The study at Wellington Terrace is upstairs, and is a large room lighted by two windows. One of these looks across the river, which at this point washes the base of the town walls, to the dingy village of Tweedmouth, rising towards the sidings and sheds of a busy railway-station and the Northumberland uplands beyond. The other looks right out to sea, and when it is open, and sometimes when it is shut, "the rush and thunder of the surge" on Berwick bar or Spittal sands can be distinctly heard. In front, the Tweed pours its waters into the North Sea under the lee of the long pier, which acts as a breakwater and shelters the entrance to the harbour. Far away to the right, Holy Island, with the castle-crowned rock of Bamborough beyond it, are prominent objects; and at night, the Longstone light on the Outer Farne recalls the heroic rescue by Grace Darling of the shipwrecked crew of the Forfarshire.
Opposite this window stood the large bookcase in which Dr. Cairns's library was housed. The books composing the library were neither very numerous, very select, nor in very good condition. Although he was a voracious reader, it must be admitted that Dr. Cairns took little pride in his books. It was a matter of utter indifference to him whether he read a favourite author in a good edition or in a cheap one. The volumes of German philosophy and theology, of which he had a fair stock, remained unbound in their original sober livery, and when any of them threatened to fall to pieces he was content to tie them together with string or to get his sister to fasten them with paste. One or two treasures he had, such as a first edition of Bacon's Instauratio Magna, a first edition of Butler's Analogy, and a Stephens Greek Testament; also a complete set of the Delphin Classics, handsomely bound, and some College prizes. These, with the Benedictine edition of Augustine, folio editions of Athanasius, Chrysostom, and other Fathers, some odd volumes of Migne, and a considerable number of books on Reformation and Secession theology, formed the most noteworthy elements in his collection. He added later a very complete set of the writings of the English Deists, and the works of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Renan. Side by side with these was what came to be a vast accumulation of rubbish, consisting of presentation copies of books on all subjects which his anxious conscience persuaded him that he was bound to keep on his shelves, since publishers and authors had been kind enough to send them to him. Nearly all the books that belonged to his real library he had read with care. Most of them were copiously annotated, and his annotations were, as a rule, characterised by a refreshing trenchancy,—in the case of some, as of Gibbon, tempered with respect; in the case of others, as of F.W. Newman and W.R. Greg, bordering on truculence. The only other noteworthy objects in the study were two splendid engravings of Raphael's "Transfiguration" and "Spasimo" (the former bearing the signature of Raphael Morghen), which had been a gift to him from Mrs. Balmer.
The greater part of each day was spent in this room. He could get along with less sleep than most men; and however late he might have sat over his books at night, he was frequently in his study again long before breakfast. After breakfast came family worship, each item of which was noteworthy. Although passionately fond of sacred music, he had a wild, uncontrollable kind of voice in singing. He seemed to have always a perfectly definite conception of what the tune ought to be, but he was seldom able to give this idea an accurate, much less a melodious, expression. Yet he never omitted the customary portion of psalm or hymn, but tackled it with the utmost gallantry, fervour, and enthusiasm, although he scarcely ever got through a verse without going off the tune.
His reading of Scripture had no elocutionary pretensions about it; it was quiet, and to a large extent gone through in a monotone; but two things about it made it very impressive. One of these was the deep reverence that characterised it, and the other was a note of subdued enthusiasm that ran all through it. It was clear to the listener that behind every passage read, whether it was history, psalm, or prophecy, or even the driest detail of ritual, there was visible to him a great world-process going on that appealed to his imagination and influenced even the tones of his voice. And his prayers, quite unstudied as they of course were, brought the whole company right into the presence of the Unseen. They were usually full of detail,—he seemed to remember everybody and everything,—but each petition was absolutely appropriate to the special case with which it dealt, and all were fused into a unity by the spirit of devotion that welled up through all. After prayers he went back to his study, and nothing was heard or seen of him for some hours, except when his heavy tread was heard upstairs as he walked backwards and forwards, or when the strains of what was meant to be a German choral were wafted down from above.
The afternoon he usually spent in visiting, and, so long as he remained in Berwick, there was no more familiar figure in its streets than his. The tall, stalwart form, already a little bent,—but bent, one thought, not so much by the weight of advancing years as by way of making an apology for its height,—the hair already white, the mild and kindly blue eye, the tall hat worn well back on the head, the swallow-tail coat, the swathes within swathes of broad white neckcloth, the umbrella carried, even in the finest weather, under the arm with the handle downward, the gloves in the hands but never on them, the rapid eager stride,—all these come back vividly to those who can remember Berwick in the Sixties and early Seventies of last century. His visitations were still carried out with the method and punctuality which had characterised them in the early days of his ministry, and he usually arranged to make a brief pause for tea with one of the families visited. On these occasions he would frequently be in high spirits, and his hearty and resounding laughter would break out on the smallest provocation. That laugh of his was eminently characteristic of the man. There was nothing smothered or furtive about it; there was not even the vestige of a chuckle in it. Its deep "Ah! hah! hah!" came with a staccato, quacking sound from somewhere low down in the chest, and set his huge shoulders moving in unison with its peals. The whole closed with a long breath of purest enjoyment—a kind of final licking of the lips after the feast was over.
