Chapter VII: That It Was a Scotchman Who Introduced Thistles Into (2)

The Scot abroad, or at any rate the Scot that one knows and loves in London, is a creature so winning and delectable in character that one proceeds to the study of the Scot at home with anticipations of the most pleasurable kind. The best way to study the Scot at home is, of course, to consult the works of those eminent Scottish writers, Dr. J. M. Barrie and Dr. Ian Maclaren, with occasional reference to Dr. S. R. Crockett. Dr. Barrie and Dr. Maclaren (otherwise Watson) have been at pains to portray for us, with what Dr. Nicoll would no doubt call loving and exquisite fidelity, the peoples and manners and customs of two Scotch parishes, named respectively Thrums and Drumtochty. Both, one gathers, are the prettiest, most charitable, and most God-fearing communities to be found upon this globe of sinful continents. Butter will not melt, and ginger is not hot in the mouth either at Thrums or Drumtochty. The various books of the chronicles of that earthly paradise, Thrums, are of formidable number, and I do not profess to have read more than five of them. But I have read enough to know all that I want to know about Thrums. Here, it seems, “twenty years ago, hundreds of weavers lived and died Thoreaus ’ben the hoose without knowing it.” Here also lived “the dear old soul who originally induced me to enter the Auld Licht Kirk” and was “as sweet and pure a woman as I ever knew”; also Tammy Mealmaker, who died a bachelor and “had been soured in his youth by disappointment in love of which he spoke but seldom,” also Tibbie McQuhattay, “at whom you may smile, but, ah! I know what she was at the sick-bedside”; also Whinny Webster, who ate peppermints in church, and when detected in the act “gave one wild scream”; and “straightway became a God-fearing man”; also Hendry Munn, “who was the only man in Thrums who did not quake when the minister looked at him”; also Jess McQumpha, who “sat at the window for twenty years or more, looking at the world as through a telescope,” and who “was possessed of a sweet, untarnished soul”; also Leeby, who “died in the back end of the year I have been speaking of”; and Jamie, who did the home-coming, and gaed somebody “sic a look”; and last, but not least, in childishness, the Little Minister and Babbie. For blithering sentiment of the cheapest and most obvious sort, these personages have certainly never been equalled. The whole tone of the Thrums chronicles is as bathotic as it could be made even by a Scotchman, and wherever one turns one finds Mr. Barrie trotting out creatures of a sentiment so slobbery that it would be eschewed even by the scribbling, simpering misses at a seminary. And at Drumtochty, need one say, Dr. Ian Maclaren introduces you to the same set of silly figures. Dr. Maclaren, it is true, put in the front of his show a cunning Scotch farmer whose attempts to cheat his landlord, the worthy doctor,—parson as he is,—would evidently have you smile, but all the rest of his people are rare and radiant pieces of virtue, clothed round in Scotch flesh and sandy hair, and speaking the most uncompromising dialect. For example, there is Mrs. Elspeth Macfadyen. This lady’s claim to greatness is not exactly of a moral kind, being based on the circumstance that she obtained a penny above the market price for her butter. All the farmers’ wives of the Scotch romances invariably do this. Even Dr. Crockett’s lady of the lilac sunbonnet made the best butter in three parishes. The butter woman, however, is not intended to count, so that we will let her go by, and proceed duly to note the heavenly dispositions of the rest of the Drumtochtyans. In the first place, there is Baxter of Burnbrae. Burnbrae, it seems, “had to make the choice that has been offered to every man since the world began”; in other words, he had to choose between losing his farm and changing his kirk.

“‘Well, Baxter,’ said the factor in his room next day, ‘your offer is all right in the money, and we’ll soon settle the building. By the way, I suppose you’ve thought over that kirk affair, and will give your word to attend the Established Church, eh?’

“‘Ye may be sure that A’ve gien a’ ye said ma best judgment, and there’s naething I wudna dae to be left in Burnbrae, but this thing ye ask A canna grant.’

“‘Why not?’ and the factor, lounging in his chair, eyed Burnbrae contemptuously as he stood erect before him. ‘My groom tells me that there is not a grain of difference between all those kirks in Scotland, and that the whole affair is just downright bad temper, and I believe he’s right.’

“‘A wudna say onything disrespectfu’, sir, but it’s juist possible that naither you nor your groom ken the history o’ the Free Church; but ye may be sure sensible men and puir fouk dinna mak’ sic sacrifices for bad temper.’”

Which is exceeding good of Burnbrae, if a little too bad of Dr. Maclaren.

And our excellent Scotch author makes Burnbrae conclude the interview thus: “‘Sir,’ he said, with great solemnity, ‘I pray God you may never have such sorrow as you have sent on my house this day.’” I should very much doubt whether there is a Scotchman in all Scotland who would not have made quite a different ending with much fist-shaking and calling down of curses in it.

Well, in the result, Burnbrae does leave his farm; anyway, there is a sale, or as the Scotch elegantly term it, a roup. And what happens? Why, the neighbours—good, honest bodies—turn up in their thousands and buy in Burnbrae’s farming stock at noble prices, bidding high for everything in order that Burnbrae may at least have a good roup. Meanwhile the minister of the kirk with which Burnbrae scorned to become a member has communicated with the owner of the soil, the Earl of Kilspindie to wit, and to Burnbrae Kilspindie writes, “Meet me in Muirtown on Friday.” On Friday, Burnbrae meets the Earl. They crack together of Burnbrae’s son, the sergeant, who, like all the other Scotch sergeants of fiction, has just won the Victoria Cross. “‘There will be no speaking to Mrs. Baxter now after this exploit of the sergeant’s! When I read it on my way home I was as proud as if he had been my own son. It was a gallant deed, and well deserves the Cross. He’ll be getting his commission some day. Lieutenant Baxter! That will stir the Glen, eh?’” Then they touch on the matter of the farm, and the tears come to Burnbrae’s eyes. “‘Athocht,’ he said, ‘when yir message cam, that maybe ye hed anither mind than yir factor, and wud send me back tae Jean wi’ guid news in ma mooth.’

