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National Library of Scotland
*B000297137*

Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive

in 2010 witii funding from

National Library of Scotland

http://www.archive.org/details/notesonedinburghOOstev

This Edinburgh Edition consists of

one thousand and thirty-five copies

all numbered

No.

.Mkksji:

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Vol. I. of issue : Nov. 1894

THE WORKS OF

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

EDINBURGH EDITION

I^A 'Ml

THE WORKS OF

ROBERT LOUIS
STEVENSON

MISCELLANIES

VOLUME I

EDINBURGH

PRINTED BY T. AND A. CONSTABLE FOR

LONGMANS GREEN AND CO : CASSELL AND CO.

SEELEY AND CO : CHAS. SCRIBNER'S SONS

AND SOLD BY CHATTO AND WINDUS

PICCADILLY : LONDON

18 94

sS^^^ i^O

"&) 5

TO. MY WIFE

I DEDICATE THIS

EDINBURGH EDITION

OF MY WORKS

R. L. S.

PICTURESQUE
NOTES ON

EDINBURGH

MEMORIES AND
PORTRAITS

CONTENTS

PAGE

PICTURESQUE NOTES ON EDINBURGH . 3

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS ... 83
ADDITIONAL MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 285

PICTURESQUE

NOTES ON

EDINBURGH

First Collected Edition : Seeley and Co. ,

London, 1879.

Originally published in the ' Portfolio '

{Seeley and Co.), 1878, with etchings by

A. Brunet-Debaines after Sam Bough

and W. E. Lockhart.

CONTENTS

I.

Introductory

PAGE

3

II.

Old Town : The Lands .

11

III.

The ParUament Close

20

IV.

Legends ....

27

V.

Greyfriars

35

VI.

New Town : Town and Country

44.

VII.

The Villa Quarters

52

l^III.

The Calton Hill .

54

IX.

Winter and New Year .

62

X.

To the Pentland Hills .

71

I

INTRODUCTORY

The ancient and famous metropolis of the North sits
overlooking a windy estuary from the slope and
summit of three hills. No situation could be more
commanding for the head city of a kingdom ; none
better chosen for noble prospects. From her tall
precipice and terraced gardens she looks far and wide
on the sea and broad champaigns. To the east you
may catch at sunset the spark of the May light-
house, where the Firth expands into the German
Ocean ; and away to the west, over all the carse of
Stirling you can see the first snows upon Ben
Ledi.

But Edinburgh pays cruelly for her high seat in
one of the vilest climates under heaven. She is
liable to be beaten upon by all the winds that blow,
to be drenched with rain, to be buried in cold sea
fogs out of the east, and powdered with the snow as
it comes flying southward from the Highland hills.
The weather is raw and boisterous in winter, shifty
and ungenial in summer, and a downright meteoro-
logical purgatory in the spring. The dehcate die

3

NOTES ON EDINBURGH

early, and I, as a survivor, among bleak winds and
plumping rain, have been sometimes tempted to envy
them their fate. For all w^ho love shelter and
the blessings of the sun, who hate dark weather
and perpetual tilting against squalls, there could
scarcely be found a more unhomely and harassing
place of residence. Many such aspire angrily after
that Somewhere-else of the imagination, where all
troubles are supposed to end. They lean over the
great bridge which joins the New Town with the
Old — that windiest spot, or high altar, in this north-
ern temple of the winds — and watch the trains
smoking out from under them and vanishing into the
tunnel on a voyage to brighter skies. Happy the
passengers who shake off the dust of Edinburgh,
and have heard for the last time the cry of the east
wind among her chimney -tops ! And yet the place
establishes an interest in people's hearts ; go where
they will, they find no city of the same distinction ;
go where they will, they take a pride in their old
home.

Venice, it has been said, differs from all other cities
in the sentiment which she inspires. The rest may
have admirers ; she only, a famous fair one, counts
lovers in her train. And indeed, even by her kindest
friends, Edinburgh is not considered in a similar
sense. These like her for many reasons, not any
one of which is satisfactory in itself They like her
whimsically, if you will, and somewhat as a virtuoso
dotes upon his cabinet. Her attraction is romantic
in the narrowest meaning of the term. Beautiful as
4

INTRODUCTORY

she is, she is not so much beautiful as interesting.
She is pre-eminently Gothic, and all the more so
since she has set herself off with some Greek airs,
and erected classic temples on her crags. In a word,
and above all, she is a curiosity. The Palace of
Holyrood has been left aside in the growth of Edin-
burgh, and stands grey and silent in a workman's
quarter and among breweries and gas-works. It is
a house of many memories. Great people of yore,
Idngs and queens, buffoons and grave ambassadors,
played their stately farce for centuries in Holyrood.
Wars have been plotted, dancing has lasted deep
into the night, murder has been done in its chambers.
There Prince Charlie held his phantom levees, and
in a very gallant manner represented a fallen dynasty
for some hours. Now, all these things of clay are
mingled with the dust, the king's crown itself is
shown for sixpence to the vulgar ; but the stone
palace has outlived these changes. For fifty weeks
together, it is no more than a show for tourists and
a museum of old furniture ; but on the fifty-first,
behold the palace reawakened and mimicking its
past. The Lord Commissioner, a kind of stage
sovereign, sits among stage courtiers ; a coach and
six and clattering escort come and go before the gate;
at night, the windows are lighted up, and its near
neighbours, the workmen, may dance in their own
houses to the palace music. And in this the palace
is typical. There is a spark among the embers ;
from time to time the old volcano smokes. Edin-
burgh has but partly abdicated, and still wears, in

5

NOTES ON EDINBUUGH

parody, her metropolitan trappings. Half a capital
and half a country town, the whole city leads a
double existence ; it has long trances of the one and
flashes of the other ; like the king of the Black Isles,
it is half alive and half a monumental marble. There
are armed men and cannon in the citadel overhead ;
you may see the troops marshalled on the high
parade ; and at night after the early winter evenfall,
and in the morning before the laggard winter dawn,
the wind carries abroad over Edinburgh the sound of
drums and bugles. Grave judges sit bewigged in
what was once the scene of imperial deliberations.
Close by in the High Street perhaps the trumpets
may sound about the stroke of noon ; and you see a
troop of citizens in tawdry masquerade ; tabard above,
heather-mixture trouser below, and the men them-
selves trudging in the mud among unsympathetic
bystanders. The grooms of a well-appointed circus
tread the streets with a better presence. And yet
these are the Heralds and Pursuivants of Scotland,
who are about to proclaim a new law of the United
Kingdom before two score boys, and thieves, and
hackney-coachmen. Meanwhile, every hour the bell
of the University rings out over the hum of the
streets, and every hour a double tide of students,
coming and going, fills the deep archways. And
lastly, one night in the spring-time — or say one
morning rather, at the peep of day — late folk may
hear the voices of many men singing a psalm in
unison from a church on one side of the old
High Street ; and a little after, or perhaps a little
6

INTRODUCTORY

before, the sound of many men singing a psalm in
unison from another church on the opposite side of
the way. There will be something in the words
about the dew of Hermon, and how goodly it is to
see brethren dwelling together in unity. And the
late folk will tell themselves that all this singing
denotes the conclusion of two yearly ecclesiastical
parliaments — the parliaments of Churches which are
brothers in many admirable virtues, but not specially
like brothers in this particular of a tolerant and
peaceful life.

Again, meditative people will find a charm in a
certain consonancy between the aspect of the city
and its odd and stirring history. Few places, if any,
offer a more barbaric display of contrasts to the eye.
In the very midst stands one of the most satisfactory
crags in nature — a Bass Rock upon dry land, rooted
in a garden, shaken by passing trains, carrying a
crown of battlements and turrets, and describing its
warlike shadow over the liveliest and brightest
thoroughfare of the new town. From their smoky
beehives, ten stories high, the unwashed look down
upon the open squares and gardens of the wealthy ;
and gay people sunning themselves along Princes
Street, with its mile of commercial palaces all be-
flagged upon some great occasion, see, across a
gardened valley set with statues, where the washings
of the old town flutter in the breeze at its high win-
dows. And then, upon all sides, what a clashing of
architecture ! In this one valley, where the life of
the town goes most busily forward, there may be

7

NOTES ON EDINBURGH

seen, shown one above and behind another by the
accidents of the ground, buildings in ahnost every
style upon the globe. Egyptian and Greek temples,
Venetian palaces and Gothic spires, are huddled one
over another in a most admired disorder ; while,
above all, the brute mass of the Castle and the sum-
mit of Arthur's Seat look down upon these imitations
with a becoming dignity, as the works of Nature may
look down upon the monuments of Art. But Nature
is a more indiscriminate patroness than we imagine,
and in no way frightened of a strong effect. The
birds roost as willingly among the Corinthian capitals
as in the crannies of the crag ; the same atmosphere
and daylight clothe the eternal rock and yesterday's
imitation portico ; and as the soft northern sunshine
throws out everything into a glorified distinctness —
or easterly mists, coming up with the blue evening,
fuse all these incongruous features into one, and the
lamps begin to glitter along the street, and faint
lights to burn in the high windows across the
valley — the feeling grows upon you that this also is
a piece of nature in the most intimate sense ; that
this profusion of eccentricities, this dream in masonry
and living rock, is not a drop-scene in a theatre, but
a city in the world of every-day reality, connected
by railway and telegraph-wire with all the capitals
of Europe, and inhabited by citizens of the familiar
type, who keep ledgers, and attend church, and have
sold their immortal portion to a daily paper. By
all the canons of romance, the place demands to
be half deserted and leaning towards decay ; birds
8

INTRODUCTORY

we might admit in profusion, the play of the sun
and winds, and a few gipsies encamped in the chief
thoroughfare ; but these citizens, with their cabs and
tramways, their trains and posters, are altogether out
of key. Chartered tourists, they make free with
historic localities, and rear their young among the
most picturesque sites with a grand human indiffer-
ence. To see them thronging by, in their neat
clothes and conscious moral rectitude, and with a
little air of possession that verges on the absurd, is
not the least striking feature of the place.^

And the story of the town is as eccentric as its
appearance. For centuries it was a capital thatched
with heather, and more than once, in the evil days
of English invasion, it has gone up in flame to
heaven, a beacon to ships at sea. It was the joust-
ing-ground of jealous nobles, not only on Greenside
or by the King's Stables, where set tournaments
were fought to the sound of trumpets and under the

^ These sentences have, I hear, given offence in my native town, and a
proportionable pleasure to our rivals of Glasgow. I confess the news
caused me both pain and merriment. May I remark, as a balm for
wounded fellow-townsmen, that there is nothing deadly in my accusations.''
Small blame to them if they keep ledgers : 'tis an excellent business
habit. Church -going is not, that ever I heard, a subject of reproach ;
decency of linen is a mark of prosperous aifairs, and conscious moral
rectitude one of the tokens of good living. It is not their fault if the
city calls for something more specious by way of inhabitants. A man in
a frock-coat looks out of place upon an Alp or Pyramid, although he has
the virtues of a Peabody and the talents of a Bentham. And let them
console themselves — they do as well as anybody else ; the population of
(let us say) Chicago would cut quite as rueful a figure on the same
romantic stage. To the Glasgow people I would say only one word, but
that is of gold : / have not yet written a hook about Glasgow.

9

NOTES ON EDINBURGH

authority of the royal presence, but in every alley
where there was room to cross swords, and in the
main street, where popular tumult under the Blue
Blanket alternated with the brawls of outlandish
clansmen and retainers. Down in the palace John
Knox reproved his queen in the accents of modern
democracy. In the town, in one of those little shops
plastered like so many swallows' nests among the
buttresses of the old Cathedral, that familiar autocrat,
James vi., would gladly share a bottle of wine with
George Heriot the goldsmith. Up on the Pent-
land Hills, that so quietly look down on the Castle
with the city lying in waves around it, those mad
and dismal fanatics, the Sweet Singers, haggard from
long exposure on the moors, sat day and night with
' tearful psalms ' to see Edinburgh consumed with
fire from heaven, like another Sodom or Gomorrah.
There, in the Grassmarket, stiff-necked, covenanting
heroes offered up the often unnecessary, but not less
honourable, sacrifice of their lives, and bade eloquent
farewell to sun, moon, and stars, and earthly friend-
ships, or died silent to the roll of drums. Down by
yon outlet rode Grahame of Claverhouse and his
thirty dragoons, with the town beating to arms
behind their horses' tails — a sorry handful thus riding
for their lives, but with a man at the head who was
to return in a different temper, make a dash that
staggered Scotland to the heart, and die happily in
the thick of fight. There Aikenhead was hanged for
a piece of boyish incredulity ; there, a few years
afterwards, David Hume ruined Philosophy and

lO

OLD TOWN: THE LANDS

Faith, an undisturbed and well-reputed citizen ; and
thither, in yet a few years more, Burns came from
the plough-tail, as to an academy of gilt unbelief
and artificial letters. There, when the great exodus
was made across the valley, and the New Town
began to spread abroad its draughty parallelograms
and rear its long frontage on the opposing hill, there
was such a flitting, such a change of domicile and
dweller, as was never excelled in the history of
cities : the cobbler succeeded the earl ; the beggar
ensconced himself by the judge's chimney ; what
had been a palace was used as a pauper refuge ; and
great mansions were so parcelled out among the
least and lowest in society, that the hearthstone of
the old proprietor was thought large enough to be
partitioned off into a bedroom by the new.

II

OLD TOWN: THE LANDS

The Old Town, it is pretended, is the chief charac-
teristic, and, from a picturesque point of view, the
liver-wing of Edinburgh. It is one of the most
common forms of depreciation to throw cold water
on the whole by adroit over-commendation of a part,
since everything worth judging, whether it be a man,
a work of art, or only a fine city, must be judged
upon its merits as a whole. The Old Town depends
for much of its effect on the new quarters that lie

II

NOTES ON EDINBURGH

around it, on the sufficiency of its situation, and on
the hills that back it up. If you were to set it some-
where else by itself, it would look remarkably like
Stirling in a bolder and loftier edition. The point
is to see this embellished Stirling planted in the
midst of a large, active, and fantastic modern city ;
for there the two react in a picturesque sense, and
the one is the making of the other.

The Old Town occupies a slophig ridge or tail of
diluvial matter, protected, in some subsidence of the
waters, by the Castle cliifs which fortify it to the
west. On the one side of it and the other the new
towns of the south and of the north occupy their
lower, broader, and more gentle hill-tops. Thus, the
quarter of the Castle overtops the whole city and
keeps an open view to sea and land. It dominates
for miles on every side ; and people on the decks of
ships, or ploughing in quiet country places over in
Fife, can see the banner on the Castle battlements,
and the smoke of the Old Town blowing abroad
over the subjacent country. A city that is set upon
a hill. It was, I suppose, from this distant aspect
that she got her nickname of Auld Reekie. Per-
haps it was given her by people who had never
crossed her doors : day after day, from their various
rustic Pisgahs, they had seen the pile of building on
the hill-top, and the long plume of smoke over the
plain ; so it appeared to them ; so it had appeared to
their fathers tilling the same field ; and as that was
all they knew of the place, it could be all expressed
in these two words.

12

OLD TOWN: THE LANDS

Indeed, even on a nearer view, the Old Town is
properly smoked ; and though it is well washed with
rain all the year round, it has a grim and sooty aspect
among its younger suburbs. It grew, under the law
that regulates the growth of walled cities in pre-
carious situations, not in extent, but in height and
density. Public buildings were forced, wherever
there was room for them, into the midst of thorough-
fares ; thoroughfares were diminished into lanes ;
houses sprang up story after story, neighbour mount-
ing upon neighbour's shoulder, as in some Black
Hole of Calcutta, until the population slept fourteen
or fifteen deep in a vertical direction. The tallest of
these lands, as they are locally termed, have long
since been burnt out ; but to this day it is not un-
common to see eight or ten windows at a flight;
and the cliff of building which hangs imminent over
Waverley Bridge would still put many natural pre-
cipices to shame. The cellars are already high above
the gazer's head, planted on the steep hill-side; as
for the garret, all the furniture may be in the pawn-
shop, but it commands a famous prospect to the
Highland hills. The poor man may roost up there
in the centre of Edinburgh, and yet have a peep of
the green country from his window ; he shall see the
quarters of the well-to-do fathoms underneath, with
their broad squares and gardens ; he shall have
nothing overhead but a few spires, the stone top-
gallants of the city ; and perhaps the wind may reach
him with a rustic pureness, and bring a smack of the
sea, or of flowering lilacs in the spring.

13

NOTES ON EDINBURGH

It is almost the correct literary sentiment to
deplore the revolutionary improvements of Mr.
Chambers and his following. It is easy to be a conser-
vator of the discomforts of others ; indeed, it is only
our good quaUties we find it irksome to conserve.
Assuredly, in driving streets through the black
labyrinth, a few curious old corners have been swept
away, and some associations turned out of house and
home. But what slices of sunlight, what breaths of
clean air, have been let in ! And what a picturesque
world remains untouched ! You go under dark
arches, and down dark stairs and alleys. The way
is so narrow that you can lay a hand on either wall ;
so steep that, in greasy winter weather, the pave-
ment is almost as treacherous as ice. Washing
dangles above washing from the windows ; the
houses bulge outwards upon flimsy brackets ; yovi
see a bit of sculpture in a dark corner ; at the top of
all, a gable and a few crowsteps are printed on the
sky. Here, you come into a court where the
children are at play and the grown people sit upon
their doorsteps, and perhaps a church spire shows
itself above the roofs. Here, in the narrowest of the
entry, you find a great old mansion still erect, with
some insignia of its former state — some scutcheon,
some holy or courageous motto, on the lintel. The
local antiquary points out where famous and well-
born people had their lodging ; and as you look up,
out pops the head of a slatternly woman from the
countess's window. The Bedouins camp within
Pharaoh's palace walls, and the old war-ship is given
14

OLD TOWN: THE LANDS

over to the rats. We are already a far way from the
days when powdered heads were plentiful in these
alleys, with jolly, port- wine faces underneath. Even
in the chief thoroughfares Irish washings flutter at
the windows, and the pavements are encumbered
with loiterers.

These loiterers are a true character of the scene.
Some shrewd Scotch workmen may have paused on
their way to a job, debating Church affairs and
politics with their tools upon their arm. But the
most part are of a different order — skulking jail-birds ;
unkempt, bare-foot children ; big-mouthed, robust
women, in a sort of uniform of striped flannel petti-
coat and short tartan shawl : among these, a few
supervising constables and a dismal sprinkling of
mutineers and broken men from higher ranks in
society, with some mark of better days upon them,
like a brand. In a place no larger than Edinburgh,
and where the traffic is mostly centred in five or six
chief streets, the same face comes often under the
notice of an idle stroller. In fact, from this point of
view, Edinburgh is not so much a small city as the
largest of small towns. It is scarce possible to avoid
observing your neighbours ; and I never yet heard of
any one who tried. It has been my fortune, in this
anonymous accidental way, to watch more than one
of these downward travellers for some stages on the
road to ruin. One man must have been upwards of
sixty before I first observed him, and he made then a
decent, personable figure in broadcloth of the best.
For three years he kept falling — grease coming and

15

NOTES ON EDINBURGH

buttons going from the square-skirted coat, the face
puffing and pimpling, the shoulders growing bowed,
the hair falling scant and grey upon his head ; and
the last that ever I saw of him, he was standing at
the mouth of an entry with several men in moleskin,
three parts drunk, and his old black raiment daubed
with mud. I fancy that I still can hear him laugh.
There was something heart-breaking in this gradual
declension at so advanced an age ; you would have
thought a man of sixty out of the reach of these
calamities; you would have thought that he was
niched by that time into a safe place in life, whence
he could pass quietly and honourably into the
grave.

One of the earliest marks of these degringolades
is, that the victim begins to disappear from the New
Town thoroughfares, and takes to the High Street,
like a wounded animal to the woods. And such an
one is the type of the quarter. It also has fallen
socially. A scutcheon over the door somewhat jars
in sentiment where there is a washing at every
window. The old man, when I saw him last, wore
the coat in which he had played the gentleman three
years before ; and that was just what gave him so
pre-eminent an air of wretchedness.

It is true that the over-population was at least as
dense in the epoch of lords and ladies, and that
now-a-days some customs which made Edinburgh
notorious of yore have been fortunately pretermitted.
But an aggregation of comfort is not distasteful like
an aggregation of the reverse. Nobody cares how
i6

OLD TOWN: THE LANDS

many lords and ladies, and divines and lawyers, may
have been crowded into these houses in the past —
perhaps the more the merrier. The glasses clink
around the china punch-bowl, some one touches the
virginals, there are peacocks' feathers on the chimney,
and the tapers burn clear and pale in the red firelight.
That is not an ugly picture in itself, nor will it
become ugly upon repetition. All the better if the
like were going on in every second room ; the land
would only look the more inviting. Times are
changed. In one house, perhaps, two score families
herd together ; and, perhaps, not one of them is
wholly out of the reach of want. The great hotel is
given over to discomfort from the foundation to the
chimney-tops ; everywhere a pinching, narrow habit,
scanty meals, and an air of sluttishness and dirt. In
the first room there is a birth, in another a death, in
a third a sordid drinking-bout, and the detective and
the Bible-reader cross upon the stairs. High words
are audible from dwelling to dwelling, and children
have a strange experience from the first ; only a
robust soul, you would think, could grow up in such
conditions without hurt. And even if God tempers
his dispensations to the young, and all the iU does
not arise that our apprehensions may forecast, the
sight of such a way of living is disquieting to people
who are more happily circumstanced. Social in-
equahty is nowhere more ostentatious than at
Edinburgh. I have mentioned already how, to
the stroller along Princes Street, the High Street
callously exhibits its back garrets. It is true, there

B 17

NOTES ON EDINBURGH

is a garden between. And although nothing could
be more glaring by way of contrast, sometimes the
opposition is more immediate ; sometimes the thing
lies in a nutshell, and tiiere is not so much as a blade
of grass between the rich and poor. To look over
the South Bridge and see the Cowgate below full of
crying hawkers, is to view one rank of society from
another in the twinkling of an eye.

One night I went along the Cowgate after every
one was abed but the policeman, and stopped by
hazard before a tall land. The moon touched upon
its chimneys, and shone blankly on the upper win-
dows ; there was no light anywhere in the great bulk
of building ; but as I stood there it seemed to me
that I could hear quite a body of quiet sounds from
the interior ; doubtless there were many clocks
ticking, and people snoring on their backs. And
thus, as I fancied, the dense life within made itself
faintly audible in my ears, family after family con-
tributing its quota to the general hum, and the whole
pile beating in tune to its time-pieces, like a great
disordered heart. Perhaps it was little more than a
fancy altogether, but it was strangely impressive at
the time, and gave me an imaginative measure of
the disproportion between the quantity of living
flesh and the trifling walls that separated and con-
tained it.

There was nothing fanciful, at least, but every

circumstance of terror and reality, in the fall of the

land in the High Street. The building had grown

rotten to the core ; the entry underneath had sud-

i8

OLD TOWN: THE LANDS

denly closed up so that the scavenger's barrow could
not pass ; cracks and reverberations sounded through
the house at night ; the inhabitants of the huge old
human bee-hive discussed their peril when they
encountered on the stair ; some had even left their
dwellings in a panic of fear, and returned to them
again in a fit of economy or self-respect ; when, in
the black hours of a Sunday morning, the whole
structure ran together with a hideous uproar and
tumbled story upon story to the ground. The phy-
sical shock was felt far and near ; and the moral
shock travelled with the morning milkmaid into all
the suburbs. The church-bells never sounded more
dismally over Edinburgh than that grey forenoon.
Death had made a brave harvest ; and, like Samson,
by pulling down one roof destroyed many a home.
None who saw it can have forgotten the aspect of
the gable : here it was plastered, there papered,
according to the rooms ; here the kettle still stood
on the hob, high overhead ; and there a cheap picture
of the Queen was pasted over the chimney. So, by
this disaster, you had a glimpse into the life of thirty
families, all suddenly cut off from the revolving
years. The land had fallen ; and with the land
how much ! Far in the country, people saw a gap
in the city ranks, and the sun looked through be-
tween the chimneys in an unwonted place. And
all over the world, in London, in Canada, in New
Zealand, fancy what a multitude of people could
exclaim with truth : ^ The house that I was born in

fell last night !'

19

NOTES ON EDINBURGH

III

THE PARLIAMENT CLOSE

Time has wrought its changes most notably around
the precinct of St. Giles's Church. The church itself,
if it were not for the spire, would be unrecognisable ;
the Krames are all gone, not a shop is left to shelter
in its buttresses ; and zealous magistrates and a mis-
guided architect have shorn the design of manhood,
and left it poor, naked, and pitifully pretentious. As
St. Giles's must have had in former days a rich and
quaint appearance now forgotten, so the neighbour-
hood was bustling, sunless, and romantic. It was
here that the town was most overbuilt ; but the
overbuilding has been all rooted out, and not only a
free fairway left along the High Street, with an open
space on either side of the church, but a great port-
hole, knocked in the main line of the lands, gives an
outlook to the north and the New Town.

There is a silly story of a subterranean passage
between the Castle and Holyrood, and a bold High-
land piper who volunteered to explore its windings.
He made his entrance by the upper end, playing a
strathspey ; the curious footed it after him down
the street, following his descent by the sound of the
chanter from below ; until all of a sudden, about the
level of St. Giles's, the music came abruptly to an
end, and the people in the street stood at fault with
hands uplifted. Whether he was choked with gases,
20

THE PARLIAMENT CLOSE

or perished in a quag, or was removed bodily by the
Evil One, remains a point of doubt ; but the piper
has never again been seen or heard of from that day
to this. Perhaps he wandered down into the land of
Thomas the Rhymer, and some day, when it is least
expected, may take a thought to revisit the sunlit
upper world. That will be a strange moment for the
cabmen on the stance beside St. Giles's, when they
hear the drone of his pipes reascending from the
bowels of the earth below their horses' feet.

But it is not only pipers who have vanished, many
a solid bidk of masonry has been hkewise spirited into
the air. Here, for example, is the shape of a heart
let into the causeway. This was tl>e site of the Tol-
booth, the Heart of Midlothian, a place old in story
and name-father to a noble book. The walls are now
down in the dust ; there is no more squalor carceris
for merry debtors, no more cage for the old, acknow-
ledged prison-breaker; but the sun and the wind
play freely over the foundations of the jail. Nor is
this the only memorial that the pavement keeps of
former days. The ancient burying-ground of Edin-
burgh lay behind St. Giles's Church, running down-
hill to the Cowgate and covering the site of the
present Parliament House. It has disappeared as
utterly as the prison or the Luckenbooths ; and for
those ignorant of its history, I know only one token
that remains. In the Parliament Close, trodden
daily underfoot by advocates, two letters and a date
mark the resting-place of the man who made Scot-
land over again in his own image, the indefatigable,

21

NOTES ON EDINBURGH

undissuadable John Knox. He sleeps within call of
the church that so often echoed to his preaching.

Hard by the reformer, a bandy-legged and gar-
landed Charles Second, made of lead, bestrides a tun-
bellied charger. The King has his back turned, and,
as you look, seems to be trotting clumsily away from
such a dangerous neighbour. Often, for hours to-
gether, these two will be alone in the Close, for it
lies out of the way of all but legal traffic. On one
side the south wall of the church, on the other the
arcades of the Parliament House, enclose this irregular
bight of causeway and describe their shadows on it
in the sun. At either end, from round St. Giles's
buttresses, you command a look into the High Street
with its motley passengers ; but the stream goes by,
east and west, and leaves the Parliament Close to
Charles the Second and the birds. Once in a while,
a patient crowd may be seen loitering there all day,
some eating fruit, some reading a newspaper ; and to
judge by their quiet demeanour, you would think
they were waiting for a distribution of soup-tickets.
The fact is far otherwise ; within in the Justiciary
Court a man is upon trial for his life, and these are
some of the curious for whom the gallery was found
too narrow. Towards afternoon, if the prisoner is
vmpopular, there will be a round of hisses when he is
brought forth. Once in a while, too, an advocate in
wig and gown, hand upon mouth, full of pregnant
nods, sweeps to and fro in the arcade listening to an
agent ; and at certain regular hours a whole tide of
lawyers hurries across the space.

22

THE PARLIAMENT CLOSE

The Parliament Close has been the scene of mark-
ing incidents in Scottish history. Thus, when the
Bishops were ejected from the Convention in 1688,
'all fourteen of them gathered together with pale
faces and stood in a cloud in the Parliament Close : '
poor episcopal personages who were done with fair
weather for life ! Some of the west-country Socie-
tarians standing by, who would have ' rejoiced more
than in great sums ' to be at their hanging, hustled
them so rudely that they knocked their heads to-
gether. It was not magnanimous behaviour to
dethroned enemies ; but one, at least, of the Socie-
tarians had groaned in the boots, and they had all
seen their dear friends upon the scaffold. Again, at
the ' woeful Union,' it was here that people crowded
to escort their favourite from the last of Scottish
parliaments: people flushed with nationality, as
Boswell would have said, ready for riotous acts, and
fresh from throwing stones at the author of Robin-
S071 Crmoe as he looked out of window.

One of the pious in the seventeenth century, going
to pass his trials (examinations as we now say) for
the Scottish Bar, beheld the Parliament Close open
and had a vision of the mouth of Hell. This, and
small wonder, was the means of his conversion. Nor
was the vision unsuitable to the locality ; for after
an hospital, what uglier piece is there in civilisation
than a court of law? Hither come envy, malice,
and all uncharitableness to wrestle it out in public
tourney ; crimes, broken fortunes, severed households,
the knave and his victim, gravitate to this low build-

23

NOTES ON EDINBURGH

ing with the arcade. To how many has not St.
Giles's bell told the first hour after ruin ? I think I
see them pause to count the strokes, and wander on
again into the moving High Street, stunned and
sick at heart.

A pair of swing doors gives admittance to a hall
with a carved roof, hung with legal portraits, adorned
with legal statuary, lighted by windows of painted
glass, and warmed by three vast fires. This is the
Salle des pas perdus of the Scottish Bar. Here, by
a ferocious custom, idle youths must promenade from
ten till two. From end to end, singly or in pairs
or trios, the gowns and wigs go back and forward.
Through a hum of talk and footfalls, the piphig tones
of a Macer announce a fresh cause and call upon the
names of those concerned. Intelligent men have
been walking here daily for ten or twenty years
without a rag of business or a shilling of reward.
In process of time, they may perhaps be made the
Sheriff-Substitute and Fountain of Justice at Lerwick
or Tobermory. There is nothing required, you
would say, but a little patience and a taste for exer-
cise and bad air. To breathe dust and bombazine,
to feed the mind on cackhng gossip, to hear three
parts of a case and drink a glass of sherry, to long
with indescribable longings for the hour when a man
may slip out of his travesty and devote himself to
golf for the rest of the afternoon, and to do this day
by day and year after year, may seem so small a
thing to the inexperienced ! But those who have
made the experiment are of a different way of
24

THE PARLIAMENT CLOSE

thinking, and count it the most arduous form of
idleness.

More swing doors open into pigeon-holes where
Judges of the First Appeal sit singly, and halls of
audience where the supreme Lords sit by three or
four. Here, you may see Scott's place within the
bar, where he wrote many a page of Waverley novels
to the drone of judicial proceeding. You will hear
a good deal of shrewdness, and, as their Lordships do
not altogether disdain pleasantry, a fair proportion
of dry fun. The broadest of broad Scotch is now
banished from the bench ; but the courts still retain
a certain national flavour. We have a solemn enjoy-
able way of lingering on a case. We treat law as
a fine art, and relish and digest a good distinction.
There is no hurry : point after point must be rightly
examined and reduced to principle ; judge after
judge must utter forth his obite?^ dicta to delighted
brethren.

Besides the courts, there are installed under the
same roof no less than three libraries : two of no
mean order ; confused and semi-subterranean, full of
stairs and galleries ; where you may see the most
studious-looking wigs fishing out novels by lantern
light, in the very place where the old Privy Council
tortured Covenanters. As the Parliament House is
built upon a slope, although it presents only one
story to the north, it measures half-a-dozen at least
upon the south ; and range after range of vaults
extend below the libraries. Few places are more
characteristic of this hilly capital. You descend one

25

NOTES ON EDINBURGH

stone stair after another, and wander, by the flicker
of a match, in a labyrinth of stone cellars. Now,
you pass below the Outer Hall and hear overhead,
brisk but ghostly, the interminable pattering of legal
feet. Now, you come upon a strong door with a
wicket : on the other side are the cells of the police
office and the trap-stair that gives admittance to the
dock in the Justiciary Court. Many a foot that has
gone up there lightly enough, has been dead-heavy
in the descent. Many a man's life has been argued
away from him during long hours in the court above.
But just now that tragic stage is empty and silent
like a church on a week-day, with the bench all
sheeted up and nothing moving but the sunbeams
on the wall. A little farther and you strike upon
a room, not empty like the rest, but crowded with
productions from bygone criminal cases : a grim
lumber : lethal weapons, poisoned organs in a jar,
a door with a shot hole through the panel, behind
which a man fell dead. I cannot fancy why they
should preserve them, unless it were against the
Judgment Day. At length, as you continue to
descend, you see a peep of yellow gaslight and hear
a jostling, whispering noise ahead ; next moment you
turn a corner, and there, in a whitewashed passage,
is a machinery belt industriously turning on its
wheels. You would think the engine had grown
there of its own accord, like a cellar fungus, and
would soon spin itself out and fill the vaults from
end to end with its mysterious labours. In truth, it
is only some gear of the steam ventilator ; and you
26

LEGENDS

will find the engineers at hand, and may step out of
their door into the sunlight. For all this while, you
have not been descending towards the earth's centre,
but only to the bottom of the hill and the founda-
tions of the Parliament House ; low down, to be
sure, but still under the open heaven and in a field
of grass. The daylight shines garishly on the back
windows of the Irish quarter; on broken shutters,
wrj gables, old palsied houses on the brink of ruin,
a crumbhng human pig-sty fit for human pigs.
There are few signs of life, besides a scanty washing
or a face at a window : the dwellers are abroad, but
they will return at night and stagger to their pallets.

IV

LEGENDS

The character of a place is often most perfectly
expressed in its associations. An event strikes root
and grows into a legend, when it has happened
amongst congenial surroundings. Ugly actions,
above all in ugly places, have the true romantic
quality, and become an undying property of their
scene. To a man hke Scott, the different appear-
ances of nature seemed each to contain its own
legend ready made, which it was his to call forth : in
such or such a place, only such or such events ought
with propriety to happen ; and in this spirit he made
the Lady of the Lake for Ben Venue, the Heai^t of

27

NOTES ON EDINBURGH

Midlothiaii for Edinburgh, and the Pirate, so in-
differently written but so romantically conceived, for
the desolate islands and roaring tideways of the
North. The common run of mankind have, from
generation to generation, an instinct almost as deli-
cate as that of Scott ; but where he created new
things, they only forget what is unsuitable among
the old ; and by svu'vival of the fittest, a body of
tradition becomes a work of art. So, in the low
dens and high-flying garrets of Edinburgh, people
may go back upon dark passages in the town's
adventures, and chill their marrow with winter's tales
about the fire : tales that are singularly apposite and
characteristic, not only of the old life, but of the
very constitution of built nature in that part, and
singularly well qualified to add horror to horror, when
the wind pipes around the tall lands, and hoots adown
arched passages, and the far-spread wilderness of city
lamps keeps quavering and flaring in the gusts.

Here, it is the tale of Begbie the bank-porter,
stricken to the heart at a blow and left in his blood
within a step or two of the crowded High Street.
There, people hush their voices over Burke and
Hare ; over drugs and violated graves, and the
resurrection-men smothering their victims with their
knees. Here, again, the fame of Deacon Brodie is
kept piously fresh. A great man in his day was the
Deacon ; well seen in good society, crafty with his
hands as a cabinet-maker, and one who could sing
a song with taste. Many a citizen was proud to
welcome the Deacon to supper, and dismissed him
28

LEGENDS

with regret at a timeous hour, who would have been
vastly disconcerted had he known how soon, and in
what guise, his visitor returned. Many stories are
told of this redoubtable Edinburgh burglar, but the
one I have in my mind most vividly gives the key of
all the rest. A friend of Brodie's, nested some way
towards heaven in one of these great lands, had told
him of a projected visit to the country, and after-
wards, detained by some affairs, put it off and stayed
the night in town. The good man had lain some
time awake ; it was far on in the small hours by the
Tron bell ; when suddenly there came a creak, a jar,
a faint light. Softly he clambered out of bed and
up to a false window which looked upon another
room, and there, by the glimmer of a thieves' lantern,
was his good friend the Deacon in a mask. It is
characteristic of the town and the town's manners
that this little episode should have been quietly tided
over, and quite a good time elapsed before a great
robbery, an escape, a Bow Street runner, a cock-fight,
an apprehension in a cupboard in Amsterdam, and
a last step into the air off his own greatly improved
gallows drop, brought the career of Deacon WilHam
Brodie to an end. But still, by the mind's eye, he
may be seen, a man harassed below a mountain of
duplicity, slinking from a magistrate's supper-room
to a thieves' ken, and pickeering among the closes
by the flicker of a dark lamp.

Or where the Deacon is out of favour, perhaps
some memory lingers of the great plagues, and of
fatal houses still unsafe to enter within the memory

29

NOTES ON EDINBURGH

of man. For in time of pestilence the discipline had
been sharp and sudden, and what we now call
' stamping out contagion ' was carried on with deadly
rigour. The officials, in their gowns of grey, with
a white St. Andrew's cross on back and breast, and
white cloth carried before them on a staff, perambu-
lated the city, adding the terror of man's justice to
the fear of God's visitation. The dead they buried
on the Borough Muir ; the living who had concealed
the sickness were drowned, if they were women, in
the Quarry Holes, and if they were men, were
hanged and gibbeted at their own doors; and
wherever the evil had passed, furniture was destroyed
and houses closed. And the most bogeyish part of
the story is about such houses. Two generations
back they still stood dark and empty ; people
avoided them as they passed by ; the boldest school-
boy only shouted through the key-hole and made
off; for within, it was supposed, the plague lay
ambushed like a basilisk, ready to flow forth and
spread blain and pustule through the city. What a
terrible next-door neighbour for superstitious citizens !
A rat scampering within would send a shudder
through the stoutest heart. Here, if you like, was a
sanitary parable, addressed by oiu* uncleanly fore-
fathers to their own neglect.

And then we have Major Weir ; for although even
his house is now demolished, old Edinburgh cannot
clear herself of his unholy memory. He and his
sister lived together in an odour of sour piety. She
was a marvellous spinster ; he had a rare gift of

30

LEGENDS

supplication, and was known among devout admirers
by the name of Angelical Thomas. ' He was a tall,
black man, and ordinarily looked down to the ground ;
a grim countenance, and a big nose. His garb was
still a cloak, and somewhat dark, and he never went
without his staff.' How it came about that Angelical
Thomas was burned in company with his staff, and
his sister in gentler manner hanged, and whether
these two were simply religious maniacs of the more
furious order, or had real as well as imaginary sins
upon their old-world shoulders, are points happily
beyond the reach of our intention. At least, it is
suitable enough that out of this superstitious city
some such example should have been put forth : the
outcome and fine flower of dark and vehement
rehgion. And at least the facts struck the public
fancy and brought forth a remarkable family of
myths. It would appear that the Major's staff went
upon his errands, and even ran before him with a
lantern on dark nights. Gigantic females, 'sten-
toriously laughing and gaping with tehees of
laughter ' at unseasonable hours of night and morning,
haunted the purlieus of his abode. His house fell
under such a load of infamy that no one dared to
sleep in it, until municipal improvement levelled the
structure with the groimd. And my father has often
been told in the nursery how the devil's coach, drawn
by six coal-black horses with fiery eyes, would drive
at night into the West Bow, and belated people
might see the dead Major through the glasses.

Another leojend is that of the two maiden sisters.

31

NOTES ON EDINBURGH

A legend I am afraid it may be, in the most
discreditable meaning of the term ; or perhaps some-
thing worse — a mere yesterday's fiction. But it is a
story of some vitality, and is worthy of a place in the
Edinburgh calendar. This pair inhabited a single
room ; from the facts, it must have been double-
bedded ; and it may have been of some dimensions ;
but when all is said, it was a single room. Here
our two spinsters fell out — on some point of con-
troversial divinity belike: but fell out so bitterly
that there was never a word spoken between them,
black or white, from that day forward. You would
have thought they would separate : but no ; whether
from lack of means, or the Scottish fear of scandal,
they continued to keep house together wliere
they were. A chalk line drawn upon the floor
separated their two domains ; it bisected the door-
way and the fireplace, so that each could go out and
in, and do her cooking, without violating the territory
of the other. So, for years, they co-existed in a hate-
ful silence ; their meals, their ablutions, their friendly
visitors, exposed to an unfriendly scrutiny ; and at
night, in the dark watches, each could hear the
breathing of her enemy. Never did four walls look
down upon an uglier spectacle than these sisters
rivalling in unsisterliness. Here is a canvas for
Hawthorne to have turned into a cabinet picture — he
had a » Puritanic vein, which would have fitted him
to treat this Puritanic horror ; he could have shown
them to us in their sicknesses and at their hideous
twin devotions, thumbing a pair of great Bibles, or
32

LEGENDS

praying aloud for each other's penitence with mar-
rowy emphasis ; now each, with kilted petticoat, at her
own corner of the fire on some tempestuous evening ;
now sitting each at her window, looking out upon
the summer landscape sloping far below them towards
the firth, and the field-paths where they had wandered
hand in hand ; or, as age and infirmity grew upon
them and prolonged their toilettes, and their hands
began to tremble and their heads to nod involuntarily,
growing only the more steeled in enmity with years ;
until one fine day, at a word, a look, a visit, or the
approach of death, their hearts would melt and the
chalk boundary be overstepped for ever.

Alas ! to those who know the ecclesiastical history
of the race — the most perverse and melancholy in
man's annals — this will seem only a figure of much
that is typical of Scotland and her high-seated capital
above the Forth — a figure so grimly realistic that it
may pass with strangers for a caricature. We are
wonderful patient haters for conscience' sake up here
in the North. I spoke, in the first of these papers,
of the Parliaments of the Established and Free
Churches, and how they can hear each other singing
psalms across the street. There is but a street
between them in space, but a shadow between them
in principle ; and yet there they sit, enchanted, and
in damnatory accents pray for each other's growth in
grace. It would be well if there were no more than
two; but the sects in Scotland form a large family
of sisters, and the chalk lines are thickly drawn, and
run through the midst of many private homes.

NOTES ON EDINBURGH

Edinburgh is a city of churches, as though it were
a place of pilgrimage. You will see four within a
stone-cast at the head of the West Bow. Some are
crowded to the doors ; some are empty like nionu-
ments ; and yet you will ever find new ones in the
building. Hence that surprising clamour of church
bells that suddenly breaks out upon the Sabbath
morning, from Trinity and the sea-skirts to Morning-
side on the borders of the hills. I have heard the
chimes of Oxford playing their symphony in a
golden autumn morning, and beautiful it was to hear.
But in Edinburgh all manner of loud bells join, or
rather disjoin, in one swelling, brutal babblement of
noise. Now one overtakes another, and now lags
behind it ; now five or six all strike on the pained
tympanum at the same punctual instant of time, and
make together a dismal chord of discord ; and now
for a second all seem to have conspired to hold their
peace. Indeed, there are not many uproars in this
world more dismal than that of the Sabbath bells in
Edinburgh : a harsh ecclesiastical tocsin ; the outcry
of incongruous orthodoxies, calling on every separate
conventicler to put up a protest, each in his
own synagogue, against 'right-hand extremes and
left-hand defections.' And surely there are few
worse extremes than this extremity of zeal ; and few
more deplorable defections than this disloyalty to
Christian love. Shakespeare wrote a comedy of
'Much Ado about Nothing.' The Scottish nation
made a fantastic tragedy on the same subject. And
it is for the success of this remarkable piece that
34

GKEYFRIARS

these bells are sounded every Sabbath morning on
the hills above the Forth. How many of them
might rest silent in the steeple, how many of these
ugly churches might be demolished and turned once
more into useful building material, if people who
think almost exactly the same thoughts about religion
would condescend to worship God under the same
roof ! But there are the chalk lines. And which is
to pocket pride, and speak the foremost word ?

V

GREYFRIARS

It was Queen Mary who threw open the gardens of
the Grey Friars: a new and semi-rural cemetery in
those days, although it has grown an antiquity in its
turn and been superseded by half-a-dozen others.
The Friars must have had a pleasant time on summer
evenings ; for their gardens were situated to a wish,
with the tall castle and the tallest of the Castle crags
in front. Even now, it is one of our famous Edin-
burgh points of view ; and strangers are led thither
to see, by yet another instance, how strangely the
city lies upon her hills. The enclosure is of an
irregular shape ; the double church of Old and New
Greyfriars stands on the level at the top ; a few thorns
are dotted here and there, and the ground falls by
terrace and steep slope towards the north. The open
shows many slabs and table tombstones ; and all

35

NOTES ON EDINBURGH

round the margin, the place is girt by an array of
aristocratic mausoleums appallingly adorned.

Setting aside the tombs of Roubilliac, which belong
to the heroic order of graveyard art, we Scots stand,
to my fancy, highest among nations in the matter of
grimly illustrating death. We seem to love for their
own sake the emblems of time and the great change ;
and even around country churches you will find a
wonderful exhibition of skulls, and crossbones, and
noseless angels, and trumpets pealing for the Judg-
ment Day. Every mason was a pedestrian Holbein :
he had a deep consciousness of death, and loved to
put its terrors pithily before the churchyard loiterer ;
he was brimful of rough hints upon mortality, and
any dead farmer was seized upon to be a text. The
classical examples of this art are in Greyfriars. In
their time, these were doubtless costly monuments,
and reckoned of a very elegant proportion by con-
temporaries ; and now, when the elegance is not so
apparent, the significance remains. You may perhaps
look with a smile on the profusion of Latin mottoes
— some crawling endwise up the shaft of a pillar,
some issuing on a scroll from angels' trumpets — on
the emblematic horrors, the figures rising headless
from the grave, and all the traditional ingenuities in
which it pleased our fathers to set forth their sorrow
for the dead and their sense of earthly mutability.
But it is not a hearty sort of mirth. Each ornament
may have been executed by the merriest apprentice,
whistling as he plied the mallet ; but the original
meaning of each, and the combined effect of so many
36

GREYFRIARS

of them in this quiet enclosure, is serious to the
point of melancholy.

Round a great part of the circuit, houses of a low
class present their backs to the churchyard. Only
a few inches separate the liAdng from the dead.
Here, a window is partly blocked up by the pedi-
ment of a tomb ; there, where the street falls far
below the level of the graves, a chimney has been
trained up the back of a monument, and a red pot
looks vulgarly over from behind. A damp smell of
the graveyard finds its way into houses where work-
men sit at meat. Domestic life on a small scale goes
forward visibly at the windows. The very solitude
and stillness of the enclosure, which lies apart from
the town's traffic, serves to accentuate the contrast.
As you walk upon the graves, you see children
scattering crumbs to feed the sparrows; you hear
people singing or washing dishes, or the sound of
tears and castigation ; the linen on a clothes-pole flaps
against funereal sculpture; or perhaps the cat slips
over the lintel and descends on a memorial urn. And
as there is nothing else astir, these incongruous
sights and noises take hold on the attention and
exaggerate the sadness of the place.

Greyfriars is continually overrun by cats. I have
seen one afternoon as many as thirteen of them
seated on the grass beside old Milne, the Master
Builder, all sleek and fat, and complacently blinking,
as if they had fed upon strange meats. Old Milne
was chanting with the saints, as we may hope, and
cared little for the company about his grave ; but I

Z7

NOTES ON EDINBURGH

confess the spectacle had an ugly side for me ; and I
was glad to step forward and raise my eyes to where
the Castle and the roofs of the Old Town, and the
spire of the Assembly Hall, stood deployed against
the sky with the colourless precision of engraving.
An open outlook is to be desired from a churchyard,
and a sight of the sky and some of the world's beauty
relieves a mind from morbid thoughts.

I shall never forget one visit. It was a grey,
dropping day ; the grass was strung with rain-drops ;
and the people in the houses kept hanging out their
shirts and petticoats and angrily taking them in
again, as the weather turned from wet to fair and
back again. A gravedigger, and a friend of his, a
gardener from the country, accompanied me into one
after another of the cells and little courtyards in
which it gratified the wealthy of old days to enclose
their old bones from neighbourhood. In one, under a
sort of shrine, we found a forlorn human effigy, very
realistically executed down to the detail of his ribbed
stockings, and holding in his hand a ticket with the
date of his demise. He looked most pitiful and ridi-
culous, shut up by himself in his aristocratic precinct,
like a bad old boy or an inferior forgotten deity under
a new dispensation ; the burdocks grew familiarly
about his feet, the rain dripped all round him ; and
the world maintained the most entire indiiFerence as
to who he was or whither he had gone. In another,
a vaulted tomb, handsome externally but horrible
inside with damp and cobwebs, there were three
mounds of black earth and an uncovered thigh-bone.
3^

GREYFRIARS

This was the place of mterment, it appeared, of a
family with whom the gardener had been long in
service. He was among old acquaintances. * This '11
be Miss Marg'et's,' said he, giving the bone a friendly
kick. ' The aiild ! ' I have always an uncom-
fortable feeling in a graveyard, at sight of so many
tombs to perpetuate memories best forgotten ; but I
never had the impression so strongly as that day.
People had been at some expense in both these cases :
to provoke a melancholy feeling of derision in the
one, and an insulting epithet in the other. The
proper inscription for the most part of mankind, I
began to think, is the cynical jeer, eras tibi. That,
if anything, will stop the mouth of a carper ; since it
both admits the worst and carries the war triumph-
antly into the enemy's camp.

Greyfriars is a place of many associations. There
was one window in a house at the lower end, now
demolished, which was pointed out to me by the
gravedigger as a spot of legendary interest. Burke,
the resurrection-man, infamous for so many murders
at five shillings a head, used to sit thereat, with pipe
and nightcap, to watch burials going forward on the
green. In a tomb higher up, which must then have
been but newly finished, John Knox, according to
the same informant, had taken refuge in a turmoil of
the Reformation. Behind the church is the haunted
mausoleum of Sir George Mackenzie : Bloody Mac-
kenzie, Lord Advocate in the Covenanting troubles,
and author of some pleasing sentiments on toleration.
Here, in the last century, an old Heriot's Hospital

39

NOTES ON EDINBURGH

boy once harboured from the pursuit of the police.
The Hospital is next door to Greyfriars— a courtly
building among lawns, where, on Founder's Day, you
may see a multitude of children playing Kiss-in-the-
Ring and Round the Mulberry-bush. Thus, when the
fugitive had managed to conceal himself in the tomb,
his old schoolmates had a hundred opportunities to
bring him food ; and there he lay in safety till a ship
was found to smuggle him abroad. But his must
have been indeed a heart of brass, to lie all day and
night alone with the dead persecutor ; and other lads
were far from emulating him in courage. When a
man's soul is certainly in hell, his body will scarce lie
quiet in a tomb, however costly ; some time or other
the door must open, and the reprobate come forth in
the abhorred garments of the grave. It was thought
a high piece of prowess to knock at the Lord
Advocate's mausoleum and challenge him to appear.
' Bluidy Mackenyie, come oot if ye daur ! ' sang the
foolhardy urchins. But Sir George had other affairs
on hand ; and the author of an essay on toleration
continues to sleep peacefully among the many whom
he so intolerantly helped to slay.

For this infelix campus, as it is dubbed in one of
its own inscriptions — an inscription over which Dr.
Johnson passed a critical eye — is in many ways
sacred to the memory of the men whom Mackenzie
persecuted. It was here, on the flat tombstones,
that the Covenant was signed by an enthusiastic
people. In the long arm of the churchyard that
extends to Lauriston, the prisoners from Bothwell
40

GKEYFRIARS

Bridge — fed on bread and water, and guarded, life for
life, by vigilant marksmen — lay five months looking-
for the scaffold or the plantations. And while the
good work was going forward in the Grassmarket,
idlers in Greyfriars might have heard the throb of
the military drums that drowned the voices of the
martyrs. Nor is this all : for down in the corner
farthest from Sir George, there stands a monument
dedicated, in uncouth Covenanting verse, to all who
lost their lives in that contention. There is no
moorsman shot in a snow shower beside Irongray or
Co'monell ; there is not one of the two hundred who
were drowned off the Orkneys ; nor so much as a
poor, over-driven, Covenanting slave in the American
plantations ; but can lay claim to a share in that
memorial, and, if such things interest just men
among the shades, can boast he has a monument on
earth as well as Julius Caesar or the Pharaohs.
Where they may all lie, I know not. Far-scattered
bones, indeed ! But if the reader cares to learn how
some of them — or some part of some of them — found
their way at length to such honourable sepulture, let
him listen to the words of one who was their com-
rade in life and their apologist when they were dead.
Some of the insane controversial matter I omit, as
well as some digressions, but leave the rest in
Patrick Walker's language and orthography : —

' The never to be forgotten Mr. James Renwick told me, that
he was Witness to their Public Murder at the Gallowlee,
between Leith and Edinburg-h, when he saw the Hangman hash
and hagg off all their Five Heads, with Patrick Foremaiis

41

NOTES ON EDINBURGH

Right Hand : Their Bodies were all buried at the Gallows
Foot ; their Heads, with PatricJSs Hand, were brought and put
upon five Pikes on the Pleasaunce-Port. . . . Mi*. Renwick told
me also that it was the first public Action that his Hand was
at, to conveen Friends, and lift their murthered Bodies, and
carried them to the West Churchyard of Edinbicrg-h,'' — not
Greyfriars, this time, — ' and buried them there. Then they
came about the City . . . and took down these Five Heads
and that Hand ; and Day being come, they went quickly up
the Pleasaunce ; and when they came to Lauristoun Yards,
upon the South-side of the City, they durst not venture, being
so light, to go and bury their Heads with their Bodies, which
they designed ; it being present Death, if any of them had
been found. Alexander Tweedie, a Friend, being with them,
who at that Time was Gardner in these Yards, concluded to
bury them in his Yard, being in a Box (wrapped in Linen),
where they lay 45 Years except 3 Days, being executed upon
the 10th of October 1681, and found the 7th Day of October
1726. That Piece of Ground lay for some Years unlaboured ;
and trenching it, the Gardner found them, which affrighted
him ; the Box was consumed. Mr. Schaw, the Owner of these
Yards, caused lift them, and lay them upon a Table in his
Summer-house : Mr. Scliaxefs mother was so kind, as to cut out
a Linen-cloth, and cover them. They lay Twelve Days there,
where all had Access to see them. Alexander Tweedie, the
foresaid Gardner, said, when dying. There was a Treasure hid
in his Yard, but neither Gold nor Silver. Daniel Tweedie, his
Son, came along with me to that Yard, and told me that his
Father planted a white Rose-bush above them, and farther
down the Yard a red Rose-bush, which were more fruitful than
any other Bush in the Yard, . . . Many came ' — to see the
heads — ' out of Curiosity ; yet I rejoiced to see so many con-
cerned grave Men and Women favouring the Dust of our
Martyrs. There were Six of us concluded to bury them upon
the Nineteenth Day of October 1726, and every One of us to
acquaint Friends of the Day and Hour, being Wednesday, the
42

GREYFRIARS

Day of the Week on which most of them were executed, and at
4 of the Clock at Night, being the Hour that most of them
went to their resting Graves. We caused make a compleat
Coffin for them in Black, with four Yards of fine Linen, the
way that our Martyrs Corps were managed. . . . Accordingly
we kept the aforesaid Day and Hour, and doubled the Linen,
and laid the Half of it below them, their nether Jaws being
parted from their Heads ; but being young Men, their Teeth
remained. All were Witness to the Holes in each of their
Heads, which the Hangman broke with his Hammer; and
according to the Bigness of their Sculls, we laid the Jaws to
them, and drew the other Half of the Linen above them, and
stufft the Coffin with Shavings. Some prest hard to go thorow
the chief Parts of the City as was done at the Revolution ; but
this we refused, considering that it looked airy and frothy, to
make such Show of them, and inconsistent with the solid
serious Observing of such an affecting, surprizing unheard-of
Dispensation : But took the ordinary Way of other Burials
from that Place, to wit, we went east the Back of the Wall,
and in at B?'isto-Port, and down the Way to the Head of the
Cowgate, and turned up to the Church-yard, where they were
interred closs to the Martyrs Tomb, with the greatest Multi-
tude of People Old and Young, Men and Women, Ministers
and others, that ever I saw together.'

