Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2

by John Wilson

The whole world is improving; nor can there be a pleasanter proof of that than this very wayside inn—ycleped the Salutation. What a miserable pot-house it was long ago, with a rusty-hinged door, that would neither open nor shut—neither let you out nor in—immovable and intractable to foot or hand—or all at once, when you least expected it to yield, slamming to with a bang; a constant puddle in front during rainy weather, and heaped up dust in dry—roof partly thatched, partly slated, partly tiled, and partly open to the elements, with its naked rafters. Broken windows repaired with an old petticoat, or a still older pair of breeches, and walls that had always been plastered and better plastered and worse plastered, in frosty weather—all labour in vain, as crumbling patches told, and variegated streaks, and stains of dismal ochre, meanest of all colours, and still symptomatic of want, mismanagement, bankruptcy, and perpetual flittings from a tenement that was never known to have paid any rent. Then what a pair of drunkards were old Saunders and his spouse! Yet never once were they seen drunk on a Sabbath or a fast-day—regular kirk-goers, and attentive observers of ordinances. They had not very many children, yet, pass the door when you might, you were sure to hear a squall or a shriek, or the ban of the mother, or the smacking of the palm of the hand on the part of the enemy easiest of access; or you saw one of the ragged fiends pursued by a parent round the corner, and brought back by the hair of the head till its eyes were like those of a Chinese. Now, what decency—what neatness—what order—in this household—this private public! into which customers step like neighbours on a visit, and are served with a heartiness and goodwill that deserve the name of hospitality, for they are gratuitous, and can only be repaid in kind. A limited prospect does that latticed window command—and the small panes cut objects into too many parts—little more than the breadth of the turnpike road, and a hundred yards of the same, to the north and to the south, with a few budding hedgerows, half-a-dozen trees, and some green braes. Yet could we sit and moralise, and intellectualise, for hours at this window, nor hear the striking clock.

There trips by a blooming maiden of middle degree, all alone—the more's the pity—yet perfectly happy in her own society, and one we venture to say who never received a love-letter, valentines excepted, in all her innocent days.—A fat man sitting by himself in a gig! somewhat red in the face, as if he had dined early, and not so sure of the road as his horse, who has drunk nothing but a single pailful of water, and is anxious to get to town that he may be rubbed down, and see oats once more.—Scamper away, ye joyous schoolboys, and, for your sake, may that cloud breathe forth rain and breeze, before you reach the burn, which you seem to fear may run dry before you can see the Pool where the two-pounders lie.—Methinks we know that old woman, and of the first novel we write she shall be the heroine.—Ha! a brilliant bevy of mounted maidens, in riding-habits, and Spanish hats, with "swaling feathers"—sisters, it is easy to see, and daughters of one whom we either loved, or thought we loved; but now they say she is fat and vulgar, is the devil's own scold, and makes her servants and her husband lead the lives of slaves. All that we can say is, that once on a time it was tout une autre chose; for a smaller foot, a slimmer ankle, a more delicate waist, arms more lovely, reposing in their gracefulness beneath her bosom, tresses of brighter and more burnished auburn—such starlike eyes, thrilling without seeking to reach the soul—But phoo! phoo! phoo! she married a jolter-headed squire with two thousand acres, and, in self-defence, has grown fat, vulgar, and a scold.—There is a Head for a painter! and what perfect peace and placidity all over the Blind Man's countenance! He is not a beggar although he lives on alms—those sightless orbs ask not for charity, nor yet those withered hands, as, staff-supported, he stops at the kind voice of the traveller, and tells his story in a few words. On the ancient Dervise moves, with his long silvery hair, journeying contentedly in darkness towards the eternal light.—A gang of gypsies! with their numerous assery laden with horn-spoons, pots, and pans, and black-eyed children. We should not be surprised to read some day in the newspapers, that the villain who leads the van had been executed for burglary, arson, and murder. That is the misfortune of having a bad physiognomy, a sidelong look, a scarred cheek, and a cruel grin about the muscles of the mouth; to say nothing about rusty hair protruding through the holes of a brown hat, not made for the wearer—long, sinewy arms, all of one thickness, terminating in huge, hairy, horny hands, chiefly knuckles and nails—a shambling gait, notwithstanding that his legs are finely proportioned, as if the night prowler were cautious not to be heard by the sleeping house, nor to awaken—so noiseless his stealthy advances—the unchained mastiff in his kennel.