“‘Gin it be yir wull that we flit, A’ll mak nae mair complaint, an’ there’s nae bitterness in ma hert. But A wud like ye tae ken that it ’ill be a sair pairtin’.

“‘For twa hundred years an’ mair there’s been a Baxter at Burnbrae and a Hay at Kilspindie; ane wes juist a workin’ farmer, an’ the other a belted earl, but gude freends an’ faithfu’; an’, ma Lord, Burnbrae wes as dear tae oor fouk as the castle wes tae yours.

“‘A mind that day the Viscount cam’ o’ age, an’ we gaithered tae wush him weel, that A saw the pictures o’ the auld Hays on yir walls, an’ thocht hoo mony were the ties that bund ye tae yir hame.

“We haena pictures nor gowden treasures, but there’s an auld chair at oor fireside, an’ A saw ma grandfather in it when A wes a laddie at the schule, an’ A mind him tellin’ me that his grandfather hed sat in lang afore. It’s no worth muckle, an’ it’s been often mended, but A’ll no like tae see it carried oot frae Burnbrae.

“‘There is a Bible, tae, that hes come doon, father tae son, frae 1690, and ilka Baxter hes written his name in it, an’ “farmer at Burnbrae,” but it’ll no’ be dune again, for oor race ’ill be awa frae Burnbrae for ever.

“‘Be patient wi’ me, ma Lord, for it’s the laist time we’re like tae meet, an’ there’s anither thing A want tae say, for it’s heavy on ma hert.

“‘When the factor told me within this verra room that we maun leave, he spoke o’ me as if A hed been a lawless man, an’ it cut me mair than ony ither word.

“‘Ma Lord, it’s no’ the men that fear their God that ’ill brak the laws, an’ A ken nae Baxter that wes ither than a loyal man tae his King and country.

“‘Ma uncle chairged wi’ the Scots Greys at Waterloo, and A mind him tellin’, when A wes a wee laddie, hoo the Hielanders cried oot, “Scotland for ever,” as they passed.

“‘A needna tell ye aboot ma brither, for he wes killed by yir side afore Sebastopol, and the letter ye sent tae Burnbrae is keepit in that Bible for a heritage.

“‘A’ll mention naething aither o’ ma ain laddie, for ye’ve said mair than wud be richt for me, but we coont it hard that when oor laddie hes shed his blude like an honest man for his Queen, his auld father and mither sud be driven frae the hame their forebears hed for seeven generations.’”

What a family! The sergeant with the V. C., ma uncle who chairged wi’ the Scots Greys, and ma brither who wes killed by yir side afore Sebastopol, and, of course, the Bible has to be lugged in. What wonder that at this outburst of Scottish reticence, so to say, Lord Kilspindie rose to his feet. In the twinkling of a paragraph or two the shallow, monstrous, black-hearted English factor is, need one say, coming in for a bit of his Lordship’s mind.

“‘You’ll reduce the rent to the old figure, and put in the name of John Baxter, and let it be for the longest period we ever give on the estate.’

“‘But, Lord Kilspindie … I … did you know⸺’

“‘Do as I command you without another word,’ and his Lordship was fearful to behold.”

Baxter goes home to his farm victor. The news goes down the Glen,—or up it as the case may be,—and the question arises as to what Baxter is going to do with the farm that has been denuded of live stock and implements, and before you can say Jack Robinson every man who has made a purchase at the Burnbrae roup is off to Burnbrae with his purchase and dumps it down and leaves it there, free, gratis, and for nothing.

Now the whole of this story is simply ridiculous. Even if one swallowed the English factor who had turned an old tenant out of his farm on a question of kirk; even if one swallowed the neighbourly bidding up at the roup (not to mention the Victoria Cross and the fighting uncle and brither), Dr. Maclaren cannot make us believe that a Scotchman would part freely and without price with anything that he had once bought. And what a reflection it is upon the dulness of the patient, resigned, and tear-stricken Burnbrae, that he did not have the presence of mind to address dear, good Earl of Kilspindie before the roup came off! But had he done that, of course, Dr. Ian Maclaren could not have made his point as to the incredible generosity of the dwellers about Drumtochty.