And so there they were at last, in * their resting
graves.' So long as men do their duty, even if it be
greatly in a misapprehension, they will be leading
pattern lives ; and whether or not they come to lie
beside a martyrs' monument, we may be sure they
will find a safe haven somewhere in the providence
of God. It is not well to think of death, unless we
temper the thought with that of heroes who despised
it. Upon what ground, is of small account ; if it be

43

NOTES ON EDINBURGH

only the bishop who was burned for his faith in the
antipodes, his memory hghtens the heart and makes
us walk undisturbed among graves. And so the
martyrs' monument is a wholesome heartsome spot
in the field of the dead ; and as we look upon it, a
brave influence comes to us from the land of those
who have won their discharge, and, in another phrase
of Patrick Walker's, got 'cleanly off the stage.'

VI

NEW TOWN : TOWN AND COUNTRY

It is as much a matter of course to decry the New
Town as to exalt the Old ; and the most celebrated
authorities have picked out this quarter as the very
emblem of what is condemnable in architecture.
Much may be said, much indeed has been said, upon
the text; but to the unsophisticated, who call any-
thing pleasing if it only pleases them, the New Town
of Edinburgh seems, in itself, not only gay and airy,
but highly picturesque. An old skipper, invincibly
ignorant of all theories of the sublime and beautiful,
once propounded as his most radiant notion for Para-
dise : ' The New Town of Edinburgh, with the wind
the matter of a point free.' He has now gone to that
sphere where all good tars are promised pleasant
weather in the song, and perhaps his thoughts fl.y
somewhat higher. But there are bright and tem-
perate days — with soft air coming from the inland
44

NEW TOWN : TOWN AND COUNTRY

hills, military music sounding bravely from the hollow
of the gardens, the flags all waving on the palaces of
Princes Street — when I have seen the town through
a sort of glory, and shaken hands in sentiment with
the old sailor. And indeed, for a man who has been
much tumbled round Orcadian skerries, what scene
could be more agreeable to witness ? On such a day,
the valley wears a surprising air of festival. It seems
(I do not know how else to put my meaning) as if it
were a trifle too good to be true. It is what Paris
ought to be. It has the scenic quality that would
best set off a life of unthinking, open-air diversion.
It was meant by nature for the realisation of the
society of comic operas. And you can imagine, if
the climate were but towardly, how all the world and
his wife would flock into these gardens in the cool of
the evening, to hear cheerful music, to sip pleasant
drinks, to see the moon rise from behind Arthur's
Seat and shine upon the spires and monuments and
the green tree-tops in the valley. Alas ! and the
next morning the rain is splashing on the window,
and the passengers flee along Princes Street before
the galloping squalls.

It cannot be denied that the original design was
faulty and short-sighted, and did not fully profit by
the capabilities of the situation. The architect was
essentially a town bird, and he laid out the modern
city with a view to street scenery, and to street
scenery alone. The country did not enter into his
plan ; he had never lifted his eyes to the hills. If he
had so chosen, every street upon the northern slope

45

NOTES ON EDINBURGH

might have been a noble terrace and commanded an
extensive and beautiful view. But the space has
been too closely built ; many of the houses front the
wrong way, intent, like the Man with the Muck-
Rake, on what is not worth observation, and standing
discourteously back-foremost in the ranks ; and, in a
word, it is too often only from attic windows, or here
and there at a crossing, that you can get a look
beyond the city upon its diversified surroundings.
But perhaps it is all the more surprising, to come
suddenly on a corner, and see a perspective of a mile
or more of falling street, and beyond that woods and
villas, and a blue arm of the sea, and the hills upon
the farther side.

Fergusson, our Edinburgh poet, Burns's model,
once saw a butterfly at the Town Cross ; and the
sight inspired him with a worthless little ode. This
painted countryman, the dandy of the rose garden,
looked far abroad in such a humming neighbourhood ;
and you can fancy what moral considerations a youth-
ful poet would supply. But the incident, in a fanciful
sort of way, is characteristic of the place. Into no
other city does the sight of the country enter so far ;
if you do not meet a butterfly, you shall certainly
catch a glimpse of far-away trees upon your walk ;
and the place is full of theatre tricks in the way
of scenery. You peep under an arch, you descend
stairs that look as if they would land you in a cellar,
you turn to the back- window of a grimy tenement in
a lane : — and behold ! you are face-to-face with dis-
tant and bright prospects. You turn a corner, and
46

NEW TOWN : TOWN AND COUNTRY

there is the sun going down into the Highland hills.
You look down an alley, and see ships tacking for
the Baltic.

For the country people to see Edinburgh on her
hill-tops, is one thing ; it is another for the citizen,
from the thick of his affairs, to overlook the country.
It should be a genial and ameliorating influence in
life ; it should prompt good thoughts and remind him
of Nature's unconcern : that he can watch from day
to day, as he trots ofliceward, how the Spring green
brightens in the wood or the field grows black under
a moving ploughshare. I have been tempted, in this
connection, to deplore the slender faculties of the
human race, with its penny- whistle of a voice, its dull
ears, and its narrow range of sight. If you could see
as people are to see in heaven, if you had eyes such
as you can fancy for a superior race, if you could
take clear note of the objects of vision, not only a
few yards, but a few miles from where you stand : —
think how agreeably your sight would be entertained,
how pleasantly your thoughts would be diversified, as
you walked the Edinburgh streets ! For you might
pause, in some business perplexity, in the midst of the
city traffic, and perhaps catch the eye of a shepherd
as he sat down to breathe upon a heathery shoulder
of the Pentlands ; or perhaps some urchin, clambering
in a country elm, would put aside the leaves and
show you his flushed and rustic visage ; or a fisher
racing seawards, with the tiller under his elbow, and
the sail sounding in the wind, would fling you a
salutation from between Anst'er and the May.

47

NOTES ON EDINBURGH

To be old is not the same thing as to be pictur-
esque ; nor because the Old Town bears a strange
physiognomy, does it at all follow that the New
Town shall look commonplace. Indeed, apart from
antique houses, it is curious how much description
would apply commonly to either. The same sudden
accidents of ground, a similar dominating site above
the plain, and the same superposition of one rank of
society over another, are to be observed in both.
Thus, the broad and comely approach to Princes
Street from the east, lined with hotels and public
offices, makes a leap over the gorge of the Low
Calton ; if you cast a glance over the parapet, you
look direct into that sunless and disreputable con-
fluent of Leith Street ; and the same tall houses open
upon both thoroughfares. This is only the New Town
passing overhead above its own cellars ; walking, so
to speak, over its own children, as is the way of cities
and the human race. But at the Dean Bridge you
may behold a spectacle of a more novel order. The
river runs at the bottom of a deep valley, among
rocks and between gardens ; the crest of either bank
is occupied by some of the most commodious streets
and crescents in the modern city ; and a handsome
bridge unites the two summits. Over this, every
afternoon, private carriages go spinning by, and ladies
with card-cases pass to and fro about the duties of
society. And yet down below you may still see, with
its mills and foaming weir, the little rural village of
Dean. Modern improvement has gone overhead on
its high-level viaduct; and the extended city has
48

NEW TOWN : TOWN AND COUNTRY

cleanly overleapt, and left unaltered, what was once
the summer retreat of its comfortable citizens. Every
town embraces hamlets in its growth ; Edinburgh
herself has embraced a good few ; but it is strange to
see one still surviving — and to see it some hundreds
of feet below your path. Is it Torre del Greco that
is built above buried Herculaneum ? Herculaneum
was dead at least ; but the sun still shines upon the
roofs of Dean ; the smoke still rises thriftily from its
chimneys ; the dusty miller comes to his door, looks
at the gurgling water, hearkens to the turning wheel
and the birds about the shed, and perhaps whistles
an air of his own to enrich the symphony — for all the
world as if Edinburgh were still the old Edinburgh
on the Castle Hill, and Dean were still the quietest
of hamlets buried a mile or so in the green country.

It is not so long ago since magisterial David Hume
lent the authority of his example to the exodus from
the Old Town, and took up his new abode in a street
which is still (so oddly may a jest become perpetu-
ated) known as Saint David Street. Nor is the town
so large but a holiday schoolboy may harry a bird's
nest within half a mile of his own door. There are
places that still smell of the plough in memory's
nostrils. Here, one had heard a blackbird on a haw-
thorn ; there, another was taken on summer evenings
to eat strawberries and cream ; and you have seen a
waving wheatfield on the site of your present resi-
dence. The memories of an Edinburgh boy are but
partly memories of the town. I look back with
delight on many an escalade of garden walls ; many
D 49

NOTES ON EDINBURGH

a ramble among lilacs full of piping birds ; many an
exploration in obscure quarters that were neither
town nor country ; and I think that both for my
companions and myself, there was a special interest,
a point of romance, and a sentiment as of foreign
travel, when we hit in our excursions on the butt-
end of some former hamlet, and found a few rustic
cottages imbedded among streets and squares. The
tunnel to the Scotland Street Station, the sight of the
trains shooting out of its dark maw with the two
guards upon the brake, the thought of its length and
the many ponderous edifices and open thoroughfares
above, were certainly things of paramount impressive-
ness to a young mind. It was a subterranean passage,
although of a larger bore than we were accustomed
to in Ains worth's novels ; and these two words,
' subterranean passage,' were in themselves an irresis-
tible attraction, and seemed to bring us nearer in
spirit to the heroes we loved and the black rascals we
secretly aspired to imitate. To scale the Castle
Kock from West Princes Street Gardens, and lay a
triumphal hand against the rampart itself, was to
taste a high order of romantic pleasure. And there
are other sights and exploits which crowd back upon
my mind under a very strong illumination of remem-
bered pleasure. But the effect of not one of them
all will compare with the discoverer's joy, and the
sense of old Time and his slow changes on the face
of this earth, with which I explored such corners as
Canonmills or Water Lane, or the nugget of cottages
at Broughton Market. They were more rural than

50

NEW TOWN : TOWN AND COUNTRY

the open country, and gave a greater impression of
antiquity than the oldest land upon the High Street.
They too, hke Fergusson's butterfly, had a quaint
air of having wandered far from their own place ;
they looked abashed and homely, with their gables
and their creeping plants, their outside stairs and
running mill-streams ; there were corners that smelt
like the end of the country garden where I spent my
Aprils ; and the people stood to gossip at their doors,
as they might have done in Colinton or Cramond.

In a great measure we may, and shall, eradicate
this haunting flavour of the country. The last elm is
dead in Elm Row ; and the villas and the workmen's
quarters spread apace on all the borders of the city.
We can cut down the trees ; we can bury the grass
under dead paving-stones ; we can drive brisk streets
through all our sleepy quarters ; and we may forget
the stories and the playgrounds of our boyhood. But
we have some possessions that not even the infuriate
zeal of builders can utterly abolish and destroy. No-
thing can abolish the hills, unless it be a cataclysm of
nature, which shall subvert Edinburgh Castle itself and
lay all her florid structures in the dust. And as long
as we have the hills and the Firth, we have a famous
heritage to leave our children. Our windows, at no
expense to us, are mostly artfully stained to repre-
sent a landscape. And when the Spring comes round,
and the hawthorn begins to flower, and the meadows
to smell of young grass, even in the thickest of our
streets, the country hill-tops find out a young man's
eyes, and set his heart beating for travel and pure air.

51,

NOTES ON EDINBURGH

VII

THE VILLA QUARTERS

Mr. Ruskin's denunciation of the New Town of
Edinburgh includes, as I have heard it repeated,
nearly all the stone and lime we have to show. Many
however find a grand air and something settled and
imposing in the better parts ; and upon many, as I
have said, the confusion of styles induces an agree-
able stimulation of the mind. But upon the subject
of our recent villa architecture I am frankly ready to
mingle my tears with Mr. Ruskin's, and it is a subject
which makes one envious of his large declamatory
and controversial eloquence.

Day by day, one new villa, one new object of
offence, is added to another ; all around Newington
and Morningside, the dismallest structures keep
springing up like mushrooms ; the pleasant hills are
loaded with them, each impudently squatted in its
garden, each roofed and carrying chimneys like a
house. And yet a glance of an eye discovers their
true character. They are not houses ; for they were
not designed with a view to human habitation, and
the internal arrangements are, as they tell me, fantas-
tically unsuited to the needs of man. They are not
buildings ; for you can scarcely say a thing is built
where every measurement is in clamant disproportion
with its neighbour. They belong to no style of art,
only to a form of business much to be regretted.
52

THE VILLA QUARTERS

Why should it be cheaper to erect a structure
where the size of the windows bears no rational
relation to the size of the front ? Is there any profit
in a misplaced chimney-stalk ? Does a hard-working,
greedy builder gain more on a monstrosity than on
a decent cottage of equal plainness ? Frankly, we
should say, No. Bricks may be omitted, and green
timber employed, in the construction of even a very
elegant design ; and there is no reason why a chimney
should be made to vent, because it is so situated as
to look comely from without. On the other hand,
there is a noble way of being ugly : a high aspiring
fiasco like the fall of Lucifer. There are daring and
gaudy buildings that manage to be offensive, with-
out being contemptible ; and we know that ' fools
rush in where angels fear to tread.' But to aim at
making a commonplace villa, and to make it in-
sufferably ugly in each particular ; to attempt the
homeliest achievement and to attain the bottom of
derided failure ; not to have any theory but profit, and
yet, at an equal expense, to outstrip all competitors
in the art of conceiving and rendering permanent de-
formity ; and to do all this in what is, by nature, one
of the most agreeable neighbourhoods in Britain : —
what are we to say, but that this also is a distinction,
hard to earn, although not greatly worshipful ?

Indifferent buildings give pain to the sensitive;
but these things offend the plainest taste. It is a
danger which threatens the amenity of the town ;
and as this eruption keeps spreading on our borders,
we have ever the farther to walk among unpleasant

NOTES ON EDINBURGH

sights, before we gain the country air. If the popu-
lation of Edinburgh were a hving, autonomous body,
it would arise like one man and make night hideous
with arson ; the builders and their accomplices would
be driven to work, like the Jews of yore, with the
trowel in one hand and the defensive cutlass in the
other ; and as soon as one of these masonic wonders
had been consummated, right-minded iconoclasts
should fall thereon and make an end of it at once.

Possibly these words may meet the eye of a builder
or two. It is no use asking them to employ an
architect ; for that would be to touch them in a
delicate quarter, and its use w^ould largely depend on
what architect they were minded to call in. But let
them get any architect in the world to point out
any reasonably well-proportioned villa, not his own
design ; and let them reproduce that model to satiety.

VIII

THE CALTON HILL

The east of new Edinburgh is guarded by a craggy
hill, of no great elevation, which the town embraces.
The old London road runs on one side of it ; while
the New Approach, leaving it on the other hand,
completes the circuit. You mount by stairs in a
cutting of the rock to find yourself in a field of
monuments. Dugald Stewart has the honours of
situation and architecture ; Burns is memorialised

54

THE CALTON HILL

lower down upon a spur ; Lord Nelson, as befits a
sailor, gives his name to the topgallant of the Calton
Hill. This latter erection has been differently and
yet, in both cases, aptly compared to a telescope and
a butter-churn : comparisons apart, it ranks among
the vilest of men's handiworks. But the chief feature
is an unfinished range of columns, ' the Modern Ruin '
as it has been called, an imposing object from far and
near, and giving Edinburgh, even from the sea, that
false air of a Modern Athens which has earned for
her so many slighting speeches. It was meant to
be a National Monument ; and its present state is a
very suitable monument to certain national charac-
teristics. The old Observatory — a quaint brown
building on the edge of the steep — and the new
Observatory — a classical edifice with a dome — occupy
the central portion of the summit. All these are
scattered on a green turf, browsed over by some sheep.
The scene suggests reflections on fame and on
man's injustice to the dead. You see Dugald
Stewart rather more handsomely commemorated
than Burns. Immediately below, in the Canongate
churchyard, lies Robert Fergusson, Burns's master in
his art, who died insane while yet a stripling ; and if
Dugald Stewart has been somewhat too boisterously
acclaimed, the Edinburgh poet, on the other hand,
is most unrighteously forgotten. The votaries of
Burns, a crew too common in all ranks in Scotland,
and more remarkable for number than discretion,
eagerly suppress all mention of the lad who handed
to him the poetic impulse, and, up to the time when

55

NOTES ON EDINBURGH

he grew famous, continued to influence him in his
manner and the choice of subjects. Burns himself
not only acknowledged his debt in a fragment of
autobiography, but erected a tomb over the grave in
Canongate churchyard. This was worthy of an
artist, but it was done in vain ; and although I think
I have read nearly all the biographies of Burns, I
cannot remember one in which the modesty of nature
was not violated, or where Fergusson was not sacri-
ficed to the credit of his follower's originality. There
is a kind of gaping admiration that would fain roll
Shakespeare and Bacon into one, to have a bigger
thing to gape at ; and a class of men who cannot
edit one author without disparaging all others. They
are indeed mistaken if they think to please the great
originals ; and whoever puts Fergusson right with
fame cannot do better than dedicate his labours to
the memory of Burns, who will be the best delighted
of the dead.

Of all places for a view, this Calton Hill is
perhaps the best ; since you can see the Castle,
which you lose from the Castle, and Arthur's Seat,
which you cannot see from Arthur's Seat. It is
the place to stroll on one of those days of sun-
shine and east wind which are so common in our
more than temperate summer. The breeze comes
off the sea, with a little of the freshness, and that
touch of chill, peculiar to the quarter, which is de-
lightful to certain very ruddy organisations and
greatly the reverse to the majority of mankind. It
brings mth it a faint, floating haze, a cunning de-
56

THE CALTON HILL

colouriser, although not thick enough to obscure
outhnes near at hand. But the haze Hes more
thickly to windward at the far end of Musselburgh
Bay ; and over the links of Aberlady and Berwick
Law and the hump of the Bass Rock it assumes
the aspect of a bank of thin sea fog.

Immediately underneath upon the south, you
command the yards of the High School, and the
towers and courts of the new Jail — a large place,
castellated to the extent of foll}?^, standing by itself
on the edge of a steep cliff, and often joyfully hailed
by tourists as the Castle. In the one, you may
perhaps see female prisoners taking exercise like a
string of nuns ; in the other, schoolboys running at
play and their shadows keeping step with them.
From the bottom of the valley, a gigantic chimney
rises almost to the level of the eye, a taller and a
shapelier edifice than Nelson's Monument. Look a
little farther, and there is Holyrood Palace, with its
Gothic frontal and ruined abbey, and the red sentry
pacing smartly to and fro before the door like a
mechanical figure in a panorama. By way of an
outpost, you can single out the little peak-roofed
lodge, over which Bizzio's murderers made their
escape, and where Queen Mary herself, according to
gossip, bathed in white wine to entertain her loveli-
ness. Behind and overhead, lie the Queen's Park,
from Muschat's Cairn to Dumbiedykes, St. Mar-
garet's Loch, and the long wall of Salisbury Crags ;
and thence, by knoll and rocky bulwark and precipi-
tous slope, the eye rises to the top of Arthur's Seat,

57

NOTES ON EDINBURGH

a hill for magnitude, a mountain in virtue of its bold
design. This upon your left. Upon the right, the
roofs and spires of the Old Town climb one above
another to where the citadel prints its broad bulk
and jagged crown of bastions on the western sky. —
Perhaps it is now one in the afternoon ; and at the
same instant of time, a ball rises to the summit of
Nelson's flagstaff close at hand, and, far away, a puff
of smoke followed by a report bursts from the half-
moon battery at the Castle. This is the time-gun
by which people set their watches, as far as the sea
coast or in hill farms upon the Pentlands. — To com-
plete the view, the eye enfilades Princes Street, black
with traffic, and has a broad look over the valley
between the Old Town and the New : here, full of
railway trains and stepped over by the high North
Bridge upon its many columns, and there, green
with trees and gardens.

On the north, the Calton Hill is neither so abrupt
in itself nor has it so exceptional an outlook ; and
yet even here it commands a striking prospect. A
gully separates it from the New Town. This is
Greenside, where witches were burned and tourna-
ments held in former days. Down that almost pre-
cipitous bank, Bothwell launched his horse, and so
first, as they say, attracted the bright eyes of Mary.
It is now tessellated with sheets and blankets out to
dry, and the sound of people beating carpets is rarely
absent. Beyond all this, the suburbs run out to
Leith ; Leith camps on the seaside with her forest
of masts ; Leith Roads are full of ships at anchor ;
58

THE CALTON HILL

the sun picks out the white pharos upon Inehkeith
Island ; the Firth extends on either hand from the
Ferry to the May ; the towns of Fifeshire sit, each
in its bank of blowing smoke, along the opposite
coast ; and the hills enclose the view, except to the
farthest east, where the haze of the horizon rests
upon the open sea. There Hes the road to Norway ;
a dear road for Sir Patrick Spens and his Scots
Lords ; and yonder smoke on the hither side of
Largo Law is Aberdour, from whence they sailed to
seek a queen for Scotland.

' O lang, lang, may the ladies sit,
Wi' their fans into their hand.
Or e'er they see Sir Patrick Spens
Come saihng to the land ! '

The sight of the sea, even from a city, will bring
thoughts of storm and sea disaster. The sailors'
wives of Leith and the fisherwomen of Cockenzie,
not sitting languorously with fans, but crowding to
the tail of the harbour with a shawl about their ears,
may still look vainly for brave Scotsmen who will
return no more, or boats that have gone on their last
fishing. Since Sir Patrick sailed from Aberdour,
what a multitude have gone down in the North Sea !
Yonder is Auldhame, where the London smack went
ashore and wreckers cut the rings from ladies'
fingers ; and a few miles round Fife Ness is the fatal
Inchcape, now a star of guidance ; and the lee shore
to the west of the Inchcape is that Forfarshire coast
where Mucklebackit sorrowed for his son.

59

NOTES ON EDINBURGH

These are the main features of the scene roughly
sketched. How they are all tilted by the inclination
of the ground, how each stands out in delicate rehef
against the rest, what manifold detail, and play of
sun and shadow, animate and accentuate the picture,
is a matter for a person on the spot, and turning
swiftly on his heels, to grasp and bind together in
one comprehensive look. It is the character of
such a prospect, to be full of change and of things
moving. The multiplicity embarrasses the eye ; and
the mind, among so much, suffers itself to grow
absorbed with single points. You remark a tree in
a hedgerow, or follow a cart alpng a country road.
You turn to the city, and see children, dwarfed by
distance into pigmies, at play about suburban door-
steps ; you have a glimpse upon a thoroughfare
where people are densely moving ; you note ridge
after ridge of chimney-stacks running downhill one
behind another, and church spires rising bravely
from the sea of roofs. At one of the innumerable
windows, you watch a figure moving ; on one of the
multitude of roofs, you watch clambering chimney-
sweeps. The wind takes a run and scatters the
smoke ; bells are heard, far and near, faint and loud,
to tell the hour ; or perhaps a bird goes dipping
evenly over the housetops, like a gull across the
waves. And here you are in the meantime, on
this pastoral hillside, among nibbling sheep and
looked upon by monumental buildings.

Return thither on some clear, dark, moonless
night, with a ring of frost in the air, and only a star
60

THE CALTON HILL

or two set sparsely in the vault of heaven ; and you
will find a sight as stimulating as the hoariest
summit of the Alps. The solitude seems perfect ;
the patient astronomer, flat on his back under the
Observatory dome and spying heaven's secrets, is
your only neighbour; and yet from all round you
there come up the dull hum of the city, the tramp
of countless people marching out of time, the rattle
of carriages and the continuous jingle of the tram-
way bells. An hour or so before, the gas was
turned on ; lampHghters scoured the city ; in every
house, from kitchen to attic, the windows kindled
and gleamed forth into the dusk. And so now,
although the town lies blue and darkling on her
hills, innumerable spots of the bright element shine
far and near along the pavements and upon the high
fa9ades. Moving lights of the railway pass and
repass below the stationary lights upon the bridge.
Lights burn in the Jail. Lights burn high up in
the tall lands and on the Castle turrets ; they burn
low down in Greenside or along the Park. They
run out one beyond the other into the dark country.
They walk in a procession down to Leith, and shine
singly far along Leith Pier. Thus, the plan of the
city and her suburbs is mapped out upon the ground
of blackness, as when a child pricks a drawing full of
pinholes and exposes it before a candle; not the
darkest night of winter can conceal her high station
and fanciful design ; every evening in the year she
proceeds to illuminate herself in honour of her own
beauty ; and as if to complete the scheme — or rather

6i

NOTES ON EDINBURGH

as if some prodigal Pharaoh were beginning to
extend to the adjacent sea and country — half-way
over to Fife, there is an outpost of light upon Inch-
keith, and far to seaward, yet another on the May.

And while you are looking, across upon the Castle
Hill, the drums and bugles begin to recall the scat-
tered garrison ; the air thrills with the sound ; the
bugles sing aloud ; and the last rising flourish
mounts and melts into the darkness like a star: a
martial swan-song, fitly rounding in the labours of
the day.

IX

WINTER AND NEW YEAR

The Scots dialect is singularly rich in terms of
reproach against the winter wind. Snell, blae,
nirly, and scowthering, are four of these significant
vocables ; they are all words that carry a shiver with
them ; and for my part as I see them aligned before
me on the page, I am persuaded that a big wind
comes tearing over the Firth from Burntisland and
the northern hills ; I think I can hear it howl in the
chimney, and as I set my face northwards, feel its
smarting kisses on my cheek. Even in the names
of places there is often a desolate, inhospitable
sound ; and I remember two from the near neigh-
bourhood of Edinburgh, Cauldhame and Blaw-weary,
that would promise but starving comfort to their
inhabitants. The inclemency of heaven, which has
62

WINTER AND NEW YEAR

thus endowed the language of Scotland with words,
has also largely modified the spirit of its poetry.
Both poverty and a northern climate teach men the
love of the hearth and the sentiment of the family ;
and the latter, in its own right, inclines a poet to the
praise of strong waters. In Scotland, all our singers
have a stave or two for blazing fires and stout pota-
tions : — to get indoors out of the wind and to
swallow something hot to the stomach, are benefits
so easily appreciated where they dwelt !

And this is not only so in country districts where
the shepherd must wade in the snow all day after his
flock, but in Edinburgh itself, and nowhere more
apparently stated than in the works of our Edin-
burgh poet, Fergusson. He was a delicate youth, I
take it, and willingly slunk from the robustious
winter to an inn fireside. Love was absent from
his life, or only present, if you prefer, in such a form
that even the least serious of Burns's amourettes was
ennobling by comparison; and so there is nothing
to temper the sentiment of in-door revelry which
pervades the poor boy's verses. Although it is
characteristic of his native town, and the manners of
its youth to the present day, this spirit has perhaps
done something to restrict his popularity. He recalls
a supper-party pleasantry with something akin to
tenderness ; and sounds the praises of the act of
drinking as if it were virtuous, or at least witty, in
itself. The kindly jar, the warm atmosphere of
tavern parlours, and the revelry of lawyers' clerks,
do not offer by themselves the materials of a rich

NOTES ON EDINBURGH

existence. It was not choice, so much as an ex-
ternal fate, that kept Fergusson in this round of
sordid pleasures. A Scot of poetic temperament,
and without religious exaltation, drops as if by
nature into the public-house. The picture may not
be pleasing ; but what else is a man to do in this
dog's weather ?

To none but those who have themselves suffered
the thing in the body, can the gloom and depression of
our Edinburgh winters be brought home. For some
constitutions there is something almost physically
disgusting in the bleak ugliness of easterly weather ;
the wind wearies, the sickly sky depresses them ; and
they turn back from their walk to avoid the aspect
of the unrefulgent sun going down among perturbed
and pallid mists. The days are so short that a man
does much of his business, and certainly all his
pleasure, by the haggard glare of gas lamps. The
roads are as heavy as a fallow. People go by,
so drenched and draggle-tailed that I have often
wondered how they found the heart to undress.
And meantime the wind whistles through the town
as if it were an open meadow ; and if you lie awake
all night, you hear it shrieking and raving overhead
with a noise of shipwrecks and of falling houses. In
a word, life is so unsightly that there are times when
the heart turns sick in a man's inside ; and the look
of a tavern, or the thought of the warm, fire-lit study,
is hke the touch of land to one who has been long
struggling with the seas.

As the weather hardens towards frost, the world
64

WINTER AND NEW YEAR

begins to improve for Edinburgh people. We enjoy
superb, sub-arctic sunsets, with the profile of the city
stamped in indigo upon a sky of luminous green.
The wind may still be cold, but there is a briskness
in the air that stirs good blood. People do not all
look equally sour and downcast. They fall into two
divisions : one, the knight of the blue face and hollow
paunch, whom Winter has gotten by the vitals ; the
other well lined with New-year's fare, conscious of
the touch of cold on his periphery, but stepping
through it by the glow of his internal fires. Such an
one I remember, triply cased in grease, whom no
extremity of temperature could vanquish. ' Well,'
would be his jovial salutation, * here 's a sneezer ! '
And the look of these warm fellows is tonic, and
upholds their drooping fellow-townsmen. There is
yet another class who do not depend on corporal
advantages, but support the winter in virtue of a
brave and merry heart. One shivering evening, cold
enough for frost but with too high a wind, and a little
past sundown, when the lamps were beginning to
enlarge their circles in the growing dusk, a brace of
barefoot lassies were seen coming eastward in the
teeth of the wind. If the one was as much as nine,
the other was certainly not more than seven. They
were miserably clad ; and the pavement was so cold,
you would have thought no one could lay a naked
foot on it unflinching. Yet they came along
waltzing, if you please, while the elder sang a tune
to give them music. The person who saw this, and
whose heart was full of bitterness at the moment,

E 65

NOTES ON EDINBURGH

pocketed a reproof which has been of use to him
ever since, and which he now hands on, with his
good wishes, to the reader.

At length, Edinburgh, with her satelhte hills and
all the sloping country, is sheeted up in white. If
it has happened in the dark hours, nurses pluck their
children out of bed and run with them to some
commanding window, whence they may see the
change that has been worked upon earth's face. ' A'
the hills are covered wi' snaw,' they sing, 'and
Winter 's noo come fairly ! ' And the children,
marvelling at the silence and the white landscape,
find a spell appropriate to the season in the words.
The reverberation of the snow increases the pale day-
light, and brings all objects nearer the eye. The
Pentlands are smooth and glittering, with here and
there the black ribbon of a dry-stone dyke, and here
and there, if there be wind, a cloud of blowing snow
upon a shoulder. The Firth seems a leaden creek,
that a man might almost jump across, between well-
powdered Lothian and well-powdered Fife. And
the effect is not, as in other cities, a thing of half
a day ; the streets are soon trodden black, but the
country keeps its virgin white ; and you have only
to lift your eyes and look over miles of country snow.
An indescribable cheerfulness breathes about the
city ; and the well-fed heart sits lightly and beats
gaily in the bosom. It is New-year's weather.

New-year's Day, the great national festival, is a
time of family expansions and of deep carousal.
Sometimes, by a sore stroke of fate for this Calvinistic
66

WINTER AND NEW YEAR

people, the year's anniversary falls upon a Sunday,
when the public-houses are inexorably closed, when
singing and even whistling is banished from our
homes and highways, and the oldest toper feels called
upon to go to church. Thus pulled about as if
between two loyalties, the Scots have to decide
many nice cases of conscience, and ride the marches
narrowly between the weekly and the annual
observance. A party of convivial musicians, next
door to a friend of mine, hung suspended in this
manner on the brink of their diversions. From ten
o'clock on Sunday night my friend heard them
tuning their instruments ; and as the hour of liberty
drew near, each must have had his music open, his
bow in readiness across the fiddle, his foot already
raised to mark the time, and his nerves braced for
execution ; for hardly had the twelfth stroke sounded
from the earliest steeple, before they had launched
forth into a secular bravura.

Currant-loaf is now popular eating in all house-
holds. For weeks before the great morning, confec-
tioners display stacks of Scots bun — a dense, black
substance, inimical to life — and full moons of short-
bread adorned with mottoes of peel or sugar-plum,
in honour of the season and the family affections.
'Frae Auld Reekie,' 'A guid New Year to ye a','
' For the Auld Folk at Hame,' are among the most
favoured of these devices. Can you not see the
carrier, after half-a-day's journey on pinching hill-
roads, draw up before a cottage in Teviotdale, or
perhaps in Manor Glen among the rowans, and the

67

NOTES ON EDINBUKGH

old people receiving the parcel with moist eyes and
a prayer for Jock or Jean in the city ? For at this
season, on the threshold of another year of calamity
and stubborn conflict, men feel a need to draw
closer the links that unite them ; they reckon the
number of their friends, Hke allies before a war ; and
the prayers grow longer in the morning as the absent
are recommended by name into God's keeping.

On the day itself, the shops are all shut as on a
Sunday ; only taverns, toyshops, and other holiday
magazines, keep open doors. Every one looks for
his handsel. The postman and the lamplighters have
left, at every house in their districts, a copy of
vernacular verses, asking and thanking in a breath ;
and it is characteristic of Scotland that these
verses may have sometimes a touch of reality in
detail of sentiment and a measure of strength in the
handhng. All over the town, you may see com-
forter'd schoolboys hasting to squander their half-
crowns. There are an infinity of visits to be paid ;
all the world is in the street, except the daintier
classes ; the sacramental greeting is heard upon all
sides ; Auld Lang Syne is m-uch in people's mouths ;
and whisky and shortbread are staple articles of
consumption. From an early hour a stranger wiU be
impressed by the number of drunken men ; and by
afternoon drunkenness has spread to the women.
With some classes of society, it is as much a matter
of duty to drink hard on New-year's Day as to go to
church on Sunday. Some have been saving their
wages for perhaps a month to do the season honour.
68

WINTER AND NEW YEAR

Many carry a whisky-bottle in their pocket, which
they will press with embarrassing effusion on a per-
fect stranger. It is not expedient to risk one's body
in a cab, or not, at least, until after a prolonged study
of the driver. The streets, which are thronged from
end to end, become a place for delicate pilotage.
Singly or arm-in-arm, some speechless, others noisy
and quarrelsome, the votaries of the New Year go
meandering in and out and cannoning one against
another ; and now and again, one falls, and lies as he
has fallen. Before night, so many have gone to bed,
or the police office, that the streets seem almost
clearer. And as guisards and Jii^st-footers are now
not much seen except in country places, when once
the New Year has been rung in and proclaimed at
the Tron railings, the festivities begin to find their
way in-doors and something like quiet returns upon
the town. But think, in these piled lands, of all the
senseless snorers, all the broken heads and empty
pockets !

Of old, Edinburgh University was the scene of
heroic snowballing ; and one riot obtained the epic
honours of military intervention. But the great
generation, I am afraid, is at an end ; and even
during my own college days, the spirit appreciably
declined. Skating and sliding, on the other hand,
are honoured more and more ; and curling, being a
creature of the national genius, is little likely to
be disregarded. The patriotism that leads a man
to eat Scotch bun will scarce desert him at the
curling-pond. Edinburgh, with its long steep

69

NOTES ON EDINBURGH

pavements, is the proper home of sHders ; many
a happy urchin can shde the whole way to
school ; and the profession of errand-boy is trans-
formed into a hohday amusement. As for skating,
there is scarce any city so handsomely provided,
Duddingston Loch lies under the abrupt southern
side of Arthur's Seat ; in summer a shield of blue,
with swans sailing from the reeds ; in winter a field
of ringing ice. The village church sits above it on a
green promontory ; and the village smoke rises from
among goodly trees. At the church gates is the
historical Jougs, a place of penance for the neck of
detected sinners, and the historical louphig-on stane,
from which Dutch-built lairds and farmers climbed
into the saddle. Here Prince Charlie slept before
the battle of Prestonpans ; and here Deacon Brodie,
or one of his gang, stole a plough coulter before the
burglary in Chessel's Court. On the opposite side of
the loch, the ground rises to Craigmillar Castle, a
place friendly to Stuart Mariolaters. It is worth a
climb, even in summer, to look down upon the loch
from Arthur's Seat ; but it is tenfold more so on a
day of skating. The surface is thick with people
moving easily and swiftly and leaning over at a
thousand graceful inclinations ; the crowd opens and
closes, and keeps moving through itself like water ;
and the ice rings to half a mile away, with the flying
steel. As night draws on, the single figures melt
into the dusk, until only an obscure stir and coming
and going of black clusters is visible upon the loch.
A little longer, and the first torch is kindled and
70

TO THE PENTLAND HILLS

begins to flit rapidly across the ice in a ring of
yellow reflection, and this is followed by another
and another, until the whole field is full of skimming
lights.

X

TO THE PENTLAND HILLS

On three sides of Edinburgh, the country slopes
downward from the city, here to the sea, there to the
fat farms of Haddington, there to the mineral fields
of Linlithgow. On the south alone it keeps rising,
until it not only out-tops the Castle, but looks down
on Arthur's Seat. The character of the neighbour-
hood is pretty strongly marked by a scarcity of
hedges ; by many stone walls of varying height ; by
a fair amount of timber, some of it well grown, but
apt to be of a bushy, northern profile and poor in
foliage ; by here and there a little river, Esk or Leith
or Almond, busily journeying in the bottom of its
glen ; and from almost every point, by a peep of the
sea or the hills. There is no lack of variety, and yet
most of the elements are common to all parts ; and
the southern district is alone distinguished by con-
siderable summits and a wide view.

From Boroughmuirhead, where the Scottish army
encamped before Flodden, the road descends a long
hill, at the bottom of which, and just as it is prepar-
ing to mount up on the other side, it passes a toll-bar

71

NOTES ON EDINBURGH

and issues at once into the open country. Even as
I write these words, they are becoming antiquated in
the progress of events, and the chisels are tinkling
on a new row of houses. The builders have at
length adventured beyond the toll which held them in
respect so long, and proceed to career in these fresh
pastures like a herd of colts turned loose. As Lord
Beaconsfield proposed to hang an architect by way
of stimulation, a man, looking on these doomed
meads, imagines a similar example to deter the
builders ; for it seems as if it must come to an open
fight at last to preserve a corner of green country
unbedevilled. And here, appropriately enough, there
stood in old days a crow-haunted gibbet, with two
bodies hanged in chains. I used to be shown, when
a child, a flat stone in the roadway to which the
gibbet had been fixed. People of a willing fancy
were persuaded, and sought to persuade others, that
this stone was never dry. And no wonder, they
would add, for the two men had only stolen four-
pence between them.

For about two miles the road climbs upwards,
a long hot walk in summer time. You reach the
summit at a place where four ways meet, beside the
toll of Fairmilehead. The spot is breezy and agree-
able both in name and aspect. The hills are close
by across a valley : Kirk Yetton, with its long,
upright scars visible as far as Fife, and AUermuir
the tallest on this side: with wood and tilled field
running high up on their borders, and haunches all
moulded into innumerable glens and shelvings and
72

TO THE PENTLAND HILLS

variegated with heather and fern. The air comes
briskly and sweetly off the hills, pure from the ele-
vation, and rustically scented by the upland plants ;
and even at the toll, you may hear the curlew calling
on its mate. At certain seasons, when the gulls
desert their surfy forelands, the birds of sea and
mountain hunt and scream together in the same field
by Fairmilehead. The winged, wild things inter-
mix their wheelings, the sea-birds skim the tree-tops
and fish among the furrows of the plough. These
little craft of air are at home in all the world, so
long as they cruise in their own element ; and like
sailors, ask but food and water from the shores they
coast.

Below, over a stream, the road passes Bow Bridge,
now a dairy-farm, but once a distillery of whisky.
It chanced, some time in the past century, that the
distiller was on terms of good-fellowship with the
visiting officer of excise. The latter was of an easy,
friendly disposition and a master of convivial arts.
Now and again, he had to walk out of Edinburgh to
measure the distiller's stock ; and although it was
agreeable to find his business lead him in a friend's
direction, it was unfortunate that the friend should
be a loser by his visits. Accordingly, when he got
about the level of Fairmilehead, the gauger would
take his flute, without which he never travelled, from
his pocket, fit it together, and set manfully to play-
ing, as if for his own delectation and inspired by the
beauty of the scene. His favourite air, it seems, was
' Over the hills and far away.' At the first note, the

73

NOTES ON EDINBURGH

distiller pricked his ears. A flute at Fairmilehead ?
and playing * Over the hills and far away ' ? This
must be his friendly enemy, the gauger. Instantly,
horses were harnessed, and sundry barrels of whisky
were got upon a cart, driven at a gallop round Hill-
end, and buried in the mossy glen behind Kirk
Yetton. In the same breath, you may be sure, a fat
fowl was put to the fire, and the whitest napery pre-
pared for the back parlour. A little after, the gauger,
having had his fill of music for the moment, came
strolling down with the most innocent air imagin-
able, and found the good people at Bow Bridge
taken entirely unawares by his arrival, but none the
less glad to see him. The distiller's liquor and the
ganger's flute would combine to speed the moments
of digestion ; and when both were somewhat mellow,
they would wind up the evening with ' Over the
hills and far away ' to an accompaniment of knowing
glances. And at least there is a smuggling story,
with original and half-idyllic features.

A little farther, the road to the right passes an
upright stone in a field. The country people call it
General Kay's monument. According to them, an
officer of that name had perished there in battle at
some indistinct period before the beginning of history.
The date is reassuring ; for I think cautious writers
are silent on the General's exploits. But the stone
is connected with one of those remarkable tenures of
land which linger on into the modern world from
Feudalism. Whenever the reigning sovereign passes
by, a certain landed proprietor is held bound to climb

74

TO THE PENTLAND HILLS

on to the top, trumpet in hand, and sound a flourish
according to the measure of his knowledge in that
art. Happily for a respectable family, crowned heads
have no great business in the Pentland Hills. But
the story lends a character of comicality to the
stone ; and the passer-by will sometimes chuckle to
himself.

The district is dear to the superstitious. Hard by,
at the back gate of Comiston, a belated carter beheld
a lady in white, ' with the most beautiful, clear shoes
upon her feet,' who looked upon him in a very
ghastly manner and then vanished ; and just in front
is the Hunters' Tryst, once a roadside inn, and not
so long ago haunted by the devil in person. Satan
led the inhabitants a pitiful existence. He shook
tlie four corners of the building with lamentable
outcries, beat at the doors and windows, overthrew
crockery in the dead hours of the morning, and
danced unholy dances on the roof. Every kind of
spiritual disinfectant was put in requisition ; chosen
ministers were summoned out of Edinburgh and
prayed by the hour ; pious neighbours sat up all
night making a noise of psalmody ; but Satan minded
them no more than the wind about the hill- tops ;
and it was only after years of persecution, that he
left the Hunters' Tryst in peace to occupy himself
with the remainder of mankind. What with General
Kay, and the white lady, and this singular visitation,
the neighbourhood offers great facilities to the makers
of sun-myths ; and without exactly casting in one's
lot with that disenchanting school of writers, one

75

NOTES ON EDINBURGH

cannot help hearing a good deal of the winter wind
in the last story. ' That nicht,' says Burns, in one
of his happiest moments, —

' That nicht a child might understand
The deil had business on his hand.'

And if people sit up all night in lone places on
the hills, with Bibles and tremulous psalms, they
will be apt to hear some of the most fiendish noises
in the world : the wind will beat on doors and
dance upon roofs for them, and make the hills howl
around their cottage with a clamour like the Judg-
ment Day.

The road goes down through another valley, and
then finally begins to scale the main slope of the
Pentlands. A bouquet of old trees stands round a
white farmhouse ; and from a neighbouring dell you
can see smoke rising and leaves ruffling in the breeze.
Straight above, the hills climb a thousand feet into
the air. The neighbourhood, about the time of
lambs, is clamorous with the bleating of flocks ; and
you will be awakened, in the grey of early summer
mornings, by the barking of a dog or the voice of
a shepherd shouting to the echoes. This, with the
hamlet lying behind unseen, is Swanston.

The place in the dell is immediately connected
with the city. Long ago, this sheltered field was
purchased by the Edinburgh magistrates for the sake
of the springs that rise or gather there. After they
had built their water-house and laid their pipes, it
occurred to them that the place was suitable for
76

TO THE PENTLAND HILLS

junketing. Once entertained, with jovial magistrates
and public funds, the idea led speedily to accom-
plishment ; and Edinburgh could soon boast of a
municipal Pleasure House. The dell was turned
into a garden ; and on the knoll that shelters it from
the plain and the sea winds, they built a cottage
looldng to the hills. They brought crockets and
gargoyles from old St. Giles's, which they were then
restoring, and disposed them on the gables and over
the door and about the garden ; and the quarry
which had supplied them with building material,
they draped with clematis and carpeted with beds of
roses. So much for the pleasure of the eye ; for
creature comfort, they made a capacious cellar in the
hillside and fitted it with bins of the hewn stone.
In process of time, the trees grew higher and gave
shade to the cottage, and the evergreens sprang up
and turned the dell into a thicket. There, purple
magistrates relaxed themselves from the pursuit of
municipal ambition ; cocked hats paraded soberly
about the garden and in and out among the holhes ;
authoritative canes drew ciphering upon the path ;
and at night, from high up on the hills> a shepherd
saw lighted windows through the foliage and heard
the voice of city dignitaries raised in song.

The farm is older. It was first a grange of White-
kirk Abbey, tilled and inhabited by rosy friars.
Thence, after the Reformation, it passed into the
hands of a true-blue Protestant family. During the
Covenanting troubles, when a night conventicle was
held upon the Pentlands, the farm doors stood hos-

NOTES ON EDINBURGH

pitably open till the morning ; the dresser was laden
with cheese and bannocks, milk and brandy ; and
the worshippers kept slipping down from the hill
between two exercises, as couples visit the supper-
room between two dances of a modern ball. In the
Forty-Five, some foraging Highlanders from Prince
Charlie's army fell upon Swanston in the dawn.
The great-grandfather of the late farmer was then
a little child ; him they awakened by plucking the
blankets from his bed, and he remembered, when he
was an old man, their truculent looks and uncouth
speech. The churn stood full of cream in the dairy,
and with this they made their brose in high delight.
' It was braw brose,' said one of them. At last, they
made off, laden like camels with their booty; and
Swanston Farm has lain out of the way of history
from that time forward. I do not know what may
be yet in store for it. On dark days, when the mist
runs low upon the hill, the house has a gloomy air as
if suitable for private tragedy. But in hot July, you
can fancy nothing more perfect than the garden, laid
out in alleys and arbours and bright old-fashioned
flower-plots, and ending in a miniature ravine, all
trellis-work and moss and tinkling waterfall, and
housed from the sun under fathoms of broad
foliage.

The hamlet behind is one of the least considerable
of hamlets, and consists of a few cottages on a green
beside a burn. Some of them (a strange thing in
Scotland) are models of internal neatness ; the beds
adorned with patchwork, the shelves arrayed with
73

TO THE PENTLAND HILLS

willow-pattern plates, the floors and tables bright
with scrubbing or pipeclay, and the very kettle
polished like silver. It is the sign of a contented
old age in country places, where there is little matter
for gossip and no street sights. Housework becomes
an art; and at evening, when the cottage interior
shines and twinkles in the glow of the fire, the house-
wife folds her hands and contemplates her finished
picture ; the snow and the wind may do their worst,
she has made herself a pleasant corner in the world.
The city might be a thousand miles away : and yet
it was from close by that Mr. Bough painted the
distant view of Edinburgh which has been engraved
for this collection : ^ and you have only to look at the
cut, to see how near it is at hand. But hills and
hill people are not easily sophisticated ; and if you
walk out here on a summer Sunday, it is as like
as not the shepherd may set his dogs upon you.
But keep an unmoved countenance ; they look for-
midable at the charge, but their hearts are in the
right place; and they will only bark and sprawl
about you on the grass, unmindful of their master's
excitations.

Kirk Yetton forms the north-eastern angle of the
range ; thence, the Pentlands trend off to south
and west. From the summit you look over a great
expanse of champaign sloping to the sea and behold
a large variety of distant hills. There are the hills
of Fife, the hills of Peebles, the Lammermoors and
the Ochils, more or less mountainous in outline, more

^ Reference to an etching in original edition.

79

NOTES ON EDINBURGH

or less blue with distance. Of the Pentlands them-
selves, you see a field of wild heathery peaks with a
pond gleaming in the midst ; and to that side the
view is as desolate as if you were looking into
Galloway or Applecross. To turn to the other, is
like a piece of travel. Far out in the lowlands
Edinburgh shows herself, making a great smoke on
clear days and spreading her suburbs about her
for miles ; the Castle rises darkly in the midst ;
and close by, Arthur's Seat makes a bold figure in
the landscape. All around, cultivated fields, and
woods, and smoking villages, and white country
roads, diversify the uneven surface of the land.
Trains crawl slowly abroad upon the railway lines ;
little ships are tacking in the Firth ; the shadow
of a mountainous cloud, as large as a parish, travels
before the wind ; the wind itself ruffles the wood
and standing corn, aiid sends pulses of varying
colour across the landscape. So you sit, like Jupiter
on Olympus, and look down from afar upon men's
life. The city is as silent as a city of the dead : from
all its humming thoroughfares, not a voice, not a
footfall, reaches you upon the hill. The sea surf, the
cries of ploughmen, the streams and the mill-wheels,
the birds and the wind, keep up an animated concert
through the plain ; from farm to farm, dogs and
crowing cocks contend together in defiance ; and yet
from this Olympian station, except for the whisper-
ing rumour of a train, the world has fallen into a
dead silence and the business of town and country
grown voiceless in your ears. A crying hill-bird, the
80

TO THE PENTLAND HILLS

bleat of a sheep, a wind singing in the dry grass,
seem not so much to interrupt, as to accompany, the
stillness ; but to the spiritual ear, the whole scene
makes a music at once human and rural, and dis-
courses pleasant reflections on the destiny of man.
The spiry habitable city, ships, the divided fields, and
browsing herds, and the straight highways, tell
visibly of man's active and comfortable ways ; and
you may be never §o laggard and never so unim-
pressionable, but there is something in the view that
spirits up your blood and puts you in the vein for
cheerful labour.

Immediately below is Fairmilehead, a spot of roof
and a smoking chimney, where two roads, no thicker
than packthread, intersect beside a hanging wood.
If you are fanciful, you will be reminded of the
ganger in the story. And the thought of this old
exciseman, who once lipped and fingered on his pipe
and uttered clear notes from it in the mountain air,
and the words of the song he affected, carry your
mind ' Over the hills and far away ' to distant
countries ; and you have a vision of Edinburgh, not,
as you see her, in the midst of a little neighbourhood,
but as a boss upon the round world with all Europe
and the deep sea for her surroundings. For every
place is a centre to the earth, whence highways
radiate or ships set sail for foreign ports ; the limit
of a parish is not more imaginary than the frontier
of an empire ; and as a man sitting at home in his
cabinet and swiftly writing books, so a city sends
abroad an influence and a portrait of herself. There
F 8i

NOTES ON EDINBURGH

is no Edinburgh emigrant, far or near, from China to
Peru, but he or she carries some Hvely pictures of
the mind, some sunset behind the Castle chfFs, some
snow scene, some maze of city lamps, indelible in the
memory and delightful to study in the intervals of
toil. For any such, if this book fall in their way,
here are a few more home pictures It would be
pleasant, if they should recognise a house where they
had dwelt, or a walk that they had taken.

82

MEMORIES AND
PORTRAITS

First Collected Edition: Ohatto and Windus,

London, 1887.
Originally published :

I. Cornhill Magazine, May 18S2.
II. ' The New Amphion, being the Book of the
Edinburgh University Union Fancy Fair,'
Edinburgh, 1886.
III. Longman's Magazine, May 1884.
V. Edinburgh University Magazine, March

1871.
VI. Longman's Magazine, April 1887.
VII. Scribner's Magazine, May 1877.
IX. Contemporary Review, May 1887.
X. Gornhill Magazine, April 1882.
XI. Gornhill Magazine, August 1882.
XII. English Illustrated Magazine, February

1884.
XIII, Magazine of Art, May 1882.
XV, Longman's Magazine, November 1883.
XVI. Longmans Magazine, December 1884.

84

CONTENTS

Dedication

PAGE

87

I.

The Foreigner at Home

89

II.

Some College Memories

100

III.

Old Mortality .

109

IV.

A College Magazine

122

V.

An Old Scots Gardener

135

VI.

Pastoral

144

VII.

The Manse

155

VIII.

Memoirs of an Islet

164

IX.

Thomas Stevenson

171

X.

Talk and Talkers, I. .

179

XL

Talk and Talkers, II. .

196

XII.

The Character of Dogs

210

XIII. A Penny Plain and Twopence Coloured 225

85

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

PAGE

XIV. A Gossip on a Novel of Dumas's . 235

XV. A Gossip on Romance . . 248

XVI. A Humble Remonstrance . . 267

86

TO MY MOTHER

IN THE NAME OF PAST JOY
AND PRESENT SORROW

I DEDICATE

THESE MEMORIES AND

PORTRAITS

XS'. 'Ludgate Hiir

ivithin sight of Cape Race

87

THE FOREIGNER AT HOME

' This is no' my ain house ;
I ken by the biggin' o't. '

A Scotsman may tramp the better part of Europe
and the United States, and never again receive so
vivid an impression of foreign travel and strange
lands and manners as on his first excursion into
England. The change from a hilly to a level
country strikes him with delighted wonder. Along
the flat horizon there arise the frequent venerable
towers of churches. He sees at the end of airy
vistas the revolution of the windmill sails. He
may go where he pleases in the future; he may
see Alps, and Pyramids, and lions ; but it will
be hard to beat the pleasure of that moment.
There are, indeed, few merrier spectacles than that
of many windmills bickering together in a fresh
breeze over a woody country ; their halting alacrity
of movement, their pleasant busyness, making
bread all day with uncouth gesticulations, their air,
gigantically human, as of a creature half alive, put a
spirit of romance into the tamest landscape. When
the Scottish child sees them first he falls immediately

89

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

in love ; and from that time forward windmills keep
turning in his dreams. And so, in their degree, with
every feature of the life and landscape. The warm,
habitable age of towns and hamlets, the green,
settled, ancient look of the country ; the lush hedge-
rows, stiles, and privy pathways in the fields ; the
sluggish, brimming rivers ; chalk and smock-frocks ;
chimes of bells and the rapid, pertly-sounding English
speech — they are all new to the curiosity ; they are
all set to English airs in the child's story that he tells
himself at night. The sharp edge of novelty wears
off; the feeling is blunted, but I doubt whether it is
ever killed. Rather it keeps returning, ever the more I
rarely and strangely, and even in scenes to which you
have been long accustomed suddenly awakes and
gives a relish to enjoyment or heightens the sense of
isolation.

One thing especially continues unfamiliar to the
Scotsman's eye — the domestic architecture, the look
of streets and buildings ; the quaint, venerable age of
many, and the thin walls and warm colouring of all.
We have, in Scotland, far fewer ancient buildings,
above all in country places ; and those that we have
are all of hewn or harled masonry. Wood has been
sparingly used in their construction ; the window-
frames are sunken in the wall, not flat to the front,
as in England; the roofs are steeper- pitched ; even
a hill farm will have a massy, square, cold and
permanent appearance. English houses, in compari-
son, have the look of cardboard toys, such as a puff
might shatter. And to this the Scotsman never
90

THE FOREIGNER AT HOME

becomes used. His eye can never rest consciously
on one of these brick houses — rickles of brick, as he
might call them — or on one of these flat-chested
streets, but he is instantly reminded where he is, and
instantly travels back in fancy to his home. ' This is
no' my ain house ; I ken by the biggin' o't.' And yet
perhaps it is his own, bought with his own money, the
key of it long polished in his pocket ; but it has not
yet been, and never will be, thoroughly adopted by his
imagination ; nor does he cease to remember that, in
the whole length and breadth of his native country,
there was no building even distantly resembling it.

