  possible  that  these  things  could 
cause — M.  de  Saint  Brun  to  with- 
draw from  me.' 

"Without  adding  anything  more, 
she  continued  to  question  notwith- 
standing. With  the  tone  of  her  voice, 
with  her  eyes,  with  the  whole  anguish 
of  her  heart,  she  was  asking  why  her 
father's  action  should  recoil  upon  her, 
why  she  should  be  spurned  unknown, 
why  the  path  of  love  and  happiness 
should  be  closed  to  her  1 

•'"The  world  is  thus,'  murmured 
Blanche. 

"  There  was  a  long  pause,  each  one 
pursuing  silently  the  chain  of  her  re- 
flections. Ten  minutes  passed  thus, 
slow  and  heavy  as  the  invisible  wing 
of  time  ever  is.  The  young  girl  push- 
ing her  cushions  sat  up  on  the  sofa  ; 
and  as  she  now  appeared  to  be  calm, 
Blanche  said  to  her  mechanically, 
thinking  as  it  were  aloud — 

"  '  You  will  forget,  my  child.  .  .  . 
At  your  age  life  is  still  so  bright  ! ' 

"  Annie  shook  her  head. 

" '  You  know  quite  well  that  one 
does  not  forget, '  she  answered .  'Why 
should  I  be  less  capable  of  a  great 
love  than ' 

"  She  had  been  on  the  point,  fol- 
lowing up  her  train  of  thought,  of 
saying  '  than  yourself,'  but  corrected 
herself  by  saying — 

"  '  Than  another  woman.' 

"  But  Blanche  had  guessed :  she 
felt  herself  understood,  and  loved  her 
for  it." 

The  most  cruel  irony  in  the 
unequal  workings  of  Nemesis  is 
that  Michel  Teissier  himself,  the 
chief  culprit,  is  eventually  the 
least  punished,  for  at  the  con- 
clusion of  the  book  we  see  him 
about  to  re-enter  the  political 
arena  with  a  fresh  lease  of  energy, 


accumulated  during  his  enforced 
idleness,  and  he  receives  the  news 
of  his  nomination  but  a  few  hours 
before  his  eldest  daughter  is 
carried  to  the  grave  : — 

"  On  Sunday  evening,  as  they  were 
all  assembled  in  the  mortuary-cham- 
ber, in  presence  of  the  coffin  that  was 
about  to  be  closed,  a  telegram  ar- 
rived. 

'"What  is  it?'  asked  Blanche, 
mechanically. 

"  Michel  replied — 

"  'My  election  is  assured.' 

"  His  voice  had  betrayed  no  elated 
vibration,  nor  had  his  eye  lighted  up. 
Why,  therefore,  did  this  piece  of  news, 
smothered  down  by  the  mourning, 
evoke,  as  it  were,  two  lightning 
flashes,  blending  together  from  the 
souls  of  Blanche  and  Lawrence?  They 
looked  at  each  other  for  an  instant ; 
then  Lawrence,  who  had  not  yet  been 
able  to  weep,  burst  into  tears,  and 
threw  herself  into  the  young  woman's 
arms  as  she  murmured  between  sobs — 

"  '  Forgive  me  !  forgive  me  !  You 
are  the  only  one  who  knew  how  to 
love  her ! ' 

"She  said  this  very  low,  without 
bitterness  or  reproach  towards  any 
one,  as  though  suddenly  the  gentle- 
ness of  her  dead  sister  had  passed  into 
her.  Michel  did  not  hear.  He  only 
saw,  and  it  was  for  him  a  gleam  of 
consolation  to  realise  that  his  wife 
and  daughter,  moved  by  the  same  emo- 
tion, were  being  united  in  a  concilia- 
tory embrace,  and  were  mingling 
their  tears  brow  against  brow.  But 
he  failed  to  understand  the  profound 
significance  of  those  tears  :  he  did  not 
guess  that  they  came  from  an  identi- 
cal source  in  order  to  be  lost  in  the 
same  current ;  that  they  were  but  an 
isolated  sigh  in  the  unceasing  lament 
of  those  who  are  the  eternal  victims 
of  our  selfishness,  our  ambition,  and 
our  hardness." 

It  is  difficult,  by  the  short  ex- 
tracts here  given,  to  convey  a  just 
idea  of  the  peculiar  charm  of 
M.  Rod's  workmanship,  a  charm 
which  chiefly  consists  in  the  evolu- 
tionary perfection  with  which  the 
characters  are  developed  and  sus- 
tained, and  the  climax  brought 


592 


Some  French  Novelists. 


[Nov. 


about  by  a  series  of  incidents  so 
simple  as  to  appear  insignificant 
at  first  sight,  but  which  in  reality 
are  but  the  perfection  of  an  art 
scarcely  ever  to  be  found  on  our 
side  of  the  Channel.  The  book 
is  essentially  one  which  only  a 
Frenchman  could  have  written, 
although  at  the  same  time  it  is 
only  fair  to  say  that  very  few 
Frenchmen,  either  of  the  present 
or  of  the  past  generation,  would 
have  been  capable  of  writing  it. 

Of  a  totally  different  class  of 
fiction,  but  with  distinctive  merits 
of  its  own,  is  Jean  de  la  Brete's 
latest  work,  *  Badinage/  1  a  book 
which  undoubtedly  deserves  to  be 
honourably  mentioned  here,  were 
it  only  for  the  exceptional  fact 
that,  without  being  in  the  least 
mawkish  or  sentimental,  it  may 
yet  be  read  with  impunity  by  the 
most  carefully  preserved  "  young 
person."  The  genial  author  of 
that  delightful  girlish  autobio- 
graphy, '  Mon  Oncle  et  mon  Cure,' 
has  given  us  many  other  almost 
equally  charming  pictures  of  coun- 
try-life in  France,  the  life  of  the 
old  French  chateaux,  buried  deep 
in  the  provinces,  where,  if  we  are 
to  believe  the  author  aright,  the 
wickedness  of  the  Parisian  world 
has  not  yet  penetrated,  and  simple 
truth  and  honesty,  loyal  faith, 
chivalrous  love,  and  all  the  rest 
of  the  patriarchal  virtues,  are  in- 
variably to  be  found  grouped 
around  some  ancient  family  whose 
meagre  rent-roll  ill  matches  its 
lengthy  pedigree.  The  heroine 
of  these  exceptionally  moral  ro- 
mances is  almost  invariably  an 
enchanting  hoyden  of  the  enfant 
terrible  type,  a  child  of  nature, 
gifted  with  a  warm  and  faithful 
heart,  a  keen  sense  of  the  ludi- 
crous, and  a  ready  wit,  which 
makes  her  the  terror  and  admira- 


tion of  all  who  come  into  contact 
with  her.  Without  having  ever 
seen  the  outside  world,  this  mar- 
vellous young  lady  seems  to  know 
all  about  it  by  intuition  alone, 
detecting  its  follies  and  deceits 
with  the  eye  of  an  expert,  and 
promptly  condemning  them  with 
unerring  wisdom.  Whether  such 
girls  really  exist,  and  where  they 
are  to  be  found,  is  a  question 
which  we  shall  not  attempt  to 
solve ;  but  the  portrait,  if  a 
fancy  one,  is  at  all  events  very 
pleasing,  and  it  speaks  much  for 
the  charm  of  the  author's  style 
that  he  succeeds,  at  least  for  the 
nonce,  in  investing  his  heroine 
with  a  certain  semblance  of  real- 
ity in  the  reader's  eyes,  and  arous- 
ing his  interest  in  the  simple 
love-story,  whose  course  remains 
unmarked  by  any  very  thrilling 
incidents  or  stupendous  obstacles. 

The  title  of  'Badinage'  is  its 
only  weak  point,  in  so  far  as  it 
lacks  all  discernible  connection 
with  the  contents  of  the  book. 
But  what  does  that  signify,  after 
all  1  The  old  saying,  "  Give  a  dog 
a  bad  name  and  hang  it,"  may  well 
be  rendered  thus  nowadays,  "  Give 
a  book  a  silly  name  and  sell  it." 
Only  choose  a  title  sufficiently  in- 
ane, pointless,  and,  as  far  as  pos- 
sible, irrelevant  to  the  subject 
treated,  and  the  success  of  your 
book  is  made.  Let,  for  instance, 
any  obscure  young  author  desir- 
ous of  rapidly  achieving  celebrity 
select  'Boo'  as  the  title  of  his 
first  novel,  and  before  a  week  has 
elapsed  every  one  you  meet  will 
ask  enthusiastically,  "  Oh,  have 
you  read  'BooT' 

To  return,  however,  to  '  Badin- 
age,' which,  far  from  being  a  joke, 
is  the  history  of  a  young  lady  who 
takes  herself  and  her  life  very 
seriously,  conveyed  to  the  reader 
by  the  rather  well-worn  device  of 


1  Badinage.     Jean  de  la  Brcte.     Paris  :  Plon  Nourrit  et  Cie.,  1894. 


1894.] 


Some  French  Novelists. 


593 


a  series  of  letters  addressed  to  a 
soi-disant  bosom  friend,  a  person 
of  straw  who  never  appears  in  the 
story.  But  these  letters  are  de- 
lightfully fresh  and  original,  and 
it  is  more  than  probable  that,  nar- 
rated in  any  other  language  but 
her  own,  the  history  of  Claude  de 
Metierne  would  have  lost  its  prin- 
cipal charm. 

Claude,  who  has  grown  up  be- 
tween a  silly  fantastic  old  grand- 
mother and  a  distant  cousin  who 
fondly  believes  herself  to  be  a 
profound  student  of  human  nature, 
describes  her  relatives  in  the  fol- 
lowing manner  : — 

"  Grandmother  has  remained  intel- 
lectually at  the  year  1830,  the  golden 
age  of  her  youth  and  of  her  ideas. 
In  growing  old,  all  reminiscences  pos- 
terior to  this  date,  with  the  exception 
of  her  great  sorrows,  have  faded,  and 
the  engraving  chisel  has  marked  noth- 
ing deeply  save  the  first  impressions. 
As  the  result  of  this  state,  we  have 
ungainly  furniture  strewn  about  the 
house,  a  disastrous  taste,  and  a  sort 
of  retrospective  existence,  establish- 
ing upon  one  fixed  point  an  intellect 
which  has  remained  very  young  and 
very  inexperienced. 

"  In  literature,  grandmother  has 
very  distinct  predilections.  She 
adores  Madame  de  Genlis,  she  loves 
Madame  Cottin.  She  still  weeps  in 
realising  for  the  hundredth  time  the 
triumphs  of  Corinne,  and  Walter  Scott 
is  her  idol. 

"  Grandmother  is  romantic,  and  has 
a  fashion  of  her  own  of  settling  diffi- 
cult questions  without  reference  to 
obstacles  and  danger.  During  the  war, 
when  the  arrival  of  the  Prussians  at 
Anjou  was  spoken  of,  she  never  lost 
her  composure.  She  sold  her  cow, 
which  might  have  encumbered  her 
movements,  and  made  the  following 
astounding  announcement  to  her  sur- 
roundings— 

" '  As  soon  as  I  hear  that  those 
Prussians  are  at  Tours,  we  will  get 
into  my  caltehe  with  Walter  Scott, 
and  will  start  off  vaguely  before  us  to 
escape  them.3 

"And  in  spirit  grandmother  saw 
herself,  like  Diana  Vernon,  clearing 
mountains,  valleys,  dangers,  and  pre- 


cipices with  the  serenity  of  courage 
and  of  a  peaceful  soul. 

"  In  order  to  simplify  the  situation, 
the  silver  plate,  along  with  some  pre- 
cious objects,  had  been  stowed  away 
in  a  hiding-place  devised  by  my  cousin, 
and  devised  in  such  manner  that  it 
must  infallibly  have  caught  the  eyes 
of  the  conquerors  had  they  invaded 
Le  Vaulne,  where  they  would  have 
found  the  doors  sufficiently  worm-  eaten 
to  fall  into  dust  at  the  mere  sight  of  a 
bayonet." 

Unfortunately  the  Prussians 
give  no  opportunity  of  testing  the 
efficacy  of  these  ingenious  arrange- 
ments, for  they  never  think  of 
going  out  of  their  way  to  visit  the 
solitary  castle ;  but  grief  and  con- 
sternation are  presently  conveyed 
to  its  inhabitants  by  the  news 
that  Claude's  father  has  perished 
in  battle,  and,  within  a  few  days 
of  his  decease,  her  mother  too  has 
been  carried  off  by  brain-fever. 
After  dwelling  on  these  mis- 
fortunes, Claude  goes  on  thus  to 
describe  her  other  remaining  rela- 
tive : — 

"  If  grandmother  still  turns  the 
spinning-wheel  from  time  to  time, 
plays  oil  the  guitar,  and  lives  in  the 
first  part  of  this  century,  Madame  de 
Lines,  my  cousin,  moves,  intellectually 
speaking,  in  a  whole  period  which 
does  not  overstep  1860.  She  speaks 
with  passionate  interest  of  the  litera- 
ture of  her  time,  of  the  conflicts  be- 
tween Veuillot,  of  detestable  memory, 
and  of  the  liberal  Catholics.  She 
dreams  or  philosophises,  and  digs 
mouse-holes,  at  the  bottom  of  which 
she  suddenly  makes  discoveries,  which 
she  carefully  consigns  to  a  note-book, 
with,  I  believe,  the  latent  idea  of  see- 
ing them  pass  on  to  posterity,  with 
the  view  of  enlightening  it  as  to  the 
psychological  condition  of  man. 

"  If  you  ask  who  directs  the  house- 
hold, I  would  tell  you  that  it  is  never 
so  well  directed  as  when  no  one 
troubles  their  head  about  it,  for  grand- 
mother is  like  all  our  ancestresses, 
who  had  so  many  excellent  recipes 
for  making  easy  things  in  a  difficult 
manner ;  and  as  to  my  cousin,  crouched 


594 


Some  French  Novelists. 


[Nov 


in  her  mouse-hole,  and  endeavouring 
to  enlarge  it  by  nibbling  at  some 
thought,  the  pot  au  feu,  whose  com- 
position she  scarcely  knows,  might 
have  boiled  over  into  the  flames  or 
remained  eternally  at  the  state  of 
clear  water  without  her  philosophy 
designing  to  remark  it." 

The  quaint  surroundings  of  the 
castle,  the  farm  and  household 
animals,  and  the  portraits  of  some 
old  family  domestics,  whose  gro- 
tesque peculiarities  are  as  remark- 
able as  their  intrinsic  worth,  are 
all  touched  off,  or  rather  suggest- 
ed, with  humour  and  delicacy,  as 
likewise  the  little  scraps  of  dia- 
logue serving  to  illustrate  the 
development  of  events,  and  of 
which  the  following  is  a  good 
specimen  : — 

"  I  was  sitting  this  morning  on 
a  wooden  bench.  This  bench  is  a 
simple  board,  placed  without  the 
shadow  of  style  upon  two  stones. 
The  board  has  become  black  with 
age,  its  surface  crumbles  away  when 
scratched,  and  is  partially  covered 
over  by  a  little  coating  of  clinging 
lichen.  I  was  vaguely  dreaming 
over  this  lichen,  which  seemed  to 
inspire  me,  I  know  not  why,  with  a 
quantity  of  reflections.  I  saw  Madame 
de  Lines  advancing  towards  me,  her 
shapeless  gown  blown  out  by  the 
wind,  and  her  garden-hat  in  hand. 
Her  serious  expression  made  me  anti- 
cipate that  we  were  in  accelerated 
march  towards  philosophy. 

"  The  opening  was  in  truth  alarm- 
ingly profound. 

"  '  My  child,'  she  said,  '  the  human 
heart  is  a  harpsichord.3 

"Instinctively,  and  with  a  lively 
gesture,  I  moved  my  hand  to  the 
site  of  this  organ,  in  order  to  see 
whether  there  was  any  truth  in  the 
assertion.  Then,  smiling  at  my  own 
simplicity,  I  answered  in  a  feeble 
voice — 

" '  A  harpsichord,  madame  ! ' 

"'A  harpsichord,  Claude,'  she  re- 
plied, in  the  firm  tone  of  a  thinker 
whom  profound  meditations  have  trans- 
ported into  the  very  bosom  of  truth  ; 
'a  harpsichord,  whose  notes  vibrate 
successively,  one  after  the  other, — 
unless,'  she  added,  'unless  several  of 


the  notes  happen  to  speak  simultane- 
ously.' 

"  This  striking  metaphor  filled  me 
with  extreme  respect,  and,  as  usual, 
the  more  so  because  of  being  utterly 
incomprehensible  to  me. 

"  But  what  a  thing  it  is  to  be  dull- 
headed  !  It  seems  that  the  whole 
matter  was  perfectly  clear,  for  my 
cousin  rejoined — 

"  *  You  must  have  guessed,  my 
daughter,  that  I  am  alluding  to  a 
marriage.' 

"  I  opened  my  eyes  very  wide,  for 
unless  Providence  or  friends  took  the 
matter  in  hand,  I  did  not  imagine  that 
there  could  be  the  shadow  of  a  hus- 
band on  my  path, — that  is  to  say, — 
hum  ! 

"  '  He  will  come  to-morrow,'  went 
on  Madame  de  Lines.  '  You  have 
already  seen  him  once,  but  I  do  not 
choose  to  tell  you  his  name  to-day. 
He  is  very  worthy.  He  has  an  in- 
come of  fifteen  thousand  francs  be- 
sides his  practice,  for  he  is  doc- 
tor. .  .  .' 

"  '  It  is  surprising,'  I  exclaimed. 

"And  replying  to  her  astonished 
expression,  I  continued  warmly — 

"  '  Yes  ;  surprising  that  a  man  so 
advantageously  situated  should  have 
thought  of  me,  who  have  nothing  at 
all.  He  must  surely  be  the  son  of  an 
assassin,  or  something  equally  respect- 
able.' 

"  *  The  question  is  too  serious  to  be 
joked  about,'  returned  Madame  de 
Lines,  displeasedly.  '  He  is  of  an 
honourable  family,  although  less  well 
descended  than  your  own,  and  he  is 
twenty  years  older  than  you  are. 
These  are  the  two  shady  sides  of  the 
situation.' 

"  I  understood  !  It  was  a  case  of 
free  exchange  applied  to  matrimony. 

"  *  You  lack  sufficient  experience  to 
judge  wisely  of  the  future,'  resumed 
my  cousin.  '  Besides,  I  know  that  at 
your  age  the  notes  of  the  harpsichord 
incessantly  vibrate  upon  one  point.' 

"'I  swear  by  the  Styx!'  I  ex- 
claimed vehemently,  '  that  my  harp- 
sichord is  dumb  as ' 

"  I  was  about  to  say  '  as  the  grave,' 
but  drew  up  suddenly,  and  felt  a  lively 
colour  spreading  over  my  face.  Luck- 
ily Madame  de  Lines,  being  preoccu- 
pied, noticed  nothing.  I  think  she 
was  mentally  groping  about  in  search 
of  some  crushing  sentence,  when  I 


1894.] 


Some  French  Novelists. 


595 


continued,  with  a  little  hesitation,  for 
I  felt  myself  engaged  upon  danger- 
ously slippery  ground — 

" '  I  do  not  care  for  money,  my 
cousin.  I  have  lived  for  twenty  years 
with  nothing,  and  finding  myself  per- 
fectly comfortable  as  it  is,  I  only  de- 
sire to  continue.' 

"  She  looked  at  me  with  stupefac- 
tion. 

"  '  You  could  not  argue  more  fool- 
ishly if  you  were  ten  years  old.  Money 
constitutes  three-quarters  of  happi- 
ness ;  I  ought  to  know  it,  having 
been  deprived  of  it  all  my  life.' 

"  '  Very  well,  suppose  I  were  not  to 
marry  at  all ! '  I  exclaimed,  with  a 
sudden  inspiration. 

"But  Madame  de  Lines  for  all 
answer  merely  shrugged  her  shoul- 
ders, which  lowered  my  discovery  and 
my  inspiration  to  the  level  of  a 
frightful  Mtise." 

Claude,  who  has  long  since  made 
up  her  mind  that  she  will  marry 
no  other  but  her  old  playmate 
Herve  de  Chetigne,  the  son  of  a 
near  neighbour,  makes  very  short 
work  of  the  doctor's  pretensions ; 
and  after  about  half  an  hour's  con- 
versation, in  which  she  contrives 
to  draw  out  and  cover  with  ridi- 
cule all  his  views  and  opinions  re- 
garding science,  politics,  religion, 
and  morality,  the  unlucky  suitor 
retired  discomfited,  leaving  Claude 
to  sustain  the  reproaches  of  her 
relatives  regarding  her  unjustifi- 
able reception  of  the  only  respect- 
able offer  she  was  ever  likely  to 
have.  She  receives  their  scoldings 
with  perfect  equanimity,  for  does 
she  not  know  that  the  man  of  her 
heart  will  presently  return  home, 
after  an  absence  of  four  years 
spent  in  scientific  travels ;  and  only 
a  few  days  later,  as  Claude  is  sit- 
ting on  the  top  of  a  ruined  wall 
plunged  in  day-dreams,  their  meet- 
ing takes  place. 

"  Having  reached  this  point  of  my 
wisdom,  I  interrupted  myself  in  order 
to  raise  my  eyes,  and  in  the  hollow 
lane  I  perceived,  perched  upon  a 
steed  gaunter  than  Eosinante,  a  horse- 
man looking  boldly  up  at  me. 


"  I  returned  his  look,  and  straight- 
way a  multitude  of  echoes  began  to 
sound  around  me,  like  the  entrancing 
notes  of  a  delicate  instrument.  Subtle 
vibrations  escaped  from  the  yellowing 
corn-ears,  from  the  sunburnt  grasses, 
from  the  very  cart-ruts  of  the  road ; 
they  surrounded  us  like  a  legion  of  ex- 
quisite friends,  all  speaking  together 
in  their  joy  at  having  refound  us. 

"  Perhaps  Herve  was  also  listening 
to  their  fugitive  voices,  for  he  re- 
mained a  good  minute  without  mov- 
ing or  speaking ;  and  I,  for  my  part, 
would  have  liked  to  prolong  in- 
definitely this  moment,  which  was 
gradually  giving  me  the  thrilling  im- 
pression produced  by  ancient  per- 
fumes locked  away  in  drawers  rarely 
opened,  and  thus  passed  on  to  several 
successive  generations. 

"  But  he  spoke,  and  straightway  the 
charm  was  broken. 

"  '  Claude  !     You  recognise  me  1 ' 

"  '  Assuredly,'  I  replied,  '  although 
you  have  some  slight  resemblance  to 
a  Moor.' 

"  I  drew  near  and  gave  him  my  hand, 
which  he  kept  in  his,  tapping  ab- 
sently on  my  fingers  with  the  end  of 
his  reins. 

"  I  was  dying  to  know  his  thoughts, 
while,  without  pronouncing  a  word, 
he  examined  me  with  the  gravity  of 
a  praying  Arab. 

"  *  Is  that  a  habit  you  have  ac- 
quired over  there  ? '  I  asked,  losing 
patience  a  little. 

"  '  I  have  traversed  so  many  danger- 
ous countries,'  he  returned,  '  that  I 
cannot  now  make  a  step  without  look- 
ing suspiciously  around  me.' 

"  '  Thank  you,'  I  said,  laughing ; 
'but  you  are  in  our  good  province 
of  Anjou,  and  its  women  are  not 
wild  beasts.' 

" '  Who  knows/  he  answered, 
gravely. 

"I  could  have  beaten  him.  It  was 
too  much,  after  four  years  of  absence, 
to  find  nothing  better  to  say  than 
to  compare  me  to  a  crocodile  or  a 
jaguar. 

" '  Is  that  Persian  courtesy  which 
you  are  bringing  back  with  you  ? '  I 
asked.  '  You  seem  to  have  forgotten 
civilised  ways.'" 

Claude,  however,  rapidly  gets 
reconciled  to  what  she  calls  her 
old  comrade's  oriental  manners, 


596 


Some  French  Novelists. 


[Nov. 


and  before  many  weeks  have 
passed  they  have  exchanged  un- 
alterable vows  of  fidelity.  But 
her  two  old  relatives  are  filled 
with  consternation  at  the  notion 
of  such  a  poor  marriage  for  Claude, 
and  give  vent  to  their  misgivings 
in  comical  fashion  : — 

"  Approaching  the  drawing-room 
by  the  garden,  I  caught  up  some 
scraps  of  animated  conversation. 

"  '  We  cannot  consent  to  it,  Agathe,' 
Madame  de  Lines  was  saying  ;  '  to  do 
so  would  be  throwing  her  into  a 
wretched  position.' 

"'Undoubtedly  she  cannot  marry 
such  an  ugly  man,'  replied  grand- 
mother. '  She  would  have  hideous 
children  ! ' 

" « Poor  child  !  At  the  age  of 
twenty  to  accept  a  life  of  care  and 
privation  ! ' 

"  '  Her  daughters  would  be  perfect 
frights  ;  she  would  never  be  able  to 
find  husbands  for  them  ! ' 

"  What  do  you  think  of  this  solici- 
tude for  creatures  who  will  perhaps 
never  exist?  The  human  mind  is 
verily  a  droll  kind  of  thing  ! " 

An  unexpected  legacy  from  a 
distant  relative,  however,  abruptly 
transforms  Claude  into  a  rich 
heiress ;  but  instead  of  her  being 
enabled  to  realise  the  wish  of  her 
heart,  her  relatives  only  see  in 
this  circumstance  a  yet  more  con- 
clusive reason  for  discouraging 
Hervd  de  Chetigne.  Now  that 
Claude  is  rich,  of  course  she  can 
have  an  unlimited  choice  of  suitors, 
and  it  were  folly  to  throw  her  and 
her  fortune  away  on  an  obscure 
country  gentleman;  and  he  himself, 
too  proud  to  owe  everything  to 
a  wealthy  wife,  voluntarily  with- 
draws his  claims.  How  in  the 
sequel  Claude  is  taken  to  Paris, 
there  to  be  angled  for  as  a  desir- 
able gold-fish,  and  how  in  the  long- 
run  an  unscrupulous  banker  con- 
trives to  relieve  her  of  the  incon- 
venient money-bags  which  had 


proved  such  a  stumbling-block  in 
the  path  of  true  love,  the  reader 
must  be  left  for  himself  to  find 
out.  The  whole  story  from  begin- 
ning to  end  is  pleasant  light  read- 
ing of  the  non-sensational,  unex- 
citing type.  We  do  not  think 
that  M.  de  la  Brete  will  ever  be 
answerable  for  a  sleepless  night, 
or  an  attack  of  palpitation  on  the 
part  of  his  readers ;  but  is  it  not 
some  compensation  to  be  able  to 
say  that  at  least  he  has  never 
caused  them  any  touch  of  nausea 
or  of  indigestion?  Plain  rice- 
pudding,  when  partaken  of  on  the 
back  of  caviare  and  red  pepper,  is 
apt  to  taste  just  a  trifle  insipid  to 
a  vitiated  palate ;  but  after  all  it 
were  scarcely  fair  to  blame  the 
rice-pudding  for  this  result. 

Likewise  of  the  rice -pudding 
tribe,  but  rather  more  so,  is  a 
work  lately  crowned  by  the  French 
Academy,  entitled  *  Brave  Fille ' ; 1 
and  were  it  not  for  the  fact  of 
this  distinction,  which  challenges 
both  attention  and  criticism,  we 
feel  more  than  doubtful  as  to 
whether  we  should  have  succeeded 
in  wading  through  three  hundred 
pages  of  herring- fishery,  merely  in 
order  to  assure  ourselves  that 
Elise  Henin,  the  heroine  of  the 
book,  at  its  conclusion  is  led  to 
the  altar  by  the  man  to  whom  she 
has  been  .faithful  all  along.  The 
herring  is  doubtless  a  very  attrac- 
tive fish,  whether  contemplated  as 
a  wriggling  piece  of  silver  inside  a 
net,  or  crisp  and  golden  upon  a 
breakfast-plate ;  but  surely  a  novel 
is  not  a  fishing  manual,  and  it  is 
scarcely  too  much  to  say  that, 
apart  from  the  technical  know- 
ledge of  the  subject  it  treats,  and 
of  the  photographic  accuracy  of 
its  descriptions,  the  book  is  abso- 
lutely devoid  of  all  qualities  which 


1  Fernant  Calmettes,  *  Brave  Fille,'  ouvrage  couronn£  par  1' Academic  Frai^aise. 
Paris  :  Plon  Nourrit  et  Cie.,  1894. 


1891] 


Some  French  Novelists. 


597 


go  to  make  up  a  good  work  of 
fiction. 

Some  people  may  perhaps  object 
that  Pierre  Loti's  stories  are  like- 
wise invariably  sea-narratives  from 
beginning  to  end,  without  being 
the  less  admirable  on  that  account, 
and  that  precisely  his  best  and 
most  generally  appreciated  work, 
1  Pecheur  d'Islande,'  treats  of  little 
else  but  of  herring -fishery.  We 
are  even  inclined  to  consider 
Monsieur  Loti  directly  answerable 
for  this  sorry  imitation,  which, 
viewed  by  the  side  of  his  own 
artistic  production,  is  like  tinsel 
to  gold,  or  clay  to  marble.  To 
keep  one  single  note  reverberat- 
ing without  producing  monotony 
requires  a  master-hand,  and  even 
Monsieur  Loti's  talent  is  not 
always  sufficient  to  make  us  escape 
the  feeling  that  we  have  swallowed 
quite  as  much  salt-water  as  we  are 
able  to  take. 

But  it  is  not  merely  the  salt- 
water and  the  herrings  to  which 
we  take  exception  in  the  present 
instance.  It  is  the  Brave  Fille 
herself,  who,  to  our  thinking,  is 
the  chief  stumbling-block  of  the 
tale.  She  is  at  once  too  brave  in 
the  French,  and  too  brave  in  the 
English  acceptation  of  the  word ; 
too  impossibly  and  preposterously 
courageous  and  high-minded  to 
remind  us  even  distantly  of  a 
woman  of  flesh  and  blood.  Gifted 
with  the  beauty  of  a  Diana,  the 
governing  talent  of  a  Napoleon,  the 
wit  of  a  Talleyrand,  and  the 
strength  of  a  bullock,  this  surpris- 
ing young  woman  takes  service 
as  a  common  sailor  in  a  fishing- 
smack,  in  order  to  gain  a  living 
for  herself  and  her  little  brother 
Firmian,  aged  twelve,  her  sole 
remaining  relative.  They  are 
orphans,  the  father  having  been 
lately  drowned  one  wild  night  off 
the  coast,  and  neither  his  body  nor 
those  of  his  six  companions  have 
yet  been  recovered.  His  death 


has  ruined  his  children,  for  he  was 
returning  with  a  purse  well  filled 
from  a  successful  fishing  expedi- 
tion, when  the  waters  had  swal- 
lowed him  along  with  the  boat 
that  was  his  property.  Under 
these  circumstances  Elise  had  ob- 
tained from  her  cousin,  the  beau 
Florimondj  as  he  was  called  in 
these  parts,  the  favour  of  being 
enrolled  in  the  crew  of  his  fishing- 
boat  along  with  her  little  brother. 
This  intrusion  of  a  woman  among 
them  is  at  first  much  resented 
by  the  other  sailors,  who  consider 
this  to  be  an  unjustifiable  infrac- 
tion of  their  rights.  A  wench  on 
board  never  fails  to  bring  bad  luck, 
and  where  will  the  trade  come  to 
if  women  are  to  be  suffered  thus 
to  take  the  bread  out  of  honest 
sailors'  mouths  ?  Presently,  as 
though  to  confirm  these  evil  prog- 
nostications, the  vessel  runs  on  to 
a  sand -bank,  and  the  sailors,  in 
order  to  deliver  themselves  and 
their  boat  from  this  damsel  of  evil 
omen,  solve  the  difficulty  by  throw- 
ing the  Brave  Fille  bodily  over- 
board. Fished  out  and  brought 
back  to  life  by  one  of  the  men, 
younger  and  less  stony  -  hearted 
than  the  rest,  Elise  presently  com- 
pels the  respect  of  the  crew  by 
the  muscular  force  and  moral 
energy  with  which,  still  dripping 
like  a  drowned  rat  from  her  recent 
immersion,  she  seizes  on  the  helm, 
and,  assisted  by  an  opportune  blast 
of  wind,  succeeds  in  dislodging  the 
boat  from  its  inconvenient  posi- 
tion. From  this  moment  forward 
she  has  it  all  her  own  way :  the 
men  who  a  minute  previously  had 
beon  planning  her  destruction, 
now  look  up  to  her  with  blind 
adoration  as  a  sort  of  patron 
saint,  so  that  Florimond,  the  com- 
mander of  the  sloop,  begins  to  be 
seriously  jealous  of  the  rival  in- 
fluence of  this  little  upstart  rela- 
tion, whom  he  had  only  taken  on 
out  of  charity. 


598 


Some  French  Novelists. 


[Nov. 


By-and-by  the  vessel  gets  into 
dangerous  waters,  a  violent  tem- 
pest has  arisen,  and  it  requires  all 
Florimond's  experience  and  energy 
to  avoid  the  catastrophe  which  he 
sees  staring1  them  in  the  face: — 

"  Florimond  was  at  the  helm.  Since 
four  days  he  had  scarcely  left  it.  Less 
than  ever  at  the  hour  of  danger  could 
he  resign  himself  to  place  the  fate  of 
his  vessel  in  other  hands.  He  had 
refused  himself  all  repose,  taking  his 
meals  aloft,  eating  with  one  hand  and 
directing  with  the  other.  In  this  half- 
week  he  had  scarcely  slept  five  hours. 
His  cheeks  were  hollowed  by  fever, 
and  his  clear  eyes  were  darkened  by 
the  shades  of  his  thoughtful  glance. 
For  he  knew  it,  and  feared  it,  that 
sea  which  never  hesitates  in  its  fury, 
that  sea  which  gives  life  and  also 
death." 

But  when  Florimond  is  presently 
struck  down  senseless  by  the  action 
of  a  wave,  the  distracted  sailors, 
bereft  of  their  commander,  all  turn 
instinctively  to  Elise  as  their  one 
chance  of  salvation  : — 

"  The  three  breakers  passed  on  with 
unbridled  fury,  which  foreshadowed 
the  violence  of  the  coming  squall.  It 
was  necessary  to  act  or  to  perish. 

"To  whom  the  helm? 

'"To  the  Lison— the  Lison  !' 

"  And  all  the  sailors  simultaneously 
shouted  the  name  of  the  young  girl,  as 
though  to  testify  the  salvation  they 
expected  from  her.  She  had  gained 
them  by  her  heroic  valour  ;  in  the 
hour  of  danger  they  placed  in  her 
their  force  and  their  confidence  ;  but 
it  was  a  perilous  honour  that  they  de- 
signed to  her.  Injured  in  her  most 
vital  parts,  gorged  with  water,  the 
sloop  was  about  to  be  shattered  be- 
neath the  thundering  waves  at  the 
entrance  of  the  Ecueil  des  Banes.  Elise 
did  not  hesitate.  .  .  . 

"Without  losing  heart,  without 
even  feeling  surprised  at  the  choice 
which  had  fallen  on  her,  she  came  to 
the  wheel,  and  boldly  caused  herself 
to  be  lashed  on  to  the  mizen-mast,  in 
order  to  be  able  to  defy  the  smash  of 
the  breakers,  which  threatened  to  be 
gigantic.  She  commanded  the  man- 
oeuvre." , 


Elise  gives  her  orders  with  the 
peremptory  decision  of  an  experi- 
enced commander.  To  each  man 
is  assigned  a  task,  and  nothing  is 
forgotten  that  can  increase  the 
chances  of  escape.  She  seems  to 
govern  the  wheel  as  easily  as  other 
young  ladies  handle  a  fan  or  a 
parasol,  and  to  feel  as  much  at 
home  in  her  perilous  position  as 
another  would  be  on  the  ball-room 
floor.  The  breakers  are  so  im- 
mense that  the  girl's  figure  con- 
stantly vanishes  in  clouds  of  spray, 
only  to  reappear  again,  always 
erect,  energetic,  and  invincible. 
Now  they  have  already  passed  the 
quicksands,  and  are  nearing  the 
lighthouse  of  Treport,  which  looks 
out  yonder  on  the  horizon,  white 
and  gleaming  as  a  beacon  of 
hope : — 

"  Courage  !  the  breakers  are  stiff, 
but  the  quicksands  are  behind  them. 
In  less  than  half  an  hour  the  Bon 
Pecheur  will  have  reached  the  har- 
bour-bar. 

"  Alas  !  the  squall  still  persists  in 
blowing,  the  sky  is  dark,  the  sea  is 
dark,  the  foam  alone  is  white.  The 
waves  hurl  themselves  with  yet 
greater  violence  against  the  boat. 
One  of  the  breakers,  implacable,  irre- 
sistible, has  almost  swallowed  it  up 
in  a  yawning  embrace.  It  has  dis- 
appeared entirely.  During  twenty 
seconds  it  was  no  longer  distinguish- 
able from  the  coast.  ...  If  it  cannot 
regain  breath,  it  must  infallibly  go 
down. 

"  A  la  grace  !  " 

Of  a  sudden  Elise  commands 
the  sails  to  be  hoisted.  Is  she 
mad  to  think  of  it  in  such  a  tem- 
pest ?  But  her  orders  are  obeyed. 
The  Bon  Pecheur  flies  like  a  storm- 
bird,  and  in  less  than  a  quarter  of 
an  hour  has  rolled  in  beneath  the 
lighthouse  at  the  entrance  of  the 
harbour.  The  tempest  has  reached 
its  climax,  and  yet  Elise  continues 
to  order  more  sail,  and  yet  more, 
to  be  hoisted.  It  is  positive  de- 
lirium ! 


1894.' 


Some  French  Novelists. 


"  Courage  !  The  boat  regains  its 
speed —  the  white  lighthouse  is  no 
more  than  twenty  boat-lengths  off. 
But  at  the  harbour-bar  the  waves  are 
revolving  in  a  delirious  whirlpool. 

"  Courage  !  Alas  !  the  big  mast  has 
crashed  down  on  to  the  deck. 

"  «  Cut  down  the  rigging  ! ' 

"  The  hatchets  work.  The  mast 
and  the  sails,  set  free  from  their  fas- 
tenings, fall  into  the  abyss.  The  boat, 
relieved  and  lightened,  rises  up  again. 
It  still  floats. 

"  Like  a  spar  tossed  from  crest  to 
crest,  it  sinks  down  only  to  rebound, 
to  sink  again,  and  once  more  to  re- 
bound. A  terrified  shout  resounds 
from  the  pier. 

«  H-o-o— h-o-o-o  ! '  The  Bon  Pe1- 
cheur  has  been  caught  round  by  a 
current  of  backwater. 

"  A  wave  has  seized  it  in  the^a^c, 
and  has  hurled  it  into  the  harbour 
entrance.  Courage  !  Alas  !  it  will 
be  shattered  against  the  stone  pier. 
No! 

"  Elise  has  caused  all  her  blood  to 
recoil  to  the  heart.  [It  would  be  in- 
teresting, by  the  way,  to  know  how 
this  little  manoeuvre  is  executed.] 
She  has  put  her  whole  vitality  into  a 
supreme  motion  of  the  wheel.  The 
Bon  Pecheur  has  turned  over  keel- 
wards  towards  the  pier— one  might 
say  keel  upwards.  Hoo  !  It  has  dis- 
appeared into  the  yawning  abyss. 
No — it  rebounds  again.  Is  it  for  the 
last  time  ?  .  .  .  No — the  wheel  has 
raised  it  up  again.  Hurrah  !  The 
ropes  are  thrown  and  seized.  Two 
hundred  hands  are  dragging  them  in. 

"'Sails  down!' 

"  The  last  remaining  scrap  of  linen 
is  lowered.  And  they  are  in  port. 
Hurrah,  Elise  !  your  sloop  and  your 
men  are  saved  ! " 

The  foregoing  description  of 
the  storm,  greatly  curtailed  for 
the  reader's  benefit,  will  convey  a 
good  idea  of  the  author's  style, 
which,  although  occasionally  both 
spirited  and  forcible,  is  invariably 
marred  by  the  needless  profusion 


of  ejaculation  and  interrogation, 
producing  a  jerky,  spasmodic,  and 
hysterical  effect. 

Elise,  however,  meets  with  but 
small  thanks  for  having  rescued 
the  vessel,  and  Florimond,  furious 
at  an  incident  which  has  robbed 
him  of  his  accustomed  prestige, 
succeeds  in  exciting  the  sailors' 
wrath  anew  against  the  girl  as  a 
witch  and  sorceress.  Abandoned 
and  shunned  by  every  one,  and 
with  only  an  old  dog  to  protect 
her  against  the  fury  of  an  unjust 
and  senseless  rabble,  the  Brave 
Fille,  however,  does  not  lose  heart, 
but  continues  to  perform  prodigies 
of  valour.  She  goes  down  in  a 
diving-bell  to  search  for  the  body 
of  her  dead  father,  succeeds  in  find- 
ing her  little  brother,  who  some- 
how had  been  mislaid  in  the  Ger- 
man Ocean,  saves  the  ungrateful 
Florimond  and  his  crew  a  second 
time,  when  once  more  they  are  in 
danger  of  perishing,  and  finally 
reaps  the  reward  of  all  these  heroic 
actions  by  leading  to  the  altar 
(rather  than  being  led  to  it)  the 
exceedingly  namby-pamby  young 
man  on  whom  she  has  fixed  her  af- 
fections. 

Why  the  French  Academy  has 
thought  fit  to  crown  a  book  which 
so  little  fulfils  the  conditions  of 
a  good  work  of  fiction,  might  be 
matter  for  surprise  were  it  not 
for  the  notoriously  unhealthy  con- 
dition of  contemporary  French 
literature.  Where  talent  and  mor- 
ality so  rarely  go  hand  in  hand, 
the  predicament  is  apt  to  be  a 
grave  one;  and  when  compelled 
perforce  to  make  their  choice  be- 
tween a  vicious  novel  and  a  foolish 
one,  it  were  perhaps  unjust  to  con- 
demn the  Immortals  for  having 
decided  in  favour  of  the  latter. 


VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCXLIX. 


2  R 


600 


A  Ride  in  Ilakkaland. 


[Nov. 


A    RIDE    IN    HAKKALAND. 

THE  Hakkas  are  an  extraneous  tribe  of  Chinese  who  migrated  into 
the  north-east  of  the  province  of  Canton  about  A.D.  1300.  They  are 
an  agricultural  people,  about  five  millions  in  number,  and  are  the  most 
numerous  emigrants  from  China,  whence  they  go  in  great  numbers  to 
Australia,  California,  Honolulu,  Mauritius,  and  especially  to  the 
Straits  Settlements  and  the  neighbouring  places.  They  are  very 
numerous  in  the  mining  districts  of  the  protected  Malay  States  of 
Perak  and  Selangor,  to  the  former  of  which  references  occur  in  the 
following  narrative. 


"I  EXPECT  there  are  probably 
none,"  I  said,  gloomily  prolonging 
the  last  word  to  emphasise  my 
objection. 

"  Hai  yaah  /  Extremely  many, 
and  as  big  as  donkeys,"  replied 
Vong  Ah  Nyi  (Brown  Secundus). 
So  I  promised. 

Vong  was  a  farmer,  and  a 
Hakka  Chinaman,  and  a  good 
Catholic.  He  had  come  in  to  see 
my  friend  the  French  priest,  as 
he  was  in  trouble.  "A  woman's 
affair,"  he  told  me  ambiguously. 
Then  I  showed  him  my  six-bang 
guns,  and  then  he  asked  me  to 
shoot  the  wild  pig  that  were  devas- 
tating his  young  wheat,  and  pro- 
mised in  return  to  carry  my  bag 
and  give  me  a  hen. 

4.30  A.M.,  $th  April  1894. — 
Saddling  a  pony  by  moonlight  is 
ghastly  work,  not  to  say  impious. 
Everything,  too,  goes  wrong  with 
the  harness,  as  home-made  things 
will  go  wrong ;  the  girths  are  too 
short,  and  must  be  ingeniously 
supplemented  with  lamp- wick;  a 
stirrup-leather  gives,  but  the  strap 
from  a  Gladstone  bag  makes  a 
very  good  substitute ;  finally,  the 
cushion  of  shavings  that  covers 
the  wooden  framework  of  the 
saddle  has  got  itself  into  lumps, 
and  wants  altering.  I  should  ex- 
plain that  I  am  up-country,  150 
miles  from  the  nearest  treaty  port 


(Swatow),  and  that  my  harness  is 
"  made  in  China,"  principally  from 
bits  of  string.  Then  half-an-hour 
of  waiting  while  Ah  Nyi  fills  him- 
self with  rice  as  you  stoke  an 
engine  for  a  long  run,  measuring 
out  the  amount  of  fuel  necessary, 
and  methodically  packing  it  away, 
actuated  apparently  by  a  sense  of 
duty  rather  than  by  appetite. 
This  done,  he  proceeds  to  strap 
my  impedimenta  to  the  ends  of  his 
kandur  (carrying-stick),  slips  his 
shoulders  underneath,  arid  we  are 
off.  Alas !  not  so  soon,  in  a 
land  of  delays.  After  three  paces 
he  stops.  It  seems  that  the  bas- 
ket at  one  end  of  the  kandur  out- 
weighs the  guns  at  the  other  by 
some  pounds  ;  so,  after  tentatively 
lifting  his  burden  once  or  twice, 
he  retires,  to  return  with  a  skein 
of  fibre.  Then  sitting  down,  he 
bares  his  thigh,  and  on  it  rolls  a 
dozen  threads  together  into  a 
string,  with  which  he  ties  a  blan- 
ket and  a  pair  of  shoes  to  the 
lighter  end  of  the  burden,  and 
makes  the  balance  true.  He  is 
provokingly  deliberate  in  his 
movements,  but  he  is  right.  He 
has  to  carry  50  Ib.  for  thirty  miles 
before  nightfall,  and  a  very  little 
irregularity  in  the  spring  of  his 
burden  will  put  him  out  of  his 
stride.  Having  seen  him  fairly 
off  (for  if  you  would  not  find  your- 
self stranded  baggageless,  your 


1894.] 


A  Ride  in  Hakkaland. 


601 


indigenous  Hakka  is  of  burden- 
bearers  the  least  well  left  to 
follow),  I  take  a  cup  of  cocoa  and 
start  after  him,  with  a  valedictory 
"  Well,  well !  Softly,  softly,  go  !  " 
from  my  household  ringing  in  my 
ears. 

The  sun  is  rising  crimson  through 
a  white  haze  as  I  canter  along,  and 
the  thermometer  is  at  50° — and 
that  alone  makes  half  a  paradise, 
as  any  Straits  man  will  tell.  For 
the  first  mile  or  so  the  road  lies 
through  the  plain  which  feeds  the 
district  city  of  Ka  -  Yin  -  Chu — 
through  an  expanse  of  greenest 
wheat,  with  here  and  there  a 
brown  patch  flooded  and  set  aside 
as  a  nursery  for  the  coming  padi. 
On  every  side  white  homesteads 
are  scattered,  each  in  its  setting 
of  giant  bamboo  shoots.  When 
you  have  realised  the  fact  that 
each  of  these  little  clusters  of 
lime  -  washed  cottages  represents 
the  home  of  fathers,  sons,  grand- 
sons, and  all  their  female  belong- 
ings, you  will  begin  to  appreciate 
the  density  of  the  population.  In 
front  of  every  farm  stand  yellow 
straw-stacks  raised  on  wooden  legs, 
and  under  each  a  tiny  red  cow 
ruminates,  or  else  a  dull  hairy 
water-buffalo,  stupidly  wondering 
whether  a  mouthful  of  straw 
snatched  from  above  will  repay 
the  trouble  of  balancing  on  his 
hind-legs.  The  general  effect  is 
most  homelike  and  pleasant.  It 
must  be  added  that  a  closer  in- 
spection of  one  of  these  farms 
does  not  prove  so  satisfactory. 
Round  about  the  ground  is  strewed 
with  litter  and  broken  earthen- 
ware, while  the  drainage  from  the 
cattle-sheds  forms  puddles  on  the 
roadway.  The  plaster  has  fallen 
in  flakes  from  the  walls ;  the  gay 
lanterns  arid  gaudy  texts  in  red 
and  black  that  adorn  the  entrance 
only  accentuate  the  dismal  un- 
tidiness; nor  is  the  semicircular 


fish  -  tank,  half  full  of  stagnant 
water,  pleasing  either  to  eyes  or 
nose.  Clattering  across  the  dry- 
ing-floor between  it  and  the  house, 
I  bring  out  a  pack  of  curly  black- 
haired  dogs,  who  bark  furiously, 
but  at  a  respectful  distance.  I 
am  known  here,  and  am  let  pass 
without  further  comment  than  the 
customary  "  Stit  lifan  m  thyam  ?  " 
("Have  you  eaten  rice  or  not 
yet?"),  which,  like  "How  do  you 
do1?"  calls  for  no  particular  an- 
swer. Riding  on,  I  catch  Ah  Nyi 
up  at  the  edge  of  the  plain,  and 
begin  the  ascent  with  him. 

The  road  now  runs  steeply  up 
the  slope  of  the  hill,  with  no  par- 
ticular regard  for  gradients.  The 
engineer  was  guiltless  at  any  rate 
of  wasting  money  on  surveys  or 
trial  traces;  his  one  idea  when 
crossing  hilly  ground  appears  to 
have  been  to  follow  water  where 
there  was  water,  elsewhere  to  go 
straight  ahead.  In  Hakkaland  it 
is  not  uncommon  to  find,  after  a 
breathless  scramble  straight  up  the 
face  of  a  hill,  that  on  reaching  the 
top  another  scramble  down  lies 
ahead,  to  the  level  from  which  you 
started ;  all  of  which  might  have 
been  saved  by  a  very  moderate 
deviation.  But,  after  all,  this  is  a 
matter  of  taste.  If  John  China- 
man prefers  walking  one  mile  up- 
hill and  one  mile  down,  to  two 
miles  and  a  half  on  the  flat,  who 
shall  blame  him  for  making  his 
roads  to  suit  his  likings  ?  What  is 
more  noteworthy  is  the  unparal- 
leled public  spirit  without  which 
these  roads  would  not  be  made  at 
all.  We  English,  who  find  our 
roads  ready  made,  and  grumble  at 
having  to  pay  for  their  upkeep,  can 
hardly  comprehend  it.  Talk  about 
the  London  hospitals  supported  by 
voluntary  contributions  !  Here  is 
a  people  who  (unblessed  with  local 
rates  and  a  Public  Works  Depart- 
ment) have  by  sheer  force  of  col- 


602 


A  Ride  in  Ilakkaland. 


[Nov. 


lection-box  and  an  active  public 
spirit  built  and  maintained  the 
entire  road-system  of  their  country 
— thousands  of  miles  of  road,  from 
the  narrow  track  of  granite  slabs 
embedded  longwise,  which  leads  to 
some  little  hamlet  or  market  vil- 
lage, to  a  twelve-foot  road  neatly 
paved  with  cobble-stones,  or  a  con- 
crete bund  raised  ten  feet  above 
the  padi-fields.  All  these  roads 
are  apportioned  by  established 
traditions  among  the  principal 
clans  in  the  neighbourhood,  each 
of  which  prides  itself  in  the  main- 
tenance of  its  section,  and  will 
send  round  the  hat  when  repairs 
are  necessary.  Every  one  sub- 
scribes according  to  his  means, 
under  pain  of  "  becoming  faceless," 
and  greybeards  who  spend  their 
old  age  in  the  hardest  manual 
labour,  apparently  in  deepest  pen- 
ury, display  unlooked-for  resources 
and  give  their  two  or  three  dollars, 
while  the  nouveau  riche  who  would 
become  a  power  in  his  village 
makes  a  bid  for  popularity  with  a 
proportionately  handsome  dona- 
tion. New  roads  are  built  in  the 
same  way  by  the  clans  in  whose 
neighbourhood  they  run.  Natural- 
ly this  system  does  not  tend  to- 
wards uniformity  of  design.  With- 
in a  mile  you  may  find  your  road 
in  parts  paved  with  flagstones  and 
in  parts  a  mere  muddy  track ; 
crossing  one  river  by  a  rickety 
plank  and  the  next  by  a  solid 
bridge  of  masonry.  Moreover,  I 
have  been  assured  by  missionaries 
that  what  I  call  public  spirit  is  not 
public  spirit  at  all,  but  the  outcome 
of  a  degrading  superstition  :  which 
is  very  sad.  Still,  there  they  are 
— good  roads  and  plenty  of  them — 
a  monument  to  the  sturdy  self- 
reliance  of  your  Hakka,  in  the 
absence  of  fancy  bazaars,  charity 
sermons,  and  all  the  Western  appar- 
atus for  extracting  voluntary  con- 
tributions from  unwilling  pockets. 


Regarded  from  a  horse's  point 
of  view,  these  roads  are  less  satis- 
factory. Neither  cobbles  set  on 
end  nor  slippery  paving  -  stones 
make  good  roads  for  unshod  cattle. 
It  is  wonderful  how  the  12-hand 
ponies  of  the  country  manage 
the  distances  they  do.  We  meet 
several  picking  their  way  down 
the  hill,  most  in  wretched  con- 
dition, all  sadly  in  want  of  groom- 
ing. A  Hakka  knows  nothing 
of  the  sentiment  with  which  an 
Englishman  regards  his  horse  and 
his  dog.  The  idea  of  bestowing  a 
name  on  either  seems  absurd  to 
him,  and  to  fondle  them  is  to 
associate  with  beasts  because  you 
are  of  them.  This  want  of  sym- 
pathy is  reflected  in  their  horse- 
manship, which  I  take  to  be  the 
worst  in  the  world.  Look  round 
at  the  cavalier  who  has  just  passed 
down  the  hill,  smiling  a  tolerant 
smile  at  my  riding-breeches.  He 
is  perched  on  a  monstrous  wooden 
saddle,  over  which  are  laid  —  I 
dare  not  say  how  many  —  quilts, 
till  the  edifice  is  as  big  as  a 
dressing-table,  and  nearly  as  flat, 
the  whole  being  covered  with  a 
crimson  blanket.  There  he  sits 
well  back,  with  his  feet  stretched 
out  in  front,  and  the  heels  of  his 
shoes  thrust  into  enormous  rusty 
stirrups  a  little  below  the  pony's 
shoulder,  so  that  his  legs  from  the 
knee  up  are  parallel  with  the 
ground, — sitting,  in  fact,  much  as 
one  would  sit  on  a  bare-backed 
elephant.  He  wears  white  em- 
broidered shoes  of  silk,  with  soles 
two  inches  thick,  yellow  silk 
trousers  gathered  in  at  the  ankle, 
and  a  lilac-coloured  silk  coat  with 
pendulous  sleeves.  A  hemispher- 
ical black  cap  of  pasteboard  and 
sateen,  surmounted  by  a  red 
button,  completes  this  chaste  rid- 
ing costume. 

Ponies  are  sold  in  Hakkaland  at 
prices  ranging  from  20  to  60  dollars, 


1894.] 


A  Ride  in  Ilakkaland. 


603 


but  are  not  very  generally  used. 
Those  who  can  afford  it  generally 
travel  in  sedan-chairs.  Walking 
for  pleasure's  sake  is  of  course  a 
purely  Western  conception,  and 
should  you  give  it  as  your  reason 
when  on  a  walking  tour,  your 
interrogator  will  smile  and  change 
the  subject,  considering  the  crude- 
ness  of  the  lie  to  be  a  hint 
that  you  would  avoid  further 
questioning. 

The  higher  we  go  the  steeper 
the  road  becomes :  for  the  last 
hundred  yards  from  the  top  of 
the  pass  it  is  a  flight  of  stone 
steps,  leading  to  a  ruinous  Bud- 
dhist temple.  We  wait  under  a 
grass  -  grown  archway  to  look 
about  us,  while  man  and  horse 
get  their  breath.  What  a  coun- 
try and  what  a  people !  Surely 
there  never  was  such  a  harvest 
wrung  from  so  niggardly  a  soil. 
Down  by  the  way  we  came  the 
valley  lies  at  our  feet  one  smiling 
sea  of  green,  cultivated  every  inch 
of  it  up  to  high-water  mark.  But 
from  this  level,  above  which  irri- 
gation is  impracticable,  the  red 
sandstone  hills  lie  huddled  to- 
gether in  a  crumbling  arid  desola- 
tion, varied  only  where  a  stratum 
of  blue  rock  crops  up  and  runs  in 
an  unbroken  zigzag  up  and  down 
half-a-dozen  hillsides.  On  this 
shaly  barren  soil  fir-trees  alone 
seem  to  thrive,  and  these,  unfor- 
tunately, the  country -people  (ex- 
cept in  the  neighbourhood  of  iron- 
mines,  where  charcoal  is  needed 
for  smelting  purposes)  have  little 
interest  in  planting.  Firewood  is 
so  cheap,  and  most  people  burn 
grass  instead ;  as  witness  the 
women  grass-cutters  dotted  like 
blue  flowers  among  the  few 
parched  patches  of  herbage.  The 
result  of  this  denudation  is  pain- 
fully apparent.  When  after  a 
six  months'  drought  the  summer 
rains  burst,  they  fall  in  sudden 


torrents  on  a  soil  cracked  and 
disintegrated  by  the  heat,  and 
unprotected  as  it  should  be  by  a 
leafy  covering  and  network  of 
roots.  The  water  rushes  off  the 
hillsides  as  fast  as  it  falls,  cutting 
the  great  red  gashes  that  disfigure 
every  slope,  and  bringing  down 
an  equivalent  amount  of  sterile 
red  sand  on  to  the  valleys,  to 
the  silting  up  of  streams  and  the 
smothering  of  fields. 

The  contrast  presented  by  the 
rounded  slopes  of  the  few  fir 
plantations  is  most  marked.  An 
energetic  Government  could  hard- 
ly do  less  than  impress  on  its  sub- 
jects the  necessity  of  planting, 
which  to  a  foreigner  seems  obvi- 
ous enough. 

In  the  face  of  this  perennial 
downflow  of  sand  and  rubbish 
from  the  hills,  it  seems  hardly 
credible  that  men  should  have  the 
industry  to  cultivate  the  gorges 
between  them  ;  yet  so  it  is.  Even 
between  the  gaunt  red  cracks,  the 
eye  catches  here  and  there  a  flight 
of  wholesome  brown  terraces  run- 
ning up  the  hill-face  for  a  hundred 
yards  or  more,  until  the  topmost 
reaches  the  level  of  the  fountain 
that  called  them  into  being. 

Ah  Nyi  wants  to  know  what  I 
am  staring  at.  I  say  I  am  admir- 
ing "his"  China.  He  replies 
modestly,  "Not  good,  certainly 
not  good,  such  a  worthless  land  !  " 
He  ventures  an  opinion  that  for- 
eign parts  are  more  serviceable 
and  have  a  broader  wealth,  but  he 
only  says  this  out  of  politeness, 
and  is,  I  think,  rather  pleased 
with  my  little  compliment. 

We  scramble  down  to  the  valley; 
then  up  and  down  again.  One 
hill -top  is  much  the  same  as 
another,  each  with  a  view  of  red 
and  blue  sandstone  hills,  each 
crowned  by  a  temple  or  tea-house. 
At  one  of  the  latter  we  stop  for 
refreshments — to  "strike  a  point 


604 


A  Ride  in  Hakkaland. 


[Nov. 


on  our  hearts,"  as  the  idiom  of 
the  country  expresses  it.  Great 
institutions  are  these  Fung  Yi 
Thin  (wind-and-rain  rest-houses), 
and  very  Chinese  in  the  way  they 
meet  a  want,  and  satisfy  without 
pampering  it.  Usually  they  are 
plain  brick  barns,  whitewashed 
and  tiled,  strongly  built  with 
foundations  and  lintels  of  stone, 
and  set  right  across  the  thorough- 
fare, which  passes  through  them 
from  arched  doorway  to  doorway. 
Inside  there  is  no  more  pretence 
of  ornament.  The  walls  are  bare 
except  for  the  handicraft  of  pass- 
ing vandals,  verses  and  sketches 
such  as  "  'Arry  "  would  inscribe  on 
such  blank  walls ;  and  except  for 
the  lists  of  orange-coloured  paper 
which  set  forth  the  subscribers' 
names — for  these  tea-houses,  like 
the  roads,  are  paid  for  entirely  by 
voluntary  subscriptions.  I  see 
with  pleasure  how  our  Perak  Tin 
Hills  have  lent  their  aid  ;  for  it  is 
here  recorded  how  Ku  Fu  Long,  at 
present  a  miner  of  the  Great  Pet 
Lak,  subscribes  17  dollars.  I  wonder 
what  most  of  us  other  exiles  would 
say  if  we  were  called  upon  to  sub- 
scribe a  month's  wages  to,  say,  a  free 
library  or  a  people's  park  for  the 
good  folk  at  home  !  Not  of  course 
that  I  wish  to  imply  that  Fu  Long 
was  actuated  by  pure  motives, 
himself  being  a  heathen.  I  dare- 
say his  main  thought  was  to  keep 
the  name  of  him  green  in  his 
native  village ;  the  poor  girls  cut- 
ting grass  who  shelter  here  when 
a  summer  rain-storm  has  turned 
the  five  miles  of  mountain  -  side 
between  them  and  home  into  a 
smoking  torrent — they  may  have 
been  a  secondary  consideration. 
Perhaps  this  is  why  they  do  not 
bless  the  "pious  founders,"  as 
they  set  their  dripping  bundles 
down  and  laugh  and  dab  each 
other  after  the  manner  of  damp 
womankind  all  the  world  over. 


The  refreshment -buffet  ranged 
against  the  wall  is  a  purely  private 
speculation.  It  is  of  the  unpre- 
tentious form  patronised  by  the 
peripatetic  vendor  of  winkles  at 
home.  On  it  are  ranged  various 
comestibles,  many  of  which  are  fit 
for  human  consumption.  Such  are 
not  those  unripe  pears  preserved  in 
brine.  The  white  thew-fu  or  bean 
jelly  looks  nice,  but  it  is  not.  As 
for  that  great  quivering  yellow 
slab  of  fermented  rice,  like  Mrs 
Todger's  fish,  "  Don't  you  eat  none 
of  him ! "  But  the  slices  of  candied 
cucumber  may  be  ventured  upon, 
and  the  rice  biscuits,  and  the  sticks 
of  what  looks  like  hardbake.  They 
are  harmless,  and  taste  strongly  of 
nothing.  The  tea  and  the  oranges 
are  unexceptionable.  The  former  is 
given  you  mixed  with  a  little  cold 
water  at  the  bottom  of  a  bowl. 
You  are  further  supplied  with  a 
small  earthenware  teapot  full  of 
hot  water,  which  you  transfer  to 
the  bowl  and  thence  into  a  doll's 
teacup  without  a  handle,  and  drink 
it  neat  and  as  near  boiling-point  as 
may  be.  Among  the  oranges  there 
is  a  sort  about  the  size  and  shape 
of  an  olive  which  is  eaten  skin  and 
all,  and  which  is,  I  am  assured,  a 
sovereign  cure  for  a  sore  throat. 
Most  of  these  luxuries  sell  for 
three  cash  each,  or  a  little  more 
than  the  quarter  of  a  cent. 

On  again.  Another  scramble, 
down  this  time,  through  a  planta- 
tion of  spruce-firs  big  enough  to 
suggest  to  Ah  Nyi  a  fresh  variation 
of  his  favourite  question,  "  In  the 
Outland,  such  great  trees  are  there 
or  not  ? "  (0  Malaysia,  where  art 
thou  now  !) 

At  the  next  turning  our  path 
reduces  itself  to  a  notch  cut  round 
a  buttress  of  rock.  As  my  pony 
walks,  after  its  nature,  on  the  ex- 
tremest  edge,  I  get  a  beautiful  view 
of  a  little  cascade  two  hundred  feet 
below,  "  as  straight  as  a  beggar  can 


1894.] 


A  Ride  in  Hakkaland. 


605 


spit."  It  is  not  particularly  re- 
assuring to  find  at  this  point  a 
little  shrine  about  the  size  of  a 
dog  -  kennel,  recording  the  fact 
that  somebody  did  go  over  at 
this  spot,  and  recommending  the 
traveller  to  burn  a  joss -stick  or 
two  to  the  spirit  of  the  place  as 
a  precaution. 

Once  round  this  awkward 
corner,  we  descend  gladly  into  a 
longer  stretch  of  level  ground  than 
we  have  met  with  so  far.  Now 
the  road  follows  a  river-bed,  as  it 
might  be  some  quiet  towing-path 
in  the  old  country,  sweet  with  the 
scent  of  brier-rose  and  honey- 
suckle. But  a  water  -  wheel  as 
high  as  a  house  brings  me  back  to 
China.  Hollow  joints  of  bamboo 
are  tied  to  its  flange,  and  as  the 
wheel  revolves  lazily  with  the 
current,  they  scoop  up  the  water, 
and  turning  one  after  the  other  on 
their  downward  sweep,  pour  it  into 
a  trough  twenty  feet  above  the 
level  of  the  stream,  whence  it 
flows  by  a  hundred  channels  over 
the  rice  -  fields :  a  very  Chinese 
"notion,"  truly,  in  its  ingenious 
simplicity. 

We  cross  the  river  by  a  massive 
bridge  raised  thirty  feet  above  its 
bed  on  three  immense  buttresses 
of  sandstone.  These  buttresses 
project  up-stream  some  twenty 
feet  beyond  the  bridging  they 
support,  tapering  to  a  point  like 
a  ship's  prow ;  so  that  from  a  little 
distance  one  might  fancy  them  to 
be  so  many  great  barges  passing 
under  the  bridge  on  their  way  up- 
stream. This  is  a  necessary  pre- 
caution; otherwise  the  beds  of 
sand  brought  down  from  the  hills 
by  the  summer  rainstorms  would 
bank  against  the  masonry  and 
carry  it  away.  This  continual 
down-drift  of  sand  is  the  curse  of 
the  Chinese  peasant.  It  continues 
till  in  many  places  the  river-bed  is 
raised  to  the  level  of  the  fields  on 


either  side,  and  dams  have  to  be 
built  along  the  banks,  so  that  the 
river  is  confined  in  a  channel 
higher  than  the  surrounding  coun- 
try. Then  one  day  the  river  comes 
down  in  spate ;  the  dam  cracks, 
crumbles,  bursts  open  ;  and  a 
flood  of  brown  water  spreads  itself 
over  the  low  land,  sweeping  towns 
away  and  counting  its  victims  by 
the  myriad — as  happens  every  few 
years  in  the  valley  of  the  Yellow 
Eiver,  or,  to  go  back  to  our  brooks 
in  Hakkaland,  merely  washing 
away  a  homestead  or  two,  and 
burying  one  knows  not  how  much 
of  labour  and  hope  under  an  ex- 
panse of  red  sand. 

But  it  is  now  past  mid-day,  and 
Ah  Nyi  has  begun  to  give  his 
tongue  a  rest,  and  to  shift  his 
burden  more  often  from  left 
shoulder  to  right,  while  his  face 
begins  to  wear  the  fixed  pained 
smile  which  in  a  Chinaman  means 
that  he  is  tired  and  wants  his  rice. 
Fortunately  our  halting -place  is 
not  much  farther.  Already  the 
increased  traffic  heralds  its  ap- 
proach. Troops  of  women  meet 
us,  armed  with  basket  and  sickle, 
on  their  way  to  cut  grass,  in  their 
homely  dress  of  loose  blue  coat 
and  knickerbockers.  They  are  of 
all  ages,  from  sixty  years  to  ten ; 
but  all  stare  alike  their  hardest 
as  I  pass,  covering  their  faces 
with  their  sleeves  to  ward  off  any 
noxious  humours  the  foreigner 
may  exhale.  Safely  passed,  all 
relieve  their  feelings  with  shrieks 
of  laughter.  Then  there  are  men, 
women,  and  children  carrying  iron- 
ore,  vegetables,  sugar-cane,  rice, 
and  pigs — especially  pigs.  I  think 
it  is  Mark  Twain  who  says  that, 
next  to  your  amateur  tenor,  a  calf 
chewing  a  dishclout  is  the  most 
self-satisfied  thing  on  earth.  He 
cannot  have  seen  a  Chinese  pig 
driving  to  market.  The  contrast, 
indeed,  is  striking.  The  two  lords 


606 


A  Ride  in  Hakkaland. 


[Nov. 


of  creation  stagger  along  under 
their  pole,  stopping  every  fifty 
yards  for  breath,  half  -  naked, 
bowed,  perspiring  at  every  pore ; 
while  the  pig  lies  slung  in  the 
crate  between  them,  reposing  with 
his  four  fat  legs  sticking  out  of 
holes  in  the  wicker-work,  eyes 
half  -  shut,  tail  gently  curling. 
"There  must  be  classes,"  he 
grunts  sotto  voce  (the  haughty 
aristocrat !).  "  Every  one  can't  go 
riding  in  carriages  ! " 

But  now  Oak-Tree  Town  comes 
in  view  half-way  down  the  valley, 
showing    flat    and    uninteresting, 
like  all  Hakka  towns.     It  is  en- 
closed   by   a   triangular   wall,    of 
which  the  base  lies  parallel  to  the 
river  that  waters  the  valley,  and 
the    sides    run   up   the    hillsides, 
meeting    at    a    point    above   the 
town.     This  peculiar  situation  is 
common    among    small   towns   in 
Hakkaland.     It  suggests  the  idea 
of   a   cur    snapping   in   a   corner. 
Viewed  as  a  defence  against  brig- 
ands or   rebels,    this   fortification 
is  of  doubtful  value,  as  the  whole 
town  is  commanded  by  every  point 
on  the  hillside  above  the  apex  of 
the   triangle;   but   a   people  who 
thought  to  keep  out  the  Tartars 
by  the  Great  Wall  is  above  stra- 
tegical considerations.     But  these 
thirty  -  foot  ramparts,   with  their 
conning   towers    and   rusty   little 
cannon,    are  noteworthy   for    one 
thing:   they  are  the  only  visible 
return    that    ratepayers    get    for 
their  money.     To  the  outer  bar- 
barian their  only  use  seems  to  be 
that  they  confine  the  dirty  town, 
and  prevent  it  from  straggling  on 
to  the  corn-land  around.     As  we 
pass  through  the  massive  gateway, 
the  contrast  is  striking;  and  the 
first  thing  that  forces  itself  upon 
my   senses    is    that    every    third 
wayfarer  is  a  woman    staggering 
under  two  tubs  of  night-soil.     The 
streets  are  lanes  eight  or  ten  feet 


wide,    paved  with   cobble-stones, 
and  the  houses  on  either  side  are 
one  -  storey ed       shops.        Perhaps 
booths  would  be  a  better  name, 
for  the  whole  shop-front  is  open 
to   the   street,    showing   a  greasy 
counter  and  a  gloomy  little  pas- 
sage beyond.     Even  booths   does 
not  seem  a  very  happy  name,  for 
apparently   there   is    nothing    for 
sale.      For    example,    one    Virtue 
Glorious  has  hung  before  his  shop 
a  long  board,  on  which  the  legend 
"  General  Ware  Shop  "  is  inscribed 
in  green  and  gold.     Nothing,  how- 
ever,  is   visible   except   some  tin 
lamps,   an  assortment  of  English 
needles  laid  out  in  rows  on  the 
counter,  a  few  rice-bowls  of  coarse 
earthenware,  and  some  packets  of 
"self -come  fire,"  the  last  also  of 
quasi-English  origin,  as  the  legend 
thereon,  SUREBESTMATCH,  will  tell. 
Similarly   the    draper's   stock-in- 
trade  is  represented  by  an  unas- 
suming parcel  or  two  in  whitey- 
brown  paper,  unless  you  count  a 
pair  of  indelicate  straddling  knick- 
erbockers that  solicit  custom  from 
above  the  doorway.      The  under- 
taker alone   understands   the   ad- 
vantage of  an  artistic  shop -win- 
dow.    A  little  delicate  scroll-work 
in  green  and  red  at  the  ends  of 
his  stock-in-hand  has  given  quite 
a  jaunty  air  to  the  black  loglike 
coffins.     As  for  the  barber's  shop, 
what  mysteries  it   contains   shall 
be    left    unobserved :     a    passing 
glance  at  the  customer  is  enough, 
on   whose   ears   and   nostrils    the 
man  of  razors  is  operating  with  a 
six-inch  brazen  bradawl. 

As  we  pass  on  at  a  foot-pace, 
every  doorway  fills  with  curious 
spectators.  The  men  put  on  an 
air  of  ill-feigned  indifference;  the 
women  greet  the  absurdity  of  my 
coiffure  and  costume  with  quaint 
comments  and  unconcealed  amuse- 
ment. A  smartly  dressed  urchin 
salutes  me  as  Law  Ya  (Venerable 


1894. 


A  Ride  in  Ilakkaland. 


607 


Father),  with  a  sublime  demure- 
ness  of  expression,  as  one  who 
would  say,  "  Let  me  at  least  ren- 
der honour  where  honour  is  due." 
Hardly,  however,  have  I  gone 
twenty  yards  farther  when  he 
changes  his  tune,  and  (I  thought 
it  was  coming)  raises  a  tentative 
cry  of  "  Foreign  Devil !  "  and  waits 
to  see  the  result,  like  a  nervous 
rider  striking  a  strange  horse. 
Encouraged  by  his  impunity, 
others  take  up  the  cry,  and  in 
a  few  minutes  a  crowd  of  little 
imps  are  dancing  along  behind  me, 
albeit  at  a  respectful  distance,  to 
a  chorus  of  "Fan  Kwi,  'E  f  Fan 
Kwi,  A  ...  ah  ! "  It  is  impos- 
sible to  be  angry  with  them,  they 
are  so  intensely  happy.  Their  faces 
simply  dance  with  pleasure ;  while 
their  clattering  wooden  shoes,  their 
little  loose  breeches  and  napping 
sleeves,  all  seem  electrified  into  an 
ecstasy  of  merriment.  Even  the 
red  tags  of  incipient  pigtails  bob 
up  and  down,  as  if  they  too  must 
get  a  peep  at  this  extraordinary 
phenomenon.  At  last  we  find 
refuge  in  our  inn. 

You  may  know  it  is  an  inn, 
because  there  is  absolutely  nothing 
to  buy  in  it.  The  landlord  greets 
me  with  a  "  Good  day,  boss  ! "  and 
insists  on  shaking  hands,  such 
lore  of  barbarian  customs  has  he 
acquired  during  a  ten  years'  stay 
in  the  Gold  Mountains.  Has  he 
tea  or  rice  ?  No,  he  has  nothing ; 
but  he  can  buy.  So  we  pass 
through  the  dirty  shop,  and  dirtier 
passage,  into  a  kitchen  in  posses- 
sion of  a  weak-backed  sow.  At 
the  farther  end  is  a  straw  loft  or 
platform,  raised  six  or  seven  feet 
above  the  ground.  Gaining  this 
coign  of  vantage,  I  appeal  to  mine 
host  to  clear  the  house  of  the  crowd 
that  has  followed  me.  He  cour- 
teously goes  so  far  as  to  swear 
lustily  at  large,  but  without  re- 
sult. A  Chinaman's  house  em- 


phatically is  not  his  castle.  The 
public  considers  a  wandering  for- 
eigner as  public  property,  and 
would  deeply  resent  any  attempt 
at  monopolising  him.  Being  thus 
thrown  on  my  own  resources  to 
quiet  the  hubbub,  I  resort  to 
strategy.  Pulling  out  my  tele- 
scope, I  direct  it  on  the  crowd 
below,  and,  in  the  lull  caused  by 
this  manoeuvre,  seize  the  oppor- 
tunity of  observing  that,  if  there 
is  any  more  noise  or  pulling  about 
of  my  things,  I  shall  decline  all 
intercourse  with  this  people.  This 
produces  an  excellent  effect.  There 
is  a  general  chorus  of  "  Hush, 
hush  !  .  .  .  Pulling  his  things 
about !  .  .  .  A  reverend  stranger, 
too  !  .  .  .  Such  bad  manners  ! " 
and  comparative  quiet  reigns,  of 
which  I  take  advantage,  and  try 
to  reply  categorically  to  the  spit- 
ting fire  of  questions.  Some  one 
well  up  in  theology  first  puts  me 
through  my  facings.  No ;  I  am 
neither  a  Soul's  Father  (Catholic) 
nor  a  Guardian  Master  (Lutheran) ; 
neither  a  Frenchman  nor  a  Ger- 
man. "  What  are  you,  then  1 " 
I  reply,  with  much  dignity,  that 
my  nation  is  the  nation  of  Great 
Yin  (of  which  most  of  them  have 
heard),  and  that  I  am  a  mandarin 
in  a  foreign  land  (I  translate  the 
word  magistrate,  and  if  they  are 
filled  with  an  exaggerated  sense  of 
my  importance,  that  is  not  my 
fault).  I  cannot  say  I  find  their 
country  very  good,  for  the  Hun- 
dred Surnames  (the  masses)  lack 
reverence.  Having  thus  exalted 
my  office,  I  proceed  to  explain 
that  my  stockings  are  made  of 
sheep's  wool,  and  even  condescend 
to  let  them  be  felt,  legs  dangling, 
a  second  Tappertit.  I  have  not 
come  to  teach  them  religion  ;  I 
am  not  a  grandfather,  though  I 
have  a  beard  ;  I  am  not  in  the 
least  afraid,  thank  you ;  I  have  a 
surname ;  I  cannot  see  as  far  as 


608 


A  Ride  in  Hakkaland. 


three  feet  below  the  surface  of  the 
ground. 

At  last  I  am  released  from  this 
catechism  by  the  arrival  of  my 
rice,  which  I  eat  &  la  Chinoise, 
basin  to  lip,  using  the  chop-sticks 
as  shovels,  or  beak-wise  to  extract 
a  piece  of  salmon  from  its  tin. 
Disgusting  as  it  may  seem  to  good 
people  who  live  at  home  at  ease, 
this  method  of  feeding  is  adopted 
by  most  of  those  whom  fate  has 
sent  to  live  off  the  beaten  track 
in  the  Flowery  Kingdom  —  that 
is,  when  dining  in  public.  The 
curious  staring  and  bursts  of  con- 
temptuous laughter  are  quite 
enough  to  ruin  a  man's  digestion, 
without  the  addition  of  such  com- 
ments as,  "Look  at  his  fork  all 
made  of  tin  !  "  "  No,  it's  silver." 
"  There,  he's  spiked  a  bit  of  his 
foreign -tin -cow -meat !  "  "  He'll 
prick  his  tongue."  "  So  curious  !  " 
ad  nauseam. 

Man  and  beast  being  satisfied, 
we  step  out  again,  escorted  by  the 
populace  as  far  as  the  gates,  on 
through  patches  of  sugar-cane, 
market  produce,  and  tobacco. 
Then  comes  more  barley,  varied 
at  intervals  by  brown  hillocks 
studded  with  graves,  where  goats 
and  cattle  browse  unmolested. 
These  are  the  graves  of  the  com- 
mon people.  In  choosing  a  favour- 
able site  for  a  grave,  where  the 
elements  of  wind  and  water  shall 
be  propitious,  lies  much  virtue. 
Here  and  there  you  may  see  one 
of  these  tombs,  set  like  a  white 
ring  in  some  lofty  mountain-spur 
on  a  lucky  spot  where  the  geo- 
mantist  has  discovered  a  curving 
Dragon's  back,  in  conjunction  with 
the  White  Tiger,  among  the  sur- 
rounding hills ;  or  a  view  of  wind- 
ing water  such  as  will  comfort  the 
spirit  of  the  dead,  and  win  his 
goodwill  on  behalf  of  his  pious 
descendants.  But  this  is  a  great 
subject.  Our  Hakka  peasants  can- 
not, as  a  rule,  afford  such  luxuri- 


[Nov. 

ous  insurance,  and  have  to  content 
themselves  with  faith  and  what 
hillock  of  waste  land  may  belong 
to  their  clan.  A  stone  tablet  set 
in  an  arch  of  masonry,  and  let 
into  the  slope  of  the  rising  ground, 
marks  the  resting-place  and  tells 
the  name  of  the  deceased ;  while 
the  approach  thereto  is  enclosed 
by  a  low  stone  wall  of  horse-shoe 
shape.  But,  lofty  or  humble,  the 
grave  of  his  ancestors  is  of  the 
essence  of  a  Hakka's  religion.  It 
is  hard  for  a  stranger  to  appre- 
ciate the  depth  of  his  feeling  for 
it.  You  may  sneer  at  Confucius 
and  laugh  at  the  Buddhist  priest- 
hood ;  but  do  not  try  with  a  light- 
ning-conductor or  weather-cock  to 
divert  the  luck  of  a  graveyard,  or 
there  will  be  trouble. 

By  good  fortune  we  come  on.  a 
party  paying  their  annual  visit  of 
respect  at  one  of  these  graves.  It 
is  a  pretty  sight,  and  one  worth 
stopping  for.  Nor  need  we  fear 
to  intrude.  By  the  token  that 
your  Hakka  does  not  hesitate  to 
invade  your  room  at  an  inn,  you 
may  understand  that  European 
notions  of  privacy  are  foreign  to 
him.  A  Tsi  Fun,  or  Sacrificing 
at  the  Tomb,  is  perhaps  the  nearest 
Chinese  equivalent  to  a  picnic. 
From  early  day  all  the  male  de- 
scendants of  the  departed  have 
been  assembled  at  his  sepulchre, 
from  the  white-haired  grandfather 
(soon  himself  to  be  an  object  of 
worship)  to  the  children  playing 
knucklebones  with  the  shells  of 
exploded  crackers.  All  the  morn- 
ing they  have  been  cooking  the 
cakes  and  sweetmeats  laid  out  on 
the  cement  threshold  before  the 
tablet;  and  now  kneeling  one  by 
one  in  their  long  blue  gowns  of 
ceremony,  they  give  each  other 
and  taste  the  wine- cup,  bowing, 
bowing  before  the  grave  till  their 
foreheads  touch  the  ground,  amid 
discordant  too-tooing  of  horns  and 
popping  of  bombs.  They  pray  for 


1894.] 


A  Ride  in  Hakkaland. 


609 


health,  wealth,  long  life,  and  male 
issue,  the  good  souls,  much  as 
other  people  use.  Let  us  recog- 
nise the  touch  of  nature  and  bid 
them  a  hearty  farewell,  leaving 
the  cheap  sneer  to  professional 
iconoclasts. 

A  picture  of  Chinese  scenery 
must  have  its  pagoda.  Without 
which  none  other  are  genuine,  as 
the  advertisements  say.  So  it  is 
worth  while  to  leave  the  path  and 
scramble  up  a  hill  in  pursuit  of 
one,  even  at  the  end  of  a  day's 
march.  It  is  the  traveller's  duty 
to  carry  sextant  and  yard  measure 
in  his  pocket;  so  let  me  record 
that  this  pagoda  of  mine  is  an 
octagonal  seven-storeyed  tower  of 
stone,  a  hundred  feet  high,  with 
walls  twelve  feet  thick,  into  which 
a  winding  staircase  is  built.  There 
is,  however,  nothing  to  be  seen  in 
any  of  the  storeys  after  the  first 
two.  The  others  have  been  left 
unfurnished,  and  the  ship  is  spoilt 
for  the  want  of  a  penn'orth  of  tar. 
The  ground-floor  is  an  octagonal 
room  sixteen  or  eighteen  feet  in 
diameter.  Opposite  the  door  there 
is  an  altar  or  throne  on  which  the 
effigy  of  a  former  emperor  sits, 
fatuously  smiling  through  a  thin 
black  beard,  flanked  by  attendant 
ministers,  in  the  midst  of  a  mass 
of  tawdry  paper  ornaments,  dusty 
lanterns,  tinsel,  and  flummery. 
Before  this  altar  obeisance  is  made 
and  incense  burned  by  devotees. 
Human  patience  has  its  limits; 
sympathy  the  most  cosmopolitan 
can  hardly  find  interest  in  such 
nonsense.  The  occupant  of  the 
second  floor  is  a  small  individual 
with  squint  eyes,  a  ghastly  hare- 
lip, and  a  swollen  lolling  tongue. 
He  is  known  to  fame  as  having 
been  so  hideous  that,  though  his 
essays  were  on  two  occasions  far 
the  best  sent  up,  the  examiners 
declared  he  was  really  too  ugly 
to  qualify.  However,  the  third 
time  they  had  to  give  way,  and 


he  passed  triumphantly.  At  his 
death  he  was  canonised,  and  is 
now  worshipped  by  students.  The 
sculptor  has  gilded  his  homely 
features,  perhaps  to  typify  his 
merits ;  and  impelled  by  a  mis- 
trust (quite  uncalled  for)  in  his 
ability  to  devise  a  sufficient  atroc- 
ity of  countenance,  has  accentu- 
ated the  effect  by  representing  the 
demi-god  as  standing  with  one 
knee  pressed  into  the  pit  of  his 
stomach,  while  he  fiercely  brand- 
ishes a  pen  rather  bigger  than 
himself.  But  these  are  mere 
superfluities.  The  object  of  the 
pagoda  is  engraved  on  the  slab 
of  marble,  which,  fallen  from  its 
niche  in  the  wall,  lies  among 
briers  and  rubble  at  its  'foot. 
It  seems  to  have  been  built  A.D. 
1800,  at  a  cost  of  10,000  dollars, 
to  retain  the  luck  of  the  neigh- 
bourhood, but  more  especially  to 
preserve  those  who  travel  by  land 
and  by  water  in  the  Barbarous 
Outland.  If  our  good  miners  in 
the  Perak  Tin  Hills  can  remember 
the  old  country,  as  the  tea-house" 
showed,  it  seems  that  they  in  turn 
are  not  forgotten. 

But  now  night  is  falling,  and 
brings  a  cold  rain  with  it.  As 
we  plod  stiffly  over  the  last  mile, 
the  fields  have  become  deserted, 
save  where  two  enthusiasts,  man 
and  wife,  are  still  wading  in  a 
padi  -  nursery  sowing  the  rice. 
Covered  back  and  front  with  rain- 
proof coats  of  palm-leaf,  with  legs 
bare  from  the  thigh  downward, 
and  red  with  cold,  they  look  like 
some  unwieldy  species  of  waders 
or  cranes. 

But  at  last  our  inn  !  I  have 
asked  but  a  small  boon  from  the 
Fates,  that  it  shall  not  prove  to 
be  market-day,  and  my  prayer 
is  heard.  Rice  is  to  be  had  for 
man,  and  bean-stalks  for  beast. 
And  so  gladly  to  supper  and  to 
bed. 

E.  A.  IRVING. 


610 


Roger  Bacon. 


[Nov. 


ROGEK      BACON. 


THE  brilliance  of  the  intellectual 
Renaissance  in  Italy,  the  potency 
of  its  effect  upon  the  philosophy, 
literature,  and  art  of  Western 
Europe,  and  the  renown  attained 
by  the  foremost  men  at  all  stages 
of  the  movement,  have  blinded  us 
to  the  eminence  of  thinkers  and 
writers  who  lived  before  the  close 
of  the  middle  ages.  Apart  from 
and  besides  the  imperfection  of 
such  records  as  remain,  the  atten- 
tion of  succeeding  generations  has 
been  diverted  from  the  silent 
labour  of  earlier  students  by  the 
intense  and  sudden  vitality  awak- 
ened in  those  of  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury. Just  as,  standing  before 
a  great  conflagration  on  a  dark 
night,  the  spectator  beholds  none 
of  the  objects  in  the  landscape 
immediately  beyond  the  blaze,  so 
in  order  to  view  the  operations 
carried  on  in  the  civilised  world 
during  the  thirteenth  century,  one 
must  pass  to  one  side  of  the 
centre  of  action,  and  disregard, 
for  the  moment,  the  stir  and 
tumult  in  the  foreground.  And 
even  then,  in  estimating  the  pro- 
portions and  nature  of  the  different 
figures  disclosed,  allowance  must 
be  made  for  the  glare  reflected  on 
them  from  the  nearer  flames. 

It  was  the  age  of  princes  and  of 
priests.  Military  force  and  eccle- 
siastical power  alternately  strove 
for  mastery  and  allied  themselves 
for  rule.  The  titles  of  kings  and 
cardinals  of  that  time  are  associ- 
ated with  great  works  of  art,  while 
of  those  who  wrought  them,  even 
the  names  have  perished.  No  one 
who  has  traced  the  development 
of  Gothic  architecture  from  the 
sturdy  Saxon  translation  of  Roman 
building  through  the  masculine 
beauty  of  the  Norman,  down  to 


its  consummation  in  the  honest 
splendour  of  the  thirteenth  cen- 
tury, can  fail  in  the  conviction  that 
great  intellects  were  untiringly  at 
work  during  all  the  rigours  and 
perils  of  these  four  hundred  years 
— nay,  that  in  the  matter  of  noble 
building,  neither  in  this  country 
nor  in  Germany  or  France  have 
their  equals  since  been  seen.  The 
most  ambitious  efforts  of  modern 
architects  are  no  more  than  copies 
of  the  old  masterpieces. 

Take  the  most  complete  expres- 
sion of  the  intellectual  energy  of 
the  thirteenth  century  which  we 
possess,  the  only  great  building 
designed  and  completed  during  the 
noontide  of  Gothic  art  and  un- 
altered since,  the  Cathedral  of  Sal- 
isbury, and  you  may  read  that  it 
was  founded  by  Bishop  Poore  in 
1220,  that  the  cloisters  and  chapter- 
house were  built  forty  years  later 
by  Bishop  de  la  Wyle,  and  that  the 
tower  and  matchless  spire  were 
completed  by  Bishop  Wyville, 
more  than  a  hundred  years  after  the 
foundations  were  laid.  But  you 
shall  learn  nothing  about  the  minds 
that  conceived,  or  the  hands  that 
carried  out,  the  noble  designs : 
only  the  bare  names  of  these  per- 
fect workers  may  here  and  there 
survive  in  the  account  -  books  of 
the  Chapter.  Nevertheless,  their 
works  remain,  testifying  that  men 
thought  and  wrought  mightily 
before  the  revival  of  learning. 

The  coincidence  that  Roger 
Bacon  bore,  in  a  time  before  sur- 
names had  come  into  general  use, 
the  same  surname  that  was  to  be 
carried  to  fame  four  centuries  later 
by  "the  wisest,  brightest,  meanest 
of  mankind,"  has  cast  into  deeper 
eclipse  the  reputation  of  one  of 
the  most  penetrating  thinkers  who 


1894.] 


Roger  Bacon. 


611 


have  from  time  to  time  revolted 
against  false  teaching  and  unsound 
systems  of  science.  Hardly  for 
every  hundred  persons  who  have 
a  general  idea  of  the  life  and  works 
of  Francis  Bacon  of  Yerulam 
shall  one  be  found  who  could 
give  an  outline  of  those  of  Roger 
Bacon  the  Franciscan.  Yet  with 
the  fruit  of  four  additional  cen- 
turies of  learning  and  civilisation 
at  his  command,  the  secret  of  the 
later  Bacon's  philosophy  was  none 
other  than  the  earlier  Bacon  had 
imparted  to  ears  that  would  not 
hear — that  the  road  to  knowledge 
lay,  not  through  scholastic  argu- 
ment and  self-confident  routine, 
but  by  way  of  cautious  induction 
and  patient  experiment. 

There  exists  one  other  hindrance 
to  popular  familiarity  with  Roger 
Bacon's  teaching,  inasmuch  as 
there  hangs  over  his  writings  the 
veil  of  a  dead  language.  A  very 
small  part  of  them  have  been 
translated  out  of  the  original 
Latin,  nor  is  there,  indeed,  any 
pressing  reason  for  undertaking 
this  at  the  present  day.  It  is 
pathetically  interesting  to  follow 
the  workings  of  a  powerful  mind 
tearing  at  the  trammels  woven  by 
generations  of  mysticism  and  schol- 
asticism, and  sympathy  is  deeply 
stirred  for  the  dauntless  spirit 
suffering  persecution  at  the  hands 
of  prejudice  and  vanity ;  but  the 
battle  has  since  been  fought  and 
won,  the  truths  contended  for  are 
now  so  unquestionable,  the  know- 
ledge so  painfully  strained  at  has 
been  brought  within  such  easy 
reach  of  all  who  care  to  possess 
it,  that,  except  as  a  study  of  faith- 
ful human  endeavour,  these  writ- 
ings are  not  now  of  great  profit 
to  the  general  reader. 

But   it   is   otherwise   with   the 


author  of  them.  It  is  well  worth 
calling  to  mind  the  earnestness, 
patience,  and  courage  of  the 
humble  Franciscan  friar. 

M.  Emile  Charles,  who  has 
written  by  far  the  best  monograph 
extant  on  Roger  Bacon,1  complains 
of  the  conspiracy  of  silence  which 
wrapped  his  memory  for  more  than 
two  hundred  years  after  his  death. 
When  in  the  sixteenth  century 
human  intelligence  was  pouring 
through  channels  reopened  by  the 
Renaissance,  men  became  aware 
that  a  prophet  had  been  allowed 
to  pass  away  without  honour,  and 
John  Leyland  set  himself  to  collect 
the  scattered  remains  of  Bacon's 
writings.  But  there  was  no  re- 
membrance of  the  philosopher's 
life,  nor  hardly  any  written  record, 
save  fragments  of  narrative  and 
disconnected  allusions  in  his  own 
works,  slender  materials  out  of 
which  to  compile  a  biography. 
Anthony  Wood  says  he  was  born 
a  younger  son  of  a  good  family 
near  Ilchester  in  Somerset ;  there 
is  evidence  under  his  own  hand  to 
show  that  this  must  have  been 
about  the  year  1214.  Early  in 
his  teens,  perhaps  in  the  year 
1228,  he  went  to  study  at  Oxford, 
where  he  came  immediately  under 
the  influence  of  a  learned  name- 
sake, Robert  Bacon,  probably  a 
near  relative  of  his  own.  It  was 
in  the  company  of  this  individual 
that  Roger  first  flashed  into  public 
notice.  Matthew  Paris  records 
how  Henry  III.,  then  at  the  be- 
ginning of  his  political  troubles, 
visited  Oxford  in  1233,  in  order  to 
meet  his  malcontent  barons. 
Robert  Bacon,  having  been  ap- 
pointed to  preach  before  the  king, 
had  an  interview  with  Henry  after 
the  sermon,  and  told  him  roundly 
that  there  was  no  chance  of  peace 


1  Roger  Bacon,  sa  vie,  ses  ouvrages,  ses  doctrines.     Par  Emile  Charles.     Paris, 
1861. 


G12 


Roger  Bacon, 


[Nov. 


so  long  as  Pierre  Desroches,  Bishop 
of  Winchester,  and  head  of  the 
foreign  party  in  England,  remained 
his  adviser.  His  Majesty  took 
this  plain  -  speaking  in  wonder- 
fully good  part,  whereupon,  says 
Matthew  Paris,  "  a  certain  clerk, 
to  wit  Roger  Bacon,  already  re- 
nowned for  wit,  dared  to  address 
the  following  audacious  pleasantry 
to  the  king  :  *  Sire,  dost  thou  know 
the  dangers  most  to  be  feared  by 
those  who  sail  upon  the  sea?' 
'Those  know  them  best,'  replied 
Henry,  'who  are  accustomed  to 
make  voyages.'  '  Well,  I  will  tell 
thee,'  answered  the  clerk ;  { the 
greatest  dangers  come  from  stones 
and  rocks  (les  pierres  et  les  roches).' 
He  referred  in  this  to  Pierre  Des- 
roches, Bishop  of  Winchester." 

This  anecdote  is  the  only  men- 
tion made  of  Roger  in  the  chronicle 
in  which  it  is  preserved.  Oxford 
had  at  that  time  the  reputation 
for  liberty  of  opinion  and  uncon- 
ventional teaching  beyond  all  other 
seats  of  learning,  and  mathematics, 
elsewhere  neglected,  were  dili- 
gently studied  there.  The  last- 
named  circumstance  was  one  which 
greatly  contributed  to  the  sub- 
sequent character  of  the  young 
student's  philosophy.1 

But  even  more  plainly  than  the 
effect  of  sound  mathematical  train- 
ing upon  Roger,  there  may  be 
traced  certain  influences  to  which 
he  was  thus  early  exposed  at  the 
University.  Robert  Grosseteste, 
Bishop  of  Lincoln,  was  one  of  the 
ruling  spirits  of  Oxford  and  the 
leading  mathematician  of  his  age. 
In  the  strange  combination  of  an 
ardent  student  with  a  fearless 
social  reformer  he  trod  the  same 
path  which  his  pupil  was  to  follow, 
and  roused  similar  opposition  to 


that  which  young  Roger  was  des- 
tined to  encounter.  Grosseteste's 
dearest  friend  was  Adam  de  Mar- 
isco,  also  a  profound  mathema- 
tician, who,  though  of  much 
milder  nature  than  the  Bishop  of 
Lincoln,  had  also  to  pay  heavily 
for  incurring  the  displeasure  of  the 
Papal  Court.  He  was  a  wealthy 
man,  and  it  was  not  till  he  was 
well  advanced  in  years  that  he 
joined  the  Mendicant  Order  of  St 
Francis. 

In  the  thirteenth  century  Paris 
was  the  metropolis  of  letters  in 
Western  Europe,  and  it  was  a  com- 
mon thing  for  ambitious  students 
to  pass  thither  after  a  period  of 
instruction  at  Oxford.  Bacon, 
whose  ardour  in  study  and  pro- 
ficiency had  already  brought  him 
into  notice,  was  but  following  the 
example  set  by  his  friend  and 
patron  Grosseteste,  and  no  doubt 
fulfilling  his  advice,  when,  about 
the  year  1234,  being  then  twenty 
years  of  age,  he  went  to  Paris. 
He  seems  to  have  remained  there 
for  not  less  than  sixteen  years,  by 
which  time  he  had  attained  the 
degree  of  doctor  in  theology,  which 
could  not  be  conferred  on  any  one 
under  the  age  of  thirty-five.  The 
reputation  for  learning  which  he 
had  gained  at  Oxford  was  certainly 
not  dimmed  in  the  greater  world 
of  Paris :  it  is  said  that  he  held 
some  official  rank  as  lecturer,  and 
that  his  classes  were  well  attended ; 
but  in  the  tenor  of  his  teaching 
may  be  traced  in  the  pupil  of 
Grosseteste  a  growing  spirit  of 
revolt  against  scholastic  authority 
and  pedantry.  The  wrangling 
between  the  Begging  Friars  and  the 
University  filled  him  with  disgust, 
and,  when  referring  in  a  later  day 
to  the  doings  in  the  learned  world, 


1  The  term  "mathematics"  was  used  in  the  thirteenth  century  in  a  sense  far 
more  extended  than  it  bears  now.  It  embraced  the  study  of  geography,  geo- 
metry, astronomy,  chronology,  arithmetic,  and  music. 


1894." 


Roger  Bacon. 


613 


he  uttered  no  word  of  reverence, 
still  less  of  affection,  for  the 
weighty  names  of  Alexander  of 
Hales,  Albertus  Magnus,  Thomas 
Aquinas,  and  others  who  were 
foremost  in  the  fray.  The  root  of 
the  whole  mischief  lay,  so  Bacon 
believed,  in  the  miserably  corrupt 
translations  of  Holy  Writ,  of  Aris- 
totle, and  of  other  masters,  upon 
which  the  arguments  on  either  side 
were  founded ;  so,  leaving  aside 
metaphysics,  he  threw  himself  ar- 
dently into  the  study  of  languages, 
and  acquired  the  power  of  reading 
the  original  manuscripts  in  Chal- 
dean, Hebrew,  Arabic,  and  Greek.1 
At  the  same  time  he  worked  hard 
at  alchemy,  mathematics,  and 
optics,  and  was  incessantly  con- 
ducting experiments  in  physical 
science. 

He  had  one  chosen  leader  and 
companion  in  his  labours,  to  whom 
he  refers  as  dominus  experiment- 
orum.  Of  this  individual's  fame, 
if  he  enjoyed  any  beyond  the  de- 
votion of  his  disciple,  nothing 
now  remains;  and  his  works,  ex- 
cept a  single  letter  addressed  to 
the  knight  Sigurd  de  Fontancourt 
on  the  subject  of  the  magnet,  have 
all  perished.  It  was  to  this  Maitre 
Pierre — Petrus  de  Mahariscuria,  a 
Picard — that  Bacon  declared  he 
owed  all  his  proficiency  in  science. 
In  the  following  passage  he  prom- 
ised to  tell  us  all  about  him,  but 
the  fulfilment  of  the  pledge  has 
not  come  down  to  our  time : — 

"No  one  can  obtain  the  service  of 
first-rate  mathematicians  except  my 
lord  the  Pope,  or  some  other  great 
prince,2  especially  the  services  of  him 
who  is  worth  more  than  any  of  them  ; 
of  whom  I  have  written  fully  in  my 


'Opus  Minus,'  and  shall  write  more 
in  its  proper  place."  3 

Elsewhere,4  in  urging  the  su- 
periority of  experiment  over  argu- 
ment in  the  attainment  of  know- 
ledge, he  declared  there  was  only 
one  scholar  who  understood  this 
truth — namely,  Magister  Petrus. 

Biographers  of  Bacon  greatly 
differ  in  fixing  the  date  when  he 
entered  the  Order  of  St  Francis. 
Anthony  Wood  says  it  was  before 
he  first  left  Oxford  for  Paris ;  but 
his  subsequent  declaration  to  Pope 
Clement  IV.  is  inconsistent  with 
the  vow  of  poverty  which  he  must 
then  have  taken.  Writing  in 
1267,  he  said:— 

"During  the  twenty  years  that  I 
have  specially  laboured  in  the  attain- 
ment of  Wisdom,  abandoning  the 
vulgar  path,  I  have  spent  upon  these 
pursuits  more  than  two  thousand 
pounds,  not  to  mention  the  cost  of 
secret  books,  of  various  experiments, 
instruments,  tables,  and  the  like."  6 

It  is  clear  that  during  these 
twenty  years,  at  all  events,  he 
must  have  been  a  free  man  with 
money  to  spend ;  and  if  they  be 
reckoned  from  the  time  he  went 
to  Oxford,  say  in  1228,  it  will  be 
seen  that  he  had  nearly  reached 
the  prime  of  life  before  he  sur- 
rendered his  liberty. 

The  exact  date,  however,  does 
not  greatly  concern  us  now  :  what 
is  of  more  moment  is  the  object 
such  a  man  can  have  had  in  view 
in  entering  the  Mendicant  Order. 
Robert  Grosseteste  and  Adam  de 
Marisco  had  both  taken  the  vow 
of  poverty ;  the  former  was  the 
first  head  of  the  Franciscan  House 
at  Oxford  :  but  if  the  motive  was 


1  Compendium  Studii,  c.  viii. ;  Opus  Tertium,  c.  xi. 

2  Professor  Brewer  has  compared  this  passage  with  a  sigh  from  the  later  Bacon  : 
"These  are  opera  basilica,  kingly  works,  towards  which  the   endeavours  of  a 
private  man  may  be  but  as  an  image  in  a  cross-way,  that  may  point  the  road, 
but  not  travel  it." 

3  Opus  Tertium,  c.  viii.  4  Ibid.,  cc.  xi.  and  xiii.  5  Ibid.,  c.  xvii. 


614 


Roger  Bacon. 


[Nov. 


obscure  in  their  case,  it  remains 
doubly  so  in  that  of  Roger,  whose 
restless  spirit  brought  him  con- 
stantly into  conflict  with  authority. 
Perhaps  the  reason  might  be  in  the 
state  of  his  private  affairs.  His 
original  patrimony  having  been 
spent,  as  he  explained,  in  books 
and  experiments  ;  his  family,  once 
affluent,  having  been  ruined,  as 
we  know,  by  adherence  to  Henry 
III.  in  his  long  conflict  with  the 
barons, — he  found  himself  without 
means.  The  remuneration  for  his 
lectures  in  Paris,  seeing  that  he 
was  a  free-lance  in  learning,  was 
probably  the  reverse  of  liberal  or 
regular.  To  a  bankrupt  student 
one  of  the  Mendicant  Orders,  in 
which  all  private  property  was 
prohibited,  would  offer  a  welcome 
asylum,  and  early  association 
would  incline  him  towards  the 
Franciscans  rather  than  the  Do- 
minicans. M.  Charles  has  sug- 
gested another  cause  for  sacrificing 
his  freedom.  Only  three  kinds  of 
power  existed  capable  of  lifting  a 
solitary  student  over  the  difficulties 
in  his  path — the  king,  the  Pope, 
and  one  of  the  religious  corpora- 
tions— for  there  was  no  public  in 
those  days  to  extend  sympathy  to 
the  searcher  for  truth.  The  only 
way  for  Bacon  to  reach  the  ear  of 
either  of  the  two  first  was  through 
the  agency  of  the  last  named. 
Among  these  the  Franciscans,  or 
Minorites  proper,  were  then  the 
leading  Order,  for  Albertus  Mag- 
nus and  Thomas  Aquinas  had  not 
yet  raised  the  renown  of  the  Do- 
minicans. Further,  Bacon  might 
be  attracted  to  the  Franciscans 
because  of  their  independent  spirit, 
which  was  to  culminate  in  the 
following  century  in  their  revolt 
against  Pope  John  XXII.  He 
became,  therefore,  a  brother  of  the 
Order  of  St  Francis  of  Assisi,  the 
first  step  in  a  road  leading  him  to 
irremediable  misery. 


We  have  Bacon's  own  statement 
that  during  this  sixteen  years'  resi- 
dence at  Paris  he  wrote  nothing 
but  a  few  scattered  tracts ;  but  we 
have  the  same  authority  for  know- 
ing the  intensity  with  which  he 
applied  himself  to  learning : — 

"  While  I  was  in  another  condition" 
(that  is,  before  he  entered  the  Fran- 
ciscan Order)  "  people  were  astonished 
that  I  could  endure  the  excessive 
labours  which  I  undertook." 

Through  all  these  years  of  youth 
and  prime  there  shines  no  gleam 
of  amatory  romance,  nor  even  of 
friendship,  save  such  as  arose  in 
the  common  pursuit  of  learning. 
No  woman  is  mentioned  in  any 
part  of  his  surviving  writings, 
except  his  mother,  of  whom  he 
speaks  as  still  alive  in  1267.  If 
these  writings  faithfully  reflect 
his  life,  from  the  day  he  first  set 
foot  in  Oxford  he  kept  two  ob- 
jects, and  two  only,  in  view — the 
discovery  and  diffusion  of  truth, 
and  the  exposure  and  expulsion  of 
what  he  called  "the  pestilential 
causes  of  human  error." 

Bacon  returned  to  Oxford  about 
the  year  1250,  bringing  with  him 
the  familiar  and  complimentary 
sobriquet,  conferred  in  Paris,  of 
doctor  mirabilis.  There  is  ever 
sadness  inseparable  from  revisit- 
ing one's  old  college,  but  for 
Roger  there  must  have  been  more 
than  full  measure  of  melancholy. 
In  the  brightness  of  life's  morning 
he  had  left  the  old  city,  a  free 
man,  with  all  the  confidence  of 
youth  and  the  ardour  stirred  by 
the  first  draught  of  knowledge ;  it 
was  high  noon  before  he  trod  the 
well  -  remembered  streets  again. 
They  were  filled  with  new  faces ; 
his  own  countenance  was  hard- 
ened by  disappointment,  his  shoul- 
ders bent  by  close  study :  the 
world  on  which  he  had  embarked 
with  such  high  hopes  had  turned 


1894.' 


Roger  Bacon. 


615 


out  to  be  full  of  imposture  and 
make-believe  science.  The  Ox- 
ford he  had  left  was  no  more  the 
same  for  him.  Grosseteste  of  Lin- 
coln, who,  he  afterwards  declared, 
alone  had  true  learning,1  the  gentle 
and  wise  Adam  de  Marisco,  the 
intrepid  reformer  Edmund  Rich — 
all  had  passed  away;  while  out- 
side Oxford  his  birthplace  was 
desolate — his  mother  and  brothers, 
ruined  in  the  civil  disturbances, 
were  exiles  from  the  Somersetshire 
home. 

Roger  was  not  a  man  to  make 
new  friends  easily ;  his  manner  was 
too  dogmatic,  his  spirit  too  little 
patient  of  control,  his  temper,  per- 
haps, like  Dante's,  not  of  the  sweet- 
est. His  profound  learning,  how- 
ever, commanded  respect,  and  it 
may  be  assumed  that  he  found  little 
difficulty  in  attracting  pupils  to 
his  lectures.  There  stood,  until 
1779,  a  tower  on  the  Berkshire 
shore  of  the  Isis,  known  as  Friar 
Bacon's  study  :  it  is  shown  in  an 
engraving  in  Skelton's  '  Oxonia 
Antiqua  Restorata.'  The  secrecy 
of  his  pursuits  in  that  secluded 
retreat,  and  his  researches  into 
unlawful  arts  and  astrology,  soon 
brought  upon  him  the  jealous 
scrutiny  of  his  superiors.  He  was 
accused,  as  Wadding,  his  earliest 
biographer,  states,  of  certain  sus- 
picious novelties  (quasdam  novi- 
tates  suspectas),  from  which,  when 
commanded,  he  refused  to  desist. 
Bonaventura,  the  Seraphic  Doctor, 
had  succeeded  Jean  de  Rochelle  as 
General  of  the  Franciscans,  and 
had  set  his  hand  sternly  to  restore 
discipline  in  the  Order.  In  1257 
Bacon  was  interdicted  from  lec- 
turing, and  ordered  to  quit  Oxford 
and  place  himself  under  supervi- 
sion at  Paris.  We  have  only 
knowledge  of  one  friend  whom  he 


left  to  deplore  his  exile,  a  certain 
Friar  Thomas  Bungay,  who,  re- 
marks the  magnanimous  compiler 
of  the  *  Historia  Ecclesiastica  Mag- 
deburgensis,'  "  had  profound  know- 
ledge in  mathematics,  either  by 
inspiration  of  the  devil  or  by  the 
teaching  of  Robert  Bacon."  2 

This  was  the  beginning  of  trib- 
ulation for  the  unhappy  friar. 
For  the  next  ten  years  Bacon 
was,  if  not  actually  incarcerated, 
at  least  subjected  to  restraint 
which  would  have  been  humiliat- 
ing to  an  idle  schoolboy,  and  must 
have  been  little  short  of  intoler- 
able to  an  intellect  burning  to 
achieve  and  communicate  know- 
ledge. We  do  not  know  what 
detail  of  irksome  discipline  he 
may  have  had  to  endure ;  we  can 
only  guess  at  the  means  and  op- 
portunity he  may  have  secured 
for  study,  and  the  degree  of  inter- 
course with  learned  men  which 
may  have  been  permitted  to  him. 
At  all  events,  we  know  that  dur- 
ing this  period  of  ten  years  he  was 
forbidden,  under  pain  of  severe 
fasting,  to  write  anything  that 
should  pass  beyond  the  walls  of 
his  house  of  bondage,  and  no  one 
was  ever  more  thoroughly  of  Sene- 
ca's opinion  that  knowledge  is  but 
a  corpse  unless  it  can  be  communi- 
cated to  others.  What  was  the  use 
of  learning  if  he  might  not  teach  1 

One  bright  thread  was  woven 
in  this  dark  web  of  suffering. 
There  was  a  servant  lad  in  the 
convent,  named  Jean,  of  whom 
Friar  Roger  made  a  friend  and 
disciple.  Jean  became  the  reposi- 
tory of  all  that  his  master  could 
impart,  the  confidant  of  all  his 
aspirations,  the  accomplice  in  all 
his  schemes.  The  sympathy  of 
this  humble  follower  must  have 
been  the  one  means  which  saved 


1  "Solus  scivit  scientias." — Opus  Tertium,  c.  x. 

2  Hist.  Eccl.  Magd.,  i.  3. 

VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCXLIX.  2  S 


616 


Eager  Bacon. 


[Nov. 


him  from  utter   despair   or  mad- 
ness. 

At  last,  when  the  cloud  was 
darkest,  when  Bacon  was  entering 
the  decline  of  years,  and  it  seemed 
as  if  the  knowledge  he  had  so 
painfully  amassed  was  to  pass 
with  its  possessor  into  the  land 
where  all  things  are  forgotten, 
there  came  relief.  In  1264,  the 
year  when  Henry  was  defeated  by 
Leicester  at  the  battle  of  Lewes, 
Pope  Urban  IV.  had  sent  Cardinal 
Guy  de  Foulques  as  his  legate  to 
England  to  mediate  between  the 
king  and  the  subjects  whom  he 
had  lashed  into  rebellion.  His 
mission,  as  is  well  known,  was 
contemptuously  rejected  by  the 
barons,  and  ended  in  a  failure, 
but  it  was  of  indirect  advantage 
to  Bacon.  De  Foulques  was  an 
eager  patron  of  learning :  his  at- 
tention having  been  called  by  his 
chaplain,  Raymond  de  Laon,  to 
the  extraordinary  erudition  of  the 
Franciscan  friar,  it  was  quickened 
into  sympathetic  interest  when  he 
learned  that  the  family  of  Bacon 
had  been  ruined  by  their  adher- 
ence to  the  king's  cause  in  Eng- 
land. Guy  was  not  of  a  temper 
to  forget  or  pardon  the  insults  put 
upon  his  legation  by  the  popular 
party  in  England ;  he  determined 
to  assist  the  poor  scholar  whose 
relations  had  suffered  as  royalists. 
It  was  not  long  before  he  was  in  a 
position  to  do  so  effectively.  In 
1265  he  was  elected  Pope,  under 
the  name  of  Clement  IY.  Ray- 
mond had  told  him,  erroneously  as 
it  turned  out,  that  Bacon  had  com- 
posed a  great  work  on  philosophy 
and  natural  science.  Raymond 
had  also,  it  appears,  advised  Bacon 
to  address  a  letter  to  Clement, 
which  was  put  into  the  hands  of 
a  gentleman  called  Bonnecor  to 
carry  to  the  Pope,  together  with 
many  oral  explanations  which  it 
was  not  considered  prudent  to 


commit  to  writing.  Soon  after, 
in  1266,  came  the  gracious  re- 
sponse. It  is  pleasant  to  imagine 
the  rapture  which  burst  upon 
Roger's  troubled  life  when  the 
following  letter  was  put  into  his 
hands : — 

"  To  our  beloved  son,  Brother 
Roger,  called  Bacon,  of  the  order  of 
Friars  Minor: — 

"We  have  received  with  joy  the 
letter  of  thy  devotion,  and  have  also 
paid  heed  to  the  explanation  there- 
upon which  our  dear  son,  the  knight 
G.,  called  Bonnecor,  laid  before  us  by 
word  of  mouth,  no  less  faithfully  than 
wisely.  In  order  that  we  may  better 
understand  thy  purpose,  it  is  our 
will,  and  in  virtue  of  our  apostolic 
authority  we  command,  that  thou 
shalt  send  to  us  as  soon  as  possible 
that  work  fairly  written  out,  which, 
when  we  were  in  a  less  exalted  office, 
we  desired  thee  to  communicate  to 
our  beloved  son,  Raymond  de  Laon  ; 
and  this  notwithstanding  the  com- 
mand to  the  contrary  of  any  prelate 
whatsoever,  or  any  ordinance  whatso- 
ever of  your  Order.  And  further, 
that  thou  shalt  explain  in  thy  letter 
the  remedies  which  seem  to  thee  ap- 
plicable in  certain  circumstances,  of 
which  lately,  at  a  very  critical  time, 
thou  madest  mention. 

"  Given  at  Yiterbio,  the  second  year 
of  our  pontificate,  x  Cal.  Julii "  (June 
22). 

Now,  at  last,  the  tyranny  of  pre- 
judice and  professional  interest  was 
at  an  end  ;  with  the  authority  of 
God's  Yicegerent  in  his  hand, 
Bacon  might  disregard  the  mad- 
dening restraint  of  his  superiors, 
and,  carrying  out  the  explicit  in- 
structions of  a  higher  power,  let  in 
a  flood  of  light  upon  the  ignorance 
and  corruption  of  his  enemies. 

But  the  greatest  genius  cannot 
express  itself  without  common 
materials.  There  is  nothing  to 
show  that  Clement  directed  that 
the  rules  of  the  convent,  which  he 
enjoined  upon  Bacon  to  disregard, 
should  be  relaxed  in  order  that  he 


1894.] 


Roger  Bacon. 


617 


might  apply  himself  to  his  ap- 
pointed task.  Bacon  explained  to 
Clement,  in  the  forefront  of  his 
work,  the  delay  which,  greatly 
contrary  to  his  desire,  ensued  upon 
receipt  of  the  command.  In  the 
first  place,  no  such  book  as  Ray- 
mond had  described  was  in  exist- 
ence Before  joining  the  Francis- 
cans he  had  written  nothing  but  a 
few  essays  not  worth  mentioning  ; 
and  since  that  time,  seeing  that 
he  had  been  forbidden  under  severe 
penalties  to  communicate  anything 
he  might  write  to  persons  outside 
the  convent,  where  had  been  the 
object  in  writing  ?  Otherwise  he 
would  assuredly  have  written  much 
for  the  information  of  his  scholarly 
brother  and  other  dear  friends. 
He  proceeds  to  say l  that  when  the 
welcome  command  at  last  arrived, 
he  met  with  other  causes  of  delay 
which  wellnigh  made  him  despair. 
It  was  accompanied  by  an  injunc- 
tion from  the  Pope,  probably  con- 
veyed verbally  by  Bonnecor,  not  to 
reveal  the  secret  of  what  he  was 
going  to  do. 

"My  chief  impediment  lay  in  my 
superiors  :  for  whereas  you  had  writ- 
ten nothing  to  them  in  the  way  of 
dispensation  for  me,  I  have  been  un- 
able to  reveal  your  secret  to  them, 
which,  in  face  of  your  command  to 
secrecy,  it  was  my  duty  to  conceal. 
They  threatened  me  with  indescrib- 
able violence  in  order  that  I  should 
obey  their  will  like  the  other  brethren. 
.  .  .  Certain  particulars  of  this  oppo- 
sition I  will  peradventure  explain  to 
you  in  their  due  place,  and  draw  them, 
up  in  my  own  handwriting  because  of 
the  importance  of  the  secret." 

It  must  be  admitted  that  there 
does  not  seem  here  evidence  of 
wanton  tyranny.  Bacon,  as  a 
sworn  brother  of  the  Order,  was 
bound  to  conform  to  its  rules ;  his 
superiors  were  only  acting  accord- 
ing to  their  light  in  enforcing 


them.  It  could  hardly  be  expected 
that  they  would  take  the  unsup- 
ported word  of  a  quick-tempered 
insubordinate  friar  as  good  assur- 
ance that  the  head  of  the  Church 
had  so  strangely  departed  from 
constitutional  order  as  to  address 
himself  to  one  under  their  rule, 
directing  him  to  disregard  that 
rule  and  write  a  treatise  on  for- 
bidden subjects.  Probably  they 
thought  him  not  a  little  insane, 
and  that  a  bread-and- water  diet 
would  tend  to  restore  him  to 
reason. 

But  Bacon  goes  on,  in  execrable 
Latin  it  must  be  confessed,  to  give 
a  second  reason  for  delay,  which 
it  is  certainly  strange  that  Clement 
had  overlooked.  Member  of  a 
Mendicant  Order,  Bacon  was  penni- 
less ;  the  Pope  knew  that  his 
mother  and  brothers  were  in  the 
same  plight,  in  exile,  and  utterly 
unable  to  help  him.  How  was  he 
to  employ  copyists,  obtain  manu- 
scripts for  reference,  make  experi- 
ments, without  money  ?  It  would 
take,  he  said,  sixty  Paris  pounds 
for  the  necessary  expenses. 

"  This  obstacle  was  enough  to  upset 
the  whole  business  (quod  suffecit  ad 
subversionem  totius  negotice).  ...  I 
do  not  wonder  that  these  expenses 
never  occurred  to  you,  for,  seated  on 
the  summit  of  the  world,  you  have  so 
many  and  so  great  things  to  consider 
that  the  cares  on  your  mind  must  be 
incalculable." 

He  then  describes  how  he  im- 
plored the  aid  of  many  great 
people,  "of  some  of  whom  you 
know  the  features,  but  not  the 
characters."  He  told  them  that 
he  was  employed  on  a  certain 
business  in  France  for  the  Pope, 
which  he  might  not  reveal,  but 
which  required  funds  : — 

"But  how  often  I  was  deemed  a 
rogue,  how  often  I  was  repulsed,  how 


1  Opus  Tertium,  c.  iii. 


618 


Roger  Bacon. 


[Nov. 


often  inflated  with  vain  hopes,  how 
often  I  was  completely  bewildered, 
I  cannot  express.  Even  my  friends 
would  not  believe  me,  because  I  could 
not  explain  to  them  the  nature  of  the 
business.  Perplexed,  therefore,  be- 
yond description,  I  compelled  (coegi) 
poor  people  and  servants  to  spend 
all  they  had,  to  sell  some  of  their 
possessions  and  pawn  others,  and  I 
pledged  myself  to  give  you  a  detailed 
account  of  these  expenses,  and  that 
I  would  obtain  from  you  full  repay- 
ment." 

It  says  much  for  the  kind  hearts  of 
the  poor  that  he  got  anything  on 
such  extraordinary  security;  but 
he  collected  the  required  sum,  and 
got  to  work  at  last. 

When  one  considers  the  scope 
of  the  treatise  he  had  undertaken, 
the  narrow  means  which  he  had 
at  command,  and  the  short  space 
of  time  he  took  to  complete  it,  one 
cannot  but  be  filled  with  admira- 
tion of  a  great  intellectual  feat. 
Bacon  was  now  fifty -three;  his 
all-absorbent  mind  had  for  nearly 
forty  years  been  accumulating 
facts,  theories,  judgments,  and 
foreign  languages.  But  his  know- 
ledge had  not  been  committed  to 
writing;  a  few  notes  may  have 
been  laid  by  in  his  cell,  and  that 
was  all.  He  had  suddenly  been 
called  on  to  set  forth  all  he 
knew,  fairly  written  out,  scrip- 
turn  de  bona  littera.  A  start- 
ling summons,  in  truth,  which  any 
ordinary  student  might  reason- 
ably have  demanded  years  to  ful- 
fil. Not  so  Bacon.  It  was  not 
the  least  remarkable  part  of  his 
encyclopaedic  intellect  that  it  en- 
abled him  to  utter  thoughts  in 
consecutive  and  consistent  order, 
as  fast  as  copyists  could  follow; 
and  the  '  Opus  Majus,'  filling 
474  pages  in  folio,  was  completed 
with  almost  incredible  despatch. 


Whewell  summarised  its  contents 
as  follows :  1.  On  the  four  causes 
of  human  ignorance — authority, 
custom,  popular  opinion,  and  the 
pride  of  supposed  knowledge.  2. 
On  the  cause  of  perfect  wisdom 
in  the  Sacred  Scriptures.  3.  On 
the  usefulness  of  grammar.  4.  On 
the  usefulness  of  mathematics.1 
5.  On  Optics.  6.  On  experimental 
science. 

"Even,"  wrote  Dr  Whewell,  "if 
the  work  had  no  leading  purpose,  it 
would  have  been  highly  valuable  as 
a  treasure  of  the  most  solid  knowledge 
and  soundest  speculation  of  the  time. 
...  It  may  be  considered  as  at  the 
same  time  the  Encyclopaedia  and 
Novum  Organon  of  the  thirteenth 
century." 

The  work  having  been  happily 
brought  to  completion — and  the 
happiness  of  its  author  can  only 
be  estimated  by  comparison  with 
the  foregoing  years  of  misery — it 
might  have  been  expected  that 
Bacon  would  have  hastened  in 
person  to  lay  it  before  his  august 
patron.  We  know  not  what  cause 
stood  in  the  way,  whether  con- 
ventual discipline  or  another;  in 
effect  it  was  committed  to  the 
faithful  Jean, — not,  as  some  bio- 
graphers have  stated,  Jean  de 
Londres,  the  mathematician  hon- 
ourably mentioned  elsewhere  in 
Bacon's  writings,  but  Jean  the 
servant,  the  humble  disciple,  whom 
he  had  been  instructing  for  six 
years,  and  could  now  trust  to  de- 
liver, in  addition  to  the  precious 
volume,  oral  explanations  of  such 
passages  as  might  be  obscure.2 
Jean  was  but  twenty,  yet  his 
master  gives  to  Clement  an  en- 
thusiastic certificate  of  his  honesty, 
purity,  and  abundant  knowledge, 
and  predicted  for  him  an  illustri- 
ous career.  We  know  not  whether 


*  For  the  subjects  included  in  mathematics  see  footnote,  p.  612. 
Opus  Tertium,  c.  xix. 


1894. 


Roger  Bacon. 


619 


this  was  fulfilled  in  the  person  of 
any  one  of  the  many  learned  men 
named  Jean  of  the  generation 
succeeding  Bacon. 

Well,  Bacon  had  got  the  great 
work  off  his  hands,  but  he  could 
not  rest.  The  way  to  Rome  was 
long,  and  set  with  many  perils.  His 
solitary  messenger  might  miscarry, 
his  precious  freight  never  reach 
its  destiny,  so  Bacon  set  to  work 
immediately  on  another  treatise, 
of  which  the  only  copy  known  to  ex- 
ist at  this  day 'is  but  a  fragment  in 
the  Bodleian  Library — moreover,  a 
very  badly  copied  fragment.  This 
'  Opus  Minus '  was  an  abridgment 
of  the  first  work,  in  which,  also, 
some  of  the  subjects  treated  before 
were  further  explained,  and  the 
evils  of  schoolmen  were  exposed 
at  greater  length.1 

But  Bacon  did  not  rest  satisfied 
with  the  completion  of  this  second 
work.  He  undertook  a  third, 
'Opus  Tertium,'  which,  though 
designed  as  an  introduction  to  the 
other  two,  is  the  most  attractive 
of  all  to  the  modern  reader,  for  it 
is  that  which  tells  most  of  the 
author's  life  and  difficulties. 

When  it  is  considered  that  these 
three  great  works  were  begun  and 
finished  within  little  more  than  a 
year,  it  is  difficult  to  find  a  parallel 
to  such  a  stupendous  effort  in  the 
annals  of  literature.  It  may  be 
thought  putting  a  heavy  strain  on 
Bacon's  veracity  to  accept  his  as- 
surance2 that  no  part  of  them 
was  in  existence  before  he  re- 
ceived the  Pope's  command, — that 
he  had  composed  nothing  except 
a  few  tracts  (aliqua  capitula}, 
thrown  hastily  together  at  the  in- 
stance of  friends  from  time  to 
time ;  but  there  is,  in  truth,  no 


reason  to  doubt  it.  Any  writings 
which  he  had  beside  him  in  his 
cell  must  surely  have  been  known 
to  the  convent  authorities,  and 
they  would  have  been  ready  enough 
in  after-years  to  expose  the  false- 
hood of  the  assurance,  repeated 
more  than  once  in  the  works 
themselves,  that  they  were  only 
begun  in  obedience  to  the  Pope's 
letter.  That  letter  was  dated  22d 
June  1266 ;  it  could  not  have  been 
received  in  Paris  until  some  weeks 
later :  then  arose  the  delays  so 
bitterly  complained  of ;  money  had 
to  be  collected  and  materials  ob- 
tained. The  writer  could  scarcely 
have  got  to  work  till  late  in 
autumn.  Yet  in  the  'Opus  Ter- 
tium,' the  last  of  the  three,  he 
refers  to  the  current  year  as  1267, 
which  leads  us  to  the  astonishing 
conclusion  that  the  whole  of  this 
triple  series  was  begun,  continued, 
and  ended  in  not  more  than  fifteen 
months.  Truly  a  prodigious  feat 
in  literature. 

Soon  after  the  completion  of 
'  Opus  Minus,'  Bacon,  doubtless 
by  direction  of  Clement,  was  re- 
leased from  surveillance,  and  re- 
turned to  Oxford.  But  a  terrible 
discomfiture  of  his  hopes  took  place 
in  the  following  year,  1268,  when 
Clement  IV.  died.  There  was  no 
fresh  election  of  a  Pope  till  1271, 
when  Gregory  X.  assumed  the 
tiara.  This  pontiff,  the  nominee 
of  Bonaventura,  General  of  the 
Franciscan  Order,  was  not  likely 
to  show  special  indulgence  to  a 
recalcitrant  friar.  It  behoved 
Bacon  to  walk  warily,  and,  as  he 
valued  liberty  to  study,  to  attract 
no  attention  by  publishing  any- 
thing that  might  give  offence.  He 
began  a  fresh  work  which  might 


1  The  '  Opus  Minus,'  '  Opus  Tertium,'  and  '  Compendium  Studii  Philosophise' 
were  first  printed  in  1859  in  the  Historical  Manuscripts  Series,  under  the  able 
editorship  of  Professor  J.  S.  Brewer. 

2  Opus  Tertium,  c.  ii. 


620 


Roger  Bacon. 


[Nov. 


expand  and  place  in  better  order 
the  subjects  which  had  been  so 
hastily  thrown  together  in  his 
other  books.  The  'Compendium 
Philosophise'  was  designed  as  a 
complete  and  leisured  exposition 
of  the  whole  field  of  science.  But 
ever  while  Bacon  mused  the  fire 
burned.  He  could  not  be  con- 
tent with  stating  the  truth  as 
he  knew  it,  he  must  also  expose 
ignorance  as  he  saw  it.  To  ful- 
minate was  as  necessary  to  him  as 
to  illuminate.  It  might  be  held 
necessary  to  show  the  corruptness 
of  translations  from  Greek  and 
Arabic ;  but  it  had  been  wiser  to 
refrain  from  denouncing  the  trans- 
lators as  false  pretenders  and  pour- 
ing ridicule  upon  the  doctors,  some 
of  whom  were  still  alive,  who  re- 
lied on  these  translations.1  Not 
content  with  this,  he  set  in  the 
very  forefront  of  his  new  book  2 
a  tirade  against  the  abuses  in  high 
places  of  both  State  and  Church, 
not  fearing  to  lash  the  Papal  See 
itself ;  and,  sweeping  the  religious 
Orders  into  one  common  contempt, 
declared  that  Christians  were  far 
behind  Pagans  in  all  that  con- 
duced to  wisdom  and  inventive 
science. 

This  was  all  very  true,  no  doubt, 
in  the  sense  that  there  is  always 
plenty  of  material  for  the  moralist 
and  satirist  in  every  age.  But 
Bacon  was  distinctly  imprudent  in 
making  a  personal  grievance  of  it. 
He  perceived  rightly  enough  the 
false  methods  and  vicious  material 
that  had  to  be  got  rid  of  before 
any  advance  in  learning  could  be 
made ;  it  seems  now  that  he  might 
have  borne  testimony  to  the  truth 
not  less  effective  without  making 
so  many  implacable  enemies.  But 
he  was  not  a  man  to  save  his  skin 
at  the  price  of  his  principles  :  per- 


adventure  his  warnings  had  never 
been  heeded  if  he  had  refrained 
from  pointing  out  the  chief  of- 
fenders, for  authority  was  all- 
powerful  in  those  days. 

Jerome  d'Ascoli,  a  doctrinal  mar- 
tinet, succeeded  Bonaventura  in 
1274  as  General  of  the  Francis- 
cans. Nicholas  III.,  of  the  family 
of  Orsini,  became  Pope  in  1276. 
Bacon's  proceedings  at  Oxford 
brought  upon  him  afresh  the  dis- 
ciplinary eye  of  the  authorities, 
and  in  1278  he  was  taken  to  Paris 
and  tried  before  the  Grand  Chapter 
for  heretical  teaching,  and  con- 
demned to  imprisonment.  He  ap- 
pealed to  the  Pope,  but  Jerome 
anticipated  him.3  Others  had 
caught  from  Bacon  the  dangerous 
infection  of  speculation ;  the  au- 
thority of  the  Church  had  to  be 
vindicated,  the  rebellious  inquirer 
be  silenced,  so  the  prison  doors 
closed  on  the  rash  prophet.  "I 
was  imprisoned,"  he  afterwards 
said,  "  because  of  the  incredible 
stupidity  of  those  with  whom  I 
had  to  do." 

But  not  for  ever.  After  four- 
teen years  the  vox  clamantis  was 
to  be  heard  once  more  in  the  old 
strain.  In  1292  died  Pope  Nicho- 
las IV.,  no  other  than  the  pitiless 
Jerome  d'Ascoli,  and  in  the  same 
year  Raymond  Gaufredi,  who  had 
succeeded  him  as  General  of  the 
Franciscans,  summoned  a  Grand 
Chapter  of  the  Order  in  Paris. 
There  is  documentary  evidence, 
not  complete,  indeed,  but  reason- 
ably convincing,  that  Gaufredi, 
who  had  already  released  many 
persons  imprisoned  by  Jerome  for 
heretical  opinions,  effected  at  this 
meeting  the  liberation  of  Bacon. 

He  was  now  an  old  man  of 
seventy-eight,  yet  his  indomitable 
spirit  had  survived  the  sorrows  of 


1  Compendium  Phil.,  viii. 

3  Wadding's  'Annals,'  anno  1278. 


Ibid.,  i. 


1894." 


Roger  Bacon. 


621 


captivity.  He  could  still  strive  to 
save  the  world  which  had  treated 
him  so  harshly.  He  designed 
another  and -a  last  great  book,  the 
'Compendium  Studii  Theologiae,' 
and  finished  several  parts  of  it. 
It  begins,  like  its  predecessors, 
with  deploring  the  prevalence  of 
ignorance  and  prescribing  for  its 
cure,  and  then  he  proceeds  : — 

"  I  propose  to  set  forth  all  the 
speculative  philosophy  now  in  use 
among  theologians,  adding  many 
necessary  considerations  besides,  with 
which  they  are  not  acquainted." 

The  year  in  which  this  troubled 
life  was  laid  to  rest  cannot  be 
exactly  fixed.  There  is  nothing 
but  vague  tradition  in  support  of 
the  statement  that  he  died  at  Ox- 
ford, and  was  buried  in  the  church 
of  the  Franciscans  there. 

It  profits  not  to  enter  in  this 
place  upon  an  examination  of 
Bacon's  philosophy,  writings,  and 
discoveries.  The  labours  of  Jebb, 
Whewell,  Brewster,  and  Charles 
have  provided  inquirers  with  a  full 
analysis  of  these,  and  my  purpose 
has  been  limited  to  presenting  as 
clear  a  picture  as  may  be  drawn 
through  the  mists  of  six  centuries 
of  a  life  remarkable  for  singleness 
of  purpose  and  penetration  of  in- 
tellect. Nevertheless,  there  are 
certain  salient  points  in  Bacon's 
teaching  which  jar  so  harshly  with 
that  which  he  ever  held  chiefly  in 
view  —  namely,  the  truth  —  that 
some  allusion  to  them  is  necessary 
to  understanding  his  character. 

While  he  attached  no  credit  to 
magic  or  necromancy,  and  devoted 
some  pains  to  exposing  their  ab- 
surdity and  impossibility,  he  was 
a  firm  believer  in  astrology.  His 
writings  on  this  subject  formed 
part  of  the  charges  on  which  he 
was  condemned  by  the  chapter  of 
Jerome  d'Ascoli.  Now  there  is  a 
radical  difference  between  the  re- 


lations of  medieval  astrology  with 
modern  astronomy  and  those  of 
alchemy  and  chemistry.  Bacon 
was  an  industrious  alchemist,  and 
pursued  the  two  grand  objects 
which  ever  flitted  before  students 
of  that  craft — the  elixir  of  life,  and 
the  secret  of  transmuting  metals. 
But  there  was  nothing  inconsistent 
with  true  philosophy  in  those  ideas. 
They  represented  ends  highly  desir- 
able to  be  obtained.  So  long  as 
men  worked  on  the  plan  of  four 
irreducible  elements  —  earth,  air, 
fire,  and  water — there  was  nothing 
unreasonable  in  attempting  to  turn 
lead  into  silver  and  copper  into 
gold.  Had  Bacon's  appliances  and 
opportunities  enabled  him  to  as- 
certain, as  we  have  ascertained, 
that  there  are  not  four  but  sixty- 
four  elements  (or,  as  Lord  Ray- 
leigh  now  claims  to  have  discovered, 
sixty-five),  he  would  have  directed 
his  energy  into  more  fruitful 
channels.  And  as  for  the  elixir 
of  life,  who  is  there  at  this  day  so 
bold  as  to  prescribe  the  limit  be- 
yond which  it  is  impossible  to 
carry  resistance  to  bodily  decay  ? 

In  truth,  the  science  of  chem- 
istry owes  a  great  deal  to  the 
alchemists.  Much  of  our  know- 
ledge of  the  properties  of  matter 
was  acquired  in  conducting  the 
pursuit  of  a  chimera,  and  from 
the  experiments  necessary  to  dis- 
prove the  existence  of  the  chimera. 
The  pursuit  started  with  an  a 
priori  fallacy,  but  was  itself  a 
kind  of  roundabout  process  of 
negative  induction. 

But  his  belief  in  judicial  astrol- 
ogy is  less  creditable  to  Bacon's 
intelligence.  It  involved  the  ac- 
ceptance of  a  cruder  hypothesis 
than  was  required  in  alchemy. 
The  alchemist  began  with  a  hy- 
pothesis, and  proceeded  to  experi- 
ments in  the  hope  of  discovering 
the  secret.  The  judicial  astrologer 
began  with  the  naked  assertion 


622 


Roger  Bacon. 


[Nov. 


that  the  heavenly  bodies  exerted 
a  direct  influence  upon  terrestrial 
beings,  and  proceeded  to  dogma- 
tise on  purely  imaginary  grounds. 
There  was  no  shame  in  being  ig- 
norant of  the  fact,  which  Copernicus 
first  revealed,  that  the  earth  is 
itself  one  of  the  heavenly  bodies ; 
but  it  is  a  slur  on  Bacon's  intellec- 
tual standing  that  he  lent  credence 
to  the  system  under  which  the 
planets,  arbitrarily  named  after 
the  heathen  gods,  were  invested 
with  the  human  attributes  which 
these  deities  personified,  and  vari- 
ously affected  the  course  of  lives 
and  events,  according  to  the  vary- 
ing perspective  in  which  they 
appeared  when  viewed  from  the 
earth.  It  is  true  that  the  belief 
was  of  immemorial  standing,  and 
that  rules  for  casting  horoscopes 
had  been  framed  by  writers  of  the 
greatest  erudition.  But  were  not 
these  the  very  circumstances  that 
should  have  put  Bacon  on  his 
guard?  Did  he  not  himself  de- 
nounce authority,  custom,  popular 
opinion,  and  the  pride  of  supposed 
knowledge  as  the  fourfold  root  of 
error  ? 

Nor  did  he  make  matters  any 
better  by  the  limitation  which  he 
set  to  the  power  of  the  stars  over 
man's  freewill.  In  the  *  Opus 
Majus'  he  explains  the  difference 
between  himself  and  those  as- 
trologers whom  he  derides  as  false 
mathematicians  ;  for  whereas  they 
held  that  all  mundane  events 
were  the  direct  result  of  certain 
conjunctions  of  the  heavenly 
bodies,  Bacon  insisted  that  the 
influence,  though  powerful,  and 
predisposing  human  beings  to  cer- 
tain lines  of  conduct,  good  or  evil 
fortune,  accident  or  mode  of  death, 


was  yet  capable  of  being  modified 
or  overcome  by  resolute  will  and 
sagacious  precautions.1  According 
to  this  scheme,  a  man  born  under 
the  influence  of  the  planet  Mer- 
cury would  be  predisposed  to 
baldness,  but  might  avert  that  in- 
convenience by  using  the  proper 
hair -wash.  It  does  not  require 
very  deep  insight  into  the  modern 
system  of  reasoning  to  recognise 
in  Bacon's  treatment  of  astrology 
an  autocratic  dogmatism  no  whit 
less  baseless  than  that  of  his  op- 
ponents. No  greater  fallacy  lies 
in  the  original  assertion  of  sidereal 
influence  than  in  the  arbitrary 
limitation  thereof. 

Howbeit,  if  Roger  Bacon  must 
be  blamed  for  yielding  assent  to 
an  almost  universal  belief,  the 
later  and  greater  Bacon  cannot 
be  absolved  from  betraying  his 
own  philosophy  in  a  similar  way ; 
for  if  he  did  not  greatly  encourage 
the  study  of  judicial  astrology  and 
the  doctrine  of  portents,  he  quotes 
some  of  the  phenomena,  without 
condemning  the  system. 

Popular  tradition  has  attributed 
many  discoveries  to  "  Friar  Bacon" 
to  which  in  truth  he  could  have 
no  claim.  In  the  'De  Mirabili 
Potestate '  he  imparts  the  secret  of 
imitating  thunder  and  lightning 
by  means  of  a  mixture  of  saltpetre, 
charcoal,  and  sulphur,  whence  the 
legend  of  his  invention  of  gun- 
powder. But  he  himself  mentions 
in  the  '  Opus  Majus '  how  children 
of  various  countries  made  squibs 
of  this  material,  which  was  well 
known  long  before  his  day.  Bacon 
has  also  been  credited  with  the 
invention  of  spectacles ;  but  M. 
Charles  traces  this  to  his  use  of  a 
reading-glass,  which,  being  flat  on 


1  See  Scott's  Introduction  to  '  Guy  Mannering,'  where  this  doctrine  is  explained 
by  the  Astrologer.  "  The  influence  of  the  constellations  is  powerful ;  but  He 
who  made  the  heavens  is  more  powerful  than  all,  if  His  aid  be  invoked  in  sincerity 
and  truth." 


1894," 


Roger  Bacon. 


623 


one  side  and  convex  on  the  other, 
was  laid  on  the  written  page  and 
facilitated  reading  by  magnifying 
the  text.  Although  the  first 
spectacles  were  made  towards  the 
close  of  the  thirteenth  century, 
there  is  no  evidence  that  Bacon 
was  their  inventor.  He  un- 
doubtedly knew  the  use  of  the 
lens,  but  Layard  found  a  convex 
lens  of  rock-crystal  in  the  ruins  of 
Nimrod's  palace ;  and  Cuvier,  in 
attributing  to  Bacon  the  inven- 
tion of  the  microscope,  was  un- 
able to  show  that  he  understood 
how  to  apply  a  combination  of 
lenses. 

But,  partly  by  experiment  and 
partly  by  availing  himself  of  the 
researches  of  the  Arabian  Alhazen, 
Bacon  undoubtedly  carried  the 
science  of  optics  to  a  point  beyond 
which  it  did  not  rise  till  the  days 
of  Kepler.  He  frankly  owned 
what  he  had  borrowed  from  the 
Eastern  sage,  which  is  just  what 
Vitellion,  a  contemporary  Polish 
savant,  did  not  do,  thereby  gaining 
renown  to  which  he  was  not  en- 
titled. 

It  has  been  commonly  said  of 
Roger  Bacon  that  he  lived  three 
centuries  before  his  time,  but  this 
is  an  observation  founded  on  a 
misconception  of  human  progress. 
None  can  say  what  he  might  have 
accomplished  in  direct  invention 
and  discovery  had  he  not  been 
hampered  by  ecclesiastical  auth- 
ority, and  deprived,  during  the 
best  years  of  his  life,  of  the  means 
of  carrying  out  experiments.  The 


part  of  his  mission  which  he  per- 
formed was  to  detect  fallacies  in 
accepted  systems,  and  clear  the 
way  for  workers  in  a  happier  age. 
Error  had  been  accumulating  in 
Europe  through  all  the  centuries 
following  the  fall  of  the  Roman 
Empire.  It  lay  deep  as  volcanic 
ash  on  buried  Pompeii  on  every 
subject  of  human  inquiry ;  and,  if 
the  truth  were  to  be  brought  to 
light,  some  one  must  be  found 
with  hardihood  to  break  the  crust. 
Such  pioneers  are  only  too  likely 
to  meet  a  martyr's  fate.  Bacon's 
career,  weighed  as  that  of  an  in- 
dividual, may  be  reckoned  a  fail- 
ure, but  only  inasmuch  as  he 
failed  to  convince  the  world  of 
the  falsity  of  its  system  of  learn- 
ing. Regarded  in  its  true  light  as 
an  episode  in  the  advance  of  know- 
ledge, it  must  be  deemed  part  of 
the  mighty  movement,  destined  in 
the  lapse  of  years  to  overthrow 
the  whole  fabric  of  medieval  schol- 
asticism. The  gospel  he  proclaimed 
fell  as  seed  by  the  wayside ;  the 
clue  which  he  uncovered  seemed 
to  slip  unheeded  from  his  dying 
hand  :  but  still,  the  seed  had  been 
sown,  the  clue  had  been  found,  and 
it  is  to  the  despised  Franciscan 
friar  that  the  glory  is  due  of  hav- 
ing been  the  protomartyr  of  the 
new  learning,  at  once  the  knell 
of  dogma  and  the  reveille  of  free 
inquiry.  Roger  Bacon  was  the 
first  Englishman  to  claim  freedom 
for  human  intellect  and  proclaim 
its  scope. 

HERBERT  MAXWELL. 


624 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. — Conclusion. 


[Nov. 


WHO    WAS    LOST    AND    IS    FOUND. — CONCLUSION. 


CHAPTER  XXI. 


How  this  night  passed  over,  this 
dreadful  night,  under  the  once  peace- 
ful roof  of  the  Hewan,  was  never 
known.  It  must  have  been  dawn, 
though  it  seemed  to  her  so  dark, 
when  Mrs  Ogilvy  dropped  on  her 
knees  by  the  dining-room  door — and 
how  she  got  to  her  own  room  she 
did  not  know.  She  came  to  herself 
with  the  brilliant  summer  morning 
pervading  all  things,  her  room  full 
of  light,  her  body  full  of  pain,  her 
mind,  as  soon  as  she  was  conscious, 
coming  back  with  a  dull  spring  to 
the  knowledge  of  catastrophe  and 
disaster,  though  for  the  first  mo- 
ment she  could  not  tell  what  it 
was.  She  was  lying  upon  her  bed 
fully  dressed,  her  white  shawl, 
which  she  had  been  wearing  last 
night,  flung,  all  crumpled,  upon  the 
floor,  but  nothing  else  changed.  A 
thicker  shawl  had  been  thrown  over 
her.  Who  was  it  that  had  carried 
her  up -stairs?  This  became  an 
awful  question  as  her  mind  grew 
clearer.  Who  was  it1?  who  was 
it? — the  victor — perhaps  the  sur- 
vivor   She  was  aching  from 

head  to  foot,  feeling  as  if  her  bones 
were  broken,  and  she  could  never 
stand  on  her  feet  again ;  but  when 
this  thought  entered  her  mind  she 
sprang  up  from  her  bed  like  a 
young  girl.  The  survivor  ! — per- 
haps Robbie,  Robbie,  her  once 
innocent  boy,  with  the  stain  of 

blood  on  his  hands :   perhaps 

Mrs  Ogilvy  snatched  at  the  shawl 
on  the  floor,  which  looked  almost 
as  if  something  dead  might  lie 
hidden  under  it,  and  wrapped  her- 
self in  it,  not  knowing  why,  and 
stole  down  -  stairs  in  the  bright- 
ness of  that  early  morning  before 
even  Janet  was  stirring.  She  hur- 


ried into  the  dining-room,  from 
which  she  had  been  shut  out  only 
a  few  hours  ago,  with  her  heart 
leaping  in  her  throat,  not  knowing 
what  awful  scene  she  might  see. 
But  there  was  nothing  there.  A 
chair  had  been  knocked  down,  and 
lay  in  the  middle  of  the  floor  in  a 
sort  of  grotesque  helplessness,  as  if 
in  mockery  of  the  mother's  fears. 
Nothing  else.  She  stood  for  a 
moment,  rendered  weak  again  by 
sudden  relief,  asking  herself  if  that 
awful  vision  of  the  night  had  been 
merely  a  dream,  until  suddenly  a 
little  heap  of  torn  paper  flung  upon 
the  ornaments  in  the  grate  brought 
it  back  again  so  vividly  that  all  her 
fears  awoke  once  more.  Then  she 
stole  away  again  to  the  bedrooms, 
in  which,  if  all  was  well,  they  should 
be  lying  asleep.  There  was  no 
sound  from  Robbie's,  or  she  could 
hear  none  from  the  beating  of  her 
heart.  She  stole  in  very  softly,  as 
she  had  not  ventured  to  do  since 
the  first  morning  after  his  return. 
There  he  lay,  one  arm  over  his  head 
like  a  child,  breathing  that  soft 
breath  of  absolute  rest  which  is 
almost  inaudible,  so  deep  and  so 
quiet.  What  fountains  of  love  and 
tenderness  burst  forth  in  the  old 
mother's  breast,  softening  it,  heal- 
ing it,  filling  its  dryness  with 
heavenly  dew !  Oh,  Eobbie,  God 
bless  him  !  God  bless  him  !  who  at 
the  last  had  stood  for  his  mother — 
who  would  not  let  her  be  hurt — 
who  would  rather  lose  everything. 
And  she  had  perhaps  been  hard 
upon  him !  There  was  no  blood 
on  the  hand  of  one  who  slept  like 
that.  She  went  to  the  other  door 
and  listened  there,  with  her  heart 
lightened  ;  and  the  breathing  there 


1894.] 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. — Conclusion 


625 


was  not  inaudible.  She  retired  to 
her  own  room  almost  with  a  smile 
on  her  face. 

When  Mrs  Ogilvy  came  into  the 
room  in  which  the  two  young  men 
awaited  her  for  the  only  meal  they 
shared,  the  early  dinner,  she  was 
startled  to  see  a  person  who  seemed 
a  stranger  to  her  in  Lew's  place. 
He  wore  Lew's  clothes,  and  spoke 
with  Lew's  voice,  but  seemed  an- 
other man.     He  turned  to  Robert 
as  she  drew  back  bewildered,  and 
burst  into   a   laugh.       "There's   a 
triumph  for  me — she  doesn't  know 
me,"  he  said.     Then  he  approached 
her  with  a  deprecating  look.    "  I  am 
the  man  that  was  so  rude  to  you 
last  night.     .Forget  there  was  ever 
such  a  person.      You  see  I  have 
thrown  off  all  semblance  of  him." 
He  spoke  gravely  and  with  a  sort 
of  dignity,  standing   in   the  same 
place  in  which  Mrs  Ogilvy  remem- 
bered in  a  flash  of  sudden  vision 
he  had  almost  shaken  the  life  out 
of  her  last   night,   glaring  at  her 
with  murderous  eyes.     There  was 
a  gleam  in  them  still  which  was 
not  reassuring ;  but  his  aspect  was 
everything  that  was  penitent  and 
respectful.     The  change  in  his  ap- 
pearance was  made  by  the  removal 
of  the   beard   which  had   covered 
his  face.     He  had  suddenly  grown 
many  degrees  lighter  in  colour,  it 
seemed,   by   the    removal   of   that 
forest  of  dark  hair;   and  the  man 
had  beautiful  features,  a  fine  mouth, 
that  rare  beauty  either  in  man  or 
woman.    His  expression  had  always 
been  good-humoured  and  agreeable. 
It  was  more  so,  a  look  in  which 
there  seemed  no  guile,  but  for  that 
newly  awakened  tigerish  expression 
in   his   eyes.      Mrs   Ogilvy  felt  a 
thrill   of  terror   such   as   had   not 
moved  her  through  all  the  horrors 
of  the  previous  night,  when  Eobbie 
for  a  moment  left  the  room.     She 
felt  that  the  handsome  smiling  man 
before  her  would  have  strangled  her 


without  a  moment's  hesitation  had 
there  been  any  possibility  of  get- 
ting the  money  for  which  he  had 
struggled  in  another  way,  in  what 
was  for  her  fortunately  the  only 
possible  way.  She  felt  his  grip 
upon  her  shoulders,  and  a  shiver 
ran  through  her  in  spite  of  herself. 
She  could  not  help  a  glance  towards 
the  door,  where,  indeed,  Janet  was 
at  the  moment  about  to  come  in, 
pushing  it  open  before  her.  There 
was  no  danger  to-day,  with  every- 
body about;  but  another  night — 
who  could  tell? 

When  the  dinner  was  over,  Lew 
addressed  her  again.  "  This,"  he 
said,  putting  up  his  hand  to  his 
chin,  "  is  my  toilette  de  voyage. 
You  are  going  to  be  free  of  us  soon. 
We  shall  make  no  flourish  of 
trumpets,  but  go  suddenly  as  we 
came." 

"If  it  doesn't  prove  too  late," 
said  Eobert,  gruffly. 

"  Listen  to  the  croaker.  It  isn't, 
and  it  shan't  be,  too  late.  I  don't 
admit  the  possibility — so  long  as 
your  mother,  to  whom  we  behaved 
so  badly  last  night " 

"You,"  Mrs  Ogilvy  breathed  forth 
in  spite  of  herself. 

"  Oh,  he  was  in  it  just  as  much 
as  I  was,"  said  the  other,  lightly ; 
"but  he's  a  canny  Scot,  Bob;  he 
knows  when  to  stop.  I,  when  I 
am  in  a  good  way,  don't." 

There  was  a  savage  meaning  in 
the  lightness  of  this  speech  and  the 
smile  that  accompanied  it.  Mrs 
Ogilvy,  terrified,  felt  herself  again 
shaking  like  a  leaf,  like  a  rag  in 
these  tremendous  hands.  And 
Robbie,  who  only  knew  when  to 
stop — oh,  no,  no — oh,  no,  no — 
she  would  not  believe  that :  though 
he  had  stood  still  long  and  looked 
on. 

"  You  shall  see  that  I  will  keep 
my  word,"  she  said,  and  hurried 
out  of  the  room  to  fetch  the  money 
which  she  had  brought  from  Edin- 


626 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. — -Conclusion. 


[Nov 


burgh  with  so  many  precautions. 
She  who  had  been  above  all  fear 
felt  it  now  penetrating  to  her  very 
soul.  She  locked  her  door  when 
she  went  into  her  room,  a  precau- 
tion she  had  probably  never  taken 
in  her  life  before.  She  caught  a 
glimpse  of  herself  in  the  mirror  as 
she  passed,  and  saw  that  her  coun- 
tenance was  blanched,  and  her  eyes 
wide  with  fright.  Two  men,  per- 
haps— at  least  one  in  the  fulness 
of  his  strength — and  she  such  a 
little  old  feeble  woman.  Had  the 
money  she  possessed  been  more 
easily  got  at,  she  knew  that  she 
would  have  had  short  shrift.  And, 
indeed,  if  he  killed  her,  there 
would  have  been  no  need  of  mak- 
ing her  sign  anything  first.  It 
would  all  go  to  Eobbie  naturally — 
provided  she  could  be  sure  that 
Eobbie  would  be  free  of  any  share 
of  the  guilt.  Oh,  he  would  be 
free !  he  would  not  stand  by  and 
see  her  ill-used — he  had  not  been 
able  to  bear  it  last  night.  Eobbie 
would  stand  by  her  whatever  hap- 
pened. But  her  bosom  panted  and 
her  heart  beat  in  her  very  throat. 
She  had  to  go  down  again  into  the 
room  where  red  murder  was  in  the 
thoughts  of  one,  and  perhaps — God 
forbid  it !  God  forbid  it !  Oh,  no, 
no,  no  ! — it  was  not  in  nature  :  not 
on  his  mother,  not  on  any  one  to 
kill  or  hurt  would  Eobbie  ever  lay 
a  hand. 

She  went  down-stairs  after  a  very 
short  interval,  and  as  she  reached 
the  dining-room  door  heard  the 
voice  of  Lew  talking  to  Janet  in 
the  most  genial  tones.  He  was  so 
cheerful,  so  friendly,  that  it  was  a 
pleasure  to  hear  so  pleasant  a  voice ; 
and  Bobbie,  very  silent  behind 
backs,  was  altogether  eclipsed  by 
his  friend,  although  to  Janet  too 
that  often  sullen  Eobbie  was  "  my 
ain  laddie,"  dear  in  spite  of  all. 
But  there  was  no  drawback  in  her 
opinion  of  Mr  Lewis,  as  she  called 


him, — "Aye  canty  and  pleasant,  aye 
with  a  good  word  in  his  head ;  no 
pride  about  him ;  just  as  pleasant 
with  me  as.  if  I  were  the  Duchess 
hersel'."  She  held  up  her  hands 
in  expressive  horror  as  she  met  her 
mistress  at  the  door.  "  He  car- 
ries it  off  wi'  his  pleasant  ways; 
but  oh,  he  has  just  made  an  objeck 
of  himself,"  Janet  said. 

Mrs  Ogilvy  went  in,  feeling  as 
if  she  were  going  to  her  doom. 
She  took  her  little  packet  to  the 
table,  and  put  it  down  before  him. 
The  room  was  filled  with  clouds  of 
smoke ;  and  that  bottle,  which  was 
so  great  a  trial  to  her,  stood  on  the 
table  :  but  these  details  had  sunk 
into  absolute  insignificance.  She 
had  taken  the  trouble  to  get  the 
money  in  English  notes  and  gold 
— the  latter  an  unusual  sight  in 
the  Hewan,  where  one-pound  notes 
were  the  circulating  medium.  In 
the  tremor  of  her  nerves  and  com- 
motion of  her  feelings  she  had 
added  twenty  pounds  which  were 
in  the  house,  of  what  she  called 
"her  own  money,"  the  money  for 
the  housekeeping,  to  the  sum  which 
she  had  told  him  was  to  be  for 
him.  It  was  thus  a  hundred  and 
fifty  pounds  which  she  put  before 
him — hastily  laying  it  down  as  if 
it  burned  her,  and  yet  with  a  cer- 
tain reluctance  too. 

"  Ah  !  "  he  said,  and  threw  a  look 
across  the  table  to  Eobbie ;  "  an- 
other twenty  pounds  —  and  more 
where  that  came  from,  mother, 
eh?" 

"  I  have  no  more — not  a  farth- 
ing," she  said,  hastily;  "this  was 
my  money  for  my  house.  I  thought 
I  would  add  it  to  the  other :  since 
you  were  not  pleased — last  night." 

It  was  evidently  an  unfortunate 
movement  on  her  part.  "  You  will 
perhaps  find  some  more  still,"  he 
said,  with  a  laugh,  "before  this 
night.  It's  not  very  much  for  two, 
and  one  your  only  son ;  but  there 


1894.] 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. — Conclusion. 


627 


will  be  plenty  of  time  to  settle 
that  to-night." 

"  Eobbie,"  she  said,  breathlessly, 
"  is  not  going — he  is  not  going  :  it 
is  for  you." 

"  Are  you  not  going,  Bob  1 " 

Eobert  said  not  a  word  in  reply 
— he  sat  with  his  head  supported 
on  his  hands,  his  elbows  on  the 
table  :  and  his  countenance  was  in- 
visible— he  made  no  movement  or 
indication  of  what  he  meant  to  do. 

"  I  have  no  more,"  said  Mrs 
Ogilvy,  with  a  trembling  voice ;  for 
she  was  afraid  of  the  look,  half 
fierce,  half  mocking,  with  which  he 
met  her  eyes.  "  It  would  perhaps 
have  been  better  if  I  had — money 
in  the  bank,  and  could  draw  a 
cheque  like  most  people  now ;  but 
I  have  always  followed  the  old- 
fashioned  way,  and  all  I  have  is  in 
the  hands  of " 

She  broke  off  with  a  quavering, 
broken  sound — seeing  over  again 
the  scene  of  last  night,  and  the 
paper  with  Mr  Somerville's  name 
upon  it — she  remembered  now,  sud- 
denly, that  Mr  Somerville's  name 
was  upon  the  paper  which  they  had 
wanted  her  to  sign.  What  had  be- 
come of  Mr  Somerville  that  he  had 
not  come,  as  he  promised,  to  speak 
to  Eobbie,  to  persuade  the  other 
one  to  go  away?  It  was  difficult 
to  recall  to  herself  the  fact  that  it 
was  only  two  days  since  she  had 
gone  to  Edinburgh  and  poured  her 
trouble  into  his  sympathetic  ears. 
Perhaps  it  would  have  been  better 
if  she  had  not  done  this,  or  opened 
her  heart  to  any  one.  Mr  Somer- 
ville would  never  betray  them,  he 
would  not  betray  Eobbie  ;  but  still 
it  seemed  that  something  had  hap- 
pened between  that  time  and  this, 
a  greater  sense  of  insecurity,  the 
feeling  that  something  was  going  to 
happen.  Things  had  been  better 
before,  when  that  strange  life  which 
she  had  felt  to  be  insupportable  was 
going  on :  now  it  was  more  than  in- 


supportable, it  was  almost  over,  and 

after ?     A  great  chasm  seemed 

to  have  opened  at  her  feet,  and  she 
felt  herself  hurrying  towards  it,  but 
could  not  tell  what  was  below. 
After  ?  what  was  to  happen  after,  if 
Eobbie  drifted  away  again,  and  she 
saw  his  face  no  more  1 

He  avoided  her  all  day,  while 
she  watched  for  him  at  every  cor- 
ner, eager  only  to  get  a  word,  to  ask 
a  question,  to  put  forth  a  single 
prayer.  The  afternoon  was  terribly 
long :  it  went  over,  one  sunny  hour 
after  another,  hot,  breathless,  ter- 
rible. It  was  clear  by  all  those  signs 
that  a  thunder-storm  was  coming, 
and  the  most  appalling  roll  of 
thunder  would  have  been  a  relief ; 
but  even  that  delayed  its  coming, 
and  a  dead  stillness  hung  over 
heaven  and  earth.  There  was  not 
a  breath  of  air,  the  flowers  lan- 
guished in  the  borders,  the  leaves 
hung  their  heads,  and  all  was  still 
indoors.  She  did  not  know  what 
the  young  men  were  doing,  but 
they  made  no  sound.  Perhaps  the 
weather  affected  them  too — perhaps, 
another  storm  coming,  which  they 
had  been  long  looking  for,  had  over- 
come their  spirits.  Perhaps  they 
were  making  preparations  for  their 
departure.  But  what  preparations 
could  they  make,  unless  it  were  a 
bundle  on  the  end  of  a  stick  like 
the  tramps]  She  said  to  herself 
they,  and  then  with  anguish  changed 
it  in  her  mind  to  he,  but  did  not  be- 
lieve it  even  while  she  did  so.  No  ! 
she  had  a  conviction  in  her  heart 
that  Eobbie  would  go.  What  was 
there  to  keep  him  back  ?  Nothing 
but  dulness  and  the  society  of  an 
old  woman.  What  was  that  to  keep 
a  man  at  home  ?  She  was  not  angry 
with  him,  nor  intolerant,  but  simply 
miserable.  What  was  there  in  her 
to  make  a  young  man  happy  at 
home  1  to  keep  him  contented  with- 
out society  or  any  amusement  ^  No, 
no,  she  could  not  blame  Eobbie. 


628 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. — Conclusion. 


[Nov 


He  wanted  movement,  lie  wanted 
life  at  his  age.  He  was  not  even 
like  a  young  lad  who  sometimes  has 
a  great  feeling  for  his  mother.  She 
could  not  expect  it  of  him  that  he 
should  stay  here  for  his  mother. 
Even  the  flight,  the  excitement  of 
being  pursued,  the  difficulty  of 
getting  away  —  Mrs  Ogilvy  had 
heard  that  such  things  were  more 
attractive  than  quietness  and  safety 
at  home.  It  was  natural  —  and, 
what  was  the  chief  thing  above  all 
other,  Robbie  was  not  so  much,  not 
so  very  much,  to  blame. 

She  was  still  wandering  about 
when  the  day  began  to  wane  into 
evening,  like  an  unquiet  soul.  Where 
were  they  ?  what  were  they  doing  1 
The  quiet  of  the  house  became  dread- 
ful to  her.  She  who  had  loved  her 
quiet  so,  who  had  felt  it  so  insup- 
portable to  have  her  calm  sol- 
itude so  spoiled  and  broken  ! — but 
now  she  would  have  given  much 
only  to  hear  the  scuffle  of  their  feet, 
the  roar  of  their  loud  laughter.  She 
went  about  the  house  from  one  room 
to  another,  avoiding  only  the  bed- 
rooms where  she  supposed  they 
were.  She  would  not  drive  them 
out  of  that  last  refuge.  She  would 
not  interfere  there,  be  importunate, 
disturb  them,  if,  perhaps,  it  was  the 
last  day. 

And  then  she  went  outside  and 
gazed  right  and  left  for  she  knew 
not  what.  She  was  looking  for  no 
one — or  was  it  the  storm  she  was 
looking  for  1  Everything  was  grey, 
— the  sky,  like  some  deep  solid  lid 
for  the  panting  breathless  world, 
stealing  down  upon  the  earth,  close- 
ly hiding  the  heavens :  it  seemed 
to  come  closer  and  closer  down,  as 
if  to  smother  the  universe  and  all 
the  terrified  creatures  on  it.  The 
birds  flew  low,  making  little  agi- 
tated flights,  as  if  they  thought  the 
end  of  the  world  was  at  hand.  So 
did  she,  to  whom,  as  far  as  she 
knew,  everything  was  hastening  to 


a  conclusion — her  son  about  to  dis- 
appear again  into  the  unknown,  if 
he  had  not  already  done  so,  and 
her  life  about  to  be  wound  up  for 
ever.  For  she  knew  well  there 
would  be  no  second  coming  back. 
Oh  !  never,  never  again  would  she 
sit  at  her  door,  and  listen  and  hope 
for  his  step  on  the  path.  If  he 
left  her  now,  it  would  be  for  ever. 
It  might  be  that  for  the  sake  of  the 
money  he  would  have  seen  some 
violence  done  to  his  mother ;  but 
no  money,  if  it  were  ten  times  as 
much,  would  bring  him  back  again 
— none  !  none !  not  if  it  were  ten 
times  as  much.  If  he  went  now, 
he  would  never  come  back ;  and 
how  could  she  keep  him  from 
going  now? 

About  seven  o'clock  the  windows 
of  heaven  were  opened,  and  torrents 
of  rain  fell — not  the  storm  for  which 
everybody  had  been  looking,  but 
only  the  tail  of  the  storm,  which 
sounded  all  round  the  horizon  in 
distant  dull  reports,  like  a  battle 
going  on  a  dozen  miles  away,  and 
the  tremendous  downpour  of  rain. 
She  said  to  herself,  "In  such  a  night 
they  can  never  go,"  with  a  mingled 
happiness  and  despair — happiness 
to  put  off  the  inevitable,  to  gain 
perhaps  a  propitious  moment,  and 
supplicate  her  son  not  to  go ;  and 
despair  in  the  prospect  of  another 
twenty -four  hours  of  misery  like 
this,  the  dreadful  suspense,  the  ter- 
ror of  she  knew  not  what.  "When 
the  first  darkening  of  the  twilight 
came,  Mrs  Ogilvy  began  to  think 
of  another  night  to  go  through, 
and  Lew's  laughing  threats,  and  the 
devil  in  his  eyes.  He  had  said 
there  would  be  time  to  talk  of  that 
to-night.  Perhaps  he  would  mur- 
der her  to-night ;  and  all  the  coun- 
tryside would  believe  it  was  her 
son,  and  curse  him,  though  it 
would  not  be  Robbie — not  Robbie, 
who  had  saved  her  once,  but  per- 
haps might  not  again.  She  asked 


1894.] 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. — Conclusion. 


