A LITERARY CLUB
The ministers in the town did not hold with literature. When the most
notorious of the clubs met in the town-house under the presidentship of
Gavin Ogilvy, who was no better than a poacher, and was troubled in his
mind because writers called Pope a poet, there was frequently a wrangle
over the question, Is literature necessarily immoral? It was a
fighting club, and on Friday nights the few respectable, god-fearing
members dandered to the town-house, as if merely curious to have
another look at the building. If Lang Tammas, who was dead against
letters, was in sight they wandered off, but when there were no spies
abroad they slunk up the stair. The attendance was greatest on dark
nights, though Gavin himself and some other characters would have
marched straight to the meeting in broad daylight. Tammas Haggart, who
did not think much of Milton's devil, had married a gypsy woman for an
experiment, and the Coat of Many Colours did not know where his wife
was. As a rule, however, the members were wild bachelors. When they
married they had to settle down.
Gavin's essay on Will'um Pitt, the Father of the Taxes, led to the
club's being bundled out of the town-house, where people said it should
never have been allowed to meet. There was a terrible town when Tammas
Haggart then disclosed the secret of Mr. Byars's supposed approval of
the club. Mr. Byars was the Auld Licht minister whom Mr. Dishart
succeeded, and it was well known that he had advised the authorities to
grant the use of the little town-house to the club on Friday evenings.
As he solemnly warned his congregation against attending the meetings
the position he had taken up created talk, and Lang Tammas called at
the manse with Sanders Whamond to remonstrate. The minister, however,
harangued them on their sinfulness in daring to question the like of
him, and they had to retire vanquished though dissatisfied. Then came
the disclosures of Tammas Haggart, who was never properly secured by
the Auld Lichts until Mr. Dishart took him in hand. It was Tammas who
wrote anonymous letters to Mr. Byars about the scarlet woman, and,
strange to say, this led to the club's being allowed to meet in the
town-house. The minister, after many days, discovered who his
correspondent was, and succeeded in inveigling the stone-breaker to the
manse. There, with the door snibbed, he opened out on Tammas, who,
after his usual manner when hard pressed, pretended to be deaf. This
sudden fit of deafness so exasperated the minister that he flung a book
at Tammas. The scene that followed was one that few Auld Licht manses
can have witnessed. According to Tammas the book had hardly reached
the floor when the minister turned white. Tammas picked up the
missile. It was a Bible. The two men looked at each other. Beneath
the window Mr. Byars's children were prattling. His wife was moving
about in the next room, little thinking what had happened. The
minister held out his hand for the Bible, but Tammas shook his head,
and then Mr. Byars shrank into a chair. Finally, it was arranged that
if Tammas kept the affair to himself the minister would say a good word
to the Bailie about the literary club. After that the stone-breaker
used to go from house to house, twisting his mouth to the side and
remarking that he could tell such a tale of Mr. Byars as would lead to
a split in the kirk. When the town-house was locked on the club Tammas
spoke out, but though the scandal ran from door to door, as I have seen
a pig in a fluster do, the minister did not lose his place. Tammas
preserved the Bible, and showed it complacently to visitors as the
present he got from Mr. Byars. The minister knew this, and it turned
his temper sour. Tammas's proud moments, after that, were when he
passed the minister.
Driven from the town-house, literature found a table with forms round
it in a tavern hard by, where the club, lopped of its most respectable
members, kept the blinds down and talked openly of Shakspeare. It was
a low-roofed room, with pieces of lime hanging from the ceiling and
peeling walls. The floor had a slope that tended to fling the debater
forward, and its boards, lying loose on an uneven foundation, rose and
looked at you as you crossed the room. In winter, when the meetings
were held regularly every fortnight, a fire of peat, sod, and dross lit
up the curious company who sat round the table shaking their heads over
Shelley's mysticism, or requiring to be called to order because they
would not wait their turn to deny an essayist's assertion that
Berkeley's style was superior to David Hume's. Davit Hume, they said,
and Watty Scott. Burns was simply referred to as Rob or Robbie.
