That Anadale {9b} doth crown, with a most amorous eye,
Salutes me every day, or at my pride looks grim,
Oft threatning me with clouds, as I oft threatning him.'
These lines recurred to William's memory, and we talked of Burns, and of
the prospect he must have had, perhaps from his own door, of Skiddaw and
his companions, indulging ourselves in the fancy that we might have been
personally known to each other, and he have looked upon those objects
with more pleasure for our sakes. We talked of Coleridge's children and
family, then at the foot of Skiddaw, and our own new-born John a few
miles behind it; while the grave of Burns's son, which we had just seen
by the side of his father, and some stories heard at Dumfries respecting
the dangers his surviving children were exposed to, filled us with
melancholy concern, which had a kind of connexion with ourselves. In
recollection of this, William long afterwards wrote the following Address
to the sons of the ill-fated poet:--
Ye now are panting up life's hill,
'Tis twilight time of good and ill,
And more than common strength and skill
Must ye display,
If ye would give the better will
Its lawful sway.
Strong-bodied if ye be to bear
Intemperance with less harm, beware,
But if your Father's wit ye share,
Then, then indeed,
Ye Sons of Burns, for watchful care
There will be need.
For honest men delight will take
To shew you favour for his sake,
Will flatter you, and Fool and Rake
Your steps pursue,
And of your Father's name will make
A snare for you.
Let no mean hope your souls enslave,
Be independent, generous, brave;
Your Father such example gave,
And such revere,
But be admonished by his grave,
And think and fear. {11}
* * * * *
_Friday_, _August_ 19_th_.--Open country for a considerable way. Passed
through the village of Thornhill, built by the Duke of Queensberry; the
'brother-houses' so small that they might have been built to stamp a
character of insolent pride on his own huge mansion of Drumlanrigg, which
is full in view on the opposite side of the Nith. This mansion is indeed
very large; but to us it appeared like a gathering together of little
things. The roof is broken into a hundred pieces, cupolas, etc., in the
shape of casters, conjuror's balls, cups, and the like. The situation
would be noble if the woods had been left standing; but they have been
cut down not long ago, and the hills above and below the house are quite
bare. About a mile and a half from Drumlanrigg is a turnpike gate at the
top of a hill. We left our car with the man, and turned aside into a
field where we looked down upon the Nith, which runs far below in a deep
and rocky channel; the banks woody; the view pleasant down the river
towards Thornhill, an open country--corn fields, pastures, and scattered
trees. Returned to the turnpike house, a cold spot upon a common, black
cattle feeding close to the door. Our road led us down the hill to the
side of the Nith, and we travelled along its banks for some miles. Here
were clay cottages perhaps every half or quarter of a mile. The bed of
the stream rough with rocks; banks irregular, now woody, now bare; here a
patch of broom, there of corn, then of pasturage; and hills green or
heathy above. We were to have given our horse meal and water at a
public-house in one of the hamlets we passed through, but missed the
house, for, as is common in Scotland, it was without a sign-board.
Travelled on, still beside the Nith, till we came to a turnpike house,
which stood rather high on the hill-side, and from the door we looked a
long way up and down the river. The air coldish, the wind strong.
We asked the turnpike man to let us have some meal and water. He had no
meal, but luckily we had part of a feed of corn brought from Keswick, and
he procured some hay at a neighbouring house. In the meantime I went
into the house, where was an old man with a grey plaid over his
shoulders, reading a newspaper. On the shelf lay a volume of the Scotch
Encyclopaedia, a History of England, and some other books. The old man
was a caller by the way. The man of the house came back, and we began to
talk. He was very intelligent; had travelled all over England, Scotland,
and Ireland as a gentleman's servant, and now lived alone in that
lonesome place. He said he was tired of his bargain, for he feared he
should lose by it. And he had indeed a troublesome office, for
coal-carts without number were passing by, and the drivers seemed to do
their utmost to cheat him. There is always something peculiar in the
house of a man living alone. This was but half-furnished, yet nothing
seemed wanting for his comfort, though a female who had travelled half as
far would have needed fifty other things. He had no other meat or drink
in the house but oat bread and cheese--the cheese was made with the
addition of seeds--and some skimmed milk. He gave us of his bread and
cheese, and milk, which proved to be sour.
