Book ' P ^ ^ 
 
 3 <</ 
 

DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 a jHeDle^ of pitxmxit^ 
 
 BY 
 
 ALEXANDER INNES SHAND 
 
 AUTHOR OF 'OLD-TIME TRAVEL* 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 E. P. BUTTON AND COMPANY 
 
 190S 
 
5 ^»^ 
 
 ^\l 
 
 o 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. THE RURAL REVOLUTION i 
 
 II. THE CHANGES IN LONDON 15 
 
 III. THE EVOLUTION OF THE HOTEL AND 
 
 RESTAURANT 29 
 
 IV. IN LONDON LODGINGS 53 
 
 ■ V. THE THAMES ABOVE BRIDGES .... 72 
 . VI. OLDER EDINBURGH 91 
 
 VII. OLD SCOTTISH ECCLESIASTICISM . .111 
 
 VIII. SOME MILITARY MEMORIES . . . .136 
 
 . IX. SOME FLUTTERS ON THE STOCK EXCHANGE 159 
 
 X. LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS . . . .172 
 
 XI. MORE LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS . . ,201 
 
 XII. FRIENDS OF THE ATHEN^UM . . . .225 
 
 XIII. RAMBLES WITH ROD AND GUN . . .250 
 
 XIV. KEEPERS AND HILL SHEPHERDS . . .273 
 XV. THE SHEPHERDS AND THE POACHERS . 291 
 
 XVI. THE LAST OF THE ROAD 304 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE RURAL REVOLUTION 
 
 Lord Cockburn, in his Circtnt Journeys, remarks 
 on the marvellous improvements he had seen on 
 his progresses through Aberdeenshire. Memory 
 does not carry me quite so far back, though I 
 have seen his lordship seated on the bench, but 
 I can remember much of the devolution of the 
 transformation. Few of the semi-lowland shires 
 had to contend with greater disadvantages. The 
 uplands were highland ; the midlands were hill 
 and moss ; and the eastern flats, with the bleak 
 coast of Buchan, are swept by bitter gales from 
 the Pole. In Buchan, trees and bushes were 
 shaved, as with a razor, when they rose above 
 the shelter of the 'dens.' The climate was severe 
 and the soil unkindly. Sand dunes fenced the 
 county from the Atlantic gales, yet a parish had 
 been buried there under the sand drift. The 
 ground was fertile in granite, yet it is a remarkable 
 fact that the venerable buildings of Old Aberdeen 
 were of imported freestone, which shows that the 
 Aberdonians of ancient days, if enterprising, were 
 not resourceful. It was very different with the agri- 
 culturists in the nineteenth century, and especially 
 
 A 
 
2 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 towards the middle of it. They bid, with the 
 Lothians, for a lead in high farming, and showed 
 the world the way in cattle breeding. They were 
 among the first to appreciate the value of guano, 
 and they found that their farms, freely manured, 
 reared such rich crops as were not to be seen else- 
 where. In a dry season in southern England the 
 worried partridges find no cover in either turnips 
 or mangolds. In Aberdeenshire you wade over 
 the knee ; you can only work with the most 
 powerful dogs, and the swedes after a morning 
 shower hold whole bucketfuls of water. So with 
 exuberant winter-feeding, Aberdeenshire breeders 
 invested money in shorthorns and the polled 
 Angus. Naturally they went in for enclosures. 
 In my own boyhood I can recollect on the crofts 
 and small farms — even now there are few farms 
 rented above .^200 — the barefooted herd-boys and 
 herd-girls shouting after the scraggy beasts they 
 had in charge, for ever encroaching on neighbours' 
 boundaries. Now, the boys and girls with shoe 
 leather and stockings are at the board schools ; 
 and, except to scare the crows from the crops, there 
 is no necessity for their services. When the fields 
 were being cleared for the plough, loose stone 
 enclosures, but substantially built, followed as 
 matter of course. The stones must be disposed 
 of somehow. The worst of those dikes was that 
 they became almost impregnable refuges for 
 vermin. Stoats, weasels, and rats, with the mis- 
 
THE RURAL REVOLUTION 3 
 
 chievous rabbits, bid defiance to the keenest ferrets. 
 That clearing the ground was a costly business 
 for improving landlords. I have seen enormous 
 granite blocks, locally denominated 'haythens,' 
 occupy skilled men a day or two in drilling and 
 blasting. 
 
 Johnson declared there were no trees in East 
 Scotland, and Cockburn said much the same of 
 Aberdeen. He did not take count of the ma^ni- 
 ficent pines in the forests of Deeside, or the sylvan 
 * Paradise ' of Monymusk ; of the beeches and 
 elms round many an ancestral fortalice, and of 
 the clumps of wind-beaten ashes that screened 
 the cottage or the lonely homestead. But I have 
 seen sheltering plantations of spruce springing up 
 everywhere — they have drawn clouds of cushat- 
 doves, as destructive as the rabbits — and it is 
 only a pity that larches did not take the place of 
 the spruce or the silver fir. For larch always 
 commands a sale for fencing and building pur- 
 poses, whereas in the heavy 'windfalls,' after some 
 devastating gale, the spruce lies rotting, a drug 
 in the market. 
 
 Wheat was a delicate exotic and a speculative 
 crop. On the estates I used to shoot over, I only 
 remember a single field annually sown and stead- 
 fastly persisted with, and that was on the sunny 
 North Mains of Barra, near the scene of the first 
 decisive battle won by the Bruce over the 
 Comyns. But everywhere the skirts of the 
 
4 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 heather were going back ; isolated patches of 
 morass were being reclaimed ; the grouse was 
 giving way to the partridge, and the snipe to 
 the landrail. But even the belated oat crops 
 were failures in cold, showery years, and the great 
 stand-by of progressive farmers with capital was 
 their cattle. M'Combie of Tillyfour, and Grant 
 Duff of Eden, the father of Sir Mountstuart, were 
 notable for their pedigree herds. The most famous 
 of all was Amos Cruickshank of Sittyton, the 
 quaker, who had grudged no money in purchases, 
 and had brought his herd of shorthorns almost to 
 perfection. He rented two of the best farms from 
 a cousin of mine. His steading was within half a 
 mile of the house where from my nursery days 
 I had always found a home. His annual sales of 
 bull calves drew admiring purchasers from all 
 Scotland, from England, and the Colonies. The 
 sale began with a parade of the superb fathers of 
 the herd. The mansion overflowed with guests 
 from the county, who came in vehicles of every 
 kind, and their horses found shelter in byres, the 
 stabling of the home-farm, or anywhere. The 
 sale was preceded by an early dinner at the farm. 
 But the quaker, who was a temperance man, stuck to 
 his principles, and, contrary to the universal practice 
 in the county, gave the visitors nothing stronger 
 than indifferent beer. On one of those occasions 
 he was scandalised when one of the gentlemen 
 from the house brought up half a dozen, of port 
 
THE RURAL REVOLUTION 5 
 
 and as many of champagne for his own immediate 
 circle. Yet though the bidders came to the scratch 
 unprimed, the bidding was none the less spirited, 
 and the pick of the calves fetched what were then 
 considered inordinate prices. Cruickshank did 
 well and died in affluence ; but he cut his own 
 throat, for as his stock was disseminated his sales 
 fell off. 
 
 On the other hand, I saw how the ordinary- 
 breeders gained with the opening of the railways. 
 Formerly they sent their cattle by road, losing 
 flesh and condition, to local markets that were 
 overstocked. The trucks on the rail opened easy 
 communications with the south, till the prime beef 
 from Aberdeen and Angus fetched the top prices 
 at Leadenhall, and arable land was broken up 
 for the * grass parks ' which were more surely 
 remunerative. 
 
 At that time rents were rising fast, till they 
 actually boomed. Forty years ago, one of the 
 trustees on the personal estate of a wealthy iron- 
 master complained that though they were in- 
 structed to invest solely in land, they could not 
 buy at reasonable prices. The idea then was that 
 'the land could not run away,' and few were far- 
 sighted enough to foresee the prospective fall. 
 The shrewdest of Scots, with money in bank, were 
 inclined to discount a golden future. A relation of 
 my own age had a twenty years' minority. He 
 might, on coming of age, have come into a great 
 
6 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 sum of ready money. He did not find a shilling 
 to his credit, but his estates were in grand con- 
 dition. The friendly and capable Writer to the 
 Signet who had administered them conscientiously 
 believed he had been actinsf for the best. Farm 
 steadings had been rebuilt or extended ; roads had 
 been made ; diking, draining, and ditching had 
 been carried out on a colossal scale. That was a 
 somewhat exceptional case ; the factor may have 
 overshot the mark, but, more or less, the same 
 thing was going on in many places. Some of the 
 cottages, or rather hovels, which were cleared 
 away were primitive in the extreme. Built of 
 loose stones, they were roofed with turf, and the 
 smoke partially escaped through an aperture over 
 the peat fire, where a cask roped with straw did 
 doubtful duty for a chimney. There were two 
 so-called rooms, 'a but and a ben,' and in the 
 bigger was the box-bed, where the bulk of the 
 family slept. One of these hovels, I remember, 
 was tenanted by an old gentleman, who had his 
 croft rent free for doing 'orra jobs' about the 
 mansion house. He used to drive cattle in a 
 flowing, flowered dressing-gown, which had been 
 passed on to him, and he only shaved his grey 
 beard at long intervals. One of my earliest re- 
 collections is seeing him biting off the tails of a 
 litter of terrier puppies in the courtyard. He was 
 a philosopher in his own way, and with the free 
 run of the servants' hall and butler's pantry, he 
 
THE RURAL REVOLUTION 7 
 
 took life easily. He never complained. Once 
 when the landlord paid a morning visit, he splashed 
 from the drainage outside the door into a puddle 
 within where some ducklings were disporting 
 themselves, and the wet was dripping over him 
 from the blackened rafters. 'Why, John!' was 
 the exclamation, ' you are in a terrible state here, 
 we must have your roof overhauled.' 'Ay, it's 
 lettin' in some water,' was the quiet reply, 'but it's 
 gey thick, and there are but antrim drops, and the 
 wife and I do weel eneuch in the bed under our 
 auld umbrella.' 
 
 Then the larger tenants universally had nineteen 
 years' leases, and would have liked them longer, 
 though the tenure was secure ; but a few of the 
 farms and the crofts had been passed on from 
 generation to generation, and the Lowlands, like 
 the Highland 'tacks', were run somewhat on the 
 patriarchal system. That was expressed in the 
 old phase and phrase of the 'kindly tenants.' 
 Part of the rent was invariably paid in ' kain and 
 carriages.' The kain was a certain number of 
 fowls, to be duly delivered, and under carriages, 
 the tenants were bound to do a certain amount of 
 carting of coals, etc. As to these old imposts, there 
 is a good story in Sir Walter Scott's Journal. 
 There was another restriction the tenants liked 
 less. They were 'thirled' to the landlord's mill, 
 — that is to say, they had to bring all their corn 
 to be ground there at a fixed rate. The old mill 
 
8 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 was a favourite resort of us boys. We used to 
 revel in the smell of the fresh meal, descending 
 in cascades, groping in it, wrist-deep, and devour- 
 ing it too, by handfuls. Then there was the deep 
 mill-lade under the great moss-grown wheel, with 
 the speckled trout shooting into darksome crevices, 
 and within gunshot was the sedgy dam, shrouded 
 with dark willow and alder, haunted by mallards, 
 teals, and waterhen. 
 
 There was a more serious grievance the tenants 
 brooded over, though they took it in acquiescent 
 silence. Reform, enlarging the roll of the 'old 
 freeholders,' had given them votes, but no shadow 
 of political power. The county was a safe Con- 
 servative seat, and though occasionally there was a 
 contested election, the result was a foregone con- 
 clusion. The politics of the landlords were known ; 
 they simply counted heads and brought their 
 tenants up to the hustings. To take a special 
 instance. A liberal-minded relative of mine took 
 great and justifiable credit for giving one of his 
 farmers leave to vote Liberal. But the man was 
 an educated vet, son-in-law of an invaluable old 
 bailiff, which extenuated what in other circum- 
 stances would have been an unpardonable act of 
 treachery to the order of the landlords. Retribu- 
 tion came in due course, with the ballot and the 
 passing of new reform acts. There was a reaction 
 with a vengeance, and for many a year the Tories 
 had never another chance. 
 
THE RURAL REVOLUTION 9 
 
 If the farmers clung to the land, the farm hands 
 were always changing. The good ploughmen and 
 * horsemen ' hiad high wages, but the supply was 
 always in excess of the demand. Nor had they any 
 great attraction to any particular place, for their 
 living was everywhere coarse — brose and kail, por- 
 ridge and skim milk — and the quarters invariably 
 of the roughest. Thanks to close friendship with 
 an old keeper who pigged with the farm folk, I 
 paid frequent visits to their joint bedroom in one 
 of the most generously managed of home-farms. 
 It was a loft in which confusion was worse 
 confounded ; soaking and muddy garments were 
 tossed about, and the rough beds unmade in the 
 middle of the afternoon. The young woman who 
 cooked and did for the men had charge of the 
 dairy as well, and she would have given them 
 even less attention, had not the arrangement been 
 far from conducive to morality. Rural morality, 
 indeed, was at a low ebb, though it is only fair to 
 say that the fair sinner generally ended as an 
 honest woman and settled down into sober matri- 
 mony. The farm servants were restless, and they 
 had periodical opportunity of changing places 
 at the * feeing ' or hiring markets, held all over the 
 country. Great festive occasions these markets 
 were, combined with the cattle and sheep sales, 
 before the railway carried stock to central depots. 
 There were booths of itinerant merchants, travelling 
 shows, and above all, refreshment tents, flowing 
 
lo DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 with whisky and porter. Ere night fell, the most 
 sober of the men were concerned in liquor, and 
 the girls, stuffed with sweets and gingerbread, 
 were flaming forth in bright shawls and gaudy 
 ribbons, the gifts of temporarily devoted swains. 
 
 Then prosperity was the rule rather than the 
 exception, though there might be wet autumns 
 and poor harvests. There was little question of 
 reduction of rents, till they had been abnormally 
 raised by the good times and lively competition. 
 I have often looked in on rent day, on the little 
 square room at the home farm, where the clerk of 
 the Edinburgh agent sat with a square decanter 
 of whisky at one elbow and the old grieve at the 
 other. Man after man walked in, handed over 
 his grimy notes, made the inevitable requests, did 
 a moderate amount of grumbling, swallowed a 
 bumper and walked out. At midday all sat down 
 to a substantial dinner, with toasts and steaming 
 toddy ad libitum. Every other occasion was 
 seized for a festivity — a coming of age, a wed- 
 ding, or sometimes even a funeral. It was amusing 
 to mark how the stereotyped speeches used to run 
 in the identical grooves, except with the parochial 
 clergy, who were florid and professional orators. 
 How eloquently they did flatter the laird, and 
 even remote connections of the family ! The 
 oldest tenant who proposed his health always 
 quoted the maxim of 'live and let live,' a shrewd 
 hint of what was expected by the canny Scots- 
 
THE RURAL REVOLUTION ii 
 
 men, and the fiddles of the orchestra, according 
 to the county paper, invariably * discoursed sweet 
 music ' in the intervals. 
 
 The fiddlers feasted with the rest, but they 
 earned their money. There were local celebrities 
 like 'Wandering Willie,' who were everywhere in 
 request, and the quantity of toddy with which 
 they refreshed themselves was astounding. For a 
 ball invariably succeeded these special dinners. 
 The scene was a long loft, decorated with ever- 
 greens or flowers, where reels and country dances 
 alternated in endless succession. The gymnastics 
 grew more violent as the night went on. It was 
 tremendously hard work, and took it out of one 
 more than the longest clay's shooting. I was hard 
 enough then, but often I have tumbled into bed in 
 the small hours, to wake towards noon, aching in 
 every limb. But these jovial rural carnivals have 
 been going out of fashion. Some of the straighter- 
 laced of the gentry said they were prejudicial to 
 morals, — which possibly was true, for as Christopher 
 North wrote, it was a perilous temptation for an 
 enamoured bachelor, seeing the belle of the ball 
 home across the bloomincr heather. But the more 
 probable explanation is, that the ties between land- 
 lord and tenant have been loosening, and with 
 chronic reduction of rents, the shoe has been 
 pinching severely. 
 
 I had heard more than I saw of the old con- 
 viviality. I can only once recall a gentleman 
 
12 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 committing himself in a drawing-room, where he 
 came a cropper over an ottoman and went a header 
 on the hearth-rug. And he was a genuine survival 
 of the old school, a boon companion of the fox- 
 hunting Lord Kintore of his time, and of the Lord 
 Panmure of Brechin, noted as one of the three 
 hardest drinking peers in the islands. His arbi- 
 trary hospitality was commemorated by ' Nimrod ' 
 in TAe Northern Tottr, when he firmly refused the 
 request of a brother-in-law, who, after the party 
 had been mixing their liquors for hours, humbly 
 ' supplicated ' for a tumbler. My father was an 
 abstemious man, but he could speak of nights with 
 Lord Panmure at Brechin Castle, of which we find 
 almost fabulous reports in the Biography of Con- 
 stable — not the artist, but the publisher. And 
 at my father's own seat of the Burn, on the 
 North Esk, the summer houses on the romantic 
 walks along the overhanging banks were sections 
 of Madeira hogsheads, emptied at the entertain- 
 ments of Lord Adam Gordon, his predecessor in 
 the property. 
 
 If I saw any other signs of excess, it was at state 
 funerals. No doubt things had mended much 
 since the days of Duncan Forbes of Colloden, 
 Lord President of the Court of Session and the 
 most venerated of Scottish statesmen, when he set 
 the example of drinking so deep at the funeral of 
 his much-lamented mother, that when the proces- 
 sion reached the kirk, it was found the corpse had 
 
THE RURAL REVOLUTION 13 
 
 been forgotten. But still, when the ceremony- 
 came off in a chill winter day, the company, who 
 had gathered from far and near, expected generous 
 cheer, and did it ample justice. It was an odd 
 blending of mourning — more or less sincere — and 
 joviality. Friends were pleased to meet, and 
 there were long arrears of local gossip to be 
 discussed. All turned up with broad 'weepers' of 
 cambric, stitched on the coat cuffs. The dealing 
 out of scarves, hat-bands, and gloves, was followed 
 by the circulation of wine and cake, and that by 
 prayer and solemn words of exhortation. When 
 the cortege came back from the vault, which was 
 often miles away, though many families had their 
 private mausoleum within easy reach, the mourners 
 to a man were chilled and famished. Nothino- 
 could be more welcome than the announcement of 
 the late luncheon, and sorrow served only to give a 
 keener edge to the appetite. The strong ale and 
 the wines flowed freely, and frequently there was a 
 melancholy contrast between the oblivious con- 
 viviality of the hungry guests and the efforts of 
 the grief-stricken entertainer to do the honours. 
 
 But on these melancholy occasions there were 
 invariably those from whom the bereaved family 
 was sure of sympathy. Domestic servants and 
 out-of-door retainers knew well when they were 
 well-off, and seldom left the situations in which 
 they had been bred and almost born. The boy 
 who was entered to knives and boots, often died 
 
14 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 a grey-haired butler, with the keys and carte 
 blanche over the cellar, and unlimited vicarious 
 authority. The housekeeper, who might have been 
 trusted with untold gold, was equally paramount 
 in her own department. They kept a saving eye 
 on details, and drove their subordinates with a 
 tight rein, but, like Caleb Balderstone, they made 
 the honour of the family their own, and prided 
 themselves on the profusion of the table. There 
 were no diners a la Russe, with finikin carving at 
 the side table ; and the board used to groan under 
 the load of good fare, with such trifles as pairs of 
 goslings and turkey poults for side dishes. So the 
 show of cold and r^chauffd on the sideboard at 
 next morning's breakfast was superb. But it 
 was at weddings or the funeral feasts that they 
 felt bound to surpass themselves. I have seen 
 one venerable retainer, a beloved friend of my 
 own, nerving himself manfully for his onerous 
 duties at a funeral luncheon, filling the glasses 
 indefatigably, whispering recommendations of choice 
 dishes into the ears of his numerous acquaintances, 
 and then breaking down in sobs and retiring to 
 the pantry till he had pulled himself together 
 to resume his painful task. When the guests 
 were gone he took to bed, and only got out of it 
 to be retired on a pension. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE CHANGES IN LONDON 
 
 The reign of Victoria saw marvellous transforma- 
 tion scenes in London. According to that once 
 popular novelist, G. P. R. James, Simon Reynard, 
 the intriguing Spanish ambassador, remarked epi- 
 grammatically that in the Tower he read the history 
 of England. The Victorian era was a record of 
 imperial expansion with London for the loadstone. 
 The growth of the overcrowded metropolis ex- 
 ceeded the expansion of an empire which had been 
 casually annexing kingdoms and principalities. 
 When her accession was announced to the o-irl- 
 heiress at the semi-rural palace of Kensington, 
 England had barely found breathing-time after 
 the exhausting struggle in which she had fought 
 one half the continent and subsidised the other. 
 When she celebrated her jubilee, the Empress- 
 Queen, though latterly she had lived in retirement, 
 was the idol of a nation which under her rule had 
 been rapidly growing rich. The fleet assembled 
 at Spithead was the visible sign of supremacy on 
 the ocean. Battleships, armoured cruisers, and 
 torpedo boats were the watch-dogs of the com- 
 merce which had been bringing wealth to the port 
 
 15 
 
i6 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 of London. London had been the centre of many 
 industries which till then had been indifferent 
 to foreign competition. The national credit had 
 never stood higher, and in the superabundance 
 of golden or gilt-edged securities, Sam Weller's 
 ' reduced counsels ' stood at an exceptional premium. 
 Floating on the flood of the swelling Pactolus, 
 London had at last begun to realise its responsi- 
 bilities. Private expenditure was stimulating public 
 munificence. The architect with ideas had a free 
 hand, and the speculative builder never had a better 
 time. Antiquated structures and squalid back 
 streets were swept away ; luxurious mansions and 
 decent dwellings were rising in their places. If 
 there was a dreary monotony in the stuccoed fa9ades 
 of new crescents and terraces, there was no denying 
 the improvement in the general effect, and still 
 more in substantial comforts. Punch might sneer 
 at the squirts in Trafalgar Square, and laugh at 
 the lions of the Nelson Column ; but there are points 
 of view, such as those of the Palladio-like Govern- 
 ment Offices from the water-bridge in St. James's 
 Park, which rival those from the Ponte Vecchio of 
 Florence, or the Schiavoni of Venice. 
 
 Though falling into the yellow leaf, memory does 
 not take me back to Queen Victoria's accession ; 
 but as a very small boy I can remember the birth 
 of the Princess Royal, the loyal excitement in 
 Edinburgh, and the salute from the Castle that 
 shook the town. Two years afterwards, on my 
 
THE CHANGES IN LONDON 17 
 
 first visit to England, I sailed for Liverpool from 
 the Glasgow Broomielaw in the superb new steamer, 
 the Princess Royal — I forget her modest tonnage. 
 That summer I went no further south than Leam- 
 ington, where now I miss the avenue of noble elms 
 which then shaded the promenade. I was intro- 
 duced to Victorian London a few years later, 
 when we drove by the Chevy Chase Coach through 
 the Border scenery from Edinburgh to take the 
 North-Eastern train at Newcastle. Dick Whitting- 
 ton never looked back so longingly to London as 
 I looked forward. I little thought how much I 
 should see of it later, and how well I should know 
 the flags in Pall Mall. Nor were my dreams of 
 golden-paved streets and gold to be had for the 
 gathering. Even then a voracious reader and 
 highly sensitive to casual associations, London 
 sights and London celebrities were to me at that 
 time a very loadstone of attraction. Our first sight 
 of London, our first impressions of the Continent, — 
 these are landmarks in the memory, never to be 
 obliterated. Byron seldom wrote a truer or more 
 melodious couplet than — 
 
 * There 's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away. 
 When the glow of early thought declines in feeling's dull decay.' 
 
 Novelty gave point to the excitement which was 
 sometimes calmed, but seldom satiated. I know 
 not what I enjoyed most — the sculptured tombs 
 of monarchs in the Abbey or the monuments of 
 fallen heroes in the Cathedral church — the survey 
 
 B 
 
t8 days of the past 
 
 from the caged summit of the Monument, the 
 pessimism of whose guardian had depressed Tom 
 Pinch, another young man from the country — the 
 esplanade at Greenwich Hospital, with the old 
 blue-coated pensioners crawling about like torpid 
 wasps, or the quaint Chinese junk, moored off 
 Blackwall, with its silken hangings and porcelain, its 
 carvings in jade and its uncanny idols. Then there 
 were the Zoological, and the Thames Tunnel, with 
 its dimly lighted bazaar, and Madame Tussaud's, 
 where we looked longingly at the forbidden door 
 of the Chamber of Horrors, and one even had fear- 
 some pleasure in the scientific Polytechnic, where 
 you were shocked by electric batteries, and had 
 the excitement of the descent in the diving-bell. 
 Verrey's, with its cakes and its ices, was nearly next 
 door. You felt agreeably lost in the whirl of the 
 Strand and Fleet Street, with the blocks of traffic, 
 and the show in the shop windows ; it was like visit- 
 ing the bazaars of Bagdad or Bassorah in company 
 of Haroun Alraschid and his vizier. The white- 
 aproned touts at the portals of Doctors' Commons 
 reminded you of David Copperfield and of old Mr. 
 Weller, let in for his rash matrimonial venture. 
 
 There were no omnibuses then to the north of 
 the Tweed, and the London four-wheeler, or the 
 dashing hansom, was a vast improvement on the 
 ' minnibus ' of Edinburgh — a local speciality like a 
 covered Irish car, which was an exceedingly tight 
 fit for four, and which more than once broke down 
 
THE CHANGES IN LONDON 19 
 
 ignominiously when taking me to catch an early 
 steamer at Granton Pier. And apropos of aquatics, 
 that was the golden age of cheap and quick con- 
 veyancing on the river. The Dahlias and Sun- 
 flowers, and the numbered ' Watermen,' were plying 
 perpetually from Putney to Greenwich, but most 
 industriously between Hungerford Stairs and 
 Paul's Wharf. Owing to their flying moorings 
 against the tide, they would smash their paddle 
 boxes like swift steamers on the rapid Danube, cast 
 off again, and, go on as if nothing had happened. 
 They had run the old wherrymen and scullers off 
 the Thames, and in fine weather were formidable 
 competitors to the omnibuses. 
 
 But all minor sensations were swallowed up in 
 the anxiety for a glimpse at the Queen. We had 
 gone to Eton to draw a cousin in Dr. Goodford's 
 house — he was then Mr. Goodford — and the expedi- 
 tion was to include a visit to the castle where Her 
 Majesty was in residence. Often since then I have 
 admired the historical pile when pulling past on 
 the river, and thought how costly it would be to 
 take it over a repairing lease, but in that glorious 
 day in June, the glories of the palace-chateau were 
 lost upon me. My Eton cousin's mind was set 
 upon ices in the morning, a dinner at the White 
 Hart towards eve, the probable tip to follow. I 
 could think of nothing but the assurance that the 
 Sovereign was going for a drive at three, and that 
 I should actually see her in the body. Ever since 
 
20 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 I have understood and sympathised with the loyal 
 enthusiasm of provincial crowds who flock in a 
 suffocating crush to cheer a royal progress. Pre- 
 ceded by its outriders, the open carriage left the 
 castle gates and swept down the Long Avenue. 
 I can see the youthful matron, as she was then, 
 sitting by her husband's side, bowing and smiling 
 graciously. Her hand was unconsciously caressing 
 the Princess Royal, who was standing and bending 
 over her mother's knee. Seated as she was, you 
 did not note the shortness of stature on which 
 Greville remarks in his flattering notice of her. 
 Quietly dressed, yet with some touch of coquetry 
 in the summer toilet, she seemed to me a dazzling 
 vision of grace and beauty. She was smiling again 
 when I saw her at her Jubilee, with grey in her hair 
 and furrows on her brow, but how much had she 
 done and seen and suffered in the interval ! 
 
 With half the world I was in London again in 
 the Great Exhibition year. The Crystal Palace 
 enclosing some of the secular timber in Hyde 
 Park, conceived by the Prince Consort and planned 
 by the chief of the Duke of Devonshire's hot- 
 houses, was a monument of progress, fondly meant 
 as a cosmopolitan Temple of Concord, and the 
 symbol of a new departure in amicable commercial 
 relations. Never shall I forget the first stupefying 
 effect on a youth who had scarcely dreamed of 
 such fairy-like splendour. With the courts dis- 
 playing the wares of the world, with the crash of 
 
THE CHANGES IN LONDON 21 
 
 music and the blaze of colours, with the views 
 down the long vistas under Venetian streamers, 
 with the sculptures and groups of statuary scattered 
 along the aisles, with new enchantments awaiting 
 you at every turn, it was a vision of the Arabian 
 Nights from which you feared to awaken. One 
 crowd was pressing round Hiram Power's Greek 
 slave, another around the Koh-i-noor, securely 
 guarded by policemen. But the half-exhausted 
 mines of Golconda were outshone, for America 
 showed a towering obelisk of gold to advertise 
 the newly discovered treasures of California. 
 
 All nations had come up to the great show, as 
 Jews used to flock to the festivals of Jerusalem. 
 The scanty hotel accommodation was overcrowded : 
 Claridge's and other aristocratic resorts could pick 
 and choose among royalties and foreign princes. 
 But the oddest and most picturesque gatherings 
 were in Leicester Square and in Seven Dials. 
 Punch and the new police paid special attention 
 to the troops of out-of-elbow strangers who had 
 found their way across the Channel. What they 
 came for, or how they paid their way, no one could 
 exactly say. They were attended by agents of 
 the Rue Jerusalem, by emissaries from St. Peters- 
 burg, Vienna, and Berlin, and shadowed by 
 detectives from Scotland Yard. I was taken one 
 evening to dine at a restaurant in Leicester Square 
 — I think it was Berthollini's, celebrated in the 
 parody of a popular song by Albert Smith — and a 
 
22 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 queerer assemblage I had never set eyes on. At 
 that time when Mechi of Tiptree Hall and agricul- 
 tural celebrity was making a fortune by his razors, 
 everybody shaved, except scamps and cavalry 
 officers. In that gathering the absence of the 
 barber was more conspicuous than the neglect of 
 the washerwoman. Napkins were tucked under 
 collarless chins ; the fork was a casual auxiliary to 
 the knife ; the plates were carefully cleaned and 
 the sauces mopped up by use of a bread-crust ; 
 and in the guttural confusion of cosmopolitan 
 speech you might have been among the scattering 
 builders of Babel. The entente cordiale notwith- 
 standing, P^mck was humorously satirical on our 
 French friends. Two of his sketches I well 
 remember. One presented a couple of briskly 
 Parisian badauds taken aback by the startling 
 surprise of a sponge and basin in the Exhibition. 
 ' Tiens, Alphonse, quest-ce que c'est que fa ? * says 
 Jules to his comrade. Another was a night scene 
 from the top of the Haymarket, with ladies in crino- 
 line and a lavish show of silk stocking, inscribed : 
 ' Some foreign produce we could very well spare.' 
 
 On the other hand, even when the Christmas 
 agricultural shows used to be held in Baker Street, 
 never before was the town so full of rustics, 
 bent upon brief enjoyment of life in London. On 
 frequented routes there was no getting a seat in 
 the omnibuses ; cabmen took outrageous liberties 
 with simple-minded country folk. It was not then 
 
THE CHANGES IN LONDON 23 
 
 the custom to run plays in the theatres, but pieces 
 that had caught on were being given night after 
 night at the leading houses. I remember how the 
 spectacular ' Princesses of the Alhambra ' drew at 
 the Princess's, not so much because the gorgeous 
 decorations anticipated the splendours of a future 
 generation, as because Flexmore the famous clown 
 played the Princesses' pet monkey. When he 
 caught his tail in a chest, and aggravated his 
 agonies by passionately stamping on the lid, all the 
 spectators were convulsed. In fact, we provincials, 
 trained upon travelling circuses and strolling com- 
 panies of actors, cared for sensations and sights 
 rather than refinements. We were as keen upon 
 Punch and Judy in the streets as Sampson Brass's 
 eccentric lodger in The Old Curiosity Shop ; we 
 were always brought to a stop at the bottom of 
 Suffolk Street by the cage of the happy family, 
 where the owl blinked amiably at the cat lying 
 down with the mouse ; and we paid more than one 
 visit to Astley's, over Westminster Bridge, where 
 Mr. Widdycombe, as Napoleon, had been gratui- 
 tously advertised in the Bon Gaultier Ballads. 
 However the evening might be passed, ' it was 
 pretty sure to end at Evans's,' where the topical 
 songs were suited rather to the Georgian than to 
 the Victorian era. Chops and Welsh rabbits were 
 the order of the night, but the consumption of 
 shellfish there and at Scott's and other night- 
 houses in the neighbourhood of the Haymarket 
 
24 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 was extraordinary. Lobsters and oysters were 
 unaccustomed delicacies to the cotton spinners of 
 the Palatinate and the men of the Midlands. Then 
 the oysters were so cheap, that, as old Mr. Weller 
 had observed to Mr. Pickwick shortly before, the 
 poor of Whitechapel, when tending to despair, 
 made a rush for the oyster stall instead of the gin 
 palace. Oysters and stout were still as natural a 
 sequel to the play as when Walter Scott, who 
 was being feasted everywhere and by everybody, 
 climbed the corkscrew stairs from the boxes in 
 the Old Adelphi to sup with Daniel Terry in his 
 * squirrel's cage.' 
 
 I had seen the Queen and Prince Consort on 
 my previous visit. Even as a boy it had struck 
 me that there was something of foreboding melan- 
 choly in the Prince's handsome face, and I was at 
 Gibraltar when the news of his death threw the 
 garrison into genuine mourning. In the Exhibi- 
 tion year, being comparatively at rest as to 
 Royalties, my ambition was for a sight of the 
 Iron Duke. I did see the national hero, and 
 followed him as he walked his horse up Con- 
 stitution Hill to the mansion that was given by 
 the gratitude of the nation. There the lower 
 windows were still closed by the iron shutters, 
 memorials of the fickleness of the mob, which 
 would have torn him from his saddle, had it not 
 been for the interposition of Peel's new police. 
 With abstracted face, gazing fixedly before him, 
 
THE CHANGES IN LONDON 25 
 
 mechanically he kept raising his finger to the brim 
 of his hat, in answer to the incessant salutations 
 he rather expected than saw. A light-weight, 
 for he was spare of figure and stood barely five 
 feet seven, he sat his horse with the ease of the 
 habitual horseman, who used to strike across 
 country in southern France when hounds were 
 running, and breathe the best mounted of his 
 aides-de-camp in the gallop to visit his distant 
 outposts. The dress in the severe military style 
 was faultless ; the buttoned blue frock-coat, the 
 white ducks tightly strapped down, and the stock 
 with the silver buckle showing conspicuously 
 behind. 
 
