_The Bothie of Toper-na-fuosich: a Long-vacation Pastoral. By Arthur
Hugh Clough. Oxford: Macpherson. London: Chapman and Hall.--1848_
The critic who should undertake to speak of all the poetry which
issues from the press of these present days, what is so called by
courtesy as well as that which may claim the title as of right, would
impose on himself a task demanding no little labor, and entailing no
little disgust and weariness. Nor is the trouble well repaid. More
profit will not accrue to him who studies, if the word can be used,
fifty of a certain class of versifiers, than to him who glances over
one: and, while a successful effort to warn such that poetry is not
their proper sphere, and that they must seek elsewhere for a vocation
to work out, might embolden a philanthropist to assume the position
of scare-crow, and drive away the unclean birds from the flowers and
the green leaves; on the other hand, the small results which appear
to have hitherto attended such endeavors are calculated rather to
induce those who have yet made, to relinquish them than to lead
others to follow in the same track. It is truly a disheartening task.
To the critic himself no good, though some amusement occasionally,
can be expected: to the criticised, good but rarely, for he is seldom
convinced, and annoyance and rancour almost of course; and, even in
those few cases where the voice crying "in the wilderness" produces
its effect, the one thistle that abandons the attempt at bearing figs
sees its neighbors still believing in their success, and soon has its
own place filled up. The sentence of those who do not read is the
best criticism on those who will not think.
It is acting on these considerations that we propose not to take
count of any works that do not either show a purpose achieved or give
promise of a worthy event; while of such we hope to overlook none.
We believe it may safely be assumed that at no previous period has
the public been more buzzed round by triviality and common-place; but
we hold firm, at the same time, that at none other has there been a
greater or a grander body of genius, or so honorable a display of
well cultivated taste and talent. Certainly the public do not seem to
know this: certainly the critics deny it, or rather speak as though
they never contemplated that such a position would be advanced: but,
if the fact be so, it will make itself known, and the poets of this
day will assert themselves, and take their places.
Of these it is our desire to speak truthfully, indeed, and without
compromise, but always as bearing in mind that the inventor is more
than the commentator, and the book more than the notes; and that, if
it is we who speak, we do so not for ourselves, nor as of ourselves.
The work of Arthur Hugh Clough now before us, (we feel warranted in
the dropping of the _Mr._ even at his first work,) unites the most
enduring forms of nature, and the most unsophisticated conditions of
life and character, with the technicalities of speech, of manners,
and of persons of an Oxford reading party in the long vacation. His
hero is
"Philip Hewson, the poet,
Hewson, the radical hot, hating lords and scorning ladies;"
and his heroine is no heroine, but a woman, "Elspie, the quiet, the
brave."
The metre he has chosen, the hexametral, harmonises with the spirit
of primitive simplicity in which the poem is conceived; is itself a
background, as much as are "Knoydart, Croydart, Moydart, Morrer, and
Ardnamurchan;" and gives a new individuality to the passages of
familiar narrative and every day conversation. It has an intrinsic
appropriateness; although, at first thought of the subject, this
will, perhaps, be scarcely admitted of so old and so stately a
rhythmical form.
As regards execution, however, there may be noted, in qualification
of much pliancy and vigour, a certain air of experiment in occasional
passages, and a license in versification, which more than warrants a
warning "to expect every kind of irregularity in these modern
hexameters." The following lines defy all efforts at reading in
dactyls or spondees, and require an almost complete transposition of
accent.
"There was a point which I forgot, which our gallant Highland
homes have;"--
"While the little drunken Piper came across to shake hands with
Lindsay:"--
"Something of the world, of men and women: you will not refuse me."
In the first of these lines, the omission of the former "_which_,"
would remove all objection; and there are others where a final
syllable appears clearly deficient; as thus:--
"Only the road and larches and ruinous millstead between"
[_them_]:--
"Always welcome the stranger: I may say, delighted to see
[_such_] Fine young men:"--
"Nay, never talk: listen now. What I say you can't apprehend"
[_yet_]:--
"Laid her hand on her lap. Philip took it. She did not resist"
[_him_]:--
Yet the following would be scarcely improved by greater exactness:
"Roaring after their prey, do seek their meat from God;"
Nor, perhaps, ought this to be made correct:
"Close as the bodies and intertwining limbs of athletic wrestlers."
