A devout lady, to whom some friend had presented one of my books, used to
say when asked how she was getting on with it, ‘Sal, it’s dreary, weary,
uphill work, but I’ve wrastled through with tougher jobs in my time, and,
please God, I’ll wrastle through with this one.’ It was in this spirit,
I fear, though she never told me so, that my mother wrestled for the next
year or more with my leaders, and indeed I was always genuinely sorry for
the people I saw reading them. In my spare hours I was trying journalism
of another kind and sending it to London, but nearly eighteen months
elapsed before there came to me, as unlooked for as a telegram, the
thought that there was something quaint about my native place. A boy who
found that a knife had been put into his pocket in the night could not
have been more surprised. A few days afterwards I sent my mother a
London evening paper with an article entitled ‘An Auld Licht Community,’
and they told me that when she saw the heading she laughed, because there
was something droll to her in the sight of the words Auld Licht in print.
For her, as for me, that newspaper was soon to have the face of a friend.
To this day I never pass its placards in the street without shaking it by
the hand, and she used to sew its pages together as lovingly as though
they were a child’s frock; but let the truth be told, when she read that
first article she became alarmed, and fearing the talk of the town, hid
the paper from all eyes. For some time afterwards, while I proudly
pictured her showing this and similar articles to all who felt an
interest in me, she was really concealing them fearfully in a bandbox on
the garret stair. And she wanted to know by return of post whether I was
paid for these articles as much as I was paid for real articles; when she
heard that I was paid better, she laughed again and had them out of the
bandbox for re-reading, and it cannot be denied that she thought the
London editor a fine fellow but slightly soft.
When I sent off that first sketch I thought I had exhausted the subject,
but our editor wrote that he would like something more of the same, so I
sent him a marriage, and he took it, and then I tried him with a funeral,
and he took it, and really it began to look as if we had him. Now my
mother might have been discovered, in answer to certain excited letters,
flinging the bundle of undarned socks from her lap, and ‘going in for
literature’; she was racking her brains, by request, for memories I might
convert into articles, and they came to me in letters which she dictated
to my sisters. How well I could hear her sayings between the lines: ‘But
the editor-man will never stand that, it’s perfect blethers’—‘By this
post it must go, I tell you; we must take the editor when he’s hungry—we
canna be blamed for it, can we? he prints them of his free will, so the
wite is his’—‘But I’m near terrified.—If London folk reads them we’re
done for.’ And I was sounded as to the advisability of sending him a
present of a lippie of shortbread, which was to be her crafty way of
getting round him. By this time, though my mother and I were hundreds of
miles apart, you may picture us waving our hands to each other across
country, and shouting ‘Hurrah!’ You may also picture the editor in his
office thinking he was behaving like a shrewd man of business, and
unconscious that up in the north there was an elderly lady chuckling so
much at him that she could scarcely scrape the potatoes.
I was now able to see my mother again, and the park seats no longer
loomed so prominent in our map of London. Still, there they were, and it
was with an effort that she summoned up courage to let me go. She feared
changes, and who could tell that the editor would continue to be kind?
Perhaps when he saw me—
She seemed to be very much afraid of his seeing me, and this, I would
point out, was a reflection on my appearance or my manner.
No, what she meant was that I looked so young, and—and that would take
him aback, for had I not written as an aged man?
‘But he knows my age, mother.’
‘I’m glad of that, but maybe he wouldna like you when he saw you.’
‘Oh, it is my manner, then!’
‘I dinna say that, but—’
Here my sister would break in: ‘The short and the long of it is just
this, she thinks nobody has such manners as herself. Can you deny it,
you vain woman?’ My mother would deny it vigorously.
‘You stand there,’ my sister would say with affected scorn, ‘and tell me
you don’t think you could get the better of that man quicker than any of
us?’
‘Sal, I’m thinking I could manage him,’ says my mother, with a chuckle.
‘How would you set about it?’
Then my mother would begin to laugh. ‘I would find out first if he had a
family, and then I would say they were the finest family in London.’
‘Yes, that is just what you would do, you cunning woman! But if he has
no family?’
‘I would say what great men editors are!’
‘He would see through you.’
‘Not he!’
‘You don’t understand that what imposes on common folk would never
hoodwink an editor.’
‘That’s where you are wrong. Gentle or simple, stupid or clever, the men
are all alike in the hands of a woman that flatters them.’
‘Ah, I’m sure there are better ways of getting round an editor than
that.’
‘I daresay there are,’ my mother would say with conviction, ‘but if you
try that plan you will never need to try another.’
‘How artful you are, mother—you with your soft face! Do you not think
shame?’
‘Pooh!’ says my mother brazenly.