 At that time the Duke, with his commanding 
 influence and his pre-eminence in politics, had 
 been singled out as the subject of endless cari- 
 catures which figured in the printshop at the 
 bottom of St. James's Street, side by side with 
 engravings of his numberless portraits. Two of 
 the caricatures I specially remember. One repre- 
 sented a stage coachman in heavy capes with great 
 bone buttons, subscribed, ' The man wot drives 
 the Sovereign ' — counterpart to another of Earl 
 Grey — ' The man wot drives the Opposition.' But 
 more artistically effective was a shadowy face, the 
 stern and determined features loomino^ throuo-h a 
 haze, with the motto : — 
 
 ' What seemed a head. 
 The image of a kingly crown had on.' 
 
26 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 Even satire treated the Duke with the reverence 
 due to a heroic personality, and the caricatures 
 flattered the authority they sought to undermine. 
 When he was carried on the State car to 
 St. Paul's in the following year, some remorse 
 must have mingled with the general mourning, 
 and I was sadly disappointed that I missed the 
 memorable funeral. The many incidents were 
 vividly described by juvenile correspondents not 
 much in the way of letter-writing : all the world 
 from the highest to the lowest was in a state of 
 feverish excitement, and I recollect hearing among 
 other things how the old Duke of Cambridge 
 had galloped down St. James's Street at a break- 
 neck pace to clear up some passing confusion 
 among the guards before the palace. 
 
 Strangely enough, perhaps, I was almost as keen 
 about another celebrity, and was lucky enough 
 to see him in 'the Lords.' If the caricaturists 
 treated Wellington respectfully, with Brougham 
 both caricaturists and lampooners took the freest 
 fling. Never had so gifted a man laid himself 
 open to such scathing ridicule. Memories of his 
 younger days, revived by Lockhart's Life of Scott, 
 were still rife in the Edinburgh Parliament House ; 
 of those days when the audacious young advocate, 
 going on the Border Circuit, used to make poor 
 old Lord Eskgrove's life a burden. Eskgrove, 
 by the way, with his vacuous repetitions, was 
 undoubtedly the original of Sir Robert Hazlewood 
 
THE CHANGES IN LONDON 27 
 
 in Guy Mannering. And the Nodes Ambrosiancs, 
 in which Brougham had been praised and merci- 
 lessly scarified, were still in the flush of their 
 popularity. A terror in debate, an encyclopaedia of 
 universal knowledge, all marvelled at the amazing 
 grasp of the genius which in the same day, as his 
 secretary told Greville, could flit from Chancery 
 suits to philosophy and mathematics, and after 
 correcting proofs for a ' Library of Useful Know- 
 ledge,' wind up with a tremendous philippic in 
 the House of Lords. There was no getting to 
 the bottom of his bodily strength ; there was no 
 overtaxing the power of his brain. Yet there was 
 so much of the monkey or the mountebank in that 
 universal genius that Sampson was for ever making 
 sport for the Philistines. Punch had just depicted 
 him standing on his head, flourishing his legs 
 and the Bliicher boots in the air — the Bluchers 
 Thackeray sketched in the Snob Papers, — with 
 the commentary, ' What he will do next.' The 
 piquancy of the eccentric contrasts made me 
 eager to see him, nor was I disappointed. Take 
 him all in all, he was one of the ugliest of mortal 
 men, and apparently he prided himself on setting 
 off his personal deficiencies. The lofty forehead 
 scarcely redeemed the mouth, the nose, the cada- 
 verous complexion, and the eyes under their 
 shaggy penthouses, that lent themselves so easily 
 to most diabolical scowls. Wellington was aus- 
 terely spick and span ; Brougham was one of the 
 
28 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 worst-dressed men in the kingdom, in a day when 
 statesmen and legislators were still among the 
 dandies. He wore the famous plaid trousers : it 
 was said he had picked up a web of the stuff, sold 
 \^ at a sacrifice, after spending fabulous sums on a 
 Yorkshire election. There was a catch-phrase in 
 those days of * What a shocking bad hat ! ' But 
 Brougham's headpiece was the shabbiest it was 
 possible to conceive, a battered beaver with the 
 bristles rubbed the wrong way, which no old 
 clothesman would have picked out of the gutter. 
 His gestures were grotesque as those of Johnson, 
 and in his oratory he carried action to the heights 
 and depths of absurdity. He swung his arms like 
 a round-hitting prize-fighter, and bellowed like a 
 bull of Bashan. I had longed to see him, nor was 
 I surprised or disappointed. He was pretty much 
 what fancy had painted. Brougham was a hisus 
 natures^ and is still a psychological puzzle. Neither 
 I nor any one else is likely to look on his like 
 again. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE EVOLUTION OF THE HOTEL AND RESTAURANT 
 
 In the middle of last century, and for years after- 
 wards, few cities were so miserably supplied as 
 London with commodious hotels and decent 
 dining places. It is amazing now to contemplate 
 the spirit of contentment which acquiesced in 
 indifferent entertainment and resigned itself to 
 uncomfortable quarters. In the matter of hotels 
 the explanation is more simple, for till railways 
 and steamboats brought customers to town there 
 was little encouragement for enterprising inn- 
 keepers. But Londoners, like other people, had 
 to dine, and many of them must go out of doors 
 to look for a dinner. Even young men of means 
 and some position were much at a loss. The clubs 
 were few, the membership was far more limited 
 than now, and moreover dining in those some- 
 what solemn establishments was left more or less 
 to elderly fogies. Of dining-rooms and popular 
 taverns there was no dearth, but the internal 
 arrangements, the attendance and the cooking, 
 left much to desire. For a year or two before 
 as a very young man I was balloted into the 
 Wyndham, I prowled the streets each evening 
 
 20 
 
30 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 in search of food : after I was introduced to the 
 comforts of one of the most homelike of clubs, 
 still I often shared the adventurous fare of less 
 fortunate comrades left out in the cold. But 
 when I first came to the front, the days of rough- 
 ing it were going by, and the tavern had already 
 given way to the restaurant. No man need have 
 asked a better English dinner than that provided 
 at Simpson's in the Strand. Simpson was the 
 gastronomic Napoleon of a new epoch. A daring 
 speculator who always saw his way, in after years 
 he successfully ran Cremorne. I believe he was the 
 brother of the other Simpson who originated the 
 famous fish dinners at Billingsgate ; where in the 
 queerest company, with rough cooking and rude 
 cutlery, you fared sumptuously for the small charge 
 of eighteenpence. But Simpson's restaurant in the 
 Strand was attractively mounted ; the tables were 
 decked in snowy drapery, and the peripatetic 
 carvers, with aprons tucked up in their waist- 
 belts, were faultlessly attired in spotless white. 
 Peripatetics they were, for it was a conception of 
 genius to wheel the joints on small round tables to 
 your elbow and let you select your own cut. A 
 healthy appetite may have had something to say 
 to it, but never before nor since have I seen such 
 saddles or sirloins. Charles, the head waiter, was 
 omnipresent, ready, like deaf old M. Pascall of 
 Philippes's in the Rue Montorgueil, with recom- 
 mendations and suggestions. The marrow pud- 
 
EVOLUTION OF THE HOTEL 31 
 
 dings were features of the establishment, and the 
 Gruyere and Camembert, then comparative novelties, 
 were ranged on the side table with the ripe Stiltons 
 and Cheshires. The liquors were of the best, but 
 after dinner you were not driven out of doors nor 
 were you bound to sit drinking for the good of 
 the house. Passing through a tobacconist's, you 
 mounted to a 'divan ' on the upper floor. If I re- 
 member rightly, you paid a shilling at the door, 
 for which you had coffee in a breakfast cup — 
 which was a mistake — a cigar and the use of 
 chess boards, backgammon boards, and the day's 
 journals. 
 
 Simpson's drew amazingly as it deserved, but it 
 soon found a formidable, though ephemeral, rival. 
 Greville in his Memoirs speaks contemptuously 
 of the Wellington, but the Cruncher was a fine 
 gentleman and hyperfastidious. Possibly, too, 
 his conservative sentimentality saw something of 
 sacrilege in turning Crockford's temple of vicious 
 fashion open to the profane vulgar. For the Well- 
 ington took possession of the palatial premises at 
 the top of St. James's Street, where the old fish- 
 monger kept open house for all and sundry who 
 were inclined to play the deuce with their fortunes 
 at the hazard table. There Disraeli had laid his 
 opening scene in Sybil, on the Derby eve when 
 Caravan was the favourite for the great race. There 
 Whyte Melville's Digby Crand threw his last dice 
 before adjourning in despair to pass the night upon 
 
32 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 a bench in St. James's Park. There more reckless 
 gamblers had beggared themselves than at Watier's, 
 for Crockford's had had a far longer lease of 
 life. Crockford's in its time had been the resort 
 of every celebrity : of foreign statesmen like Talley- 
 rand and Metternich ; of warriors like Wellington 
 and Blucher ; of men of letters like Byron, Moore, 
 and Bulwer Lytton ; of wits and sybarites like 
 Luttrell and Alvanley, and of all the rabble rout of 
 loose men about town who followed in the train 
 of the leaders of society. 
 
 I do not know that we gave much thought to 
 those memories or conjured up the gay scenes of 
 that vanished past. What we liked were the lofty 
 rooms with their spacious windows, and the general 
 sense of luxury given by gilded cornices, somewhat 
 tarnished, and tall mirrors. Not that these would 
 have sufficed to allure us. But the English fare 
 was as good as at Simpson's ; there was greater 
 variety in the entrdes and entremets, and the table 
 appointments were in keeping with the surround- 
 ings. There were green glasses at your elbow, 
 suggesting ' hock,' for then the various growths of 
 the Rheingau and the Gironde were unscientifically 
 classified and seldom ordered. Then the ordinary 
 tipple was Burton bitter ale, frothed in frosted 
 tankards, supplemented by the modest half pint 
 of nutty sherry, with which Sydney Scraper solaced 
 himself at his club in the Snob Papers. The 
 march of luxury has been moving fast since then. 
 
EVOLUTION OF THE HOTEL 33 
 
 Now the sort of men who were content then 
 with sherry and beer, are become curious in 
 Champagnes, L^ovilles and Liebfraumilchs, and 
 all the choicer second growths. 
 
 For port and beef-steaks there was no better 
 place than the Blue Posts in Cork Street. By the 
 way, there was another Blue Posts in the Hay- 
 market of much more questionable reputation. To 
 dine satisfactorily at the Cork Street house, you 
 had to be introduced by an /ladihi^ who had the ear 
 of the head waiter and the pass-key of the cellar. 
 It was a favourite haunt of Anthony Trollope, 
 and in TAe Claverings he has given a sympathetic 
 description of one of those snug little Blue Posts 
 dinners, which must have been answerable for a 
 good deal of gout and chronic indigestion. If the 
 Blue Posts was famous for its steaks, Clunn's in 
 Covent Garden was renowned for its Welsh mutton 
 and marrow bones. It was in the north-west 
 corner of the piazza, beside the portal which led 
 down to Evans's. It was a sombre house, and 
 you dined in a long dark slip of a room, with one 
 large window at the eastern end. But the dark 
 mahogany tables were miracles of radiant polish, 
 as in old country mansions, where they were the 
 pride of the chief butler, and at Clunn's the cloth 
 used to be swept off before the decanters were 
 brought in. The menu was good Old English, 
 and the head waiter a true-blue Conservative. I 
 used to ruffle him till he had got accustomed to my 
 
 c 
 
34 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 eccentricities, by my predilection for legs of mutton 
 boiled with caper sauce. Roast was the rule of 
 that orthodox establishment. The mock turtle or 
 thick oxtail was followed by salmon, cod or turbot, 
 and marrow bones were the invariable sequel to 
 the mountain haunch. As for the marrow bones, 
 they might have been elephantine, except that 
 elephants, owing to some malformation, have no 
 marrow. There was always a suspicion that they 
 were fictitiously packed : be that as it may, they 
 tempted to a surfeit and were invariably corrected 
 by a caulker of Glenlivet. Then with the Stilton 
 and the devilled biscuits at dessert, carefully de- 
 canted port, as venerable as any from the bins at 
 the Blue Posts, was placed on the mahogany. 
 Now and again the landlord when in genial mood 
 was to be 'wiled,' like Meg Dods of the Cleikum, 
 out of a bottle of 1820. It came up shrouded in 
 the cobwebs. Clunn's, though essentially a dining 
 house, professed to be an hotel, and once when I 
 had run up to town for the night, I arranged to 
 take a bed there. The dining-room was darksome 
 enough, but it was brightened by good company 
 and good cheer. The fusty first-floor front smelt 
 like a charnel house when you had withdrawn to 
 its solitude from merry society, and getting into the 
 great fourposter with its sable hangings was like 
 stepping into a hearse. It may have been the 
 marrow bones, the Stilton or the port, but never had 
 I such a night of appalling nightmares. 
 
EVOLUTION OF THE HOTEL 35 
 
 The London in Fleet Street was a west central 
 reflection of the Wellington, chiefly frequented by- 
 lawyers from Lincoln's Inn and the Temple, by 
 prosperous clerks and well-to-do tradesmen. The 
 St. James's Hall was opened when the Wellington 
 had closed. The Cafe de 1' Europe, next door to 
 the Haymarket Theatre, had a mixed and motley 
 clientele. Started by an actor from the Adelphi 
 who somehow found the capital, it had a strong 
 theatrical connection. Then fashionable patrons of 
 the drama, like Lord William Lennox, were mixing 
 on a familiar footing with the shining lights of the 
 stage. And the Cafe de I'Europe was cheek by 
 jowl with the Raleigh Club, where billiards and 
 broiled bones were the order of the night, towards 
 the small hours. So the cafe was patronised by a 
 rather fast set for dinners before the play and for 
 suppers subsequently. I fancy there was a room 
 on the upper floor where ladies were received with- 
 out awkward questions being asked as to their 
 marriage certificates. But the cafe was reputably 
 conducted and the French cookery was more than 
 fair. Of the second class French restaurants about 
 Leicester Square, in St. Martin's Lane, I can tell 
 nothing from personal experience. As I have said, 
 I paid a single visit to one of them and was 
 not tempted to repeat it. Berthollini's and 
 Dubourg's were sung by Albert Smith and Angus 
 Reach in topical lyrics, and described in their 
 shilling brochure (the Lounger in Regent Street, 
 
36 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 or Sketches of London Life), which caught on 
 amazingly. 
 
 To the east of Temple Bar the classic taverns in 
 Fleet Street were still flourishing. Had some of 
 the most famous only held out a little longer, they 
 would surely have renewed their youth and re- 
 trieved their fortunes, with the extraordinary 
 impulse given to journalistic work. There were 
 Dick's and Anderton's and the Cheshire Cheese, 
 where you could superintend the cooking of steak or 
 chop and say for yourself when it was done to a 
 turn. There was a Mitre in Fetter Lane — not the 
 Mitre where Johnson moralised to Boswell and 
 mapped out the programme of his studies at Leyden. 
 All of these had their admirers who clung to them 
 from habit : most of them elderly gentlemen in the 
 yellow leaf, who loved solid fare and crusted port, 
 or struggling barristers who were content with 
 tankards of ale, with something hot and strong to 
 follow. On sentimental grounds I once sought the 
 Cock in Fleet Street, to be sadly disillusioned. 
 There was no sign of Tennyson's plump head 
 waiter, — perhaps he was peacefully sleeping in the 
 vaults of St. Clements Dane. A few purple-faced 
 old gentlemen were still clinging to the place, but 
 it was pervaded by a general air of drowsiness 
 which extended to the service and the smoulder- 
 ing fires. I ordered a steak as de rigueur : in vain I 
 waited, and after a volcanic explosion I fled and 
 chartered a hansom for Fall Mall. Now I see 
 
EVOLUTION OF THE HOTEL 2>7 
 
 there is a Cockerel in Shaftesbury Avenue, where 
 no doubt there is a very different clientele. 
 
 In those days, on my return from sojourning on 
 the Continent, there was nothing I enjoyed more 
 than the luncheon in the city. The contrasts 
 were so striking from the solitudes of the Alps, the 
 shores of Lake Leman, the dead-alive towns of 
 stagnating Germany, even from the comparatively 
 leisurely traffic of Brussels or Paris, to the roar of 
 crowded streets, and the endless blocks in funereal 
 procession of cabs and omnibuses. I used to hurry 
 off to look up a cousin on the Stock Exchange, the 
 best of good fellows, who was barely earning 
 enough to pay his errand boy, and the bustle and 
 scramble in Capel Court, the bellowing and bar- 
 gaining from the privileged interior worked like a 
 tonic. Under his guidance we dived into some dark- 
 some alley and turned aside into Reuben's or Joe's 
 or Ned's. How different from the Cafe Riche or 
 the Maison Doree, even from Champeaux in the 
 Place de la Bourse, where speculators and coulis- 
 siers would assemble at high noon to empty flasks 
 of burgundy or champagne and indulge in all 
 manner of meretricious delicacies ! In London men 
 hustled each other at a bar, or sat, packed pro- 
 miscuously at the small tables, with cloths that 
 hinted economy in washing bills. You had barely 
 elbow room to ply knife and fork, but if you were 
 not pressed for time, it was a most amusing scene, 
 though the manager looked askance at loiterers. 
 
SS DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 The steak or chop, served piping hot, was unexcep- 
 tionable ; the mealy potatoes in their wrinkled 
 jackets, were such a dream of perfection as is 
 never realised in watery Ireland, where they are 
 invariably waxy ; as the frothing tankards of ale or 
 stout were refreshing after a course of light wines, 
 and admirably adapted to the atmosphere. But 
 all these early dinner houses closed their doors 
 long before the shellfish shops in the Haymarket 
 thought of taking down their shutters. Once, with 
 a friend, in a fit of frugality, I went into the city 
 about six p.m. to dine economically. We drew all 
 the familiar luncheon coverts blank ; at one or two 
 an old charwoman was sweeping out the place, and 
 evidently suspected us of nefarious designs. In 
 point of economy the expedition was a failure, but 
 we might have been worse off. For Painter's in 
 Leadenhall Street was round the corner, and there 
 one could feast luxuriously. The window of the 
 Ship and Turtle, like that of Chevet in the Palais 
 Royal, was always an entrancing sight, with the 
 shellbacks from the Caribbean Sea or Ascension 
 floating in the tanks, an agreeable change for them 
 from the painful deck passage under tropical sun- 
 blaze, and all unconscious of their impending 
 doom. And mystery lent a halo of romance to the 
 treasures of calipash and calipee in the cellarage. 
 
 You breathed calipash and calipee as you 
 climbed the thickly carpeted staircase, and you 
 were never kept waiting. Half a dozen oysters 
 
EVOLUTION OF THE HOTEL 39 
 
 from Prince's in the Poultry, or Sweeting's in 
 Cheapside, and the silver tureen with its fragrant 
 contents was on the table. Hobson Newcome's 
 brother-in-law remarked that Pendennis dininof in 
 Bryanston Square did not 'ave twice of turtle. 
 At Painter's I am ashamed to remember that we 
 used to 'ave twice or thrice of it, and that it rather 
 whetted the appetite for the subsequent beefsteak. 
 If port was associated with Clunn's or the Blue 
 Posts, madeira and old East Indian sherry were 
 the specialties at the Ship. But if the Ship were 
 the house for a turtle dinner, it was to Birch's in 
 Cornhill you gravitated for a turtle lunch. Birch's, 
 between the Guildhall and the Mansion House, 
 maintaining the gastronomic credit of the Guilds, 
 was the city counterpart of Farrance's at Charing 
 Cross, which had it all its own way in ices, pastry, 
 and light refreshments, and prided itself on the 
 graces of its pretty waitresses. 
 
 It is strange that Black wall should have abso- 
 lutely dropped out of the running among down- 
 river dining places, though, perhaps, it is stranger 
 that it should ever have been a popular resort, for 
 the purlieus were the reverse of inviting. But as 
 the Chevalier Beaujeu of the Fortunes of Nigel 
 used to say, I have memory of the great bow 
 window at Lovegrove's or the Brunswick, sus- 
 pended over the river. It reminded you of a box 
 on the grand tier in the opera house, or of the 
 salon on the entresol of the Caf^ de Paris, on the 
 
40 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 Boulevards, where, sitting breast high above the 
 pavement, you watched the high tide of Parisian 
 Hfe. But the aquatic panorama passing Blackwall 
 was more characteristic of the great tideway of 
 commerce, and infinitely richer in cosmopolitan 
 romance. The towering East Indiaman, with high 
 poop and spacious stern galley, the swift Aberdeen 
 clipper, aspiring to beat the record in the tea trade, 
 went lumbering by in tow of snorting and puff- 
 ing tugs, mingled with 'passenger pakidges,' as 
 Mrs. Gamp would have termed them, bound for 
 Flemish and French ports from the Tower Wharf. 
 Sails and cordage were then in the ascendant ; 
 there were no steel masts and wire shrouds ; and 
 when the clipper cleared the river and swept down 
 channel, under a press of billowing canvas, from 
 sky-scrapers to flying jib, she was a sight still 
 cherished by nautical sentimentalists like Mr. Clark 
 Russell. I remember more than one Blackwall 
 dinner, where the other tables were occupied by 
 officers of the mercantile marine, who prided them- 
 selves on being the smartest of seamen. They 
 were giving themselves a send-off to the far East, 
 or celebrating a happy return. What strikes me 
 most forcibly now, in looking back, was the number 
 of sprightly midshipmen, full of spirits doomed to 
 be depressed, and of ambitions destined to be 
 blighted. They were dressed in spruce uniforms 
 of blue serge, and they tossed on to a side-table 
 caps with a gold-laced band, embroidered with the 
 
EVOLUTION OF THE HOTEL 41 
 
 Union Jack. The crack ships in Green's or other 
 great mercantile firms carried a dozen or so of 
 decently born and educated boys. What became 
 of them all ? Even if they climbed to the cross- 
 trees there was but a single command for a score of 
 aspirants. 
 
 Greenwich was then in its glory : like Richmond 
 it has declined since rail and train have made 
 transit cheap and common. Whyte Melville has 
 thrown himself heartily from vivid personal remin- 
 iscences into the description of the banqueting and 
 the driving down in the drags, when his Tilbury 
 Nogo fought the old waterman and got knocked 
 out of time for his pains. Then from the begin- 
 ning of the whitebait season, Ship, Trafalgar, 
 and Crown and Sceptre were crowded to over- 
 flowing. It is lonof since the Trafalo-ar struck 
 its colours — a sign of the melancholy collapse. 
 Then if you did not take a sixpenny steamer, — 
 the pleasantest way of a summer evening, when 
 the river was not as higfh as a haunch of over- 
 hung venison, — you rattled down by street and 
 road in some sort of conveyance. It was awkward 
 work coaching a four-in-hand, or even piloting a 
 lively pair in a phaeton among the crowds of 
 coster barrows ; and it was a crucial test of nerve 
 coming home of a Saturday night, if you could not 
 confide in the skill and sobriety of your coachman. 
 In those palmy days there were as many ostlers, 
 helpers, and hangers-on about the hotels as waiters 
 
42 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 — engaged for the short season — which is saying a 
 great deal. There were as many carriages of all 
 kinds, in the yards and before the door, as in the 
 shops of Long Acre or the Baker Street bazaar. 
 While you were kept waiting for dinner, as belated 
 guests dropped in, the mudlarks scrambling for 
 coppers under the balconies must have earned a 
 working-man's wages. But the trains upset the 
 jovial carriage traffic : steamers were chartered for 
 special companies, like Her Majesty's ministers or 
 the Fox Club, assembled for ministerial, political, 
 or scientific banquets, and the Greenwich dinner 
 gradually became more conventional and common- 
 place. Moreover, the gratifying development of 
 industry had a good deal to do with it : with the 
 smoke from workshops and factories the summer 
 evenings were clouded with a murky haze like a 
 thin London fog, and the atmosphere, flavoured 
 with unsavoury odours, became foul as the water in 
 which the whitebait were fattened. 
 
 In those early days an outing to Greenwich 
 in June or July was delightful and refreshing. 
 I fondly remember a little room at the Ship, to 
 which, if possible, we always resorted. Panelled 
 in heart of oak, it resembled a semi-circular galley- 
 cabin. Half a dozen of us would seat ourselves 
 facing the semi-circular open window. We did 
 not go in for Lucullus-like luxury : there was a 
 careful selection from the elaborate menu^ with 
 champagne or cyder cup, as the case might be, 
 
EVOLUTION OF THE HOTEL 43 
 
 according to the condition of our purses. But 
 those modest gatherings of friends came to be 
 popular in a certain set, like the literary breakfasts 
 of Rogers or Lord Houghton; and there was no 
 sort of difficulty in recruiting for them. Some- 
 times we picked up chance acquaintances, while 
 zigzagging from pier to pier in steaming down 
 river from Hungerford. I recollect a young soldier 
 thus getting a lift in his profession by meeting 
 a distinguished Indian officer who took a fancy to 
 him, and forthwith took him on to his staff. And 
 at one of the first of those visits to the Ship, I 
 remember one of the cheeriest of companions 
 sitting so brooding and self-absorbed, that we 
 naturally rallied him. Plucky to foolhardiness, 
 I had seen him plunge into a backswirl under a 
 Highland waterfall, simply because he was told 
 the insuck meant death. He had been jubilating 
 for a week before because he was ordered to the 
 Crimea in charge of a draft of artillery ; that 
 evening he was under the shadow of a foreboding, 
 and when he thanked us for giving him a joyous 
 send-off, he said gravely that he should never 
 come back to us. His gloomy forebodings were 
 realised, for on his first day in the trenches, a shell 
 cut him in two. 
 
 I never hear anything of Purfleet now : in the 
 olden time there used to be capital dining there 
 near the powder mills, and on far more frugal 
 terms than at Greenwich. And I fancy the Falcon 
 
44 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 at Gravesend must have fallen upon evil times ; in 
 any case it must have changed its clientele. Steam 
 has left the Falcon high and dry, as it knocked up 
 the old posting-houses. In the days of the sails, 
 all the East and West Indiamen, the Australian 
 and Chinese clippers, when towed down the river, 
 used to cast out their anchors off the town, and 
 wait a night to pick up passengers and pilot. It 
 has been a marvel to me that Dickens, who loved 
 Gravesend so well, never made the Falcon the 
 scene of one of his Christmas stories. Dickens 
 had his home at Gadshill ; for three years I had a 
 house at Farningham, and the Falcon had always 
 a fascination for me. To compare great men with 
 small, Dickens and I were both great walkers, and 
 many a day we must both have lunched at the 
 Falcon or at the Leather Bottel at Cobham. The 
 Leather Bottel, with its low-roofed dining-room, 
 its old oaken chairs and quaint engravings, was 
 sacred to Dickens himself, to the memories of 
 Tupman patching up a broken heart over a roasted 
 fowl and a brimming tankard. But the Falcon was 
 most ordinarily the inn of sad partings, and far 
 less often of joyous reunions. There the outward- 
 bound, sung by Mrs. Hemans, dropped anchor to 
 have their last communications with the land. The 
 old panes of cloudy glass in the coffee-room 
 were scratched with initials of the dead and 
 gone, and with all manner of inscriptions. The 
 least sentimental of mortals could hardly look out 
 
EVOLUTION OF THE HOTEL 45 
 
 on the river without an uneasy impression that, 
 like Harvey, he was meditating among the tombs. 
 Joys and sorrows are invariably intermingled, 
 and within a mile or two of Gravesend was 
 Rosherville, persistently obtruded on public notice 
 as ' the place to spend a happy day.' When I had 
 friends staying with me at Farningham, we often 
 drove over to dine at the Falcon, and the sequel 
 was a visit to Rosherville Gardens. Of a gala 
 night they were a veritable carnival of Cockney- 
 dom : a vulgar travesty of the more fashionable 
 Cremorne, with promenades illuminated by varie- 
 gated lamps, with shaded alleys, where the young 
 folk keeping company could lose themselves, with 
 gin, punch, and beer for champagne and liqueurs, 
 and with the inevitable bouquets of fireworks to wind 
 up the evening. But Rosherville had one advantage 
 over Cremorne in the really romantic background. 
 The hermit at Cremorne had a cave constructed 
 specially for him ; the Rosherville recluse retired 
 like the ascetics of the Thebaid to a cavern in the 
 crumbling chalk, worn by the weather of the ages, 
 or worked by the rude tools of prehistoric man. 
 There you strolled about among the queerest 
 contrasts of suggestive antiquity and modern 
 vulgarity. Researches in the sequestered recesses 
 of the chalk cliffs would have given Darwin or 
 Professor Owen matter for speculation ; in the 
 foreground was an omnium gatherum of plaster 
 and stucco, interesting in its way as the art 
 
46 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 treasures of the Vatican, and much more likely 
 to be appreciated by the holiday makers who paid 
 their shillings and took their choice. 
 
 The metropolitan environs were then both rural 
 and romantic. From Greenwich Observatory you 
 looked over the Essex marshes to the rolling hill 
 landscapes, with rarer visitations of obscuring fog, 
 and from the terrace at Richmond there was the 
 unrivalled view of the most enchanting of English 
 valley scenery. In essentials I do not fancy that 
 Richmond had greatly changed since John, Duke 
 of Argyll and Greenwich, drove Jeanie Deans 
 down to petition Queen Caroline, when the Scottish 
 dairy-lass was chiefly impressed by the sleek kine 
 grazing in the southern meadows. For the splash 
 of paddles and the blowing off of steam, when going 
 to Greenwich or Gravesend, one recalls the cheery 
 echoes of light hoofs as the horses trotted home in 
 the moonlight which silvered the secular oaks in 
 Bushey Park, and irradiated casual glances of the 
 winding river. For when a pleasant party had 
 been got up beforehand, you went to Richmond by 
 road. It might be on a drag, tooled by some 
 expert whip, when the merry company was seated 
 on the roof, and the grooms were carried as inside 
 passengers. Or with sundry vehicles of various 
 kinds, but all tolerably horsed, keeping well to- 
 gether, and rather given to racing in friendly 
 rivalry. There was the appetising lounge on the 
 hill before dinner, or the stroll in the park among 
 
EVOLUTION OF THE HOTEL 47 
 
 the deer and the bracken. The dinners, indeed, 
 at the Star and Garter left something to desire ; 
 and in the old establishment, since burned down, 
 everything was on a modest scale, except the 
 charges. In those days there were no cheap teas 
 on the hill, at eighteenpence a head, to attract 
 trippers and holiday-excursionists. The Star and 
 Garter traded on its fashionable repute, but at 
 the Castle, which has closed its doors, at the 
 Talbot, or the Roebuck, you could dine more 
 reasonably, and at least as well. Yet, if you cared 
 for literary associations, there was this to be said 
 for the Star and Garter, that it had figured in 
 many a famous society novel. Lord Beaconsfield 
 and Lord Lytton, Thackeray, Whyte Melville, 
 Wilkie Collins, and Anthony Trollope had all 
 taken down personally conducted parties to dine 
 there. The Greville Memoirs and the Creevey 
 Papers abound in Richmond reminiscences. When 
 a scapegrace was running headlong on the race to 
 ruin, or when an eligible was involving himself in 
 an undesirable entanglement with some light of 
 the stage or star of the ballet, their steps on the 
 fatal down-grade invariably tended to Richmond. 
 As for other hostelries up the river, I shall advert 
 to them in the next chapter. 
 
