Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 13

by Unknown

I had slept on the preceding night at Brampton; and, without entering so far into particulars as to say whether I took the road towards Carlisle, Newcastle, Annan, or to the south, suffice it to say, that, towards evening, and just as I was again beginning to think of a resting-place, I overtook a man sauntering along the road, with his hands behind his back. A single glance informed me that he was not one who earned his bread by the sweat of his brow; but the same glance also told me that he had not bread enough and to spare. His back was covered with a well-worn black coat, the fashion of which belonged to a period at least twelve years preceding the time of which I write. The other parts of his outward man harmonised with his coat as far as apparent age and colour went. His head was covered with a low-crowned, broad-brimmed hat; and on his nose he wore a pair of silver-mounted spectacles. To my mind he presented the picture of a poor scholar, or of gentility in ruins. The lapels of his coat were tinged a little, but only a little, with snuff; which Flee-up, or Beggar's Brown, as some call it, is very apt to do. In his hands, also, which, as I have said, were behind his back, he held his snuff-box. It is probable that he imagined he had returned it to his pocket after taking a pinch; but he appeared from his very saunter to be a meditative man, and an idea having shot across his brain while in the act of snuff-taking, the box was unconsciously retained in his hand, and placed behind his back. Whether the hands are in the way of contemplation or not, I cannot tell, for I never think, save when my hand holds a pen; yet I have observed that to carry the hands behind the back is a favourite position with walking thinkers. I accordingly set down the gentleman with the broad-brimmed hat and silver-mounted spectacles to be a walking thinker; and it is more than probable that I should not have broken in upon his musings (for I am not in the habit of speaking to strangers), had it not been that I observed the snuff-box in his hands, and that mine required replenishing at the time. It is amazing and humiliating to think how uncomfortable, fretful, and miserable the want of a pinch of snuff can make a man!—how dust longs for dust! I had been desiring a pinch for an hour, and here it was presented before me like an unexpected spring in the wilderness. Snuffers are like freemasons—there is a sort of brotherhood among them. The real snuffer will not give a pinch to the mere dipper into other people's boxes, but he will never refuse one to the initiated. Now, I took the measure of the man's mind at a single glance. I discovered something of the pedant in his very stride—it was thoughtful, measured, mathematical; to say nothing of the spectacles, or of his beard, which was of a dark colour, and which had not been visited by the razor for at least two days. I therefore accosted him in the hackneyed but pompous language attributed to Johnson—

"Sir," said I, "permit me to immerge the summits of my digits in your pulveriferous utensil, in order to excite a grateful titillation in my olfactory nerves."

"Cheerfully, sir," returned he, handing me the box, for which, by the way, he first groped in his waistcoat-pocket; "I know what pleasure it is—'naribus aliquid haurire.'"

I soon discovered that my companion, to whom a pinch of snuff had thus introduced me, was an agreeable and well-informed man. About a mile before us lay a village in which I intended to take up my quarters for the night, and near the village was a house of considerable dimensions, the appearance of which it would puzzle me to describe. The architect had evidently set all orders at defiance; it was a mixture of the castle and the cottage—a heap of stones confusedly put together. Around it was a quantity of trees—poplars and Scotch firs; and they appeared to have been planted as promiscuously as the house was built. Its appearance excited my curiosity, and I inquired of my companion what it was called, or to whom it belonged.

"Why, sir," said he, "people generally call it Lottery Hall; but the original proprietor intended that it should have been named Luck's Lodge. There is rather an interesting story connected with it, if you had time to hear it."

"If the story be as amusing as the appearance of the house," added I, "and you have time to tell it, I shall take time to hear it."

I discovered that my friend with the silver-mounted spectacles kept what he termed an "Establishment for Young Gentlemen" in the neighbourhood—that being the modernised appellation for a boarding-school; though, judging from his appearance, I did not suppose his establishment to be over-filled; and having informed him that I intended to remain for the night at the village inn, I requested him to accompany me, where, after I had made obeisance to a supper—which was a duty that a walk of forty miles strongly prompted me to perform—I should, "enjoying mine ease" like the good old bishop, gladly hear his tale of Lottery Hall.