But, hark! the spirit-stirring music of fife and drum! A whole regiment of soldiers on their march to replace another whole regiment of soldiers—and that is as much as we can be expected to know about their movements. Food for the cannon's mouth; but the maw of war has been gorged and satiated, and the glittering soap-bubbles of reputation, blown by windy-cheeked Fame from the bole of her pipe, have all burst as they have been clutched by the hands of tall fellows in red raiment, and with feathers on their heads, just before going to lie down on what is called the bed of honour. Melancholy indeed to think, that all these fine, fierce, ferocious, fire-eaters are doomed, but for some unlooked-for revolution in the affairs of Europe and the world, to die in their beds! Yet there is some comfort in thinking of the composition of a Company of brave defenders of their country. It is, we shall suppose, Seventy strong. Well, jot down three ploughmen, genuine clodhoppers, chaw-bacons sans peur et sans reproche, except that the overseers of the parish were upon them with orders of affiliation; add one shepherd, who made contradictory statements about the number of the spring lambs, and in whose house had been found during winter certain fleeces, for which no ingenuity could account; a laird's son, long known by the name of the Neerdoweel; a Man of tailors, forced to accept the bounty-money during a protracted strike—not dungs they, but flints all the nine; a barber, like many a son of genius, ruined by his wit, and who, after being driven from pole to pole, found refuge in the army at last; a bankrupt butcher, once a bully, and now a poltroon; two of the Seven Young Men—all that now survive—impatient of the drudgery of the compting-house, and the injustice of the age—but they, we believe, are in the band—the triangle and the serpent; twelve cotton-spinners at the least; six weavers of woollens; a couple of colliers from the bowels of the earth; and a score of miscellaneous rabble—flunkies long out of place, and unable to live on their liveries—felons acquitted, or that have dreed their punishment—picked men from the shilling galleries of playhouses—and the élite of the refuse and sweepings of the jails. Look how all the rogues and reprobates march like one man! Alas! was it of such materials that our conquering army was made?—were such the heroes of Talavera, Salamanca, Vittoria, and Waterloo?

Why not, and what then? Heroes are but men after all. Men, as men go, are the materials of which heroes are made; and recruits in three years ripen into veterans. Cowardice in one campaign is disciplined into courage, fear into valour. In presence of the enemy, pickpockets become patriots—members of the swell mob volunteer on forlorn hopes, and step out from the ranks to head the storm. Lord bless you! have you not studied sympathy and l'esprit de corps? An army fifty thousand strong consists, we shall suppose, in equal portions of saints and sinners; and saints and sinners are all English, Irish, Scottish. What wonder, then, that they drive all resistance to the devil, and go on from victory to victory, keeping all the cathedrals and churches in England hard at work with all their organs, from Christmas to Christmas, blowing Te Deum? You must not be permitted too curiously to analyse the composition of the British army or the British navy. Look at them, think of them as Wholes, with Nelson or Wellington the head, and in one slump pray God to bless the defenders of the throne, the hearth, and the altar.

The baggage-waggons halt, and some refreshment is sent for to the women and children. Ay, creatures not far advanced in their teens are there—a year or two ago, at school or service, happy as the day was long, now mothers, with babies at their breasts—happy still perhaps; but that pretty face is woefully wan—that hair did not use to be so dishevelled—and bony, and clammy, and blue-veined is the hand that lay so white, and warm, and smooth in the grasp of the seducer.

Yet she thinks she is his wife; and, in truth, there is a ring on her marriage-finger. But, should the regiment embark, so many women, and no more, are suffered to go with a company; and, should one of the lots not fall on her, she may take of her husband an everlasting farewell.

The Highflier Coach! carrying six in, and twelve outsides—driver and guard excluded—rate of motion eleven miles an hour, with stoppages. Why, in the name of Heaven, are all people nowadays in such haste and hurry? Is it absolutely necessary that one and all of this dozen and a half Protestants and Catholics—alike anxious for emancipation—should be at a particular place, at one particular moment of time out of the twenty-four hours given to man for motion and for rest? Confident are we that that obese elderly gentleman beside the coachman—whose ample rotundity is encased in that antique and almost obsolete invention, a spenser—needed not to have been so carried in a whirlwind to his comfortable home. Scarcely is there time for pity as we behold an honest man's wife, pale as putty in the face at a tremendous swing, or lounge, or lurch of the Highflier, holding like grim death to the balustrades. But umbrellas, parasols, plaids, shawls, bonnets, and great-coats with as many necks as Hydra—the Pile of Life has disappeared in a cloud of dust, and the faint bugle tells that already it has spun and reeled onwards a mile on its destination.

But here comes a vehicle at a more rational pace. Mercy on us—a hearse and six horses returning leisurely from a funeral! Not improbable that the person who has just quitted it, had never, till he was a corpse, got higher than a single-horse Chay—yet no fewer than half-a-dozen hackneys must be hired for his dust. But clear the way! "Hurra! hurra! he rides a race, 'tis for a 'thousand pound!" Another, and another, and another—all working away with legs and knees, arms and shoulders, on cart-horses in the Brooze—the Brooze! The hearse-horses take no sort of notice of the cavalry of cart and plough, but each in turn keeps its snorting nostrils deep plunged in the pail of meal and water—for well may they be thirsty—the kirkyard being far among the hills, and the roads not yet civilised. "May I ask, friend," addressing ourself to the hearseman, "whom you have had inside?" "Only Dr Sandilands, sir—if you are going my way, you may have a lift for a dram!" We had always thought there was a superstition in Scotland against marrying in the month of May; but it appears that people are wedded and bedded in that month too—some in warm sheets—and some in cold—cold—cold—dripping damp as the grave.

