None of these thoughts came into the minds of the two travellers.
They did not see this dreadful dungeon, for it was hidden beneath
the rubbish of the ruined walls. The sight of it would, I hope, have
moved Johnson to write otherwise than he did. Had he looked down into
its gloomy depths, he would scarcely have said that “Cardinal Beaton
was murdered by the ruffians of reformation.” Never surely was a more
righteous sentence executed than that whereby this murderer of George
Wishart, in the very room where, lolling on his velvet cushion, he had
looked forth on the martyr’s sufferings, was himself put to death.
[Sidenote: THE CATHEDRAL.]
With far different feelings are we animated as we look at “the poor
remains of the stately Cathedral.” If we do not grieve for the rooks,
nevertheless we mourn over the wild folly which struck down so glorious
a rookery. Would that that fair sight still caught the sailor’s eye
which met John Knox’s gaze when, “hanging tired over his oar in the
French galley, he saw the white steeples of St. Andrews rising out of
the sea in the mist of the summer morning!”[462] Desolate as is the
scene of ruin now, it was far more desolate when Johnson saw it. The
ground lay deep in rubbish. The few broken pillars which were left
standing were almost hidden in the ruins heaped up around them. The
Cathedral until very lately had been made a common quarry, “and every
man had carried away the stones who fancied that he wanted them.”
Now all is trim. The levelled ground, the smooth lawn, the gravelled
paths, the gently sloping banks, the trees and the shrubs, all bear
witness to man’s care for the venerable past, and to his reverence
for the dead who still find their last resting-place by the side of
their forefathers. The wantonness of the destruction, however, mocks
at repair. The work was too thoroughly done by those fierce reformers,
and by the quiet quarrymen of after ages. In all the cities of Scotland
there were craftsmen, but it was in Glasgow alone that they rose to
save their beloved Cathedral. Yet everywhere the people should have
felt—to use Johnson’s homely words—as, “wrapt up in contemplation,”
he surveyed these scenes—that “differing from a man in doctrine
is no reason why you should pull his house about his ears.” We may
exclaim, as Wesley exclaimed at Aberbrothick, when he was told that the
zealous reformers burnt the Abbey down, “God deliver us from reforming
mobs!”[463]
[Sidenote: TALK IN THE CLOISTERS.]
In the ruined cloisters as our travellers paced up and down, while the
old walls gave “a solemn echo” to their steps and to Johnson’s strong
voice, he talked about retirement from the world. For such a discourse
there could not easily have been found a more fitting scene.
“I never read of an hermit (he said) but in imagination I kiss
his feet: never of a monastery, but I could fall on my knees
and kiss the pavement. But I think putting young people there,
who know nothing of life, nothing of retirement, is dangerous
and wicked. It is a saying as old as Hesiod—
‘Ἑργα νέων, βουλαί δε μέσων, εὐχαὶ δὲ γερόντων.’[464]
That is a very noble line: not that young men should not pray,
or old men not give counsel, but that every season of life has
its proper duties. I have thought of retiring, and have talked
of it to a friend; but I find my vocation is rather to active
life.”
Here, too, it was a different scene upon which he looked from that
which meets our view. The gravestones which are now set against
the walls of the cloisters were then buried beneath the rubbish of
the cathedral. On the other side of this wall, in the grounds of
the priory, were situated those “two vaults or cellars” where our
travellers found a strange inmate.
“In one of them (writes Johnson) lives an old woman, who claims
an hereditary residence in it, boasting that her husband was
the sixth tenant of this gloomy mansion in a lineal descent,
and claims by her marriage with this lord of the cavern
an alliance with the Bruces. Mr. Boswell staid a while to
interrogate her, because he understood her language; she told
him that she and her cat lived together; that she had two sons
somewhere, who might perhaps be dead; that when there were
quality in the town notice was taken of her, and that now
she was neglected, but did not trouble them. Her habitation
contained all that she had; her turf for fire was laid in
one place and her balls of coal dust in another, but her bed
seemed to be clean. Boswell asked her if she never heard any
noises, but she could tell him of nothing supernatural, though
she often wandered in the night among the graves and ruins;
only she had sometimes notice by dreams of the death of her
relations.”
