I told them that Sheffield was famous for making knives and scissors, and razors, and that cutlery meant the manufacture of anything that cuts. Presto! and the blinds were all up, and eagerness, and _nous_, and brains at the window. I happened to have a Wharncliffe, with "Rodgers and Sons, Sheffield," on the blade. I sent it round, and finally presented it to the enraptured Dougal. Would not each one of those boys, the very boobiest there, know that knife again when they saw it, and be able to pass a creditable competitive examination on all its ins and outs? and wouldn't they remember "cutlery" for a day or two? Well, the examination over, the minister performed an oration of much ambition and difficulty to himself and to us, upon the general question, and a great many other questions, into which his Gaelic subtlety fitted like the mists into the hollows of Ben-a-Houlich, with, it must be allowed, a somewhat similar tendency to confuse and conceal what was beneath; and he concluded with thanking the Chief, as he well might, for his generous support of "this aixlent CEMETERY of ædication." Cemetery indeed! The blind leading the blind, with the ancient result; the dead burying their dead.
Now, not greater is the change we made from that low, small, stifling, gloomy, mephitic room, into the glorious open air, the loch lying asleep in the sun, and telling over again on its placid face, as in a dream, every hill and cloud, and birch and pine, and passing bird and cradled boat; the Black Wood of Rannoch standing "in the midst of its own darkness," frowning out upon us like the Past disturbed, and far off in the clear ether, as in another and a better world, the dim shepherds of Etive pointing, like ghosts at noonday, to the weird shadows of Glencoe;--not greater was this change, than is that from the dingy, oppressive, weary "cemetery" of mere word-knowledge to the open air, the light and liberty, the divine infinity and richness of nature and her teaching.
We cannot change our time, nor would we if we could. It is God's time as well as ours. And our time is emphatically that for achieving and recording and teaching man's dominion over and insight into matter and its forces--his subduing the earth; but let us turn now and then from our necessary and honest toil in this neo-Platonic cavern where we win gold and renown, and where we often are obliged to stand in our own light, and watch our own shadows as they glide, huge and misshapen, across the inner gloom; let us come out betimes with our gold, that we may spend it and get "goods" for it, and when we can look forth on that ample world of daylight which we can never hope to overrun, and into that overarching heaven where, amid clouds and storms, lightning and sudden tempest, there are revealed to those who look for them, lucid openings into the pure, deep empyrean, "as it were the very body of heaven in its clearness;" and when, best of all, we may remember Who it is who stretched out these heavens as a tent to dwell in, and on whose footstool we may kneel, and out of the depths of our heart cry aloud,
Te Deum veneramur,
Te Sancte Pater!
we shall return into our cave, and to our work, all the better of such a lesson, and of such a reasonable service, and dig none the worse.
Science which ends in itself, or still worse, returns upon its maker, and gets him to worship himself, is worse than none; it is only when it makes it more clear than before who is the Maker and Governor, not only of the objects, but of the subjects of itself, that knowledge is the mother of virtue. But this is an endless theme. My only aim in these desultory hints is to impress parents and teachers with the benefits of the study, the personal engagement--with their own hands and eyes, and legs and ears--in some form or another of natural history, by their children and pupils and themselves, as counteracting evil, and doing immediate and actual good. Even the immense activity in the Post-Office-stamp line of business among our youngsters has been of immense use in many ways, besides being a diversion and an interest. I myself came to the knowledge of Queensland, and a great deal more, through its blue twopenny.
If any one wishes to know how far wise and clever and patriotic men may occasionally go in the way of giving "your son" a stone for bread, and a serpent for a fish,--may get the nation's money for that which is not bread, and give their own labour for that which satisfies no one; industriously making sawdust into the shapes of bread, and chaff into the appearance of meal, and contriving, at wonderful expense of money and brains, to show what can be done in the way of feeding upon wind,--let him take a turn through certain galleries of the Kensington Museum.
