LETTER XIII.
HIGHLAND HUT, ITS FURNITURE AND INMATES—HIGHLAND AMUSEMENT AND DINNER—“ROB ROY,” AND SCENERY OF THE “LADY OF THE LAKE.”
The cottage-inn at the head of Loch Katrine, was tenanted by a woman who might have been a horse-guardsman in petticoats, and who kept her smiles for other cattle than the Sassenach. We bought her whiskey and milk, praised her butter, and were civil to the little Highlandman at her breast; but neither mother nor child were to be mollified. The rocks were bare around, we were too tired for a pull in the boat, and three mortal hours lay between us and the nearest event in our history. I first penetrated, in the absence of our Hecate, to the inner room of the shieling. On the wall hung a broadsword, two guns, a trophy or two of deers’ horns, and a Sunday suit of plaid, philibeg and short red coat, surmounted by a gallant bonnet and feather. Four cribs, like the berths in a ship, occupied the farther side of the chamber, each large enough to contain two persons; a snow-white table stood between the windows; a sixpenny glass, with an eagle’s feather stuck in the frame, hung at such a height that, “though tall of my hands,” I could just see my nose; and just under the ceiling on the left was a broad and capacious shelf, on which reposed apparently the old clothes of a century—a sort of place where the gude-wife would have hidden Prince Charlie, or might rummage for her grandmother’s baby-linen.
The heavy steps of the dame came over the threshold, and I began to doubt, from the look in her eyes, whether I should get a blow of her hairy arm or a “persuader” from the butt of a gun for my intrusion. “What are ye wantin’ here?” shespeeredat me, with a Helen M’Gregor-to-Baillie-Nicol-Jarvie-sort of an expression.
“I was looking for a potato to roast, my good woman.”
“Is that a’? Ye’ll find it ayont, then!” and pointing to a bag in the corner, she stood while I subtracted the largest, and then followed me to the general kitchen and receiving-room, where I buried myimprovistadinner in the remains of the peat fire, and congratulated myself on my ready apology.
What to do while the potato was roasting! My English friend had already cleaned his gun for amusement, and I had looked on. We had stoned the pony till he had got beyond us in the morass, (small thanks to us, if the dame knew it.) We had tried to make a chicken swim ashore from the boat, we had fired away all my friend’s percussion caps, and there was nothing for it but to converseà rigueur. We lay on our backs till the dame brought us the hot potato on a shovel, with oat-cake and butter, and, with this Highland dinner, the last hour came decently to its death.
An Englishman, with his wife and lady’s maid, came over the hills with a boat’s crew; and a lassie, who was not very pretty, but who lived on the lake and had found the means to get “Captain Rob” and his men pretty well under her thumb. We were all embarked, the lassie in the stern-sheets with the captain; and ourselves, though we “paid the Scot,” of no more consideration than our portmanteaus. I was amused, for it was the first instance I had seen in any country (my own not excepted) of thorough emancipation from the distinction of superiors. Luckily the girl was bent on showing the captain to advantage, and by ingenious prompting and catechism she induced him to do what probably was his custom when he could not better amuse himself—point out the localities as the boat sped on, and quote the Lady of the Lake with an accent which made it a piece of good fortune to have “crammed” the poem before hand.
The shores of the lake are flat and uninteresting at the head, but, toward the scene of Scott’s romance, they rise into bold precipices, and gradually become worthy of their celebrity. The Trosachs are a cluster of small, green mountains, strewn, or rather piled, with shrubs and mossy verdure, and from a distance you would think only a bird, or Ranald of the Mist, could penetrate their labyrinthine recesses. Captain Rob showed us successively the Braes of Balquidder, Rob Roy’s birth and burial place, Benledi, and the crag from which hung, by the well woven skirts of braidcloth, the worthy baillie of Glasgow; and, beneath a precipice of remarkable wildness, the half intoxicated steersman raised his arm, and began to repeat, in the most unmitigated gutterals:—
“Higho’erthe south huge BenvenueDowntothe lakehismasses threw,Crags, knowls,andmoundsconfusedly hurl’dThe fragmentsof an earlierwurruld!” etc.
“Higho’erthe south huge BenvenueDowntothe lakehismasses threw,Crags, knowls,andmoundsconfusedly hurl’dThe fragmentsof an earlierwurruld!” etc.
“Higho’erthe south huge BenvenueDowntothe lakehismasses threw,Crags, knowls,andmoundsconfusedly hurl’dThe fragmentsof an earlierwurruld!” etc.
“Higho’erthe south huge Benvenue
Downtothe lakehismasses threw,
Crags, knowls,andmoundsconfusedly hurl’d
The fragmentsof an earlierwurruld!” etc.
I have underlined it according to the captain’s judicious emphasis, and in the last word have endeavored to spell after his remarkable pronunciation. Probably to a Frenchman, however, it would have seemed all very fine—for Captain Rob (I must do him justice, though he broke the strap of my portmanteau) was as good-looking a ruffian as you would sketch on a summer’s tour.
Some of the loveliest water I have ever seen in my life (and I am rather an amateur of that element—to look at,) lies deep down at the bases of these divine Trosachs. The usual approaches from lake to mountain (beach or sloping shore,) are here dispensed with; and, straight up from the deep water, rise the green precipices and bold and ragged rocks, over-shadowing the glassy mirror below with teints like a cool corner in a landscape of Ruysdael’s. It is something—(indeed on a second thought, exceedingly) like—Lake George; only that the islands in this extremity of Loch Katrine lie closer together, and permit the sun no entrance except by a ray almost perpendicular. A painter will easily understand the effect of this—the loss of all thatmakes a surfaceto the water, and the consequent far depth to the eye, as if the boat in which you shot over it brought with it its own water and sent its ripple through the transparent air. I writecurrente calamo, and have no time to clear up my meaning, but it will be evident to all lovers of nature.