 Fifty years ago the greatest metropolis of the 
 world was the worst provided with hotels. Not 
 many travellers from the Continent found their 
 way thither, and they were for the most part 
 
48 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 impecunious refugees or of the classes who 
 were content with poor accommodation. Foreign 
 princes and nobles, diplomatists en voyage, or 
 wealthy country gentlemen, paying flying visits 
 to the town, were sumptuously housed at the 
 Clarendon or Mivart's, Fladong's, much fre- 
 quented by naval officers in the war time, had been 
 closed, and the Old Slaughter's in St. Martin's 
 Lane, patronised by Major Dobbin and George 
 Osborne, was a forgotten memory. Gay gentle- 
 men of the army forgathered in Long's and 
 Limmer's ; houses where night was turned into 
 day, and where, with the free and easy manners of 
 the mess ante-room, no ordinary article of furniture 
 was put to its proper use. It used to be said that 
 at Limmer's — where John Collins, the head waiter, 
 bequeathed his name to a seductive drink — the glass 
 of gin and soda had the honours of the chair, while 
 the man who gave the order sat on the mantel- 
 piece. If a country cousin from the provinces had 
 ventured into these hotels, or a nouveatt riche had 
 risked himself in the coffee-room of the Claren- 
 don, he would have found himself strangely out of 
 his element. Civilians of the middle classes had 
 to shift as best they could, though, unless there was 
 something going on, such as the Great Exhibition^ 
 or the Christmas Cattle Show in Baker Street, 
 they found fair comfort in cramped quarters. 
 Morley's in Trafalgar Square trembled on the 
 verge of the fashionable ; and the Golden Cross 
 
E\^OLUTION OF THE HOTEL 49 
 
 round the corner, of coaching fame, where Steer- 
 forth renewed acquaintance with ' little Copper- 
 field,' was a comfortable house. I was once 
 recommended by a man in an Oxford set who 
 patronised it to the British in Cockspur Street. 
 Carlyle of Inveresk mentions it in his reminis- 
 cences of one hundred and fifty years ago ; but I 
 was never tempted to go there again. The whole 
 place, with its dark passages and stifling bedrooms, 
 might have been conveniently accommodated in one 
 of the grand saloons of the Metropole or Carlton. 
 But I have still pleasant recollections of Hatchett's, 
 the old White Horse Cellar in Piccadilly, where 
 in former days all western coaches from the city 
 pulled up. Partly because, although much in the 
 rough, it evoked memories of those coaching times. 
 There was a sanded floor in the carpetless coffee- 
 room, and you breakfasted — one never dreamed 
 of dining there — in the old-fashioned boxes, like 
 uncovered bathing machines. There was always 
 a certain scramble and bustle, though the break- 
 faster might have a long idle day before him, as 
 if the Bristol mail or the Exeter Quicksilver were 
 to draw up, sharp to time, in fifteen minutes. 
 Coffee and muffins came in with a rush ; the toast 
 had apparently been scorched on the surface ; 
 and the invariable beefsteak, though juicy, was 
 thin, as if cut to be passed in haste over a 
 glowing gridiron. Cox's in Jermyn Street, with 
 its sundry suites of small private rooms, was 
 
 D 
 
50 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 crowded with families from the country. I imagine 
 that Anthony Trollope had it in his eye when he 
 sketched Pawkins' — that * capital, good house ' — 
 where Lord de Guest entertained his young friend 
 Johnnie Eames, and Pawkins in person, in the 
 solemn old style, brought in the silver soup-tureen. 
 Lane's, up a cul-de-sac to the west of the Hay- 
 market, was much affected by officers in the 
 Company's service, and many a rather recherche 
 little dinner was given me there by a cousin, who 
 oscillated between that and the Blue Posts, and 
 who worked hard for rheumatism, chronic liver 
 complaint, and winters in southern Europe by 
 his weakness for old port and for wading in his 
 Deveron salmon water. Nor should I forget 
 Fenton's in St. James's Street, much patronised 
 by prosperous men of business from the provinces. 
 But Covent Garden was still the centre of the 
 unsophisticated stranger's gay life in London. 
 There were many hotels there, and some have 
 renewed a youth which dates from the period of 
 Sir John Fielding and the scarlet-vested Bow 
 Street runners. Year after year I used to resort 
 to the Tavistock, flourishing still, although utterly 
 transmogrified. The servants seemed to have 
 taken out a lease of immortality. The porter in 
 the hall — Pickwick we used to call him — never 
 forgot a friend or a face ; he welcomed you with 
 a broad smile, handing over any letters that might 
 be waiting. The boots rushed out, grinning recog- 
 
EVOLUTION OF THE HOTEL 51 
 
 nition, and the grey-haired head waiter consulted 
 your tastes and anticipated your orders, like John 
 at the Slaughter's when Major Dobbin turned up 
 from Madras. It must be owned that the back 
 bedrooms were gloomy, and that in the brighter 
 front rooms rest might have been broken by the 
 bustle in the Market, but at that age one slept 
 sound. I liked the primitive larder on the first 
 landing place, with the uncooked joints, the 
 salmon, the lobsters, and the fruit tarts : I liked 
 the six o'clock table d'hote — a convenient hour 
 for the theatre-goers, with everything of the 
 choicest, from the mulligatawny or oxtail to the 
 Stilton and celery : above all, it was pleasant to 
 come down to the cheery breakfast-room, where 
 for the moderate fixed charge you could call for 
 anything you pleased in reason, and where the 
 side-tables were loaded with Scottish profusion. 
 As lavish was the provision of the Times and 
 other morning journals : the newsboys came to- 
 wards midday to sweep them up and pass them 
 on. Characteristic of the room were the basin 
 breakfast cups without handles, the plates of 
 water-cress, the luscious buttered toast and muffins. 
 At the Tavistock they never bothered you with a 
 bill : the sum total was inscribed on a tiny card, 
 and if you cared to check it, there were the books 
 in the clerk's box. I fancy no one ever did care 
 to check it : there was confidence between host 
 and guests. To this day, when in sentimental 
 
52 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 mood, I love a stroll under the piazza, inhaling 
 the odours of crushed oranges and rotting cabbage 
 leaves. 
 
 The railways brought the revolution. The 
 growing influx of visitors was to be accommodated, 
 and the railway companies saw their way to en- 
 couraging traffic. What were then considered 
 great caravansaries were built at Paddington and 
 Euston, and they paid. They not only attracted 
 travellers but London residents. An old bachelor, 
 a connection of mine, was among the first, per- 
 manently to engage a bedroom at the Great 
 Western, locked up for him when he w^ent his 
 annual round of visits, for he was welcome in 
 many a country house. Now, as we know, in the 
 matter of hotels, London shows the way to the 
 capitals of Europe. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 IN LONDON LODGINGS 
 
 In London below the upper bridges, the changes 
 are transformation. When I first knew it as a 
 temporary resident, the hotels, as I said, were poor 
 and few, or aristocratic and ruinously expensive. 
 The bachelor quarters were in St. James's, between 
 Piccadilly and Pall Mall. There you were within 
 a stone's throw or a short cab-fare of the clubs, 
 the dining places, and the theatres. For twenty 
 years I had vcvy pied a terre in Bury Street. The 
 man who took me in and did for me was a typi- 
 cal representative of a class. Retired butlers or 
 saving footmen united themselves in wedlock with 
 housekeepers or ladies' maids, and went in for 
 keeping lodgings. When frugal and intelligent, 
 they generally did well : many of them, as indeed 
 is often the case now, had a good country connec- 
 tion, like Mrs. Ridley who entertained the Rev. 
 Charles Honeyman and was victimised by Fred 
 Bayham. My friendly host had been a courier, 
 and had made a wide circle of acquaintance in 
 the course of innumerable foreign tours. He was 
 a man of substance, used frequently to consult me 
 about his small investments, and though I never 
 
54 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 tried it, as I happen to know, he could afford to 
 give long credit when he could reckon on the 
 essential solvency of his lodger. Everything was 
 managed on a liberal scale, and as the friend who 
 recommended me to the place remarked, you 
 might change your boots four times in the day 
 and never hear a grumble. The courier's wife 
 had been a lady's maid, but had she been a cordon 
 bleu the kitchen could not have been better con- 
 ducted. He did not profess to get up dinners, 
 though when he could be persuaded the guests 
 had no cause of complaint. As for the breakfasts, 
 it would have been difficult to beat them, and I 
 believe the special dishes were the work of his 
 own hands. For an inveterate continental rover 
 like myself, he had a special kindness ; and when 
 he brought in the tray with the morning's Times, I 
 always looked out for an awakening of associations. 
 A plat of macaroni transported you to Naples, and 
 Fortnum and Mason round the corner were laid 
 under contribution to carry you to Rhineland, to 
 Pithiviers or the Gironde. The consequence was 
 that his rooms were run upon. I always paid a 
 retaining fee for my own, a modest but spacious 
 apartment au troisieme, with a curtain screening 
 off the bed and the bath. There when I made 
 up my traps for a foreign tour, I left the rest of 
 my worldly belongings for Brown — as I may call 
 him — to pack ; and he used to buy endless second- 
 hand portmanteaus for their stowage. He struck 
 
IN LONDON LODGINGS 55 
 
 at last and amicably told me I must make a clear- 
 ance, and indeed it was high time. He called up 
 one of these peripatetic merchants in old clothes, 
 who used to go prowling along Bury Street, shout- 
 ing down the area railings, and I left them busied 
 over the bargaining, for which he would insist on 
 honourably accounting. 
 
 One day, dining in Edinburgh with an old 
 acquaintance, I met his elder brother, who had 
 come home from India with a fortune. He asked 
 me about London lodgings. I saw how he 
 appreciated the oyster soup and the crimped 
 salmon, and recommended him to try Brown's. He 
 came, he saw, he took the second floor, and there 
 he remained for a dozen of years, dying in the 
 grim four-poster in the back bedroom. Lodgings 
 in Bury Street are not a lively place to die in, 
 listening to the chimes of the clock of St. James's, 
 Piccadilly, and bethinking yourself when the bell 
 will toll for your own departure. But the lonely 
 invalid's passage was made as smooth as might 
 be, by the affectionate attentions of the courier 
 and his helpmate. The first floor for four-fifths 
 of the year was the residence of a young aristocrat 
 who had done a good deal of aesthetic decoration 
 there on his own account. That is to say, it was his 
 residence when at home, for he was perpetually 
 absent on rounds of visits. And in the season he 
 invariably migrated to more fashionable quarters 
 in Half-Moon Street, for Piccadilly then drew a 
 
56 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 sharp dividing line between fashion and affluent 
 
 or respectable Bohemianism. The day came when 
 
 poor Brown died himself; and the announcement 
 
 of the news gave me a sad shock, when I drove 
 
 up one morning from the Tower Wharf where the 
 
 Baron Osy from Antwerp had landed me. The 
 
 widow flitted ; the house was sold ; and so I lost 
 
 the only home I have ever known in London. In 
 
 after years I went from sentimental motives to 
 
 take a bed there, and thought myself happy in 
 
 securing the familiar bedroom. The house had 
 
 been burnished up externally ; a brisk butler 
 
 opened the door with the bright brass plate, and 
 
 a flaunting maid brought a tarnished flat candle 
 
 and a jug of tepid water, when I came in to dress 
 
 for dinner. Now I was only a night casual and 
 
 No. 9, and I had every opportunity for meditating 
 
 on the changes through the night watches. Never 
 
 even in Sicily or Syria have I been worse worried 
 
 by families of bugs of all ages and sizes. The 
 
 sheets and chintz curtains were splashed with gore. 
 
 When getting into a pair of badly blackened 
 
 boots, I recalled the mirror-like polish by which 
 
 you might have shaved, and took a last farewell of 
 
 the desecrated lodgings. 
 
 Everywhere about the capitalist or the specula- 
 tive builder has been busy. There are piles of resi- 
 dential chambers in Duke Street and Bury Street, 
 and the old directory maker would be as much abroad 
 as the old fldnettr, if he took a stroll up Piccadilly. 
 
IN LONDON LODGINGS 57 
 
 There were no clubs to the west of St. James's 
 Street, till the Junior AthenEcum was started at 
 the corner of Down Street and Piccadilly. In 
 comparatively recent years, the Berkeley, among 
 the first of the sumptuous new restaurants, with its 
 set dinners and recherche luncheons, was reared 
 on the site of the White Horse Cellar. Lady 
 Palmerston was still receiving the dlite of the 
 Whig party, and recruiting for it in receptions at 
 Cambridge House, which has since become a 
 succursale of the Junior and the Rag. Apsley 
 House — I can remember the iron shutters, the epi- 
 grammatic retort of the Duke to the violence of an 
 oblivious rabble — had not been overtopped by the 
 golden palace of the Rothschilds. Hamilton Place 
 was a quiet cul-de-sac, only disturbed by the echoes 
 of the congested traffic between St. George's 
 Hospital and the narrows leading to Park Lane. 
 The houses in the Lane itself, though suggestive 
 of luxury and affluence, so as to point the diatribes 
 of the demagogues who smashed the railings of 
 the Park, were comparatively unpretentious. The 
 landowners were still the aristocracy of wealth, 
 for it was before the multi-millionaires had struck 
 oil in America, or exploited the gold treasures 
 of Australia and the Transvaal. 
 
 Since then the ornamental gardener has done 
 much to beautify the Park with flower beds, 
 blazing with tulips, geraniums, and pelargoniums. 
 But I liked it better when it was less carefully 
 
58 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 tended, for comparative neglect reminded one of 
 the simplicity of the country. And since then 
 many a stately tree has come down, both there 
 and in Kensington Gardens, and quaint summer- 
 houses, where sentimental lovers had assignations 
 for summer evenings, have disappeared. The gates 
 were guarded against public conveyances, and so far 
 the democracy had a genuine grievance. On the 
 other hand there was no church parade, and they 
 missed the opportunity of staring at celebrities, 
 with whose looks and domestic habits the illus- 
 trated and society journals have since made them 
 familiar. When I first knew the Park, few people 
 turned out to ride of a fine morning, except for 
 fresh air and exercise. Then the before-breakfast 
 ride became the fashion ; and a very good thing it 
 was, for it got the young folk out of bed, after 
 late dances and midnight suppers. It freshened 
 their complexions through the season, and kept 
 them going till they changed the scene to the 
 country or the continental baths. 
 
 But my brightest recollections of the Park of 
 those days are of an exceptionally severe winter. 
 The frost was as intense, if not so enduring, as 
 when the Thames was hard-frozen from bank to 
 bank. I had just come south from Scotland in 
 time to change curling stones for skates, and 
 seldom have I gone in for such prolonged exertion, 
 as was only possible in the exhilarating cold. 
 After skating all the day on the Serpentine, with 
 
IN LONDON LODGINGS 59 
 
 perhaps an occasional suburban excursion to the 
 Welsh Harp, or the ponds at the Crystal Palace, 
 you came back with ravenous appetite for a hasty 
 dinner at the club, with a pint of champagne or a 
 flask of burgundy. Then shaking off somnolence, 
 like a giant refreshed, you were whirled in a 
 hansom behind a slipping horse to the passage 
 hard by the Knightsbridge Barracks. The Park 
 was lighted with a lurid glare, the reflection 
 of hundreds of smoking torches. For several 
 days the ice was in perfect condition, for the 
 orange peel and the debris of other comestibles 
 were regularly swept away by gangs of frozen- out 
 sweepers. It was a saturnalia where all sorts and 
 conditions were mingled ; from the ragged vaga- 
 bond who screwed on your skates, to the beggar 
 who appealed to your charity when you sought 
 temporary rest on a chair. You could even afford 
 to be in charity with the pickpockets who hustled 
 you, for as at the prize fight you had wisely left 
 your valuables at home, and if they found any 
 small change by searching your pockets, you made 
 them heartily welcome to it. 
 
 To go back to the pleasant summer mornings, 
 we used often to prolong the ride from Rotten 
 Row to Lords'. Then the arrangements were as 
 primitive as when the fielders turned out in tight 
 raiment and top-hats, and batters and wicket- 
 keepers took no special precautions against the 
 steady underhand bowling. You rode in, took 
 
6o DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 your seat on a backless bench, and held your 
 own horse who stood quietly grazing behind you. 
 St. John's Wood was still a suburban solitude, of 
 doubtful reputation, but with Cytherean retreats 
 where apocryphal respectability often led a double 
 existence. I remember one forenoon pulling up 
 face to face with an elderly acquaintance, coming 
 out of one of those eligible cottage residences. 
 He was a doctor in fashionable practice who might 
 have been visiting a patient anywhere, and had 
 it not been for his blushing and embarrassment, 
 I should never have dreamed of suspecting evil. 
 As it was, he gave himself so thoroughly away, 
 that I believe I could have blackmailed him to 
 any extent. 
 
 Eastward from the Union Club the changes 
 have been so great that I have wellnigh forgotten 
 how things used to be. One of my boyish recol- 
 lections is of Farrance's on the south side, famous 
 for ices and pastry, and for the fascinating young 
 women behind the counters. There was but one 
 narrow thoroughfare southward — the crossing- 
 sweeper found it almost as lucrative as that before 
 the Bank — where now are the multiplicity of 
 spacious crossways on the slope, as perilous to 
 pedestrians as the Place de la Republique, with 
 the incapable Paris coachmen. Northumberland 
 House, the last of the great historic mansions of 
 the Strand, had not yet been sold for a million, 
 more or less ; and the Percy lion on the roof, 
 
IN LONDON LODGINGS 6i 
 
 with rampant tail, always attracted little groups 
 of country gazers. Nothing could be quieter or 
 duller than the side streets, ending on the mud- 
 banks of the tidal river, as they were then. They 
 were chiefly populated by lodging-house keepers 
 like Mrs. Lirriper, by rather shady private hotels, by 
 struggling solicitors with a sprinkling of usurers, and 
 by cook-shops. It was an innovation when George 
 Smith started the Pall Mall Gazette, a West End 
 journal, 'written by gentlemen for gentlemen,' 
 bringing life and briskness into Northumberland 
 Street, which nevertheless was still a cul-de-sac. 
 Since the brothers Adam built the Adelphi, which 
 proved a financial failure, the builder and educated 
 architect had found little to do in that quarter. 
 Even the Government Offices were disgraceful 
 survivals. I remember often groping my way 
 about the old War Office, as much a warren of 
 winding passages and darksome rooms as the 
 venerable Savoy before it was pulled down. 
 Naturally such a dilapidated rookery was a nest 
 of abuses, and if youths of fashion might grumble 
 at uncomfortable quarters, they consoled them- 
 selves by being seldom looked up and having 
 next to nothing to do. And I fancy things must 
 have been managed in a singularly free and easy 
 fashion. Once I had come to town for a con- 
 tinental tour with a captain in a light cavalry 
 regiment. He had some interest and a good 
 record, and counted so confidently on getting a 
 
62 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 month or six weeks' leave that all our plans were 
 settled. The answer to his written application 
 was a curt refusal. Intensely disgusted, he did 
 not despair. He went next day to interview an 
 underling, who told him it should be all right, and 
 he would come to dine with us and report. So he 
 did and so it was, and we had a jovial evening at 
 the Rag. 
 
 Hard by was another decrepit survival of the 
 past, Hungerford Market, a wooden construction 
 of low bulging buildings, with galleries and over- 
 hanging eaves. It was fragrant with the smell of 
 stale shellfish and the odours from the booths and 
 stalls of small tradesmen. It was there that David 
 Copperfield or young Charles Dickens served his 
 apprenticeship to the blacking warehouse. But it 
 was a bustling place all the same, for there was 
 constant coming and going to the floating pier 
 and the penny river boats. Moreover, turning 
 to the stairs on the right, for another penny or 
 a halfpenny, you could cross the river by the 
 slender suspension bridge which now spans the 
 Avon opposite Clifton Hot Wells. 
 
 Hungerford Market was disreputable, though 
 not unpicturesque in its decay, yet evidently 
 doomed. But Leicester Square was simply a 
 scandal ; and it was a marvel how that dreary 
 abomination of desolation could be left in the 
 midst of the wealthiest city in the world. There 
 was a headless statue in a wilderness of weeds, 
 
IN LONDON LODGINGS 63 
 
 and the silence of the night was disturbed by the 
 caterwauling of starving cats on the rampage. 
 From time to time the jungle had been cleared 
 for dioramas and exhibitions of various kinds, but 
 they invariably came to grief, for the place seemed 
 accursed. And the morals of the vicinity left every- 
 thing to desire, for it was a modern sanctuary — a 
 preserve for political and criminal refugees from 
 continental justice, always shadowed by agents of 
 the secret police and the objects of urgent demands 
 for extradition. In comparison the female society 
 of the Haymarket was pure and refined. I have 
 said something of the company you saw in the 
 restaurants. Berthollini's had a great renown in its 
 time among English Bohemians ; it was celebrated 
 in verse by Albert Smith in his * Pottle of Straw- 
 berries ' ; and as you wandered away into the back 
 streets towards Soho and Clerkenwell, the eating- 
 houses shaded down from the cheap and mean to 
 the villainous. 
 
 Then a great reformer and philanthropist came 
 to the rescue. Albert Grant had cast his Jewish 
 gabardine and adopted a Christian name ; he had 
 begged or bought a German title ; and by his rare 
 skill in promoting and company running had laid 
 the shaky foundations of a colossal fortune. But 
 his credit had been blown upon, as he protested, by 
 calumny, and in the art of self-advertising he was 
 far in advance of the age. It occurred to him as a 
 happy stroke of business to present a renovated 
 
64 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 Leicester Square to London. The Metropolitan 
 Board of Works rose readily to the offer ; the 
 scheme was carried out regardless of cost, and a day 
 was fixed for the opening ceremony. I happened 
 to be dining with Mr. Delane of the Times, when 
 he asked me to go and report the proceedings. 
 I went accordingly, and a queer scene it was, both 
 to see at the time and to look back upon after 
 the collapse of the Machiavelli of finance. The 
 Baron, sleek, smiling, and sandy-haired, ruddy of 
 complexion like David, and swelling with satisfied 
 pride and self-importance, stood forward on the 
 platform. A capital speech he made, for he was a 
 born orator, and he showed when he fought his 
 own case in the courts, and was highly compli- 
 mented by the judge, that had he turned his 
 attention to the law, he might have aspired to seat 
 himself on the Woolsack. The most characteristi- 
 cally suggestive point was his remarking casually 
 that he had brought his boys up from Eton to assist 
 at a scene they would long remember. As perhaps 
 they might, though with mingled feelings. For 
 the public benefactor had his bitter enemies, and 
 all about, outside the garden railings, newsboys 
 were shouting over satirical broadsheets, illustrated 
 with grave-slabs and headstones, commemorative 
 of the Baron's fatal fiascoes which had ruined con- 
 fiding investors by the thousands. Anyhow, 
 whatever the donor's motive, the gift has done 
 a world of good to the neighbourhood, giving 
 
IN LONDON LODGINGS 65 
 
 a recreation ground to the feeble and sickly, and 
 a play garden to the children of the slums. More 
 than that, the enterprising promoter gave a start 
 to speculations by which he was not to benefit. 
 The square associated with Newton and Reynolds, 
 with Dr. Burney and the mysterious authorship of 
 Evelina, is now a centre of the theatrical world, 
 and adorned by music halls of Moorish architec- 
 ture, paying dividends from twenty to thirty per 
 cent. 
 
 I might be tempted to ramble on to the top of 
 the Haymarket, and to Shaftesbury Avenue, where 
 the transformations have been more striking than 
 anywhere else, but I may as well travel eastwards, 
 and sample the city. Forty or fifty years ago, few 
 self-respecting men dreamed of taking an omnibus 
 — omnibuses were slow, they were filthy, they 
 were not cheap, for sixpence was the fare from 
 Pall Mall to St. Paul's — and the eternal stoppages, 
 with the squaring of complacent policemen, were 
 standing subjects of satire in Punch. The crawling 
 four-wheeler was an intolerable trial of the patience, 
 and was chiefly relegated to old parties with 
 heavy boxes, or to the sight-seeing country cousins 
 who were ruthlessly and remorselessly victimised. 
 Hansoms were less common then than now, and 
 you gained little by taking them, for they were 
 always being caught up in crushes, and could 
 seldom put on the pace. If you safely shot the 
 cross currents at Charing Cross, there was always 
 
 E 
 
66 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 a long block at Temple Bar, and indefinite delays 
 at the bottom of Ludgate Hill. Then you had 
 to negotiate crowded Cheapside, for there was no 
 broad thoroughfare throug-h Cannon Street. Con- 
 sequently when the weather was fine, and I seldom 
 went cityward except under favourable weather 
 circumstances, I generally took the penny boat 
 at Hungerford. 
 
 There was no place I visited more habitually 
 than the old East India House in Leadenhall 
 Street : to my fancy it was always enveloped with 
 a gorgeous halo of oriental romance. The reason 
 of my going and of my free admission was that a 
 bosom friend was a confidential clerk and private 
 secretary to his father, a director with sundry 
 stars to his name in the catalogue of stockholders, 
 and repeatedly chairman in critical circumstances. 
 It was that gentleman who was at the helm when 
 Lord Ellenborough was recalled. A keen sports- 
 man, he used to take me out snipe-shooting as 
 a boy. He had the oddest trick of throwing his 
 hand to his hat, before raising his gun ; but when 
 he did bring the gun to his shoulder he seldom 
 missed, for he had served an apprenticeship in 
 the rice swamps of Bengal. I well remember his 
 telling his brother, when sitting down to luncheon 
 on the skirts of an Aberdeenshire bog— his brother, 
 also a stockholder, was advising caution — that his 
 mind was made up, that the viceroy must come 
 back, and that he was ready to carry the war into 
 
IN LONDON LODGINGS 67 
 
 the enemy's camp. He spoke as if he had the 
 directorate in his pocket, and I verily believe he 
 had, for he was a man of no ordinary sagacity, and 
 of indomitable will. 
 
 He and that brother of his were typical men. 
 In the palmy days of the Company, it was not 
 only on shore that fortunes were to be made by 
 civilians shaking the pagoda tree. Both had been 
 in the Company's naval service. One married 
 early and retired in comfortable circumstances ; 
 the other held on a few years longer and retired 
 comparatively rich. Then the Lady Melville or 
 the Lord Clive was a cross between a castle and a 
 floating warehouse, with its Dutch-built poop, its 
 quarter galleries and its capacious holds. On the 
 homeward voyage the holds were always richly 
 freighted : there were bars of bullion, there were 
 bales of silks and cases of indigo, and sealed pack- 
 ages of diamonds were locked away in the captain's 
 cabin. The captain had his commission on the 
 value of the cargo, and with his officers, according 
 to their degree, was privileged to ship a certain 
 quantity of goods. His venture was compact and 
 precious ; and through friends in India to whom he 
 could do many a good turn, he had always means 
 of investing his savings to the best advantage. 
 Many a quaint souvenir of their voyages they had 
 brought home. There were roots fantastically 
 fashioned with slight touches, into beasts, birds, 
 and fishes ; idols in ivory, silken hangings, and 
 
68 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 emblazoned scrolls ; with carvings in jade, picked 
 up for a song in the bazaars of Shanghai or Canton, 
 which would fetch a great price nowadays. 
 
 So it may be imagined what wealth of treasure 
 was stored in the India House. It was a museum, 
 besides, of trophies won in memorable battles and 
 sea-fights, and of the offerings which humbled 
 potentates had brought to the feet of the merchant 
 adventurers. There were costumes of state, and 
 antiquated suits of chain armour ; an arsenal of 
 semi-barbarous weapons from gingals, matchlocks 
 and stinkpots to sabres, swords and daggers of the 
 finest tempered steel, with sheaths inlaid with 
 Canarese gold work, and hilts, made for small, 
 nervous hands, rich with uncut gems. There was 
 always a scent, or one fancied there was, of sandal- 
 wood and oriental spices, which lent a halo of 
 romance to the drudgery going forward, conducted 
 with as business-like methods as at Lloyd's or the 
 Bank of England. Yet you were brought back to 
 the present when you crossed in the passages boys 
 bearing trays which were not laden with oriental 
 sweets, but with chops from the pot-house round 
 the corner, flanked with pewters of bitter or stout. 
 The most imposing man on the premises was the 
 gold-laced giant who mounted guard at the portal. 
 As my visits were frequent when in town, I thought 
 it well to tip him ; but I can never forget the 
 hesitation with which I tendered the douceur, or my 
 relief when he smilingly condescended to accept it. 
 
IN LONDON LODGINGS 69 
 
 That porter must have been pensioned when the 
 rule of the Company was transferred to the Crown. 
 But in after years my connection with the East 
 was renewed when I made acquaintance with 
 sundry directors of the Peninsular and Oriental. 
 Leadenhall Street was still the centre of East 
 Indian trade, and notably of the passenger traffic. 
 But already its practical monopoly was being 
 threatened by engineering science and keen com- 
 petition. When I went out to the opening of the 
 Suez Canal on the Delta with other guests of the 
 Khedive, it was already reconstructing its fleet 
 and reconsidering- its arrangfements. The old 
 Delta was one of the last of the paddle steamers, 
 and a comfortable and roomy craft she was. We 
 had a placid passage from Marseilles to Alexandria, 
 and not a soul failed to turn up at every meal. I 
 may remark, parenthetically, that the idea was to 
 leave her at Alexandria, as it was doubted whether 
 she did not draw too much water for the new 
 canal ; but afterwards the directors decided that 
 they ought to show their flag in the Red Sea, and 
 they dared the passage successfully. Meantime, 
 after a kindly offer of a shake-down on the deck of 
 his crowded steam yacht from Sir John Pender, 
 associated with regenerating Egypt by electrical 
 enterprise, I transhipped myself to the Newport, 
 the Government surveying ship, where they turned 
 out a beer cask to make room for a bed in the 
 saloon. The Newport, commanded by my connec- 
 
70 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 tion, Captain Nares — the Sir George of the Arctic 
 Expedition — was overcrowded with captains and 
 flag officers of the Mediterranean fleet. Many of 
 them have since been admirals, and more than one 
 found a watery grave with Tryon, who, I think, 
 was one of our company. 
 
 Ships of the Delta class were built for the com- 
 fort of passengers ; freight was by no means a 
 secondary consideration, but then it was of great 
 value in small bulk. Silks and spices could be 
 compactly stowed away. In the newer vessels, 
 cargoes of cotton were consigned to capacious 
 holds, and the Suez Canal would never have paid 
 had it not been for the simultaneous introduction 
 of the compound engine. At the same time, more 
 severe competition lowered the passage money, 
 and stricter economy became the word of com- 
 mand. In the palmy days the Company charged 
 pretty much what they pleased, and in all the 
 commissariat arrangements there was a princely 
 disregard of detail. At the many meals, sherry and 
 claret were served ad libitum ; you might douche 
 yourself with brandy and soda or Bass as you 
 lounged in the camp chair under the awnings on 
 deck. Now the fares are cut down ; the second- 
 class accommodation is infinitely improved ; and 
 though you may call for what liquor you like, you 
 have to pay for it. These changes may be all for 
 the better, but one loved the old sense of luxurious 
 pleasure yachting. What is more questionable 
 
IN LONDON LODGINGS 71 
 
 is the substitution of Lascars for Europeans in 
 the crews, though I remember Morris, one of the 
 oldest captains in the service, warmly advocating it, 
 when he showed me over what he considered his 
 model steamer at Alexandria. But Morris was an 
 enthusiast. Often after that Egyptian trip, I en- 
 joyed the hospitality of the Board in their head- 
 quarters in Leadenhall Street at luncheon time ; 
 and a privilege it was to lunch in such intellectual 
 company, with a rare variety of oriental experi- 
 ences. But at these simple luncheons frugality 
 reigned, and the Board of that wealthy and pro- 
 sperous Company, all men of affluence or ample 
 means, set their subordinates a laudable example 
 of economy. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE THAMES ABOVE BRIDGES 
 
 It is a natural transition from London hotels to 
 the Thames. What pleasant times we used to 
 have up the river, when the house-boat was a 
 rarity and when the swans were never scared by 
 the steam launch. The swan hopper's barge, slow 
 and stately, with its gorgeous display and its 
 associations with the venerable city guilds and 
 immemorial custom, was a different thing alto- 
 gether and suited to the suburban river scenery 
 as the Bucentaur to Venetian canals. Among my 
 brightest recollections is that of a July and August 
 spent cruising between old Windsor and Kingston. 
 It was a singularly dry summer, intensely hot, and 
 we lived in flannels. There was no fear of the rain 
 upsetting the daily arrangements. We were four : 
 two to pull, one to steer, and the supernumerary to 
 go along the bank at a dog-trot, with a terrier and 
 a gaunt mongrel, who had attached himself to the 
 party and fattened on good living. Our quarters 
 were at the nautically named Ship of Lower 
 Halliford, and if the accommodation was some- 
 what cramped, we could not have been more 
 comfortable. The day began with a dip in the 
 
 72 
 
THE THAMES ABOVE BRIDGES 73 
 
 river, when one of the Rosewells, a family of 
 Halliford boatmen, who punted us to the bathing 
 place, took the opportunity of examining his eel 
 pots, and the results were not without a personal 
 interest for us. Breakfast in the little parlour, 
 with the window wide open over the riverside 
 road, was not the least enjoyable hour of the day. 
 There was a pretty clean sweep of the well-spread 
 table, and especially the crusts of home-baked 
 loaves disappeared, the crumb being left to make 
 into toast, which never was made, or was given 
 away in generous charity. After breakfast, and 
 over pipes, Mr. Stone, our worthy host, was called 
 into consultation as to the more solemn business 
 of dinner. The fish cart used always to come up 
 punctually, at a canter, when we made our own 
 selections, ranging from salmon to smelts. That 
 weighty matter off our minds, the long summer 
 day was devoted to relaxation. When we were 
 equally divided as to going up or down, the 
 question was settled by the spin of a shilling. 
 Really, it mattered little, though perhaps it was 
 more satisfactory to begin with the pull against the 
 stream, drifting downwards with the current as the 
 shadows were declining. Either way, you could 
 not go wrong. The Thames has a placid beauty of 
 its own, and everywhere the banks, even when 
 from the boat you lost sight of the beauties, were 
 brightened by associations. Upwards there was 
 Shepperton, at an inconvenient distance and too 
 
74 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 near to Halliford, for Mrs. Steer who kept the 
 inn was famous for her cookery. It used to be 
 a favourite resort of Albert Smith, who had a 
 cottage at Chertsey ; and in the garden we made 
 acquaintance with the great showman's mother. 
 The old lady had rather gone off her head, but the 
 worthy landlady made her welcome for the sake of 
 old times. In unconventional costume, we used 
 regularly to attend morning service of a Sunday in 
 the picturesque old church, and seldom have I 
 profited more than by the ministrations of the 
 excellent parson. It was luxurious to listen to the 
 songs of praise and words of power, to see the 
 glorious sunshine filtering through the panes of 
 stained glass, and to know that in the afternoon 
 you would be worshipping in the sunshine of 
 the open. 
 
 In those days Mr. Lindsay, a great shipowner, 
 who was an authority in the House of Commons 
 on seafaring and commercial subjects, had a charm- 
 ing maritime residence there, and the borders that 
 fringed his lawns were blazing with geraniums and 
 fuchsias. He used to have Cabinet ministers down 
 with him for the ' weeks' ends,' which had not then 
 come into general observance, and more than once 
 we were indiscreet enough to pull ' easy all ' when 
 we recognised Mr. Gladstone, then Chancellor 
 of the Exchequer, in confidential talk with him. 
 Chertsey and the neighbourhood were associated 
 with the burglarious expedition of Bill Sikes and 
 
THE THAMES ABOVE BRIDGES 75 
 
 flash Toby Crackit, and Laleham, the suburban 
 seat of Lord Lucan, with memories of Dr. Arnold 
 and Tom Brown s School Days ; for at Lale- 
 ham we were naturally reminded of Rugby, and 
 one of the quartette was an old intimate of Tom 
 Hughes. In after years I knew ' Tom Brown ' toler- 
 ably well, and had many a pleasant chat with him in 
 the subterraneous smoking-room of the Athenseum. 
 Also at Margate, where he swore by the invigorat- 
 ing air, and whither I often took my walks, by way 
 of Broadstairs and Kingsgate from Ramsgate. And 
 there were few men I loved more than his brother 
 George, with whom I golfed and forgathered, 
 season after season, at Pau, and with whom, and 
 our common friend, Ferdinand St. John, we have 
 whipped the water, rather than caught trout, in 
 many a tempting emerald-coloured stream of the 
 Pyrenees. But the evening chat — we never retired 
 early — more than atoned for the disappointments 
 of the day. St. John had been everywhere, knew 
 everybody, was at home in all useful European 
 languages, and had brilliant talents which should 
 have raised him to high distinction, had he not, 
 to his subsequent regret, perversely wrapped 
 them up in a napkin. As racontetir and causeur, he 
 scarcely yielded to Charles Lever, who suggested 
 that he should give his autobiography to the world 
 under the title of ' Devious Ways and Loose Re- 
 collections.' George Hughes was more reserved, 
 but he brimmed over with appreciative humour. 
 
76 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 and had a happy turn for amateur theatricals and 
 charades. He never hinted at it, but I have reason 
 to beHeve that he collaborated with his brother 
 in the Rugby book which has made Thomas an 
 English classic. 
 
