THE
UNSPEAKABLE SCOT
BY
T. W. H. CROSLAND
[Illustration]
LONDON: GRANT RICHARDS
NEW YORK: G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
1902
Copyright, 1902, by
T. W. H. CROSLAND
Published, July, 1902
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE SUPERSTITION 1
II. PREDECESSORS 23
III. THE POW-WOW MEN 42
IV. THE SCOT IN JOURNALISM 57
V. THRUMS AND DRUMTOCHTY 76
VI. BARBIE 92
VII. THE BARD 101
VIII. THE SCOT AS A CRITIC 117
IX. THE SCOT AS BIOGRAPHER 142
X. THE SCOT IN LETTERS 153
XI. THE SCOT IN COMMERCE 163
XII. THE SCOT AS A DIPSOMANIAC 172
XIII. THE SCOT AS CRIMINAL 179
XIV. THE SCOT BY ADOPTION 186
XV. THE SCOT AND ENGLAND 194
XVI. THE WAY OUT 204
XVII. ADVERTISEMENT 212
The Unspeakable Scot
I
THE SUPERSTITION
This book is for Anglo-Saxons. It is also in the nature of a broad hint
for Scotchmen. My qualification to bestow broad hints upon the politest
and most intellectual of the peoples is that I possess a large fund of
contempt for the Scottish character. Also, I had the misfortune to be
born on a day which is marked, sadly enough, in the calendars, BURNS
DIED. So that, one way and another, I appear to have been raised up for
the work before us, even as Dr. J. M. Barrie[1] was raised up to assist
the fortunes of a certain brand of smoking mixture.[2]
Of course, if a man speak of the Scotch in any but the most dulcet tones
he invites the onslaught of a thousand witty pens. The bare title of
the present essay is pronounced by good judges to be uncomplimentary
to Scotland, and I can well imagine that since its announcement Drs.
Lang, Archer, Robertson Nicoll, Ross, and Hamish Hendry, together with
a base residuum of anonymous reviewers, have made a point of sleeping
in their clothes in order that they might be “ready, aye ready,” to
deal faithfully with the haughty Southron at the earliest possible
moment. I like to think, however, that Dr. Lang, who, with true Scottish
shrewdness, avowed himself but yesterday a convinced crystal-gazer,[3]
has had due prevision of the friendliness of my intentions. Were I
disposed to bloody battle, I might have opened fire by remarking in hot
type that if you scratch a Scotchman you will find a very low person
indeed. Or I could have thrown from my pompom that shining projectile:
False Scot
Sold his king
For a groat.
But who, that has a feeling for warfare, would fight with a Scotchman?
Such a one, I hope, does not breathe; the plain fact being that if a Scot
beats you, he beats you; whereas, if you begin to beat a Scot, he will
assuredly bawl, in the King’s name, for the law. “Hech, sirs, rin for the
polis. Ah’m gettin’ whupped!” Let us therefore continue our discourse
amicably.
Your proper child of Caledonia believes in his bones that he is the salt
of the earth. Prompted by a glozing pride, not to say by a black and
consuming avarice, he has proclaimed his saltiness from the house-tops
in and out of season, unblushingly, assiduously, and with results which
have no doubt been most satisfactory from his own point of view. There
is nothing creditable to the race of men, from filial piety to a pretty
taste in claret, which he has not sedulously advertised as a virtue
peculiar to himself. This arrogation has served him passing well. It has
brought him into unrivalled esteem. He is the one species of human animal
that is taken by all the world to be fifty per cent cleverer and pluckier
and honester than the facts warrant. He is the daw with a peacock’s tail
of his own painting. He is the ass who has been at pains to cultivate
the convincing roar of a lion. He is the fine gentleman whose father
toils with a muck-fork. And, to have done with parable, he is the clumsy
lout from Tullietudlescleugh, who, after a childhood of intimacy with
the crudest sort of poverty, and twelve months at “the college” on
moneys wrung from the diet of his family,[4] drops his threadbare kilt
and comes South in a slop suit to instruct the English in the arts of
civilisation and in the English language. And because he is Scotch, and
the Scotch superstition is heavy on our Southern lands, England will
forthwith give him a chance; for an English chance is his birthright.
Soon, forbye, shall he be living in “chambers” and writing idiot books.
Or he shall swell and hector and fume in the sub-editor’s room of a
halfpenny paper. Or a pompous and gravel-blind city house shall grapple
him to its soul in the capacity of confidential clerk. Or he shall be
cashier in a jam factory, or “boo and boo” behind a mercer’s counter, or
“wait on” in a coffee tavern, or, for that matter, soak away his chapped
spirit in the four-ale bars off Fleet Street. Hence, as an elegant writer
in one of the weekly reviews puts it, the Englishman “is painfully aware
that it is the Scot who thrusts him aside in the contest for many of the
best prizes.”
When one turns to the intimate study of the Scotch character as limned
by Scotch authority, one finds oneself confronted with the work of two
schools of artists, which, for the sake of convenience, we will dub the
Old and New Schools. The Old School—of which, by the way, every Scotchman
save one is either a member or a supporter—has had a tremendous vogue
and has accomplished superhuman things for the country and people of its
love. To this school the Scotch superstition owes its origin and its firm
grip on the imagination of the average white man. It is a forthright,
downright, thorough sort of school, not in the least diffident or
mealy-mouthed, not in the least ambiguous, not in the least infected
with that “proud reserve” which is understood to be Scotland’s noblest
heritage. Among the choice exemplars of the art of the Old School—and it
has thousands of choice exemplars—we may reckon Dr. George Lockhart, who
wrote the _Memoirs_ and thereby earned for himself imperishable fame.
