we come to the quaint little church of Foston, one of the oldest in
England. It was already in existence in 1081 when Doomsday Book was
compiled, being then the property of Earl Allen: later it was conveyed
to St. Mary's Abbey, whose ruins--marvellously beautiful even in
decay--we find at the gates of York. It is noteworthy that this church
of Foston early contained an image of the Virgin of such repute that
people flocked to it in great numbers, and in 1313 the archbishop issued
an edict that they should not desert their own churches to come here.
Smith's church is prettily placed upon a gentle eminence from which we
look across a wave-like expanse of smiling fields to steeper slopes
beyond, a picture of pastoral peace and calm. Beneath the many
mouldering heaps of the church-yard sleep the rustic poor for whom Smith
labored, many of them having been committed to their narrow cells, "in
the certain hope of the life to come," by his kindly hands. Among the
graves stands the old church, the plainest and smallest of its kind. The
present venerable and reverend incumbent, to whom we are indebted for
many courtesies, has at his own expense restored the chancel as a
memorial of his wife, but the principal portion of the edifice remains
the same "miserable hovel" that Macaulay described in Smith's day. A
heavy porch shelters the entrance, and above this is a sculptured Norman
arch of great antiquity, a Scripture subject being graven upon each
stone, that upon the key-block representing the Last Supper. The bare
walls are surmounted by a dilapidated belfry, and the barn-like edifice
is desolate and neglected. We find the interior dismal and depressive,
and quite unchanged since Smith's time, save that the stove-pipe now
enters a flue instead of emerging through a window. The quaint old
pulpit, perched high in the corner opposite the gallery and beneath a
huge sounding-board, is the same in which he so often stood; its frayed
and faded cushions are said to be those that he belabored in his
discourses, and out of which, on one occasion, he raised such a cloud of
dust "that for some minutes he lost sight of the congregation." The
pewter communion plate he used is preserved in a recess of the wall.
Across the end and along one side of the church extends a gallery, in
which sat the children under Smith's sharp eye, and kept in order, as
some remember, by "a threaten-shake of his head." Along the front of
this gallery ugly wooden pegs are aligned, on which the occupants of the
pews hang their wraps, and so diminutive is the place that there are but
four pews between door and pulpit. The present rector, whose father
owned most of the parish and was Smith's firm friend, attended as a boy
Smith's ministrations here, and remembers something of the direct
eloquence of his sermons and their impressive effect upon the auditors.
Attracted by his fame, some came from far to hear him preach who
afterward became his ardent friends, among these being Macaulay and the
Mrs. Apreece whom de Stael depicted as "Corinne" and who subsequently,
as wife of Humphry Davy, was guest at The Rector's Head. In this shabby
little church Smith gave away his daughter Emily, the Archbishop of York
reading the marriage service; and not long after Smith removed to
Somerset, and Foston saw him no more.
The church contains no memorial of any sort in memory of Smith. The
decayed condition of this temple has long been a reproach to the
resident gentry. Since those whose property interests are most concerned
in the restoration of the church have declined to enter upon it, the
good rector contemplates undertaking it at his own charge. Not long ago
he was engaged upon the plans, and it may be that, by the time these
pages reach the reader, Foston church as Smith knew it will have ceased
to exist. The writer has a lively hope that some of the New World
pilgrims who have marked other Old World shrines which else had been
neglected, will set in these renovated walls an enduring memorial--of
pictured glass or sculptured stone or graven metal--in remembrance of
the illustrious author-divine who, during his best years, ministered in
this lowly place to a congregation of rude and unlettered poor.