629 


herself  whether  it  would  not  be 
better  to  go  away  somewhere,  to 
save  herself,  and  above  all,  them, 
from  such  a  dreadful  temptation. 
But  where  could  she  go,  exposing 
the  misery  of  her  house  ?  and  how 
did  she  know  that  something  might 
not  happen  which  would  make  her 
presence  a  protection  to  them  ] 
She  gazed  out  from  the  window 
through  the  rain,  and  it  occurred 
to  her  that  she  could  always  run 
out  there  and  hide  herself  among 
the  trees.  They  would  not  think  of 
looking  for  her  there.  She  would 

be    safe    there,    or    at    least 

This  idea  gave  her  a  little  comfort. 
How  could  he  find  her  in  the  dark, 
in  the  heavy  rain,  among  her  own 
trees  ? 

The  rain  had  driven  her  indoors, 
and  in  the  parlour  where  she  was  she 
heard  them  overhead.  They  seemed 
to  be  moving  about  softly,  and 
sometimes  crossed  the  passage,  as 
if  going  from  one  room  to  another. 
They  had  shared  the  clothes  with 
which  Eobbie  had  liberally  pro- 
vided himself  on  his  return — and 
the  thought  that  they  were  busied 
only  with  so  homely  an  occupation 
as  packing  brought  back  a  little 
comfort  to  her.  A  man  does  not 
fash  about  his  clothes,  she  thought, 
who  has  murder  in  his  head.  She 
shook  off  her  terror  with  a  heat  of 
shame  naming  over  her.  Shame  to 
have  done  injustice  to  her  neigh- 
bour, how  much  more  to  her  son ! 
They  were  thinking  of  no  such  dread- 
ful things  :  it  was  only  the  panic  of 
her  own  imagination  which  was  in 
fault.  She  said  to  herself  that  if 


it  must  be  so,  if  Eobbie  left  her, 
she  would  get  from  him  a  sure 
address,  and  there  she  would  send 
him  the  money  he  wanted,  or  what- 
ever he  wanted — for  was  it  not  all 
his  1  This  was  what  she  would* do  : 
she  had  nothing  to  give  him  now. 
Perhaps,  perhaps  he  might  be  de- 
terred by  that,  and  wait  till  she 
could  get  it  for  him,  while  his  friend 
went  on.  What  a  thing  this  would 
be,  to  get  him  alone,  to  talk  to  him, 
to  represent  to  him  how  much 
better  to  take  a  little  time,  to 
think,  to  give  himself  a  chance. 
She  thought  over  all  this,  and 
shook  her  head  while  she  thought  j 
for,  alas !  this  was  what  Eobbie 
would  never  do. 

Suddenly,  it  seemed  in  a  mo- 
ment, the  rain  stopped,  the  dis- 
tant thunder  came  to  an  end,  the 
battle  in  the  skies  was  over.  And 
after  all  the  tumult  and  commotion 
of  the  elements,  the  clouds,  which 
had  poured  themselves  out,  dis- 
persed in  rags  and  fragments  of 
vapour,  and  let  the  sky  look 
through — the  most  serene  evening 
sky,  with  the  stars  faintly  visible 
through  the  wistful  lingering  day- 
light— the  sweetest  evening,  with 
that  clearness  as  of  weeping,  and 
radiance  as  of  hope  returned,  which 
is  in  the  skies  after  the  relief  of 
the  rain,  and  in  a  human  counten- 
ance sometimes  when  all  its  tears 
have  been  shed,  and  there  are  no 
more  to  come.  Was  it  a  good 
omen,  or  was  it  only  the  resig- 
nation of  despair  which  shone 
upon  her  out  of  that  evening 
sky? 


CHAPTER   XXII. 


Mrs  Ogilvy  went  wearily  up- 
stairs  after  the  suspense  and  alarm, 
of  this  long,  long  day.  It  was  all 


brain  was  in  a  confusion  of  misery, 
out  of  which  she  now  could  dis- 
tinguish  no  distinct  sentiment  — 


that  she  could  do  to  drag  one  foot     terror  and  grief  and  suspense,  and 
after  another,  to  keep  upright  ;  her     the    vague    wild   apprehension   of 


630 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. — Conclusion. 


[Nov. 


some  unintelligible  catastrophe,  all 
mingling  together.  When  she 
reached  the  head  of  the  stairs  she 
met  Eobbie,  who  told  her,  not 
looking  at  her,  that  he  had  bidden 
Janet  prepare  the  supper  earlier 
than  usual,  "  for  we'll  have  to  make 
a  start  to-night,"  he  said. 

She  seized  his  hand  in  her  frail 
ones,  which  could  scarcely  hold 
it.  "Eobbie,  will  you  go? — will 
you  go,  and  break  my  heart?" 

"  It's  of  no  use  speaking,  mother; 
let  me  be  free  of  you  at  least,  for 
God's  sake !  You  will  drive  me 
mad " 

"  Eobbie  !  Eobbie  !  my  only  son 
— my  only  child  !  I'll  be  dead 
and  gone  before  ever  you  could 
come  back." 

"  You'll  live  the  longest  of  the 
two  of  us,  mother." 

"God  forbid!  "she  said;  "God 
forbid !  But  why  will  ye  go  out 
into  the  jaws  of  death  and  the 
mouth  of  hell  1  If  the  pursuers  of 
blood  are  after  him,  they  are  not 
after  you.  Oh,  Eobbie,  stay  with 
your  mother.  Dinna  forsake  me 
for  a  strange  man." 

"  Mother,"  he  said,  with  a  hoarse 
voice,  "  when  your  friend  is  in 
deadly  danger,  is  that  the  time, 
think  you,  to  forsake  him?" 

And  Mrs  Ogilvy  was  silent. 
She  looked  at  him  with  a  gasp 
in  her  throat.  All  her  old  teach- 
ings, the  tenets  of  her  life,  came 
back  upon  her  and  choked  her. 
When  your  friend  is  in  deadly 
danger!  Was  it  not  she  who 
had  taught  her  son  that,  of  all 
the  moments  of  life,  that  was 
the  last  to  choose  to  abandon  a 
friend?  She  could  make  him  no 
answer;  she  only  stared  at  him 
with  troubled  failing  eyes. 

"But  once  he  is  in  safety," 
Eobbie  said,  with  a  stammer  of 
hesitation  and  confusion,  "once  I 

can  feel  sure  that Mother,  I 

promise  you,  if  I  can  help  it,  I  will 


not  go — where  he  is  going.  I — 
promise  you."  He  cast  a  look  be- 
hind him.  There  was  no  one  there, 
but  Lew's  door  was  open,  and  it 
was  possible  he  might  hear.  Eob- 
bie bent  forward  hastily  to  his 
mother's  ear.  "I  cannot  stand 
against  him,"  he  said ;  "  I  cannot : 
I  told  you  —  he  is  my  master — 
didn't  I  tell  you  ?  But  I  will  come 
back — I  will  come  back — as  soon 
as  I  am  free." 

He  trembled,  too,  throughout 
his  big  bulk,  with  agitation  and 
excitement — more  than  she  ever 
did  in  her  weakness.  If  this  was 
so,  was  it  not  now  her  business  to 
be  strong  to  support  her  boy  ?  She 
went  on  to  her  room  to  put  on  her 
other  cap,  to  prepare  for  the  evening, 
and  the  last  meal  they  were  to  eat 
together.  The  habits  of  life  are  so 
strong;  her  heart  was  breaking, 
and  yet  she  knew  that  it  was  time 
to  put  on  her  evening  cap.  She 
went  into  her  room,  too,  with  the 
feeling  that  there  no  new  agitation 
could  come  near  her,  that  she  might 
kneel  down  a  moment  by  her  bed- 
side and  get  a  little  calm  and 
strength.  But  not  to-night.  To 
her  astonishment  and  horror,  the 
tall  figure  of  Lew  raised  itself  from 
the  old-fashioned  escritoire  in  which 
she  kept  her  papers  and  did  her 
writing.  He  turned  round,  and 
faced  her  with  a  laugh.  "  Oh,  it 
is  you  !  "  he  said.  "  I  thought  it 
was  your  good  son  Bob.  You  sur- 
prised us  when  we  were  making  a 
little  examination  by  ourselves.  It 
is  always  better  to  examine  for 
yourself,  don't  you  know " 

"To  examine— what?" 

"  Where  the  money  is,  mother," 
he  said,  with  another  laugh. 

She  had  herself  closed  the  door 
before  she  had  seen  him.  She  was 
at  his  mercy. 

"You  think,  then,"  she  said,  "that 
I've  told  you  a  lie — about  money  ? " 

"Everybody     tells     lies     about 


1894.] 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. — Conclusion. 


631 


money,  mother.  I  never  knew 
one  yet  who  did  not  declare  he 
had  none — until  it  was  taken  out 
of  his  pockets,  or  out  of  his  boxes, 
or  out  of  a  nice  little  piece  of  furni- 
ture like  this,  which  an  old  lady 
can  keep  in  her  bedroom — locked." 

She  took  her  keys  out  of  her 
pocket,  a  neat  little  bunch,  shining 
like  silver,  and  handed  them  to 
him  without  a  word.  He  received 
them  with  a  somewhat  startled 
look.  It  was  something  like  the 
sensation  of  having  the  other  cheek 
turned  to  you,  after  having  struck 
the  first.  He  had  been  examining 
the  lock  with  a  view  to  opening  by 
other  methods.  The  keys  put  into 
his  hand  startled  him;  but  again 
he  carried  it  off  with  a  laugh. 
"  Plucky  old  girl !  "  he  said.  And 
then  he  turned  round  and  proceeded 
to  open  the  well-worn  old  secretary 
which  had  enclosed  all  Mrs  Ogilvy's 
trifling  valuables,  and  the  records 
of  her  thoughts  since  she  was  a 
girl.  It  opened  as  easily  as  any 
door,  and  gave  up  its  treasures,  her 
letters,  her  little  memorials,  the 
records  of  an  innocent  woman's 
evanescent  joys  and  lasting  sorrows. 
The  rough  adventurer,  whose  very 
presence  here  was  a  kind  of  sacri- 
lege, stooped  over  the  tiny  writing- 
board,  the  dainty  little  drawers,  like 
a  bear  examining  a  beehive.  He 
pulled  out  a  drawer  or  two,  in  which 
there  were  bundles  of  old  letters,  all 
neatly  tied  up,  touching  them  as  if 
his  hands  were  too  big  for  the  small 
ivory  knobs ;  and  then  he  suddenly 
turned  round  upon  her,  shutting 
the  drawers  again  hurriedly,  and 
flung  the  keys  into  her  lap. 

"  Hang  it  all !  I  cannot  do  it. 
I've  not  come  to  that.  Eob  a 
rogue  by  day  or  night;  that's  fair 
enough :  but  turn  to  picking  and 
stealing.  No  !  take  back  your  keys 
— you  may  have  millions  for  me. 
I  can't  look  up  your  little  drawers, 
d — n  you  ! "  he  cried. 

VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCXLIX. 


"  No,  laddie  ! "  said  Mrs  Ogilvy, 
looking  up  at  him  with  tears  in  her 
eyes,  "  you're  fit  for  better  things." 

He  looked  at  her  strangely.  She 
sat  quite  still  beside  him,  not  mov- 
ing, not  even  taking  up  her  keys, 
which  lay  in  her  lap. 

"  Zou  think  so,  do  you  1 "  he  said. 
"  And  yet  I  would  have  killed  you 
last  night." 

"  Thank  the  Lord,"  said  the  old 
lady,  "that  delivered  you  from  that 
temptation." 

"That  saved  your  life,  you  mean. 
But  it  wasn't  the  Lord.  It  was 
Bob,  your  son,  who  couldn't  stand 
and  see  it  after  all." 

"Thank  the  Lord  still  more,"  she 
said,  "that  wakened  the  old  heart, 
his  own  natural  heart,  in  my  boy." 

"  Well,  that  is  one  view  to  take 
of  it,"  said  Lew.  "I  should  have 
thought  it  more  sensible,  however, 
to  thank  the  Lord,  as  you  say,  for 
your  own  life." 

Mrs  Ogilvy  rose  up.  The  keys  of 
her  treasures  fell  to  the  ground. 
What  were  they  to  her  at  this  mo- 
ment? "And  what  is  my  life  to 
me,"  she  said,  "  that  I  should  think 
of  it  instead  of  better  things  1  Do 
you  think  it  matters  much  to  me, 
left  here  alone  an  auld  wreck  on  the 
shore,  without  a  son,  without  a  com- 
panion, without  a  hope  for  this 
world ,  whether  I  live  or  die  ?  Man ! " 
she  cried,  laying  a  hand  on  his  arm, 
"  it's  not  that  I  would  give  it  for  my 
Robbie,  my  own  son,  over  and  over 
and  over !  but  I  would  give  it  for 
you.  Oh,  dinna  think  that  I  am 
making  a  false  pretence  !  For  you, 
laddie,  that  are  none  of  mine,  that 
would  have  killed  me  last  night, 
that  would  kill  me  now  for  ever  so 
little  that  I  stood  in  your  way." 

"  No  ! "  he  said  in  a  hoarse  mur- 
mur, "  no  ! " — but  she  saw  still  the 
gleam  of  the  devil  in  his  eye,  that 
murderous  sense  of  power — that  he 
had  but  to  put  forth  a  hand. 

"  If  it  would  not  be  for  the  sin 

2T 


632 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. — Conclusion. 


[Nov. 


on  your  soul — you  that  are  taking 
my  son  from  me — you  might  take 
my  life  too,  and  welcome,"  she 
said. 

She  could  not  stand.  She  was 
restless,  too,  and  could  not  bear  one 
position.  She  sank  upon  her  chair 
again,  and,  lifting  up  the  keys,  laid 
them  down  upon  the  open  escri- 
toire, where  they  lay  shining  be- 
tween the  two,  neither  of  use  nor 
consequence  to  either.  Lew  began 
to  pace  up  and  down  the  room, 
half  abashed  at  his  own  weakness, 
half  furious  at  his  failure.  She 
might  have  millions — but  he  could 
not  fish  them  out  of  her  drawers,  not 
he.  That  was  no  man's  work.  He 
could  have  killed  her  last  night, 
and  he  could,  she  divined,  kill  her 
now,  with  a  sort  of  satisfaction,  but 
not  rob  her  escritoire. 

"  Mr  Lew,  will  you  leave  me  my 
son?"  she  said. 

"  ]STo :  I  have  nothing  to  do 
with  it ;  he  comes  of  his  own  will," 
cried  the  other.  "  You  make  your- 
self a  fine  idea  of  your  son.  Do  you 
know  he  has  been  in  with  me  in 
everything  ?  Ah  !  he  has  his  own 
scruples;  he  has  not  mine.  He 
interfered  last  night ;  but  he'd  turn 
out  your  drawers  as  soon  as  look  at 
you.  It's  a  pity  he's  not  here  to  do 
it." 

"  Will  you  leave  me  my  son  ? " 
she  repeated  again ;  "  he  is  all  I  have 
in  the  world." 

"  I've  got  less,"  cried  Lew  ;  "  I 
haven't  even  a  son,  and  don't  want 
one.  You  are  a  deal  better  without 
him.  Whatever  he  might  be  when 
he  was  a  boy,  Bob's  a  rover  now. 
He  never  would  settle  down.  He 
would  do  you  a  great  deal  more 
harm  than  good." 

"  Will  you  leave  me  my  son  ? "  she 
said  again. 

"  No !  I  can  say  No  as  well  as 
you,  mother;  but  I've  nothing 
to  do  with  it.  Ask  himself,  not 
me.  Do  you  think  this  is  a  place 


for  a  man  1  What  can  he  do  1  Who 
would  he  see  1  Nobody.  It  is  not 
living — it  is  making  beliSve  to  live. 
No  ;  he  won't  stay  here  if  he  will 
be  guided  by  me." 

The  door  opened  suddenly,  and 
Eobbie  looked  in.  "  Are  you  going 
to  stay  all  night  1 "  he  said,  gruffly. 
"There's  supper  waiting,  and  no 
time  to  be  lost,  if " 

"  If — we  take  that  long  run  we 
were  thinking  of  to-night.  Well, 
let's  go.  Mrs  Ogilvy,  you're  going 
to  keep  us  company  to-night  1 " 

"  It's  the  last  time,"  said  her  son. 

"  Oh,  Eobbie,  Eobbie  !  "  she  cried. 

"  Stop  that,  mother.  I've  said  all 
I'm  going  to  say." 

To  sit  down  round  the  table  with 
the  dishes  served  as  usual,  the  lamp 
shining,  the  men  eating  largely,  even 
it  seemed  with  enjoyment,  a  little 
conversation  going  on — was  to  go 
from  one  dreadful  dream  to  another 
with  scarcely  a  pause  between.  Was 
it  real  that  they  were  sitting  there 
.to-day  and  would  be  far  away  to- 
morrow? That  this  was  her  son, 
whom  she  could  touch,  and  to- 
morrow he  would  have  disappeared 
again  into  the  unseen?  Love  is 
the  most  obdurate,  the  most  un- 
reasoning thing  in  the  world.  Mrs 
Ogilvy  knew  now  very  well  what 
her  Eobbie  was.  There  were  few 
revelations  which  could  have  been 
made  to  her  on  the  subject.  Per- 
haps— oh,  horrible  thing  to  think 
or  say ! — it  was  better  for  her  be- 
fore he  came  back,  when  she  had 
thought  that  his  absence  was  the 
great  sorrow  of  her  life :  she  had 
learnt  many  other  things  since 
then.  Perhaps  in  his  heart  the 
father  of  the  prodigal  learned  this 
lesson  too,  and  knew  that,  even 
with  the  best  robe  upon  him,  and 
the  ring  on  his  finger  and  the  shoes 
on  his  feet,  he  was  still  hankering 
after  the  husks  which  the  swine 
eat,  and  their  company.  How  much 
easier  would  life  be,  and  how  many 


1894." 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. — Conclusion. 


633 


problems  would  disappear  or  be 
solved,  if  we  could  love  only  those 
whom  we  approved  !  But  how  little, 
how  very  little  difference  does  this 
make.  Mrs  Ogilvy  knew  every- 
thing, divined  everything,  and  yet 
the  thought  that  he  was  going 
away  made  heaven  and  earth  blank 
to  her.  She  could  not  reconcile 
herself  to  the  dreadful  thought. 
And  he,  for  his  part,  said  very 
little.  He  showed  no  regret,  but 
neither  did  he  show  that  eagerness 
to  take  the  next  step  which  began 
to  appear  in  Lew.  He  sat  very 
silent,  chiefly  in  the  shade,  saying 
nothing.  Perhaps  after  all  he  was 
sorry ;  but  his  mother,  watching 
him  in  her  anguish,  could  not  make 
sure  even  of  that.  Janet  was,  next 
to  Lew  himself,  the  most  cheerful 
person  in  the  room.  She  pulled 
her  mistress's  sleeve,  and  showed 
her  two  shining  pieces  of  gold  in 
her  hand,  with  a  little  nod  of  her 
head  towards  Lew.  "And  Andrew 
has  one,"  she  whispered.  "  I  aye 
said  he  was  a  real  gentleman  ! 
Three  golden  sovereigns  between 
us — and  what  have  we  ever  done? 
I'll  just  put  them  by  for  curiosities. 
It's  no  often  you  see  the  like  o' 
them  here."  The  mistress  looked 
at  them  with  a  rueful  smile.  Gold 
is  not  very  common  in  rural  Scot- 
land. She  had  taken  so  much 
trouble  to  get  those  golden  sover- 
eigns for  her  departing  guest !  but 
it  did  not  displease  her  that  he  had 
been  generous  to  her  old  servants. 
There  was  good  in  him — oh,  there 
was  good  in  him ! — he  had  been  made 
for  better  things. 

Janet  had  been  in  this  radiant 
mood  when  she  cleared  the  table; 
but  a  few  minutes  after  she  came 
in  again  with  a  scared  face,  and 
beckoned  to  her  mistress  at  the 
door.  Mrs  Ogilvy  hurried  out, 
afraid  she  knew  not  of  what,  fear- 
ing some  catastrophe.  Andrew 
stood  behind  Janet  in  the  hall. 


"What  is  it?   what  is   it?"   the 
mistress  cried. 

"Have  you  siller  in  the  house, 
mem?  is  it  known  that  you  have 
siller  in  the  house?" 

"Me — siller?  are  you  out  of  your 
senses?  I  have  no  siller  in  the 
house — nothing  beyond  the  ordin- 
ary," Mrs  Ogilvy  cried. 

"  It's  just  this,"  said  Janet, 
"  there's  a  heap  of  waiff  characters 
creeping  up  about  the  house.  I 
canna  think  it's  just  for  the  spoons 
and  the  tea-service  and  that,  that 
are  aye  here ;  but  I  thought  if  you 
had  been  sending  for  money,  and 
thae  burglars  had  got  wit  of  it " 

"  What  kind  of  waiff  characters  ?" 
said  Mrs  Ogilvy,  trembling. 

"  They  are  both  back  and  front. 
Andrew  he  was  going  to  supper 
Sandy,  and  a  man  started  up  at 
his  lug.  The  doors  and  the  win- 
dows are  all  we  el  fastened,  but 
Andrew  he  said  I  should  let  you 
ken." 

"The  gentlemen,"  said  Andrew, 
"  will  maybe  know — they  will  may- 
be know " 

"  How  should  the  gentlemen 
know,  poor  laddies,  mair  than  any 
one  of  us  ? "  cried  Janet. 

It  was  a  great  thing  for  Andrew 
all  his  life  after  that  the  mistress 
approved  his  suggestion.  "I  will 
go  and  tell  them,"  she  said ;  "  and 
you  two  go  ben  to  your  kitchen  and 
keep  very  quiet,  but  if  ye  hear  any- 
thing more  let  me  know." 

She  went  back  into  the  lighted 
room,  trembling,  but  ready  for 
everything.  The  two  men  were 
seated  at  the  table.  They  were 
not  talking  as  usual,  but  sat  like 
men  full  of  thought,  saying  noth- 
ing to  each  other.  They  looked  up 
both  —  Lew  with  much  attention, 
Rob  with  a  sort  of  sulky  in- 
difference. "  It  appears,"  said  Mrs 
Ogilvy,  speaking  in  a  broken  voice, 
"  that  there  are  men — all  round  the 
house." 


634 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. — Conclusion. 


[Nov. 


"  Men  !  all  round  the  house." 
There  was  a  moment  of  consterna- 
tion, and  then  Lew  sprang  to  his 
feet.  "  It  has  come,  Bob  ;  the  hour 
has  come,  sooner  than  we  thought." 

Kob  rose  too,  slowly;  an  oath, 
which  in  this  terrible  moment 
affected  his  mother  more  than  all 
the  rest,  came  from  his  lips.  "I 
told  you — you  would  let  them  take 
you  by  surprise." 

"  Fool  again  !  I  don't  deny  it," 
the  other  said,  with  a  sort  of  gaiety. 
"  Now  for  your  gulley  and  Eskside, 
and  a  run  for  it.  We'll  beat  them 
yet." 

"If  they've  not  stopped  us  up 
like  blind  moles,"  cried  Eobbie. 
"Mother,  keep  them  in  parley  as 
long  as  you  can ;  every  moment's 
worth  an  hour.  You'll  have  to 
open  the  door,  but  not  till  the  very 
last." 

She  answered  only  with  a  little 
movement  of  her  head,  and  stood 
looking  without  a  word,  while  they 
caught  up  without  another  glance 
at  her — Eobbie  the  cloak  which  he 
had  brought  with  him,  and  Lew  a 
loose  coat,  in  which  he  enveloped 
himself.  Their  movements  were 
very  quiet,  very  still,  as  of  men  ab- 
sorbed in  what  they  were  doing, 
thinking  of  nothing  else.  They 
hurried  out  of  the  room,  Eobbie  first, 
leading  the  way,  and  his  mother's 
eyes  following  him  as  if  they  would 
have  burst  out  of  the  sockets.  He 
was  far  too  much  preoccupied  to 
think  of  her,  to  give  her  even  a  look. 
And  this  was  their  farewell,  and  she 
might  never  see  him  more.  She 
stood  there  motionless,  conscious  of 
nothing  but  that  acute  and  poignant 
anguish  that  she  had  taken  her  last 
look  of  her  son,  when  suddenly  the 
air,  which  was  trembling  and  quiver- 
ing with  excitement  and  expecta- 
tion, like  the  air  that  thrills  and 
shimmers  over  a  blazing  furnace, 
was  penetrated  by  the  sound  for 
which  the  whole  world  seemed  to 


have  been  waiting — a  heavy  omin- 
ous loud  knock  at  the  outer  door. 
Mrs  Ogilvy  recovered  all  her  facul- 
ties in  a  moment.  She  went  to  the 
open  door  of  the  dining-room,  where 
Andrew  and  Janet,  one  on  the  heels 
of  the  other,  were  arriving  in  com- 
motion, Andrew  about  to  stride  with 
a  heavy  step  to  the  door.  She 
silenced  them,  and  kept  them  back 
with  a  movement  of  her  hands, 
stamping  her  impatient  foot  at  An- 
drew and  his  unnecessary  haste. 
She  thought  it  would  look  like  ex- 
pectation if  she  responded  too  soon 
— and  had  they  not  told  her  to  par- 
ley, to  gain  time  1  She  stood  at  the 
dining-room  door  and  waited  till  the 
summons  should  be  repeated.  And 
after  an  interval  it  came  again,  with 
a  sound  of  several  voices.  She  put 
herself  in  motion  now,  coming  out 
into  the  hall,  pretending  to  call  upon 
Andrew,  as  she  would  have  done  in 
former  days  if  so  disturbed.  "  Bless 
me!"  she  cried;  "who  will  that 
be  making  such  a  noise  at  the 
door?" 

"Will  I  open  it,  mem?"  Andrew 
said. 

"  No,  no ;  let  me  speak  to  them 
first.  Who  is  it  1 "  Mrs  Ogilvy  said, 
raising  her  calm  voice ;  "  who  is 
making  such  a  disturbance  at  my 
door  at  this  hour  of  the  night  1 " 

"Open  in  the  Queen's  name," 
cried  somebody  outside. 

"Ay,  that  would  I  willingly," 
cried  Mrs  Ogilvy;  "  but  who  are  ye 
that  are  taking  her  sacred  Majesty's 
name?  None  of  her  servants,  I'm 
sure,  or  you  would  not  disturb  an 
honest  family  at  this  hour  of  the 
night." 

"Open  to  the  police,  at  your 
peril,"  said  another  voice. 

"The  police — in  this  house  ?  No, 
no,"  she  cried,  standing  white  and 
trembling,  but  holding  out  like  a 
lion.  "You  will  not  deceive  me 
with  that — in  this  house." 

"Open  the  door,  or  we'll  break  itin. 


1894.] 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. — Conclusion. 


635 


Here,  you  speak  to  her !  " — "  Mem," 
said  a  new  voice,  very  tremulous 
but  familiar,  "it  is  me,  Peter  Young, 
with  the  men  from  Edinburgh.  It's 
maybe  some  awfu'  mistake ;  but  you 
must  let  us  in — you  maun  open  the 
door." 

"  You,  Peter  Young !  "  cried  Mrs 
Ogilvy — "you  are  not  the  man  to  dis- 
turb my  house  in  the  middle  of  the 
night.  It  ill  becomes  you,  after  all 
you've  got  from  the  He  wan.  Just 
tell  these  idle  folk  there  is  nothing 
to  be  gotten  here,  and  bid  them  go 
away." 

"This  is  folly,"  said  a  more  im- 
perative voice.  "Break  in  the 
door  if  she  will  not  open  it.  We 
can't  stand  all  the  night  parleying 
here." 

Then  Mrs  Ogilvy  heard,  her  ears 
preternaturally  sharp  in  the  crisis, 
a  sound  as  of  women's  voices,  which 
gave  her  a  momentary  hope.  Was 
it  a  trick  that  was  being  played 
upon  her  after  all  ?  for  if  it  was  for 
life  or  death,  why  should  there  be 
women's  voices  there  1 

And  then  another  voice  arose 
which  was  even  more  reassuring. 
It  was  the  minister  who  spoke, — 
the  minister  dragged  hither  against 
his  will,  but  beginning  to  feel  piously 
that  it  was  the  hand  of  Providence, 
and  that  he  had  been  directed  not 
by  Mrs  Ainslie,  but  by  some  special 
messenger  from  heaven — if  indeed 
she  was  not  one.  "Mrs  Ogilvy," 
the  minister  said,  "it  must  be,  as 
Peter  says,  some  dreadful  mistake — 
but  it  certainly  is  the  police  from 
Edinburgh,  and  you  must  let  them 
in." 

"  Who  is  that  that  is  speaking  ?  is 
it  the  minister  that  is  speaking  1  are 
ye  all  in  a  plot  to  disturb  the  rest 
of  a  quiet  family?  No,"  with  a 
sudden  exclamation,  "ye  will  not 
break  in  my  door.  I  will  open  it, 
since  ye  force  me  to  open  it.  I  am 
coming,  I  am  coming." 

Andrew  rushed  forward,  to  pull 


back  with  all  expedition  the  bolts 
and  bars.  But  his  mistress  stamped 
her  foot  at  him  once  more,  and  dis- 
missed him  behind  backs  with  a 
look — from  which  he  did  not  recover 
for  many  a  long  day — and  coming 
forward  herself,  began  to  draw  back 
with  difficulty  and  very  slowly  the 
innocent  bolts  and  bars.  They 
might  have  been  the  fastenings  of  a 
fortress  from  the  manner  in  which 
she  laboured  at  them,  with  her  un- 
accustomed hands.  "And  me 
ready  to  do  it  in  a  moment,"  An- 
drew said,  aggrieved,  while  she  kept 
asking  herself,  the  words  buzzing  in 
her  ears,  like  flies  coming  and  going, 
"Have  I  kept  them  long  enough? 
have  I  given  my  lads  their  time? 
Oh,  if  they  got  out  that  quiet  they 
should  be  safe  by  now."  There  was 
the  bolt  at  the  bottom  and  the  top, 
and  there  was  the  chain,  and  then 
the  key  to  turn.  The  door  was 
driven  in  upon  her  at  last  by  the 
sudden  entrance  of  a  number  of 
impatient  men,  a  great  gust  of 
fresh  air,  a  ray  of  moonlight  straight 
from  the  skies  :  and  Mr  Logan  and 
his  companions,  Susie  pale  and  cry- 
ing, and  Mrs  Ainslie  pale  too — but 
with  eyes  sparkling  and  all  the  keen 
enjoyment  of  an  exciting  catastrophe 
in  her  face. 

"We  have  a  warrant  for  the 
arrest  of  Lew  or  Lewis  Winterman, 
alias,  &c.,  &c.,  accused  of  murder," 
said  the  leader  of  the  party,  "  who 
we  have  reason  to  believe  has  been 
for  some  weeks  harboured  here." 

Mrs  Ogilvy  disengaged  herself 
from  the  man,  whose  sudden  push 
inwards  had  almost  carried  her  away. 
She  came  forward  into  the  midst  in 
her  white  cap  and  shawl,  a  wonder- 
ful centre  to  all  these  dark  figures. 
"There  is  no  such  person  in  my 
house,"  she  said. 

And  then  there  came  a  cry  and 
tumult  from  behind,  and  through 
the  door  of  the  dining-room,  which 
stood  wide  open,  making  it  a  part  of 


636 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. — Conclusion. 


[Nov. 


the  scene,  there  suddenly  appeared 
another  group  of  whirling  strug- 
gling figures,  steadily  pushing  back 
before  them  the  two  fugitives,  who 
had  crept  their  way  out,  only  to  be 
met  and  overpowered,  and  brought 


back  to  answer  as  they  could  for 
themselves.  Then,  and  only  then, 
Mrs  Ogilvy's  strength  failed  her. 
The  light  for  a  moment  went  out 
of  her  eyes.  All  that  she  had  done 
had  been  in  vain — in  vain  ! 


CHAPTER  XXIII. 


The  two  men  stood  with  the  back- 
ground of  dark  figures  behind,  while 
the  inspector  who  was  at  the  head  of 
the  party  advanced  towards  them. 
Bobbie,  with  his  long  beard  and 
his  cloak  over  his  shoulder,  was  the 
one  upon  whom  all  eyes  were  fixed. 
One  of  the  policemen  held  him  firm 
by  the  arm.  His  countenance  was 
dark,  his  air  sullen,  like  a  wild 
beast  taken  in  the  toils.  The  other 
by  his  side,  almost  spruce  in  his 
loose  coat,  his  clean-shaven  face 
seeking  no  shadow,  facing  the 
enemy  with  a  half -smile  upon  it, 
easy,  careless,  fearing  no  evil — pro- 
duced an  effect  quite  contrary  to 
that  which  the  dark  and  bearded 
brigand  made  upon  the  officers  of 
the  law.  Who  could  doubt  that  it 
was  he  who  was  the  son  of  the 
house,  "  led  away  "  by  the  truculent 
ruffian  by  his  side  1  There  was  no 
mention  of  Robbie's  name  in  the 
warrant.  And  the  sight  of  Rob- 
bie's mother,  and  her  defence  of 
her  threshold,  had  touched  the 
hearts  even  of  the  police.  To  take 
away  this  ruffian,  to  leave  her  her 
son  in  peace,  poor  old  lady,  reliev- 
ing her  poor  little  quiet  house  of 
the  horror  that  had  stolen  into  it — 
the  inspector  certainly  felt  that  he 
would  be  doing  a  good  service  to 
his  neighbour  as  well  as  obeying 
the  orders  of  the  law. 

^The  one  with  the  beard,"  he 
said,  looking  at  a  paper  which  he 
held  in  his  hand — "  that  is  him. 
Secure  him,  Green.  Stand  by, 
men  ;  be  on  your  guard ;  he  knows 


what    he's    about 


The 


inspector  breathed  more  freely  when 
the  handcuffs  clicked  on  Robert 
Ogilvy's  wrists,  who  for  his  part 
neither  resisted  nor  answered,  but 
stood  looking  almost  stupidly  at 
the  scene,  and  then  down  upon  his 
hands  when  they  were  secured. 
The  other  by  his  side  put  up  a 
hand  to  his  face,  as  if  overwhelmed 
by  the  catastrophe,  and  fell  a  little 
backward,  overcome  it  seemed  with 
distress — as  Robbie  ought  to  have 
done,  had  this  and  not  the  ruffian 
in  the  beard  been  he. 

Mrs  Ogilvy  had  been  leaning  on 
Susie's  shoulder,  incapable  of  more, 
her  heart  almost  ceasing  to  beat,  all 
her  strength  gone;  but  when  the 
words,  "  the  one  with  the  beard," 
reached  dully  and  slowly  to  her 
comprehension,  she  made  but  one 
bound,  pushing  with  both  arms 
every  one  away  from  her,  and  with 
a  shriek  appeared  in  the  midst  of 
the  group.  "  It  is  my  son,"  she 
cried,  "  my  son,  my  son  !  It  is 
Robbie  Ogilvy  and  no  one  else.  It 
is  my  son,  my  son,  my  son  ! "  She 
flung  herself  upon  him,  raving  as  if 
she  had  suddenly  gone  mad  in  her 
misery,  and  tried  to  pluck  off  with 
her  weak  hands  the  iron  bands 
from  his  wrists.  Her  cries  rang 
out,  silencing  every  other  sound. 
"It  is  my  son,  my  son, my  son !" 

"I  am  very  sorry,  madam;  it 
may  be  your  son,  and  still  it  may 
be  the  man  we  want,"  the  inspector 
said. 

And  then  another  shrill  woman's 
voice  burst  forth  from  behind. 
"  You  fools,  he's  escaping  !  Don't 


1894." 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. — Conclusion. 


637 


you  see?"  —  the  speaker  clapped 
her  hands  with  a  sound  that  rang 
over  their  heads.  "  Don't  you  see  ? 
It's  easy  to  take  off  a  beard.  If 
you  waste  another  moment,  he'll  be 
gone ! " 

He  had  almost  got  beyond  the 
last  of  the  men,  retreating  very 
softly  backwards,  while  all  the  at- 
tention was  concentrated  upon 
Eobbie  and  his  mother.  But  he 
allowed  himself  to  be  pushed  for- 
ward again  at  the  sound  of  this 
voice,  as  if  he  had  had  no  such  in- 
tention. A  snarl  like  that  of  a 
furious  dog  curled  up  his  lip  at  the 
side  for  a  moment ;  but  he  did  not 
change  his  aspect — the  game  was 
not  yet  lost. 

"  There  are  folk  here,"  cried  Mrs 
Ogilvy,  still  plucking  at  the  hand- 
cuffs, while  Robbie  stood  silent, 
saying  nothing  —  "  there  are  folk 
here  who  have  known  him  from 
his  cradle,  that  will  tell  you  he's 
Robert  Ogilvy :  there  are  my  ser- 
vants— there  is  the  minister,  here 
present  God  knows  why  or  where- 
fore :  they  know — he's  been  absent 
from  his  home  many  a  day ;  but 
he's  Robert  Ogilvy — no  the  other. 
If  he's  Robert  Ogilvy  he  is  not  the 
other :  if  he's  my  son  he's  not  that 
man.  And  he  is  my  son,  my  son, 
my  son  !  I  swear  it  to  you — and 
the  minister.  Mr  Logan,  tell 
them " 

Mr  Logan's  mind  was  much  dis- 
turbed. He  felt  that  providence 
itself  had  sent  him  here ;  but  he 
was  slow  to  make  up  his  mind  what 
to  say.  He  wanted  time  to  speak 
and  to  explain.  "  I  have  every 
reason  to  think  that  is  Robert 
Ogilvy,"  he  said,  "  but  I  never  saw 
him  with  a  beard ;  and  what  he 
may  have  been  doing  all  these 
years " 

"Mr  Inspector,"  cried  Mrs  Ain- 
slie,  panting  with  excitement,  close 
to  the  officer's  side.  "Listen  to 
me :  as  it  chances,  I  know  the  man. 


There  is  no  one  here  but  I  who 
knows  the  man.  It  shows  how 
little  you  know  if  you  think  that 
idiot  is  Lew.  I'm  a  respectable 
lady  of  this  place,  but  I've  been 
in  America,  and  I  know  the  man. 
I've  seen  him  —  I've  seen  him 
tried  for  his  life  and  get  off;  and  if 
you  drivel  on  like  that,  he'll  get  off 
again.  That  Lew ! "  she  cried, 
with  a  hysterical  laugh,  —  "  Lew 
the  devil,  Lew  the  road  -  agent  ! 
That  man's  like  a  sheep.  Do  you 
hear  me,  do  you  hear  me  ?  You'll 
let  him  escape  again." 

Now  was  the  time  for  Robbie  to 
speak,  for  his  mother  to  speak,  and 
say,  "  That  is  the  man  ! "  But  Mrs 
Ogilvy  was  absorbed  tearing  in 
vain  at  the  handcuffs,  repeating 
unconsciously  her  exclamation, 
"  My  son,  my  son  ! "  And  he  stood 
looking  down  upon  her  and  her 
vain  struggle,  and  upon  his  own 
imprisoned  hands.  I  doubt  whether 
she  knew  what  was  passing,  or  was 
conscious  of  anything  but  of  one 
thing — which  was  Robbie  in  those 
disgraceful  bonds.  But  he  in  his 
dull  soul,  forced  into  enlightenment 
by  the  catastrophe,  was  very  con- 
scious of  everything,  and  especially 
that  he  was  betrayed — that  he  him- 
self was  being  left  to  bear  the 
brunt,  and  that  his  friend  in  his 
character  was  stealing  away. 

Janet  had  been  kept  back,  partly 
by  fright  and  astonishment,  partly 
by  the  police  and  Andrew,  the  last 
of  whom  had  a  fast  hold  upon  her 
gown,  and  bade  her  under  his 
breath  to  "  Keep  out  o't — keep  out 
o't ;  we  can  do  nothing  : "  but  this 
restraint  she  could  no  longer  bear. 
Her  desire  to  be  in  the  midst  of 
everything,  to  be  by  her  mistress's 
side,  to  have  her  share  of  what  was 
going  on,  would  have  been  enough 
for  her,  even  if  she  felt,  as  Andrew 
did,  that  she  could  do  no  good. 
But  Janet  was  of  no  such  opinion. 
Was  she  not  appealed  to,  as  one 


638 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. — Conclusion. 


[Nov. 


whose  testimony  would  put  all 
right?  She  pushed  her  way  from 
among  the  men,  pulling  her  cotton 
gown,  which  tore  audibly,  out  of 
Andrew's  hand.  "  Sir,  here  am  I : 
let  me  speak,"  she  said.  "  This  is 
Mr  Robert  Ogilvy,  that  I've  known 
since  ever  he  was  born.  He  came 
home  the  15th  of  June,  the  same 
day  many  weary  years  before  as  he 
ran  away.  The  other  gentleman  is 
Mr  Lewis,  his  friend,  that  followed 
him  here  about  a  month  ago  at  the 
most,  a  real  fine  good  -  hearted 
gentleman,  too,  if  maybe  he  has 
been  a  little  wild.  Our  gentle- 
man is  just  as  he  was  when  he 
came  out  of  the  deserts  and  wilder- 
nesses. We're  not  a  family  that 
cares  a  great  deal  for  appearances. 
But  Mr  Lewis,  he's  of  another  way 
of  thinking,  and  we've  had  a  great 
laughing  all  day  at  his  shaving  off 
of  his  beard." 

"  That's  what  I  told  you  ! "  said 
Mrs  Ainslie,  in  her  excitement 
pulling  the  inspector's  arm.  "I 
told  you  so  !  What's  a  beard  1  it 
is  as  easy  to  take  off  as  a  bonnet. 
And  he  would  have  got  clean  off — 
look  at  him,  look  at  him  ! — if  it 
hadn't  been  for  me." 

"Look  after  that  man,  you  fel- 
lows there  !  "  said  the  inspector's 
deep  voice.  "Don't  let  him  get 
away.  Secure  them  both." 

No  one  had  put  handcuffs  on 
Lew's  wrists ;  no  policeman  had 
touched  him;  he  had  been  free, 
with  all  his  wits  about  him,  noting 
everything,  alert,  all  conscious,  self- 
possessed.  Twice  he  had  almost 
got  away  :  the  first  time  before  Mrs 
Ainslie  had  interfered  ;  the  second 
when  Janet  with  her  evidence  had 
,^come  forward,  directing  all  atten- 
tion once  more  to  Robbie — during 
which,  moment  he  had  made  his 
way  backward  again  in  the  most 
cautious  way,  endeavouring  to  get 
behind  the  backs  of  the  men  and 
make  a  dash  for  the  door.  Al- 


most !  but  what  a  difference  was 
that !  The  policemen,  roused  and 
startled,  hustled  him  forward  to 
his  "  mate's  "  side,  but  still  without 
laying  a  hand  upon  him.  All 
their  suspicions  and  observation 
were  for  the  handcuffed  criminal 
standing  silent  and  gloomy  on  the 
other  side.  Lew  maintained  his 
careless  attitude  well,  nodding  at 
the  inspector  with  a  "  Well,  well, 
officer,"  as  if  he  yielded  easily  but 
half -contemptuously  to  punctilio. 
But  when  he  saw  another  con- 
stable draw  from  his  pocket  an- 
other pair  of  handcuffs,  he  changed 
colour ;  his  eyes  lighted  up  with  a 
wild  fire.  Mrs  Ainslie,  who  had 
got  beyond  her  own  control,  fol- 
lowed his  movements  with  the 
closest  inspection.  She  burst  into 
a  laugh  as  he  grew  pale.  Her 
nerves  were  excited  far  beyond  her 
control.  She  cried  out,  without 
knowing,  without  intending,  "Ah, 
Lew !  You  have  had  more  than 
you  meant.  You've  found  more 
than  you  wanted.  Caught !  caught 
at  last !  And  you  will  not  get  off 
this  time,"  she  cried,  with  the  wild 
laugh  which  she  was  quite  unable 
to  quench,  or  even  to  restrain. 

Whether  he  saw,  what  no  doubt 
was  true,  that  every  hope  was  over, 
and  that,  once  conveyed  to  Edin- 
burgh, no  further  mistake  was  pos- 
sible, and  his  fate  sealed ;  or  whether 
he  was  moved  by  a  swift  wave  of 
passion,  as  happened  to  him  from 
time  to  time — and  the  exasperation 
of  the  woman's  voice,  which  worked 
him  to  madness  —  can  never  be 
known.  He  was  still  quite  free, 
untouched  by  any  one,  but  the 
handcuffs  approaching  which  would 
make  an  end  of  every  independent 
act.  His  tall  figure,  and  clean- 
shaven, unveiled  face  seemed  sud- 
denly to  rise  and  tower  over  every 
other  in  the  heat  and  pale  glow  of 
passion.  "  You  viper,  Liz  ! "  he 
thundered  out.  "  Music-hall  Liz  !  " 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. — Conclusion. 


1894.] 

with  a  fierce  laugh,  "here's  for 
yOU — the  traitor's  pay  ! "  And  be- 
fore any  one  could  breathe  or  speak, 
before  a  hand  could  be  lifted,  there 
was  a  sudden  flash  and  report,  and 
in  a  moment  he  had  flung  himself 
forward  upon  the  two  or  three  star- 
tled men  in  front  of  him,  with  a 
rush  for  the  open  door,  and  the 
pistol  still  smoking  in  his  hand. 
Two  steps  more,  and  he  would 
have  been  out  in  the  open,  in  the 
fresh  air  that  breathed  like  heaven 
upon  him,  among  the  dark  trees 
that  give  hiding  and  shelter,  and 
make  a  man,  with  his  wits  about 
him,  a  match  for  any  dozen.  Two 
steps  more  !  But  rapid  as  he  was, 
there  were  too  many  of  them  to 
make  such  an  escape  possible. 
Before  he  had  reached  that  open 
way,  half-a-dozen  men  were  upon 
him.  The  struggle  was  but  for  a 
moment — a  wild  sudden  tumult  of 
stamping  feet  and  loud  voices ;  then 
there  was  again  a  sudden  flash  and 
report  and  fall.  The  whole  band 
seemed  to  fall  together — the  xnen 
who  had  grappled  with  him  being 
dragged  with  him  to  the  ground. 
They  gathered  themselves  up  one 
by  one  —  everybody  who  could 
move :  and  left  the  one  on  the 
ground  who  would  never  move 
again. 

He  had  so  far  succeeded  in  his 
rush  that  his  head  fell  outside  the 
open  door  of  the  Hewan,  where 
his  face  caught  the  calm  line  of 
the  moonlight  streaming  in.  The 
strange  white  radiance  enveloped 
him,  separating  him  from  every- 
thing round — from  the  men  who, 
struggling  up  to  their  feet,  sud- 
denly hushed  and  awestricken, 
stood  hastily  aside  in  the  shadow, 
looking  down  upon  the  prisoner 
who  had  thus  escaped  from  their 
hands.  He  lay  right  across  the 
threshold  in  all  his  length  and 
j^rength  of  limb, — motionless  now, 
no  struggle  in  him,  quenched  every 


639 


resistance  and  alarm.  It  was  so  in- 
stantaneous that  the  terrible  event 
— that  sudden,  incalculable  change 
of  death,  which  is  of  all  things  in 
the  world  the  most  interesting  and 
tremendous  to  all  lookers-on — be- 
came doubly  awful,  falling,  with  a 
solemn  chill  and  horror  which  para- 
lysed them,  upon  the  astonished 
men  around.  Dead  !  Yet  a  mo- 
ment since  flinging  off  the  strongest, 
struggling  against  half-a-dozen,  al- 
most escaping  from  their  hands. 
He  had  escaped  now.  None  of 
them  would  willingly  have  laid  a 
finger  on  him.  They  stood  trem- 
bling round,  who  had  been  grappling 
him  a  minute  before,  keen  for  his 
subjugation.  The  curious  moon,  too 
still  and  cold  for  any  ironical  mean- 
ing, streamed  on  him  from  head  to 
foot  in  the  opening  of  the  door- 
way, displaying  him  as  if  to  the 
regard  of  men  and  angels,  with  a 
white  blaze  upon  his  upturned  face, 
and  here  and  there  a  strong  silver 
line  where  an  edge  of  his  clothing 
caught  the  whiteness  in  relief. 
Everything  else  was  in  shadow,  or 
in  the  trembling  uncertainty  of  the 
indoor  light.  The  pistol,  still  with 
a  little  smoke  from  it,  which  curled 
for  a  moment  into  the  shining  light 
and  disappeared,  was  still  in  his 
hand. 

This  was  the  end  of  that  strange 
visit  to  the  little  tranquil  house, 
where  he  had  introduced  so  much 
disturbance,  so  strange  an  overturn- 
ing of  every  habit.  He  had  taken 
it  for  his  rest  and  refuge,  like  a 
master  in  a  place  where  every 
custom  of  the  tranquil  life,  and 
every  principle  and  sentiment,  cried 
out  against  him.  He  had  made 
the  son  his  slave,  but  yet  had  not., 
made  the  mother  his  enemy.  And 
yet  a  more  wonderful  thing  had 
happened  to  Lew.  He,  whom  no- 
body had  loved  in  his  life,  save 
those  whose  vile  affections  can  be 
bought  for  pay,  and  who  dishonour 


640 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. — Conclusion. 


[Nov. 


the  name — and  for  whom  nobody 
would  have  wept  had  he  not 
strayed  into  this  peaceful  abode 
and  all  but  ruined  and  destroyed 
it — had  tears  shed  for  him  here. 
Had  he  never  come  to  the  Hewan 
— to  shed  misery  and  terror  around 
him,  to  kill  and  ruin,  to  rob  and 
slay,  as  for  some  time  at  least  he 
had  intended — there  would  have 


been  no  lament  made  for  the  ad- 
venturer. Bat  kind  nature  gained 
him  this  much  in  his  end,  though 
he  no  way  deserved  it.  And  the 
moonlight  made  him  look  like  a 
hero  slain  in  its  defence  upon  the 
threshold  of  the  outraged  house, — 
the  only  house  in  the  world  where 
prayer  had  ever  been  said  for  this 
abandoned  soul. 


CHAPTER  XXIV. 


It  was  only  when  that  extraor- 
dinary momentary  tragedy  was  over, 
and  the  hush  of  silence,  overawed 
and  thunder-stricken,  had  taken  the 
place  of  the  tumult,  that  it  became 
apparent  to  most  of  the  spectators 
that  all  was  not  over — that  there 
was  yet  something  to  be  done. 
"Let  some  one  go  for  the  nearest 
doctor,"  the  inspector  said,  quickly. 

"  ISTo  need  for  any  doctors  here, 
sir,"  said  the  men  in  concert. 

"  Go  at  once — you,  Young,  that 
know  where  to  find  one  :  and  some 
of  you  go  with  him,  to  lose  no  time. 
There's  a  woman  shot  beside,"  said 
the  officer,  in  his  curt  tones  of  com- 
mand. 

But  the  woman  shot  was  not 
Mrs  Ainslie,  at  whom  the  pistol 
was  levelled.  These  three  visitors, 
so  strangely  mixed  up  in  the  melee 
and  in  the  confusion  of  events, 
had  been  hustled  about  among 
the  policemen,  to  the  consterna- 
tion of  the  father  and  daughter, 
who  could  not  explain  to  them- 
selves at  first  what  was  going  on, 
nor  what  their  companion  had  to  do 
with  it.  As  the  course  of  the  affair 
advanced,  Mr  Logan  began  to  per- 
ceive, as  has  been  said,  that  it  was 
a  special  providence  which  had 
brought  him  here.  But  Susie, 
troubled  and  full  of  anguish,  her 
whole  heart  absorbed  in  Robbie 
and  his  mother,  and  the  mysterious 
trouble  which  she  did  no't  under- 


stand, which  was  hanging  over 
them,  stood  alone,  pressed  back 
against  the  wall,  following  every 
movement  of  her  friends,  suffering 
with  them.  A  sharp  cry  had  come 
out  of  her  very  heart  when  the 
handcuffs — those  dreadful  signs  of 
shame — were  put  upon  his  hands. 
She  saw  nothing,  thought  of  noth- 
ing, but  these  two  figures  —  what 
was  any  other  to  her  1 — and  all  that 
she  understood  or  divined  was  that 
some  dreadful  trouble  had  happened 
to  Robbie,  and  that  she  could  not 
help  him.  She  took  no  notice  of 
her  future  step-mother's  strange  pro- 
ceedings, nor  of  the  extraordinary 
fact  that  she  had  forced  herself  into 
the  midst  of  it — she,  a  stranger — 
and  was  adding  her  foolish  shrill 
opinion  to  the  discussion.  If  Susie 
thought  of  Mrs  Ainslie  at  all,  it 
was  with  a  passing  reflection  that 
she  loved  to  be  in  the  midst  of 
everything,  which  was  far  too 
trifling  a  thought  to  occupy  Susie 
in  the  deep  distress  of  sympathy 
in  which  she  was.  Her  father 
moved  about  helplessly  among 
the  men.  He  thought  he  had 
been  brought  there  by  a  special 
providence,  but  he  did  not  know 
what  to  do.  Mrs  Ogilvy  had  turned 
upon  him  almost  fiercely,  when  he 
had  hesitated  in  giving  his  testi- 
mony for  Robbie — which  was  not 
from  any  lack  of  kindness,  but 
solely  because  he  wanted  to  say  a 


1894.] 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. — Conclusion. 


641 


great  deal  on  the  subject.  Mrs 
Ogilvy  by  this  time  had  come  a 
little  to  herself,  she  had  given  up 
the  foolish  struggle  with  the  hand- 
cuffs ;  and  when  Janet's  over-frank- 
ness had  drawn  attention  again  to 
Lew,  the  mistress  withdrew  for  a 
moment  her  own  anxious  looks 
from  her  son,  and  turned  to  the 
other,  of  whom  she  had  said  noth- 
ing, protecting  him  instinctively, 
even  in  the  face  of  Robbie's  danger. 
But  when  she  looked  at  Lew's  face, 
she  trembled.  The  horror  of  last 
night  came  over  her  once  more. 
Was  that  murder  that  was  in  it,  the 
fire  of  hell  1  She  had  learned  now 
what  it  meant  when  he  put  his 
hand  to  his  pocket,  and  hers,  per- 
haps, was  the  only  eye  that  saw 
that  gesture.  He  was  looking  at 
some  one :  was  it  at  her,  was  it  at 
some  one  behind  her?  Mrs  Ogilvy 
instinctively  made  a  step  back, 
whether  to  escape  in  her  own  per- 
son or  to  protect  that  other  she 
knew  not,  her  eyes  fixed  on  him 
with  a  fascination  of  terror.  She 
stretched  out  her  arms,  with  her 
shawl  covering  them  like  wings, 
facing  him  always,  stretching  forth 
what  was  like  a  white  shield  be- 
tween him  in  his  fury  and  all  the 
unarmed  defenceless  people.  She 
seemed  to  feel  nothing  but  the 
sharp  sound  of  the  report,  which 
rang  through  and  through  her.  She 
did  not  know  why  she  fell.  There 
came  a  shriek  from  the  woman  be- 
hind her,  at  whom  that  bullet  was 
aimed;  but  the  real  victim  fell 
softly  without  a  cry,  with  a  murmur 
of  bewilderment,  and  the  sharp 
sound  still  ringing,  ringing  in  her 
ears.  The  man  seemed  to  spring 
over  her  where  she  lay  ;  but  she 
knew  no  more  of  what  had  hap- 
pened, except  that  soft  arms  came 
suddenly  round  her,  and  her  head 
was  raised  on  some  one's  breast,  and 
Susie's  voice  began  to  sound  over 
her,  calling  her  name,  asking  where 


was  she  hurt.  She  did  not  know 
she  was  hurt.  It  all  seemed  to  be- 
come natural  again  with  the  sound 
of  Susie's  voice.  She  did  not  lose 
consciousness,  though  she  fell,  and 
though  it  was  evident  now  that  the 
white  shawl  was  all  dabbled  with 
red.  It  was  hard  to  tell  what  it 
all  meant,  but  yet  there  seemed 
some  apology  wanted.  "  He  did 
not  mean  it,"  she  said;  "he  did 
not  mean  it.  There  is — good  in 
him."  She  laid  her  head  back  on 
Susie's  bosom  with  a  soft  look  of 
content.  "  It  is  maybe — not  so  bad 
as  you  think,"  she  said. 

The  shot  was  in  the  shoulder, 
and  the  wound  bled  a  great  deal. 
No  ambulance  classes  nor  amateur 
doctoring  had  reached  so  far  as  Esk- 
holm ;  but  Susie  by  the  light  of 
nature  did  all  that  was  possible  to 
stop  the  bleeding  until  the  doctor 
came.  She  sent  Janet  off  for 
cushions  and  pillows,  to  make  so  far 
as  she  could  an  impromptu  bed, 
that  the  sufferer  might  rest  more 
easily.  Most  of  the  police  party 
had  been  ordered  outside,  though 
two  of  them  still  stood,  a  living 
screen,  between  the  group  round 
the  wounded  woman  and  that  figure 
lying  in  the  doorway,  which  was  not 
to  be  disturbed  till  the  doctor  came, 
some  one  having  found  or  fancied 
a  faint  flutter  in  the  heart.  Mrs 
Ainslie,  to  do  her  justice,  had  been 
totally  overwhelmed  for  the  moment. 
She  had  flung  herself  down  on  her 
knees  by  Mrs  Ogilvy's  side,  weeping 
violently,  her  face  hidden  in  her 
hands.  She  was  of  no  help  in  the 
dreadful  strait ;  but  at  least  she  was 
in  a  condition  of  excitement  and 
shattered  nerves  from  which  no  help 
could  be  expected.  Mr  Logan  had 
not  taken  any  notice  of  her,  though 
he  was  not  yet  aroused  to  any  ques- 
tions as  to  her  behaviour  and  posi- 
tion here.  He  was  moving  about 
with  soft  suppressed  steps  from  one 
side  to  another,  in  an  agony  of  desire 


642 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. — Conclusion. 


[Nov. 


to  do  his  duty,  and  consciousness  of 
having  been  brought  by  a  special 
providence.  But  the  minister  was 
appalled  by  the  dead  face  in  the 
moonlight,  the  great  figure  fallen 
like  a  tower.  When  it  was  said 
there  was  still  life  in  him,  he  knelt 
down  heroically  by  Lew's  side,  and 
tried  to  whisper  into  his  ear  an  en- 
treaty that  still  at  the  eleventh  hour 
he  should  prepare  to  meet  his  God. 
And  then  he  came  round  and  looked 
over  his  daughter's  head  at  Mrs 
Ogilvy.  Ought  he  to  recall  to  her 
mind  the  things  that  concerned  her 
peace  as  long  as  she  was  able  to 
hear  ?  But  the  words  died  on  the 
minister's  lips.  He  was  a  good 
man,  though  he  was  not  quick  to 
understand,  or  able  to  divine.  His 
lips  moved  with  the  conventional 
phrases  which  belonged  to  his  pro- 
fession, which  it  was  his  duty  to 
say ;  but  he  could  not  utter  any  of 
them.  He  felt  with  a  curious  stupe- 
fied sense  of  reality  that  most  likely 
after  all  God  was  here,  and  knew 
more  perfectly  all  about  it  than  he. 
Meanwhile  the  chief  person  in 
this  scene  lay  quite  still,  not  suffer- 
ing as  appeared,  very  quiet  and 
tranquil  in  her  mind,  Susie's  arm 
supporting  her,  and  her  head  on 
Susie's  breast.  The  bleeding  had 
almost  stopped,  partly  because  of 
the  complete  peace,  partly  from 
Susie's  expedients.  Mrs  Ogilvy,  no 
doubt,  thought  she  was  dying;  but 
it  did  not  disturb  her.  The  loss  of 
blood  had  reduced  her  to  that  state 
of  weakness  in  which  there  is  no 
struggle.  Impressions  passed  lightly 
over  her  brain  in  its  confusion. 
Sometimes  she  asked  a  question,  and 
then  forgot  what  it  was  and  the 
answer  to  it  together.  She  was 
aware  of  a  coming  and  going  in  the 
place,  a  sense  of  movement,  the 
strange  voices  and  steps  of  the  men 
about;  but  they  were  all  part  of 
the  turmoil,  and  she  paid  no  at- 
tention to  them.  Only  she  roused 


a  little  wTben  Robbie  stood  near  : 
he  looked  so  large,  when  one  looked 
up  at  him  lying  stretched  out  on 
the  floor.  He  was  talking  to  some 
one  gravely,  standing  up,  a  free 
man,  talking  and  moving  like  the 
master  of  the  house.  She  smiled 
and  held  out  a  feeble  hand  to  him, 
and  he  came  immediately  and  knelt 
down  by  her  side.  "  He  did  not 
mean  it,"  she  said.  And  then,  "  It 
is  maybe  not  so  bad  as  you  think." 
These  were  the  little  phrases  which 
she  had  got  by  heart. 

He  patted  her  on  the  sound 
shoulder  with  a  large  trembling 
hand,  and  bade  her  be  quiet,  very 
quiet,  till  the  doctor  came. 

"  You  have  not  left  me,  Eobbie  1 " 

"No,  mother."  His  voice  trem- 
bled very  much,  and  he  stooped  and 
kissed  her.  "Never,  never  any 
more ! " 

She  smiled  at  him,  lying  there 
contented,  with  her  head  on  Susie's 
breast — joyful,  but  not  surprised 
by  this  news,  for  nothing  could 
surprise  her  now  —  and  then  she 
motioned  to  him  to  come  closer,  and 
whispered,  "  Has  he  got  away  1 " 

The  appearance  of  the  doctor, 
notwithstanding  his  pause  and  ex- 
clamation of  horror  at  the  door,  was 
an  unspeakable  relief.  That  cry 
conveyed  no  information  to  the 
patient  within,  who  did  not  seem 
even  to  require  an  answer  to  her 
question.  There  was  no  question 
any  longer  of  any  fluttering  of  Lew's 
heart.  The  slight  shake  of  the 
doctor's  head,  the  look  on  his  face, 
his  rapid,  low-spoken  directions  for 
the  removal  of  the  dead  maD,  re- 
newed the  dreadful  commotion  of 
the  night  for  a  moment.  And  then 
he  had  Mrs  Ogilvy  removed  on  the 
mattress  which  his  skilled  hands 
helped  to  place  her  on,  into  her 
own  parlour,  where  he  examined 
her  wound.  She  was  still  quite 
conscious,  and  told  him  over  again 
her  old  phrases.  "  He  did  not  mean 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. — Conclusion. 


1894.] 

it}" — and  "Maybe  it  will  not  be  so 
ill  as  you  think" — with  a  smile 
which  wavered  between  conscious- 
ness and  unconsciousness.  Her 
troubled  brain  had  got  those  words 
as  it  were  by  heart.  She  said  them 
many  times  over  during  the  course 
of  the  long  and  feverish  night,  dur- 
ing which  she  saw  many  visions — 
glimpses  of  her  son  bending  over 
her,  smoothing  her  pillow,  touch- 
ing her  with  ignorant  tender  hands  ; 
glimpses  of  Susie  sitting  beside  her, 
coming  and  going.  They  were  all 
dreams,  she  knew — but  sometimes 
dreams  are  sweet.  She  was  ill  some- 
how— but  oh,  how  immeasurably 
content ! 

This  catastrophe  made  Robert 
Ogilvy  a  man — at  least  it  gave  him 
the  courage  and  sense  which,  since 
his  arrival  at  home,  he  seemed  to 
have  lost.  He  gave  the  police  in- 
spector an  account  of  the  man  who 
was  dead,  who  could  no  longer  be 
extradited  or  tried,  in  Scotland  or 
elsewhere.  He  did  not  conceal  that 
he  himself  had  been  more  or  less 
connected  with  the  troop  which 
Lew  had  led.  The  inspector 
nodded.  "We  know  all  about 
that,"  he  said ;  "  we  know  you 
didn't  count,"  which  pricked  Robbie 
all  the  more,  half  with  a  sense  of 
injured  pride,  to  prove  that  now  at 
least  he  did  count.  His  story  filled 
up  all  that  the  authorities  had 
wanted  to  know.  What  Lew's 
antecedents  were,  what  his  history 
had  been,  mattered  nothing  in  this 
country.  They  mattered  very  little 
even  in  that  from  which  he  came, 
and  where  already  his  adventures 
had  dropped  into  the  legends  of  the 
road  which  we  still  hear  from 
America  with  wonder,  as  if  the  days 
of  Turpin  were  not  over.  No  one 
doubted  Robert  Ogilvy 's  word.  He 
felt  for  the  first  time,  on  this  night, 
when  for  a  brief  and  terrible  moment 
he  had  worn  handcuffs,  and  borne 
the  brand  of  shame — and  when  he 


643 


had  felt  that  he  was  about  to  be 
left  to  stand  in  another  man's  name 
for  his  life — that  he  was  now  a 
known  person,  the  master,  at  least  in 
a  secondary  sense,  of  a  house  which 
"counted,"  though  it  was  not  a 
great  house  :  and  that  he  had,  what 
he  had  never  been  conscious  before 
of  having,  a  local  habitation  and 
a  name.  Robbie  was  very  much 
overpowered  by  this  discovery,  as 
well  as  by  the  other  incidents  of 
the  night.  He  was  not  perhaps 
deeply  moved  by  grief  for  his 
friend.  The  man  had  not  been  his 
friend — he  had  been  his  master, 
capable  of  fascinating  and  holding 
him,  with  an  influence  which  he 
could  not  resist.  But  whenever  he 
was  removed  from  that  influence, 
his  mind  and  spirit  had  rebelled 
against  it.  Now  it  seemed  im- 
possible, too  wonderful  to  believe, 
that  he  was  free, — that  Lew's  voice 
would  never  call  him  back,  nor 
Lew's  will  rule  him  again.  But 
neither  was  he  glad.  Lew  had  led 
him  very  far  in  these  few  days, — 
almost  to  the  robbing,  almost  to  the 
killing,  of  his  mother — his  mother, 
who  had  fought  for  them  both  like 
a  lion,  who  had  done  everything 
and  dared  everything  for  their 
sakes.  But  the  slave,  the  bonds- 
man, though  he  felt  the  thrill  of 
his  freedom  in  his  veins,  did  not 
rejoice  in  the  death  of  his  task- 
master. It  was  too  recent,  too 
terrible,  too  tragical  for  that.  The 
sight  of  that  familiar  face  lying  in 
the  moonlight  was  always  before 
him — he  could  not  get  it  out  of  his 
eyes.  He  did  not  attempt  to  go  to 
bed,  but  walked  up  and  down,  some- 
times going  into  the  drawing-room 
where  his  mother  lay,  with  a  wonder- 
ful tenderness  towards  her,  alto- 
gether new  to  his  consciousness,  and 
understanding  of  the  part  she  had 
played.  He  had  never  thought  of 
this  before.  It  had  seemed  to  him 
merely  the  course  of  nature,  what 


644 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. — Conclusion. 


[Nov. 


was  to  be  expected,  the  sort  of  thing 
women  did,  and  were  glad  and 
proud  to  be  permitted  to  do.  To 
have  a  son  to  do  everything  for  was 
her  delight.  Why  should  not  the 
son  take  it  as  such "?  she  was  pleas- 
ing herself.  That  was  what  he  had 
always  thought, — he  awakened  to  a 
different  sense,  another  appreciation, 
not  perhaps  very  vivid,  but  yet 
genuine.  She  had  almost  been 
killed  for  her  love — surely  there 
was  something  in  it  after  all,  more 
than  the  course  of  nature.  He  was 
very  sorry  for  her,  to  see  her  lying 
there  with  little  spots  of  blood  upon 
her  white  night-dress,  and  the  shawl 
all  covered  with  blood  laid  aside  in 
the  corner.  Poor  mother  !  She  was 
old  and  she  was  weak,  and  most 
likely  she  would  die  of  it.  And  it 
was  Lew's  doing,  and  all  for  his 
own  sake. 

The  house  had  once  more  become 
still.  The  crowd  of  people  who  had 
so  suddenly  taken  possession  of  it 
had  surged  away.  No  one  knew 
how  it  was  that  Mr  Logan  and  his 
daughter  and  the  lady  who  was 
going  to  be  his  wife  had  appeared 
in  that  strange  scene,  and  no  one 
noted  how  at  least  the  last-named 
person  disappeared.  One  moment 
she  was  kneeling  on  the  floor,  in 
wild  fits  of  convulsive  weeping,  her 
hat  pushed  back  from  her  head,  her 
light  hair  hanging  loose,  wholly 
lost  in  trouble  and  distress :  the 
next  she  was  gone.  She  had  in- 
deed stolen  away  in  the  commotion 
caused  by  the  arrival  of  the  doctor, 
when  Mrs  Ogilvy  was  taken  away, 
and  that  tragic  obstruction  removed 
from  the  doorway.  It  is  to  be  sup- 
posed that  she  had  come  to  herself 
by  that  time.  She  managed  to  steal 
out  unseen,  though  with  a  shudder 
crossing  the  threshold  where  Lew 
had  lain.  It  was  she  doubly,  both 
in  her  betrayal  of  him  and  in  her 
exasperation  of  him,  who  was  the 
cause  of  all ;  but  probably  she  did 
not  realise  that.  She  found  her 


way  somehow  through  the  moon- 
light and  the  black  shadows,  along 
the  road  all  slippery  with  the  recent 
rain,  to  her  own  house,  and  there 
spent  the  night  as  best  she  might, 
packing  up  many  things  which  she 
prized, — clothes  and  trinkets,  and 
the  bibelots,  which,  in  their  fashion 
and  hers,  she  loved  like  her  betters. 
And  early  in  the  morning,  by  the 
first  train,  she  went  away — to  Edin- 
burgh, in  the  first  place,  and  Esk- 
holm  saw  her  no  more. 

When  the  doctor's  ministrations 
were  over,  for  which  Mr  Logan 
waited  to  hear  the  result,  the  minis- 
ter went  into  all  the  rooms  look- 
ing for  her.  He  had  thought  she 
was  helping  Susie  at  first;  then, 
that  she  had  retired  somewhere  in 
the  excess  of  her  feelings,  which 
were  more  exquisite  and  delicate 
than  those  of  common  folk.  He 
had  in  the  excitement  of  the  time 
never  thought  of  as  yet,  or  even 
begun  to  wonder  at,  the  position 
she  had  assumed  here,  and  the  part 
she  had  taken.  He  knew  that  if 
his  Elizabeth  had  a  fault,  it  was 
that  she  liked  to  be  always  in  the 
front,  taking  a  foremost  place  in 
everything.  He  waited  as  long  as 
he  could,  looking  about  everywhere ; 
and  then,  when  he  was  quite  sure 
she  was  not  to  be  found,  and  saw 
the  doctor  starting  on  his  walk 
home,  took  his  hat  and  went  also. 
"You  think  it  will  not  be  fatal, 
doctor  1 " 

"  It  may  not  be — I  cannot  answer 
for  anything.  She's  very  quiet, 
which  is  much  in  her  favour.  But 
how,  in  the  name  of  all  that  is 
wonderful,  did  I  find  a  dead  man, 
whom  I  never  saw  in  life,  lying 
across  the  door-steps  of  the  He  wan, 
and  a  quiet  old  lady  like  Mrs 
Ogilvy  struck  almost  to  death  with 
a  pistol-shot  ? " 

"It  is  a  wonder  indeed,"  said 
the  minister.  "  I,  if  ye  will  believe 
me,  was  led  there,  I  cannot  tell  ye 
how,  with  the  idea  of  a  common 


1894.] 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found.  —  Conclusion. 


645 


call — and  found  the  police  all  about 
the  house.  It  is  just  the  most 
extraordinary  special  providence," 
said  Mr  Logan  with  solemnity, 
"that  I  ever  encountered  in  the 
course  of  my  life."  He  began  by  this 
time  to  feel  that  he  had  been  of  great 
use.  But  he  was  a  little  troubled, 
poor  man,  by  the  thought  of  his 
Elizabeth  running  home  by  herself, 
as  she  must  have  done  in  the  night. 
He  passed  her  house  on  his  way  to 
the  manse,  and  was  relieved  to  find 
that  there  was  a  light  in  her  bed- 
room window ;  but  though  he 
knocked  and  knocked  again,  and 
even  went  so  far  as  to  throw  up 
gravel  at  the  window,  he  could  ob- 
tain no  response.  He  went  home 
full  of  thought.  There  began  to 
rise  into  his  mind  recollections  of 
things  which  he  was  not  conscious 
of  having  noticed  at  the  time — of 
the  energy  with  which  she  had 
rushed  to  the  front  (but  that  was  her 
way,  he  reflected,  with  a  faint 
smile)  and  insisted  with  the  in- 
spector: and  then  some  one  had 
called  her  Liz — Liz  ! — who  was  it 
that  had  called  her  Liz  ? 

Mr  Logan's  thoughts  grew, 
through  a  night  that  was  not  very 
comfortable  to  him  more  than  to 
the  other  persons  involved.  The 
absence  of  Susie  made  things  worse. 
He  would  not  have  spoken  to  Susie 
on  such  a  delicate  subject,  especially 
as  she  was  already  hostile ;  but  still, 
if  Susie  had  been  there — in  her  ab- 
sence there  was  an  unusual  tumult 
in  the  house,  and  he  had  no  one  to 
save  him  from  it.  And  his  mind 
was  sorely  troubled.  She  had  taken 
a  part  last  night'  that  would  not 
have  been  becoming  in  a  minister's 
wife.  He  would  speak  to  her  about 
it :  and  was  it — could  it  be — surely 
it  was  that  robber  villain,  the 
suicide,  the  murderer,  who  had 
called  her  Liz  1  It  added  to  all  his 
troubles  that  when  he  had  finally 
made  up  his  mind  to  go  to  her — 
she  not  coming  to  him,  as  was  her 


habit  in  the  morning  —  he  found 
her  gone.  Away  to  Edinburgh  with 
the  first  train,  leaving  her  boxes 
packed,  and  a  message  that  they 
would  be  sent  for,  her  bewildered 
maid  said.  Mr  Logan  returned 
home,  a  sorely  disturbed  man.  But 
he  never  saw  more  the  woman  who 
had  so  nearly  been  his  wife.  There 
was  truth  in  the  story  she  told  her 
daughter  and  son-in-law  in  Edin- 
burgh, that  the  scene  she  had  wit- 
nessed had  completely  shattered  her 
nerves,  and  that  she  did  not  think 
she  could  ever  face  the  associations 
of  that  dreadful  place  again.  She 
did  not  cheat  anybody  or  rob  any- 
body, but  left  her  little  affairs  at 
Eskholm  in  Tom  Blair's  hands,  who 
paid  everything  scrupulously.  I 
don't  know  that  he  ever  was  repaid ; 
but  he  saw  very  little  of  his  mother- 
in-law  after  this  extraordinary  over- 
turn of  her  fate. 

Mrs  Ogilvy's  wound  took  a  long 
time  to  heal,  but  it  did  heal  in  the 
end.  She  was  very  weak,  but  had 
for  a  long  time  that  wonderful 
exemption  from  care  which  is  usu- 
ally the  privilege  of  the  dying, 
though  she  did  not  die.  Perhaps 
there  was  no  time  of  her  life  when 
she  was  happier  than  during  these 
weeks  of  illness.  Susie  was  by  her 
bedside  night  and  day.  Robbie 
came  in  continually,  a  large  shadow 
standing  over  her,  staying  but  a 
moment  at  first,  then  longer,  sitting 
by  her,  talking  to  her,  answering 
her  questions.  I  do  not  know 
that  there  was  soon  or  funda- 
mentally a  great  moral  improve- 
ment in  Robbie ;  but  he  had  been 
startled  into  anxiety  and  kindness, 
and  a  little  went  a  long  way  with 
those  two  women,  who  loved  him. 
For  there  was  little  doubt  in  any 
mind,  except  perhaps  in  his  own, 
that  Susie  loved  him  too,  with 
something  of  the  same  tolerant, 
all -explaining,  all-pardoning  love 
which  was  in  his  mother's  heart. 
She  had  done  so  all  her  life,  waiting 


646 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found. — Conclusion. 


[Nov. 


for  him  all  those  years,  through 
which  he  never  thought  of  her : 
that  did  not  matter  to  Susie, — 
nobody  had  ever  touched  her 
faithful  simple  heart  but  he.  She 
would  not  perhaps  have  been  an 
unhappy  woman  had  he  never  come 
back :  she  would  have  gone  on 
looking  for  him  with  a  vague  and 
visionary  hope,  which  would  have 
lent  a  grace  to  her  gentle  being, 
maiden-mother  as  she  had  been  born. 
And  even  this  wild  episode,  which 
she  never  quite  understood,  which 
she  never  desired  to  understand, 
made  no  difference  to  Susie.  She 
forgave  it  all  to  the  man  who  was 
dead,  and  shed  tears  over  the 
horror  of  his  fate ;  but  she  put 
easily  all  the  blame  upon  him. 
Robbie  had  been  faithful  to  the 
death  for  him, — would  have  gone 
away  instead  of  him  to  save  him. 
It  covered  Lew  with  a  shining 
mantle  of  charity  that  he  called 
forth  so  much  that  was  noble  in 
his  friend. 

The  minister,  who  was  shamed 
to  the  heart,  and  wounded  in  his 
amour  propre  beyond  expression 
by  the  desertion  of  Mrs  Ainslie, 
and  by  the  conviction,  slowly  forced 
upon  him,  that  she  had  deceived 
him,  and  was  no  exquisite  English 
lady  of  high  pretensions,  but  an 
adventuress  —  felt  that  the  only 
amends  he  could  make  to  himself 
and  the  world  was  to  carry  out  his 
intention  of  marrying,  and  that  as 
quickly  as  possible.  Providence,  as 
he  piously  said,  directed  his  eyes  to 
one  of  those  kind  old  maids  who  fill 
up  the  crevices  of  the  world,  and  who 
are  often  so  humbly  ready  to  take 
that  position  of  nurse-housekeeper- 
wife,  in  which  perhaps  they  can  be 
of  more  use  to  their  generation  than 
in  their  solitude,  and  which  satis- 
fies, I  suppose,  the  wish  to  belong  to 
somebody,  and  be  the  first  in  some 
life,  as  well  as  the  mother-yearning 
in  their  hearts.  Such  a  blessed 


solution  of  the  difficulty  enchanted 
the  parish,  and  satisfied  the  boys 
aud  the  little  girls,  who  had  now 
unlimited  petting  to  look  forward 
to  —  and  set  Susie  free.  She 
married  Eobert  Ogilvy  soon  after 
his  mother's  recovery.  Fortunately 
Mrs  Ogilvy  was  never  conscious  of 
the  details  of  the  tragedy,  and  did 
not  know  ever  what  had  lain  there 
in  the  moonlight  across  her  thresh- 
old. I  doubt  if  she  could  have 
come  and  gone  cheerfully  as  she 
did  over  that  door-stone  had  she 
ever  known.  And  the  young  ones 
full  of  their  own  life  forgot  — 
and  the  family  of  three  continued 
in  the  Hewan  in  love  and  content. 
Bobbie  never  became  a  model  man. 
He  never  did  anything,  notwith- 
standing the  fulness  of  his  life  and 
strength.  He  had  no  impulse  to 
work — rather  the  reverse :  his  im- 
pulses were  all  in  the  way  of  idle- 
ness. He  lounged  about  and  oc- 
cupied himself  with  trifles,  and 
gardened  a  little,  and  carpentered 
a  little,  and  was  never  weary.  It 
fretted  the  two  women  often,  some- 
times the  length  of  despair,  especi- 
ally Susie,  who  would  burst  out 
into  regrets  of  all  his  talents  lost, 
and  the  great  things  he  might 
have  done.  But  Mrs  Ogilvy  did 
not  echo  those  regrets :  she  was 
well  enough  aware  what  Robbie's 
talents  were,  and  the  great  things 
which  he  would  never  have  done. 
She  represented  to  her  daughter-in- 
law  that  if  he  had  been  weary  of 
the  quiet,  if  he  had  grown  moody, 
tired  of  his  idleness,  tired  of  his 
life,  as  some  men  do,  there  would 
then  have  been  occasion  to  com- 
plain. "  But  he  is  just  very  happy, 
God  bless  him ! "  his  mother  said. 
"  And  you  and  me,  Susie,  we 
are  two  happy  women ;  and  the 
Lord  be  thanked  for  all  He  has 
done  for  us,  and  no  suffered  me 
to  go  down  famished  and  fasting 
to  the  grave." 


1894.] 


British  Forestry. 


G47 


BEITISH    FORESTRY. 


IT  is  sometimes  alleged  against 
the  scientist  that  he  is  a  hard- 
hearted, uncompromising  individ- 
ual. Assuredly  he  is  no  respecter 
of  persons  or  of  persons'  "  fads  and 
fancies."  Old  traditions,  fondled 
by  ordinary  folk,  are  to  him  as 
nothing,  mere  myths  to  be  brushed 
aside  as  the  musty  cobwebs  of  a 
superstitious  past.  The  man  of 
science  hunts  for  hard  facts,  plays 
games  with  algebraic  signs,  com- 
munes familiarly  with  the  faithful 
units  of  the  atomic  theory.  He  is 
wary  of  wise  saws,  impatient  of  old 
men's  proverbs,  conceding  little 
which  cannot  be  demonstrated. 
There  is  reason  to  fear  that 
the  Scientific  Forester,  one  of  the 
latest  recruits  to  the  ranks  of 
industrial  scientists,  may  not  be 
unlike  his  learned  brethren. 

Common  people  have  been  ac- 
customed to  regard  the  Laird  of 
Dumbiedikes  as  a  prudent  man, 
as  a  man  before  his  day  in  wis- 
dom and  enterprise.  "Jock," 
said  he  to  his  son,  "  when  ye  hae 
naething  else  to  do,  ye  may  aye 
be  sticking  in  a  tree;  it  will  be 
growing,  Jock,  when  ye're  sleep- 
ing." That  fatherly  advice  has 
long  been  accounted  the  very  es- 
sence of  sound  economy,  an  admir- 
able example  of  frugal  industry. 
Now,  however,  the  Scientific  For- 
ester has  dispelled  the  illusion — 
showing  that  it  is  all  wrong,  a 
fundamental  error  arising  from 
the  want  of  a  scientific  know- 
ledge of  the  laws  of  plant-growth. 
If  the  Laird  of  Dumbiedikes  had 
been  a  scientific  Forester,  he  would 
have  known  that  trees  as  well  as 
their  planters  have  a  habit  of 
going  to  sleep  at  stated  times — 
that,  in  fact,  assuming  that  his  son 
Jock  was  an  orderly  young  man, 

VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCXLIX. 


the  trees  planted  by  Jock  would 
be  sleeping  when  Jock  slept.  It 
is  only  under  the  influence  of  sun- 
shine that  the  chlorophyll  of  the 
foliage  can  actively  perform  its 
function  in  plant-growth ;  and  so, 
when  the  sun  goes  down,  the  tree 
goes  to  sleep. 

Now  we  have  not  a  word  to  say 
against  this  action  on  the  part  of 
the  Scientific  Forester.  We  dare 
not  challenge  him,  for  he  has  truth 
on  his  side.  But  while  the  Laird 
of  Dumbiedikes's  advice  may  have 
been  "  all  wrong  "  scientifically,  it 
was  both  sound  and  good  from  a 
practical  point  of  view.  If  those 
quaint  words  addressed  to  Jock 
had  become  the  motto  of  every 
owner  of  forest-land  in  this  coun- 
try, and  if  that  motto  had  been 
faithfully  carried  into  practice, 
such  fabulous  additions  would 
have  been  made  to  the  material 
wealth  of  the  British  Isles  as 
could  hardly  now  be  calculated. 
The  whole  aspect  of  the  country- 
side would  have  been  changed. 
Millions  of  money  going  abroad 
every  year  would  have  been  kept 
at  home.  "  Aye  be  sticking  in  a 
tree  " — why,  a  better  bit  of  advice 
never  passed  from  father  to  son. 

Tree  -  planting  is  an  old  art. 
Strange  as  at  first  glimpse  it  may 
appear,  tree- clearing  is  still  older. 
"  A  man  was  famous  according  as 
he  had  lifted  up  axes  upon  the 
thick  trees,"  we  are  told  in  the 
seventy  -  fourth  psalm;  and  the 
same  enterprise — the  cutting  down 
of  trees  —  has  been  in  all  coun- 
tries and  in  all  ages  the  fore- 
runner of  both  forestry  and  agri- 
culture. The  Romans  were  the 
first  as  a  nation  to  perceive  that 
persistent  tree  -  cutting,  unaccom- 
panied by  methodical  tree-planting, 
2  u 


648 


British  Forestry. 


[Nov. 


would  be  disastrous  to  the  indus- 
trial interests  of  a  country.  We 
have  to  thank  the  Romans  for  in- 
troducing the  art  of  Forestry  into 
Britain.  It  is  acknowledged  that, 
if  tree-culture  was  pursued  at  all 
in  this  country  before  the  Roman 
invasion,  it  was  not  practised  to 
any  important  extent  until  after 
that  event.  Both  Pliny  and 
Horace  tell  us  that  the  Romans 
were  eminent  as  foresters  at  an 
early  date.  They  planted  and 
reared  coppice-woods  for  poles  to 
support  their  vines  and  for  other 
purposes,  planted  willows  for 
wicker-work,  and  on  their  hills 
cultivated  forests  from  which  they 
cut  timber  for  building  purposes. 
There  is  hardly  any  doubt  that 
they  were  the  first  to  introduce 
exotic  trees  into  Britain.  Many 
species  brought  over  by  the  Romans 
have  remained  in  this*  country  ever 
since,  becoming  thoroughly  accli- 
matised, and  adding  greatly  to  the 
forest-wealth  of  the  British  Isles. 
Other  varieties  would  seem  to  have 
succumbed  to  the  rigours  of  the 
British  climate  when  first  tried ; 
but  most,  if  not  all,  of  them  have 
since  been  reintroduced  and  suc- 
cessfully established.  We  have  to 
thank  the  Roman  invaders  for  the 
English  elm,  the  lime,  the  sweet- 
chestnut,  poplar,  and  other  trees, 
which  have  been  a  boon  of  no 
small  value  to  the  country. 

The  love  of  the  chase  was,  no 
doubt,  the  motive  which  first  in- 
duced the  early  kings  of  England 
and  Scotland  to  preserve  certain 
stretches  of  woodlands  as  forests. 
These  forests,  indeed,  were  known 
as  the  royal  hunting-grounds.  They 
were  numerous  in  England  at  the 
time  of  the  Norman  Conquest; 
and  we  are  told  that  a  great  im- 
petus was  given  in  this  direction 
by  William  I.  and  his  immediate 
successors,  amongst  other  new  for- 
ests formed  being  the  New  Forest 


in  Hampshire,  which  has  ever  since 
been  an  interesting  feature  in  Brit- 
ish woodlands.  But  forest-forming 
for  the  purpose  of  the  chase  is  one 
thing,  tree-culture  for  direct  profit 
is  quite  another.  The  latter,  which 
constitutes  the  modern  art  of  Syl- 
viculture, came  long  after  the  crea- 
tion of  the  ancient  royal  hunting- 
grounds.  And  the  mention  of  the 
word  Sylviculture  brings  to  mind 
the  confusion  which  exists  as  to 
the  use  and  the  meaning  of  the 
terms  Sylviculture  and  Arboricul- 
ture. The  treatment  of  woods 
on  sound,  rational,  scientific,  and 
financial  principles,  with  timber 
production  as  the  one  main  object, 
is  properly  described  as  Sylvicul- 
ture. On  the  other  hand,  by  Ar- 
boriculture is  meant  the  cultivation 
of  individual  trees,  or  small  groups 
or  patches  of  trees,  intended  more 
for  ornament,  shelter,  or  game- 
rearing  than  as  a  source  of  income 
from  the  produce  of  the  trees 
themselves.  When  one  speaks  of 
Forestry  it  is  Sylviculture  rather 
than  Arboriculture  that  is  usually 
meant,  but  it  may  be  doubted  if 
in  this  country  the  distinction  be- 
tween the  two  arts  is  as  well 
understood  as  it  ought  to  be.  In- 
deed, it  is  alleged  that  the  woods 
in  this  country  have  hitherto  been 
treated  too  much  from  an  arbori- 
cultural  point  of  view,  and  that 
the  true  art  of  Sylviculture  is  but 
in  its  merest  infancy  in  the  British 
Isles.  It  cannot  be  denied  that 
there  are  grounds  for  these  state- 
ments, yet  it  seems  to  us  they  are 
stronger  than  the  circumstances 
really  warrant.  The  local  pecu- 
liarities of  large  parts  of  this  coun- 
try lend  themselves  more  readily 
to  arboricultural  than  to  sylvicul- 
tural  treatment, — or  perhaps  it 
would  be  more  correct  to  say  that 
they  suggest  the  former  rather 
than  the  latter.  To  provide  shel- 
ter in  exposed  situations,  and  to 


1894.] 


British  Forestry. 


649 


beautify  a  landscape  that  sorely 
needed  something  of  the  kind,  have 
been  the  chief  motives  which  have 
led  many  British  landowners  into 
tree-planting.  It  is  thus  by  design 
more  than  through  neglect  or  want 
of  knowledge  that  the  minor  art 
of  Arboriculture  has  become  so 
largely  characteristic  of  British 
Forestry. 

The  art  of  Forestry  in  this 
country  cannot  now  be  traced  to 
the  precise  date  at  which  it  began. 
Holinshed  in  his  'Description  of 
Britaine '  states  that,  in  the  reign 
of  Henry  VIII.,  "plantations  of 
trees  began  to  be  made  for  pur- 
poses of  utility,"  and  it  is  known 
that  the  cultivation  of  the  trees 
and  woods  of  the  New  Forest  in 
Hampshire  was  undertaken  prior 
to  the  reign  of  Edward  IV.  Fitz- 
herbert's  book  on  planting,  the  first 
work  of  the  kind  in  the  English 
language,  was  published  in  1523. 
It  is  stated  on  reliable  authority 
(Brit.  Topo.,  p.  61)  that  before 
the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century 
Gerard  had  1100  different  plants 
and  trees  in  cultivation.  During 
the  first  half  of  the  seventeenth 
century  considerable  progress  was 
made  in  Forestry,  several  im- 
portant trees,  such  as  the  silver 
fir,  maple,  Iarch5  and  others,  having 
then  been  introduced  into  England. 
In  1664  there  appeared  a  work 
which  for  its  day  was  a  treatise 
of  remarkable  intelligence  and 
ability,  and  which  was  destined  to 
exercise  no  little  influence  upon 
the  art  of  Forestry  in  Britain. 
We  refer  to  Evelyn's  '  Silva.'  In 
little  more  than  forty  years  the 
third  edition  was  called  for,  and  a 
work  which  in  those  days  attained 
that  distinction  must  have  made  a 
marked  impression  upon  the  public 
mind.  Evelyn  describes  fully  the 
modes  of  planting,  pruning,  thin- 
ning, and  general  treatment  of 
trees  and  plants  which  were  pur- 


sued by  him,  and  no  doubt  by 
means  of  his  writings  he  was  able 
to  induce  many  others  to  follow 
his  example.  Evelyn  was  dis- 
tressed by  the  wholesale  tree-cut- 
ting which  was  then  taking  place, 
and  in  the  third  edition  of  his 
work,  published  in  1706,  he  gives 
forcible  expression  to  his  regret  at 
"the  impolitic  diminution  of  our 
timber  .  .  .  caused  through  the 
prodigious  havoc"  by  those  who 
"were  tempted,  not  only  to  fell 
and  cut  down,  but  utterly  to  ex- 
tirpate, demolish,  and  raze,  as  it 
were,  all  the  many  goodly  woods 
and  forests  which  our  prudent 
ancestors  left  standing,  for  the 
Ornament  and  Service  of  their 
country." 

Another  event  of  perhaps  still 
greater  importance — one  in  which 
Scotchmen  may  well  have  some 
pride  and  interest  —  followed 
quickly  the  publication  of  Evelyn's 
'Silva.'  In  the  year  1670  the 
Botanic  Gardens  of  Edinburgh 
were  founded  by  Dr  Balfour  — 
exactly  ninety  years  before  the 
establishment  of  the  celebrated 
Gardens  at  Kew.  Scotland  thus 
took  the  lead  at  a  comparatively 
early  date  in  the  promotion  of 
tree-planting ;  and  it  is  interesting 
to  note  that  the  oldest  Botanic 
Gardens  in  the  United  Kingdom 
have  in  our  own  day  been  the  first 
to  establish  a  systematic  course  of 
instruction  in  the  science  and  prac- 
tice of  Forestry  —  a  step  which 
will  call  for  mention  later  on.  It 
is  known  that  during  the  last 
thirty  years  of  the  seventeenth 
and  the  earlier  years  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century  great  activity  in 
tree  -  planting  was  displayed  in 
different  parts  of  Scotland.  Not 
only  were  plantations  formed  of 
native  trees,  but  other  species  were 
introduced  and  planted  on  a  toler- 
ably extensive  scale.  The  lime- 
tree  was  planted  at  Tay  mouth  in 


650 


British  Forestry. 


[Nov. 


1664,  the  silver  and  spruce  firs  at 
Inverary  in  1682,  the  black  poplar 
at  Hamilton  in  1696,  the  horse- 
chestnut  at  New  Posso  in  1709, 
the  Weymouth  pine  at  Dunkeld  in 
1725,  the  larch  at  the  same  place 
in  1741,  the  cedar  of  Lebanon 
(which  had  been  brought  to  the 
Edinburgh  Botanic  Garden  in 
1683)  at  Hopetoun  in  1743,  and 
the  English  elm  at  Dalrnahoy  in 
1763. 

At  the  pressing  instigation  of 
his  mother,  Thomas,  sixth  Earl 
of  Haddington,  began  his  great 
plantations  at  Tynninghame,  East 
Lothian,  in  1705.  He  became  an 
enthusiast  in  the  work,  and  planted 
not  only  upon  an  extensive  scale, 
but  with  skill  and  good  judg- 
ment. There  is  no  need  to  point 
out  what  East  Lothian  in  gen- 
eral, and  Tynninghame  in  par- 
ticular, have  gained  from  the  fore- 
thought and  enterprise  of  that 
nobleman.  His  example  no  doubt 
exerted  influence  far  beyond  his 
own  country,  for  in  1733  he  wrote 
and  published  a  treatise  on  forest- 
trees.  In  that  treatise  he  tells  us 
that  planting  was  not  well  under- 
stood in  this  country  till  the  begin- 
ning of  the  eighteenth  century. 
He  believed  that  the  Earl  of  Mar 
was  the  first  to  introduce  amongst 
them  what  was  called  the  wilder- 
ness way  of  planting  —  planting 
large  masses  with  openings  left 
through  them,  as  vistas  from  given 
points,  which  method  was  in  vogue 
in  England  at  the  time.  The  Earl 
of  Mar's  example  "  very  much  im- 
proved the  taste  of  our  gentlemen, 
who  very  soon  followed  his  ex- 
ample." A  natural  result  of  the 
growing  taste  for  planting  was  the 
formation  of  nurseries  for  the  rear- 
ing of  young  forest  -  trees.  Soon 
these  nurseries  became  so  plentiful 
that  landowners  were  able  to  ob- 
tain supplies  of  trees  at  moderate 
prices.  From  this  circumstance 


planting  received  a  great  impetus, 
and  the  extent  to  which  planting 
was  carried  on  is  evidenced  by  the 
fact  that  a  very  large  portion  of 
the  existing  woodlands  throughout 
Britain  had  been  planted  in  the 
latter  part  of  the  last  and  the 
earlier  years  of  the  present  cen- 
tury. The  most  extensive  plant- 
ers in  the  kingdom  at  that  time 
were  the  Duke  of  Athole,  Lord 
Breadalbane,  and  Sir  J.  Grant  of 
Strathspey,  whose  noble  forests 
have  been  the  admiration  of  all 
countries. 

For  some  time  after  1830  there 
would  seem  to  have  been  a  lull  in 
tree-planting.  This  has  been  at- 
tributed partly  to  the  fact  that  the 
great  prosperity  which  was  attend- 
ing agriculture  was  diverting  at- 
tention from  the  woodlands,  and 
partly  also  to  the  demands  which 
the  promotion  of  railways  was  at 
that  time  making  upon  the  capital 
of  landowners.  It  was  no  doubt, 
however,  in  a  very  large  measure 
accounted  for  by  the  comparatively 
poor  returns  which  were  then  being 
realised,  or  were  likely  to  be  ob- 
tained, from  plantations  that  had 
been  formed  in  the  preceding  cen- 
tury. It  has  to  be  acknowledged 
that  the  financial  returns  from 
most  of  the  earlier  plantations 
were  far  from  satisfactory.  Little 
wonder,  indeed,  that  this  was  so, 
for  it  was  not  until  after  the  year 
1845  that  the  draining  of  forest- 
land  was  practised  to  any  consider- 
able extent.  The  systematic  thin- 
ning of  the  young  plantations  had 
been  pursued  to  some  extent  in 
earlier  years ;  but  even  in  that  all- 
important  work,  as  in  other  matters 
affecting  the  healthy  and  profitable 
formation  of  the  woodlands,  there 
was  need  for  improved  methods. 
A  new  era  in  planting  dates  from 
about  1845.  Mr  Robert  Mon- 
teath's  '  Forester's  Guide  and  Pr  o- 
fitable  Planter,'  which  brought 


1894.] 


British  Forestry. 


651 


out  Sir  Walter  Scott's  famous 
essay  in  'The  Quarterly  Review,' 
was  followed  by  Sir  Henry  Steu- 
art's  work,  '  The  Planter's  Guide,' 
which  was  published  by  Messrs 
Blackwood.  By  these  and  later 
works,  and  by  other  means,  a  new 
light  has  been  thrown  upon  the 
art  of  Forestry.  The  function  of 
drainage  is  now  thoroughly  under- 
stood. Much  that  was  before  un- 
known as  to  the  thinning,  pruning, 
and  the  general  tending  of  wood- 
lands, has  been  learned  and  turned 
to  good  purpose  both  in  the  man- 
agement of  existing  and  in  the  for- 
mation of  new  plantations.  There 
is  no  doubt  much  to  be  learned 
still.  It  is  not  pretended  that  all 
that  has  been  taught  as  to  the 
art  of  Forestry  since  the  dawn  of 
the  new  era  has  been  unassailably 
sound;  the  systematic  study  of 
the  science  of  Forestry  may  show 
the  old  teaching  to  be  astray  on 
various  points.  Be  this  as  it  may, 
it  is  undeniable  that  an  improve- 
ment of  a  very  marked  character 
in  the  management  of  British 
woodlands  took  place  soon  after 
1845. 

Various  agencies  have  been  ac- 
tive in  promoting  this  improve- 
ment in  Forestry.  None  has  been 
more  effective  than  that  standard 
work  known  as  Brown's  '  Forester.' 
The  first  edition  of  '  The  Forester ' 
was  published  in  1847,  the  second 
in  1851,  and  the  sixth  has  just 
made  its  appearance.1  '  The  For- 
ester' has  from  the  very  outset 
of  its  useful  career  ranked  as  a 
standard  work.  It  has  been  the 
guide,  philosopher,  and  friend  of 
the  best  foresters  in  the  country. 
It  was  the  product  of  a  master- 


mind, the  work  of  a  man  far 
above  most  of  his  compeers  in 
intelligence  and  ability.  Brown's 
experience  of  practical  Forestry 
was  extensive  and  thorough.  It 
was  his  misfortune,  not  his  fault, 
that  the  scientific  principles  regu- 
lating plant  growth  were  but  im- 
perfectly known  to  him.  Viewed  in 
the  light  of  his  own  day,  his  work 
was  from  beginning  to  end  sound 
and  consistent.  The  fuller  know- 
ledge of  the  science  of  Forestry, 
which,  thanks  mainly  to  Conti- 
nental effort,  is  now  available, 
shows  that  at  several  points 
Brown's  teaching  is  capable  of 
advantageous  modification.  In 
the  new  edition  before  us  it  has 
received  this  and  a  good  deal 
more.  The  work  of  revision  has 
been  planned  judiciously.  Brown's 
book  it  is  still.  The  outstanding 
features  of  the  old  work  are  all 
there.  Where  its  teaching  is  at 
variance  with  the  newer  school  of 
Forestry,  the  editor  comes  in  with 
appropriate  guidance  to  the  reader. 
The  reasons  for  the  modifications 
are  always  given,  so  that  the  line 
of  transition  from  'the  old  methods 
to  the  new  may  be  readily  fol- 
lowed. The  work  has  been  brought 
up  to  date  in  the  most  thorough 
manner;  and  the  fact  that,  not- 
withstanding the  great  advance 
which  the  study  of  scientific  For- 
estry has  lately  made,  this  has 
been  done  without  any  serious 
disfigurement  of  the  old  book,  says 
not  a  little  for  the  character  of 
the  work  in  its  original  form. 
The  new  matter  added  is  of  great 
value  in  itself,  and  will  much  in- 
crease the  practical  usefulness  of 
the  work,  alike  to  the  landowner, 


1  The  Forester  :  A  Practical  Treatise  on  the  Planting  and  Tending  of  Forest 
Trees  and  the  General  Management  of  Woodlands.  By  James  Brown,  LL.D. 
New  edition.  Thoroughly  revised,  emended,  and  amplified  by  John  Nisbet, 
D.CEc.,  Author  of  'British  Forest  Trees,'  &c.  In  2  vols.  royal  8vo.  William 
Blackwood  &  Sons,  Edinburgh  and  London. 


652 


British  Forestry. 


[Nov. 


the  forester,  and  the  student  of 
Forestry.  No  one,  however,  who 
knew  the  fine  old  book  in  its 
original  shape,  will  think  any  the 
less  of  the  achievement  of  its 
author  because  of  the  alterations 
that  have  now  had  to  be  made 
upon  his  handiwork. 

In  the  new  edition  of  '  The  For- 
ester' the  present  condition  of 
British  woodlands  is  represented 
in  an  interesting  and  suggestive 
light.  It  is  shown  that  they  are 
sufficiently  extensive  to  be  of  great 
national  importance.  It  is  observed 
that,  comparatively  speaking,  they 
are  so  limited  in  extent  as  to  give 
rise  to  no  little  concern  regarding 
the  future  timber-supplies  for  the 
industrial  wants  of  the  country. 
It  is,  moreover,  more  than  hinted 
that  the  management  of  our  wood- 
lands is  so  very  bad  as  to  incur 
enormous  losses  to  the  owners  of 
plantations  themselves  and  to  the 
nation  at  large.  Upon  each  of 
these  aspects  of  the  question  the 
editor  has  much  to  say  that  is 
worthy  of  careful  study.  Dr  Nis- 
bet  has  had  exceptional  opportun- 
ities of  becoming  acquainted  with 
the  science  and  practice  of  For- 
estry as  taught  and  practised  in 
Germany,  India,  and  elsewhere 
abroad,  as  well  as  in  our  own 
country  ;  and  in  this  work  he  has 
shown  that  he  has  made  good  use 
of  those  opportunities. 

There  is,  in  particular,  one  point 
concerning  the  new  edition  of  *  The 
Forester'  as  to  which  many  will 
be  anxious  to  obtain  information. 
The  methods  and  principles  of 
thinning  and  pruning  advocated 
by  Brown  in  former  editions  of 
the  work  were  well  known  to  be 
at  variance  with  the  teaching  of 
the  modern  school  of  Continental 
Forestry,  which  may  be  said  to 
have  its  head  and  centre  in  Ger- 
many. "  What  course  does  the 


new  edition  take1?"  is  a  question 
that  will  be  on  many  lips.  As 
might  have  been  expected,  the 
editor,  himself  a  student  of  the 
German  school,  has  frankly  avowed 
his  faith  in  the  German  methods. 
He  has  not  expunged  the  author's 
recommendations  as  to  thinning 
and  pruning,  but  he  has  made  it 
plain  wherein  he  differs  from  him, 
and  describes  fully  the  newer  meth- 
ods with  which  he  would  supplant 
the  old. 

Continental  foresters  favour 
thick  planting  and  frequent  but 
spare  thinning,  with  the  view  of 
providing  and  maintaining  an 
abundant  leaf  -  canopy,  so  that 
the  trees  may  be  encouraged  to 
seek  for  light  and  air  from  the 
tops  rather  than  the  sides,  and 
that  the  fertility  of  the  soil  may 
be  conserved.  It  is  argued  that 
this  struggling  upwards  for  light 
and  air  promotes  the  formation  of 
a  long,  clean,  straight  bole,  a  tree 
of  the  highest  technical  value ; 
while  the  system  of  excessive  thin- 
ning, which  has  been  so  largely  pur- 
sued in  this  country,  encourages 
lateral  development  rather  than 
high  -  growing,  the  formation  of 
thick,  short,  quickly  tapering  boles, 
with  numerous  low  branches,  which 
lessen  the  value  of  the  wood  by  the 
"knots"  they  form.  The  editor 
remarks : — 

"  Thinning  operations  should  be  re- 
peated at  regular  intervals  of  a  few 
years  ;  but  the  actual  number  of  years 
depends  mainly  on  the  age  and  the 
energy  of  growth  of  the  crop,  and 
on  the  species  of  tree.  In  pole-forests 
of  light-demanding  species,  thinning 
will  have  to  be  repeated  most  fre- 
quently ;  in  tree  -  forests  of  shade- 
bearing  species,  the  need  for  thinning 
will  be  least.  In  the  former  class  of 
young  woods  (oak,  ash,  larch,  Scots 
pine)  thinnings  should,  if  possible,  be 
repeated  every  Jive  years;  whilst  in 
pole-forests  of  shade-bearing  species 


1894.] 


British  Forestry. 


653 


(spruce,  silver  fir,  beech,  and  some- 
times maple  and  sycamore),  it  will 
usually  be  sufficient  to  thin  once  every 
eight  or  ten  years  during  the  pole- 
forest  stage  of  development. 

"  Considerations  regarding  the  con- 
servation of  the  productivity  of  the  soil 
of  course  demand  that  on  inferior  quali- 
ties of  land  the  thinnings  should  be 
slighter,  but  more  frequently  repeated, 
than  on  good  soil.  Although  on  the 
former  class  nature  requires  more  assis- 
tance in  the  elimination  of  the  weak- 
lings, yet  the  productive  capacity  of 
the  soil  is  more  apt  to  be  injuriously 
affected  even  by  the  temporary  and 
slight  interruption  in  the  leafy  cano- 
py, and  the  consequent  partial  expos- 
ure of  the  soil  to  insolation. 

"As  long  as  thinnings  are  not 
carried  so  far  as  to  interfere  with 
increment  in  height  and  with  the 
formation  of  a  long,  clean  bole,  free 


from  branch- knots,  and  having  a  good 
form-factor,  i.e.,  a  high  relative  pro- 
portion between  the  top-diameter  and 
the  base  of  the  bole,  their  influence 
is  beneficial.  But  wherever  they  tend 
to  prejudice,  as  is  so  often  the  case  in 
Britain,  the  finest  development  of  the 
stem  for  technical  purposes,  they 
must,  of  course,  affect  the  financial 
value  of  the  woods,  even  when  they 
do  not  go  so  far  as  to  endanger  the 
productivity  of  the  soil,  in  violation 
of  the  first  fundamental  principle  of 
Sylviculture." 

The  following  table  shows  the 
extent  of  woodlands  as  compared 
with  the  other  main  divisions  of 
land  and  water  in  the  United 
Kingdom,  the  figures  being  taken 
from  the  Agricultural  Returns 
for  1892  :— 


In  the  United  Kingdom. 

Acres. 

Percentage  of 
total  area. 

Total  area  of  land  and  water 
Arable  land       
Permanent  pasture    .... 
Woodlands  (and  nurseries) 

77,642,099 
20,444,577 
27,533,326 
3,005,670 

100.0 
25.5 
35.5 

3.8 

Comparatively  small  as  is  the 
extent  of  our  woodlands  in  acres, 
their  value  in  hard  cash  is  by  no 
means  insignificant.  It  is  esti- 
mated that  their  bare  cost  of  pro- 
duction must  have  considerably 
exceeded  the  sum  of  £20,000,000, 
and  their  present  value  may  surely 
be  placed  at  a  good  deal  more  than 
that.  In  his  rectorial  address  be- 
fore the  University  of  Munich  in 
1889,  Professor  Gayer  stated  that 
the  annual  out-turn  in  timber  from 
the  forests  of  Germany  amounted 
to  about  60,000,000  cubic  metres, 
or  about  2,160,000,000  cubic  feet, 
worth  from  £20,000,000  to 
£22,000,000  ;  and  reckoning  2  per 
cent  as  the  rate  of  interest  yielded, 
he  estimated  the  capital  value  of 
all  the  German  forests  at  about 
£1,000,000,000.  Estimated  upon 


the  same  basis,  it  would  be  ex- 
pected that,  if  our  British  wood- 
lands, which  extend  to  about  one- 
eleventh  of  those  of  Germany, 
were  as  economically  and  efficient- 
ly managed  as  are  the  German 
forests,  they  would  yield  annually 
very  nearly  £2,000,000,  and— 
adopting  2  per  cent  as  the  rate  of 
interest  yielded  —  would  have  a 
capital  value  of  £90,000,000— or 
at  any  rate  about  £50,000,000, 
even  adopting  only  twenty -five 
years'  purchase  as  their  value,  and 
presuming  that  they  yielded  as 
much  as  4  per  cent  per  annum  on 
the  capital  value  of  the  soil  plus 
the  growing  stock  of  timber.  It  is 
thus  obvious  that  British  wood- 
lands are  extensive  and  valuable 
enough  to  be  regarded  as  of  great 
national  importance. 


654 


British  Forestry. 


[Nov. 


An  interesting  view  of  the  forest 
areas  in  Great  Britain  and  in  the 


Continental  countries  of  Europe  is 
provided  in  the  following  table  : l — 


STATE. 

Forest  area  in 
acres. 

Percentage  of 
the  total  area 
of  the  State. 

Acreage  per 
capita  of 
population. 

Percentage 
owned  by  the 
State. 

Russia    )      . 

447,592,405 

36.0 

4.94 

57.4 

Finland  f     . 

50,359,471 

38.0 

23.14 

70.5 

Sweden  )      .         . 

45,061,984 

44.4 

9.50 

31.0 

Norway  )      . 

19,280,820 

24.0 

10.67 

13.0 

Germany 

34,353,743 

25.7 

0.69 

32.7 

Austria    )    . 

24,150,215 

32.6 

1.11 

6.5 

Hungary  J    . 

22,683,469 

28.3 

1.53 

16.1 

France 

23,360,062 

17.7 

0.61 

11.3 

Spain  .... 

20,955,480 

17.0 

1.28 

83.7 

Turkey  (with  ) 
Bulgaria)       } 

13,919,685 

19.1 

3.45 

9 

Italy    .... 

9,030,320 

12.0 

0.32 

1.6 

Russia  and          ) 
Herzegovina      J 

6,583,515 

51.0 

? 

85.0 

Roumania    . 

4,446,000 

13.7 

0.38 

52.3 

Great  Britain 

3,005,670 

3.8 

0.08 

3.6 

Servia  .... 

2,393,430 

20.0 

1.43 

? 

Switzerland  . 

2,032,572 

19.9 

0.71 

4.2 

Greece 

2,025,400 

15.8 

1.21 

80.0 

Belgium 

1,205,830 

16.6 

0.22 

j 

Portugal 

1,165,346 

5.1 

0.27 

? 

Holland 

568,100 

7.0 

0.12 

9 

Denmark 

508,298 

5.4 

0.24 

24.0 

Luxemburg  . 

380,380 

34.8 

1.77 

71.4 

Total  forest  area      \ 
throughout  Europe  /  ' 

735,062,195 

30.2 

2.51 

It  is  thus  observed  that,  as  a 
timber-producing  country,  Britain 
occupies  quite  a  minor  position 
amongst  the  European  nations. 
As  a  timber-consuming  country, 
however,  its  position  is  very 
different.  Indeed,  so  enormous 
are  the  demands  of  Britain  for 
timber  and  other  forest  produce 
that  the  state  of  the  British 
market  practically  regulates  prices 
all  over  the  trading  universe.  The 
remarkable  position  which  Britain 
has  attained  as  a  vast  consumer 
of  timber  is  well  indicated  in  the 
following  extract  from  an  article 
by  Professor  Endres  of  Karlsruhe 


on  "The  World's  Timber  Trade, 
and  Taxation  in  Timber,"  in  the 
'Allgemeine  Forst-  und  Jagdzeit- 
ung,'  March  1893,  p.  82  :— 

"  England  has  only  4  per  cent  of 
woodland,  and  is,  in  consequence  of 
its  highly  developed  commerce  and 
intensive  output  of  coal,  the  most 
absorptive  country  in  the  world.  The 
English  timber  consumption  influ- 
ences the  timber  .trade  all  over  the 
world,  and  determines  the  level  of  the 
timber  prices.  In  the  beginning  of 
the  year  1890,  when  a  serious  crisis 
occurred  in  the  English  market  in 
consequence  of  enormous  imports, 
prices  fell  about  10  to  15  per  cent 
throughout  Central  Europe.  4  In  1890 


1  Endres,  article  on  Forsten,  in  '  Handworterbuch  der  Staatswissenschaf ten,' 
Jena,  1892  ;  but  including  corrections  of  figures  for  Britain. 


1894.] 


British  Forestry. 


655 


the  total  import  amounted  to  9,983,774 
cubic  metres  =  5,990, 244  tons,  valued 
at  sixteen  million  pounds  sterling. 
The  total  was  supplied  as  follows: — 


Sweden  and  Norway 

Russia 

British  North  America 

United  States     . 

Germany     . 

British  East  India 

Other  countries 


Per  cent. 
37.4 
21.5 
19.3 

6.5 

4.7 

0.6 
10.0 


"  Thus  over  30  per  cent  of  the  tim- 
ber is    produced   in    non  -  European 


countries,  and  consists  of  kinds  of 
timber  that  cannot  possibly  be  grown 
in  Europe.  The  timber  export  of 
England  is  almost  zero,  so  that  the 
new  customs  legislation  relative  to 
timber  within  the  Central  European 
countries  does  not  affect  England  in 
the  slightest  degree." 

The  customs  returns  for  1892 
show  that  the  imports  of  forest 
produce  into  Britain  in  that  year 
were  as  follows  : — 


SPECIES. 

Quantity. 

Value. 

Hewn  wood  (in  the  round  or  square) 
Converted  timber  (sawn  or  split,  plane 
or  dressed)  l 
Staves  of  all  dimensions  . 

Loads,  2,469,140 

„      5,094,309 
M          136,063 

£4,905,846 

11,180,141 
593,539 

Total  for  wood  and  timber 

„      7,699,512 

£16,679,526 

Wood-pulp  for  paper  manufacture    . 
Rosin       ...... 
Bark  for  tanners  and  dyers 

Tons,        190,938 
Cwt.,    1,681,393 
M          380,337 

-£981,025 
384,050 
158,105 

Total  for  minor  forest  produce  . 



£1,523,180 

Total  value  of  forest  produce  imported 

£18,202,706 

It  is  acknowledged  in  the  new 
edition  of  'The  Forester'  that  it 
would  be  impossible  to  eliminate 
from  these  returns  the  classes  of 
timber  which  could  not  possibly 
be  produced  in  our  own  country — 
such,  for  example,  as  the  teak 
used  in  the  lining  of  iron  ships, 
the  jarrah,  and  other  Australasian 
hardwoods  used  for  street  pave- 
ments, &c.  At  the  same  time  the 
returns  given  above  do  not  include 
the  other  similar  articles  which 
could  be  eliminated  from  the 
Custom  accounts,  such  as  mahog- 
any (56,315  tons  =  £501,203), 


Cutch  and  Gambier  (25,192  tons  = 
£548,395),  caoutchouc  and  gutta- 
percha(317,660cwt.  =£3,501,932), 
&c.,  supplies  of  which  must  of 
course,  under  all  circumstances, 
be  drawn  from  foreign  lands. 

How  much  of  this  eighteen  mil- 
lions worth  of  timber  now  import- 
ed could  be  raised  at  home  ?  This 
question  very  naturally  rises  in 
one's  mind  here.  Upon  this  point 
the  new  edition  of  '  The  Forester ' 
gives  forth  no  uncertain  sound  : — 

"If  our  woodlands,"  we  read  at 
p.  14,  vol.  i.,  "were  better  managed 
than  they  at  present  are,  and  if  the 


1  Of  this  converted  timber,  20,935  loads,  valued  at  £72,860,  were  exported ; 
but  all  the  other  raw  produce  appears  to  have  been  actually  consumed  in  the 
country,  making  the  true  figures  for  the  year  £18,129,846, 


656 


British  Forestry. 


[Nov. 


landed  proprietors  could  be  made  to 
study  the  importance  of  the  steady 
appreciation  in  the  value  of  timber, 
and  the  bright  prospect  existing  for 
timber  that  may  become  marketable 
in  about  fifty  years'  time,  home  com- 
petition might  easily  be  induced  for 
the  supply  of  more  than  the  half  of 
our  total  timber  imports.  For,  taking 
the  countries  in  which  identically  the 
same  species  of  trees  are  grown  that 
may  be  produced  sylviculturally  in 
Britain,  there  still  remain  the  follow- 
ing imports  that  may  be  regarded 
as  utilised  by  us  and  not  exported 
again : — 

Imported  from  Russia,  Sweden,  Norway, 
and  Germany  during  1892. 

Loads.  Value. 

Timber  in  the  rough  1,400,927  £2,257,401 
Converted  timber  3,362,425  6,950,504 


Total 


4,763,352  £9,207,905 


"  It  may  confidently  be  stated  that 
if  due  attention  were  given  to  the 
selection  of  the  proper  species  of  trees 
for  given  soils  and  situations,  if  the 
principles  relating  to  the  most  fav- 
ourable density  of  plantations,  or 
sowings,  or  natural  regenerations, 
and  to  the  operations  of  tending 
(clearing,  thinning,  &c.)  were  properly 
understood  and  practised  throughout 
Britain,  there  would  not  be  the  slight- 
est necessity  for  the  insertion  (as  at 
present  obtains)  of  any  clauses  into 
Government  contracts  stipulating  for 
the  use  of  foreign  wood  in  preference 
to  home-grown  timber. 

"  But  if  woods  be  allowed  to  grow 
up  so  that  a  considerable  portion  of 
the  energy  of  growth  of  the  individ- 
ual trees  forming  the  crop  is  dissi- 
pated in  branch  development,  in 
place  of  being  utilised  economically 
in  the  formation  of  a  clean,  smooth, 
full-wooded  bole  of  high  general  tech- 
nical quality,  then  no  surprise  need 
be  felt  at  every  person  concerned 
with  its  utilisation  giving  a  solid 
preference  to  foreign  timber  grown 
under  more  rational  conditions,  and 
therefore  of  higher  technical  and  gen- 
eral value,  owing  to  its  comparative 
freedom  from  knots." 


Again,  at  p.  40,  vol.  i.,  we 
read  : — 

"There  is  no  climatic  reason  why 
a  very  considerable  portion  of  the 
^9,207,905  worth  of  timber  that  was 
imported  into  Britain  during  1892 
from  Russia,  Scandinavia,  and  Ger- 
many should  not  in  future  be  sup- 
plied of  home-growth,  when  once  the 
crops  raised  have  been  subjected  to 
rational  treatment  from  the  time  of 
their  formation  onwards.  This  latter 
condition  is  essential ;  for  woods  that 
are  crowded  at  thirty,  forty,  or  fifty 
years  of  age  may  not  have  been  of 
sufficient  or  normal  density  at  ten  or 
fifteen  years  of  age,  but  may  have 
become  crowded  in  canopy  through 
excessive  and  uneconomical  ramifica- 
tion and  coronal  development.  When, 
however,  the  woods  have  been  pro- 
perly tended  during  the  early  stages 
of  growth,  their  subsequent  tending, 
by  means  of  thinning  out,  determines 
their  economic  value  to  a  considerable 
extent.  This  has  been  very  well  put, 
by  one  of  the  greatest  German  author- 
ities on  Sylviculture,  in  the  following 
words  : 1  — 

" '  It  must,  however,  be  expressly 
stated  that  the  youthful  development 
of  timber  crops  can  afford  no  reliable 
indication  for  the  future  quality  of  the 
mature  fall.  Expectations,  anticipa- 
tions, and  suppositions  in  this  respect 
have  no  justification  ;  for  the  whole 
matter  depends  most  essentially  on 
the  later  treatment  of  the  crops 
(whether  formed  by  sowing  or  by 
planting)  during  the  operations  of 
thinning  out.'" 

Now,  if  it  is  practicable  to  sub- 
stantially extend  our  area  of  wood- 
lands— and  the  great  majority  of 
trustworthy  authorities  believe  it 
is — then  assuredly  strenuous  efforts 
should  be  made  to  achieve  this 
object.  The  advantages  which 
would  be  gained  are  manifold. 
The  first  and  main  consideration 
of  keeping  at  home  several  mil- 
lions sterling  per  annum,  which 
now  go  to  foreign  countries  for 


1  Gayer,  '  Waldbau,'  third  edition,  1889,  p.  384. 


1894.] 


British  Forestry. 


657 


imported  timber,  is  in  itself  a 
matter  of  momentous  importance. 
Even  if  there  were  no  other  end 
to  be  served,  surely  this  one  object 
would  be  worthy  of  the  ambition 
of  any  nation.  But  there  are 
other  advantages  of  no  mean 
value  which  would  follow  and  be 
derived  from  a  marked  extension 
in  the  area  of  our  woodlands. 
There  are,  for  instance,  the  in- 
creased labour  which  would  be 
provided  for  our  working  classes, 
the  beneficial  effects  which  planta- 
tions exercise  upon  climate  and 
soil,  the  shelter  provided  for  agri- 
cultural land,  and  the  beautifying 
effect  of  woods  upon  the  land- 
scape. Another  consideration  of 
importance  is  the  increased  provi- 
sion which  would  thus  be  made 
against  the  dreaded  dearth  of  timber 
in  the  comparatively  near  future. 
It  is,  indeed,  an  easy  matter  to  make 
out  a  strong  case  for  extended 
planting,  at  least  from  the  national 
or  public  point  of  view.  It  would 
be  easy  to  adduce  evidence  in  sup- 
port of  all  the  advantages  indi- 
cated. Some  of  them,  however, 
are  so  self-evident  as  to  render 
this  unnecessary.  If  we  would 
wish  to  know  what  a  vastly  in- 
creased area  of  woodlands  would 
mean  to  our  working  classes,  we 
have  but  to  glance  across  at  the 
state  of  matters  in  Germany. 
In  that  country  something  like 
£4,150,000  is  annually  spent  in 
the  management,  protection,  and 
regeneration  of  the  forests,  and  in 
the  felling,  preparing,  and  hand- 
ling of  the  produce  before  it  is 
delivered  into  the  hands  of  the 
buyer ;  while  the  timber  and  other 
products  of  the  woodlands  directly 
afford  employment  to  583,000  per- 
sons (or  9  per  cent  of  all  the 
industrial  classes  throughout  the 
empire)  who  are  engaged  in  indus- 
tries dependent  on  the  forests  for 
their  raw  material.  It  is  esti- 


mated that  these  583,000  bread- 
winners represent  about  3,000,000 
persons,  or  nearly  one-sixteenth  of 
the  entire  population.  Moreover, 
to  all  this  have  to  be  added  the  very 
large  sums  incurred  for  transport 
by  land  and  water  after  the  raw 
produce  of  the  forests  has  reached 
the  hands  of  the  buyer.  Another 
authority  states  that  from  190,000 
to  230,000  families  obtain  their 
livelihood  from  work  in  the  forests 
of  Germany.  No  one  will  deny  that 
a  large  extension  in  our  woodland 
area  would  be  an  advantage  to  the 
industrial  interests  of  the  nation. 

From  time  to  time  much  has 
been  written  regarding  the  influ- 
ence of  plantations  upon  clima- 
tic conditions.  Generally  speak- 
ing, it  is  unquestionably  beneficial. 
Woods  moderate  extremes  of  heat 
and  cold.  Well-wooded  districts 
do  not  suffer  so  much  as  treeless 
regions  either  from  the  scorching 
heat  of  extremely  hot  summers  or 
from  the  chilling  frosts  of  bitterly 
cold  winters.  The  general  tend- 
ency of  woods  is  to  increase  rainfall. 
This  consideration  would  of  course 
count  for  or  against  planting, 
according  to  whether  the  normal 
rainfall  of  the  district  happens  to 
be  insufficient  or  ample.  In  re- 
gions where  the  climate  is  natu- 
rally dry,  great  advantage  has 
been  gained  by  extensive  planting. 
Dry  arid  winds  which  formerly 
swept  over  the  treeless  land  have 
been  softened  and  moistened,  while 
springs  of  running  water  have  ap- 
peared where,  prior  to  the  forma- 
tion of  the  woods,  there  were  no 
springs.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
extensive  clearing  of  woodlands  in 
parts  characterised  by  dry  climates 
— as  in  many  districts  of  the 
United  States  of  America — has 
been  followed  by  the  disappear- 
ance of  springs  and  by  the  lessen- 
ing of  streams  that  were  formerly 
reliable  sources  of  water  -  supply. 


658 


British  Forestry. 


[Nov. 


These  circumstances  are  explained 
by  the  facts  that  plantations  con- 
serve the  moisture  which  descends 
in  rain,  yielding  it  gradually  in 
springs  and  streams,  and  that  in 
treeless  parts  the  rainfall  is  carried 
away  rapidly  in  the  flood  of  the 
time. 

Tree-culture   increases   the  fer- 
tility of  the  soil.     It  does  this  in 
more  ways  than  one.      Reference 
has  already  been  made  to  the  pro- 
tection which  the  woods  provide 
to   the   soil    from   the    effects   of 
extreme   heat   and   extreme  cold, 
as   also  to   the   shelter   from   the 
blasting    influence     of     dry    arid 
winds.       Woods,    moreover,    pre- 
vent the  waste  of  soil  by  washing 
in  times  of  heavy  rainfall.     But 
the  influence  of  woods  on  the  soil 
is    not    merely   negative.       They 
break   up   and   loosen    the    lower 
layers   by  the   operations   of   the 
tree-roots.      They  add  largely  to 
the  fertility  of  the  surface-soil  by 
the  great  mass  of  vegetable  matter 
which   drops    upon    it   from    the 
trees,   and  there  decomposes   and 
turns  into  humus.     The  tendency 
of  all  this  is  to  raise  the  tempera- 
ture of  the  soil,  and  to  render  it 
capable     of     maintaining     higher 
forms   of   vegetable    life    than   it 
produced   before   it   grew  a   crop 
of  trees.     Examples  of  the  truth 
of   this   may   be   found   in   many 
parts  of  the  country.     The  writer 
has  in  his  mind's  eye  a  certain  hill 
familiar    to    him.       That   hill    is 
marked  by  a  straight  line  running 
from  base  to  wellnigh  the  summit. 
On  one  side  of  this  line  nothing  is 
to  be  seen  but  a  mass  of  strong 
brown  heather ;  on  the  other,  the 
hillside   displays  well -mixed   pas- 
ture of  wonderfully  good  quality. 
The  contrast  is  striking.     To  what 
is  it  due?    The  straight  line  was 
the  boundary  fence  of  a  thriving 
plantation  that  was  cleared  away 
a  few  years  ago. 


There  is  no  need  to  enlarge  upon 
the  great  advantage  that  is  derived 
from  the  shelter  provided  by  plan- 
tations. The  agricultural  value  of 
the  adjoining  land  is  thereby  in- 
creased substantially  —  to  a  far 
greater  extent,  indeed,  than  would 
be  readily  believed  by  those  who 
have  not  observed  the  matter  nar- 
rowly. It  may  be  doubted  if  land- 
owners and  others,  in  weighing  the 
"pros"  and  "cons"  of  planting, 
attach  sufficient  value  to  the  im- 
portant consideration  of  the  shelter 
provided  by  the  woods.  The  agri- 
cultural value  of  large  areas  of 
land  may  be  sensibly  increased  by 
the  judicious  formation  of  adjacent 
plantations.  It  is  but  fair  that 
the  plantations  should  be  credited 
with  the  amount  of  this  increase. 
It  is  more  than  probable  that  if 
this  were  universally  and  faith- 
fully done,  the  woodlands  would  in 
many  instances  stand  higher  than 
they  do  in  the  estimation  of  their 
owners. 

As  an  argument  in  favour  of 
planting,  something  has  been  said 
of  its  beautifying  effect  upon  the 
landscape.  Is  there  nothing  more 
in  this  than  mere  sentiment?  If 
not,  it  is  assuredly  a  sentiment 
which  possesses  a  reliable  market 
value.  It  has  been  said  that 
without  woods  there  would  be  no 
landscape  "worth  speaking  of." 
When  one  hears  a  district  or  an 
estate  described  as  finely  or  beau- 
tifully wooded,  one  knows  that 
more  is  meant  and  conveyed  than 
that  that  district  or  estate  is  bear- 
ing a  crop  of  timber  that  will  in  due 
time  be  marketable.  What  our 
own  country  in  particular,  even 
in  this  one  sense,  owes  to  its  woods, 
is  more  than  can  be  adequately 
expressed  in  the  sombre  measure 
of  prose.  The  land  of  brown 
heath,  of  mountain  and  flood, 
would  not  be  the  land  it  is  with- 
out its  shaggy  woods.  Better  and 


1894.] 


British  Forestry. 


659 


"bonnier"  it  would  be  if  its 
"  shaggy  woods  "  were  more  plen- 
tiful than  they  are. 

But  it  may  be  objected  by  the 
landowner,  the  man  who  should 
form  the  woods,  that  in  all  this 
we  have  been  thinking  too  much 
of  others  and  too  little  of  him — 
have  concerned  ourselves  too  much 
with  the  advantages  of  woodlands 
to  the  country  at  large.  "What 
of  the  interests  of  landowners  1 
Would  planting  be  profitable  to 
them  ? "  he  may  ask.  At  once  let 
it  be  admitted  that  this  is  the 
crux  of  the  question.  Unless  there 
is  good  reason  to  believe  that 
planting  will  be  profitable  to  the 
planter,  it  is  not  likely  to  be 
carried  out  to  any  considerable  ex- 
tent. Landowners  cannot  be  ex- 
pected to  form  plantations  from 
philanthropic  motives.  Private 
interest  will  govern  here  as  in 
most  other  "  going  concerns."  As 
to  whether  extensive  planting  in 
this  country  would  or  would  not 
be  profitable,  there  is  great  differ- 
ence of  opinion.  Much  will  al- 
ways depend  upon  local  circum- 
stances— such  as  the  suitability  or 
unsuitability  of  the  soil  and  dis- 
trict, the  value  of  the  land  for 
other  purposes,  the  manner  in 
which  the  plantations  are  made, 
and  the  methods  of  treatment 
throughout  the  various  stages  of 
their  existence.  Planting  upon 
land  of  any  description  that  is  ill 
suited  for  tree-growth  is  not  likely 
to  be  attended  with  good  results, 
however  skilful  the  management. 
It  would  certainly  not  pay  to  plant 
the  very  poorest  of  poor  land. 
Neither  would  it,  as  a  rule,  be 
profitable  to  plant  land  which  has 
any  considerable  value  for  agri- 
cultural purposes.  Throughout 
the  country,  however,  there  are 
vast  areas  of  land  which  are  of 
little  value  in  their  present  condi- 
tion, but  which,  with  proper  treat- 


ment, might  produce  crops  of  trees 
that  would  be,  at  least,  fairly  re- 
munerative. At  p.  40,  vol.  i.,  of 
the  new  edition  of  '  The  Forester  ' 
we  read  the  following  : — 

"  It  may  be  stated  as  a  general  rule, 
based  on,  and  verified  by,  actual 
practical  experience  both  in  England 
and  Scotland,  that  land  which  is  from 
various  causes  unfit  for  arable  occupa- 
tion will,  if  brought  under  sylvicul- 
tural  crops,  and  subjected  to  rational 
and  careful  management,  at  the  end 
of  seventy  years  pay  the  proprietor 
nearly  three  times  the  sum  of  money 
that  he  would  have  received  from  any 
other  crop  upon  the  same  piece  of 
ground." 

In  support  of  this  statement  ex- 
amples are  given  of  large  and  pro- 
fitable returns  from  the  sale  of 
wood  upon  various  estates  in  Scot- 
land and  the  north  of  England. 
The  editor  of  the  new  edition  is 
guarded  in  his  language  when  he 
speaks  of  the  probable  returns 
from  planting;  yet  he,  as  well 
as  the  author,  is  confident  that 
in  suitable  surroundings,  and  with 
proper  management,  planting 
should  almost  invariably  be  pro- 
fitable. His  "practical  experi- 
ence, both  at  home  and  abroad, 
shows  that  for  the  poorer  classes 
of  land,  sylvicultural  occupation 
is  on  the  whole  much  more  ad- 
vantageous than  any  other  system, 
even  for  private  owners." 

One  of  the  chief  hindrances  to 
planting  is  the  long  waiting  for 
the  harvest.  A  crop  of  trees  is 
a  slow -growing  one.  The  men 
who  plant  rarely  live  to  reap  the 
benefit;  that  is  reserved  for  the 
succeeding  generation.  Seventy- 
eight  or  a  hundred  years  are  long 
periods  of  time  to  have  to  wait 
for  the  return  of  capital  that  per- 
haps at  the  outset  can  be  but 
ill  spared.  These  considerations 
naturally  weigh  with  landowners, 
and  will  always  act  as  a  deterring 


G60 


British  Forestry. 


[Nov. 


influence  to  the  forming  of  planta- 
tions. 

Another  hindrance  to  planting 
in  Scotland  was  the  fact  that 
while  landowners  could  charge 
their  estates  with  the  cost  of 
most  other  improvements,  they 
could  only  do  so  with  the  cost 
of  planting  in  cases  in  which  the 
planting  was  being  carried  out  for 
the  express  purpose  of  providing 
shelter.  Landowners  were  there- 
fore unable  to  get  any  assistance 
from  the  provisions  of  the  "Im- 
provement of  Land  Act,  1864," 
in  the  forming  of  plantations  as 
a  pure  investment.  This  has  now 
been  altered  by  the  "Improvement 
of  Land  (Scotland)  Act,  1893," 
which  enables  landowners  to  apply 
to  the  Board  of  Agriculture  for 
permission  to  charge  their  estates 
with  the  cost  of  planting,  whether 
for  shelter  or  other  purposes.  It 
is  more  than  probable  that  tliis 
will  tend  to  increase  the  rate  of 
planting  in  Scotland. 

In  the  new  edition  of  *  The 
Forester'  much  is  said  as  to  the 
future  of  Forestry  in  this  and  other 
countries,  and  as  to  the  conditions 
under  which  success  is  most  likely 
to  be  attained. 

"The  sister  arts  of  Sylviculture 
and  Arboriculture,"  we  read  at  p.  81, 
vol.  i.,  "  are  of  vast  importance  both 
to  the  welfare  and  the  pleasure  of  all 
nations  ;  and  no  people  can  be  said  to 
be  wise  and  economic  which  does  not 
attend  to  their  advancement.  The 
future  of  Forestry  is  not  confined  to 
any  one  people  or  nation  ;  it  is  a  uni- 
versal science,  and  an  art  capable  of 
being  cultivated  so  as  to  promote  the 
comfort  and  the  happiness  of  every 
people  in  every  clime,  and  to  secure 
rich  harvests  to  the  industry  of  all 
nations  that  will  put  its  precepts 
properly  into  practice." 

But  if  "rich  harvests,"  direct 
or  indirect,  are  to  be  derived  from 
the  pursuit  of  Forestry,  it  is  abso- 
lutely essential  that  those  intrust- 


ed with  the  formation  and  man- 
agement of  woodlands  shall  be 
equipped  for  their  duties  by  a 
thorough  education  in  the  science 
and  practice  of  Sylviculture.  This 
is  well  enforced  in  the  following 
extract  from  p.  81,  vol.  i.,  of  the 
new  edition  of  '  The  Forester  ' : — 

"The  only  safe  manner  in  which 
the  future  benefits  derivable  from  a 
system  of  Sylviculture,  based  upon 
natural  laws  and  carried  out  with 
well-directed  judgment,  can  be  se- 
curely realised,  is  by  the  thorough 
education  of  practical  foresters  and 
sylviculturists.  Upon  these  must 
chiefly  depend  the  planning,  the 
carrying  out,  and  the  supervision 
of  all  the  operations  in  connection 
with  the  formation,  tending,  regen- 
eration, protecting,  utilising,  and 
general  management  of  the  forests 
of  the  future — not  only  in  this  coun- 
try, but  in  our  colonies  and  depen- 
dencies as  well.  Care  should  be 
taken,  therefore,  that  in  the  near 
future  we  may  have  a  class  of  for- 
esters who  have  received  a  sound 
general  education  in  all  the  theo- 
retical knowledge  of  their  profession, 
combined  with  a  good  practical  train- 
ing, in  which  they  may  have  proper 
opportunities  of  testing  the  soundness 
of  the  scientific  teaching  they  receive. 
It  is  extremely  undesirable  that  for- 
esters should  be  men  of  theory  alone. 
It  is  essential  that  they  should  be 
practical  men ;  but  they  can  only 
be  well  equipped  for  practical  work 
when  they  have  become  thoroughly 
acquainted  with  the  fundamental 
principles  of  scientific  Forestry. 

"  So  long  as  no  well-organised  sys- 
tem exists  in  this  country  for  the 
education  of  foresters,  the  advance- 
ment of  Sylviculture  must  be  slow ; 
for  no  art  can  flourish  so  long  as  it 
feels  the  want  of  a  sure  scientific 
foundation.  From  a  purely  national- 
economic  point  of  view,  therefore,  it 
would  appear  to  be  the  duty  of  Gov- 
ernment to  establish,  from  national 
funds,  such  means  of  education  for 
foresters  as  will  be  for  the  future 
benefit  not  only  of  this  country, 
but  also  of  all  her  colonies  and 
dependencies." 


1894." 


British  Forestry. 


661 


Evidence  is  not  wanting  that 
the  country  is  wakening  up  to  a 
sense  of  the  importance  of  tree- 
culture  as  a  national  industry,  and 
of  the  need  there  exists  for  the 
better  training  of  those  intrusted 
with  the  management  of  British 
forests.  At  the  recent  meeting  of 
the  British  Association,  the  sub- 
ject of  Forestry  received  unusu- 
ally prominent  attention  ;  and  the 
publication  of  Professor  Bayley 
Balfour's  able  and  eminently  prac- 
tical address,  delivered  before  that 
body,  has  been  followed  by  a  news- 
paper discussion  which  is  both  sig- 
nificant and  suggestive.  Professor 
Balfour  strongly  advocated  the  ex- 
tension of  systematic  and  scientific 
forestry  in  the  British  Isles,  main- 
taining that  it  would  be  profitable 
to  landowners,  provide  labour  at 
seasons  of  the  year  when  there  is 
little  else  doing  in  country  dis- 
tricts, stimulate  other  industries, 
and  increase  the  national  wealth. 
He  acknowledged  that  the  long 
waiting  for  the  return  would  ever 
be  a  hindrance  to  extensive  tree- 
planting  ;  but  he  pointed  out  that, 
in  properly  managed  timber-grow- 
ing, areas  would  be  so  arranged 
that  some  part  of  the  forest  would 
be  annually  yielding  its  final  return 
of  mature  crop  : — 

"  Given  a  systematic  cultivation  of 
forest  on  scientific  principles  of  rota- 
tion, the  conditions  are  prepared  for  a 
steady  output  by  annual  cut,  and  for 
a  supply  of  raw  material  to  be  utilised 
in  subsidiary  manufactures.  Then 
the  travelling  timber-merchant,  buy- 
ing small  lots  and  transporting  them 
to  his  distant  mill,  might  be  super- 
seded by  the  landowner's  mill  near 
the  forest,  and  by  his  machinery  for 
making  useful  products  from  waste 
wood.  A  steady  market  would  favour 
the  home-grown  article,  and  local  in- 
dustries dependent  upon  forest  growth 
would  provide  fresh  outlets  for  forest 
produce." 

But  Professor  Balfour  did  not  go 


too  far  when  he  asserted  that,  to 
become  a  profitable  industry,  For- 
estry must  be  practised  as  an 
applied  science,  and  not  as  an 
empirical  routine;  and  that  the 
true  solution  of  the  question  is 
to  be  found  in  the  diffusion  of 
accurate  knowledge. 

Little  has  as  yet  been  done  in 
this  country  to  provide  Forestry 
education.  It  was  hoped  that 
the  Forestry  Exhibition  held  at 
Edinburgh  in  1884  would  have 
provided  funds  to  establish  a 
Chair  of  Forestry  in  the  Univer- 
sity of  Edinburgh.  The  Exhibition 
failed  in  that  object,  but  was  by 
no  means  fruitless.  It  gave  a 
fresh  impetus  to  the  study  of 
Forestry,  and  led  to  the  considera- 
tion of  the  whole  question  of 
British  Forestry  by  a  Committee 
of  the  House  of  Commons.  The 
Committee  sat  in  the  years  1885, 
1886,  and  1887,  and  produced  an 
interesting  and  suggestive  Report 
in  August  1887.  From  that  Re- 
port the  following  paragraph  is 
taken : — 

"Your  Committee  recommend  the 
establishment  of  a  Forest  Board. 
They  are  also  satisfied  by  the  evi- 
dence that  the  establishment  of  Forest 
Schools,  or  at  any  rate  of  a  course  of 
instruction  and  examination  in  For- 
estry, would  be  desirable,  and  they 
think  that  the  consideration  of  the 
best  mode  of  carrying  this  into 
effect  might  be  one  of  the  functions 
intrusted  to  such  a  Forest  Board." 

The  Forest  Board  has  not  been 
established.  Neither  have  the 
Forest  Schools.  Both  must  come. 
The  sooner  they  are  in  existence 
the  better  it  will  be  for  British 
Forestry.  The  schools  in  particu- 
lar are  urgently  needed.  A  begin- 
ning has  been  made,  from  which 
good  things  are  expected.  The 
Board  of  Agriculture  gives  a  grant 
of  £100  a-year  towards  the  Lec- 
tureship on  Forestry  temporarily 


662 


British  Forestry. 


[Nov. 


instituted  in  1889  in  the  Univer- 
sity of  Edinburgh,  and  supported 
by  a  grant  of  £50  a-year  from  the 
Highland  and  Agricultural  So- 
ciety ;  £150  a-year  in  support  of  a 
"  Course  of  Free  Instruction  for 
Practical  Foresters  and  Garden- 
ers," at  the  Royal  Botanic  Garden, 
Edinburgh;  and  similar  aid  to 
classes  in  Forestry  in  the  Durham 
College  of  Science,  Newcastle-on- 
Tyne,  and  at  the  West  of  Scotland 
Technical  College,  Glasgow.  It  is 
to  be  hoped  that  before  long  tech- 
nical and  scientific  instruction  in 
Forestry  will  receive  much  more 
substantial  support  from  Govern- 
ment, both  financially  and  other- 
wise. 

With  its  admirably  appointed 
Arboretum,  Edinburgh  is  peculi- 
arily  adapted  for  a  centre  of  higher 
education  in  Forestry.  Naturally, 
therefore,  the  founding  of  a  Chair 
of  Forestry  in  the  University  of 
Edinburgh  has  long  been  an  object 
eagerly  sought  for  in  Scotland. 
Scotchmen  are  impatient  in  wait- 
ing. TKey  also  indulge  the  belief 
that  those  who  desire  a  thing  well 
done,  and  done  timely,  must  do  it 
themselves.  The  Forestry  Exhibi- 
tion left  no  money  for  the  pur- 
pose; successive  Governments  have 
allowed  the  Report  of  the  Forestry 
Committee  to  lie  as  a  dead  letter ; 
and  so  Scotchmen  have  set  to  work 
to  establish  on  a  sure  foundation 
a  course  of  Forestry  instruction 


in  the  University  of  Edinburgh. 
When  this  movement  began,  the 
University  authorities  undertook 
to  institute  a  Chair  of  Forestry  if 
a  sum  of  £10,000  were  provided 
with  which  to  endow  it.  The 
promoters  obtained  a  promise  from 
the  Government  that  if  the  one- 
half  of  that  sum  were  raised  other- 
wise, the  other  half  would  be  con- 
tributed from  Government  funds. 
The  matter  was  taken  in  hand  by 
the  Highland  and  Agricultural 
Society  and  the  Royal  Scottish 
Arboricultural  Society,  and  the 
results  so  far  have  been  fairly 
encouraging.  A  sum  of  over 
£2250  has  now  been  subscribed 
privately,  and  the  efforts  to  obtain 
further  subscriptions  are  still  being 
continued.  It  is  understood  that 
now,  on  account  of  the  low  rate  of 
interest  for  money,  a  larger  sum 
than  £10,000  would  be  required 
by  the  University  authorities  be- 
fore they  would  undertake  to  in- 
stitute and  maintain  a  Chair  of 
Forestry.  For  a  smaller  sum  even 
than  £10,000,  however,  the  tem- 
porary Lectureship  on  Forestry 
might  be  put  upon  a  permanent 
footing.  This  in  itself  would  be 
an  important  object.  It  might 
now  be  accomplished  if  the  Gov- 
ernment could  be  induced  to  make 
a  substantial  grant  to  the  fund 
that  has  been  raised  by  private 
subscriptions.  Has  not  the  time 
come  for  an  effort  in  this  direction  1 


1894.] 


Hanna,  my  Abyssinian  Servant. 


663 


HANNA,    MY    ABYSSINIAN     SERVANT. 


CERTAINLY,  until  the  end  came, 
we  had  found  no  fault  in  Giam- 
maria,  our  Italian  messman.  His 
efficiency  in  the  most  varied  ca- 
pacities had  been  amply  approved. 
As  a  cook,  he  was  without  an 
equal  in  the  camp;  and  he  could 
evolve  salads  from  almost  any 
materials.  "  Is  it  vegetable  1 "  he 
would  ask,  when  in  joke  we  handed 
him  some  mysterious  parcel;  "then 
it  will  make  a  salad."  And  appa- 
rently it  did.  Anything  served; 
and  we  suspected  that  shavings, 
compressed  hay,  or  straw  bottle- 
cases  even,  if  nothing  else  was  at 
hand,  became  salads  that  were  de- 
lightful. Giammaria  was  a  great 
traveller.  He  had  visited  all  the 
quarters  of  the  world,  but  espe- 
cially he  knew  Africa ;  and  during 
long  years  of  ceaseless  fighting  under 
Gessi  Bey  in  Equatoria  and  Bahr- 
el-Ghazal,  had  gained  an  acquaint- 
ance with  the  methods  and  strata- 
gems of  Sudan  warfare  that  might 
well  have  entitled  him  (had  mere 
knowledge  aught  to  do  with  such 
matters)  to  no  obscure  place  in 
the  officers'  council-tent.  By  the 
natives,  moreover,  he  was  account- 
ed a  great  Hakim.1  Indeed,  here  at 
Suakim,  his  reputation  had  spread 
so  widely  among  the  JMendlies, 
that  his  medicine-chest — he  kept  a 
bottle  of  croton-oil,  a  camel's-hair 
brush,  and  a  fleam  in  an  old  cigar- 
box —  was  in  continual  demand. 
But  perhaps  he  was  at  his  best  as 
an  interpreter.  In  this  capacity 
he  was  invaluable.  It  was  not 
merely  that  he  was  an  able  trans- 
lator of  words  and  phrases — that 
were  nothing — but  he  could  read 
the  native  mind  like  an  open  and 
dog-eared  book,  and  would  fathom 


at  once  the  hidden  motive  prompt- 
ing each  particular  lie  with  an 
accuracy  that  terrified  his  victim. 
And  he  was  always  cheerful. 

We  used  to  watch  him  lazily  in 
the  hot  mornings  as  we  sat,  scant- 
ily clad,  on  the  shady  side  of  our 
tree.  The  kitchen -tent  gleamed 
before  us  white-hot  in  the  sun- 
light. From  within,  plates  rattled, 
spoons  clinked,  fragrant  fumes 
burst  from  cook-pots  and  hung  in 
the  shimmering  air.  Giammaria, 
singing  always  as  he  worked,  flit- 
ted in  and  out,  bustling  every- 
where— tasting  one  pot,  stirring 
another,  throwing  a  pinch  of  some- 
thing into  a  third ;  now  polishing 
a  knife,  now  wringing  out  a  cloth 
and  spreading  it  on  the  tent  to 
dry,  and  anon  checking  his  music 
to  fling  a  command  to  the  black 
boys,  his  aids. 

All  day  long  round  about  the 
kitchen-tent,  at  a  respectful  dis- 
tance, squatted  ever  a  circle  of 
his  patients  and  admirers.  A 
group  of  Friendlies  maybe,  their 
shields  on  their  knees,  their  spears 
stretched  before  them  ;  a  few  camp- 
followers,  not  actively  interested, 
but  with  an  eye  to  potential  pil- 
fering ;  further  off  a  huddled  mass 
of  greasy  flaccid  goat -skins  and 
women  water-carriers — women  so 
stunted,  so  battered  and  withered, 
as  to  be  like  nothing  in  the  world 
so  much  as  the  shrivelled  skins 
whose  contents  they  had  just  now 
poured  into  our  zeer.2 

Presently  through  the  cowering 
groups  would  stalk  a  personage. 
It  was,  say,  Wa-ad  Idis,  chief  of 
the  guides — gaunt,  stately,  with 
the  tread  of  a  panther, — a  great 
spear  flashing  in  one  hand,  a  huge 


1  Doctor.  2  Porous  clay  water- jar  holding  many  gallons. 

VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCXLIX.  2  X 


664 


Hanna,  my  Abyssinian  Servant. 


[Nov. 


lump  of  fresh  mutton -fat  sizzling 
on  his  top-knot,  and  dripping  on 
to  the  half-dozen  yards  of  cotton 
stuff  that  draped  his  lithe  limbs 
like  a  toga.  He  was  come  to  con- 
sult the  doctor. 

The  ceremony  of  consultation 
never  varied  in  its  details.  The 
patient  approached  the  tent  and 
leant  on  his  spear.  Giammaria, 
feigning  brief  unconsciousness  of 
the  visit,  sang  two  bars  in  a  high 
key,  and  then  paused  to  fling  a 
curt  inquiry  at  the  sufferer.  To 
the  native  mind  the  song  held  no 
mean  place  in  the  treatment. 
Then  the  patient  detailed  his 
symptoms,  and  saying  his  inside 
was  "  going  like  this,"  conveyed 
with  his  fingers  suggestions  of  a 
stag-beetle  struggling  on  its  back. 

"  Out  tongue  !  "  ordered  the  doc- 
tor, much  as  one  might  say  "  Fix 
bayonets,"  and  produced  the  cigar- 
box,  singing  louder  than  ever. 

"  lo  son  la  Farfalla"  he  carolled, 
plunging  the  brush  in  the  croton- 
oil. 

"  Che  scerza  tra  i  finri  " — here 
he  liberally  daubed  the  victim's 
tongue — "  e  schelga  le  rose."  This 
line  was  always  con  espressione 
as  he  gave  the  finishing  touches. 
Then  he  said  sharply  to  the  pa- 
tient, "  Now  shut  your  mouth  and 
enjoy  yourself,"  and  vanished  into 
the  tent,  leaving  his  audience  at 
once  awestruck  and  delighted. 

But  long  years  of  sojourn  be- 
neath the  fierce  African  sun  entail 
penalties  from  which  few  Euro- 
peans are  exempt.  Poor  Giam- 
maria was  constantly  shaken  by 
recurrent  attacks  of  fever,  and  as 
the  days  grew  hotter  lived  in  daily 
dread  of  the  sunstroke,  to  which 
he  had  already  fallen  twice  a 
victim.  The  saying  that  no  doc- 
tor can  prescribe  for  himself  is 
probably  not  more  absurd  than 


many  other  old  sayings ;  but  in 
this  case  it  was  justified.  Misled, 
doubtless,  by  his  experience  of 
native  constitutions,  our  unlucky 
factotum  subjected  himself  to 
heroic  treatment,  and  applied 
quinine  for  his  fevers,  and  the 
fleam  against  the  sunstroke,  and 
terrible  Greek  brandy  as  a  fillip 
for  the  system  generally,  with  a 
Spartan  determination  that  pro- 
duced fatal  results.  For  under 
these  combined  influences,  one 
night  he  ran  wildly,  singing  as 
usual,  to  the  top  of  the  water- 
fort,  and  threw  himself  on  to  the 
rocks  beneath,  where,  when  we 
found  him,  he  had  already  passed 
beyond  reach  of  aught  save  our 
regrets. 

This  was  the  dawning  of  Hanna. 

I  met  him  at  Massowah.  Hanna 
was  at  this  time  about  three-and- 
twenty  years  old.  He  was  five 
feet  ten  in  height,  handsome  as  a 
bronze  statue,  free,  irresponsible, 
happy;  untouched  by  the  canker 
of  civilisation;  trammelled  by 
neither  cares  nor  clothes  nor  po- 
litical convictions.  His  worldly 
possessions  were  a  breech  -  cloth, 
a  sheath-knife — minus  the  sheath 
— half-a-dozen  sugar-canes,  and 
a  small  blue  cross  tattooed  on  the 
right  wrist;  and  with  these  he 
was  in  a  manner  rich,  since  he 
needed  and  wished  nothing  more, 
unless,  indeed,  it  were  a  copper  ring 
for  his  great  toe.  All  day  long  he 
lay  on  a  heap  of  dhurra1  in  the 
market-place,  munching  ceaselessly 
at  a  sugar-cane,  chatting  with  his 
friends,  men  of  means  and  leisure 
like  himself,  and  chaffing  the  girls 
as  they  trudged  to  and  fro  with 
the  water-skins  across  the  long 
stone  causeway  that  led  to  the 
mainland  and  the  wells.  At  night 
the  dhurra  made  a  soft  bed  and  a 
strip  of  mat  a  counterpane,  and 


1  Coarse  Indian  corn. 


1894." 


Hanna,  my  Abyssinian  Servant. 


665 


each  morning  found  him  in  his 
place  tasting  the  pleasures  of  a 
new  day. 

Servant -seeking  though  I  was, 
I  had  watched  Hanna  for  a  week 
before  I  ventured  to  approach  him 
with  an  offer  of  employment.  I 
had  no  equivalent,  I  felt,  to  give 
him  in  exchange  for  this  idyllic 
existence  that  was  his.  But  when 
I  saw  him  attack  the  stump  of  his 
last  sugar-cane,  I  knew  the  time 
for  hesitation  was  past.  If  he 
went  out  to  steal  a  fresh  supply 
I  might  lose  sight  of  him  alto- 
gether ;  or  should  he  return  from 
the  foray,  weary  but  enriched,  he 
would  be  less  than  ever  inclined 
for  work.  Yet  even  as  it  was,  it 
needed  dark  strategy  to  secure  my 
end. 

I  sought  the  owner  of  Hanna's 
dhurra-heap,  and  bought  it  from 
beneath  him,  and  while  he  was 
still  dazed  with  the  shock  of 
eviction,  I  persuaded  him  to  con- 
vey the  grain  on  board  my  steamer. 
There  I  gave  him  a  lump  of  coarse 
brown  sugar,  and  suggested  that 
he  should  clean  my  long  tan 
boots  with  milk.  He  complied, 
but  drank  the  milk  first — perhaps 
to  stimulate  his  arm.  Then  I 
exhibited  some  more  sugar  and 
several  small  coins,  and  invited 
him  to  come  next  morning  and 
make  himself  useful.  He  looked 
bewildered,  startled,  a  little  hurt 
maybe,  that  he  should  be  asked 
to  do  so  much.  He  glanced  from 
the  sugar  in  his  hand  to  the 
dhurra- baskets  ranged  on  deck, 
and  from  the  dhurra-baskets  to 
the  machinery,  the  boots,  the  awn- 
ing, the  open  door  of  the  cook's 
galley — and  hesitated.  Refusal 
puckered  his  brown  forehead.  At 
this  supreme  moment  I  had  an 
inspiration.  I  carelessly  drew  out 
my  watch — a  repeater — and  made 
it  strike.  Hanna's  eyes  gleamed. 
I  touched  the  spring  again.  Ping- 


ping  !  ping-ping !  and  victory  was 
mine.  "  Shiigl  bittal  Inglis,"  he 
murmured  in  broken  Arabic — an 
invention  of  the  English — and  de- 
clared himself  my  slave  forthwith. 
It  was  once  more  the  triumph  of 
curiosity  over  innocence. 

The  plunge  made,  Hanna  de- 
veloped rapidly,  and  readily  ac- 
commodated himself  to  his  new 
position.  Very  early  he  discovered 
his  need  of  clothes.  There  was  no 
question  of  shame,  but  it  was  not 
for  my  dignity,  he  said,  that  he 
should  go  naked.  An  ancestor  of 
his,  and  mine  used  a  less  manly,  if 
more  plausible,  argument,  although 
he  knew  naught  of  yellow  boots  or 
"clocks  that  cried  like  the  steamer." 
For  thus  Hanna,  who  knew  no  other 
bells,  designated  the  repeater.  Like 
other  infants  newly  born  into  civil- 
ised life,  Hanna  was  bathed  and 
put  into  long-clothes  :  what  else, 
indeed,  were  the  seven  yards  of 
cotton  stuff  in  which  he  draped 
himself,  with  the  Manchester  fac- 
tory mark  displayed  proudly  on 
the  corner?  Like  an  infant,  too, 
he  wore  a  little  embroidered  cap, 
and  some  yards  of  belting  about 
his  middle.  He  differed  from 
white  children  only  in  that  the 
process  of  evolution  was,  in  his 
case,  more  rapid  than  in  theirs. 
In  two  years  he  had  run  through 
the  whole  gamut  of  costume,  and 
had  reached  a  state  of  sartorial 
effulgence  which  the  European 
youth  rarely  attains  under  twenty. 
He  had  swiftly  traversed  the  sev- 
eral stages  of  short-clothes  —  re- 
presented in  his  case  by  varieties 
of  the  galubieh  and  jubbe,  tunics 
reaching  to  the  ankle  and  the 
knees.  He  had  made  a  length- 
ened halt  at  the  knickerbocker 
and  short-jacket  stage  —  knicker- 
bockers, be  it  said,  of  a  generous 
oriental  cut,  and  jackets  broidered 
with  gold ;  and  finally,  after  suffer- 
ing cruel  tortures  with  his  first 


666 

starched  shirfc  and  high  collar,  his 
garments  had  attained  the  apoth- 
eosis of  dress  as  typified  by  a  tall 
hat,  a  suit  of  reach-me-downs,  very 
tight  (from  Messrs  Somebody's  on 
Ludgate  Hill),  and  patent  leathers, 
or,  as  he  called  them,  "  glass  boots," 
with  uppers  of  bright  blue  cloth. 

It  is  no  doubt  a  matter  of  taste, 
but,  for  my  own  part,  I  preferred 
Hanna  in  his  first  costume,  the 
tobt.  Draped  in  this  toga -like 
garment,  with  rawhide  sandals 
bound  to  his  great  toes,  on  one 
of  which  gleamed  the  coveted 
ring,  with  a  sickle -shaped  dagger 
buckled  to  each  elbow,  and  a  tall 
slim-bladed  spear  grasped  in  one 
hand,  Hanna,  as  he  swaggered 
through  the  market  -  place  and 
among  the  mat  hovels  of  the 
native  town,  was  a  sight  worth 
beholding.  His  flashing  eyes,  his 
gleaming  white  teeth,  the  oily 
wrinkles  of  his  bronze  face,  the 
shiny  curls  that  held  his  white 
cap  in  place  far  back  on  his  bullet 
head,  seemed  all  to  smile  at  once. 
His  satisfaction  in  himself  was  ir- 
resistible. His  delight  in  his  new- 
found prosperity — a  prosperity  al- 
ready far  beyond  the  wildest  flights 
of  his  day-dreams — was  unbounded, 
and  found  an  outlet  in  an  ineffable 
good-humour  towards  his  old  com- 
panions, and  a  demeanour  of  bland 
tolerance  towards  his  former  ene- 
mies, the  Banian  merchants  of  the 
town. 

When  the  time  came  to  return 
to  Suakim,  Hanna  made  no  diffi- 
culties as  to  the  trip.  He  had 
heard,  he  said,  that  there  was  an 
excellent  Franghi  souk1  at  Sua- 
kim where  he  might  obtain  articles 
necessary  to  a  man  of  his  rank, 
such  as  were  not  to  be  found  in 
Massowah.  At  this  time  he  had 
been  in  my  service  a  fortnight. 
Moreover,  he  had  relations,  he 


Hanna,  my  Abyssinian  Servant. 


[Nov. 


thought,  in  the  town.  No  doubt, 
too,  his  intense  desire  to  investi- 
gate the  working  of  that  strange 
monster,  the  bappor,2  did  much  to 
allay  his  fears  of  the  unknown 
world  that  lay  beyond  Massowah. 
It  was  already  something  to  have 
lived  on  board  the  bappor  while  at 
anchor  in  the  little  bay,  and  the 
circumstance  had  given  him  great 
authority  among  his  fellows ;  but 
the  movements  of  the  great  black 
beast  were  still  as  deep  a  mystery 
to  him  as  to  his  comrades,  who 
asked  him  continually  what  was 
the  whirring,  throbbing  song  she 
moaned  always  before  she  moved, 
and  what  they  had  done  to  annoy 
her  that  she  should  viciously  spout 
great  volumes  of  boiling  steam 
through  a  little  hole  in  her  side, 
straight  into  the  dug-out  where 
they  sat  laughing  and  chattering 
alongside. 

But  if  the  exile  himself  was 
cheerful,  the  demeanour  of  his 
friends  made  ample  amends.  For 
three  days  before  we  sailed  they 
boarded  the  steamer  in  a  continu- 
ous procession  from  dawn  to  sun- 
down. Great  numbers  of  them 
were  ladies,  —  Hanna  said  they 
were  his  sisters,  which  showed 
that  his  mother  must  have  been  a 
remarkable  as  well  as  a  handsome 
woman.  The  young  ladies  were  all 
very  much  the  same  age — bright, 
pretty,  modest-looking  Abyssinian 
girls,  with  big  soft  eyes  and  cool 
grey  skins,  with  slim  hands  and 
feet,  and  small  regular  features, 
and  limbs  delicately  moulded. 
Their  costume  was  indescribable, 
and  so  slight  as  to  leave  on  my 
memory  an  impression  not  more 
definite  than  it  produced  on  them- 
selves ;  but  their  ornaments,  I 
remember,  were  Maria  Theresa 
dollars — necklaces,  bracelets,  ank- 
lets —  all  of  these  same  useful 


European  market. 


2  Steamer. 


1894.] 


Hanna,  my  Abyssinian  Servant. 


667 


tokens.  They  came  alongside  in 
dug-outs,  crowded  so  many  into  one 
flimsy  craft  as  threatened  to  make 
a  feast-day  for  all  the  sharks  in 
the  harbour,  and  all  chattering  like 
a  flock  of  paddy-birds.  Half  a 
dozen  paddled,  the  rest  sat  astride 
the  ends  of  the  boat,  their  little 
feet  trailing  overboard,  and  threw 
stones  into  the  harbour  to  keep 
off  the  enemy.  They  all  brought 
gifts  to  the  emigrant :  one  had  a 
black  stone  which  she  vowed  was 
a  bezoar  and  infallible  against  every 
disease,  but  most  of  them  tearfully 
offered  fragments  of  their  jewel- 
lery, which  they  laid  on  a  cloth 
at  the  young  traveller's  feet. 
Hanna  accepted  everything  with 
dignified  urbanity,  and  offered  in 
return  a  slight  collation  of  sugar, 
merissa,1  and  cigarettes.  He  took 
a  generous  part  in  the  grief  of  the 
company,  and  howled  with  great 
spirit  when  the  final  parting  came ; 
and  exactly  seventeen  minutes 
later  came  flying  up  on  deck  pur- 
sued by  a  Malay  fireman  with  a 
shovel,  who  swore  he  had  caught 
him  tampering  with  the  engines, 
to  the  peril  of  the  vessel.  I  be- 
lieve the  accusation  was  warranted, 
yet  how  could  I  blame  Hanna  for 
yielding  to  the  impulse  that  urges 
all  children  to  "  see  wheels  go 
round." 

At  Suakim,  where,  by  the  way, 
he  found  many  relatives,  some  of 
whom  immediately  took  service 
with  me — I  was  not  consulted  in 
the  matter — very  kindly  sharing 
my  board  and  my  tobacco,  Hanna's 
political  education  was  begun. 
We  had  in  camp  at  the  time  an 
Abyssinian  prisoner  —  one  Eit- 
orari-Debeb  —  a  cousin  of  King 
John,  who,  an  outlaw  from  his 
own  people,  and  with  a  price  set 
on  his  head  by  the  Egyptian 
Government,  had  lived  for  years  a 


noted  border  brigand  in  the  hills 
round  Senneheit.  At  length  the 
Khedive's  Government,  being 
anxious  to  conciliate  King  John, 
had  bought  the  body  of  this  un- 
happy princelet  from  some  of  his 
smuggler  followers,  and  pending 
the  negotiations  for  the  price  of 
his  delivery  to  his  suzerain — who 
was  very  eager  to  put  him  to 
death — Debeb  had  the  run  of  the 
camp,  and  used  to  hold  a  little 
court  every  afternoon  outside  the 
turret,  which  was  his  prison. 

Hanna  owed  allegiance  to  Ras 
Area,  who  was  King  John's  uncle ; 
and  the  prisoner,  Ras  Area's  son, 
as  evil-eyed  a  scoundrel  as  ever 
wore  fetters  or  aspired  to  a  throne, 
therefore  claimed  his  support. 
This  Hanna  freely  promised.  Nor 
was  he  backward  with  more 
material  pledges.  The  prince's 
adherents,  like  those  of  other 
pretenders,  were  called  upon  to 
make  sacrifices  for  the  cause. 
Coming  upon  my  servant  suddenly 
one  day,  I  found  him  squatting 
on  the  ground  with  certain  rare 
treasures  spread  on  a  mat  before 
him.  His  prince — who  was  not 
more  diffident  in  the  matter  than 
other  princes  —  had  demanded  a 
proof  of  his  loyalty.  Hanna  had 
no  thought  of  questioning  the 
divine  right  of  Ras  Area's  son  to 
claim  what  he  wanted  from  a 
follower,  but  his  mind  was  torn 
with  doubts  over  the  impending 
sacrifice.  Before  him  on  the  mat 
were  a  large  loaf  of  white  sugar, 
and  a  pair  of  brand-new  yellow 
boots  of  an  alarming  shade  and 
pattern ;  and  near  them  were 
spread  his  broad  flat  feet  with  a 
thick  bright  ring  shining  on  each 
great  toe.  No  doubt  it  was  a  cruel 
struggle.  Hanna  nursed  and 
sniffed  longingly  at  the  sugar ;  he 
gently  stroked  the  bilious  uppers 


1  Fermented  mare's  milk. 


668 


lianna,  my  Abyssinian  Servant. 