"Yesterday forenoon," writes a friend, "I went to South Kensington Museum. It is really an absurd collection. A great deal of valuable material and a great deal of perfect rubbish. The analyses are even worse than I was led to suppose. There is an analysis OF A MAN. First, a man contains so much water, and there you have the amount of water in a bottle; so much albumen, and there is the albumen; so much phosphate of lime, fat, hæmatin, fibrine, salt, etc. etc. Then in the next case so much carbon; so much phosphorus--a bottle with sticks of phosphorus; so much potassium, and there is a bottle with potassium; calcium, etc. They have not bottles of oxygen, hydrogen, chlorine, etc., but they have cubical pieces of wood on which is written 'the quantity of oxygen in the human body would occupy the space of 170 (e.g.) cubes of the size of this,' etc. etc." And so with analysis of bread, etc. etc. What earthly good can this do any one?
No wonder that the bewildered beings whom I have seen wandering through these rooms, yawned more frequently and more desperately than I ever observed even in church.
So then, cultivate observation, energy, handicraft, ingenuity, outness in boys, so as to give them a pursuit as well as a study. Look after the blade, and don't coax or crush the ear out too soon, and remember that the full corn in the ear is not due till the harvest, when the great School breaks up, and we must all dismiss and go our several ways.
$THE BLACK DWARF'S BONES.
"If thou wert grim,
Lame, ugly, crooked, swart, prodigious."
-KING JOHN.
|THESE gnarled, stunted, useless old bones, were all that David Ritchie, the original of the Black Dwarf, had for left femur and tibia, and we have merely to look at them, and add poverty, to know the misery summed up in their possession. They seem to have been blighted and rickety. The thigh-bone is very short and slight, and singularly loose in texture; the leg-bone is dwarfed, but dense and stout. They were given to me many years ago by the late Andrew Ballantyne, Esq., of Woodhouse (the Wudess, as they call it on Tweedside), and their genuineness is unquestionable.
As anything must be interesting about one once so forlorn and miserable, and whom our great wizard has made immortal, I make no apology for printing the following letters from my old friend, Mr. Craig, long surgeon in Peebles, and who is now spending his evening, after a long, hard, and useful day's work, in the quiet vale of Manor, within a mile or two of "Cannie Elshie's" cottage. The picture he gives is very affecting, and should make us all thankful that we are "wiselike." There is much that is additional to Sir Walter's account, in his "Author's Edition" of the Waverley Novels.
"Hall Manor, Thursday, May 20, 1858.
"My dear Sir,--David Ritchie, _alias_ Bowed Davie, was born at Easter Happrew, in the parish of Stobo, in the year 1741. He was brought to Woodhouse, in the parish of Manor, when very young. His father was a labourer, and occupied a cottage on that farm; his mother, Anabel Niven, was a delicate woman, severely afflicted with rheumatism, and could not take care of him when an infant. To this cause he attributed his deformity, and this, if added to imperfect clothing, and bad food, and poverty, will account for the grotesque figure which he became. He never was at school, but he could read tolerably; had many books; was fond of poetry, especially Allan Ramsay; he hated Burns. His father and mother both died early, and poor Davie became a homeless wanderer; he was two years at Broughton Mill, employed in stirring the husks of oats, which were used for drying the corn on the kiln, and required to be kept constantly in motion; he boasted, with a sort of rapture, of his doings there. From thence he went to Lyne's Mill, near his birthplace, where he continued one year at the same employment, and from thence he was sent to Edinburgh to learn brush-making, but made no progress in his education there; was annoyed by the wicked boys, or _keelies_, as he called them, and found his way back to Manor and Woodhouse. The farm now possessed by Mr. Ballantyne was then occupied by four tenants, among whom he lived; but his house was at Old Woodhouse, where the late Sir James Nasmyth built him a house with two apartments, and separate outer doors, one for himself exactly his own height when standing upright in it; and this stands as it was built, exactly four feet. A Mr. Ritchie, the father of the late minister of Athelstane-ford, was then tenant; his wife and Davie could not agree, and she repeatedly asked her husband to put him away, by making the highest stone of his house the lowest. Ritchie left, his house was pulled down, and Davie triumphed in having the stones of his chimney-top made a step to his door, when this new house was built. He was not a little vindictive at times, when