But we must up, and off. Not many gentlemen's houses in the parish—that is to say, old family seats; for of modern villas, or boxes, inhabited by persons imagining themselves gentlemen, and, for anything we know to the contrary, not wholly deceived in that belief, there is rather too great an abundance. Four family seats, however, there certainly are, of sufficient antiquity to please a lover of the olden time; and of those four, the one which we used to love best to look at was—The Mains. No need to describe it in many words. A Hall on a river-side, embosomed in woods—holms and meadows winding away in front, with their low thick hedgerows and stately single trees—on—on—on—as far as the eye can reach, a crowd of grove-tops—elms chiefly, or beeches—and a beautiful boundary of blue hills. "Good-day, Sergeant Stewart! farewell, Ma'am—farewell!" And in half an hour we are sitting in the moss-house at the edge of the outer garden, and gazing up at the many-windowed grey walls of the Mains, and its high steep-ridged roof, discoloured by the weather-stains of centuries. "The taxes on such a house," quod Sergeant Stewart, "are of themselves enough to ruin a man of moderate fortune—so the Mains, sir, has been uninhabited for a good many years." But he had been speaking to one who knew far more about the Mains than he could do—and who was not sorry that the Old Place was allowed to stand, undisturbed by any rich upstart, in the venerable silence of its own decay. And this is the moss-house that we helped to build with our own hands, at least to hang the lichen tapestry, and stud the cornice with shells! We were one of the paviers of that pebbled floor—and that bright scintillating piece of spar, the centre of the circle, came all the way from Derbyshire in the knapsack of a geologist, who died a Professor. It is strange the roof has not fallen in long ago; but what a slight ligature will often hold together a heap of ruins from tumbling into nothing! The old moss-house, though somewhat decrepit, is alive; and, if these swallows don't take care, they will be stunning themselves against our face, jerking out and in, through door and window, twenty times in a minute. Yet with all that twittering of swallows—and with all that frequent crowing of a cock—and all that cawing of rooks—and cooing of doves—and lowing of cattle along the holms—and bleating of lambs along the braes—it is nevertheless a pensive place; and here sit we like a hermit, world-sick, and to be revived only by hearkening in the solitude to the voices of other years.

What more mournful thought than that of a Decayed Family—a high-born race gradually worn out, and finally ceasing to be! The remote ancestors of this House were famous men of war—then some no less famous statesmen—then poets and historians—then minds still of fine, but of less energetic mould—and last of all, the mystery of madness breaking suddenly forth from spirits that seemed to have been especially formed for profoundest peace. There were three sons and two daughters, undegenerate from the ancient stateliness of the race—the oldest on his approach to manhood erect as the young cedar, that seems conscious of being destined one day to be the tallest tree in the woods. The twin-sisters were ladies indeed! Lovely as often are the low-born, no maiden ever stepped from her native cottage-door, even in a poet's dream, with such an air as that with which those fair beings walked along their saloons and lawns. Their beauty no one could at all describe—and no one beheld it who did not say that it transcended all that imagination had been able to picture of angelic and divine. As the sisters were, so were the brothers—distinguished above all their mates conspicuously, and beyond all possibility of mistake; so that strangers could single them out at once as the heirs of beauty, that, according to veritable pictures and true traditions, had been an unalienable gift from nature to that family ever since it bore the name. For the last three generations none of that house had ever reached even the meridian of life—and those of whom we now speak had from childhood been orphans. Yet how joyous and free were they one and all, and how often from this cell did evening hear their holy harmonies, as the Five united together with voice, harp, and dulcimer, till the stars themselves rejoiced!—One morning, Louisa, who loved the dewy dawn, was met bewildered in her mind, and perfectly astray—with no symptom of having been suddenly alarmed or terrified—but with an unrecognising smile, and eyes scarcely changed in their expression, although they knew not—but rarely—on whom they looked. It was but a few months till she died—and Adelaide was laughing carelessly on her sister's funeral day—and asked why mourning should be worn at a marriage, and a plumed hearse sent to take away the bride. Fairest of God's creatures! can it be that thou art still alive? Not with cherubs smiling round thy knees—not walking in the free realms of earth and heaven with thy husband—the noble youth, who loved thee from thy childhood when himself a child; but oh! that such misery can be beneath the sun—shut up in some narrow cell perhaps—no one knows where—whether in this thy native kingdom, or in some foreign land—with those hands manacled—a demon-light in eyes once most angelical—and ringing through undistinguishable days and nights imaginary shriekings and yellings in thy poor distracted brain!—Down went the ship with all her crew in which Percy sailed;—the sabre must have been in the hand of a skilful swordsman that in one of the Spanish battles hewed Sholto down; and the gentle Richard, whose soul—while he possessed it clearly—was for ever among the sacred books, although too long he was as a star vainly sought for in a cloudy region, yet did for a short time starlike reappear—and on his death-bed he knew us, and the other mortal creatures weeping beside him, and that there was One who died to save sinners.