If you will know my house,
‘Tis at the tuft of olives here hard by. AS YOU LIKE IT.
By a revolution of humour which I am unable to account for, I changed my
mind entirely on my plans of life, in consequence of the disappointment,
the history of which fills the last chapter. I began to discover
that the country would not at all suit me; for I had relinquished
field-sports, and felt no inclination whatever to farming, the ordinary
vocation of country gentlemen. Besides that, I had no talent for
assisting either candidate in case of an expected election, and saw no
amusement in the duties of a road trustee, a commissioner of supply, or
even in the magisterial functions of the bench. I had begun to take some
taste for reading; and a domiciliation in the country must remove me
from the use of books, excepting the small subscription library, in
which the very book which you want is uniformly sure to be engaged.
I resolved, therefore, to make the Scottish metropolis my regular
resting-place, reserving to myself to take occasionally those excursions
which, spite of all I have said against mail-coaches, Mr. Piper has
rendered so easy. Friend of our life and of our leisure, he secures by
dispatch against loss of time, and by the best of coaches, cattle, and
steadiest of drivers, against hazard of limb, and wafts us, as well as
our letters, from Edinburgh to Cape Wrath in the penning of a paragraph.
When my mind was quite made up to make Auld Reekie my headquarters,
reserving the privilege of EXPLORING in all directions, I began to
explore in good earnest for the purpose of discovering a suitable
habitation. “And whare trew ye I gaed?” as Sir Pertinax says. Not to
George’s Square--nor to Charlotte Square--nor to the old New Town--nor
to the new New Town--nor to the Calton Hill. I went to the Canongate,
and to the very portion of the Canongate in which I had formerly been
immured, like the errant knight, prisoner in some enchanted castle,
where spells have made the ambient air impervious to the unhappy
captive, although the organs of sight encountered no obstacle to his
free passage.
Why I should have thought of pitching my tent here I cannot tell.
Perhaps it was to enjoy the pleasures of freedom where I had so long
endured the bitterness of restraint, on the principle of the officer
who, after he had retired from the army, ordered his servant to continue
to call him at the hour or parade, simply that he might have the
pleasure of saying, “D--n the parade!” and turning to the other side to
enjoy his slumbers. Or perhaps I expected to find in the vicinity some
little old-fashioned house, having somewhat of the RUS IN URBE which
I was ambitious of enjoying. Enough: I went, as aforesaid, to the
Canongate.
I stood by the kennel, of which I have formerly spoken, and, my mind
being at ease, my bodily organs were more delicate. I was more
sensible than heretofore, that, like the trade of Pompey in MEASURE FOR
MEASURE,--it did in some sort--pah an ounce of civet, good apothecary!
Turning from thence, my steps naturally directed themselves to my own
humble apartment, where my little Highland landlady, as dapper and
as tight as ever, (for old women wear a hundred times better than the
hard-wrought seniors of the masculine sex), stood at the door, TEEDLING
to herself a Highland song as she shook a table napkin over the
fore-stair, and then proceeded to fold it up neatly for future service.
“How do you, Janet?”
“Thank ye, good sir,” answered my old friend, without looking at
me; “but ye might as weel say Mrs. MacEvoy, for she is na a’body’s
Shanet--umph.”
“You must be MY Janet, though, for all that. Have you forgot me? Do you
not remember Chrystal Croftangry?”
The light, kind-hearted creature threw her napkin into the open door,
skipped down the stair like a fairy, three steps at once, seized me by
the hands--both hands--jumped up, and actually kissed me. I was a little
ashamed; but what swain, of somewhere inclining to sixty could resist
the advances of a fair contemporary? So we allowed the full degree
of kindness to the meeting--HONI SOIT QUI MAL Y PENSE--and then Janet
entered instantly upon business. “An ye’ll gae in, man, and see your
auld lodgings, nae doubt and Shanet will pay ye the fifteen shillings
of change that ye ran away without, and without bidding Shanet good day.
But never mind” (nodding good-humouredly), “Shanet saw you were carried
for the time.”
By this time we were in my old quarters, and Janet, with her bottle of
cordial in one hand and the glass in the other, had forced on me a
dram of usquebaugh, distilled with saffron and other herbs, after some
old-fashioned Highland receipt. Then was unfolded, out of many a little
scrap of paper, the reserved sum of fifteen shillings, which Janet had
treasured for twenty years and upwards.
