I HAVE thy two last epistles, my dear Darsie, and expecting the third, have been in no hurry to answer them. Do not think my silence ought to be ascribed to my failing to take interest in them, for, truly, they excel (though the task was difficult) thy usual excellings. Since the moon-calf who earliest discovered the Pandemonium of Milton in an expiring wood-fire—since the first ingenious urchin who blew bubbles out of soap and water, thou, my best of friends, hast the highest knack at making histories out of nothing. Wert thou to plant the bean in the nursery-tale, thou wouldst make out, so soon as it began to germinate, that the castle of the giant was about to elevate its battlements on the top of it. All that happens to thee gets a touch of the wonderful and the sublime from thy own rich imagination. Didst ever see what artists call a Claude Lorraine glass, which spreads its own particular hue over the whole landscape which you see through it?—thou beholdest ordinary events just through such a medium.
I have looked carefully at the facts of thy last long letter, and they are just such as might have befallen any little truant of the High School, who had got down to Leith Sands, gone beyond the prawn-dub, wet his hose and shoon, and, finally, had been carried home, in compassion, by some high-kilted fishwife, cursing all the while the trouble which the brat occasioned her.
I admire the figure which thou must have made, clinging for dear life behind the old fellow’s back—thy jaws chattering with fear, thy muscles cramped with anxiety. Thy execrable supper of broiled salmon, which was enough to ensure the nightmare’s regular visits for a twelvemonth, may be termed a real affliction; but as for the storm of Thursday last (such, I observe, was the date), it roared, whistled, howled, and bellowed, as fearfully amongst the old chimney-heads in the Candlemaker Row, as it could on the Solway shore, for the very wind of it—teste me per totam noctem vigilante. And then in the morning again, when—Lord help you—in your sentimental delicacy you bid the poor man adieu, without even tendering him half a crown for supper and lodging!
You laugh at me for giving a penny (to be accurate, though, thou shouldst have said sixpence) to an old fellow, whom thou, in thy high flight, wouldst have sent home supperless, because he was like Solon or Belisarius. But you forget that the affront descended like a benediction into the pouch of the old gaberlunzie, who overflowed in blessings upon the generous donor—long ere he would have thanked thee, Darsie, for thy barren veneration of his beard and his bearing. Then you laugh at my good father’s retreat from Falkirk, just as if it were not time for a man to trudge when three or four mountain knaves, with naked claymores, and heels as light as their fingers, were scampering after him, crying furinish. You remember what he said himself when the Laird of Bucklivat told him that furinish signified “stay a while”. “What the devil,” he said, surprised out of his Presbyterian correctness by the unreasonableness of such a request under the circumstances, “would the scoundrels have had me stop to have my head cut off?”
Imagine such a train at your own heels, Darsie, and ask yourself whether you would not exert your legs as fast as you did in flying from the Solway tide. And yet you impeach my father’s courage. I tell you he has courage enough to do what is right, and to spurn what is wrong—courage enough to defend a righteous cause with hand and purse, and to take the part of the poor man against his oppressor, without fear of the consequences to himself. This is civil courage, Darsie; and it is of little consequence to most men in this age and country whether they ever possess military courage or no.
Do not think I am angry with you, though I thus attempt to rectify your opinions on my father’s account. I am well aware that, upon the whole, he is scarce regarded with more respect by me than by thee. And, while I am in a serious humour, which it is difficult to preserve with one who is perpetually tempting me to laugh at him, pray, dearest Darsie, let not thy ardour for adventure carry thee into more such scrapes as that of the Solway Sands. The rest of the story is a mere imagination; but that stormy evening might have proved, as the clown says to Lear, “a naughty night to swim in.”