Lockhart was a “Scotland-for-ever” man of the first water. “As for the
[Scots],” he says, “none will, I think, deny them to have been a Brave,
Generous, Hardy People.… As the Scots were a Brave, so likewise were
they a Polite People; every Country has its own peculiar Customs, and
so had Scotland, but in the main they lived and were refined as other
Countries; and this won’t seem strange, for the English themselves allow
the Scots to be a Wise and Ingenious People, for say they to a Proverb,
‘_They never knew a_ Scots _Man a Fool_.’ And if so, what should hinder
them from being as well bred and civilised as any other People? Those of
Rank (as they still do) travelled Abroad into foreign Countries for their
Improvement, and vast numbers, when their Country at home did not require
their services [mark the fine sophistry] went into that of foreign
Princes, from whence after they had gained immortal Honour and Glory,
they returned home; and as it is obvious that at this very time (which
must chiefly proceed from this humour of Travelling) the Scotch Gentry
do far exceed those of England, so that in the one you shall find all
the accomplishments of well-bred gentleman, and in your country English
Esquires all the Barbarity imaginable.”[5] Thus Dr. George Lockhart,
two hundred years ago. ’Tis a fair picture and a winning, if a trifle
overstated. There stands your brilliant, and at the same time unassuming,
figure of a Scotchman—“brave,” “generous,” “hardy,” “polite,” “refined,”
“not a fool,” “well bred,” “civilised,” “travelled,” “wise,” “ingenious,”
and immortally “honourable” and “glorious.” Who can withstand him? Who
would deny him the look of love, the patriot glow? Certainly not the
men of his own blood, who have their livings to get. Certainly not the
Scotchman, who perceives, by favour of Dr. Lockhart, his own impeccable
sonsie self done to the life. To this day the artists of the Old School
continue to paint the same inspiring portrait, and if you look into the
latest replica, by no less judicial a hand than that of Dr. John Hill
Burton[6] you shall discover the undying lineaments, bespeaking the
undying virtues, and composed sweetly to the purposes of the undying
advertisement.
So much for the Old School. As for the New School, I take credit that it
is a discovery of my own. It consists of one man only. He is a Scotchman,
and his name is William Robertson Nicoll. Dr. Nicoll is the editor of
the _British Weekly_. He also edits the _Bookman_, and lounges round
letters in a paper called the _Sketch_. Some time ago this great and good
Scotchman was accused of indulging in too many literary aliases. We were
then informed by a _protégé_ of his that it would be well for us to lift
reverent eyes and behold in Dr. William Robertson Nicoll “a force in
letters”—“the only force, some of us think,” added the incense-breathing
_protégé_. We looked and beheld. Also we read, in _Who’s Who_, that Dr.
Nicoll was the author of _The Lamb of God_, _The Key of the Grave_,
_The Incarnate Saviour_, _The Return to the Cross_, _The Secret of
Christian Experience_, _Songs of Rest_, and _Sunday Afternoon Verses_,
all, no doubt, excellent and exciting works, but obviously sealed to
a department of letters in which we have not specialised. Therefore,
we took “the-force-in-letters” notion for granted. Our own idea of Dr.
Robertson Nicoll’s relation to letters will be set forth duly in another
chapter. Meanwhile, it is necessary to say that Dr. Nicoll is one of
those delightfully irresponsible literary forces who babble of “Mr. S. R.
Crockett’s _great_ novel _Joan of the Sword Hand_,” in one breath, and
with the next pray to be delivered from “a misuse of words.”
But let us give honour where honour is due. There are white marks even
on the editor of the _British Weekly_. For quite two years past his
dropsical pennyworth has been our constant solace in times of darkness
and difficulty. Each week it contains a lengthy and helpful letter by
one “Claudius Clear.” Many young Scotch writers have told us in many a
useful paragraph that they do not think they are breaking a confidence
when they say that “Claudius Clear” is one of the pen names of Dr.
