interest. Their author had firmly established his position, at least
till “The Monastery” caused some murmurings. Even the “Quarterly Review”
was infinitely more genial in its reception of “The Antiquary” than of
“Guy Mannering.” The critic only grumbled at Lovel’s feverish dreams,
which, he thought, showed an intention to introduce the marvellous. He
complained of “the dark dialect of Anglified Erse,” but found comfort in
the glossary appended. The “Edinburgh Review” pronounced the chapter on
the escape from the tide to be “I the very best description we have ever
met, inverse or in prose, in ancient or in modern writing.” No reviewer
seems to have noticed that the sun is made to set in the sea, on the
east coast of Scotland. The “Edinburgh,” however, declared that the
Antiquary, “at least in so far as he is an Antiquary,” was the chief
blemish on the book. The “sweet heathen of Monkbarns” has not suffered
from this disparagement. The “British Critic” pledged its reputation
that Scott was the author. If an argument were wanted, “it would be that
which has been applied to prove the authenticity of the last book of
the Iliad,--that Homer must have written it, because no one else could.”
Alas! that argument does not convince German critics.
ANDREW LANG.
CHAPTER FIRST.
Go call a coach, and let a coach be called,
And let the man who calleth be the caller;
And in his calling let him nothing call,
But Coach! Coach! Coach! O for a coach, ye gods!
Chrononhotonthologos.
It was early on a fine summer’s day, near the end of the eighteenth
century, when a young man, of genteel appearance, journeying towards the
north-east of Scotland, provided himself with a ticket in one of those
public carriages which travel between Edinburgh and the Queensferry,
at which place, as the name implies, and as is well known to all my
northern readers, there is a passage-boat for crossing the Firth of
Forth. The coach was calculated to carry six regular passengers, besides
such interlopers as the coachman could pick up by the way, and intrude
upon those who were legally in possession. The tickets, which conferred
right to a seat in this vehicle, of little ease, were dispensed by a
sharp-looking old dame, with a pair of spectacles on a very thin nose,
who inhabited a “laigh shop,” anglice, a cellar, opening to the High
Street by a straight and steep stair, at the bottom of which she sold
tape, thread, needles, skeins of worsted, coarse linen cloth, and such
feminine gear, to those who had the courage and skill to descend to
the profundity of her dwelling, without falling headlong themselves, or
throwing down any of the numerous articles which, piled on each side of
the descent, indicated the profession of the trader below.
The written hand-bill, which, pasted on a projecting board, announced
that the Queensferry Diligence, or Hawes Fly, departed precisely at
twelve o’clock on Tuesday, the fifteenth July 17--, in order to secure
for travellers the opportunity of passing the Firth with the flood-tide,
lied on the present occasion like a bulletin; for although that hour was
pealed from Saint Giles’s steeple, and repeated by the Tron, no coach
appeared upon the appointed stand. It is true, only two tickets had been
taken out, and possibly the lady of the subterranean mansion might have
an understanding with her Automedon, that, in such cases, a little space
was to be allowed for the chance of filling up the vacant places--or the
said Automedon might have been attending a funeral, and be delayed by
the necessity of stripping his vehicle of its lugubrious trappings--or
he might have staid to take a half-mutchkin extraordinary with his crony
the hostler--or--in short, he did not make his appearance.
The young gentleman, who began to grow somewhat impatient, was now
joined by a companion in this petty misery of human life--the person who
had taken out the other place. He who is bent upon a journey is usually
easily to be distinguished from his fellow-citizens. The boots, the
great-coat, the umbrella, the little bundle in his hand, the hat pulled
over his resolved brows, the determined importance of his pace, his
brief answers to the salutations of lounging acquaintances, are all
marks by which the experienced traveller in mail-coach or diligence can
distinguish, at a distance, the companion of his future journey, as he
pushes onward to the place of rendezvous. It is then that, with worldly
wisdom, the first comer hastens to secure the best berth in the coach
for himself, and to make the most convenient arrangement for his baggage
before the arrival of his competitors. Our youth, who was gifted with
little prudence, of any sort, and who was, moreover, by the absence of
the coach, deprived of the power of availing himself of his priority of
choice, amused himself, instead, by speculating upon the occupation and
character of the personage who was now come to the coach office.
