6, Rothesay Terrace,Edinburgh.October 22, 1890.
Dear Madame Patti:
I do not know how to thank you enough for your charming gift. I am afraid, however, that the useof your lozenges will not make me your rival.Voce quastata di ottante' anni non si ricupera.
It was a rare treat to hear from your Italian lips last night the songs of my own tongue, rendered with a delicacy of modulation and a fineness of utterance such as no native ever in my hearing had reached or even approached. Believe me,
Faithfully yours,W. E. GLADSTONE.
This letter, naturally enough, gave conversation a reminiscent turn. After some talk of great folk she had known, I asked Madame Patti what had been the proudest experience in her career.
"For a great and unexpected honour most gracefully tendered," said she, "I have known nothing that has touched me more deeply than a compliment paid by the Prince of Wales (afterwards King Edward VII) and a distinguished company, at a dinner given to the Duke of York and the Princess May (the present King and Queen), a little while before their wedding. The dinner was given by Mr. Alfred Rothschild, one of my oldest and best friends. There were many royalties present and more dukes and duchesses than I can easily remember. During the ceremonies the Prince of Wales arose, and to my astonishment, proposed the health of his 'old and valued friend, Madame Patti.' He madesucha pretty speech, and in the course of it said that he had first seen and heard me in Philadelphia in 1860, when I sang in 'Martha', and that since then his own attendance at what he was good enough to call my 'victories in the realm of song' had been among his pleasantestrecollections. He recalled the fact that on one of the occasions, when the Princess and himself had invited me to Marlborough House, his wife had held up little Prince George, in whose honour we were this night assembled, and bade him kiss me, so that in after life he might say that he had 'kissed the famous Madame Patti.' And then, do you know, that whole company of royalty, nobility, and men of genius rose and cheered me and drank my health. Don't you think that any little woman would be proud, and ought to be proud, of a spontaneous tribute like that?"
It is difficult, when repeating in this way such snatches of biography, to suggest the modest tone and manner of the person whose words may be recorded. It is particularly difficult in the case of Madame Patti, who was absolutely unspoiled by praise. Autobiography such as hers must read a little fanciful to most folk; it is so far removed from the common experiences of us all and even from the extraordinary experiences of the renowned persons we hear about usually. But there was not a patch of vanity in Patti's sunny nature. Her life had been a long, unbroken record of success,—success to a degree attained by no other woman. No one else has won and held such homage; no one else had been so wondrously endowed with beauty and genius and sweet simplicity of nature,—a nature unmarred by flattery, by applause, by wealth, by the possession and exercise of power. Patti at fifty was like a girl in her ways, in her thoughts, her spirit, in her disinterestedness, in her enjoyments.Time had dimmed none of her charms, it had not lessened then her superb gifts. She said to me one day:
"They tell me I am getting to be an old woman, but I don't believe it. I don't feel old. I feel young. I am the youngest person of my acquaintance."
That was true enough, as they knew who saw Patti from day to day. She had all the enthusiasm and none of the affectations of a young girl. When she spoke of herself it was with most delicious frankness and lack of self-consciousness. She was perfectly natural.
She promised to show me the programme of that Philadelphia performance before the Prince of Wales so long ago, and the next day she put it before me. It was a satin programme with gilt fringe, and it was topped by the Prince of Wales's feathers. At that Philadelphia performance Patti made her first appearance before royalty. In the next year she made her London début at Covent Garden, as Amina in "La Somnambula." The next morning Europe rang with the fame of the new prima donna from America.
"I tried to show them that the young lady from America was entitled to a hearing," said she, as we looked over the old programmes.
"And has 'the young lady from America' kept her national spirit, or has she become so much a citizen of the world that no corner of it has any greater claim than another upon her affections?"
"I love the Italian language, the American people,the English country, and my Welsh home," she said.
"Good! The national preferences, if you can be said to own any, have reason on their side. Your parents were Italian, you were born in Spain, you made your first professional appearance in America, you first won international fame in England, and among these Welsh hills you have planted a paradise."
"How nice of you! That evening at Mr. Alfred Rothschild's, the Prince of Wales asked me why I do not stay in London during 'the season', and take some part in its endless social pleasures. 'Because, your Royal Highness,' I replied, 'I have a lovely home in Wales, and whenever I come away from it I leave my heart there.' 'After all,' said the prince, 'why should you stay in London when the whole world is only too glad to make pilgrimages to Craig-y-Nos?' Was n't that nice of him?"
