Carlisle, April the 5th, 1744 or 5.
I really feel that I must put a date to my writing now, when this is the
first time of my going out into the great world. I have never been
beyond Carlisle before, and now I am going, first into a new country,
and then to London itself, if all go well.
News came last night, just before we started, that my Lord Orford is
dead--he that was Sir Robert Walpole, and the Elector's Prime Minister.
Father says his death is a good thing for the country, for it gives more
hope that the King may come by his own. I don't know what would happen
if he did. I suppose it would not make much difference to us. Indeed,
I rather wish things would not happen, for the things that happen are so
often disagreeable ones. I said so this evening, and Mr Keith smiled,
and answered, "You are young to have reached that conviction, Miss
Caroline."
"Oh, rubbish!" said Angus. "Only old women talk so!"
"Angus, will you please tell me," said I, "whether young men have
generally more sense than old women?"
"Of course they have!" replied he.
"The young men are apt to think so," added Flora.
"But have young women more sense than old ones?" said I. "Because I
see, whenever people mean to speak of anything as particularly silly,
they always say it is worthy of an old woman. Now why an old woman?
Have I more commonsense now than I shall have fifty years hence? And if
so, at what age may I expect it to take leave of me?"
"You are not talking sense now, at any rate," replied Angus--who might
be my brother, instead of my cousin, for the way in which he takes me
up, whatever I say.
"Pardon me," said Mr Keith. "I think Miss Caroline is talking very
good sense."
"Then you may answer her," said Angus.
"Nay," returned Mr Keith. "The question was addressed to you."
"Oh, all women are sillies!" was Angus's flattering answer. "They're
just a pack of ninnies, the whole lot of them."
"It seems to me, Angus," observed Mr Keith, quite gravely, "that you
must have paid twopence extra for manners."
Flora and I laughed.
"I was not rich enough to go in for any," growled Angus. "I'm not a
laird's son, Mr Duncan Keith, so you don't need to throw stones at me."
"Did I, Angus? I beg your pardon."
Angus muttered something which I did not hear, and was silent. I
thought I had better let the subject drop.
But before we went to bed, something happened which I never saw before.
Mr Keith took a book from his pocket, and sat down at the table. Flora
rose and went to the sofa, motioning to me to come beside her. Even
Angus twisted himself round, and sat in a more decorous way.
"What are we going to do?" I asked of Flora.
"The exercise, dear," said she.
"Exercise!" cried I. "What are we to exercise?"
A curious sort of gurgle came from Angus's part of the room, as if a
laugh had made its way into his throat, and he had smothered it in its
cradle.
"The word is strange to Miss Caroline," said Mr Keith, looking round
with a smile. "We Scots people, Madam, speak of exercising our souls in
prayer. We are about to read in God's Word, and pray, if you please.
It is our custom, morning and evening."
"But how can we pray?" said I. "There is no clergyman."
"Though I am not a minister," replied Mr Keith, "yet I trust I have
learned to pray."
It seemed to me so strange that anybody not a clergyman should think of
praying before other people! However, I sat down, of course, on the
sofa by Flora, and listened while Mr Keith read something out of the
Gospel of Saint John, about the woman of Samaria, and what our Lord said
to her. But I never heard such reading in my life! I thought I could
have gone on listening to him all night. The only clergymen that I ever
heard read were Mr Bagnall and poor old Mr Digby, and the one always
read in a high singsong tone, which gave me the idea that it was nothing
I need listen to; and the other mumbled indistinctly, so that I never
heard what he said. But Mr Keith read as if the converse were really
going on, and you actually heard our Lord and the woman talking to one
another at the well. He made it seem so real that I almost fancied I
could hear the water trickling, and see the cool wet green mosses round
the old well. Oh, if clergymen would always read and preach as if the
things were real, how different going to church would be!