 Lord Lucan was the lord of the manor where 
 we used to lie, after luncheon, and smoke under 
 the trees. As it chanced, when it was my habit 
 to lunch at the Carlton, as an early bird — indulging 
 in something like a French ddjeuner — I always 
 secured the corner table at a window on Pall Mall, 
 and his lordship invariably occupied the next one. 
 The gallant old field marshal, the hero of the Heavy 
 Cavalry Charge, cared little about Arnold, but had 
 a love for his family seat and the scene of the 
 doctor's early labours. He was a delightful and 
 informing acquaintance, but it was difficult to draw 
 him on the subject of the Crimean campaign, 
 though he discussed cuisine and other subjects with 
 knowledgeable zest. But though instructive, he 
 was the most embarrassing of neighbours. Pain- 
 fully deaf, he spoke in stentorian tones, and ex- 
 pected any modest man he was conversing with to 
 respond in similar key. Once I happened to be 
 relating a dramatic incident of saving a kitten from 
 a bull-dog at Laleham, when our terrier and mongrel 
 had cut into the fight. That day the dining-room 
 was extraordinarily crowded, as a great debate was 
 coming on, and it was one of the rare occasions 
 when Lord Beaconsfield had condescended to drop 
 
THE THAMES ABOVE BRIDGES ^^ 
 
 in with Mr. Montague Corrie for lunch. As I 
 began to retell the tale in a louder voice, there 
 chanced to be a lull, so I had more of an audience 
 than I desired or expected. 
 
 But this is one of my innumerable digressions. 
 At Chertsey we would diverge from the river to 
 the Cricketers ; at Staines we used to pull up at 
 the Packhorse ; its name suggestive of traffic in the 
 olden time, when the Berkshire roads were sloughs 
 and the lanes were flooded. It was a quaint and 
 modest hostelry, in high repute for its ale and 
 mutton chops. Experts in ale — and we were all 
 of us familiar with the Trinity Audit — used to swear 
 by the beer at the Bells of Ouseley. To me it 
 always seemed a trifle hard, suggesting the cider 
 they used to serve from the cask in earthenware 
 jugs at the Brittany tables d'hote. I may have been 
 mistaken, for no haunts on the river were more 
 frequented by connoisseurs of all classes than the 
 taproom and parlours of that somewhat sequestered 
 inn. Bargemen and swell boating men gathered 
 on the benches before the door, and it was largely 
 patronised by gipsies from caravans on the adjacent 
 commons, and by the passing tramp. I recollect 
 one free fight in which we interposed at great per- 
 sonal risk, when two Romany ladies took to pulling 
 bonnets, and their swarthy mates, who at first looked 
 indifferently on, began to show an interest in the 
 affair which threatened serious hostilities. But 
 considering that the rural constabulary were con- 
 
78 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 spicuous by their absence, and that rough chaff was 
 constantly flying about, it was wonderful how little 
 trouble there was on the river. The temper of the 
 bargees had not been soured by steam-launches 
 interfering with their steering, or house-boats 
 getting foul of the towing-ropes. Alongside of 
 the fragile outrigger in the locks they always made 
 themselves pleasant — in the expectation of the price 
 of a pint — though still morbidly sensitive to the 
 time-honoured query of, 'Who ate the puppy-pie 
 under Marlow Bridge ? ' 
 
 Maidenhead and Marlow were the objects of 
 more distant excursions, with the Red Lion at 
 Henley as a goal, where we sometimes passed a 
 couple of nights. There was no greater contrast 
 than that between the Henley of the Regatta and 
 the Henley of other weeks of the year. The 
 drowsy little town was nodding, if not asleep. No 
 longer were the echoes awoke by the horns of the 
 coach guards, or by the shouts down the stable 
 yards for 'first and second pairs out.' But you 
 seldom failed in a fine season to find company at 
 the Lion, of the best sort and inclined to be sociable. 
 Skindle's at Maidenhead, with its verdant lawn 
 and beds of geraniums, was a delightful place to 
 lounge away an afternoon, till the lotus-eating torpor 
 grew on you, and you were loath to slip the painter. 
 There was no club hard by and no noisy racket, 
 though of a Sunday it was rather a place to be 
 shunned, for hard-worked men of letters from the 
 
THE THAMES ABOVE BRIDGES 79 
 
 borders of Bohemia were apt to hold high festival 
 there with their ladies. 
 
 There is many a picturesque mansion on the 
 river banks, but perhaps none is more attractive 
 than Bisham. We had the fortune to find hospi- 
 table welcome there — one of us was heir-presump- 
 tive to the Abbey and estates — and the hospitality 
 was free and easy as any boating man, whose 
 ordinary wear was loose flannels, could desire. 
 On the great oaken table in the ancient hall were 
 the massive tankards of home-brewed ale, which 
 rather stimulated thirst, while professing to quench 
 it. There were no rules as to strictly correct cos- 
 tume for dinner, always served punctually to the 
 hour, when the guests walked in to take their 
 seats, though the master might be late, as was 
 very often the case. The venerable mansion was 
 associated with the two great baronial families who 
 had transmitted their names and manors to ' the 
 last of the barons,' There was of course a ghost, 
 dating from Elizabethan days, for one of the 
 Hobdays walked, and though I forget the details, 
 I do remember that there was some odd association 
 with child murder and a blotted copy-book. The 
 lady never disturbed my slumbers, and when we 
 rose it was to take a header into the Thames from 
 a bathing-house shrouded in luxuriant shrubbery. 
 From the square, grey tower — there was a tradi- 
 tion that a cat had been tossed from the battle- 
 ments to alight safely on its feet on the gravel 
 
8o DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 walk — there was an enchanting view over hill, 
 dale, and valley, and the long sweep under the 
 sheltering ridge of the amphitheatre of beech- 
 woods. There Shelley had boated through many 
 a summer's day, meditating sonnets to the sky- 
 larks, as they soared skyward, or dreaming over 
 The Revolt of Islam, which he composed in great 
 part while, dropping his sculls off Bisham, he left 
 the boat to drift. The exile, on one of his returns 
 to England, had his home at Marlow, across the 
 river, and the proscription of the atheist and 
 socialist was so general, that his only friend and 
 acquaintance was Love Peacock, whom he had 
 tempted to Marlow — a poet like himself and the 
 author of those inspired snatches of song in The 
 Misforttmes of Elphin and Maid Marian. Lapped 
 in the folds of the beechen amphitheatre, on its 
 sloping lawn, stood the vicarage, where Peacock's 
 Dr. Opimian might have been content to settle 
 down, renouncing dreams of deaneries and 
 bishoprics. If the parson were foolish enough to 
 change the scene in summer, he could always let 
 that ideal Paradise for a fabulous rent — from thirty 
 to forty guineas a week. As for the old-fashioned 
 Dutch garden of the Abbey, scarcely above the 
 river level, with its encircling moat flooded in 
 any overflow, with the old-fashioned hollyhocks, 
 dahlias, and sunflowers, it was a blaze of brilliant 
 colour. Nowhere have I seen brighter or fresher 
 tints on the gladiolas, save at Inverewe in Western 
 
THE THAMES ABOVE BRIDGES 8i 
 
 Ross-shire, where the terraces were watered by 
 balmy rains tempered by the genial flow of the 
 Gulf Stream. 
 
 Scarcely less attractive was the downward pull 
 from Halliford to Kingston, the county town of 
 Surrey. Again you were among the suburban 
 haunts of more or less illustrious men, who had 
 their summer residences near to town before the 
 days of the railway. Love Peacock and Leigh 
 Hunt had lived at Halliford : on a garden terrace 
 just below the village used to sit wrapt in her 
 book a girl in a scarlet jacket, who was pointed 
 out as Hunt's granddaughter. One of the homes 
 of Harold Skimpole, where, like the poet of the 
 Seasons, he may have nibbled, with hands behind 
 his back, at the sunny sides of the peaches, 
 must have been still in the family. At Walton, 
 with its long, low bridge of many arches, stretching 
 over marshy strips of meadowland, periodically 
 submerged — a scene often transferred to the walls 
 of the Academy — Mr. Sturgis, a partner in 
 Baring's, then in the full flush of high credit and 
 cautious prosperity, kept open house for Trans- 
 atlantic guests, who hunted up the history and 
 romance of the old country from Windsor Forest 
 to Hampton Court. Then there was Sunbury, 
 reminding one of Gilbert White's notes upon 
 swallows and their hybernation — the birds were 
 always flashing by the boat and twittering over the 
 reed beds, while the great black swifts flew scream- 
 
 F 
 
82 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 ing round the church tower — and of Barham of 
 the Ingoldsby Legends, who had often rowed there 
 before us. There was Thames Ditton, where we 
 would land to lunch at the Swan, associated with 
 Scott's correspondence with Lord Montague, and 
 with Theodore Hook, who was fond of going punt 
 fishing there, with sufficient ground-bait for him- 
 self on board, and superfluity of claret and cold 
 punch. There was Moulsey Hurst, of renown in 
 the palmy days of the prize-ring, when chariots 
 and four, bedecked with the colours of Cribb or 
 Molyneux — Captain Barclay or Berkeley Craven 
 seated beside the bruisers they had trained or 
 backed — brought the swells of St. James's to the 
 scene of old English 'sport,' which, when not 
 interrupted by the presence of some officious 
 magistrate, often ended in a fight more free than 
 was contemplated. I was versed in the vivid 
 descriptions of those days by the amusing Memoirs 
 of Archibald Constable the publisher, when his 
 partner Hunter, who had the quarrel with Scott, 
 drove down with ' Maule,' afterwards Lord Pan- 
 mure, and ' the Bailie,' which was the sobriquet 
 of Hunter's sire. But forty years ago the glories 
 of the ring were gone — as Borrow remarks in 
 Lavengro, rottenness had crept into the heart of 
 it — the once popular Bell's Life was on the 
 decline, and the office of the umpire was even 
 more perilous than it had always been, now that 
 ' crosses ' were common, and the whips that strove 
 
THE THAMES ABOVE BRIDGES 83 
 
 to keep the ring could hardly hold boisterous 
 roughs in order. Yet it still published columns 
 of challenges, intimating houses where money was 
 to be put down at a series of convivial meetings, 
 and where the office was to be obtained by the 
 initiated on the eve of the battle. Ben Caunt was 
 at home at the Coach and Horses ; Jem Burn, 
 who was in the way of dropping into poetry like 
 Silas Wegg, had 'lush to cool you, when your 
 coppers were hot,' at the Rising Sun ; and Nat 
 Langham, champion of the middle weights, was 
 giving lessons to the nobility and gentry in the 
 noble art of self-defence. But the police were 
 ever on the trail of those half-tolerated law- 
 breakers ; the forlorn gentlemen of the fancy 
 were forced to find their way at unholy hours to 
 the fogs of the Essex marshes, when the con- 
 sumption of fiery liquors before the ordinary 
 breakfast hour was portentous. However dark 
 the impending affair might have been kept, those 
 outings of East-end roughs often ended in a fiasco, 
 and treachery hedged unsatisfactory bets by play- 
 ing into the hands of the common enemy. To my 
 shame, be it said, I once made one of such a party, 
 when the fight was a cross, and the expedition 
 in every sense ' a sell.' I had been wise enough 
 to leave watch and gold at home, but my loose 
 silver had escaped through a cut in the trouser 
 pocket, and I lost a breast pin which would not 
 have fetched a shilling when it was pawned. 
 
84 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 Moulsey Hurst, by the way, has other memories. 
 It was almost as old a golfing ground as Black- 
 heath, if it had no Royal Club and was not so 
 generally frequented, being less accessible from 
 the city. When Garrick had his villa at Hampton, 
 Jupiter Carlyle, with John Home, the author of 
 Douzlas and confidential man-of-all-work to the 
 omnipotent Lord Bute, drove down with a party 
 of Scots to spend a day with the great actor. 
 They met the rector, Mr. Black, who owed his 
 benefice to having initiated the Duke of Cum- 
 berland in the game. Before adjourning to play 
 a foursome on the Hurst, Carlyle astonished the 
 natives by the skill with which he sent a ball 
 through an archway under the highroad intersect- 
 ing the garden. Garrick was so delighted by the 
 feat that he begged the club as a memento. 
 
 Hampton, where Trollope laid the scenes of his 
 Three Clerks, by far the best in his opinion as he 
 once told me, of his earlier novels, used to boast the 
 sobriquet of * Appy.' That came from the annual 
 race meeting, a veritable cockney carnival. To 
 the turf it was much what the Epping Hunt was 
 to the chase ; it was a civic caricature of the Derby, 
 with the Derby humours parodied and exaggerated. 
 No one except the bookmakers and a sprinkling 
 of legs and flats seemed to give a thought to the 
 running of the horses. There were shows and 
 booths of every description : Short and Codlin, 
 Jerry with his performing dogs, were all there ; 
 
THE THAMES ABOVE BRIDGES 85 
 
 there were caravans with giants, dwarfs and other 
 freaks, nigger minstrels, when they were rather a 
 novelty ; and notably troops of frolicksome young 
 women with tambourines, who chanted free and 
 easy songs, making unblushing advances to up- 
 roarious bachelors who had freighted their car- 
 riages with champagne hampers. I have seen 
 nothing like it before or since, except in ' Sausage 
 Alley ' in the Viennese Prater at Easter or Whit- 
 suntide. But there was more bitter beer and 
 brandy than champagne, which marked the tone 
 of the oratherino-. Of course there was some bet- 
 ting on the races and a drawing of sweeps, but the 
 genuine excitement was in the gambling tents. 
 Charlie Lyley and other notorieties did literally a 
 roaring trade. Heaps of gold and silver, and occa- 
 sionally a flutter of ' flimsies ' changed hands with 
 the spinning of the ball. It was in one of these 
 canvas hells that Charles Dickens laid the scene 
 of Sir Mulberry Hawk's quarrel with his pupil and 
 dupe, and such quarrels were likely enough to 
 come off, when men were flushed with wine and 
 fretted by losses. 
 
 Hotels of famous repute have had their day, 
 apparently decaying like the most fashionable 
 Parisian restaurants of last century of something 
 like dry rot and eclipsing themselves from no 
 visible cause. When I knew Hampton Court, the 
 Toy, commemorated by Scott in one of his letters, 
 had gone ; he had driven down with a select 
 
86 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 party of poets to dine with his son the Major, 
 whose regiment was in quarters there. So had 
 the hog-backed wooden bridge, with timbers of 
 extraordinary length, felled, as Gilbert White tells 
 us, in the Hanger of Selborne. But it had been 
 succeeded by a capital house, looking out on the 
 river, where we dallied over many a quiet little 
 dinner, when waiting for the rising moon to light 
 us home to Halliford. Sometimes we would send 
 portmanteaus by train, and shifting from flannels 
 to evening dress, accept the hospitality of the regi- 
 ment of light cavalry. The lot of the youngsters in 
 the corps seemed always in those days especially 
 enviable. They did their duty no doubt, but they 
 were full of spirits and flush of money, however 
 they came by it, and in the season or out of it, they 
 were always on the rampage between the gaieties 
 of West London and the tranquil Court. 
 
 Nothing could be gayer than the palace gardens 
 on a fine Saturday or Sunday afternoon, and if 
 you sympathised in the pleasures of humble folk, 
 you could hardly fail to have a good time. The 
 rail was circuitous, slow and decorous, and most of 
 the merry excursionists came down by van. Albert 
 Smith, the cockney novelist par excellence, has 
 painted the cockney assemblage with the realistic 
 detail of a Paul de Kock or a Zola. There were 
 any number of Sprouts playing the cavaliers to 
 good-looking Bessies flaunting in all the hues of 
 the rainbow; and red-faced 'jolly men' were there 
 
THE THAMES ABOVE BRIDGES ^7 
 
 by the dozen. It was worth while getting your- 
 self lost in the leafy labyrinths of the Maze, 
 for at each turn you came upon loving couples, 
 the gentleman always taking the lady's arm when 
 his was not round her waist, and in that ideal 
 solitude acting as if there were no onlookers 
 except the sparrows or the robins. 
 
 Hampton Court was crowded of a holiday, and 
 the river of a Sunday was lively from Maidenhead 
 downwards ; the only bother was the delay at 
 the locks, and that was lightened by the friendly 
 interchange of chaff. Immemorial privileges were 
 so seldom abused, that there was little enforce- 
 ment of riverine rights. The house-boat had 
 hardly made its appearance, and when one did 
 show, its occupants like the early navigators were 
 on their best behaviour, and never made themselves 
 obnoxious. On the contrary, they were rather 
 welcome to the natives, for their hands were 
 generally in their pockets. Here and there a 
 quiet party would land for lunch : now and again 
 they took up their quarters under canvas, drawing 
 on the neighbourhood for supplies. The thread of 
 blue smoke rising from the camp fire gave a grace- 
 ful touch to the sylvan landscape, and the worst 
 damage was widening a gap in the hedge when 
 gathering a few fallen branches for fuel. The 
 farmers sold their chickens and dairy produce, and 
 the cottage children were delighted to run on 
 errands before the days of compulsory school 
 
88 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 attendance. Now with all regard for the recreations 
 of the public, I am inclined to sympathise with the 
 landowners who stand on rights of way, and come 
 down upon aggressive excursionists for trespass 
 on the rare occasions when they get the chance. 
 For these amphibious trespassers are slippery as 
 eels and elusive as the reckless motor-car drivers 
 who are the terror and horror of our roads. 
 
 Down to Twickenham and Richmond you could 
 dream away the time when you shipped the sculls 
 or lay on. the oars : you could indulge in romantic 
 meditation on the many masters of song who have 
 wedded the beauties of the river to immortal verse. 
 The swans, undisturbed by the rush of the steam- 
 launch, left it to you to avoid a collision, and 
 seldom troubled to get out of the way. The punt 
 fisher, with bait-can, beer-jar, and luncheon-basket, 
 hung himself up between the 'rypecs' on some 
 quiet reach of backwater where he could practise 
 patience in perfect peace, and no watcher thought 
 of disturbing him : even the otters and the water- 
 hens, who had still their haunts in the sedges or 
 under the willow roots, had no great reason to 
 complain. But before taking leave of the non- 
 tidal Thames, I must fondly recall one enchant- 
 ing resort of mine. It was the Wharfe Farm on 
 the Hedsor estate, rented by an old friend of 
 mine and one of our boating crew, the brother- 
 in-law of Lord Boston, The name commemorated 
 the time when there was busy barge traffic on the 
 
THE THAMES ABOVE BRIDGES 89 
 
 Thames ; when the barges tied up there to land 
 coal or lime, and to load up with fruit and vege- 
 tables for the London markets. The way to enjoy 
 the quiet was to have a week's hard grinding in 
 town over heavy dinners and in crowded drawing- 
 rooms. You took the key of the fields on a 
 Saturday, with a return ticket from Paddington, 
 and at Maidenhead chartered a crawling fly. 
 Shot out on the terrace at the door of the 
 Wharfe, the transformation scene was exquisite 
 and enchanting. We dined with windows opening 
 on the little lawn, and the music, which I generally 
 detest at dinner, was the chattering of starlings 
 and the twittering of sparrows. And the swallows 
 were circling and dipping on the river, till the bats, 
 streaming out from under the tiled roof, gave them 
 warning it was time to retire. When you went 
 to your own bed, you were lulled to rest by the 
 jug-jug of rival nightingales, and were wakened 
 prematurely by the early thrush, whose challenge 
 was answered from shrubbery and coppice, and 
 whose solo was soon lost in a chorus. You heard 
 the crow of the pheasant from the Hedsor woods 
 and the gabble of water-loving birds from the 
 reed-beds. With sunshine and freshening air 
 streaming in through the latticed casement, the 
 laziest of mortals could not have lain long in bed. 
 Then your boat was on the shore, or rather the 
 punt was in readiness, and the boatman had been 
 impatiently waiting to punt you out for your bath 
 
90 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 and to inspect his eel-baskets. You took your 
 header under the hanging woods of CHeveden, erst 
 the bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love, secure 
 from intrusion as Diana and her nymphs — though, 
 by the way, they were once surprised — as in the 
 loneliest of Highland tarns. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 OLDER EDINBURGH 
 
 Edinburgh in these latter days has flourished by 
 law, physic, and divinity, above all by law. It 
 lives in a legal atmosphere, and every second man 
 you meet is a lawyer. In its legal aspect it is in- 
 timately associated with the two biographies of the 
 language — BosweWs Jo/znson and Lockhart's ScoU. 
 Boswell distinguished himself by failing at the 
 Scottish Bar, after heading the mob that broke 
 the judges' windows, while Lockhart abandoned it 
 to edit the Quarterly. Lockhart before he left gave 
 inimitable descriptions of the legal celebrities of 
 his time in Peter's Letters to His Kmsfolk. Scott 
 had painted the habits of earlier generations in 
 the Waverley Novels : when Pleydell devoted the 
 week end to buffoonery and high jinks at Cleri- 
 hugh's ; when the host of the Hawes Inn was proud 
 of his ' ganging plea ' in the Parliament House, 
 and when Peter Peebles deemed the notoriety of 
 the suit that beggared him the height of earthly 
 grandeur. In fact the Scots, who in the Baron 
 of Bradwardine's words were made up of martial 
 septs, betook themselves to fighting in the law 
 courts when feuds had been put down with the 
 
 91 
 
92 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 strong hand. Dandie Dinmont, who would have 
 rather settled his neighbourly dispute with cudgel 
 or broadsword, wellnigh quarrelled with Coun- 
 sellor Pleydell for not lending him a lift towards 
 insolvency. So when the lairds were impecunious 
 and British colonies in their infancy, law was the 
 most thriving of professions. Gentlemen of high 
 descent could take to it without derogating : the 
 heir, after a course of the Dutch universities, put 
 on the wig and gown in the rash presumption that 
 it would train him to manage the family estate : 
 the cadets preferred a possible competency in the 
 gay capital to the chances of adventure, with the 
 certainty of hardships, in the Hudson Bay Com- 
 pany's service or our East Indian possessions. The 
 aristocracy of the robe was the aristocracy of the 
 Northern Island. With few exceptions, the judges 
 of Session took sonorous titles from hereditary 
 estates ; they set the social fashions, and the 
 fashions were peculiar. They dined early and 
 drank deep. In the courts, which were darksome 
 dens, they refreshed themselves from decanters of 
 port at their elbows, and found their recreation in 
 supping in some squalid tavern, where with talk 
 that was sometimes brilliant and always loose, 
 they prolonged conviviality into the small hours. 
 They had often to be helped home by the ' cadie ' 
 in waiting ; but nevertheless they got through a 
 vast deal of head-work and drudgery when the 
 pleading was chiefly carried on by pen and ink. 
 
OLDER EDINBURGH 9^ 
 
 When I settled down in Edinburgh some fifty 
 years ago, the old order had passed away alto- 
 gether ; the decencies of high position were strictly 
 observed, and a judge would as soon have thought 
 of supping in a tavern, or hotel, as of dancing 2^ pas 
 seul in his ermine in the Parliament Close. But 
 celebrities still survived — the Whigs were then in the 
 ascendant — who had fought the battles of popular 
 freedom against the autocracy of Dundas and had 
 listened to the savage sentences of Braxfield. 
 There were men who had curiously looked on 
 at the marvellous drinking feats of such famous 
 four-bottle legfislators as Hermiston or Kilkerran. 
 Jeffrey had long resigned the editorship of the 
 Edinburgh, but he was still seated in the Inner 
 House. I remember the reverence with which I 
 regarded the wrinkled old litUrateur, whose name 
 had become a household word all the world over. 
 Political animosities had calmed down with the 
 passing of the Reform Bill, and Whig and Tory 
 now met on neutral ground, though the struggle 
 for place and promotion was fierce as ever in the 
 Parliament House. Jeffrey extended his hospi- 
 talities to both parties. Craigcrook, his picturesque 
 residence, under the northern slopes of Corstor- 
 phine Hill, where he used to play leap-frog on the 
 lawn when a few years younger, was then really in 
 the country. There the landlord still gave weekly 
 welcome to legal or literary cronies and contem- 
 poraries, and there was generally a gathering on 
 
94 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 Saturdays and Sundays. Some had battled and 
 suffered together in adverse times ; others had run 
 to extremities of anti-patriotism through the Penin- 
 sular War; not a few of the cronies were to drop off 
 almost simultaneously. There was Lord Cockburn, 
 yNhosQ Memoirs, though embittered by prejudice and 
 political animus, give the most vivid pictures of 
 the men and manners and abuses of his early days. 
 No man was more beloved by his friends and 
 family, or with better reason, but for years he had 
 been generating gall in the cold shade of political 
 ostracism. As Jeffrey had set up his tabernacle 
 under Corstorphine, so Cockburn had his home at 
 Bonaly, beneath the Pentlands. There was Mon- 
 crieff, whom Cockburn loved and laughed at — 
 ' Crief^e,' as he familiarly calls him — who inherited 
 the talents he transmitted to his descendants. 
 There was Lord Murray, chiefly famed as host 
 and bon vivant, who appreciated the claret and . 
 cuisine of Craigcrook ; there were Lords Cunning- 
 hame and Rutherfurd. On the death of the latter 
 I bought his set of Session Cases, sumptuously 
 bound in calf, to be resold very shortly, and sub- 
 sequently to be replaced by another set which in 
 their turn went to the sale room. 
 
 When I went to Edinburgh to try my fortunes 
 in the law, decentralisation and democracy were 
 already beginning to affect the lawyers. Yet there 
 was still a survival of the immemorial state of 
 things described by ' Peter ' in his Letters. All 
 
OLDER EDINBURGH 95 
 
 cases of importance came for settlement to the 
 Supreme Courts ; the advocates were still some- 
 thing of a landed aristocracy ; and most of them, 
 when they had landed possessions and rose to the 
 Bench, took the honorary title from their estates. 
 Very embarrassing it sometimes was when they 
 went touring on the continent with their untitled 
 wives, and punctilious landlords, not understanding 
 the connection, rudely turned them away from 
 the door. 
 
 Birth and family connection were even more 
 profitable to the Writers to the Signet. Fortunate 
 firms had transmitted lucrative business from 
 father to son. When I was entered for the run- 
 ning, serving my time in a Writer to the Signet's 
 office, about ^500 was paid for me, in shape of 
 apprentice fees, government stamps, etc., I got a 
 trifle of it back in copying papers at threepence a 
 page, which brought in a professional income of 
 about ^^50. That was nearly all I gained in an 
 apprenticeship of monotonous routine. Moreover, 
 though I had fair connections, prospects were 
 being overcast. Hitherto fortunate writers had 
 taken things easily ; they managed all the great 
 estates, and without giving any guarantee for the 
 rents, earned a five per cent, commission by simply 
 collecting them. In these days the Bar not only 
 offers every man a fair field, but, as in England, 
 the best chance of a clever aspirant is to be con- 
 nected with firms of solicitors ; and the jurisdiction 
 
96 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 of the county courts having been enlarged, many 
 once profitable suits are settled far away from the 
 Parliament House. Birth and descent count for 
 very little. But it is the Writers to the Signet 
 who have most reason for grumbling. The lairds 
 were always an impecunious class, but under 
 pressure of falling rents and growing mortgages, 
 they had learned to look more closely to their out- 
 givings. They grudged the Edinburgh agents 
 their easy gains, and found local men to do their 
 work for what old Trapbois would have called a 
 small consideration. A kinsman of my own, of 
 moderate estate, to whom I had looked to help me 
 towards affluence, said he saved ^150 a year by 
 the change. I dare say he did, but it was money 
 out of my pocket, so I decided to turn my talents 
 to the higher branch of the profession. 
 
 If I never become Lord President or Lord 
 Justice - Clerk, perhaps I have only myself to 
 blame. I passed the preliminary trials with credit, 
 and then devoted a dozen of years to sport, con- 
 tinental travel, and other distractions. When I 
 came back to put on the wig and gown, my con- 
 temporaries had got as many years ahead of me, 
 and I was not the man to come on with a rush and 
 make up the leeway. Nevertheless, I did a deal 
 of pedestrlanism in the long and lofty hall of the 
 ancient Parliament House. Edinburgh has the 
 pull of London in that respect, for the advocate in 
 embryo is always on show. He has not to sit 
 
OLDER EDINBURGH 97 
 
 waiting for mythical briefs in a sequestered garret in 
 some Inn of Court. There are agents to be stalked, 
 button-holed, and flattered, and the cynic sees a con- 
 siderable amount of unsophisticated human nature. 
 In the year I paced the boards, I picked up a few 
 guineas for formal motions, and some stray five 
 pound notes for assisting at technical proceedings, 
 but found no opportunity of distinguishing myself. 
 Had I had the chance, I doubt whether I should 
 have availed myself of it, for I cannot flatter my- 
 self I cut a figure in legal debates in the Juridical 
 Society. The orator is shaky on his legs, when he 
 knows next to nothing of his subject. So, after a 
 twelvemonth, I shook the dust off my feet and 
 came south. Yet though that year became in- 
 tolerably tiresome as it drew to a close, I have 
 rather pleasant recollections of it. The hall itself, 
 with its high timbered roof and dim religious light, 
 was rich in historical associations of the troublous 
 times of distracted Scotland. There were old 
 briefless advocates who had made them their study, 
 and were always ready to impart their knowledge, 
 enthusiastic as Dickens's Jack Bamber over 
 lonely chambers in the Inns of Court. There 
 were still scintillations of the sparks Lockhart 
 tells of, when there were gatherings of the 
 junior briefless round the great fireplaces, where 
 gossip and jest and repartee went round ; where 
 Scott with his toupet, christened by the facetious 
 Peter Robertson, ' Peveril of the Peak,' had tossed 
 
 G 
 
98 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 back the clinging sobriquet of ' Peter of the 
 Paunch.' 
 
 By the way, in naming notable judges, I forgot 
 the humorous Peter. In my time he was still well 
 to the fore and as keen after fun and jollity as ever. 
 With some of the officers in garrison, we once 
 gave a picnic and dance at Roslin, just after war 
 had been declared with Russia. Lord Robertson 
 arrived late, but came in time to take the chair at 
 supper, and characteristically brought a couple of 
 bottles of kiimmel. The last we should have, he 
 pathetically remarked, so we had better make the 
 most of them. By the way, at the sale of his 
 lordship's books, I bought his set of the Waverley 
 Novels, most of them first editions. They were 
 scrawled over with his pencil notes, some of them 
 serious, others sneering. One of them is : ' Easy 
 
 writing, Master Walter, is d d hard reading.' 
 
 In another, where Scott in The Bride of Lammer- 
 moor preaches patience as the best alleviation of 
 human ills, the remark is, ' Very true, Walter ; I 
 trust I shall always remember that.' 
 
 I might have held out longer, but for the sense 
 of living under the microscope and being con- 
 strained to be hypocritical in spite of yourself. 
 Every one knew and talked about what everybody 
 else did. If you put the foot in a stirrup it was 
 a professional scandal ; in common prudence you 
 had to sneak out of the stable-yard and head for 
 the beautiful country by back streets. Happily 
 
OLDER EDINBURGH 99 
 
 golf was not only tolerated but encouraged. At 
 one o'clock, if — Heaven save the mark — he had 
 no pressing business, the youthful advocate was 
 supposed to be free, and could betake himself to 
 the Links with unruffled conscience. To the links 
 of Musselburgh or North Berwick, the decaying 
 guild of the caddies had transported itself. When 
 Colonel Mannering visited Edinburgh, a caddie 
 guided him to Pleydell's lodgings, and Pleydell 
 put Dominie Sampson in charge of another. The 
 caddies, like the Gallegans, the water-carriers of 
 Madrid, were a Highland confraternity with some 
 of the barbaric virtues, but with neither prin- 
 ciples nor morals. They sold themselves to their 
 employer for the time, and charged themselves 
 with the most questionable missions. They knew 
 every close and den in the Old Town, and as it 
 was their business to gather scandalous gossip, 
 they were the most serviceable of spies — and 
 worse. No Figaro was more tactful in conveying 
 a billet-doux, and the fraternity were always able 
 and ready to help each other. When society 
 shifted to the New Town, their occupation was 
 wellnigh gone. Forty years ago there was still 
 a remnant of them to be seen, lounging on benches 
 at the street corners, with the leathern straps, 
 which were the badge of office, on their shoulders. 
 They carried bundles of papers for the ' writers ' or 
 baggage for the casual tourist. They spoke broken 
 Scotch in a guttural Gaelic accent, and in their 
 
loo DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 faces you could see that whether business was 
 brisk or slack, they were good customers to the 
 public round the corner. But the veritable caddie 
 had betaken himself to carrying golf clubs. If he 
 were sharp and something of a performer, there 
 he was sure of regular employment, for golf was 
 the solitary recreation, except a walk, in which 
 any man might indulge without losing caste or 
 credit. I have seen myself the Lord Justice-Clerk 
 playing a round with an ex-Moderator of the 
 General Assembly. Indeed divines of the olden 
 time like Robertson prided themselves on their 
 performances with the clubs as on their pulpit 
 eloquence. Still on Bruntsfield Links, immune 
 Crom building desecration, and overlooked by 
 Heriot's Hospital, burghers as grave as ' Jingling 
 Geordie ' might be seen doing the daily round in 
 scarlet bleached by sunshine and storm. No one 
 I ever heard of played on Leith Links, where 
 James of York and Cumberland, 'the butcher of 
 Culloden,' used to take their pleasure, as golfing 
 tradition was still proud to tell. But Mussel- 
 burgh was the great resort, and, owing to the press 
 of business engagements, the links, save on a 
 Saturday, were seldom overcrowded, I cannot 
 say so much for the parlour at Mrs. Foreman's, 
 near Drummore, so often mentioned in Jupiter 
 Carlyle's Reminiscences, where each party on its 
 rounds made a point of lunching on the simple 
 fare of grilled haddocks and poached eggs. 
 