Captain Rob put up his helm for a little fairy green island, lying like a lapfull of green moss on the water, and, rounding a point, we ran suddenly into a cove sheltered by a tree, and in a moment the boat grated on the pebbles of a natural beach perhaps ten feet in length. A flight of winding steps, made roughly of roots and stones, ascended from the water’s edge.
“Gentlemen and ladies!” said the captain, with a hiccup, “this is Ellen’s Isle. This is the gnarled oak,” (catching at a branch of the tree as the boat swung astern,) “and —— you’ll please to go upthemsteps, and I’ll tell ye the rest in Ellen’s bower.”
The Highland lassie sprang on shore, and we followed up the steep ascent, arriving breathless at last at the door of a fanciful bower, built by Lord Willoughby D’Eresby, the owner of the island, exactly after the description in the Lady of the Lake. The chairs were made of crooked branches of trees and covered with deer-skins, the tables were laden with armor and every variety of weapon, and the rough beams of the building were hung with antlers and other spoils of the chase.
“Here’s where she lived!” said the captain, with the gravity of a cicerone at the Forum, “andnoo, if ye’ll come out, I’llshowyou the echo!”
We followed to the highest point of the island, and the Highlandman gave a scream that showed considerable practice, but I thought he would have burst his throat in the effort. The awful echo went round, “as mentioned in the bill of performance,” every separate mountain screaming back the discord till you would have thought the Trosachs a crew of mocking giants. It was a wonderful echo, but, like most wonders, I could have been content to have had less for my money.
There was a “small silver beach” on the mainland opposite, and above it a high mass of mountain.
“There,” said the captain, “gentlemen and ladies, is where Fitz-Jamesblow’dhis bugle, and waited for the ‘light shallop’ of Ellen Douglas; and here, where you landed and came upthemsteps, is where she brought him to the bower, and the very tree’s still there—as you see’d me tak’ hold of it—and over the hill, yonder, is where the gallant gray giv’ out, and breathedhislast, and (will you turn round, if you please, them that likes) yonder’s where Fitz-James met Red Murdoch that killed Blanche of Devon, and right across this waterswumyoung Greme that disdained the regular boat, and I s’pose on that lower step set the old Harper and Ellen many a time a-watching for Douglas—and now, if you’d like to hear the echo once more—”
“Heaven forbid!” was the universal cry; and, in fear of our ears, we put the bower between us and Captain Rob’s lungs, and followed the Highland girl back to the boat.
From Ellen’s Isle to the head of the small creek, so beautifully described in the Lady of the Lake, the scenery has the same air of lavish and graceful vegetation, and the same features of mingled boldness and beauty. It is a spot altogether that one is sure to live much in with memory. I see it as clearly now as then.
The whiskey had circulated pretty freely among the crew, and all were more or less intoxicated. Captain Rob’s first feat on his legs was to drop my friend’s gun case and break it to pieces, for which he instantly got a cuff between the eyes from the boxing dandy, that would have done the business for a softer head. The Scot was a powerful fellow, and I anticipated a row; but the tremendous power of the blow and the skill with which it was planted, quite subdued him. He rose from the grass as white as a sheet, but quietly shouldered the portmanteau with which he had fallen, and trudged on with sobered steps to the inn.
We took a post-chaise immediately for Callender, and it was not till we were five miles from the foot of the lake that I lost my apprehensions of an apparition of the Highlander from the darkening woods. We arrived at Callender at nine, and the next morning at sunrise were on our way to breakfast at Stirling.
LETTER XIV.
SCOTTISH STAGES—THOROUGH-BRED SETTER—SCENERY—FEMALE PEASANTRY—MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS, STIRLING CASTLE.
The lakes of Scotland are without the limits of stage-coach and post-horse civilization, and to arrive at these pleasant conveniences is to be consoled for the corresponding change in the character of the scenery. From Callander there is a coach to Stirling, and it was on the top of the “Highlander,” (a brilliant red coach, with a picture of Rob Roy on the panels,) that, with my friend and his dog, I was on the road, bright and early, for the banks of the Teith. I have scarce done justice, by the way, to my last mentioned companion, (a superb, thorough-bred setter, who answered to the derogatory appellation of Flirt,) for he had accompanied me in most of my wanderings for a couple of months, and his society had been preferred to that of many a reasoning animal on the road, in the frequent dearth of amusement. Flirt’s pedigree had been taken on trust by my friend, the dog-fancier, of whom he was bought, only knowing that he came of a famous race, belonging to a gentleman living somewhere between Stirling and Callander; and to determine his birthplace and get another of the same breed, was a greater object with his master than to see all the lakes and mountains of Caledonia. Poor Flirt was elevated to the highest seat on the coach, little aware that his reputation for birth and breeding depended on his recognising the scenes of his puppyhood—for if his former master had told truly, these were the fields where his young ideas had been taught a dog’s share in shooting, and his unconscious tail and ears were now under watchful surveillance for a betrayal of his presumed reminiscences.
