MELROSE REVISITED.
Jack Bakewell and Edward Lancelot Stirling went to see me off by the
night train to Dunbar Station, five miles from Thornton-Loch, and I got
there in time for breakfast. The old house was just the same except for
an oriel window in the drawing room looking out on the North Sea, and
the rocks which lay between it and Colhandy path (where my
great-grandfather Spence had preached and his wife had preferred
Wesley), and Chirnside, or Spence's Mains in the same direction. All
the beautiful gardens, the farm village, where about 80 souls lived,
the fields and bridges were just as I remembered them. My aunt Margaret
was no longer the vigorous business-like woman whom I recollected
riding or driving in her little gig an over the farm of 800 English
acres which my great-grandfather had rented since 1811. Not the Miss
Thompson whom I had introduced into "Uphill Work." She had had a severe
stroke of paralysis, and was a prisoner to the house, only being lifted
from her bed to be dressed, and to sit in a wheeled chair and be taken
round the garden on fine days. The vigorous intellect was somewhat
clouded, and the power of speech also; but she retained her memory. She
was always at work with her needle (for her hands were not affected)
for the London children, grandnieces, and nephews who called her
grandmamma, for she had had the care of their Parents during 11 years
of her brother Alexander's widowhood. But Aunt Margaret could play a
capital game of whist--long whist. I could see that she missed it much
on Sunday. It was her only relaxation. She had given up the farm to
James Brodie, who had married her cousin Jane, the eldest of the two
children she had mothered, and he had to come to the farm once or twice
a week, having a still larger farm of his own in East Lothian, and a
stock farm in Berwickshire also to look after. The son of the old farm
steward, John Burnet, was James Brodie's steward, and I think the farm
was well managed, but not so profitable as in old times. Aunt Mary
said, in her own characteristic way, "she always knew that her sister
was a clever woman, but that the cleverest thing she had done was
taking up farming and carrying it on for 30 years when it was
profitable, and turning it over when it began to fall off." But she
turned it over handsomely, and did not interfere in the management. My
Aunt Mary deserves a chapter for herself. She was my beau ideal of what
a maiden aunt should be, though why she was never married puzzles more
than me. Between my mother and her there was a love passing the love of
sisters--my father liked her better than his own sisters. When my
letter announcing my probable visit reached her she misread it, and
thought it was Helen herself who was to come; and when she found out
her mistake she shed many tears. I was all very well in my way, but I
was not Helen. It was not the practice in old times to blazon an
engagement, or to tell of an offer that had been declined; but my
mother firmly believed that her sister Mary, the cleverest and, as she
thought, the handsomest of the five sisters, had never in her life had
an offer of marriage, although she had a love disappointment at 30. She
had fixed her affections on a brilliant but not really worthy man, and
she had to tear him out of her heart with considerable difficulty. It
cost her a severe illness, out of which she emerged with what she
believed to be a change of heart. She was a converted Christian. I
myself don't think there was so much change. She was always a noble,
generous woman, but she found great happiness in religion. Aunt Mary's
disappointment made her most sympathetic to all love stories, and
without any disappointment at all, I think I may say the same of
myself. She was very popular with the young friends of her youngest
brother, who might have experienced calf love; so very real, but so
very ineffectual. One of these said to her:--"Oh, Miss Mary, you're
just a delight, you are so witty." Another, when she spoke of some man
who talked such delightful nonsense, said, "If you would only come to
Branxholme I'd talk nonsense to you the haill (whole) day."