[Nov. 


of  the  boots ;  he  glanced  sadly  at 
his  glittering  toe-rings.  Then  he 
sighed  deeply,  and  meditatively 
applied  his  tongue  to  the  base 
of  the  cone  where  the  torn  blue 
wrapper  showed  the  sweet  stuff 
sparkling  within.  Interference 
would  have  been  indelicate  in  so 
grave  a  crisis  :  I  stole  softly  away. 
That  evening,  strolling  through  the 
camp,  I  wandered  into  view  of  the 
princely  reception  —  held  behind 
the  wall  of  the  water-fort  —  and 
saw  Hanna,  clad  in  a  new  white 
tunic  and  the  yellow  boots,  but 
grey  and  haggard  with  suffering, 
limp  painfully  into  the  royal  pres- 
ence and  tender  the  lower  half  of 
a  much-nibbled  sugar-loaf  to  the 
noble  prisoner.  He  was  well  re- 
ceived. The  prince  graciously 
noticed  his  gallant  appearance. 
The  ragged  courtiers  were  guttur- 
ally  enthusiastic.  They  crowded 
round  him  with  covetous  eyes, 
stroking  the  boots,  patting  them, 
pinching  them  even;  and  Hanna 
bore  it  all  manfully,  and  even 
fetched  up  a  weird  smile  at  the 
flattery.  But  he  was  evidently  ill 
at  ease,  and  at  length,  the  attention 
of  the  court  being  diverted — the 
owner  of  a  neighbouring  melon- 
patch  had  peremptorily  demanded 
audience — he  crept  away  into  the 
shadow  of  a  bush,  I  following,  and 
sank  upon  the  ground.  "Innah- 
lah  -  aboo  -  uc  ya  -  ibni  -  sorma  !  "  he 
groaned,  tugging  wildly  at  the 
laces — "  Curse  your  father,  0  son 
of  a  yellow  slipper ! " — and  throwing 
the  boots  far  into  the  sand,  he  sat 
cuddling  his  aching  feet  in  both 
hands.  Then  I  saw  that  he  still 
wore  his  toe-rings. 

Thenceforth  he  carried  the  boots 
slung  about  his  neck,  until  he  lost 
them  in  our  hurried  flight  from 
the  massacre  of  Baker's  expedi- 
tion at  El-Teb.  He  felt  this  blow 


keenly,  though  he  extracted  from 
it  a  certain  naive  comfort  in  the 
reflection  that  had  he  been  in  them 
when  taken  by  the  enemy  his  loss 
might  have  been  greater.  But 
ever  afterwards  he  treasured  the 
memory  of  those  yellow  boots  as  a 
mother  does  the  little  shapeless 
shoe  of  her  first-born.  True,  he 
had  worn  them  but  once,  but  they 
represented  to  him  the  perfection 
of  the  cobbler's  art.  Others,  even 
"  glass  boots,"  faltered  through  his 
life  and  left  him  cold.  "  They  are 
not  like  the  Suakim  boots,"  he 
would  say  as  he  discarded  each 
worn-out  pair.  "  Those  were  good. 
They  would  have  lasted  for  ever. 
The  dealer  said  so." 

It  was  in  Cairo,  while  resting 
after  the  fatigues  and  hardships  of 
the  double  campaign,  that  Hanna 
learned  he  was  a  Christian.  The 
intelligence,  due  entirely  to  the 
sight  by  an  erudite  friend  of  the 
little  blue  cross  tatooed  on  his 
wrist,  gave  him  immense  satisfac- 
tion. Hitherto,  in  lazy  Masso- 
wah,  religious  questions  had  not 
troubled  him.  Arabs  had  a  religion, 
of  course,  because  they  were  Arabs 
and  knew  no  better,  and  Greeks 
because  they  were  Greeks  and  sold 
rakki  ; l  but  not  the  Habbashe,  un- 
less he  was  rich  and  the  aboona2  was 
his  friend,  and  even  then  it  was  a 
business  matter.  When  he  had 
thought  about  it  at  all,  Hanna  had 
regarded  the  sign  of  his  baptism 
as  nothing  more  than  a  distinctive 
tribal  mark,  such  as  was  worn  at 
once  by  the  cattle  and  the  camels 
and  the  ladies  of  his  acquaintance. 
But  now  the  knowledge  of  his 
Christianity  seemed  to  bring  him 
yet  a  step  nearer  to  the  civilisa- 
tion of  the  Franghi,  towards  which 
he  aspired.  From  the  moment  of  the 
discovery  he  adopted  towards  his 
fellow-servants,  who  were  Berbers 


1  Spirit  distilled  from  mastic  gum. 


Coptic  priost. 


1894.] 


Hanna,  my  Abyssinian  Servant. 


669 


and  Arabs,  an  attitude  of  pitying 
contempt.  "What  can  you  ex- 
pect," he  would  say  to  me,  "of 
these  ignorant '  black-faces '  ?  They 
are  not  Nazarenes  like  us."  The 
main  fact  being  established,  how- 
ever, complications  arose.  Hanna 
found  that,  though  doubtless  a 
pleasant  pastime,  religion  had  its 
drawbacks.  For  a  time  indeed 
he  was  somewhat  in  the  position 
of  a  child  with  not  a  new  toy 
merely,  but  a  whole  box  of  new 
toys  of  intricate  mechanism.  He 
admired  all  and  understood  none. 
He  had  no  prepossession  in  favour 
of  one  Church  or  another,  and  the 
entire  freedom  from  prejudice  with 
which  he  approached  the  subject 
must  have  caused  much  perplexity 
to  his  various  teachers — for  he  had 
many.  Orthodoxy  charmed  him  a 
while.  On  the  eve  of  the  Greek 
Easter  he  borrowed  my  revolver 
with  which  to  salute  the  joyous 
dawn,  and  spent  the  Sunday  amid 
the  mad  throng  of  revellers  who 
bore  to  the  stake  the  stuffed  pre- 
sentment of  Judas  Iscariot.  I 
met  the  wild  procession  in  a  by- 
street, and  marked  Hanna  yelling 
at  the  top  of  his  voice  the  antique 
chant  consecrated  to  the  occasion 
(to  an  air,  by  the  way,  identical 
with  that  sung  on  the  5th  of  Nov- 
ember by  English  boys).  He  pro- 
fessed himself  next  day  much 
soothed  by  the  consolations  of  the 
Church.  The  papas,1  who  he  said 
was  much  pleased  with  his  fervour, 
had  impressed  on  him  the  beauty 
of  patience,  the  contempt  of  riches, 
and  the  nobility  of  self-denial. 
Three  dollars,  Hanna  was  in- 
structed, if  I  would  give  them, 
would  be  a  powerful  aid  to  grace. 
Yery  soon,  however,  he  became 
dissatisfied  with  the  Greek  faith. 
He  ceased  to  frequent  the  precincts 
of  the  church  where  he  had  been 


wont  to  pass  all  his  mornings. 
Apparently  he  had  conscientious 
misgivings  as  to  whether  he  was 
really  in  the  right  path,  and  it  is 
probable  that  the  importunities  of 
his  papas  for  the  payment  of  the 
dollar  and  a  half  still  owing  of  the 
promised  three  influenced  him  not 
a  little — for  Hanna  had  withheld 
this  sum.  No  doubt  he  wished  to 
study  in  another  the  growth  of 
the  virtues  preached  by  his  pastor, 
and  the  result  of  his  experiment 
disheartened  him. 

While  thus  unsettled  and  drift- 
ing with  his  doubts,  he  made  the 
acquaintance  of  some  American 
missionaries,  in  whose  somewhat 
dingy  retreat  he  spent  many  peace- 
ful hours.  Here  certainly  he  was 
not  put  under  contribution,  and 
the  only  sacrifice  demanded  of  him 
was  that  he  should  abandon  the 
picturesque  smoothness  of  fable  for 
the  harsh  squalor  of  fact.  There 
was  a  pleasant  garden,  too,  attached 
to  the  mission-house,  where  he  and 
his  fellows  might  sit  and  smoke 
under  a  great  fig-tree,  while  the 
missionary  and  his  wife  talked 
with  them,  and  strove  to  lift  the 
veil  of  stolid  misapprehension  that 
shrouded  their  understandings. 

So  fond  was  Hanna  of  this  shel- 
tered garden,  that  I  was  astonished 
when  one  day  he  announced  that  he 
was  going  no  more  to  the  mission. 
In  lieu  of  the  explanation  I  asked, 
he  delivered  what  appeared  to  be 
a  theme  advocating  celibacy  in 
the  priesthood.  At  first,  though 
eloquent,  he  was  incoherent;  but 
at  length  I  perceived  that  there 
ran  disconnectedly  through  his 
argument  a  kind  of  burden  or  re- 
frain, from  which  I  gathered  that 
the  kassis2  was  a  good  man,  and 
that  the  sitti  kassis  3  was  good  too  ; 
that  the  kassis  gave  cigarettes  and 
sometimes  piastres  to  the  sons  of 


Greek  Pope.  2  Clergyman.  3  Lady  (or  Mrs)  clergyman. 


670 


the  Habbashe,  and  that  the 
kassis  had  a  pleasant  smile,  but 
took  tea  with  milk  in  the  after- 
noon under  the  fig-tree.  That  the 
kassis  was  a  learned  man  though 
blind,  and  knew  the  sons  of  the 
Habbashe  were  good  —  and  was 
always  busy  with  many  books, 
which  he  read  and  wrote,  and 
would  put  down  on  benches  and 
tables  and  in  the  house  and  forget 
where  they  lay ;  and  that  the 
sitti  kassis  would  go  into  the  house 
to  help  him,  but  was  giddy  and 
restless  like  a  young  snake,  and 
returning  hurriedly,  would  trace, 
with  a  smiling  eye  and  unerring 
certainty,  tongue-licks  in  the  jam- 
dish  and  finger-marks  in  the  cream- 
jug,  and  knew  at  a  glance  how 
much  sugar  had  gone  from  the 
bowl  and  how  much  cake  from  the 
basket;  finally,  that  the  sons  of 
the  Habbashe  were  brave  and 
honest,  and  sweet  things  were 
nice,  and  he,  Hanna,  was  not  a 
slave,  but  Myrza  and  Benna  were 
stupid  like  the  hyena,  and  he  was 
going  to  the  mission  -  house  no 
more. 

Nor  did  he,  but  fell  straightway 
into  the  arms  of  the  Coptic  Church 
— into  which,  indeed,  he  had  ori- 
ginally been  baptised — only  to  find 
once  more  that  disappointment  was 
in  store  for  him.  The  aboona  having 
welcomed  the  lost  sheep,  upbraided 
him  severely  for  having  forsaken 
the  oldest  Church  in  Christendom 
for  a  new-fangled  faith,  and  declar- 
ing that  both  penance  and  a  sacri- 
fice were  necessary  to  wipe  out  the 
offence,  suggested  that  ten  dollars 
would  be  an  acceptable  oblation. 
This  was  too  much  for  Hanna. 
"  Religion  is  for  rich  men  like  the 
Bey,"  he  said,  sadly,  when  I  offered 
to  advance  the  money  on  his  wages ; 
"it  is  too  costly  for  Hanna.  I 
knew  that  at  Massowah."  And 


Ifanna,  my  Abyssinian  Servant. 


[Nov. 


from    that     day    his    enthusiasm 
cooled. 

Perhaps  the  fact  that  other 
branches  of  instruction  occupied 
him  may  have  had  something  to  do 
with  his  backsliding.  It  was  his 
ambition  at  this  time  to  possess  a 
watch,  and  he  had  drawn  from  me 
a  promise  that,  so  soon  as  he  could 
read  the  hour  on  a  clock-dial,  the 
coveted  treasure  should  be  his. 
Every  artifice  that  native  ingen- 
uity could  devise  was  employed  by 
him  to  convince  me  that  he  had 
mastered  the  difficult  lesson.  I 
lay  ill  at  the  time,  and  the  fact 
that  my  repeater,  which  had  suf- 
fered, in  common  with  every  watch 
that  had  braved  a  Sudan  cam- 
paign, reposed  disembowelled  in  a 
saucer  of  oil  at  a  jeweller's  in  the 
Mouskee,  lent  Hanna  an  opportu- 
nity he  could  not  forego.  He 
would  enter  my  room  and  announce 
airily  that  it  was  half-past  twelve. 
He  would  bring  me  a  watch  bor- 
rowed from  a  fellow-servant,  and 
reading  the  hour  from  it,  would 
hurry  away  to  return  it  to  its 
owner.  I  was  almost  convinced  of 
his  proficiency  when  one  night  I 
sent  him  to  see  the  time  by  the 
clock  in  the  hall  of  the  hotel,  and 
he  returned  with  the  news  that  it 
was  ten  o'clock.  After  several 
hours  of  sleepless  fevered  tossing 
on  a  burning  pillow,  I  roused 
Hanna  from  his  mattress  on  the 
floor  and  bid  him  see  how  near  it 
was  to  dawn.  He  announced  that 
it  was  ten  o'clock.  "  Ya  salaam !  " 1 
I  cried,  "  is  it  no  later  1 "  "  Wal- 
lahi,"2  said  Hanna,  "the  clock 
marks  it."  Later,  much  later,  I 
roused  him  again,  but  with  the 
same  result.  It  was  ten  o'clock. 
"  Then  the  clock  has  stopped,"  I 
said.  "  Certainly  it  has  stopped," 
answered  Hanna.  "  Open  the 
shutters,"  I  ordered;  and  as  he 


Freely  translated — Good  heavens  ! 


Freely  translated — Verily. 


1894.] 


Hanna,  my  Abyssinian  Servant. 


G71 


obeyed  a  flood  of  rosy  light  gleamed 
through  the  banana-trees,  while  at 
the  same  moment  the  patter  of  un- 
shod feet  in  the  corridor  announced 
that  the  hotel  was  awakening. 
From  the  first  servant  passing  the 
door  I  learned  that  by  the  clock  in 
the  hall  it  was  half  -  past  six. 
Hanna  was  unconvinced ;  but  later, 
presumably  after  consultation  with 
friends,  he  inveighed  loudly  against 
the  clock,  and  protested  that  al- 
though its  "  fingers  "  had  perhaps 
moved,  it  had  not  altered  its  posi- 
tion on  the  wall.  The  Habbashe, 
he  said  loftily,  were  bold  and  keen. 
They  tracked  the  elephant  in  the 
forest  and  the  river-horse  in  the 
swamp,  and  watched  the  eye  of 
the  lion  in  the  thicket,  waiting  for 
its  spring.  How  should  they  take 
note  of  the  fingers  of  a  clock,  a 
harmless  creature,  slower  than  a 
tortoise  and  cold  as  a  lizard  ? 
"Shugl  bittal  Inglis,"  he  said, 
with  a  shrug,  in  conclusion,  as 
though  that  explained  everything. 
"It  is  an  invention  of  the  Eng- 
lish. It  is  not  like  the  sun  and 
the  moon.  They  do  not  lie  to  the 
sons  of  the  Habbashe." 

"Shugl  bittal  Inglis."  The 
phrase  was  not  Hanna's  only,  but 
was  common  enough  throughout 
the  Sudan,  where  all  Europeans 
— known  collectively  as  Inglis — 
are  understood  to  be  in  league 
with  the  devil.  Steam  and  tele- 
graphy, their  handiwork,  are  all 
sufficient  proofs  of  this,  without 
the  further  testimony  of  their 
strange  practices  and  wondrous 
costume  and  uncanny  knowledge. 
The  expression,  which  allays  appre- 
hensions and  soothes  the  native 
mind,  covers  everything  that  is 
incomprehensible,  from  the  steam- 
engine  to  photography,  and  from 
Verey's  lights  to  an  eclipse  of  the 
sun. 


Up  the  Nile  among  these  simple 
Sudanese  Hanna  was  in  his  ele- 
ment. He  was  at  once  cook  and 
messman,  and  superintendent  of  all 
the  other  servants.  When  on  the 
march  he  had  charge  of  the  com- 
missariat, and  travelled  perched 
high  on  his  camel  amid  the  camp 
canteen,  with  the  larder  and  store- 
closet  at  either  knee  convenient 
to  his  pilfering  hands.  He  lagged 
always  far  behind  his  comrades, 
and  would  devour  in  the  course 
of  a  morning  a  whole  week's  sup- 
ply of  sugar,  and  drain  in  an  hour 
the  entire  water  provision  of  the 
party;  and  the  movement  of  his 
camel,  surnamed  Osman  Digna, 
because,  like  that  gentleman,  he 
could  never  be  got  to  the  front, 
made  a  jangling  and  unmusical 
accompaniment  to  his  languid  pro- 
gress, heralding  his  tardy  approach 
from  afar,  when  weary  and  hungry 
we  awaited  dinner.  The  privilege 
of  spending  money — my  money — 
was  very  dear  to  Hanna.  He 
ruffled  with  a  ludicrous  swagger 
among  the  mild-mannered  villagers 
at  our  halting-places,  clinking  al- 
ways a  heavy  bag  of  reals l  wher- 
ever he  went,  and  exhibiting, 
when  he  wished  to  pay  twopence, 
at  least  ten  pounds'  worth  of  loose 
silver. 

Catering  was  now  his  ruling 
passion.  Wherever  we  stopped  on 
the  road  he  would  eagerly  purchase 
any  strange  esculents  the  natives 
had  to  offer,  in  such  quantities  as 
we  could  neither  eat  nor  carry 
away,  but  with  the  hope  always 
that  I  would  prolong  our  stay  un- 
til we  had  sufficiently  reduced  the 
supply.  There  existed,  too,  be- 
tween himself  and  his  fellow-ser- 
vants a  conspiracy,  not  organised 
in  any  way,  but  born  spontaneously 
of  the  requirements  of  the  situa- 
tion, to  induce  me  to  call  a  halt 


1  Dollars  (the  only  currency  in  the  Sudan). 


672 


Ilanna,  my  Abyssinian  Servant. 


[Nov. 


at  any  village  which  was  like  to 
yield  the  nauseous  dainties  that 
they  loved.  When,  for  instance, 
as  often  happened,  we  had  made 
a  short  cut  across  the  desert,  and 
the  camels  (which  had  ploughed 
wearily  through  the  sand,  lurching 
and  dragging  their  limbs,  and  had 
faltered  over  the  hot  rocks,  utter- 
ing hoarse  cries  and  lifting  their 
feet  quickly)  had  scented  the  river 
at  last,  and  had  begun  to  jog 
along  almost  cheerfully,  the  mur- 
murs of  my  little  following  took 
the  form  of  a  dialogue  —  unre- 
hearsed no  doubt,  but  none  the 
less  effective — conducted  in  loud 
asides  intended  for  my  ear.  I 
knew  always  what  was  in  their 
minds,  and  feigned  callousness,  the 
better  to  enjoy  their  comical  dis- 
satisfaction. "  It  would  be  like 
the  brutality  of  an  Englishman," 
they  thought,  "  to  drag  them  out 
again  into  the  hot  desert,  despite 
the  delightful  possibilities  hidden 
in  the  accommodating  little  huts. 
To  him  one  village  was  as  another. 
His  gross  nature  could  not  gauge 
the  subtle  distinctions  between 
sugar-cane  cut  last  week  and  sugar- 
cane cut  yesterday,  and  niceties  of 
quality  in  castor-oil  [for  cooking 
purposes]  were  sealed  from  his 
Christian  palate." 

As  we  neared  the  trees — a  long 
straggling  grove  of  palms — Abd- 
el-al,  a  chartered  glutton,  preda- 
tory by  conviction,  where  sweet 
stuff  was  in  question,  remarked 
musingly  "that  the  dates  were 
ripe  here,"  adding  with  emphasis, 
"  they  are  the  best  on  the  river." 

Suleiman,  his  neighbour,  who 
was  somewhat  of  a  dandy,  with  a 
neat  taste  in  breech  -  cloths  and 
hair-fat,  his  only  wear,  announced 
that  this  was  a  rich  village. 
"They  have  a  market  here,"  he 
said,  "  and  articles  for  sale.  They 
are  not  thieves." 

"  The  next  village  is  the  worst 


on  the  river,"  pursued  Abd-el-al. 
"There  you  will  see  robbers — the 
worst  robbers  in  the  country. 
Two  years  ago  I  was  there."  And 
he  proceeded  to  narrate  an  ima- 
ginary and  incoherent  tale  of  fraud 
through  which  the  turpitude  of 
the  next  village  frowned  black, 
though  intangible. 

A  little  patch  of  growing  dhurra, 
sheltered  from  the  sun,  and  well 
watered  by  a  thin  muddy  stream 
poured  from  the  hidden  river,  now- 
gleamed  greenly  through  the  palm- 
trunks  in  the  distance.  At  this 
Myrza,  who  had  not  opened  his 
lips  for  some  hours,  shouted  to 
Bakheet,  as  though  pursuing  an 
argument :  "  And  now  four  days 
with  nothing  but  grain ;  the  camels 
suffer ;  they  weaken  •  they  are  ill ! 
Unless  they  have  stalks  they  can- 
not run ! " 

Bakheet  was  half  asleep,  squat- 
ting on  his  pack  among  bedding 
and  camp-chairs,  his  knees  drawn 
up  to  his  chin.  The  suddenness 
of  the  address  nearly  overbalanced 
him,  but  he  was  equal  to  the 
occasion.  "The  Bey's  camel,"  he 
acquiesced  with  respectful  melan- 
choly, "  is  very  weak.  Perhaps  he 
will  die." 

Strangers  lent  their  aid  willingly 
to  this  conspiracy  of  obstruction. 
An  Abadi  tribesman  was  squat- 
ting on  his  heels  in  the  shade  of  a 
cam  el -thorn,  and  of  him  Saleh, 
the  guide,  suavely  inquired  the 
distance  to  the  next  village.  In 
Saleh's  voice  were  delicate  modu- 
lations, conveying  much  to  the 
native  ear,  and  to  whose  meaning 
practice  had  given  me  a  key. 
The  Abadi  was  a  stranger  from 
up-country,  and  probably  neither 
knew  the  next  village  nor  cared 
where  it  was;  but  he  did  know 
what  was  expected  of  him,  and 
was,  moreover,  attracted  by  my 
new  camel  -  halters,  the  sight  of 
which  roused  in  him  desires  that 


1894.] 


Ilanna,  my  Abyssinian  Servant. 


673 


no  Abadi  can  resist.  So  he  replied 
softly  that  the  distance  to  the 
next  village  was  five  or  perhaps 
seven  hours. 

"  Seven  hours  !  "  cried  Sal  eh, 
and  smiled  approval.  "  Come,  rny 
children,  mount,  ride  on  ;  ride  like 
men.  'Tis  but  seven  hours.  If  a 
camel  die  the  Bey  is  rich.  Bide 
in  the  name  of  Him,  and  you  shall 
rest  to-morrow.  Tallah/1  The  Bey 
will  give  a  sheep  for  a  fantasia.2 
Irkub  ya  walled.5  Yallah  b'el 
Affia.^  'Tis  but  seven  hours,  and 
the  day  is  now  not  hot." 

Of  course,  as  he  well  knew,  it 
was  not  to  be.  A  turn  in  the  path 
had  brought  us  into  a  circular  open 
space,  round  which  were  built  huts 
shaded  gratefully  by  overhanging 
branches.  As  we  filed  into  the 
open,  many  anxious  faces  were 
turned  to  watch  our  approach. 
Old  men  and  young  crept  out 
timidly  from  among  the  trees,  or 
raised  themselves  from  sleep  in 
shady  corners;  mat -doors  in  the 
huts  were  pulled  aside,  and  the 
forms  of  half -clad  women,  naked 
children,  and  young  girls  whose 
only  garment  was  a  fringed  leather 
girdle,  crowded  forward  from  the 
dim  squalor  within.  A  hundred 
pairs  of  black  beady  eyes  blinked 
at  us  in  mingled  fear  and  wonder 
from  the  huts  and  from  amid  the 
bushes,  and  many  voices  specu- 
lated in  low  tones  on  the  inten- 
tions of  the  gayadeen.5 

Another  moment  brought  us  in 
view  of  the  river.  Before  us,  in 
a  smooth,  oily  sweep,  flowed  the 
ruddy  current  of  the  Nile,  and  at 
the  sight  of  the  broad  stretch  of 
brown  water  the  thirsty  camels 
bellowed  loudly,  and,  craning  out 
their  necks,  ran  forward,  fight- 


ing  against  the   hands  that  held 
them. 

In  an  instant  all  was  confusion. 
The  servants  slid  to  the  ground, 
and,  hanging  on  to  their  beasts, 
hissed  angrily  to  make  them  lie 
down  ;  half-a-score  of  villagers  ran 
between  the  river  and  the  animals, 
shouting  and  waving  their  arms 
to  scare  them  away ;  and  a  dozen 
more  hurried  up  to  lift  the  packs 
from  the  tired  beasts,  that  they 
might  drink  without  fear  of  fall- 
ing in  to  drown,  in  their  blunder- 
ing haste.  The  camels  struggled 
and  resisted  with  loud  gurgling 
cries ;  the  men  shouted  at  them 
and  to  each  other;  the  women 
squealed  in  hideous  imitation  of 
the  Zughareet®  welcome  of  their 
more  civilised  sisters;  and  the 
little  children  ran  hither  and 
thither  picking  up  stray  articles 
that  fell  from  the  packs,  and  hav- 
ing no  pockets,  poor  little  souls, 
in  which  to  conceal  the  spoil,  were 
promptly  detected,  caught  and 
cuffed  and  dismissed,  and  trotted 
off,  adding  shrill  protests  to  the 
general  medley  of  sounds. 

When  the  hubbub  was  at  its 
height,  a  lean  hen  and  a  couple 
of  goats,  startled  from  placid  re- 
search on  the  river-brink,  straggled 
crookedly  across  the  open,  throw- 
ing up  a  little  cloud  of  sand  in 
their  frantic  flight.  The  sight  of 
the  meagre  quarry  scudding  off 
into  the  bushes  aroused  the  demon 
dormant  in  Hanna,  and  awakened 
his  culinary  ambitions. 

"  Milk,"  he  shouted, — "  milk  for 
the  Bey,  and  eggs ! "  and  leaving 
his  camel  to  the  care  of  Bakheet, 
he  ran  off  among  the  trees  calling 
on  the  Ababdeh7  to  aid  him  in  the 
chase. 


1  Come  on ! 


Festival. 


3  Mount  and  ride. 
4  Come  on  in  your  strength.  5  Literally,  passers-by. 

6  Shrill  ululation  by  which  women  of  Arab  crowds  express  joy  on  public 
occasions. 

7  A  tribe  ;  plural  of  Abadi. 


674 


Hanna,  my  Abyssinian  Servant. 


[Nov. 


But  we  were  not  always  journey- 
ing on  the  Nile  bank,  and  during 
our  lengthy  sojourn  at  Haifa  and 
Dongola,  Hanna  made  himself  very 
comfortable,  and  managed  to  ex- 
tract a  good  deal  more  enjoyment 
from  his  life  than  fell  to  his 
master's  share.  He  would  float 
for  miles  down  the  river,  on  the 
flood,  seated  astride  of  a  log  or  an 
inflated  goat-skin,  with  his  clothes 
in  a  bundle  on  his  head,  coming 
home  leisurely  in  the  cool  of  the 
evening  with  some  stray  party  of 
travellers  who  had  lent  him  a 
mount  far  down-stream.  He  had 
delightful  bargainings  each  morn- 
ing with  bands  of  old  women  who 
eagerly  exchanged  eggs  and  milk 
and  dhurra-cakes  for  empty  bottles, 
and  sat  in  a  row  before  sunrise  in 
our  yard  making  butter  in  pickle- 
jars.  He  had  elaborate  washing- 
days,  when  he  would  starch  my 
shirts  with  flour,  producing  curious 
-pie-crust  effects;  and  spent  his 
leisure  in  cutting  up  ragged  silk 
under-garments  into  pocket-hand- 
kerchiefs, of  which  I  stood  in  great 
need. 

He  made  acquaintance,  too,  with 
the  English  soldiers  and  sailors. 
At  his  first  introduction  to  them, 
a  group  of  these  worthies,  after 
their  usual  method  of  propitiating 
a  "nigger,"  cuffed  him  heartily  to 
see  if  he  would  fight.  For  a 
moment  Hanna  stood  bewildered. 
Then  he  turned  and  ran  wildly 
towards  the  bazaar,  while  the  men- 
of-war  yelled  in  frantic  derision  of 
his  cowardice,  and  called  on  him 
to  return.  He  returned.  In  five 
minutes  he  was  seen  approaching 
at  a  steady  trot.  In  one  hand 
he  brandished  a  great  spear,  and 
on  his  other  arm  was  a  shield  of 
hippopotamus-hide  heavily  studded 
with  brass.  He  halted  some 


twenty  yards  from  his  insulters, 
and  began  a  war -chant,  in  the 
course  of  which  he  made  many 
bitter  and  painful  accusations 
against  their  families  (of  whom  he 
really  knew  nothing),  which  fortu- 
nately they  did  not  understand. 
As  it  was,  the  war-chant  had  its 
advantages,  for  it  enabled  my  inter- 
vention to  be  sought  before  blood 
was  shed. 

"The  Habbashe  do  not  laugh 
with  blows,"  was  Hanna's  indig- 
nant comment  when  I  explained 
that  the  affair  was  a  joke.  But 
ere  long  he  allowed  himself  to  be 
pacified,  and  pardoned  his  assail- 
ants, with  whom  he  speedily  be- 
came so  friendly  as  to  learn  a  good 
many  words  of  English.  He 
quickly  acquired,  too,  something 
of  the  ways  of  his  new  friends. 
From  the  sailors  he  learned  to 
make  pets.  He  kept  a  lizard  four 
feet  long,  tethered  by  a  thong 
round  its  middle  to  a  stake  in 
the  Nile  bank ;  he  had  a  monkey, 
and  cherished  two  chameleons,  who 
lived  tied  by  strings  to  the  legs  of 
his  angkarieb  l ;  and  he  acquired  a 
taste  for  setting  a  scorpion  and  a 
tarantula  to  deadly  combat  in  a 
biscuit-box,  hazarding  bets  with 
his  comrades  on  the  result.  From 
the  soldiers  he  took  a  great  love 
for  music,  and  became  a  delighted 
listener  to  band  practice,  and  to 
"  last  post,"  and  would  hover 
always  on  the  outskirts  of  church 
parade.  He  was  an  eager  attend- 
ant, too,  of  the  concerts  held 
weekly  in  camp,  and  applauded 
the  choruses  with  enthusiasm ; 
and  one  morning  while  he  cleaned 
my  boots  I  overheard  him  singing, 
in  a  queer  broken  voice,  with  the 
husky  hesitations  of  a  rusty  musical 
box,  the  burden  of  a  favourite  camp 
ditty,  which  he  rendered  thus  : — 


Native  couch,  much  resembling  the  Indian  charpoy. 


1894.] 


Hanna,  my  Abyssinian  Servant. 


675 


"  Celloolee  kan l  bootifee,  Celloolee  kan 

fa', 
See  lib  willee  glanma  fil2  loomberlee 

sqa'; 
Wunshee  was  'um  unkeedoodilum,  but 

nowallashee 
P'ay  kissee  kiss  b'el3  offcer  fil  artil- 

lillee." 

To  appreciate  the  beauties  of 
which  version  of  a  popular  bar- 
rack-room song,  it  being  necessary 
to  know  the  original,  I  give  it 
without  comment : — 

"Cerulia  was  beautiful,  Cerulia  was 
fair, 

She  lived  with  her  grandma'  in  Blooms- 
bury  Square; 

She  once  was  my  hunkeedoodleum, 
but  now,  alas  !  she 

Plays  kissy-kissy  with  an  officer  in 
the  Artillery." 

So  enamoured  of  English  people 
and  English  ways  did  Hanna  grow, 
that  when  the  time  came  to  leave 
the  Sudan  and  Egypt  and  return 
to  Fleet  Street,  he  was  very  ready 
to  accompany  me.  He  had,  in- 
deed, but  one  misgiving.  "  Eng- 
land," he  said,  "was  a  very  cold 
country,  and  his  friends  had  told 
him  he  would  be  ill."  But  when 
I  told  him  we  were  bound  first  to 
Stamboul,  the  country  of  the 
Turks,  he  made  no  further  demur. 
Nor  did  he  complain  when,  off 
Mitylene,  we  were  caught  in  a 
terrific  snowstorm,  which  forced 
us  to  beat  about  the  mouth  of  the 
narrow  harbour  for  twenty-four 
hours,  unable  to  approach  the 
port.  He  sat  all  day  on  deck 
abaft  the  funnel,  paying  no  heed 
either  to  the  frozen  slush  heaped 
about  his  feet,  or  to  the  chilly 
drip  from  the  cordage  above. 
"Cold  such  as  this,"  he  said,  "he 
did  not  mind.  There  was  always 
snow  on  the  hills  in  the  country 
of  the  Habbashe.  It  was  only 
the  cold  of  England  that  he 


feared."  And  in  Constantinople, 
where  throughout  our  short  stay 
snow  and  sleet,  alternating  with 
rain  and  a  bitter  wind  from  the 
Black  Sea,  chilled  us  to  the  mar- 
row despite  our  furs,  he  displayed 
the  same  generous  courage  and 
indifference.  He  spent  his  days 
in  the  streets,  eagerly  seeking 
friends  of  his  own  nation,  and 
whenever  he  met  a  black  man, 
would  accost  him  first  in  Abys- 
sinian and  then  in  Arabic,  in 
Gallas,  or  Berberi,  or  Hadendowa, 
or  some  other  language  of  the 
Sudan,  many  of  which  he  spoke 
indifferently,  until  he  hit  upon  a 
satisfactory  medium  for  the  inter- 
change of  thought.  And  not  until 
we  had  left  the  frozen  shores  of  the 
Bosphorus,  down  which  the  bleak 
north  wind  shrieked  as  through  a 
funnel,  did  his  fears  of  the  English 
climate  return. 

But  as  the  Messageries  steamer 
neared  its  destination,  and  the 
sun  grew  hotter  and  the  sky  a 
brighter  blue,  Hanna's  spirits 
steadily  declined.  He  sat  all  day 
on  a  coil  of  cable  on  the  foc'sle 
with  his  head  bound  up  in  a  thick 
shawl,  and  with  a  big  box  of 
lokoums,  purchased  in  Stamboul, 
on  his  knees.  From  time  to  time 
he  would  heave  a  mighty  sigh,  and 
sadly  convey  a  lump  of  sweetmeat 
from  the  box  to  his  mouth,  and, 
as  he  slowly  absorbed  it,  would 
gaze  with  deep  melancholy  upon 
his  fetich.  For  he  had  a  fetich,  a 
mascotte,  that  had  never  left  him 
since  quite  the  early  days  of  our 
acquaintance  at  Massowah,  in  the 
shape  of  a  picture  advertisement 
of  Nabob's  pickles,  which  he  had 
mounted  in  the  plush  frame  of  a 
little  broken  mirror,  and  carried 
always  inside  his  jacket,  fastened 
round  his  neck  by  a  thong  of  raw 
hide. 


1  Arab  for  was. 


2  Arab  for  in. 


3  Arab  for  with. 


676 


Hanna,  my  Abyssinian  Servant. 


[Nov. 


Except  for  meals,  of  which  he 
partook  very  heartily,  he  rarely 
left  his  seat ;  and  he  showed  none 
of  the  intense  interest  of  former 
voyages  in  the  doings  of  the  crew 
and  the  machinery,  or  the  occupa- 
tions of  the  butcher  and  the  cook. 
As  we  approached  the  island  of 
Syra,  whose  three  sugar-loaf  hills, 
covered  with  snow-white  houses, 
gleamed  dazzling  bright  in  the  sun- 
glow,  he  was  seized  with  a  great 
fit  of  shivering,  which  yielded, 
however,  to  treatment  on  the  ex- 
hibition of  one  or  two  boxes  of  pre- 
serves of  new  and  varied  flavours, 
which  the  islanders  brought  on 
board  for  sale.  At  Naples,  under 
the  influence  of  "  Santa  Lucia " 
and  "Bella  Napoli"  and  the 
gentleman  who  imitates  a  farm- 
yard, he  revived  sufficiently  to 
make  several  purchases  of  coral 
ornaments  and  a  box  of  nougat, 
and  found  time,  though  we  stayed 
but  an  hour  in  the  bay,  to  have 
his  ears  pierced  and  fitted  with  a 
pair  of  elaborate  tortoise-shell 
rings  that  had  taken  his  fancy. 
But  when  the  first  pleasurable 
excitement  attaching  to  this  new 
acquisition  had  subsided  he  re- 
lapsed once  more  into  a  despon- 
dency, from  which  I  endeavoured 
in  vain  to  rouse  him. 

Matters  came  to  a  climax  in 
Marseilles.  I  was  seated  at  break- 
fast in  the  pleasant  dining-room 
of  the  Hotel  de  Noailles  on  the 
day  after  our  arrival.  It  was  a 
glorious  morning,  though  with  a 
promise  of  noontide  heat  rivalling 
that  of  Cairo  in  June,  and  as  I  ate 
lazily  I  rejoiced  in  the  cool  green 
of  the  ferns  and  the  soft  plash  of 
the  fountain,  and  the  flavour  of 
the  bouillabaisse,  and,  most  of  all 
maybe,  in  the  delightful  fact  of 
being  once  more  on  European 
ground  after  many  weary  months 
of  hardship  and  suffering  in  the 
Sudan.  Suddenly  my  happy 


reverie  was  rudely  broken  by  the 
abrupt  entrance  of  the  Suisse  of 
the  hotel,  followed  by  half-a-dozen 
scared  waiters.  "  Yotre  Africain, 
monsieur,"  shouted  the  Suisse,  as 
he  hurried  toward  me  —  "  votre 
Africain  se  detraque.  II  se  taille 
a  grands  coups  de  couteau." 

I  received  this  startling  intelli- 
gence with  such  composure  as  I 
could  command,  but  with  grave 
inward  misgivings  as  to  the  pos- 
sible conduct  of  a  maniac  Abys- 
sinian. "  C'est  sans  doute  sa  re- 
ligion," hazarded  one  of  the  waiters 
as  I  followed  the  Suisse  to  the 
hall;  and  with  the  view  of  calm- 
ing their  apprehensions  and  saving 
appearances,  I  eagerly  adopted  this 
suggestion,  hinting  vaguely  at  mys- 
terious heathen  rites.  We  found 
Hanna  seated  on  the  flags  in  the 
porch,  surrounded  by  a  little  crowd 
of  curious  spectators,  and  engaged 
very  gravely  and  deliberately  in 
gashing  the  thick  skin  of  his 
head  with  a  razor — apparently,  it 
seemed,  to  very  little  purpose. 
There  was,  however,  evidently  no 
cause  for  alarm.  He  was  merely 
essaying,  with  but  poor  success,  an 
experiment  in  primitive  phleboto- 
my, for  the  furtherance  of  which 
operation  he  had  provided  himself 
with  the  razor,  an  india-rubber 
drinking-cup,  and  a  box  of  matches. 

"  Hanna  was  suffering  acutely," 
he  said,  with  a  heavy  sigh,  in 
explanation  of  this  strange  whim. 
In  Cairo  he  had  been  told  by  an 
Abyssinian  soothsayer  that  Eng- 
land was  a  cold  country,  and  that 
its  climate  would  be  injurious  to 
a  son  of  the  Habbashe ;  and  now 
that  he  had  reached  England,  he 
would  of  course  be  very  ill.  The 
soothsayer  had  said  so,  and  he  was 
a  wise  man  who  would  not  lie. 

To  disabuse  him  of  this  fixed 
idea,  nursed  sedulously  throughout 
the  voyage,  that  the  air  of  Eng- 
land would  be  fatal  to  him,  and 


1894.] 


Hanna,  my  Abyssinian  Servant. 


677 


that  now  he  had  reached  land  he 
must  prepare  to  wrestle  with  some 
wasting  disease,  I  exhausted  in 
vain  all  my  powers  of  persuasion, 
backed  by  a  lengthy  geographical 
disquisition.  He  admitted,  some- 
what reluctantly,  that  the  sun  was 
as  hot  and  as  bright  here  as  in 
Cairo ;  he  granted  that  his  ap- 
petite was  excellent,  and  that  he 
felt  as  yet  no  indisposition  :  but 
he  maintained  the  soothsayer  was 
a  wise  man.  He  had  told  Gara- 
bet,  whose  leg  had  been  cut  off, 
that  he  would  die,  and  Garabet 
died.  Therefore  when  he  said 
Hanna  would  be  ill  it  must  be 
true. 

At  length  I  lost  patience. 
"Hanna  Habbashe,"  I  cried,  "I 
did  wrong  to  take  you  from  your 
thieving  and  your  nakedness  at 
Massowah;  I  did  wrong  to  trust 
you  as  my  servant.  You  are  as 
ignorant  as  the  Dinkas,  you  are 
as  vicious  as  the  camel,  you  are  as 
stupid  as  the  hyena,  and  your 
wicked  heart  is  as  black  as  your 
face." 

For  a  moment  Hanna  stood 
silent.  Then  the  scowl  of  sullen 
obstinacy  faded  from  his  brow, 
and  I  saw  that  I  had  prevailed. 

"  Hanna's  face  is  a  little  black," 
he  said,  diffidently,  "  but  his  heart 
is  nice.  It  is  an  English  heart, 
and  white  like  the  Bey's." 

From  this  moment  the  warnings 
of  the  soothsayer  were  forgotten. 
Hanna  had  no  further  thought  of 
illness;  and  as  in  Marseilles  he 
found  many  companions  of  his 
own  colour,  the  few  days  of  our 
stay  there  passed  pleasantly  enough 
with  him.  Yery  speedily  his  ob- 
jections to,  and  fears  of,  the  rigour 
of  English  weather  disappeared ; 
and  when  at  length,  with  a  biting 
wind  blowing  in  our  teeth,  and  a 
driving  storm  of  sleet  and  hail 


stinging  our  cheeks  and  eyelids, 
we  emerged  shivering  at  daybreak 
from  Charing  Cross  Station  into 
the  Strand,  Hanna  turned  to  me 
sleepily,  but  with  a  merry  smile. 
"Is  this  England?"  he  asked, 
turning  up  the  collar  of  his 
cloak. 

"This  is  London,"  I  said,  em- 
phatically. 

"  Ah  ! "  said  Hanna,  with  de- 
light. "  Then  we  shall  see  the 
great  white  Queen." 

It  being  obviously  out  of  my 
power  to  procure  for  him  this 
supreme  satisfaction,  I  sent  him 
as  an  alternative  to  the  pantomime 
at  Drury  Lane  Theatre,  where  the 
gorgeous  pageantry  provided  by 
Sir  Augustus  Harris  certainly  im- 
pressed him  far  more  deeply  than 
aught  he  could  have  seen  in  a 
European  Court.  It  may  be  said, 
too,  that  he  never  knew  he  had 
been  deceived.  He  was  delighted 
beyond  measure  with  this  splendid 
entertainment,  which  he  visited  on 
no  less  than  six  successive  nights. 
Each  morning  he  would  stand  at 
the  foot  of  my  bed  and  give  me 
a  detailed  account  of  the  doings 
of  the  great  Queen  (Mr  Harry 
Nicholls,  I  believe)  and  the  King 
her  husband,  and  the  brilliant 
courtiers,  and  the  army  with  glit- 
tering armour  of  gold  and  silver, 
and  shapely  pink  legs.  He  was 
always  curious,  indeed,  to  know 
why  these  troops  had  not  accom- 
panied Lord  Wolseley  to  the 
Sudan,  where  they  would,  he 
said,  have  been  so  well  adapted 
to  the  pretty  little  boats  provided 
for  the  carriage  of  the  expedition. 
He  was  amazed  and  awestruck  by 
the  transformation-scene,  and  would 
describe  with  bated  breath  the 
Djinnoun1  floating  in  mid-air  in  the 
shapes  of  beautiful  maidens,  and 
the  fountains  of  coloured  flame, 


1  Genii. 


678 


Hanna,  my  Abyssinian  Servant. 


[Nov 


and  the  glittering  foliage  of  gold 
and  silver.  Some  giant  attendants 
on  the  comic  monarch,  however, 
with  big  wobbling  heads,  troubled 
him  not  a  little.  Of  course  he 
could  know  nothing  of  the  divin- 
ity that  hedges  round  a  king  ;  but 
(and  here  was  an  example  of  the 
danger  of  a  little  learning)  there 
was  in  his  dark  mind,  I  fear,  as  he 
gazed  on  these  wicker  effigies,  a  con- 
fused memory  of  the  teachings  of 
the  papas  and  the  aboona  and  the 
American  missionary.  "  I  was  not 
afraid,"  said  Hanna,  alluding  to  the 
three  grotesque  monsters;  "I  am 
a  Christian,  too,  like  the  Bey." 
I  had  noticed  some  months  before 
that  the  contemplation  of  the  three 
huge  seated  figures  at  Abou  Simbel 
had  roused  in  him  feelings  of  a  like 
mixed  nature,  and  I  had  been  at 
some  trouble  to  avoid  any  discus- 
sion on  the  subject.  But  as  a 
result  of  his  pantomime  experi- 
ences, I  have  no  doubt  that  when 
Hanna  left  England  he  was  con- 
vinced that  he  had  basked  for 
several  days  in  the  sunlight  of 
Royalty,  and  that  he  had  even  con- 
tributed, by  the  payments  of  him- 
self and  his  companion  at  the  pit 
entrance,  in  no  small  measure  to 
the  support  of  the  English  Crown. 
The  pantomime  over,  I  discovered 
that  a  performance  styled  Khar- 
toum was  being  presented  at  an 
outlying  place  of  entertainment. 
To  this  I  accompanied  Hanna  with 
a  friend,  and  we  occupied  a  stage- 
box.  The  hero  of  the  entertain- 
ment, we  soon  found,  was  a  war 
correspondent,  in  a  helmet  and 
khakee  suit  and  shiny  patent- 
leather  boots.  Hanna,  very  justi- 
fiably, took  quite  early  in  the  per- 
formance a  rabid  dislike  to  this 
personage,  who  never  did  any  work, 
but  passed  his  time  in  rhapsodising 
about  the  dangers  of  his  calling 
and  the  beauty  of  his  beloved. 
And  when  the  war  correspondent, 


having  lain  down  to  sleep,  note- 
book, helmet,  patent  boots  and  all, 
beside  a  tinfoil  camp-fire  in  the 
centre  of  the  stage,  the  Arab  en- 
emy, led  by  a  treacherous  guide, 
stole  on  in  the  limelight  and 
searched  for  him  painfully  amid 
pasteboard  rocks  and  painted 
bushes  at  the  back,  and,  though 
every  one  could  see  him  quite 
plainly,  failed  to  discover  his 
bivouac.  Hanna  directed  them 
loudly  in  Arabic  to  where  he  lay, 
and  shouted  to  them  to  go  and  kill 
him,  and  abused  them  roundly  for 
fools  when  they  took  no  heed. 
And  when,  at  length  discovered, 
the  war  correspondent  arose  and 
fought,  and  after  emptying  at  them 
a  thirty-two  chambered  revolver 
(we  counted  the  shots),  dispersed 
some  hundred  assailants  with  his 
note-book — a  weapon  he  should 
have  thought  of  sooner — Hanna 
was  greatly  disconcerted.  "  They 
are  not  Arabs,"  he  said  emphati- 
cally, as  the  discomfited  supers 
slunk  away  into  the  wings.  "They 
are  not  Arabs.  They  are  not  even 
Egyptians.  Kooluhoum  Ghreeki — 
They  are  all  Greeks." 

A  few  days  later  I  escorted  my 
protege  to  the  Zoological  Gardens. 
The  first  object  we  encountered  as 
we  entered  was  an  elephant  slouch- 
ing placidly  along,  regardless  of  the 
burden  of  some  dozen  schoolgirls. 
Hanna  looked  at  the  great  beast  in 
silent  wonder,  and  it  was  evident 
to  me  that  the  English  rose  greatly 
in  his  estimation  at  the  sight.  "Do 
children  tame  the  Fil  here?"  he 
said  at  length.  "In  my  country 
we  kill  him  and  take  his  teeth." 

He  hissed  at  the  camels  when 
he  came  to  them,  making  them 
kneel  down  with  much  docility, 
despite  the  warnings  of  their 
keepers  that  they  were  very  sav- 
age. He  laughed  at  the  brown 
bears,  though  he  expressed  wonder 
at  the  white  polar  beast.  He 


1894.] 


Hanna,  my  Abyssinian  Servant. 


679 


stood  unmoved  before  the  hip- 
popotamus and  rhinoceros,  and 
blinked  lazily  at  the  giraffe,  which 
he  said  was  a  foolish  beast  de- 
prived by  Eblis  of  brains.  With 
the  ostrich,  the  stork,  the  pelican, 
and  the  flamingoes  he  was  familiar, 
and  expressed  surprise  only  that 
they  should  stay  where  they  were, 
in  so  cold  a  country.  Finally, 
having  visited  every  other  object 
likely  to  interest  him  in  the 
Gardens,  I  led  him  to  the  lion- 
house. 

It  was  near  feeding-time.  As 
we  entered,  in  the  cage  nearest 
the  door  lay  a  big  male  lion,  his 
muzzle  pressed  against  the  bars. 
From  time  to  time  he  uttered  a 
low  whining  roar.  In  the  cage 
next  to  him  was  a  female  in  a 
state  of  terrible  excitement,  now 
rearing  herself  upright  against  the 
bars,  now  dragging  herself  along 
the  front  of  the  cage  by  her  paws, 
now  beating  furiously  at  the  iron 
door  in  the  rear. 

Hanna  stood  for  a  moment 
motionless,  watching  these  two 
brutes.  Then  he  made  three 
steps  to  the  door,  picked  up  a 
handful  of  gravel,  and  returned. 
"  I  know  you,"  he  said — "  I  have 
known  you  always.  God's  curse 
be  on  you !  Have  you  come  to 
this  country  too?"  and  he  threw 
the  gravel  in  the  male  lion's  blink- 
ing eyes. 

After  this  he  refused  to  stay 
in  the  Gardens.  "  He  was  not 
armed,"  he  said,  "  and  the  lions 
might  come  round  by  a  back  way 
and  meet  him  with  no  weapon 
but  a  shemseeye."  l 

When  the  time  arrived  at  length 
for  Hanna  to  return  to  Egypt — if 
not  indeed  to  Massowah — a  ques- 
tion arose  as  to  the  investment  of 
his  capital.  For  he  was  in  a  man- 
ner a  capitalist.  He  had  spent  no 


money  for  three  years,  and  his  ac- 
cumulated savings  made  a  useful 
sum.  I  suggested  various  schemes 
for  the  preservation  and  increase 
of  this  little  estate,  but  to  all  of 
them  Hanna,  though  expressing 
much  sensibility  of  my  kindness, 
remained  cold.  He  had  a  plan 
himself,  he  said,  which  he  hoped 
I  would  aid  him  to  put  in  execu- 
tion. He  had  observed  not  only 
in  England,  but  in  Cairo  and  Alex- 
andria, that  piano-organs  were  a 
valuable  property,  and  he  expressed 
a  desire  to  purchase  some  of  these 
instruments  and  carry  them  with 
him.  I  raised  some  objections 
against  the  plan,  urging  that  he 
himself  could  only  manipulate  one 
organ  at  a  time,  and  that  if  he  let 
out  the  others  they  would  be  very 
liable  to  injury,  or  even  destruc- 
tion, in  those  quarters  of  the  Egyp- 
tian towns  where  their  music  was 
most  appreciated.  But  this  argu- 
ment he  cleverly  combated,  saying 
that  he  would  only  hire  his  pro- 
perty to  Greeks,  who  had  wives 
and  young  children,  and  whose 
furniture  he  could  hold  as  a 
mortgage. 

After  all,  when  regarded  from 
this  point  of  view,  the  plan  was  a 
good  one.  The  cost  of  a  piano- 
organ  was  about  £12,  while  the 
rent  of  one  in  Cairo,  said  Hanna, 
where  they  were  scarce,  was  three 
dollars  per  week.  So  after  some 
diligent  search  —  for  the  instru- 
ments are  chiefly  made  in  Vienna 
— I  discovered  an  importer  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  Hatton  Gardens, 
from  whom  I  purchased  five  in- 
struments, to  be  delivered  on 
board  the  ship  by  which  Hanna 
was  to  sail  from  Liverpool,  for  the 
sum  of  ,£65. 

With  these,  then,  and  a  fair  sum 
of  money,  and  with  several  suits  of 
very  fashionable  clothes  and  in- 


1  An  umbrella. 


VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCXLIX. 


2  Y 


680 


Hanna,  my  Abyssinian  Servant. 


[Nov. 


numerable  presents  from  friends 
of  all  ranks,  including  a  silver- 
gilt  repeater  -  watch  and  chain, 
which  I  handed  to  him  in  the 
cab  on  the  way  to  the  station, 
Hanna  prepared  to  return  to 
Egypt,  to  seek  there  his  fortune. 

When  we  were  nearing  the  sta- 
tion I  noticed  that  he  was  unduly 
agitated,  and  by  cross-examination 
elicited  that  his  desire  was  to  in- 
vest in  some  boots  of  a  very  showy 
red  leather,  exhibited  in  the  win- 
dows of  cheap  ready-made  dealers. 
It  was  easy  to  satisfy  so  modest  a 
taste,  and  as  time  permitted,  we 
stopped  and  made  the  purchase. 

Hanna  nursed  his  new  acquisi- 
tions in  his  arms  throughout  the 
rest  of  the  drive,  and  had  no 
sooner  taken  his  seat  in  the  rail- 
way carriage  than  he  commenced 
a  minute  examination  of  their 
workmanship.  As  the  train 
moved  out  of  the  station  he  rose 
from  his  seat  and  stretched  his 
body  out  of  the  window. 

I  hurried  along  the  platform  to 
catch  his  farewell. 

"  Ya  Bey,"  he  said,  sadly,  "  they 
are  not  like  the  Suakim  boots. 
Those  were  good.  They  would 


have  worn  for  ever.      The  dealer 
said  so." 

These  were  Hanna's  last  spoken 
words  to  me,  but  I  have  since  re- 
ceived a  letter  from  him,  so  full  of 
information  that  it  will  doubtless 
be  of  interest  to  my  readers.  I 
therefore  quote  it  verbatim.  This 
is  the  letter  : — 

"in  CAIRO. 

"Mr  Feruncis  Scudamore  Times 
Special  correspondent :  En  London. 
My  Sir  I  have  the  honor  to  be  Sir 
verj  setfully  your  obedient  servant. 
My  Sir  I  have  the  plesure  to  ask 
your  in  good  Hulth.  But  I  am  much 
obeliged  by  yuur  kindess.  that  you 
make  me  verj  useful  and  I  thunke 
you  olwys.  You  mj  a  great  Sir. 
And  I  am  now  obedient  at  Cairo. 
But  not  yet  I  did  not  find  work  But 
I  am  verj  glod  by  yuur  name  sir.  if 
you  sent  a  letter  for  me  you  con  sent 
it  in  Captain  Chercha.  But  my  sir, 
I  may  have  a  reeve  a  letter  to  sent 
me  Beneh  from  you  my  sir.  Biano 
Lanterna l  are  in  good  Hulth  but  my 
sir,  one  broke  liver  and  bowils  run 
away. 

"  Eemen  yours  servant 

"  HANNA  Abyssinian." 

FRANCIS  SCUDAMORE. 


1  Piano- organ. 


1894.] 


A  Nook  of  North  Wales. 


681 


A  NOOK  OF  NOETH  WALES. 


IN  the  following  sketch  I  shall 
carefully  avoid  referring  to  any 
of  those  "  problems  of  humanity  " 
which  I  am  given  to  understand 
are  now  calling  for  solution.  Dis- 
establishment, Land  Commissions, 
Education — though  I  am  going  to 
a  country  where  men's  minds  are 
much  exercised  by  all  three — I  will 
none  of. 

"Negligens,  ne  qua  populus  laboret, 
Parce  privatus  nimium  cavere  : 
Dona  prsesentis  cape  Isetus  horse  et 
Linque  severa." 

One  fine  morning,  then,  about  the 
middle  of  last  September,  I  booked 
myself  and  a  faithful  middle-aged 
spaniel  from  a  London  terminus  to 
a  small  station  in  the  mid-west  of 
Great  Britain,  bound  for  a  well- 
remembered  spot  which  I  had 
never  yet  left  without  inwardly 
resolving  to  get  back  again  as 
soon  as  I  could.  I  was  in  the 
best  of  humours  at  the  prospect 
of  being  once  more  at  my  old 
quarters ;  and  though  the  railway 
runs  through  a  great  variety  of  rich 
and  luxuriant,  and  sometimes  even 
beautiful,  scenery  between  London 
and  Shrewsbury,  I  was  impatient 
for  the  first  glimpse  of  Wales,  and 
it  was  not  until  we  crossed  the  Dee 
that  I  felt  my  holiday  had  fairly  be- 
gun. The  change  in  the  aspect  of 
the  country  at  this  point  is  com- 
plete. I  have  crossed  the  boundary 
farther  south  without  being  con- 
scious of  any  immediate  alteration 
in  the  character  of  the  scenery. 
But  on  leaving  Chester  we  are 
greeted  by  nature  with  a  totally 
different  countenance — different  in 
colour,  in  form,  in  the  smallest 
details  as  well  as  in  general  effect, 
from  the  England  we  have  left 
behind  us.  The  prevailing  tints 


now  are  light  green  and  grey. 
The  hills  on  our  left,  as  we 
speed  on  our  way,  are  prettily 
wooded  :  but  we  miss  the  dark  foli- 
age of  the  English  hedgerow  tim- 
ber, the  old  red  brick  farm-houses, 
which,  covered  with  crumbling 
lichens,  are  rather  roan  than  red ; 
the  snug  villages  with  the  tall 
church  tower  or  spire.  In  place 
of  these  we  have  between  the  hills 
and  the  sea  small  flat  enclosures, 
divided  very  often  by  walls ;  and 
everywhere  whitewashed  cottages 
and  houses  with  slated  roofs,  im- 
parting an  air  of  coldness  to  the 
landscape  even  on  a  summer  day. 
The  churches  are  small,  and  not 
often  visible  from  the  railway.  But 
then  at  every  turn  on  our  journey 
we  come  upon  little  picturesque 
nooks  which  compensate  for  all : 
little  pictures  done  by  nature's 
hand,  in  which  hanging  wood, 
moss-covered  rock,  fretting  stream- 
let, and  banks  of  tangled  gorse  and 
fern  are  blended  together  in  such 
exquisite  confusion  that  the  eye 
could  feast  on  it  for  ever.  These 
tiny  glens  and  dingles  greet  one 
with  increasing  frequency  as  we 
penetrate  farther  into  the  country ; 
and  of  course,  on  approaching  the 
Conway,  we  are  in  the  immediate 
vicinity  of  some  of  the  most  beau- 
tiful scenery  in  North  Wales. 
Bettys-y-Coed  in  particular,  at  the 
junction  of  the  Conway  and  the 
Lugwy,  I  have  always  thought 
one  of  the  loveliest  spots  in 
the  Principality.  But  our  way 
does  not  lie  thither.  We  run 
straight  on,  at  first  through  a  coun- 
try diversified  by  many  such  pretty 
little  bits  of  natural  composition  as 
we  have  here  described.  But  by 
degrees  it  grows  wilder  and  more 
desolate.  Swamps  and  bogs  ap- 


682 


A  Nook  of  North  Wales. 


[Nov. 


pear  on  either  side  of  the  line,  tor- 
menting us  with  thoughts  of  the 
sport  to  be  had  there  in  Novem- 
ber, till  at  last  we  reach  a  point 
where  just  for  a  little  distance  the 
country  assumes  a  more  English 
look.  There  is  a  larger  proportion 
of  cultivated  land,  and  we  see  more 
sheep  and  fewer  pewits.  Here  we 
get  out  and  find  a  dog-cart  in  wait- 
ing, which  soon  conveys  us  out  of 
sight  of  anything  approaching  to 
the  commonplace,  and  eventually 
lands  us,  about  seven  o'clock,  at  one 
of  the  most  delightful  retreats  it 
has  ever  been  our  lot  to  visit. 

Let  the  reader  imagine  to  him- 
self, lying  on  a  gentle  declivity,  a 
large  low  farm-house,  which  has 
once  been  a  manor-house  and  the 
residence  of  a  country  gentleman, 
approached  downwards  through 
an  avenue  of  ancient  sycamores, 
and  shut  in  on  the  left  by  a  very 
high  stone  wall  enclosing  a  large 
old-fashioned  garden,  and  open- 
ing on  the  right  to  the  stables, 
cow-houses,  and  out-buildings  ap- 
pertaining to  its  modern  character. 
At  the  end  of  the  avenue  an  iron 
gate  leads  into  a  small  courtyard, 
where  we  descend  from  our  vehi- 
cle, entrance  to  the  front  of  the 
house  being  obtained  through  a  low 
postern -door  in  the  garden -wall, 
overshadowed  by  one  of  the  largest 
of  the  sycamores,  which  stretches 
its  branches  on  every  side.  This 
opens  on  to  a  pretty  little  green 
lawn,  divided  from  the  garden  by 
a  mass  of  flowering-shrubs,  inter- 
mingled with  roses  and  fuchsias. 
Behind  the  fence  are  visible  some 
dark  yew-trees,  apple-trees,  and 
tall  hazel-bushes,  while  the  front 
of  the  house  is  here  formed  by  a 
low  verandah  with  glass  windows 
running  the  whole  length,  and  ad- 
mitting us  into  the  dark  old  din- 
ing-room and  sitting-room,  where 
many  a  Welsh  cavalier  has  in  all 
probability  drank  to  the  health  of 


King  Charles  and  success  to  the 
White  Rose.  On  this  side  the 
house  is  entirely  shut  in  by  the 
high  wall  and  the  trees ;  and  for 
a  weary  Londoner,  tired  of  politics, 
tired  of  controversy,  tired  of  town, 
wellnigh  tired  of  the  world,  can 
any  place  of  repose  be  imagined 
more  delicious  ! 

Brian,  who  has  a  strain  of  the 
Irish  water -spaniel  in  him — "I 
make  no  doubt,"  says  Mr  Thack- 
eray, "that  I  too  am  descended 
from  Brian  Boru," — Brian  is  ac- 
commodated in  a  comfortable 
stable,  and  I  then  proceed  indoors 
to  pay  my  compliments  to  my 
hostesses,  very  unlike  the  furies 
described  by  Tacitus,  who  encoun- 
tered the  Roman  army  when  it 
crossed  the  Menai  Straits.  They  are 
two  most  courteous,  amiable,  and  re- 
fined women,  sisters,  who  carry  on 
the  farm  together — and  there  is  a 
saying  in  parts  of  Anglesey  that 
women  make  the  best  farmers. 
These  two  ladies  always  take  in  a 
friend  or  two  of  their  landlord's  in 
the  partridge-shooting  time,  and 
most  comfortable  do  they  make 
them,  as  I  can  testify.  They  are, 
one  or  both,  born  cooks  :  and  even 
Mr  Saintsbury  would  acknowledge 
that  they  can  dress  game  to  per- 
fection. Perhaps  if  they  excel 
in  one  thing  more  than  in  another 
it  is  their  hare-soup. 

I  stayed  at  this  house  by  myself 
about  ten  days,  shooting  partridges, 
in  company  with  Brian  and  a 
Welsh  boy  who  had  "  niel  Sassen- 
ach," from  ten  to  five,  and  return- 
ing home  on  the  late  September 
afternoon,  when  everything  is  so 
fair,  fresh,  and  sweet.  It  has 
been  in  many  parts  of  England  a 
very  bad  season  for  birds,  and  this 
part  of  Wales  had  suffered 
grievously,  in  so  much  that  over 
a  farm  where  last  year  I  shot  twelve 
brace  of  birds  to  my  own  gun 
without  any  difficulty,  I  could  not 


A  Nook  of  North  Wales. 


683 


1894.] 

now,  by  dint  of  hard  walking  and  a  hurry  about  anything.     The  be- 

careful  shooting,  get  more  than  a  haviour  of  the  rooks  is  very  differ- 

third.     Brian  had  the  advantage  ent.     I   have  seen   two    or   three 

of  me  in  one  respect,  for  he  did  thousand  at  a  time  wheeling  round 

not  know  it  was  a  bad  season,  and  and   round   over  the  little   wood, 

was  naturally  buoyed  up  with  the  now  high  in  the  air,  now  almost 

hope  of  finding  a  covey  in  every  touching  the  tree  tops,  now  right 

field  we  entered  ;  and  I  don't  think  overhead,  now  taking  a  circuit  of 

he    felt   the  sickness  of  hope  de-  half  a  mile  or  more,  and  returning 

ferred  at  all.    It  was  different  with  only  to  do  the  same  thing  over  and 

myself  :  for  after  two  or  three  days  over  again  a  dozen  times.     Some- 

I  began  to  see  plainly  that  there  times  they  all  pitch  head  first  into 

was  no  chance  of  making  anything  the   trees,   and  you  imagine  that 

like  a  bag,   and  resolved  to  find  the  ceremony  is  over,   when  in  a 

what  compensation  I  could,  and  I  few  minutes  out  they  all  bounce 

can   always  find  a  great  deal,  in  again  with  a  rush,  and  collecting 

the    wild,     rough     scenery,     the  together  in  the  air  resume   their 

beautiful  air,  the  mellow  sunshine,  rotatory  movements  with  unabated 

in   watching   the   habits  of   birds  energy  and  clamour. 


and  beasts,  and  in  observing  the 
manners      and     sayings     of 
human  race. 


About  this  time,  too,  I  used  to 
the  watch  the  pigs  gathering  together 
in  an  open  space  near  the  sty, 
After  I  came  home  from  shoot-  moving  about  restlessly  with  their 
ing,  I  used  to  delight  in  strolling  noses  in  the  air,  and  apparently 
out  in  the  serene  September  even-  wanting  to  ask  me  what  o'clock 
ing  to  watch  the  turkeys  going  to  it  was.  I  am  very  fond  of  pigs, 
roost  in  the  sycamores,  and  the  though  I  still  adhere  to  the  habit, 
rooks  preparing  for  rest  in  the  contracted  in  early  youth,  of 
little  grove  of  ash  -  trees  beyond  throwing  stones  at  them.  But 
the  pig  -  sty.  Why  both  turkeys  not  at  their  dinner-hour.  No.  I 
and  rooks  proceed  with  so  much  think  of  my  own;  and  am  sure 
deliberation,  and  are  so  long  in  there  must  be  some  secret  sym- 
making  up  their  minds  before  pathy  between  us  which  accounts 
settling  for  the  night,  I  have  never  for  their  confidence  and  famili- 
been  able  to  discover.  I  know  arity.  Presently,  as  it  grows 
that  many  birds  make  what  seems  dusk,  the  white  owls  will  be 
a  very  unnecessary  fuss  about  seen  flitting  about  the  chimney- 
going  to  bed,  none  more  so  than  tops  and  the  adjacent  trees,  sy Ba- 
the rook.  But  there  is  no  fuss  bols,  as  they  always  seem  to  me, 
or  bustle  about  the  turkeys.  One  of  peace,  seclusion,  and  immemo- 
will  sit  upon  a  wall,  staring  rial  repose  and  tranquillity.  And 
straight  up  into  the  tree  where  then,  repeating  to  myself  the  ad- 
he  means  ultimately  to  perch,  for  mirably  chosen  words  of  Gray,  I 
half  an  hour  at  a  time,  solemn,  re-enter  the  house  to  prepare  for 
silent,  and  nearly  motionless,  the  agreeable  repast  which  awaits 
Whether  this  is  done  in  obedience  me  in  the  old  wainscoted  parlour, 
to  any  private  understanding  On  Sunday  I  went  to  the  little 
among  themselves,  which,  like  parish  church,  where  the  service 
Sergeant  Buzf uz,  I  am  not  in  a  was  in  Welsh,  and  where,  to  j  udge 
position  to  explain,  I  can't  say.  from  the  attention  with  which  it 
Possibly  the  turkey,  like  the  Turk,  was  listened  to,  the  sermon  must 
may  consider  it  infra  dig.  to  be  in  have  been  a  very  good  one.  The 


684 


A  Nook  of  North  Wales. 


[Nov. 


Welsh  clergy  now  are  indeed  a 
very  different  class  of  men  from 
what  they  were  fifty  or  sixty  years 
ago.  Many  of  them,  of  course, 
are  not  Oxford  or  Cambridge  men. 
Their  stipends  are  frequently  small, 
and  they  live  in  a  very  plain  way. 
But  all  those  that  I  have  met  have 
been  distinctly  men  of  more  than 
average  ability,  devoted  to  their 
profession,  and  exemplary  in  the 
discharge  of  its  duties. 

I  must  make  some  exception  to 
the  rule  with  which  I  started,  in 
regard  to  the  aspect  of  Dissent  in 
Wales,  though  I  shall  plunge  into 
no  controversy.  The  majority  of 
the  people,  both  farmers  and  la- 
bourers, are  Dissenters;  but  I  never 
could  find  out  that  they  cherished 
any  hostility  to  the  Church's  doc- 
trines. I  used  often  to  be  asked 
into  the  farm-houses  for  lunch,  or 
to  take  a  "  cup  o'  tea  "  in  the  after- 
noon, and  always  found  the  farmers 
very  courteous,  very  easy  to  get 
on  with,  and  very  ready  to  talk. 
Some  of  them  were  educated  and 
intelligent  men,  whose  main  ob- 
jection to  the  Church  was  the  un- 
equal distribution  of  its  revenues. 
They  would  not  have  understood 
Sydney  Smith's  argument  at  all. 
Others  there  were,  and  probably 
these  are  everywhere  the  majority, 
at  least  among  such  as  have  ever 
taken  the  trouble  to  consider  why 
they  are  Dissenters,  with  whom 
the  question  of  Orders  seemed  to 
be  uppermost.  One  old  man,  a 
Calvinistic  Methodist,  amused  me 
rather  by  his  way  of  putting  the 
question.  He  said  the  Dissenters 
were  accused  of  intolerance.  But 
that  was  not  so.  It  was  the 
bigotry  of  the  Church  which  stood 
in  the  way  of  reunion.  "  You  see, 
sir,"  he  said,  "  they  won't  acknow- 
ledge us."  It  did  not  seem  to 
occur  to  him  that  Dissenters,  hav- 
ing repudiated  the  Church  and 
episcopal  orders,  had  begun  the 


quarrel,  and  were  out  of  court  in 
complaining  that  the  Church  still 
insisted  on  them.  His  way  of 
looking  at  the  question  reminded 
me  strongly  of  the  old  poacher, 
who  declared  that  when  he  was 
in  business  he  never  wanted  to 
"run  up  agen  the  keepers,"  if 
they'd  only  leave  him  alone.  So 
the  old  gentleman  aforesaid  would 
have  no  quarrel  with  the  Church, 
if  she  would  only  allow  what  all 
her  formularies  condemn,  and  aban- 
don the  chief  principle  which  it 
is  her  bounden  duty  to  protect. 
If  the  Church  would  deny  the 
Prayer-Book,  and  admit  that  no 
men  who  "profess  and  call  them- 
selves Christians"  can  require  to 
be  "led  into  the  way  of  truth," 
this  excellent  Nonconformist  would 
hold  out  the  right  hand  of  fellow- 
ship to  her.  It  is  the  old  story  of 
the  fox  who  had  lost  his  tail.  In 
the  meantime  I  had  reason  to  be- 
lieve that  a  species  of  practical 
intolerance  existed  among  some 
Welsh  Dissenters,  at  all  events. 
I  am  not,  of  course,  speaking  from 
personal  knowledge ;  but  I  was  as- 
sured that  many  Nonconformists 
refuse  to  allow  their  servants  to  go 
to  church  :  and  that  if  any  of  them 
do  go,  they  are  informed  that  next 
hiring-day  they  will  not  be  re- 
engaged unless  they  discontinue 
the  practice. 

In  North  Wales  generally  the 
labourers  are  boarded  by  the  far- 
mers, and  in  the  neighbourhood  of 
my  little  "nook"  receive  about 
nine  shillings  a-week  besides.  The 
married  men  get  cottages,  con- 
sidered to  represent  a  shilling  a- 
week  more.  As  a  general  rule, 
all  alike  are  allowed  a  piece  of 
ground  on  which  to  plant  a  sack 
of  potatoes,  the  farmer  finding  the 
manure;  and  sometimes  they  are 
allowed  grazing  for  one  sheep  all 
the  year  round.  They  are  appar- 
ently comfortable  and  contented. 


1894.] 


A  Nook  of  North  Wales. 


685 


But  in  many  parts  of  the  world 
the  working  man  has  a  smiling 
face  for  strangers,  which  may  be 
no  index  to  his  real  feelings,  and 
such  may  be  the  case,  for  what  I 
can  tell,  in  North  Wales.  More- 
over, I  have  noticed,  both  in 
Wales  and  England,  that  men  at 
work  in  the  fields  seem  always 
pleased  to  see  a  sportsman,  and 
that  if  you  only  have  a  gun  in 
your  hand  you  are  certain  of 
meeting  with  a  friendly  civility 
which  you  might  not  invariably  ex- 
perience as  an  ordinary  pedes- 
trian. Here,  however,  there  is 
this  to  be  said,  that  the  men 
could  not  well  be  rude  to  an 
Englishman  if  they  wished,  as 
very  few  Welsh  labourers  speak 
English,  and  very  few  English 
visitors  understand  Welsh.  The 
farmers,  it  is  true,  will  tell  you 
that  much  of  this  ignorance  on 
the  part  of  the  peasantry  is  as- 
sumed, and  that  they  not  only 
understand  English  when  it  is 
spoken  to  them,  but  that  some 
among  them,  at  all  events,  especi- 
ally the  boys,  could  speak  it  in 
return  if  they  chose.  My  two 
kind  hostesses  always  maintained 
that  the  boy  I  took  out  shooting 
with  me  was  only  shy,  and  didn't 
like  to  talk  English  before  me. 
This,  I  believe,  was  partly  true  ; 
for  as  he  got  more  used  to  me, 
he  would  occasionally  volunteer  a 
remark  in  English,  as,  for  in- 
stance, "the  pull's  a-shouting" — 
i.e.,  the  bull's  a  -  roaring ;  or 
"you've  broken"  —  i.e.,  torn — 
"your  clothes."  But  sometimes 
to  very  simple  questions,  requir- 
ing only  Yes  or  No,  his  replies, 
like  some  of  those  I  got  from  the 
labourers,  must  have  betokened, 
I  think,  a  genuine  ignorance.  I 
asked  him  once  whether  he  had 
had  his  dinner ;  he  answered  that 
he  didn't  know.  I  asked  a  man 
in  the  fields  if  there  were  any 


birds  on  the  farm.  He  replied, 
"  To  -  morrow."  The  boy  could 
read  English  well  enough ;  and 
by  carrying  pencil  and  paper  with 
me,  and  writing  down  what  I 
wanted  him  to  do,  we  got  on 
nicely.  They  are  taught  to  read 
English  at  school,  but  not  to  speak 
it ;  and  probably  when  addressed 
by  an  Englishman  it  is  the  accent 
and  rapidity  of  utterance  which 
perplexes  them. 

One  very  old  farmer  once  came 
out  of  his  house  to  me  in  the  fields, 
mistaking  me  for  his  landlord.  I 
said  I  was  only  a  friend  of 
that  gentleman ;  and  as  he  was 
very  cordial,  I  shook  hands  with 
him,  and  asked  him  how  he 
was.  He  understood  English  well 
enough ;  but  his  reply  was  partly 
conveyed  by  signs.  He  clasped 
his  hands  across  the  pit  of  his 
stomach,  and,  looking  at  me  earn- 
estly, declared  that  he  was  all 
right  "from  here  up,"  at  the  same 
time  regarding  the  lower  part  of 
his  body  with  a  deep  sigh.  Yery 
amusing  scenes  would  sometimes 
arise  from  the  mutual  misunder- 
standings of  Welsh  and  English. 
I  was  once  out  shooting  with  a 
Welsh  proprietor  when  two  native 
trespassers  were  brought  before 
him.  He  could  speak  no  Welsh, 
and  the  two  lads  only  very  broken 
English.  He  asked  who  they  were, 
who  were  their  parents,  and  so 
forth.  Only  half  catching  the 
meaning  of  something  said  by  one 
of  them,  "What,"  he  exclaimed, 
"do  you  mean  to  say  you  never 
had  a  mother?"  " Ah,"  said  the 
English  keeper,  in  his  eagerness  to 
show  his  scorn  of  Welsh  veracity 
rather  overrunning  the  scent, 
"and  he  wouldn't  tell  you  if  he 
had." 

Primitive  manners  and  customs 
die  hard  in  such  localities.  The 
ancient  ways  of  agriculture  are 
still  cherished.  Close  by  the  house 


686 


A  Nook  of  North  Wales. 


[Nov. 


where  I  was  living  dwelt  two  old 
men,  bachelors  and  brothers,  joint- 
tenants  of  a  small  farm.  Last 
summer,  for  the  first  time,  when 
the  grass  was  ready  to  be  cut, 
there  was  some  talk  of  using  the 
mowing  -  machine.  One  of  the 
two  brothers,  a  Progressive,  was 
strongly  in  favour  of  it,  and  even- 
tually carried  the  day,  whereupon 
the  other  immediately  went  to 
bed,  and  remained  there  till  the 
hay  was  got  in.  Dairy -farming 
and  grazing  are  leading  industries 
in  Anglesey,  and  the  farmers  send 
large  supplies  of  store  cattle  to 
England  —  Leicester,  I  believe, 
being  one  of  their  chief  markets. 
The  farmers  here  take  great  pride 
in  their  dairies,  the  walls  of  which 
on  one  estate  are  often  prettily 
inlaid  with  Minton  tiles,  at  the 
landlord's  expense,  with  illustra- 
tions suggested  by  himself.  Some- 
times a  portrait  of  the  farmer's 
pretty  daughter  who  superintends 
the  dairy  has  the  place  of  honour. 
Agriculturists  have  of  course  been 
hard  hit  here  as  elsewhere ;  but  I 
heard  no  prophecies  of  ruin,  nor 
anything  of  land  going  out  of 
cultivation.  They  probably  made 
money  in  the  dear  years,  on  which 
they  can  now  fall  back.  One 
nice  little  lady  I  know  very  well, 
so  small  and  neat  and  ladylike, 
and  always  so  prettily  dressed, 
who  often  talked  about  the  past. 
She  had  a  grandmother  living, 
when  I  first  went  to  Anglesey, 
who  "had  seen  the  fairies";  but 
the  good  old  dame  had  seen  some- 
thing more  substantial  than  that. 
"When  my  grandmother  first  came 
to  this  farm,"  said  my  informant, 
"wheat  was  six  pounds  ten  a 
quarter,  and  the  men  had  sixpence 
a-day"  (in  addition,  of  course,  to 
their  board  and  lodging).  "  Folk 
could  live  then"  she  naively  added. 
I  assented  to  the  statement,  think- 
ing, however,  at  the  same  time,  as 


I  glanced  at  her  black  silk  dress 
and  handsome  cloth  cloak,  that 
they  could  live  pretty  well  still. 

Among  the  farmers  the  belief  in 
fairies  and  witches  seemed  to  have 
reached  about  the  same  stage  as 
the  Borderer's  belief  in  the  Black 
Dwarf,  so  humorously  described  in 
the  introduction  to  that  novel. 
Behind  their  incredulity,  half  real 
and  half  assumed,  there  lurked  in 
a  corner  of  their  minds  a  suspicion 
that  there  might  be  something  in 
it  after  all.  I  was  told  gravely 
of  a  reputed  witch  who  lived  about 
a  mile  off  in  a  hut  in  a  remote 
glen  —  the  very  spot  for  such  a 
character  —  that  "  she  was  quite 
harmless," — a  piece  of  information 
which  would  have  been  entirely 
superfluous  had  the  speaker  not 
believed  that  there  were  some  who 
were  not  harmless.  My  informant 
on  this  occasion  was  a  man  about 
five-and-thirty,  who  had  been  edu- 
cated in  England,  had  read  *  Pick- 
wick,' and  drank  ale.  If  the 
fairies  have  really  got  King 
Arthur,  Mona  is  the  place,  of 
all  others,  where  we  should  nat- 
urally expect  to  find  them. 

While  I  was  staying  in  my 
farm-house,  indulging  in  all  the 
luxuries  of  solitude,  getting  up 
when  I  liked,  going  to  bed  when 
I  liked,  and  rambling  about  the 
fields  all  day  as  long  as  I  liked, 
I  too  felt  in  a  kind  of  fairy-land, 
or,  rather,  very  like  a  lotos-eater, 
careless  of  mankind,  and  forgetful 
of  all  ties,  duties,  or  obligations. 
I  quitted  that  happy,  peaceful, 
picturesque  retreat  with  infinite 
reluctance,  though  I  exchanged 
it  for  all  the  elegancies  of  a  great 
country-seat  full  of  agreeable  com- 
pany, and  surrounded  by  finer  and 
bolder  scenery  than  any  I  had 
left,  in  the  midst  of  which  it  was 
still  possible  to  make  a  good  bag 
of  partridges  even  in  the  present 
season.  A  favourite  beat  of  mine 


1894.] 


A  Nook  of  North  Wales. 


687 


lies  far  away  on  the  western  ex- 
tremity of  the  island,  where  the 
Irish  Channel  and  the  Carnarvon- 
shire mountains  are  visible  the 
whole  time.  I  have  every  year 
had  one  walk  by  myself  on  this 
beat,  which  takes  a  very  long  day, 
and  is  in  parts  very  rough  walk- 
ing, and  in  average  seasons  I  have 
generally  managed  to  get  from  ten 
to  twelve  brace  on  it.  I  could 
have  done  the  same  this  year ;  but 
I  left  off  shooting  when  I  had 
got  eight  brace,  thinking  that  as 
birds  were  scarce,  I  was  not  ex- 
pected to  kill  many  more.  But  I 
had  many  more  chances. 

The  partridge-shooting  there  is 
very  pretty  sport,  either  with  a 
spaniel  or  a  pointer.  Long  narrow 
fields  of  stubble  and  turnips  run 
up  between  high  "banks,"  as  they 
are  called  here,  being  really  masses 
of  stone  clothed  with  fern,  heather, 
gorse,  and  brambles.  On  ground 
like  this  it  is  easy  to  scatter  birds, 
but  very  difficult  to  mark  them ; 
and  I  wish  for  no  better  sport  than 
hunting  for  a  broken  covey  with 
a  good  dog  among  these  rocks 
and  hollows.  Sometimes,  if  a 
pointer  or  setter,  you  catch  sight 
of  him  on  the  topmost  stone, 
drawn  up  stiff  and  well-defined 
against  the  sky-line,  the  birds  pro- 
bably being  just  underneath  him 
among  the  thick  grass  and  rubbish 
under  the  stone  wall  which  runs 
round  the  base  of  the  rock.  Hav- 
ing climbed  up  to  him,  you  then 
have  to  descend  again  over  the 
slippery  stones,  with  the  great  pro- 
bability that  the  birds  will  rise 
just  as  you  are  poising  yourself  on 
a  loose  fragment.  It  requires  all 
one's  nerve  to  shoot  well  in  such 
circumstances.  Then  at  other 
times  the  keeper  will  summon  you 
rapidly  round  the  corner,  to  find 
Ponto  or  Carlo  curled  round  like 
a  fried  whiting,  with  his  head 
nearly  meeting  his  tail,  in  a  narrow 


place  where  there  is  hardly  room 
for  him  to  stand  at  all.  There  is 
a  brace  of  birds  under  that  black- 
berry bush.  The  keeper  pokes  his 
stick  in  :  out  come  the  birds,  and 
twirl  rapidly  round  the  steep  bank 
to  your  right.  One  is  stopped 
quickly  •  the  other  you  catch  just 
as  he  is  disappearing,  and  are  not 
certain  whether  you  have  killed 
him  or  not  till  Brian,  who  is  told 
off  for  this  particular  duty,  brings 
him  back  in  triumph.  These  are 
moments  which  repay  the  partridge- 
shooter  for  many  long  and  blank 
hours  in  a  bad  season. 

But  a  good  many  birds,  in  twos 
and  threes,  have  gone  towards  the 
bog  which  lies  just  below,  and 
where,  God  willing,  as  the  Baron  of 
Bradwardine  says,  we  may  meet 
with  a  snipe.  Partridges  are  very 
fond  of  the  dry  places  in  these 
bogs,  and  we  get  half-a-dozen 
pretty  shots  in  crossing  it,  besides 
a  snipe  and  a  landrail  j  and  then 
on  to  some  large  turnip-fields  be- 
yond, whence  we  hope  again  to 
drive  birds  into  the  clefts  and 
crags  lying  on  the  other  side  of 
them.  From  eight  to  twelve  brace 
of  birds  killed  after  this  fashion 
are  worth  ten  times  the  number 
bagged  on  ordinary  ground,  whether 
over  dogs  or  not. 

There  is  only  one  drawback  to 
this  sport  in  Anglesey,  and  that  is 
the  number  of  dogs  kept  by  the 
small  farmers.  Every  little  holder, 
with  his  twenty  or  thirty  acres  of 
land,  though  he  owns  neither  sheep 
nor  cow,  thinks  himself  entitled  to 
keep  two,  and  sometimes  three  or 
four,  half -starved  mongrels,  who 
get  their  living  in  the  fields.  I 
was  once  talking  to  the  tenant  of 
the  farm  where  I  was  shooting, 
when  a  big  dog,  not  his  own,  sud- 
denly crossed  the  road  in  front  of 
us,  as  if  he  had  just  come  out  of 
the  turnip -field  I  was  about  to 
enter,  and  went  into  another  which 


688 


A  Nook  of  North  Wales. 


[Nov. 


did  not  belong  to  us.  I  asked  my 
friend  how  he  could  expect  to  have 
any  game  if  loose  dogs  were  allowed 
all  over  the  place  like  that  one? 
The  man  replied,  as  in  excuse  and 
pity  for  the  dog,  "  Well,  sir,  it  is 
bad  j  but  you  see,  poor  thing,  he's 
got  nothing  to  do."  This  was 
capital  —  a  piece  of  unconscious 
testimony  to  the  justice  of  my  com- 
plaint which  was  worth  a  mine  of 
gold.  The  dog  had  nothing  to  do ; 
his  owner  didn't  want  him  :  there- 
fore he  beat  all  the  adjoining  fields 
for  his  amusement,  if  not  for  his 
dinner.  This  is  the  case  with  more 
than  half  the  dogs  in  the  island. 
They  kill  hares  in  the  breeding 
seasons,  when  the  does  fall  an  easy 
prey  to  them.  As  likely  as  not, 
they  kill  young  partridges  when 
they  have  a  chance ;  and  of  course 
in  marauding  over  the  fields  I 
have  described,  they  drive  away 
all  the  coveys.  Personally  I  would 
make  some  sacrifice  for  "  the  poor 
man's  dog,"  but  not  for  the  poor 
man's  pack.  That  is  quite  another 
thing.  It  is  ridiculous  to  say  that 
a  farmer  of  twenty  acres,  with  two 
cows  and  a  goat,  can  require  three 
or  four  dogs,  or  even  one  dog,  for 
his  business.  One  is  quite  enough 


for  a  friend  and  a  companion.  The 
rest  are  kept  for  poaching,  and 
spoiling  sport.  I  have  been  told 
by  many  of  the  large  dairy  farmers 
in  the  island  that  where  herds  of 
cows  are  kept,  dogs  do  more  harm 
than  good.  They  are  of  course 
wanted  for  sheep ;  but  none  of  the 
smaller  occupiers,  who  are  the 
chief  offenders,  have  any  sheep. 
The  dogs,  as  my  friend  said,  have 
nothing  to  do,  and,  being  idle,  get 
into  mischief. 

Alas !  it  is  all  over  now.  I 
have  had  my  outing.  I  looked 
my  last  on  glen  and  mountain, 
brook  and  bog,  wood  and  crag, 
from  the  windows  of  the  Irish 
express,  as  it  rushed  past  them  at 
the  rate  of  sixty  miles  an  hour; 
and  now  the  only  consolation  I 
can  find  is  sitting  in  my  arm-chair 
recalling  all  my  pleasant  experi- 
ences, and  living  that  fortnight 
over  again  in  imagination,  as  I 
commit  my  reminiscences  to  paper. 
I  thank  my  stars  that  I  am  able 
to  do  this.  It  softens  the  pangs  of 
parting,  and  makes  me  even  love 
my  writing-table  for  the  time  being, 
though  regarded  generally  as  a 
hard  taskmaster. 

RUSTICUS  UEBANUS. 


1894. 


Some  Thoughts  on  the  Woman  Question. 


689 


SOME     THOUGHTS     ON    THE     WOMAN     QUESTION.1 
BY   THE    AUTHOR    OP    c  MONA    MACLEAN.' 


"  IT  is  a  curious  thing,"  said  a 
friend  to  me  some  time  ago,  "  how 
in  all  our  talk  of  the  evolution  of 
the  individual,  we  fail  to  recognise 
the  evolution  of  the  medium." 

I  have  often  been  struck  since 
with  the  truth  of  the  remark.  In 
studying  a  man's  life,  even  when 
we  give  ourselves  credit  for  taking 
into  account  the  action  of  environ- 
ment, we  look  upon  that  environ- 
ment as  a  fixed  quantity,  and 
fail  to  recognise  that  it  is  develop- 
ing just  as  surely  as  the  man  him- 
self is.  Nay,  it  even  happens  re- 
peatedly that  we  give  the  individ- 
ual credit  for  the  natural  evolu- 
tion of  the  medium  in  which  he 
lives,  and,  when  his  surroundings 
change,  we  say,  "  How  much  he 
has  accomplished  ! " 

This  truth  seems  to  me  particu- 
larly applicable  to  the  present 
state  of  the  woman  question. 
When  we  reflect  upon  the  great 
improvement  in  the  position  of 
women  which  the  last  thirty  years 
have  seen,  we  are  perhaps  too 
much  inclined  to  regard  it  simply 
as  a  proof  of  the  development  of 
the  sex,  whereas  surely,  in  itself, 
this  improvement  is  not  so  much 
an  evolution  as  a  change  of  sur- 
roundings. Our  girls  do  good 
work  at  school  and  college,  they 
win  high  honours  in  the  field  of 
open  competition  with  men,  their 
names  are  in  every  mouth ;  but 
did  not  their  mothers  and  grand- 
mothers do  good  work  before 
them  1  Woman's  work  is  more 
varied  than  it  was  of  old, — more 
exciting,  more  amusing,  more  con- 
genial; but,  regarded  simply  as 
work,  is  it  any  better?  Surely 


the  girls  who  distinguish  them- 
selves at  Girton  are,  as  a  rule,  pre- 
cisely the  girls  who  would  have 
distinguished  themselves  at  home. 
It  is  not  only  their  work  that  has 
improved ;  it  is  not  necessarily  they 
that  have  improved ;  it  is  mainly 
the  medium  in  which  they  live. 

I  do  not  wish  for  one  moment 
to  detract  from  the  honour  due  to 
those  who  were  pioneers  in  the 
cause  of  women,  who,  in  the  teeth 
of  real  persecution,  asserted  their 
right  to  be  complete  human  beings, 
to  "  make  good  the  faculties  of 
themselves "  in  obedience  to  the 
light  that  was  in  them.  They 
carried  their  lives  in  their  hands, 
so  to  speak ;  they  risked  much  and 
lost  much.  The  girls  who  now 
follow  in  their  steps  risk  nothing. 
They  are  sure  of  applause,  sure  of 
popularity,  sure  of  a  welcome.  Let 
us  give  them  the  credit  they  de- 
serve; but  do  they  deserve  credit 
for  the  fact  that  their  choice  of  oc- 
cupation is  wider,  their  life  more 
varied,  their  work  [more  congenial, 
and  therefore  easier  1 

In  an  able  article  on  the  wo- 
man question  which  appeared  some 
time  ago,  the  writer  stated  his 
conviction  that  the  freedom  which 
women  at  present  enjoy  is  simply 
an  instance  of  altruism  on  the 
part  of  the  men.  When  the  pen- 
dulum swings  back,  and  altruism 
goes  out  of  fashion,  it  was  argued, 
women  will  once  more  betake 
themselves  meekly  to  their  distaffs. 

The  writer,  no  doubt,  overstated 
his  case,  ignoring  the  fact  that 
sluice-gates  are  more  easily  opened 
than  shut,  and  forgetting  that, 
on  any  computation,  the  relation 


1  This  paper  was  originally  addressed  to  a  guild  of  medical  women  and  others. 


690 


Some  Thoughts  on  the  Woman  Question. 


[Nov. 


which  women  bear  to  men  is  not 
precisely  that  which  domestic  ani- 
mals bear  to  both.  At  our  worst 
and  weakest  we  have  at  least  the 
power  of  making  ourselves  un- 
pleasant ;  and  history  tells  us  that 
long  before  the  days  of  "altru- 
ism "  and  "  woman's  rights  "  secret 
poisons  were  in  demand  for  unruly 
husbands.  Still  it  is  good  for  us 
to  hear  the  other  side,  and  few 
thoughtful  women  will  *be  inclined 
to  underrate  the  part  which  men 
have  played  in  bringing  about 
the  so-called  "emancipation"  of 
women.  It  is  probably  true  that 
at  the  present  moment  the  whole 
aspect  of  the  woman  question 
is  a  proof  rather  of  the  evolution 
of  the  men  than  of  the  women  in  a 
community;  for,  when  all  is  said, 
we  are  bound,  as  women,  to  re- 
member that  the  ultimate  physical 
power  lies  with  the  other  sex.  I 
know  it  is  the  custom  at  present 
to  ignore  this  truth  ;  but  I  can  see 
no  reason  for  ignoring  a  fact,  the 
existence  of  which  lies  at  the  root 
of  the  chivalry  of  men,  just  as  its 
recognition  lies  at  the  root  of  all 
we  call  womanliness  in  women. 
If  it  is  essential  to  a  lofty  and 
ideal  relation  of  the  sexes  that  the 
man  shall  lay  down  his  physical 
power,  it  is  surely  equally  essential 
for  the  woman  to  recognise  the 
fact  that  he  has  laid  it  down. 
Only  on  this  understanding  does  it 
seem  to  me  possible  for  women  to 
share  men's  work  without-  sacri- 
ficing all  that  makes  womanhood — 
as  distinct  from  mere  humanity — 
worth  having. 

But  while  the  medium  develops, 
it  is  of  course  impossible  for  the 
individual  to  stand  still.  When 
the  habitat  of  a  plant  is  changed, 
one  of  two  things  happens  :  either 
it  dwindles  and  dies ;  or  it  accom- 
modates itself — perhaps  with  con- 
siderable modification  of  structure 
and  function  —  to  the  new  con- 


ditions ;  and  when  we  deliberately 
move  a  plant  into  new  surround- 
ings, we  do  our  best  to  minimise 
the  change  as  much  as  possible 
until  the  plant  has  had  a  chance  so 
to  adapt  itself. 

The  comparison  is  obvious.  A 
change  of  almost  unexampled  ra- 
pidity has  taken  place  in  the 
position  of  woman,  and  she  is 
adapting  herself  to  it,  not  without 
the  manifestation  of  many  crudi- 
ties and  misconceptions  which,  de- 
servedly perhaps,  bring  a  sneer  to 
the  lips  of  the  unscientific.  The 
wise  man  recognises  that  it  would 
be  against  all  reason  and  experi- 
ence to  expect  such  an  adapta- 
tion to  take  place  in  a  moment. 
Enough,  he  says,  if  it  is  coming 
about  at  all,  however  slowly. 

And  yet  one  cannot  but  feel 
with  some  regret  that  what  we 
women  are  mainly  striving  after 
at  the  present  moment  is  not 
more  perfect  adaptation,  but  only 
a  greater  change  of  surroundings. 
Most  loyally,  as  I  have  said,  do 
I  give  honour  to  those  whose  self- 
denying  exertions  have  enlarged 
the  sphere  and  the  horizon  of  their 
sex, — who  have  revolutionised  the 
medium  in  which,  as  women,  we 
live;  but  are  we  not  nowadays 
following  their  lead  too  much  au 
pied  de  la  lettre  ?  Is  our  good  and 
laudable  demand  for  more  free- 
dom, further  privileges,  not  be- 
coming to  some  extent  a  matter 
of  habit?  Are  men  not  partly 
justified  in  maintaining  that  we 
"  grow  hot  over  wrongs  that  have 
long  ceased  to  be,  and  argue  as 
we  might  have  done  before  there 
was  any  Married  Woman's  Pro- 
perty Act,  or  other  amelioration  "  ? 
No  doubt  there  are  still  some 
things  which  we  are  entitled  to 
ask  from  the  other  sex;  but  is  it 
not  amazing  that  we  have  got  so 
much  ?  Surely  now  what  we  want 
most  is  to  rise  to  the  full  stature  of 


1894.] 


Some  Thoughts  on  the  Woman  Question. 


691 


the  advantages  we  possess ;  surely 
now  the  duty  next  to  hand  for  most 
of  us  is  not  to  develop  the  medium, 
but  to  develop  the  woman. 

A  tangled  skein  is  this  woman 
question  of  ours  in  the  present 
day !  —  a  skein  that  well  may 
baffle  the  wisest,  the  most  liberal, 
the  most  patient.  What  is  needed 
to  set  it  right  ?  One  thing  only — 
good  and  capable  women.  Let 
them  call  themselves  what  they 
will — doctors,  or  lawyers,  or  dress- 
makers, or  cooks  ;  only  let  us  have 
them.  Surely  the  two  doctrines 
which  most  need  to  be  preached 
to  the  girls  of  the  present  day 
are  these :  1.  Choose  work  that 
is  beneath  you  rather  than  work 
that  is  above  you.  2.  Take  the 
work  that  comes  to  hand,  and  do 
it  with  all  your  might.  It  is  not 
by  opening  up  new  spheres  that 
you  will  best  improve  the  position 
of  women ;  it  is  by  filling  ably  the 
sphere  that  you  are  in. 

Trite  doctrines,  no  doubt,  old 
as  humanity  itself  ;  and  doctrines, 
moreover,  which  have  often  been 
used  to  bolster  up  abuses.  Thirty — 
twenty — years  ago,  I  believe,  many 
women  were  justified  in  ignoring 
such  aphorisms.  "There  is  another 
side  to  the  question,"  they  said ; 
and  by  word  and  deed  they  stated 
the  other  side  nobly.  But  now 
that  it  has  been  stated,  now  that  the 
point  has  been  gained,  may  we  not 
thankfully  go  back  to  the  simpler, 
more  lovable  virtues  ?  As  regards 
the  medium,  there  is  no  longer  any 
need  to  fear.  The  ball  has  been  set 
rolling,  and  will  run  of  itself.  Let 
us  leave  for  a  time  the  education, 
the  development,  the  purification, 
of  men,  and  try  to  develop  ourselves. 

But  here  I  shall  be  told  that  no 
doctrine  is  so  dangerous  to  preach 
as  the  duty  of  self-development,  in 
that  it  leads  to  priggishness  and 
self-consciousness,  and  all  the  faults 
we  are  most  anxious  to  avoid. 


In  self-defence,  let  me  fall  back 
on  my  well-worn  metaphor.  If 
we  want  a  plant  to  attain  the 
highest  perfection  of  which  it  is 
capable,  we  do  not  twist  and  bend 
its  stem  and  snip  its  petals  in 
accordance  with  our  artificial  idea 
of  beauty  :  we  plant  it  out  in  suit- 
able air,  at  a  suitable  temperature, 
among  suitable  surroundings,  and 
leave  it  to  Mother  Nature.  The 
metaphor  plays  me  false  in  one 
respect,  for  the  plant  has  but  one 
medium — its  world  of  physical  sur- 
roundings. When,  on  the  other 
hand,  we  are  considering  human 
beings,  a  new  dimension  is  intro- 
duced ;  for  the  human  being  has 
two  mediums :  first,  that  of  which 
I  have  spoken  already — the  me- 
dium of  outward  things,  which  is 
ours  by  necessity  ;  and,  second,  the 
medium  of  thought  and  imagina- 
tion, which  is  ours  by  choice. 
Who  does  not  know  that  the 
second  has  a  more  real  influence  in 
developing  character  than  the  first? 

So,  surely,  the  one  obvious  un- 
questionable duty  in  this  puzzling 
woman  question  is  to  place  the 
growing  thing,  the  girls — ay,  and 
the  women,  if  these  be  fortunate 
enough  to  be  growing  still !  —  in 
an  atmosphere  of  pure  arid  noble 
thoughts,  of  lofty  aspirations,  and 
then  to  leave  the  result  in  the  hands 
of  Eternal  Law.  Can  any  one  fear 
that  this  will  tend  to  produce  prig- 
gishness and  self-consciousness  1 

But  however  mistakenly  we  may 
strive  after  self -development,  the 
struggle  is  yet  to  my  mind  a  more 
edifying  one  than  our  present 
blatantly  expressed  desire  to  in- 
fluence the  other  sex.  Let  us  da 
it  by  all  means-— nay,  we  cannot 
help  doing  it,  for  good  or  evil,  any 
more  than  they  can  help  influenc- 
ing us — but  why  counteract  our 
own  efforts  by  assuring  them  in 
every  periodical  that  we  mean  to 
do  it?  It  is  not  the  friend  who 


Some  Thoughts  on  the  Woman  Question. 


692 


says,  "I  intend  by  precept  and 
example  to  exercise  a  salutary  in- 
fluence over  you,"  who  awakens  in 
us  a  feeling  of  meekness  and  doci- 
lity; and  I  cannot  see  why  we 
should  expect  the  same  principle 
of  action  to  be  more  efficacious 
when  the  two  sexes  instead  of  two 
individuals  are  concerned.  If  it 
be  true  that,  "beyond  and  above 
all  that  we  may  do,  is  that  which 
we  may  be"  it  is  yet  more  true 
that  what  we  may  say  —  and  par- 
ticularly what  we  may  say  about 
ourselves  —  is  of  no  consequence  at 
all.  One  is  tempted  sometimes  to 
think  that  we  women  are  forget- 
ting altogether  the  words  of  our 
poetess  and  priestess  :  — 

"A  woman  cannot   do   the  thing  she 

ought, 
Which  means  whatever  perfect  thing 

sne  can, 

In  life,  in  art,  in  science,  but  she  fears 
To  let  the  perfect  action  take  her  part, 
And  rest  there  :  she  must  prove  what 

she  can  do 
Before  she  does  it,    prate  of  woman's 

rights, 
Of  woman's  mission,  woman's  function, 

till 
The  men  (who  are  prating  too  on  their 

side)  cry, 
'  A  woman's  function  plainly  is  ...  to 

talk.'" 

And  again  :  — 

"  We  want  more  quiet  in  our  works, 
More  knowledge  of  the  bounds  in 

which  we  work  ; 
More  knowledge  that  each   individual 

man 

Remains  an  Adam  to  the  general  race, 
Constrained  to  see  like  Adam,  that  he 

keep 

His  personal  state's  condition  honestly, 
Or  vain  all  thoughts  of  his  to  help  the 

world, 
Which  still  must  be  developed  from  its 

one, 
If  bettered  in  its  many." 

And  now  some  young  scientist 
will  remind  me  ruthlessly  that  by 
using  the  word  "  evolution  "  I  have 


[Nov. 


cut  the  ground  from  under  my  own 
feet  —  that  "trying  to  develop 
ourselves"  is  like  trying  to  push 
on  the  locomotive  that  carries  us, 
that  Nature  makes  no  leaps,  and 
that,  slowly  as  women  have  de- 
veloped throughout  the  ages,  so 
slowly  will  they  develop  to  the 
end. 

I  am  not  learned  enough  to 
refute  the  objection,  but  I  should 
like  to  quote  in  answer  to  it  a  few 
words  which  a  great  man  spoke  to 
me  some  years  ago. 

"  On  this  subject  of  evolution," 
he  said,  "three  things  seem  clear 
to  me : — 

"1.  That,  as  a  rule,  Nature  has 
worked  slowly  and  imperceptibly, 
leaving  behind  traces  of  the  links 
in  the  chain. 

"  2.  That  there  have  been  from 
time  to  time  periods  of  exceptional 
activity,  when  development  has 
advanced  with  a  rush,  and  some 
of  the  links  have  been  lost. 

"  3.  That  in  one  such  period 
of  exceptional  activity  man  was 
evolved." 

Is  it  too  sanguine  to  hope  that 
the  present  age,  with  all  its  fever- 
ish unrest,  its  mistaken  ambitions, 
its  false  estimate  of  intrinsic 
values,  may  yet  prove  to  be  an 
age  of  exceptional  activity  for 
woman,  not  only  as  regards  the 
comparatively  accidental  charac- 
teristics of  the  medium  in  which 
she  lives,  but  also  as  regards  the 
essential  characteristics  of  herself  1 
Do  we  need  a  new  revelation  to 
tell  us  that  such  a  hope  can  never 
be  realised  through  our  scrutinis- 
ing the  faults  of  others,  and  loudly 
proclaiming  ourselves  the  con- 
science of  the  race  ?  The  woman 
question,  with  all  its  special  fea- 
tures, is  subject  to  general,  eternal 
laws ;  and  the  experience  of  the 
ages  has  surely  taught  us  that  he 
who  would  save  his  fellows  can 
only  do  it  by  consecrating  himself. 


1894.] 


An  Eton  Master. 


693 


AN     ETON     MASTER. 


AT  no  time  of  our  national  life, 
perhaps,  has  there  been  so  much 
importance  attached  to  the  public 
schools,    which    are    one    of    the 
greatest  and  most    interesting  of 
English   national   institutions,    as 
now.      It   may  be  that  the   con- 
tinual increase  of  the  class  which 
desires  its  boys  to  be  educated  in 
that  way,  either  because  of  its  ex- 
cellence or  because  of  the  pride  of 
bringing  up  their  boys  along  with 
the  offspring  of  the  highest  classes, 
which  is  so  strong  among  the  new 
rich,   rouses   ever   a   greater   and 
greater  curiosity  on  this  point ;  or 
it  may  be — a  motive  which  tells 
very   strongly   with   the    popular 
writer,    if    not    always    with   the 
reader  —  because    they   are   very 
easy  to  write  about :  but  certainly 
the  amount  of  articles  and  even 
books  written  about  Eton,  Harrow, 
and  the  other   great   schools  has 
been   very  great  during  the  last 
twenty  years.     Curious  delusions 
exist  about  them,  in  the  face  of  all 
this  information ;  but  yet  there  is 
no  reason  why  we  should  not  all 
know  familiarly  enough  the  course 
of   life   which   is   led   there,    and 
which  commends  itself  so  warmly 
to  all  who  have  been  trained  in  it. 
In  the  first  place,  they  are  pecu- 
liarly,    even    narrowly,     English. 
Scotland  knows  them  (except  by 
recent    importation)    as    little   as 
France  or  Germany.      Their  rule 
and  principles  are  unknown  else- 
where.    That  the  sons  of  gentle- 
men should  be  trained  by  gentle- 
men more  or  less  of  their  own  con- 
dition, understanding  their  special 
needs  and  duties,  and  that  from 
their    childhood    they   should   be 
treated   like   gentlemen,  —  taught 
first  of  all  the  laws  of  honour,  and 
that  a  man,  even  if  only  ten  years 


old,  must  be  true  to  his  word,  and 
governed  by  the  unwritten  laws 
of  that  noblest  aristocracy,  the  re- 
gulations which  noblesse  oblige  and 
gentle  blood  demands,  —  is  their 
special  pride  and  distinction.  It 
would  be  presumption  and  folly  to 
pretend  that  the  love  of  truth  is 
not  inculcated  in  others — in  all  the 
schools  of  England, — but  in  those 
in  a  special  form  and  noble  way. 
The  teaching  itself  is  a  different 
matter.  We  do  not  pretend  to 
distinguish  what  shades  of  better 
and  worse  may  be  in  this  respect 
between  one  or  another.  There  is 
a  general  level  nowadays  which 
none  can  fall  beneath,  and  some 
rise  above.  And  Eton  especially 
has  its  ranks  of  masters  always 
replenished  with  the  best  of  the 
young  scholars  from  the  Univer- 
sities year  by  year  —  than  which 
we  suppose  no  more  successful 
way  of  procuring  the  best  teaching 
is  known.  But  the  thing  which 
distinguishes  it  and  its  fellows 
from  all  public  schools  elsewhere 
— from  the  Lycees  of  France  and 
the  Gymnasiums  of  Germany,  and 
from  all  other  High  Schools  and 
Academies  known — is  that  teach- 
ers and  taught  are  of  the  same 
class,  and  understand  each  other 
to  the  tips  of  their  fingers. 

The  pedagogue  has  never  been 
very  highly  thought  of,  though 
everybody  allows  theoretically  the 
importance  of  his  office.  The 
schoolmaster  in  general  has  sprung 
mostly  from  among  the  poor,  as 
the  clergy  have  done  also  in  every 
case  but  that  of  England,  and,  per- 
haps, only  not  in  England  for  the 
last  hundred  years.  This  is  to  say 
nothing  against  the  schoolmaster  j 
but  it  has  put  him  in  many  cases 
in  a  very  false  position.  He  has 


694 


An  Eton  Master. 


[Nov. 


had  to  train  the  minds  and  thoughts 
of  many  youths  who  looked  down 
upon  him  as  much  as,  or  more  than, 
they  looked  up  to  him,  with  ex- 
cuses for  his  deficiencies  even  when 
with  admiration  for  his  learning. 
He  was  an  inferior  in  the  homes 
of  his  pupils — except  when  he  was 
an  equal  feeling  himself  superior 
to  the  native  class  from  which  he 
sprang — out  of  it  everywhere,  and 
neither  in  one  place  or  the  other 
properly  acclimatised. 

But  this  feeling  does  not  exist 
in  the  great  English  public  schools. 
The  masters  are  almost  entirely  if 
not  of  the  same  rank  as  their  pupils 
(for  there  are  no  dukes  among  them 
that  we  are  aware  of),  yet  of  the 
same  class  according  to  modern 
fashions  —  trained  in  the  same 
habits,  with  the  same  manners, 
the  same  standard  of  social  vir- 
tues, in  all  essential  points  the 
same  mode  of  life.  An  English 
duke  can  be  no  more  than  a  gen- 
tleman, be  he  ever  so  great.  And 
that  his  son's  tutor  should  neither 
be  the  son  of  a  peasant  on  his 
estate,  nor  of  a  tradesman  whom 
he  patronises,  nor  a  meek  priest, 
or  even  an  imperious  priest,  re- 
garded only  for  his  office,  excused 
or  smiled  at  in  other  matters — but 
a  gentleman  trained  more  or  less 
like  himself,  more,  not  less,  fa- 
voured than  himself  in  preliminary 
education,  is  an  advantage  which 
it  is  difficult  to  exaggerate.  The 
tradition  of  gentle  birth  and  train- 
ing is  not  of  universal  efficacy. 
Some  boors  and  brutes  come  from 
the  oldest  blood,  some  of  the 
noblest  specimens  of  humanity 
from  the  lower.  But  when  we 
consider  the  race  we  must  take 
the  average,  the  general  level  of 
humanity.  And  there  is  no  doubt 
that  on  these  this  tradition  tells. 
It  is  of  infinite  consequence,  at 
least  in  its  effect  upon  the  youth 


of  the  country ;  and  a  great  deal 
of  the  true  distinction  of  English 
gentlemen  has  no  doubt  come  from 
the  fact  that  they  are  taught  and 
trained  by  men  born  in  the  same 
atmosphere,  contemplating  the 
same  aims,  and  bound  by  the 
same  inner  code  of  laws  and 
manners  as  themselves.  There  is 
no  doubt  that  the  growing  ac- 
quaintance with  this  fundamental 
difference  has  had  a  great  effect. 
There  are  many  in  whom  the 
name  of  Eton  rouses  old  preju- 
dices and  prepossessions  —  many 
who  believe  quite  erroneously  that 
the  carelessness  of  old  has  sur- 
vived there  against  all  the  quick- 
ening of  the  new — as  there  are 
also  many  to  whom  it  is  the  sym- 
bol of  all  that  is  noblest  in  the 
training  of  young  life,  and  all 
that  is  most  happy  and  blessed  in 
schoolboy  days.  We  will  neither 
combat  the  one  nor  add,  as  there 
are  so  many  to  do,  to  the  ap- 
plauses of  the  other.  To  ourselves 
Eton  means  a  series  of  golden 
years,  the  best  in  life.  God  bless 
the  old  School ! — the  happy  law, 
the  youthful  honour,  the  sound 
public  sense,  the  grace  of  boy- 
ish courtesy,  that  are  its  very 
breath  and  being.  The  theme  is 
too  tender  and  too  dear  to  many 
of  us  to  bear  dwelling  upon.  We 
believe  that,  with  all  the  changes 
which  the  new  views  of  the  time 
in  respect  to  education  demand, 
and  which  have  been  rigorously 
complied  with,  not  to  the  approval 
of  all  who  love  Eton,  its  essential 
character  remains  what  it  always 
was. 

An  Eton  master,  or  assistant- 
master,  as  all  are  called  except  the 
Head,  had  for  a  long  time  a 
special  place  to  himself  in  the 
world.  The  very  fact,  perhaps, 
that  Eton  was  not  in  the  first  of 
the  educational  struggle  and  move- 


1894.] 


An  Eton  Master. 


695 


ment,  preserved  to  it  the  class  of 
the  urbane  and  accomplished  man 
of  the  world,  often  an  excellent 
scholar,  almost  always  a  man 
known  for  his  own  character  and 
individuality,  never  a  mere  peda- 
gogue. In  these  days  the  young, 
keen  University  element  was  not 
conspicuous,  or  else  it  was  so 
tempered  by  its  Etonianism  that 
it  produced  little  or  no  change 
in  the  character  of  the  group  of 
men  who  knew  everybody,  saw 
everything  in  their  own  country, 
and  had  their  full  share  of 
political  and  social  life,  in  ad- 
dition to  their  work,  which  has 
always  that  great  attraction  and 
advantage,  a  large  and  legitimate 
portion  of  holiday  attached  to  it. 
These  men  preserved  the  tradi- 
tional character  of  the  School  better 
than  the  cleverest  of  teaching 
machines  could  have  done.  Their 
classics  were  always  good,  their 
sense  and  feeling  still  better,  and 
there  was  a  breadth  of  life  in  them 
which  counteracted  perhaps  (what 
would  now  be  called)  the  narrow- 
ness of  their  stalwart  tenets  of 
Church  and  King.  In  those  days 
mature  manhood,  experience,  and 
knowledge  of  life  were  held  of 
the  highest  importance  in  the 
training  of  men. 

The  master  whom  Eton  has 
lately  lost,  and  whose  memorial 
it  is  our  desire,  with  what  force 
we  can,  to  set  up  in  these  pages, 
Edward  Hale,  was  in  character 
and  nature  one  of  the  elder 
group,  while  in  sentiment  and 
feeling  he  belonged  entirely  to 
the  younger  world.  He  came 
to  Eton,  one  of  the  first  who 
were  not  Eton  bred,  in  1850,  in 
a  day  when  we  all  thought  our- 
selves at  the  head  of  a  noble  revolt 
against  the  errors  of  the  past,  just 
as  our  successors  do  now.  He  was 
only  twenty-two,  fresh  from  Cam- 

VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCXLIX. 


bridge,  an  Emmanuel  man,  full  of 
Maurice  and  Kingsley  and  Christ- 
ian Socialism,  and  the  determina- 
tion to  make  this  world  a  better 
world.  We  do  not  know  if  it  is 
partiality  —  no  doubt  there  was 
much  that  was  conventional  and 
stilted  in  that  movement,  as  in  all 
movements  —  but  it  seems  to  us 
there  was  more  generosity,  more 
breadth  and  nobleness  of  aim,  in  it 
than  in  much  that  has  succeeded, 
— less  of  the  school,  much  more  of 
the  largeness  and  atmosphere  of 
humanity.  For  one  thing,  it  was 
warmly  Christian,  which  is  the 
great  thing  of  all.  It  aimed  at 
making  Christian  men,  not  prigs 
or  doctrinaires.  Mr  Hale  was  all 
new,  all  fresh,  and  a  little  heter- 
odox in  the  old-fashioned  world 
of  Eton  :  a  Liberal  in  his  political 
opinions,  and  not  even  a  classicist, 
though  that  was  still  the  way  of  sal- 
vation. The  mathematical  branch 
had  just  been  instituted  in  the 
school,  under  the  headship  of  the 
Rev.  Stephen  Hawtrey,  a  most  well- 
known  Eton  character  and  patri- 
arch, and  Mr  Hale's  appointment 
was  that  of  a  mathematical  master. 
But  notwithstanding  these  diver- 
gencies from  the  old  type,  and  the 
novelty  and  freshness  of  him  alto- 
gether, he  yet  belonged  more  dis- 
tinctly to  that  type  than  to  that  of 
the  schoolmaster  of  to-day.  He 
was  a  man  of  the  world,  full  of 
interest  in  everything.  Eton  was 
the  centre  of  the  world  to  him,  as 
it  ought  to  have  been ;  but  it  was 
not  the  whole  world.  He  lived  not 
in  his  study  or  pupil-room  alone, 
but  in  a  larger  atmosphere  which 
embraced  them. 

The  new  has  many  differences 
from  the  old.  We  have  lived  to 
see  a  great  quickening  of  public 
interest  in  Education  so-called,  or 
at  least  in  schooling  and  the  arts 
of  communicating  instruction :  and 
2z 


696 


An  Eton  Master 


[Nov. 


all  the  methods  are  to  be  seen  at 
Eton  as  in  other  places.  There 
are  masters  whose  delight  it  is 
to  cultivate,  almost  as  if  in  a 
hot-house,  with  sedulous  observa- 
tion, intercourse,  and  influence,  the 
characters,  as  they  think,  of  the 
boys  under  them,  uniting  a  kind 
of  maternal,  half  -  feminine  inti- 
macy and  tenderness  to  the  ruder 
bonds;  and  there  are  some  to  whom 
the  other  form  of  life,  as  prized 
and  followed  at  the  present  day, 
the  athletic  side,  is  everything, 
pursued  and  maintained  not  only 
for  the  honour  of  the  School  (so 
esteemed),  and  the  successes  that 
count  so  much  in  the  present  phase 
of  English  life,  but  because  they 
honestly  believe,  and  with  reason, 
that  these  manly  sports  force  out 
much  worse  things  from  the  minds 
of  the  uiiintellectual,  and  that  the 
grossest  temptations  of  youth  are 
blunted  to  those  who  know  by  ex- 
perience that  the  body  must  be 
kept  in  subjection  even  for  the 
sake  of  pleasure.  Both  these  types 
flourish  amid  a  small  community 
of  men  entirely  absorbed  in  the 
training  of  boys,  and  taking  but  a 
modified  interest  in  anything  save 
that  all-important  nurture  of  youth. 
The  new  University  man,  of 
course,  abounds  also,  who  has  not 
yet  had  sufficient  knowledge  of 
life  to  be  himself  aware  what  his 
higher  faculties  or  duties  are,  and 
who  is  only  a  schoolboy  of  a  larger 
growth,  thinking  chiefly  how  to 
encourage  other  schoolboys  to  gain 
the  prizes  he  has  himself  so  lately 
won.  Perhaps  the  influences  of 
such  a  place,  the  pressure  of  the 
young  life,  all  so  undeveloped,  so 
full  of  possibilities,  has  an  effect 
in  limiting  the  growth  of  the  men, 
almost  all  young,  who  are  its  guides 
and  leaders,  keeping  up  an  atmos- 
phere of  artificial  youthfulness, 
and  diminishing  everything  that 


does  not  tell  more  or  less  upon  the 
progress  and  instruction  of  the 
boys. 

In  such  a  sphere  it  is  impossible 
to  overestimate  the  importance  of 
a  man  who  has  altogether  out- 
grown this  youthful  phase,  which  is 
in  its  nature  entirely  modern,  and 
proceeds  from  the  over-importance 
which  every  influence  around  us 
helps  to  give  to  mere  teaching, 
or  we  may  even  go  further,  and 
say  mere  training, — the  conscious 
influence  put  forth  by  one  human 
creature  upon  another.  It  is  the 
fashion  of  the  time  to  think  that 
everything  is  in  that.  But  it  is 
not  the  old  tradition  of  the  Eng- 
lish school,  nor  is  it,  we  think,  the 
highest  inspiration.  After  all,  to 
be  brought  up  by  and  among  men 
is  the  best — men  full  in  all  the  in- 
terests of  the  world,  not  either 
cloistered  or  confined  within  schol- 
astic limits.  It  was  Mr  Hale's 
great  distinction  that  he  was  this. 
He  was  the  genial  father  of  Eng- 
lish life,  not  so  overwhelmingly 
devoted  to  his  children  as  to  cut 
off  his  own  individuality,  not  femi- 
nine in  any  absorption  of  sym- 
pathy :  but  all  the  more  a  tower  of 
strength  on  that  account,  an  inde- 
pendent mind,  ready  to  bring  its 
native  powers  and  long  experience 
to  every  problem,  clearing  away 
all  that  was  unimportant,  cutting 
to  the  root  of  the  matter,  with 
eyes  always  sympathetic  but  never 
sentimental,  dispersing  the  unreal, 
helping  the  true.  He  was  not  an 
athlete,  though  he  loved  his  boys 
to  win  a  race  and  bring  the  glories 
of  another  cup  to  the  house.  He 
was  not  in  any  exclusive  way  a 
scholar,  though  ready  to  rejoice  and 
triumph  in  every  literary  success. 
He  was  a  man,  an  Englishman, 
entering  into  every  sphere  of  life, 
eager  in  politics,  full  of  books,  read- 
ing everything,  as  far  as  was  pos- 


1894.] 


An  Eton  Master. 


697 


sible  seeing  everything,  taking  his 
part  wherever  he  was.  His  smile, 
his  ready  joke,  the  kindness  that 
seemed  to  ray  out  from  him  like 
an  atmosphere,  pervaded  the  whole 
school.  Old  Hale,  Badger  Hale! 
The  merry  nickname,  in  itself 
almost  always  a  sign  of  kind- 
ness, always  evoked  an  answer- 
ing glow  of  pleasure  and  kind- 
ness in  old  boys  and  new  boys 
alike,  amid  all  the  wonderful  sub- 
divisions of  that  youthful  crowd. 
There  were  many  masters  of  whom 
the  boys  stood  in  more  awe.  There 
were  many  whose  attainments  were 
greater  in  the  strait  limits  of  pro- 
fessional life  :  there  was  none  who 
was  more,  scarcely  any  who  was 
so  much,  a  man  in  the  midst  of 
those  overwhelming  influences  of 
youth.  Through  all  these  he  pre- 
served always  the  large  and  natural 
proportions  of  manhood,  unexag- 
gerated,  unspecialised.  He  loved 
London  and  his  club,  and  the  mur- 
mur of  all  that  was  going  on  :  it 
troubled  him  if  there  was  a  new 
book  talked  of  which  he  had  not  at 
least  dipped  into :  he  even  read 
the  serials  as  they  ran,  and  kept 
himself  going  with  half-a-dozen 
stories.  And  he  knew  everybody 
about  a  world  which  was  always 
cheerful  in  his  eyes,  of  which  he 
always  hoped  and  thought  the 
best.  From  Bond  Street  or  the 
Park  to  the  familiar  High  Street 
of  Eton  he  could  not  walk  a  dozen 
steps  without  encountering  a  friend; 
at  every  railway  station,  whenever 
he  took  a  journey,  he  met  some- 
body he  knew.  He  was  every- 
body's trustee,  adviser,  helper,  the 
guardian  of  the  poor,  both  for- 
mally— for  he  held  that  office  in  his 
parish — and  unofficially,  to  every 
one  who  called  upon  his  aid.  He 
was  one  of  the  local  political  leaders 
on  Mr  Gladstone's  side,  until  that 
statesman  entered  upon  the  erratic 


career  which  ended  his  political 
life,  when  Mr  Hale  became  a  steady 
and  useful  Liberal  Unionist.  With 
all  these  charges,  and  many  more, 
upon  his  head,  his  fall  was  like 
that  of  a  great  tower  in  the  little 
place  where  he  had  been  a  shadow 
from  the  storm  to  many  for  forty 
years.  There  is  a  new  opening  of 
sky  behind  every  such  great  re- 
moval, but  the  light  is  chill  and 
terrible  to  mortal  eyes. 

Mr  Hale's  sphere  in  the  School 
was  that  of  science,  which  he  loved. 
For  a  long  time  he  had  been  chiefly 
concerned  with  the  Army  Class, 
which  was  specially  congenial  to 
him,  for  he  came  of  a  race  of 
soldiers  and  sailors,  and  all  his 
traditions  were  of  that  strenuous 
and  militant  life,  while  at  the 
same  time  the  association  with 
those  young  men,  about  to  be 
scattered  to  every  corner  of  the 
globe  in  the  service  of  their 
country,  added  to  the  breadth  of 
his  sympathies  with  every  spot  of 
ground  on  which  Englishmen  lived 
and  died.  He  had  one  of  the 
largest  houses  in  Eton,  always 
overflowing  with  boys,  always  well 
to  the  front  on  field  and  river,  and 
warmly  attached  to  the  genial, 
humorous  house-master,  the  twin- 
kle in  whose  eye  made  many  a 
small  heart  rise  with  a  conscious- 
ness of  punishment  averted.  The 
name  of  Badger  Hale,  by  which 
he  was  everywhere  known,  arose 
from  the  fact  that  he  was  very  grey, 
almost  white,  quite  early  in  life,  and 
presented  the  curious  sight  of  an 
almost  white  head  and  black  beard. 
The  nickname  remained  when 
the  beard  had  also  become  grey. 
An  impudent  little  person  in  his 
division  asked  him  once,  while  the 
form  listened  with  tremulous  de- 
light, "Is  it  true,  sir,  that  badgers 
flourish  in "  we  do  not  remem- 
ber what  degree  of  cold  or  warmth. 


698 


An  Eton  Master. 


[Nov. 


"Come  to  me  at  one,  my  boy, 
and  we'll  talk  it  over,"  said  with 
a  twinkle  the  genial  master.  Com- 
ing at  one  means  many  dreadful 
things  to  Eton  ears :  it  meant 
nothing  in  this  but  a  tug  at  the 
boy's  ear,  and  a  word  of  humorous 
advice.  In  India,  in  Australia, 
in  Africa,  in  every  corner  of  the 
world,  men  meeting  in  all  manner 
of  wild  or  dangerous  places  will 
have  told  stories  to  each  other 
within  the  last  three  months,  with 
a  smile  on  the  lip  but  water  in  the 
eyes,  of  Badger  Hale. 

We  have  said  he  had  been  a 
Christian  Socialist  in  his  early 
days,  and  a  volunteer  in  the 
Working  Men's  Colleges  and  night- 
schools  which  that  movement 
brought  forth.  He  had  also  a 
place  in  the  very  different  circle 
surrounding  the  poet  -  painter 
Rossetti,  and  was  among  those  who 
read  in  MS.  the  poems  which 
were  buried  in  the  grave  of  the 
poet's  wife,  although  they  came  to 
light  again  in  after-years.  Thus 
his  acquaintance  embraced  the 
innermost  walks  of  literature  as 
well  as  the  more  thickly  trodden 
paths  of  life,  and  it  did  not  fail 
among  later  writers,  with  whom  he 
had  many  friendships.  The  last 
public  place  in  which  he  appeared 
was  Lord's  cricket-ground,  at  the 
Eton  and  Harrow  match,  which, 
as  everybody  will  remember,  was 
played,  and  drawn,  in  the  most 
unfavourable  weather.  He  had 
probably  not  missed  that  function 
for  all  his  forty  years  at  Eton 
above  once  or  twice.  It  had  been 
damp  and  dreary,  and  it  was  re- 
membered that  he  was  not  so  lively 
as  usual  on  the  way  home.  It  was 
appropriate  that  this  should  have 
been  the  very  last  scene  in  which 
he  was  seen  of  men  :  for  the  charm 
of  that  meeting  is  that  it  brings 
together  old  Etonians  from  all 


quarters  to  compare  the  feats  of 
the  old  with  the  youthful  prowess 
of  the  new.  Mr  Hale  never  rose 
again  from  the  bed  to  which  he 
went  tired  on  the  damp  evening 
of  that  disappointing  day.  For  a 
time  nothing  was  feared,  though 
he  had  in  previous  years  experi- 
enced several  serious  attacks  of 
similar  illness,  and  his  doctors 
knew  there  was  a  weak  spot  in 
him.  All  seemed  to  go  well,  how- 
ever, for  several  days,  and  his  re- 
covery was  confidently  expected, 
when  suddenly  this  weak  point 
was  touched,  and  no  further  hope 
remained.  He  lived  for  some 
thirty -six  hours  after,  in  great 
self-possession  and  peace,  receiv- 
ing the  holy  communion  with  his 
family,  and  leaving  with  them 
every  tender  word  and  farewell 
that  could  soften  their  lot.  One 
of  his  last  acts  was  to  put  together 
the  hands  of  an  affianced  pair,  over 
whom  a  few  days  later  he  was 
to  have  pronounced  the  marriage 
blessing  :  by  no  ritual,  with  no 
nuptial  pomp,  could  that  blessing 
have  been  more  solemnly  or  touch- 
ingly  bestowed.  The  great  boys' 
house,  with  all  its  commotion  of 
young  life,  will  soon  change  hands, 
and  another  and  younger  man  step 
into  the  vacant  place.  It  is  one  of 
the  special  pangs  of  such  a  position 
that  the  home  of  many  years  must 
necessarily  be  closed  upon  the  wife 
who  has  ruled  it,  and  who  now  sits 
there  alone,  in  a  noble  serenity  and 
patience,  waiting  for  the  moment 
when  the  ever-open  hospitable  doors 
must  be  shut  upon  her,  and  upon 
the  children  born  within  them. 

The  loss  of  such  men,  however, 
let  us  remember,  can  never  be 
made  up  for  by  any  sharpening 
of  mere  teaching,  by  any  quicken- 
ing of  modern  lessons,  or  devices 
of  the  School  Board,  polished  up 
for  the  use  of  a  higher  class.  We 


1894.] 


An  Eton  Master. 


699 


cannot  make  schoolmasters  like  Mr 
Hale ;  but  he  would  not  probably 
have  satisfied  the  School  Board.  It 
ought  at  least  to  be  fully  acknow- 
ledged, and  especially  among  the 
class  themselves,  that  the  breadth 
and  manly  naturalness  of  his  kind 
do  more  for  a  future  generation 
than  all  the  improved  machinery 
of  teaching.  The  young  ones  push 
out  the  elder  men,  by  nature  in 
many  cases,  but  sometimes  with 
the  vehemence  of  a  principle,  which 
thinks  of  nothing  but  the  addi- 
tional keenness  as  an  implement 
of  the  recently  sharpened  and 
polished  weapon.  It  is  a  great 
mistake  in  many  ways,  in  none 
more  than  in  the  world  of  educa- 
tion. The  experience,  the  com- 
posure even,  if  we  may  so  call  it, 
the  comparative  indifference  of 


age,  is  a  great  addition,  and  one 
that  can  least  of  all  be  dispensed 
with  in  a  public  school.  The  ma- 
tured mind,  which  is  beyond  the 
starts  of  panic,  and  knows  by  ex- 
perience how  much  more  to  be 
trusted  is  the  even  tenor  of  the 
general  than  the  occasional  dis- 
turbances of  boyish  extravagance, 
or  the  bad  moments  that  some- 
times occur  in  the  management 
of  a  surging,  seething  world  of 
humanity,  even  in  childhood — is 
an  almost  fatal  loss  to  any  kind  of 
government.  A  public  school,  above 
all,  wants  that  steadying  element. 
No  young  man  could  have  held  the 
place  which  Mr  Hale  did  in  Eton  : 
nothing  but  a  great  tree,  nourished 
by  many  snows  and  summers,  can 
give  such  strong  support  or  cast 
such  grateful  shade. 


700 


Denny's  Daughter. 


[Nov. 


DENNY'S  DAUGHTEE. 


DENNY'S  daughter  stood  a  minute  in  the  field  I  was  to  pass, 
All  as  quiet  as  her  shadow  laid  before  along  the  grass; 
In  her  hand  a  switch  o'  hazel  from  the  nut-tree's  crooked  root, — 
An'  I  mind  the  crown  o'  clover  crumpled  under  one  bare  foot. 

For  the  look  of  her, 
The  look  of  her 

Comes  back  on  me  to-day; — 

With  the  eyes  of  her, 
The  eyes  of  her 

That  took  me  on  the  way. 

Though  I  seen  poor  Denny's  daughter  white  an'  stiff  upon  her  bed, 
Yet  I  be  to  think  there's  sunlight  fallin'  somewhere  on  her  head. 
She'll  be  singin'  Ave  Mary  where  the  flowers  never  wilt, — 
She,  the  girl  my  own  hands  covered  with  the  narrow  daisy-quilt  .  .   . 

For  the  love  of  her, 
The  love  of  her 

That  would  not  be  my  wife; — 

An'  the  loss  of  her, 
The  loss  of  her 

Has  left  me  lone  for  life. 

MOIRA  O'NEILL. 


1894.] 


Club- Homes  for  Unmarried  Working  Men. 


701 


CLUB-HOMES    FOR    UNMARRIED    WORKING   MEN. 


MALTHUS  says,  that  to  prevent 
men  roaming  about  like  savages  in 
search  of  food  they  must  have  a 
home.  Had  he  been  a  prophet^ 
we  might  have  concluded  he  was 
alluding  to  the  rise  of  tramps, 
whose  numbers  are  largely  aug- 
mented by  recruits  from  the  ranks 
of  those  who  start  in  life  without 
attachment  to  any  kind  of  prop- 
erty. Such  is  the  case  of  the 
unskilled  labourer.  At  eighteen 
or  nineteen  his  career  begins  as  a 
lodger  for  a  time  at  home,  and 
then  very  soon  at  a  private  lodg- 
ing-house. He  receives,  if  lucky, 
twenty  shillings  a- week,  and,  being 
thoroughly  uncomfortable  while 
paying  highly,  presently  gets  mar- 
ried as  the  best  means  he  knows  of 
bettering  his  lot.  Thus  he  mort- 
gages the  future.  Too  often  from 
hopelessness,  he  afterwards  runs 
on  a  path  of  drink  to  the  work- 
house. The  custom  among  the 
working  classes  of  entering  early 
into  marriage,  lies  at  the  bottom 
of  our  social  problems.  Without 
taking  it  fully  into  consideration, 
it  is  useless  to  present  schemes  of 
improvement,  as  every  plan  would 
be  upset  sooner  or  later  by  the 
growth  of  population.  This  is  one 
of  the  chief  reasons  which  produces 
the  contempt  of  well-informed 
minds  for  socialistic  remedies  that 
neglect  the  kernel  of  the  subject, 
while  offering  the  absurd  nonsense 
of  flabby  sentimentalism  as  an 
offset  to  the  want  of  actual  ex- 
perience. There  is  full  sympathy 
with  the  wage-earner.  There  is 
every  desire  to  do  whatever  may 
be  right.  The  hardship  is  to 
arrive  at  the  right.  Of  course, 
there  can  only  be  steady  opposition 
to  the  "cranks"  who  cheerfully 
favour  a  general  bouleversement 


for  party  purposes,  who  lightly 
ignore  the  gradual  evolution  of  the 
principles  of  Political  Economy. 

From  Adam  Smith  to  our  own 
period,  early  marriage  and  its  con- 
comitant, population,  have  been 
discussed  by  economists.  Ricardo, 
for  example,  rightly  insists  that 
the  wellbeing  of  the  poor  cannot 
be  secured  without  some  effort  on 
their  part,  or  on  the  part  of  the 
legislature,  to  render  less  frequent 
early  marriages.  Prudence  in 
marriage,  says  Malthus,  is  the 
only  means  by  which  workmen 
can  acquire  a  greater  share  of  pro- 
duction. Mr  Henry  Sidgwick,  in 
his  '  Elements  of  Politics,'  fore- 
sees a  time  when  Governments 
must  face  the  question  of  popu- 
lation, unless  people  do  it  for 
themselves.  There  are  naturally 
prudent  men  in  the  unskilled 
grade  as  in  every  grade  of  society. 
We  are  not,  however,  treating  of 
them,  or  of  persons  who  reach  the 
workhouse  through  misfortune. 
Our  remarks  are  solely  confined 
to  those  whose  characters  set  up 
the  "social  question."  To  skilled 
workers  what  we  have  to  write 
hardly  applies,  because  British 
artisans  are  capable  fellows.  They 
belong  to  a  club,  perchance  to  a 
union,  subscribe  to  a  friendly 
society,  and  are  anxious  about 
their  future.  Therefore  we  are 
not  here  concerned  with  their 
troubles,  which  are  produced  by 
the  false  system  of  economics 
governing  the  world.  They  can 
take  care  of  themselves.  If  they 
marry  too  young,  as  unfortunate- 
ly is  the  case,  they  have,  at  all 
events,  good  and  to  some  extent 
progressive  wages.  The  solution 
of  the  social  difficulty  is  thus  con- 
nected, so  far  as  material  pros- 


702 


Club-Homes  for  Unmarried  Working  Men. 


[Nov. 


perity  per  se  requires  attention, 
with  the  proper  development  of 
the  heady,  unskilled  worker.  ^  To 
any  one  who  knows  the  individual 
it  must  be  manifest  that,  as  he 
sinks  beneath  the  struggle  of  life, 
his  interest  in  the  management  of 
the  workhouse  grows.  He  is  dim- 
ly conscious  that  his  destiny  leads 
towards  its  direction,  and  he  will 
tell  one  that  as  the  rates  are  paid 
by  him  through  the  landlord,  he  is 
entitled  to  relief  when  necessary 
without  loss  of  character,  or  to  re- 
ceive support  at  fair  wages  during 
times  of  depression.  He  hankers 
unaware  after  pre- Reform  poor-law 
days.  He  is  seemingly  unconscious 
that  his  own  conduct  makes  his 
destiny,  and  that  in  the  interest  of 
everybody  he  cannot,  as  a  rule,  be 
treated  leniently  by  philanthropic 
people.  Were  the  idea  once  ac- 
knowledged that  the  poor-rate  was 
levied  for  the  free  use  of  the  poor, 
every  idler  would  speedily  be 
fattening  at  the  public  expense, 
and  the  springs  of  industry  be 
weighted  with  an  intolerable  bur- 
den. Happily  there  are  men  now- 
adays, impressing  on  the  reckless, 
independence  and  restraint,  who 
are  unlikely  to  feel  disturbed 
while  pursuing  justice  and  truth 
by  sentimental  appeals.  Our  aim, 
accordingly,  has  for  its  object  to 
point  out  that  if  the  ordinary, 
youthful,  unskilled  labourer  is  to 
be  saved  from  making  the  descensus 
Averni,  the  descent  must  be  stopped 
where  it  begins.  Now,  it  begins 
with  the  marriage  of  the  youth  at 
a  ridiculous  age.  No  sooner  does 
he  pull  himself  into  manhood  than 
he  forthwith  reproduces  his  species, 
mainly  because  of  the  economic 
conditions  which  surround  his  life. 
A  change  in  these  is  therefore 
indispensable.  How  is  it  to  be 
made? 

At  the  present  time,  the  fashion- 
able means  for  delaying  marriage 


is  to  encourage  athleticism.  This 
is  all  right  in  its  way.  It  agrees 
with  the  Aristotelian  maxim,  that 
"  the  body  should  be  trained  for 
the  sake  of  the  soul,"  and  is  taken 
advantage  of  by  the  ultra,  physi- 
cally fit.  When,  however,  an  aver- 
age man  has  gone  through  a  day's 
toil,  he  has  had  his  athletics.  He 
is  too  tired,  generally,  to  willingly 
undertake  any  more.  No  doubt 
the  presentation  of  cricketing  or 
boating  flannels,  the  promise  of 
prizes,  or  an  occasional  supper  by 
outsiders  of  other  classes,  are  grand 
inducements  towards  making  a 
start.  The  spurt,  unluckily,  does 
not  always  so  easily  continue  when 
regular  exertion  is  demanded,  nor 
will  labourers  be  "bossed"  by  men 
of  their  own  class  as  captains  of 
teams.  Indeed,  it  is  a  serious 
drawback  to  democratic  club  ar- 
rangements that  seniors  will  ex- 
ercise no  authority  over  juniors, 
who  may  make  the  club  thoroughly 
uncomfortable  with  little  display 
of  dissatisfaction  beyond  the  silent 
withdrawal  of  older  members.  The 
athletic  movement  is  the  result  of 
the  establishment  of  clubs,  such  as 
past  and  present  Etonians  have 
built  in  East  London  at  Hackney 
Wick,  where  working  men  can 
spend  their  evenings ;  and,  al- 
though it  may  be  probably  too 
early  in  the  history  of  East  End 
club-life  to  draw  any  satisfactory 
conclusions,  still,  in  the  opinion  of 
some  who  know,  it  is  thought  that 
the  average  age  at  which  marriage 
occurs  has  been  pushed  back  a 
little,  owing  to  the  improved  sur- 
roundings occasioned  by  the  clubs. 
How  far  the  unskilled  labourer  is 
affected,  it  would  not  be  easy  to  say. 
From  our  own  small  experience, 
we  should  infer  that  athleticism 
and  clubs  have  been  chiefly  service- 
able to  the  better  grades  of  work- 
ing men  in  the  various  depart- 
ments of  manual  labour,  and,  as 


1894.] 


Club-Homes  for  Unmarried  Working  Men. 


703 


already  remarked,  it  is  not  from 
those  that  the  pressure  of  social 
difficulties  comes. 

The  great  desideratum,  brought 
out  by  the  contemplation  of  the 
lives  of  English  unskilled  workers, 
is  a  method  which  will  awaken 
their  interest.  Culture  seems  of 
slight  use.  Few  of  them  "  care  a 
dump  "  for  anything  of  that  sort. 
A  certain  sporting  paper,  issued 
weekly  at  five  shillings  a  copy,  is 
an  object  exciting  eager  attention, 
when  it  can  be  seen  gratuitously, 
by  those  who  know  of  its  existence. 
Culture  cannot  quicken  a  mind 
averse  to  intellectual  tastes,  nor  is 
it  of  universal  value  to  members 
of  the  more  prosperous  classes. 
Why,  then,  should  it  be  expected 
to  perform  miracles  in  the  lower 
ranks'?  A  will  to  get  on  in  the 
world  is  of  the  first  consequence. 
Culture  may  happily  follow  as  the 
effect  of  improvement,  otherwise, 
if  thrust  down  from  above,  the 
nation  must  become,  as  we  have 
heard  it  expressed,  "  a  collection  of 
prigs."  When  the  Angels  carried 
off  Faust's  immortal  part,  when 
they  rescued  him  from  the  devil, 
he  had  given  evidence  of  true  cul- 
ture ;  he  possessed  an  appreciative, 
constructive  mind,  and  was  not  an 
a  priori  dealer  in  cant.  He  had, 
besides,  an  unswerving  will,  which 
rendered  his  salvation  a  com- 
paratively light  task.  What  is 
the  treatment  to  apply  to  those 
who  principally  care  for  boxing, 
the  buffoonery  of  music-halls,  for 
love-songs  not  necessarily  having 
a  double  entendre,  for  card-playing, 
gambling,  and  talk  which  is  solely 
chaff?  It  will  be  seen  that  a 
likeness  exists  in  the  society  of 
the  "proletariat,"  as  socialists 
say,  to  a  section  of  that  of  the 
upper  ten  thousand.  The  differ- 
ence is  merely  one  of  degree,  of 
comfort  and  wealth.  We  believe 
the  answer  to  the  question  is,  that 


the  same  relative  amount  of  com- 
fort should  be  present  in  the  lower 
as  in  the  higher  class.  Human 
nature  has  similar  developments 
all  the  way  through.  If,  then, 
the  working  man  marries  to  better 
himself,  as  he  undeniably  does, 
if  the  marriage  of  a  well-to-do 
bachelor  does  not  usually  occur 
till  thirty,  the  inference  may  be 
legitimately  drawn  that,  were  the 
conditions  of  the  humbler  ranks 
identical  pro  rata  with  the  richer 
ranks,  a  very  great,  a  very  healthy 
change  would  speedily  take  place 
in  the  position  of  small,  limited 
wage  -  earners.  The  well-known 
opinion  of  Ricardo  still  holds 
good,  that  "  the  friends  of  human- 
ity cannot  but  wish  that  in  all 
countries  the  labouring  classes 
should  have  a  taste  for  comforts 
and  enjoyments,  and  that  they 
should  be  stimulated  by  all  legal 
means  in  their  exertions  to  pro- 
cure them."  The  sensible  man 
of  assured  prospects  marries  when 
he  can  afford  it.  He  is  not  driven 
into  matrimony  simply  to  better 
his  lot.  He  expects,  of  course,  to 
do  that.  His  standard  of  living 
has  always  been  high,  and  he 
takes  every  precaution  to  ensure 
it  through  the  future.  The  poor 
man  marries  in  self-defence.  He 
likewise  expects,  as  has  been  said, 
to  improve  his  position.  They 
are  both  respectively,  after  their 
own  manner,  on  the  same  journey. 
What  has  altered  the  outlook  of 
the  one  will  alter  that  of  the  other. 
What  has  delayed  the  marriage  of 
the  former  will  delay  that  of  the 
latter.  No  one  can  deny  that 
the  altering,  the  delaying  agent, 
was  the  gradual  acquisition  of 
"  comfort." 

With  the  object  of  enabling 
labourers  to  arrive  at  this,  let  us 
see  how  it  can  be  managed.  The 
title  of  our  paper  shows  the  line 
which,  from  observation  of  labour 


704 


Club-Homes  for  Unmarried  Working  Men. 


[Nov. 


difficulties,  appears  to  ourselves  to 
be  the  one  to  follow  out.  Lodg- 
ing -homes  that  are  not  lodging- 
houses  are  wanted  in  England. 
They  do  not  exist.  When  a  young 
fellow  leaves  his  father's  roof- 
perhaps  "  ceiling  "  would  be  the 
proper  expression — could  he  find  a 
satisfactory  abode,  better,  certain- 
ly, than  the  one  he  has  quitted, 
the  marriage  -  day  would  be  con- 
siderably delayed  if  the  argument 
which  has  been  set  forth  is  correct. 
Almost  the  last  action  of  Lord 
Shaftesbury  was  the  evidence  he 
gave  in  1885  before  the  Royal 
Commission  on  the  Housing  of  the 
Working  Classes.1  He  said  that 
if  his  Lodging-House  Act  of  1851, 
amended  in  1866,  was  put  into 
force,  "  it  would  meet  almost 
everything  that  was  required  at 
the  present  moment."  The  pur- 
pose of  the  law  was  to  establish 
"  dwellings  for  the  working  classes 
by  giving  power  to  localities  to 
adopt  the  Act,  and  to  borrow  on 
the  security  of  the  rates."  The 
Roy  al  Comm  issioners  recomm  ended 
a  trial  with  certain  amendments, 
for  the  Bill,  though  mutilated  in 
the  House  of  Commons,  as  we 
learn  from  Lord  Shaftesbury's 
'Life,'  created  so  much  interest 
at  the  time  that  it  excited  the 
attention  of  Europe  and  America ; 
while,  on  account  of  the  "indis- 
position of  vestries  to  avail  them- 
selves of  their  powers,"  the  Act 
could  scarcely  be  said  to  have 
ever  been  tried.  Indeed,  it  was 
not  tried  till  nineteen  years  had 
passed.  Here  was  a  grand  social 
scheme  propounded  by  a  Peer, 
and  made  legal  long  before  muni- 
cipal socialism  was  heard  of.  It 
is  only  an  extra  proof  that  Col- 
lectivism lacks  the  stimulant  to 
progress  which  the  individual 


It  is  he  who  first 
makes  the  move,  as  he  alone  is 
interested.  Lord  Shaftesbury's 
opinion  regarding  such  a  matter, 
founded  upon  the  most  unique  ex- 
perience, is  still  the  highest  we 
have ;  and  with  his  usual  acumen, 
with  the  knowledge  of  a  long  life 
devoted  to  the  public  welfare,  he 
placed  his  finger  immediately  on 
one  of  the  weak  spots  of  our  social 
organisation.  The  recent  develop- 
ment of  the  "  lodging  -  house 
system,"  to  which  we  are  about  to 
refer,  demonstrates  at  once  that 
Lord  Shaftesbury  was  half  a  cen- 
tury ahead  of  his  age.  It  can 
be  scarcely  too  much  to  say  that 
were  he  alive  to-day,  the  further 
unrolling  of  social  needs  would 
have  proved  to  him  the  necessity 
for  club -homes,  where  men  may 
sleep,  eat,  and  live  without  un- 
necessary restrictions,  as  a  corol- 
lary from  his  idea  of  lodging-houses. 
Love  of  country  is  not  simply  an 
affair  of  birth,  as  Dr  MacGregor  2 
imagines.  Good  feeding  and  hous- 
ing give  it  a  very  secure  base. 
There  is  a  meaning  in  the  parody 
on  Sir  Walter  Scott's  lines  which 
we  once  heard  in  Canada  : — 

"  Breathes  there  a  man  with   soul   so 

dead, 

Who  never  to  himself  hath  said 
This  is  the  land  where  I  am  fed." 

In  Scotland,  the  first  large, 
actual  expansion  of  what  was 
really  in  conception  Lord  Shaftes- 
bury's plan,  took  place.  It  was 
perhaps  well  suited  to  a  country 
where  the  single -room  arrange- 
ment seems  widely  adopted. 
Through  the  courtesy  of  Sir  James 
D.  Marwick,  Town  Clerk  of  Glas- 
gow, one  of  the  ablest  and  most 
practical  men  north  of  the  Tweed, 
we  have  received  the  report  issued 


1  See  First  Report. 

2  Speech  in  the  House  of  Commons,  18th  April  1894. 


The  «  Standard.' 


1894.] 


Club-Homes  for  Unmarried  Working  Men. 


705 


in  1890,  "by  a  deputation  from  the 
city  and  county  of  Newcastle-on- 
Tyne  on  their  visit  to  Glasgow  as 
to  Housing  of  the  Poor  there." 
Under  the  "Glasgow  Improve- 
ments Act,  1866,"  the  year  al- 
ready referred  to  when  Lord 
Shaftesbury's  Act  was  amended, 
the  Corporation  "obtained  powers 
to  deal  with  a  vast  amount  of  old 
and  insanitary  property,"  In 
1870  they  carried  out  the  "im- 
portant experiment"  of  opening 
lodging  -  houses  in  Drygate  and 
East  Russell  Street,  the  latter  for 
women.  Gradually  the  number 
of  houses  was  increased,  until  now 
there  are  seven  establishments  all 
earning  fair  dividends,  ranging 
from  £3,  18s.  llfd.  to  £6,  11s.  2d. 
per  cent  on  the  original  cost  of 
£85,000  for  the  whole  seven. 
This  is  a  net  return,  somewhat 
lowered  by  that  from  the  women's 
house,  which  is  the  first  sum.  The 
lowest  men's  house  dividend  starts 
at  £4,  14s.  Ofd.  These  returns 
are  for  the  year  ending  31st  May 
1890.  The  enterprise  has  been 
thoroughly  successful  according  to 
the  Report.  In  the  two  lodging- 
houses  inspected  by  the  deputa- 
tion, there  was  a 
"large  dining-hall  and  abundant  ac- 
commodation in  the  adjoining  kitchen 
for  cooking.  Each  inmate  is  allowed 
the  use  of  cooking  utensils,  and  cooks 
his  own  food.  Each  man  can  have 
the  use  of  a  small  locker  by  deposit- 
ing sixpence  for  the  key.  In  the 
Clyde  Street  house  there  is  accommo- 
dation for  350  lodgers,  who,  in  addi- 
tion to  comfortable,  clean  beds,  have 
the  use  of  the  recreation  and  dining 
halls,  the  kitchen-range  and  cooking 
utensils,  and  facilities  for  washing 
their  clothes,  &c.,  all  for  the  charge 
of  3|d.  per  night,  or,  if  they  wish  to 
indulge  in  the  luxury  of  an  extra 
sheet  on  their  bed,  the  charge  is  4^d. 


per  night.  Each  lodger  has  his  own 
enclosed  sleeping  closet,  in  which  is 
fitted  up  a  spring  wire  mattress, 
covered  with  a  hair  mattress.  The 
lodgers  are  not  allowed  to  go  up  into 
the  sleeping-rooms  during  the  day- 
time." 

Every  establishment  has  a  well- 
stocked  shop.  It  is  "carried  on 
by  the  superintendent,  who  takes 
the  profits  as  part  of  his  remunera- 
tion. All  articles  of  food  are  sold 
in  these  shops  at  ordinary  trade 
prices ;  but  lodgers  may,  if  they 
prefer  it,  purchase  their  food  out- 
side." The  taking  of  a  bath  has 
to  be  paid  for.1  A  man  can  live 
in  the  houses  "at  a  cost  of  4s. 
to  5s.  a -week."  In  the  women's 
house  "  the  charge  per  night  is  3d., 
and  IJd.  for  a  child  per  night 
occupying  the  same  bed  as  the 
mother."  The  expenditure  on  one 
of  these  houses,  that  in  Portugal 
Street,  during  the  year  already 
mentioned,  was  .£1252,  14s.  10d., 
including  £159,  18s.  4d.  as  an 
allowance  for  depreciation  on  cap- 
ital account,  and  also  a  trifling 
payment  for  the  "  harmoniumist's 
salary."  We  have  added  up  the 
number  of  the  nightly  lodgers 
who  for  the  same  year  passed 
through  the  seven  houses.  There 
were  667,364  men  and  34,286 
women.2  It  is  a  significant  fact 
that  the  great  majority  of  men 
took  the  single-sheet  price  of  3Jd. 
per  night.  Bearing  the  above  in 
mind,  few  will  deny — considering 
the  quantity  of  solid  comfort  these 
poor  people  received,  the  enor- 
mous quantity  of  misery  rightly 
relieved  —  that  the  man  who  by 
his  remarkable  foresight  in  1851 
secured  the  passing  of  an  Act  for 
the  creation  of  such  establish- 
ments was,  when  we  think  of  the 


1  In  similar  London  lodgings  the  price  is  one  penny  with  hot  water  and  a 
towel.     The  bather  provides  his  own  soap. 

2  Of  course,  many  must  have  been  regular  lodgers  night  after  night. 


Club-Homes  for  Unmarried  Working  Men. 


706 

countless  other  social  reforms  he 
effected,  the  greatest  genius  of 
this  century.  That  man  was  Lord 
Shaftesbury.  Nobody  approaches 
him  in  the  good  he  achieved. 
How  many  candidly  remember  to- 
day to  give  him  his  legitimate 
due1?  His  animating  principles, 
as  the  world  knows,  were  love  to 
God  and  men.  He  talked  no 
socialistic  buncombe,  but  every 
Socialist  is  for  ever  his  debtor, 
especially  when  working  for  the 
destruction  of  slums. 

The  Glasgow  Corporation  were 
nine  years  in  erecting  their  seven 
houses,    and    nothing   noteworthy 
seems  to  have  occurred  anywhere 
till  May    1887,  when  Lord  Rad- 
stock,  with  several  friends,  opened 
a   lodging-house   for   500  men  at 
39  Commercial  Street,  Whitechapel 
Road,    London.       The    house    is 
situated    in    the    centre     of    the 
locality   rendered   infamously   no- 
torious by  the  series  of  murders 
of     unfortunate      women     which 
shocked  the  nation  some  time  ago. 
In  1890  Lord  Radstock  acquired 
a    second    lodging-house     at    77 
Whitechapel     Road.       They     are 
both  highly  appreciated  in  these 
neighbourhoods,    are   called  "The 
Victoria   Homes,"  and  are  under 
the  excellent   superintendence   of 
Mr  A.  Wilke.     This  year  a  third 
has  been  added  to  the  list,  that  in 
the  old  Brunswick  Hotel  at  Black- 
wall,    formerly   the    "  Emigrants' 
Home," — Lord  Radstock's  earliest 
scheme,  dating  from  1883,  but  no 
longer    required   to    shelter    emi- 
grants.    It  is  started  as  a  "club 
and   home,"  to   quote   the  leaflet 
announcing  its  opening,   for  "re- 
spectable men  who  wish  to  avoid 
the  common  lodging-house  or  the 
discomfort  and  expense  of  private 
lodgings."    Thus  it  marks  a  begin- 
ning  of   the   plan    we    are    here 
advocating.     The  "hotel  contains 


[Nov. 


a  large  number  of  separate,  single- 
bedded,  small  rooms,  public  dining- 
hall,    separate    dining   and    coffee 
rooms,  smoking-room,  lavatories, 
baths,     and     hairdressing  -  room." 
The  prices  per  night  are  4d.,  6d., 
and  9d.,  according  to  accommoda- 
tion.    Beds  or  rooms  may  be  hired 
also  per  week    at  the  same  rate. 
A  dinner  of  three  courses  can  be 
had  for  6d.  in  the  general  dining- 
hall,     in     private     dining  -  rooms 
for  9d.     The   "Victoria  Homes" 
have  been  of  enormous  advantage 
to   East  -  Enders.     Beds   are    4d., 
cubicles    6d.    per  night.     Lodgers 
who  take  "their  beds  six  nights 
running,  from   Monday  to  Satur- 
day, are  entitled  to  a  free  night  on 
Sunday."     Lord  Radstock,  by  his 
example,  was  the  man  who  forced 
London    lodging-house-keepers   to 
put  their  places  on  an  improved 
footing,   though  nothing  short  of 
their  systematic  night  inspection, 
to  quote  from  a  pamphlet  entitled 
'  Outcast  London,'  will  keep  alive 
Lord  Shaftesbury's  second  Act,  to 
secure  proper  sanitary  conditions. 
Dickens  called  this  Act,  as  told  in 
Lord  Shaftesbury's  'Life,'  the  best 
law  "  that  was  ever  passed  by  an 
English  Parliament."    The  descrip- 
tion of  the  Glasgow  houses  likewise 
describes  the  "Victoria  Homes." 
They  are  financially  successful.  The 
money  earned  goes  to  the  extension 
of  the  work,  and  not  into  the  pockets 
of  the  owners.     At  an  expense  of 
8d.  a-day,  in  addition  to  the  bed- 
charge,  a  man  can  live  fairly.     At 
Is.  he  would  get  all  he  desired. 
The   houses   have   fire -escapes,   a 
piano,  harmonium,   barber's  shop, 
savings-bank,    and   labour   office. 
Servants  make  up  the  beds,  and 
keep  everything  clean.     In  special 
halls,  on  various  evenings,  religious 
addresses,  concerts,  or  temperance 
lectures  are  given.    At  other  times 
smoking  is  permitted,  games  are 


1894.] 


Club- Homes  for  Unmarried  Working  Men. 


707 


played,  or  newspapers  read.  No 
interference  of  any  kind  with  the 
opinions  or  habits  of  lodgers  occurs, 
beyond  the  necessary  rules  regulat- 
ing such  establishments.  Neither 
gambling  nor  cards  is  allowed. 
To  the  meetings,  men  come  if  they 
please.  If  disinclined  to  come, 
they  sit  about  the  dining-rooms 
chatting  and  smoking.  Brotherly 
sympathy,  brotherly  help,  extends 
itself  freely  as  the  highest  privi- 
lege; and,  we  may  add,  it  would 
be  difficult  to  see  Christianity  more 
practically  applied. 

It  is  not  within  the  scope  of  our 
paper  to  enter  into  further  details. 
Any  one  wishing  information  on 
the  awful  lot  of  the  London  com- 
mon lodger,  and  the  comparative 
paradise  Lord  Radstock  has  cre- 
ated, can  obtain,  at  8  Salisbury 
Court,  London,  the  pamphlet  above 
quoted,  or  pay  a  visit  to  the 
"Victoria  Homes."1 

In  the  evolutionary  growth  of 
improved  lodgings,  yet  another 
Peer,  Lord  Rowton,  the  nephew 
of  Lord  Shaftesbury,  takes  the 
next  place.  Profiting,  we  believe, 
by  Lord  Radstock's  experience, 
he  opened  on  strictly  commercial 
principles,  on  the  31st  Decem- 
ber 1892,  as  stated  in  the  pro- 
spectus issued  8th  March  1894, 
creating  a  limited  liability  com- 
pany, the  now  well-known  "  Row- 
ton  House  "  in  Yauxhall,  London, 
at  a  cost  of  £30,000.  This  is  a 
splendid  affair,  white-tiled  through- 
out, containing  470  cubicles,  the 
whole  building  being  properly 
ventilated,  lighted,  and  warmed. 
The  internal  arrangements,  save 
for  excellence,  are  scarcely  different 
from  what  has  been  already  de- 
scribed. There  is  no  piano.  Card- 
playing  is  prohibited.  The  cost 


of  a  cubicle  is  6d.  per  night. 
Each,  like  cubicles  generally,  is 
furnished  with  a  chair  and  iron 
bedstead ;  but  the  occupant,  as  is 
usual,  must  wash  at  the  lavatories. 
The  enterprise  yielded  a  net  profit 
of  "5  per  cent  on  the  capital 
invested,"  for  the  year  ending 
31st  December  1893;  while,  "for 
the  last  three  months  of  that 
period,  when  the  House  had  be- 
come thoroughly  known,  and  was 
consequently  more  largely  used, 
the  net  profits  were  at  the  rate  of 
6  per  cent  per  annum."  We  do 
not  notice,  however,  that  any  sum 
has  been  set  aside  to  cover  repairs, 
nor  does  the  prospectus  state  if 
this  were  included  in  the  term 
"  net  profit."  It  frequently  "  hap- 
pens that  forty  or  fifty  lodgers 
have  to  be  turned  away  on  a 
single  night."  Lord  Rowton  is 
extending  the  field  of  his  opera- 
tions. The  new  company  by  next 
summer  hope  to  open  at  King's 
Cross,  London,  another  "lodging- 
house,  which  will  contain  620 
separate  cubicles  with  a  window 
to  each."  All  the  results  gained 
at  Vauxhall  will  be  utilised  to  the 
fullest  extent.  It  is  also  "in- 
tended hereafter,  as  suitable  op- 
portunities arise,  to  increase  the 
capital  of  the  company,  and  to 
erect  other  lodging-houses  in  con- 
venient positions."  Lodgings  for 
women  are  "  receiving  careful  con- 
sideration." We  were  told  by  a 
lodger  at  Vauxhall  that  a  man 
can  have  first-class  meals  for  5s. 
or  6s.  a- week,  which,  with  the 
cubicle  charge,  would  enable  him 
to  live  for  9s.  a-week — of  course 
doing  his  own  laundry-work. 

Finally,  we  come  to  the  much- 
vaunted  London  County  Council. 
The  value  of  its  "  Progressivism  " 


1  The  superintendent  is  constantly  needing  cast-off  clothes,  suitable  books,  and 


708 


Club-Homes  for  Unmarried  Working  Men. 


[Nov. 


to  the  London  artisan  can  be 
gauged  by  the  fact  that  in  the 
erection  of  lodgings  it  was  the 
last  to  make  a  move,  while  its 
first  dividend  of  about  If  per  cent 
is  also  the  worst,  owing,  it  was 
reported,  to  "unforeseen  circum- 
stances."1 Where,  then,  we  ask, 
is  the  business  ability?  The 
Council  spent  from  £18,000  to 
£22,000  on  the  Parker  Street 
House,  Holborn;  and  it  charged, 
during  fourteen  months,  5d.  per 
night  per  cubicle.  The  original  es- 
timate, as  stated  in  the  '  Standard ' 
for  16th  June  last,  was  £11,000. 
Comment  is  superfluous.  The  house 
is  a  good  one,  but  the  claim  made 
by  a  county  councillor  that  the 
Council's  action  had  had  the  effect 
of  stimulating  "the  other  900 
lodging-house-keepers  in  London" 
to  improve  their  houses,  seems  as 
far  behind  the  mark  as  the  "  pro- 
gressive "  activity  in  taking  up  the 
matter  is  behind  private  enterprise. 
The  management  is  the  same  as 
the  others.  It,  too,  possesses  a 
piano  and  an  excellent  sitting-room. 
The  return  to  capital  is  ridiculous. 
Well  did  Colonel  Rotton  say  at 
the  Council's  meeting  that  they 
were  "  asked  to  subsidise  the  ten- 
ants out  of  the  rates."  A  deter- 
mination has  been  happily  just 
reached  to  raise  the  cubicle  price 
to  6d.  per  night,  so  that  a  3  per 
cent  dividend  may  be  paid,  and 
"  the  statutory  sinking  fund  "  cre- 
ated to  reproduce  the  capital  in 
fifty-five  years.  Three  per  cent  on 
these  houses  is  barely  sufficient. 
If  they  do  not  pay  at  least  4 
per  cent,  they  will  act  as  centres 
of  attraction  to  the  whole  kingdom, 
or  "the  cost  of  maintenance,"  as 
here  appears,  is  absurd.  The 
Council's  Committee  had  no  right 
to  plead  want  of  experience  to 


cover  their  commercial  stupidity 
when  the  Glasgow  houses  and 
"Victoria  Homes"  were  before 
their  eyes. 

Any  one  may  observe  from  what 
has  been  written,  that  a  great 
improvement  has  at  the  best  all 
too  tardily  set  in  with  regard  to 
the  lodging  requirements  of  poor 
men,  which  must  totally  change 
the  hard  lot  of  many  a  deserving 
man  trembling  on  the  verge  of  the 
workhouse.  Others,  including  the 
Church  Army  and  the  Salvation 
Army,  have  established  houses  of 
more  or  less  utility,  but  we  have 
said  enough  to  show  the  origin  and 
progress  of  the  scheme.  Similar 
lodgings  for  women  of  the  same 
class  as  the  men,  and  for  young 
work -girls,  are  urgently  needed. 
The  question,  however,  is  compli- 
cated by  the  lives  such  large  num- 
bers lead ;  also  by  the  small  wages 
a  respectable  woman  earns.  Its 
solution,  nevertheless,  must  be 
tackled  as  a  moral  reform,  while 
more  girls  are  yearly  going  into 
lodgings  from  distaste  to  home-life. 
What  sort  of  wives  they  will  make, 
or  to  what  ends  they  will  come, 
those  who  know  them  best  can 
answer.  Here  it  does  not  concern 
us.  We  will  just  say  that  the 
evils  connected  with  women  who 
have  no  proper  homes,  with  girls 
whose  chief  motive  of  action  is 
impulse,  almost  puts  out  of  view, 
in  our  judgment,  the  possibility  of 
satisfactorily  treating  them  as  if 
they  were  men.  Influence  of 
some  sort  will  be  required.  The 
purely  socialistic  idea  of  this  seems 
a  notion  derived  partly  from 
Comte,  that  humanity  will  serve 
humanity  for  the  pleasure  of  doing 
so ;  or,  according  to  modern  high- 
flown  enthusiasm,  as  a  return  for 
the  advantages  of  socialism.  As 


1  The  « Standard,'  21st  March  1894. 


1894.] 


Club-Homes  for  Unmarried  Working  Men. 


709 


either  of  these  is  a  metaphysical 
speculation  having  no  basis  of 
fact,  neither  deserves  serious  dis- 
cussion as  a  remedy  to  cure  the 
ills  of  real  life. 

