was not singular in those times of danger, she instantly recovered
her tranquillity, though her eyes could not but express that she
half-believed herself to be in the presence of a being out of this
world. One affectionate look from William sufficed to put her alarm on
that score to rest; but she continued to feel the utmost apprehension
respecting his safety, as well as a multitude of other confused
emotions, which fast awakened in her heart, as from his imaginary
grave, where they had long been buried, and thronged tumultuously
through her breast. A few words, heard by no ears but hers, stealing
under cover of the noise made by the music and the dancers, like the
rill under a load of snow, conveyed to her the delightful intelligence
that he was still alive and her lover, and that he was come thus late,
when the days of peril seemed past, and under happier auspices than
before, to claim her affections. When the dancers next arose upon the
floor, he respectfully presented his hand, and led her, nothing loath,
into the midst of the splendid assemblage, where Lord ——, bustling
about as master of the ceremonies, assigned them an honourable place,
in spite of the surprised looks and reprobatory winks of not a few
matrons as well as young ladies. The handsome and well-matched pair
acquitted themselves to the admiration of the whole assemblage, except
the censorious and the envious; and when they sat down together upon
the same seats from which they had risen, the speculation excited among
the whole throng by the unexpected appearance of such a pair, was
beyond all precedent in the annals of gossip.
Not long after, supper was announced, and the company left the
dancing-room in order to go down stairs to the apartment where that
meal was laid out. A ludicrous circumstance now occurred, which we
shall relate, rather because it formed a part of the story, as told by
our informant, than from any connection it has with the main incident.
Sir Robert had all this time been so earnestly engaged in the
genealogical discussion alluded to, that, interesting as the word
supper always is on such occasions to those not given to dancing alone,
he did not hear it. It was not till all were gone that he and the old
spectacled lady discovered at what stage of the proceedings they were
arrived. Recollecting his old-fashioned politeness, however, in proper
time, the venerable antiquary made his _congé_, and offered his hand
to the tall, stiff, and rigid-looking dame, in order to escort her,
_more majorum_, down stairs. Sir Robert was a man somewhat of the
shortest, and, moreover, of the fattest, while a gouty foot, carefully
swaddled, gave an infirm and tottering air to his whole person. As
they moved along, the two antiques would have reminded one of Sancho
Panza leading the distressed old spectacled duenna through the dark
labyrinths of the duke’s castle. Thus they went along the room, down
the earl’s narrow spiral stair, and through an ill-lighted passage, he
cringing and limping, as gouty men are wont, and she sailing along,
erect and dignified, after the manner of an old maid of 1750, who had
seen good company at the Hunters’ Balls in Holyrood House. Now, it so
happened that a servant, or, as some editions have it, a baker, had set
down a small fruit pasty, contained in an oval dish, in a dark corner
of the passage, intending immediately to return from the supper-room,
to which he had carried some other dishes, in order to rescue it from
that dangerous situation—to which, indeed, he had been compelled to
consign it, on finding that his hands were already over-engaged. Before
he returned, as ill luck would have it, Sir Robert’s gouty and clouty
foot alighted full in the middle of the pasty, and stuck in it up to
the ancle—perfectly unconscious, however, in its swaddlings, of having
so shod itself, so that the good baronet walked on with it into the
room. What was his surprise, and what the mirth of the company, and
what the indignation of the old duenna, on finding that she shared in
the ridicule of her esquire, may perhaps be imagined, but cannot be
adequately described. Suffice it to say, that the whole assemblage were
so delighted with the amusing incident, that not one face exhibited
any thing of gloom during the subsequent part of the evening; and even
the young ladies were tempted to forget and forgive the good fortune
of Miss Lindsay, in having, to all appearance, so completely secured a
first-rate lover.
Our tale now draws to a conclusion, and may be summed up in a few
words. William Douglas soon settled in business as a writer to the
signet, and found no obstacle on the part of either his parent or his
mistress in uniting himself to that amiable young lady. It was known
to a few, and suspected by more, that under the decent habit he now
wore was concealed the very person who knocked down two of Gardener’s
dragoons in the Luckenbooths, and braved all Edinburgh to single
combat. But he was never molested on this account; and he therefore
continued to practise in the Court of Session for upwards of half a
century, with the success and with the credit of a respectable citizen.