But the Glen could boast much more remarkable men than Burnbrae. There is Drumsheugh, about as pale a martyr as a martyr-loving people could wish for. Drumsheugh passed in the Glen for a hard man and a miser, “a wratch that ’ill hae the laist penny in a bargain, and no spend a saxpence gin he can keep it.” But Drumsheugh was sairly misjudged. He carried his tribble for mair than thirty year, and then unburdened himself of it over the whiskey to his friend, Dr. Maclure. “‘It wes for anither A githered, an’ as fast as A got the gear A gied it awa’,’ and Drumsheugh sprang to his feet, his eyes shining; ‘it wes for love’s sake A haggled an’ schemed, an’ stairved an’ toiled, till A’ve been a byword at kirk an’ market for nearness; A did it a’, an’ bore it a’, for ma love, an’ for … ma love A wud hae dune ten times mair.’” Naturally, and the lady in the case was named Marget, the bonniest as weel as the noblest o’ weemen (they all are). Well, Drumsheugh fell in love with Marget when she was in her bloom. With the true Scottish reticence, however, he omitted to mention his condition to the object of his affection, so that she went off quite properly and married a feckless person named Whinnie, who, being feckless, got himself into persistent holes for money, so that Whinnie and Marget were continually being threatened with the loss of their happy home, and all the time Drumsheugh, for love’s sake, kept on sending money through his solicitors in the name of Whinnie’s rich uncle in America. For thirty years Whinnie continued to be a drain on his purse, and Drumsheugh spake no word, but went on loving Marget all the time. Being made the recipient of this astonishing confidence, Maclure is for posting off to Marget right away, and she, good woman, posts as swiftly off to Drumsheugh. It is a case of ae fond kiss and dinna peety me, Marget; A’ve hed ma reward, an’ A’m mair than content; and we wind up with the biblical reflection that “They which shall be accounted worthy … neither marry nor are given in marriage … but are as the angels of God in Heaven”; which is all very pretty and all very Scotch, and all made to sell. We may note, however, that Drumsheugh did not stand alone in Drumtochty for his devotion to a lost love. The fetch is too easy and too safe for Dr. Maclaren to allow himself the use of it only once. There was a man in Drumtochty who had been counted a cynic and a railer against “merridge,” even as Drumsheugh was accounted a miser. In the course of nature this man, Jamie Soutar, came to die. On his death bed he remarked to a friend, “‘Wha sed A wes against merridge, Doctor Davidson?’ and Jamie’s face flushed. ‘Did ever man or woman hear me speak lichtly o’ the mystery o’ love? The Glen hes thocht me an auld cankered bachelor, an’ A’ve seen a lass leave her lad’s side on the sicht o’ me. Little they kent!’” And it transpires that “‘forty-five years syne A met … a lassie near Kildrummie, an’ A cam tae love her aince and for ever, an’ we hed … seeven evenin’s thegither. When A cam the next day she wesna there, an’ A hoddit amang the trees for a ploy; but it wes lang waitin’, for she didna come, an’ A gaed hame wi’ fear in ma hert.…

“‘A set aff tae her hoose, and ilka turn o’ the road A lookit for Menie. Aince ma hert loupit in ma breist like a birdie in its cage, for a wumman cam’ along the near road frae Kildrummie, but it wesna Menie.

“‘When A saw her brither wi’ his face tae Drumtochty, A kent, afore he said a word, that he wes seekin’ me, an’ that Menie was deid. Never a tear cam’ that day tae ma een, an’ he telt me, stannin’ in the middle o’ the road, where it begins tae gae doon the hill:

“‘It wes her throat, an’ the doctor wes feared frae the first day. The nicht she didna come she wes carried (delirious); she … said, “Jamie, Jamie,” ower an’ ower again, an’ wanted tae rise.

“‘Aboot daybreak she cam’ tae hersel’, and knew oor faces. “A’m deein’,” she said, “an’ A didna keep ma tryst last nicht. It’s ower late noo, an’ A’ll no see him on earth again.

“‘“Tell James Soutar that it wesna ma blame A failed, an’ gie him ma Bible,” an’ a while aifter she said, “A’ll keep the tryst wi’ him some day,” an’ … that’s a’.’”

After that, any child could tell you what Jamie’s “last words” would be.

“‘Menie,’ he cried, suddenly, with a new voice, ‘A’ve keepit oor tryst.’”

Heaven help us!

VI

BARBIE

From Thrums and Drumtochty the blest to Barbie, which is also in Scotland, may be fairly described as a far cry. In the beautiful communities conceived by Drs. Barrie and Maclaren the milk of human nature flows like a river; everybody lives, not for his or her foolish self, but for somebody else; everybody dies for somebody else; all bachelors are faithful to the sweethearts of their youth “for forty year and more”; all the women make the best butter in Galloway; all the girls are pretty and angelic of temperament, and, in short, Thrums and Drumtochty are little bits of heaven dropped on to the map of Scotland. But Barbie is not of heavenly origin in the least. The chronicles of Barbie have been put into print for us by Mr. George Douglas, and he calls his book _The House with the Green Shutters_. If he had wanted a just title for it, he might very well have called it “The Unspeakable Scot.” Nowhere in letters does there exist such an unsophisticated revelation of the minds and habits of a savage and barbarous people as is to be found in this book. It is fiction, of course; but it is that kind of fiction which has been written from observation, and is practically a human document. The Barbie crowd do not waste any time on little acts of kindness; there is not a man among them who cannot fairly be termed mean. If meanness were the only fault one might be able to put up with Barbie; but the inhabitants have graver failings. They are all dour; they are all bitter-hearted; they are all greedy; they are all merciless and full of the wickedest guile. Gourlay, who is the hero of the piece, counts among the most unpleasant persons one has ever met in a book. He has “the black glower in his een,” and all the Scotch qualities of envy, hatred, overweening pride, and tyranny find full expression in him. For years he has trampled the rest of Barbie under his feet, and all Barbie hates him. “He had been born and bred in Barbie, and he knew his townsmen—oh, yes—he knew them. He knew they laughed because he had no gift of the gab, and could never be provost, or bailie, or elder, or even chairman of the gasworks! ‘Oh, verra well, verra well, let Connal and Brodie and Allardyce have the talk, and manage the town’s affairs’ (he was damned if they should manage his!); he, for his part, preferred the substantial reality.” So that he treated Barbie with contempt; he had a civil word for nobody, and his manners were as bad as only Scotch manners can be. It was these very manners, however, that helped to bring about his downfall. One fine morning a stranger walked into Barbie; he was a Scotchman, and in his appearance there was “an air of dirty and pretentious well-to-doness,” which is the Scotch way. Well, this stranger ran up against Mr. Gourlay.