The  possibility,  however,  of  ob- 
taining a  decent  nightly  lodging, 
does  not  cover  the  subject  under 
consideration.  Lodging-houses  are 
for  those  who  do  not  possess  a 
trunkful  of  belongings  or  even  a 
second  shirt.  Besides,  what  mod- 
erately well-to-do  man  would  be 
satisfied  perpetually  with  such  an 
arrangement,  although  carried  out 
on  the  best  of  plans  ?  The  feeling 
of  home  can  never  be  enjoyed,  and 
the  man  is  always  a  wanderer 
divorced  from  property.  Yet,  to 
associate  together  in  the  minds  of 
working  men  comfort,  independ- 
ence, and  property,  is  one  of  the 
greatest  requisites  to  give  moral 
and  material  stability  to  the  na- 
tion. It  may  be  read  in  Lord 
Shaftesbury's  'Life'  how  he  once 
said,  before  leaving  the  House  of 
Commons,  that  "  all  who  were  con- 
versant with  the  working  classes 
knew  that,  until  their  domiciliary 
condition  were  Christianised  (he 
could  use  no  less  forcible  a  term), 
all  hope  of  moral  or  social  improve- 
ment was  utterly  vain."  The 
youthful  unskilled  labourer  wants 
a  home,  where  he  can  live  comfort- 
ably at  the  smallest  figure ;  where 
his  interests  will  be  studied; 
where  he  can  gather  his  knick- 
knacks  about  him,  and  be  happy 
after  the  manner  of  his  own  heart. 
Capitalists,  then,  perceiving  the 
trend  of  things,  might  very  well 
study  the  subject  —  might  very 
well  see  what  dividends  can  be 
eventually  made,  by  erecting  or 
altering  buildings  with  different 
internal  arrangements  to  lodging- 
houses,  by  establishing  homes  on 
club  lines  for  unmarried  working 
men,  who  are  constantly  approach- 


ing in  large  numbers  the  fatal 
marrying  age.  We  say  "  eventu- 
ally," because  every  new  proposi- 
tion offered  to  the  British  labourer 
is  viewed  by  him  with  suspicion. 
This  is  a  natural  safeguard,  so  we 
do  not  underrate  it.  A  waiting 
time,  therefore,  might  be  required 
before  return  to  outlay  began. 
Success  would  largely  depend  on 
the  management  of  the  homes,  on 
their  judicious  advertisement  by 
handbills,  on  their  establishment 
amid  localities  close  to  centres  of 
unskilled  work,  such  as  the  docks 
and  other  places  of  East  and  South 
London,  or  in  the  suburbs  of  cities 
accessible  by  cheap  trains.  To 
make  them  pay,  the  accommoda- 
tion would  have  to  be  large.  Each 
man  should  have  his  own  room, 
bed,  and  bedroom  furniture.  A 
capacious  room  at  either  end,  one 
of  them  containing  a  piano,  ought 
to  be  set  aside  for  purposes  of 
recreation,  smoking,  reading,  writ- 
ing letters,  and  chat.  The  dining- 
room  might  be  in  the  centre,  com- 
municating with  the  kitchen;  or 
if  it  were  found  impracticable  to 
spare  so  many  public  rooms  as 
three,  the  room  with  the  piano 
might  be  the  one  for  meals.  All 
the  laundry  -  work,  if  possible, 
should  be  done  on  the  premises, 
and  the  clothes  of  the  lodgers  after- 
wards mended.  A  man  with  his 
wife  ought  to  closely  superintend 
everything,  having  under  them 
several  servants  to  attend  to  the 
rooms,  to  the  laundry,  and  to  wait 
at  meals.  Strict  rules  and  con- 
stant inspection  by  some  one  of 
authority  would,  of  course,  be 
necessary.  It  would  be  advan- 
tageous if  "  local  government," 
under  the  regulations  and  control 
of  the  proprietary  body,  were  in- 
troduced. If  a  committee  were 
formed  of  the  more  respectable 
inmates,  and  those  of  longest 


Club-Homes  for  Unmarried  Working  Men. 


710 

standing,  to  make  internal  rules 
not  only  respecting  management 
but  conduct  of  members,  in  the 
same  manner  as  any  club -com- 
mittee does,  subject  always  to  the 
necessity  for  making  the  under- 
taking pay,  this  would  afford  a 
premium  to  continued  residence 
and  be  of  service  to  all  con- 
cerned. Three  ample  meals  a- 
day  must  be  given.  Breakfast 
should  consist  of  bacon,  eggs,  or 
fish,  bread  and  butter,  tea  or 
coffee.  Dinner  of  meat,  one  vege- 
table, and  a  pudding.  Supper  of 
cold  remnants,  tea  or  coffee,  bread 
and  butter  again.  Variation  in 
food  should  be  aimed  at.  No 
alcoholic  liquors,  gambling,  or  card- 
playing  could  be  allowed,  while 
the  weekly  pension  price  might 
have  to  be  regulated  so  as  to  per- 
mit of  lodgers,  if  working  at  a 
distance,  dining  away  from  home. 
Respecting  price,  what  the  lodg- 
ing-houses do  is  a  sufficient  guide. 
A  man  earning  18s.  a-week  could 
not  afford  to  pay  more  than  10s. 
6d.  Ten  shillings  is  the  amount 
usually  asked  by  the  father  of  his 
son,  but  the  6d.  might  go  to  the 
laundress.  The  interesting  blue- 
book  *  on  the  expenditure  of  work- 
ing men  may  be  said  to  bear  it  out, 
though  no  definite  figure  can  be 
stated.  At  a  private  lodging- 
house  a  young  man  will  give  for 
a  room  about  2s.  6d.  a-week,  in- 
cluding the  washing  of  bed-linen. 
If  boarding  and  lodging  are  ob- 
tained, he  spends  12s.  per  week, 
and  can  afford  the  sum  when  earn- 
ing £1  a-week.2  A  great  trouble 
would  arise  in  the  probable  ina- 
bility of  many  workmen  to  steadily 


[Nov. 


pay,  owing  to  the  months  they  may 
be  out  of  work  through  no  fault  of 
their  own,  but  on  account  of  bad 
weather  or  bad  trade.  Under  pres- 
ent circumstances  such  an  occur- 
rence means  getting  into  debt  and 
frequently  a  descent  at  last  to  the 
"  doss-house."  The  uncertainty  of 
wages  is  a  constant  worry  to  every 
honest  working  man,  and  one  of 
the  predisposing  causes  which  lead 
him  to  listen  to  socialistic  argu- 
ments. The  remedy  is  not  with 
these,  nevertheless.  It  must  be 
principally  sought  by  delaying 
marriage,  and  by  the  extension  of 
the  truth  of  free  international  ex- 
change. Socialism,  we  cannot  too 
strongly  assert  it,  rests  on  the  anti- 
quated opinions  bound  up  with 
foreign  paternal  notions  of  gov- 
ernment. Stability  of  wages, 
stability  of  every  sort,  arises  only 
from  the  free  play  of  liberty.  It 
is  greater  world-liberty,  not  greater 
national  restriction,  that  all  labour- 
ers require.  The  sole  restriction 
of  any  kind  applicable  to  the  indi- 
vidual is  the  moral  government  -of 
himself.  With  regard  to  popula- 
tion and  free  trade,  we  have  already 
referred  to  them  in  *  Maga,' 3  but 
uncertainty  of  employment  must 
be  met  by  forethought,  insurance, 
and  laying  up  of  money  during 
good  seasons.  Life's  uncertainties 
have  to  be  faced  at  some  stage 
by  most  people.  In  fluctuating 
trades,  such  as  the  building  trade, 
we  understand  high  wages  are  given 
when  fully  active,  because  of  the 
doubtfulness  of  the  future.  Moral 
restraint,  carefulness,  is  just  what 
the  English  labourer  dislikes. 
Thriftlessness,  perhaps,  has  been 


1  C  5861  of  1889. 

2  The  agricultural  labourer  in  England  pays  as  a  lodger  from  8s.  to  10s. 


See 


various  reports  from  the  assistant  commissioners  to  the  Royal  Commission  on 
Labour. 

3  May  and  September  1892. 


1894.] 


Club- Homes  for  Unmarried  Working  Men. 


711 


forced  into  his  nature  along  the  has  another  side.  In  the  opinion  of 
centuries  since  the  age  of  the  Mr  St  Glair  Donaldson,  the  vicar 
Black  Death,  1349,  which  unhap-  of  the  Eton  Mission  parish,  with 
pily  precipitated  at  revolutionary  whom  we  agree,  the  early  age  when 
speed  the  gradual  enfranchisement  deterioration  commences  is  partly 
of  labour  that  had  then  already  due  to  the  fact  that  frequently 
begun.  The  labourer,  amid  the  youths  of  fourteen,  fifteen,  or  six- 
catastrophe,  became  divorced  from  teen  are  called  upon  to  support 
property  through  the  general  up-  their  relations  through  drink,  in- 
set, and  the  attraction  of  better  capacity,  disease,  or  death  of  the 
wages  which  scarcity  of  hands  fathers.  Thus,  lower  -  class  lads 
created  for  a  time.  Consequently  assume  the  cares  of  existence  at 
what  is  required,  what  has  been  an  age  when  upper-class  boys  are 
wanted  by  working  men  to  rein-  running  wild  about  the  playing- 
vigorate  their  moral  tone,  is  the  fields  of  Eton.  Also,  the  work- 
facilitation  of  the  methods  by  man  weakens  himself  by  late 
which,  through  their  own  exer-  hours  and  the  vile  atmosphere, 
tions,  they  may  again  become  pos-  even  of  clubs,  in  which  he  lives, 
sessed  of  property.  Socialism  must  It  is  astonishing,  unless  due  to 
immediately  fizzle  out.  If  the  un-  anaemia,  how  he  hates  an  open 
skilled  man  found  himself  comfort-  window,  and  catches  "  coke-fever," 
able,  he  would  feel  a  strong  induce-  as  it  is  named,  from  persistently 
ment  to  take  such  precautions  as  roasting  himself  at  a  fire  regardless 
were  necessary  to  always  maintain  of  the  temperature.  The  load  of 
comfort.  "  Actual  possession  of  sorrow  falling  so  quickly  upon  the 
property,"  says  Mr  T.  Mackay  in  youth  of  the  labouring  classes  has 
his  succinct  account  of  "  The  Eng-  little  connection  with  the  social 
lish  Poor,"  is  "the  only  known  conditions  of  England  to-day, 
influence "  restraining  an  undue  There  are  people  born  that  have 
growth  of  population.  At  all  no  right  to  be  born.  Marriage  is 
events,  there  is  no  reason  why  a  privilege,  the  reward  of  fitness 
a  "  club-home  "  should  be  confined  to  live  ;  but  working  men,  chiefly 
solely  to  labourers.  The  small  city  on  account  of  discomfort,  use  it 
clerk  and  the  artisan  have  wages  as  a  means  of  acquiring  comfort 
of  sufficient  steadiness.  Men  of  when  young  and  of  insurance 
these  classes  could  be  mixed  with  against  old  age.  Could  States 
the  lower  class  to  its  advantage  divide  to-morrow  all  wealth  equally 
and  to  the  prosperity  of  the  club,  among  everybody — under  present 
Friction  at  first  might  occur,  conditions,  or  those  of  Collectiv- 
It  is  the  opinion,  however,  of  ism — the  world  would  soon  possess 
the  most  capable  wage-earner  of  such  an  enormous  population  that 
our  acquaintance,  that  everything  civil  war  and  famine  would  at 
would  settle  down  at  the  end  once  arise  as  nature's  stern  check 
satisfactorily.  on  outraged  morality.  Were,  how- 
One  objection  labourers  have  to  ever,  the  commerce  of  the  world 
delaying  marriage  is  the  desire  for  based  on  the  principles  of  free  ex- 
a  grown-up  family  capable  of  earn-  change  of  goods,  population  would 
ing  money  at  the  period  when  their  automatically  adjust  itself  beneath 
powers  are  beginning  to  fail.  They  the  play  of  freedom,  and  the  im- 
say  they  begin  to  get  played-out  petus  given  to  discovery  might  en- 
before  forty.  This,  nevertheless,  able  many  more  millions  to  be  born 


VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCXLIX. 


3  A 


712 


Club-Homes  for  Unmarried  Working  Men. 


[Nov. 


with  absolute  safety.  Till  then,  it 
is  plain  that  individual  regulation 
of  marriage  lies  at  the  bottom  of 
schemes  of  improvement ;  so  that, 
were  the  wage -earner,  especially 
the  artisan,  induced  by  greater 
comfort  to  postpone  marriage  to  a 
later  date,  while  fighting  in  early 
years  for  free -trade  internation- 
ally, he  could  lengthen  his  life, 
cause  misery  to  decrease,  lighten 
the  burdens  of  youth,  and  easily 
insure  for  old  age.  Thus,  no 
State  -  pension  plan  ought  to  be 
adopted  which  does  not  demand 
at  first  considerable  contributions 
from  the  insurer.  With  this 
granted,  the  system  might  become 
a  measure  of  value  and  of  mental 
relief  to  thousands  of  souls ;  other- 
wise the  State,  by  removing  the 
spur  to  the  maintenance  of  com- 
fort, will  place  a  premium  on  self- 
indulgence. 

The  cost  of  establishing  "club- 
homes,"  as  here  advocated,  can 
now  be  so  easily  arrived  at,  that 
it  would  only  be  tedious  to 
enter  into  its  discussion.  Lord 
Rowton's  Company,  Lord  Rad- 
stock's  Committee,  any  one  of  the 
London  Industrial  Dwellings  Com- 
panies, or  "The  Manchester  La- 
bourers' Dwellings  Company," 
could  very  speedily  decide  what 
amount  of  capital  would  be  re- 
quired. Such  undertakings  gen- 
erally possess  powers  enabling 
them  to  do  anything.  That  a 
great  opening  presents  itself,  we 
think  is  shown  by  the  growth  and 
success  of  improved  lodging-houses. 
There  are  large  profits  to  be  earned. 
In  fact,  Lord  Shaftesbury,  arguing 
upon  his  bill,  as  Lord  Ashley,  be- 
fore the  House  of  Commons,  spoke 
"  of  the  cheerful  punctuality  with 
which  the  rents  were  paid"  of 
model  homes,  and  preferred  that 
they  should  be  undertaken  by  local 
authorities,  "  as  the  temptation  to 


make  inordinate  profits  had  always 
proved  irresistible  "  to  the  individ- 
ual. Still,  a  personal  rather  than 
a  machine  element  seems  prefer- 
able. The  Manchester  company 
above  mentioned  was  established 
for  the  purpose  of  giving  every 
advantage  to  the  "  less  favoured 
portion  of  the  community."  It 
does  not  seek  more  than  a  4  or  5 
per  cent  dividend,  while  window- 
gardening  is  promoted  by  share- 
holders interested  in  the  success 
of  the  general  scheme.  The  brick- 
and-mortar  building  of  clubs  is  one 
thing,  but  the  satisfactory  build- 
ing of  character  by  human  contact 
at  a  later  stage  is  another  thing 
just  as  requisite.  Comfort  has  a 
tendency  to  produce  selfishness, 
and  the  world  possesses  enough 
Sybarites  already. 

If,  however,  no  capitalist  will 
examine  the  question  of  "  club- 
homes,"  local  authorities  have 
ample  power  to  establish  them 
at  once  —  even  to  build  separate 
houses  or  cottages  having  a  gar- 
den of  not  more  than  half  an  acre. 
Lord  Shaftsbury's  Act,  and  other 
Acts  connected  with  labourers' 
dwellings,  have  all  been  consoli- 
dated into  one,  and  will  be  found 
in  chapter  70  of  the  Public  Gen- 
eral Statutes,  53  &  54  Victoria, 
1890.  On  page  581  is  Part  III., 
which  deals  more  particularly  with 
our  subject.  Any  one  may  there 
find  how  the  law  provides  machin- 
ery for  setting  in  action  a  grand 
extension  of  one  of  the  most  salu- 
tary reforms  that  the  present  day 
could  witness — a  reform,  too,  which 
is  not  limited  to  unmarried  men. 
The  initiative  rests  with  the  rural 
and  urban  sanitary  authorities. 
To  stir  them  up  is  the  duty  of 
those  who  believe  in  constructive 
statesmanship.  Lord  Salisbury 
and  Mr  Chamberlain  have  lately 
spoken  on  population  and  im- 


1894.] 


Club-Homes  for  Unmarried  Working  Men. 


713 


proved  artisans'  dwellings,  so  that 
the  Unionist  party  are  keenly 
alive  to  the  sorrows  and  wants  of 
the  wage-earner. 

We  are  aware,  moralists  may 
tell  us,  that  the  evils  attending  a 
delay  of  marriage  would  be  greater 
than  the  present  social  perplexity. 
We  reply,  it  would  be  no  greater 
in  the  case  of  working  men  than 
in  the  case  of  well-to-do  men.  The 
manual  labourer,  feeling  himself 
comfortable,  will  occupy  the  same 
relative  position  as  the  mental 
labourer  who  is  already  comfort- 
able. Of  course,  we  do  not  place 
more  reliance  on  comfort  than 
experience  warrants.  Those  who 
impartially  move  between  all 
classes  know  that  the  workman 
has  notions  of  honour  concerning 
a  breach  of  the  seventh  command- 
ment which  the  richer  man,  to  his 
discredit,  does  not  as  effectively 
recognise.  The  most  licentious 


blackguards  of  the  world  have  been 
despots  and  popes,  men  who  pos- 
sessed riches  or  were  supposed  to 
be  shining  examples.  Democracies 
carry  self-will  to  blatant  absurdity, 
showing  that  excessive  individual 
egoism  from  which  springs  all 
corruption ;  while  Aristotle  con- 
cluded it  was  more  difficult  to  pre- 
serve a  democracy  than  to  create 
one.  The  animal  element  in  human 
nature  does  not  respect  either  per- 
sons or  the  positions  of  persons. 
It  must  be  controlled  before  satis- 
factory results  can  be  reached. 
Pari  passu,  then,  with  improved 
material  conditions  must  go  im- 
proved moral  conditions,  or  ad- 
vantages gained  by  the  former 
will  be  lost.  Countless  efforts 
have  been  made  to  attain  the 
latter.  Philosophy  has  produced 
Stoics ;  primitive  Christianity — 
saints  and  heroes. 

WARNEFORD  MOFFATT. 


714 


China' 8  Reputation-Bubble. 


[Nov. 


CHINA'S  REPUTATION-BUBBLE. 


"China   is  a  huge   country  with   a 
huge   population ;   its  wealth   and   re- 
sources are  enormous,  and  its  inhabi- 
tants are  energetic  and  brave.     There- 
fore  the   Chinese   will    'walk   round,' 
perhaps  will  annihilate,  the  Japanese." 
— Current  popular  verdict  in  Eng- 
land at  the  outbreak  oj 


"  The  Japanese  have  spent  years  in 
organising  and  improving  their  sea  and 
land  forces,  and  in  every  department  of 
administration  have  evinced  an  admir- 
able aptitude  for  progress.  They  have 
now  proved  themselves  a  thoroughly 
military  nation.  Not  only  are  their 
fighting  characteristics  of  a  high  order, 
but  their  strategical  science  reminds  us 
of  Von  Moltke,  and  their  army  may 
take  rank  amongst  those  of  Europe." 
— Current  verdict  six  weeks  later. 


IN  both  of  the  above  cases  the 
premisses  are  undoubtedly  right, 
but  I  suggest  that  the  deductions 
are  erroneous.  What,  then  1  War 
is  ever  fertile  in  surprises  ;  do  you 
intend  to  weary  us  with  an  academ- 
ical proof  of  error — to  flog  a  dead 
horse  ?  No,  I  reply ;  but  I  would 
point  out  a  fresh  illustration  of  our 
constant  tendency  to  be  led  astray 
by  the  irresponsible  chatter  of 
optimists,  and  I  would  urge  that 
our  policy  in  the  Far  East  should 
not  henceforth  be  prompted  by 
that  perversity  of  goodwill  which, 
in  the  case  of  China,  has  beguiled 
us  to  select  the  ugliest  of  nations 
for  our  especial  favour.  As  some 
sort  of  credentials  for  my  attempt, 
I  venture  to  explain  that  I  have 
travelled  over  considerable  dis- 
tances both  in  China  and  Japan, 
by  no  means  limiting  myself  to  the 
coast-lines,  with  the  carefully  pre- 
arranged purpose  of  learning,  as 
well  as  with  the  view  of  compar- 
ing more  modern  conditions  with 
those  which  prevailed  when  Sir 
Hope  Grant  captured  Pekin  in 
1860.  An  objection  that  my  testi- 
mony is  invalidated  by  the  march 
of  events  would  not  here  hold 
good.  China  never  "marches," 
except  in  the  sense  that  she 
frequently  progresses  backwards. 


Perhaps  only  those  who  have  had 
personal  experience  of  the  nation 
can  realise  the  extraordinary 
power  which  custom  exercises  over 
the  whole  course  of  their  public 
and  domestic  life.  All  classes 
regard  the  slightest  innovation  not 
only  as  hateful  but  criminal. 
Utility  and  progress,  whether  ap- 
plied to  science  or  to  practical  art, 
they  cannot  away  with.  Their 
reputed  astronomical  proficiency 
would  have  aroused  the  ridicule  of 
the  cotemporaries  of  Copernicus, 
and  their  practice  of  medicine  that 
of  Galen.  Their  medical  science 
is  on  a  par  with  the  above. 
The  most  trivial  surgical  opera- 
tion is  forbidden,  anaesthetics  are 
hated,  and  physiology  is  despised. 
And  as  regards  manufactures,  al- 
though the  Chinese,  from  contact 
with  Europeans,  have  had  ample 
opportunities  of  appreciating  the 
advantages  of  steam  and  machin- 
ery ;  although  the  establishment  of 
a  few,  a  very  few,  Government 
factories  might  imply  an  acquies- 
cence in  principle;  although  they 
possess  a  steam  navy  and  an  ar- 
senal at  Shanghai,  partly  worked 
by  machinery,  —  the  evidence  of 
these  circumstances  is  altogether 
illusory.  The  establishments  are 
not  national,  and  only  exist  to 


1894.] 


China's  Reputation- Bubble. 


715 


blind  Europeans.  They  are  work- 
ed by  foreigners,  who  are  hired  by 
the  nation  to  carry  out  that  which 
they  despise.  Our  simplest  devices 
for  augmenting  the  results  of  mus- 
cular action  are  entirely  repudiated 
by  the  working  classes,  who  are  more 
than  content  with  the  elementary 
application  of  the  lever,  the  pulley, 
and  the  wheel.  Household  imple- 
ments, farm  implements,  and  trade 
implements  are  fashioned  strictly  in 
accordance  with  the  prescriptions 
of  "olo  [old]  custom."  "  Why  are 
all  your  oars,  large  and  small, 
made  in  two  pieces  clumsily  lashed 
together  1 "  I  ask.  "  Olo  custom," 
is  the  conclusive  reply.  "  Why  do 
you  arm  all  your  coast-junks  with 
those  useless  2-pounders,  when  you 
have  plenty  of  6-pounders  avail- 
able?" "Olo  custom."  "Why  do 
you  always  emboss  huge  goggle- 
eyes  on  the  bows  of  your  ships  ? " 
"Olo  custom,"  as  a  matter  of 
course — plus,  in  this  case,  a  cham- 
pionship of  its  wisdom.  "  If  ship 
no  have  eyes,  how  can  see?  If 
no  can  see,  how  can  walkee  ? 
You  number  one  foolo."  Should 
my  reader  decline  to  realise  the 
power  and  prevalence  of  "  olo  cus- 
tom," he  will  do  well  to  discon- 
tinue the  perusal  of  this  paper, 
for  he  will  pronounce  my  further 
facts  fallacious  and  my  conclusions 
inconclusive. 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  my  postu- 
late be  granted,  the  hollowness  of 
China's  alleged  military  resources 
becomes  evident.  For  instance, 
its  population  is  estimated,  some- 
what vaguely,  but  with  a  probable 
approximation  to  accuracy,  at  a 
minimum  of  350  millions.  Were 
it  double  this  number,  of  what 
avail  for  recruiting  purposes,  on 
a  sudden  emergency,  if  the  levies 
for  the  army  cannot  be  concen- 
trated within  months'?  China 
is  practically  destitute  of  every 
means  of  communication,  save 


the  shifting  water-ways  of  a  few 
large  rivers.  I  shall  have  more 
to  say  anon  about  railways  in 
process  of  inception,  or  rather 
alleged  conception;  but  the  only 
lines  actually  existent  are,  accord- 
ing to  the  authority  of  Mr  Curzon's 
excellent  book,  'Problems  of  the 
Far  East,'  the  twenty-seven  miles 
from  Tien-tsin  to  Tong-ku,  with  its 
prolongation  thence  in  the  direc- 
tion of  Manchuria,  and  a  few 
trumpery  local  lengths,  all  of 
which  as  little  serve  for  present 
strategical  purpose  as  would  a 
railway  from  London  to  Balham 
facilitate  the  concentration  of 
troops  in  Yorkshire.  Highroads, 
in  our  sense  of  the  term,  the 
Chinese  will  have  none  of,  ex- 
cept in  areas  so  restricted,  com- 
pared to  the  total  extent  of  ter- 
ritory, as  not  to  invalidate  iny 
general  statement.  "  Olo  custom  ; 
we  don't  want  them,  we  won't 
make  them."  Throughout  the 
course  of  my  travels,  I  failed 
to  discover  a  single  highway, 
or  even  track  for  wheel  traffic. 
There  were  none  in  the  vicinity 
of  Canton,  or  Swatow,  or  Amoy, 
or  Foochow,  or  Kiu-kiang,  or 
the  populous  inland  metropolis 
Hankow  -  Wuchau,  or  bordering 
at  least  six  hundred  miles  of  the 
Yang-tsze-kiang.  When  explor- 
ing the  neighbourhood  of  Chin- 
kiang,  I  paid  particular  attention 
to  the  isolated  path,  winding  for 
miles  across  the  open  burial  dis- 
trict, and  furnishing  an  example 
of  what  is  called  a  Chinese  road. 
It  was  six  feet  wide,  with  a  narrow 
breadth  of  rough  paving -stones, 
and  with  sharply  sloping  sides, 
which  in  summer  are  ankle-deep 
in  dust,  and  in  winter  knee- deep 
in  sticky  mud.  It  was  useful  for 
wheelbarrows  and  for  sweltering 
pack  -  coolies ;  but  as  a  military 
communication  it  was  beneath 
contempt.  When,  in  1860,  Sir 


716 


China's  Reputation- Bubble. 


[Nov. 


Hope  Grant  marched  with  his 
little  army,  not  exceeding  10,000 
effectives,  supplemented  by  about 
5000  French,  up  to  the  very  walls 
of  Pekin,  the  Chinese  had  had 
several  months'  grace  for  the  con- 
centration of  myriads  of  levies ; 
but  they  never  appeared  in  suffi- 
cient numbers  to  cause  him  a 
moment's  disquietude  from  the 
preponderance  of  odds,  and  the 
proud  capital  surrendered  to  our 
comparative  handful  without  firing 
a  shot  from  its  fortified  walls. 

Assuming,  however,  the  possi- 
bility that  China's  enemy  were 
sufficiently  obliging  or  dilatory  to 
admit  of  the  concentration  at  cer- 
tain strategical  points  of  a  tithe  of 
her  resources  in  personnel — might 
it  not  be  urged  that  the  dogged 
courage  of  the  Chinese  taken  as 
individuals  would,  together  with 
the  force  of  sheer  numbers,  coun- 
terbalance her  inferiority  in  tactics 
and  organisation  1  I  should  demur 
to  such  a  deduction.  Without  a 
doubt  a  Chinaman  upon  due  occa- 
sion is  capable  of  conspicuous  fer- 
ocity, frequently  entertains  a  cyn- 
ical disregard  for  his  own  life — 
besides  the  lives  of  his  relations 
and  friends  —  and  patiently  en- 
dures danger,  torture,  and  death 
for  a  consideration.  Witness  the 
stolid  equanimity  with  which  our 
paid  coolies  stood  in  the  ditch  of 
the  Taku  Fort  in  1886,  unflinch- 
ingly supporting  on  their  shoulders 
the  ladder-bridges  across  which  our 
troops  rushed  to  the  assault,  while 
the  bearers  were  shot  down  in 
numbers  by  their  own  country- 
men. But  this  sordid  sullen  in- 
difference to  death  is  not  to  be 
confounded  with  the  fierce  valour 
of  the  true  soldier,  actuated  by 
the  fanaticism  of  fighting,  of  which 
Napoleon,  speaking  of  civilised 
troops,  said,  "II  en  faut  pour  se 
faire  tuer."  II  en  faut— but  the 


Chinaman  has  it  not ;  he  is  not 
a  fighting  man,  and  he  feels  no 
shame  in  being  morally  cowed  or 
physically  whacked.  An  angry 
Chinaman,  stimulated  by  a  sur- 
rounding knot  of  his  countrymen, 
made  a  snatch  at  my  pony's  bridle. 
"Ah,  would  you,"  said  I,  merely 
raising  my  slight  whip.  There 
was  no  occasion  for  the  whip  to 
descend  on  the  shoulders,  though 
there  was  not  another  Englishman 
within  miles.  I  have  been  pelted 
by  a  howling  crowd  outside  a 
Chinese  temple,  and  surrounded 
by  a  menacing  throng  inside  a 
Chinese  city.  The  isolated  Eng- 
lishman had  but  to  wheel  sharply 
round  and  to  advance  with  cheap 
swagger,  and  his  enemies  melted 
away  like  snow.  The  story  of  the 
little  engagement  of  "Muddy  Flat " 
at  Shanghai  shows  how  absolutely 
powerless  are  mere  numbers  of 
natives.  A  large  number  of 
Chinese  Imperialists,  acting  against 
the  Taeping  rebels,  had  been  en- 
camped on  the  limits  of  the  British 
concession,  where  they  behaved 
in  so  hostile  a  manner  that  our 
municipal  council  sent  a  message 
to  the  head  mandarin  requiring 
the  removal  of  his  troops  to  a 
more  distant  camping-ground,  and 
intimating  that,  in  the  event  of 
non-compliance  within  twenty-four 
hours,  serious  consequences  would 
ensue.  This  message  from  a  few 
hundreds  to  several  thousands  was 
treated  with  silent  contempt,  until 
the  rumour  went  abroad  that,  with 
their  characteristic  and  insensate 
audacity,  the  Englishmen  meant 
what  they  said.  Thereupon  the 
mandarin  sent  a  message  that  we 
"  must  wait  a  little."  "  Certainly 
not,"  was  the  rejoinder ;  "  we 
fixed  on  2  P.M.,  and  at  2  P.M.  we 
intend  to  act."  Sure  enough  at 
that  hour  the  volunteers,  rein- 
forced with  some  blue-jackets,  and 


1894.] 


China's  Reputation-Bubble. 


717 


making  an  aggregate  of  not  more 
than  300  men,  marched  out  against 
the  Chinese  at  "Muddy  Flat," 
numbering  about  3000,  and  sup- 
ported by  some  additional  5000 
in  the  vicinity.  We  opened  the 
ball  with  a  vigorous  fire,  and  the 
Chinese  were  so  astonished  and 
dismayed  at  the  arrogance  of  our 
tiny  force  that  the  victory  was 
already  half  won,  when  the  rebel 
Taepings,  who  from  the  city  walls 
had  been  narrowly  watching  our 
operations,  became  so  charmed  at 
seeing  the  chastisement  which  the 
English  were  inflicting  on  the  Im- 
perial Chinese  troops,  that  they 
sallied  forth,  attacked  their  own 
countrymen  in  flank,  and  material- 
ly contributed  to  their  final  defeat. 
My  informant,  who  had  himself 
been  present  at  this  engagement, 
told  me  he  had  counted  130  bodies 
of  the  Chinese.  Our  own  loss  was 
3  killed  and  about  30  wounded. 

Inasmuch  as  recent  telegrams 
have  given  rise  to  some  apprehen- 
sion lest  the  small  knots  of  our 
countrymen  in  Chinese  settlements 
should  be  suddenly  attacked  and 
swept  off  the  face  of  the  earth 
by  the  mere  weight  of  surging 
masses,  I  may  expatiate  some- 
what on  the  measures  which 
Englishmen  formerly  have  con- 
certed there  for  self  -  defence. 
The  Shanghai  volunteers  requested 
the  general  at  Hong-Kong  to  de- 
pute an  officer  to  judge  of  their 
efficiency,  and  to  give  them  any 
useful  hints.  I  was  selected  for 
the  duty ;  and  as  all  my  expenses 
were  most  liberally  paid  out  of 
the  private  pockets  of  the  volun- 
teers themselves,  I  considered  it 
incumbent  on  me  not  only  to  per- 
form my  task  with  prolonged  dili- 
gence, but  to  point  out  shortcom- 
ings with  an  unreserve  for  which 


they  had  the  wondrous  wisdom  to 
express  emphatic  thanks.  The 
strength  on  parade  of  the  tiny 
army  which  I  inspected,  com- 
manded by  an  excellent  soldier, 
Major  C.  Holliday,  amounted  to 
20  cavalry,  33  artillery  with  field- 
guns,  and  208  infantry,  all  sturdy, 
well-armed  (with  the  exception  of 
the  artillery),  well-equipped,  and 
worthily  representing  the  organisa- 
tion of  English  civilisation.  Their 
drill  movements  were  not  ambi- 
tious, but  were  performed  with  a 
clever  readiness  and  a  grave  steadi- 
ness which  fulfilled  every  practical 
requirement.1  They  were  justly 
proud  of  themselves,  and  English- 
men could  not  but  be  proud  of 
these  specimens  of  our  country- 
men in  the  Far  East.  Keen  was 
the  interest  of  the  Chinese  popu- 
lation. A  vast  crowd  of  many 
thousands  from  the  native  city 
had  clustered  round  every  con- 
ceivable point  of  vantage  bearing 
on  the  inspection  -  ground  —  and 
none  but  the  mentally  blind  could 
doubt  how  profoundly  they  were 
impressed  with  the,  to  them  mir- 
aculous, regularity  of  our  manoeu- 
vres, and  the  evenly  sustained  fire 
of  our  infantry  and  artillery. 
"  Humph  !  China  soldier  no  good  ; 
no  can  do,"  was  the  philosophical 
remark  of  a  native  patriot. 

On  my  return  to  England,  I 
represented  to  the  War  Office  the 
deficiency  at  Shanghai  of  proper 
artillery  armament,  and  a  com- 
plete battery  of  Armstrongs  was 
sent  out  as  a  present  to  the 
soldiers  of  this  little  republic,  so 
lavish  in  furnishing  funds  for  their 
military  budget. 

At  a  later  period  these  volun- 
teers were  again  inspected  by 
General  Sir  William  Cameron, 
now  commanding  the  troops  in 


1  From  notes  taken  on  the  spot. 


718 


China's  Reputation-Bubble. 


[Nov. 


South  Africa,  and  from  him  I 
learned  that  they  had  in  no  wise 
deteriorated  by  the  lapse  of  time. 
Not  less  efficient  than  their  ap- 
pearance on  parade  were  their 
organisation  and  their  measures 
to  resist  a  sudden  outbreak,  and 
these  precautions  had,  mutatis 
mutandis,  been  adopted  in  other 
localities.  At  Hankow,  600  miles 
in  the  interior,  the  British  Muni- 
cipal Council,  regulating  the  affairs 
of  a  mere  handful  of  European 
merchants,  had  purchased  a  large 
supply  of  rifles  and  ammunition, 
and  had  stored  them  in  a  central 
building  ready  for  immediate  issue. 
A  rendezvous  for  the  fighting  men, 
as  well  as  for  the  women  and  chil- 
dren, had  been  fixed,  with  a  view 
of  holding  out  until  relieved  by  an 
English  ship.  We  must  admit 
the  possibility  that  the  various 
communities  of  our  countrymen 
may  be  destroyed ;  but  they  will 
not  be  unresistingly  massacred. 
To  use  the  French  prophecy  con- 
cerning their  next  war  with  Ger- 
many :  "  On  ne  nous  mangera  pas 
tout  crus." 

To  revert  to  the  soldiers  of 
China :  I  had  occasional  oppor- 
tunities of  personally  scrutinising 
small  bodies  of  Chinese  troops. 
Their  arms  were  of  various  pat- 
terns, possessing  a  uniformity  only 
of  such  dirt,  rust,  and  deficiency 
as  to  lead  to  the  suspicion  that 
one-half  were  incapable  of  being 
fired,  while  their  equipment  and 
marching,  their  drill  and  demean- 
our, were  suggestive  of  a  show  at 
a  transpontine  pantomime.  Cap- 
tain Butler,  superintendent  of  the 
Lung  Hwa  powder-factory,  a  Prus- 
sian officer  free  from  Prussian 
arrogance,  informed  me  that  the 
Chinese  Government,  having  heard 
of  the  efficiency  uof  German  drill, 


had  requested  him  to  undertake, 
as  an  additional  duty,  the  drilling 
of  an  infantry  battalion,  and  the 
following  was  the  gist  of  his  state- 
ment to  me  : x  "I  explained,  but 
without  the  slightest  success,  that 
the  undertaking  would  be  a  waste 
of  their  money  and  my  time.  As 
soon  as  I  appear  within  the  fort, 
the  mandarin  colonel  and  his  offi- 
cers— at  all  times  thoroughly  idle 
— swagger  off  with  offended  dig- 
nity. The  non-commissioned  offi- 
cers— at  all  times  thoroughly  use- 
less— squat  on  the  ground  and  go 
to  sleep,  unless  I  constantly  bully 
them.  I  make  it  a  point  of  prin- 
ciple never  to  allow  any  of  the 
men  to  be  thrashed  except  by  my- 
self. But  the  necessity  for  this 
operation  is  so  frequent  that  a 
great  part  of  my  time  is  spent  in 
bambooing  the  sergeants,  and  the 
balance  available  for  drill  is  small." 
He  added  that  one  of  the  greatest 
impediments  to  their  efficient  field- 
firing  was  their  incurable  habit  of 
shutting  both  eyes  just  before  pull- 
ing the  trigger.  Moreover,  their 
rifles  were  kept  in  so  filthy  a  con- 
dition that  a  large  proportion  of 
the  locks  became  jammed,  and  the 
delivery  of  fire  was  habitually 
doubtful.  He  was  of  opinion  that 
the  men  would  never  be  worth  one 
farthing  unless  they  were  exclus- 
ively officered  by  Europeans. 

Although  Chinese  soldiers  have 
a  thorough  knowledge  of  oppres- 
sion, they  have  not  a  notion  of 
discipline,  as  we  use  the  term. 
A  small  body  of  troops  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  Shanghai  were 
one  day  warned  for  muster,  in 
order  to  deal  with  a  local  dis- 
turbance. Next  night  they  ab- 
sconded en  masse,  and  when  sub- 
sequently ridiculed  and  questioned 
by  some  of  the  English  community, 


1  From  some  unpublished  notes  taken  at  the  time. 


1894.] 


China's  Reputation- Bubble. 


719 


they  believed  their  absence  would 
be  held  quite  justified  by  the  al- 
leged remarkable  coincidence  of 
general  misfortune  involving  a 
principle  of  ancestral  worship. 
"  Must  go,"  said  these  warriors 
one  and  all ;  "  last  night  mother 
makee  die." 

I  do  not  think  I  shall  be  far 
wrong  in  declaring  that,  taking 
the  Chinese  troops  as  a  body, 
they  are,  as  a  rule,  little  better 
than  an  undrilled  rabble,  danger- 
ous only  to  their  friends ;  and 
that,  taking  the  Chinese  soldier 
individually,  he  differs  little  from 
a  coolie,  wearing  a  filthy  and  scanty 
uniform.  Without  pride  in  his 
vocation  or  in  his  arms,  ill-dis- 
ciplined and  untaught,  with  a 
great  deal  of  the  bully  and,  on 
occasions,  a  little  of  the  craven, 
he  is  detested  by  his  countrymen 
and  despised  by  outsiders.  The 
infrequent  Chinese  successes  have 
been  due  to  the  folly  of  her  foes, 
and  the  co-operation  of  climate, 
rather  than  to  her  own  active 
achievements. 

To  state  that  the  professional 
knowledge  of  the  officers  is  at  the 
lowest  ebb  would  be  to  lead  to  a 
misconception,  because  their  pro- 
fessional knowledge  is  limited  to 
skill  in  perpetrating  a  maximum 
of  evil  and  fraud.  Generals,  com- 
manding officers,  subordinate  offi- 
cers, and  non-commissioned  officers, 
from  the  very  highest  to  the  very 
lowest,  their  one  object  is  to  carry 
out  a  scientifically  graduated 
system  of  cheating.  The  Fuhtais 
swindle  through  the  supply  depart- 
ment; the  mandarin  draws  pay 
for  1000  men,  though  he  has  but 
500  under  arms.  At  an  inspec- 
tion by  a  superior,  who,  being  a 
thief  himself,  allows  no  poaching 
on  his  own  domain,  the  former 
dresses  up  as  soldiers  the  required 
balance,  in  the  shape  of  500  coolies 


ignorant  even  how  to  hold  a  rifle. 
The  subordinate  officers  pay  their 
men  only  one-half  of  the  pittance 
due  to  them,  and  the  private 
soldier  compensates  himself  by 
pillaging  and  bullying  the  miser- 
able villagers.  In  fine,  provided 
an  officer  be  rich  and  quiet,  he  is 
content  to  be  infamous.  He  has 
not  the  faintest  idea  of  that  sense 
of  honour  which  feels  a  stain 
like  a  wound.  To  imply  to  him 
that  he  is  a  thief,  a  liar,  and  a 
coward  would  scarcely  convey 
greater  offence  than  to  charge  an 
English  gentleman  with  being  an 
inveterate  punster.  Can  it  be 
maintained  that  such  officers  can 
heroically  and  efficiently  lead  such 
men?  I  was  on  board  a  ship  of 
the  China  Merchant  Company,  con- 
veying a  Chinese  general  and  some 
hundreds  of  his  men  to  Foochow. 
The  general,  in  support  of  his  own 
dignity,  claimed  to  dine  with  the 
five  or  six  Europeans  present,  and 
we  all  exerted  ourselves  to  treat 
him  with  the  utmost  civility  and 
consideration.  But  the  poor  fish- 
out -of -water  crawled  cringingly 
to  his  meals,  replied  tremblingly 
to  the  conversation  I  addressed  to 
him  in  French  —  he  knew  little 
English  —  and  shrank  servilely 
into  a  corner  at  the  conclusion  of 
the  repasts.  He  had  little  gen- 
eral education,  less  professional 
knowledge,  and  no  dignity  of 
address  whatever,  whether  Euro- 
pean or  oriental.  On  disembark- 
ing at  Pagoda  Anchorage,  he 
suddenly  blossomed  into  a  high 
official,  and  was  received  with 
great  pomp  by  his  garrison.  But 
on  closer  examination  I  realised 
that  the  latter  consisted  of  a  dis- 
orderly mob,  and  that  the  blaze  of 
colour  was  chiefly  due  to  a  con- 
glomeration of  standards,  amount- 
ing to  about  50  per  cent  of  the 
fighting  strength. 


720 


China's  Reputation-Bubble. 


[Nov. 


As  might  be  expected,  the 
Chinese  fortifications  reflect  the 
military  characteristics  of  the 
nation.  Their  works,  though  they 
are  occasionally — as  at  Wuchau — 
skilfully  traced  and. strongly  built, 
are  constructed  on  the  principles 
of  the  Great  Wall  of  China.  They 
decide  that  an  enemy  will  assail 
them  at  such  and  such  a  spot : 
this  particular  portion  only  will 
they  fortify,  and  no  power  will 
induce  them  to  adopt  precautions 
against  other  contingencies.  As  a 
result,  in  many  cases  their  works 
can  be  turned  with  ease  by  an 
enemy  of  ordinary  intelligence  and 
enterprise.  This  measure  they 
consider  as  somewhat  dastardly 
and  unfair.  "You  had  no  busi- 
ness to  hit  me  then,"  remonstrat- 
ed Moliere's  Monsieur  Jourdain. 
"  You  must  never  thrust  in  carte 
till  you  have  thrust  in  tierce." 
Sir  Hope  Grant  used  to  tell  of  the 
intercepted  Chinese  despatch  : 
"The  untutored  Barbarians,  ap- 
parently ignorant  that  guns  could 
not  be  fired  backwards,  attacked 
us  in  rear,  and  thus  rendered  the 
whole  of  our  ordnance  useless." 

I  carefully  swept  with  my  glass 
the  works  protecting  Amoy.  Their 
front  was  formidable,  and  they 
were  apparently  heavily  armed ; 
but  their  flanks  were  "  up  in  the 
air,"  and  there  was  no  sort  of 
obstacle,  natural  or  artificial,  to 
prevent  an  easy  and  successful 
flank  attack.  "  No  occasion  to 
bother  about  such  a  contingency," 
say  the  Chinese;  "it  is  certain 
our  enemy  would  attack  us  in  the 
particular  part  we  have  fortified." 
To  be  sure,  I  did  detect  a  recog- 
nition of  a  more  true  principle  in 
some  intrenchments  defending  the 
river  Min  —  some  elementary  re- 
doubts guarding  the  flanks ;  but  on 


more  careful  scrutiny  they  proved 
to  be  mere  sham, — painted  lath  and 
pasteboard,  calculated  to  deceive 
an  exceedingly  childish  enemy. 

Under  the  guidance  of  European 
superintendents,  I  spent  some  time 
in  examining  the  powder-factories, 
the  navy-yard,  and  the  arsenal  at 
Kiangnan  and  Lung  Hwa  on  the 
Whampoa  river,  and  here  the 
curious  incapacity  of  the  Chinese 
to  grasp  any  idea  deviating  from 
"  olo  custom "  was  strikingly  ex- 
emplified. The  working  head  of 
the  arsenal,  Mr  Mackenzie,  whose 
name  the  Chinese  had  transformed 
into  "  Mah-chen-tsze,"  had  for  ten 
years  occupied  a  high  position  in 
Woolwich  Arsenal,  and  had  been 
employed  by  the  Pekin  Govern- 
ment to  manufacture  guns  accord- 
ing to  modern  principles.  He 
achieved  some  success,  in  spite 
of  the  vexatious  opposition  of  the 
Chinese  themselves ;  but  his  work 
was  of  a  heart-breaking  nature. 
Let  him  speak  for  himself.1 
"  Try, "  he  said,  "  to  introduce 
improvements  of  obvious  and  tried 
utility.  The  Chinese  will  have 
none  of  them,  and  argue  that  our 
so-called  inventions  had  been  an- 
ticipated by  them  years  ago, 
tested,  and  found  wanting.  My 
native  workmen  are  in  some  re- 
spects excellent,  steady,  hardwork- 
ing, and  extremely  intelligent  and 
accurate  as  regards  imitation ;  but 
they  cannot  go  beyond  copying, 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  they  are 
thoroughly  untrustworthy  unless 
under  constant  supervision,  thank- 
less, and  inveterate  pilferers.  In 
great  matters  of  arsenal  adminis- 
tration I  am  absolute  master,  but 
in  practical  details  I  am  incessantly 
hampered.  For  example,  here  are 
a  quantity  of  smooth-bore  2-pound- 
ers.  Pekin  ordered  eighty  of 


1  The  gist  of  some  unpublished  notes  taken  at  the  time. 


1894.] 


China's  Reputation-Bubble. 


721 


these  wretched  guns  for  their 
river-junks.  In  vain  did  I  urge 
that  I  could  supply  far  more  effi- 
cient and  lighter  rifled  weapons, 
with  little  ultimate  increase  of 
expense.  No.  '  Olo  custom. ' 
These  junk-guns  had  been  in  use 
for  generations,  and  had  I  devi- 
ated a  hair's -breadth  from  the 
glaring  defects  of  the  old  pattern, 
the  whole  batch  would  have  been 
condemned.  I  can  turn  out  good 
guns,  but  I  cannot  turn  out  good 
gunners.  They  have  neither  the 
spirit  of  artillerymen  iiorof  soldiers, 
and  are  quite  unable  to  work  their 
own  guns  with  any  approach  to 
efficiency."1  Captain  Butler,  the 
manager  of  the  powder-factories, 
to  whom  I  have  before  alluded, 
gave  independent  evidence  to  pre- 
cisely the  same  effect,  laying 
especial  stress  on  their  incapa- 
bilities for  organising,  and  their 
untrustworthiness  as  foremen  of 
departments.  During  the  Tonkin 
war  he  was  asked  by  the  Chinese 
Government  whether  he  could 
meet  a  sudden  demand  for  an  in- 
creased supply  of  cartridges. 
"Certainly,"  was  his  answer.  "I 
could  issue  20,000  instead  of  5000 
daily."  But  the  mandarin,  who 
was  the  titular  head  of  the  de- 
partment, remonstrated  :  "  Pray 
moderate  your  estimate.  Say,  at 
most,  10,000  per  diem,  otherwise 
I  shall  have  so  much  extra  trouble, 

and  —  and "    conveying,    in 

fact,  his  scarcely  concealed  fear 
that  the  innovation  might  in  some 
way  curtail  his  corrupt  gains.  Re- 
assured on  this  point,  he  at  once 
withdrew  his  opposition  to  his 
country  being  supplied  with  suffi- 
cient ammunition  to  deal  with  his 
country's  enemies. 


I  do  not  presume  to  discuss  the 
question  of  China's  navy,  because 
I  do  not  possess  the  technical 
knowledge  to  qualify  me  for  the 
task ;  but  can  it  be  doubted  that 
it  is  affected  by  the  rottenness 
and  rascality  which  pervade  the 
other  departments  ?  The  frequent 
statement  that  the  captain  of  a 
gunboat  pays  a  premium  for  his 
command,  and  recoups  himself 
handsomely  by  cheating  his  crew, 
bears  at  least  the  semblance  of 
strong  probability. 

In  dealing  with  the  second  of 
the  two  armies  which  we  are  con- 
sidering—  the  Japanese  —  I  shall 
restrict  myself  to  a  few  remarks 
of  a  general  nature,  partly  because 
excellent  reports  have  recently 
been  furnished  by  English  officers, 
and  partly  because  the  remark- 
able progress  of  reform  through- 
out the  country  forbids  my  assert- 
ing, as  I  assert  concerning  China, 
that  Japan  has  not  much  changed 
of  late  years.  We  may,  however, 
safely  assume  that  its  best  fea- 
tures have  become  more  pro- 
nounced by  the  lapse  of  time. 
During  my  stay  in  Tokio  I  was 
aided  by  the  hearty  co-operation 
of  General  Saigo  and  of  the 
Japanese  War  Office  in  my  meth- 
odical study  of  their  organisation, 
while  staff  and  regimental  officers 
vied  in  their  friendly  endeav- 
ours to  enable  me  to  see  for  my- 
self. I  came  to  the  conclusion 
that  their  theory  of  organisation 
was  very  good,  and  that  men  and 
materiel  were  in  a  satisfactory 
condition  of  efficiency — "  consider- 
ing " ;  considering  that  the  sub- 
ject of  my  investigation  was  an 
Eastern  and  not  a  Western  na- 


1  While  this  paper  is  passing  through  the  press,  a  telegram  from  Shanghai 
reports  that  this  arsenal  of  Kiangnan,  by  far  the  most  efficient  in  China,  is  only 
working  half  time — in  the  very  heat  of  war — owing  to  lack  of  funds. 


722 


China's  Reputation-Bubble. 


[Nov. 


tion.  I  suggest  that  this  quali- 
fication bears  directly  on  my  alle- 
gation of  a  fallacy  of  judgment 
which  has  bracketed  the  army  of 
Japan  with  the  leading  armies  of 
Europe. 

In   further   explanation   of  my 
statement,    not    only    were    their 
departments,  civil  as  well  as  mili- 
tary,  conducted   on  principles   of 
wisdom  which  resulted  in  efficiency 
in   practice,    their   manufacturing 
departments  delightful  miniature 
counterparts    of    European    State 
workshops,    their    educational    es- 
tablishments of  a  high  order ;  not 
only  was  their  regimental  system 
excellent,  but  the  individual  regi- 
ments, taken  en  masse,  might  be 
fairly  designated  good  factors.     I 
may  mention  that  I  was  so  enam- 
oured of  the  aspect  and  efficiency 
of  their  field-batteries  that  I  could 
not  resist  the  temptation  of  per- 
sonally participating  in  their  man- 
oeuvres by  driving  the  centre  of 
a   gun -team,    in   which   I   found 
myself  as  much  at  home  as  though 
I  were  drilling  with  my  own  bat- 
tery.     The  infantry  were  precise 
and  efficient  in  their  movements; 
and  the  cavalry,  though  scanty  in 
numbers,    was   fair.      The    aspect 
and  the  turn-out  of  the  three  arms 
left  little  to  be  desired ;  and  yet — 
and  yet  —  as  we  walk  down  the 
ranks  a  sensation  of  illusion  creeps 
over    us,    for    the    spirit   of   the 
soldier  is  not  here.     Here  are  not 
men  with  an  innate  love  of  fight- 
ing, who  would  take  the  initiative 
of  danger,  and  who,  out  of  hand 
in  their  eagerness,  would  storm  a 
position  with  a  cheer.     That  they 
have   fought   fiercely  against    the 
Chinese  does  not  confute  my  sug- 
gestion, because  in  this   case  na- 
tional hatred  has  been  roused  to 
fury,  and  has  assumed  the  phase 
of  personal  animosity  rather  than 
that  of  the  courage  of  a  soldier. 


May  it  not  be  questioned  whether 
the  remarkable  absence  of  crime 
and  the  submissive  discipline  of 
the  Japanese  army  does  not  con- 
stitute an  absolute  military  psycho- 
logical defect — whether  its  soldiers 
are  not  over-docile,  and  therefore 
tend  to  be  spiritless?  Better, 
surely,  that  they  should  occa- 
sionally insult  the  sergeant-major, 
knock  down  the  sergeant,  break 
out  of  barracks,  and  make  away 
with  kits,  rather  than  that  they 
should  be  characterised  by  a  lack 
of  that  spirited  impetuosity  which 
constitutes  so  valuable  a  compon- 
ent of  the  true  soldier.  No ;  the 
Jap  will  remain  a  Jap,  do  what 
you  will  to  dress  him,  and  arm 
him,  and  drill  him  as  a  European 
soldier.  You  may  discipline  him 
into  military  semblance,  but  you 
will  never  manufacture  him  into  a 
"  vieille  moustache."  Relax  the 
stringency  of  barrack  life  or  set 
him  to  campaigning  work,  and 
Nature  will  insist  on  reasserting 
herself :  the  soldier  will  rapidly 
revert  to  coolie  instincts — a  thor- 
oughly well  -  behaved  coolie,  but 
still  a  coolie. 

One  word  more  of  caution.  In 
Japan,  as  elsewhere,  we  are  fre- 
quently led  astray  by  the  failure 
of  practice  to  correspond  with 
theory.  When  I  was  going  round 
the  barrack- rooms  at  Tokio,  the 
officers  who  accompanied  me  urged 
me  to  question  them  in  details  as 
much  as  I  pleased.  I  therefore 
inquire — 

"How  many  boots  has  the 
private  ? " 

"  Two  pairs ;  one  he  wears,  and 
the  other  he  keeps  at  his  bed- 
head." 

"Why,"  I  reply,  "I  do  not  see 
a  second  pair  belonging  to  yonder 
man  1 " 

"  Oh,  gone  to  be  mended." 

"But,"  I  urbanely  suggest,  "I 


1894.] 


China's  Reputation- Bubble. 


723 


do  not  see  a  single  second  pair 
among  all  the  thirty  men  in  the 
room1?"  Baffled  silence,  and  I 
hastily  change  the  subject. 

"  Can  you,  please,  tell  me  what 
are  the  articles  of  his  kit  ? " 

A  long  enumeration,  which  com- 
prises the  most  liberal  supply  of 
every  item  conducive  to  cleanli- 
ness, health,  and  comfort. 

"Would  you  be  so  kind  as  to 
permit  me  to  see  the  nature  of 
those  articles.  May  that  man,  for 
instance,  unpack  his  squad-bag  1 " 

Dismayed  hesitation — but  there 
is  no  help  for  it.  And  I  have 
some  difficulty  in  maintaining  my 
gravity  as  the  French  military 
attache,  whose  pride  in  the  Japanese 
army  is  great,  mutters  with  a 
keen  sense  of  the  ridiculous, 
mingled,  perhaps,  with  a  little 
vexation  :  "  Dieu  salt  ce  qu'il  y 
trouvera."  Ah,  I  thought  so :  a 
blanket,  shirt,  and  head-dress,  a 
piece  of  some  nasty  eatable,  and  a 
box  of  flea-powder.  This  triviality 
shows  them  in  Japan  as  elsewhere ; 
a  scratch  on  the  surface  often  re- 
veals essential  deficiencies  in  what 
is  fair  seeming. 

It  is,  moreover,  important  to 
remember,  in  estimating  Japanese 
progress,  that  a  similar  tendency, 
inevitable  where  very  rapid  civil- 
isation has  not  had  time  to  be- 
come ingrained,  is  noticeable  in 
other  classes.  I  was  once  a  fellow- 
passenger  on  board  a  Mitzu  Bishi 
(Japanese)  steamer  with  four 
Japanese,  who,  on  first  embark- 
ing, were  shyly  polished  in  their 
demeanour,  and  bore  the  aspect 
of  refined  and  even  dandified 
European  gentlemen.  But  as 
time  wore  on,  their  real  nature 
soon  asserted  itself.  Their  ac- 
quired social  manners  lapsed  into 
abeyance  ;  they  became  untidy 
and  unkempt ;  their  "  Europe  " 
garments  were  in  quick  succes- 


sion discarded ;  the  flowing  Kim- 
mono  was  substituted ;  they  dis- 
played an  inclination  to  squat 
rather  than  to  sit;  their  mode  of 
eating  was  suggestive  of  chop- 
sticks ;  they  shambled  about  in 
naked  feet ;  and  as  their  clothing 
became  more  and  more  scanty,  I 
began  to  surmise  whether  we 
should  not  be  favoured  with  their 
"  birthday  suits  "  alone  had  we  not 
fortunately  reached  port. 

With  the  data  I  have  set  before 
the  reader,  I  will  now  endeavour 
to  show  that  the  recent  course  of 
events  has  been  precisely  such  as 
we  ought  to  have  anticipated. 

Both  nations  must  long  ago  have 
been  aware  that  their  increasing 
fierce  animosity  would  result  in 
war.  Japan,  who  during  the  last 
twenty  years  has  made  strides  of 
progress  attained  by  civilised 
Europe  only  in  the  course  of 
centuries,  has  for  some  time  been 
concerting  preparations  for  such 
an  outbreak.  China,  who  for  the 
last  hundred  years — and  a  great 
deal  more — has  persisted  in  stagna- 
tion and  corruption,  also  persisted 
in  allowing  eventualities  to  shift 
for  themselves.  Herein  both  sides 
resembled  France  and  Germany  in 
1870,  "only  a  great  deal  more  so." 
The  crisis  came.  Three-quarters- 
civilised,  and  wholly  prepared, 
Japan  hurled  all  her  power  against 
her  half -civilised  and  wholly  un- 
prepared neighbour.  Of  what 
avail  China's  vast  superiority  in 
wealth  and  population  if  time, 
the  most  important  element  of 
success  in  war,  precluded  her  util- 
ising these  advantages  1  Japan 
struck  blow  after  blow,  while  China 
was  still  thinking  it  was  really 
time  to  be  doing  something.  Great, 
therefore,  was  the  relative  strength 
of  Japan ;  great  was  not  her  abso- 
lute strength.  Her  preparations, 


724 


China's  Reputation-Bubble. 


[Nov. 


adequate  against  the  Chinese,  would 
have  been  entirely  inadequate 
against  a  civilised  enemy ;  and  to 
speak  of  her  as  formidable  to  a 
European  nation  is  to  measure  her 
with  a  false  standard,  and  to  weigh 
her  with  false  scales.  Equally 
preposterous  is  it  to  describe 
Japanese  strategy  as  Von  Moltke- 
like.  The  despatch  of  a  strong 
force  to  the  Oorea  was  wisdom ; 
it  was  also  such  wisdom  as  might 
be  expected  from  a  child  of  tender 
years.  What  exercise  was  there 
for  painful,  careful,  and  scientific 
strategy,  which  led  to  Waterloo, 
to  Sadowa,  or  to  Sedan  ?  Dealing 
with  later  events,  what  evidence 
is  there  of  Von  Moltke's  strategy 
in  this  tarrying  at  Ping  Yang, 
instead  of  following  up  success 
with  an  immediate  further  blow? 
Eeally,  the  invocation  of  reputed 
strategists  and  the  publication  of 
their  forecasts  is  about  as  reason- 
able as  to  summon  Sir  William 
Broadbent  to  diagnose  a  case  of 
simple  ear-ache. 

And  the  Japanese  tactics — mar- 
vellous !  Nay,  rather,  marvellous 
the  pig-headedness  of  the  Chinese. 
At  Ping  Yang,  the  former  found 
themselves  confronted  by  an  enemy 
ensconced  behind  entrenchments 
more  or  less  formidable  in  front, 
but  as  defenceless  on  the  flanks  as 
would  be  a  man  with  his  hands 
tied  behind  his  back.  The  Japan- 
ese played  with  the  Chinese  in 
front,  and  then  ran  round  both 
corners  and  belaboured  them  in 
rear.  To  compliment  them  for 
such  "  tactics  "  would  be  like  com- 
plimenting the  wolves  for  their 
masterly  destruction  of  the  lambs. 

Of  more  weight,  however,  has 
been  the  favourable  verdict  from 
three  or  four  authorities  concern- 
ing China's  awakening,  her  actual 
development,  and  her  prospective 
progress.  Truly  it  is  pleasant  and 


popular  to  support  the  optimists 
where,  as  in  the  case  of  China, 
the  power  of  refutation  belongs  to 
few.  Some  years  ago  I  published 
my  personal  experiences  of  the 
country,  under  the  title  of  '  English 
Life  in  China.'  Then,  as  now,  I 
vehemently  denounced  the  in- 
famous administration  of  China, 
the  misery  of  its  inhabitants,  and 
the  quagmire  of  its  ante-reform. 
My  statements  were  characterised 
as  the  ravings  of  a  sour  pessimist. 
Doubtless  I  had  represented  my 
case  in  a  clumsy  fashion,  for  now, 
after  the  lapse  of  many  years,  I 
find  the  more  skilfully  framed 
arguments  of  Mr  Curzon's  most 
interesting  'Problems  of  the  Far 
East '  received  with  ready  accept- 
ance, although  they  correspond  in 
essentials  with  singular  exactitude 
to  my  former  prognostications. 
As  one  of  the  few  who  have 
not  been  without  opportunities  of 
seeing  for  themselves,  I  again  ask 
for  evidences  of  development  and 
progress  in  their  internal  adminis- 
tration and  all  that  is  comprised 
in  that  comprehensive  expression. 
What  of  their  laws,  their  prisons, 
and  their  local  rule?  Dare  you 
pronounce  them  aught  but  legal- 
ised wickedness  and  cruelty?  What 
of  their  officials  1  Dare  you  deny 
that,  with  very  few  exceptions,  they 
revel  in  the  very  luxury  of  base- 
ness, and  that  systematic  robbery 
continues  to  be  the  all-powerful 
lever,  from  the  highest  Fuhtai  to 
the  lowest  myrmidon?  What  of 
their  manufactures?  Can  you 
quote  a  single  national  instance 
on  a  large  scale  where  the  modern 
inventions  of  steam  and  machinery 
have  been  utilised,  apart,  as  I  have 
said  before,  from  the  ingrafted 
European  factories,  which  no  more 
represent  China  than  Gibraltar 
represents  Spain?  And  the  do- 
mestic condition  of  their  myriad 


1894.] 


China 's  Reputation-Bubble. 


725 


lower  orders — will  you  contend  that 
they  are  not  sunk  in  abject  depths 
of  ignorance  and  superstition,  of 
misery  and  crime?  The  mission- 
aries are  awakening  them,  do  you 
say  1  "  Are  awakening  "  is  not 
identical  with  "  have  awakened  "  ; 
and  alas  that  the  reports  of  a 
noble  cause  are,  with  rare  excep- 
tions, so  overstated  that  impartial 
witnesses  who  have  investigated 
the  allegations  on  the  spot  must 
needs  admit  them  to  be  fallacious ! 
What  of  railroads,  the  indispen- 
sable requirement  of  even  the 
initiatory  palliation  of  China's 
maladies?  "There,"  may  be  the 
triumphant  rejoinder,  "  we  can 
confute  you  with  your  own  argu- 
ments. The  country  is  being 
opened  up;  railways  are  being 
constructed,  and,  pari  passu,  pro- 
gress and  improvement  are  matters 
of  certainty."  Let  us  accept  the 
challenge  as  a  test  one.  A  line, 
to  the  best  of  my  recollection 
about  seven  miles  long,  was  con- 
structed between  Woosung  and 
Shanghai  by  an  English  company, 
and  worked  under  English  admini- 
stration upon  a  concession  of  three 
years,  at  the  end  of  which  period 
the  Chinese  Government  was  to 
have  the  option  of  purchase.  The 
railway  proved  such  a  remarkable 
success,  and  was  so  largely  utilised 
by  the  natives,  that  the  mandarins 
became  alarmed  at  this  symptom  of 
local  progress,  exercised  their  ulti- 
mate right  of  purchase,  destroyed 
the  railway,  tore  up  the  lines, 
and  transported  the  whole  of  the 
materiel  to  far  distant  regions. 
I  traced  the  destination  of  a  por- 
tion of  the  metal  to  the  island 
of  Formosa.  A  skilled  English 
engineer,  Mr  Morrison,  who  had 
come  out  for  the  special  purpose 
of  laying  down  the  Woosung  line, 
and  carrying  out  other  apparently 
dawning  prospects,  expressed  his 


concurrence  in  the  prevalent  belief 
that  there  is  scarcely  any  country 
in  the  world  where  railways  can 
be  constructed  with  greater  ease, 
speed,  and  cheapness,  and  with  the 
certainty  of  a  profitable  return. 
But  he  considered  that  the  general 
line  of  action  pursued  by  the  Im- 
perial authorities  transferred  to 
the  remote  future  the  actual  con- 
struction of  a  railway-system  on  a 
large  scale,  and  acting  on  this 
opinion  he  returned  to  England. 
This  occurred  ten  years  ago,  and 
uninterruptedly  since  that  period 
the  Chinese  Government,  faithful 
to  its  crooked  courses,  has  hood- 
winked European  nations  by  simu- 
lated intentions  to  construct  lines 
throughout  the  length  and  breadth 
of  the  empire.  Over  and  over 
again  enthusiasts  have  assured  me 
that  railways  in  China  are  an 
accomplished  fact.  Pressed  to 
specify  work  completed  and  lo- 
calities, the  reply  has  been  a  com- 
pound of  animadversion  on  scepti- 
cism and  a  reluctant  modification 
of  the  original  statement.  "  I  tell 
you  the  country  has  been  surveyed, 
the  estimates  drawn  up,  working 
gangs  and  material  in  process  of 
concentration,  and  fulfilment  is  a 
mere  question  of  a  few  months." 
"  Not  a  bit  of  it,"  has  been  my 
reply,  and  not  a  bit  of  it  has  been 
the  obstinate  truth  up  to  a  very 
late  period,  when  the  Chinese, 
driven  into  a  corner  by  foreign 
financiers,  have,  as  Mr  Curzon  in- 
forms us,  carried  out  the  reality 
of  some  short  length,  chiefly  valu- 
able as  indicating  at  least  the 
possibility  of  a  wide  extension, 
which  recent  events  may  materi- 
ally accelerate. 

On  the  China  question,  as  on  all 
others,  the  wise  may  agree  to  differ 
in  their  deductions;  but  they  cannot 
agree  to  differ  about  their  facts,  or 
to  dispute  that  two  and  two  make 


726 


China's  Reputation- Bubble. 


[Nov.  1894. 


four.  How  can  the  traveller  be 
required  to  resist  the  evidence  of 
his  own  senses  — to  ignore  that 
which  he  himself  has  actually  ex- 
perienced, to  disbelieve  that  which 
he  himself  has  actually  seen  1  Can 
those  who  have  actually  travelled 
in  China,  and  whose  discrimination 
is  not  warped  by  optimism,  deny 
the  universal  reign  of  corruption, 
the  rule  of  insensate  custom,  and 
the  prevalence  of  ignorance  and 
degradation  1  How,  then,  must 
such  men  be  amazed  at  reading 
the  following  passages  in  the  late 
Mr  Pearson's  'National  Character' : 
"Ordinary  statesmanship,  adopting 
the  improvements  of  Europe,  with- 
out offending  the  customs  and  pre- 
judices of  the  [Chinese]  people, 
may  make  them  a  State  which  no 
Power  in  Europe  will  dare  to  dis- 
regard. .  .  .  Does  any  one  doubt 
that  the  day  is  at  hand  when  China 
will  have  cheap  fuel  from  her  coal- 
mines, cheap  transport  by  railways 


and  steamers,  and  will  have  found- 
ed technical  schools  to  develop  her 
industries  1  .  .  .  The  preponder- 
ance of  China  over  any  rival,  even 
over  the  United  States  of  America, 
is  likely  to  be  overwhelming."  We 
can  only  lament  that  the  eminent 
writer  was  so  misled  in  his  con- 
clusions through  second-hand,  fal- 
lacious, or  fanatic  evidence. 

Through  the  violent  convulsion 
of  current  events,  or  the  more 
gradual  force  of  resulting  circum- 
stances, the  Chinese  empire  may, 
in  the  course  of  decades,  be  puri- 
fied ;  and  after  the  lapse  of  tenfold 
decades  may  attain  to  a  wondrous 
pitch  of  prosperity  :  but  to  bid  us 
believe  that  she  is  actually  enter- 
ing on  a  career  of  purity  and  pros- 
perity, notwithstanding  existent 
corruption,  is  to  bid  us  believe 
that  we  may  gather  grapes  of 
thorns  and  figs  of  thistles. 

HENRY  KNOLLYS, 
Col.  (h.p.}  R.A. 


Printed  by  William  Blackwood  and  Sons. 


BLACKWOOD'S 
EDINBUBGH     MAGAZINE. 


No.  DCCCCL. 


DECEMBER  1894. 


VOL.  CLVI. 


A     FOREIGNER. 

INTRODUCTION. 
PART     FIRST REHEARSAL. 


LT  the  THEATRE  ROYAL,  COCKLEBURGH,  will  be  performed,  on  the  21st  inst., 
the  celebrated  Drama  of 

"CINDERELLA;    OR,   THE   GLASS   SLIPPER," 
by  a  Select  Company  of  Distinguished  Artists. 


The  Baroness 


Characters. 


Cinderella,  Stepdaughter  to  the  Baroness 
A  Fairy,  Godmother  to  Cinderella 
The  Prince. 
Muley,  Lord  Chamberlain  to  the  Prince. 


Miss  BELLA  SIMPSON. 
("Miss  KITTY  COCKBURN. 
\  Miss  AGNES  HENDERSON. 

Miss  EUPHEMIA  DALRYMPLE. 

Miss  JESSIE  LUSHINGTON. 


Court  Ladies  and  Gentlemen,  Pages,  Servants,  &c. 


SUCH  was  the  playbill  which, 
transcribed  in  printed  characters 
on  a  sheet  of  foolscap  paper,  and 
embellished  by  sundry  ornamental 
flourishes  executed  in  red  ink,  was 
posted  up  in  the  receiving  parlour 
of  Miss  Crossbill's  private  boarding- 
school  for  young  ladies  at  Cockle- 
burgh,  near  Edinburgh,  in  order  to 
inform  the  world  at  large  of  the 
dramatic  treat  in  store  for  it. 

For  wellnigh  a  month  past  the 
girls  had  talked  of  nothing  else  but 
this  play,  which  was  to  conclude 

VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCL. 


the  annual  entertainment  following 
upon  the  prize-distribution  previous 
to  breaking  up  school  for  the  vaca- 
tion. Scenery  and  costumes  were 
all  complete,  the  parts  had  been 
conned  over  and  over  again  with 
such  zeal  that  each  young  actress 
might  almost  have  performed  her 
role  asleep,  yet  now  at  the  eleventh 
hour  the  performance  seemed  likely 
to  fall  through  for  lack  of  two  young 
gentlemen  to  take  the  parts  of  the 
Prince  and  Muley,  and  that  was  the 
reason  why,  on  the  above  playbill, 
3  B 


728 


A  Foreigner. 


[Dec. 


the  names  of  these  two  important 
actors  were  as  yet  represented  by 
blank  spaces. 

To-day,  being  Saturday,  is  a  half- 
holiday  at  Miss  Crossbill's  school ; 
and  as  it  is  a  faultless  summer  day, 
the  girls  have  been  permitted  to 
spend  the  afternoon  on  the  stretch 
of  beach  which  lies  so  conveniently 
close  to  the  garden  of  Rhododendron 
Lodge,  that  by  a  high  tide  and  in 
stormy  weather  the  waves  are  apt  to 
leap  up  the  steps,  and,  bursting  in 
between  the  rusty  bars  of  the  iron 
gate  opening  out  of  the  garden  wall 
at  this  end,  rudely  to  dash  over  the 
nearest  flowers  and  shrubs,  leaving 
them  encrusted  with  a  delicate  crys- 
tal powder  resembling  the  sparkle 
of  hoar-frost.  From  this  reiter- 
ated action  of  the  breakers,  the 
ancient  steps  have  been  honey- 
combed through  and  through,  pro- 
ducing numberless  holes  and  crevices 
in  which  miniature  limpets  and 
mussels  have  lodged  themselves, 
side  by  side  with  tufts  of  many- 
coloured  varieties  of  sea-weed  and 
lichen. 

The  sea-gulls  are  almost  as  much 
at  home  in  the  garden  as  are  black- 
birds and  chaffinches,  whose  legiti- 
mate nourishment  of  worms  and 
grubs  they  come  to  dispute ;  and 
the  arrogant  toads,  which  in  other 
more  inland  gardens  are  accustomed 
to  reign  supreme,  are  here  often 
superciliously  surprised  on  encoun- 
tering a  bewildered  crab,  which, 
landed  here  by  the  last  spring-tide, 
has  ever  since  been  vainly  endeav- 
ouring to  find  an  issue  from  this 
strange  prison-trap  into  which  it  has 
unwittingly  fallen. 

But  it  is  low  tide  just  now,  and 
the  sea — that  arch  deceiver — looks 
quite  far  away  as  seen  across  the 
space  of  sand  dividing  it  from  the 
garden  wall :  so  blue  and  motionless 
are  the  waters  to-day,  that  only  by 
a  faint  subdued  ripple  the  giant 
occasionally  gives  warning  that  he 


is  asleep,  not  dead,  and  will  waken 
up  anon  to  a  fresh  burst  of  fury. 

A  belt  of  tangled  brown  sea-weed 
marks  the  usual  boundary  of  the 
spring- tides  along  the  beach,  while, 
gently  sloping  down  as  it  nears  the 
water's  edge,  the  smooth  expanse 
of  firm,  shining  sand  is  broken  here 
and  there  by  the  mysterious  imprint 
of  some  living  marine  creature. 
Here  it  is  the  silver  sand  -  eels, 
which,  in  burrowing  downwards, 
have  traced  their  spiral  hiero- 
glyphics on  the  surface;  yonder  a 
razor-shell,  eluding  the  pursuit  of 
man,  has  discharged  a  jet  of  sand 
and  water  ere  it  vanishes  from  sight ; 
while  the  action  of  myriads  of 
smaller  animals  have  combined  to 
produce  a  whole  further  series  of 
cabalistic  signs,  unintelligible  to  the 
vulgar  crowd,  but  easily  deciphered 
by  those  who  have  learnt  Nature's 
lessons  with  thoughtful  love. 
Snowy  white  cockles,  blue  mussels, 
and  pale  pink  scallop  -  shells  are 
scattered  along  the  water's  edge, 
like  jewels  strewn  broadcast  by  a 
lavish  hand ;  and  here  and  there 
the  fierce  July  sun  beating  down 
on  the  sands  strikes  a  flash  of 
coloured  fire  from  off  some  agate 
or  jasper  fragment  cast  up  by  the 
waves. 

The  young  ladies  of  Miss  Cross- 
bill's boarding  -  school,  something 
more  than  a  score  in  number,  are 
dispersed  over  the  piece  of  beach 
which  lies  directly  beyond  the 
garden  wall,  each  one  of  them 
intent  upon  extracting  out  of  her 
surroundings  such  diversion  as  hap- 
pens best  to  suit  her  own  indi- 
vidual taste.  A  number  of  the 
younger  ones  are  busily  engaged 
upon  the  construction  of  a  sand 
fortress,  surrounded  by  a  formidable 
moat,  into  which  by -and -by  the 
sea-water  is  to  be  ingeniously  con- 
ducted, while  others  have  wandered 
right  and  left  in  quest  of  shells, 
crabs,  or  Scotch  pebbles. 


1894.] 


A  Foreigner. 


729 


Three  of  the  senior  pupils,  their 
ages  ranging  from  thirteen  to  fifteen, 
have  ensconced  themselves  on  camp- 
stools  close  to  the  garden  entrance, 
each  one  with  some  piece  of  work 
in  hand  which  has  to  be  finished 
before  the  distribution  day,  while 
their  busy  tongues  —  never  silent 
for  a  moment — keep  steady  pace 
with  the  swiftly  moving  needles ; 
and  as  usual,  it  is  the  subject  of 
the  all-important  drama  which  forms 
the  chief  topic  of  their  discourse 
this  afternoon. 

"  There  now  !  "  says  Bella  Simp- 
son, holding  up  for  the  admiration 
of  her  comrades  a  little  slipper 
which  she  has  been  neatly  covering 
over  with  silver  ribbon  adorned  by 
a  border  of  glittering  glass  beads — 
"Cinderella's  first  slipper  is  ready, 
and  I  hope  to  finish  the  second  one 
to-day.  Does  it  not  look  perfectly 
stunning  1 " 

"  What  is  the  good  of  the  slipper 
so  long  as  we  have  not  got  some 
one  to  act  the  parts  of  Muley  and 
the  Prince?"  says  a  second  voice, 
discontentedly.  "I  bet  that  the 
play  will  come  to  nothing  after  all, 
because  of  that." 

"  We  might  dispense  with  Muley 
at  a  pinch,"  remarks  Agnes  Hen- 
derson, reflectively,  laying  down 
on  her  knees  the  piece  of  tapestry 
upon  which  she  has  been  engaged, 
and  smoothing  it  out  with  both 
hands.  "  His  part  might  be  struck 
out  altogether,  or  some  of  his 
phrases  transferred  to  one  of  the 
Court  ladies;  but  the  Prince  is  a 
difficulty,  to  be  sure,  for  the  play 
cannot  well  go  on  without  him. 
I  suppose  there  will  be  nothing  for 
it  but  for  one  of  us  to  dress  up  in 
boy's  clothes  and  play  the  Prince. 
Why,  I  am  quite  willing  to  do  so 
myself  rather  than  let  the  play  fall 
through  on  that  account,"  she  con- 
cludes, with  the  magnanimous  ex- 
pression of  a  martyr  who  is  pre- 
pared to  sacrifice  herself  to  any 


extent  for  the  sake  of  a  noble 
cause,  backed  up  by  the  comforting 
conviction  that  the  well-turned  foot 
and  ankle,  just  now  rather  freely 
displayed  by  the  outgrown  school- 
frock,  would  appear  to  fullest 
advantage  encased  in  silken  hose 
and  velvet  tights. 

Her  companions,  however,  do  not 
seem  disposed  to  treat  the  idea  with 
any  particular  enthusiasm. 

"  In  boy's  clothes  ! "  exclaims 
Bella  in  horrified  accents.  "  How 
can  you  think  of  such  a  thing, 
Agnes  ?  You  know  quite  well  that 
Miss  Crossbill  would  never,  never 
allow  it!" 

"And  it  would  be  so  much  more 
amusing  to  have  a  real  boy,"  objects 
Kitty  Cockburn. 

"  But  if  there  is  no  real  boy  to 
be  had  for  love  or  money  except 
old  Jacob  the  gardener,"  persists 
Agnes; — "and  he  hardly  realises 
one's  ideas  of  a  Fairy  Prince,  you 
know?" 

Several  of  the  younger  girls  had 
meanwhile  drawn  near  in  order  to 
admire  Cinderella's  slipper,  and  at 
the  vision  thus  evoked  of  old 
hunchbacked,  bandy-legged,  pock- 
pitted  Jacob — it  had  been  precisely 
on  account  of  these  physical  pecu- 
liarities that  he  had  been  considered 
fit  for  the  post  of  gardener  in  a 
young  ladies'  boarding  -  school  — 
decked  out  in  regal  attire,  and 
spouting  enamoured  verses  to  his 
lady-love,  there  was  a  general  burst 
of  laughter,  in  which  only  one  of 
the  pupils  failed  to  join. 

This  was  a  pale,  sallow  child, 
aged  about  nine,  who  had  sat  down 
silently  on  the  lowest  garden-step 
in  order  to  arrange  some  lumps  of 
quartz  and  agate  she  had  collected 
in  her  pinafore,  and  seemingly  so 
engrossed  in  their  contemplation  as 
to  be  deaf  and  blind  to  what  was 
passing  around  her.  ' 

"  What  is  Cinderella's  opinion  in 
the  matter  1 "  now  said  Bella  Simp- 


730 


A  Foreigner. 


[Dec. 


son,  veering  round  her  camp-stool 
and  addressing  the  silent  child. 
"  As  she  is  the  principal  party  in- 
terested in  the  choice  of  a  prince, 
it  is  only  just  that  she  should  give 
us  her  views  on  the  subject  of  fairy 
princes  in  general,  and  draw  us  the 
portrait  of  what  her  own  particular 
hero  is  to  be  like.  Say,  Phemie,  is 
he  to  be  dark  or  fair,  tall  or  short, 
grave  or  gay  ? " 

But  so  absorbed  was  Phemie 
Dalrymple  in  admiration  of  a  pink- 
veined  piece  of  agate  she  had  found, 
and  which  she  was  holding  up 
against  the  light  to  test  its  trans- 
parency, that  the  question  had  to 
be  twice  repeated  before  at  last  she 
raised  her  eyes  to  her  questioner. 

"The  Prince1?"  she  now  said 
dreamily,  leaning  back  against  the 
steps  while  her  eyes  wandered  over 
the  expanse  of  water  with  a  far-off 
expression,  almost  as  though  she 
could  see  the  figure  she  was  describ- 
ing approaching  in  a  fairy  bark 
across  the  blue,  dancing  waves. 
"  Of  course  he  must  be  beautiful. 
He  ought  to  look  like  the  picture 
of  St  George  killing  the  Dragon 
that  hangs  in  the  library  at  home. 
He  has  short  thick  curls  escaping 
from  the  helmet  he  wears ;  his  eyes 
are  sweet,  and  fierce  all  at  once; 
and  when  he  smiles  it  is  like  the 
sunshine  breaking  through  clouds." 

"I  am  afraid  old  Jacob  would 
never  come  up  to  the  mark,"  said 
Agnes,  laughing  immoderately  at 
this  rather  high-flown  description. 
"  You  will  have  to  be  content  with 
me  after  all,  Phemie,  for  your  Fairy 
Prince ;  and  if  I  wear  a  short  tunic, 
I  daresay  Miss  Crossbill  will  have 
no  objection  to  the  plan.  Luckily, 
I  have  learnt  the  words  by  heart, 
and  am  ready  to  play  the  part  at  a 
minute's  notice;  just  see  if  I  am 
not.  Come,  girls,  let's  have  a  re- 
hearsal now.  There  will  be  just 
time  to  go  through  the  second  act 
of  the  play  before  tea-time,  and  out 


here  we  shall  be  much  less  disturbed 
than  indoors." 

The  other  stragglers  were  soon 
collected,  and  the  play  taken  up 
from  the  moment  when  the  Prince, 
standing  in  the  foreground  with 
Muley,  his  chamberlain,  first  catches 
sight  of  Cinderella  behind  the 
scenes. 

Muley  (catching  sight  of  Cinderella 
behind  the  scenes,  and  pointing  her  out 
to  the  Prince). 

See  there,  my  lord !  who  is  it  doth 

appear  ? 
That  figure  ne'er  have  I  encountered 

here. 

Some  lady  she  of  royal  race,  I  ween, 
So  rich  her  raiment,  and  so  high  her 

mien; 
The  gems  how  lustrous,  that  her  bodice 

grace. 
Prince.  All  nothing  to  the  lustre  of 

her  face. 
Ne'er  have  these  eyes  beheld  a  form  so 

fair; 

Vision  of  beauty  this  beyond  compare. 
Nor  richest  gold  may  with  her  tresses 

vie, 
Nor  sapphires  match  the  azure  of  her 

eye; 
Less  white  the  lily  than  her  hand  of 

snow, 

Red  as  her  blush  did  never  roses  blow ; 
Her  face  shames  all  that  artists'  chisels 

trace, 
Moulding   a    Nymph,   a    Naiad,    or  a 

Grace. 
Aright  her  praise  to  sing,  her  charms 

to  speak, 
Too  dull  my  wit,  my  tongue  is  all  too 

weak; 

Alone  avails  the  witness  of  my  heart, 
That,  smitten,  glows  with  Cupid's  fiery 

dart. 

Her  love  to  win,  I  dedicate  my  life : 
None  else  but  she  is  destined  for  my 

wife. 
Muley.  Softly,  my  lord  !     First  be  it 

surely  known 
If    she    be   worthy    partner    for    your 

throne ; 
Her  name  we  know  not  yet,  nor  her 

estate. 
Prince.    I   know  this   only,   I  have 

found  my  fate; 

On  her  is  centred  all  my  weal  or  woe, — 
Nothing  I  reck  of  lineage  high  or  low. 


1894.] 


A  Foreigner. 


731 


Fixed  is  my  purpose,  steadfast  I  decide, 
Her  will  I  make  my  princess  and  my 

bride. 
Muley  (aside).   Crazed  is  my  master; 

that,  alas  !  is  plain. 
This  fair  unknown  has  turned  his  royal 

brain. 

But  just  at  the  moment  when 
Muley  had  expressed  these  treason- 
able doubts  as  to  his  royal  master's 
sanity,  the  rehearsal  was  rudely 
interrupted  by  a  new  arrival  on  the 
scene.  Jessie  Lushington,  the  only 
one  of  the  boarders  who  had  been 
hitherto  wanting,  now  came  flying 
down  the  centre  garden  walk, 
scaring  away  a  couple  of  sea-gulls 
that  had  been  seeking  for  worms  in 
the  cabbage-beds,  and,  clearing  the 
steps  with  a  bound,  scarcely  in 
keeping  with  her  dignity  as  a 
fifteen  years'  old  young  lady, 
bounced  down  into  the  centre  of 
the  group  of  actors,  in  her  hand  an 
open  letter,  which  she  brandished 
aloft  with  every  appearance  of  ex- 
citement. 

"  Victory  !  "  she  panted,  as  soon 
as  she  had  sufficiently  recovered 
breath  to  be  able  to  speak.  "  The 
Prince  is  found  !  Only  think  of 
that." 

"  A  real  boy  1 "  inquired  two  or 
three  voices  simultaneously,  in 
tones  of  as  deepest  amazement  as 
though  a  centaur,  or  at  the  very 
least  a  unicorn,  had  been  here  in 
question. 

"  Two  real,  live  boys,  guaranteed 
perfectly  genuine  —  one  for  the 
Prince  and  one  for  Muley,"  chuckled 
Jessie,  triumphantly.  "  At  least 
one  of  them — that  is  my  cousin 
Edward — is  a  boy.  The  other  one, 
whom  I  have  never  seen,  is,  I  fancy, 
more  inclined  to  consider  himself  a 
grown-up  gentleman." 

" What  is  his  name?" 

"Ronald  Hamilton,  aged  six- 
teen," promptly  replied  Jessie. 
"He  is  at  the  same  school  as 
Edward,  only  a  couple  of  classes 


higher,  and  is  coming  down  to 
Scotland  next  week  for  the  mid- 
summer holidays.  Edward  has 
often  spoken  of  him  as  stunningly 
clever,  and  quite  an  out-and-outer 
in  every  way." 

"  And  how  did  you  come  to 
secure  this  paragon  all  of  a  sudden, 
Jessie  ? "  asked  Agnes,  with  an  in- 
flection of  mingled  envy  and  regret 
in  her  tone. 

"  I  wrote  to  Edward  some  days 
ago  to  tell  him  of  our  dilemma. 
He  is  a  very  good-natured  fellow, 
and  I  know  that  I  can  count  upon 
him  to  oblige  me  when  he  can ; 
besides,  I  have  often  helped  him 
out  with  pocket-money,  so  he  owes 
me  a  kindness  in  return,  only  I 
thought  it  better  to  keep  my  letter 
a  secret  for  fear  of  exciting  false 
hopes.  The  disappointment  would 
have  been  too  cruel  had  it  all  come 
to  nothing,  but  now  we  are  secured, 
for  Edward  never  breaks  his  word. 
Listen  what  he  writes  : — 

"DEAR  Coz, — Blood  is  thicker 
than  water,  and  it  shall  not  be  said 
that  you  implored  my  assistance  in 
vain.  Here  I  am  at  your  orders,  a 
willing  slave,  ready  to  perform  the 
part  of  Muley  or  any  other  Avhich 
my  fair  cousin  Jessie  may  choose  to 
impose  upon  me.  To  find  a  worthy 
representative  of  the  Prince  would, 
however,  have  been  no  such  easy 
matter,  had  not  a  lucky  chance  be- 
friended me ;  for  Ronald  Hamilton, 
whom  I  have  often  told  you  about, 
goes  down  to  Scotland  next  week  on 
a  visit  to  his  aunt,  Lady  Lauriston, 
and  by  dint  of  some  persuasion  I 
have  at  last  induced  him  to  accom- 
pany me  down  to  Cockleburgh  on 
Wednesday  week  and  play  the 
Prince's  part.  He  did  not  seem  to 
see  it  at  first,  for  Hamilton  is  rather 
a  swell,  and  does  not  like  to  make 
himself  too  cheap;  but  I  have 
drawn  him  such  dazzling  pictures 
of  Cinderella's  beauty,  that  I  have 


732 


A  Foreigner. 


[Dec. 


succeeded  in  arousing  his  curiosity 
as  to  this  paragon  of  female  loveli- 
ness, whom  I  have  described  in  such 
glowing  terms.  Who  is  she  to  be, 
by-the-by?  You  did  not  mention 
that  in  your  letter.  I  trust  she 
will  do  no  discredit  to  my  portrait- 
ure? As  to  Hamilton,  he  is  in 
every  way  an  out-and-outer.  He 
is  a  great  dab  at  acting,  and  has 
quite  a  remarkable  talent  for  coin- 
ing impromptu  verses,  so  you  may 
expect  the  text  of  your  play  to  be 
embellished  by  some  flashes  of 
original  genius.  You  may  consider 
yourselves  uncommonly  lucky  to 
have  secured  the  co  -  operation  of 
such  a  distinguished  actor-  for 
Hamilton  is  out  and  out  the  clev- 
erest boy  in  the  school,  as  well  as 
the  handsomest :  he  can  be  very 
pleasant  when  he  chooses,  only 
sometimes  he  is  apt  to  give  himself 
airs. 

"  Send  me  a  copy  of  the  play  at 
once  by  the  next  post,  that  we  may 
learn  our  parts  by  heart  beforehand, 
as  there  will  be  no  time  for  re- 
hearsal, since  all  we  can  manage  is 
to  arrive  on  Wednesday  evening 
just  in  time  for  the  performance. 
Of  course  we  shall  bring  our  own 
costumes  and  everything  we  re- 
quire.— Your  affec.  cousin, 

"  EDWARD  LUSHINGTON. 

"P.S.—  Eonald  Hamilton,  who 
has  been  looking  over  my  shoulder, 
desires  me  to  send  his  love  to  the 
fair  Cinderella." 

"Delightful!"  exclaimed  half- 
a-dozen  voices  in  a  chorus. 

"Jessie,  you  really  deserve  to 
be  decorated  in  recognition  of  the 
services  you  have  rendered  to  the 
drama,"  added  Kitty  Cockburn, 
picking  up  a  large  pink  scallop-shell, 
and  proceeding  with  mock  gravity 
to  fix  it  by  a  piece  of  tapestry  wool 
into  her  companion's  button-hole, 
whence  it  dangled  as  proudly  as 


though  it  had  been  the  order  of  the 
Golden  Fleece.  But  Phemie  Dal- 
rymple,  who  had  coloured  up  pain- 
fully while  the  letter  was  being 
read,  now  interposed. 

"  Oh,  how  could  he,  your  cousin, 
tell  such  fibs  about  my  looks  1 "  she 
cried,  piteously,  while  something 
suspiciously  like  tears  began  to 
cloud  her  hazel  eyes.  "  You  know 
quite  well  that  I  am  not  at  all  like 
the  description  of  Cinderella  in  the 
play-book  :  now,  am  I  ? " 

"  Not  a  bit  of  it,"  said  Jessie, 
candidly,  as  she  examined  her  little 
companion  with  impartial  scrutiny. 
"  Your  features  are  not  exactly  bad 
in  the  abstract,  for  your  mouth  is 
small,  and  your  nose  has  nothing 
vitally  wrong  about  it,  but  you  are 
far  too  yellow  and  skinny  ever  to 
be  called  pretty,  and  you  haven't 
an  atom  of  colour  in  your  cheeks ; 
so,  strictly  speaking,  there  is  nothing 
good  about  you  but  your  eyes,  which 
have  got  a  queer,  wistful  sort  of  look 
about  them  which  is  rather  taking. 
But  if  we  subtract  the  eyes,  you 
really  have  nothing  more  to  fall 
back  upon." 

"  I  knew  it,"  said  Phemie,  clasp- 
ing her  hands  together  with  a  tragic 
gesture ;  "  so  I  say  to  myself  often 
when  I  look  in  the  glass.  I  am 
nothing  but  an  ugly  little  girl,  and 
not  at  all  like  beautiful  Cinderella 
in  the  play.  I  am  sure  I  don't 
know  what  made  Miss  Crossbill 
choose  me  out  for  the  part." 

"  That  is  only  because  Cinderella 
must  be  the  smallest  of  the  three 
sisters,  and  you  recite  better  than 
any  of  the  other  little  ones.  That 
is  all  that  Miss  Crossbill  thinks 
of,"  said  Agnes,  cruelly.  "  Your 
face  has  nothing  at  all  to  do  with 
the  part.  If  she  had  wanted  a 
really  pretty  girl,  then  she  would 
have  chosen  Minnie  Palmer,  but 
only  her  awful  lisp  puts  her  out  of 
the  question." 

"  But  Phemie  also  suited  because 


1894.] 


A  Foreigner. 


733 


her  foot  is  smaller  than  any  other 
in  the  school,"  said  Bella,  good- 
naturedly,  as  she  pointed  to  the 
silver  slipper  with  an  encouraging 
gesture.  "  Cheer  up,  Phemie,  and 
don't  lose  heart.  We  shall  turn 
you  out  quite  a  respectable  Prin- 


cess •  just  see  if  we  don't.  Fine 
feathers  make  fine  birds,  you  know; 
and  with  a  plentiful  layer  of  rouge 
on  your  cheeks,  and  a  flaxen  wig 
on  your  head,  no  one  will  ever  be 
able  to  recognise  you  as  plain  little 
Phemie  Dalrymple." 


PART    SECOND. — PERFORMANCE. 


Eeassured  by  these  persuasive 
arguments,  it  was  almost  with 
equanimity  that  Phemie  awaited 
the  arrival  of  the  all-important  day 
which  was  to  witness  her  debut  on 
the  boards.  Certainly  her  pink 
silk  frock,  decorated  with  glittering 
tinsel  stars,  looked  very  pretty,  and 
the  little  silver  slippers  shone  as 
brightly  as  though  in  truth  they 
had  been  made  of  glass.  A  judi- 
cious coating  of  rouge  on  her  cheeks 
had  supplied  the  colour  which 
niggardly  Nature  had  as  yet  refused 
to  them ;  and  with  her  own  smooth 
brown  hair  tightly  plaited  and  hid- 
den away  beneath  a  gorgeous  flaxen 
wig,  which  fell  in  long  corkscrew 
ringlets  to  far  below  her  slender 
waist,  even  her  companions  had 
difficulty  in  recognising  her  thus 
transfigured  by  a  borrowed  glory. 

•"I  really  do  not  look  so  very 
much  amiss,"  she  said  complacently, 
as  she  surveyed  herself  in  the  large 
pier-glass  which  stood  in  one  corner 
of  the  green-room  on  the  momentous 
evening. 

"  If  only  he  arrives  in  time ! 
Whatever  shall  we  do  if  the  Prince 
does  not  come  ? "  For  although  it 
was  almost  half-past  seven  o'clock, 
and  the  performance  had  been  an- 
nounced for  sharp  eight,  the  two 
young  gentlemen  on  whom  so  much 
depended  had  not  yet  made  their 
appearance,  despite  the  telegram 
which  had  come  earlier  in  the  day 
to  announce  their  arrival  in  Edin- 
burgh. 

"I  shall  be  obliged  to  take  the 


part  myself,  after  all,"  Agnes  Hen- 
derson was  just  beginning  to  say 
for  the  tenth  time  at  least  that 
evening,  when  the  words  were 
checked  on  her  lips  by  the  sound 
of  carriage  -  wheels  grating  on  the 
gravel  outside. 

"  They  have  come  ! "  exclaimed 
Jessie  Lushington,  dashing  from  the 
room  in  order  to  welcome  her  cousin 
and  his  companion. 

Some  of  the  other  girls  looked  as 
if  they  would  fain  have  followed 
her  example,  had  they  not  been  re- 
strained by  a  reproving  glance  from 
the  cold  grey  eyes  of  Miss  Allan, 
the  under  -  teacher,  who,  a  great 
stickler  for  the  proprieties,  had  from 
the  outset  rather  set  her  face  against 
the  theatrical  scheme,  considering 
it  culpable  weakness  on  old  Miss 
Crossbill's  part  to  have  ever  coun- 
tenanced the  admission  of  boys  into 
the  hallowed  sanctuary  of  a  young 
ladies'  boarding-school,  even  for  one 
single  evening. 

Not  being,  therefore,  fortunate 
enough  to  claim  kinship  with  either 
of  the  new  arrivals,  the  other  pupils 
had  to  content  themselves  by  throng- 
ing to  the  window,  where,  craning 
over  each  other's  necks,  they  con- 
trived to  catch  glimpses  of  the  two 
youths  just  alighting  from  the  car- 
riage that  had  brought  them  out 
here  from  town. 

"Which  is  Eonald  Hamilton?" 
asked  Kitty  Cockburn.  "Is  it 
the  short  fair  one  in  -the  Glengarry 
cap  ? " 

"  No,  I  think  not  j  that  must  be 


734 


A  Foreigner. 


[Dec. 


Edward  Lushington,  Jessie's  cousin, 
for  see  he  is  kissing  her.  The  tall- 
er one  in  the  homespun  suit  is  Mr 
Hamilton.  Now  he  is  turning  this 
way.  Oh  my  !  How  handsome  he 
is !  and  what  a  regular  full-fledged 
swell  he  looks  !  " 

"  Let  me  see !  let  me  see !"  pleaded 
Phemie  Dalrymple,  in  an  agony  of 
tantalised  curiosity,  as  she  vainly 
endeavoured,  by  standing  on  tiptoe, 
to  catch  a  glimpse  over  the  shoulders 
of  her  taller  companions.  "  I  want 
to  see  what  my  Fairy  Prince  is  like." 

"  Get  up  beside  me  on  the  dress- 
ing-table, Phemie,  and  you  will  see 
quite  well,"  said  her  younger  sister, 
Chrissy, — a  smaller,  scraggier,  and 
yet  more  insignificant  edition  of 
Phemie's  own  self,  and  who  from 
this  enviable  position  had  been  en- 
joying the  sight  in  a  comfortable 
and  leisurely  fashion. 

Thus  encouraged,  Phemie  fol- 
lowed her  sister's  example,  and 
ascended  the  table,  where  powder 
and  pomatum  pots,  ends  of  burnt 
cork  and  sticking-plaster,  and  other 
such  indispensable  articles  of  a  thea- 
trical green-room,  were  huddled  to- 
gether in  motley  confusion. 

The  other  girls,  still  engrossed 
in  contemplation  of  the  scene  out- 
side, had  meanwhile  paid  no  atten- 
tion to  what  was  passing  behind 
their  backs  till  suddenly  startled 
by  Chrissy  Dalrymple's  piercing 
shrieks — "Fire!  fire!  Phemie  is 
burning  ! "  they  all  turned  round  in 
alarm  to  see  Phemie's  head  and 
shoulders  in  a  blaze.  In  her  anxiety 
to  catch  sight  of  Ronald  Hamilton, 
she  had  taken  no  heed  of  the  tapers 
burning  on  each  side  of  the  looking- 
glass,  and  it  had  required  but  a  touch 
of  one  of  the  combustible  flaxen  curls 
to  set  the  whole  wig  on  fire. 

In  the  general  panic  which  en- 
sued most  of  the  girls  confined 
themselves  to  helpless  shrieks,  ut- 
terly incapable  of  rendering  assist- 
ance to  their  companion. 


"Water!"  cried  Miss  Allan, 
hurrying  to  the  washstand  and 
catching  hold  of  a  well-filled  ewer, 
which  she  proceeded  to  empty 
over  the  burning  Cinderella.  But 
almost  simultaneously  Bella  Simp- 
son, quicker  of  thought,  had  seized 
hold  of  the  blazing  wig,  and  plucked 
it  bodily  off. 

This  all  happened  so  rapidly 
that  luckily  no  portion  of  the 
dress  had  as  yet  caught  fire,  and, 
barring  the  fright  she  had  received, 
Phemie  was  none  the  worse  of  the 
little  mishap ;  while  Bella,  whose 
energetic  action  had  averted  the 
danger,  was  quit  for  a  slight  burn 
on  the  wrist  of  her  right  hand. 

The  flaxen  wig  was,  however, 
irremediably  destroyed ;  and  as  its 
charred  and  blackened  remains  now 
floated  limply  in  the  foot-pail,  where 
it  had  been  thrown,  no  one  would 
have  recognised  the  luxuriant  golden 
chevelure  of  but  a  few  minutes  since. 

"My  beautiful,  beautiful  curls 
are  destroyed  ! "  exclaimed  Phemie, 
beginning  to  cry  as  she  realised  the 
state  of  things.  "Whatever  shall 
I  do  ?  I  cannot  act  Cinderella 
without  my  curls  !  " 

"You  must  just  go  on  in  your 
own  hair,"  said  Miss  Allan,  severe- 
ly. "  It  serves  you  right  for  play- 
ing such  foolish  pranks ;  and  you 
may  thank  your  stars  that  it  was 
only  the  wig  that  was  burned,  and 
not  yourself  as  well." 

Phemie  thought  to  herself  that 
she  would  gladly  have  purchased 
back  her  vanished  flaxen  glory 
even  at  the  expense  of  a  little 
pain. 

There  was  nothing  for  it  now, 
however,  but  to  make  the  best  of 
the  situation,  and  try  to  conceal  the 
accident  from  the  general  public, 
which  already  was  beginning  to 
show  signs  of  impatience  at  this 
delay  in  the  rising  of  the  curtain. 
Phemie's  own  brown  hair,  all  drip- 
ping and  draggled  from  its  recent 


1894.] 


A  Foreigner. 


735 


immersion  in  water,  was  forthwith 
—  faute  de  mieux  —  combed  out 
about  her  shoulders,  where  it  hung 
in  long,  limp,  expressionless  wisps ; 
and  hastily  clothed  in  the  dingy 
brown  wrapper  which,  during  the 
earlier  part  of  the  play  was  to  con- 
ceal the  glittering  ball- dress  from 
the  world's  gaze,  Phemie  was  hur- 
ried on  to  the  scene,  still  wholly 
bewildered  by  the  fright  and  agita- 
tion of  the  recent  episode. 

The  first  scene,  in  which  Cin- 
derella, sitting  by  the  kitchen-fire, 
is  found  lamenting  over  her  un- 
happy  lot,  and  the  cruelty  of  her 
stepmother  and  sisters,  passed  off 
smoothly  enough.  Phemie  Dal- 
rymple  was  possessed  of  a  remark- 
ably sweet  voice,  and  her  plaintive 
monologue,  recited  with  much  pathos 
and  feeling,  was  warmly  applauded, 
the  more  so  as  the  dimly  -  lighted 
kitchen  scene  did  not  permit  the 
spectators  to  analyse  her  charms 
very  minutely.  Then  comes  the 
Fairy  Godmother,  who,  with  a 
single  wave  of  her  magic  wand, 
transforms  the  rags  into  finery; 
the  sombre  brown  wrapper  is 
thrown  aside,  and  Cinderella  stands 
forth,  decked  out  in  all  the  splen- 
dour of  flounced  pink  silk  and  tin- 
sel ornaments. 

By  this  time  our  little  heroine 
had  forgotten  all  about  her  recent 
mishap,  and  so  completely  identified 
herself  with  the  part  she  was  play- 
ing, that,  as  the  curtain  fell  at  the 
conclusion  of  the  first  act,  she  had 
no  other  thought  but  of  the  pleasure 
in  store  for  her,  and  of  the  grand 
ball  where  her  incomparable  charms 
were  to  meet  with  such  ample  and 
triumphant  recognition. 

She  had  as  yet  scarcely  caught 
sight  of  the  Prince  assigned  to  her 
by  fate,  and  who,  leaning  in  an 
opposite  doorway,  was  exchanging 
with  his  companion  Muley  sotto- 
voce  remarks  which,  fortunately,  did 
not  reach  her  ears ;  and  it  was  only 


when  the  curtain  went  up  for  the 
second  time,  to  reveal  a  brilliant 
ball-room,  furnished  with  six  claret- 
coloured  armchairs  out  of  Miss 
Crossbill's  best  parlour,  a  couple  of 
brass  chandeliers,  and  a  crowd  of 
aristocratic  guests  all  belonging  to 
the  female  sex,  and  consisting  of 
the  remaining  boarders  who  had 
been  considered  too  young  or  too 
dull  to  take  more  important  parts 
in  the  performance,  that  Phemie, 
for  the  first  time,  obtained  a  clear 
view  of  Ronald  Hamilton. 

Arm-in-arm  with  his  faithful 
Muley,  the  Prince  advanced  through 
the  crowd  of  obsequious  guests,  who 
with  low  curtseys,  carefully  drilled 
into  them  by  the  dancing-master, 
made  way  for  him  to  pass.  Hav- 
ing reached  the  footlights  he  paused, 
and  with  a  graceful  gesture  threw 
back  upon  his  shoulder  the  short 
Spanish  cloak,  displaying  a  well- 
fitting  costume  of  dark  ruby  velvet 
adorned  with  glittering  paste  but- 
tons, black  silken  hose,  diamond- 
buckled  shoes,  and  a  jewel-encrusted 
dirk  by  his  side.  His  almost  coal- 
black  hair,  with  a  slight  inclination 
to  curl,  fell  in  natural  rings  about 
a  broad  and  rather  prominent  fore- 
head; and  from  beneath  the  well- 
defined  straight  eyebrows,  the  eyes 
looked  out  upon  the  world  with 
an  expression  of  mocking  defiance. 
Though  having  scarcely  reached  his 
sixteenth  year,  an  unmistakable 
shade  of  down  adorned  the  upper 
lip,  giving  to  his  face  a  look  of 
achieved  manhood  wholly  wanting 
in  his  companion,  who,  short,  fair, 
and  rosy  -  cheeked,  looked  simply 
what  he  was,  a  healthy,  wholesome, 
average  English  schoolboy. 

Poor  little  Cinderella's  heart 
fluttered  wildly  as,  standing  in  the 
side-scene,  she  took  in  all  these  de- 
tails. How  beautiful  he  was  !  More 
handsome  by  far  than  her  dreams 
had  shown  her,  although  he  cer- 
tainly bore  no  particular  resem- 


736 


A  Foreigner. 


[Dec. 


blance  to  the  picture  of  St  George 
and  the  Dragon,  which  had  hither- 
to seemed  to  her  to  represent  the 
impersonification  of  manly  beauty. 
In  another  minute  it  will  be  her 
turn  to  enter  the  scene,  as  soon  as 
the  Prince  has  recited  his  impas- 
sioned monologue  on  her  charms. 
She  knows  her  part  quite  well,  and 
is  in  no  danger  of  tripping.  Di- 
rectly after  the  words — 

Fixed  is  my  purpose,  steadfast  I  de- 
cide, 
Her  will  I  make  my  princess  and  my 

bride- 
she  will  have  to  advance  into 
the  ballroom.  The  Prince  will 
come  to  meet  her,  and,  raising  her 
hand  to  his  lips,  will  welcome  her, 
saying — 

Lady,  permit  me,  I  am  proud  to  see 
So  fair  a  guest,  whate'er  her  rank  may 
be. 

What  will  his  voice  be  like,  she 
wonders.  Ah  !  now  directly  she 
will  hear  it,  for  already  Muley  has 
made  a  gesture  pointing  her  out  to 
the  Prince,  as  he  says — 

See  there,    my  lord  !   who   is  it  doth 

appear  ? 
That  figure  ne'er  have  I  encountered 

here. 

Some  lady  she  of  royal  race,  I  ween, 
So  rich  her  raiment,  and  so  high  her 

mien ; 
The  gems  how  lustrous,  that  her  bodice 

grace. 

To  which  the  Prince,  looking  in 
the  same  direction,  made  answer  in 
a  clear  ringing  voice  : — 

They  scarcely  seem  to    me  to   match 

her  face. 
What    direful    vision    do    mine    eyes 

behold  ? 
A  sight  indeed  to  make  a  young  man 

old. 

I  never  thought  a  lass  so  plain  to  meet ; 
If  she's  a  beauty,  then  my  head  I'll 

eat. 


What  was  the  matter  with  the 
words  1  Phemie  asked  herself  con- 
fusedly, with  a  sort  of  feeling  that 
somehow  she  had  got  into  a  dread- 
ful nightmare.  Surely  that  was 
not  what  was  written  in  the  play  1 

But  there  was  no  time  for  re- 
flection just  now ;  for  utterly  un- 
moved by  the  titters  breaking  out 
around  him,  Ronald  Hamilton  pro- 
ceeded with  ruthless  emphasis, 
while  a  cruel  mocking  smile  played 
over  his  well-formed  lips  : — 

Her   face   resembles   most    an    unripe 

pear; 
Her   figure's   like   the   very   crows   to 

scare ; 

Her  cheek  the  colour  of  a  tallow  dip  ; 
No  rose  nor  cherry  hues  adorn  her  lip. 
Not  heaven  nor  hell  itself  shall  have 

the  power 
To   make  me   lead   that   lady   to    my 

bower  ! 

The  last  words  were  drowned  in 
a  general  and  uncontrollable  fit 
of  laughter,  in  which  actors  and 
audience  joined  indiscriminately. 
It  was  in  vain  that  the  faithful 
Muley  endeavoured  to  rescue  the 
situation  by  repeating  over  and 
over  again  with  intense  conviction 
the  next  lines  of  his  part : — 

Crazed   is  my  master — that,    alas  !    is 

plain — 
This  fair  unknown  has  turned  his  royal 

brain  ! 

He  only  provoked  the  Prince's  in- 
solent rejoinder — 

A  galley  slave  I'd  sooner  be  for  life, 
Than   take    Miss    Cinderella    for    my 
wife  ! 

Then  it  was  that  took  place  an 
event  hitherto  unparalleled  in  the 
annals  of  Miss  Crossbill's  refined 
and  select  boarding  -  school.  A 
thin,  scraggy  little  girl,  with  lank 
disordered  elf-locks  hanging  about 
her  shoulders,  her  painted  cheeks 
all  disfigured  by  the  marks  of 
angry  tears,  which  had  washed 


1894.] 


A  Foreigner. 


737 


away  the  rouge  in  long  irregular 
streaks,  and  her  hazel  eyes  alight 
with  the  fury  of  a  Medea  and  a 
Cassandra  rolled  into  one,  rushed 
on  to  the  scene,  and  raising  her- 
self on  tiptoe,  before  any  one  had 
been  able  to  guess  or  forestall  her 
intention,  had  then  and  there,  in 
full  view  of  the  assembled  audi- 
ence, delivered  a  resounding  slap 
on  the  miscreant  Prince's  cheek. 

Let  us  draw  a  merciful  veil  over 
the  conclusion  of  this  mournful 
scene.  To  continue  the  play  after 
this  tragic  incident  was  clearly  im- 
possible ;  and  there  was  nothing  for 
it  but  to  lower  the  curtain  with 
all  possible  speed,  so  as  at  least 
to  screen  from  the  outer  public 
the  further  painful  details  of  this 
dramatic  fiasco. 

Severely  reprimanded  by  the 
persons  in  authority  for  her  un- 
seemly and  unladylike  behaviour, 
Phemie  Dalrymple  was  sent  to  bed, 
there  to  sob  herself  to  sleep  with 
mortification  and  annoyance,  while 
the  faithless  Prince,  cause  of  all 
the  disaster,  had  meanwhile  taken 
an  abrupt  departure  from  Rhodo- 
dendron Lodge,  and  was  enjoying 
a  hearty  laugh  over  the  recollection 
of  the  scene,  as  together  with  his 
companion  he  drove  back  to  town. 

"  But  it  was  a  dirty  trick  to 
play  all  the  same,  Hamilton,"  re- 
monstrated the  softer-hearted  Ed- 
ward, although  he  too  had  been 


unable  to  refrain  from  joining  in 
his  comrade's  infectious  mirth. 

"  Nonsense,  my  dear  fellow ;  you 
should,  on  the  contrary,  be  grateful 
to  me  for  having  delivered  you 
from  the  ordeal  of  sitting  out  the 
rest  of  the  evening  in  company 
with  a  set  of  dowdy  schoolgirls. 
Why,  there  was  not  a  pretty  face 
among  them.  Now  we  shall  get 
back  to  town  in  time  to  attend  the 
circus,  and  see  Senora  Juanita,  the 
beautiful  bull-tamer,  whom  all  the 
papers  are  full  of  just  now." 

"  Senora  Juanita  might  have 
waited  till  to-morrow,"  said  Ed- 
ward •  "  and  I  really  do  not  like 
to  think  of  that  poor  little  girl, 
who  will  probably  now  be  punished 
by  your  fault." 

"  Poor  little  girl  !  A  regular 
spitfire,  I  tell  you.  She  looked  as 
if  she  could  have  scratched  out 
my  eyes  with  pleasure.  Why,  my 
cheek  is  still  all  hot  and  tingling 
with  the  pain  of  the  slap  she  gave 
me." 

"  I  rather  liked  her  spirit,"  said 
Edward,  reflectively.  "  You  only 
got  what  you  richly  deserved, 
Hamilton,  after  all,  and  I  cannot 
say  that  I  think  Cinderella  was  in 
the  wrong  for  having  boxed  your 
ears." 

"A  woman  is  always  in  the 
wrong  when  she  is  ugly,"  rejoined 
Hamilton,  with  a  smile  that  was 
decidedly  too  cynical  for  his  six- 
teen years. 


CHAPTER   I. — LEAVE-TAKINGS. 


The  captain  of  the  West  Indian 
steamer  Minerva  was  in  high  good- 
humour  to-day,  and  rubbed  his  large 
red  hands  delightedly  together  as  he 
welcomed  on  board  the  pilot  that 
was  to  guide  them  into  Southamp- 
ton port.  He  had  just  accomplished 
the  quickest  passage  ever  known 
across  the  Atlantic, — eleven  days 


and  a  half  from  Barbadoes,  which 
was  quite  twenty-four  hours  within 
the  usual  time,  and  fully  six  hours 
less  than  the  utmost  achievement  of 
his  rival,  the  Neptune.  No  wonder, 
then,  that  he  felt  satisfied  with  him- 
self and  his  ship. 

The  passengers  too  were  satisfied 
with  their  captain;  for  man  is  by 


738 


A  Foreigner. 


[Dec. 


nature  an  impatient  animal,  and 
even  the  most  indolent  of  human 
beings  generally  contrive  to  nour- 
ish the  delusion  that  they  have  no 
time  to  lose.  Most  people  may 
have  felt  that  a  day  struck  off  a 
tedious  sea-voyage  was  a  day  added 
on  to  life, — a  day  gained  to  busi- 
ness, to  liberty,  to  love,  or  perhaps 
merely  to  sport  or  pleasure,  but  a 
gain  undoubtedly. 

Alone,  Mr  Dalrymple  was  con- 
scious of  no  particular  gain,  and 
would  have  been  glad  if  the  sea- 
voyage  had  lasted  twenty-four  or 
even  forty-eight  hours  longer.  He 
was  fond  of  these  trips  to  and  fro 
over  the  Atlantic — fond  of  the  easy 
unconventional  life  on  board  ship — 
fond,  too,  of  the  chance  acquaintances 
with  whom  he  found  himself  mated 
for  a  week  or  so, — acquaintanceship 
which  mostly  involved  no  binding 
sense  of  obligation,  no  irksome  tie 
of  social  duty  on  either  side.  The 
passengers  on  board  this  time  exactly 
suited  his  taste;  for  besides  his 
neighbour  and  old  acquaintance, 
Mr  Braidwood  of  Braidwood,  who 
owned  an  adjacent  West  Indian 
estate,  Mr  Dalrymple  had  found  in 
the  Minerva  a  pleasant  whist  party 
wherewith  to  beguile  an  hour  or  two 
of  an  evening :  a  retired  military 
surgeon,  who  talked  very  intelli- 
gently of  the  gout;  a  promising 
young  artist,  who  had  some  very 
good  ideas  on  the  subject  of  clouds 
and  waves ;  and  an  Austrian  lady, 
the  widow  of  a  general  officer, — as 
she  took  care  to  explain  to  people 
in  general,  —  who  displayed  great 
social  talent  in  devising  and  getting 
up  all  sorts  of  amusements  on  board 
ship,  and  who  was  not  unwilling  to 
smoke  other  people's  cigarettes,  or  to 
make  use  of  their  private  stores  of 
tea  or  biscuits,  in  exchange  for  the 
many  little  civilities  she  contrived 
to  offer;  —  whereas  no  particular 
business  or  pleasure  awaited  him 
at  home.  He  was  returning  to  the 


arms  of  no  tender  spouse,  to  the 
genial  atmosphere  of  no  domestic 
circle.  Two  daughters  he  had,  it  is 
true,  but  they  hardly  counted  for 
much  in  his  life.  Two  little  girls 
at  school  near  Edinburgh,  who  came 
home  once  a-year  for  the  midsummer 
holidays.  It  was  now  the  beginning 
of  May,  and  the  vacations  would 
not  begin  till  July,  full  eight  weeks 
hence,  complacently  reflected  Mr 
Dalrymple,  who  was  not  encum- 
bered with  any  very  acute  paternal 
feelings. 

Obviously  cut  out  for  a  bachelor, 
Thomas  Dalrymple  had,  like  many 
another  man  before  him,  slipped 
almost  unawares  into  the  matri- 
monial noose  some  eighteen  years 
ago ;  and  though  after  a  fashion 
sincerely  attached  to  his  wife  dur- 
ing her  lifetime,  he  had  never  been 
able  wholly  to  divest  himself  of 
a  certain  uneasy  consciousness  of 
having  been  worsted  in  the  game 
of  life.  He  had  acquired  all  the 
habits  of  middle-aged  bachelorhood 
before  he  met  his  fate  in  the  person 
of  Isabel  Grahame,  and  what  he 
had  then  to  offer  her  consisted 
chiefly  of  a  small  Scotch  estate, 
somewhat  heavily  encumbered,  an 
insignificant  sugar  -  plantation  on 
one  of  the  West  Indian  islands, 
and  a  hereditary  disposition  to 
gout.  It  almost  seemed  as  if  by 
some  mysterious  dispensation  of 
Providence  these  two  last  inherit- 
ances had  been  expressly  designed 
in  order  to  complete  and  supple- 
ment each  other, — as  if  the  hered- 
itary gout  of  the  Dalrymples  had 
been  decreed  solely  for  the  purpose 
of  necessitating  a  tropical  winter ; 
or  else  the  little  West  Indian 
plantation  created  mainly  with  a 
view  to  counteracting  the  family 
complaint,  for  its  utility  from  a 
financial  point  of  view  had  ceased 
with  the  abolition  of  slavery. 

Mr  Dalrymple  had  readily  fallen 
in  with  the  views  of  Providence  in 


1894.] 


A  Foreigner. 


739 


this  respect.  He  was  a  great  man 
at  Santa  Eeata,  whereas  he  was  a 
very  small  one  in  Blankshire,  and 
the  aimless  vegetating  life  of  the 
tropics  exactly  suited  his  somewhat 
indolent  turn  of  mind.  Gifted 
with  some  artistic  capacity,  he  was 
fond  of  making  studies  in  water- 
colour,  but  he  had  an  extreme 
aversion  to  responsibility  in  any 
shape.  Specially  odious  to  him 
were  the  duties  of  a  Scotch  landed 
proprietor :  to  attend  meetings, 
feign  an  interest  in  the  political 
state  of  the  county,  and  listen  to 
talk  about  poor-rates  and  branch 
railways,  was  to  him  weariness  un- 
speakable ;  and  though  not  object- 
ing to  shooting  over  his  moor  in 
August,  and  taking  a  turn  or  so  at 
cub -hunting  in  October,  he  was 
never  really  happy  till  he  had 
turned  his  back  again  on  his  native 
land,  so  that  by  degrees  it  became 
a  settled  part  of  his  annual  routine 
to  sail  for  Santa  Beata  in  Novem- 
ber and  return  thence  in  April  or 
May.  Then  at  the  age  of  forty 
this  congenial  programme  had  been 
rudely  interrupted.  It  had  all 
been  the  work  of  five  minutes. 
An  awkward  fence  in  the  hunting- 
field, — a  handsome  girl  thrown  al- 
most into  his  arms,  who,  with  re- 
turning consciousness,  had  called 
him  my  preserver, — and  the  chain 
was  fixed.  The  much-bewildered 
bachelor  realised  that  he  had  parted 
with  his  liberty,  and  some  weeks 
later  led  to  the  altar  the  beautiful, 
penniless  Miss  Grahame,  who  had 
refused  so  many  younger,  hand- 
somer men,  after  the  incompre- 
hensible fashion  in  which  lovely 
girls  will  sometimes  act.  The 
change  from  celibacy  to  matrimony 
was,  however,  less  acutely  felt  than 
might  have  been  supposed.  Isabel 
Dalrymple,  like  many  another 
bright,  high-spirited  girl,  subsided 
into  a  singularly  quiet  domestic 
woman,  asking  little  of  life,  and 


perfectly  satisfied  with  the  manage- 
ment of  her  house,  her  garden,  and 
her  nursery.  Once  supplied  with 
a  baby  to  fill  her  arms  and  her 
heart,  she  was  wholly  and  entirely 
contented,  and  did  not  even  seek 
to  deter  her  husband,  whenever 
gout  and  a  futile  pretext  of  busi- 
ness pointed  out  to  him  the  ex- 
pediency of  resuming  his  tropical 
winters.  Accepting  his  absence 
with  cheerful  equanimity,  she  soon 
came  to  regard  her  half-yearly  grass- 
widowhood  as  the  most  natural 
arrangement  in  the  world ;  and  it 
had  been  during  one  of  her  hus- 
band's periodical  visits  to  Santa 
Beata  that  she,  whose  health  had 
always  been  so  robust,  had  sud- 
denly succumbed  to  an  attack  of 
acute  bronchitis. 

This  had  been  ten  years  ago, 
when  Mr  Dalrymple,  hurrying  home 
at  news  of  his  bereavement,  had  for 
the  first  time  dimly  realised  the  in- 
convenience of  being  a  father.  A 
brief  trial  with  a  superior  governess 
had  resulted  in  utter  failure;  that 
accomplished  lady  having  shown  a 
decided  inclination  to  devote  more 
attention  to  the  father  than  to  the 
daughters.  Mistrusting  his  own 
strength  of  resistance,  and  fearing 
to  stumble  into  another  less  con- 
genial matrimonial  trap,  the  widower 
precipitately  fled  to  his  beloved 
tropics,  after  having  placed  his 
daughters  at  a  high-class  boarding- 
school,  where  they  would  be  well 
cared  for.  Since  that  time,  regular 
monthly  letters,  and  a  short  summer 
vacation,  had  amply  sufficed  to 
satisfy  his  paternal  yearnings.  He 
had  always  been  sincerely  glad  to 
welcome  his  girls  home  for  a  few 
weeks  every  summer,  along  with  the 
return  of  roses  and  carnations,  and 
had  still  more  sincerely  rejoiced  to 
see  them  depart  in  autumn  with  the 
swallows.  It  had  never  yet  seriously 
occurred  to  him  to  think  that  there 
might  come  an  autumn  when  the 


740 


A  Foreigner. 


[Dec. 


swallows  would  go   but   the   girls 
would  remain. 

The  bustle  of  impending  arrival 
was  pervading  the  steamer  ;  luggage 
was  being  collected,  and  farewells 
interchanged,  which,  according  to 
the  degree  of  intimacy  which  had 
sprung  up  within  a  fortnight,  took 
the  shape  of  cards,  addresses,  and 
more  or  less  conventionally  express- 
ed hopes  of  meeting  again.  The 
ex-surgeon  had  presented  Mr  Dal- 
rymple  with  a  small  pamphlet  treat- 
ing of  the  gout,  and  the  young 
artist  had  given  him  the  address  of 
a  French  manufactory  where  water- 
colours  could  be  procured  at  one- 
half  of  the  London  price.  Baroness 
Gabelstein,  the  Austrian  lady,  who 
never  missed  an  opportunity  of  add- 
ing to  her  interesting  photographic 
collection,  which  had  furnished 
amusement  for  more  than  one  even- 
ing on  board,  now  offered  her  carte 
de  visite  likeness,  and  asked  for  the 
portraits  of  the  widower  and  his 
family  in  exchange. 

"  I  fear  I  have  not  much  to  give 
in  return,"  said  Mr  Dalrymple, 
hastily  reopening  his  travelling  desk, 
and  taking  out  a  couple  of  rather 
faded  photographs,  which  he  handed 
to  the  lady.  The  first  of  these  pic- 
tures represented  a  stout  elderly 


man,  rather  undersized,  with  a 
shock  head  of  grey  hair,  short 
stubbly  beard,  and  a  cheerful,  devil- 
may-care,  almost  rakish  expression. 
The  second  a  pair  of  girls,  seemingly 
aged  ten  and  twelve  respectively,  at- 
tired in  staring  checked  frocks,  and 
with  large  white  sun-bonnets  over- 
shadowing small  insignificant  faces. 
"  Quelles  charmantes  petites 
fittest"  said  Baroness  Gabelstein, 
thinking  to  herself  that  she  had 
rarely  seen  such  uninteresting  speci- 
mens of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race. 
"How  must  you  rejoice  to  think 
that  you  will  so  soon  to  your 
heart  press  those  sweet  little  trea- 
sures." 

"  Yes  —  hum,"  said  Mr  Dal- 
rymple, doubtfully.  "  Children  are 
a  great  responsibility." 

"  Surely,"  said  the  Baroness, 
sweetly,  "our  children  make  us  a 
great  concern,  and  where  the  mother 
fails,  the  father  has  hard  task  in- 
deed." 

Then  the  steam- whistle,  sounding 
loud  and  shrill,  cut  short  all  further 
leave-takings  by  giving  notice  that 
arrival  was  imminent;  and  ten 
minutes  later  the  party  which 
chance  and  fate  had  thus  united 
for  a  brief  span  of  time  had  dis- 
persed, never  in  all  probability  to 
meet  again. 


CHAPTER   II. — HORSE-CHESTNUT   BLOSSOMS. 


Mr  Dalrymple  dined  and  slept 
at  his  London  club  that  night,  then, 
as  he  had  nothing  further  to  do  in 
town,  took  the  Northern  express 
next  morning,  having  previously 
telegraphed  his  arrival  to  Mrs 
Dunn,  the  housekeeper,  in  order 
that  she  might  air  his  sheets  and 
get  in  a  girl  from  the  village  to 
assist  in  the  household  work.  Ever 
since  he  had  lost  his  wife,  Mr  Dal- 
rymple had  made  no  pretence  at  all 
of  keeping  up  an  establishment  at 


Airds  Hill.  The  large  drawing-  and 
dining-room  there  had  been  shut 
up  for  years,  and  the  little  back 
library,  with  its  shabby,  worm-eaten 
bookcases  and  faded  wall-paper, 
hung  round  with  some  old  sporting 
engravings,  was  ample  accommoda- 
tion for  his  simple  tastes. 

The  change  from  Santa  Lucia 
to  Blankshire  always  disagreeably 
affected  Mr  Dalrymple's  artistic 
perceptions,  and  it  invariably  took 
him  some  weeks  to  get  reconciled 


1894.] 


A  Foreigner. 


741 


to  the  altered  scenery.  Nature 
here  seemed  poor  and  niggardly 
compared  to  the  rich  vegetation  of 
the  tropics ;  and  the  average  Scotch 
navvy  or  collier  was  a  far  less 
picturesque  feature  in  the  landscape 
than  silver-bangled  coolies,  or  grin- 
ning negroes,  tricked  out  with  gaudy 
rags.  To-day  as  he  got  into  the  fly 
that  was  to  drive  him  up  to  Airds 
Hill,  it  struck  Mr  Dalrymple  that 
he  had  never  seen  the  country  look 
so  bare,  so  dismal,  so  thoroughly 
unprepossessing.  Not  a  bright 
patch  of  colour  anywhere  on  which 
to  rest  the  eye,  not  a  single  poet- 
ical idea  to  be  extracted  from  the 
hopeless  prose  of  a  coal-pit-dotted, 
rail  way -netted,  smoke -enshrouded 
neighbourhood. 

After  a  while  the  creaking  sound 
of  the  vehicle,  and  the  snail's  pace 
at  which  it  ascended  the  last  stiff 
hill,  became  intolerable  to  bear. 
He  felt  chilly  too,  as  he  always 
did  on  his  return  to  Scotland  j  and 
although,  according  to  national 
standard,  the  afternoon  was  a  very 
fine  one  for  the  middle  of  May,  it 
felt  bleak  and  raw  enough  to  any 
one  hailing  from  brighter  regions. 
A  walk  would  do  him  good,  re- 
flected Mr  Dalrymple.  There  was 
a  short-cut  just  here  through  the 
fir-plantation  that  would  take  him 
up  in  half  the  time  required  by  the 
carriage,  which  had  to  make  a  wide 
circuit  in  order  to  avoid  a  group  of 
ironworks.  It  was  a  decided  relief 
to  be  able  to  stretch  his  cramped 
limbs,  and  to  turn  aside  from  the 
dusty  highroad  to  a  narrow  path- 
way between  the  trees.  The  fir- 
plantation,  after  running  up  for 
about  half  a  mile,  finally  resolved 
itself  into  a  shrubbery  of  ever- 
greens leading  up  to  Airds  Hill;  and 
thus  it  came  about  that,  after  six 
months'  absence,  Mr  Dalrymple  re- 
entered  his  home  unperceived  and 
unannounced. 

The  front  door   stood   open,  in 


itself  an  unusual  circumstance ;  and 
he  noted  too  with  surprise  that  the 
drawing-room  shutters  were  un- 
closed. Stepping  in  to  the  entrance 
lobby,  he  was  about  to  go  in  quest 
of  Mrs  Dunn  to  make  known  his 
arrival,  when  the  sound  of  hammer- 
ing struck  upon  his  ear.  It  came 
from  the  drawing-room,  whose  door 
stood  likewise  ajar.  In  the  next 
moment  Mr  Dalrymple  had  entered 
the  drawing-room,  and  stood  petri- 
fied with  surprise  at  the  sight  that 
met  his  eyes. 

At  the  far  end  of  the  apartment 
was  a  deep  recess  in  the  wall,  where 
formerly  a  large  old-fashioned  look- 
ing-glass had  hung.  This  mirror 
had  now  been  removed,  and  was 
leaning  against  the  wall  a  little  way 
off,  while  the  empty  recess,  freshly 
lined  with  dark  crimson  velvet,  had 
acquired  a  new,  unknown  glory. 
Mounted  upon  a  ladder  was  a  thin 
angular  girl  of  about  fifteen,  vigor- 
ously plying  the  hammer  whose 
sound  had  attracted  Mr  Dalrymple 
to  the  room.  She  was  engaged  in 
fixing  up  a  little  carved  wooden 
bracket  against  the  velvet,  and 
seemed  to  be  finding  some  diffi- 
culty in  getting  the  nails  to  hold 
securely,  for  her  face  was  flushed 
with  the  exertion,  her  hair  rough 
and  tumbled.  Several  more  little 
brackets  of  the  same  kind  lay  piled 
up  together  on  a  table  alongside, 
with  half-a-dozen  rare  old  china 
cups,  and  some  quaint  Japanese 
soapstone  figures. 

For  a  full  minute  Mr  Dalrymple 
had  stood  and  watched  her  aghast. 

"  Phemie,  my  dear,"  he  called  out 
at  last,  having  recovered  his  voice. 
"  Phemie ! " 

The  young  lady  dropped  the 
hammer  with  a  clatter,  barely  es- 
caping the  destruction  of  one  of  the 
soapstone  figures  on  the  table  be- 
low, and  springing  down  the  lad- 
der with  the  agility  of  a  cat,  but 
with  scarcely  its  grace,  she  ran  to 


742 


A  Foreigner. 


[Dec. 


embrace  her  father  rather  boister- 
ously. 

"  Papa  !  Already  1  We  did  not 
expect  you  for  an  hour  at  least." 

"And  I  did  not  expect  you  at 
all,"  reflected  the  parent ;  but  aloud 
he  only  said — 

"But,  my  dear  Phemie,  how  on 
earth  do  you  happen  to  be  here  1 
And  what  are  you  doing  to  the 
room  1 " 

"  Phemie  !  "  now  laughed  the 
young  lady  with  a  shrill,  school- 
girl laugh.  "  Phemie  !  why,  I  am 
Chrissy,  papa.  It  is  high  time  you 
came  home  if  you  have  forgotten 
your  own  daughters'  faces." 

«  Yes — to  be  sure,  Chrissy,"  said 
Mr  Dalrymple,  in  some  confusion, 
unwilling  to  admit  that  he  had  been 
in  truth  mistaken;  "Chrissy,  of 
course, — it  was  only  a  little  slip  of 
the  tongue,  my  dear :  and  then,  you 

see,  it  is  quite  six  months  since 

But  why  are  you  here  at  all,  instead 
of  at  school  1 "  he  repeated,  reverting 
to  the  original  question. 

"  Measles,"  replied  Chrissy,  short- 
ly. "  They  broke  out  last  Saturday, 
so  school  was  dissolved  eight  weeks 
sooner.  It  was  too  late  to  telegraph 
you  about  it,  as  we  knew  you  would 
be  already  on  your  way  home ;  so 
Phemie  and  I  came  here  right  away, 
and  we  have  been  trying  to  make 
the  house  a  little  comfortable  before 
your  arrival.  We  are  not  quite 
finished  yet,  for,  you  see,  we  only 
expected  your  steamer  on  the  16th. 
If  you  had  come  to-morrow  the 
drawing-room  would  have  been 
ready.  It  was  meant  as  a  little 
surprise." 

"  A  great  surprise  indeed,"  mur- 
mured the  widower. 

"  But  you  see  that  at  least  we 
nave  lost  no  time,"  said  Chrissy, 
apologetically.  "You  will  be  de- 
lighted, papa,  to  see  all  we  have 
done  in  one  short  week.  Just  look 
how  lovely  the  recess  will  be  when 
all  is  finished.  We  are  going  to 


put  up  the  marble  console  below, 
with  the  clock  and  the  big  Japanese 
vases,  and  those  brackets  will  be 
filled  up  with  cups  and  saucers  and 
little  soapstone  men  in  the  centre. 
I  dragged  them  out  of  the  store- 
room yesterday,  all  covered  with 
dust  and  cobwebs.  Then  the  mir- 
ror will  come  over  the  mantel- 
piece as  soon  as  the  frame  has  been 
regilt." 

"  But,  my  dear  Chrissy,"  said  the 
father,  feebly,  a  prey  to  a  sort  of 
nightmare,  feeling  as  though  nets 
were  closing  in  around  him  on  all 
sides,  "it  is  very  good  of  you  and 
Phemie  to  take  so  much  trouble  to 
make  the  house  look  nice,  but  you 
need  not  have  minded  on  my 
account.  I  am  quite  comfortable, 
I  assure  you,  without  all  this — this 
red  velvet,  and  soapstone  men,  and 
so  on." 

"  Oh,  we  do  not  mind  the  trouble," 
rejoined  Chrissy,  lightly;  "and  it 
had  to  be  done  at  any  rate,  you 
know.  We  should  have  had  the 
drawing  -  room  repapered  had  there 
been  time,  but  I  suppose  it  must 
do  for  this  year.  And  as  for  the 
furniture,"  she  went  on,  rather 
aggrievedly,  "  I  wanted  to  have 
chosen  it  in  Edinburgh  last  week, 
but  Phemie  would  not  consent. 
She  said  you  had  better  be  con- 
sulted first." 

"Phemie  was  quite  right,"  said 
Mr  Dalrymple,  with  more  decision 
than  he  had  as  yet  displayed.  "  I 
have  not  at  all  thought  about  re- 
furnishing the  drawing-room.  It 
hardly  seems  worth  while  for  a 
few  weeks  in  summer,  and  you 
will  be  going  back  to  school  in 
September." 

"Going  back  to  school!  What 
are  you  thinking  of,  papa?  Why, 
now  that  Phemie  is  grown-up  and 
has  come  home  for  good,  you  could 
surely  never  think  of  sending  me 
back  to  school  by  myself.  Two  girls 
are  less  trouble  than  one,  you  know." 


1894.] 


A  Foreigner. 


743 


"  Perhaps,"  said  the  father,  doubt- 
fully, with  an  unacknowledged 
feeling  that  no  girls  at  all  would 
probably  have  been  a  still  less 
troublesome  arrangement,  had  Pro- 
vidence so  willed  it.  "  But  do  not 
let  us  decide  anything  in  a  hurry, 
my  dear,"  he  continued,  "either 
about  the  furniture  or  about  other 
things.  And  where  is  Phemie  all 
this  time?" 

"She  went  to  get  ready  for 
dinner,  I  think;  and  it  is  high 
time  that  I  should  dress  as  well," 
concluded  Chrissy,  divesting  herself 
of  the  large  Holland  apron  which 
she  wore  over  the  shabby  brown 
merino,  now  considerably  too  short 
for  its  wearer,  but  which  last  year 
had  been  her  Sunday  frock  at  the 
boarding-school. 

"  Oh,  never  mind  dressing,"  said 
Mr  Dalrymple,  hastily,  —  "not  on 
my  account,  at  all  events,  my  dear 
Chrissy.  I  never  think  of  changing 
my  coat  when  I  am  here  alone.  I 
shall  just  wash  my  hands  up-stairs 
and  be  ready  to  join  you  in  five 
minutes." 

Something  like  a  frown  passed 
over  Chrissy 's  face. 

"Very  well,"  she  said,  reluc- 
tantly, and  with  the  air  of  a 
person  in  authority  who  is  making 
a  grudging  concession  to  the  in- 
dolence of  those  under  her  charge. 
"I  suppose  we  must  let  you  off 
dressing  the  first  evening,  but  by 
to-morrow  we  shall  be  able  to  get 
into  regular  habits  at  last.  And, 
by-the-by,"  she  continued,  seeing 
that  her  father  was  turning  to  go, 
"we  have  changed  you  into  the 
chintz  room  at  the  end  of  the  pas- 
sage, as  the  peacock  room  which 
you  have  lately  been  using  will 
now  be  required  as  our  morning 
room.  We  have  had  the  old  piano 
sent  to  be  repolished  and  partly  re- 
strung  •  and  with  a  new  carpet  the 
room  will  look  quite  decent." 

"What     answer     Mr    Dalrymple 

VOL.  CLVI. NO.  DCCCCL. 


would  have  made  is  uncertain,  for 
happening  to  glance  out  of  the 
window  at  that  moment,  his 
thoughts  were  abruptly  diverted 
into  another  channel. 

The  window  by  which  he  was 
standing  looked  straight  on  to  an 
indifferently  kept  shrubbery,  where 
large  masses  of  bay,  laurel,  and 
southernwood  were  diversified  here 
and  there  by  a  clump  of  rhodo- 
dendrons or  a  bush  of  ribes.  Most 
conspicuous  among  these  in  form 
and  colour  was  a  young  red  horse- 
chestnut  tree,  which,  growing  about 
fifteen  paces  distant  from  the  win- 
dow, stood  out  in  bold  relief  from 
the  belt  of  dark  laurels  behind  it. 
If  the  sad  and  sombre  laurels  made 
an  effective  background  to  the 
wealth  of  ruddy  blossoms  standing 
up  between  the  large  fan -shaped 
leaves  like  as  many  rose-coloured 
flames,  so  in  its  turn  the  bright  hues 
of  the  red  horse-chestnut  but  served 
to  enhance  and  set  off  the  slender 
white-clad  form  standing  beside  it. 

It  was  the  figure  of  a  very  young 
girl,  over-slender  with  the  excessive 
slenderness  of  first  youth,  and  over- 
pale  with  the  paleness  of  those  from 
whom  the  pink  flush  of  childhood 
has  fled,  without  as  yet  having  been 
replaced  by  the  roses  of  maturity. 
The  delicate  profile,  in  which  per- 
haps the  nose  and  chin  were  just  a 
little,  a  very  little,  too  pointed  as 
yet,  showed  like  an  exquisite  cameo 
against  the  flowers,  of  which,  to- 
gether with  two  or  three  of  their 
large  fan -like  leaves,  she  held  a 
bunch  clasped  tightly  against  the 
folds  of  her  white  muslin  dress. 
The  soft  brown  hair,  piled  up  high 
according  to  the  fashion  of  the  day, 
displayed  the  curves  of  a  graceful 
neck,  and  was  drawn  back  tightly 
behind  the  daintily  formed  little 
ear.  The  girl's  whole  attitude  ex- 
pressed a  sort  of  dreamy  languor ; 
and  she  seemed  to  have  forgotten 
for  what  reason  she  had  come  out 
3c 


744 


A  Foreigner. 


[Dec. 


hither,  as  with  head  thrown  back 
she  watched  a  flight  of  homeward- 
hasting  rooks  with  a  far-off,  almost 
wistful  look  in  her  uplifted  hazel 
eyes.  The  white  evening  dress  of 
embroidered  Indian  muslin  was 
slightly  cut  out  at  the  neck,  and 
terminated  at  the  elbow  with  some 
snowy  lace  frillings.  With  her 
disengaged  right  hand  she  had 
drawn  up  the  folds  of  the  trailing 
gown  to  shield  it  from  contact  with 
the  possibly  damp  grass. 

If  specially  designed  by  an  artist, 
nothing  more  perfect  could  have 
been  conceived  in  colour  and  out- 
line than  this  graceful  study  in  red 
and  white.  If  Mr  Dalrymple  had 
an  artist's  eye,  it  certainly  did  not 
appear  on  the  present  occasion, 
for  it  was  with  an  expression  of 
mingled  disgust  and  indignation 
that  he  presently  turned  from  the 
window. 

"What  is  the  meaning  of  this, 
Chrissy  ? "  he  inquired  in  the  stern- 
est tone  of  voice  which  he  was 
capable  of  assuming  on  the  spur 
of  the  moment.  "Why  have  you 
invited  visitors  here  without  my 
sanction,  and  on  my  very  first 
evening  too?" 

"Visitors?"  said  Chrissy,  inter- 
rogatively, from  the  other  end  of 
the  room,  where  she  was  still  en- 
gaged in  sorting  her  working  im- 
plements. "What  do  you  mean, 
papa?  and  what  on  earth  are  you 
looking  at  out  of  that  window?" 

"  Just  look  for  yourself,"  pursued 
the  parent,  testily,  "and  see  if 
there  is  not  a  fashionable  young 
lady  out  there  in  evening  dress, 


and  goodness  knows  how  many 
others  there  may  be  lurking  be- 
hind the  bushes.  Are  you  con- 
templating a  ball  or  party,  I 
wonder?  Another  of  your  idiotic 
surprises,  I  suppose.  Really,  girls, 
it  is  too  bad  of  you,  I  declare. 
Where  is  Phemie  ?  I  shall  give 
her  a  piece  of  my  mind,  indeed  I 
shall ! " 

Mr  Dalrymple  had  now  worked 
himself  up  into  a  very  tolerable 
imitation  of  a  passion,  but  his 
indignant  expostulations  were  cut 
short  in  unexpected  fashion ;  for 
Chrissy,  springing  to  his  side  in 
order  to  verify  the  accuracy  of  her 
irate  parent's  accusation,  had  sunk 
down  on  to  the  nearest  chair,  a 
prey  to  a  perfect  paroxysm  of 
laughter. 

"  Good  gracious,  papa  ! "  she 
gasped  at  last,  pressing  her  hand 
to  her  side  as  though  racked  by 
mortal  agony,  and  with  large  tears 
rolling  down  her  cheeks,  wrung 
forth  by  the  very  violence  of  her  en- 
joyment. "How  dreadfully  funny 
you  are  to-day  !  Why,  I  thought  I 
must  have  died  of  laughing.  Are 
you  doing  it  on  purpose,  I  wonder?" 

"On  purpose ?  Why,  surely — 

But  Chrissy  had  flung  up  the 
window-sash  by  this  time,  and  with 
her  shrill  schoolgirl  treble  echoing 
sharply  into  the  evening  air,  had 
called  out — 

"  Phemie  !  Phemie  !  what  are 
you  doing  out  there?  It  is  too 
late  now  to  arrange  the  dinner-table 
flowers.  Come  in  here  directly. 
Don't  you  see  that  papa  has 
arrived  ? " 


CHAPTER   III. TAKING   COUNSEL. 


A  year  ago  Euphemia  Dalrymple 
had  been  quite  a  child,  sallow-faced 


paration,  just  as  a  raw,  green  bud 
may  change  over-night  to  a  fragrant 


and  angular,  and  with  no  particular     blossom,    she   had   developed   into 


promise  of  beauty  in  her  face ;  then 
suddenly,  without  warning  or  pre- 


winsome  beauty.     It  had  required 
no  startling  metamorphosis,  no  great 


1894.] 


A  Foreigner. 


745 


constitutional  convulsion,  to  bring 
this  about ;  for  truly  great  artists 
ever  produce  their  effects  by  the 
most  seemingly  simple  devices,  and 
a  few  deft  strokes  of  Nature's  pencil 
had  here  sufficed.  Nose  and  chin 
had  become  more  delicately  pointed 
within  the  last  few  months ;  a 
somewhat  deeper  shade  had  come 
into  the  clear  hazel  eyes ;  a  faint,  a 
very  faint,  tinge  of  pink  to  the 
hitherto  insipid  complexion.  Each 
single  change  was  but  the  change 
of  a  line  —  a  mere  hair's-breadth  ; 
but  that  line,  trifling  as  it  seemed, 
was  the  bridge  that  spanned  the 
tremendous  gulf  that  must  always 
divide  a  pretty  woman  from  a  plain 
one. 

People  who  had  not  seen  Eu- 
phemia  Dairy mple  for  six  months 
could  not  imagine  what  she  had 
been  doing  to  herself  in  the  interval 
to  make  herself  look  so  different, 
but  no  one  was  as  much  bewildered 
and  perplexed  by  the  transformation 
as  was  her  own  father.  All  through 
that  first  dinner,  between  the  inter- 
vals of  eating  his  soup  or  trifling 
with  the  early  strawberries  which 
the  solicitude  of  his  young  house- 
keepers had  provided  from  town, 
he  kept  surreptitiously  glancing  at 
that  slender  figure  opposite,  occupy- 
ing the  long-vacant  place  at  the 
head  of  the  dinner-table,  with  a 
comical  expression  of  semi-aggrieved 
bewilderment,  as  though  dimly  cog- 
nisant of  the  existence  of  something 
utterly  preposterous  and  incongru- 
ous, which  had  been  surreptitious- 
ly foisted  upon  his  unoffending 
shoulders.  So  absorbed  was  he  by 
these  novel  reflections  that  he 
scarce  listened  to  Chrissy's  lively 
prattle  as  she  chattered  on  inces- 
santly, airing  her  views  and  opinions 
upon  every  imaginable  subject,  sup- 
ported by  Phemie  in  somewhat  more 
sober  fashion ;  and  it  was  only  when 
dessert  had  been  reached,  and  when 
the  housemaid,  who  was  doing  duty 


as  footman,  had  retired,  that  he 
began  to  recover  from  the  first 
shock  of  surprise,  and  simultane- 
ously to  wake  up  to  a  sense  of  the 
gravity  of  the  situation. 

"Have  you  brought  home  no  guava 
jelly  or  preserved  ginger,  papa1?" 
Chrissy  was  saying,  as  she  helped 
herself  to  strawberries  for  the  second 
time.  *'  They  would  be  useful,  you 
know,  for  making  a  variety  when- 
ever we  give  a  dinner-party." 

"But  I  never  give  a  dinner- 
party ! "  exclaimed  the  widower  in 
considerable  alarm. 

"  Oh,  but  of  course  you  will  have 
to  do  so  just  like  every  one  else,  now 
that  Phemie  is  grown-up.  Mustn't 
he  indeed,  Phemie  ? " 

"Yes,  I  suppose  so,"  chimed  in 
the  calmer  elder  sister,  without, 
however,  any  particular  enthusiasm 
in  her  voice.  "  Of  course  there  will 
have  to  be  dinner-parties,"  and  she 
drew  her  delicate  eyebrows  together 
with  a  frown  of  pretty  concern,  as 
though  already  oppressed  by  the 
weight  of  a  responsibility  which  she 
could  not  well  avoid.  Her  satisfac- 
tion at  leaving  school,  and  on  realis- 
ing that  she  was  in  truth  grown-up, 
had  been  little  influenced  by  the 
prospect  of  fashionable  parties, 
which  she  was  as  yet  too  ignorant 
to  appreciate  as  did  her  more 
vivacious  and  precocious  younger 
sister.  She  was  glad,  certainly,  that 
the  long  dull  years  of  boarding- 
school  life  had  come  to  an  end,  but 
in  the  change  it  was  chiefly  the 
sense  of  regained  liberty  that  she 
prized.  She  was  glad  to  be  at  home 
again  amoaag  the  familiar  objects 
and  scenes  which  reminded  her  of 
her  mother, — glad  to  be  able  to 
wander  at  will  over  the  park  and 
shrubberies,  or  spend  hour  after 
hour  unchecked,  poring  over  her 
favourite  poets :  further  than  this 
her  aspirations  did  not  go  just  yet. 

"Of  course,"  continued  Chrissy, 
glibly,  "  it  will  take  us  some  weeks 


746 


A  Foreigner. 


[Dec. 


before  we  have  organised  the  estab- 
lishment properly;  but  as  people 
will  probably  begin  to  call  as  soon 
as  they  hear  that  Airds  Hill  is  re- 
opened, we  must  lose  as  little  time 
as  possible.  I  hope  that  the  butler 
who  is  coming  this  week  to  inquire 
about  the  situation  will  suit  us. 
His  character  seemed  to  be 
thoroughly  satisfactory,  for  he 
served  five  years  as  footman  with  a 
relation  of  Lady  Lauriston." 

"  Lady  Lauriston ! "  exclaimed 
the  father,  with  an  air  of  relief, 
clutching  at  the  name  as  a  drowning 
man  may  catch  at  a  straw.  "  Yes, 
that  is  just  what  we  want  at  pres- 
ent. Why  on  earth  did  I  not  think 
of  her  before  ?  Yes,  we  shall  drive 
over  to  Lauriston  Park  to-morrow 
afternoon." 

"To  inquire  about  the  butler?" 
said  Chrissy,  eagerly,  delighted  to 
perceive  that  she  had  succeeded  in 
communicating  to  her  father  some- 
thing of  her  enthusiasm. 

"To  inquire  about  other  things 
as  well  as  the  butler,"  returned  the 
parent  evasively,  as  he  rose  from  the 
dinner -table  in  order  to  enjoy  a 
peaceful  cigar  on  the  back  of  all 
these  agitating  discoveries. 

"  Yes,  to  be  sure,  Lady  Lauriston 
was  the  right  person  to  go  to  for 
advice  in  the  present  complicated 
contingency,"  mused  Mr  Dalrymple, 
when  he  found  himself  ensconced 
i  n  the  delightful  privacy  of  his  own 
shabby  smoking  -  room  up  -  stairs. 
"  She  has  had  so  many  girls  herself, 
that  she  will  know  exactly  what 
is  to  be  done  about  them.  Dear, 
dear !  How  time  runs  on,  to  be 
sure.  I  never  realised  that  such  a 
thing  was  possible  !  Little  Phemie 
grown-up  !  How  absurd  it  sounds, 
and  how  she  has  changed  since  last 
October.  I  do  not  pretend  to  under- 
stand these  things  myself,  but  I 
cannot  help  fancying  that  she  has 
turned  out  what  people  call  uncom- 
monly pretty.  If  I  were  addicted 


to  figure-drawing,  upon  my  word  I 
believe  that  she  would  have  made 
a  first-rate  study  in  water-colour  as 
she  stood  there  beside  the  red  horse- 
chestnut  tree.  Pink  madder,  with 
a  faint  suspicion  of  yellow  ochre, 
and  the  dark  belt  of  laurels  just 
suggested  in  sap  -  green  by  way  of 
background.  We  shall  see  what 
Lady  Lauriston  says  to  her  to- 
morrow." 

This  was  by  no  means  the  first 
occasion  upon  which  Thomas  Dal- 
rymple had  sought  advice  of  his 
old  friend  Lady  Lauriston,  and 
never  yet  had  he  repented  having 
done  so.  Was  it  not  to  her  that 
he  had  gone  eighteen  years  ago,  on 
the  morrow  of  that  fateful  hunting 
expedition,  when  almost  unwittingly 
he  had  parted  with  his  liberty,  and 
with  perhaps  a  sort  of  sneaking  un- 
acknowledged hope  that  some  mode 
of  retreat  might  be  found  from  this 
unexpected  position  1  Lady  Lauris- 
ton's  verdict  on  that  memorable 
occasion  had  been  given  with  the 
characteristic  shortness  and  decision 
which  had  raised  her.  to  the  posi- 
tion of  a  sort  of  oracle  amongst  her 
friends. 

"Do  your  duty,  Thomas  Dal- 
rymple," she  had  drily  said  when 
the  state  of  the  case  had  then  and 
there  been  laid  before  her.  "Do 
your  duty,  and  it  is  no  such  great 
hardship  either,  I'm  thinking,  as  you 
might  very  easily  have  gone  farther 
and  fared  worse  than  with  Isabel 
Grahame;  for  though  you  have 
escaped  scot-free  till  now,  you  are 
just  the  sort  of  soft,  helpless  loon 
to  have  drifted  sooner  or  later  into 
some  idiotic  marriage.  Thank  your 
stars,  therefore,  that  the  matter  is  no 
worse ;  and  depend  upon  it  you  will 
never  repent  your  bargain." 

Which  he  certainly  never  did; 
for  granting  that  matrimony  was  to 
be  his  fate,  what  more  convenient 
wife  could  he  have  lighted  upon? 
And  as  years  went  by,  more  than 


1894.] 

ever  he  realised  the  truth  of  his 
oracle's  assertion  that  he  might 
easily  have  gone  farther  and  fared 
worse. 

It  had  likewise  been  to  Lady 
Lauriston  that  Mr  Dalrymple  had 
unburdened  his  soul  some  ten  years 
previously,  when  it  first  began  to 
dawn  upon  his  troubled  mind  that 
Miss  Findlay — the  superior  gover- 
ness whom  he  had  engaged  to 
superintend  the  girls'  education — 
was  making  a  dead  -  set  at  his 
liberty;  and  it  was  by  her  advice 
that  Phemie  and  Chrissy  had  been 
placed  at  school  with  such  unex- 
pected alacrity  as  to  defeat  all  that 
accomplished  lady's  cunningly  laid 
plans.  Mr  Dalrymple  had  never 
entertained  the  slightest  doubt  that, 
as  his  actual  marriage  had  been  vir- 
tually decided  by  the  decree  of  his 
old  friend,  so,  too,  the  second  union 
into  which  he  must  infallibly  have 
stumbled,  if  left  to  himself,  had 
been  solely  averted  by  her  sagacity. 
Many  a  time,  when  smoking  the 
pipe  of  luxurious  idleness  under 
the  shade  of  bananas  and  cocoa-nut 
trees,  he  had  thought  of  Lady  Laur- 
iston with  heartfelt  gratitude ;  and 
it  was  with  a  sort  of  undefined  hope 
that  some  such  consolatory  scission 
of  this  new  Gordian  knot  might  now 
be  awaiting  him,  that  on  the  follow- 
ing day  he  drove  over  to  Lauriston 
Park  to  lay  the  case  before  her. 

Lady  Lauriston  was  an  old  lady, 
well  turned  sixty,  with  white  fluffy 
curls  and  spirituel  brown  eyes,  which 
might  have  belonged  to  some  rococo 
French  marquise,  combined  with  the 
firm  square  chin  and  shrewd,  tightly 
closed  lips  of  a  Glasgow  man  of 
business.  If  humour  and  esprit 
were  clearly  written  upon  the  upper 
part  of  her  face,  so  in  no  less  unmis- 
takable characters  energy  and  com- 
mon-sense were  to  be  read  on  the 
lower  portion.  Only  daughter  and 
heiress  of  one  of  the  great  iron- 
masters who  had  raised  himself  to 


747 


honour  and  wealth  by  his  unaided 
efforts,  Elizabeth  M'Bean  combined 
the  advantage  of  culture  and  refine- 
ment to  a  vein  of  more  powerful 
originality  than  is  mostly  to  be 
found  nowadays  among  the  upper 
ten  thousand.  The  slight  Northern 
accent,  which  she  had  never  entirely 
shaken  off,  was  rather  a  charm  than 
a  blemish ;  and  when,  in  rare  mo- 
ments of  emotion  or  excitement,  she 
unconsciously  emphasised  her  mean- 
ing with  a  word  or  two  of  vigorous, 
old-fashioned,  broad  Scotch,  the 
effect  produced  by  contrast  to  the 
conventional  idiom,  which  has  now 
been  imposed  upon  us  all  alike,  was 
that  of  some  brilliant  weed  spring- 
ing up  irrepressibly  'twixt  well- 
ordered  rows  of  turnips  or  cabbages. 
Her  natural  qualities  had  been  fur- 
ther developed  and  accentuated  by 
circumstances.  Married  at  sixteen, 
for  the  sake  of  her  fortune,  to  Sir 
Ronald  Lauriston,  the  worthless 
scion  of  a  long  line  of  dissipated 
ancestors,  who  had  sought  to  regild 
his  tarnished  'scutcheon  with  the 
money  of  the  iron  heiress,  as  she 
was  then  called,  Elizabeth  M'Bean 
had  quickly  realised  that  she  must 
trust  to  her  own  wits  alone  if  she 
would  save  her  father's  hardly 
earned  guineas  from  being  made 
ducks  and  drakes  of,  as  had  been 
the  case  with  the  Lauriston  fortune. 
With  the  business  instincts  of  her 
race  thus  early  aroused,  she  had  con- 
trived to  keep  hold  of  her  fortune 
in  so  firm  a  grasp,  that  when,  after 
a  dozen  years  of  conjugal  life,  her 
worthless  spendthrift  husband  had 
betaken  himself  to  a  better,  or  more 
probably  a  worse,  world,  she  found 
herself  still  in  possession  of  her 
uncurtailed  patrimony.  With  the 
same  energy  and  discrimination  she 
had  brought  up  her  six  children 
and  settled  them  in  life,  procuring 
good  appointments  for  the  sons  and 
suitable  marriages  for  the  daughters. 
It  was  now  some  twenty  years  since 


748 


A  Foreigner. 


[Dec. 


the  last  Miss  Lauriston  had  left  her 
mother's  wing,  and  having  therefore 
no  more  immediate  social  duties  to 
perform,  Lady  Lauriston  had  virt- 
ually retired  from  the  gay  world  : 
but  though  she  rarely  paid  visits  or 
attended  public  entertainments,  she 
still  continued  to  see  her  friends  in 
a  quiet  way  at  Lauriston  Park  in 
summer,  or  in  winter  at  her  Edin- 
burgh house;  and  she  was  very 
much  at  the  service  of  such  of  her 
acquaintances  as  chose  to  seek  her 
out  for  the  purpose  of  profiting  by 
her  shrewd  judgment  and  close  ac- 
quaintance with  men  and  manners. 
Her  cool-headed  reason  was  not  to 
be  upset  or  misled  by  any  deceptive 
glamour ;  and  there  were  few  char- 
acters so  close  or  so  insidious  as  not 
to  be  read  aright  by  her  penetrating 
brown  eyes. 

"She  is  very  young,"  Mr  Dal- 
rymple  was  saying,  in  a  deprecat- 
ing tone  of  voice,  as  he  sat  opposite 
his  counsellor  holding  an  untasted 
cup  of  tea  poised  in  mid-air. 

"I  don't  know  what  you  call 
young,"  returned  his  companion, 
a  little  testily.  "  She  was  seventeen 
last  month,  and  that  is  decidedly 
too  old  to  be  sent  back  to  school. 
Why,  man,  I  had  a  bairn  myself 
before  her  age  ! " 

"Then  what  would  you  have 
me  do?"  said  the  father,  help- 
lessly. 

"Your  duty,"  said  the  old  lady, 
shortly,  making  use  of  much  the 
same  words  she  had  used  on  a  for- 
mer occasion  eighteen  years  ago. 
"  Show  her  the  world,  let  her  gauge 
her  value  against  that  of  other  girls, 
and  make  for  herself  the  best  bar- 
gain she  can.  Try,  in  short,  to  re- 
member that  you  are  her  father." 

Mr  Dalrymple  emptied  his  cup 
at  one  gulp  with  an  exceedingly 
wry  face,  just  as  though,  instead  of 
containing  superfine  Ceylon  tea  at 
6s.  per  lb., — Lady  Lauriston's  tea 
was  always  famous,  as  she  invari- 
ably contrived  to  have  better  bever- 


age at  a  smaller  figure  than  any  of 
her  acquaintances,  —  it  had  been 
some  nauseous  physic  he  was  im- 
bibing. 

"  Then,  do  you  really  mean  to 
say  that  there  is  nothing  else  to  be 
done  1 "  he  said,  after  a  pause,  put- 
ting down  the  empty  cup  on  the 
nearest  table. 

"Nothing,"  returned  the  oracle, 
with  uncompromising  cruelty;  "you 
will  have  to  pay  visits  at  country- 
houses  and  invite  people  in  return  ; 
you  will  have,  in  short,  to  change 
all  your  habits,  and  give  up  your 
expeditions  to  Santa  Beata  till 
both  your  daughters  are  settled  in 
life." 

Mr  Dalrymple  moaned  aloud,  but 
did  not  attempt  to  struggle  further 
against  fate.  "I  will  do  what  I 
can,"  he  said,  submissively,  "  but 
how  on  earth  I  am  to  set  about  it 
is  more  than  I  can  tell." 

"  Perhaps  you  would  like  to  put 
an  advertisement  in  the  '  Glasgow 
Herald,'"  suggested  the  old  lady 
sarcastically,  "  stating  that  you  have 
a  marriageable  daughter,  and  that 
you  will  be  delighted  to  receive 
suitors  every  day  from  12  to  2 
o'clock.  That  would  save  a  deal 
of  trouble,  to  be  sure." 

"  So  it  would  ! "  exclaimed  the 
father,  fervently.  "  I  wish  to  good- 
ness that  people  would  hit  upon 
some  such  common-sense  device  for 
simplifying  all  the  ridiculous  com- 
plications of  society.  Why,  that  is 
the  way  they  arrange  marriages 
abroad,  I  believe.  In  Italy,  for 
instance,  everything  is  managed  by 
some  competent  go-between,  and 
the  young  people  rarely  meet  till 
everything  is  settled — a  most  con- 
venient arrangement ! " 

"  Most  convenient,"  said  the  old 
lady,  drily ;  then  bursting  into  a 
genial  laugh,  she  added  compas- 
sionately, "But  cheer  up,  Thomas 
Dalrymple.  You  are  scarcely  likely 
to  be  compelled  to  play  the  part  of 
heavy  father  for  very  long  —  in 


1894.] 


A  Foreigner. 


749 


Phemie's  case  at  least.  She  is  so 
pretty  that  you  are  sure  to  find 
some  one  anxious  to  take  her  off 
your  hands  before  many  months 
have  elapsed." 

4 'You  find  her  pretty?  Why, 
that  was  certainly  my  own  im- 
pression when  I  first  saw  her  yes- 
terday ;  but  I  scarcely  felt  sure  of 
the  fact  till  I  heard  your  opinion." 

"Well,  now,  you  have  my 
opinion  that  she  is  on  the  high- 
road to  become  an  uncommon 
pretty  girl  —  as  pretty  as  any  I 
have  known  during  the  last  twenty 
years.  Not  regularly  handsome, 
perhaps,  for  her  chin  is  almost  too 
pointed  and  her  nose  scarcely 
straight  enough  for  that,  but  she 
possesses  that  peculiar  charm  which 
is  ten  times  more  worth  than  reg- 
ular beauty.  Depend  upon  it,  you 
will  require  neither  advertisements 
nor  go-between  in  order  to  secure 
a  son-in-law." 

Mr  Dalrymple's  hitherto  doleful 
countenance  now  brightened  visibly 
under  these  consolatory  words;  and, 
unconsciously  perhaps,  his  eyes 
wandered  to  the  bow  window  op- 
posite, which  afforded  a  view  on 
to  the  croquet  -  ground,  occupied 
just  now  by  a  party  of  four — viz., 
the  two  Dalrymple  girls,  with  a 
couple  of  young  men  as  their 
respective  partners,  —  the  one  a 
schoolboy,  scarcely  older  than 
Chrissy  herself,  the  other  a  tall 
and  remarkably  handsome  man, 
whose  grey  tweed  coat  had  an 
unmistakable  air  of  distinction 
about  it.  It  was  on  this  latter 
figure,  just  now  eagerly  bent  down 
towards  his  eldest  daughter,  as  he 
explained  to  her  some  new  intri- 
cate rule  of  the  game  they  were 
playing,  that  Mr  Dalrymple's  eyes 
were  fixed.  But  his  glance  had 
not  passed  unnoticed. 

"It  is  not  out  there  anyway 
that  you  will  find  the  son-in-law 
you  are  seeking.  Ronald  Hamilton 
is  a  very  elegant  and  fascinating 


young  man,  no  doubt,  but  scarcely 
the  sort  of  fellow  whom  it  would 
be  wise  to  welcome  into  the  bosom 
of  a  respectable  family.  He  comes 
of  a  bad  stock,  and  I  ought  to 
know,  considering  that  he  is  almost 
my  nephew  by  marriage.  His 
mother  was  a  Lauriston,  step-sister 
to  my  own  husband,  and  spite  of 
his  father's  name  he  has  far  more 
of  the  Lauriston  blood  in  his  veins 
than  my  grandson  Archie  out  there. 
Handsome  and  fascinating  to  be 
sure,  like  all  the  Lauristons,  but 
rotten  at  core — mere  dross,  I  assure 
you,  mere  dross." 

It  was  always  in  this  calm 
dispassionate  manner  that  Lady 
Lauriston  alluded  to  any  member 
of  the  family  whose  name  she 
bore.  It  was  wellnigh  forty 
years  since  she  had  buried  her 
ne'er-do-weel  husband;  and  what- 
ever bitterness  she  may  once  have 
felt  connected  with  his  memory 
had  long  since  died  out.  She 
as  little  remembered  the  suffering 
she  had  endured  at  his  hands  as 
we  recall  the  pain  of  losing  our 
first  milk-tooth. 

