YEAR 1768
IT’S a surprising thing how time flieth away, carrying off our youth and
strength, and leaving us nothing but wrinkles and the ails of old age.
Gilbert, my son, that is now a corpulent man, and a Glasgow merchant,
when I take up my pen to record the memorables of this Ann. Dom., seems
to me yet but a suckling in swaddling clothes, mewing and peevish in the
arms of his mother, that has been long laid in the cold kirkyard, beside
her predecessor, in Abraham’s bosom. It is not, however, my design to
speak much anent my own affairs, which would be a very improper and
uncomely thing, but only of what happened in the parish, this book being
for a witness and testimony of my ministry. Therefore, setting out of
view both me and mine, I will now resuscitate the concerns of Mrs.
Malcolm and her children; for, as I think, never was there such a visible
preordination seen in the lives of any persons, as was seen in that of
this worthy decent woman, and her well-doing off-spring. Her morning was
raw, and a sore blight fell upon her fortunes; but the sun looked out on
her midday, and her evening closed loun and warm; and the stars of the
firmament, that are the eyes of heaven, beamed as it were with gladness,
when she lay down to sleep the sleep of rest.
Her son Charles was by this time grown up into a stout buirdly lad, and
it was expected that, before the return of the Tobacco trader, he would
have been out of his time, and a man afore the mast, which was a great
step of preferment, as I heard say by persons skilled in seafaring
concerns. But this was not ordered to happen; for, when the Tobacco
trader was lying in the harbour of Virginia in the North Americas, a
pressgang, that was in need of men for a man-of-war, came on board, and
pressed poor Charles, and sailed away with him on a cruise, nobody, for
many a day, could tell where, till I thought of the Lord Eaglesham’s
kindness. His lordship having something to say with the king’s
government, I wrote to him, telling him who I was, and how jocose he had
been when buttoned in my clothes, that he might recollect me, thanking
him, at the same time, for his condescension and patronage to Andrew
Lanshaw, in his way to the East Indies. I then slipped in, at the end of
the letter, a bit nota-bene concerning the case of Charles Malcolm,
begging his lordship, on account of the poor lad’s widow mother, to
enquire at the government if they could tell us any thing about Charles.
In the due course of time, I got a most civil reply from his lordship,
stating all about the name of the man-of-war, and where she was; and at
the conclusion his lordship said, that I was lucky in having the brother
of a Lord of the Admiralty on this occasion for my agent, as otherwise,
from the vagueness of my statement, the information might not have been
procured; which remark of his lordship was long a great riddle to me; for
I could not think what he meant about an agent, till, in the course of
the year, we heard that his own brother was concerned in the admiralty;
so that all his lordship meant was only to crack a joke with me, and that
he was ever ready and free to do, as shall be related in the sequel, for
he was an excellent man.
There being a vacancy for a schoolmistress, it was proposed to Mrs.
Malcolm, that, under her superintendence, her daughter Kate, that had
been learning great artifices in needle-work so long with Lady Macadam,
should take up the school, and the session undertook to make good to Kate
the sum of five pounds sterling per annum, over and above what the
scholars were to pay. But Mrs. Malcolm said she had not strength herself
to warsle with so many unruly brats, and that Kate, though a fine lassie,
was a tempestuous spirit, and might lame some of the bairns in her
passion; and that selfsame night, Lady Macadam wrote me a very
complaining letter, for trying to wile away her companion; but her
ladyship was a canary-headed woman, and given to flights and tantrums,
having in her youth been a great toast among the quality. It would,
however, have saved her from a sore heart, had she never thought of
keeping Kate Malcolm. For this year her only son, who was learning the
art of war at an academy in France, came to pay her, his lady mother, a
visit. He was a brisk and light-hearted stripling, and Kate Malcolm was
budding into a very rose of beauty; so between them a hankering began,
which, for a season, was productive of great heaviness of heart to the
poor old cripple lady; indeed, she assured me herself, that all her
rheumatics were nothing to the heart-ache which she suffered in the
progress of this business. But that will be more treated of hereafter;
suffice it to say for the present, that we have thus recorded how the
plan for making Kate Malcolm our schoolmistress came to nought. It
pleased, however, Him, from whom cometh every good and perfect gift, to
send at this time among us a Miss Sabrina Hooky, the daughter of old Mr.
Hooky, who had been schoolmaster in a neighbouring parish. She had gone,
after his death, to live with an auntie in Glasgow, that kept a shop in
the Gallowgate. It was thought that the old woman would have left her
heir to all her gatherings, and so she said she would, but alas! our life
is but within our lip. Before her testament was made, she was carried
suddenly off by an apoplectick, an awful monument of the uncertainty of
time and the nearness of eternity, in her own shop, as she was in the
very act of weighing out an ounce of snuff to a professor of the College,
as Miss Sabrina herself told me. Being thus destitute, it happened that
Miss Sabrina heard of the vacancy in our parish, as it were, just by the
cry of a passing bird, for she could not tell how; although I judge
myself that William Keckle the elder had a hand in it, as he was at the
time in Glasgow; and she wrote me a wonderful well-penned letter
bespeaking the situation, which letter came to hand on the morn following
Lady Macadam’s stramash to me about Kate Malcolm, and I laid it before
the session the same day; so that, by the time her auntie’s concern was
taken off her hands, she had a home and a howf among us to come in, to
the which she lived upwards of thirty years in credit and respect,
although some thought she had not the art of her predecessor, and was
more uppish in her carriage than befitted the decorum of her vocation.
Hers, however, was but a harmless vanity; and, poor woman, she needed all
manner of graces to set her out; for she was made up of odds and ends,
and had but one good eye, the other being blind, and just like a blue
bead. At first she plainly set her cap for Mr. Lorimore, but after
oggling and goggling at him every Sunday in the kirk for a whole
half-year and more, Miss Sabrina desisted in despair.
But the most remarkable thing about her coming into the parish, was the
change that took place in Christian names among us. Old Mr. Hooky, her
father, had, from the time he read his Virgil, maintained a sort of
intromission with the nine muses, by which he was led to baptize her
Sabrina, after a name mentioned by John Milton in one of his works. Miss
Sabrina began by calling our Jennies Jessies, and our Nannies Nancies;
alas! I have lived to see even these likewise grow old-fashioned. She
had also a taste in the mantua-making line, which she had learnt in
Glasgow; and I could date from the very Sabbath of her first appearance
in the kirk, a change growing in the garb of the younger lassies, who
from that day began to lay aside the silken plaidie over the head, the
which had been the pride and bravery of their grandmothers; and instead
of the snood, that was so snod and simple, they hided their heads in
round-eared bees-cap mutches, made of gauze and catgut, and other curious
contrivances of French millendery; all which brought a deal of custom to
Miss Sabrina, over and above the incomings and Candlemas offerings of
school; insomuch that she saved money, and in the course of three years
had ten pounds to put in the bank.
At the time, these alterations and revolutions in the parish were thought
a great advantage; but now when I look back upon them, as a traveller on
the hill over the road he has passed, I have my doubts. For with wealth
come wants, like a troop of clamorous beggars at the heels of a generous
man; and it’s hard to tell wherein the benefit of improvement in a
country parish consists, especially to those who live by the sweat of
their brow. But it is not for me to make reflections; my task and duty
is to note the changes of time and habitudes.