Chronicles of the Canongate

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Dr. -- entered. I had left him a middle-aged man. He was now an
elderly one; but still the same benevolent Samaritan, who went
about doing good, and thought the blessings of the poor as good a
recompense of his professional skill as the gold of the rich.

He looked at me with surprise, but the young lady said a word of
introduction, and I, who was known to the doctor formerly,
hastened to complete it. He recollected me perfectly, and
intimated that he was well acquainted with the reasons I had for
being deeply interested in the fate of his patient. He gave me a
very melancholy account of my poor friend, drawing me for that
purpose a little apart from the lady. "The light of life," he
said, "was trembling in the socket; he scarcely expected it would
ever leap up even into a momentary flash, but more was
impossible." He then stepped towards his patient, and put some
questions, to which the poor invalid, though he seemed to
recognize the friendly and familiar voice, answered only in a
faltering and uncertain manner.

The young lady, in her turn, had drawn back when the doctor
approached his patient. "You see how it is with him," said the
doctor, addressing me. "I have heard our poor friend, in one of
the most eloquent of his pleadings, give a description of this
very disease, which he compared to the tortures inflicted by
Mezentius when he chained the dead to the living. The soul, he
said, is imprisoned in its dungeon of flesh, and though retaining
its natural and unalienable properties, can no more exert them
than the captive enclosed within a prison-house can act as a free
agent. Alas! to see HIM, who could so well describe what this
malady was in others, a prey himself to its infirmities! I shall
never forget the solemn tone of expression with which he summed
up the incapacities of the paralytic--the deafened ear, the
dimmed eye, the crippled limbs--in the noble words of Juvenal,--
"'Omni
Membrorum damno major, dementia, quae nec
Nomina servorum, nec vultum agnoscit amici.'"

As the physician repeated these lines, a flash of intelligence
seemed to revive in the invalid's eye--sunk again--again
struggled, and he spoke more intelligibly than before, and in the
tone of one eager to say something which he felt would escape him
unless said instantly. "A question of death-bed, a question of
death-bed, doctor--a reduction EX CAPITE LECTI--Withering against
Wilibus--about the MORBUS SONTICUS. I pleaded the cause for
the pursuer--I, and--and--why, I shall forget my own name--I,
and--he that was the wittiest and the best-humoured man living--"

The description enabled the doctor to fill up the blank, and the
patient joyfully repeated the name suggested. "Ay, ay," he said,
"just he--Harry--poor Harry--" The light in his eye died away,
and he sunk back in his easy-chair.

"You have now seen more of our poor friend, Mr. Croftangry," said
the physician, "than I dared venture to promise you; and now I
must take my professional authority on me, and ask you to retire.
Miss Sommerville will, I am sure, let you know if a moment should
by any chance occur when her uncle can see you."

What could I do? I gave my card to the young lady, and taking my
offering from my bosom--"if my poor friend," I said, with accents
as broken almost as his own, "should ask where this came from,
name me, and say from the most obliged and most grateful man
alive. Say, the gold of which it is composed was saved by grains
at a time, and was hoarded with as much avarice as ever was a
miser's. To bring it here I have come a thousand miles; and now,
alas, I find him thus!"

I laid the box on the table, and was retiring with a lingering
step. The eye of the invalid was caught by it, as that of a
child by a glittering toy, and with infantine impatience he
faltered out inquiries of his niece. With gentle mildness she
repeated again and again who I was, and why I came, etc. I was
about to turn, and hasten from a scene so painful, when the
physician laid his hand on my sleeve. "Stop," he said, "there is
a change."

There was, indeed, and a marked one. A faint glow spread over
his pallid features--they seemed to gain the look of intelligence
which belongs to vitality--his eye once more kindled--his lip
coloured--and drawing himself up out of the listless posture he
had hitherto maintained, he rose without assistance. The doctor
and the servant ran to give him their support. He waved them
aside, and they were contented to place themselves in such a
position behind as might ensure against accident, should his
newly-acquired strength decay as suddenly as it had revived.

"My dear Croftangry," he said, in the tone of kindness of other
days, "I am glad to see you returned. You find me but poorly;
but my little niece here and Dr. -- are very kind. God bless
you, my dear friend! We shall not meet again till we meet in a
better world."

