Once more I tread upon English ground, which I like not the worse for
the six weeks’ ramble I have made among the woods and mountains of
Caledonia; no offence to the land of cakes, where bannocks grow upon
straw. I never saw my uncle in such health and spirits as he now enjoys.
Liddy is perfectly recovered; and Mrs Tabitha has no reason to complain.
Nevertheless, I believe, she was, till yesterday, inclined to give the
whole Scotch nation to the devil, as a pack of insensible brutes, upon
whom her accomplishments had been displayed in vain.--At every place
where we halted, did she mount the stage, and flourished her rusty arms,
without being able to make one conquest. One of her last essays was
against the heart of Sir George Colquhoun, with whom she fought all
the weapons more than twice over.--She was grave and gay by turns--she
moralized and methodized--she laughed, and romped, and danced, and sung,
and sighed, and ogled, and lisped, and fluttered, and flattered--but all
was preaching to the desart. The baronet, being a well-bred man, carried
his civilities as far as she could in conscience expect, and, if evil
tongues are to be believed, some degrees farther; but he was too much a
veteran in gallantry, as well as in war, to fall into any ambuscade that
she could lay for his affection--While we were absent in the Highlands,
she practised also upon the laird of Ladrishmore, and even gave him
the rendezvous in the wood of Drumscailloch; but the laird had such
a reverend care of his own reputation, that he came attended with the
parson of the parish, and nothing passed but spiritual communication.
After all these miscarriages, our aunt suddenly recollected lieutenant
Lismahago, whom, ever since our first arrival at Edinburgh, she seemed
to have utterly forgot; but now she expressed her hopes of seeing him at
Dumfries, according to his promise.
We set out from Glasgow by the way of Lanerk, the county-town of
Clydesdale, in the neighbourhood of which, the whole river Clyde,
rushing down a steep rock, forms a very noble and stupendous cascade.
Next day we were obliged to halt in a small borough, until the carriage,
which had received some damage, should be repaired; and here we met
with an incident which warmly interested the benevolent spirit of Mr
Bramble--As we stood at the window of an inn that fronted the public
prison, a person arrived on horseback, genteelly, tho’ plainly, dressed
in a blue frock, with his own hair cut short, and a gold-laced hat upon
his head.--Alighting, and giving his horse to the landlord, he advanced
to an old man who was at work in paving the street, and accosted him in
these words: ‘This is hard work for such an old man as you.’--So
saying, he took the instrument out of his hand, and began to thump the
pavement.--After a few strokes, ‘Have you never a son (said he) to ease
you of this labour?’ ‘Yes, an please Your honour (replied the senior),
I have three hopeful lads, but, at present, they are out of the way.’
‘Honour not me (cried the stranger); but more becomes me to honour your
grey hairs. Where are those sons you talk of?’ The ancient paviour said,
his eldest son was a captain in the East Indies; and the youngest had
lately inlisted as a soldier, in hopes of prospering like his brother.
The gentleman desiring to know what was become of the second, he wiped
his eyes, and owned, he had taken upon him his old father’s debts, for
which he was now in the prison hard by.
The traveller made three quick steps towards the jail, then turning
short, ‘Tell me (said he), has that unnatural captain sent you nothing
to relieve your distress?’ ‘Call him not unnatural (replied the other);
God’s blessing be upon him! he sent me a great deal of money; but I made
a bad use of it; I lost it by being security for a gentleman that was
my landlord, and was stript of all I had in the world besides.’ At that
instant a young man, thrusting out his head and neck between two iron
bars in the prison-window, exclaimed, ‘Father! father! if my brother
William is in life, that’s he!’ ‘I am!--I am!--(cried the stranger,
clasping the old man in his arms, and shedding a flood of tears)--I
am your son Willy, sure enough!’ Before the father, who was quite
confounded, could make any return to this tenderness, a decent old woman
bolting out from the door of a poor habitation, cried, ‘Where is my
bairn? where is my dear Willy?’--The captain no sooner beheld her, than
he quitted his father, and ran into her embrace.