“‘It’s a fine morning, Mr. Gourlay!’ simpered the stranger. His air was that of a forward tenant who thinks it a great thing to pass remarks on the weather with his laird.

“Gourlay cast a look at the dropping heavens.

“‘Is that _your_ opinion?’ said he. ‘I fail to see ’t mysel’.…’

“The stranger laughed, a little deprecating giggle. ‘I meant it was fine weather for the fields,’ he explained.…

“‘Are _you_ a farmer, then?’ Gourlay nipped in, with his eye on the white waistcoat.

“‘Oh—oh, Mr. Gourlay! A farmer, no. Hi—hi! I’m not a farmer. I daresay, now, you have no mind of _me_!’

“‘No,’ said Gourlay, regarding him very gravely and steadily with his dark eyes. ‘I cannot say, sir, that I have the pleasure of remembering _you_!’

“‘Man, I’m a son of auld John Wilson of Brigabee!’

“‘Oh, auld Wilson, the mole-catcher!’ said contemptuous Gourlay. ‘What’s this they christened him now? “Toddling Johnnie,” was it noat?’

“Wilson coloured. But he sniggered to gloss over the awkwardness of the remark. A coward always sniggers when insulted, pretending that the insult is only a joke of his opponent, and therefore to be laughed aside. So he escapes the quarrel which he fears a show of displeasure might provoke.

“But, though Wilson was not a handy man, it was not timidity only that caused his tame submission to Gourlay.…”

Here you have the two types of Scotchmen presented in speaking likenesses, namely, the bully, primed with “repressiveness” and “force of character,” and the giggling lickspittle who does not know how to fight and consequently falls back on livid revenges.

Later, Wilson ventures on a remark about business. Gourlay retorts:

“‘Business! Heavens, did ye hear him talking? What did Toddling Johnny’s son know about business? What was the world coming to? To hear him setting up his face there and asking the best merchant in the town whether business was brisk! It was high time to put him in his place, the conceited upstart, shoving himself forward like an equal!’

“For it was the assumption of equality implied by Wilson’s manner that offended Gourlay—as if mole-catcher’s son and monopolist were discussing, on equal terms, matters of interest to them both.

“‘Business!’ he said, gravely. ‘Well, I’m not well acquainted with your line, but I believe mole-traps are cheap—if ye have any idea of taking up the oald trade!’

“Wilson’s eyes flickered over him, hurt and dubious. His mouth opened—then shut—then he decided to speak after all. ‘Oh, I was thinking Barbie would be very quiet,’ said he, ‘compared wi’ places where they have the railway! I was thinking it would need stirring up a bit.’

“‘Oh, ye was thinking that, was ye?’ birred Gourlay, with a stupid man’s repetition of his jibe. ‘Well, I believe there’s a grand opening in the moleskin line, so _there’s_ a chance for ye! My quarrymen wear out their breeks in no time!’

“Wilson’s face, which had swelled with red shame, went a dead white. ‘Good morning!’ he said, and started rapidly away with a vicious dig of his stick upon the wet road.

“Goo-ood mor-r-ning, serr!’ Gourlay birred after him; ‘goo-ood mor-r-ning, serr!’ He felt he had been bright this morning. He had put the branks on Wilson!”

In spite of his smallness and rattiness, Wilson is not without his Scotch feelings, so that he goes away and schemes. And the end of his scheming is that he becomes a trade rival of Gourlay’s in Barbie. Perhaps man never had a more unscrupulous or fiendishly cunning trade rival. The end of it is that Gourlay is brought to the verge of bankruptcy and dies miserably, while Barbie is left to go on its wicked way rejoicing. This fight between two ugly natures is watched by the population of Barbie with great zest; the combatants are continually egged on by the sarcastic comments of the neebors, who practically hate them both as they hate one another. And the result is a picture which rivals in hideousness anything of the kind which has hitherto been attempted. From _The House with the Green Shutters_ one is able to gather what life in a Scotch township really means. One understands, too, how it comes to pass that the Scotchmen one meets in London are so wanting in the qualities which render communication between men possible and tolerable. Persons who have spent their youth in such a township as Barbie must of necessity have altogether wrong views about life and the reason for it. Their hand is against every man; to get and to keep by fair means or foul is their sole ambition, and of the finer feelings which keep existence sweet they know absolutely nothing. It is a squalid picture, and not in the least flattering to Scotland. Yet the Scotch critics have not ventured to deny its authenticity; indeed, they admit that there is a great deal in it. Mr. Douglas, the author of _The House with the Green Shutters_, is himself a Scotchman, and to malign his country is about the last thing you may expect from a Scotch writer; his tendency usually is the other way. To put Thrums, Drumtochty, and Barbie into one vessel, as it were, to mix them and make a blend of them is probably to get at the truth about the Scot as he lives and moves in his native element. And when one has done this, one can only imagine that the average Scotchman is a compound of two things,—to wit, the knave and the fool.

