FROM GREENOCK TO ARDROSSAN.
I shall never forget my first view of the Clyde from the heights above
Greenock. It is true I had seen the Clyde before, but it was at Glasgow
years ago, and it had left on my mind but a poor impression of its
extent, or utility, or grandeur. What a sight you have of dockyards,
where thousands of men are ship-building! and what a fleet of vessels
laden with the produce of every country under heaven! As I take up a
Scotch paper, I read:--"The cargoes imported during the month included 64
of grain, &c., 65 of sugar, 22 of timber, 5 of wine, 2 of fruits, 1 of
brandy, 1 of ice, 3 of esparto grass and iron ore, 3 of rosin, 2 of oil,
1 of tar, 1 of guano, 1 of nitrate of soda, and 4 with minerals." And
then how grand is the prospect beyond--of distant watering-places,
crammed during the summer season, not alone with Glasgow and Edinburgh
citizens, but with English tourists, who find in these picturesque spots
a charm they can discover nowhere else. Almost all the way--at any rate,
since I left Leeds--I have had my carriage almost entirely to myself; and
now I am in a crowd greater and busier than of Cheapside at noon, with
knapsacks and carpet-bags and umbrellas, all bent on seeing those
beauties of Nature of which Scotland may well be proud.
To leave the train and hurry down the pier, and rush on board the _Iona_,
is the work of a minute, but of a minute rich in marvels. The _Iona_ is
a fine saloon steamer, which waits for the train at Greenock, and thence
careers along the Western Coast, leaving her passengers at various ports,
and picking up others till some place or other, with a name which I can
hardly pronounce, and certainly cannot spell, is reached. It must carry
some fourteen or fifteen hundred people. I should think we had quite
that number on board--people like myself, who had been travelling all
night--people who had joined us at such places as Leicester, or Leeds, or
Carlisle--people who had come all the way in her from Glasgow--people who
had come on business--people who were bent on pleasure--people who had
never visited the Highlands before--people who are as familiar with them
as I am with Cheapside or the Strand--people with every variety of
costume, of both sexes and of all ages--people who differed on all
subjects, but who agreed in this one faith, that to breakfast on board
the _Iona_ is one of the first duties of man, and one of the noblest of
woman's rights. Oh, that breakfast! To do it justice requires an abler
pen than mine. Never did I part with a florin--the sum charged for
breakfast--with greater pleasure. We all know breakfasts are one of
those things they manage well in Scotland, and the breakfast on board the
_Iona_ is the latest and most triumphant vindication of the fact.
Cutlets of salmon fresh from the water, sausages of a tenderness and
delicacy of which the benighted cockney who fills his paunch with the
flabby and plethoric article sold under that title by the provision
dealer can have no idea; coffee hot and aromatic, and suggestive of Araby
the blest; marmalades of all kinds, with bread-and-butter and toast, all
equally good, and served up by the cleanest and most civil of stewards.
Sure never had any mother's son ever such a breakfast before. It was
with something of regret that I left it, and that handsome saloon filled
with happy faces and rejoicing hearts.
In about half-an-hour after leaving Greenock, I was at Kirn, a beautiful
watering-place in Argyleshire, in one of the handsomest villas of which I
was to find my host, and the owner of the _Elena_, one of the finest of
the four or five hundred yachts which grace the lake-like waters of the
Clyde, and which carry the ensign of the Royal Clyde Yacht Club. A
volume might be written of the owner, whose place of business in Glasgow
is one of the real wonders of that ancient town. Morrison, the founder
of the Fore Street Warehouse, and the father of the late M.P. for
Plymouth, was accustomed to say that he owed all his success in life to
the realisation of the fact that the great art of mercantile traffic was
to find out sellers rather than buyers; that if you bought cheap and
satisfied yourself with a fair profit, buyers--the best sort of buyers,
those who have money to buy with--would come of themselves. It is on
this principle the owner of the _Elena_ has acted. It is worth something
to see the Sevres china, the fine oil paintings, the spoils of such
palaces as the Louvre or St. Cloud, the rarest ornaments of such
exhibitions as those of Vienna, all gathered together in the Glasgow
Polytechnic, and to seek which the proprietor is always on the look-out,
and to recollect that all this display has been got together by one
individual, who began the world in a much smaller way, and who is still
in the prime of life. A further interest attaches to the gentleman of
whom I write, inasmuch as it was under his roof that the first article of
the _Christian Cabinet_, swallowed up in the _Christian World_, was
written. It may be to this it is due that at once I am at home with him,
and that here on board the _Elena_ we chat of what goes on in London as
if we had known each other all our lives. By my side is his
son-in-law--one of those well-trained, thoughtful divines who have left
Scotland for the South, and who are doing so much to introduce into
England that Presbyterianism the yoke of which our fathers could not
bear, but on which we, their more liberal sons, have learned to look with
a less jealous eye; and no wonder, for to know such a man as the Doctor
is to love him. And now let me say a word as to the _Elena_, which is a
picture to admire, as she floats calmly on the water, or speeds her way
from one scene of Scottish story and romance to another. It is rarely
one sees a yacht more tastefully fitted-up, and we have a ladies'
drawing-room on board not unworthy of Belgravia itself. She is slightly
rakish in build, but not disagreeably so. Her tonnage is 200 tons, and
her crew consists, including the stoker and steward, of some eight
clever-looking, sailor-like men. As we sleep on board I am glad of this.