There was little drinking at these meetings, for the members knew what
they were talking about, and your mind had to gallop to keep up with
the flow of reasoning. Thrums is rather a remarkable town. There are
scores and scores of houses in it that have sent their sons to college
(by what a struggle!), some to make their way to the front in their
professions, and others, perhaps, despite their broadcloth, never to be
a patch on their parents. In that literary club there were men of a
reading so wide and catholic that it might put some graduates of the
universities to shame, and of an intellect so keen that had it not had
a crook in it their fame would have crossed the county. Most of them
had but a thread-bare existence, for you weave slowly with a Wordsworth
open before you, and some were strange Bohemians (which does not do in
Thrums), yet others wandered into the world and compelled it to
recognize them. There is a London barrister whose father belonged to
the club. Not many years ago a man died on the staff of the _Times_,
who, when he was a weaver near Thrums, was one of the club's prominent
members. He taught himself shorthand by the light of a cruizey, and
got a post on a Perth paper, afterwards on the _Scotsman_ and the
_Witness_, and finally on the _Times_. Several other men of his type
had a history worth reading, but it is not for me to write. Yet I may
say that there is still at least one of the original members of the
club left behind in Thrums to whom some of the literary dandies might
lift their hats.
Gavin Ogilvy I only knew as a weaver and a poacher; a lank, long-armed
man, much bent from crouching in ditches whence he watched his snares.
To the young he was a romantic figure, because they saw him frequently
in the fields with his call-birds tempting siskins, yellow yites, and
linties to twigs which he had previously smeared with lime. He made
the lime from the tough roots of holly; sometimes from linseed oil,
which is boiled until thick, when it is taken out of the pot and drawn
and stretched with the hands like elastic. Gavin was also a famous
hare-snarer at a time when the ploughman looked upon this form of
poaching as his perquisite. The snare was of wire, so constructed that
the hare entangled itself the more when trying to escape, and it was
placed across the little roads through the fields to which hares
confine themselves, with a heavy stone attached to it by a string.
Once Gavin caught a toad (fox) instead of a hare, and did not discover
his mistake until it had him by the teeth. He was not able to weave
for two months. The grouse-netting was more lucrative and more
exciting, and women engaged in it with their husbands. It is told of
Gavin that he was on one occasion chased by a gamekeeper over moor and
hill for twenty miles, and that by and by when the one sank down
exhausted so did the other. They would sit fifty yards apart, glaring
at each other. The poacher eventually escaped. This, curious as it
may seem, is the man whose eloquence at the club has not been forgotten
in fifty years. "Thus did he stand," I have been told recently,
"exclaiming in language sublime that the soul shall bloom in immortal
youth through the ruin and wrack of time."
Another member read to the club an account of his journey to Lochnagar,
which was afterwards published in _Chambers's Journal_. He was
celebrated for his descriptions of scenery, and was not the only member
of the club whose essays got into print. More memorable perhaps was an
itinerant match-seller known to Thrums and the surrounding towns as the
literary spunk-seller. He was a wizened, shivering old man, often
bare-footed, wearing at the best a thin ragged coat that had been black
but was green-brown with age, and he made his spunks as well as sold
them. He brought Bacon and Adam Smith into Thrums, and he loved to
recite long screeds from Spenser, with a running commentary on the
versification and the luxuriance of the diction. Of Jamie's death I do
not care to write. He went without many a dinner in order to buy a
book.
The Coat of Many Colours and Silva Robbie were two street preachers who
gave the Thrums ministers some work. They occasionally appeared at the
club. The Coat of Many Colours was so called because he wore a garment
consisting of patches of cloth of various colours sewed together. It
hung down to his heels. He may have been cracked rather than inspired,
but he was a power in the square where he preached, the women declaring
that he was gifted by God. An awe filled even the men, when he
admonished them for using strong language, for at such a time he would
remind them of the woe which fell upon Tibbie Mason. Tibbie had been
notorious in her day for evil-speaking, especially for her free use of
the word handless, which she flung a hundred times in a week at her
man, and even at her old mother. Her punishment was to have a son born
without hands. The Coat of Many Colours also told of the liar who
exclaimed, "If this is not gospel true may I stand here for ever," and
who is standing on that spot still, only nobody knows where it is.
George Wishart was the Coat's hero, and often he has told in the Square
how Wishart saved Dundee. It was the time when the plague lay over
Scotland, and in Dundee they saw it approaching from the West in the
form of a great black cloud. They fell on their knees and prayed,
crying to the cloud to pass them by, and while they prayed it came
nearer. Then they looked around for the most holy man among them, to
intervene with God on their behalf. All eyes turned to George Wishart,
and he stood up, stretching his arms to the cloud and prayed, and it
rolled back. Thus Dundee was saved from the plague, but when Wishart
ended his prayer he was alone, for the people had all returned to their
homes. Less of a genuine man than the Coat of Many Colours was Silva
Robbie, who had horrid fits of laughing in the middle of his prayers,
and even fell in a paroxysm of laughter from the chair on which he
stood. In the club he said things not to be borne, though logical up
to a certain point.
