Prince Charles. Enter on the Christmas week of 1745-46 the wild,
foot-sore, Highland host on its flight from Derby. How the sleek
citizens shrink back from the worn, hairy faces, and fierce eyes in
which the lights of plunder burn. "The Prince, the Prince! which is
the Prince?" "That's he--yonder--wi' the lang yellow hair." Onward
rides, pale and dejected, the throne-haunted man. He looks up as he
catches a fair face at a window, and you see he inherits the Stuart
smile and the Stuart eye. He, like his fathers, will provoke the
bitterest hatred, and be served by the wildest devotion. Men will
gladly throw away their lives for him. The blood of nobles will
redden scaffolds for him. Shepherds and herdsmen will dare death to
shelter him; and beautiful women will bend over his sleep--wrapped in
clansman's plaid on bed of heather or bracken--to clip but one shred
of his yellow hair, and feel thereby requited for all that they and
theirs have suffered in his behalf. But with all his beauty and his
misfortunes, his appearance in Glasgow created little enthusiasm. He
scarcely gained a recruit. Only a few ladies donned in his honour
white breast-knots and ribbons. He levied a heavy contribution on
the inhabitants. A prince at the head of an army in want of brogues,
and who insisted on being provided with shoe-leather gratis, was
hardly calculated to excite the admiration of prudent Glasgow
burgesses. He did not remain long. The Green beheld for one day the
far-stretching files and splendour of the Highland war, on the
next--in unpaid shoe-leather--he marched to his doom. Victory, like
a stormy sunbeam, burned for a moment on his arms at Falkirk, and
then all was closed in blood and thunder on Culloden Moor.
[Sidenote: Glasgow Clubs.]
It is about this period that Dr Strang's book on the "Clubs" begins.
In those old, hospitable, hard-drinking days, Glasgow seems to have
been pre-eminently a city of clubs. Every street had its tavern, and
every tavern had its club. There were morning clubs, noon-day clubs,
evening clubs, and all-day clubs, which, like the sacred fire, never
went out. The club was a sanctuary wherein nestled friendship and
enjoyment. The member left his ordinary life outside the door, like
his greatcoat, and put it on again when he went away. Within the
genial circle of the club were redressed all the ills that flesh is
heir to: the lover forgot Nerissa's disdain, the debtor felt no
longer his creditor's eye. At the sight of the boon companions, Care
packed up his bundles and decamped, or if he dared remain, he was
immediately laid hold of, plunged into the punch-bowl, and there was
an end of him for that night at least. Unhappily those clubs are
dead, but as their ghosts troop past in Dr Strang's pages, the sense
is delicately taken by an odour of rum-punch. [Sidenote: The
Anderston Club.] Shortly after the Pretender's visit to the city, the
Anderston Club--so called from its meetings being held in that little
village--flourished, drank its punch, and cracked its jokes on
Saturday afternoons. Perhaps no club connected with the city, before
or since, could boast of a membership so distinguished. It comprised
nearly all the University professors. Dr Moore, professor of Greek;
Professor Ross, who faithfully instilled the knowledge of Humanities
into the Glasgow youth; Drs Cullen and Hamilton, medical teachers of
eminence; Adam Smith; the Brothers Foulis--under whose auspices the
first Fine-Art Academy was established in Scotland, and from whose
printing-press the Greek and Roman classics were issued with a
correctness of text and beauty of typography which had then no
parallel in the kingdom--were regular and zealous members. But the
heart and soul of the Anderston Club seems to have been Dr Simson,
professor of mathematics. His heart vibrated to the little hostelry
of Anderston as the needle vibrates to the pole. He could have found
his way with his eyes shut. The following story, related of the
professor by Dr Strang, is not unamusing in itself, and a fair
specimen of the piebald style in which the greater portion of the
book is written:--
"The mathematician ever made it a rule to throw algebra and
arithmetic 'to the dogs,' save in so far as to discover the just
_quadratic equation_ and _simple division_ of a bowl of punch. One
thing alone in the club he brought his mathematics to bear upon, and
that was his glass. This had been constructed on the truest
principles of geometry for emptying itself easily, the stalk
requiring to form but a very acute angle with the open lips ere its
whole contents had dropped into the æsophagus. One fatal day,
however, Girzy, the black-eyed and dimple-cheeked servant of the
hostelry, in making arrangements for the meeting of the club, allowed
this favourite piece of crystal, as many black and blue eyed girls
have done before and since, to slip from her fingers and be broken.