The coach rolled on over the dew-damp road, crossing continually those bright and sparkling rivulets, which gladden the favored neighborhood of mountains; and the fields and farm houses took gradually the look of thrift and care, which indicates an approach to a thickly settled country. The castle of Doune, a lovely hunting seat of the Queen of Scots, appeared in the distance, with its gray towers half-buried in trees, when Flirt began to look before and behind, and take less notice of the shabby gentleman on his left, who, from sharing with him a volant breakfast of bread and bacon, had hitherto received the most of his attention. We kept on at a pretty pace, and Flirt’s tail shifted sides once or twice with a very decided whisk, and his intelligent head gradually grew more erect upon his neck of white-and-tan. It was evident he had travelled the road before. Still on, and as the pellucid Teith began to reflect in her eddying mirror the towers of Castle Doune—a scene worthy of its tender and chivalrous associations—a suppressed whine and a fixed look over the fields to the right, satisfied us that the soul of the setter was stirring up with the recognition of the past. The coach was stopped and Flirt loosed from his chain, and, with a promise to join me at Stirling at dinner, my friend “hied away” the delighted dog over the hedge, and followed himself on foot, to visit, by canine guidance, the birthplace of this accomplished family. It was quite beautiful to see the fine creature beat the field over and over in his impatience, returning to his slower-footed master, as if to hurry him onward, and leaping about him with an extravagance eloquent of such unusual joy. I lost sight of them by a turning in the road, and reverted for consolation to that loveliest river, on whose bank I could have lain (had I breakfasted) and dreamed till the sunset of the unfortunate queen, for whose soft eyes and loving heart it perhaps flowed no more brightly in the days of Rizzio, than now for mine and those of the early marketers to Stirling.
The road was thronged with carts, and peasants in their best attire. The gentleman who had provided against the enemy with a brown paper of bread and bacon, informed me that it was market day. A very great proportion of the country people were women and girls, walking all of them barefoot, but with shoes in their hands, and gowns and bonnets that would have eclipsed in finery the bevy of noble ladies at Gordon Castle. Leghorn straw-hats and dresses of silk, with ribands of any quantity and brilliancy, were the commonest articles. Feet excepted, however, (for they had no triflers of pedestals, and stumped along the road with a sovereign independence of pools and pebbles) they were a wholesome-looking and rather pretty class of females; and, with the exception of here and there a prim lassie who dropped her dress over her feet while the coach passed, and hid her shoes under her handkerchief, they seemed perfectly satisfied with their own mode of conveyance, and gave us a smile in passing, which said very distinctly, “You’ll be there before us, but it’s only seven miles, and we’ll foot it in time.” How various are the joys of life! I went on with the coach, wondering whether I ever could be reduced to find pleasure in walking ten miles barefoot to a fair—and back again!
I thought again of Mary, as the turrets of the proud castle where she was crowned became more distinct in the approach—but it is difficult in entering a crowded town, with a real breakfast in prospect and live Scotchmen about me, to remember with any continuous enthusiasm even the most brilliant events in history.
“Can history cut my hay or get my corn in?Or can philosophy vend it in the market?”
“Can history cut my hay or get my corn in?Or can philosophy vend it in the market?”
“Can history cut my hay or get my corn in?Or can philosophy vend it in the market?”
“Can history cut my hay or get my corn in?
Or can philosophy vend it in the market?”
says somebody in the play, and with a similar thought I looked up at the lofty towers of the home of Scotland’s kings, as the “Highlander” bowled round its rocky base to the inn. The landlord appeared with his white apron, “boots” with his ladder, the coachman and guards with their hints to your memory; and, having ordered breakfast of the first, descended the “convenience” of the second, and received a tip of the hat for a shilling to the remaining two, I was at liberty to walk up stairs and while away a melancholy half hour in humming such charitable stanzas as would come uncalled to my aid.
“Oh for a plump fat leg of mutton,Veal, lamb, capon, pig, and cony,None is happy but a glutton,None an ass but who wants money.”
“Oh for a plump fat leg of mutton,Veal, lamb, capon, pig, and cony,None is happy but a glutton,None an ass but who wants money.”
“Oh for a plump fat leg of mutton,Veal, lamb, capon, pig, and cony,None is happy but a glutton,None an ass but who wants money.”
“Oh for a plump fat leg of mutton,
Veal, lamb, capon, pig, and cony,
None is happy but a glutton,
None an ass but who wants money.”
So sang the servant of Diogenes, with an exceptionable morality, which, nevertheless, it is difficult to get out of one’s head at Stirling, if one has not already breakfasted.
I limped up the long street leading to the castle, stopping on the way to look at a group of natives who were gaping at an advertisement just stuck to the wall, offering to take emigrants to New York on terms “ridiculously trifling.” Remembering the “bannocks o’ barley meal” I had eaten for breakfast, the haddocks and marmalade, the cold grouse and porridge, I longed to pull Sawney by the coat, and tell him he was just as well where he was. Yet the temptation of the Greenock trader, “cheap and nasty” though it were, was not uninviting to me!
I was met on the drawbridge of the castle by a trim corporal, who offered to show me the lions for a consideration. I put myself under his guidance, and he took me to Queen Mary’s apartments, used at present for a mess-room, to the chamber where Earl Douglas was murdered, etc. etc. etc., in particulars which are accurately treated of in the guide-books. The pipers were playing in the court, and a company or two of a Highland regiment, in their tartans and feathers, were under parade. This was attractive metal to me, and I sat down on a parapet, where I soon struck up a friendship with a curly-headed varlet, some four years old, who shouldered my stick without the ceremony of “by-your-leave,” and commenced the drill upon an unwashed regiment of his equals in a sunshiny corner below. It was delightful to see their gravity, and the military air with which they cocked their bonnets and stuck out their little round stomachs at the word of command. My little Captain Cockchafer returned my stick like a knight of honor, and familiarly climbed upon my knee to repose after his campaign, very much to the surprise of his mother, who was hanging out to dry, what looked like his father’s inexpressibles, from a window above, and who came down and apologized in the most unmitigated Scotch for the liberty the “babby” had taken with “his honor.” For the child of a camp-follower, it was a gallant boy, and I remember him better than the drill-sergeant or the piper.