As for the rest, if you can work mysterious and romantic heroes out of old cross-grained fishermen, why, I for one will reap some amusement by the metamorphosis. Yet hold! even there, there is some need of caution. This same female chaplain—thou sayest so little of her, and so much of every one else, that it excites some doubt in my mind. “Very pretty” she is, it seems—and that is all thy discretion informs me of. There are cases in which silence implies other things than consent. Wert thou ashamed or afraid, Darsie, to trust thyself with the praises of the very pretty grace-sayer?—As I live, thou blushest! Why, do I not know thee an inveterate squire of dames? and have I not been in thy confidence? An elegant elbow, displayed when the rest of the figure was muffled in a cardinal, or a neat well-turned ankle and instep, seen by chance as its owner tripped up the Old Assembly Close,1 turned thy brain for eight days. Thou wert once caught if I remember rightly, with a single glance of a single matchless eye, which, when the fair owner withdrew her veil, proved to be single in the literal sense of the word. And, besides, were you not another time enamoured of a voice—a mere voice, that mingled in the psalmody at the Old Greyfriars’ Church—until you discovered the proprietor of that dulcet organ to be Miss Dolly MacIzzard, who is both “back and breast”, as our saying goes?
All these things considered, and contrasted with thy artful silence on the subject of this grace-saying Nereid of thine, I must beg thee to be more explicit upon that subject in thy next, unless thou wouldst have me form the conclusion that thou thinkest more of her than thou carest to talk of.
You will not expect much news from this quarter, as you know the monotony of my life, and are aware it must at present be devoted to uninterrupted study. You have said a thousand times that I am only qualified to make my way by dint of plodding, and therefore plod I must.
My father seems to be more impatient of your absence than he was after your first departure. He is sensible, I believe, that our solitary meals want the light which your gay humour was wont to throw over them, and feels melancholy as men do when the light of the sun is no longer upon the landscape. If it is thus with him, thou mayst imagine it is much more so with me, and canst conceive how heartily I wish that thy frolic were ended, and thou once more our inmate.
I resume my pen, after a few hours’ interval, to say that an incident has occurred on which you will yourself be building a hundred castles in the air, and which even I, jealous as I am of such baseless fabrics, cannot but own affords ground for singular conjecture.
My father has of late taken me frequently along with him when he attends the courts, in his anxiety to see me properly initiated into the practical forms of business. I own I feel something on his account and my own from this over-anxiety, which, I dare say, renders us both ridiculous. But what signifies my repugnance? my father drags me up to his counsel learned in the law,—“Are you quite ready to come on to-day, Mr. Crossbite?—This is my son, designed for the bar—I take the liberty to bring him with me to-day to the consultation, merely that he may see how these things are managed.”
Mr. Crossbite smiles and bows; as a lawyer smiles on the solicitor who employs him, and I dare say, thrusts his tongue into his cheek, and whispers into the first great wig that passes him, “What the d—l does old Fairford mean by letting loose his whelp on me?”
As I stood beside them, too much vexed at the childish part I was made to play to derive much information from the valuable arguments of Mr. Crossbite, I observed a rather elderly man, who stood with his eyes firmly bent on my father, as if he only waited an end of the business in which he was engaged, to address him. There was something, I thought, in the gentleman’s appearance which commanded attention. Yet his dress was not in the present taste, and though it had once been magnificent, was now antiquated and unfashionable. His coat was of branched velvet, with a satin lining, a waistcoat of violet-coloured silk, much embroidered; his breeches the same stuff as the coat. He wore square-toed shoes, with foretops, as they are called; and his silk stockings were rolled up over his knee, as you may have seen in pictures, and here and there on some of those originals who seem to pique themselves on dressing after the mode of Methuselah. A chapeau bras and sword necessarily completed his equipment, which, though out of date, showed that it belonged to a man of distinction.
The instant Mr. Crossbite had ended what he had to say, this gentleman walked up to my father, with, “Your servant, Mr. Fairford—it is long since you and I met.”
My father, whose politeness, you know, is exact and formal, bowed, and hemmed, and was confused, and at length professed that the distance since they had met was so great, that though he remembered the face perfectly, the name, he was sorry to any, had—really—somehow—escaped his memory.