Therefore, having reached the inn, and partaken of supper and a glass together, after priming each nostril with a separate pinch from the box aforesaid, he thus began:—

Thirty years ago, there dwelt within this village a man named Andrew Donaldson. He was merely a day-labourer upon the estate of the squire to whom the village belongs; but he was a singular man in many respects, and one whose character very few were able to comprehend. You will be surprised when I inform you that the desire to become a Man of Fashion haunted this poor day-labourer like his shadow in the sun. It was the disease of his mind. Now, sir, before proceeding with my story, I shall make a few observations on this plaything and ruler of the world called Fashion. I would describe Fashion to be a deformed little monster with a chameleon skin, bestriding the shoulders of public opinion. Though weak in itself, it has gradually usurped a degree of power that is well-nigh irresistible; and this tyranny prevails, in various forms, but with equal cruelty, over the whole habitable earth. Like a rushing stream, it bears along all ranks and conditions of men, all avocations and professions, and often principles. Fashion is withal a notable courtier, bowing to the strong, and flattering the powerful. Fashion is a mere whim, a conceit, a foible, a toy, a folly; and withal an idol whose worshippers are universal. Wherever introduced, it generally assumes the familiar name of Habit; and many of your great and philosophical men, and certain ill-natured old women, who appear at parties in their wedding-gowns, and despise the very name of Fashion, are each the slaves of sundry habits which once bore the appellation. Should Fashion miss the skirts of a man's coat, it is certain of seizing him by the beard. It is humiliating to the dignity of immortal beings, possessed of capabilities the extent of which is yet unknown, to confess that many of them, professing to be Christians, Jews, Mahometans, or Pagans, are merely the followers in the stream of Fashion; and are Christians or Jews simply because such a religion was after the fashion of their fathers or country. During the present century, it has been the cause of much infidelity and free-thinking; or, rather, as is more frequently the case with its votaries, of no thinking. This arose from wisdom and learning being the fashion; and a vast number of brainless people—who could neither be out of the service of their idol, nor yet endure the plodding labour and severe study necessary for the acquiring of wisdom and learning, and many of them not even possessing the requisite abilities—in order to be thought at once wise men and philosophers, they pronounced religion to be a cheat, futurity a bugbear, and themselves organic clods. Fashion, indeed, is as capricious as it is tyrannical; with one man it plays the infidel, and with another it runs the gauntlet of Bible and missionary meetings or benevolent societies. It is like the Emperor of Austria—a compound of intolerable evil and much good. It attempts to penetrate the mysteries of metaphysics; and it mocks the calculations of the most sagacious chancellor of the exchequer. At the nod of Fashion, ladies change their gloves; and the children of the glove-makers of Worcester go without dinners. At its call they took the shining buckles from their shoes, and they walked in the laced boot, the sandalled slipper, or the tied shoe. Individually, it seemed a small matter whether shoes were fastened with a buckle or with riband; but the small-ware manufacturers found a new harvest, while the buckle-makers of Birmingham and their families, in thousands, were driven through the country, to beg, to steal, to coin, to perish. This was the work of Fashion; and its effects are similar to the present hour. If the cloak drive the shawl from the promenade, Paisley and Bolton may go in sackcloth. Here I may observe that the cry of distress is frequently raised against bad government, assuming it to be the cause; when fickle Fashion has alone produced the injury. In such a matter, government was unable to prevent, and is unable to relieve—Fashion defying all its enactments, and the ladies being the sole governors in the case. For, although the world rules man and his business, and Fashion is the ruler of the world, yet the ladies, though the most devoted of its servants, are at the same time the rulers of Fashion. This last assertion may seem a contradiction, but it is not the less true. With simplicity and the graces, Fashion has seldom exhibited any inclination to cultivate an acquaintance. Now, the ladies being, in their very nature, form, and feature, the living representatives of these virtues, I am the more surprised that they should be the especial patrons of Fashion, seeing that its efforts are more directed to conceal a defect, by making it more deformed, than to lend a charm to elegance, or an adornment to beauty. The lady of fortune follows the tide of Fashion, till she and her husband are within sight of the shores of poverty. The portionless, or the poorly-portioned, maiden presses on in its wake, till she find herself immured in the everlasting garret of an old maid. The well-dressed woman every man admires—the fashionable woman every man