When I arrived at the old home I found Aunt Mary vigorously rubbing her
hand and wrist (she had slipped downstairs in a neighbour's house, and
broken her arm, and had to drive home before she could have it set). No
one from the neighbour's house went to accompany her; no one came to
enquire; no message was sent. When she recovered so far as to be able
to be out, she met at Dunbar the gentleman and lady also driving in
their conveyance. They greeted each other, and aunt could not resist
the temptation to say:--"I am so glad to see you, and so glad that you
have spoken to me, for I thought you were so offended at my taking the
liberty of breaking my arm in your house that you did not mean to speak
to me again." This little expression of what the French call malice,
not the English meaning, was the only instance I can recollect of Aunt
Mary's not putting the kindest construction on everybody's words and
actions. But when I think of the love that Aunt Mary gathered to
herself from brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, cousins, and
friends--it seems as if the happiest wife and mother of a large family
could not reckon up as rich stores of affection. She was the unfailing
correspondent of those members of the family who were separated by land
and ocean from the old home, the link that often bound these together,
the most tolerant to their failings, the most liberal in her aid--full
of suggestions, as well as of sympathy. Now, in my Aunt Margaret's
enfeebled state, she was the head of the house and the director of all
things. Although she had differed from the then two single sisters and
the family generally at the time of the disruption of the Church of
Scotland, and gone over to the Free Church, the more intensely
Calvinistic of the two, though accepting the same standards--the
Westminster Confession and the Shorter Catechism--all the harsher
features fell off the living texture of her faith like cold water off a
duck's back. From natural preference she chose for her devotions those
parts of the Bible which I selected with deliberate intention. She
wondered to find so much spiritual kinship with me, when I built on
such a different foundation. When I suggested that the 109th Psalm,
which she read as the allotted portion in "Fletcher's Family
Devotions," was not fit to be read in a Christian household, she said
meekly--"You are quite right, I shall mark it, and never read it again."
My mother always thought me like her sister Mary, and when I asked Mr.
Taylor if he saw any resemblance between us, he said, with cruel
candour--"Oh, no. Your Aunt Mary is a very handsome woman." But in ways
and manners, both my sister Mary and myself had considerable
resemblances to our mother's favourite sister; and I can see traces of
it in my own nieces. There can be no direct descent from maiden aunts,
though the working ants and bees do not inherit their industrious
habits from either male or female parents, but from their maiden aunts.
Galton's theory, that potentialities not utilized by individuals or by
their direct descendants may miss a generation or two, opens a wide
field of thought, and collaterals may draw from the original source
what was never suspected. And the Brodies intermarried in such a way as
to shock modern ideas. When my father was asked if a certain Mr.
Dudgeon, of Leith, was related to him, he said--"He is my mother's
cousin and my stepmother's cousin, and my father-in-law's cousin, and
my mother-in-law's cousin." Except for Spences and Wauchopes there was
not a relative of my father that was not related to my mother.
Grandfather Brodie married his cousin, and Grandfather Spence married
his late wife, Janet Parks cousin Katherine Swanston. I cannot see that
these close marriages produced degenerates, either physical or mental,
in the case of my own family.
Of the twelve months I spent in the old country, I spent six with the
dear old aunts. How proud Aunt Mary was of my third novel, with the
sketch of Aunt Margaret in it, of the Cornhill article, and the request
from Mr. Wilson to write for The Fortnightly. I introduced her to new
books and especially to new poets; she had never heard of Browning and
Jean Ingelow. She was so much cleverer than her neighbours that I often
wondered how she could put up with them. How conservative these farmers
and farmers' wives and daughters were, to be sure. These big tenants
considered themselves quite superior to tradesmen, even to merchants,
unless they were in a big way. There was infinitely more difference
between their standard of living and that of their labourers than
between theirs and that of the aristocratic landlords. James Barnet,
the farm steward, said to me--"you have brought down the price of wheat
with your Australian grain, and you do big things in wool, but you can
never touch us in meat." This was quite true in 1865. I expected to see
some improvement in the farm hamlet, but the houses built by the
landlord were still very poor and bare. The wages had risen a little
since 1839, but not much. The wheaten loaf was cheaper, and so was tea
and sugar, but the poor were still living on porridge and bannocks of
barley and pease meal instead of tea and white bread. It was
questionable if they were as well nourished. There were 100 souls
living on the farms of Thornton and Thornton Loch.
A short visit from Mrs. Graham to me at Thornton Loch opened up to Aunt
Mary some of my treasures of memory. She asked me to recite "Brother in
the Lane," Hood's "Tale of a Trumpet," "Locksley Hall." "The Pied
Piper," and Jean Ingelow's "Songs of Seven." She made me promise to go
to see her, and find out how much she had to do for her magnificent
salary of 30 pounds a year; but she impressed Aunt Mary much. Mrs.