I made as diligent an inquiry as I could after this kinswoman of the
royal family of Scotland, but all in vain.
“The glories of our blood and state
Are shadows, not substantial things.”
The memory has been preserved of “some cellar-looking places,” but no
tradition of human habitation has come down to our time.
“Dr. Johnson wanted to mount the steeples (writes Boswell),
but it could not be done. One of them, which he was told was
in danger, he wished not to be taken down; ‘for (said he) it
may fall on some of the posterity of John Knox; and no great
matter.’”
[Sidenote: ST. RULE’S TOWER.]
Among the posterity was to be born eight-and-twenty years later
a little girl, destined to become famous as the wife of Thomas
Carlyle.[465] What was the hindrance to the ascent of St. Rule’s Tower
I could not ascertain. The staircase, which is perfect, has in no part
a modern appearance, but nevertheless, it is possible that some of
the steps were missing. Saint-Fond, nevertheless, went up it not long
after Johnson’s visit. Sir Walter Scott, a few years before his death,
visiting the ruins, wrote that he had not been strong enough to climb
the tower.
“When before did I remain sitting below when there was a
steeple to be ascended? I sat down on a grave-stone, and
recollected the first visit I made to St. Andrews, now
thirty-four years ago. What changes in my feelings and my
fortunes have since then taken place!—some for the better,
many for the worse. I remembered the name I then carved in
runic characters on the turf beside the Castle Gate, and I
asked why it should still agitate my heart.”[466]
[Illustration: WEST DOOR, ST. ANDREWS.]
As we wander among these ancient ruins it is pleasant to think not
only on the days when the cathedral stood in all its magnificence,
and on those other days when the wild mob raved through it, but also
on old Samuel Johnson, wrapped up in contemplation or preaching about
retirement, and on Walter Scott resting on a gravestone and dreaming
of his first love. We may pause, too, for one moment in the old chapel
beneath the tower, at the spot where that good man and good antiquary
Robert Chambers lies in everlasting rest. From the top of the tower I
looked with pleasure on the long row of young trees planted along the
main street. The reproach of bareness will not long hang over the town.
Indeed, much had been done to remove it by an earlier generation, for
this noble street was adorned not many years ago by a fine group of
trees. Unfortunately a reforming provost arose, who swept them away.
Near the cathedral I noticed an inscription which might have called
forth Johnson’s sarcastic wit had he chanced to see it. It bore the
date of 1712, and was in memory of “John Anderson who was Minister of
the Gospel of St. Andrews.”
[Sidenote: THE PROFESSORS’ DINNER.]
While the travellers were strolling about “dinner was mentioned.
‘Ay, ay,’ said Johnson. ‘Amidst all these sorrowful scenes I have no
objection to dinner.’” They were to be the guests of the professors,
who entertained them at one of the inns.
“An ill-natured story was circulated (says Boswell) that,
after grace was said in English, Johnson, with the greatest
marks of contempt, as if he had held it to be no grace in an
university, would not sit down till he had said grace aloud, in
Latin. This would have been an insult indeed to the gentlemen
who were entertaining us. But the truth was precisely thus. In
the course of conversation at dinner, Dr. Johnson, in very good
humour, said, ‘I should have expected to have heard a Latin
grace, among so many learned men: we had always a Latin grace
at Oxford. I believe I can repeat it.’”
This grace had been written by the learned Camden for Pembroke College,
“to which,” to use Johnson’s own words, “the zeal or gratitude of those
that love it most can wish little better than that it may long proceed
as it began.”
In the afternoon they went to see the monument to Archbishop Sharpe.
His great granddaughter they met at supper. Saint-Fond, confounding
him with Cardinal Beaton, says: “Il parâit que les parens du Cardinal
Beaton n’ont pas voulu déguiser la paternité du saint archevêque,
puisque sa fille est représentée toute en pleurs, les bras tendus vers
son père.”[467]
[Illustration: GOLF AT ST. ANDREWS.]
