But the troubles were not over for the courageous travellers who had thus gratified their curiosity to witness for themselves the scenes of a besieged city and a Parisian Communistic revolt. On coming down to breakfast on the Sunday morning, they were gratified to meet at the breakfast table an old friend, in company with two others who, like themselves, had come to Paris to see the results of the terrible war. They were the only other guests at the hotel. On their first visit to Versailles they had had a good view of the great fortress, Mont Valérien, and explored with much interest the surrounding rifle-pits and other means of defence; and it was now proposed that the whole party should visit the fort. But Mrs. Nelson writes:—“On reconsidering our plans, William decided that he would prefer going to Versailles; so Mr. Buckham and I set out with him, while our friends started for Fort Valérien. We found much to interest us, and did not return to our hotel till the evening. But on arriving there the landlord met us in a state of great excitement. We had, it seemed, very narrowly escaped anovel and trying experience. Our three friends had been taken for spies, and as soon as they reached the fort were made prisoners. After being detained all day, they had been released, and were already on their way to England. He also told us that he had orders from head-quarters that we were to leave at once.” So ended this visit to Paris in the days of the capitulation and the Commune, not without some very exciting experiences, and more than one narrow escape from imminent danger. It was characteristic of William Nelson’s fearless unconsciousness of danger that he made Mrs. Nelson the sharer in an expedition, replete indeed with attractions of a highly novel and exceptional kind, but beset by so many dangers that nothing but her trusting confidence in his guardianship could have induced her to risk the exposure which it involved. As it was, it might be styled a lucky accident which alone prevented her sharing in the uncomfortable romance of being made a state prisoner in Fort Valérien. But such incidents have a piquancy in the memories of later years, when the discomforts and apprehensions they involved have passed out of memory. Nevertheless the narrow escape from incarceration in a state prison under the later Commune was the foremost incident in Mrs. Nelson’s thoughts whenever she recalled the experiences of that exciting time.
“It was a narrow escape,” she writes, “for we werethe last people to get out of Paris. The Provisional Government took the place of the Prussian invaders; and our train was the last one allowed to leave Paris. We were repeatedly taken for spies and stopped on the street. Had we gone to Fort Valérien and been made prisoners, the suspicions that had been excited would have told against us. But William never seemed to be put out, or to be conscious of danger.”
AJOURNEY through unfamiliar scenes had at all times a special fascination for William Nelson; and had circumstances favoured the devotion of his early years to exploration in strange, unknown regions, it was a work that would have proved peculiarly congenial to his tastes. He had some of the most needful characteristics of an observant traveller; and his acuteness and keen desire for the thorough investigation of whatever came under notice, would have secured results of permanent value. But as it was, his later travels, even when out of the beaten track of the tourist, were necessarily the mere holiday rambles of a man escaping from the engrossing cares of business. Yet even such rambles furnish some interesting glimpses of character.
From among William Nelson’s varied experiences of foreign travel in later years I select his trip to the Baltic in 1878, the incidents of which are familiar to me as his companion on the journey. More correctly,he accompanied me, starting at a few hours’ notice with that indifference to elaborate preparation so characteristic of him as a traveller. We sailed from Leith on the 4th of July by the steam-shipBuda, bound for Copenhagen. The North Sea gave us a rough shake; but I was seasoned for the voyage by fresh Atlantic experiences, and William Nelson was a good sailor in all weathers. He was at home among the sailors on the deck or in the forecastle, and found, as usual, some objects of practical sympathy there.
The first subject of curious investigation was the famed castle of Helsingör—Hamlet’s Elsinore. But it is better seen through Shakespeare’s eyes, and is much too modern and prosaic to awaken any associations with Hamlet the Dane. Our traveller, who was apt to be amusingly literal on such occasions, protested against the contemptible escarpment which it offered in lieu of
“The dreadful summit of the cliffThat beetles o’er his base into the sea.”
“The dreadful summit of the cliffThat beetles o’er his base into the sea.”
“The dreadful summit of the cliffThat beetles o’er his base into the sea.”
But Copenhagen had much to interest him; and among the rest, the recurrence of his own name, under slight modifications, suggesting the possible descent of the Covenanting farmers of the Carse of Stirling from some rough old Baltic viking. The Thorwaldsen Galleries were explored with keen interest. Then, too, I was fortunate in an early personal acquaintance withthe eminent Danish archæologist, Wörsaae, which subsequent correspondence on subjects of mutual interest had ripened into friendship. He was then chamberlain to the king. So under his guidance a charming day was passed in the Rosenborg Slot, where, in addition to the choice cabinet of coins, the famous silver drinking-horn of Oldenburg, and other ancient relics, a succession of state apartments are arranged with historical portraits, arms, jewels, and furniture of the royal Danish line. Illustrated as they were by the fascinating commentary of our guide, they charmed William Nelson beyond measure. “It was,” he said, “like walking down the centuries into the present time.” Another day was spent, under the same instructive guidance, inspecting the richly-stored cabinets of the Prindsens Palais, where the Runic slabs from Greenland—memorials of the Northmen’s pre-Columbian discovery of America—excited the liveliest interest.