Graham had found that the Kirkbeen folks, among whom she lived, were
more impressed by the six months' experiences of two maiden ladies, who
had gone to Valparaiso to join a brother who died, than with her fresh
and racy descriptions of four young Australian colonies. She had seen
Melbourne from 1852 to 1855--a wonderful growth and development. The
only idea the ladies from Valparaiso formed about Australia was that it
was hot and must be Roman Catholic, and consequently the Sabbath must
be desecrated. It was in vain that my friend spoke of the Scots Church
and Dr. Cairns's Church. Heat and Roman Catholicism were inseparably
connected in their minds.
Visiting Uncle and Aunt Handyside and grown-up cousins, whom I left
children, I saw a lot of good farming and the easy circumstances which
I always associated with tenants' holdings in East Lothian. Next farm
to Fenton was Fentonbarns, a Show place, which was held by George Hope,
a cousin of my grandmother's He was an exceptional man--a radical, a
freetrader, and a Unitarian. Cobden died that year. Uncle Handyside was
surprised that George Hope did not go into mourning for him. John
Bright still lived, and he was the bete noire of the Conservatives in
that era; and the abolition of the corn laws was held to be the cause
of the agricultural distress--not the high rent of agricultural land.
George Hope was a striking personality. When my friend J. C. Woods was
minister at St. Mark's Unitarian Church, Edinburgh, Mr. Hope used to be
called the Bishop, though he lived 16 miles off. When the first Mrs.
Woods died, leaving an infant son, it was Mrs. Hope who cared for it
till it could go to his relatives in Ireland. Later he stood for
Parliament himself. In the paper I wrote over the name of Edward Wilson
for The Fortnightly I noted how the House of Commons represented the
people--or misrepresented them. The House consisted of peers and sons
of peers, military and naval officers, bankers, brewers, and
landownership was represented enormously, but there were only two
tenant farmers in the House. It was years after my return to Australia
that I heard of his unsuccessful candidature, and that when he sought
to take another lease of Fentonbarns, he was told that under no
circumstances would his offer be entertained. Fentonbarns had been
farmed by, three generations of Hopes for 100 years, and to no owner by
parchment titles could it have been more dear. George Hope's friend,
Russell, of The Scotsman, fulminated against the injustice of refusing
a lease to the foremost agriculturist in Scotland--and when you say
that you may say of the United Kingdom--because the tenant held certain
political opinions and had the courage to express them. My uncle
Handyside, however, always maintained that his neighbour was the most
honourable man in business that he knew, and far from being an atheist
or even a deist, he had family prayers, and on the occasion of a death
in the family, the funeral service was most impressive. He was one of
the salt of the earth, and the atmosphere was clearer around him for
his presence.
But I must give some space to my visit to Melrose, my childhood's home.
My father's half-sister Janet Reid was alive and though her two sons
were, one at St. Kitts and the other at Grand Canary, she lived with an
old husband and her only daughter in Melrose still.. I can never forget
the look of tender pity cast on me as I was sitting in our old seat in
church, looking at seats filled by another generation. The
paterfamilias, so wonderfully like his father of 1839, and sons and
daughters, sitting in the place of uncles and aunts settled elsewhere.
They grieved that I had been banished from the romantic associations
and the high civilization of Melrose to rough it in the wilds, while my
heart was full of thankfulness that I had moved to the wider spaces and
the more varied activities of a new and progressive colony. My dear old
teacher was still alive, though the school had been closed for many
years. She lived at St. Mary's with her elder sister, who had taught me
sewing and had done the housekeeping, but she herself was almost blind,
and a girl came every day to read to her for two or three hours. She
told me what a good thing it was that she knew all the Psalms in the
prose version by heart, for in the sleepless nights which accompany old
age so often they were such a comfort to her in the night watches. I
had sent her my two novels when they were published, "Clara Morison"
and "Tender and True." She would have been glad if they had been more
distinctly religious in tone. Indeed, the novel I began at 19 would
have suited her better, but my brother's insistence on reading it every
day as I wrote it somehow made me see what poor stuff it was, and I did
not go far with it. But Miss Phin was, on the whole, pleased with my
progress, and glad that I was able to go to see her and talk of old
times. How very small the village of Melrose looked! How little
changed! The distances to the neighbouring villages of Darnick and
Newstead, and across the Tweed to Gattonsville, seemed so shrunken. It
was not so far to Abbotsford as to Norwood. The very Golden Hills
looked lower than my childish recollection of them. Aunt Janet Reid
rejoiced over me sufficiently. "You are not like your mother in the
face, but, oh, Katie, you are like dear Mrs. David in your ways. How I
was determined to hate her when she came to Melrose first. I was not 13
and she was taking away the best of my brothers, the one that I liked
best; but it did not take long before I was as fond of her as of David
himself."