With Gonsalo I exclaim, "The wills above be done; but I had rather die a
dry death."
And now, after skirting the greater and the lesser Cumbraes, and the cave
where Bruce hid himself, &c., &c., we are coaling off Ardrossan,
apparently a busy town on the Ayrshire coast. I have been on shore, and
have seen no end of coal and lumber ships in the docks, and in the
streets are many shops with all the latest novelties from town, and with
ladies lounging in and out. I know I am in Scotland, as I hear the
bagpipes droning in the distance, and stop to judge the beef and mutton
exposed for sale at the shop of the nearest "flesher." On a hill behind
me is a monument which, the natives inform me, is in memory of Dr.
Mac-something, of whom I never heard, and respecting whom no one
apparently can tell me anything. I know further I am in Scotland, as I
see everywhere Presbyterian places of worship, and hear accents not
familiar to an English ear. I know also I am in Scotland, as I see no
gaudy public-house with superfine young ladies to attract my weak-kneed
brethren to the bar, but instead dull and dark houses, in which only sots
would care to go. I know I am in Scotland, because it is only there I
read of "self-contained houses" to let or sell; and as to Ardrossan in
particular, let me say that it is much frequented by the Glasgow
merchants in the season; that it, with its neighbour Saltcoats, supports
a _Herald_, published weekly for a penny; that from it, as a local poet
writes--
"We see bold Arran's mountains gray,
In dark sublimity, stand forth in grandeur day by day."
The poet speaks truly. As I write I see the heights of the Scottish
Alps, whose feet are fringed with the white villas of the Glasgow
merchants for miles, and washed by the romantic waters of the Clyde.
Anciently Ardrossan was a hamlet of miserable huts, says Mr. Murray--Mr.
Thomas, of Glasgow, not Mr. John, of London--gathered around an old
castle on Castle Hill, the scene of some of Wallace's daring
achievements, and destroyed by Cromwell. It was said to have belonged to
a warlock, known as the Deil of Ardrossan. The present town was
originated in 1806 as a seaport for Glasgow, but, like Port Glasgow,
proved a failure in this respect. It is, however, generally well filled
with shipping. The Pavilion, a residence of the Earl of Eglinton,
adjoins the town. Steamers run thence to Belfast and Newry, and to Ayr
and Arran and Glasgow.
Let me here remark, as indicating the cultivated character of the
Scotchman, one is surprised at the number of local papers one sees in all
the Scotch towns. They are mostly well written, and have a London
Correspondent. It is beautiful to find how in the Scotch towns there is
still faith left in the London Correspondent. The people swallow him as
they do the Greater and Lesser Catechism, and even the London papers
quote him as with happy audacity he describes the dissensions in the
Cabinet--the hopes and fears of Earl Beaconsfield, the secret purposes of
the garrulous Lord Derby, or the too amiable and communicative Marquis of
Salisbury. When yachting I made a point to buy every Scotch paper I
could, for the express purpose of reading what Our London Correspondent
had got to say. I was both amused and edified. It is said you must go
from home to hear the news. I realised that in Scotland as I had never
done before. On the dull, wet days, when travelling was out of the
question, what a boon was our "Own Special London Correspondent!"