On returning to our hotel on the latter occasion, we found unusual stir and excitement. We had not been aware that the Prince Imperial of France was a guest at the hotel—come to Copenhagen, as was reported, to sue for the hand of a Danish princess; and here was his Danish majesty’s carriage awaiting the prince to take him to dine at the palace at the fashionable hour of 5P.M.William Nelson remarks in a letter of the following July:—“You would see the sad fate of thePrince Imperial; though one cannot help asking what business he had there, fighting the poor Zulus who had done him no wrong, and bringing discredit on British officers who were there on duty, whatever we may think of such duty. It seems hard to blame them for bolting—every man for himself. But you remember the little prince as we saw him at Copenhagen; he did not seem very fit to fight Zulus or anybody else, poor fellow.”
The Frue Kirke occupies a prominent place among the attractions of Copenhagen, and is now associated in my mind with a characteristic little incident. The travellers had visited the church, the decorations of which, from the chisel of Thorwaldsen, constitute the main source of its interest. On the morning of the Sunday following they attended the English service; and in the afternoon his companion announced his intention to go to the Frue Kirke, and invited William Nelson to accompany him. But he refused, protesting that they should not understand a word of the service, and pronouncing the procedure to be a desecration of the day. His fellow-traveller had accordingly to go alone. The church is in the form of a Roman basilica, built under the direction of the great Danish sculptor, with a special view to its marble adornments. The sole light is admitted from ground-glass panels in the ceiling. Above the altar, inthe chancel, stands the colossal statue of Christ, with arms extended in loving regard. In front of each pier, in the nave, is a statue of an apostle: St. Paul symbolizing the irresistible might of the truth; St. Peter the custodian of the symbolic keys; the doubting Thomas, with look of indecision and finger on his lip; St. John as the impersonation of love; and the others, each more or less skilfully suggesting some appropriate ideal. As works of art they are open to criticism, for as an artist Thorwaldsen had far more of classical than of Christian feeling. But the absence of all gay colouring, usually so much favoured in church decoration, and the grand scale of the works in pure white marble, so appropriate to a place of Christian worship, produce as a whole an effect singularly impressive in its mode of enlisting art as the handmaid of religion. The Lutheran service, with its familiar hymn tunes, was simple as that of the Presbyterian Church; and the sermon was obviously eloquent, though delivered in the unknown Danish tongue. On the wanderer returning to the hotel, he found his friend asleep in an easy-chair, and ventured to hint that his time had been spent to as good purpose; but this idea was scouted, and William Nelson stuck to it, that the sharing in the afternoon service of the Frue Kirke was a profanation of the day.
His interest was specially excited by the comments of Wörsaae, on the succession of flora in Denmark, fromthePinus sylvestrisof the early Stone Period to that of theQuercus roburwhich accompanies the prehistoric works of the Iron Age, and has been replaced within the historic period by the beech. So a run by rail afforded him the gratification of seeing one of the fine beech forests of Denmark. But he was still more charmed with the habitual courtesy of the Dane. The Thorwaldsen Museum has refined the Copenhageners, even to the proverbial street boy. He who was at all times noticeable for that spontaneous courtesy which knew no distinction between rich and poor, was amused to learn that the travellers were guilty of an unconscious boorishness in keeping their hats on when entering a shop, or even a railway waiting-room. At their first Swedish railway station—a half-finished structure with unglazed windows—a Danish friend drew their attention to this notice: “Behall gerna hufvudbonaden pa!” which politely invited them to keep their hats on under such exceptional circumstances. The impression which this produced was recalled by an incident of a different kind, on their proceeding from Stockholm to Christiania. Their interview with custom-house officers on the frontier reminded them that Sweden and Norway are still distinct kingdoms. The simple kindly manners of the Norwegian people charmed them no less than those of the Danes. Introductions gave them access to scenes of quiet domestic life, where they learned toshake hands with the host and hostess after dinner, with the salutation: “Tak for maten”—thanks for the repast. A journey northward among the mountains and fiords afforded some amusing experiences of the kindly hospitalities of the peasant proprietors. The sheaf of oats, a Christmas gift for the birds, which surmounts the gable of every Norwegian farm-house, greatly charmed William Nelson as a thing so consonant to his love for the lower animals. The wild birds struck them as very familiar, never being molested, as they were told, even by the boys. On their return to the Norwegian capital, they had occasion in one of their rambles to appeal to a stranger for direction. Their few words of Norwegian, and his more ample English, proving inadequate for the occasion, he politely undertook to be their guide; and after a walk of nearly half a mile, he turned to William Nelson to inquire the name of the person we were in search of, and lifting his hat he said: “Please you wait till I ask where he is to find.”