But it is not alone in scenery and architecture that
we count England foreign. The constitution of
society, the very pillars of the empire, surprise and
even pain us. The dull, neglected peasant, sunk in
matter, insolent, gross and servile, makes a startling
contrast with our own long-legged, long-headed,
thoughtful, Bible-quoting ploughman. A week or
two in such a place as Suffolk leaves the Scotsman
gasping. It seems incredible that within the boun-
daries of his own island a class should have been thus
forgotten. Even the educated and intelUgent, who
hold our own opinions and speak in our own words,
yet seem to hold them with a difference or from
another reason, and to speak on all things with less
interest and conviction. The first shock of Enghsh
society is like a cold plunge. It is possible that the
Scot comes looking for too much, and to be sure his
first experiment will be in the wrong direction. Yet
surely his complaint is grounded ; surely the speech

91

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

of Englishmen is too often lacking in generous
ardour, the better part of the man too often withheld
from the social commerce, and the contact of mind
with mind evaded as with terror. A Scottish
peasant wiU talk more liberally out of his own
experience. He will not put you by with conversa-
tional counters and small jests ; he will give you the
best of himself, like one interested in life and man's
chief end. A Scotsman is vain, interested in himself
and others, eager for sympathy, setting forth his
thoughts and experience in the best Ught. The
egoism of the Englishman is self-contained. He
does not seek to proselytise. He takes no interest
in Scotland or the Scots, and, what is the un-
kindest cut of all, he does not care to justify his
indifference. Give him the wages of going on and
being an EngHshman, that is all he asks ; and in the
meantime, while you continue to associate, he would
not be reminded of your baser origin. Compared
with the grand, tree-Hke self-sufficiency of his
demeanour, the vanity and curiosity of the Scot seem
uneasy, vulgar, and immodest. That you should
continually try to establish human and serious
relations, that you should actually feel an interest in
John Bull, and desire and invite a return of interest
from him, may argue something more awake and
lively in your mind, but it still puts you in the
attitude of a suitor and a poor relation. Thus even
the lowest class of the educated English towers over
a Scotsman by the head and shoulders.

Different indeed is the atmosphere in which Scot-
92

THE FOREIGNER AT HOME

tish and English youth begin to look about them,
come to themselves in life, and gather up those
first apprehensions which are the material of future
thought and, to a great extent, the rule of future
conduct. I have been to school in both countries,
and I found, in the boys of the North, something at
once rougher and more tender, at once more reserve
and more expansion, a greater habitual distance
chequered by glimpses of a nearer intimacy, and
on the whole wider extremes of temperament and
sensibility. The boy of the South seems more
wholesome, but less thoughtful ; he gives himself to
games as to a business, striving to excel, but is not
readily transported by imagination ; the type remains
with me as cleaner in mind and body, more active,
fonder of eating, endowed with a lesser and a less
romantic sense of life and of the future, and more
immersed in present circumstances. And certainly,
for one thing, English boys are younger for their age.
Sabbath observance makes a series of grim, and
perhaps serviceable, pauses in the tenor of Scottish
boyhood — days of great stillness and solitude for the
rebellious mind, when in the dearth of books and
play, and in the intervals of studying the Shorter
Catechism, the intellect and senses prey upon and
test each other. The typical English Sunday, with
the huge midday dinner and the plethoric afternoon,
leads perhaps to different results. About the very
cradle of the Scot there goes a hum of metaphysical
divinity ; and the whole of two divergent systems is
summed up, not merely speciously, in the two first

93

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

questions of the rival catechisms, the English tritely
inquiring, 'What is your name?' the Scottish
striking at the very roots of life with, ' What is the
chief end of man ?' and answering nobly, if obscurely,
'To glorify God, and to enjoy Him for ever.' I do
not wish to make an idol of the Shorter Catechism ;
but the fact of such a question being asked opens to
us Scots a great field of speculation ; and the fact
that it is asked of all of us, from the peer to the
ploughboy, binds us more nearly together. No
Englishman of Byron's age, character, and history,
would have had patience for long theological discus-
sions on the way to fight for Greece ; but the daft
Gordon blood and the Aberdonian school-days kept
their influence to the end. We have spoken of the
material conditions ; nor need much more be said of
these : of the land lying everywhere more exposed,
of the wind always louder and bleaker, of the black,
roaring winters, of the gloom of high -lying, old stone
cities, imminent on the windy seaboard ; compared
with the level streets, the warm colouring of the
brick, the domestic quaintness of the architecture,
among which English children begin to grow up and
come to themselves in life. As the stage of the
University approaches, the contrast becomes more
express. The English lad goes to Oxford or
Cambridge ; there, in an ideal world of gardens, to
lead a semi-scenic life, costumed, disciplined, and
drilled by proctors. Nor is this to be regarded
merely as a stage of education ; it is a piece of
privilege besides, and a step that separates him
94

THE FOREIGNER AT HOME

further from the bulk of his compatriots. At an
earlier age the Scottish lad begins his greatly differ-
ent experience of crowded class-rooms, of a gaunt
quadrangle, of a bell hourly booming over the traffic
of the city to recall him from the public-house where
he has been lunching, or the streets where he has
been wandering fancy-free. His college life has Uttle
of restraint, and nothing of necessary gentility. He
will find no quiet clique of the exclusive, studious
and cultured ; no rotten borough of the arts. All
classes rub shoulders on the greasy benches. The
raffish young gentleman in gloves must measure his
scholarship with the plain, clownish laddie from the
parish school. They separate, at the session's end,
one to smoke cigars about a watering-place, the other
to resume the labours of the field beside his peasant
family. The first muster of a college class in Scot-
land is a scene of curious and painful interest ; so
many lads, fresh from the heather, hang round the
stove in cloddish embarrassment, ruffled by the pre-
sence of their smarter comrades, and afraid of the
sound of their own rustic voices. It was in these
early days, I think, that Professor Blackie won the
affection of his pupils, putting these uncouth, um-
brageous students at their ease with ready human
geniality. Thus, at least, we have a healthy
democratic atmosphere to breathe in while at work ;
even when there is no cordiality there is always a
juxtaposition of the different classes, and in the
competition of study the intellectual power of each
is plainly demonstrated to the other. Our tasks

95

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

ended, we of the North go forth as freemen into the
humming, lamplit city. At five o'clock you may see
the last of us hiving from the college gates, in the
glare of the shop-windows, under the green glimmer
of the winter sunset. The frost tingles in our blood ;
no proctor lies in wait to intercept us ; till the bell
sounds again, we are the masters of the world;
and some portion of our lives is always Saturday,
la trSve de JDieu.

Nor must we omit the sense of the nature of his
country and his covmtry's history gradually growing
in the child's mind from story and from observation.
A Scottish child hears much of shipwreck, outlying
iron skerries, pitiless breakers, and great sea-lights;
much of heathery mountains, wild clans, and hunted
Covenanters. Breaths come to him in song of the
distant Cheviots and the ring of foraying hoofs. He
glories in his hard-fisted forefathers, of the iron girdle
and the handful of oatmeal, who rode so swiftly and
lived so sparely on their raids. Poverty, ill-luck,
enterprise, and constant resolution are the fibres of
the legend of his country's history. The heroes and
kings of Scotland have been tragically fated; the
most marking incidents in Scottish history — Flodden,
Darien, or the Forty-five — were still either failures
or defeats ; and the fall of Wallace and the repeated
reverses of the Bruce combine with the very small-
ness of the country to teach rather a moral than a
material criterion for life. Britain is altogether small,
the mere taproot of her extended empire ; Scotland,
again, which alone the Scottish boy adopts in his
96

THE FOREIGNER AT HOME

imagination, is but a little part of that, and avowedly
cold, sterile, and unpopulous. It is not so for nothing.
I once seemed to have perceived in an American boy
a greater readiness of sympathy for lands that are
great, and rich, and growing, like his own. It proved
to be quite otherwise r a mere dumb piece of boyish
romance, that I had lacked penetration to divine.
But the error serves the purpose of my argument ;
for I am sure, at least, that the heart of young Scot-
land will be always touched more nearly by paucity
of number and Spartan poverty of life.

So we may argue, and yet the difference is not
explained. That Shorter Catechism which I took as
being so typical of Scotland, was yet composed in the
city of Westminster. The division of races is more
sharply marked within the borders of Scotland itself
than between the countries. Galloway and Buchan,
Lothian and Lochaber, are like foreign parts ; yet
you may choose a man from any of them, and, ten to
one, he shall prove to have the headmark of a Scot.
A century and a half ago the Highlander wore a
different costume, spoke a different language, wor-
shipped in another church, held different morals,
and obeyed a different social constitution from his
fellow-countrymen either of the south or north.
Even the English, it is recorded, did not loathe the
Highlander and the Highland costume as they were
loathed by the remainder of the Scots. Yet the
Highlander felt himself a Scot. He would willingly
raid into the Scottish lowlands ; but his courage
failed him at the border, and he regarded England as
G 97

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

a perilous, unhomely land. When the Black Watch,
after years of foreign service, returned to Scotland,
veterans leaped out and kissed the earth at Port-
patrick. They had been in Ireland, stationed among
men of their own race and language, where they were
well liked and treated with affection ; but it was the
soil of Galloway that they kissed, at the extreme end
of the hostile lowlands, among a people who did not
understand their speech, and who had hated, harried,
and hanged them since the dawn of history. Last,
and perhaps most curious, the sons of chieftains were
often educated on the continent of Europe. They
went abroad speaking Gaelic ; they returned speaking,
not English, but the broad dialect of Scotland. Now,
what idea had they in their minds when they thus,
in thought, identified themselves with their ancestral
enemies ? What was the sense in which they were
Scottish and not English, or Scottish and not Irish ?
Can a bare name be thus influential on the minds
and affections of men, and a political aggregation
blind them to the nature of facts ? The story of the
Austrian Empire would seem to answer No ; the far
more galling business of Ireland chnches the negative
from nearer home. Is it common education, common
morals, a common language, or a common faith, that
join men into nations ? There were practically none
of these in the case we are considering.

The fact remains : in spite of the difference of

blood and language, the Lowlander feels himself the

sentimental countryman of the Highlander. When

they meet abroad they fall upon each other's necks

98

THE FOREIGNER AT HOME

in spirit ; even at home there is a kind of clannish
intimacy in their talk. But from his compatriot in
the south the Lowlander stands consciously apart.
He has had a different training ; he obeys different
laws ; he makes his will in other terms, is otherwise
divorced and married ; his eyes are not at home in an
English landscape or with English houses ; his ear
continues to remark the English speech ; and even
though his tongue acquire the Southern knack, he
will still have a strong Scots accent of the mind.

99

II
SOME COLLEGE MEMORIES

I AM asked to write something (it is not specifically
stated what) to the profit and glory of my Alma
Mater ; ^ and the fact is I seem to be in very nearly
the same case with those who addressed me, for while
T am willing enough to write something, I know not
what to write. Only one point I see, that if I am to
write at all, it should be of the University itself and
my own days under its shadow ; of the things that
are still the same and of those that are already
changed : such talk, in short, as would pass naturally
between a student of to-day and one of yesterday,
supposing them to meet and grow confidential.

The generations pass away swiftly enough on the
high seas of life ; more swiftly still in the little
bubbUng backwater of the quadrangle ; so that we
see there, on a scale startlingly diminished, the flight
of time and the succession of men. I looked for my
name the other day in last year's case-book of the
Speculative. Naturally enough I looked for it near
the end ; it was not there, nor yet in the next column,

1 For the ' Book ' of the Edinburgh University Union Fancy Fair^
1886.

lOO

SOME COLLEGE MEMORIES

so that I began to think it had been dropped at
press ; and when at last I found it, mounted on the
shoulders of so many successors, and looking in that
posture like the name of a man of ninety, I was con-
scious of some of the dignity of years. This kind of
dignity of temporal precession is likely, with prolonged
life, to become more familiar, possibly less welcome ;
but I felt it strongly then, it is strongly on me now,
and I am the more emboldened to speak with my
successors in the tone of a parent and a praiser of
things past.

For, indeed, that which they attend is but a fallen
University ; it has doubtless some remains of good,
for human institutions decline by gradual stages ; but
decline, in spite of all seeming embellishments, it
does ; and, what is perhaps more singular, began to do
so when I ceased to be a student. Thus, by an odd
chance, I had the very last of the very best of Alma
Mater ; the same thing, I hear (which makes it the
more strange), had previously happened to my father ;
and if they are good and do not die, something not
at all unsimilar will be found in time to have befallen
my successors of to-day. Of the specific points of
change, of advantage in the past, of shortcoming in
the present, I must own that, on a near examination,
they look wondrous cloudy. The chief and far the
most lamentable change is the absence of a certain
lean, ugly, idle, unpopular student, whose presence
was for me the gist and heart of the whole matter ;
whose changing humours, fine occasional purposes of
good, flinching acceptance of evil, shiverings on wet,

lOI

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

east- windy, morning journeys up to class, infinite
yawnings during lecture and unquenchable gusto in
the delights of truantry, made up the sunshine and
shadow of my college life. You cannot fancy what
you missed in missing him ; his virtues, I make sure,
are inconceivable to his successors, just as they were
apparently concealed from his contemporaries, for I
was practically alone in the pleasure I had in his
society. Poor soul, I remember how much he was
cast down at times, and how life (which had not yet
begun) seemed to be already at an end, and hope
quite dead, and misfortune and dishonour, like phy-
sical presences, dogging him as he went. And it
may be worth while to add that these clouds rolled
away in their season, and that all clouds roll away at
last, and the troubles of youth in particular are things
but of a moment. So this student, whom I have in
my eye, took his full share of these concerns, and that
very largely by his own fault ; but he still clung to
his fortune, and in the midst of much misconduct,
kept on in his own way learning how to work ; and
at last, to his wonder, escaped out of the stage of
studentship not openly shamed ; leaving behind him
the University of Edinburgh shorn of a good deal of
its interest for myself.

But while he is (in more senses than one) the first
person, he is by no means the only one whom I regret,
or whom the students of to-day, if they knew what
they had lost, would regret also. They have still
Tait, to be sure — long may they have him ! — and
they have still Tait's class-room, cupola and all ; but

I02

SOME COLLEGE MEMORIES

think of what a different place it was when this youth
of mine (at least on roll days) would be present on
the benches, and, at the near end of the platform,
Lindsay senior ^ was airing his robust old age. It is
possible my sucpessors may have never even heard of
Old Lindsay ; but when he went, a link snapped with
the last century. He had something of a rustic air,
sturdy and fresh and plain ; he spoke with a ripe east-
country accent, which I used to admire ; his reminis-
cences were all of journeys on foot or highways busy
with post-chaises — a Scotland before steam ; he had
seen the coal fire on the Isle of May, and he regaled
me with tales of my own grandfather. Thus he was
for me a mirror of things perished ; it was only in his
memory that I could see the huge shock of flames of
the May beacon stream to leeward, and the watchers,
as they fed the fire, lay hold unscorched of the wind-
ward bars of the furnace ; it was only thus that I
could see my grandfather driving swiftly in a gig
along the seaboard road from Pittenweem to Crail,
and for all his business hurry, drawing up to speak
good-humouredly with those he met. And now, in
his turn, Lindsay is gone also ; inhabits only the
memories of other men, till these shall follow him ;
and figures in my reminiscences as my grandfather
figured in his.

To-day, again, they have Professor Butcher, and I
hear he has a prodigious deal of Greek ; and they
have Professor Chrystal, who is a man filled with the
mathematics. And doubtless these are set-offs. But

1 Professor Tait's laboratory assistant.

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

they cannot change the fact that Professor Blackie
has retired, and that Professor Kelland is dead. No
man's education is complete or truly liberal who knew
not Kelland. There were unutterable lessons in the
mere sight of that frail old clerical gentleman, lively
as a boy, kind like a fairy godfather, and keeping
perfect order in his class by the spell of that very
kindness. I have heard him drift into reminiscences
in class-time, though not for long, and give us
glimpses of old-world hfe in out-of-the-way English
parishes when he was young ; thus playing the same
part as Lindsay — the part of the surviving memory,
signalling out of the dark backward and abysm of
time the images of perished things. But it was a
part that scarce became him ; he somehow lacked the
means : for all his silver hair and worn face, he was
not truly old ; and he had too much of the unrest
and petulant fire of youth, and too much invincible
innocence of mind, to play the veteran well. The
time to measure him best, to taste (in the old phrase)
his gracious nature, was when he received his class
at home. What a pretty simplicity would he then
show, trying to amuse us like children with toys ;
and what an engaging nervousness of manner, as
fearing that his efforts might not succeed ! Truly,
he made us all feel like children, and like children
embarrassed, but at the same time filled with sym-
pathy for the conscientious, troubled elder-boy who
was working so hard to entertain us. A theorist has
held the view that there is no feature in man so tell-
tale as his spectacles ; that the mouth may be com-
104

SOME COLLEGE MEMORIES

pressed and the brow smoothed artificially, but the
sheen of the barnacles is diagnostic. And truly it
must have been thus with Kelland ; for as I still
fancy I behold him frisking actively about the plat-
form, pointer in hand, that which I seem to see most
clearly is the way his glasses glittered with affection.
I never knew but one other man who had (if you will
permit the phrase) so kind a spectacle, and that was
Dr. Appleton.^ But the light in his case was tem-
pered and passive ; in Kelland's it danced, and
changed, and flashed vivaciously among the students,
like a perpetual challenge to goodwill.

I cannot say so much about Professor Blackie, for
a good reason. Kelland's class I attended, once even
gained there a certificate of merit, the only distinc-
tion of my University career. But although I am
the holder of a certificate of attendance in the pro-
fessor's own hand, I cannot remember to have been
present in the Greek class above a dozen times.
Professor Blackie was even kind enough to remark
(more than once) while in the very act of writing the
document above referred to, that he did not know
my face. Indeed, I denied myself many opportuni-
ties ; acting upon an extensive and highly rational
system of truantry, which cost me a great deal of
trouble to put in exercise — perhaps as much as would
have taught me Greek — and sent me forth into the
world and the profession of letters with the merest
shadow of an education. But they say it is always

^ Charles Edward Appleton^ D.C.L.^ Fellow of St. John's College,
Oxford, founder and first editor of the Academy : born 1841, died 1879.

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

a good thing to have taken pains, and that success
is its own reward, whatever be its nature ; so that,
perhaps, even upon this I should plume myself, that
no one ever played the truant with more deliberate
care, and none ever had more certificates for less
education. One consequence, however, of my system
is that I have much less to say of Professor Blackie
than I had of Professor Kelland ; and as he is still
alive, and will long, I hope, continue to be so, it will
not surprise you very much that I have no intention
of saying it.

Meanwhile, how many others have gone — Jenkin,
Hodgson, and I know not who besides ; and of that
tide of students that used to throng the arch and
blacken the quadrangle, how many are scattered into
the remotest parts of the earth, and how many more
have lain down beside their fathers in their ' resting-
graves ' ! And again, how many of these last have
not found their way there, all too early, through the
stress of education ! That was one thing, at least,
from which my truantry protected me. I am sorry
indeed that I have no Greek, but I should be sorrier
still if I were dead ; nor do I know the name of that
branch of knowledge which is worth acquiring at the
price of a brain fever. There are many sordid
tragedies in the life of the student, above all if he be
poor, or drunken, or both ; but nothing more moves
a wise man's pity than the case of the lad who is in
too much hurry to be learned. And so, for the sake
of a moral at the end, I will call up one more figure,
and have done. A student, ambitious of success
1 06

i

SOME COLLEGE MEMOKIES

by that hot, intemperate manner of study that
now grows so common, read night and day for an
examination. As he went on, the task became more
easy to him, sleep was more easily banished, his
brain grew hot and clear and more capacious, the
necessary knowledge daily fuller and more orderly.
It came to the eve of the trial, and he watched all
night in his high chamber, reviewing what he knew,
and already secure of success. His window looked
eastward, and being (as I said) high up, and the
house itself standing on a hill, commanded a view
over dwindling suburbs to a country horizon. At
last my student drew up his blind, and still in quite
a jocund humour, looked abroad. Day was breaking,
the east was tinging with strange fires, the clouds
breaking up for the coming of the sun ; and at the
sight, nameless terror seized upon his mind. He was
sane, his senses were undisturbed ; he saw clearly,
and knew what he was seeing, and knew that it was
normal ; but he could neither bear to see it nor find
the strength to look away, and fled in panic from his
chamber into the enclosure of the street. In the cool
air and silence, and among the sleeping houses, his
strength was renewed. Nothing troubled him but
the memory of what had passed, and an abject fear
of its return.

' Gallo canente, spes redit,
Aegris salus refunditur,
Lapsis fides revertitur/

as they sang of old in Portugal in the Morning
Office. But to him that good hour of cockcrow,

107

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

and the changes of the dawn, had brought panic,
and lasting doubt, and such terror as he still shook
to think of. He dared not return to his lodging ; he
could not eat ; he sat down, he rose up, he wandered ;
the city woke about him with its cheerful bustle, the
sun chmbed overhead ; and still he grew but the
more absorbed in the distress of his recollection and
the fear of his past fear. At the appointed hour he
came to the door of the place of examination ; but
when he was asked, he had forgotten his name.
Seeing him so disordered, they had not the heart
to send hiin away, but gave him a paper and ad-
mitted him, still nameless, to the Hall. Vain kind-
ness, vain efforts. He could only sit in a still
growing horror, writing nothing, ignorant of all,
his mind filled with a single memory of the breaking
day and his own intolerable fear. And that same
night he was tossing in a brain fever.

People are afraid of war and wounds and dentists,
all with excellent reason ; but these are not to
be compared with such chaotic terrors of the mind
as fell on this young man. We all have by our
bedsides the box of the Merchant Abudah, thank
God, securely enough shut ; but when a young
man sacrifices sleep to labour, let him have a care,
for he is playing with the lock.

1 08

Ill
OLD MORTALITY

There is a certain graveyard, looked upon on the
one side by a prison, on the other by the windows of
a quiet hotel ; below, under a steep cliff, it beholds
the traffic of many lines of rail, and the scream of the
engine and the shock of meeting buffers mount to it
all day long. The aisles are lined with the enclosed
sepulchres of families, door beyond door, like houses
in a street ; and in the morning the shadows of the
prison turrets, and of many tall memorials, fall upon
the graves. There, in the hot fits of youth, I came
to be unhappy. Pleasant incidents are woven with
my memory of the place. I here made friends with
a certain plain old gentleman, a visitor on sunny
mornings, gravely cheerful, who, with one eye upon
the place that awaited him, chirped about his youth
like winter sparrows ; a beautiful housemaid of the
hotel once, for some days together, dumbly flirted
with me from a window and kept my wild heart
flying ; and once — she possibly remembers — the wise
Eugenia followed me to that austere enclosure. Her

109

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

hair came down, and in the shelter of a tomb my
trembUng fingers helped her to repair the braid.
But for the most part 1 went there solitary, and,
with irrevocable emotion, pored on the names of
the forgotten. Name after name, and to each the
conventional attributions and the idle dates : a
regiment of the unknown that had been the joy
of mothers, and had thrilled with the illusions of
youth, and at last, in the dim sick-room, wrestled
with the pangs of old mortality. In that whole
crew of the silenced there was but one of whom
my fancy had received a picture ; and he, with
his comely, florid countenance, bewigged and
habited in scarlet, and in his day combining fame
and popularity, stood forth, like a taunt, among
that company of phantom appellations. It was
possible, then, to leave behind us something more
explicit than these severe, monotonous, and lying
epitaphs ; and the thing left, the memory of a
painted picture and what we call the immortality
of a name, was hardly more desirable than mere
oblivion. Even David Hume, as he lay composed
beneath that ' circular idea,' was fainter than a
dream ; and when the housemaid, broom in hand,
smiled and beckoned from the open window, the
fame of that bewigged philosopher melted like a
raindrop in the sea.

And yet in soberness I cared as little for the

housemaid as for David Hume. The interests of

youth are rarely frank ; his passions, like Noah's

dove, come home to roost. The fire, sensibility,

no

OLD MORTALITY

and volume of his own nature, that is all that he
has learned to recognise. The tumultuary and
grey tide of life, the empire of routine, the un-
rejoicing faces of his elders, fill him with con-
temptuous surprise; there also he seems to walk
among the tombs of spirits : and it is only in the
course of years, and after much rubbing with his
fellow-men, that he begins by glimpses to see
himself from without and his fellows from within :
to know his own for one among the thousand
undenoted countenances of the city street, and to
divine in others the throb of human agony and hope.
In the meantime he will avoid the hospital doors,
the pale faces, the cripple, the sweet whiff of
chloroform — for there, on the most thoughtless,
the pains of others are burned home ; but he will
continue to walk, in a divine self-pity, the aisles of
the forgotten graveyard. The length of man's hfe,
which is endless to the brave and busy, is scorned
by his ambitious thought. He cannot bear to have
come for so little, and to go again so wholly. He
cannot bear, above all, in that brief scene, to be still
idle, and by way of cure, neglects the little that he
has to do. The parable of the talent is the brief
epitome of youth. To believe in immortality is one
thing, but it is first needful to believe in life.
Denunciatory preachers seem not to suspect that
they may be taken gravely and in evil part; that
young men may come to think of time as of a
moment, and with the pride of Satan wave back the
inadequate gift. Yet here is a true peril ; this it is

III

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

that sets them to pace the graveyard alleys and to
read, with strange extremes of pity and derision, the
memorials of the dead.

Books were the proper remedy ; books of vivid
human import, forcing upon their minds the issues,
pleasures, busyness, importance and immediacy of
that life in which they stand; books of smiling or
heroic temper, to excite or to console ; books of
a large design, shadowing the complexity of that
game of consequences to which we all sit down, the
hanger-back not least. But the average sermon flees
the point, disporting itself in that eternity of which
we know, and need to know, so little ; avoiding the
bright, crowded, and momentous fields of life where
destiny awaits us. Upon the average book a writer
may be silent ; he may set it down to his ill-hap that
when his own youth was in the acrid fermentation,
he should have fallen and fed upon the cheerless
fields of Obermann. Yet to Mr. IMatthew Arnold,
who led him to these pastures, he still bears a grudge.
The day is perhaps not far off when people will
begin to count Moll Flanders, ay, or The Countr-y
Wife, more wholesome and more pious diet than
these guide-books to consistent egoism.

But the most inhuman of boys soon wearies of the
inhumanity of Obermann. And even while I still
continued to be a haunter of the graveyard, I began
insensibly to turn my attention to the grave-diggers,
and was weaned out of myself to observe the conduct
of visitors. This was dayspring, indeed, to a lad in
such great darkness. Not that I began to see men,

112

OLD MORTALITY

or to try to see them, from within, nor to learn
charity and modesty and justice from the sight ; but
still stared at them externally from the prison win-
dows of my affectation. Once I remember to have
observed two working women with a baby halt-
ing by a grave ; there was something monumental
in the grouping, one upright carrying the child, the
other with bowed face crouching by her side. A
wreath of immortelles under a glass dome had thus
attracted them ; and, drawing near, T overheard their
judgment on that wonder : ' Eh ! what extrava-
gance ! ' To a youth afflicted with the callosity of
sentiment, this quaint and pregnant saying appeared
merely base.

My acquaintance with grave-diggers, considering
its length, was unremarkable. One, indeed, whom
I found plying his spade in the red evening, high
above Allan Water and in the shadow of Dun-
blane Cathedral, told me of his acquaintance with
the birds that still attended on his labours; how
some would even perch about him, waiting for their
prey ; and, in a true Sexton's Calendar, how the
species varied with the season of the year. But
this was the very poetry of the profession. The
others whom I knew were somewhat dry. A faint
flavour of the gardener hung about them, but
sophisticated and disbloomed. They had engage-
ments to keep, not alone with the deliberate series
of the seasons, but with mankind's clocks and hour-
long measurement of time. And thus there was no
leisure for the relishing pinch, or the hour-long
H 113

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

gossip, foot on spade. They were men wrapped up
in their grim business ; they liked well to open long-
closed family vaults, blowing in the key and throw-
ing wide the grating ; and they carried in their minds
a calendar of names and dates. It would be ' in fifty-
twa' that such a tomb was last opened, for 'Miss
Jemimy.' It was thus they spoke of their past
patients — familiarly but not without respect, like old
family servants. Here is indeed a servant, whom
we forget that we possess ; who does not wait at
the bright table, or run at the bell's summons, but
patiently smokes his pipe beside the mortuary fire,
and in his faithful memory notches the burials of
our race. To suspect Shakespeare in his maturity
of a superficial touch savours of paradox ; yet he was
surely in error when he attributed insensibility to
the digger of the grave. But perhaps it is on Hamlet
that the charge should He ; or perhaps the EngUsh
sexton differs from the Scottish. The 'goodman
delvei-,' reckoning up his years of office, might have
at least suggested other thoughts. It is a pride
common among sextons. A cabinet-maker does
not count his cabinets, nor even an author his
volumes, save when they stare upon him from the
shelves ; but the grave-digger numbers his graves.
He would indeed be something different from human
if his solitary open-air and tragic labours left not
a broad mark upon his mind. There in his tranquil
aisle, apart from city clamour, among the cats and
robins and the ancient effigies and legends of the
tomb, he waits the continual passage of his con-
114

OLD MORTALITY

temporaries, falling like minute drops into eternity.
As they fall, he counts them ; and this enumeration,
which was at first perhaps appalling to his soul, in
the process of years and by the kindly influence
of habit grows to be his pride and pleasure. There
are many common stories telling how he piques
himself on crowded cemeteries. But I will rather tell
of the old grave-digger of Monkton, to whose un-
sufFering bedside the minister was summoned. He
dwelt in a cottage built into the wall of the church-
yard ; and through a bull's-eye pane above his bed he
could see, as he lay dying, the rank grasses and the
upright and recumbent stones. Dr. Laurie was, I
think, a Moderate ; 'tis certain, at least, that he took
a very Roman view of deathbed dispositions ; for he
told the old man that he had lived beyond man's
natural years, that his life had been easy and re-
putable, that his family had all grown up and been
a credit to his care, and that it now behoved him
un regretfully to gird his loins and follow the
majority. The grave-digger heard him out; then
he raised himself up on one elbow, and with the
other hand pointed through the window to the
scene of his lifelong labours. 'Doctor,' he said,
* I hae laid three hunner and fower-score in that
kirkyaird ; an it had been His wull,' indicating
Heaven, ' I would hae likit weel to hae made out
the fower hunner.' But it was not to be ; this
tragedian of the fifth act had now another part
to play ; and the time had come when others were
to gird and carry him.

115

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

II

I would fain strike a note that should be more
heroical; but the ground of all youth's suffering,
solitude, hysteria, and haunting of the grave, is
nothing else than naked, ignorant selfishness. It
is himself that he sees dead ; those are his virtues
that are forgotten ; his is the vague epitaph. Pity
him but the more, if pity be your cue ; for where
a man is all pride, vanity, and personal aspiration,
he goes through fire unshielded. In every part and
corner of our life, to lose oneself is to be gainer ; to
forget oneself is to be happy ; and this poor laugh-
able and tragic fool has not yet learned the rudi-
ments ; himself, giant Prometheus, is still ironed on
the peaks of Caucasus. But by and by his truant
interests will leave that tortured body, slip abroad,
and gather flowers. Then shall death appear before
him in an altered guise ; no longer as a doom
peculiar to himself, whether fate's crowning in-
justice or his own last vengeance upon those who
fail to value him ; but now as a power that wounds
him far more tenderly, not without solemn com-
pensations, taking and giving, bereaving and yet
storing up.

The first step for all is to learn to the dregs our
own ignoble fallibility. When we have fallen through
story after story of our vanity and aspiration, and
sit rueful among the ruins, then it is that we begin
to measure the stature of our friends : how they
stand between us and our own contempt, beheving
ii6

OLD MORTALITY

in our best; how, linking us with others, and still
spreading wide the influential circle, they weave us
in and in with the fabric of contemporary life ; and
to what petty size they dwarf the virtues and the
vices that appeared gigantic in our youth. So that
at the last, when such a pin falls out — when there
vanishes in ths least breath of time one of those
rich magazines of life on which we drew for our
supply — when he who had first dawned upon us
as a face among the faces of the city, and, still
growing, came to bulk on our regard with those
clear features of the loved and living man, falls in
a breath to memory and shadow, there falls along
with him a whole wing of the palace of our life.

Ill
One such face I now remember ; one such blank
some half a dozen of us labour to dissemble. In his
youth he was most beautiful in person, most serene
and genial by disposition ; full of racy words and
quaint thoughts. Laughter attended on his coming.
He had the air of a great gentleman, jovial and royal
with his equals, and to the poorest student gentle
and attentive. Power seemed to reside in him ex-
haustless ; we saw him stoop to play with us, but
held him marked for higher destinies ; we loved his
notice ; and I have rarely had my pride more grati-
fied than when he sat at my father's table, my
acknowledged friend. So he walked among us, both
hands full of gifts, carrying with nonchalance the
seeds of a most influential life.

117

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

The powers and the ground of friendship is a
mystery; but, looking back, I can discern that, in
part, we loved the thing he was, for some shadow
of what he was to be. For with all his beauty,
power, breeding, urbanity, and mirth, there was in
those days something soulless in our friend. He
would astonish us by sallies, witty, innocent, and in-
humane ; and by a misapplied Johnsonian pleasantry
demoUsh honest sentiment. I can still see and hear
him, as he went his way along the lampht streets,
La ci da7'em la mano on his lips, a noble figure of a
youth, but following vanity and incredulous of good ;
and sure enough, somewhere on the high seas of life,
with his health, his hopes, his patrimony and his
self-respect, miserably went down.

From this disaster, like a spent swimmer, he came
desperately ashore, bankrupt of money and con-
sideration ; creeping to the family he had deserted ;
with broken wing, never more to rise. But in his
face there was a light of knowledge that was new to
it. Of the wounds of his body he was never healed ;
died of them gradually, with clear-eyed resignation ;
of his wounded pride, we knew only from his silence.
He returned to that city where he had lorded it in
his ambitious youth ; lived there alone, seeing few ;
striving to retrieve the irretrievable; at times still
grappling with that mortal frailty that had brought
him down ; still joying in his friend's successes ; his
laugh still ready, but with a kindlier music ; and over
all his thoughts the shadow of that unalterable law
which he had disavowed and which had brought him
ii8

OLD MORTALITY

low. Lastly, when his bodily evils had quite dis-
abled him, he lay a great while dying, still without
complaint, still finding interests ; to his last step
gentle, urbane, and with the will to smile.

The tale of this great failure is, to those who
remained true to him, the tale of a success. In his
youth he took thought for no one but himself;
when he came ashore again, his whole armada lost,
he seemed to think of none but others. Such was
his tenderness for others, such his instinct of fine
courtesy and pride, that of that impure passion of
remorse he never breathed a syllable; even regret
was rare with him and pointed with a jest. You
would not have dreamed, if you had known him
then, that this was that great failure, that beacon
to young men, over whose fall a whole society had
hissed and pointed fingers. Often have we gone to
him, red-hot with our own hopeful sorrows, raihng
on the rose-leaves in our princely bed of life, and
he would patiently give ear and wisely counsel ;
and it was only upon some return of our own
thoughts that we were reminded what manner of
man this was to whom we disembosomed : a man,
by his own fault, ruined; shut out of the garden
of his gifts ; his whole city of hope both ploughed
and salted; silently awaiting the deliverer. Then
something took us by the throat ; and to see him
there, so gentle, patient, brave, and pious, oppressed
but not cast down, sorrow was so swallowed up in
admiration that we could not dare to pity him.
Even if the old fault flashed out again, it but awoke

119

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

our wonder that, in that lost battle, he should have
still the energy to fight. He had gone to ruin with
a kind of kingly abandon, like one who conde-
scended ; but once ruined, with the lights all out,
he fought as for a kingdom. Most men, finding
themselves the authors of their own disgrace, rail
the louder against God or destiny. Most men,
when they repent, obhge their friends to share the
bitterness of that repentance. But he had held an
inquest and passed sentence : mene, mene ; and con-
demned himself to smiling silence. He had given
trouble enough ; had earned misfortune amply, and
forgone the right to murmur.

Thus was our old comrade, like Samson, careless
in his days of strength ; but on the coming of
adversity, and when that strength was gone that
had betrayed him — ' for our strength is weakness ' —
he began to blossom and bring forth. Well, now
he is out of the fight: the burden that he bore
thrown down before the great deliverer. We

' in the vast cathedral leave him ;
God accept him,
Christ receive him ! '

IV

If we go now and look on these innumerable
epitaphs, the pathos and the irony are strangely fled.
They do not stand merely to the dead, these foolish
monuments ; they are pillars and legends set up to
glorify the difficult but not desperate life of man.
This ground is hallowed by the heroes of defeat.

I20

OLD MORTALITY

I see the indifferent pass before my friend's last
resting-place ; pause, with a shrug of pity, marvelling
that so rich an argosy had sunk. A pity, now
that he is done with suffering, a pity most uncalled
for, and an ignorant wonder. Before those who
loved him, his memory shines like a reproach ; they
honour him for silent lessons ; they cherish his ex-
ample ; and, in what remains before them of their
toil, fear to be unworthy of the dead. For this
proud man was one of those who prospered in the
valley of humiliation ; — of whom Bunyan wrote that,
'Though Christian had the hard hap to meet in the
valley with Apollyon, yet I must tell you, that
in former times men have met with angels here,
have found pearls here, and have in this place found
the words of life.'

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All through my boyhood and youth I was known
and pointed out for the pattern of an idler ; and
yet I was always busy on my own private end,
which was to learn to write. I kept always two
books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.
As I walked, my mind was busy fitting what I
saw with appropriate words ; when I sat by the
roadside, I would either read, or a pencil and a
penny version-book would be in my hand, to note
down the features of the scene or commemorate
some halting stanzas. Thus I lived with words.
And what I thus wrote was for no ulterior use, it
was written consciously for practice. It was not
so much that I wished to be an author (though I
Avished that too) as that I had vowed that I would
learn to write. That was a proficiency that tempted
me ; and I practised to acquire it, as men learn to
whittle, in a wager with myself. Description was
the principal field of my exercise ; for to any one
with senses there is always something worth describ-
ing, and town and country are but one continuous

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subject. But I worked in other ways also ; often
accompanied my walks with dramatic dialogues, in
which I played many parts ; and often exercised
myself in writing down conversations from memory.
This was all excellent, no doubt ; so were the
diaries I sometimes tried to keep, but always and
very speedily discarded, finding them a school of
posturing and melancholy self-deception. And yet
this was not the most efficient part of my training.
Good though it was, it only taught me (so far as
I have learned them at all) the lower and less
intellectual elements of the art, the choice of the
essential note and the right word : things that to a
happier constitution had perhaps come by nature.
And regarded as training, it had one grave defect ;
for it set me no standard of achievement. So that
there was perhaps more profit, as there was certainly
more effort, in my secret labours at home. When-
ever I read a book or a passage that particularly
pleased me, in which a thing was said or an effect
rendered with propriety, in which there was either
some conspicuous force or some happy distinction
in the style, I must sit down at once and set myself
to ape that quality. I was unsuccessful, and I
knew it ; and tried again, and was again unsuccessful,
and always unsuccessful; but at least in these vain
bouts I got some practice in rhythm, in harmony,
in construction and the co-ordination of parts. I
have thus played the sedulous ape to Hazlitt, to
Lamb, to Wordsworth, to Sir Thomas Browne, to
Defoe, to Hawthorne, to Montaigne, to Baudelaire,

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and to Obermann, I remember one of these mon-
key tricks, which was called The Vanity of Morals :
it was to have had a second part, The Vanity of
Knowledge ; and as I had neither morality nor
scholarship, the names were apt; but the second
part was never attempted, and the first part was
written (which is my reason for recalling it, ghost-
like, from its ashes) no less than three times : first
in the manner of Hazlitt, second in the manner of
Ruskin, who had cast on me a passing spell, and
third, in a laborious pasticcio of Sir Thomas Browne.
So with my other works : Cain, an epic, was (save
the mark !) an imitation of Sordello : Robin Hood,
a tale in verse, took an eclectic middle course
among the fields of Keats, Chaucer, and Morris :
in Monmouth, a tragedy, I reclined on the bosom
of Mr. Swinburne ; in my innumerable gouty-footed
lyrics, I followed many masters ; in the first draft
of The Kings Pardon, a tragedy, I was on the
trail of no less a man than John Webster ; in
the second draft of the same piece, with staggering
versatility, I had shifted my allegiance to Congreve,
and of course conceived my fable in a less serious
vein — for it was not Congreve's verse, it was his
exquisite prose, that I admired and sought to copy.
Even at the age of thirteen I had tried to do justice
to the inhabitants of the famous city of Peebles
in the style of the Book of Snobs. So I might go
on for ever, through all my abortive novels, and
down to my later plays, of which I think more
tenderly, for they were not only conceived at first
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under the bracing influence of old Dumas, but have
met with resurrections : one, strangely bettered by
another hand, came on the stage itself and was
played by bodily actors ; the other, originally known
as Semiramis : a Tragedy, I have observed on book-
stalls under the alias of Prince Otto. But enough
has been said to show by what arts of impersonation,
and in what purely ventriloquial efforts I first saw
my words on paper.

That, like it or not, is the way to learn to write ;
whether I have profited or not, that is the way.
It was so Keats learned, and there was never a
finer temperament for literature than Keats's; it
was so, if we could trace it out, that all men have
learned, and that is why a revival of letters is always
accompanied or heralded by a cast back to earlier
and fresher models. Perhaps I hear some one cry
out : ' But this is not the way to be original ! ' It
is not; nor is there any way but to be born so.
Nor yet, if you are born original, is there anything
in this training that shall clip the wings of your
originality. There can be none more original than
Montaigne, neither could any be more unlike Cicero ;
yet no craftsman can fail to see how much the
one must have tried in his time to imitate the other.
Burns is the very type of a prime force in letters :
he was of all men the most imitative. Shakespeare
himself, the imperial, proceeds directly from a school.
It is only from a school that we can expect to have
good writers ; it is almost invariably from a school
that great writers, these lawless exceptions, issue.

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MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

Nor is there anything here that should astonish the
considerate. Before he can tell what cadences he
truly prefers, the student should have tried all that are
possible ; before he can choose and preserve a fitting
key of language, he should long have practised the
literary scales ; and it is only after years of such
gymnastic that he can sit down at last, legions of
words swarming to his call, dozens of turns of phrase
simultaneously bidding for his choice, and he him-
self knowing what he wants to do and (within the
narrow limit of a man's ability) able to do it.

And it is the great point of these imitations that
there still shines beyond the student's reach his
inimitable model. Let him try as he please, he is
still sure of failure ; and it is a very old and a very
true saying that failure is the only highroad to
success. I must have had some disposition to learn ;
for I clear-sightedly condemned my own perform-
ances. I liked doing them indeed ; but when they
were done, I could see they were rubbish. In
consequence, I very rarely showed them even to
my friends ; and such friends as I chose to be my
confidants I must have chosen well, for they had
the friendliness to be quite plain with me. ' Padding,'
said one. Another wrote : ' I cannot understand
why you do lyrics so badly.' No more could I !
Thrice I put myself in the way of a more authori-
tative rebuff, by sending a paper to a magazine.
These were returned; and I was not surprised or
even pained. If they had not been looked at, as
(like all amateurs) I suspected was the case, there
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was no good in repeating the experiment; if they
had been looked at — well, then I had not yet learned
to write, and I must keep on learning and living.
Lastly, I had a piece of good fortune which is the
occasion of this paper, and by which 1 was able to
see my literature in print, and to measure experi-
mentally how far I stood from the favour of the
public.

II

The Speculative Society is a body of some anti-
quity, and has counted among its members Scott,
Brougham, Jeffrey, Horner, Benjamin Constant,
Robert Emmet, and many a legal and local celebrity
besides. By an accident, variously explained, it has
its rooms in the very buildings of the University of
Edinburgh : a hall, Turkey-carpeted, hung with
pictures, looking, when lighted up at night with fire
and candle, like some goodly dining-room ; a passage-
like library, walled with books in their wire cages ;
and a corridor with a fireplace, benches, a table, many
prints of famous members, and a mural tablet to the
virtues of a former secretary. Here a member can
warm himself and loaf and read ; here, in defiance of
Senatus-consults, he can smoke. The Senatus looks
askance at these privileges ; looks even with a some-
what vinegar aspect on the whole society ; which
argues a lack of proportion in the learned mind, for
the world, we may be sure, will prize far higher this
haunt of dead lions than all the living dogs of the
professoriate.

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MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

I sat one December morning in the library of the
Speculative ; a very humble-minded youth, though
it was a virtue I never had much credit for ; yet
proud of my privileges as a member of the Spec. ;
proud of the pipe I was smoking in the teeth of the
Senatus ; and, in particular, proud of being in the
next room to three very distinguished students, who
were then conversing beside the corridor fire. One
of these has now his name on the back of several
volumes, and his voice, I learn, is influential in the
law courts. Of the death of the second, you have
just been reading what I had to say. And the third
also has escaped out of that battle of life in which he
fought so hard, it may be so unwisely. They were
all three, as I have said, notable students ; but this
was the most conspicuous. Wealthy, handsome,
ambitious, adventurous, diplomatic, a reader of Balzac,
and of all men that I have known, the most like to
one of Balzac's characters, he led a life, and was
attended by an ill fortune, that could be properly set
forth only in the Comedie Huviaine. He had then
his eye on Parliament ; and soon after the time of
which I write, he made a showy speech at a political
dinner, was cried up to heaven next day in the
Courant, and the day after was dashed lower than
earth with a charge of plagiarism in the Scotsman.
Report would have it (I daresay very wrongly) that
he was betrayed by one in whom he particularly
trusted, and that the author of the charge had learned
its truth from his own lips. Thus, at least, he was
up one day on a pinnacle, admired and envied by all ;
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and the next, though still but a boy, he was publicly
disgraced. The blow would have broken a less finely
tempered spirit ; and even him I suppose it rendered
reckless ; for he took flight to London, and there, in
a fast club, disposed of the bulk of his considerable
patrimony in the space of one winter. For years
thereafter he lived I know not how ; always well
dressed, always in good hotels and good society,
always with empty pockets. The charm of his manner
may have stood him in good stead ; but though my
own manners are very agreeable, I have never found
in them a source of livelihood ; and to explain the
miracle of his continued existence, I must fall back
upon the theory of the philosopher, that in his case,
as in all of the same kind, 'there was a suffering
relative in the background.' From this genteel
eclipse he reappeared upon the scene, and presently
sought me out in the character of a generous editor.
It is in this part that I best remember him ; tall,
slender, with a not ungraceful stoop ; looking quite
Uke a refined gentleman, and quite like an urbane
adventurer ; smiling with an engaging ambiguity ;
cocking at you one peaked eyebrow with a great
appearance of finesse ; speaking low and sweet and
thick, with a touch of burr ; telling strange tales with
singular deliberation and, to a patient listener, excel-
lent effect. After all these ups and downs, he seemed
still, like the rich student that he was of yore, to
breathe of money ; seemed still perfectly sure of him-
self and certain of his end. Yet he was then upon
the brink of his last overthrow. He had set himself
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MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

to found the strangest thing in our society : one of
those periodical sheets from which men suppose
themselves to learn opinions ; in which young gentle-
men from the Universities are encouraged, at so much
a line, to garble facts, insult foreign nations, and
calumniate private individuals ; and which are now
the source of glory, so that if a man's name be often
enough printed there, he becomes a kind of demigod ;
and people will pardon him when he talks back
and forth, as they do for Mr. Gladstone ; and crowd
him to suffocation on railway platforms, as they did
the other day to General Boulanger ; and buy his
literary works, as I hope you have just done for me.
Our fathers, when they were upon some great enter-
prise, would sacrifice a Hfe ; building, it may be, a
favourite slave into the foundations of their palace.
It was with his own life that my companion disarmed
the envy of the gods. He fought his paper single-
handed ; trusting no one, for he was something of a
cynic ; up early and down late, for he was nothing of
a sluggard ; daily ear-wigging influential men, for he
was a master of ingratiation. In that slender and
silken fellow there must have been a rare vein of
courage, that he should thus have died at his employ-
ment; and doubtless ambition spoke loudly in his
ear, and doubtless love also, for it seems there was a
marriage in his view had he succeeded. But he died,
and his paper died after him ; and of all this grace,
and tact, and courage, it must seem to our bhnd
eyes as if there had come Hterally nothing.

These three students sat, as I was saying, in the
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corridor, under the mural tablet that records the
virtues of Macbean, the former secretary. We would
often smile at that ineloquent memorial, and thought
it a poor thing to come into the world at all and leave
no more behind one than Macbean. And yet of
these three, two are gone and have left less ; and
this book, perhaps, when it is old and foxy, and some
one picks it up in a corner of a book-shop, and glances
through it, smiling at the old, graceless turns of
speech, and perhaps for the love of Alma Mater
(which may be still extant and flourishing) buys it,
not without haggling, for some pence — this book
may alone preserve a memory of James Walter
Ferrier and Robert Glasgow Brown.

Their thoughts ran very differently on that
December morning ; they were all on fire with
ambition ; and when they had called me in to them,
and made me a sharer in their design, I too became
drunken with pride and hope. We were to found a
University magazine. A pair of little, active brothers
— Livingstone by name, great skippers on the foot,
great rubbers of the hands, who kept a book-shop
over against the University building — had been
debauched to play the part of publishers. We four
were to be conjunct editors, and, what was the main
point of the concern, to print our own works ; while,
by every rule of arithmetic — that flatterer of credu-
lity— the adventure must succeed and bring great
profit. Well, well : it was a bright vision. I went
home that morning walking upon air. To have been
chosen by these three distinguished students was to

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MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

me the most unspeakable advance ; it was my first
draught of consideration ; it reconciled me to myself
and to my fellow-men ; and as I steered round the
railings at the Tron, I could not withhold my lips
from smiling publicly. Yet, in the bottom of my
heart, I knew that magazine would be a grim fiasco ;
I knew it would not be worth reading ; I knew, even
if it were, that nobody would read it ; and I kept
wondering how I should be able, upon my com-
pact income of twelve pounds per annum, payable
monthly, to meet my share in the expense. It was a
comfortable thought to me that I had a father.

The magazine appeared, in a yellow cover, which
was the best part of it, for at least it was unassuming ;
it ran four months in undisturbed obscurity, and died
without a gasp. The first number was edited by all
four of us with prodigious bustle; the second fell
principally into the hands of Ferrier and me ; the
third I edited alone ; and it has long been a solemn
question who it was that edited the fourth. It would
perhaps be still more difficult to say who read it.
Poor yellow sheet, that looked so hopefully in the
Livingstones' window ! Poor, harmless paper, that
might have gone to print a Shakespeare on, and was
instead so clumsily defaced with nonsense ! And,
shall I say. Poor Editors ? I cannot pity myself, to
whom it was all pure gain. It was no news to me,
but only the wholesome confirmation of my judg-
ment, when the magazine struggled into half-birth,
and instantly sickened and subsided into night. I
had sent a copy to the lady with whom my heart was
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at that time somewhat engaged, and who did all that
in her lay to break it; and she, with some tact,
passed over the gift and my cherished contributions
in silence. I will not say that I was pleased at this ;
but I will tell her now, if by any chance she takes up
the work of her former servant, that I thought the
better of her taste. I cleared the decks after this lost
engagement ; had the necessary interview with my
father, which passed off not amiss ; paid over my
share of the expense to the two little, active brothers,
who rubbed their hands as much, but methought
skipped rather less than formerly, having perhaps,
these two also, embarked upon the enterprise with
some graceful illusions ; and then, reviewing the
whole episode, I told myself that the time was not
yet ripe, nor the man ready ; and to work I went
again with my penny version-books, having fallen
back in one day from the printed author to the
manuscript student.

Ill

From this defunct periodical I am going to reprint
one of my own papers. The poor little piece is all
tail-foremost. I have done my best to straighten its
array, I have pruned it fearlessly, and it remains in-
vertebrate and wordy. No self-respecting magazine
would print the thing ; and here you behold it in a
bound volume, not for any worth of its own, but for
the sake of the man whom it purports dimly to
represent and some of whose sayings it preserves ;
so that in this volume of Memories and Portraits,

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MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

Robert Young, the Swanston gardener, may stand
alongside of John Todd, the Swanston shepherd.
Not that John and Robert drew very close together
in their lives ; for John was rough — he smelt of the
windy brae ; and Robert was gentle, and smacked of
the garden in the hollow. Perhaps it is to my shame
that I liked John the better of the two ; he had grit
and dash, and that salt of the old Adam that pleases
men with any savage inheritance of blood ; and he
was a wayfarer besides, and took my gipsy fancy.
But however that may be, and however Robert's
profile may be blurred in the boyish sketch that
follows, he was a man of a most quaint and beautiful
nature, whom, if it were possible to recast a piece
of work so old, I should like well to draw again
with a maturer touch. And as I think of hina and
of John, I wonder in what other country two such
men would be found dwelling together, in a hamlet
of some twenty cottages, in the woody fold of a
green hill.

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AN OLD SCOTS GARDENER

I THINK I might almost have said the last : some-
where, indeed, in the uttermost glens of the Lammer-
muir or among the south-western hills there may yet
linger a decrepit representative of this bygone good
fellowship ; but as far as actual experience goes, I
have only met one man in my life who might fitly be
quoted in the same breath with Andrew Fairservice,
— though without his vices. He was a man whose
very presence could impart a savour of quaint anti-
quity to the baldest and most modern flower-plots.
There was a dignity about his tall, stooping form, and
an earnestness in his wrinkled face, that recalled
Don Quixote ; but a Don Quixote who had come
through the training of the Covenant, and been
nourished in his youth on Walkers Lives and The
Hind let Loose.

Now, as I could not bear to let such a man pass
away with no sketch preserved of his old-fashioned
virtues, 1 hope the reader will take this as an excuse
for the present paper, and judge as kindly as he can
the infirmities of my description. To me, who find
it so difficult to tell the little that 1 know, he stands

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MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

essentially as a genius loci. It is impossible to
separate his spare form and old straw hat from the
garden in the lap of the hill, with its rocks overgrown
with clematis, its shadowy walks, and the splendid
breadth of champaign that one saw from the north-
west corner. The garden and gardener seem part
and parcel of each other. When I take him from
his right surroundings and try to make him appear
for me on paper, he looks unreal and phantasmal :
the best that I can say may convey some notion to
those that never saw him, but to me it will be ever
impotent.

The first time that I saw him, I fancy Robert was
pretty old already : he had certainly begun to use his
years as a stalking-horse. Latterly he was beyond
all the impudencies of logic, considering a reference
to the parish register worth all the reasons in the
world. ' / am old and well stricken in yearsj he was
wont to say ; and I never found any one bold enough
to answer the argument. Apart from this vantage
that he kept over all who were not yet octogenarian,
he had some other drawbacks as a gardener. He
shrank the very place he cultivated. The dignity
and reduced gentility of his appearance made the
small garden cut a sorry figure. He was full of tales
of greater situations in his younger days. He spoke
of castles and parks with a humbUng familiarity. He
told of places where under-gardeners had trembled at
his looks, where there were meres and swanneries,
labyrinths of walk and wildernesses of sad shrubbery
in his control, till you could not help feehng that it
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AN OLD SCOTS GARDENEK

was condescension on his part to dress your humbler
garden plots. You were thrown at once into an
invidious position. You felt that you were profiting
by the needs of dignity, and that his poverty and
not his will consented to your vulgar rule. Involun-
tarily you compared yourself with the swineherd that
made Alfred watch his cakes, or some bloated citizen
who may have given his sons and his condescension
to the fallen Dionysius. Nor were the disagreeables
purely fanciful and metaphysical, for the sway that
he exercised over your feelings he extended to your
garden, and, through the garden, to your diet. He
would trim a hedge, throw away a favourite plant, or
fill the most favoured and fertile section of the garden
with a vegetable that none of us could eat, in supreme
contempt for our opinion. If you asked him to send
you in one of your own artichokes, ' That I wull,
mem,' he would say, 'with pleesure, for it is mair
blessed to give than to receive.' Ay, and even when,
by extra twisting of the screw, we prevailed on him
to prefer our commands to his own inclination, and
he went away, stately and sad, professing that ' our
wull was his pleasure,' but yet reminding us that
he would do it ' with feelins,' — even then, I say, the
triumphant master felt humbled in his triumph, felt
that he ruled on sufferance only, that he was taking
a mean advantage of the other's low estate, and that
the whole scene had been one of those ' slights that
patient merit of the unworthy takes.'