I pressed his extended hand to my lips--I pressed it to my bosom
--I would fain have flung myself on my knees; but the doctor,
leaving the patient to the young lady and the servant, who
wheeled forward his chair, and were replacing him in it, hurried
me out of the room. "My dear sir," he said, "you ought to be
satisfied; you have seen our poor invalid more like his former
self than he has been for months, or than he may be perhaps again
until all is over. The whole Faculty could not have assured such
an interval. I must see whether anything can be derived from it
to improve the general health. Pray, begone." The last argument
hurried me from the spot, agitated by a crowd of feelings, all of
them painful.

When I had overcome the shock of this great disappointment, I
renewed gradually my acquaintance with one or two old companions,
who, though of infinitely less interest to my feelings than my
unfortunate friend, served to relieve the pressure of actual
solitude, and who were not perhaps the less open to my advances
that I was a bachelor somewhat stricken in years, newly arrived
from foreign parts, and certainly independent, if not wealthy.

I was considered as a tolerable subject of speculation by some,
and I could not be burdensome to any. I was therefore, according
to the ordinary rule of Edinburgh hospitality, a welcome guest in
several respectable families. But I found no one who could
replace the loss I had sustained in my best friend and
benefactor. I wanted something more than mere companionship
could give me, and where was I to look for it? Among the
scattered remnants of those that had been my gay friends of yore?
Alas!

"Many a lad I loved was dead,
And many a lass grown old."

Besides, all community of ties between us had ceased to exist,
and such of former friends as were still in the world held their
life in a different tenor from what I did.

Some had become misers, and were as eager in saving sixpence as
ever they had been in spending a guinea. Some had turned
agriculturists; their talk was of oxen, and they were only fit
companions for graziers. Some stuck to cards, and though no
longer deep gamblers, rather played small game than sat out.
This I particularly despised. The strong impulse of gaming,
alas! I had felt in my time. It is as intense as it is
criminal; but it produces excitation and interest, and I can
conceive how it should become a passion with strong and powerful
minds. But to dribble away life in exchanging bits of painted
pasteboard round a green table for the piddling concern of a few
shillings, can only be excused in folly or superannuation. It is
like riding on a rocking-horse, where your utmost exertion never
carries you a foot forward; it is a kind of mental treadmill,
where you are perpetually climbing, but can never rise an inch.
From these hints, my readers will perceive I am incapacitated for
one of the pleasures of old age, which, though not mentioned by
Cicero, is not the least frequent resource in the present day--
the club-room, and the snug hand at whist.

To return to my old companions. Some frequented public
assemblies, like the ghost of Beau Nash, or any other beau of
half a century back, thrust aside by tittering youth, and pitied
by those of their own age. In fine, some went into devotion, as
the French term it, and others, I fear, went to the devil; a few
found resources in science and letters; one or two turned
philosophers in a small way, peeped into microscopes, and became
familiar with the fashionable experiments of the day; some took
to reading, and I was one of them.

Some grains of repulsion towards the society around me--some
painful recollections of early faults and follies--some touch of
displeasure with living mankind--inclined me rather to a study of
antiquities, and particularly those of my own country. The
reader, if I can prevail on myself to continue the present work,
will probably be able to judge in the course of it whether I have
made any useful progress in the study of the olden times.

I owed this turn of study, in part, to the conversation of my
kind man of business, Mr. Fairscribe, whom I mentioned as having
seconded the efforts of my invaluable friend in bringing the
cause on which my liberty and the remnant of my property depended
to a favourable decision. He had given me a most kind reception
on my return. He was too much engaged in his profession for me
to intrude on him often, and perhaps his mind was too much
trammelled with its details to permit his being willingly
withdrawn from them. In short, he was not a person of my poor
friend Sommerville's expanded spirit, and rather a lawyer of the
ordinary class of formalists; but a most able and excellent man.
When my estate was sold! he retained some of the older title-
deeds, arguing, from his own feelings, that they would be of more
consequence to the heir of the old family than to the new
purchaser. And when I returned to Edinburgh, and found him still
in the exercise of the profession to which he was an honour, he
sent to my lodgings the old family Bible, which lay always on my
father's table, two or three other mouldy volumes, and a couple
of sheepskin bags full of parchments and papers, whose appearance
was by no means inviting.