"  He  tried  to  elope  with  his 
sister's  governess  before  he  was 
eighteen,"  resumed  the  old  lady, 
after  a  pause ;  "  and  after  that 
his  father  imprudently  bought  him 
a  commission  in  the  Guards,  but 
before  a  twelvemonth  he  was  forced 
to  exchange  into  an  Indian  regi- 
ment ;  and  now,  after  scarce  half- 
a-dozen  years'  service,  he  is  back 
again  like  a  bad  shilling  on  his 
father's  hands — obliged  to  sell  out 
because  of  some  row  he  got  into 
out  there.  Some  story  about  a 
woman,  I  believe.  Poor  old 
Hamilton  is  terribly  cut  up  about 
it,  and  has  sent  him  over  here 
to-day  in  order  to  let  me  try  my 
hand  upon  him.  I  have  done  what 
I  can,  but  I  fear  he  is  a  hopeless 
case." 

"Dear!  dear!"  said  Mr  Dal- 
rymple, putting  up  his  eyeglass  the 


750 


A  Foreigner. 


[Dec. 


better  to  scan  this  precocious  black 
sheep,  who  at  this  moment  was 
kneeling  down  on  the  grass  in 
order  to  steady  Euphemia's  ball 
for  the  tight  roquet  she  was  about 
to  inflict  upon  her  sister.  "  Dear  ! 
dear  !  you  don't  mean  to  say  so  *? 
and  there  he  is  just  now  playing 
croquet  with  the  girls.  Do  you 
think  it  is  quite  safe  to  leave  them 
alone  so  long  1 " 

"Quite  safe  so  far  as  matri- 
mony goes,"  replied  the  old  lady. 
"Konald  may  possibly  flirt  with 
Euphemia,  but  he  will  never  dream 
of  proposing  to  her,  even  if  they 
play  a  hundred  croquet -parties  to- 
gether ;  for  he  has  got  a  keen  eye 
to  the  main  chance  in  the  midst 
of  all  his  philandering,  and  when- 


ever  he  marries  it  will  be  money, 
depend  upon  it.  To  return,  how- 
ever, to  what  we  were  saying  before 
about  Euphemia's  coming  out :  it  is, 
of  course,  too  late  to  have  her  pre- 
sented this  season,  but  you  might 
take  her  to  a  few  small  gatherings 
in  the  meantime,  just  to  let  her 
feel  her  way  and  rub  off  the  first 
shyness  before  making  the  decisive 
plunge  into  the  world.  Why,  you 
cannot  do  better  than  take  her  to 
the  Yeomanry  ball  at  Lanark  next 
month,  where  she  will  meet  all  the 
county,  and  you  can  freshen  up 
old  acquaintances.  I  shall  make  a 
point  of  going  there  myself  for 
once  in  a  way,  and  shall  take  care 
that  she  gets  the  right  sort  of 
partners." 


CHAPTER   IV. — CINDERELLA. 


"Come  along,"  said  young 
Archie  Lauriston,  as  he  took  hold 
of  Chrissy's  hand  with  schoolboy 
familiarity,  and  dragged  her  out 
in  the  direction  of  the  croquet- 
ground.  "Let  us  leave  the  an- 
cestry alone  to  moralise  over  their 
tea-cups,  while  we  have  a  jolly 
good  game  at  croquet.  There  will 
be  plenty  of  time  before  your 
horses  are  put  to.  I  will  play  you 
two  girls  single-handed  for  half  a 
bob — all  I  have  left  of  my  pocket- 
money  this  month.  We  might  ask 
Hamilton  to  join  us,  to  be  sure, 
only  he  is  so  infernally  stuck-up 
that  he  would  probably  not  find  it 
worth  his  while  to  play  with  a 
couple  of  schoolgirls  like  you,"  he 
added,  with  youthful  candour. 

"Phemie  is  not  a  schoolgirl," 
said  Chrissy,  indignantly.  "  She 
has  left  for  good,  and  so  have  I. 
We  are  getting  all  the  house  freshly 
done  up,  and  intend  to  give  dinner- 
parties next  month,  to  which  you 
shall  certainly  not  be  invited  if 
you  make  such  rude  speeches  and 
call  us  a  couple  of  schoolgirls." 


"  Is  that  really  true  about  the 
dinner  -  parties  1 "  said  Archie, 
greedily.  "  Oh,  come  then,  you 
would  surely  not  be  mean  enough 
to  leave  out  an  old  friend  like  me ; 
that  would  be  real  shabby,  you 
know  !  Let  us  make  a  bargain, 
Miss  Chrissy.  I  will  engage  to 
call  you  a  young  lady,  or  a 
dowager,  or  a  duchess,  or  anything 
else  you  please,  and  will  not  roquet 
your  ball  a  single  time,  if  you 
will  promise  to  invite  me  to  the 
very  first  dinner-party  you  give. 
Please  remember  that  I  dote  upon 
lobster  -  salad,  and  that  I  would 
be  ready  to  sign  away  my  soul 
any  day  for  a  chance  of  goose-liver 
pie." 

"  How  very  flattering  !  Then  I 
suppose  it  would  do  quite  as  well 
if,  instead  of  an  invitation,  I  were 
to  send  you  a  parcel  containing  a 
jar  of  lobster-salad  and  a  goose- 
liver  pie?"  suggested  Euphemia, 
demurely. 

"  Not  near  as  well,"  returned  the 
candid  youth;  "for  you  see  there 
might  be  some  mistake  about  the 


1894.] 


A  Foreigner. 


751 


parcel  being  delivered,  and  then  the 
lobster  would  probably  be  stale,  or 
else  I  might  be  obliged  to  eat  it  with 
my  fingers,  which  would  be  horribly 
uncomfortable,  you  know.  But, 
honour  bright !  if  you  will  send  me 
a  printed  invitation- card  with  'Mr 
and  Miss  Dalrymple  request  the 
pleasure  of  Mr  Archibald  Lauriston's 
company,'  &c.,  I  will  really  and 
truly  never  call  you  a  schoolgirl 
again  ;  and  I  was  not  speaking  of 
myself  either  when  I  did  so  just 
now,  but  of  Hamilton.  He  is  such 
a  confounded  swell,  and  never 
thinks  any  one  good  enough  for 
him." 

"  Hamilton  ?  "  now  inquired 
Phemie,  whom  the  name  had  pre- 
viously escaped.  "  Which  Hamil- 
ton ?  surely  not  the  same 1 " 

"Here  he  comes,"  interrupted 
Archie,  as  the  person  in  question 
emerged  from  behind  a  clump  of 
southernwood,  holding  in  his  fingers 
a  half -finished  cigar,  and  looking 
very  handsome,  rather  sulky,  and 
wholly  bored.  He  was  in  particu- 
larly bad  humour  this  afternoon; 
for  having  ridden  over  here  with 
the  latent  intention  of  wheedling 
his  aunt,  Lady  Lauriston,  out  of 
the  loan  of  a  hundred  pounds 
which  he  sorely  wanted  for  going 
up  to  the  Derby,  he  had  been 
dismissed,  so  to  say,  with  his  tail 
between  his  legs,  and  with  a 
moral  lecture  which  he  considered 
a  very  poor  substitute  for  the 
guineas  he  had  hoped  to  reap. 
Unaware  of  the  presence  of  other 
visitors,  he  had  stumbled  into  their 
midst  without  warning,  and  could 
not  escape  the  introduction  which 
naturally  followed. 

"  Will  you  not  join  us  at  a 
croquet- match,  Hamilton?"  asked 
Archie,  somewhat  diffidently,  for  he 
was  rather  in  awe  of  the  elder 
man's  supercilious  airs.  "We  are 
only  three  players,  as  it  is,  and  I 
should  have  to  take  two  balls  my- 
self against  these  two  gir — young 


ladies,  unless  you  take  pity  upon 
us.  Do  come,  that's  a  good  fellow." 

Thus  apostrophised,  Mr  Hamilton 
looked  doubtfully  at  the  little  group 
before  him.  Archie  and  Chrissy 
were  looking  eagerly  in  his  face, 
as  though  awaiting  an  all-important 
decision  to  fall  from  his  lips,  but 
Euphemia,  after  the  first  stiff  little 
bow,  had  turned  away  her  head, 
and  was  now  standing  a  few  paces 
off,  tapping  the  mallet  against  the 
ground  with  a  nervous  movement 
that  seemed  to  speak  of  impatience 
or  annoyance. 

"  So  sorry  to  disappoint  you," 
Mr  Hamilton  was  beginning  to 
drawl,  "but  I  am  really  afraid  it 
cannot  be  managed,  for  you  see  my 
horse  will  be  coming  round  almost 
direc " 

His  phrase  was  unexpectedly  cut 
short  by  the  elder  Miss  Dalrymple, 
who  had  suddenly  turned  round 
with  a  bright  flush  of  indignation 
on  her  cheek. 

"Archie,"  she  exclaimed,  speak- 
ing fast  and  breathlessly,  "how 
can  you  be  so  tiresome  as  to  tease 
people  in  that  way?  Leave  Mr 
Hamilton  alone  if  he  does  not  want 
to  play.  We  shall  manage  quite 
well  without  him." 

The  two  men  stared  at  her  in 
surprise,  each  equally  ignorant  of 
the  cause  which  had  called  forth 
this  sudden  excitement  on  the  part 
of  the  usually  so  quiet  Miss  Dal- 
rymple j  and  Chrissy,  on  whose 
face  a  look  of  mischievous  in- 
telligence had  suddenly  dawned, 
and  who  had  begun  to  giggle  be- 
hind her  pocket-handkerchief,  was 
silenced  by  a  severe  glance  from 
Phemie's  eyes. 

"By  Jove  !  she  does  look  like  a 
grown-up  young  lady  now,  and  no 
mistake,"  was  Archie's  muttered  re- 
flection ;  while  simultaneously  Mr 
Hamilton  was  thinking  to  himself 
that  this  girl,  upon  whom  he  had 
scarcely  bestowed  a  glance  just  now, 
was  decidedly  worth  looking  at, 


752 


after  all,  and  as  the  natural  result 
of  this  discovery,  he  hastened  to 
qualify  his  former  assertion  by  ex- 
plaining that  perhaps  it  might  be 
possible  to  send  back  the  horse  to 
the  stables  for  another  hour :  now 
that  he  came  to  think  of  it,  a  ride 
home  in  the  cool  of  the  evening 
would  be  infinitely  pleasanter  than 
to  set  out  along  the  dusty  high- 
road at  this  early  hour  :  there  was 
nothing  that  he  enjoyed  more  than 
a  game  at  croquet,  &c.,  &c. 

Delighted  at  having  gained  his 
point,  like  a  shot  Archie  was  off 
to  the  stables  to  countermand  the 
steed;  and  as  Miss  Dalrymple  had 
apparently  no  more  objections  to 
offer,  a  match  was  quickly  organ- 
ised, in  which  Phemie  and  Archie 
Lauriston  on  one  side  acted  as 
partners  against  Chrissy  and  Mr 
Hamilton. 

The  latter  gentleman  made  no 
attempt  to  approach  Miss  Dal- 
rymple for  some  time,  but  though 
ostensibly  engrossed  in  the  progress 
of  the  game,  he  contrived  to  watch 
her  furtively,  with  an  expression 
of  half-puzzled  recognition  on  his 
countenance.  "  I  must  have  seen 
that  face  before  somewhere,  but 
cannot  for  the  life  of  me  remember 
where.  And  why  did  she  look  at 
me  so  savagely,  I  wonder  ? "  he 
questioned  himself  over  and  over 
again,  without  coming  to  any  satis- 
factory conclusion. 

"  Have  you  ever  been  in  India  ? " 
he  presently  inquired  of  Chrissy, 
when  he  had  successfully  initiated 
her  into  the  art  of  sending  her  ball 
through  two  hoops  at  once. 

"  Good  gracious  !  no  ;  what  on 
earth  should  make  you  suppose 
so?" 

"  Because  I  cannot  get  over  my 
impression  that  we  have  met  before 
somewhere  or  other.  I  seem  to  re- 
member your  sister's  face  somehow, 
but  haven't  a  notion  where  it  can 
have  been." 

Chrissy's  eyes  sparkled  with  mis- 


[Dec. 

chievous  glee,  and  her  lips  were 
twitching  with  ill-suppressed  merri- 
ment, as  she  replied  as  gravely  as 
she  could — 

"  Phemie  has  certainly  never  been 
in  India,  unless  it  was  in  her  sleep. 
Why,  she  has  never  been  out  of 
Scotland — as  little  as  I  myself  have 
ever  been." 

"  Phemie  1  Is  that  her  name  1 
Phemie  Dalrymple  ?  Why,  the 
name  is  half-familiar  too,  as  well 
as  the  face :  it  seems  to  wake  some 
old — some  very  old — chord  in  my 
memory  which  I  cannot  quite 
reach.  Her  face " 

But  Chrissy,  unable  to  contain 
herself  any  longer,  now  burst  forth 
impetuously — 

"Her  face  resembles  most  an  unripe 

pear; 
Her   figure's   like   the   very   crows    to 

scare ; 

Her  cheek  the  colour  of  a  tallow  dip  ; 
No  rose  nor  cherry  hues  adorn  her  lip. 
Not  heaven  nor  hell  itself  shall  have 

the  power 
To   make   me   lead   that   lady   to   my 

bower ! 

There  now  !  Do  you  remember 
where  it  was  that  you  met  Phemie 
before?" 

For  a  full  minute  Mr  Hamilton 
stared  at  his  tormentor  before  re- 
plying. 

"  Good  heavens  ! "  he  exclaimed 
at  last,  striking  his  forehead.  "  What 
a  duffer  I  have  been,  to  be  sure  ! 
Of  course  I  remember  now.  It 
was  at  that  midsummer  party  at 
Cockleburgh  seven  —  no,  let  me 
see — eight  years  ago.  And  do  you 
really  mean  to  say  that  that  is 
Cinderella  —  little  Cinderella,  who 
boxed  my  ears  because  I  had  ven- 
tured to  take  some  liberties  with 
the  original  text  of  the  play  ? " 

"Very  great  liberties,  indeed, 
and  you  richly  deserved  to  have 
your  ears  boxed,"  affirmed  Chrissy, 
gravely.  "  No  wonder  that  Phemie 
has  never  forgiven  you." 

"Is  she  indeed  so  implacable?" 


1894.] 


A  Foreigner. 


753 


said  the  young  man,  with,  a  half- 
smile  of  amusement.  "Why,  your 
sister  looked  just  now  as  if  she 
would  not  have  minded  boxing  my 
ears  over  again.  But  I  shall  make 
my  peace  by-and-by — just  see  if  I 
don't." 

He  smiled  again,  the  self-confi- 
dent smile  of  a  man  who  has  already 
sufficiently  tested  his  power  over 
women  in  order  to  feel  sure  of  the 
result.  A  singularly  handsome 
man  with  his  clean-cut  features  and 
well-marked  brows  overshadowing 
a  pair  of  dark-brown  eyes,  in  which 
there  ever  lurked  a  slight  suspicion 
of  careless  devilry,  Ronald  Hamil- 
ton's success  with  the  fair  sex  was 
yet  not  due  to  appearance  only,  but 
fully  more  to  the  absence  of  effort 
with  which  he  seemed  to  accom- 
plish most  things  which  are  cal- 
culated to  make  us  shine  in  the 
eyes  of  the  world.  A  splendid 
rider,  a  deadly  shot,  and  a  fencer 
of  the  first  water,  he  was  equally 
proficient  at  cards  and  billiards, 
cricket  and  golf,  croquet  and  lawn- 
tennis,  whenever,  as  in  the  present 
instance,  he  condescended  to  take  a 
turn  at  such  minor  sports,  and  de- 
monstrate his  superiority  over  the 
rest  of  his  fellows ;  and  there  was, 
moreover,  this  difference  between 
him  and  other  skilful  players,  riders, 
and  marksmen,  that  whereas  in 
their  case  proficiency  was  evidently 
the  result  of  teaching  and  prac- 
tice, these  various  accomplishments 
seemed  but  natural  and  instinctive 
to  Eonald  Hamilton,  no  more  learnt, 
apparently,  than  was  his  brilliant 
smile  and  the  seductive  glance  of 
his  dark -brown  eye.  Hamilton 
the  Invincible,  as  half -contemp- 
tuously, half-enviously  he  had  been 
dubbed  by  his  less  brilliant  friends, 
had  but  lately  returned  from  India 
after  an  absence  of  some  five  or  six 
years ;  and  though,  apparently,  his 
moral  character  had  gained  but 
little  from  the  change  of  climate, 
there  could  be  no  doubt  that  he 


had  returned  home  infinitely  more 
fascinating  and  seductive  than  he 
had  previously  been.  In  the  free, 
untrammelled  life  of  the  tropics  he 
had  acquired  greater  vigour  and 
independence  of  bearing  than  our 
spoilt  children  of  fashion  can 
usually  boast ;  and  the  slight  pres- 
tige of  an  exiled  black  sheep,  which 
still  clung  about  his  person,  and 
out  of  which  he  had  ingeniously 
contrived  to  weave  for  himself  a 
very  fair  imitation  of  a  martyr's 
crown,  but  further  served  to  invest 
him  with  a  flavour  of  romance. 

Euphemia,  who  had  recognised 
her  former  enemy  at  the  first  glance, 
was  firmly  resolved  that  nothing 
should  induce  her  to  unbend  to- 
wards him.  Had  not  the  recol- 
lection of  that  eventful  theatrical 
party  been  rankling  in  her  mind 
all  these  eight  long  years  1  and  was 
it  not  his  fault  that  she  had  been 
sent  sobbing  and  supperless  to  bed, 
while  the  other  children  were  mak- 
ing merry  down-stairs  over  pigeon- 
pie  and  plum-cake?  Recognition 
had  not  been  mutual,  of  that  she 
felt  sure  ;  and  if  only  Chrissy  would 
have  the  sense  to  hold  her  tongue, 
he  need  never  be  the  wiser.  Chance 
seemed  to  favour  her  wishes  by 
assigning  to  her  Archie  Lauriston 
as  partner,  when  with  two  blades 
of  grass  the  question  was  decided 
by  lots. 

Apparently  Mr  Hamilton  was 
quite  satisfied  with  the  arrange- 
ment, for  after  those  few  phrases  of 
conversation  with  Chrissy,  he  had 
abruptly  changed  the  subject,  and 
during  the  first  half  of  the  game 
kept  studiously  avoiding  the  pale 
green  ball  which  belonged  to  Miss 
Dalrymple,  and  even  refrained  from 
glancing  in  her  direction.  Pres- 
ently, however,  just  when  she  least 
expected  it,  Phemie,  leaning  list- 
lessly on  her  mallet,  was  startled  by 
a  sharp  click  close  at  hand,-  causing 
her  to  turn  round  with  a  start  of 
surprise.  It  was  Mr  Hamilton's 


754 


A  Foreigner. 


[Dec. 


orange  globe  which,  bearing  down 
from  the  other  end  of  the  croquet- 
ground  with  the  unerring  aim  of  a 
William  Tell  and  ten  times  the 
velocity  of  the  Flying  Scotchman, 
had  ousted  her  own  green  ball  from 
its  advantageous  position  close  to 
the  centre  bell. 

"  Too  bad  of  you,  Hamilton  ! " 
exclaimed  Archie,  aggrievedly. 
"That  is  what  I  call  malice  pre- 
pense to  go  out  of  your  way  to 
injure  unoffending  mortals." 

"A  mere  chance,"  said  the 
offender,  sauntering  up  to  rejoin 
his  ball.  "  I  was  aiming  at  the  bell, 
indeed  I  was,  and  had  not  even 
perceived  the  green  ball  —  so  ex- 
actly the  colour  of  the  grass,  you 
see.  To  whom  does  it  belong  1 
Ah,  Miss  Dalrymple  !  Very  sorry, 
I  am  sure,  to  have  disturbed  a  lady, 
but  all  means  are  fair  in  war — or 
in  love — you  know  the  proverb." 

"  I  know  the  rules  of  the  game," 
said  Phemie,  a  little  shortly.  "  Of 
course  you  have  a  right  to  roquet 
me  now." 

"  Well,  that  is  just  about  it,  I 
am  afraid,  and  I  am  only  admiring 
the  philosophical  coolness  with 
which  you  submit  to  the  inevit- 
able. You  will  have  to  make  an 
involuntary  excursion  to  some  dis- 
tant point  of  Lady  Lauriston's  park, 
I  fancy.  Where  shall  it  be  ?  See 
how  generous  I  am :  I  leave  you 
to  pronounce  your  own  sentence. 
Do  you  desire  to  make  nearer  ac- 
quaintance with  that  copper  beech- 
tree  over  there  1  or  would  you  rather 
go  and  join  those  charming  young 
lambs  which  are  frolicking  so  sweet- 
ly at  the  end  of  the  avenue  ? " 

"  Whichever  you  like,"  returned 
Phemie,  impatiently ;  "  only,  please 
be  quick,  or  we  shall  never  be 
finished  with  this  game." 

"  Here  goes  for  the  lambs,  then !  " 
exclaimed  Mr  Hamilton,  swinging 
his  mallet  on  high  with  a  formid- 
able gesture. 


"  We  are  lost  now,  Phemie !  " 
cried  Archie,  piteously.  "  I  know 
what  Hamilton's  roquets  mean,  and 
we  shall  never  be  able  to  make  up 
for  the  ground  we  lose." 

Twice  —  thrice  the  mallet  was 
brandished  on  high,  as  though  to 
prolong  the  agony  of  suspense,  then 
the  blow  descended ;  but,  contrary 
to  all  anticipation,  it  was  neither 
to  the  lambs  nor  yet  to  the  shade 
of  the  copper  beech-tree  that  the 
hapless  green  ball  was  exiled. 

"  Missed,  by  Jove  !  "  exclaimed 
Archie,  executing  a  rapturous  caper 
on  the  grass.  "  Only  fancy  the 
Invincible  having  slipped  his  foot 
in  that  incomprehensible  fashion  ! " 
"  Incomprehensible  !  "  echoed 
Hamilton,  rubbing  his  left  foot 
with  an  admirably  assumed  expres- 
sion of  excruciating  agony.  "  Such 
a  thing  has  not  happened  to  me  for 
years,  and  I  cannot  imagine  how 
on  earth  it  came  about.  The  tables 
are  turned  with  a  vengeance,  for 
now  it  is  I  who  am  at  your  mercy, 
Miss  Dalrymple." 

"  Give  him  no  quarter,  Phemie," 
said  Archie.  "  He  does  not  deserve 
any  pity." 

"Certainly  no  pity,"  agreed 
Phemie,  drawing  her  pretty  eye- 
brows together  with  a  ferocious 
frown  as  she  prepared  to  adjust  her 
mallet. 

"  Not  even  if  I  have  smashed  my 
foot  and  nearly  made  myself  a  help- 
less cripple  for  life?"  pleaded  the 
victim,  glancing  at  Phemie  with  an 
expression  of  abject  supplication, 
through  which,  however,  there 
pierced  a  certain  humorous  twinkle, 
for  the  first  time  raising  doubts  in 
her  mind  as  to  whether  the  accident 
had  been  entirely  unpremeditated 
on  his  part.  Then,  seeing  that  she 
gave  no  answer,  he  proceeded  in  a 
lower  tone,  not  intended  to  reach 
the  others — "  How  lucky  it  is,  is 
it  not,  that  my  foot  is  not  made 
of  glass  —  like  —  like  Cinderella's 


1894.] 


A  Foreigner. 


755 


slipper,  for  instance  1  If  it  were,  it 
must  inevitably  have  been  shattered 
by  the  blow." 

Phemie  flushed  scarlet  up  to  the 
roots  of  her  hair,  and  in  order  to 
cover  her  confusion,  played  a  rather 
reckless  stroke  which  called  forth 
the  violently  expressed  disapproba- 
tion of  her  partner. 

"  What  do  you.  know  about  Cin- 
derella 1"  she  said  at  last,  looking 
at  him  with  clearly  expressed  de- 
fiance in  her  hazel  eyes. 

"  I  only  know  that  she  is  an 
exceedingly  dangerous  young  lady, 
and  that  I  must  be  careful  never 
again  to  incur  her  displeasure  if  I 
wish  to  preserve  my  ears  intact." 

"Are  your  ears  then  as  brittle 
as  your  foot  1 "  inquired  Miss  Dal- 
rymple,  drily,  with  no  sign  of 
relenting  in  her  voice. 

"Would  you  like  to  try?"  said 
Mr  Hamilton,  uncovering  his  head 
with  a  ready  gesture,  and  standing 
before  her  in  an  attitude  of  mock 
submission.  "Here  I  am  bared 
for  execution — you  have  only  to 
strike." 

"Don't  talk  nonsense,"  said 
Phemie,  smiling  in  spite  of  her- 
self, but  with  an  annoyed  con- 
sciousness that  with  her  schoolgirl 
training  she  was  no  match  for  the 
ready  wit  and  easy  grace  of  this 
man  of  the  world ;  "  and  for  heaven's 
sake  put  on  your  hat  again  before 
the  others  see  you.  I  don't  want 
Archie  Lauriston  to  know  that — 
that " 

"  That  you  ever  boxed  my  ears  ? 
By  no  means.  Let  it  be  a  secret 
between  us — the  tender  link  that 
binds  us  together." 

Here  again  Phemie  was  uneasily 
conscious  of  having  been  worsted 
in  the  encounter  of  wits.  It  was 
distinctly  mortifying  to  find  the 
incident  of  Cinderella,  which  had 
lived  in  her  memory  as  purest 
tragedy,  thus  lightly,  almost  face- 
tiously, treated.  Whenever  in  im- 


agination she  had  thought  of  a 
possible  meeting  with  her  former 
enemy,  she  had  always  seen  herself 
as  mistress  of  the  situation,  crush- 
ing Ronald  Hamilton  by  the  weight 
of  contempt,  and  coldly  disdainful 
of  all  his  efforts  at  reconciliation. 
And  now,  without  exactly  knowing 
how  it  had  come  about,  here  she 
was  having  entered  into  a  sort  of 
tacit  alliance  with  her  quondam 
foe.  With  a  tardy  attempt  to 
regain  her  lost  dignity,  she  added, 
"  I  do  not  care  to  let  any  one  know 
that  such — such  a  ridiculous  thing 
ever  took  place.  And  you  have 
ever  so  much  more  reason  to  keep 
silence  than  I  have,  for  it  was  all 
your  fault,  you  know.  If  it  had 
not  been  for  those  silly  verses  noth- 
ing would  have  happened." 

"  Exactly.  The  verses  were  un- 
doubtedly very  silly,  and  I  richly 
deserved  my  punishment.  But  all 
the  same,  I  scarcely  thought  you 
would  have  done  me  the  honour  to 
remember  this  youthful  flight  of 
poetical  fancy  during  eight  whole 
years.  I  really  had  no  notion  that 
young  ladies  had  such  excellent 
memories,  or  that  they  nursed  re- 
venge so  carefully.  That  is  scarcely 
Christian,  you  know.  Undoubtedly 
I  am  a  very  black  sinner,  but 
even  black  sinners  occasionally  re- 
pent, and  I  shall  be  delighted  to 
make  amends  for  my  crime  by  send- 
ing you  a  fresh  copy  of  verses  in 
place  of  those  which  had  such  a  dis- 
astrous effect.  You  will  find,  I  am 
sure,  that  I  have  greatly  improved 
as  a  poet  since  those  days." 

He  was  bending  towards  her  now, 
and  his  laughing  brown  eyes  were 
telling  her  very  plainly  what  would 
be  the  gist  of  the  poem  he  was 
offering  to  make  upon  her  face. 

"No,  thank  you,"  she  said,  as 
she  turned  away  in  some  confusion, 
"  I  don't  think  I  care  for  any  more 
of  your  verses.  You  had  better 
keep  them  for  some  one  else." 


756 


Reminiscences  of  James  Anthony  Froude. — /. 


[Dec. 


KEMINISCENCES    OF    JAMES    ANTHONY    FEOUDE. — I. 


I  FANCY  that  I  shall  always  here- 
after associate  the  plaintive  strains 
of  Gluck's  "  Orpheo  "  with  the  fatal 
illness  of  one  of  my  dearest  friends. 
I  was  on  my  way  to  hear  Julia 
Eavoglio  at  a  morning  perform- 
ance of  the  "Orpheo,"  when  I 
learnt  that  Froude  was  dying. 
Julia  Ravoglio,  as  Orpheus,  has 
always  been  and  is  still  (as  I  think) 
without  a  rival;  but  that  day  it 
seemed  as  if  the  news  I  had  just 
received  added  a  keen,  a  poignant, 
pathos  to  music  which  I  never 
hear  unmoved.  While  one  was 
being  recalled  from  Hades,  another 
high  and  pure  spirit  was  passing 
away !  Somehow  the  tender  ap- 
peal, the  exquisite  pain  and  pas- 
sion, the  lofty  consecration  of  a 
love  stronger  than  death,  elicited 
a  responsive  echo.  Were  it  pos- 
sible to  revoke  the  sentence  that 
had  gone  forth  !  Might  not  Death 
be  appeased  once  more  1  Even  at 
the  eleventh  hour  might  he  not  be 
persuaded  to  relent  1 

But  in  our  prosaic  modern  world 
(where  even  the  piping  of  an  Or- 
pheus would  be  unregarded)  there 
is  no  relenting.  Science  has  felt 
her  way  too  surely  :  when  she  tells 
us  with  impartial  composure,  with 
cruel  serenity,  that  there  is  no 
hope,  we  ask  in  vain  for  a  reprieve. 
Froude,  if  we  count  by  years,  was 
an  old  man;  yet  it  was  wellnigh 
impossible  to  believe  that  he  could 
be  dying.  Until  a  year  or  two 
ago  he  had  retained  much  of  his 
youthful  vigour.  His  eye  was  not 
dim,  nor  his  natural  force  abated. 
He  could  still  land  his  salmon; 
and  he  had  been  a  famous  angler. 
He  could  still  handle  a  gun ;  and 
he  had  been  a  crack  shot  in  his 
time.  When  aboard  the  tidy  little 
craft  that  he  kept  at  Salcombe, 


especially  if  the  waves  ran  high, 
he  was  almost  boyishly  elate. 
Sometimes,  no  doubt,  he  was  sad ; 
but  it  was  the  sadness  of  one  who, 
looking  before  and  after,  has  found 
that  the  riddle  is  hard  to  read.  He 
had  indeed  an  ever-present  sense 
of  the  mysteries  of  existence,  and 
of  the  awful  responsibility  of  the 
creature  to  the  unknown  and  in- 
visible lawgiver.  I  have  heard 
him  described  by  shallow  observers 
as  "  taciturn  "  and  "  saturnine." 
No  two  words  could  be  less  de- 
scriptive. He  was  a  singularly 
bright  and  vivacious  companion; 
his  smile  was  winning  as  a  wo- 
man's ;  possibly  he  did  not  always 
unbend,  but  when  he  unbent  he 
unbent  wholly.  In  congenial 
society  he  was  ready  to  discourse 
on  every  topic  in  the  heaven  above 
or  on  the  earth  beneath;  and 
when  at  his  best  he  was  not  only 
a  brilliant  and  picturesque  but  a 
really  suggestive  talker.  I  would 
not  have  it  thought  that  he  was  not 
sometimes  severe.  He  had  a  very 
high  standard  of  right  and  wrong. 
He  hated  all  shams,  religious,  liter- 
ary, political.  The  casuistry  of  the 
rhetorician,  the  sophistical  make- 
believe  of  the  worldly  ecclesiastic, 
he  could  not  abide.  In  public  as 
in  private  they  were  abhorrent  to 
him.  But  while  he  had  a  passion- 
ate scorn  of  meanness  and  truck- 
ling, he  had  an  equally  passionate 
reverence  for  truth,  as  he  under- 
stood it,  whatever  guise  it  as- 
sumed. The  mask  might  be  some- 
times as  impassive  as  Disraeli's ; 
but  behind  it  was  an  almost 
tremulous  sensitiveness — a  tender- 
ness easily  wounded.  His  presence 
was  striking  and  impressive, — coal- 
black  eyes,  wonderfully  lustrous 
and  luminous  ("  eyes  full  of  genius 


1894.] 


Reminiscences  of  James  Anthony  Froude. — /. 


757 


— the  glow  from  within," — as  Dr 
John  Brown  said  x) ;  coal  -  black 
hair,  only  latterly  streaked  with 
grey;  massive  features  strongly 
lined,  —  massive  yet  mobile,  and 
capable  of  the  subtlest  play  of  ex- 
pression. For  myself  I  can  say 
without  any  reserve  that  he  was, 
upon  the  whole,  the  most  interest- 
ing man  I  have  ever  known.  To 
me,  moreover,  not  only  the  most 
interesting,  but  the  most  stead- 
fastly friendly.  I  have  fished  with 
him  in  the  English  Channel,  have 
yachted  with  him  on  the  Kenmare 
river,  have  acted  as  his  assessor  in 
University  courts,  have  been  his 
guest  and  his  host  for  five -and - 
thirty  years ;  and  I  found  him  ever 
the  same,  —  the  most  loyal  and 
lovable  of  friends,  the  frankest 
but  most  genial  of  critics. 

That  what  may  be  roughly 
called  the  popular  impression  is 
very  different  I  am  well  aware. 
That  this  silent,  reserved,  cynical, 
sardonic  censor  held  aloof  from  his 
fellows,  and  regarded  them  with 
tacit  or  even  Swiftian  disapproba- 
tion, we  have  been  assured  again 
and  again.  Against  such  a  con- 
firmed misunderstanding,  the  assur- 
ance of  friends  is  comparatively 
valueless.  But  even  yet  the  true 
man -is  disclosed  in  his  letters; 
and  of  his  letters  I  have  preserved 
many.  He  wrote  with  surprising 
ease ;  and  the  sunshine  or  storm 
of  the  moment  was  reflected  in 
them  as  in  a  glass.  His  "verbal 
magic "  was  not  an  accomplish- 
ment but  a  natural  grace.  Carlyle 


might  hammer  away  painfully  at 
his  Frederick  in  the  Valley  of  the 
Shadow;  but  Froude,  however 
lofty  or  however  lowly  the  theme, 
was  never  embarrassed ;  and  the 
rhythmical  rise  and  fall,  the  mus- 
ical flow,  of  his  written  words  was 
as  noticeable  in  familiar  epistle 
as  in  finished  "study."  I  venture 
to  think  that  even  a  limited  selec- 
tion, a  provisional  instalment,  of 
his  charming  and  characteristic 
letters  will  serve  to  dissipate  many 
prejudices.  Some  of  them  are 
too  intimate  and  confidential  for 
publication.  There  are  passages 
of  flattering  personal  appreciation 
which  must,  wherever  practicable, 
be  omitted,  while  on  the  other  hand 
there  are  humorously  savage  de- 
nunciations of  clerical  impostors 
and  political  charlatans  which 
might  be  taken  too  seriously  by 
the  unwary.  Froude,  though  con- 
stitutionally good-humoured,  could 
hit  very  hard  when  roused.  And 
there  were  occasions  when  he  did 
not  hesitate  to  speak  his  mind  to 
friend  and  foe, — though  I  honestly 
believe  that  he  never  penned  a 
line  which,  so  far  as  he  was  con- 
cerned, the  world  was  not  welcome 
to  read.  His  opinions  might 
change  —  as  they  no  doubt  did; 
but  he  wrote  always  with  the  most 
absolute  sincerity.  He  did  not 
pride  himself  on  "  consistency," — 
which  indeed  is  not  seldom  only  a 
euphuism  for  obstinacy  or  unteach- 
ableness.  Of  a  certain  eminent 
politician  he  wrote  to  me  long  ago, 
that  he  was  "a  man  of  the  be- 


1  "  I  greatly  fear  I  shall  not  get  to  you  to-night.  I  am  never  sure  of  Mon- 
day, owing  to  my  Insurance  work,  which  cannot  be  gainsaid.  So  if  I  do  not 
appear  at  seven,  you  will  know  how  sorry  I  am  for  myself.  Give  my  best 
regards  and  admiration  to  your  friend.  What  a  noble  utterance  that  was  and 
is — as  full  of  genius  as  are  his  eyes — the  glow  from  within.  He  and  Carlyle  are 
our  only  Rectors  of  Genius.  I  shall  be  very  vex'd  if  I  don't  see  him. " — Letter 
from  Dr  John  Brown,  1865.  On  another  occasion  "  Dr  John  "  writes  that  he 
is  afraid  he  will  not  be  able  to  come,  as  possibly  old  Mrs  Brewster  is  to  dine 
with  him.  "  But  I  hope  to  learn  to-day  the  will  of  that  beautifullest  and  oldest 
of  womeD." 


758 


Reminiscences  of  James  Anthony  Fronde. — /. 


[Dec. 


lieving  temperament,  without  a 
single  conviction  that  can  stand  a 
strain";  but  (though  sensitive  as 
an  aneroid  to  all  the  moods  of  the 
weather)  his  own  vital  convictions 
were  never  lightly  shaken.  There 
was  an  apparent  fickleness,  no 
doubt,  about  his  judgments  of 
men;  but  it  was  apparent  only. 
He  judged  them  as  —  week  by 
week,  session  after  session  —  they 
approached  or  fell  short  of  his 
ideal.  He  had,  for  example,  no 
confidence  in  the  divine  wisdom 
of  democracies;  the  vox  populi 
was  not  the  vox  Dei  —  quite  the 
reverse  indeed  as  a  rule  ;  and  just 
as  the  statesman  when  he  resisted 
ignorant  popular  clamour  was 
blessed,  so  when  he  yielded  was 
he  banned. 

The  letters  cover  a  wide  range — 
literature,  history,  poetry,  philoso- 
phy, and  politics.  Browning,  Car- 
lyle,  Matthew  Arnold,  Swinburne, 
Freeman,  Disraeli,  Gladstone,  are 
among  the  men  who  figure  most 
prominently  in  this  vivid  record 
of  five  and-thirty  years.  The  Rus- 
sian troubles,  the  Irish  troubles, 
the  Carlyle  troubles,  —  there  is 
hardly  a  single  incident  of  our 
time  on  which  they  do  not  touch. 
One  page  will  be  devoted  to  the 
struggle  between  Moslem  and  Slav ; 
the  next  to  the  contest  between 
rat  and  water-hen,  or  "  the  fate  of 
the  magpie's  nest."  A  singularly 
sensitive  and  receptive  eye  watches 
with  unwearied  curiosity  the  game 
that  is  being  played  !  The  watcher 
sometimes  becomes  the  worker; 
and  then — once  at  least,  and  possi- 
bly more  than  once — the  interest 
deepens  into  tragedy. 

I  did  not  know  Froude  except 
through  his  books  (the  first  two 
volumes  of  the  'History  of  Eng- 
land' had  been  published  in  1856) 
until,  on  John  Parker's  death  in 
1860,  he  undertook  the  manage- 
ment of  '  Fraser's  Magazine.'  He 


had  nursed  Parker  on  his  death- 
bed ;  he  was  with  him  to  the  end ; 
and  it  was  to  Froude  that  Parker's 
aged  father  naturally  looked  for 
help  when  the  blow  fell.  For 
twenty  years  thereafter  Froude, 
though  much  occupied  (till  1870 
at  least)  on  the  successive  volumes 
of  his  history,  continued  to  edit 
the  Magazine, — Charles  Kingsley 
and  Sir  Theodore  Martin  occasion- 
ally taking  the  duty  when  he  had 
to  be  at  Simancas  or  elsewhere 
abroad.  It  was  in  1860,  conse- 
quently, that  our  correspondence 
began;  and  it  did  not  close  till 
the  summer  of  the  present  year. 
His  last  letter  to  me  is  dated  22d 
June  1894.  I  need  only  add  that 
I  had  been  a  frequent  contributor 
to  '  Fraser '  for  several  years  be- 
fore Parker's  death  ;  and  that  the 
manuscript  of  a  political  sketch 
(now  dead  and  buried),  entitled 
*  Thalatta,'  was  in  his  hands  at  the 
time. 

"  6  CLIFTON  PLACE,  HYDE  PARK, 
December  17  [I860]. 

"  DEAR  SIR, — You  must  excuse 
the  silence  of  the  Editor  of 
c  Fraser ' ;  when  there  was  no 
editor,  you  could  receive  no  letter 
from  such  a  person.  .  .  .  Am  I 
addressing  l  Shirley '  1  At  present 
even  the  names  of  most  of  the 
contributors  are  unknown  to  me. 
I  hope,  however,  that  I  may  be- 
come better  acquainted  with  them 
in  a  little  while.  I  have  often 
heard  John  Parker  mention  your 
name. — Faithfully  yours, 

"J.  A.  FROUDE." 

"  The  papers  are  sent  to  me  in 
handfuls  from  the  Strand.  I  get 
not  what  I  wish  to  see,  but  what 
the  porter's  hands  happen  to  close 
upon  when  they  dive  into  poor 
young  Parker's  chest.  Chest  and 
all,  I  believe,  come  to  me  to- 
morrow. ...  I  hope  when  you 


1894] 


Reminiscences  of  James  Anthony  Froude. — /. 


759 


come  to  London  you  will  give  me 
the  pleasure  of  your  acquaintance, 
and  will  call  on  me." 

"6  CLIFTON  PLACE,  HYDE  PARK, 
Jan.  12  [1861]. 

"I  have  read  '  Thalatta.'  .  .  . 
The  yacht  scene  made  me  groan 
over  the  recollection  of  days  and 
occupation  exactly  the  same.  To 
wander  round  the  world  in  a 
hundred -ton  schooner  would  be 
my  highest  realisation  of  human 
felicity." 

"BEMBRIDGE,  ISLE  OF  WIGHT, 
August  12  [1862]. 

"We  were  driven  at  last  to  a 
shorter  flight  for  our  summer  than 
we  had  intended.  ...  You  will 
see  me,  however,  at  Edinburgh 
alone  before  I  begin  to  write  out 
my  first  copy.  Even  on  so  old 
and  vexed  a  subject  as  Mary 
Stuart,  I  have  much  to  tell  that 
is  new.  Alas  !  that  Knox's  Kirk 
should  have  sunk  down  into  the 
thing  which  is  represented  in  those 
verses.  .  .  .  The  horrible  creed  is 
not  new.  Thomas  Aquinas  says 
much  the  same.  And  after  all, 
if  it  is  once  allowed  that  God 
Almighty  will  torture  poor  Devils 
for  ever  and  ever  for  making  mis- 
takes on  the  nature  of  the  Trinity, 
I  don't  see  why  any  quantity  of 
capricious  horrors  may  not  be 
equally  true.  Given  the  truth  of 
what  all  English  orthodox  parsons 
profess  to  believe,  and  Hephzibah 
Jones  may  believe  as  much  more 
in  the  same  line  as  he  pleases. 
Only  I  think  our  opinion  ought  to 
have  been  asked  as  to  whether  we 
would  accept  existence  on  such 
terms  before  we  were  sent  into 
the  world." 

"6  CLIFTON  PLACE, 
May  18  [1862].; 

"If  it  will  not  give  you  too 
much  trouble,  will  you  tell  me, 


quite  briefly,  the  relation  in  which 
'  the  Lords  of  the  Articles '  stood 
to  a  Scotch  Parliament,  and  how 
in  theory  they  were  chosen  1 " 

"6  CLIFTON  PLACE,  HYDE  PARK, 
May  22  [1862]. 

"My  DEAR  SKELTON, — Thank 
you  much.  You  tell  me  exactly 
what  I  wanted  to  know.  I  fear 
my  book  will  bring  all  your  people 
about  my  ears.  Mary  Stuart,  from 
my  point  of  view,  was  something 
between  Rachel  and  a  pantheress. 
— Ever  sincerely  yours, 

"J.  A.  FEOUDE." 

.  "  KAMSGATE,  Easter  Monday,  1862. 
"I  know  very  little  of  Brown- 
ing's poetry ;  but  Browning  him- 
self I  admire  extremely,  and  I 
have  often  wished  for  leisure  to 
read  him.  I  tried  *  Paracelsus  ' 
twenty  years  ago  unsuccessfully, 
and  this,  I  suppose,  has  prevented 
me  from  exciting  myself  about 
him  as  I  ought.  By  all  means 
let  me  have  your  article.  Kingsley 
was  very  sorry  not  to  see  you." 

"  BEMBRIDGE,  ISLE  OF  WIGHT, 
Sep.  13  [1862]. 

"Mr  DEAR  SKELTON, — I  sup- 
pose you  are  right  about  the 
Maclachlan  story  l — in  some  de- 
gree. But  in  that  the  offence 
was  treason  and  not  creed  (though 
I  incline  to  think  the  tradition 
true  as  to  the  public  execution), 
yet  creed  and  treason  ran  inevi- 
tably one  into  the  other.  The 
two  metals,  quite  separate  in  the 
cold  days,  fused  together  in  the 
melting  heat  of  passion.  I  wish 
you  or  some  competent  person 
would  take  a  look  at  your  Scotch 
history  as  a  whole  from  the 
Reformation  downwards,  showing 
how  Queen  Mary's  Catholics  be- 
came the  Montrose  and  the  Claver- 


1  The  article  referred  to  was  on  the  Wigtown  Martyrs  controversy. 
VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCL.  3  D 


760 


Reminiscences  of  James  Anthony  Froude. — /. 


[Dec. 


house  of  the  next  century.  Men 
divide  themselves  into  orthodox 
and  unorthodox  quite  irrespective 
of  the  special  creed  they  profess. 
The  types  of  character  and  the  con- 
trasts of  character  remain  constant, 
while  the  subject-matter  is  infin- 
itely varied.  Your  orthodox  lati- 
tudinarian  Sadducee  joined  in  con- 
demning our  Lord,  just  as  your 
orthodox  latitudinarian  Doctor 
Lushington  condemns  the  Essay- 
ists. No  mind  could  be  further  from 
a  Covenanter's,  judged  by  its  separ- 
ate detailed  opinions,  than  Macau- 
lay's  ;  yet  the  essential  resemblance 
of  sympathy  was  stronger  than  the 
opposed  views  of  which  he  was 
conscious.  The  remarkable  thing 
in  Scotland  was  the  intense  hatred 
of  the  two  parties  for  each  other. 
It  was  not  altogether  Highlander 
and  Lowlander.  It  was  not 
patrician  and  plebeian,  though  in 
some  degree  these  divisions  fol- 
lowed the  religious  division. 

"All  mankind,  Coleridge  says,  are 
either  Nominalist  or  Realist.  This 
was  a  metaphysical  way  of  ex- 
pressing two  opposed  classes  which 
in  one  form  or  other  divide  the 
world ;  and  which  in  your  Scot- 
land took  such  picturesque  and 
romantic  forms. — Ever  faithfully 
yours,  J.  A.  FROUDE. 

"On  controverted  points  I  ap- 
prove myself  of  the  practice  of 
the  Reformation.  When  St  Paul's 
Cross  pulpit  was  occupied  one 
Sunday  by  a  Lutheran,  the  next 
by  a  Catholic,  the  next  by  a  Cal- 
vinist,  all  sides  had  a  hearing,  and 
the  preachers  knew  that  they 
would  be  pulled  up  before  the 
same  audience  for  what  they  might 
say." 

"  December  13  [1862]. 

"  You  will  let  me  keep  Brown- 
ing till  Feb.— will  you  not  ? " 


[Froude  in  his  conduct  of  the 
Magazine  followed  the  "  Reforma- 
tion practice  " ;  though  Browning, 
I  am  afraid,  was  a  hard  nut  to 
crack.  But  the  prolonged  unpop- 
ularity of  our  great  poet  is  now  a 
commonplace.] 

"6  CLIFTON  PLACE, 
Jan.  3  [1863]. 

"  MY  DEAR  SKELTON,  —  I  am 
very  sorry  about  Browning.  The 
length  has  been  the  difficulty. 
"Were  it  made  up  of  your  own 
work  it  should  have  gone  in  long 
ago,  without  a  day's  delay.  But 
Browning's  verse  ! — with  intellect, 
thought,  power,  grace,  all  the 
charms  in  detail  which  poetry 
should  have,  it  rings  after  all  like 
a  bell  of  lead.  However,  it  shall 
go  in  next  time — for  your  sake. 
No  doubt  he  deserves  all  you  say ; 
yet  it  will  be  vain.  To  this  genera- 
tion Browning  is  as  uninteresting 
as  Shakespeare's  Sonnets  were  to 
the  last  century.  In  making  the 
comparison  you  see  I  admit  that 
you  may  be  right.  I  have  no  idea 
of  giving  up  'Fraser'  unless  it 
changes  hands,  and  goes  to  some 
publisher  whose  views  about  it 
may  be  different  from  mine. 
Parker,  as  you  know,  wishes  to 
sell  it.  'Thalatta'  came  duly, 
very  much  improved,  I  think,  by 
the  additions.  Thank  you  most 
warmly  for  your  words  about  me 
in  the  Preface.  I  wish  I  could 
deserve  them.  I  hope  to  be  in 
Edinburgh  the  end  of  the  month. 
I  suppose  I  had  better  go  through 
at  once,  and  see  Dunbar  and  Ber- 
wick on  my  way  back.  Surely  I 
shall  be  delighted  with  '  The  Sea- 
side Sketch.'  —  Faithfully  yours, 
"  J.  A.  FROUDE." 

"  March  8  [1863]. 

"The  Magazine  prospers.  The 
circulation  now  exceeds  3000,  and 
more  copies  must  be  printed." 


Reminiscences  of  James  Anthony  Froude. /. 


1894.] 


"  I  was  highly  complimented  by 
Carlyle  last  night  on  the  manage- 
ment of  'Eraser.'" 

"  November  18  [1863]. 
"The  old  familiar  faces  which 
we  recollect  from  childhood  have  a 
hold  over  us  peculiar  of  its  kind ; 
and  as  they  drop  off  one  by  one 
the  roots  of  our  own  hold  on  life 
seem  shaken.  .  .  .  But  somehow 
when  successes  of  this  kind  do 
come  to  us,  they  come  at  a  time 
when  we  have  ceased  to  care  for 
them,  and  are  beginning  to  think 
as  much  of  the  other  world  as  the 
present." 

"December  12  [1863]. 

"I  want  you  some  day  to  go 
with  me  to  Lochleven,  and  then  to 
Stirling,  Perth,  and  Glasgow.  Be- 
fore I  go  further  I  must  have  a 
personal  knowledge  of  Lochleven 
Castle  and  the  grounds  at  Lang- 
side.  Also  I  must  look  at  the 
street  at  Linlithgow  where  Murray 
was  shot." 

"December  22  [1863]. 

"  As  to  Darnley.  Yes,  it  was 
too  certain  that  she  would  kill 
him.  He  was  a  poor  wretched 
worm;  but  they  had  better  have 
let  him  crawl  away  to  England, 
and  the  manner  of  it  was  so  pite- 
ous. Still,  considering  the  times, 
there  was  nothing  about  a  mere 
murder  of  an  inconvenient  scoun- 
drel so  very  wonderful.  It  was 
made  important  by  the  political 
consequences.  On  the  ground  that 
'  a  blunder  is  worse  than  a  crime,' 
it  was  unpardonable." 

"February  28  [1864]. 
"Lord   Stanhope  tells  me    that 
he   [Joseph   Robertson]   has    just 
brought    out   for   the    Bannatyne 


761 

Club  a  curious  book  about  Queen 

Mary If  you  see  Mr  Robertson, 

will  you  kindly  tell  him  that  if  he 
will  lend  me  the  book  I  will  take 
the  greatest  care  of  it.  ...  I  send 
you  a  lecture  which  I  gave  at  the 
Royal  Institution,  and  for  which  I 
was  called  an  Atheist." 

"6  CLIFTON  PLACE,  June  29  [1864].  ' 
"  I  almost  regret  that  I  did  not 
choose  Scotland  this  year,  as  local 
knowledge  of  many  places  is  grow- 
ing more  and  more  necessary  to 
me.  If  we  are  alive  next  year, 
you  must  take  me  to  Lochleven. 
I  want  to  make  out  Carberry  Hill, 
and  to  seat  myself  on  Queen 
Mary's  stone.  .  .  .  The  story  grows 
wilder  and  grander  the  more  I 
know  of  it;  but  like  most  wild 
countries  it  has  bad  roads  through 
it,  and  the  travelling  is  danger- 
ous." 

"SALCOMBE,  August  14  [1864]. 

"  I  am  only  sorry  to  hear  that 
the  Campaigner1  is  so  near  his 
retirement.  Let  it  be  only  on 
furlough,  and  let  us  by  all  means 
hope  for  more  of  him  by-and-by. 
If  your  own  travels  bring  you 
this  way  it  will  be  most  delightful, 
only  if  you  come  let  it  be  before 
this  splendid  weather  ends.  We 
have  no  grouse,  but  we  have  a  sea 
like  the  Mediterranean,  and  estu- 
aries beautiful  as  Loch  Fyne,  the 
green  water  washing  our  garden 
wall,  and  boats  and  mackerel.  I, 
alas  !  instead  of  enjoying  it,  have 
been  floundering  all  the  summer 
among  the  extinct  mine-shafts  of 
Scotch  politics,  —  the  most  dam- 
nable set  of  pitfalls  mortal  man 
was  ever  put  to  blunder  through 
in  the  dark.  Nothing  but  blind 
paths  ending  each  of  them  in  a 
chasm  with  no  bottom,  and  in  the 


1  A  Campaigner  at  Home  (Longmans,  1865)  originally  appeared  in  'Eraser's 
Magazine.' 


762 


Reminiscences  of  James  Anthony  Froude. — /. 


[Dec. 


place  of  guides  with  good  horn 
Ian  thorns  to  show  the  way,  noth- 
ing but  Protestant  and  Catholic 
Will-o'-the-wisps.  I  believe  still 
that  the  Regent  Murray  was  the 
honestest  man  in  the  whole  island ; 
but  there  was  much  pitch  which 
he  could  not  help  handling. — Ever 
most  truly  yours, 

"J.  A.  FROUDE." 

"  6  CLIFTON  PLACE,  June  6  [1864]. 
"My  DEAR  SKELTON, — Thanks 
about  the  Campaigner,  which  is 
quite  faultless.  If  you  care  for 
praise,  you  will  be  satisfied  with 
what  is  said  by  all  whose  good  word 
is  valuable.  You  shall  have  your 
proof  as  soon  as  possible.  I  did 
my  work  in  Spain ;  and  except 
that  I  found  I  should  have  to  go 
there  many  times  again,  I  should 
be  well  satisfied.  Just  now  my 
chief  interest  is  in  a  number  of 
ballads  in  the  Record  Office  on  the 
death  of  Darnley,  and  again  on 
that  of  the  Regent  Murray.  The 
whole  tragedy  told  in  that  wild 
musical  Scotch,  which  is  like  a 
voice  out  of  another  world.  There 
are  ten  or  twelve  of  them,  some 
written  or  nominally  written  by 
Robert  Semple,  but  there  is  more 
than  one  hand.  Will  you  ask  any 
of  your  antiquarian  friends  if  they 
know  anything  about  them  1  They 
are  printed  on  loose  sheets  at  the 
time— 1567  and  1570.  There  is  no 
doubt  of  their  being  the  genuine 
expression  of  the  emotions  of  the 
time,  and  although  strongly  Puri- 
tan, they  are  equally  beautiful.  I 
am  having  them  copied,  and  shall 
print  them  in  a  volume l  if  you  or 
Laing  or  some  one  will  help  me 
with  the  Scotch.  —  Most  truly 
yours,  J.  A.  FROUDE." 


11  December  4  [1864]. 

"Theodore  Martin  will,  I  hope, 
undertake  the  Life  of  Maitland 
of  Lethington,  which  I  have  been 
so  long  wishing  to  have  written. 
Will  the  trout  rise  in  Lochleven 
in  May1?  Then,  or  about  then,  I 
hope  for  my  fortnight  with  you  in 
the  North." 

"WESTCLIFF  HOUSE,  RAMSGATE, 
August  8  [1865]. 

"Pam.  cares  for  nothing  but 
popularity ;  he  will  do  what  the 
people  most  interested  wish;  and 
he  would  appoint  the  Devil  over 
the  head  of  Gabriel  if  he  could 
gain  a  vote  by  it." 

"WESTCLIFF,  August  25  [1865]. 
"  If  you  have  time,  I  wish  you 
would  write  half-a-dozen  pages 
for  October  in  review  of  two  little 
books  of  poetry — one  Allingham's 
'  Fifty  Modern  Poems ' ;  the  other 
another  volume  of  our  Devonshire 
Postman  Capern,  whom  I  reviewed 
in  c  Fraser '  seven  years  ago,  when 
he  first  appeared.  Art  has  done 
nothing  for  him,  but  he  is  a  fine 
musician  by  nature,  and  found  out 
his  faculties  merely  by  being  em- 
ployed to  write  songs  for  the 
farmers'  festivities  at  Christmas, 
and  sonnets  or  elegies  for  despair- 
ing lover  and  friend.  It  is  wild- 
flower  growth,  but  real  as  far  as 
it  goes." 

"5  ONSLOW  GARDENS, 
October  16  [1865]. 

"  I  hope  to  be  with  you  on  the 
second.  Pray  do  not  ask  people 
to  meet  me.  I  am  sorry  about 
the  chair ;  a  leaden  bottom  and  a 
wooden  head  seem  the  established 
qualifications." 

[This  is  the  first  letter  from  the 


1  Since  this  letter  was  written  these  poems  have  been  issued  by  the  Scottish 
Text  Society  in  a  volume  edited  by  Dr  Cranstoun,  entitled  '  Satirical  Poems  of 
the  Time  of  the  Reformation.' 


1894.] 


Reminiscences  of  James  Anthony  Froude. — /. 


763 


pleasant  house  in  Onslow  Gardens, 
where  Froude  remained  until  he 
went  to  Oxford  in  1891.] 

[In  June  1865  I  had  reviewed 
Mr  Swinburne's  earliest  volume, 
'  The  Queen  -  Mother  and  Rosa- 
mond ' ;  and  on  the  appearance  of 
the  first  series  of  'Poems  and 
Ballads'  in  1866,  Froude  per- 
mitted me,  after  some  hesitation, 
and  in  spite  of,  or  rather  in  con- 
sequence of,  the  extravagant  and 
irrational  violence  of  the  critics, 
to  insert  a  qualified  "  apology." 
He  had  at  first,  having  seen  only 
garbled  extracts,  been  rather  car- 
ried away.] 


"BABBICOMBE,  TORQUAY, 
August  15  [1866]. 

"  You  are  coming  round  to  my 
opinion  of  Swinburne.  ...  I 
have  looked  at  his  late  poems,  but 
I  have  not  got  a  copy  of  them. 
Your  difficulty  will  be  in  choosing 
passages  to  justify  your  interpre- 
tation. .  .  .  What  about  Dallas? 
Is  the  book  ever  coming  out,  or 
is  the  article  to  be  broken  up? — 
Most  truly  yours, 

"J.  A.  FROUDE." 


"  BABBICOMBE,  TORQUAY, 
August  19  [1866]. 

"  Since  I  wrote  you  I  have  seen 
Swinburne's  volume,  and  also  the 
'  Saturday  '  and  the  *  Athena3um  ' 
reviews  of  it.  There  is  much,  of 
course,  which  is  highly  objection- 
able in  it,  but  much  also  of  real 
beauty.  He  convinces  me  in  fact 
for  the  first  time  that  he  has  real 
stuff  in  him,  and  I  think,  consid- 
ering the  fatuous  stupidity  with 
which  the  critics  have  hitherto 
flattered  him,  considering  that  he 
is  still  very  young,  and  that  the 
London  intellectual  life  is  perhaps 


the  very  worst  soil  which  has  ever 
existed  in  the  world  for  a  young 
poet  to  be  planted  in, — consider- 
ing all  this,  I  am  very  unwilling  to 
follow  the  crew  of  Philistines,  and 
bite  his  heels  like  the  rest  of  them. 
The  'Saturday  Review'  tempera- 
ment is  ten  thousand  thousand 
times  more  damnable  than  the 
worst  of  Swinburne's  skits.  Mod- 
ern respectability  is  so  utterly 
without  God,  faith,  heart;  it 
shows  so  singular  ingenuity  in 
assailing  and  injuring  everything 
that  is  noble  and  good,  and  so 
systematic  a  preference  for  what 
is  mean  and  paltry,  that  I  am  not 
surprised  at  a  young  fellow  dash- 
ing his  heels  into  the  face  of  it. 
If  he  is  to  be  cut  up  for  what  he 
has  done,  I  would  lay  the  blame 
far  more  heavily  on  others  than 
on  him,  and  I  would  select  and 
especially  praise  the  many  things 
which  highly  deserve  praise. 
When  there  is  any  kind  of  true 
genius,  we  have  no  right  to  drive 
it  mad.  We  must  deal  with  it 
wisely,  justly,  fairly. — Ever  yours, 
"J.  A.  FROUDE." 

"5  ONSLOW  GARDENS, 
December  15  [1866]. 

"  I  entirely  except  to  your  view 
that  there  is  no  genius  in  the 
country  beyond  what  is  occupying 
itself  with  stringing  words  together 
in  prose  or  verse.  I  should  say, 
on  the  contrary,  that  genius  in- 
tuitively seeks  the  practical,  and 
only  by  accident  gets  squeezed  off 
the  road  into  book-writing.  The 
ablest  men  in  the  country  at  this 
time,  I  believe,  are  lawyers,  en- 
gineers, men  of  science,  doctors, 
statesmen,  anything  but  authors. 
If  we  have  only  four  supreme 
men  at  present  alive  among  us, 
and  if  Browning  and  Ruskin  are 
two  of  those,  the  sooner  you  and  I 
emigrate  the  better." 


764 


Reminiscences  of  James  Anthony  Froude. — /. 


[Dec. 


5  ONSLOW  GARDENS, 
Feb.  6  [1867]. 


"Your  paper  is  with  the  printers. 
I  don't  agree  with  it;  but  why 
should  I?  Could  you  not  prefix 
to  the  proof  two  or  three  words 
intimating  that  you  don't  agree 
with  the  line  which  we  are  taking, 
and  that  you  wish  to  say  a  little 
on  the  other  side  1  and  then  I  can 
put  a  note  saying  that  I  have  the 
greatest  possible  pleasure  in  ac- 
ceding to  the  wishes  of  an  old 
and  deeply  valued  contributor.  I 
am  grieved  to  hear  about  your 
side.  If  I  were  you,  and  could 
manage  it,  I  would  go  right  away 
to  Algiers  or  some  such  place. 
— Most  truly  yours, 

"J.  A.  EKOUDE." 


"  5  ONSLOW  GARDENS. 
July  7  [18671- 

"  I  had  a  pleasant  time  in  Spain, 
finishing  my  work  there,  I  fear, 
for  good  and  all.  A  great  deal 
which  is  curious  and  unlocked  for 
comes  out  about  the  relations  be- 
tween James  VI.  and  Spain.  They 
were  more  intimate  than  anybody 
in  Scotland  knew,  and  fresh  vivid 
light  is  thrown  by  them  on  the 
Raid  of  Ruthven.  I  have  a  weary 
time  before  me,  however,  before  I 
can  begin  to  write.  The  book 
will  be  finished  in  the  next  two 
volumes." 

"  5  ONSLOW  GARDENS, 
December  26  [1867]. 

"  I  was  on  the  point  of  writing 
to  you  to  stir  your  memory.  You 
shall  gather  material  in  Kerry 
next  year  for  splendid  'River- 
side' papers.  The  likenesses  and 
the  unlikenesses  to  Scotland  will 
not  fail  to  strike  you ;  also  the 
remains  of  the  Anglo-Franco-Scoto- 
Hispano-Hibernico  private  estab- 
lishments which  swarmed  on  those 
coasts  in  the  16th  century.  What 
a  subject  for  a  novel ! " 


[Froude  was  much  gratified  when 
the  St  Andrews  students  in  1868 
elected  him  their  Rector,  and 
his  Inaugural  Address  was  de- 
livered on  23d  March  1869.] 

"  5  ONSLOW  GARDENS, 
Feb.  23  [1869]. 

"  I  am  writing  my  lecture,  which 
I  alternately  believe  to  be  pro- 
foundly wise  and  absolute  non- 
sense. I  suppose  it  is  neither  one 
nor  the  other,  but  considerably 
nearer  the  last." 

"  5  ONSLOW  GARDENS, 
Feb.  26  [1869]. 

"Matt,  wishes  your  article  on 
him  to  be  postponed  till  the  ap- 
pearance of  the  new  edition  of  his 
poems.  He  knows  that  he  is 
strongest  in  criticism,  and  there- 
fore cares  most  to  be  praised  for 
his  verses.  Enough  can  be  said 
justly  in  praise  of  this  side  of  him 
without  flattery,  and  therefore  it 
will  be  perhaps  wise  to  confine 
yourself  to  it ;  but  we  can  talk 
him  over  when  I  see  you.  About 
my  address.  The  subject  will  be 
modern  education;  the  burden, 
that  all  education,  high  and  low, 
ought  to  be  of  a  kind  to  help  men 
to  earn  their  livelihood.  The  use- 
ful first,  the  beautiful  and  the 
good  even  afterwards.  Or  if  men 
choose  to  devote  themselves  to  the 
beautiful  and  good,  &c.,  it  should 
be  with  the  conditions  attached  to 
that  sort  of  thing  by  the  old 
scholars  of  prospective  poverty. 
Indirectly  it  will  be  a  compliment 
to  your  system  at  the  expense  of 
ours.  After  four  years  of  Oxford 
or  Cambridge,  and  an  expenditure 
of  two  or  three  thousand  pounds, 
we  turn  young  fellows  out  unable 
to  earn  a  sixpence,  and  with  habits 
of  luxury  which  will  be  a  misery 
and  temptation  to  them  all  their 
lives.  Of  course  there  will  be 
more  in  the  lecture  than  this. 


1894.] 


Reminiscences  of  James  Anthony  Froude. — /. 


765 


I  give  you  merely  a  sketch  of  the 
main  drift.  .   .  .  Faithfully  yours, 
"  J.  A.  FKOUDE." 


"5  ONSLOW  GARDENS, 
Jan.  11  [1870]. 

"  I  am  glad  you  liked  what  I 
said  about  the  Colonies.  It  will  be 
well  if  you  will  work  to  the  same 
purpose  in  '  Blackwood.'  Every 
nerve  ought  to  be  strained,  or  it 
will  be  too  late." 

[From  this  time  onwards,  the 
policy  of  Imperial  Federation — 
or  at  least  of  a  closer  connection 
between  the  mother  country  and 
the  Colonies — was  urgently  advo- 
cated by  Mr  Froude.  There  can 
be  no  doubt  that  to  his  urgent 
advocacy  the  sounder  views  that 
now  prevail  are  in  some  measure 
due.] 

"5  ONSLOW  GARDENS. 
Feb.  10  [1870]. 

"You  might  put  Morris's  last 
poem  into  Rossetti's  volume. 
Also,  could  you  not  throw  a 
general  retrospective  glance  over 
the  last  ten  years'  produce  in  this 
line, — gathering  some  kind  of  unity 
of  tendency  from  it.  ...  Poetry, 
like  all  else,  is  going  post-haste 
to  the  Devil  just  now,  and  Alfred's 
last  volume  is  the  most  signal  in- 
stance of  it.  ...  You  might  say 
as  much  as  this — much  as  I  like 
and  honour  him. 

"  I  have  been  among  some  of  the 
Tory  magnates  lately.  They  dis- 
trust Disraeli  still,  and  will  never 
again  be  led  by  him.  So  they  are 
as  sheep  that  have  no  shepherd. 
Lord  Salisbury's  time  may  come ; 
but  not  yet.  I  am  going  in  with 
1  Fraser '  for  the  reconstituting 
1  authority '  somehow." 

"  5  ONSLOW  GARDENS, 
March  9  [1870]. 

"  I  am  to  lecture  at  Edinburgh 
next  winter  on  Calvin.  .  . 


Hearty  thanks  for  your  invita- 
tion, of  which  I  shall  not  fail  to 
avail  myself.  Remember,  on  the 
other  hand,  that  you  and  Mrs 
Skelton  promised  yourselves  to  us 
this  summer  at  Derreen.  It  is  our 
last  season ;  we  are  to  be  evicted 
without  compensation  at  the  end 
of  our  lease.  ...  I  want  a  crusade 
against  party  government.  That 
lies  at  the  bottom  of  every  mischief 
under  which  we  groan." 

"5  ONSLOW  GARDENS. 
April  12  [1870]. 

"  Rossetti  has  gone  to  press.  I 
was  going  to  write  to  you  to  ask  if 
you  would  review  '  Loth  air '  for 
the  June  number.  It  will  be  a 
labour  of  love  to  you,  and  you 
may  praise  Dizzy  as  much  as  you 
please.  G and  Co.  deliber- 
ately intend  to  shake  off  the 
Colonies.  They  are  privately 
using  their  command  of  the  situa- 
tion to  make  the  separation  in- 
evitable." 

"DERREEN,  June  21  [1870], 
"  Don't  bother  yourself.  My 
only  vexation  was  lest  S.  and  M. 
should  construe  the  passage  into 
retaliation  for  their  own  good-for- 
nothing  attack  on  me  in  the  Q . 

I  never  resented  anything  more 
than  that  article.  I  felt  as  if  I 
was  tied  to  a  post,  and  a  mere  ass 
was  brought  up  to  kick  me.  Some 
day  I  think  I  shall  take  my  re- 
viewers all  round,  and  give  them 
a  piece  of  my  mind.  I  acknow- 
ledge to  five  real  mistakes  in  the 
whole  book — twelvevolumes — about 
twenty  trifling  slips,  equivalent  to 
i's  not  dotted  and  t's  not  crossed  \ 
and  that  is  all  that  the  utmost 
malignity  has  discovered.  Every 
one  of  the  rascals  has  made  a 
dozen  blunders  of  his  own,  too, 
while  detecting  one  of  mine." 

[This  is  almost  the  only  letter 


766 


Reminiscences  of  James  Anthony  Froude. — /. 


[Dec. 


in  which  Froude  alluded  to  the 
charges  of  inaccuracy  that  were 
freely  brought  against  him  by  Mr 
Freeman  and  others.  It  seems  to 
me  that  the  charge,  even  when 
stated  in  far  more  temperate  lan- 
guage than  was  used  at  the  time, 
rests  on  no  sufficient  basis.  We 
must  remember  that  he  was  to 
some  extent  a  pioneer,  and  that 
he  was  the  first  (for  instance)  to 
utilise  the  treasures  of  Simancas. 
He  transcribed,  from  the  Spanish, 
masses  of  papers  which  even  a 
Spaniard  would  have  read  with 
difficulty,  and  I  am  assured  that 
his  translations  (with  rare  excep- 
tions) render  the  original  with 
singular  exactness.  As  regards 
Scottish  history,  I  could  not  accept 
his  conclusions,  and  I  had  more 
than  once  to  examine  his  state- 
ments sentence  by  sentence ;  but  I 
have  seen  no  reason  to  change  the 
opinion  I  expressed  in  the  Pre- 
face to  '  Maitland  of  Lethington ' : 
"  Only  the  man  or  woman  who 
has  had  to  work  upon  the  mass 
of  Scottish  material  in  the  Record 
Office  can  properly  appreciate  Mr 
Froude's  inexhaustible  industry 


and  substantial  accuracy.  His 
point  of  view  is  very  different 
from  mine ;  but  I  am  bound  to 
say  that  his  acquaintance  with  the 
intricacies  of  Scottish  politics  dur- 
ing the  reign  of  Mary  appears  to 
me  to  be  almost,  if  not  quite,  un- 
rivalled." And  with  this  view,  I 
may  add,  John  Hill  Burton  con- 
curred.1] 

"  DERREEN,  August  24  [1870]. 
"  We  expect  you  anxiously,  and 
shall  be  most  disappointed  if  you 
and  Mrs  Skelton  do  not  come. 
At  present  the  weather  is  most 
beautiful.  Bring  your  gun  or  not 
as  you  please.  Our  grouse  have 
been  a  failure  so  far  as  we  have 
yet  seen.  .  .  .  You  misunderstand 
me  about  the  [Calvin]  lecture. 
I  don't  mean  to  meddle  with  the 
metaphysical  puzzle,  but  to  insist 
on  the  fact  historically  that  this 
particular  idea  has  several  times 
appeared  in  the  world  under  dif- 
ferent forms,  and  always  with  the 
most  powerful  moral  effect.  The 
last  reappearance  of  it  in  Spinoza, 
and  virtually  in  Goethe,  is  the 
most  singular  of  all.  .  .  .  They 


1  Since  the  text  was  written  an  admirable  letter  on  the  subject  of  the  alleged 
"  inaccuracies  "  (by  Sir  Theodore  Martin)  has  appeared  in  the  *  Times  ' : — 

"  SIR, — If  I  may  venture  to  say  so,  the  writer  of  your  obituary  notice  (October 
22)  of  Professor  Froude  has  given  too  ready  credence  to  the  critics  who  accused 
my  friend  of  failing  in  the  painstaking  and  discriminating  research  which  must 
go  to  the  production  of  anything  that  deserves  the  name  of  history.  To  say  of  a 
historian,  as  your  writer  says  of  Froude,  that  '  he  was  not  a  student, '  that  '  he 
had  neither  the  desire  to  probe  his  authorities  to  the  bottom,  nor  the  patience  to 
do  so,'  is  about  the  heaviest  charge  that  could  be  levelled  against  him.  It 
strikes,  indeed,  at  the  very  root  of  his  reputation  as  man  as  well  as  writer.  To 
those  who,  like  myself,  know  that  Froude  thought  no  labour  too  great  to  get  at 
the  essential  facts  of  history,  and  who  also  know  how  dear  truth  and  sincerity 
were  to  him,  the  statement  is,  indeed,  startling.  Its  accuracy  fails,  if  it  may  be 
tested  by  the  specimens  your  writer  gives  of  the  '  anecdotes '  on  which  it  is 
based.  When,  he  says,  Froude  was  invited  to  inspect  the  Cecil  papers  at  Hat- 
field,  '  he  went  there  and  stayed  one  day. '  What  was  the  fact  ?  Froude  was 
there  quite  a  month  studying  these  papers.  Again,  it  is  said  that  although 
Froude  visited  Simancas,  '  it  is  unquestionable  that  he  learned  comparatively 
little  about  the  records  there  preserved. '  Mr  Froude  was  at  Simancas  more  than 
once.  On  his  first  visit,  in  1861,  he  spent  three  months  of  hard  work  there,  and 
then  and  subsequently  he  spared  no  pains  to  make  himself  master  of  every  docu- 
ment of  value  that  bore  upon  the  reign  of  Elizabeth.  This  I  had  the  best 


1894.] 


Reminiscences  of  James  Anthony  Froude. — /. 


767 


have  believed  in  Election,  Pre- 
destination, and,  generally,  the 
absolute  arbitrary  sovereignty  of 
God ;  and  these,  and  not  the 
moderate  Liberals  and  the  reason- 
able prudent  people  who  seem  to 
us  most  commendable,  have  had 
the  shaping  of  the  world's  des- 
tinies." 

"  DERREEN,  KENMARE, 
Sep.  4  [1870]. 

"You  will  come  from  Killarney, 
and  will  therefore  be  at  Kenmare 
about  one.  If  the  wind  is  East  or 
North,  the  yacht  shall  go  up  and 
meet  you,  and  the  men  will  be  at 
the  Lansdowne  Arms.  If  you  do 
not  find  them  there,  you  will  un- 
derstand that  it  would  not  do,  and 
come  on  in  a  car." 

[Of  that  memorable  visit  to  the 
wild  glens  of  Kerry  some  record 
remains  in  an  old  Note  -  book, 
and  the  pages  devoted  to  the 
Peasant  days  spent  on  the  bay  of 
Killmackillog  still  retain  a  touch 
of  colour — though  out  of  all  the 
rest  it  has  faded.  As  the  happiest 
of  Froude's  later  summers  were 
passed  at  Derreen,  those  who  knew 


him  only  in  London  drawing-rooms 
may  like  to  see  him  in  his  shooting- 
jacket  among  the  Paddies,  for 
whom,  in  spite  of  all  political 
heartburnings,  he  retained  a  warm 
liking  to  the  last.  Here,  then,  is 
one  of  these  pages  : — 

We  were  on  our  way  to  visit  a 
friend  whose  name  has  long  been, 
and  long  will  be,  illustrious  in 
English  literature ;  and  the  week 
which  we  spent  with  him  on  the 
bay  of  Killmackillog  will  not  be 
quickly  forgotten.  The  "  harbour  " 
on  which  the  house  stands  is  sur- 
rounded on  all  sides  by  lofty  moun- 
tains, which  shut  off  the  profane 
world.  Their  sides  are  bare  of 
timber ;  but  around  the  lawn  for- 
est-trees and  rare  shrubs,  hollies, 
laurels,  hedges  of  fuchsias,  the 
pampas  grass,  the  hydrangea,  the 
myrtle,  and  the  arbutus  nourish 
luxuriantly.  The  woods  are  car- 
peted with  ferns  in  autumn,  and 
the  loveliest  wild-flowers  imagin- 
able are  found  in  spring.  Great 
dragon  -  flies  sweep  across  the 
heather,  and  the  curious  humming- 
bird moth  flutters  among  the  roses 


reason  to  know  from  my  intimate  personal  communication  with  him  at  the  time. 
Not  less  without  warrant  is  the  statement  of  your  writer  of  his  having,  while 
engaged  upon  his  'Life  of  Lord  Beaconsfield,'  merely  glanced  at  the  Beaconsfield 
papers  '  on  a  Saturday  to  Monday  visit. '  What  the  '  Beaconsfield  papers '  are 
your  writer  does  not  say.  But  I  know  for  certain  that  the  letters  which  were  of 
chief  value  to  Froude,  and  which  greatly  modified  and  moulded  his  opinion  of 
Lord  Beaconsfield,  if  they  were  only  glanced  at  '  on  a  Saturday  to  Monday  visit,' 
had  sunk  so  deeply  into  his  mind  that  he  was  able  to  give  me  orally  as  full  a 
description  of  their  contents  as  I  could  have  gained  had  I  read  the  letters  them- 
selves. Every  detail  in  them  was  talked  over  between  us,  and  I  was  under  the 
impression  that  they  were  either  then  or  lately  in  his  hands  to  consider  how  far 
they  might  be  used. 

"Mr  Froude  during  his  life  endured  silently  much  misrepresentation  as  to  his 
works  and  ways.  If  he  were  guilty  of  occasional  inaccuracy,  or  mistaken  con- 
clusions, who  is  not,  especially  in  a  great  work  like  his  History,  where  the  con- 
flict of  contemporary  statements  and  opinions  is  so  great  as  it  is  throughout  all 
the  period  with  which  he  deals.  But  the  charge  of  deliberately  failing  to  take 
the  only  means  by  which  accuracy  in  history  or  biography  is  to  be  arrived  at 
might  surely  have  been  left  to  die  with  Mr  Freeman.  .  .  . — I  am,  Sir,  your 
obedient  servant,  THEODORE  MARTIN. 


"  BRYNTYSILIO,  near  LLAKOOLLEN,  Nov.  5." 


768 


Reminiscences  of  James  Anthony  Froude. — /. 


[Dec. 


and  geraniums.  Nor  are  more 
material  attractions  wanting — the 
land  flows,  so  to  speak,  with  milk 
and  honey.  There  are  real  Scotch 
grouse  on  the  mountain  -  tops 
(2000  feet  above  us),  where  they 
find  it  cooler  than  in  the  valleys. 
There  are  hares  and  rabbits  and 
wild-duck ;  salmon  lying  by  the 
score  in  the  long  still  reaches  of 
the  river ;  an  oyster  -  bed  on  the 
beach ;  plaice,  soles,  turbot,  lobster 
in  the  bay.  There  are  water-birds, 
moreover,  of  various  kinds;  but 
no  one  cares  to  meddle  with  them  : 
so  that,  at  twilight,  you  hear  close 
at  hand  the  wild  plaint  of  the  cur- 
lew, and  next  morning,  when  you 
go  down  to  bathe,  the  cormorants 
gaze  at  you  with  the  utmost  com- 
posure. 

On  this  side  of  the  bay,  for 
twenty  miles,  our  host  has  no 
neighbours  except  the  Kerry  cot- 
tars and  fishermen;  but  on  the 
other  side  there  are  a  few  country 
houses  :  Dromore,  the  residence  of 
the  last  representative  of  a  great 
old  Irish  house;  Parknacilla,  where 
the  most  genial,  tolerant,  and 
learned  member  of  the  Irish  hier- 
archy enjoys  his  summer  holiday ; 
and  Garinish,  which  the  taste  and 
munificence  of  a  Catholic  peer 
have  transformed  from  a  desolate 
rocky  island  into  a  veritable  piece 
of  fairyland.  The  Kerry  cottars 
and  fishermen  are  an  interesting 
study,  and  they  are  best  studied 
on  Sunday.  The  Catholic  chapel 
and  its  vicinity  on  that  day  pre- 
sent a  curious  scene.  The  people 
assemble  on  the  highroad  and  in 
the  neighbouring  fields.  The  don- 
keys and  ponies  are  taken  out  of 
the  carts  and  tethered  to  the 
bushes.  Through  the  birch-trees 
that  bend  over  the  stream  one 
sees  young  women,  who  have 
walked  without  shoes  eight  or  ten 
or  twelve  miles,  washing  their  feet 
in  the  running  water.  (They 


don't  wear  shoes  in  rainy  Ireland, 
on  the  principle  that  it  is  dryer  to 
wet  their  feet  only,  than  their  feet 
plus  shoes  and  stockings.)  Men 
and  women  and  children  are  sit- 
ting about  everywhere,  a  profusion 
of  bright  reds  blazing  through  the 
green.  Within  the  unfinished  and 
unfurnished  chapel  the  service  is 
conducted  in  the  most  primitive 
fashion.  The  hum  of  voices  comes 
in  with  the  autumn  sunshine  until 
the  host  is  raised,  when  for  a  few 
seconds  there  is  deep  stillness 
both  within  and  without.  Then 
the  congregation  leave  the  chapel 
— gathering  into  groups  as  at  a 
fair — eating,  drinking,  buying,  sell- 
ing, winding  up  with  a  dance  on 
the  green.  If  you  are  looking  on, 
some  pretty,  swift -footed  Kerry 
girl  will  insist  on  your  dancing 
with  her — it  is  the  custom  of  the 
country  —  and  you  must  submit 
with  the  best  grace  you  can.  Then, 
late  in  the  afternoon,  the  inhabi- 
tants of  each  district  leave  together 
in  a  body,  and  the  loneliest  glens 
are  startled  at  dusk  by  the  sounds 
of  what  always  seemed  to  me  in 
Southern  Ireland  a  harsh  and 
discordant  merriment. 

Respecting  the  other  incidents 
of  that  pleasant  visit,  much  might 
be  written.  How,  in  our  host's 
yacht,  we  beat  up  and  down  the 
wide  estuary  from  one  point  of 
vantage  to  another ;  how  we  visit- 
ed the  old  churchyard  where  "  The 
last  remains  of  MacEinnan  Dhu, 
Pater  Patrise  " !  are  deposited ;  how 
we  were  lost  in  the  mist  among 
the  mountains ;  how,  aided  by  the 
most  charming  of  antiquaries  (since 
Monkbarns),  we  opened  a  rath  (or 
underground  dwelling  of  the  old 
natives),  and  how,  on  hands  and 
feet,  the  great  historian  disap- 
peared from  our  gaze  into  the 
bowels  of  the  earth,  and  reap- 
peared  heavens  !  if  all  the  mud 

that  the   'Saturday  Review'  has 


1894.] 


Reminiscences  of  James  Anthony  Froude. — 7. 


cast  at  him  had  stuck,  he  could 
not  have  presented  a  more  appal- 
ling spectacle;  how  we  ascended 
Knockatee,  and  inspected  the  Holy 
Loch  and  its  rude  shrine  and  ruder 
offerings ;  how  we  walked  and 
rowed  and  sketched,  and  were 
happy  in  that  glorious  Kerry 
sunshine,  will  be  known  here- 
after, perhaps,  when  A.'s  private 
diary  is  published  by  Mr  Black- 
wood. 

I  return  again  to  the  letters.] 

"5  ONSLOW  GARDENS, 
Jan.  12  [1871]. 

"  Carlyle  has  been  angry  too, — 
a  strong  Calvinism  lies  at  the 
bottom  of  his  nature.  He  knows 
perfectly  that  the  life  has  gone 
out  of  modern  Calvinistic  theology, 
but  he  likes  to  see  the  shell  of  the 
flown  bird  still  treated  with  rever- 
ence. .  .  .  B is  vexed  with 

me  because  I  will  not  let  him  use 
'Eraser'  to  preach  up  toleration 
of  Ritualism.  I  grow  more  and 
more  intolerant  of  certain  things ; 
and  conscious  humbug  in  religious 
matters  is  one  of  them." 

[Froude  delivered  his  closing  ad- 
dress to  the  St  Andrews  students 
on  17th  March  1871.  The  sub- 
ject was  "Calvinism."] 

"  5  ONSLOW  GARDENS, 
March  24  [1871]. 

"  I  enjoyed  my  trip  exceedingly  ; 
you  were  all  very  kind  to  me.  I 
shall  ever  retain  a  grateful  recol- 
lection of  the  St  Andrews  stu- 
dents, from  whom  alone  I  have 
yet  received  any  public  recogni- 
tion. .  .  .  The  Yankees  have 
written  to  me  about  going  out  to 
lecture  to  them.  I  am  strongly 
tempted ;  but  I  could  not  tell  the 
truth  about  Ireland  without  re- 
flecting in  a  good  many  ways  on 
my  own  country.  I  don't  fancy 


769 

doing  that,  however  justly,  to 
amuse  Jonathan.  ...  I  liked 
the  notice  in  the  '  Scotsman '  very 
much.  It  is  a  paradox  to  say  that 
old  Calvinism  was  not  doctrinal 
in  the  face  of  the  Institute;  but 
it  is  astonishing  to  find  how  little 
in  ordinary  life  they  talked  or 
wrote  about  doctrine.  The  doc- 
trine was  never  more  than  the 
dress.  The  living  creature  was 
wholly  moral  and  political,  —  so 
at  least  I  think  myself." 

"5  ONSLOW  GARDENS. 
June  8  [1871]. 

"  I  remain  in  office  till  Decem- 
ber, so  by  all  means  let  me  have 
the  'Mary  Stuart.'  I  shall  be  ex- 
tremely interested  in  reading  it. 
.  .  .  I  am  working  away  at  the 
Irish  book.  I  found  vast  stores 
of  material  of  a  curious  kind  in 
Dublin ;  and  at  any  rate  I  hope  to 
produce  something  readable.  I 
fear,  however,  that  it  will  not 
conduce  to  the  agreeableness  of 
my  future  visits  to  Celtic  Ireland. 

If  G could  have  his  way,  there 

would  be  no  Ireland  but  a  Celtic 
one  in  a  few  years ;  but  there  are 
happy  signs  of  approximation  be- 
tween the  Church  and  the  Pres- 
byterians, which  may  be  the  be- 
ginning of  a  wholesome  reaction. 
Protestants  pulling  together  may 
still  hold  out,  and  even  recover 
the  reins." 

"5  ONSLOW  GARDENS, 
Nov.  17  [1871]. 

"  I  am  to  continue  editor  after 
all.  Dasent  declines  at  the  last 
moment.  .  .  .  Driven  out  of 
Derreen,  I  am  thinking  of  trying 
to  get  Garinish.  Lord  Dunraven 
is  dead,  and  his  successor  does  not 
care  to  keep  it." 

"5  ONSLOW  GARDENS, 
April  11  [1871]. 

"  Don't  you  think  the  introduc- 
tion into  newspapers  of  remarks 


770 


Reminiscences  of  James  Anthony  Froude. — 7. 


[Dec. 


upon  our  private  affairs  ought  to 
be  actionable  ?  .  .  .  I  have 
changed  my  political  mind  about 
Dizzy,  and  shall  be  heartily  glad 
of  a  laudatory  article  upon  him  if 
you  care  to  write  it." 

"WESTCLIFF  HOUSE,  EAMSGATE, 
Sep.  7  [1872]. 

"  I  sail  in  a  fortnight  [for  the 
States],  and  I  know  not  what  I 
have  before  me.  I  go  like  an 
Arab  of  the  desert :  my  hand  will 
be  against  every  man,  and  there- 
fore every  man's  hand  will  be 
against  me.  Protestant  and  Catho- 
lic, English,  English  -  Irish,  and 
Celtic — my  one  hope  will  be,  like 
St  Paul's,  to  fling  in  some  word 
or  words  among  them  which  will 
set  them  by  the  ears  among  them- 
selves. ...  I  have  been  cruising 
with  Lord  Ducie  in  a  big  schooner. 
We  were  for  several  days  in  the 
Kenmare  river,  and  I  again  walked 
over  Knockatee,  with  Campbell  of 
Isla  for  my  companion  —  an  ex- 
tremely interesting  man.  Derreen 
was  beautiful  as  ever." 

"5  ONSLOW  GARDENS, 
Feb.  15  [1873]. 

"My  American  experience  has 
been  more  than  interesting.  They 
are  good  people — very  unlike  what 
I  looked  for." 

[This  year  I  find  he  was  looking 
out  for  a  country-house  in  Scot- 
land,— "where  we  can  have  our 
three  or  four  months  of  gypsy  life 
like  the  Irish  one.  A  stream  with 
trout  and  an  odd  salmon  would 
add  to  the  pleasure,  or  still  better 
the  sea  or  a  salt-water  loch."  But 
nothing  came  of  it.] 

"ATHEN2EUM  CLUB, 

I  April  2  [1873]. 

"  Some  time  ago  you  offered  to 
do  a  panegyric  on  Dizzy.  I  de- 
clined, but  I  have  come  round  to 


your  way  of  thinking.  I  am  one 
of  the  weak-minded  beings  who 
are  carried  away  by  the  Conser- 
vative reaction.  Rather,  I  see 

plainly  that  G is  driving  the 

ship  into  the  breakers.  ...  I 
mentioned  at  a  party  of  M.P.'s 
the  other  night  that  throughout 
human  history  the  great  orators 
had  been  invariably  proved  wrong. 
There  were  shrieks  of  indignation  ; 
but  at  last  it  was  allowed  that 
facts  looked  as  if  it  were  true. 
Will  you  write  on  Dizzy  now  1 — 
Ever  yours,  J.  A.  FROUDE." 

"5  ONSLOW  GARDENS, 
December  16  [1873]. 

"I  am  working  hard  to  finish 
my  Irish  book,  which  I  have  grown 
to  hate.  It  will  make  the  poor 
Paddies  hate  me  too,  which  I  do 
not  wish,  as  I  cannot  return  the 
feeling.  .  .  .  Anyway,  I  am  sat- 
isfied to  feel  that  the  great  Revol- 
utionary wave  has  spent  its  force, 
and  that  the  next  fifty  years  will 
probably  be  more  and  more  Con- 
servative." 

[In  the  spring  of  1874  a  great 
calamity  overtook  Mr  Froude. 
Mrs  Froude  died  suddenly  early  in 
March.  Sir  James  Stephen,  writ- 
ing to  me  on  April  1,  informed  me 
that  he  had  been  constantly  with 
him  since  her  death.  "It  is  a 
terrible  blow  for  him,  poor  fellow, 
and  I  think  I  am  the  only  person 
(except  Mr  Carlyle)  whom  he  has 
seen  since  it  happened."] 

"5  ONSLOW  GARDENS, 
March  11  [1874]. 

"  You  will  not  expect  me  to 
say  anything  of  what  has  befallen 
me.  Rigid  silence  is  my  only 
present  resource.  ...  I  am  un- 
able just  now  to  attend  to  the 
Magazine  work.  We  go  in  a  fort- 
night to  Wales,  to  remain  there 
till  the  end  of  the  year." 


1894.] 


Reminiscences  of  James  Anthony  Froude. — /. 


771 


[Early  next  year  Lord  Carnarvon 
requested  Mr  Froude  to  visit 
South  Africa,  and  ascertain  the 
state  of  political  feeling  through- 
out the  colony.  He  returned  in 
December.] 

"5  ONSLOW  GARDENS, 
December  24  [1875]. 

L"  A  word  of  thanks  for  your  note, 
though  I  am  overwhelmed  with 
business.  Yes,  I  am  at  home 
again,  after  strange  adventures. 
We  know  what  we  are,  but  we 
know  not  what  we  shall  be.  If 
anybody  had  told  me  two  years 
ago  that  I  should  be  leading  an 
agitation  within  Cape  Colony,  I 
should  have  thought  my  informant 
delirious.  And  though  the  world 
cannot  yet  understand  what  has 
happened,  I  have  picked  the  one 
Diamond  out  of  the  rubbish-heap, 
and  brought  it  home  with  me. 
The  Ministers  have  the  appearance 
of  victory,  but  we  have  the  sub- 
stance. 

"Pray  send  your  Essays.  I 
shall  delight  in  them.  I  have 
seen  your  hand  from  time  to  time 
in  'Blackwood ' — specially  in  praise 
of  Green's  book  at  my  expense.1 
I  will  back  my  view  to  outlive 
Green's ;  though  I  haven't  had  it, 
and  don't  know  what  he  says. 
My  best  regards  to  Mrs  Skelton. — 
Yours  most  warmly, 

"  J.  A.  FROUDE." 

[In  1876  Mr  Froude  and  Pro- 
fessor Huxley  were  appointed 
members  of  the  Scottish  Univer- 
sities Commission.  For  several 
years  thereafter  they  paid  fre- 
quent visits  to  Edinburgh, — Mr 
Froude  being  my  guest  at  the 
Hermitage.  Both  of  the  English 
Commissioners  were  brilliant  talk- 
ers, and  the  remembrance  of  these 


Noctes    Ambrosianse   still   lingers 
among  us. 

"5  ONSLOW  GARDENS, 
May  20  [1876]. 

"  I  would  not  be  an  inconveni- 
ence to  either  of  you  for  the  world. 
And  least  of  all  think  of  inviting 
any  one  to  meet  me.  An  evening 
or  two  with  you  in  your  beautiful 
glen  will  be  better  than  any  quan- 
tity of  idle  dinner  -  party  talk. 
Abana  and  Pharpar  are  not  bet- 
ter than  the  waters  of  Israel  or 
the  murmur  of  Lothianburn." 

"5  ONSLOW  GARDENS, 
May  27  [1876]. 

"  Some  time  ago,  before  I  knew 
that  I  was  to  be  a  Commissioner, 
I  promised  Henry  Bowie  that  I 
would  open  the  annual  course  at 
the  Philosophical  Institution  by 
a  lecture  upon  landlords  and  land- 
ed property.  I  had  been  much 
interested  by  what  Mr  Smith  had 
done  at  Scilly,  and  I  wanted  to 
show  Radical  Scotland  how  bene- 
ficent a  fairy  a  landlord  still  might 
and  may  be,  in  spite  of  battues 
and  Deer-Forests.  It  occurs  to 
me  that  my  being  a  University 
Commissioner  may  be  inconsistent 
with  my  performing  on  platforms. 
Will  you  think  this  over  1 " 

"5  ONSLOW  GARDENS, 
March  24  [1877]. 

"This  accursed  Turkish  business 
is  still  in  the  air.  I  met  Lord  and 
Lady  Derby  last  night.  They  lay 
the  blame  on  Ignatieff.  I  suppose, 
in  fact,  that  the  Russians  mean 
to  go  to  war  unless  Europe  will 
efficiently  back  them  in  controlling 
the  Turkish  Government;  and  that 
the  object  of  all  their  diplomacy  is 
to  put  them  in  the  right  before 
Europe,  and  England  in  the  wrong. 


Certainly  not. 


772 


Reminiscences  oj  James  Anthony  Froude. — /. 


[Dec. 


A  few  weeks  must  end  the  un- 
certainty. When  the  roads  in 
Bulgaria  become  practicable,  the 
Russian  army  will  either  advance 
or  show  clearly  that  it  does  not 
mean  to  advance." 

"5  ONSLOW  GARDENS, 
March  29  [1877]. 

"  I  cannot  make  up  my  mind  to 

go  to  P .      It  would  be  like 

being  shut  up  in  a  cage  with  a 
benevolent  white  bear.  .  .  .  The 
Essays  come  out  to-morrow." 

"5  ONSLOW  GARDENS, 
Sept.  17  [1877]. 

"This  Eastern  business  is  very 
frightful,  and  will  bring  an  ugly 
train  of  mischiefs  behind  it,  worse 
than  any  which  were  anticipated. 
No  European  Government  can 
allow  Moslem  fanaticism  to  come 
off  completely  victorious.  The 
Turk,  I  fear,  is  like  the  Bull 
in  a  Spanish  circus.  However 
splendidly  he  fights,  and  how- 
ever many  men  and  horses  he 
kills,  he  is  none  the  less  finished 
off  in  the  end  by  somebody.  Pro- 
vidence, that  'loves  to  disappoint 
the  Devil,'  will  probably  bring 
one  good  out  of  it  all — a  reform 
of  the  Russian  administration. 
That  democracies  should  promote 
the  wrong  man  to  high  place  is 
natural  enough;  but  there  is  no 
excuse  for  an  autocrat." 

"5  ONSLOW  GARDENS, 
November  23  [1877]. 

"I  have  never  been  in  Scotland 
in  mid-winter,  and  am  curious  to 
see  what  it  is  like.  Curling  is 
one  of  the  Scotch  mysteries  in 
which  I  am  still  uninitiated,  and 
I  may  have  a  chance  of  witnessing 
it.  Also,  there  may  be  a  wood- 
cock or  woodcocks  in  your  glen. 
But  whether  or  no,  there  will  be 
warm  Scotch  firesides  and  warm 
friends." 


"5  ONSLOW  GARDENS, 
December  4  [1877]. 

"Anyway,  pray  order  a  frost. 
I  have  never  seen  Scotland  in  her 
snow  drapery  and  icy  jewels." 

"5  ONSLOW  GARDENS, 
May  3  [1878]. 

"We  will  talk  about  Salcombe 
when  we  meet.  Sea-bathing,  sail- 
ing, and  fishing  will  do  more  to 
set  you  up  than  the  French  doctors. 
What  a  nice  temper  we  are  all 
getting  into,  and  how  delightfully 
the  cards  are  shuffled  ! — Bradlaugh 
and  Liddon  shaking  hands  on  one 
side,  and  Lord  Beaconsfield  and 
General  Cluseret  on  the  other.  I 
have  letters  from  the  latter  (who 
is  now  in  Turkey)  on  the  text 
of  '  il  faut  humilier  le  Russie,' 
which  explains  the  tenderness  with 
which  the  '  General '  is  treated  in 
'Lothair.'  ...  I  am  reading  up 
Csesar  and  his  times,  with  a  view 
to  writing  a  book  about  him. 
Imagine  a  few  years  hence  fac- 
tion growing  hot  here; — England 
governed  by  troops  from  India, 
with  Mr  Hardy  for  Sylla ;  and 
then,  by-and-by,  Chamberlain  and 
Bright  for  Cinna  and  Marius ! — 
one's  mouth  waters  at  the  pros- 
pect, and  nothing  less  is  foretold 
by  hot  correspondents  of  the  Radi- 
cal papers.  Seriously,  I  believe 
things  will  end  quietly.  The  pros- 
pect on  the  Continent  is  so  ugly 
on  all  sides  that  all  the  Powers 
are  frightened  at  the  look  of  it." 

"5  ONSLOW  GARDENS, 
Feb.  7  [1878]. 

"  I  was  at  the  club  this  evening, 
took  up  'Black wood,'  as  you  re- 
commended, and  found  your  kind 
handiwork.  Of  course  it  is  yours — 
no  one  else  would  say  such  pretty 
things  of  me,  or  give  Freeman 
a  kick  on  my  behalf.  But  I  was 
more  pleased  with  your  evident 
liking  for  my  poor  little  volume 


1894.' 


Reminiscences  of  James  Anthony  Froude. — /. 


773 


of  'Studies.'  It  contains  things 
which  have  been  on  my  mind 
these  thirty  years,  and  could  never 
get  themselves  uttered  before.  A 
*  Tory ' !  I  don't  know  what  I 
am.  Nobody  rejoiced  more  than 
I  did  when  the  Tories  came  in, 
or  wished  them  longer  life.  But 
they  seem  to  me  to  be  no  wiser 
than  their  predecessors,  and  to 
be  working  steadily  on  the  lines 
which  will  bring  on  the  catas- 
trophe, which  I  fear  as  much  as 
you.  But  what  am  I?  and  what 
do  I  know*?  I  have  lived  long 
enough  to  distrust  my  own  judg- 
ment beyond  that  of  most  reason- 
able men.  I  have  been  often 
wrong  before,  and  I  hope  I  am 
wrong  now.  And  yet  I  hated  the 
Crimean  war,  and  I  saw  every 
one  (a  few  years  ago)  come  round 
to  my  old  opinion.  Now,  the 
country  seems  to  me  to  have  been 
bitten  by  the  same  mad  dog." 


"5  ONSLOW  GARDENS, 
April  29  [1878]. 

"I  congratulate  you.  .  .  .  The 
laurel  is  welcome  when  it  comes ; 
and  though,  as  with  Caesar,  it 
serves  sometimes  to  conceal  the 
thin  locks,  which  tell  us  that  we 
are  older  than  we  were,  it  is  ever- 
green, and  defies  age.  I  should 
like  to  hear  a  little  more  of  you 
and  of  the  Glen,  where  I  have 
spent  so  many  happy  hours.  How 
are  you,  and  how  is  Mrs  Skelton, 
and  May,  and  Jim,  and  the  little 
fellow  with  the  round  face?  .  .  . 
You  may  have  seen  Freeman's 
papers  in  the  '  Contemporary.' 
The  only  answer  which  I  shall 
make  will  be  to  republish  my  own 
articles  with  a  few  notes.  .  .  . 
You  will  be  glad  to  hear  that  he 
is  changing  his  mind  on  the  East- 
ern question.  That  /  should  be 
on  the  same  side  has  satisfied  him 
that  he  must  be  wrong." 


"  5  ONSLOW  GARDENS. 
May  9  [1878]. 

"The  political  atmosphere  has 
grown  cooler.  I  wrote  to  my 
Russian  friends  to  warn  them 
that  the  Liberal  party  here  was 
divided  and  powerless,  and  that 
they  must  not  count  on  the 
slightest  help  from  that  quarter. 
.  .  .  But  I  have  got  into  Caesar, 
and  think  no  more  of  this  storm 
in  a  slop-basin." 

"  THE  MOLT,  Sep.  19  [1878]. 
"  We  have  been  very  quiet ;  a 
few  visitors  have  looked  in  upon 
us,  among  them  Bret  Harte,  who 
charmed  us  all;  occasional  yachts 
have  come  in  with  glimpses  of 
the  outside  world ;  and  as  long 
as  the  weather  allowed  I  had  a 
trawler,  which  gave  us  an  oc- 
casional sail  and  found  us  in  fish ; 
but  I  cannot  respond  to  your  en- 
comiums on  the  season.  August 
was  wet  and  stormy  ;  the  harvest 
was  ruined ;  and  an  incessant 
heavy  sea,  rolling  in  from  the 
south-west,  interfered  with  our 
water  amusements  more  than  we 
could  wish.  But  I  have  been 
very  happy  and  very  busy,  .  .  . 
steadily  at  work  on  Caesar.  .  .  . 
I  can  form  no  conjecture  of  what 
the  world  will  say.  I  find  the 
kite  rises  equally  well  whichever 
way  the  wind  blows,  if  only  there 
is  enough  of  it.  But,  indeed,  I 
shall  have  trod  on  nobody's  toes 
this  time,  unless  it  be  a  few  Re- 
publican fanatics — modern  Catos 
like  Frank  Newman." 

"  5  ONSLOW  GARDENS, 
December  27  [1878]. 

"  My  hearty  thanks  for  your 
kind  card  of  good  wishes.  We 
make  many  acquaintances  as  we 
grow  old,  but  few  or  no  new 
friends.  Those  that  are  left  of 
the  old  ones  we  cling  to  closer 
than  ever,  and  you  and  yours  I 


774 


Reminiscences  of  James  Anthony  Froude. — /. 


[Dec. 


look  upon  as  among  the  nearest 
now  belonging  to  me.  ...  I  have 
taken  to  my  skates  again,  and 
I  should  have  enjoyed  the  change 
from  the  open  winters  which  we 
have  had  so  long  if  it  was  not 
that  so  many  poor  wretched  crea- 
tures are  starving,  and  that  I 
have  to  drive  twice  a-week  with 
Carlyle  in  a  fly  with  wide  open 
windows.  The  ten  generations 
of  his  Annandale  ancestors  have 
given  him  a  constitution  as  hard 
as  granite.  Disraeli's  cards  are 
still  made  of  trumps.  Even  when 
his  hand  is  bad  he  plays  it  so 
well  that  I  admire  his  skill, 
though  I  disbelieve  in  his  foreign 
politics.  He  is  more  popular 
than  ever.  You  see  how  well  the 
people  like  him,  in  the  absence  of 
all  complaints  against  the  Govern- 
ment, in  the  midst  of  so  much 
suffering;  and  after  all  I  would 
sooner  see  him  Minister  than 


"5  ONSLOW  GARDENS, 
Feb.  6  [1879]. 

"  I  have  been  so  busy  up  to 
this  moment  that  I  have  not  had 
time  to  read  the  '  Essays  in  Ro- 
mance '  as  I  wished  to  read  them. 
Yesterday  I  spent  a  delightful 
evening  with  you  over  the  Pre- 
lude and  Martin  Holdfast.  The 
Prelude  is  quite  excellent, — your 
own  Hermitage,  with  the  rocks 
and  the  trees  and  the  ivy  and 
the  owls,  and  the  cocks  and  hens. 
Can  I  ever  forget  poor  blind 
Bellerophon — eating  his  soul — can 
I  ever  cease  to  feel  for  him  ?  The 
picture  made  me  long  to  be  with 
you  again. 

"Martin  Holdfast  I  of  course 
remembered  ;  but  in  the  new  good 
type  it  was  fresh  and  young 
again.  .  .  . 

"Those  old  times  in  Johnny 
Parker's  room  are  wae  to  think 
on  —  so  many  dead  and  gone; — 


Whyte-Melville  went  the  last,  and 
how  characteristically  !  The  rest 
of  us  will  soon  be  over-ripened 
fruit ;  but  what  is  the  use  of 
complaining  ?  We  must  go  on 
and  defy  the  Devil  as  long  as  we 
can  stand  and  speak.  Whether 
we  shall  have  any  more  of  that 
work  beyond  remains  to  be  seen. 

"Tulloch  takes  'Fraser' — what 

will  C say  to  this?  I  had 

an  odd  dream  about  Tulloch  last 
night.  I  heard  him  say,  with  one 
of  his  jolly  laughs,  that  his  breeks 
were  bigger  than  mine.  May  it 
prove  prophetic !  .  .  .  I  would 
not  have  given  it  up  had  you  and 
Melville  and  Lawrence  even  been 
willing  and  able  to  help. 

"  '  Caesar '  is  in  the  press.  I  be- 
lieve it  is  the  best  book  which  I 
have  ever  written.  But  how  can 
I  know  ?  You  say  so  truly  that  as 
we  grow  old  we  hold  our  con- 
victions conditionally,  and  lose 
the  confidence  with  which  we 
stept  out  when  we  knew  less 
and  felt  more. 

"  I  will  write  to  you  again 
when  I  have  finished  the  Essays. 
My  warmest  regards  to  Mrs  Skel- 
ton  and  the  Boys  and  the  little 
bright  May. — Yours  most  truly, 
"J.  A.  FROUDE." 

"5  ONSLOW  GARDENS, 
June  2  [1879]. 

"I  have  been  building  a  large 
boat,  and  we  could  have  some  sails, 
and  forget  that  we  are  literary 
mortals,  subject  to  wrath  and  the 
4  Saturday  Review.'  I  begin  to 
think  it  is  my  fate  to  fly  my  kite 
against  the  wind.  If  by  any 
chance  the  wind  came  favourable 
I  should  fall  collapsed.  Has 
Tulloch  tempted  you  back  to 
'  Eraser  T 

"5  ONSLOW  GARDENS, 
July  28  [1879]. 

"  I  am  tired  out  with  work  and 
want  of  sleep.  The  salt  water 


1894.] 


Reminiscences  of  James  Anthony  Froude. /. 


775 


will  set  me  up  again.  The  '  Short 
Studies'  have  done  better  than  I 
had  expected ;  a  large  edition  is 
sold,  and  another  is  coming.  But 
my  poor  Divus  Caesar  falls  flat : 
nobody  cares  about  it." 

[We  were  at  The  Molt  this  Au- 
gust,— a  place  almost  as  lovely  and 
romantic  as  Derreen.  Then  we 
went  to  North  Devon.] 

"THE  MOLT,  SALCOMBB, 
September  2  [1879]. 

"  I  am  glad  you  have  seen  Clo- 
velly  and  the  Hobby.  I,  as 
South  Devon  born,  am  fondest  of 
our  own  coast;  but  I  like  the 
north  of  the  county  next  best  to 
my  own  side,  as  I  like  Yankees 
next  best  to  Englishmen.  ...  I 
have  promised  Morley  an  article  on 
South  Africa.  It  seemed  easy  at 
a  distance.  Now  that  the  time 
has  come  to  write  it,  I  am  like  a 
pump  which  can  draw  no  water. 
It  is  painfully  brought  home  to 
me  that  as  we  grow  old,  the  soil 
will  not  bear  as  it  did." 


"5  ONSLOW  GARDENS, 
December  5  [1879]. 

"  The  world  has  nibbled  at  my 
Railway  Siding  like  minnows  round 
a  worm,  as  if  they  were  afraid 
there  was  a  hook  inside  of  some 
kind.  Francis  Newman  seems 
morally  shocked  at  my  pretending 
to  believe  in  a  day  of  judgment. 
It  was  just  a  fancy  that  came  into 
my  head ;  part  of  it  was  a  real 
dream.  .  .  .  There  should  be  cock 
and  wild-duck  in  your  glen,  though 
you  don't  mention  them.  I  have  a 
fine  preserve  of  sparrows  under  my 
window.  A  London  sparrow,  if  he 
is  aware  of  his  advantages,  should 
know  that  he  is  on  the  whole  the 
best  off  of  all  mortal  beings." 

[Of  one  subject  even  Mr  Freeman 
would  have  been  forced  to  admit 

VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCL. 


that  the  historian  of  the  Reforma- 
tion was  a  master.  Froude  was  a 
born  sailor,  and  could  manage  a 
yacht  or  yawl  in  the  ugliest  sea  as 
if  he  had  been  bred  to  the  business. 
So  he  was  quick  to  detect  any  slip 
that  his  friends,  who  were  less  ex- 
pert, might  make.  The  workman- 
ship of  "Crookit  Meg,"  he  was 
pleased  to  say,  was  as  good  as 
could  be  —  with  one  exception. 
"  If  you  mean  to  take  us  to  sea  in 
this  questionable  little  vessel,  you 
must  have  your  sea-dialect  looked 
over.  The  main  sheet  is  a  rope, 
not  a  sail.  The  jib  is  'loosed' 
when  you  get  under  weigh,  and  is 
the  first  sail  taken  in  when  you  are 
coming  to  your  moorings "  (Jan- 
uary 30,  1880).  The  next  letter 
refers  to  a  proposal  to  republish 
'The  Nemesis  of  Faith,'  which 
(happily  it  may  be)  came  to  noth- 
ing. The  *  Nemesis '  as  a  psycho- 
logical study  is  extremely  interest- 
ing ;  but  it  does  not  reach  the 
high -water  mark  of  his  more 
mature  work.] 

"5  ONSLOW  GARDENS, 
March  19  [1880]. 

"  MY  DEAR  SKELTON,  —  Your 
letter  encourages  a  half -formed 
purpose  to  ripen  into  Act.  It 
seems  that  there  is  a  demand  for 
the  poor  *  Nemesis.'  The  Longmans 
apply  for  leave  to  bring  out  a  new 
edition  of  it.  As  yet  I  have  said 
No, — but  why  may  I  not  change 
it  to  Yes,  and  show  the  world  for 
what  slight  cause  they  expelled 
from  Oxford  and  half  ruined  the 
now  visibly  innocent  author  of  the 
thing. 

"  I  am  hard  at  work  on  Carlyle's 
Life.  As  soon  as  the  leaves  are  on 
the  trees,  I  must  make  a  little  tour 
about  Dumfriesshire  —  chiefly  in 
Annandale  —  looking  at  places 
where  0.  lived  and  Irving  lived. 
Don't  you  think  that  you  might 
meet  me  at  Carlisle  or  Moffat,  and 
3  E 


776 


^Reminiscences  of  James  Anthony  Froude. — 7. 


[Dec. 


that  we  might  do  the  investigation 
together?  If  the  Annandale  dia- 
lect is  what  it  was  sixty  years  ago, 
I  may  want  a  construe  now  and 
then.  Three  days  would  exhaust 
it  all ;  and  if  the  Howards  are  at 
Naworth  Castle,  as  they  perhaps 
will  be,  we  could  give  another  day 
or  two  to  that. 

"I  take  M to  Paris  next 

Saturday ;  we  shall  stay  a  week. 
As  to  the  elections,  I  had  meant 
to  vote  for  Brown,  a  Conservative, 
but  a  stanch  Colonist,  who  shares 
my  views  on  that  subject.  But 
as  he  must  support  the  Colonial 
Office  about  the  South  African 
policy,  and  as  I  cannot  induce 
Beach  to  do  as  I  think  he  ought, 
I  shall  not  vote  at  all. 

"  I  do  not  love  Beaconsfield ; 
but  I  love  Gladstone  less. — Ever 
warmly  yours,  J.  A.  FROUDE. 

"  I  have  a  charming  little  cutter 


— 13  tons — building  at  Salcombe. 
We  count  on  you  and  Mrs  Skelton 
coming," 

Here  in  the  meantime  I  must 
pause.  The  fifteen  years  that 
followed  were  not  the  least  event- 
ful in  Mr  Froude's  career;  and 
the  letters  belonging  to  them  are 
(to  say  the  least)  as  direct  and 
graphic  as  any  of  the  earlier. 
Sir  George  Trevelyan  remarked  at 
Dundee  the  other  day  that  Mr 
Froude  had  "  a  personal  charm  and 
a  personal  force  which  was  above 
anything  that  he  put  on  paper." 
The  personal  charm  and  the  per- 
sonal force  were  unquestionably 
very  great ;  but  I  would  have  been 
inclined  to  say  that  they  were 
reflected  with  quite  exceptional 
felicity  and  faithfulness  in  his 
familiar  '  Studies,'  and,  still  more 
so,  in  his  familiar  letters. 

JOHN  SKELTON. 


1894.] 


Celibacy  and  the  Struggle  to  get  on. 


777 


CELIBACY    AND    THE    STKUGGLE    TO    GET    ON. 


THE  end-of-the-century  young 
man  is  on  his  trial.  The  lady 
novelist  is  his  judge,  and  the  jury, 
packed  largely  with  New  Women, 
will  have  little  hesitation  in  find- 
ing him  guilty.  Manifold  are  his 
crimes,  if  but  the  half  one  hears 
be  true.  He  is  selfish,  luxurious, 
effeminate,  and  vicious.  He  has 
no  pluck.  The  modern  analytical 
spirit  has  so  paralysed  his  natural 
impulses  that  he  cannot  make  up 
his  mind  to  propose.  He  tyran- 
nises abominably  over  poor,  weak, 
defenceless  woman.  He  is  over- 
fond  of  his  club.  To  sum  up,  he 
is  a  worthless  and  somewhat  dis- 
gusting creature,  and  Woman  — 
the  New  Woman  —  rebelling 
against  her  natural  instincts,  will 
no  more  seek  intercourse  with 
him,  but  rather  shrink  from  him 
with  aversion  and  loathing. 

The  indictment  is  a  heavy  one, 
and  it  is  variously  framed.  It  is 
chiefly  contained  in  the  works  of 
the  new  female  school  of  physio- 
logico  -  psychological  fiction,  with 
which  novel-readers  are  becoming 
so  unpleasantly  familiar.  The  neu- 
rotic story  has  long  since  sup- 
planted the  erotic.  We  are  forced 
now  to  read  of  heredity  and  path- 
ology, of  diseased  babies,  and 
of  anaemic,  morbidly  introspective 
damsels  full  of  self-torturings  and 
soul -questionings.  Formerly  the 
French  and  Scandinavian  novelists, 
with  their  numerous  male  imita- 
tors, had  this  field  to  themselves, 
but  now  the  "  monstrous  regiment 
of  women,"  who  have  carried  by 
storm  so  many  man  -  garrisoned 
citadels,  have  invaded  the  domain 
of  pathological  story-telling.  And, 
strange  as  it  seems,  the  novel- 
reading  public,  or  at  any  rate  the 
female  section  of  it,  seems  to  prefer 


perusing  these  tales  to  any  others. 
If  in  the  process  they  devour  much 
garbage  and  more  bad  grammar,  it 
still  seems  to  suit  their  mental 
tastes  and  digestions. 

"  Ah,  why  is  each  '  passing  depression' 

Of  stories  that  gloomily  bore 
Keceived  as  the  subtle  expression 

Of  almost  unspeakable  lore  ? 
In  the  dreary,  the  grubby,  the  grimy, 

Say,  why  do  our  women  delight, 
And  wherefore  so  constantly  ply  me 

With  Ships  in  the  Night  ?  " 

So  sings  Mr  Andrew  Lang,  not 
without  cause.  But  for  the  mul- 
titude of  feminine  readers,  much 
of  our  popular  modern  "litera- 
ture "  would  find  its  proper  haven 
of  rest  in  the  waste-paper  basket. 

"And  why  ladies  read  what  they  do 
read 

Is  a  thing  that  no  man  may  explain, 
And  if  any  one  asks  for  a  true  rede, 

He  asketh  in  vain." 

As  these  highly  seasoned  stories  are 
presumably  written  with  a  lofty 
moral  purpose,  one  is  forcibly  re- 
minded of  Swift's  epigram,  that 
"nice  persons  are  persons  of 
nasty  ideas."  They  are  written 
by  ladies  for  ladies,  and  pater- 
familias will  be  wise  if,  before 
taking  one  of  them  up,  he  first  as- 
certains from  his  daughters  whether 
it  is  fit  for  him  to  read.  As  a 
rule,  he  is  so  much  more  easily 
shocked  than  they.  Besides,  his 
ears  may  tingle  and  his  feelings 
be  harrowed  when  he  finds  what 
nasty  things  the  lady  novelist  has 
been  saying  about  him  and  his 
unregenerate  male  compeers.  Ac- 
cording to  her,  Man  is  a  vile, 
degraded  being,  diseased  and  en- 
feebled, as  a  rule,  both  in  mind 
and  body,  and  in  every  respect 


778 


Celibacy  and  the  Struggle  to  get  on. 


[Dec. 


thoroughly  objectionable.  No  de- 
cent-minded girl  ought  to  touch 
him  with  a  barge-pole.  The  ladies 
have  picked  and  pulled  his  char- 
acter to  pieces  till  he  has  not  a 
rag  of  reputation  left,  and  he 
stands  naked,  so  to  speak,  yet, 
I  regret  to  say,  not  ashamed. 
His  most  truculent  critic,  as  every 
one  knows,  is  Mrs  Sarah  Grand, 
though  Mr  Grant  Allen  has  re- 
cently added  that  shrill  vox  cla- 
mantium  of  his  to  the  feminine 
clamour  against  the  wickedness  of 
his  sex.1  Mrs  Grand  gave  us  a 
taste  of  her  quality  in  '  The 
Heavenly  Twins,'  but  she  has 
since  greatly  improved  on  that  pe- 
culiar performance.  The  modern 
Caliban,  the  Man  of  the  Moment, 
finds  his  ugly  lineaments  vividly 
portrayed  by  her  with  a  hand  that 
does  not  spare.  She  has  ruth- 
lessly torn  aside  the  veil  which 
hitherto  shrouded  his  iniquities, 
and  he  stands  revealed,  like  Mo- 
kanna,  in  his  utter  repulsiveness. 

"'Here— judge   if   Hell,  with  all  its 

power  to  damn, 
Can  add  one  curse  to  the  foul  thing  I 

am  !' 
He  raised  the  veil — the  maid  turned 

slowly  round ; 
Looked   at   him — shrieked — and    sunk 

upon  the  ground  !  " 

The  modern  woman  shrieks,  like 
Zelica,  on  beholding  the  monster 
(was  there  a  Shrieking  Sisterhood 
even  in  those  days,  I  wonder  ?),  and 
probably  joins  the  Pioneer  Club. 

A  volume  might  be  filled  with 
the  flowers  of  Mrs  Grand's  vitu- 
perative rhetoric,  but  I  cannot 
refrain  from  culling  a  few  of  her 
choicer  and  more  recent  speci- 
mens. "Man,"  she  tells  us,  "has 
shrunk  to  his  true  proportions  "  in 
the  eyes  of  the  ladies.  What  those 
proportions  may  be  the  shrinking 


male  creature  shudders  to  contem- 
plate. Probably  they  are  very  in- 
significant. It  is,  however,  con- 
soling to  know  that,  while  men 
have  been  thus  shrinking  to  their 
true  proportions,  the  ladies  are 
"  expanding  to  theirs  " — subaudi, 
I  imagine,  in  their  own  eyes  also. 
For  we  are  told  with  refreshing 
frankness  that,  in  spite  of  the 
decay  of  male  manners  and  morals, 
"the  manners  of  the  New  Woman 
are  perfect."  I  would  we  could 
say  the  same  of  her  literary  style  ! 
To  the  just  modern  girl  thus  made 
perfect  in  manners  "  the  man  of 
the  moment  is  not  of  much  ac- 
count." A  strong  dislike  for  him 
is  arising  in  her  mind.  She  makes 
merry  over  him,  and  thinks  him 
"  a  subject  both  for  contempt  and 
pity."  For  is  he  not  "  a  skulking 
creature  "  —  indolent,  feeble,  and 
nerveless  ?  Does  he  not  lie  long 
abed,  while  the  New  Woman  is 
up  and  doing?  Does  he  not  "  grow 
ever  more  effeminate  "  ?  Small 
wonder,  then,  that  to  the  New 
Woman  "  he  appears  a  common 
creature,  of  no  ideals,  deficient  in 
breadth  and  depth,  and  only  of  a 
boundless  assurance."  Only  when 
he  appears  as  a  suitor,  or  "  candi- 
date for  marriage,"  does  he  cease 
to  puff  himself  out  and  comport 
himself  with  proper  humility. 
And  we  may  be  quite  sure  that 
the  girl  of  the  period  will  not 
accept  him  unless  he  can  show 
a  certificate — medical  or  otherwise 
— of  a  blameless  life,  from  which 
one  gathers  that  the  world  must 
be  getting  in  a  parlous  state.  For 
if,  as  it  seems,  man  is  almost  uni- 
formly vicious,  and  woman  will 
only  wed  such  as  have  no  "  horrid 
past,"  the  human  race  must  be  in 
some  danger  of  final  extinction. 
Perhaps  in  view  of  its  widespread 


1  See  f  The  Humanitarian  '  for  September,  and  '  The  North  American  Review  J 
for  March  and  May. 


1894.] 


Celibacy  and  the  Struggle  to  get  on. 


779 


corruption  this  is  a  consummation 
more  to  be  desired  than  dreaded. 
If  I  mistake  not,  there  exists  al- 
ready in  Russia  a  religious  sect 
which  is  putting  these  principles 
into  practice.  Similarly  our  noble 
British  Pioneers  declare  that  Man, 
a  necessary  evil,  is  to  be  no  longer 
nattered  but  fought  —  a  policy 
which  should  delight  the  shade 
of  Malthus.  Probably,  however, 
Nature,  even  though  the  New 
Woman  expel  her  with  a  pitch- 
fork, will  speedily  return  and  as- 
sert herself. 

One  feels  tempted  to  ask  what 
is  Mrs  Grand's  warrant  for  the  as- 
sertion that  men  "  grow  ever  more 
effeminate,"  and  that  idleness  and 
luxury  are  making  them  flabby  ? 
From  the  physical  point  of  view 
the  evidence  all  points  in  the 
contrary  direction.  The  records 
of  athleticism,  so  far  as  they  can 
be  taken  as  a  guide,  seem  to 
prove  that  man  is  improving 
rather  than  degenerating.  The 
spirit  of  adventure  is  as  rife  as 
ever,  though  the  field  for  its 
exercise  of  necessity  becomes  more 
limited.  Even  your  young  Guards- 
man, who  is  usually  represented  as 
the  type  of  all  that  is  lazy  and  dis- 
solute, is  not  behindhand  in  volun- 
teering for  a  Soudan  or  Nile  cam- 
paign whenever  he  gets  the  chance. 
Men  are  as  ready  as  ever  to  risk 
their  lives  in  distant  travel  and 
exploration,  if  only  for  amuse- 
ment. In  the  Alps,  the  Caucasus, 
the  Andes,  and  the  Himalayas, 
peaks  are  scaled  and  climbing 
feats  performed  which  twenty 
years  ago  would  have  been 
deemed  impossible.  I  do  not  say 
that  all  these  things  are  wise  or 
admirable;  but  at  least  they  are 
evidence  of  latent  energy  that 
must  have  an  outlet  somehow,  of 
steam  that  must  find  its  vent 
somewhere.  When  we  come  to 
the  moral  sphere  one  is  on  less 


sure  ground.  Here  we  are  forced 
to  descend  to  generalities,  and  in 
this  field  one  is  necessarily  some- 
what at  a  disadvantage  when  argu- 
ing with  a  lady.  No  doubt  we  are 
less  impulsive  in  these  ratiocina- 
tive  days  ;  but,  speaking  generally, 
I  should  say  there  is  more  serious 
purpose  in  men's  lives  than  for- 
merly, and  also  a  greater  desire 
to  do  some  good  in  the  world. 
If  there  is  less  plain  living,  there 
is  also  more  high  thinking.  It 
would  be  strange  were  it  other- 
wise in  our  altruistic  age,  when 
the  worship  of  humanity  in  one 
form  or  another  is  so  prevalent. 

Of  course,  as  I  have  said,  all 
this  cannot  be  proved.  I  am 
merely  stating  my  views  in  oppo- 
sition to  those  of  the  lady  novelists 
concerning  the  moral  degradation 
of  the  masculine  creature.  Hap- 
pily, however,  his  feminine  censors 
do  not  leave  him  without  hope  of 
consolation  in  the  future.  Fallen 
as  the  big  baby  Man  is,  Woman — 
the  New  Woman — "holds  out  a 
strong  hand  to  the  child-man,  and 
insists,  but  with  infinite  tenderness 
and  pity,  upon  helping  him  up." 
Our  feelings  in  return,  Mrs  Grand 
may  rest  assured,  will  be  those  of 
unutterable  regard  and  gratitude. 
From  our  clubs,  from  the  moral 
gutters  where  we  lie  wallowing, 
we  will  stretch  forth  our  hands  to 
meet  those  of  the  lady  novelist  and 
her  angel  helpmates.  With  "in- 
finite tenderness  "  will  we  welcome 
their  clasp,  and  when  they  have 
assisted  us  to  rise  and  set  us  on 
our  legs  again — why,  words  fail  to 
express  the  emotions  we  shall  ex- 
perience then. 

Now  all  this,  with  much  more 
to  the  same  effect,  is  of  course  in- 
tensely comical,  and  none  the  less 
so  because  the  humour  is  so  ob- 
viously unconscious.  The  question 
rfaturally  suggests  itself,  however, 
Why  is  the  "trumpet  of  sexual 


780 

revolt "  being  blown  so  shrilly  and 
continuously?  What  is  all  the 
pother  about?  Does  it  represent 
any  real  feeling  or  want,  or  is  it 
merely  one  of  those  passing  dust- 
storms  which  sweep  periodically 
across  the  barren  wilderness  of 
magazine  and  newspaper  contro- 
versy? According  to  one  lady 
critic l  there  is  nothing  new  in  the 
Woman  Question,  which  existed 
as  far  back  as  the  days  of  King 
Charles  the  Second.  It  is  the 
same  old  trumpet  that  is  being 
blown,  only  different  performers 
are  exercising  their  lungs  upon  it. 
In  other  words,  the  New  Woman 
is  no  more  of  a  novelty  than,  let 
us  say,  Mrs  Humphry  Ward's 
new  theological  ideas.  This  is 
quite  possible,  though  I  cannot 
help  thinking  that  woman's  rebel- 
lion in  its  latest  form  springs  from 
the  altered  conditions  of  contem- 
porary social  existence.  If  "the 
sex  "  are  going  on  strike  there  is  a 
reason  for  it.  I  may  be  wrong, 
but  I  suspect  that  the  movement 
arises  in  the  main  from  the  celibate 
tendencies  of  modern  mankind. 
What  is  called  the  Sex  Problem, 
or  the  Woman  Question,  resolves 
itself  largely  into  the  question  of 
marriage.  In  the  words  of  Mrs 
Grand,  "  the  Woman  Question  is 
the  Marriage  Question."  To  speak 
plainly,  man's  chief  crime  in  the 
average  woman's  eyes  is  that  he 
does  not  marry  her.  This  is  the 
head  and  front  of  his  offending, 
though,  as  we  have  seen,  many 
other  crimes  are  laid  at  his  door. 
Herein  we  have  the  real  origin  of 
the  revolt  of  the  daughters,  as  the 
perfectly  natural  demand  of  the 
girls  for  rather  more  liberty  is 
somewhat  unreasonably  called. 
Matrimony  has  ceased  to  be  the 
sole  aim  and  end  of  women's  lives. 
In  not  a  few  cases  it  is  not  an  aim 


Celibacy  and  the  Struggle  to  get  on. 


[Dec. 


at  all.  Many  women  are  unable, 
and  some  have  no  desire,  to  marry. 
This  being  so,  small  blame  to  them 
if  they  are  rebelling  against  the 
tyranny  of  the  chaperon,  who  not 
unfrequently  is  more  youthful  than 
her  charges  both  in  years  and  dis- 
cretion. No  wonder  that  they  are 
calling  out  for  latch-keys,  Wander- 
jdhre,  rational  bicycling  costumes, 
new  religions,  boxes  at  the  music- 
halls,  and  a  variety  of  other  hither- 
to forbidden  joys  and  privileges. 
They  ask  to  be  allowed  sufficient 
freedom  to  follow  their  bent,  to  de- 
velop their  own  personalities  and 
talents,  so  that  when  man  comes 
up  humbly  and  submissively  as  a 
"  candidate  for  marriage  "  they  may 
be  free  to  take  him  or  leave  him 
just  as  they  please.  If,  as  is  highly 
probable,  he  does  not  come  at  all, 
they  will  be  perfectly  well  able  to 
get  along  without  him.  Nobody 
now  thinks  that  a  woman  has  ne- 
cessarily missed  her  mark  in  life 
merely  because  she  never  marries. 
In  the  days  that  are  to  be,  let  us 
hope,  the  girl  of  the  moment,  if 
Mrs  Grand  will  permit  me  to  coin 
the  phrase,  will  never  be  tempted 
to  make  a  loveless  match  merely  to 
secure  emancipation  from  burden- 
some home  restraints. 

All  this,  in  my  humble  opinion, 
is  quite  as  it  should  be.  In  fact 
it  would  seem  to  be  the  inevitable 
outcome  of  our  altered  social  con- 
ditions, now  that  marriage  is  so 
notably  on  the  decline.  And  one 
may  well  hold  these  views  without 
committing  oneself  to  approval  of 
the  ravings  of  the  New  Woman  or 
the  prancing  of  the  over -advanced 
girl.  I  do  not  know  whether  Mrs 
Grand  means  to  give  us  an  accurate 
description  of  the  chaste  and  deli- 
cate communings  of  the  modern 
maiden  who,  we  are  told,  says  in 
her  heart,  "Don't  offer  me  the 


1  Mrs  Gosse  in  the  'New  Review.3 


1894.] 


Celibacy  and  the  Struggle  to  get  on. 


781 


mutilated  remains  of  a  man,"  or, 
"  I  shall  never  marry  unless  I  can 
find  a  man  of  honour  with  no 
horrid  past."  If,  however,  such  a 
maiden  exists,  I  fancy  that  in  the 
majority  of  cases  she  will  be  spared 
the  pain  of  refusing  her  unwelcome 
suitor.  In  the  words  of  the  old 
song,  slightly  altered, — 

"  'Nobody  asked  you,  Miss,'  he  said." 

In  future  times,  perhaps,  the  bash- 
ful girl  of  the  period  will  come  for- 
ward herself  as  a  "candidate  for 
marriage  " ;  but  at  present,  in  flat 
contradiction  of  the  French  pro- 
verb, man  no  longer  proposes. 
Many  and  varied  are  the  reasons 
given  for  his  remissness.  The  sub- 
ject has  been  frequently  ventilated, 
and,  "  Why  men  don't  marry  "  has 
more  than  once  formed  the  theme 
of  a  copious  newspaper  correspon- 
dence. Some  attribute  it  to  the 
selfishness  and  luxury  of  the 
"  skulking  "  male  creature ;  others 
to  his  shilly-shally  and  want  of 
pluck  ;  others,  again,  lay  the  blame 
on  those  odious  clubs.  One  brutal 
person  of  my  acquaintance  says  it 
is  all  the  fault  of  the  modern  girl, 
who  has  such  expensive  and  lux- 
urious habits ;  but  then  I  do  not 
hesitate  to  characterise  him  as  a 
"man  of  the  moment"  of  the 
worst  possible  description !  Mr 
Grant  Allen  in  his  *  Post-Prandial 
Philosophy '  disagrees  with  them 
all.  He  thinks  that  in  most 
things  the  modern  young  man  is 
an  improvement  on  his  progeni- 
tors, but  he  nevertheless  discerns 
in  him  a  distinct  and  disastrous 
weakening  of  the  matrimonial  im- 
pulse. He  attributes  the  present 
crisis  in  the  English  marriage- 
market  to  the  cumulative  effect  of 
nervous  over  -  excitement,  conse- 
quent upon  the  wear  and  tear  of 
modern  existence.  Tot  homines 
quot  sententice :  no  two  people  can 
agree  as  to  the  cause ;  only  the  dis- 


tressing fact  remains,  patent  to 
all  mothers  of  marriageable  girls. 
The  decline  of  marriage  is,  in  fact, 
a  new  social  phenomenon  that  has 
to  be  reckoned  with  and,  if  possible, 
explained. 

For  my  own  part,  I  doubt 
whether  any  of  these  things  have 
much  to  do  with  the  celibate  ten- 
dencies of  the  latter-day  male. 
They  are  very  possibly  contribu- 
tory causes,  though  I  cannot  but 
think  that  their  influence  is  greatly 
exaggerated.  The  real  reason  must 
be  sought  in  the  bad  times,  in  the 
gloom  and  uncertainty  of  the  pre- 
sent business  outlook.  I  do  not 
believe  that  the  men  of  our  day 
are  any  more  misogamists  than 
their  forefathers.  They  are  not  so 
romantic,  perhaps,  for  they  have 
lost  most  of  their  illusions ;  but 
their  instincts  are  no  less  sound 
and  healthy.  They  remain  bache- 
lors, not  because  they  are  selfish 
and  vicious,  but  because  they  can- 
not afford  the  luxury  of  a  wife. 
Of  my  own  rich  or  well-to-do 
friends  by  far  the  larger  propor- 
tion are  married,  which  would 
seem  to  point  to  the  permanence 
of  the  matrimonial  impulses,  so 
long  as  the  means  for  satisfying 
them  exist.  For  most  of  the  others 
a  state  of  single  blessedness  is  a 
matter  of  dire  necessity,  or  at  any 
rate  of  ordinary  prudence.  Never 
was  a  living  so  difficult  to  make 
as  now;  never,  from  a  monetary 
point  of  view,  was  the  prospect 
more  cheerless.  Never  was  there 
so  much  distress  in  the  upper 
classes,  or  so  many  families  among 
the  multitude  of  the  outwardly 
well-to-do  struggling  to  make  both 
ends  meet.  Mrs  Grand  is  very 
severe  on  the  idleness  and  luxury 
of  the  "man  of  the  moment,"  as 
she  calls  him.  Is  she  merely  in- 
dulging in  a  journalistic  scream, 
or  does  she  really  think  that  her 
effeminate  slug-abed  is  fairly  re- 


782 

presentative  of  the  modern  male  1 
Does  she  know  nothing  of  the  daily 
wear  and  tear,  the  mental  strain 
and  worry,  of  commercial  and  pro- 
fessional life  ?  For  myself,  I  con- 
fess that,  viewing  humanity  as  a 
whole,  the  follies  of  the  idle  few 
bulk  far  less  largely  on  my  imagi- 
nation than  do  the  pluck  and  per- 
severance of  that  greater  number 
of  men  who  in  these  times  are 
bravely  fighting  a  losing  battle 
against  adverse  circumstances. 
Mrs  Grand  suggests  that  the  al- 
ternative of  work  or  starvation 
should  be  offered  to  the  lazy  and 
luxurious.  The  pity  of  it  is  that 
for  not  a  few  people  nowadays  it  is 
a  case  of  work  plus  starvation — or 
something  like  it.  I  am  in  the 
City  myself,  and,  though  in  such 
matters  it  is  obviously  impossible 
to  descend  to  details,  I  know  some- 
thing of  the  silent  tragedies  that 
are  daily  being  enacted  in  our 
midst.  I  say  "  silent,"  because  not 
the  least  cruel  of  the  hardships  of 
genteel  poverty  is  its  obligation  to 
mask  its  sufferings.  The  lower- 
class  working  man,  who  cries  out 
loudest,  is  less  to  be  pitied,  for  his 
wages  have  risen  during  the  last 
few  years  coincidently  with  a  gene- 
ral fall  in  prices.  The  upper-  and 
middle-class  bread-winner,  on  the 
other  hand,  finds  the  sources  of 
his  income  gradually  diminishing, 
while,  if  he  has  children  to  feed 
and  clothe  and  educate,  retrench- 
ment is  practically  impossible. 
The  present  state  of  affairs  all  the 
world  over  is  surely  calculated  to 
make  thoughtful  men  pause  before 
they  undertake  the  responsibilities 
of  marriage,  unless  they  possess  a 
good  and  fairly  assured  income. 
Nor  is  it  easy  to  discern  signs  of 
permanent  improvement,  and  the 
bachelor  with  only  a  few  hundreds 
a-year  of  his  own  may  well  be  ex- 
cused if,  seeing  the  dangers  and 
pitfalls  in  his  path,  he  prefers  to 


Celibacy  and  the  Struggle  to  get  on. 


[Dec. 


encounter  them  unencumbered. 
His  critics  may  ascribe  his  conduct 
in  this  matter  to  the  feebleness  and 
flabbiness  which  are  said  to  be  his 
most  prominent  characteristics.  It 
all  depends  upon  the  point  of  view. 
To  me  it  seems  that  he  is  only  dis- 
playing common  prudence  and  the 
discretion  which,  in  matters  matri- 
monial at  any  rate,  is  certainly  the 
better  part  of  valour. 

It  will  be  argued,  no  doubt, 
that  all  this  is  stale  pessimism ; 
that  the  same  has  been  said  many 
times  before ;  that  things  are  no 
worse  than  formerly,  and  will 
right  themselves  ere  long.  I  sin- 
cerely hope  they  will,  though  I 
have  my  doubts  about  it.  To 
make  the  matter  clearer,  I  pro- 
pose to  set  forth  a  few  of  the 
reasons  that  lead  me  to  believe 
that  the  present  times  are  quite 
exceptionally  bad,  and  also  that 
our  generation  is  not  likely  to  see 
the  prosperous  days  our  fathers 
enjoyed.  And,  lest  I  should  seem 
to  be  generalising  overmuch,  I 
propose  to  examine  the  point 
somewhat  in  detail,  dealing  more 
especially  with  one  or  two  rep- 
resentative professions  and  occu- 
pations of  the  upper  and  upper- 
middle  classes.  I  shall  endeavour 
to  look  at  the  facts  as  they  are, 
or  at  any  rate  as  they  appear  to 
me,  for  unfortunately  I  am  not 
gifted  with  the  ostrich's  happy 
faculty  of  hiding  his  head  from 
things  he  does  not  wish  to  see. 
It  is  always  best  to  know  the 
truth,  even  though  it  be  un- 
pleasant. 

Let  us  begin  with  the  legal 
profession,  confining  our  attention 
for  the  present  to  the  Bar,  which 
seems  still  to  be  regarded  as  the 
natural  career  for  youths  of  good 
abilities  who  are  not  destined  for 
the  Church  or  either  of  the  Ser- 
vices. Personally  I  always  assume 
that  every  University  graduate  I 


1894.] 


Celibacy  and  the  Struggle  to  get  on. 


783 


meet  is  a  barrister  until  I  hear 
the  contrary.  At  present  the 
members  of  the  various  Inns  of 
Court  number  over  seven  thou- 
sand. Of  these  many,  no  doubt, 
are  barristers  in  name  only,  for 
the  Bar  is  something  more  than 
a  mere  profession  or  means  of 
livelihood.  It  is  also  the  favourite 
pseudo-occupation  of  the  dilettante 
who  dislikes  real  work,  but  thinks 
that  "  every  man  ought  to  do 
something,  don't  you  know  ? "  Be- 
yond question,  therefore,  the  Bar 
contains  more  ornamental  mem- 
bers than  any  other  profession. 
But  it  is  equally  certain  that 
there  is  not  work  to  occupy  half 
even  of  those  who  take  it  up 
seriously.  I  have  never  quite 
understood  why  the  career  of  a 
barrister  is  so  specially  attractive, 
or  for  what  occult  reason  a  wig 
and  gown  are  supposed  to  confer 
social  status  on  the  fortunate 
owner.  It  seems  incomprehen- 
sible that  people  should  keep 
crowding  into  a  profession  which, 
if  we  are  to  judge  from  the  aver- 
age earning^  of  its  members,  is  cer- 
tainly the  least  remunerative  in 
the  world.  Many  fond  fathers  of 
fairly  talented  boys  still  hug  the 
delusion  that  by  sending  them  to 
the  Bar  they  are  opening  to  them 
the  most  promising  avenue  to- 
wards a  successful  career.  They 
imagine  that,  even  without  in- 
terest, their  abilities  are  sure  to 
win  them,  if  not  fame,  at  least 
a  sufficient  competence.  Alas ! 
there  are  so  many  clever  people 
about  nowadays !  We  are  all 
educated  up  to  such  a  high  level 
of  mediocrity,  and  our  intellectual 
stature  is  so  uniform,  that  pre- 
eminence is  doubly  difficult  to 
attain.  There  is  much  work  to  be 
done,  but  far  too  many  to  do  it. 
The  harvest  is  there  to  be  gathered 
in,  but  among  the  multitude  of 
reapers  many  must  come  short. 


Young  Briefless  may  think  him- 
self fortunate  if,  after  five  or  ten 
years'  hard  work,  he  is  earning 
as  much  as  the  head-gamekeeper 
or  the  family  butler.  Meanwhile 
he  will  very  likely  have  the  morti- 
fication of  seeing  other  men,  in- 
tellectually his  inferiors,  making 
comfortable  incomes  almost  from 
the  start.  As  a  legal  friend  once 
remarked  to  me,  "  The  really  try- 
ing thing  is,  not  so  much  the  good 
men  who  fail  to  get  on,  but  the 
awful  duffers  who  do."  It  is  a 
great  mistake  to  suppose  that  a 
colossal  intellect  is  necessary  for 
legal  advancement.  A  hard  head 
and  a  strong  stomach  are  far  more 
essential  qualifications,  though,  of 
course,  good  backing  is  the  one 
thing  needful.  A  recent  writer 
declares  that  the  "  qualities  which 
ensure  a  successful  bagman"  are 
in  these  days  no  less  valuable 
at  the  Bar.  This  sounds  a  trifle 
strong,  but  certain  it  is  that 
modest  and  retiring  talent  stands 
a  poor  chance  against  "  push  "  and 
blatant  self-assertiveness. 

Everybody  is  agreed  that  the 
Bar  stands  not  where  it  did  as  a 
money-making  occupation.  Com- 
plaints are  rife  of  the  falling-off  of 
work,  and  men  who  not  so  long 
ago  were  making  their  thousand 
a-year,  or  thereabouts,  are  now 
earning  barely  the  half.  For  the 
decline  in  legal  business  the  rea- 
sons are  neither  few  nor  far  to  seek. 
Our  old  friends,  hard  times  and 
trade  depression,  are  of  course 
largely  responsible.  Overcrowding 
and  consequent  competition  and 
the  scaling  down  of  fees  are  scarce- 
ly less  obvious  causes.  Nor  has 
the  aggregate  of  legal  work  in- 
creased relatively  to  the  number  of 
lawyers  who  seek  to  obtain  it. 
Indeed,  if  figures  are  to  be  trusted, 
it  would  seem  doubtful  if  it  has 
increased  at  all.  From  statistics 
recently  published,  it  appears  that 


784 

the  number  of  lawyers  in  England 
and  Scotland  has  augmented  about 
forty  per  cent  during  the  last 
twenty-five  years.  Meanwhile,  in 
spite  of  more  than  a  proportional 
growth  in  the  population,  the 
volume  of  litigation  has  remained 
almost  stationary.  Educated 
people  think  twice  before  going  to 
law  nowadays,  and  no  wonder.  Of 
course  there  is  a  great  deal  of  work 
quite  apart  from  litigation;  but 
legislation  has  greatly  simplified 
procedure  and  other  matters  during 
recent  years,  and  the  process  is 
likely  to  extend  further.  The  sol- 
icitor can  now  dispense  with  the 
barrister's  services  in  many  cases 
where  they  would  formerly  have 
been  indispensable.  Another  point 
which  should  be  noted  is  the  grad- 
ual breaking  down  of  those  barriers 
between  the  two  branches  of  the 
law  which  have  been  set  up  by 
etiquette  and  the  unwritten  rules 
of  the  profession.  One  by  one 
they  are  giving  way  before  the 
pressure  of  an  ever  -  augmenting 
competition,  so  that  many  barris- 
ters now  think  that  the  inevitable 
outcome  is  the  amalgamation  of 
the  two  branches  of  the  profession. 
The  middleman  has  a  natural  ten- 
dency to  disappear  in  these  days  of 
diminishing  profits,  and  the  law 
will  probably  have  to  follow  the 
example  set  by  trade  in  this  re- 
spect. Indeed,  the  change  would 
almost  seem  to  be  taking  place 
already.  The  old  idea  of  marrying 
a  solicitor's  daughter  is  out  of  date ; 
but  the  sons  and  brothers  of  law- 
yers are  often  called  to  the  Bar  to 
co-operate  with  their  relations,  and 
these  snug  little  family  parties  are 
in  many  cases  partnerships  in 
everything  but  name.  Barrister 
and  solicitor  are  thus  "  tied  "  one 
to  the  other  as  effectually  as  are 
brewer  and  publican. 

Perhaps  the  most  serious  thing 
for  the  Bar  nowadays  is  the  grad- 


Celibacy  and  the  Struggle  to  get  on. 


[Dec. 


ual  but  persistent  decline  in  its 
commercial  work.  Business  men 
are  learning  to  settle  their  disputes 
among  themselves.  They  dread 
the  worry,  the  delay,  the  expense, 
and  the  uncertainty  of  the  law 
courts,  and  will  sacrifice  a  great 
deal  sooner  than  face  them.  They 
are  conscious  also  of  the  extra- 
ordinary ignorance  of  business 
principles  which  exists  both 
among  barristers  and  judges;  and, 
whether  rightly  or  wrongly,  they 
do  not  always  feel  sure  of  securing 
an  entirely  unprejudiced  hearing. 
The  prejudice  may  be  unconscious, 
but  it  undoubtedly  exists.  Both 
Bench  and  Bar  are  far  too  prone 
to  profess  a  holy  and  undiscrimin- 
ating  horror  of  the  City  and  its 
ways,  which,  knowing  as  I  do 
something  both  of  business  and 
the  law,  I  can  only  ascribe  to  want 
of  knowledge.  Lastly,  the  City 
man  stands  in  great  fear  of  the 
insults  to  which  litigants  are  ex- 
posed at  the  hands  of  cross-examin- 
ing counsel.  Plaintiff,  for  instance, 
may  think  that  he  has  a  just  cause 
of  action  against  defendant  for  a 
debt  owing  to  him  from  the  latter. 
He  considers  it  both  irrelevant  and 
disagreeable  to  be  asked  whether 
it  is  not  a  fact  that  he  had  an 
affair  with  a  certain  lady  twenty 
years  previously.  My  readers  will 
remember  what  a  storm  of  popular 
indignation  was  evoked  by  the 
questions  asked  in  cross-examina- 
tion by  Sir  Charles  Russell  during 
the  "nobly  conducted"  Osborne 
case,  and  how  it  found  vent  in  a 
correspondence  in  the  '  Times '  that 
lasted  for  about  three  months. 
Beyond  doubt  the  forensic  bully 
has  much  to  answer  for  in  the  way 
of  discouraging  litigation. 

The  above  are  some  of  the  rea- 
sons which  lead  one  irresistibly  to 
the  conclusion  that  the  Bar  does 
not  now,  and  never  can,  afford  work 
for  the  multitudes  who  seek  admis- 


1894.] 


Celibacy  and  the  Struggle  to  get  on. 


785 


sion  within  it.  There  are  many 
other  causes,  no  doubt,  but  space 
would  fail  me  were  I  to  enter  into 
the  subject  more  fully.  One  thing, 
however,  is  certain,  and  that  is, 
that  the  business  world  has  largely 
learned  to  dispense  with  litigation ; 
nor  is  it  ever  likely  to  revert  to  the 
old  methods  as  before.  The  liti- 
gious instinct  is  chiefly  prominent 
among  the  inferior  races,  and 
the  advance  of  civilisation  surely 
promotes  its  decay.  Hindoos, 
Chinese,  and  other  Orientals  de- 
light in  lawsuits,  but  the  Western 
merchant  fights  shy  of  them. 
This  probably  accounts  in  a  great 
measure  for  the  frequent  com- 
plaints one  hears  concerning  the 
decline  in  the  quality  as  well  as 
quantity  of  legal  work.  Instead 
of  big  commercial  cases,  where  the 
parties  are  rich  and  the  fees  cor- 
respondingly high,  common  law- 
yers, at  any  rate,  are  now  mostly 
occupied  with  libel  and  running- 
down  actions,  breach  of  promise 
suits,  and  the  like.  The  better 
class  of  business  goes  to  the 
Chancery  side,  which  on  the  whole 
has  less  cause  to  complain. 

One  advantage  barristers  pos- 
sess to  console  them  in  part  for 
their  enforced  idleness.  They  run 
no  risks ;  there  are  no  bad  debts 
beyond  those  guineas  sometimes 
withheld  by  the  solicitor.  They 
need  have  no  presentiments  of  im- 
pending disaster,  no  fears  of  fin- 
ancial crises  to  haunt  their  dreams. 
Far  otherwise  is  it  with  that 
larger  world  east  of  Temple  Bar, 
whose  position  and  prospects  we 
will  now  proceed  to  discuss. 

The  City  is  not  happy.  It  is 
sighing  over  the  good  old  times 
that  are  gone,  when  the  avenues 
of  commerce  were  not  choked  with 
mobs  of  competitors,  when  business 
was  brisk  and  profits  were  large. 
It  is  looking  forward  anxiously  to 
the  long-expected  revival  which  is 


so  long  in  putting  in  an  appear- 
ance. Meanwhile  trade  is  lan- 
guishing, owing  to  the  general 
distrust  and  uncertainty.  Com- 
modities are  desperately  low,  and 
prices  still  trend  downwards. 
Many  of  our  industries  are  in  a 
critical  state,  and  the  despondency 
of  agriculture  is  deepening  into 
despair.  Signs  of  improvement 
are  happily  visible  here  and  there, 
but  their  effect  on  trade  in  general 
is  as  yet  scarcely  perceptible. 
The  acute  stage  of  the  financial 
crisis  has,  let  us  hope,  finally  dis- 
appeared, but  in  its  stead  dulness 
reigns  supreme.  All  these  ad- 
verse influences  naturally  make 
themselves  felt  through  every 
branch  of  trade  in  the  City,  but 
nowhere  more  than  in  the  Stock 
Exchange.  I  mention  the  Stock 
Exchange  in  particular,  firstly, 
because  it  is  always  well  to  speak 
of  what  one  knows,  and  also  be- 
cause the  state  of  business  in 
Capel  Court  is  considered  by  many 
people  to  be  a  fair  index  or  bar- 
ometer of  commercial  prosperity 
all  over  the  country.  The  Stock 
Exchange  probably  suffers  more 
acutely  during  the  bad  times  than 
any  other  business  or  profession. 
Trade  there  is  sometimes  exceed- 
ingly brisk  and  remunerative ;  but 
it  also  has  an  unpleasant  way  of 
suddenly  and  completely  dying 
away,  and  then  losses  and  bad 
debts  too  often  take  the  place  of 
handsome  profits.  The  latter  are, 
in  any  but  exceptionally  good 
times,  quite  disproportionate  to 
the  magnitude  of  the  risks  in- 
curred, the  bulk  of  the  business 
being,  as  everybody  knows,  purely 
speculative.  At  present  specula- 
tion is  almost  non-existent.  It  is 
not  for  want  of  capital,  for  money 
is  piling  up  until  men  are  at  their 
wits'  end  to  know  what  to  do 
with  it,  but  confidence  is  lacking. 
Brokers  and  dealers  will  have  to 


786 


Celibacy  and  the  Struggle  to  get  on. 


[Dec. 


wait  until  the  prevailing  distrust 
has  passed  away,  or,  as  some  cyni- 
cally express  it,  until  a  new  crop 
of  fools  arises  with  money  in  their 
pockets  to  lose. 

Unfortunately  the  members  of 
the  "House"  have  earned,  not 
altogether  unjustly,  a  character  for 
extravagance  and  improvidence ; 
and  a  prolonged  period  of  depres- 
sion like  the  present  puts  a  severe 
strain  upon  their  resources.  It  is 
possible — though  I  doubt  it — that 
similarly  gloomy  periods  have  been 
experienced  before;  but  in  those 
days  there  were  less  than  half  the 
number  of  men  engaged  in  scram- 
bling for  such  business  as  was  offer- 
ing, and  competition  had  not  here, 
as  everywhere  else,  cut  profits  down 
to  a  minimum.  At  present  the 
"House"  contains  little  short  of 
four  thousand  members,  besides  a 
considerable  number  of  clerks  who 
have  a  share  in  their  employers' 
profits.  Nearly  all  of  these  are 
actually  engaged  in  business.  Un- 
like the  Bar,  the  Stock  Exchange 
does  not  contain  a  host  of  idle 
supernumeraries  in  its  ranks,  for  it 
has  not  yet  come  to  be  regarded  as 
an  ornamental  occupation.  At  the 
same  time  it  has,  I  regret  to  say, 
immensely  increased  in  popularity 
during  the  last  few  years,  and,  if 
not  ornamental,  it  is  growing  peril- 
ously fashionable.  Its  personnel, 
or  perhaps  one  ought  to  say,  its 
social  status,  has  greatly  improved 
of  late,  while  the  incomes  of  its 
members  have  steadily  declined. 
About  five  years  ago  there  was 
quite  a  rush  of  gilded  youth  within 
the  portals  of  Capel  Court.  Nearly 
every  firm  of  standing  could  boast 
of  one  or  more  sprigs  of  nobility 
on  its  staff  of  clerks,  and  smart 
cavalry  officers  were  glad  to  act 
as  "runners"  if  they  could  not 
become  partners.  The  talk  in 
the  smoking-rooms  of  fashionable 
West-End  clubs  was  of  the  com- 


parative merits  of  American  and 
Nitrate  Kails,  of  the  coming  rise  in 
frozen  meat  and  land  companies' 
shares.  Many  thought  they  had 
only  to  come  to  pick  the  sovereigns 
off  a  species  of  Tom  Tiddler's 
ground,  and  great  must  have  been 
their  disappointment  when  the 
place  proved  less  of  an  Eldorado 
than  they  had  anticipated.  Those 
were  the  palmy  days  of  "booms" 
and  general  inflation.  The  loan- 
monger  and  the  company  pro- 
moter were  on  the  war-path,  and 
the  public  tumbled  over  each  other 
in  the  wild  rush  after  premiums  on 
new  issues.  Financial  houses  and 
firms  of  old  standing  vied  one 
with  the  other  in  foisting  un- 
marketable rubbish  on  the  guile- 
less investor,  who,  through  the 
medium  of  trust  and  other  com- 
panies, fell  a  victim  to  various 
ingenious  devices  to  part  him 
and  his  money.  It  was  a  mean 
and  sordid  game  at  best,  and  one 
which  was  productive  of  untold 
suffering  and  misery,  but  it  paid 
well  while  the  mad  saturnalia  of 
greed,  folly,  and  unscrupulousness 
lasted.  Now  the  day  of  reckoning 
has  come — but  it  has  not  yet  gone. 
Throughout  the  year  that  is  now 
drawing  to  a  close,  things  have 
been  continually  brought  to  light 
which  mate  honest  men  blush  for 
their  fellow-countrymen,  and  the 
whole  City,  the  innocent  and  the 
guilty  alike,  are  repenting  in  sack- 
cloth and  ashes. 

Not  only  from  Capel  Court,  but 
from  Mark  and  Mincing  Lanes, 
from  the  Wool  and  Corn  Ex- 
changes, and  all  the  other  crowded 
purlieus  of  commerce,  there  goes 
up  the  same  bitter  cry,  which  is 
echoed  back  from  the  great  manu- 
facturing towns  of  the  North  of 
England,  Scotland,  and  Ireland. 
Profits  are  insignificant  or  nil. 
The  foreigner  is  underselling  us 
and  filching  away  our  trade.  The 


1894.] 


Celibacy  and  the  Struggle  to  get  on. 


787 


fall  in  the  exchanges  is  paralysing 
our  Eastern  merchants,  and,  by 
stimulating  exports  from  countries 
with  depreciated  currencies,  is 
keeping  down  the  prices  of  com- 
modities. Business  men  are  liv- 
ing from  hand  to  mouth,  and  not 
a  few  are  drawing  on  their  capital, 
and  thus  wearing  out  the  machin- 
ery of  their  calling,  in  the  en- 
deavour to  keep  their  connection 
together  until  better  times  come 
round.  And  those  times  must 
come  soon,  or  it  will  go  hard  with 
many  who  are  now  struggling  with 
difficulty  to  keep  their  heads  above 
water.  Already  the  distress  in 
the  City  is  very  great,  and  I  could 
tell  of  many  unspeakably  sad  cases 
of  men  who  a  few  years  ago  were 
earning  comfortable  incomes,  but 
who  now  are  sorely  put  to  it  to 
keep  the  wolf  from  the  door.  "  If 
one  had  only  oneself  to  think  of, 
it  would  be  bearable  enough,"  I 
have  heard  more  than  one  father 
of  a  family  say.  One  of  the  most 
melancholy  things  is  the  number 
of  clerks,  many  of  them  married 
men  with  families,  who  are  thrown 
out  of  work  for  no  fault  of  their 
own.  Their  employers  have  either 
failed,  or  else  have  been  compelled 
by  pressure  of  circumstances  to 
reduce  their  establishments,  and 
fresh  situations  are  very  difficult 
to  obtain.  In  some  businesses,  the 
tea  and  wine  trades  particularly, 
the  middleman  has  been  elbowed 
out,  owing  to  the  cutting  down  of 
profits.  Many  formerly  remunera- 
tive occupations  have  thus  entirely 
disappeared,  and  those  who  are 
engaged  in  them  do  not  easily 
find  new  openings.  Owing  to  the 
same  cause,  the  position  of  the 
small  trader  is  becoming  more  and 
more  difficult.  When  the  margin 
of  profits  is  so  small,  operations 
must  be  conducted  on  an  exten- 
sive scale  to  yield  any  adequate 
return,  and  business  thus  tends 


to  become  concentrated  in  the 
hands  of  large  firms  and  joint- 
stock  companies. 

Depression  in  the  City  of  course 
reflects  itself  in  the  diminished 
earnings  of  nearly  every  trade  and 
calling  in  the  outside  world. 
Literature  and  art  in  their  various 
branches,  the  purveyors  of  all 
kinds  of  luxuries,  the  entire  shop- 
keeping  class  —  all  these  suffer 
from  loss  of  clientele.  Hard  times 
for  agriculture  mean  hard  times 
for  the  Church  and  the  Universities, 
whose  interests  are  bound  up  with 
those  of  the  landowners.  Even 
the  doctors  are  calling  out  that 
nowadays  people  cannot  afford  to 
be  ill.  The  losses  of  investors 
through  the  various  financial 
panics  of  the  last  four  years  have 
been  colossal,  and  their  full  effects 
have  only  lately  made  themselves 
felt  among  the  non-business  com- 
munity. Many  people,  growing 
tired  of  holding  on  to  shares  and 
bonds  that  yield  no  return,  have 
sold  them,  and  the  pressure  of 
money  that  is  seeking  safe  rein- 
vestment has  driven  the  sounder 
class  of  securities  up  to  a  prohibi- 
tive price.  Thus,  with  diminished 
capital  returning  a  lower  rate  of 
interest,  many  a  British  house- 
holder finds  his  income  to-day 
sadly  straitened.  In  only  too 
many  cases  families  have  been  left 
with  little  more  than  the  bare 
means  of  subsistence.  It  is  not 
surprising  to  hear,  therefore,  of 
the  number  of  men  of  gentle  birth 
who  are  to  be  found  in  the  ranks 
of  the  army,  driving  cabs  and 
omnibuses,  and  otherwise  engaged 
in  occupations  unbefitting  their 
social  position.  Harder  still  is 
the  lot  of  those  women  who  sud- 
denly find  themselves  compelled 
to  go  out  into  the  world  to  earn  a 
living.  A  friend  of  mine,  who 
himself  is  not  well  off,  tells  me 
that  he  advertised  a  short  time 


788                        Celibacy  and  the  Struggle  to  get  on.  [Dec. 

a*o  for  a  daily  governess.     Forty  those  claims,   are  also  factors   in 
fairlv  well-qualified  candidates  for  the  problem  which   must  not  be 
the  post  answered  the  advertise-  lost    sight   of.       Then    the    ever- 
roent    and  of   these  fifteen  were  present  over-population  ogre  keeps 
readv  to  work  for  such  a  miserable  showing  his  ugly  face,  and  threaten- 
pittance    as    one   would    imagine  ing  us  with  fresh  forms  of  competi- 
could  hardly  keep  body  and  soul  tion  every  day.      For  the   upper 
together  an(*  middle  classes  have  now  a  new 
«  How  much  longer  is  this  state  rival  to  encounter  in  the  struggle 
of  things  likely  to  last?"  is  the  for  their  daily  bread.    The  children 
thou^ht&  uppermost  in  many  anxi-  of  the  working  class,  whom  they 
ous  minds.     One  may  reasonably  have  educated  to  be  their  competi- 
expect,  without  being  unduly  opti-  tors    in    the    battle   of    life,    are 
mistic,' that  times  will  improve  be-  gradually  squeezing   them  out  ^  of 
fore  long.     Prices  cannot  continue  many  fields  of  employment  which 
to  fall  for  ever,  and  the  natural  law  they  formerly  had  to  themselves. 
of   reaction   must   surely  reassert  Meanwhile,  so  far  as  this  country 
itself  some  day.     Whether  the  im-  is  concerned,   it  is  almost  incon- 
provement  will  last  long  is  another  ceivable    that    England    can   ever 
and  very  different  matter.    For  my-  occupy  quite  the  same  position  as 
self,  I  more  than  doubt  it  for  many  in  bygone  days.     Our  trade  may 
reasons.      Some  of  the  causes  of  be  greater  than  ever  in  volume, 
our  present  troubles  are,  it  may  but  we  have  undoubtedly  lost  our 
be  hoped,  temporary,  and  will  dis-  commercial  supremacy  in  the  sense 
appear.     Others,  I  fear,  are  per-  that   we   are   no   longer  the   sole 
manent,  and  the  sphere  of   their  hucksters,  or  distributors,  or  car- 
operation  is  more  likely  to  expand  riers,    or    manufacturers    of    the 
than   to   contract.      In   the   first  world.      It  must  be  remembered, 
place,  the  cycles  of  business  pros-  too,  that  we  are  drawing  to  the 
perity  show  a  steadily  diminishing  close  of  the  greatest  period  of  in- 
tendency.       Formerly   economists  dustrial    development    that    man- 
and  merchants  looked  for  alternate  kind  has  ever  seen.    The  Victorian 
decades  of  inflation  and  depression,  era  has  been   the   golden   age  of 
but  now  and  in  future  we  must  invention  and   material   progress, 
anticipate  more  prolonged  eras  of  and  a  prolonged  reaction  after  a 
slack  trade  and  general  cheapness,  time   of   such   uninterrupted    and 
with  correspondingly  short  periods  feverish  activity  seems  almost  in- 
of  high  prices  and  business  activity,  evitable.     The  habitable  and  pro- 
When  a  demand  arises  it  is  more  fitable  areas  of  the  globe  are  get- 
rapidly   supplied,    owing,    I    pre-  ting   rapidly   populated.      Nearly 
sume,  to  increased  facilities  of  pro-  every  country,  except  China,  has 
duction  and  transport,  and  to  the  been  railroaded,  and  even  suppos- 
fierce    competition    that    prevails  ing  that  some  new  motive  force 
everywhere.      The   constant    ten-  were  to  be  discovered  and  used, 
dency   of    profits  to   a   minimum  such  as  electricity,  or  vril,  or  Bud- 
seems  to  be  one  of  the  few  really  dhist  akasa,   the  greater  part  of 
established  economic  doctrines.    It  the  manual  labour  is  accomplished, 
is  certainly  being  exemplified  now  The  rails  are  laid ;  the  cuttings, 
in  a  most  unpleasant  way,  both  in  the  bridges,  and  the  embankments 
trade  and  in  the  low  rates  of  inter-  are  made.    The  field  of  commercial 
eat  procurable  from  sound  invest-  enterprise    being    thus    gradually 
ments.     The  claims  of  labour,  and  contracted,    I   cannot    but    think 
its  ever-growing  power  to  enforce  that  employment  is  likely  to  be 


1894.] 


Celibacy  and  the  Struggle  to  get  on. 


789 


increasingly  difficult  to  obtain,  and 
that,  speaking  generally,  the  old 
days  of  large  profits  earned  in 
legitimate  trading  are  not  likely 
to  be  seen  again. 