“Here they are,” she said, in honest triumph, “just the same I was
holding out to ye when ye ran as if ye had been fey. Shanet has had
siller, and Shanet has wanted siller, mony a time since that. And the
gauger has come, and the factor has come, and the butcher and baker--Cot
bless us just like to tear poor auld Shanet to pieces; but she took good
care of Mr. Croftangry’s fifteen shillings.”
“But what if I had never come back, Janet?”
“Och, if Shanet had heard you were dead, she would hae gien it to the
poor of the chapel, to pray for Mr. Croftangry,” said Janet, crossing
herself, for she was a Catholic, “You maybe do not think it would do you
cood, but the blessing of the poor can never do no harm.”
I agreed heartily in Janet’s conclusion; and as to have desired her to
consider the hoard as her own property would have been an indelicate
return to her for the uprightness of her conduct, I requested her to
dispose of it as she had proposed to do in the event of my death--that
is, if she knew any poor people of merit to whom it might be useful.
“Ower mony of them,” raising the corner of her checked apron to her
eyes--“e’en ower mony of them, Mr. Croftangry. Och, ay. ‘There is the
puir Highland creatures frae Glenshee, that cam down for the harvest,
and are lying wi’ the fever--five shillings to them; and half a crown to
Bessie MacEvoy, whose coodman, puir creature, died of the frost, being
a shairman, for a’ the whisky he could drink to keep it out o’ his
stamoch; and--”
But she suddenly interrupted the bead-roll of her proposed charities,
and assuming a very sage look, and primming up her little chattering
mouth, she went on in a different tone--“But och, Mr. Croftangry,
bethink ye whether ye will not need a’ this siller yoursel’, and maybe
look back and think lang for ha’en kiven it away, whilk is a creat sin
to forthink a wark o’ charity, and also is unlucky, and moreover is not
the thought of a shentleman’s son like yoursel’, dear. And I say this,
that ye may think a bit, for your mother’s son kens that ye are no so
careful as you should be of the gear, and I hae tauld ye of it before,
jewel.”
I assured her I could easily spare the money, without risk of future
repentance; and she went on to infer that in such a case “Mr. Croftangry
had grown a rich man in foreign parts, and was free of his troubles
with messengers and sheriff-officers, and siclike scum of the earth, and
Shanet MacEvoy’s mother’s daughter be a blithe woman to hear it. But
if Mr. Croftangry was in trouble, there was his room, and his ped, and
Shanet to wait on him, and tak payment when it was quite convenient.”
I explained to Janet my situation, in which she expressed unqualified
delight. I then proceeded to inquire into her own circumstances, and
though she spoke cheerfully and contentedly, I could see they were
precarious. I had paid more than was due; other lodgers fell into
an opposite error, and forgot to pay Janet at all. Then, Janet being
ignorant of all indirect modes of screwing money out of her lodgers,
others in the same line of life, who were sharper than the poor,
simple Highland woman, were enabled to let their apartments cheaper in
appearance, though the inmates usually found them twice as dear in the
long run.
As I had already destined my old landlady to be my house-keeper
and governante, knowing her honesty, good-nature, and, although a
Scotchwoman, her cleanliness and excellent temper (saving the short
and hasty expressions of anger which Highlanders call a FUFF), I now
proposed the plan to her in such a way as was likely to make it most
acceptable. Very acceptable as the proposal was, as I could plainly
see, Janet, however, took a day to consider upon it; and her reflections
against our next meeting had suggested only one objection, which was
singular enough.
“My honour,” so she now termed me, “would pe for biding in some fine
street apout the town. Now Shanet wad ill like to live in a place where
polish, and sheriffs, and bailiffs, and sie thieves and trash of the
world, could tak puir shentlemen by the throat, just because they wanted
a wheen dollars in the sporran. She had lived in the bonny glen of
Tomanthoulick. Cot, an ony of the vermint had come there, her father
wad hae wared a shot on them, and he could hit a buck within as mony
measured yards as e’er a man of his clan, And the place here was so
quiet frae them, they durst na put their nose ower the gutter. Shanet
owed nobody a bodle, but she couldna pide to see honest folk and pretty
shentlemen forced away to prison whether they would or no; and then, if
Shanet was to lay her tangs ower ane of the ragamuffins’ heads, it would
be, maybe, that the law would gi’ed a hard name.”