I also had the pleasure of visiting Mr. Murray, the parish
schoolmaster, who taught my three brothers, then retired, living with
his daughter, Louisa, an old schoolfellow at Miss Phin's. There was an
absurd idea current in 1865 that all visiting Australians were rich and
I could not disabuse people of that notion. Of all the two families of
Brodies and Spences who came out in 1839 there was only my brother John
who could be called successful. He was then manager of the Adelaide
branch of the English, Scottish, and Australian Bank. If it had not
been for help from the wonderful aunts from time to time both families
would have been stranded. I had the greatest faith in the future of
Australia, but I felt that for such gifts as I possessed there was no
market at home. Possibly I should have tried literature earlier if I
had remained in Scotland, but I am not at all sure that I could have
succeeded as well. For the first time in my life I had as much money as
I wanted. I am surprised now that I spent that 200 pounds when I had so
much hospitality. In fact, except for a week in Paris, I never had any
hotel expenses. I had got the money to enjoy it and I did. This was
what my friend wished. I made a few presents. I bought some to take
home with me. I spent money on dress freely, so as to present a proper
appearance when visiting. I was liberal with veils, though I hate the
practice. To a woman who had to look on both sides of a shilling since
1839 this experience was new and delightful. Among other people I went
to see was Mrs. C----. the widow of the Tory writer and branch bank
manager, who was my father's successful rival. He was not speculative
like my father. He was a keen business man and had a great hunger for
land.
On the gravestones around Melrose Abbey are many names with the
avocation added--John Smith, builder; William Hogg, mason--but many
with the word portioner. They were small proprietors, but they were not
distinguished for the careful cultivation which in France is known as
"LA PETITE CULTURE." No; the portions were most carelessly handled, and
in almost every instance they were "bonded" or mortgaged. I recollect
in old days these portioners used to make moonlight, flittings and
disappear, or they sold off their holdings openly and went to America,
meaning the United States. The tendency was to buy up these portions,
and a considerable estate could be built up by any shrewd man who had
money, or the command of it. Before we left Melrose in 1839, Mr. C----
had possession of a good deal of land. When he died he left property of
the value of 90,000 pounds, an unheard-of estate for a country writer
before the era of freetrade and general expansion. He had asked so much
revenue from the railway company when the plan was to cut through the
gardens we as children used to play in, that the company made a
deviation and left the garden severely alone. The eldest daughter had
married a landed proprietor, the second was single, the third married
to a wealthy man in the west, the fourth the richest widow in Scotland.
One son had land, and the other son land, and another business
training. All was material success, and I am sure I did not grudge it
to them, but when I took stock of real things I had not the least
glimmering of a wish to exchange. One generally desires a little more
money than one has; but even that may cost too much. I think my dear
old Aunt Reid felt that the Spences had gone down in my father's
terrible smash in 1839, and the C---- family had steadily gone up, and
she was pleased that a niece from Australia, who had written two books
and a wonderful pamphlet, and, more important still in the eyes of Mrs.
Grundy, had money to spend and to give, was staying with her in
Melrose, and wearing good and well made clothes. Old servants--the old
laundress--old schoolfellows were visited. My father's old clerk, Allan
Freer, had a good business in Melrose, though not equal to that of the
Tory firm. I think the portioners were all sold out before he could
enter the field, and the fate of these Melrose people has thoroughly
emphasized for me the importance of having our South Australian
workmen's blocks, the glory of Mr. Cotton's life, maintained always on
the same footing of perpetual lease dependent on residence. If the
small owner has the freehold, he is tempted to mortgage it, and then in
most instances the land is lost to him, and added to the possessions of
the man who has money. With a perpetual lease, there is the same
security of tenure as in the freehold--indeed, there is more security,
because he cannot mortgage. I did not see the land question as clearly
on this 1865 visit, as I did later; but the extinction of the old
portioners and the wealth acquired by the moneyed man of Melrose gave
me cause for thinking.