feeble narrative of this delightful day with the same freedom as
heretofore; so, perhaps, I may as well bring it to a close. I may
mention, however, that I saw the library, a fine, large apartment, hung
round with portraits of eminent literary men, principally of the last
century, most of whom were familiar guests of the Harcourts. The house
itself is about eighty years old, and is built in the classic style, as
if the family had been anxious to diverge as far as possible from the
Gothic picturesqueness of their old abode at Stanton Harcourt. The
grounds were laid out in part by Capability Brown, and seemed to me even
more beautiful than those of Blenheim. Mason the poet, a friend of the
house, gave the design of a portion of the garden. Of the whole place I
will not be niggardly of my rude Transatlantic praise, but be bold to
say that it appeared to me as perfect as anything earthly can
be,--utterly and entirely finished, as if the years and generations had
done all that the hearts and minds of the successive owners could
contrive for a spot they dearly loved. Such homes as Nuneham Courtney
are among the splendid results of long hereditary possession; and we
Republicans, whose households melt away like new-fallen snow in a spring
morning, must content ourselves with our many counterbalancing
advantages,--for this one, so apparently desirable to the far-projecting
selfishness of our nature, we are certain never to attain.
It must not be supposed, nevertheless, that Nuneham Courtney is one of
the great show-places of England. It is merely a fair specimen of the
better class of country-seats, and has a hundred rivals, and many
superiors, in the features of beauty, and expansive, manifold, redundant
comfort, which most impressed me. A moderate man might be content with
such a home,--that is all.
And now I take leave of Oxford without even an attempt to describe
it,--there being no literary faculty, attainable or conceivable by me,
which can avail to put it adequately, or even tolerably, upon paper. It
must remain its own sole expression; and those whose sad fortune it may
be never to behold it have no better resource than to dream about gray,
weather-stained, ivy-grown edifices, wrought with quaint Gothic
ornament, and standing around grassy quadrangles, where
cloistered walks have echoed to the quiet footsteps of twenty
generations,--lawns and gardens of luxurious repose, shadowed with
canopies of foliage, and lit up with sunny glimpses through archways of
great boughs,--spires, towers, and turrets, each with its history and
legend,--dimly magnificent chapels, with painted windows of rare beauty
and brilliantly diversified hues, creating an atmosphere of richest
gloom,--vast college halls, high-windowed, oaken-paneled, and hung round
with portraits of the men, in every age, whom the university has
nurtured to be illustrious,--long vistas of alcoved libraries, where the
wisdom and learned folly of all time is shelved,--kitchens (we throw in
this feature by way of ballast, and because it would not be English
Oxford without its beef and beer), with huge fireplaces, capable of
roasting a hundred joints at once,--and cavernous cellars, where rows of
piled-up hogsheads seethe and fume with that mighty malt-liquor which is
the true milk of Alma Mater: make all these things vivid in your dream,
and you will never know nor believe how inadequate is the result to
represent even the merest outside of Oxford.
[Illustration: _Magdalen College, Oxford._]
We feel a genuine reluctance to conclude this article without making
our grateful acknowledgments, by name, to a gentleman whose overflowing
kindness was the main condition of all our sight-seeings and enjoyments.
Delightful as will always be our recollection of Oxford and its
neighborhood, we partly suspect that it owes much of its happy coloring
to the genial medium through which the objects were presented to us,--to
the kindly magic of a hospitality unsurpassed, within our experience, in
the quality of making the guest contented with his host, with himself,
and everything about him. He has inseparably mingled his image with our
remembrance of the Spires of Oxford.
VIII.
SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS
We left Carlisle at a little past eleven, and within the half hour were
at Gretna Green. Thence we rushed onward into Scotland through a flat
and dreary tract of country, consisting mainly of desert and bog, where
probably the moss-troopers were accustomed to take refuge after their
raids into England. Anon, however, the hills hove themselves up to view,
occasionally attaining a height which might almost be called
mountainous. In about two hours we reached Dumfries, and alighted at the
station there.