Then we knelt down, and Mr Keith prayed. It was not out of the
Prayer-Book. And I dare say, if I were to hear nothing but such
prayers, I might miss the dear old prayers that have been like sweet
sounds floating around me ever since I knew anything. But this evening,
when it was all new, it came to me as so solemn and so real! This was
not saying one's prayers; it was talking to one's Friend. And it seemed
as if God really were Mr Keith's Friend--as if they knew each other,
and were not strangers at all, but each understood what the other would
like or dislike, and they wanted to please one another. I hope I am not
irreverent in writing so, but really it did seem like that. And I never
saw anything like it before.
I suppose, to the others, it was an old worn-out story--all this which
came so new and fresh to me. When we rose up, Angus said, without any
pause,--
"Well! I am off to bed. Good-night, all of you."
Flora went up to him and offered him a kiss, which he took as if it were
a condescension to an inferior creature; and then, without saying
anything more to Mr Keith or me, lighted his candle and went away.
Flora sighed as she looked after him, and Mr Keith looked at her as if
he felt for her.
"I shall be glad to get him home," said Flora, answering Mr Keith's
look, I think. "If he can only get back to Father, then, perhaps--"
"Aye," said Mr Keith, meaningly, "it is all well, when we do get back
to the Father."
Flora shook her head sorrowfully. "Not that!" she answered. "O Duncan,
I am afraid, not that, yet! I feel such terrible fear sometimes lest he
should never come back at all, or if he do, should have to come over
sharp stones and through thorny paths."
"`So He bringeth them unto their desired haven,'" was Mr Keith's gentle
answer.
"I know!" she said, with a sigh. "I suppose I ought to pray and wait.
Father does, I am sure. But it is hard work!"
Mr Keith did not answer for a moment; and when he did, it was by
another bit of the Bible. At least I think it was the Bible, for it
sounded like it, but I should not know where to find it.
"`Wait on the Lord; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thine
heart; wait, I say, on the Lord.'"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Castleton, April the sixth.
Mr Keith left us so early this morning that there was not time for
anything except breakfast and good-bye. I feel quite sorry to lose him,
and wish I had a brother like him. (Not like Angus--dear me, no!) Why
could we four girls not have had one brother?
About half an hour after Mr Keith was gone, the Scots gentleman with
whom we were to travel--Mr Cameron--came in. He is a man of about
fifty, bald-headed and rosy-faced, pleasant and chatty enough, only I do
not quite always understand him. By six o'clock we were all packed into
his chaise, and a few minutes later we set forth from the inn door. The
streets of Carlisle felt like home; but as we left them behind, and came
gradually out into the open country, it dawned upon me that now, indeed,
I was going out into the great world.
We sleep here to-night, where Flora and I have a little bit of a
bed-chamber next door to a larger one where Mr Cameron and Angus are.
On Monday we expect to reach Abbotscliff. I am too tired to write more.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Abbotscliff Manse, April the ninth.
I really could not go on any sooner. We reached the manse--what an odd
name for a vicarage!--about four o'clock yesterday afternoon. The
church (which Flora calls the kirk) and the manse, with a few other
houses, stand on a little rising ground, and the rest of the village
lies below.
But before I begin to talk about the manse, I want to write down a
conversation which took place on Monday morning as we journeyed, in
which Mr Cameron told us some curious things that I do not wish to
forget. We were driving through such a pretty little village, and in
one of the doorways an old woman sat with her knitting.
"Oh, look at that dear old woman!" cries Flora. "How pleasant she
looks, with her clean white apron and mutch!"
"Much, Flora?" said I. "What do you mean?" I thought it such an odd
word to use. What was she much?
Flora looked puzzled, and Mr Cameron answered for her, with amusement
in his eyes.
"A mutch, young lady," said he, "is what you in the South call a cap."
"The South!" cried I. "Why, Mr Cameron, you do not think we live in
the South?"
I felt almost vexed that he should fancy such a thing. For all that
Grandmamma and my Aunt Dorothea used to say, I always look down upon the
South. All the people I have seen who came from the South seemed to me
to have a great deal of wiliness and foolishness, and no commonsense. I
suppose the truth is that there are agreeable people, and good people,
in the South, only they have not come my way.