“Have you forgot Herries of Birrenswork?” said the gentleman, and my father bowed even more profoundly than before; though I think his reception of his old friend seemed to lose some of the respectful civility which he bestowed on him while his name was yet unknown. It now seemed to be something like the lip-courtesy which the heart would have denied had ceremony permitted.
My father, however, again bowed low, and hoped he saw him well.
“So well, my good Mr. Fairford, that I come hither determined to renew my acquaintance with one or two old friends, and with you in the first place. I halt at my old resting place—you must dine with me to-day, at Paterson’s, at the head of the Horse Wynd—it is near your new fashionable dwelling, and I have business with you.”
My father excused himself respectfully, and not without embarrassment—“he was particularly engaged at home.”
“Then I will dine with you, man,” said Mr. Herries of Birrenswork; “the few minutes you can spare me after dinner will suffice for my business; and I will not prevent you a moment from minding your own—I am no bottle-man.”
You have often remarked that my father, though a scrupulous observer of the rites of hospitality, seems to exercise them rather as a duty than as a pleasure; indeed, but for a conscientious wish to feed the hungry and receive the stranger, his doors would open to guests much seldomer than is the case. I never saw so strong an example of this peculiarity (which I should otherwise have said is caricatured in your description) as in his mode of homologating the self-given invitation of Mr. Herries. The embarsassed brow, and the attempt at a smile which accompanied his “We will expect the honour of seeing you in Brown Square at three o’clock,” could not deceive any one, and did not impose upon the old laird. It was with a look of scorn that he replied, “I will relieve you then till that hour, Mr. Fairford;” and his whole manner seemed to say, “It is my pleasure to dine with you, and I care not whether I am welcome or no.”
When he turned away, I asked my father who he was.
“An unfortunate gentleman,” was the reply.
“He looks pretty well on his misfortunes,” replied I. “I should not have suspected that so gay an outside was lacking a dinner.”
“Who told you that he does?” replied my father; “he is omni suspicione major, so far as worldly circumstances are concerned. It is to be hoped he makes a good use of them; though, if he does, it will be for the first time in his life.”
“He has then been an irregular liver?” insinuated I.
My father replied by that famous brocard with which he silences all unacceptable queries turning in the slightest degree upon the failings of our neighbours,—“If we mend our own faults, Alan, we shall all of us have enough to do, without sitting in judgement upon other folks.”
Here I was again at fault; but rallying once more, I observed, he had the air of a man of high rank and family.
“He is well entitled,” said my father, “representing Herries of Birrenswork; a branch of that great and once powerful family of Herries, the elder branch whereof merged in the house of Nithesdale at the death of Lord Robin the Philosopher, Anno Domini sixteen hundred and sixty-seven.”
“Has he still,” said I, “his patrimonial estate of Birrenswork?”
“No,” replied my father; “so far back as his father’s time, it was a mere designation—the property being forfeited by Herbert Herries following his kinsman the Earl of Derwentwater to the Preston affair in 1715. But they keep up the designation, thinking, doubtless, that their claims may be revived in more favourable times for Jacobites and for popery; and folks who in no way partake of their fantastic capriccios do yet allow it to pass unchallenged, ex comitate, if not ex misericordia.—But were he the Pope and the Pretender both, we must get some dinner ready for him, since he has thought fit to offer himself. So hasten home, my lad, and tell Hannah, Cook Epps, and James Wilkinson, to do their best; and do thou look out a pint or two of Maxwell’s best—it is in the fifth bin—there are the keys of the wine-cellar. Do not leave them in the lock—you know poor James’s failing, though he is an honest creature under all other temptations—and I have but two bottles of the old brandy left—we must keep it for medicine, Alan.”
Away went I—made my preparations—the hour of dinner came, and so did Mr. Herries of Birrenswork.