On the north side of Stirling Castle the view is bounded by the Grampians and laced by the winding Teith; and just under the battlements lies a green hollow called the “King’s Knot,” where the gay tournaments were held, and the “Ladies’ Hill,” where sat the gay and lovely spectators of the chivalry of Scotland. Heading Hill is near it, where James executed Albany and his sons, and the scenes and events of history and poetry are thickly sown at your feet. Once recapitulated, however—the Bruce and the Douglas, Mary and the “Gudeman of Ballengiech,” once honored in memory—the surpassing beauty of the prospect from Stirling towers, engross the fancy and fill the eye. It was a day of predominant sunshine, with here and there the shadow of a cloud darkening a field of stubble or a bend of the river, and I wandered round from bastion to bastion, never sated with gazing, and returning continually to the points from which the corporal had hurried me on. There lay the Forth—here Bannockburn and Falkirk, and all bathed and flooded with beauty. Let him who thinks the earth ill-looking, peep at it through the embrasures of Stirling Castle.
My friend, the corporal, got but sixteen pence a day, and had a wife and children—but much as I should dislike all three as disconnected items, I envied him his lot altogether. A garrison life at Stirling, and plenty of leisure, would reconcile one almost to wife and children and a couple of pistareensper diem.
LETTER XV.
SCOTCH SCENERY—A RACE—CHEAPNESS OF LODGINGS IN EDINBURGH—ABBOTTSFORD—SCOTT—LORD DALHOUSIE—THOMAS MOORE—JANE PORTER—THE GRAVE OF SCOTT.
I was delighted to find Stirling rather worse than Albany in the matter of steamers. I had a running fight for my portmanteau and carpet-bag from the hotel to the pier, and was at last embarked in entirely the wrong boat, by sheer force of pulling and lying. They could scarce have put me in a greater rage between Cruttenden’s and the Overslaugh.
The two rival steamers, the Victory and the Ben Lomond, got under way together; the former, in which I was a compulsory passenger, having a flagelet and a bass drum by way of a band, and the other a dozen lusty performers and most of the company. The river was very narrow and the tide down, and though the other was the better boat, we had the bolder pilot, and were lighter laden and twice as desperate. I found my own spunk stirred irresistibly after the first mile. We were contending against odds, and there was something in it that touched my Americanism nearly. We had three small boys mounted on the box over the wheel, who cheered and waved their hats at our momentary advantages; but the channel was full of windings, and if we gained on the larboard tack we lost on the starboard. Whenever we were quite abreast and the wheels touched with the narrowness of the river, we marched our flagelet and bass-drum close to the enemy and gave them a blast “to wake the dead,” taking occasion, during our moments of defeat, to recover breath and ply the principal musician with beer and encouragement. It was a scene for Cooper to describe. The two pilots stood broad on their legs, every muscle on the alert; and though Ben Lomond wore the cleaner jacket, Victory had the “varminter” look. You would have bet on Victory to have seen the man. He was that wickedest of all wicked things, a wicked Scotchman—a sort of saint-turned-sinner. The expression of early good principles was glazed over with drink and recklessness, like a scene from the Inferno painted over a Madonna of Raphael’s. It was written in his face that he was a transgressor against knowledge. We were perhaps, a half-dozen passengers, exclusive of the boys, and we rallied round our Bardolph nosed hero and applauded his skilful manœuvres; sun, steam, and excitement together, producing a temperature on deck that left nothing to dread from the boiler. As we approached a sharp bend in the course of the stream, I perceived by the countenance of our pilot, that it was to be a critical moment. The Ben Lomond was a little ahead, but we had the advantage of the inside of the course, and very soon, with the commencement of the curve, we gained sensibly on the enemy, and I saw clearly that we should cut her off by a half-boat’s length. The three boys on the wheel began to shout, the flagelet made all split again with “the Campbells are comin’,” the bass-drum was never so belabored, and “Up with your helm!” cried every voice, as we came at the rate of twelve miles in the hour sharp on to the angle of mud and bulrushes, and, to our utter surprise, the pilot jammed down his tiller, and ran the battered nose of the Victory plump in upon the enemy’s forward quarter! The next moment we were going it like mad down the middle of the river, and far astern stuck the Ben Lomond in the mud, her paddles driving her deeper at every stroke, her music hushed, and the crowd on her deck standing speechless with amazement. The flagelet and bass-drum marched aft and played louder than ever, and we were soon in the open Frith, getting on merrily, but without competition, to the sleeping isle of Inchkeith. Lucky Victory! luckier pilot! to have found an historian! How many a red-nosed Palinurus—how many a bass drum and flagelet, have done their duty as well, yet achieved no immortality.
I was glad to see “Auld Reekie” again, though the influx of strangers to the “Scientific Meeting” had over-run every hotel, and I was an hour or two without a home. I lit at last upon a good old Scotchwoman who had “a flat” to herself, and who, for the sum of one shilling and sixpence per diem, proposed to transfer her only boarder from his bed to a sofa, as long as I should wish to stay. I made a humane remonstrance against the inconvenience to her friend. “It’s only a Jew,” she said, “and they’re na difficult, puir bodies!” The Hebrew came in while we were debating the point—a smirking gentleman, with very elaborate whiskers, much better dressed than the proposed usurper of his sanctum—and without the slightest hesitation professed that nothing would give him so much pain as to stand in the way of his landlady’s interest. So for eighteen-pence—and I could not prevail on her to take another farthing—I had a Jew put to inconvenience, a bed, boots and clothes brushed, and Mrs. Mac—to sit up for me till two in the morning—what the Jew himself would have called a “cheap article.”
I returned to my delightful quarters at Dalhousie Castle on the following day, and among many excursions in the neighborhood during the ensuing week, accomplished a visit to Abbottsford. This most interesting of all spots has been so minutely and so often described, that a detailed account of it would be a mere repetition. Description, however, has anticipated nothing to the visiter. The home of Sir Walter Scott would possess an interest to thrill the heart, if it were as well painted to the eye of fancy as the homes of his own heroes.