irritated, especially when any allusion was made to his deformity. On one occasion, he and some other boys were stealing pease in Mr. Gibson's field, who then occupied Woodhouse; all the others took _leg-bail_, but Davie's locomotion being tardy, he was caught, shaken, and scolded by Gibson for all the rest. This he never forgot, and vowed to be avenged on the 'auld sinner and deevil and one day when Gibson was working about his own door, Davie crept up to the top of the house, which was low, and threw a large stone down on his head, which brought the old man to the ground. Davie crept down the other side of the house, got into bed beside his mother, and it was never known where the stone came from, till he boasted of it long afterwards. He only prayed that it might sink down through his '_harn-pan_' (his skull). His personal appearance seems to have been almost indescribable, not bearing any likeness to anything in this upper world. But as near as I can learn, his forehead was very narrow and low, sloping upwards and backwards, something of the hatchet shape; his eyes deep-set, small, and piercing; his nose straight, thin as the end of a cut of cheese, sharp at the point, nearly touching his fearfully projecting chin; and his mouth formed nearly a straight line; his shoulders rather high, but his body otherwise the size of ordinary men; his arms were remarkably strong. With very little aid he built a high garden wall, which still stands, many of the stones of huge size; these the shepherds laid to his directions. His legs beat all power of description; they were bent in every direction, so that Mungo Park, then a surgeon at Peebles, who was called to operate on him for strangulated hernia, said he could compare them to nothing but a pair of cork-screws; but the principal turn they took was from the knee outwards, so that he rested on his inner ankles, and the lower part of his tibias. The position of the bones in the woodcut gives some, but a very imperfect idea of this; the _thrawn_ twisted limbs must have crossed each other at the knees, and looked more like roots than legs,
'An' his knotted knees play'd aye knoit between.'
"He had never a shoe on his feet; the parts on which he walked were rolled in rags, old stockings, etc., but the toes always bare, even in the most severe weather. His mode of progressing was as extraordinary as his shape. He carried a long pole, or 'kent,' like the alpenstock, tolerably polished, with a turned top on it, on which he rested, placed it before him, he then lifted one leg, something in the manner that the oar of a boat is worked, and then the other, next advanced his staff, and repeated the operation, by diligently doing which he was able to make not very slow progress.--He frequently walked to Peebles, four miles, and back again, in one day. His arms had no motion at the elbow-joints, but were active enough otherwise. He was not generally ill-tempered, but furious when roused. "Robert Craig."
"Hall Manor, June 15, 1858.
"My DEAR Sir,--I have delayed till now to finish Bowed Davie, in the hope of getting more information, and to very little purpose. His contemporaries are now so few, old, and widely scattered, that they are difficult to be got at, and when come at, their memories are failed like their bodies. I have forgotten at what stage of his history I left off; but if I repeat you can omit the repetitions. Sir James Nasmyth, late of Posso, took compassion on the houseless, homeless lusus naturo, and had a house built for him to his own directions; the door, window, and everything to suit his diminished, grotesque form; the door four feet high, the window twelve by eighteen inches, without glass, closed by a wooden board, hung on leathern hinges, which he used to keep shut. Through it he reconnoitred all visitors, and only admitted ladies and particular favourites; he was very superstitious; ghosts, fairies, and robbers he dreaded most. I have forgotten if I mentioned how he contrived to be fed and warmed. He had a small allowance from the parish poor-box, about fifty shillings; this was eked out by an annual peregrination through the parish, when some gave him food, others money, wool, etc., which he hoarded most miserly. How he cooked his food I have not been able to learn, for his sister, who lived in the same cottage with him, was separated by a stone-and-lime wall, and had a separate door of the usual size, and window to match, and was never allowed to enter his dwelling; but he brought home such loads, that the shepherds had to be on the look-out for him, when on his annual eleemosynary expeditions, to carry home part of his spoil. On one occasion a servant was ordered to give him some salt, for containing which he carried a long stocking; he thought the damsel had scrimped him in quantity, and he sat and distended the