Tammas Haggart was the most sarcastic member of the club, being
celebrated for his sarcasm far and wide. It was a remarkable thing
about him, often spoken of, that if you went to Tammas with a stranger
and asked him to say a sarcastic thing that the man might take away as
a specimen, he could not do it. "Na, na," Tammas would say, after a
few trials, referring to sarcasm, "she's no a critter to force. Ye
maun lat her tak her ain time. Sometimes she's dry like the pump, an'
syne, again, oot she comes in a gush." The most sarcastic thing the
stone-breaker ever said was frequently marvelled over in Thrums, both
before and behind his face, but unfortunately no one could ever
remember what it was. The subject, however, was Cha Tamson's potato
pit. There is little doubt that it was a fit of sarcasm that induced
Tammas to marry a gypsy lassie. Mr. Byars would not join them, so
Tammas had himself married by Jimmy Pawse, the gay little gypsy king,
and after that the minister re-married them. The marriage over the
tongs is a thing to scandalise any well-brought-up person, for before
he joined the couple's hands, Jimmy jumped about in a startling way,
uttering wild gibberish, and after the ceremony was over there was
rough work, with incantations and blowing on pipes. Tammas always held
that this marriage turned out better than he had expected, though he
had his trials like other married men. Among them was Chirsty's way of
climbing on to the dresser to get at the higher part of the plate-rack.
One evening I called in to have a smoke with the stone-breaker, and
while we were talking Chirsty climbed the dresser. The next moment she
was on the floor on her back, wailing, but Tammas smoked on
imperturbably. "Do you not see what has happened, man?" I cried.
"Ou," said Tammas, "she's aye fa'in aff the dresser."
Of the schoolmasters who were at times members of the club, Mr. Dickie
was the ripest scholar, but my predecessor at the school-house had a
way of sneering at him that was as good as sarcasm. When they were on
their legs at the same time, asking each other passionately to be calm,
and rolling out lines from Homer, that made the inn-keeper look
fearfully to the fastenings of the door, their heads very nearly came
together although the table was between them. The old dominie had an
advantage in being the shorter man, for he could hammer on the table as
he spoke, while gaunt Mr. Dickie had to stoop to it. Mr. McRittie's
arguments were a series of nails that he knocked into the table, and he
did it in a workmanlike manner. Mr. Dickie, though he kept firm on his
feet, swayed his body until by and by his head was rotating in a large
circle. The mathematical figure he made was a cone revolving on its
apex. Gavin's reinstalment in the chair year after year was made by
the disappointed dominie the subject of some tart verses which he
called an epode, but Gavin crushed him when they were read before the
club. "Satire," he said, "is a legitimate weapon, used with michty
effect by Swift, Sammy Butler, and others, and I dount object to being
made the subject of creeticism. It has often been called a t'nife
(knife), but them as is not used to t'nives cuts their hands, and ye'll
a' observe that Mr. McRittie's fingers is bleedin'." All eyes were
turned upon the dominie's hand, and though he pocketed it smartly
several members had seen the blood. The dominie was a rare visitor at
the club after that, though he outlived poor Mr. Dickie by many years.
Mr. Dickie was a teacher in Tilliedrum, but he was ruined by drink. He
wandered from town to town, reciting Greek and Latin poetry to any one
who would give him a dram, and sometimes he wept and moaned aloud in
the street, crying, "Poor Mr. Dickie! poor Mr. Dickie!"