When I cried out like that, Mr Cameron laughed.
"Well," said he, "north and south are comparative terms. We in Scotland
think all England `the South,'--and so it is, if you will think a
moment. You in Cumberland, I suppose, draw the line at the Trent or the
Humber; lower down, they employ the Thames; and a Surrey man thinks
Sussex is the South. 'Tis all a matter of comparison."
"What does a Sussex man call the South?" said Angus.
"Spain and Portugal, I should think," said Mr Cameron.
"But, Mr Cameron," said I, "asking your pardon, is there not some
difference of character or disposition between those in the North and in
the South--I mean, of England?"
"Quite right, young lady," said he. "They are different tribes; and the
Lowland Scots, among whom you are now coming, have the same original as
yourself. There were two tribes amongst those whom we call
Anglo-Saxons, that peopled England after the Britons were driven into
Wales--namely, as you might guess, the Angles and the Saxons. The
Angles ran from the Frith of Forth to the Trent; the Saxons from the
Thames southward. The midland counties were in all likelihood a mixture
of the two. There are, moreover, several foreign elements beyond this,
in various counties. For instance, there is a large influx of Danish
blood on the eastern coast, in parts of Lancashire, in Yorkshire and
Lincolnshire, and in the Weald of Sussex; there was a Flemish settlement
in Lancashire and Norfolk, of considerable extent; the Britons were left
in great numbers in Cumberland and Cornwall; the Jutes--a variety of
Dane--peopled Kent entirely. Nor must we forget the Romans, who left a
deep impress upon us, especially amongst Welsh families. 'Tis not easy
for any of our mixed race to say, I am this, or that. Why, if most of
us spoke the truth (supposing we might know it), we should say, `I am
one-quarter Saxon, one-eighth British, one-sixteenth Iberian, one-eighth
Danish, one-sixteenth Flemish, one-thirty-secondth part Roman,'--and so
forth. Now, Miss Caroline, how much of that can you remember?"
"All of it, I hope, Sir," said I; "I shall try to do so. I like to hear
of those old times. But would you please to tell me, what is an
Iberian?"
"My dear," said Mr Cameron, smiling, "I would gladly give you fifty
pounds in gold, if you could tell me."
"Sir!" cried I, in great surprise.
He went on, more as if he were talking to himself, or to some very
learned man, than to me.
"What is an Iberian? Ah, for the man who could tell us! What is a
Basque?--what is an Etruscan?--what is a Magyar?--above all, what is a
Cagot? Miss Caroline, my dear, there are deep questions in all arts and
sciences; and, without knowing it, you have lighted on one of the
deepest and most interesting. The most learned man that breathes can
only answer you, as I do now (though I am far from being a learned
man)--I do not know. I will, nevertheless, willingly tell you what
little I do know; and the rather if you take an interest in such
matters. All that we really know of the Iberii is that they came from
Spain, and that they had reached that country from the East; that they
were a narrow-headed people (the Celts or later Britons were
round-headed); that they dwelt in rude houses in the interior of the
country, first digging a pit in the ground, and building over it a kind
of hut, sometimes of turf and sometimes of stone; that they wore very
rude clothing, and were generally much less civilised than the Celts,
who lived mainly on the coast; that they loved to dwell, and especially
to worship, on a mountain top; that they followed certain Eastern
observances, such as running or leaping through the fire to Bel,--which
savours of a Phoenician or Assyrian origin; and that it is more than
likely that we owe to them those stupendous monuments yet standing--
Stonehenge, Avebury, the White Horse of Berkshire, and the White Man of
Wilmington."
"But what sort of a religion had they, if you please, Sir?" said I; for
I wanted to get to know all I could about these strange fathers of ours.
"Idolatry, my dear, as you might suppose," answered Mr Cameron. "They
worshipped the sun, which they identified with the serpent; and they
had, moreover, a sacred tree--all, doubtless, relics of Eden. They
would appear also to have had some sort of woman-worship, for they held
women in high honour, loved female sovereignty, and practised
polyandry--that is, each woman had several husbands."