NITHSDALE RAMBLES
_Scott--Hogg--Wordsworth--Carlyle's Birthplace--Homes--Grave--Burns's
Haunts--Tomb--Jeanie Deans--Old Mortality, etc.--Annie Laurie's
Birthplace--Habitation--Poet-Lover--Descendants._
[Sidenote: Carlyle's Birthplace--Grave]
From the "Heart of Mid-Lothian" and the many shrines of picturesque
Edinburgh, once the literary capital of Britain, our saunterings bring
us to other haunts of the "Wizard of the North:" to his oft described
Abbotsford,--that baronial "romance in stone and lime,"--with its
libraries and armories, its precious relics and more precious memories
of its illustrious builder and occupant, who here literally "wrote
himself to death;" to the dream-like, ivy-grown ruins of holy Melrose,
whose beauties he sang and within whose crumbling walls he lingered and
mused; to his tomb fittingly placed amid the ruined arches and
mouldering pillars of Dryburgh Abbey, embowered by venerable trees and
mantled by clinging vines. Strolling thence among the "Braes of Yarrow,"
the Yarrow of Wordsworth and Hamilton, through the haunts of Hogg the
Ettrick Shepherd, and passing the Hartfell, we come into the dale of
Annan, and follow that winsome water past Moffat, where lived Burns's
daughter, to historic Applegarth, and thence by Lockerby approach
Ecclefechan, the hamlet of Carlyle's birth and sepulture. Among the
lowly stone cottages on the straggling street of the rude village is a
double dwelling with an arched passage-way through the middle of its
lower story; this humble structure was erected by the stone-mason James
Carlyle, and the northern end of it was his home when his illustrious
son was born. Opening from the street is a narrow door; beside it is a
diminutive window, with a similar one above and another over the arch.
The exterior is now smartened somewhat,--the shillings of pilgrims would
pay for that,--but the abode is pathetically small, bare, and poor. The
one lower room is so contracted that the Carlyles could not all sit at
the table, and Thomas used to eat his porridge outside the door. Some
Carlyle relics from Cheyne Row--letters, portraits, pieces of china,
study-lamp, tea-caddy, and other articles--are preserved in the room
above, and adjoining it is the narrow chamber above the archway where
the great historian, essayist, and cynic was born. In this comfortless
home, and amid the dreary surroundings of this hard and rough village,
which is little improved since the days of border war and pillage, he
was reared. The stern savagery of the physical horizon of his boyhood
here, and the hateful and uncongenial character of his environment at
the most impressionable period of his life, may account to us for much
of the morose cynicism of his later years. Further excuse for his
petulance and his acerbities of tongue and temper is found in his
dyspepsia, and a very limited experience of Ecclefechan cookery suffices
to convince us that his indigestion was another unhappy sequence of his
early life in this border hamlet. In "Sartor Resartus" he has
vivaciously recorded some of the incidents and impressions of his
childhood here,--notably the passage of the Carlisle coach, like "some
terrestrial moon, coming from he knew not where, going he knew not
whither." A shabby cross-street leads to the village graveyard, which
was old a thousand years ago, and there, within a few rods of the spot
of his birth, the great Carlyle is forever laid, with his parents and
kindred. The yard is a forlorn enclosure, huddled with hundreds of
unmarked graves, and with other hundreds of crumbling memorials drooping
aslant among the brambles which infest the place. The tombstone of
Carlyle, within an iron railing, is a little more pretentious than those
about it, but his grave seems neglected; daisies and coarse grass grow
about it, and the only tokens of reverent memory it bears are placed by
Americans, who constitute the majority of the pilgrims to this place.
Not far from the kirk-yard is a lowly cottage, hardly better than a
hut, in which dwelt Burns's "Lass of Ecclefechan."
[Sidenote: Dumfries--Burns's Dwelling]
By a transverse road from Lockerby we come to the ruined Lochmaben
Castle of Bruce, and thence into Nithsdale and to Dumfries, the ancient
capital of southwestern Scotland. Here lived Edward Irving, and here
Allan Cunningham toiled as a common mason; but the gray town is
interesting to us chiefly because of its associations with Burns. Here
are the tavern, familiar to us as the "howff," which he frequented, and
where he made love to the bar-maid, "Anna of the Gowden Locks;" the
parlor where his wit kept the table in a roar; the heavy chair in the
"ingle neuk" where he habitually sat, and, in the room above, the lines
to "Lovely Polly Stewart" graven by his hand upon the pane. From the inn
a malodorous lane, named Burns Street, and oft threaded by the bard when
he "wasna fou but just had plenty," leads to the poor dwelling where
lived and died the poet of his country and of mankind. An environment
more repulsive and depressing, a spot more unworthy to be the home of a
poet of nature, can scarcely be imagined. Here not a flower nor a green
bough, not even a grass-blade, met his vision, not one beautiful object
appeased his poetic taste; he saw only the squalid street infested by
unwashed bairns and bordered by rows of mean cottages. How shall we
extol the genius which in such an uncongenial atmosphere produced those
exquisite poems which for a century have been read and loved in every
clime? His own dwelling, a bare two-storied cottage, is hardly more
decent than its neighbors. Within, we find a kitchen and sitting-room,
small and low-ceiled; above, a windowed closet,--sometimes used by the
poet as a study,--and the poor little chamber where he died, only
thirty-seven years after he first saw the light in the clay biggin by
his bonnie Doon.