The aspect of _fact_ pervading "the Bothie of Toper-na-fuosich,"--(in
English, "the hut of the bearded well," a somewhat singular title, to
say the least,) is so strong and complete as to render necessary the
few words of dedication, where, in inscribing the poem, (or, as the
author terms it, "trifle,") to his "long-vacation pupils," he
expresses a hope, that they "will not be displeased if, in a fiction,
purely fiction, they are here and there reminded of times enjoyed
together."
As the story opens, the Oxford party are about to proceed to dinner
at "the place of the Clansmen's meeting." Their characters,
discriminated with the nicest taste, and perfectly worked out, are
thus introduced:
"Be it recorded in song who was first, who last, in dressing.
Hope was the first, black-tied, white-waistcoated, simple, his Honor;
For the postman made out he was a son to the Earl of Ilay,
(As, indeed, he was to the younger brother, the Colonel);
Treated him therefore with special respect, doffed bonnet, and ever
Called him his Honor: his Honor he therefore was at the cottage;
Always his Honor at least, sometimes the Viscount of Ilay.
"Hope was the first, his Honor; and, next to his Honor, the Tutor.
Still more plain the tutor, the grave man nicknamed Adam,
White-tied, clerical, silent, with antique square-cut waistcoat,
Formal, unchanged, of black cloth, but with sense and feeling beneath it;
Skilful in ethics and logic, in Pindar and poets unrivalled;
_Shady_ in Latin, said Lindsay, but _topping_ in plays and Aldrich.
"Somewhat more splendid in dress, in a waistcoat of a lady,
Lindsay succeeded, the lively, the cheery, cigar-loving Lindsay,
Lindsay the ready of speech, the Piper, the Dialectician:
This was his title from Adam, because of the words he invented,
Who in three weeks had created a dialect new for the party.
"Hewson and Hobbes were down at the _matutine_ bathing; of course
Arthur Audley, the bather _par excellence_ glory of headers:
Arthur they called him for love and for euphony: so were they bathing
There where in mornings was custom, where, over a ledge of granite,
Into a granite bason descended the amber torrent.
There were they bathing and dressing: it was but a step from the cottage,
Only the road and larches and ruinous millstead between.
Hewson and Hobbes followed quick upon Adam; on them followed Arthur.
"Airlie descended the last, splendescent as god of Olympus.
When for ten minutes already the fourwheel had stood at the gateway;
He, like a god, came leaving his ample Olympian chamber."--pp. 5, 6.
A peculiar point of style in this poem, and one which gives a certain
classic character to some of its more familiar aspects, is the
frequent recurrence of the same line, and the repeated definition of
a personage by the same attributes. Thus, Lindsay is "the Piper, the
Dialectician," Arthur Audley "the glory of headers," and the tutor
"the grave man nicknamed Adam," from beginning to end; and so also of
the others.
Omitting the after-dinner speeches, with their "Long constructions
strange and plusquam-Thucydidean," that only of "Sir Hector, the
Chief and the Chairman;" in honor of the Oxonians, than which nothing
could be more unpoetically truthful, is preserved, with the
acknowledgment, ending in a sarcasm at the game laws, by Hewson, who,
as he is leaving the room, is accosted by "a thin man, clad as the
Saxon:"
"'Young man, if ye pass thro' the Braes o'Lochaber,
See by the Loch-side ye come to the Bothie of Toper-na-fuosich.'"--p. 9.
Throughout this scene, as through the whole book, no opportunity is
overlooked for giving individuality to the persons introduced: Sir
Hector, of whom we lose sight henceforward, the attaché, the
Guards-man, are not mere names, but characters: it is not enough to
say that two tables were set apart "for keeper and gillie and
peasant:" there is something to be added yet; and with others
assembled around them were "Pipers five or six; _among them the young
one, the drunkard_."
The morrow's conversation of the reading party turns on "noble ladies
and rustic girls, their partners." And here speaks out Hewson the
chartist:
"'Never (of course you will laugh, but of course all the
same I shall say it,)
Never, believe me, revealed itself to me the sexual glory,
Till, in some village fields, in holidays now getting stupid,
One day sauntering long and listless, as Tennyson has it,
Long and listless strolling, ungainly in hobbydihoyhood,
Chanced it my eye fell aside on a capless bonnetless maiden,
Bending with three-pronged fork in a garden uprooting potatoes.
Was it the air? who can say? or herself? or the charm of the labor?
But a new thing was in me, and longing delicious possessed me,
Longing to take her and lift her, and put her away from her slaving.