I despair of conveying any impression of thenaïvetéwith which the last five words were uttered. The tone expressed the most innocent pleasure in the world. When Patti spoke in that way she seemed to be wondering why people should say and do so many pleasant things on her account. There was an air of childish surprise in her look and voice.
I said: "All good republicans have a passion for royalty. I find that an article about a King, or a Queen, or a Prince is in greater demand in the United States than anywhere else in the world. So tell me something more about the Prince and Princess of Wales. I promise, as a zealous democrat, thatno one on the far side of the Atlantic will skip a word. Have the Prince and Princess visited Craig-y-Nos?"
"No. But they were coming here a couple of years ago. See—here is the Prince's letter fixing the date. But it was followed by the death of the Duke of Clarence, their eldest son, and then for many months they lived in quiet and mourning, only appearing in their usual way just before the wedding of the Duke of York (King George V). They sent me an invitation to the wedding festivities. But alas! I could not go. I had just finished my season and was lying painfully ill with rheumatism. You heard of that? For weeks I suffered acutely. It's an old complaint. I have had it at intervals ever since I was a child. But about that royal wedding. When the Prince and Princess of Wales learned that I was too ill to accept their gracious invitation, they—well, what do you suppose they did next?"
"Something kind and graceful."
"They sent me two large portraits of themselves, bearing their autographs and fitted into great gilt frames. You shall see the portraits after dinner. They have the places of honour at Craig-y-Nos."
We had reached the coffee stage of dinner, and the cigars were being passed. The ladies did not withdraw, according to the mediæval (and shall I say popular?) habit, but the company remained unbroken, and while the gentlemen smoked, the ladies kept them in conversation. Nowadays you would say they all smoked. Presently, some oneproposed Patti's health, and we all stood, singing, "For She 's a Jolly Good Fellow."
That put the ball of merriment in motion again. One of the young ladies, a goddaughter of the hostess, carolled a stanza from a popular ditty. At first I thought it audacious that any one should sing in the presence ofLa Diva. It seemed sacrilege. But in another instant we were all at it, piping the chorus, and Patti leading off. The fun of the thing was infectious. The song finished, we ventured another, and Patti joined us in the refrains of a medley of music-hall airs, beginning with London's latest mania, "Daisy Bell, or a Bicycle Built for Two", and winding up with Chevalier's "Old Kent Road" and the "Coster's Serenade", Coborn's "Man That Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo", and somebody else's "Daddy Would n't Buy me a Bow-Wow."
Patti turned with an arch look. "You will think our behaviour abominable."
"No, I don't. I think it jolly. Besides, it's not everybody who has heard you sing comic songs."
Her answer was a peal of laughter, and then she sat there, singing very softly a stanza of "My Old Kentucky Home", and as we finished the chorus she lifted a clear, sweet note, which thrilled us through and through and stirred us to excited applause.
"What have I done?" Patti put the question with a puzzled air.
The reply came from the adjoining library: "High E." One of our number had run to the piano.
Then I recalled what Sir Morell Mackenzie had told me a little while before he died. We were chatting in that famous room of his in Harley Street, and we happened to mention Madame Patti. "She has the most wonderful throat I have ever seen," said Sir Morell. "It is the only one I have ever seen with the vocal cords in absolutely perfect condition after many years of use. They are not strained, or warped or roughened, but as I tell you, they are perfect. There is no reason why they should not remain so ten years longer, and with care and health twenty years longer."
Remembering this, I asked Patti if she had taken extraordinary care of her voice.
"I have never tired it," said she; "I never sing when I am tired, and that means I am never tired when I sing. And I have never strained for high notes. I have heard that the first question asked of new vocalists nowadays is 'How high can you sing?' But I have always thought that the least important matter in singing. One should sing only what one can sing with perfect ease."
"But in eating and drinking? According to all accounts, you are the most abstemious person in the world."
"No, indeed! I avoid very hot and very cold dishes, otherwise I eat and drink whatever I like. My care is chiefly to avoid taking cold and to avoid indigestion. But these are the ordinary precautions of one who knows that health is the key to happiness."
"And practising? Have you rigid rules for that? One hears of astounding exercise and self-denial."
"Brilliant achievements in fiction. For practising I run a few scales twenty minutes a day. After a long professional tour I let my voice rest for a month and do not practise at all during that time."