‘I can see the reason why you are so popular with men.’
‘Ay, you can see it, but they never will.’
‘Well, how would you dress yourself if you were going to that editor’s
office?’
‘Of course I would wear my silk and my Sabbath bonnet.’
‘It is you who are shortsighted now, mother. I tell you, you would
manage him better if you just put on your old grey shawl and one of your
bonny white mutches, and went in half smiling and half timid and said, “I
am the mother of him that writes about the Auld Lichts, and I want you to
promise that he will never have to sleep in the open air.”’
But my mother would shake her head at this, and reply almost hotly, ‘I
tell you if I ever go into that man’s office, I go in silk.’
I wrote and asked the editor if I should come to London, and he said No,
so I went, laden with charges from my mother to walk in the middle of the
street (they jump out on you as you are turning a corner), never to
venture forth after sunset, and always to lock up everything (I who could
never lock up anything, except my heart in company). Thanks to this
editor, for the others would have nothing to say to me though I battered
on all their doors, she was soon able to sleep at nights without the
dread that I should be waking presently with the iron-work of certain
seats figured on my person, and what relieved her very much was that I
had begun to write as if Auld Lichts were not the only people I knew of.
So long as I confined myself to them she had a haunting fear that, even
though the editor remained blind to his best interests, something would
one day go crack within me (as the mainspring of a watch breaks) and my
pen refuse to write for evermore. ‘Ay, I like the article brawly,’ she
would say timidly, ‘but I’m doubting it’s the last—I always have a sort
of terror the new one may be the last,’ and if many days elapsed before
the arrival of another article her face would say mournfully, ‘The blow
has fallen—he can think of nothing more to write about.’ If I ever
shared her fears I never told her so, and the articles that were not
Scotch grew in number until there were hundreds of them, all carefully
preserved by her: they were the only thing in the house that, having
served one purpose, she did not convert into something else, yet they
could give her uneasy moments. This was because I nearly always assumed
a character when I wrote; I must be a country squire, or an
undergraduate, or a butler, or a member of the House of Lords, or a
dowager, or a lady called Sweet Seventeen, or an engineer in India, else
was my pen clogged, and though this gave my mother certain fearful joys,
causing her to laugh unexpectedly (so far as my articles were concerned
she nearly always laughed in the wrong place), it also scared her. Much
to her amusement the editor continued to prefer the Auld Licht papers,
however, as was proved (to those who knew him) by his way of thinking
that the others would pass as they were, while he sent these back and
asked me to make them better. Here again she came to my aid. I had said
that the row of stockings were hung on a string by the fire, which was a
recollection of my own, but she could tell me whether they were hung
upside down. She became quite skilful at sending or giving me (for now I
could be with her half the year) the right details, but still she smiled
at the editor, and in her gay moods she would say, ‘I was fifteen when I
got my first pair of elastic-sided boots. Tell him my charge for this
important news is two pounds ten.’
‘Ay, but though we’re doing well, it’s no’ the same as if they were a
book with your name on it.’ So the ambitious woman would say with a
sigh, and I did my best to turn the Auld Licht sketches into a book with
my name on it. Then perhaps we understood most fully how good a friend
our editor had been, for just as I had been able to find no well-known
magazine—and I think I tried all—which would print any article or story
about the poor of my native land, so now the publishers, Scotch and
English, refused to accept the book as a gift. I was willing to present
it to them, but they would have it in no guise; there seemed to be a
blight on everything that was Scotch. I daresay we sighed, but never
were collaborators more prepared for rejection, and though my mother
might look wistfully at the scorned manuscript at times and murmur, ‘You
poor cold little crittur shut away in a drawer, are you dead or just
sleeping?’ she had still her editor to say grace over. And at last
publishers, sufficiently daring and far more than sufficiently generous,
were found for us by a dear friend, who made one woman very ‘uplifted.’
He also was an editor, and had as large a part in making me a writer of
books as the other in determining what the books should be about.