fears. Then comes the animal of the male kind, whose coat is cut, whose hair is curled, and his very cravat tied according to the fashion. Away with such shreds and patches of effeminacy! But the fashion for which Andrew Donaldson, the day-labourer, sighed aimed at higher things than this. It grieved him that he was not a better-dressed man and a greater man than the squire on whose estate he earned his daily bread. He was a hard and severe man in his own house: at his frown his wife was submissive, and his children trembled. His family consisted of his wife; three sons, Paul, Peter, and Jacob; and two daughters, Sarah and Rebecca. Though all scriptural names, they had all been so called after his own relations. His earnings did not exceed eight or nine shillings a-week; but even out of this sum he did not permit the one-half to go to the support of his family—and that half was doled out most reluctantly, penny by penny. For twenty years, he had never intrusted his wife with the management or the keeping of a single sixpence. With her, of a verity, money was but a sight, and that generally in the smallest coins of the realm. She seldom had an opportunity of contemplating the gracious countenance of His Majesty; and when she had, it was invariably upon copper. If she needed but a penny to complete the cooking of a dinner, the children had to run for it to the fields, the quarry, or the hedge-side, where their father might be at work; and then it was given with a lecture against their mother's extravagance! Extravagance indeed! to support seven mouths for a week out of five shillings! I have spoken of dinners, and I should tell you that bread was seen in the house but once a-day, and that only of the coarsest kind. Potatoes were the staple commodity, and necessity taught Mrs Donaldson to cook them in twenty different ways; and, although butcher meat was never seen beneath Andrew's roof, with the exception of pork of their own feeding, in a very small portion, once a-week, yet the kindness of the cook in the squire's family, who occasionally presented her with a jar of kitchen-fee, enabled her to dish up her potatoes in modes as various and palatable to the hungry as they were creditable to her own ingenuity and frugality. Andrew was a man of no expensive habits himself; he had never been known to spend a penny upon liquor of any kind but once, and that was at the christening of his youngest child, who was baptised in the house; when, it being a cold and stormy night, and the minister having far to ride, and withal being labouring under a cold, he said he would thank Andrew for a glass of spirits. The frugal father thought the last born of his flock had made an expensive entry into existence; but, handing twopence to his son Paul, he desired him to bring a glass of spirits to his reverence. The spirits were brought in a milk-pot; but a milk-pot was an unsightly and an unseemly vessel out of which to ask a minister to drink. The only piece of crystal in the house was a footless wine-glass, out of which a grey linnet drank, and there was no alternative but to take it from the cage, clean it, pour the spirits into it, and hand it, bottomless as it was, to the clergyman—and this was done accordingly. For twenty years, this was all that Andrew Donaldson was known to have spent on ale, wine, or spirits; and as, from the period that his children had been able to work, he had not contributed a single sixpence of his earnings towards the maintenance of his house, it was generally believed that he could not be worth less than two or three hundred pounds. Where he kept his money, however, or who was his banker, no one could tell. Some believed that he was saving in order to emigrate to Canada, and purchase land; but this was only a surmise. For weeks and months he was frequently wont to manifest the deepest anxiety. His impatience was piteous to behold; but why he was anxious and impatient no one could tell. These fits of anxiety were as frequently succeeded by others of the deepest despondency; and during both, his wife and children feared to look in his face, to speak or move in his presence. As his despondency was wont to wear away, his penuriousness in the same degree increased; and at such periods a penny for the most necessary purpose was obstinately refused.

Such were the life and habits of Andrew Donaldson, until his son Paul, who was the eldest of his family, had attained the age of three-and-twenty, and his daughter Rebecca, the youngest, was seventeen, when, on a Saturday evening, he returned from the market-town, so changed, so elated (though evidently not with strong drink), so kind, so happy, and withal so proud, that his wife and his sons and daughters marvelled, and looked at each other with wonder. He walked backward and forward across the floor, with his arms crossed upon his breast, his head thrown back, yea, he stalked with the majestic stride of a stage-king in a tragedy. He took the fragment of a mirror, which, being fastened in pieces of parchment, hung against the wall, and endeavoured, as he best might, and as its size and its half-triangular, half-circular form would admit, to survey himself from head to foot. His family gazed at him and at each other with increased astonishment.