Part 4

His farewell crimson kiss he left On clouds suffused with blushes: One star beam’d down the dewberry-cleft Across the mirror’d flashes.

From cliffs of slate the vintage call’d In muffled leafage dusky: And down the river grandly wall’d, The grape reel’d ripe and husky.

We reach’d entwining hands to seize The clusters round us glowing: Our locks were fondled by the breeze From southern sandhills blowing.

The long-neck’d flask was not unbent, The globed green glass unemptied; The god of honest pleasure lent Young Love his powers, untempted.

Home-friends we pledged; our bridal-maids; Sweet wishes gaily squander’d: We wander’d far in faëry glades, Up golden heights we wander’d.

Like King and Queen in royal bliss, We paced a realm enchanted, A realm rose-vista’d, rich from this, Tho’ not from this transplanted.

For this Rome’s frontier foot endear’d, Her armèd heel made holy; And Ages grey as Time’s own beard, Wreathed it with melancholy.

Old days it has that live in gleams Of suns for ever setting: A moth-wing’d splendour, faint as dreams, That keeps the fancy fretting.

A gorgeous tracing dash’d with gloom, And delicately dusted: To grasp it is to spoil its bloom; ’Twas ours because we trusted.

No longer severing our embrace Was Night a sword between us; But richest mystery robed in grace To lock us close, and screen us.

She droopt in stars; she whisper’d fair; The wooded crags grew dimmer; The arrow in the lassie’s hair Glanced by a silver glimmer.

The ruin-rock renew’d its frown, With terror less transparent, Tho’ all its ghosts are hunted down, And all its knights are errant.

The island in the gray expanse, We watch’d with colour’d longing: The mighty river’s old romance Thro’ many channels thronging.

Ah, then, what voice was that which shed A breathless scene before us: We heard it, knowing not we heard; It rose around and o’er us.

It rose around, it thrill’d with life, And did infuse a spirit To misty shapes of ancient strife: Again I seem to hear it!

The voice is clear, the song is wild, And has a quaint transition; The voice is of a careless child Who sings an old tradition.

He sings it witless of his power; Beside the rushing eddies, His singing plants the tall white tower Mid shades of knights and ladies.

Against the glooming of the west The grey hawk-ruins darken, And hand in hand, half breast to breast, Two lovers gaze and hearken.

MILVERSTON WORTHIES.

From his sixth year, my brother Davie manifested undeniable symptoms of the divine afflatus, but it was not until fifteen that he commenced his immortal poem, “The Vengeance of Bernardo Caspiato.” He was a delicate, pretty, fair boy, with a spiritual countenance, a noble brow, and abundance of silky brown hair; quite the poet to look at, and very like my dear mother, as we all daily observed. It was expected that he would cover the name of Cleverboots with a halo of glory: unlike some families, we were the first to believe in our hero, and the most constant in our faith in his splendid future. At the epoch referred to, Davie began to tie his collar with a black ribbon, to wear his white throat exposed, and his beautiful hair very long; his appetite did not fail him in private, but at our little réunions he always partook of dry toast and strong green tea; was very silent, abstracted, and averse to men’s society: the women petted him, and called him “all soul.” He was very kind-hearted and sweet-tempered, and rather vain, which was nothing more than natural, considering how he was flattered.

He had a little room at the top of the house which looked over the town to Milverston mere, where the immortal poem was commenced. I remember he began it on a wet evening, and it opened dismally, with a storm; he had me up there with my plain sewing to listen to the first stanzas; and he consulted me about one or two difficult rhymes: he was not sure whether “horror” and “morrow” were correct. I thought not; and, his birthday falling three days after, I presented him with a rhyming dictionary. Subsequently, the poem made rapid progress.

Cousin John had just gone up to London to study law, and my father wished Davie to be articled to Mr. Briggs, the solicitor at Milverston. This did not chime in with his taste at all; he stated that it was his wish to follow the profession of letters. We did not quite understand this at the time. Cousin Jack said it meant that he wanted to be the idle gentleman. I had my doubts on the matter. Davie brought my mother over to his way of thinking. “I shall be very poor, but very happy, mother,” he used to say; “if you put me to anything else, I shall be miserable and do no good.” So Davie got his own way; and, as a preparation for his profession of letters, he stayed at home and finished “Bernardo Caspiato.” It was a splendid work. I have wept over it often. The heroine having been executed for witchcraft, her lover, Bernardo, devotes his life to avenge her; and, after committing a catalogue of murders, ends by disappearing mysteriously in a flash of blue lightning to rejoin her in heaven. My mother objected to the morality of the conclusion; but she acknowledged herself, at the same time, ignorant of the laws and licence of poetry.