We had yet ten or eleven miles to travel, and no food with us. William
lay under the wind in a corn-field below the house, being not well enough
to partake of the milk and bread. Coleridge gave our host a pamphlet,
'The Crisis of the Sugar Colonies;' he was well acquainted with Burns's
poems. There was a politeness and a manly freedom in this man's manners
which pleased me very much. He told us that he had served a gentleman, a
captain in the army--he did not know who he was, for none of his
relations had ever come to see him, but he used to receive many
letters--that he had lived near Dumfries till they would let him stay no
longer, he made such havoc with the game; his whole delight from morning
till night, and the long year through, was in field sports; he would be
on his feet the worst days in winter, and wade through snow up to the
middle after his game. If he had company he was in tortures till they
were gone; he would then throw off his coat and put on an old jacket not
worth half-a-crown. He drank his bottle of wine every day, and two if he
had better sport than usual. Ladies sometimes came to stay with his
wife, and he often carried them out in an Irish jaunting-car, and if they
vexed him he would choose the dirtiest roads possible, and spoil their
clothes by jumping in and out of the car, and treading upon them. 'But
for all that'--and so he ended all--'he was a good fellow, and a clever
fellow, and he liked him well.' He would have ten or a dozen hares in
the larder at once, he half maintained his family with game, and he
himself was very fond of eating of the spoil--unusual with true
heart-and-soul sportsmen.
The man gave us an account of his farm where he had lived, which was so
cheap and pleasant that we thought we should have liked to have had it
ourselves. Soon after leaving the turnpike house we turned up a hill to
the right, the road for a little way very steep, bare hills, with sheep.
After ascending a little while we heard the murmur of a stream far below
us, and saw it flowing downwards on our left, towards the Nith, and
before us, between steep green hills, coming along a winding valley. The
simplicity of the prospect impressed us very much. There was a single
cottage by the brook side; the dell was not heathy, but it was impossible
not to think of Peter Bell's Highland Girl.
We now felt indeed that we were in Scotland; there was a natural
peculiarity in this place. In the scenes of the Nith it had not been the
same as England, but yet not simple, naked Scotland. The road led us
down the hill, and now there was no room in the vale but for the river
and the road; we had sometimes the stream to the right, sometimes to the
left. The hills were pastoral, but we did not see many sheep; green
smooth turf on the left, no ferns. On the right the heath-plant grew in
abundance, of the most exquisite colour; it covered a whole hillside, or
it was in streams and patches. We travelled along the vale without
appearing to ascend for some miles; all the reaches were beautiful, in
exquisite proportion, the hills seeming very high from being so near to
us. It might have seemed a valley which nature had kept to herself for
pensive thoughts and tender feelings, but that we were reminded at every
turning of the road of something beyond by the coal-carts which were
travelling towards us. Though these carts broke in upon the tranquillity
of the glen, they added much to the picturesque effect of the different
views, which indeed wanted nothing, though perfectly bare, houseless, and
treeless.
After some time our road took us upwards towards the end of the valley.
Now the steeps were heathy all around. Just as we began to climb the
hill we saw three boys who came down the cleft of a brow on our left; one
carried a fishing-rod, and the hats of all were braided with
honeysuckles; they ran after one another as wanton as the wind. I cannot
express what a character of beauty those few honeysuckles in the hats of
the three boys gave to the place: what bower could they have come from?
We walked up the hill, met two well-dressed travellers, the woman
barefoot. Our little lads before they had gone far were joined by some
half-dozen of their companions, all without shoes and stockings. They
told us they lived at Wanlockhead, the village above, pointing to the top
of the hill; they went to school and learned Latin, Virgil, and some of
them Greek, Homer, but when Coleridge began to inquire further, off they
ran, poor things! I suppose afraid of being examined.