Chill as the Scottish summer is reputed to be, we found it an awfully
hot day, not a whit less so than the day before; but we sturdily
adventured through the burning sunshine up into the town, inquiring our
way to the residence of Burns. The street leading from the station is
called Shakespeare Street; and at its farther extremity we read "Burns
Street" on a corner-house,--the avenue thus designated having been
formerly known as "Mill-Hole Brae." It is a vile lane, paved with small,
hard stones from side to side, and bordered by cottages or mean houses
of whitewashed stone, joining one to another along the whole length of
the street. With not a tree, of course, or a blade of grass between the
paving-stones, the narrow lane was as hot as Tophet, and reeked with a
genuine Scotch odor, being infested with unwashed children, and
altogether in a state of chronic filth; although some women seemed to be
hopelessly scrubbing the thresholds of their wretched dwellings. I never
saw an outskirt of a town less fit for a poet's residence, or in which
it would be more miserable for any man of cleanly predilections to spend
his days.
We asked for Burns's dwelling; and a woman pointed across the street to
a two-story house, built of stone, and whitewashed, like its neighbors,
but perhaps of a little more respectable aspect than most of them,
though I hesitate in saying so. It was not a separate structure, but
under the same continuous roof with the next. There was an inscription
on the door, bearing no reference to Burns, but indicating that the
house was now occupied by a ragged or industrial school. On knocking, we
were instantly admitted by a servant-girl, who smiled intelligently when
we told our errand, and showed us into a low and very plain parlor, not
more than twelve or fifteen feet square. A young woman, who seemed to be
a teacher in the school, soon appeared, and told us that this had been
Burns's usual sitting-room, and that he had written many of his songs
here.
She then led us up a narrow staircase into a little bedchamber over the
parlor. Connecting with it, there is a very small room, or windowed
closet, which Burns used as a study; and the bedchamber itself was the
one where he slept in his later lifetime, and in which he died at last.
Altogether, it is an exceedingly unsuitable place for a pastoral and
rural poet to live or die in,--even more unsatisfactory than
Shakespeare's house, which has a certain homely picturesqueness that
contrasts favorably with the suburban sordidness of the abode before us.
The narrow lane, the paving-stones, and the contiguity of wretched
hovels are depressing to remember; and the steam of them (such is our
human weakness) might almost make the poet's memory less fragrant.
As already observed, it was an intolerably hot day. After leaving the
house, we found our way into the principal street of the town, which, it
may be fair to say, is of very different aspect from the wretched
outskirt above described. Entering a hotel (in which, as a Dumfries
guide-book assured us, Prince Charles Edward had once spent a night), we
rested and refreshed ourselves, and then set forth in quest of the
mausoleum of Burns.
Coming to St. Michael's Church, we saw a man digging a grave, and,
scrambling out of the hole, he let us into the churchyard, which was
crowded full of monuments. Their general shape and construction are
peculiar to Scotland, being a perpendicular tablet of marble or other
stone, within a framework of the same material, somewhat resembling the
frame of a looking-glass; and, all over the churchyard, these sepulchral
memorials rise to the height of ten, fifteen, or twenty feet, forming
quite an imposing collection of monuments, but inscribed with names of
small general significance. It was easy, indeed, to ascertain the rank
of those who slept below; for in Scotland it is the custom to put the
occupation of the buried personage (as "Skinner," "Shoemaker,"
"Flesher") on his tombstone. As another peculiarity, wives are buried
under their maiden names, instead of those of their husbands, thus
giving a disagreeable impression that the married pair have bidden each
other an eternal farewell on the edge of the grave.
There was a foot-path through this crowded churchyard, sufficiently well
worn to guide us to the grave of Burns; but a woman followed behind us,
who, it appeared kept the key of the mausoleum, and was privileged to
show it to strangers. The monument is a sort of Grecian temple, with
pilasters and a dome, covering a space of about twenty feet square. It
was formerly open to all the inclemencies of the Scotch atmosphere, but
is now protected and shut in by large squares of rough glass, each pane
being of the size of one whole side of the structure. The woman unlocked
the door, and admitted us into the interior. Inlaid into the floor of
the mausoleum is the gravestone of Burns,--the very same that was laid
over his grave by Jean Armour, before this monument was built. Displayed
against the surrounding wall is a marble statue of Burns at the plough,
with the Genius of Caledonia summoning the ploughman to turn poet.
