“In a barbarous ageGave to rude Scotland Virgil’s page.”
“In a barbarous ageGave to rude Scotland Virgil’s page.”
“In a barbarous ageGave to rude Scotland Virgil’s page.”
It was probably due to the vicinity of their lodgings that the poet interposed on behalf of the militant archbishop when, after the famous street feud of “Cleanse the Causeway,” Beaton had vainly sought sanctuary behind the altar of the Blackfriars’ Church, and, butfor the interposition of the poet, would have been slain. His vigorous translation of the Æneid into the Scottish vernacular was a favourite with William Nelson in later years. But the associations of the locality in his school days were for the most part of more recent date.
The High School Yards had been the playground of Hume, Robertson, Erskine, Horner, Jeffrey, Cockburn, Brougham, and Scott, and of many a notability before them. The memory of its gentle, scholarly rector, Dr. Adam, author of “Roman Antiquities” and other works, was still fresh; and the old school seemed a link between past generations and the living age. But neither the site, with its picturesque surroundings, nor the building, accorded with the ideas of civic reformers who had organized a crusade against whatever was out of keeping with the brand-new town. The age had not then reverted to the mediæval models which have since come into vogue. Classic art was regarded as most suited to academic requirements; and so a beautiful Grecian building—the finest specimen of Thomas Hamilton’s architectural skill, in the designing of which his artist friend, David Roberts, was understood to have contributed valuable aid,—had been erected on the southern slope of the Calton Hill, as a more fitting home for the city Grammar School.
The migration from the antiquated building at thehead of the High School Wynd to this splendid edifice in the New Town was an important change in many ways besides the mere removal to more commodious and sightly halls. It brought to an end a host of old customs and traditions; and, among the rest, to the hereditary feud between the Cowgate “blackguards” and the High School “puppies.” A grand civic ceremonial marked this transfer of the school to its new domicile. On the 23rd of June 1829—a bright, auspicious day—William Nelson, the head boy of his class, with his schoolmates, under the leadership of the rector and masters, walked in procession, each bearing an osier wand, with music, military escort, and all the civic glories that the Lord Provost and magistrates could command, to do honour to the occasion. It was a memorable epoch in schoolboy life. But it seemed to the old boys as though they never were quite at home in their stately New Town quarters. Old “Blackie,” with her famous “gib” or toffy stall, was out of place there; and as for Brown’s famous subterranean pie-shop in the old High School Wynd, it necessarily tarried behind, to the inevitable ruin of a once flourishing business. Not the building only, but the entire scholastic system carried on within its walls, soon after underwent a complete revolution; and the work of the venerable Grammar School of Prebendary Vocat, the classic arena of Adam, Pillans, and Carson,has since devolved on Fettes College, a creation of the present century.
But the old classic system still prevailed in William Nelson’s time; and, notwithstanding some glaring defects, was turned by him to good account. As to the school itself, it must be owned that it stood in need of reform. The class of Mr. Benjamin Mackay, under whose training William Nelson remained for four years, numbered upwards of a hundred boys. Those in the two front forms worked with more or less persistency under a somewhat coercive system; the remainder idled in the most flagrant fashion, and not a few of them looked back in later years on those dreary hours with an indignant sense of wasted time. But William Nelson was foremost among the studious workers. The same quiet, resolute perseverance which marked his later career in business characterized him as a schoolboy. He maintained his place as the dux of his class, carried off the chief prizes of the school, and at the close of his course under the rector, Dr. Carson, he passed to the university with the highest honours, as classical gold medalist.
Among the carefully preserved papers of his early years are a bundle of old letters from schoolmates, enclosed in an envelope addressed to his mother, with an endorsation begging her to see to their safe keeping. They furnish pleasant glimpses of the affectionate relationsalready established with more than one of the friends of later years. The solemn protest of the learned Principal, Dr. Lee, against “that most objectionable and pernicious practice of making balls of snow,” is humorously commented on, along with graver matters, such as pertained to the themes and discussions of the Juvenile Literary Society, and the more ambitious debating societies of the university. His own sense of humour found free play both in early and later years; but above all, his youthful letters are full of pleasant gossip of the old sailors of Kinghorn, who told him yarns of the victories in which they had shared in the great French war, and the pranks they indulged in when flush with prize-money. Old Charlie Mackenzie had been in theMarsin her action with theHercules, one of the bloodiest naval conflicts of the war. Another of the Kinghorn story-tellers—Orrock, who died in 1836, upwards of ninety years of age—claimed to have known the man who acted as drummer at the Porteous mob, and to have learned from him some details of the burning of the doors, and so gaining admission to the Tolbooth. The intense feeling of local attachment which such reminiscences reveal manifested itself in later years in the interest he took in improvements at Kinghorn, as well as in the more costly restorations in his native city. But one of the first fruits of his intercourse with the old pensioners of Kinghorn,who, as he says, “were great fishers for podlies from certain rocks on the sea-shore,” was the capture of a crab with a double claw, alusus naturæ, which furnished a novel subject for discussion at a meeting of the Juvenile Literary Society. His contributions to its collections and learned discussions were generally of the same class—algæ, shells, or other marine curiosities, the fruits of his last holiday ramble by the sea.
Among stray waifs that have survived from those old days is a letter, bearing date February 20, 1829, addressed to the secretary of the Juvenile Society by the elder brother of one of its members. With all the condescension of an undergraduate placing his mature knowledge at the service of schoolboys, the writer sets forth “the very great pleasure I take in hearing of the proceedings of your society, and my unqualified approbation of your plan of keeping a journal as a sort of record of your proceedings.” He proceeds: “I daresay you are unaware that the duties of a student of medicine are of a very arduous nature.” But, as he goes on to state, he had laid before the Plinian Society in the previous summer a paper on certain “Discoveries made behind Edinburgh Castle in digging the foundation of the new bridge,”—part of the terraced road which involved the destruction of Trotter’s Close and the Nelson homestead,—and this, he says, “I shall copy out in a style which I hope will prove interesting tomy young friends, and which may, perhaps, form a contribution to their journal.” The writer, whose seniority, by the years that separate the College student from the High School boy, entitled him thus condescendingly to address his brother Philip and the other juvenilesavants, is now Sir Douglas Maclagan, the genial veteran Professor of Medical Jurisprudence in his own university; and, it may be added, the author of some of the most popular of a younger generation’s student-songs.
At a later stage the juvenile debaters awoke to an interest in the stirring questions of the day. Mr. Alexander Sprunt, writing from Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1859, says: “During the period of our High School curriculum, questions were occupying the public mind, and startling events taking place in Europe: the final struggle of the Poles, the French ‘Three Days of July,’ the reform movement, etc. The subject of the immediate or gradual emancipation of the negro slaves in the colonies was also keenly discussed about that time. Some of us, being related to families of the colonists, were familiar with the arguments for a gradual abolition of slavery.” William Nelson took up the question warmly, and was an uncompromising advocate for immediate emancipation. As to the oft-renewed struggle in France between Bourbon Royalists, Imperialists, and Red Republicans, it was forcibly brought home to therealization of the young debaters by the presence of the exiled Charles X. and his little court at Holyrood; and by the occasional sight of the royal refugee as he passed the High School Yards on foot, in company with one or two of his suite, to enjoy the magnificent panorama from the Calton Hill.