When, after a steep ascent, we had reached the top of the hill, we saw a
village about half a mile before us on the side of another hill, which
rose up above the spot where we were, after a descent, a sort of valley
or hollow. Nothing grew upon this ground, or the hills above or below,
but heather, yet round about the village--which consisted of a great
number of huts, all alike, and all thatched, with a few larger slated
houses among them, and a single modern-built one of a considerable
size--were a hundred patches of cultivated ground, potatoes, oats, hay,
and grass. We were struck with the sight of haycocks fastened down with
aprons, sheets, pieces of sacking--as we supposed, to prevent the wind
from blowing them away. We afterwards found that this practice was very
general in Scotland. Every cottage seemed to have its little plot of
ground, fenced by a ridge of earth; this plot contained two or three
different divisions, kail, potatoes, oats, hay; the houses all standing
in lines, or never far apart; the cultivated ground was all together
also, and made a very strange appearance with its many greens among the
dark brown hills, neither tree nor shrub growing; yet the grass and the
potatoes looked greener than elsewhere, owing to the bareness of the
neighbouring hills; it was indeed a wild and singular spot--to use a
woman's illustration, like a collection of patchwork, made of pieces as
they might have chanced to have been cut by the mantua-maker, only just
smoothed to fit each other, the different sorts of produce being in such
a multitude of plots, and those so small and of such irregular shapes.
Add to the strangeness of the village itself, that we had been climbing
upwards, though gently, for many miles, and for the last mile and a half
up a steep ascent, and did not know of any village till we saw the boys
who had come out to play. The air was very cold, and one could not help
thinking what it must be in winter, when those hills, now 'red brown,'
should have their three months' covering of snow.
The village, as we guessed, is inhabited by miners; the mines belong to
the Duke of Queensberry. The road to the village, down which the lads
scampered away, was straight forward. I must mention that we met, just
after we had parted from them, another little fellow, about six years
old, carrying a bundle over his shoulder; he seemed poor and half
starved, and was scratching his fingers, which were covered with the
itch. He was a miner's son, and lived at Wanlockhead; did not go to
school, but this was probably on account of his youth. I mention him
because he seemed to be a proof that there was poverty and wretchedness
among these people, though we saw no other symptom of it; and afterwards
we met scores of the inhabitants of this same village. Our road turned
to the right, and we saw, at the distance of less than a mile, a tall
upright building of grey stone, with several men standing upon the roof,
as if they were looking out over battlements. It stood beyond the
village, upon higher ground, as if presiding over it,--a kind of
enchanter's castle, which it might have been, a place where Don Quixote
would have gloried in. When we drew nearer we saw, coming out of the
side of the building, a large machine or lever, in appearance like a
great forge-hammer, as we supposed for raising water out of the mines.
It heaved upwards once in half a minute with a slow motion, and seemed to
rest to take breath at the bottom, its motion being accompanied with a
sound between a groan and 'jike.' There would have been something in
this object very striking in any place, as it was impossible not to
invest the machine with some faculty of intellect; it seemed to have made
the first step from brute matter to life and purpose, showing its
progress by great power. William made a remark to this effect, and
Coleridge observed that it was like a giant with one idea. At all
events, the object produced a striking effect in that place, where
everything was in unison with it--particularly the building itself, which
was turret-shaped, and with the figures upon it resembled much one of the
fortresses in the wooden cuts of Bunyan's 'Holy War.'
After ascending a considerable way we began to descend again; and now we
met a team of horses dragging an immense tree to the lead mines, to
repair or add to the building, and presently after we came to a cart,
with another large tree, and one horse left in it, right in the middle of
the highway. We were a little out of humour, thinking we must wait till
the team came back. There were men and boys without number all staring
at us; after a little consultation they set their shoulders to the cart,
and with a good heave all at once they moved it, and we passed along.
These people were decently dressed, and their manners decent; there was
no hooting or impudent laughter. Leadhills, another mining village, was
the place of our destination for the night; and soon after we had passed
the cart we came in sight of it. This village and the mines belong to
Lord Hopetoun; it has more stone houses than Wanlockhead, one large old
mansion, and a considerable number of old trees--beeches, I believe. The
trees told of the coldness of the climate; they were more brown than
green--far browner than the ripe grass of the little hay-garths. Here,
as at Wanlockhead, were haycocks, hay-stacks, potato-beds, and
kail-garths in every possible variety of shape, but, I suppose from the
irregularity of the ground, it looked far less artificial--indeed, I
should think that a painter might make several beautiful pictures in this
village. It straggles down both sides of a mountain glen. As I have
said, there is a large mansion. There is also a stone building that
looks like a school, and the houses are single, or in clusters, or rows
as it may chance.