In flowers his taste was old-fashioned and catholic ;
affecting sunflowers and dahlias, wallflowers and

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MEMOKIES AND PORTRAITS

roses, and holding in supreme aversion whatsoever
was fantastic, new-fashioned, or wild. There was one
exception to this sweeping ban. Foxgloves, though
undoubtedly guilty on the last count, he not only
spared, but loved ; and when the shrubbery was
being thinned, he stayed his hand and dexterously
manipulated his bill in order to save every stately
stem. In boyhood, as he told me once, speaking in
that tone that only actors and the old-fashioned
common folk can use nowadays, his heart grew
^yroud' within him when he came on a burn-course
among the braes of Manor that shone purple with
their graceful trophies ; and not all his apprenticeship
and practice for so many years of precise gardening
had banished these boyish recollections from his heart.
Indeed, he was a man keenly alive to the beauty of
all that was bygone. He abounded in old stories of
his boyhood, and kept pious account of all his former
pleasures ; and when he went (on a holiday) to visit
one of the fabled great places of the earth where he
had served before, he came back full of little pre-
Raphaelite reminiscences that showed real passion
for the past, such as might have shaken hands with
Hazlitt or Jean-Jacques.

But however his sympathy with his old feelings
might affect his liking for the foxgloves, the very
truth was that he scorned all flowers together. They
were but garnishings, childish toys, trifling ornaments
for ladies' chimney-shelves. It was towards his
cauliflowers and peas and cabbage that his heart grew
warm. His preference for the more useful growths
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AN OLD SCOTS GARDENER

was such that cabbages were found invading the
flower-plots, and an outpost of savoys was once
discovered in the centre of the lawn. He would
prelect over some thriving plant with wonderful
enthusiasm, piling reminiscence on reminiscence of
former and perhaps yet finer specimens. Yet even
then he did not let the credit leave himself He had,
indeed, raised 'fine7^ o' them ' ; but it seemed that no
one else had been favoured with a like success. All
other gardeners, in fact, were mere foils to his own
superior attainments ; and he would recount, with
perfect soberness of voice and visage, how so-and-so
had wondered, and such another could scarcely give
credit to his eyes. Nor was it with his rivals only
that he parted praise and blame. If you remarked
how well a plant was looking, he would gravely
touch his hat and thank you with solemn unction ;
all credit in the matter falling to him. If, on the
other hand, you called his attention to some back-
going vegetable, he would quote Scripture: 'Paul
may plant, and Apollos may water \ aU blame being
left to Providence, on the score of deficient rain or
untimely frosts.

There was one thing in the garden that shared his
preference with his favourite cabbages and rhubarb,
and that other was the bee-hive. Their sound, their
industry, perhaps their sweet product also, had taken
hold of his imagination and heart, whether by way of
memory or no I cannot say, although perhaps the
bees too were linked to him by some recollection of
Manor braes and his country childhood. Neverthe-

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MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

less, he was too chary of his personal safety or (let
me rather say) his personal dignity to mingle in any
active office towards them. But he could stand by
while one of the contemned rivals did the work for
him, and protest that it was quite safe in spite of
his own considerate distance and the cries of the
distressed assistant. In regard to bees, he was rather
a man of word than deed, and some of his most
striking sentences had the bees for text. ' l^hey are
mdeed wonderju creatures, mem,'' he said once.
' They just mind me o' what the Queen of Sheha said
to Solomon — andji think she said it wi a sigh, — " The
half of it hath not been told unto me.'" '

As far as the Bible goes, he was deeply read.
Like the old Covenanters, of whom he was the
worthy representative, his mouth was full of sacred
quotations ; it was the book that he had studied
most and thought upon most deeply. To many
people in his station the Bible, and perhaps Burns,
are the only books of any vital literary merit that
they read, feeding themselves, for the rest, on the
draff of country newspapers, and the very instruc-
tive but not very palatable pabulum of some cheap
educational series. This was Robert's position. All
day long he had dreamed of the Hebrew stories, and
his head had been full of Hebrew poetry and Gospel
ethics ; until they had struck deep root into his
heart, and the very expressions had become a part of
him ; so that he rarely spoke without some antique
idiom or Scripture mannerism that gave a raciness
to the merest trivialities of talk. But the influence
140

AN OLD SCOTS GARDENER

of the Bible did not stop here. There was more
in Robert than quaint phrase and ready store of
reference. He was imbued with a spirit of peace
and love : he interposed between man and wife : he
threw himself between the angry, touching his hat
the while with all the ceremony of an usher: he
protected the birds from everybody but himself,
seeing, I suppose, a great difference between official
execution and wanton sport. His mistress telling
him one day to put some ferns into his master's
particular corner, and adding, 'Though, indeed,
Robert, he doesn't deserve them, for he wouldn't
help me to gather them,' ' Eh, memj replied Robert,
' but I wouldna say that, for I think he 's just a
most deservin gentleman.' Again, two of our friends,
who were on intimate terms, and accustomed to
use language to each other somewhat without the
bounds of the parliamentary, happened to differ
about the position of a seat in the garden. The
discussion, as was usual when these two were at it,
soon waxed tolerably insulting on both sides. Every
one accustomed to such controversies several times
a day was quietly enjoying this prize-fight of some-
what abusive wit — every one but Robert, to whom
the perfect good faith of the whole quarrel seemed
unquestionable, and who, after having waited till his
conscience would suffer him to wait no more, and till
he expected every moment that the disputants would
fall to blows, cut suddenly in with tones of almost
tearful entreaty : ' Eh, hut, gentlemen, I wad hae nae
mair words about it!' One thing was noticeable

141

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

about Robert's religion : it was neither dogmatic nor
sectarian. He never expatiated (at least in my
hearing) on the doctrines of his creed, and he never
condemned anybody else. I have no doubt that he
held all Roman Catholics, Atheists, and Mahometans
as considerably out of it ; I don't believe he had any
sympathy for Prelacy; and the natural feelings of
man mu.st have made him a little sore about Free-
Churchism ; but at least, he never talked about these
views, never grew controversially noisy, and never
openly aspersed the belief or practice of anybody.
Now all this is not generally characteristic of Scots
piety ; Scots sects being churches militant with a
vengeance, and Scots believers perpetual crusaders
the one against the other, and missionaries the one
to the other. Perliaps Robert's originally tender
heart was what made the difference ; or, perhaps, his
solitary and pleasant labour among fruits and flowers
had taught him a more sunshiny creed than those
whose work is among the tares of fallen humanity ;
and the soft influences of the garden had entered
deep into his spirit,

' Annihilating all that 's made
To a green thought in a green shade.'

But I could go on for ever chronicling his golden
sayings or telling of his innocent and living piety.
I had meant to tell of his cottage, with the German
pipe hung reverently above the fire, and the shell box
that he had made for his son, and of which he would
say pathetically : ' He was I'eal pleased wi it at firsts
142

AN OLD SCOTS GARDENER

but I think he 's got a kind d" tired o' it now ' — the son
being then a man of about fort)^ But I will let all
these pass. ' 'Tis more significant : he 's dead. ' The
earth, that he had digged so much in his life, was
dug out by another for himself ; and the flowers that
he had tended drew their life still from him, but in
a new and nearer way. A bird flew about the open
grave, as if it too wished to honour the obsequies of
one who had so often quoted Scripture in favour
of its kind : ' Are not two sparrows sold for one
farthing? and yet not one of them falleth to the
ground.'

Yes, he is dead. But the kings did not rise in the
place of death to greet him ' with taunting proverbs '
as they rose to greet the haughty Babylonian ; for in
his life he was lowly, and a peacemaker and a servant
of God.

143

VI
PASTORAL

To leave home in early life is to be stunned and
quickened with novelties ; but to leave it when years
have come only casts a more endearing light upon
the past. As in those composite photographs of Mr.
Galton's, the image of each new sitter brings out but
the more clearly the central features of the race ; when
once youth has flown, each new impression only
deepens the sense of nationality and the desire of
native places. So may some cadet of Royal Ecossais
or the Albany Regiment, as he mounted guard about
French citadels, so may some officer marching his
company of the Scots-Dutch among the polders, have
felt the soft rains of the Hebrides upon his brow, or
started in the ranks at the remembered aroma of
peat-smoke. And the rivers of home are dear in
particular to all men. This is as old as Naaman, who
was jealous for Abana and Pharpar ; it is confined to
no race nor country, for I know one of Scottish blood
but a child of Suffolk, whose fancy still lingers about
the Ulied lowland waters of that shire. But the
streams of Scotland are incomparable in themselves
— or I am only the more Scottish to suppose so — and
144

PASTORAL

their sound and colour dwell for ever in the memory.
How often and willingly do I not look again in
fancy on Tummel, or Manor, or the talking Airdle,
or Dee swirling in its Lynn ; on the bright burn of
Kinnaird, or the golden burn that pours and sulks in
the den behind Kingussie ! I think shame to leave
out one of these enchantresses, but the list would
grow too long if I remembered all ; only I may not
forget Allan Water, nor birch-wetting Rogie, nor
yet Almond ; nor, for all its pollutions, that Water
of Leith of the many and well-named mills — Bell's
Mills, and Canon Mills, and Silver Mills ; nor Red-
ford Burn of pleasant memories ; nor yet, for all its
smallness, that nameless trickle that springs in the
green bosom of AUermuir, and is fed from Halker-
side with a perennial teacupful, and threads the moss
under the Shearer's Knowe, and makes one pool
there, overhung by a rock, where I loved to sit and
make bad verses, and is then kidnapped in its infancy
by subterranean pipes for the service of the sea-
beholding city in the plain. From many points in the
moss you may see at one glance its whole course and
that of all its tributaries ; the geographer of this
Lilliput may visit all its corners without sitting
down, and not yet begin to be breathed ; Shearer's
Knowe and Halkerside are but names of adjacent
cantons on a single shoulder of a hill, as names are
squandered (it would seem to the inexpert, in
superfluity) upon these upland sheep walks ; a bucket
would receive the whole discharge of the toy river ;
it would take it an appreciable time to fill your
K 145

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

morning bath ; for the most part, besides, it soaks
unseen through the moss ; and yet for the sake of
auld lang syne, and the figure of a certain genius loci,
I am condemned to linger a while in fancy by its
shores ; and if the nymph (who cannot be above a
span in stature) will but inspire my pen, I would
gladly carry the reader along with me.

John Todd, when I knew him, was already 'the
oldest herd on the Pentlands,' and had been all his
days faithful to that curlew-scattering, sheep-collect-
ing life. He remembered the droving days, when
the drove-roads, that now lie green and solitary
through the heather, were thronged thoroughfares.
He had himself often marched flocks into England,
sleeping on the hillsides with his caravan ; and by his
account it was a rough business, not without danger.
The drove-roads lay apart from habitation ; the
drovers met in the wilderness, as to-day the deep-sea
fishers meet off the banks in the solitude of the
Atlantic ; and in the one as in the other case rough
habits and fist-law were the rule. Crimes were com-
mitted, sheep filched, and drovers robbed and beaten ;
most of which offences had a moorland burial, and
were never heard of in the courts of justice. John,
in those days, was at least once attacked, — by two
men after his watch, — and at least once, betrayed by
his habitual anger, fell under the danger of the law
and was clapped into some rustic prison-house, the
doors of which he burst in the night and was no more
heard of in that quarter. When I knew him, his
life had fallen in quieter places, and he had no cares
146

PASTORAL

beyond the dulness of his dogs and the inroads of
pedestrians from town. But for a man of his pro-
pensity to wrath these were enough ; he knew neither
rest nor peace, except by snatches ; in the grey of
the summer morning, and already from far up the
hill, he would wake the ' toun ' with the sound of his
shoutings ; and in the lambing- time his cries were
not yet silenced late at night. This wrathful voice
of a man unseen might be said to haunt that quarter
of the Pentlands, an audible bogie ; and no doubt it
added to the fear in which men stood of John a touch
of something legendary. For my own part, he was
at first my enemy, and I, in my character of a
rambling boy, his natural abhorrence. It was long
before I saw him near at hand, knowing him only
by some sudden blast of bellowing from far above,
bidding me 'c'way oot amang the sheep.' The
quietest recesses of the hill harboured this ogre ; I
skulked in my favourite wilderness like a Cameronian
of the Killing Time, and John Todd was my Claver-
house, and his dogs my questing dragoons. Little
by little we dropped into civilities ; his hail at sight
of me began to have less of the ring of a war-slogan ;
soon, we never met but he produced his snuff-box,
which was with him, like the calumet with the Red
Indian, a part of the heraldry of peace; and at length,
in the ripeness of time, we grew to be a pair of friends,
and when I lived alone in these parts in the winter,
it was a settled thing for John to 'give me a cry '
over the garden wall as he set forth upon his evening
round, and for me to overtake and bear him company.

147

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

That dread voice of his that shook the hills when
he was angry, fell in ordinary talk very pleasantly
upon the ear, with a kind of honeyed, friendly whine,
not far off singing, that was eminently Scottish. He
laughed not very often, and when he did, with a
sudden, loud haw-haw, hearty but somehow joyless,
like an echo from a rock. His face was permanently
set and coloured ; ruddy and stiff with weathering ;
more like a picture than a face ; yet with a certain
strain and a threat of latent anger in the expression,
like that of a man trained too fine and harassed with
perpetual vigilance. He spoke in the richest dialect
of Scots I ever heard ; the words in themselves were
a pleasure and often a surprise to me, so that 1 often
came back from one of our patrols with new acqui-
sitions; and this vocabulary he would handle like
a master, stalking a little before me, 'beard on
shoulder,' the plaid hanging loosely about him, the
yellow staff clapped under his arm, and guiding
me uphill by that devious, tactical ascent which
seems peculiar to men of his trade. I might count
him with the best talkers ; only that talking Scots
and talking English seem incomparable acts. He
touched on nothing at least but he adorned it ; when
he narrated, the scene was before you ; when he
spoke (as he did mostly) of his own antique business,
the thing took on a colour of romance and curiosity
that was surprising. The clans of sheep with their
particular territories on the hill, and how, in the
yearly killings and purchases, each must be pro-
portionally thinned and strengthened ; the midnight
148

PASTORAL

busyness of animals, the signs of the weather, the
cares of the snowy season, the exquisite stupidity of
sheep, the exquisite cunning of dogs : all these he
could present so humanly, and with so much old
experience and living gusto, that weariness was
excluded. And in the midst he would suddenly
straighten his bowed back, the stick would fly abroad
in demonstration, and the sharp thunder of his voice
roll out a long itinerary for the dogs, so that you saw
at last the use of that great wealth of names for
every knowe and howe upon the hillside; and the
dogs, having hearkened with lowered tails and raised
faces, would run up their flags again to the mast-head
and spread themselves upon the indicated circuit. It
used to fill me with wonder how they could follow
and retain so long a story. But John denied these
creatures all intelligence; they were the constant
butt of his passion and contempt ; it was just possible
to work with the like of them, he said,— not more
than possible. And then he would expand upon the
subject of the really good dogs that he had known,
and the one really good dog that he had himself pos-
sessed. He had been oflered forty pounds for it ; but
a good collie was worth more than that, more than
anything, to a 'herd'; he did the herd's work for
him. ' As for the like of them ! ' he would cry, and
scornfully indicate the scouring tails of his assistants.
Once — I translate John's Lallan, for I cannot do
it justice, being born Britannis in montibus, indeed,
but alas ! inerudito saeculo — once, in the days of his
good dog, he had bought some sheep in Edinburgh,

149

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

and on the way out, the road being crowded, two
were lost. This was a reproach to John, and a slur
upon the dog ; and both were alive to their mis-
fortune. Word came, after some days, that a farmer
about Braid had found a pair of sheep ; and thither
went John and the dog to ask for restitution. But |
the farmer was a hard man and stood upon his rights.
' How were they marked ? ' he asked ; and since John
had bought right and left from many sellers, and
had no notion of the marks — ' Very well,' said the
farmer, ' then it 's only right that I should keep them.'
— 'Well,' said John, 'it's a fact that I canna tell
the sheep ; but if my dog can, will ye let me have
them ? ' The farmer was honest as well as hard, and
besides I daresay he had little fear of the ordeal ; so
he had all the sheep upon his farm into one large
park, and turned John's dog into their midst. That
hairy man of business knew his errand well ; he knew
that John and he had bought two sheep and (to their
shame) lost them about Boroughmuirhead ; he knew
besides (the Lord knows how, unless by listening)
that they were come to Braid for their recovery ;
and without pause or blunder singled out, first one
and then another, the two waifs. It was that after-
noon the forty pounds were offered and refused.
And the shepherd and his dog — what do I say ? the
true shepherd and his man — set off together by
Fairmilehead in jocund humour, and ' smiled to ither '
all the way home, with the two recovered ones before
them. So far, so good ; but intelligence may be
abused. The dog, as he is by little man's inferior in
150

PASTORAL

mind, is only by little his superior in virtue; and
John had another collie tale of quite a different
complexion. At the foot of the moss behind Kirk
Yetton (Caer Ketton, wise men say) there is a scrog
of low wood and a pool with a dam for washing sheep.
John was one day lying under a bush in the scrog,
when he was aware of a colHe on the far hillside
skulking down through the deepest of the heather
with obtrusive stealth. He knew the dog ; knew
him for a clever, rising practitioner from quite a
distant farm ; one whom perhaps he had coveted as
he saw him masterfully steering flocks to market.
But what did the practitioner so far from home ? and
why this guilty and secret manoeuvring towards the
pool ? — for it was towards the pool that he was head-
ing. John lay the closer under his bush, and presently
saw the dog come forth upon the margin, look all
about to see if he were anywhere observed, plunge
in and repeatedly wash himself over head and ears,
and then (but now openly, and with tail in air) strike
homeward over the hills. That same night word was
sent his master, and the rising practitioner, shaken
up from where he lay, all innocence before the fire,
was had out to a dykeside and promptly shot ; for
alas ! he was that foulest of criminals under trust,
a sheep-eater ; and it was from the maculation of
sheep's blood that he had come so far to cleanse him-
self in the pool behind Kirk Yetton.

A trade that touches nature, one that hes at the
foundations of life, in which we have all had ancestors
employed, so that on a hint of it ancestral memories

151

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

revive, lends itself to literary use, vocal or written.
The fortune of a tale lies not alone in the skill of
hiin that writes, but as much, perhaps, in the inherited
experience of him who reads ; and when I hear with
a particular thrill of things that I have never done
or seen, it is one of that innumerable army of my
ancestors rejoicing in past deeds. Thus novels begin
to touch, not the fine dilettante, but the gross mass of
mankind, when they leave off to speak of parlours
and shades of manner and still-born niceties of motive,
and begin to deal with fighting, sailoring, adventure,
death or childbirth ; and thus ancient out-door crafts
and occupations, whether Mr. Hardy wields the
shepherd's crook or Count Tolstoi swings the scythe,
lift romance into a near neighbourhood with epic.
These aged things have on them the dew of man's
morning ; they lie near, not so much to us, the semi-
artificial flowerets, as to the trunk and aboriginal
taproot of the race. A thousand interests spring up
in the process of the ages, and a thousand perish ;
that is now an eccentricity or a lost art which was
once the fashion of an empire ; and those only are
perennial matters that rouse us to-day, and that
roused men in all epochs of the past. There is a
certain critic, not indeed of execution but of matter,
whom I dare be known to set before the best : a
certain low-browed, hairy gentleman, at first a percher
in the fork of trees, next (as they relate) a dweller in
caves, and whom I think I see squatting in cave-
mouths, of a pleasant afternoon, to munch his berries
— his wife, that accomplished lady, squatting by his
152

PASTORAL

side : his name I never heard, but he is often described
as Probably Arboreal, which may serve for recog-
nition. Each has his own tree of ancestors, but at
the top of all sits Probably Arboreal ; in all our veins
there run some minims of his old, wild, tree-top
blood ; our civilised nerves still tingle with his rude
terrors and pleasures ; and to that which would have
moved our common ancestor, all must obediently
thrill.

We have not so far to chmb to come to shepherds ;
and it may be I had one for an ascendant who has
largely moulded me. But yet I think I owe my
taste for that hillside business rather to the art and
interest of John Todd. He it was that made it live
for me, as the artist can make all things live. It was
through him the simple strategy of massing sheep
upon a snowy evening, with its attendant scampering
of earnest, shaggy aides-de-camp, was an affair that
I never wearied of seeing, and that I never weary of
recalling to mind ; the shadow of the night darkening
on the hills, inscrutable black blots of snow-shower
moving here and there like night already come,
huddles of yellow sheep and dartings of black dogs
upon the snow, a bitter air that took you by the
throat, unearthly harpings of the wind along the
moors ; and for centre-piece to all these features and
influences, John winding up the brae, keeping his
captain's eye upon all sides, and breaking, ever and
again, into a spasm of bellowing that seemed to make
the evening bleaker. It is thus that I still see him
in my mind's eye, perched on a hump of the declivity

153

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

not far from Halkerside, his staff in airy flourish, his
great voice taking hold upon the hills and echoing
terror to the lowlands ; I, meanwhile, standing some-
what back, until the fit should be over, and, with a
pinch of snufF, my friend relapse into his easy, even
conversation.

^54

VII

THE MANSE

I HAVE named, among many rivers that make music
in my memory, that dirty Water of Leith. Often
and often I desire to look upon it again ; and the
choice of a point of view is easy to me. It should
be at a certain water-door, embowered in shrubbery.
The river is there dammed back for the service of the
flour-mill just below, so that it lies deep and darkling,
and the sand slopes into brown obscurity with a glint
of gold ; and it has but newly been recruited by the
borrowings of the snuff-mill just above, and these,
tumbling merrily in, shake the pool to its black heart,
fill it with drowsy eddies, and set the curded froth of
many other mills solemnly steering to and fro upon
the surface. Or so it was when I was young; for
change, and the masons, and the pruning-knife, have
been busy ; and if I could hope to repeat a cherished
experience, it must be on many and impossible con-
ditions. I must choose, as well as the point of view,
a certain moment in my growth, so that the scale
may be exaggerated, and the trees on the steep
opposite side may seem to climb to heaven, and the
sand by the water-door, where I am standing, seem

155

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

as low as Styx. And I must choose the season also,
so that the valley may be brimmed like a cup with
sunshine and the songs of birds ; — and the year of
grace, so that when I turn to leave the river-side
I may find the old manse and its inhabitants un-
changed.

It was a place in that time like no other : the:
garden cut into provinces by a great hedge of beech,
and overlooked by the church and the terrace of the
churchyard, where the tombstones were thick, and
after nightfall ' spunkies ' might be seen to dance, at
least by children ; flower-plots lying warm in sun-
shine ; laurels and the great yew making elsewhere
a pleasing horror of shade ; the smell of water rising
from all round, with an added tang of paper-mills ;
the sound of water everywhere, and the sound of
mills — the wheel and the dam singing their alternate
strain ; the birds on every bush and from every
corner of the overhanging woods pealing out their
notes until the air throbbed with them ; and in the
midst of this, the manse. I see it, by the standard
of my childish stature, as a great and roomy house.
In truth, it was not so large as I supposed, nor yet
so convenient, and, standing where it did, it is diffi-
cult to suppose that it was healthful. Yet a large
family of stalwart sons and tall daughters was housed
and reared, and came to man and womanhood in that
nest of little chambers ; so that the face of the earth
was peppered with the children of the manse, and
letters with outlandish stamps became familiar to the
local postman, and the walls of the little chambers
156

THE MANSE

brightened with the wonders of the East. The
dullest could see this was a house that had a pair of
hands in divers foreign places : a well-beloved house
— its image fondly dwelt on by many travellers.

Here lived an ancestor of mine, who was a herd of
men. I read him, judging with older criticism the
report of childish observation, as a man of singular
simplicity of nature ; unemotional, and hating the
display of what he felt ; standing contented on the
old ways ; a lover of his life and innocent habits to
the end. We children admired him : partly for his
beautiful face and silver hair, for none more than
children are concerned for beauty, and above all for
beauty in the old ; partly for the solemn light in
which we beheld him once a week, the observed of
all observers, in the pulpit. But his strictness and
distance, the effect, I now fancy, of old age, slow
blood, and settled habit, oppressed us with a kind of
terror. When not abroad, he sat much alone, writing
sermons or letters to his scattered family in a dark
and cold room with a library of bloodless books— or
so they seemed in those days, although I have some
of them now on my own shelves and like well enough
to read them ; and these lonely hours wrapped him
in the greater gloom for our imaginations. But the
study had a redeeming grace in many Indian pictures,
gaudily coloured and dear to young eyes. I cannot
depict (for I have no such passions now) the greed
with which I beheld them ; and when I was once
sent in to say a psalm to my grandfather, I went,
quaking indeed with fear, but at the same time glow-

157

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

ing with hope that, if I said it well, he might reward
me with an Indian picture.

' Thy foot He '11 not let slide, nor will
He slumber that thee keeps/

it ran : a strange conglomerate of the unpronounce-
able, a sad model to set in childhood before one who
was himself to be a versifier, and a task in recitation
that really merited reward. And I must suppose the
old man thought so too, and was either touched or
amused by the performance ; for he took me in his
arms with most unwonted tenderness, and kissed me,
and gave me a little kindly sermon for my psalm ; so
that, for that day, we were clerk and parson. I was
struck by this reception into so tender a surprise that
I forgot my disappointment. And indeed the hope
was one of those that childhood forges for a pastime,
and with no design upon reality. Nothing was more
unlikely than that my grandfather should strip him-
self of one of those pictures, love-gifts and reminders
of his absent sons ; nothing more unlikely than that
he should bestow it upon me. He had no idea of
spoiling children, leaving all that to my aunt ; he had
fared hard himself, and blubbered under the rod in
the last century ; and his ways were still Spartan for
the young. The last word I heard upon his lips was
in this Spartan key. He had over- walked in the teeth
of an east wind, and was now near the end of his
many days. He sat by the dining-room fire, with
his white hair, pale face, and bloodshot eyes, a some-
what awful figure ; and my aunt had given him a
158

THE MANSE

dose of our good old Scots medicine, Dr. Gregory's
powder. Now that remedy, as the work of a near
kinsman of Rob Roy himself, may have a savour of
romance for the imagination ; but it comes uncouthly
to the palate. The old gentleman had taken it with
a wry face ; and that being accomplished, sat with
perfect simplicity, like a child's, munching a ' barley-
sugar kiss.' But when my aunt, having the canister
open in her hands, proposed to let me share in the
sweets, he interfered at once. I had had no Gregory;
then I should have no barley-sugar kiss : so he
decided with a touch of irritation. And just then
the phaeton coming opportunely to the kitchen
door — for such was our unlordly fashion — I was
taken for the last time from the presence of my
grandfather.

Now I often wonder what I have inherited from
this old minister. I must suppose, indeed, that he
was fond of preaching sermons, and so am I, though
I never heard it maintained that either of us loved
to hear them. He sought health in his youth in the
Isle of Wight, and I have sought it in both hemi-
spheres ; but whereas he found and kept it, I am still
on the quest. He was a great lover of Shakespeare,
whom he read aloud, I have been told, with taste;
well, I love my Shakespeare also, and am persuaded
I can read him well, though I own I never have been
told so. He made embroidery, designing his own
patterns ; and in that kind of work I never made
anything but a kettle-holder in Berlin wool, and an
odd garter of knitting, which was as black as the

159

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

chimney before I had done with it. He loved port,
and nuts, and porter ; and so do I, but they agreed
better with my grandfather, which seems to me a
breach of contract. He had chalk-stones in his
fingers ; and these, in good time, I may possibly
inherit, but I would much rather have inherited his
noble presence. Try as I please, I cannot join my-
self on with the reverend doctor ; and all the while,
no doubt, and even as I write the phrase, he moves
in my blood, and whispers words to me, and sits
efficient in the very knot and centre of my being.
In his garden, as I played there, I learned the love of
mills — or had I an ancestor a miller? — and a kindness
for the neighbourhood of graves, as homely things
not without their poetry — or had I an ancestor a
sexton ? But what of the garden where he played
himself? — for that, too, was a scene of m)^ education.
Some part of me played there in the eighteenth
century, and ran races under the green avenue at
Pilrig ; some part of me trudged up Leith Walk,
which was still a country place, and sat on the High
School benches, and was thrashed, perhaps, by Dr.
Adam. The house where I spent my youth was not
yet thought upon ; but we made holiday parties
among the cornfields on its site, and ate strawberries
and cream near by at a gardener's. All this I had
forgotten ; only my grandfather remembered and
once reminded me. I have forgotten, too, how we
grew up, and took orders, and went to our first
Ayrshire parish, and fell in love with and married a
daughter of Burns's Dr. Smith — ' Smith opens out
1 60

THE MANSE

his cauld harangues.' I have forgotten, but I was
there all the same, and heard stories of Burns at first
hand.

And there is a thing stranger than all that ; for
this homunculus or part-man of mine that walked
about the eighteenth century with Dr. Balfour in his
youth, was in the way of meeting other hoviunculi
or part-men, in the persons of my other ancestors.
These were of a lower order, and doubtless we looked
down upon them duly. But as I went to college
with Dr. Balfour, I may have seen the lamp and oil
man taking down the shutters from his shop beside
the Tron ; — we may have had a rabbit-hutch or a
bookshelf made for us by a certain carpenter in 1
know not what wynd of the old smoky city ; or,
upon some holiday excursion, we may have looked
into the windows of a cottage in a flower-garden^ and
seen a certain weaver plying his shuttle. And these
were all kinsmen of mine upon the other side ; and
from the eyes of the lamp and oil man one-half of my
unborn father, and one-quarter of myself, looked out
upon us as we went by to college. Nothing of aU
this would cross the mind of the young student, as
he posted up the Bridges with trim, stockinged legs,
in that city of cocked hats and good Scots still
unadulterated. It would not cross his mind that he
should have a daughter; and the lamp and oil man,
just then beginning, by a not unnatural metastasis,
to bloom into a lighthouse-engineer, should have a
grandson ; and that these two, in the fulness of time,
should wed ; and some portion of that student him-
L i6i

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

self should survive yet a year or two longer in the
person of their child.

But our ancestral adventures are beyond even the
arithmetic of fancy ; and it is the chief recommenda-
tion of long pedigrees, that we can follow backward
the careers of our homunculi and be reminded of
our antenatal lives. Our conscious years are but a
moment in the history of the elements that build us.
Are you a bank-clerk, and do you live at Peckham ?
It was not always so. And though to-day I am only
a man of letters, either tradition errs or I was present
when there landed at St. Andrews a French barber-
surgeon, to tend the health and the beard of the
great Cardinal Beaton ; I have shaken a spear in
the Debateable Land and shouted the slogan of the
Elliots ; I was present when a skipper, plying from
Dundee, smuggled Jacobites to France after the '15 ;
I was in a West India merchant's office, perhaps next
door to Bailie Nicol Jarvie's, and managed the
business of a plantation in St. Kitt's ; I was with my
engineer-grandfather (the son-in-law of the lamp and
oil man) when he sailed north about Scotland on the
famous cruise that gave us the Filiate and the Lord
of the Isles ; I was with him, too, on the Bell Rock,
in the fog, when the Smeaton had drifted from her
moorings, and the Aberdeen men, pick in hand, had
seized upon the only boats, and he must stoop and
lap sea- water before his tongue could utter audible
words ; and once more with him when the Bell Rock
beacon took a ' thrawe,' and his workmen fled into
the tower, then nearly finished, and he sat unmoved
162

THE MANSE

reading in his Bible — or affecting to read — till one
after another slunk back with confusion of counten-
ance to their engineer. Yes, parts of me have seen
life, and met adventures, and sometimes met them
well. And away in the still cloudier past, the threads
that make me up can be traced by fancy into the
bosoms of thousands and millions of ascendants :
Picts who rallied round Macbeth and the old (and
highly preferable) system of descent by females,
fleers from before the legions of Agricola, marchers
in Pannonian morasses, star-gazers on Chaldsean
plateaus ; and, furthest of all, what face is this that
fancy can see peering through the disparted branches ?
What sleeper in green tree-tops, what muncher of
nuts, concludes my pedigree ? Probably arboreal in
his habits. . . .

And I know not which is the more strange,
that I should carry about with me some fibres
of my minister-grandfather ; or that in him, as he
sat in his cool study, grave, reverend, contented
gentleman, there was an aboriginal frisking of the
blood that was not his ; tree-top memories, like un-
developed negatives, lay dormant in his mind ; tree-
top instincts awoke and were trod down ; and
Probably Arboreal (scarce to be distinguished from
a monkey) gambolled and chattered in the brain
of the old divine.

163

VIII
MEMOIRS OF AN ISLET

The little isle of Earraid lies close in to the south-
west corner of the Ross of Mull : the sound of lona
on one side, across which you may see the isle and
church of Columba ; the open sea to the other,
where you shall be able to mark on a clear, surfy
day the breakers running white on many sunken
rocks. I first saw it, or first remember seeing it,
framed in the round bull's-eye of a cabin port, the
sea lying smooth along its shores like the waters of
a lake, the colourless, clear light of the early morn-
ing making plain its heathery and rocky hummocks.
There stood upon it, in those days, a single rude
house of uncemented stones, approached by a pier of
wreckwood. It must have been very early, for it was
then summer, and in summer, in that latitude, day
scarcely withdraws ; but even at that hour the house
was making a sweet smoke of peats which came to
me over the bay, and the bare-legged daughters of
the cotter were wading by the pier. The same day
we visited the shores of the isle in the ship's boats ;
rowed deep into Fiddler's Hole, sounding as we went;
164

MEMOIRS OF AN ISLET

and, having taken stock of all possible accommoda-
tion, pitched on the northern inlet as the scene
of operations. For it was no accident that had
brought the lighthouse steamer to anchor in the
Bay of Earraid. Fifteen miles away to seaward, a
certain black rock stood environed by the Atlantic
rollers, the outpost of the Torran reefs. Here was a
tower to be built, and a star lighted, for the conduct
of seamen. But as the rock was small, and hard of
access, and far from land, the work would be one of
years ; and my father was now looking for a shore
station, where the stones might be quarried and
dressed, the men live, and the tender, with some
degree of safety, lie at anchor.

I saw Earraid next from the stern-thwart of an
lona lugger, Sam Bough and I sitting there cheek
by jowl, with our feet upon our baggage, in a
beautiful, clear, northern summer eve. And behold !
there was now a pier of stone, there were rows of
sheds, railways, travelling- cranes, a street of cottages,
an iron house for the resident engineer, wooden
bothies for the men, a stage where the courses of
the tower were put together experimentally, and
behind the settlement a great gash in the hillside
where granite was quarried. In the bay, the
steamer lay at her moorings. All day long there
hung about the place the music of chinking tools :
and even in the dead of night, the watchman carried
his lantern to and fro, in the dark settlement, and
could light the pipe of any midnight muser. It was,
above all, strange to see Earraid on the Sunday,

165

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

when the sound of the tools ceased and there fell a
crystal quiet. All about the green compound men
would be sauntering in their Sunday's best, walking
with those lax joints of the reposing toiler, thought-
fully smoking, talking small, as if in honour of the
stillness, or hearkening to the wailing of the gulls.
And it was strange to see our Sabbath services, held,
as they were, in one of the bothies, with Mr. Brebner
reading at a table, and the congregation perched
about in the double tier of sleeping-bunks ; and to
hear the singing of the psalms, 'the chapters,' the
inevitable Spurgeon's sermon, and the old, eloquent
lighthouse prayer.

In fine weather, when by the spy-glass on the hill
the sea was observed to run low upon the reef, there
would be a sound of preparation in the very early
morning ; and before the sun had risen from behind
Ben More, the tender would steam out of the bay.
Over fifteen sea-miles of the great blue Atlantic
rollers she ploughed her way, trailing at her tail
a brace of wallowing stone-lighters. The open
ocean widened upon either board, and the hills of
the mainland began to go down on the horizon,
before she came to her unhomely destination, and
lay-to at last where the rock clapped its black head
above the swell, with the tall iron barrack on its
spider legs, and the truncated tower, and the cranes
waving their arms, and the smoke of the engine-fire
rising in the mid-sea. An ugly reef is this of the
Dhu Heartach; no pleasant assemblage of shelves,
and pools, and creeks, about which a child might
i66

MEMOIRS OF AN ISLET

play for a whole summer without weariness, like the
Bell Rock or the Skerryvore, but one oval nodule of
black-trap, sparsely bedabbled with an inconspicuous
fucus, and alive in every crevice with a dingy insect
between a slater and a bug. No other life was there
but that of sea-birds, and of the sea itself, that here
ran like a mill-race, and growled about the outer reef
for ever, and ever and again, in the calmest weather,
roared and spouted on the rock itself. Times were
different upon Dhu Heartach when it blew, and the
night fell dark, and the neighbour hghts of Skerryvore
and Rhu-val were quenched in fog, and the men sat
prisoned high up in their iron drum, that then re-
sounded with the lashing of the sprays. Fear sat
with them in their sea-beleaguered dwelling ; and the
colour changed in anxious faces when some greater
billow struck the barrack, and its pillars quivered
and sprang under the blow. It was then that the
foreman builder, Mr. Goodwillie, whom I see before
me still in his rock-habit of undecipherable rags,
would get his fiddle down and strike up human
minstrelsy amid the music of the storm. But it
was in sunshine only that I saw Dhu Heartach ;
and it was in sunshine, or the yet lovelier summer
afterglow, that the steamer would return to Earraid,
ploughing an enchanted sea; the obedient lighters,
relieved of their deck cargo, riding in her wake more
quietly ; and the steersman upon each, as she rose on
the long swell, standing tall and dark against the
shining west.

167

MEMORIES AND POKTRAITS

II

But it was in Earraid itself that I delighted chiefly.
The lighthouse settlement scarce encroached beyond
its fences ; over the top of the first brae the ground
was all virgin, the world all shut out, the face of
things unchanged by any of man's doings. Here
was no living presence, save for the limpets on
the rocks, for some old, grey, rain-beaten ram that
I might rouse out of a ferny den betwixt two
boulders, or for the haunting and the piping of
the gulls. It was older than man ; it was found
so by incoming Celts, and seafaring Norsemen,
and Columba's priests. The earthy savour of the
bog plants, the rude disorder of the boulders, the
inimitable seaside brightness of the air, the brine
and the iodine, the lap of the billows among the
weedy reefs, the sudden springing up of a great
run of dashing surf along the sea-front of the
isle, — all that I saw and felt my predecessors must
have seen and felt with scarce a difference. I
steeped myself in open air and in past ages.

' Delightful would it be to me to be in Uchd Ailkm

On the pinnacle of a rock,
That I might often see

The face of the ocean ;
That I might hear the song of the wonderful birds.

Source of happiness ;
That I might hear the thunder of the crowding waves

Upon the rocks :
At times at work without compulsion —

This would be delightful ;

i68

MEMOIRS OF AN ISLET

At times plucking dulse from the rocks ;
At times at fishing.'

So, about the next island of lona, sang Columba
himself twelve hundred years before. And so might
I have sung of Earraid.

And all the while I was aware that this life of sea-
bathing and sun-burning was for me but a holiday.
In that year cannon were roaring for days together
on French battle-fields ; and I would sit in my isle
(I call it mine, after the use of lovers) and think upon
the war, and the loudness of these far-away battles,
and the pain of the men's wounds, and the weariness
of their marching. And I would think too of that
other war which is as old as mankind, and is indeed
the life of man : the unsparing war, the grinding
slavery of competition; the toil of seventy years,
dear-bought bread, precarious honour, the perils and
pitfalls, and the poor rewards. It was a long look
forward; the future summoned me as with trumpet
calls, it warned me back as with a voice of weeping
and beseeching ; and I thrilled and trembled on the
brink of life, like a childish bather on the beach.

There was another young man on Earraid in these
days, and we were much together, bathing, clamber-
ing on the boulders, trying to sail a boat and spinning
round instead in the oily whirlpools of the roost.
But the most part of the time we spoke of the great
uncharted desert of our futures ; wondering together
what should there befall us ; hearing with surprise
the sound ofour own voices in the empty vestibule
of youth. As far, and as hard, as it seemed then to

169

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

look forward to the grave, so far it seems now to look
backward upon these emotions ; so hard to recall
justly that loath submission, as of the sacrificial bull,
with which we stooped our necks under the yoke of
destiny. I met my old companion but the other day ;
I cannot tell of course what he was thinking ; but,
upon my part, I was wondering to see us both so
much at home, and so composed and sedentary in
the world ; and how much we had gained, and how
much we had lost, to attain to that composure ;
and which had been upon the whole our best estate :
when we sat there prating sensibly like men of some
experience, or when we shared our timorous and
hopeful counsels in a western islet.

170

IX

THOMAS STEVENSON

CIVIL ENGINEER

The death of Thomas Stevenson will mean not very
much to the general reader. His service to mankind
took on forms of which the public knows little and
understands less. He came seldom to London,
and then only as a task, remaining always a stranger
and a convinced provincial ; putting up for years at
the same hotel where his father had gone before
him ; faithful for long to the same restaurant, the
same church, and the same theatre, chosen simply
for propinquity ; steadfastly refusing to dine out. He
had a circle of his own, indeed, at home ; few men
were more beloved in Edinburgh, where he breathed
an air that pleased him ; and wherever he went, in
railway carriages or hotel smoking-rooms, his strange,
humorous vein of talk, and his transparent honesty,
raised him up friends and admirers. But to the
general public and the world of London, except about
the parliamentary committee-rooms, he remained
unknown. All the time, his lights were in every
part of the world, guiding the mariner ; his firm were

171

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

consulting engineers to the Indian, the New Zealand,
and the Japanese Lighthouse Boards, so that Edin-
burgh was a world-centre for that branch of applied
science ; in Germany, he had been called ' the Nestor
of lighthouse illumination '; even in France, where
his claims were long denied, he was at last, on the
occasion of the late Exposition, recognised and
medalled. And to show by one instance the inverted
nature of his reputation, comparatively small at home,
yet filling the world, a friend of mine was this winter
on a visit to the Spanish main, and was asked by a
Peruvian if he 'knew Mr. Stevenson the author,
because his works were much esteemed in Peru.'
My friend supposed the reference was to the writer
of tales ; but the Peruvian had never heard of Dr.
Jekyll ; what he had in his eye, what was esteemed
in Peru, were the volumes of the engineer.

Thomas Stevenson was born at Edinburgh in the
year 1818 ; the grandson of Thomas Smith, first
engineer to the Board of Northern Lights ; son of
Robert Stevenson, brother of Alan and David ; so
that his nephew, David Alan Stevenson, joined with
him at the time of his death in the engineership,
is the sixth of the family who has held, successively
or conjointly, that office. The Bell Rock, his father's
great triumph, was finished before he was born ; but
he served under his brother Alan in the building of
Skerry vore, the noblest of all extant deep-sea lights ;
and, in conjunction with his brother David, he added
two — the Chickens and Dhu Heartach — to that
small number of man's extreme outposts in the ocean.
172

THOMAS STEVENSON

Of shore lights, the two brothers last named erected
no fewer than twenty-seven ; of beacons,^ about
twenty -five. Many harbours were successfully carried
out : one, the harbour of Wick, the chief disaster of
my father's life, was a failure ; the sea proved too
strong for man's arts ; and after expedients hitherto
unthought of, and on a scale hyper-cyclopean, the
work must be deserted, and now stands a ruin in that
bleak, God-forsaken bay, ten miles from Jc^n-o'-
Groat's. In the improvement of rivers the brothers
were likewise in a large way of practice over both
England and Scotland, nor had any British engineer
anything approaching their experience.

It was about this nucleus of his professional labours
that all my father's scientific inquiries and inventions
centred ; these proceeded from, and acted back upon,
his daily business. Thus it was as a harbour engineer
that he became interested in the propagation and
reduction of waves ; a difficult subject, in regard to
which he has left behind him much suggestive matter
and some valuable approximate results. Storms were
his sworn adversaries, and it was through the study
of storms that he approached that of meteorology at
large. Many who knew him not otherwise, knew —
perhaps have in their gardens — his louvre-boarded
screen for instruments. But the great achievement
of his life was, of course, in optics as applied to light-
house illumination. Fresnel had done much ; Fresnel

^ In Dr. Murray's admirable new dictionary, I have remarked a flaw
sub voce Beacon. In its express, technical sense, a beacon may be defined
as ^ a founded, artificial sea-mark, not lighted.'

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

had settled the fixed light apparatus on a principle
that still seems unimprovable ; and when Thomas
Stevenson stepped in and brought to a comparable
perfection the revolving light, a not unnatural jealousy
and much painful controversy rose in France. It
had its hour ; and, as I have told already, even in
France it has blown by. Had it not, it would have
mattered the less, since all through his life my father
contii^ed to justify his claim by fresh advances.
New apparatus for lights in new situations was con-
tinually being designed with the same unwearied
search after perfection, the same nice ingenuity of
means ; and though the holophotal revolving light
perhaps still remains his most elegant contrivance, it
is difficult to give it the palm over the much later
condensing system, with its thousand possible modi-
fications. The number and the value of these
improvements entitle their author to the name of one
of mankind's benefactors. In all parts of the world
a safer landfall awaits the mariner. Two things must
be said : and, first, that Thomas Stevenson was no
mathematician. Natural shrewdness, a sentiment of
optical laws, and a great intensity of consideration,
led him to just conclusions ; but to calculate the
necessary formulae for the instruments he had con-
ceived was often beyond him, and he must fall back
on the help of others, notably on that of his cousin
and lifelong intimate friend, emeritus Professor Swan,^
of St. Andrews, and his later friend. Professor P. G.

^ William Swan, LL. D. , Professor of Natural Philosophy in the Univer-
sity of St. Andrews, 1859-80 : born 1818, died 1894.
174

THOMAS STEVENSON

Tait. It is a curious enough circumstance, and a
great encouragement to others, that a man so ill
equipped should have succeeded in one of the most
abstract and arduous walks of applied science. The
second remark is one that applies to the whole family,
and only particularly to Thomas Stevenson from the
great number and importance of his inventions :
holding as the Stevensons did a Government appoint-
ment, they regarded their original work as something
due already to the nation, and none of them has ever
taken out a patent. It is another cause of the com-
parative obscurity of the name : for a patent not only
brings in money, it infallibly spreads reputation ; and
my father's instruments enter anonymously into a
hundred light-rooms, and are passed anonymously
over in a hundred reports, where the least consider-
able patent would stand out and tell its author's
story.

But the life-work of Thomas Stevenson remains ;
what we have lost, what we now rather try to recall,
is the friend and companion. He was a man of a
somewhat antique strain : with a blended sternness
and softness that was wholly Scottish, and at first
somewhat bewildering ; with a profound essential
melancholy of disposition and (what often accom-
panies it) the most humorous geniality in company ;
shrewd and childish ; passionately attached, passion-
ately prejudiced ; a man of many extremes, many
faults of temper, and no very stable foothold for
himself among life's troubles. Yet he was a wise
adviser; many men, and these not inconsiderable,

175

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

took counsel with him habitually. ' I sat at his feet,'
writes one of these, ' when I asked his advice, and
when the broad brow was set in thought and the firm
mouth said his say, I always knew that no man could
add to the worth of the conclusion.' He had excel-
lent taste, though whimsical and partial; collected old
furniture and delighted specially in simflowers long
before the days of Mr. Oscar Wilde ; took a lasting
pleasure in prints and pictures ; was a devout admirer
of Thomson of Duddingston at a time when few
shared the taste ; and though he read little, was
constant to his favourite books. He had never any
Greek ; Latin he happily re-taught himself after he
had left school, where he was a mere consistent idler :
happily, I say, for Lactantius, Vossius, and Cardinal
Bona were his chief authors. The first he must have
read for twenty years uninterruptedly, keeping it near
him in his study, and carrying it in his bag on journeys.
Another old theologian, Brown of Wamphray, was
often in his hands. When he was indisposed, he had
two books, Guy Mannering and The Parent's Assis-
tant, of which he never wearied. He was a strong
Conservative, or, as he preferred to call himself, a
Tory ; except in so far as his views were modified by
a hot-headed chivalrous sentiment for women. He
was actually in favour of a marriage law under which
any woman might have a divorce for the asking,
and no man on any ground whatever ; and the same
sentiment found another expression in a Magdalen
Mission in Edinburgh, founded and largely supported
by himself. This was but one of the many channels
176

THOMAS STEVENSON

of his public generosity ; his private was equally un-
strained. The Church of Scotland, of which he held
the doctrines (though in a sense of his own) and to
which he bore a clansman's loyalty, profited often
by his time and money ; and though, from a morbid
sense of his own unworthiness, he would never
consent to be an office-bearer, his advice was often
sought, and he served the Church on many com-
mittees. What he perhaps valued highest in his
work were his contributions to the defence of Chris-
tianity ; one of which, in particular, was praised by
Hutchison Stirling and reprinted at the request of
Professor Crawford.

His sense of his own unworthiness I have called
morbid ; morbid, too, were his sense of the fleeting-
ness of life and his concern for death. He had never
accepted the conditions of man's life or his own
character ; and his inmost thoughts were ever tinged
with the Celtic melancholy. Cases of conscience
were sometimes grievous to him, and that delicate
employment of a scientific witness cost him many
qualms. But he found respite from these trouble-
some humours in his work, in his lifelong study of
natural science, in the society of those he loved, and
in his daily walks, which now would carry him far
into the country with some congenial friend, and
now keep him dangling about the town from one old
book-shop to another, and scraping romantic acquaint-
ance with every dog that passed. His talk, com-
pounded of so much sterling sense and so much
freakish humour, and clothed in language so apt,

M 177

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

droll, and emphatic, was a perpetual delight to all
who knew him before the clouds began to settle on
his mind. His use of language was both just and
picturesque ; and when at the beginning of his illness
he began to feel the ebbing of this power, it was
strange and painful to hear him reject one word after
another as inadequate, and at length desist from the
search and leave his phrase unfinished rather than
finish it without propriety. It was perhaps another
Celtic trait that his affections and emotions, passionate
as these were, and liable to passionate ups and downs,
found the most eloquent expression both in words
and gestures. Love, anger, and indignation shone
through him and broke forth in imagery, like what
we read of Southern races. For all these emotional
extremes, and in spite of the melancholy ground of
his character, he had upon the whole a happy life ;
nor was he less fortunate in his death, which at the
last came to him unaware.

178

X
TALK AND TALKERS

Sir, we had a good talk. — Johnson.

As we must account for every idle word, so we must for every idle
silence. — Fkanklin.

There can be no fairer ambition than to excel in
talk ; to be affable, gay, ready, clear and welcome ;
to have a fact, a thought, or an illustration, pat to
every subject; and not only to cheer the flight of
time among our intimates, but bear our part in that
great international congress, always sitting, where
public wrongs are first declared, public errors first
corrected, and the course of public opinion shaped,
day by day, a little nearer to the right. No measure
comes before Parliament but it has been long ago
prepared by the grand jury of the talkers ; no book
is written that has not been largely composed by
their assistance. Literature in many of its branches
is no other than the shadow of good talk ; but the
imitation falls far short of the original in life, freedom,
and effect. There are always two to a talk, giving
and taking, comparing experience and according

179

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

conclusions. Talk is fluid, tentative, continually ' in
further search and progress'; while written words
remain fixed, become idols even to the writer, found
wooden dogmatisms, and preserve flies of obvious
error in the amber of the truth. Last and chief,
while literature, gagged with linsey-woolsey, can only
deal with a fraction of the life of man, talk goes fancy
free and niay call a spade a spade. Talk has none
of the freezing immunities of the pulpit. It cannot,
even if it would, become merely aesthetic or merely
classical like literature. A jest intervenes, the solemn
humbug is dissolved in laughter, and speech runs
forth out of the contemporary groove into the open
fields of nature, cheery and cheering, like school-
boys out of school. And it is in talk alone that we
can learn our period and ourselves. In short, the
first duty of a man is to speak ; that is his chief
business in this world ; and talk, which is the har-
monious speech of two or more, is by far the most
accessible of pleasures. It costs nothing in money ;
it is all profit ; it completes our education, founds
and fosters our friendships, and can be enjoyed at
any age and in almost any state of health.

The spice of life is battle ; the friendliest relations
are still a kind of contest ; and if we would not
forego all that is valuable in our lot, we must con-
tinually face some other person, eye to eye, and
wrestle a fall whether in love or enmity. It is still
by force of body, or power of character or intellect,
that we attain to worthy pleasures. Men and
women contend for each other in the lists of love,
1 80

TALK AND TALKERS

like rival mesmerists ; the active and adi'oit decide
their challenges in the sports of the body ; and
the sedentary sit down to chess or conversation.
All sluggish and pacific pleasures are, to the same
degree, solitary and selfish ; and every durable bond
between human beings is founded in or heightened
by some element of competition. Now, the relation
that has the least root in matter is undoubtedly that
airy one of friendship ; and hence, I suppose, it is
that good talk most commonly arises among friends.
Talk is, indeed, both the scene and instrument of
friendship. It is in talk alone that the friends can
measure strength, and enjoy that amicable counter-
assertion of personality which is the gauge of rela-
tions and the sport of life.

A good talk is not to be had for the asking.
Humours must first be accorded in a kind of overture
or prologue; hour, company, and circumstance be
suited ; and then, at a fit juncture, the subject, the
quarry of two heated minds, spring up like a deer
out of the wood. Not that the talker has any of
the hunter's pride, though he has all and more than
all his ardour. The genuine artist follows the stream
of conversation as an angler follows the windings of
a brook, not dallying where he fails to 'kill.' He
trusts implicitly to hazard ; and he is rewarded by
continual variety, continual pleasure, and those
changing prospects of the truth that are the best of
education. There is nothing in a subject, so called,
that we should regard it as an idol, or follow it
beyond the promptings of desire. Indeed, there are

i8i

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

few subjects ; and so far as they are truly talkable,
more than the half of them may be reduced to
three : that I am I, that you are you, and that there
are other people dimly understood to be not quite
the same as either. Wherever talk may range, it
still runs half the time on these eternal lines. The
theme being set, each plays on himself as on an
instrument; asserts and justifies himself; ransacks
his brain for instances and opinions, and brings them
forth new-minted, to his own surprise and the admira-
tion of his adversary. All natural talk is a festival
of ostentation ; and by the laws of the game each
accepts and fans the vanity of the other. It is ,from
that reason that we venture to lay ourselves so open,
that we dare to be so warmly eloquent, and that we
swell in each other's eyes to such a vast proportion.
For talkers, once launched, begin to overflow the
limits of their ordinary selves, tower up to the
height of their secret pretensions, and give them-
selves out for the heroes, brave, pious, musical, and
wise, that in their most shining moments they aspire
to be. So they weave for themselves with words
and for a while inhabit a palace of delights, temple
at once and theatre, where they fill the round of the
world's dignities, and feast with the gods, exulting
in Kudos. And when the talk is over, each goes
his way, still flushed with vanity and admiration,
still trailing clouds of glory ; each decHnes from the
height of his ideal orgie, not in a moment, but by
slow declension. I remember, in the entr'acte of an
afternoon performance, coming forth into the sun-
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TALK AND TALKERS

shine in a beautiful green, gardened corner of a
romantic city ; and as I sat and smoked, the music
moving in my blood, I seemed to sit there and
evaporate The Flying Dutchman (for it was that I
had been hearing) with a wonderful sense of life,
warmth, well-being and pride ; and the noises of
the city, voices, bells, and marching feet, fell together
in my ears like a symphonious orchestra. In the
same way, the excitement of a good talk lives for
a long while after in the blood, the heart still hot
within you, the brain still simmering, and the phy-
sical earth swimming around you with the colours
of the sunset.