She knew the professor's partiality for his favourite beaker, and
thought of getting another; but the day was too far spent, and the
Gallowgate, then the receptacle of such luxuries, was too far distant
to procure one for that day's meeting of the fraternity. Had
Verreville, the city of glass, been then where it has since stood,
the mathematician's placid temper might not have been ruffled, nor
might Girzy have found herself in so disagreeable a dilemma. The
club met, the hen-broth smoked in every platter, the few standard
dishes disappeared, the _medoc_ was sipped, and was then succeeded,
as usual, by a goodly-sized punch-bowl. The enticing and delicious
compound was mixed, tasted, and pronounced nectar: the professor,
dreaming for a moment of some logarithm of Napier's, or problem of
Euclid's, pushed forward to the fount unconsciously the glass which
stood before him, drew it back a brimmer, and carried it to his lips;
but lo! the increased angle at which the professor was obliged to
raise his arm, roused him from his momentary reverie, and, pulling
the drinking-cup from his lips as if it contained the deadliest
henbane, exclaimed, 'What is this, Girzy, you have given me? I
cannot drink out of this glass. Give me my own, you little minx.
You might now well know that _this_ is not mine.' 'Weel-a-wat, it's
a I hae for't, Maister Simson,' answered Girzy, blushing. 'Hush,
hush,' rejoined the mathematician, 'say not so. I know it is not
_my_ glass, for the outer edge of this touches my nose, and _mine_
never did so.' The girl confessed the accident, and the professor,
though for some minutes sadly out of humour, was at length appeased,
and swallowed his _sherbet_ at the risk of injuring his proboscis."
[Sidenote: Dr Simson.]
Dr Strang informs us that the eccentric mathematician, in his
progress from the University to Anderston, was in the habit of
counting his steps, and that, walking blind-folded, he could have
told the distance to a fraction of an inch. He has omitted, however,
to tell us whether the Doctor's steps were counted on his return, and
if the numbers corresponded!
Along with the notices of the clubs subsequent to the one mentioned,
Dr Strang gives his reader a tolerable notion of how it went with
Glasgow in those years. We have a peep of the Trongate during the
lucrative tobacco trade, when Glasgow had her head not a little
turned by her commercial prosperity. There are rich citizens now in
the streets. Behold Mr Glassford, picking his steps daintily along
the Crown o' the Causeway, with scarlet cloak, flowing wig,
cocked-hat, and gold-headed cane! He has money in his purse, and he
knows it too. All men warm themselves in the light of his
countenance. If he kicks you, you are honoured, for is it not with a
golden foot? How the loud voice droops, how the obsequious knee
bends before him! He told Tobias Smollett yesterday that he had
five-and-twenty ships sailing for him on the sea, and that
half-a-million passed through his hands every year. Pass on a little
farther, and yonder is Captain Paton sunning himself on the ample
pavement in front of the Tontine. Let us step up to him. He will
ask us to dinner, and mix us a bowl of punch flavoured with his own
limes--
"In Trinidad that grow."
For hospitality was then, as now, a characteristic of the city. The
suppers--the favourite meal--were of the most substantial
description. A couple of turkeys, a huge round of beef, and a
bowl--a very Caspian Sea--of punch, seething to its silver brim, and
dashed with delicate slices of lime or lemon--formed the principal
ingredients. Good fellowship was the order of the day. In the
morning and forenoon the merchants congregated in the Tontine
reading-room for news and gossip, and at night the punch-bowl was
produced, emptied, replenished, and emptied again, while the
toasts--"Down with the Convention," "The Pilot that weathered the
storm"--were drunk with enthusiasm in some cosy tavern in the then
aristocratic Princes Street. At a later period, during the disturbed
years that preceded the Reform Bill, we see the moneyed
classes--"soor-milk jockeys" they were profanely nicknamed by the
mob--eagerly enrolling themselves in yeomanry corps: on field days
resplendent in laced jacket and shako, or clanking through the
streets with spur and sabre. As we approach our own times the clubs
pale their ineffectual fires--they shrink from planets to
will-o'-the-wisp; at last
"They die away
And fade into the light of common day."