With such experiences of Danish and Norwegian courtesy, they had not long returned to Christiania when they learned of the expected arrival of his majesty King Oscar, to open the Storthing, or Norwegian parliament. Mingling with the crowd that awaited his arrival, they were surprised at the reception tendered to their sovereign and the crown princeby those same courteous Norwegians. It was his majesty’s first appearance since he vetoed a popular measure excluding the ministers of the crown from a seat in the Storthing. There was nothing menacing or rude in his reception, but the only hat taken off on the occasion was that of the king himself.
In 1882 William Nelson visited Portugal and Spain for the second time, accompanied on this occasion by Mrs. Nelson and his two younger daughters. At Cadiz, Seville, Toledo, Cordova, and other cities at which the travellers tarried, he derived intense gratification from the magnificent mediæval remains, the splendid cathedrals with their elaborately sculptured details, but above all, from the novel beauty of Arabian art. Already, at Damascus, Grand Cairo, and other Eastern cities, he had been greatly impressed with the taste and the fine elaboration of detail in the works of the Arabian architects. His rooms at Salisbury Green were enriched with tiles from the Alhambra, and with pottery and beautiful models of other works of the Spanish Moors.
The notes of Dr. Porter of Belfast have already furnished interesting reminiscences of the interchange of experiences and observations between William Nelson and himself as travellers in the East; and they are no less available for information illustrating the impressions left on the mind of the formerby his Spanish tour. Dr. Porter thus writes:—“Mr. Nelson spoke to me often, and with singular enthusiasm, of his travels in Spain, and of all the wonders of art and architecture he saw there. On one occasion, I remember well, after showing me some of the exquisite models brought from the Alhambra, and also drawings of the Great Mosque-Cathedral of Cordova, and of the Alkazar in Seville, he said: ‘All these are relics of the Moors, or imitations of their work. Where did they get that marvellous style of architectural decoration? It is unique. There is nothing like it, except in those countries where the Moors were settled. The Greeks excelled it in pure taste and grandeur of idea; the Egyptians in magnitude, as at Thebes and Ghizeh; the Assyrians in vastness and perhaps splendour; but in beauty of ornament, in delicacy of finish, in gorgeousness of interior decoration, the Moors stand unrivalled. I often wonder how, where, and at what exact period this Moorish style of architecture was conceived; in what way all its details were elaborated. One sees it in the Great Mosque at Jerusalem, in the old Arab tombs and the private houses of Damascus, in the mosques of Cairo and Algiers, and above all in the glorious Alhambra. The Greeks had their schools of architecture and art: where were the Arabs or Moors taught? Their peculiar style, so far as I know,’ he added, ‘rose rapidly, almost at a bound.We can scarcely discover any trace of progress from rude beginnings, as in the Greek architecture. This has ever been to me a most interesting and mysterious subject.’ ” Mr. Nelson evidently thought and read not a little upon Moorish architecture, but, like many another student, without arriving at any satisfactory result. “How the wild tribes who came up from the desert of Arabia, and occupied in succession the great cities of Syria, Egypt, northern Africa, and lastly of Spain, attained to so much taste and splendour in architecture seems a mystery.” Then he remarked: “When Arab rule ceased, architecture declined in all those places, and has never been revived.” He remarked more than once: “Were not the Arabs, especially those in the great cities of the East, a literary people? Had they not a multitude of books on the various departments of science and philosophy? Was not their language capable of expressing the most profound thoughts? Did it not give evidence of high cultivation?” The impress of their intellectual influence, still manifest throughout Christian Spain, attracted his notice on all hands, and especially in its ecclesiastical architecture. The Moorish artists, he observed, had furnished the models on which, after the conquest of Granada, the architects of Christian Spain wrought. When conversing about the celebrated Cathedral of Cordova, he said: “That appears to me to be one ofthe most remarkable buildings in Spain, or perhaps in the world. It seems to be of purely Arab architecture: in all respects like a mosque, and adapted originally for the Moslem worship. Its internal decoration too is Arab, with the flaring stripes on the walls of red and white paint, and the imitation of red and white stones in the circular arches;” and he observed that he had seen rude painting exactly resembling it in several of the private houses and on the outside of the mosques in Damascus and Cairo. Nothing different from ordinary usage, either in building or internal decoration, escaped his keen observation; but his ignorance of the language precluded him from that familiar intercourse with the people which, when opportunity offered, he ordinarily turned to such good account.
He was not unfamiliar with the beautifully illuminated mediæval Arabic manuscripts. On one occasion, when looking over Silvestre’s “Universal Paleography” with myself, he remarked on the rare beauty of the Arabian illuminations, recalling his observation of them in an example shown to him in one of the mosques at Cairo; and he noted that even now illuminated manuscripts may be seen exposed for sale in the bazaars of Damascus and Grand Cairo. Dr. Porter referred to the great interest that he manifested in the work of the modern printing-press in the latter city, and the eagerness with which he inquired about the character of thebooks issued from the press set up there by the native Arabs. Dr. Porter told him “that there were many on medical subjects, many on interpretations of the Koran, on Mohammedan religion and morals, and one work especially which greatly pleased the common people.”—“What one is that?” he asked.—“The ‘Thousand and One Nights,’ ” was the reply. “You can hear them in everycaféthroughout the East. Men act them professionally, read and recite them; and those who frequent thecafésalways give them small presents in money.”