Robertson Nicoll. So that on the whole “Claudius” is a Scotchman,
despite the circumstance that he dates his correspondence from Basil
Regis, Middlesex, and masquerades in a name which is about as Scotch
as “Schiepan.” For that matter, anybody might have guessed it from his
syntax. And being a Scotchman, “Claudius” is, of course, omniscient
and infallible. That is where the absurd beauty of him comes in. That,
Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton, is why one reads the _British Weekly_. Do
you wish to know how to run the _Times_? Would you care to be instructed
in “the art of conversation”? Are you anxious to learn what is really
meant by “good manners”? Would you be advised on “Order and Method,”
“Brilliance,” “Overwork,” “Handwriting,” “Publishing as a Profession,”
“Editing as a Profession,” “The Keeping of Old Letters,” “How to Remember
and how to Forget,” “The Art of Life,” “The Art of Taking things Coolly,”
“Turning Out the Fools,” or indeed on any other matter under the sun—from
“Vanity” to “Samuel”?—why, you just turn up “Claudius,” and there you
are; two columns which settle the question swiftly and for ever. What
wonder, then, that in my anxiety to get at the truth about Scotchmen, I
should turn up “Claudius”? Nor have I turned him up in vain, as witness
the following admirable words:
“In the first place, the Scotsman is a son of the rock. The circumstances
of his birth and upbringing are as a rule very stern. He is cradled in
the storm; he has to fight for life in a rough climate, in a huddle of
grey houses. The amenities of life are by no means plentiful. As a rule,
money is scarce. There are few demonstrations of affection; one is made
to feel that he must trust himself, that man is a soldier, and life is a
fight. [Here, Scot-like, the worthy “Claudius” breaks off to indulge in
a little pathetic personal reminiscence.] When I look back to my early
years it seems to me that the whole atmosphere was laden with care, that
the strain on the hearts of the people was so tightened by the material
needs of those who depended on them that life was a taut rope on which
only a trained acrobat could keep his balance. The result was a feeling
of constant anxiety, a dread of the future. It was haunted by fears which
could hardly be measured, and as the years went on their difficulties
seemed to increase. [Which, to say the least, is clumsily put.] In this
way young Scotsmen were taught to take things seriously. They knew that
their right arms must serve them, and they did not lean upon others.
They were thus fiercely independent. They asked nothing from those about
them—the asking would be vain. As they sought nothing they would give
nothing. Acknowledgment of superior position they resolutely refused;
and they were ready to resent every assumption of superiority. They knew
well that the door of opportunity opens but seldom, and were eager to
enter it when it did open. They knew that success in any form was to be
paid for, and they were willing to pay. They would work hard without
complaining, and they were willing to sacrifice, and ever came to disdain
the pleasures and amusements of life. They had been taught that it was
of no use to complain, and they did not complain. But they made amends
for this by refusing to be gracious, by a reserved and proud manner.
They knew that competition was the law of life, and they were none too
gentle in dealing with their competitors. Those who achieved positions
were objects of criticism, and the criticism was pitiless enough. For a
fight they were in constant readiness. ‘Touch me gin you daur,’ was the
national motto, and there never was one more expressive of character. The
Scotsman as a rule does not take the offensive, but those who meddle
with him must take all the consequences.”[7]
Clearly, as one might say, a Daniel come to judgment! “Claudius Clear,”
the New School, struts and roisters and swaggers as your Scot must do,
or perish; but, on the whole and out of the honesty of his heart, he
will modify. Perhaps he was not in the best of humours when he wrote
the foregoing. Anyway it rather disposes of the gallant and debonair
vision conjured up for us by the glowing pencils of the Old School.
The generous, polite, refined, well-bred, civilised, and immortally
honourable and glorious Scotchman of Dr. George Lockhart becomes,
under the brush of Dr. Robertson Nicoll, another and a distinctly less
beautiful personality. He is born on the rock. The amenities of life
are not for him. He is haunted by constant fears. He will give nothing.
He refuses to be gracious. He is none too gentle in dealing with his
competitors. And instead of saying “_Nemo me impune lacesset_,” as you
might expect of a young man who has been to college, he whoops “Touch me
gin you daur,” like any common rowdy. When I come to think of it, I am
much obliged to the New School.
On another matter—a very big matter, indeed, with your common
Scotchman—Dr. Nicoll is equally frank. “I think I may also say,” he
remarks, “that the Scottish people cared very much for education and
knowledge, far more in my opinion than the average Englishman. They
thought about learning as the New Englanders did in the days of Emerson.
The learned man was much more respected than the rich man. Perhaps
there was an intuition that in the end of the day knowledge is the
key to everything. But thirty years ago, at all events, knowledge was
regarded as an end, and its possessor was profoundly esteemed. The
_summum bonum_[8] of the best Scottish youth in those days was to be
a professor.” _Summum bonum_ is scarcely the phrase, but that and the
New Englanders may pass. Scotland, admittedly, enjoys a reputation for
learning of a sort. Once, I visited Edinburgh with a Scotchman. It was
a rash thing to do, yet I did it. On the road north my Scotchman filled
me with tales of his country’s culture. “You are not going into a dirty
English city,” quoth he, “but into a centre of light and leading. Every
man, woman, and child in ‘aud Immemour’ can at least read, and every
publican in the place keeps a set of _Chambers’s Encyclopædia_, a copy of
Fox’s _Book of Martyrs_, and plenty of back numbers of the _Nineteenth
Century_, just as an English publican keeps for the use of his customers
the _Post Office Directory_ and _Whitaker’s Almanack_.” And the first
thing I noticed when we got into Edinburgh was a fruiterer’s sign, upon
which was written in startling letters:
FRUITS IN THERE SEASON
All the same, I concede that the Scotch really do love learning. I
gather, too, from unbiassed sources that they starve their mothers and
make gin-mules of their fathers to get it. And when it is gotten, what a
monstrous and unlovely possession it usually turns out to be. For your
Scotchman always takes knowledge for wisdom. His learning consists wholly
of “facts and figures,” all grouped methodically round that heaven-sent
date, A.D. 1314,[9] and if you cannot tell him off-hand the salary of
the Archbishop of Canterbury, the population of Otaheite and the names
of the fixed stars, he votes you a damned ignorant Southron, and goes
about telling his friends that he shouldn’t wonder if you never went to
“the schule.” It may rejoice him to know that his readiness to answer
all manner of questions involving book learning is in point of fact the
beginnings of a species of idiocy. Persons of whom this idiocy has got
properly hold are styled by the medical profession “idiot _savants_.”