OLDER EDINBURGH loi 
 
 Apropos of caddies and luncheons at Mrs. Fore- 
 man's, I mentioned Clerihugh's, and every one 
 remembers Colonel Mannerinor's amazement when 
 he surprised Pleydell at high jinks in that pande- 
 monium of roasting and grilling. Great lawyers 
 had ceased to frequent the Clerihugh's, where it had 
 been their habit to receive clients and hold nightly 
 consultations. But there was still a sublimated 
 Clerihugh's in the Fleshmarket, a survival of those 
 prehistoric days, and the only place for a genuine 
 Scottish dinner, with cookery worthy of Meg Dods. 
 The approaches were as little alluring as the name 
 of the locality. Putting it bluntly, it needed a 
 strong stomach to face them, and that indeed was 
 indispensable for the fare to follow. Once over 
 the threshold it was a highly respectable house, 
 and many a memory associates itself with the 
 faded moreen of the curtains and the bristling 
 horsehair of the sofas. It was all the better if you 
 sent your own wines, but the brands of the stronger 
 liquors were unexceptionable. The memt might 
 safely be left to the landlord. You began with 
 cock-a-leekie, hotch-potch, or the barley broth of 
 which Dr. Johnson declared he cared not how 
 soon he ate of it again ; there were crappit heads, 
 crimped salmon or sea-trout fresh from the Firth ; 
 sheep's head was followed by steaks sent up hot 
 and hot ; winding up with marrow-bones and 
 toasted Dunlop cheese. But the grand feature 
 of the banquet was the haggis — 'great chieftain 
 
I02 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 of the pudding race ' — the gush of balmy fragrance 
 under the insertion of the knife would have given 
 an appetite under the ribs of death. The secret 
 of judicious excess was an occasional chasse of 
 whisky. Once when entertaining some English 
 friends, giving one of them his directions and 
 bearings, I had asked him to order dinner. The 
 dinner was satisfactory, till the haggis came up, 
 a pitiful abortion about the size of an apple. The 
 host himself appeared, in answer to the breaking 
 of the bell-pull, and the apology came before 
 indignation found voice. * Lord bless me, sir, 
 gin' I had known it was you. They tellt me it 
 was English folk, and I kenned weel they would 
 never settle the hao-als wi' a dram.' 
 
 Ambrose's must have much resembled that 
 sombre dining place in the Fleshmarket, and 
 Ambrose's recalls \\\^ Nodes Ambrosiance 2^\di the 
 last of the golden age of letters in Edinburgh. 
 Fifty years ago or less, there were shining cele- 
 brities, — some of them still in the matured strength 
 of intellectual activity, and the memory of others 
 who had departed was still green. Law and letters 
 were closely associated. Many a young briefless 
 advocate had eked out his income anonymously, 
 and though a successful novel would have been pro- 
 fessional suicide, to such an one, a shrievalty put the 
 anonymous scribble!* on velvet, and the judge was 
 free to take any liberties. Jeffrey and Cockburn 
 were cases in point. Professor Aytoun, though 
 
OLDER EDINBURGH 103 
 
 Sheriff of the Orkneys, like Scott, had thrown 
 over law for literature, and 'Willie Aytoun,' joint 
 author with Theodore Martin of the Bon Gaultier 
 Ballads, was famous for impromptus and the bon 
 mot. With Mark Napier, another literary sheriff, 
 he did not add to his popularity in Presbyterian 
 circles by his passion for Prelacy and high Toryism, 
 — for Montrose, Claverhouse, and the persecuting 
 Cavaliers who had watered the seeds of the kirk 
 with the blood of the martyrs. Talking of Bon 
 Gaultier, there never was a grosser calumny than 
 that which alleged that the Scot is impervious to 
 humour. To say nothing of Dean Ramsay and 
 his collections of north country anecdotes, in the 
 generation that followed Jeffrey, there was no 
 greater social favourite than Lord Neaves, who 
 not only wrote comic songs and clever parodies, 
 but sang them in a cracked voice that rather re- 
 minded you of the croak of the raven. It was a 
 sign of the progress of the times when he had an 
 extraordinary success with the blasphemous refrain, 
 ' Let us all be unhappy on Sunday ' ; and when 
 with an audacity worthy of Voltaire, he parodied 
 the theories of Darwin. Hill Burton, who might 
 have sat to Scott for the book-loving Antiquary, 
 was writing sober history and his Book-Hiinter 
 in lighter vein, in a den in a gloomy old mansion 
 beyond Morningside, approached by a weed-grown 
 avenue shadowed by secular elms — a cheerless 
 counterpart of the sanctum of Monkbarns. His 
 
I04 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 curious library was stored away on shelves in a 
 labyrinth of dark passages and cabinets with short 
 flights of steps in the most unlikely places. Never- 
 theless, when he went groping in the dark, his 
 flair for each volume was infallible as that of Con- 
 stable. He took his holidays like the proverbial 
 waiter whose notion of recreation was helping a 
 friend. When he came to London, it was to 
 haunt the British Museum, and he never cared to 
 sacrifice to the Graces. I see the old gentleman 
 now in the hall of the Athenaeum, with hat and 
 hair both brushed the wrong way, and the high- 
 pointed collar, unattached behind, giving him the 
 look of a venerable lop-eared rabbit. Yet to the 
 last he was the best of company, over-bubbling 
 with genuine Scottish esprit. An early booklet of 
 his on the Cairngorums, unfortunately long out of 
 print, is the most delightful of guides to the 
 recesses of those romantic mountains. 
 
 Every one must be familiar with Christopher 
 North from his portraits. I have seen him, with- 
 out doubt, though he was never pointed out to me. 
 But it always struck me that another professor 
 must have resembled him en petit, and both were 
 enthusiasts and equally regardless of appearances. 
 Blackie was a familiar figure in Princes Street. 
 There was ho mistaking his erect carriage, the 
 springy step, the piercing eye, the thin and 
 nervous hand grasping the heavy staff, with the 
 plaid that in all weathers was cast loosely round 
 
OLDER EDINBURGH 105 
 
 the shoulders. The Professor and I were old 
 acquaintances : he had the good sense to take a 
 fancy to me as a boy — he then filled the chair of 
 Latin in Aberdeen. He gave me the run of his 
 book-shelves, and he had works that exactly suited 
 me. There were A 'Beckett's Comic History of 
 England, Keightley's Fairy Mythology, and Bishop 
 Percy's Reliqties. But perhaps the volume of our 
 joint predilection was a collection of penny horn- 
 books, of which the gem was Dan O' Rotcrke s 
 Flight to the Moon. Then the Professor, who 
 always had a sweet tooth, had been translating 
 -^schylus and was much in the way of poetical 
 improvisation. One stanza I best remember was 
 inspired by a sight of his tea-table : — 
 
 ' My heart leaps up into my mouth, 
 
 And happy now I am. 
 
 When on the table I behold 
 
 A plate of ruddy jam.' 
 
 He was in his finest form when striding up and 
 down the room, chanting in a stentorian voice 
 his patriotic German war songs. Educated at a 
 German University, he was more German than 
 the Germans, as afterwards he became more of a 
 Highlander than the Celts. 
 
 Christopher North and Maga recall John Black- 
 wood, around whom Aytoun, Burton, Neaves, and 
 many minor luminaries were revolving. There 
 were two centres of attraction, or rather three : 
 
io6 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 the old saloon, 43 George Street, rich in literary 
 portraits as another room in Albemarle Street ; the 
 hospitable table in Randolph Crescent, where the 
 host himself was the magnet ; and the mansion of 
 Strathtyrum, near St. Andrews Links, where the 
 doors were always open to golfers and all others. 
 I heard much of him then, though I only won his 
 intimacy years afterwards. What endeared him 
 to friends was his staunch friendship, his cheery 
 social gifts, and his sterling candour. His con- 
 tributors owed him much, for they profited by the 
 shrewd and searching criticism, as sound as it was 
 kindly offered. If he had a fault as a publisher, it 
 was that he was more generous of praise than 
 blame, and when he took a fancy to a clever 
 contributor, it would have been hard indeed to 
 disillusion him. 
 
 With the doctors, happily, I had little to do ; 
 but there were men of eminence who perpetuated 
 the traditions of the Scottish medical school, and 
 drew many wealthy families to Edinburgh. Symes 
 was famous for surgical operations, and Simpson, 
 with his skill and use of anaesthetics, had, perhaps, 
 the largest female clientele in Great Britain. I 
 used to hear that the many rooms of his house 
 in Queen Street looked in the afternoon like a 
 military ambulance after a severe action. 
 
 Outsiders and the ladies o-ave little thouo-ht to 
 
 o o 
 
 the law, but pulpit eloquence was much in favour ; 
 and the stage as a magnet of attraction was not in 
 
OLDER EDINBURGH 107 
 
 it with the pulpit. Scotland was still palpitating 
 from the convulsions of the Disruption. Chalmers 
 had died in 1847, but his impassioned aides-de- 
 camp, with something" less of his sound judgment 
 and politic moderation, still upheld the blue 
 banner of the Covenant, and had taken for their 
 badge the burning bush and the motto of Nee tamen 
 consumebatztr. Chief among those who kept the 
 fire alive in Edinburgh were Candlish and 
 Cunningham, with Dr. Begg of Liberton, a fana- 
 tical advocate for total abstinence and the Mosaic 
 observance of a Judaical Sabbath; but the most 
 eloquent and persuasive of the Free Kirk divines 
 was Guthrie. He drew like Rowland Hill or 
 Charles Honeyman, though a very different stamp 
 of man from either. He attracted alike the 
 devout, the fashionables, and those who, like the 
 too superstitious citizens of Athens, were keen to 
 hear or to tell any new thing to remote St. John's 
 at the back of the Castle Rock, looking down on 
 the Grassmarket where so many martyrs for the 
 Covenant had glorified God on the gibbet. I kept 
 a couple of sittings there for several years, and the 
 occupant of a seat — a stall I was almost going to say 
 — could do no greater kindness than that of offering 
 it to a friend. The preacher was intensely dramatic 
 in action, and Guthrie might have been a Garrick. 
 A grand tragedian, steeped to the soul in the spirit 
 of his mission, playing on the emotions at will with 
 marvellous versatility, he swept his audience along 
 
io8 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 with him. There was no mistaking his profound 
 sincerity ; but he threw himself into each part he 
 conceived, and evidently realised the scenes he 
 imagined and acted. The magic was that all 
 seemed improvised, and not infrequently the strong 
 sense of humour would lend a subtle infusion of the 
 comic. Most actors warm to their work as they 
 go along; Guthrie pitched his keynote at the 
 highest, and could sustain it even at that pitch 
 when he changed the sensational for the solemn 
 appeal. The opening of one sermon I can never 
 forget. He reared his tall figure in the pulpit, 
 looked into vacancy with the fixed gaze of the 
 seer, and began, ' I see a shipwreck.' We heard 
 the roar of the storm ; we saw the billows breaking 
 over the wreck ; then when all eyes were on the 
 sinking ship, he pointed to the castaway, clinging 
 to a plank, seemingly lost beyond hope of salva- 
 tion. 
 
 The leaders of the Moderates may have been 
 learned theologians, but they were ' cauldrife ' 
 doctrinaires, and did not appeal to hot gospellers. 
 For the most part they preached to half-empty 
 churches. Almost a generation later, when acerbities 
 had greatly softened, there were eloquent scholars, 
 like my genial and accomplished friend Principal 
 Tulloch, who could fill great St. George's of a 
 summer evening. The aristocratic Episcopalian 
 communion, with its quaternion of churches, was 
 represented by the venerable Dean Ramsay of 
 
OLDER EDINBURGH 109 
 
 St. John's. Seats were almost as difficult to get 
 there as at the St. John's of Dr. Guthrie. The 
 Dean was not a great preacher, but he was a living 
 exponent of broad Christian charity. No man was 
 more winning, or won more admirers. Had he 
 advocated confession, his hours would have been 
 fully occupied, for he was adored by the ladies of 
 his flock. The chronicler of old Scottish wit and 
 humour came from the * Howe of the Mearns,' 
 and had endless good stories of family connections 
 and old country friends in Forfar and Kincardine. 
 Some of them, transplanted to the Borders, have 
 reappeared in Mrs. Wugh^ss Recollections of Scott. 
 No doubt he condemned the excessive conviviality 
 of Lairds of Balnamoon and the drinking bouts of 
 Lord Panmure at Brechin Castle, yet there was a 
 merry twinkle in his eye when he alluded to these 
 scandals and to the lad who was told off to loosen 
 the cravats of the boon companions who had slipped 
 under the table. Of a summer afternoon after 
 service he would stroll out over the Dean Bridge. 
 One blustering day when his hat was blown off, 
 and went circling down the depths to St. Bernard's 
 Well, I remember how the stream of promenaders 
 turned amused and affectionate looks on the grey 
 hair streaming in the air, when his laughing niece 
 was replacing the hat with a handkerchief. But 
 such Sunday strolls were virtually forbidden to 
 the stricter sect of Sabbatarians. The town was 
 absolutely silent, except immediately before and 
 
no DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 after the two ' diets of service.' Then for ten 
 minutes or so, there was a tread on the pavements, 
 as of the march of battalions a trifle out of step. 
 Landladies in lodgings struck against cooking hot 
 victuals, drawing the line at boiling potatoes ; the 
 hotel-keepers who catered for stranger guests were 
 regarded as Erastians who risked perdition for 
 lucre ; and the Post Office at the extreme end of 
 the city was only open for an hour in the early 
 morning, when you had to fight for your letters at 
 a grating. Knox, Melville, or Henderson would 
 turn in their graves, were they to see Princes 
 Street now of a fine Sunday summer morning with 
 brakes, busses, and tramcars, and its uproarious 
 tourist traffic. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 OLD SCOTTISH ECCLESIASTICISM 
 
 Memory looks back on strange changes in Scottish 
 society since my boyhood — some I have already 
 remarked upon — especially in the northern 
 counties, for they were more out of the world. 
 Melancholy changes I call them, but that may 
 be matter of sentiment. Stagnation, with under- 
 currents of quiet but strenuous activity, was only 
 occasionally disturbed by ripples on the surface. 
 Such as it was, it was a society we shall never see 
 again. There was no bustle and little perceptible 
 progress. By land the means of transport were few 
 and comparatively costly. On the highroads from 
 Aberdeen to the South, or to the Highland capital, 
 there were at the most two or three coaches /^r 
 diem. The day and night mails carried only light 
 luggage on the roof; the scarlet-coated guard was 
 perched on a breezy tripod at the back, and there 
 was a bare half dozen of outside passengers. 
 Whether by the mails or the more accommodat- 
 ing ' Defiance,' there were odds against being 
 picked up anywhere en route. Dr. Johnson spent 
 several days at Lichfield, waiting for the chance of 
 
 a cast to London by coach or return post-chaise. 
 
 Ill 
 
112 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 With us things were not altogether so bad as that ; 
 but more than once on successive mornings in 
 deep snow or bitter frost, I have gone with my 
 luggage to the ' smithy ' at the side-road, and after 
 toasting myself over the fires of the forge, have 
 had to go back to the family breakfast-table from 
 a bootless errand. The lumbering coaches on the 
 by-routes loaded up to any extent, but after all 
 their capacity was limited. Yet rather than be left 
 behind, I have held on to a toppling pile of baggage, 
 in the company of a collie or a setter choking in 
 his collar, and slipping over the edge at intervals 
 to be half strangled in the chain. That was no 
 place for the prim spinster, contemplating a long 
 deferred visit, or for the gouty old gentleman who 
 might have liked a last glimpse at the gay world. 
 Consequently, as they could not afford posting, they 
 stayed at home, sticking tenaciously to their houses 
 like mussels to the sea-reefs. For posting came 
 uncommonly dear, what with stoppages at the inns 
 and tips to the servants and post-boys ; and besides, 
 you had to reckon with inevitable delays, for on 
 those byways the number of horses was limited. 
 Very different it was from the Bath or the Great 
 Northern Road, where, when the smoking posters 
 dashed up to the door, the relay and the rider were 
 always ready. 
 
 In the sleepy county town, though it might boast 
 a baron bailie and a town council, the society was 
 almost as innocent and unsophisticated as in the 
 
OLD SCOTTISH ECCLESIASTICISM 113 
 
 most world-forsaken of parishes. They knew Httle 
 and cared less about politics and public affairs. In 
 fact, through the long peace, there was seldom 
 exciting news from abroad, till the country after 
 waking up with the Crimean War was thrilled by 
 the horrors of the Indian Mutiny. Even home 
 politics excited small interest and no enthusiasm, 
 for if by chance there was a contested election the 
 issue was generally a foregone conclusion. All my 
 own relations and connections went naturally for 
 the sound old Tory with an absolutely safe seat. 
 The sitting member's agent had no sort of trouble ; 
 he prophesied on velvet and the simplest calcula- 
 tions. Each landowner counted the heads of his 
 tenants, and saw that they were safely shepherded 
 to the poll. I have mentioned that cousin of 
 mine who took no little credit to himself for lettinof 
 one of his leading farmers, the son of a favourite 
 ' grieve,' vote according to his conscience for the 
 Radical candidate who had not the shadow of 
 a chance. Hence the violent revulsion of rural 
 Scotland to Radicalism when the ballot assured 
 freedom of action, and the Free Kirkers, who were 
 invariably Liberal, came to the front. Nevertheless, 
 the arrival of the weekly journal was an event 
 eagerly looked forward to, because all were pro- 
 foundly concerned with ' domestics.' Domestics 
 comprehended everything local in the way of news 
 or gossip, from births and deaths, markets and 
 cattle shows, to presentations, presbytery meetings, 
 
 H 
 
114 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 and ploughing matches. Any amount of space was 
 devoted to the speeches at agricultural dinners, 
 though always running on identical lines, bristling 
 with the familiar platitudes and jokes ; and parochial 
 penny-a-liners ran riot in recording local convivial 
 gatherings, in complimenting the musicians who 
 * discoursed sweet music,' and the landlady who 
 served the supper in 'her usual admirable style.' 
 The paper passed on from hand to hand, till, be- 
 grimed beyond deciphering, it was worn to tatters. 
 It was read the more religiously that it cost money, 
 for the stamp-duty crippled journalism ; the paper 
 tax had not been repealed, and fivepence was a 
 grave consideration in a frugal household. On the 
 other hand, distance lent a delusive glamour to the 
 power, personalities, and omniscience of the Metro- 
 politan press, and even tarry-at-home natives of 
 some education were quaintly credulous. I can 
 recall a queer example. A worthy baronet with 
 one of his neighbours was laughing uproariously 
 over the latest Punch. Mark Lemon had sent ' Mr. 
 Briggs Salmon-hshing and Deer-stalking in the 
 Highlands,' and they were tickled by his latest 
 mishap. ' I wonder who Briggs is,' said the baronet, 
 who fancied him as veritable a personage as Pal- 
 merston or Derby, though delicately shrouded 
 under a pseudonym. ' Ay, you may be sure they 
 know all about him in London,' ejaculated the 
 other, ' and I wonder how the poor man takes to 
 his notoriety.' 
 
OLD SCOTTISH ECCLESIASTICISM 115 
 
 I used to be taken on visits to various old-lady 
 relatives dotted about those county towns. Gener- 
 ous to the poor, they lived within modest incomes, 
 and their small establishments were regulated 
 with the strictest economy. Nevertheless I have 
 pleasant recollections of their tables, for they 
 prided themselves on family recipes ; they person- 
 ally superintended the kitchen and delighted in 
 spoiling the young folk with cakes of their own 
 baking. Generally they had a single servant, de- 
 voted to the mistress, of whom the mistress stood 
 in considerable awe, and who was consulted on 
 all occasions. They prided themselves on their 
 pedigrees, were great in genealogies, and, like 
 Walter Scott's grand-aunt, Mrs. Scott of Harden, 
 could trace out intricate connections to the tenth 
 generation. Though the reverse of rich, as they 
 had money to bequeath, they were the objects of 
 respectful attentions on the part of impecunious 
 relatives. I cannot tax myself with fulsome ob- 
 sequiousness, though I had the luck to come in 
 for more than one small legacy, and indeed I have 
 always fancied I lost a few hundred pounds, because 
 I threw over one solemn tea-party for a gay dinner 
 in barracks. And that was in somewhat later years 
 when I ought to have known better. 
 
 With those worthy old ladies entertainments 
 took the form of an early tea, followed by long 
 whist and a heavy supper. They made no pretence 
 of dinner-giving, and foreign wines were seldom 
 
ii6 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 seen on their tables. On rare occasions wines came 
 from the grocer's round the corner, who laid down 
 a dozen or two for christenings and burials. I shall 
 never forget the wry face of an uncle, when his 
 sister, in honour of his visit, brought out a bottle 
 of port. A connoisseur of the vintages of the 
 Douro, he knew well the qualities of that infernal 
 black draught, but he had reasons for keeping well 
 with the lady : he manfully braced himself for the 
 ordeal, and was much the worse for a week after. 
 Port or so-called Bucellus was never wasted on 
 me, and I rather liked the currant or the ginger, 
 which was always accompanied by sweet cakes. 
 
 There were two sorts of spinster aunts : the frivo- 
 lous and the serious. Extreme High Church folk, of 
 whom there were many in these parts, though they 
 went in for ritual, and long morning prayers from 
 the Scottish liturgy — a terrible tax on the patience 
 before breakfast — took liberal views of life and 
 its innocent amusements. Their evenings were 
 lightened by the card-tables, with infinitesimal 
 stakes, and they liked to get up an impromptu dance. 
 And Presbyterian ladies who belonged to the mode- 
 rate party of the Church were likewise relatively 
 lax in life and conversation. But it was a serious 
 business staying with an evangelical hostess, who 
 mortified the flesh in an atmosphere of gloom, and 
 held fast to the Calvinism of Knox and Andrew 
 Melville, Cards were literally the devil's books, 
 for some one was bound to look after the luck, and 
 
OLD SCOTTISH ECCLESIASTICISM 117 
 
 it only could be the Power of Evil. Even the 
 strathspey and the reel were snares of Satan, and as 
 for the waltz, it was a horror unspeakable. Of the 
 theatre they knew nothing, except from vague 
 report : no strolling company could ever have 
 cleared its expenses in a country town, and even 
 in the comparatively populous city of Aberdeen, 
 the house was never encouraged by the gentry. 
 It paid its way by the aid of pit and gallery, with 
 an occasional benefit or gala night under patronage 
 of the garrison. 
 
 Almack's was never more exclusive than those 
 select parties : ' coming of kenned folk ' was an 
 indispensable recommendation, and the line was 
 severely drawn above the doctor or the solicitor. 
 But the clergyman of whatever denomination 
 was an exception ; in Presbyterian circles especi- 
 ally, he was a cherished and honoured guest. 
 The Episcopalian divines had a somewhat hard 
 time of it, though in the north-eastern counties 
 most of the greater landowners belonged to their 
 flocks. Supported chiefly by voluntary contribu- 
 tions, they starved upon small stipends, and wel- 
 comed an invitation to a good dinner as a godsend. 
 One gentleman I remember, a fine scholar and a 
 pluralist too, for he not only had a parochial 
 charge and a deanery, but was chaplain to a 
 wealthy noble, who as he said himself, kept his 
 household chiefly on farinaceous food. Neverthe- 
 less the diet agreed with him : he was plump and 
 
ii8 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 well-liking, like the children of the Captivity who 
 fattened on pulse, and he always came up to the 
 pulpit smiling. When he took for his theme the 
 obligation of being temperate in all things, you 
 could hardly realise that he was constrained to 
 practise the doctrine he preached. It was very 
 different with his successor in that cure. An 
 incarnation of compulsory asceticism, as if he had 
 trained upon pickled herrings and parched peas, 
 he looked like a St. Simeon Stylites come down 
 from his column. Yet the wiry little man was 
 extraordinarily energetic ; he preached once and 
 sometimes twice in his own little church, and with 
 a fervour of eloquence which should have drawn a 
 larger congregation. In the evening he undertook 
 a service in a schoolhouse, five miles from his 
 vicarage, and if he could not get a lift in a farmer's 
 gig, he tramped it on his own little legs. A 
 scholar like his predecessor, and a reader with 
 slight inducement to study, had his lines been cast 
 in the South, he might have held an audience 
 spell-bound on his words under the dome of St. 
 Paul's, published sermons which would have forced 
 themselves on popular notice, and been promoted 
 by force of public appreciation to a bishopric. As 
 it was, being, as Counsellor Pleydell put it to Guy 
 Mannering, a member of the suffering Church of 
 Scotland, though the days of persecution had 
 passed away, he was inevitably condemned to 
 poverty and obscurity, a type of too many of his 
 
OLD SCOTTISH ECCLESIASTICISM 119 
 
 class who were starving on miserable endowments. 
 The state of those poor Episcopalian divines in 
 partibtis was a scandal, and though all may have 
 had a trifle over forty pounds a year, no one of 
 them could call himself 'passing rich,' even in 
 districts where the cost of living was at a minimum. 
 The Presbyterian ' minister ' was an exception- 
 ally fortunate man : nine times out of ten when he 
 was 'placed,' he had attained the summit of his 
 ambitions. He might dream of oratorical triumphs 
 and authority in Church Courts, but as to these he 
 was comparatively indifferent. For the most part, 
 after many fears and hopes, he had risen from 
 poverty to relative affluence. Respected for the 
 sake of his gown, it was his own fault if he were 
 not reverenced, especially by the women. He 
 was not very often a gentleman, in the social 
 acceptation of the word, and even the sons of the 
 manse, who took to the hereditary profession as 
 ducklings to the water, were seldom regarded alto- 
 gether as the equals of their aristocratic landed 
 neighbours. Many of the clergy had risen from 
 the ranks, and attained the exalted eminence of 
 the pulpit by strenuous efforts of their own and at 
 the cost of great sacrifices on the part of relatives. 
 They were of a higher order than the modern 
 Irish priest, but the ordeal they had gone through 
 was not very different. The Aberdeen colleges 
 were the clerical nurseries of the North, and notably 
 King's College in Old Aberdeen. The session 
 
I20 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 lasted for five months in the year, and for those 
 who meant business, it was a time of tremendous 
 work — of pinching and sometimes of starving. 
 The sleepy old borough, with its long single 
 street, was a somewhat gaunt and grim but pic- 
 turesque reflection of the English cathedral town 
 and the Southern seats of letters. Old Aberdeen 
 was the St. Andrews of the North. The shady 
 Canonry recalled the departed glories of the 
 well-endowed Catholic Church. The low, massive 
 spires of the grey cathedral, the graceful, arched, 
 and strongly buttressed crown that crested the 
 square tower of the college matched well with the 
 bare links, the yellow sand-hills, and the moaning 
 surf of the northern sea. But the professors were 
 snugly housed in old rambling, ramshackle houses 
 with great straggling gardens. For seven months 
 the ' auld toon ' slept and stagnated ; then it 
 wakened up to noisy life with the rush of possible 
 ministers in embryo. Each lad or boy of them 
 was as keen on cash as any man who stakes his 
 napoleons at Monte Carlo. Mr. Andrew Carnegie 
 had been anticipated by forgotten philanthropists ; 
 each autumn some thirty bursaries, ranging in value 
 from thirty pounds down to eight pounds or less, 
 were put up to open competition ; and besides 
 there were sundry others to which the right of 
 presentation was reserved by descendants of the 
 original donors. The decision depended on the 
 facility of turning English into Latin and vice versa. 
 
OLD SCOTTISH ECCLESIASTICISM 121 
 
 For that purpose every parochial schoolmaster of 
 notoriety in the North had turned crammer, and 
 the two Grammar Schools in Old and New Aber- 
 deen, with their reputation for success, had attracted 
 troops of the better-to-do aspirants. 
 
 The lucky youth, who had listened with throb- 
 bing heart to the announcements of the successful, 
 got his bursary ; then he had to look to ways and 
 means and to search out his modest lodging. The 
 tenements in the College Bounds swarmed like so 
 many rabbit warrens ; two lads might club and 
 pig together in a single upper chamber. Literally 
 not a few of them cultivated literature on a little 
 oatmeal with occasional salt herrings. Some 
 took pupils in the recess, when they could get 
 them ; others tramped back to their homes in the 
 distant Highlands to hire themselves out as field 
 labourers or take a summer cruise with the fishing 
 craft. One man, I remember, who went to Trinity, 
 Cambridge, had broken stones on the roads. The 
 best of them, whether in college or away from it, 
 burned the midnight oil indefatigably or strained 
 aching eyes over guttering tallow. The last Duke 
 of Gordon, who was greatly beloved, and who 
 deserved better treatment than was given him in 
 Lord Cockburn's book, used to delight in giving 
 these footsore wayfarers a lift in his chariot, with 
 bed and supper to follow, and something to send 
 them on their way rejoicing. For like the German 
 Reisebilrscken they did not scorn such kindly 
 
122 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 charity, and moreover more than one of those 
 chance meetings is said to have led to a presenta- 
 tion and a parish. As N. P. WilHs remarked, on 
 his visit to Gordon Castle, his Grace was more 
 free with the many parishes in his gift than with 
 his famous breed of Gordon setters. 
 
 All through the four years' curriculum and the 
 subsequent divinity course, the clerical aspirant 
 had his gaze set steadily on the pulpit. Failing 
 that, there was always the parish school as a pis 
 aller, and of that in any case he was pretty sure. 
 But taking a school was tantamount to an advocate 
 accepting a sub-sheriffship and throwing up the 
 sponge. On the road to the pulpit were various 
 stumbling-blocks. Country congregations were 
 not fastidious as to manners and deportment, 
 though some of these rough-bred Highland alumni 
 were ungainly and uncouth as Dominie Sampson, 
 but like Sampson they never came to wag their 
 pow in a pulpit, because the nerve gave way when 
 they came to the scratch. If there was anything 
 the Scots were hot upon, it was fluent extempore 
 preaching : reading from a paper was a sure sign 
 that the minister had not the root of the matter in 
 him. And then, and I say it with all reverence, 
 the long extempore prayers were staggerers to the 
 novice. 
 
 In the olden time the patron presented and the 
 parishioners had nothing to say in the matter. 
 When I was a boy, the rule began to be relaxed, 
 
OLD SCOTTISH ECCLESIASTICISM 123 
 
 and the more liberal-minded patrons gave ' a leet ' 
 of a dozen or so, who paraded their paces on as 
 many successive Sabbaths before an intensely 
 critical congregation. A terrible ordeal it must 
 have been, when modest merit, and sensitive self- 
 consciousness were the most likely to go to the 
 wall. 
 
 Going back more years than I care to think of, 
 I call up the interior of a country church and the 
 pew in front of the gallery facing the pulpit in 
 which I was seated, when a competition came to 
 its climax. In front was a row of cushioned chairs, 
 with the eagle crest of the family carved on the 
 backs ; behind these a double row of seats for the 
 servants. The front places in the galleries at 
 right angles on either side were occupied by other 
 lairds or landowners. All were draped with cloth, 
 often faded and moth-eaten, though if there had 
 been a recent death in the household, it had been 
 renewed in dismal black. Immediately beneath 
 the pulpit was the precentor's box ; in the dusk of 
 the wintry afternoon service, it was his duty to 
 read out the metrical psalms by couplets before 
 striking up the stave ; ex officio he was an authori- 
 tative judge. At the bottom of the stairs was the 
 square pew filled with the elders of the kirk- 
 session, the final court of appeal. But it was a 
 thoroughly democratic assemblage, and the elders 
 only reflected popular opinion. Each soul in the 
 crowded church, except the school-boys and the 
 
124 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 small children, were deeply interested auditors. 
 Some sixty years ago the costumes were primitive 
 and picturesque. Most of the males were in 
 decent black, in coats kept carefully in 'kists,' and 
 handed down as heirlooms. But though the parish 
 was below the Highland line, there was a sprink- 
 ling of shepherds in rough homespun, with checked 
 plaids belted across their broad shoulders, and some- 
 times accompanied by the collies which crouched at 
 their feet. Yet the sombre o-loom of the interior 
 was relieved by patches of colour. The old wives 
 were regular attendants at public worship, travel- 
 ling in all weathers from remote farm steadings 
 and cottages, seated on trusses of straw in jolting 
 carts ; but on this extraordinary occasion they had 
 mustered in unusual strength. They were all got 
 up in scarlet cloaks, or roquelaures — much as they 
 loathed the Scarlet Woman of Babylon, they unani- 
 mously copied her attire — and in high white 
 'mutches,' with flowing lappets and black bows. 
 Every woman of them brought a great bunch of 
 mint or thyme, or some strong-smelling herbs, 
 warranted as anti-soporific as the goodman's 
 pungent snuff. Nor was it an unnecessary pre- 
 caution, for with hermetically sealed windows the 
 atmosphere was overpowering. 
 
 It was an extraordinary occasion, for out of a 
 list of half a dozen candidates, five had already 
 preached 'with no approval.' The chance had* 
 now come to the sixth, and it was known that there 
 
OLD SCOTTISH ECCLESIASTICISM 125 
 
 was some romance attaching to the decision. He 
 was a nephew of the late minister, and it was 
 notorious that he had lost his heart to the bonniest 
 of all the belles of the parish. If he got the kirk, 
 they would be married right away ; if he failed to 
 catch the tide of fortune at the flow, the couple 
 must wait — indefinitely. And there was his 
 blushing lady-love — a mistake, perhaps — sheltering 
 under the wing of her practical mother, who would 
 never give her away to a ' stickit ' preacher. 
 
 So the youth, who, like David, was ruddy and 
 well-favoured, had the sympathies of the congrega- 
 tion. Nevertheless, with so much involved, it was 
 a terrible ordeal, and boy as I was, I felt for him. 
 The colour went and came in his pallid cheeks, but 
 he got through the preliminaries tolerably well. 
 The sermon was the big leap, and it was a ques- 
 tion whether he could stay and clear it. All eyes 
 were riveted on him as he rose ; and his fingers 
 trembled nervously as he opened the Bible. ' Eh, 
 man,' I heard the old butler mutter behind me, 
 * half a bottle of port or a mutchkin of Glenlivet 
 would mak' a' the differ now.' It seemed likely, 
 indeed, that for lack of stimulants there would be 
 a regular breakdown ; the candidate was clearly 
 stricken with stage fright. He stammered; he stut- 
 tered out a sentence or two, and then came to a 
 full stop. There were audible ejaculations of ' puir 
 lad,' and the rosy face of the half-betrothed was 
 white as her pocket napkin. The preacher leaned 
 
126 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 forward on the cushion for what might have been 
 half a minute, but seemed hke half an hour. Then 
 he rose, evidently divested of fears and detached 
 from terrestrial surroundings ; the faltering accents 
 swelled into a volume of sublime self-confidence, 
 and for a full hour he poured forth a simple, fervid, 
 eloquent discourse which struck straight home to 
 the hearts of the hearers. There was no formal 
 preparation there ; it was the outpouring of familiar 
 thoughts and profound feeling, in an outburst of 
 inspiration. It was like the dramatic triumph of a 
 prima donna in embryo, if there were neither shouts 
 of applause nor showers of bouquets. The cause 
 was won with the manse and the wife. 
 
