While Copenhagen still led the praise to Coleshill and “yon one of his own,” a pestilent innovator came to the place who knew music, and, unhappily, introduced a band of enterprising youths to the mysteries of harmony. He taught them bass and alto, and showed them how the melody of Dundee and Coleshill could be embellished and improved by those. The first Sunday these vocalists started to display their new art in the church, Copenhagen stopped in the middle of a verse to make a protest.
“I’ll have none of your boom-boom singing here to put me all reel-rall,” said he, “nor praising of the Lord with such theatricals,” then baffled them by changing the air to “yon one of his own.”
A bachelor by prejudice and conviction, he liked to hear of marriages, and when the “cries” were read he had for long—until a new incumbent made a protest—a cheerful, harmless habit of crying at the end of the announcement, “I have no objections to’t whatever.”
The new incumbent was less tolerant than his predecessor; to him was due the old man’s retirement from the office of conductor of the psalmody. He would not countenance the ran-dans, nor consent to the perpetuation of Copenhagen’s ancient manners in the precentor’s desk. First of all he claimed the right of intimating the tunes as well as the psalms to be sung to them, and sought thereby to put an end to the unseemly “yon one of my own”; but Copenhagen started what air he pleased, no matter what was intimated, and more often than before it was his own creation. Then were thrust upon the old man wooden boards with the names of half a dozen psalm tunes printed on them. They were to be displayed in front of the desk as required, and thus save all necessity for any verbal intimation. But Copenhagen generally showed them upside down, and still maintained his vested rights to start what airs he chose. “I think we agreed on Martyrdom in the vestry,” said the minister once, exasperated into a protest in front of the congregation when Copenhagen started “yon one.” “So we did, so we did—I mind fine; but I shifted my mind,” said Copenhagen, looking up, and cleared his throat to start again. “Upon my word,” said he to sympathisers in the afternoon, “upon my word the man’s a fair torment!”
Old Copenhagen’s most notable ran-dans were after he had demitted office as musician, out of patience at last with the “torment.” They were such guileless, easily induced excesses, so marked by an incongruous propriety, that I hesitate to speak of them as more than innocent exhilarations. ’Twas then his surtout was most spick and span, his manner most urbane and engaging. The poorest gangrel who addressed him on the highway then was “sir” to Copenhagen, and a boy had but to look at him to be assured of a halfpenny. His timber leg went tapping over the causeways then with an illusive haste, for it was Copenhagen’s wish to be thought a man immersed profoundly in affairs. He spoke in his finest English (reserved for moments of importance) of the Admiralty, and he never entered the inn without having in his hand a large packet of blue envelopes tied with a boot-lace, to suggest important and delicate negotiations with some messenger from the First Lord. Once, I remember, he came out of the inn with a suspicious-looking bulge in the tail-pocket of his surtout. As he passed the Beenickie and Jock Scott and me standing at the factor’s corner, and punctiliously returned the naval salute he always looked for from his own old pupils, a “Glenorchy pint” (as it was called) fell out of his pocket in the street, without suffering any damage. He never paused a moment or looked round, and the Beenickie cried after him, “You have dropped something, Mr Bain.” “It is just a trifle, lads,” he answered without looking back; “I will get it when I return,” and pursued his way to his house, six miles away. He was ashamed, I suppose, of the exposure.
Another time—on the night of St John’s, when the local Freemasons had their flambeau march, and every boy who carried a torch got threepence on production of its stump the following day (which induced some to cut their stumps in two, and so get sixpence)—I saw old Copenhagen falling down an outside stair. I hastened to his assistance, suffering sincere alarm and pity for my ancient dominie. He was, luckily, little the worse. “I was coming down in any case, John,” said he benignly. “Man! I am always vexed I never learned you the fencing with the cutlass, for you were a promising lad.” “I am sorry too, Mr Bain,” said I, though indeed I could not see that a clerk in a law office would find the accomplishment in question of much use to him. “I knew your Uncle Jamie,” he added. “Him and me was pretty chief. You will say nothing about my bit of a glide, John: I was coming down at any rate, I assure you.”
I should like my last reminiscence of old Copenhagen to be more reputable, for his own last words in gossiping of any one, no matter how foolish or vile, were always generous. And I recall a day when he came from his distant seminary through deep drifts of snow to the town to post a letter that he wished me to revise first. The ‘Courier’ of the week was full of tales of misery among our troops in the Crimean trenches, and Copenhagen’s sympathies were fired. His letter was a suggestion to the Admiralty that in these times of stress it might help my Lords a little if they were relieved of the payment of the pension of Archibald Bain, late of H.M.S. Elephant. He was very old, and frail, and tremulous in these days; his hand of write would have sorely puzzled any one but me, who knew so well its eccentricities. His folly touched me to the core; I knew his object, but for the life of me I could not read his letter.
“I think it would be a mistake to send it, Mr Bain,” I said, when he explained.
“Havers!” said he. “What I want you to tell me is if it is shipshape and Bristol fashion, eh? and not likely to give offence. Read it, man, read it!”
“Read it out to me yourself, Mr Bain,” I stammered, “the thing’s beyond me.”