The lack of a colloquial knowledge of the native language was a source of inevitable difficulty and trouble to the Spanish tourists; but in spite of this Mr. Nelson’s observant habits were directed to some of the local peculiarities of the native dialects, and Dr. Porter notes:—“He appeared to take a great interest in the language of that part of Spain which is to a large extent peopled by the descendants of the Moors. I told him of many of the local names which are derived from the Arabic, and gave him examples of the singular changes which have been made in them to give them a Spanish form and sound. ‘That accounts,’ he said, ‘for the peculiar pronunciation of some of those names by the people in the south of Spain, so very different from what would appear from the spelling, and from what we in this country havebeen accustomed to hear.’ He had noticed all this in his travels, and, as was his uniform habit, tried to get at the root of everything.”
But modern Spain had also its historical associations for the English traveller. In our own youthful days the war of the Peninsula and the crowning victory of Waterloo were the prominent themes in popular thought; and so William Nelson naturally turned from the exquisite remains of Arabian art to muse on the battlefields of Talavera and Albuera. After surveying the fortifications of Badajoz, he writes to his friend Captain Chester: “I could not help asking myself, What good came of all the blood shed on those two terrible battlefields, and of all who perished in the frightful siege and assault of Badajoz? Why should British blood have flowed like water for such a country and such a people as the Spaniards?” He visited Gibraltar, and passed on to Tangier; and as he notes the width of the strait and the features of the great fortress, he considers its retention by England as no longer desirable. He thus writes to his friend Captain Chester: “I took care by the way to take a good look at that so-calledprecious jewelof the British crown, Gibraltar, wondering to myself what can be the use to us of this gigantic fox-trap. The popular idea is that it commands the straits; but these are about twenty-two miles in width, there is deep waterto the opposite coast, and the gun has still to be invented that can carry to such a distance. They are just now engaged in mounting a one hundred ton gun in a little fort that has been expressly built for it; but where will ever be the enemy that will allow its ships or ironclads to be brought within range of such a monster? There are to be four guns of this calibre erected on the fox-trap.” He next discusses its value as a coaling-station, and thus proceeds: “We have no fewer than seven thousand troops of one kind and another immured within the walls; and there is nothing for the common soldiers in the way of amusement. Time hangs heavy on their hands, and they hate ‘Gip’ with a perfect hatred.... I am unpatriotic enough to say that the fortress ought to be given up, as it has never been, and never can be, I am convinced, of any use to us. It cannot be said that it does more than merely command the ground on which it stands and points that can be reached by its guns.”
This was not William Nelson’s first visit to Spain; he had travelled through it before alone, and remembered nothing but the pleasures of the journey. But his experiences were different now, and he thus wrote to a friend soon after his return: “I have come back from my trip a wiser if not a better man; and the wisdom I have learned is that no one with a party of ladies should attempt travelling in Spain without acourier. We did not indulge in this luxury, and as none of us could speak Spanish, and as it is a rare thing for a Spaniard to learn any language but his own, the troubles that we fell into on this account were not infrequent. Again: Spaniards as a rule have no conscience, and when they have to do with parties travelling as we were, they fleece them most unmercifully; and we were not spared by them, I assure you. I need not say that the old Moorish cities of Spain are very charming, and that the people of Spain are very interesting on account of their picturesque costumes, and their being, as it were, an intermediate race between the people of the Orient and the Occident (to use two words that are rather grand).” It was characteristic of William Nelson’s transparent guilelessness that it never occurred to him to make any secret of his own blunders, or to conceal the mishaps which they involved. He gave a most humorous account of the travellers’ perplexities—the luggage persistently going one way and its owners another, till the ladies’ troubles culminated at Madrid, where the attractions of a court reception and introduction to the state mysteries of the Palacio Real were balked by the lack of all but their travelling costume.
A later tour, in 1886, took the traveller once more to Norway, on his way to St. Petersburg and Moscow, in company with Mrs. Nelson, Florence, and theirexpected son-in-law, Mr. S. F. MacLeod. On that occasion the ancient capital of Norway, beautifully situated on a bay in the Trondhjem Fiord, afforded him a special object of interest in its curious old cathedral, the most remarkable ecclesiastical edifice in Norway. It dates from 1033, and still retains singularly interesting remains of the Romanesque work of the Northmen of the eleventh century. But it is overlaid with many unsightly additions of a later date, well calculated to excite the critical comments of one whose indefatigable labours were so successfully directed to the removal of such incongruous defacements from the ancient buildings in his own native city. Numerous letters are available for the details of this later tour; but there is not room in a brief memoir such as is now aimed at for more than a few characteristic gleanings from the traveller’s tale. Some of his notes on the architecture of St. Petersburg will come under notice in a later chapter; but one literary comment must not be omitted here. Writing to his friend, Captain MacEnery, he says: “The censorship of the press in St. Petersburg is something terrible. All newspapers and periodicals in all languages are subjected to its tender mercies. As an instance of this, a copy of theScotsmanposted to St. Petersburg came to us with about three-fourths of a column blotted out, on account of some statements that displeased the greatauthority as to what should or should not be read by the subjects of the emperor. A copy ofPunchalso reached us with a paragraph blotted out. It would make a grand subject for a cartoon: the emperor of all the Russias surrounded by countless thousands of armed men, and yet afraid of poorPunch!”