REMOVALS.
“Three removes are as bad as a fire.”
“A rolling stone gathers no fog.”
_Poor Richard._
There is an allegory in the Spectator, called, if I recollect rightly,
“The Mountain of Miseries.” It narrates how the human race were once
summoned by a good Genius to a particular spot, and each permitted to
cast down the misery which most afflicted him, taking up some one which
had belonged to a fellow-creature, and which he thought he should be
more able to endure. Some cast down diseased limbs, some bad wives,
and so forth; but the end of the story is, that after the exchange had
been made, all felt themselves a great deal more uneasy under their
adopted evils than they had ever felt under their natural ones, and,
accordingly, had to petition the Genius for permission to take back
each his own proper original misery. I have often thought that the
practice of removing from one house to another, in the hope of finding
better ease and accommodation, was not much unlike this grand general
interchange of personal distresses; and often on a Whitsunday in
Scotland, when I have seen people flying in all directions with old
tables and beds, that would have looked a great deal better in their
native homes than on the street, I have mentally compared the scene to
that which is so graphically described by Addison.
The English, it seems, are not much of a removing people. When a
Southron once settles himself down in a house, he only quits it with
the greatest reluctance. No matter for an increasing family—no matter
for bettered circumstances—no matter for the ambition of wife or
daughters to get into a genteeler neighbourhood. An Englishman has
naturally a strong feeling about his house: it is his castle, and he
never will abandon the fort so long as he can possibly retain it. Give
him but a few years’ associations to hallow the dwelling—let him have
been married in it, and there spent the years of the youth of his
children; and sooner than part from the dear little parlour where he
has enjoyed so many delightful evening scenes, with his young spouse
and his happy infants around him, he would almost part with life
itself. An Englishman gets accommodated to all the inconveniences of
his house, however great, as naturally as the fish with its shell,
however tortuous. Some strange angularity in his vestibule, which
nearly throws you down every time you visit him, may appear to you a
most disagreeable crook in his lot, and one that ought to make the
house intolerable to him; but, ten to one, he looks upon it as only
an amiable eccentricity in the plan of the mansion, and, so far from
taking ill with it, would feel like a fish out of water if it were
otherwise.
The Scotch, on the contrary, are an eminently migratory people. They
never are three months in any house till they wish that the annual
term were once more at hand, when they might remove to another. There
is no day in the year so important in their eyes as Whitsunday, when
almost the whole population of every considerable town is found to
be on the move, exchanging houses with each other. This is a curious
feature in the people, and seems as if it only could be accounted for
by supposing that the nation is totally deficient in the phrenological
organ called _inhabitiveness_. It is all to no use that experience is
constantly showing how vain are their expectations of better lodging.
Every disappointment seems to give them but a keener relish for a new
attempt.
The fact is this: A family always enters upon a new house in a state
of high hope as to its accommodations. So long as the recollection of
their deserted abode is still fresh, the new house appears a paradise;
for, mark, it has been selected on the express account of its not being
characterised by any one of the inconveniences alleged against the
old. By and bye, however, its own peculiar evils are felt; and, long
before Candlemas day, it has been found as disagreeable as the other.
Then a new one is selected, which, in its turn, is declared as bad
as any. So far as my observation has extended, the itch for removing
more generally prevails among the female than the male department of
the population. Husbands in general are too little in the house ever
to fall out of conceit with it; but the wife, as the more domestic
creature, has full opportunity to observe and feel its defects; and she
it is who most frequently urges and achieves the removal. There are
various things about a house in which the husband can never see any
importance, or feel any interest, but which appear to the wife as each
the most cardinal of all cardinal points. One of these, for instance,
is a back-green. “A back-green!” let the words be pronounced with a
solemnity befitting their awful import. Often, when a house has seemed
to the husband all that could be desired, he has been thrust out of
it, whether he would or not, all on account of a thing which was as
inexplicable to him as the mysteries of the Chinese faith—a back-green.
