Visit to the Home of Burns.—The Poet’s Cottage.—The
Celebration.—Walks and Rides in the Rain.—Edinburgh.—Its
Associations.—The Teachings of History.—Home
of Drummond.—Abbotsford.—Melrose.—Jedburgh
Abbey.—Newcastle-on-Tyne.
Bayard’s visit to Ayr was the first of a long series of like visitations
to the homes of celebrated poets, and being then a novel experience
was doubly enjoyed. It may be that the similar occupation, and like
inspiration, which characterized both himself and Burns, made the spot
more attractive. Had they not both followed the plough through the thick
sward? Had not both milked the cows; drove the horses to the water;
planted the corn; dug up the weeds; cut the hay, and all the while sang
and recited original verses? Had he not been ridiculed by his playmates,
and sneered at by his neighbors, in common with that great poet of
Scotland? To look over the farm on which Burns toiled; to be shown the
spot on which it is claimed Burns overturned—
“That wee bit heap o’ leaves and stibble,”
the home of the “mousie,” and to be shown the cottage he was born in,
and the scenes which inspired his songs, interesting as they are to
the writer of prose, must have been peculiarly satisfactory to him. He
does not speak of it, however, with the enthusiasm one would expect,
and it is quite probable that he was not yet wholly inured to the
inconveniences of a wet climate, and could not think or muse in a crowd
as satisfactorily as when dry and alone. When he arrived in the town,
the streets were filled by an immense throng, and there could have
been little satisfaction in trying to fall into poetical dreams. It is
a great satisfaction to those of Bayard’s friends who have loved him,
and put their faith in him, to know that he put himself on record in
some of his early letters, in no light terms, as having an unutterable
disgust for the drunken brawling which went on in the name of Burns
that day in Ayr. He felt, with great keenness, the disgrace which every
American feels that it is to Scotland, that the old cottage, so sacred
for its associations as the birthplace of Burns, should be occupied as
a drinking-saloon, and be crowded with intoxicated vagabonds. It seemed
like making a dog-kennel of a chapel in St. Paul’s. Anything but genius,
intellect, or wit characterizes the crowd that usually frequent Burns’
Cottage on such days; and it is said to have been, in 1844, the resort of
a more beastly class than are those wretches who get intoxicated there
now, and, naturally, on such a great day as that on which Bayard visited
it, every Scotsman who indulged at all became furiously drunk. Besides
that inconvenience, the trustees of the monument, on the day when so
many thousands came to see it and its treasures, voted to lock it up; and
Bayard, with the others, was shut out from its interesting collection of
relics and mementoes. Still further, it was so arranged by the marshals
of the occasion, that the grand stand, with its literary feast and the
ceremonies appurtenant to the occasion, were shut out from the populace
to whom the poet sang, and Bayard being only a strange boy, with no
more of a title than Robert Burns had, was obliged to content himself
with a seat on the ridge of the “brig o’ Doon.” He did see old Alloway
kirk, and heard its bell. He saw within its ruined walls the rank weeds,
and without, the graves of the poet’s ancestry. He did have a cheerful
pedestrian tour; for the home of Burns, with Alloway kirk and the bonnie
Doon, are three miles from the city of Ayr in open country. He saw the
sister and sons of the poet. He heard the assembled thousands sing, “Ye
banks and braes’ o’ bonnie Doon.” He saw a grandson of Tam O’Shanter. He
had to walk the three miles, returning through mud and rain, and he had
to stand in an open car, exposed to a driving rain-storm, throughout the
two hours’ ride by railroad to Glasgow. How different his reception then,
as a boy and unknown, from that which he received in his riper age, after
his fame was secured, at the home of Germany’s greatest poet.
We follow Bayard in his first tour in Europe with greater detail than we
shall do with other journeys, because in this he developed so much of
that character which made him famous. History being written, not for the
dead, but for the instruction and encouragement of the living, should
show clearly how a great life was attained, as a guide for similar genius
in the days to come. In a volume of hasty sketches like this, we cannot
hope to do the work as thoroughly as we should so much love to do it; but
as far as can be done at this early day, we give those events which had
the greatest effect upon his life as a writer of prose and poetry.
He must have feasted in Edinburgh. Richest storehouse in Scotland, for
all such as follow letters! There was the monument to Scott, suggestive
of the most beautiful in art, but so insignificant as a reminder of him,
while the walls of Salisbury Crags, and the dome of Arthur’s Seat, frown
beyond and above it. There was Holyrood Palace, with its stains of blood,
the couch of the beautiful queen, and the collections of historical
relics. No place but the Tower of London has received such attention
from gifted and famous literary men. Historians, poets, philosophers,
educators, preachers, and lawyers have written and discoursed upon it.
