Part 26

In the same way, almost all of us have kinsfolk a little higher in the scale than ourselves, or whom we think so—it is all one. Now, it is quite amazing how accurate our genealogical knowledge becomes respecting one of these individuals, compared with its equally surprising ignorance regarding those who have not been so fortunate. When a cousin or half grand-uncle rises above our level, he rises into a blaze of light, which enables us to trace our connection with him as plainly as we run our eye along the string of a boy’s kite. But when a poor nephew or grand-nephew descends into poverty and contempt, he seems like a plummet submersed in the ocean, where, though we may occasionally feel him tugging at the bottom of the line, we are totally unable to trace the line itself. We are always most laudably ready to exchange the civilities of life and the affections of kindred with the cousin who has, in the first place, convinced us of his merit by thatching himself well over with bank-notes. It is pleasant to go and dine at a kinsman’s house, where we know that our entertainment can be furnished without any distress to our worthy host. But really it is a totally different case to intrude upon a scene where our poor friend is doing his best, with the tears in his eyes, to satisfy the cravings of his family with, perhaps, a very homely meal. Humanity in that case demands that we should rather stay away, for we know he does not like to be seen in his poor state. And then, too, how easily we can put up with the eccentricities of a wealthy relation, even though they may sometimes gall our pride a little: how strangely liable, on the other hand, are we to fall out with the poor unfortunates below us! On the day after having been regaled to the uttermost excess by our wealthy friend, we will quarrel with the poor one for having drunk a single glass of some plebeian fluid. With the former, nothing—with the latter, every thing, is a fault. The imperfections of the poor are yawning and palpable as their own rags: those of the rich are as smooth as broad-cloth can make them. The truth is, our senses can tolerate almost any odious or improper thing that is found in a scene above our usual grade in the world. We never know enough of it to be able to measure its real odiousness, or it is disguised by the cordial appliances which we always have ready for the sores of the great. But the vices, nay, the smallest foibles of the lowly, come before our senses so bare, so beggarly, so unanealed, and, moreover, they are so immediately followed by that additional wretchedness which wealthy error escapes, that we have no excuse for them. Hence we generally find, that we have shaken off the most of our poor relations on account of some trivial cause of offence, which we find it necessary, however, to be always nursing in our minds, in order to sustain us in the conviction that the breach of treaty—the _casus fœderis_—was sufficient.

There is one very obvious mark of the individual who despises poor relations—a perpetual reference to rich ones. Some people are constantly bringing in allusions to “my cousin Mr This,” and “my uncle Mr That,” and even to more remote relations, such as “my great-grandmother the Countess of Somewhere.” A few are so very silly as to tell, in the newspaper announcement of their marriage, that their bride, besides being daughter to this or that plain esquire, is “grand-niece to General So-and-So,” or “cousin to Mr Such-a-Thing, secretary of state.” These announcements are an impertinence fit for the interference of the legislature—or the police. If people have exalted relations, let them enjoy them as much as they can within themselves, but do not let them be perpetually presenting this odious little piece of vanity before others, who not only are not interested in it, but are perhaps reminded by it that they have no fine relations themselves. To be always thus singling out a relation from all the rest, and holding him up in connection with ourselves, is a direct injury to him, in so far as we are thus trying to exalt ourselves at his expense—an indirect insult to our kindred in general, whom we leave out of view, and a nuisance to all before whom we thus exhibit our own poverty of soul. It is a _cultivation_ of the most odious character, and necessarily suggests to every thinking person, that in exact proportion to our homage to the great persons of our family must be our haughtiness and severity to the humble. The people addicted to this vice of conversation are evidently satisfied in their own minds that they are talking very fine, and exciting no feeling in their hearers but admiration and respect; but in reality they are always scouted and ridiculed, even to the degree of being honoured with a nickname, carved, perhaps, out of the favourite phrase.