Was it to clasp her in lifting, or was it to lift her by clasping,
Was it embracing or aiding was most in my mind? Hard question.
But a new thing was in me: I too was a youth among maidens.
Was it the air? who can say? But, in part, 'twas the charm of
the labor.'"
And he proceeds in a rapture to talk on the beauty of household
service.
Hereat Arthur remarks: "'Is not all this just the same that one hears
at common room breakfasts, Or perhaps Trinity-wines, about Gothic
buildings and beauty?'"--p. 13.
The character of Hobbes, called into energy by this observation, is
perfectly developed in the lines succeeding:
"And with a start from the sofa came Hobbes; with a cry from
the sofa,
There where he lay, the great Hobbes, contemplative, corpulent,
witty;
Author forgotten and silent of currentest phrase and fancy;
Mute and exuberant by turns, a fountain at intervals playing,
Mute and abstracted, or strong and abundant as rain in the tropics;
Studious; careless of dress; inobservant; by smooth persuasions
Lately decoyed into kilt on example of Hope and the Piper,
Hope an Antinous mere, Hyperion of calves the Piper.....
"'Ah! could they only be taught,' he resumed, 'by a Pugin of women
How even churning and washing, the dairy, the scullery duties,
Wait but a touch to redeem and convert them to charms and attractions;
Scrubbing requires for true grace but frank and artistical handling,
And the removal of slops to be ornamentally treated!"--pp. 13, 14.
Here, in the tutor's answer to Hewson, we come on the moral of the
poem, a moral to be pursued through commonplace lowliness of station
and through high rank, into the habit of life which would be, in the
one, not petty,--in the other, not overweening,--in any, calm and
dignified.
"'You are a boy; when you grow to a man, you'll find things alter.
You will learn to seek the good, to scorn the attractive,
Scorn all mere cosmetics, as now of rank and fashion,
Delicate hands, and wealth, so then of poverty also,
Poverty truly attractive, more truly, I bear you witness.
Good, wherever found, you will choose, be it humble or stately,
Happy if only you find, and, finding, do not lose it.'"--p. 14.
When the discussion is ended, the party propose to separate, some
proceeding on their tour; and Philip Hewson will be of these.
"'Finally, too,' from the kilt and the sofa said Hobbes in conclusion,
'Finally Philip must hunt for that home of the probable poacher,
Hid in the Braes of Lochaber, the Bothie of what-did-he-call-it.
Hopeless of you and of us, of gillies and marquises hopeless,
Weary of ethic and logic, of rhetoric yet more weary,
There shall he, smit by the charm of a lovely potatoe-uprooter,
Study the question of sex in the Bothie of what-did-he-call-it."'--p.18.
The action here becomes divided; and, omitting points of detail, we
must confine ourselves to tracing the development of the idea in
which the subject of the poem consists.
Philip and his companions, losing their road, are received at a farm,
where they stay for three days: and this experience of himself
begins. He comes prepared; and, if he seems to love the
"golden-haired Katie," it is less that she is "the youngest and
comeliest daughter" than because of her position, and that in that
she realises his preconceived wishes. For three days he is with her
and about her; and he remains when his friends leave the farm-house.
But his love is no more than the consequence of his principles; it is
his own will unconsidered and but half understood. And a letter to
Adam tells how it had an end:
"'I was walking along some two miles from the cottage,
Full of my dreamings. A girl went by in a party with others:
She had a cloak on,--was stepping on quickly, for rain was
beginning;
But, as she passed, from the hood I saw her eyes glance at me:--
So quick a glance, so regardless I, that, altho' I felt it,
You couldn't properly say our eyes met; she cast it, and left it.
It was three minutes, perhaps, ere I knew what it was. I had
seen her
Somewhere before, I am sure; but that wasn't it,--not its import.
No; it had seemed to regard me with simple superior insight,
Quietly saying to herself: 'Yes, there he is still in his
fancy......
Doesn't yet see we have here just the things he is used to
elsewhere,
And that the things he likes here, elsewhere he wouldn't have
looked at;
People here, too, are people, and not as fairy-land creatures.
He is in a trance, and possessed,--I wonder how long to continue.
It is a shame and pity,--and no good likely to follow.'--
Something like this; but, indeed, I cannot the least define it.
Only, three hours thence, I was off and away in the moor-land,
Hiding myself from myself, if I could, the arrow within me.'"--p.29.