stocking till it appeared less than half full, by pressing down the salt, and then called for the gudewife, showed it her, and asked if she had ordered Jenny only to give him that wee pickle saut; the maid was scolded, and the stocking filled. He spent all his evenings at the back of the Woodhouse kitchen fire, and got at least one meal every day, where he used to make the rustics gape and stare at the many ghost, fairy, or robber stories which he had either heard of or invented, and poured out with unceasing volubility, and so often, that he believed them all true. But the Ballantyne family had no great faith in his veracity, when it suited his convenience to fib, exaggerate, or prevaricate, particularly when excited by his own lucubrations, or the waggery of his more intellectual neighbours and companions. He had a seat in the centre, which he always occupied, and a stool for his deformed feet and legs; they all rose at times, asking Davie to do likewise, and when he got upon his pins, he was shorter than when sitting, his body being of the ordinary length, and the deficiency all in his legs. On one occasion, a wag named Elder put up a log of wood opposite his loophole, made a noise, and told Davie that the robbers he dreaded so much were now at his house, and would not go away: he peeped out, saw the log, and exclaimed, 'So he is, by the Lord God and my soul; Willie Elder, gi'e me the gun, and see that she is weel charged.' Elder put in a very large supply of powder without shot, rammed it hard, got a stool, which Davie mounted, Elder handing him the gun, charging him to take time, and aim fair, for if he missed him, he would be mad at being shot at, be sure to come in, take everything in the house, cut their throats, and burn the house after. Davie tremblingly obeyed, presented the gun slowly and cautiously, drew the trigger; off went the shot, the musket rebounded, and back went Davie with a rattle on the floor.
[Illustration: 0295]
Some accomplice tumbled the log; Davie at length was encouraged to look out, and actually believed that he had shot the robber; said he had done for him now, 'that ane wad plague him nae mair at ony rate.' He took it into his head at one time that he ought to be married, and having got the consent of a haverel wench to yoke with him in the silken bonds of matrimony, went to the minister several times, and asked him to perform the ceremony. At length the minister sent him away, saying that he could not and would not accommodate him in the matter. Davie swung himself out at the door on his kent, much crest-fallen, and in great wrath, shutting the door with a bang behind him; but opening it again, he shook his clenched fist in the parson's face, and said, 'Weel, weel, ye'll no let decent, honest folk marry; but,'od, lad, I'se plenish your parish wi' bastards, to see what ye'll mak' o' that,' and away he went. He read Hooke's _Pantheon_, and made great use of the heathen deities. He railed sadly at the taxes; some one observed that he need not grumble at them as he had none to pay. 'Hae I no'?' he replied; 'I can neither get a pickle snuff to my neb, nor a pickle tea to my mouth, but they maun tax't.' His sister and he were on very unfriendly terms. She was ill on one occasion; Miss Ballantyne asked how she was to-day. He replied, 'I dinna ken, I ha na been in, for I hate folk that are aye gaun to dee and never do't.' In 1811 he was seized with obstruction of the bowels and consequent inflammation; blisters and various remedies were applied for three days without effect. Some one came to Mrs. Ballantyne and said that it was 'just about a' owre wi' Davie noo.' She went, and he breathed his last almost immediately. His sister, without any delay, got his keys, and went to his secret repository, Mrs. Ballantyne thought to get dead-clothes, but instead, to her amazement, she threw three money-bags, one after another, into Mrs. Ballantyne's lap, telling her to count that, and that, and that. Mrs. B. was annoyed and astonished at the multitude of half-crowns and shillings, all arranged according to value. He hated sixpences, and had none, but the third contained four guineas in gold. Mrs. B. was disgusted with the woman's greed, and put them all up, saying, what would anybody think if they came in and found them counting the man's money and his breath scarcely out,--took it all home to her husband, who made out £4, 2s. in gold, £10 in a bank receipt, and £7, 18s. in shillings and half-crowns, in all £22. How did he get this? He had many visitors, the better class of whom gave him half-crowns, others shillings and sixpences; the latter he never kept, but converted them into shillings and half-crowns whenever he got an opportunity. I asked the wright how he got him a coffin. He replied, 'Easily; they made it deeper than ordinary, and wider, so as to let in