ON the evening of Tuesday, the 10th of April 1878, as at the close of many a previous day, the hundreds of industrious workers in the Hope Park establishment welcomed the return of the hour of rest. The whirr of the busy machinery was stilled, and the buildings were left untenanted till the toilers with brain and hand should resume the work of a new day. The site to which the works had been transferred from the Castle Hill thirty-five years before was now crowded to its utmost limits with the warehouses, engine and work rooms of the prosperous firm. Everything seemed to give assurance of continuous success. Yet the workers were then leaving for the last time. Within a few hours the building was a pile of smoking ruins. The circumstances of this calamitous event were thus concisely narrated by William Nelson in response to a letter of sympathy: “In reference to the destruction of our printing and publishing works at Hope Park, never did fire do its work more speedily ormore thoroughly. It broke out about three o’clock on the morning of Wednesday, the 10th inst., and in little more than an hour the whole building was in flames. I was aroused about a quarter past four, and I hurried as fast as I could to the scene; but I found when I arrived that the roof all round had fallen in, and that flames were bursting forth from all the windows in the very front of the building. The fire broke out somewhere in the back part of it; there was a strong east wind blowing at the time, and this fanned the flames and made them rush along the various flats as they successively caught fire with extraordinary rapidity. Not a book or sheet of printed paper was saved!”
The calamity seemed to be overwhelming. The splendid results of intelligent industry and rare aptitude for business had vanished, like the gourd of Jonah, in a night. The insurance on the buildings was trifling compared with the amount of property destroyed. But his brother’s comment on being shown the above letter reveals a characteristic trait of William’s sympathetic and unselfish nature. “Willie’s letter about the fire recalls very distinctly that terrible morning. Poor fellow! it was most touching to see him come up to me before all the people and hold out his hand and say, ‘O Tom, I am so sorry for you.’ He did not speak or seem to think of himself at all.”
An onlooker has preserved this little, appreciative incident: “A few of the girls who worked in the establishment were noticed standing together and weeping bitterly, when one of them, looking up, was overheard to say, as she saw Mr. William Nelson surveying the conflagration, ‘Eh, there’s our dear maister. I’m thinking he’ll be thinking mair o’ us the day than o’ himsel’.’ ” The remark was abundantly justified; for a friend who was near him noted that his first thoughts were of sympathy for the work-people who would be thrown out of employment; and the feeling found practical form in his exertions on their behalf. This was characteristic of the spirit that animated him in all his relations with his work-people, and which helped to make of him an example of the very highest type of the true captains of industry. “The liberal deviseth liberal things, and by liberal things shall he stand.”
The Rev. Dr. Alison, the clergyman of Newington parish, in which the Hope Park works were situated, remarked, when paying a just tribute to his memory: “I have often had occasion to remark, in visiting employés of the firm pastorally, as well as in my intercourse with heads of departments, how beautifully the idea of the Christian employer seemed to have been realized in him. The affectionate terms in which he was always spoken of were obviously the naturalreturn for the fairness, consideration, and generosity for which he had become known. Being more than a payer of wages, he got more than hirelings’ service. He was a member of another outward communion; but there is a unity of spiritual life that ignores outward separations. There is a Church which includes the faithful of all churches.” To one so unselfish, it was almost inevitable that he should realize keenly the sufferings which his own great loss must inflict on others; and this very sympathy was his own best protection against the blow. Nevertheless, the equanimity displayed under such trying circumstances was peculiarly notable in one whose emotional sensibilities were intense. The same calm composure was characteristic of him under any imposition or personal wrong, if practised on him by a stranger. It was indeed a common saying that nothing could anger him. One who knew him well writes: “He had a rare power of keeping his temper. I never saw him angry. I never heard him utter a harsh word, except to reprobate some mean or unworthy action. The only hard words I can recall were in denouncing the conduct of one whom he had regarded as a friend, and who had grossly abused his misplaced confidence.” But his equanimity gave way when during the conflagration, in which it seemed as if the work of a life-time was being destroyed, some one asked him if he did not suspect it tobe the work of an incendiary. The passionate emotion with which he resented the suggestion showed how keenly he was moved by the possibility that any one could be found capable of entertaining the thought of such a dastardly purpose.