Natural talk, like ploughing, should turn up a
laige surface of life, rather than dig mines into
geological strata. Masses of experience, anecdote,
incident, cross-lights, quotation, historical instances,
the whole flotsam and jetsam of two minds forced
in and in upon the matter in hand from every point
of the compass, and from every degree of mental
elevation and abasement — these are the materia] with
wiiich talk is fortified, the food on which the talkers
thrive. Such argument as is proper to the exercise
shDuld still be brief and seizing. Talk should pro-
ceed by instances ; by the apposite, not the exposi-
toiy. It should keep close along the lines of
hunanity, near the bosoms and businesses of men,
at the level where history, fiction, and experience
intersect and illuminate each other. I am I, and
you are you, with all my heart ; but conceive how
these lean propositions change and brighten when,

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MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

instead of words, the actual you and I sit cheek by
jowl, the spirit housed in the live body, and the very
clothes uttering voices to corroborate the story in
the face. Not less surprising is the change when
we leave off to speak of generalities — the bad, the
good, the miser, and all the characters of Theophras-
tus — and call up other men, by anecdote or instance,
in their very trick and feature ; or, trading on a
common knowledge, toss each other famous names,
still glowing with the hues of life. Communication
is no longer by words, but by the instancing of whole
biographies, epics, systems of philosophy, and epochs
of history, in bulk. That which is understood
excels that which is spoken in quantity and quality
alike ; ideas thus figured and personified, change
hands, as we may say, like coin ; and the speakers
imply without effort the most obscure and intricate
thoughts. Strangers who have a large common
ground of reading will, for this reason, come the
sooner to the grapple of genuine converse. If
they know Othello and Napoleon, Consuelo and
Clarissa Harlowe, Vautrin and Steenie Steenson,
they can leave generalities and begin at once to
speak by figures.

Conduct and art are the two subjects that arise
most frequently and that embrace the widest range
of facts. A few pleasures bear discussion for their
own sake, but only those which are most social or
most radically human ; and even these can only be
discussed among their devotees. A technicality is
always welcome to the expert, whether in athletics,
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TALK AND TALKERS

art, or law ; I have heard the best kind of talk on
technicalities from such rare and happy persons as
both know and love their business. No human
being ever spoke of scenery for above two minutes
at a time, which makes me suspect we hear too
much of it in literatiu'e. The weather is regarded
as the very nadir and scoff of conversational topics.
And yet the weather, the dramatic element in
scenery, is far more tractable in language, and far
more human both in import and suggestion than
the stable features of the landscape. Sailors and
shepherds, and the people generally of coast and
mountain, talk well of it ; and it is often excitingly
presented in literature. But the tendency of all
living talk draws it back and back into the common
focus of humanity. Talk is a creature of the street
and market-place, feeding on gossip ; and its last
resort is still in a discussion on morals. That is the
heroic form of gossip ; heroic in virtue of its high
pretensions ; but still gossip, because it turns on
personalities. You can keep no men long, nor
Scotsmen at all, off moral or theological discussion.
These are to all the world what law is to lawyers ;
they are everybody's technicalities ; the medium
through which all consider life, and the dialect in
which they express their judgments. I knew three
young men who walked together daily for some
two months in a solemn and beautiful forest and in
cloudless summer weather ; daily they talked with
unabated zest, and yet scarce wandered that whole
time beyond two subjects — theology and love. And

185

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

perhaps neither a court of love nor an assembly of
divines would have granted their premisses or wel-
comed their conclusions.

Conclusions, indeed, are not often reached by talk
any more than by private thinking. That is not the
profit. The profit is in the exercise, and above all
in the experience ; for when we reason at large on
any subject, we review our state and history in life.
From time to time, however, and specially, I think,
in talking art, talk becomes effective, conquering
like war, widening the boundaries of knowledge like
an exploration. A point arises ; the question takes
a problematical, a baffling, yet a likely air ; the
talkers begin to feel lively presentiments of some
conclusion near at hand ; towards this they strive
with emulous ardour, each by his own path, and
struggling for first utterance ; and then one leaps
upon the summit of that matter with a shout, and
almost at the same moment the other is beside him ;
and behold they are agreed. Like enough, the
progress is illusory, a mere cat's cradle having been
wound and unwound out of words. But the sense
of joint discovery is none the less giddy and inspirit-
ing. And in the life of the talker such triumphs,
though imaginary, are neither few nor far apart;
they are attained with speed and pleasure, in the
hour of mirth ; and by the nature of the process,
they are always woi'thily shared.

There is a certain attitude, combative at once and
deferential, eager to fight yet most averse to quarrel,
which marks out at once the talkable man. It is
i86

TALK AND TALKERS

not eloquence, not fairness, not obstinacy, but a
certain proportion of all of these, that I love to
encounter in my amicable adversaries. They must
not be pontiffs holding doctrine, but huntsmen
questing after elements of truth. Neither must
they be boys to be instructed, but fellow-teachers
with whom I may wrangle and agree on equal terms.
We must reach some solution, some shadow of
consent ; for without that, eager talk becomes a
torture. But we do not wish to reach it cheaply,
or quickly, or without the tussle and effort wherein
pleasure lies.

The very best talker, with me, is one whom I shall
call Spring-Heel'd Jack. I say so, because I never
knew any one who mingled so largely the possible
ingredients of converse. In the Spanish proverb,
the fourth man necessary to compound a salad is
a madman to mix it : Jack is that madman. I
know not which is more remarkable : the insane
lucidity of his conclusions, the humorous eloquence
of his language, or his power of method, bringing the
whole of life into the focus of the subject treated,
mixing the conversational salad like a drunken god.
He doubles like the serpent, changes and flashes like
the shaken kaleidoscope, transmigrates bodily into
the views of others, and so, in the twinkling of an
eye and with a heady rapture, turns questions inside
out and flings them empty before you on the
ground, like a triumphant conjuror. It is my
common practice when a piece of conduct puzzles
me, to attack it in the presence of Jack with such

187

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

grossness, such partiality, and such wearing iteration,
as at length shall spur him up in its defence. In a
moment he transmigrates, dons the required char-
acter, and with moonstruck philosophy justifies the
act in question. I can fancy nothing to compare
with the vigour of these impersonations, the strange
scale of language, flying from Shakespeare to Kant,
and from Kant to Major Dyngwell —

'As fast as a musician scatters sounds
Out of an instrument — '

the sudden, sweeping generalisations, the absurd
irrelevant particularities, the wit, wisdom, folly,
humour, eloquence, and bathos, each startling in
its kind, and yet all luminous in the admired dis-
order of their combination. A talker of a different
calibre, though belonging to the same school, is
Burly. Burly is a man of a great presence ; he
commands a larger atmosphere, gives the impression
of a grosser mass of character than most men. It
has been said of him that his presence could be
felt in a room you entered blindfold ; and the same,
I think, has been said of other powerful constitu-
tions condemned to much physical inaction. There
is something boisterous and piratic in Burly 's
manner of talk which suits well enough with this
impression. He will roar you down, he will bury his
face in his hands, he will undergo passions of revolt
and agony ; and meanwhile his attitude of mind
is really both conciliatory and receptive ; and after
Pistol has been out-Pistol'd, and the welkin rung

TALK AND TALKERS

for hours, yoa begin to perceive a certain subsidence
in these spring torrents, points of agreement issue,
and you end arm-in-arm, and in a glow of mutual
admiration. The outcry only serves to make your
final union the more unexpected and precious.
Throughout there has been perfect sincerity, perfect
intelligence, a desire to hear although not always
to listen, and an unaffected eagerness to meet
concessions. You have, with Burly, none of the
dangers that attend debate with Spring-Heel'd Jack ;
who may at any moment turn his powers of trans-
migration on yourself, create for you a view you
never held, and then furiously fall on you for holding
it. These, at least, are my two favourites, and both
are loud, copious, intolerant talkers. This argues
that I myself am in the same category ; for if we
love talking at all, we love a bright, fierce adversary,
who will hold his ground, foot by foot, in much our
own manner, sell his attention dearly, and give us
our full measure of the dust and exertion of battle.
Both these men can be beat from a position, but
it takes six hours to do it; a high and hard ad-
venture, worth attempting. With both you can
pass days in an enchanted country of the mind,
with people, scenery, and manners of its own ; live
a life apart, more arduous, active, and glowing than
any real existence ; and come forth again when the
talk is over, as out of a theatre or a dream, to find
the east wind still blowing and the chimney-pots
of the old battered city still around you. Jack has
the far finer mind, Burly the far more honest ; Jack

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MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

gives us the animated poetry. Burly the romantic
prose, of similar themes ; the one glances high like
a meteor and makes a light in darkness ; the other,
with many changing hues of fire, burns at the sea-
level, like a conflagration ; but both have the same
humour and artistic interests, the same unquenched
ardour in pursuit, the same gusts of talk and
thunderclaps of contradiction.

Cockshot^ is a different article, but vastly enter-
taining, and has been meat and drink to me for many
a long evening. His manner is dry, brisk, and perti-
nacious, and the choice of words not much. The
point about him is his extraordinary readiness and
spirit. You can propound nothing but he has either
a theory about it ready-made, or will have one in-
stantly on the stocks, and proceed to lay its timbers
and launch it in your presence. 'Let me see,' he
will say. ' Give me a moment. I should have some
theory for that.' A bhther spectacle than the vigour
with which he sets about the task, it were hard to
fancy. He is possessed by a demoniac energy, weld-
ing the elements for his life, and bending ideas, as
an athlete bends a horse-shoe, with a visible and lively
effort. He has, in theorising, a compass, an art;
what I would call the synthetic gusto ; something of
a Herbert Spencer, who should see the fun of the
thing. You are not bound, and no more is he, to
place your faith in these brand-new opinions. But
some of them are right enough, durable even for life ;
and the poorest serve for a cock-shy — as when idle

^ The late Professor Fleeming Jenkin.
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TALK AND TALKERS

people, after picnics, float a bottle on a pond and
have an hour's diversion ere it sinks. Whichever
they are, serious opinions or humours of the moment,
he still defends his ventures with indefatigable wit
and spirit, hitting savagely himself, but taking punish-
ment like a man. He knows and never forgets that
people talk, first of all, for the sake of talking ; con-
ducts himself in the ring, to use the old slang, like
a thorough 'glutton,' and honestly enjoys a telling
facer from his adversary. Cockshot is bottled effer-
vescency, the sworn foe of sleep. Three-in-the-
morning Cockshot, says a victim. His talk is like
the driest of all imaginable dry champagnes. Sleight
of hand and inimitable quickness are the qualities by
which he lives. Athelred, on the other hand, presents
you with the spectacle of a sincere and somewhat
slow nature thinking aloud. He is the most unready
man I ever knew to shine in conversation. You may
see him sometimes wrestle with a refractory jest for
a minute or two together, and perhaps fail to throw
it in the end. And there is something singularly
engaging, often instructive, in the simplicity with
which he thus exposes the process as well as the
result, the works as well as the dial of the clock.
Withal he has his hours of inspiration. Apt words
come to him as if by accident, and, coming from
deeper down, they smack the more personally, they
have the more of fine old crusted humanity, rich in
sediment and humour. There are sayings of his in
which he has stamped himself into the very grain of
the language ; you would think he must have worn

191

MEMORIES AND POUTRAITS

the words next his skin, and slept with them. Yet
it is not as a sayer of particular good things that
Athelred is most to be regarded, rather as the stalwart
woodman of thought. I have pulled on a light cord
often enough, while he has been wielding the broad-
axe ; and between us, on this unequal division, many
a specious fallacy has fallen. I have known him to
battle the same question night after night for years,
keeping it in the reign of talk, constantly applying
it and re-applying it to life with humorous or grave
intention, and all the while never hurrying, nor flag-
ging, nor taking an unfair advantage of the facts.
Jack at a given moment, when arising, as it were,
from the tripod, can be more radiantly just to those
from whom he differs ; but then the tenor of his
thoughts is even calumnious ; while Athelred, slower
to forge excuses, is yet slower to condemn, and sits
over the welter of the world, vacillating but still
judicial, and still faithfully contending with his
doubts.

Both the last talkers deal much in points of conduct
and religion studied in the ' dry light ' of prose. In-
directly and as if against his will the same elements
from time to time appear in the troubled and poetic
talk of Opalstein.i His various and exotic knowledge,
complete although unready sympathies, and fine, full,
discriminative flow of language, fit him out to be the
best of talkers ; so perhaps he is with some, not quite
with me — proocime accessit, I should say. He sings
the praises of the earth and the arts, flowers and

1 The late John Addington Symonds.
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TALK AND TALKERS

jewels, wine and music, in a moonlight, serenading
manner, as to the light guitar ; even wisdom comes
from his tongue like singing ; no one is, indeed, more
tuneful in the upper notes. But even while he sings
the song of the Sirens, he still hearkens to the bark-
ing of the Sphinx. Jarring Byronic notes interrupt
the flow of his Horatian humours. His mirth has
something of the tragedy of the world for its perpetual
background ; and he feasts like Don Giovanni to a
double orchestra, one lightly sounding for the dance,
one pealing Beethoven in the distance. He is not
truly reconciled either with life or with himself; and
this instant war in his members sometimes divides
the man's attention. He does not always, perhaps
not often, frankly surrender himself in conversation.
He brings into the talk other thoughts than those
which he expresses ; you are conscious that he keeps
an eye on something else, that he does not shake off
the world, nor quite forget himself Hence arise
occasional disappointments ; even an occasional un-
fairness for his companions, who find themselves one
day giving too much, and the next, when they are
wary out of season, giving perhaps too little. Purcel
is in another class from any I have mentioned. He
is no debater, but appears in conversation, as occa-
sion rises, in two distinct characters, one of which
I admire and fear, and the other love. In the first,
he is radiantly civil and rather silent, sits on a high,
courtly hill-top, and from that vantage-ground drops
you his remarks like favours. He seems not to share
in our sublunary contentions ; he wears no sign of
N 193

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

interest ; when on a sudden there falls m a crystal of
wit, so polished that the dull do not perceive it, but
so right that the sensitive are silenced. True talk
should have more body and blood, should be louder,
vainer, and more declaratory of the man ; the true
talker should not hold so steady an advantage over
whom he speaks with ; and that is one reason out
of a score why I prefer my Purcel in his second
character, when he unbends into a strain of graceful
gossip, singing like the fireside kettle. In these
moods he has an elegant homeliness that rings of
the true Queen Anne. I know another person who
attains, in his moments, to the insolence of a Restora-
tion comedy, speaking, I declare, as Congreve wrote ;
but that is a sport of nature, and scarce falls under
the rubric, for there is none, alas ! to give him
answer.

One last remark occurs : It is the mark of genuine
conversation that the sayings can scarce be quoted
with their full effect beyond the circle of common
friends. To have their proper weight they should
appear in a biography, and with the portrait of the
speaker. Good talk is dramatic ; it is like an im-
promptu piece of acting where each should represent
himself to the greatest advantage ; and that is the
best kind of talk where each speaker is most fully
and candidly himself, and where, if you were to shift
the speeches round from one to another, there would
be the greatest loss in significance and perspicuity.
It is for this reason that talk depends so wholly
on our company. We should like to introduce
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TALK AND TALKERS

Falstaff and Mercutio, or FalstafF and Sir Toby ; but
FalstafF in talk with Cordelia seems even painful.
Most of us, by the Protean quality of man, can talk
to some degree with all ; but the true talk, that
strikes out all the slumbering best of us, comes only
with the peculiar brethren of our spirits, is founded
as deep as love in the constitution of our being, and
is a thing to relish with all our energy, while yet we
have it, and to be grateful for for ever.

195

XI
TALK AND TALKERS^

II

In the last paper there was perhaps too much about
mere debate ; and there was nothing said at all
about that kind of talk which is merely luminous
and restful, a higher power of silence, the quiet of
the evening shared by ruminating friends. There
is something, aside from personal preference, to be
alleged in support of this omission. Those who
are no chimney-corn erers, who rejoice in the social
thunderstorm, have a ground in reason for their
choice. They get little rest indeed ; but restfulness
is a quality for cattle ; the virtues are all active, life
is alert, and it is in repose that men prepare them-
selves for evil. On the other hand, they are bruised
into a knowledge of themselves and others ; they
have in a high degree the fencer's pleasure in dex-
terity displayed and proved ; what they get they get
upon life's terms, paying for it as they go ; and once
the talk is launched, they are assured of honest
dealing from an adversary eager like themselves.

^ This sequel was called forth by an excellent article in The Spectator.
196

TALK AND TALKERS

The aboriginal man within us, the cave-dweller, still
lusty as when he fought tooth and nail for roots and
berries, scents this kind of equal battle from afar ; it
is like his old primeval days upon the crags, a return
to the sincerity of savage life from the comfortable
fictions of the civilised. And if it be delightful to
the Old Man, it is none the less profitable to his
younger brother, the conscientious gentleman, I
feel never quite sure of your urbane and smiling
coteries ; I fear they indulge a man's vanities in
silence, suffer him to encroach, encourage him on
to be an ass, and send him forth again, not merely
contemned for the moment, but radically more con-
temptible than when he entered. But if I have a
flushed, blustering fellow for my opposite, bent on
carrying a point, my vanity is sure to have its ears
rubbed, once at least, in the course of the debate.
He will not spare me when we differ ; he will not
fear to demonstrate my folly to my face.

For many natures there is not much charm in the
still, chambered society, the circle of bland counten-
ances, the digestive silence, the admired remark, the
flutter of affectionate approval. They demand more
atmosphere and exercise ; ' a gale upon their spirits,'
as our pious ancestors would phrase it ; to have their
wits well .breathed in an uproarious Valhalla. And
I suspect that the choice, given their character and
faults, is one to be defended. The purely wise are
silenced by facts ; they talk in a clear atmosphere,
problems lying around them like a view in nature ;
if they can be shown to be somewhat in the wrong,

197

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

they digest the reproof like a thrashing, and make
better intellectual blood. They stand corrected by
a whisper ; a word or a glance reminds them of the
great eternal law. But it is not so with all. Others
in conversation seek rather contact with their fellow-
men than increase of knowledge or clarity of thought.
The drama, not the philosophy, of life is the sphere of
their intellectual activity. Even when they pursue
truth, they desire as much as possible of what we
may call human scenery along the road they follow.
They dwell in the heart of life ; the blood sounding
in their ears, their eyes laying hold of what delights
them with a brutal avidity that makes them blind to
all besides, their interest riveted on people, living,
loving, talking, tangible people. To a man of this
description, the sphere of argument seems very pale
and ghostly. By a strong expression, a perturbed
countenance, floods of tears, an insult which his
conscience obliges him to swallow, he is brought
round to knowledge which no syllogism would have
conveyed to him. His own experience is so vivid,
he is so superlatively conscious of himself, that if,
day after day, he is allowed to hector and hear
nothing but approving echoes, he will lose his hold
on the soberness of things and take himself in
earnest for a god. Talk might be to such an one
the very way of moral ruin ; the school where he
might learn to be at once intolerable and ridiculous.
This character is perhaps commoner than philoso-
phers suppose. And for persons of that stamp to
learn much by conversation, they must speak with
198

TALK AND TALKERS

their superiors, not in intellect, for that is a superi-
ority that must be proved, but in station. If they
cannot find a friend to bully them for their good,
they must find either an old man, a woman, or
some one so far below them in the artificial
order of society, that courtesy may be particularly
exercised.

The best teachers are the aged. To the old our
mouths are always partly closed ; we must swallow
our obvious retorts and listen. They sit above our
heads, on life's raised dais, and appeal at once to our
respect and pity. A flavour of the old school, a
touch of something different in their manner — which
is freer and rounder, if they come of what is called
a good family, and often more timid and precise if
they are of the middle class — serves, in these days,
to accentuate the difference of age and add a dis-
tinction to grey hairs. But their superiority is
founded more deeply than by outward marks or
gestures. They are before us in the march of man ;
they have more or less solved the irking problem ;
they have battled through the equinox of life ; in
good and evil they have held their course ; and
now, without open shame, they near the crown and
harbour. It may be we have been struck with one
of fortune's darts ; we can scarce be civil, so cruelly
is our spirit tossed. Yet long before we were so
much as thought upon, the like calamity befell the
old man or woman that now, with pleasant humour,
rallies us upon our inattention, sitting composed in
the holy evening of man's life, in the clear shining

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MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

after rain. We grow ashamed of our distresses, new
and hot and coarse, hke villainous roadside brandy ;
we see life in aerial perspective, under the heavens
of faith ; and out of the worst, in the mere presence
of contented elders, look forward and take patience.
Fear shrinks before them ' like a thing reproved,'
not the flitting and ineffectual fear of death, but the
instant, dwelling terror of the responsibilities and
revenges of life. Their speech, indeed, is timid ;
they report lions in the path ; they counsel a meti-
culous footing; but their serene, marred faces are
more eloquent and tell another story. Where they
have gone, we will go also, not very greatly fearing ;
what they have endured unbroken, we also, God
helping us, will make a shift to bear.

Not only is the presence of the aged in itself
remedial, but their minds are stored with antidotes,
wisdom's simples, plain considerations overlooked by
youth. They have matter to communicate, be they
never so stupid. Their talk is not merely literature,
it is great literature ; classic in virtue of the speaker's
detachment, studded, hke a book of travel, with
things we should not otherwise have learnt. In
virtue, I have said, of the speaker's detachment, —
and this is why, of two old men, the one who is not
your father speaks to you with the more sensible
authority; for in the paternal relation the oldest
have lively interests and remain still young. Thus
I have known two young men great friends; each
swore by the other's father ; the father of each swore
by the other lad ; and yet each pair, of parent and
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TALK AND TALKERS

child, were perpetually by the ears. This is typical :
it reads like the germ of some kindly comedy.

The old appear in conversation in two characters :
the critically silent and the garrulous anecdotic.
The last is perhaps what we look for ; it is perhaps
the more instructive. An old gentleman, well on in
years, sits handsomely and naturally in the bow-
window of his age, scanning experience with reverted
eye; and, chirping and smiling, communicates the
accidents and reads the lesson of his long career.
Opinions are strengthened, indeed, but they are also
weeded out in the course of years. What remains
steadily present to the eye of the retired veteran in
his hermitage, what still ministers to his content,
what still quickens his old honest heart — these are
' the real long-lived things ' that Whitman tells us
to prefer. Where youth agrees with age, not where
they differ, wisdom lies ; and it is when the young
disciple finds his heart to beat in tune with his grey-
bearded teacher's that a lesson may be learned. I
have known one old gentleman, whom I may name,
for he is now gathered to his stock — Hobert Hunter,
Sheriff of Dumbarton, and author of an excellent
law-book still re-edited and republished. Whether
he was originally big or little is more than I can
guess. When I knew him he was all fallen away
and fallen in ; crooked and shrunken ; buckled into
a stiff waistcoat for support ; troubled by ailments,
which kept him hobbling in and out of the room ;
one foot gouty ; a wig for decency, not for deception,
on his head ; close shaved, except under his chin —

20I

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

and for that he never failed to apologise, for it went
sore against the traditions of his life. You can
imagine how he would fare in a novel by Miss Mather ;
yet this rag of a Chelsea veteran lived to his last
year in the plenitude of all that is best in man,
brimming with human kindness, and staunch as a
Roman soldier under his manifold infirmities. You
could not say that he had lost his memory, for he
would repeat Shakespeare and Webster and Jeremy
Taylor and Burke by the page together ; but the
parchment was filled up, there was no room for fresh
inscriptions, and he was capable of repeating the same
anecdote on many successive visits. His voice sur-
vived in its full power, and he took a pride in using
it. On his last voyage as Commissioner of Light-
houses, he hailed a ship at sea and made himself
clearly audible without a speaking-trumpet, ruffling
the while with a proper vanity in his achievement.
He had a habit of eking out his words with interro-
gative hems, whicli was puzzling and a little weari-
some, suited ill with his appearance, and seemed a
survival from some former stage of bodily portliness.
Of yore, when he was a great pedestrian and no
enemy to good claret, he may have pointed with
these minute-guns his allocutions to the bench. His
humour was perfectly equable, set beyond the reach
of fate ; gout, rheumatism, stone and gravel might
have combined their forces against that frail taber-
nacle, but when I came round on Sunday evening,
he would lay aside Jeremy Taylor's Life of Christ
and greet me with the same open brow, the same
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TALK AND TALKERS

kind formality of manner. His opinions and sym-
pathies dated the man ahuost to a decade. He had
begun life, under his mother's influence, as an admirer
of Junius, but on maturer knowledge had transferred
his admiration to Burke. He cautioned me, with
entire gravity, to be punctilious in writing English ;
never to forget that I was a Scotsman, that English
was a foreign tongue, and that if I attempted the
colloquial, I should certainly be shamed : the remark
was apposite, I suppose, in the days of David Hume.
Scott was too new for him ; he had known the author
— known him, too, for a Tory ; and to the genuine
classic a contemporary is always something of a
trouble. He had the old, serious love of the play ;
had even, as he was proud to tell, played a certain
part in the history of Shakespearian revivals, for he
had successfully pressed on Murray, of the old Edin-
burgh Theatre, the idea of producing Shakespeare's
fairy pieces with great scenic display. A Moderate
in religion, he was much struck in the last years of
his life by a conversation with two young lads,
revivalists. ' H'm,' he would say — ' new to me. T
have had — h'm — no such experience.' It struck him,
not with pain, rather with a solemn philosophic
interest, that he, a Christian as he hoped, and a
Christian of so old a standing, should hear these
young fellows talking of his own subject, his own
weapons that he had fought the battle of life with, —
'and — h'm — not understand.' In this wise and
graceful attitude he did justice to himself and others,
reposed unshaken in his old beliefs, and recognised

20.^

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

their limits without anger or alarm. His last recorded
remark, on the last night of his life, was after he had
been arguing against Calvinism with his minister and
was interrupted by an intolerable pang. 'After all,'
he said, 'of all the 'isms, I know none so bad as
rheumatism.' My own last sight of him was some
time before, when we dined together at an inn ; he
had been on circuit, for he stuck to his duties like a
chief part of his existence ; and I remember it as the
only occasion on which he ever soiled his hps with
slang — a thing he loathed. We were both Roberts ;
and as we took our places at table, he addressed me
with a twinkle : ' We are just what you would call
two bob.' He offered me port, I remember, as the
proper milk of youth ; spoke of 'twenty-shilling
notes ' ; and throughout the meal was full of old-
world pleasantry and quaintness, like an ancient boy
on a holiday. But what I recall chiefly was his con-
fession that he had never read Othello to an end.
Shakespeare was his continual study. He loved
nothing better than to display his knowledge and
memory by adducing parallel passages from Shake- '
speare, passages where the same word was employed,
or the same idea differently treated. But Othello
had beaten him. 'That noble gentleman and that
noble lady — h'm — too painful for me.' The same
night the hoardings were covered with posters, ' Bur-
lesque of Othello,'' and the contrast blazed up in my
mind like a bonfire. An unforg-ettable look it g-ave
me into that kind man's soul. His acquaintance
was indeed a liberal and pious education. All the
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TALK AND TALKERS

humanities were taught in that bare dining-room
beside his gouty footstool. He was a piece of good
advice ; he was himself the instance that pointed and
adorned his various talk. Nor could a young man
have found elsewhere a place so set apart from envy,
fear, discontent, or any of the passions that debase ;
a life so honest and composed ; a soul Uke an ancient
violin, so subdued to harmony, responding to a touch
in music — as in that dining-room, with Mr. Hunter
chatting at the eleventh hour, under the shadow of
eternity, fearless and gentle.

The second class of old people are not anecdotic ;
they are rather hearers than talkers, listening to the
young with an amused and critical attention. To
have this sort of intercourse to perfection, I think
we must go to old ladies. Women are better hearers
than men, to begin with ; they learn, I fear in
anguish, to bear with the tedious and infantile vanity
of the other sex; and we will take more from a
woman than even from the oldest man in the way of
biting comment. Biting comment is the chief part,
whether for profit or amusement, in this business.
The old lady that I have in my eye is a very caustic
speaker, her tongue, after years of practice, in
absolute command, whether for silence or attack. If
she chance to dislike you, you will be tempted to
curse the maUgnity of age. But if you chance to
please even shghtly, you will be listened to with a
particular laughing grace of sympathy, and from
time to time chastised, as if in play, with a parasol
as heavy as a pole-axe. It requires a singular art, as

205

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

well as the vantage-ground of age, to deal these
stunning corrections among the coxcombs of the
young. The pill is disguised in sugar of wit ; it is
administered as a compliment — if you had not pleased,
you would not have been censured ; it is a personal
affair — a hyphen, a trait d'union, between you and
your censor ; age's philandering, for her pleasure and
your good. Incontestably the young man feels very
much of a fool ; but he must be a perfect Malvolio,
sick with self-love, if he cannot take an open buffet
and still smile. The correction of silence is what
kills ; when you know you have transgressed, and
your friend says nothing and avoids your eye. If a
man were made of gutta-percha, his heart would
quail at such a moment. But when the word is out,
the worst is over ; and a fellow with any good-
humour at all may pass through a perfect hail of
witty criticism, every bare place on his soul hit to
the quick with a shrewd missile, and reappear, as if
after a dive, tingling with a fine moral reaction, and
ready, with a shrinking readiness, one-third loath, for
a repetition of the discipline.

There are few women, not well sunned and ripened,
and perhaps toughened, who can thus stand apart
from a man and say the true thing with a kind of
genial cruelty. Still there are some — and I doubt if
there be any man who can return the compliment.
The class of man represented by Vernon Whitford
in The Egoist says, indeed, the true thing, but he
says it stockishly. Vernon is a noble fellow, and
makes, by the way, a noble and instructive contrast
206

TALK AND TALKERS

to Daniel Deronda ; his conduct is the conduct of a
man of honour ; but we agree with him, against our
consciences, when he remorsefully considers 'its
astonishing dryness.' He is the best of men, but the
best of women manage to combine all that and some-
thing more. Their very faults assist them ; they are
helped even by the falseness of their position in hfe.
They can retire into the fortified camp of the pro-
prieties. They can touch a subject and suppress it.
The most adroit employ a somewhat elaborate reserve
as a means to be frank, much as they wear gloves
when they shake hands. But a man has the full
responsibility of his freedom, cannot evade a ques-
tion, can scarce be silent without rudeness, must
answer for his words upon the moment, and is not
seldom left face to face with a damning choice, be-
tween the more or less dishonourable wriggling of
Deronda and the downright woodenness of Vernon
Whitford.

But the superiority of women is perpetually
menaced ; they do not sit throned on infirmities hke
the old ; they are suitors as well as sovereigns ; their
vanity is engaged, their affections are too apt to
follow ; and hence much of the talk between the
sexes degenerates into something unworthy of the
name. The desire to please, to shine with a certain
softness of lustre and to draw a fascinating picture
of oneself, banishes from conversation all that is
sterling and most of what is humorous. As soon
as a strong current of mutual admiration begins to
flow, the human interest triumphs entirely over the

207

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

intellectual, and the commerce of words, consciously
or not, becomes secondary to the commercing of eyes.
But even where this ridiculous danger is avoided,
and a man and woman converse equally and honestly,
something in their nature or their education falsifies
the strain. An instinct prompts them to agree ; and
where that is impossible, to agree to differ. Should
they neglect the warning, at the first suspicion of an
argument, they find themselves in different hemi-
spheres. About any point of business or conduct,
any actual affair demanding settlement, a woman
will speak and listen, hear and answer arguments,
not only with natural wisdom, but with candour and
logical honesty. But if the subject of debate be
something in the air, an abstraction, an excuse for
talk, a logical Aunt Sally, then may the male debater
instantly abandon hope ; he may employ reason,
adduce facts, be supple, be smiling, be angry, all shall
avail him nothing ; what the woman said first, that
(unless she has forgotten it) she will repeat at the
end. Hence, at the very junctures when a talk
between men grows brighter and quicker and begins
to promise to bear fruit, talk between the sexes is
menaced with dissolution. The point of difference,
the point of interest, is evaded by the brilliant
woman, under a shower of irrelevant conversational
rockets ; it is bridged by the discreet woman with
a rustle of silk, as she passes smoothly forward to
the nearest point of safety. And this sort of presti-
digitation, juggling the dangerous topic out of sight
until it can be reintroduced with safety in an altered
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TALK AND TALKERS

shape, is a piece of tactics among the true drawing-
room queens.

The drawing-room is, indeed, an artificial place ; it
is so by our choice and for our sins. The subjection
of women ; the ideal imposed upon them from the
cradle, and worn, like a hair-shirt, with so much
constancy ; their motherly, superior tenderness to
man's vanity and self-importance ; their managing
arts — the arts of a civilised slave among good-natured
barbarians — are all painful ingredients and all help
to falsify relations. It is not till we get clear of that
amusing artificial scene that genuine relations are
founded, or ideas honestly compared. In the garden,
on the road or the hillside, or tete-a-Ute and apart
from interruptions, occasions arise when we may
learn much from any single woman ; and nowhere
more often than in married life. Marriage is one
long conversation, chequered by disputes. The
disputes are valueless ; they but ingrain the differ-
ence ; the heroic heart of woman prompting her at
once to nail her colours to the mast. But in the
intervals, almost unconsciously and with no desire to
shine, the whole material of life is turned over and
over, ideas are struck out and shared, the two persons
more and more adapt their notions one to suit the
other, and in process of time, without sound of
trumpet, they conduct each other into new worlds
of thought.

209

XII

THE CHARACTER OF DOGS

The civilisation, the manners, and the morals of dog-
kind are to a great extent subordinated to those of
his ancestral master, man. This animal, in many
ways so superior, has accepted a position of inferi-
ority, shares the domestic life, and humours the
caprices of the tyrant. But the potentate, like the
British in India, pays small regard to the character
of his wilhng client, judges him with listless glances,
and condemns him in a byword. Listless have been
the looks of his admirers, who have exhausted idle
terms of praise, and buried the poor soul below
exaggerations. And yet more idle and, if possible,
more unintelhgent has been the attitude of his
express detractors ; those who are very fond of dogs,
*but in their proper place'; who say 'poo',* fellow,
poo' fellow,' and are themselves far poorer ; who whet
the knife of the vivisectionist or heat his oven ; who
are not ashamed to admire 'the creature's instinct';
and flying far beyond folly, have dared to resuscitate
the theory of animal machines. The ' dog's instinct '
and the ' automaton-dog,' in this age of psychology
and science, sound like -strange anachronisms. An

2IO

THE CHARACTER OF DOGS

automaton he certainly is ; a machine working in-
dependently of his control, the heart like the mill-
wheel, keeping all in motion, and the consciousness,
like a person shut in the mill garret, enjoying the
view out of the window and shaken by the thunder
of the stones ; an automaton in one corner of which
a living spirit is confined : an automaton like man.
Instinct again he certainly possesses. Inherited
aptitudes are his, inherited frailties. Some things he
at once views and understands, as though he were
awakened from a sleep, as though he came ' trailing
clouds of glory.' But with him, as with man, the
field of instinct is limited ; its utterances are obscure
and occasional ; and about the far larger part of life
both the dog and his master must conduct their
steps by deduction and observation.

The leading distinction between dog and man,
after and perhaps before the different duration of
their lives, is that the one can speak and that the
other cannot. The absence of the power of speech
confines the dog in the development of his intellect.
It hinders him from many speculations, for words
are the beginning of metaphysic. At the same blow
it saves him from many superstitions, and his silence
has won for him a higher name for virtue than his
conduct justifies. The faults of the dog are many.
He is vainer than man, singularly greedy of notice,
singularly intolerant of ridicule, suspicious like the
deaf, jealous to the degree of frenzy, and radically
devoid of truth. The day of an intelligent small dog
is passed in the manufacture and the laborious com-

21 I

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

miinication of falsehood ; he hes with his tail, he lies
with his eye, he lies with his protesting paw ; and
when he rattles his dish or scratches at the door his
purpose is other than appears. But he has some
apology to offer for the vice. Many of the signs
which form his dialect have come to bear an arbitrary
meaning, clearly understood both by his master and
himself; yet when a new want arises he must either
invent a new vehicle of meaning or wrest an old one
to a different purpose ; and this necessity frequently
recurring miust tend to lessen his idea of the sanctity
of symbols. Meanwhile the dog is clear in his own
conscience, and draws, with a human nicety, the
distinction between formal and essential truth. Of
his punning perversions, his legitimate dexterity
with symbols, he is even vain ; but when he has told
and been detected in a he, there is not a hair upon
his body but confesses guilt. To a dog of gentle-
manly feeUng, theft and falsehood are disgraceful
vices. The canine, like the human, gentleman
demands in his misdemeanours Montaigne's '^je ne
sais quoi de genereuoo.' He is never more than half
ashamed of having barked or bitten ; and for those
faults into which he has been led by the desire to
shine before a lady of his race, he retains, even under
physical correction, a share of pride. But to be
caught lying, if he understands it, instantly un-
curls his fleece.

Just as among dull observers he preserves a name
for truth, the dog has been credited with modesty.
It is amazing how the use of language blunts the

212

THE CHARACTER OF DOGS

faculties of man — that because vainglory finds no
vent in words, creatures supplied with eyes have
been unable to detect a fault so gross and obvious.
If a small spoiled dog were suddenly to be endowed
with speech, he would prate interminably, and still
about himself; when we had friends, we should be
forced to lock him in a garret ; and what with his
whining jealousies and his foible for falsehood, in a
year's time he would have gone far to weary out
our love. I was about to compare him to Sir
Willoughby Patterne, but the Patternes have a
manlier sense of their own merits ; and the parallel,
besides, is ready. Hans Christian Andersen, as we
behold him in his startling memoirs, thriUing from
top to toe with an excruciating vanity, and scouting
even along the street for shadows of offence — here
was the talking dog.

It is just this rage for consideration that has
betrayed the dog into his satellite position as the
friend of man. The cat, an animal of franker
appetites, preserves his independence. But the
dog, with one eye ever on the audience, has been
wheedled into slavery, and praised and patted into
the renunciation of his nature. Once he ceased
hunting and became man's plate-licker, the Rubicon
was crossed. Thenceforth he was a gentleman of
leisure ; and except the few whom we keep working,
the whole race grew more and more self-conscious,
mannered, and affected. The number of things that
a small dog does naturally is strangely small. En-
joying better spirits and not crushed under material

213

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

cares, he is far more theatrical than average man.
His whole life, if he be a dog of any pretension
to gallantry, is spent in a vain show, and in the
hot pursuit of admiration. Take out your puppy
for a walk, and you will find the little ball of fur
clumsy, stupid, bewildered, but natural. Let but
a few months pass, and when you repeat the pro-
cess you will find nature buried in convention.
He will do nothing plainly ; but the simplest pro-
cesses of our material life will all be bent into the
forms of an elaborate and mysterious etiquette.
Instinct, says the fool, has awakened. But it is not
so. Some dogs — some, at the very least — if they
be kept separate from others, remain quite natural ;
and these, when at length they meet with a com-
panion of experience, and have the game explained
to them, distinguish themselves by the severity of
their devotion to its rules. I wish I were allowed
to tell a story which would radiantly illuminate the
point ; but men, like dogs, have an elaborate and
mysterious etiquette. It is their bond of sympathy
that both are the children of convention.

The person, man or dog, who has a conscience
is eternally condemned to some degree of humbug ;
the sense of the law in their members fatally pre-
cipitates either towards a frozen and affected bearing.
And the converse is true ; and in the elaborate and
conscious manners of the dog, moral opinions and the
love of the ideal stand confessed. To follow for
ten minutes in the street some swaggering, canine
cavalier is to receive a lesson in dramatic art and
214

THE CHARACTER OF DOGS

the cultured conduct of the body ; in every act and
gesture you see hhn true to a refined conception ;
and the dullest cur, beholding him, pricks up his ear
and proceeds to imitate and parody that charming
ease. For to be a high-mannered and high-minded
gentleman, careless, affable, and gay, is the inborn
pretension of the dog. The large dog, so much
lazier, so much more weighed upon with matter, so
majestic in repose, so beautiful in effort, is born with
the dramatic means to wholly represent the part.
And it is more pathetic and perhaps more instructive
to consider the small dog in his conscientious and
imperfect efforts to outdo Sir Philip Sidney. For
the ideal of the dog is feudal and reHgious ; the ever-
present polytheism, the whip-bearing Olympus of
mankind, rules them on the one hand ; on the other,
their singular difference of size and strength among
themselves effectually prevents the appearance of the
democratic notion. Or we might more exactly com-
pare their society to the curious spectacle presented
by a school — ushers, monitors, and big and little
boys — qualified by one circumstance, the introduc-
tion of the other sex. In each we should observe
a somewhat similar tension of manner, and some-
what similar points of honour. In each the larger
animal keeps a contemptuous good humour ; in
each the smaller annoys him with wasp-like im-
pudence, certain of practical immunity ; in each we
shall find a double life producing double characters,
and an excursive and noisy heroism combined with
a fair amount of practical timidity. I have known

215

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

dogs, and I have known school heroes that, set aside
the fur, could hardly have been told apart ; and if
we desire to understand the chivalry of old, we must
turn to the school playfields or the dungheap where
the dogs are trooping.

Woman, with the dog, has been long enfranchised.
Incessant massacre of female innocents has changed
the proportions of the sexes and perverted their rela-
tions. Thus, when we regard the manners of the
dog, we see a romantic and monogamous animal,
once perhaps as delicate as the cat, at war with im-
possible conditions. Man has much to answer for ;
and the part he plays is yet more damnable and
parlous than Corin's in the eyes of Touchstone. But
his intervention has at least created an imperial situ-
ation for the rare surviving ladies. In that society
they reign without a rival : conscious queens ; and
in the only instance of a canine wife-beater that has
ever fallen under my notice, the criminal was some-
what excused by the circumstances of his story. He
is a little, very alert, well-bred, intelligent Skye, as
black as a hat, with a wet bramble for a nose and
two cairngorms for eyes. To the human observer
he is decidedly well-looking ; but to the ladies of
his race he seems abhorrent. A thorough elaborate
gentleman, of the plume and sword-knot order, he
was born with a nice sense of gallantry to women.
He took at their hands the most outrageous treat-
ment ; I have heard him bleating like a sheep, I
have seen him streaming blood, and his ear tattered
like a regimental banner ; and yet he would scorn
216

THE CHARACTER OF DOGS

to make reprisals. Nay more, when a human lady
upraised the contumelious whip against the very
dame who had been so cruelly misusing him, my
little great-heart gave but one hoarse cry and fell
upon the tyrant tooth and nail. This is the tale
of a soul's tragedy. After three years of unavailing
chivalry, he suddenly, in one hour, threw off the
yoke of obligation ; had he been Shakespeare he
would then have written T'roilus and Cressida to
brand the offending sex ; but being only a little
dog, he began to bite them. The surprise of the
ladies whom he attacked indicated the monstrosity
of his offence ; but he had fairly beaten off his better
angel, fairly committed moral suicide; for almost
in the same hour, throwing aside the last rags of
decency, he proceeded to attack the aged also. The
fact is worth remark, showing, as it does, that ethical
laws are common both to dogs and men ; and that
with both a single deliberate violation of the con-
science loosens all. 'But while the lamp holds on
to burn,' says the paraphrase, 'the greatest sinner
may return.' I have been cheered to see symp-
toms of effectual penitence in my sweet ruffian ;
and by the handling that he accepted uncomplain-
ingly the other day from an indignant fair one, I
begin to hope the period of Sturm und Drang is
closed.

All these little gentlemen are subtle casuists.
The duty to the female dog is plain ; but where
competing duties rise, down they will sit and study
them out, like Jesuit confessors. I knew another

217

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

little Skye, somewhat plain in manner and appear-
ance, but a creature compact of amiability and solid
wisdom. His family going abroad for a winter, he
was received for that period by an uncle in the same
city. The winter over, his own family home again,
and his own house (of which he was very proud)
reopened, he found himself in a dilemma between
two conflicting duties of loyalty and gratitude.
His old friends were not to be neglected, but it
seemed hardly decent to desert the new. This was
how he solved the problem. Every morning, as soon
as the door was opened, off posted Coolin to his
uncle's, visited the children in the nursery, saluted
the whole family, and was back at home in time for
breakfast and his bit of fish. Nor was this done
without a sacrifice on his part, sharply felt ; for he
had to forgo the particular honour and jewel of
his day — his morning's walk with my father. And,
perhaps from this cause, he gradually wearied of and
relaxed the practice, and at length returned entirely
to his ancient habits. But the same decision served
him in another and more distressing case of divided
duty, which happened not long after. He was not
at all a kitchen dog, but the cook had nursed him
with unusual kindness during the distemper ; and
though he did not adore her as he adored my father
— although (born snob) he was critically conscious
of her position as ' only a servant ' — he still cherished
for her a special gratitude. Well, the cook left, and
retired some streets away to lodgings of her own ;
and there was Coolin in precisely the same situation
218

THE CHARACTER OF DOGS

with any young gentleman who has had the m-
estimable benefit of a faithful nurse. The canine
conscience did not solve the problem with a pound
of tea at Christmas. No longer content to pay a
flying visit, it was the whole forenoon that he dedi-
cated to his solitary friend. And so, day by day,
he continued to comfort her solitude until (for
some reason which I could never understand and
cannot approve) he was kept locked up to break
him of the graceful habit. Here, it is not the
similarity, it is the difference, that is worthy of
remark ; the clearly marked degrees of gratitude
and the proportional duration of his visits. Any-
thing further removed from instinct it were hard
to fancy ; and one is even stirred to a certain im-
patience with a character so destitute of spontaneity,
so passionless in justice, and so priggishly obedient
to the voice of reason.

There are not many dogs like this good Coolin,
and not many people. But the type is one well
marked, both in the human and the canine family.
Gallantry was not his aim, but a solid and somewhat
oppressive respectabihty. He was a sworn foe to the
unusual and the conspicuous, a praiser of the golden
mean, a kind of city uncle modified by Cheeryble.
And as he was precise and conscientious in all the
steps of his own blameless course, he looked for
the same precision and an even greater gravity in the
bearing of his deity, my father. It was no sinecure
to be Coohn's idol : he was exacting like a rigid
parent; and at every sign of levity in the man

219

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

whom he respected, he announced loudly the death
of virtue and the proximate fall of the pillars of
the earth.

I have called him a snob ; but all dogs are so,
though in varying degrees. It is hard to follow
their snobbery among themselves ; for though I
think we can perceive distinctions of rank, we cannot
grasp what is the criterion. Thus in Edinburgh,
in a good part of the town, there were several
distinct societies or clubs that met in the morning
to — the phrase is technical — to ' rake the backets '
in a troop. A friend of mine, the inaster of three
dogs, was one day surprised to observe that they
had left one club and joined another ; but whether
it was a rise or a fall, and the result of an invitation
or an expulsion, was more than he could guess.
And this illustrates pointedly our ignorance of the
real life of dogs, their social ambitions and their
social hierarchies. At least, in their dealings with
men they are not only conscious of sex, but of the
difference of station. And that in the most snobbish
manner ; for the poor man's dog is not offended by
the notice of the rich, and keeps all his ugly feeling
for those poorer or more ragged than his master.
And again, for every station they have an ideal of
behaviour, to which the master, under pain of
derogation, will do wisely to conform. How often
has not a cold glance of an eye informed me that
my dog was disappointed ; and how much more
gladly would he not have taken a beating than
to be thus wounded in the seat of piety !
220

THE CHARACTER OF DOGS

I knew one disrespectable dog. He was far liker
a cat ; eared little or nothing for men, with whom
he merely co-existed as we do with cattle, and was
entirely devoted to the art of poaching. A house
would not hold him, and to hve in a town was what
he refused. He led, I believe, a hfe of troubled but
genuine pleasure, and perished beyond all question
in a trap. But this w^as an exception, a marked
reversion to the ancestral type ; Hke the hairy human
infant. The true dog of the nineteenth century, to
judge by the remainder of my fairly large acquaint-
ance, is in love with respectabihty. A street-dog
was once adopted by a lady. While still an Arab,
he had done as Arabs do, gambolling in the mud,
charging into butchers' stalls, a cat-hunter, a sturdy
beggar, a common rogue and vagabond ; but with
his rise into society he laid aside these inconsistent
pleasures. He stole no more ; he hunted no more
cats ; and, conscious of his collar, he ignored his
old companions. Yet the canine upper class was
never brought to recognise the upstart, and from
that hour, except for human countenance, he was
alone. Friendless, shorn of his sports and the habits
of a lifetime, he still Hved in a glory of happiness,
content with his acquired respectabihty, and with
no care but to support it solemnly. Are we to
condemn or praise this self-made dog ? We praise
his human brother. And thus to conquer vicious
habits is as rare with dogs as with men. With the
more part, for all their scruple-mongering and moral
thought, the vices that are born with them remain

221

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

invincible throughout ; and they Hve all their years,
glorying in their virtues, but still the slaves of
their defects. Thus the sage Coolin was a thief
to the last ; among a thousand peccadilloes, a whole
goose and a whole cold leg of mutton lay upon
his conscience ; but Woggs,^ whose soul's shipwreck
in the matter of gallantry 1 have recounted above,
hag only twice been known to steal, and has often
nobly conquered the temptation. The eighth is his
favourite commandment. There is something pain-
fully human in these unequal virtues and mortal
frailties of the best. Still more painful is the
bearing of those ' stammering professors ' in the
house of sickness and under the terror of death.
It is beyond a doubt to me that, somehow or other,
the dog connects together, or confounds, the un-
easiness of sickness and the consciousness of guilt.
To the pains of the body he often adds the tortures
of the conscience ; and at these times his haggard
protestations form, in regard to the human death-
bed, a dreadful parody or parallel.

I once supposed that I had found an inverse
relation between the double etiquette which dogs
obey ; and that those who were most addicted to the
showy street life among other dogs were less careful
in the practice of home virtues for the tyrant man.
But the female dog, that mass of carneying affecta-

1 Walter, Watty, Woggy, Woggs, Wogg, and lastly Bogue ; under
which last name he fell in battle some twelve months ago. Glory was
his aim^ and he attained it ; for his icon, by the hand of Caldecott, now
lies among the treasures of the nation at the British Museum.

222

THE CHARACTER OF DOGS

tions, shines equally in either sphere ; rules her rough
posse of attendant swains with unwear5dng tact and
gusto ; and with her master and mistress pushes the
arts of insinuation to their crowning point. The
attention of man and the regard of other dogs flatter
(it would thus appear) the same sensibility ; but
perhaps, if we could read the canine heart, they
would be found to flatter it in very different degrees.
Dogs live with man as courtiers round a monarch,
steeped in the flattery of his notice and enriched
with sinecures. To push their favour in this world
of pickings and caresses is, perhaps, the business of
their lives ; and their joys may lie outside. I am in
despair at our persistent ignorance. I read in the
lives of our companions the same processes of reason,
the same antique and fatal conflicts of the right
against the wrong, and of unbitted nature with too
rigid custom ; I see them with our weaknesses, vain,
false, inconstant against appetite, and with our one
stalk of virtue, devoted to the dream of an ideal ;
and yet as they hurry by me on the street with tail
in air, or come singly to solicit my regard, I must
own the secret purport of their lives is still inscrut-
able to man. Is man the friend, or is he the patron
only ? Have they indeed forgotten nature's voice ?
or are those moments snatched from courtiership
when they touched noses with the tinker's mongrel,
the brief reward and pleasure of their artificial lives ?
Doubtless, when man shares with his dog the toils
of a profession and the pleasures of an art, as with
the shepherd or the poacher, the affection warms and

223

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

strengthens till it fills the soul. But doubtless, also,
the masters are, in many cases, the object of a merely
interested cultus, sitting aloft like Louis Quatorze,
giving and receiving flattery and favour; and the
dogs, like the majority of men, have but forgone
their true existence and become the dupes of their
ambition.

224

XIII

A PENNY PLAIN
AND TWOPENCE COLOURED

These words will be familiar to all students of
Skelt's Juvenile Drama. That national monument,
after having changed its name to Park's, to Webb's,
to Kedington's, and last of all to Pollock's, has now
become, for the most part, a memory. Some of its
pillars, like Stonehenge, are still afoot, the rest clean
vanished. It may be the Museum numbers a full
set; and Mr. lonides perhaps, or else her gracious
Majesty, may boast their great collections ; but to
the plain private person they are become, like
Raphaels, unattainable. I have, at different times,
possessed Aladdin, The Red Rover, The Blind Boy,
The Old Oak Chest, The Wood JDcBmon, Jack
Sheppard, The Miller and his Men, Der Freischutz,
The Smuggler, The Forest of Bondy, Robin Hood,
The Waterman, Richard I., My Poll and my
Partner Joe, The Inchcape Bell (imperfect), and
Three- Fingered Jack, the Terror of Jamaica ; and
I have assisted others in the illumination of The
Maid of the Inn and The Battle of Waterloo. In
this roll-call of stirring names you read the evidences
p 225

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

of a happy childhood ; and though not half of them
are still to be procured of any living stationer, in the
mind of their once happy owner all survive, kaleido-
scopes of changing pictures, echoes of the past.

There stands, I fancy, to this day (but now how
fallen !) a certain stationer's shop at a corner of the
wide thoroughfare that joins the city of my child-
hood with the sea. When, upon any Saturday, we
made a party to behold the ships, we passed that
corner ; and since in those days I loved a ship as a
man loves Burgundy or daybreak, this of itself had
been enough to hallow it. But there was more than
that. In the Leith Walk window, all the year
round, there stood displayed a theatre in working
order, with a ' forest set,' a ' combat,' and a few
' robbers carousing ' in the slides ; and below and
about, dearer tenfold to me ! the plays themselves,
those budgets of romance, lay tumbled one upon
another. Long and often have I lingered there with
empty pockets. One figure, we shall say, was
visible in the first plate of characters, bearded, pistol
in hand, or drawing to his ear the clothyard arrow ;
I would spell the name : was it Macaire, or Long
Tom Coffin, or GrindofF, 2d dress ? O, how I
would long to see the rest ! how — if the name by
chance were hidden — I would wonder in what play
he figured, and what immortal legend justified his
attitude and strange apparel ! And then to go
within, to announce yourself as an intending pur-
chaser, and, closely watched, be suffered to undo
those bundles and breathlessly devour those pages
226

1^. PLAIN, 2d. COLOURED

of gesticulating villains, epileptic combats, bosky
forests, palaces and war-ships, frowning fortresses
and prison vaults — it was a giddy joy. That shop,
which was dark and smelt of Bibles, was a loadstone
rock for all that bore the name of boy. They could
not pass it by, nor, having entered, leave it. It was
a place besieged; the shopmen, like the Jews re-
building Salem, had a double task. They kept us
at the stick's end, frowned us down, snatched each
play out of our hand ere we were trusted with
another ; and, incredible as it may sound, used to
demand of us upon our entrance, like banditti, if
we came with money or with empty hand. Old Mr.
Smith himself, worn out with my eternal vacillation,
once swept the treasures from before me, with the
cry : ' I do not believe, child, that you are an intend-
ing purchaser at all ! ' These were the dragons of
the garden ; but for such joys of paradise we could
have faced the Terror of Jamaica himself Every
sheet we fingered was another lightning glance into
obscure, delicious story ; it was like wallowing in
the raw stuff of story-books. 1 know nothing to
compare with it save now and then in dreams, when
I am privileged to read in certain unwrit stories
of adventure, from which I awake to find the world
all vanity. The crux of Buridan's donkey was as
nothing to the uncertainty of the boy as he handled
and lingered and doated on these bundles of delight ;
there was a physical pleasure in the sight and touch
of them which he would jealously prolong; and
when at length the deed was done, the play selected,

227

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

and the impatient shopman had brushed the rest
into the grey portfoho, and the boy was forth again,
a little late for dinner, the lamps springing into light
in the blue winter's even, and The Miller, or The
Rover, or some kindred drama clutched against his
side — on what gay feet he ran, and how he laughed
aloud in exultation ! I can hear that laughter still.
Out of all the years of my life, I can recall but one
home-coming to compare with these, and that was
on the night when I brought back with me the
Arabian Entej^tainments in the fat, old, double-
columned volume with the prints. I was just well
into the story of the Hunchback, I remember, when
my clergyman-grandfather (a man we counted pretty
stiff) came in behind me. I grew blind with terror.
But instead of ordering the book away, he said he
envied me. Ah, well he might !