We passed a decent-looking inn, the Hopetoun Arms; but the house of Mrs.
Otto, a widow, had been recommended to us with high encomiums. We did
not then understand Scotch inns, and were not quite satisfied at first
with our accommodations, but all things were smoothed over by degrees; we
had a fire lighted in our dirty parlour, tea came after a reasonable
waiting; and the fire with the gentle aid of twilight, burnished up the
room into cheerful comfort. Coleridge was weary; but William and I
walked out after tea. We talked with one of the miners, who informed us
that the building which we had supposed to be a school was a library
belonging to the village. He said they had got a book into it a few
weeks ago, which had cost thirty pounds, and that they had all sorts of
books. 'What! have you Shakespeare?' 'Yes, we have that,' and we found,
on further inquiry, that they had a large library, {19} of long standing,
that Lord Hopetoun had subscribed liberally to it, and that gentlemen who
came with him were in the habit of making larger or smaller donations.
Each man who had the benefit of it paid a small sum monthly--I think
about fourpence.
The man we talked with spoke much of the comfort and quiet in which they
lived one among another; he made use of a noticeable expression, saying
that they were 'very peaceable people considering they lived so much
underground;'--wages were about thirty pounds a year; they had land for
potatoes, warm houses, plenty of coals, and only six hours' work each
day, so that they had leisure for reading if they chose. He said the
place was healthy, that the inhabitants lived to a great age; and indeed
we saw no appearance of ill-health in their countenances; but it is not
common for people working in lead mines to be healthy; and I have since
heard that it is _not_ a healthy place. However this may be, they are
unwilling to allow it; for the landlady the next morning, when I said to
her 'You have a cold climate,' replied, 'Ay, but it is _varra halesome_.'
We inquired of the man respecting the large mansion; he told us that it
was built, as we might see, in the form of an H, and belonged to the
Hopetouns, and they took their title from thence, {20} and that part of
it was used as a chapel. We went close to it, and were a good deal
amused with the building itself, standing forth in bold contradiction of
the story which I daresay every man of Leadhills tells, and every man
believes, that it is in the shape of an H; it is but half an H, and one
must be very accommodating to allow it even so much, for the legs are far
too short.
We visited the burying-ground, a plot of land not very small, crowded
with graves, and upright grave-stones, overlooking the village and the
dell. It was now the closing in of evening. Women and children were
gathering in the linen for the night, which was bleaching by the
burn-side;--the graves overgrown with grass, such as, by industrious
culture, had been raised up about the houses; but there were bunches of
heather here and there, and with the blue-bells that grew among the grass
the small plot of ground had a beautiful and wild appearance.
William left me, and I went to a shop to purchase some thread; the woman
had none that suited me; but she would send a '_wee_ lad' to the other
shop. In the meantime I sat with the mother, and was much pleased with
her manner and conversation. She had an excellent fire, and her cottage,
though very small, looked comfortable and cleanly; but remember I saw it
only by firelight. She confirmed what the man had told us of the quiet
manner in which they lived; and indeed her house and fireside seemed to
need nothing to make it a cheerful happy spot, but health and good
humour. There was a bookishness, a certain formality in this woman's
language, which was very remarkable. She had a dark complexion, dark
eyes, and wore a very white cap, much over her face, which gave her the
look of a French woman, and indeed afterwards the women on the roads
frequently reminded us of French women, partly from the extremely white
caps of the elder women, and still more perhaps from a certain gaiety and
party-coloured appearance in their dress in general. White bed-gowns are
very common, and you rarely meet a young girl with either hat or cap;
they buckle up their hair often in a graceful manner.