VII

THE BARD

In England “the Bard” stands for Shakespeare; in Scotland, of course, when you say “the Bard” you mean Robert Burns. Nothing that Scotland ever possessed has abided so firmly in the heart of the Scotchman as “the Bard”—Robert Burns, that is to say. An Englishman can forget that Shakespeare ever existed. A Scotsman never forgets that Robert Burns was a Scotchman. Morn, noon, and night he will talk to you of Burns if you give him half a chance. Till Dr. J. M. Barrie and Dr. Crockett came in, the Scotchman had no other book but a dog’s-eared Burns, from which work he gathered his views of life, including justification for his vices. Round the person and poetry of Burns numberless well-meaning people have found it worth their while to write a literature. There was a time when “the Bard” received praise only from mere poets. Keats wrote sonnets about him; Montgomery offered him the usual graceful tribute; Wordsworth mentioned him cheek by jowl with Chatterton; and even Eliza Cook had her metrical say about him. Then the prose men came along—Carlyle, Stevenson, Henley. Carlyle took the man Burns and set him up for a tremendous genius, with “a head of gold.” Stevenson, whom probably for this reason the Scotch do not love, ventured to suggest that Mr. Burns had “feet of clay.” Mr. Henley followed and accentuated the feet of clay, greatly to the annoyance of all Scotland. It ill becomes the present writer to attempt to do what has already been done so well, therefore he will say nothing about either heads of gold or feet of clay. But Robert Burns is everybody’s property, and one may crave leave even at this late day to say about him the thing that one believes. The whole truth about Burns may be summed up in half a dozen words. He was a poet, he was a loose liver, and he was a ploughman. And if one looks through his writings, one is forced to the conclusion that he owes his fame to the circumstances that he was a loose liver and a ploughman rather than to the circumstance that he was a poet. To take up the works of Burns in one volume and to glance through them haphazard, assaying here a page and there a page, is to come to a knowledge of him which is rather staggering. As I write, I have before me the Globe Edition of the _Complete Works of Robert Burns_, edited by Alexander Smith. It is a portly book, and one is aware that it contains matter which is really of excellent quality, considered as poetry. Yet to test it by chance openings is to perceive that in the main Burns, as poet, has been vastly overrated. On page 211, for example, which is about the middle of the book, I find five pieces, not one of which is good enough to grace a common valentine. We lead off with _Peggy’s Charms_:

My Peggy’s face, my Peggy’s form,
The frost of hermit age might warm;
My Peggy’s worth, my Peggy’s mind,
Might charm the first of human kind.
I love my Peggy’s angel air,
Her face so truly, heavenly fair,
Her native grace so void of art;
But I adore my Peggy’s heart.

Not to put too fine a point upon it, this is arrant drivel, villainously rhymed. Then comes _Up in the Morning Early_:

Up in the morning’s no’ for me,
Up in the morning early;
When a’ the hills are cover’d wi’ snaw,
I’m sure it’s winter fairly.

Cauld blaws the wind frae east to west,
The drift is driving sairly;
Sae loud and shrill’s I hear the blast,
I’m sure it’s winter fairly.

The birds sit chittering in the thorn,
A’ day they fare but sparely;
And lang’s the night frae e’en to morn,
I’m sure it’s winter fairly.

One surmises _Up in the Morning Early_ belongs to “that great body of treasurable songs with which Burns has dowered his countrymen.” On the face of it, to find sorrier stuff one would have to visit an English music hall. There is not a glimmer of poetry in any one of the twelve lines, and the composition as a whole might have been written by a precocious infant in a Glasgow Board School. After this precious production we are regaled with the appended touching piece of sentimentalism:

Tho’ cruel fate should bid us part,
As far’s the pole and line;
Her dear idea round my heart
Should tenderly entwine.

Tho’ mountains frown and deserts howl,
And oceans roar between;
Yet, dearer than my deathless soul,
I still would love my Jean.

The spectacle of a gentleman having somebody’s “dear idea” entwined, whether tenderly or otherwise, round his heart would surely set a cat laughing. And the loving of Jean, though mountains frown and deserts howl and oceans roar between, is clearly the merest fustian. Follows _I Dreamed I Lay Where Flowers were Springing_—a stupid sort of dream to say the least of it. The flowers, it seems, were springing “gaily in the sunny beam,” and the poet, it seems, not only “dreamed that he lay among them” but, that he was “list’ning to the wild birds singing by a falling crystal stream,” which is a very common and hackneyed thing for a tenth-rate poet to do. But mark:

Straight the sky grew black and daring;
Thro’ the woods the whirlwinds rave;
Trees with aged arms were warring,
O’er the swelling, drumlie wave.

Such was my life’s deceitful morning,
Such the pleasures I enjoy’d;
But lang or noon, loud tempests storming
A’ my flowery bliss destroy’d.
Tho’ fickle fortune has deceived me,
She promised fair, and performed but ill;
Of monie a joy and hope bereav’d me,
I bear a heart shall support me still.

The moral here is as lame as the meter, and in the open market to-day the “poem” is not worth fourpence. We finish the page with _Bonie Ann_:

Ye gallants bright, I red you right,
Beware of bonie Ann:
Her comely face sae fu’ o’ grace,
Your heart she will trepan.
Her een sae bright, like stars by night,
Her skin is like the swan;
Sae jimpy lac’d her genty waist,
That sweetly ye might span.

Youth, grace, and love, attendant move,
And pleasure leads the van;
In a’ their charms, and conquering arms,
They wait on bonie Ann.
The captive bands may chain the hands,
But love enslaves the man:
Ye gallants braw, I red you a’
Beware of bonie Ann.

One notes that three out of these five lucubrations have to do with love, and one wonders how a man who went about with such ill-considered love-verses in his pocket ever got a woman to look at him.

To take our life in our hands once more, we open on page 153. Here we have a choice selection of short pieces, and feeble, which we reproduce as they stand:

TO JOHN M’MURDO, ESQ.

O, could I give thee India’s wealth,
As I this trifle send!
Because thy joy in both would be
To share them with a friend.
But golden sands did never grace
The Heliconean stream;
Then take what gold could never buy—
An honest Bard’s esteem.

ON THE DEATH OF A LAP-DOG, NAMED ECHO

In wood and wild, ye warbling throng,
Your heavy loss deplore;
Now half-extinct your powers of song,
Sweet Echo is no more.