I can assure you, my uncle, who saw and heard every thing that passed,
was as much moved as any one of the parties concerned in this pathetic
recognition--He sobbed, and wept, and clapped his hands, and hollowed,
and finally ran down into the street. By this time, the captain had
retired with his parents, and all the inhabitants of the place were
assembled at the door.--Mr Bramble, nevertheless, pressed thro’ the
crowd, and entering the house, ‘Captain (said he), I beg the favour of
your acquaintance. I would have travelled a hundred miles to see this
affecting scene; and I shall think myself happy if you and your parents
will dine with me at the public house.’ The captain thanked him for his
kind invitation, which, he said, he would accept with pleasure; but in
the mean time, he could not think of eating or drinking, while his poor
brother was in trouble. He forthwith deposited a sum equal to the debt
in the hands of the magistrate, who ventured to set his brother at
liberty without farther process; and then the whole family repaired to
the inn with my uncle, attended by the crowd, the individuals of which
shook their townsman by the hand, while he returned their caresses
without the least sign of pride or affectation.
This honest favourite of fortune, whose name was Brown, told my uncle,
that he had been bred a weaver, and, about eighteen years ago, had,
from a spirit of idleness and dissipation, enlisted as a soldier in the
service of the East-India company; that, in the course of duty, he had
the good fortune to attract the notice and approbation of Lord Clive,
who preferred him from one step to another, till he attained the rank
of captain and pay-master to the regiment, in which capacities he
had honestly amassed above twelve thousand pounds, and, at the peace,
resigned his commission.--He had sent several remittances to his father,
who received the first only, consisting of one hundred pounds; the
second had fallen into the hands of a bankrupt; and the third had been
consigned to a gentleman of Scotland, who died before it arrived; so
that it still remained to be accounted for by his executors. He now
presented the old man with fifty pounds for his present occasions, over
and above bank notes for one hundred, which he had deposited for his
brother’s release.--He brought along with him a deed ready executed, by
which he settled a perpetuity of four-score pounds upon his parents, to
be inherited by their other two sons after their decease.--He promised
to purchase a commission for his youngest brother; to take the other as
his own partner in a manufacture which he intended to set up, to give
employment and bread to the industrious; and to give five hundred
pounds, by way of dower, to his sister, who had married a farmer in low
circumstances. Finally, he gave fifty pounds to the poor of the town
where he was born, and feasted all the inhabitants without exception.
My uncle was so charmed with the character of captain Brown, that he
drank his health three times successively at dinner--He said, he was
proud of his acquaintance; that he was an honour to his country, and
had in some measure redeemed human nature from the reproach of pride,
selfishness, and ingratitude.--For my part, I was as much pleased
with the modesty as with the filial virtue of this honest soldier,
who assumed no merit from his success, and said very little of his own
transactions, though the answers he made to our inquiries were equally
sensible and laconic, Mrs Tabitha behaved very graciously to him until
she understood that he was going to make a tender of his hand to a
person of low estate, who had been his sweet-heart while he worked as
a journeyman weaver.--Our aunt was no sooner made acquainted with this
design, than she starched up her behaviour with a double proportion of
reserve; and when the company broke up, she observed with a toss of her
nose, that Brown was a civil fellow enough, considering the lowness of
his original; but that Fortune, though she had mended his circumstances,
was incapable to raise his ideas, which were still humble and plebeian.
On the day that succeeded this adventure, we went some miles out of our
road to see Drumlanrig, a seat belonging to the duke of Queensberry,
which appears like a magnificent palace erected by magic, in the midst
of a wilderness.--It is indeed a princely mansion, with suitable parks
and plantations, rendered still more striking by the nakedness of
the surrounding country, which is one of the wildest tracts in all
Scotland.--This wildness, however, is different from that of the
Highlands; for here the mountains, instead of heath, are covered with a
fine green swarth, affording pasture to innumerable flocks of sheep. But
the fleeces of this country, called Nithsdale, are not comparable to the
wool of Galloway, which is said to equal that of Salisbury plain. Having
passed the night at the castle of Drumlanrig, by invitation from
the duke himself, who is one of the best men that ever breathed, we
prosecuted our journey to Dumfries, a very elegant trading town near
the borders of England, where we found plenty of good provision and
excellent wine, at very reasonable prices, and the accommodation as good
in all respects as in any part of South-Britain. If I was confined to
Scotland for life, I would chuse Dumfries as the place of my residence.