I returned to the inn, and went into the kitchen to speak with the
landlady; she had made a hundred hesitations when I told her we wanted
three beds. At last she confessed she _had_ three beds, and showed me
into a parlour which looked damp and cold, but she assured me in a tone
that showed she was unwilling to be questioned further, that all _her_
beds were well aired. I sat a while by the kitchen fire with the
landlady, and began to talk to her; but, much as I had heard in her
praise--for the shopkeeper had told me she was a varra discreet woman--I
cannot say that her manners pleased me much. But her servant made
amends, for she was as pleasant and cheerful a lass as was ever seen; and
when we asked her to do anything, she answered, 'Oh yes,' with a merry
smile, and almost ran to get us what we wanted. She was about sixteen
years old: wore shoes and stockings, and had her hair tucked up with a
comb. The servant at Brownhill was a coarse-looking wench, barefoot and
barelegged. I examined the kitchen round about; it was crowded with
furniture, drawers, cupboards, dish-covers, pictures, pans, and pots,
arranged without order, except that the plates were on shelves, and the
dish-covers hung in rows; these were very clean, but floors, passages,
staircase, everything else dirty. There were two beds in recesses in the
wall; above one of them I noticed a shelf with some books:--it made me
think of Chaucer's Clerke of Oxenforde:--
'Liever had he at his bed's head
Twenty books clothed in black and red.'
They were baking oat-bread, which they cut into quarters, and half-baked
over the fire, and half-toasted before it. There was a suspiciousness
about Mrs. Otto, almost like ill-nature; she was very jealous of any
inquiries that might appear to be made with the faintest idea of a
comparison between Leadhills and any other place, except the advantage
was evidently on the side of Leadhills. We had nice honey to breakfast.
When ready to depart, we learned that we might have seen the library,
which we had not thought of till it was too late, and we were very sorry
to go away without seeing it.
* * * * *
_Saturday_, _August_ 20_th_.--Left Leadhills at nine o'clock, regretting
much that we could not stay another day, that we might have made more
minute inquiries respecting the manner of living of the miners, and been
able to form an estimate, from our own observation, of the degree of
knowledge, health, and comfort that there was among them. The air was
keen and cold; we might have supposed it to be three months later in the
season and two hours earlier in the day. The landlady had not lighted us
a fire; so I was obliged to get myself toasted in the kitchen, and when
we set off I put on both grey cloak and spencer.
Our road carried us down the valley, and we soon lost sight of Leadhills,
for the valley made a turn almost immediately, and we saw two miles,
perhaps, before us; the glen sloped somewhat rapidly--heathy, bare, no
hut or house. Passed by a shepherd, who was sitting upon the ground,
reading, with the book on his knee, screened from the wind by his plaid,
while a flock of sheep were feeding near him among the rushes and coarse
grass--for, as we descended we came among lands where grass grew with the
heather. Travelled through several reaches of the glen, which somewhat
resembled the valley of Menock on the other side of Wanlockhead; but it
was not near so beautiful; the forms of the mountains did not melt so
exquisitely into each other, and there was a coldness, and, if I may so
speak, a want of simplicity in the surface of the earth; the heather was
poor, not covering a whole hillside; not in luxuriant streams and beds
interveined with rich verdure; but patchy and stunted, with here and
there coarse grass and rushes. But we soon came in sight of a spot that
impressed us very much. At the lower end of this new reach of the vale
was a decayed tree, beside a decayed cottage, the vale spreading out into
a level area which was one large field, without fence and without
division, of a dull yellow colour; the vale seemed to partake of the
desolation of the cottage, and to participate in its decay. And yet the
spot was in its nature so dreary that one would rather have wondered how
it ever came to be tenanted by man, than lament that it was left to waste
and solitude. Yet the encircling hills were so exquisitely formed that
it was impossible to conceive anything more lovely than this place would
have been if the valley and hill-sides had been interspersed with trees,
cottages, green fields, and hedgerows. But all was desolate; the one
large field which filled up the area of the valley appeared, as I have
said, in decay, and seemed to retain the memory of its connexion with man
in some way analogous to the ruined building; for it was as much of a
field as Mr. King's best pasture scattered over with his fattest cattle.