There was Calton Hill, with its monuments to great men. There was the
great University, and there was the old Castle, that sat like a crown on
the head of the city. All had been described by the most facile pens. All
were full of living interest, and when Bayard tried to describe them,
he found himself attempting to compete with the greatest essayists
of the English-speaking world. The Grass Market, where Porteous was
executed; Cowgate Street, with its aristocratic associations; St. Giles’
Church, with its memories of John Knox and the Heart of Mid-Lothian,
were described by him, about which it is a kind of literary sacrilege to
speak in other than classic language. It was a school that included every
other, and Bayard was an apt and diligent scholar.
A short distance from Edinburgh, the pedestrians saw the birthplace
and hermitage of Drummond. It is a delightful, sequestered chateau,
called “Hawthornden,” and in it the poet wrote nearly all his elegant
sonnets, and it was there that old Ben Jonson, after a walk from London,
was entertained by Drummond, and Drummond was in turn entertained by
Jonson. Going by the way of Galashiels and Selkirk, the party visited
Abbotsford and its environs, where the immortal Scott lived and wrote.
In the beautiful mansion which Scott built, and in which he wrote his
most popular works, they read his manuscripts; sat at his desk; wandered
in his gardens; gazed intently over the wide lawn and the distant Tweed;
scrutinized the enormous variety of relics which had been collected by
that antiquarian, to whom kings and queens were glad to become tributary.
Thence they walked along the hard and smooth highway to old Melrose.
Ruins they would see in the near England, and on the distant continent,
which would enclose a dozen abbeys such as this; Gothic arches they
would enter which would make those of Melrose seem as a toy; and ivy and
carving and chancels would be noticed, so much more rich and beautiful,
that these would suffer sadly if put in comparison. But nowhere else in
all the wide world would they find a locality made more interesting than
this. The associations are almost everything. And to the initiated, the
great magician, Scott, still speaks in the groined arches, flowering
pillars, old clock, and willow-like windows. Melrose Abbey is a marked
illustration of the power of a master-mind to give influence, life, and
interest to inanimate things. Bayard felt this truth and mentioned it.
He read “The Lay of the Last Minstrel” in the shadow of the arches, and
imagined how the ruins glowed when the grave of the wizard opened and the
book was revealed. Who knows but it was there, in the presence of those
stirring associations, that he first conceived the plan which led him
to make classic in poetry and fiction the fields, hills, and Quakers of
his native county. Had he lived ten years longer than he did, his loved
Kennett might have been as classic in song and story as Abbotsford itself.
From Melrose the young pedestrians walked to Jedburgh, omitting the
delightful excursion to Dryburgh, but passing the home of Pringle, who
had been the founder of “Blackwood’s Magazine,” and who had been also
a poet and wanderer like Bayard. While passing the Cheviot Hills, the
party met an excursionist in a carriage, fast asleep, which appeared to
amuse Bayard very much. Probably he afterwards saw more amusing scenes
than that, wherein travellers did not appreciate their privileges. The
writer, as late as the summer of 1878, saw an American who had worked
most industriously to lay up the funds to visit Switzerland, ride up the
entire ascent of the glorious Alps at St. Gothard, on the top of a coach,
fast asleep. Such marvels does the world of humanity contain. Bayard did
not sleep when anything of interest called upon him for investigation,
nor when the beauties of nature were to be enjoyed. They crossed the
border between Scotland and England, over the battle-fields of the
Percys, and by streams that were often, in days past, actually swollen
with blood. There, “Marmion,” with all its tales historical, and legends
mythical, was quoted and _lived_ as only the cultured traveller can live
it. There was instruction in every scene, every stranger, and every inn.
How well Bayard availed himself of their lessons, is illustrated in
all his excellent letters on foreign travel, and in his books compiled
from them. At Newcastle he noticed a group of miners begging in the
streets, and when he heard how they had struck for higher wages, because
they could not longer exist on the pittance allowed them, and how they
and their families were turned out upon the streets to starve, his
indignation was very great, and in his book he utters a prophecy that
soon that murmur from the oppressed people would increase to a roar, and
be heard “by the dull ears of power.” From Newcastle he went by boat to
London, reaching that city in the early morning near the end of August.