The loss which the fire involved amounted to little short of £100,000; but Mr. Nelson, in describing the event in a letter to a friend, added: “I am happy, however, to state that our stereotype plates and our wood-cuts and electrotypes are all to the fore, they having been in two strong stone-built safes alongside a part of the back wall of the building, and though covered with masses of burning timber, etc., they escaped quite uninjured. With all this valuable property intact, and it forming the back-bone of our business, we will ere long be able to rear our heads again as publishers; there being no difficulty in getting all the printing and bookbinding done that we will require in various offices in town here and in London. In the meantime thedébrisof the old building is being cleared away rapidly, and a new Hope Park will by-and-by appear on the site of the old one.”
The new Hope Park did not, however, rise from the ashes of the old. The energy of its originators was indeed unabated. While William Nelson was contemplating, amid its smoking ruins, the suffering to be entailed on their hundreds of work-people, his brotherwas telegraphing to London, Paris, and other centres of industry, ordering fresh printing-presses and all other newest machinery to replace what had perished. By the favour of the city authorities temporary buildings were erected on the neighbouring Meadows. As the new machinery arrived it was set up under what was designed for mere temporary shelter at Parkside, on the outskirts of St. Leonard’s Hill. But speedily the superior advantages of the new site, and the arrangement of the works over an extended area, instead of occupying successive floors of a quadrangle, became so manifest that the Parkside Works were completed, with an effective architectural façade in the favourite Scottish style of the sixteenth century. Hope Park was accordingly finally abandoned; but a graceful memorial of the old works remains. When bidding good-bye to the site, two beautiful pillars—the one surmounted by the lion and the other by the unicorn—were erected at the cost of the two brothers, at the eastern entrance to the Meadows, as their acknowledgment to the city of the timely favour extended to them in their hour of need.
It was while the prosperous career of the great publishing firm was arrested by this disastrous event that a more dire calamity extended its effects far and wide. A leading Edinburgh publisher, writing to me shortly after the death of William Nelson, remarked:“I need not say to you what a true, large-hearted man he was. Do you remember when their printing-house was totally destroyed, and one would have thought his own immense losses would have frozen his sympathy for other sufferers? Yet he was one of the earliest subscribers of £1,000 to the victims of the Glasgow Bank; and so far did his kindly nature long to help them, he even refused at first to discountenance the project of a state lottery on their behalf!” Their sufferings had been brought home to him in the most moving form. A letter found among his papers after his death, endorsed in touching simplicity, “Poor fellow!” is the plea of an old schoolmate for failing to appear at a High School anniversary dinner. “I have to ask you to accept my apology,” he writes, “which you will readily do when I mention that I am one of the unfortunate victims of the City of Glasgow Bank; andto-dayI have received the liquidator’s final call for payment on the 22nd inst., which, I fear, will be total ruin to me.”
William Nelson’s local associations were strong; they attached him with passionate love to his native city. Its very stones were dear to him. Every nook and corner of it associated with his own early years, with school and schoolmates, or with the later incidents of his business career, retained a hold on his sympathies. “I send you a photograph of Edinburgh from theCastle,” he writes to an old friend beyond the Atlantic, “that it may keep you in mind of the dear old city.” Hence the abrupt close of the Hope Park epoch, and the transfer to the new quarters at Parkside, awoke feelings wholly apart from those which the pecuniary loss involved. The sense of strangeness in the new locality is noticeable in more than one of his private memoranda, as in the following record of time and place: “This is the first memorandum I have written in the new room in Parkside. I came to it at a quarter to eleven o’clock on Friday, July 16, 1880. Dr. and Mrs. Wilson are at present staying with us.” Curiously, it is not till upwards of two years later that the memorandum occurs of the kindling of the Parkside hearth, thus: “Fire lighted in grate in my room here for the first time, November 13, 1882.”
There Mr. Nelson had to be visited to see how promptly and skilfully he administered the affairs of the great printing and publishing business which he had developed into such proportions; and, happily, notes furnished by an authoress, who did considerable literary work for the firm in those later years, enable us to catch a glimpse of him in business hours. “My first visit to his office,” she writes, “was, I think, in the spring of 1883. Several persons were in attendance, waiting for orders or interviews. Owing to this circumstance, and my having formed the impression thatMr. Nelson was a very formidable sort of a man to approach, I made my proposals in an abrupt and hurried manner. I was by no means surprised at a hasty, ‘No, no; quite unnecessary at present,’ and made my retreat at once. But as I was passing out, he turned from another to whom he had given some instructions in an equally concise fashion, and rising suddenly from his chair with some apologetic words, he inquired what I had published, and then said, ‘I have been wishing to see you.’ After this we had a long, pleasant chat, and he at once explained to me certain literary work that he wished me to undertake. This was my introduction to him. I went to him a stranger, but though my acquaintance with him was only of some four years’ duration, and was mostly a business acquaintance, I soon learned to regard him as a friend. The kindness and encouragement he gave helped me greatly, because it was not the mere kindness of a ‘big’ publisher to a ‘little’ author. He was always business-like in insisting that the work done should be just as he liked it. There could be no ‘scamping’ work under his keen eyes. But he took infinite trouble in procuring books of reference and helping my work, and was most generous in all his dealings. On one occasion, after having undertaken some work, and having given him much trouble regarding books of reference, I found the task beyondme, and had to tell him so. I expected a scolding, and instead received a cheque ‘in payment for what you have done of the book.’ What I had done was merely to indicate the lines upon which the book might run. A fortnight before his death he sent me a copy of the book I ‘was to have written,’ with a very kind note, which I value much. The publisher’s office is a terrible place to a not-confident lady-writer. Sometimes I have had to wait while Mr. Nelson was ‘interviewing,’ directing, correcting, and so forth; and my courage has not been strengthened by the spectacle of faulty work being overhauled in a most careful manner, and ruthlessly condemned or sharply criticised. Yet I have always gone out of that office with a light heart. Some kindly word about my children or my old home, some chat about the foreign lands he had visited, the gift of a book, a fatherly caution ‘not to work too much’—these made me feel that Mr. Nelson took his large heart into the publisher’s office. Would that all publishers did like him.”