The fruits of those early experiences could be discerned in later years. The boy’s education was progressing under other teachings besides those of the schoolmaster. It was altogether alien to the unobtrusiveness of William Nelson’s sensitive nature to take, in later years, a prominent share in political life; but his generous support was extended in the most practical form to all philanthropic movements. He manifested the keenest interest in all questions of liberal politics: in the emancipation of the slaves; in the prolonged controversies which led to the disruption of the Scottish Church; and in the more recent struggle between the Slave and Free States in the great American Civil War. Most of those questions belong to periods long subsequent to the time when James and Alexander Sprunt were the champions of the West Indian planters, and William Nelson and other juvenile debaters maintained the cause of the enslaved negro.
But the members of the Literary Society, as already noted, had their field-days as well as their Friday night sessions; and in pursuit of material for their papers,as well as in the free use of the Saturday and other holidays, the schoolmates had many an exciting ramble. In spite of its uncertain climate, Edinburgh presents an unequalled variety of choice holiday excursions; and as to the rain, it required a good deal more than an ordinary shower to put a stop to any projected excursion. In walking, climbing, and all the ordinary feats of healthy boyhood, William Nelson was unsurpassed. To make our way to the summit of Salisbury Crags by the famous Cat-Nick, or outrival each other in the attempt to scale Samson’s Ribs, and sit supreme on some overhanging ledge of the basaltic columns, were among the most favourite pastimes. Or a leisurely climb along the slopes to the summit of Arthur’s Seat, and a survey of the magnificent landscape spread out to view, were a prelude, at the word, to a dash down the hill, scrambling like so many goats over the western cliffs and the rough slope below, and so by the Hunter’s Bog, for the first draught at St. Anthony’s Well. In all such feats William Nelson was a match for any schoolmate. His coolness equalled his courage, and he had a love for daring feats such as those who only knew him in later years will hardly realize. When the old home at the Bowhead was displaced by the Assembly Hall, and its lofty spire was in process of erection, he made friends with the contractor, and I accompanied him in more than one ascent. A steamhoist carried us up the main portion of the way; and then came the trying ordeal on the ladders. But as the tapering spire approached completion, it was no longer possible to reach the summit from within; and I still recall with vividness the composure with which, all unconscious of danger, he walked out on the narrow plank, over a depth of upwards of two hundred feet, and stood at the extreme end of it, noting and commenting on the various objects spread out below.
A future career for life was as yet unthought of. But while aiming solely at pleasure, and rejoicing in a holiday’s escape from school, the boy was unconsciously educating himself. Already the botanical box and the geological hammer were in vogue. Not, indeed, the luxurious appliances with which amateur naturalists are now furnished. Any hammer sufficed for getting at a coveted fossil; and as for ourhortus siccus, an old candle-box was appropriated by the botanical collector. But the archæological tastes in which more than one of William Nelson’s schoolmates sympathized, and to which he gave such practical expression in later years, were already in process of development. The pleasurable associations with historic scenes and picturesque ruins found ample scope in those holiday rambles. Craigmillar Castle was close at hand; and within easy distance was old Roman Cramond, with chances of a numismatic prize to the fortunate explorer, and withthe sculptured eagle of the legionaries of the second century still visible on the cliff at the mouth of the river Almond. This had a special charm for boys fresh from their Cæsar and Tacitus, giving a sense of reality to those forgotten centuries. It was an object-lesson, better even than the Roman altar dedicated to the goddess Epona—DEÆ EPONÆ—which Dr. Carson, the Rector of the High School, produced to his class, and won their attentive admiration as he pointed to the focus in which the Roman horse-jockey had poured a libation; and adduced passages from the Satires of Juvenal in confirmation of his theme.
Farther afield lay Woodhouselee, Seton and Roslin chapels; Niddry, Borthwick, and Crichton castles; Preston Cross and Tower; and many another storied ruin associated with familiar historic events. Pinkie Cleugh, Carberry Hill, Lasswade, Dalkeith, and Prestonpans, were each linked with song or story. Maclagan was an ardent collector of plants and insects; geology divided with botany the interest of George Wilson; John A. Smith had already begun the collection of coins; and William Nelson was forming the tastes which manifested themselves in later years in his love for every venerable nook of his native city, and in his zeal for the preservation of its historic memorials.
The change from school to college life is in every case an important one. With the majority it involvesemancipation, in a large degree, from enforced and distasteful studies, and their exchange for congenial pursuits. The youth begins for the first time to estimate knowledge at its real worth, and to shape out plans of study for himself. But the novel arena is no less important as that in which the companionships of the playground give place to that discriminating choice of congenial associates in which life-long friendships have so often originated. It is the joyous season in which the springtide is just merging into life’s early summer; when youth is animated by all generous aspirations, and hope’s rainbow arch spans the horizon.
The period of William Nelson’s admission as an undergraduate of the University of Edinburgh was in some respects a brilliant one in its history; and even more so in relation to its students than its professors. Dr. John Lee, the learned Church historian and black-letter scholar, was principal, and Dr. Chalmers occupied the chair of divinity; the chair of natural philosophy was successively occupied by Sir John Leslie and by James D. Forbes. Before the abrupt close of William Nelson’s academic career, Sir William Hamilton had assumed the lead in its school of mental science; and the fame of John Wilson, its professor of moral philosophy, under his pseudonym of “Christopher North,” attracted many to his class-room for whom his professed theme would have had no charm.But in the department of classics, for which all William Nelson’s previous training had been specially directed, the faculty was imperfectly equipped. Dunbar, a poor representative of Hellenic scholarship, had then filled the Greek chair for upwards of a quarter of a century. On the other hand, the professor of humanity was James Pillans, an elegant scholar, and, in the words of Sir Alexander Grant, “a born teacher and educator;” though latterly more prone to dwell on little critical niceties than to give himself up to the drudgery which was indispensable for the training of his large and often inadequately prepared class. Among other traits that his old pupils will recall was the never-failing protest at the opening of a new session, which reminded the class that he enjoyed the dubious fame of being pilloried by Byron in his “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.” The irate bard, in his indiscriminatefuror, had characterized the professor of humanity as “Paltry Pillans;” and William Nelson used to quote this incident of his own experience in justification of the title:—He had an essay to give in on a certain day, and not having finished it till late on the previous night, instead of walking to the professor’s remote residence at Inverleith Row, he dropped his manuscript into the nearest post-box. Next day, when the class assembled, the first intimation from the professor was, “I will thank Mr. William Nelson to hand twopence tothe janitor for the postage of his essay!” Notwithstanding some amusing eccentricities, Professor Pillans was held in great esteem by his old pupil as an apt and painstaking enthusiast in his profession; and the good feeling was mutual. William Nelson was a favourite pupil, in whose progress he took a lively interest, and it was in spite of his most urgent remonstrances that the classic muse was abandoned at the call of filial duty.
But it was the fortune of William Nelson, in those happy days of student life, to find himself among a rare band of undergraduates, many of whom subsequently won a name for themselves in ampler fields. Edward Forbes was then a zealous volunteer on the staff of theUniversity Maga, contributing with pen and pencil, in prose and verse, to its columns. He had a rare power of winning co-operation in whatever he set on foot; and he gathered around him a band of kindred spirits, who, as sharers in the exuberant frolic and satire of theMaga, formed themselves at length into the Magi, or members of the Maga Club. Out of this grew the famous “Brotherhood of the Friends of Truth,” with its archimagus, its ribbon, and its mystic motto:-
ΟΙΝΣ ΕΡΩΣ ΜΑΘΗΣΙΣ,
ΟΙΝΣ ΕΡΩΣ ΜΑΘΗΣΙΣ,
ΟΙΝΣ ΕΡΩΣ ΜΑΘΗΣΙΣ,
which still survives under its later guise of the RedLions of the British Association gatherings. There was a curious admixture of youthful exuberance and frolic with a lofty earnestness of aim in the Brotherhood. The search after truth was declared, in its programme, not only to be man’s noblest occupation, but his duty; and the spirit of the order is thus set forth: “This brotherhood is a union of the searchers after truth, for the glory of God, the good of all, and the honour of the order, to the end that mind may hold its rightful sway in the world.”