Glasgow is now, so far as history is concerned, a clubless city.
[Sidenote: The Glasgow operative.]
During the commercial distress of 1848-49, and the agitation
consequent on the flight of Louis Philippe and the establishment of
the French Republic, Glasgow had the bad eminence of going further in
deeds of lawlessness and riot than any other city in the empire. The
"Glasgow operative" is, while trade is good and wages high, the
quietest and most inoffensive of creatures. He cares comparatively
little for the affairs of the nation. He is industrious and
contented. Each six months he holds a saturnalia--one on New-year's
day, the other at the Fair, (occurring in July,) and his excesses at
these points keep him poor during the intervals. During periods of
commercial depression, however, when wages are low, and he works
three-quarter time, he has a fine nose to scent political iniquities.
He begins to suspect that all is not right with the British
constitution. These unhappy times, too, produce impudent demagogues,
whose power of lungs and floods of flashy rhetoric work incredible
mischief. To these he seriously inclines his ear. He is hungry and
excited. He is more anxious to reform Parliament than to reform
himself. He cries out against tyranny of class-legislation,
forgetting the far harder tyranny of the gin-palace and the
pawn-shop. He thinks there should be a division of property. Nay,
it is known that some have in times like these marked out the very
houses they are to possess when the goods of the world are segregated
and appropriated anew. What a dark sea of ignorance and blind wrath
is ever weltering beneath the fair fabric of English prosperity!
This dangerous state of feeling had been reached in the year spoken
of. Hungry, tumultuous meetings were held on the Green. The
ignorant people were maddened by the harangues of orators--fellows
who were willing to burn the house of the nation about the ears of
all of us, if so be _their_ private pig could be roasted thereby.
"The rich have food," said they, "you have none. You cannot die of
hunger. Take food by the strong hand wherever you can get it." This
advice was acted upon. The black human sea poured along London
Street, and then split--one wave rushed up the High Street, another
along the Trongate--each wasting as it went. The present writer,
then a mere lad, was in the streets at the time. [Sidenote: Glasgow
riots.] The whole thing going on before his eyes seemed strange,
incredible, too monstrous to be real--a hideous dream which he fought
with and strove to thrust away. For an hour or so all order was
lost. All that had been gained by a thousand years of strife and
effort--all that had been wrested from nature--all the civilities and
amenities of life--seemed drowned in a wild sea of scoundrelism. The
world was turned topsy-turvy. Impossibility became matter of fact.
Madness ruled the hour. Gun-shops were broken open, and
wretched-looking men, who hardly knew the muzzle from the stock, were
running about with muskets over their shoulders. In Buchanan Street
a meal cart was stopped, overturned, the sacks ripped open with
knives, and women were seen hurrying home to their famishing broods
with aprons full; some of the more greedy with a cheese under each
arm. In Queen Street a pastry cook's was attacked, the windows
broken, and the delicacies they contained greedily devoured. A large
glass-case, filled with coloured lozenges, arranged in diamond
patterns, stood serene for a while amid universal ruin. A scoundrel
smashed it with a stick; down rushed a deluge of lozenges, and a
dozen rioters were immediately sprawling over each other on the
ground to secure a share of the spoil. By this time alarm had
spread. Shops were shutting in all directions, some of the more
ingenious traders, it is said, pasting "A Shop to Let" upon their
premises--that they might thereby escape the rage or the cupidity of
the rioters. At last, weary with spoliation, the mob, armed with
guns, pistols, and what other weapons they had secured, came marching
along the Trongate, a tall begrimed collier, with a rifle over his
shoulder, in front. This worthy, more than two-thirds drunk, kept
shouting at intervals, "Vive la Republic! We'll hae Vive la
Republic, an' naething _but_ Vive la Republic!" to which intelligible
political principle his followers responded with vociferous cheers.