It is a dreary country about Abbottsford, and the house itself looks from a distance like a small, low castle, buried in stunted trees, on the side of a long, sloping upland or moor. The river is between you and the chateau as you come down to Melrose from the north, and you see the gray towers opposite you from the road at the distance of a mile—the only habitable spot in an almost desolate waste of country. From the town of Melrose you approach Abbottsford by a long, green lane, and, from the height of the hedge and the descending ground on which the house is built, you would scarce suspect its vicinity till you enter a small gate on the right and find yourself in an avenue of young trees. This conducts you immediately to the door, and the first effect on me was that of a spacious castle seen through a reversed glass. In fact it is a kind of castle cottage—not larger than what is often called a cottage in England, yet to the minutest point and proportion a model of an ancient castle. The deception in the engravings of the place lies in the scale. It seems like a vast building as usually drawn.
One or two hounds were lounging round the door; but the only tenant of the place was a slovenly housemaid, whom we interrupted in the profane task of scrubbing the furniture in the library. I could have pitched her and her scrubbing brushes out of the window with a good will. It is really a pity that this sacred place, with its thousand valuable and irreplaceable curiosities, should be so carelessly neglected. We were left to wander over the house and the museum as we liked. I could have brought away—and nothing is more common than this species of theft in England—twenty things from that rare collection, of which the value could scarce be estimated. The pistols and dagger of Rob Roy, and a hundred equally valuable and pocketable things, lay on the shelves unprotected, quite at the mercy of the ill-disposed, to say nothing of the merciless “cleanings” of the housemaid. The present Sir Walter Scott is a captain of dragoons, with his regiment in Ireland, and the place is never occupied by the family. Why does notScotlandbuy Abbotsford, and secure to herself, while it is still perfect, the home of her great magician, and the spot that to after ages would be, if preserved in its curious details, the most interesting in Great Britain?
After showing us the principal rooms, the woman opened a small closet adjoining the study, in which hung the last clothes that Sir Walter had worn. There was the broad-skirted blue coat with large buttons, the plaid trousers, the heavy shoes, the broad-rimmed hat and stout walking-stick—the dress in which he rambled about in the morning, and which he laid off when he took to his bed in his last illness. She took down the coat and gave it a shake and a wipe of the collar, as if he were waiting to put it on again!
It was encroaching somewhat on the province of Touchstone and Wamba to moralize on a suit of clothes—but I am convinced I got from them a better idea of Scott, as he was in his familiar hours, than any man can have who has seen neither him nor them. There was a character in the hat and shoes. The coat was an honest and hearty coat. The stout, rough walking-stick, seemed as if it could have belonged to no other man. I appeal to my kind friends and fellow travellers who were there three days before me (I saw their names on the book,) if the same impression was not made on them.
I asked for the room in which Sir Walter died. She showed it to me, and the place where the bed had stood, which was now removed. I was curious to see the wall or the picture over which his last looks must have passed. Directly opposite the foot of the bed hung a remarkable picture—the head of Mary Queen of Scots, in a dish taken after her execution. The features were composed and beautiful. On either side of it hung spirited drawings from the Tales of a Grandfather—one very clever sketch, representing the wife of a border-knight serving up her husband’s spurs for dinner, to remind him of the poverty of the larder and the necessity of a foray. On the left side of the bed was a broad window to the west—the entrance of the last light to his eyes—and from hence had sped the greatest spirit that has walked the world since Shakspeare. It almost makes the heart stand still to be silent and alone on such a spot.
What an interest there is in the trees of Abbotsford—planted every one by the same hand that waved its wand of enchantment over the world! One walks among them as if they had thoughts and memories.
Everybody talks of Scott who has ever had the happiness of seeing him, and it is strange how interesting it is even when there is no anecdote, and only the most commonplace interview is narrated. I have heard, since I have been in England, hundreds of people describe their conversations with him, and never the dullest without a certain interest far beyond that of common topics. Some of these have been celebrated people, and there is the additional weight that they were honored friends of Sir Walter’s.
Lord Dalhousie told me that he was Scott’s playfellow at the high school of Edinboro’. There was a peculiar arrangement of the benches with a head and foot, so that the boys sat above or below, according to their success in recitation. It so happened that the warmest seat in the school, that next to the stove, was about two from the bottom, and this Scott, who was a very good scholar, contrived never to leave. He stuck to his seat from autumn till spring, never so deficient as to get down, and never choosing to answer rightly if the result was to go up. He was very lame, and seldom shared in the sports of the other boys, but was a prodigious favorite, and loved to sit in the sunshine, with a knot of boys around him, telling stories. Lord Dalhousie’s friendship with him was uninterrupted through life, and he invariably breakfasted at the castle on his way to and from Edinboro’.
I met Moore at a dinner party not long since, and Scott was again, (as at a previous dinner I have described) the subject of conversation. “He was the soul of honesty,” said Moore. “When I was on a visit to him, we were coming up from Kelso at sunset, and as there was to be a fine moon, I quoted to him his own rule for seeing ‘fair Melrose aright,’ and proposed to stay an hour and enjoy it. ‘Bah!’ said he, ‘Inever saw it by moonlight.’ We went, however; and Scott, who seemed to be on the most familiar terms with the cicerone, pointed to an empty niche and said to him, ‘I think, by the way, that I have a Virgin and Child that will just do for your niche. I’ll send it to you!’ ‘How happy you have made that man!’ said I to him. ‘Oh,’ said Scott, ‘it was always in the way, and Madame S. is constantly grudging it house-room. We’re well rid of it.’
“Any other man,” said Moore, “would have allowed himself at least the credit of a kind action.”