During my visit to Craig-y-Nos we usually spent our evenings in the billiard rooms. There were two, an English room and a French one. In the French room there was a large orchestrion which had been built in Geneva for Madame Patti. It was operated by electricity and was said to be the finest instrument of its kind. Our hostess would start it of an evening, and the ingenious contrivance would "discourse most eloquent music" from a repertoire of one hundred and sixteen pieces, including arias from grand operas, military marches and simple ballads. Music, of course, is the fascinator that Patti cannot resist. The simplest melody stirs her to song. In the far corner from the orchestrion she would sit in a big easy-chair, and hum the air that rolled from the organ pipes, keeping time with her dainty feet, or moving her head as the air grew livelier. Or she would send forth some lark-like trill, or urge the young people to a dance, or a chorus, and when every one was tuned to the full pitch of melody and merriment, she would join in the fun as heartily as the rest. I used to sit and watch her play the castanets, or hear her snatch an air or two from "Martha", "Lucia", or "Traviata."
One night the younger fry were chanting negro melodies, and Patti came into the room, warbling as if possessed by an ecstasy. "I love those darky songs," said she, and straightway she sang to us,with that inimitable clarity and tenderness which were hers alone, "Way Down upon the Suwanee River", "Massa's in the Col', Col' Ground", and after that "Home, Sweet Home", while all of us listeners felt more than we cared to show.
Guests at Craig-y-Nos were the most fortunate of mortals. If the guest were a man, a valet was told off to attend him; if the guest were a lady, a maid was placed at her service. Breakfast was served in one's room at any hour one chose. Patti never came down before high noon. She rose at half-past eight, but remained until twelve in her apartments, going through her correspondence with her secretary and practising a little music. At half-past twelve luncheon was served in the glass pavilion. After that hour a guest was free to follow his own devices until dinner time. He might go shooting, fishing, riding, walking, or he might stroll about the lovely demesne, and see what manner of heavenly nook nature and Patti had made for themselves among the hills of Wales. Patti's castle is in every sense a palatial dwelling. She saw it fifteen years before I did, fell in love with it, purchased it, and subsequently expended great sums in enlarging it. The castellated mansion, with the theatre at one end and the pavilion and winter garden at the other, has a frontage of fully a thousand feet along the terraced banks of the Tawe. But the place has been so often described that it is unnecessary to repeat that oft-told story, or to give details of the gasworks, the electric-lighting station, the ice plant and cold-storage rooms, the steamlaundry, the French and English kitchens, the stables, the carriage houses, the fifty servants, or of the watchfulness, care, devotion, which surrounded the melodious mistress of this miniature kingdom. Those matters are a part of the folklore of England and America.
But I must say something of Patti's little theatre. It was her special and particular delight. She got more pleasure from it than from any other of the many possessions at Craig-y-Nos. It was a gem of a theatre, well proportioned and exquisitely decorated. Not only could the sloping floor be quickly raised, so that the auditorium might become a ballroom, but the appurtenances of the stage were elaborate and complete. For this statement I had the authority of the stage manager of the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden. This expert was supervising certain alterations at the Patti theatre while I was at Craig-y-Nos, and he told me that the house then contained every accessory for the production of forty operas!
Patti sang occasionally at concerts in her theatre. All her life she treasured her voice for the public; she had never exhausted it by devising an excess of entertainment for her personal friends. And so most of the performances in the little theatre were pantomimic. Although Patti seemed to me always to be humming and singing while I was at the Castle, yet there was nothing of the "performing" order in what she did. She merely went singing softly about the house, or joining in our choruses, like a happy child.
One morning, while a dozen of us were sitting in the shade of the terrace, the ladies with their fancy work, the men with their papers, books, and cigars, we heard, from an open window above, a burst of song, full-throated like a bird's. It was for all the world like the song of a skylark, of glorious ecstasy, as if the bird were mounting in the air, the merrier as it soared the higher, until it poured from an invisible height a shower of joyous melody. No one amongst us stirred, or made a sound.La Divathought us far away up the valley, where we had planned an excursion, but we had postponed the project to a cooler day. We remained silent, listening. Our unseen entertainer seemed to be flitting about her boudoir, singing as she flitted, snatching a bar or two from this opera and that, revelling in the fragment of a ballad, or trilling a few notes like our friend the lark. Presently she ceased, and we were about to move, when she began to sing "Comin' Thro' the Rye." She was alone in her room, but she was singing as gloriously as if to an audience of ten thousand in the Albert Hall. The unsuspected group of listeners on the terrace slipped then from their own control, and took to vigorous applause and cries of "brava, brava."