Methought it was not a very successful piece of work; for the plough was
better sculptured than the man, and the man, though heavy and cloddish,
was more effective than the goddess. Our guide informed us that an old
man of ninety, who knew Burns, certifies this statue to be very like the
original.
The bones of the poet, and of Jean Armour, and of some of their
children, lie in the vault over which we stood. Our guide (who was
intelligent, in her own plain way, and very agreeable to talk withal)
said that the vault was opened about three weeks ago, on occasion of the
burial of the eldest son of Burns. The poet's bones were disturbed, and
the dry skull, once so brimming over with powerful thought and bright
and tender fantasies, was taken away, and kept for several days by a
Dumfries doctor. It has since been deposited in a new leaden coffin, and
restored to the vault. We learned that there is a surviving daughter of
Burns's eldest son, and daughters likewise of the two younger
sons,--and, besides these, an illegitimate posterity by the eldest son,
who appears to have been of disreputable life in his younger days. He
inherited his father's failings, with some faint shadow, I have also
understood, of the great qualities which have made the world tender of
his father's vices and weaknesses.
We listened readily enough to this paltry gossip, but found that it
robbed the poet's memory of some of the reverence that was its due.
Indeed, this talk over his grave had very much the same tendency and
effect as the home-scene of his life, which we had been visiting just
previously. Beholding his poor, mean dwelling and its surroundings, and
picturing his outward life and earthly manifestations from these, one
does not so much wonder that the people of that day should have failed
to recognize all that was admirable and immortal in a disreputable,
drunken, shabbily clothed, and shabbily housed man, consorting with
associates of damaged character, and, as his only ostensible occupation,
gauging the whiskey, which he too often tasted. Siding with Burns, as we
needs must, in his plea against the world, let us try to do the world a
little justice too. It is far easier to know and honor a poet when his
fame has taken shape in the spotlessness of marble than when the actual
man comes staggering before you, besmeared with the sordid stains of his
daily life. For my part, I chiefly wonder that his recognition dawned so
brightly while he was still living. There must have been something very
grand in his immediate presence, some strangely impressive
characteristic in his natural behavior, to have caused him to seem like
a demigod so soon.
As we went back through the churchyard, we saw a spot where nearly four
hundred inhabitants of Dumfries were buried during the cholera year; and
also some curious old monuments, with raised letters, the inscriptions
on which were not sufficiently legible to induce us to puzzle them out;
but, I believe, they mark the resting-places of old Covenanters, some of
whom were killed by Claverhouse and his fellow-ruffians.
St. Michael's Church is of red freestone, and was built about a hundred
years ago, on an old Catholic foundation. Our guide admitted us into it,
and showed us, in the porch, a very pretty little marble figure of a
child asleep, with a drapery over the lower part, from beneath which
appeared its two baby feet. It was truly a sweet little statue; and the
woman told us that it represented a child of the sculptor, and that the
baby (here still in its marble infancy) had died more than twenty-six
years ago. "Many ladies," she said, "especially such as had ever lost a
child, had shed tears over it." It was very pleasant to think of the
sculptor bestowing the best of his genius and art to re-create his
tender child in stone, and to make the representation as soft and sweet
as the original; but the conclusion of the story has something that jars
with our awakened sensibilities. A gentleman from London had seen the
statue, and was so much delighted with it that he bought it of the
father-artist, after it had lain above a quarter of a century in the
church-porch. So this was not the real, tender image that came out of
the father's heart; he had sold that truest one for a hundred guineas,
and sculptured this mere copy to replace it. The first figure was
entirely naked in its earthly and spiritual innocence. The copy, as I
have said above, has a drapery over the lower limbs. But, after all, if
we come to the truth of the matter, the sleeping baby may be as fitly
reposited in the drawing-room of a connoisseur as in a cold and dreary
church-porch.
