Nevertheless, whatever might have been his sentiments regarding the dead among whom, during his days of health, he loathed to be placed, certain it is, that, when brought within view and feeling of the awful close of mortal existence, his heart was softened towards his fellow-men, his antipathies relaxed, and he died with a wish upon his lips to be buried among his fathers.
In 1820, the writer of the present narrative visited the deserted hut of “Bowed Davie,” actuated by a sort of pilgrim-respect for scenes hallowed by genius. The little mansion at present existing is not that built by the Dwarf’s own hands, but one of later date, erected by the charity of a neighbouring gentleman in the year 1802. A small tablet of freestone, bearing this date below the letters D. R. was still to be seen in the western gable. The eastern division of the cottage, separated from the other by a partition of stone and lime, and entering by a different door, was still inhabited by his sister. It is remarkable that even with that near relation he was never on terms of any affection; an almost complete estrangement having subsisted between these two lonely beings for many years. Agnes had been a servant in the earlier part of her life; but having of late years become subject to a degree of mental aberration, she had retired from every sort of employment to her brother’s habitation, where she subsisted on the charity of the poor’s funds.
On entering the cottage with my guide, we found her seated on a low settle before the fire, her hands reclined upon her lap, and her eyes gazing unmeaningly on a small turf fire, which died away in a perfect wilderness of chimney. Her whole figure and situation reminded me strongly of the inimitable description of the lone Highland woman in Hogg’s “Winter Evening Tales,” who sat singing by the light of a moss-lamp in expectation of the apparition of her son. The scene was nearly as wild and picturesque, the wretched inmate of the hut was as lonely and helpless, and there was an air of desolate imbecility about her that rendered her almost as interesting. It seemed surprising, indeed, how a person apparently so abandoned by her own energies and the care of her fellow-creatures, could at all exist in such a solitude. She neither moved nor looked up on our entrance; but a few minutes after we had seated ourselves, which we did with silence and awe, she lifted her eyes, and thereby gave us a fuller view of her countenance. She much resembled her brother in features, but was not deformed. Her face was dark with age and wretchedness, and her aspect, otherwise somewhat appalling, was rendered almost unearthly by two large black eyes, the lustre of which was not the less horrible by the imbecility of their gaze. I have been thus particular in describing her person and circumstances, because I do not judge it impossible that she may have suggested the original idea of Elspeth Cheyne, the superannuated dependant of Glenallan, in the “Antiquary.”
Through the medium of my guide, a sagacious country lad, I contrived to ask her a number of questions concerning her brother; but she was extremely shy in answering them, and expressed her jealousy of my intentions by saying, “she wondered why so many grand people had come from distant parts to inquire after her family—she was sure there was naething ill anent them.” Little did she, poor soul, understand the cause of this curiosity, or the honour conferred upon her family by the attention of the great hermit-author, in whose works the very mention of a name confers immortality.
She showed us her brother’s Bible. It was of Kincaid’s fine quarto edition, and had been bought in 1773 by the Dwarf himself. His name was written with his own hand on a blank leaf, and it was with something like transport that I drew a fac-simile of the autograph into my pocket-book, which I still preserve.
Agnes Ritchie died in December, 1821, ten years after the decease of her brother, and was buried in the same grave, in Manor churchyard, on which occasion the deformed bones of Bowed Davie were found, to the utter disproof of a vulgar report, that they had suffered resurrection at the hands of certain anatomists in the College of Glasgow.
I found the part of the house which had been inhabited by the Dwarf himself deserted as he had left it at his death. Its furniture had been all dispersed among the curious or the friendly; and a host of poultry were now suffered to roost on the rafters where only soot formerly dared to hang. His seat of divination before the door had been suffered to remain. It was covered very rurally with a ruinous door of a cart. There seemed no precise window in the hut, but it contained numerous holes and bores all round, some of which were built up with turf. I drew a pair of rusty nails from a joist near the door, and, wrapping them up in a piece of paper, brought them away.
We stole a look at the garden, by climbing up the high wall. Some care has been taken by the neighbouring peasants to preserve it in good order; but, alas! it is scarcely the ghost of what it was: “Cum Troja fuit,” there was not a weed to be seen over its whole surface, nor durst a single kail-worm intrude its unhallowed nose within the precincts; an hundred mountain-ashes, displaying their red, sour fruit to the temptation of the passing urchin, stood around like a guard, to preserve from the influence of witchcraft the richer treasures that lay within,—
“Fair as the gardens of Gul in their bloom”;
but now weeds and kail-worms were abundant, the rowan-trees had been all cut down, and Bowed Davie’s garden, that once might have rivalled Milton’s imagination of Paradise, now lay stale, flat, and unprofitable—like a buxom cheek deprived of its blushes, or Greece deserted by the liberty that once, according to Byron, inspired its beauty. A few skeps, however, still remained, which the neighbouring Hobbie Elliots had not taken away.