The two colleges which formed the University greatly interested
Johnson. The natural advantages of St. Andrews for a seat of learning
had been pointed out by an earlier traveller, who maintained that it
had the best situation he had ever seen for an University, “being out
of all common roads, and having fine downs or links, as they call
them, for exercising the scholars.”[468] The golfers who now throng the
links and boast that when professors by their learning could not save
the ancient city from sinking into decay, they by their idleness have
lifted it into prosperity, must have been numerous even in Johnson’s
time. Of all the old manufactures, that of golf-balls alone was left,
and it maintained, or rather helped to destroy, several people. “The
trade,” says Pennant, “is commonly fatal to the artists, for the balls
are made by stuffing a great quantity of feathers into a leathern
case, by help of an iron rod with a wooden handle pressed against the
breast, which seldom fails to bring on a consumption.”[469] To Johnson,
though he makes no mention of the Links, “St. Andrews seemed to be a
place eminently adapted to study and education.” [Sidenote:
A DECLINING UNIVERSITY.] Nevertheless, he had to grieve over
a declining university. The fault was not, he said, in the
professors; the expenses of the students, moreover, were very
moderate. For about fifteen pounds, board, lodging, and instruction
were provided for the session of seven months for students of
the highest class. Those of lower rank were charged less than
ten. Percival Stockdale, who was there in 1756, says that “for a
good bedroom, coals, and the attendance of a servant, he paid one
shilling a week.”[470] At this period an Oxford commoner, Johnson
says, required a hundred a year and a petty scholarship “to live
with great ease.”[471] To anyone who could pay for what he bought
in ready money, living was made cheaper by the system of giving
a discount of a shilling in the pound. A Scotch gentleman who
resided much in England finding that this was not done in that
country, “was in the habit when he purchased anything of putting
the cash in a piece of paper, on which he wrote what it was to pay.
This he kept in his desk twelve months, saying that the English
traders are a set of rascals.”[472] The poorer Scotch students,
however, had to bear great privations. “The miserable holes which
some of them inhabit,” writes a young English traveller, “their
abstemiousness and parsimony, their constant attendance to study,
their indefatigable industry, border on romance.”[473] At St.
Andrews they often were too poor to buy candles, and had to study
by fire-light.[474] In spite of the extraordinary cheapness of the
life their numbers were dwindling. They did not at this time exceed
a hundred, says Johnson. Three years later Wesley was told that
there were only about seventy.[475] “To the sight of archiepiscopal
ruins,” Johnson was reconciled, he said, by the remoteness of
the calamity which had befallen them. “Had the University been
destroyed two centuries ago we should not have regretted it; but
to see it pining in decay and struggling for life fills the mind
with mournful images and ineffectual wishes.” Some improvement,
nevertheless, had of late been made. [Sidenote: ST. SALVATOR’S
COLLEGE.] Defoe, in the year 1727, had described the whole building
of St. Salvator’s College “as looking into its grave.”[476] The
account given by Boswell of the fabric is much more cheerful. “The
rooms for students,” he writes, “seemed very commodious, and Dr.
Johnson said the chapel was the neatest place of worship he had
seen.” Nevertheless, at the beginning of this century some of the
lecture-rooms were described as being places “in which a gentleman
would be ashamed to lodge his hacks or his terriers.”[477] It was
fortunate for the reputation of the College that our two travellers
had not visited it earlier in the summer, otherwise they would have
had to report a disgraceful sight which three years later shocked
John Wesley. It was soon after the beginning of the Long Vacation
that he was there, before the glaziers had repaired the wreck which
marked the end of the yearly course. It was the custom, he was
told, for the students to break all the windows before they left.