He was a good-looking man of the age of sixty, perhaps older,--but his
hale complexion and firm step announced that years had not impaired
his strength or health. His countenance was of the true Scottish
cast, strongly marked, and rather harsh in features, with a shrewd
and penetrating eye, and a countenance in which habitual gravity was
enlivened by a cast of ironical humour. His dress was uniform, and of a
colour becoming his age and gravity; a wig, well dressed and powdered,
surmounted by a slouched hat, had something of a professional air. He
might be a clergyman, yet his appearance was more that of a man of
the world than usually belongs to the kirk of Scotland, and his first
ejaculation put the matter beyond question.
He arrived with a hurried pace, and, casting an alarmed glance towards
the dial-plate of the church, then looking at the place where the coach
should have been, exclaimed, “Deil’s in it--I am too late after all!”
The young man relieved his anxiety, by telling him the coach had not
yet appeared. The old gentleman, apparently conscious of his own want of
punctuality, did not at first feel courageous enough to censure that
of the coachman. He took a parcel, containing apparently a large folio,
from a little boy who followed him, and, patting him on the head, bid
him go back and tell Mr. B----, that if he had known he was to have had so
much time, he would have put another word or two to their bargain,--then
told the boy to mind his business, and he would be as thriving a lad as
ever dusted a duodecimo. The boy lingered, perhaps in hopes of a penny
to buy marbles; but none was forthcoming. Our senior leaned his little
bundle upon one of the posts at the head of the staircase, and, facing
the traveller who had first arrived, waited in silence for about five
minutes the arrival of the expected diligence.
At length, after one or two impatient glances at the progress of the
minute-hand of the clock, having compared it with his own watch, a huge
and antique gold repeater, and having twitched about his features to
give due emphasis to one or two peevish pshaws, he hailed the old lady
of the cavern.
“Good woman,--what the d--l is her name?--Mrs. Macleuchar!”
Mrs. Macleuchar, aware that she had a defensive part to sustain in the
encounter which was to follow, was in no hurry to hasten the discussion
by returning a ready answer.
“Mrs. Macleuchar,--Good woman” (with an elevated voice)--then apart, “Old
doited hag, she’s as deaf as a post--I say, Mrs. Macleuchar!”
“I am just serving a customer.--Indeed, hinny, it will no be a bodle
cheaper than I tell ye.”
“Woman,” reiterated the traveller, “do you think we can stand here all
day till you have cheated that poor servant wench out of her half-year’s
fee and bountith?”
“Cheated!” retorted Mrs. Macleuchar, eager to take up the quarrel upon a
defensible ground; “I scorn your words, sir: you are an uncivil
person, and I desire you will not stand there, to slander me at my ain
stair-head.”
“The woman,” said the senior, looking with an arch glance at his
destined travelling companion, “does not understand the words of
action.--Woman,” again turning to the vault, “I arraign not thy
character, but I desire to know what is become of thy coach?”
“What’s your wull?” answered Mrs. Macleuchar, relapsing into deafness.
“We have taken places, ma’am,” said the younger stranger, “in your
diligence for Queensferry”--“Which should have been half-way on the road
before now,” continued the elder and more impatient traveller, rising
in wrath as he spoke: “and now in all likelihood we shall miss the tide,
and I have business of importance on the other side--and your cursed
coach”--
“The coach?--Gude guide us, gentlemen, is it no on the stand yet?”
answered the old lady, her shrill tone of expostulation sinking into a
kind of apologetic whine. “Is it the coach ye hae been waiting for?”