“In all asylums,” says Professor Vivian Poore, “you will find idiot
_savants_.… There used to be at Earlswood—and I saw him when I visited
Earlswood—an idiot quite incapable of taking care of himself, but who had
a most extraordinary memory. When I went to the asylum the superintendent
said to me: ‘Ask that man anything you like.’ It was rather a strange
thing to be told to do; I said: ‘What kind of thing shall I ask about?’
And he said: ‘Any ordinary bit of knowledge.’ I said: ‘Tell me about
Socrates.’ The idiot then drew himself up like a child would who was
about to repeat a lesson, gave a cough, and told me about Socrates.… He
knew a great deal more about Socrates than I did; he knew when he was
born, why he was condemned, the name of his wife, and everything that
was essential to be known. This he repeated without difficulty. The
superintendent gave a grin and said: ‘Would you like to ask him anything
else?’ I was afraid that the man might ask me something. I said: ‘What
do you know about comets?’ Immediately he gave me—I presume correctly—all
the facts about the chief comets, their periods of revolution, the names
of the best known, and so on. Nothing that had ever been read by this
patient did he seem to forget. The words which had been read to him
seemed to have stuck to the cells of his brain like so much superior
glue, and nothing would eradicate it.”[10]
How very, very, very Scotch! Who has not met just this idiot _savant_ in
a newspaper office, at the meetings of absurd societies, at the houses
of uncultivated people? And always, always, he is Scotch. And always,
always, he has that sententious trick of drawing himself up to launching
into his subject by way of the self-satisfied cough of conscious
knowledge.
And now, to make a handsome end for a brilliant chapter, let us remember
I. THAT HADRIAN HAD THE EXCELLENT SENSE TO BUILD A WALL FOR THE
PURPOSE OF KEEPING THE SCOTCH OUT OF ENGLAND.
II. THAT FOR A THOUSAND YEARS THE SCOT WAS ENGLAND’S BITTEREST
ENEMY, AND PLOTTED AND MADE WAR AGAINST HER WITH FRANCE.
III. THAT THE SCOTCH DESERTED THAT LARGE LAME WOMAN (AND,
ACCORDING TO THE SCOTCH, THAT PARAGON OF ALL THE VIRTUES),
MARY STUART, IN HER HOUR OF DIREST NEED.
IV. THAT IT WAS THE SCOTCH WHO SOLD CHARLES I. (AND A STUART)
TO THE PARLIAMENTARIANS FOR £400,000.
V. THAT THE STUARTS WERE THE WICKEDEST AND STUPIDEST KINGS
EUROPE HAS EVER KNOWN.
VI. THAT THE SCOTCH ARE IN POINT OF FACT QUITE THE DULLEST
RACE OF WHITE MEN IN THE WORLD, AND THAT THEY “KNOCK ALONG”
SIMPLY BY VIRTUE OF THE SCOTTISH SUPERSTITION COUPLED WITH
PLOD, THRIFT, A GRAVID MANNER, AND THE ORDINARY ENDOWMENTS OF
MEDIOCRITY.
VII. THAT IT WAS A SCOTCHMAN WHO INTRODUCED THISTLES INTO
CANADA, AND THAT, VERY LIKELY, IT WAS A SCOTCHMAN WHO
INTRODUCED RABBITS INTO AUSTRALIA.
II
PREDECESSORS
From the day he first clapped eyes on him, the Englishman has felt that
there was something wrong about the Scotchman. And this feeling rapidly
crystallised itself into literature. Many early ballads against the
Scotch are to be found by him who cares to look for them. That Chaucer
did not love Scotchmen is pretty certain, though there is nothing in his
writings to prove it. The same holds true of Spenser. But when one comes
to Shakespeare the case is very much altered. There can be no getting
away from the circumstance that Shakespeare knew his Scotchman through
and through. Any Scot who is feeling a desire to be particularly humble
and to learn the real truth about himself and his compatriots should
read and read again the tragedy of _Macbeth_. Of course, Shakespeare does
not count much in Scotland. Whenever a Scottish writer of the old school
has to speak of him, he does so with a grumbling grudgingness as who
should say, “The man was a genius, but not a Scot, what a peety!”
“Here Douglas forms wild Shakespeare into plant,” warbled Burns. Think
of it! And I have seen a Scotch reviewer complain that a certain author
was cursed with a “Shakespearean smartness.” This antipathy for the Bard
of Avon has often created much wonderment in the mind of the Englishman,
and the cause of it, one may guess, is that Shakespeare wrote _Macbeth_.
There is scarcely a line in that tremendous drama which does not mean
bitter reading for Scotchmen. About the first person named is one
Macdonwald:
The merciless Macdonwald
Worthy to be a rebel for to that,
The multiplying villainies of Nature
Do swarm upon him.
In a neighbouring passage we are given a beautiful insight into Scottish
views of warfare. Ross is made to say:
Sweno the Norway’s King craves composition,
Nor would we deign him burial of his men
Till he disbursed at Saint Colmes’ inch
Ten thousand dollars to our general use.