Returning to his house, he always entered it by the back door, apparently because he did not wish to put the servant to the trouble of going upstairs to open the front door for him. It does not seem to have occurred to him to use a latch-key. In the evening there was generally some meeting to go to, but after his return, when evening worship and the invariable supper of porridge and milk were over, he always went back to his study, and its lights were seldom put out until long past midnight.
Although his reading in these solitary hours was of course mainly theological, he always kept fresh his interest in the classical studies of his youth. He did not depend on his communings with Origen and Eusebius for keeping up his Greek, but went back as often as he could find time to Plato and to the Tragedians. Macaulay has defined a Greek scholar as one who can read Plato with his feet on the fender. Dr. Cairns could fully satisfy this condition; indeed he went beyond it, for when he went from home he was in the habit of taking a volume of Plato or Aeschylus with him to read in the train. One of his nephews, at that time a schoolboy, remembers reading with him, when on a holiday visit to Berwick, through the Alcestis of Euripides. It may have been because he found it necessary to frighten his young relative into habits of accuracy, or possibly because an outrage committed against a Greek poet was to him the most horrid of all outrages; but anyhow, during these studies, he altogether laid aside that restraint which he was usually so jealous to maintain over his powers of sarcasm and invective. He lay on the study sofa while the lesson was going on, with a Tauchnitz Euripides in his hand; but sometimes, when a false quantity or a more than usually stupid grammatical blunder was made, he would spring to his feet and fairly shout with wrath. Only once had he to consult a Greek lexicon for the meaning of a word; and then it turned out that the meaning he had assigned to it provisionally was the right one. A Latin lexicon he did not possess.
On Sunday, Wallace Green Church was a goodly sight. Forenoon and afternoon, streams of worshippers came pouring by Ravensdowne, Church Street, and Walkergate Lane across the square and into the large building, which was soon filled to overflowing. Then "the Books" were brought in by the stately beadle, and last of all "the Doctor" came hurriedly in, scrambled awkwardly up the pulpit stair, and covered his face with his black gloved hands.[15] Then he rose, and in slow monotone gave out the opening psalm, during the singing of which his strong but wandering voice could now and again be distinctly heard above the more artistic strains of the choir and congregation rendering its tribute of praise. The Scripture lessons were read in the same subdued but reverent tones, and the prayers were simple and direct in their language, the emotion that throbbed through them being kept under due restraint. The opening periods of the sermon were pitched in the same note, but when the preacher got fairly into his subject he broke loose from such restraints, and his argument was unfolded, and then massed, and finally pressed home with all the strength of his intellect, reinforced at every stage by the play of his imagination and the glow of a passionate conviction. His "manner" in the pulpit was, it is true, far from graceful. His principal gesture was a jerking of the right arm towards the left shoulder, accompanied sometimes by a bending forward of the upper part of the body; and when he came to his peroration, which he usually delivered with his eyes closed and in lowered tones, he would clasp his hands and move them up and down in front of him. But all these things seemed to fit in naturally to his style of oratory; there was not the faintest trace of affectation in any of them, and, as a matter of fact, they added to the effectiveness of his preaching.
In Wallace Green Dr. Cairns was surrounded by a devoted band of office-bearers and others, who carried on very successful Home Mission work in the town, and kept the various organisations of the church in a vigorous and flourishing state. He had himself no faculty for business details, and he left these mostly to others; but his influence was felt at every point, and operated in a remarkable degree towards the keeping up of the spiritual tone of the church's work. With his elders, who were not merely in regard to ecclesiastical rank, but also in regard to character and ability, the leaders of the congregation, he was always on the most cordial and intimate terms. In numerical strength they usually approximated to the apostolic figure of twelve, and Dr. Cairns used to remark that their Christian names included a surprisingly large number of apostolic pairs. Thus there were amongst them not merely James and John, Matthew and Thomas, but even Philip and Bartholomew.
The Philip here referred to was Dr. Philip Whiteside Maclagan, a brother of the present Archbishop of York and of the late Professor Sir Douglas Maclagan. Dr. Maclagan had been originally an army surgeon, but had been long settled in general practice in Berwick in succession to his father-in-law, the eminent naturalist, Dr. George Johnstone. It was truly said of him that he combined in himself the labours and the graces of Luke the beloved physician and Philip the evangelist. When occasion offered, he would not only diagnose and prescribe but pray at the bedsides of his patients, and his influence was exerted in behalf of everything that was pure and lovely and of good report in the town of Berwick. His delicately chiselled features and fine expression were the true index of a devout and beautiful soul within. Dr. Cairns and he were warmly attached to one another, and he was his minister's right-hand man in everything that concerned the good of the congregation.