"I never heard of such queer folks!" said I. "And what became of them,
Sir?"
"The Iberians and Celts together," he answered, "made up the people we
call Britons. When the Saxons invaded the country, they were driven
into the remote fastnesses of Wales, Cumberland, and Cornwall. Some
antiquaries think the Picts had the same original, but this is one of
the unsettled points of history."
"I wish it were possible to settle all such questions!" said Flora.
"So do the antiquaries, I can assure you," returned Mr Cameron, with a
smile. "But it is scarce possible to come to a conclusion with any
certainty as to the origin of a people of whom we cannot recover the
language."
"If you please, Sir," said I, "what has the language to do with it?"
"It has everything to do with it, Miss Caroline. You did not know that
languages grew, like plants, and could be classified in groups after the
same manner?"
"Please explain to us, Mr Cameron," said Flora. "It all sounds so
strange."
"But it is very interesting," I said. "I want to know all about it."
"If you want to know _all_ about it," answered our friend, "you must
consult some one else than me, for I do not know nearly all about it.
In truth, no one does. For myself, I have only arrived at the stage of
knowing that I know next to nothing."
"That's easy enough to know, surely," said Angus.
"Not at all, Angus. It is one of the most difficult things to ascertain
in this world. No man is so ready to give an off-hand opinion on any
and every subject, as the man who knows absolutely nothing. But we must
not start another hare while the young ladies' question remains
unanswered. Languages, my dears, are not made; they grow. The first
language--that spoken in Eden--may have been given to man ready-made, by
God; but I rather imagine, from the expressions of Holy Writ, that what
was granted to Adam was the inward power of forming a tongue which
should be rational and consistent with itself; and, if so, no doubt it
was granted to Eve that she should understand him--perhaps that she
should possess a similar power."
"The woman made the language, Sir, you may be sure," said Angus. "They
are shocking chatterers."
"Unfortunately, my boy, Scripture is against you. `Whatsoever Adam'--
not Eve--`called the name of every living creature, that was the name
thereof.' To proceed:--The confusion of tongues at Babel seems, from
what we can gather, to have called into being a number of languages
quite separate from each other, yet all having a certain affinity. The
structure differs; but some of the words are alike, or at least so
nearly alike that the resemblance can be traced. Take the word for
`father' in all languages: cut down to its root, there is the same root
found in all. Ab in Hebrew, abba in Syriac, pater in Greek and Latin,
vater in Low Dutch, pere in French, padre in Spanish and Italian, father
in English--ay, even the child's papa and the infant's daddy--all come
from one root. But this cutting away of superfluities to get at the
root, is precisely what a 'prentice hand should not attempt; like an
unskilled gardener, he will prune away the wrong branches."
"Then, Sir," I asked, "what are the languages which belong to the same
class as ours?"
"Ours, young lady, is a composite language. It may almost be said to be
made up of bits of other languages. German or Low Dutch is its mother,
and the Scandinavian group--Swedish, Danish, and so forth--may be termed
its aunts. It belongs mostly to what is called the Teutonic group; but
there are in it traces of Celtic, and though more dimly perceptible,
even of Latin and Oriental tongues. We are altogether a made-up
nation--to which fact some say that we owe those excellences on which we
are so fond of priding ourselves."
"Please, Sir, what are they?" I asked.
Mr Cameron seemed much amused at the question.
"What are the excellences we have?" said he; "or, what are those on
which we pride ourselves? They are often not the same. And--notice it,
young ladies, as you go through life--the virtue on which a man plumes
himself the most highly is very frequently one which he possesses in
small measure. (I do not say, in no measure.) Well, I suppose the
qualities on which we English--"
"We are not English!" cried Angus, hotly.
"For this purpose we are," was Mr Cameron's answer. "As I observed
before, the Lowland Scots and the northern English are one tribe. But I
was going to say, when you were so rude as to interrupt me, English and
Scots, young gentleman."