 In the far-scattered peopling of a wide Scottish 
 parish, the kirkyard of a Sunday was the gossiping 
 and rallying place. There thoughts were thought 
 and words were spoken which should have been 
 forbidden by austere Sabbatical observance. When 
 the bell began to toll, as the minister was seen 
 emerpfinp- from the manse, the men sat clustered 
 like so many rooks on the low, encircling dykes. 
 Generally, when the long-winded preacher had 
 dismissed them, they were in haste to get home 
 to dine. But on this occasion, though a bitter 
 east wind was soughing through the boughs of 
 the storm-twisted ashes, the male communicants 
 remained in a body to give the pastor-elect an 
 ovation. He had to shake as many horny hands, 
 in proportion, as an American President at a 
 
OLD SCOTTISH ECCLESIASTICISM 127 
 
 reception in the White House. Few have the 
 gifts to take a parish by storm like that ; but 
 thenceforth such a minister, if orthodox, has a 
 free hand ; he is the revered and infallible pope 
 of his own little spiritual dominion. 
 
 When the minister was married and settled in 
 the manse, he might shape his course pretty much 
 as he pleased. The moderates, who swore by 
 patronage and detested popular suffrage, generally 
 took life easily. Their dry discourses were as 
 strictly doctrinal and dogmatical as those of the 
 divines of the Georgian era in England. How 
 well I remember a church whither I was taken on 
 a Sabbath day's drive of four miles by the patron 
 of the parish who disliked the duty of the obser- 
 vance at least as much as myself Both he and 
 that wearisome preacher punctiliously discharged 
 their duties. Most of the scattered flock came 
 from a distance and could not be expected to 
 make two journeys in the day. So after the 
 morning 'diet,' which lasted two mortal hours, 
 wet or dry, we aristocrats withdrew to the vestry, 
 while the mob were turned into the churchyard for 
 a fifteen minutes' interval. By that time the old 
 doctor had got his second wind, and we worked 
 through the second spell of somniferous weariness. 
 No soul could have profited by it, and, I fancy, no 
 one was more conscious of that than the minister. 
 
 More likely than not I had seen him the even- 
 ing before at the mansion house, for he was ever 
 
128 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 welcome there. Dry as a stick in the pulpit, he was 
 merry company out of it, fluent of jest, full of good 
 stories, in which his brethren of the Presbytery 
 were never spared. He was a favourable specimen 
 of that particular Presbytery, which was a scandal 
 to broad Scotland, indirectly doing more than 
 any other to precipitate the lamentable Disruption. 
 But our friend was lenient to the failings of his 
 confreres, though in an unpublished epitaph he 
 wrote for one of them, he broadly stigmatised him 
 as the drunken departed. For himself, he was a 
 merry man within beseeming bounds, with a portly 
 figure, a rubicund face, and a nose that had been 
 coloured by whole casks of carefully matured 
 spirits. Catch that minister making h^vock of 
 his constitution by venturing on new Glenlivet or 
 raw Ferintosh. All the clergy of that fine old 
 crusted school were bon vivants according to their 
 lights and means. As Christopher North remarked 
 of himself and the Ettrick Shepherd, they were 
 men not only of good but of great appetites. We 
 used always to be on the look-out for their sending 
 twice for hotch-potch or the solid Scotch hare soup, 
 by way of launching themselves handsomely on the 
 courses of a heavy dinner. They never pretended 
 to be connoisseurs in wines, though they took 
 kindly to port, and had no objection to occasional 
 champagne. But the best of dinners would have 
 wanted the coping-stone, if they had not topped 
 off with tumblers of whisky toddy before joining 
 
OLD SCOTTISH ECCLESIASTICISM 129 
 
 the ladies. To tell the truth, that toddy as a 
 wind-up was not unwelcome to anybody. As a 
 youth I used to visit in a somewhat stately 
 mansion, where everything ran on rather ultra- 
 luxurious lines, and the native spirit was ordinarily 
 ignored. A neighbouring minister was a frequent 
 guest ; a leader of his party, he had more than 
 once been Moderator of the General Assembly. 
 A man of the world who had mixed much in 
 society, he carried himself with the dignity of an 
 archbishop. In his case an exception was always 
 made. Instead of the coffee the butler brought in 
 the kettle, and it was a sight to see the good man 
 religiously mixing the materials. Every one fol- 
 lowed suit ; even southerners followed his lead ; the 
 claret decanters were swept aside, and sometimes 
 tumbler succeeded to tumbler, till the company 
 adjourned in indecorous hilarity. As for the arch- 
 bishop, he was a seasoned vessel, who, though 
 ardently religious according to his lights, per- 
 petuated the traditions of the cultured Edinburgh 
 school, where one of the most eloquent of moderate 
 divines who married a woman of fortune, kept one 
 of the most hospitable of tables, and was notorious 
 for carrying more claret discreetly than any of the 
 hard-drinking Lords of Session. It was averred 
 that when a company of these jovial and fairly well- 
 beneficed clericals came together to celebrate the 
 close of the biennial 'sacramental occasion,' the 
 merriment was fast and verging on the furious. 
 
 I 
 
I30 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 Michael Scott, who knew his Scotland well, sets 
 Aaron Bang to describe such a ' Gaudeamus ' in 
 Tom Cringle's Log. ' Oh, the fun of such a 
 meeting ! the feast of reason, and the flow of 
 Ferintosh, and the rich stories, ay, fatter even 
 than I would venture on, and the cricket-like 
 chirps of laughter of the probationer, and the loud 
 independent guffaw of the placed minister, and 
 the sly innuendos when our freens got half-fou.' 
 Aaron may have been censorious, if not calum- 
 nious — he was a Catholic — but I know our friend 
 the Archbishop was never more in his element 
 than when filling the chair at some dinner of 
 the tenantry in honour of the occasion, or at the 
 marriage of some parochial laird. With his quiet 
 humour, his native drollery, and the tact with 
 which he blended subtle flattery of the host, with 
 compromising hopes and expectations of all that 
 would be done for the farmers, he was an inimit- 
 able after-dinner speaker. 
 
 The minister made the most of his orlebe and 
 was a shrewd hand at a bargain over corn or 
 cattle. He had seldom much chance of transla- 
 tion to a richer benefice, and when once settled in 
 his parish he had struck his roots deep. He was 
 sure to have a large family, and he was bound to 
 give the boys a good education and a fair start. 
 So he was always set on the augmentation of 
 stipend, for which application was invariably made 
 at decent intervals. As invariably the heritors 
 
OLD SCOTTISH ECCLESIASTICISM 131 
 
 or parochial landowners showed fight, and the 
 question was threshed out in the Teind Court in 
 Edinburgh, Once in the week all the thirteen 
 scarlet-robed judges of Session assembled to 
 decide on the appeals. These interludes came 
 as reliefs to the ordinary solemnity of the civil 
 courts. The ministers were to be seen seated 
 with anxious faces behind their agents and counsel. 
 Facetious pleaders had the pick of the briefs, and 
 all manner of ingenious arguments were adduced 
 to show that the case for an increment was 
 irresistible. As a rule, augmentation worked 
 automatically, for it was indisputable that living 
 expenses were on the rise, and the petitioner 
 went back to his parish with his mind relieved. 
 
 Against those easy-going moderates, the evan- 
 gelicals or high-fliers, as they were called, had been 
 lifting up their testimony from time immemorial. 
 They inherited the traditions of Covenanters and 
 Cameronians ; they resented the supremacy of the 
 Law Courts in matters ecclesiastical, and specially 
 objected to the abuses of patronage. I can 
 remember the convulsions of the Disruption which 
 stirred Scotland to its depths from Berwick to 
 Wick. It had been preceded by the revivals 
 which Mrs. Oliphant dramatically described in 
 one of the best of her Scottish novels. They 
 were somewhat similar, yet in striking contrast to 
 the ' Holy Fairs,' satirised and ridiculed by Burns 
 with too good reason. These Holy Fairs were 
 
132 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 great sacramental gatherings, when the most sacred 
 ordinance was made the excuse for drinking, 
 feasting, flirtations leading to worse things, and 
 every sort of unholy revelry. The revivals, which 
 chiefly ran their course in the Highlands, appealed 
 to the fervour and transcendentalism of the 
 emotional Celtic temperament. Whole congrega- 
 tions were dissolved in tears, or thrown into 
 paroxysms of desponding penitence. They had 
 prepared the way for the Secession, which was 
 precipitated by one or two strong cases of * in- 
 trusion,' when the parishioners barricaded the 
 kirk doors against an incumbent who could only 
 preach to empty pews. 
 
 They may say what they like of the Scot 
 looking closely to sixpences : when great prin- 
 ciples are at stake, he will scatter bank-notes 
 broadcast, and stint himself to keep up his 
 subscriptions year after year. Four hundred 
 and seventy ministers resigned their benefices, 
 following Chalmers from St. Andrew's Church to 
 the Canonmills, trusting their future and that 
 of their families to the liberality of their lay 
 supporters ; nor was their confidence misplaced. 
 I can faintly remember that memorable pro- 
 cession : the black-coated ministers leading the 
 way, followed by an excited train of elders and 
 laymen through the silent and sympathetic crowds. 
 I was taken one evening to the vast, low-roofed 
 hall of Canonmills gas-works, and remember the 
 
OLD SCOTTISH ECCLESIASTICISM 133 
 
 fervour that filled the enthusiastic audience, strain- 
 inof their ears to catch each word from the revered 
 leaders, as they stood forward on the platform. 
 There were Chalmers, Candlish, Cunningham, and 
 many others, each with his own following of ardent 
 admirers, but sinking individual differences in a 
 community of exultant hope and assurance. There 
 were few laymen of social importance, but two 
 stood forward conspicuously : Fox Maule and 
 Mackgill Crichton. I fancy Fox Maule gave 
 the movement his support purely from political 
 motives. Be that as it may, I remember the effect 
 he produced when he addressed ' The Fathers and 
 Brethren,' in calm, impressive, gentlemanly accents 
 — rather foreign to the general conception of his 
 character — the smooth English accent contrasting 
 with the Doric of some of the eloquent divines. 
 
 The urgent question was that of ways and 
 means. To find stipends for five hundred ousted 
 ministers, to build as many churches, manses, and 
 schools was no light matter for a section of a 
 frugal people, who, if they backed out of the affair, 
 could find free accommodation in the parish kirks. 
 If the dissentient clergymen had been carried out 
 on a swell of enthusiasm, they were like to find 
 themselves stranded. But from the first the rank 
 and file came down handsomely ; and when a 
 Scot commits himself, he is slow to go back. I 
 have been told that an uncle of my own set a 
 match to the fire at a meeting of the leaders in 
 
134 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 the first week of the Secession. Plans and strategy 
 were being discussed on general grounds, when 
 this blunt and impetuous naval officer got up and 
 said : ' All that is very well, gentlemen, but surely 
 it can wait : the question is, what each of us is 
 to subscribe.' For himself, though by no means 
 wealthy, he gave liberally with both hands, and he 
 was only one of many. Another memory I have, 
 as the Chevalier Beaujeu remarked in The For- 
 tunes of Nigel. Effective speakers were sent 
 forth to travel the country, and beat up subscrip- 
 tions to the building and sustentation funds. One 
 of the most effective and seductive was Mac- 
 donald of Blairgowrie, who everywhere had the 
 welcome of a St. Paul, and described himself very 
 truly as a red-headed laddie. His gift of persuasion 
 was simply marvellous, and when he spoke of 
 future returns upon spiritual investments, I doubt 
 if Spurgeon could have been in it with him. And, 
 like Spurgeon, he was eminently practical in his 
 methods. I was taken by that relative of mine to 
 a great gathering where he held his audience spell- 
 bound, till having heated them with his own blaz- 
 ing fire, he came abruptly to his point. * Now, 
 what will you contribute weekly to the cause — out 
 of your trade profits — out of your daily earnings ? 
 Think well before you promise, for there must be 
 no drawing back ; it is far better not to vow, than 
 to vow and not to pay ; but if you pledge yourself, 
 put your solemn pledges on paper, if it be only for 
 
OLD SCOTTISH ECCLESIASTICISM 135 
 
 a penny a week.' And straightway through all 
 that crowded hall, there was a crackling of shreds 
 of paper, and a general borrowing of pencils. 
 The remarkable fact was that those vast annual 
 subscriptions steadily rose instead of sagging 
 away. The seceders had no monopoly of piety 
 or benevolence ; but after sketching the typical 
 minister of the moderate persuasion, it is but 
 fair to give this companion picture of the men 
 who, for their convictions, turned out of the manse, 
 at the risk of seeing their children on the parish. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 SOME MILITARY MEMORIES 
 
 From ministers to messes is a sharp transition, 
 but I must own that, as the Americans say, there 
 was a time when I had more truck with the one 
 than with the other. Twice I had nearly taken 
 the shilling : once when I had actually the gift of 
 an appointment to the Indian cavalry in the old 
 days of the Company, and again when I was on 
 the point of being gazetted straight off to a 
 captaincy in a crack militia corps. I threw up 
 the former under irresistible pressure at the 
 eleventh hour ; and the other bit of manipula- 
 tion never came off, for the Lord- Lieutenant of 
 the county declared at the last moment that he 
 could not sign the commission or sanction so gross 
 an abuse. No doubt his Grace was in the right, 
 and I could only growl and resign myself. At 
 any rate, as a Scotsman, I had the consolation of 
 not having ordered uniform and outfit, as the 
 Colonel had warned me to do. My hope had 
 been to find a hundred recruits from the regiment, 
 and on the strength of that public service be 
 transferred to the line. Compelled to renounce 
 dreams of military glory ,^ I fell back in the mean- 
 
 136 
 
SOME MILITARY MEMORIES 137 
 
 time on military society, so that friends and 
 relations used to chaff me about my brother 
 officers. I don't know if the society was im- 
 proving, but I do know it was very agreeable. 
 The long peace had brought into the army men 
 who were eager enough to fight if the chance 
 turned up, but who loved to take life in piping 
 times easily and luxuriously. They rather boasted 
 of being Her Majesty's hard bargains, though 
 really, from the pecuniary point of view, Her 
 Majesty had much the best of it. The newly 
 fledged ensign had the wages of a capable artisan, 
 and was expected not only to live up to his posi- 
 tion, but to launch out incidentally in all manner 
 of extravagances. Of course it was a fellow's own 
 fault if he did not cut his coat according to his 
 cloth. He ought to have known the tone and 
 character of regiments beforehand. Some were 
 well-off but sedate, others were rich and reck- 
 less ; in the line, or the marching regiments, 
 as they were called, some were known to be con- 
 strained to a dignified economy, while others, like 
 the Rifle Brigade and the 60th and the crack 
 Highland corps, were on the borderland between 
 the Guards or the Household Cavalry and the 
 involuntary economists. Anyhow, all were capital 
 fellows, bound together by strong bonds of brother- 
 hood. For which very reason they tried to shunt 
 any man who obviously was unlikely to suit 
 them. They were really inspired by the best of 
 
138 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 feelings in apparently rather ugly episodes, when 
 field officers ignored the bully-ragging by sub- 
 alterns, and the colonel, whose pride was in his 
 regiment, serenely winked at the proceedings. On 
 the other hand, I have known cases where a 
 pauper of the right sort, who had followed an 
 irresistible vocation with but a mere trifle beyond 
 his pay, was lifted along discreetly and in the most 
 delicate fashion. Somehow he found comrades 
 who stuck to him as staunchly as in Kipling's 
 Soldiers Three. Those impecunious ones had 
 nothing for it but to wait for a war or the chances 
 of Indian service, yet sometimes, if over-sensitive, 
 they were cornered in painful positions. One case 
 I remember which touched me nearly. In Edin- 
 burgh I had been hand-in-glove with a lieutenant 
 of the 33rd or 8,2nd, I forget which. He had often 
 dined with me, and I had so many acquaintances in 
 his mess, that I scarcely noted whether an invita- 
 tion ever came from him. The day came when, 
 after a long and rather lonely cruise down the 
 Adriatic, I landed at Corfu. The old regiment was 
 in garrison there, and I climbed the heights to the 
 citadel, to ask for my friend, counting confidently 
 on a bright dinner and a merry evening. We sat 
 and talked and talked, and still no invitation came. 
 It seemed so inevitable, that though I surmised 
 where the hitch was, I was only anxious to get out 
 of the room ; my old acquaintance was blushing to 
 the roots of his carroty hair, and a comrade, who 
 
SOME MILITARY MEMORIES 139 
 
 made a third in the party, was the most embar- 
 rassed of the three. Sympathetic, I walked back 
 to the hotel, past the saluting sentries, to try the 
 Corfu cookery. Later in the evening the comrade 
 looked me up ; he had sneaked out of barracks as 
 if he was scouting in an enemy's country, but he 
 came to explain, for the honour of the regiment. 
 My acquaintance was not only hard up, but in 
 debt; he would not spend a shilling unnecessarily 
 in the circumstances, but in intense humiliation 
 and mortification, he had fairly broken down when 
 I had left. As for myself, my visitor went on, I 
 could not for the world have aggravated his pain 
 by interfering. The little trouble cut both ways, 
 for not to prolong his griefs I shortened my stay 
 at Corfu. 
 
 That, however, was an exceptional case; as a 
 rule the men, though seldom rich, were affluent 
 or in easy circumstances. In the Highland regi- 
 ments especially, which generally then had their 
 depots in Scotland, the majority were members of 
 ancient families, and some were the heirs to chief- 
 taincies and vast tracts of mountain and moorland. 
 They all knew or were known by name to every- 
 body. Whenever there was a county ball or dance, 
 invitations were circulated through the garrisons 
 with offers of hospitable quarters. I fancy the 
 regimental business was carried on somehow, but 
 three-fourths of the fellows seemed always on short 
 leave. The great winter gaieties in Edinburgh 
 
I40 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 came as matters of course ; it was the business of 
 the Scottish military to support them. What 
 crowded carriages there were, from Perth and 
 Stirhng, even from distant Fort George, to the 
 balls of the New Club and the United Service! 
 Other entertainments were arranged for the same 
 week, and how we used to keep it up on interven- 
 ing nights at the Castle or the Cavalry Barracks at 
 Piershill ! Musselburgh Races — a poor affair — or 
 the more aristocratic racing of the annual Cale- 
 donian Meeting were always fair excuses for an 
 outing. And when nothing particular was going- 
 forward, what belated symposia there used to be, 
 in one of the Princes Street hotels, with jest and 
 song and healths with Highland honours, winding 
 up with ' Auld Lang Syne ' and the right good 
 willie-waught ! One of the last and the merriest, 
 like the farewell banquet at Holyrood before 
 Flodden, was when the first regiments were under 
 orders for the Bosphorus, before the Crimean War. 
 After that death was busy ; promotion came fast, 
 and boys barely of age came back as full captains. 
 The song of that evening was ' The Maids of 
 Merry England,' by a gunner; it brought down 
 the room, but he seemed to have the shadow of his 
 impending fate on his brow, and he fell behind his 
 guns at the Alma. 
 
 Stirling used to be a favourite resort of mine in 
 those days. Sometimes I put up at Campbell's 
 Hotel in the High Street, but I preferred the more 
 
SOME MILITARY MEMORIES 141 
 
 ample elbow-room of the hostelries at Bridge of 
 Allan. There was no more delightful headquarters 
 for romantic excursions, when the railway had 
 been opened up the valley of the Teith. Before 
 that, the fun was perhaps even better, when we 
 used to organise driving and fishing expeditions on 
 drag or dogcart to the Trossachs and the lakes 
 and streams in the country of the Lady of the 
 Lake. When I had renounced my dreams of 
 military distinction for the ambition of being Lord 
 President of the Court of Session, I retired one 
 summer to the Dreadnought Hotel at Callander in 
 July, for solitary and severe study of the law. 
 Never did a well-intended scheme come to more 
 dismal failure. Even when alone the seductions 
 of the summer-time were almost irresistible. But 
 when under a gloomy sky, with threatenings of a 
 depressing drizzle, I had settled down to Bell or 
 Erskine, I might be disturbed by the sound of 
 wheels and the discords of a key-bugle. Then 
 would come the tread of feet on the stair, and the 
 inburst of a lot of jovial anglers. * Never was 
 such a day for Loch Ard or the Lake of Menteith.' 
 There was no help for it ; you had to go. Who 
 could resist the sight of the rods ; the knowledge 
 that the carriages were charged with seductive 
 hampers and lashings of good liquor, and above 
 all the certainty of merry companionship ? Suc- 
 cessful or the reverse, those days of trolling and 
 casting on Loch Ard were intensely enjoyable. It 
 
142 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 did not need the so-called rusty broadsword of 
 Rob Roy suspended to a tree before the hostelry 
 to inspire you with the spirit of the novel. As you 
 listened to the crow of the grouse-cock, the wail 
 of the plover, and the whistle of the whaup, you 
 thought of the gloaming when the Bailie and 
 Frank Osbaldistone, cheered by the glimmering 
 lights in the manse of Aberfoyle, were consoled 
 by venison collops, and brandy in the clachan, 
 after being recommended by the anxious landlady 
 to bivouac in the moss-flow. As you revelled in 
 the scenery or played with the vigorous trout, you 
 felt profoundly grateful that times were changed 
 and that you could count on a peaceful dinner at 
 the Dreadnought before drinking the doch-an- 
 dorras with your comrades from the Castle. 
 
 Many a time have I gone for a solitary ramble 
 with my rod up the Allan from * the Bridge ' to 
 Greenloaning in the springtide, and pleasant sport 
 one used to have in those days, though the trout 
 were small. The ' Banks of Allan Water,' famous 
 in Scottish song, were fragrant with the honey- 
 scents of furze and broom, and melodious with the 
 matins and evensongs of the green linties. But 
 the happiest outings I had there were in the depths 
 of bitter winter, when still waters were icebound, 
 and the Allan itself was trickling feebly between 
 snow-crusted banks, through snow-flakes and ice- 
 floes. The Caledonian Curling Club held the 
 great annual contest between North and South 
 
SOME MILITARY MEMORIES 143 
 
 on flooded meadows close to the station of Black- 
 ford. The Black Watch was then quartered in 
 Stirling, and many of the Highlandmen were keen 
 curlers, and had been engaged to play for their 
 local clubs. For days before the weather had 
 been matter of intense anxiety, for if a thaw set 
 in, the matches must be deferred. A good deal 
 of money was staked on the event, though there 
 were always optimists to lay odds on the frost 
 lasting ; nevertheless, at mess the evening before, 
 with a cloudy sky, there was no little searching 
 of spirit. It was joyful news when the man 
 who called you in the morning, announced, like 
 Sam Weller, that the water in the basin was a 
 mask o' ice. Subalterns, who chronically detested 
 the reveille, were on the alert and tumbling into 
 their garments. The curling-stones from Clydes- 
 dale, Ailsa Craig, or Burnock Water, snugly repos- 
 ing in their baskets, were carefully put in charge 
 of the railway guard. We slowed off as we 
 approached Blackford in a block of advancing 
 trains ; and already excitement was being wrought 
 up to fever pitch by the roar of distant voices. 
 Train after train, from south and north, had been 
 disgorging their crowded contents, half-drunk with 
 enthusiasm and prematurely primed with whisky. 
 Cricket is not in it with curling for levelling of 
 ranks and the assertion of meritorious manhood. 
 It was a place of strange meetings. A Cameron 
 or a Macdonald, the crown-prince of some ancient 
 
144 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 patriarchal family, might be seen clasping the horny 
 hand of a blacksmith from Badenoch, or fraternising 
 with some stalwart poacher from Lochaber, notori- 
 ously in the habit of raiding his father's forests. 
 Ranks were ignored and feuds forgotten for the 
 day. If the smith was skip of the rink, his young 
 master obeyed him implicitly. Scores, or I may 
 say hundreds, of games were going forward simul- 
 taneously on the broad sheets of ice ; fires were 
 kindled on the frozen shore, where kettles were 
 boiling and ale was being mulled ; there was no 
 lack of refreshments of all sorts, and the convivi- 
 ality might have been deemed excessive had not 
 the cold and violent exercise toned it down. The 
 dusk was falling, the match had been decided, and 
 the great gathering was breaking up. Then the 
 players resumed their places in the social ranks. 
 The smith made his humble adieux, pocketing 
 gratefully the coins transferred in a handgrip ; the 
 poacher would have sneaked off shamefacedly had 
 he not been recalled to get a ranker's modest 
 commendation for his skipping. And whether 
 vanquished or victorious, had not every one been 
 in good-humour, there might have been free fights, 
 as sanguinary, if not so deadly, as the combat 
 of the clans in the lists at Perth. There were 
 carriages in plenty drawing up, but what were 
 they among so many ? How the ruck got away 
 before nightfall on those occasions I never under- 
 stood — the laggards, I fancy, must have lain out 
 
SOME MILITARY MEMORIES 145 
 
 in their wraps or plaids — but I know that once I 
 went back to Stirling on the knees of a drover in 
 a third-class carriage, in an atmosphere reeking of 
 spirits, foul tobacco, and perspiration ; and on 
 another occasion I travelled to Edinburgh on the 
 engine, roasting and freezing alternately as I 
 changed sides before the furnace. 
 
 Applications for leave thickened at the approach 
 of the shooting season ; for the most part they 
 were generously granted by a sympathetic com- 
 manding officer, and then, I imagine, the regimental 
 duties devolved to a great extent on the admirable 
 non-commissioned officers, for the ranks were 
 stiffened with veterans. Opportunities for sport 
 were innumerable, and invitations were pressing. 
 There were comrades who had forests in Badenoch 
 or moors on Deeside or in Lochaber ; some of 
 them hailed from the wilds of Sutherland or the 
 hills of misty Skye. And the unfortunates who 
 were doomed to stagnate on garrison duty, looked 
 forward enviously to the arrival of local journals 
 recording the feats of their friends in the opening 
 days of the season. It was poor consolation that 
 disappointment was sweetened by the arrival of 
 boxes of game from all quarters, till even sergeants 
 and corporals began to sicken of the savoury meat 
 as the Israelites wearied of the quails in the 
 wilderness. Later in the season, hands were 
 dealt out more indiscriminately and honours were 
 divided. From social considerations the garrison 
 
T46 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 guns were always in request, for ' the Army ' was 
 quite as popular in Scotland with marriageable 
 maidens and their mothers as in Galway or Kerry. 
 A wagonette crowded fore and aft, loaded with 
 gun-cases and portmanteaus, would rattle up to the 
 door, when the long day would begin with an 
 elaborate second breakfast. The sport might be 
 good or indifferent, but the evening was sure to be 
 a success. The host produced his oldest claret, 
 and where could one get such Bordeaux as in 
 those Scottish cellars of the olden time ? It was 
 late ere the bell was rung for coffee, and then the 
 rooms had been cleared for the dance. If any of 
 the soldiers had to go back for morning parade, 
 they were handsomely launched on the homeward 
 drive with libations of old cognac or mellowed 
 whisky from the crested cut-crystal decanters on 
 the side-table. 
 
 There were no better companions than the 
 scientists of the scientific corps, and I ought to 
 know. The engineers on duty, and the officers 
 charged with surveillance of the survey, had their 
 headquarters in Edinburgh, with no barracks, 
 and they had to find billets for themselves. For 
 several years I kept house with three of them ; the 
 fifth of the party was an artilleryman in the north 
 on the recruiting service. It may be understood 
 what manner of men they were when I say, that 
 of the three engineers, not the least promising 
 went off prematurely ; that both the others died 
 
SOME MILITARY MEMORIES 147 
 
 generals and K.C.B.'s, and that one of them had 
 been Inspector-General of Fortifications. In 'the 
 Diggings,' as they were familiarly called, we kept 
 open house, feasting in an off-hand way, and being 
 feasted in turn by the various regiments. When 
 'at Home,' of an evening, there was always whist, 
 with supper on the sideboard. Our opposite 
 neighbours used to orumble at unseasonable 
 hours, though admitting there were compensations, 
 for the street was safe from nocturnal burglary, 
 and the services of the police could be dispensed 
 with. James Payn, who became one of my best 
 friends, was a constant guest at our whist table ; 
 he was then editing Chambers s Journal, and 
 always grumbling good-humouredly, like Louis 
 Stevenson, at the winds from the Firth, the eternal 
 sea-fog, and the drift of the whirling dust pillars 
 along Princes Street, like so many ' dervishes of 
 the desert.' 
 
 The engineers were men of culture, with a 
 literary turn that attracted Payn. They had a 
 talent for drawing as well as for triangulation ; 
 they were devoted to shooting and fishing, and 
 many a delightful ramble I have had with them, as 
 we roamed the length and breadth of Scotland. 
 Often we found free quarters in some pleasant 
 house where they were known and welcomed ; more 
 often, when duty led them into the wilderness, we 
 tried the accommodation of Highland inns, or of 
 rough hostelries far away from tourists' tracks on 
 
148 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 the Borders, or in the soHtudes of the south-west, 
 where the hill-folk, hunted down by Claverhouse 
 or Grierson, used to hide themselves in dens and 
 caves, lulled to sleep by the roar of such a 
 cataract as masked the lurking-place of Balfour of 
 Burleigh. Everywhere were scenes for the brush 
 or pencil, and streams with swift rushes and 
 swirling waters, where you needed ask no per- 
 mission to fish. We had evenings in the classical 
 Tibby Shells, on ' lone St. Mary's Loch,' redolent 
 of memories of the Shepherd and the Nodes, and 
 there we once forgathered with Russel of the 
 Scotsman, who perpetuated the traditions of North 
 and Tickler. A man so merry within the limits of 
 becoming mirth, with such readiness of repartee, 
 with so rich a fund of jest and anecdote, it has 
 seldom been my fate to meet. I remember when 
 arriving late at Elvanfoot, among the bleakest of 
 the bare Lanarkshire hills, some sheep-fair being 
 on in the neighbourhood, we were invited to take 
 halves of the beds, already occupied by a couple 
 of Dandie Dinmonts. That we declined, and as 
 our shakedowns were not specially tempting, we 
 prolonged the sitting after a solid supper. My 
 friend, who was of a jovial temperament, and had 
 a fine voice, struck up ' Jock o' Hazeldean.' The 
 melody drew ; a farmer stumbled into the room, 
 insisting on joining in a stentorian chorus. The 
 other man followed, charmed at finding himself in 
 good company, declared he was a first-class hand 
 
SOME MILITARY MEMORIES 149 
 
 at a bowl of punch, and forthwith roused the land- 
 lady to fetch the materials. With a feeble protest, 
 ' Siccan a man as you I never saw,' she complied, 
 and not only produced the spirits and sugar, but 
 her husband. The upshot was, that the Borderers 
 never went back to bed ; and that we sought our 
 couches on the floor about the time we should 
 have been getting up for breakfast. It reminded us 
 of Scott's experiences among his Border hills, when, 
 as Shortreed phrased it, 'he was making himself.' 
 
 In autumn the cuisine in the small Highland 
 inns, if slightly semi-barbaric, was in its way irre- 
 proachable. If you took them by surprise, you 
 might have to rough it on eggs and bacon, or a 
 chicken, hunted down and ' brandered ' off-hand as 
 in an Indian bungalow. But give them notice in 
 the morning before going out with rod and sketch- 
 book, and there was no cause for complaint. 
 Hotch-potch, or game soup, trout or salmon, 
 grouse, and cranberries and cream was the 
 invariable menu, and the grouse was generally 
 forthcoming, whether poached or honestly pur- 
 chased. On that score, like the Dominie when he 
 dipped into Meg Merrilees' cauldron, we had no 
 conscientious qualms. By the way, at Aviemore, 
 and in some of the mountain villages near the 
 sources of the Spey and Don, we varied the 
 cranberries with averns, which are even more 
 delectable. It is a mountain berry, only growing 
 in the loftiest corries, and as little known as the 
 
I50 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 mangasteen even in the Scottish lowlands. There 
 were inns that had their specialties, and kept 
 up immemorial customs, where they invariably 
 speeded the parting guest with a beaker of Athol 
 Brose, a diabolically deleterious mixture, of which 
 the main ingredients are whisky and honey. 
 Johnson praised it once — theoretically — when 
 comparing it with the Cornish ' mahogany,' which 
 is a compound of gin and molasses. He was safe 
 in asserting that it must be better, because the 
 materials were better, which was not saying much. 
 Sometimes the officers' visit would be to the 
 little encampment, in some sheltered glen on the 
 high slopes of such mountains as Ben Nevis or 
 Ben Macdhui. The white bell tents, and the 
 bright scarlet made a homelike show in these 
 blustering solitudes, but once or twice, hesitating 
 to bivouac in cramped quarters, we sought shelter 
 in a convenient shepherd's shealing, where we 
 were assured of hospitable welcome ; the embar- 
 rassment was that you caused an infinity of trouble, 
 though it was evident enough that the visit was a 
 pride and pleasure. The good wife welcomed the 
 unwonted stir, and if the shepherd, used to solitude 
 and the society of his dogs, seemed somewhat 
 sullen of mood, it was manner rather than tempera- 
 ment. He thirsted for knowledge of the news of 
 the day, and your talk with a gift of the latest of 
 the county journals was an even more effectual 
 open sesame to his heart than the tobacco pouch or 
 
SOME MILITARY MEMORIES 151 
 
 cigar case. The supper was somewhat of a trial ; 
 not that there was any shortcoming, for there were 
 eggs and bacon, butter and cheese, and bannocks 
 from the griddle. But as you were carrying no 
 gun, you brought no game, and the ' braxie,' 
 produced as the plat de resistance, was a dish to 
 scunner at. It was mutton which had come to an 
 untimely end — probably found drowned in the 
 burn, after several days' saturation. Out of polite- 
 ness you were bound to taste, and even seem to 
 enjoy it; yet like the snails served to the Scotch 
 
 philosophers, Black and Ferguson, it tasted 'd d 
 
 green,' and reminded one of the diabolical mess 
 served to Curzon of the Levant monasteries by the 
 Albanian abbot, which courtesy compelled him 
 to attempt. The kettle was swinging from the 
 hook over the peat fire, and sociability constrained 
 us to sip more toddy than we cared for, considering 
 the fiery quality of the raw spirit, but pleasanter or 
 more informing chat on all matters connected with 
 sheep-farming, wild winter tales and mountain 
 superstitions, I never wish to indulge in. There 
 were snowy sheets awaiting us, if we cared to use 
 them, but not being fanatical entomologists, these 
 we had learned to distrust. There were heather 
 shoots and trusses of mountain hay in the loft 
 above the outhouse, and no wearied man needed 
 desire a more fragrant couch. Up betimes, after 
 a plunge in the nearest pool, the shepherd gave us 
 a long convoy on our next day's 'travel.' The 
 
152 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 worst of it was, you could only repay him with 
 a handshake, and you had no chance, as after using 
 or abusing the hospitality of the Great St. Bernard, 
 of slipping gold into a money-box behind his back. 
 Talking of dining reminds me of the old messes. 
 Much of the change must be in oneself, from days 
 when you had no liver, never dreamed of indiges- 
 tion or insomnia, and when the spirits were ever 
 ready to rise to boiling-point. But it does strike 
 me that much of the old joviality is gone. Our 
 officers may be more scientific, but they are less 
 companionable and convivial. In those piping 
 times of peace they were driven with loose reins, 
 and there were no sumptuary restrictions. It was 
 not quite as Lever described things in the West 
 Cork militia, where every man backed his comrade's 
 bills to any extent, till they actually became waste- 
 paper with the discounting fraternity ; but under 
 the purchasing system there was a flow of cash, and 
 the mess was managed with large-minded liberality. 
 Guest nights were frequent, apparently with carte 
 blanche in the way of invitations, and one regiment 
 never missed an occasion of giving the other that 
 came as relief a magnificent reception. In the 
 corps that prided themselves on going the pace, 
 the monthly wine bills must have been something 
 portentous. If a guest of the old time were dining 
 at a modern mess, two changes would strike him 
 particularly. Then in the regiments of foot all the 
 faces were clean-shaven ; the razor only went out 
 
SOME MILITARY MEMORIES 153 
 
 with the Crimean War and the winters on the 
 storm-swept Chersonese plateau. Then the friendly- 
 fashion of hobnobbing over the wine-glasses was in 
 full force, and if you were bidden to the feast by a 
 popular officer, before the entrees had made way for 
 the joints, you had dropped into a circle of cordial 
 acquaintances. I remember how greatly I felt 
 flattered as a raw youth, when as the mess waiter 
 touched me on the shoulder and whispered, I saw 
 the grave colonel bowing and smiling. In due 
 course subalterns and captains followed suit, and 
 the general interchange of civilities made you free 
 of the anteroom, when you adjourned for cigars, 
 brandy and sodas, and limited or unlimited loo. 
 