“Where,” asks Wesley, indignantly, “are their blessed Governors in
the mean time? Are they all fast asleep?”[478] The young Etonian,
Bishop Berkeley’s grandson, had the merit of putting an end to
this bad practice. [Sidenote: “WINDOW-CROONS.”] On entrance he
was required to deposit a crown for window-money; when, model
of virtue as he was, he objected that he had never yet broken a
window in his life, and was not likely to begin, he was assured
that he would before he left St. Andrews. The College porter, who
collected “these window-_croons_,” told him of a poor student who
had shed tears on being called on to pay. His father, a cottar,
had sold one of his three cows to find money for his education at
the university, and had sent him up with a large tub of oatmeal, a
pot of salted butter, and five shillings in his pocket. Sixpence
of this money had already been spent, and the rest the porter
took.[479] When the window-breaking time came on, and Berkeley was
summoned to take his part in the riot, he refused. As a boy at
Eton, he said, though sometimes with more wine in his head than
was good for him, he had never performed such a valiant feat, and
he was not therefore going to begin as a young man. His comrades
yielded to his remonstrances, and the windows were no longer
broken.[480]
At St. Mary’s College Johnson was shown the fine library which had been
finished within the last few years. Dr. Murison, the Principal, was
abundantly vain of it, for he seriously said to him, “You have not such
a one in England.” Johnson, though he has his laugh at the Doctor for
hoping “to irritate or subdue his English vanity,” yet admits that if
“it was not very spacious, it was elegant and luminous.” It is not, of
course, to be compared with the largest libraries at Oxford. “If a man
has a mind to prance” it is not at St. Andrews, but at Christ Church
and All Souls, that he must study.[481] Nevertheless it confers great
dignity on the University, and with its 120,000 volumes there is no
English College that it would disgrace. Murison’s vanity had therefore
some excuse. He was, however, a man “barely sufficient” for the post
which he held. Over his slips in Latin the lads sometimes made merry.
In the Divinity Hall he one day rebuked a student for delivering a
discourse which was too high-flown and poetical. “Lord help him, poor
man!” said the indignant youngster, “He knows no better.”[482]
[Illustration: ST. MARY’S COLLEGE LIBRARY.]
[Sidenote: A FINE PLANE TREE.]
On the second day of our travellers’ stay “they went,” says Boswell,
“and saw Colonel Nairne’s garden and grotto. Here was a fine old plane
tree.[483] Unluckily the Colonel said there was but this and another
large tree in the country.[484] This assertion was an excellent cue
for Dr. Johnson, who laughed enormously, calling to me to hear it.”
The Colonel’s father, Lord Nairne, had been “out in the ’45,” while
the son, who fought in the King’s army, had been sent to batter down
the old castle of his forefathers. George II. wished to reward his
fidelity with the command of a regiment, but was hindered by the
Duke of Cumberland, “who told the King that it was impossible that a
man who had suffered so much could ever forget or forgive it.”[485]
His garden and grotto were at the back of the Chapel. The grotto has
disappeared with its “petrified stocks of trees,” unless perchance
some remains of it are seen in a small building, which looks like a
private chapel, and which might have been transformed by that ingenious
collector of curiosities, the Colonel. The plane tree survived till
about the beginning of the century. An old gentleman still living was
told by his grandfather that in the branches a wooden platform had
been built, on which tea-parties were held.[486] I remember seeing in
my boyhood a similar platform in a large willow-tree overhanging Isaac
Walton’s sedgy Lea. That the good people of St. Andrews have not in
their traditions made Johnson drink a dozen or two cups of tea in this
airy summer-house is a proof either of their truthfulness or of the
sluggishness of their imagination.
[Sidenote: A REVIVING UNIVERSITY.]
Every Scotchman, it was said long ago, thought it his duty once in
his life to visit “the city of the scarlet gown” and to see the ruins
of the great cathedral.[487] No longer, happily, is the mind of the
pilgrim “filled with mournful images and ineffectual wishes;” no longer
does he see “a University pining in decay and struggling for life;” no
longer does he wander through grass-grown streets, listening to the
sound of his own solitary steps. The town is thriving and animated; the
University sees the number of its students steadily increasing. It had
long been depressed by poverty; but a noble endowment happily has this
very year[488] fallen to its lot. If it can never hope to attain to
those stately avenues and lawns and gardens and buildings, as beautiful
as they are venerable, which are the boast of Oxford, nevertheless in
the bracing pureness of its air, in its fine situation on the shores
of the northern sea, in its seclusion from that bustle which distracts
the student’s life, and from that luxury which too often makes poverty,
however honest, hang its head, it has advantages which are not enjoyed
by any other of our Universities.
[Illustration: LEUCHARS.]