This is not a guide-book that can afford to expatiate in small print on all the aisles and monuments of this grand estuary, with its lochs opening like side chapels. The stranger will do well to halt almost wherever he pleases, and at a dozen resorts has a choice of steamboats plying up and down the water, as a Glasgow man calls it, even as his ancestors named the Esks and Avons which for them were alone familiar. The butterfly tourist, if he get a fine day or two, may settle on Tarbert, the isthmus of Cantire; or at Inveraray, the ducal village-capital of Argyll; or at Dunoon, its largest town; or at Rothesay, the Swindon Junction of this inland voyaging; or at the Cumbraes, whose minister prayed for “the adjacent islands of Great Britain and Ireland”; or at one and another of those snug bathing-places that almost line the shores. The gem, the bouquet, the crown of all Clyde scenery is, of course, Arran, to know which non cuivis contingit. But if he can find quarters in some airy hovel with rats running about the roof, or on some shake-down of an hotel annexe, and if the rain clears up over Goatfell, the reader will not regret taking my word for the exceeding loveliness of glens and corries, which have inspired painters, poets, and even guide-book makers.
Many writers have described Clyde voyaging. To
save myself trouble, let me borrow from the ingenious M. Jules Verne, who in his Rayon-Vert gives a remarkable account of this region and its inhabitants. It is always well to see ourselves as others see us, especially through the eyes of a famous story-teller. This story of his is intended to be amusing, and he appears to succeed in being funnier than he knew by reading up Sir Walter Scott and other works of fiction, then “combining his information.”
The time is the present day; the scene opens on the Clyde; the dramatis personæ are as follows: Two old bachelor brothers, Sam and Sib Melvill, have been avowedly “lifted” from those chieftains of the southron clan Cheeryble. They live together in kindly one-mindedness; they take snuff out of the same box; they quote Ossian in alternate stanzas, also Scott, and such good old Scottish proverbs as “let us leave that fly tranquil on the wall.” They especially agree in spoiling their niece, Miss Helena Campbell, who, like other heroines of fiction, is beautiful to behold, and like other Scottish damsels of rank, does her hair up in a snood, believes in valkyries and “browines,” then, though as good as she is charming, has a most troublesome obstinacy in getting her own way. This is a rich family, who have a town house in Glasgow and a cottage near Helensburgh, opposite the promontory always spelt “Rosenheat,” a cottage of much gentility, with a tower, a terrace, and a park. Over a large household rule two faithful retainers of the olden time, (1) the “intendant” Partridge, who always sports tartan in the form of a kilt “above the philabeg,” with blue bonnet, cow-skin brogues and other trappings of a Highland butler’s livery; (2) a venerable housekeeper, who, like all housekeepers in the Highlands, bears the title of “Luckie,” but is also styled Dame Bess, and addressed by Partridge as “Mavourneen,” that well-known Scottish term of endearment, while her masters invariably summon her by crying “Bet! Beth! Bess! Betsey! Betty!” each word taking up a line, so as to make what printers call “fat” and what French authors, from the great Dumas downwards, must find very convenient for stretching out “copy.”
Though Sam and Sib are Glasgow aristocrats, they seem so far in touch with the great metropolis as to take in the Morning Post, in which one day Miss Campbell reads an account of a wonderful green ray shed by the unclouded sun at his setting on an open sea horizon. Nothing will serve this wilful young lady but at once setting out to behold such an optical phenomenon. Gifted as she is, our heroine can have passed no high standard of geography, but her uncles explain to her that Oban is the nearest place at which an open sea view can be had. Va pour Oban! she exclaims. The sly uncles agree on the trip, all the more readily as they are aware how at Oban happens to be sojourning a certain Aristobulus Ursiclos, on whom they have their eye as an excellent parti for their ward.