Perhaps you hear some day that your back-green lies totally out of
the sun, or that the right use to it is shared by some disagreeable
neighbours, or is naught for some other equally intelligible reason.
But you learn no more, and next Whitsunday you find yourself in the
horrors and agonies of a removal to some distant part of the town, all
on account of a little space of ground, of which you never yet could
guess the use or purpose. Very often you are removed from a comfortable
and every way excellent house, because it wants a back-green, and taken
to one every way inferior, and, indeed, utterly wretched, but which, in
the eyes of your sweet spouse, is rendered equal to a palace—because it
has a back-green. I would advise all husbands to keep a sharp look-out
after the back-greens, as well as several other things, which I shall
point out to them.
Let us suppose a case of proposed removal in the middle walks of life.
You are, say, the father of a rather numerous family, living very
contentedly in a _flat_ in not the least dense part of the town. For a
long time there have been grumblings, like distant thunder among the
mountains; but you have never yet heard any very strong reason urged
why you should remove. At length, about the New Year, these mutterings
begin to get voice; and your wife, some quiet evening, after all the
young people are gone to bed, opens a sudden and most tremendous attack
upon you, respecting the necessity of no longer keeping the children
pent up in this small dwelling, so far from any play-ground or fresh
air. And, really, she does not think it is good for her own health
that you should live any longer here. She has plenty of exercise, she
acknowledges, but no air. It is so far from public walks, that it makes
a toil of a pleasure before they can be reached. And then, no place
whatsoever to dry the clothes. Your own shirts are never properly
seen to, being only hung in an open garret, where they are exposed to
all the smoke of the town; at least, all that chooses to come in at
the skylights. And there is no such thing as a servant’s bed-room in
this house. The girl, I assure you, has her own complaints as to the
hardship of being obliged to sleep in that den above the kitchen door.
And as for the stair, is it not a thoroughfare to all the scum of the
town? Some of the neighbours, I assure you, are no better than they
should be, if all tales be true. There is even an old man in the garret
who is supposed to live by _Burking_. The fact is, we would now require
an additional bed-room for the boys—&c. &c.
Lectured up to removing point, you consent, unhappy man! to leave
your shop some forenoon, in order to take a walk with your wife about
the outskirts of the town, in search of a more airy, more spacious,
and more genteel abode. You are dragged “by the lug and the horn,”
as shepherds say, through multitudes of those “delightful small
_self-contained_ houses,” which offer, “within twenty minutes’ walk of
the college,” all the elegancies of Heriot Row and Great King Street,
at a tithe of the rent. You find them all as like each other in the
interior as if they had been made on the principle of chip-boxes; but
yet, to your wife, each seems to have its own peculiar merits. One
excels in the matter of a lobby; another has an extra closet; a third
affords a superior view from the drawing-room windows; and a fourth—O
merit above all merits!—transcends its fellows in the article of a
back-green. Every thing, however, is inspected—every thing is taken
into the general account; and the result of the whole is, that though
the rent is ten pounds higher, and the dining-room a thought less than
in your present abode, you _must_ remove. The carpets, with a very
little eeking and clipping, will all suit. Your sideboard, of which
your spouse has a measure in her reticule, will exactly answer the
recess devoted to it. The jack in the kitchen answers to a tee; and
even the scraper at the door has something about it that is singularly
appropriate, as if the builder at the very first had designed to
take the measure of your foot. All things appear, in the showing of
your good dame, to be so remarkably answerable and proper, that you
half believe it to be a matter of destiny, and, in completing your
arrangements, hardly bargain so much with the landlord as with Fate.