The purchase and the first half-hour at home, that
was the summit. Thenceforth the interest declined
by little and little. The fable, as set forth in the
play-book, proved to be unworthy of the scenes
and characters : what fable would not ? Such
passages as 'Scene 6. The Hermitage. Night set
scene. Place back of scene 1, No. 2, at back of
stage and hermitage. Fig. 2, out of set piece, R. H.
in a slanting direction ' — such passages, I say, though
very practical, are hardly to be called good reading.
Indeed, as literature, these dramas did not much
appeal to me. I forget the very outline of the plots.
Of The Blmd Boy, beyond the fact that he was a
most injured prince, and once, I think, abducted, I
228

Id. PLAIN, 2d. COLOURED

know nothing. And The Old Oak Chest, what was
it all about? that proscript (1st dress), that pro-
digious number of banditti, that old woman with the
broom, and the magnificent kitchen in the third act
(was it in the third ?) — they are all fallen in a deli-
quium, swim faintly in my brain, and mix and vanish.
I cannot deny that joy attended the illumination ;
nor can I quite forgive that child who, wilfully for-
going pleasure, stoops to 'twopence coloured.'
With crimson lake (hark to the sound of it — crimson
lake ! — the horns of elf-land are not richer on the
ear) — with crimson lake and Prussian blue a certain
purple is to be compounded which, for cloaks
especially, Titian could not equal. The latter
colour with gamboge, a hated name although an
exquisite pigment, supplied a green of such a
savoury greenness that to-day my heart regrets it.
Nor can I recall without a tender weakness the very
aspect of the water where I dipped my brush. Yes,
there was pleasure in the painting. But when all
was painted, it is needless to deny it, all was spoiled.
You might, indeed, set up a scene or two to look at ;
but to cut the figures out was simply sacrilege ; nor
could any child twice court the tedium, the worry,
and the long-drawn disenchantment of an actual
performance. Two days after the purchase the
honey had been sucked. Parents used to complain ;
they thought I wearied of my play. It was not so :
no more than a person can be said to have wearied
of his dinner when he leaves the bones and dishes ;
I had got the marrow of it and said grace.

229

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

Then was the time to turn to the back of the
play-book and to study that enticing double file of
names, where poetry, for the true child of Skelt,
reigned happy and glorious like her Majesty the
Queen. Much as I have travelled in these realms of
gold, I have yet seen, upon that map or abstract,
names of El Dorados that still haunt the ear of
memory, and are still but names. The Floating
Beacon — why was that denied me ? or The Wreck
Ashoi^el Siocteen- String Jack, whom I did not
even guess to be a highwayman, troubled me awake
and haunted my slumbers ; and there is one sequence
of three from that enchanted calendar that I still at
times recall, like a loved verse of poetry ; Lodoiska,
Silver Palace, Echo of WestminsterBridge. Names,
bare names, are surely more to children than we
poor, grown-up, obliterated fools remember.

The name of Skelt itself has always seemed a part
and parcel of the charm of his productions. It may
be different with the rose, but the attraction of this
paper drama sensibly declined when Webb had crept
into the rubric : a poor cuckoo, flaunting in Skelt 's
nest. And now we have reached Pollock, sounding
deeper gulfs. Indeed, this name of Skelt appears so
stagey and piratic, that I will adopt it boldly to
design these qualities. Skeltery, then, is a quality of
much art. It is even to be found, with reverence be
it said, among the works of nature. The stagey is
its generic name ; but it is an old, insular, home-
bred staginess ; not French, domestically British ;
not of to-day, but smacking of O. Smith, Fitzball,
230

Id. PLAIN, 2d. COLOURED

and the great age of melodrama : a peculiar fragrance
haunting it ; uttering its unimportant message in a
tone of voice that has the charm of fresh antiquity.
I will not insist upon the art of Skelt's purveyors.
These wonderful characters that once so thrilled our
soul with their bold attitude, array of deadly engines
and incomparable costume, to-day look somewhat
pallidly ; the extreme hard favour of the heroine
strikes me, I had almost said with pain ; the villain's
scowl no longer thrills me like a trumpet ; and the
scenes themselves, those once unparalleled landscapes,
seem the eiforts of a prentice hand. So much of
fault we find ; but on the other side the impartial
critic rejoices to remark the presence of a great unity
of gusto ; of those direct clap-trap appeals, which a
man is dead and buriable when he fails to answer ;
of the footlight glamour, the ready-made, bare-faced,
transpontine picturesque, a thing not one with cold
reality, but how much dearer to the mind !

The scenery of Skeltdom — or, shall we say, the
kingdom of Transpontus ? — had a prevailing charac-
ter. Whether it set forth Poland as in The Blind
Boy, or Bohemia with The Miller and his Men, or
Italy with The Old Oak Chest, still it was Trans-
pontus. A botanist could tell it by the plants.
The hollyhock was all-pervasive, running wild in
deserts ; the dock was common, and the bending
reed ; and overshadowing these were poplar, palm,
potato tree, and Quercus Skeltica — brave growths.
The caves were all embo welled in the Surrey side
formation ; the soil was all betrodden by the light

231

MEMORIES AND POUTRAITS

pump of T. P. Cooke. Skelt, to be sure, had yet
another, an oriental string: he held the gorgeous
East in fee ; and in the new quarter of Hyeres, say,
in the garden of the Hotel des lies d'Or, you may
behold these blessed visions realised. But on these
I will not dwell ; they were an outwork ; it was in
the occidental scenery that Skelt was all himself. It
had a strong flavour of England; it was a sort of
indigestion of England and drop-scenes, and I am
bound to say was charming. How the roads
wander, how the castle sits upon the hill, how the
sun eradiates from behind the cloud, and how the
congregated clouds themselves uproU, as stiff as
bolsters I Here is the cottage interior, the usual
first flat, with the cloak upon the nail, the rosaries
of onions, the gun and powder-horn and corner-cup-
board ; here is the inn (this drama must be nautical,
I foresee Captain Luff and Bold Bob Bowsprit)
with the red curtain, pipes, spittoons, and eight-day
clock ; and there again is that impressive dungeon
with the chains, which was so dull to colour.
England, the hedgerow elms, the thin brick houses,
windmills, glimpses of the navigable Thames —
England, when at last I came to visit it, was only
Skelt made evident : to cross the border was, for the
Scotsman, to come home to Skelt; there was the
inn-sign and there the horse-trough, all foreshadowed
in the faithful Skelt. If, at the ripe age of fourteen
years, I bought a certain cudgel, got a friend to load
it, and thenceforward walked the tame ways of the
earth my own ideal, radiating pure romance — still I

Id. PLAIN, 2d. COLOURED

was but a puppet in the hand of Skelt ; the original
of that regretted bludgeon, and surely the antitype
of all the bludgeon kind, greatly improved from
Cruikshank, had adorned the hand of Jonathan
Wild, pi. 1. *This is mastering me,' as Whitman
cries, upon some lesser provocation. What am 1 ?
what are life, art, letters, the world, but what my
Skelt has made them ? He stamped himself upon
my immaturity. The world was plain before I
knew him, a poor penny world ; but soon it was all
coloured with romance. If I go to the theatre to
see a good old melodrama, 'tis but Skelt a little
faded. If I visit a bold scene in nature, Skelt
would have been bolder; there had been certainly
a castle on that mountain, and the hollow tree — that
set piece — I seem to miss it in the foreground.
Indeed, out of this cut-and-dry, dull, swaggering,
obtrusive and infantile art, I seem to have learned
the very spirit of my life's enjoyment ; met there the
shadows of the characters I was to read about and
love in a late future ; got the romance of Der Frei-
schutz long ere I was to hear of Weber or the mighty
Formes ; acquired a gallery of scenes and characters
with which, in the silent theatre of the brain, I
might enact all novels and romances ; and took
from these rude cuts an enduring and transforming
pleasure. Reader — and yourself?

A word of moral : it appears that B. Pollock,
late J. Redington, No. 73 Hoxton Street, not only
publishes twenty- three of these old stage favourites,
but owns the necessary plates and displays a modest

233

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

readiness to issue other thirty-three. If you love
art, folly, or the bright eyes of children, speed to
Pollock's or to Clarke's of Garrick Street. In
Pollock's list of publicanda I perceive a pair of my
ancient aspirations : Wreck Ashore and Siocteen-
String Jack ; and I cherish the behef that w^hen
these shall see once more the light of day, B. Pollock
will remember this apologist. But, indeed, I have
a dream at times that is not all a dream. I seem
to myself to wander in a ghostly street — E. W., I
think, the postal district — close below the fool's cap
of St. Paul's, and yet within easy hearing of the
echo of the Abbey Bridge. There in a dim shop,
low in the roof, and smelling strong of glue and
footlights, I find myself in quaking treaty with great
Skelt himself, the aboriginal, all dusty from the
tomb. I buy, with what a choking heart — I buy
them all, all but the pantomimes ; I pay my mental
money, and go forth ; and lo ! the packets are dust.

234

XIV

A GOSSIP ON A NOVEL OF DUMAS'S

The books that we re-read the oftenest are not
always those that we admire the most ; we choose
and we revisit them for many and various reasons,
as we choose and revisit human friends. One or
two of Scott's novels, Shakespeare, Moliere, Mon-
taigne, The Egoist, and the Vicomte de Bragelonne,
form the inner circle of my intimates. Behind these
comes a good troop of dear acquaintances ; The
Pilgrims Progress in the front rank, The Bible
in Spain not far behind. There are besides a
certain number that look at me with reproach as
I pass them by on my shelves : books that I once
thumbed and studied : houses which were once
like home to me, but where I now rarely visit.
I am on these sad terms (and blush to confess it)
with Wordsworth, Horace, Burns, and Hazlitt.
Last of all, there is the class of book that has its
hour of brilliancy — glows, sings, charms, and then
fades again into insignificance until the fit return.
Chief of those who thus smile and frown on me
by turns, I must name Virgil and Herrick, who,
were they but

' Their sometime selves throughout the year/

235

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

must have stood in the first company with the six
names of my continual Hterary intimates. To these
six, incongruous as they seem, I have long been
faithful, and hope to be faithful to the day of death.
I have never read the whole of Montaigne, but I
do not like to be long without reading some of him,
and my delight in what I do read never lessens.
Of Shakespeare I have read all but Richard III.,
Henry VI., Titus Andronicus, and All's Well that
Ends Well; and these, having already made all
suitable endeavour, I now know that I shall never
read — to make up for which unfaithfulness I could
read much of the rest for ever. Of Moliere —
surely the next greatest name of Christendom — I
could tell a very similar story ; but in a little
corner of a little essay these princes are too much
out of place, and I prefer to pay my fealty and
pass on. How often I have read Guy Mannering,
Rob Roy, or Redgauntlet, I have no means of guess-
ing, having begun young. But it is either four or
five times that I have read The Egoist, and either
five or six that I have read the Vicomte de Brage-
lonne.

Some, who would accept the others, may wonder
that I should have spent so much of this brief life
of ours over a work so little famous as the last.
And, indeed, I am surprised myself; not at my
own devotion, but the coldness of the world.
My acquaintance with the Vicomte began, somewhat
indirectly, in the year of grace 1863, when I had
the advantage of studying certain illustrated dessert
236

A GOSSIP ON A NOVEL OF DUMAS'S

plates in a hotel at Nice. The name of dArtagnan
in the legends I already saluted like an old friend,
for I had met it the year before in a work of
Miss Yonge's. My first perusal was in one of
those pirated editions that swarmed at that time
out of Brussels, and ran to such a troop of neat
and dwarfish volumes. I understood but little of
the merits of the book ; my strongest memory is
of the execution of d'Eymeric and Lyodot — a
strange testimony to the dulness of a boy, who could
enjoy the rough-and-tumble in the Place de Grdve,
and forget dArtagnan's visits to the two finan-
ciers. My next reading was in winter-time, when I
lived alone upon the Pentlands. I would return in
the early night from one of my patrols with the
shepherd; a friendly face would meet me in the
door, a friendly retriever scurry upstairs to fetch
my slippers ; and I would sit down with the Vicomte
for a long, silent, solitary lamp-lit evening by the
fire. And yet I know not why I call it silent,
when it was enlivened with such a clatter of
horse-shoes, and such a rattle of musketry, and
such a stir of talk ; or why I call those evenings
solitary in which I gained so many friends. I
would rise from my book and pull the blind aside,
and see the snow and the glittering hollies chequer
a Scottish garden, and the winter moonlight brighten
the white hills. Thence I would turn again to that
crowded and sunny field of life in which it was
so easy to forget myself, my cares, and my surround-
ings : a place busy as a city, bright as a theatre,

237

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

thronged with memorable faces, and sounding with
dehgbtful speech. I carried the thread of that epic
into my slumbers, I woke with it unbroken, I
rejoiced to plunge into the book again at breakfast,
it was with a pang that I must lay it down and
turn to my own labours ; for no part of the world
has ever seemed to me so charming as these pages,
and not even my friends are quite so real, perhaps
quite so dear, as d'Artagnan.

Since then I have been going to and fro at very
brief intervals in my favourite book ; and I have
now just risen from my last (let me call it my
fifth) perusal, having liked it better and admired
it more seriously than ever. Perhaps I have a sense
of ownership, being so well known in these six
volumes. Perhaps I think that dArtagnan delights
to have me read of him, and I^ouis Quatorze is
gratified, and Fouquet throws me a look, and
Aramis, although he knows I do not love him, yet
plays to me with his best graces, as to an old patron
of the show. Perhaps, if I am not careful, some-
thing may befall me like what befell George iv.
about the battle of Waterloo, and I may come
to fancy the Vicovite one of the first, and Heaven
knows the best, of my own works. At least I avow
myself a partisan ; and when I compare the popu-
larity of the Vicomte with that of Monte Crista,
or its own elder brother, the Trois 3Iousquetaires,
I confess I am both pained and puzzled.

To those who have already made acquaintance
with the titular hero in the pages of Vingt Ans

A GOSSIP ON A NOVEL OF DUMAS'S

Apres, perhaps the name may act as a deterrent.
A man might well stand back if he supposed he
were to follow, for six volumes, so well-conducted,
so fine-spoken, and withal so dreary a cavalier
as Bragelonne. But the fear is idle. I may be
said to have passed the best years of my hfe in
these six volumes, and my acquaintance with Raoul
has never gone beyond a bow ; and when he, who
has so long pretended to be aUve, is at last suffered
to pretend to be dead, I am sometimes reminded
of a saying in an earlier volume : ' Enfin, dit Miss
Stewart,' — and it was of Bragelonne she spoke —
' enfin il a fait quelquechose : cest, ma foi! hien
heureuoD.' I am reminded of it, as I say ; and the
next moment, when Athos dies of his death, and
my dear dArtagnan bursts into his storm of sob-
bing, I can but deplore my flippancy.

Or perhaps it is La Valliere that the reader of
Vingt Ans Apres is inclined to flee. Well, he
is right there too, though not so right. Louise
is no success. Her creator has spared no pains ;
she is well-meant, not ill-designed, sometimes has
a word that rings out true ; sometimes, if only
for a breath, she may even engage our sympathies.
But I have never envied the King his triumph.
And so far from pitying Bragelonne for his defeat,
I could wish him no worse (not for lack of malice,
but imagination) than to be wedded to that lady.
Madame enchants me ; I can forgive that royal
minx her most serious offences ; I can thrill and
soften with the King on that memorable occasion

239

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

when he goes to upbraid and remains to flirt; and
when it comes to the ' Allons, aimez-moi done,' it
is my heart that melts in the bosom of de Guiche.
Not so with Louise. Readers cannot fail to have
remarked that what an author tells us of the beauty
or the charm of his creatures goes for nought ;
that we know instantly better; that the heroine
cannot open her mouth but what, all in a moment,
the fine phrases of preparation fall from round her
like the robes from Cinderella, and she stands before
us, self-betrayed, as a poor, ugly, sickly wench, or
perhaps a strapping market-woman. Authors, at
least, know it well ; a heroine will too often start
the trick of ' getting ugly ' ; and no disease is more
difficult to cure. I said authors ; but indeed I had
a side eye to one author in particular, with whose
works I am very well acquainted, though I cannot
read them, and who has spent many vigils in this
cause, sitting beside his ailing puppets and (like
a magician) wearying his art to restore them to
youth and beauty. There are others who ride
too high for these misfortunes. Who doubts the
loveliness of Rosalind ? Arden itself was not more
lovely. Who ever questioned the perennial charm of
Rose Jocelyn, Lucy Desborough, or Clara Middle-
ton ? fair women with fair names, the daughters
of George Meredith. Ehzabeth Bennet has but to
speak, and I am at her knees. Ah ! these are the
creators of desirable women. They would never
have fallen in the mud with Dumas and poor
La Valliere. It is my only consolation that not
240

A GOSSIP ON A NOVEL OF DUMAS'S

one of all of them, except the first, could have
plucked at the moustache of dArtagnan.

Or perhaps, again, a portion of readers stumble
at the threshold. In so vast a mansion there were
sure to be back stairs and kitchen offices where no
one would delight to linger ; but it was at least un-
happy that the vestibule should be so badly lighted ;
and until, in the seventeenth chapter, dArtagnan
sets oif to seek his friends, I must confess, the book
goes heavily enough. But, from thenceforward,
what a feast is spread ! Monk kidnapped ; dArtagnan
enriched ; Mazarin's death ; the ever delectable
adventure of Belle Isle, wherein Aramis outwits
dArtagnan, with its epilogue (vol. v. chap, xxviii.),
where d'Artagnan regains the moral superiority ; the
love adventures at Fontainebleau, with St. Aignan's
story of the dryad and the business of de Guiche,
de Wardes, and Manicamp ; Aramis made general
of the Jesuits; Aramis at the Bastille; the night
talk in the forest of Senart ; Belle Isle again, with
the death of Porthos ; and last, but not least, the
taming of dArtagnan the untamable, under the lash
of the young King. What other novel has such
epic variety and nobility of incident? often, if you
will, impossible ; often of the order of an Arabian
story ; and yet all based in human nature. For if
you come to that, what novel has more human
nature? not studied with the microscope, but seen
largely, in plain daylight, with the natural eye ?
What novel has more good sense, and gaiety, and
wit, and unflagging, admirable hterary skill ? Good
Q 241

MEMORIES AND POKTRAITS

souls, I suppose, must sometimes read it in the
blackguard travesty of a translation. But there is
no style so untranslatable ; light as a whipped trifle,
strong as silk ; wordy like a village tale ; pat like
a general's despatch ; with every fault, yet never
tedious ; with no merit, yet inimitably right. And,
once more, to make an end of commendations, what
novel is inspired with a more unstrained or a more
wholesome morality ?

Yes ; in spite of Miss Yonge, who introduced me
to the name of dArtagnan only to dissuade me
from a nearer knowledge of the man, I have to add
morality. There is no quite good book without a
good morality ; but the world is wide, and so are
morals. Out of two people who have dipped into
Sir Richard Burton's Thousand and One Nights,
one shall have been offended by the animal details ;
another to whom these were harmless, perhaps even
pleasing, shall yet have been shocked in his turn by
the rascality and cruelty of all the characters. Of
two readers, again, one shall have been pained by
the morality of a religious memoir, one by that of
the Vicomte de Bragelonne. And the point is that
neither need be wrong. We shall always shock each
other both in life and art ; we cannot get the sun
into our pictures, nor the abstract right (if there be
such a thing) into our books ; enough if, in the one,
there glimmer some hint of the great light that blinds
us from heaven ; enough if, in the other, there shine,
even upon foul details, a spirit of magnanimity. I
would scarce send to the Vicomte a reader who was
242

A GOSSIP ON A NOVEL OF DUMAS'S

in quest of what we may call puritan morality. The
ventripotent mulatto, the great eater, worker, earner
and waster, the man of much and witty laughter, the
man of the great heart and, alas ! of the doubtful
honesty, is a figure not yet clearly set before the
world ; he still awaits a sober and yet genial portrait ;
but with whatever art that may be touched, and
whatever indulgence, it will not be the portrait of
a precisian. Dumas was certainly not thinking of
himself, but of Planchet, when he put into the
mouth of d'Artagnan's old servant this excellent
profession : '^ Monsieur, J etais une de ces bonnes pdtes
dliommes que Dieu a faits pour sanwier 'pendant un
certain temps et pour trouver bonjies toutes choses
qui accompagnent leur sejour sur la terre.' He was
thinking, as I say, of Planchet, to whom the words
are aptly fitted ; but they were fitted also to
Planchet 's creator; and perhaps this struck him as
he wrote, for observe what follows: ^UArtagnan
s'assit alors pres de la fenetre, et, cette pMlosophie de
Planchet lui ay ant paru solide, il y reva.' In a man
who finds all things good, you will scarce expect
much zeal for negative virtues : the active alone wiU
have a charm for him; abstinence, however wise,
however kind, will always seem to such a judge
entirely mean and partly impious. So with Dumas.
Chastity is not near his heart ; nor yet, to his own
sore cost, that virtue of frugality which is the armour
of the artist. Now, in the Vicomte, he had much
to do with the contest of Fouquet and Colbert.
Historic justice should be all upon the side of

243

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

Colbert, of official honesty, and fiscal competence.
And Dumas knew it well : three times at least he
shows his knowledge ; once it is but flashed upon us,
and received with the laughter of Fouquet himself,
in the jesting controversy in the gardens of Saint
Mande ; once it is touched on by Aramis in the
forest of Senart ; in the end, it is set before us
clearly in one dignified speech of the triumphant
Colbert. But in Fouquet, the waster, the lover of
good cheer and wit and art, the swift transactor of
much business, ' Vhomme de bruit, Vhomme de plaisif%
riiomme qui nest que parceque les autres sontj Dumas
saw something of himself and drew the figure the
more tenderly. It is to me even touching to see
how he insists on Fouquet 's honour ; not seeing, you
might think, that unflawed honour is impossible to
spendthrifts ; but rather, perhaps, in the light of his
own fife, seeing it too well, and clinging the more
to what was left. Honour can survive a wound ; it
can live and thrive without a member. The man
rebounds from his disgrace ; he begins fresh founda-
tions on the ruins of the old ; and when his sword is
broken, he will do valiantly with his dagger. So it
is with Fouquet in the book ; so it was with Dumas
on the battlefield of life.

To chng to what is left of any damaged quality
is virtue in the man ; but perhaps to sing its praises
is scarcely to be called morality in the writer. And
it is elsewhere, it is in the character of dArtagnan,
that we must look for that spirit of morality, which
is one of the chief merits of the book, makes one of
244

A GOSSIP ON A NOVEL OF DUMAS'S

the main joys of its perusal, and sets it high above
more popular rivals. Athos, with the coming of
years, has declined too much into the preacher, and
the preacher of a sapless creed ; but dArtagnan has
mellowed into a man so witty, rough, kind, and
upright, that he takes the heart by storm. There is
nothing of the copy-book about his virtues, nothing
of the drawing-room in his fine, natural civiUty ; he
will sail near the wind ; he is no district visitor — no
Wesley or Robespierre ; his conscience is void of all
refinement whether for good or evil ; but the whole
man rings true like a good sovereign. Readers who
have approached the Kicomte, not across country,
but by the legitimate, five-volumed avenue of the
Mousquetaires and Vingt Ans Apres, will not have
forgotten dArtagnan's ungentlemanly and perfectly
improbable trick upon Milady. What a pleasure it
is, then, what a reward, and how agreeable a lesson,
to see the old captain humble himself to the son
of the man whom he had personated ! Here, and
throughout, if I am to choose virtues for myself or
my friends, let me choose the virtues of dArtagnan.
I do not say there is no character as well drawn in
Shakespeare ; I do say there is none that I love so
wholly. There are many spiritual eyes that seem
to spy upon our actions — eyes of the dead and
the absent, whom we imagine to behold us in our
most private hours, and whom we fear and scruple to
offend : our witnesses and judges. And among these,
even if you should think me childish, I must count
my dArtagnan — not dArtagnan of the memoirs

245

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

whom Thackeray pretended to prefer — a preference, I
take the freedom of saying, m which he stands alone ;
not the d'Artagnan of flesh and blood, but him of
the ink and paper ; not Nature's, but Dumas's. And
this is the particular crown and triumph of the artist
— not to be true merely, but to be lovable ; not
simply to convince, but to enchant.

There is yet another point in the Vicomte which I
find incomparable. I can recall no other work of the
imagination in which the end of life is represented
with so nice a tact. I was asked the other day if
Dumas ever made me either laugh or cry. Well,
in this my late fifth reading of the Vicomte, I did
laugh once at the small Coquehn de Vohere busi-
ness, and was perhaps a thought surprised at having
done so : to make up for it I smiled continually.
But for tears, I do not know. If you put a pistol
to my throat, I must own the tale trips upon a
very airy foot — within a measurable distance of un-
reality ; and for those who like the big guns to be
discharged and the great passions to appear authen-
tically, it may even seem inadequate from first to
last. Not so to me ; I cannot count that a poor
dinner, or a poor book, where I meet with those
I love ; and, above all, in this last volume, I find
a singular charm of spirit. It breathes a pleasant
and a tonic sadness, always brave, never hysterical.
Upon the crowded, noisy life of this long tale,
evening gradually falls ; and the lights are extin-
guished, and the heroes pass away one by one.
One by one they go, and not a regret embitters
246

A GOSSIP ON A NOVEL OF DUMAS'S

their departure; the young succeed them in their
places, Louis Quatorze is swelling larger and shining
broader, another generation and another France
dawn on the horizon ; but for us and these old
men whom we have loved so long, the inevitable
end draws ^ear, and is welcome. To read this
well is to anticipate experience. Ah, if only when
these hours of the long shadows fall for us in reality
and not in figure, we may hope to face them with
a mind as quiet.

But my paper is running out ; the siege-guns are
firing on the Dutch frontier ; and I must say adieu
for the fifth time to my old comrade fallen on the
field of glory. Adieu — rather au revoirf Yet a
sixth time, dearest d'Artagnan, we shall kidnap
Monk and take horse together for Belle Isle.

247

. XV
' A GOSSIP ON ROMANCE

In anything fit to be called by the name of read-
ing, the process itself should be absorbing and volup-
tuous ; we should gloat over a book, be rapt clean
out of ourselves, and rise from the perusal, our
mind filled with the busiest, kaleidoscopic dance of
images, incapable of sleep or of continuous thought.
The words, if the book be eloquent, should run
thenceforward in our ears like the noise of breakers,
and the story, if it be a story, repeat itself in a
thousand coloured pictures to the eye. It was for
this last pleasure that we read so closely, and loved
our books so dearly, in the bright, troubled period of
boyhood. Eloquence and thought, character and con-
versation, were but obstacles to brush aside as we
dug blithely after a certain sort of incident, like
a pig for truffles. For my part, I liked a story to
begin with an old wayside inn where, ' towards the
close of the year 17 — ,' several gentlemen in three-
cocked hats were playing bowls. A friend of mine
preferred the Malabar coast in a storm, with a ship
beating to windward, and a scowhng fellow of Her-
248

A GOSSIP ON ROMANCE

culean proportions striding along the beach ; he, to
be sure, was a pirate. This was further afield than
my home-keeping fancy loved to travel, and de-
signed altogether for a larger canvas than the tales
that I affected. Give me a highwayman and I was
full to the^ brim ; a Jacobite would do, but the
highwayman was my favourite dish. I can stiU
hear that merry clatter of the hoofs along the moon-
lit lane ; night and the coming of day are still
related in my mind with the doings of John Rann
or Jerry Abershaw ; and the words ' post-chaise,' the
'great North road,' ' ostler,' and 'nag' still sound in
my ears like poetry. One and all, at least, and each
with his particular fancy, we read story-books in
childhood, not for eloquence or character or thought,
but for some quality of the brute incident. That
quality was not mere bloodshed or wonder. Although
each of these was welcome in its place, the charm
for the sake of which we read depended on some-
thing different from either. My elders used to read
novels aloud ; and I can still remember four different
passages which I heard, before I was ten, with
the same keen and lasting pleasure. One I dis-
covered long afterwards to be the admirable opening
of What will He Do with It : it was no wonder I
was pleased with that. The other three still remain
unidentified. One is a little vague ; it was about a
dark, tall house at night, and people groping on
the stairs by the light that escaped from the open
door of a sickroom. In another, a lover left a ball,
and went walking in a cool, dewy park, whence

249

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

he could watch the Hghted windows and the figures
of the dancers as they moved. This was the most
sentimental impression I think I had yet received,
for a child is somewhat deaf to the sentimental. In
the last, a poet, who had been tragically wrangling
with his wife, walked forth on the sea-beach on
a tempestuous night and witnessed the horrors of
a wreck.^ Different as they are, all these early
favourites have a common note — they have all a
touch of the romantic.

Drama is the poetry of conduct, romance the
poetry of circumstance. The pleasure that we take
in life is of two sorts — the active and the passive.
Now we are conscious of a great command over our
destiny ; anon we are lifted up by circumstance, as by
a breaking wave, and dashed we know not how into
the future. Now we are pleased by our conduct, anon
merely pleased by our surroundings. It would be
hard to say which of these modes of satisfaction is
the more effective, but the latter is surely the more
constant. Conduct is three parts of life, they say ;
but I think they put it high. There is a vast deal
in life and letters both which is not immoral, but
simply non-moral ; which either does not regard the
human will at all, or deals with it in obvious and
healthy relations ; where the interest turns, not upon
what a man shall choose to do, but on how he man-
ages to do it ; not on the passionate slips and hesita-

^ Since traced by many obliging correspondents to the gallery of
Charles Kingsley.
250

i

A GOSSIP ON ROMANCE

tions of the conscience, but on the problems of the
body and of the practical intelligence, in clean, open-
air adventure, the shock of arms or the diplomacy of
life. With such material as this it is impossible to
build a play, for the serious theatre exists solely
on moral grounds, and is a standing proof of the
dissemination of the human conscience. But it is
possible to build, upon this ground, the most joyous
of verses, and the most lively, beautiful, and buoyant
tales.

One thing in life calls for another ; there is a
fitness in events and places. The sight of a pleasant
arbour puts it in our mind to sit there. One place
suggests work, another idleness, a third early rising
and long rambles in the dew. The effect of night,
of any flowing water, of lighted cities, of the peep of
day, of ships, of the open ocean, calls up in the
mind an army of anonymous desires and pleasures.
Something, we feel, should happen; we know not
what, yet we proceed in quest of it. And many of
the happiest hours of life fleet by us in this vain
attendance on the genius of the place and moment.
It is thus that tracts of young fir, and low rocks
that reach into deep soundings, particularly torture
and delight me. Something must have happened
in such places, and perhaps ages back, to members
of my race ; and when I was a child I tried in vain
to invent appropriate games for them, as I still
try, just as vainly, to fit them with the proper
story. Some places speak distinctly. Certain dank
gardens cry aloud for a murder ; certain old houses

251

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

demand to be haunted ; certain coasts are set apart
for shipwreck. Other spots again seem to abide
their destiny, suggestive and impenetrable, ' miching
mallecho.' The inn at Burford Bridge, with its
arbours and green garden and silent, eddying river
— though it is known already as the place where
Keats wrote some of his Endymion and Nelson
parted from his Emma — still seems to wait the
coming of the appropriate legend. Within these
ivied walls, behind these old green shutters, some
further business smoulders, waiting for its hour.
The old Hawes Inn at the Queen's Ferry makes
a similar call upon my fancy. There it stands,
apart from the town, beside the pier, in a climate
of its own, half inland, half marine — in front, the
ferry bubbhng with the tide and the guardship
swinging to her anchor; behind, the old garden
with the trees. Americans seek it already for the
sake of Lovel and Oldbuck, who dined there at
the beginning of the Antiqicary. But you need
not tell me — that is not all ; there is some story,
unrecorded or not yet complete, which must ex-
press the meaning of that inn more fully. So it
is with names and faces; so it is with incidents
that are idle and inconclusive in themselves ; and
yet seem like the beginning of some quaint romance,
which the all-careless author leaves untold. How
many of these romances have we not seen determine
at their birth ; how many people have met us with
a look of meaning in their eye, and sunk at once
into trivial acquaintances ; to how many places
252

A GOSSIP ON ROMANCE

have we not drawn near, with express intimations
— ' here my destiny awaits me ' — and we have but
dined there and passed on ! I have hved both at
the Hawes and Burford in a perpetual flutter, on
the heels, as it seemed, of some adventure that
should justify the place ; but though the feeling had
me to bed at night and called me again at morning
in one unbroken round of pleasure and suspense,
nothing befell me in either worth remark. The
man or the hour had not yet come ; but some
day, I think, a boat shall put off from the Queen's
Ferry, fraught with a dear cargo, and some frosty
night a horseman, on a tragic errand, rattle with
his whip upon the green shutters of the inn at
Burford.^

Now, this is one of the natural appetites with
which any lively literature has to count. The desire
for knowledge, I had almost added the desire for
meat, is not more deeply seated than this demand
for fit and striking incident. The dullest of clowns
tells, or tries to tell, himself a story, as the feeblest
of children uses invention in his play ; and even as
the imaginative grown person, joining in the game,
at once enriches it with many delightful circum-
stances, the great creative writer shows us the
realisation and the apotheosis of the day-dreams of
common men. His stories may be nourished with
the realities of life, but their true mark is to satisfy

1 Since the above was written I have tried to launch the boat with my
own hands in Kidnapped. Some day, perhaps^ I may try a rattle at the
shutters.

MEMORIES AND POUTRAITS

the nameless longings of the reader, and to obey
the ideal laws of the day-dream. The right kind
of thing should fall out in the right kind of place ;
the right kind of thing should follow ; and not only
the characters talk aptly and think naturally, but all
the circumstances in a tale answer one to another
like notes in music. The threads of a story come
from time to time together and make a picture in
the web ; the characters fall from time to time into
some attitude to each other or to nature, which
stamps the story home like an illustration. Crusoe
recoiling from the footprint, Achilles shouting over
against the Trojans, Ulysses bending the great bow.
Christian running with his fingers in his ears, — these
are each culminating moments in the legend, and
each has been printed on the mind's eye for ever.
Other things we may forget ; we may forget the
words, although they are beautiful ; we may forget
the author's comment, although perhaps it was in-
genious and true ; but these epoch-making scenes,
which put the last mark of truth upon a story, and
fill up, at one blow, our capacity for sympathetic
pleasure, we so adopt into the very bosom of our
inind that neither time nor tide can efface or weaken
the impression. This, then, is the plastic part of
literature : to embody character, thought, or emotion
in some act or attitude that shall be remarkably
striking to the mind's eye. This is the highest and
hardest thing to do in words ; the thing which, once
accomplished, equally delights the schoolboy and
the sage, and makes, in its own right, the quality of
254

A GOSSIP ON ROMANCE

epics. Compared with this, all other purposes in
literature, except the purely lyrical or the purely
philosophic, are bastard in nature, facile of execution,
and feeble in result. It is one thing to write about
the inn at Burford, or to describe scenery with the
word-painters ; it is quite another to seize on the
heart of the suggestion and make a country famous
with a legend. It is one thing to remark and to
dissect, with the most cutting logic, the complica-
tions of life, and of the human spirit; it is quite
another to give them body and blood in the story
of Ajax or of Hamlet. The first is literature, but
the second is something besides, for it is likewise
art.

English people of the present day are apt, I know
not why, to look somewhat down on incident, and
reserve their admiration for the clink of teaspoons
and the accents of the curate. It is thought clever
to write a novel with no story at all, or at least with
a very dull one. Reduced even to the lowest terms,
a certain interest can be communicated by the art of
narrative ; a sense of human kinship stirred ; and a
kind of monotonous fitness, comparable to the words
and air of Sandy s 31ull, preserved among the infini-
tesimal occurrences recorded. Some people work,
in this manner, with even a strong touch. Mr.
TroUope's inimitable clergymen naturally arise to the
mind in this connection. But even Mr. Trollope
does not confine himself to chronichng small beer.
Mr. Crawley's collision with the Bishop's wife, Mr.
Melnotte dallying in the deserted banquet-room, are

255

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

typical incidents, epically conceived, fitly embodying
a crisis. Or again look at Thackeray. If Rawdon
Crawley's blow were not delivered, Vanity Fair
would cease to be a work of art. That scene is the
chief ganglion of the tale ; and the discharge of
energy from Rawdon 's fist is the reward and conso-
lation of the reader. The end of Esmond is a yet
wider excursion from the author's customary fields ;
the scene at Castlewood is pure Dumas ; the great
and wily English borrower has here borrowed from
the great, unblushing French thief; as usual, he has
borrowed admirably well, and the breaking of the
sword rounds off the best of all his books with a
manly, martial note. But perhaps nothing can more
strongly illustrate the necessity for marking incident
than to compare the living fame of Robinson Crusoe
with the discredit of Clarissa Harlox^e. Clarissa is
a book of a far more startling import, worked out,
on a great canvas, with inimitable courage and un-
flagging art. It contains wit, character, passion, plot,
conversations full of spirit and insight, letters spark-
ling with unstrained humanity ; and if the death of
the heroine be somewhat frigid and artificial, the last
days of the hero strike the only note of what we now
call Byronism, between the Elizabethans and Byron
himself. And yet a little story of a shipwrecked
sailor, with not a tenth part of the style nor a
thousandth part of the wisdom, exploring none of
the arcana of humanity and deprived of the perennial
interest of love, goes on from edition to edition, ever
young, while Clarissa lies upon the shelves unread,
256

A GOSSIP ON ROMANCE

A friend of mine, a Welsh blacksmith, was twenty-
five years old and could neither read nor write, when
he heard a chapter of Robinson read aloud in a farm
kitchen. Up to that moment he had sat content,
huddled in his ignorance, but he left that farm
another man. There were day-dreams, it appeared,
divine day-dreams, written and printed and bound,
and to be bought for money and enjoyed at pleasure.
Down he sat that day, painfully learned to read
Welsh, and returned to borrow the book. It had
been lost, nor could he find another copy but one
that was in Enghsh. Down he sat once more,
learned English, and at length, and with entire
dehght, read Robinson. It is like the story of a
love-chase. If he had heard a letter from Clarissa,
would he have been fired with the same chivalrous
ardour ? I wonder. Yet Clarissa has every quality
that can be shown in prose, one alone excepted —
pictorial or picture-making romance. While Robin-
son depends, for the most part and with the over-
whelming majority of its readers, on the charm of
circumstance.

In the highest achievements of the art of words,
the dramatic and the pictorial, the moral and romantic
interest, rise and fall together by a common and
organic law. Situation is animated with passion,
passion clothed upon with situation. Neither exists
for itself, but each inheres indissolubly with the
other. This is high art ; and not only the highest
art possible in words, but the highest art of all, since
it combines the greatest mass and diversity of the

R 257

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

elements of truth and pleasure. Such are epics, and
the few prose tales that have the epic weight. But
as from a school of works, aping the creative, incident
and romance are ruthlessly discarded, so may char-
acter and drama be omitted or subordinated to
romance. There is one book, for example, more
generally loved than Shakespeare, that captivates in
childhood, and still delights in age — I mean the
Arabian Nights — where you shall look in vain for
moral or for intellectual interest. No human face or
voice greets us among that wooden crowd of kings
and genies, sorcerers and beggarmen. Adventure,
on the most naked terms, furnishes forth the enter-
tainment and is found enough. Dumas approaches
perhaps nearest of any modern to these Arabian
authors in the purely material charm of some of his
romances. The early part of Monte Crista, down to
the finding of the treasure, is a piece of perfect story-
telling ; the man never breathed who shared these
moving incidents without a tremor ; and yet Faria
is a thing of packthread and Dantes little more than
a name. The sequel is one long-drawn error, gloomy,
bloody, unnatural, and dull ; but as for these early
chapters, I do not believe there is another volume
extant where you can breathe the same unmingled
atmosphere of romance. It is very thin and light,
to be sure, as on a high mountain ; but it is brisk
and clear and sunny in proportion. I saw the other
day, with envy, an old and very clever lady setting
forth on a second or third voyage into Monte Crista.
Here are stories which poAverfully affect the reader,
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A GOSSIP ON ROMANCE

which can be reperused at any age, and where the
characters are no more than puppets. The bony fist
of the showman visibly propels them ; their springs
are an open secret ; their faces are of wood, their
bellies filled with bran ; and yet we thriUingly partake
of their adventures. And the point may be illus-
trated still further. The last interview between
Lucy and Richard Feverel is pure drama ; more
than that, it is the strongest scene, since Shakespeare,
in the English tongue. Their first meeting by the
river, on the other hand, is pure romance ; it has
nothing to do with character ; it might happen to
any other boy and maiden, and be none the less
delightful for the change. And yet I think he would
be a bold man who should choose between these
passages. Thus, in the same book, we may have
two scenes, each capital in its order : in the one,
human passion, deep calling unto deep, shall utter
its genuine voice ; in the second, according circum-
stances, Hke instruments in tune, shall build up a
trivial but desirable incident, such as we love to pre-
figure for ourselves ; and in the end, in spite of the
critics, we may hesitate to give the preference to
either. The one may ask more genius — 1 do not say
it does ; but at least the other dwells as clearly
in the memory.

True romantic art, again, makes a romance of all
things. It reaches into the highest abstraction of
the ideal ; it does not refuse the most pedestrian
realism. Robinson Crusoe is as reahstic as it is
romantic ; both qualities are pushed to an extreme,

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MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

and neither suffers. Nor does romance depend upon
the material importance of the incidents. To deal
with strong and deadly elements, banditti, pirates,
war and murder, is to conjure with great names, and,
in the event of failure, to double the disgrace. The
arrival of Haydn and Consuelo at the Canon's villa
is a very trifling incident ; yet we may read a dozen
boisterous stories from beginning to end, and not
receive so fresh and stirring an impression of adven-
ture. It was the scene of Crusoe at the wreck, if I
remember rightly, that so bewitched my blacksmith.
Nor is the fact surprising. Every single article the
castaway recovers from the hulk is 'a joy for ever '
to the man who reads of them. They are the things
that should be found, and the bare enumeration stirs
the blood. I found a glinmier of the same interest
the other day in a new book. The Sailoi^'s Sweet-
heart, by Mr. Clark Russell. The whole business of
the brig Mornifig Star is very rightly felt and
spiritedly written ; but the clothes, the books, and
the money satisfy the reader's mind like things to
eat. We are dealing here with the old cut-and-dry,
legitimate interest of treasure-trove. But even
treasure-trove can be made dull. There are few
people who have not groaned under the plethora of
goods that fell to the lot of the Swiss Family Robin-
son, that dreary family. They found article after
article, creature after creature, from milk-kine to
pieces of ordnance, a whole consignment; but no
informing taste had presided over the selection, there
was no smack or relish in the invoice; and these
260

A GOSSIP ON ROMANCE

riches left the fancy cold. The box of goods in
Verne's Mysterious Island is another case in point :
there was no gusto and no glamour about that ; it
might have come from a shop. But the two-hundred
and seventy-eight Australian sovereigns on board the
Morning Star fell upon me like a surprise that I had
expected ; whole vistas of secondary stories, besides
the one in hand, radiated forth from that discovery,
as they radiate from a striking particular in life ; and
I was made for the moment as happy as a reader has
the right to be.

To come at all at the nature of this quality of
romance, we must bear in mind the pecuharity of
our attitude to any art. No art produces illusion ;
in the theatre we never forget that we are in the
theatre ; and while we read a story, we sit wavering
between two minds, now merely clapping our hands
at the merit of the performance, now condescending
to take an active part in fancy with the characters.
This last is the triumph of romantic story-telling :
when the reader consciously plays at being the hero,
the scene is a good scene. Now in character-studies
the pleasure that we take is critical ; we watch, we
approve, we smile at incongruities, we are moved to
sudden heats of sympathy with courage, suffering, or
virtue. But the characters are still themselves, they
are not us ; the more clearly they are depicted, the
more widely do they stand away from us, the more
imperiously do they thrust us back into our place as
a spectator. I cannot identify myself with Rawdon
Crawley or with Eugene de Rastignac, for I have

261

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

scarce a hope or fear in common with them. It is
not character but incident that woos us out of our
reserve. Something happens as we desire to have it
happen to ourselves ; some situation, that we have
long dallied with in fancy, is realised in the story
with enticing and appropriate details. Then we
forget the characters ; then we push the hero aside ;
then we plunge into the tale in our own person and
bathe in fresh experience ; and then, and then only,
do we say we have been reading a romance. It is
not only pleasurable things that we imagine in our
day-dreams ; there are lights in which we are willing
to contemplate even the idea of our own death ;
ways in which it seems as if it would amuse us
to be cheated, wounded, or calumniated. It is thus
possible to construct a story, even of tragic import,
in which every incident, detail, and trick of circum-
stance shall be welcome to the reader's thoughts.
Fiction is to the grown man what play is to the
child ; it is there that he changes the atmosphere
and tenor of his life ; and when the game so
chimes with his fancy that he can join in it with
all his heart, when it pleases him with every turn,
when he loves to recall it and dwells upon its
recollection with entire delight, fiction is called
romance.

Walter Scott is out and away the king of the
romantics. The Lady of the Lake has no indisput-
able claim to be a poem beyond the inherent fitness
and desirability of the tale. It is just such a story as
a man would make up for himself, walking, in the
262

A GOSSIP ON ROMANCE

best health and temper, through just such scenes as
it is laid in. Hence it is that a charm dwells unde-
finable among these slovenly verses, as the unseen
cuckoo fills the mountains with his note ; hence, even
after we have flung the book aside, the scenery and
adventures remain present to the mind, a new and
green possession, not unworthy of that beautiful
name. The Lady of the Lake, or that direct, romantic
opening — one of the most spirited and poetical in
literature — ' The stag at eve had drunk his fill.' The
same strength and the same weaknesses adorn and
disfigure the novels. In that ill-written, ragged
book. The Pirate, the figure of Cleveland — cast up
by the sea on the resounding foreland of Dunross-
ness — moving, with the blood on his hands and the
Spanish words on his tongue, among the simple
islanders — singing a serenade under the window of his
Shetland mistress — is conceived in the very highest
manner of romantic invention. The words of his
song, ' Through groves of palm,' sung in such a
scene and by such a lover, clinch, as in a nutshell,
the emphatic contrast upon which the tale is
built.

In Guy Mannering, again, every incident is
dehghtful to the imagination ; and the scene when
Harry Bertram lands at Ellangowan is a model
instance of romantic method.

' " I remember the tune well," he says, " though I
cannot guess what should at present so strongly
recall it to my memory." He took his flageolet from
his pocket and played a simple melody. Apparently

263

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

the tune awoke the corresponding associations of
a damsel. . . . She immediately took up the
song —

' '■ Are these the Hnks of Forth, she said ;
Or are they the crooks of Dee,
Or the bonny woods of Warroch Head
That I so fain would see ?"

'"By heaven!' said Bertram, "it is the very
ballad."'

On this quotation two remarks fall to be made.
First, as an instance of modern feeling for romance,
this famous touch of the flageolet and the old song
is selected by Miss Braddon for omission. Miss
Braddon's idea of a story, Hke Mrs. Todgers's idea
of a wooden leg, were something strange to have
expounded. As a matter of personal experience,
Meg's appearance to old Mr. Bertram on the road,
the ruins of Derncleugh, the scene of the flageolet,
and the Dominie's recognition of Harry, are the four
strong notes that continue to ring in the mind after
the book is laid aside. The second point is still
more curious. The reader will observe a mark of
excision in the passage as quoted by me. Well, here
is how it runs in the original : ' a damsel, who, close
behind a fine spring about half-way down the descent,
and which had once supplied the castle with water,
was engaged in bleaching linen.' A man who gave
in such copy would be discharged from the staff" of
a daily paper. Scott has forgotten to prepare the
reader for the presence of the ' damsel'; he has for-
gotten to mention the spring and its relation to
264

A GOSSIP ON ROMANCE

the ruin ; and now, face to face with his omission,
instead of trying back and starting fair, crams all this
matter, tail foremost, into a single shambling sentence.
It is not merely bad English, or bad style; it is
abominably bad narrative besides.

Certainly the contrast is remarkable ; and it is one
that throws a strong light upon the subject of this
paper. For here we have a man of the finest creative
instinct touching with perfect certainty and charm
the romantic junctures of his story ; and we find him
utterly careless, almost, it would seem, incapable, in
the technical matter of style, and not only frequently
weak, but frequently wrong in points of drama.
In character parts, indeed, and particularly in the
Scots, he was delicate, strong, and truthful ; but the
trite, obliterated features of too many of his heroes
have already wearied three generations of readers.
At times his characters will speak with something far
beyond propriety — with a true heroic note ; but on
the next page they will be wading wearily forward
with an ungrammatical and undramatic rigmarole of
words. The man who could conceive and write the
character of Elspeth of the Craigburnfoot, as Scott
has conceived and written it, had not only splendid
romantic but splendid tragic gifts. How comes it,
then, that he could so often fob us off with languid,
inarticulate twaddle ? It seems to me that the ex-
planation is to be found in the very quahty of his
surprising merits. As his books are play to the
reader, so were they play to him. He was a great
day-dreamer, a seer of fit and beautiful and humorous

265

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

visions, but hardly a great artist. He conjured up
the romantic with delight, but had hardly patience
to describe it. Of the pleasures of his art he
tasted fully ; but of its cares and scruples and
distresses never man knew less.

266

XVI
A HUMBLE REMONSTRANCE

We have recently enjoyed a quite peculiar pleasure:
hearing, in some detail, the opinions, about the art
they practise, of Mr. Walter Besant and Mr. Heniy
James ; two men certainly of very different cahbre :
Mr. James so precise of outline, so cunning of fence,
so scrupulous of finish, and Mr. Besant so genial, so
friendly, with so persuasive and humorous a vein of
whim : Mr. James the very type of the deliberate
artist, Mr. Besant the impersonation of good-nature.^
That such doctors should differ will excite no great
surprise ; but one point in which they seem to agree
fills me, I confess, with wonder. For they are both
content to talk about the ' art of fiction ' ; and Mr.
Besant, waxing exceedingly bold, goes on to oppose
this so-called 'art of fiction ' to the 'art of poetry.'
By the art of poetry he can mean nothing but the

^ This papei% which does not otherwise fit the present volume, is
reprinted here as the proper continuation of the last. — R. L. S.

- '^The Art of Fiction/ by Walter Besant; a lecture delivered at the
Royal Institution, April 25, 1884. 'The Art of Fiction/ by Henry
James ; Longman's Magazine, September 1884.

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MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

art of verse, an art of handicraft, and only compar-
able with the art of prose. For that heat and height
of sane emotion which we agree to call by the name
of poetry is but a libertine and vagrant quality ;
present, at times, in any art, more often absent from
them all ; too seldom present in the prose novel, too
frequently absent from the ode and epic. Fiction
is in the same case : it is no substantive art, but
an element which enters largely into all the arts
but architecture. Homer, Wordsworth, Phidias,
Hogarth, and Salvini, all deal in fiction ; and yet I
do not suppose that either Hogarth or Salvini, to
mention but these two, entered in any degree into
the scope of Mr. Besant's interesting lecture or Mr.
James's charming essay. The art of fiction, then,
regarded as a definition, is both too ample and too
scanty. Let me suggest another; let me suggest
that what both Mr. James and Mr. Besant had in
view was neither more nor less than the art of
narrative.

But Mr. Besant is anxious to speak solely of ' the
modern English novel,' the stay and bread-winner of
Mr. Mudie ; and in the author of the most pleasing
novel on that roll. All So7^ts and Conditions of Men,
the desire is natural enough. I can conceive then,
that he would hasten to propose two additions, and
read thus : the art oi fictitious narrative in prose.

Now the fact of the existence of the modern

English novel is not to be denied ; materially, with

its three volumes, leaded type, and gilded lettering,

it is easily distinguishable from other forms of litera-

268

A HUMBLE REMONSTRANCE

ture ; but to talk at all fruitfully of any branch of
art, it is needful to build our definitions on some
more fundamental ground than binding. Why, then,
are we to add ' in prose ' ? The Odyssey appears to
me the best of romances ; The Lady of the Lake to
stand high in the second order ; and Chaucer's tales
and prologues to contain more of the matter and art
of the modern English novel than the whole treasury
of Mr. Mudie. Whether a narrative be written in
blank verse or the Spenserian stanza, in the long
period of Gibbon or the chipped phrase of Charles
Reade, the principles of the art of narrative must be
equally observed. The choice of a noble and swell-
ing style in prose affects the problem of narration
in the same way, if not to the same degree, as the
choice of measured verse ; for both imply a closer
synthesis of events, a higher key of dialogue, and a
more picked and stately strain of words. If you are
to refuse D071 Juan, it is hard to see why you should
include Zanoni or (to bracket works of very different
value) The Scarlet Letter ; and by what discrimina-
tion are you to open your doors to The Pilgrims
Progress and close them on The Faery Queeni
To bring things closer home, I will here propound
to Mr. Besant a conundrum. A narrative called
Paradise Lost was written in English verse by one
John Milton ; what was it then ? It was next
translated by Chateaubriand into French prose ;
and what was it then ? Lastly, the French trans-
lation was, by some inspired compatriot of George
Gilfillan (and of mine) turned bodily into an English

269

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

novel ; and, in the name of clearness, what was it
then?

But, once more, why should we add ' fictitious ' ?
The reason why is obvious. The reason why not, if
something more recondite, does not want for weight.
The art of narrative, in fact, is the same, whether it
is applied to the selection and illustration of a real
series of events or of an imaginary series. Boswell's
Life of Johnson, a work of cunning and inimitable
art, owes its success to the same technical manoeuvres
as (let us say) Tom Jones : the clear conception of
certain characters of man, the choice and presenta-
tion of certain incidents out of a great number that
offered, and the invention (yes, invention) and pre-
servation of a certain key in dialogue. In which
these things are done with the more art — in which
with the greater air of nature — readers will differ-
ently judge. Boswell's is, indeed, a very special
case, and almost a generic ; but it is not only in
Boswell, it is in every biography with any salt of
life, it is in every history where events and men,
rather than ideas, are presented — in Tacitus, in
Carlyle, in Michelet, in Macaulay — that the novelist
will find many of his own methods most conspicu-
ously and adroitly handled. He will find besides
that he, who is free — who has the right to invent
or steal a missing incident, who has the right, more
precious still, of wholesale omission — is frequently
defeated, and, with all his advantages, leaves a less
strong impression of reality and passion. Mr. James
utters his mind with a becoming fervour on the
270

A HUMBLE REMONSTRANCE

sanctity of truth to the novelist ; on a more careful
examination truth will seem a word of very debate-
able propriety, not only for the labours of the
novelist, but for those of the historian. No art — to
use the daring phrase of Mr. James — can success-
fully ' compete with life ' ; and the art that seeks to
do so is condemned to perish montibus aviis. Life
goes before us, infinite in complication ; attended by
the most various and surprising meteors ; appealing
at once to the eye, to the ear, to the mind — the seat
of wonder ; to the touch — so thrillingly delicate ; and
to the belly — so imperious when starved. It com-
bines and employs in its manifestation the method
and material, not of one art only, but of all the arts.
Music is but an arbitrary trifling with a few of life's
majestic chords ; painting is but a shadow of its
pageantry of light and colour ; literature does but
drily indicate that wealth of incident, of moral obli-
gation, of virtue, vice, action, rapture, and agony,
with which it teems. To 'compete with hfe,' whose
sun we cannot look upon, whose passions and diseases
waste and slay us — to compete with the flavour of
wine, the beauty of the dawn, the scorching of fire,
the bitterness of death and separation — here is,
indeed, a projected escalade of heaA^en ; here are,
indeed, labours for a Hercules in a dress coat, armed
with a pen and a dictionary to depict the passions,
armed with a tube of superior flake-white to paint
the portrait of the insufferable sun. No art is true
in this sense : none can ' compete with life ' : not
even history, built indeed of indisputable facts, but

271

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

these facts robbed of their vivacity and sting; so
that even when we read of the sack of a city or the
fall of an empire, we are surprised, and justly com-
mend the author's talent, if our pulse be quickened.
And mark, for a last differentia, that this quickening
of the pulse is, in almost every case, purely agree-
able ; that these phantom reproductions of experi-
ence, even at their most acute, convey decided
pleasure ; while experience itself, in the cockpit of
life, can torture and slay.