“What else could have kept us broiling in the sun by the side of the
gutter here, you--you faithless woman, eh?”
Mrs. Macleuchar now ascended her trap stair (for such it might be
called, though constructed of stone), until her nose came upon a level
with the pavement; then, after wiping her spectacles to look for
that which she well knew was not to be found, she exclaimed, with
well-feigned astonishment, “Gude guide us--saw ever onybody the like o’
that?”
“Yes, you abominable woman,” vociferated the traveller, “many have seen
the like of it, and all will see the like of it that have anything to do
with your trolloping sex;” then pacing with great indignation before
the door of the shop, still as he passed and repassed, like a vessel who
gives her broadside as she comes abreast of a hostile fortress, he
shot down complaints, threats, and reproaches, on the embarrassed Mrs.
Macleuchar. He would take a post-chaise--he would call a hackney coach--he
would take four horses--he must--he would be on the north side,
to-day--and all the expense of his journey, besides damages, direct and
consequential, arising from delay, should be accumulated on the devoted
head of Mrs. Macleuchar.
There, was something so comic in his pettish resentment, that the
younger traveller, who was in no such pressing hurry to depart, could
not help being amused with it, especially as it was obvious, that
every now and then the old gentleman, though very angry, could not help
laughing at his own vehemence. But when Mrs. Macleuchar began also to
join in the laughter, he quickly put a stop to her ill-timed merriment.
“Woman,” said he, “is that advertisement thine?” showing a bit of
crumpled printed paper: “Does it not set forth, that, God willing, as
you hypocritically express it, the Hawes Fly, or Queensferry Diligence,
would set forth to-day at twelve o’clock; and is it not, thou falsest of
creatures, now a quarter past twelve, and no such fly or diligence to
be seen?--Dost thou know the consequence of seducing the lieges by
false reports?--dost thou know it might be brought under the statute of
leasing-making? Answer--and for once in thy long, useless, and evil
life, let it be in the words of truth and sincerity,--hast thou such
a coach?--is it in rerum natura?--or is this base annunciation a mere
swindle on the incautious to beguile them of their time, their patience,
and three shillings of sterling money of this realm?--Hast thou, I say,
such a coach? ay or no?”
“O dear, yes, sir; the neighbours ken the diligence weel, green picked
oat wi’ red--three yellow wheels and a black ane.”
“Woman, thy special description will not serve--it may be only a lie with
a circumstance.”
“O, man, man!” said the overwhelmed Mrs. Macleuchar, totally exhausted
at having been so long the butt of his rhetoric, “take back your three
shillings, and make me quit o’ ye.”
“Not so fast, not so fast, woman--Will three shillings transport me to
Queensferry, agreeably to thy treacherous program?--or will it requite
the damage I may sustain by leaving my business undone, or repay the
expenses which I must disburse if I am obliged to tarry a day at the
South Ferry for lack of tide?--Will it hire, I say, a pinnace, for which
alone the regular price is five shillings?”
Here his argument was cut short by a lumbering noise, which proved to
be the advance of the expected vehicle, pressing forward with all the
dispatch to which the broken-winded jades that drew it could possibly
be urged. With ineffable pleasure, Mrs. Macleuchar saw her tormentor
deposited in the leathern convenience; but still, as it was driving off,
his head thrust out of the window reminded her, in words drowned amid
the rumbling of the wheels, that, if the diligence did not attain the
Ferry in time to save the flood-tide, she, Mrs. Macleuchar, should be
held responsible for all the consequences that might ensue.
The coach had continued in motion for a mile or two before the stranger
had completely repossessed himself of his equanimity, as was manifested
by the doleful ejaculations, which he made from time to time, on the too
great probability, or even certainty, of their missing the flood-tide.