Ye jarring, screeching things around,
Scream your discordant joys;
Now half your din of tuneless sound
With Echo silent lies.

LINES WRITTEN AT LOUDEN MANSE

The night was still, and o’er the hill
The moon shone on the castle wa’;
The mavis sang, while dew-drops hang
Around her on the castle wa’.

Sae merrily they danced the ring,
Frae eenin’ till the cock did craw;
And the o’erword o’ the spring,
Was Irvine’s bairns are bonie a’.

These three effusions, dear reader, are really and truly the work of Burns—or, if you prefer it, of Burrrrrns. In despair one hunts up something for which the man is noted. _Scots Wha Hae_ one thinks, will serve. It has been described as noble, and marvellous, and inspiring, and Heaven knows what besides. Here it is:

Scots wha hae wi’ Wallace bled,
Scots whom Bruce has often led;
Welcome to your gory bed
Or to victorie!

Now’s the day, and now’s the hour,
See the front o’ battle lour,
See approach proud Edward’s power—
Chains and slaverie!

Wha will be a traitor knave?
Wha can fill a coward’s grave?
Wha sae base as be a slave?—
Let him turn and flee!

Wha for Scotland’s king and law
Freedom’s sword will strongly draw,
Freeman stand or freeman fa’,
Let him follow me!

By Oppression’s woes and pains,
By your sons in servile chains,
We will drain our dearest veins,
But they shall be free.

Lay the proud usurpers low!
Tyrants fall in every foe,
Liberty’s in every blow,
Let us do or dee!

As a matter of fact, _Scots Wha Hae_ is one those poems which most people have heard about and few people have read. For this reason I print it _in extenso_ and commend it to the consideration of the critical. Is it really noble, or marvellous, or inspiring? Would it pass muster as a new performance? Is it a whit the better, or sounder, or more convincing than _God Save the King_, which everybody cheerfully admits is not poetry? I, for one, hae me doots.

Like Artemus Ward and writers of “Wot-the-Orfis-Boy Finks” order, Burns owes much of his seeming inspiration and humour to an uncouth orthography. Put into decent English, many of his most vaunted lays amount to nothing at all. Indeed, practically the whole of the _poetry_ which came from his pen could be compressed into a book of fifty pages. I do not say that much of the matter one would have to include in those fifty pages is not matter of an exceptional and extraordinary quality. Mr. Henley has told us that in the vernacular, Burns, at his best, touches the highest level; and with this pronouncement nobody who knows the difference between good writing and bad will quarrel. But I do assert that the best of Burns is not sufficient, either in quality or quantity, to justify the absurd fame which has been bestowed upon him by his countrymen. James I., whom the average Scotchman barely knows by name, was, taking him all in all, quite as good a poet as Burns. So was Barbour; so was Drummond of Hawthornden; and, I had almost added, so were Stevenson and Robert Buchanan. The question naturally arises, How comes it to pass that Burns who, excepting by a fluke, was always more or less of a middling poet, has come to rank as the finest thing in letters that Scotland ever produced? The answer to that question is simple enough. In spite of _The Cotter’s Saturday Night_, and two or three other pieces which are the delight and mainstay of the Scotch kirk-goer, Burns was undoubtedly the poet of licence and alcoholism. Also he was a ploughman.

Should humble state our mirth provoke!
What folly to misca’ that,
The sapling grows a stately oak,
Wi’ spreading shade and a’ that.
For a’ that and a’ that,
His toils and cares and a’ that,
We’ve seen a ploughman crowned at last
The king o’ men for a’ that.

After illicit love and flaring drunkenness, nothing appeals so much to Scotch sentiment as having been born in the gutter. In this matter of admiration for people who attain notoriety from a basis of humble origins I do not know that the Scotch stand entirely alone. At the present moment, much fuss is being made in the newspapers over a policeman who has seen fit to devote himself to the painting of pictures, and who has succeeded in getting one of his canvases hung at Burlington House; and if I remember rightly there used to be a postman poet of whom sundry highly placed critics wrote sundry kindly encouraging and gratuitous things. Also the English press is apt to tell us that the great Lord So-and-So was originally a bootblack, and that the great Mr. So-and-So went to Canada with seven shillings in his pocket. In fact, the prodigy who began on nothing, and ultimately became rich or famous, is a figure which British humanity dearly loves. And Burns, as we have seen, was a ploughman. What special excellence may lie in being a ploughman nobody but a Scotchman may perceive. In England our booms on humble talent are of short duration. Clare and Ebenezer Elliott both had their little day, and ceased to be. But the Scotch ploughman persists, and the fact that he was a ploughman helps him to persist, and is a great source of pride to the Scotch. The real reason, however, why Burns became, and continues to be, a sort of patron saint to the peoples north of the Tweed is, as I have already suggested, that he was an erotic writer and a condoner of popular vices. Turn where you will in his precious works, you will find that drunkenness and impropriety are matters for which he has unqualified sympathy. Whiskey and women are the subjects which furnish forth the majority of his flights. He writes of both with a freedom which would not nowadays be tolerated, and the moral effect of what he has to say cannot be regarded as otherwise than detrimental. I have before pointed out that one of Mr. Henley’s critics has asserted that the standard of morality in the rural districts of Scotland is much lower to-day than it was in Burns’s time. The inference is obvious. Burns, every Scotchman tells you, and tells you truly, has played no small part in moulding the sentiments and tendencies of the Scotch people as we know them. It was he who gave them their first notion of bumptious independence; it was he who taught them that “a man’s a man for a’ that”—which, on the whole, is a monstrous fallacy; it was he who averred that whiskey and freedom gang together; and it was he who gave the countenance of song to shameful and squalid sexuality. In a great number of Burns’s love songs the suggestion is of the lowest. One could take a selection of these songs, print them in a little book, have them sold in the streets of London at a penny, and be prosecuted at Bow Street for one’s trouble. The man’s mind was not clean; he made the Muse an instrument for the promulgation of skulduddery (I will not vouch for the orthography, but every Scotchman knows what I mean); he degraded and prostituted his intellect, and earned thereby the love and worship of a people who appear to have a sympathetic weakness for erotic verse if it be but Scotch.

