I learned a good deal about the Baxter _ménage_ during the next few
weeks, from various sources.
First the Rector, whom I encountered one day paying a parochial call
at Twenty-One, The Common. We walked home together.
"He's a strange old fellow," said my companion, "and most of his
characteristics are derived from imitations, conscious or
unconscious, of a stranger old fellow still."
"The late lamented?"
"Exactly. Old Belford was a bachelor, and lived alone among his
books in his house in the Close for nearly forty years. His only
companions were an aged cook-housekeeper and Adam Baxter. He died
fifteen or twenty years ago, before I came here. He was nearly
ninety, I fancy."
"What was Baxter's exact status in the household?"
"By his own account, he was the old man's confidential secretary,
amanuensis, and librarian. My own belief is that he cleaned the
Archidiaconal boots. Of course he may have been allowed to dust the
books in the library too. Anyhow, during his period of service in
that household he contrived to amass an enormous quantity of more or
less useless book-learning. He is regarded hereabouts as quite a
savant. His erudition makes him respected by those who have none,
and his library of miscellaneous rubbish gives him the status of a
man of property."
"It's not all rubbish. He has a Shakespeare and a Southey, at least.
He has Jowett's Thucydides too, he tells me."
"You're right: I retract that part. But his library is rubbish, in
the sense that it's an unclassified rag-bag of odds and ends. Still,
he's an enlightened old chap in his way. When he settled down in
that little house after old Belford's death and began to set up as a
sort of provincial Socrates, his conversation and library were mainly
classical, as you might expect, considering their origin. He would
pull down a Homer, or a Herodotus, or a Vergil, and spout to his
audience some favourite passage of his late employer."
"You mean to say he translated from the original Latin and Greek?"
"Ah! That's what nobody knows. The peculiar thing about Baxter is
that, though he will read or quote from any book in his library for
your delectation, he practically never permits any one to take the
book out of his hands. No human eye, for instance, has ever fallen
upon the printed pages of Baxter's Homer. If it did, I suspect it
would find that page printed in good plain English. Pope's
translation, probably."
"You think he is a fraud, then?"
"Oh, bless you, no! I think he is a genuine book-lover, and
values--in fact lives on--the respect which his literary eminence
earns for him in this extremely unliterary township. But candidly I
think most of his classical works are common cribs. I have known
less pardonable forms of hypocrisy. But I was saying just now he was
enlightened. Of late years he has supplemented his Latin and Greek
and his Poets and Historians by scientific and technical literature.
People go and consult him about all sorts of modern developments and
tendencies now."
"Adenoids, for instance?"
"Precisely. Well, I turn off here. I am going to pay a call upon a
gentleman who made a large fortune out of Civilian War Work of
National Importance. _He_ has acquired a library, too--quite
recently and all at once--beautifully bound in morocco and tree calf.
But I doubt if he could quote a single line from a single volume
therein. Baxter for me, every time! Good-afternoon."
Secondly, from McAndrew.
"Yon auld felly, Baxter," he suddenly remarked to me one day while
driving me home from a professional round, and passing the door of
Number Twenty-One; "he's real respeckit in the toon. In Scotland, of
course, he would be naebody, for every one's educatit there. But
here there's men making as much as seeven pound a week at the Phoenix
Linoleum Works, on the south side, that has read naething since they
passed through school but the Sabbath newspapers. They look on
Baxter as a kin' o' Cyclopedy. _But_--I was in there the other nicht
for a bit crack, and I asked him what he thought of Rabbie Burns.
_He'd never heard tell of him_! There's your Oracle!"
"Mr. Baxter is a self-made man of letters," I said. "He got most of
his learning second-hand from the Archdeacon. Perhaps the Archdeacon
was not a student of Burns, either."
The enormity of this suggestion quite paralyzed McAndrew for a while.
Presently he recovered sufficiently to resume: "Yon Archdeacon was a
doited sort of body. He lived all alone in yon dreich-lookin' house
in the Cathedral Close nigh fufty year. He had naething aboot him
but books, and naebody aboot him but an auld wife, Mistress Corby,
and Baxter. She's deid now, but her dochter married on the
ironmonger in High Street. It was her was telling me. Mistress
Corby did the beds and the cooking, and Baxter did everything else.
He redd up the library, and dusted the books. He carried the coals
and sorted the garden as weel. And where do you think the Archdeacon
got him?"
"Baxter?"
"Aye, Baxter. _Singin' in the street_! There's few fowk in this
toon ken that, or mind it. But Baxter just drufted into the place
one wet day, with the toes stickin' oot of his boots, and the
Archdeacon found him standin' in the rain and took him intil the
hoose and kept him. Twenty-five shillin' a week he got, with two
suits of clothes a year and a bit present at Christmas. He bided
there thirty years, and the Archdeacon never repented of his bargain.
Good servants is scarce."
McAndrew paused impressively, to allow this last truth to sink in,
and continued.
"I jalouse the way Baxter got an so weel with the Archdeacon was the
interest he took in the library. He was never oot of it, unless he
was pitten oot. It wasna so much that he would read the books as
worship them. He would take them oot and hold them in his hands by
the hour, or sit back on a chair and glower at their backs on the
shelves. So Mistress Corby's dochter that married on the ironmonger
tellt me."
"By the way, when did Mr. Baxter's granddaughter appear on the
scene?" I inquired.
"That was long after the old man died. He left Baxter an annuity,
with two bookcases and a wheen books to start a library of his ain.
Mistress Corby's dochter says he left him fufty, and Baxter pinched
other twenty-five. That was the nucleus, you'll understand. The
rest he has been collecting for himself for many a year."
"And the granddaughter?" I inquired gently.
"Oh, aye; I was coming to her. She came along aboot five years ago,
long after the old man had settled into yon wee hoose where he stays
now. She just appeared. Naebody could ever find oot where from,
although Mistress Corby's dochter asked Baxter to tea in her own
hoose twice and called on him herself three times. Baxter is as
close as an oyster, and as for the lassie"--McAndrew shuddered
slightly--"she has an ill tongue tae provoke."
Thirdly, _chez_ Baxter.
As already indicated, it was the old gentleman's custom of an evening
to receive visitors in the front room and discourse to them on
literature, poetry, history, and science. Light refreshments--very
light refreshments--were handed round by Miss Weeks; but these were a
mere appendage to the literary provender supplied. I formed the
habit of joining this symposium upon one evening every week--at first
out of idle curiosity (and perhaps with the pardonable desire of
indulging in one of the few forms of advertisement open to a
struggling physician), but subsequently through sheer interest in the
academy itself and the amazingly sure touch with which the master
handled his disciples.
They were a motley crew. There were socially ambitious young
shop-assistants, anxious to acquire a literary polish likely to
impress the opposite sex. There were artisans who wished to advance
themselves in the technique of their profession. There were
heavy-handed, heavy-shouldered, rather wistful men, with muscles made
lusty by hard physical labour, conscious of minds grown puny and
attenuated for lack of intellectual nourishment. There were humble
folk with genuine literary leanings, who came to consult Mr. Baxter's
poems and essays, and sometimes shyly proffered compositions of their
own for perusal and comment. There were men--uneducated men--dimly
conscious of the fact that they possessed immortal souls, who had
waded into the deep waters of theological speculation, and got out of
their depth. For each and all Mr. Baxter had a word of welcome and
counsel.
"I am very happy to see you, Mr. Wright. And your friend, Mr.--?
Mr. Dennis. Thank you. We are going to read and discuss a passage
from 'The Tempest' presently. Shakespeare, you know. Be seated, and
my granddaughter will offer you a little refreshment.... I have been
consulting various authorities on statical electricity for you, Mr.
Armitage. I have marked a few passages in my Encyclopædia, Volume
Twenty in my library, which seem to me to treat the subject most
lucidly. You might also derive some information from the life of Mr.
Faraday--Volume Eighteen. My granddaughter will look up the passage
for you presently.... Ah, Mr. Jobson! How are they down at the
factory to-day? You are just in time. We are about to read and
discuss a passage from 'The Tempest.' Shakespeare, of course. Be
seated, pray.... For me to read, Mr. Penton? Thank you: that indeed
will be an intellectual treat. I will peruse your manuscript at
leisure, and comment upon it at our next meeting.... The Agnostics
still bothering you, Mr. Clamworthy? Well, I am no theologian; but
for sheer old-fashioned common sense I don't think you can beat
Paley's 'Evidences of Christianity.' The late Archdeacon used to say
that he always came back to Paley in the end. Ada, my dear, that
passage I marked in Volume Forty-Seven! Now friends, 'The Tempest'!"
After that the Presentation Shakespeare would be opened, and Mr.
Baxter would declaim selected passages. His voice was mellow, and
his manner ecclesiastical; plainly his whole deportment was moulded,
to the last gesture and inflexion, on one unvarying model. A
discussion would follow--a quite naïve and rather pathetic
discussion, sometimes. Ultimately Mr. Baxter would sum up, generally
with extracts from other Shakespearian passages, which he turned up
with great readiness and dexterity, rolling them from off his tongue
with obvious relish. Occasionally he would ask Ada for some other
volume, and read from that. There were great moments when he would
actually call for Homer or Horace and, with apologies for rusty
scholarship, offer to our respectful ears a quite coherent rendering
of some famous passage.
Finally, at a moment selected by herself, the vigilant Ada Weeks
would terminate the proceedings with the curt announcement that her
grandfather was tired. The precious volumes were locked in the
library again, and we were bidden, without ceremony, to say
good-night to our host and not to bang the street door. Both of
which commands we obeyed promptly and reverently, and departed
homeward.