The next time I shared Mr. Fairscribe's hospitable dinner, I
failed not to return him due thanks for his kindness, which
acknowledgment, indeed, I proportioned rather to the idea which I
knew he entertained of the value of such things, than to the
interest with which I myself regarded them. But the conversation
turning on my family, who were old proprietors in the Upper Ward
of Clydesdale, gradually excited some interest in my mind and
when I retired to my solitary parlour, the first thing I did was
to look for a pedigree or sort of history of the family or House
of Croftangry, once of that Ilk, latterly of Glentanner. The
discoveries which I made shall enrich the next chapter.

CHAPTER II.

IN WHICH MR. CROFTANGRY CONTINUES HIS STORY.

"What's property, dear Swift? I see it alter
From you to me, from me to Peter Walter."

"Croftangry--Croftandrew--Croftanridge--Croftandgrey for sa mony
wise hath the name been spellit--is weel known to be ane house of
grit antiquity; and it is said that King Milcolumb, or Malcolm,
being the first of our Scottish princes quha removit across the
Firth of Forth, did reside and occupy ane palace at Edinburgh,
and had there ane valziant man, who did him man-service by
keeping the croft, or corn-land, which was tilled for the
convenience of the King's household, and was thence callit Croft-
an-ri, that is to say, the King his croft; quhilk place, though
now coverit with biggings, is to this day called Croftangry, and
lyeth near to the royal palace. And whereas that some of those
who bear this auld and honourable name may take scorn that it
ariseth from the tilling of the ground, quhilk men account a
slavish occupation, yet we ought to honour the pleugh and spade,
seeing we all derive our being from our father Adam, whose lot it
became to cultivate the earth, in respect of his fall and
transgression.

"Also we have witness, as weel in holy writt as in profane
history, of the honour in quhilk husbandrie was held of old, and
how prophets have been taken from the pleugh, and great captains
raised up to defend their ain countries, sic as Cincinnatus, and
the like, who fought not the common enemy with the less valiancy
that their alms had been exercised in halding the stilts of the
pleugh, and their bellicose skill in driving of yauds and owsen.

"Likewise there are sindry honorable families, quhilk are now of
our native Scottish nobility, and have clombe higher up the brae
of preferment than what this house of Croftangry hath done,
quhilk shame not to carry in their warlike shield and insignia of
dignity the tools and implements the quhilk their first
forefathers exercised in labouring the croft-rig, or, as the poet
Virgilius calleth it eloquently, in subduing the soil, and no
doubt this ancient house of Croftangry, while it continued to be
called of that Ilk, produced many worshipful and famous patriots,
of quhom I now praetermit the names; it being my purpose, if God
shall spare me life for sic ane pious officium, or duty, to
resume the first part of my narrative touching the house of
Croftangry, when I can set down at length the evidents and
historical witness anent the facts which I shall allege, seeing
that words, when they are unsupported by proofs, are like seed
sown on the naked rocks, or like an house biggit on the flitting
and faithless sands."

Here I stopped to draw breath; for the style of my grandsire, the
inditer of this goodly matter, was rather lengthy, as our
American friends say. Indeed, I reserve the rest of the piece
until I can obtain admission to the Bannatine Club, [This Club,
of which the Author of Waverley has the honour to be President,
was instituted in February 1823, for the purpose of printing and
publishing works illustrative of the history, literature, and
antiquities of Scotland. It continues to prosper, and has
already rescued from oblivion many curious materials of Scottish
history.] when I propose to throw off an edition, limited
according to the rules of that erudite Society, with a facsimile
of the manuscript, emblazonry of the family arms surrounded by
their quartering, and a handsome disclamation of family pride,
with HAEC NOS NOVIMUS ESSE NIHIL, or VIX EA NOSTRA VOCO.

In the meantime, to speak truth, I cannot but suspect that,
though my worthy ancestor puffed vigorously to swell up the
dignity of his family, we had never, in fact, risen above the
rank of middling proprietors. The estate of Glentanner came to
us by the intermarriage of my ancestor with Tib Sommeril, termed
by the southrons Sommerville, a daughter of that noble house,
but, I fear, on what my great-grandsire calls "the wrong side of
the blanket." [The ancient Norman family of the Sommervilles
came into this island with William the Conqueror, and established
one branch in Gloucestershire, another in Scotland. After the
lapse of seven hundred years, the remaining possessions of these
two branches were united in the person of the late Lord
Sommerville, on the death of his English kinsman, the well-known
author of "The Chase."] Her husband, Gilbert, was killed
fighting, as the INQUISITIO POST MORTEM has it, "SUB VEXILLO
REGIS, APUD PRAELIUM JUXTA BRANXTON, LIE FLODDDEN-FIELD."