At last they reached the Cross. Here a barricade was in process of
erection. Carts were stopped and thrown down, and London Street
behind was crowded with men, many of them provided with muskets. On
a sudden the cry arose, "The sogers, the sogers!" terrible to the
heart of a British mob. Hoofs were heard clattering along the
Trongate, and the next moment an officer of Carabineers leaped his
horse over the barricade, followed by his men, perhaps a dozen in
all. The effect was instantaneous. In five minutes not a rioter was
to be seen. When evening fell the Trongate wore an unwonted
appearance. Troops stacked their bayonets, lighted their fires, and
bivouacked under the piazzas of the Tontine. Sentinels paced up and
down the pavements, and dragoons patrolled the streets. Next day the
disturbance came to a crisis. A riot occurred in Calton or
Bridgeton. The pensioners were sent to quell it there. While
marching down one of the principal streets, they were assailed by
volleys of stones, the crowd meanwhile falling back sullenly from the
bayonet points. The order was given to fire, and the veterans, whose
patience was completely exhausted, sent their shot right into the
mass of people. Several were wounded, and one or more killed. When
the pensioners were gone, a corpse was placed on boards, carried
through the streets shoulder-high by persons who, by that means,
hoped to madden and rouse the citizens; a large crowd attending,
every window crammed with heads as the ghastly procession passed. As
they approached the centre of the city, a file of soldiers was drawn
across the street up which they were marching. When the crowd fell
back, the bearers of the dead were confronted by the ominous glitter
of steel. The procession paused, stopped, wavered, and finally beat
a retreat, and thus the riots closed. That evening people went to
look at the spot where the unhappy collision had taken place. Groups
of workmen were standing about, talking in tones of excitement. The
wall of one of the houses was chipped in places by bullets, and the
gutter, into which a man had reeled, smashed by the death-shot, had
yet a ruddy stain. Next day tranquillity was in a great measure
restored. [Sidenote: Special constables.] Masses of special
constables had by this time been organised, and marched through the
city in force. Although they did not come into contact with the
rioters, the bravery they displayed in cudgelling what unfortunate
females, and _keelies_ of tender years fell into their hands, gave
one a lively idea of the prowess they would have exhibited had they
met foes worthy of the batons they bore.
Glasgow, as most British readers are aware, is situated on both sides
of the Clyde, some twenty or thirty miles above its junction with the
sea. Its rapidity of growth is perhaps without a parallel in the
kingdom. There are persons yet alive who remember when the river,
now laden with shipping, was an angler's stream, in whose gravelly
pools the trout played, and up whose rapids the salmon from the sea
flashed like a sunbeam; and when the banks, now lined with warehouses
and covered with merchandise of every description, really merited the
name of the Broomy Law. Science and industry have worked wonders
here. The stream, which a century ago hardly allowed the passage of
a herring-boat or a coal-gabbert, bears on its bosom to-day ships
from every clime, and mighty ocean steamers which have wrestled with
the hurricanes of the Atlantic. Before reaching Glasgow the Clyde
traverses one of the richest portions of Scotland, for in summer
Clydesdale is one continued orchard. As you come down the stream
towards the city, you have, away to the right, the mineral districts
of Gartsherrie and Monkland--not superficially captivating regions.
Everything there is grimed with coal-dust. Spring herself comes with
a sooty face. The soil seems calcined. You cannot see that part of
the world to advantage by day. With the night these innumerable
furnaces and iron-works will rush out into vaster volume and wilder
colour, and for miles the country will be illuminated--restless with
mighty lights and shades. It is the Scottish Staffordshire.
[Sidenote: Moors of the covenant.] On the other hand, away to the
south-west stretch the dark and sterile moors of the covenant, with
wild moss-haggs, treacherous marshes green as emerald, and dark mossy
lochs, on whose margins the water-hen breeds--a land of plovers and
curlews, in whose recesses, and in the heart of whose mists, the
hunted people lay while the men of blood were hovering near--life and
death depending on the cry and flutter of a desert bird, or the flash
of a sunbeam along the stretches of the moor. In the middle of that
melancholy waste stands the farm-house of Lochgoin, intimately
connected with the history of the Covenanters. To this dwelling came
Cameron and Peden and found shelter; here lies the notched sword of
Captain John Paton, and the drum which was beaten at Drumclog by the
hill-folk, and the banner that floated above their heads that day.