It is hard to get the truth about Burns out of the Scotch writers; yet the more honest among them have always had a sneaking suspicion that he was an overrated poet. Somehow, in perusing their estimates, one has a feeling that Burns is not so much being expounded as defended. Stevenson, who tried to be just, has come nearer the mark about him than any writer of our own time; but even Stevenson lacked the courage to go the whole hog. Of Burns, the writer, he could be brought to say nothing more trenchant than that he “had a tendency to borrow a hint,” and that he was “indebted in a very uncommon degree to Ramsay and Fergusson.” And, he adds, by way of defence, that “when we remember Burns’s obligation to his predecessors, we must never forget his immense advances on them.” Perhaps not.

As to Burns, the man, it is safe to say that a more profligate person has seldom figured on the slopes of Parnassus. In love he was as carnal as he was false. He canted and prated and pretended, but his relations with women will not bear examination. His life as a whole would have discredited a dustman, much less a poet. He whined about his “misfortunes,” and advertised them and made much out of them; but nobody in his senses can sympathise with him. That he should be held up for a model by Scottish writers and Scottish preachers is a crying scandal. The king-o’-men cackle is the sheerest impertinence. Burns never was the king o’ men. He was never even a decent living man. He never had a rag of conduct wherewithal to cover himself. He was simply an incontinent yokel with a gift for metricism. That his memory should stand for so much in Scotland constitutes a very grave reflection upon the Scottish character and the Scottish point of view.

VIII

THE SCOT AS A CRITIC

Taking him all in all, the Scotch critic is a good deal of an anomaly. To criticise is scarcely the Scotchman’s _forte_, his chief gifts lying rather in the direction of admiration, particularly of admiration for whatever is Scotch. But we have amongst us (and I do not wish him other than a long and prosperous career) one Scotch critic—or, at any rate, a Scotchman who passes for a critic. I refer, need it be said, to Dr. William Archer. Dr. Archer is the dramatic critic of the _World_ newspaper. Whenever I have looked into the _World_ newspaper, I have found a page or so of Dr. Archer. His work appears to be done to the satisfaction of his employers, and I have no fault to find with it, excepting that I cannot bring myself to feel enthusiastic about it. To tackle Dr. Archer flying, as it were, let us peep at his contribution to the current number of his journal. Herein he deals with a play by Miss Netta Syrett and preaches a little sermon to theatrical managers.

“I admit, then [he says], that from the actor-manager’s point of view—his quite legitimate and inevitable point of view under our accursed system—the play has drawbacks that might well stand in the way of its production. But if any manager read it and did not recognise that he was face to face with an exceptional talent, and one of which, by judicious encouragement, much might be made, then I say that he showed a deplorable lack of discernment. This—hypothetic—manager ought to have sent for the authoress and said, ‘Miss Syrett, I cannot, for such and such reasons, produce this play. But there are scenes in it which show me that you have the making of a playwright in you. Have you other ideas? Yes, of course you have. Well, go home and draw me out the scenario of a play that you think would suit me, and then come and let us talk it over. Remember, I promise nothing, except my very best attention to anything you may bring me. But that you shall have; and if you are not above taking hints from my experience, you may be able to avoid certain trifling errors and crudities into which you have fallen in this piece. Don’t be in a hurry. You ladies, if I may say so, are apt to imagine that, when once you have got an idea, a play can be improvised like a newspaper article or a six shilling novel. This is a mistake. A play, to have any solid value, must be carefully and laboriously built up. You will make false steps, find yourself in blind alleys, and have to try back and start afresh many and many a time. You will have days of discouragement, when your characters refuse point-blank to do what you want them to. Probably you will find in the end that you have given as much thought and labour to every line of your play as you would to a whole page of a novel. But if you are prepared to take your art seriously, you may rely upon my taking seriously whatever you may offer me. And be assured of this, that if you fail to do something really worth while, my disappointment will be scarcely less than your own.’ In some such words, as it seems to me, should the sagacious manager have addressed the authoress of _The Finding of Nancy_.”

Excellently intended, my dear Dr. Archer, excellently and honestly intended. But could gratuitousness, or egregiousness, or flat-footedness go further? Such an oration, happily, might come out of none but a Scotch mouth or from any pen but that of a Scotchman. In point of unnecessariness it rivals pretty well aught that I have had the felicity to see in print. And it illustrates to admiration the Scotch faculty for spreading out the commonplace and being sententious over it.

What Dr. Archer’s view of the theatre may be nobody knows. In the beginning of the speech I have quoted he refers to “our accursed system,” so that there must be a screw loose somewhere. For years Dr. Archer has been pounding away at this same system, and it seems to continue. Nor has Dr. Archer made the slightest dint upon it. A little while back, one of the wags in which London appears to abound pointed out that plays praised by Dr. Archer invariably come in for the shortest of runs. To which impeachment Dr. Archer replied, with great ingenuousness, by printing a formidable list of plays which had survived his approval. Another wag having said something against the Scotch in a paper called _The Outlook_, Dr. Archer exclaimed, in cold type, “_Outlook_ indeed! Methinks that north of the Tweed they will call it _Outrage_!” This, of course, is a Scotch joke, and therefore an old one. In the year 600 or thereabouts, Gregory the Great, noting the fair faces and golden hair of some youths in the market-place of Rome, enquired from what country the men came. “They are Angles,” was the reply. “Not _Angles_,” quoth the worthy Gregory, “but _angels_.” For thirteen centuries the pun of the Bishop of Rome had remained decently tucked away in the history books. And in 1901, Dr. Archer, who really is a wit, drags it forth and makes another like it.