A really good and philosophical spirit will neither plume himself upon his more fortunate, nor despise his less fortunate, relations. He will modestly rejoice in the success of the former, and take care, by avoiding the appearance of intrusiveness on the one hand, and splenetic and pettish jealousy on the other, to afford no reason for the fortunate individual to feel incommoded by the connection, and, consequently, to endeavour to shake it off. To those who are less fortunate than himself, he will be as encouraging and kind as his circumstances render prudent or decent, neither manifesting that vulgar pride which tries needlessly to make a kind of virtue out of a low origin, nor that still more pitiable vanity which denies all inferior kindred, and seeks, at the expense of real dignity, the eclat of a few “great friends.” We allow there is a general difficulty in the case. Friends in different worldly circumstances are like positive and negative clouds in electricity: there is a constant tendency in the poor to an equalization, which is not relished by the parties whose pockets are charged positively. But human nature should be always contending with its weaknesses, and, though full confiding friendship is not perhaps to be expected, there may still be a sufficient interchange of kindness to lighten, in no small degree, the general burden of life.

THE STRANGERS’ NOOK.

In country churchyards in Scotland, and perhaps in other countries also, there is always a corner near the gateway, which is devoted to the reception of strangers, and is distinguished from the rest of the area by its total want of monuments. When you inquire of the passing peasant respecting this part of the burial-ground, he tells you that it is the corner for strangers, but never, of course, thinks that there is or can be any sentiment in the matter. To me, I must confess, this spot is always more interesting than any other, on account of the more extended scope which it gives to those feelings with which one surveys a churchyard. As you wander over the rest of the ground, you see humble memorials of humbler worth, mixed perhaps with the monuments of rank and wealth. But these tell always a definite tale. It is either the lord or the tenant of some of the neighbouring fields, or a trading burgher, or perhaps a clergyman; and there is an end of it. These men performed their parts on earth, like the generality of their fellows, and, after figuring for a space on the limited arena of the parish or the district, were here gathered to their fathers. But the graves of the strangers! what tales are told by every undistinguished heap—what eloquence in this utter absence of epitaphs!

There can be no doubt that the individuals who rest in this nook belonged, with hardly the possibility of an exception, to the humbler orders of the community. But who will say that the final sufferings and death of any individual whatsoever are without their pathos? To me, who have never been able to despise any fellow-creature upon general considerations, the silent expressive stories related by these little heaps, possess an interest above all real eloquence. Here, we may suppose, rests the weary old man, to whom, after many bitter shifts, all bitterly disappointed, wandering and mendicancy had become a last trade. His snow-white head, which had suffered the inclemency of many winters, was here at last laid low for ever. Here also the homeless youth, who had trusted himself to the wide world in search of fortune, was arrested in his wanderings; and, whether his heart was as light and buoyant as his purse, or weighed down with many privations and disappointments, the end was the same—only in the one case a blight, in the other a bliss. The prodigal, who had wandered far, and fared still worse and worse, at length returning, was here cut short in his better purpose, far from those friends to whom he looked forward as a consolation for all his wretchedness. Perhaps, when stretched in mortal sickness in a homely lodging in the neighbouring village, where, though kindness was rendered, it was still the kindness of strangers, his mind wandered in repentant fondness to that mother whom he had parted with in scorn, but for whose hand to present his cup, and whose eye to melt him with its tenderness, he would now gladly give the miserable remains of his life. Perhaps he thought of a brother, also parted with in rage and distrust, but who, in their early years, had played with him, a fond and innocent child, over the summer leas, and to whom that recollection forgave every thing. No one of these friends to soothe the last moments of his wayward and unhappy life—scarcely even to hear of his death when it had taken place. Far from every remembered scene, every remembered face, he was doomed here to take his place amidst the noteless dead, and be as if he had never been. Perhaps one of these graves contains the shipwrecked mariner, hither transferred from the neighbouring beach. A cry was heard by night through the storm which dashed the waves upon the rocky coast; deliverance was impossible; and next morning, the only memorial of what had taken place was the lifeless body of a sailor stretched on the sand. No trace of name or kin, not even the name of the vessel, was learned; but, no doubt, as the villagers would remark in conveying him to the Strangers’ Nook, he left _some_ heart to pine for his absence, _some_ eyes to mourn for him, if his loss should ever be ascertained. There are few so desolate on earth as not to have one friend or associate. There must either be a wife to be widowed, or a child to be made an orphan, or a mother to suffer her own not less grievous bereavement. Perhaps the sole beloved object of some humble domestic circle, whose incomings and outgoings were ever pleasant, is here laid low, while neither can the bereaved learn aught of the fate and final resting-place of their favourite, nor can those who kindly, but without mourning, performed his last offices, reach their ears with the intelligence, grateful even in its pain, of what had been done to his remains; here the energies which had battled with the waves in their hour of night, and the despair whose expression had been wasted upon the black tempest, are all stilled into rest, and forgotten. The storm is done; its work has been accomplished; and here lies the strange mariner, where no storms shall ever again trouble him.