One thing I have learned in life--never to speak sense when nonsense
will answer the purpose as well. I should have had great difficulty
to convince this practical and disinterested admirer and vindicator of
liberty, that arrests seldom or never were to be seen in the streets of
Edinburgh; and to satisfy her of their justice and necessity would have
been as difficult as to convert her to the Protestant faith. I therefore
assured her my intention, if I could get a suitable habitation, was to
remain in the quarter where she at present dwelt. Janet gave three skips
on the floor, and uttered as many short, shrill yells of joy. Yet doubt
almost instantly returned, and she insisted on knowing what possible
reason I could have for making my residence where few lived, save those
whose misfortunes drove them thither. It occurred to me to answer her by
recounting the legend of the rise of my family, and of our deriving our
name from a particular place near Holyrood Palace. This, which would
have appeared to most people a very absurd reason for choosing a
residence, was entirely satisfactory to Janet MacEvoy.
“Och, nae doubt! if it was the land of her fathers, there was nae mair
to be said. Put it was queer that her family estate should just lie at
the town tail, and covered with houses, where the King’s cows--Cot bless
them, hide and horn--used to craze upon. It was strange changes.”
She mused a little, and then added: “Put it is something better wi’
Croftangry when the changes is frae the field to the habited place,
and not from the place of habitation to the desert; for Shanet, her
nainsell, kent a glen where there were men as weel as there may be in
Croftangry, and if there werena altogether sae mony of them, they were
as good men in their tartan as the others in their broadcloth. And there
were houses, too; and if they were not biggit with stane and lime, and
lofted like the houses at Croftangry, yet they served the purpose of
them that lived there, and mony a braw bonnet, and mony a silk snood
and comely white curch, would come out to gang to kirk or chapel on
the Lord’s day, and little bairns toddling after. And now--Och, Och,
Ohellany, Ohonari! the glen is desolate, and the braw snoods and bonnets
are gane, and the Saxon’s house stands dull and lonely, like the single
bare-breasted rock that the falcon builds on--the falcon that drives the
heath-bird frae the glen.”
Janet, like many Highlanders, was full of imagination, and, when
melancholy themes came upon her, expressed herself almost poetically,
owing to the genius of the Celtic language in which she thought, and in
which, doubtless, she would have spoken, had I understood Gaelic. In two
minutes the shade of gloom and regret had passed from her good-humoured
features, and she was again the little, busy, prating, important old
woman, undisputed owner of one flat of a small tenement in the Abbey
Yard, and about to be promoted to be housekeeper to an elderly bachelor
gentleman, Chrystal Croftangry, Esq.
It was not long before Janet’s local researches found out exactly the
sort of place I wanted, and there we settled. Janet was afraid I would
not be satisfied, because it is not exactly part of Croftangry; but I
stopped her doubts by assuring her it had been part and pendicle thereof
in my forefather’ time, which passed very well.
I do not intend to possess any one with an exact knowledge of my
lodging; though, as Bobadil says, “I care not who knows it, since the
cabin is convenient.” But I may state in general, that it is a house
“within itself,” or, according to a newer phraseology in advertisements,
SELF-CONTAINED, has a garden of near half an acre, and a patch of
ground with trees in front. It boasts five rooms and servants’
apartments--looks in front upon the palace, and from behind towards the
hill and crags of the King’s Park. Fortunately, the place had a name,
which, with a little improvement, served to countenance the legend which
I had imposed on Janet, and would not, perhaps have been sorry if I had
been able to impose on myself. It was called Littlecroft; we have dubbed
it Little Croftangry, and the men of letters belonging to the Post
Office have sanctioned the change, and deliver letters so addressed.
Thus I am to all intents and purposes Chrystal Croftangry of that Ilk.