Of the youthful band of undergraduates, John Goodsir, Bennett, Blackie, Lyon Playfair, George Wilson, and Edward Forbes, all ultimately filled chairs in their own university. Day succeeded to a professorship in St. Andrews, and Struthers to one in Aberdeen. Henry Goodsir, a youth of high ability, accompanied Sir John Franklin as naturalist in the ill-fated Arctic expedition, from which none returned. Dr. Stanger distinguished himself, with better fortune, in the Niger expedition of 1844; Andrew Ramsay rose to be chief of the Geological Survey; and other fellow-students and members of the order have occupied professors’ chairs in Canada and in India, have represented their university in Parliament, or made their mark in no less useful ways. Among the latter the name of William Nelson claims an honourable rank. For the scheme of the brotherhood required each member“to devote his time and his energies to the department for which he feels and proves himself best fitted, communicating his knowledge to all, so that all may benefit thereby, casting away selfishness, and enforcing precepts of love.” Assuredly when those maxims came to be tested in the daily business of life, no one gave their spirit of unselfishness more practical manifestation than the subject of this memoir.
In Professor Pillans’s class he maintained the standing which he had achieved at the High School. His foremost but unequal rival in the composition of Latin verse was the late George Paxton Young, the esteemed Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the University of Toronto. It was while William Nelson was still a student that John Cairns—the friend and fellow-student both at Edinburgh and Berlin of his younger brother, John Nelson, and now the venerable Principal and Professor of Systematic Theology in the Divinity Hall of the United Presbyterian Church—came fresh from the pastoral hills of Berwickshire to win for himself a distinguished place among the men of his time.
Amid the stimulus and rivalry of such competitors for fame, the young student devoted himself with renewed zeal to the classics, with undefined visions of some honourable professional or academic reward as his life-prize; and fulfilled the high anticipations of his earlier career. But while thus steadily pursuing acourse which gave abundant promise of triumph, his father was suddenly prostrated by disease; and William, as the eldest son of a large family, abandoned all the bright prospects of his university career, and the dream of professional or academic achievements, to grapple with the unfamiliar difficulties of a commercial enterprise, till then conducted on a scale commensurate with the modest aims of an elder generation in the Old Town of Edinburgh.
The business of Mr. Thomas Nelson was a curious survival of the system borrowed from the great fairs of the Middle Ages, and grafted on to their older traffic by the successors of Guttenburg and Fust; of Caxton, Wynkin de Worde, and Chepman and Miller. Allan Ramsay had followed in their steps, with his booth at the sign of the Mercury, opposite the head of Niddry’s Wynd, from whence he transferred it to the Luckenbooths at the City Cross. It was in just such another luckenbooth at the Bowhead that Mr. Thomas Nelson originated the business which has since developed into such great proportions.
William Nelson threw himself at once, with characteristic singleness of aim, into his new vocation; nor did he ever express regret at his enforced desertion of scholarship for trade. But few men have carried away from school or college a keener sense of the attachments of student life. To the last the plea ofan old schoolmate ever presented an irresistible claim which scarcely any demerit could cancel. The fate of one whose life, by his own misconduct, had closed in miserable failure is thus charitably noted in one of his letters: “Poor —— died two days ago of congestion of the lungs; and it is a wonder that he hung on so long, as he has been in a very dilapidated condition for years. The last time I saw him, his condition was truly pitiable. I sent him a fresh bolster and bedding, for the ones he had were hard and foul. Poor fellow! he did a great deal to hasten the approach of the last enemy.” His loyalty to early friends was unfailing. He kept a record of his classmates in the High School, and noted with keenest interest their success or failure in life. He told with kindly humour of the refusal of a liberal “tip” offered to a porter at Cairo who had been specially serviceable, and then claimed fellowship by reminding him of old High School doings. B—— was the ne’er-do-weel of Mackay’s class, who had thus found his vocation in the land of the Pharaohs. His sympathy was unbounded in any honour or good fortune achieved by a schoolmate; and latterly, as he watched the rapidly diminishing numbers of the old group of school and college companions, he recorded at the close of each year the minutes of Death’s roll-call. To one who entered so keenly into academic life, and whose career was so replete with promise, it was a trying ordeal to abandoncollege for the uncongenial drudgery of a trading venture for which such experiences seemed to promise no helpful training. But in Scotland a university career is by no means regarded as unsuitable preparation for trade and commerce; and William Nelson was speedily to show what success the classical gold medalist of the High School and the best writer of Latin verse in the College could achieve in business life.
WITH characteristic energy the young student, now in his nineteenth year, set himself to grapple with the novel difficulties of the book-trade. Neither the irksome drudgery nor the uncongenial demands incident to the business daunted the youthful adventurer, who had so recently found his highest vocation in the mastery of Latin quantities, and the triumphs of competitive hexameters after the models of Horace and Virgil. In the summer of 1880, the present writer spent some weeks with his old schoolmate at Philiphaugh, in the vale of Yarrow, famous as the scene of Montrose’s last battle. During an excursion to Berwick, with the special object of visiting another schoolmate, he pointed out more than one book-store in the old Border town, familiar to him in association with his first experiences as a commercial traveller, and humorously described those early ventures in the disposal of his literary wares. According to Johnson of Liverpool, his journey extended to that city, and Mr.Johnson gave him his first large order for books. He had already succeeded in overcoming the prejudices of the regular trade, and fixed a scale of prices which disarmed their antagonism.
The books, as already stated, were for the most part reprints from standard and popular works beyond the range of copyright restrictions. Their paper-covered boards and imperfect printing were in striking contrast to the choice typography, paper, and binding, and the tasteful illustrations, which characterized the works issued by the firm in later days. Yet the germ even of this was already discernible in the engraved frontispieces and vignette titles introduced to catch the eye and cater for the popular taste.
So early as 1829, Mr. Thomas Nelson, senior, had aimed at the extension of his business by engaging a commercial traveller to push the sales of his publications with the trade. Mr. James Macdonald was first despatched on this mission; but as Curwen states, in his “History of Booksellers,” owing to the stigma attached to the unwonted nature of the business, his mission was a failure. “At Aberdeen the booksellers rose up in arms, and only one had the courage to give him an order.” To him succeeded, ere long, Mr. James Peters, a more successful agent, and a faithfulattachéof the house through all its later fortunes till his death. But Curwen says: “It was not until Mr. William Nelson, theeldest son of the founder, took to the road that the trade business was really consolidated, not only in Scotland, but also in the chief towns of the United Kingdom. In fact, it may be said that Mr. William Nelson was the real builder of the business, working upwards from a foundation that was certainly narrow and circumscribed. Mr. Thomas Nelson, the younger brother, soon after this admitted to the firm, undertook the energetic superintendence of the manufacturing department, and was the originator of the extensive series of school books.”