his distorted legs, as it was impossible to streek him like others.' He often expressed a resolve to be buried on the Woodhill top, three miles up the water from the churchyard, as he could never lie 'amang the common trash:' however, this was not accomplished, as his friend, Sir James Nasmyth, who had promised to carry this wish into effect, was on the Continent at the time. When Sir James returned he spoke of having his remains lifted and buried where he had wished; but this was never done, and the expense of a railing and plantation of rowan-trees (mountain ash), his favourite prophylactic against the spells of witches and fairies, was abandoned. The Woodhill is a romantic, green little mount, situated at the west side of the Manor, which washes its base on the east, and separates it from Langhaugh heights, part of a lofty, rocky, and heathery mountain range, and on the west is the ruin of the ancient peel-house of old Posso, long the residence of the Nasmyth family. And now that we have the Dwarf dead and buried, comes the history of his resurrection in 1821. His sister died exactly ten years after him. A report had been spread that he had been lifted and taken to dissecting-rooms in Glasgow, which at that period was the fate of many a more seemly corpse than Davie's; and the young men--for Manor had no sexton--who dug the sister's grave in the vicinity of her brother's, stimulated by curiosity to see if his body had really been carried off, and if still there what his bones were like, lifted them up, and carried them to Woodhouse, where they lay a considerable time, till they were sent to Mr. Ballantyne, then in Glasgow. Miss Ballantyne thinks the skull was taken away with the other bones, but put back again. I have thus given you all the information I can gather about the Black Dwarf, that I think worth narrating. It is reported that he sometimes sold a gill, but if this is true the Ballan-tynes never knew it. Miss Ballantyne says that he was not ill-tempered, but on the contrary, kind, especially to children. She and her brother were very young when she went to Woodhouse, and her father objected to re-setting the farm from Sir James, on account of the fearful accounts of his horrid temper and barbarous deeds, and Sir James said if he ever troubled them that he would immediately put him away; but he was very fond of the younger ones, played with them and amused them, though when roused and provoked by grown-up people, he raged, stormed, swore terrifically, and struck with anything that was near him, in short, he had an irritable but not a sulky, sour, misanthropic temper. The Messrs. Chambers wrote a book about him and his doings at a very early period of their literary history. Did I tell you of a female relative, Niven (whom he would never see), saying that she would come and streek him after he died? He sent word, 'that if she offered to touch his corpse he would rive the thrapple oot o' her--he would rather be streekit by Auld Clootie's ain red-het hands.'--
Yours, truly obliged,
R. C."
This poor, vindictive, solitary, and powerful creature, was a philocalist: he had a singular love of flowers and of beautiful women. He was a sort of Paris, to whom the blushing Aphrodites of the Glen used to come, and his judgment is said to have been as good, as the world generally thinks that of Ginone's handsome and faithless mate. His garden was full of the finest flowers, and it was his pleasure, when the young beauties
"Who bore the blue sky intermixed with flame
In their fair eyes,"
came to him for their competitive examination, to scan them well, and then, without one word, present each with a flower, which was of a certain fixed and well-known value in Davie's standard calimeter.
I have heard that there was one kind of rose, his [Greek], which he was known to have given only to three, and I remember seeing one of the three, when she was past seventy. Margaret Murray, or Morra, was her maiden name, and this fine old lady, whom an Oxonian would call a Double First, grave and silent, and bent with "the pains," when asked by us children, would, with some reluctance, and a curious grave smile, produce out of her Bible, Bowed Davie's withered and flattened rose: and from her looks, even then, I was inclined to affirm the decision of the connoisseur of Manor Water. One can fancy the scene in that sweet solitary valley, informed like its sister Yarrow with pastoral melancholy, with a young May, bashful and eager, presenting herself for honours, encountering from under that penthouse of eyebrows the steady gaze of the strange eldritch creature; and then his making up his mind, and proceeding to pluck his award and present it to her, "herself a fairer flower and then turning with a scowl, crossed with a look of tenderness, crawl into his den. Poor "gloomy Dis," slinking in alone.