I have had the happiness since I have been in England of passing some weeks at a country house where Miss Jane Porter was an honored guest, and, among a thousand of the most delightful reminiscences that were ever treasured, she has told me a great deal of Scott, who visited at her mother’s as a boy. She remembers him then as a good-humored lad, but very fond of fun, who used to take her younger sister, (Anna Maria Porter) and frighten her by holding her out of the window. Miss Porter had not seen him since that age; but, after the appearance of Guy Mannering, she heard that he was in London, and drove with a friend to his house. Not quite sure (as she modestly says) of being remembered, she sent in a note, saying, that if he remembered the Porters, whom he used to visit, Jane would like to see him. He came rushing to the door, and exclaimed, “Rememberyou! Miss Porter,” and threw his arms about her neck and burst into tears. After this he corresponded constantly with the family, and about the time of his first stroke of paralysis, when his mind and memory failed him, the mother of Miss Porter died, and Scott sent a letter of condolence. It began—“Dear Miss Porter”—but, as he went on, he forgot himself, and continued the letter as if addressed to her mother, ending it with—“And now, dear Mrs. Porter, farewell! and believe me yours for ever (as long as there is anything of me) Walter Scott.” Miss Porter bears testimony, like every one else who knew him, to his greatheartedness no less than to his genius.
I am not sure that others like as well as myself these “nothings” about men of genius. I would rather hear the conversation between Scott and a peasant on the road, for example, than the most piquant anecdote of his brighter hours. I like a great mind in dishabille.
We returned by Melrose Abbey, of which I can say nothing new, and drove to Dryburgh to see the grave of Scott. He is buried in a rich old Gothic corner of a ruin—fittingly. He chose the spot, and he sleeps well. The sunshine is broken on his breast by a fretted and pinnacled window, over-run with ivy, and the small chapel in which he lies is open to the air, and ornamented with the mouldering scutcheons of his race. There are few more beautiful ruins than Dryburgh Abbey, and Scott lies in its sunniest and most fanciful nook—a grave that seems divested of the usual horrors of a grave.
We were ascending the Gala-water at sunset, and supped at Dalhousie, after a day crowned with thought and feeling.
LETTER XVI
BORDER SCENERY—COACHMANSHIP—ENGLISH COUNTRY-SEATS—THEIR EXQUISITE COMFORT—OLD CUSTOMS IN HIGH PRESERVATION—PRIDE AND STATELINESS OF THE LANCASHIRE AND CHESHIRE GENTRY—THEIR CONTEMPT FOR PARVENUS.
If Scott had done nothing else, he would have deserved well of his country for giving an interest to the barren wastes by which Scotland is separated from England. “A’ the blue bonnets” must have had a melancholy march of it “Over the Border.” From Gala-Water to Carlisle it might be anywhere a scene for the witches’ meeting in Macbeth. We bowled away at nearly twelve miles in the hour, however, (which would unwind almost any “serpent of care” from the heart,) and if the road was not lined with witches and moss-troopers, it was well macadamized. I got a treacherous supper at Howick, where the Douglas pounced upon Sir Alexander Ramsay; and, recovering my good humor at Carlisle, grew happier as the fields grew greener, and came down by Kendal and its emerald valleys with the speed of an arrow and the light heartedness of its feather. How little the farmer thinks when he plants his hedges and sows his fields, that the passing wayfarer will anticipate the gleaners and gather sunshine from his ripening harvest.
I was admiring the fine old castle of Lancaster, (now desecrated to the purposes of a county jail,) when our thirteen-mile whip ran over a phæton standing quietly in the road, and spilt several women and children, as you may say,en passant. The coach must arrive, though it kill as many as Juggernaut, and Jehu neither changed color, nor spoke a word, but laid the silk over his leaders to make up the back-water of the jar, and rattled away up the street, with the guard blowing the French horn to the air of “Smile again, my bonny lassie.” Nobody threw stones after us; the horses were changed in a minute and three quarters, and away we sped from the town of the “red nose.” There was a cool, you-know-where-to-find-me sort of indifference in this adventure, which is peculiarly English. I suppose if his leaders had changed suddenly into griffins, he would have touched them under the wing and kept his pace.
Bound on a visit to —— Hall in Lancashire, I left the coach at Preston. The landlady of the Red Lion became very suddenly anxious that I should not take cold when she found out the destination of her post-chaise. I arrived just after sunset at my friend’s lodge, and ordering the postillion to a walk, drove leisurely through the gathering twilight to the Hall. It was a mile of winding road through the peculiarly delicious scenery of an English park, the game visible in every direction, and the glades and woods disposed with that breadth and luxuriance of taste that make the country houses of England palaces in Arcadia. Anxious as I had been to meet my friend, whose hospitality I had before experienced in Italy, I was almost sorry when the closely-shaven sward and glancing lights informed me that my twilight drive was near its end.
An arrival in a strange house in England seems, to a foreigner, almost magical. The absence of all the bustle consequent on the same event abroad, the silence, respectfulness, and self-possession of the servants, the ease and expedition with which he is installed in a luxurious room, almost with his second breath under the roof—his portmanteau unstrapped, his toilet laid out, his dress shoes and stockings at his feet, and the fire burning as if he had sat by it all day—it is like the golden facility of a dream. “Dinner at seven!” are the only words he has heard, and he finds himself (some three minutes having elapsed since he was on the road) as much at home as if he had lived there all his life, and pouring the hot water into his wash-basin with the feeling that comfort and luxury in this country are very much matters of course.