During the spring months which elapse before the day of removal, you
live in a state of dreamy bliss respecting your new house. Almost
every fine morning you rise about seven for a walk, and, by a strange
chance, you invariably take the house of promise in your way, and
enjoy a survey of its external excellencies. When you observe, from
the closed shutters, that its present occupants, so far from being
agog about it like yourself, are snugly snoozing in their beds, you
wonder at their indifference. If you were they, you would have been up
hours ago, enjoying the air in the back-green, or playing the king of
the Vandals in the front-plot. What a pity to see that splendid ruin
of a rhododendron drooping in that fashion! What a shame to pay so
little attention to the boxwood! At length, the 25th of May arrives.
You transfer yourself to the now vacated tenement, pitying with all
your heart the stupid people who have left it. For a time, a kind
of honeymoon delirium pervades the household. You certainly do find
some pleasure in contemplating from your drawing-room windows the
cattle in the neighbouring grass-park, even though sensible all the
time that they are only kept there _in petto_ by the exterminating
butcher at the end of “the Row.” Your wife, too, reposes upon the
joys of her back-green with a gratulation of spirit that seems as if
it could never know an end. And while the servant girl rejoices in a
chamber to herself, your boys have sport unceasing in pasting over
the kitchen door with pictures and excellent new songs. But all this
only holds good while summer lasts—summer, during which no house ever
appears inconvenient or disadvantageous. By and bye comes the winter
of your discontent. The views from the window are no longer fair; the
back-green, which already in autumn had begun to lose its character as
a play-ground, in consequence of the swarms of creeping things, which
covered the walls in such a way as if they had a design to form a
living entomological museum, and so fairly frightened the children into
the house, is now a sink of mud and melting snow; the serving-wench
finds that it was better to sleep in “that den above the kitchen
door”—in so far as the said den was very “cosey”—than to lie in a
chamber under the slates, exposed to the malevolence of the elements in
all its shapes. You find, too, that in the short days it is not very
agreeable to walk several times to and from town in the dark, through
a district which, in the language of house-proprietors, “has the
advantage of being out of the bounds of police.” The phrase, “within
twenty minutes’ walk of the College,” appears to you as only calculated
for the faculties of some itinerating prodigy, in as much as it never
takes you less than twice the time. The worthy housewife herself, after
long suffering in secret, and great reluctance to confess her counsel
wrong, has to complain at last of “the distance from the market,” which
obliges her to buy every thing from small dealers in the neighbourhood,
who necessarily must make up for uncertain custom by “two prices.” No
getting so much as a pennyworth of vegetables without sending for it
nearly a mile; and then “that creature Jenny,” there is no sending her
out, you know, even upon the shortest errand, but she stays an hour.
When we want even so much as change for a shilling, there is no getting
it nearer than Port Hopetoun, which is half a mile away. Then we are
such a distance from the kirk. It is only in fine weather we are able
to get that length, and at most only once in the day. I declare, if we
stay here much longer, we shall become absolute heathens. Although, to
be sure, we pay less taxes in this out-of-the-way place than we did
before, have we not lost a washing-tub, from there being no police?
And then, is there not a toll-bar betwixt us and the town, at which we
must pay one shilling every time we have to go out or come home in a
coach? And, above all things, we are cut off here from all our friends
and acquaintances. We do not know a soul nearer hand than the Duncans,
who live at the back of the Meadows. And there is no dropping in here,
in an easy way, upon a forenoon call, but the people, when they reach
us, are so much fatigued with the distance, that they must be asked
to stay to dinner: and the case ends, perhaps, with the good man being
obliged to walk three miles home with a young lady at twelve o’clock
at night! Only think of that! No, no, this cold, outlandish, genteel
place, will never do. Give me a good front door in the New Town, “with
all the conveniences,” and I’ll leave such places as this to them that
like them better.
When once a resolution is formed to leave a house, it is amazing how
many holes are picked in its character, many of them literal. The wind
gets in at a hundred places; we can see daylight through stone walls
and double-deafened ceilings. Then, there is such a draught up the
staircase, and into the best bed-room, that positively there is no
enduring it. I think another six months of this house would fairly make
an end of _me_. It’s not a house for tender folk. You might sometimes
as well sit in the open street, as by the fireside. You burn your
shins, and all the time your back is freezing. Upon my word, I think
we should save all the difference between this and a front door in
doctors’ bills!