By degrees, however, his wrath subsided; he wiped his brows, relaxed his
frown, and, undoing the parcel in his hand, produced his folio, on which
he gazed from time to time with the knowing look of an amateur, admiring
its height and condition, and ascertaining, by a minute and individual
inspection of each leaf, that the volume was uninjured and entire
from title-page to colophon. His fellow-traveller took the liberty
of inquiring the subject of his studies. He lifted up his eyes with
something of a sarcastic glance, as if he supposed the young querist
would not relish, or perhaps understand, his answer, and pronounced
the book to be Sandy Gordon’s Itinerarium Septentrionale,* a book
illustrative of the Roman remains in Scotland.
* Note B. Sandy Gordon’s Itinerarium.
The querist, unappalled by this learned title, proceeded to put
several questions, which indicated that he had made good use of a good
education, and, although not possessed of minute information on the
subject of antiquities, had yet acquaintance enough with the classics to
render him an interested and intelligent auditor when they were enlarged
upon. The elder traveller, observing with pleasure the capacity of
his temporary companion to understand and answer him, plunged, nothing
loath, into a sea of discussion concerning urns, vases, votive, altars,
Roman camps, and the rules of castrametation.
The pleasure of this discourse had such a dulcifying tendency, that,
although two causes of delay occurred, each of much more serious
duration than that which had drawn down his wrath upon the unlucky Mrs.
Macleuchar, our =Antiquary= only bestowed on the delay the honour of
a few episodical poohs and pshaws, which rather seemed to regard the
interruption of his disquisition than the retardation of his journey.
The first of these stops was occasioned by the breaking of a spring,
which half an hour’s labour hardly repaired. To the second, the
Antiquary was himself accessory, if not the principal cause of it; for,
observing that one of the horses had cast a fore-foot shoe, he apprized
the coachman of this important deficiency. “It’s Jamie Martingale that
furnishes the naigs on contract, and uphauds them,” answered John, “and
I am not entitled to make any stop, or to suffer prejudice by the like
of these accidents.”
“And when you go to--I mean to the place you deserve to go to, you
scoundrel,--who do you think will uphold you on contract? If you don’t
stop directly and carry the poor brute, to the next smithy, I’ll have
you punished, if there’s a justice of peace in Mid-Lothian;” and,
opening the coach-door, out he jumped, while the coachman obeyed his
orders, muttering, that “if the gentlemen lost the tide now, they could
not say but it was their ain fault, since he was willing to get on.”
I like so little to analyze the complication of the causes which
influence actions, that I will not venture to ascertain whether our
Antiquary’s humanity to the poor horse was not in some degree aided by
his desire of showing his companion a Pict’s camp, or Round-about,
a subject which he had been elaborately discussing, and of which a
specimen, “very curious and perfect indeed,” happened to exist about a
hundred yards distant from the spot where this interruption took place.
But were I compelled to decompose the motives of my worthy friend (for
such was the gentleman in the sober suit, with powdered wig and slouched
hat), I should say, that, although he certainly would not in any case
have suffered the coachman to proceed while the horse was unfit for
service, and likely to suffer by being urged forward, yet the man of
whipcord escaped some severe abuse and reproach by the agreeable mode
which the traveller found out to pass the interval of delay.
So much time was consumed by these interruptions of their journey, that
when they descended the hill above the Hawes (for so the inn on the
southern side of the Queensferry is denominated), the experienced eye
of the Antiquary at once discerned, from the extent of wet sand, and
the number of black stones and rocks, covered with sea-weed, which were
visible along the skirts of the shore, that the hour of tide was past.
The young traveller expected a burst of indignation; but whether, as
Croaker says in “The Good-natured Man,” our hero had exhausted himself
in fretting away his misfortunes beforehand, so that he did not feel
them when they actually arrived, or whether he found the company in
which he was placed too congenial to lead him to repine at anything
which delayed his journey, it is certain that he submitted to his lot
with much resignation.