"Oh, oh, oh!" cried the birdlike voice above.
We looked up, and saw Patti leaning out at the casement.
"Oh," said she, "I couldn't help it, really I could n't. I 'm so happy!"
At luncheon she proposed an entertainment in the theatre for the evening of the following day.We were to have "Camille" in pantomime. The preparations moved swiftly. Among the guests were several capable amateur actors. The performance began a little after ten. Some musicians were brought from Swansea. A dozen gentlefolk hastily summoned from the valley, those among the guests who were not enrolled for the pantomime, and a gallery full of cottagers and servants made up the audience. We had "an opera" in five acts of pantomime, with orchestra, and all together it was fun. Of course, Patti carried off the honours. There was supper after the play, and the sunlight crept into the Swansea Valley within two hours after we had risen from table.
I said to Patti after the pantomime, "You don't seem to believe that change of occupation is the best possible rest. You seem to work as hard at rehearsing and acting in your little theatre as if you were 'on tour.'"
"Not quite! Besides, it is n't work, it's play," replied the miraculous little woman. "I love the theatre. And, then, there is always something to learn about acting. I find these pantomime performances useful as well as amusing."
Every afternoon about three o'clock Patti and her guests went for a drive, a small procession of landaus and brakes rattling along the smooth country roads. You could see at once that this was Pattiland. The cottagers came to their doors and saluted her Melodious Majesty, and the children of the countryside ran out and threw kisses.
"Oh! the dears," exclaimed the kind-heartedQueen, as we were driving toward the village of Ystradgynlais (they call it something like "Ist-rag-dun-las"), one afternoon. "I would like to build another castle and put all those mites into it, and let them live there with music and flowers!" And I believe she would have given orders for such a castle straightway, had there been a builder in sight.
On the way home Patti promised me "a surprise" for the evening. I wondered what it might be, and when the non-appearance of the ladies kept the gentlemen waiting in the drawing-room at dinner time, I was the more puzzled. The men, to pass the time, inspected the "trophies" of the prima donna. It would be impossible to enumerate them because Craig-y-Nos Castle was another South Kensington Museum in respect to the treasures it held. Every shelf, table, and cabinet was packed with gifts which Patti had received from all parts of the earth, from monarchs and millionaires, princes and peasants, old friends and strangers. There was Marie Antoinette's watch, to begin with, and there were portraits of the Prince and Princess of Wales, to end with. There was a remarkable collection of portraits of royal personages, presented to Patti by the distinguished originals on the occasion of her marriage to M. Nicolini. Photographs of the Grand Old Man of Politics and the Grand Old Man of Music rested side by side on a little table presented by some potentate. Gladstone's likeness bore his autograph and the inscription, "Con tanti e tanti Complimenti"; Verdi's, his autograph and a fervent tribute written at Milan. There were crowns andwreaths and rare china; there were paintings and plate, and I know not what, wherever one looked.
If one were to make Patti a gift, and he had a King's ransom to purchase it, he would find it difficult to give her anything that would be a novelty, or that would be unique in her eyes. She had everything. For my part, I would pluck a rose from her garden, or gather a nosegay from a hedgerow, and it would please her as much as if it were a diadem. She valued the thought that prompted the giving, rather than the gift itself. She never forgot even the smallest act of kindness that was done for her sake. And she was always doing kindnesses for others. I have heard from the Welsh folk many tales of her generosity. And to her friends she was the most open-handed of women.
There was one dark, drizzly day during the visit to Craig-y-Nos. It mattered little to the men. The wet did not interfere with their amusements. But every lady wore some precious jewel that Patti had given her that morning,—a ring, a brooch, a bracelet, as the case might be. For the generous creature thought her fair friends would be disappointed because they could not get out of doors. How could she know that every one in the Castle welcomed the rain because it meant a few hours more with Patti?
The "surprise" she had spoken of was soon apparent. The ladies came trooping into the drawing-room wearing the gowns and jewels of Patti's operatic roles. Patti herself came last, in "Leonora's" white and jewels. What a dinner-party wehad that night,—we men, in the prim black and white of evening dress, sitting there with "Leonora" and "Desdemona" and "Marguerite" and "Rachel" and "Lucia" and "Carmen" and "Dinorah", and I know not how many more! Nobody but Patti would have thought of such merry masquerading, or, having thought of it, would or could have gone to the trouble of providing it.
