weather was such as no boat could put off to ascertain the cause. On the
third day the storm abated, and a boat was manned from Crail. No sooner
had the crew of the boat landed, than they were assailed by a strong
sulphurous smell, and proceeding directly to the lighthouse, they found
the door shut, and no one answered their call. Forcing an entrance, they
saw the keeper, his wife, and five children, all lying suffocated, and a
sixth infant sucking its dead mother. In another room were found two men
almost expiring, but who, by the timely assistance rendered,
providentially recovered. It was supposed that this sad accident was
occasioned by some burning coals being blown among some cinders and
refuse lying at the bottom of the lighthouse.
The last incident to which we shall refer is the boat disaster at the
island in 1837.
On the 1st of July, 1837, a skipper and boat-owner belonging to
Cellardyke set sail from that harbour, with a large party, on a pleasure
excursion to the Isle of May. The day was fine and wind favourable, and
the party, chiefly young men and women, consisting of sixty-five
persons, including the crew, were all in high spirits, having music on
board, indulging freely in mirth and gaiety, and little thinking of the
sad event impending over their heads, by which, in a little half-hour,
so many of them were to perish.
Having approached close to the island, on the western side, it was not
deemed fitting to land at the place called "the Stand," or
"Atterstones," but to proceed round the southern end of the island to
the eastern side thereof, with intention to disembark at a creek on the
eastern side, called "Kirken Haven." In the attempt to enter this haven,
there being a swell of the sea, or surge, setting in from the eastward
at the time, the boat became unmanageable, and was violently driven
against the shore; the _stem_, in consequence, having stuck fast on the
rocks, while the _stern_ floated in deep water, the swell or eddies, and
broken water, upset or caused the boat to sink, and a great number of
persons belonging to Anstruther, Cellardyke, and the neighbouring towns,
were drowned. Of those, ten were young unmarried women, two married
women, and one infant--in all, thirteen persons. One individual lost his
wife, his mother, and his child; another, a young man, observing his
sister and a young woman to whom he was warmly attached both struggling
in the water, and sinking in the midst of furious breakers, boldly
plunged into the boiling sea, and made his way to the perishing girls.
And oh what a sight for those on shore, to see the noble-minded youth
risking his life for those he loved! He supports both for some time; he
comforts them with hopes of succour; but his strength begins to fail.
What shall he do? Shall he part with one? and if so, which of the two?
No; the idea is torment to him--he cannot for a moment entertain it. He
will save both, or perish in the attempt. He sinks, and rises, and sinks
again, with his precious burden. The waters close over their heads--they
are given up for lost. The two young women perish, but a huge wave casts
the young man nearer the shore; his comrades on the beach make the most
extraordinary efforts to save him, and he is at last rescued from the
very jaws of death.
CALEB CRABBIN.
As a good theorising spirit in philosophy is the very soul of all
progress in science, and the creatures that dabble in experiments with
crucibles and retorts are no better than pioneers to the great geniuses
that combine and generalise, so some think it an undoubted truth that
speculation is the great spirit of commerce (including, of course, in
the articles of that commerce, _wives_), and that those who do not make
a bold stroke seldom make an effectual one. In no department of commerce
is speculation held of greater importance than in that of marriage; and
how rare is it to find a man who thoroughly understands it--if, indeed,
it may not be said that ninety-nine out of a hundred do not know even
the difference between buying and selling. The women marriage-traders,
indeed, form a very creditable exception, because every one of
them--knowing very well, for a surety, that they have on hand a stock
that does not improve by keeping--are sellers, out and out; while the
males again are almost all buyers, though, if they had the sense of a
tortoise, they might know that they have just as good a stock to dispose
of as their fair customers. There are, doubtless, some exceptions in our
sex that go far to retrieve our characters; but, alas! they are very
few; and it is just on that very account that we think it proper to give
some account of Mr Caleb Crabbin, hosier in the Lawn-market in
Edinburgh--so great a genius in the department to which we have alluded,
that he discovered that all mongering in blankets and stockings was a
perfect bagatelle in comparison of the profitable disposal of his own
person; and no sooner did he make the discovery than he acted upon it,
with all the boldness that belongs to original thinkers.
The worthy we have thus mentioned favourably--because we admire a
supporter of the rights of free trade--had laboured for a period of six
or eight years in disposing of articles of hosiery, for every one of
which he paid a high price; and, whether it was that he could not buy to
advantage--his genius, probably, not lying in that way--or that he
could not sell with a profit, wherein he displayed the same want of
natural tact--it is certain that he became a bankrupt about as soon as
other people merely begin to see they might make "a good thing" of a
stop. So he wound up cleverly, and made just as little of his
bankruptcy--a matter of profit often to those who are mere bunglers in
the department of solvency--and took it into his head to sell himself.
So, accordingly, as chance would have it, he threw his eyes on Miss
Belinda Yellowlees, who combined the two comely properties of wealth and
weakness--in other words, she possessed a thousand pounds, and a very
bad constitution; and here it was that Caleb's properties began to be
manifested; for the man who thought himself not worth one farthing--and
was, in fact, not worth more, in the estimation of any of his own
sex--was proved to be worth no less than a thousand pounds, at which
price Miss Yellowlees bought him, and thought, too, that she had got a
very good bargain. Seldom, indeed, it happens that both buyer and
seller, in a transaction of pure business concerns, think that they have
made a hit; yet, of a surety, it was the case in this marriage; for Mr
Caleb Crabbin actually conceived that he had made as good a bargain as
did Miss Belinda Yellowlees; and so, to be sure, it was soon proved, by
an exceeding good probatory test; for Miss Belinda, within six months,
went the way of the dead, and her thousand pounds went the way of the
living--that is, into the possession of her surviving husband.
No one will deny that this was undoubtedly a good beginning in this new
commercial enterprise of Mr Caleb; and the best feature of the whole
transaction was, that, along with the thousand pounds, he had actually
got back again the commodity which he gave for it, and was thereby in a
capacity to dispose of it again, on far better terms than ever. Many a
good article of hosiery he had disposed of over the counter, and never
seen a single glimpse again either of the price or the article; whereas
here there was all the difference in the world; for he held the
possession of both--the thing sold, and the price got for it; and,
stimulated by his success, he, as soon as decency would permit, set
about again endeavouring to make a bargain, upon the same, or better,
terms than before. Nor was he long about encompassing his object; for
the money he had got by the first transaction yielded a facility to the
progress of the second; and, within a year of the death of the first
unfortunate, Mrs Belinda Crabbin, he, after a hunt comprehending nearly
all that period, found out an individual not only in every way worthy of
his attention, but exhibiting all the features of being as good a
market-woman as he was an out-and-out trader. The lady, whose name was
Miss Amelia Reddie--clearly an orthographic phase of the cognomen
Ready--was eager, or "yape," as the Scotch call it, for a transaction;
and, having nothing to boast of but her patrimony of twelve hundred and
fifty, she made the most of what she had; and the never a man of all she
had ever spoken to but knew, as well as he did the number of his own
fingers, the exact sum, to the odd fifty, which she was willing to give
as the consideration. Many a dozen of suitors had heard her set forth
her mercantile recommendation; but, then, she was the last of five, who
had all died of consumption, leaving her the heir of the small sums that
belonged to them; and this fact, which she tried assiduously to conceal,
had, in a great measure, destroyed her saleable capability, till the
time when there appeared in the mart Mr Caleb, who, instead of deeming
it an objection, thought it the consideration next best to the amount of
her funds. Well, without exhausting a lexicon upon the affair, we come
to the point, as cleverly as did the hero himself, who was, in the
thirteenth month after the death of his first wife, duly and lawfully
put in possession of Miss Amelia Reddie and her twelve hundred and
fifty.
"A deuced deal better than hosiery this!" said Caleb to himself, on his
marriage night; "for here have I not made two thousand two hundred and
fifty pounds in one year and a month, without ever a shop, or signboard,
or risk or trouble at all!"
If we were to say that there was an atom of affection in a concern of
this kind, we would assuredly be doing not only Mr Caleb a great
injustice, but be committing a libel on the taste of our sex; and, to be
sure, save for the money, there was none at all. But we have more to
say; and that is, that, where a man does not love the woman (as why
should he?) whom he has married for money, it follows, as a natural
corollary, that he wishes her dead. With "a trembling hand," like that
of the poet Tibullus, he would hold the fair one, when dying; but then
the hand would tremble lest she should recover, not lest she should go
the way of all flesh. But, alas for the plans of mortals! the greatest
geniuses sometimes fail in noble undertakings; and, not long after Mr
Crabbin had begun to discover ailing symptoms on the part of his
helpmate, the truth broke upon him that he was about to become a father;
and a father, too, in good time, he became, of as healthy a child as
ever blessed a living husband who liked his wife.
"If I am to have half-a-dozen, or mayhap a dozen, of these," said he,
"the devil a merchant that ever sold cheaper than he bought, ever made
so bad a bargain. Every one of those creatures will cost, at least,
three hundred pounds; so that, if I shall have six of them, I will be a
loser to the extent of five hundred and fifty."
The speech was prophetic; for every year, for a period of six, the
consumptive Mrs Amelia Crabbin presented her husband with a healthy
pledge; and on every birth-day Mr Caleb made a speech almost the same,
but with increased lugubrity. But for this he might have found very good
authority among the ancients; and if he had known of that strange man
who wept at the birth of a child, or of Xenophon, who continued the job
of a sacrifice he was at, though a messenger told him of the death of
his boy, he would have thought them very sensible men, of a very
different kidney from the fool, John Zopilah, who died of joy, when he
heard that his wife had brought him an heir male. But it availed Mr
Caleb nothing.
"Better," said he, "I had stuck by the counter; for I might have become
bankrupt as often as I chose; and, if I had made the never a penny by
it, I might at least have got quit of my creditors; but children are a
sort of creditors that a man cannot sweep off by any means, not even the
famous cessio."
And what made the matter more intolerable was, that all this time, when
Mrs Crabbin was thriving so excellently well, in the way of adding to
the number of the human species, she was gradually declining in health,
having, by the time she had the third child, become so lean and
shrivelled, that neither the Atlas nor the Hercules would have insured
her life at a premium of fifty per cent. Yet, as we have said, three
more followed in good time, and healthier creatures never opened their
eyes on an evil world. Mrs Amelia Crabbin had now, however, done her
worst; and, having been wasted away to a mere sigh, she one night took
Mr Caleb round the neck, and, weeping bitterly, told him she was going,
in the midst of her prosperity, to where she once thought she would have
gone six years before--even where her five sisters were--the grave;
recommending to him to take care of the twelve hundred and fifty, for
the sake of the six children she had left, as every penny of it, and
more, would be needed by the dear orphans. Mr Caleb wept too; but it was
at the touching allusion she had made to the danger she had escaped, of
dying before the first of the children was born; and Mrs Amelia, seeing
what she conceived to be undoubted evidence of his affection, hung
awhile upon his neck, and then bid him bring in every one of the six.
They were accordingly ranged by the side of her bed.
"Now, my little ones," she said to them, tenderly, "Caleb, Andrew,
Maria, George, Amelia, and Augustus, your mother is going to die, and
you may never see her again after this hour. Mr Crabbin," she continued,
looking to her husband, "you must know that these children are the last
of the blood of our Reddies, and proud am I to think that it has pleased
Heaven that I should be the means of thus leaving so many scions of our
ancient race, that there is no chance of the name being forgotten,
seeing that they have all three names, the middle one being Reddie in
every instance. I hope they will multiply as I have done. Bless you, my
dear children! Your father will protect you; and thankful am I that the
twelve hundred and fifty is yet all left, so that you will get your
shares when you come to be of age."
In an hour afterwards Mrs Amelia Crabbin was no more, and in three days
afterwards she was buried.
"It is finished," said the husband; "and a fair speculation never turned
up an uglier balance, since the days of the bubble of the South Sea."
So he took to real weeping; and there was not a friend that came to give
him consolation, but went away with the impression that he had been one
of the most loving of husbands, and was one of the tenderest of men.
Among those visiters, were two or three acquaintances of his deceased
wife, and one or two of them possessed even more than twelve hundred and
fifty. So, Mr Caleb, seeing through his wet eyes that his grief took
with them very well, continued the indications--a very easy process,
seeing he had only to look to the debit and credit of his speculation to
make the tears drop as fast as hailstones.
"It's a heavy loss you have sustained, Mr Crabbin," said Miss Jean
Gibbs.
"Very heavy loss," rejoined he, with emphasis on the principal word.
"But the children are a consolation."
"To be sure they are," answered Caleb; "and I have six of them, and now,
you see, all without a female to take charge of them."
The hint did not take, as the saying goes; and Miss Jean having
departed, and Miss Isabella Gentle, who had also a competency, having
arrived, he tried the same plan with her; for his spirit for speculation
was still strong; and he expected, yet, to make a far more successful
hit than he had even done in the case of Miss Belinda Yellowlees. Now,
Miss Isabella was just as sincere in her admiration of his sorrow as was
Miss Jean Gibbs; and all that was gone over about the loss he had
sustained, and the consolation of the children, and the feeling he
exhibited, as became a good husband and a loving father. But the moment
he made a hint about the poor creatures having no female to look after
them, the same effect was as evident as in the case of Miss Jean--for
Miss Isabella, for a certainty, did not seem to relish it.
"All this may come of my being too eager and too soon," said he. "But I
fear these six children will be stumbling-blocks in the way of my
farther enterprise; for a woman will not give so much for a man with six
children, as she would do for himself. Had my second transaction come up
to the first, I might to-day have been an independent man. But a third
may do better; and, if it don't, it shall not, by Hymen, be Mr Caleb
Crabbin that will be to blame."
Nor, indeed, could it be alleged that he spoke falsely; for, as soon as
the proper time came, he set about a very vigorous search for a third
helpmate in every direction where he thought he had any chance. He tried
again Miss Jean Gibbs and Miss Isabella Gentle; but the children formed
an objection which they could not get over.
"I will never marry a man with six children--no--nor five, nor four, nor
three, nor two," said Miss Jean.
"I would far rather live and die an old maid, than become the slave of
another woman's family," was the reply of Miss Isabella.
And then he tried Miss Julia Cross, who had something of a lying stock,
though not much, and her answer was just as peremptory.
"I hold the woman to be mad, Mr Caleb Crabbin," said she, "who would
undertake the charge of six children. One might as well become a
schoolmistress at once."
And after this rebuff, he tried Miss Angelina Crabbe, who had an annuity
of somewhere about seventy-five pounds, besides about three hundred of
old savings; but Angelina said that she would not be a stepmother for
the whole earth.
"I see it will not do," said he, after some farther rejections. "Unless
I take a wife with nothing, I will never get another, where it is known
that I am burdened with six children. But he who takes a wife with
nothing is but a sorry trafficker; and the never a wife with nothing,
were she as fair as Venus, will Caleb Crabbin marry in this world. I
will pack off the whole crew, and try my fortune under other colours."
The resolution thus formed he put in execution, by getting the whole of
his children boarded with friends who lived at a distance, upon the
pretence that he was going to take a trip away somewhere abroad. Having
achieved this preliminary, he set off for the nearest good
watering-place, being no other than the noted Pitcaithly, where so many
"wanters," have, with various success, been supplied; and he had not
been a week there when he fell in with a buxom widow of five-and-thirty,
who was reported as being worth not a jot less than one hundred and
fifty pounds a-year, secured on the strong Atlas, by the providence of
her deceased husband. The name she carried, Mrs Jemima Bowsie, was a
mixture of her own maiden name and the surname of her husband, very well
blended; and she carried herself with such an air of frankness,
surrounded with the eclat of her fortune, which she had taken care to
blaze pretty well, that Mr Caleb Crabbin was immediately struck.
"That is my mark," said he, "as sure as was Belinda Yellowlees; and, if
I'm not worth the purchase at one hundred and fifty pounds per annum, on
the life of Mrs Jemima Bowsie, I have lost all my saleable commodity."
One who had twice sold himself, and offered himself for sale a score of
times over, had no difficulty in getting matters placed in a train for a
new offer; and an hour had scarcely elapsed after the monologue we have
mentioned, when Mr Caleb Crabbin and Mrs Jemima Bowsie were walking and
talking together as if they had been acquainted from the period of
conning the alphabet. Nor was their intimacy long limited to talking
a-field; for he found his way to the house where she lodged, and she
found her way to the house where he had taken up his quarters, and, in
the course of these meetings, mutual hints and questions tended towards
the expression of mutual wishes.
"By the way, Mr Crabbin," said Mrs Jemima, one evening when they were
sitting together in her lodgings, "I have a question to put to you; and,
as you respect a widow, left, as it were, alone in the world, you will
answer me according to your conscience."
"That will I, Mrs Bowsie," answered Caleb, "as sincerely as if you were
my wedded wife."
"That is tenderly and beautifully indited, Mr Crabbin," answered she.
"Pray, sir, is the Atlas a strong company?"
"I believe it is a very strong concern, madam," replied he; "not much
less so, I fancy, than the Royal, where I happen to have two thousand
pounds deposited on an operating account. But might I have the great
boldness, madam, to ask you why you put that question to me?"
"I am not sure," replied Mrs Jemima; "yet, let me see. Why, there can't
be much harm in it either, only one does not like to trumpet forth her
private affairs. But then it is to be remembered that I am a lonely
creature in the world; and to whom can an unprotected widow speak, if it
isn't to one who is just in her own situation?--for you hinted to me
that your wife has gone, and left you also solitary."
"Too true," answered Caleb, affecting some ocular moisture. "My house is
indeed empty enough. Indeed I have the key of it in my pocket; and one
who has the never a one to speak to at home just wanders about where the
fancy lists."
"How our positions and sentiments _do_ coincide!" replied she. "Well, as
to the reason for my putting the question about the strength of the
Atlas; this," she continued, as she opened a box, and took out a
policy--"this may explain it." And she handed the policy to Mr Caleb
Crabbin.
"An annuity policy for one hundred and fifty, for the natural life,"
said he, as he affected surprise at what he knew as well as he did the
amount of the sums possessed by his two deceased wives. "A handsome
thing, madam, of a certainty."
"Very well for two single people," rejoined she, sentimentally; "but
believe me, sir, I would not have put the question, had it not been that
a female is apt to get nervous where her all is laid out on the security
of one concern."
"There need be never a tone of apology about the matter, madam; for, to
be plain with you, I often make inquiries about the stability of the
Royal, where, as I told you, I have two thousand pounds deposited on an
operating account; and, to be plainer still, I do not hesitate to tell
you, madam, that my house being, as I said, locked up in these gloomy
days of my widowhood, I carry about with me my receipt. Here it is."
(Opening his pocket-book.) "You may take a glance at it just as I have
done at your policy. Giff-gaff, as we say, makes good friends."
"And you have just hit upon the very reason," replied she, "why I carry
about my policy with me; for, where there is no one at home to take an
interest in one's affairs, or a charge of their effects, one feels
uneasy about a valuable document, such as these in our hands. Of course
you do not tell any one of the question I put to you; because, you know,
the Atlas might come on me for damages."
"No fear on't, madam," said Caleb; "but pray--hem! hem!--is it your
intention, Mrs Bowsie, ever again to change your name?"
"And, pray, Mr Crabbin," replied she, holding away her head, "is it your
intention ever to give yours to another woman?"
"The never a doubt on't, madam," rejoined Mr Caleb. "Loneliness is poor
company; and I would marry to-morrow, were it for nothing else than to
produce some stir of life in my deserted house."
"And, for society's sake, I would almost be tempted to change condition,
too," rejoined she, rising to put past the policy and conceal her
blushes.