 Much of the regimental money went for music, 
 and though personally I think music a nuisance 
 during dinner and fatal to pleasant talk, the band 
 striking up in the anteroom gave a festal solemnity 
 to the guest nights. Even unmelodious souls 
 prided themselves on the music, professing to be 
 critical, as the band was tending towards wood, or 
 brass, or string. One thing I always did find 
 overpowering, and that was the march of half a 
 dozen pipers round the Highland mess table. The 
 most characteristic part of the Celtic entertainment 
 was the silver-bound quaichs of old whisky which 
 circulated simultaneously, and it was a gladsome 
 moment when the pipe-major, or whatever he was 
 called, tossed off a scallop-shell at the president's 
 elbow, saluted, and retired. But the devotion of 
 
154 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 the Celt to the bagpipe is a sentiment and a passion. 
 I have heard it with most complacency in foreign 
 stations, when the wail of the pipes playing 
 * Lochaber no more ' and the pathetic melodies 
 of the pipers' native glens brought on a passing 
 touch of homesickness. Merely a passing touch, 
 for there were no more exhilarating interludes in a 
 foreign tour than those when in the sunny Medi- 
 terranean you found yourself back again in Scotland 
 or old England. Nowhere is the Briton more 
 uncompromisingly British ; nowhere do you more 
 gratefully appreciate the power of the ocean empire. 
 Never shall I forget the December afternoon, 
 when, after the long ride from Algesiras, we 
 spurred our fagged hacks to a canter to pass 
 Gibraltar gates before gunfire. The smart sentry 
 in scarlet, standing severely to attention, was such 
 a striking contrast to the slouching Spaniard, even 
 when mounting guard before the royal palace at 
 Madrid. When we drew bridle before the Casino 
 Hotel, the square-shouldered corporals and ser- 
 geants, with the stripes of their ranks on their arms, 
 moved like so many princes among the mixed 
 rabble of Turks, heretics, and infidels, Berbers, 
 Jews, and Scorpions of the Rock. But it must be 
 confessed they showed some lack of adaptation, 
 and carried their northern habits along with them. 
 In the public room on the rez de chaussde, with 
 its sanded floor, was an overpowering odour of 
 London porter and strong Edinburgh ale. Had 
 
SOME MILITARY MEMORIES 155 
 
 we come in summer it would have been exactly 
 the same, and so it was in all the Mediterranean 
 garrisons. Disapproving of such suicidal practices, 
 nevertheless, I can sympathise. One spring I 
 had taken a coasting steamer from the Isthmus 
 down the Gulf of Corinth. We were bound for the 
 Ionian Isles, touching at all intermediate ports. 
 The weather was already scorching, the water in 
 the carafes was lukewarm, and the only other 
 liquor on board was the native Greek wine, im- 
 pregnated with resin, and provocative of thirst. 
 The sole chance I had of quenching that thirst 
 satisfactorily was in a cafe at Patras, where ice was 
 forthcoming, and where I robbed an orchard to fill 
 my handkerchief with sour apples. When Zante 
 was sighted, I could appreciate the sufferings of 
 the adventurers who go fossicking for diamonds in 
 Khama's Thirstland. Tumbling out upon the pier, 
 I rushed into the arms of a British sergeant, and 
 implored him to take me to the best liquor in the 
 nearest tavern. And never shall I forget those 
 draughts of stout, when I emptied two tankards 
 in quick succession. The only case to parallel it 
 was after walking from the Great St. Bernard to 
 Aosta beneath the glowing chalk cliffs, when sub- 
 siding into a bath, with a salver of luscious figs, 
 I disposed of as many bottles of Asti Spumante. 
 
 And I am bound to say the commissioned officers 
 in their degree kept the non-commissioned and the 
 rank and file in countenance. Next day I shifted 
 
156 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 quarters from the Casino Hotel to barracks on the 
 heights, where, sorely against the wishes of kindly 
 entertainers, I insisted on being made an honorary 
 member of the mess. A merrier set of fellows, 
 with a more brotherly esprit de corps, I never wish 
 to meet. It was comparatively cool Christmastide, 
 when one might take liberties ; and the essential 
 merits of the regimental cellar were undeniable. 
 But the staple liquor was fiery sherry, and it could 
 not be said there was not a headache in a hogshead 
 of it, though it only wanted maturing and a less 
 tropical climate to make it delectable. In the 
 Ionian Isles it was otherwise, for there the expa- 
 triated garrison did not feel bound to patronise the 
 vintages of the country. Even the classical Chian 
 is a tradition of the past, and Greek vintages mean 
 colic, diarrhoea, or dysentery. The wines, like the 
 cognac, came from France ; they harmonised with 
 the softness of a climate always tempered by fresh 
 sea-breezes. Many an old soldier lamented the 
 day when Mr. Gladstone handed those Edens over 
 to the Hellenes. I remember trying my influence 
 with Delane of the Times, when the proposal was 
 broached, saying that the Premier's next move 
 might be the cession of Gibraltar. He only said 
 that the Minister who gave up Gibraltar should be 
 hanged, and took no action in the matter. There 
 was nothing more jolly than those mess nights in 
 the Isles of Greece ; and though I have mentioned 
 a day when I went without a mess dinner at Corfu, 
 
SOME MILITARY MEMORIES 157 
 
 I was more fortunate on other occasions. Zante 
 had its fascinations, but Cephalonia was charming. 
 There was generally a mixed party at mess, and 
 the talk ran on other subjects than pipeclay. 
 Yachts or Her Majesty's ships were always coming 
 into harbour. Men were arranging shooting trips 
 to the Albanian coast, or talking over big bags and 
 sensational adventures among shepherds, wilder 
 than their own savage sheep-dogs, with whom 
 nevertheless they had fraternised and drilled into 
 tolerable beaters. There was a captain of a cruiser, 
 now a distino^uished admiral and a K.C.B., aoainst 
 whom I was always running up, at home and abroad. 
 Fond of his jokes, he added a pang to my last fare- 
 well to Cephalonia. The Austrian Lloyd's boat, 
 on which I had embarked, was leisurely slipping 
 her moorings, when he steamed into the harbour 
 and ranged up alongside. Standing on the paddle- 
 box and catching sight of me, he bolted below, to 
 rush up again and shake a grinning boar's head 
 in my face, and shout out a fabulous total of his 
 slaughter of snipe and cocks. 
 
 For myself, I always detested London in the 
 season, and had I had unlimited means and the entry 
 to the most select circles, should still have preferred 
 the country or the Continent. But if you were in 
 town, I knew no more pleasant invitation than that 
 to the Guards' mess in St. James's Palace. It was 
 little that the cuisine was as unexceptionable as the 
 wines. But all the Guards were more or less men 
 
158 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 of the world, and it was amusing to see the latest- 
 joined subaltern, who had probably graduated at 
 Eton or Harrow, striving, not unsuccessfully, to ape 
 the airs and talk of the seniors. They might not 
 be scientific, and assuredly they were not pedantic, 
 but they had the light culture that sits gracefully on 
 the accomplished soldier, and the tact that puts the 
 stranger guest on easy terms with himself, though he 
 may know few of their intimates and miss many of the 
 allusions. Moreover, he was never absolutely alone, 
 for a breath from a somewhat different society came 
 with the officers on duty who had strolled through 
 the Park from the Horse Guards. For dining 
 with the Life Guards in their own barracks, you 
 were conscious of a change of tone. You met 
 Rawdon Crawley and Captain Macmurdo. The 
 horse, in one shape or another, was a staple subject 
 of talk ; familiars of Tattersall's, they had the odds 
 on the favourites at their fingers' ends ; and with 
 one eye on the Shires and the other on the livery 
 stables, were ever open to a deal or a bet. They 
 were undeniable authorities on the personel of the 
 opera, the theatre, and the ballet ; but long years 
 were to elapse before the music-hall or polo came 
 into fashion, so they missed some engrossing topics 
 of latter-day talk. Capital company they were, all 
 the same, especially outside one of their drags at 
 a race-meeting, though dangerous over unlimited 
 loo in the small-hours, with the flush of champagne- 
 cup and curagoa punch. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 SOME FLUTTERS ON THE STOCK EXCHANGE 
 
 When I went eastward to the India House or the 
 P. and O. offices, I was on pleasure bent : on my 
 early visits to the Stock Exchange I combined 
 business with pleasure, or at least with sensation. 
 I know no better amusement than winning steadily, 
 but it is long since I have renounced speculation, 
 especially dabbling in new companies. More than 
 I ever gained, they got out of me, and notwith- 
 standing the recent decline, I am still convinced 
 there is nothing like consols — if you can only afford 
 enough of them. Very probably I should never 
 have gambled if I had not gained heavily at the 
 ofo-off. It was in this wise. I had a dozen or so 
 of shares in the Union Bank of Scotland, when 
 they fell ominously in a wild burst of panic. With 
 all sorts of sinister rumours in the air, it seemed 
 even betting on a smash. I did not fancy throwing 
 my shares away, and if I held, the liability was 
 unlimited — at least so far as my small resources 
 went. Had I dreamed then of turning my talents to 
 letters, I might have written an intensely realistic 
 novel on the terrors of two horribly anxious days, 
 though, by the way, the author of John Halifax, 
 
 159 
 
i6o DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 Gentleman, had just then anticipated me. Then 
 I made up my mind to 'go a mucker.' In spite of 
 the solemn warnings of my broker, the only man in 
 my confidence, I realised all the securities I possessed 
 and put them into Union Bank shares. I was brought 
 to that momentous decision by a chance meeting 
 with an elderly baronet, a safe man and a sleeping- 
 partner in the bank. He said it would be all 
 right, and his smile was more reassuring than his 
 words. He told me, moreover, that while the 
 cashiers were facing the run and paying off 
 anxious depositors, the rival Edinburgh establish- 
 ments were sending in notes and coin by the back 
 door. After all, I have some searchings of heart 
 now, as to the strict honesty of my proceedings. 
 True, if the bank went, I should be beggared my- 
 self, but that was no excuse for courting liabilities 
 I could not have met. Be that as it may, I did it, 
 and with brilliant results. The shares went up, 
 rather faster than they had gone down, and on 
 the strength of the relief and the stroke of good 
 fortune, I straightway started on a foreign trip. 
 
 Some of the shares were sold to finance myself, 
 and I should have done better had I parted with 
 more, or stayed at home to watch the market. 
 There was one of those reactions, which the 
 experienced speculator would have expected. 
 Nevertheless, on my way through London, the 
 Tempter sent a second turn of luck. I dined with 
 a clever friend, an engineer on Indian Irrigation 
 
THE STOCK EXCHANGE i6i 
 
 works. He swore by the Madras Irrigation, and 
 induced me to buy lOO shares, a pound paid up, at 
 a trifling premium. I have seldom enjoyed the Eng- 
 Hsh papers more than on that tour, which carried 
 me by easy stages from Sicily to Trieste and thence 
 down the Dalmatian coast to the Ionian Islands. 
 Whenever it was my luck to open a Times, those 
 shares were going up like mercury in the dog-days. 
 We garrisoned the islands then, and the night 
 I dined with the forces in Cephalonia, the shares 
 were quoted at ^5 or £6. It must be admitted 
 it was doing fairly well to quintuple capital in 
 six weeks or so, and so I was led to back East India 
 Irrigations, which were by no means a success. 
 
 Then my relations began with Throgmorton 
 Street and the old Stock Exchange. I was for- 
 tunate in an introduction to one of the most genial, 
 capable, and fatherly of brokers, who afterwards 
 established his claim to a Scottish peerage. He 
 stuck chiefly to the American market ; amassed a 
 solid fortune, and the world seemed to go wondrous 
 well with him. Always smiling, never in a flurry, 
 he would give any amount of consideration to your 
 miserable trivialities. Had I listened to him, I 
 should seldom have burned my fingers, and should 
 never have made the coups which tempt one to go 
 on gambling. We hear of nothing now but stag- 
 nation on the Stock Exchange, and of packs of 
 famished wolves reduced to worrying each other. 
 Those were the golden days when prosperity was 
 
 L 
 
i62 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 advancing by leaps and bounds, and when the 
 promotion of companies was the sure road to 
 moneymaking ; if you only cut clear of the schemes 
 in time. Everything went automatically to a 
 premium, and systematic stagging was a profitable 
 business. It may be much the same now; I am 
 sure I don't know ; but I remember then that one 
 used to be deafened at the swing-doors by the roar 
 of boisterous business from the House. It used 
 always to be a marvel to me, when your broker's 
 name was shouted through the confusion how 
 promptly he responded. My friend always came 
 out beaming, and not infrequently afterwards, 
 when he answered the summons, I was in anxiety 
 or sore tribulation. Speculation in stocks is like 
 rouge et noir, for even in normal circumstances the 
 odds must be against the player. Then you 
 waited impatiently while he went in again, and 
 came back to report on the trend of the market. 
 You had to make up your mind at a few seconds' 
 notice, whether you would sell or hold. Some- 
 times you had plunged into troubled water, and 
 after wading waist deep were up to the chin. 
 Bombay had been booming during the American 
 Civil War ; speculators made great fortunes in 
 Indian cotton ; the old Indian Banks paying 
 fabulous dividends were at fancy prices, and new 
 competitors underselling them, were doing a roaring 
 trade. Then when a pacified America began to 
 grow cotton for export again, the bubble of that 
 
THE STOCK EXCHANGE 163 
 
 inflated business was pricked. It was almost an 
 oriental version of the collapse of the South Sea 
 scheme. The shares of the Chartered Mercan- 
 tile had fallen from — I think — about 120 to some- 
 thing over 45. I believed the Bank was sound ; 
 thought I saw my chance, and bought. Sadly- 
 disappointed as to elasticity and recuperative 
 power, I saw the shares declining with dear 
 money and a high Bank rate. The experienced 
 manager of the Union of Scotland had warned me 
 that those Indian Banks had breakers ahead, but 
 like a fool I did not cut a trifling loss and sell. I 
 never regretted it more than after Black Monday, 
 when Overend and Gurneys put up their shutters. 
 The news of the panic came to Edinburgh with 
 a Tuesday's Courant; I walked the Parliament 
 House that day in a worry, and as professional 
 engagements were not engrossing, took the night 
 train to town. The morning papers I bought at 
 Newcastle, York, etc., were by no means exhilar- 
 ating. Each speculative share I held seemed to 
 be tossing in a bubbling caldron, with strong 
 tendencies to settle to the bottom. My cheery 
 broker, though depressed, was still optimistic, 
 recommending me to see it out and wait for 
 developments. That was my own feeling, and I 
 tried to divert my mind, but I never had a worse 
 time at the pleasant old Tavistock : the Times 
 played the mischief with one's appetite for break- 
 fast, and the latest edition of the Globe spoiled 
 
i64 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 digestion for dinner. Next evening, going down 
 to dine at Norwood, I had lively company in the 
 train. A knot of spruce young stockbrokers were 
 talking shop, with the keen zest of the onlooker 
 who has no personal stake on the upshot. ' The 
 Indian Banks had it pretty hot to-day, but nothing 
 to what will come off to-morrow.' They were true 
 prophets. At that time Mr. Leeson of York had 
 not introduced his Bank Act, and the bears 
 might sell any number of shares, without giving 
 the numbers as vouchers for ownership. The new 
 Bombay Banks, whose shares had gone to a high 
 premium on issue, were in the depths : distracted 
 holders were ready to sacrifice their property on any 
 terms which might relieve them of liability. ' If 
 you care for a flutter,' said my broker's clerk play- 
 fully, 'you may buy Hindustans at 4.' I fancy 
 they had been at 30 a few days before. I smiled 
 grimly, for I did not care at that moment to 
 increase my small holdings in Indian banks. My 
 own Chartered Mercantiles were falling fast, and 
 the Oriental, which was regarded by Anglo- Indians 
 as a trifle more stable than the Old Lady in 
 Threadneedle Street, was shaking on its solid foun- 
 dations. That is the time when a man must come 
 to swift decision upon momentous issues. I did 
 not sell Mercantiles. I held in the faith that the 
 weeding of weak competitors would send them up 
 to something approaching the former fancy price. 
 That blissful day never arrived, for with the close 
 
THE STOCK EXCHANGE 165 
 
 of the Civil War, the Southern States were again 
 shipping full cargoes to Liverpool ; and I had 
 leisure to meditate on the sage warning of the 
 Scottish banker. Finally, losing patience I con- 
 sulted with the financial expert who then edited the 
 Times City Article, as to changing my investment 
 to the Oriental. Rather to my surprise, he strongly 
 dissuaded me, recommending me, if I would continue 
 to play on the same colour, to put my money on the 
 Chartered of India and Australia. I should have 
 done well had I taken that advice. But I did cut 
 the Mercantile, which went sagging away, till it died 
 a natural death, to be reconstructed ; and I did not 
 go into the Oriental, which burst up soon after, 
 carrying desolation to Anglo-Indian investors, with 
 a frightful smashing of rich civilians' nest eggs. 
 
 There is no denying that banks, with their un- 
 called liabilities, are risky. If one could afford 
 consols it would be well to steer clear of them, 
 but at least they give you excitement and a long 
 run for your money, and there are times when 
 your confidence has its reward. With stakes in 
 the two great Anglo-Australian Banks, I ran the 
 whole gamut of sharp sensations in the crisis of 
 the Australian panic. There were storm signals 
 which one ought to have heeded, — the difficulties 
 of some small establishments at Melbourne, and 
 the passing of the dividend in a big ironmongery 
 store in which I had an interest, which had paid 
 15 per cent, when the city was booming. The 
 
i66 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 storm burst suddenly after all, and there was little 
 time to strike or shorten sail, without heart- 
 rending sacrifices of spars and canvas. Each 
 morning came news of banks in good credit, stop- 
 ping payment and going in for convenient ' re- 
 construction.' Things culminated one day when 
 I saw in the morning paper the collapse of 
 three of the best ; I hurried off to my banker in the 
 city, who said that when the Commercial of Sydney 
 had closed its doors — a panic-stricken act of pre- 
 cipitate folly — he could answer for nothing. He 
 had been so sceptical that he had sent a clerk 
 to verify the fact, and theretofore he had always 
 strongly advocated my holding. I walked across 
 to take counsel with my friend, the editor of the 
 great city journal, and he counselled in the same 
 hesitating key. But he took me across the way 
 to the Union of London, where they expressed 
 the strongest confidence that my special Banks 
 must pull through. A notable financial authority 
 spoke in similar fashion, saying that the names 
 on the Boards were sufficient guarantee for good 
 backing, and that if the Bank of England did not 
 come ostensibly to the rescue, yet it must lend 
 efficient assistance underhand. In fact, I fussed as 
 much as if I had millions at hazard, but then it was 
 matter of material import to me, and in this case I 
 did worry the trouble through, with results that 
 have yearly been becoming more satisfactory. 
 After all, as Mr. Squeers said of threshing a boy 
 
THE STOCK EXCHANGE 167 
 
 in a cab, there is a pleasure in it too, so long as 
 you do not actually come to grief. The fun of a 
 race is soon over, when your fancy wins or is 
 beaten. In stock broking convulsions, the excite- 
 ment, sometimes tending towards agony, is long 
 drawn out, but there are the blissful moments of 
 temporary relief, when you read encouraging para- 
 graphs in the city articles, and if you shoot the 
 rapids and float off in smooth water, that sense of 
 relief is simply paradisiacal. 
 
 Banks are chancy speculations at the best, but 
 they are not in it with juvenile finance companies. 
 Not even when you stand in with the promoters 
 and are brought in on the ground-floor. When 
 the 'House at the Corner' was converted into a 
 limited company, I believe I might have had an 
 allotment of a few original shares, under promise 
 of not realising for the premium. But a wise old 
 partner who had been bought out, gave me a 
 glance over a glass of port, and I forbore. How- 
 ever, the mania of financing everything had set in ; 
 anything floated by such experts as Albert Grant 
 went up like a balloon, and it was hard to resist the 
 temptation of venturing. I tried my luck with 
 the London Financial, launched with an un- 
 impeachable Board under the presidency of an 
 ex-chairman of the Hudson Bay Company. Fortun- 
 ately for me, the chairman's promise of an allotment 
 was broken, for the London Financial followed 
 Overend and Gurneys to Basinghall Street. All 
 
i68 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 the same that speculative fever was catching, and I 
 was bound to burn my fingers. I had been in the 
 East ; I had talked to attaches, consuls, and 
 merchants ; I had read various instructive works 
 on Turkey ; I had great faith in the resources and 
 capabilities of the Ottoman Empire, if developed 
 by British capital and enterprise. So the ' Ottoman 
 Financial Association ' seemed the very thing for 
 my money. As I know now by melancholy ex- 
 perience, I ought to have cried off, and sold, when 
 they gave me all the shares I wrote for. But it 
 was my Kismet to embark on that rotten craft, 
 and I shipped with some show of reason. A year 
 or two before I had bought a small lot of Ottoman 
 Bank Shares at ^^lo — 'entirely your own idea,' as 
 my banker said patronisingly — and had sold at over 
 ^20. I bought in again, by the way, to scorch 
 myself severely when Turkey repudiated. But to 
 go back to the present venture, I had discussed 
 Turkey as an inviting field of enterprise with 
 the Hon. Thomas Bruce, then chairman of the 
 Ottoman Bank. He was sanguine also, and 
 meant to work for Turkish reg'eneration and good 
 dividends to his shareholders, but on a large scale 
 by deliberate methods, and with the powerful 
 machinery of his influential corporation. Had I con- 
 sulted him as to the Ottoman Financial, he would 
 have laughed its inception to scorn. There were 
 decent English names on the direction, but the 
 majority were Greek, which in itself should have 
 
THE STOCK EXCHANGE 169 
 
 made me distrustful. The only Turkish schemes 
 we financed were some powder mills on the 
 Bosphorus, which no company would insure on 
 any terms. They did not blow up, but of course 
 they collapsed. We lent and lost more of our 
 money in a shady London Bank, and of all things 
 in the world, we temporarily invested any super- 
 fluous cash in Swedish forests and iron mines 
 which never paid a shilling. I presume the 
 Articles of Association — which I never saw — were 
 loosely drawn, or the directors dared not have 
 indulged in such pranks. So long as the boom was 
 on, the shares kept about par, and we had one or 
 two dividends. Then they weakened, then they 
 sunk, and one day I hurried eastward in a hansom, 
 resolved to sell out at any price. By hard luck 
 there was an announcement that morning that 
 three new directors had strengthened the board ; 
 the shares had shot up, and so i held on. 
 
 Naturally the crash came in course, when in place 
 of a dividend there was a heavy call. I went to 
 the office and interviewed the obsequious secre- 
 tary, with a Simian forehead, diamond studs, and 
 gold-linked shirt-cuffs turned back to the elbow. 
 The mere sight of the man should have been 
 a warning, but he solemnly assured me before 
 a cloud of clerk-witnesses, that the call would 
 yield immediate returns, and that the company 
 possessed a most valuable property. Next week 
 it was in liquidation, and for the first and last time 
 
I70 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 I attended a company meeting. It appeared that 
 the Articles had been so adroitly drawn, that we 
 unlucky English investors were legally bound to pay 
 off the Oriental shareholders in full. There was a 
 second call and a third before we heard the last of 
 that transaction. What impressed my innocence 
 most was the obvious way in which the liquidator, 
 an honourable man, I daresay, and certainly a 
 member of a leading firm of accountants, did his 
 best to shield the directors and draw the wool 
 over the eyes of the victims. 1 said something 
 at the time ; I insisted on personally interviewing 
 him ; I had been doubly aggravated by seeing 
 the secretary standing at his elbow through the 
 meeting and prompting. I had told my story to 
 the meeting, and taxed the secretary broadly with 
 the shameless mendacity he could not deny. All 
 the satisfaction I had of it then was an off-hand, 
 ' If you had gone to the directors they would have 
 told you everything.' And now when I repre- 
 sented that as the secretary had tacitly admitted 
 himself a rascal it was scandalous to continue his 
 salary and virtually to intrust him with the winding 
 up, the worthy liquidator gave me to understand 
 that in the interests of the liquidation he knew too 
 much to be dismissed. No doubt I might have 
 taken my revenge, for I could have subpoenaed 
 witnesses enough to convict the secretary, but 
 though the moral of this story is that of fools and 
 their money, I was not mad enough to throw more 
 
THE STOCK EXCHANGE 171 
 
 good coin after bad by trying to get damages out 
 of a man of straw. 
 
 Mines were tempting ventures for those hasten- 
 ing to be rich, and, in my earHer days, a compara- 
 tively limited market. California was notoriously 
 in the hands of Americans who were * in the 
 know,' and English eyes were generally turned 
 to Brazil and the Central American republics. 
 In a happy hour I dipped in Don Pedro North 
 Del Reys, buying at ten or twelve shillings, and 
 selling shortly afterwards for nearly ten times the 
 money. In a happy hour, I say, not because I 
 made money, for immediately afterwards they had 
 it all out of me again when I went in for speculat- 
 ing in Nicaragua and Guatemala. But what with 
 liquidations and calls, or selling out at an alarming 
 sacrifice, I got such a sickener that though I 
 struck a fair balance-sheet on the whole, I have 
 never since been involved in the incalculable 
 fluctuations of manipulated markets. If I missed 
 the boom in South Africans, when Rands were 
 steadily on the rise, I have spared myself all 
 the subsequent sorrows of disappointments long 
 drawn out and over-capitalised certainties. Years 
 ago I came to the conclusion that the specula- 
 tive investments of the uninformed outsider are 
 simply loss and sorrow ; and I give my experience 
 for what it is worth. Gilt-edged securities are 
 cheapest in the end, even if peace of mind were 
 not a luxury well worth paying for. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 My connection with literature began at the dinner 
 given by his tenants to a cousin on the occasion 
 of his coming of age. Though I had not attained 
 my own majority, for some reason I was told off 
 to propose the Press. I never shone as a speaker, 
 and that was my maiden effort at public oratory. 
 The toast was coupled with the name of the 
 reporter of the county paper. Of course I tried 
 the humorous line, and touched on a personal 
 grievance — the bother there was in cutting the 
 pages of books. He answered that if I had to cut 
 up books like him, I would have better reason for 
 grumbling. He had decidedly the best of it, but 
 as Mrs. Gamp might have remarked, 'his words 
 was prophecy.' Since then I have criticised in- 
 numerable books, good, bad, and indifferent, and 
 though the pleasure and pain have been pretty 
 evenly balanced, I have waded through consider- 
 able muddy water and endured more drudgery 
 than was altogether agreeable. 
 
 But years were to elapse before I took to the 
 pen which was to give me so many pleasant 
 memories and acquaintances — to introduce me to 
 
 172 
 
LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS 173 
 
 so many valued friends. The only break was 
 when I met one of the brightest of those friends 
 in James Payn, when, as I have said, he was 
 conducting Chamberss Jozirnal in Edinburgh. 
 Afterwards we were brouorht into close and 
 constant relations ; some of the most agreeable 
 dinners I recollect were in Warrington Crescent, 
 where he always attracted lively company, and 
 when he died the loss left an irreparable blank. 
 There I heard Frith supplementing the amusing 
 Reminiscences he published, and the present editor 
 of Punch indulging in dry facetiae which capped a 
 story or pointed a moral. Payn introduced me 
 to his friend Horace Pym, another genial host, 
 who, when he kept house in Harley Street, often 
 tempted me to town for a night, more for the 
 company than the admirable English fare. When 
 he shifted his quarters to my neighbourhood in 
 Kent, at the distance of a long and hilly drive, 
 I saw less of him. Something of a bibliomaniac, 
 like Heber or Scott he went in for sumptuous 
 bindings, and nothing pleased him more than the 
 gift of the manuscript of any book by a friend 
 which had caught on with the public. He might 
 have made a name in literature himself, had he 
 not been preoccupied with more profitable busi- 
 ness. His Memoir of Caroline Fox pleased 
 George Smith so well, that he proposed to him 
 to undertake the biography of Lord Beaconsfield ; 
 it is one of the curiosities of literature that at 
 
174 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 that time two leading firms were assured that they 
 were to be intrusted with the immediate pub- 
 Hcation. Payn, then editing the Cornkill, was 
 the literary adviser of Smith and Elder. As he 
 told me himself on that occasion, he tapped his 
 magnificent chief on the shoulder, whispering, 
 ' Are you not getting rather deep in the thou- 
 sands ? ' But Payn, except on a holiday in the 
 Lake District, was never happy out of London or 
 away from the Reform, where he had his regular 
 afternoon rubber. Like Pym he never walked a 
 yard when he could help it, or touched a fishing- 
 rod or o-un. So ' our own romantic town ' with the 
 biting winds which Louis Stevenson execrated had 
 few charms for him. An indefatigable worker, 
 Sundays and week-days, like his friend Trollope 
 he could always come to time ; working still, when 
 crippled and confined to his chair, he may be said 
 to have dropped and died in harness. In those 
 latter days the only time I saw his sweet nature 
 rufiled was when he misunderstood one of my 
 remarks. Trying to write with his gouty fingers, 
 he was evidently in great pain, and I made some 
 commonplace observation as to the worse ills to 
 which humanity is subject. He fired up and said, 
 ' If you think I can find comfort in the sufferings of 
 my fellow-creatures ' — which I did not mean at all. 
 If after many idle years I fluked myself into a 
 literary income, it is one of the wonderful instances 
 of unmerited luck. When supplies are running 
 
LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS 175 
 
 short, taking to letters is naturally the resort of the 
 destitute who have been trained to nothing, or have 
 failed at everything they tried. One fine morning, 
 the turning-point of my fortunes, I took a flying 
 shot at an advertisement. I had seen the an- 
 nouncement of a new Conservative weekly, the 
 Imperial Review, with a hospitable invitation to 
 contributors. I wrote to place my services at the 
 editor's disposal, and suggested as subjects Turkey 
 and America. Of Turkey I knew nothing more 
 than I had picked up on a flying visit to Constan- 
 tinople and sundry shooting-parties in the provinces; 
 of America I knew nothing at all, but some Ameri- 
 can question chanced to have cropped up just then. 
 Both articles appeared as leaders in leaded type, 
 and thenceforward my career was decided. The 
 Revieiv was run by Cecil Raikes, member for 
 Chester and afterwards Chairman of Committees. 
 It came to a sudden stop, but it served his purpose 
 and it answered mine. For a year or more it gave 
 me capital practice, at the rate of an article or a 
 couple of articles per week, and before the stoppage 
 came which I feared and expected, I had been 
 casting out sundry anchors to windward. 
 
 I had no sort of claim on Leslie Stephen. I 
 was introduced to him in Trinity Common room 
 by two old travelling companions — Augustus Van- 
 sittart, then Bursar of the College, and Hardy 
 of Alpine fame, the first Englishman to climb 
 the Finster Aarhorn. I had seen Stephen that 
 
176 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 morning, with his tall, sinewy figure, going at a 
 hand gallop along the banks of the Cam, cheering 
 and coaching the Trinity boats. When Stephen 
 promised, it meant generous performance. He 
 gave kindly introductions forthwith to Cooke of the 
 Saturday, and Frederick Greenwood of the Pall 
 Mall — another good friend, of whom, as he is 
 living, I have nothing more to say. Cooke had 
 somewhat of a formidable reputation ; he was said 
 to be fastidious and capricious in the choice of 
 his contributors, and as the hansom cabman said 
 of Forster, 'an harbitrary gent.' Indeed, any self- 
 made man had reason to be proud of having recruited 
 such a constellation of varied talent. It was the 
 pride of the Saturday, like Thackeray's Pall Mall, 
 to be written by gentlemen for gentlemen, and not 
 a few of the gentlemen were predestined to exalted 
 places in the Empire. Chief among the contri- 
 butors was Lord Robert Cecil, who could handle 
 his incisive and sarcastic pen with no fear 
 of the impulsive slip which compromised him or 
 the thought of 'putting his foot in it.' Faded 
 daguerreotypes and primitive photographs hung 
 round the inner room in the Albany, formed an 
 interesting historical gallery of notorieties. For 
 Beresford Hope, who launched the brilliantly 
 successful venture, was lavish of money and could 
 well afford it. The editing was sumptuously done. 
 Editorial and business departments were sundered 
 by the distance between the Albany and the 
 
LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS 177 
 
 Strand. In the Albany the editor was supposed 
 to sit enthroned from 11 a.m. to 5 r.M. 
 There the Articles were arranged in cosy talk. 
 Ushered into Mr. Cooke's sanctum in some fear 
 and trembling, I found a man in striking contrast 
 to his surroundings. Nothing could be more 
 suitably luxurious than the fittings of the room, 
 with its Turkish carpets, its massive furnishing, and 
 the usual literary litter of an editor's den. Cooke 
 wore a long, loose rough coat, something between 
 a shooting-jacket and a dressing-gown, and a 
 slippered foot stretched out on a cushioned leg-rest 
 was suggestive of gout. The veteran was then in 
 decay and drawing near to his end, but the old fire 
 flickered up when he began to talk, flashing out 
 from beneath his shaggy eyebrows. I had heard 
 him talked of as a terror, but nothing could be 
 kinder than his reception. Had I been Lord Robert 
 Cecil, Harcourt, Stephen, or Venables, he could 
 not have discussed proposals more respectfully. 
 It was a great relief when the first proof arrived, 
 but I should have been far less cock-a-hoop had 
 I known that the Saturday sent all manuscripts 
 straight to Spottiswoode's, unless indeed they came 
 from an absolute outsider. 
 