If I had thy power of imagination and description, Darsie, I could make out a fine, dark, mysterious, Rembrandt-looking portrait of this same stranger, which should be as far superior to thy fisherman as a shirt of chain-mail is to a herring-net. I can assure you there is some matter for description about him; but knowing my own imperfections, I can only say, I thought him eminently disagreeable and ill-bred.—No, “ill-bred” is not the proper word on the contrary, he appeared to know the rules of good-breeding perfectly, and only to think that the rank of the company did not require that he should attend to them—a view of the matter infinitely more offensive than if his behaviour had been that of uneducated and proper rudeness. While my father said grace, the laird did all but whistle aloud; and when I, at my father’s desire, returned thanks, he used his toothpick, as if he had waited that moment for its exercise.
So much for Kirk—with King, matters went even worse. My father, thou knowest, is particularly full of deference to his guests; and in the present care, he seemed more than usually desirous to escape every cause of dispute. He so far compromised his loyalty as to announce merely “The King’ as his first toast after dinner, instead of the emphatic “King George’, which is his usual formula. Our guest made a motion with his glass, so as to pass it over the water-decanter which stood beside him, and added, “Over the water.”
My father coloured, but would not seem to hear this. Much more there was of careless and disrespectful in the stranger’s manner and tone of conversation; so that, though I know my father’s prejudices in favour of rank and birth, and though I am aware his otherwise masculine understanding has never entirely shaken off the slavish awe of the great which in his earlier days they had so many modes of commanding, still I could hardly excuse him for enduring so much insolence—such it seemed to be as this self-invited guest was disposed to offer to him at his own table.
One can endure a traveller in the same carriage, if he treads upon your toes by accident, or even through negligence; but it is very different when, knowing that they are rather of a tender description, he continues to pound away at them with his hoofs. In my poor opinion—and I am a man of peace—you can, in that case, hardly avoid a declaration of war.
I believe my father read my thoughts in my eye; for, pulling out his watch, he said; “Half-past four, Alan—you should be in your own room by this time—Birrenswork will excuse you.”
Our visitor nodded carelessly, and I had no longer any pretence to remain. But as I left the room, I heard this magnate of Nithesdale distinctly mention the name of Latimer. I lingered; but at length a direct hint from my father obliged me to withdraw; and when, an hour afterwards, I was summoned to partake of a cup of tea, our guest had departed. He had business that evening in the High Street, and could not spare time even to drink tea. I could not help saying, I considered his departure as a relief from incivility. “What business has he to upbraid us,” I said, “with the change of our dwelling from a more inconvenient to a better quarter of the town? What was it to him if we chose to imitate some of the conveniences or luxuries of an English dwelling-house, instead of living piled up above each other in flats? Have his patrician birth and aristocratic fortunes given him any right to censure those who dispose of the fruits of their own industry, according to their own pleasure?”
My father took a long pinch of snuff, and replied, “Very well, Alan; very well indeed. I wish Mr. Crossbite or Counsellor Pest had heard you; they must have acknowledged that you have a talent for forensic elocution; and it may not be amiss to try a little declamation at home now and then, to gather audacity and keep yourself in breath. But touching the subject of this paraffle of words, it’s not worth a pinch of tobacco. D’ye think that I care for Mr. Herries of Birrenswork more than any other gentleman who comes here about business, although I do not care to go tilting at his throat, because he speaks like a grey goose, as he is? But to say no more about him, I want to have Darsie Latimer’s present direction; for it is possible I may have to write the lad a line with my own hand—and yet I do not well know—but give me the direction at all events.”
I did so, and if you have heard from my father accordingly, you know more, probably, about the subject of this letter than I who write it. But if you have not, then shall I have discharged a friend’s duty, in letting you know that there certainly is something afloat between this disagreeable laird and my father, in which you are considerably interested.
Adieu! and although I have given thee a subject for waking dreams, beware of building a castle too heavy for the foundation; which, in the present instance, is barely the word Latimer occurring in a conversation betwixt a gentleman of Dumfriesshire and a W.S. of Edinburgh—Cætera prorsus ignoro.
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1. Of old this almost deserted alley formed the most common access betwixt the High Street and the southern suburbs. [back] |