“Ten thousand dollars to our general use”! From the beginning of time
Scotch fighting men have been mercenaries, and Scotch armies have
insisted upon fining a vanquished foe. They did it in France; and they
did it in their own country. And, after Naseby, the Scotch army in
England, coming to the conclusion that there was nothing more to be
done, straightway demanded a sum of money in the way of solatium for
leaving the country. “Nor would we deign him burial of his men till he
disbursed,” hits them hard. Shakespeare, as was his way, understood. Then
one comes to the celebrated scene on the blasted heath. Here enter three
witches, and to them Macbeth and Banquo. Macbeth, bloated with pride and
devoured with ambition, falls an easy victim to Shakespeare’s trinity of
hags.
All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Glamis!
All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor!
All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be King hereafter!
The man swells visibly as a Scotchman should, and stalks off heroically,
full of the consciousness of his own bigness. And mark how arrant a
Scotchman he becomes in the result. In his castle he has for guest a king
who has trusted him and bestowed honours and dignities upon him. “Conduct
me to mine host,” says the unsuspecting monarch. “We love him highly, and
shall continue our graces towards him.” And all the time the excellent
Macbeth and his excellent lady are plotting murder. When it comes to the
point of actual killing, the gentleman’s Scotch spirits fail him; he is
really not sure, don’t you know, whether after all it ought to be done.
Then the lady very naturally grows disgusted and shrill:
Was the hope drunk,
Wherein you dress’d yourself? hath it slept since?
And wakes it now to look so green and pale
At what it did so freely? From this time,
Such I account thy love. Art thou afeard
To be the same in thine own act and valour,
As thou art in desire? Would’st thou have that
Which thou esteem’st the ornament of life,
And live a coward in thine own esteem;
Letting I dare not wait upon I would,
Like the poor cat i’ the adage?
And what a deliciously smug Scotch answer is immediately forthcoming!
Says the faint-hearted traitor:
I dare all that may become a man;
Who dares do more, is none.
Here we have the moralising scoundrel in which Scotland is so prolific
turned out to the life. Right through the play Shakespeare pitilessly
holds up to our gaze the low and squalid cunning, treachery, the
hypocrisy, and the devilry which have always been and always will be at
the bottom of the Scotchman’s soul, and Macduff puts the coping stone on
the structure of opprobrium by calling his countryman a hell-hound and a
bloodier villain than terms can give him out, and assuring him that he
will live to be the show and gaze o’ the time:
Painted upon a pole and underwrit,
Here may you see the tyrant.
From Shakespeare it is an easy jump to Jonson, who helped to write a
play which put the Scot in such bad plight that it had to be suppressed
by the authorities. Then, of course, there is Samuel Johnson, LL.D., who
hated the Scotch at large and by instinct. Johnson has enjoyed no little
reputation for his animadversions upon Scotland. In bulk they are slight,
but they are decidedly to the point. Boswell treasured them and put them
into his book, and to Johnson was the glory. Boswell, it is true, was
a Scotchman himself, and the fact that he has given us one of the most
entertaining pieces of biography ever written is allowed to redound to
the credit of Scotland. I never read the life, however, without feeling
that Johnson must have written Boswell and that Boswell wrote Johnson’s
poems.
The next good hater of your Scotchman is Charles Lamb. Lamb, need one
say, was Lamby, even in his hatreds. He had a gentle heart and he never
exerted himself to put down aught in malice, so that he called his
feelings of contempt for Scotchmen an imperfect sympathy, and this is
what he wrote:
“I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and am obliged to
desist from the experiment in despair. They cannot like me—and, in
truth, I never knew one of that nation who attempted to do it. There is
something more plain and ingenuous in their mode of proceeding. We know
one another at first sight. There is an order of imperfect intellects
(under which mine must be content to rank) which in its constitution
is essentially anti-Caledonian. The owners of the sort of faculties I
allude to have minds rather suggestive than comprehensive. They have
no pretences to much clearness or precision in their ideas or in their
manner of expressing them. Their intellectual wardrobe (to confess
fairly) has few whole pieces in it. They are content with fragments and
scattered pieces of truth. She presents no full front to them—a feature
or side-face at the most. Hints and glimpses, germs and crude essays at
a system, are the utmost they pretend to. They beat up a little game
peradventure—and leave it to knottier heads, more robust constitutions,
to run it down. The light that lights them is not steady and polar, but
mutable and shifting; waxing, and again waning. Their conversation is
accordingly. They will throw out a random word in or out of season, and
be content to let it pass for what it is worth. They cannot speak always
as if they were upon their oath—but must be understood, speaking or
writing, with some abatement. They seldom wait to mature a proposition,
but e’en bring it to market in the green ear. They delight to impart
their defective discoveries as they arise, without waiting for their
full development. They are no systematisers, and would but err more by
attempting it. Their minds, as I said before, are suggestive merely. The
brain of a true Caledonian (if I am not mistaken) is constituted upon
quite a different plan. His Minerva is born in panoply. You are never
admitted to see his ideas in their growth—if, indeed, they do grow, and
are not rather put together upon principles of clock-work. You never
catch his mind in an undress. He never hints or suggests anything, but
unlades his stock of ideas in perfect order and completeness. He brings
his total wealth into company and gravely unpacks it. His riches are
always about him. He never stoops to catch a glimmering something in
your presence, to share it with you, before he quite knows whether it be
true touch or not. You cannot cry _halves_ to anything that he finds. He
does not find, but bring. You never witness his first apprehension of
a thing. His understanding is always at its meridian—you never see the
first dawn, the early streaks. He has no falterings of self-suspicion.