We had our share in other national misfortunes--were forfeited,
like Sir John Colville of the Dale, for following our betters to
the field of Langside; and in the contentious times of the last
Stewarts we were severely fined for harbouring and resetting
intercommuned ministers, and narrowly escaped giving a martyr to
the Calendar of the Covenant, in the person of the father of our
family historian. He "took the sheaf from the mare," however, as
the MS. expresses it, and agreed to accept of the terms of pardon
offered by Government, and sign the bond in evidence he would
give no further ground of offence. My grandsire glosses over his
father's backsliding as smoothly as he can, and comforts himself
with ascribing his want of resolution to his unwillingness to
wreck the ancient name and family, and to permit his lands and
lineage to fall under a doom of forfeiture.

"And indeed," said the venerable compiler, "as, praised be God,
we seldom meet in Scotland with these belly-gods and
voluptuaries, whilk are unnatural enough to devour their
patrimony bequeathed to them by their forbears in chambering and
wantonness, so that they come, with the prodigal son, to the
husks and the swine-trough; and as I have the less to dreid the
existence of such unnatural Neroes in mine own family to devour
the substance of their own house like brute beasts out of mere
gluttonie and Epicurishnesse, so I need only warn mine
descendants against over-hastily meddling with the mutations in
state and in religion, which have been near-hand to the bringing
this poor house of Croftangry to perdition, as we have shown more
than once. And albeit I would not that my successors sat still
altogether when called on by their duty to Kirk and King, yet I
would have them wait till stronger and walthier men than
themselves were up, so that either they may have the better
chance of getting through the day, or, failing of that, the
conquering party having some fatter quarry to live upon, may,
like gorged hawks, spare the smaller game."

There was something in this conclusion which at first reading
piqued me extremely, and I was so unnatural as to curse the whole
concern, as poor, bald, pitiful trash, in which a silly old man
was saying a great deal about nothing at all. Nay, my first
impression was to thrust it into the fire, the rather that it
reminded me, in no very flattering manner, of the loss of the
family property, to which the compiler of the history was so much
attached, in the very manner which he most severely reprobated.
It even seemed to my aggrieved feelings that his unprescient gaze
on futurity, in which he could not anticipate the folly of one of
his descendants, who should throw away the whole inheritance in a
few years of idle expense and folly, was meant as a personal
incivility to myself, though written fifty or sixty years before
I was born.

A little reflection made me ashamed or this feeling of
impatience, and as I looked at the even, concise, yet tremulous
hand in which the manuscript was written, I could not help
thinking, according to an opinion I have heard seriously
maintained, that something of a man's character may be
conjectured from his handwriting. That neat but crowded and
constrained small-hand argued a man of a good conscience, well-
regulated passions, and, to use his own phrase, an upright walk
in life; but it also indicated narrowness of spirit, inveterate
prejudice, and hinted at some degree of intolerance, which,
though not natural to the disposition, had arisen out of a
limited education. The passages from Scripture and the classics,
rather profusely than happily introduced, and written in a half-
text character to mark their importance, illustrated that
peculiar sort of pedantry which always considers the argument as
gained if secured by a quotation. Then the flourished capital
letters, which ornamented the commencement of each paragraph, and
the names of his family and of his ancestors whenever these
occurred in the page, do they not express forcibly the pride and
sense of importance with which the author undertook and
accomplished his task? I persuaded myself the whole was so
complete a portrait of the man, that it would not have been a
more undutiful act to have defaced his picture, or even to have
disturbed his bones in his coffin, than to destroy his
manuscript. I thought, for a moment, of presenting it to Mr.
Fairscribe; but that confounded passage about the prodigal and
swine-trough--I settled at last it was as well to lock it up in
my own bureau, with the intention to look at it no more.