But the critical sharpness, and the abrupt manner of the man of business, preoccupied with the responsibilities of so large an establishment with endless claims on its directing head, all disappeared so soon as he had satisfied himself that his instructions were being rightly carried out. The new Parkside Works were withineasy distance of Salisbury Green; and the claimants on his ever-ready charity speedily learned to know the time when he could be waylaid in his walk to or from the counting-room, and beguiled with a piteous tale. Mr. Gray, for many years the faithful head of the financial department, thus writes: “To old servants in the works he opened his purse freely. Women who had been employed in early days at the Castle Hill were held by him in special favour, and I have often seen him give them a pound note, sometimes when it was doubtful if they would make the best use of it. The plea that they had worked at one time at Hope Park was a frequent claim of beggars; and many is the silver piece that has been given away to such folks. One adept at begging came to him, her tatters soaked and leaky slippers dripping with rain. She told a piteous tale, and pleaded she was the widow of a machineman in the firm’s employment thirty years before. The plea was irresistible; but the voluble manner in which the woman overacted her part aroused his suspicions after he had responded to her appeal. ‘What sort of a man was your husband?’ asked he. ‘Oh, a good, a very good man!’ ‘Ay; was he tall or short?—as tall as that man?’ pointing to a man about six feet high who had just entered. ‘Yes!’ responded the woman, ‘he was a braw, tall man.’ ‘Give me back the money!’ he exclaimed with unwonted severity of tone,as he recalled the fact that the old machinist was much below the ordinary stature; and the impostor was ordered to the door.”
His unstinted liberality in all philanthropic and missionary work was wholly unaffected by denominational or party limits; and hence he was liable to be preyed upon by genteel foreigners claiming to be in temporary pecuniary distress, and still more by clerical impostors. When he had reason to think he was imposed upon, he would search into the matter with the utmost keenness; though rather, as it seemed, with a desire to satisfy himself of the truth, than with any purpose of stinting his liberality in the future.
One morning, as the family sat at breakfast, a servant came into the room, and alarmed Mrs. Nelson by whispering to her that there were two detectives at the door who wished to see her. Her manner must have betrayed her apprehensions, for one of them laughed and said, “Don’t be frightened, Mrs. Nelson; we have only come to ask you to use your influence with your husband, and try to get Mr. Nelson to give up giving money to respectable-looking beggars. There is a register kept by a man in the High Street of all the ‘giving people’ in Edinburgh. That is the first resort of this class of beggars. By paying half-a-crown, they are allowed to take a note of the names and addresses, and Mr. Nelson’s stands at the head of the list!” Heundertook to look more sharply after the smooth-tongued gentry in black, though, it is to be feared, with only partial success. He manifested a sensitive repugnance to wealthy people whose riches were of no use to any one but themselves; but he protested, to the amusement of his friends, that he strongly disapproved of promiscuous charity. He had his own rules of action. A maimed or deformed person, the blind, the deaf-mute, or any one incapacitated in the struggle for life, he conceived could never be wrongly helped. A poor widow, an old employé, or the widow or orphan of any of his old work-people, had an irresistible claim on his liberality; and other pleas were readily forthcoming to justify the deed of charity to his conscience. But he took pains to search out genuine objects of commiseration; and many of his charities were unknown even to members of his own family. One Saturday afternoon, when walking home with Mrs. Nelson, he asked her to wait while he went in to a humble dwelling. When interrogated as to the object of his visit, it was ascertained that he had been giving a poor widow money to pay her rent; and on further inquiry it turned out that he had been paying it regularly for years. Nor was this a solitary case, as became known when death closed the liberal hand that had so often made the widow’s heart leap for joy. Charity was in him a spontaneous impulse of kindly sympathywhich, while exercised not only unobtrusively but with a sensitive shrinking from recognition, was carried out on too great a scale to escape observation. The difficulty of his biographer is to select from the varied instances at his disposal. “I saw him once,” writes a lady, “as he was walking along Clerk Street, pause at a confectioner’s window, where a poor little ragged urchin was standing gazing wistfully at the cakes inside. One kindly hand was laid on the boy’s shoulder; the other took a silver piece from his pocket. A few words were spoken, and Mr. Nelson passed on, while the boy darted into the shop; and I had the pleasure of seeing him come out a moment later already devouring one of the cookies of which he had become the delighted possessor.” He was never known to refer to such acts. They were, indeed, of too frequent occurrence to seem to him worthy of note. The poor and needy had learned to regard him as their unfailing resort; and if his charity was abused, he would say in reply to prudent remonstrants that it was better a few impostors should succeed, than one genuine claim be rejected.