William Nelson’s taste in literature was refined, and his reading extensive. His mind was stored with the fruits of years of liberal study; and when stimulated by the sight of beautiful scenery, or moved by some unusual occurrence, he sometimes surprised strangers by his apt and lengthened quotations from favourite poets. Soon after the removal to the Castle Hill establishment, Mr. Duncan Keith,—the son of an old friend of Mr. Nelson, with whom William had spent at Glasgow a brief period of initiation into the mysteries of trading,—was welcomed as a member of the West Bow home-circle, and took his place among the busy corps on the Castle Hill. He was the junior of William Nelson by some years, and thus writes: “My evenings were chiefly spent in the society of the younger branches of the family; but I have a distinct remembranceof William reading aloud from Horace and Virgil in a manner that showed an intimate acquaintance with the language, and an appreciation of the poetry in the original. Though a High School dux myself, it was far above me; and, so far as my later observation goes, above most people.” But it was only amongst intimate friends that he gave free play to his literary sympathies. Nothing was more remote from his character than any effort at display; and men of culture who, in their intercourse with him, had long regarded him only as the man of business, were sometimes startled by an unexpected betrayal of his familiarity with classical and general literature, as well as by his sound judgment on questions of critical discussion.
With a taste thus matured, his feeling for art was refined, and he directed his efforts, with ingenious skill, to render the works issued from the firm attractive. Novel methods of illustration were introduced. Wood-cuts were printed with tinted grounds and relieved lights. Chromo-lithographs vied in effect with the original water-colour drawings. A late series of reproductions of Landseer’s pictures, though designed only for a child’s book, constituted a valuable memorial of the great animal painter. Inventive ingenuity was directed to the production of fresh novelties in binding and illustration, many of which were eagerly copied by the trade. William Nelson’s appreciation of artisticexcellence seemed to be innate and instinctive. “A thing of beauty” was a joy to him wholly apart from his own share in its production. His admiration for a well-got-up book, or for illustrations of unusual excellence, found as hearty utterance in reference to the publications of another firm as of his own; and hence he was always open to fresh hints, and prepared for improvement on his most successful efforts. He was, indeed, too easily beguiled by good looks both in books and men. This characteristic passage occurs in a letter to an old friend: “I had a call two days ago from a most fair-spoken English clergyman, who wanted help to build a ragged school in Sheffield. He insisted that you had introduced him to me, and that I had taken him over the works and given him a book, which was likely enough; though, as I told him, I had no recollection of it. He was most plausible, and very good-looking. A good-looking outside takes my fancy in anything. I always find myself expecting the best of a good-looking book; and I am apt to believe pleasant things of good-looking people also. He assured me he was a great friend of yours; and he had such a friendly look that I gave him what he wanted. Do you know anything of this Dr. Pike? I have had my suspicions of him that he is a plausible humbug,”—which, as in many a similar case, proved to be only too well founded.
A writer in theScottish Typographical Circularremarks: “Mr. Nelson was often popping in and out among artists and engravers who did work for him, giving them new ideas and further suggestions. He did not grudge trouble or expense if he got things nice and to his mind. He rejoiced in beautiful typography, and displayed great artistic taste in the wood-cuts and illustrations.” He was indeed a familiar visitor in the studios of London and Paris, as well as of Edinburgh; and during his frequent Continental tours derived intense pleasure from his visits to the galleries both of ancient and modern art. His eye was quick to discern the merits of a painting, and his judgment was prompt and decided. He was indeed sensitive to any manifestation of bad taste; and the unsightly disfigurement of the buildings or thoroughfares of his native city by placards or signboards, excited his anger to a degree that sometimes startled the offender. His remonstrance on such occasions was apt to be expressed with a blunt sincerity that could not be misunderstood. The same severe standard of taste was applied in his own business, and made its influence felt in every department of typography, illustration, and binding.
A memorandum, found among his papers after his death, preserves an incident in the first stages of the inexperienced but energetic reformer’s proceedings. His father had acquired a set of stereotype plates ofDrinkwater’s “Siege of Gibraltar,” and had a portrait of its author engraved for the frontispiece. A reprint of it being in progress, the plate was intrusted to the engraver for retouching; and he undertook to get the autograph of the old soldier, to be added as an attractive feature. The new and illustrated edition was issued accordingly, and found a ready sale. But some years afterwards a venerable military-looking gentleman waited on Mr. Nelson, and asked where he had obtained the signature. Colonel Drinkwater, who was supposed to have been long since dead, was himself the questioner; and, as William Nelson notes, the signature was subsequently identified as in the handwriting of the deceased manager of Mr. Lizar’s engraving establishment. But only in the first stage of transition from student life to the counting-house and the publisher’s office could such a proceeding have eluded his vigilance. A copy of the engraving is attached to the memorandum, and contrasts very markedly with the illustrations of later years, when William Nelson’s critical taste, conjoined with his experience in adapting the issues of his publishing-house to popular demand, won for the productions of the firm a character for great attractiveness in outward aspect and illustration. At a later date, the “Chronicles of the Schönberg-Cotta Family” constituted the first of a highly popular series of books by the same author.The charming authoress who writes under the initials A. L. O. E., the late Mary Howitt, Mrs. Traill, R. M. Ballantyne, and other writers, figured on their list of authors. The charming series of “Art Gift Books,” from the French of M. Jules and Mme. Michelet, and M. Arthur Mangin—“The Insect,” “The Bird,” “The Mysteries of the Ocean,” and “The Desert World,” as well as other works of the same class—are illustrated in the best style of art. But it was as caterers for the people, in an abundant supply of pure, high-toned popular literature, and not as rivals of the great publishing houses through which the most eminent writers appeal to select classes of readers, that the Nelsons achieved their greatest success. In the tribute paid to the worth of William Nelson by the Rev. Dr. Alison when his life-work was finished, it is said: “His influence, and that of the firm of which he was the head, has gone forth healthfully to the ends of the earth. Religious principle, no less than skill and taste and enterprise, has been in all their work as publishers of literature. No man can measure the good which that incessant stream of excellent books issuing from their press has done for the world. To a large extent they have been for the multitude, rather than for the learned few.” But this was the summing up of the work of a lifetime. Much had to be achieved in its progress, step by step, ere such results could even be aimed at.
Under the energetic management of the young publisher the picturesque tenement at the head of the West Bow, which had sufficed for his father’s bookselling operations, soon proved inadequate for the growing business. A neighbouring “land,”—as an entire pile of building in the Old Town of Edinburgh is still called,—situated at the head of Blyth’s Close, Castle Hill, with the palace of Mary of Guise in its rear, was secured; and there the first steps were taken which ultimately developed into the great establishments of Hope Park and Parkside. Machinery was brought into use wherever available; and a well-organized division of labour was introduced, until at length nearly every process, from the initial type-setting to the final issue of the bound and illustrated volume, was executed on the premises. The locality where this new departure was made, preparatory to the great works at Hope Park, with its hundreds of work-people, and its wholesale branches at London and New York, is one rich in literary associations. Near by, on the northern slope of the Castle bank, is the house of Allan Ramsay, poet and bookseller; Blair’s Close, long noted among the most ancient nooks of the Castle Hill, was the abode of Alison Cockburn, authoress of “The Flowers of the Forest,” and of other plaintive as well as humorous Scottish songs. To St. James’s Court, on the east side, James Boswell brought Dr. Samuel Johnson,and entertained him in the house where he had succeeded to the historian David Hume. There was an old-world literary flavour about the place that gave a certain piquancy to the start of the young adventurer deserting the classic grove for the prosaic haunts of commerce.