Of course, we talked of her favourite characters in opera, and then of singers she had known. She said it would give her real pleasure to hear Mario and Grisi again, or, coming to later days, Scalchi and Annie Louise Carey. The latter, being an American and a friend, I was glad to hear this appreciation of her from the Queen of Song. "Carey and Scalchi were the two greatest contraltos I have known; and I have sung with both of them. I remember Annie Louise Carey as a superb artist and a sweet and noble woman."
I said "Hear, hear," in the parliamentary manner, and then Patti added:
"Now we will go to the theatre again. There is to be another entertainment." It was, of all unexpected things, a lantern show. Patti's arrangement for that was, like everything else at Craig-y-Nos, from her piano to her pet parrot, the only one of its kind. It was capable of giving, with all sorts of "mechanical effects", a two hours' entertainment every night for two months without repeating a scene. Patti invited me to sit beside her and watch the dissolving views. It seemed to me that it would be like this to sit beside Queen Victoriaduring a "State performance" at Windsor, only not half so much fun! Here was Patti Imperatrice, dressed like a queen, wearing a crown of diamonds, and attended by her retinue of brilliantly attired women and attentive gentlemen of the court. And it was so like her to cause the entertainment to end with a series of American views and to sing for me "Home, Sweet Home", as we looked out on New York harbour from a steamship inward bound.
The next morning I started from Craig-y-Nos for America. As the dogcart was tugged slowly up the mountain side, the Stars and Stripes saluted me from the Castle tower, waving farewell as I withdrew from my peep at Paradise.
The wind was from the east, the Scotch "mist" from everywhere, but Professor Blackie had a sunny heart that made one forget the raw weather. I thought the sun was shining and the skies blue when I went to lunch at Number 9 Douglas Crescent, Edinburgh, one November day in the early nineties.
Almost any day in half a century you might have seen Professor Blackie striding through Edinburgh as strong as an athlete, hearty as a young hunter. One morning I encountered him as he was beating eastward against half a gale, his cape flying, his cloud of white hair tossing against his big-brimmed, soft black hat, his cheeks rosy with the winter wind, and his kind eyes dancing with the delight he felt in exercise. He was eighty-five!
I told him of reading somewhere that he loved to play the peripatetic philosopher. How he laughed! "Do they say that of me? Ho, ho, ho!" And then he trolled a "Hi-ti-rumty-tum", snatching an air, as his habit was, from a half-forgotten song, and ending with an exclamatory line of Greek. He looked like a prophet apostrophising the gods.
"And they say I speak 'a confusion of tongues.'Don't mind that," said he. "Greek, Latin, Gaelic, German, English—all are one to me. I borrow the words that come readiest for the thought. But Greek is the great language." And he strode down the hill.
He was the most picturesque figure then living in Edinburgh, and many thought him the greatest man in the Scotland of those times. He was the "Grand Old Man" of that northern kingdom, and in vitality and spirits and capacity for work he was at eighty-five the youngest man I knew. He was packed with wisdom and overflowing with music and merriment. If he had not been so musical and so merry you might have called him Scotland incarnate. Doubtless he was that, with the music and merriment added. As for character, even Scotland never produced a nobler one, nor set it in a more imposing figure, or in a grander head. Scholar, poet, philosopher, teacher, learner, political writer, lover of the classics, strenuous believer in modern progress, he was sure that the world was never better than in his day, the Victorian day, and that it was growing better steadily. They were all optimists then. Lord Salisbury, when prime minister, added that they were all socialists. Professor Blackie drew the line at that. Perhaps Salisbury was quoting Harcourt.
Visiting in Glasgow, I received one morning a note from him inviting me to lunch at his house in Edinburgh. On the lower, left-hand corner of the envelope he had written a line of Greek, as his custom was. This time it was an adjuration:"Speak the truth in love." But who could speak of him in other words than those of love? In his note he had written "Come and talk." But he did all the talking. What an inspiring flood it was!
No sooner was I in his hall than I heard, to my disappointment, the sound of what seemed lively conversation from an adjoining room. I had hoped to find him alone. The prospect of a luncheon party dampened my ardour. But when the maid conducted me to the presence, there sat the Scottish sage alone, declaiming a Gaelic poem. At least he told me it was Gaelic!
"Laugh," cried he, "laugh. 'T will do ye good. Ah, y' are one o' the laughin' men! I like them. Try a man; will he no' laugh, or smile, don't tie to him. There 's too much gloom in the world."