A front door is then determined upon; and you think you have at length,
by a little stretch of your purse, reached the very perfection of
comfort. But alas! “_fronti nulla fides_,” which is as much as to say,
there is no reliance to be placed on a front door. It is true, you
escape all the evils of your former habitation, and that nothing can
match your back kitchen as a convenience to the servants. But then the
family living above you has twice your number of children; and these
imps seem to do nothing whatever the whole day long, from six in the
morning till seven at night, but run pat, pat, pat, along the floors
overhead, till they almost drive you mad, _non vi sed sæpe cadendo_.
Even the charms of a back-green, or a superior scullery, will not stand
against this; and so you determine at last to go to an upper flat in
the same neighbourhood, where you may have the pleasure of tormenting
some person below with _your_ children, without the risk of being
at the same time tormented yourself. The last selection is made upon
moderate and prudent principles; but yet hope is also even here upon
the wing. The house has no pretensions to style or external gentility,
but yet “Edwin was no vulgar boy.” The stair is remarkably spacious and
well lighted, and has, further, the advantage of a door at the bottom,
which can be opened by any inhabitant, by means of a pulley, without
the necessity of descending to the bottom. In fact, it is what I would
call a genteel stair. “The Stevensons” live in the first _flat_. The
kitchen door has a nice hole at the lower corner for the cat; and what
a delightful place there is by the side of the fire for the lamp, or
where we could keep our salt dry in a _pig_! The request of the Regent
Earl of Mar, as inscribed on the front of his house at Stirling,
“I pray all lukaris on this ludging
With gentil ee to gif their judging,”
comes powerfully into force in all cases where the tenant is just
entering upon his house. As in the other case every fault is
exaggerated, and made the subject of congratulatory disgust, so in
this, every fault is extenuated. “The ceilings are a little contracted,
I see, by the roof.” “Oh! a wee thought coomceyled—a very small matter;
these rooms are only intended for the children. We have some capital
_public_ rooms at the back, looking into the Queen Street gardens, and
have a little peep of the sea in the distance.” “Upper flats,” observes
your Malagrowther friend, “are very apt to smoke.” “Oh! not at all, I
assure you. But I have been assured that Dr Bonnyman cured this house
entirely some years ago, and since then there has never been a single
puff of smoke.” “Your nursery is in the garret; don’t you think the
children will feel it rather cold?” “Oh, the most comfortable nursery
in the world; and see, _only see_, what a nice door there is at the top
of the garret stair to prevent the bairns from tumbling down!” “I am
sorry, however, to see a green-wife established so close beneath the
door, at the bottom of your _common_ stair.” “Oh, Sir, but consider the
convenience of the greens.” In fact, there is no peculiarity about the
house, however trifling, but, in the eyes of a new tenant, it will seem
a beauty, as in those of a departing one it will constitute a disgrace.
And this is just the philosophy of the question, and the real cause why
there is so much useless tossing and tumbling of old furniture on each
25th of May.
VICTIMS.
The industrious classes of the middle rank are, on the one hand,
_attracted onwards_ to wealth and respectability, by contemplating men,
formerly of their own order, who having, as the saying is, feathered
their nests, now lie at ease, a kind of _conscripti patres_; while
they are, on the other hand, _repelled_ from the regions of poverty
and disgrace by the sight of a great many wretched persons, who
having, under the influence of some unhappy star, permitted their good
resolutions of industry and honour to give way, are sunk from their
former estate, and now live—if living it can be called—in a state of
misery and ignominy almost too painful to be thought of. There may be a
use in this—as there is a use for beacons and buoys at sea. But oh, the
desolation of such a fate! As different as the condition of a vessel
which ever bends its course freely and gallantly over the seas, on some
joyous expedition of profit or adventure, compared with one which has
been deprived of all the means of locomotion, and chained down upon
some reef of rocks, merely to tell its happier companions that it is to
be avoided; so different is the condition of a man still engaged in the
hopeful pursuits of life, and one who has lost all its prospects.