I have just come over the island and on board ship after a week-end
trip to the north of this main island to my friend R. C. Haldane, of
the distinguished family of that name, associated in historians’ minds
with Halfdan the Viking leader, and to newspaper readers with a younger
brother—late War Minister and present Lord Chancellor. I came over the
island in a single-cylinder motor-car, a splendid new departure for
these parts, over the windy, wet moorland track, four hours to do forty
miles, but what glorious speed compared with only the other day, when we
stiffened for long hours doing the same journey in a slow dog-cart.
The old whaler, Magnus Andersen, took me off to St Ebba in the wind and
dark and splashing sea in a leaky cobble.
How jolly and cheery it is to be back in the cosy, lamplit cabin. The
first mate is busy at his log, trying to write in English, and soon there
is the bump of a boat alongside, and down the companionway comes our
burly youth of a captain, and what a hearty handshake he gives, as if we
had been away for weeks, or months, instead of only a week-end: and we
compare notes. His day has been full to overflowing.
He had prepared the fatted calf—tinned meat and fish balls and beer,
and whisky and soda, against the Board of Trade inspector’s visit for
measurement and registration; and then he turned out to be a teetotaller
and vegetarian! We had telegraphed to Aberdeen for this poor man and
he had torn himself from the bosom of his family, faced two days’ gale
and arrived white as paper and rather on edge. But he was profoundly
clever, all admitted that, and he was impressed with Henriksen’s books
in the cabin, three big shelves, all of them scientific sea-books, and
directories. And he said: “Where are the novels?” And there were none!
At least there were none visible. I have two or three about heroes and
heroines of Park Lane and country mansions, into which I sometimes dip
a little just to give renewed zest for the wide horizon and the tang of
wind and sea out-by. And he measured this and that, and, much to our joy,
he practically accepted the Norwegian Lloyd registration, and put us down
at sixty-nine tons instead of a larger figure, which we feared; now,
registered as under seventy tons we need not have pilots, and we save in
many ways on entering port.
Sunday afternoon with Norwegians is a playtime and holiday, so our master
and mates and engineers had a Saturnalia of shag or cormorant shooting
and rather shocked the natives of Lerwick who heard the shooting. Our
men rejoice more heartily at banging down these marauders than you and
I, gentle reader, would rejoice at clawing down the highest birds in
Britain, and we all eat them. To cook them, we skin them first, then lay
breast and limbs, without the back, in vinegar and water for a night, and
wash them in milk and water next morning, then they are stewed; there is
a good deal of trouble taken with the cooking, and when done they are
extremely bad to eat!
My Sunday, however, was passed in unbroken peace and quiet at Lochend
on the west of Shetland. There is a silence at Lochend and on the
silvery shingle beach, and over the crystalline rippling green bay
that is astounding; a bee humming over the patch of yellow oats sounds
quite loud, and a collie barking in the distance beside one of the grey
thatched cottages sounds quite close. Haldane’s white, thick-walled stone
house looks out on to a silvery shingle that makes a perfect crescent
between a fresh-water lake of brown peaty water and the sea-loch where
the water is green above the white sand, and purple above tangle.
Ah! the purity of the air there, with its scent of peat! How I have
longed for it in town, and even in warm South Norway counted on breathing
it again, and at every breath thanked heaven for its restorative energy.
The morning dive was past expectation—how the Shetland sea makes the
blood tingle and the skin glow! And the contrast from the outside
keen air, after days buffeting on the North Atlantic or North Sea,
to come into the warm stone house, to sit by the glowing peats and
coal, surrounded by books of travel, illuminated missals and natural
history, to read or to listen to my host telling tales of the times of
our fathers, told as they told them, without haste and with exquisite
inflection and skill in picturing peoples and places at home or abroad.
One family story he told me should be of national, or even international
interest, so I must make it a classic. It was in the first days of trains
in this country that my host and his brother were coming back to school
in Edinburgh from Cloan in Perthshire with their father. The father was
considered a splendid traveller, for he could actually sleep in these
Early-Victorian carriages! As he lay asleep with a red rug drawn over
him—which Haldane says figures largely in his boyish recollections—he
and his brother plugged cattle and engine-drivers and various things as
they passed, or at the stations, with their catapults, till at Larbert
old Haldane awakened and saw the instruments and asked the boys what they
were. “Never had such things when I was a boy,” he said. They explained
to him how to fit a stone into the leather, and he did so and held the
catapult out of the window and let fly, and with inexpressible joy the
boys watched the stone go hurtling into the centre of the stationmaster’s
window. Old Haldane promptly pulled the red plaid over his head, and out
came the wrathful stationmaster, and the guard, and a boy clerk, who
took them to the Haldane carriage. Wrathfully the stationmaster pulled
open the door, and met the gaze of the cherubic innocents. Then angrily
he pulled the red rug aside and disclosed the stem, judicial features of
Haldane senior.
“How dare you, sir, disturb me in this rude manner?” he demanded of the
guard he knew so well, and “Och, sir! Save us!—It’s you, Mr Haldane!
A’ maist humbly apologise. A’ maun hae made a mistake,” and he bustled
away, angrily elbowing the boy clerk and muttering: “Yon’s Mr Haldane, ye
fuil, ye gowk, Haldane o’ Cloan, yin o’ the biggest shareholders o’ the
Company.” “Ye may ca’ him what ye like,” said the clerk, “but A’ saw him
let flee yon stane.”
As the train proceeded, Haldane _père_ emerged from the red rug again and
the three laughed long and loud, and the juniors told their father more
about catties and what they did with them at school. And this led to talk
of fights, and they asked their father if he ever fought at school, and
he confessed to having done so and pointed to two metal teeth, mark of
an ancient fray or “bicker” between the Edinburgh Academy boys and the
boys of the Old Town on the mound. It is at this point that this domestic
tale becomes of national interest, for the present Viscount and our Lord
Chancellor appears on the scene; he was much the junior of these two
elder brothers, and soon after this, when they had all got back to their
respective schools, “Campy” and his brother asked Bob, the Benjamin, if
he ever had a fight, and jeered at him for being at such a school where
they didn’t fight—I forget which it was, possibly Henderson’s, and he
replied that they were taught at school that it was very wrong to fight,
and they referred to the two metal teeth of their father, and gentle
Bobby went away thinking. A few days later he came home from school with
two black eyes, and his poor little nose pointing north by south, and
Lispeth, the old family nurse, was nearly broken-hearted. “Oh, wae’s me,
puir wee lambie, wha’s gaun an’ made sic a sicht o’ ma bonnie wee bairn?”
And he explained. He was top of his class, and “I thought I ought to
fight, so I looked at the other boys, and there was one long one, at the
bottom of the class, and I just gave him one on the eye—and he licked
me.” And there were poultices applied to the black eyes—and his nose you
have seen—and much pity from Lispeth for her bonnie wee laddie.
So the elder brother, R. C. Haldane, after travelling the wide world
o’er, has found the most quiet, most restful spot in Ultima Thule, and
the youngest is, we trust, still fighting for universal service, we
trust, in London, England.
On this Haldane senior’s property we have the land station of our
little whaling company, the Alexandra Company, which by our Government
is allowed to run two small whaling steamers only, and incidentally to
employ many Shetlanders at 23s. a week. More steamers we may not have.
Ask herring-fishers why we may not!