The Rev. Dr. Simpson of Derby, already noted as an old schoolmate and a life-long friend, refers in one of his letters to the lectures and social entertainments provided at a later date for the numerous workers in the Hope Park establishment, in which he was an active labourer. But the interest taken by William Nelson in his employés was manifested at an earlier stage. Lectures and social recreations had already been instituted before the transfer of the works to Hope Park, in some of the earliest of which the present writer bore a part. But with increasing numbers, and more ample room, those instructive entertainments were organized on an extensive scale, and are described in a memorandum of Dr. Simpson, by whom many of the later lectures were given. His account of them may find a fit place here, though in some points it anticipates the narrative of later years. “The deep interest,” he remarks, “which Mr. Nelson felt in his work-people, and his desire to promote their well-being in every sense, conspicuously appear in the entertainments which were from time to time got up for them. At first thesewere chiefly in the nature of banquets or suppers, to which all were invited, when they were regaled with the good things of this life in a judicious but liberal manner. Along with this, however, he was careful to combine moral and religious instruction, by securing addresses by one or two clerical friends. By-and-by he provided for them occasional lectures on subjects of varied interest. For those he got up, at considerable expense and trouble, a series of illustrations which were shown on a screen by the oxy-hydrogen light, the lecturer describing each picture while it was before the eyes of the audience. This was, I believe, the first introduction of this form of lecture, which has since become so common. The pictures were reproduced from engravings by the photographer of the establishment, Mr. Sinclair, and then hand-coloured with much care and skill by Mr. Ramage, who devoted himself to the art-work connected with the extensive business of the firm.
“The first of those illustrated lectures was on the transfer of Napoleon’s remains from St. Helena to Paris. The second was on Garibaldi’s invasion of Sicily and Italy, ending with his meeting with Victor Immanuel, and hailing him as king of Italy. Afterwards a new departure was made, and the lectures were chiefly devoted to the genius and works of celebrated artists; the illustrations being transcripts ofthe artists’ principal works. The first subject of this class was David Scott, R.S.A., in connection with his illustrations of Coleridge’s ‘Ancient Mariner,’ subsequently reproduced by Messrs. Nelson in a tasteful edition of the poem. The next lecture was devoted to the works of Landseer; and to this succeeded similar illustrations of Hogarth, Wilkie, Harvey, Leech, etc. Those lectures were greatly appreciated; the large hall at Hope Park, in which they were given, being always crowded to excess by the employés, their wives and families, supplemented by friends invited by Mr. Nelson, including some who took an active part in this generous effort for the social elevation of the working-classes, such as Dr. Guthrie and Dr. Hannah; and their artist friends, Sir George Harvey, D. O. Hill, James Drummond, and others. For each of those lectures Mr. Nelson had prepared from twenty to thirty slides, which were arranged in partitioned cases made for their safe keeping.” But they perished, along with much more valuable property, in the disastrous fire of 1878.
But only the initial steps towards the full development of the Hope Park works, with their ingeniously devised machinery and systematic division of labour, were possible at the Castle Hill establishment. Its accommodation, though a great step in advance of that at the Bowhead, was inadequate for such plans, andthe numbers employed were correspondingly limited. But the workmen were carefully selected; and from the first the relations between them and their employer were characterized by mutual respect and confidence. They recognized in him one whose interest in their welfare was generous, and his sympathy that of a friend. But his own attention to business extended to the minutest details, and anything indicative of mere eye-service or sloth was intolerable to him. An anecdote highly characteristic of him is thus narrated on the authority of one who had been long in his employment:—“Two navvies were engaged one day at Hope Park turning a crank when Mr. William Nelson was passing. He paused for a moment and looked at the men, who seemed to go about their work rather leisurely. He then came forward to them, and asked, in a gruff manner, if they could not work a little harder and turn the crank quicker. They answered at once ‘they could not; it was a stiff job, and very fatiguing.’ ‘Nonsense,’ he replied; ‘let me try.’ Seizing one of the handles, he did try; but, after giving the handle two or three turns, desisted, for it made the perspiration pour from him. Then he remarked, ‘Ay, just go on as you’ve been doing;’ and, putting his hand into his pocket, added, ‘There’s half-a-crown between you.’ Many similar anecdotes might be told. He liked smart, active workmen; but he did not willingly drive or undulypress any one. He would at once rebuke any of his employés if he considered they deserved it; but if afterwards he found he had acted hastily or wrongly, he would apologize, even to the humblest worker, and almost invariably with the apology there came a gift.”
It is not surprising that the relations between such an employer and his workmen were something closer than those of the mere hireling. The workmen who had shared in his first efforts in the Castle Hill establishment followed him to Hope Park. Some of them, by their fidelity and skill, contributed to the success of later years; and the veteran survivors of that original staff were regarded by William Nelson to the last as objects of exceptional favour.
Among those who thus migrated from the Castle Hill to Hope Park, one claims special attention as a relic of the original Bowhead establishment. James Peters has already been named. He was a man of good education, and, what was rare in his day, had a familiar knowledge of the French language. He was, moreover, a devout Presbyterian of the early type, eschewing the Covenanting exclusiveness of his old master, and holding faithfully to the National Kirk. His familiarity with the Scriptures was so great that he was accredited with knowing the entire New Testament by heart, and quoting familiarly from much of the Old Testament. He had been the trusted clerk,commercial traveller, and man of all work: the entire staff for a time of the bookselling business under the elderrégime; and as the cautious ventures of its founder gave way to the comprehensive schemes of a younger generation, he watched their operations with many misgivings. Old Peters would have furnished a study for Sir Walter Scott fit to have ranked alongside of his Owen and Caleb Balderstone. He moved in all things with the regularity of clockwork, and sternly resented in others the slightest deviation from orderly business procedure or punctuality as to time. Mr. Duncan Keith sums up his own early recollections of him with the remark that “even John Munro, the beadle of Mr. Goold the Covenanting minister’s kirk, stood in awe of him.” One day, contrary to all precedent, he asked leave to go away a little earlier than the usual closing hour. He reappeared next morning, and, addressing William, said, “I wish you would tell your father I got married yesterday.” On inquiry, he stated that he had just wedded the elderly dame with whom he lodged. “It will be cheaper,” he said; “and we’ll get on weel enough thegither. We hae been lang used to each other.” When in early days the plan of book sales was in vogue, he was intrusted with the carrying out of one of the ventures; but his ideas of orderly procedure were wholly at variance with the novel experiment. He abruptly returned home thefollowing day, and would have nothing more to do with such work. His loyalty to his young masters knew no bounds; but he could never quite forget that they had been boys when he had the sole charge of the Bowhead buith, or indeed feel it to be natural to speak of them otherwise than by their Christian names. Duty clearly required him to advise and warn them at every new step, so unlike the prudent thrift of early days. If we could realize all the feelings of a sober old brood-hen when the ducklings that she has hatched take their first plunge into the mill-pond, and in spite of her clucking and pother sail off into the expanse of waters heedless of all remonstrance, we might be better able to sympathize with the worthy old servitor as his young master launched into ever new and more ambitious ventures. He survived his active faculties, and was an object of kindly care and liberality long after he had ceased even to deceive himself with the fancy that he could be of service in the business.
THE premises on the Castle Hill became ere long too limited for the rapidly-growing business. William Nelson had been joined in the enterprise by his younger brother, Thomas; and with their combined energy many novel features were developed and advances made in fresh avenues of trade. The publications of the establishment were attracting attention by their improved typography and tasteful embellishment. Ampler room and greater subdivision of labour had become indispensable. So, looking around for some more suitable locality, their attention was directed to a group of antiquated dwellings at the east end of the Meadows, the remains of one of the suburban villages swallowed up when Old Edinburgh burst its mural barriers and extended over the surrounding heights.
