Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 1

by John Wilson

Would Alfred have ceased to be Alfred had he lived twenty years in the hut where he spoiled the bannocks? Would Gustavus have ceased to be Gustavus had he been doomed to dree an ignoble life in the obscurest nook in Dalecarlia? Were princes and peers in our day degraded by working, in their expatriation, with head or hand for bread? Are the Polish patriots degraded by working at eighteenpence a-day, without victuals, on embankments of railroads? "At the risk of giving a shock to the prejudices of artificial society, I have ever been ready to pay homage to the aristocracy of nature, under a conviction that vigorous human-heartedness is the constituent principle of true taste." These are Wordsworth's own words, and deserve letters of gold. He has given many a shock to the prejudices of artificial society; and in ten thousand cases, where the heart of such society was happily sound at the core, notwithstanding the rotten kitchen-stuff with which it was encrusted, the shocks have killed the prejudices; and men and women, encouraged to consult their own breasts, have heard responses there to the truths uttered in music by the high-souled Bard, assuring them of an existence there of capacities of pure delight, of which they had had either but a faint suspicion, or, because "of the world's dread laugh," feared to indulge, and nearly let die.

Mr Wordsworth quotes from Heron's Scotland an interesting passage, illustrative of the life led in our country at that time by that class of persons from whom he has chosen one—not, mind you, imaginary, though for purposes of imagination—adding that "his own personal knowledge emboldened him to draw the portrait." In that passage Heron says, "As they wander, each alone, through thinly-inhabited districts, they form habits of reflection and of sublime contemplation, and that, with all their qualifications, no wonder they should contribute much to polish the roughness and soften the rusticity of our peasantry. In North America," says he, "travelling merchants from the settlements have done and continue to do much more towards civilising the Indian natives than all the missionaries, Papist or Protestant, who have ever been sent among them;" and, speaking again of Scotland, he says, "it is not more than twenty or thirty years, since a young man going from any part of Scotland to England for the purpose to carry the pack, was considered as going to lead the life, and acquire the fortune of a gentleman. When, after twenty years' absence in that honourable line of employment, he returned with his acquisitions to his native country, he was regarded as a gentleman to all intents and purposes." We have ourselves known gentlemen who had carried the pack—one of them a man of great talents and acquirements—who lived in his old age in the highest circles of society. Nobody troubled their head about his birth and parentage—for he was then very rich; but you could not sit ten minutes in his company without feeling that he was "one of God Almighty's gentlemen," belonging to the "aristocracy of Nature."

You have heard, we hope, of Alexander Wilson, the illustrious Ornithologist, second not even to Audubon—and sometimes absurdly called the Great American Ornithologist, because with pen and pencil he painted in colours that will never die—the Birds of the New World. He was a weaver—a Paisley weaver—a useful trade, and a pleasant place—where these now dim eyes of ours first saw the light. And Sandy was a pedlar. Hear his words in an autobiography unknown to the Bard: "I have this day, I believe, measured the height of an hundred stairs, and explored the recesses of twice that number of miserable habitations; and what have I gained by it?—only two shillings of worldly pelf! but an invaluable treasure of observation. In this elegant dome, wrapt up in glittering silks, and stretched on the downy sofa, recline the fair daughters of wealth and indolence—the ample mirror, flowery floor, and magnificent couch, their surrounding attendants; while, suspended in his wiry habitation above, the shrill-piped canary warbles to enchanting echoes. Within the confines of that sickly hovel, hung round with squadrons of his brother-artists, the pale-faced weaver plies the resounding lay, or launches the melancholy murmuring shuttle. Lifting this simple latch, and stooping for entrance to the miserable hut, there sits poverty and ever-moaning disease, clothed in dunghill rags, and ever shivering over the fireless chimney. Ascending this stair, the voice of joy bursts on my ear—the bridegroom and bride, surrounded by their jocund companions, circle the sparkling glass and humorous joke, or join in the raptures of the noisy dance—the squeaking fiddle breaking through the general uproar in sudden intervals, while the sounding floor groans beneath its unruly load. Leaving these happy mortals, and ushering into this silent mansion, a more solemn—a striking object presents itself to my view. The windows, the furniture, and everything that could lend one cheerful thought, are hung in solemn white; and there, stretched pale and lifeless, lies the awful corpse, while a few weeping friends sit, black and solitary, near the breathless clay. In this other place, the fearless sons of Bacchus extend their brazen throats, in shouts like bursting thunder, to the praise of their gorgeous chief. Opening this door, the lonely matron explores, for consolation, her Bible; and in this house the wife brawls, the children shriek, and the poor husband bids me depart, lest his termagant's fury should vent itself on me. In short, such an inconceivable variety daily occurs to my observation in real life, that would, were they moralised upon, convey more maxims of wisdom, and give a juster knowledge of mankind, than whole volumes of Lives and Adventures, that perhaps never had a being except in the prolific brains of their fantastic authors."