With this great work, and some minor pieces of equal if not superior merit, my brother Davie went up to London on foot, with ten pounds in his pocket, and seventeen years of experience on his head. Cousin Jack had taken comfortable lodgings for him at a small baker’s shop, kept by a widow woman with a daughter named Lucy. The dear lad wrote us word that he was quite suited, and that, after a few days to look about him, he should carry his immortal poem to a publisher. His hopes were sanguine; his visions of fame magnificent.

To our surprise and grief, Bernardo Caspiato was declined with thanks. Nobody was inclined to publish it unless the author would bear all the expenses. Davie would not suffer my father to do this--he would earn money for himself. We wondered how he could do it; but Cousin Jack lent him a hand, and somebody who had something to do with a newspaper bought his minor pieces. He lived, at all events, by his own exertions. At this time, Lucy began to figure in letters to me marked “private.” It would be impossible to give the whole story as therein developed, but I will epitomise it as afterwards heard from his own lips.

He fell enthusiastically in love with Lucy, whose beauty he raved about as ethereal, heavenly, unsophisticated: before I heard of her at all he was evidently far gone in the tender passion; and Lucy had listened so often, and with such a graceful interest, to his literary struggles, that he fancied he had every reason to believe that his affection was returned. One morning, however, all these sunny hopes were rudely dispelled. He had seen once or twice a young man of rustic appearance in the shop, he had also known him to take tea in the back parlour with Mrs. Lawley and her daughter, without attaching any significance to his visits. As Davie sat at breakfast on this particular day, this individual drove to the door in a gig, and was pleasantly received by the landlady. He wore quite a festal appearance, and for the first time a suspicion entered Davie’s mind which changed quickly to a certainty. After speaking to Mrs. Lawley for a minute or two, the young man ran out to stop the driver of a waggon loaded with sacks of grain, and, while holding him in talk, the poor poet from the up-stairs window took an inventory, as it were, of his rival’s personal graces. He was of a very tall, straight, and robust figure, with a broad, comely face, ruddy complexion, and curly brown hair. His voice was like the roll of an organ, and his laugh the very heartiest of guffaws--altogether, a very proper man, as Davie, but for his jealousy, must have acknowledged. The stranger’s rollicking air of gaiety added present insult to previous injury; and to get out of the hearing of his rich “ha ha,” which seemed to pervade the whole neighbourhood, Davie snatched up his hat, intending to walk off his spleen: he pushed halfway down the stairs, but there paused--just below, in the passage by the back-parlour door, was the obnoxious rustic, with his arm round bonny Lucy’s waist, and his lips seeking a kiss; while the damsel’s hand was put up to shield her cheek, and her tongue was saying, in that pretty accent which lovers never take as truth, “Don’t, Tom; please don’t!” Tom caught the uplifted fingers, and held them fast till he had taken a dozen kisses to indemnify himself for the delay. Davie, greatly discomfited, retreated to his room, and made cautious surveys before venturing to leave it again. He quite hated Tom, who was a fine, single-minded young fellow, guilty of no greater sin against him than having won blue-eyed Lucy’s heart.

When Mrs. Lawley came up-stairs to remove her lodger’s breakfast-things, she looked glowing with importance, and, after a short hesitation, confided to him the great family secret--Mr. Tom Burton, of Ravenscroft Farm, had offered for Lucy, and they were to be married that day week. “You’ll have seen him, sir, maybe?” said the proud mother; “he’s been here as often as twice a-week; and, when I told him it behoved him to stop at home and attend to his farm, he’d tell me that corn would grow without watching; and I soon saw what he meant. So, as Lucy was noways unwilling, I bade ’em have done with all this courting and courting, and get wed out of hand. Perhaps, Mr. David, you’ll be so good as go out for the day, and let us have your room for breakfast--or we should be proud of your company, sir.”

The poor poet almost choked over his congratulations, but he got them out in a way. Soon after, he saw the lovers cross the street, arm-in-arm, spruced up for the occasion, and looking as stiff as Sunday clothes worn on a week-day always make rustic lovers look--everybody who met them might know what they were. Tom had a rather bashful and surprised expression; as if he were astonished to find himself part owner of such a fresh, modest, little daisy of a sweetheart, and were not quite sure that it was her cottage bonnet just below his great shoulder, for so long as Davie had them in sight he kept looking down into it to make sure Lucy was there. Davie’s feelings were almost too much for him, but he made a magnanimous resolve that as Lucy had been so good and attentive to him, he would make her a present, and, that he might endure the deepest pangs, that present should be the wedding dress and bonnet. He went off accordingly, post haste, to a great millinery establishment, and purchased a dove-coloured silk dress, and the most sweetly pretty white bonnet, with orange blossoms, that could be had for money. When Lucy and Tom returned from their walk, he called her up-stairs and presented them to her. She contemplated them with surprised delight, blushing and clasping her hands over them: never was there anything so beautiful.