In an address given by William Nelson to those in his employment, at one of his social entertainments, when a building was in progress at Hope Park which he then assumed was to be the final addition to theworks, he traced the rise of the firm, interspersing the graver narrative with humorous incidents, and with kindly notices of some whom he referred to as faithful fellow-workers, from the time when he first gathered them around him in the new workrooms on the Castle Hill. One of the reminiscences of their entertainer’s narrative is thus recalled:—When Hope Park grounds were about to be built upon, Mr. Nelson, being curious to explore the place, made a visit to what he described as a wilderness of cabbage gardens, with no end of pig-sties. One grumphy (Anglice, a sow) he noticed in a corner where the joiner’s workshop afterwards stood, which, as he humorously described it, “kept its carriage!” The body of a four-wheeled coach, still in good condition, had been consigned to this novel use. The contrast was striking when, in later years, the smooth grass lawn, with its tasteful array of shrubs and flower-plots, filled the area enclosed on three sides by the Hope Park works.
But the full development of the establishment was the result of years of patient and steady progress, until it grew to proportions adequate for the varied departments embraced in the comprehensive scheme, with all its ingenious improvements in machinery for economizing labour. Its tall chimney showed from afar the scale on which its operations were carried on; though at a later date William Nelson realized very stronglythe injury to the amenities of the city, and the obstruction to the magnificent views of the surrounding landscape, occasioned by such adjuncts to its manufactories, and laboured by precept and example to get rid of them. In the later Parkside Works gas-engines are the sole motive power, and their general introduction was advocated by him as a substitute for the unsightly chimney with its obscuring volumes of smoke.
With the numerous workmen that were ultimately engaged in all the varied branches of skilled labour, the Hope Park establishment came to be recognized as one of the most important centres of economic industry in the city; and, so far as printing, publishing, and binding are concerned, is spoken of by Mr. Bremner, in his “Industries of Scotland,” as the most extensive house in Scotland. The new buildings, when completed, formed a stately range of offices enclosing three sides of a square, where, under a well-organized division of labour, with the aid of machinery adapted to its varied operations, the entire work, from the setting of the types to the issue of the bound and illustrated volumes, was done on the premises. Compositors, draughtsmen, photographers, lithographers, steel, copper, and wood engravers, electrotypers, stereotypers, folders, stitchers, and binders, plied their industrious skill. The work-men and women employed on the establishment latterly numbered nearly six hundred;and few centres of industry have been characterized by more harmonious relations between the representatives of capital and labour.
The printing of books has constituted an important branch of Scottish industry from the days of Chepman and Miller, on through Bassendyne, Hart, and Symson, to our own time. The names of Fowlis, Constable, Ballantyne, Cadell, Blackwood, Oliver and Boyd, Chambers, Blackie, Collins, Neill, Black, and Nelson, are all familiarly associated with the literary history of the century; and, with only three exceptions, they belong to Edinburgh. It was fitting, indeed, that Edinburgh should take the lead in developing the typographer’s art, where, in 1507, Walter Chepman set up the first printing-press in Scotland; and where, in the memorable year when “the flowers o’ the forest were a’ wede away” on Flodden Hill, he built the beautiful Chepman Aisle which still adorns the collegiate church of St. Giles, and endowed there a chaplainry at the altar of St. John the Evangelist. Edinburgh, in the days of the Scottish Caxton, was even more noteworthy for its authors than its typographers. Dunbar, Gawain Douglas, and the makers of that brilliant age, were followed by Montgomery, Drummond, Allan Ramsay, and Fergusson; and along with this array of poets, reaching to him whom Burns owned as his master, Hume, Robertson, Mackenzie, Adam Smith, Dugald Stewart, and WalterScott, combined to transform their old romantic town into the Modern Athens of later years. Their genius was not without its influence on the special aspect of Edinburgh’s industries, including some of the novel forms of periodical literature which have so largely contributed to the culture of the masses.
The social entertainments and lectures provided by William Nelson at an early stage for his employés have already been noticed; but in the spring of 1868 he extended his generous sympathy over an ampler field, and organized afêtefor the whole journeymen printers and stereotypers of Edinburgh. The invitation met with a cordial response, and the appearance presented by the assembled guests in the galleries of the Museum of Science and Art was the theme of admiring comment. They were summoned to this novel social gathering by one who justly claimed recognition as an employer “who set a high value upon whatever is calculated to foster kindly feelings between man and man.” The invitation said: “For one evening let us lay aside care or irksome duty, and come out with those we love best, and let us look each other fairly in the face. In the matter of head we do not much differ; at heart we are agreed. We need to have the bow unstrung occasionally. Let us do so in company for once, and see if we can help each other to a happy evening.” The answer to this was the assembly of upwards of a thousandworkmen, with their wives and sweethearts, in the Industrial Museum, to listen to a lecture by Mr. W. H. Davenport Adams, on the noble art in the service of which they were enlisted; and to enjoy the humour and pathos of some of Scotland’s choicest national songs, including Burns’s proud protest, which could there be appreciated without any thought of social wrong—“A man’s a man for a’ that!” TheScottish Typographical Circular, in its comments on this unique gathering, remarked: “Here were a thousand men, nearly all in superfine black coats and spotless shirt-fronts; a thousand women in tasteful dresses and bonnets of the latest mode, setting off the comely features of the printers’ wives, or the fresh, pretty faces of their sweethearts; and in all this great mass of the ‘lower orders’ not a word out of joint; not a gesture of impatience; no crowding, jostling, or selfish preferring of one’s own enjoyment; nothing but courtesy and that perfect good breeding which prompts men to give their neighbour’s comfort the precedence of their own convenience.” It was a gathering that Scotland might be proud of, whether we assign to the host or the guests the chief prominence. The matter of dress, to which the critic so specially directed attention, was not unworthy of note as an evidence of provident thrift, and of the self-respect which is nowhere more fitting than in the skilled artisan.
The spirit manifested in gatherings such as this is the best antidote for those conflicts between labour and capital which have proved so detrimental to both. Yet, as will be seen by a letter addressed less than four years later to his former traveller, Mr. James Campbell, he had evidence that a perfect solution of this great social problem has yet to be devised. The letter is dated from Dunkeld, where he had been spending a holiday with his family. In 1851 he had married Miss Catherine Inglis of Kirkmay, Crail; and at the date of the letter he was surrounded by a happy family, consisting of his son Frederick and four daughters, to whom he thus alludes: “The children have enjoyed their stay immensely, and none more than Master Fred, who got capital trout-fishing in the Braan, a tributary of the Tay, and in the Butterstone, a stream about six miles distant.” His greatest happiness was in his own family circle, and surrounded by the friends whom he welcomed to his hospitable home. But the cares inseparable from his extensive commercial transactions could not always be so exorcised; and now a succession of inclement seasons and bad harvests was clouding the prospects of all. “We have had,” he writes, “a most miserable time of it for many months past, as far as weather is concerned. I don’t remember of such a long continuance of wet weather as there has been this year. It has lasted, I may almost say, all summer, up to withinthe last few days; and the result is that the crops have suffered terribly. As to the potatoes, the disease is everywhere, and potato starch-mills will have full employment this winter. It is a time calling for sympathy and forbearance on all hands. But, in addition, strikes for shorter hours and increase of wages are the order of the day; and it looks as if the words of the song, ‘Hard times come again no more,’ were ere long, as a general rule, not to be suitable for this country, as such times cannot be far distant for both masters and men, if there be not a cessation soon to this war between capital and labour. Things are all quiet at present in the trades of printing and bookbinding, but it is rumoured that heavy demands for both shorter hours and higher wages will be made by the men next month; and it is known that they have been preparing for a struggle by subscribing largely to a strike-fund ever since the beginning of the year, so that there is no doubt coming events are casting their shadows before.