Such are the imaginings which may arise in contemplating that neglected nook in our churchyards which is devoted to the reception of strangers. The other dead have all been laid down in their final beds by long trains of sorrowing friends. They rest in death in the midst of those beloved scenes which their infancy knew, and which were associated with every happiness, every triumph, every sorrow, which befel them. The burns in which they had “paidlet” when they were children, run still in their shining beauty all around and about their last resting-place; the braes over which they wandered hand in hand, “to pu’ the gowans fine,” still look down in all their summer pride upon the fold into which they have at last been gathered for eternity. But the homeless strangers! _they_ died far from every endeared scene. The rills were not here like those which _they_ had known; the hills were different too. Instead of the circle of friends, whose anticipated grief tends so much to smooth the last bed of suffering man, the pillow of the homeless was arranged by strangers: they were carried to the burial-ground, not by a train of real mourners, anxious to express their respect and affection for the departed, but by a few individuals, who, in so doing, complimented human nature in general, but not the individual. To the other graves there was also some one to resort afterwards, to lament the departure of those who lay below. The spot was always cherished and marked by at least one generation of kind ones; and, whether distinguished by a monument or not, it was always a greater or less space of time before the memory of the deceased entirely perished from its place. Still, as each holy day came round, and the living flocked to the house of prayer, there was always some one to send a kind eye aside towards that little mound, and be for a moment moved with a pensive feeling, as the heart recalled a departed parent, or child, or friend. But the graves of the strangers! all regard was shut out from them as soon as they were closed. The decent few who had affected mourning over them had no sooner turned away than they were at once forgotten. That ceremony over, their kind had done with them for ever. And so, there they lie, distinguished from the rest only by the melancholy mark that they are themselves undistinguished from each other; no eye to weep over them now or hereafter, and no regard whatsoever to be paid to them till they stand forth, with their fellow-men, at the Great and Final Day.

NOBODY TO BE DESPISED—

Except on particular grounds of demerit. This is a maxim which it would be well if the world would pay more attention to.

There are many people—very good people, too—who have a habit of speaking contemptuously or lightly of almost every body but themselves. There are still more who do not seem to consider it necessary to treat the absent with the least respect, but, to use the words of a modern writer, are remarkably candid in owning and showing up the faults of their neighbours.

These, I think, are detestable practices of human nature—the issue of its weakness rather than its strength.

When I think of a great and good character, I cannot conceive that he has a habit of depreciating the respect due to his absent friends, or of treating any of his fellow-creatures with scorn, unless for some specific delinquency. Such a person will be already too secure of his own reputation to seek to raise it at the expense of others. He will be able to take an enlarged view of human society, and, seeing that the condition of all men is in a great measure accidental, or at least moulded greatly by circumstances, will not despise any man on account of his mere place in the general system, but, on the contrary, give him respect in proportion to his good conduct in that place, whatever it may be. Such a man, also, will have too much respect for himself, to use language at any time which he would be ashamed to own at another time. He would not indulge in a tone of levity or rancour respecting any man, on whose entrance accidentally into the room he would have to alter his style, and hypocritically offer him the usual courtesies of society.

It happens, however, that all men are more or less remote from the greatness and goodness of this ideal character. We are, as yet, only in a state of comparative approximation to those qualities; hence we find that nearly all are alike given to speak slightingly of each other. There are two grand causes at the bottom of this—Selfishness and Thoughtlessness. The former gives us such an intense appreciation of ourselves, and of the rank we hold in society, that we speak and think as if every man and every class beneath us were too mean to be entitled to the least respect; we look upon the whole as a degraded caste, whose very existence must only be acknowledged indirectly, as a thing we have become acquainted with by seeing it at a distance, not by having ever come in contact with it. In this view of society our ordinary literature is very apt to confirm us. The key-note is there struck always in _alt._ The whole strain of the work, its characters, its philosophy, its manners, are presumed to be something above the common level; for literary men are still, after all, very much the slaves of the great which they used to be. If the writer describes humble life at all, he describes it as seen by a bird’s-eye view from some lofty station—not as seen by a person who mingles in it, and partakes of its sympathies. Even the middle ranks of the community, who in this country form the great mass of readers, and from which, moreover, almost all literary men arise, have no literature of their own: they have to read a literature which has been calculated for the sphere above them, and in which, of course, their sympathies must be of an imperfect character. And thus, after all that has been done, it still appears a desideratum that there should be both a literature and a philosophy _for the human race_.