Davie bade her try the bonnet on, to see how it would fit, and, without an atom of coquetry, she put it on, tied the strings under her chin, and rose on tip-toe to peep at herself in the glass over the chimney-piece.

“I must let” (Lucy was going to say “Tom,” but she substituted “mother” instead); “I must let mother see it!” and she ran out of the room, leaving the door open, with that intent. But somebody met her on the stairs, and stopped her for examination. Davie tried to shut his ears, but he could not help hearing that ominous “Don’t, Tom; please don’t;” though, as balm to his wounded feelings, he also caught the echo of a--what shall I say?--a slap? a box?--what do you call it when a pretty maiden brings her hand sharply in contact with her lover’s cheek? Well, no matter--it is a something which always is or ought to be avenged by six kisses on the spot; it was condignly punished in this instance, for Tom lacked modesty even more than French polish. Davie instantly slammed the door, and sat down to compose his feelings by inditing a sonnet on “Disappointed Love.” When it was finished--the lines being flowing and the rhymes musical--he felt more placid and easy in his mind; but, before the wedding, he withdrew himself from the house, and went into country lodgings to hide his griefs. In process of time he rhymed himself into a belief that he was the victim of a disappointed passion, the prey of a devouring sorrow; that his heart was a wreck, a ruin, dust, ashes, a stone, dwelling alone; that life was stale, an unfinished tale, a hopeless, joyless pageant: all because blue-eyed Lucy had married Tom Burton of Ravenscroft.

This was the early love-romance which furnished my brother Davie with his cynicism, his similes of darts, flames, and wounds that are scattered everywhere through his verses. Some of the productions of his troubled muse, after he fled to Highgate, shall be quoted. What would have been Lucy’s astonishment could she have heard herself apostrophised in such burning numbers! her orbs of sunny blue would have dilated until she would have looked, indeed, a round-eyed Juno. Here is one of Davie’s effusions from a little manuscript-book, bound in white vellum, the confidante of his poetical woes at this mournful era:--

Thou hast come like a mist o’er my glorious dreaming, Thy image stands up ’twixt my soul and the sun! Oh! why, when youth’s noontide of gladness was beaming, Hast thou darken’d all that it shone upon?

To see thee, to love thee, ay, love thee to madness, To know that thou ne’er couldst be aught to me! To leave thee! and read in my spirit’s lone sadness, That the love was all hopeless I centred in thee!

The muse appears at this junction to have been quite troublesome with her declarations. The following was written one evening instead of going to dinner like a Christian gentleman to Uncle Sampson’s on Christmas Day. It stands entitled, I Love Thee! and is written with a neatness that says little for its spontaneity:--

I love thee! O, never did summer sea Greet sunshine more gladly than I greet thee! Like dew to spring flowers, like stars to dusk night Art thou with thy glances of liquid light!

I love thee, as only those hearts can love Whose burning devotion is hard to move! Life, beauty, and hope, thou art all to me,-- A voice and an echo of melody!

It seems rather as if sense were made subordinate to sound in some of these lucubrations, but they are not so bad for seventeen. Davie came back to Milverston for a little while at this season, and cultivated his grief, to the great disorder of our regular household. One night he stayed out so late that my father went in search of him and found him by the mere, seeking inspiration from the stars. On this occasion he produced eight more lines, which seem to have been the utmost his muse could bring for that one time. It is called, in the vellum book into which it is carefully transcribed, Tell me, my Heart:--

Tell me, my heart, the reason of thy sadness, Why peoplest thou thy solitude with dreams? Why dost thou shun the scenes of mirth and gladness To find thy echo in the lonely streams?

Alas! my heart, that thy poor love should wander, Where it can meet with nought but cold disdain! Sad that its treasures thus my soul should squander Where it can reap but tears and griefs again!

Good little Lucy would have been sorry, indeed, if she could have known into what a limbo of anguish Davie was thrown by her marriage; but let us hope, as she might have done, that the best half of the tortures were only fancy. I know he had at the worst an excellent appetite for lamb and asparagus, to which he was very partial. Dear Davie, to read these effusions, tender imaginations may think of him as fine porcelain fractured with the world’s hard usage, whereas he is stout and bald, and wears green spectacles. The law does not undertake to deal with poetry composed under false pretences, or many would be the sighing Strephons and doleful Delias brought up for judgment.