The  subject  might  be  discussed 
indefinitely  ;  but  in  the  short  space 
of  a  magazine  article  I  can  only 
sketch  a  few  heads  and  outlines  of 
the  argument,  leaving  my  readers 
to  fill  in  the  details  for  themselves. 
Enough  has  been  said  to  show 
that  the  man  of  the  moment, 
whatever  his  shortcomings  may 
be,  has  much  to  contend  with. 
And,  on  the  whole,  right  man- 
fully, as  it  seems  to  me,  does  he 
play  his  part  in  the  battle  of  life. 
If,  perforce,  he  stands  all  day  long 
in  the  market-place  idle,  it  is  be- 
cause no  man  hath  hired  him. 
Among  the  multitudes  who  jostle 
one  another  in  our  great  commer- 
cial centres  all  cannot  hope  to 
obtain  work,  for  there  is  not 
enough  to  go  round.  One  hears 
a  great  deal  of  talk  about  the 
"superfluous  woman,"  but  how 
about  the  superfluous  men?  I 
often  apologise  to  my  fellow-men 
of  business  for  being  alive  at  all ! 
The  only  excuse  I  have  to  offer  is 
that  I  am  not  responsible  for  my 
existence,  and  the  law  forbids  me 
to  terminate  it !  I  repeat,  then, 
that  the  average  man  of  our  day 
is  no  faineant.  Indeed,  if  one 
looks  below  the  luxury,  the  folly, 
and  the  fashion  which  flaunt  on 
the  surface  of  society,  and  which 
seem  to  monopolise  Mrs  Grand's 
gaze,  his  conduct  in  the  uphill 
struggle  with  adversity  often 
strikes  me  as  little  short  of  heroic. 
Nor  has  his  training,  as  a  rule, 
been  such  as  fits  him  to  cope  with 
hard  times.  Unfortunately  for  a 
large  number  of  the  rising  genera- 
tion, they  have  been  brought  up 
to  a  standard  of  living  which  is 
quite  beyond  their  means.  Our 
fathers,  who  lived  in  the  halcyon 
days  of  commercial  prosperity,  have 


given  us  in  our  youth  of  the 
fruits  of  their  labours.  In  the 
matter  of  education,  beyond  all 
things,  they  have  treated  us  right 
royally,  though  it  may  well  be 
doubted  now  whether  in  many 
cases  it  was  not  a  cruel  kindness 
on  their  part.  Living  is  no  doubt 
cheaper,  but  there  is  a  much  higher 
standard  of  luxury.  In  other 
words,  people  nowadays — men  and 
women,  I  would  observe  —  have 
more  wants.  As  the  saying  is, 
they  expect  to  begin  where  their 
fathers  left  off.  Small  wonder, 
then,  if,  at  a  time  when  the  means 
of  satisfying  those  wants  are  harder 
than  ever  to  obtain,  and  the  out- 
look is  such  as  I  have  described, 
the  man  of  modest  means  pauses 
before  he  puts  his  head  into  the 
matrimonial  noose.  If  he  does 
offer  himself  as  a  "  candidate  for 
marriage,"  it  is  usually  late  in  life, 
which  doubtless  accounts  for  the 
number  of  elderly  Cupids  one  sees 
mating  with  spinsters  of  uncertain 
ages.  He  is  no  believer  in  the 
gospel  of  depopulation  (though 
sooner  or  later  that  knotty  prob- 
lem will  have  to  be  faced),  but 
he  refuses  to  recognise  the  propa- 
gation of  paupers  as  a  paramount 
social  duty.  The  command  to 
"  be  fruitful  and  multiply  and  re- 
plenish the  earth  "  loses  somewhat 
of  its  force  in  an  age  when  most 
people  think  that  the  world  is  too 
full  already.  And  uncertainty 
concerning  the  future  probably 
acts  even  more  as  a  deterrent 
with  him  than  an  exiguous  balance 
at  the  bank.  What  merchant  or 
trader,  for  instance,  can  tell  you 
even  approximately  how  much  he 
will  be  making  a  year  or  two 
hence,  or  whether  he  will  be  mak- 
ing anything  at  all?  Not  a  few 
men  shrink  from  the  idea  of  marry- 
ing unless  they  can  see  a  fair  pros- 
pect of  bringing  up  their  children 
in  the  same  position  in  life  as  they 
occupy  themselves.  But  what  pro- 


790 


portion  of  the  rising  generation 
can  hope  to  do  this?  I  wonder 
how  many  people  calculate  the 
expenses  of  a  modern  boy's  educa- 
tion. I  reflect  with  feelings  of 
the  profoundest  humiliation  that 
my  own,  including  school  and  uni- 
versity expenses  and  legal  training, 
must  have  cost  fully  £3000.  This 
is  of  course  excessive,  though  many 
of  my  contemporaries  must  have 
had  a  great  deal  more  spent  upon 
theirs,  and  schooling  is  one  of  the 
few  things  that  show  a  tendency 
to  rise  in  price. 

Gradually,  no  doubt,  we  shall 
accommodate  ourselves  to  our  new 
environment,  and  learn  to  live  in 
a  style  more  in  accordance  with 
our  means.  Mr  Goschen  has  more 
than  once  drawn  attention  to  the 
increase  in  the  number  of  people 
who  possess  moderate  incomes. 
Unfortunately,  the  large  fortunes 
in  the  hands  of  the  minority  tend 
to  keep  up  the  standard  of  luxu- 
rious living.  There  is  enormous 
wealth,  but  money  is  exceedingly 
difficult  to  make.  We  have  solved 
the  problem  of  production — only 
too  well,  some  will  say — but  that 
of  distribution  must  be  left  to 
our  successors  to  unriddle  as  best 
they  can.  What  changes  will  be 
wrought  thereby  in  the  social 
order,  or  in  what  precise  form 
the  latter  will  emerge  from  the 
reorganisation  process  which  is 
even  now  going  on,  it  is  impos- 
sible to  foresee.  Ours  is  an  age 
of  dissolving  views,  of  spiritual 
and  mental  unrest  and  inquiry. 
Faith  is  fading,  even  where  reli- 
gion and  morality  hold  their  own. 
Authority,  like  our  bank  balances, 
is  decidedly  on  the  wane,  and  the 
anarchical  spirit  is  by  no  means 
confined  to  the  throwers  of  bombs. 
One  result  of  all  this  is  that  the 
upper  classes  are  likely  to  have 
less  and  less  a  monopoly  of  the 
good  things  of  life.  Beyond  doubt 


Celibacy  and  the  Struggle  to  get  on. 


[Dec. 


we  are  living  in  a  transition  period, 
and,  like  all  such  periods,  it  is  a 
cause  to  many  of  much  anxiety 
and  suffering.  Men's  hearts  are 
failing  them  for  fear  of  what  the 
future  may  have  in  store  for  them. 
And  yet,  putting  monetary  ques- 
tions aside,  that  same  future  will 
probably  prove  much  less  terrible 
when  it  arrives  than  many  of  us 
now  anticipate.  One  thing,  how- 
ever, seems  tolerably  certain  :  man- 
kind in  general  will  have  to  live 
less  extravagantly.  To  take  one 
concrete  example,  our  English  sys- 
tem of  entertaining  must  be  cheap- 
ened. The  Mammon -god  must 
come  down  from  his  high  pedestal. 
We  must  borrow  a  leaf  from  the 
pages  of  Carlyle,  and  remember 
that  the  value  of  the  fraction  of 
life  can  be  better  added  to  by 
lessening  the  denominator  of  our 
desires  than  by  increasing  the 
numerator  of  our  enjoyments.  By 
making  our  claim  of  wages  a  zero 
we  may  have  the  world  under  our 
feet.  Unfortunately  our  claim 
nowadays  is  rather  for  a  living 
wage,  or,  as  the  London  County 
Council  call  it,  a  "  moral  mini- 
mum," which  of  course  varies 
greatly  with  the  individual.  Some 
people's  "  moral  minimum "  in- 
cludes a  daily  cutlet  and  pint  of 
Pommery  at  dinner,  and  a  shil- 
ling cigar  afterwards.  Their  motto 
is  "  Plain  living  and  high  drink- 
ing," and  if  they  come  short  of 
these  necessaries  of  life  they  con- 
sider themselves  ill-used.  We  have 
all  of  us  a  sort  of  average  which 
we  consider  our  due,  and  we  natu- 
rally make  our  desires  rather  than 
our  merits  the  standard  in  measur- 
ing that  average.  I  often  wonder 
what  the  sage  of  Chelsea,  if  he 
were  alive  now,  would  say  to  this 
delightful  theory  of  the  living 
wage  and  the  moral  minimum. 

It  may  seem  useless  to  preach 
moderate  living  to  an  age  which  is 


1894.]  The  Tomb  of  King  John  in  Worcester  Cathedral. 


791 


for  ever  adding  to  its  wants  and 
heightening  its  standard  of  com- 
fort, and  when  the  "THOU  (sweet 
gentleman)"  seems  to  require  more 
pampering  than  ever.  Neverthe- 
less we  may  be  sure  that  for  the 
frugal-minded  the  world  will  not 
be  such  a  bad  place  to  live  in  after 
all.  Have  we  not  the  authority 
of  the  lady  novelist  for  saying  that 
brighter  times  are  in  store  for  us  1 
If  the  men  of  the  next  generation 
are  poorer,  they  will  also,  we  may 
hope,  be  more  virtuous,  for  are  not 
Mrs  Grand  and  her  friends  going 
to  "spank  proper  principles  into 
them  in  the  nursery  "  ?  Thus  puri- 
fied and  redeemed  by  emancipated 
woman,  the  objectionable  male  will 
cease  to  be  a  stumbling-block  in 
the  march  of  humanity  towards 
perfection.  The  girls,  too,  will 
fulfil  the  hopes  of  the  lady  novelist 


by  "expanding  to  their  true  pro- 
portions." Physically,  I  am  in- 
clined to  think,  these  are  suffi- 
ciently large  already,  In  a  moral 
sense  they  will  lead  fuller,  freer, 
and  perhaps  happier  lives.  They 
will  be  married  just  as  soon — pos- 
sibly, if  the  New  Woman  and  the 
New  Hedonist  have  their  way,  just 
as  long — as  it  suits  them.  Their 
minds  will  be  enlarged,  and  their 
latent  energies  and  capabilities 
will,  let  us  trust,  find  adequate 
and  suitable  fields  of  exercise. 
Speaking  generally,  all  will  be  for 
the  best  in  this  best  of  all  possible 
worlds,  and  we  of  to-day,  by  con- 
templating the  moral  and  intellec- 
tual millennium  in  store  for  those 
who  come  after  us,  may  find  con- 
solation even  amid  our  present 
sombre  surroundings. 

HUGH  E.  M.  STUTFIELD. 


THE    TOMB    OF    KING    JOHN    IN    WORCESTER    CATHEDRAL. 

I 

BEFORE  the  great  High  Altar  of  his  God 

Lies  Norman  John : 
And  century  after  century  the  first  gleam 

Of  dawn  has  shone 
On  that  still  form,  and  stony  brow  that  wears 

A  crown  thereon. 


The  Saints  and  Martyrs  pour  their  life-blood  forth, 

Then  pass  away — 
Swift  as  the  glories  of  the  sunlit  west 

Pale  into  grey  : 
And  no  man  marks  their  place  of  sepulchre 

Unto  this  day. 

Theirs  were  the  loyal  heart,  the  stainless  shield, 

The  faithful  hands : 
They  sleep  beneath  the  unremembering  sea, 

Or  desert  sands; 
In  nameless  graves,  on  bygone  battlefields, 

In  alien  lands. 

VOL.  CLVI. NO.  DCCCCL.  3  F 


792  The  Tomb  of  King  John  in  Worcester  Cathedral.  [Dec. 

And  he  lies  here,  within  these  hallowed  walls, 

'Mid  holy  things, 
Whom  neither  chronicler  in  court  or  camp 

Nor  poet  sings : 
Least  honoured  and  least  worthy  of  the  line 

Of  England's  Kings. 


He  who  has  found  no  advocate  to  gild 

His  tarnished  fame, 
His  one  remembered  act,  the  Charter  great 

Which  bears  his  name, — 
A  nation's  triumph,  yet  withal,  alas ! 

Her  monarch's  shame. 

Was  it  some  heaven-born  instinct  that  this  man, 

Not  good  nor  wise, 
Chose  for  himself  the  very  Altar-foot 

Where  now  he  lies 
Lifting  that  rigid  face  in  mute  appeal 

Towards  the  skies? 

As  if,  heart-sick  with  sin's  sad  leprosy 

And  sore  distrest, 
He  turned  him*  to  the  only  refuge  left 

For  souls  opprest, 
And  fled  into  the  outstretched  arms  of  Love 

To  find  a  rest? 

Here,  with  his  tangled,  tortuous  web  of  life, 

His  part  misplayed, 
He  sought  at  last  for  sanctuary  within 

The  Church's  shade. 
We  judge  and  marvel,  loath  to  leave  with  God 

The  soul  He  made  ! 

"Yet  unto  whom,  to  whom,  Lord,  shall  we  go, 

Save  Thee  alone?" 
Thus  with  a  strange  pathetic  cry  of  faith 

From  yon  carved  stone, 
Here  in  the  great  Cathedral  that  he  loved, 

Speaks  ill-starred  John. 

CHRISTIAN  BUKKE. 


1894.] 


An  Epistle  from  Horace. 


793 


AN    EPISTLE    FROM    HORACE. 

[This  addition  to  the  Horatii  Epistolce  came  to  us  in  the  hexameter 
verse,  which  has  made  his  other  Epistles  famous.  We  shrank  from 
attempting  to  put  it  into  a  metrical  form,  as  none  of  the  "  eminent 
hands"  whom  'Maga'  has  at  command  would  undertake  to  do  so  upon  a 
short  notice.  There  is  one  person  in  England  to  whom  shortness  of 
notice  would  have  created  no  difficulty.  .For  the  moment  we  thought 
of  Hawarden  Castle  and  its  owner,  but  we  were  restrained  from  apply- 
ing there  by  misgivings  that  the  task  might  be  as  distasteful  to  trans- 
lator as  to  translated. — ED.  B.  M.~\ 


ELYSIAN  FIELDS,  Nov.  1894. 

DEAR  MAGA, 

You  wonder  at  the  address, 
and  you  wonder  more  at  your 
correspondent,  —  the  little  poet, 
with  whose  Alcaics  and  Sapphics 
your  soul  was,  I  have  no  doubt, 
duly  vexed  in  the  days  of  your 
youth.  But  you  must  not  be  as- 
tonished. You  remember,  when 
the  fall  of  that  "  wanchancy  "  tree 
(see  Ode  xiii.  of  my  second  book) 
nearly  floored  me,  how  I  pictured 
to  myself  the  narrow  escape  I 
made  from  being  swept  away  to 
the  place  I  now  date  from, — 
the  "  sedes  discretas  piorum,"  as  I 
reverentially  called  them,  —  and 
the  chance  I  then  very  nearly 
had  of  making  the  acquaintance 
of  Sappho  and  Alcseus,  among 
the  other  celebrities  of  the  place. 
Well,  my  time  came  to  be  made 
free  of  the  privileges  of  this 
charming  locality.  My  friend 
Virgil,  "  animce  dimidium  mece," 
was  there  before  me,  ready  to  give 
me  welcome  and  to  introduce  me 
to  all  "  the  serene  creators  of 
immortal  things,"  who  were  the 
leaders  of  society,  under  the 
ampler  ether  and  roseate  atmos- 
phere of  those  regions  of  the  blest, 
of  which,  in  the  sixth  book  of  the 
'-ffineid,'  he  had  presented  so  ad- 
mirable a  sketch. 

It    was    a   brilliant    society, — 


Homer,  Hesiod,  Sappho,  Alcseus, 
Menander,  ^Uschylus,  Sophocles, 
Euripides,  the  unapproachable 
Pindar,  Plautus,  Terence,  Lucre- 
tius, and  all  the  great  fraternity 
of  bards.  They  were  very  kind  to 
me,  for  they  knew  how  much  I 
held  them  in  reverence,  and  how 
in  my  humility  I  had  "  far  off 
their  skirts  adored."  Catullus 
stood  off  rather  sulkily  for  a  time. 
He  thought  that  in  one  of  my  Sat- 
ires I  had  spoken  rather  slight- 
ingly of  him  and  his  friend  Calvus. 
But  I  soon  satisfied  him  there  was 
"  no  such  stuff  in  my  thoughts  "  ; 
so  we  made  it  up,  and  we  have 
ever  since  been  excellent  friends. 
Needless  to  say  that  since  my 
arrival  here  the  bardic  circle  has 
been  very  considerably  enlarged. 
To  this  England  has  contributed 
most  copiously,  and  I  may  say  1 
am  on  the  happiest  visiting  ac- 
quaintance with  all  your  best  poets. 
We  keep  ourselves  well  posted  up 
in  the  poetic  and  other  literary 
doings  of  the  upper  world.  You 
may  judge  of  the  sensation  when 
your  Shakespeare  came  among  us. 
The  "  densum  humeris  vulgus" 
which  I  imagined  thronging  about 
Alcseus  as  he  sang  to  them  in  the 
realms  of  Prosperine,  was  nothing 
to  the  rush  of  bards  that  crowded 
round  him  of  Avon  when  he  came 
among  us.  The  longings  so  often 
expressed  among  you  "  for  the 


794 


An  Epistle  from  Horace. 


[Dec. 


touch  of  his  vanished  hand,  and 
the  sound  of  his  voice  that  is  still," 
often  reach  us  here,  and  I  picture 
to  myself  the  way  I  shall  be  envied 
when  I  say  that  he  has  taken  me  in- 
to his  me  intime.  I  pass  over  a  host 
of  illustrious  names,  from  Chaucer 
downwards,  that  are  household 
words  in  England.  Only  let  me 
say  that  I  am  on  the  best  terms 
with  Mr  Alexander  Pope,  whom  I 
made  supremely  happy  by  speak- 
ing to  him  very  warmly  of  the  ex- 
cellent satires  which  he  gave  to 
the  world  as  imitations  of  my  own 
efforts  in  the  same  line. 

Since  I  came  here  I  have  quite 
"grown  in  favour  with  myself"  to 
find  the  honours  that  have  been 
paid  to  my  poor  verses  during  the 
last  eighteen  centuries.  When  my 
friend  Pope  tells  me  that  the 
physician,  whom  he  happily  de- 
scribed as  "Douglas  of  the  soft 
obstetric  hand,"  had  in  his  library 
more  than  450  editions  of  my 
works,  and  when  I  read  that  Mit- 
scherlich,  one  of  my  best  editors, 
gave  eighty  years  ago  a  list  of 
editions  of  my  book  extending 
over  forty  big  pages,  I  am  simply 
amazed.  It  was  no  false  modesty 
on  my  part — you  may  believe  me, 
for  where  I  write  from  truth  is 
the  absolute  rule  —  when  I  ex- 
pressed my  fears  (Epistles,  i.  20) 
that  before  long  my  books  would 
be  used  for  wrapping  parcels,  or 
at  best,  when  they  had  got 
thumbed  and  tattered,  as  primers 
for  teaching  boys  the  elementary 
parts  of  speech.  In  a  transient 
moment  of  self-satisfaction  —  and 
if  you  could  have  heard  the  kind 
things  Virgil  and  many  of  my 
other  friends  said  of  me,  this  was 
perhaps  excusable  — I  no  doubt 
said  of  myself  "  Non  omnis 
moriar."  Even  then,  however, 
I  limited  the  term  of  my  popu- 
larity. It  was  to  endure  as  long 
as  the  Pontifex  Maximus,  with 


the  train  of  Yestal  Virgins,  should 
ascend  to  the  Capitol.  But  this 
they  have  long  ceased  to  do.  I 
also  said  some  strong  things  about 
the  monument  I  had  reared  for 
myself  being  more  durable  than 
brass,  and  higher  than  the  Pyra- 
mids; but  that  was  a  burst  of 
lyrical  fervour  which  I  never 
imagined  would  be  prophetic. 
Yet  prophetic  it  has  proved.  My 
sayings  are,  I  observe,  on  the 
lips  of  all  sorts  and  conditions 
of  men  throughout  the  habitable 
globe.  This  is  the  case  among 
those  who  know  Latin  more  or 
less  —  probably  less.  But  what, 
though  nattering,  is  not  quite  so 
satisfactory,  is  the  huge  crop  of 
translations  of  my  works  into 
German,  French,  Italian,  and 
especially  English,  with  which  the 
press  has  teemed  within  the  last 
few  years. 

There  is  no  Elysian  Mudie's. 
But  "miro  modo,"  which  I  am 
not  at  liberty  to  explain,  we  dis- 
embodied spirits  keep  ourselves 
well  up  to  date  as  to  the  literary 
doings  of  the  upper  world.  A 
good  many  of  these  translations 
come  under  my  notice.  Not  a 
few  of  them  remind  me  of  some 
lines  of  that  wicked  wag  "Bon 
Gaultier,"  with  whom,  by  the  way, 
I  shall  have  some  serious  talk 
when  he  joins  our  circle,  about  his 
own  version  or  perversion  of  my 
writings.  He  makes  Lord  Lytton 
say — 

"I've  hawk'd  at  Schiller  on  his  lyric 
throne, 

And  given  the  astonished  bard  a  mean- 
ing all  my  own." 

Personally,  let  me  say  in  passing, 
I  have  no  great  complaint  to 
make  against  Lord  Lytton  for 
what  he  has  done  for  my  lyrics 
in  his  rhythmical  but  unrhymed 
version  of  them.  But  as  Schiller 
is  said — not  that  I  say  it — to  have 


1894.] 


An  Epistle  from  Horace. 


795 


been  treated  by  him,  is  just  how 
I  constantly  find  myself  treated. 
T  try  to  recognise  myself  in  my 
English  dress,  and  I  cannot.  "  0 
dii  Superi!"  I  exclaim,  "what 
must  people  think  of  me,  if  only  by 
these  translations  they  know  me  !  " 
And  yet,  of  course,  I  should  like 
above  all  things  that  I  should  be 
known  to  the  vast  multitude  of 
English-speaking  men  and  women 
to  whom  Latin  is  a  sealed  lan- 
guage. But  I  want  them  to 
know  me  as  I  am.  1  have  no 
wish  to  illustrate  in  my  own 
person  what  I  meant  when  I 
spoke  of  the  "membra  disjecta 
poetce."  In  particular,  I  should 
wish  them  to  get  some  idea  of  the 
infinite  pains  I  took  to  put  finish, 
grace,  concentrated  force,  graphic 
touches  of  description,  easy  play- 
fulness, and  music  into  my  lyrics. 
And  if  something  of  these  qual- 
ities is  not  achieved,  I  would 
much  rather  people  would  leave 
me  alone.  I  liked  the  compli- 
ment paid  me  by  one  of  my  best- 
known  translators,  when  he  quoted 
as  the  motto  for  his  book  your 
great  poet  Tennyson's  lines, — 

"  What  practice,  howsoe'er  expert, 
In  fitting  aptest  words  to  things ; 
Or  voice,  the  richest-toned  that  sings, 

Hath  power  to  give  thee  as  thou  wert  ?" 

It  was  an  acknowledgment  that 
I  had  spared  no  pains  to  give  the 
finest  form  I  could  to  my  lyrics,  for 
in  truth  it  was  so.  They  were  pro- 
duced, as  I  myself  wrote  (Odes,  iv. 
2),  "per  laborem  plurimum."  And 
it  was  only  through  infinite  pains- 
taking that  I,  humble  poet  as  I 
was,  could  ever  have  hoped  to 
make  them  live  into  the  future. 
You  remember  what  your  Ben 
Jonson  says  of  Shakespeare  —  by 
the  way  Ben  is  a  great  favourite 
among  us,  with  all  his  roughness 
toned  off,  as  befits  spirits  "touched 
to  fine  issues,"  as  all  ours  here  are — 


He 


That  casts  to  write  a  living  line,  must 

sweat, 
(Such   as   thine   are,)    and    strike    the 

second  heat 

Upon  the  Muses'  anvil ;  turn  the  same, 
(And  himself  with  it,)  that  he  thinks 

to  frame  ; 
Or  for  the  laurel  he  may  gain  a  scorn." 

That  was  the  principle  on  which 
I  worked.  I  said  as  much  when 
I  laid  it  down  as  a  guide  to  all 
ambitious  verse  -  makers,  "  Male 
tornatos  incudi  reddere  versus" 
Indeed,  Jonson  pays  me  the 
compliment  of  saying  that  my 
words  suggested  his.  At  any  rate 
so  I  worked ;  and  if  it  cost  me 
such  toil  and  sweat  of  brain,  such 
years,  I  may  say,  of  brooding  and 
meditation,  to  produce  my  lyrics 
in  a  form  fit  to  be  made  public,  it 
would  be  strange,  indeed,  if  any 
one  could  transmute  them  into 
adequately  representative  English 
verse  without  as  much  labour  as 
the  originals  cost  myself. 

This  being  my  view,  you  may 
judge  how  I  was  staggered  when 
the  news  reached  me  —  we  hear 
all  kinds  of  gossip  here — that  an 
aged  "  statesman  out  of  place," 
— well  known  here,  as  elsewhere, 
as  the  G.O.M., — after  passing  the 
mature  age  of  fourscore,  was  at 
work  on  a  version  of  my  Odes. 
That  he  was  "audax  omnia  per- 
peti  " — he  will  recognise  the  phrase 
— was  a  remark  which  has  long 
been  current  among  us,  even  be- 
fore Lord  Beaconsfield  came  to 
amuse  us  upon  that  subject  with 
his  grim  irony.  But  among  the 
"  omnia  "  I  could  never  have  sup- 
posed that  a  version  of  my  lyrics 
would  have  been  included.  How- 
ever, so  it  is,  and  I  have  had  an 
opportunity  of  toiling  through  an 
early  copy.  "  And  how  do  you 
like  it  ? "  you  will  naturally  ask 
me.  Not  at  all,  is  my  answer. 
"  But  how,"  you  say,  "  can  you, 


796 


An  Epistle  Jrom  Horace. 


being   a   Roman,    be   a  judge    of 
English   verse?"     In   answer   let 
me  tell  you,  that  in  our  ethereal 
state  we  know  all  languages  that 
we   care   to   know  —  and  who   is 
there  among  us,  all  poets   as  we 
were  in  our  time,  that  does  not 
care    to    know   the    language    of 
Chaucer,     Spenser,     Shakespeare, 
and  his  great  compeers  ;  of  Milton, 
Pryden,  Pope,  Burns,  Wordsworth, 
Coleridge,  Keats,  Shelley,  Byron, 
Tennyson,    and    the    Brownings  1 
On  the   works   of    these   I   have 
fed  full,  for  here  we  have  a  deal 
of  spare  time  on  our  hands,  and 
this  has  made  me  as  fair  a  judge 
of  a  good  English  lyric,  as  I  was 
in  my  day,  of  a  Greek  or  Latin 
one.     What,  therefore,  I  look  for 
in  a  good  translation  of   one   of 
my  lyrics  is  that,  while  adhering 
as  closely  as  may  be  to  the  feel- 
ing, the  meaning,  and  the  struc- 
ture of   my  text,  it  shall   be   in 
itself  a  good  English  poem.     The 
difficulty  of  the  translator's  task 
no  one  can  appreciate  so  well  as 
I  can.     He  has   to   deal   with   a 
language    infinitely    less    capable 
than  mine  of  conciseness,  of  ful- 
ness of  suggestion,  and  of  delicate 
shades    of    expression ;    and    the 
glancing    allusions,     which     were 
quite  understood  and  appreciated 
by    my    contemporaries,    without 
some    expansion    must    be    unin- 
telligible   to   modern   readers.     I 
quite    agree   with   Mr   Gladstone 
when   he   says   that   a   translator 
should  not  attempt  to  imitate  the 
uniformity  which   I   managed   to 
give    to   the   metres   in   which   I 
treated     subjects     of     the     most 
diverse  kind;  but  that  he  should 
"both    claim     and    exercise    the 


[Dec. 
T 


fied    in   Mr   Gladstone's   book, 
should  not  complain. 

But  it  is  not  all.  And  this  I 
found  out  before  I  had  got  through 
many  pages.  In  the  initial  Ode 
to  Maecenas,  the  very  first  of 
the  first  book,  he  makes  me  say, 
and  very  awkwardly  too,  things  I 
never  said.  Where,  for  instance, 
I  wrote  that  there  were  folks 
whose  pleasure  was  "pulverem 
Olympicum  collegisse,"  he  makes 
me  say — 

"  Some  reckon,  for  the  crown  of  life, 
The  dust  in  the  Olympian  strife." 

What  would  Maecenas  have  thought 
of  me  if  I  had  called  'dust"  a 
"crown"?  Again,  how  would  he 
have  rated  me  if  I  had  followed 
up  this  extraordinary  metaphor  by 
such  a  couplet  as  this  1 — 

"  The  goal  well  shunned,  the  palm  that, 

given, 
Lifts  lords  of  earth  to  lords  of  heaven." 

I  pass  the  doubtful  grammar  that 
uses  the  singular  "lifts"  in  con- 
nection with  the  two  substantives 
"  goal "  and  "  palm,"  to  which  such 
a  remarkable  power  of  lift  is  as- 
cribed. But,  pray,  absolve  me 
from  the  folly  of  meaning  by  my 
line,  "  terrarum  dominos  evehit  ad 
Deos,"  that  the  noble  palm  "lifts 
lords  of  earth  to  lords  of  heaven." 
Our  gods  were  not  lords  of  heaven. 
It  had  only  one  lord.  When  I 
wrote  "ccelo  tonantem  credidimus 
Jovem  regnare"  I  expressed  the 
common  creed,  as  it  was  mine. 
By  "evehit  ad  Deos"  I  only  meant 
that  some  of  my  countrymen— you 
know  we  thought  ourselves  "  terra- 
rum  dominos" — were  lifted  "sky 
high"  with  delight  at  winning  a 


largest  possible  freedom  in  vary-  race,  just  as,  I  have  no  doubt,  the 

ing    his   metres,   so   as   to   adapt  owner  of  Ladas  was  at  your  last 

them  m  each  case  to  the  original  Derby 

with  which  he  has  to  deal."     If  I   go   on,  and   pull   up  at   the 

ihat  were  all  the  licence  exempli-  following  lines :— 


1894.' 


An  Epistle  from  Horace. 


797 


"  One  hoes  paternal  fields,  content, 
On  hardest  terms.     Will  he  consent, 
A  trembling  mariner,  to  brave, 
In  Cyprian  bark,  Myrtoan  wave  ?  " 

In  Mr  Gladstone's  preface  I  had 
noticed  some  remarks,  which 
rather  puzzled  me,  as  to  "com- 
pression" being  essential  to  a 
translation  of  my  Odes.  Is  this,  I 
thought  as  I  read,  an  illustration 
of  what  he  means  ?  What  had  be- 
come of  my  "  Attalicis  condi- 
tionibus"1  I  had  said  that  by 
all  the  wealth  of  Attalus  you 
could  not  induce  a  farmer  that 
loved  to  till  his  paternal  acres  to 
go  in  the  stoutest  ship  into  the 
smoothest  sea.  Not  a  word  about 
tilling  his  farm  on  hard  terms. 
Where  did  my  translator  get  the 
phrase  "  on  hardest  terms  "  ?  I 
suppose  he  could  not  get  out  of 
his  head  in  connection  with  agri- 
culture the  idea  of  a  brutal  Tory 
landlord.  My  text  might  other- 
wise have  reminded  him  that  my 
farmer  was  his  own  landlord.  And 
why,  I  ask,  as  I  constantly  have 
to  do  in  other  places  of  this  book, 
oh,  why  break  up  my  single  sen- 
tence into  two  1  If  this  was  com- 
pression, the  less  of  it  the  better, 
thought  I. 

A  little  further  on  I  come  upon 
the  line,  "For  want  with  com- 
merce ill  agrees."  Without  having 
been  a  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer, 
I  recognise  this  remark  as  prob- 
ably true,  though  rather  platitu- 
dinous. But  I  decline  all  respon- 
sibility for  it.  If  it  is  meant  as 
the  equivalent  for  my  statement 
that  a  merchant  is  "  indocilis  pau- 
periem  pati"  and  rather  than  not 
make  money  will  refit  his  battered 
ships,  in  spite  of  all  his  past  ex- 
periences of  the  perils  of  the  sea, 
I  must  protest  against  it  as  lower- 
ing my  language  into  the  direst 
prose. 

Still  keeping  to  the  same  Ode,  I 


find  it  hard  to  recognise  myself  in 
another  "compressed"  passage, — 

"  And  some  old  Massic  wine  desire, 
Hours  stolen  from  the  day's  entire, 
With  shade  of  arbutus  for  bed 
By  hallowed  water's  tranquil  head." 

I  have  not  yet  had  an  oppor- 
tunity of  talking  over  this  book 
with  my  friend  Ben  Jonson ;  but  I 
can  fancy  what  he  will  say  of  this 
as  lyrical  English,  or  as  reflecting 
the  nuances  of  my  lines.  What 
are  "hours  stolen  from  the  day's 
entire,"  and  what  verb  governs 
them  1  Note  also,  I  talk  of  men 
reclining  under  the  leafy -green 
arbutus,  or  at  the  lulling  fountain- 
head  of  some  sacred  stream.  None 
of  my  readers  will,  I  am  sure,  accuse 
me  of  suggesting  that  a  "shade" 
could  be  a  bed,  or  of  making  the 
arbutus  overhang  the  fountain. 

I  could  say  much  more  of  the 
injustice  done  me  in  this  Ode,  but 
I  will  only  call  attention  to  the 
last  line.  You  remember  I  wind 
up  by  saying  that,  if  Maecenas  will 
admit  me  to  the  ranks  of  lyric 
writers,  "  Sublimi  feriam  sidera 
vertice."  A  strong  phrase,  I  admit ; 
but  it  implies  no  more  than  that 
I  should  be  lifted  to  the  skies  with 
delight.  Excellent  Allan  Ramsay 
— he  is  here  with  the  rest  of  us 
lyrists — says  of  claret,  a  wine  that 
unfortunately  was  not  to  be  had 
at  Rome  in  my  time,  that  "  it 
heaves  the  saul  beyond  the  moon." 
That  is  exactly  the  feeling  I  meant 
to  express.  The  praise  of  Maecenas 
would  raise  me  to  the  skies.  But 
by  the  following  couplet  my  trans- 
lator exactly  reverses  what  I  said — 

"  Count  me  for  lyric  minstrel  thou, 
The  stars  to  kiss  my  head  will  bow." 

Why  should  the  stars  do  anything 
so  absurd  ?  If  this  be  poetry,  I 
am  happy  to  think  it  is  not 
mine. 


798 


An  Epistle  from  Horace. 


[Dec. 


But  I  must  get  on.  I  prided 
myself  greatly,  nor  am  I  ashamed 
to  admit  it,  upon  the  way  I  adapt- 
ed some  of  the  gems  of  the  Greek 
lyrists.  They  generally  deal  with 
the  fair  and  frail  beauties  of  their 
time,  but  who  do,  in  fact,  belong 
to  all  time.  One  of  these  was 
that  addressed  to  Pyrrha  (Book  i. 
5),  an  ideal  type  of  her  class. 
Knowing  how  your  great  Milton 
and  many  other  English  scholars 
had  stumbled  in  translating  it,  I 
turned  to  see  how  it  had  come  out 
of  Mr  Gladstone's  hands.  Here 
it  is : — 

"  What  scented  stripling,  Pyrrha,  woos 

thee  now, 
In  pleasant  grotto    all   with    roses 

fair? 

For  whom  these  auburn  tresses  bindest 
thou 

With  simple  care  ? 

Full  oft  shall  he  thine  altered  faith  be- 
wail, 
His  altered  gods  ;  and  his  unwonted 

gaze 

Shall  watch  the  waters  darkening  to 
the  gale 

In  wild  amaze. 

Who  now,  believing,  gloats  on  golden 

charms, 
\Vho  hopes  thee  ever  void  and  ever 

kind; 

Nor  knows  thy  changeful  heart,  nor  the 
alarms 

Of  changeful  wind. 

For  me,  let  Neptune's  temple  wall  de- 
clare 

How,  safe  escaped,  in  votive  offering, 
My  dripping  garments  own,  suspended 
there, 

Him  Ocean- King." 

Let  me  say,  that  "the  waters 
darkening  to  the  gale  "  strikes  me 
as  a  rather  happy  equivalent  for 
my  "  aspera  nigris  cKquora  ventis." 
But  here  my  satisfaction  ends.  By 
11  simplex  munditiis  "  I  meant  to 
cover  not  only  the  arrangement  of 


the  lady's  hair,  but  the  general 
quiet  elegance  of  the  lady's  dress 
and  bearing.  Ah  !  I  knew  more 
than  one  Pyrrha  in  my  time  who 
had  this  special  charm.  Charms 
many  they  had,  but  "golden" 
these  certainly  were  not,  though 
love  -  stricken  admirers  thought 
these  fickle  fair  ones,  while  the 
delusion  lasted,  as  good  as  gold, 
which  is  what  I  meant  by  the 
"tefruitur  credulus  aurea."  Cer- 
tainly they  never  hoped  to  find 
their  mistress  "  ever  void,"  though 
they  probably  hoped  she  would 
always  be  "vacua" — that  is,  at 
home  and  ready  to  receive  them 
with  open  arms  when  they  came, 
—  "semper  vacuam  et  semper  ama- 
bilem"  as  I  put  it.  And  what 
has  become  of  my  "  Miseri,  quibus 
intentata  nites/"  the  exclamation 
that  gives  point  to  all  that  has 
gone  before?  If  this  be  "com- 
pression," let  me  have  none  of  it. 
All  the  more  strange  the  com- 
pression, too,  when  "the  change- 
ful heart  "  and  "  the  alarms  "  in 
this  verse,  and  the  words  in  the 
next  about  declaring  Neptune 
Ocean  -  King,  are  sheer  super- 
fluities. 

As  Milton  failed  in  translating 
this  Ode — this  he  owns  in  our 
talks  here — it  may  well  be  that 
unskilled  and,  still  more,  hasty 
writers  should  come  badly  off.  In 
other  cases  failure  is  less  excus- 
able. And  really  the  way  my  Ode 
to  Lydia,  the  13th  of  my  first 
book,  has  been  treated  is  too  bad. 
Let  me  quote  it : — 

"  'Ah,  Telephus,  those  arms  of  wax  ! 

Ah,  Telephus,  this  neck  of  roses  ! ' 
All  this  my  spirit,  Lydia,  racks  ; 

My  swelling  bile  rebels,  opposes. 

Nor  mind  nor  colour  in  one  stay 
Continue  ;  silent  tears  begin 

To  wet  my  cheeks  ;  I  waste  away, 
Slow  fires  consume  me  from  within  ; 


1894.] 


An  Epistle  from  Horace. 


799 


Galled,  if  in  wine's  too  boisterous  joy, 
Thy  shoulders  white  are  rudely  hit, 

And  bruised ;  or  if  the  madding  boy 
Those  lips  he  should  have  kissed  hath 
bit. 

Hear  me  :  he  cannot  constant  be, 

Who  coarsely  mars  the  honeyed  kiss, 

Which,  Venus  !  holds  by  thy  decree 
The  fifth  part  of  thy  nectar's  bliss. 

Thrice  blest,  ay  more,  are  they  whose 
love, 

Ne'er  sundered  by  the  curse  of  strife, 
Through  all  events  its  worth  can  prove, 

And  only  part  with  parting  life." 

Compression  and  amplification 
again,  and  both  bad.  The  trans- 
lation opens  with  two  lines,  which 
may  be  very  good  as  rhetoric,  but 
are  not  good  as  poetry.  Who 
makes  the  exclamation  about  the 
arms  of  wax  and  neck  of  roses? 
There  is  nothing  to  show.  I 
make  the  forlorn  lover  say  that 
it  is  Lydia's  praise  of  these  which 
makes  him  mad,  drives  the  colour 
from  his  cheeks,  and  bedews  them 
with  tears  —  not  begin  to  bedew 
them,  but  actually  do  so.  Mind 
and  colour  "continuing  in  one 
stay  "  may  have  a  meaning,  but  to 
me  it  has  none.  Again,  has  Mr 
Gladstone  never  heard  of  lover's 
kisses  that  bite?  We  in  Rome 
were  familiar  with  that  sort  of 
thing, — I  could  give  lots  of  allu- 
sions to  it  among  my  contempor- 
aries. Shakespeare  was  obviously 
no  less  so,  for  I  remember  in 
his  "  Antony  and  Cleopatra "  he 
speaks  of  "a  lover's  pinch  that 
hurts  and  is  desired."  Mr  Glad- 
stone misses  my  point,  when  he 
speaks  of  "the  madding  boy"  bit- 
ing "those  lips  he  should  have 
kissed."  He  does  kiss  them/ but 
in  kissing  bites  her  lips  with  a 
coarse  animal  ferocity,  akin  to 
that  which  has  made  him  strike 
poor  Lydia's  " Candidas  humeros" 
when  in  his  cups.  Why,  again, 


should  my  translator  introduce 
an  "  aside  "  to  Venus,  of  which  I 
am  innocent  ?  I  was  rather  proud 
of  the  way  I  turned  the  compliment 
to  Lydia's  kisses,  by  saying  of 
them  that  Venus  had  imbued  them 
with  the  quintessence  of  her  own 
nectar,  "  quce  Venus  quinta  parte 
sui  nectar  is  imbuit."  Why  should 
I  be  made  to  go  out  of  my  way  to 
inform  Venus  that  Lydia's  kiss 
"  holds  by  her  decree  the  fifth  part 
of  her  nectar's  bliss  "  1  And  what, 
by  the  way,  is  "nectar's  bliss"? 
The  last  verse  I  give  up  altogether. 
"  Compressed"  it  certainly  is  not. 
Where  does  Mr  Gladstone  find  me 
speak  of  a  love  that  "through  all 
events  its  worth  can  prove  "  ?  and 
who  are  they  "that  only  part 
with  parting  life  "  1  It  cannot  be 
the  "love"  of  the  first  line,  or  the 
"events"  of  the  third.  Do  you 
wonder  that  I  feel  a  little  hurt  at 
having  one  of  my  most  carefully 
elaborated  lyrics  treated  in  this 
way  ?  It  is  one  I  adapted  from 
the  Greek.  What  would  Virgil 
or  Varius  have  said  to  me  if  I  had 
turned  it  out  crude  and  formless 
as  your  Hawarden  poet  has  done  ? 
Choose  what  metres  you  will,  I 
say  to  my  translators,  but  see  at 
least  that  they  are  musical  and 
good  English.  See  also  that  you 
put  my  ideas  in  the  order  I  have 
put  them,  and  catch  the  tone  of 
sentiment  by  which  they  were  in- 
spired. Most  of  them  don't,  and 
my  octogenarian  interpreter  is  of 
the  number.  Observe,  for  example, 
how  he  treats  my  Ode  to  Dellius 
(Book  ii.  3),— 

"An  even  mind  in  days  of  care, 
And  in  thy  days  of  joy  to  bear 
A  chastened  mood,  remember.      Why  ? 
'Tis,  Dellius,  that  thou  hast  to  die. 

Alike,  if  all  thy  life  be  sad, 
Or  festal  season  find  thee  glad, 
On  the  lone  turf  at  ease  recline, 
And  quaff  thy  best  Falernian  wine. 


800 


Why  do  tall  pine  and  poplar  white 
To  weave  their  friendly  shade  unite  ? 
This  flitting  stream,  why  hath  it  sped 
So  headlong  down  its  wandering  bed  ? 

Bring  wine,  bring  perfumes,  bring  fresh 

flowers 

Of  roses,  all  too  brief  their  hours  ! 
While  purse,  and  age,  and  Sisters  three 
Permit,    though    dark    their    threads 

may  be. 

This  home,   these    glades,    no    longer 

thine, 

Which  auburn  Tiber  laps,  resign  ; 
Resign  the  towering  heaps  of  gold, 
Which  one,  thine  heir,  not  thou,  shall 

hold. 

Be  hoary  Inachus  thy  sire, 
Or  be  thou  risen  from  the  mire ; 
Be  rich  or  poor,  it  boots  thee  not ; 
Unpitying  Orcus  casts  thy  lot. 

All,  all,  we  drive  to  doom.     The  urn 
Discharges  every  Life  in  turn  : 
For  every  Life,  or  soon  or  late, 
The  boat  and  endless  exile  wait. " 

Pray,  turn  to  my  book,  and  ask 
yourself  if  this  is  what  you  find  in 
it?  My  "rebus  arduis  "  and  "re- 
bus bonis  "  mean  much  more  than 
"  days  of  care  "  and  "  days  of  joy"; 
and  why  is  my  simple  suggestion 
to  my  friend,  in  the  word  "mori- 
ture"  that  he  is  mortal,  turned 
into  a  question  and  answer  in 
fashion  most  unlyrical?  Die,  I 
reminded  him,  he  must,  whether 
he  spent  his  life  in  grieving,  or 
whether,  stretched  on  the  grass  in 
some  quiet  nook,  he  enjoyed  him- 
self over  beakers  of  his  best  Fal- 
ernian.  I  certainly  am  not  re- 
sponsible for  telling  him  to  go  and 
do  this.  That  is  purely  the  trans- 
lator's suggestion.  But  this  comes 
of  breaking  up  my  sentences,  as 
he  is  so  fond  of  doing.  The  next 
verse  perplexed  me,  till  I  remem- 
bered that  my  text  had  been  tam- 
pered with,  and  construed  by  some 
of  my  editors  as  if  I  had  meant 
to  ask,  for  what  purpose  but  for 
the  enjoyment  of  men,  with  plenty 


An  Epistle  from  Horace. 


[Dec. 


of  time  and  money  on  their  hands, 
did  the  pine  and  white  poplar 
boughs  make  a  kindly  shade,  or  the 
brook  go  brattling  down  its  broken 
bed?  I  have  often  been  accused 
of  being  too  elliptical ;  but  so  ellip- 
tical as  this  I  hope  I  have  never 
been.  To  put  such  a  question  as 
I  am  made  to  put  would  have 
been  too  foolish,  as  all  questions 
are  that  admit  of  no  answer. 
Even  in  lyric  poetry  we  in  Rome 
used  to  require  common  -  sense. 
What  I  had  in  view  was  simply 
to  suggest  that,  while  reclining 
"in  remoto  gramine,"  my  friend 
should  choose  a  spot  which  was 
made  especially  pleasant  by  leafy 
shade  and  the  sparkle  of  a  brook 
struggling  over  the  stones  along 
its  sinuous  bed  —  not,  pray  you 
mark,  speeding  "headlong  down 
its  wandering  bed."  Thither  I 
urged  Dellius  to  bring  wine,  and 
nard,  and  too  shortlived  roses  in 
abundance,  while  he  had  means  to 
provide  and  the  youth  to  enjoy 
them,  and  the  three  Sister  Fates 
spared  his  life.  Do  this,  I  said, 
because  the  time  will  come  when 
you  cannot  do  it, — when  you  will 
have  to  give  up  all  your  cherished 
possessions,  your  woods,  your  villa 
on  the  Tiber,  an,d  your  big  bank 
balances.  But  instead  of  this, 
my  translator  makes  me  tell  my 
friend  to  "resign"  all  these  good 
things,  which,  to  say  the  least, 
would  have  been  foolish,  not  to 
say  impertinent,  on  my  part.  In 
the  following  verse  I  decline  to 
admit  the  phrase  "risen  from 
the  mire"  as  an  equivalent  for 
my  "natus  infima  de  gente" 
Neither  did  I  say  anything  like 
"All,  all,  we  drive  to  doom."  We 
do  nothing  of  the  kind.  But 
"  omnes  eodem  cogimur,"  that  is, 
sooner  or  later  we  are  all  forced 
to  go  the  same  road,  when  the 
time  comes  that  our  lot  is  shot  out 
from  the  fatal  urn,  and  it  sends 


1894.' 


An  Epistle  from  Horace. 


801 


us  to  take  our  place  in  the  bark 
that  exiles  us  into  the  regions 
from  which  there  is — happily,  as 
I  may  now  say  —  no  return.  I 
ask  you,  has  my  translator  done 
justice  to  either  the  language  or 
the  sentiment  of  my  verses? 

I  have  been  praised  for  a  "  curi- 
osa  felicitas  "  of  expression,  and 
I  have  tried  to  find  some  of  this 
quality  in  my  last  translator's 
book.  It  would  have  delighted 
me  to  have  done  so ;  but  on  the 
contrary  I  have  more  often  stum- 
bled on  curious  infelicities  of  ex- 
pression. One  instance  I  must 
give,  and  then  I  will  set  you  free. 
You  remember  my  Ode  to  Maece- 
nas (Book  ii.  17),  and  the  plaintive 
remonstrance  with  which  it  opens 
— "  Cur  me  querelis  exanimas 
tuis  ? "  Judge  of  my  dismay  to 
find  this  appear  as  "  Why  tease 
me  with  complaints  ?  "  Have  you 
ever  known  what  it  is  to  hear  one 
you  love  tell  of  symptoms  that, 
sleeping  or  waking,  are  to  him  or 
her  the  omens  of  an  early  death  ? 
You  may  speak  words  of  cheer, 
but  at  your  heart  lie  sad  misgiv- 
ings that  will  not  be  put  aside. 
The  words  of  the  sufferer  take  the 
life  out  of  you.  So  it  was  with 
me,  when  Maecenas,  in  desponding 
moods  natural  to  one  who  had  to 
bear  much  physical  pain,  spoke 


again  and  again  to  me  of  his  fore- 
bodings of  early  death.  Was  I 
"  teased  "  with  his  complaints — a 
pitiful  phrase  1  No,  they  went  to 
my  very  heart,  and  gave  it  a  sink- 
ing feeling  as  if  life  were  fading 
out  of  me  —  and  this  I  hope  I 
made  plain  to  him  by  the  words 
I  wrote. 

But  what  wonder  that  passages 
for  which  I  took  days  and  days  to 
find  apt  expression  should  not  be 
mirrored  in  a  translation  taken  up 
at  the  end  of  a  long  life,  and 
thrown  off  as  the  amusement  of 
scanty  hours  ?  It  will  of  course 
have  many  admirers,  for  every- 
thing said  or  done  by  its  author 
is  accepted,  so  we  have  heard  here, 
as  of  an  excellence  that  must  not 
be  challenged.  You  will  see  by 
what  I  have  said  that  I  am  not 
of  that  number.  When  Socrates 
was  dying  —  the  kindly  draught 
of  hemlock  prescribed  for  him 
by  those  wise  Athenians  had  al- 
ready begun  to  work — his  friends 
asked  him  what  he  wished  done 
with  his  body.  "  Do  with  it 
what  you  please,"  was  his  reply, 
"  only  do  not  think  that  it  is  me." 
So  do  I  say,  "Admire  this  book 
of  Mr  Gladstone's  as  much  as 
you  please,  only  do  not  think  that 
it  is  me  !"  Vale. 

QUINTUS    HORATIUS    FLACCUS. 


802 


Indoor  Life  in  Paris. 


[Dec. 


INDOOR    LIFE    IN    PARIS. 


NOTWITHSTANDING  the  amalga- 
mating action  of  the  new  inter- 
national influences  which  have 
come  into  operation  during  the 
present  century,  the  ancient  differ- 
ences persist  between  the  exterior 
habits,  the  personal  looks,  and  the 
ways  of  behaving  of  the  peoples  of 
Europe :  they  are  weakened,  but 
they  are  not  suppressed.  The  upper 
classes  of  various  lands  —  whose 
educational  surroundings  are  be- 
coming more  and  more  alike — are 
approximating  rapidly  to  each 
other  in  appearance  and  manners  ; 
but  even  amongst  them  diversities 
continue  to  subsist  which,  slight  as 
they  are  in  comparison  with  what 
they  used  to  be,  are,  nevertheless, 
obviously  perceptible.  And  when 
we  look  at  the  masses,  variations 
glare  at  us.  Who  has  ever  crossed 
a  frontier  without  being  impressed 
by  their  abundance?  In  that 
striking  example  the  suddenness 
of  the  change  augments  its  volume; 
the  world  of  just  now  has  disap- 
peared abruptly,  and  an  utterly 
transformed  one  has  assumed  its 
place — the  dress,  the  physical  as- 
pect, the  language,  even  the  move- 
ments, of  the  people  round  us 
have  become  other.  After  a  period 
of  residence  in  a  country,  a  certain 
amount  of  habit  forms  itself ;  the 
eye  and  ear  become  accustomed; 
but  at  the  instant  of  first  entry 
almost  every  detail  surprises  by 
its  strangeness,  and  evidence 
enough  is  supplied  to  us  that,  on 
the  outside,  nations  are  still  strik- 
ingly dissimilar. 

I  say  "on  the  outside,"  because 
what  is  viewed  in  ordinary  travel 
is  nothing  but  outside— the  rail- 
way-station, the  port,  the  street, 
the  shop,  the  theatre,  and  the 
hotel.  The  indoor  life  of  other 


lands  lies,  almost  always,  beyond 
the  reach  of  the  foreigner :  rarely 
can  he  enter  it  at  all,  or,  if  he  does 
scrape  into  it  a  little,  he  does  not 
crawl  beyond  its  fringes  ;  he  is  not 
admitted  to  live  in  it,  with  it,  and 
of  it,  and,  in  most  cases,  remains 
uninformed  as  to  its  true  nature, 
and  as  to  the  realities  of  national 
peculiarity  which  it  reveals.  Even 
of  a  city  so  much  visited  and  so 
much  talked  about  as  Paris,  most 
travellers  know  nothing  inti- 
mately ;  it  is  only  here  and  there, 
by  accident,  privilege,  or  relation- 
ship, that  a  few  strangers  (very 
few)  manage  to  get  inside  its 
doors.  The  French  keep  their 
dwellings  resolutely  shut;  they 
have  small  curiosity  about  foreign 
persons  or  things,  dislike  to  have 
their  habits  disturbed  by  intruders, 
are  dominated  —  especially  since 
1871  —  by  the  bitterest  patriotic 
hates,  are  in  no  degree  cosmopoli- 
tan, are  passionately  convinced  of 
the  superiority  of  France  over  the 
rest  of  the  world, — and,  for  these 
reasons,  though  a  very  sociable 
race  amongst  themselves,  shrink 
instinctively  and  mistrustfully 
from  people  of  other  blood.  Of 
course  there  are  amongst  the  great 
houses  of  Paris  a  few  in  which 
diplomatists  and  travellers  of  rank 
are  habitually  received ;  but  those 
houses  constitute  exceptions  :  they 
stand  apart ;  and  even  in  them  it 
is  rare  to  see  foreigners  form  inti- 
macies with  the  French.  I  could 
mention  singular  examples  of  the 
extreme  difficulty  of  becoming  real 
friends  with  them,  even  when  cir- 
cumstances are  of  a  nature  to 
arouse  friendship;  but  such  ex- 
amples would  necessitate  personal 
details,  and  personal  details  point 
to  names,  which,  where  private 


1894.] 


Indoor  Life  in  Paris. 


803 


individuals  are  concerned,  it  is  im- 
possible to  mention,  or  even  to 
suggest.  Subsidiarily,  as  regards 
ourselves  in  particular,  our  shy- 
ness, and  our  usually  insufficient 
knowledge  of  the  language  and  of 
current  topics  of  conversation  and 
of  the  manner  of  treating  them, 
raise  up  special  barriers  in  our 
way.  The  immense  majority  of 
those  who  go  to  Paris  are,  there- 
fore, unable  to  perceive  anything 
indoors  with  their  own  eyes,  and 
it  is  only  from  French  books  and 
from  reports  made  to  them  by 
such  fellow-countrymen  as,  in  con- 
sequence of  special  circumstances, 
have  been  able  to  look  in,  that 
they  can  learn  anything  exact  of 
what  is  going  on  behind  the  walls 
they  stare  at.  As  I  have  looked 
in  long  and  closely,  I  venture  to 
add  to  the  second  of  the  two  classes 
of  information  some  of  the  indoor 
experiences  I  have  collected. 

But,  before  I  begin  descriptions, 
I  must  make  some  preliminary  ob- 
servations as  regards  the  situation 
of  the  subject. 

The  strongest  of  all  my  notions, 
in  looking  back  to  my  experiences 
in  Paris  and  in  comparing  them 
with  those  I  have  encountered  in 
other  lands,  is  that,  notwithstand- 
ing all  the  superficial  contrasts — 
notwithstanding  the  differences  of 
material  organisation,  of  ways,  and 
even  of  habits  of  thought  and  of 
national  character  —  the  objects, 
rules,  and  practical  conditions  of 
existence  remain  substantially  the 
same  everywhere.  Exterior  looks 
and  details,  mannerisms,  feelings, 
temperaments,  and  convictions 
vary  endlessly ;  but,  nevertheless, 
the  main  issues  come  out  very 
nearly  identical.  It  cannot  be 
pretended,  for  instance,  that  the 
French  differ  fundamentally  from 
the  English  because  they  eat  a 
meal  called  breakfast  at  half-past 
•eleven,  instead  of  a  meal  called 


lunch  at  half-past  one;  because 
they  have  their  children  to  dine 
with  them,  instead  of  sending 
them  to  bed,  on  bread  and  milk, 
at  seven;  because  their  servants 
leave  them  at  a  week's  notice  in- 
stead of  a  month's;  because  they 
pay  their  house-rent  on  the  15th 
of  January,  April,  July,  and  Oc- 
tober, instead  of  what  we  call 
quarter-days;  because  they  have 
(or  rather  used  to  have)  more 
elaborate  manners  than  ourselves, 
and  shrug  their  shoulders  more; 
or  because  they  talk  more  volubly 
than  we  do.  These  differences, 
and  a  hundred  others  of  the  same 
value,  are  not  in  reality  differences 
at  all ;  they  are  surface  accidents 
— they  constitute  variety  to  the 
eye  but  not  to  the  mind.  How- 
ever numerous  and  however  evi- 
dent such  outside  variations  may 
be,  they  do  not  affect  the  general 
likeness  of  all  the  workings  out 
of  human  nature  any  more  than 
the  immense  diversity  of  husks 
affects  the  methodical  germination 
of  the  seeds  within  them.  This 
view  may,  perhaps,  be  regarded  as 
incorrect  by  the  ordinary  travel- 
ler, because  to  him  the  smallest 
newness  appears,  usually,  to  be 
significant,  the  slightest  strange- 
ness full  of  meaning.  But  to 
ancient  wanderers,  who  have  had 
time  to  grow  inured  and  oppor- 
tunity to  become  acclimatised,  who 
have  worn  off  astonishments,  who 
have  learnt  by  long  rubbing  against 
others  that  local  demeanours  do 
not  change  either  the  head  or  the 
heart,  the  conviction  of  universal 
unity  becomes  unshakable.  In  their 
eyes  the  .vast  majority  of  Euro- 
pean men  and  women  are  animated 
by  exactly  the  same  passions,  the 
same  vanities,  the  same  general 
tendencies,  whatever  be  their  birth- 
place. In  their  eyes  external  dis- 
similarities, which  seem  at  first 
sight  to  differentiate  nations  so 


804 


Indoor  Life  in  Paris. 


[Dec. 


markedly,  are  mere  skin  -  deep 
tokens,  affecting  only  the  second- 
ary and  unessential  elements  of 
existence,  and  serving  simply  as 
convenient  distinctive  badges.  The 
contacts  of  travel  have  taught  them 
that,  though  it  is  natural  to  at- 
tach curiosity  to  visible  national 
peculiarities,  it  would  be  a  mistake 
to  expect  to  find  behind  them  any 
corresponding  divergences  of  inner 
essence. 

Even  national  character — which 
has  shown  itself  everywhere  hither- 
to as  a  thoroughly  enduring  real- 
ity, and  which  does  not  exhibit  in 
any  of  its  developments  the  faint- 
est signs  of  coming  change — scarce- 
ly produces  in  our  day  any  absolute 
distinction  between  the  motives 
and  the  methods  of  life-organisa- 
tion in  various  countries.  It  is, 
of  all  race-marks,  the  one  which 
exercises  the  most  effect  on  public 
conduct ;  but  I  have  met  nowhere 
any  reasons  for  believing  that  it 
changes  the  constitution  of  private 
and  personal  existence.  By  its 
nature,  and  for  its  habitual  forms 
of  exhibition,  it  requires  a  wider 
field  of  operation  than  it  finds  in- 
doors. It  is  strikingly  distinct, 
constant,  and  energetic  in  its  pa- 
triotic and  collective  manifesta- 
tions ;  but  its  effects  are  infinitely 
less  evident  in  small  home  matters. 

Taking  nationality  as  an  ac- 
cumulative designation  for  the 
entire  group  of  diversities  which 
distinguish  nations  from  each 
other,  it  cannot  be  said  to  govern, 
in  any  appreciable  degree,  the 
essential  composition  of  the  indoor 
life  of  peoples.  It  works  strongly 
in  other  directions,  but  scarcely  at 
all  in  that  one.  It  does  not  intro- 
duce, in  any  land,  home  elements 
which  are  entirely  unknown  else- 
where. 

For  this  reason,  in  speaking  of 
the  indoor  life  of  Paris,  I  shall 
not  have  much  to  say  of  radical 


differences ;  there  are  scarcely  any. 
Even  details,  with  all  their  copious 
variety,  do  not  preserve,  on  exam- 
ination, the  vividness  of  contrast 
which  they  present  at  first  sight. 
Just  as  moral  principles  (under 
similar  conditions  of  education) 
exist  everywhere  in  broad  aver- 
ages; just  as  they  show  them- 
selves, all  about,  in  fairly  equal 
proportions — like  vice  and  virtue, 
intelligence  and  stupidity,  health 
and  disease — so  do  the  main  con- 
ditions of  indoor  life  run,  in  all 
countries,  in  parallel  grooves, 
slightly  twisted,  here  and  there, 
by  superficialities.  What  there  is 
to  tell,  therefore,  is  about  impres- 
sions rather  than  about  facts, 
about  sensations  rather  than  about 
sights,  almost  indeed  about  resem- 
blances rather  than  about  differ- 
ences. 

But,  what  is  indoor  life'?  To 
some  it  represents  little  more  than 
mere  family  existence;  to  others, 
on  the  contrary,  it  is  but  an  addi- 
tional name  for  society  ;  to  others, 
again,  it  represents  a  temporary 
separation  from  the  world,  during 
which  we  put  off  the  constraints 
in  which  we  enwrap  ourselves  in 
public,  and  relapse  momentarily 
into  the  undistorted  realities  of 
self.  With  these  wide  oppositions  • 
of  interpretation  (and  there  are 
more  besides),  it  is  impossible  for 
any  of  us  to  speak  of  indoor  life 
with  the  certainty  that  we  mean 
by  it  the  same  thing  as  others  do. 
And  not  only  does  it  change  its 
aspects,  its  objects,  and  its  signi- 
fications with  the  individual  point 
of  view  of  each  of  us,  but  also 
with  the  persons  at  whom  we 
happen  to  look.  I  speak,  there- 
fore, of  the  indoor  life  of  Paris 
for  myself  alone,  describing  not 
so  much  what  I  have  seen  in  it 
as  what  I  have  felt  in  it;  recog- 
nising heartily  that  every  other 
witness  has  a  right  to  disagree 


1894.] 


Indoor  Life  in  Paris. 


805 


with  me,  and  recognising  it  all 
the  more  because,  on  such  a  sub- 
ject, it  is  on  instincts  and  ideas 
proper  to  each  one,  rather  than  on 
indisputable  verities  evident  to  all, 
that  spectators  base  their  very 
varying  judgments. 

On  one  doctrine  only  is  every- 
body likely  to  be  in  accord  with 
everybody  else.  That  doctrine  is 
that  indoor  life,  whatever  else  it 
may  be  taken  to  impart,  implies 
essentially  the  life  of  women,  and 
that  its  nature  shifts  about  with 
the  action  of  the  women  who 
create  it.  This  doctrine,  true 
everywhere,  is  especially  true  of 
Paris  ;  for  there,  more  than  any- 
where, certain  women  stand  out 
before  and  above  all  their  fellows 
as  the  national  producers  of  the 
brightest  forms  of  its  indoor  life. 
That  life  is  made  by  them  and 
for  them ;  they  manufacture  it  in 
its  perfected  attractiveness ;  and, 
above  all,  they  typify  it.  They 
are  so  thoroughly  both  the  com- 
posers and  the  actors  of  the  piece, 
that  a  description  of  it  does  not 
signify  much  more  than  a  descrip- 
tion of  the  women  who  play  it. 

But  this  is  true  of  very  few 
indeed  amongst  the  women  of 
Paris.  They  all  lead,  in  general 
terms,  the  same  sort  of  indoor  life, 
so  far  as  its  outlines  are  concerned ; 
yet  scarcely  any  of  them  help  to 
shape  or  guide  it  in  what  consti- 
tutes its  national  aspects.  Ac- 
quaintance with  it  shows  that  the 
mass  of  them  follow  it  passively, 
but  neither  originate  it  nor  en- 
kindle it.  They  are  content  with 
dull  humdrum  existences,  and  take 
no  part  in  the  active  composition 
of  the  typical  aspects  of  the  place. 
They  do  their  duty  placidly,  as 
wives,  mothers,  and  housekeepers ; 
they  are,  most  of  them,  worthy, 
excellent,  estimable  persons ;  most 
of  them  smoulder  in  inertness.  1 
remember  how  astonished  I  was 


at  the  beginning,  when  I  was  still 
under  the  influence  of  the  fanciful 
teachings  of  my  youth,  to  discover, 
by  degrees,  that  Paris  women  were 
not,  as  I  had  been  assured  by  my 
British  instructors  of  those  days, 
all  worldly,  all  pleasure -seeking, 
all  love-making,  all  dress-adoring ; 
but  that  the  majority  of  them 
were  quiet,  steady,  home- cherish- 
ing, devoid  of  all  aggressive  per- 
sonality, animated  by  a  keen  sense 
of  moral  duty.  Such  is  their 
nature  still,  modified  only,  in 
certain  cases,  bA  the  action  of 
that  wonderful  \Vench  faculty, 
adaptability,  which  fits  those  who 
can  employ  it  for  any  social  or 
even  leading  role.  Unluckily,  the 
faculty  itself  is  rare,  and,  of  those 
who  own  it,  a  good  many  have 
neither  the  ambition  nor  the  power 
to  use  it,  and  remain,  just  as  most 
women  do  in  other  lands,  unpro- 
ductive in  their  nullity.  They 
are  French  in  the  details  of  their 
ways  and  habits ;  but  the  great 
heap  of  them  might  just  as  well 
be  anything  else,  so  far  as  any 
national  fruitfulness  is  concerned. 
It  is  not  they  who  stand  out  as 
the  makers  and  the  beacons  of  the 
bright  life  of  Paris;  that  part  is 
played  by  a  very  restricted  min- 
ority, which,  small  as  it  is,  lights 
up  so  vividly  the  circles  round  it, 
that  it  seems  to  represent  the 
nation  all  alone  before  the  world. 
The  fireside  goodnesses  of  the 
majority  are  to  be  seen,  almost 
in  the  same  forms,  in  any  other 
country;  but  the  fertile  arts  and 
the  sparkling  devices  of  the  min- 
ority are  special  to  Paris :  they 
cannot  be  found  outside  it;  and, 
even  there,  they  are  utterly  ex- 
ceptional. But,  scarce  though  they 
are,  they  constitute,  all  by  them- 
selves, the  most  striking  elements 
of  indoor  life,  for  they  alone  bring 
into  evidence  the  processes  em- 
ployed by  the  higher  Paris  woman. 


80G 


Indoor  Life  in  Paris. 


[Dec. 


By  the  "  higher  Paris  woman  "  And  now,  having  explained  the 
I  do  not  mean  the  woman  of  the  situation  in  its  main  lines,  I  can 
highest  classes  only,  but  the  woman  begin  to  try  to  sketch  such  elements 
of°the  higher  capacities,  whatever  of  the  indoor  life  of  Paris  as  seem 
be  her  class,  provided  only  she  to  me  to  be  worth  remembering, 
applies  them.  It  is  essential  to  It  follows  from  what  I  have 
insist  on  this,  for  in  Paris  capacity  already  said  that  that  life  is  divided 
does  not  necessarily  follow  class,  into  two  clearly  distinguishable 
It  is,  of  course,  more  frequent  divisions — the  work  of  the  mass, 
amongst  the  well-born,  because  of  and  the  work  of  the  minority.  In 
their  advantages  of  heredity,  of  speaking  of  the  characteristics  of 
training,  and  of  models  :  but  birth  the  mass,  it  is  difficult  to  use  gen- 
alone  cannot  bestow  it ;  it  is  to  be  eral  statements,  because  no  word- 
found  in  every  educated  layer ;  ing,  however  elastic,  can  apply  to 
like  adaptability,  it  may  be  dis-  everybody;  because  there  are  ex- 
covered  anywhere.  Capacity,  in  ceptions  to  every  rule;  because 
the  sense  I  have  in  view,  may  be  the  little  diversities  of  natures 
defined,  roughly  and  approximately,  and  of  ways  (even  when  all  are 
as  the  power  of  creating  a  home  dominated  by  the  same  principles 
to  which  everybody  is  tempted  to  of  action)  are  endless.  All  that 
come,  and  of  reigning  in  that  can  be  done  safely  is  to  indicate 
home  over  all  who  visit  it.  It  is  certain  main  features  of  tempera- 
a  purely  social  ability,  for  it  can  ment  and  behaviour,  and  to  declare 
only  be  exercised  in  society ;  but  expressly  that  those  features  are 
it  is  attainable  by  any  woman  who  not  universal,  and  that  no  single 
has  the  consciousness  of  its  germ  picture  can  portray  every  face, 
within  her,  and  who  has,  or  can  The  ordinary  Paris  woman,  who 
manufacture,  the  tools  and  the  makes  up  the  mass,  is  rarely  inter- 
opportunities  to  develop  it.  The  esting  as  a  national  product.  There 
European  reputation  of  the  social  is  seldom  anything  about  her  that 
life  of  Paris  proceeds  almost  ex-  is  markedly  different  from  the 
clusively  from  the  fitness  of  a  few  woman  of  elsewhere.  Occasionally 
women  in  each  group.  The  men  she  dresses  well;  occasionally  she 
count  for  very  little  —  the  other  wears  her  clothes  well,  and,  in  that 
women  for  nothing  at  all.  The  matter,  does  stand,  here  and  there, 
other  women  make  up  the  universal  somewhat  apart ;  occasionally  she 
crowd,  with  its  universal  qualities  is  smart,  but  much  more  often  she 
and  its  universal  defects  :  they  is  not  smart  at  all,  and  is  some- 
manage  conscientiously  their  own  times  altogether  dowdy.  When  it 
little  lives,  but  they  exhibit  noth-  was  the  fashion  to  be  comme  il 
ing  of  true  French  brilliancies,  faut,  nearly  every  woman  did  her 
and  it  is  those  brilliancies  alone  best  to  reach  the  standard  of  the 
which  attract  the  attention  and  period,  because  it  corresponded  to 
the  admiration  of  the  her  innate  idea  of  quiet.  But 


now  that  strong  effects  have  taken 


excite 
world. 

But,  alas  !  the  woman  who  does  the  place  of  distinction,  she  has,  in 

possess  the  brilliancies  is  disappear-  many  cases,  become  indifferent  and 

ing    rapidly :     she    is    becoming  neglects  herself.     Superiorities  of 

Imost   a    creature   of    the   past ;  any  sort  are  rare  in  her,  just  as 

which  fact  supplies  another  motive  they  are  elsewhere.     Of  course  she 

'  trying  to  describe  her  while  has  local  peculiarities,  but  peculi- 

e  patterns  of  her  still  exist.  arities  do  not  necessarily  consti- 


1894.] 


Indoor  Life  in  Paris. 


807 


tute  superiorities.  In  one  re- 
spect, however,  the  French  woman 
throughout  the  land  does  stand 
high,  —  she  possesses,  as  a  rule, 
vigorous  home  affections :  they 
are,  indeed,  so  vigorous  that, 
taking  her  class  as  a  whole,  I 
doubt  whether  the  corresponding 
women  of  any  other  race  arrive  at 
the  deep  home  tenderness  which 
she  shows  and  feels.  Her  respect 
for  the  ties  and  duties  of  relation- 
ship is  carried  so  far  that,  under 
its  impulsion,  there  are  positively 
(although  she  is  not  always  quite 
pleased  about  it)  examples  of  three 
generations  living  permanently  to- 
gether, apparently  in  harmony ! 
Her  attitude  towards  her  children 
is  one  of  great  love  :  they  live,  in 
most  cases,  entirely  with  her,  and 
constitute  the  main  object  of  her 
existence.  I  do  not  pretend  that 
the  bringing  up  which  results 
therefrom  is  the  best  in  the  world 
—  that  question  lies  outside  the 
present  matter  —  but  I  do  main- 
tain that  a  very  striking  feature 
of  the  indoor  life  of  Paris,  re- 
garded in  its  family  aspects,  is  the 
intensity  of  the  attachment  and 
devotedness  of  the  women  to  their 
parents  and  their  children,  and 
their  sympathy  for  other  relations. 
Their  husbands,  perhaps,  are  not 
invariably  included  in  this  over- 
flowing sweetness.  Of  course 
there  are  women  who  care  nothing 
for  either  their  children  or  any 
one  else;  but  the  rule  is,  incon- 
testably,  amongst  the  middle  and 
upper  sections,  as  well  as  in  the 
bourgeoisie,  that  they  are  strangely 
full  of  the  home  tie. 

The  perception  of  family  duties 
is,  indeed,  so  keen,  as  a  general 
state,  that  the  whole  race  obtains 
from  it  a  basis  for  the  construc- 
tion of  home  happiness  in  a  solid 
(though  stolid  and  prosy)  shape, 
and,  if  happiness  could  be  built 
up  with  one  material  alone,  could 

VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCL. 


reasonably  hope  to  enjoy  a  good 
deal  of  it.  Unfortunately,  how- 
ever, for  everybody  else  as  well  as 
for  the  French,  such  little  happi- 
ness as  seems  to  exist  about  the 
earth  is  derived  evidently  from  the 
joint  action  of  so  many  and  such 
composite  causes  (and  from  indi- 
vidual character  even  more  than 
from  any  outer  cause  whatever), 
that  one  single  faculty,  no  matter 
how  important  or  how  robust  it  may 
be,  does  not  suffice  to  beget  it.  In 
the  particular  case  of  the  average 
Paris  woman,  we  cannot  help  recog- 
nising, whenever  we  get  a  clear 
sight  of  her  indoors,  with  her  mask 
off,  in  a  condition  of  momentarily 
ungilded  authenticity,  that,  not- 
withstanding the  acuteness  of  her 
family  sentiment,  she  obtains  from 
it  no  more  active  happiness  than 
falls  to  the  lot  of  her  less  family- 
loving  neighbour  in  other  lands. 

If  she  extracts  distinct  content- 
ment from  any  one  source,  it  is 
from  a  totally  different  one — from 
the  consciousness  that,  with  all  the 
habitual  dulness  of  her  existence 
(I  speak,  of  course,  of  the  average 
mass),  she  possesses,  in  certain 
cases,  a  handiness  proper  to  herself, 
a  quick  perceptivity,  a  faculty  of 
absorption,  appropriation,  and  re- 
production of  other  people's  ideas, 
a  capacity  for  utilising  occasions. 
In  this  direction  she  does  possess 
sometimes  a  national  superiority. 
But  this  most  useful  characteristic 
is  very  far  from  universal  :  the 
great  majority  of  Paris  women  do 
not  possess  an  atom  of  it ;  and 
furthermore,  when  it  does  exist, 
it  is,  in  most  of  its  examples, 
rather  mental  than  practical, — it 
shows  itself  in  words  rather  than 
in  acts.  For  instance,  the  women 
of  the  present  day  are  rarely 
good  musicians ;  scarcely  any  of 
them  can  paint,  or  sing,  or  write ; 
very  few  indeed  can  cook  or 
make  dresses;  very  few  read  much, 
3o 


808 

in  comparison  with  the  English 
or  the  Germans;  but  a  portion 
of  them  can  talk  sparklingly  of 
what  they  pick  up  from  others. 
Of  this  form  of  talent  (when  she 
has  it)  the  Paris  woman  is,  with 
reason,  proud ;  and  satisfied  vanity 
is  to  many  natures  —  to  hers  in 
particular  — a  fertile  root  of  joy. 
Speaking  generally,  and  excluding 
all  the  heavy  people,  mental  handi- 
ness  may  be  said  to  be  one  of  her 
distinguishing  marks.  She  is  en- 
thusiastic about  moral  qualities, 
especially  when  she  thinks  she 
can  attribute  them  to  herself ;  but, 
as  a  rule,  she  puts  above  them  in 
her  desires  the  capacities  of  per- 
sonal action  which  can  aid  her  to 
get  on.  Her  nature  is  not  often 
either  generous  or  liberal,  but  it 
is  occasionally  very  religious.  She 
has  a  tendency  to  attach  import- 
ance to  small  things ;  the  sense  of 
proportion  and  of  relative  values 
is  often  weak  in  her, — with  the 
consequence  that  she  follows,  half 
instinctively,  a  life  in  which  trifles 
play  a  large  part,  and  such  powers 
of  productive  usefulness  as  she 
may  possess  are  often  a  good  deal 
wasted  on  unessential  occupations. 
Amongst  the  trading  classes, 
where  the  wives  so  often  share 
the  business  work  of  the  husbands, 
there  is  sometimes  a  look  of  real 
solidity  of  purpose  •  but  it  cannot 
be  said  that  in  the  middle  and 
upper  ranks,  notwithstanding  the 
abundance  of  their  general  virtues, 
there  is  much  appearance  of  steady 
earnestness.  There  is  eagerness 
rather  than  energy,  vivacity  rather 
than  vigour,  restlessness  rather 
than  industry.  I  should  not  like 
to  say  that  the  ordinary  Paris 
woman  possesses  no  earnestness, but 
I  have  often  asked  myself  whether, 
as  a  rule,  she  really  has  any.  The 
fact  that  their  language  contains 
no  word  for  earnestness,  or  indeed 
for  any  of  the  forms  of  thorou<*h- 


Indoor  Life  in  Paris. 


[Dec. 


ness,  does  seem  to  suggest  that 
the  French  have  no  need  of  ex- 
pressing the  idea  which  the  word 
conveys ;  though  when  they  are 
told  this  they  answer  triumph- 
antly, "But  we  have  s&ieux!" 
Now  s&rieux,  which  is  employed 
both  as  a  substantive  and  an  ad- 
jective, does  not  in  any  way  cor- 
respond to  earnestness  or  earnest ; 
it  implies  a  certain  gravity,  a 
certain  ponderosity,  and  even,  in 
many  cases,  a  certain  portentous 
solemnity.  The  state  is  common 
to  the  two  sexes,  and  to  be 
thought  sfrieux  is  an  object  of 
ambition  to  some  men  and  to 
some  women.  It  does  not  involve 
knowledge,  or  labour,  or  deter- 
mination; but  it  does  purport 
supremacy  over  the  follies  of  life. 
Of  course  there  are  "  des  personnes 
serieuses"  who  are  so  by  natural  in- 
clination, and  whose  sfrieux  means 
merely  quietness,  correctness,  and 
preference  for  calm  duty ;  in  all  of 
which,  again,  there  is  nothing  of 
what  we  understand  by  earnest- 
ness. The  absence  of  earnestness 
is  not  compensated  by  the  pres- 
ence of  serieux  (when  it  is  present), 
and  there  remains,  on  the  whole, 
a  worthy,  affectionate,  dutiful  life, 
often  a  little  gloomy,  sometimes 
intelligent,  scarcely  ever  intellect- 
ual,— life  like  what  it  is  anywhere 
else,  neither  more  brilliant  nor 
more  productive,  but  with  differ- 
ences of  detail. 

The  women  who  lead  this  aver- 
age life  have,  naturally,  their 
social  occupations  too,  their  social 
vanities,  and  their  struggles  after 
place;  some  of  them  possess  dis- 
tinct aptitudes  for  the  little  battle, 
and  fight  it  with  what  they  con- 
ceive to  be  success.  But  that  side 
of  the  subject  is  only  really  inter- 
esting amongst  the  minority,  to 
whom  I  am  coming  in  an  instant. 

The  men  generally  (unless  they 
have  fixed  occupations)  live  the 


1894.] 


Indoor  Life  in  Paris. 


809 


indoor  life  of  their  families,  except- 
ing during  the  time  they  pass  in 
the  little  room  which  most  of  them 
possess  under  the  title  of  "  le  cab- 
inet de  Monsieur."  What  they  do 
in  that  little  room  I  have  never 
discovered  to  my  satisfaction, 
though  I  have  employed  almost 
half  a  century  in  searching.  They 
seem  contented,  but  they  do  not 
aid  much  to  shape  the  family  ex- 
istence— that  is  the  function  of 
their  wives.  It  is  surprising  that 
men  who  exhibit  so  much  move- 
ment, and  even  so  much  excite- 
ment about  outdoor  things,  should 
be  so  passive  and  inoperative  in- 
doors. There  is  nothing  to  be 
said  about  them  in  connection 
with  the  subject  I  am  discussing. 
The  material  conditions  of  the 
life  of  the  mass  are,  on  the  whole, 
comfortable.  On  many  points 
there  are  sharp  differences  be- 
tween French  arrangements  and 
ours :  there  is  generally,  for  in- 
stance, far  more  finish  of  furniture 
with  them,  and  somewhat  more 
finish  of  service  with  us.  The 
look  of  the  rooms  is  certainly 
prettier  and  gayer  in  Paris  than 
in  London, — partly  because  the 
walls,  the  chairs,  the  tables,  are 
more  decorative,  and  the  colours 
of  the  stuffs  and  hangings  lighter 
and  brighter;  partly  because 
chintz  coverings  are  never  seen, 
the  clearness  of  the  air  allowing 
everything  to  remain  unhidden. 
There  are  many  more  mirrors ; 
ornaments  lie  about  more  abund- 
antly, and  in  greater  variety  of 
nature  and  effect.  The  grouping 
of  the  whole  is  far  less  regular, 
less  stiff,  more  intimate.  This 
advantage  is  most  marked  in  the 
drawing-rooms;  it  continues,  in  a 
less  degree,  in  the  bedrooms; 
there  are  traces  of  it  in  some  of 
the  dining-rooms.  But  the  set- 
ting out  of  the  table  is  almost 
always  inferior  to  ours,  both  in 


detail  and  as  a  picture;  and 
(barring  the  great  houses)  the 
servants  wait  with  less  attention 
and  less  experience.  I  speak,  of 
course,  in  the  most  general  terms 
and  of  the  broad  average,  taking 
no  notice  of  the  exceptions,  on 
either  side.  As  regards  comfort, 
it  can  scarcely  be  asserted  that 
the  inhabitants  of  either  of  the 
two  countries  live  better,  on  the 
whole,  than  the  others. 

Most  Paris  women  stay  so  much 
indoors  that  their  material  sur- 
roundings at  home  are  of  particu- 
lar importance  to  them.  Many 
of  them  go  out  only  once  a-day, 
for  an  hour  or  two  perhaps.  The 
vast  majority  have  still,  notwith- 
standing the  change  that  is  coming 
over  them,  no  outdoor  amusements. 
Indeed,  viewing  amusement  as  a 
serious  occupation,  there  is  vastly 
more  of  it  in  London  than  in  Paris, 
or  in  any  other  city  in  the  world. 
No  people  run  after  amusement  so 
insatiably  as  the  English :  they 
are  at  it  all  day,  in  some  form. 
The  Parisians,  on  the  contrary, 
take  their  pleasures  mainly  in  the 
evening,  and  almost  always  rest  in 
peace  till  the  afternoon ;  those  who 
ride  or  do  anything  in  the  morning 
are  infinitely  few.  As  a  practice, 
they  do  not  dress  for  dinner  when 
they  are  alone ;  the  mass  of  them 
give  scarcely  any  dinner-parties  to 
friends  or  acquaintances;  but,  as 
a  consequence  of  their  family  at- 
tachments, they  constantly  have 
relatives  to  share  their  gigot.  There 
are  no  day-nurseries  for  children, 
who  live  in  the  drawing-room,  or 
a  bedroom,  with  their  mothers,  and 
learn  there  to  become  little  men 
and  women.  There  are  no  old 
maids,  mainly  because  almost  every 
girl  marries  young :  if  any  fail  to 
find  a  husband  (which  happens 
rarely),  they  vanish  out  of  sight ; 
unmarried  women  over  thirty  are 
scarcely  known  or  heard  of  in 


810 

Paris;  the  thousand  duties  to 
which  they  apply  themselves  in 
England  are  left  undischarged  in 
France.  Finally,  no  visitors  come 
to  stay  in  a  Paris  house — partly 
because  it  is  not  the  custom, 
partly  because  there  is  no  spare 
room,  which  is  the  better  reason 
of  the  two. 

I  come  now  to  the  minority,  to 
the  higher  women,  to  something 
in  the  indoor  life  of  the  place 
which  is  unlike  what  is  found 
elsewhere.  The  higher  women 
differ  in  nearly  every  detail  of 
their  attitude  from  the  mass  which 
I  have  just  described — almost  as 
much,  indeed,  as  art  differs  from 
nature.  Excepting  that  they  too 
are,  usually,  good  mothers,  there 
is  scarcely  anything  in  common 
between  them  and  the  others. 
Just  as  the  mass  live  for  the 
home,  so  do  the  minority  live  for 
the  world;  and,  for  a  student  of 
the  world  and  its  ways,  there  is 
not  to  be  discovered  a  more  perfect 
type,  for  it  is  a  product  of  the 
very  highest  worldly  art,  worked 
up  with  skill,  will,  and  finish.  It 
is  all  the  more  a  product  of  pure 
art  because,  as  I  have  already  re- 
marked, the  higher  Paris  woman 
may  be  found  outside  the  highest 
social  class,  and  may  be  manufac- 
tured out  of  any  suitable  material. 
The  particular  position  which  is 
created  by  birth  is  not  indispens- 
able to  her  :  it  bestows  a  brilliancy 
the  more,  but  that  is  all.  The 
woman  of  whom  I  am  speaking 
may  be  of  any  rank,  provided  she 
possesses  the  requisite  abilities, 
and  provided  she  can  gather  round 
her  a  group  worthy  of  her  hand- 
ling. And  this  is  the  more  true 
because,  with  some  evident  excep- 
tions, social  station  in  Paris  does 
not  depend  exclusively,  or  even 
mainly,  on  the  causes  which  be- 
stow it  elsewhere,  —  on  birth  or 


Indoor  Life  in  Paris. 


[Dec. 


name,  on  title  or  on  money  :  they 
all  aid,  they  aid  largely ;  but  not 
one  of  them  is  absolutely  requisite. 
Even  money,  powerful  as  it  is,  is 
less  conquering  in  Paris  than  in 
London,  as  certain  persons  have 
discovered,  who,  after  failing  to 
get  recognised  to  their  satisfac- 
tion in  the  former  city,  have  suc- 
ceeded in  thrusting  themselves  to 
the  front  in  the  latter.  The 
Paris  woman  who  wins  position, 
even  if  she  possesses  these  four 
assistants,  owes  her  victory,  not 
to  them,  but  to  herself,  to  her 
own  use  of  the  powers  within  her. 
She  merits  minute  description, 
both  in  her  person  and  her 
acts.  But  here  a  difficulty  arises. 
Her  acts  can  be  set  forth  in  as 
much  detail  as  is  needed ;  but  her 
person — and,  for  the  results  that 
she  begets,  her  person  is  as  im- 
portant as  her  acts — cannot  be 
depicted  in  English. 

The  reason  is,  that  the  ideas 
which  dominate  us  as  to  the  uses 
to  which  our  language  ought  to  be 
applied  prevent  us  from  handling 
it  freely  on  such  a  subject.  There 
are  limits  to  the  application  of 
English,  limits  which  we  have  laid 
down  for  ourselves,  limits  which 
exclude  the  possibility  of  treating 
glowingly  certain  topics  without 
appearing  to  be  ridiculous.  To 
speak  of  the  feminine  delicacies  of 
a  thorough  Paris  woman,  to  show 
their  influence  on  the  crowd  around 
her  and  on  the  life  she  leads,  and 
to  dissect  their  sources,  their  mani- 
festations, and  their  consequences, 
as  the  French  do,  would  be  re- 
garded by  the  British  public  as 
unworthy  of  the  solidity  of  British 
character.  So,  as  her  person  can- 
not be  faithfully  outlined  without 
French  appreciations  of  its  elegan- 
cies, without  employing  French 
methods  of  photographic  portrait- 
ure, and  without  painting  in  French 


1894.] 


Indoor  Life  in  Paris. 


811 


colours  the  admiration  it  inspires ; 
and  as  those  French  appreciations, 
methods,  and  colourings  would  be 
regarded  as  "gushing "in  English, 
the  person  of  the  Paris  woman 
must  remain  undrawn  by  English 
pens.  The  difficulty  does  not  pro- 
ceed from  the  English  writer,  but 
from  the  English  reader  :  the  Eng- 
lish language  is  as  capable  as 
French  is  of  telling  the  tale  of 
winning  feminine  refinements;  but 
our  feeling  is  against  the  employ- 
ment of  it  for  such  frivolous  pur- 
poses. We  do  not  produce  the  same 
human  works  of  art,  and  are  not 
accustomed  to  English  descriptions 
of  them.  The  French  pages  which 
narrate  the  perfections  of  women, 
which  write  of  details  in  detail 
and  of  graces  with  grace,  are  read  in 
France  with  eager  interest,  be- 
cause of  the  inherent  attraction 
of  the  subject  to  the  French  mind, 
and  of  the  amazing  dexterity  and 
finish  which,  from  long  practice, 
has  been  acquired  in  the  handling. 
The  story  is  so  vivid  that  we  see 
and  hear  reality,  so  seductive  that 
we  bow  before  charm,  so  adroitly 
told  that  we  marvel  at  the  author's 
cunning.  Even  the  English  (a  good 
many  of  them  at  all  events)  read 
all  this  in  French  with  keen  ap- 
preciation; but  in  their  present 
mood  they  would  call  it  silly  in 
English.  Our  literature  loses  by 
this  exclusion — which  extends  to 
other  topics  besides  Frenchwomen 
—  a  quantity  of  opportunities 
which  many  writers  would,  it  may 
be  presumed,  be  delighted  toutilise, 
but  dare  not,  for  fear  of  being 
scoffed  at.  It  is  altogether  in- 
exact to  argue  that  "  the  genius  of 
the  French  language  "  —  a  much 
employed  but  nearly  meaningless 
expression — lends  itself  to  word- 
ings which  cannot  be  rendered  in 
other  tongues ;  it  is  not  genius  but 
habit  which  explains  those  word- 


ings. French  has  no  monoply  of 
the  phrases  needed  to  delineate 
personal  elegance ;  neither  has  the 
French  mind  any  exclusive  prop- 
erty of  the  sentiment  of  physical 
symmetries,  or  of  the  faculty  of 
analysis  of  delicate  perceptions  and 
of  the  sensations  aroused  by  those 
perceptions.  Both  the  thinkings 
and  the  wordings  would  be  forth- 
coming elsewhere,  if  only  readers 
wanted  them.  The  Belgians,  for 
instance,  who  use  French,  have  no 
more  of  them  than  we  have,  for  the 
reason  that,  like  us,  they  do  not 
feel  the  need  of  them.  As  things 
stand  at  present,  the  person  of  the 
higher  Parisienne  cannot  be  de- 
picted diagnostically  in  English : 
that  element  of  the  subject  must 
be  left  out  here,  which  is  a  pity, 
not  only  because  it  is  the  prettiest 
part  of  it,  but  also  because  the  ex- 
clusion lessens  the  field  of  discus- 
sion of  Paris  indoor  life.  Her  work 
alone  remains  to  be  talked  about. 

The  higher  Frenchwoman,  in  the 
time  of  her  full  glory,  was  essen- 
tially a  leader  of  men  :  from  the 
Fronde  downwards,  the  history  of 
France  was  full  (fuller  far  than 
that  of  any  other  land)  of  evidence 
of  the  influence  of  women  on  its 
progress ;  but  that  influence,  after 
waning  steadily  since  the  Revolu- 
tion, went  entirely  out  of  sight 
with  the  solidification  of  the  actual 
republic.  After  the  war  of  1870  it 
struggled  on,  under  increasing 
difficulties,  until  MacMahon  re- 
signed ;  since  his  time  it  has  dis- 
appeared altogether.  The  banish- 
ment of  the  men  of  the  well-born 
classes  from  all  share  in  the  govern- 
ment of  the  country  (not  only  be- 
cause they  are  Conservatives,  but 
even  more  because  others  want  the 
places  which,  for  the  greater  part, 
they  formerly  occupied)  has  neces- 
sarily brought  about  the  repudia- 
tion of  the  women  too ;  and  such 


812 


Indoor  Life  in  Paris. 


[Dec. 


of  them  as  are  not  well-born  suffer 
in  sympathy,  for  their  cause  is 
common.  The  republicans  avow 
that  "la  republique  manque  de 
femmes"  but  it  will  never  win  the 
higher  women  to  it  until,  amongst 
other  things,  it  makes  a  place  for 
them  to  work.  At  present  they 
are  entirely  shut  away  from  con- 
tact with  the  public  life  of  France  ; 
they  have  lost  all  empire  over  the 
events  of  the  time,  and,  in  conse- 
quence, they  themselves  have 
weakened.  It  would  be  inexact 
to  call  them  politicians,  in  the 
English  sense  of  the  word ;  but 
they  are  animated  by  a  need  of 
personal  performance  and  produc- 
tivity which  cannot  be  satisfied 
without  dabbling,  from  however 
far  off,  in  current  affairs.  Their 
intelligence  has  always  sought  for 
spheres  of  action ;  but  Liberty, 
Equality,  Fraternity — ltun  songe 
entre  deux  mensonges  " — have  now 
suppressed  all  spheres  of  action  for 
them  outside  the  walls  of  their 
drawing-rooms.  The  so-called  go- 
verning classes,  to  which,  directly 
or  indirectly,  a  good  many  of  them 
belonged,  are  replaced  by  the  nou- 
velles  couches;  the  overthrow  of 
the  classes  as  national  instruments 
has  entailed  the  overthrow  of  the 
women  as  a  national  force,  and  has 
reduced  them  to  a  purely  social 
function,  which  gives  insufficient 
play  to  their  aspirations,  and 
thrusts  them  back  into  themselves. 
The  rupture  between  society  and 
the  republic  is  complete,  and,  ap- 
parently, unmendable.  Both  lose 
by  it ;  but  society  loses  the  most, 
because,  though  the  republic  can 
prosper  ruggedly  without  society, 
the  women  of  society  (whatever 
be  their  birth)  cannot  breathe 
healthily  without  the  position 
and  the  occupation  which  they 
formerly  obtained  from  contact 
with  authority. 


This  decline  affects  them  indi- 
vidually as  well  as  collectively, 
and  because  of  it  (amongst  other 
causes)  they  no  longer  present  the 
very  marked  national  lineaments 
which  once  belonged  to  them. 
There  is  still  something  to  tell, 
both  of  their  cleverness  and  of 
their  attractiveness ;  but,  while 
the  proportion  of  attractiveness 
remains  considerable,  the  propor- 
tion of  cleverness  has  largely  di- 
minished. As  it  was,  in  great 
part,  by  cleverness  actively  em- 
ployed— effective,  operative,  pro- 
lific cleverness — that  the  foremost 
Paris  women  won  the  bright  place 
they  once  held  before  Europe,  it  is 
evident  that  the  lessening  of  that 
cleverness  renders  them  less  in- 
structive to  study.  And  they 
themselves,  some  of  them  at  least, 
are  at  this  moment,  in  other  direc- 
tions, wilfully  damaging  their  at- 
tractiveness too,  by  leaping  into 
the  wave  of  masculinity  which  the 
English  have  set  surging,  and  by 
allowing  their  infinite  femininity 
of  other  days  to  be  drowned  by  it. 
Many  of  them  have  taken  up  and, 
with  the  ardour  of  neophytes,  have 
already  surpassed  us  in,  the  most 
conspicuous  of  the  new  exercises 
which,  under  pretext  of  physical 
development,  English  women  have 
invented.  If  size  is  to  become  the 
chief  ambition  of  women,  if  the 
merits  of  girls  and  wives  are  to  be 
measured  by  length,  we  ought  to 
ask  the  Germans  and  the  Swedes 
how  they  manage  to  produce  giants. 
They  have  plenty  of  women  six 
feet  high,  feminine  and  gentle  in 
their  way,  who  could  not  dis- 
tinguish between  a  golf-club  and  a 
billiard-cue,  or  between  a  racquet 
and  a  battledore,  and  who,  though 
they  may  have  had  in  their  child- 
hood some  moderate  practice  of 
gymnastics,  have  never  given  an 
hour  to  rude  games,  to  riding  on  a 


1894.] 


Indoor  Life  in  Paris. 


813 


bicycle,  or  to  any  of  the  recent 
forms  of  romping.  It  is  possible 
that,  some  day,  women  will  once 
more  become  desirous  to  remain 
women ;  but,  for  the  moment,  the 
example  offered  by  the  English  is 
unfeminising  France,  and  that 
effect,  in  addition  to  political  en- 
feeblement,  renders  many  of  the 
Paris  women  of  to-day  different 
indeed  from  what  they  used  to  be. 
Yet,  in  some  of  their  examples, 
they  retain  a  portion  of  their 
former  selves,  and  continue  to  be 
something  else  than  others  are. 
They  are  changed,  lamentably 
changed,  as  a  general  type;  but 
memorials  of  their  former  merit  are 
still  discoverable. 

Manner,  movement,  dress,  and 
talk  are  the  weapons  of  the  higher 
Paris  woman  who  continues  to  be 
exclusively  a  woman.  She  em- 
ploys them  all  in  her  relations 
with  the  world,  on  her  day,  at 
her  dinners,  at  her  parties.  On 
her  day  a  mob  may  come  to  her, 
because  her  door  is  open  to  her 
entire  acquaintance;  but,  unless 
she  is  a  personage,  her  dinners 
and  her  parties  are  usually  kept 
small.  A  view  of  her  on  her  day 
is  interesting,  perhaps  the  most 
interesting  feminine  spectacle  in 
Paris,  for  she  shows  more  of  her 
varied  skill  on  that  occasion  than 
on  any  other.  She  has  to  be 
everything  to  everybody  at  once ; 
to  graduate  her  welcomes  ;  to 
measure  her  smiles ;  to  give  their 
full  rights  of  greeting  and  of  place 
to  all  her  visitors,  but  no  more 
than  the  right  of  each ;  and,  above 
all,  notwithstanding  this  calcu- 
lated adjustment,  to  send  every- 
body away  with  the  conviction 
that  they,  in  particular,  were  the 
very  persons  she  most  wished  to 
see.  The  power  of  listening  is,  in 
such  a  case,  almost  more  important 
than  the  power  of  speaking,  for 


there  is  no  flattery  so  irresistible 
as  to  lead  stupid  people  to  believe 
you  are  intensely  interested  in 
what  they  say.  Towards  those 
whom  she  wishes  to  impress,  she 
exhibits  herself  in  her  utmost 
winningness,  according  to  what 
she  imagines  to  be  their  accessible 
sides.  To  this  one  she  throws 
scintillant  talk ;  she  dazzles  that 
one  with  the  elegancies  of  her 
person ;  to  another  she  is  all  deep 
sympathy  and  tender  feeling;  of 
a  fourth  she  inquires  gravely,  as 
if  such  subjects  were  the  one  study 
of  her  hours,  whether  the  experi- 
ments in  the  liquefaction  of  carbon 
are  progressing  hopefully,  or  who 
will  be  the  next  successful  candi- 
date at  the  Academic.  There  is 
certainly  great  labour  in  the  pro- 
cess :  the  tension  of  the  mind  is 
augmented  by  the  longing  for  suc- 
cess, and  by  unceasing  attention  to 
physical  effect  as  an  essential  aid  to 
that  success.  But,  to  a  thorough 
woman  of  the  world,  conceive  the 
delights  of  success  !  What  must 
she  feel  when  her  last  visitor  has 
left, — when  she  looks  back  over 
the  four  hours  she  has  just  passed, 
and  tells  herself  that  every  one  has 
been  conquered  by  her,  and  has 
carried  away  a  deep  impression  of 
her  charm  1  The  scene  can  be 
beheld  in  Paris  only, — at  least  I 
have  not  discerned  it  in  the  same 
perfection  in  any  other  society : 
it  is  far  away  the  most  special 
picture  of  its  indoor  life ;  it  shows 
the  typical  Frenchwoman  in  her 
most  finished  development,  which 
no  one  else  can  attain.  But  how 
rare  it  is ! 

At  dinner  her  doings  are  equally 
complete,  but  not  the  same.  She 
is  differently  dressed.  She  is  "en 
peau"  (I  mention,  for  those  who 
may  not  be  aware  of  it,  that  this 
is  the  modern  expression  for  de- 
;  and  with  the  change  of 


814 


Indoor  Life  in  Paris. 


[Dec. 


covering  comes  change  of  bearing, 
for  the  perfect  Paris  woman  has  a 
bearing  for  every  gown.  Just  ^as 
the  nature  of  the  dress  itself  in- 
dicates its  purpose,  its  meaning, 
and  the  hour  at  which  it  is  to  be 
worn,  so  does  she  herself  associate 
her  ways  with  that  meaning.  The 
movements  of  her  bare  shoulders 
and  bare  arms  at  dinner  are  not 
identical  with  the  movements  of 
the  morning  or  the  afternoon  in 
a  high  corsage  and  long  sleeves. 
They  have  another  story  to  relate, 
another  effect  to  produce,  other 
duties  to  discharge;  her  measure- 
ment of  their  value  and  their 
functions  is  quite  different.  The 
action  of  the  hands,  again,  is  in  full 
view ;  their  language  can  be  spoken 
out;  their  eloquence  can  exercise 
its  completest  force  ;  she  talks 
with  them  as  with  her  tongue. 
In  pleased  consciousness  of  her  de- 
lightfulness  she  sits  in  the  centre 
of  her  table,  casts  her  glances  and 
her  words  around  her,  undulates 
with  varied  gesture,  and  is  again, 
in  thorough  meaning  and  result, 
the  typical  Parisienne. 

And  yet,  by  one  of  the  contra- 
dictions with  which  the  entire  sub- 
ject is  piled  up,  she  is  unable  to 
bestow  immortality  on  the  memory 
of  her  dinners.  That  memory 
disappears,  for,  incomprehensible 
though  it  be,  there  is  nothing 
which  mankind  in  its  thankless- 
ness  forgets  like  dinners  :  there  is 
nothing  which  in  gratitude  we 
ought  to  remember  more ;  there 
is  nothing  which  in  reality  we 
remember  less.  This  fact  of  the 
utter  fading  away  of  dinners  is  a 
puzzle  to  all  people  who  have 
passed  their  lives  in  dining,  with 
full  recognition  of  the  superlative 
importance  of  the  process.  Scarcely 
any  of  them  recollect  anything 
precise  about  the  thousand  ban- 
quets at  which  they  have  filled  a 


place.  They  agree,  generally,  that 
they  have  entirely  forgotten  what 
they  have  eaten,  that  they  have 
almost  forgotten  what  they  have 
seen,  that  they  have  the  feeblest 
consciousness  of  the  people  they 
have  met,  and  that  their  only 
relatively  clear  remembrance  is  of 
the  bright  talk  they  have  heard 
occasionally  at  table.  The  ear  is 
the  only  organ  which  retains  really 
lasting  impressions ;  the  tongue 
preserves  nothing,  and  the  eye 
scarcely  anything.  I  believe  that, 
with  the  exception  of  a  few  pro- 
fessional gourmets  (a  class  that  is 
becoming  everywhere  more  and 
more  rare),  this  is  the  condition 
of  mind  of  nearly  everybody  who 
is  in  a  position  to  form  an  opinion 
on  the  subject.  One  of  my  ac- 
quaintances, who  dined  diversi- 
fiedly  about  Europe,  became  so  con- 
vinced in  early  life  that  dinners 
are  inevitably  forgotten,  that  he 
preserved  from  his  outset  the 
menus  and  lists  of  guests,  with 
the  placing  at  table,  of  all  the  re- 
pasts at  which  he  assisted.  When 
I  saw  his  collection  it  had  grown 
into  several  folio  volumes.  The 
entries  in  it  were  made  with  such 
precision,  that,  discovering  in  it 
one  of  my  own  cards  with  a  date 
on  it,  and  asking  what  it  signi- 
fied, I  was  told  by  my  acquaint- 
ance that  its  object  was  to  register 
the  fact  that  he  had  dined  with 
me  alone  on  the  day  indicated. 
He,  at  all  events,  had  succeeded 
in  preventing  himself  from  falling 
into  the  universal  oblivion :  he 
considered,  probably  with  truth, 
that  he  was  the  only  man  in 
European  society  who  was  ani- 
mated by  the  real  reconnaissance 
de  I'estomac,  and  who  could  recon- 
stitute, with  becoming  thankfulness 
and  certainty,  the  details  of  every 
dinner  he  had  eaten.  At  the  act- 
ual moment  of  dinner  we  feel,  of 


1894. 


Indoor  Life  in  Paris, 


815 


^ 


course,  a  more  or  less  keen  per- 
3eption  of  the  merits  or  demerits 
of  the  feast.  But  the  perception 
does  not  endure :  even  bad  and 
gloomy  dinners  are  forgotten,  just 
as  thoroughly  as  good  and  gay 
ones.  The  explanation  is,  it  seems 
to  me,  that  we  dine  too  often; 
one  dinner  drives  out  the  effect 
of  another.  If  we  had  only  one 
dinner  in  our  lives,  how  we  should 
remember  it !  Of  the  four  great 
elements  of  dinners — food,  people, 
spectacle,  and  talk — the  talk  alone, 
as  I  have  already  observed,  dwells 
on,  in  some  degree,  in  our  thoughts. 
No  one  can  fail  to  recognise  that 
cookery  is  valueless  as  a  per- 
manent cause  of  memory  of  din- 
ners :  it  has  but  a  merely  mo- 
mentary effect;  it  does  not  merit 
the  front  place  it  is  too  commonly 
supposed  to  occupy  in  the  general 
constitution  of  a  repast ;  it  stands, 
on  the  contrary,  last  in  durability 
amongst  the  four  constituents. 
Scarcely  any  of  the  older  students 
of  dining  persist  in  giving  serious 
thought  to  food,  partly  because  of 
weakening  digestions,  mainly  be- 
cause they  have  learnt  from  long 
practice  that  the  real  pleasure  of 
a  dinner  is  derived  from  another 
source.  They  see  in  it  not  an 
occasion  for  eating,  but  a  most 
ingenious  and  soul- contenting  ar- 
rangement for  bringing  men  and 
women  intimately  together  under 
conditions  which  supply  many 
stimulants  and  brightnesses  —  an 
arrangement  which  enables  them 
to  show  themselves  at  their  best, 
and  which  terminates  the  day 
with  lustre,  like  a  luminous  sun- 
set. 

Now,  talk  at  dinner  —  the  one 
enduring  element  of  the  ceremony 
—  can  never  reach  its  full  radi- 
ance without  women :  and  here 
comes  in  the  application  of  these 
considerations  to  the  Parisienne, 


for  it  is  her  talk  which  raises 
dinner  to  the  high  place  it  occu- 
pies in  Paris.  A  womanless  dinner 
may  not  be  quite  so  dismal  as  a 
night  without  stars,  or  a  desert 
without  water ;  but  it  may  fairly 
be  compared  to  a  tree  without 
leaves,  to  a  sea  without  ships,  or 
to  a  meadow  without  buttercups. 
Somewhere  in  the  sixties  I  dined 
with  M.  Emile  de  Girardin  (I  name 
him  because  he  was  a  public  man), 
in  that  admirable  house  in  the 
Rue  Pauquet  which  he  called  his 
"thatched  hut."  He  was  famous 
for  his  dinners,  and  on  the  occa- 
sion to  which  I  refer  the  cookery 
was  supreme — so  supreme  indeed 
that  I  told  myself  at  the  time  I 
had  never  partaken  of  such  a 
dinner  :  that  shapeless  fact  is  still 
in  my  memory;  but  what  there 
was  to  eat,  or  who  was  there,  I 
have  utterly  forgotten.  I  know 
only  it  was  a  dinner  of  men — that 
is  to  say,  not  a  dinner  at  all  in  the 
great  social  meaning  of  the  term. 
Women  and  talk  alone  make 
dinner,  especially  in  Paris,  where 
the  value  of  the  women  and  the 
talk  reaches  its  highest  possibili- 
ties. If  we  forget  all  about  it  as 
soon  as  it  is  over,  that  is  not  the 
fault  of  the  Parisiennes;  they,  at 
all  events,  have  done  their  utmost 
to  induce  us  to  remember.  Certain 
Paris  dinners  provide,  probably, 
a  more  complete  supply  of  social 
satisfaction  than  can  be  extracted 
from  any  other  single  source.  They 
give  us  what  we  want  at  the  mo- 
ment in  its  best  conceivable  form, 
with  all  the  components  and  sur- 
roundings that  can  furnish  outside 
assistance.  Of  course  dinners  are 
more  or  less  alike  everywhere ;  of 
course  the  foundations  and  the 
general  nature  of  the  structure 
reared  upon  them  cannot  vary 
widely ;  but  in  the  double  sensa- 
tion of  serenity  and  complacency 


816 

on  the  one  hand,  and  of  inspiring 
allurement  on  the  other,  Paris 
possesses  in  a  few  houses  an  atmos- 
phere which  cannot  be  breathed 
anywhere  else,  and  which  consti- 
tutes a  true  international  dis- 
tinction. 

It  is  possible  that,  to  the  in- 
experienced eye,  the  charm  of  this 
would  not  be  as  evident  as  it 
becomes  on  intimate  knowledge  of 
it.  We  like  best  what  we  are  most 
accustomed  to ;  strange  ways  rarely 
please  us  at  first  —  the  habit  of 
them  needs  to  be  formed  before 
we  can  appreciate  them.  There 
is  an  involuntary  shrinking  from 
the  new  and  the  unknown ;  it  is 
only  after  time  and  usage  that,  in 
most  cases,  we  become  fit  to  com- 
prehend the  merit  of  practices  that 
we  were  not  brought  up  to  admire. 
But  when  habit  has  had  oppor- 
tunity to  grow,  when  experience 
has  enabled  us  to  base  our  judg- 
ments on  long  comparison,  then, 
at  last,  we  recognise  excellences 
which  do  not  strike  new-comers. 
I  insist  particularly  on  this  con- 
sideration, because  it  explains  not 
only  the  source  of  the  opinions  I 
hold,  but  also  one  of  the  reasons 
why  others  may  differ  from  those 
opinions. 

A  Paris  evening-party  is  nearly 
the  same  process  as  a  "  day  " — in 
other  clothes,  and  with  more 
facility  for  walking  about.  There 
is  nothing  to  be  said  of  it  that  I 
have  not  said  already.  I  will, 
however,  mention  one  recollection 
that  has  a  relation  to  its  aspects. 
The  first  time  I  was  present  at  a 
ball  in  Paris,  I  was  struck  by  the 
singular  freshness  of  the  colours  of 
the  dresses,  after  the  tints  I  had 
known  in  England:  it  was  not 
the  making  of  the  dresses  that  I 
noticed,  but  their  shades,  which 
had  a  bloom  that  astonished  me. 
I  soon  lost,  from  constant  view, 


Indoor  Life  in  Paris. 


[Dec. 


the  power  of  comparing;  but  at 
first,  before  my  eyes  had  become 
trained,  it  seemed  to  me  that 
even  the  whites  were  whiter, 
brighter,  more  intense  than  any 
I  had  seen  before,  while  all  the 
other  hues  looked  more  trans- 
parent and  more  living.  I  make 
no  attempt  to  explain  the  impres- 
sion I  received,  but  of  its  reality 
I  am  certain.  Whether  the  dis- 
tinction still  endures  I  cannot  say 
(new  arrivers  alone  could  now  judge 
of  that) ;  but  at  the  moment,  while 
the  sense  of  it  lasted,  it  served  to 
mark  a  visible  difference  between 
the  balls  of  Paris  and  of  London. 
In  all  else,  save  some  few  unim- 
portant contrasts  of  manners  and 
of  details,  evening-parties  have 
seemed  to  me  about  the  same 
everywhere,  and  I  can  think  of 
nothing  about  them  that  is  really 
proper  to  Paris.  The  women  exer- 
cise at  them  an  attraction  on  the 
people  round  which  is  more  gen- 
eral and  less  individual  than  at 
dinners :  there  is  space ;  the  spec- 
tators are  far  more  numerous ;  the 
women  are  more  completely  seen ; 
but,  all  the  same,  they  dominate 
less.  I  have  always  fancied  that, 
for  this  reason,  the  true  Paris 
woman  is  somewhat  wasted  at  an 
evening-party  ;  she  is  too  much  in 
the  crowd ;  she  may  be  admired, 
but  she  does  not  always  rule.  Her 
one  advantage  at  night  receptions 
is  that  she  can  stand  and  walk 
about,  and  can  produce  effects  of 
motion  which  are  denied  to  her  at 
dinner.  The  use  of  this  to  her  is 
undeniably  great — so  great,  indeed, 
that  I  once  heard  it  suggested  that, 
in  order  to  render  dinners  abso- 
lutely perfect,  they  should  be  per- 
formed standing,  so  as  to  enable 
the  women  to  exhibit  their  full 
results  of  dress  and  movements. 
It  was,  however,  argued  by  most 
of  those  who  were  present  on  that 


1894.] 


Indoor  Life  in  Paris. 


817 


occasion,  that  sitting  cannot  be 
disassociated  from  dinner,  and 
that  (putting  fatigue  aside)  din- 
ner would  be  degraded  to  the 
level  of  a  stand-up  supper  if  the 
guests  were  upright.  I  leave  the 
question  to  the  future. 

This  sort  of  life  in  Paris  is  not, 
after  all,  more  worldly  than  the 
same  existence  is  elsewhere. 
Wherever  amusement  is  lifted  to 
the  position  of  the  first  object  of 
existence,  the  moral  effect  on  those 
who  pursue  it  is  virtually  the 
same :  there  may  be  shades  of 
local  difference,  but  the  tendency 
of  the  mind  grows  everywhere 
alike.  It  would  therefore  be  un- 
fair to  attribute  any  special  frivol- 
ity to  Paris  because  small  sections 
of  its  society  achieve  extreme  bril- 
liancy of  vvorldliness ;  just  as  it 
would  be  unfair  to  praise  it  speci- 
ally because  other  classes  are  par- 


ticularly worthy  of  esteem.  In 
the  universal  average  of  good  and 
bad,  Paris  stands  on  the  same 
general  level  as  other  capitals ; 
but  in  glistening  pleasantness  it 
rises,  here  and  there,  above  them 
all.  How  long  that  superiority 
of  pleasantness  will  endure  re- 
mains to  be  seen  :  it  is  weakening 
fast  from  the  progressive  disap- 
pearance of  the  women  who,  thus 
far,  have  maintained  it.  If  it 
does  vanish  altogether,  Paris  will 
become  like  any  other  place,  with 
the  same  respectabilities  and  dul- 
nesses ;  but  its  indoor  life  will 
have  left  behind  it  a  history  and 
a  memory  proper  to  itself,  and 
some  day,  perhaps,  its  women  will 
wake  up  again  and  will  reassume 
the  feminine  grace  and  the  fem- 
inine capacities  which  were  so 
delightfully  distinctive  of  their 
ancestors. 


818 


Felicity  Brooke. 


[Dec. 


FELICITY    BKOOKE. 

BY    THE    AUTHOR    OF    <  MISS    MOLLY.' 

PART   I. 

"  Courage  and  Passion  are  the  Immortal  facts  of  Life.    Where  they  p. 
spot." 


3,  the  world  marks  the 


To  an  outsider  the  confusion 
might  have  seemed  purposeless, 
but,  in  truth,  all  this  noise  and 
running  hither  and  thither,  and 
clanging  of  bells,  and  shouting  of 
sailors,  meant  that  the  last  mo- 
ments were  being  counted  out,  be- 
fore the  City  of  Prague  started  on 
her  Atlantic  journey. 

The  deck  was  crowded  in  the 
usual  way  with  those  assembled  to 
speed  the  parting, — those  who  had 
many  playful  words  at  command, 
and  those  to  whom  it  was  sad 
earnest,  and  no  word  of  any  sort 
was  possible. 

A  little  apart  from  where  the 
many  mourned  or  joyed,  a  man  and 
a  woman  stood  close  together  by 
the  vessel's  side, — the  man  half 
kneeling  on  a  seat,  the  woman 
standing  straight  and  motionless 
by  his  side.  Enough  likeness  to 
pronounce  them  brother  and  sister; 
the  same  straight  features  and 
blonde  hair,  the  same  slenderness 
of  figure  and  grace  of  movement. 

"  Aymer,"  she  bent  forward,  after 
a  silence  which  seemed  the  result 
of  a  difficulty  in  wording  her 
thoughts,  and  so  leaning,  laid  her 
hand  on  his  shoulder,  "you  are  go- 
ing to  be  happy  out  there  ?  " 

"Don't  you  worry  about  me," 
— though  he  did  not  turn  his  eyes 
from  where  they  were  fixed  on  the 
shore,  there  was  a  thrill  of  feeling 
in  his  tones.  ''Anyway,  you  know," 
suddenly  looking  up,  "  it  was  not 
your  fault." 

"  She  was  my  friend,"  the  woman 
said,  sadly.  "If  I  had  not  loved 


her,  believed  in  her,  I  should  not 
have  wished  my  only  brother  to 
marry  her.  I  cannot  even  now 
think  what  tempted  her  ! " 

"  Cannot  you  ? "  the  man  retorted, 
mockingly.  "  I  do  not  attempt  to 
compare  myself  to  a  grey-bearded, 
decrepit  duke ! " 

"Ah,  hush,  Aymer," his  sister  in- 
terposed, gently,  "  do  not  be  bitter. 
Vanity,  ambition,  may  govern  one 
woman,  but  do  not  allow  yourself 
to  imagine  it  is  the  rule  for  all." 

"  Not  while  you  live,  Hilda," — 
he  spoke  more  gravely,  and  he  took 
her  hands  in  his  as  he  spoke  ;  "  but 
remember,  it  is  not  the  vanity  or 
ambition  which  I  judge  so  severely 
— let  her  try  what  they  will  do  to 
help  her  !  —  but  the  cowardice," 
there  was  a  sudden  flash  in  the 
grey  eyes,  "which  kept  me  dang- 
ling on  through  a  long  delusive 
engagement  —  to  end  in  this. 
There,"  standing  upright,  "  that 
is  the  last  word, — and  I  did  not 
intend  it  should  have  been  spoken ; 
what  is  the  good  !  I  am  going  to 
America  to  shoot  big  game,  and 
generally  amuse  myself :  Wynd- 
ham  will  meet  me  in  New  York, 
and  from  there  I  will  write  to  you, 
and  give  you  a  fresh  address.  Write 
often,  won't  you  ?  " 

"  Of  course.  And  you  1  You 
will  not  let  long  silences  give  me 
time  to  grow  anxious?"  He  did 
not  reply,  but  he  laid  his  hand  over 
the  one  that  rested  on  his  arm,  and 
side  by  side  they  paced  slowly  up 
and  down  the  deck. 

Good-byes  are  said  in  so  many 


1894. 


Felicity  Brooke. 


819 


ways.  Hilda  Forsythe's  grey  eyes 
were  full  of  tears,  though  not  one 
fell :  her  voice  when  she  spoke — 
and  words  grew  fewer  with  each 
passing  moment — trembled  a  little, 
but  each  syllable  reached  her  list- 
ener's ear, — the  touch  of  the  hand 
on  hers  told  her  what  the  separa- 
tion cost  her  companion.  Perhaps 
behind  the  silence  there  was  as 
bitter  a  heartache  as  that  which 
found  expression  in  those  loud  sobs, 
at  the  sound  of  which  she  looked 
round  startled. 

A  dowdy,  fair -haired,  elderly 
German  weeping  loudly  and  unre- 
strainedly, her  reddened  eyelids 
and  wet  cheeks  forming  a  most 
unpicturesque  exhibition  of  woe. 
But  utterly  heedless  of  spectators, 
regardless  of  the  angry  words  and 
pushes  of  those  who  would  have 
thrust  her  aside,  her  bonnet  crook- 
ed, her  ungloved  hands  in  her  com- 
panion's, she  stood  there  pouring 
out  last  words  and  thoughts. 

With  the  instinct  of  avoiding 
such  an  exhibition  of  trouble,  Mrs 
Forsythe  turned  back,  and  as  she 
did  so,  "  Oh,  Aymer,"  she  exclaim- 
ed, roused  from  her  own  thoughts, 
"  what  a  beautiful  girl !  " 

His  eyes  followed  the  direction 
of  hers.  "Yes,"  he  said,  absently, 
"she  is  handsome, —  she  is  with 
that  Niobe  over  yonder !  They 
have  come,  or  rather  she  has  come, 
to  say  good-bye  to  that  German 
lover, — or  brother." 

"Brother,  I  think,"  Hilda  said, 
gently;  "they  are  very  much  alike." 
But  while  she  spoke,  her  eyes  still 
followed  the  now  vanishing  figure 
of  the  girl  who  had  attracted  her 
attention.  A  girl  of  perhaps  fif- 
teen, in  a  sailor-like  dress  of  blue 
serge,  the  shirt  open  a  little  at  the 
throat,  a  cloth  cap  on  her  thick 
curls.  Her  dark  eyes  were  set 
under  slightly  arched  brows,  a 
brilliant  colour  was  in  her  cheeks, 
her  young  curved  mouth  was  scar- 


let as  a  pomegranate  bud.  A 
minute  later  she  had  disappeared 
from  sight;  her  movements  were 
as  young  and  strong  and  vigorous 
as  the  colour  on  her  cheeks  and 
the  light  in  her  eyes. 

"  Let  us  go  away  from  here," 
Aymer  said,  as,  for  about  the 
tenth  time,  their  walk  was  checked 
by  a  hurrying  sailor,  a  mourning 
or  jocose  passenger, — "  I  cannot 
stand  it  any  longer." 

So  saying,  he  turned  and  sought 
the  solitude  of  the  upper  deck. 
Total  solitude,  so  at  least  they 
fancied,  till  a  more  complete  survey 
showed  them  it  was  shared  by  the 
girl  whom  Mrs  Forsythe  had 
noticed  before. 

"Wise  child,"  Sir  Aymer  ob- 
served, when  he  caught  sight  of 
the  blue  serge  skirt, — "  or  discreet 
child !  She  has  also  thought  it 
desirable  to  put  as  much  space  as 
possible  between  her  and  her  weep- 
ing guardian." 

She  was  evidently  unconscious 
of  their  presence,  for  she  was 
kneeling  on  the  seat  that  ran 
round  the  deck,  looking  down  with 
amusement  and  interest  on  the 
moving,  excited  crowd  below.  She 
held  her  cap  in  her  hand,  and  Mrs 
Forsythe's  looks  were  still  at- 
tracted towards  her. 

"  She  is  beautiful,"  she  said — "  a 
child,  of  course ;  and  yet  there  is 
something  about  her,  perhaps  the 
way  her  hair  grows,  that  reminds 
me  of  the  pictures  of  Henrietta 
Maria." 

"She  is  rather  like  her,"  Sir 
Aymer  replied,  looking  in  her  direc- 
tion for  a  moment,  "  though  I 
guess  that  child  did  not  take  as 
long  to  arrange  her  curls  as  did 
Henrietta  Maria." 

The  likeness  consisted  in  a  wave 
of  the  hair  from  the  straight,  clear 
parting,  before  it  rippled  and  fell 
in  short  thick  curls.  A  few  sec- 
onds later  the  dark  eyes  were 


820 


Felicity  Brooke. 


[Dec. 


raised,  and  made  the  discovery 
that  she  was  no  longer  alone,  and 
with  the  discovery  she  vanished. 

When  Sir  Aymer  Digby  turned 
in  his  walk,  and  found  such  to  be 
the  case,  he  was  relieved, — it  made 
it  easier  to  say  these  last  words  to 
his  sister. 

And  the  moment  for  last  words 
had  arrived. 

A  great  bell  was  clanging  loudly 
and  fiercely,  an  insistent  whistle 
was  rendering  speech  and  hearing 
alike  impossible,  the  gangway 
plank  was  crowded  with  a  stream 
of  people  making  their  way  on 
shore. 

Without  an  explanatory  word — 
when  both  knew,  words  were  un- 
necessary— brother  and  sister  fol- 
lowed the  departing  throng. 

For  a  moment  the  man  paused 
ere  reaching  the  exit,  and  clasped 
a  little  closer  the  hand  he  held, 
and,  at  the  same  moment,  stooped 
his  head  and  kissed  her. 

"  Good-bye,  Hilda,  I  shall  look 
for  letters." 

"  Good-bye,  Aymer  " — her  voice 
was  unsteady — "  remember  I  shall 
live  in  the  hope  of  your  return." 

For  a  second  her  eyes  were 
lifted  to  his ;  then  her  tall  figure 
had  mingled  with  the  crowd,  al- 
most unconscious,  as  she  hurried 
along,  of  anything  but  her  own 
sad  thoughts,  behind  the  shelter  of 
her  veil. 

On  the  deck  Aymer  Digby 
stood  :  well  aware  of  those  loving, 
watching  eyes,  he  never  moved  as 
long  as  the  outlines  of  that  quiet, 
tall  figure  were  visible,  standing  a 
little  apart  from  the  small  crowd 
which  surrounded  her.  And,  after 
all,  it  was  not  for  very  long — twi- 
light was  throwing  a  haze  over 
everything,  even  before  his  reverie 
was  disturbed  by  the  loud,  angry 
voice  which  jerked  out  furious  ob- 
servations, in  his  immediate  vicin- 
ity, at  the  presence  still  on  board 


of  some  belated  visitor.  It  did 
not  need  the  look  he  gave  to  as- 
sure him  that  the  sobbing  woman 
being  hurried  away  into  the  semi- 
darkness,  utterly  regardless  of  the 
angry  words,  was  the  same  Ger- 
man woman  whose  loud  weeping 
had  alternately  annoyed  and  touch- 
ed him  earlier  in  the  afternoon. 

"  Well,  poor  soul,  the  wrench  is 
over  now ; "  and  he  looked  with  a 
sort  of  wondering  pity  at  her  dis- 
ordered hair,  and  red,  swollen 
eyelids,  the  tears  dripping  discon- 
solately down  her  cheeks :  it  was 
with  a  sigh  of  relief  his  eyes 
turned  back  to  Hilda  Forsythe's 
quiet,  graceful  figure  and  clasped 
hands. 

Long  after  it  was  impossible  to 
see  her,  he  knew  the  expression  in 
her  tender  grey  eyes. 

The  confusion  consequent  on  de- 
parture reigned  a  little  longer, 
but  moment  by  moment  routine 
regained  its  dominion. 

The  lights  of  Queenstown  dis- 
appeared almost  immediately :  with 
the  dusk  had  come  up  a  light  mist, 
not  thick  enough  for  fog,  but  suf- 
ficiently penetrating  to  make  the 
passengers  forsake  the  deck,  and 
seek  the  shelter  of  the  saloon. 
When  dinner  was  over  only  Aymer 
Digby  returned  to  the  deck,  and 
paced  its  solitary  length,  as  the 
great  ship  slipped  steadily  through 
the  quiet  waters,  and  the  stars 
peered  now  and  then  through  the 
filmy  mist  overhead. 

His  thoughts  were  elsewhere, — 
they  had  wandered  to  the  land  he 
had  left,  the  sister  he  had  left; 
almost  imperceptibly  from  her 
they  had  wandered  to  the  fair, 
treacherous  woman  who  had  laid 
bare  his  life.  Painted  011  the 
curtain  of  the  darkness  appeared 
the  tall,  lovely  figure,  the  delicate 
oval  face,  the  forget-me-not  blue 
eyes,  and  crown  of  rich  gold  hair, 


1891' 


Felicity  Brooke. 


821 


a  picture  that  it  seemed  he  might 
never  hope  to  forget.  It  was  with 
an  impatient  movement  he  recog- 
nised whither  his  thoughts  had 
strayed, — and  with  the  movement, 
he  turned  to  find  himself  face  to 
face  with  one  of  the  officers  of  the 
ship. 

The  man  was  about  to  pass  him, 
his  solitary  pacing  did  not  seem 
to  invite  companionship,  but  Sir 
Aymer,  tired  of  loneliness,  paused, 
and  as  he  did  so — 

"  You  have  got  the  place  to 
yourself,"  the  new-comer  said. 
"  You  have  made  your  escape,  I 
suppose,  from  all  the  excitement 
below  ? " 

"  Excitement !  "  Sir  Aymer  re- 
peated, wonderingly  ;  "  every  one 
seemed  to  me  half  asleep  before 
dinner  was  over." 

"  You  have  not  then  heard  " — the 
officer  laughed  as  he  spoke — "  that 
we  have  found  a  'stowaway'  on 
board?" 

"  No."  Sir  Aymer  shook  his 
head,  and  looked  inquiringly  at 
his  companion,  roused  to  curiosity 
by  something  in  his  voice  and  smile. 

"  Oh,  not  the  usual  stowaway, 
a  whimpering,  half -starved,  half- 
frightened  boy  —  very  much  the 
contrary  !  This  is  a  fine  handsome 
girl,  not  at  all  frightened  or  dis- 
pleased with  her  performances, — 
and  hungry,  shockingly  hungry. 
They  are  feeding  her  down  there 
now ;  every  one  on  board  is  assist- 
ing, I  should  think,  except  you 
and  me." 

"  What  happened  1  Did  she  fall 
asleep — 

"  Bless  you,  no  !  I  never  saw 
any  one  wider  awake  !  She  hid  in 
the  ladies'  saloon,  and  here  she  is, 
four  hours  out  from  Queenstown, 
bound,  at  any  rate,  for  this  voyage  ! 
She  was  with  a  governess,"  he  con- 
tinued, as  Sir  Aymer  still  looked 
questioningly  at  him,  "  and  whilst 
she  was  saying  good-bye  to  a  friend, 


our  young  lady  secreted  herself, 
and  somehow  apparently  managed 
to  escape  notice  in  the  confusion 
of  departure." 

There  came  to  Sir  Aymer  an 
instant's  pained  reminder  of  the 
weeping  woman  from  whose  pres- 
ence he  had  turned  away  this 
afternoon — the  weeping  woman  of 
whom  Hilda  had  spoken  pitifully — 
and  almost  immediately  the  doubt 
was  converted  into  certainty. 

"Here  she  is."  And  up  on 
deck,  close  beside  where  they 
stood,  appeared  the  blue  serge- 
clad  figure  of  the  girl  he  had 
noticed. 

Certainly,  no  regret  or  anxiety 
visible  there.  The  red  mouth  was 
curved  into  happy  smiles,  the  rich 
colour  burnt  in  her  cheeks,  the 
black -lashed  eyes  reflected  the 
smile  as  she  stepped  on  to  the 
deck.  As  she  stood  still  a  second, 
the  wind  lifting  her  dark  curls, 
health,  careless,  youthful  happiness, 
was  in  every  line  of  the  fresh  face 
and  strong  young  figure. 

By  her  side  was  the  grey-headed 
captain ;  following  her  a  tall,  slight, 
languid  American,  enveloped  in 
wraps,  whose  high-pitched  voice 
reached  the  ears  of  Sir  Aymer 
Digby  as  she  proffered  the  con- 
tents of  her  dressing-bag  and 
portmanteau. 

"  She  is  a  smart  girl,"  she  said, 
as  the  quicker  steps  of  the  other 
two  made  hurry  requisite  to  keep 
up  with  them,  pausing  by  Sir 
Aymer's  side ;  "  and  a  handsome 
girl,"  glancing  after  her  with 
honest  admiration ;  "  and  only  fif- 
teen !  My,  I  would  never  have 
thought  she  was  English  !  " 

"And  is  she?" 

"Yes,  her  name  is  Felicity 
Brooke :  she  is  an  orphan,  and 
lives  with  an  aunt.  The  aunt 
has  gone  to  London,  taking  her 
daughters  with  her,  and  left  miss 
in  the  charge  of  a  stupid  old 


Felicity  Brooke, 


[Dec. 


German  governess  at  a  dull  little 
village  in  Ireland;  but  miss  has 
rather  turned  the  tables,  I  guess," 
with  a  slow,  careless  laugh. 

11  Rather  a  mean  turning  of  the 
tables,  is  it  not,  Mrs  Davis  1  " 

The  lady  laughed  again.  '  '  Come 
now,  Sir  Aymer,  you  might  allow 
it  was  a  pretty  smart  trick." 

"You  all  seem  to  admire  it  so 
much  that  I  suppose  it  was,"  Sir 
Aymer  replied,  dryly.  "Well, 
good-night,  I  am  going  to  smoke, 
and  I  advise  you  to  go  down- 
stairs ;  it  has  grown  damp  and 
chilly." 

A  cigar,  even  a  good  one,  falls 
short  of  perfection  if  not  smoked 
in  solitude  or  congenial  company. 
Although  he  sat  apart  with  a  book 
as  a  token  of  his  abstraction,  in- 
sistent voices  would  reach  his  un- 
willing ears  discussing  the  topic 
of  the  hour;  and  the  talk  did  not 
call  up  visions  of  the  dark,  hand- 
some girl,  but  of  the  poor,  weep- 
ing woman  whom  he  would  gladly 
have  forgotten.  It  was  not  long 
before  he  returned  to  the  chill 
misty  night,  but  he  only  paced 
the  deck  long  enough  to  finish  his 
cigar  before  seeking  his  cabin  :  in 
dreamland  the  chances  were  that 
old  memories  and  this  day's  part- 
ing would  be  alike  forgotten. 

There  were  very  few  ladies  on 
board,—  only  Mrs  Davis,  languid 
and  delicate,  and  several  mothers 
whose  interests  were  bounded  by 
families  of  small  children  ;  and  it 
was  by  their  unanimous  vote,  as 
much  as  by  the  admiration  of  the 
many  men,  that  Felicity  Brooke 
stepped  into  the  position  of  Queen 
—Queen,  and  more  —  a  Heroine, 
who  had  achieved  something  quite 
out  of  the  common  round,  and 
had  brought  its  enlivenment  into 
the  dull  routine  of  everyday  ship- 
life.  A  queen  who  was  young 
and  beautiful  and  brimming  over 


with  health  and  spirits — who  had 
a  laugh  or  a  smile  for  every  one ; 
who  asked  nothing  better  than  to 
play  with  the  children,  or  wonder- 
ful games  of  cricket  with  the  men ; 
who  was  always  ready  to  move 
Mrs  Davis's  pillows,  and  help  her 
and  her  innumerable  shawls  and 
wraps  to  another  part  of  the  ship, 
as  her  fancy  might  suggest;  who 
was  equally  ready  to  pace  up  and 
down  the  ship  for  any  length  of 
time  by  the  captain's  side,  asking 
eager  questions  which  it  delighted 
him  to  answer,  or  listening  to  his 
tales  of  his  home  and  the  little 
ones  there.  Truly,  by  the  time 
they  had  been  three  days  out  at 
sea,  there  was  not  a  man  or  woman 
on  board  into  whose  heart  or  fancy 
she  had  not  found  her  way.  If 
she  had  favourites  —  and  every 
queen  is  in  her  right  there — they 
were  Jem  Moore  the  quartermaster 
and  over-burdened  Mrs  Meredith, 
the  second-class  passenger,  taking 
out  her  three  children  who  could 
walk,  and  her  new  baby  who  could 
not,  to  join  a  husband  who  had 
gone  on  before  to  get  things 
ready,  leaving  her  with  her  mother, 
to  follow  when  she  was  able. 

To  Jem  Moore  it  was  that 
Felicity  confided  that  really  it 
would  have  been  easier  for  poor 
Mrs  Meredith  if  none  of  the  four 
had  been  able  to  walk.  "  And  it 
would  have  been  kinder,  don't  you 
think,  Jem,  if  her  husband  had 
taken  some  of  them  with  him  ? 
It  seems  to  me  rather  unfair." 

And  Jem  agreed.  "  Yes,  miss ; 
but  still,  you  see,  the  mother 
understands  them  better.  What 
would  a  man  do  when  they're  all 
howling  together,  as  they  were  last 
night !" 

But  this  was  no  answer  for 
Felicity.  "  He  ought  to  know 
what  to  do,  just  the  same,"  she 
answered,  severely.  "It  is  quite 
as  unpleasant  for  Mrs  Meredith." 


1894.] 


Felicity  Brooke. 


823 


"I  hope  he  will  have  found 
work,"  Jem  observed,  his  mind 
flying  on  to  a  more  important 
topic ;  "  it  will  be  bad  for  these 
poor  things  if  he  hasn't." 

But  the  future  did  not  trouble 
Felicity  Brooke. 

"I  am  going  to  them  now,"  she 
said,  excusing  herself.  "  I  have 
promised  to  play  with  them  a 
little;  it  rests  Mrs  Meredith." 

Jem's  admiring  eyes  followed  her 
strong,  lithe  figure  as  she  walked 
away.  Other  eyes  turned  and 
watched  her  also;  even  the  cap- 
tain stopped  and  called  to  her  by 
name,  but  she  continued  on  her 
way,  with  a  little  flush  of  gratified 
vanity  as  she  shook  her  head  and 
repeated  her  refusals. 

Vanity  is  almost  as  observant  as 
love;  indeed,  as  it  is  a  matter  of 
head,  not  heart,  it  is  a  question 
whether  it  is  not  more  quick  to 
note  any  remissness  in  its  cour- 
tiers. Amongst  all  the  eager, 
kindly  voices,  one  alone  was  not 
heard — one  pair  of  grey  eyes  was 
never  lifted  from  a  book. 

"Good  morning,  Sir  Aymer." 
Impossible  to  turn  a  deaf  ear  to 
the  sound  of  his  own  name.  Sir 
Aymer  looked  up,  though  there 
was  little  encouragement  to  pro- 
long the  conversation  in  his  un- 
smiling eyes.  But  Felicity  Brooke 
was  not  to  be  daunted  by  unsmil- 
ing eyes  or  even  grave  silence.  To 
reign  a  queen  has  this  advantage 
— it  gives  confidence. 

"What  a  glorious  day!"  To 
bring  herself  nearer  to  the  level 
of  him  she  addressed,  she  drew 
closer  some  absent  passenger's 
chair  and  seated  herself,  and,  as 
she  did  so,  she  took  off  her  cap 
and  fanned  herself  slowly  with  it. 
"I  am  very  hot,"  she  said,  as  if 
apologetically.  "  Cricket  on  board 
ship  makes  one  much  hotter  than 
it  does  on  shore." 

"I  daresay,"  he  replied  politely, 

VOL.  CLVT. — NO.  DCCCCL. 


and,  as  it  seemed  his  turn  to  say 
something,  "Are  you  a  cricketer  ?" 
he  questioned. 

"  Yes ;  I  am  rather  good." 

She  spoke  modestly,  but  there 
was  no  mistaking  that  the  "rather" 
was  only  added  for  the  sake  of 
conventionality.  For  a  moment 
she  was  silent,  her  eyes  turned 
seaward,  but  wherever  her  thoughts 
may  have  been,  they  were  not  bent 
on  self.  The  glaring  sunshine 
flooded  her,  bringing  out  red  gold 
gleams  in  her  thick,  dark  curls — it 
almost  seemed  as  if  it  was  redden- 
ing her  cheeks  as  she  waited ;  the 
slender  hand  that  slowly  waved 
the  cap  was  brown  as  a  Spaniard's. 

"If  Bob — he  is  my  brother — 
had  been  allowed,  to  spend  his 
holidays  with  me," — the  silence 
was  suddenly  broken, — "I  should 
never  have  wished  to  run  away. 
I  was  quite  as  good  as  a  brother 
to  him — he  often  said  so.  I  can 
swim  better  than  he  can;  and  as 
for  cricket, — riding, — fishing," — 
slowly  enumerating  her  accomplish- 
ments,— "we  were  just  about  equal. 
You  don't  believe  me,  of  course," 
her  voice  growing  more  impetuous, 
as  he  made  no  comment,  "  because 
I  am  a  girl,  but  it  is  true  all  the 
same !  I  am  immensely  strong, 
and,"  standing  up,  "  now  that  I 
have  begun  to  grow,  I  am  not  at 
all  a  bad  height.  I  am  five  feet 
six — Bob  always  was  afraid  I 
should  be  short." 

"  My  dear  child,  I  am  not  doubt- 
ing your  list  of  perfections." 

Even  to  Felicity  Brooke's  youth- 
ful ears  the  slight  strain  of  irony 
was  audible.  She  reddened  visibly. 

"  I  did  not  mean  to  boast,"  she 
said  quickly;  "  of  course  it  was  luck 
— I  mean,  as  there  were  only  the 
two  of  us,  I  had  just  the  same  ad- 
vantages as  Bob.  If  Bob,"  revert- 
ing to  her  first  words,  "had  been 
with  me,  I  should  have  been  able 
to  bear  it ;  as  it  was  " — an  expres- 
3n 


824 


Felicity  Brooke. 


[Dec. 


sive  silence,  a  silence  which  the 
man  interpreted  to  mean  that  it 
rested  with  him  to  fill  it  up  with 
questions,  but  he  did  not  take  ad- 
vantage of  the  unspoken  permis- 
sion. The  whole  story  was  well 
known  to  him  through  the  gossip 
of  the  passengers. 

But  apparently  unaffected  by  the 
silence,  "  When  they  told  me  that 
Bob  was  to  spend  his  holidays  in 
Scotland,"  she  went  on,  "  and  that 
I  was  to  remain  alone  in  Ireland 
with  Fraulein,  I  knew,"  lifting 
her  eyes  suddenly,  "  that  I  should 
not  be  able  to  bear  it !  I  was 
rather  frightened  at  first,  but  after 
all,  it  was  nothing  really — it  only 
wanted  a  little  courage." 

"  Courage  ! "  the  word  had  scarce- 
ly passed  her  lips  before  it  was 
repeated  by  the  man.  "  Don't  call 
things  by  wrong  names.  It  was  a 
hateful,  odious,  cowardly  thing  to 
do!" 

"  Cowardly  !  "  There  was  a  blaze 
of  light  in  her  luminous  eyes  as 
she  echoed  his  word,  in  undisguis- 
edly  angry  tones. 

"Some  one,  I  suppose,"  he  said 
shortly,  "has  to  bear  the  blame. 
It  seems  to  me  cowardly  to  have 
run  away,  and  left  it  to  some  one 
else."  His  thoughts  were  with  the 
weeping  woman  of  whom  Hilda 
had  spoken  pitifully.  He  scarce- 
ly heeded  the  flushed,  angry  face 
of  the  girl,  scarcely  noted  her 
quivering  lips,  as,  without  a  word, 
she  left  him.  But  she  did  not  go 
on  her  way  as  she  had  intended, 
to  where  Mrs  Meredith  sat  with 
her  children;  she  hurried  in  the 
contrary  direction,  and  a  few 
minutes  later  her  clear  voice 
reached  Aymer  Digby's  ears  as 
she  joined  the  little  group  playing 
hop-scotch. 

The  glorious  morning  was  the 
forerunner  of  a  calm,  cloudless  day. 
"It  might  have  been  July,"  the 


captain  said,  and  the  passengers 
began  already  to  talk  of  land,  and 
the  quickest  passage,  and  of  what 
they  should  do  when  once  ashore. 

"  I  am  worried  about  that  child," 
Captain  Baxter  confided  to  Sir 
Aymer,  as  the  two  loitered  about 
together.  "She  says  she  is  not 
going  to  return  to  England,  but 
that  she  has  determined  to  go  on 
to  Charleston,  where  she  has  re- 
lations, and  ask  them  to  keep  her." 

"But  that,  of  course,  is  non- 
sense ? " 

There  had  been  a  slight  interro- 
gation in  Captain  Baxter's  words 
to  which  Sir  Aymer's  seemed  an 
answer. 

"  She  is  a  high-spirited  girl,"  the 
captain  observed,  "  and  I  expect 
the  aunt  with  whom  she  lives 
finds  her  a  handful." 

"  It  is  more  than  probable.  For- 
tunately, however,  with  that  we 
have  nothing  to  do.  All  you  have 
to  do  is  to  give  her  over  into  the 
charge  of  the  captain  of  the  next 
steamer  returning  this  way,  and 
send  a  telegram  to  the  aunt. 
Your  duties  are  at  any  rate  clear 
and  limited  ;  it  is  the  aunt,  I  think, 
whose  position  is  to  be  deplored  ! " 

"I  don't  think,"  said  Captain 
Baxter,  weakly,  "that  the  aunt 
was  very  kind  to  her." 

"  Young  ladies,  captain,  with 
strong  wills,  have  a  fancy  for 
supposing  so." 

"She  is  very  handsome,  don't 
you  think?" 

Sir  Aymer  Digby  laughed.  ' '  My 
dear  sir,  I  am  afraid  that  your 
judgment  has  been  a  little  sus- 
pended in  consequence  !  Imagine, 
now,  one  of  your  own  daughters 
having  placed  herself,  through 
such  an  odious  trick,  in  the  false 
position  in  which  this  girl  finds 
herself,  what  would  your  feelings 
be?" 

Captain  Baxter  paused  and 
looked  seaward,  not  into  the 


1894.] 


Felicity  Brooke. 


825 


speaker's  face,  as  he  answered. 
Perhaps  out  there,  on  the  horizon 
line,  his  fancy  pictured  the  little 
toddling  children  that  awaited  his 
return, — perhaps  the  picture  in- 
spired his  answer. 

"I  cannot  imagine  it,"  he  an- 
swered. "I  cannot  imagine  any 
child  of  mine,  fatherless  and 
motherless,  turning  to  a  stranger, 
and  with  those  frank  honest  eyes 
telling  him  '  that  she  was  too  un- 
happy to  live  in  the  home  selected 
for  her,  —  that  anyone  must  be 
kinder  than  the  woman  who  stood 
to  her  in  her  mother's  place.' 
There's  something  very  wrong 
before  such  things  come  to  pass, 
and,  please  God  I  reach  old  Ire- 
land again,  I  shall  find  out  for 
myself  what  it  is." 

Sir  Aymer  did  not  laugh  again, 
but  neither  was  he  convinced. 

"You  are  a  regular  paladin, 
captain,"  he  said  ;  "  you  will  have 
this  ship  the  resort  of  all  distressed 
damsels ! " 

"  That  was  a  mistake,  of  course," 
Captain  Baxter  said,  gravely,  "  but 
— she  is  only  a  child,  and  she  did 
not,  I  daresay,  give  much  thought 
to  anything  but  the  momentary 
relief  of  escape." 

"  Not  much  thought  to  anyone 
but  herself,"  was  the  reflection  Sir 
Aymer  Digby  took  away  with  him, 
but  he  did  not  utter  it  aloud,  nor 
the  continuation  thereof,  "that 
such  was  the  custom  of  most  women 
he  had  known."  He  did  have  the 
grace,  however,  to  except  Hilda 
Forsythe. 

"  Jem  "  —  flushed  with  much 
exercise  in  the  hot  sun,  Felicity 
paused  by  the  quartermaster's  side 
that  same  splendid  afternoon — 
"Jem,  it  is  very  insulting,  is  it 
not,  when  a  man  tells  another  man 
that  he  is  a  coward  1 " 

"  Yes,  miss,"  Jem  answered 
laconically;  but  he  lingered,  watch- 


ing the  brilliant  face,  in  expecta- 
tion of  a  translation  of  the  mys- 
terious question. 

"What  would  you  do,"  —  she 
came  closer,  and  lowered  her  voice 
confidentially, — "if  any  one  said 
that  to  you?" 

"Begging  your  pardon,  miss,  I 
should  knock  him  down." 

The  dark  eyes  were  lifted  ad- 
miringly to  Jem  Moore's  stalwart 
proportions  and  curly  locks ;  then 
she  sighed,  a  heavy,  troubled 
sigh.  "But  you  see  a  woman 
couldn't." 

"Couldn't  what,  miss?" — Jem 
looked  bewildered.  "  Couldn't 
knock  him  down1?  No,  of  course 
not,'"1  with  a  smile ;  "  but  then, 
miss,  a  man  would  never  say  such 
things  to  a  woman,  not  leastways 
to  a  nice  woman." 

Felicity  Brooke  pursued  her 
afternoon  walk  without  another 
word, — there  was  not  much  com- 
fort to  be  gained  from  Jem's  reply. 
It  was  with  a  heavy  heart  she 
approached  the  spot  where  Mrs 
Meredith,  enjoying  a  momentary 
respite  from  crying  children,  was 
knitting  in  the  sunshine,  one  little 
fellow  sitting  on  her  lap,  whilst  a 
neighbour  amused  the  three  other 
little  things. 

Here  at  any  rate  was  a  diver- 
sion— a  means  of  banishing  unde- 
sired  thoughts,  so  easily  banished 
at  that  age. 

"  May  I  take  him  ? "  she  began 
directly,  kneeling  down  by  Mrs 
Meredith's  side. 

"  Oh,  miss,  he's  quiet  now," 
Mrs  Meredith  answered,  depre- 
catingly ;  "  and  he's  been  that 
fretful " — she  paused,  perhaps  hop- 
ing that  the  faint  discouragement 
might  be  acquiesced  in.  But  at 
fifteen  a  baby  is  a  toy,  like  any 
other  toy,  to  be  played  with,  and 
nursed  and  tormented,  till  its 
screams  make  it  an  undesirable 
companion,  in  which  case  it  can 


826 


Felicity  Brooke. 


[Dec. 


be  returned  to  the  nurse— or  the 
mother.  Felicity  was  no  excep- 
tion. Heedless  of  the  half -worded 
refusal,  a  minute  later  she  was 
running  up  and  down  the  deck, 
the  child  in  her  strong,  young 
arms,  laughing  as  he  caught  at 
her  curls,  or  smiled  at  her. 

"He  is  a  dear,"  she  said  once, 
as  she  passed  the  mother,  who 
looked  after  him  with  proud  eyes, 
"and  he  likes  me  to  play  with 
him.  See  how  he  is  laughing." 

"  I  am  sure  he  does,"  Mrs  Mere- 
dith said,  diplomatically,  as  she 
returned  to  her  talk  with  a  friend. 

"  That  is  the  tea-bell."  A  few 
minutes  later  she  rose  with  this 
remark,  and  stood  up  to  collect 
her  little  flock. 

"  I  must  take  him  now,  miss," 
approaching  the  side  of  the  vessel 
as  she  spoke;  "it  is  very  good  of 
you  to  have  played  with  him  so 
long." 

"  He  does  not  want  to  go  to 
you,"  the  girl  cried.  "  See,  he 
loves  me  best,"  smiling  in  glad 
triumph,  and  stepping  backwards 
as  Mrs  Meredith  approached,  hold- 
ing the  child  up  above  her  head ; 
and  as  she  did  so,'  suddenly  the 
vessel  gave  a  quick,  violent  lurch, 
the  girl,  unable  to  steady  herself, 
threw  out  her  hand  to  catch  at 
something  where  there  was  noth- 
ing, the  mother  made  a  dart  for- 
ward— they  were  but  a  step  apart 
— but  too  late !  the  child,  with  a 
weak  cry,  had  disappeared. 

One  hoarse  terrible  scream  rang 
through  the  still  air  and  echoed 
in  the-  ears  of  every  one  on  deck, 
— a  scream  which  brought  every 
hearer  with  a  rush  to  the  spot. 
But  that  takes  minutes,  and  there 
was  not  a  minute,  not  a  second's 
space,  between  the  mother's  heart- 
broken cry  and  the  splash  as 
Felicity  Brooke  touched  the  water. 
The  same  splash,  so  it  seemed, 
took  Aymer  Digby,  who  had  been 


leaning  against  the  side,  in  after 
her. 

"Man  overboard  ! "  Noise  and 
confusion  all  around,  loud-voiced 
orders,  a  sudden  cessation  of  the 
throb  of  the  engines,  an  unusual, 
sudden,  fearful  silence,  broken 
only  by  human  voices,  which 
sounded  so  small  and  unimportant 
after  the  loud  incessant  breathing 
of  the  engine  —  and  away  out 
yonder,  a  small  dark  spot  on 
the  quiet  waters. 

"  She's  got  him,  she's  got  hold 
of  him,"  some  one  said,  and  caught 
Mrs  Meredith's  hand,  and  kept  re- 
peating the  words  mechanically. 
All  in  such  a  moment  of  time, 
unrealisable  how  short,  except 
that  the  boat  was  still  being 
lowered,  and  a  man  throwing  a 
buoy. 

"  She  would  never  have  had 
the  strength  to  hold  him,  though," 
Jem  Moore's  voice  said,  as  if  in 
answer ;  "  but  she's  all  right  now," 
glancing  towards  the  swimmer. 

A  quarter  of  an  hour  later  the 
steamer  was  continuing  her  course, 
the  strange  awful  silence  a  mo- 
mentary, hideous  dream  of  what 
might  have  been,  the  child  ap- 
parently none  the  worse,  safe  in 
his  mother's  arms,  and  Felicity 
Brooke — the  water  running  off  her 
wet  clothes,  her  cheeks  whiter 
than  any  one  had  ever  seen  them 
— was  standing  on  the  deck,  whilst 
one  after  another  of  her  fellow  voy- 
agers crowded  round,  clasping  her 
hands,  uttering  words  of  praise  or 
advice. 

"  Not  another  syllable," — but  as 
he  spoke  the  captain  did  not 
move  his  hand  from  where  it 
rested  on  the  girl's  soaked  shoul- 
der ;  "  now,  doctor,  give  your 
orders — dry  clothes  and  bed,  I 
should  think?" 

But  not  all  the  doctors'  orders 
in  the  world  would  have  sent 
Felicity  Brooke  to  bed  that  night. 


1894.] 


Felicity  Brooke. 


827 


When  the  dinner-hour  came  round 
she  was  in  her  place  by  the  cap- 
tain's side,  the  red  back  in  her 
cheeks.  "  I  just  ran  up  and  down 
the  deck  till  I  was  warm,"  she 
confided  to  him ;  "  that  is  what 
Bob  always  made  me  do  when  I 
was  cold  after  swimming." 

Perhaps  it  was  only  the  dress, 
but  she  looked  different  to-night, 
the  captain  thought.  Out  of  her 
innumerable  toilettes,  kind,  feeble 
Mrs  Davis  had  at  last  discovered 
some  loose,  white  muslin  wrapper, 
that  by  the  help  of  judicious  pin- 
ning had  been  drawn  across  the 
young  figure :  the  long  trailing 
skirt  and  open  sleeves  gave  her  a 
more  womanly  look,  which  was  at 
variance  with  the  dark  childish 
eyes,  the  rich  complexion,  and 
unlined  cheeks. 

She  was  but  a  child ;  she  could 
not  hide  the  pride  and  triumph  of 
the  moment.  It  flashed  from  her 
dark  eyes,  and  was  as  intoxicating 
as  the  champagne  in  which  they 
drank  her  health.  It  was  only 
afterwards,  when  the  diners  dis- 
persed, that  she  realised  there  had 
been  an  absentee. 

"Where  is  Sir  Aymer?" 

"  Ah,  he  is  not  as  young  as  you 
are,"  Dr  Grey  paused  on  his  way 
to  the  door  to  answer  the  question ; 
"he  has  got  a  chill,  and  has  gone 
to  bed  with,  I  fear,  a  feverish 
night  before  him." 

"  Oh  I  am  so  sorry ; "  but  as  she 
said  the  words  she  was  turning 
away.  "I  must  go  and  see  the 
baby,"  as  the  captain  would  have 
detained  her. 

"  How  foolish,"  Mrs  Davis  pro- 
tested, in  her  slow  southern  drawl; 
"but  if  you  are  going,  put  on  my 
fur  cloak.  Oh  captain  !  I  wish  I 
had  had  a  daughter,"  she  went 
on,  as  the  girl  disappeared.  "I 
should  have  liked  a  daughter  like 
that ! " 

The  captain  refrained  from  re- 


plying that  even  if  such  had  been 
the  case,  the  resemblance  would 
not  probably  have  been  great. 

"  She  wants  me  to  take  her  to 
Charleston,  and  give  her  over  to 
her  relations  in  the  south.  I 
should  like  that ;  do  you  think  it 
can  be  arranged  ? " 

"We  must  wait  till  we  get  to 
New  York,  and  see,"  the  captain 
answered,  diplomatically. 

The  night  was  cold,  though  still ; 
up  on  deck  there  were  not  many 
people — only  a  few  dark,  shadowy 
forms,  most  of  them  discernible  by 
the  red  light  of  a  cigar.  Felicity, 
in  her  long  dark  cloak,  passed  un- 
recognised on  her  way  until  the 
descent  to  Mrs  Meredith's  cabin 
was  reached ;  but  arrived  there,  a 
man's  figure  stepped  out  of  the 
darkness  and  approached  her. 

"  Miss,"  in  a  hesitating  voice. 

"  Oh,  is  that  you,  Jem  ?  I  looked 
for  you  on  deck ;  I  wanted  to  see 
you.  I  am  just  going  down  to  see 
how  the  little  boy  is." 

"He's  all  right,  so  his  mother 
says — and  you,  miss,  you  are  none 
the  worse?  It  was  real  brave, — 
and  that's  what  I  wanted  to  tell 
you." 

Her  eyes  shone  at  the  words, 
perhaps  at  some  tone  in  the  voice. 

"  But  you  see,"  was  all  she  said, 
"it  was  my  fault  to  begin  with. 
I  didn't  stop  to  think  afterwards, 
I  know ;  but  if  I  had  not  done  it, 
if  the  baby  had  been  drowned  " — 
her  voice  fell — "it  would  have 
been  just  like  murder." 

"Oh  no,  miss,  it  would  have 
been  an  accident;  but  you  saved 
his  life,  poor  little  thing,  that's 
sure ! " 

"And  Sir  Aymer  saved  mine. 
I  don't  think  I  could  have  held 
the  child  much  longer." 

"It  was  a  mercy,"  Jem  observed, 
"that  it  was  such  a  still  day,  and 
that  he  was  standing  so  close  to 
you.  I  got  up  to  the  side  just  as 


828 


Felicity  Brooke. 


[Dec. 


he  jumped,  and  when  I  saw  what 
a  fine  swimmer  he  was,  I  knew  it 
would  be  all  right.  If  he  had  not 
been  so  near,  I'd  have  been  the 
first,  and  gone  after  you  myself." 

"Thank  you,  Jem,"  Felicity  an- 
swered, soberly;  and  she  laid  her 
slim  hand  in  the  sailor's.  "I'd 
rather  it  had  been  you,  because 
we've  always  been  good  friends; 
but  it  was  very  brave  of  him,"  she 
added,  as  she  moved  away,  as  if 
afraid  she  had  been  rather  sparing 
of  her  praise. 

"It  was  his  duty,  miss,"  Jem 
replied,  seriously.  The  words,  per- 
haps the  tone,  perplexed  her  after- 
wards, when  they  now  and  again 
recurred  to  her.  Unconsciously 
they  served  as  a  sort  of  reverse  of 
the  medal,  of  which  the  one  side 
had  been  given  to  her. 

But  a  quiet,  dreamless  night 
drowned  all  unpleasant  memories, 
or  faintly  troubling  thoughts, 
though  at  breakfast  Sir  Aymer's 
empty  place  reminded  her  again, 
with  a  pang  of  regret,  of  his  per- 
sonality. 

"Is  Sir  Aymer  still  ill,  Dr 
Grey  1 " 

"Yes,  he  is  feverish.  I  hope, 
however,  it  will  pass  off.  It  is  a 
bad  cold,"  as  her  questioning  eyes 
did  not  leave  his  face.  "He  is 
not  very  ill,  but  bed  is  the  safest 
place." 

The  doctor  turned  away — it  was 
a  busy  hour ;  the  only  thing  left  to 
do  was  to  go  on  deck  and  join  in 
the  sports  there.  But  a  little  later 
she  had  escaped,  and  had  sought 
out  Mrs  Meredith. 

"I  have  to  keep  running  over 
to  see  how  he  is,"  she  explained, 
kneeling  down  on  the  deck,  where 
the  boy  slept,  his  fat  hand  under 
his  rosy  cheek;  "he  looks  quite 
well,  don't  you  think?" 

"Yes,  miss,  I  hope  so."  Poor 
Mrs  Meredith !  as  much  could  not 
be  said  for  her.  She  looked  slighter 


more  delicate  than  ever;  there 
were  dark  lines  under  her  eyes, 
her  cheeks  even  looked  thinner. 
There  was  a  nervous  fear  in  her 
eyes  as  the  girl  knelt  by  the  child  : 
she  stooped  and  arranged  the  shawl 
that  covered  him,  touching  his  cheek 
with  her  hand  as  she  did  so. 

"You  look  very  tired,"  Felicity 
said. 

"Yes,  miss,  I  am  tired,"  she 
said,  patiently;  "  the  children  were 
naughty,  and  I  could  not  sleep. 
I  was  so  nervous  and  upset,  and 

I  kept  thinking Oh,  miss," 

breaking  off  suddenly,  "  you  are 
a  brave  young  lady !  And  the 
gentleman  too.  He  is  ill,  the 
doctor  says,  but  I  cannot  rest  till 
I  have  thanked  him.  I  am  just 
going  down  to  see  him." 

"Oh,  I'll  go  with  you,"  Fel- 
icity cried,  getting  up  hastily. 
"  Of  course  he  must  think  it-  un- 
kind of  us  not  to  have  been  be- 
fore. Come,"  she  had  started 
impetuously,  whilst  Mrs  Meredith 
was  still  giving  over  the  care  of  the 
sleeping  child  to  a  friend. 

"  Come  in." 

The  answer  to  the  low  knock 
was  certainly  given  in  extremely 
cross  tones,  but  Mrs  Meredith  did 
not  observe  the  fact :  she  was  not 
suspicious,  and  her  mind  was  too 
much  preoccupied  to  perceive  how 
very  unwelcoming  was  the  recep- 
tion her  entrance  met  with. 

"I  have  come,"  she  began  di- 
rectly, "to  thank  you.  I  could 
not  wait  any  longer,  and  when 
they  told  me  you  were  ill " 

"  Do  sit  down.  Please,"  as  she 
hesitated,  svsaying  a  little  from 
side  to  side ;  and  it  was  only  when 
she  took  the  one  camp-stool,  and 
seated  herself  obediently,  that  Sir 
Aymer  became  aware  of  the  other 
figure  in  the  doorway,  the  figure  in 
the  well-known  blue  serge,  looking 
at  him  with  frank  sympathy  in  her 


1894.] 


Felicity  Brooke. 


829 


dark  eyes.  "Yes,  it  is  I,"  she 
said,  in  answer  to  the  look  •  "  I 
wanted  to  thank  you,"  and  she 
took  a  step  nearer.  "  We  should 
both  have  been  drowned  if  it  had 
not  been  for  you." 

He  did  not  reply  to  her  words, 
but  he  spoke  kindly  to  the  woman, 
asking  after  the  child,  questioning 
her  about  her  future  and  her  past, 
and  there  was  something  in  his 
softened  tone  which  showed  he 
was  touched  by  her  expressions  of 
gratitude. 

When  she  rose,  it  was  in  begging 
that  he  would  send  for  her  if  there 
was  anything  she  could  do. 

"You  look  very  feverish,  sir, 
and  you  are  so  hoarse — I  am  afraid 
you  have  a  bad  cold." 

"  I  am  afraid  so." 

In  the  doorway  she  paused,  wait- 
ing for  her  companion.  As  she 
had  risen,  Felicity  had  slipped 
down  on  to  the  vacated  seat. 
Leaning  a  little  nearer,  so  that 
only  Sir  Aymer  caught  the  words, 
—  so  near  that  her  dark  curls 
touched  his  hand,  "Tell  me,"  she 
said,  impetuously,  "  was  it  brave  ? 
Did  you  think  so  1 " 

"  Brave,"  he  repeated.  "  Jump- 
ing overboard  do  you  mean  ?  Doub- 
ling the  danger  for  me,  and  the 
risk  for  every  one  !  No,  foolhardy, 
if  you  want  a  name.  At  least,  that 
is  what  I  should  call  it,  if  a  sister 
of  mine  had  behaved  in  the  same 
way." 

"But  I  can  swim."  The  eager 
pride  had  faded  off  her  face ;  she 
was  still  leaning  forward,  looking 
anxiously  at  him. 

"  So  can  I,"  he  replied,  shortly  ; 
"  and  as  I  am  a  strong  man,  and 
you  are  a  child,  it  stands  to  reason 
that,  as  I  was  there,  to  say  nothing 
of  many  others,  you  were  not  the 
right  person  to  go." 

"  The  captain  said  " — there  was 
a  flash  of  anger  in  her  eyes  and  in 
the  quick  tones  of  her  voice — "  that 


I  was  a  plucky  little  devil  —  I 
heard  him  say  so  to  the  doctor  ! " 

"  I  should  have  used  another 
adjective,"  was  all  Sir  Aymer  re- 
plied, rather  curtly,  too,  as  if  he 
had  had  enough  of  the  subject, 
and  his  hand  lifted  the  book  be- 
side him  as  he  spoke.  Mrs  Mere- 
dith was  still  standing  there  :  if 
Sir  Aymer  was  unaware  of  the 
fact,  she  noted  the  quiver  of  the 
red  lips,  she  knew  that  the  tears 
were  very  near  falling. 

"  Come,  missy,"  she  said,  kindly, 
and  she  put  her  arm  round  the 
girl,  "  we  must  go  back,  or  Johnny 
will  be  waking  and  crying  for  me. 
Gentlemen  are  always  cross  when 
they  are  ill,"  she  observed  discreet- 
ly, as  they  walked  away  side  by 
side ;  "  they  are  not  used  to  it,  and 
it  frets  them,  and  they  say  things 
they  don't  mean." 

Kindly,  comforting  interpreta- 
tion of  many  uncomfortable  words 
and  acts ! 

But  Aymer  Digby  probably 
thought  —  if  he  thought  of  them 
at  all — that  they  were  very  par- 
donable, as  he  reflected  that  an- 
other feverish  night  was  in  store 
for  him  ;  and  feverish  nights  were 
apt  to  be  haunted  with  the  mem- 
ory of  a  faithless  woman,  whom  he 
had  loved. 

The  same  brilliant  sunshine  that 
had  greeted  them  day  after  day 
welcomed  their  arrival  in  New 
York. 

"You  have  brought  us  good 
weather,"  the  captain  told  Feli- 
city as  she  sat  by  his  side  for  the 
last  time  at  breakfast ;  and  imme- 
diately afterwards  there  was  the 
excitement  of  approaching  land, 
and  farewells,  and  last  words  to 
pass  the  time,  until  the  landing 
hour  had  actually  arrived,  and  cer- 
tainty should  take  the  place  of 
doubt  as  to  what  her  next  step 
should  be. 

Sir  Aymer  was  well  again — no- 


830 


Felicity  Brooke, 


[Dec. 


minally,  tha€  is :  he  still  coughed, 
and  was  unpleasantly  reminded,  at 
every  moment,  of  that  plunge  into 
the  ocean,  but  he  was  the  only  one 
to  whom  any  evil  consequence 
clung. 

Mrs  Meredith  lost  some  of  her 
careworn  appearance  when  her 
husband  came  on  board  with  the 
news  of  good  health  and  steady 
employment.  He  looked  strong 
and  healthy  enough  to  be  able  to 
lift  some  of  the  weight  off  her  over- 
burdened shoulders.  With  chil- 
dren clinging  on  either  side,  and 
the  baby  in  his  arms,  he  stood  still, 
listening  to  the  story  of  Johnny's 
escape,  told  in  duet  by  Jem  Moore 
and  Mrs  Meredith.  His  some- 
what stolid  countenance  did  not 
betray  any  emotion,  but  when  the 
recital  was  over,  he  handed  the 
baby  to  Mrs  Meredith,  and,  sol- 
emnly divesting  himself  of  the 
other  manifold  packages  in  his 
arms,  he  took  Felicity's  hand  in 
his  great  clasp  and  wrung  it  seve- 
ral times. 

"  Well,  I  never  ! "  he  repeated 
once  or  twice ;  but  of  further  ex- 
pressions he  seemed  incapable. 
Gratitude  seemed  swallowed  up  in 
wonder.  After  that  he  continued 
on  his  way  laden  with  parcels  and 
babies,  like  some  great  merchant- 
man, feeble  Mrs  Meredith  following 
in  the  wake,  and  Felicity  holding 
the  baby. 

"  It  is  the  last  time  I  can  hold 
the  dear  little  thing,"— and  Mrs 
Meredith,  recognising  the  awful- 
ness  of  the  deprivation,  felt  ob- 
liged to  consent. 