Then, as to _thoughtlessness_, as a cause for this universally mutual contempt. It must be admitted, I should think, that if we only took a proper consideration of the noble destiny which all partake in common with ourselves, both in respect to the grand moral ends of this life, and the more sublime prospects for the future, we would hardly think meanly of any one, except, as before mentioned, on account of some specific worthlessness. For my part, I wonder how any man can _dare_ to despise a fellow-creature upon other grounds. Is it difference of tongue, of rank, of personal character, of external manners, that makes you despise any one? What, I would ask, are all these distinctions to the great fellowship of our common humanity—the social end which we are working to as parts of a great community—as parts of a glorious world, or the general destiny which awaits us at the close of this brief life? Reflect upon these things before you permit yourself to think lightly of a fellow-creature; or, if these things are of no avail with you, consider what you are yourself, that you thus scorn another. I must say that I have often observed the most contemptible man to be the most contemptuous. There are some men who hardly make any other pretension to the respect of the world, than in so far as they profess to treat _every thing_ cavalierly. But as he who sheds blood must submit to have his blood shed by others, so are these men at length detected, and tossed, as they deserve, in a blanket of their own weaving. Individuals may be assured that it is not by proclaiming a war of contempt against the world, or any large number of its members, that a comfortable situation is to be gained for themselves.

There is a good old national proverb, which tells us that the king’s errand may come in the pedlar’s road—that is to say, a very lofty man may occasionally have to take a favour from one in humble life. This is no mere flattering unction applied by the common people to themselves. It breathes the very spirit of an enlarged and humane philosophy. It tells us that all ranks of men are in reality dependent upon each other, and that every one, filling its proper place, is entitled to its proportion of regard from the rest. Treating the expression in its more limited sense, it instructs us that, in the prospect of our being occasionally obliged to accept of favours from very mean hands, we should never treat any person beneath us with disrespect—as, otherwise, with what grace can we accept of such a favour? On this point I take the liberty to relate a simple anecdote, as told to me some years ago, in illustration of the subject of this essay, by the individual chiefly concerned—the wife of a shopkeeper in a country town in the north of Scotland.

“In —— there lived a poor woman, named Peggy Williamson, a kind of washerwoman, whom every body looked upon as a wretched creature. This despised and not very reputable person had a son, who on one occasion was taken up by the town-officers for some trifling offence, and would have been thrown into prison, if I had not thought the case rather a hard one, and interceded with the magistrate in his behalf. Peggy, with all her faults, was not ungrateful; she came to me, and said she never would forget my kindness.

“A long time after this, in consequence of a particular calamity, my husband’s affairs got into a very hopeless state. I was attending the shop one bleak November day. Few customers were coming in, or likely to come in, and our prospects were gloomy and dull as the atmosphere itself. I never, indeed, since we began business, saw a day when things seemed less promising. The whole street—the whole town—appeared deserted. All was desolate, cold, and wintry; and with the dread of utter ruin impending over us, you may suppose that our spirits were not very good. Well, just while we were in this dolorous state, in came my old friend Peggy Williamson, accompanied by a country girl, who, she said, wanted to provide herself with a number of our wares, being about to be married. This person expended six or eight pounds with us, and we could not help feeling it as a kind of godsend. It was, however, the result of my having at one time done a just, for I can hardly call it a kind, action, to a person whom the most of people despised. Peggy, who was not perhaps aware of the full extent to which we appreciated her good offices, told me very modestly, as she left the shop with her friend, that she was glad to have had it in her power to recommend any body to us for goods, ‘as she never could forget my kindness to Tam.’ I thus satisfied myself, not only that an act of ordinary benevolence is likely to produce its reward where it is least expected, but that some good feeling may exist even in those characters, whom on ordinary principles we may be most inclined to despise.”