My establishment consists of Janet, an under maid-servant, and a
Highland wench for Janet to exercise her Gaelic upon, with a handy lad
who can lay the cloth, and take care, besides, of a pony, on which I
find my way to Portobello sands, especially when the cavalry have a
drill; for, like an old fool as I am, I have not altogether become
indifferent to the tramp of horses and the flash of weapons, of which,
though no professional soldier, it has been my fate to see something in
my youth. For wet mornings I have my book; is it fine weather? I visit,
or I wander on the Crags, as the humour dictates. My dinner is indeed
solitary, yet not quite so neither; for though Andrew waits, Janet--or,
as she is to all the world but her master and certain old Highland
gossips, Mrs. MacEvoy--attends, bustles about, and desires to see
everything is in first-rate order, and to tell me, Cot pless us, the
wonderful news of the palace for the day. When the cloth is removed, and
I light my cigar, and begin to husband a pint of port, or a glass of old
whisky and water, it is the rule of the house that Janet takes a
chair at some distance, and nods or works her stocking, as she may be
disposed--ready to speak, if I am in the talking humour, and sitting
quiet as a mouse if I am rather inclined to study a book or the
newspaper. At six precisely she makes my tea, and leaves me to drink it;
and then occurs an interval of time which most old bachelors find heavy
on their hands. The theatre is a good occasional resource, especially if
Will Murray acts, or a bright star of eminence shines forth; but it
is distant, and so are one or two public societies to which I belong.
Besides, these evening walks are all incompatible with the elbow-chair
feeling, which desires some employment that may divert the mind without
fatiguing the body.
Under the influence of these impressions, I have sometimes thought of
this literary undertaking. I must have been the Bonassus himself to have
mistaken myself for a genius; yet I have leisure and reflections like
my neighbours. I am a borderer, also, between two generations, and can
point out more, perhaps, than others of those fading traces of antiquity
which are daily vanishing; and I know many a modern instance and many an
old tradition, and therefore I ask--
“What ails me, I may not as well as they
Rake up some threadbare tales, that mouldering lay
In chimney corners, wont by Christmas fires
To read and rock to sleep our ancient sires?
No man his threshold better knows, than I
Brute’s first arrival and first victory,
Saint George’s sorrel and his cross of blood,
Arthur’s round board and Caledonian wood.”
No shop is so easily set up as an antiquary’s. Like those of the
lowest order of pawnbrokers, a commodity of rusty iron, a bay or two of
hobnails, a few odd shoe-buckles, cashiered kail-pots, and fire-irons
declared incapable of service, are quite sufficient to set him up. If
he add a sheaf or two of penny ballads and broadsides, he is a great
man--an extensive trader. And then, like the pawnbrokers aforesaid, if
the author understands a little legerdemain, he may, by dint of a little
picking and stealing, make the inside of his shop a great deal richer
than the out, and be able to show you things which cause those who do
not understand the antiquarian trick of clean conveyance to wonder how
the devil he came by them.
It may be said that antiquarian articles interest but few customers, and
that we may bawl ourselves as rusty as the wares we deal in without any
one asking; the price of our merchandise. But I do not rest my hopes
upon this department of my labours only. I propose also to have a
corresponding shop for Sentiment, and Dialogues, and Disquisition, which
may captivate the fancy of those who have no relish, as the established
phrase goes, for pure antiquity--a sort of greengrocer’s stall erected
in front of my ironmongery wares, garlanding the rusty memorials of
ancient times with cresses, cabbages, leeks, and water purpy.
As I have some idea that I am writing too well to be understood, I
humble myself to ordinary language, and aver, with becoming modesty,
that I do think myself capable of sustaining a publication of a
miscellaneous nature, as like to the Spectator or the Guardian, the
Mirror or the Lounger, as my poor abilities may be able to accomplish.
Not that I have any purpose of imitating Johnson, whose general learning
and power of expression I do not deny, but many of whose Ramblers are
little better than a sort of pageant, where trite and obvious maxims are
made to swagger in lofty and mystic language, and get some credit only
because they are not easily understood. There are some of the
great moralist’s papers which I cannot peruse without thinking on
a second-rate masquerade, where the best-known and least-esteemed
characters in town march in as heroes, and sultans, and so forth, and,
by dint of tawdry dresses, get some consideration until they are found
out. It is not, however, prudent to commence with throwing stones, just
when I am striking out windows of my own.