All these, however, be small deer. If we wish to acquaint ourselves with the true inwardness of Dr. Archer as critic, we must turn to his _magnum opus_—that great guinea work of his, entitled _Poets of the Younger Generation_. Now, on the question of modern poetry, and particularly of the younger school of poets, people interested in poetry are always glad to hear words of wisdom. Have we any contemporary poets? If so, are they writing poetry for us, contemporary or otherwise? The subject invites. Somehow and for some reason or other it invited Dr. Archer. Indeed, it went further than inviting him; it inveigled him. No doubt the notion of writing a book about poets came to him on one of his discouraging days. He had been hammering, hammering, hammering at the theatre and “our accursed system,” and he was fain for a softer job. What work could a poor, tired critic take up outside the potter’s field of our accursed system? When a critic gets into that frame of mind he always thinks of the poets. Dr. Archer thought of the poets—the living poets—the poets of the younger generation. Being a Scotchman, Dr. Archer thought, and straightway set to work. He appears to have plodded steadfastly through the writings of no fewer than thirty-three of the minor contemporary poets of England and America. Of each of these thirty-three children of the Muse, beginning with the Rev. H. C. Beeching and ending with William Butler Yeats, he wrote painful notices, bejewelled with excerpts, put them into a book, and got them published by Mr. John Lane. With the beauty or otherwise of his thirty-three notices, in spite of their exquisite thirty-three-ness, I do not propose greatly to concern myself. Their general drift and tenor may be inferred from the following examples, culled from the article on Mr. Kipling:

“Far be it from me to disparage _Scots Wha Hae_, but I am not sure that it possesses the tonic quality of the refrain of Mr. Kipling’s song of defeat:

An’ there ain’t no chorus ’ere to give,
Nor there ain’t no band to play;
But I wish I was dead ’fore I done what I did
Or seen what I’d seed that day!

What in the name of goodness have _Scots Wha Hae_ and these four lines got to do with one another? How can they be compared, except only as verse, and where, oh where, does the tonic quality of the Kipling lines come in? Again:

“In all the poetry of warfare, was there ever a more exactly observed and yet imaginative touch than that which describes the guns of the enemy ‘shaking their bustles like ladies so fine’? It is grotesque, and it is magnificent.”

As a matter of fact it is not observed at all, and it is certainly not magnificent. Ladies do not shake their bustles. Nowadays, indeed, they have no bustles to shake, and I should imagine that the sound criticism about the simile is that it is too temporary and far fetched. And for the third and last time:

“Only by some narrow trick of definition can such work (_McAndrew’s Hymn_) be excluded from the sphere of poetry; and poetry or no poetry, it is certainly very strong and vital literature.”

Here let us agree to differ with Dr. Archer, inasmuch as _McAndrew’s Hymn_ is merely rhymed note-book eked out with a few phrases of the Doric.

On the whole, _Poets of the Younger Generation_ might well have gone down to posterity as a collection of middling and slightly wrong-headed reviews, had Dr. Archer possessed a tithe of the shrewdness commonly imputed to persons of his blood. But in putting the book before the world, Dr. Archer could not be content to figure as a simple reviewer, he must needs preface it with a pompous and bloated introduction. “Appreciation [he says nobly] is the end and aim of the following pages. The verb ‘to appreciate’ is used, rightly or wrongly, in two senses; it sometimes means to realise, at other times to enhance the value of a thing. I use the word in both significations. While attempting to define, to appraise, the talent of individual poets, I hope to enhance the reader’s estimate of the value of contemporary poetry as a whole.” After several pages of this sort of thing we come upon a full-dress “personal statement,” the like of which has never before been given us by mortal critic. Practically, it is a biography of Dr. William Archer, with special reference to Dr. William Archer’s spiritual and intellectual growth and his “qualifications as a critic of poetry.” The pose and tone of it are inimitable. It puts Burns and his “wild artless notes” utterly to the blush. As Dr. Archer himself would say, it is grotesque and it is magnificent. It begins with a rataplan on ancestral drums: “In the first place, I am a pure bred Scotchman. There is some vague family legend of an ancestor of my father’s having come from England with Oliver Cromwell and settled in Glasgow; but I never could discover any evidence of it. The only thing that speaks in its favour is that my name, common in England, is uncommon in Scotland. My maternal grandfather and grandmother both came of families that seem to have dwelt from time immemorial in and about Perth, at the gateway of the Highlands. This being so, it appears very improbable that there should not be some Keltic admixture in my blood; but I cannot absolutely lay my finger on any ‘Mac’ among my forbears. Both my parents belong to families of a deeply religious cast of mind, ultra-orthodox in dogma, heterodox and even vehemently dissenting on questions of Church Government. I can trace some way back in my mother’s family a strain of good, sound, orthodox literary culture and taste; of specially poetical faculty, little or none. It may, perhaps, be worth mentioning that one of my great-grandfathers or great-great-uncles printed—and I believe, edited—an edition of the poets, much esteemed in its day.”

Nothing could be better worth mentioning, Mr. Archer. Pray proceed: