and came fairly among the tombs. Here, at least, there were no
commonplace politics, no diluted this-morning's leader, to distract or
offend me. The old shabby church showed, as usual, its quaint extent of
roofage and the relievo skeleton on one gable, still blackened with the
fire of thirty years ago. A chill dank mist lay over all. The Old
Greyfriars' churchyard was in perfection that morning, and one could go
round and reckon up the associations with no fear of vulgar
interruption. On this stone the Covenant was signed. In that vault, as
the story goes, John Knox took hiding in some Reformation broil. From
that window Burke the murderer looked out many a time across the tombs,
and perhaps o' nights let himself down over the sill to rob some
new-made grave. Certainly he would have a selection here. The very walks
have been carried over forgotten resting-places; and the whole ground is
uneven, because (as I was once quaintly told) "when the wood rots it
stands to reason the soil should fall in," which, from the law of
gravitation, is certainly beyond denial. But it is round the boundary
that there are the finest tombs. The whole irregular space is, as it
were, fringed with quaint old monuments, rich in death's-heads and
scythes and hour-glasses, and doubly rich in pious epitaphs and Latin
mottoes--rich in them to such an extent that their proper space has run
over, and they have crawled end-long up the shafts of columns and
ensconced themselves in all sorts of odd corners among the sculpture.
These tombs raise their backs against the rabble of squalid
dwelling-houses, and every here and there a clothes-pole projects
between two monuments its fluttering trophy of white and yellow and red.
With a grim irony they recall the banners in the Invalides, banners as
appropriate perhaps over the sepulchres of tailors and weavers as these
others above the dust of armies. Why they put things out to dry on that
particular morning it was hard to imagine. The grass was grey with drops
of rain, the headstones black with moisture. Yet, in despite of weather
and common-sense, there they hung between the tombs; and beyond them I
could see through open windows into miserable rooms where whole families
were born and fed, and slept and died. At one a girl sat singing merrily
with her back to the graveyard; and from another came the shrill tones
of a scolding woman. Every here and there was a town garden full of
sickly flowers, or a pile of crockery inside upon the window-seat. But
you do not grasp the full connection between these houses of the dead
and the living, the unnatural marriage of stately sepulchres and squalid
houses, till, lower down, where the road has sunk far below the surface
of the cemetery, and the very roofs are scarcely on a level with its
wall, you observe that a proprietor has taken advantage of a tall
monument and trained a chimney-stack against its back. It startles you
to see the red, modern pots peering over the shoulder of the tomb.
A man was at work on a grave, his spade clinking away the drift of bones
that permeates the thin brown soil; but my first disappointment had
taught me to expect little from Greyfriars' sextons, and I passed him by
in silence. A slater on the slope of a neighbouring roof eyed me
curiously. A lean black cat, looking as if it had battened on strange
meats, slipped past me. A little boy at a window put his finger to his
nose in so offensive a manner that I was put upon my dignity, and turned
grandly off to read old epitaphs and peer through the gratings into the
shadow of vaults.
Just then I saw two women coming down a path, one of them old, and the
other younger, with a child in her arms. Both had faces eaten with
famine and hardened with sin, and both had reached that stage of
degradation, much lower in a woman than a man, when all care for dress
is lost. As they came down they neared a grave, where some pious friend
or relative had laid a wreath of immortelles, and put a bell glass over
it, as is the custom. The effect of that ring of dull yellow among so
many blackened and dusty sculptures was more pleasant than it is in
modern cemeteries, where every second mound can boast a similar coronal;
and here, where it was the exception and not the rule, I could even
fancy the drops of moisture that dimmed the covering were the tears of
those who laid it where it was. As the two women came up to it, one of
them kneeled down on the wet grass and looked long and silently through
the clouded shade, while the second stood above her, gently oscillating
to and fro to lull the muling baby. I was struck a great way off with
something religious in the attitude of these two unkempt and haggard
women; and I drew near faster, but still cautiously, to hear what they
were saying. Surely on them the spirit of death and decay had descended;
I had no education to dread here: should I not have a chance of seeing
nature? Alas! a pawnbroker could not have been more practical and
commonplace, for this was what the kneeling woman said to the woman
upright--this and nothing more: "Eh, what extravagance!"
O nineteenth century, wonderful art thou indeed--wonderful, but
wearisome in thy stale and deadly uniformity. Thy men are more like
numerals than men. They must bear their idiosyncrasies or their
professions written on a placard about their neck, like the scenery in
Shakespeare's theatre. The precepts of economy have pierced into the
lowest ranks of life; and there is now a decorum in vice, a
respectability among the disreputable, a pure spirit of Philistinism
among the waifs and strays of thy Bohemia. For lo! thy very gravediggers
talk politics; and thy castaways kneel upon new graves, to discuss the
cost of the monument and grumble at the improvidence of love.
Such was the elegant apostrophe that I made as I went out of the gates
again, happily satisfied in myself, and feeling that I alone of all whom
I had seen was able to profit by the silent poem of these green mounds
and blackened headstones.
FOOTNOTES:
[34] "Religio Medici," Part ii.
[35] "Duchess of Malfi."
IV
NURSES
I knew one once, and the room where, lonely and old, she waited for
death. It was pleasant enough, high up above the lane, and looking forth
upon a hill-side, covered all day with sheets and yellow blankets, and
with long lines of underclothing fluttering between the battered posts.
There were any number of cheap prints, and a drawing by one of "her
children," and there were flowers in the window, and a sickly canary
withered into consumption in an ornamental cage. The bed, with its
checked coverlid, was in a closet. A great Bible lay on the table; and
her drawers were full of "scones," which it was her pleasure to give to
young visitors such as I was then.
You may not think this a melancholy picture; but the canary, and the
cat, and the white mouse that she had for a while, and that died, were
all indications of the want that ate into her heart. I think I know a
little of what that old woman felt; and I am as sure as if I had seen
her, that she sat many an hour in silent tears, with the big Bible open
before her clouded eyes.
If you could look back upon her life, and feel the great chain that had
linked her to one child after another, sometimes to be wrenched suddenly
through, and sometimes, which is infinitely worse, to be torn gradually
off through years of growing neglect, or perhaps growing dislike! She
had, like the mother, overcome that natural repugnance--repugnance which
no man can conquer--towards the infirm and helpless mass of putty of the
earlier stage. She had spent her best and happiest years in tending,
watching, and learning to love like a mother this child, with which she
has no connection and to which she has no tie. Perhaps she refused some
sweetheart (such things have been), or put him off and off, until he
lost heart and turned to some one else, all for fear of leaving this
creature that had wound itself about her heart. And the end of it
all,--her month's warning, and a present perhaps, and the rest of the
life to vain regret. Or, worse still, to see the child gradually
forgetting and forsaking her, fostered in disrespect and neglect on the
plea of growing manliness, and at last beginning to treat her as a
servant whom he had treated a few years before as a mother. She sees the
Bible or the Psalm-book, which with gladness and love unutterable in her
heart she had bought for him years ago out of her slender savings,
neglected for some newer gift of his father, lying in dust in the
lumber-room or given away to a poor child, and the act applauded for its
unfeeling charity. Little wonder if she becomes hurt and angry, and
attempts to tyrannise and to grasp her old power back again. We are not
all patient Grizzels, by good fortune, but the most of us human beings
with feelings and tempers of our own.
And so in the end, behold her in the room that I described. Very likely
and very naturally, in some fling of feverish misery or recoil of
thwarted love, she has quarrelled with her old employers and the
children are forbidden to see her or to speak to her; or at best she
gets her rent paid and a little to herself, and now and then her late
charges are sent up (with another nurse, perhaps) to pay her a short
visit. How bright these visits seem as she looks forward to them on her
lonely bed! How unsatisfactory their realisation, when the forgetful
child, half wondering, checks with every word and action the outpouring
of her maternal love! How bitter and restless the memories that they
leave behind! And for the rest, what else has she?--to watch them with
eager eyes as they go to school, to sit in church where she can see them
every Sunday, to be passed some day unnoticed in the street, or
deliberately cut because the great man or the great woman are with
friends before whom they are ashamed to recognise the old woman that
loved them.
When she goes home that night, how lonely will the room appear to her!
Perhaps the neighbours may hear her sobbing to herself in the dark, with
the fire burnt out for want of fuel, and the candle still unlit upon the
table.
And it is for this that they live, these quasi-mothers--mothers in
everything but the travail and the thanks. It is for this that they have
remained virtuous in youth, living the dull life of a household servant.
It is for this that they refused the old sweetheart, and have no
fireside or offspring of their own.
I believe in a better state of things, that there will be no more
nurses, and that every mother will nurse her own offspring; for what can
be more hardening and demoralising than to call forth the tenderest
feelings of a woman's heart and cherish them yourself as long as you
need them, as long as your children require a nurse to love them, and
then to blight and thwart and destroy them, whenever your own use for
them is at an end? This may be Utopian; but it is always a little thing
if one mother or two mothers can be brought to feel more tenderly to
those who share their toil and have no part in their reward.
V
A CHARACTER
The man has a red, bloated face, and his figure is short and squat. So
far there is nothing in him to notice, but when you see his eyes, you
can read in these hard and shallow orbs a depravity beyond measure
depraved, a thirst after wickedness, the pure, disinterested love of
Hell for its own sake. The other night, in the street, I was watching an
omnibus passing with lit-up windows, when I heard some one coughing at
my side as though he would cough his soul out; and turning round, I saw
him stopping under a lamp, with a brown greatcoat buttoned round him and
his whole face convulsed. It seemed as if he could not live long; and so
the sight set my mind upon a train of thought, as I finished my cigar up
and down the lighted streets.
He is old, but all these years have not yet quenched his thirst for
evil, and his eyes still delight themselves in wickedness. He is dumb;
but he will not let that hinder his foul trade, or perhaps I should say,
his yet fouler amusement, and he has pressed a slate into the service of
corruption. Look at him, and he will sign to you with his bloated head,
and when you go to him in answer to the sign, thinking perhaps that the
poor dumb man has lost his way, you will see what he writes upon his
slate. He haunts the doors of schools, and shows such inscriptions as
these to the innocent children that come out. He hangs about
picture-galleries, and makes the noblest pictures the text for some
silent homily of vice. His industry is a lesson to ourselves. Is it not
wonderful how he can triumph over his infirmities and do such an amount
of harm without a tongue? Wonderful industry--strange, fruitless,
pleasureless toil? Must not the very devil feel a soft emotion to see
his disinterested and laborious service? Ah, but the devil knows better
than this: he knows that this man is penetrated with the love of evil
and that all his pleasure is shut up in wickedness: he recognises him,
perhaps, as a fit type for mankind of his satanic self, and watches over
his effigy as we might watch over a favourite likeness. As the business
man comes to love the toil, which he only looked upon at first as a
ladder towards other desires and less unnatural gratifications, so the
dumb man has felt the charm of his trade and fallen captivated before
the eyes of sin. It is a mistake when preachers tell us that vice is
hideous and loathsome; for even vice has her Hoersel and her devotees,
who love her for her own sake.
COLLEGE PAPERS
COLLEGE PAPERS
I
EDINBURGH STUDENTS IN 1824
On the 2nd of January 1824 was issued the prospectus of the _Lapsus
Linguae; or, the College Tatler_; and on the 7th the first number
appeared. On Friday the 2nd of April "_Mr. Tatler_ became speechless."
Its history was not all one success; for the editor (who applies to
himself the words of Iago, "I am nothing if I am not critical")
over-stepped the bounds of caution, and found himself seriously
embroiled with the powers that were. There appeared in No. XVI. a most
bitter satire upon Sir John Leslie, in which he was compared to
Falstaff, charged with puffing himself, and very prettily censured for
publishing only the first volume of a class-book, and making all
purchasers pay for both. Sir John Leslie took up the matter angrily,
visited Carfrae the publisher, and threatened him with an action, till
he was forced to turn the hapless _Lapsus_ out of doors. The maltreated
periodical found shelter in the shop of Huie, Infirmary Street; and NO.
XVII. was duly issued from the new office. NO. XVII. beheld _Mr.
Tatler's_ humiliation, in which, with fulsome apology and not very
credible assurances of respect and admiration, he disclaims the article
in question, and advertises a new issue of NO. XVI. with all
objectionable matter omitted. This, with pleasing euphemism, he terms in
a later advertisement, "a new and improved edition." This was the only
remarkable adventure of _Mr. Tatler's_ brief existence; unless we
consider as such a silly Chaldee manuscript in imitation of
_Blackwood_, and a letter of reproof from a divinity student on the
impiety of the same dull effusion. He laments the near approach of his
end in pathetic terms. "How shall we summon up sufficient courage," says
he, "to look for the last time on our beloved little devil and his
inestimable proof-sheet? How shall we be able to pass No. 14 Infirmary
Street and feel that all its attractions are over? How shall we bid
farewell for ever to that excellent man, with the long greatcoat, wooden
leg and wooden board, who acts as our representative at the gate of
_Alma Mater?_" But alas! he had no choice: _Mr. Tatler_, whose career,
he says himself, had been successful, passed peacefully away, and has
ever since dumbly implored "the bringing home of bell and burial."
_Alter et idem_. A very different affair was the _Lapsus Linguae_ from
the _Edinburgh University Magazine_. The two prospectuses alone, laid
side by side, would indicate the march of luxury and the repeal of the
paper duty. The penny bi-weekly broadside of session 1823-4 was almost
wholly dedicated to Momus. Epigrams, pointless letters, amorous verses,
and University grievances are the continual burthen of the song. But
_Mr. Tatler_ was not without a vein of hearty humour; and his pages
afford what is much better: to wit, a good picture of student life as it
then was. The students of those polite days insisted on retaining their
hats in the class-room. There was a cab-stance in front of the College;
and "Carriage Entrance" was posted above the main arch, on what the
writer pleases to call "coarse, unclassic boards." The benches of the
"Speculative" then, as now, were red; but all other Societies (the
"Dialectic" is the only survivor) met downstairs, in some rooms of which
it is pointedly said that "nothing else could conveniently be made of
them." However horrible these dungeons may have been, it is certain that
they were paid for, and that far too heavily for the taste of session
1823-4, which found enough calls upon its purse for porter and toasted
cheese at Ambrose's, or cranberry tarts and ginger-wine at Doull's.
Duelling was still a possibility; so much so that when two medicals fell
to fisticuffs in Adam Square, it was seriously hinted that single combat
would be the result. Last and most wonderful of all, Gall and Spurzheim
were in every one's mouth; and the Law student, after having exhausted
Byron's poetry and Scott's novels, informed the ladies of his belief in
phrenology. In the present day he would dilate on "Red as a rose is
she," and then mention that he attends Old Greyfriars', as a tacit claim
to intellectual superiority. I do not know that the advance is much.
But _Mr. Tatler's_ best performances were three short papers in which he
hit off pretty smartly the idiosyncrasies of the "_Divinity_," the
"_Medical_," and the "_Law_" of session 1823-4. The fact that there was
no notice of the "_Arts_" seems to suggest that they stood in the same
intermediate position as they do now--the epitome of student-kind. _Mr.
Tatler's_ satire is, on the whole, good-humoured, and has not grown
superannuated in _all_ its limbs. His descriptions may limp at some
points, but there are certain broad traits that apply equally well to
session 1870-71. He shows us the _Divinity_ of the period--tall, pale,
and slender--his collar greasy, and his coat bare about the seams--"his
white neckcloth serving four days, and regularly turned the
third,"--"the rim of his hat deficient in wool,"--and "a weighty volume
of theology under his arm." He was the man to buy cheap "a snuff-box, or
a dozen of pencils, or a six-bladed knife, or a quarter of a hundred
quills," at any of the public sale-rooms. He was noted for cheap
purchases, and for exceeding the legal tender in halfpence. He haunted
"the darkest and remotest corner of the Theatre Gallery." He was to be
seen issuing from "aerial lodging-houses." Withal, says mine author,
"there were many good points about him: he paid his landlady's bill,
read his Bible, went twice to church on Sunday, seldom swore, was not
often tipsy, and bought the _Lapsus Linguae_."
The _Medical_, again, "wore a white greatcoat, and consequently talked
loud"--(there is something very delicious in that _consequently_). He
wore his hat on one side. He was active, volatile, and went to the top
of Arthur's Seat on the Sunday forenoon. He was as quiet in a debating
society as he was loud in the streets. He was reckless and imprudent:
yesterday he insisted on your sharing a bottle of claret with him (and
claret was claret then, before the cheap-and-nasty treaty), and
to-morrow he asks you for the loan of a penny to buy the last number of
the _Lapsus_.