What, then, is the object, what the method, of an
art, and what the source of its power ? The whole
secret is that no art does ' compete with life.' Man's
one method, whether he reasons or creates, is to
half-shut his eyes against the dazzle and confusion
of reality. The arts, like arithmetic and geometry,
turn away their eyes from the gross, coloured and
mobile nature at our feet, and regard instead a
certain figmentary abstraction. Geometry will tell
us of a circle, a thing never seen in nature ; asked
about a green circle or an iron circle, it lays its hand
upon its mouth. So with the arts. Painting, rue-
fully comparing sunshine and flake-white, gives up
truth of colour, as it had already given up relief
and movement; and instead of vying with nature,
arranges a scheme of harmonious tints. Literature,
above all in its most typical mood, the mood of
narrative, similarly flees the direct challenge and
pursues instead an independent and creative aim.
So far as it imitates at all, it imitates not life but
speech : not the facts of human destiny, but the
272

A HUMBLE REMONSTRANCE

emphasis and the suppressions with which the human
actor tells of them. The real art that dealt with life
directly was that of the first men who told their
stories round the savage camp-fire. Our art is occu-
pied, and bound to be occupied, not so much in
making stories true as in making them typical ; not
so much in capturing the lineaments of each fact, as
in marshalling all of them towards a common end.
For the welter of impressions, all forcible but all
discrete, which life presents, it substitutes a certain
artificial series of impressions, all indeed most feebly
represented, but all aiming at the same effect, all
eloquent of the same idea, all chiming together like
consonant notes in music or like the graduated tints
in a good picture. From all its chapters, from all its
pages, from all its sentences, the well-written novel
echoes and re-echoes its one creative and controlling
thought ; to this must every incident and character
contribute ; the style must have been pitched in
unison with this ; and if there is anywhere a word
that looks another way, the book would be stronger,
clearer, and (I had almost said) fuller without it.
Life is monstrous, infinite, illogical, abrupt and
poignant ; a work of art, in comparison, is neat,
finite, self-contained, rational, flowing and emascu-
late. Life imposes by brute energy, like inarticulate
thunder ; art catches the ear, among the far louder
noises of experience, like an air artificially made by
a discreet musician. A proposition of geometry
does not compete with life ; and a proposition of
geometry is a fair and luminous parallel for a work
s 273

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

of art. Both are reasonable, both untrue to the
crude fact ; both inhere in nature, neither represents
it. The novel, which is a work of art, exists, not
by its resemblances to life, which are forced and
material, as a shoe must still consist of leather, but
by its immeasurable difference from life, a difference
which is designed and significant, and is both the
method and the meaning of the work.

The life of man is not the subject of novels, but
the inexhaustible magazine from which subjects are
to be selected ; the name of these is legion ; and
with each new subject — for here again I must differ
by the whole width of heaven from Mr. James — the
true artist will vary his method and change the point
of attack. That which was in one case an excel-
lence, will become a defect in another ; what was
the making of one book, will in the next be im-
pertinent or dull. First each novel, and then each
class of novels, exists by and for itself. I will take,
for instance, three main classes, which are fairly
distinct : first, the novel of adventure, which ap-
peals to certain almost sensual and quite illogical
tendencies in man ; second, the novel of character,
which appeals to our intellectual appreciation of
man's foibles and mingled and inconstant motives ;
and third, the dramatic novel, which deals with the
same stuff as the serious theatre, and appeals to
our emotional nature and moral judgment.

And first for the novel of adventure. Mr. James
refers, with singular generosity of praise, to a little
book about a quest for hidden treasure ; but he lets
274

A HUMBLE REMONSTRANCE

fall, by the way, some rather startling words. In
this book he misses what he calls the 'immense
luxury ' of being able to quarrel with his author.
The luxury, to most of us, is to lay by our judg-
ment, to be submerged by the tale as by a billow,
and only to awake, and begin to distinguish and find
fault, when the piece is over and the volume laid
aside. Still more remarkable is Mr. James's reason.
He cannot criticise the author as he goes, ' because,'
says he, comparing it with another work, */ have
beeU' a child, hut I have never been on a quest for
buried treasure.' Here is, indeed, a wilful paradox ;
for if he has never been on a quest for buried
treasure, it can be demonstrated that he has never
been a child. There never was a child (unless
Master James) but has hunted gold, and been a
pirate, and a military commander, and a bandit of
the mountains ; but has fought, and suifered ship-
wreck and prison, and imbrued its little hands in
gore, and gallantly retrieved the lost battle, and
triumphantly protected innocence and beauty. Else-
where in his essay Mr. James has protested with
excellent reason against too narrow a conception of
experience ; for the born artist, he contends, the
' faintest hints of life ' are converted into revelations ;
and it will be found true, I believe, in a majority
of cases, that the artist writes with more gusto and
effect of those things which he has only wished to
do, than of those which he has done. Desire is a
wonderful telescope, and Pisgah the best observatory.
Now, while it is true that neither Mr. James nor

275

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

the author of the work in question has ever, in the
fleshly sense, gone questing after gold, it is probable
that both have ardently desired and fondly imagined
the details of such a life in youthful day-dreams ;
and the author, counting upon that, and well aware
(cunning and low-minded man !) that this class of
interest, having been frequently treated, finds a
readily accessible and beaten road to the sympathies
of the reader, addressed himself throughout to the
building up and circumstantiation of this boyish
dream. Character to the boy is a sealed book ; for
him, a pirate is a beard, a pair of wide trousers and
a liberal complement of pistols. The author, for the
sake of circumstantiation and because he was himself
more or less grown up, admitted character, within
certain limits, into his design ; but only within
certain limits. Had the same puppets figured in a
scheme of another sort, they had been drawn to very
diJfferent purpose ; for in this elementary novel of
adventure, the characters need to be presented with
but one class of qualities — the warlike and formid-
able. So as they appear insidious in deceit and fatal
in the combat, they have served their end. Danger
is the matter with which this class of novel deals ;
fear, the passion with which it idly trifles ; and the
characters are portrayed only so far as they realise
the sense of danger and provoke the sympathy of
fear. To add more traits, to be too clever, to start
the hare of moral or intellectual interest while we
are running the fox of material interest, is not to
enrich but to stultify your tale. The stupid reader
276

A HUMBLE REMONSTRANCE

will only be offended, and the clever reader lose the
scent.

The novel of character has this difference from all
others : that it requires no coherency of plot, and for
this reason, as in the case of Gil Bias, it is some-
times called the novel of adventure. It turns on
the humours of the persons represented ; these are,
to be sure, embodied in incidents, but the incidents
themselves, being tributary, need not march in a
progression ; and the characters may be statically
shown. As they enter, so they may go out ; they
must be consistent, but thfey need not grow. Here
Mr. James will recognise the note of much of his
own work : he treats, for the most part, the statics
of character, studying it at rest or only gently
moved ; and, with his usual deUcate and just artistic
instinct, he avoids those stronger passions which
would deform the attitudes he loves to study, and
change his sitters from the humourists of ordinary life
to the brute forces and bare types of more emotional
moments. In his recent Author of Beltraffio, so
just in conception, so nimble and neat in workman-
ship, strong passion is indeed employed ; but observe
that it is not displayed. Even in the heroine the
working of the passion is suppressed ; and the great
struggle, the true tragedy, the scene a faire, passes
unseen behind the panels of a locked door. The
delectable invention of the young visitor is intro-
duced, consciously or not, to this end : that Mr.
James, true to his method, might avoid the scene of
passion. I trust no reader will suppose me guilty of

277

MEMORIES AND POUTRAITS

undervaluing this little masterpiece. I mean merely
that it belongs to one marked class of novel, and
that it would have been very differently conceived
and treated had it belonged to that other marked
class, of w^hich I now^ proceed to speak.

I take pleasure in calling the dramatic novel by
that name, because it enables me to point out by the
way a strange and pecuharly English misconception.
It is sometimes supposed that the drama consists of
incident. It consists of passion, which gives the
actor his opportunity ; and that passion must pro-
gressively increase, or the actor, as the piece pro-
ceeded, would be unable to carry the audience from
a lower to a higher pitch of interest and emotion.
A good serious play must therefore be founded on
one of the passionate cruces of life, where duty and
inchnation come nobly to the grapple ; and the same
is true of what I call, for that reason, the dramatic
novel. I wiU instance a few worthy specimens, all
of our own day and language : Meredith's Rhoda
Fleming, that wonderful and painful book, long out
of print,^ and hunted for at bookstalls like an Aldine;
Hardy's Pai?^ of Blue Eyes ; and two of Charles
Reade's, Griffith Gaunt and The Double Marriage,
originally called White Lies, and founded (by an
accident quaintly favourable to my nomenclature) on
a play by Maquet, the partner of the great Dumas.
In this kind of novel the closed door of The Author
of Beltraffio must be broken open ; passion must
appear upon the scene and utter its last word ;

1 Now no longer so^ thank Heaven !
278

A HUMBLE REMONSTRANCE

passion is the be-all and the end-all, the plot and the
solution, the protagonist and the deus eoc machind in
one. The characters may come anyhow upon the
stage : we do not care ; the point is, that, before
they leave it, they shall become transfigured and
raised out of themselves by passion. It may be part
of the design to draw them with detail ; to depict a
full-length character, and then behold it melt and
change in the furnace of emotion. But there is no
obhgation of the sort ; nice portraiture is not re-
quired ; and we are content to accept mere abstract
types, so they be strongly and sincerely moved.
A novel of this class may be even great, and yet
contain no individual figure ; it may be great, because
it displays the workings of the perturbed heart and
the impersonal utterance of passion ; and with an
artist of the second class it is, indeed, even more
likely to be great, when the issue has thus been
narrowed and the whole force of the writer's mind
directed to passion alone. Cleverness again, which
has its fair field in the novel of character, is debarred
all entry upon this more solemn theatre. A far-
fetched motive, an ingenious evasion of the issue, a
witty instead of a passionate turn, offend us like an
insincerity. All should be plain, all straightforward
to the end. Hence it is that, in Rhoda Fleming,
Mrs. Lovel raises such resentment in the reader ; her
motives are too flimsy, her ways are too equivocal,
for the weight and strength of her surroundings.
Hence the hot indignation of the reader when
Balzac, after having begun the Duchesse de Langeais

279

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

in terms of strong if somewhat swollen passion, cuts
the knot by the derangement of the hero's clock.
Such personages and incidents belong to the novel
of character ; they are out of place in the high
society of the passions ; when the passions are intro-
duced in art at their full height, we look to see them,
not baffled and impotently striving, as in life, but
towering above circumstance and acting substitutes
for fate.

And here I can imagine Mr. James, with his lucid
sense, to intervene. To much of what I have said
he would apparently demur ; in much he would,
somewhat impatiently, acquiesce. It may be true ;
but it is not what he desired to say or to hear said.
He spoke of the finished picture and its worth when
done ; I, of the brushes, the palette, and the north
light. He uttered his views in the tone and for
the ear of good society ; I, with the emphasis and
technicalities of the obtrusive student. But the
point, I may reply, is not merely to amuse the
public, but to offer helpful advice to the young
writer. And the young writer wiU not so much be
helped by genial pictures of what an art may aspire
to at its highest, as by a true idea of what it must
be on the lowest terms. The best that we can say
to him is this : Let him choose a motive, whether of
character or passion ; carefully construct his plot so
that every incident is an illustration of the motive,
and every property employed shall bear to it a near
relation of congruity or contrast ; avoid a sub-plot,
unless, as sometimes in Shakespeare, the sub-plot be
280

A HUMBLE REMONSTRANCE

a reversion or complement of the main intrigue ;
suffer not his style to flag below the level of the
argument; pitch the key of conversation, not with
any thought of how men talk in parlours, but with
a single eye to the degree of passion he may be
called on to express ; and allow neither himself in
the narrative, nor any character in the course of the
dialogue, to utter one sentence that is not part and
parcel of the business of the story or the discussion
of the problem involved. Let him not regret if this
shortens his book ; it will be better so ; for to add
irrelevant matter is not to lengthen but to bury.
Let him not mind if he miss a thousand qualities, so
that he keeps unflaggingly in pursuit of the one he
has chosen. Let him not care particularly if he
miss the tone of conversation, the pungent material
detail of the day's manners, the reproduction of the
atmosphere and the environment. These elements
are not essential : a novel may be excellent, and yet
have none of them ; a passion or a character is so
much the better depicted as it rises clearer from
material circumstance. In this age of the particular,
let him remember the ages of the abstract, the great
books of the past, the brave men that lived before
Shakespeare and before Balzac. And as the root of
the whole matter, let him bear in mind that his novel
is not a transcript of life, to be judged by its exacti-
tude ; but a simplification of some side or point of
life, to stand or fall by its significant simplicity.
For although, in great men, working upon great
motives, what we observe and admire is often their

281

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

complexity, yet underneath appearances the truth
remains unchanged : that simplification was their
method, and that simplicity is their excellence.

II

Since the above was written another novelist has
entered repeatedly the lists of theory : one well
worthy of mention, Mr. W. D. Howells ; and none
ever couched a lance with narrower convictions.
His own work and those of his pupils and masters
singly occupy his mind ; he is the bondslave, the
zealot of his school ; he dreams of an advance in art
like what there is in science ; he thinks of past things
as radically dead ; he thinks a form can be outlived :
a strange immersion in his own history ; a strange
forgetfulness of the history of the race ! Meanwhile,
by a glance at his own works (could he see them
with the eager eyes of his readers) much of this
illusion would be dispelled. For while he holds all
the poor little orthodoxies of the day — no poorer and
no smaller than those of yesterday or to-morrow,
poor and small, indeed, only so far as they are ex-
clusive— the living quality of much that he has done
is of a contrary, 1 had almost said of a heretical,
complexion. A man, as I read him, of an originally
strong romantic bent — a certain glow of romance
still resides in many of his books, and lends them
their distinction. As by accident he runs out and
revels in the exceptional ; and it is then, as often as
not, that his reader rejoices—justly, as I contend.
282

A HUMBLE REMONSTRANCE

For in all this excessive eagerness to be centrally
human, is there not one central human thing that
Mr. Howells is too often tempted to neglect: I
mean himself? A poet, a finished artist, a man in
love with the appearances of life, a cunning reader
of the mind, he has other passions and aspirations
than those he loves to draw. And why should he
suppress himself and do such reverence to the
Lemuel Barkers ? The obvious is not of necessity
the normal ; fashion rules and deforms ; the majority
fall tamely into the contemporary shape, and thus
attain, in the eyes of the true observer, only a higher
power of insignificance ; and the danger is lest, in
seeking to draw the normal, a man should draw the
null, and write the novel of society instead of the
romance of man.

283

ADDITIONAL

MEMORIES AND

PORTRAITS

First collected {with other Essays) in 'Across
the Plains': Ghatto and Windus, 1892.

Originally published :

I. Scrihner's Magazine, October 1 888.
II. Ibid., November 1888.

III. Ibid., January 1888.

IV. Ibid., March 1888.

V. Ibid., February 1888.

286

CONTENTS

PAGE

I. Random Memories

I. The Coast of Fife . . .289

II. Random Memories

II. The Education of an Engineer . 304

III. A Chapter on Dreams . . .317

IV. Beggars ..... 335
V. The Lantern-Bearers . . . 348

287

RANDOM MEMORIES

I. THE COAST OF FIFE

Many writers have vigorously described the pains of
the first day or the first night at school ; to a boy of
any enterprise, I believe, they are more often agree-
ably exciting. Misery — or at least misery unreHeved
— is confined to another period, to the days of sus-
pense and the ' dreadful looking-for ' of departure ;
when the old Hfe is running to an end, and the new
life, with its new interests, not yet begun ; and to
the pain of an imminent parting, there is added the
unrest of a state of conscious pre-existence. The
area railings, the beloved shop-window, the smell of
semi-suburban tanpits, the song of the church-bells
upon a Sunday, the thin, high voices of compatriot
children in a playing-field — what a sudden, what an
over-powering pathos breathes to him from each
familiar circumstance ! The assaults of sorrow come
not from within, as it seems to him, but from with-
out. I was proud and glad to go to school ; had I
been let alone, I could have borne up like any hero ;
but there was around me, in all my native town, a

T 289

ADDITIONAL MEMORIES

conspiracy of lamentation : ' Poor little boy, he is
going away — unkind little boy, he is going to leave
us ' ; so the unspoken burthen followed me as I went,
with yearning and reproach. And at length, one
melancholy afternoon in the early autumn, and at
a place where it seems to me, looking back, it must
be always autumn and generally Sunday, there came
suddenly upon the face of all I saw — the long empty
road, the lines of the tall houses, the church upon the
hill, the woody hillside garden — a look of such a
piercing sadness that my heart died ; and seating
myself on a door-step, I shed tears of miserable
sympathy. A benevolent cat cumbered me the
while with consolations — we two were alone in all
that was visible of the London Koad : two poor waifs
who had each tasted sorrow — and she fawned upon
the weeper, and gambolled for his entertainment,
watching the effect, it seemed, with motherly eyes.

For the sake of the cat, God bless her ! I confessed
at home the story of my weakness ; and so it comes
about that I owed a certain journey, and the reader
owes the present paper, to a cat in the London Road.
It was judged, if I had thus brimmed over on
the public highway, some change of scene was (in
the medical sense) indicated ; my father at the time
was visiting the harbour hghts of Scotland ; and it
was decided that he should take me along with him
around a portion of the shores of Fife ; my first
professional tour, my first journey in the complete
character of man, without the help of petticoats.

The Kingdom of Fife (that royal province) may
290

THE COAST OF FIFE

be observed by the curious on the map, occupying
a tongue of land between the firths of Forth and
Tay. It may be continually seen from many parts
of Edinburgh (among the rest, from the windows of
my father's house) dying away into the distance and
the easterly haar with one smoky seaside town
beyond another, or in winter printing on the grey
heaven some ghttering hill-tops. It has no beauty
to recommend it, being a low, sea-salted, wind- vexed
promontory ; trees very rare, except (as common on
the east coast) along the dens of rivers ; the fields
well cultivated, I understand, but not lovely to the
eye. It is of the coast I speak : the interior may be
the garden of Eden. History broods over that part
of the world like the easterly haar. Even on the
map, its long row of GaeUc place-names bear testi-
mony to an old and settled race. Of these little
towns, posted along the shore as close as sedges, each
with its bit of harbour, its old weather-beaten church
or public building, its flavour of decayed prosperity
and decaying fish, not one but has its legend, quaint
or tragic : Dunfermline, in whose royal towers the
king may be stiU observed (in the ballad) drinking
the blood-red wine ; somnolent Inverkeithing, once
the quarantine of Leith ; Aberdour, hard by the mon-
astic islet of Inchcolm, hard by Donibristle where the
' bonny face was spoiled ' ; Burntisland where, when
Paul Jones was off the coast, the Reverend Mr.
Shirra had a table carried between tidemarks, and
publicly prayed against the rover at the pitch of his
voice and his broad lowland dialect; Kinghorn,

291

ADDITIONAL MEMORIES

where Alexander 'brak's neckbane' and left Scot-
land to the Enghsh wars; Kirkcaldy, where the
witches once prevailed extremely and sank tall ships
and honest mariners in the North Sea; Dysart,
famous— well, famous at least to me for the Dutch
ships that lay in its harbour, painted hke toys and
with pots of flowers and cages of song-birds in the
cabin windows, and for one particular Dutch skipper
who would sit all day in slippers on the break of the
poop, smoking a long German pipe ; Wemyss (pro-
nounce Weems) with its bat-haunted caves, where
the Chevaher Johnstone, on his flight from Culloden,
passed a night of superstitious terrors; Leven, a
bald, quite modern place, sacred to summer visitors,
whence there has gone but yesterday the tall figure
and the white locks of the last Enghshman in Delhi,
my uncle Dr. Balfour, who was still walking his
hospital rounds while the troopers from Meerut
clattered and cried ' Deen Deen ' along the streets
of the imperial city, and Willoughby mustered his
handful of heroes at the magazine, and the nameless
brave one in the telegraph office was perhaps already
fingering his last despatch ; and just a little beyond
Leven, Largo Law and the smoke of Largo town
mounting about its feet, the town of Alexander
Selkirk, better known under the name of Robinson
Crusoe. So on, the list might be pursued (only for
private reasons, which the reader will shortly have
an opportunity to guess) by St. Monans, and
Pittenweem, and the two Anstruthers, and Cellar-
dyke, and Crail, where Primate Sharpe was once a
292

THE COAST OF FIFE

humble and innocent country minister: on to the
heel of the land, to Fife Ness, overlooked by a sea-
wood of matted elders and the quaint old mansion
of Balcomie, itself overlooking but the breach or the
quiescence of the deep — the Carr Rock beacon rising
close in front, and as night draws in, the star of the
Inchcape reef springing up on the one hand, and the
star of the May Island on the other, and farther off
yet a third and a greater on the craggy foreland of
St. Abb's. And but a httle way round the corner
of the land, imminent itself above the sea, stands
the gem of the province and the light of medigeval
Scotland, St. Andrews, where the great Cardinal
Beaton held garrison against the world, and the
second of the name and title perished (as you may
read in Knox's jeering narrative) under the knives
of true-blue Protestants, and to this day (after so
many centuries) the current voice of the professor is
not hushed.

Here it was that my first tour of inspection began,
early on a bleak easterly morning. There was a
crashing run of sea upon the shore, I recollect, and
my father and the man of the harbour hght must
sometimes raise their voices to be audible. Perhaps
it is from this circumstance, that I always imagine
St. Andrews to be an ineffectual seat of learning, and
the sound of the east wind and the bursting surf to
linger in its drowsy class-rooms and confound the
utterance of the professor, until teacher and taught
are alike drowned in oblivion, and only the sea-gull
beats on the windows and the draught of the sea-air

293

ADDITIONAL MEMOHIES

rustles in the pages of the open lecture. But upon
all this, and the romance of St. Andrews in general,
the reader must consult the works of Mr. Andrew
Lang ; who has written of it but the other day in his
dainty prose and with his incommunicable humour,
and long ago, in one of his best poems, with grace
and local truth and a note of unaffected pathos.
]Mr. Lang knows all about the romance, I say, and
the educational advantages, but I doubt if he had
turned his attention to the harbour lights ; and it
may be news even to him, that in the year 1863 their
case was pitiable. Hanging about with the east
wind humming in my teeth, and my hands (I make
no doubt) in my pockets, I looked for the first time
upon that tragi-comedy of the visiting engineer
which I have seen so often re-enacted on a more
important stage. Eighty years ago, I find my
grandfather writing : 'It is the most painful thing
that can occur to me to have a correspondence of
this kind with any of the keepers, and when I come
to the Light House, instead of having the satisfac-
tion to meet them with approbation and welcome
their Family, it is distressing when one is obliged to
put on a most angry countenance and demeanour."
This painful obligation has been hereditary in my
race. I have myself, on a perfectly amateur and
unauthorised inspection of Turnberry Point, bent
my brows upon the keeper on the question of storm-
panes ; and felt a keen pang of self-reproach, when
we went downstairs again and I found he was making
a coffin for his infant child ; and then regained my
294

THE COAST OF FIFE

equanimity with the thought that I had done the
iTian a service, and when the proper inspector came,
he would be readier with his panes. The human
race is perhaps credited with more duphcity than it
deserves. The visitation of a Hghthouse at least is a
business of the most transparent nature. As soon
as the boat grates on the shore, and the keepers step
forward in their uniformed coats, the very slouch of
the fellows' shoulders tells their story, and the engi-
neer may begin at once to assume his ' angry coun-
tenance.' Certainly the brass of the handrail will
be clouded; and if the brass be not immaculate,
certainly all will be to match — the reflectors scratched,
the spare lamp unready, the storm-panes in the
storehouse. If a hght is not rather more than mid-
dling good, it will be radically bad. Mediocrity
(except in hterature) appears to be unattainable by
man. But of course the unfortunate of St. Andrews
was only an amateur, he was not in the Service, he
had no uniform coat, he was, I believe, a plumber
by his trade and stood (in the mediaeval phrase) quite
out of the danger of my father ; but he had a painful
interview for all that, and perspired extremely.

From St. Andrews, we drove over Magus Muir.
My father had announced we were ' to post,' and the
phrase called up in my hopeful mind visions of top-
boots and the pictures in Rowlandson's Dance of
Death ; but it was only a jinghng cab that came to
the inn door, such as I had driven in a thousand
times at the low price of one shilling on the streets
of Edinburgh. Beyond this disappointment, I re-

295

ADDITIONAL MEMORIES

member nothing of that drive. It is a road I have
often travelled, and of not one of these jomiieys do
I remember any single trait. The fact has not been
suffered to encroach on the truth of the imagination.
I still see Magus Muir two hundred years ago : a
desert place, quite unenclosed ; in the midst, the
primate's carriage fleeing at the gallop ; the assassins
loose-reined in pursuit, Burley Balfour, pistol in
hand, among the first. No scene of history has ever
written itself so deeply on my mind ; not because
Balfour, that questionable zealot, was an ancestral
cousin of my own ; not because of the pleadings of
the victim and his daughter ; not even because of
the live bum-bee that flew out of Sharpe's 'bacco-
box, thus clearly indicating his complicity with
Satan ; nor merely because, as it was after all a crime
of a fine religious flavour, it figured in Sunday books
and afforded a grateful relief from Ministei^ing Chil-
dren or the Me})ioirs of Wlrs. Katherine Winslowe.
The figure that always fixed my attention is that of
Hackston of Rathillet, sitting in the saddle with his
cloak about his mouth, and through all that long,
bungling, vociferous hurly-burly, revolving privately
a case of conscience. He would take no hand in the
deed, because he had a private spite against the
victim, and ' that action ' must be sulhed with no
suggestion of a worldly motive ; on the other hand,
* that action ' in itself was highly justified, he had
cast in liis lot with ' the actors,' and he must stay
there, inactive, but pubhcly sharing the responsi-
bihty. 'You are a gentleman — you will protect
296

THE COAST OF FIFE

me!' cried the wounded old man, crawling towards
tiim. ' I will never lay a hand on you,' said Hack-
ston, and put his cloak about his mouth. It is an
old temptation with me to pluck away that cloak
and see the face — to open that bosom and to read
the heart. With incomplete romances about Hack-
ston, the drawers of my youth were lumbered. I
read him up in every printed book that I could lay
my hands on. I even dug among the Wodrow
manuscripts, sitting shame-faced in the very room
where my hero had been tortured two centuries
before, and keenly conscious of my youth in the
midst of other and (as I fondly thought) more gifted
students. All was vain : that he had passed a
riotous nonage, that he was a zealot, that he twice
displayed (compared with his grotesque companions)
some tincture of soldierly resolution and even of
mihtary common sense, and that he figured memor-
ably in the scene on Magus Muir, so much and no
more could I make out. But whenever I cast my
eyes backward, it is to see him like a landmark on
the plains of history, sitting with his cloak about his
mouth, inscrutable. How small a thing creates an
immortahty ! I do not think he can have been a
man entirely commonplace ; but had he not thrown
his cloak about his mouth, or had the witnesses
forgot to chronicle the action, he would not thus
have haunted the imagination of my boyhood, and
to-day he would scarce delay me for a paragraph.
An incident, at once romantic and dramatic, which
at once awakes the judgment and makes a picture

297

ADDITIONAL MEMORIES

for the eye, how Httle do we reahse its perdurable
power ! Perhaps no one does so but the author, just
as none but lie appreciates the influence of jinghng
words ; so that he looks on upon life, with some-
thing of a covert smile, seeing people led by what
they fancy to be thoughts and what are really the
accustomed artifices of his own trade, or roused by
what they take to be principles and are really pictur-
esque effects. In a pleasant book about a school-
class club. Colonel Fergusson has recently told a
httle anecdote. A ' Philosophical Society ' was
formed by soixie Academy boys — among them.
Colonel Fergusson himself, Fleeming Jenkin, and
Andrew Wilson, the Christian Buddhist and author
of The Abode of Snow. Before these learned pundits,
one member laid the following ingenious problem :
*What would be the result of putting a pound of
potassium in a pot of porter V 'I should think there
would be a number of interesting bi-products,' said a
smatterer at my elbow ; but for me the tale itself has
a bi-product, and stands as a type of much that is
most human. For this inquirer, who conceived him-
self to burn with a zeal entirely chemical, was really
immersed in a design of a quite different nature : un-
consciously to his own recently breeched intelligence,
he was engaged in hterature. Putting, pound, potas-
sium, pot, porter ; initial p, mediant t — that was his
idea, poor little boy ! So with pohtics and that which
excites men in the present, so with history and that
which rouses them in the past : there he, at the root
of what appears, most serious unsuspected elements.
298

THE COAST OF FIFE

The triple town of Anstruther Wester, Anstruther
Easter, and Cellardyke, all three Royal Burghs — or
two Royal Burghs and a less distinguished suburb, I
forget wliich — Ues continuously along the seaside,
and boasts of either two or three separate parish
churches, and either two or three separate harbours.
These ambiguities are painful ; but the fact is (al-
though it argues me uncultured), I am but poorly
posted up on Cellardyke. My business lay in the
two Anstruthers. A tricklet of a stream divides
them, spanned by a bridge ; and over the bridge at
the time of my knowledge, the celebrated Shell
House stood outpost on the west. This had been
the residence of an agreeable eccentric ; during his
fond tenancy, he had illustrated the outer walls, as
high (if I remember rightly) as the roof, with elabo-
rate patterns and pictures, and snatches of verse in
the vein of ea^egi monumentum ; shells and pebbles,
artfully contrasted and conjoined, had been his
medium ; and I hke to think of him standing back
upon the bridge, when all was finished, drinking in
the general effect, and (hke Gibbon) already lament-
ing his employment.

The same bridge saw another sight in the seven-
teenth century. Mr. Thomson, the * curat ' of
Anstruther Easter, was a man highly obnoxious to
the devout : in the first place, because he was a
' cm-at '; in the second place, because he was a person
of irregular and scandalous life ; and in the third
place, because he was generally suspected of deaHngs
with the Enemy of Man. These three disquahfica-

299

ADDITIONAL MEMORIES

tions, in the popular literature of the time, go hand
in hand ; but the end of Mr. Thomson was a thing
quite by itself, and in the proper phrase, a manifest
judgment. He had been at a friend's house in
Anstruther Wester, where (and elsewhere, I suspect)
he had partaken of the bottle ; indeed, to put the
thing in our cold modern way, the reverend gentle-
man was on the brink of delirium tremens. It was a
dark night, it seems ; a little lassie came carrying a
lantern to fetch the curate home; and away they
went down the street of Anstruther Wester, the
lantern swinging a bit in the child's hand, the barred
lustre tossing up and down along the front of slum-
bering houses, and Mr. Thomson not altogether
steady on his legs nor (to all appearance) easy in his
mind. The pair had reached the middle of the
bridge when (as I conceive the scene) the poor tippler
started in some baseless fear and looked behind him ;
the child, already shaken by the minister's strange
behaviour, started also ; in so doing she would jerk
the lantern ; and for the space of a moment the
hghts and the shadows would be all confounded.
Then it was that to the unhinged toper and the
twittering child, a huge bulk of blackness seemed to
sweep down, to pass them close by as they stood
upon the bridge, and to vanish on the farther side in
the general darkness of the night. ' Plainly the devil
come for Mr. Thomson !' thought the child. What
Mr. Thomson thought himself, we have no ground of
knowledge ; but he fell upon his knees in the midst
of the bridge like a man praying. On the rest of
300

THE COAST OF FIFE

the journey to the manse, history is silent ; but when
they came to the door, the poor caitiff, taking the
lantern from the child, looked upon her with so lost
a countenance that her httle courage died within her,
and she fled home screaming to her parents. Not a
soul would venture out ; all that night, the minister
dwelt alone with his terrors in the manse ; and when
the day dawned, and men made bold to go about the
streets, they found the devil had come indeed for
Mr. Thomson.

This manse of Anstruther Easter has another and
a more cheerful association. It was early in the
morning, about a century before the days of Mr.
Thomson, that his predecessor was called out of bed
to welcome a Grandee of Spain, the Duke of Medina
Sidonia, just landed in the harbour underneath. But
sure there was never seen a more decayed grandee ;
sure there was never a duke welcomed from a stranger
place of exile. Half-way between Orkney and Shet-
land there lies a certain isle ; on the one hand the
Atlantic, on the other the North Sea, bombard its
pillared cliffs; sore-eyed, short-hving, inbred fishers
and their families herd in its few huts ; in the grave-
yard pieces of wreck- wood stand for monuments ;
there is nowhere a more inhospitable spot. Belle-
Isle-en-Mer — Fair-Isle-at-Sea — that is a name that
has always rung in my mind's ear hke music ; but
the only ' Fair Isle ' on which I ever set my foot was
this unhomely, rugged turret-top of submarine sierras.
Here, when his ship was broken, my lord Duke joy-
fully got ashore ; here for long months he and certain

301

ADDITIONAL MEMORIES

of his men were harboured ; and it was from this
dm-ance that he landed at last to be welcomed (as
well as such a papist deserved, no doubt) by the
godly incumbent of Anstruther Easter ; and after the
Fair Isle, what a fine city must that have appeared !
and after the island diet, what a hospitable spot the
minister's table ! And yet he must have Uved on
friendly terms with his outlandish hosts. For to this
day there still survives a reHc of the long winter
evenings when the sailors of the great Armada
crouched about the hearths of the Fair- 1 slanders, the
planks of their own lost galleon perhaps hghting up
the scene, and the gale and the surf that beat about
the coast contributing their melancholy voices. All
the folk of the north isles are great artificers of knit-
ting : the Fair- Islanders alone dye their fabrics in the
Spanish manner. To this day, gloves and nightcaps,
innocently decorated, may be seen for sale in the
Shetland warehouse at Edinburgh, or on the Fair
Isle itself in the catechist's house ; and to this day,
they tell the story of the Duke of Medina Sidonia's
adventure.

It would seem as if the Fair Isle had some attrac-
tion for 'persons of quahty.' When I landed there
myself, an elderly gentleman, unshaved, poorly at-
tired, his shoulders wrapped in a plaid, was seen
walking to and fro, with a book in his hand, upon
the beach. He paid no heed to om- arrival, which
we thought a strange thing in itself ; but when one
of the officers of the Pharos, passing narrowly by
him, observed his book to be a Greek Testament, our
302

THE COAST OF FIFE

wonder and interest took a higher flight The cate-
chist was cross-examined ; he said the gentleman had
been put across some time before in Mr. Bruce of
Sumburgh's schooner, the only Mnk between the Fair
Isle and the rest of the world ; and that he held ser-
vices and was doing 'good.' So much came ghbly
enough ; but when pressed a little further, the cate-
chist displayed embarrassment. A singular diffidence
appeared upon his face : ' They tell me,' said he, in
low tones, ' that he 's a lord.' And a lord he was ; a
peer of the realm pacing that inhospitable beach
with his Greek Testament, and his plaid about his
shoulders, set upon doing good, as he understood it,
worthy man ! And his grandson, a good-looking
little boy, much better dressed than the lordly evan-
gehst, and speaking with a silken English accent very
foreign to the scene, accompanied me for a while in
my exploration of the island. I suppose this little
fellow is now my lord, and wonder how much he
remembers of the Fair Isle. Perhaps not much ; for
he seemed to accept very quietly his savage situation ;
and under such guidance, it is hke that this was not
his first nor yet his last adventure.

303

II
RANDOM MEMORIES

11. THE EDUCATION OF AN ENGINEER

Anstruther is a place sacred to the Muse ; she
mspu'ed (really to a considerable extent) Tennant's
vernacular poem Anster Fair ; and I have there
waited upon her myself with much devotion. This
was when I came as a young man to glean engineer-
ing experience from the building of the breakwater.
What I gleaned, I am sure I do not know ; but
indeed I had already my own private determination
to be an author ; I loved the art of words and the
appearances of hfe ; and travellers, and headers, and
rubble, and polished ashlar, and pie?^res perdues, and
even the thrilling question of the string-course, inter-
ested me only (if they interested me at all) as pro-
perties for some possible romance or as words to add
to my vocabulary. To grow a little catholic is the
compensation of years ; youth is one-eyed ; and in
those days, though I haunted the breakwater by day,
and even loved the place for the sake of the sun-
shine, the thrilling seaside air, the wash of waves on
the sea-face, the green glimmer of the divers' helmets
304

EDUCATION OF AN ENGINEER

far below, and the musical chinking of the masons,
my one genuine preoccupation lay elsewhere, and my
only industry was in the hours when I was not on
duty. I lodged with a certain Baihe Brown, a car-
penter by trade ; and there, as soon as dinner was
despatched, in a chamber scented with dry rose-
leaves, drew in my chair to the table and proceeded
to pour forth literature, at such a speed, and with
such intimations of early death and immortahty, as I
now look back upon with wonder. Then it was that
I wrote Voces Fidelium, a series of dramatic mono-
logues in verse ; then that I indited the bulk of a
covenanting novel — like so many others, never
finished. Late I sat into the night, toiling (as I
thought) under the very dart of death, toiling to leave
a memory behind me. I feel moved to thrust aside
the curtain of the years, to hail that poor feverish
idiot, to bid him go to bed and clap Voces Fidelium
on the fire before he goes ; so clear does he appear
before me, sitting there between his candles in the
rose-scented room and the late night ; so ridiculous a
picture (to my elderly wisdom) does the fool present !
But he was driven to his bed at last without miracu-
lous intervention ; and the manner of his driving sets
the last touch upon this eminently youthful business.
The weather was then so warm that I must keep the
windows open ; the night without was populous with
moths. As the late darkness deepened, my hterary
tapers beaconed forth more brightly ; thicker and
thicker came the dusty night-fliers, to gyrate for one
briUiant instant round the flame and fall in agonies
u 305

ADDITIONAL MEMOHIES

upon my paper. Flesh and blood could not endure
the spectacle ; to capture immortality was doubtless
a noble enterprise, but not to capture it at such a
cost of suffering ; and out would go the candles, and
off would I go to bed in the darkness, raging to
think that the blow might fall on the morrow, and
there was Voces Fidelium still incomplete. Well,
the moths are all gone, and Voces Fidelium along
with them ; only the fool is still on hand and prac-
tises new folhes.

Only one thing in connection with the harbour
tempted me, and that was the diving, an experience
I burned to taste of But this was not to be, at least
in Anstruther ; and the subject involves a change of
scene to the sub-arctic town of Wick. You can
never have dwelt in a country more unsightly than
that part of Caithness, the land faintly swelHng,
faintly falling, not a tree, not a hedgerow, the fields
divided by single slate stones set upon their edge, the
wind always singing in your ears and (down the long
road that led nowhere) thrumming in the telegraph
wires. Only as you approached the coast was there
anything to stir the heart. The plateau broke down
to the North Sea in formidable chffs, the tall out-
stacks rose hke pillars ringed about with surf, the
coves were over-brimmed with clamorous froth, the
sea-birds screamed, the wind sang in the thyme on
the chff s edge ; here and there, small ancient castles
toppled on the brim ; here and there, it was possible
to dip into a dell of shelter, where you might he and
tell yom'self you were a little warm, and hear (near
306

EDUCATION OF AN ENGINEEK

at hand) the whin-pods bursting in the afternoon
sun, and (farther off) the rumour of the turbulent
sea. As for Wick itself, it is one of the meanest of
man's towns, and situate certainly on the baldest of
God's bays. It hves for herring, and a strange sight
it is to see (of an afternoon) the heights of Pulteney
blackened by seaward-looking fishers, as when a city
crowds to a review — or, as when bees have swarmed,
the ground is horrible with lumps and clusters ; and
a strange sight, and a beautiful, to see the fleet put
silently out against a rising moon, the sea-line rough
as a wood with sails, and ever and again and one
after another, a boat flitting swiftly by the silver
disk. This mass of fishers, this great fleet of boats,
is out of all proportion to the town itself ; and the
oars are manned and the nets hauled by immigrants
from the Long Island (as we call the outer Hebrides),
who come for that season only, and depart again, if
' the take ' be poor, leaving debts behind them. In
a bad year, the end of the herring-fishery is therefore
an exciting time ; fights are common, riots often
possible ; an apple knocked from a child's hand was
once the signal for something like a war ; and even
when I was there, a gunboat lay in the bay to assist
the authorities. To contrary interests, it should be
observed, the curse of Babel is here added ; the Lews
men are GaeHc speakers, those of Caithness have
adopted Enghsh ; an odd ckcumstance, if you reflect
that both must be largely Norsemen by descent. I re-
member seeing one of the strongest instances of this
division : a thing hke a Punch-and-Judy box erected

307

ADDITIONAL MEMORIES

on the flat grave -stones of the churchyard ; from the
hutch or proscenium — I know not what to call it —
an eldritch -looking preacher laying down the law in
Gaelic about some one of the name of Powl, whom I
at last divined to be the apostle to the Gentiles ; a
large congregation of the Lews men very devoutly
listening ; and on the outskirts of the crowd, some of
the town's children (to whom the whole affair was
Greek and Hebrew) profanely playing tigg. The
same descent, the same country, the same narrow
sect of the same rehgion, and aU these bonds made
very largely nugatory by an accidental difference of
dialect !

Into the bay of Wick stretched the dark length
of the unfinished breakwater, in its cage of open
staging ; the travellers (like frames of churches) over-
plumbing all ; and away at the extreme end, the
divers toiling unseen on the foundation. On a
platform of loose planks, the assistants turned their
air-mills ; a stone might be swinging between wind
and water ; underneath the swell ran gaily ; and from
time to time, a mailed dragon with a window-glass
snout came dripping up the ladder. Youth is a
blessed season after all ; my stay at Wick was in the
year of Voces Fidelium and the rose-leaf room at
Bailie Brown's ; and already I did not care two
straws for literary glory. Posthumous ambition
perhaps requires an atmosphere of roses ; and the
more rugged excitant of Wick east winds had made
another boy of me. To go down in the diving-dress,
that was my absorbing fancy; and with the coun-
308

EDUCATION OF AN ENGINEEH

tenance of a certain handsome scamp of a diver. Bob
Bain by name, I gratified the whim.

It was grey, harsh, easterly weather, the swell
ran pretty high, and out in the open there were
' skipper's daughters,' when I found myself at last on
the diver's platform, twenty pounds of lead upon
each foot and my whole person swollen with ply
and ply of woollen underclothing. One moment,
the salt wind was whisthng round my night-capped
head ; the next, I was crushed almost double under
the weight of the helmet. As that intolerable bur-
then was laid upon me, I could have found it in my
heart (only for shame's sake) to cry off from the
whole enterprise. But it was too late. The attend-
ants began to turn the hurdy-gurdy, and the air to
whistle through the tube ; some one screwed in the
barred window of the vizor ; and I was cut off in a
moment from my fellow-men ; standing there in
their midst, but quite divorced from intercourse : a
creature deaf and dumb, pathetically looking forth
upon them from a climate of his own. Except that
I could move and feel, I was like a man fallen in
a catalepsy. But time was scarce given me to realise
my isolation ; the weights were hung upon my back
and breast, the signal-rope was thrust into my un-
resisting hand; and setting a twenty-pound foot
upon the ladder, I began ponderously to descend.

Some twenty rounds below the platform, twilight
fell. Looking up, I saw a low green heaven mottled
with vanishing bells of white ; looking around, ex-
cept for the weedy spokes and shafts of the ladder,

309

ADDITIONAL MEMORIES

nothing but a green gloaming, somewhat opaque but
very restful and delicious. Thirty rounds lower, I
stepped off on the pierres perdues of the foundation ;
a dumb helmeted figure took me by the hand, and
made a gesture (as I read it) of encouragement ; and
looking in at the creature's window, I beheld the face
of Bain. There we were, hand to hand and (when it
pleased us) eye to eye ; and either might have burst
himself with shouting, and not a whisper come to his
companion's hearing. Each, in his own little world
of air, stood incommunicably separate.

Bob had told me ere this a little tale, a five
minutes' drama at the bottom of the sea, which at
that moment possibly shot across my mind. He was
down with another, settUng a stone of the sea-wall.
They had it well adjusted. Bob gave the signal, the
scissors were slipped, the stone set home ; and it was
time to turn to something else. But still his com-
panion remained bowed over the block like a mourner
on a tomb, or only raised himself to make absurd
contortions and mysterious signs unknown to the
vocabulary of the diver. There, then, these two stood
for a while, like the dead and the living ; till there *
flashed a fortunate thought into Bob's mind, and he
stooped, peered through the window of that other
world, and beheld the face of its inhabitant wet with
streaming tears. Ah ! the man was in pain ! And
Bob, glancing downward, saw what was the trouble :
the block had been lowered on the foot of that un-
fortunate— he was caught alive at the bottom of the
sea under fifteen tons of rock.
310

EDUCATION OF AN ENGINEER

That two men should handle a stone so heavy,
even swinging in the scissors, may appear strange to
the inexpert. These must bear in mind the great
density of the water of the sea, and the surprising
results of transplantation to that medium. To under-
stand a little what these are, and how a man's weight,
so far from being an encumbrance, is the very
ground of his agility, was the chief lesson of my sub-
marine experience. The knowledge came upon me
by degrees. As I began to go forward with the hand
of my estranged companion, a world of tumbled
stones was visible, pillared with the weedy uprights
of the staging ; overhead, a flat roof of green : a
little in front, the sea-wall, like an unfinished ram-
part. And presently in our upward progress. Bob
motioned me to leap upon a stone ; I looked to
see if he were possibly in earnest, and he only signed
to me the more imperiously. Now the block stood
six feet high ; it would have been quite a leap to me
unencumbered ; with the breast and back weights,
and the twenty pounds upon each foot, and the
staggering load of the helmet, the thing was out
of reason. I laughed aloud in my tomb ; and to
prove to Bob how far he was astray, I gave a little
impulse from my toes. Up I soared hke a bird, my
companion soaring at my side. As high as to the
stone, and then higher, I pursued my impotent and
empty flight. Even when the strong arm of Bob
had checked my shoulders, my heels continued their
ascent ; so that I blew out side- ways like an autumn
leaf, and must be hauled in, hand over hand, as

311

ADDITIONAL MEMORIES

sailors haul in the slack of a sail, and propped upon
my feet again like an intoxicated sparrow. Yet a
httle higher on the foundation, and we began to be
affected by the bottom of the swell, running there like
a strong breeze of wind. Or so I must suppose ;
for, safe in my cushion of air, I was conscious of no
impact ; only swayed idly hke a weed, and was now
borne helplessly abroad, and now swiftly — and yet
with dream-like gentleness — impelled against my
guide. So does a child's balloon divagate upon the
currents of the air, and touch and shde off again
from every obstacle. So must have ineffectually
swung, so resented then- inefficiency, those light
crowds that followed the Star of Hades, and uttered
exiguous voices in the land beyond Cocytus.

There was something strangely exasperating, as
well as strangely wearying, in these uncommanded
evolutions. It is bitter to return to infancy, to be
supported, and dkected, and perpetually set upon
your feet, by the hand of some one else. The air
besides, as it is supphed to you by the busy millers
on the platform, closes the eustachian tubes and keeps
the neophyte perpetually swallowing, till his throat
is grown so dry that he can swallow no longer. And
for all these reasons — although I had a fine, dizzy,
muddle-headed joy in my surroundings, and longed,
and tried, and always failed, to lay hands on the fish
that darted here and there about me, swift as
humming-birds— yet I fancy I was rather relieved
than otherwise when Bain brought me back to the
ladder and signed to me to mount. And there was

312

EDUCATION OF AN ENGINEER

one more experience before me even then. Of a
sudden, my ascending head passed into the trough of
a swell. Out of the green, I shot at once into a
glory of rosy, almost of sanguine light — the mul-
titudinous seas incarnadined, the heaven above a
vault of crimson. And then the glory faded into
the hard, ugly daylight of a Caithness autumn, with
a low sky, a grey sea, and a whistling wind.

Bob Bain had five shilHngs for his trouble, and I
had done what I desired. It was one of the best
things I got from my education as an engineer : of
which however, as a way of life, I wish to speak with
sympathy. It takes a man into the open air; it
keeps him hanging about harbour-sides, which is the
richest form of idling ; it carries him to wild islands ;
it gives him a taste of the genial dangers of the sea ;
it supplies him with dexterities to exercise ; it makes
demands upon his ingenuity ; it will go far to cure
him of any taste (if ever he had one) for the miser-
able life of cities. And when it has done so, it
carries him back and shuts him in an office ! From
the roaring skerry and the wet thwart of the tossing
boat, he passes to the stool and desk ; and with a
memory fuU of ships, and seas, and perilous head-
lands, and the shining pharos, he must apply his
long-sighted eyes to the pretty niceties of drawing,
or measure his inaccurate mind with several pages of
consecutive figures. He is a wise youth, to be sure,
who can balance one part of genuine hfe against two
parts of drudgery between four walls, and for the
sake of the one, manfully accept the other.

-1 T -7

ADDITIONAL MEMORIES

Wick was scarce an eligible place of stay. But
how much better it was to hang in the cold wind
upon the pier, to go down with Bob Bain among the
roots of the staging, to be all day in a boat coiling
a wet rope and shouting orders — not always very
wise — than to be warm and dry, and dull, and dead-
aUve, in the most comfortable office. And Wick
itself had in those days a note of originality. It may
have still, but I misdoubt it much. The old minister
of Keiss would not preach, in these degenerate times,
for an hour and a half upon the clock. The gipsies
must be gone from their cavern ; where you might
see, from the mouth, the women tending their fire, hke
Meg Merrilies, and the men sleeping off their coarse
potations ; and where in winter gales, the surf would
beleaguer them closely, bursting in their very door. A
traveller to-day upon the Thurso coach would scarce
observe a little cloud of smoke among the moorlands,
and be told, quite openly, it marked a private still.
He would not indeed make that journey, for there is
now no Thurso coach. And even if he could, one
httle thing that happened to me could never happen
to him, or not with the same trenchancy of contrast.

We had been upon the road all evening ; the
coach-top was crowded with Lews fishers going
home, scarce anything but Gaelic had sounded in
my ears ; and our way had lain throughout over
a moorish country very northern to behold. Latish
at night, though it was still broad day in our sub-
arctic latitude, we came down upon the shores of the
roaring Pentland Firth, that grave of mariners ; on
314

EDUCATION OF AN ENGINEER

one hand, the chfFs of Dimnet Head ran seaward ;
in front was the httle bare white town of Castleton,
its streets full of blowing sand ; nothing beyond, but
the North Islands, the great deep, and the perennial
ice-fields of the Pole. And here, in the last imagin-
able place, there sprang up young outlandish voices
and a chatter of some foreign speech ; and I saw,
pursuing the coach with its load of Hebridean fishers
— as they had pursued vetturini up the passes of the
Apennines or perhaps along the grotto under Virgil's
tomb — two little dark-eyed, white-toothed Italian
vagabonds, of twelve to fourteen years of age, one
with a hurdy-gurdy, the other with a cage of white
mice. The coach passed on, and their small Italian
chatter died in the distance ; and I was left to marvel
how they had wandered into that country, and how
they fared in it, and what they thought of it, and
when (if ever) they should see again the silver wind-
breaks run among the olives, and the stone-pine
stand guard upon Etruscan sepulchres.

Upon any American, the strangeness of this in-
cident is somewhat lost. For as far back as he goes
in his own land, he will find some alien camping
there; the Cornish miner, the French or Mexican
half-blood, the negro in the South, these are deep in
the woods and far among the mountains. But in an
old, cold, and rugged country such as mine, the days of
immigration are long at an end ; and away up there,
which was at that time far beyond the northern-
most extreme of railways, hard upon the shore of
that ill-omened strait of whirlpools, in a land of

315

ADDITIONAL MEMORIES

moors where no stranger came, unless it should be
a sportsman to shoot grouse or an antiquary to de-
cipher runes, the presence of these small pedestrians
struck the mind as though a bird-of-paradise had
risen from the heather or an albatross come fishing
in the bay of Wick. They were as strange to their
surroundings as my lordly evangehst or the old
Spanish grandee on the Fair Isle.

316

Ill
A CHAPTEU ON DREAMS

The past is all of one texture —whether feigned or
suffered — whether acted out in three dimensions, or
only witnessed in that small theatre of the brain
which we keep brightly hghted all night long, after
the jets are down, and darkness and sleep reign un-
disturbed in the remainder of the body. There is no
distinction on the face of our experiences; one is
vivid indeed, and one dull, and one pleasant, and
another agonising to remember ; but which of them
is what we call true, and which a dream, there is not
one hair to prove. The past stands on a precarious
footing ; another straw split in the field of meta-
physic, and behold us robbed of it. There is scarce
a family that can count four generations but lays a
claim to some dormant title or some castle and estate :
a claim not prosecutable in any court of law, but
flattering to the fancy and a great alleviation of idle
hom's. A man's claim to his own past is yet less
vahd. A paper might turn up (in proper story-book
fashion) in the secret drawer of an old ebony secre-
tary, and restore your family to its ancient honours,
and reinstate mine in a certain West Indian islet

317

ADDITIONAL MEMORIES

(not far from St. Kitt's, as beloved tradition hummed
in my young ears) which was once ours, and is now
unjustly some one else's, and for that matter (in the
state of the sugar trade) is not worth anything to
anybody. I do not say that these revolutions are
likely ; only no man can deny that they are possible ;
and the past, on the other hand, is lost for ever : our
old days and deeds, our old selves, too, and the very
world in which these scenes were acted, all brought
down to the same faint residuum as a last night's
dream, to some incontinuous images, and an echo
in the chambers of the brain. Not an hom', not a
mood, not a glance of the eye, can we revoke ; it is
all gone, past conjuring. And yet conceive us robbed
of it, conceive that httle thread of memory that we
trail behind us broken at the pocket's edge ; and in
what naked nuUity should we be left ! for we only
guide ourselves, and only know ourselves, by these
air-painted pictures of the past.

Upon these grounds, there are some among us
who claim to have lived longer and more richly than
their neighbours; when they lay asleep they claim
they were still active; and among the treasures of
memory that all men review for their amusement,
these count in no second place the harvests of their
dreams. There is one of this kind whom I have in
my eye, and whose case is perhaps unusual enough
to be described. He was from a child an ardent and
uncomfortable dreamer. When he had a touch of
fever at night, and the room swelled and shrank, and
his clothes, hanging on a nail, now loomed up instant
, 318

A CHAPTEU ON DREAMS

to the bigness of a church, and now drew away into
a horror of infinite distance and infinite littleness, the
poor soul was very well aware of what must follow,
and struggled hard against the approaches of that
slumber which was the beginning of sorrows. But
his struggles were in vain ; sooner or later the night-
hag would have him by the throat, and pluck him,
strangling and screaming, from his sleep. His dreams
were at times commonplace enough, at times very
strange : at times they were almost formless, he
would be haunted, for instance, by nothing more
definite than a certain hue of brown, which he did
not mind in the least while he was awake, but feared
and loathed while he was dreaming ; at times, again,
they took on every detail of circumstance, as when
once he supposed he must swallow the populous
world, and awoke screaming with the horror of the
thought. The two chief troubles of his very narrow
existence — the practical and everyday trouble of
school tasks and the ultimate and airy one of hell
and judgment — were often confounded together into
one appaUing nightmare. He seemed to himself to
stand before the Great White Throne ; he was called
on, poor Httle devil, to recite some form of words, on
which his destiny depended ; his tongue stuck, his
memory was blank, hell gaped for him ; and he would
awake, clinging to the curtain-rod with his knees to
his chin.

These were extremely poor experiences, on the
whole ; and at that time of fife my dreamer would
have very willingly parted with his power of dreams.

319 ^

ADDITIONAL MEMOUIES

But presently, in the course of his growth, the cries
and physical contortions passed away, seemingly for
ever ; his visions were still for the most part miser-
able, but they were more constantly supported ; and
he would awake with no more extreme symptom
than a flying heart, a freezing scalp, cold sweats, and
the speechless midnight fear. His dreams, too, as
befitted a mind better stocked with particulars,
became more circumstantial, and had more the air
and continuity of life. The look of the world begin-
ning to take hold on his attention, scenery came to
play a part in his sleeping as well as in his waking
thoughts, so that he would take long, uneventful
journeys and see strange towns and beautiful places
as he lay in bed. And, what is more significant, an
odd taste that he had for the Georgian costume and
for stories laid in that period of English history,
began to rule the features of his dreams ; so that he
masqueraded there in a three-cornered hat, and was
much engaged with Jacobite conspiracy between the
hour for bed and that for breakfast. About the same
time, he began to read in his dreams — tales, for the
most part, and for the most part after the manner of
G. P. R. James, but so incredibly more vivid and
moving than any printed book, that he has ever since
been malcontent with Hterature.