And here, too, was written the "Scots Worthies," a book considerered
by the austerer portion of the Scottish peasantry as next in
sacredness to the Bible. And it has other charms this desolate
country: over there by Mearns, Christopher North spent his glorious
boyhood; in this region, too, Pollok was born, and fed his gloomy
spirit on congenial scenes. Approaching the city, and immediately to
the left, are the Cathkin Braes: and close by the village of
Cathcart, past which the stream runs murmuring in its rocky bed, is
the hill on which Mary stood and saw Moray shiver her army like a
potsherd. [Sidenote: The estuary of the Clyde.] Below Glasgow, and
westward, stretches the great valley of the Clyde. On the left is
the ancient burgh of Renfrew; farther back Paisley and Johnston,
covered with smoke; above all, Gleniffer Braes, greenly fair in
sunlight; afar Neilston Pad, raising its flat summit to the sky, like
a table spread for a feast of giants. On the right are the
Kilpatrick Hills, terminating in the abrupt peak of Dumbuck; and
beyond, the rock of Dumbarton, the ancient fortress, the rock of
Ossian's song. It rises before you out of another world and state of
things, with years of lamentation and battle wailing around it like
sea-mews. By this time the river has widened to an estuary.
Port-Glasgow, with its deserted piers, and Greenock, populous with
ships, lie on the left. Mid-channel, Rosneath is gloomy with its
woods; on the farther shore Helensburgh glitters like a silver
thread; in front, a battlement of hills. You pass the point of
Gourock, and are in the Highlands. From the opposite coast Loch Long
stretches up into yon dark world of mountains. Yonder is Holy Loch,
smallest and loveliest of them all. A league of sea is glittering
like frosted silver between you and Dunoon. The mighty city, twenty
miles away, loud with traffic, dingy with smoke, is the working
Glasgow; here, nestling at the foot of mountains, stretching along
the sunny crescents of bays, clothing beaked promontories with
romantic villas, is another Glasgow keeping holiday the whole summer
long. These villages are the pure wheat; the great city, with its
strife and toil, its harass and heart-break--the chaff and husks from
which it is winnowed. The city is the soil, this region the bright
consummate flower. The merchant leaves behind him in the roar and
vapour his manifold vexations, and appears here with his best face
and happiest smile. Here no bills intrude, the fluctuations of stock
appear not, commercial anxieties are unknown. In their places are
donkey rides, the waving of light summer dresses, merry pic-nics, and
boating parties at sunset on the splendid sea. Here are the
"comforts of the Sautmarket" in the midst of legendary hills. When
the tempest is brewing up among the mountains, and night comes down a
deluge of wind and rain; when the sea-bird is driven athwart the
gloom like a flake of foam severed from the wave, and the crimson eye
of the Clock glares at intervals across the frith, you can draw the
curtains, stir the fire, and beguile the hours with the smiling
wisdom of Thackeray, if a bachelor; if a family man, "The Battle of
Prague," or the overture to "Don Giovanni," zealously thumped by
filial hands, will drown the storm without. Hugging the left shore,
we have Largs before us, where long ago Haco and his berserkers found
dishonourable graves. On the other side is Bute, fairest, most
melancholy of all the islands of the Clyde. From its sheltered
position it has an atmosphere soft as that of Italy, and is one huge
hospital now. You turn out in the dog-days, your head surmounted
with a straw-hat ample enough to throw a shadow round you, your
nether man encased in linen ducks, and see invalids sitting
everywhere in the sunniest spots like autumn flies, or wandering
feebly about, wrapt in greatcoats, their chalk faces shawled to the
nose. You are half-broiled, they shiver as if in an icy wind. Their
bent figures take the splendour out of the sea and the glory out of
the sunshine. They fill the summer air as with the earthy horror of
a new-made grave. You feel that they hang on life feebly, and will
drop with the yellow leaf. Beyond Bute are the Cumbraes, twin
sisters born in one fiery hour; and afar Arran, with his precipices,
purple-frowning on the level sea.
[Sidenote: Arran]
In his preface to the "Rambles" Mr Macdonald writes:--
"The district of which Glasgow is the centre, while it possesses many
scenes of richest Lowland beauty, and presents many glimpses of the
stern and wild in Highland landscape, is peculiarly fertile in
reminiscences of a historical nature. In the latter respect, indeed,
it is excelled by few localities in Scotland--a circumstance of which
many of our citizens seem to have been hitherto almost unconscious.
There is a story told of a gentleman who, having boasted that he had
travelled far to see a celebrated landscape on the Continent, was put
to the blush by being compelled to own that he had never visited a
scene of superior loveliness than one situated on his own estate, and
near which he had spent the greater part of his life. The error of
this individual is one of which too many are guilty."
[Sidenote: Celebrated scenery disappointing.]