What a picture he was in that hour. Yes, and hours after, when I left him. The tall old man with strong, smooth-shaven face, like one of the traditional gods of his favourite lore, but in no other respect resembling a mythological being. His head was crowned, not with laurel, but with a wide-brimmed Panama or leghorn hat, beneath which streamed his long white hair. And his body was lost in the embraces of a blue dressing-gown which came to his heels; and around his waist were yards of red silk sash, the ends of which trailed behind him.
"Punctual," said he. "You are sharp to the minute. Came by the eleven train, eh? An hour and five minutes on the rail. Wonderful how we live now! Glasgow to Edinburgh and return,ninety-six miles for seven shillings and sixpence, first class. The quickest travelling in the world, and the cheapest. That's one thing the auld Greeks could na' do. Fol-de-rol-de-rol-de-ri. Progress, progress; I believe in it. I 'm a marching man. There's nae such thing as standin' still; you go forward, or you fall back. Will ye ring the bell? I thank ye! Bachelor's hall the day. My wife is in the country, but we will try to be comfortable."
While we ate Professor Blackie talked, burst into snatches of melody, rippled in Greek, or thundered in German, or gave the dear twist of Scotland to his words, or, when he thought there had been enough of that, drew from the "well of English, pure and undefiled." And all the time he wore his hat!
"You won't mind, I know," he said. "Eighty-five and no glasses to my eyes. There 's protection in the shade of a hat's brim. Eighty-five and no glasses! The only proof I 'm eighty-five is the almanac. There 's no proof in my body. I 'm as young as ever there." And then he turned the Greek tap so that Aristotle larded the lunch.
He had been in love with Greek for more than sixty years; he taught it for thirty or forty years; he knew it as well as he knew English; he read modern Greek newspapers; he had the best Greek library in the kingdom; I daresay he dreamed in Greek. I said: "You talk as if, in spirit, you were more a Greek than a Scotsman."
"Not that"—he half sang the words—"Oh,bonny Scotland for me. A man should stick to the land where God put him!"
He drew the knife along the breast of a chicken. "My wife won't let me carve when she 's at home," he said. He looked threateningly at a joint. "Never mind, never mind," said he, and then in a chant, "hey nonny, hi nonny." Pause. Then "Come off, old boy," and a wing and a leg clattered to the platter. "The nearer the bone the sweeter the meat," said he. "But statesmen have carved empires more easily."
"Mr. Gladstone, for example," said I, referring to the Home Rule Bill.
"Ho, there; but he has n't performed the amputation!"
"You don't agree with your old friend about that policy?"
"No, nor about Greek. But we are friends still. As for discussion, we began that when we first met. How many tens of years ago was that? We have been discussing ever since. Yes, forty years! We met at Dean Ramsey's house. Gladstone was a splendid man to disagree with even then."
As Professor Blackie talked of his friends, the names of nearly all his contemporaries in England, Scotland, and Germany came hurrying forth. But he would n't tell anecdotes about them for two reasons; first, he never remembered good stories; second, "I don't live in the past," he said. He was not a good talker, if good talk means keeping up your end in conversation. He kept up more than his end. He was always ready for a monologue.He did n't converse, he exploded. His utterances were volcanic. There would come an eruption of short sentences blazing with philosophy; then a kindly glow over it all, and the discharge would subside quickly with a gentle rumty-tum, or a snatch from some old Scotch ballad. We had been talking of education. Suddenly the table shook under a smiting hand, and these words were shot at me:
"Teaching! We are teaching our young men everything except this: to teach themselves, and to look the Lord Jesus Christ in the face! You are doing it in America, too. You are as bad as we are in Britain." And then immediately, and with a seraph's smile, "May I pass you a wing?"
He quoted from one of his books, a recent one: "Of all the chances that can befall a young man at his first start in the race of life, the greatest unquestionably is to be brought into contact, and, if possible, to enter into familiar relations with a truly great man. For this is to know what manhood means, and a manly life, not by grave precept, or wise proverb, or ideal picture; but to see the ideal in complete equipment and compact in reality before you, as undeniably and as efficiently as the sun that sheds light from the sky, or the mountain that sheds waters into the glen."