The leading poet in a club of poets was Dite Walls, who kept a school
when there were scholars, and weaved when there were none. He had a
song that was published in a half-penny leaflet about the famous
lawsuit instituted by the farmer of Teuchbusses against the Laird of
Drumlee. The laird was alleged to have taken from the land of
Teuchbusses sufficient broom to make a besom thereof, and I am not
certain that the case is settled to this day. It was Dite or another
member of the club who wrote, "The Wife o' Deeside," of all the songs
of the period the one that had the greatest vogue in the county at a
time when Lord Jeffrey was cursed at every fireside in Thrums. The
wife of Deeside was tried for the murder of her servant who had
infatuated the young laird, and had it not been that Jeffrey defended
her she would, in the words of the song, have "hung like a troot." It
is not easy now to conceive the rage against Jeffrey when the woman was
acquitted. The song was sung and recited in the streets, at the
smiddy, in bothies, and by firesides, to the shaking of fists and the
grinding of teeth. It began--
"Ye'll a' hae hear tell o' the wife o' Deeside,
Ye'll a' hae hear tell o' the wife o' Deeside,
She poisoned her maid for to keep up her pride,
Ye'll a' hae hear tell o' the wife o' Deeside."
Before the excitement had abated, Jeffrey was in Tilliedrum for
electioneering purposes, and he was mobbed in the streets. Angry
crowds pressed close to howl, "Wife o' Deeside!" at him. A contingent
from Thrums was there, and it was long afterwards told of Sam'l Todd,
by himself, that he hit Jeffrey on the back of the head with a clod of
earth.
Johnny McQuhatty, a brother of the T'nowhead farmer, was the one
taciturn member of the club, and you had only to look at him to know
that he had a secret. He was a great genius at the hand-loom, and
invented a loom for the weaving of linen such as has not been seen
before or since. In the day-time he kept guard over his "shop," into
which no one was allowed to enter, and the fame of his loom was so
great that he had to watch over it with a gun. At night he weaved, and
when the result at last pleased him he made the linen into shirts, all
of which he stitched together with his own hands, even to the
buttonholes. He sent one shirt to the Queen, and another to the
Duchess of Athole, mentioning a very large price for them, which he
got. Then he destroyed his wonderful loom, and how it was made no one
will ever know. Johnny only took to literature after he had made his
name, and he seldom spoke at the club except when ghosts and the like
were the subject of debate, as they tended to be when the farmer of
Muckle Haws could get in a word. Muckle Haws was fascinated by
Johnny's sneers at superstition, and sometimes on dark nights the
inventor had to make his courage good by seeing the farmer past the
doulie yates (ghost gates), which Muckle Haws had to go perilously near
on his way home. Johnny was a small man, but it was the burly farmer
who shook at sight of the gates standing out white in the night. White
gates have an evil name still, and Muckle Haws was full of horrors as
he drew near them, clinging to Johnny's arm. It was on such a night,
he would remember, that he saw the White Lady go through the gates
greeting sorely, with a dead bairn in her arms, while water kelpies
laughed and splashed in the pools, and the witches danced in a ring
round Broken Buss. That very night twelve months ago the packman was
murdered at Broken Buss, and Easie Pettie hanged herself on the stump
of a tree. Last night there were ugly sounds from the quarry of Croup,
where the bairn lies buried, and it's not mous (canny) to be out at
such a time. The farmer had seen spectre maidens walking round the
ruined castle of Darg, and the castle all lit up with flaring torches,
and dead knights and ladies sitting in the halls at the wine-cup, and
the devil himself flapping his wings on the ramparts.
When the debates were political, two members with the gift of song
fired the blood with their own poems about taxation and the
depopulation of the Highlands, and by selling these songs from door to
door they made their livelihood.
Books and pamphlets were brought into the town by the flying
stationers, as they were called, who visited the square periodically
carrying their wares on their backs, except at the Muckly, when they
had their stall and even sold books by auction. The flying stationer
best known to Thrums was Sandersy Riach, who was stricken from head to
foot with the palsy, and could only speak with a quaver in consequence.
Sandersy brought to the members of the club all the great books he
could get second hand, but his stock-in-trade was Thrummy Cap and
Akenstaff, the Fishwives of Buckhaven, the Devil upon Two Sticks,
Gilderoy, Sir James the Rose, the Brownie of Badenoch, the Ghaist of
Firenden, and the like. It was from Sandersy that Tammas Haggart
bought his copy of Shakspeare, whom Mr. Dishart could never abide.
Tammas kept what he had done from his wife, but Chirsty saw a
deterioration setting in and told the minister of her suspicions. Mr.
Dishart was newly placed at the time and very vigorous, and the way he
shook the truth out of Tammas was grand. The minister pulled Tammas
the one way and Gavin pulled him the other, but Mr. Dishart was not the
man to be beaten, and he landed Tammas in the Auld Licht kirk before
the year was out. Chirsty buried Shakspeare in the yard.