The student of _Law_, again, was a learned man. "He had turned over the
leaves of Justinian's 'Institutes,' and knew that they were written in
Latin. He was well acquainted with the title-page of 'Blackstone's
Commentaries,' and _argal_ (as the gravedigger in _Hamlet_ says) he was
not a person to be laughed at." He attended the Parliament House in the
character of a critic, and could give you stale sneers at all the
celebrated speakers. He was the terror of essayists at the Speculative
or the Forensic. In social qualities he seems to have stood unrivalled.
Even in the police-office we find him shining with undiminished lustre.
"If a _Charlie_ should find him rather noisy at an untimely hour, and
venture to take him into custody, he appears next morning like a Daniel
come to judgment. He opens his mouth to speak, and the divine precepts
of unchanging justice and Scots law flow from his tongue. The magistrate
listens in amazement, and fines him only a couple of guineas."
Such then were our predecessors and their College Magazine. Barclay,
Ambrose, Young Amos, and Fergusson were to them what the Cafe, the
Rainbow, and Rutherford's are to us. An hour's reading in these old
pages absolutely confuses us, there is so much that is similar and so
much that is different; the follies and amusements are so like our own,
and the manner of frolicking and enjoying are so changed, that one
pauses and looks about him in philosophic judgment. The muddy quadrangle
is thick with living students; but in our eyes it swarms also with the
phantasmal white greatcoats and tilted hats of 1824. Two races meet:
races alike and diverse. Two performances are played before our eyes;
but the change seems merely of impersonators, of scenery, of costume.
Plot and passion are the same. It is the fall of the spun shilling
whether seventy-one or twenty-four has the best of it.
In a future number we hope to give a glance at the individualities of
the present, and see whether the cast shall be head or tail--whether we
or the readers of the _Lapsus_ stand higher in the balance.
II
THE MODERN STUDENT CONSIDERED GENERALLY
We have now reached the difficult portion of our task. _Mr. Tatler_, for
all that we care, may have been as virulent as he liked about the
students of a former day; but for the iron to touch our sacred selves,
for a brother of the Guild to betray its most privy infirmities, let
such a Judas look to himself as he passes on his way to the Scots Law or
the Diagnostic, below the solitary lamp at the corner of the dark
quadrangle. We confess that this idea alarms us. We enter a protest. We
bind ourselves over verbally to keep the peace. We hope, moreover, that
having thus made you secret to our misgivings, you will excuse us if we
be dull, and set that down to caution which you might before have
charged to the account of stupidity.
The natural tendency of civilisation is to obliterate those distinctions
which are the best salt of life. All the fine old professional flavour
in language has evaporated. Your very gravedigger has forgotten his
avocation in his electorship, and would quibble on the Franchise over
Ophelia's grave, instead of more appropriately discussing the duration
of bodies under ground. From this tendency, from this gradual attrition
of life, in which everything pointed and characteristic is being rubbed
down, till the whole world begins to slip between our fingers in smooth
undistinguishable sands, from this, we say, it follows that we must not
attempt to join _Mr. Tatler_ in his simple division of students into
_Law_, _Divinity_, and _Medical_. Nowadays the Faculties may shake hands
over their follies; and, like Mrs. Frail and Mrs. Foresight (in _Love
for Love_) they may stand in the doors of opposite class-rooms, crying:
"Sister, Sister--Sister everyway!" A few restrictions, indeed, remain to
influence the followers of individual branches of study. The _Divinity_,
for example, must be an avowed believer; and as this, in the present
day, is unhappily considered by many as a confession of weakness, he is
fain to choose one of two ways of gilding the distasteful orthodox
bolus. Some swallow it in a thin jelly of metaphysics; for it is even a
credit to believe in God on the evidence of some crack-jaw philosopher,
although it is a decided slur to believe in Him on His own authority.
Others again (and this we think the worst method), finding German
grammar a somewhat dry morsel, run their own little heresy as a proof of
independence; and deny one of the cardinal doctrines that they may hold
the others without being laughed at.