I think even the local situation of Little Croftangry may be considered
as favourable to my undertaking. A nobler contrast there can hardly
exist than that of the huge city, dark with the smoke of ages, and
groaning with the various sounds of active industry or idle revel,
and the lofty and craggy hill, silent and solitary as the grave--one
exhibiting the full tide of existence, pressing and precipitating itself
forward with the force of an inundation; the other resembling some
time-worn anchorite, whose life passes as silent and unobserved as the
slender rill which escapes unheard, and scarce seen, from the fountain
of his patron saint. The city resembles the busy temple, where the
modern Comus and Mammon hold their court, and thousands sacrifice ease,
independence, and virtue itself at their shrine; the misty and lonely
mountain seems as a throne to the majestic but terrible Genius of feudal
times, when the same divinities dispensed coronets and domains to those
who had heads to devise and arms to execute bold enterprises.
I have, as it were, the two extremities of the moral world at my
threshold. From the front door a few minutes’ walk brings me into the
heart of a wealthy and populous city; as many paces from my opposite
entrance place me in a solitude as complete as Zimmerman could have
desired. Surely, with such aids to my imagination, I may write better
than if I were in a lodging in the New Town or a garret in the old. As
the Spaniard says, “VIAMOS--CARACCO!”
I have not chosen to publish periodically, my reason for which was
twofold. In the first place, I don’t like to be hurried, and have had
enough of duns in an early part of my life to make me reluctant to hear
of or see one, even in the less awful shape of a printer’s devil. But,
secondly, a periodical paper is not easily extended in circulation
beyond the quarter in which it is published. This work, if published in
fugitive numbers, would scarce, without a high pressure on the part
of the bookseller, be raised above the Netherbow, and never could be
expected to ascend to the level of Princes Street. Now, I am ambitious
that my compositions, though having their origin in this Valley of
Holyrood, should not only be extended into those exalted regions I have
mentioned, but also that they should cross the Forth, astonish the long
town of Kirkcaldy, enchant the skippers and colliers of the East of
Fife, venture even into the classic arcades of St. Andrews, and travel
as much farther to the north as the breath of applause will carry their
sails. As for a southward direction, it is not to be hoped for in my
fondest dreams. I am informed that Scottish literature, like Scottish
whisky, will be presently laid under a prohibitory duty. But enough
of this. If any reader is dull enough not to comprehend the advantages
which, in point of circulation, a compact book has over a collection of
fugitive numbers, let him try the range of a gun loaded with hail-shot
against that of the same piece charged with an equal weight of lead
consolidated in a single bullet.
Besides, it was of less consequence that I should have published
periodically, since I did not mean to solicit or accept of the
contributions of friends, or the criticisms of those who may be less
kindly disposed. Notwithstanding the excellent examples which might
be quoted, I will establish no begging-box, either under the name of a
lion’s head or an ass’s. What is good or ill shall be mine own, or the
contribution of friends to whom I may have private access. Many of my
voluntary assistants might be cleverer than myself, and then I should
have a brilliant article appear among my chiller effusions, like a patch
of lace on a Scottish cloak of Galashiels grey. Some might be worse, and
then I must reject them, to the injury of the feelings of the writer, or
else insert them, to make my own darkness yet more opaque and palpable.
“Let every herring,” says our old-fashioned proverb, “hang by his own
head.”
One person, however, I may distinguish, as she is now no more, who,
living to the utmost term of human life, honoured me with a great share
of her friendship--as, indeed, we were blood-relatives in the Scottish
sense--Heaven knows how many degrees removed--and friends in the sense
of Old England. I mean the late excellent and regretted Mrs. Bethune
Baliol. But as I design this admirable picture of the olden time for a
principal character in my work, I will only say here that she knew and
approved of my present purpose; and though she declined to contribute
to it while she lived, from a sense of dignified retirement, which she
thought became her age, sex, and condition in life, she left me some
materials for carrying on my proposed work which I coveted when I
heard her detail them in conversation, and which now, when I have their
substance in her own handwriting, I account far more valuable than
anything I have myself to offer. I hope the mentioning her name in
conjunction with my own will give no offence to any of her numerous
friends, as it was her own express pleasure that I should employ the
manuscripts which she did me the honour to bequeath me in the manner
in which I have now used them. It must be added, however, that in
most cases I have disguised names, and in some have added shading and
colouring to bring out the narrative.