Strong influences were about Blackie's life in his youth, and he became, in his turn, a great influence in other lives. He was the son of a Scotch banker, and was born in Glasgow. He had his first schooling in Aberdeen, and he entered college at twelve and the University of Edinburgh at fifteen. Atthe latter place he studied under John Wilson ("Christopher North"). At Aberdeen he had the best Latin instruction of his time. There they were famous Latinists. At the University of Edinburgh it was mainly religion with him, and the Bible his favourite reading. At twenty he went to Germany, the Germany that is dead. His strong grave face would light up when he spoke of the men he had known there.
"Niebuhr was the biggest man Germany has produced, but Bunsen was the greatest all round. Bunsen looked like Goethe. I told him so, and found that others thought so. But Bunsen had a sweeter mouth than Goethe. My father's teaching, the nature that God gave me, and Bunsen's influence, have been the shaping forces of my life.
"I returned to Scotland, was called to the bar at twenty-five, and ran away from it at thirty. I was not meant for a lawyer. Aberdeen University made me its Professor of Latin Literature, and I kept at that till 1852, when Edinburgh appointed me Professor of Greek. I was thirty years at that time. A few years ago I retired. There is the story of my life."
No. Only the story of the shell of his life. It said nothing of what he had done.
"Done!" exclaimed the old man. "If you live to be as old as John Blackie, you 'll find it less important to know what a man has done than to know what he is. Done? I 've taught Greek, written a little, preached a good deal!"
But many men teach Greek, and everybody writesnowadays, and the globe is a vast pulpit from which all who are not dumb try to preach, while only the deaf long to listen. John Stuart Blackie's achievements are not to be measured by phrases. He was one of the strong teachers of men. Many men now celebrated have told me that they studied under him and learned little Greek but more wisdom than an entire faculty could teach them, or any number of books. "The art of the teacher is to teach the student to teach himself", the old man was fond of saying.
Blackie was a marching man, you will remember. For years he marched across Scotland, and up and down, lecturing the people. If Scotland had a hall in which he did not lecture on Burns, on Goethe, on Scottish Song, Education, Government—to his list of themes there was no end—it must have been built since his death. No wonder they called him a "peripatetic philosopher."
He said to me: "I think I can do more good by speaking to people than by writing to them. I have written thirty or forty volumes, if you count the little ones, but I don't know how to write books to please the public."
"How can that be?" I asked. "A bookseller told me that your 'Self-Culture' has already run to thirty editions."
"Oh, that was not written for the public, but for my students; and the public happened to like it."
"A distinction without much difference then." And I thought of his "Essays on Social Subjects", "Four Phases of Morals", "Homer and the Iliad",and the book "On Beauty"; of his "Songs of Religion and Life", "The Language and Literature of the Scottish Highlands", "Musa Burschicosa", "Songs and Legends of Ancient Greece", "Scottish Song", "Poetical Tracts", and so on. The public had seemed to like them. And the public of Edinburgh must have found some attraction in his novel "Altavona", for, he said, "They made a great row over it here, thought they had identified one of the characters, and went buzzing about over their discovery. But I 'm not a novelist. I was trying to effect reform in the Scottish Land Laws. I believe in Home Rule for Scotland," he added.
"Why not, then, for Ireland?" This was putting one's head into the lion's mouth. But he purred gently: "I don't know Ireland! I've been there only once!" That was a fair hit at Gladstone. "Scotland I do know!" The last words came like a blast from the mountains.
Once on a time Professor Blackie printed a list of one hundred and twelve Scottish songs, and he declared that every Scotsman should know them all. I suppose it was patriotism even more than a love of learning that impelled him to raise £10,000 by four years' labour, and endow with it, at Edinburgh, a Professorship of Celtic Literature.
He lived on an edge of Edinburgh, and his house overflowed with books and pictures. It commanded a northerly outlook, and the country rolled up almost to the windows. "Look there," said he, pointing to the big window of the dining room, "the sun's out, and you can see the Fife Hills. I see them aboutthree times a month when our mists lift. The Forth Bridge is yonder"—pointing. "Wonderful thing that Forth Bridge. You whiz through towards Perth in five minutes!"
Above the fireplace was a large portrait of himself, painted years before by James Archer, of the Royal Scottish Academy. It represented its subject gazing, with head uncovered, at a mountainous landscape. "That's the poetic Blackie," said the original, "the Blackie who loves to roam hills and glens. Yon is Blackie militant," pointing to a severer portrait on the opposite wall. "A very different person, as you see. A painter can show only one aspect of a character in a single portrait, and the public, seeing but one portrait, will see but one side of the character. That's why there are several Blackies on these walls. Come and see my friends as they hang."