Here we made enquiries about captain Lismahago, of whom hearing no
tidings, we proceeded by the Solway Frith, to Carlisle. You must know,
that the Solway sands, upon which travellers pass at low water, are
exceedingly dangerous, because, as the tide makes, they become quick
in different places, and the flood rushes in so impetuously, that the
passengers are often overtaken by the sea and perish.
In crossing these treacherous Syrtes with a guide, we perceived a
drowned horse, which Humphry Clinker, after due inspection, declared to
be the very identical beast which Mr Lismahago rode when he parted with
us at Feltonbridge in Northumberland. This information, which seemed
to intimate that our friend the lieutenant had shared the fate of his
horse, affected us all, and above all our aunt Tabitha, who shed salt
tears, and obliged Clinker to pull a few hairs out of the dead horse’s
tail, to be worn in a ring as a remembrance of his master: but her grief
and ours was not of long duration; for one of the first persons we saw
in Carlisle, was the lieutenant in propria persona, bargaining with
a horse-dealer for another steed, in the yard of the inn where we
alighted.--Mrs Bramble was the first that perceived him, and screamed
as if she had seen a ghost; and, truly, at a proper time and place, he
might very well have passed for an inhabitant of another world; for
he was more meagre and grim than before.--We received him the more
cordially for having supposed he had been drowned; and he was not
deficient in expressions of satisfaction at this meeting. He told us,
he had enquired for us at Dumfries, and been informed by a travelling
merchant from Glasgow, that we had resolved to return by the way of
Coldstream. He said, that in passing the sands without a guide, his
horse had knocked up, and he himself must have perished, if he had not
been providentially relieved by a return post-chaise.--He moreover gave
us to understand, that his scheme of settling in his own country having
miscarried, he was so far on his way to London, with a view to embark
for North-America, where he intended to pass the rest of his days among
his old friends the Miamis, and amuse himself in finishing the education
of the son he had by his beloved Squinkinacoosta.
This project was by no means agreeable to our good aunt, who expatiated
upon the fatigues and dangers that would attend such a long voyage
by sea, and afterwards such a tedious journey by land--She enlarged
particularly on the risque he would run, with respect to the concerns
of his precious soul, among savages who had not yet received the glad
tidings of salvation; and she hinted that his abandoning Great-Britain
might, perhaps, prove fatal to the inclinations of some deserving
person, whom he was qualified to make happy for life. My uncle, who is
really a Don Quixote in generosity, understanding that Lismahago’s real
reason for leaving Scotland was the impossibility of subsisting in it
with any decency upon the wretched provision of a subaltern’s half-pay,
began to be warmly interested on the side of compassion.--He thought
it very hard, that a gentleman who had served his country with honour,
should be driven by necessity to spend his old age, among the refuse of
mankind, in such a remote part of the world.--He discoursed with me upon
the subject; observing, that he would willingly offer the lieutenant an
asylum at Brambleton-hall, if he did not foresee that his singularities
and humour of contradiction would render him an intolerable housemate,
though his conversation at some times might be both instructive and
entertaining: but, as there seemed to be something particular in
his attention to Mrs Tabitha, he and I agreed in opinion, that this
intercourse should be encouraged and improved, if possible, into a
matrimonial union; in which case there would be a comfortable provision
for both; and they might be settled in a house of their own, so that Mr
Bramble should have no more of their company than he desired.
In pursuance of this design, Lismahago has been invited to pass the
winter at Brambleton-hall, as it will be time enough to execute his
American project in the spring.--He has taken time to consider of this
proposal; mean while, he will keep us company as far as we travel in the
road to Bristol, where he has hopes of getting a passage for America.
I make no doubt but that he will postpone his voyage, and prosecute his
addresses to a happy consummation; and sure, if it produces any
fruit, it must be of a very peculiar flavour. As the weather continues
favourable, I believe, we shall take the Peak of Derbyshire and Buxton
Wells in our way.--At any rate, from the first place where we make any
stay, you shall hear again from
Yours always, J. MELFORD CARLISLE, Sep. 12.
To Dr LEWIS.