I MEET A GREAT MAN
"With knowledge so vast and with judgment so strong
No man with the half of them e'er could go wrong;
With passion so potent, and fancies so bright,
No man with the half of them e'er could go right."
I passed as miserable a night as my worst enemy could have wished and
was up at the dawning for a jaunt in the open. The gowans so white and
bonny were swinging their dewy heads in the morning wind; the sea-fog
was lifting skyward, and whether the message came from them I can not
say, but a mystical white word floated between me and my troubled
thoughts of Nancy--a word which means the changing of baser metal into
pure gold, the returning of the balance to nature, the fine adjustment
of spirit to mind and body--the great word Motherhood. Nancy as a
mother. My Little Flower with a floweret of her own might be the
solution of a happy marriage for her more than compensating for the
independence and adulation which she had always had.
As I tramped along I came to a definite thought concerning the Burns
poems as well, which was that I would set fire to them, as if by
accident, that very day, and have them by and done with. And as for the
man himself, it would, I thought, be no hard matter to keep him out of
our lives; in which conclusions I left out just two things--the throw
of Fate, which none of us can reckon upon, and my own rhyme-loving
nature and fondness for being entertained.
It was Fate's throw with which I had to reckon first. I had come in my
musings to a side-path which led from the old Abbey to the foot-bridge,
when I heard the sound of a man's singing:
"As I cam in by Glenap,
I met wi' an ancient woman,
Who told me to cheer my heart up
For the best of my days were comin'."
The singer was sitting upon a fallen tree, beside a smoking fire, with
the women, children, aye, and the very dogs, gathered about him as
though he carried a charm. He was a thick-set man, dark and swarthy,
with a pair of eyes literally glowing. His hat was cocked upon the back
of his head, and he had his plaid thrown around him in a certain manner
known to himself alone. He was eating and drinking with these
gipsy-folk, for he'd a bannock in one hand and a mug of hot drink in
the other, but at sight of me he set them down and came forward to
greet me; and my amazed eyes rested on Robert Burns himself, as though
raised up by some of his own witches to fit into my thoughts--Robert
Burns whom I had met at Mauchline before he was famous, the year
before.
He inquired if I were stepping townward, and on the instant I asked him
to breakfast with me at the Star and Garter, and this, you will
remember, within five short minutes of my resolve to burn his book and
keep him out of our lives.
It was charged against me later that I was lax in this Burns affair
and, because of my own infatuation for men of parts, took too little
thought for the temptation to which I exposed my daughter. I answer the
accusation by telling the circumstances exactly as they fell, and he
who reads may judge the truth of these charges for himself. As we came
to the door of the inn, I asked Creech and Dundas, who happened to be
passing, to join us at the breakfast, and a merry feast it was, and one
for the three of us to hold as a lifelong memory, for only those who
had the honor to know Burns could understand that the "best of him was
in his talk." In the year of which I write all the eyes of Edinburgh
were fixed upon him, and his toasts, his epigrams, his love affairs
were the scandal of the town and his own countryside. There was some
flouting of him at this very meal, I recall, by Creech, who was deep in
his affairs, concerning a Mauchline lassie who had thrown his love back
at him with some violence and scandal; but he was not in the least
dashed either by the event or the naming of it, and, seizing a glass,
he called out, with the jolliest laugh in the world:
"Their tricks and crafts hae put me daft,
They've ta'en me in--and a' that,
But clear your decks! and here's 'The Sex,'
I like the jades for a' that,"----
the applause which greeted this sally bringing the servants to the
window, though, in fact, when it was known that Burns was in the house
there was no keeping them out of the room.
I do not feel, even at this late day, that I need an excuse for the
admiration I have of Burns, the greatest poet, in my judgment, who ever
lived. I knew his faults, if faults they were, but, before God, I knew
his temptations as well, and can speak with greatest thankfulness of
one he put behind him.
Pastor Muirkirk, of the New Light, in one of his more relaxed moments,
said to me:
"The Lord cast seven devils out of the man in the scriptures because
his nature was big enough to hold seven devils. Most of us, laddie," he
went on, "are not big enough to hold half a devil," which explains the
thought I have of Burns to a nicety, for it was surely the very bigness
of his nature, the instant sympathy with all who lived, which brought
many of the troubles to him for which he has been greatly blamed. But
this can be said of him: that no man I ever knew, from the highest lord
in the land down, presented himself to the world in a saner or more
balanced manner. I have known him to breakfast with tramps at an
ale-house in the morning, walk arm in arm with a duke down High Street
in the afternoon, and leave him perchance to dine with some poor
country acquaintance up from Ayr for a day's buying.
It was after Creech and his friend had left us that Burns turned toward
me.
"There is a matter upon which I am undecided whether it is good taste
for me to speak to you, Lord Stair," he said, "but there is such
sincerity of admiration at the root of it that ye'll can just be
forgiving me if I trespass on your sense of the proprieties. 'Tis of
your daughter, Mistress Stair. I was carried off my feet by her singing
at the charity ball, and the verses she writes are as unstudied as the
song of a lark. But she will never write a poem that is so great as
herself. All her accomplishments seem to me but a set of warbles or
trills to the true song of her great womanhood. 'Where she is,'" he
quoted prettily, "'man will be more than his wont, because of her
belief.'"
And at these words my resolutions were clean forgotten in my pride in
his praises of her.
"She wants to know you, Mr. Burns. Your book is by her day and night,"
I cried, at which he looked flattered, but said he was for Ayr that
afternoon, and the pleasure of an acquaintance with her must be put by
until some later date.
I told him at this that a friend had invited us down to his part of the
country for the fair, where we might meet again, on which he took a
slip from his pocket, putting his Edinburgh address on one side of it,
like this:
"It is in the house of Mrs. Carfrae, Baxter Close, Town market:
first scale-stair on the left hand going down; first door on the
stair,"
and on the other:
"To Mistress Nancy, Mistress Stair,
At Mauchline race or Mauchline fair,
I shall be glad to meet you there.
We'll give one night's discharge to care,
If we forgither,
And have 'a-swap-of-rhyming-ware,'
With ane anither."
And it was this "swap o' rhyming ware" which brought about the tragedy
toward which I draw.