Now that I was an author I must get into a club. But you should have
heard my mother on clubs! She knew of none save those to which you
subscribe a pittance weekly in anticipation of rainy days, and the London
clubs were her scorn. Often I heard her on them—she raised her voice to
make me hear, whichever room I might be in, and it was when she was
sarcastic that I skulked the most: ‘Thirty pounds is what he will have to
pay the first year, and ten pounds a year after that. You think it’s a
lot o’ siller? Oh no, you’re mista’en—it’s nothing ava. For the third
part of thirty pounds you could rent a four-roomed house, but what is a
four-roomed house, what is thirty pounds, compared to the glory of being
a member of a club? Where does the glory come in? Sal, you needna ask
me, I’m just a doited auld stock that never set foot in a club, so it’s
little I ken about glory. But I may tell you if you bide in London and
canna become member of a club, the best you can do is to tie a rope round
your neck and slip out of the world. What use are they? Oh, they’re
terrible useful. You see it doesna do for a man in London to eat his
dinner in his lodgings. Other men shake their heads at him. He maun
away to his club if he is to be respected. Does he get good dinners at
the club? Oh, they cow! You get no common beef at clubs; there is a
manzy of different things all sauced up to be unlike themsels. Even the
potatoes daurna look like potatoes. If the food in a club looks like
what it is, the members run about, flinging up their hands and crying,
“Woe is me!” Then this is another thing, you get your letters sent to
the club instead of to your lodgings. You see you would get them sooner
at your lodgings, and you may have to trudge weary miles to the club for
them, but that’s a great advantage, and cheap at thirty pounds, is it
no’? I wonder they can do it at the price.’
My wisest policy was to remain downstairs when these withering blasts
were blowing, but probably I went up in self-defence.
‘I never saw you so pugnacious before, mother.’
‘Oh,’ she would reply promptly, ‘you canna expect me to be sharp in the
uptake when I am no’ a member of a club.’
‘But the difficulty is in becoming a member. They are very particular
about whom they elect, and I daresay I shall not get in.’
‘Well, I’m but a poor crittur (not being member of a club), but I think I
can tell you to make your mind easy on that head. You’ll get in, I’se
uphaud—and your thirty pounds will get in, too.’
‘If I get in it will be because the editor is supporting me.’
‘It’s the first ill thing I ever heard of him.’
‘You don’t think he is to get any of the thirty pounds, do you?’
‘’Deed if I did I should be better pleased, for he has been a good friend
to us, but what maddens me is that every penny of it should go to those
bare-faced scoundrels.’
‘What bare-faced scoundrels?’
‘Them that have the club.’
‘But all the members have the club between them.’
‘Havers! I’m no’ to be catched with chaff.’
‘But don’t you believe me?’
‘I believe they’ve filled your head with their stories till you swallow
whatever they tell you. If the place belongs to the members, why do they
have to pay thirty pounds?’
‘To keep it going.’
‘They dinna have to pay for their dinners, then?’
‘Oh yes, they have to pay extra for dinner.’
‘And a gey black price, I’m thinking.’
‘Well, five or six shillings.’
‘Is that all? Losh, it’s nothing, I wonder they dinna raise the price.’
Nevertheless my mother was of a sex that scorned prejudice, and, dropping
sarcasm, she would at times cross-examine me as if her mind was not yet
made up. ‘Tell me this, if you were to fall ill, would you be paid a
weekly allowance out of the club?’
No, it was not that kind of club.
‘I see. Well, I am just trying to find out what kind of club it is. Do
you get anything out of it for accidents?’
Not a penny.
‘Anything at New Year’s time?’
Not so much as a goose.
‘Is there any one mortal thing you get free out of that club?’
There was not one mortal thing.
‘And thirty pounds is what you pay for this?’
If the committee elected me.
‘How many are in the committee?’
About a dozen, I thought.
‘A dozen! Ay, ay, that makes two pound ten apiece.’
When I was elected I thought it wisdom to send my sister upstairs with
the news. My mother was ironing, and made no comment, unless with the
iron, which I could hear rattling more violently in its box. Presently I
heard her laughing—at me undoubtedly, but she had recovered control over
her face before she came downstairs to congratulate me sarcastically.
This was grand news, she said without a twinkle, and I must write and
thank the committee, the noble critturs. I saw behind her mask, and
maintained a dignified silence, but she would have another shot at me.
‘And tell them,’ she said from the door, ‘you were doubtful of being
elected, but your auld mother had aye a mighty confidence they would
snick you in.’ I heard her laughing softly as she went up the stair, but
though I had provided her with a joke I knew she was burning to tell the
committee what she thought of them.
Money, you see, meant so much to her, though even at her poorest she was
the most cheerful giver. In the old days, when the article arrived, she
did not read it at once, she first counted the lines to discover what we
should get for it—she and the daughter who was so dear to her had
calculated the payment per line, and I remember once overhearing a
discussion between them about whether that sub-title meant another
sixpence. Yes, she knew the value of money; she had always in the end
got the things she wanted, but now she could get them more easily, and it
turned her simple life into a fairy tale. So often in those days she
went down suddenly upon her knees; we would come upon her thus, and go
away noiselessly. After her death I found that she had preserved in a
little box, with a photograph of me as a child, the envelopes which had
contained my first cheques. There was a little ribbon round them.