Much of my materials, besides these, are derived from friends, living
or dead. The accuracy of some of these may be doubtful, in which case I
shall be happy to receive, from sufficient authority, the correction of
the errors which must creep into traditional documents. The object of
the whole publication is to throw some light on the manners of Scotland
as they were, and to contrast them occasionally with those of the
present day. My own opinions are in favour of our own times in many
respects, but not in so far as affords means for exercising the
imagination or exciting the interest which attaches to other times. I am
glad to be a writer or a reader in 1826, but I would be most interested
in reading or relating what happened from half a century to a century
before. We have the best of it. Scenes in which our ancestors thought
deeply, acted fiercely, and died desperately, are to us tales to divert
the tedium of a winter’s evening, when we are engaged to no party, or
beguile a summer’s morning, when it is too scorching to ride or walk.
Yet I do not mean that my essays and narratives should be limited to
Scotland. I pledge myself to no particular line of subjects, but, on the
contrary, say with Burns--
“Perhaps it may turn out a sang,
Perhaps turn out a sermon.”
I have only to add, by way of postscript to these preliminary chapters,
that I have had recourse to Moliere’s recipe, and read my manuscript
over to my old woman, Janet MacEvoy.
The dignity of being consulted delighted Janet; and Wilkie, or Allan,
would have made a capital sketch of her, as she sat upright in her
chair, instead of her ordinary lounging posture, knitting her
stocking systematically, as if she meant every twist of her thread and
inclination of the wires to bear burden to the cadence of my voice. I am
afraid, too, that I myself felt more delight than I ought to have done
in my own composition, and read a little more oratorically than I should
have ventured to do before an auditor of whose applause I was not so
secure. And the result did not entirely encourage my plan of censorship.
Janet did indeed seriously incline to the account of my previous life,
and bestowed some Highland maledictions, more emphatic than courteous,
on Christie Steele’s reception of a “shentlemans in distress,” and of
her own mistress’s house too. I omitted for certain reasons, or greatly
abridged, what related to her-self. But when I came to treat of my
general views in publication, I saw poor Janet was entirely thrown out,
though, like a jaded hunter, panting, puffing, and short of wind,
she endeavoured at least to keep up with the chase. Or, rather, her
perplexity made her look all the while like a deaf person ashamed of his
infirmity, who does not understand a word you are saying, yet desires
you to believe that he does understand you, and who is extremely jealous
that you suspect his incapacity. When she saw that some remark was
necessary, she resembled exactly in her criticism the devotee who
pitched on the “sweet word Mesopotamia” as the most edifying note
which she could bring away from a sermon. She indeed hastened to bestow
general praise on what she said was all “very fine;” but chiefly dwelt
on what I, had said about Mr. Timmerman, as she was pleased to call the
German philosopher, and supposed he must be of the same descent with the
Highland clan of M’Intyre, which signifies Son of the Carpenter. “And a
fery honourable name too--Shanet’s own mither was a M’Intyre.”
In short, it was plain the latter part of my introduction was altogether
lost on poor Janet; and so, to have acted up to Moliere’s system, I
should have cancelled the whole, and written it anew. But I do not
know how it is. I retained, I suppose, some tolerable opinion of my
own composition, though Janet did not comprehend it, and felt loath to
retrench those Delilahs of the imagination, as Dryden calls them, the
tropes and figures of which are caviar to the multitude. Besides, I hate
rewriting as much as Falstaff did paying back--it is a double labour.
So I determined with myself to consult Janet, in future, only on such
things as were within the limits of her comprehension, and hazard my
arguments and my rhetoric on the public without her imprimatur. I am
pretty sure she will “applaud it done.” and in such narratives as come
within her range of thought and feeling I shall, as I first intended,
take the benefit of her unsophisticated judgment, and attend to it
deferentially--that is, when it happens not to be in peculiar opposition
to my own; for, after all, I say with Almanzor,--
“Know that I alone am king of me.”
The reader has now my who and my whereabout, the purpose of the work,
and the circumstances under which it is undertaken. He has also a
specimen of the author’s talents, and may judge for himself, and
proceed, or send back the volume to the bookseller, as his own taste
shall determine.