He led the way to the entrance hall whose walls were hung with paintings, engravings, photographs, old prints. A bust of "Christopher North" occupied a pedestal at the foot of the stairs. "And there's Nolly," sang the Professor, pointing to an oil likeness of Cromwell. We would take a step or two, and then pause to look at a portrait, while my energetic host threw out an explanatory phrase whimsically abbreviating the names of the men he liked best. "Tom," said he, "Tom Carlyle, a tyrannical genius who did a lot of good in a hard way. Bobbie," and he stopped before a portrait of Burns, "Bobbie was a ploughman, but the artist here made him a dandy, and he never was that."We must have stopped twenty times on the first flight of stairs, and at each pause the old man would shoot a remark. At the drawing-room door he paused again, exclaiming: "Aristotle, Shakespeare, Goethe, and the Apostle Paul—these are my heroes!"
The drawing-room was a national, or rather an international portrait gallery in little. We began with a line of faces at one end of which was Goethe, at the other end Bunsen. There were portraits everywhere, on the walls, in the chairs, on the tables; some of them rested on the floor. Sir Henry Irving as Becket had a chair. Blackie stopped in front of him. "That's a man who has done a great work," said he. "The people require amusement, and Irving has amused them nobly. Ah, you see Mary Anderson over there. A marvellous sweet woman. Scott's next to her on that wall, now. Ah, no, I never saw him. I wish I had known him. 'Green grow the rushes, O!' Here are some preachers—Chalmers, John Knox, Guthrie, Norman Macleod, Cardinal Manning. Ye 'll think it a queer assortment, maybe, John Knox and Manning. Well, the five o' them were men, man, men!"
"Dear, dear, who has done this thing?" he cried, as if startled. We stood before an easel which held a portrait of himself. An engraving of Gladstone stood beneath, on the floor. "Wrong! It's the wrong order," said he. "We must change it. Down goes Blackie; up goes Gladdy. He belongs above me." He suited the action to the word and shifted the portraits.
Presently we marched up another flight of stairs to his study, which consisted of three connecting rooms lined with books. "This is where I live," he said. "Seven thousand volumes hereabout. See the Greek here, here, everywhere. Man, man, Greek is the only living bridge between the present and the past!"
Then, snatching up a handful of newspapers from Athens, he continued, "Some folks call Greek a dead language. Poor souls! They don't know any better. These things should interest you. They are fresh from Athens; not a week old." And then he read aloud from them, a bit of politics, an advertisement, lines from the bargain counter, as if to show that one touch of shopping makes the whole world kin. "But no heroes, man, no heroes! There's no Aristotle now, no Shakespeare, no Goethe, no Apostle Paul!"
We sat awhile in the study, and Blackie "surveyed mankind from China to Peru" in lightning flashes. He always left one panting behind, breathless, trying to keep pace with his rushing thoughts. He had done that sort of thing all his teaching life, and that was why men said they learned but little Greek from him, but absorbed streams of wisdom. They would say that when teaching, he never stuck to his text. The best you could do was quietly to watch and listen, remember and apply. After all, that was what he wanted men to do—to learn to teach themselves.
There are men, very distinguished men, who are much more easily described than John Stuart Blackie.What he said of the portrait painter is equally true of the portrait writer. I might borrow his own phrase and say that there was the preacher, there was the teacher, the patriot, the man of merry soul; and there was the Blackie of odd moments who was all these in one, as I saw him, with straw hat, blue dressing-robe, and trailing red sash. If I picture him as I saw him then, going about the house in his queer gear and genially nicknaming great folk in the intervals of snatches of song, you are not to think of him as merely an eccentric and entertaining old gentleman. He was very much at his ease, and he made me feel happily so. He was natural man without a pose, without an affectation. He never posed. He did not care what others thought or said about him, what he cared for was what they thought and said about his subject, whatever that might be—country, or religion, or song—and it all led to manliness. "Be a man! Be God's man!" That was the burden of his teaching, preaching, writing, scholarship, philosophy, religion. He wrought great things for the manhood of Scotland.
I remember his coming to Glasgow one night while I visited there. He lectured for some society of young men. His theme was Love. When he had finished, a minister jumped up and shouted this invitation:
"Put that into a sermon, sir, and come and preach it to us next Sabbath. A guinea and a bed!"
"What?" roared Blackie. "D'ye think I'd preach the Gospel for money? I 'll preach it for nothing if ye 'll come and listen!"