“The d--l’s in the diligence and the old hag, it belongs to!--Diligence,
quoth I? Thou shouldst have called it the Sloth--Fly, quoth she? why, it
moves like a fly through a glue-pot, as the Irishman says. But, however,
time and tide tarry for no man, and so, my young friend, we’ll have a
snack here at the Hawes, which is a very decent sort of a place,
and I’ll be very happy to finish the account I was giving you of the
difference between the mode of entrenching castra stativa and castra
aestiva, things confounded by too many of our historians. Lack-a-day, if
they had ta’en the pains to satisfy their own eyes, instead of following
each other’s blind guidance!--Well! we shall be pretty comfortable at the
Hawes; and besides, after all, we must have dined somewhere, and it will
be pleasanter sailing with the tide of ebb and the evening breeze.”
In this Christian temper of making the best of all occurrences, our
travellers alighted at the Hawes.
CHAPTER SECOND.
Sir, they do scandal me upon the road here!
A poor quotidian rack of mutton roasted
Dry to be grated! and that driven down
With beer and butter-milk, mingled together.
It is against my freehold, my inheritance.
Wine is the word that glads the heart of man,
And mine’s the house of wine. Sack, says my bush,
Be merry and drink Sherry, that’s my posie.
Ben Jonson’s New Inn.
As the senior traveller descended the crazy steps of the diligence at
the inn, he was greeted by the fat, gouty, pursy landlord, with that
mixture of familiarity and respect which the Scotch innkeepers of the
old school used to assume towards their more valued customers.
“Have a care o’ us, Monkbarns (distinguishing him by his territorial
epithet, always most agreeable to the ear of a Scottish proprietor), is
this you? I little thought to have seen your honour here till the summer
session was ower.”
“Ye donnard auld deevil,” answered his guest, his Scottish accent
predominating when in anger though otherwise not particularly
remarkable,--“ye donnard auld crippled idiot, what have I to do with the
session, or the geese that flock to it, or the hawks that pick their
pinions for them?”
“Troth, and that’s true,” said mine host, who, in fact, only spoke upon
a very general recollection of the stranger’s original education, yet
would have been sorry not to have been supposed accurate as to the
station and profession of him, or any other occasional guest--“That’s
very true,--but I thought ye had some law affair of your ain to look
after--I have ane mysell--a ganging plea that my father left me, and his
father afore left to him. It’s about our back-yard--ye’ll maybe hae heard
of it in the Parliament-house, Hutchison against Mackitchinson--it’s a
weel-kenn’d plea--its been four times in afore the fifteen, and deil ony
thing the wisest o’ them could make o’t, but just to send it out again
to the outer-house.--O it’s a beautiful thing to see how lang and how
carefully justice is considered in this country!”
“Hold your tongue, you fool,” said the traveller, but in great
good-humour, “and tell us what you can give this young gentleman and me
for dinner.”
“Ou, there’s fish, nae doubt,--that’s sea-trout and caller haddocks,”
said Mackitchinson, twisting his napkin; “and ye’ll be for a
mutton-chop, and there’s cranberry tarts, very weel preserved, and--and
there’s just ony thing else ye like.”
“Which is to say, there is nothing else whatever? Well, well, the fish
and the chop, and the tarts, will do very well. But don’t imitate the
cautious delay that you praise in the courts of justice. Let there be no
remits from the inner to the outer house, hear ye me?”
“Na, na,” said Mackitchinson, whose long and heedful perusal of
volumes of printed session papers had made him acquainted with some law
phrases--“the denner shall be served quam primum and that peremptorie.”
And with the flattering laugh of a promising host, he left them in his
sanded parlour, hung with prints of the Four Seasons.
As, notwithstanding his pledge to the contrary, the glorious delays of
the law were not without their parallel in the kitchen of the inn, our
younger traveller had an opportunity to step out and make some inquiry
of the people of the house concerning the rank and station of his
companion. The information which he received was of a general and less
authentic nature, but quite sufficient to make him acquainted with
the name, history, and circumstances of the gentleman, whom we shall
endeavour, in a few words, to introduce more accurately to our readers.