“Things must be in a strange way in New York just now with operative printers. We know this from two of our men, who went out there some months ago in the hope of bettering their condition; but they were glad to come back to us, and they are both at work again, each at the machine at which he worked before he left. The history of the experiences of one of the men was as follows:—He got to New York, but he hadno sooner begun to look out for work than he was set upon by a committee of operative printers, who were at the time on strike, and he was offered eleven dollars a week if he would not ask for work. The offer was too good a one for him to refuse, and he went about for several weeks with his hands in his pockets. By-and-by he was asked if he would not like to go back to Scotland. He said he had no objections, and it was arranged that his passage back should be paid. When the day came for his leaving, some of the New York men came down to the steamer to see him off, and they gave him five dollars for pocket-money during the voyage, and a sum of ten dollars to give to his wife, whom he had left behind in Edinburgh. And so he left the shores of America. The story of the other man is still more strange. He took work in an office in which there was a strike; but after being there for a week, he found his position so uncomfortable from annoyance from the men who had left, that he went and told his master he would have to leave on account of this. But what was his surprise when his master told him that he need not allow this state of matters to continue, as he had just to put a ball through one of the fellows, and there would be an end of it; and that the utmost that would be done to him in the way of punishment would be a day or two’s confinement in the police office or jail. He then handed him a revolverand said, ‘Take this and make good use of it, and you’ll have a quiet life for the future.’ This pistol I have now in my possession, and it is worth having as a curiosity.”
At an earlier date the mischievous effects of a strike extended to the Hope Park works, ending in the places of some of the strikers being supplied by other applicants. But the victims learned by experience that they never appealed in vain to the sympathy of William Nelson, even when their share in the revolt had been characterized by ingratitude or breach of faith. It was sufficient that they were impoverished. “Poor fellow!” he would say, “he brought it on himself; but what of that?” And the liberal aid was given only too readily; for the plea was discovered to be one to which he most promptly responded, and was resorted to frequently by impostors who preyed on his kindly sympathy. What, indeed, the Rev. Dr. Alison remarked of him after his death, when he said: “He simply could not turn from distress of any sort without doing something to relieve it,” was no more than an echo of the sentiment which experience had rendered familiar to many.
THE excursions of early years, and the longer holiday rambles of student life, for which the environs of Edinburgh and the neighbouring shores of Fife afforded so many attractions, were exchanged for a time for the prosaic rounds of the commercial traveller and book-agent. But this duty was transferred ere long to trustworthy subordinates; and so soon as prosperity rewarded the intelligent labours of the young adventurer, the spirit that prompted earlier excursions revived. This was further stimulated by that keen desire to see and judge for himself in reference to all matters of general interest which manifested itself through life. The occurrence of any unusual event, or the opening up of some new region, was sufficient at any time to awaken the desire to explore a scene rendered interesting by its novelty, or by the exceptional circumstances which attracted his notice. When the first Pacific Railway was completed, he crossed the Atlantic in company with Mrs. Nelson, travelled toSan Francisco, visited the Yellowstone Region and the Mariposa Valley, and returned through Canada to renew his intercourse with old friends there. While in the Mariposa Valley, Mrs. Nelson was presented with one of the giantSequoia, orWellingtonia, which now bears, on a marble tablet attached to it, the name of “Auld Reekie,” then bestowed on it. At Salt Lake City a Scotsman addressed Mr. Nelson by name, and begged him to convey his respects to his old clergyman, the Rev. W. Arnot of Edinburgh; but in mentioning this, Mr. Nelson dryly added that the Free Churchman of Salt Lake City seemed to take very kindly to its spiritual wives! He visited Paris in 1851, and exposed himself to its dangers at the time of the famouscoup d’étatby which the Third Napoleon made himself emperor. Twenty years later he hastened again to the French capital in the perilous outbreak of the Commune; and when the Christmas season of 1879 was overclouded by the disastrous fall of the Tay Bridge, immediately on learning of the event he made his way to Dundee to see for himself the ruins and to investigate the cause. He succeeded in finding a man who had watched the lights of the train as it swept on in the profound darkness, and was startled by their being suddenly extinguished. The bridge had given way; and the train, with all its passengers, was precipitated into the Tay. In like manner he set out forthe Scilly Islands on the occasion of the wreck of theSchiller; travelled to Ischia after the occurrence of the earthquake of 1881, in which the town of Casamicciola was almost totally destroyed; and when, in the following year, the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act led to a violent popular outbreak in Connemara, he crossed over to Ireland, that he might visit the disturbed district and judge for himself of the merits of the conflict.
The amount of preparation for even the longest journey was amazingly trifling. William Nelson would start almost at a day’s notice for an extended tour; and this course of procedure, so characteristic of his equanimity, conjoined with calm, resolute endurance, was curiously exemplified in his first extended journey. In 1849 he left home with the intention of spending a six weeks’ holiday in the south of Europe. He was in Leghorn when a letter reached him which showed that all was going on satisfactorily in the business. He thereupon decided to make an extended journey to the East. But his funds were exhausted, and it was before the days of railways or telegraphs. With a faith in human nature characteristic of him through life, he stepped into the counting-house of Messrs. Henderson Brothers, the leading British merchants in Leghorn. He was a total stranger, with no introduction. He told them his story, and asked them to cash a draft on Edinburgh for£300. They looked at him, and after a pause told him to draw the cheque, and gave him the money. The strangers became friends in later years; and one day, when Mr. Robert Henderson was dining at Salisbury Green, William Nelson asked him how it was that he and his brother had ventured to give a stranger so large a sum. “Well,” said Mr. Henderson, “in plain truth, it was just your Scotch tongue and honest Scotch face, and nothing else!” The friendship which originated in this novel introduction lasted with their lives.
There was, in truth, something singularly winning in his open, handsome countenance; and its influence on strangers was anew illustrated at a later date, when Mrs. Nelson accompanied him in a tour through the Black Forest. They were overtaken by a thunderstorm when in Baden-Baden, and taking refuge in the nearest shop, they found it devoted to articles ofvirtu. A woman in charge, who spoke English fluently, received them courteously, and responded to Mr. Nelson’s inquiries in a way that greatly interested him. On leaving he expressed his grateful thanks, and said he would have liked to make some purchases, but unfortunately his remaining funds were not more than sufficient for his journey home. The reply was: “Take whatever you please, sir. No one could look in your face and distrust you.” He did accordingly carry off somechoice objects ofvirtu, always a temptation to him; the money for which, it is scarcely necessary to add, was duly remitted on reaching England.
Provided, on such novel security, with funds requisite for a prolonged tour in the East, he was absent upwards of ten months, and turned the time to account with characteristic assiduity. The late President of Queen’s College, Belfast, the Rev. Dr. J. Leslie Porter, who, as a traveller in Palestine, was familiar with the scenes embraced in Mr. Nelson’s tour, and repeatedly conversed with him on points of mutual interest, remarks:—“He did not as a rule enter into detailed descriptions of the localities he had visited. His chief desire apparently was to elicit from those with whom he talked the fullest information, as if to add to or correct his own impressions. One thing particularly struck me: his questions were all pertinent and exactly to the point. He showed a talent in obtaining exactly the information he wished such as I have never known equalled, except in the case of one person. He could glean a wonderful amount of knowledge in a very brief period. He had himself been a close and accurate observer. He knew exactly the points which, from want of time or opportunity, he had not been able perfectly to grasp, and he put his questions in a form that brought out every particle of information the person he addressed could give.