But I do not know how it was, that the subject began to sit
nearer my heart than I was aware of, and I found myself
repeatedly engaged in reading descriptions of farms which were no
longer mine, and boundaries which marked the property of others.
A love of the NATALE SOLUM, if Swift be right in translating
these words, "family estate," began to awaken in my bosom--the
recollections of my own youth adding little to it, save what was
connected with field-sports. A career of pleasure is
unfavourable for acquiring a taste for natural beauty, and still
more so for forming associations of a sentimental kind,
connecting us with the inanimate objects around us.

I had thought little about my estate while I possessed and was
wasting it, unless as affording the rude materials out of which a
certain inferior race of creatures, called tenants, were bound to
produce (in a greater quantity than they actually did) a certain
return called rent, which was destined to supply my expenses.
This was my general view of the matter. Of particular places, I
recollected that Garval Hill was a famous piece of rough upland
pasture for rearing young colts, and teaching them to throw their
feet; that Minion Burn had the finest yellow trout in the
country; that Seggy-cleugh was unequalled for woodcocks; that
Bengibbert Moors afforded excellent moorfowl-shooting; and that
the clear, bubbling fountain called the Harper's Well was the
best recipe in the world on the morning after a HARD-GO with my
neighbour fox-hunters. Still, these ideas recalled, by degrees,
pictures of which I had since learned to appreciate the merit--
scenes of silent loneliness, where extensive moors, undulating
into wild hills, were only disturbed by the whistle of the plover
or the crow of the heathcock; wild ravines creeping up into
mountains, filled with natural wood, and which, when traced
downwards along the path formed by shepherds and nutters, were
found gradually to enlarge and deepen, as each formed a channel
to its own brook, sometimes bordered by steep banks of earth,
often with the more romantic boundary of naked rocks or cliffs
crested with oak, mountain ash, and hazel--all gratifying the eye
the more that the scenery was, from the bare nature of the
country around, totally unexpected.

I had recollections, too, of fair and fertile holms, or level
plains, extending between the wooded banks and the bold stream of
the Clyde, which, coloured like pure amber, or rather having the
hue of the pebbles called Cairngorm, rushes over sheets of rock
and beds of gravel, inspiring a species of awe from the few and
faithless fords which it presents, and the frequency of fatal
accidents, now diminished by the number of bridges. These
alluvial holms were frequently bordered by triple and quadruple
rows of large trees, which gracefully marked their boundary, and
dipped their long arms into the foaming stream of the river.
Other places I remembered, which had been described by the old
huntsman as the lodge of tremendous wild-cats, or the spot where
tradition stated the mighty stag to have been brought to bay, or
where heroes, whose might was now as much forgotten, were said to
have been slain by surprise, or in battle.

It is not to be supposed that these finished landscapes became
visible before the eyes of my imagination, as the scenery of the
stage is disclosed by the rising of the curtain. I have said
that I had looked upon the country around me, during the hurried
and dissipated period of my life, with the eyes, indeed, of my
body, but without those of my understanding. It was piece by
piece, as a child picks out its lesson, that I began to recollect
the beauties of nature which had once surrounded me in the home
of my forefathers. A natural taste for them must have lurked at
the bottom of my heart, which awakened when I was in foreign
countries, and becoming by degrees a favourite passion, gradually
turned its eyes inwards, and ransacked the neglected stores which
my memory had involuntarily recorded, and, when excited, exerted
herself to collect and to complete.

I began now to regret more bitterly than ever the having fooled
away my family property, the care and improvement of which I saw
might have afforded an agreeable employment for my leisure, which
only went to brood on past misfortunes, and increase useless
repining. "Had but a single farm been reserved, however small,"
said I one day to Mr. Fairscribe, "I should have had a place I
could call my home, and something that I could call business."

"It might have been managed," answered Fairscribe; "and for my
part, I inclined to keep the mansion house, mains, and some of
the old family acres together; but both Mr. -- and you were of
opinion that the money would be more useful."

"True, true, my good friend," said I; "I was a fool then, and did
not think I could incline to be Glentanner with L200 or L300 a
year, instead of Glentanner with as many thousands. I was then a
haughty, pettish, ignorant, dissipated, broken-down Scottish
laird; and thinking my imaginary consequence altogether ruined, I
cared not how soon, or how absolutely, I was rid of everything
that recalled it to my own memory, or that of others."

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