At a subsequent period he retraced his steps, taking with him copies of his poems to distribute among subscribers, and endeavour to promote a more extensive circulation. Of this excursion also he has given an account in his journal, from which it appears that his success was far from encouraging. Among amusing incidents, sketches of character, occasional sound and intelligent remarks upon the manners and prospects of the common classes of society into which he found his way, there are not a few severe expressions indicative of deep disappointment, and some that merely bespeak the keener pangs of the wounded pride founded on conscious merit. "You," says he, on one occasion, "whose souls are susceptible of the finest feelings, who are elevated to rapture with the least dawnings of hope, and sunk into despondency with the slightest thwartings of your expectations—think what I felt." Wilson himself attributed his ill fortune, in his attempts to gain the humble patronage of the poor for his poetical pursuits, to his occupation. "A packman is a character which none esteems, and almost every one despises. The idea that people of all ranks entertain of them is, that they are mean-spirited loquacious liars, cunning and illiterate, watching every opportunity, and using every mean art within their power, to cheat." This is a sad account of the estimation in which a trade was then held in Scotland, which the greatest of our living poets has attributed to the chief character in a poem comprehensive of philosophical discussions on all the highest interests of humanity. But both Wilson and Wordsworth are in the right: both saw and have spoken truth. Most small packmen were then, in some measure, what Wilson says they were generally esteemed to be—peddling pilferers, and insignificant swindlers. Poverty sent them swarming over bank and brae, and the "sma' kintra touns"—and for a plack people will forget principle who have, as we say in Scotland, missed the world. Wilson knew that to a man like himself there was degradation in such a calling; and he latterly vented his contemptuous sense of it, exaggerating the baseness of the name and nature of packman. But suppose such a man as Wilson to have been in better times one of but a few packmen travelling regularly for years over the same country, each with his own district or domain, and there can be no doubt that he would have been an object both of interest and of respect—his opportunities of seeing the very best and the very happiest of humble life, in itself very various, would have been very great; and with his original genius, he would have become, like Wordsworth's Pedlar, a good moral Philosopher.

Without, therefore, denying the truth of his picture of packmanship, we may believe the truth of a picture entirely the reverse, from the hand and heart of a still wiser man—though his wisdom has been gathered from less immediate contact with the coarse garments and clay floors of the labouring poor.

It is pleasant to hear Wordsworth speak of his own "personal knowledge" of packmen or pedlars. We cannot say of him in the words of Burns, "the fient a pride, nae pride had he;" for pride and power are brothers on earth, whatever they may prove to be in heaven. But his prime pride is his poetry; and he had not now been "sole king of rocky Cumberland," had he not studied the character of his subjects in "huts where poor men lie"—had he not "stooped his anointed head" beneath the doors of such huts, as willingly as he ever raised it aloft, with all its glorious laurels, in the palaces of nobles and princes. Yes, the inspiration he "derived from the light of setting suns," was not so sacred as that which often kindled within his spirit all the divinity of Christian man, when conversing charitably with his brother-man, a wayfarer on the dusty high-road, or among the green lanes and alleys of merry England. You are a scholar, and love poetry? Then here you have it of the finest, and will be sad to think that heaven had not made you a pedlar.

"In days of yore how fortunately fared
The Minstrel! wandering on from Hall to Hall,
Baronial Court or Royal; cheer'd with gifts
Munificent, and love, and Ladies' praise;
Now meeting on his road an armed Knight,
Now resting with a Pilgrim by the side
Of a clear brook;—beneath an Abbey's roof
One evening sumptuously lodged; the next
Humbly, in a religious Hospital;
Or with some merry Outlaws of the wood;
Or haply shrouded in a Hermit's cell.
Him, sleeping or awake, the Robber spared;
He walk'd—protected from the sword of war
By virtue of that sacred Instrument
His Harp, suspended at the Traveller's side,
His dear companion wheresoe'er he went,
Opening from Land to Land an easy way
By melody, and by the charm of verse.
Yet not the noblest of that honour'd Race
Drew happier, loftier, more impassion'd thoughts
From his long journeyings and eventful life,
Than this obscure Itinerant had skill
To gather, ranging through the tamer ground
Of these our unimaginative days;
Both while he trod the earth in humblest guise,
Accoutred with his burden and his staff;
And now, when free to move with lighter pace.

"What wonder, then, if I, whose favourite School
Hath been the fields, the roads, and rural lanes,
Look'd on this Guide with reverential love?
Each with the other pleased, we now pursued
Our journey—beneath favourable skies.
Turn wheresoe'er we would, he was a light
Unfailing: not a hamlet could we pass,
Rarely a house, that did not yield to him
Remembrances; or from his tongue call forth
Some way-beguiling tale.
—Nor was he loth to enter ragged huts,
Huts where his charity was blest; his voice
Heard as the voice of an experienced friend.
And, sometimes, where the Poor Man held dispute
With his own mind, unable to subdue
Impatience, through inaptness to perceive
General distress in his particular lot;
Or cherishing resentment, or in vain
Struggling against it, with a soul perplex'd,
And finding in herself no steady power
To draw the line of comfort that divides
Calamity, the chastisement of Heaven,
From the injustice of our brother men;
To him appeal was made as to a judge;
Who, with an understanding heart, allay'd
The perturbation; listen'd to the plea;
Resolved the dubious point; and sentence gave
So grounded, so applied, that it was heard
With soften'd spirit—e'en when it condemn'd."

What was to hinder such a man—thus born and thus bred—with such a youth and such a prime—from being in his old age worthy of walking among the mountains with Wordsworth, and descanting

"On man, on nature, and on human life?"