"Who  is  that  girl?"  as  the 
little  procession  passed  by,  Percy 
Wyndham  —  who  was  on  board, 
discussing  future  plans  with  Sir 
Aymer  Digby  —  stopped  in  mid 
speech  to  inquire.  "  What  a  hand- 
some girl ! " 

"She  is   a   Miss   Brooke,"  Sir 


Aymer  replied.  He  was  loyally 
silent  as  to  the  escapade  which 
had  brought  her,  though  he  was 
aware  of  the  curiosity  in  his 
friend's  face. 

"One  of  the  Brookes  of  Hoi- 
den?" 

"  Yes,  I  believe  so." 

"  What  on  earth  is  she  doing 
here  1 " 

"  She  is  at  school,  I  believe,"  he 
answered,  vaguely,  "  but  I  really 
know  nothing  of  her ;  she  is  only 
a  child." 

"  She  will  be  a  lovely  woman," 
Mr  Wyndham  answered,  "or  I 
am  much  mistaken."  But  Aymer 
Digby  had  nothing  to  say  or  fore- 
tell on  the  subject,  and  the  con- 
versation drifted  to  more  import- 
ant topics. 

"  I  will  get  my  things  together," 
he  said,  "and  meet  you  at  the 
hotel  in  a  couple  of  hours,  and  we 
can  make  our  plans,"  and  on  that 
agreement  they  separated. 

Left  alone,  he  walked  over  to 
the  captain's  cabin,  into  which,  a 
quarter  of  an  hour  before,  he  had 
seen  disappear  Felicity's  blue  serge 
skirt.  Yes,  she  was  there,  but  as 
he  opened  the  door  she  passed 
him,  hurrying  away,  leaving  him 
and  the  captain  alone. 

"I  was  talking  to  her,"  the  cap- 
tain remarked.  "  This,"  touching 
a  telegram,  "  was  awaiting  me.  It 
is  from  her  aunt," — he  put  it  into 
Sir  Aymer's  hand  as  he  spoke  : — 

"  Return  by  next  steamer.  Mrs 
Lucas  will  meet  you,  and  take  you 
to  school  in  London." 

"  She  does  not  want  to  go,"  Cap- 
tain Baxter  observed,  as  he  laid 
it  down.  "She  wants  to  go  to 
Charleston  with  Mrs  Davis." 

"  I  suppose  her  wishes  don't 
very  much  matter,  after  all,"  Sir 
Aymer  commented.  "  Which  is 
the  steamer?" 

"  The  France  leaves  to-morrow." 


1894.] 


Felicity  Brooke. 


831 


"That  is  fortunate."  He  waited. 
It  was  a  moment  before  the  cap- 
tain added,  "  Mrs  Davis  is  taking 
her  ashore ;  she  will  stay  with  her 
to-night  at  the  hotel." 

"Well,  I  must  be  saying  good- 
bye, though  perhaps  we  shall  meet 
again.  Good-bye." 

But  at  the  door  he  turned 
back.  "  Has  she  money? "  he  asked, 
rather  awkwardly. 

"  Oh,  there's  no  difficulty  about 
that.  Mrs  Davis  will  see  she  gets 
all  she  wants." 

Sir  Aymer  breathed  a  sigh  of 
relief  when  he  had  shaken  hands 
with  Captain  Baxter,  and  stood 
once  more  on  deck.  It  was  empty 
of  passengers  now  \  there  was  no 
one  visible  except  officers  and  sail- 
ors, and  one  girlish  figure  walking 
up  and  down, — evidently  awaiting 
him,  for,  as  he  appeared,  she  hur- 
ried to  his  side  at  once. 

"  Sir  Aymer,  I  have  made  up 
my  mind,  —  I  am  going  back  to 
England  to-morrow  in  the  France." 
There  was  a  ring  of  exultant  tri- 
umph in  her  voice. 

"Well,  I  don't  see  that  you 
have  much  choice,  have  you  ? 
Your  aunt  has  telegraphed  her  in- 
structions to  the  captain." 

"  But  I  might  go  on  to  Charles- 
ton with  Mrs  Davis,"  she  persisted. 

"  My  dear  child,  at  your  age 
young  ladies  do  what  they  are 
told,  not  what  they  fancy." 

She  half-turned  her  head  away  ; 
the  soft  curls  hid  her  eyes  from 
him. 

"  Did  you  see  the  telegram  \ " 
she  questioned,  —  something  had 
gone  out  of  her  voice, — "she  is 
sending  me  to  school  in  London." 

"  The  result  of  making  fools  of 
ourselves,"  he  replied,  slowly,  "is 
rarely  agreeable."  There  was  per- 
haps an  added  poignancy  of  per- 
sonal suffering  in  the  remark. 

Two   tears   slowly   made    their 


way  into  the  dark  eyes,  but  she 
stared  steadfastly  out  to  sea  the 
while  behind  those  sheltering  curls. 
She  furtively  brushed  them  away, 
and  no  others  followed  them. 

She  walked  very  uprightly  by 
his  side  to  the  gangway,  holding 
her  head  very  high,  and  he  was 
quite  unconscious  of  the  effect  of 
his  words.  He  said  good-bye,  and 
did  not  even  once  look  back  to 
where  she  stood  leaning  against 
the  vessel's  side,  watching  his  re- 
treating form,  till  he  had  vanished 
out  of  her  sight.  And  even  then 
she  lingered,  before  she  turned,  to 
find  Jem  Moore  approaching. 

"  I  am  going  back  to  England," 
she  said,  "to-morrow,  in  the  France, 
and  when  I  get  there  I  am  to  be 
sent  to  school  in  London." 

"Well,  it  won't  be  for  long," 
Jem  observed,  consolingly. 

"Three  years,  I  suppose  —  it 
seems  to  me  centuries,"  she  re- 
plied, despondingly.  "Well,  the 
very  first  thing  I  shall  do  when 
they  are  over  will  be  to  go  an- 
other voyage,  and  if  it  could  be  on 
the  same  ship  as  you  are  on,  I 
should  choose  it;  so  if  you  leave 
this,  you  must  be  sure  and  tell 
me." 

"That  I  will,  surely." 

"I  will  give  you  my  address. 
You  had  better  write  to  Bob's 
house — that  is  my  brother — then 
it  is  sure  to  reach  me.  That  is 
it— 

' Robert  Brooke,  Esq., 

Holden  Manor, 

Elsdon:» 

She  wrote  it  as  she  spoke,  and 
handed  it  to  him.  "And  if  you 
should  hear  anything  of  the  Mere- 
diths, Jem,  you  might  mention  it 
in  your  letter.  I  asked  Mrs  Mere- 
dith to  write,  but  she  says  she  is  a 
poor  correspondent,  and  she  does 


832 


Felicity  Brooke. 


[Dec. 


not  think  there  will  be  much  time 
for  writing." 

"  Not  likely,"  Jem  assented.  ^ 

"  Mr  Meredith  seemed  very  nice, 
don't  you  think?"  she  went  on. 
"He  is  very  quiet,  but  he  looked 
kind ;  and  even  the  little  children 
did  not  seem  to  mind  him,  and 
Mrs  Meredith  was  rather  afraid 
they  might  not  like  him." 

With  this  view  of  the  case  Jem 
Moore  coincided — in  fact,  he  quite 
endorsed  her  summing-up  of  Mr 
Meredith  as  a  husband  and  father, 
adding  thereto  that  he  preferred 
the  silence  to  what  might  have 
been.  "I  was  rather  afraid,  miss, 
as  I  told  you  once,  as  to  what  sort 
of  a  man  he  might  be,  but  I  was 
glad  when  I  saw  he  wasn't  a  jab- 
berer ! " 

Certainly  no  one  could  bring 
that  accusation  against  him.  And 
in  this  fact  he  seemed  to  take 
much  comfort,  and  Felicity  Brooke 
also  reflectively,  as  to  the  future 
prosperity  of  the  Meredith  family. 

After  that  parting  there  was 
nothing  to  do  but  to  return  to  the 
captain  and  listen  to  the  plans  for 
to-day  and  to-morrow.  But  what- 
ever sorrow  might  have  been  at 
her  heart,  she  kept  up  a  good 
spirit :  there  was  no  reflection  of  it 
on  her  face,  no  tone  of  it  in  her 
voice.  She  never  alluded  again  to 
the  future,  or  of  the  fate  that  was 
awaiting  her;  she  did  not  even 
give  Captain  Baxter  the  chance 
of  offering  all  the  sympathy  with 
which  his  kind  heart  was  over- 
flowing. 

"Mrs  Davis  will  take  you 
ashore,"  he  said,  "  and  you  must 
rig  yourself  out  with  all  you 
want." 

"  I  was  going  to  ask  you,"  she 
said,  and  she  grew  rather  red,  "  if 
you  would  lend  me  some  money. 
Bob  will  send  it  back  directly,  I 
know.  I  can't  pay  him  till  I 


come  of  age,  but  he  will  wait — he 
is  very  generous." 

"Oh,  the  money  is  all  right," 
Captain  Baxter  replied,  brusquely. 
"Tell  me  what  you  want;  or, 
perhaps,  I  had  better  speak  to 
Mrs  Davis." 

"  Yes,  that  will  be  much  better," 
Felicity  assented.  "I  don't  think 
I  told  you  before,  but  when  I  am 
twenty-one  I  shall  be  very  rich, 
and  then  I  mean  to  live  with  Bob  : 
we  settled  that  the  last  time  I  saw 
him." 

"How  old  is  he1?"  the  captain 
asked,  tenderly  curious. 

"He  is  one  year  older  than  I 
am.  Time  goes  very  slowly,  does 
it  not ?" 

But  the  captain  could  not  echo 
the  reflection,  and  it  was  with  a 
laugh  they  went  out  to  look  for 
Mrs  Davis. 

Even  the  next  day,  when  he 
took  her  on  board  the  France,  and 
gave  her  into  the  charge  of  the 
new  captain,  and  the  very  last 
moment  had  arrived,  there  was 
still  no  flinching,  no  fear  of  what 
was  to  come,  no  outward  lack  of 
courage.  It  was  there,  Captain 
Baxter  knew,  when  he  felt  the 
slim,  sunburnt  hand  cling  to  his : 
he  recognised  something  of  what 
she  was  enduring  in  that  convul- 
sive clasp,  guessed  more  when  he 
noted  how  the  rich  colour  had 
faded,  and  how  often  the  red  lips 
quivered.  But  there  was  not  a 
word  to  show  it,  or  to  ask  for  the 
sympathy  he  was  so  ready  to  be- 
stow, and  which  her  silence  kept 
out  of  reach ;  but  it  was  that 
knowledge  that  made  him  stoop 
his  grey  head  and  kiss  her  smooth 
cheek  when  he  said  good-bye — 
that  knowledge  that  prompted 
his  thoughts  of  her  as  he  drove 
away  afterwards,  "A  beautiful 
child  ! — and  what  courage — what 
courage  ! " 


1894.] 


Felicity  Brooke. 


833 


PART     II. 


"Though  Love  do  all  that  Love  can  do, 
My  heart  will  never  ache  or  break 
For  your  heart's  sake." 


London  at  the  very  height  of 
the  season.  Dusty  already,  and 
hot,  though  it  was  still  early  in 
June,  and  the  night  air  was  plea- 
sant and  refreshing ;  so  thought  at 
least  Sir  Aymer  Digby,  as,  leaving 
his  hansom,  he  mounted  slowly  the 
steps  of  a  great  house  in  a  fashion- 
able square. 

"It  is  three  years, — more,"  he 
reflected,  "since  I  was  in  a  ball- 
room. I  wonder  what  is  taking 
me  to-night?" 

But  he  did  not  really  wonder, 
only  we  are  all  inclined  to  keep  up 
those  little  fictions,  even  with  our- 
selves. 

"  Aymer,  so  you  have  returned  ! 
I  did  not  believe  it,  and  am  all  the 
more  glad  to  see  you.  Come  and 
tell  me  what  you  have  been  doing." 

"  My  dear  Ferris,  I  have  far 
more  to  learn  than  to  tell.  I  feel 
like  an  outer  barbarian.  Come, — 
instruct  me.  Tell  me  all  about 
everybody." 

But  the  whole  time  he  stood 
talking  with  his  old  friend,  he  was 
well  aware  of  all  that  went  on 
around,  of  almost  every  passer-by 
in  the  crowded  rooms ;  was  well 
aware,  though  he  never  turned  his 
head,  when  a  beautiful  blonde 
woman  passed  slowly  by,  her  hand 
on  the  arm  of  an  old  man,  whose 
age  was  scarcely  concealed,  under 
all  the  assistance  that  art  could 
give.  So  close  did  they  pass,  that 
the  golden  brocade  of  her  train 
swept  against  him,  brocade  scarcely 
more  golden  than  the  rich  plaits  of 
hair,  under  their  diamond  coronet; 
so  close  that  his  friend  paused  a 
moment  before  he  risked  his  com- 
ment. 


"The  Duchess  of  Huntingdon, 
as  beautiful  as  ever  —  hers  is  a 
beauty  that  time  does  not  seem  to 
touch." 

And  at  the  same  moment,  "She 
smiled  oftener  when  I  knew  her," 
the  other  man  was  thinking,  as  she 
mingled  with  the  crowd. 

Yes,  it  was  for  that  he  had  come 
here — with  some  vague  idea  of  test- 
ing his  own  weakness  and  strength, 
that  he  was  standing  in  this  bril- 
liant room,  amongst  all  the  great- 
est in  the  land  ;  and  it  was  with  a 
wave  of  thankfulness  he  recognised 
that  the  wound  had  healed,  that 
the  cold,  beautiful  face  in  which 
he  had  once  read  his  fate,  now  held 
no  power  to  sway  him  either  to 
grief  or  joy.  It  had  been  a  slow, 
agonising  recovery,  but  the  wound 
had  healed  at  length. 

And  all  the  time  his  friend  was 
slowly  remembering  the  old  story, 
cursing  the  luck  that  had  made 
him  revive  it,  by  his  passing 
allusion  to  a  woman  whose  name 
could  only  call  up  bitter  or  un- 
happy thoughts. 

"  The  new  beauty  is  better 
worth  looking  at,"  with  nervous 
anxiety  to  say  something,  and  a 
nervous  consciousness  that  he  had 
said  the  wrong  thing. 

But  Aymer  Digby  seemed  un- 
aware of  it. 

"You  must  point  her  out  to 
me,"  he  said,  carelessly;  all  the 
time  he  was  rejoicing  over  his  re- 
gained strength  —  rejoicing  that 
he  had  proved  it,  and  that  he  need 
fear  no  more. 

"  There,  look  to  your  right," — he 
was  conscious  of  his  friend's  words, 
of  a  light  touch  on  his  arm,  and, 


834 


Felicity  Brooke. 


[Dec. 


glancing  in  the  direction  indicated, 
became  aware  of  a  small  group, 
the  centre  of  which  was  evidently 
the  girl  in  question.  He  could 
not  see  her  distinctly,  her  head 
was  bent,  he  could  only  vaguely 
distinguish  a  beautiful  figure  clad 
in  white  satin,  that  fell  in  straight 
folds,  and  was  devoid  of  flounces 
and  ornaments  alike, — of  a  white 
throat,  round  which  was  clasped 
a  single  string  of  pearls,  of  pearls 
twisted  into  thick,  dark  hair; 
then  the  bent  head  was  lifted,  and 
she  walked  away,  a  very  straight, 
beautiful — yes,  certainly  beautiful 
— young  figure,  and  disappeared 
with  her  partner. 

But  he  saw  her  again :  this 
time  she  was  talking  to  the  man 
who  had  pointed  her  out  to  him, 
and  he  watched  her  with  a  certain 
idle  curiosity,  a  certain  half-care- 
less wonder  as  to  what  would  be 
the  end  of  her  story.  This  first 
chapter  reminded  him  of  another 
story — that  fair-haired  young  man 
who  hovered  near  her  was  probably 
the  hero  of  the  romance ;  and  then 
he  smiled  at  the  thought  of  how 
much  he  had  conjectured. 

"  What  do  you  think  of  her  ? " 
His  friend  was  back  by  his  side. 
"Beautiful,  is  she  not?  It  is  no 
wonder  she  has  turned  everyone's 
head." 

"Beautiful,"  Sir  Aymer  repeated, 
vaguely.  "Well,  good-night,  I  have 
had  a  look  round.  I  am  going  to 
slip  away.  Balls  are  not  in  my 
line." 

"Oh,  you  must  speak  to  her 
first.  I  have  come  on  purpose 
to  fetch  you.  She  says  she  knows 
you." 

"Knows  me,  my  dear  fellow! 
that  must  be  a  delusion."  He 
was  moving  slowly  away  as  he 
spoke.  "Why,"  raising  his  eyes 
and  looking  slowly  and  deliber- 
ately towards  where  she  stood, 


"  she  must  have  been  in  the  nurs- 
ery when  I  left  England." 

He  had  made  his  escape  this 
time.  A  sudden  channel  had 
opened  in  the  crowd.  With  a 
parting  nod  he  had  gone,  and  Tom 
Ferris  was  left  alone.  A  few 
minutes  later  he  was  back  by  the 
girl's  side. 

"  Did  you  tell  him  ? "  she  began, 
eagerly. 

Mr  Ferris  shook  his  head. 

"You  are  mistaken.  He  says 
he  has  never  seen  you  before — that 
he  has  been  out  of  England  for 
years " 

"  There,  Felicity,  now  you  see," 
broke  in  the  fair-haired  boy — he 
to  whom  had  been  assigned  the 
part  of  hero — "now  you  see  what 
comes  of  seeking  out  new  adorers 
instead  of  resting  content  with 
faithful  people  like  me." 

"  How  tiresome  you  are,  Jack," 
half  turning  her  head.  "  Did  you 
tell  him  my  name?"  addressing 
again  her  unlucky  messenger. 
"No?  Perhaps  he  might  remem- 
ber it" — her  voice  was  not  very 
assured — "if  you  were  to  tell  him. 
He  ought  to  remember  me,"  she 
added  more  confidently ;  "he  once 
saved  my  life." 

There  was  no  resisting  the  pe- 
tition in  the  dark  eyes.  Mr 
Ferris  said  not  another  word,  but 
turned  back  and  fought  his  way 
through  the  crowd,  till,  in  the 
very  last  room  of  all,  he  found 
himself  once  more  by  Aymer 
Digby's  side. 

"  Going  ? "  he  questioned. 

"  No,  I  have  come  after  you  to 
ask  you  to  reconsider  what  you 
said  just  now.  Miss  Brooke  is 
certain  that  she  has  met  you,  and 
she  wishes  to  speak  to  you." 

"Miss  Brooke,  did  you  say? 
Of  course  I  remember  her.  I  met 
her  once  —  it  was  several  years 
ago." 


1894.] 


Felicity  Brooke. 


835 


"  It  seems  to  have  been  a  mem- 
orable meeting  1 " 

Sir  Aymer  looked  at  the  speaker, 
quickly,  suspiciously,  but  "She  was 
only  a  child  in  those  days  "  was  all 
he  said. 

"Here  he  comes,"  the  fair- 
haired  boy  observed.  "  Cheer  up, 
Felicity ;  the  advantage  of  being 
six  feet  two  is,  that  I  can  see 
our  Gallant  Preserver  being  some- 
what unwillingly  led  hither  just 
when  he  thought  he  had  es- 
caped." 

"  How  do  you  do,  Miss  Brooke  1 
How  clever  of  you  to  recognise 
me."  He  had  taken  her  hand, 
and  was  now  standing  beside  her, 
striving  to  recall  the  child  he  only 
half  remembered  in  the  beautiful 
radiant  girl  before  him.  Yes,  of 
course,  now  he  knew  it,  he  could 
trace  the  likeness — the  same  rich 
warm  colouring  and  red  mouth, 
the  same  dark  curls,  fastened  up 
now  in  some  way  that  suited  the 
fashion,  and  yet  which  bore  the 
same  resemblance  that  Hilda  had 
noted  years  ago  to  those  of  Hen- 
rietta Maria ;  and  now  that  she 
looked  up,  the  great  dark  eyes 
were  just  the  same — they  had  not 
changed  in  the  least.  They  met 
his  own  with  the  same  frank 
honesty  as  of  old. 

But  when  he  had  exchanged  a 
few  commonplaces,  there  seemed 
nothing  more  to  say.  With  so 
many  possible  listeners  he  was 
afraid  of  alluding  to  the  past, 
which  might  easily  have  come  to 
be  considered  a  sealed  book ;  and 
beyond  that  one  mutual  experi- 
ence, what  was  there  he  could 
find  to  say  to  a  girl  of  her  age? 
Escape  was  once  more  in  mind 
and  eye. 

"Don't  you  dance?"  Felicity's 
voice  questioned. 

"  No ;  I  am  afraid  I  have  long 
passed  the  dancing  age,'  and  he 


smiled.  "  But  that  reminds  me 
that  it  is  not  for  the  sake  of  con- 
versation we  are  here  to-night ; 
that  can  be  postponed.  Don't  let 
me  keep  you  from  your  partner," 
looking  round  until  his  eyes  rested 
on  Jack  Curzon. 

"  Let  me  throw  myself  into  the 
breach,  Felicity.  Now  you  see 
what  comes  of  saying  you  are 
engaged  when  you  are  not !  To 
save  appearances,  you  will  have  to 
dance  with  me,  though  you  said 
you  would  not." 

"You  do  dance  so  badly,"  she 
said ;  but  she  had  flushed  scarlet 
at  his  words, 

"  I  know  I  do — vilely ;  but  still 
I  am  better  than  no  one." 

Sir  Aymer  made  no  observation  ; 
there  seemed  nothing  else  to  be 
done.  She  put  her  hand  on  Jack's 
arm  and  turned  away. 

"He  had  quite  forgotten  me," 
she  said,  defiantly,  standing  still 
a  moment  later.  "  Did  you  notice 
it  ? "  turning  to  her  partner. 

u  My  dear  Felicity,  incredible  as 
it  may  appear,  I  think  there  was 
no  possibility  of  not  noticing  it ; 
and  considering  how  you  have  in- 
sisted on  our  admiring  him — both 
Bob  and  I — it  would  have  been 
polite  if  you  had  introduced  me  to 
him." 

"  I  am  so  sorry — I  never  thought 
of  it." 

"  Comfort  yourself  with  the  re- 
flection that,  to  judge  from  his 
speaking  countenance,  he  had  had 
quite  enough  honour  in  making 
the  acquaintance  of  one  member 
of  the  family." 

But  even  this  scathing  observa- 
tion failed  to  draw  forth  any  re- 
joinder. 

"  Quite  and  entirely  cured  ; " 
that  was  what  Aymer  Digby  was 
saying  to  himself  again,  as  he 
walked  home  slowly  under  the 
stars.  "  I  shall  always  be  thank- 


i 


ggg  Felicity  Brooke. 

ful  that  I  made  the  effort— it  is 
better  to  know.  A  beautiful  wo- 
man, of  course;  but  her  beauty 
has  ceased  to  interest  or  affect 
me.  And  it  is  pleasant  to  be 
back  in  London,— dear,  delightful 
London,  —  and  to  see  again  the 
old  life  and  the  old  friends,  after 
these  many  years  with  the  Past 
for  my  only  companion." 

After  that  evening  he  often  met 
Felicity  Brooke.  He  called  on 
her,  and  was  presented  to  her 
aunt — a  very  ill-tempered-looking 
person,  to  whom  he  vainly  strove 
to  make  himself  agreeable.  But 
though  he  saw  her  often,  it  was 
always  when  other  people  were 
present,  which  made  it  difficult  to 
talk  of  the  past,  though  she  had 
alluded  to  it,  had  spoken  of  their 
mutual  acquaintances  on  board  the 
City  of  Prague,  who,  as  far  as  he 
was  concerned,  had  long  ago  passed 
into  the  unreal  world  of  shadows. 
He  had  been  shown  Jem  Moore's 
letter  announcing  his  joining  an- 
other ship.  The  letter  had  amused 
him,  with  its  quaint  wording  and 
details  of  life,  and  the  scraps  of 
information  he  had  picked  up 
about  the  Merediths.  The  P.S. 
especially  had  touched  his  sense  of 
humour : — 

"  P.S. — And  I  am  going  to  be 
married  after  next  voyage.  I 
thought  you  would  like  to  hear. 
She  is  a  very  nice,  good  girl,  I've 
known  all  my  life.  Her  name  is 
Sarah  Foster." 

"  I  sent  her  a  watch  for  a  wed- 
ding-present," Felicity  observed. 
"I  thought  he  would  like  that 
best,  and  she  wrote  me  a  beauti- 
ful letter,"  her  eyes  kindling.  "  I 
am  sure  she  is  just  as  nice  and 
good  as  he  says." 

But  that  was  one  rare,  little 
conversation;  as  a  rule,  she  was 


[Dec. 


the  centre  of  a  crowd  of  admirers, 
or  else  Lady  Brooke  was  a  silent 
listener  to  every  word,  in  which 
case,  by  mutual  consent,  the  past 
was  not  referred  to.  But  who- 
ever came  or  went,  Jack  Curzon 
was  always  in  attendance. 

Standing  watching  her  one 
morning  as  she  rode  in  the  Park, 
Aymer  Digby  was  joined  by  his 
friend  Ferris. 

"  She  looks  very  well  on  a 
horse,  does  she  not  1 "  following 
the  direction  of  Aymer's  eyes. 
"Do  you  know  her  brother?"  he 
went  on.  "  No  ?  He  is  at  college 
— a  nice  boy.  He  has  had  the 
best  of  it,  I  expect." 

"In  what  way?" 

"Well,  I  don't  expect  Lady 
Brooke  is  a  particularly  agreeable 
person  to  live  with." 

"No,  I  should  think  not,"  and 
Aymer  Digby  smiled ;  "  but  I  ex- 
pect she  has  her  match  in  her 
niece." 

"  Oh,  I  don't  know ;  a  girl  has 
not  much  chance  with  a  woman  of 
that  sort.  Her  husband  was  Miss 
Brooke's  uncle — father's  brother — 
and  was  left  her  guardian.  Then 
he  died,  and  the  duties  devolved 
on  this  good  lady.  Bob  of  course 
went  off  to  school  and  college; 
I  don't  think  he  troubled  the 
domestic  portals  much,  and  this 
girl  was  left  in  the  charge  of 
a  match  -  making  mother,  with 
two  daughters  of  her  own  to 
marry." 

"  She  married  them,  I  suppose  ? " 
Sir  Aymer  questioned. 

"  Yes,  very  well,  according  to 
her  own  views.  I  never  saw  two 
girls  out  of  whom  all  spirit  had 
been  so  completely  taken;  they 
scarcely  dared  to  speak  without 
leave !  And  then  the  path  clear, 
the  daughters  out  of  the  way,  a 
.niece  who  brings  five  hundred  a- 
year  to  the  housekeeping  is  an 
agreeable  addition." 


1894.] 


Felicity  Brooke. 


837 


"  And  when  does  she  acquire 
freedom  1 " 

"  When  she  is  twenty-one  she 
can  go  her  own  way,  and  comes 
into  a  very  nice  fortune  besides, 
so  I  believe.  But  I  am  only  gos- 
siping, I  know  very  little." 

"  I  wonder,"  Sir  Aymer  said, 
slowly,  "  that  she  does  not  marry  ; 
it  would  offer  a  means  of  escape." 

"  Rumour  says,"  —  Mr  Ferris 
lowered  his  voice  impressively, — 
"  that  that  is  what  she  intends 
to  do ;  and  he,  who  has  just  joined 
her,  is  said  to  be  the  man." 

Sir  Aymer  looked  up  with  curi- 
osity ;  then  "  Lord  Gresham  !  "  he 
exclaimed,  incredulously. 

Mr  Ferris  nodded. 

"  But  he  is  old  enough  to  be 
her  father ! " 

"  It  is  the  fashion  amongst 
beauties,"  the  other  man  replied, 
carelessly,  and  then  again,  too 
late,  would  fain  have  recalled  the 
malapropos  words.  "  He  is  a  fine 
old  man,"  he  added,  hastily,  "  re- 
spected and  admired  by  everyone." 

Yes,  he  at  least  was  not  made 
up  to  imitate  forgotten  youth,  that 
was  all  Aymer  Digby  could  think 
of,  as  he  walked  away.  And  in 
addition  he  had  position,  and 
great  estates,  and  a  fine  old  name ; 
his  first  wife  had  died  years  ago 
and  had  left  him  childless  —  of 
course,  what  more  likely !  A 
splendid  match,  every  one  would 
tell  her  so, — out  of  an  unhappy 
home  too,  it  would  be  an  easy  way 
to  freedom. 

"  Oh,  but  she  is  not  at  all  the 
kind  of  girl  to  do  that."  The 
words  had  passed  his  lips  without 
any  reflection  :  it  was  of  the  child 
on  the  City  of  Prague  he  had  been 
thinking. 

"But  Lady  Brooke  is  just  the 
kind  of  woman,"  his  friend  had 
retorted  dryly,  and  he  recognised 
the  truth  of  the  words,  that  there 
was  another  factor  in  the  girl's 


life  to  be  taken  into  account.  He 
thought  of  it  all  the  way  home; 
of  course,  now  the  idea  was  brought 
to  his  notice,  Lord  Gresham  was 
always  in  attendance.  He  himself 
rarely  went  to  balls ;  his  chances 
of  meeting  her  were  limited  to  a 
dinner-party,  or  an  afternoon  call, 
but  on  such  occasions,  if  Jack  Cur- 
zon  was  always  fluttering  round, 
Lord  Gresham  was  there  as  well. 
Of  course,  the  old  story !  He 
was  conscious  of  impatience  at  the 
thought,  and  doubtless  it  would 
end  the  same  way. 

That  very  evening,  as  chance 
would  have  it,  when  he  entered 
Mrs  Murray's  drawing-room,  the 
first  person  on  whom  his  eyes  fell 
was  Felicity  Brooke.  For  a  mar- 
vel she  was  not  smiling,  or  even 
speaking,  but  standing  by  her 
aunt  in  an  attitude  that  suggested 
expectancy.  Entering  the  room, 
he  met  her  eyes  turned  towards 
him,  but  immediately  they  fell, 
and  at  the  same  moment  Jack 
Ourzon's  voice  sounded  in  his  ear. 
He  might  have  guessed  it,  might 
easily  have  interpreted  what  the 
silence  and  expectancy  meant. 

A  minute  later  he  was  walking 
into  dinner  with  Felicity  Brooke's 
hand  on  his  arm.  When  they  were 
seated,  he  found  that  on  the  girl's 
other  side  was  Lord  Gresham, 
nearly  opposite  Jack  Curzon's 
fresh,  boyish  face. 

In  his  present  mood  he  was 
glad  of  the  arrangement,  which 
brought  so  much  within  his  scope 
of  vision :  in  two  hours  he  would 
surely  find  out  if  there  were  any 
foundation  for  the  rumour  that 
had  reached  him. 

She  was  very  quiet,  quieter  than 
he  had  ever  known  her,  but  now 
and  again  she  asked  him  those 
point-blank  questions  for  which 
she  was  famous. 

"  Don't  you  ever  go  to  balls,  Sir 
Aymer  ? "  she  suddenly  turned  her 


838 


Felicity  Brooke. 


[Dec. 


head  to  say;  "  I  thought,  of  course, 
you  would  have  been  at  the 
Vavasour's  last  night." 

"No,  I  am  afraid  I  am  too 
old." 

"  How  old  are  you  1 " 

"  Thirty-five." 

"  Oh,  I  wish  I  was  ! " 

Such  a  troubled  sigh  followed 
the  words  that  it  checked  the 
laugh  that  rose  to  his  lips.  He 
could  not  ask  what  her  words 
meant — he  knew. 

Lord  Gresham  was  in  the  midst 
of  an  animated  discussion  with  his 
hostess.  He  leant  a  little  nearer, 
and  "Now  it  is  my  turn  to  ask 
questions,"  he  said.  "You  have 
never  told  me  what  happened  when 
you  reached  England.  Was  she" 
lowering  his  voice,  "  very  angry  ?  " 

"  Very, — I  suppose." 

"You  suppose1?" 

"I  did  not  see  her  for  two 
years.  I  was  left  at  school." 

"  No  holidays  ? " 

"  No ;  you  foretold,  you  remem- 
ber, that  the  consequences  were 
always  unpleasant  of  making  fools 
of  ourselves !  Well,  they  were" 
she  added,  emphatically. 

"I  might  have  saved  you  the 
pain  of  prophecy  at  least ;  it  is  as 
well  to  leave  people  to  find  out 
such  truths  for  themselves." 

She  made  no  reply. 

And  somehow  her  silence  served 
to  prevent  any  further  reference  to 
the  subject,  and  afterwards  there 
was  little  opportunity.  Lord 
Gresham  joined  in  the  talk,  and 
she  made  no  effort  to  prevent  him. 

But  when  she  was  leaving  he 
followed  her  to  the  door,  and 
asked  her  if  she  would  be  at  Lady 
Rashleigh's  ball  the  following 
night.  "But  of  course  you  will, 
so  perhaps  we  shall  meet.  I  have 
almost  made  up  my  mind  to  go." 

"  I  hope  you  will,"  she  replied, 
and  though  she  added  nothing  else, 
he  felt  that  she  wished  it  really, 


—that  she  was  glad  to  hope  that 
he  would  be  there. 

And  yet  when  eleven  o'clock 
found  him  the  following  evening 
entering  the  room,  there  was  a  dis- 
tinct pang  at  the  memory  of  the 
cool  comfort  and  peace  of  the 
Club. 

Nevertheless  he  made  his  way 
into  the  hot  ball-room,  and  stand- 
ing in  the  doorway,  glanced  slowly 
round.  She  was  not  there,  of  that 
he  was  certain.  Well,  he  would 
wait  until  he  saw  her.  It  was 
cool  standing  here:  behind  the 
curtain  by  which  he  found  himself 
there  was  evidently  an  open  win- 
dow,— it  was  very  refreshing. 

Some  one  else  was  waiting  too, 
that  he  perceived.  Just  opposite 
him  stood  grey-headed  Lord  Gres- 
ham, not  taking  part  in  the  revelry 
any  more  than  he  himself  was 
doing,  and  it  was  with  suddenly 
accented  curiosity  he  took  note  of 
him. 

A  remarkable  figure  and  face, — 
certainly  a  man  that  a  girl  might 
respect,  and  marry  with  dignity, 
and  yet  how  much  she  must  inevi- 
tably lose,  even  with  all  that 
thrown  into  the  balance. 

Here  his  thoughts  were  inter- 
rupted by  voices,  low  voices,  be- 
hind him, — the  curtain  apparently 
concealed  a  balcony, — the  voices, 
he  recognised  them  both.  He  was 
scarcely  conscious  he  was  listening, 
before  he  had  heard  the  short, 
quick  words. 

"Throw  it  up,"  in  the  man's 
young  voice,  how  easily  he  recog- 
nised it.  "  What  is  the  use  of 
being  unhappy1?  and  you  are  un- 
happy !  Throw  prudence  to  the 
winds, — you  did  so  once  before, 
you  know, — and  I  will  go  to  Bob, 
and  see  him,  and  explain." 

"  No,  no — it  is  very  good  of  you, 
but  I  would  rather  it  went  on  as  it 
is.  I  don't  wish  Bob  to  know  any- 


1894.] 


Felicity  Brooke. 


839 


thing.  Come,  we  had  better  return, 
or  I  shall  be  missed." 

The  man  made  no  answering 
comment, — he  lifted  the  curtains, 
Aymer  Digby  had  only  time  to 
turn  and  saunter  away  before  he 
was  in  the  room,  Felicity  by  his 
side.  A  little  distance  off  he  turned 
his  head  and  looked  at  her.  It 
was  difficult  to  associate  her  with 
trouble,  or  anything  indeed  but 
careless,  triumphant  girlhood,  but 
she  was  troubled,  he  knew  it, — or 
were  the  overheard  words  the  key 
to  the  expression  he  noted  in  her 
eyes? 

At  the  sight  of  that  expression 
something  was  born  in  him,  some 
swift  longing  to  save  her,  to  pre- 
vent her  from  hurrying  farther  on 
that  path  on  which  she  had  already 
entered, — to  warn  her  back,  if  pos- 
sible, into  youth  and  happiness, — 
before  the  final  steps  were  taken. 
Of  what  he  should  say  there  was 
no  definite  consciousness,  —  the 
words  would  be  found  in  which  to 
warn  and  counsel.  It  was  as  if 
Hilda,  in  her  gracious,  serious 
womanhood,  were  standing  by  his 
side,  urging  him  to  do  what  he 
could. 

At  the  same  moment  Lord  Gres- 
ham,  seeing  her,  had  also  made  a 
step  forward,  but  when  Aymer 
Digby  was  roused  and  determined, 
he  was  not  easily  outdone  :  he  was 
standing  beside  her,  her  hand  was 
on  his  arm,  his  decided  voice  in 
her  ears — "  This  is  our  dance,  I 
think,"  and  then  he  and  she  were 
walking  away  from  the  ball-room 
together. 

"It  was  not  your  dance,"  she 
said,  decidedly,  a  minute  later,  "  it 
was  Jack's." 

"Who  is  Jack?" 

"He  is  Bob's  dearest  friend," 
she  answered,  calmly.  He  looked 
quickly  down  at  her,  but  her  in- 
genuous eyes  were  frankly  raised. 
It  was  hard  to  accuse  her  of  want 

VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCL. 


of  frankness,  but  of  course  on  such 

a  subject "  You  told  me  you 

did  not  dance,"  she  added,  a  second 
later. 

"  Neither  do  I.  I  wish  to  speak 
to  you,  that  is  the  reason  of  my 
pretence." 

She  looked  up  quickly,  but  said 
nothing,  and  they  walked  on  till 
the  fernery,  a  small  glass  building 
that  led  into  the  conservatory,  was 
reached.  It  was  quite  deserted  :  a 
valse  was  sounding  in  the  distance, 
and,  except  for  the  splash  of  falling 
water  into  a  little  marble  basin, 
there  was  no  sound. 

After  all,  he  recognised,  it  was 
not  quite  as  easy  to  say  anything, 
at  any  rate  to  begin,  as  he  had  ex- 
pected. 

There  were  two  chairs  in  the 
shade  of  a  palm-tree  away  from  the 
door — he  walked  over  there  and 
bid  her  seat  herself  :  it  was  after  a 
moment's  hesitation  he  sat  down 
beside  her.  "What  do  you  want 
to  say  to  me  1 " 

Her  voice,  quiet  and  grave,  was 
the  first  to  break  silence ;  it  gave 
him  the  impetus  he  needed. 

"It  is  always  difficult,"  he  said, 
"  almost  impossible,  for  a  man  to 
speak  to  a  woman  ]  but  you  are  a 
child  —  compared  with  me  —  a 
child,"  he  repeated,  "and  if  one 
sees  a  child  about  to  do  any- 
thing very  foolish,  one  is  bound 
to  speak " 

"Yes." 

There  was  not  much  encourage- 
ment in  the  monosyllable. 

"I  wish,"  he  exclaimed,  im- 
petuously, "that  you  had  gone  to 
Charleston  with  Mrs  Davis." 

She  laughed,  but  rather  un- 
steadily. 

"  Why,  I  wonder  1 " 

"  It  would  have  saved  you  two 
years  at  school  without  a  holiday, 
would  it  not  ? " 

"  Yes,"  she  sighed,  ever  so  air- 
ily. "  Well  now,  it  is  my  turn  \ 
3  i 


840 


Felicity  Brooke. 


[Dec. 


let  me  tell  you  what  7  wish.  I 
wish  that  you  had  praised  me 
when  I  told  you  that  I  had  de- 
cided to  go  to  England.  When  I 
told  you,  evidently  yearning  for 
praise,  I  think  you  might  have 
given  it,  and  it  would  have  made 
it  much  easier." 

"Why?  I  question  back.  Though 
I  know,  of  course,  you  expected  a 
great  deal  of  praise  in  those  days," 
— he  paused  and  looked  inquiring- 
ly at  her.  "  But  that  is  not  what 
I  wish  to  say." 

"  What  do  you  wish  to  say  1 " 

Her  chin  was  on  her  hands,  her 
elbows  rested  on  her  knees,  she 
did  not  look  up  as  she  spoke. 
"  I  want  to  warn  you,  and  I  don't 
know  how  to  do  it — a  man  is  so 
clumsy." 

He  did  not  glance  towards  her, 
and  yet  he  was  well  aware  of  the 
scarlet  flame  mounting  in  her 
cheeks,  and  it  was  with  a  swift 
determination  to  spare  her  pain 
that  his  next  words  came. 

"  You  are  on  the  brink  of  folly 
— madness ;  at  least  so  it  seems  to 
the  outsider.  What  tempts  you, 
of  course,  I  don't  know ;  but  what- 
ever the  temptation  may  be,  the 
result  will  be  unhappiness.  You  " 
— he  averted  his  eyes  —  "  would 
never  be  happy  in  a  loveless  mar- 
riage,— you  do  not  know,  that  is 
all.  You  were  brave  and  fearless 
enough  once;  all  that  is  neces- 
sary is  to  call  back  your  courage 
now." 

She  did  not  move,  she  made  no 
faintest  comment  on  his  words — 
her  elbows  rested  on  her  knee,  she 
did  not  look  up  as  he  spoke. 

"Let  me  tell  you  a  story,"  he 
went  on  directly.  "Once  I  was 
young— I  loved  "—his  voice  sank 
lower  still  — "a  woman,  young, 
beautiful,  as  you.  She  — well,  I 
think  she  loved  me ;  but  love,  so 
she  decided,  was  not  enough. 
There  were  other,  greater  things 


in  life,  for  which  she  might  sell 
herself.  So  she  left  me,  and  gave 
her  beauty  to  a  man,  old  and  worn, 
in  exchange  for  a  title  and  a  cor- 
onet, and  everything  else  that  she 
fancied  would  make  her  happy." 

He  had  not  once  looked  up — 
he  would  not  see  her  face  whilst 
he  told  the  story  that  might  save 
her  from  a  like  fate  ;  but  he  knew 
she  had  risen,  that  she  was  stand- 
ing a  little  behind  his  chair,  where, 
even  had  he  lifted  his  eyes,  he 
could  not  have  seen  her  face. 

"And  you?"  He  heard  the 
low,  hurried  question. 

"I  have  told  you  one  side  of 
the  story,"  he  went  on,  slowly. 
"  She — well,  if  she  did  not  attain 
happiness,  gained  what  she  had 
desired, — but  for  the  man,  it  was 
otherwise.  She  left  him  in  des- 
pair, that  ended  in  contempt  and 
hatred  for  all  women ;  despair 
which  first  broke  his  heart,  then  de- 
stroyed his  faith,  and  finally " 

He  half  paused. 

"  And  finally  ? "  The  low  voice 
was  quite  steady,  there  was  a  half- 
question  in  the  words. 

"And  finally,"  he  went  on, 
slowly,  "  has  ended — Heaven  be 
praised  ! — in  the  knowledge  that 
the  cruel  work  of  one  woman  is  at 
length  only  a  memory,  though,  at 
the  same  time,  the  freshness,  and 
joy,  and  happiness  that  life  once 
offered,  are  also  at  an  end  for  ever." 

Just  a  second's  silence,  whilst 
the  valse  in  the  distance  sounded, 
and  the  fountain  trickled  on  into 
the  basin,  before  the  girl  spoke, 
and  as  she  did  so  she  bent  her 
head  so  near  to  his  that  every 
word,  low  as  it  was,  reached  his 
ears. 

"Is  the  faith  quite  dead?  If 

"  and  as  she  spoke  she  rested 

her  hand  on  the  back  of  his  chair, 
as  if  to  steady  herself, — "if  you 

met  a  woman  who  loved  you " 

she  paused  again, — "and  was  true 


1894." 


Felicity  Brooke. 


841 


and  faithful,  would  nob  that  help 
to  undo  the  past  ? " 

A  silence.  Then,  "It  is  too 
late,"  the  man  said  slowly.  "  That, 
you  see,  is  what  a  woman's  coward- 
ice and  treachery  can  accomplish." 

The  music  was  silent,  the  valse 
over,  people  were  crowding  into 
the  conservatory,  eager  voices 
breaking  the  stillness. 

Aymer  Digby  rose  from  his 
seat. 

"  I  had  better  take  you  back  to 
the  ball-room,"  he  said.  "They 
will  be  looking  for  you."  He  re- 
frained from  glancing  in  her  direc- 
tion, he  did  not  add  another  word, 
but  as  they  were  leaving  the  long 
passage,  young  Curzon  appeared 
in  sight. 

"There  is  Jack,"  she  spoke, 
rather  unsteadily  he  fancied.  "  I 
want  to  speak  to  him.  Wait, 
please.  It  is  his  dance,"  in  dis- 
connected sentences.  She  was 
white,  curiously  white,  he  thought, 
as  he  took  her  hand  and  said  good 
night.  "  Good-bye,"  he  added  ;  "  I 
am  leaving  town  to-morrow  —  I 
may  not  see  you  for  some  time." 

He  turned  away  :  for  half  a 
second  her  eyes  followed  his  tall 
figure,  and  fair,  smooth  head.  And 
then,  "I  am  so  tired,  Jack,"  she 
said.  "I  do  wish  you  could  per- 
suade Aunt  Barbara  to  go  home." 

"You  look  tired,  but  it  is  not 
really  tiredness,  it  is  bother.  Did 
my  eyes  deceive  me,"  in  lighter 
tones,  "or  did  I  see  you  and  the 
'Preserver'  come  out  of  the  con- 
servatory together  1  What  goings- 
on  !  I  shall  have  to  look  on  him 
as  a  rival  next,  I  suppose  1  His 
dislike  going  off,  eh1?" 

"  He  never  disliked  me,"  she 
said,  but  she  did  not  smile;  "he 
is  only  indifferent." 

"Only  indifferent."  The  words 
echoed  in  her  ears  during  the  drive 
home ;  sometimes  they  changed  to 
other  words  which  kept  time  to  the 


horses'  feet,  "Refused"!  "Very 
kindly  and  courteously,  he  would 
always  try  to  be  courteous — for  he 
does  not  dislike  me,  he  is  only 
indifferent." 

"  Write  to  Lord  Gresham  to- 
morrow, Felicity,"  her  aunt  said 
as  they  walked  up-stairs,  "  and  ask 
him  to  dine  with  us  on  Sunday.  I 
told  him  to  expect  a  letter." 

"  I  would  rather  you  wrote." 

"Why,  I  wonder?  You  write 
the  other  invitations,  why  should 
you  make  a  difficulty  about  this 
one  1  I  suppose  merely  out  of 
love  of  contradiction." 

There  was  no  reply.  After  all, 
it  was  not  worth  arguing  over 
She  said  "  Good  night, >;  and  turned 
away. 

She  did  not  sleep  much  :  the 
summer  dawn  was  stealing  into 
the  room  before  she  fell  into  a 
short,  troubled  slumber,  but  to 
her  perfect  health  and  strength,  it 
needed  more  than  a  sleepless  night 
to  take  the  lustre  from  her  dark 
eyes  and  the  rich  bloom  from  her 
cheeks.  The  school-room  was  her 
own  sitting-room  ;  she  went  there 
while  it  was  yet  early  to  eat  her 
breakfast  in  solitude,  and  thought 
a  great  deal, — and  the  result  of  all 
the  thinking  was,  that  by  eleven 
o'clock,  with  paper  and  ink  before 
her,  she  was  fulfilling  her  aunt's 
bidding,  and  writing  to  Lord 
Gresham.  It  meant  a  good  deal, 
she  felt — much  more  was  involved 
than  that  Sunday  dinner,  at  which 
no  other  guest  would  be  present, 
and  after  which  Lady  Brooke 
would  vanish  to  the  inner  drawing- 
room  on  some  pretence,  and  she 
and  he  would  be  left  virtually 
alone. 

"What  does  it  matter?"  she 
thought  wearily,  as  she  wrote  his 
name.  "  He  is  good  and  kind,  and 
I — I  like  him  better  than  any  one 
else, — and  this  life,  I  cannot  bear 
it  any  longer  !  " 


842 


Felicity  Brooke. 


[Dec. 


And  at  that  moment  the  door 
was  suddenly  opened,  and,  with- 
out any  warning,  Aymer  Digby 
entered  the  room. 

The  first  thought  he  had  was, 
that  somehow  once  again  she  was 
the  child  of  the  City  of  Prague, 
with  whom  of  late  he  had  ceased 
to  associate  her.  She  was  dressed 
in  dark -blue  linen,  made  with  a 
sailor-like  shirt — it  may  have  been 
in  part  that  fact  —  and  her  hair 
also  was  twisted  loosely  up  with  a 
comb,  from  which  it  escaped  in 
careless  loops  and  curls.  That 
was  his  first  thought.  The  second, 
even  as  he  approached  the  table 
at  which  she  wrote,  was,  that 
never  before  during  all  their  ac- 
quaintance had  he  ever  seen  her 
look  frightened,  and  now  into  her 
eyes  there  certainly  passed  an 
expression  which  banished  tHeir 
fearlessness :  then  the  lashes  had 
fallen,  and  he  was  standing  by  her 
side. 

"Of  course  I  am  a  fool" — his 
voice  was  rough  and  moved — "  but 
tell  me,  what  did  you  mean  by 
those  words  you  said  to  me  last 
night?" 

There  was  a  hurried  glance 
round,  as  if  she  were  calculating 
the  chances  of  escape :  then  he 


heard  a  sharp,  painful  sob,  and  she 
had  covered  her  face  with  her 
hands,  and  between  the  slender 
fingers  two  tears  fell. 

"Felicity,"— he  knelt  beside  her, 
taking  her  hands  in  his, — "do  not 
cry.  Is  it  my  roughness  that  has 
hurt  you1?  Answer  me,  did  they 
mean  nothing  1  Tell  me — you  may 
trust  me." 

Still  no  answer.  He  lifted  his 
hands,  and,  clasping  hers  gently, 
drew  them  down  into  her  lap. 
The  lashes  were  wet,  the  tears 
rose  and  fell  slowly  one  by  one. 

"  Perhaps  the  folly  was  in  com- 
ing back,"  he  said,  and  his  voice 
was  still  strange  and  hurried ; 
"but  you  are  courageous — speak 
to  me.  Shall  I  go  or  stay  1 " 

The  dark  eyes  were  raised  for  a 
moment.  Perhaps  their  expression 
was  enough,  perhaps  words  were 
unnecessary,  for  "Say  it  once,"  he 
said,  very  low ;  "  tell  me  that  you 
love  me." 

"Oh,  you  know  it,"  she  cried; 
"  you  must  know  it !  I  am  only 
afraid." 

But  with  his  arm  round  her  and 
his  kisses  on  her  tear-wet  cheeks, 
it  seemed  easy  to  believe  the  voice 
that  told  her  there  was  nothing 
more  for  her  to  fear. 


1894.] 


An  Ancient  Inn. 


843 


AN    ANCIENT    INN. 


"An!  there  you  are,"  said  a 
friend  whom  I  met  lately  at  the 
Writers'  Club,  which  some  of  our 
women  authors  frequent.  "  I  have 
been  nursing  up  something  new 
in  the  natural  history  line,  a  curi- 
ous fact  that  I  thought  would 
interest  you,  and  perhaps  serve  as 
copy  for  your  '  Country  Month  by 
Month.'  Did  you  ever  hear  of  a 
rabbit  that  casts  its  furry  skin, 
entirely  and  completely,  just  as  a 
snake  does  ? " 

"  Never,"  I  answer,  confidently. 

"Then  I  can  tell  you  of  one 
which  happens  to  be  just  now 
going  through  the  loosening  pro- 
cess. You  can  go  and  see  it  if 
you  like,  and  the  coat  which  it 
cast  off  last  year  as  well ;  also,  if 
you  are  unbelieving,  you  can  put 
your  hand  up  its  back,  and  feel 
the  beautiful  new  coat  of  fur 
underneath  your  hand  and  the 
whole  old  skin  over  it :  so  com- 
plete is  this,  that  with  a  little 
trimming  at  the  head  and  tail,  it 
would  make  the  loveliest  muff. 
It  is  an  Angora  rabbit,  and  the 
fur  is  of  long  silky  dark-grey  hair." 

This  wonderful  creature  was,  I 
learned  further,  to  be  seen  at 
Colnbrook,  a  little  town  which,  I 
am  ashamed  to  say,  I  had  never 
heard  of  before,  although  from 
the  earliest  times  in  our  history, 
as  I  found  out  later,  it  has  been 
frequented  by  kings,  queens,  am- 
bassadors, not  to  speak  of  those 
"Sixe  worthie  Yeomen  of  the 
West,"  of  whom  Gordon  Willough- 
by  Gyll,  Esq.,  of  the  ancient 
parish  of  Wraysbury,  the  chroni- 
cler of  this  remarkable  little  town, 
tells  that  they  were  written  about 
in  an  old  book  by  "  a  certain  Thow 
of  Heading."  This  book,  he  says, 
was,  even  at  the  time  he  wrote, 


early  in  the  century,  difficult  to 
be  procured. 

To  return  to  the  present  time, 
however,  and  to  our  rabbit :  Coin- 
brook,  which  had  for  very  many 
years  been  left  out  in  the  cold  in  the 
world's  progress,  through  having 
no  railroad,  is  now  to  be  reached 
by  a  single  line,  running  from 
West  Drayton,  on  the  Great 
Western  line.  Thither  I  jour- 
neyed as  soon  as  it  was  possible 
for  me  to  do  so,  for  I  feared  lest 
that  skin  might  be  cast  before  I 
had  time  to  put  my  hand  in  be- 
tween the  two  coats,  &c.,  &c.  As 
I  do  not  purpose  to  describe  the 
rabbit  in  this  article,  it  need 
scarcely  be  mentioned  again.  I 
have  simply  spoken  of  it,  as  it  was 
the  cause  of  my  visit  to  the  re- 
markable old  town.  Perhaps  I 
should  say,  however,  that  it  was 
just  what  my  friend  described  it,  a 
great  curiosity  in  its  way ;  so  un- 
usual, in  fact,  that  the  well-known 
zoologist,  Mr  Tegetmeyer  of  the 
'Field,'  &c.,  has  arranged  to  ex- 
hibit the  skin,  now  cast,  at  the 
next  meeting  of  the  Royal  Zoolo- 
gical Society,  as  he  declares  that 
the  case  is  unique  and  most  inter- 
esting. 

As  I  neared  the  little  railway- 
station,  the  line  passing  through  a 
number  of  water-meadows,  a  heron 
rose  with  heavy  flapping  flight 
from  a  small  stream,  a  tributary 
of  the  river  Colne ;  and  presently 
another  from  a  little  runnel,  where 
he  had  been  feeding.  So  in  order  to 
note  this  interesting  bird,  I  was  glad 
to  find  one  need  only  go  a  few  miles 
beyond  Baling.  Long  lines  of  pol- 
lard willows  lined  the  streams,  and 
there  are  innumerable  little  run- 
nels and  channels  that  feed  the 
larger  river.  The  county  of  Buck- 


844 


An  Ancient  Inn. 


[Dec. 


ingham  is  bounded  by  this  river 
Colne  for  a  length  of  fourteen  miles 
of  its  course,  as  it  runs  to  empty 
itself  into  the  Thames,  opposite 
Tinsey  Mead,  about  half  a  mile 
from  Staines.  An  old  writer  says 
of  these  willows,  "  Such  who  have 
lost  their  love  make  their  mourn- 
ing garlands,  and  the  Jews  hung 
their  harps  on  these  doleful  sup- 
porters." But  in  their  favour 
again  Mr  Gyll  says  it  has  been 
remarked  that  the  owner  of  willows 
will  buy  a  horse,  whilst  by  other 
trees  he  would  only  pay  for  his 
saddle. 

Colnbrook  itself  is  on  four  chan- 
nels of  the  stream,  and  one-half  of 
the  long  grey  stone  bridge  which 
crosses  it,  just  as  one  enters  the 
town,  is  in  Middlesex  and  the 
other  half  in  Buckingham.  It 
belongs  to  the  parish  of  Horton, 
which  name  is  derived  from  Ort  or 
Wort,  a  herb  or  vegetable,  and  tun, 
an  inclosure  or  garden.  The  soil 
here  is  rich  and  fruitful ;  and  this 
was  the  rural  retreat  chosen  by 
the  father  of  our  poet  John  Milton, 
when  he  retired  from  his  business 
in  Bread  Street,  at  the  ripe  age  of 
seventy,  to  renew  his  youth  among 
these  pleasant  surroundings.  In 
spite  of  the  amount  of  water  that 
seems  to  run  and  lie  everywhere 
in  this  district,  there  must  be 
something  in  the  air  very  con- 
ducive to  longevity,  for  I  found 
that  a  great  number  of  the  inhabi- 
tants were  exceedingly  old.  In 
the  stilted  language  of  a  bygone 
age,  we  are  told  that  "  Horton  and 
the  repeated  strains  of  the  sweet 
bird  of  eve,  for  nightingales  abound 
in  the  village,  together  with  the 
scenery  and  the  society,  awakened 
an  inspiration  in  the  thoughtful 
mind  of  the  young  philosopher  and 
child  of  song.  A  welcome  recep- 
tion at  the  big  Manor  House  en- 
deared him  to  his  companions,  and 
as  the  Sabbaths  revolved  he  found 


himself  the  centre  of  a  congrega- 
tion animated  with  warm  devotion 
and  gratitude,  whose  expansion  is 
a  virtue  and  a  pleasure." 

Are  not  these  what  used  to  be 
called  rounded  periods'?  Life  is 
now  too  rapid,  fortunately  or  un- 
fortunately, shall  we  say,  for  sen- 
tences such  as  these,  in  which  many 
of  our  cultured  forefathers  delight- 
ed. Not  so,  however,  that  early 
writer  whom  Mr  Gyll  calls  "old 
Thow  of  Reading,"  whose  "  pleas- 
ant Historic,"  as  we  shall  see 
further  on,  is  marked  by  a  pithy 
simplicity  of  style  which  is  quite 
refreshing. 

The  home  of  the  rabbit  which  I 
had  come  to  see  was,  I  found,  in 
an  old-fashioned  little  house  just 
where  the  town  begins,  and  I  had 
a  pleasant  welcome  from  its  owners. 
"What  an  old-world  forgotten 
sort  of  air  your  little  town  has,"  I 
remarked  to  my  hostess,  a  most 
intelligent  and  youthful  old  lady, 
now  in  her  eightieth  year.  I  sat 
in  her  pretty  drawing-room,  strok- 
ing the  silky  hair  of  the  rabbit, 
which  was  in  my  lap,  for  Bunny 
is  allowed  to  run  about  the  house 
and  the  garden  freely. 

"Ah,  yes!  it  is  indeed  so;  yet 
I  remember  the  time  when  coaches 
ran  by  our  house  every  five  min- 
utes, and  great  waggons,  too,  with 
eight  horses  to  each,  their  bells 
jingling  merrily ;  but  now  the 
place  is  silent  indeed.  Across  the 
road  there,  you  see  King  John's 
old  house — Magna  Charta  island, 
you  know,  is  very  near  to  this ; 
and  a  few  doors  farther  up  in  our 
street  is  the  house  that  used  to  be 
a  noted  inn  called  the  Catherine's 
Wheel.  Henry  VIII.  stayed 
there  with  Queen  Catherine  and 
their  suite.  It  is  still  a  good 
house,  but  it  has,  as  you  will  see, 
been  refronted.  The  Ostrich 
Inn  is,  however,  the  great  feature 
of  the  place  :  it  is  the  house  where 


1894.] 


An  Ancient  Inn. 


845 


the  ambassadors  used  to  put  up,  in 
order  to  robe  themselves  before 
being  presented  to  royalty  at  Wind- 
sor. Queen  Elizabeth's  arms  are 
still  over  the  mantel  in  one  old 
room ;  she  stayed  there  once  whilst 
one  of  the  wheels  of  her  coach, 
which  had  come  to  grief,  was  being 
repaired.  The  house  is  well  worth 
going  over :  they  will  show  you 
the  best  chamber,  which  Dick 
Turpin  always  used,  and  the  win- 
dow from  which  he  sprang  into 
the  road  below  when  he  was  once 
hotly  pursued.  But  the  inn,  in- 
deed, is  chiefly  noted  for  the  great 
number  of  murders  which  took 
place  there  at  one  time." 

"  Have  you  any  old  book  about 
the  place  1 "  I  asked. 

"There  used  to  be  one;  but  no 
one  seems  to  know  what  has  be- 
come of  it.  It  was  written  about 
three  hundred  years  ago.  We  can 
show  you,  however,  a  history  of 
this  parish,  which  was  written 
early  in  this  century." 

This  was  the  book  to  which  I 
have  previously  alluded  ;  and  after 
glancing  at  some  of  its  facts  about 
Colnbrook,  and  hearing  the  tales 
which  my  hostess  and  her  daughter 
told  me,  with  the  hints  at  that  old 
book  which  was  fifty  years  ago 
already  so  "difficult  to  be  pro- 
cured," I  began  to  feel  I  was 
coming  in  touch  with  an  old- 
world  life — rare,  indeed,  to  hear 
of  in  the  present  day — and  I  was 
seized  with  that  instinct  which 
was  keen  in  my  old  favourites, 
William  and  Mary  Howitt,  and 
of  which  that  charming  author, 
Miss  Mitford,  wrote :  "  All  my 
life  long  I  have  had  a  passion  for 
that  sort  of  seeking  that  implies 
finding — the  secret,  I  believe,  of 
the  love  of  field-sports — which  is 
in  man's  mind  a  natural  impulse." 

The  first  thing  to  do  was,  I  felt, 
to  go  and  have  some  luncheon  at 
the  old  Ostrich  Inn,  which  I  found 


to  be  a  most  interesting  old  house, 
part  of  which  has  long  been  used 
as  corn-stores.  The  whole  build- 
ing is  panelled  with  beautifully 
grained  chestnut-wood,  which  was 
all  grown  on  the  adjacent  Houns- 
low  Heath.  In  the  part  now  used 
as  an  inn,  this  has  unfortunately 
been  painted  or  papered  over ;  but 
in  the  larger  rooms  up-stairs,  now 
used  for  storing  grain,  it  is  as  it 
originally  was. 

The  old  landlady's  daughter,  in 
showing  me  Dick  Turpin's  room, 
said  that  as  children  they  always 
feared  to  go  into  it,  because  of  the 
tales  told  of  all  that  had  happened 
there.  Tradition  indeed  said  that 
there  had  been  the  gruesome  old 
death-trap,  of  which  I  shall  tell 
further  on.  But  that  could  not 
have  been  so,  as  the  house  that 
stood  first  on  this  site,  called  in 
our  old  book  the  Crane,  must  have 
been  that  public  inn  with  the  half 
hide  of  land,  on  the  site  of  the 
present  Ostrich,  on  the  road  to 
London,  which  was  given  to  the 
Abbey  of  Abingdon  by  Milo 
Crispin  in  return  for  certain  good 
offices  received  near  the  time  of 
his  death,  soon  after  the  Norman 
Conquest ;  which  inn  was,  as  we 
shall  see,  destroyed  by  order  of 
King  Henry  I.,  at  the  time  when 
the  present  town  is  said  to  have 
been  first  called  Colebrook.  In 
the  Doomsday  Book  it  had  not 
been  mentioned  by  that  name. 

Amongst  other  old  furniture  in 
Dick  Turpin's  room  is  an  old  chest, 
on  which  is  lettered,  "  God  give 
Jeames  Stiles  grace,  1695."  There 
were  four  doors  to  this  room,  and 
a  hidden  communication  with  a 
large  well-floored  attic-room,  that 
runs  the  whole  length  of  the  long 
building.  The  exterior  of  this  is 
remarkably  well  preserved,  and  it 
is  strange  that  it  has  attracted  so 
little  notice  in  works  descriptive 
of  old  domestic  architecture. 


846 


An  Ancient  Inn. 


[Dec. 


In  the  centre,  over  an  archway, 
is  the  frame  of  a  doorway,  and  the 
ledge  on  which  rested  the  balcony 
from  which,  over  a  small  draw- 
bridge, the  "  quality  "  stepped  on 
to  the  tops  of  the  old  coaches. 
We  read  of  the  Ostrich  as  having 
been  a  famous  inn  frequently  re- 
sorted to  by  "  visitors  wending  to 
and  from  the  Palace  at  Windsor," 
as  far  back  as  the  time  of  Edward 
I. ;  and  in  *  Froissart's  Chronicles ' 
he  says  of  four  French  Ambas- 
sadors to  Edward  III.,  "  So  they 
dyned  in  the  Kynge's  chamber, 
and  after  they  departed,  and  lay 
the  same  night  at  Colbrook  and 
the  next  day  at  London."  Mr 
Gyll  again  speaks  of  the  "sad 
reputation  "  of  this  inn  for  "  sys- 
tematic removal  of  strangers." 

The  old  ballad  of  the  three 
cooks  of  Colnbrook  was  com- 
posed here.  Later  on  Queen 
Elizabeth  and  many  great  Court 
magnates  slept  at  the  old  George 
Inn,  which  is  said  to  have  taken 
its  name  from  a  wooden  statue  of 
St  George,  which  was  stolen  by  a 
clothier  from  the  porch  of  the  par- 
ish church  of  Dursley  in  Glouces- 
ter, and  carried  to  Colebrook  on 
his  waggon.  But  the  Ostrich  has 
remained  always  as  the  centre  of 
interest  in  the  old  town. 

At  the  Ostrich  again  I  heard  of 
the  old  book.  It  was  not  there ; 
but  I  did  not  return  to  town  from 
Colnbrook,  that  day,  without  hav- 
ing found  it,  and  it  lies  before  me 
as  I  write  this  article.  It  was 
written  by  Tom  Deloney,  a  famous 
ballad-maker  and  broadsheet  writer 
of  Queen  Elizabeth's  time,  who  was 
also  the  author  of  the  well-known 
"Jack  of  Newberry,"  and  some 
lives  of  contemporaneous  angling 
worthies.  Several  of  Deloney 's 
"Garlands"  and  broad-sheets  have 
been  reprinted  by  the  Percy 
Society,  and  his  chapbooks  were 
long  favourites  with  the  people. 


The  proper  title  of  the  book  is 
1  Thomas  of  Heading ;  or,  The  Sixe 
worthie  Yeomen  of  the  West,'  which 
was,  as  its  title-page  states,  "  Now 
for  the  sixth  time  corrected  and 
enlarged  by  T.  D.,"  and  printed 
in  London  by  Eliz.  Allde  for 
Robert  Bird,  1632.  The  author 
of  the  later  work  I  have  alluded 
to  was  therefore  incorrect  when 
he  spoke  of  it  as  having  been 
written  by  one  Thow  of  Reading. 
He  knew  of  the  book  probably 
only  by  hearsay.  The  story  of 
Thomas  of  Reading  concerns  Coin- 
brook,  because  the  surname  of  that 
worthy  clothier  was  Cole ;  and  it 
was  the  tragic  ending  to  his  life 
which  took  place  at  the  Crane 
Inn,  that  stood  on  the  present 
site  of  the  Ostrich,  which  caused 
the  place  to  be  called  Colnbrook, 
and  the  stream  which  runs  past 
the  bottom  of  the  inn-yard  to  be 
called  the  Colne.  In  all  the 
earlier  records  the  name  is  written 
Colbrook,  Culbrok,  or  Colebrook, 
as  it  is  pronounced. 

I  shall  give  the  story  of  Thomas 
Cole  as  far  as  possible  in  the  very 
wording  of  the  quaint  author :  it 
presents  a  more  vivid  picture  of 
the  life  and  manners  of  that  early 
age  than  I  remember  to  have  read 
elsewhere.  The  spelling  will  be 
altered  slightly,  so  as  to  make  it 
more  intelligible. 

In  the  days  of  King  Henry  I. 
there  lived  nine  men  who,  for  the 
trade  of  clothing,  were  famous 
throughout  all  England.  This 
art  in  those  days  was  held  in 
high  reputation  both  in  respect 
of  the  great  riches  which  thereby 
was  gotten,  as  also  of  the  benefit 
it  brought  to  the  whole  Common- 
wealth :  the  younger  sons  of 
knights  and  gentlemen,  to  whom 
their  fathers  would  leave  no  lands, 
were  most  commonly  preferred  to 
learn  this  trade,  to  the  end  that 
they  might  thereby  live  in  good 


1894.]  An  Ancient  Inn. 

estate,  and  drive  forth  their  days 
in  prosperity. 

Among  all  crafts  this  was  the 
one  by  which  our  country  became 
famous  throughout  all  nations. 
And  it  was  verily  thought  that 
the  one-half  the  people  in  the 
land  lived  in  those  days  thereby, 
and  in  such  good  sort  that  in  the 
Commonwealth  there  were  few  or 
no  beggars  at  all :  poor  people, 
whom  God  lightly  blessed  with 
most  children,  did,  by  means  of 
this  occupation,  so  order  them 
that  by  the  time  they  were  come 
to  be  five  or  seven  years  of  age, 
they  were  able  to  get  their  own 
bread  ;  idleness  was  then  banished 
our  coast,  so  that  it  was  a  rare 
thing  to  hear  of  a  thief  in  those 
days.  Therefore  it  was  not  with- 
out cause  that  clothiers  were  then 
both  honoured  and  loved,  among 
whom  these  six  persons  in  this 
king's  days  were  of  great  credit — 
viz.,  Thomas  Cole  of  Reading, 
Gray  of  Gloucester,  Sutton  of 
Salisbury,  Fitzallan  of  Worcester 
—  commonly  called  William  of 
Worcester,  Tom  Dove  of  Exeter, 
and  Simon  of  Southampton,  alias 
Supbroth;  who  were  by  the  king 
called  the  Sixe  worthy  Husbands 
of  the  West.  Then  there  were 
three  living  in  the  north,  that 
is  to  say,  Cuthbert  of  Kendall, 
Hodgekins  of  Halifax,  and  Martin 
Briam  of  Manchester.  Every  one 
of  these  kept  a  great  number  of 
servants  at  work,  spinners,  carders, 
weavers,  fullers,  dyers,  shearmen, 
and  rowers,  to  the  great  admira- 
tion of  those  who  came  into  their 
houses. 

Those  gallant  clothiers,  by 
reason  of  their  dwelling-places, 
separated  themselves  in  three 
several  companies  :  Gray  of  Glou- 
cester, William  of  Worcester,  and 
Thomas  of  Reading,  because  their 
journey  to  London  was  all  one 
way,  conversed  generally  together; 


847 


and  Dove  of  Exeter,  Sutton  of 
Salisbury,  and  Simon  of  South- 
ampton in  like  sort  kept  company 
the  one  with  the  other,  meeting 
all  together  at  Bazingstoke;  and 
the  three  northern  clothiers  did 
the  like, — they  commonly  did  not 
meet  till  they  came  to  Bolome's 
Inne  in  London. 

Moreover,  for  the  love  and  de- 
light that  these  western  men  had 
each  in  other's  company,  they  did 
so  provide  that  their  waines  and 
themselves  would  ever  meet  upon 
one  day  in  London  at  Jarrat's 
Hall,  surnamed  the  Giant,  for  that 
he  surpassed  all  other  men  at  that 
age  both  in  stature  and  strength. 

It  chanced  on  a  time  as  this 
King  Henry — who  for  his  great 
learning  and  wisdom  was  called 
Beauclarke — with  one  of  his  sons 
and  divers  of  his  nobility,  rode  from 
London  towards  Wales  to  appease 
the  fury  of  the  Welshmen,  which 
then  began  to  raise  themselves  in 
arms  against  his  authority,  that 
he  met  with  a  great  number  of 
waines  loaden  with  cloth  coming 
to  London,  and  seeing  them  still 
drive  one  after  another,  so  many 
together,  demanded  whose  they 
were.  The  waine-men  answered 
in  this  sort,  "  Cole's  of  Reading." 
Then  by-and-by  the  king  asked 
another,  saying,  "  Whose  cloth  is 
all  this?"  "Old  Cole's,"  quoth 
he.  The  king  had  met  them  in 
so  narrow  and  straight  a  place 
that  he  and  his  train  were  fain  to 
stand  close  to  the  hedge  whilst 
the  carts  passed  by,  and  as  they 
were  in  number  about  two  hundred, 
it  was  near  hand  an  hour  ere  the 
king  could  get  room  to  be  gone : 
so  that  by  his  long  stay  he  began 
to  be  displeased,  although  the  ad- 
miration of  that  sight  did  much 
qualify  his  fury.  But,  break- 
ing out  in  discontent,  he  said, 
"  Methinks  old  Cole  hath  got  a 
commission  for  all  the  carts  in  the 


848 


An  Ancient  Inn. 


[Dec. 


country  to  carry  his  cloth."  "  And 
how  if  he  have,"  quoth  one  of  the 
waine-men:  "doth  that  grieve 
you,  good  sir?"  "Yes,  good  sir," 
said  our  king,  "what  say  you  to 
that?"  The  fellow,  seeing  the 
king  bend  his  brows,  though  he 
knew  not  what  he  was,  answered, 
"Why,  sir,  if  you  be  angry, 
nobody  can  hinder  you  :  for  pos- 
sible, sir,  you  have  anger  at  com- 
mandment." At  this  the  king 
laughed  heartily  at  him ;  and  as 
soon  as  the  last  waine  went  by, 
which  gave  passage  unto  him  and 
his  nobles,  he  entered  into  com- 
munication of  the  commodity  of 
clothing,  and  on  returning  home 
gave  orders  to  have  old  Cole 
brought  before  his  Majesty,  that 
he  might  have  conference  with 
him,  noting  him  to  be  a  person  of 
great  ability. 

The  old  book  gives  further  an 
amusing  account  of  how,  near 
Staines  again,  the  king  met 
another  company  of  wains  laden 
with  cloth,  and  asking  whose  they 
were,  was  told  "They  be  Good- 
man Button's  of  Salisburie,  good 
sir."  And  again  a  second  and 
third  time  his  way  was  stopped 
by  them,  till  he  cried,  "  God  send 
me  many  such  Buttons !  .  .  .  I 
always  thought,"  quoth  he,  "  that 
England's  valor  was  more  than 
her  wealth,  yet  now  I  see  her 
wealth  sufficient  to  maintain  her 
valor." 

The  clothiers,  it  seems,  were 
wont  to  shorten  the  long  way  to 
Colebrook  with  pleasant  discourses. 
Some  of  these  were  full  of  wit  and 
of  sayings  that  are  still  in  familiar 
use  with  us — such,  for  instance, 
as  that  "God  sends  us  good  meat, 
but  the  devil  sends  us  cooks." 
And  only  yesterday,  in  a  London 
journal,  I  saw  a  saying  that  I  find 
here  attributed  to  some  one  else. 
In  speaking  of  a  nagging  wife,  our 
old  author  pays  she  did  "talke 


until  her  goodman's  hair  did  grow 
through  his  hood." 

At  Colebrook  these  goodmen  of 
the  West  always  dined  together,  for 
good  cheer  was  provided  for  them. 
Then  they  proceeded  to  London, 
where  a  costly  supper  was  ready 
for  them  at  the  house  of  Jarrat 
the  Giant.  Over  this  they  made 
their  bargains,  and  upon  every 
bargain  made  the  merchants  "  still 
used  to  send  some  token  to  the 
clothiers'  wives." 

At  the  Hall  next  day  they 
would  meet  the  three  northern 
clothiers,  and  they  greeted  one 
another  in  this  sort. 

"  What,  my  Masters  of  the  West, 
well  met ;  what  cheere  1 " 

"Even  the  best  cheere  our 
merchants  could  make  us,"  quoth 
Gray. 

"  Then  you  could  not  choose 
but  fare  well,"  quoth  Hodgekins. 

"And  you  be  weary  of  our  com- 
pany, adieu,"  quoth  Sutton. 

"Not  so,"  said  Martin,  "but 
shall  we  not  have  a  game  ere  we 
goe?"  And  with  that  old  Cole 
and  Gray  went  to  the  dice  with 
Martin  and  Hodgekins ;  and  the 
dice  running  on  Hodgekins'  side, 
Cole's  money  began  to  waste,  till 
Cole  cried,  "  By  the  Masse,  my 
money  shines  as  bad  as  Northern 
cloth." 

There  is  a  curious  reference  in 
our  book  to  the  builder  of  the 
Priory  of  St  Bartholomew  in 
Smithfield,  whose  name  is  here 
spelt  "Reior"  (Rahere).  Tom 
Dove  of  Exeter  loved  music,  and 
had  "all  the  fiddlers  at  a  beck 
of  his  finger,"  so  that  they  fol- 
lowed him  up  and  down  the  city, 
as  diligent  as  little  chickens  after 
a  hen.  And  there  lived  then  in 
London  "  a  musician  of  great  repu- 
tation, named  Reior,"  who  kept 
his  servants  in  costly  garments, 
their  coats  all  of  one  colour,  which 
it  is  said  is  the  cause  of  the 


1894.]  An  Ancient  Inn. 

nobility  of  this  land  beginning  to 
clothe  their  servants  in  livery. 
The  bows  of  Reior's  servants' 
violins  were  of  solid  silver.  "  He 
was  also  for  his  wisdome  called  to 
great  office  in  the  city,  who  also 
builded  at  his  own  cost  the  Priory 
and  Hospitall  of  St  Bartholomew 
in  Smithfield."  The  company  of 
this  great  musician,  the  wealthy 
clothier  Tom  Dove  appointed  to 
play.  "  Let  us  with  music  remove 
these  Brabbles  (bickerings),"  he 
said.  And  old  Cole,  who  had 
won  back  his  money  and  much 
more,  paid  for  the  sacke,  for,  said 
he,  "  I  promise  you,  I  strive  not 
to  grow  rich  by  dice  -  playing, 
therefore  call  for  what  you  will, 
I  will  pay  for  all." 

Their  business  in  London  being 
ended,  it  was  the  habit  of  the 
sixe  clothiers  of  the  West  to  leave 
together,  and  to  take  up  the  first 
night's  lodging  at  Colebrook. 
There  Cole  of  Reading  was  used 
to  give  the  money  he  had  with  him 
into  the  keeping  of  the  goodwife 
of  the  inn  until  the  morning, 
which  in  the  end  led  to  his  de- 
struction. 

One  summer  the  king  made  a 
progress  through  the  West  country, 
and  having  grown  to  respect  them 
greatly,  he  visited  the  six  clothiers 
in  their  several  towns.  At  Read- 
ing he  and  his  son,  and  the  nobles 
in  attendance,  were  royally  en- 
tertained by  old  Cole.  He  was 
amazed  and  delighted  by  the  great 
number  of  workmen  who  were 
maintained  in  work  by  the  one 
man,  and  he  liked  well  "  their  out- 
ward countenances."  As  for  Cole 
himself,  the  king  placed  him  in  a 
high  position  of  authority  in  his 
town,  and  he  declared  further  that 
"for  the  love  those  people  bore 
him  living,  he  would  lay  his  bones 
among  them  when  he  was  dead." 
"  For  I  know  not,"  said  he,  "  where 
they  may  better  be  bestowed  till 


849 


the  blessed  day  of  Resurrection 
than  among  these  my  friends, 
which  are  like  to  be  happy  partakers 
of  the  same"  And  there  he  had 
built  a  goodly  castle  in  which  he 
of  ten  kept  court,  telling  the  clothiers 
that  because  he  found  them  such 
faithful  subjects  he  would  often 
dwell  among  them.  The  famous 
abbey  of  Reading  the  king  also 
now  caused  to  be  built. 

After  this,  Thomas  of  Reading 
had  oftener  occasion  to  go  to  Lon- 
don, both  on  his  Majesty's  busi- 
ness and  his  own  ;  and  it  happened 
that  his  host  and  hostess  of  Cole- 
brook,  who  had  already,  as  was 
found  out  later,  through  covetous- 
ness,  murdered  many  of  their 
guests,  and  who  were  tempted  by 
the  large  sums  the  wealthy  clothier 
left  from  time  to  time  in  their 
hands,  made  up  their  minds  that 
he  should  be  their  next  victim. 
He  was  exceedingly  rich  at  this 
time,  having  at  his  house  a  hun- 
dred men-  and  forty  maid-servants, 
whilst  as  a  clothier  he  maintained 
also  from  two  to  three  hundred 
spinners,  carders,  and  other  work- 
people. 

It  was  the  custom  of  the  hus- 
band to  say  to  his  wife  when  any 
traveller  whom  they  knew  to  have 
money  about  him  came  alone  to 
their  inn :  "Wife,  there  is  now  a 
fat  pig  to  be  had  if  you  want  one." 
To  which  she  would  answer,  "  I 
pray  you  put  him  in  the  hog-stye 
till  to-morrow."  The  victim  was 
then  put  to  sleep  in  a  fair  chamber 
which  was  right  over  the  kitchen, 
and  had  in  it  the  best  furniture  in 
the  house.  The  bedstead,  we  are 
told,  although  it  was  little  and 
low,  yet  was  it  most  cunningly 
carved ;  and  the  feet  of  it  were 
fast  nailed  to  the  chamber  floor, 
so  that  it  could  not  be  pushed 
aside.  Underneath  the  bed  was  a 
trap-door,  and  all  was  so  arranged 
that  by  pulling  out  two  iron  pins, 


850 


An  Ancient  Inn. 


[Dec. 


down  in  the  kitchen  below,  the 
whole  fell  in  such  a  manner  that 
the  victim  was  received  into  an 
immense  caldron  which  they  used 
for  brewing.  As  soon  as  they 
knew  the  man  to  be  asleep,  he  was 
let  down,  scalded,  and  drowned, 
without  being  able  to  cry  out  or 
utter  a  word.  Putting  a  ladder 
which  stood  ready  in  the  kitchen 
up  to  the  floor  of  the  chamber, 
they  next  took  away  the  man's 
clothing  as  well  as  his  money  "  in 
his  male  or  cap-case  " ;  the  falling- 
floor  was  then  lifted  up  by  its 
hinges  again,  and  all  made  fast  as 
before.  The  dead  body  was  pre- 
sently taken  out  of  the  caldron, 
and  thrown  into  the  river,  which 
ran  close  to  the  house. 

In  the  morning,  if  any  other  of 
the  guests  who  had  chanced  to 
talk  with  the  murdered  man  over- 
night asked  after  him,  happening 
perhaps  to  have  to  ride  the  same 
way  as  he  had  purposed  to  do,  the 
goodman  would  reply  that  he  had 
taken  horse  a  good  while  before 
day,  and  that  he  had  risen  early 
himself  to  see  him  off.  His  horse 
had  been,  before  this,  taken  out  of 
its  stable  and  hurriedly  ridden  by 
the  host  himself  to  a  hay -barn 
that  he  had  a  mile  or  two  away : 
of  this  he  always  kept  the  keys 
carefully  himself,  and  never  al- 
lowed any  one  else  to  enter  the 
barn.  Before  the  horse  left  this, 
the  man  "dismarked  him,"  crop- 
ped its  ears,  cut  its  mane  or 
cropped^its  tail,  or  even  put  out 
one  of  its  eyes,  so  that  the  beast 
might  not;  be  recognised. 

The  worthy  clothier  having  now 
been  marked  for  death,  he  was 
laid  in  the  same  awful  chamber; 
but  it  happened  that  Gray  of 
Gloucester  arrived  the  same  night 
at  the  inn,  which  caused  him  to 
escape  for  the  time.  When  he 
next  rode  that  way,  he  was  laid 
there  again;  but  before  he  fell 


asleep,  one  came  riding  through 
the  town,  "  and  cryed  piteously 
that  London  was  all  on  a  fire,  and 
that  it  had  burned  down  Thomas 
a  Becket's  house  in  West-cheape, 
and  a  great  number  more  in  the 
same  street ;  and  yet,  quoth  he, 
the  fire  is  not  queiicht." 

These  tidings  agitated  Thomas 
of  Reading  exceedingly,  for  it 
happened  that  he  had  received  a 
great  piece  of  money  from  that 
same  Becket  before  leaving  Lon- 
don. He  had  also  left  many  writ- 
ings at  the  house  in  West-cheape, 
some  of  which  related  to  the 
king's  business ;  so  that  it  was 
necessary  for  him  to  ride  back 
again  to  London  that  same  night. 
This  cross  fortune  made  his  host 
frown.  "  Nevertheless,"  said  he, 
"  the  next  time  will  pay  for  all." 

On  Cole's  next  visit,  however, 
Providence  again  interposed ;  for 
a  couple,  who  happened  to  be 
staying  in  the  house,  fell  out  at 
dice  to  such  a  degree  that  the 
would  -  be  murderers  themselves, 
knowing  him  to  be  a  man  in  great 
authority,  called  him  up  in  order 
that  he  might  set  their  house  in 
quietness,  because,  "  by  meanes  of 
this  quarrell  they  doubted  to  lose 
many  things." 

A  fourth  time  again,  when  he 
came  to  their  inn,  he  fell  so  sick 
that  he  requested  to  have  some- 
body to  watch  beside  him.  It  was 
impossible,  however,  to  avert  the 
calamity  which  was  destined  to 
overtake  him  sooner  or  later.  Or 
was  it  that,  being  a  man  of  ob- 
stinate purpose,  he  would  heed  no 
warning  1  For  although,  the  next 
time  that  he  had  to  go  to  London, 
his  horse  stumbled  and  broke  one 
of  its  legs,  so  that  he  had  to  turn 
homeward  again,  yet  he  hired  an- 
other, for  there  seemed  nothing 
for  it  but  he  must  go  to  Oolebrook 
that  night.  On  the  way  there,  too, 
he  was  so  heavy  with  sleep  that  he 


1894.] 


An  Ancient  Inn. 


851 


could  hardly  keep  himself  in  the 
saddle,  and  as  he  came  near  to  the 
town  his  nose  suddenly  burst  out 
a-bleeding. 

Arrived  at  his  inn,  so  heavy 
was  his  heart  that  he  could  eat  no 
meat;  and  his  host  and  hostess, 
hearing  that  he  was  so  melancholy, 
came  up  to  cheer  him,  saying, 
"  Jesus,  Master  Cole,  what  ails 
you  to-night?  Never  did  we  see 
you  thus  sad  before  :  will  it  please 
you  to  have  a  quart  of  burnt 
sacke?" 

"  With  a  good  will,"  quoth  he ; 
"  and  would  to  God  Tom  Dove 
were  here,  he  would  surely  make 
me  merry,  and  we  should  lack 
no  music."  A  little  later  he  said, 
"  Let  me  see,  I  have  but  one  child 
in  the  world,  and  that  is  my 
daughter,  and  half  that  I  have  is 
hers,  the  other  half  my  wife's. 
But  shall  I  be  good  to  nobody  but 
them  1  In  conscience,  my  wealth 
is  too  much  for  a  couple  to  pos- 
sess, and  what  is  our  religion  with- 
out charity  ?  And  to  whom  is 
charity  more  to  be  shown  than 
to  decayed  householders  1 "  Tom 
Dove,  through  his  love  of  jollity 
and  good-fellowship,  had  now  lost 
his  all. 

"  Good  my  host,  lend  me  a  pen 
and  ink  and  some  paper,  for  I  will 
write  a  letter  unto  a  poor  man 
straight ;  and  something  I  will 
give  him.  That  alms  which  a  man 
bestows  with  his  own  hands,  he 
shall  be  sure  to  have  delivered, 
and  God  knows  how  long  I  shall 
live." 

With  that  his  hostess  dis- 
semblingly  answered,  "  Doubt  nob, 
Master  Cole,  you  are  like  enough 
by  the  course  of  nature  to  live 
many  years."  "  God  knows," 
quoth  Cole,  "  I  never  found  my 
heart  so  heavy  before ; "  and 
soon  he  set  himself  to  write  as 
follows, — 

"In  the  name  of  God,  Amen. 


I  bequeath  my  soul  to  God,  and 
my  body  to  the  ground,  my  goods 
equally  between  my  wife  Elenor 
and  Isabel  my  daughter.  Item,  I 
give  to  Thomas  Dove  of  Exeter 
one  hundred  pounds," — nay,  that  is 
too  little, — "I  give  to  Thomas  Dove 
two  hundred  pounds  in  money,  to 
be  paid  unto  him  presently  upon 
his  demand  thereof,  by  my  said 
wife  and  daughter."  Then  he 
bade  his  host  read  it,  to  see  that 
it  was  all  right. 

"Why,  Master  Cole,  what  have 
you  written  here?"  asked  the 
latter.  "  You  said  you  would  write 
a  letter,  but  you  have  made  a 
will :  what  need  have  you  to  do 
thus  ?  Thanks  be  to  God,  you  may 
live  many  fair  years." 

"'Tis  true,"  quoth  Cole,  "if  it 
please  God,  and  I  trust  this  writ- 
ing cannot  shorten  my  days.  I 
did  verily  purpose  to  write  a  letter, 
notwithstanding  I  have  written 
that  which  God  did  put  into  my 
mind  ;  and  it  shall  go  as  it  is." 

Then  he  folded  it  up,  sealed  it, 
and  desired  his  host  to  send  it  at 
once  to  Exeter,  and  was  not  satis- 
fied until  he  had  himself  hired  the 
man  to  carry  it.  Then  he  sat 
down  sadly  in  his  chair  again,  and 
presently  burst  forth  a-weeping. 
"  No  cause  of  these  fears  I  know," 
he  said  presently;  "but  it  comes 
now  into  my  mind  that  when  I 
set  toward  this  my  last  journey 
to  London  my  daughter  took  on, 
and  what  a  coyle  she  kept  to  have 
me  stay  ;  and  I  could  not  be  rid 
of  the  little  baggage  a  long  time, 
she  did  so  hang  about  me.  When 
her  mother  by  violence  took  her 
away,  she  cried  out  most  mainly, 
'0  my  father,  my  father,  I  shall 
never  see  him  again  ! ' " 

"  Alas  !  pretty  soul,"  said  his 
false  hostess,  "this  was  but  mere 
kindness  in  the  girl,  and  it  seem- 
eth  that  she  is  very  fond  of  you. 
But,  alas !  why  should  you  grieve 


852 


An  Ancient  Inn. 


[Dec. 


at  this  ?  You  must  consider  that 
it  was  but  childishness."  "  Ay,  it 
is  indeed,"  said  Cole,  and  with  that 
he  began  to  nod.  Then  they  asked 
him  if  he  would  go  to  bed.  "  No," 
said  he,  "  although  I  am  heavy,  I 
have  no  mind  to  go  to  bed  at  all." 
Then  certain  musicians  of  the  town 
came  to  the  chamber,  and  knowing 
Master  Cole  was  there,  drew  out 
their  instruments,  and  very 
solemnly  began  to  play.  "This 
music  comes  very  well,"  said  Cole ; 
but  after  he  had  listened  a  little 
while  he  said,  "  Methinks  these 
instruments  sound  like  the  ring 
of  St  Mary  Overie's  bells ;  but 
the  bass  drowns  all  the  rest,  and 
in  my  ear  it  goes  like  a  bell 
that  rings  a  frozen  one's  knell. 
For  God's  sake,  let  them  leave 
off,  and  bear  them  this  simple  re- 
ward." The  musicians  having  left, 
his  host  asked  if  now  it  would 
please  him  to  go  to  bed;  for  it 
was  now  nearly  eleven  o'clock. 

At  that  Cole  looked  earnestly 
at  his  host  and  hostess,  and 
started  back,  saying,  "  What  ails 
you  to  look  so  like  pale  Death  1 
Good  Lord !  what  have  you  done, 
that  your  hands  are  thus  bloody  1 " 

"What,  my  hands?"  said  his 
host;  "why,  you  may  see  that 
they  are  neither  bloody  nor  foul ; 
either  your  eyes  do  greatly  dazell, 
or  else  fancies  of  a  troubled  mind 
do  delude  you." 

"  Alas  !  my  host,  you  may  see," 
said  Cole,  "  how  weak  my  wits 
are.  I  never  had  my  head  so  idle 
before.  Come,  let  me  drink  once 
more,  and  then  I  will  to  bed,  and 
trouble  you  no  longer."  With  that 
he  undressed  himself,  and  his  host- 
ess warmed  a  kerchief  and  put  it 
about  his  head.  "Good  Lord!" 
said  he,  "  I  am  not  sick,  I  praise 
God ;  but  such  an  alteration  I  find 
in  myself  as  I  never  did  before." 
With  that  the  Scritch-Owle  cried 
piteously,  and  anon  after  the 


Night -Raven  sate  croking  hard 
by  his  Window.  "  Jesu  !  have 
Mercy  upon  me !  quoth  hee,  what 
an  ill-favoured  Cry  doe  yonder 
Carrion-Birds  make ;  "  and  there- 
with-all he  laid  him  downe  in  his 
Bed,  from  whence  he  never  rose 
againe. 

The  innkeeper  and  his  wife  were 
somewhat  disturbed  by  the  mental 
condition  of  their  victim,  and  the 
man  said  he  knew  not  what  were 
best  to  be  done.  "By  my  con- 
sent," quoth  he,  "the  matter 
should  pass,  for  I  think  it  best 
not  to  meddle  with  him ; "  but  the 
woman  was  relentless.  "What, 
man,  faint  you  now !  have  you 
done  so  many,  and  do  you  shrink 
at  this  ? "  and  with  that  she  showed 
him  a  great  deal  of  gold  which 
Cole  had  put  into  her  care. 
"Would  it  not  grieve  a  body's 
heart  to  lose  this  ?  Hang  the  old 
churle,  what  should  he  do  living 
any  longer  1  He  hath  too  much  and 
we  have  too  little :  tut,  husband, 
let  the  thing  be  done,  and  then  this 
is  our  own." 

Presently,  when  they  listened 
at  his  chamber  door,  they  heard 
the  man  sound  asleep.  The  ser- 
vants were  all  in  bed ;  down  they 
went  into  the  kitchen,  pulled  out 
the  iron  pins,  the  bed  fell,  and  the 
man  was  dropped  into  the  boiling 
caldron.  Soon  betwixt  them  they 
cast  his  body  into  the  river  and 
disposed  of  his  clothes,  &c. ;  but 
when  the  man  went  to  the  stable 
to  take  away  Cole's  horse,  they 
found  that  somehow  it  had  got 
loose,  and  out  into  a  meadow  ad- 
joining an  inn.  Then  after  leap- 
ing divers  hedges,  being  a  lusty, 
stout  horse,  it  had  got  to  a  ground 
where  a  mare  was  grazing.  Pres- 
ently both  horses  were  out  on  the 
highway,  where  a  man  who  knew 
the  mare  met  them  and  took  both 
her  and  the  horse  to  the  one  who 
owned  her.  Early  in  the  morning 


1894.]  An  Ancient  Inn. 

the  musicians  arrived  again,  wish- 
ing to  give  their  good  friend  Cole 
some  music  early.  They  were 
told,  however,  that  he  had  taken 
horse  before  day.  Presently  came 
the  man  who  owned  the  mare,  in- 
quiring up  and  down  the  place 
which  of  them  had  missed  a  horse. 
At  the  Crane  the  ostlers  told  him 
they  had  missed  no  horse,  at  which 
the  man  took  it  back  to  his  own 
house,  saying,  "I  perceive  my 
mare  is  good  for  something,  for  if 
I  send  her  to  field  single  she  comes 
home  double." 

On  the  third  day  after  this, 
Cole's  wife  sent  out  one  of  her 
men  on  horseback  to  meet  his 
master.  "And  if,"  said  she,  "you 
meet  him  not  between  this  and 
Colebrook,  ask  for  him  at  the 
Crane.  If  you  find  him  not  there, 
ride  to  London ;  for  I  doubt  he  is 
either  sick,  or  else  some  mischance 
hath  fallen  unto  him."  The  fellow 
did  so,  and  when  he  asked  for  him 
at  Colebrook  he  was  told  that  he 
had  travelled  farther  on  such  a 
day.  Puzzled  by  this,  the  man 
made  much  inquiry  in  the  town, 
and  in  so  doing  heard  of  the  horse 
which  had  been  found  on  the  high- 
way, which  no  one  claimed.  At 
once  he  recognised  this  to  be  his 
master's,  and  back  to  the  Crane  he 
went  with  him.  That  same  night 
the  innkeeper  fled  secretly  away, 
and  Cole's  servant  going  to  the 
justice  claimed  his  help.  As  soon 
as  it  was  known  that  Jarman  of 
the  Crane  was  gone,  no  one  knew 
whither,  also  that  the  musicians 
said  that  the  innkeeper  had  told 
them  he  himself  had  seen  Cole  off 


853 


before  daybreak,  the  woman  was 
apprehended,  and  being  examined, 
she  confessed  the  truth.  Jarman 
was  taken  soon  afterwards  in 
Windsor  Forest,  and  he  and  his 
wife  were  both  hanged,  but  not 
before  they  had  confessed  their 
evil  deeds.  The  husband  explained 
that,  being  a  carpenter  by  trade, 
he  had  made  that  false  falling-floor; 
but  it  seems  it  was  his  wife  who 
had  devised  it.  And  with  it  they 
had  murdered  in  all  sixty  persons. 
Yet,  strangely  enough,  in  spite  of 
all  the  money  they  had  got  through 
this,  they  had  never  prospered,  and 
at  their  death  were  found  to  be 
deeply  in  debt.  The  news  of  the 
murder  of  his  favourite  clothier 
was  speedily  carried  to  the  king, 
and  for  the  space  of  seven  days, 
says  the  old  book,  he  was  "  so 
sorrowfull  and  heavy  as  he  would 
not  hear  any  suit."  He  ordered 
also  that  the  inn  called  the  Crane, 
in  which  Cole  had  been  murdered, 
should  be  burned  to  the  ground. 

Yet  to  this  very  day  the  Ostrich 
Inn  bears  the  evil  reputation  of 
having  had  these  murders  commit- 
ted in  it,  and,  as  I  was  myself  told, 
the  children  of  the  present  inn- 
keeper used  to  fear  to  enter  Tur- 
pin's  chamber,  believing  that  in 
it  had  been  the  trap-door  through 
which  the  victims  disappeared. 
The  river  runs,  as  it  did,  past  the 
yard  of  the  old  inn,  and  some  say, 
adds  our  old  chronicler,  that  this 
stream,  "  whereinto  Cole  was  cast, 
did  ever  since  carrie  the  name  of 
Cole,  being  called,  The  River  of 
Cole  and  the  Towne  Colebrooke." 
J.  A.  OWEN. 


854 


In  '  Maga's '  Library  : 


[Dec. 


IN    'MAGA'S'    LIBRAE Y. 


WHEN  the  prevailing  passion  for 
biography   and    autobiography   is 
raging  like  an  epidemic,  it  would 
be  strange  if  there  were  not  lives 
of  rare   interest    and   excellence. 
We  have  selected  three  in  very  dif- 
ferent styles,  but  each  delightful 
of  its  sort.     Although  Lord  Duf- 
ferin  has  done  good  service  to  the 
State,  and  filled  with  honour  and 
no  ordinary  distinction  the  highest 
and  most  responsible  posts  in  the 
empire,    we   could   almost   regret 
that    he  had    not    devoted    him- 
self to  literature.     Few  men  are 
more    perfect    masters   of    style ; 
fewer  still  are  more  richly  gifted 
with  the  rare  quality  of  literary 
tact.      His    'Letters   from   High 
Latitudes '  had  made  him  a  repu- 
tation which,  with  more  ambitious 
opportunities,  he  could  afford  to 
neglect.     It  is  very  evident  that 
he   has  not  been  demoralised  by 
the  dictating  of  State  papers  and 
diplomatic  despatches.     He  could 
hardly  have   undertaken   a   more 
delicate    task    than    writing    the 
memoirs  of  a  mother  he  adored,1 
but  the  inevitable  difficulties  have 
been  triumphantly  surmounted.   It 
is  a  graceful  panegyric,  which  is 
no  whit  exaggerated,  inspired  by 
filial  affection,   and   confirmed   in 
each  particular  by  a  cloud  of  dis- 
interested witnesses.      He  makes 
his   readers   sympathise   with   his 
own  loving  admiration.     He  excels 
in  vigorous  portraiture  —  witness 
his  presentation  of  Lord  Gifford — 
and   in   the    art   of   throwing  off 
effective  sketches ;  but  we  believe 
that  he  has  painted  Lady  Dufferin 
to  the  life,  and  assuredly  no  per- 


sonality could  be  more  fascinating. 
This  is  how  he  describes  her,  after 
her  first  husband's  sudden  death, 
when  the  young  widow  was  still  in 
the  fresh  blush  of  her  beauty  : — 

"  My  mother,  in  spite  of  the  gaiety 
of  her  temperament  and  her  powers 
of  enjoyment,  or  perhaps  on  that  very 
account,  was  endued  with  a  deep  reli- 
gious spirit — a  spirit  of  love,  purity, 
self-sacrifice,  and  unfailing  faith  in 
God's  mercy.  In  spite  of  her  sensi- 
tive taste,  keen  sense  of  humour,  in- 
voluntary appreciation  of  the  ridicul- 
ous, and  exquisite  critical  faculty,  her 
natural  impulse  was  to  admire,  and  to 
see  the  good  in  everything,  and  to 
shut  her  eyes  to  what  was  base,  vile, 
or  cruel.  Nowhere  is  this  instinctive 
benevolence  more  apparent  than  in 
her  letters,  for  among  the  hundreds 
which  I  possess,  .  .  .  there  is  scarcely 
one  which  could  not  be  published  as 
it  stands,  without  causing  pain  to  any 
human  being.  The  intensity  of  her 
love  of  Nature  was  another  remark- 
able characteristic.  I  never  knew 
any  one  who  seemed  to  derive  such 
enjoyment  as  she  did  from  the  splen- 
dour of  earth  and  heaven,  from  flow- 
ers, from  the  sunshine  or  the  song  of 
birds.  A  beautiful  view  produced  in 
her  the  same  ecstasy  as  did  lively 
music.  But  the  chief  and  dominant 
characteristic  of  her  nature  was  the 
power  of  loving.  ...  In  my  mother's 
case  love  seemed  an  inexhaustible 
force." 

Love  begot  love  in  turn,  with  per- 
fect trust  and  absolute  unreserve  : 
the  son  remembered  the  mother's 
coming  of  age,  for  she  had  married 
Captain  Blackwood  when  a  mere 
girl,  and  with  all  the  reverence  of 
the  only  child  on  whom  her  deepest 
and  fondest  affections  were  centred, 
their  relations  rather  resembled 


Songs,  Poems,  and  Verses,  by  Helen,  Lady  Dufferin  (Countess  of  Gifford). 
With  a  Memoir,  by  her  Son,  the  Marquess  of  Dufferin  and  Ava.  London  :  John 
Murray.  1894. 


1894.]      'Songs,  Poems,  and  Verses,1  by  Helen,  Lady  Dufferin.          855 


those  of  a  brother  and  sister.  Lady 
Dufferin's  fascinations  of  person 
and  intellect  had  descended  to  her 
by  right  of  inheritance.  Nothing 
is  more  interesting  than  the  pro- 
logue to  the  memoir,  in  which  the 
writer  tells  in  rapid  outline  the 
remarkable  story  of  his  maternal 
ancestors.  Biographical  genealogy 
is  generally  desperately  dull ;  but 
Lord  Dufferin  gives  an  extra- 
ordinary charm  to  his  cursory 
narrative  of  the  successive  genera- 
tions of  the  gifted  Sheridans.  We 
hope  that  some  day  he  may  be 
tempted  to  do  deliberate  justice  to 
the  family  history.  The  ancient 
Irish  race  had  produced  innumer- 
able warriors,  and  sundry  statesmen 
and  bishops ;  but  the  first  of  them 
who  is  familiar  to  English  readers 
is  Sir  Thomas.  He  was  a  privy 
councillor  and  Irish  Secretary 
under  James  II.,  and  he  followed 
the  fallen  monarch  into  exile.  He 
married  a  natural  daughter  of  the 
sovereign,  and  became  the  father 
of  the  still  better  known  son  who 
landed  with  the  young  Chevalier  in 
Moidart.  Sir  Thomas,  the  younger, 
acted  through  the  campaign  as  the 
Prince's  Secretary,  and  with  regard 
to  him  Lord  Dufferin  has  a  curious 
story  to  relate.  His  lordship  was 
accompanying  the  late  Duke  and 
Duchess  of  Sutherland  on  a  yacht- 
ing cruise.  The  Duchess,  then 
Lady  Stafford,  was  lineal  represen- 
tative of  the  attainted  Earls  of 
Cromartie,  and  the  party  had  gone 
to  Cromartie  House.  One  day 
Lord  Dufferin  remarked  a  chest, 
which  was  said  to  contain  old 
family  papers.  He  asked  per- 
mission to  open  it  and  examine 
them. 

"The  very  first  proved  to  be  an 
order  written  and  signed  by  Sir 
Thomas  Sheridan,  .  .  .  instructing 
the  Earl  of  Cromartie  of  that  day  to 
burn  down  the  castle  of  the  Earl  of 
Sutherland.  It  was  curious  that  the 

VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCL. 


first  time  that  this  paper  saw  the 
light  since  reaching  its  destination 
three  persons  so  closely  connected 
with  the  original  three  concerned  in 
its  subject-matter  should  have  been 
alone  together." 

Passing  downwards,  we  come  to 
Dr  Sheridan,  the  familiar  friend 
of  Swift  and  of  the  brilliant  wits 
of  the  day.  With  all  his  humour 
and  his  exceptional  talents,  he 
showed  a  strange  absence  of  world- 
ly wisdom.  His  son  was  the 
friend  of  Garrick,  whom  Johnson 
nicknamed  Sherry,  and  who  is 
familiar  to  the  readers  of  Boswell. 
Seldom  has  there  been  such  an 
illustration  of  heredity  as  the 
transmission  of  talent  in  these 
Sheridans.  For  his  son  was  the 
famous  Richard  Brinsley,  Lord 
Dufferin's  great-grandfather.  He 
would  have  easily  taken  the  fore- 
most place  in  any  all-round  com- 
petitive examination  among  the 
illustrious  men  of  the  world  who 
were  his  contemporaries.  He 
wrote  the  best  comedy ;  he  wrote 
the  best  farce ;  in  a  generation  of 
orators,  at  the  trial  of  Warren 
Hastings  he  is  said  to  have  made 
the  most  brilliant  oration.  Yet 
perhaps  he  survives  chiefly  in  faint 
traditional  recollections  of  his 
sparkling  wit  and  unrivalled  readi- 
ness of  repartee.  As  Lord  Duffer- 
in remarks  regretfully,  "The  real 
Sheridan,  as  he  was  known  in 
private  life,  is  irrecoverably  gone." 
Not  unsuccessfully  he  undertakes 
a  pious  defence  of  his  great  ances- 
tor's memory.  He  drank  freely,  in 
days  when  deep  drinking  was 
habitual;  when  Pitt  invariably 
primed  himself  for  speeches  with 
port -wine,  and  when  he  and  his 
boon-companion  Dundas  strewed 
"  marines  "  beneath  the  table, — and 
with  his  nervous  temperament, 
"the  effects  upon  his  brain  and 
constitution  were  exceptionally 
deleterious."  He  was  careless  in 
3  K 


856 


In  '  Maga's '  Library  : 


[Dec. 


his  expenditure  and  generous  to 
prodigality  ;  but  he  lived  as  a  poor 
man  with  the  wealthy  :  he  had  the 
heavy  misfortune  of  the  burning 
of  his  theatre,  and  after  all,  his 
debts  were  comparatively  insignifi- 
cant. Considering  that  he  began 
life  without  a  shilling — we  remem- 
ber the  famous  retort  to  his  father 

and  that  he  married  a  penniless 

beauty  for  love, — considering  the 
many  temptations  which  beset 
him,  we  may  fairly  say  he  did 
wonderfully  well.  He  married 
the  lovely  Miss  Linley,  and  for 
her,  says  Lord  Dufferin,  "I  have 
not  words  to  express  my  admira- 
tion." In  many  respects  he  seems 
to  regard  her  as  the  prototype  of 
his  mother.  His  grandchildren, 
Lady  Dufferin  and  her  accom- 
plished sisters,  were  the  daughters 
of  another  beauty,  Miss  Callander 
of  Craigforth.  The  fair  trio  were 
known  as  the  Graces :  they  were 
Mrs  Norton,  Lady  Dufferin,  and 
the  Duchess  of  Somerset,  who  had 
been  enthroned  as  Queen  of  Beauty 
at  the  Eglinton  Tournament. 
"My  mother,  though  her  features 
were  less  regular  than  those  of 
her  sisters,  was  equally  lovely  and 
attractive.  Her  figure  was  divine, 
the  perfection  of  grace  and  sym- 
metry, her  head  being  beautifully 
set  upon  her  shoulders."  And  if 
we  look  at  the  sweet  serenity  of 
the  face  which  fronts  the  title- 
page,  we  feel  sure  that  her  sisters 
cannot  have  surpassed  her.  More- 
over, she  sang  delightfully,  and 
set  her  own  songs  to  music.  She 
heard  an  opera  overnight,  and  would 
be  singing  the  airs  that  took  her 
fancy  on  the  following  morning. 

The  bright  young  beauty,  on  the 
persuasion  of  her  friends,  made  a 
mariage  de  raison  with  a  man  con- 
siderably older  than  herself,  yet  it 
proved  a  happy  love-match.  Cap- 
tain Blackwood,  although  he  had 
become  heir  -  presumptive  to  the 


family  title  by  the  dramatic  death 
of  an  elder  brother  on  the  field  of 
Waterloo,  had  only  his  pay  as  a 
naval  officer.  His  relatives  thought 
he  had  done  badly  for  himself,  and 
it  was  to  spare  her  the  mortifica- 
tion of  a  cold  reception  that  he 
took  his  young  bride  abroad.  Lord 
Dufferin  was  born  at  Florence  in 
1826,  and  he  recently  visited  the 
house  at  Siena  and  the  old  castle 
in  the  Apennines  where  his  father 
had  taken  his  wife  for  her  health,  as 
she  had  nearly  succumbed  during 
her  confinement.  They  returned 
to  England,  and  were  happily 
settled  at  Ditton,  when  they  had 
to  resign  themselves  to  a  long 
separation.  Captain  Blackwood 
was  appointed  to  a  frigate  ordered 
on  foreign  service,  nor  could  he 
afford  to  refuse.  During  his  four 
years'  absence,  and  after  his  return, 
his  wife  devoted  herself  to  their 
boy.  Her  husband  had  become 
heir-presumptive  to  the  title  and 
estates,  and  their  circumstances 
were  easier,  although  still  strait- 
ened, for  he  had  many  younger 
brothers  and  sisters.  But  young 
Blackwood,  the  future  Marquis, 
was  distinguishing  himself  at  Eton, 
and  the  outlook  seemed  bright  and 
prosperous,  when  all  was  over- 
clouded. Captain  Blackwood  had 
died  suddenly  while  crossing  to 
Ireland,  and  the  shock  to  his 
wife  and  son  was  terrible.  It 
fell  the  heavier  on  her  that  she 
was  absent  in  Italy  at  the  time, 
and  it  was  but  slowly  she  re- 
covered from  a  serious  illness. 
Then  she  removed  from  Naples 
to  Rome,  and  Mrs  Somerville 
writes  in  her  '  Personal  Recol- 
lections '  : — 

"  There  was  much  beauty  in  Rome 
at  that  time.  ...  I  recollect  Lady 
Dufferin,  at  the  Easter  ceremonies  at 
St  Peter's,  in  her  widow's  cap,  with  a 
large  black  crape  veil  over  it,  creating 
quite  a  sensation.  With  her  exquisite 


1894.]      '  Songs,  Poems,  and  Verses,'  by  Helen,  Lady  Dufferin.          857 


features  and  oval  face,  anything  more 
lovely  could  not  be  imagined,  and  the 
Roman  people  crowded  round  her  in 
undisguised  admiration  of  *  La  bella 
monaca  Inglese?  Her  charm  of  man- 
ner and  her  brilliant  conversation  will 
never  be  forgotten  by  those  who  knew 
her." 

When  Lord  Dufferin  attained 
his  majority,  they  exchanged  a 
small  London  house  for  a  more 
commodious  mansion.  His  mother 
paid  off  a  debt  of  gratitude  to  the 
Duehess  of  Montebello,  who  had 
shown  her  much  kindness,  by  giv- 
ing a  shelter  after  the  Revolution 
of  1848  to  the  Duchess  and  her 
husband,  who  had  been  one  of  the 
Ministers  of  Louis  Philippe.  Next 
year  Lord  Dufferin  was  made  a 
lord  -  in  -  waiting,  and  though  he 
never  lost  his  domestic  tastes,  he 
"lived  the  pleasant  social  life 
which  is  open  to  a  young  man 
about  town."  Unlike  most  young 
men,  it  was  his  chief  source  of 
pleasure  that  his  mother  was  his 
companion  in  his  visits  to  the  best 
country-houses.  And  their  own 
home  in  town  was  a  centre  of 
attraction  for  all  that  was  most 
eminent  in  the  world  of  literature. 
There  they  received  Dickens  and 
Thackeray,  Stirling-Maxwell,  who 
afterwards  married  his  aunt,  Mac- 
aulay,  Yenables,  Charles  Buller, 
Kingsley,  and  many  others.  But, 
in  fact,  Lady  Dufferin's  friendships 
were  cosmopolitan,  and  one  of  her 
oldest  and  most  intimate  acquaint- 
ances was  the  Emperor  William  of 
Germany.  She  was  in  regular  cor- 
respondence with  him,  and  when 
he  came  to  England  he  never  failed 
to  pay  her  frequent  visits.  Wher- 
ever she  went,  she  made  new  and 
valuable  acquaintances.  In  the 
course  of  a  Syrian  tour,  it  is  curi- 
ous to  note  the  number  of  distin- 
guished Frenchmen  she  found  in 
residence  at  Beirut.  There  were 
Oeneral  Chanzy  and  General  Due- 


rot,  Cardinal  Lavigerie,  M.  Renan, 
and  M.  Waddington. 

Lord  Dufferin,  then  Under-Sec- 
retary  for  India,  was  offered  the 
Government  of  Bombay.  The 
offer  was  tempting,  nevertheless 
it  was  declined,  simply  because  it 
would  involve  a  separation  from 
his  mother.  But  the  almost  in- 
evitable event  in  a  man's  life  was 
impending,  and  in  1862  he  mar- 
ried. "On  no  occasion  did  my 
mother's  unselfishness  and  nobility 
of  character  declare  itself  more 
triumphantly  than  by  the  way 
in  which  she  took  to  her  heart  of 
hearts  the  woman  that  was  to 
share  with  her  the  adoration  and 
affection  which  had  hitherto 
been  solely  her  own."  Assuredly 
neither  of  them  foresaw  at  the 
time  another  matrimonial  episode 
which  Lord  Dufferin  treats  with 
infinite  delicacy  and  sympathy. 
His  beautiful  mother  had  had 
numerous  admirers,  and  had  re- 
fused many  proposals.  But  one 
of  her  lovers  stood  out  from  the 
rest,  and  had  won  her  regard  and 
something  like  love  by  his  con- 
stancy. Her  long  and  affectionate 
relations  with  Lord  Gifford  are  a 
singularly  romantic  story.  Lord 
Dufferin  gives  the  highest  praise 
to  his  moral  qualities  and  his  great 
intellectual  powers,  and  Lady 
Dufferin's  influence  had  done  much 
to  ennoble  him,  and  to  encourage 
and  direct  his  ambitions  and  as- 
pirations. Nevertheless,  he  knew, 
to  his  sorrow,  that  their  attach- 
ment was  purely  platonic.  In  the 
pride  of  health  and  strength  he 
was  struck  down  by  a  fatal  acci- 
dent. He  was  removed  to  the 
Dufferins'  house  at  Highgate,  and 
there  he  lingered  on  for  a  year, 
while  Lady  Dufferin  lavished  at- 
tentions on  his  sick-bed.  When 
the  hour  of  death  drew  near,  he 
again  entreated  her  to  marry  him. 
Nor  could  she  deny  him  that  last 


858 


In  '  Maga's '  Library  : 


[Dec. 


consolation.  Her  son  quotes  a 
beautiful  letter  to  Lord  Tweeddale, 
Lord  Gifford's  father,  in  which 
she  explains  the  motives  he  al- 
ready thoroughly  understood. 
Suffering  from  that  second  be- 
reavement and  the  exhaustion  of 
long  nursing,  she  was  cheered  by 
the  warm  sympathy  of  her  second 
husband's  relatives.  She  never 
recovered  from  that  second  shock, 
though  with  the  joyous  elasticity 
of  her  temperament  she  would 
rally  from  time  to  time.  An 
attack  of  cancer  gave  the  finishing 
stroke.  Yet,  to  the  last,  she  was 
calm,  cheerful,  and  sympathetic, 
till,  in  utter  prostration,  she 
quietly  passed  away. 

"  Thus  there  went  out  of  the  world 
one  of  the  sweetest,  most  beautiful, 
most  accomplished,  wittiest,  most 
loving  and  lovable  human  be- 
ings that  ever  walked  upon  the 
earth.  There  was  no  quality  want- 
ing to  her  perfection  ;  and  this  I  say, 
not  prompted  by  the  partiality  of  a 
son,  but  as  one  well  acquainted  with 
the  world,  and  with  both  men  and 
women." 

We  have  dwelt  at  some  length 
on  the  memoir,  and  to  our  regret 
can  say  little  of  the  poems,  though 
from  these  we  might  have  learned 
much  of  the  writer's  individuality. 
The  moods  change  from  the  gayest 
to  the  melancholy  :  now  we  see  the 
reflection  of  the  brilliant  woman  of 
society,  and  again  it  is  an  angel 
who  seems  to  be  walking  the  earth. 
The  sweetest  and  the  most  char- 
acteristic are  the  Irish  melodies, 
with  the  quick  alternations  of 
drollery  and  pathos,  of  smiles  and 
tears.  "Katie's  Letter,"  which 
we  have  all  so  often  heard  sung  in 
drawing-rooms,  and  "Sweet  Kil- 
kenny Town,"  are  perhaps  the 
most  taking.  But  she  strikes  a 


deeper  note  in  "  The  Irish  Emi- 
grant," with  the  infinite  sadness  of 
its  simple  memories,  and  the  appre- 
hensions of  deadly  home -sickness 
in  the  future  : — 

"  I'm  sitting  on  the  stile,  Mary, 
Where  we  sat  side  by  side, 
That  bright  May  morning  long  ago, 
When  first  you  were  my  bride. 

I'm  bidding  you  a  long  farewell, 
My  Mary — kind  and  true  ; 

But  I'll  not  forget  you,  darling, 
In  the  land  I'm  going  to." 

For  Mary,  with  their  baby  in 
her  arms,  sleeps  in  the  little 
churchyard  within  sight  of  the 
stile. 

There  are  many  birthday  tributes 
to  her  son,  overflowing  with  fond 
memories  and  motherly  affection ; 
and  again  there  is  that  rattling, 
tripping,  rollicking  song,  "The 
Charming  Woman,"  which  had  an 
extraordinary  success  in  society 
when  it  appeared.  In  similar 
vein  is  "  The  Fine  Young  English 
Gentleman,"  suggested  by  the 
habits  of  her  brother  Charles,  a 
clerk  in  a  Government  office,  who 
enjoyed  life  like  his  grandfather. 
Still  more  humorous,  to  our  mind, 
is  "  Donna  Inez'  Confession," 
where  a  fair  and  frivolous  Spanish 
beauty,  going  to  confession,  is  can- 
did as  to  the  follies  of  a  charming 
cousin,  and  entirely  ignores  her 
own. 

The  best  autobiographies  are 
those  that  are  written  with  the 
least  reserve,  and  that  of  Sir 
William  Gregory  has  the  recom- 
mendation of  unusual  candour.1  It 
was  written  for  the  edification  of  his 
son,  with  no  idea  of  publication.  A 
man  of  the  world,  he  writes  of  men 
of  the  world  with  easy  toleration. 
For  himself,  he  puts  forth  no  profes- 


1  Sir  William    Gregory,    K.C.M.G.      An  Autobiography,    edited   by   Lady 
Gregory.     London  :  John  Murray.     1894. 


1894.] 


•Sir  William  Gregory,  K.C.M.G? 


859 


sions  of  sanctity  :  on  the  contrary, 
he  makes  frank  record  of  his  indis- 
cretions and  follies,  that  his  son 
may  take  warning  and  avoid  them. 
En  revanche  and  in  compensation, 
he  sees  no  reason  to  deny  himself 
the  eulogies  which  he  feels  he 
justly  deserved.  He  can  point 
with  satisfaction  to  his  brilliant 
classical  attainments,  to  the  active 
and  useful  part  he  played  in  poli- 
tics, to  the  enlightened  legislation 
he  was  among  the  first  to  advo- 
cate, to  the  many  distinguished 
men  who  honoured  him  with  their 
cordial  friendship,  and,  above  all, 
to  the  extraordinary  success  of  his 
colonial  administration.  This  post- 
humous memoir  reopens  a  chapter 
in  his  history  which  he  had  re- 
solutely closed  while  he  was  living. 
The  present  writer  was  in  the 
habit  of  meeting  him  frequently, 
and  had  many  interesting  conver- 
sations with  him.  Yet  never  did 
he  hear  him  make  allusion  to  the 
turf,  which  had  been  the  passion  of 
his  youth  and  early  manhood. 
Naturally  a  quick-tempered  man, 
he  had  cultivated  severe  self-con- 
trol. Only  twice  in  the  writer's 
recollection  did  he  get  visibly  over- 
heated— once  when  he  was  defend- 
ing Arabi  Pasha,  whose  cause  he 
had  warmly  espoused ;  and  again 
when  he  resented  an  impeachment 
of  the  hospitality  of  his  old  friend 
Sir  John  Crampton,  who  shortly 
before  had  been  our  Minister  at 
Madrid. 

The  volume  is  full  of  good 
stories,  told  with  point  and  genu- 
ine Irish  humour,  and  the  intro- 
ductory pages  are  not  the  least 
entertaining.  We  hear  of  the 
great-grandfather,  the  Nabob,  who 
had  made  an  immense  fortune  by 
shaking  the  Pagoda  Tree,  who 
scattered  the  garnered  fruit  by 
keeping  up  sumptuous  state,  and 
who  gloried  in  a  cabinet  of  uncut 
gems,  from  which  his  young  lady 


visitors  were  invited  to  draw 
prizes  at  leave  -  taking.  Sir 
William's  recollections — it  must 
be  remembered  that  he  was  a 
Galwayman  —  almost  go  back  to 
the  drinking  and  duelling  Ireland 
of  Sir  Jonah  Barrington  and 
Charles  O'Malley.  The  old  Lord 
Clanricarde  had  shown  him  the 
meadow  by  the  Shannon  where 
a  combat  came  off  between  Galway 
and  Tipperary.  The  choice  of 
banks  was  an  important  matter, 
for  the  survivor,  if  he  stood  on 
the  wrong  shore,  was  pretty  sure 
to  be  murdered  by  the  hostile 
county.  The  Galway  champion, 
who  shot  his  antagonist,  escaped 
to  the  water's  edge  on  a  fleet 
horse,  where  his  retreat  was 
covered  by  the  shillelahs  of  two 
thousand  compatriots.  In  'Charles 
O'Malley '  the  incident  has  been 
utilised,  when  old  Considine  acts 
as  his  young  friend's  second.  As 
a  youth  Sir  William  went  in  state  in 
the  family  coach  from  an  episcopal 
palace  with  a  cousin,  the  daughter 
of  a  strait-laced  peer,  on  a  three 
days'  visit  to  a  lively  lady.  The 
respectable  seniors  would  have 
been  sorely  scandalised  had  the 
secrets  of  the  entertainment  ever 
been  revealed.  There  was  dancing 
till  a  nine  o'clock  dinner ;  there 
was  dancing  again  to  the  late 
supper,  after  which  the  ladies 
withdrew  :  then  the  gentlemen 
settled  to  serious  drinking,  till 
the  majority  subsided  beneath  the 
tables.  Gregory  got  up  the  first 
morning,  thinking  of  breakfast. 
The  only  soul  stirring  in  the  house 
was  a  grumbling  old  woman.  Her 
answer  to  a  request  for  informa- 
tion was  decided,  if  unsatisfactory : 
"The  divil  a  mouthful  you'll  get 
before  three  o'clock,  so  you  had 
much  better  go  to  bed  again." 

He  very  soon  began  to  form 
useful  acquaintances.  When  a 
small  boy  he  was  fishing  in  the 


860 

Phoenix  Park— his  father  for  long 
held  a  high  official  appointment. 
A  slight,  elderly  gentleman  strolled 
up,  and  showed  so  much  interest  in 
the  landing  of  a  roach   that  the 
fisherman  was  greatly  pleased  with 
him.  So,  on  the  understanding  that 
honourable  secrecy  was  to  be  ob- 
served, he  promised  to  show  the 
best  fishing -places.      The  elderly 
gentleman  was  Marquis  Wellesley 
and  Lord  Lieutenant,  and  he  never 
lost  sight  of  his  young  acquaintance. 
At   school   Gregory  distinguished 
himself  by  his  brilliant   capacity 
for   the   classics  :    he    carried   off 
various    prizes    and    scholarships, 
but   the    scholastic    successes,    al- 
though they  doubly  enriched  him, 
were  by  no  means  unmixed  gain. 
The  eccentric  uncle,  of  whom  he 
was  the  presumptive  heir,  invari- 
ably sent  him  a  handsome  cheque, 
which  gave  him  the  command  of 
money  and  the  means  of  premature 
self-indulgence.     Consequently,  he 
got  into  scrapes  he  might  other- 
wise have  avoided,  and  found  him- 
self in  a  fast  set  when  he  went  up 
to  the  University.     One  fatal  day 
some  old  Harrow  friends  took  him 
to  Newmarket,  and  thenceforward 
he  was  inoculated  with  his  passion 
for  racing.     Though  afterwards  he 
only  read  by  fits  and  starts,  what 
between  his  studies  and  the  racing- 
stables,  he  burned  the  candle  at 
both  ends  :  his  health  broke  down, 
and  he  accompanied  his  parents  to 
Italy.     Though  still  an  invalid,  he 
found   a   plausible  excuse  for  re- 
turning alone.     The  fact  was,  he 
had    backed    Coronation    heavily 
for   the   Derby,    and   was    bound 
to   be   on   the   spot  in  case  of  a 
mishap.     The  anxious  parents,  on 
their  way  back,  overheard  a  conver- 
sation  at  a  Belgian   table   d'hote, 
which  gave  them  the  first  reliable 
news  of  Young  Hopeful,  and  ex- 
plained  the   cause  of   his  abrupt 
departure.     A  youthful  Irishman 


In  '  Maga's '  Library  : 


[Dec. 


of  the  name  of  Gregory,  fresh 
from  College,  had  made  a  sensa- 
tion at  Epsom  by  landing  £5000 
on  Coronation, — for  that  was  long 
before  the  days  of  the  plungers. 

But  the  versatile  youth  was 
soon  to  win  greater  distinction  in 
a  more  glorious  field.  No  ordinary 
compliment  was  paid  him  when  he 
was  invited  to  contest  the  city  of 
Dublin  against  Lord  Morpeth,  the 
popular  Chief  Secretary,  backed 
by  the  whole  influence  of  O'Connell. 
He  carried  the  election  after  a 
fierce  fight,  and  he  won  besides 
the  admiration  of  the  Liberator  by 
the  pluck  and  readiness  with  which 
he  had  repelled  a  tremendous  per- 
sonal onslaught.  "  Ould  Dan  " 
•crossed  the  hustings,  and  whispered 
in  his  ear,  "  Only  speak  the  little 
word  '  repeal ' — only  whisper  it, 
mind  you — I  will  be  the  first  at 
the  polling-booth  to-morrow  to 
vote  for  you."  The  success  at 
the  election  recommended  him  to 
Peel,  although  unfortunately  he 
had  fettered  himself  by  rash 
pledges,  which  subsequently  inter- 
fered with  his  political  advance- 
ment. It  clashes  strangely  with 
the  popular  notion  of  the  stiff  and 
starched  repealer  of  the  Corn 
Laws,  when  we  find  him  generally 
addressing  young  Gregory  as  "  my 
good  fellow,"  and  giving  him  the 
warmest  welcome  to  his  house  on 
all  occasions.  But  Gregory  seems 
to  have  been  the  fashion  in  London 
society,  and  he  was  a  habitue  of 
the  salon  of  Ladies  Ashburton, 
Londonderry,  and  Jersey.  He 
made  acquaintance  or  formed  inti- 
macies with  many  of  the  most  dis- 
tinguished public  men.  He  pays 
Sidney  Herbert  a  doubtful  compli- 
ment, saying  that  he  could  tell 
improper  stories  with  exceptional 
grace.  By  the  way,  he  asserts  the 
truth  of  the  story  of  his  betraying 
an  important  State  secret  to  Mrs 
Norton,  who  straightway  went  off 


1894.] 


'Sir  William  Gregory,  K.C.M.G.' 


861 


to  sell  it  to  '  The  Times.'  George 
Meredith  founds  a  sensational 
episode  on  it  in  his  '  Diana  of  the 
Cross  ways.'  We  happen  to  know 
that  it  was  a  baseless  calumny. 
He  frequently  dined  with  Disraeli, 
who,  as  he  says,  shone  at  his  own 
dinner-table  rather  by  flashes  of 
silence  than  by  sparkling  talk. 
And  he  tells  a  capital  story  of  an 
old  naval  captain,  whom  Disraeli 
had  sent  for  when  a  war  was 
believed  to  be  impending,  that 
he  might  get  information  about 
China.  The  veteran  took  a  look 
round  the  room.  "Ah,"  said  he, 
"  I  remember  it  very  well,  and 
these  curtains.  I  dined  here 
several  times  with  a  rum  old  girl, 
Mrs  Wyndham  Lewis."  Disraeli, 
though  sensitive  to  the  ridicule  of 
having  married  an  elderly  and 
eccentric  woman — to  whom,  how- 
ever, he  always  showed  the  most 
grateful  attention  —  was  quite 
equal  to  the  occasion,  and  answered 
placidly  :  "  Yes,  the  curtains  cer- 
tainly are  old  and  rather  fusty. 
In  fact,  we  must  do  up  the  whole 
room  when  our  ship  comes  in." 
Gregory  speaks  of  Disraeli  as 
absolutely  destitute  of  all  prin- 
ciple in  public  life.  He  much 
doubts  the  correctness  of  the  be- 
lief that  Disraeli's  fierce  philippics 
against  Peel  "originated  in  resent- 
ment alone."  "We  should  have 
said  there  was  no  doubt  in  the 
matter;  " but  with  that  quickness 
which  pre-eminently  characterised 
him,  he  saw  an  opening  for  dis- 
tinction and  seized  it  at  once." 
Of  Lord  George  Bentinck,  on  the 
contrary,  whom  he  knew  as  well 
or  even  better,  Gregory  speaks  in 
the  highest  terms.  Beyond  the 
sacrifice  he  made  when  he  sold  his 
stud  and  Surplice,  much  is  said  of 
his  lordship's  consistent  self-denial 
when  he  had  left  the  turf  to  lead 
the  Tories.  "  If  ever  a  man  killed 
himself  by  sheer  hard  labour  and 


privation,  that  man  was  Lord 
George  Bentinck.  .  .  .  He  has 
told  me  repeatedly  that  he  was  in 
a  state  of  inanition,  because  if  he 
tasted  food  till  his  day's  work  was 
over,  he  would  become  liable  to 
the  drowsiness  which  only  starva- 
tion overcame." 

Gregory  made  a  good  figure  in 
Parliament.  Some  of  the  quota- 
tions he  gives  from  his  speeches 
are  really  witty,  and  they  read 
extremely  well,  but  we  understand 
that  his  delivery  was  somewhat 
ponderous.  In  1846,  Peel  paid 
him  the  flattering  compliment  of 
offering  him  the  conduct  of  Irish 
business  in  the  Commons,  although 
he  would  have  had  to  hold  his  own 
against  O'Connel  and  Sheil.  But 
his  awkward  election  pledges  were 
stumbling-blocks,  and  his  saga- 
cious father  persuaded  him  to 
decline.  As  a  private  member, 
however,  he  took  a  prominent  part 
in  advocating  various  important 
measures;  he  always  showed  an 
intelligent  interest  in  Eastern 
affairs;  and  when  he  sat  for  Gal- 
way  County  he  gratified  his  consti- 
tuents by  his  successful  efforts  to 
secure  and  prolong  the  unfortunate 
contract  for  a  Transatlantic  line  of 
steam-packets.  As  his  father  had 
been  before  him,  he  seems  to  have 
been  a  most  liberal  and  generous 
landlord,  and  his  relations  with  his 
tenants  had  always  been  excellent, 
till,  fortunately  for  himself,  he  dis- 
posed of  great  part  of  his  estate, 
before  the  disastrous  collapse  of 
the  land  market.  The  famine 
year  fell  heavily  on  the  family, 
and  his  father,  who  died  at  that 
time,  left  an  estate  burdened  with 
debt.  No  wonder  that  a  Gal  way 
proprietor's  liabilities  accumulated 
then.  The  nominal  rent-roll  was 
nearly  £8000,  but  "  poor-rates  and 
other  charges  swallowed  up  every- 
thing. The  rates  over  the  division 
of  Kinrara  were  eighteen  shillings 


862 


In  l  Magcts '  Library  : 


[Dec. 


in  the  pound,  and  that  a  fictitious 
pound,  for  it  was  never  paid."  He 
confesses  that  instead  of  retrench- 
ing and  looking  after  the  property 
on  the  return  of  better  times,  he 
tried  to  recover  himself  by  shorter 
methods,  and  ventured  rashly  in 
the  betting-ring,  where  luck  had 
deserted  him.  So  he  was  always 
a  seriously  embarrassed  man  till 
twenty  years  afterwards,  when  he 
not  only  liquidated  his  liabilities  by 
a  wealthy  marriage,  but  attained 
the  object  of  his  lifelong  ambition, 
— the  blue  ribbon  of  the  Colonial 
service — the  governorship  of  Cey- 
lon. He  was  indebted  for  it  to 
feminine  influence ;  and  it  is  a  re- 
markable proof  of  the  extraordi- 
nary ascendancy  of  Lady  Walde- 
grave  that  she  had  only  to  ask  of 
Lord  Granville  to  obtain. 

Gregory  was  fortunate  enough 
to  go  to  Ceylon  in  the  prosperous 
days  before  the  blighting  of  the 
coffee-plantations.  Revenue  flowed 
freely  into  the  treasury,  and  the 
Governor  was  enabled  to  gratify  in 
great  measure  his  beneficent  as- 
pirations for  promoting  the  future 
prosperity  of  the  island,  and 
ameliorating  the  social  condition  of 
the  inhabitants.  He  boasts  with 
good  reason  of  the  works  he  accom- 
plished or  set  agoing :  of  the  con- 
struction of  roads  and  bridges — of 
irrigation  and  the  reparation  of  the 
magnificent  old  tanks — of  the  har- 
bour works  and  the  stupendous 
breakwater,  which  were  to  make 
Colombo  the  rival  of  Hong-Kong — 
of  the  reform  in  prisons,  the  sup- 
pression of  drinking-shops,  and  the 
establishment  of  co-operative  stores. 
That  his  claims  to  the  gratitude  of 
Cinghalese  and  English  colonists 
were  amply  justified  was  shown  by 
the  enthusiasm  alike  of  the  whites 


and  the  coffee  -  coloured,  when  a 
statue  was  raised  to  his  memory  at 
Colombo.  Unquestionably  there 
has  seldom  been  a  more  efficient  or 
enlightened  governor. 

Had  Jack  Jebb l  been  born  two 
or  three  centuries  ago,  he  might 
have  been  immortalised  among  the 
makers  of  the  British  Empire.  He 
was  of  the  stuff  of  the  old  Eliza- 
bethan breed  of  daring  adventur- 
ers, —  of  the  Raleighs  and  the 
Drakes, — and  with  fair  opportun- 
ity he  might  have  developed  the 
genius  of  a  dashing  leader  of  des- 
perate expeditions.  He  was  always 
fired  by  the  hope  of  finding  an  El 
Dorado,  though  what  he  really 
enjoyed  was  the  excitement  of  the 
quest,  and  he  was  comparatively 
indifferent  to  the  gold  nuggets  or 
the  ingots.  He  was  brave,  chiv- 
alrous, and  extraordinarily  cool  in 
moments  of  imminent  peril,  as  his 
resolute  determination  was  scarce- 
ly to  be  discouraged.  He  was  the 
type  of  the  resourceful  and  unself- 
ish leader  whom  reckless  spirits 
love  to  follow ;  for  all  he  was  con- 
cerned to  monopolise  was  the  lion's 
share  of  the  dangers,  and  his  self- 
confidence  increased  with  long-con- 
tinued impunity,  as  he  seemed  to 
bear  a  charmed  life.  After  habit- 
ually tempting  Providence  and,  so 
to  speak,  bullying  Death, — after 
scores  of  hairbreadth  escapes  from 
all  manner  of  experiences, — that 
iron  frame  of  his  succumbed  at 
last  to  the  reiterated  attacks  of 
disease  and  the  effects  of  privations 
and  exposure. 

But  Jack — for  neither  his  widow, 
who  writes  the  biography,  nor  any 
one  else,  ever  gave  him  the  more 
respectful  appellation  of  Mr — was 
born,  as  ill  luck  would  have  it,  to- 


StranSe  Career.     Life  and  Adventures  of  John  Gladwyn  Jebb.     By  his 
Mi  ith  an  Introduction  by  H.  Rider  Haggard.     Edinburgh  and  London  : 

illiam  Blackwood  &  Sons.     1894. 


1894.] 


'  A  Strange  Career.' 


863 


wards  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  There  was  still  romance 
enough  in  the  world,  as  he  lived 
to  show.  But  it  was  the  age  of 
shrewd  promoters,  with  their  plaus- 
ible joint-stock  companies.  With 
his  guileless,  unsuspicious,  and  un- 
bounded belief  in  contemporary 
humanity,  he  became  the  agent  and 
victim  of  calculating  speculators 
with  elastic  consciences.  In  fine, 
he  managed,  as  he  had  squandered 
his  health,  to  fritter  away  a  hand- 
some fortune  in  ventures  by  which 
others  were  not  unfrequently  en- 
riched. With  all  that,  he  was  a 
singularly  attractive  character,  and 
he  had  no  ordinary  share  of 
talent  and  ability.  But  literally, 
and  without  irony,  he  was  too 
good  for  this  world.  He  judged 
others  by  the  standard  that  came 
naturally  to  himself;  and  no 
amount  of  unfortunate  experience 
could  teach  him  to  mistrust  the 
neighbour  he  did  not  know,  or  to 
hold  his  own  in  a  hard  bargain. 
He  made  no  pretence  to  Puritan- 
ism, and  would  swear  at  large  on 
provocation;  nevertheless,  he  in- 
variably practised  the  Gospel  pre- 
cepts, and  never  missed  an  oppor- 
tunity of  doing  a  kindly  action. 
In  the  worst  extremity,  he  never 
failed  or  deserted  a  fellow -crea- 
ture. With  regard  to  his  unself- 
ishness, imperturbable  coolness, 
and  indomitable  pluck,  his  friend 
Mr  Rider  Haggard,  who  contributes 
an  interesting  introduction,  re- 
cords a  remarkable  example.  The 
friends  had  gone  for  a  tour  in 
Mexico,  and  were  travelling  into 
a  lawless  mining  district  with  3000 
dollars  in  their  charge.  One  night 
they  had  taken  up  their  quarters 
in  a  rambling  house  in  one  of  the 
towns,  where  it  might  have  been 
presumed  they  were  tolerably  safe 
under  the  protection  of  the  civic 
authorities.  But  Jebb,  who  had 
his  doubts,  and  who  had  stowed 


away  two  bags  of  specie  in  his 
bedroom,  was  restless  and  anxious. 
He  was  awakened  by  the  barking 
of  dogs,  and  when  he  went  to  look 
out  of  the  window,  he  saw  a 
group  of  ruffians  mustered  beneath. 
There  was  no  doubt  that  they  were 
after  the  dollars.  Jack  sat  up  all 
through  the  night,  with  his  re- 
volver in  one  hand  and  a  box  of 
wax- matches  in  the  other.  His 
idea  was  to  strike  a  light  and 
shoot,  when  the  first  robber  should 
have  shown  his  head  above  the 
window-sill.  As  it  happened,  the 
clamour  of  the  dogs  scared  the 
thieves,  and  the  assault  did  not 
come  off.  Rider  Haggard,  who 
had  his  bedroom  at  the  other  end 
of  the  building,  naturally  asked 
next  morning  why  Jack  had  not 
summoned  him.  The  answer  was 
characteristic  :  "  There  was  no 
use  in  both  of  us  handing  in  our 
checks,  for  there  were  a  dozen  of 
those  devils,  and  I  knew  that,  had 
they  once  got  into  the  room,  they 
would  have  made  a  clean  sweep 
of  us." 

But  the  whole  of  the  memoir, 
from  its  subject's  nursery  to  his 
grave,  is  an  endless  succession  of 
sensational  adventures,  invariably 
put  in  a  humorous  light,  and 
always  narrated  with  dramatic 
effect.  The  biographer  falls  in 
sympathetically  with  her  hus- 
band's cheery  mood,  for  Jack, 
who  had  many  misfortunes  in 
the  course  of  his  career,  sur- 
mounted his  trials  with  hilarious 
philosophy.  We  need  not  say  he 
was  a  scapegrace  at  school,  and 
it  would  have  surprised  none  of 
the  neighbours  had  he  been  seen, 
like  Olive,  seated  on  the  weather- 
cock of  the  village  steeple.  He 
was  very  free  and  handy  with 
his  fists,  fighting  his  way  to  the 
top  of  the  preparatory  school. 
Afterwards  he  showed  his  pre- 
cocious resource  in  critical  emerg- 


864 


In  '  Maga's '  Library  : 


[Dec. 


encies,    escaping    in    a    poaching 
raid  from  the  hot  pursuit  of  the 
keepers  by  setting  a  light  to  some 
thickets   of   furze.      In   short,  he 
was  ever  more  or   less   in  warm 
water,     so     that    when     on     his 
sixteenth    birthday   his    reverend 
father   solemnly   declared   at   the 
birthday   banquet    that    the    boy 
had  never  caused  him  a  moment's 
anxiety,  no  wonder  that  "  sensa- 
tion"   was    reported    among    the 
guests.      Jack   had   naturally   set 
his   heart   on   going   to   sea,    and 
we  are   told   that   it  was   a   life- 
long source  of  misery  to  him  that 
his  wishes  had  not  been  gratified. 
But   if  it  were  dangers  and  dis- 
comforts that  he  desired,  he  had 
no  reason  to  be  dissatisfied.      At 
first  he  had  to  put  up  with  the 
sister  service  as  a  pis  aller.     He 
got  his  commission,  was  gazetted 
to  India,  and  joined  his  regiment 
at  a  dull  up-country  station.    But, 
as  we  know,  adventures  come  un- 
sought  to   the   adventurous,    and 
even   there   his   life   was   not   al- 
together  uneventful.      Awakened 
once  by  what  seemed  a  mysterious 
warning — and  more  than  once  or 
twice  he  was  in  touch  with  the 
supernatural  —  he   had   a  narrow 
escape  from  a  midnight  murderer. 
Another  incident  might  have  been 
little    less    serious,    for-  he   came 
very    near    to    being    court-mar- 
tialled  and   broken,  when,  in  the 
teeth     of     the     standing     orders 
against  striking  natives,  he  jumped 
out  of  the  palankin  where  he  was 
lying  apparently  helpless  to  thrash 
an     insolent     Eurasian      station- 
master  within  an  inch  of  his  life. 
When    the    invalid    in    the    last 
stages  of  emaciation  and  exhaus- 
tion   was    charged    in    the    civil 
court,  the  worthy  magistrate  dis- 
missed the  case.     He  declared  it 
to  be  altogether    impossible   that 
the  pitiable  shadow  of  humanity 
before    him     could     have     done 


the  complainant  the  substantial 
damage  as  to  which  there  could 
be  no  mistake.  Had  he  known 
Jack  better,  or  read  this  volume 
before  it  could  have  been  written, 
he  might  have  decided  differently. 
In  the  worst  extremity,  excite- 
ment or  indignation  could  always 
galvanise  Jack  into  a  spasm  of 
formidable  energy. 

For  certain  reasons  which  were 
quixotically  unselfish,  he  sold  out 
of  the  army  and  came  home.  As 
he  had  a  safely  invested  fortune, 
yielding  £2000  a-year,  it  seemed 
possible  that  he  might  be  doomed 
to  voluptuous  inaction.  He  took 
prompt  precautions  against  that 
fatality.  He  proceeded  to  lose 
half  his  capital  in  a  highly  specu- 
lative industrial  undertaking,  and 
after  a  flying  trip  to  Guatemala, 
having  bought  into  financial  and 
banking  companies,  he  lost  near- 
ly the  whole  of  the  other  half 
in  the  Overend  &  Gurney  panic. 
II  faut  vivre,  and  having  been 
victimised  by  promoters,  he  took 
to  promoting  himself.  Latterly, 
by  predilection,  he  turned  his 
attention  to  mines,  apparently 
because  they  were  exceptionally 
risky ;  but  he  was  first  concerned 
in  floating  the  White  Star  Packet 
Line.  As  soon  as  it  had  got  into 
smooth  water,  and  promised  to 
pay  handsomely,  it  ceased  to  in- 
terest him.  •  Casting  about  for 
something  more  hazardous,  he  de- 
termined to  try  coffee-planting  in 
the  Brazils.  He  found  a  post  as 
manager,  taking  a  part  interest  as 
proprietor,  on  a  remote  estate  that 
was  lapsing  back  into  jungle,  and, 
in  consequence,  was  scourged  by 
deadly  malaria.  Most  Englishmen 
would  have  succumbed  at  once, 
especially  as  his  best  company  was 
his  own  brooding  thoughts.  Jack 
gradually  became  a  fever-stricken 
wreck;  and  we  fancy  it  was  the 
hallucination  of  a  disordered  brain 


1894.] 


Strange  Career.' 


865 


when  he  saw  the  very  realistic  vis- 
ion of  "The  Haunted  Enghenio,"1 
with  the  spectral  host  of  resusci- 
tated negroes.  If  he  were  to  save 
his  life  it  was  high  time  to  go,  so, 
throwing  up  his  serious  stake  in 
the  enterprise,  he  left  the  pesti- 
lence-stricken fazenda. 

The  fever  had  laid  firm  hold  on 
him,  nor  was  it  easy  to  shake  it 
off.      An  expedition  to  the  wild 
west  of  America  was  a  congenial, 
and  seemed  a  promising,  mode  of 
treatment.     He  selected  Colorado 
as  the  scene  of  his  new  experiences, 
intending  to  combine  hunting  with 
mining  ventures.     At  that  time  it 
was  the  most  lawless  district  in 
the  Union :  as  yet  there  were  not 
even  the  bands  of  "  Regulators," 
organised  to  hold  the  roughs  and 
criminal  refugees   in   check.      To 
begin  with,  Jack  picked  up  some 
travelling  companions,  who,  while 
they  shared   his  cup  and   crusts, 
were  laying  dark  plans  to  murder 
him.     Fortunately  the  plot  came 
to  the  knowledge  of  his  friendly 
guide,  who,  although  a  half-breed 
with  neither  conscience  nor  prin- 
ciples, happened  to  have  taken  a 
fancy  to  him.     "  Muddy  "  reasoned 
the  matter  out  with  the  rascals  in 
a  characteristic  fashion  of  his  own  : 
"  Luk    here,    boys :    there's    only 
four  of  you,  and  there's  three  of  us. 
Now,  I  can  lick  any  two  of  you, 
and  Bob  wouldn't  grumble  over  the 
responsibility   of    the   other  two, 
while  the  boss  saw  fair  play.     So 
I    think  we've  got   the   draw  on 
you   this   time,  and  you'd   better 
chuck  up  the  game."    Which  they 
wisely  did.     But  at  that  time  a 
series  of  mysterious  crimes  were 
being  perpetrated,  which  shocked 
and  horrified  even  Colorado  society. 
More  than  forty  corpses  had  been 
found  strewed  about  the  wilder- 
ness,   each  scored   on   the   bosom 


with  the  sign  of  the  cross.     It  fell 
to  Jack  and  his  comrades  to  dis- 
cover a  clue,  follow  up  the  trail,  and 
do  justice  on  the  criminals.     But 
Jack's    most    perilous   adventures 
were  in  the  solitudes  of  the  moun- 
tains during  a  winter  which  proved 
to  be  one  of  unprecedented  severity. 
He  was  in  charge  of  several  mines, 
and   he   persisted   in  going  upon 
tours    of   inspection    when  travel 
was  in  any  way  practicable.     His 
escapes  were   innumerable.      The 
valleys    were     filled    with     drift. 
Blinding  storms  would  break  upon 
him  in  the  most  promising  weather, 
and    all    the   familiar   landmarks 
were  obliterated.     He  could  only 
move  about  on  Norwegian  snow- 
shoes;   and   on   one  occasion  one 
of    the    shoes    became    detached, 
and  slid  towards  the  brink  of  a 
bottomless  abyss.     Unless   he  re- 
covered it,  his  fate  was  inevitable ; 
so,  detaching  the  other,  he  glided 
in  company  down  the  snow-slope. 
By  a  miracle  of  good  fortune  he 
recovered  both.     Soon  afterwards 
he   received   the  disastrous   news 
that  one  of  his  mining  camps  had 
been  overwhelmed  by  an  avalanche. 
It  was   a   point   of   honour  with 
those    miners,  who    daily   carried 
their  lives  in  their  hands,  to  search 
for  the  bodies  of  their  comrades, 
and  give  them  decent  burial.     So 
Jack    started   with  two   or  three 
volunteers  on  that  pious  but  most 
perilous  mission.     For  avalanches 
were  still  roaring  in  the  mountains 
around,  and  toppling  snow-banks 
were  only  held  in  suspension  over 
their  heads  by  the  strong  souther- 
ly wind,  that  might  change  at  any 
moment.       Nevertheless,    though 
his  companions  were  successively 
crippled,  he   persevered,  nor   was 
it  till  he  had  dug  to  a  depth  of 
thirty  feet  that  he  came  upon  the 
buried  huts.    Again,  he  was  block- 


Republished  in  c  Tales  from  Blackwood.5 


866 


In  'Maga's '  Library  : 


[Dec. 


aded  in  a  solitary  camp  with  one 
companion;  and  some  days  after 
they  had  consumed  the  last  scrap 
of  provision,  they  saw  themselves 
without  a  hope  of  succour.  As  a 
last  desperate  resource  he  ventured 
out  in  search  of  game,  although 
more  than  doubtful'  whether  he 
would  ever  find  his  way  back. 
By  one  of  the  strokes  pf  luck 
which  too  rarely  happened  to  him, 
he  came  upon  an  elk  close  to  the 
camp.  Still  more  marvellous  was 
his  escape  from  poisoning,  when, 
finding  a  tin  of  strychnine  in  a 
deserted  hut,  he  mistook  it  for 
baking-powder,  and  used  it  to 
bake  his  bread.  It  was  a  legacy 
of  the  last  occupant,  who  had  been 
a  wandering  taxidermist ;  but  the 
bread  tasted  so  bad  that  he  only 
swallowed  a  single  mouthful,  and 
the  consequences,  though  disagree- 
able, were  not  serious. 

We  might  linger  indefinitely 
over  his  subsequent  experiences, 
but  we  must  cut  the  story  short. 
Next  we  find  him  in  Mexico,  the 
silver  land  par  excellence,  where 
he  was  again  interested  in  mining 
quests.  His  second  wife  accom- 
panied him,  and  her  pictures  of 
Mexican  life  are  delightfully  vivid 
and  humorous.  We  have  scenes 
in  the  low  slums  of  the  capital, 
which  Ruxton  some  fifty  years 
before  had  described  with  so  much 
spirit.  We  hear  of  similar  brushes 
with  the  banditti.  We  hear 
strange  tales  of  treasure  buried  by 
the  Aztecs,  of  which  the  memory 
has  been  perpetuated  in  the  tradi- 
tions of  their  descendants.  Once 
Jack  came  near  to  enriching  him- 
self beyond  the  dreams  of  avarice, 
when  a  grateful  Indian,  in  his 
dying  moments,  hesitated  over  the 
disclosure  of  his  secret,  but  finally 
decided  to  have  it  buried  with  him 


in  his  grave.  Jack's  luck  had 
always  been  bad,  but  it  became 
worse  when  in  an  evil  hour  he 
bought  an  Aztec  idol.  After  that 
nothing  prospered  with  him.  In 
England,  wherever  the  hideous 
little  monster  was  located,  strange 
noises  were  heard  in  the  silence  of 
the  night,  and  each  house  acquired 
the  reputation  of  being  haunted. 
Whether  it  had  influenced  the  fate 
of  its  first  English  possessor  or  no, 
for  the  first  time  and  after  he  had 
secured  it,  the  last  of  Jebb's  many 
illnesses  assumed  a  dangerous 
character.  He  was  transported 
with  difficulty  from  Mexico  to 
New  York,  and  thence  to  Eng- 
land, where  he  lingered  for  six 
weary  months,  bearing  his  suffer- 
ings with  wonderful  patience  and 
courage,  till  death  brought  him 
merciful  relief.  Not  a  single 
chapter  in  the  memoir  but  is  re- 
plete with  sensation,  nor,  perhaps, 
was  there  ever  a  more  striking 
illustration  of  the  old  saying  that 
truth  may  be  far  stranger  than 
fiction. 

Mr  Froude's  dying  bequest  to 
English  letters  is  a  volume  at  once 
worthy  of  his  great  name  and 
true  to  the  special  note  which  he 
has  struck  in  contemporary  litera- 
ture. The  brilliant  lectures  on 
Erasmus,1  which  may,  without 
hyperbole,  be  said  to  mark  an 
epoch  in  the  teaching  of  Modern 
History  at  Oxford,  and  which  im- 
posed a  strain  upon  the  historian 
that  is  said  to  have  hastened  his 
death,  possess  a  melancholy  inter- 
est as  the  last  fruits  of  one  of  the 
clearest  and  most  masterly  minds 
of  our  century.  Less  picturesque 
and  less  commanding  than  that  of 
his  master  Carlyle,  the  position  of 
his  disciple  was  one  of  aloofness 


1  Life  and  Letters  of  Erasmus. 
1894. 


By  J.    A.    Fronde.      London :    Longmans. 


1894.] 


Life  and  Letters  of  Erasmus.'' 


867 


from  the  downward  tendencies  of 
the  age ;  and,  like  the  elder  sage, 
Mr  Froude  too  preached  the  gospel 
of  Individuality,  Freedom,  and 
Truth,  as  salvation  from  the  social 
and  political  nostrums  which  are 
being  swallowed  with  acceptance 
by  the  popular  gullet.  We  have 
had  to  complain  that  Mr  Froude 
was  too  prone  to  gratify  his  per- 
sonal prejudices  at  the  expense  of 
history  —  never  more  than  in  his 
treatment  of  Mary  of  Scotland ; 
but  it  is  precisely  at  the  point 
where  we  begin  to  feel  the  inse- 
curity of  the  history,  that  we  be- 
come most  conscious  of  being 
brought  under  the  power  of  the  his- 
torian. In  his  presentation  of 
Erasmus  we  encounter  the  same 
overmastering  personality  as  per- 
vades his  other  works,  pressing, 
often  unduly,  upon  us  and  extort- 
ing half-assents,  where  we  would, 
if  less  plied  by  fervid  bias,  have 
returned  whole  negatives. 

We  have  many  Erasmuses,  all 
of  them  partly,  and  most  of  them 
wholly,  irreconcilable  each  with 
the  other.  His  fame  is  so  ample 
that  all  the  conflicting  parties  of 
the  sixteenth  century  can  claim 
a  share  in  it.  We  have  the  Cath- 
olic Erasmus,  the  exponent  of  lib- 
eral orthodoxy,  the  friend  of  the 
Christian  unity  under  the  Papal 
See,  the  corrector  of  internal  abuse 
and  error,  the  valued  correspon- 
dent of  Popes  and  Cardinals.  We 
have  the  Protestant  Erasmus,  who 
kindled  the  torch  which  Luther 
blew  into  a  flame,  the  covert 
friend  of  the  Reformation,  and  its 
chief  literary  mainstay.  We  have 
the  Erasmus  regarded  as  the  typi- 
cal product  of  the  Renaissance, 
with  more  scholarship  than  faith, 
elevated  above  superstition  as 
above  reforming  vehemence,  a 
philosopher  with  his  gaze  fixed 
farther  ahead  than  the  immediate 
objects  of  this  side  or  that  side, — 


a  sixteenth-century  Voltaire,  with 
notable  points  of  difference.  There 
is  the  Erasmus  of  Mark  Pattison 
and  the  Erasmus  of  Mr  Seebohm. 
We  have  now  the  Erasmus  of  Mr 
Froude,  a  powerful  piece  of  por- 
traiture, which  Erasmus's  own 
hand,  guided  by  Mr  Froude,  has 
chiefly  painted.  The  question  is, 
if,  given  all  these,  we  have  at 
length  got  the  real  Erasmus.  As 
to  this  we  may  venture  to  express 
a  doubt,  and  to  urge  that  a  per- 
sonality so  many-sided  as  that  of 
Erasmus  cannot  be  completely 
grasped  by  seizing  on  one  or  even 
more  of  the  particular  sides  which 
it  presents. 

Mr  Froude  bases  his  study  of 
Erasmus  on  the  voluminous  '  Let- 
ters,' of  nervous  and  spirited  ad- 
aptations of  which  the  work  chiefly 
consists.  We  say  adaptations 
rather  than  translations,  for  Mr 
Froude  not  unfrequently  infuses  a 
spirit  of  modernity  into  his  version 
of  which  Erasmus,  we  think,  would 
have  been  unconscious.  If  Mr 
Froude  had  combined  a  study  of 
the  'Colloquies'  with  that  of  the 
'Letters,'  he  would  have  been 
able  to  give  us  a  more  complete 
and,  perhaps,  more  easily  reconcil- 
able impression.  In  the  longer 
1  Colloquies '  we  have  traces  of 
self-consciousness,  flashes  of  self- 
revelation,  confessions  which  came 
straight  from  Erasmus's  inner 
mind,  all  the  more  frankly  that 
they  were  covered  by  assumed  per- 
sonalities. In  the  'Letters,'  on 
the  other  hand,  Erasmus  was  too 
often  writing  for  a  purpose;  he  had 
his  position  and  interest  always 
clearly  in  view;  and  he  had  the 
knowledge  that  his  epistles  gener- 
ally would  be  read  by  wider  circles 
than  the  individuals  to  whom  they 
were  addressed.  Roughly  classified, 
the  bulk  of  Erasmus's  correspon- 
dence may  be  divided  into  letters 
pushing  his  claims  to  patronage 


868 


and  pecuniary  assistance ;  letters 
of  scholarly  friendship,  like  his 
delightful  epistles  to  More  and 
Colet ;  letters  connected  with  his 
literary  work  ;  and  letters  defining 
his  theological  position  in  relation 
to  the  two  great  parties  that  were 
agitating  the  Church.  These  are 
excellent  materials  for  a  public 
memoir,  but  to  be  taken  in  their 
relative  significance.  Erasmus  had 
too  much  the  spirit  of  the  true 
literary  artist  to  desire  to  pose 
before  his  audience,  but  even  in 
his  personal  correspondence  we 
are  conscious  that  he  is  now  play- 
ing to  the  boxes,  now  to  the  pit ; 
and  a  longing  seizes  us  to  see  be- 
hind the  actor's  mask.  Mr  Froude 
has  critically  weighed  the  value  of 
these  letters,  and,  except  where 
Erasmus  is  not  in  accord  with  his 
own  bias,  he  rarely  fails  to  put 
a  true  interpretation  upon  their 
import. 

Mr  Froude,  as  his  '  Life  of  Oar- 
lyle '  impresses  upon  us,  is  not  one 
of  those  portrait-painters  who  re- 
quire the  Oromwellian  reminder 
of  "warts  and  all."  He  has  not 
spared  himself  or  his  readers  the 
recital  of  those  shifty  mean- 
nesses from  which  few  great  geni- 
uses any  more  than  Erasmus  have 
been  exempt.  The  scanty  and 
precarious  equipment  with  which 
Erasmus  entered  upon  the  battle 
of  life,  his  delicate  constitution, 
and  fastidious  if  not  extravagant 
tastes,  were  always  landing  him  in 
straits,  from  which  his  accomplish- 
ments, his  fertile  mind,  and  his 
friendships  had  to  be  set  to  work 
to  extricate  himself.  He  had  to 
live  by  his  wits,  in  the  best  sense 
of  the  phrase.  Nothing  is  more 
curious  to  us  in  an  age  of  self-sup- 
porting literature  than  the  pro- 
found conviction  entertained  by 
Erasmus  of  the  duty  of  his  friends 
and  patrons  to  administer  to  his 
comforts.  The  Bishop  of  Cambray 


In  '  Maya's '  Library  : 


[Dec. 


had  rescued  him  from  the  cloister, 
and  provided  him  with  means  of 
prosecuting  his  studies  in  Paris; 
but  the  episcopal  benefactions, 
though  Erasmus's  life  and  pursuits 
may  have  raised  doubts  in  the 
Bishop's  mind  as  to  whether  he 
was  a  proper  subject  for  munifi- 
cence, always  fall  short  of  the 
scholar's  expectations.  "The  faith- 
ful Battus  " — the  poor  scholar,  like 
the  poor  Irishman,  has  generally  a 
follower  more  necessitous  than 
himself  to  employ  in  "  raising  the 
wind  " — has  no  sinecure  as  Eras- 
mus's Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer. 
Battus  is  kept  at  work,  now  writ- 
ing to  the  Bishop,  now  to  the 
Abbot  of  St  Bertin's,  his  brother, 
who  may  influence  his  lordship  to 
open  his  purse-strings,  now  to 
Anna  Bersala,  the  lady  of  Yere, 
in  Holland,  a  wealthy  religious 
prfaieuse  of  the  day,  whose  mental 
and  spiritual  endowments,  not  less 
than  her  benevolence,  call  forth 
Erasmus's  most  flattering  com- 
mendations. 

"  The  Lady  Anna  is  not  an  ordin- 
ary woman,"  he  writes  to  Battus,  who 
has  preceded  him  to  her  castle  of 
Tournehem.  "  Her  sending  for  me  in 
this  way  will  give  you  an  opportunity 
of  applying  for  some  money  to  me.  I 
could  not  even  go  to  her  on  foot,  pro- 
vided as  I  am  at  present ;  still  less  if 
I  take  a  horse  and  two  servants  with 
me.  .  .  .  You,  meanwhile,  must  for- 
ward me  some  decent  viaticum.  .  .  . 
I  must  have  a  better  horse,  too.  I 
don't  want  a  Bucephalus,  but  I  re- 
quire a  beast  which  I  shall  not  be 
ashamed  to  ride.  You  must  arrange 
this  with  the  lady.  ...  Be  careful 
and  wide  awake.  I  also  shall  not 
sleep  where  I  am.  You  know  what 
to  say  to  the  Lady  for  me.  Adieu, 
and  show  yourself  a  man." 

"  She  neglects  her  own  affairs, 
and  you  suffer,"  he  writes  to 
Battus  on  another  occasion,  the 
marchioness's  own  affairs  being 


1894.] 


'  Life  and  Letters  of  Erasmus.' 


869 


very  evidently  those  of  Erasmus 
also. 

"  She  trifles  and  plays  with  N 

or  M ,  and  you  are  racked  for  it. 

You  tell  me  you  cannot  give  me  any- 
thing at  present,  for  she  has  not  got 
it.  If  she  had  not  this  excuse,  she 
would  find  another.  These  great  folks 
are  never  at  a  loss  for  reasons.  "What 
would  it  have  been  to  her,  in  the 
midst  of  such  a  wasteful  expenditure, 
to  have  given  me  a  couple  of  hundred 
livres?" 

Later  on  we  find  him  expressing 
a  hope  that  "the  Lady  will  not 
be  so  cruel  as  to  forget  my  birth- 
day." He  looks  with  jealousy  upon 
another  learned  mendicant,  who 
seemed  not  unlikely  to  divert  the 
beneficent  stream  from  his  own 

channel :    "  P means  to  visit 

the  Lady.  I  don't  fancy  him.  He 
is  a  scab  of  a  fellow  —  theology 
incarnate."  The  unfortunate  Bat- 
tus  gets  rated  for  the  laxness  of 
his  financial  operations.  He  had 
tried  "  hinting,  suggesting,  en- 
treating" with  the  Lady,  but  all 
in  vain.  "  You  should  have  gone 
more  roundly  to  work,"  scolds 
Erasmus.  "You  should  have  been 
peremptory,  and  then  all  would 
have  gone  well.  Modesty  is  out 
of  place  when  you  have  a  friend 
to  serve."  All  this  would  have 
been  vastly  amusing  in  the  case 
of  a  smaller  man,  but  in  Erasmus 
it  is  only  pitiful.  Mr  Froude 
makes  the  formal  apology  that 
the  patron  was  then  the  natural 
support  of  the  struggling  author; 
that  Erasmus,  to  do  his  work,  had 
first  to  live ;  and  "  to  beg  was 
better  than  to  sell  his  soul  for 
promotion  in  the  Church,  which 
appeared  to  be  the  only  other 
alternative."  But  making  all  due 
allowance  for  the  times,  we  find 
many  men  of  Erasmus's  own  age 
who  battled  against  learned  penury 
without  descending  to  the  humili- 
ating recourse  to  a  Battus,  our 


own  George  Buchanan  being  one 
of  the  most  illustrious  examples. 
But  Erasmus  loved  ease  and  com- 
fort, and  had  as  refined  tastes  to 
be  gratified  as  any  abbe"  under  the 
B/egency;  and  his  exigencies  too 
often  wore  out,  if  they  did  not 
disgust,  the  patience  of  his  patrons. 
Hatred  of  monachism  and  dogma 
forms  the  common  tie  that  binds 
together  Erasmus  and  his  bio- 
grapher. His  abhorrence  of  the 
system  which  had  exercised  so 
prejudicial  an  effect  upon  all  his 
own  life  provoked  his  exposures  of 
its  abuses,  accentuated  the  grow- 
ing distaste  for  the  grosser  evils 
of  the  Roman  Church,  and  struck 
a  note  of  popular  liberty,  not  so 
much  by  intention  as  by  accident. 
The  world  was  ripe  for  such  ideas  as 
were  thus  brought  home  to  it  with 
so  much  pith  in  his  lighter  works, 
the  'Adagia,'the  'Colloquies,'  and 
the  '  Julius  Exclusus.'  The  last- 
mentioned  work  is  the  only  one 
of  his  books  of  which  he  shrank 
from  avowing  the  authorship.  Mr 
Froude,  whose  lively  and  sparkling 
version  of  the  '  Julius '  does  almost 
more  than  justice  to  the  pointed 
and  crisp  Latinity  of  the  original, 
while  he  does  not  directly  challenge 
the  disclaimer,  evidently  regards  it 
as  academical.  A  process  of  ex- 
haustion brings  us  surely  to  Eras- 
mus. Ulrich  von  Hutten,  who 
was  then  at  Mainz  with  the  Arch- 
bishop Albert  of  Brandenburg,  is 
the  only  other  man  possessed  of 
the  wit  and  satire  equal  to  the 
authorship  of  such  a  work,  and 
the  'Julius,'  so  far  as  we  know, 
has  never  been  laid  to  Ulrich's 
charge.  Aut  Erasmus  aut  Dia- 
bolus  is  the  only  open  conclusion ; 
and  the  reference  in  the  '  Julius ' 
to  the  Bologna  procession,  which 
recurs  so  constantly  in  Erasmus's 
writings,  seems  to  settle  the  author- 
ship beyond  question.  In  the 
case  of  so  valuable  a  supporter 


870 


In  '  Maya's '  Library  : 


[Dec. 


as  Erasmus,  of  whom  it  was  above 
all  important  not  to  make  an 
enemy,  the  Roma  Curia  could 
tolerate  considerable  freedom,  but 
it  could  not  have  passed  over  the 
'Julius.'  The  wrangling  between 
the  Pope  and  St  Peter  at  the  gate 
of  heaven  is  as  caustic  and  clever 
as  Byron's  "  Vision  of  Judgment," 
and  even  more  profane.  We  wish 
our  space  would  permit  us  to  show 
with  what  dramatic  vigour  Mr 
Froude  has  thrown  this  dialogue 
into  an  English  version. 