We went into the church, and found it very plain and naked, without
altar decorations, and having its floor quite covered with unsightly
wooden pews. The woman led us to a pew, cornering on one of the side
aisles, and, telling us that it used to be Burns's family pew, showed us
his seat, which is in the corner by the aisle. It is so situated, that a
sturdy pillar hid him from the pulpit, and from the minister's eye; "for
Robin was no great friends with the ministers," said she. This
touch--his seat behind the pillar, and Burns himself nodding in
sermon-time, or keenly observant of profane things--brought him before
us to the life. In the corner-seat of the next pew, right before Burns,
and not more than two feet off, sat the young lady on whom the poet saw
that unmentionable parasite, which he has immortalized in song. We were
ungenerous enough to ask the lady's name, but the good woman could not
tell it. This was the last thing which we saw in Dumfries worthy of
record; and it ought to be noted that our guide refused some money which
my companion offered her, because I had already paid her what she deemed
sufficient.
At the railway-station we spent more than a weary hour, waiting for
the train, which at last came up, and took us to Mauchline. We got into
an omnibus, the only conveyance to be had, and drove about a mile to the
village, where we established ourselves at the Loudoun Hotel, one of the
veriest country inns which we have found in Great Britain. The town of
Mauchline, a place more redolent of Burns than almost any other,
consists of a street or two of contiguous cottages, mostly whitewashed,
and with thatched roofs. It has nothing sylvan or rural in the immediate
village, and is as ugly a place as mortal man could contrive to make, or
to render uglier through a succession of untidy generations. The fashion
of paving the village street, and patching one shabby house on the
gable-end of another, quite shuts out all verdure and pleasantness; but,
I presume, we are not likely to see a more genuine old Scotch village,
such as they used to be in Burns's time, and long before, than this of
Mauchline. The church stands about midway up the street, and is built of
red freestone, very simple in its architecture, with a square tower and
pinnacles. In this sacred edifice, and its churchyard, was the scene of
one of Burns's most characteristic productions, "The Holy Fair."
[Illustration: _Robert Burns._]
Almost directly opposite its gate, across the village street, stands
Posie Nansie's inn, where the "Jolly Beggars" congregated. The latter is
a two-story, red-stone, thatched house, looking old, but by no means
venerable, like a drunken patriarch. It has small, old-fashioned
windows, and may well have stood for centuries,--though, seventy or
eighty years ago, when Burns was conversant with it, I should fancy it
might have been something better than a beggars' alehouse. The whole
town of Mauchline looks rusty and time-worn,--even the newer houses, of
which there are several, being shadowed and darkened by the general
aspect of the place. When we arrived, all the wretched little dwellings
seemed to have belched forth their inhabitants into the warm summer
evening: everybody was chatting with everybody, on the most familiar
terms; the bare-legged children gamboled or quarreled uproariously, and
came freely, moreover, and looked into the window of our parlor. When we
ventured out, we were followed by the gaze of the old town: people
standing in their doorways, old women popping their heads from the
chamber-windows, and stalwart men--idle on Saturday at e'en, after their
week's hard labor--clustering at the street-corners, merely to stare at
our unpretending selves. Except in some remote little town of Italy
(where, besides, the inhabitants had the intelligible stimulus of
beggary), I have never been honored with nearly such an amount of public
notice.
The next forenoon my companion put me to shame by attending church,
after vainly exhorting me to do the like; and it being Sacrament Sunday,
and my poor friend being wedged into the farther end of a closely filled
pew, he was forced to stay through the preaching of four several
sermons, and came back perfectly exhausted and desperate. He was
somewhat consoled, however, on finding that he had witnessed a spectacle
of Scotch manners identical with that of Burns's "Holy Fair" on the very
spot where the poet located that immortal description. By way of further
conformance to the customs of the country, we ordered a sheep's head and
the broth, and did penance accordingly; and at five o'clock we took a
fly, and set out for Burns's farm of Moss Giel.