And then, while he was yet a student, there came
to him a dream-adventure which he has no anxiety
to repeat ; he began, that is to say, to dream in
sequence and thus to lead a double hfe — one of the
day, one of the night — one that he had every reason
320

A CHAPTER ON DREAMS

to believe was the true one, another that he had no
means of proving to be false. I should have said he
studied, or was by way of studying, at Edinburgh
College, which (it may be supposed) was how I came
to know him. Well, in his dream-life, he passed a
long day m the surgical theatre, his heart in his
mouth, his teeth on edge, seeing monstrous mal-
formations and the abhorred dexterity of surgeons.
In a heavy, rainy, foggy evening he came forth into
the South Bridge, turned up the High Street, and
entered the door of a tall land, at the top of which
he supposed himself to lodge. All night long, in his
wet clothes, he climbed the stairs, stair after stair in
endless series, and at every second flight a flaring
lamp with a reflector. AU night long, he brushed by
single persons passing downward — beggarly women
of the street, great, weary, muddy labom'ers, poor
scarecrows of men, pale parodies of women — but all
drowsy and weary Uke himself, and all single, and all
brushing against him as they passed. In the end,
out of a northern window, he would see day begin-
ning to whiten over the Firth, give up the ascent,
turn to descend, and in a breath be back again upon
the streets, in his wet clothes, in the wet, haggard
dawn, trudging to another day of monstrosities and
operations. Time went quicker in the life of dreams,
some seven hours (as near as he can guess) to one ;
and it went, besides, more intensely, so that the
gloom of these fancied experiences clouded the day,
and he had not shaken off" their shadow ere it was
time to he down and to renew them. I cannot tell

ADDITIONAL MEMORIES

how long it was that he endured this discipUne ; but
it was long enough to leave a great black blot upon
his memory, long enough to send him, trembhng for
his reason, to the doors of a certain doctor ; where-
upon with a simple draught he was restored to the
common lot of man.

The poor gentleman has since been troubled by
nothing of the sort ; indeed, his nights were for some
while like other men's, now blank, now chequered
with dreams, and these sometimes charming, some-
times appalhng, but except for an occasional vivid-
ness, of no extraordinary kind. I will just note one
of these occasions, ere I pass on to what makes my
dreamer truly interesting. It seemed to him that he
was in the first floor of a rough hill-farm. The room
showed some poor efforts at gentihty, a carpet on
the floor, a piano, I think, against the wall ; but, for
all these refinements, there was no mistaking he was
in a moorland place, among hillside people, and set
in miles of heather. He looked down from the
window vipon a bare farmyard, that seemed to have
been long disused. A great, uneasy stillness lay
upon the world. There was no sign of the farm-folk
or of any live stock, save for an old, brown, curly
dog of the retriever breed, who sat close in against
the waU of the house and seemed to be dozing.
Something about this dog disquieted the di'eamer ;
it was quite a nameless feehng, for the beast looked
right enough — indeed, he was so old and dull and
dusty and broken-down, that he should rather have
awakened pity; and yet the conviction came and

.^2 2

A CHAPTER ON DREAMS

grew upon the dreamer that this was no proper dog
at all, but something heUish. A great many dozing
summer flies hummed about the yard ; and presently
the dog thrust forth his paw, caught a fly in his open
palm, carried it to his mouth like an ape, and looking
suddenly up at the dreamer in the window, winked
to him with one eye. The dream went on, it matters
not how it went ; it was a good dream as dreams go ;
but there was nothing in the sequel worthy of that
devihsh brown dog. And the point of interest for
me hes partly in that very fact : that having found
so singular an incident, my imperfect dreamer should
prove unable to carry the tale to a fit end and fall
back on indescribable noises and indiscriminate
horrors. It would be different now ; he knows his
business better !

For, to approach at last the point : This honest
fellow had long been in the custom of setting himself
to sleep with tales, and so had his father before him ;
but these were irresponsible inventions, told for the
teller's pleasure, with no eye to the crass public or
the thwart reviewer : tales where a thread might be
dropped, or one adventure quitted for another, on
fancy's least suggestion. So that the little people
who manage man's internal theatre had not as yet
received a very rigorous training ; and played upon
their stage like children who should have shpped
into the house and found it empty, rather than like
driUed actors performing a set piece to a huge hall
of faces. But presently my dreamer began to turn
his former amusement of story-teUing to (what is

323

ADDITIONAL MEMORIES

called) account ; by which I mean that he began to
write and sell his tales. Here was he, and here were
the little people who did that part of his business, in
quite new conditions. The stories must now be
trimmed and pared and set upon all-fours, they must
run from a beginning to an end and fit (after a
manner) with the laws of life ; the pleasure, in one
word, had become a business ; and that not only for
the dreamer, but for the little people of his theatre.
These understood the change as well as he. When
he lay down to prepare himself for sleep, he no
longer sought amusement, but printable and profit-
able tales ; and after he had dozed off in his box-
seat, his little people continued their evolutions with
the same mercantile designs. All other forms of
dream deserted him but two : he still occasionally
reads the most deMghtful books, he still visits at
times the most deUghtful places ; and it is perhaps
worthy of note that to these same places, and to
one in particular, he returns at intervals of months
and years, finding new field-paths, visiting new
neighbours, beholding that happy valley under new
effects of noon and dawn and sunset. But all the
rest of the family of visions is quite lost to him : the
common, mangled version of yesterday's affairs, the
raw-head-and-bloody-bones nightmare, rumoured to
be the child of toasted cheese — these and their hke
are gone ; and, for the most part, whether awake or
asleep, he is simply occupied — he or his httle people
— in consciously making stories for the market. This
dreamer (like many other persons) has encountered
324

A CHAPTER ON DREAMS

some trifling vicissitudes of fortune. When the bank
begins to send letters and the butcher to hnger at
the back gate, he sets to belabouring his brains after
a story, for that is his readiest money- winner ; and,
behold ! at once the little people begin to bestir
themselves in the same quest, and labour all night
long, and all night long set before him truncheons
of tales upon their lighted theatre. No fear of his
being frightened now ; the flying heart and the frozen
scalp are things bygone ; applause, growing applause,
growing interest, growing exultation in his own
cleverness (for he takes all the credit), and at last a
jubilant leap to wakefulness, with the cry, ' I have
it, that 'U do ! ' upon his Ups : with such and similar
emotions he sits at these nocturnal di'amas, with
such outbreaks, like Claudius in the play, he scatters
the performance in the midst. Often enough the
waking is a disappointment : he has been too deep
asleep, as I explain the thing ; drowsiness has gained
his little people, they have gone stumbhng and
maundering through their parts ; and the play, to
the awakened mind, is seen to be a tissue of ab-
surdities. And yet how often have these sleepless
Brownies done him honest service, and given him, as
he sat idly taking his pleasure in the boxes, better
tales than he could fashion for himself.

Here is one, exactly as it came to him. It seemed
he was the son of a very rich and wicked man, the
owner of broad acres and a most damnable temper.
The dreamer (and that was the son) had lived much
abroad, on purpose to avoid his parent ; and when

325

ADDITIONAL MEMORIES

at length he returned to England, it was to find him
married again to a young wife, who was supposed to
suffer cruelly and to loathe her yoke. Because of
this marriage (as the dreamer indistinctly understood)
it was desirable for father and son to have a meeting ;
and yet both being proud and both angry, neither
would condescend upon a visit. Meet they did
accordingly, in a desolate, sandy country by the
sea ; and there they quarrelled, and the son, stung
by some intolerable insult, struck down the father
dead. No suspicion was aroused ; the dead man
was found and buried, and the dreamer succeeded
to the broad estates, and found himself installed
under the same roof with his father's widow, for
whom no provision had been made. These two
lived very much alone, as people may after a be-
reavement, sat down to table together, shared the
long evenings, and grew daily better friends ; until
it seemed to him of a sudden that she was prying
about dangerous matters, that she had conceived a
notion of his guilt, that she watched him and tried
him with questions. He drew back from her
company as men draw back from a precipice
suddenly discovered ; and yet so strong was the
attraction that he would drift again and again into
the old intimacy, and again and again be startled
back by some suggestive question or some inexpH-
cable meaning in her eye. So they lived at cross
purposes, a hfe full of broken dialogue, challenging
glances, and suppressed passion ; until, one day,
he saw the woman slipping from the house in a
326

A CHAPTER ON DREAMS

veil, followed her to the station, followed her in
the train to the seaside country, and out over the
sandhills to the very place where the murder was
done. There she began to grope among the bents,
he watching her, flat upon his face ; and presently
she had something in her hand — I cannot remember
what it was, but it was deadly evidence against the
dreamer — and as she held it up to look at it, perhaps
from the shock of the discovery, her foot slipped, and
she hung at some peril on the brink of the tall sand-
wreaths. He had no thought but to spring up and
rescue her ; and there they stood face to face, she
with that deadly matter openly in her hand — his
very presence on the spot another link of proof
It was plain she was about to speak, but this was
more than he could bear — he could bear to be lost,
but not to talk of it with his destroyer ; and he cut
her short with trivial conversation. Arm in arm,
they returned together to the train, talking he knew
not what, made the journey back in the same
carriage, sat down to dinner, and passed the evening
in the drawing-room as in the past. But suspense
and fear drummed in the dreamer's bosom. ' She has
not denounced me yet ' — so his thoughts ran : ' when
will she denounce me? Will it be to-morrow?'
And it was not to-morrow, nor the next day, nor the
next ; and their Hfe settled back on the old terms,
only that she seemed kinder than before, and that,
as for him, the burthen of his suspense and wonder
grew daily more unbearable, so that he wasted away
like a man with a disease. Once, indeed, he broke

327

ADDITIONAL MEMORIES

all bounds of decency, seized an occasion when she
was abroad, ransacked her room, and at last, hidden
away among her jewels, found the damning evidence.
There he stood, holding this thing, which was his
life, in the hollow of his hand, and marveUing at her
inconsequent behaviour, that she should seek, and
keep, and yet not use it ; and then the door opened,
and behold herself So, once more, they stood, eye
to eye, with the evidence between them ; and once
more she raised to him a face brimming with some
communication ; and once more he shied away from
speech and cut her off. But before he left the
room, which he had turned upside down, he laid
back his death-warrant where he had found it ; and
at that, her face lighted up. The next thing he
heard, she was explaining to her maid, with some
ingenious falsehood, the disorder of her things.
Flesh and blood could bear the strain no longer;
and I think it was the next morning (though chrono-
logy is always hazy in the theatre of the mind)
that he burst from his reserve. They had been
breakfasting together in one corner of a great, par-
queted, sparely -furnished room of many windows ;
all the time of the meal she had tortured him with
sly allusions ; and no sooner were the servants gone, j
and these two protagonists alone together, than he m
leaped to his feet. She too sprang up, with a pale ^
face; with a pale face, she heard him as he raved
out his complaint: Why did she torture him so?
she knew all, she knew he was no enemy to her ; why
did she not denounce him at once? what signified
328

A CHAPTER ON DREAMS

her whole behaviour ? why did she torture him ?
and yet again, why did she torture him ? And when
he had done, she fell upon her knees, and with out-
stretched hands : ' Do you not understand ? ' she
cried. ' I love you ! '

Hereupon, with a pang of wonder and mercantile
delight the dreamer awoke. His mercantile delight was
not of long endurance ; for it soon became plain that in
this spirited tale there were unmarketable elements ;
which is just the reason why you have it here so briefly
told. But his wonder has still kept growing ; and I
think the reader's will also, if he consider it ripely.
For now he sees why I speak of the little people as of
substantive inventors and performers. To the end they
had kept their secret. I will go bail for the dreamer
(having excellent grounds for valuing his candour)
that he had no guess whatever at the motive of the
woman — the hinge of the whole well-invented plot
— until the instant of that highly dramatic declara-
tion. It was not his tale ; it was the little people's !
And observe : not only was the secret kept, the
story was told with really guileful craftsmanship.
The conduct of both actors is (in the cant phrase)
psychologically correct, and the emotion aptly gradu-
ated up to the surprising climax. I am awake now,
and I know this trade ; and yet I cannot better it.
I am awake, and I live by this business ; and yet
I could not outdo— could not perhaps equal — that
crafty artifice (as of some old, experienced carpenter
of plays, some Dennery or Sardou) by which the
same situation is twice presented and the two actors

329

ADDITIONAL MEMORIES

twice brought face to face over the evidence, only
once it is in her hand, once in his— and these in their
due order, the least dramatic first. The more I
think of it, the more I am moved to press upon the
world my question : Who are the Little People ?
They are near connections of the di'eamer's, beyond
doubt ; they share in his financial worries and have
an eye to the bank-book ; they share plainly in his
training ; they have plainly learned like him to build
the scheme of a considerate story and to arrange
emotion in progTCSsive order ; only I think they have
more talent ; and one thing is beyond doubt, they
can tell him a story piece by piece, like a serial, and
keep him all the while in ignorance of where they
aim. Who are they, then ? and who is the dreamer ?
Well, as regards the di-eamer, I can answer that,
for he is no less a person than myself ;— as I might
have told you from the beginning, only that the
critics murmur over my consistent egotism ; — and
as I am positively forced to tell you now, or I could
advance but httle further with my story. And for
the Little People, what shall I say they are but just
my Brownies, God bless them ! who do one-half
my work for me while I am fast asleep, and in
all human likelihood, do the rest for me as well, when
I am wide awake and fondly suppose I do it for
myself. That part which is done while I am sleeping
is the Brownies' part beyond contention ; but that
which is done when I am up and about is by no
means necessarily mine, since all goes to show the
Brownies have a hand in it even then. Here is a

330

A CHAPTER ON DREAMS

doubt that much concerns my conscience. For my-
self— what I call I, my conscious ego, the denizen
of the pineal gland unless he has changed his resi-
dence since Descartes, the man with the conscience
and the variable bank-account, the man with the
hat and the boots, and the privilege of voting and
not carrying his candidate at the general elections —
I am sometimes tempted to suppose he is no story-
teller at all, but a creature as matter of fact as any
cheesemonger or any cheese, and a realist bemired
up to the ears in actuality ; so that, by that account,
the whole of my published fiction should be the single-
handed product of some Brownie, some Familiar, some
unseen collaborator, whom I keep locked in a back
garret, while I get all the praise and he but a share
(which I cannot prevent him getting) of the pudding.
I am an excellent adviser, something hke Moliere's
servant ; I pull back and I cut down ; and I dress
the whole in the best words and sentences that I
can find and make ; I hold the pen, too ; and I do the
sitting at the table, which is about the worst of it ;
and when all is done, I make up the manuscript
and pay for the registration ; so that, on the whole,
I have some claim to share, though not so largely as
I do, in the profits of our common enterprise.

I can but give an instance or so of what part is
done sleeping and what part awake, and leave the
reader to share what laurels there are, at his own nod,
between myself and my collaborators ; and to do this
I will first take a book that a number of persons
have been polite enough to read, The Strange Case

331

ADDITIONAL MEMORIES

of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I had long been
trying to write a story on this subject, to find a
body, a vehicle, for that strong sense of man's double
being which must at times come in upon and over-
whelm the mind of every thinking creature. I had
even written one. The Travelling Companion, which
was returned by an editor on the plea that it was
a work of genius and indecent, and which I burned
the other day on the ground that it was not a work
of genius, and that Jekyll had supplanted it. Then
came one of those financial fluctuations to which
(with an elegant modesty) I have hitherto referred in
the third person. For two days I went about racking
my brains for a plot of any sort ; and on the second
night I dreamed the scene at the window, and a
scene afterward split in two, in which Hyde, pursued
for some crime, took the powder and underwent the
change in the presence of his pursuers. All the rest
was made awake, and consciously, although I think
I can trace in much of it the manner of my Brownies.
The meaning of the tale is therefore mine, and had
long pre-existed in my garden of Adonis, and tried
one body after another in vain ; indeed, I do most of
the morahty, worse luck ! and my Brownies have not
a rudiment of what we call a conscience. Mine, too,
is the setting, mine the characters. All that was
given me was the matter of three scenes, and the
central idea of a voluntary change becoming in-
voluntary. WiU it be thought ungenerous, after I
have been so hberally ladhng out praise to my un-
seen collaborators, if I here toss them over, bound
332

A CHAPTER ON DREAMS

hand and foot, into the arena of the critics ? For
the business of the powders, which so many have
censured, is, I am reheved to say, not mine at all but
the Brownies'. Of another tale, in case the reader
should have glanced at it, I may say a word : the
not very defensible story of Olalla. Here the court,
the mother, the mother's niche, Olalla, Olalla's
chamber, the meetings on the stair, the broken
window, the ugly scene of the bite, were all given
me in bulk and detail as I have tried to write them ;
to this I added only the external scenery (for in my
dream I never was beyond the court), the portrait,
the characters of Felipe and the priest, the moral,
such as it is, and the last pages, such as, alas ! they
are. And I may even say that in this case the moral
itself was given me ; for it arose immediately on a
comparison of the mother and the daughter, and
from the hideous trick of atavism in the first. Some-
times a parabohc sense is still more undeniably
present in a dream ; sometimes I cannot but suppose
my Brownies have been aping Bunyan, and yet in
no case mth what would possibly be called a moral
in a tract ; never with the ethical narrowness ; con-
veying hints instead of life's larger limitations and
that sort of sense which we seem to perceive in the
arabesque of time and space.

For the most part, it will be seen, my Brownies
are somewhat fantastic, hke their stories hot and hot,
full of passion and the picturesque, ahve with ani-
mating incident ; and they have no prejudice against
the supernatural But the other day they gave me a

ADDITIONAL MEMORIES

surprise, entertaining me with a love-story, a little
April comedy, which I ought certainly to hand over
to the author of A Chance Acquaintance, for he could
write it as it should be written, and I am sure
(although I mean to try) that I cannot. — But who
would have supposed that a Brownie of mine should
invent a tale for Mr. Howells ?

IV
BEGGARS

In a pleasant, airy, uphill country, it was my fortune
when I was young to make the acquaintance of a
certain beggar, I call him beggar, though he usually
allowed his coat and his shoes (which were open-
mouthed, indeed) to beg for him. He was the wreck
of an athletic man, tall, gaunt, and bronzed ; far gone
in consumption, with that disquieting smile of the
mortally stricken on his face ; but still active afoot,
still with the brisk mihtary carriage, the ready
military salute. Three ways led through this piece
of country ; and as I was inconstant in my choice,
I beheve he must often have awaited me in vain.
But often enough, he caught me ; often enough,
from some place of ambush by the roadside, he
would spring suddenly forth in the regulation attitude,
and launching at once into his inconsequential talk,
fall into step with me upon my farther course. ' A
fine morning, sir, though perhaps a trifle inclining to
rain. I hope I see you well, sir. Why, no, sir, I don't
feel as hearty myself as I could wish, but I am keeping
about my ordinary. I am pleased to meet you on the

"^ 335

ADDITIONAL MEMORIES

road, sir. I assure you I quite look forward to one
of our little conversations. ' He loved the sound of
bis own voice inordinately, and though (with some-
thing too off-hand to caU servihty) he would always
hasten to agree with anything you said, yet he
could never suffer you to say it to an end. By what
transition he slid to his favourite subject I have
no memory ; but we had never been long together on
the way before he was deahng, in a very military
manner, with the Enghsh poets. ' SheUey was a
fine poet, sir, though a trifle atheistical in his opinions.
His Queen Mab, sir, is quite an atheistical work.
Scott, sh', is not so poetical a writer. With the works
of Shakespeare I am not so weU acquainted, but he
was a fine poet. Keats — John Keats, sir — he was a
very fine poet.' With such references, such trivial
criticism, such loving parade of his own knowledge,
he would beguile the road, striding forward up-hill,
his staff now clapped to the ribs of his deep, resonant
chest, now swinging in the ak with the remembered
jauntiness of the private soldier ; and all the while
his toes looking out of his boots, and his shirt looking
out of his elbows, and death looking out of his smile,
and his big, crazy frame shaken by accesses of cough.
He would often go the whole way home with me :
often to borrow a book, and that book always a poet
Off he would march, to continue his mendicant
rounds, with the volume shpped into the pocket of
his ragged coat ; and although he would sometimes
keep it quite a while, yet it came always back again
at last, not much the worse for its travels into beggar-

BEGGARS

dom. And in this way, doubtless, his knowledge
grew and his ghb, random criticism took a wider
range. But my hbrary was not the first he had
drawn upon : at our first encounter, he was already
brimful of Shelley and the atheistical Queen Mab,
and 'Keats — John Keats, sir.' And I have often
wondered how he canne by these acquirements ; just
as I often wondered how he fell to be a beggar. He
had served through the Mutiny — of which (like so
many people) he could tell practically nothing beyond
the names of places, and that it was 'difficult work, sir,'
and very hot, or that so-and-so was ' a very fine com-
mander, sir.' He was far too smart a man to have
remained a private ; in the nature of things, he must
have won his stripes. And yet here he was, without a
pension. When I touched on this problem, he would
content himself with diffidently offisring me advice.
'A man should be very careful when he is young,
sir. If you '11 excuse me saying so, a spirited young
gentleman like yourself, sir, should be very careful.
I was perhaps a trifle incHned to atheistical opinions
myself' For (perhaps with a deeper wisdom than we
are inclined in these days to admit) he plainly
bracketed agnosticism with beer and skittles.

Keats- — John Keats, sir — and Shelley were his
favourite bards. I cannot remember if I tried him
with Bossetti ; but I know his taste to a hair, and if
ever I did, he must have doted on that author.
What took him was a richness in the speech ; he
loved the exotic, the unexpected word ; the moving
cadence of a phrase ; a vague sense of emotion (about
Y ZZ7

ADDITIONAL MEMORIES

nothing) in the very letters of the alphabet : the
romance of language. -His honest head was very
nearly empty, his intellect like a child's ; and when
he read his favourite authors, he can almost never
have understood what he was reading. Yet the taste
was not only genuine, it was exclusive ; I tried in
vain to offer him novels ; he would none of them, he
cared for nothing but romantic language that he
could not understand. The case may be commoner
than we suppose. I am reminded of a lad who was
laid in the next cot to a friend of mine in a pubhc
hospital, and who was no sooner installed than he
sent out {perhaps with his last pence) for a cheap
Shakespeare. My friend pricked up his ears ; fell at
once in talk with his new neighbour, and was ready,
when the book arrived, to make a singular discovery.
For this lover of great Uterature understood not one
sentence out of twelve, and his favourite part was
that of which he understood the least — the inimitable,
mouth-filling rodomontade of the ghost in Hamlet.
It was a bright day in hospital when my friend
expounded the sense of this beloved jargon : a task
for which I am wiUing to believe my friend was very
fit, though I can never regard it as an easy one. I
know indeed a point or two, on which I would gladly
question Mr. Shakespeare, that lover of big words,
could he revisit the ghmpses of the moon, or could I
myself chmb backward to the spacious days of EHza-
beth. But in the second case, I should most hkely
pretermit these questionings, and take my place
instead in the pit at the Blackfriars, to hear the actor
338

BEGGARS

in his favourite part, playing up to Mr. Burbage, and
rolling out — as I seem to hear him — with a pon-
derous gusto —

' Unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd.'

What a pleasant chance, if we could go there in a
party ! and what a surprise for Mr, Burbage, when
the ghost received the honours of the evening !

As for my old soldier, like Mr. Burbage and Mr.
Shakespeare, he is long since dead ; and now hes
buried, I suppose, and nameless and quite forgotten,
in some poor city graveyard. ^ — ^But not for me, you
brave heart, have you been buried ! For me, yovi
are still afoot, tasting the sun and air, and striding
southward. By the groves of Comiston and beside
the Hermitage of Braid, by the Hunters' Tryst, and
where the curlews and plovers cry around Fairmile-
head, I see and hear you, stalwartly carrying your
deadly sickness, cheerfully discoursing of uncompre-
hended poets.

II

The thought of the old soldier recalls that of
another tramp, his counterpart. This was a little,
lean, and fiery man, with the eyes of a dog and the
face of a gypsy ; whom I found one morning en-
camped with his wife and children and his grinder's
wheel, beside the burn of Kinnaird. To this beloved
dell I went, at that time, daily ; and daily the knife-
grinder and I (for as long as his tent continued
pleasantly to interrupt my little wilderness) sat on
two stones, and smoked, and plucked grass and talked

ADDITIONAL MEMORIES

to the tune of the brown water. His childi-en were
mere whelps, they fought and bit among the fern
like vermin. His wife was a mere squaw ; I saw her
gather brush and tend the kettle, but she never
ventured to address her lord while I was present.
The tent was a mere gypsy hovel, hke a sty for pigs.
But the grinder himself had the fine self-sufficiency
and grave pohteness of the hunter and the savage ; he
did me the honours of this dell, which had been
mine but the day before, took me far into the secrets
of his life, and used me (I am proud to remember) as
a friend.

Like nay old soldier, he was far gone in the national
complaint. Unlike him, he had a vulgar taste in
letters ; scarce flying higher than the story papers ;
probably finding no difference, certainly seeking none,
between Tannahill and Burns ; his noblest thoughts,
whether of poetry or music, adequately embodied in
that somewhat obvious ditty,

' Will ye gang, lassie, gang
To the braes o' Balquhidder :'

— which is indeed apt to echo in the ears of Scottish
children, and to him, in view of his experience, must
have found a special directness of address. But if he
had no fine sense of poetry in letters, he felt with a
deep joy the poetry of life. You should have heard
him speak of what he loved ; of the tent pitched
beside the talking water ; of the stars overheard at
night ; of the blest return of morning, the peep of
day over the moors, the awaking birds among the
birches ; how he abhorred the long winter shut in
340

BEGGARS

cities ; and with what dehght, at the return of the
spring, he once more pitched his camp in the living
out-of-doors. But we were a pair of tramps ; and to
you, who are doubtless sedentary and a consistent
first-class passenger in hfe, he would scarce have laid
himself so open ; — to you, he might have been con-
tent to tell his story of a ghost — that of a buccaneer
with his pistols as he lived — whom he had once en-
countered in a seaside cave near Buckie ; and that
would have been enough, for that would have shown
you the mettle of the man. Here was a piece of
experience sohdly and hvingly built up in words,
here was a story created, teres atque rotundus.

And to think of the old soldier, that lover of the
literary bards ! He had visited stranger spots than
any seaside cave ; encountered men more terrible
than any spirit ; done and dared and suffered in that
incredible, unsung epic of the Mutiny War ; played
his part with the field force of Delhi, beleaguering
and beleaguered ; shared in that enduring, savage
anger and contempt of death and decency that, for
long months together, bedevil'd and inspired the
army ; was hurled to and fro in the battle-smoke of
the assault; was there, perhaps, where Nicholson
fell ; was there when the attacking column, with hell
upon every side, found the soldier's enemy — strong
drink, and the Hves of tens of thousands trembled in
the scale, and the fate of the flag of England stag-
gered. And of all this he had no more to say than
* hot work, sir,' or ' the army suffered a great deal,
sir,' or, ' I believe General Wilson, sir, was not very

341

ADDITIONAL MEMORIES

highly thought of m the papers.' His Hfe was naught
to him, the vivid pages of experience quite blank : in
words his pleasure lay — melodious, agitated words —
printed words, about that which he had never seen
and was connatally incapable of comprehending.
We have here two temperaments face to face ; both
untrained, unsophisticated, surprised (we may say) in
the egg ; both boldly charactered : — that of the artist,
the lover and artificer of words ; that of the maker,
the seeer, the lover and forger of experience. If the
one had a daughter and the other had a son, and
these married, might not some illustrious wiiter
count descent from the beggar-soldier and the needy
knife-grinder ?

Ill

Every one hves by selling something, whatever be
his right to it. The burglar sells at the same time
his own skill and courage and my silver plate (the
whole at the most inoderate figure) to a Jew receiver.
The bandit sells the traveller an article of prime
necessity : that traveller's life. And as for the old
soldier, who stands for central mark to my capricious
figures of eight, he dealt in a specialty ; for he was
the only beggar in the world who ever gave me plea-
sure for my money. He had learned a school of
manners in the barracks and had the sense to cling
to it, accosting strangers with a regimental freedom,
thanking patrons with a merely regimental difference,
sparing you at once the tragedy of his position and
the embarrassment of yours. There was not one
hint about him of the beggar's emphasis, the outburst
342

BEGGARS

of revolting gratitude, the rant and cant, the ' God
bless you, Kind, Kind gentleman,' which insults the
smallness of your alms by disproportionate vehemence,
which is so notably false, which would be so unbear-
able if it were true. I am sometimes tempted to
suppose this reading of the beggar's part, a survival
of the old days when Shakespeare was intoned upon
the stage and mourners keened beside the death-bed ;
to think that we cannot now accept these strong
emotions unless they be uttered in the just note of
life ; nor (save in the pulpit) endure these gross con-
ventions. They wound us, I am tempted to say, like
mockery ; the high voice of keening (as it yet Hngers
on) strikes in the face of sorrow like a buffet ; and
the rant and cant of the staled beggar stirs in us a
shudder of disgust. But the fact disproves these
amateur opinions. The beggar lives by his know-
ledge of the average man. He knows what he is
about when he bandages his head, and hires and
drugs a babe, and poisons Hfe with Poor Mary Ann
or Long, long ago ; he knows what he is about when
he loads the critical ear and sickens the nice con-
science with intolerable thanks ; they know what
they are about, he and his crew, when they pervade
the slums of cities, ghastly parodies of suffering,
hateful parodies of gratitude. This trade can scarce
be called an imposition ; it has been so blown upon
with exposures ; it flaunts its fraudulence so nakedly.
We pay them as we pay those who show us, in huge
exaggeration, the monsters of our drinking-water;
or those who daily predict the fall of Britain. We

343

ADDITIONAL MEMORIES

pay them for the pain they inflict, pay them, and
wince, and hurry on. And truly there is nothing
that can shake the conscience like a beggar's thanks ;
and that pohty in which such protestations can be
purchased for a shilling, seems no scene for an honest
man.

Are there, then, we may be asked, no genuine
beggars ? And the answer is. Not one. My old
soldier was a humbug hke the rest ; his ragged boots
were, in the stage phrase, properties ; whole boots
were given him again and again, and always gladly
accepted ; and the next day, there he was on the
road as usual, with toes exposed. His boots were
his method ; they were the man's trade ; without his
boots he would have starved ; he did not Mve by
charity, but by appeahng to a gross taste in the
public, which loves the hmelight on the actor's face,
and the toes out of the beggar's boots. There is a
true poverty, which no one sees : a false and merely
mimetic poverty, which usurps its place and dress,
and hves and above all drinks, on the fruits of the
usurpation. The true poverty does not go into the
streets ; the banker may rest assured, he has never
put a penny in its hand. The self-respecting poor
beg from each other ; never from the rich. To live
in the frock-coated ranks of Ufe, to hear canting
scenes of gratitude rehearsed for twopence, a man
might suppose that giving was a thing gone out of
fashion ; yet it goes forward on a scale so great as to
fill me with surprise. In the houses of the working
classes, all day long there will be a foot upon tlie
344

BEGGARS

stair ; all day long there will be a knocking at the
doors ; beggars come, beggars go, without stint,
hardly with intermission, from morning till night;
and meanwhile, in the same city and but a few streets
off, the castles of the rich stand unsummoned. Get
the tale of any honest tramp, you will find it was
always the poor who helped him ; get the truth from
any workman who has met misfortunes, it was always
next door that he would go for help, or only with
such exceptions as are said to prove a rule ; look at
the course of the mimetic beggar, it is through the
poor quarters that he trails his passage, showing his
bandages to every window, piercing even to the attics
with his nasal song. Here is a remarkable state of
things in our Christian commonwealths, that the poor
only should be asked to give.

IV

There is a pleasant tale of some worthless, phrasing
Frenchman, who was taxed with ingratitude : ' //
faut savoir garder Vindependance du cceurj cried he.
I own I feel with him. Gratitude without famiharity,
ffratitude otherwise than as a nameless element in a
friendship, is a thing so near to hatred that I do not
care to spht the difference. Until 1 find a man who
is pleased to receive obligations, I shall continue to
question the tact of those who are eager to confer
them. What an art it is, to give, even to our nearest
friends ! and what a test of manners, to receive !
How, upon either side, we smuggle away the obliga-
tion, blushing for each other ; how bluff and dull we

345

ADDITIONAL MEMORIES

make the giver ; how hasty, how falsely cheerful, the
receiver ! And yet an act of such difficulty and dis-
tress between near friends, it is supposed we can
perform to a total stranger and leave the man trans-
fixed with grateful emotions. The last thing you
can do to a man is to burthen him with an obliga-
tion, and it is what we propose to begin with ! But
let us not be deceived : unless he is totally degraded
to his trade, anger jars in his inside, and he grates his
teeth at our gratuity.

We should wipe two words from our vocabulary :
gratitude and charity. In real hfe, help is given out
of friendship, or it is not valued ; it is received from
the hand of friendship, or it is resented. We are all
too proud to take a naked gift : we must seem to
pay it, if in nothing else, then with the delights of
our society. Here, then, is the pitiful fix of the rich
man ; here is that needle's eye in which he stuck
akeady in the days of Christ, and still sticks to-day,
firmer, if possible, than ever : that he has the money
and lacks the love which should make his money
acceptable. Here and now, just as of old in Pales-
tine, he has the rich to dinner, it is with the rich that
he takes his pleasure : and when his turn comes to
be charitable, he looks in vain for a recipient. His
friends are not poor, they do not want ; the poor are
not his friends, they will not take. To whom is he
to give ? Where to find — note this phrase — the
Deserving Poor? Charity is (what they call) cen-
tralised ; offices are hired ; societies founded, with
secretaries paid or unpaid : the hunt of the Deserving
346

BEGGARS

Poor goes merrily forward. I think it will take
more than a merely hmnan secretary to disinter that
character. What ! a class that is to be in want from
no fault of its own, and yet greedily eager to receive
from strangers ; and to be quite respectable, and at
the same time quite devoid of self-respect ; and play
the most delicate part of friendship, and yet never be
seen ; and wear the form of man, and yet fly in the
face of all the laws of human nature : — and all this,
in the hope of getting a belly-god Burgess through a
needle's eye ! Oh, let him stick, by all means : and
let his polity tumble in the dust ; and let his epitaph
and all his literature (of which my own works begin
to form no inconsiderable part) be abolished even
from the history of man ! For a fool of this mon-
strosity of dulness, there can be no salvation : and
the fool who looked for the elixir of life was an angel
of reason to the fool who looks for the Deserving
Poor !

And yet there is one course which the unfortunate
gentleman may take. He may subscribe to pay the
taxes. There were the true charity, impartial and
impersonal, cumbering none with obhgation, helping
all. There were a destination for loveless gifts ;
there were the way to reach the pocket of the deserv-
ing poor, and yet save the time of secretaries ! But,
alas ! there is no colour of romance in such a course ;
and people nowhere demand the picturesque so much
as in their virtues.

347

V
THE LANTERN-BEARERS

These boys congregated every autumn about a
certain easterly fisher-village, where they tasted in a
high degree the glory of existence. The place was
created seemingly on purpose for the diversion of
young gentlemen. A street or two of houses, mostly
red and many of them tiled ; a number of fine trees
clustered about the manse and the kirkyard, and
turning the chief street into a shady alley ; many
little gardens more than usually bright with flowers ;
nets a-drying, and fisher- wives scolding in the back-
ward parts ; a smell of fish, a genial smell of sea-
weed ; whiffs of blowing sand at the street-corners ;
shops with golf-balls and bottled lolhpops ; another
shop with penny pickwicks (that remarkable cigar)
and the London Journal, dear to me for its starthng
pictures, and a few novels, dear for their suggestive
names : such, as well as memory serves me, were
the ingredients of the town. These, you are to con-
ceive posted on a spit between two sandy bays, and
sparsely flanked with villas — enough for the boys to
lodge in with their subsidiary parents, not enough
348

THE LANTERN-BEARERS

(not yet enough) to cocknify the scene : a haven in
the rocks in front : in front of that, a file of grey
islets : to the left, endless hnks and sand wreaths, a
wilderness of hiding-holes, ahve with popping rabbits
and soaring gulls : to the right, a range of seaward
crags, one rugged brow beyond another ; the ruins
of a mighty and ancient fortress on the brink of one ;
coves between — now charmed into sunshine quiet,
now whistling with wind and clamorous with burst-
ing surges ; the dens and sheltered hollows redolent
of thyme and southernwood, the air at the cliff's
edge brisk and clean and pungent of the sea — in
front of all, the Bass Rock, tilted seaward like a
doubtful bather, the surf ringing it with white, the
solan-geese hanging round its summit like a great
and glittering smoke. This choice piece of seaboard
was sacred, besides, to the wrecker ; and the Bass, in
the eye of fancy, still flew the colours of King James ;
and in the ear of fancy the arches of Tantallon still
rang with horse-shoe iron, and echoed to the com-
mands of Bell-the-Cat.

There was nothing to mar your days, if you were
a boy summering in that part, but the embarrassment
of pleasure. You might golf if you wanted ; but
I seem to have been better employed. You might
secrete yourself in the Lady's Walk, a certain sun-
less dingle of elders, all mossed over by the damp
as green as grass, and dotted here and there by the
stream-side with roofless walls, the cold homes of
anchorites. To fit themselves for life, and with a
special eye to acquire the art of smoking, it was even

349

ADDITIONAL MEMORIES

common for the boys to harbour there ; and you
might have seen a smgle penny pickwick, honestly
shared in lengths with a blunt knife, bestrew the
glen with these apprentices. Again, you might join
our fishing parties, where we sat perched as thick as
solan-geese, a covey of little anglers, boy and girl,
angling over each other's heads, to the ixiuch entangle-
ment of lines and loss of podleys and consequent
shrill recrimination — shrill as the geese themselves.
Indeed, had that been all, you might have done this
often ; but though fishing be a fine pastime, the
podley is scarce to be regarded as a dainty for the
table ; and it was a point of honour that a boy
should eat all that he had taken. Or again, you
might climb the Law, where the whale's jawbone
stood landmark in the buzzing wind, and behold the
face of many counties, and the smoke and spires of
many towns, and the sails of distant ships. You
might bathe, now in the flaws of fine weather, that
we pathetically call our summer, now in a gale of
wind, with the sand scourging yom* bare hide, your
clothes thrashing abroad from underneath their
guardian stone, the froth of the great breakers cast-
ing you headlong ere it had drowned your knees.
Or you might explore the tidal rocks, above all in
the ebb of springs, when the very roots of the hills
were for the nonce discovered ; following my leader
from one group to another, gToping in slippery tangle
for the wreck of ships, wading in pools after the
abominable creatures of the sea, and ever with an
eye cast backward on the march of the tide and the
350

THE LANTERN-BEARERS

menaced line of your retreat. And then you might
go Crusoeing, a word that covers all extempore eat-
ing in the open air : digging perhaps a house under
the margin of the Unks, kindling a lire of the sea-
ware, and cooking apples there — if they were truly
apples, for I sometimes suppose the merchant must
have played us off with some inferior and quite local
fruit, capable of resolving, in the neighbourhood of
fire, into mere sand and smoke and iodine ; or perhaps
pushing to Tantallon, you might lunch on sandwiches
and visions in the grassy court, while the wind
hummed in the crumbhng turrets ; or clambering
along the coast, eat geans ^ (the worst, I must sup-
pose, in Christendom) from an adventurous gean-
tree that had taken root under a cliff, where it was
shaken with an ague of east wind, and sUvered after
gales with salt, and grew so foreign among its bleak
surroundings that to eat of its produce was an
adventure in itself

There are mingled some dismal memories with
so many that were joyous. Of the fisher- wife, for
instance, who had cut her throat at Canty Bay ; and
of how I ran with the other children to the top of
the Quadrant, and beheld a posse of silent people
escorting a cart, and on the cart, bound in a chair, her
throat bandaged, and the bandage all bloody — horror !
— the fisher-wife herself, who continued thenceforth
to hag-ride my thoughts, and even to-day (as I recall
the scene) darkens dayhght. She was lodged in the
little old jail in the chief street ; but whether or no

1 Wild cherries.

ADDITIONAL MEMORIES

she died there, with a wise terror of the worst, I
never inquired. She had been tipphng ; it was but
a dingy tragedy ; and it seems strange and hard that,
after all these years, the poor crazy sinner should
be still pilloried on her cart m the scrap-book of my
memory. Nor shall I readily forget a certain house
in the Quadrant where a visitor died, and a dark old
woman continued to dwell alone with the dead body ;
nor how this old woman conceived a hatred to myself
and one of my cousins, and in the dread hour of the
dusk, as we were clambering on the garden-walls,
opened a window in that house of mortality and
cursed us in a shrill voice and with a marrowy choice
of language. It was a pair of very colourless urchins
that fled down the lane from this remarkable experi-
ence ! But I recall with a more doubtful sentiment,
compounded out of fear and exultation, the coil of
equinoctial tempests ; trumpeting squalls, scouring
flaws of rain ; the boats with their reefed lugsails
scudding for the harbour mouth, where danger lay,
for it was hard to make when the wind had any east
in it ; the wives clustered with blowing shawls at
the pier-head, where (if fate was against them) they
might see boat and husband and sons — their whole
wealth and their whole family — engulfed under their
eyes ; and (what I saw but once) a troop of neigh-
bours forcing such an unfortunate homeward, and
she squalling and batthng in their midst, a figure
scarcely human, a tragic Meenad.

These are things that I recall with interest; but
what my memory dwells upon the most, I have been
352

THE LANTERN-BEARERS

all this while withholding. It was a sport peculiar
to the place, and indeed to a week or so of our two
months' hohday there. Maybe it still flourishes in its
native spot ; for boys and their pastimes are swayed
by periodic forces inscrutable to man ; so that tops
and marbles reappear in their due season, regular like
the sun and moon ; and the harmless art of knuckle-
bones has seen the fall of the Roman empire and the
rise of the United States. It may still flourish in its
native spot, but nowhere else, I am persuaded ; for I
tried myself to introduce it on Tweedside, and was
defeated lamentably ; its charm being quite local,
Hke a country wine that cannot be exported.

The idle manner of it was this : —

Toward the end of September, when school-time
was drawing near and the nights were already black,
we would begin to sally from our respective villas,
each equipped with a tin bull's-eye lantern. The
thing was so well known that it had worn a rut in
the commerce of Great Britain ; and the grocers,
about the due time, began to garnish their windows
with our particular brand of luminary. We wore
them buckled to the waist upon a cricket belt, and
over them, such was the rigour of the game, a
buttoned top-coat. They smelled noisomely of
bhstered tin ; they never burned aright, though
they would always burn our fingers ; their use was
naught ; the pleasure of them merely fanciful ; and
yet a boy with a bull's-eye under his top-coat asked
for nothing more. The fishermen used lanterns
about their boats, and it was from them, I suppose,

z 353

ADDITIONAL MEMORIES

that we had got the hint ; but theirs were not bull's-
eyes, nor did we ever play at being fishermen. The
police carried them at their belts, and we had plainly
copied them in that ; yet we did not pretend to be^
policemen. Burglars, indeed, we may have had
some haunting thoughts of; and we had certainly an
eye to past ages when lanterns were more common,
and to certain story-books in which we had found
them to figure very largely. But take it for all in
aU, the pleasure of the thing was substantive ; and
to be a boy with a bull's-eye under his top-coat was
good enough for us.

When two of these asses met, there would be an
anxious ' Have you got your lantern ?' and a gratified
' Yes ! ' That was the shibboleth, and very needful
too ; for, as it was the rule to keep our glory con-
tained, none could recognise a lantern-bearer, unless
(hke the polecat) by the smell. Four or five would
sometimes chmb into the belly of a ten-man lugger,
with nothing but the thwarts above them — for the
cabin was usually locked, or choose out some hollow
of the links where the wind might whistle overhead.
There the coats would be unbuttoned and the bull's-
eyes discovered ; and in the chequering gUmmer,
under the huge windy hall of the night, and cheered
by a rich steam of toasting tinware, these fortunate
young gentlemen would crouch together in the cold
sand of the links or on the scaly bilges of the fishing-
boat, and dehght themselves with inappropriate talk.
Woe is me that I may not give some specimens —
some of their foresights of life, or deep inquiries into
354

THE LANTERN-BEARERS

the rudiments of man and nature, these were so fiery
and so innocent, they were so richly silly, so romanti-
cally young. But the talk, at any rate, was but a
condiment ; and these gatherings themselves only
accidents in the career of the lantern-bearer. The
essence of this bliss was to walk by yourself in the
black night ; the shde shut, the top-coat buttoned ;
not a ray escaping, whether to conduct your footsteps
or to make your glory pubhc : a mere pillar of dark-
ness in the dark ; and all the while, deep down in
the privacy of your fool's heart, to know you had a
bull's-eye at your belt, and to exult and sing over
the knowledge.

II

It is said that a poet has died young in the breast
of the most stohd. It may be contended, rather,
that this (somewhat minor) bard in almost every case
survives, and is the spice of life to his possessor.
Justice is not done to the versatihty and the un-
plumbed childishness of man's imagination. His life
from without may seem but a rude mound of mud ;
there will be some golden chamber at the heart of it,
in which he dwells dehghted ; and for as dark as his
pathway seems to the observer, he will have some
kind of a bull's-eye at his belt.

It would be hard to pick out a career more cheer-
less than that of Dancer, the miser, as he figures in
the ' Old Bailey Reports,' a prey to the most sordid
persecutions, the butt of his neighbourhood, betrayed

355

ADDITIONAL MEMORIES

by his hired man, his house beleaguered by the impish
school-boy, and he himself grinding and fuming and
impotently fleeing to the law against these pin-pricks.
You marvel at first that any one should wilhngiy
prolong a life so destitute of charm and dignity ; and
then you call to memory that had he chosen, had he
ceased to be a miser, he could have been freed at
once from these trials, and might have built himself
a castle and gone escorted by a squadron. For the
love of more recondite joys, which we cannot esti-
mate, which, it may be, we should envy, the man
had wiUingly forgone both comfort and consideration.
' His mind to him a kingdom was ; ' and sure enough,
digging into that mind, which seems at first a dust-
heap, we unearth some priceless jewels. For Dancer
must have had the love of power and the disdain of
using it, a noble character in itself ; disdain of many
pleasures, a chief part of what is commonly called
wisdom ; disdain of the inevitable end, that finest
trait of mankind ; scorn of men's opinions, another
element of virtue ; and at the back of all, a con-
science just like yours and mine, whining like a cur,
swindling like a thimble-rigger, but still pointing
(there or thereabout) to some conventional standard.
Here were a cabinet portrait to which Hawthorne
perhaps had done justice ; and yet not Hawthorne
either, for he Avas mildly minded, and it lay not in
him to create for us that throb of the miser's pulse,
his fretful energy of gusto, his vast arms of ambition
clutching in he knows not what : insatiable, insane,
a god with a muck-rake. Thus, at least, looking in
356

THE LANTERN-BEARERS

the bosom of the miser, consideration detects the
poet in the full tide of life, with more, indeed, of the
poetic fire than usually goes to epics; and tracing
that mean man about his cold hearth, and to and
fro in his discomfortable house, spies within him a
blazing bonfire of dehght And so with others, who
do not five by bread alone, but by some cherished
and perhaps fantastic pleasure ; who are meat sales-
men to the external eye, and possibly to themselves
are Shakespeares, Napoleons, or Beethovens ; who
have not one virtue to rub against another in the
field of active life, and yet perhaps, in the life of
contemplation, sit with the saints. We see them
on the street, and we can count their buttons ; but
heaven knows in what they pride themselves ! heaven
knows where they have set their treasure !

There is one fable that touches very near the
quick of life : the fable of the monk who passed into
the woods, heard a bird break into song, hearkened
for a trill or two, and found himself on his return a
stranger at his convent gates ; for he had been absent
fifty years, and of all his comrades there survived
but one to recognise him. It is not only in the
woods that this enchanter carols, though perhaps he
is native there. He sings in the most doleful places.
The miser hears him and chuckles, and the days are
moments. With no more apparatus than an ill-
smeUing lantern I have evoked him on the naked
Hnks. All life that is not merely mechanical is spun
out of two strands : seeking for that bird and hearing
him. And it is just this that makes life so hard to

357

ADDITIONAL MEMORIES

value, and the delight of each so incommunicable.
And just a knowledge of this, and a remembrance of
those fortunate hours in which the bird has sung to
us, that fills us with such wonder when we tm-n the
pages of the reaUst There, to be sure, we find a
picture of hfe in so far as it consists of mud and of
old iron, cheap desires and cheap fears, that which
we are ashamed to remember and that which we are
careless whether we forget ; but of the note of that
time-devouring nightingale we hear no news.

The case of these writers of romance is most
obscure. They have been boys and youths ; they
have lingered outside the window of the beloved,
who was then most probably wi'iting to some one
else ; they have sat before a sheet of paper, and felt
themselves mere continents of congested poetry, not
one hne of which would flow ; they have walked
alone in the woods, they have walked in cities under
the countless lamps ; they have been to sea, they
have hated, they have feared, they have longed to
knife a man, and maybe done it ; the wild taste of
life has stung their palate. Or, if you deny them
all the rest, one pleasure at least they have tasted to
the full — their books are there to prove it — the keen
pleasure of successful literary composition. And yet
they fiU the globe with volumes, whose cleverness
inspires me with despairing admiration, and whose
consistent falsity to all I care to call existence, with
despairing wrath. If I had no better hope than to
continue to revolve among the dreary and petty
businesses, and to be moved by the paltry hopes and
358

THE LANTERN-BEARERS

fears with which they suiTOund and animate their
heroes, I declare I would die now. But there has
never an hour of mine gone quite so dully yet ; if it
were spent waiting at a railway junction, I would
have some scattering thoughts, I could count some
grains of memory, compared to which the whole of
one of these romances seems but dross.

These writers would retort, if I take them
properly, that this was very true; that it was the
same with themselves and other persons of (what
they call) the artistic temperament ; that in this we
were exceptional, and should apparently be ashamed
of ourselves; but that our works must deal ex-
clusively with (what they call) the average man,
who was a prodigious dull fellow, and quite dead to
aU but the paltriest considerations. I accept the
issue. We can only know others by ourselves.
The artistic temperament (a plague on the expres-
sion !) does not make us different from our fellow-
men, or it would make us incapable of writing
novels; and the average man (a murrain on the
word!) is just like you and me, or he would not
be average. It was Whitman who stamped a kind
of Birmingham sacredness upon the latter phrase ;
but Whitman knew very well, and showed very
nobly, that the average man was full of joys and
full of poetry of his own. And this harping on
life's dulness and man's meanness is a loud profession
of incompetence ; it is one of two things : the cry
of the bhnd eye, / cannot see, or the complaint of
the dumb tongue, / cannot utter. To draw a hfe

359

ADDITIONAL MEMORIES

without de%hts is to prove I have not reahsed it.
To picture a man without some sort of poetry —
well, it goes near to prove my case, for it shows an
author may have httle enough. To see Dancer only
as a dirty, old, smaU-minded, impotently fuming
man, in a dirty house, besieged by Harrow boys,
and probably beset by small attorneys, is to show
myself as keen an observer as . . . the Harrow
boys. But these young gentlemen (with a more
becoming modesty) were content to pluck Dancer
by the coat-tails; they did not suppose they had
surprised his secret or could put him Hvmg in a
book : and it is there my error would have lain.
Or say that in the same romance — I continue to
call these books romances, in the hope of giving
pain — say that in the same romance, which now
begins really to take shape, I should leave to speak
of Dancer, and follow instead the Harrow boys;
and say that I came on some such business as that
of my lantern-bearers on the links; and described
the boys as very cold, spat upon by flurries of rain,
and drearily surrounded, all of which they were;
and their talk as silly and indecent, which it certainly
was. I might upon these hues, and had I Zola's
genius, turn out, in a page or so, a gem of hterary
art, render the lantern-hght with the touches of a
master, and lay on the indecency with the ungrudg-
ing hand of love; and when all was done, what a
triumph would my picture be of shallowness and
dulness ! how it would have missed the point ! how
it would have belied the boys ! To the ear of the
^60

THE LANTERN-BEARERS

stenographer, the talk is merely silly and indecent;
but ask the boys themselves, and they are discussing
(as it is highly proper they should) the possibilities
of existence. To the eye of the observer they are
wet and cold and drearily surrounded ; but ask them-
selves, and they are in the heaven of a recondite
pleasure, the ground of which is an ill-smelling
lantern.

Ill

For, to repeat, the ground of a man's joy is often
hard to hit. It may hinge at times upon a mere
accessory, like the lantern ; it may reside, like
Dancer's, in the mysterious inwards of psychology.
It may consist with perpetual failure, and find
exercise in the continued chase. It has so little
bond with externals (such as the observer scribbles
in his note-book) that it may even touch them not ;
and the man's true life, for which he consents to
hve, lie altogether in the field of fancy. The clergy-
man, in his spare hours, may be winning battles,
the farmer saihng ships, the banker reaping triumph
in the arts : all leading another life, plying another
trade from that they chose ; like the poet's house-
builder, who, after all, is cased in stone,

' By his fireside, as impotent fancy prompts,
Rebuilds it to his liking.'

In such a case the poetry runs underground. The
observer (poor soul, with his documents !) is all
abroad. For to look at the man is but to court

361

ADDITIONAL MEMORIES

deception. We shall see the trunk from which he
draws his nourishment ; but he himself is above and
abroad in the green dome of foliage, hummed through
by winds and nested in by nightingales. And the
true reaHsm were that of the poets, to chmb up after
him Hke a squirrel, and catch some glimpse of the
heaven for which he lives. And the true reahsm,
always and everywhere, is that of the poets : to find
out where joy resides, and give it a voice far beyond
singing.

For to miss the joy is to miss aU. In the joy of
the actors hes the sense of any action. That is the
explanation, that the excuse. To one who has not
the secret of the lanterns, the scene upon the links
is meaningless. And hence the haunting and truly
spectral unreaHty of reahstic books. Hence, when
we read the English realists, the incredulous wonder
with which we observe the hero's constancy under
the submerging tide of dulness, and how he bears
up with his jibbing sweetheart, and endures the
chatter of idiot girls, and stands by his whole un-
featured wilderness of an existence, instead of seek-
ing relief in drink or foreign travel. Hence in the
French, in that meat-market of middle-aged sensu-
ality, the disgusted surprise with which we see the
hero drift sidelong, and practically quite untempted,
into every description of misconduct and dishonour.
In each, we miss the personal poetry, the enchanted
atmosphere, that rainbow work of fancy that clothes
what is naked and seems to ennoble what is base ; in
each, hfe falls dead like dough, instead of soaring
362

THE LANTERN-BEARERS

away like a balloon into the colours of the sunset ;
each is true, each inconceivable ; for no man hves
in external truth, among salts and acids, but in the
warm, phantasmagoric chamber of his brain, with
the painted windows and the storied walls.

Of this falsity we have had a recent example from
a man who knows far better — Tolstoi's Powers of
Darkness. Here is a piece full of force and truth,
yet quite untrue. For before Mikita was led into
so dire a situation he was tempted, and temptations
are beautiful at least in part ; and a work which
dwells on the ughness of crime and gives no hint
of any lovehness in the temptation, sins against the
modesty of life, and even when Tolstoi writes it,
sinks to melodrama. The peasants are not under-
stood ; they saw their life in fairer colours ; even
the deaf girl was clothed in poetry for Mikita, or
he had never fallen. And so, once again, even an
Old Bailey melodrama, without some brightness of
poetry and lustre of existence, falls into the incon-
ceivable and ranks with fairy tales.

IV

In nobler books we are moved with something
like the emotions of hfe ; and this emotion is very
variously provoked. We are so moved when Levine
labours on the field, when Andre sinks beyond
emotion, when Richard Feverel and Lucy Des-
borough meet beside the river, when Antony, * not
cowardly, puts off his helmet,' when Kent has infinite

ADDITIONAL MEMORIES

pity on the dying Lear, when, in DostoiefFsky's
Despised and Rejected, the uncomplaining hero drains
his cup of suffering and virtue. These are notes
that please the great heart of man. Not only love, and
the fields, and the bright face of danger, but sacrifice
and death and unmerited suffering humbly supported,
touch in us the vein of the poetic. We love to think
of them, we long to try them, we are humbly hope-
ftd that we may prove heroes also.

We have heard, perhaps, too much of lesser
matters. Here is the door, here is the open air.
Itur in antiquam silvam.

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