The  pleasantest  part  of  Mr 
Froude's  book  is  the  passages  that 
illustrate  Erasmus's  English  friend- 
ships. In  his  responses  to  the 
thoughtful  affection  of  Sir  Thomas 
More,  and  the  graver  but  not  less 
considerate  communications  from 
Colet,  the  bright  and  genial  side 
of  Erasmus's  disposition  is  set 
forth,  in  his  appreciation  of  per- 
sonal friendship  cemented  by  in- 
tellectual and  religious  affinity, 
with  more  naturalness  and  spon- 
taneity than  in  any  other  portions 
of  his  correspondence.  But  the 
most  valuable  of  Mr  Froude's 
chapters  are  those  which  elucidate 
Erasmus's  relations  to  the  Church 
of  Rome  and  the  rising  movement 
of  the  Reformation.  To  define 
the  exact  position  which  Erasmus 
occupies  in  the  great  controversy, 
to  do  justice  to  his  moderate  and 
peaceful  views,  and  to  vindicate 
him  from  the  charge  of  timidity, 
seems  to  have  been  the  main  ob- 
jects of  Mr  Froude's  study.  The 
subject  is  too  far-reaching  for  us 
to  attempt  to  enter  upon  its  con- 
sideration in  this  brief  notice. 
We  think  Erasmus  himself  sums 
up  his  position  very  tersely  in  a 
letter  written  after  the  Witten- 
berg challenge : — 

''That  frigid  quarrelsome  old  lady, 

1  neology,  had  swollen    herself  into 

Jch  a  point  of  vanity  that  it  was 


necessary  to  bring  her  back  to  the 
fountain,  but  I  would  rather  have  her 
mended  than  ended.  I  would  at  least 
have  her  permitted  to  endure  till  a 
better  Theology  has  been  invented. 
Luther  has  said  many  things  excel- 
lently well.  I  could  wish,  however, 
that  he  would  be  less  rude  in  his 
manner.  He  would  have  stronger 
support  behind  him,  and  might  do 
real  good.  But,  at  any  rate,  unless 
we  stand  by  him  when  he  is  right,  no 
one  hereafter  will  dare  to  speak  the 
truth.  I  can  give  no  opinion  about 
his  positive  doctrines  ;  but  one  good 
thing  he  has  done,  and  has  been  a 
public  benefactor  by  doing  it — he  has 
forced  the  controversialists  to  examine 
the  early  Fathers  for  themselves." 

If  Erasmus  ever  showed  great 
firmness  of  character,  it  was  in  his 
consistent  maintenance  of  the 
difficult  attitude  of  neutrality  to- 
wards both  sides.  His  open  sup- 
port would  have  been  hailed  as  a 
moral  triumph  by  either  party,  but 
he  was  as  little  to  be  tempted  by 
the  rich  bribes  Rome  had  to  offer 
as  by  the  paramount  influence 
which  the  Protestants  would 
readily  have  accorded  to  him. 
His  convictions  were  too  divided 
to  supply  a  determining  motive 
to  any  course  other  than  that 
which  he  followed.  He  disliked 
the  Protestant  Revolution,  and 
would  doubtless  have  disliked  it 
still  more  had  he  lived  to  wit- 
ness its  later  phases,  but  his 
opposition  to  it  was  checked  by 
a  conscientious  fear  that  "I 
might  be  found  fighting  against 
the  Spirit  of  God."  He  had  un- 
flinchingly denounced  the  worst 
corruptions  of  the  Romish  Church, 
and  he  realised  how  far  distant 
were  any  hopes  of  the  Church 
being  purified  from  within,  but 
yet  he  could  say,  "The  Roman 
Church  I  know,  and  death  will 
not  part  me  from  it  till  the  Church 
departs  from  Christ."  With  such 
views,  the  position  of  a  neutral 
was  the  only  one  that  he  could 


1894.] 


'Archery.' 


871 


conscientiously  and  consistently 
occupy,  even  though  it  drew 
upon  him  obloquy  from  both 
sides.  But  the  Protestant  must 
still  acknowledge  him  one  of 
the  most  powerful  agents  of  the 
Reformation,  while,  in  the  words 
of  a  witty  and  well-known  priest 
of  the  last  generation,  "  that  Eras- 
mus, in  seeking  to  throw  the  rub- 
bish overboard,  and  so  ease  the 
bark  of  Peter  for  the  coming 
storm,  acted  the  part  of  a  sensible 
and  conscientious  Catholic,  no  one 
at  the  present  day  can  doubt." 

The  Badminton  series  of  volumes 
has  been  imaginatively  likened  to 
the  chorus  of  Diana's  nymphs,  a 
bevy  of  fair  sportswomen  of  every 
variety  of  charm.  The  present 
volume  on  '  Archery,' l  if  we  may 
follow  out  the  fanciful  comparison, 
is  a  somewhat  staid  dryad,  not  per- 
haps environed  with  the  exuberant 
frivolity  of  her  more  modern  and 
fashionable  compeers,  but  lacking 
neither  grace  nor  dignity  :  like  her 
own  yew-tree,  an  evergreen,  with 
a  distinct  place  in  the  summer 
panorama  of  foliage,  yet  invaluable 
in  the  bleak  desolation  of  a  winter 
landscape,  when  the  gaudy  spring- 
tide and  exuberant  summer  of 
sport  have  escaped  us  never  to 
return. 

Metaphor  apart :  the  invariably 
handsome,  well-appointed  volume, 
which  Mr  Longman  has  made 
familiar  to  the  British  reader, 
has  in  this  instance  an  interest  for 
a  somewhat  more  varied  circle 
than  is  always  the  case  in  regard 
to  these  treatises.  Archery  has 
its  side  for  the  antiquary,  the  mili- 
tary student,  and  the  romantic 
poet,  as  well  as  for  the  scientific 
marksman  who  shoots  his  "York 
round"  during  stated  hours,  in 


every  week,  and  looks  forward  to 
the  "  Grand  National,"  as  a  London 
licensed  victualler  to  the  Derby. 
The  editors  of  the  volume  have 
probably  done  wisely  in  associat- 
ing with  themselves  a  band  of  con- 
tributors competent  each  in  his 
degree  to  deal  with  one  of  the 
varied  phases  of  the  main  subject, 
and  the  result  is  one  of  the  best  of 
the  valuable  handbooks  of  which 
this  library  consists. 

The  worst  of  a  composite  book 
of  this  kind  is,  that  it  is  not  elas- 
tic ;  and  the  endeavour  to  compress 
very  miscellaneous  contents  into 
one  receptacle  is  often  unsatisfac- 
tory, unless  extraordinary  care  is 
exercised  to  secure  the  due  adjust- 
ment of  the  several  claimants.  So 
there  may  be  a  plausible  conten- 
tion that,  in  a  work  expressly  dedi- 
cated to  English  sport,  elaborate 
and  erudite  dissertation  upon  the 
archery  of  foreign  races,  taking  up 
nearly  a  fifth  of  the  volume,  is  less 
to  the  purpose  than  it  would  have 
been  in  an  encyclopedia, — that  Dr 
von  Luschan's  descriptive  analysis 
of  the  composite  Egyptian  bow  in 
the  Royal  Museum  at  Berlin  (p.  63) 
would  be,  for  instance,  "skipped" 
by  the  majority  of  readers,  and 
that  the  maps  showing  the  preva- 
lence of  particular  kinds  of  bows 
in  various  parts  of  the  globe  rep- 
resent a  branch  of  the  subject 
caviare  to  the  English  bowman. 
Without  endorsing  this  complaint, 
we  may  admit  that  the  real  value 
of  the  book,  from  the  point  of  view 
of  a  British  toxophilite,  will  be 
found  to  commence  with  Lord 
Dillon's  admirable  chapter  upon 
military  archery  in  the  middle 
ages,  which  will  be  read  with  pride 
and  pleasure  by  every  patriot.  No 
man  is  better  qualified  to  analyse, 
as  he  does  so  clearly  and  concisely, 


1  The  Badminton  Library  :    Archery. 
Walrond.     London :  Longmans.      1894. 
VOL.  CLVI. — NO.  DCCCCL. 


By  C.   J.    Longman  and  Colonel  H. 
3  L 


872 


In  '  Maga's  '  Library  : 


[Dec. 


the  causes  of  the  superiority  of  the 
long-bow  over  the  cross-bow,  the 
steel  implement  drawn  up  by  a 
cranequin  which  the  mercenaries 
in  the  service  of  France  and  Bur- 
gundy employed.  He  shows  that 
the  proportion  in  rapidity  of  fire 
was  actually  more  than  six  to  one 
in  favour  of  the  long-bow  (p.  115); 
and  explains  elaborately  the  reason 
why  the  Southern  bowman  was  so 
ineffective  at  Bannockburn,  and 
so  deadly  in  the  other  Scottish 
battlefields  from  Falkirk  to  Flod- 
den.  By  the  way,  we  may  note  a 
slight  confusion  between  Halidon 
Hill  and  Homildon,  which  culmi- 
nates in  the  index,  in  a  single 
reference  to  "  Hamilton  Hill " 
(sic).  The  two  battles,  it  is  cor- 
rectly stated,  were  fought  at  the 
interval  of  seventy  years ;  but  it 
might  have  been  added  that,  while 
Homildon  was  near  Wooler  in 
Northumberland,  Halidon  was  on 
the  Border  itself,  close  to  Berwick- 
on-Tweed.  The  remarks  upon  the 
efficiency  of  archers,  when  judi- 
ciously posted,  may  possibly  come 
to  be  of  interest  in  military  circles 
once  more.  We  thought  that  the 
officer  of  the  9th  Lancers  who  fell 
in  the  campaign  of  Delhi,  pierced 
through  the  eye  by  an  arrow,  was 
the  last  victim  to  the  ancient  wea- 
pon; but  now  that  it  appears  that 
the  hordes  upon  whom  China  is 
supposed  to  rely  as  reserves  are  for 
the  most  part  no  better  equipped, 
we  may  hereafter  have  an  essay 
dedicated  to  these  later  appear- 
ances of  the  bow  in  warfare. 

While  giving  deserved  praise  to 
the  way  in  which  both  Lord 
Dillon  and  Colonel  Walrond  have 
dealt  with  the  history  of  Archery 
in  South  Britain,  we  must  protest 
against  the  very  inadequate  sum- 
mary of  Scottish  archery  contained 
in  Chapter  XIII.  It  is  self-evi- 
dent that  a  writer  as  experienced 
and  accomplished  as  the  historian 


of  the  Royal  Company  would  not 
have  come  short  of  the  expecta- 
tions of  Scotsmen,  had  sufficient 
scope  been  given  him ;  but  the 
"  baker's  dozen  "  of  pages  to  which 
Scottish  Archery  is  restricted  must 
be  disappointing  to  many  who  had 
hoped  to  find  some  notice  of  the 
doings  of  Highland  and  Border 
archers.  No  doubt — we  have  the 
authority  of  the  author  of  c  Mar- 
mion'  for  it — 

"Short  were  the  shafts,  and  weak  the 

bow, 
To  that  which  England  bore  ; " 

but  the  exploits  of  the  compeers 
of  Callum  Dhu  and  Wat  Tinlinn 
would  have  been  worth  a  sketch, 
and  assuredly  her  Majesty's  Archer 
Guard  might  have  claimed  for 
themselves  at  least  as  much  space 
as  that  allotted  to  the  respect- 
able but  provincial  society  whose 
friendly  contests  with  them  are 
its  chief  title  to  recognition  in  a 
national  sense.  And  where — oh 
where  —  is  a  facsimile  of  that 
superb  figure,  Raeburn's  portrait 
of  Dr  Spens,  the  finest  of  all  old 
illustrations  of  Archery1? 

It  is  not  the  fault  either  of 
Mr  Bedford  or  of  Major  Fisher 
that  their  chapters  can  have  but 
local  and  temporary  interest.  We 
turn  with  greater  satisfaction 
to  the  practical  lessons  on  bow- 
manry  contained  in  the  essays  of 
Miss  Legh  and  Mr  Eyre  Hussey. 
To  the  latter,  above  all,  must  be 
conceded  the  palm  of  having 
written  tersely,  elegantly,  and  to 
the  purpose.  His  chapter  will  be 
read  and  quoted  by  archers  for 
years  to  come  as  the  ablest  prac- 
tical code  of  directions  for  success 
in  their  favourite  exercise. 

A  supplementary  essay  by  Mr 
Longman  on  the  penetration  of 
arrows  is  also  a  valuable  contribu- 
tion to  the  scientific  historical 
study  of  archery.  To  take  an 


1894.] 


Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found} 


873 


instance,  his  experiments  help  us 
to  understand  a  curious  story  in 
a  strange  book  of  memoirs  by  Sir 
James  Campbell  (the  adventurer 
who  originally  annexed  the  Ionian 
islands  to  the  British  Crown),  of  a 
demonstration  of  the  projectile 
power  of  the  bow  given  by  a 
Turkish  Pasha,  who  boasted  that 
he  could  shoot  an  arrow  through 
a  man's  body.  The  story  is  told 
in  a  vague  slipshod  style ;  but  it 
is  evident,  in  the  light  of  Mr 
Longman's  facts,  that  the  old  Turk 
did  not  boast  without  warrant. 
The  representative  of  our  brethren 
across  the  Atlantic  contributes 
also  an  excellent  description  of 
the  rise  and  progress  of  imported 
Archery  in  the  States.  It  will 
thus  be  seen  that  the  book  ad- 
dresses itself  to  a  world -wide 
constituency,  and  we  venture  to 
predict  that  it  will  not  fail  to 
obtain  their  favourable  suffrages. 

The  beautiful  and  touching  pic- 
ture of  maternal  affection  which 
forms  the  foreground  of  Mrs  Oli- 
phant's  latest  novel l  cannot  fail  to 
sympathetically  connect  itself  in 
the  minds  of  readers  with  the 
sorrowful  bereavement  which  over- 
took the  gifted  authoress  while 
the  story  of  '  Who  was  Lost  and 
is  Found'  was  passing  through 
our  pages.  In  the  world  of  novel- 
readers,  to  whose  interest  and 
pleasure  Mrs  Oliphant  has  minis- 
tered incessantly  for  more  than 
half  -  a  -  century,  there  is  no  one 
whose  feelings  will  not  have  been 
turned  towards  her  in  this  last 
and  crowning  loss.  Our  readers 
have  had  evidence  that  the  late 
Mr  Francis  Oliphant  was  a  writer 
finely  endowed  with  talent  and 
manifold  accomplishments ;  and 
he  wanted  nothing  but  the  bless- 


ing of  health  to  make  for  himself 
a  prominent  place  in  contemporary 
literature.  With  a  bright  and 
lively  imagination,  such  as  was 
seen  to  advantage  in  his  playful 
tale  of  "The  Grateful  Ghosts," 
which  will  be  still  in  the  remem- 
brance of  '  Maga's '  readers,  he 
combined  a  penetrating  and  ap- 
preciative critical  faculty  which  is 
well  represented  by  studies  on 
Henryson  and  Dunbar  in  our 
own  pages,  and  a  fine  touch  in 
picturesque  description  which  was 
very  effectively  used  in  his  ac- 
count of  the  Riviera,  and  in  his 
little  book  on  the  'Holy  Land.' 
His  delicate  health,  which  but  for 
his  mother's  unremitting  devotion 
must  have  given  way  earlier,  de- 
barred him  from  undertaking  more 
arduous  literary  pursuits,  which  he 
was  well  qualified  to  have  followed 
up.  We  are  sure  that  we  only 
give  voice  to  the  sincere  feelings  of 
4  Maga's '  readers  who  have  been 
so  long  under  Mrs  Oliphant's  spell, 
in  expressing  our  hopes  that 
strength  may  be  vouchsafed  her 
to  bear  up  under  this  terrible  blow. 
Not  many  women  have  been  tried 
'as  she  has  been,  or  have  come  more 
nobly  and  courageously  through 
the  furnace  of  affliction,  deprived 
one  after  another  of  all  that  were 
nearest  and  dearest.  There  come 
to  our  mind  recollections  of  the 
touching  picture  by  Anthony  Trol- 
lope  of  his  mother  writing  bright 
and  sparkling  romances  while'nurs- 
ing  day  and  night  her  husband 
upon  his  deathbed,  and  of  the 
fortitude  with  which  other  dis- 
tinguished authors  have  clung  to 
their  pens  amidst  domestic  sor- 
rows and  desolation ;  and  we  hope 
yet  to  have  other  good  and  power- 
ful works  from  Mrs  Oliphant's 
pen. 


1  Who  was  Lost  and  is  Found.    A  Novel.    By  Mrs  Oliphant. 
London  :  William  Blackwood  &  Sons.     1894. 


Edinburgh  and 


874 


In  l  Maga's '  Library  : 


[Dec. 


No  doubt  much  of  the  depth  and 
tenderness  which  Mrs  Oliphant  in- 
fuses into  her  studies  of  domestic 
life  is  leavened  by  her  own  lessons 
in  the  school  of  sorrow  ;  and  it  is 
noteworthy,  though  it  is  probably 
by  coincidence,  that  the  central 
interest  of  her  two  most  recent 
novels  turns  upon  the  same  theme 
— the  strong  love  arid  yearning  of  a 
mother.  The  figure  of  Mrs  Ogilvy, 
one  of  the  most  original  and  strik- 
ing characters  in  recent  fiction, 
is  too  fresh  in  the  recollection  of 
our  readers  to  need  dwelling  upon 
here :  the  lonely  little  woman  whose 
strength  is  most  manifest  in  her 
weakness;  her  simple,  staid,  nar- 
row, God-fearing  life,  suddenly 
brought  into  actual  contact  with 
an  atmosphere  of  guilt  and  crime ; 
the  overpowering  strength  of  ma- 
ternal love  which  conquers  her 
natural  loathing,  and  compels  her 
to  tolerate  and  even  protect  the 
criminal  who  has  been  the  evil 
genius  of  her  son;  her  desperate 
struggle  to  save  the  invertebrate 
Robbie  from  the  influence  of  his 
associate,  and  to  keep  him  safe  in 
her  own  hands ;  the  intense  human- 
ity which  causes  her  to  see  traces 
of  good  even  in  her  and  her  son's 
worst  enemy.  The  appearance  of 
a  desperado  like  Lew  in  such  a 
respectable  well-ordered  household 
as  that  of  the  Hewan  is  a  shock  to 
us,  as  to  its  quiet  inmates  ;  and  we 
much  prefer  to  encounter  the  type 
in  its  native  atmosphere  of  Red 
Gulch  or  Poker  Flat.  But  Mrs 
Ogilvy  of  herself  concentrates  our 
whole  interest,  which  can  hardly 
be  divided  with  any  of  the  other 
characters,  —  even  Robbie,  round 
whose  ultimate  fate  the  whole  ac- 
tion revolves,  counting  as  little 
more  than  a  pawn  in  the  game. 
Mrs  Ogilvy  and  her  two  old  re- 


tainers are  natural  and  likeable 
types  of  Scottish  character  that 
are  not  unneeded  as  examples  to 
contemporary  fiction.  The  present 
popular  conception  of  the  Scots- 
man and  Scotswoman  as  inspired 
idiots  of  dissenting  proclivities  may 
be  piquant  to  English  tastes,  but 
cannot  be  particularly  gratifying 
to  their  own  countrymen.  It  is  to 
George  MacDonald,  we  fear,  that 
the  blame  must  attach  of  having 
first  put  forward  in  his  earlier 
novels  this  unpatriotic  presenta- 
tion, and  in  his  "  Shargers "  and 
"  Soutars  " — we  forget  his  particu- 
lar characterisations — of  elevating 
abnormal  types  into  general  es- 
timation. Mr  Barrie's  genius  has 
not,  we  regret  to  think,  prevented 
him  from  repeating  the  faults  of 
his  predecessor  with  even  greater 
extravagance;  and  in  the  present 
day,  "haverils,"  "naturals,"  mad- 
men, and  ministers  are  the  essen- 
tial ingredients  of  every  reputable 
Scottish  fiction.  It  is  only  in  the 
pages  of  Mrs  Oliphant  and  Mr 
Stevenson  that  we  now  meet  with 
any  serious  attempt  at  delineating 
Scottish  character — that  character 
which,  in  its  many-sidedness,  its 
strength,  its  sense,  consistency, 
fidelity,  obstinacy,  shrewdness, 
manliness,  even  in  its  foibles  and 
angularities,  supplied  the  domin- 
ating interest  in  so  many  of  Sir 
Walter's  novels.  With  these  two 
writers  as  current  standards,  the 
general  debasement  of  our  north- 
ern coinage  scarcely  admits  of  an 
excuse. 

Another  excellent  type  of  Scots- 
woman is  Miss  Bethune,  whom, 
we  suppose,  we  may  designate  the 
heroine  of  'A  House  in  Blooms- 
bury,'  l  although  there  are  at  least 
two  other  ladies  who  have  fair 


1  A  House  in  Bloomsbury.     A  Novel.     By  Mrs  Oliphant.     London  :  Hutchin- 
son  &  Co.     1894 


1894.] 


1 A  House  in  Bloomsbury' 


875 


claims  for  contesting  that  distinc- 
tion. Here  again  the  plot  is  con- 
cerned with  maternal  love,  but  we 
have  not  one  but  two  mothers, 
whose  longing  for  the  children 
they  have  both  lost  forms  the 
groundwork  of  a  romance  which 
is  chiefly  enacted  in  the  'House 
in  Bloomsbury,'  a  neighbourhood 
of  respectable  mediocrity  and  dull 
decorum,  where  we  would  not  very 
readily  seek  for  a  sensation.  From 
one  mother,  a  worthless  husband 
has  carried  away  her  infant  son ; 
the  other,  through  an  unfortunate 
accident,  which  Mrs  Oliphant  very 
ingeniously  unfolds,  has  to  go  away 
and  abandon  her  daughter.  The 
lives  of  the  two  women  cross  each 
other,  although  there  is  no  con- 
nection between  the  stories.  The 
one  lady  has  the  wish  of  her  heart 
granted  to  her  only  on  her  death- 
bed, but  she  is  able  to  leave  a 
fortune  to  her  daughter  Dora, 
which  serves  to  extricate  her  and 
her  father  from  the  domestic  dif- 
ficulties which  threaten  to  over- 
whelm them.  The  other  never 
recovers  her  child  at  all,  but  she 
imagines  that  she  has  done  so,  and 
is  quite  satisfied  to  hug  the  illusion 
in  spite  of  all  evidence  to  the  con- 
trary. Our  friend  Miss  Bethune, 
for  she  is  the  lady  in  question  who 
has  been  deserted  by  her  husband, 
and  has  since  succeeded  to  much 
wealth,  encounters  a  youth  under 
the  charge  of  Dora  Mannering's 
dying  mother, 'whom,  from  his  name, 
age,  and  appearance,  she  concludes 
to  be  her  own  child;  and  having 
argued  herself  into  loving  him 
with  a  mother's  affection,  she  shuts 
her  eyes  to  all  facts  that  would 
deprive  her  of  this  relationship. 
Mrs  Oliphant  enlists  our  full  sym- 
pathies on  Miss  Bethune's  behalf 
somewhat  at  the  expense  of  our 
critical  judgment.  Is  she  playing 
with  us,  and  would  she  have  us 
believe  that  love  can  find  the  same 


satisfaction  in  an  illusive  as  in  a 
real  relationship  ?  In  the  novel,  at 
any  rate,  we  have  a  right  to  expect 
that  maternal  instinct  should  be 
infallible.  In  real  life,  mistakes 
may  be,  and  have  been,  made  by 
poor  ladies  when  a  waif  turns  up 
that  is  "just  like  Roger,"  but  the 
ideal  parent  is  never  deceived. 
With  all  our  liking  for  Miss 
Bethune,  she  is  somewhat  lessened 
in  our  esteem  by  the  rough  and 
ready  way  in  which  she  fills  up 
the  void  in  her  heart,  although 
Harry  Gordon  is  in  every  way 
worthy  of  being  adopted  as  a  son. 
There  is  a  clever  little  Doctor  in 
the  '  House  in  Bloomsbury,7  great 
in  psychological  as  in  pathological 
diagnosis,  who  generally  seeks  to 
get  at  the  root  of  a  mental  trouble 
or  bodily  ailment  by  a  reference 
to  the  patient's  grandfather.  It 
would  have  been  interesting  to 
have  had  his  frank  opinion  of  his 
friend  Miss  Bethune's  case,  which 
he  would  doubtless  have  explained 
by  a  weakness  somewhere  in  the 
Bethune  ancestry.  The  difference 
between  Mrs  Ogilvie  and  Miss 
Bethune  is  the  difference  between 
fact  and  fiction;  and  the  'House 
in  Bloomsbury '  would  be  decidedly 
more  full  for  some  such  absorbing 
presence  as  that  of  the  former 
round  which  our  interest  could 
continually  converge.  Mr  Man- 
nering,  the  British  Museum  assist- 
ant, the  quiet  solitary  man  of 
research,  the  native  proper  to 
Bloomsbury,  is  the  central  figure 
round  whom  the  other  personages 
revolve,  though  he  is  altogether 
a  motionless  actor  in  the  play. 
But  when  we  come  to  know  the 
story  of  this  Dryasdust  student, 
whose  solitude  and  reserved  ex- 
terior conceal  a  tragedy  which  has 
been  brought  entirely  about  by 
cruel  fate  and  by  no  wrong-doing 
on  any  side,  we  feel  much  drawn 
towards  him,  and  can  enter  into 


876 


In  'Maga's'  Library: 


[Dec. 


the  feelings  with  which,  on  his 
recovery  from  a  critical  illness,  he 
repudiates  the  expensive  delicacies 
which  he  cannot  afford,  but  which 
are  absolutely  necessary  to  the 
regaining  of  his  strength,  and 
which  come  to  him  from  a  source 
that  he  little  dreams  of.  Mr 
Mannering  is  the  most  natural 
character  in  the  Bloomsbury  House, 
and  if  he  has  only  been  sketched 
in  outline,  it  is  because  Mrs  Oli- 
phant's  ready  perception  shows  her 
that  detailed  description  is  not 
necessary  to  enable  the  reader  to 
realise  his  personality.  We  can 
all  fill  in  for  ourselves  the  figure 
of  the  scientific  scholar  who  is 
burying  a  heart-sorrow  behind  his 
labours  in  working  one  of  those 
great  discoveries  which  would  re- 
volutionise scientific  thought,  if 
only  it  were  ever  to  see  the  light, 
which  we  feel  assured  all  along 
that  it  never  shall.  The  man  is 
a  quite  familiar  character  :  simple, 
frugal,  saving  in  all  his  worldly 
tastes  and  habits,  he  cannot  deny 
his  mind  any  luxury  for  which  it 
craves.  The  money  that  should 
have  been  laid  past  for  the  rainy 
day,  which  at  length  pours  down  a 
deluge  upon  him,  goes  for  philo- 
sophical knick-knacks,  rare  speci- 
mens, and  early  editions,  all  of 
which  he  has  at  command  gratis  at 
the  scene  of  his  daily  labours  in  the 
Museum,  but  which  he  cannot  deny 
himself  the  extravagance  of  having 
all  for  his  own  use.  Mrs  Oliphant 
could  not  have  more  skilfully  im- 
pressed us  with  the  earnest  spirit 
in  which  Mr  Mannering,  on  his  con- 
valescence, throws  himself  into  the 
battle  of  life  and  encounters  its 
outpost  skirmishers  in  the  form  of 
bills  and  duns,  than  when  she 
makes  him  send  back  that  unique 
and  costly  fifteenth-century  edition, 


for  which  he  has  sighed  so  long, 
and  which  his  bookseller  has  at 
last  procured  for  him  after  so 
much  inquiry  and  trouble.  We 
are  glad  that  the  bibliopole  has 
refused  to  take  back  the  precious 
volume  when  the  fortune  of  that 
unhappy  mother,  whom  fell  chance 
had  separated  from  husband  and 
daughter,  provides  Dora  with  ample 
means  of  gratifying  her  father's 
tastes  and  comfort,  and  of  saving 
him  from  all  anxious  thoughts 
about  her  unprovided  future. 

Another  recent  novel1  by  Mrs 
Oliphant,  which  has  been  for  some 
time  on  our  table,  deserves  to  be 
noticed  for  the  robust  and  vigor- 
ous personality  which  pervades  it, 
and  for  the  dramatic  incidents, 
which  Mrs  Oliphant  employs  with 
more  liberality  than  is  usual  in 
her  works.  Patty  Hewitt  is  one 
of  the  most  striking  and  original 
conceptions  that  have  of  late 
years  been  set  before  us  in  fiction. 
A  selfish,  ambitious,  and  vulgar 
young  woman,  with  strong  com- 
mon-sense, tact,  and  audacity,  and 
without  an  iota  of  principle,  does 
not  seem  a  likely  subject  to  attach 
herself  to  our  aesthetic  sensibilities. 
But  in  spite  of  the  unscrupulous 
tactics  by  which  she  foists  herself 
into  a  baronial  family  through 
marriage  with  the  "Softy,"  the 
witless  only  son  and  heir,  who  is 
almost  too  silly  to  be  at  large ;  of 
the  splendid  impudence  with  which 
she  forcibly  occupies  her  new  po- 
sition ;  and  of  the  remorseless  way 
in  which  she  puts  rivals  and  enemies 
to  the  rout,  it  is  difficult  not  to  feel 
a  kindly  interest  in  her  machina- 
tions. It  may  be  that  our  judgment 
is  becoming  tainted  by  the  demo- 
cratic tendencies  of  our  day ;  but 
we  take  much  more  kindly  to  the 


1  The  Cuckoo  in  the  Nest.     A  Novel.     By  Mrs  Oliphant.     London  :  Hutchin- 
son  &  Co.     1894. 


1894.] 


The  Cuckoo  in  the  Nest.' 


877 


belligerent  Patty  than  to  the  two 
perfectly  proper  but  rather  washed- 
out  Pierceys  whom  she  has  dis- 
possessed, and  who  unquestionably 
ought  to  be  the  proper  objects  of 
our  sympathy.  We  feel  ourselves 
always  disposed  to  extenuate  her 
aggressive  attitudes  by  the  cir- 
cumstances in  which  she  is  placed, 
or,  more  honestly  speaking,  into 
which  she  has  thrust  herself ;  and 
we  are  well  disposed  to  make  the 
most  of  such  little  traits  of  good- 
ness as  she  shows  in  her  thread  of 
affection  for  the  "  Softy,"  and  her 
kindness,  not  disinterested  how- 
ever, to  his  feeble  old  father  Sir 
Giles.  Against  such  a  woman  as 
Patty  poetic  retribution  would  be 
in  vain  directed,  and  Mrs  Oliphant 
has  the  tact  to  provide  for  her 
more  handsomely  than  the  strict 
moralist  would  consider  that  she 
deserves.  After  having  carried 
everything  before  her,  and  earned 
renown  as  the  successful  heroine 


of  a  civil  cause  celebre,  Patty 
becomes  satiated  and  dissatisfied 
with  her  position,  in  which  she 
finds  herself  painfully  isolated,  and 
she  at  length  meets  with  happiness 
in  the  love  of  a  man  in  her  former 
rank  of  life,  though  not  before  her 
lover's  sense  of  justice  has  com- 
pelled her  to  unload  of  a  consider- 
able portion  of  her  spoils.  She 
retires  from  the  scene  amid  a 
shower  of  acclamations  over  her 
constrained  generosity,  to  a  life 
for  which  she  is  more  fitted,  and 
where  the  better  qualities  of  her 
nature  will  have  fuller  play.  She 
is  more  fortunate  than  Becky 
Sharp,  to  whom  she  bears  con- 
siderable affinity;  but  Patty  is 
prudent  where  Becky  is  rash,  and 
her  circumspection  meets  with  its 
natural  reward.  We  are  glad  to 
notice  that  '  The  Cuckoo  in  the 
Nest'  has  already  run  through 
several  editions — a  success  which 
it  thoroughly  merits. 


878 


The  Position  of  Japan. 


[Dec. 


THE    POSITION    OF    JAPAN. 


BY   AN    EX-DIPLOMATIST. 


AT  the  commencement  of  the 
present  war  between  Japan  and 
China,  the  opinions  and  the  sym- 
pathies expressed  in  the  press  of 
Europe  were,  in  general,  unfavour- 
able to  Japan  and  favourable  to 
China.  The  motives  of  Japan  in 
attacking  China  were  declared  in 
many  quarters  to  be  either  "  insuf- 
ficient," "discreditable,"  or  "un- 
avowable,"  or  all  three  together; 
and  her  ultimate  defeat  was  pro- 
claimed to  be  inevitable.  She  had 
been  "foolish  and  blustering"  in 
attacking  a  bigger  Power  than 
herself,  and  would  have  to  pay  for 
it.  The  predictions  of  her  discom- 
fiture— many  of  which  were  pro- 
nounced in  harsh  words  and  with 
unhesitating  precision  and  certainty 
— have  not,  however,  been  realised 
thus  far.  It  happens  that,  on  the 
contrary,  Japan  has  shown  herself, 
hitherto,  to  be  the  more  capable  and 
therefore  the  stronger  of  the  two 
belligerents ;  the  differences  which 
have  been  revealed  between  their 
respective  states  of  preparation, 
and  especially  between  their  to- 
tally opposite  conditions  of  or- 
ganisation and  skill,  are  staring 
everybody  in  the  face.  The  army 
and  navy  of  Japan  have  proved 
that  they  possess  the  same  sort 
of  qualities  and  can  render  very 
much  the  same  services  as  Euro- 
pean forces  ;  while  what  are  called 
"  the  limitless  resources  "  of  China 
have  been  shown  to  consist  of  un- 
available materials,  which,  so  far 
as  the  present  conflict  is  concerned, 
can  scarcely  be  got  into  any  or- 
ganised and  utilisable  shape.  As  a 
natural  result,  and  because  nothing 


succeeds  like  success,  European 
opinion  is  turning  round,  and  is 
beginning  to  transfer  its  goodwill 
from  China  to  Japan. 

The  moment  may,  therefore,  be  a 
convenient  one  for  supplying  some 
additional  reasons  for  this  change 
of  feeling,  and  for  showing  that 
Japan  has  right,  as  well  as  readi- 
ness, capacity,  and  success,  on  her 
side.  The  immense  number  of 
articles  which  have  appeared  about 
the  war  in  the  newspapers  and 
magazines  of  most  of  the  countries 
of  Europe  have,  as  a  rule,  treated 
the  subject  solely  from  the  point 
of  view  of  the  West ;  scarcely  any- 
thing has  been  published  in  the 
interest  of  the  East.  There  may 
not  be  much  to  say  on  the  side  of 
China,  but  there  is  a  good  deal  to 
urge  on  the  side  of  Japan ;  and  the 
intention  here  is  to  put  together 
some  of  the  elements  of  that  por- 
tion of  the  subject.  With  the 
exception  of  M.  de  Blowitz,  Sir 
Edwin  Arnold,  and  one  or  two 
others,  no  one  has  spoken  up,  thus 
far,  for  Japan.  As  a  mere  matter 
of  fair-play,  it  is  just  that  what 
can  be  said  in  her  behalf  should 
be  brought  before  the  public.  It 
is  of  course  difficult  to  obtain 
thoroughly  reliable  information ; 
but  enough  can  be  discovered,  by 
any  one  who  takes  the  pains  to 
search,  to  render  it  possible  to 
judge  the  general  situation. 

Three  main  questions  are  worth 
examining: — 

Why  did  this  war  begin  ? 

Under  what  conditions  is  it 
likely  to  end? 

What  will  be  its  ultimate  effect 


1894.] 


The  Position  of  Japan. 


879 


on  the  position  of  Japan  towards 
other  countries,  and  especially 
towards  China1? 

Two  false  ideas  are  current  as 
to  the  origin  of  the  war.  One  is, 
that  Japan  is  an  "  aggressive," 
"  precipitate,"  "  conceited  "  land 
(these  are  some  of  the  epithets 
that  have  been  applied  to  her), 
who  longed  to  use  her  new  army 
and  navy,  and  was  delighted  to 
find  an  opportunity  of  testing 
them.  The  other  is,  that  the 
Japanese  Government  have  sought 
to  escape  from  the  home  difficulties 
resulting  from  opposition  in  the 
Parliament,  by  the  counter-irrita- 
tion of  a  foreign  war.  It  has  not 
occurred,  apparently,  to  any  of 
the  writers  who  have  put  forward 
these  explanations  to  examine  the 
real  facts  of  the  case ;  to  consider 
whether  they,  in  themselves  and 
by  themselves,  do  not  suffice  to 
explain  and  justify  the  course 
which  Japan  has  been  forced  to 
adopt ;  and  to  tell  the  story  on 
those  facts,  so  far,  at  least,  as 
they  can  be  learnt  in  Europe. 

It  has  been  announced  by  tele- 
graph that  at  the  opening  of  the 
Japanese  Parliament  in  October, 
Count  Ito,  the  Prime  Minister, 
gave  a  detailed  explanation  of  the 
events  which  led  up  to  the  rup- 
ture, and  read  the  correspondence 
exchanged  with  China.  But  as 
the  text  of  his  speech  has  not  yet 
reached  us,  it  cannot  be  quoted 
here.  The  materials  for  a  history 
of  the  case  must,  therefore,  for 
the  moment,  be  taken  from  less 
authoritative  sources. 

There  appeared  in  the  'Japan 
Weekly  Mail'  of  llth  August  an 
article  headed  "  The  Korean  Im- 
broglio," which  gave  the  completest 
and  most  truthful  account  of  the 
preceding  circumstances  which  has 
yet  been  published.  The  following 


statement  of  those  circumstances 
is  based,  in  part,  on  that  article, 
with  additions  from  elsewhere. 
It  is  difficult  to  suppose  that  the 
statement  can  be  read  without 
recognising  that,  instead  of  being 
the  product  either  of  pugnacious 
self-assertion  or  of  a  desire  to 
escape  from  home  difficulties  by 
outside  distractions,  the  war  was 
in  reality  thrust  upon  Japan  by 
the  march  of  events,  which,  in 
consequence  of  their  long  and 
irritating  accumulation,  left  her 
at  last  no  alternative  but  to  fight. 
No  one  but  the  parties  to  a 
quarrel  can  determine  how  much 
they  will  endure  for  the  sake  of 
peace;  no  looker-on  can  measure 
the  exact  degree  of  provocation 
which  others  feel :  all  that  can  be 
fairly  asked,  in  the  interest  of 
outsiders,  is  that  arms  shall  not 
be  employed  until  a  good  deal  has 
been  endured,  and  until  the  pro- 
vocation has  become  too  intense 
to  be  borne  any  longer.  In  this 
case  Japan  endured  much  and  was 
provoked  much. 

But  before  describing  the  im- 
mediate origin  of  the  war,  it  is 
essential  to  draw  attention  to  two 
general  causes  which  have  been 
operating  for  some  time,  and  which 
have  prepared  the  ground  for  the 
present  conflict,  irrespective  of 
the  specific  motives  which  have 
precipitated  it. 

The  first  of  those  two  general 
causes  is  the  decision  adopted  by 
Japan  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago 
to  prepare  herself,  by  the  aid  of 
Western  methods,  to  take  a  very 
different  place  in  the  world  at 
large  from  that  which  either  she  or 
China  had  previously  filled.  China 
has  never  forgiven  Japan  for 
adopting  that  decision  :  she  has 
regarded  it  as  a  disgraceful  aban- 
donment of  Eastern  Asiatic  con- 
servatism, and  has  looked  on  at 


880 


The  Position  of  Japan. 


[Dec. 


its  working  out  with  constantly 
augmenting  scorn  and  rage.  A 
perpetually  widening  separation 
has  stretched  out  between  the 
countries  in  consequence  thereof ; 
each  despises  the  other's  convic- 
tions; motionless  China  regards 
advancing  Japan  as  a  traitor  to 
the  principles  and  practices  which 
were  once  common  (in  a  general 
way)  to  them  both;  advancing 
Japan  regards  motionless  China 
as  a  narrow-minded,  antiquated 
bigot.  As  the  'Japan  Mail'  re- 
marks, "  the  struggle  in  Korea 
is  not  to  determine  China's  shad- 
owy suzerainty  or  Japan's  politi- 
cal supremacy,  but  is  a  contest 
between  Japanese  progress  and 
Chinese  stagnation."  There  lies 
the  main  starting-point  of  the 
actual  war,  which  has,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  been  becoming  more  and 
more  inevitable  for  years  past. 
From  the  moment  when  Japan 
made  up  her  mind  to  adopt  Eu- 
ropean theories  and  systems  of 
action,  and  to  build  a  new  power 
for  herself  upon  them,  China, 
despising  the  means  but  fearing 
the  results,  became  the  latent 
enemy  of  Japan.  A  struggle  of 
ill-will  commenced ;  that  it  would 
end  some  day  in  war  has  long 
looked  certain  to  everybody  who 
knew  the  nature  of  the  relations 
that  were  growing  up  between 
Japan  and  China.  Korea  has 
supplied  a  pretext ;  but  the  war 
was  in  the  air,  and  would  and  must 
have  come  sooner  or  later,  even  if 
Korea  had  not  existed.  Japan  had 
diverged  from  the  path  which  the 
two  nations  had  so  far  followed 
with  approximate  parallelism,  and 
China  for  that  reason  regarded 
her  as  an  apostate  and  a  pros- 
pective foe. 

The  second  general  cause  lay  in 
the  ideas  and  attitude  of  China 
towards  the  small  States  around 
her  frontiers.  She  viewed  and 


treated  them  for  a  long  time  partly 
as  vassals,  but  mainly  as  "  buffers 
for  softening  the  shock  of  foreign 
contact."  In  her  peculiar  tactics, 
however,  they  were  to  be  buffers 
without  imposing  any  responsi- 
bilities on  the  country  they  fenced 
in ;  they  were  to  be  vassals  with- 
out the  protection  of  a  suzerain 
behind  them ;  they  were  to  bear 
the  blows,  but  China  was  not  to 
shield  them,  or  even  to  doctor  the 
wounds  they  received  in  her  ser- 
vice, unless  on  each  particular 
occasion  she  happened  to  think  fit 
to  do  so.  Her  shadow  was  cast 
prerogatively  over  them,  but  they 
were  not  to  expect  that  a  strong 
hand  held  a  sword  behind  the 
shadow.  They  were  told  they 
were  independent  of  all  the  world, 
excepting  China  herself ;  but 
China  took  no  steps  to  guard  their 
independence  when  it  was  attacked 
from  elsewhere.  So  one  by  one 
the  border  States  have  been  occu- 
pied and  annexed  by  others.  On 
the  frontier  of  what  used  to  be 
called  Chinese  Turkestan  (which 
is  regarded  as  an  inherent  part  of 
the  empire,  and  not  as  a  vassal 
State)  China  has,  thus  far,  it  is 
true,  maintained  her  claims  against 
Russia;  but  in  Tonquin,  Annam, 
Siam,  Burmah,  we  have  seen  ex- 
amples of  the  fashion  in  which  she 
behaves  towards  territories  she  once 
pretended  to  call  her  own.  Her 
attitude  was,  until  quite  recently, 
equally  vague  and  hesitating  to- 
wards Korea :  no  one  knew  what 
she  claimed  there,  and  it  was  not 
unreasonable  to  suppose  that  Korea 
would  be  left  to  shift  for  herself, 
like  the  others.  All  this  must 
be  borne  in  mind  in  judging  the 
growth  of  the  question  we  are 
considering,  for  the  effect  of  this 
permanent  vacillation  has  been 
to  convince  everybody,  Japan 
included,  that  China  had  no 
principles  of  frontier  policy,  that 


1894." 


The  Position  of  Japan. 


881 


neither  her  declarations  nor  her 
action  concerning  border  States 
could  be  relied  on,  and  that,  in 
reality,  she  had  renounced  all 
further  influence  over  them. 

And  now  as  to  the  specific  causes 
which,  out  of  this  general  situa- 
tion, have  brought  about  the  war. 

While  abandoning,  one  after  the 
other,  her  so-called  border  States, 
and  while  leading  all  the  world  to 
suppose  that  she  had  given  up 
meddling  with  them,  China  seems 
(from  what  we  have  learnt  of  late) 
to  have  put  Korea  apart.  It  must 
be  recognised  that  she  had  a  reason 
for  desiring  that  Korea,  more  than 
any  other  outlying  retainer,  should 
remain,  in  some  way,  under  her 
control.  The  reason  was  that,  if 
Korea  passed  into  foreign  hands, 
the  command  of  the  Gulf  of  Pa- 
chili  and  of  the  sea-route  to  Pekin 
would  pass  with  it,  while  Man- 
churia, the  cradle  of  the  present 
Chinese  dynasty,  would  become 
threatened.  As  those  consequen- 
ces would  be  serious,  it  was  de- 
sirable to  preserve  Korea.  But, 
according  to  the  ways  of  China, 
she  must  be  preserved,  not  by  plain 
speaking,  not  by  telling  other 
people  what  was  meant,  not  by 
proclaiming  and  carrying  out  a 
stated  policy,  but  by  the  tradition- 
ary ancient  methods  of  disguise 
and  mental  reservations,  for  to 
this  day  China  knows  no  others. 
Korea  was  not  to  be  declared  a 
vassal  kingdom ;  .  no  exposition 
was  to  be  made  of  the  exact  nature 
of  her  connection  with  China :  on 
the  contrary,  that  connection  was 
to  be  left  in  entire  uncertainty,  so 
as  to  enable  China  to  behave  about 
it  in  any  way  she  liked,  according 
to  what  might  happen.  But  at  the 
same  time  (as  has  come  out  now) 
she  was  to  be  kept  secretly,  by 
indirect  processes,  without  anybody 
knowing  anything,  in  the  antique 
position  of  undefined  dependence 


which  has  failed  on  other  bound- 
aries. She  was  to  be  left  free 
towards  others,  but  to  be  kept  sub- 
ordinate towards  China ;  she  was 
to  be  independent  in  public,  but 
dependent  in  private;  she  was  to 
be  mistress  of  her  own  destinies 
so  far  as  the  world  could  see,  but 
directed  by  China  as  between  their 
two  selves.  As  an  outcome  of 
these  nebulous  tactics,  Korea  con- 
cluded in  1876  a  direct  treaty  with 
Japan,  in  which  she  (Korea)  de- 
clared herself  to  be  an  independent 
State.  The  exact  words  employed 
were,  "Korea,  being  an  indepen- 
dent State,  enjoys  the  same  rights 
as  does  Japan."  Direct  treaties 
implying  similar  independence  were 
signed  successively  with  other 
Powers,  and  Japan  became  en- 
titled to  suppose  that,  if  words 
meant  anything,  China  had  aban- 
doned Korea  just  as  she  had  aban- 
doned her  south-western  fringes. 
But  although  China  kept  care- 
fully out  of  sight,  made  no  ob- 
jection to  the  treaties  and  did 
not  say  a  word  about  them,  al- 
though she  appeared  to  claim  no 
longer  any  suzerainty  over  Korea, 
and  almost  ceased  (externally  and 
visibly)  to  occupy  herself  about  her, 
she  did  not  by  any  means  intend, 
at  the  bottom  of  her  heart,  that  the 
freedom  these  treaties  presupposed 
on  the  part  of  Korea  should  become 
an  effective  reality.  Her  eternal 
system  of  subterfuge,  equivocation, 
and  back-stairs  intrigue  was  kept 
going  furtively,  but  in  this  case 
resolutely.  Korea  was  to  proclaim 
herself  free  to  make  treaties,  but 
she  was  not  to  be  free  to  execute 
them.  To  prevent  her  from  ex- 
ecuting them  a  Chinese  agent  was 
placed  at  Soul,  with  instructions 
to  profit  by  the  disordered  con- 
dition of  the  local  government  in 
order  to  organise  Chinese  influence, 
and  to  inaugurate  a  system  of  con- 
cealed but  steady  interference  in 


882 


The  Position  of  Japan. 


[Dec. 


the  home  and  foreign  affairs  of 
Korea.  Then  it  happened  that,  as 
Japan  was  the  closest  neighbour  of 
Korea,  as  well  as  by  far  the  most 
important  commercial  dealer  with 
her,  it  was  precisely  Japan  which 
felt 'most  keenly,  in  everyday  con- 
tacts, the  difficulties  thrown  in  the 
way  of  the  working  of  the  treaty. 
And  this  was  not  all :  those  diffi- 
culties extended  to  everybody  and 
everything,  but  they  were  far  more 
numerous,  persistent,  and  irritating 
towards  the  Japanese  in  particular, 
because  of  the  hate  of  the  Chinese 
for  a  Government  and  people  whom 
they  regarded  as  renegades  and  as 
unworthy  imitators  of  Europe.  In 
every  form,  in  the  smallest  details 
of  daily  intercourse,  in  commerce, 
in  matters  of  administration  and 
police,  the  Japanese  who  had  come 
into  Korea  under  the  treaty  were 
made  to  feel  that  China  was  doing 
her  utmost,  by  underhand  and 
clandestine  processes,  to  render  the 
country  untenable  for  them  :  they 
were  everywhere  hampered,  foiled, 
and  opposed  by  Chinese  hidden 
action. 

This  action  operated  principally 
through  the  family  of  the  Korean 
queen.  That  family  had  managed 
to  get  hold  of  every  department 
of  State,  worked  them  all  for  its 
own  profit,  and  thought  it  clever 
to  support  itself  in  power  against 
local  hostilities  by  the  assistance 
of  the  Chinese,  with  whom,  in 
return,  it  allied  itself  against 
Japan.  Under  the  combined  pres- 
sure of  the  queen's  party  and  of 
the  agents  of  Pekin,  the  Govern- 
ment of  Korea  fell  into  disgraceful 
disorder;  bribery  and  corruption 
were  the  bases  of  authority  ;  the 
misery  of  the  people  became  such 
that  rebellions  were  frequent,  and 
were  suppressed  with  growing 
difficulty.  In  1882,  and  again  in 
1884,  the  partisans  of  China  at- 
tacked the  Japanese  Legation  in 


Soul,  and  the  Japanese  Minister, 
Hanabusa  (though  he  happened  to 
be  a  particularly  brave  man),  had 
to  fly  for  his  life.  In  consequence 
of  these  proceedings  Japan  claimed 
and  obtained  the  right  to  main- 
tain a  guard  at  the  Legation,  and 
in  1885,  after  urgent  representa- 
tions and  difficult  negotiations, 
concluded  a  special  convention 
with  China  (who  had  at  last  shown 
her  hand)  for  the  arrangement  of 
difficulties  in  Korea,  by  which, 
amongst  other  things,  each  nation 
pledged  itself  not  to  send  troops 
into  Korea  without  notifying  the 
intention  to  the  other,  so  placing 
them  both  on  a  footing  of  equal 
military  rights  there. 

But  notwithstanding  this  con- 
vention, China  continued  her  occult 
interference  in  Korea,  and  went  on 
raising  so  many  annoyances  for 
the  Japanese  residents  that  their 
situation  became  more  and  more 
intolerable.  They  had  no  longer 
before  them  the  independent  coun- 
try which  had  signed  the  treaty  of 
1876,  but  a  country  which  had  re- 
lapsed into  dependence  on  China, 
which  took  all  its  orders  from 
China,  and  which  simultaneously 
had  fallen  into  the  most  wretch- 
ed condition  of  misgovernment. 
Hearts  grew  full  of  rage :  the 
local  situation  was  the  external 
motive  of  that  rage;  but  under- 
neath the  external  motive  lay  fes- 
tering international  hate, — China 
regarding  Japan  more  and  more  as 
a  deserter  from  the  common  cause 
of  old  Eastern  Asia,  and  Japan 
beginning  to  ask  herself  whether 
any  argument  other  than  the  active 
employment  of  the  new  forces  she 
had  constituted  for  herself,  under 
the  influence  of  Western  example, 
would  convince  China  that  she 
had  been  right  in  following  that 
example.  This  state  of  things  was 
visible  to  every  one  who  was  in  a 
position  to  watch  what  was  pass- 


1891] 


The  Position  of  Japan. 


883 


ing ;  so  visible,  indeed,  that  it  is 
incomprehensible  that  no  one  on 
this  side  of  the  earth  has  told  the 
story  already.  The  '  Japan  Mail ' 
alone  has  narrated  it ;  and  few- 
Europeans  see  that  paper. 

Again,  the  interior  condition  of 
Korea  was  becoming  such  that 
motives  and  opportunities  were 
growing  up  of  a  nature  to  render 
possible  the  intervention  of  other 
Powers,  a  contingency  which  Japan 
could  not  view  with  indifference. 
To  leave  Korea  to  drift  into  such 
a  state  of  disorder  and  anarchy 
that  another  strong  hand  might 
find  occasion  for  putting  down  its 
grasp,  was  not  an  eventuality  which 
Japan  could  allow  to  assume  a 
shape.  Korea  is  the  immediate 
neighbour  of  Japan,  to  whom  the 
presence  of  foreign  forces  there 
would  have  been  most  offensive. 
Japan  called  earnestly,  at  Pekin 
and  at  Soul,  for  reforms,  in  order 
to  avert  this  contingency  ;  but  no 
real  answer  was  made  to  her  com- 
munications. 

So  things  went  on,  strained  and 
irritating  :  old  deeply-seated  fun- 
damental hates  and  fresh  superfi- 
cial dissensions  reacted  on  and  aug- 
mented each  other.  The  Korean 
people  got  into  such  misery  that, 
in  the  spring  of  this  year,  a  serious 
insurrection  broke  out  against  the 
Government.  The  queen's  party, 
trembling  for  their  authority,  ap- 
pealed to  China  for  aid  to  quell 
the  revolt :  2500  men  were  sent  at 
once  from  Tientsin,  and  notice  of 
their  landing  was  given  to  Japan, 
in  conformity  with  the  convention 
of  1885. 

By  that  time  the  situation  in 
Korea,  as  viewed  from  Japan,  had 
arrived,  in  substance,  at  this — so 
far,  at  least,  as  it  is  possible  to  de- 
fine it  by  the  light  of  accessible  in- 
formation. Here  is  a  country,  so 
close  to  us  that  we  cannot  fail  to 
feel  keen  interest  in  it,  both  poli- 


tically and  commercially ;  a  coun- 
try with  which  we  have  a  treaty 
bestowing  on  us  certain  clearly  de- 
fined rights,  which  rights  we  can- 
not exercise  because  China  stands 
in  the  way ;  a  country  which  is  so 
odiously  misgoverned  that  it  is 
becoming  a  source  of  varied  dan- 
gers to  us.  It  is  hopeless,  as 
things  stand,  to  think  of  introduc- 
ing reforms  into  it ;  for  China 
—  who  has  revived  the  claims 
of  suzerainty  which,  a  short  time 
ago,  she  kept  so  carefully  out  of 
sight  that,  especially  with  the  ex- 
perience before  us  of  her  attitude 
on  other  frontiers,  we  were  justi- 
fied in  supposing  them  abandoned 
— cannot  be  expected  to  allow 
in  Korea  administrative  changes 
which  she  will  not  apply  at  home. 
By  sending  troops,  indeed,  to  sup- 
port the  present  Government,  she 
proves  that  she  means  to  keep 
things  as  they  are.  Under  such 
circumstances  there  is  nothing  left 
for  us  but  to  act  for  ourselves. 

So  Japan,  following  the  example 
of  China,  despatched  regiments  to 
Korea,  and  laid  before  the  Cabinets 
of  Soul  and  Pekin  a  programme  of 
the  reforms  in  Korea  which,  for 
her  own  safety,  she  considered 
indispensable. 

From  that  the  war  has  grown. 

Now,  after  this  statement,  which 
is  correct  and  fairly  put,  will  any 
one  deny  that  Japan  had  reason 
on  her  side,  and  that  she  could 
endure  no  more?  What  war  in 
Europe  has  ever  been  commenced 
for  more  justifying  motives  1  The 
general  attitude  of  China  towards 
Japan  has  been  for  twenty  years 
unfriendly,  suspicious,  contempt- 
uous; her  particular  attitude  in 
this  matter  of  Korea  has  been 
double-faced,  stealthy,  wilfully  de- 
ceptive. However  much  it  may 
be  regretted  that  the  war  has  be- 
gun, it  must,  at  all  events,  be 
avowed  that  Japan  was  driven  to 


884 


The  Position  of  Japan. 


[Dec. 


it  by  a  long  accumulation  of  grave 
causes  of  complaint.  The  asser- 
tion that  she  wished  for  it,  that 
she  had  been  preparing  for  it,  that 
she  meant  to  have  it,  is  easy 
enough  to  make;  but  it  proves 
nothing.  It  is  probable  that  she 
did  know  it  had  to  come,  for 
all  fairly  well-informed  outsiders 
have  been  expecting  it,  though 
none  of  them  could  have  known  a 
tenth  part  of  the  details  which 
must  have  been  before  the  eyes  of 
the  Cabinet  of  Tokio.  It  may  be 
that,  wisely  and  prudently,  Japan 
got  ready.  But  she  was  provoked 
to  get  ready  by  the  conduct  of 
China  alone.  If  China  had  left 
Japan  to  travel  on  her  road,  had 
respected  the  new  principles  of 
action  she  had  chosen  to  adopt, 
and  had  allowed  her  to  carry  out 
her  treaty  with  Korea,  the  war 
would  never  have  occurred  at  all ; 
there  would  have  been  no  reason 
for  it.  China  has  caused  the  war 
by  her  unpardoning  jealousy  of 
the  progress  of  Japan,  and,  subsidi- 
arily, by  her  tricky  deceit  in  Korea. 
It  is  time  the  European  public 
recognised  this  truth. 

We  come  now  to  the  second 
question,  Under  what  conditions 
is  the  war  likely  to  end  1 

If  we  may  venture  to  base  an 
opinion  on  what  has  happened 
already,  and  to  presume  that  the 
causes  which  have  hitherto  given 
superiority  to  Japan  will  continue 
to  work  for  her  in  the  future,  it 
may  be  supposed  that,  in  some 
degree  which  cannot  for  the  pres- 
ent be  determined,  Japan  will  go 
on  conquering,  and  that  the  war 
will  end  when  China  has  had 
enough.  If  so,  and  if  the  two 
sides  are  left  face  to  face  to 
make  a  settlement  for  themselves, 
China  will  necessarily  have  to 
yield  compensations  to  Japan. 
But  here  comes  in  the  possibility 


of  that  foreign  intervention  which 
has  been  so  much  but  so  vaguely 
talked  about. 

What  pretext  exists  for  foreign 
intervention1?  We  do  not  know 
what  motives  were  invoked  by 
Lord  Rosebery  in  his  recent  un- 
successful proposals  to  the  Powers; 
but,  judging  from  the  evidence 
before  the  public,  it  looks  im- 
probable that — however  urgently 
China  may  beg  for  it — interven- 
tion will  be  attempted  while  the 
war  lasts.  The  fight  between 
Japan  and  China,  regarded  mere- 
ly as  a  fight,  concerns  no  one- 
but  the  parties  to  it;  it  is  only 
by  its  collateral  effects  that  it  can 
touch  others.  Thus  far  those  col- 
lateral effects  have  been  limited  to 
relatively  slight  inconveniences ; 
neither  the  persons  nor  the  trade 
of  foreigners  have  been  damaged 
by  the  war  itself.  And  even  if, 
in  certain  cases,  some  little  harm 
has  been  done  to  commerce,  that 
harm  has  been  far  more  than  com- 
pensated by  the  new  special  and 
very  lucrative  business  which  the 
war  has  brought  into  existence, 
to  the  great  benefit  of  neutrals. 
The  risks  to  foreigners  in  China 
arise  from  Chinese  temper,  with 
which  Japan  has  nothing  what- 
ever to  do,  except  indeed  to 
point  to  it  as  showing  how  bar- 
barous is  the  condition  of  China, 
and  how  impossible  it  is  to  trust 
her.  She  might  point,  just  in 
the  same  way  and  with  as  much 
reason,  to  the  brutality  shown  to 
Japanese  subjects  in  China  when 
the  war  began,  and  might  compare 
it  with  the  decree  of  the  Mikado 
of  September  4,  authorising  the 
Chinese  to  remain  in  Japan  and 
placing  them  under  the  protection 
of  the  authorities,  which  decree 
has  been  scrupulously  respected 
by  the  Japanese  people.  The 
necessity  of  protecting  foreigners 
in  China  is  a  regrettable  accident, 


1894/ 


The  Position  of  Japan. 


885 


but  it  can  in.  no  way  affect  the 
rights  of  Japan  as  a  belligerent. 
The  difficulties  provoked  directly 
by  the  war  must  go  a  long  way 
beyond  the  local  question  of  the 
safety  of  foreigners  in  China,  be- 
fore Japan  can  be  held  responsible 
to  outsiders  for  any  accessory  con- 
sequences, and  especially  before 
outsiders  can  claim,  towards 
Japan,  any  right  of  interven- 
tion. It  may  be  presumed  that 
Japan,  who  has  shown  intelli- 
gence enough  in  the  management 
of  her  affairs,  will  take  good 
care  that  her  naval  and  military 
operations  shall  be  so  conducted 
as  to  supply  no  valid  excuse  for 
intervention. 

And  if  no  such  excuse  should  be 
found  while  the  war  is  proceeding, 
is  there  any  reasonable  probability 
before  us  that  intervention  would 
become  more  justifiable  when  the 
moment  arrives  to  discuss  the  terms 
of  peace  1  That  again  would  de- 
pend, so  far  as  reason  can  furnish 
an  answer  to  the  question,  on  the 
effect  on  the  interests  of  others  of 
the  conditions  which  Japan  (sup- 
posing her  to  go  on  winning)  might 
seek  to  impose  on  China.  No  Euro- 
pean can  pretend  to  say  now  what 
those  conditions  would  be  :  Japan 
herself  cannot  be  in  a  position  to 
define  them  yet,  for  they  would  of 
necessity  vary  with  the  degree  of 
her  final  success,  and  with  the  sur- 
rounding circumstances  of  the  time. 
We  may  suppose,  if  we  like,  that 
Japan  would  ask  for  a  money 
indemnity,  for  guarantees  that 
China  would  behave  to  her  thence- 
forward with  the  respect  to  which 
she  is  entitled,  for  the  independ- 
ence of  Korea,  for  the  introduc- 
tion of  settled  government  there, 
and  perhaps  for  the  formal  entry 
of  the  Japanese  army  into  Pekin  (if 
it  were  riot  taken  already),  and  for 
the  temporary  occupation  of  cer- 
tain districts  until  the  conditions 


of  peace  were  carried  into  execu- 
tion. So  far  the  conditions  would 
be  so  moderate,  and  would  follow 
so  closely  the  habitual  practices 
of  Europe,  that  no  foreign  Power 
could  find  in  them  any  plea  for 
intervention.  But  let  us  imagine, 
as  a  mere  hypothesis,  that  Japan 
asked  for  territory  as  well.  What 
then  ?  The  newspapers  have  been 
suggesting  that  there  would  be  no 
objection  to  her  annexing  Formosa, 
but  that  there  would  be  resistance 
if  she  attempted  to  acquire  any 
continental  territory,  either  in 
Korea  or  elsewhere.  So,  if  the 
papers  which  have  treated  the 
question  have  judged  correctly, 
the  prospect  of  intervention  at  the 
conclusion  of  peace  may  be  con- 
sidered to  be  limited,  practically, 
to  the  dispositions  which  Japan 
might  manifest  as  regards  annexa- 
tions on  the  mainland. 

Now  it  may  be  that  Japan 
would  not  have  the  slightest  de- 
sire for  any  such  annexations, — 
no  one  knows,  or  can  know,  one 
word  about  it;  but,  as  the  ques- 
tion has  been  publicly  raised,  it 
is  as  well  to  ask  what  right  others 
would  have  to  deny  to  her  the 
prerogatives  of  extension  which 
they  themselves  are  applying  all 
over  the  earth  ?  As  all  the  great 
European  Powers  are  seizing  out- 
lying land,  however  distant  from 
them,  wherever  they  can  lay  their 
hands  on  it,  with  what  reason  could 
they  tell  Japan  that  they  would  not 
allow  her  to  incorporate  into  her 
empire  any  portions  of  the  prov- 
inces of  a  vanquished  enemy,  even 
if  they  lay  at  her  very  doors'? 
The  answer  is,  of  course,  the  right 
of  the  strongest.  Which  means 
that  if  intervention  by  words  did 
not  suffice  to  dissuade  Japan  from 
taking  Asiatic  territory — on  the 
hypothesis  that  she  may  desire  to 
do  so,  which  has  been  laid  before 
the  world,  but  about  which  no- 


886 


The  Position  of  Japan. 


[Dec. 


body  knows  anything  whatever — 
intervention  by  force  would  be 
employed  to  prevent  it. 

But  who  would  employ  force  ? 
Not  Germany ;  not  France :  nei- 
ther of  them  would  feel  any  in- 
terest in  the  affair.  Not  England 
(unless,  indeed,  Kussia  intervened 
in  a  manner  which  would  oblige 
England  to  act  for  herself),  for 
it  would  matter  nothing  to  her, 
provided  the  Chinese  markets  for 
her  goods  were  in  no  way 
affected,  if  Japan  obtained  a 
settlement  on  the  mainland. 
Russia,  however,  is  in  a  different 
position,  and  it  is  to  Russia  that 
the  newspapers  point  when  they 
talk  of  resistance.  Just  as  the 
objects  of  England  are  exclusively 
commercial,  and  in  no  way  politi- 
cal, so  are  the  objects  of  Russia 
exclusively  political,  and  in  no 
way  commercial.  Just  as  England 
wants  no  territory  at  all  in  Eastern 
Asia,  so  does  Russia  long  for  every 
yard  of  it  she  can  acquire.  Russia 
cannot  allow  Japan  —  the  news- 
papers have  been  insisting  on 
this  —  to  settle  herself  either  in 
Korea  or  in  Northern  China  j  she 
can  permit  no  influence  to  be  estab- 
lished there  which  could  in  any 
way  interpose  a  barrier  to  her  own 
extension  when  the  time  conies. 
The  presence  on  the  mainland  of 
an  energetic,  well-armed  Power 
like  Japan  would  constitute  an 
obstacle ;  therefore  no  such  ob- 
stacle must  be  constituted. 

Of  course  all  this  is  mere  specu- 
lation, based  on  nothing  but  pre- 
sumption; but  in  considering  the 
possibilities  of  the  future,  where 
there  are  no  ascertained  facts  to 
guide  us,  speculation  cannot  be 
avoided.  And  in  this  case  it  is 
all  the  more  excusable  because,  if 
there  are  no  facts,  there  are,  at  all 
events,  glaring  notorieties  of  in- 
tention on  the  part  of  Russia,  and 


there  have  appeared  recently  most 
explicit  declarations  in  certain 
organs  of  the  Russian  press.  In- 
dividual opinion,  which  may  be 
right  or  may  be  wrong,  has  no 
need  to  express  itself  here :  the 
fixed  impression  of  the  greater 
part  of  Europe  is  before  us,  and 
that  impression  is  that  Russia  is 
waiting  for  Manchuria,  and  will 
take  it,  with  Korea  and  the  north- 
ern provinces  of  China  as  well,  if 
anyhow  she  can  get  them.  The 
majority  of  people  are  convinced 
— and  no-  protestations  of  injured 
innocence  from  Russia  will  uncon- 
vince  them — that  Russia  means  to 
do  all  this,  just  as  she  has  pursued 
for  fifty  years  the  absorption  of 
all  Central  Asia.  But,  at  the 
same  time,  everybody  is  ready  to 
suppose  that  she  will  wait  patiently 
until  the  fruit  is  ripe  enough  to 
pluck.  There  is  a  "  sick  man  "  at 
Pekin  as  well  as  at  Constantinople. 
This  being  the  general  condition 
of  European  public  feeling  in  the 
matter,  it  is  probable  that  there 
would  be  difficulties  for  Japan  if, 
when  discussing  hereafter  the  terms 
of  peace  with  China,  she  should 
raise  any  claim  for  continental 
territory,  even  in  Korea.  Up  to 
that  point,  however  —  and  that 
point  may  never  be  reached — 
there  is  no  sufficient  reason,  as 
things  stand  to-day,  for  apprehend- 
ing any  interference  on  the  part  of 
European  States. 

Supposing,  therefore — and  some- 
thing must  be  supposed,  because 
otherwise  nothing  could  be  said — 
that  Japan  does  finally  come  out 
the  victor,  she  will  be  left,  in  all 
probability,  to  make  her  own  terms 
of  peace,  provided  she  asks  for 
nothing  on  the  continent. 

The  third  matter  for  considera- 
tion is  the  effect  of  the  war  on 
the  future  position  of  Japan  to- 


1894.] 


The  Position  of  Japan. 


887 


wards    other   countries,   especially 
towards  China. 

It  is  impossible  to  doubt  that, 
whatever  be  the  fashion  in  which 
the  war  may  finish,  its  foremost 
and  most  permanent  effect  will  be 
to  raise  Japan  to  a  very  different 
standing  from  that  she  has  oc- 
cupied hitherto  in  the  world. 
She  has  supplied  such  unexpected 
proofs  of  her  capacity  that  opinion 
about  her  is  rising  high.  Every- 
body recognises  that,  suddenly,  a 
new  force  has  come  into  existence 
in  the  East.  The  campaign  on  sea 
and  on  land  has  shown  that  Japan 
possesses  a  practical  adaptability, 
a  faculty  of  applying  teaching,  a 
spirit  of  order,  of  elaboration,  of 
organisation,  which  put  her  en- 
tirely apart  in  Asia,  and  lift  her 
to  a  level  with  Europe. 

In  the  present  day  the  value  of 
nations  is  counted  mainly  by  their 
fitness  for  fighting,  and  it  cannot 
be  denied  that  from  that  point  of 
view  Japan  has  shown  herself  to 
possess  much  value.  Either  as  an 
enemy  or  as  an  ally  she  is  now 
well  worth  the  consideration  of 
other  nations.  But  it  happens 
that  her  progress  has  not  been 
towards  the  power  of  war  alone : 
it  has  stretched  out  simultaneously 
in  almost  every  other  direction. 
Here  are  half-a-dozen  facts  as  ex- 
amples of  what  she  has  been  doing. 
Her  population  has  augmented 
from  33  millions  in  1872,  to  41 
millions  in  1892.  Her  foreign 
trade,  the  tonnage  of  her  mer- 
chant shipping,  and  the  move- 
ment of  vessels  in  her  ports,  have 
all  doubled  in  the  last  ten  years. 
Manufactures  of  varied  natures 
have  been  established  and  are 
prospering  actively — some  of  them, 
indeed,  brilliantly.  The  national 
wealth  is  increasing  rapidly,  one 
proof  whereof  is  that  the  whole  of 
the  war  loans  issued  hitherto  have 

VOL.  CLVI — NO.  DCCCCL. 


been  subscribed  inside  the  land. 
And  —  more  important  and  more 
striking  than  all  the  rest — educa- 
tion is  compulsory,  and  the  schools 
of  Japan  are  almost  as  numerous 
as  those  of  Great  Britain,  while 
the  level  of  teaching  in  them  is 
quite  as  high.  There  are  26,000 
primary  schools  in  Japan,  and,  ac- 
cording to  the  last  Statistical  Ab- 
stract, there  are  31,000  inspected 
schools  in  the  United  Kingdom 
and  Ireland. 

This  universality  of  advance  is 
an  argument  in  itself.  Hitherto 
it  has  been  ignored,  and  the 
oppressive  treaties  which  Japan 
signed  forty  years  ago,  in  utter 
ignorance  of  their  real  meaning, 
have  been  maintained  against  her, 
as  if  she  were  still  in  her  former 
condition.  But  they  can  be  kept 
up  no  longer ;  this  war  has  killed 
them.  England,  to  her  credit,  has 
been  the  first  to  change  them, 
without  waiting  for  the  evidence 
of  the  war;  other  Powers  will  be 
obliged  to  follow  her  example. 
When  it  is  remembered  that  the 
total  number  of  foreign  residents 
in  Japan,  men,  women,  and  chil- 
dren, of  all  ranks  and  nationalities 
(for  whose  benefit  these  treaties 
have  been  kept  up),  is,  excluding 
Chinese,  only  4200,  it  becomes  diffi- 
cult to  believe  that,  in  the  interest 
of  that  little  group,  nearly  all  the 
nations  have  joined  together  to 
grind  down  such  a  country  as 
Japan. 

But  this  cannot  last.  The  world 
is  perceiving,  with  astonishment, 
that  a  real  Power  is  arising  in  the 
East,  and  is  beginning  to  claim 
its  place  in  the  sunlight  —  the 
sunlight,  be  it  remembered,  of 
which  it  is  called  the  birth-land. 
It  will  be  useless,  as  things  are 
marching,  to  continue  to  deny 
that  place  to  Japan ;  it  will  be  un- 
generous to  postpone  the  frank 

3M 


888 


The  Position  of  Japan. 


[Dec. 


recognition  of  it.  England  has 
been  the  first  to  alter  the  treaties 
with  Japan ;  may  she  also  be  the 
first  to  hold  out  a  hand  of  confi- 
dence and  esteem  to  her. 

Towards  China  the  position  to 
be  taken  up  by  Japan  after  the 
war  would,  apparently,  be  some- 
thing of  this  sort.  If  Japan 
should  win  finally — and  it  is  be- 
coming every  day  more  difficult  to 
fancy  that  she  can  fail  to  win — 
she  would  become  the  political 
leader  of  the  Far  East,  and  China 
would  be  placed  in  the  second  rank. 
But  it  appears  to  be  very  probable 
that,  however  resolutely  Japan 
might  claim  and  occupy  the  front 
place,  it  would  be  her  interest  to 
establish  (if  possible)  thoroughly 
friendly  and  co-operative  relations 
with  China.  If  the  future  inter- 
national policy  of  Japan  be  based, 
as  it  is  reasonable  to  imagine  it 
will  be,  on  the  ambition  that 
Eastern  Asia  shall  count  hence- 
forth as  a  new  living  force  in  the 
world,  and  that  she  herself  shall 
be  the  guiding  spirit  of  that  force, 
an  alliance  for  mutual  advantage 
and  concert  between  herself  and 
China  will  almost  of  necessity 
appear  to  her  to  be  a  desirable 
condition  thereof.  The  two  would 
gain  by  working  heartily  together 
towards  others.  Of  the  dispositions 
of  Japan  in  that  direction  it  is  diffi- 
cult to  doubt ;  the  line  of  conduct 
that  would  suit  her  seems  self- 
evident.  But  would  China  accept 
friendly  relations  with  her  1  And 
if  she  did  appear  to  accept  them, 
would  she  do  so  frankly,  honestly, 
cordially,  without  those  mental 
reservations  to  which  allusion  has 
already  been  made,  and  to  which 
she  is  so  addicted  ?  Would  she — 
could  she — shake  off  her  pride,  her 
jealousy,  her  corruption,  her  stag- 


nation, in  order  to  give  practical 
effect  to  a  new  policy?  Would 
she  enter  into  a  union  with  Japan 
in  which  the  latter  would  be  the 
"  dominant  partner,"  and  would 
she  fit  herself  by  a  totally  changed 
attitude  and  system,  as  Japan  has 
done,  to  serve  the  general  cause  of 
Eastern  Asia? 

That  Japan  would  desire  all 
this  looks  clear. — so  far,  that  is, 
as  an  opinion  can  be  formed  from 
the  outside.'  It  is  in  the  nature 
of  things  that,  after  acquiring 
supremacy  over  China,  she  should 
wish  to  join  hands  with  her  for 
their  common  good.  But  what 
China  may  consent  to  do,  and 
what  —  even  if  she  consents  to 
anything — she  may  really  do,  is  a 
very  different  matter.  She  would 
have  an  opportunity,  under  totally 
new  conditions,  of  emerging  from 
her  shell,  and  of  becoming  some- 
thing in  the  outside  world ;  but 
she  could  only  attain  those  ends  by 
imitating  Japan  as  regards  work- 
ing means,  and  by  following  her 
lead  as  regards  political  action. 
Would  she — could  she — do  either  ? 
If  she  refused,  or  if  she  were  un- 
able (and  most  of  the  people  who 
know  China  declare  positively  that 
she  would  be  unable),  then  Japan 
would  have  to  continue  on  her  road 
alone,  and  to  labour  for  her  own 
hand  exclusively ;  which  would 
mean,  so  far  as  the  future  can  be 
judged  by  the  present,  the  steady 
political  rise  of  Japan,  and  the 
corresponding  political  decline  of 
China. 

For  lookers-on,  like  ourselves, 
the  situation  is  deeply  interest- 
ing. New  Powers  are  not  often 
born  into  the  world  of  our  day  : 
Prussia  was  the  last  to  bring  her- 
self forth  ;  Japan,  apparently,  will 
be  the  next. 


1894.] 


The  Coming  Struggle. 


889 


THE    COMING    STKUGGLE. 


WHATEVER  differences  of  opin- 
ion may  exist  between  Lord  Salis- 
bury and  Lord  Rosebery  on  poli- 
tics in  general,  they  at  least  agree 
on  one  point — and  that  is,  that  this 
country  is  on  the  verge  of  a  social 
and  political  struggle  only  to  be 
compared  in  importance  to  the  great 
conflict  which  convulsed  England  in 
the  seventeenth  century.  We  say 
"  on  the  verge  of,"  because  it  may 
yet  be  averted,  or  at  all  events  in- 
definitely postponed.  But  that 
both  these  statesmen  regard  it  as  a 
contingency  which  has  to  be  reck- 
oned with  in  our  forecast  of  the 
immediate  future  we  know  from 
their  own  lips.  They  regard  it 
from  very  different  points  of  view. 
The  one  sees,  or  professes  to  see  in 
it,  only  an  inevitable  and  not 
wholly  unwelcome  stage  in  the  pro- 
gress of  our  political  development, 
accelerated,  perhaps  exasperated, 
by  the  action  of  one  branch  of  the 
Legislature,  but  certain  to  have 
come  in  one  shape  or  another  be- 
fore the  world  was  much  older. 
The  other  sees  in  it  only  that  col- 
lision between  the  spirit  of  anarchy 
and  the  spirit  of  constitutional 
government,  which  sometimes  ends 
in  the  destruction  of  both :  between 
that  respect  for  law,  liberty,  and 
authority  characteristic  of  a  peo- 
ple's manhood,  and  that  impa- 
tience of  all  subordination,  of  all 
prescriptions,  of  all  individual  free- 
dom, which  marks  the  first  queru- 
lous stage  in  its  decline,  and  indi- 
cates the  approach  of  that  period 
of  weakness  when  nations,  no 
longer  strong  enough  to  bear  the 
burden  of  self-government,  take 
refuge  in  despotism. 

The  autumn  of  1894  will  be  re- 
markable hereafter  for  many  events 
of  great  importance.  But  in  our 


own  domestic  history  nothing  can 
equal  in  significance  the  three 
signs  of  the  times  which  have 
appeared  in  the  political  firma- 
ment during  the  last  three  months. 
In  the  first  place  we  have  heard  the 
Prime  Minister  of  England,  serving 
one  of  the  most  truly  constitutional 
sovereigns  who  have  ever  sat  upon 
the  throne,  taking  upon  himself  to 
declare,  without  either  royal  assent 
or  national  demand,  that  an  integral 
part  of  the  constitution — a  second 
chamber,  that  is,  with  substantial 
suspensory  powers — must  cease  to 
exist.  In  the  second  place,  we 
have  a  distinguished  statesman, 
remarkable  rather  for  a  tone  of 
sarcastic  cynicism  than  for  one  of 
sensational  declamation, — a  states- 
man who  shrinks  with  even  more 
than  the  usual  fastidiousness  of  an 
English  gentleman  from  anything 
approaching  ever  so  distantly  to 
the  bombastic  or  the  turgid, — we 
find,  we  say,  Lord  Salisbury,  only 
on  the  30th  of  last  October,  mak- 
ing use  of  language  in  all  serious 
and  sober  earnest  which,  twenty 
years  ago,  he  would  have  uttered 
only  in  jest  or  in  irony.  In  his 
address  to  the  National  Union  of 
Conservative  Associations  in  Edin- 
burgh, Lord  Salisbury,  referring 
to  the  difference  in  numbers  be- 
tween the  Conservative  party  in 
the  House  of  Lords  now  and  at 
previous  periods  of  comparative!^ 
recent  date,  made  use  of  these 
words  : — 

"  The  truth  is  that  the  movement 
in  the  House  of  Lords  indicates  an 
enormous  change  of  opinion  over  a 
vast  section  of  English  society.  Vast 
numbers  of  men  who  formerly  gave 
in  to,  I  will  not  call  it  the  optimism, 
but  the  generous  hopes  of  those 
who  led  them,  have  come  to  conclude 


890 


The  Coming  Struggle. 


[Dec. 


that  the  dangers  which  are  before 
them  are  too  formidable  to  allow 
those  hopes  any  longer  to  guide  them, 
and  that  they  must  close  up  their 
ranks  in  order  to  save  society." 

To  save  society :  yes,  it  has 
come  to  that  now.  We  are  all 
familiar  with  the  phrase.  It  has 
often  been  laughed  at  by  those 
who  had  never  felt  'the  danger 
which  it  indicated.  He  jests  at 
scars  who  never  felt  a  wound. 
But  it  is  our  turn  now.  There 
can  be  no  doubt  whatever  of  the 
direction  in  which  the  party  of 
anarchy  is  moving.  And  Lord 
Salisbury  only  echoes  the  words 
of  Lord  Rosebery  himself  when 
he  says  that  "  the  struggle  will  be 
desperate." 

The  same  conviction  was  ex- 
pressed by  as  hard-headed  a  man 
as  lives,  Mr  Leonard  Courtenay, 
on  the  24th  of  last  September ; 
and  these  sentiments  falling  from 
the  lips  of  such  men  as  these 
throw  a  strong  light  on  what  we 
shall  call  the  third  sign  of  the 
times — namely,  the  declaration  of 
Mr  Chamberlain  on  the  6th  of 
last  September,  that  no  fusion 
between  the  Liberal  Unionists  and 
the  Radicals  was  any  longer  pos- 
sible. Mr  Chamberlain  was  here 
expressing  the  feelings  of  that 
large  class  referred  to  by  Lord 
Salisbury,  who,  having  once  been 
Liberals,  were  now  driven  to  a 
union  with  the  Conservatives  in 
order  "  to  save  society."  More 
than  that,  Mr  Chamberlain  volun- 
teered an  exhortation  which  re- 
veals the  depth  of  the  gulf  al- 
ready yawning  between  himself 
and  the  Radicals  —  a  gulf  which 
neither  can  ever  cross  without 
such  a  recantation  as  neither 
would  submit  to  make.  Mr 
Chamberlain  said : — 

"  And  if  you  desire  to  preserve  your 
great  inheritance,  I  ask  you  whether 
you  will  not  do  better  to  rely  on  those 


who  are  honest  and  inspired  by  old 
traditions,  and  who  are  determined  to 
maintain  the  honour  and  the  interests 
of  this  country,  rather  than  upon 
those  who  have  shown  themselves 
indifferent  to  the  principles  upon 
which  the  fabric  of  our  greatness 
has  been  built  up,  and  who  have 
shown  themselves  willing  to  truckle 
to  enemies  without  and  to  traitors 
within." 

This  is  surely  the  language  of 
a  man  who  has  moved,  as  Lord 
Salisbury  describes  the  House  of 
Lords  to  have  moved,  as  the  late 
Poet  Laureate  had  moved,  as  our 
last  great  historian,  Mr  Froude, 
had  moved, — men  who  see  that 
some  things  which  they  despised 
in  their  youth  they  were  wrong 
in  despising,  and  some  things  which 
they  disbelieved  in  their  youth  they 
were  wrong  in  disbelieving. 

Surely  we  are  not  mistaken  in 
saying  that  the  utterances  of  these 
three  statesmen,  Lord  Rosebery, 
Lord  Salisbury,  and  Mr  Chamber- 
lain, are  signs  of  the  times  to 
which  no  man  can  well  shut  his 
eyes ;  and  more  especially,  per- 
haps, the  announcement  of  Mr 
Chamberlain  that  the  separation 
between  the  Radicals  and  the 
Liberal  Unionists  is  complete  and 
final ;  since  it  marks  a  turning- 
point  in  the  history  of  English 
parties,  and  a  recombination  of 
forces  to  which  we  have  had  no 
parallel  since  1835. 

It  is  a  movement  which,  as  Lord 
Salisbury  says,  has  been  going  on 
all  through  the  country.  Why 
does  not  Lord  Rosebery  look  at 
the  House  of  Commons  as  well  as 
at  the  House  of  Lords  ?  He  would 
see  exactly  the  same  process  in 
operation.  Why  was  the  British 
majority  in  1880  and  in  1885  Lib- 
eral, and  why  in  1886  and  in  1892 
was  it  Conservative  *?  Why  is  this? 
Mr  Chamberlain,  Mr  Goschen,  Sir 
Henry  James,  and  others,  have 
only  been  doing  in  the  Lower 


1894.] 


The  Coming  Struggle. 


891 


House  what  the  Peers  complained 
of  by  Lord  Rosebery  have  been 
doing  in  the  Upper.  The  move- 
ment is  not  confined  to  the  House 
of  Lords.  It  is  the  awakening  of 
the  people  of  Great  Britain.  Mr 
Chamberlain  sees  that  all  which  he 
desires  to  accomplish  can  be  done 
now  without  setting  class  against 
class,  and  without  injury  to  any 
of  the  great  interests  of  which 
society  is  composed.  These  were 
his  words  at  Liverpool,  and  what 
more  can  any  Conservative  require? 
They  embody  the  great  maxim, 
sic  utere  tuo  ut  alieno  non  Icedas. 
Lord  Rosebery  and  the  Radicals 
cannot  be  allowed  to  take  advan- 
tage of  their  own  wrong ;  and  after, 
by  their  own  infatuated  and  un- 
principled policy,  filling  the  House 
of  Lords  with  Conservatives,  cry 
out,  forsooth,  that  the  balance  of 
the  Constitution  is  destroyed.  But 
if  the  Radicals  are  wolves  the 
Lords  are  not  lambs,  and  we  have 
no  fear  of  the  fable  being  illus- 
trated in  their  persons.  The  trick 
has  been  exposed  now  in  the  sight 
of  the  whole  world.  We  all  know 
what  the  Government  mean  by 
huddling  through  the  Commons  a 
number  of  hasty  and  ill-constructed 
measures,  which,  if  they  became 
law  to-day,  would  have  to  be  re- 
pealed to-morrow,  and  then  throw- 
ing the  unavoidable  burden  of  re- 
jecting them  on  the  House  of 
Lords ! 

The  House  of  Lords  has,  of 
course,  been  the  prominent  topic 
in  the  very  interesting  and  very 
able  political  discussion  which  has 
been  carried  on  during  the  last 
three  months.  But  before  ap- 
proaching this  central  question,  we 
must  glance  at  the  legislative 
programme  which  Mr  Chamber- 
lain has  more  than  once  sub- 
mitted to  the  public,  and  more 
particularly  on  the  llth  of  last 
October  in  his  address  to  his 


constituents  at  Birmingham.  He 
describes  the  new  system  of  log- 
rolling and  government  by  groups 
in  language  nearly  identical  with 
that  which  we  have  used  ourselves 
on  many  previous  occasions  since 
the  present  Ministry  have  been  in 
office  ;  and  he  then  asks,  "  What  is 
the  alternative  way  1  What  is  the 
ancient  way  ? " 

"  It  is,"  he  says,  "  to  survey  the 
whole  field,  to  choose  those  points 
which  are  the  most  ripe  for  practical 
legislation,  those  which  command  the 
largest  amount  of  general  support  ; 
then  to  submit  them  to  the  electors 
of  the  country  for  full  discussion,  for 
criticism,  to  accept  any  amendments, 
to  make  any  concessions  which  are 
demanded  by  reasonable  opponents, 
bearing  in  mind  that  half  a  loaf  is 
better  than  no  bread,  and  that 
gradual  reform  is  more  permanent 
and  more  certain  than  violent  changes, 
which  may  provoke  a  great  reaction." 

There  is  nothing  new  in  this  last 
warning,  "of  course.  We  have  fre- 
quently repeated  it.  But  its 
utterance  by  Mr  Chamberlain 
gives  it  fresh  point  and  pertin- 
ence, and  it  is  one  that  cannot 
too  often  be  enforced. 

It  is  by  observing  this  principle 
that  the  late  Conservative  Govern- 
ment was  able  to  do  so  much, 
and  by  the  neglect  of  it  that  the 
present  revolutionary  Government 
have  been  able  to  do  so  little. 
Nor  does  the  remark  apply  only 
to  Lord  Salisbury's  Administra- 
tion. It  was  equally  true  of 
Lord  Beaconsfield's.  And  it  was 
not  till  after  the  first  Mid-Lothian 
campaign  and  the  general  elec- 
tion of  1880  that  those  bloated 
and  unwieldy  programmes  came 
into  fashion  with  the  Liberals, 
and  were  found  so  imposing  in 
appearance  that  they  are  still  per- 
severed with,  though  found  to  be 
perfectly  unmanageable  and  to  end 
in  nothing.  All  those  measures 


892 


The  Coining  Struggle. 


[Dec. 


for  the  benefit  of  the  working 
classes  to  which  Mr  Chamberlain 
refers  at  the  close  of  his  Birming- 
ham speech  were  passed  either 
between  1874  and  1880,  or  be- 
tween 1886  and  1892. 

The  further  measures  which  he 
now  suggests  relate  to  the  temper- 
ance question,  to  old  age  pensions, 
the  housing  of  the  poor,  alien  immi- 
gration, employers'  liability,  trades 
unions,  and  limitation  of  the  hours 
of  labour.  These  are  the  seven 
points  of  the  new  charter,  many 
of  which  are  included  in  the  pro- 
gramme of  the  London  Municipal 
Society,  which  held  its  first  meet- 
ing last  June.  The  most  impor- 
tant of  those  not  mentioned  by 
Mr  Chamberlain  is  the  decentral- 
isation of  municipal  government, 
now  formally  adopted  by  Lord 
Salisbury  —  and,  now  that  the 
London  County  Council  has 
made  itself  so  thoroughly  odious, 
likely  to  be  generally  welcomed. 
These  two  "  Proposals,"  *taken  to- 
gether, exhibit  to  us  the  positive 
side  of  the  Conservative  policy, 
against  which  it  is  to  be  regretted 
that  any  members  of  the  party 
should  be  so  ill  advised  as  to  run 
atilt,  seeing  that  no  political 
party  can  live  on  negations ;  and 
that  the  time  has  long  gone  by 
when  a  purely  defensive  party, 
concerning  itself  only  with  the 
maintenance  of  existing  institu- 
tions, and  preaching  obedience  to 
principles  which,  however  true  in 
the  abstract,  the  depositories  of 
political  power  in  this  country  will 
no  longer  accept,  could  hope  to 
maintain  itself  in  power.  It  must 
speedily  sink  into  decrepitude,  and 
lose  all  that  capacity  for  control- 
ling, modifying,  or  retarding  the 
march  of  revolution  which  it  still 
retains,  and  which  is  the  final  cause 
of  its  existence. 

We  do  not  mean  to  say  that 
every  item  either  in  the  Birming- 


ham or  in  the  London  programme 
is  equally  deserving  of  support. 
What  we  call  on  all  Conservatives 
to  accept  is  this  joint  exhortation  to 
resume  the  work  of  social  legisla- 
tion where  it  was  dropped  in  1892, 
and  to  show  the  world  the  differ- 
ence between  practical  statesmen 
who  go  to  work  in  a  business- 
like manner,  with  due  regard  to 
British  interests,  and  those  who 
have  neither  practice  nor  theory 
to  recommend  them,  whose  policy 
is  the  clamour  of  the  strongest 
group,  whose  performances  consist 
in  marching  up  a  hill  and  march- 
ing down  again,  and  whose  princi- 
ples are  to  be  found  at  the  bottom 
of  Mr  Sexton's  pocket. 

Referring  to  the  sneers  which 
have  been  levelled  at  him  by 
Gladstonians  since  he  left  their 
ranks,  and  to  the  prophecy  that 
though  the  Conservatives  might 
use  him  they  would  never  respect 
him,  Mr  Chamberlain  says  : — 

"  I  can  say  here  what  I  have  said 
before,  that  from  the  first  day  in 
1886  when  I  took  what  was,  to  me  at 
any  rate,  a  momentous  decision,  and 
determined  to  come  out  from  the 
Government,  and  to  vote  against  the 
Home  Kule  Bill,  with  all  the  con- 
sequences that  I  knew  it  would  en- 
tail, I  have  been  treated  with  the 
greatest  consideration,  with  the  great- 
est kindness,  with  the  greatest  good 
feeling,  by  every  member  of  the  Con- 
servative party  with  whom  I  have 
been  brought  in  contact,  and  by  none 
more  signally  than  by  my  friend  Mr 
Balf  our,  the  leader  of  the  Opposition." 

The  real  explanation  of  Mr 
Chamberlain's  alliance  with  the 
Conservatives,  not  only  for  the 
prevention  of  Home  Rule,  but 
also  for  the  promotion  of  bene- 
ficial popular  legislation,  can  only 
be  the  one  which  he  assigns  him- 
self, in  the  extract  we  have  al- 
ready given  on  the  previous  page. 
Had  Mr  Chamberlain  looked  only 
to  his  own  personal  advancement, 


1894.] 


The  Coming  Struggle, 


893 


the  leadership  of  the  Radical  party, 
with  the  Treasury  in  no  distant 
perspective,  was  at  his  feet.  The 
party  could  have  refused  him  noth- 
ing. And  whatever  he  wanted,  he 
would  have  got  directly.  On  the 
other  hand,  in  joining  the  Con- 
servatives he  allied  himself  with 
a  party  which  numbers  in  the 
House  of  Lords  statesmen  of  com- 
manding abilities  and  great  experi- 
ence, who  must,  for  some  years  to 
come,  exercise  a  decisive  influence 
in  the  counsels  of  the  Unionist 
party,  and  whose  young  and  bril- 
liant leader  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons he  could  neither  hope  nor 
desire  to  supersede.  No :  the 
relinquishment  of  his  prospects 
as  the  leader  of  the  Radicals  is 
another  of  the  "sacrifices"  which 
he  has  made  to  his  conscientious 
convictions  :  and  these  convictions 
are,  that  those  whom  he  once 
thought  the  friends  of  progress 
have  now  become  its  greatest 
enemies  ;  that  he  and  his  follow- 
ers must  combine  with  the  de- 
fenders of  that  splendid  empire 
which  is  so  necessary  to  our  ma- 
terial prosperity ;  and  that  all  alike 
must  now  close  up  their  ranks  in 
order  to  save  society. 

The  leaders  of  the  Conservative 
party  have  always  maintained  that 
they  had  as  much  right  to  call 
themselves  Liberal  as  any  body  else; 
and  that  right  is  now  acknow- 
ledged by  one  whose  testimony  is 
unimpeachable.  To  the  impres- 
sion thus  made  on  such  a  mind  as 
Mr  Chamberlain's  by  the  course  of 
public  events  during  the  last  ten 
years  Conservatives  may  point  with 
justifiable  pride  and  satisfaction  in 
vindication  of  the  general  views 
which  through  evil  report  and 
good  report  they  have  kept  be- 
fore the  country  for  more  than  a 
quarter  of  a  century. 

To  turn  now  to  the  great  ques- 
tion of  the  day,  we  see  from  Mr 


Chamberlain's  programme  that  he 
is  as  anxious  to  preserve  the  rights 
of  labour,  the  rights  of  property, 
individual  freedom  and  imperial 
security,  as  Lord  Salisbury  him- 
self. What,  then,  stands  between 
these  great  interests  and  those  who 
are  bent  on  their  destruction — for 
Mr  Chamberlain  makes  no  bones 
of  so  describing  his  Radical  neigh- 
bours in  the  House  1  The  House 
of  Lords  alone.  Practically,  the 
House  of  Lords  is  the  one  insti- 
tution to  which  the  constitutional 
party  has  now  to  look  for  pro- 
tection against  the  sudden  and 
violent  action  of  a  chance  major- 
ity in  the  Commons  which  might 
overthrow  in  a  moment  what 
could  never  be  restored  in  a  cen- 
tury, however  the  nation  might 
regret  it.  We  wonder  that,  while 
on  this  subject,  no  one  has  ever 
quoted  the  wise  words  of  Lord 
Beaconsfield :  "  England  cannot 
begin  again."  It  is  the  argument 
against  revolutionary  change  in 
this  country  which  underlies  every 
other.  The  passage  is  in  itself  so 
remarkable,  and  has  so  close  a 
bearing  on  the  existing  political 
situation,  that  we  could  wish  to 
quote  it  entire.  But  we  can  only 
give  a  short  extract.  In  what 
follows,  we  must  take  the  word 
democracy  to  mean  a  pure  democ- 
racy,— not  merely  a  constitutional 
system  containing  a  large  demo- 
cratic element,  but  one  in  which 
this  element  is  supreme  without 
any  more  check  on  its  most 
sudden  and  violent  impulses  than 
existed  in  the  Athenian  consti- 
tution at  the  time  of  the  Mity- 
lenean  decree. 

"  I  very  much  doubt,"  said  Lord 
Beaconsfield,  "  whether  a  democ- 
racy is  a  government  which  is 
suited  to  this  country;  and  it  is 
just  as  well  that  the  House,  when 
coming  to  a  vote  on  this  question, 
should  recollect  that  the  stake  is 


894 


The  Coming  Struggle. 


[Dec. 


not  mean — that  what  is  at  issue 
is  of  some  price."  Compare  Mr 
Chamberlain's  "You  are  citizens 
of  no  mean  country."  France 
and  the  United  States,  with  their 
wide  extent  of  fertile  soil  and 
comparatively  limited  population, 
might  begin  again,  after  the  most 
violent  and  deep-cutting  revolu- 
tions or  civil  wars. 

"But  England  — the  England  we 
know,  the  England  we  live  in,  the 
England  of  which  we  are  proud — could 
not  begin  again.  I  do  not  mean  to 
say  that  after  great  troubles  England 
would  become  a  howling  wilderness, 
or  doubt  that  the  good  sense  of  the 
people  would  to  some  extent  prevail, 
and  some  fragments  of  the  national 
character  survive  :  but  it  would  not  be 
old  England,  the  England  of  power  and 
tradition,  of  credit  and  capital,  that 
now  exists  :  it  is  not  in  the  nature  of 
things." 

It  is  to  prevent  the  destruction 
of  the  only  institution  which 
stands  between  ourselves  and  the 
catastrophe  thus  eloquently  de- 
scribed that  Conservatives  and 
Liberal  Unionists  are  prepared  to 
stand  shoulder  to  shoulder;  and 
we  should  be  much  inclined  to 
think  that  Lord  Rosebery  himself 
understands  well  enough  that,  if 
left  to  the  mercy  of  a  purely 
democratic  House  of  Commons, 
the  British  Empire  of  which  he  is 
so  proud  would  not  be  long  in 
falling  to  pieces.  It  may  be  this 
suspicion  which  took  all  the  "  go  " 
out  of  his  speech  at  Bradford, 
and  reduced  him  to  the  necessity 
of  sketching  out  a  method  of  pro- 
cedure which  made  him  the  laugh- 
ing-stock of  friend  and  foe. 

The  irregular  debate  on  this 
great  question  which  has  been  pro- 
ceeding, with  a  very  short  interval, 
since  Parliament  was  prorogued, 
could  not  be  examined  in  detail  in 
less  than  treble  the  number  of 
pages  which  we  are  in  a  position 


to  devote  to  it.  Fortunately,  the 
pith  and  marrow  of  it  lie  within 
a  very  narrow  compass,  and  the 
salient  points  on  which  it  is  neces- 
sary to  fix  public  attention  are 
few  in  number,  and  admit  of  easy 
exposition.  The  first  question  is 
whether  in  the  exercise  of  its  veto 
the  House  of  Lords  is  really  defeat- 
ing the  true  ends  of  popular  gov- 
ernment. The  second  is  whether 
the  postponement  of  popular  legis- 
lation is  not  often  for  its  ultimate 
benefit ;  and  whether  the  proverb 
"  the  more  haste  the  less  speed  "  is 
not  as  applicable  to  politics  as  to 
anything  else.  Now  if  it  is  found 
at  any  general  election  that  the 
majority  of  the  House  of  Commons, 
after  three  or  four  years  of  power, 
no  longer  reflects  the  national  con- 
victions, the  House  of  Lords  in 
overruling  that  majority  cannot 
possibly  be  charged  with  having 
thwarted  those  convictions.  If, 
on  the  other  hand,  it  appears  that 
the  Commons  and  the  people  are 
still  of  one  opinion,  the  House 
of  Lords,  by  gaining  time  for  us  to 
ascertain  this  fact,  secures  for  the 
particular  measure  under  consider- 
ation a  degree  of  authority  and  a 
prospect  of  finality  which  it  might 
not  otherwise  have  commanded. 
This  is  exactly  what  Lord  Rose- 
bery  and  the  speakers  on  the  same 
side  either  can't  or  won't  see. 
The  veto  of  the  House  of  Lords 
may  happen  at  any  given  moment 
to  represent  only  what  would  be 
the  veto  of  the  people,  if  Parlia- 
ment were  dissolved  at  once ;  and 
when  it  does  not  represent  this,  it 
only  defers  the  execution  of  the 
popular  will  to  make  its  effect  more 
lasting  and  conclusive  :  an  advant- 
age very  cheaply  purchased  by  the 
delay  of  a  year  or  two  in  the  com- 
pletion of  any  great  change,  be  it 
religious,  social,  or  constitutional. 
In  1825  the  House  of  Commons 
passed  the  Bill  for  Roman  Catholic 


1894.] 


The  Coming  Struggle. 


895 


Emancipation  by  a  majority  of 
twenty-one.  The  House  of  Lords 
threw  it  out  by  a  majority  of  forty- 
eight.  In  1826  there  was  a  gen- 
eral election,  and  the  new  House 
of  Commons  reversed  the  decision 
of  the  old  one,  and  rejected  the 
same  Bill  by  a  majority  of  four. 
The  same  thing  happened  in  the 
case  of  Church  Rates.  Bills  for 
the  abolition  of  Church  Rates  had 
been  carried  through  the  House  of 
Commons  more  than  once  in  pre- 
vious Parliaments.  In  the  Parlia- 
ment of  1859  the  same  measure 
was  rejected.  It  is  true,  of  course, 
that  both  measures  ultimately 
became  law.  But  the  history  of 
them  shows  that  it  is  quite  possible 
for  the  House  of  Commons  to  pass 
measures  for  which  public  opinion 
is  not  yet  ripe,  and  which  do  not 
therefore  represent  the  will  of  the 
people.  To  come  nearer  to  our 
own  time,  the  House  of  Lords, 
when  by  standing  out  for  freedom 
of  contract  they  caused  the  hasty 
withdrawal  of  the  Employers  Lia- 
bility Bill,  were  accused  of  course 
of  resisting  a  popular  demand. 
But  since  that  time  it  has  been 
shown  that  90  per  cent  of  the 
employees  on  the  London  and 
North -Western  Railway  are  in 
favour  of  the  clause  on  which 
the  House  of  Lords  insisted ;  and 
resolutions  have  been  passed  by 
large  numbers  of  working  men 
begging  the  House  of  Lords  to 
protect  them  from  the  tyranny 
with  which  they  were  threatened. 
The  second  proposition  is  one 
which  nobody  will  seriously  dis- 
pute. When  Sir  Robert  Peel 
announced  that  it  was  not  his 
intention,  even  if  he  had  the  power, 
to  disturb  the  settlement  of  1832,  it 
was  simply  because  the  battle  had 
been  fairly  fought  out,  and  the 
matured  judgment  of  the  nation  un- 
mistakably ascertained.  Nothing 
short  of  this  would  have  prevented 


the  Tory  party  from  reopening  the 
question.  And  substantially  the 
same  may  be  said  of  almost  every 
other  great  measure  which  has  been 
passed  in  the  present  century.  It 
has  not  always  been  the  opposition 
of  the  House  of  Lords  which  has 
secured  delay.  But  it  has  been 
secured.  In  1869  the  question  of 
the  Irish  Church  had  been  before 
the  country  for  years,  and  a 
general  election  had  taken  place 
exclusively  on  that  question.  And 
if  the  repeal  of  the  Corn  Laws  was 
effected  before  public  opinion  had 
been  consulted,  we  must  remember 
that  if  the  verdict  of  the  people 
had  been  in  favour  of  these  duties 
they  could  easily  have  been  re- 
stored. That  is  not  the  case  with 
rebuilding  a  constitution  or  re- 
establishing a  church. 

The  best  argument  in  favour 
of  the  veto  deduced  from  the 
special  conditions  of  our  own  con- 
stitution was  delivered  by  Mr 
Chamberlain  at  Leeds,  in  reply  to 
the  Leeds  Conference,  on  the  26th 
of  September.  There  are  no 
checks  or  limitations  in  England, 
as  there  are  in  the  United  States, 
on  the  omnipotence  of  Parliament. 
Take  away  the  House  of  Lords, 
and  the  House  of  Commons  for 
the  time  being  becomes  the  ab- 
solute master  of  the  empire.  By 
the  House  of  Commons  is  now 
meant  the  majority  of  the  House 
of  Commons,  if  it  is  only  a  ma- 
jority of  one ;  and  by  the  majority 
of  the  House  of  Commons  is  meant 
really  the  casting  vote  of  the  Irish 
contingent,  the  sworn  enemies  of 
Great  Britain.  This  is  what  a 
single  chamber  means  in  this 
country :  the  absolute  command 
of  all  our  resources,  of  our  whole 
empire,  of  our  religion  and  our 
liberties,  placed  in  the  hands  of 
men  "whose  character  and  pro- 
ceedings are  alien  to  the  British 
spirit,  of  men  who  are  subsidised 


896 


The  Coming  Struggle. 


[Dec. 


by  foreign  gold,  and  may  be  no- 
minated by  a  foreign  organisa- 
tion." In  other  words,  the  ab- 
solute supremacy  of  the  House  of 
Commons  means  the  absolute 
supremacy  of  the  Irish  Brigade. 
That  is  the  level  to  which  the 
abolition  or  emasculation  of  the 
House  of  Lords  would  reduce  the 
British  people.  Lord  Salisbury 
took  exactly  the  same  view,  and 
this,  with  Lord  Rosebery's  re- 
joinder, we  shall  notice  in  its 
proper  place. 

It  was  supposed  that  in  his 
speech  at  Bradford  on  the  27th 
of  October  the  Prime  Minister 
would  lead  the  field,  and  give  the 
Peers  a  foretaste  of  what  was  in 
store  for  them.  But  the  Radical 
party  who  rode  him  met  with  a 
terrible  mishap.  When  he  ap- 
proached the  big  fence  of  all,  the 
favourite  "  refused,"  and  threw  his 
jockey  over  his  head.  We  employ 
these  metaphors  in  compliment  to 
our  sporting  Premier;  but  they 
accurately  represent  the  situation. 
Lord  Rosebery  has  taken  a  lesson 
from  his  former  leader,  and  has 
dealt  with  the  House  of  Lords 
exactly  as  Mr  Gladstone  dealt 
with  Home  Rule.  All  the  time 
that  he  was  preaching  to  the 
people  in  its  favour,  he  positively 
refused  to  say  one  word  as  to  the 
nature  of  the  measure  by  which 
the  scheme  was  to  be  accomplished. 
Lord  Rosebery,  appreciating  the 
convenience  and  the  simplicity  of 
the  plan,  at  once  adopted  it,  as 
it  might  easily  have  been  foreseen 
that  he  would.  In  the  meantime 
he  amuses  his  supporters  by  drop- 
ping now  one  hint  and  now  another 
of  what  the  course  of  action  is 
to  be,  which  only  come  to  this, 
after  all,  that  a  resolution  of 
some  kind  or  another,  we  don't 
know  what,  is  to  be  submitted  to 
the  House  of  Commons,  we  don't 
know  when,  either  affirming  what 


nobody  denies,  or  denying  what 
nobody  affirms.  At  first  it  was 
surmised  that  what  the  Govern- 
ment would  ask  the  Commons  to 
declare  was,  that  their  House  was 
the  predominant  partner  in  the 
Constitution.  But  nobody,  at  all 
events  since  1832,  has  ever  con- 
tested this  position.  That  the  will 
of  the  people,  expressed  through 
the  House  of  Commons,  must, 
when  clearly  ascertained,  prevail, 
is  a  political  truism.  Where  is 
the  need  of  a  resolution  to  assert 
this  1  Lord  Rosebery  says  it  could 
never  be  rubbed  out.  Why  should 
anybody  want  to  rub  it  out?  If  you 
write  under  the  picture  of  a  horse, 
"This  is  a  horse,"  the  statement 
is  superfluous,  no  doubt,  but  who 
would  take  the  trouble  to  erase  it  ? 
Not  all  the  perfume  of  Araby 
could  get  rid  of  the  resolution,  he 
says.  If  it  is  likely  to  stink  in 
the  nostrils  of  posterity  to  that  ex- 
tent, perhaps  it  had  better  not  be 
passed.  Radicalism  smells  strong, 
we  know,  but  we  didn't  know  that 
it  smelt  so  strong  as  all  that. 

We  have  heard  a  good  deal  of 
the  Resolution  of  1678.  But  it 
only  affirmed  what  the  House  had 
the  power  of  enforcing.  It  merely 
declared  that  the  House  of  Lords 
had  no  right  either  to  initiate 
or  amend  money  bills :  and,  of 
course,  if  they  did  either,  the  Com- 
mons had  the  power  in  their  own 
hands  to  reject  either  the  bill  or 
the  amendment.  The  Resolution 
of  1678  asserts  the  right  of  veto 
in  the  Commons,  while  the  resolu- 
tion of  Lord  Rosebery  would  take 
it  away  from  the  House  of  Lords. 
Yet  the  one,  forsooth,  is  called  a 
precedent  for  the  other! 

More  recently  we  have  been 
referred  to  another  precedent, 
which  only  makes  the  position  of 
the  Government  more  absurd  than 
ever.  We  are  now  told  that  one 
of  the  resolutions  introduced  by 


1894. 


The  Coming  Struggle. 


897 


Mr  Disraeli  in  1867  is  to  serve  as 
a   model   for   this   prodigious   de- 
claration,   the    herald   of    a    new 
revolution.     As  one  of  the  bases 
of   his   coming    Reform    Bill,    Mr 
Disraeli  asked  the  House  to  recog- 
nise that  it  is   "  contrary  to   the 
constitution  of  this  realm  to  give 
to  any  one  class  or  interest  a  pre- 
dominating power  over  the  rest  of 
the  community  " ;  and  Lord  Rose- 
bery  at  Glasgow  crows  like  a  ban- 
tam over  this  immense  discovery, 
feeling   that   he   has  them,   then, 
at  last,  these  Tories  !     Here  they 
stand  convicted  out  of  their  own 
mouths,  the  villains  !     He  thanks 
them   for  these   words,   which  he 
proposes  speedily  to  make  his  own. 
He  may  if  he  pleases.    But  he  had 
really  better  think   of  something 
else  before  he  speaks  again.    Why, 
the    very   reason    given    by   Lord 
Rosebery  himself  and  many  other 
Radicals    for   meddling    with   the 
House  of  Lords  is  that  the  two 
last  Reform  Bills  have  placed  all 
political    power   in    the  hands   of 
the  working  class.     This  is  their 
constant   boast.       It   is   this    one 
class  which  now  possesses  "  a  pre- 
dominating  power   over   the   rest 
of    the    community."       The   very 
evil  which  Mr  Disraeli's  resolution 
was    intended    to    prevent,    Lord 
Rosebery's  resolution  would  only 
aggravate.     In  the  absence  of  the 
House  of  Lords,  the  working  class 
would   be   not   only   predominant 
but  absolute.      Lord  Rosebery  is 
not,  generally  speaking,  dull ;  and 
he  is,  occasionally,  witty.     But  at 
Glasgow   his   wit  was  spoiled  by 
his  temper.     Under  the  sting  of 
Lord  Salisbury's  sarcasms,  his  at- 
tempts at  repartee  became  noth- 
ing but  a  shrill  tu  quoque,  the  last 
resource  of  injured  boyhood.   Whe- 
ther Lord  Rosebery's  tongue  was  in 
his  cheek  on  the  occasion  quoted  by 
the  noble  Marquis  we  will  not  un- 
dertake to  say ;  but  where  was  it 


on  the  14th  of  November,  when 
he  made  this  astounding  reference 
to  the  resolutions  of  1867?  Did 
he  really  fail  to  see  the  extra- 
ordinary blunder  he  was  making, 
or  did  he  think  that  the  public 
would  never  find  it  out,  and  that 
the  argument,  at  all  events,  was 
good  enough  for  the  people  of 
Glasgow1?  It  comes  virtually  to 
this :  that  the  Lords  must  be 
crushed  because  the  people  are 
predominant,  and  that  the  people 
must  fight  because  the  Lords  are 
predominant !  Did  mortal  man 
ever  hear  any  great  public  ques- 
tion treated  with  such  careless 
levity  as  this? 

If  a  resolution  of  any  kind  ever 
is  passed  by  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, the  Lords  will  certainly  not 
be  deterred  by  it  from  asserting 
their  co-ordinate  jurisdiction  on 
all  constitutional  questions.  We 
have  already  noticed  Lord  Rose- 
bery's reliance  on  the  fact  that 
it  cannot  be  rubbed  out,  which 
reminds  one  more  of  old  Mr 
Weller's  style  of  reasoning  than 
of  any  other.  But  when  all  due 
weight  has  been  allowed  to  this 
important  point,  will  it  afford  the 
Government  any  leverage  in  their 
appeal  to  the  country  1  We  do 
not  believe  that  it  will  help  them 
one  atom.  The  popular  verdict 
will  be  determined  by  the  nature 
of  the  particular  question  on  which 
the  collision  has  occurred,  and  not 
on  any  abstract  principle.  If  this 
alone  were  at  stake  we  should  have 
no  doubt  whatever  of  the  result. 
Lord  Salisbury's  speech  in  reply  to 
the  Prime  Minister,  to  which  we 
have  already  referred  so  often,  de- 
livered at  Edinburgh  on  the  30th  of 
October,  began  with  the  very  per- 
tinent remark  that  the  House  of 
Lords  is  now  the  only  channel 
through  which  the  voice  of  Great 
Britain  can  be  heard,  because  in 
the  House  of  Commons  it  is  either 


898 


The  Coming  Struggle. 


[Dec. 


gagged  by  the  Government  or 
swamped  by  the  Irish:  and  he 
asks,  as  in  other  words  Mr  Cham- 
berlain asked  also,  whether  it  is 
likely  that  the  people  of  Great 
Britain  will  destroy  an  institution 
which  has  existed  for  centuries, 
and  is  even  now  the  sole  repre- 
sentative and  protector  of  their 
own  interests,  merely  to  place 
their  necks  under  the  hoof  of  the 
Home  Rulers,  and  intrust  the 
government  of  England  and  Scot- 
land to  the  inhabitants  of  the  south 
and  west  of  Ireland.  Of  course 
they  will  do  nothing  of  the  kind. 
Lord  Rosebery  challenged  this 
description  of  the  Government  ma- 
jority, asking  why  it  should  not 
be  called  a  Welsh  majority,  or  a 
Scotch  majority,  as  well  as  an 
Irish  one.  We  will  tell  him  why. 
Because  it  is  an  open  secret  that 
many  Welsh  and  Scotch  Radicals  as 
well  as  English  disliked  the  Home 
Rule  Bill  and  the  Evicted  Ten- 
ants Bill  as  much  as  the  Unionists, 
and  would  never  have  supported  it 
but  to  save  the  Government  from 
resignation.  The  Government  was 
coerced  by  the  Irish,  and  the  mem- 
bers in  question  by  the  Govern- 
ment. They  were  obliged  to  vote 
against  their  consciences  to  satisfy 
the  Irish,  in  order  to  save  the  Min- 
istry. If  this  is  not  being  under 
the  yoke  of  the  Brigade  we  know 
not  what  is. 

It  was  said  at  the  time  that 
they  would  not  have  supported 
Home  Rule  even  on  this  account, 
had  they  not  been  sure  of  its  re- 
jection by  the  House  of  Lords. 
If  that  was  so,  can  we  desire  a 
better  illustration  of  the  service 
which  the  House  of  Lords  is  cap- 
able of  rendering  to  the  House  of 
Commons  ?  The  reluctant  Radicals 
either  bowed  to  the  dictation  of 
the  Irish,  or  they  accepted  salva- 
tion from  the  Lords.  Some  con- 
sciousness of  this  truth  may  pos- 


sibly prevent  the  Ministry  from 
proceeding  very  rapidly  with  the 
House  of  Lords  question.  Lord 
Rosebery  would  prefer  a  second 
chamber  if  he  could  get  it,  but 
shrinks  from  any  attempt  to  de- 
fine its  powers.  As  for  the  veto, 
he  can  neither  do  with  it  nor  with- 
out it.  He  knows  that  without  it 
his  so-called  check  would  be  a 
farce,  and  his  senate  a  nonentity ; 
and  that  with  it  the  existence  of 
a  second  chamber  would  be  even 
more  exasperating  to  the  Radicals 
than  it  is  now,  as  clothed  with 
new  sanctions  and  having  a  fresh 
lease  of  life. 

It  seems  to  us  that  if  this  first 
step  is  really  to  be  the  inaugura- 
tion of  that  great  struggle  which 
Lord  Rosebery,  Lord  Salisbury, 
and  Mr  Balfour  seem  equally  to 
anticipate,  it  matters  very  little 
what  the  Resolution  is.  Great 
as  will  be  the  responsibility  of 
the  statesman  who  takes  the  first 
plunge,  the  manner  of  doing  it — 
the  preliminary  skirmish  —  is  of 
comparatively  small  importance. 
A  bill  would  certainly  have  to  be 
introduced  at  an  early  period  of 
the  contest,  and  then  we  should  be 
face  to  face  with  the  dilemma  in- 
dicated by  Lord  Rosebery.  Lord 
Rosebery  tells  us  that  the  Lords 
would  never  pass  a  bill  for  their 
own  degradation,  and  that  the 
country  at  large  would  never  con- 
sent to  a  revolution.  Then  how 
is  the  struggle  to  be  carried  on? 
If  by  "revolution"  Lord  Rosebery 
means  anything  in  the  nature  of  a 
coup  d'etat  by  which  the  House  of 
Lords  was  forcibly  suppressed,  we 
quite  agree  with  him.  We  are  a 
long  way  from  anything  of  that 
kind  in  England.  And  the  con- 
sequences which  followed  on  the 
first  and  last  attempt  of  the  kind 
are  not  such  as  to  encourage  a 
repetition  of  it.  The  House  of 
Commons  in  1649  voted  the  aboli- 


1894.] 


The  Coming  Struggle. 


899 


tion  of  the  House  of  Lords,  and 
immediately  afterwards  the  aboli- 
tion of  the  monarchy.  But  this 
was  only  accomplished  by  the 
power  of  the  sword,  which  at  no 
long  interval  was  turned  against 
themselves  ;  and  the  once  all- 
powerful  assembly  fell  without  a 
struggle  at  the  nod  of  an  absolute 
dictator. 

We  are  to  assume,  then,  that  the 
struggle  is  to  be  carried  on  by 
agitation,  and  that  the  whole 
country  is  to  be  a  prey  to  it  till  such 
time  as  either  the  Radicals  are  ex- 
hausted, or  a  volume  of  opinion 
is  set  rolling  against  the  House  of 
Lords  sufficient  either  to  make  it 
give  way,  or  induce  the  Sovereign 
to  swamp  it  by  the  creation  of 
new  Peers.  Nothing  but  the  im- 
mediate prospect  of  a  civil  war 
would  be  held  to  justify  such  a 
measure ;  and  our  own  conviction 
is,  that  long  before  it  came  to  that 
the  good  sense  of  the  people  would 
interpose,  and  a  general  election 
restore  the  constitutional  party  to 
power.  But,  at  all  events,  the 
House  of  Commons  would  never 
be  allowed  to  take  the  question 
into  its  own  hands  exclusively. 
The  constitution  of  this  country 
can  only  be  changed  by  constitu- 
tional means  ;  and  for  one  branch 
of  the  Legislature  to  arrogate  to 
itself  the  right  of  dictating  to  the 
other  two  is  a  mere  usurpation, 
which  would  certainly  recoil  on 
the  aggressor  as  it  did  before. 

It  is  not  wonderful  that  in  a 
country  like  England,  accustomed 
so  long  to  see  the  stream  of  politi- 
cal and  social  progress  flow  along 
like  a  broad  and  tranquil  river,  of 
which  the  current,  though  strong, 
steady,  and  continuous,  is  so  smooth 
as  to  be  scarcely  perceptible — it  is 
not  wonderful  that  England  should 
be  slow  to  believe  that  we  are  ap- 
proaching the  rapids.  Neither  is 
it  wonderful  that  men,  looking 


back  to  what  immediately  followed 
the  Reform  Bill  of  1832,  and  see- 
ing that  the  prophecies  of  ruin 
which  were  then  so  rife  have  not 
yet  been  fulfilled,  should  hug  them- 
selves in  the  belief  that  the  alarm 
now  sounded  by  friends  of  the 
Constitution  will  prove  to  have 
been  equally  premature,  and  that 
they  are  at  liberty  to  turn  round 
and  go  to  sleep  again.  To  all  such 
persons  as  these — and  we  are  afraid 
their  name  is  Legion — we  can  only 
give  one  piece  of  advice,  and  that 
is  to  read  Mr  Balfour's  speech  at 
Sunderland  on  the  14th  of  last 
month.  There  they  will  find  set 
before  them,  with  all  the  clearness 
and  conciseness  they  could  wish, 
the  true  character  of  the  present 
epoch,  and  wherein  1894  differs 
from  1834.  Within  the  last  ten 
years,  he  says,  a  marked  change 
has  occurred  in  the  policy  and 
practice  of  what  is  still  called  the 
Liberal  party,  though  in  our  own 
opinion  the  change  dates  really 
not  from  1885  but  from  1865. 
But  that  by  the  by.  Since  1885, 
then,  we  have  seen  the  develop- 
ment of  three  separate  attacks  on 
the  unity  of  the  Empire,  the  Es- 
tablishment of  the  Church,  and 
the  authority  of  the  House  of 
Lords.  We  have  now,  says  Mr 
Balfour,  to  face  the  fact  that  one 
of  the  two  great  parties  in  the 
State  is  committed  to  deferring 
every  other  question,  be  it  political 
or  be  it  social,  to  these  three  great 
constitutional  revolutions.  By  such 
leaps  and  bounds  has  Radicalism 
advanced  within  only  the  last  nine 
years.  Nor  is  this  all.  The 
unity  of  the  Empire,  the  Estab- 
lished Church,  and  the  hereditary 
House  of  Parliament  have  been 
threatened  before.  But  threat- 
ened by  whom?  By  O'Connell, 
by  Miall,  by  private  members 
of  Parliament  only.  But  these  in- 
stitutions are  now  assailed  by  the 


900 


The  Coming  Struggle. 


[Dec. 


Ministers  of  the  Crown,  and  bills 
for  the  destruction  of  them  are  a 
first  charge  upon  the  Government. 
That  is  the  difference  between  our 
own  epoch  and  the  period  succeed- 
ing the  first  Reform  Bill.  But  let 
this  be  noted  also,  that  even  at  this 
last-mentioned  period  these  great 
institutions  were  believed  to  be 
in  imminent  danger,  not  merely 
by  such  men  as  Croker,  and  Raikes, 
and  Wetherell,  but  by  the  Duke 
of  Wellington,  by  Sir  Robert  Peel, 
and  even  by  Lord  Melbourne  him- 
self :  and  who  shall  say  that  these 
statesmen  were  mistaken1?  But 
what  was  it  that  averted  the  dan- 
ger, and  enables  the  country  now  to 
say  that  no  evil  effects  have  fol- 
lowed from  1832?  Why,  the  very 
same  fusion  between  the  Conserv- 
atives and  the  Constitutional  Lib- 
erals which  is  now  in  process 
between  the  Conservatives  and  the 
Liberal  Unionists.  If  the  country 
would  avert  the  great  danger 
which  approached  us  sixty  years 
ago,  and  is  now  again  lowering  on 
the  horizon,  they  must  support  this 
fusion  at  the  next  general  election 
in  no  faint-hearted  manner. 

Equally  desirable  is  it  that  the 
people  of  this  country  should  mark 
their  sense  of  the  new  method  of 
procedure  described  by  Mr  Balfour, 
and  which  he  also  seems  to  date 
from  1885.  And  though  it  can 
clearly  be  traced  back  to  1867,  no 
doubt  the  most  flagrant  example 
of  it  is  Mr  Gladstone's  adoption 
of  Home  Rule.  The  method  is 
described  by  Mr  Balfour  in  these 
few  words : — 

"  If  whenever  the  Liberal  party,  or 
any  party,  merely  because  it  happened 
to  suit  their  electoral  convenience, 
were  going  to  place  in  the  forefront 
of  their  programme  the  destruction  of 
one  or  other  of  the  great  institutions 
of  this  country,  then  he  said  that  the 
English  democracy  had  got  a  perilous 
path  to  tread,  and  it  behoved  it  to  look 
well  where  it  placed  its  footsteps." 


What  is  to  happen  when  the 
Church,  the  aristocracy,  and  the 
Empire  have  been  sacrificed  to  the 
exigencies  of  an  unscrupulous  pol- 
itical ambition  ?  When  a  bonfire 
has  been  made  of  the  Constitution, 
where  is  the  next  supply  of  fuel  to 
come  from  1  The  Radical  capital- 
ists of  Glasgow  must  wriggle  un- 
easily in  their  seats  sometimes 
when  this  question  occurs  to  them. 
Lord  Rosebery,  Mr  Balfour,  and 
Mr  Asquith  have  been  the  chief 
speakers  on  Disestablishment ;  and 
as  it  is  now  understood  that  Welsh 
Disestablishment  stands  first  on 
the  paper  for  next  session,  we  may 
glance  for  a  moment  at  what  they 
each  have  to  say  about  the  subject 
in  general.  Lord  Rosebery's  treat- 
ment of  it  is  eminently  character- 
istic. He  tries  to  squeeze  himself 
out  of  his  famous  dictum  about 
the  Scotch  manses,  just  as  he  did 
out  of  his  very  infelicitous  recogni- 
tion of  "  the  predominant  partner." 
But  he  has  only  wedged  himself 
into  it  more  tightly  than  ever. 
For  the  purpose  of  Disestablish- 
ment he  requires  evidence  to 
show  that  the  Scotch  Established 
Church  is  not  a  National  Church ; 
and  he  finds  it  in  the  alleged  fact 
that  the  residences  of  the  Scotch 
clergy  are  so  many  Tory  agencies. 
And  then  he  says  that  he  does 
not  use  this  fact  as  an  argument 
for  Disestablishment !  For  the 
third  or  fourth  time  we  are  obliged 
to  repeat  that  Lord  Rosebery  has 
not  sat  at  Mr  Gladstone's  feet  for 
nothing.  If  a  man  has  committed 
murder,  and  the  weapon  with 
which  the  crime  was  committed 
is  found  in  his  pocket,  it  is  the 
merest  quibble  to  say  that  the  fact 
is  no  argument  for  hanging  him. 
Lord  Rosebery  puts  it  down 
as  the  leading  delinquency  in 
the  Scotch  Establishment,  which 
proves  her  to  merit  decapitation, 
that  the  manses  are  Conservative 


1894.] 


The  Coming  Struggle. 


901 


strongholds.  How  he  distinguishes 
this  from  saying  that  the  principles 
of  the  clergy  are  a  reason  for  dis- 
establishing the  Church,  he  will 
perhaps  explain  to  us  on  another 
occasion.  So  far,  he  has  only  gone 
from  bad  to  worse,  because  he 
gave  us  at  Glasgow  a  careful  ex- 
planation of  his  meaning,  which 
he  had  been  able  to  think  over 
beforehand ;  and  instead  of  weak- 
ening the  effect  of  what  he  said  at 
Edinburgh,  he  has  only  clinched  it. 
Scotch  Disestablishment,  then,  is 
postponed  for  the  present,  though 
Lord  Rosebery,  who  is  great  on 
the  virtue  of  sincerity,  promises 
to  introduce  a  bill  without  doing 
anything  to  carry  it,  just  to 
show  he  is  in  earnest.  He  is 
frank  enough,  however,  to  tell  the 
Scotch  Liberationists  that  they 
must  not  look  for  much  till  Scot- 
land returns  as  large  a  proportion 
of  members  in  favour  of  Disestab- 
lishment as  Wales.  As  this  comes 
virtually  to  the  same  thing  as  Sir 
Robert  Walpole's  famous  answer 
to  the  English  Dissenters,  we 
should  imagine  that  these  young 
men  went  away  sorrowful.  The 
Forfarshire  election  will  certainly 
not  restore  their  cheerfulness. 
The  victory  of  Mr  Ramsay  was 
largely  due  to  the  Radical  attack 
upon  the  Church,  and  Lord  Rose- 
bery's  demand  for  a  flowing  tide 
of  opinion  in  favour  of  Scotch 
Disestablishment  is  immediately 
answered  by  a  signal  which  pro- 
claims it  decidedly  on  the  ebb. 
Instead  of  any  increase  in  the 
number  of  Scotch  members  pledged 
to  Disestablishment,  the  Govern- 
ment have  begun  to  lose  those 
which  they  already  have.  And 
the  process  will  not  end  with 
Forfarshire.  Reluctant  as  Minis- 
ters have  been  all  along  to  dissolve 
Parliament,  they  will  be  still  more 
reluctant  now.  On  the  other  hand, 
there  is  proportionate  encourage- 


ment to  the  Opposition  to  force  a 
dissolution ;  and  it  may  be  that 
before  the  end  of  next  session  op- 
portunities will  not  be  wanting. 

The  disestablishment  of  the 
Church  of  England  in  Wales  is, 
however,  to  be  proceeded  with; 
and  on  this  subject  we  have 
the  valuable  assistance  of  Mr 
Asquith.  This  eminent  lawyer, 
however,  can  do  no  more  than 
improve  upon  the  stale  old  false- 
hood that  the  estates  of  the 
Church  were  given  to  her  by  Par- 
liament, and  that  Parliament  can 
resume  them  at  pleasure.  We  have 
never  heard  that  Parliament  had  a 
right  to  resume  at  pleasure  even 
what  it  actually  did  give,  such,  for 
instance,  as  the  Blenheim  or  Strath- 
fieldsaye  estates ;  but  that  it  has 
any  right  to  take  what  it  didn't 
give  is  a  new  doctrine.  The  simple 
truth  is  this.  These  estates  were 
given  to  the  Church  for  the  sup- 
port of  the  Anglican  religion. 
She  helds  them  in  trust  for 
that  purpose.  And  it  is  only 
on  the  assumption  that  she  is 
no  longer  capable  of  carrying  out 
the  trust  that  the  State  has  any 
right  to  interfere.  Mr  Gladstone 
himself  has  denied  that  this  argu- 
ment is  good  against  the  Church 
in  Wales :  if  it  was  not  good 
twenty  years  ago,  it  is  certainly 
much  worse  now ;  and  if  it  is 
not  good  for  Wales,  it  certainly  is 
not  for  England.  The  position 
of  the  Church,  both  in  England 
and  Wales,  may  vary  from  year 
to  year  and  from  century  to  cen- 
tury. The  struggle  that  she  is 
waging  must  necessarily  be  fluc- 
tuating. But  is  she  or  is  she  not, 
upon  the  whole,  administering  her 
trust  efficiently?  If  she  is,  by 
what  right  is  she  deprived  of  her 
property?  If  not,  that  property 
can  only  be  devoted  to  the  next 
nearest  purpose,  and  cannot  cer- 
tainly be  diverted  to  secular  uses. 


902 


The  Coming  Struggle. 


[Dec. 


The  confiscation  of  monastic  pro- 
perty stands  upon  a  wholly  differ- 
ent footing. 

Mr  Balfour  went  to  the  root  of 
the  matter  when  he  spoke  of  the 
property  of  the  Church  being  used 
for  the  corruption  of  the  people. 
Sacrilege  is  bad  enough.  But 
sacrilege  of  which  the  object  is 
bribery  is  a  special  crime  reserved 
for  our  modern  Puritans.  The 
fact  is,  that  religious  equality 
means  in  the  mouths  of  many 
persons  simple  plunder  —  a  com- 
munity of  ecclesiastical  goods. 
In  the  mouths  of  others  it  no 
doubt  means  something  less  ig- 
noble than  that :  but  in  as  far  as 
it  is  different,  the  term  is  utter- 
ly misleading.  Religious  equality 
only  means  that  all  religions  shall 
be  equal  in  the  eye  of  the  State, 
just  as  all  individuals  are  equal  in 
the  eye  of  the  law.  There  are  to 
be  no  immunities,  no  privileges,  no 
disabilities;  and  there  are  none 
either  in  the  English  Church  or 
among  English  Dissenters.  The 
Bishops  sit  in  the  House  of  Lords 
in  virtue  of  their  temporal  baron- 
ies; and  as  for  property,  there  is 
no  more  reason  why  one  religious 
body  should  not  be  richer  than 
another,  than  why  one  individual 
should  not  be  richer  than  another. 
Equality  as  a  political  term  does 
not  extend  to  such  differences  as 
these. 

Passing  for  a  moment  to  foreign 
affairs,  we  find  Lord  Rosebery 
once  more  at  his  old  game  on 
the  subject  of  China  and  Japan 
and  the  emergency  Council.  What 
the  Cabinet  was  summoned  for 
on  that  memorable  occasion,  and 
why  all  Europe  was  thrown  into 
confusion  by  so  sudden  and  un- 
expected a  portent,  we  are  left 
to  guess.  But  the  object  of  it 
— so  we  are  to  understand — was 
wholly  unconnected  with  the  war 
between  China  and  Japan.  Very 


well.  Three  days  afterwards,  how- 
ever, the  Governments  of  France, 
Germany,  Italy,  Russia,  and 
America  were  all  discussing  a 
proposal  submitted  to  them  by 
the  English  Government  for  joint 
intervention  between  the  two 
belligerents.  Two  refused  the 
offer;  two  didn't  even  answer 
it;  and  only  one  agreed  to  it. 
This  is  described  by  Lord  Rose- 
bery as  an  "  extraordinarily  favour- 
able reception  "  of  the  British  pro- 
posals. It  had  been  publicly  stated 
that  Government  had  despatched 
a  circular  to  the  Powers,  and  had 
met  with  a  rebuff.  Oh  dear,  no  ! 
There  had  been  no  circular,  but 
only  an  all-round  communication  : 
no  rebuff,  but  only  a  distinct  refusal 
by  two  Powers,  and  contemptuous 
silence  on  the  part  of  two  others. 
The  agitator,  says  Mr  Balfour, 
who  does  not  know  how  to  wrap 
up  a  bad  policy  in  fine  language, 
is  not  fit  for  his  work,  and  should 
be  dismissed  without  a  character. 
Perhaps  this  is  what  some  of  Lord 
Rosebery's  colleagues  are  thinking 
about  their  chief. 

The  Irish  party  will,  of  course, 
lend  their  assistance  in  overthrow- 
ing the  House  of  Lords.  Mr  Dil- 
lon, speaking  at  Glasgow'  on  the 
15th  of  last  month,  made  no 
secret  of  that.  Of  course  the  Irish 
will  do  all  they  can  to  make  them- 
selves masters  of  Great  Britain, 
which  in  the  absence  of  the  House 
of  Lords  they  will  be.  Whatever 
their  internal  dissensions,  they 
are  "  well  drilled  "  enough  for 
that.  We  earnestly  beg  the  British 
public  to  note  well  the  real  char- 
acter of  the  present  crisis,  and 
the  danger  which  lies  ahead  of 
them,  not  in  the  fitful  energy  of 
irresponsible  cliques  or  individuals, 
but  in  the  unprecedented  attitude 
now  assumed  by  the  Ministers  of 
the  Crown.  Surely  both  Scotch- 
men and  Englishmen  can  under- 


1894.] 


The  Coming  Struggle. 


903 


stand  what  the  absolute  suprem- 
acy of  Irish  politicians  in  a 
House  of  Commons  uncontrolled 
by  any  second  chamber  must 
necessarily  mean :  that  it  would 
lead  to  methods  of  government 
wholly  irreconcilable  with  the 
laws  of  political  economy,  with 
the  most  elementary  rights  of  pro- 
perty, and  with  all  those  prescrip- 
tions and  traditions  which  are 
necessary  to  the  maintenance  of 
our  Indian  and  Colonial  empire. 
Ireland  has  proved  over  and  over 
again  her  incapacity  for  self- 
government.  How,  then,  can  she 
be  trusted  to  govern  others,  and 
those  others  ourselves  ?  We  must 
not  forget,  either,  the  power  that 
lurks  in  the  background  of  Irish 
supremacy,  or  the  uses  to  which 
it  would  certainly  be  converted  by 
the  Roman  Church.  All  these  dan- 
gers, no  longer  fanciful,  remote,  or 
despicable,  but  real,  imminent,  and 
formidable,  can  only  be  successfully 
encountered  by  the  combination  of 
parties  which  has  prevailed  for  the 


last  eight  years,  heartily  and 
powerfully  supported  by  the  voice 
of  the  people.  They  have  their 
fortunes  in  their  own  hands.  If 
they  do  not  choose  to  save  them- 
selves from  the  hateful  tyranny 
which  awaits  them  on  the  de- 
struction of  the  House  of  Lords, 
nobody  else  can  save  them.  If 
they  will  not  strike  a  blow  in 
defence  of  the  great  social  fabric 
which  is  now  threatened ;  in  de- 
fence of  the  commerce,  the  credit, 
and  the  capital  on  which  their 
prosperity  is  dependent ;  in  de- 
fence of  the  political  constitution 
by  which  alone  these  are  now 
protected ;  and  for  the  sake  of 
that  ancient  religion  of  whose 
implacable  enemy  the  Separatists 
are  the  secret  agents, — they  de- 
serve the  worst  that  can  befall 
them  when  England  has  lost  her 
place  among  the  nations,  and  her 
wealth,  her  power,  and  her  em- 
pire, which  now  support  her  teem- 
ing population,  have  departed  for 
ever. 


VOL.   CLVI. NO.   DCCCOT, 


INDEX    TO    VOL.    CLVL 


Abyssinia,  French  designs  regarding, 
155. 

ABYSSINIAN  SERVANT,  HANNA,  MY,  663. 

A  FOREIGNER,  727. 

AFRICAN  CRISIS  WITH  FRANCE  AND 
GERMANY,  THE  NEW,  145. 

AGRICULTURE  TAXED  TO  DEATH,  118. 

Alligators,  shooting  at,  in  Oudh,  389. 

AMERICAN  TARIFF,  THE  NEW,  573. 

ANCESTOR-RIDDEN,  205. 

ANCIENT  INN,  AN,  843. 

Angling,  a  new  branch  of,  418  et  seq. 

Anglo-Congolese  treaty,  differences  with 
France  and  Germany  arising  out  of 
the,  145  et  seq. 

BACON,  ROGER,  610. 

Bacon,  Roger,  birth  and  early  training 
of,  611— enters  the  Order  of  St 
Francis,  613— returns  to  Oxford,  614 
— is  taken  under  the  patronage  of 
Pope  Clement  IV.,  616— the  'Opus 
Majus  '  speedily  written  by,  618  — 
imprisonment  of,  620  —  death  of, 
621. 

'Badinage,'  by  M.  de  la  Brete,  review 
of,  592. 

Bar-le-Duc,  life  of  the  Pretender  at,  227 
et  seq.  —amusements  of  the  exiled  Court 
at,  235  et  seq.—  departure  of  the  Pre- 
tender from,  245. 

BAR-LE-DUC,  THE  PRETENDER  AT,  226. 

Bass,  fishing  for,  with  fly -rod,  422,  425. 

Beauty  in  nature,  little  feeling  of  the 
Irish  for,  321. 

BEN  VRACKIE,  FAREWELL  TO,  571. 

Bermudas,  fabulous  references  to  the, 
in  literature,  520. 

Birds,  the  protection  of,  56  et  seq.—  diffi- 
culty in  identifying  eggs  of,  57— keep- 
ing of,  in  cages,  63  et  seq. 

Black-buck  shooting  in  India,  fascination 
of,  388. 

BLACK  FLY,  THE  RED  BODICE  AND  THE, 
66. 

Blackwater,  the  country  of  the,  320. 

Blue    cow    or    neelghai,    difference    of 


opinion  amongst  Hindoos  regarding 
sacredness  of  the,  389. 

Bonapartism,  decay  of,  in  France,  307. 

Boulevards  of  Paris,  modern  changes  in 
the,  465. 

'Brave  Fille,'  by  M.  Calmettes.  review 
of,  596. 

British  cavalry,  present  condition  of, 
172  et  seq. — training  of,  for  war,  176 
et  seq. — traditionary  recklessness  of, 
in  the  field,  180. 

BRITISH  FORESTRY,  647. 

BRITISH  SERVICE,  THE  CAVALRY  ARM 
OF  THE,  169. 

BROOKE,  FELICITY,  818. 

Buddhist  temples  of  Java,  the,  90  et 
seq. 

Budget  Bill,  the,  in  the  House  of  Lords, 
441. 

Cannes,  golfing  in  winter  at,  552. 

Cardigan,  Lord,  sporting  anecdote  of, 
550. 

Carnot,  M.,  assassination  of,  305. 

CAVALRY  ARM  OF  THE  BRITISH  SERVICE, 
THE,  169. 

Cavalry,  rdle  of,  in  modern  war,  170 — 
character  of  British,  172— regiments 
of,  in  British  service,  173 — training 
and  instruction  of  British,  176— sug- 
gested improvements  in  British,  178. 

CELIBACY  AND  THE  STRUGGLE  TO  GET 
ON,  777. 

Chamberlain,  Mr,  the  legislative  pro- 
gramme of,  891  et  seq. 

Champs  Elyse'es,  modern  changes  in  the, 
464. 

Charles  Edward,  Prince,  entry  into  Edin- 
burgh of,  in  1745,  98 — victory  of  army 
of,  at  Preston,  99— march  of  troops  of, 
on  London,  102— the  battle  of  Falkirk 
won  by,  104. 

Chiffoniers  of  Paris,  the  past  and  present, 
460. 

China,  stationary  condition  of  civilisa- 
tion in,  714,  724— want  of  true  valour 
in  soldiers  of,  716 — undisciplined  con- 


Index. 


905 


dition  of  troops  in,  718— state  of  forti- 
fications in,  720 — origin  of  the  war 
between  Japan  and,  879  et  seq. — prob- 
able results  of  war  with,  884  et  seq. — 
effect  of  war  with,  on  future  position 
of  Japan,  887  et  seq. 

CHINA'S  REPUTATION-BUBBLE,  714. 

Church,  General  Sir  R.,  suppression  of 
brigandage  in  Apulia  by,  254  et  seq. — 
imprisonment  of,  by  revolutionary 
forces,  at  Naples,  270— release  of,  271. 

CLIMATE,  THE  GOLFER  IN  SEARCH  OF 
A,  552. 

CLUB-HOMES  FOR  UNMARRIED  WORKING 
MEN,  701. 

Codling,  fishing  for,  with  throw-out  lines, 
426. 

Colnbrook,  situation  and  history  of,  843 
—  an  ancient  inn  at,  845  —  story  of 
the  murder  of  Thomas  Cole  at,  846 
et  seq. 

COMING  STRUGGLE,  THE,  889. 

Commercy,/etes  at,  in  honour  of  the  Pre- 
tender, 238 — escape  of  the  Pretender 
from,  in  disguise,  244. 

CONFESSION  OF  TIBBIE  LAW,  THE,  213. 

Congo  State,  claims  of  France  in  the, 
154. 

Conservative  programme,  proposals  re- 
garding a,  160  et  seq. 

CONSERVATIVES,  DESTRUCTIVES  AND, 
159. 

County  rates,  increase  of,  during  last 
fifty  years,  121  et  seq. 

'Dalila,'  M.  Feuillet's,  adaptation  of, 
for  the  stage,  381. 

"DAMNABLE  COUNTRY,  THAT,"  309. 

Death  duties,  the,  origin  of,  126 — Sir 
William  Harcourt's  provisions  regard- 
ing, 127. 

DEER-FOREST,  A  LUCKY  DAY  IN  A,  272. 

DENNY'S  DAUGHTER,  700. 

DESTRUCTIVES  AND  CONSERVATIVES,  159. 

DOUBLE-BEDDED  ROOM,  THE,  411. 

Early  marriages,  prevalence  of,  amongst 
workmen,  701 — proposed  counterac- 
tives to,  703  et  seq. 

East  India  College  of  Haileybury,  the 
students  of  the,  108  et  seq. 

Education  rate,  origin  of,  119 — increase 
in  amount  of,  120. 

Eggs  of  wild  birds,  difficulty  in  identify- 
ing, 57— legislation  regarding  protec- 
tion of,  58  et  seq. 

Elephant,  trials  of  the  Indian  sportsman 
in  connection  with  the,  391  et  seq. — 
hunting  of  the  wild,  in  the  Nepaul 
Terai,  404— use  of  the  fighting,  in 
coercing  captured  wild  elephants,  406. 

"El  Mahdi,"  Moslem  expectations  re- 
garding the  appearance  of,  27 — title  of, 
assumed  by  the  Sheikh  of  Jerboub,  28 
et  seq. 

END  OF  THE  STORY,  THE,  254. 


EPISTLE  FROM  HORACE,  AN,  793. 

ETON  MASTER,  AN,  693. 

Evicted  Tenants  Bill,  secession  of  Union- 
ist leaders  regarding  the,  446 — debate 
in  House  of  Lords  on  second  reading 
of  the,  447. 

Falkirk,  the  battle  of,  104— letter  from 
an  eye-witness  regarding,  ib.  et  seq. 

FAREWELL  TO  BEN  VRACKIE,  571. 

FELICITY  BROOKE,  818.J 

FEUILLET,  LA  FEMME  DE  M.,  370. 

Feuillet,  Madame,  birth  and  early  years 
of,  371  et  seq. — youth  of,  spent  at  St 
Lo,  373 — diamond  spray  presented  to, 
by  Prince  Louis  Napoleon,  375  — 
married  life  of,  377  et  seq. — letters  of 
M.  Octave  Feuillet  to,  385. 

Fez,  news  of  the  death  of  the  Sultan 
of  Morocco  received  at,  478  —  new 
sovereign  accepted  at,  ib. — State  en- 
try of  Sultan  into,  484. 

Finance  Bill,  provisions  of  the,  regard- 
ing taxes  on  land,  126  et  seq. 

FOREIGNER,  A,  727. 

Forest  fires  of  India,  the,  405. 

FORESTRY,  BRITISH,  647. 

FRANCE  AND  GERMANY,  THE  NEW 
AFRICAN  CRISIS  WITH,  145. 

FRENCH  NOVELISTS,  SOME,  583. 

FRIGATE,  AN  OLD  "  SEVENTY  -  FOUR,  " 
222. 

FROUDE,  JAMES  ANTHONY,  REMIN- 
ISCENCES OF  :  I. ,  756. 

Gaelic  language,  the  relationships  of, 
39 — pronunciation  of,  41. 

Galla  race,  characteristics  of  the,  358 — 
hair-dressing  of  the,  365. 

GAME-BOOK,  LEAVES  FROM  A,  543. 

Gentili,  Don  Luigi,  an  Italian  spy, 
General  Church's  treatment  of,  259 
et  seq. 

GEOGRAPHERS,  POETS  AND,  515. 

Geography,  former  contempt  in  England 
for  the  study  of,  515 — modern  esti- 
mate of,  517  et  seq. — influence  of  the 
romance  of,  on  Shakespeare  and  Mil- 
ton, 519  et  seq. — inspiration  received 
from,  by  Coleridge,  524 — Tennyson's 
indebtedness  to,  525. 

GERMANY,  THE  NEW  AFRICAN  CRISIS 
WITH  FRANCE  AND,  145. 

Gladstone,  Mr,  review  of  the  translation 
of  Horace  by,  793  et  seq. 

Golf,  the  playing  of,  at  Cannes,  552 — at 
Pau,  553— at  Biarritz,  556— at  Dinard, 
561  —  at  Jersey,  564  —  at  Guernsey, 
568. 

GOLFER  IN  SEARCH  OF  A  CLIMATE,  THE, 
552. 

Grand,  Mrs  Sarah,  on  the  "  Man  of  the 
Moment,"  778. 

Great  skua  or  bonxie,  the,  in  Foula,  58. 

HAILEYBURY,  MEMORIALS  OF  OLD,  107. 

HAKKALAND,  A  RIDE  IN,  600. 


906 


Index. 


Hale,  Edward,  Master  of  Eton,  charac- 
teristics of,  695 — influence  of,  at  Eton, 
696— wide  sympathies  of,  698— death 
of,  ib. 

HAND,  THE  SKELETON,  527. 

HANNA,  MY  ABYSSINIAN  SERVANT,  663. 

HARBAB,  A  RECENT  VISIT  TO,  350. 

Harrar,  the  history  of,  361  —  situation 
of  the  city  of,  363— hairdressing  of 
the  women  of,  365— an  outbreak  of 
cholera  in,  366— designs  of  Italy  upon, 
369. 

Hawley,  General,  flight  of  the  Dragoons 
of,  at  the  battle  of  Falkirk,  104  et  seq. 

Heir,  birth  of  an,  to  the  British  throne, 
304. 

Homes  for  unmarried  working  men,  de- 
sirability of  establishing,  709  et  seq. — 
cost  of,  712. 

HORACE,  AN  EPISTLE  FROM,  793. 

House  of  Lords,  legal  and  moral  author- 
ity of  the,  444— barrier  presented  by 
the,  against  revolutionary  legislation, 
893— power  of  veto  frequently  exer- 
cised by  the,  in  parliamentary  history, 
894— Lord  Rosebery's  utterances  re- 
garding the,  896  et  seq.  — assistance  of 
Irish  party  in  overthrowing  the,  902. 

INDOOR  LIFE  IN  PARIS,  802. 

INN,  AN  ANCIENT,  843. 

Ireland,  first  impressions  of,  310— char- 
acteristics of  the  inhabitants  of,  312 
et  seq. — aspects  of  spring  in,  317 — the 
climate  of,  322  —  hospitality  of  the 
people  of,  323. 

JAPAN,  THE  POSITION  OF,  878. 

Japan,  condition  of  the  troops  in,  721 — 
absence  of  true  martial  spirit  in  sol- 
diery of,  722 — preparations  for  war 
made  by,  723— origin  of  the  war  be- 
between  China  and,  879  et  seq. — prob- 
able results  of  the  war  between  China 
and,  884  et  seq.— effect  of  war  with 
China  on  future  position  of,  887  et  seq. 

JAVA,  Six  WEEKS  IN,  78. 

Java,  the  climate  of,  78— travelling  in, 
79— the  cinchona  plantations  of,  82 — 
native  flora  of,  83  et  seq.  passim— the 
Buddhist  temples  of,  90  et  seq.—  the 
volcanoes  of,  94  et  seq. 

JERBOUB,  SENOUSSI,  THE  SHEIKH  OF,  27. 

Jerboub,  situation  of,  29 — propaganda 
emanating  from,  30  — growing  reli- 
gious importance  of  the  Mahdi  of, 
ib.  et  seq.  —  political  power  of  the 
Mahdi  of,  35. 

Jildessa,  the  Arab  governor  of,  359— 
famine  and  disease  at,  360. 

Journalists,  reminiscences  of  some  mo- 
dern, 533  et  seq. 

Kilkee,  the  natural  attractions  of,  311 
et  seq. 

Killarney,  beauty  of,  in  spring-time, 
317. 


Kinglake,  A.  W.,  influence  of  the  liter- 
ary style  of,  on  contributors  to  the 
periodical  press,  540. 

Korea,  policy  of  China  regarding,  880 
et  seq. — probable  future  of,  885. 

LA  FEMME  DE  M.  FEUILLET,  370. 

'La  Seconde  Vie  de  Michel  Teissier,' 
M.  Rod's  review  of,  587. 

LEAVES  FROM  A  GAME-BOOK,  543. 

Leopold,  Duke  of  Lorraine,  character 
of,  228  et  seq. — reception  of  the  Pre- 
tender at  Bar-le-Duc  by,  233 — recep- 
tion of  Mary  of  Modena  by,  239— the 
Pretender's  farewell  to,  245. 

Local;  Government  (Scotland)  Bill, 
powers  of,  as  regards  taxes  on  land, 
123  et  seq. 

Lodging  -  houses,  establishment  of,  in 
Glasgow,  704— in  London,  706  et  seq. 

Longo,  Maestro,  an  Italian  revolution- 
ary, General  Church's  treatment  of, 
262  et  seq. 

LOOKER-ON,  THE,  285. 

Loss  OF  H.M.S.  VICTORIA,  THE  :  AN 
ANNIVERSARY  LAMENT,  435. 

LOST  AND  is  FOUND,  WHO  WAS,  Chap- 
ters V.-VIIL,  1 — ix. -xn.,  182— xm.- 
xvi.,  325— xvn. -xx.,  485 — xxi.-xxiv. 
(Conclusion),  624. 

*  Lourdes,'  M.  Zola's,  review  of,  584. 

LUCKY  DAY  IN  A  DEER-FOREST,  A,  272. 

Lupo,  Occhio,  a  noted  Apulian  brigand, 
capture  of,  257. 

Lythe,  fishing  for,  with  rod  and  tackle, 
424. 

Mackerel,  fishing  for,  with  fly-rod,  421. 

Maclagan,  Dr  David,  career  of,  247 — 
biographical  notices  of  the  seven  sons 
of,  248. 

MACLAGAN,  GENERAL  ROBERT,  R.E.  : 
ONE  OF  A  REMARKABLE  FAMILY, 
247. 

Maclagan,  Robert,  birth  and  parentage 
of,  247 — career  in  India  of,  249  et  seq. 
— marriage  of,  252 — labours  of,  during 
the  Indian  Mutiny,  ib. — settlement  of, 
in  England,  253— his  death,  ib. 

Maclagan,  Sir  Douglas,  career  of,  248. 

'  MAGA'S  '  LIBRARY,  IN  : — 

July :  Life  of  General  Sir  Hope 
Grant,  edited  by  Henry  Knollys, 
Colonel  (H.P.)  R.A.,  129  —  Corre- 
spondence of  Mr  Joseph  Jekyll  with 
his  Sister-in-law,  Lady  Gertrude  Sloane 
Stanley,  1818-1838,  edited  by  the  Hon. 
Algernon  Bourke,  135  —  Letters  of 
Harriet  Countess  Granville,  1810-1845, 
edited  by  her  Son,  the  Hon.  F. 
Leveson-Gower,  138 — The  Diplomatic 
Reminiscences  of  Lord  Augustus  Lof- 
tus,  P.C.,  G.C.B.,  second  series,  1862- 
1879,  141. 

December  :  Songs,  Poems,  and  Vers- 
es, by  Helen,  Lady  Dufferiii  (Countess 


Index. 


907 


of  Gifford),  854—  Sir  William  Greg- 
ory, K.C.M.G.,  An  Autobiography, 
edited  by  Lady  Gregory,  858  —  A 
Strange  Career:  Life  and  Adventures 
of  John  Gladivyn  Jebb,  by  his  Widow, 
862 — Life  and  Letters  of  Erasmus,  by 
J.  A.  Froude,  866  —  The  Badminton 
Library :  Archery,  by  C.  J.  Longman 
and  Colonel  H.  Walrond,  SI  1— Who 
was  Lost  and  is  Found:  A  Novel,  by 
Mrs  Oliphant,  873  —  A  House  in 
Bloomsbury :  A  Novel,  by  Mrs  Oli- 
phant, 874— The  Cuckoo  in  the  Nest : 
A  Novel,  by  Mrs  Oliphant,  876. 

Mahan,  Captain,  of  American  Navy, 
banquet  in  honour  of,  293. 

Mahdi  of  Jerboub,  growing  power  and 
importance  of  the,  30  et  seq. 

Mahouts  or  elephant-drivers,  trials  of 
Indian  sportsmen  in  connection  with, 
393  et  seq. 

Marriage,  causes  of  the  decline  of,  781 
et  seq. 

Mary  Queen  of  Scots,  early  home  of,  in 
Lorraine,  227. 

MEMORIALS  OF  OLD  HAILEYBURY,  107. 

Menagerie,  an  Anglo-Indian,  contents 
of,  408. 

MILL,  FROM  WEIR  TO,  510. 

Monier  Monier- Williams,  Sir,  "Remin- 
iscences "  of  Haileybury  College  by, 
112  et  seq. 

MORE  ABOUT  THE  PREPARATORY  SCHOOL, 
45. 

Morocco,  candidates  for  the  throne  of, 
468  et  seq. — dismissal  of  Ministers  at, 
480  et  seq. 

MOROCCO,  THE  ASCENSION  OF  THE  NEW 
SULTAN  OF,  467. 

Moslems,  divisions  amongst  the,  27. 

Mulai  Abdul  Aziz,  proclamation  of,  as 
Sultan  of  Morocco,  475— sovereignty 
of,  accepted  at  Fez,  478 — State  entry 
of,  into  Fez,  484. 

Mulai  el  Hassen,  late  Sultan  of  Morocco, 
summer  expedition  of,  467 — death  of, 
468,  473 — accession  of  son  of,  474. 

Musset,  Alfred  de,  disillusioning  view 
of,  379. 

NEW  AMERICAN  TARIFF,  THE,  573. 

"New  democracy,"  Radical  fallacies  as 
to  designs  of  the,  166  et  seq. 

NEW  SPORT,  A,  418. 

New  Woman,  the,  777  et  seq.  passim. 

NITCHEVO  :  A  FRAGMENT  OF  RUSSIAN 
LIFE,  430. 

NOOK  OF  NORTH  WALES,  A,  681. 

ODE,  A  QUITRENT,  417. 

ONE  OF  A  REMARKABLE  FAMILY  :  GEN- 
ERAL ROBERT  MACLAGAN,  R.E.,  247. 

Otters,  depredations  of,  514. 

Palermo,  revolutionary  outbreak  at, 
General  Church's  efforts  to  quell,  266 


Panther,  taming  of  a,  408. 

PARIS,  INDOOR  LIFE  IN,  802. 

PARIS,  THE  STREETS  OF,  FORTY  YEARS 
AGO,  453. 

Parish  councils,  powers  of  new,  in  Scot- 
land, 123  et  seq. 

Parisian  women,  characteristics  of,  half 
a  century  ago,  456  et  seq. — indoor  life 
of,  805  et  seq. 

PERIODICAL  PRESS,  THIRTY  YEARS  OF 
THE,  532. 

Pictures,  special  exhibitions  of,  298  et  seq. 

PLACE-NAMES  OF  SCOTLAND,  38. 

POETS  AND  GEOGRAPHERS,  515. 

Poor  assessment,  origin  of,  120 — in- 
creased taxation  in  regard  to,  121. 

POSITION  OF  JAPAN,  THE,  878. 

PREPARATORY  SCHOOL,  MORE  ABOUT 
THE,  45. 

PRESTON  AND  FALKIRK,  SIDE -LIGHTS 
ON  THE  BATTLES  OF,  98. 

Preston,  victory  of  the  Pretender's 
troops  at,  99  —  letters  of  eye-wit- 
nesses regarding  the  battle  of,  100. 

PRETENDER  AT  BAR-LE-DUC,  THE,  226. 

Pretender,  the,  life  of,  at  Bar-le-Duc, 
227  et  seq.  —  negotiations  regarding 
the  marriage  of,  240 — escape  of,  to 
England,  244 — refugees  attracted  to 
Bar-le-Duc  by,  246. 

Property  and  income  tax,  Sir  Wm,  Har- 
court's  proposed  reductions  in,  119. 

PROTECTION  OF  WILD  BIRDS,  THE,  55. 

Provincial  press,  influence  of  the,  on 
London  journalism,  540  et  seq. 

QUITRENT  ODE,  A,  417. 

Rabbit  casting  its  skin,  a,  843. 

Rain  of  Ireland,  the,  322. 

RECENT  VISIT  TO  HARRAR,  A,  350. 

RED  BODICE  AND  THE  BLACK  FLY,  THE, 
66. 

Red-deer,  some  experiences  in  stalking, 
in  Ross-shire,  272  et  seq. 

REMINISCENCES  OF  JAMES  ANTHONY 
FROUDE  :  I. ,  756. 

RIDE  IN  HAKK ALAND,  A,  600. 

ROGER  BACON,  610. 

ROOM,  THE  DOUBLE-BEDDED,  411. 

Rosebery,  Lord,  on  reform  of  the  House 
of  Lords,  896  et  seq. — 011  the  Dis- 
establishment question,  900 — Cabinet 
Council  of,  regarding  war  between 
China  and  Japan,  902. 

RUSSIAN  LIFE,  NITCHEVO  :  A  FRAGMENT 
OF,  430. 

Salisbury,  Lord,  on  the  social  and 
political  outlook,  889. 

Salmon,  fishing  for,  in  the  sea  with  fly- 
rod,  422. 

Scotch  Local  Government  Bill,  passing 
of  the,  450. 

SCOTLAND,  PLACE-NAMES  OF,  38. 

Sea-fishing  with  rod  and  tackle,  rise  of, 
418 — literature  on  the  subject  of,  419 


908 


Index. 


clubs  for  the  promotion  of,  ib. — 

artificial  flies  for  use  in,  421  et  seq.— 
improvements  in  method  of,  428. 

SENOUSSI,  THE  SHEIKH  OF  JERBOUB,  27. 

SESSION  OF  1894,  438. 

"SEVENTY- FOUR"  FRIGATE,  AN  OLD, 
222. 

SHIKAR,  THIRTY  YEARS  OF:  Conclu- 
sion, 387. 

Shops  of  Paris,  the  former  and  the  pres- 
ent, 455. 

SIDE-LIGHTS  ON  THE  BATTLES  OF  PRES- 
TON AND  FALKIRK,  98. 

Six  WEEKS  IN  JAVA,  78. 

SKELETON  HAND,  THE,  527. 

Skelton,  John,  C.B.,  LL.D.,  letters  of 
James  Anthony  Froude  to,  758  et  seq. 

Smith,  Richard  Baird,  notice  of,  247. 

Society,  the  annual  exodus  of,  285  et 
seq. — the  scandals  in,  288. 

Somaliland,  -  commencement  of  British 
influence  in,  350 — the  inhabitants  of, 
352  et  seq. — attractions  for  the  sports- 
man in,  354, 357 — coronation  ceremony 
of  a  native  king  in,  367. 

SOME  FRENCH  NOVELISTS,  583. 

SOME  THOUGHTS  ON  THE  WOMAN  QUES- 
TION, 689. 

SPORT,  A  NEW,  418. 

Stone's  Tavern,  London,  literary  gather- 
ings at,  539. 

STORY,  THE  END  OF  THE,  254. 

STREETS  OF  PARIS,  THE,  FORTY  YEARS 
AGO,  453. 

STRUGGLE,  THE  COMING,  889. 

STRUGGLE  TO  GET  ON,  CELIBACY  AND 
THE,  777. 

SULTAN  OF  MOROCCO,  THE  ACCESSION  OF 
THE  NEW,  467. 

Taxes  upon  land,  origin  and  history  of, 
118  et  seq.—  results  of  proposed  legis- 
lation regarding,  123  et  seq.,  164. 

Terai,  sport  in  the,  391— the  wild  ele- 
phant in  the,  404. 

"THAT  DAMNABLE  COUNTRY, "  309. 

Theatre,  the  modern,  as  a  teacher  of 
morals,  296. 

THIRTY  YEARS  OF  SHIKAR  :  Conclusion, 
387. 

THIRTY  YEARS  OF  THE  PERIODICAL 
PRESS,  532. 

TIBBIE  LAW,  THE  CONFESSION  OF,  213. 

Tiger-cub,  attempt  to  tame  a,  408. 

Tigers,  killing  of,  in  the  Terai,  391  et 
seq.—  lifting  of,  when  dead,  395— dis- 


appointments in  the  hunting  of,  396 
et  seq. — most  effective  weapon  for  de- 
spatch of,  398  —  use  of  machans  in 
shooting  of,  409. 

TOMB  OF  KING  JOHN  IN  WORCESTER 
CATHEDRAL,  THE,  791. 

Tree -planting,  practice  of,  by  the  Ro- 
mans, 647 — introduction  of,  as  an  art, 
into  Britain,  649 — extensive  operations 
in,  at  Tynninghame,  650 — Continental 
methods  of,  652 — arguments  in  favour 
of,  658. 

UNMARRIED  WORKING  MEN,  CLUB- 
HOMES  FOR,  701. 

Vagrant  traders  of  Paris,  reminiscences 
of  the,  460  et  seq. 

VICTORIA,  THE  Loss  OF  H.M.S.  :  AN 
ANNIVERSARY  LAMENT,  435. 

WALES,  A  NOOK  OF  NORTH,  681. 

Wales,  the  aspect  of  Dissent  in,  684 — 
condition  of  the  farm -labourers  in,  ib. 
et  seq. — partridge-shooting  in,  687. 

Water-carriers  of  Paris,  reminiscences 
of  the,  459. 

WEIR  TO  MILL,  FROM,  510. 

White  ant,  ravages  of  the,  in  Indian 
households,  388. 

WHO  WAS  LOST  AND  is  FOUND,  Chap- 
ters V.-VIIL,  1 — ix. -xii.,  182— xni.- 
xvi.,  325— xvn. -xx.,  485— XXL -xxiv. 
(Conclusion),  624. 

WILD  BIRDS,  THE  PROTECTION  OF,  55. 

Wilson  Bill,  scope  of  the,  574  —  provi- 
sions of  the,  576  et  seq. — income-tax 
feature  of  the,  579 — probable  duration 
of  the,  581. 

Wolseley,  Lord,  recent  military  reforms 
of,  177. 

WOMAN  QUESTION,  SOME  THOUGHTS  ON 
THE,  689. 

Women,  modern  views  of  the  rights  and 
disabilities  of,  289  et  seq.  ' 

Women  of  Paris,  characteristics  of  the, 
half  a  century  ago,  456  et  seq. — indoor 
life  of  the,  805  —life  of  the  masses 
among  the,  806  et  seq.  —  life  of  the 
minority  among  the,  810  et  seq. 

WORCESTER  CATHEDRAL,  THE  TOMB  OF 
KING  JOHN  IN,  791. 

Worth,  M.,  a  business  engagement  with, 
383. 

Yule,  Sir  Henry,  notice  of,  247. 

Zeilah,  the  town  of,  352 — African  coro- 
nation ceremony  at,  367 — designs  of 
Italy  upon,  368. 


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