The traders on his benevolence were wont, as already noted, to watch for him on his way to Parkside; and Mr. Gray notes of such claimants: “Mr. Nelson would sometimes say to me, ‘The printing trade must be in a dreadful state,’ for in his walk thither he had beenmet by half-a-dozen printers pleading for help. He inquired at times into the state of the trade, with the view, I suppose, to guide him in his charities; for it offended his guileless trustfulness in others to find he had been imposed upon, though it never led to any stint in his liberality.” Another who had been many years in his service writes: “He had an almost child-like confidence in some folks; but if his suspicions were once aroused as to anything wrong, he ferreted out the matter to the bottom, and in case of any betrayal of trust, he would speak of it with a keen sense of wrong. But if you responded with any denunciation of the offender, his manner changed, and he generally found some apology or some reason for pitying the delinquent. Nor did the fact that a claimant had wronged him affect his consideration of the case if it proved to be a necessitous one, especially if he had a wife and children.” When an action was raised by the contracting engineer who undertook the repairs of the machinery, against the widow of his predecessor, to enforce the completion of some work for which her late husband had been responsible, William Nelson opposed it, declaring that no good ever came of prosecuting a widow, and he ultimately repaid £130 of law expenses incurred in the suit.
Under the system which such a spirit naturally developed, the relation between master and servantsassumed a very different aspect from that of the mere hireling. The workers in his employment cordially sympathized in his success, and took a pride in contributing to the prosperity of the firm. A gentleman, whose intimate relations with it for many years made him familiar with its internal economy, thus writes: “The claims of his own work-people at Hope Park or Parkside were never disregarded. He had, as the firm still has, a host of pensioners: aged employés, and the widows and children of former workmen, who were mainly dependent on his charity for their daily bread. Groups of them, or of their representatives, still assemble in the entrance hall at Parkside on the pay-day, by whom his name is revered. They tell their own tale of satisfaction and gratitude.” The charity which thus began at home did not end there. The difficulty, indeed, is to select from the examples communicated to me. One characteristic instance I owe to a fellow-traveller, who found himself in company with William Nelson in an Italian town during a festive season. It was a scene of holiday rejoicings; but it did not escape Mr. Nelson’s notice that while the mass of the people were enjoying themselves, there were a number of uncared-for poor whose misery was made the more apparent by the festive scenes that surrounded them. This so impressed him that he forthwith made arrangements with a hosteller for the entertainment of theragged lazaroni. Another gentleman who passed some weeks with him at one of the German spas tells this story:—“At the little English church there was a clergyman stationed, entirely dependent on the freewill offerings of the ever-changing congregation. There were no resident members to act as churchwardens or vestrymen; so, after the service, the poor clergyman himself went round and collected the offertory. This was too much for Mr. Nelson. He volunteered his services, which were accepted. To the clergyman’s agreeable surprise, the collection increased amazingly; and he only learned where the increase came from by a return to the old scale after Mr. Nelson’s departure.”
It was a curious study to note the guilelessness and child-like simplicity which William Nelson retained unchanged to the close of his life, along with rare shrewdness and sagacity as a man of business. Whenever any transaction assumed a business aspect, however trifling might be the amount involved, he was prompt, clear-sighted, and acute, detecting and with quiet firmness resisting any attempt at overreaching or fraud. On one occasion, when I was his fellow-traveller, a knavish newsboy to whom he had intrusted a sixpence decamped without returning the change. This breach of faith provoked a display of indignation so entirely disproportionate to the value of the loss, as obviously suggested to our wondering fellow-travellers in therailway carriage that they witnessed another Shylock bemoaning his lost ducats. They little knew that the rogue, by the invention of a pitiful tale, might have transmuted the stolen coppers into gold. This transparent naturalness of character revealed itself equally in his intercourse with high and low. Alike at home and abroad he was often brought into familiar relations with men of rank and distinction, and his engaging manners and wide culture made him a welcome addition to any company. But there was no change in his manner towards the nobleman or the skilled artisan. An old friend notes of him what many will recall:—“Reverence was part of his nature. However intimate he might be with a friend, he scarcely ever addressed him, personally or by letter, except by full name as Mr. or Dr.; and it was the same with his own employés. The Dick or Tom of his fellows in the workroom was Richard or Thomas, if not Mr. ——, when spoken to by him.” His circle of friends included men of the most dissimilar social positions; and his intercourse with some of his old workmen whose integrity and worth had been proved by long experience was of the most intimate and confidential nature. No wonder that he was faithfully served. He practically demonstrated his belief that,—