Moss Giel is not more than a mile from Mauchline, and the road extends
over a high ridge of land, with a view of far hills and green slopes on
either side. Just before we reached the farm, the driver stopped to
point out a hawthorn, growing by the wayside, which he said was Burns's
"Lousie Thorn;" and I devoutly plucked a branch, although I have really
forgotten where or how this illustrious shrub has been celebrated. We
then turned into a rude gateway, and almost immediately came to the
farm-house of Moss Giel, standing some fifty yards removed from the
high-road, behind a tall hedge of hawthorn, and considerably
overshadowed by trees. The house is a whitewashed stone cottage, like
thousands of others in England and Scotland, with a thatched roof, on
which grass and weeds have intruded a picturesque, though alien, growth.
There is a door and one window in front, besides another little window
that peeps out among the thatch. Close by the cottage, and extending
back at right angles from it, so as to inclose the farm-yard, are two
other buildings of the same size, shape, and general appearance as the
house: any one of the three looks just as fit for a human habitation as
the two others, and all three look still more suitable for
donkey-stables and pigsties. As we drove into the farm-yard, bounded on
three sides by these three hovels, a large dog began to bark at us; and
some women and children made their appearance, but seemed to demur about
admitting us, because the master and mistress were very religious
people, and had not yet come back from the Sacrament at Mauchline.
However, it would not do to be turned back from the very threshold of
Robert Burns; and as the women seemed to be merely straggling visitors,
and nobody, at all events, had a right to send us away, we went into the
back door, and, turning to the right, entered a kitchen. It showed a
deplorable lack of housewifely neatness, and in it there were three or
four children, one of whom, a girl eight or nine years old, held a baby
in her arms. She proved to be the daughter of the people of the house,
and gave us what leave she could to look about us. Thence we stepped
across the narrow mid-passage of the cottage into the only other
apartment below stairs, a sitting-room, where we found a young man
eating bread and cheese. He informed us that he did not live there, and
had only called in to refresh himself on his way home from church. This
room, like the kitchen, was a noticeably poor one, and, besides being
all that the cottage had to show for a parlor, it was a
sleeping-apartment, having two beds, which might be curtained off, on
occasion. The young man allowed us liberty (so far as in him lay) to go
up stairs. Up we crept, accordingly; and a few steps brought us to the
top of the staircase, over the kitchen, where we found the wretchedest
little sleeping-chamber in the world, with a sloping roof under the
thatch, and two beds spread upon the bare floor. This, most probably,
was Burns's chamber; or, perhaps, it may have been that of his mother's
servant-maid; and, in either case, this rude floor, at one time or
another, must have creaked beneath the poet's midnight tread. On the
opposite side of the passage was the door of another attic-chamber,
opening which, I saw a considerable number of cheeses on the floor.
The whole house was pervaded with a frowzy smell, and also a dunghill
odor; and it is not easy to understand how the atmosphere of such a
dwelling can be any more agreeable or salubrious morally than it
appeared to be physically. No virgin, surely, could keep a holy awe
about her while stowed higgledy-piggledy with coarse-natured rustics
into this narrowness and filth. Such a habitation is calculated to make
beasts of men and women; and it indicates a degree of barbarism which I
did not imagine to exist in Scotland, that a tiller of broad fields,
like the farmer of Mauchline, should have his abode in a pigsty. It is
sad to think of anybody--not to say a poet, but any human
being--sleeping, eating, thinking, praying, and spending all his
home-life in this miserable hovel; but, methinks, I never in the least
knew how to estimate the miracle of Burns's genius, nor his heroic merit
for being no worse man, until I thus learned the squalid hindrances amid
which he developed himself. Space, a free atmosphere, and cleanliness
have a vast deal to do with the possibilities of human virtue.
The biographers talk of the farm of Moss Giel as being damp and
unwholesome; but I do not see why, outside of the cottage-walls, it
should possess so evil a reputation. It occupies a high, broad ridge,
enjoying, surely, whatever benefit can come of a breezy site, and
sloping far downward before any marshy soil is reached. The high hedge,
and the trees that stand beside the cottage, give it a pleasant aspect
enough to one who does not know the grimy secrets of the interior; and
the summer afternoon was now so bright that I shall remember the scene
with a great deal of sunshine over it.