The bell rings for dinner, and the new-comer finds his way to the drawing-room. He has not seen his host, perhaps, for a year; but hisentréeis anything but a scene. A cordial shake of the hand, a simple inquiry after his health, while the different members of the family collect in the darkened room, and the preference of his arm by the lady of the house to walk into dinner, are all that would remind him that he and his host had ever parted. The soup is criticised, the weather “resumed,” as the French have it, gravity prevails, and the wine that he used to drink is brought him without question by the remembering butler. The stranger is an object of no more attention than any other person, except in the brief “glad to see you,” and the accompanying just perceptible nod with which the host drinks wine with him; and, not even in theabandonof after-dinner conversation, are the mutual reminiscences of the host and his friend suffered to intrude on the indifferent portion of the company. The object is the general enjoyment, and you are not permitted to monopolize the sympathies of the hour. You thus escape the aversion with which even a momentary favorite is looked upon in society, and in your turn you are not neglected, or bored with a sensation, on the arrival of another. In what other country is civilization carried to the same rational perfection?
I was under the hands of a physician during the week of my stay at —— Hall, and only crept out with the lizards for a little sunshine at noon. There was shooting in the park for those who liked it, and fox hunting in the neighborhood for those who could follow, but I was content (upon compulsion) to be innocent of the blood of hares and partridges, and the ditches of Lancashire are innocent of mine. The well-stocked library, with its caressing chairs, was a paradise of repose after travel; and the dinner, with its delightful society, sufficed for the day’s event.
My host was himself very much of a cosmopolite; but his neighbors, one or two most respectable squires of the old school among them, had the usual characteristics of people who have passed their lives on one spot, and though gentlemanlike and good-humored, were rather difficult to amuse. I found none of the uproariousness which distinguished the Squire Western of other times. The hale fox-hunter was in white cravat and black coat, and took wine and politics moderately; and his wife and daughters, though silent and impracticable, were well-dressed, and marked by that indefinable stamp of “blood,” visible no less in the gentry than in the nobility of England.
I was delighted to encounter at my friend’s table one or two of the old English peculiarities, gone out nearer the metropolis. Toasted cheese and spiced ale—“familiar creatures” in common life—were here served up with all the circumstance that attended them when they were not disdained as the allowance of maids of honor. On the disappearance of the pastry, a massive silver dish, chased with the ornate elegance of ancient plate, holding coals beneath, and protected by a hinged cover, was set before the lady of the house. At the other extremity of the table stood a “peg tankard” of the same fashion, in the same massive metal, with two handles, and of an almost fabulous capacity. Cold cheese and port were at a discount. The celery, albeit both modish and popular, was neglected. The crested cover erected itself on its hinge, and displayed a flat surface, covered thinly with blistering cheese, with asoupçonof brown in its complexion, quivering and delicate, and of a most stimulating odor. A little was served to each guest, and commended as it deserved, and then the flagon’s head was lifted in its turn by the staid butler, and the master of the house drank first. It went around with the sun, not disdained by the ladies’ lips in passing, and came to me, something lightened of its load. As a stranger I was advised of the law before lifting it to my head. Within, from the rim to the bottom, extended a line of silver pegs, supposed to contain, in the depth from one to the other, a fair draught for each bibber. The flagon must not be taken from the lips, and the penalty of drinking deeper than the first peg below the surface, was to drink to the second—a task for the friar of Copmanhurst. As the visible measure was of course lost when the tankard was dipped, it required some practice or a cool judgment not to exceed the draught. Raising it with my two hands, I measured the distance with my eye, and watched till the floating argosy of toast should swim beyond the reach of my nose. The spicy odor ascended gratefully to the brain. The cloves and cinnamon clung in a dark circle to the edges. I drank without drawing breath, and complacently passed the flagon. As the sea of all settled to a calm, my next neighbor silently returned the tankard. I had exceeded the draught. There was a general cry of “drink! drink!” and sounding my remaining capacity with the plummet of a long breath, I laid my hands once more on the vessel, and should have paid the penalty or perished in the attempt, but for the grace shown me as a foreigner, at the intercession of that sex distinguished for its mercy.
This adherence to the more hearty viands and customs of olden time, by the way, is an exponent of a feeling sustained with peculiar tenacity in that part of England. Cheshire and Lancashire are the stronghold of that race peculiar to this country, thegentry. In these counties the peerage is no authority for gentle birth. A title unsupported by centuries of honorable descent, is worse than nothing; and there is many a squire, living in his immemorial “Hall,” who would not exchange his name and pedigree for the title of ninety-nine in a hundred of the nobility of England. Here reignsaristocracy. Your Baron Rothschild, or your new-created lord from the Bank or the Temple, might build palaces in Cheshire, and live years in the midst of its proud gentry unvisited. They are the cold cheese, celery, and port, in comparison with the toasted cheese and spiced ale.
LETTER XVII.
ENGLISH CORDIALITY AND HOSPITALITY, AND THE FEELINGS AWAKENED BY IT—LIVERPOOL, UNCOMFORTABLE COFFEE-HOUSE THERE—TRAVELLING AMERICANS—NEW YORK PACKETS—THE RAILWAY—MANCHESTER.
England would be a more pleasant country to travel in if one’s feelings took root with less facility. In the continental countries, the local ties are those of the mind and the senses. In England they are those of the affections. One wanders from Italy to Greece, and from Athens to Ephesus, and returns and departs again; and, as he gets on shipboard, or mounts his horse or his camel, it is with a sigh over some picture or statue left behind, some temple or waterfall—perhaps some cook or vintage. He makes his last visit to the Fount of Egeria, or the Venus of the Tribune—to the Caryatides of the Parthenon, or the Cascatelles of Tivoli—or pathetically calls for his last bottle of untransferable lachra christi, or his lastcôtelettes provençales. He has “five hundred friends” like other people, and has made the usual continental intimacies—but his valet-de-place takes charge of his adieus—(distributes his “p. p. c’s” for a penny each,) and he forgets and is forgotten by those he leaves behind, ere his passport is recorded at the gates. In all these countries, it is only as a resident or a native that you are treated with kindness or admitted to the penetralia of domestic life. You are a bird of passage, expected to contribute a feather to every nest, but welcomed to none. In England this same disqualification becomes a claim. The name of a stranger opens the private house, sets you the chair of honor, prepares your bed, and makes everything that contributes to your comfort or pleasure temporarily your own. And when you take your departure, your host has informed himself of your route, and provided you with letters to his friends, and you may go through the country from end to end, and experience everywhere the same confiding and liberal hospitality. Every foreigner who has come well-introduced to England, knows how unexaggerated is this picture.