“Of Damascus Mr. Nelson spoke with great enthusiasm. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘richness, beauty, and fertility are there. Where,’ he asked, ‘was the scene of Paul’s conversion? Was it near the east gate, where tradition has located it?’ I pointed out that this could scarcely be, as Paul was on his way from Jerusalem, and the road from the Holy City approaches Damascus from the opposite side. He next inquired whether there was still any tradition of Abraham; and he was very much interested when I told him that a few miles to the north there is still a shrine, at the foot of the hills, called the prayer-place of Abraham. ‘Is not that,’ he said, ‘a proof of the tenacity with which even the oldest traditions cling to the country?’ There was much in this; and he seemed to feel, as others have felt, that it may be used as an argument in favour of the truth of the early Christian traditions regarding the holy places of Jerusalem and other cities in Palestine. He asked much about the leprosy. ‘Did any tradition of it exist in Damascus?’ I remember well how deeply he seemed to be impressed when I told him that a short distance outside the east gate there were the remains of a very ancient building, called Naaman’s House, and that a portion of it was still used as a leper hospital. He said to me, ‘I looked for the Straight Street, mentioned in connection with the conversion of St. Paul, but could see no trace of it.’ Then I told himthe results of more recent researches; how they had brought to light the position and character of that great street which ran through the city from the east to the west gate, and had on each side a double row of columns, fragments of which can still be seen in the houses and courts adjoining.”
But he had a no less keen eye for the modern Damascus, with its motley population, its narrow streets and thronged bazaars, all full of strange Eastern life and habits. “The mean, dirty thoroughfares, worse,” as he says, “than an Old Town Edinburgh close, run between low, shabby-looking houses; and nothing surprised me more than when I was taken through a long dark passage, to suddenly find that the shabby street-front concealed a beautiful court, laid out in garden fashion, with a fine fountain in the centre, and flower-beds and orange trees, and round this the chambers, brightly furnished with cushions and matting, etc., all opening on to it, like a scene from the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments.” Nevertheless the predominant thought in his mind was the Damascus of Roman and New Testament times; the city to which Saul the persecutor was journeying when he was arrested on the way, and commissioned to go far hence to proclaim the gospel of glad tidings to the Gentile world.
Having gratified his intelligent curiosity, in seekingto discover the ancient localities of Damascus associated with Scripture history, he proceeded by way of Lebanon to Jerusalem. The associations of the city of Zion, of Nazareth, the Jordan, the Syrian desert, and the Dead Sea, were replete with interest to a mind trained from earliest childhood in devout familiarity with every incident of sacred story. The novel scenes of Eastern life were, moreover, explored with peculiar zest in this his first escape from the restraints of homely Western civilization into that strange old East where the customs and ideas of an ancient past still survive. In referring to this visit to Jerusalem he remarks:—“I was there before any guide-book was written; and so I had to consult my Bible, and occasionally Josephus, on a point of history. After these I found Robinson’s ‘Biblical Researches’ the most thorough and useful. Robinson seemed to me to write, and study, and investigate as a scholar. Perhaps he paid rather too little regard to tradition; but this was natural in a place like Jerusalem, which absolutely swarms with the most absurd legends. He lays down on the whole a firm basis of biblical and historical facts; then he leads one on in a logical and critical manner to the truth regarding the exact sites of the great events of the Gospel narrative: the site of the Temple, of the Palace of David, of the Hall of Judgment in which Pilate sat, of the old walls and gates of theHoly City, etc. Then Robinson seemed to me to prove that the Holy Sepulchre could not have been where it is now located.”
The controverted questions about the topography of Jerusalem, which have since received such abundant elucidation, were all familiar to him, and were discussed with keenest interest when he met with any one who had either visited the sacred city, or made its historical details a subject of research. The scenes of the nativity, the crucifixion, and the holy sepulchre, of the agony in the garden, and the ascension, were all investigated by him with critical care. Dr. Porter furnishes the following memoranda of their conversation on those subjects:—
“He asked me my views as to the true site of Calvary. Was I convinced that it was not—or, as Robinson affirms, could not have been—within the compass of the present walls? If not, then where was it? He several times said, as if by way of suggestion, that it was either on the north side of the modern city, or to the east, on the brow of the Kidron Valley. ‘Did you ever consider,’ he asked me, ‘the statement of the evangelist to the effect that the women, as if afraid to approach, viewed the awful tragedy from afar?’ He was pleased when I suggested that possibly the true site of Calvary was not far south of St. Stephen’s Gate, where two public roads passed a short distance off—one leading north to Samaria and Galilee, the other east, over the Kidron and Olivet, to Jericho and the Jordan. ‘Yes,’ he said; ‘and the women would then have a clear view of the whole scene, from a safe distance, on the side of the Mount of Olives, beyond the deep and narrow valley.’ ”
To this succeeded discussions on the value of the local traditions in reference to the scenes latterly associated with so much superstition and deceit; and the possibility of identifying them with the help of local topography and the sacred narrative. “ ‘Where,’ he asked me, ‘would you locate the scene of the ascension? Was it, or could it have been, on the traditional spot at the Church of the Ascension on the summit of Olivet? If you adopt this tradition, then how,’ he asked, ‘do you explain the words of the evangelist: “He led them out as far as to Bethany”?’ My reply was, ‘I do not admit the reality of the traditional site.’ He said this impressed himself very deeply when he crossed over the Mount of Olives to Bethany. He felt convinced that the scene of that wonderful last interview with the disciples was some spot near the village. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘our Lord took the disciples to a retired place, not in view either of Jerusalem or of the village of Bethany. Then,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘was there not some analogy between this scene and that of the transfiguration on a high mountain apart?Would not the solitude impress the disciples more forcibly with the glory of the appearance of the angels, and of his own close and immediate intercourse with the hosts of heaven?’ The thoughtfulness and depth of many of Mr. Nelson’s remarks upon the events of the life and death of Jesus often struck me. His visit to Palestine was brief; but he grasped in a very short time the most interesting and important points, and he connected them, with a kind of intuitive readiness and accuracy, with the events of the sacred narrative. He spoke on several occasions of the noble and yet very peculiar site of the Holy City, different in many respects from his previous ideas; but the moment he saw it, more deeply fixing in his mind the truth of the Psalmist’s words: ‘Beautiful for situation is Mount Zion.’ The view from the top of Olivet, and that from the old road which winds round and along its side from Bethany, was, he told me, to him by far the most instructive. ‘I read,’ he said, ‘the words of Jesus, when he looked on and wept over the city, with a feeling of their reality and wonderful vividness such as I had never experienced before.’ Another thing he observed more than once: ‘I was disappointed in the scenery of Palestine. I did not see, and I could not fully understand, the glowing descriptions in some parts of Scripture of its fertility and beauty. When I thought of England and Scotland, and compared their fertile lowlandsand magnificent highlands with the bare plains and rocky hills of Judah, I felt much difficulty in divesting my mind of the idea that even the sacred writers indulged in exaggeration. But,’ he added, ‘I suppose my Western ideas were entirely different from theirs as to what are the elements of richness and grandeur.’ I reminded him of the words of Scripture: ‘A land of corn and wine and oil olive.’ ‘Yes,’ he said; ‘most probably an Eastern would despise even the best parts of Scotland because they want the vines and the olives,’ ”