Surmises, guesses, misgivings, half-intuitions, semi-consciousness,
partial illuminations, dim instincts, embryo conceptions, have no place
in his brain or vocabulary. The twilight of dubiety never falls upon
him. Is he orthodox?—he has no doubts. Is he an infidel?—he has none
either. Between the affirmative and the negative there is no border
land with him. You cannot hover with him upon the confines of truth, or
wander in the maze of a probable argument. He always keeps the path. You
cannot make excursions with him, for he sets you right. His taste never
fluctuates. His morality never abates. He cannot compromise or understand
middle actions. There can be but a right and a wrong. His conversation is
as a book. His affirmations have the sanctity of an oath. You must speak
upon the square with him. He stops a metaphor like a suspected person in
an enemy’s country. ‘A healthy book!’ said one of his countrymen to me,
who had ventured to give that appellation to John Buncle—‘did I catch
rightly what you said? I have heard of a man in health and of a healthy
state of body, but I do not see how that epithet can be properly applied
to a book.’ Above all, you must beware of indirect expressions before a
Caledonian. Clap an extinguisher upon your irony, if you are unhappily
blest with a vein of it. Remember you are upon your oath. I have a print
of a graceful female after Leonardo da Vinci, which I was showing off
to Mr. ⸺. After he had examined it minutely, I ventured to ask him how
he liked ‘my beauty’ (a foolish name it goes by among my friends)—when
he very gravely assured me that ‘he had considerable respect for my
character and talents’ (so he was pleased to say), ‘but had not given
himself much thought about the degree of my personal pretensions.’ The
misconception staggered me, but did not seem much to disconcert him.
Persons of this nation are particularly fond of affirming a truth—which
nobody doubts. They do not so properly affirm as annunciate it. They do,
indeed, appear to have such a love of truth (as if, like virtue, it were
valuable for itself) that all truth becomes equally valuable, whether
the proposition that contains it be new or old, disputed, or such as is
impossible to become a subject of disputation. I was present not long
since at a party of North Britons, where a son of Burns was expected; and
happened to drop a silly expression (in my South British way), that I
wished it were the father instead of the son, when four of them started
up at once to inform me that ‘that was impossible, because he was dead.’
An impracticable wish, it seems, was more than they could conceive. Swift
has hit off this part of their character, namely, their love of truth, in
his biting way, but with an illiberality that necessarily confines the
passage to the margin.[11]
“The tediousness of these people is certainly provoking. I wonder if they
ever tire one another! In my early life I had a passionate fondness
for the poetry of Burns. I have sometimes foolishly hoped to ingratiate
myself with his countrymen by expressing it. But I have always found that
a true Scot resents your admiration of his compatriot, even more than
he would your contempt of him. The latter he imputes to your ‘imperfect
acquaintance with many of the words which he uses’; and the same
objection makes it a presumption in you to suppose that you can admire
him. Thomson they seem to have forgotten. Smollett they have neither
forgotten nor forgiven for his delineation of Rory and his companion upon
their first introduction to our metropolis. Speak of Smollett as a great
genius, and they will retort upon you Hume’s _History_ compared with
_his_ continuation of it. What if the historian had continued _Humphrey
Clinker_?”[12]
I reproduce this estimate with the utmost satisfaction. The irony of the
“imperfect intellects” passage will not be understood by dull Donald;
indeed, he will in all probability take the passage seriously and quote
it against me, but he is welcome. And on the whole I think that Lamb’s
view of the Scot is almost as acute as that of Dr. Robertson Nicoll
himself. Nobody can doubt after reading the foregoing that Lamb saw in
the Scotchman a crass and plantigrade person, incapable of comprehending
the inexplicit and as devoid of true imagination as a brick. Lamb’s
notion of the Scot’s incapacity for humour also chimes with that of
Sidney Smith, who, as all men know, was of opinion that if you would have
a Scotchman see a joke it is necessary to perform a surgical operation on
him.[13]
Last of all, though perhaps brightest and best of them, who have
lifted up their voices in the unmasking of the Scot, we must take
Mr. W. E. Henley. In an entirely just and reasonable essay on Burns,
Mr. Henley made a passing reference to the poor living, lewd, grimy,
free-spoken, ribald old Scots peasant-world. For this choice collocation
of adjectives he was rewarded with many Scottish thwacks. That the old
Scots peasant-world was everything that Mr. Henley said of it no person
of sense will gainsay, and that the Scots peasant-world of to-day is,
if anything, worse, is evident from the remark of one of Mr. Henley’s
Scottish critics, who says:
“We challenge Mr. Henley, _et hoc genus omne_, to disprove the fact that
the record of crime, immorality, loose living in every parish wherein
Burns resided, shows less by one half—by fifty to seventy per cent.—in
that Burns epoch than it does in the same parishes to-day.”
Mr. Henley has brought such a swarm of bees round his bonnet by a simple
and quite tolerant bit of criticism, that to venture on anything in
the way of plain talk about the Scotch might well appal the stoutest.