I was put upon the road again by my kind friend, and with a strong west wind coming off the Atlantic, drove along within sound of the waves, on the road to Liverpool. It was a mild wind, and came with a welcome—for it was freighted with thoughts of home. Goethe says, we are never separated from our friends as long as the streams run down from them to us. Certain it is, that distance seems less that is measured by waters and winds. America seemed near, with the ocean at my feet and only its waste paths between. I sent my heart over (against wind and tide) with a blessing and a prayer.
There are good inns, I believe, at Liverpool, but the coach put me down at the dirtiest and worst specimen of a public house that I have encountered in England. As I was to stay but a night, I overcame the prejudice of the firstcoup d’œil, and made the best of a dinner in the coffee room. It was crowded with people, principally merchants, I presumed, and the dinner hour having barely passed, most of them were sitting over their wine or toddy at the small tables, discussing prices or reading the newspapers. Near me were two young men, whose faces I thought familiar to me, and with a second look I resolved them into two of my countrymen, who, I found out presently by their conversation, were eating their first dinner in England. They were gentlemanlike young men, of good education, and I pleased myself with looking about and imagining the comparison they would draw, with their own country fresh in their recollection, between it and this. I could not help feeling how erroneous in this case would be a first impression. The gloomy coffee room, the hurried and uncivil waiters, the atrocious cookery, the bad air, greasy tables, filthy carpet, and unsocial company—and this one of the most popular and crowded inns of the first commercial town in England! My neighbors themselves, too, afforded me some little speculation. They were a fair specimen of the young men of our country, and after several years’ exclusive conversance with other nations, I was curious to compare an untravelled American with the Europeans around me. I was struck with the exceedingambitiousnessof their style of conversation. Dr. Pangloss himself would have given them a degree. They called nothing by its week-day name, and avoided with singular pertinacity exactly that upon which the modern English are as pertinaciously bent—a concise homeliness of phraseology. They were dressed much better than the people about them, (who were apparently in the same sphere of life,) and had on the whole a superior air—owing possibly to the custom prevalent in America of giving young men a university education before they enter into trade. Like myself, too, they had not yet learned the English accomplishment of total unconsciousness in the presence of others. When not conversing they did not study profoundly the grain of the mahogany, nor gaze with solemn earnestness into the bottom of their wine-glasses, nor peruse with the absorbed fixedness of Belshazzar, the figures on the wall. They looked about them with undisguised curiosity, ordered a great deal more wine than they wanted (veryAmerican, that!) and were totally without the self-complacent, self-amused, sober-felicity air which John Bull assumes after his cheese in a coffee room.
I did not introduce myself to my countrymen, for an American is the last person in the world with whom one should depart from the ordinary rules of society. Having no fixed rank either in their own or a foreign country, they construe all uncommon civility into either a freedom, or a desire to patronise—and the last is the unpardonable sin. They called after a while for a “mint julep,” (unknown in England,) for slippers, (rather an unusual call also—gentlemen usually wearing their own,) and seemed very much surprised on asking for candles, at being ushered to bed by the chambermaid.
I passed the next morning in walking about Liverpool. It is singularly like New York in its general air, and quite like it in the character of its population. I presume I must have met many of my countrymen, for there were some who passed me in the street whom I could have sworn to. In a walk to the American consul’s, (to whose polite kindness I, as well as all my compatriots, have been very much indebted,) I was lucky enough to see a New York packet drive into the harbor under full sail—as gallant a sight as you would wish to see. It was blowing rather stiffly, and she ran up to her anchorage like a bird, and taking in her canvass with the speed of a man-of-war, was lying in a few moments with her head to the tide, as neat and as tranquil as if she had slept for the last month at her moorings. I could feel in the air that came ashore from her, that I had letters on board.
Anxious to get on to Cheshire, where, as they say of the mails, I had been due some days, and very anxious to get rid of the perfume of beer, beefsteaks, and bad soup, with which I had become impregnated at the inn, I got embarked in an omnibus at noon, and was taken to the railway. I was just in time, and down we dived into the long tunnel, emerging from the darkness at a pace that made my hair sensibly tighten and hold on with apprehension. Thirty miles in the hour is pleasant going when one is a little accustomed to it. It gives one such a contempt for time and distance! The whizzing past of the return trains, going in the other direction with the same velocity, making you recoil in one second, and a mile off the next—was the only thing which, after a few minutes, I did not take to very kindly. There were near a hundred passengers, most of them precisely the class of English which we see in our country—the fags of Manchester and Birmingham—a class, I dare say, honest and worthy, but much more to my taste in their own country than mine.
I must confess to a want of curiosity respecting spinning-jennies. Half an hour of Manchester contented me, yet in that half hour I was cheated to the amount of four and-six-pence—unless the experience was worth the money. Under a sovereign I think it not worth while to lose one’s temper, and I contented myself with telling the man (he was a coach proprietor) as I paid him the second time for the same thing in the course of twenty minutes, that the time and trouble he must have had in bronzing his face to that degree of impudence gave him some title to the money. I saw some pretty scenery between Manchester and my destination, and having calculated my time very accurately, I was set down at the gates of —— Hall, as the dressing bell for dinner came over the park upon the wind. I found another English welcome, passed three weeks amid the pleasures of English country life, departed as before with regrets, and without much more incident or adventure reached London on the first of November, and established myself for the winter.