Last summer we had Davie at home for a month, and during that time occurred the grand incremation of Bernardo Caspiato. I shall ever regard it as a most cruel sacrifice, and Cousin Jack, who instigated it, as an illiterate character. Davie brought it forth one evening when we three were together, and read parts of it aloud: Jack unfeelingly remarked that it was not like good wine, it did not improve with keeping; that, like fruit plucked immaturely, it was green and tasteless; it had not acquired mellowness and flavor, and if stored up for another twenty years it would not taste better. Davie half coincided with him; but I did not; so grandly majestic as was the march of the lines, so delicate and true the rhymes, so thrilling the noble catastrophe. It exasperated me to see Jack, first yawn to the full extent of his jaws, then snatch the manuscript from Davie, and toss it up to the ceiling, retreating afterwards in feigned fear lest he should be crushed by its leaden fall. An ignoble fate was thine,--immortal Bernardo! Convicted of the respectable sin of dulness--which none pardon--thou wert condemned to be burnt! Davie did not act with undue precipitation; Jack urged an immediate execution, but the poet took a week to consider of it, and many a pang it cost him. Those who have written immortal poems and destroyed them will appreciate his feelings; none else can. Let anybody of experience call to mind the last time he has read through the letters from his first love, just before she was married to somebody else; or the letters from that particular old friend, which it is of no use to keep because he is dead, or you have quarrelled beyond hope of reconciliation, and then some faint idea will be conceived of the poet’s sensations at this immolation of his first love, his particular friend, and his pet child--all in one.

It was the summer-season, and warm,--I found it very warm; there was no fire in the grate, and the match-box on the writing-table was empty. Jack supplied the want eagerly from his smoking apparatus, and Bernardo Caspiato shrank into a pinch of tinder. I wept.

“There!” said poor Davie, with a profound sigh, “it took two years to write and two seconds to destroy--just like an eternal friendship, an undying affection, or anything of that kind which half a dozen indiscreet words are at any time enough to annihilate!”

“Have a cigar, old boy; never mind moralising,” said Jack, to whom a cigar would be consolation for the death of his grandmother; “have a cigar; the business can’t be helped.”

“Poor Bernardo!” said Davie, as feelingly as if he spoke of a brother, “poor Bernardo! He gave me many an hour’s delightful occupation. I feel as if I had lost a friend to whom I had been in the habit of confiding my sentimental vagaries. I’m not sure that it was right to burn him.”

“Have a cigar,” reiterated Cousin Jack. Davie accepted the offer with a pensive sigh, put on his green spectacles, and went out for a walk in mournful mood. It is a serious thing burning immortal poems. Nobody can tell what losses the world has had in that way--nobody!

SCOTCH COAST FOLK.

FOOTDEE IN THE LAST CENTURY.

The aged lady whose recollections I condense, and combine with my own observations, says:

Remote, but still distinct, the view appears, Thro’ the long vista of departed years;

although, towards the conclusion of the American War, the fish town of Footdee was not one of those “green spots on which memory delights to dwell.” The town consisted of several rows of low-thatched cottages running from east to west, between the high-road and the harbour, or, as it is called, the tide. During the high spring-tides, the furthest waves came up to the bank of sand on which the ends of the houses were built. Exteriorly, these cottages appeared comfortless enough, as each dwelling fronted the back of its opposite neighbour, and, as in the narrow space between there was a line of dunghills crossed over with spars, upon which were hung lines, bladders, and buoys, intermixed with dried dog-fish and skate. Their interior was not more alluring to a stranger. The earthen-floor was uneven, and sometimes dirty, although generally sanded over of an evening, or at least every Saturday, in preparation for the Sabbath. Upon the wood or rafters which stretched across horizontally from the tops of the walls, was a ceiling of old oars and bits of drift-wood. The bare rough walls were not whitewashed. Roof, walls, and rafters were all blackened by smoke from a fire at one end of the cottage, placed upon the floor, and made of turf and sea-weed. Soot-drops--curious black glossy accumulations, formed by a similar process, doubtless, to that which produces stalactites and stalagmites--hung here and there upon the walls, rafters, and roof. These collections of pendulous carbon might have been deemed ornaments, if they had not been signs of defective cleanliness. There was a small window at each side of the door. Under each window was a clumsy black bedstead. There was but one small deal table. There were only two or three chairs, and as many sunkies, or low fixed seats resting upon stakes driven into the floor, to sit upon. Beside the wall opposite the door were seen the requisites of the fishing occupation--lines, creels, murlains, &c. Such were the principal property and furniture visible. There was no press or cupboard; and the only depository for keeping things in was a chest or locker, in which lay the precious stores and the Sunday clothes. The salt-backet, or box, was suspended in the chimney.