The worthy Dr. John D. Ross, editor of the _Burns Almanac_ and sundry
other compilations of a fatuously Burnsite character, has collected
some of the diatribes against Mr. Henley into a volume which he calls
_Henley and Burns_. Like everything else that comes out of Scotland,
this volume gives the Scotchman away at all points. For example, it is
made quite plain that Mr. Henley’s essay, a purely critical venture,
was regarded in Scotland as a base attempt to pull down the cash value
of early editions of Burns’s poetry. Dr. Ross’s volume opens with the
following oracular sentence: “Lovers of Burns will rejoice to learn from
the large price paid this week for a Kilmarnock edition, that despite
the criticism of Mr. W. E. Henley in the Centenary edition, there are
as yet no signs that the poet’s popularity is on the wane,” and this
brilliant commercialist adds: “Rightly or wrongly, Scotsmen will cling to
the Burns’ superstition, and will be the better for it. At an important
book sale in Edinburgh this week, a Kilmarnock first edition in an
apparently perfect state of preservation, fetched the remarkable price
of 545 guineas. The highest price ever before given for a copy of this
edition, mutilated, however, and in inferior condition, was £120. Such a
figure is undoubtedly a fancy price. The book is very rare, and to the
bibliophile rarity is an all-important consideration in estimating value.
But the popularity of the poet, the admiration of the uncritical, as Mr.
Henley would put it, has helped to magnify the price of the book, and the
critic’s depreciation has had no effect on the market.” What in the name
of all that is Burnsy does this gentleman mean?
Again, in another paper headed “A Critic Scarified,” the scarifier
takes Mr. Henley to task for saying that “the Scots peasant … fed so
cheaply that even on high days and holidays his diet (as set forth in
the _Blithsome Bridal_) consisted largely in preparations of meal and
vegetables and what is technically known as ‘offal.’” To which Dr. Ross’s
scarifier retorts, “The author is happily addressing ignorant Southrons,
not even ‘half-read’ Scots. However, it need not be imagined that Mr.
Henley can translate the Scots language of the poem he refers to, else he
would not assert that the viands specified in it are such common fare,
consisting as they did of six different soups, eight varieties of fish
(including shell-fish), six varieties of flesh (roasts, salted meat, nolt
feet, haggis, tripe, sheep’s head), three kinds of bread (oaten, barley,
and wheaten), cheese, new ale, and brandy.” On the face of it there is
here a mighty deal of offal to precious little sound meat. If nolt feet,
haggis, tripe, and sheep’s head are not offal in Scotland, they are
certainly reckoned in that category in England.
We shall return to Dr. Ross’s scarifier in a chapter on “The Bard.”
Meanwhile, let us note that the best English writers have agreed that the
Scotchman is, at best, not quite an angel of light. They have looked on
him with the eye of calm perception, and they have found him seriously
wanting. That he is a savage and a barbarian by blood, a freebooter by
heredity, a dullard, a braggart, and in short, a Scotchman, cannot be
doubted. The testimony is all against him, and until he mends his ways it
will continue to be against him.
III
THE POW-WOW MEN
It is the Scotchman’s boast that the Scotchman has always figured
portentously in the councils of the civilised nations. In France, in
Germany, and even in unbeautiful Russia, Scotchmen have established
themselves and at time and time risen to positions of considerable
political power. And if we are to credit Dr. Hill Burton, this has always
been an excellent thing for the nations concerned. According to Dr.
Burton, if the Scotch did not entirely build up the France of the Middle
Ages they had a mighty big finger in the process, and we are asked to
believe by the same authority that it is the strain of Scotch blood in
the veins of the French which has assisted very materially in making
the fortunes of that singularly fascinating and ingenious people.[14]
The subject is a large one, and much that is edifying has been written
about it, not only by Scotchmen, but by various foreign authors. On
the whole, perhaps, Europe has not done so badly with her Scots, the
reason being that she never allowed them to be any Scotcher than she
could help, and turned them out the minute they became aggressive. In
England, however, the more Scotch and the more aggressive the Scot
becomes the more we seem to like him. At the present moment England is
virtually being run by the Scotch. In the House of Commons the Leader
of the Government—and practically the autocrat of the Assembly—is the
Right Honourable Arthur James Balfour, a philosopher from Scotland, who
is so Scotch that he plays golf. And the Leader of the Opposition, save
the mark! of an Opposition which, in a constitution like the British,
carries upon its shoulders the heaviest responsibilities, is Sir Henry
Campbell-Bannerman, also a Scotchman, and if the truth must be told, a
dullard. And in the way of a third party, which will imperialise with the
Government and cackle of reform with the Opposition, we have the Liberal
Leaguers, headed by that proud chieftain of the pudding race—the Right
Honourable the Earl of Rosebery. So that at the front of each of the
three great political forces of Britain—the forces which, when all is
said, mean everything to Britain as a nation—there stands firm and erect
some sort of a Caledonian. Such a condition of things has never existed
in England before, and in the light of recent political happenings it is
devoutly to be hoped that it will never exist again. Since Mr. Balfour
and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman came into the offices they hold,
England has been going steadily down-hill. At no period in her history
have her enemies been so thick on the ground and so exultant and sure of
themselves as they are at present, and at no period in her history has
her prestige been at so low an ebb. Politically she has come to count
as a little less than France and more than Spain. Formerly she led the
nations—now she is content to walk humbly in line with them. Formerly
she led the band, now she is merely third trombone player. Formerly,
if she went to war, it was with nations of ponderability and for high
principles; until the other day, she was draining her best blood and
getting rid of one and a half millions of money weekly in a struggle
with a handful of freebooters, got up and fomented largely in the
interests of the children of Israel. At the time of writing Consols are
at 94 and the Income Tax is 1_s._ 2_d._ in the pound, which shows what
managers the Scotch are. Also Government, in so far as Government means
the steady development of the higher interests of the state at home
and in the colonies, is at a dead standstill. The march of reform has
been checked. Progress in the wide sense of the term is no more thought
of. The legislative mill grinds heavily along and the grist amounts to
nothing; in the seats of the mighty,—in the seats of Benjamin Disraeli
and William Ewart Gladstone,—there blandly smiles Balfour and dodders
Campbell-Bannerman. Mr. Balfour, golfer, and, for aught I know to the
contrary, curler and hammer-putter, plays what he is pleased to call the
game. Now the game is no new thing. Practically it is a development of
that childish pastime known as “Jack’s on his Island.” On Mr. Balfour’s
island grows the green bay tree of power, and to live snugly under the
shade of that tree, no matter what comes, is, in the view of Mr. Balfour,
the game. It is with him a question of what can I do for England, having
due regard to the exigencies of the game? Hence does he seek and bring
along young talent. Having found your young talent, you must make quite
sure, not of its talentedness, but of its unwavering disposition to play
the game. Will it be loyal to the Balfour? Can you depend upon it to
stick by the Balfour though the heavens fall and it thunder to the tune
of Green Sleeves? Anything that will subscribe to the Test Act of the
Balfour is young talent. Hence it comes to pass that at the War Office we
have had that shallow, dandy Wyndham. He is a _protégé_ of the Balfour,
even as the Balfour is the nephew of his uncle. And he plays the game.
When matters at the War Office became too vasty for him he was shovelled
by the Balfour into the Chief Secretaryship for Ireland. Even the Balfour
and his friends are fain to admit that Mr. Wyndham has done no more
for Ireland than he did for the War Office. Yet he plays the game, and
so does the Balfour, and everything is right as right can be. In Mr.
Wyndham’s old place at the War Office we have that excellent dabbler,
Mr. Brodrick. Mr. Brodrick, like the House of Lords, has always been
exceedingly busy doing nothing and doing it very well. Periodically he
stands on his hind legs in the Commons and trots out tremendous schemes,
all of which end pleasantly in smoke. The rottenness of the British Army
is no affair of his; it was rotten when he first made its acquaintance—it
will be just as rotten when he leaves Pall Mall. Underneath the terrific
expenditure necessitated by the war there are jobs and scandals of the
gravest sort, and Mr. Brodrick knows nothing about them. His business
is to vindicate the characters of fribbling officers and gentlemen, to
lay on praise of the British soldier with a trowel, and to assure the
world at large that the persons who have brought charges against army
contractors have brought those charges simply because the contractors’
names are un-English and consequently not pleasing to the British
commercial mind. He it is, in short, who allows himself to be put up as a
sort of sand-bag in front of the Government, guaranteed to ward off all
attacks by simply sitting tight and remaining as dumb as an oyster. He
was no doubt told when he took up his present dignities that the Balfour
would expect him to play the game, and, being a good man, he is playing
it.
For the rest of them one man only needs be discussed. He is a Birmingham
man, Joseph Chamberlain by name. The Balfour took him over from the other
side, and, in spite of all his faults, gave him a warm Scotch welcome
and set him high in the Balfourian councils. From that day to this the
Balfour has looked upon him askance and wished him anywhere but where
he is; but the Balfour is Scotch and he lacks the pluck to get rid of
the Birmingham gentleman, because it might cost them something. The
Birmingham gentleman, knowing the Balfour to be Scotch, defies him.
On the other side, as we have said, there is poor, dear old Sir ’Enry
of the double-barrelled Scotch name, which the economical have reduced
to C.-B. On the whole, C.-B. is about as pathetic a figure as one can
find in history; he is the type and flower of your Scotchman lifted to
the pinnacles. Sooner or later he was bound to make a mess of it, and,
lacking the blood of Liverpool which delayed Mr. Gladstone’s downfall
for so many years, he made it sooner. From the first he has been the
laughing-stock, not only of the Government, and, for that matter, of
Europe, but also of his own party. He lolls enthroned on the front
Opposition Bench, shoulder to shoulder with trusty lieutenants who never
obey him, and backed up by political friends who put no trust in him. On
the day that he took the party by the nose, the party dropped off, and
all that remains to C.-B. is the nose. To this relic of ambition realised
he clings with true Scottish pertinacity. He has wrapped it up in a
napkin and hidden it; probably it will never again be found, inasmuch as
C.-B. is invariably too bewildered to know what he is doing. Harcourt
bewilders him, Asquith bewilders him, Morley bewilders him, and latterly
there has come that crowning bewilderment of them all, Lord Rosebery.
C.-B. will go bewildered through whatever remains to him of his term of
office, and when Liberalism takes thought to get properly rid of him, he
will be more bewildered still. He is too Scotch to perceive that nobody
wants him, and if he saw it he is too Scotch to go.