[Sidenote: Tomb]
The interior of St. Michael's Church has been refitted, and the
sacristan can show us now only the site of Burns's seat, behind a great
pillar which hid him from the preacher, and that of the Jenny on whose
bonnet he saw the "crowlin'" pediculus. Through the crowded church-yard
a path beaten by countless pilgrims from every quarter of the globe
conducts to the place where he lies with "Bonnie Jean" and some of their
children. The costly mausoleum which now covers his tomb--erected by
those who had neglected or shunned him in his life--is to us less
impressive than the poor little gravestone which the faithful Jean first
placed above him, which now forms part of the pavement. The ambitious
statue, designed to represent Genius throwing her mantle over Burns at
the plough, suggests, as some one has said, that a bath-woman bringing a
wet sheet to an unwilling patient had served as a model. Oddly enough,
the grave of John Bushby, an attorney oft lampooned in Burns's verse,
lies but a few feet from that of the poet.
[Sidenote: Jeanie Deans--Carlyle's Craigenputtock]
Our ramble along the wimpling Nith lies for the most part in a second
Burnsland, so closely is it associated with his personality and poetry.
The beauties of the stream itself are celebrated in half a score of his
songs. Every seat and scene are sung in his verse; every neighborhood
and almost every house preserve some priceless relic or some touching
reminiscence of the ploughman-bard. A short way above Dumfries we come
to the picturesque ruin of Lincluden Abbey, at the meeting of the waters
of Cluden and Nith. The crumbling walls are enshrouded in ivy and
surrounded by giant trees, among which Burns loved to loiter. His
"Evening View" and "Vision" commemorate this ruin, and the poem
"Lincluden" was written here. In a tasteful cottage not far from the
Abbey sojourned the Mrs. Goldie who communicated to Scott the incidents
which he wrought into his "Heart of Mid-Lothian," and it was in the
little kitchen of this cottage that the lady talked with Helen Walker,
the original Jeanie Deans. In a poor little low-eaved dwelling, a mile
or two up the valley, that heroine lived, keeping a dame's school and
rearing chickens; and our course along the tuneful stream brings us to
the ancient and sequestered kirk-yard of Irongray, where, among the
grass-grown graves of the Covenanters, her ashes repose beneath a
tombstone erected by Scott himself and marked by an inscription from his
hand: "Respect the Grave of Poverty when associated with love of Truth
and dear Affection." Farther in this lovely region we come to ancient
Dunscore and the monument of Scott's "Old Mortality;" and beyond
Moniaive we find, near the source of the Cairn, Craigenputtock--the
abode where "Thomas the Thunderer prepared his bolts" before he removed
to London. This dreary place, "the loneliest in Britain," had been the
abode of many generations of Mrs. Carlyle's ancestors,--among whom were
"several black-guards but not one blockhead,"--and Carlyle rebuilt and
furnished the house here to which he brought the bride he had wedded
after his repulsion by his fair Rose-goddess, the Blumine of his
"Romance." It is a severely plain and substantial two-storied structure
of stone with steep gables. The entrance is under a little porch in the
middle of the front; on either side is a single window, with another
above it in the second story. There are comfortable and commodious rooms
at each side of the entrance, and a large kitchen is joined at the back.
Carlyle's study, a rather sombre apartment, with a dispiriting outlook,
is at the left; a fireplace which the sage especially loved is in one
wall, his writing-table stood near it, and here he sat and clothed in
virile diction the brilliant thoughts which had come to him as he paced
among his trees or loitered on the near hill-tops. The dining-room and
parlor are on the other side, looking out upon wild and gloomy crags.
Mrs. Carlyle's pen long ago introduced us to this interior, and,
although all her furniture, except perhaps the kitchen "dresser," has
been removed, we recognize the household nooks she has mentioned. The
kitchen, which was the scene of her tearful housekeeping trials, seems
most familiar; its chimney retains its abominable habits, but a recent
incumbent, instead of crying as did Mrs. Carlyle, declared the "chimla
made her feel like sweerin'." Great ash-trees, which were old when the
sage dwelt beneath them, overtop the house; many beautiful flowers--some
survivors of those planted by Carlyle and his wife--bloom in the yard.
In front a wide field slopes away to a tributary of the Cairn, but
sombre moorland hills rise at the back and cluster close about the
house on either side, imparting to the place an indescribably depressing
aspect: as we contemplate the desolate savagery of this wilderness, we
can understand why one of Carlyle's predecessors here killed himself and
others "took to drink."
The bare summit behind the house overlooks Carlyle's estate of a
thousand acres and, beyond it, an expanse of bleak hills and black
morasses. From the craggy brow on the left, the spot where Carlyle and
Emerson sat and talked of the immortality of the soul, we see Dunscore
and a superb vista of the valley towards Dumfries and the Wordsworth
country. The isolation of this place--so complete that at one time not
even a beggar came here for three months--was an advantage to Carlyle at
this period. He speaks of it as a place of plain living and high
thinking: life here appeared to him "an humble russet-coated epic," and
long afterward he referred to the years of their stay in this waste as
being "perhaps the happiest of their lives." This expresses his own
feeling rather than that of his wife, whose discontent finds expression
in many ways, notably in her poem "To a Swallow." Carlyle produced here
some of his best work, including the matchless "Sartor Resartus," the
essay on Burns, and several scintillant articles for the various reviews
which denoted the rise of a new star of genius; but the period of his
stay here was essentially one of study and thought, and, plenteous as it
was in production, it was more prolific in preparation for the great
work he had to do. To Carlyle in this solitude Jeffrey was a visitor, as
well as "Christopher North," Hazlitt, and Edward Irving: hither, "like
an angel from heaven," came Emerson to greet the new genius on the
threshold of its career and to enjoy the "quiet night of clear, fine
talk." Carlyle bequeathed this estate to the University of Edinburgh.
[Sidenote: Friars Carse--Burns's Ellisland]
Another day, our ramble follows the winding Nith northward from
Lincluden. As we proceed, the lovely and opulent dale, once the scene of
clannish strife, presents an appearance of peaceful beauty, pervaded
everywhere with the sentiment of Burns. In one enchanting spot the
stream circles about the grounds of ancient Friars Carse, now a tasteful
and pretty seat. It was erstwhile the residence of Burns's friend
Riddel, to which the poet was warmly welcomed: here he composed the poem
"Thou whom Chance may hither lead," and here he presided at the famous
drinking-match which he told to future ages in "The Whistle." It is
noteworthy that the first Scotch winner of the Whistle was father of
Annie Laurie of the popular song, and that the contest here was between
two of her grandnephews and her grandson,--the latter being victorious.
Burns celebrated his friend of this old hermitage in seven of his poems;
and the present proprietor carefully cherishes the window upon whose
pane the bard inscribed "Lines written in Friars Carse." A little way
beyond lies Druidical Holywood, where once dwelt the author of "De
Sphaera," and next we find the Nith curving among the acres which Burns
tilled in his happiest years, at Ellisland. Embowered in roses and
perched upon an eminence overhanging the stream is the plain little
dwelling which he erected with his own hands for the reception of his
bonnie Jean. It is little changed since the time he lived under its
lowly roof. We think the rooms dingy and bare, but they are better than
those of his abode at Alloway and Mossgiel, much better than those in
which he died at Dumfries. In the largest of the apartments, by a window
which looks down the dreamful valley, Burns had a rude table, and here
he penned some of the most touchingly beautiful poetry of our
language,--poems which he had pondered as he worked or walked afield.
Adjoining the house is the yard where he produced the exquisite lines
"To Mary in Heaven;" in this near-by field he met "The Wounded Hare" of
his verse; in yonder path along the murmuring Nith he composed the
immortal "Tam O'Shanter," laughing aloud the while at the pictures his
fancy conjured; and all about us are reminders of the bard and of the
idyllic life which here inspired his muse: it would repay a longer
journey to see the spot where the one song "John Anderson, my Jo" was
pondered and written.
[Sidenote: Annie Laurie--Early Home]
[Sidenote: Annie Laurie and her Lover]