 Almost immediately after that Cooke was gathered 
 to his fathers, bequeathing his romantic Cornish 
 home and the better part of his fortune to the 
 family of his friend and patron. Had Beresford 
 Hope not been born in the purple, or at least 
 
 M 
 
178 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 succeeded to the noble Bedgebury manor in the 
 Weald, with its wide woodlands, remains of the 
 Anderida forest where iron industries had antici- 
 pated those of the north, he might himself have 
 made a name in letters. As it was, he wrote some 
 clever social novels, and I repeatedly urged him to 
 try a historical romance, with the scenes in the 
 historical surroundings of the family seat. Given 
 to hospitality, his annual Greenwich dinner at the 
 Trafalgar was a great help to his brilliant weekly. 
 The editor took the chair, the proprietor sat on 
 his right, and invitations were issued on a most 
 catholic scale. Well and appropriately was the 
 gathering fixed for a Saturday evening, for if the 
 guests did justice to the cheer, work was impossible 
 on the morrow. There you could absolutely trust 
 the wines : the burgundy and the venerable port 
 and amontillado came from the renowned cellars of 
 Marshal Beresford, a noted bon vivant, who always 
 kept a sumptuous table in the Peninsula, even when 
 rank and file were on short commons. That 
 legacy of the Marshal-Connoisseur had overflowed 
 from the cellars at Bedgebury into the vaults of 
 the Albany, and was far from exhausted when these 
 premises were evacuated. At those Greenwich 
 dinners there was mercifully no speechifying, and 
 the grace was compressed in a couple of Latin 
 words. The invitations were miscellaneous, for 
 many specialists and men of note were in occasional 
 relations with the Saturday. Lord Salisbury — as 
 
LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS 179 
 
 he had become — was sometimes seated next to his 
 brother-in-law, and their nephews the Balfours, 
 promising young politicians, were often present. 
 Medicine was generally represented by Ouain, who 
 was so keenly interested in literature and journalism 
 that he would discuss them at length in consultation, 
 oblivious of your ailments as of patients impatiently 
 waiting in the anteroom ; and science by the aged 
 Professor Owen in his black silk skull-cap. In the 
 very last year of his life, I think, I travelled up 
 with him in the railway carriage to Waterloo, when 
 he left me with a cordial grasp of the hand. 
 
 When Cooke departed, Harwood, his sub-editor, 
 reigned in his stead. Never was editing more 
 conscientiously done. Harwood came punctually 
 to the receipt of custom ; he carried business back 
 with him to St. John's Wood, and was never to be 
 lured away by invitations to dinner. When he 
 retired to Hastings, on a snug pension, it might 
 have seemed that, with his occupation gone his life 
 would be a blank. But he was a man of resource, 
 and turned Cincinnatus among his cabbages, con- 
 centrating his interests on a garden the size of a 
 pocket-handkerchief. The amiable veteran had 
 the satisfaction of feeling he had never made an 
 enemy, and nothing gave him more pleasure than 
 a visit from an old acquaintance and a chat over 
 old days in the Albany. 
 
 The Pall Mall, as Greenwood kindly reminded 
 me in an encouraging letter when I had begun to 
 
i8o DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 contribute, came out every day, and there it had 
 the pull of the Saturday. Those were happy times 
 for the journalist who loved a long range and a 
 free tether. Already I have passed Greenwood 
 over in silence, but on reflection I must say that, 
 with his versatile tastes and rare literary flair and 
 discrimination, with perhaps a single exception he 
 was the ablest editor I have ever known. Con- 
 ducting simultaneously the Pall Mall and the 
 Cornkill, his zealous look-out for rising talent 
 carried him easily through a vast amount of 
 drudgery. He could see at a glance what might 
 be hoped of a novice. Nor did he confine himself 
 merely to editing. Many of the political leaders 
 came from his own pen, and there was no brighter 
 or more sagacious literary critic, doing justice to 
 talent wherever he found it, whether in history, 
 philosophy, or a light society novel. 
 
 The reading world owes a great debt of gratitude 
 to the spirit and enterprise of the munificent pro- 
 prietor. George Smith originated the brightest of 
 evening papers, as he started the Cornkill under 
 the auspices of Thackeray. He has left his 
 monument in the Dictionary of National Biography; 
 he floated Charlotte Bronte in the beginning of 
 his career, and Mrs. Humphrey Ward towards its 
 close. When he started the Pall Mall, with his 
 strong publishing connection, he found powerful 
 allies, eager to aid. The chief leader writers who 
 shared the burden of the day with the editor were 
 
LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS i8i 
 
 Fitzjames Stephen and Henry Sumner Maine. 
 Stephen, a legist by profession, with a legal and 
 logical intellect, was a journalist by predilection. He 
 used to say he would rather represent Northumber- 
 land Street than any constituency in the kingdom. 
 Reluctantly he accepted a lucrative post in the East, 
 but he hated Calcutta, never ceased to be home- 
 sick, and when he took his welcome release, hurried 
 home like a schoolboy for the holidays. A tele- 
 gram from Southampton announcing his arrival to 
 Northumberland Street, asked that next morning 
 a boy should be sent as formerly for copy to his 
 chambers in the Temple. The boy may have 
 been sent, but in Stephen's absence Maine had 
 stepped into his place as leading leader writer. 
 His brother Leslie, and Matthew Arnold were 
 also of the dei majores ; and among the irregulars 
 who did excellent service were that very dubious 
 character Grenville Murray, more admired than 
 respected, with his double portion of genuine 
 French esprit, and the eccentric Franco-Oriental, 
 with the pseudonym of Azamut-Batuk, who amus- 
 ingly satirised our manners and customs and 
 launched rhyming philippics at our fogs and spleen. 
 The Pall Mall originated the Occasional Notes. 
 No one devoted himself to them more conscien- 
 tiously than Maurice Drummond, the most genial of 
 entertainers and delightful of companions. In the 
 literary capacity he took himself very seriously, 
 which was more than he did as head of a Government 
 
i82 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 department, though he honestly believed himself 
 the most hard-worked of officials. Regularly as 
 clock-work he was to be found of an afternoon at 
 The Travellers, skimming the morning papers and 
 cogitating notes for next day. Always looking out 
 for ' pegs/ he was admirably informed on many 
 matters ; he knew most people in London who 
 were worth knowing, and had a memory that ex- 
 actly served his purpose. Like that of Scott, it 
 retained all he wanted and dismissed the rest. He 
 and his charming wife were the most hospitable 
 of people. You never found them unprepared, 
 if you looked them up of a summer evening at 
 their coita-gG-orn^e at Frognal, where dinner was 
 served at a table under a spreading tree in the 
 garden. Du Maurier was a friend and a frequent 
 guest ; Drummond's children, who inherited their 
 mother's beauty, were the models for innumerable 
 pictures in Punch, where they figured with the 
 artist's favourite dog". 
 
 George Smith, then or soon after, had a mansion 
 hard by, on Hampstead hill, with sloping lawns 
 and gardens looking over to Harrow. His garden 
 parties were gatherings of the select, where you 
 came across the noted littdrateurs who were 
 familiars of Waterloo Place, or thirled, as they say 
 in Scotland, to the CornhilL There was a bed- 
 room in the Waterloo Place office, of which some 
 of his familiars were free, when they cared to use 
 it. Matthew Arnold slept there often, and Smith 
 
LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS 183 
 
 was good enough to place it at my disposal when 
 I passed a night in town. On an evening after 
 one of those garden parties, some of us remained 
 for a scratch collation and had sat on talking till a 
 late hour. I remember the occasion well, for it 
 was then I made the acquaintance of George 
 Meredith. I happened to say to my host that I 
 was only leaving one roof of his for another, and 
 that, as I wanted exercise, I meant to walk to 
 his bed in Waterloo Place. To my satisfaction, 
 Meredith, who was also a great pedestrian and 
 in the vio-our of his strengrth, declared he would 
 accompany me. That walk proved only the first 
 of many with him, but seldom has the time passed 
 more quickly, and as he warmed up in conversa- 
 tion, he stepped out only too fast. He had much 
 of the buoyant Gallic temperament, with a flow of 
 esprit to the very finger tips ; mind and body 
 seemed to be set on springs. As with the illus- 
 trious authors of The Feast of Brougham and The 
 Old Woman of Berkeley, I have always lamented 
 that Meredith did not give himself more to lyric 
 and ballad poetry. That night as we were striding 
 along, some of the spirited snatches of verse in his 
 * Legend of Cologne,' 
 
 ' The lark and the thrush and the blackbird, they taught me 
 how to sing,' etc., 
 
 were ringing in my ears, and I could not help 
 quoting them. Naturally, my unmistakable ad- 
 miration pleased him, and I know it was with 
 
i84 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 regret and reluctance on one side that we separated 
 at Piccadilly Circus. To my infinite pleasure, the 
 acquaintance was to be renewed and improved. 
 Shortly afterwards I took a house at Leatherhead, 
 within an easy stroll of Burford Bridge, and many 
 a pleasant walk we had afterwards, in the grounds 
 of Norbury Park, sacred to memories of Fanny 
 Burney, and in the adjacent lanes of the rich 
 Surrey woodlands. Since then his rare genius has 
 come slowly to be recognised ; after a tantalising 
 and disheartening struggle he has scaled the 
 heights of the literary Pisgah, and had the fortune, 
 in the fulness of years, to descend into the Land 
 of Promise. He has taken foremost rank as an 
 English classic, but happily he survives and no 
 more can be said. 
 
 No one in habitual relations with the Pall Mall 
 ever passed through Paris without looking up the 
 Hon. Denis Bingham. From first to last, under 
 the imperial regime, he was the journal's Paris 
 correspondent : late in the afternoon, about the 
 hour of absinthe — which he never tasted — he was 
 to be found at the marble table behind an ink- 
 stand, at one of the cafes on the Boulevards. 
 For long the Cardinal was his house of call, 
 though afterwards, for some reason he changed 
 it. With his imperturbable coolness and Irish 
 courage, he held to his post through both the 
 sieges, seizing each opportunity of forwarding his 
 letters, by balloon or underground rail. The 
 
LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS 185 
 
 balcony of his apartment in the Rue de Tilsit 
 was seriously damaged by the cannonade from 
 St. Cloud. I have a shell now, picked up in 
 his salon, which he consigned to me by Mr. 
 Labouchere, when the ' Besieged Resident ' broke 
 out. I fancy it must have crossed me en rotite, for 
 I was in the place a day or two after the entry of 
 the Crown Prince of Saxony under the Arc de 
 Triomphe. Bingham's household bills were curi- 
 osities. In the beginning he had been a good 
 customer to the butcher of the Boulevard Hauss- 
 man, paying fancy prices for beasts from the 
 Jardins d'Acclimatation and des Plantes — elephant, 
 rhinoceros, kangaroo, and all manner of outlandish 
 animals. Then when supplies and cash ran short, 
 he had been reduced to short commons. By way 
 of souvenir he had kept some scraps of the 
 abominable black bread, for which Marie, his 
 good-humoured little bonne, had waited for hours, 
 morning after morning, in the queue before the 
 doors of the Mairie. In the siege of the 
 Commune he ran serious danger. The Commune, 
 in its truculent censorship, kept close watch on 
 his proceedings, but showed him a certain con- 
 sideration. It was perilous work to carry his 
 letters personally from the Arc de Triomphe to 
 the Gare du Nord, whence they were to be 
 smuggled ; and in the storm and slaughter follow- 
 ing the entry of the Versailles troops, he was shut 
 up for four and twenty hours in a house that was 
 
i86 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 bombarded by both sides impartially. Perhaps 
 he owed something of his immunity to his relations 
 with Rossel, for whom he had a sincere regard. 
 Had Rossel not mislaid Bingham's visiting-card 
 with the address, he might have found safety 
 under his roof. On short commons in the first 
 siege, he came near starvation in the second. 
 The infraction of a cupboard in a house confided 
 to his charge by a friend, gave him a luxurious 
 Christmas dinner, which he shared hospitably with 
 his special chum, Hely Bowes of the Standard 
 and other journalistic confreres. 
 
 Laurence Oliphant was Times correspondent in 
 Paris after the German siege and when the Ver- 
 sailles troops were being held at bay by the 
 Commune. Off and on, I had known Oliphant 
 for long. I met him first when dining in Edin- 
 burgh with Norman Macpherson, afterwards pro- 
 fessor of Scots law. Oliphant, then a boyish- 
 looking figure, had just returned from his trip to 
 Nepaul with Jung Bahadur. He had cast that 
 magnetic spell of his over the astute and seem- 
 ingly impassive Oriental, and with his wonderful 
 adaptability had become thoroughly at home with 
 him. As his friend Walter Pollock used to say, 
 ' Laurie would wile the bird off the bush.' He stole 
 the conversation, rather than engrossed it, and his 
 sparkling narrative, with the vivid pictures of 
 Nepaulese manners and the march through the 
 gloomy Terai was a thing to be remembered. 
 
LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS 187 
 
 Oliphant might have been anything he pleased, 
 but he lacked ballast, persistence, and concentra- 
 tion of purpose. His social gifts were a snare; 
 his versatility was fatal ; and he was never really 
 happy, except in action, excitement, or danger. 
 Emphatically a bird of passage, and in some sort 
 in his early life a stormy petrel, wherever there 
 was trouble he was skimming the waves, shaking 
 the spray from his wings in sheer enjoyment of 
 the tempest. He was the more plucky that he 
 was a fatalist and a predestinarian. He was not 
 an ideal war correspondent, for he risked himself 
 too freely. I have been told by a confrere, himself 
 by no means overcautious, that even the Zouaves 
 blamed the Englishman's rashness. And, by the 
 way, as a good judge of courage, he always main- 
 tained that the German dash and determination 
 came short of that of the Americans in the Civil 
 War. War risks he was ready to encounter, but 
 he told me his nerves were never more severely 
 tried than when he was on Times duty at Lyons, 
 and attending a great socialistic meeting. Per- 
 fidious England was bitterly denounced, when the 
 rumour somehow got about that a spy of the Times 
 was present. The rabid mob were on their legs 
 to hunt him out, when Oliphant jumped up with 
 the others, and with his staunch friend Leroy 
 Beaulieu began looking everywhere below the 
 benches. Needless to say, he did not find the 
 man he was hunting: for. 
 
i88 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 After the German siege, Oliphant had an 
 apartment in the Champs Elysees, where his 
 mother kept house for him. There I was pre- 
 sented to the charming and accompHshed girl to 
 whom he was engaged ; and both mother and wife 
 shared his chequered fortunes when his strong but 
 mystical intellect succumbed to the influence of 
 the American prophet. It was said that those 
 refined ladies took their places at the washtub, and 
 certainly Laurence hawked oranges on railway 
 platforms, when his talents might have been 
 turned to more lucrative account. The odd 
 thing was that on his flying visits of Europe, he 
 was still the quick-witted man of the world, the 
 acute critic of contemporary politics. At Hom- 
 bourg the Prince of Wales used to consult him 
 on the morning letters. Frank as he was in his 
 Scientific Religion and other writings, there were 
 only one or two of his friends with whom he cared 
 to discuss his religious views, and I was never one 
 of them. Yet I remember one night at a little 
 dinner of four I gave at the Wyndham, we drew 
 him to the verge of the delicate ground, when in 
 an unlucky moment I exchanged a glance with 
 William Blackwood. Oliphant intercepted it, and 
 shut up like an oyster. 
 
 Then, in the Champs Elysees, forenoon or after- 
 noon, a coupd was always in waiting at the door. 
 He was perpetually dashing about to the Quai 
 D'Orsay or other places, hunting up the informa- 
 
LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS 189 
 
 tion he generally secured. So he had no time to 
 devote to the animated debates and scandalous 
 scenes in the Assembly, which was in session at 
 Versailles. He was then congratulating himself on 
 the discovery of Blowitz, the most noteworthy of 
 the treasure -troves, he said, among the submerged 
 he had brought to the surface, and he said it long 
 before that eentleman had attained a world-wide 
 celebrity. He declared that Blowitz's memory was 
 equal to the most exact shorthand reporting, and 
 that as an interviewer he could mimic the accents 
 and dramatise the gestures of the interviewed. 
 When I next forgathered with him, it was im- 
 mediately before the outbreak of the Commune, 
 when he had discarded silken top hat and frock 
 coat, and was bustling about the disturbed quarters 
 of Paris in flexible felt and a suit of tweeds. I 
 had been waiting for the convulsion that had never 
 come off, and was waxing impatient. He warned 
 me that I would not have to wait much longer, but 
 one day, after inspecting the guns peacefully parked 
 on the heights of Montmartre I went off carrying 
 one of his packets to his agent at Calais. Two 
 days afterwards the guns were seized by the 
 insurgents. 
 
 Shortly after that his connection with the Times 
 came to an abrupt termination. When I left him, 
 I believe he already had his marching orders from 
 the prophet, which he had disregarded. Then 
 followed a more peremptory summons from the 
 
I90 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 seer, announcing a sign. The sign came on the 
 day of the absurd demonstration of the unarmed 
 pacificators in the Rue de la Paix, and he accepted 
 it, when, in a shower of rifle balls, he was dragging 
 the wounded under shelter in the doorway of 
 Blount, the consul and banker. So much I heard 
 from himself, and I heard more from Mowbray 
 Morris. He went straightway to his quarters at 
 the Chatham, packed his portmanteau and hurried 
 off to London. It was the very moment when a 
 special correspondent should have stuck to his 
 post, and never did a Times correspondent give 
 himself French leave in more summary fashion. 
 But Oliphant, as a rara avis, was a privileged person, 
 and the journal paid him the exceptional compliment 
 of condoning the offence and employing him again. 
 A rara avis and bird of passage, there was no 
 calculating his migrations. One month he was at 
 Haifa or in his lodge upon Carmel, looking down, 
 as he said, on the valley where Elijah slew the 
 prophets of Baal, and settling disputes as a Syrian 
 J. P. between the farmers and the vine dressers. 
 Then a fancy would take him for the pavements of 
 Pall Mall, and some fine morning he would stroll 
 into the Athenaeum, and shake hands as if you had 
 dined together the evening before. I never met 
 a man who had done so much, and who might 
 have done so much more, who had so little self- 
 assumption. He would ask an acquaintance if he 
 might lunch with him as if he were receiving a 
 
LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS 191 
 
 favour, instead of bringing inexhaustible stores of 
 reminiscence and pointed anecdote. Now that he 
 is gone I feel the old effort of disengaging myself 
 from his company. If I gave memory the rein 
 there might be matter for a volume. 
 
 Talking of Oliphant suggests my own connection 
 with the Times, though it was to ' Blackwood ' 
 I was indebted for familiarity with him. I was 
 fortunate enough to have the friendship of successive 
 editors, and of all the editors I knew, Delane was 
 the most remarkable. His intuitive perception, 
 his sagacious prescience of the tendency of events, 
 were only paralleled by his prompt decision. A 
 message coming in at the last moment, pregnant 
 with issues in foreign politics or home affairs, never 
 found him unready. On one momentous occasion 
 I had expressed my wonder and admiration to his 
 brother-in-law, Mowbray Morris, for although 
 utterly taken by surprise a few days had justified 
 his action. Morris's answer was, 'It is those 
 flashes of sure intuition that save him ; if he were 
 in the habit of hesitating he would often be 
 blundering.' Yet he was no more infallible than 
 other men, and sometimes when he waited his 
 sagacity failed him. There was a notable instance 
 when he was against the marriage of the Princess 
 Royal, though even then he was not altogether 
 mistaken, for the consequences he predicted were 
 in some measure realised by the strained relations 
 of her Royal Highness with the autocratic chan- 
 
192 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 cellor, who resented, and sometimes in the most 
 offensive language, feminine influence in business 
 of state. 
 
 Like Wellington and all brilliant commanders 
 he had a contempt for any feebleness of moral 
 fibre. The editorship was offered him at the age 
 of twenty-four — the mantle of Chatham was falling 
 on the shoulders of the younger Pitt — and I re- 
 member when we were having a quiet talk in 
 Serjeants' Inn, asking if it did not shake his 
 courage. ' Not a bit of it,' was the reply ; ' what I 
 dislike about you young fellows is, that you all 
 shrink from responsibility.' Precisely what Wel- 
 lington said, somewhat unjustly, of his subordinates 
 in the Peninsula. Nor was there any boastful self- 
 assertion involved, for I have heard the story from 
 his life-long friend, John Blackwood. The youths 
 were living together in St. James's Square. One 
 morning Delane burst into their room, exclaiming, 
 ' By God, John, what do you think has happened ? 
 I am editor of the Times' Forthwith he buckled to 
 the arduous task, and from the first Printing House 
 Square acknowledged the master. 
 
 It is not easy for outsiders to estimate the 
 responsibilities he shouldered so lightly. The 
 youth had inherited the traditions of an immense 
 though occult power. The Times had unseated 
 domineering ministers, had shaken strong cabinets, 
 had made continental ministers tremble. Under 
 the rdgime of the citizen king, the French foreign 
 
LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS 193 
 
 minister had tampered with the transmission of 
 Times despatches. Promptly, and regardless of 
 expense, the Times accepted the challenge, and the 
 French cabinet had the worse in the war. Much 
 had been happening to increase the power of the 
 Press. There had been a reduction of the stamp 
 duty and the advertisement tax, and the circulation 
 of the papers, increasing by leaps and bounds, had 
 awakened the intelligent interest of the masses. 
 We hear in the Greville Memoirs of Lord Durham 
 dropping in upon Barnes to complain of articles 
 which had stung King Leopold and embarrassed 
 the British ministry. Apropos of communications 
 between the Times and Wellington touching the 
 revelation of Cabinet secrets, Lyndhurst had ex- 
 claimed in a burst of annoyance, ' Why, Barnes is 
 the most powerful man in the country!' In the 
 same year Peel, the most reserved and discreet of 
 statesmen, wrote effusively thanking the editor for 
 * his powerful support.' Such was the responsibility 
 the youth manfully took over from an accomplished 
 veteran, versed in intrigue, callous to flattery, and 
 hardened to strife. 
 
 He picked his subordinates well, and had a sure 
 eye for the qualities which make the popular 
 journalist. Asked for help with the authorities at 
 the Colonial Office by a future Colonial governor, 
 Sir Frederick Broome, he tapped his ink-bottle, 
 saying, ' You have your fortune here if you stay 
 with me,' and for years he kept a valued con- 
 
 N 
 
194 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 tributor who did excellent work on important 
 missions. Broome subsequently went as Colonial 
 Secretary to Natal, with the editor's free consent 
 and recommendation. But Delane naturally re- 
 sented being left in the lurch, or unceremoniously 
 thrown over for a better thing. One of his leader- 
 writers, a man whom he greatly appreciated, 
 and a charming convive, accepted an important 
 governorship without giving warning or coming to 
 a satisfactory explanation. He proved somewhat 
 of a failure in the new sphere of action, and came 
 back to find the gates of Printing House Square 
 locked and barred. These men were only two 
 of many who had served their apprenticeship to 
 statecraft at home and abroad under Delane. 
 
 Personally, he did the day's work in Serjeants' 
 Inn within easy reach of the office. The door 
 was guarded by his confidential servant, a smooth- 
 spoken and gentlemanly Cerberus, who knew 
 habitual callers well ; and admission may have 
 rather depended on the master's mood than on the 
 urgency of the incessant preoccupations. But an in- 
 terview, and a very leisurely one, was assured when 
 the visitor was fresh from foreign parts, especi- 
 ally when he had returned from a Times mission. 
 For Delane, who was deeply versed in foreign 
 politics, was the most many-sided of men. When 
 he gave himself a breathing on the Continent for 
 a brief holiday, the goose-fair in the Vienna Prater 
 or the morning market in picturesque Bamberg, 
 
LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS 195 
 
 interested him as much as the details of some 
 secret treaty being manipulated between Paris 
 and Berlin. My old acquaintance, General Eber, 
 ex-insurgent, ex-lieutenant of Garibaldi, member 
 of the Hungarian Diet, Times correspondent at 
 Vienna, was one of his favourite travelling com- 
 panions, and Eber used to say that in all his 
 experience he never met any one with so universal 
 an interest in things, great and small. Necessarily 
 a late sleeper in London, abroad he was an early 
 riser, and liked nothing more than the morning 
 stroll about the streets of some quaint old German 
 city. He had a great predilection for Mayence, 
 where he put up at the Angleterre, a capital house 
 looking out on the river, but with a noisy thorough- 
 fare in front and a darksome lane behind. The 
 landlord was his sworn friend, and boasted a 
 vintage of Feuerberger to which Delane directed 
 my special attention. He always believed in good 
 holidays, both for himself and the members of his 
 staff. But as he grew older he was less inclined 
 to ramble, and when he found himself in congenial 
 quarters he was loath to leave them. One autumn 
 he went to Scotland ' for a round of visits.' When 
 he came back I asked where he had passed his 
 time, and he had to own that he went straight to 
 Dunrobin, where he was made so comfortable that 
 he never stirred. In Dunrobin he delighted, but 
 on another occasion his visit there was brought to 
 an abrupt termination. He gave his trusted leader- 
 
196 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 writers a loose rein, but sometimes as strong men, 
 with pronounced views on burning political ques- 
 tions, conscience and conviction would make them 
 jib or kick over the traces. One fine morning in 
 Sutherlandshire, when the editor opened his Times, 
 he was shocked and startled. It was on the eve 
 of the war between Russia and Turkey ; the 
 writer's sympathies were strongly Russian, and 
 he had gone far towards committing the paper. 
 Delane took the first train to town to put things 
 straight before the error was irretrievable. But 
 he knew a good contributor when he had one, and 
 the delinquent, with light reproof, was put on to 
 less thorny subjects. 
 
 Probably he never wrote a line for his own 
 paper, though he played on its manifold keys with 
 the touch of an accomplished artist. The most 
 ready of note writers, he seemed to be always 
 scribbling, and no one ever despatched multi- 
 farious business more promptly or pointedly. Half 
 a dozen lines smeared across a page of notepaper 
 with a broad-pointed quill indicated the lines of 
 an important article, and gave assurance of safe 
 guidance. But as I happen to know, there is a 
 single document extant, in which he virtually 
 embodied a leader in a succession of blue paper 
 slips. That shows how strongly he was excited 
 over the formation of Disraeli's Ministry in 1874. 
 Ordinarily he took the most sensational incidents 
 with the most imperturbable calm, even when the 
 
LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS 197 
 
 credit of the journal was in question ; and of that 
 I could give various examples from personal 
 experience. Reviewing was generally left to the 
 writer's discretion, but as to important political 
 works, such as Campbell's Lives of Brottgham and 
 Lyndktirsty or Gladstone's Fragment of Political 
 AtUobiography, he would take infinite trouble, even 
 to arranging a dinner of experts that the writer 
 might be authoritatively primed. 
 
 He bore his honours meekly, though, indeed, 
 with his recognised autocracy, he had slight 
 inducement to assert himself. He dressed care- 
 fully, though he never sacrificed to the Graces. 
 But few statesmen or politicians drew more notice 
 in Rotten Row than the unobtrusive rider on the 
 neat black cob. It was not with the butterflies of 
 fashion that he exchanged greetings, but with men 
 and women of light and leading. It was a rare 
 experience to have his arm up St. James's Street 
 and Piccadilly in the season, when the stream of 
 members was setting of a summer afternoon 
 towards the House, and to listen to his amusing- 
 commentary of anecdote and reminiscence, inter- 
 spersed with incisive sketches of characters and 
 careers, suggested by passing personalities. As 
 no one had greater regard for a formidable 
 political opponent, so no one had less respect 
 for the dilettante diplomatist who had climbed to 
 high place through influential connections. Once, 
 coming back from the Continent, I reported some 
 
198 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 conversations with our ambassador at one of the 
 great capitals. I was flattered, and rather vain of 
 them, for the big man's condescension and cham- 
 pagne had made a highly favourable impression. 
 Delane listened and abruptly changed the subject. 
 ' Oh, that old woman. . . . Yes, she 's always 
 making love to us, and can be very civil when she 
 likes ! ' 
 
 His eclipse was gradual and for a time veiled to 
 the public. Worn with arduous work and in- 
 cessant strain, at last the strong constitution gave 
 way. His good friend Sir Richard Quain did all 
 that science could do to prolong a valuable life ; 
 but retirement became inevitable, though doubtless 
 retirement, with the loss of stimulus, accelerated 
 collapse. Nor was the final disappearance of this 
 remarkable man from the society he had instructed, 
 guided, and adorned long to be delayed. 
 
 Delane, while directing the Times, was deeply 
 indebted to the co-operation of his brother-in-law, 
 the manager. He and Mowbray Morris invariably 
 worked together on the most confidential terms, 
 and Morris was something more than a sleeping 
 partner in the editorship. General Eber used to 
 say that when Delane got too engrossed in political 
 topics of the day, Morris was always there to tap 
 him on the shoulder with a reminder. He might 
 have filled the role of editor as well as that of 
 manager, and he knew it. At the outbreak of the 
 Franco- German war, Delane chanced to be abroad, 
 
LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS 199 
 
 and I remarked casually that he would be annoyed 
 at his absence from the helm at so critical a 
 moment. Morris rejoined, rather tartly, ' Do you 
 think then that our readers will know he s away ? ' 
 Like all the men who have had a voice in the 
 policy of the great journal, he identified its honour 
 with his own. To touch the Times was to touch 
 himself. He used to pride himself on having, for 
 the first time, put the foreign correspondence on a 
 business-like footing in accordance with modern 
 demands. The world had been moving since 
 Crabbe Robinson went to Hamburg from Print- 
 ing House Square to furnish letters as he found 
 opportunities, based upon rumours rather than 
 facts. Yet, like his brother-in-law, when he 
 indulged in a brief outing, he loved to leave the 
 Square behind. He used to say that when he 
 could not keep his incognito, nothing worried him 
 more than the attentions of obsequious waiters, 
 who would smooth out the Times on his table. 
 He was a man of imposing presence, with a dignity 
 befitting his position. As Power to Power, he was 
 indignant with the Germans, when they refused to 
 receive his correspondents in their camps. * But 
 we have plenty of money in the treasury, and 
 the public shall be informed all the same.' An 
 exception was afterwards made in favour of 
 Russell, on King William's personal guarantee, 
 and Morris was soothed. But his indignation was 
 roused again, when Russell, with his bold criticism 
 
200 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 and inquiring mind, was cold-shouldered by the 
 statesmen and generals at Versailles. ' Yet they 
 know well we are recording history for them, and 
 transmitting their names and fame to posterity.' If 
 Delane broke down slowly, Morris, to all appear- 
 ance, went with a crash. Two or three years 
 before he had lost 2.fidus Achates, a sort of humble 
 secretary, whose intimate knowledge of details 
 saved him an infinity of trouble. The man died 
 suddenly ; his loss was felt in every way, and I 
 have always thought his master took it as an 
 ominous warning. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 MORE LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 There was much wild speculation as to Delane's 
 successor. More than one member of the staff 
 was named as being in the running, and gossip 
 insisted with great confidence that the mantle was 
 to light on the shoulders of a distinguished Govern- 
 ment official. The knowing ones were all wrong ; 
 no one named the winner, and the decision came 
 as a surprise. One evening when dining with 
 Mr. Stebbing — he had virtually edited the paper 
 in Delane's decline — I made the acquaintance of 
 Mr. Chenery, an eminent Orientalist, Professor of 
 Arabic at Oxford, and one of Delane's most valued 
 collaborators. That evening was the beginning of 
 a fast friendship, prematurely ended to my bitter 
 regret. We walked together from Russell Square 
 to Oxford Circus, and stood talking for some time 
 under the lamps, before we shook hands. As 
 Chenery told me afterwards, ' that evening I had 
 my commission in my pocket.' In many respects 
 he was admirably equipped. A fluent linguist, he 
 was versed in foreign politics, and had discussed 
 them in innumerable articles. He had a wide 
 literary and scientific connection ; he laid himself 
 
 201 
 
202 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 out to secure the assistance of specialists, and 
 as he remarked complacently a few years later, 
 he might pride himself on the number of his ac- 
 complished contributors. The advertisements, he 
 added, were then at high-water mark, a proof of 
 the steady popularity of the paper. Yet he could 
 scarcely be called a popular editor, and through the 
 Parliamentary session, even more than Delane, he 
 was absorbed in politics, to the neglect of literature 
 and lighter matters. Moreover he had taken to 
 the leadership too late in life, and the burden of 
 daily care weighed heavily upon him. The most 
 charming of companions in a quiet way, he had 
 not his predecessor's social adaptability. But the 
 editor of the Times must entertain, and no man was 
 more inclined to be hospitable. He was a cul- 
 tured gourmet besides, and had a delicate taste in 
 vintages. At his house in Norfolk Crescent, and 
 afterwards when he moved into Delane's quarters 
 in Serjeants' Inn, you were sure to find yourself 
 among celebrities or in elevating company, though 
 the host listened, rather than led the talk. There 
 were statesmen, politicians, travellers, and scientists ; 
 there were cultured soldiers who have since made 
 themselves famous, and officials of the Foreign or 
 Colonial Offices, who have become ambassadors, 
 ministers, satraps of provinces — Chenery could pick 
 and choose. But though that part of his duties 
 was the reverse of disagreeable, he was never more 
 happy than when at the table in the north-east 
 
MORE RECOLLECTIONS 203 
 
 corner of the Athenaeum dining-room, with his 
 habitual cronies, reinforced by casual arrivals. 
 Hayward, who in his later years seldom cared to 
 dress and dine out, was a regular member of the 
 little party. There I have heard Forster relate 
 some of his anxious experiences as Irish Secretary, 
 when he narrowly escaped the fate of Lord Frede- 
 rick Cavendish. He little knew that his most 
 providential escape was on the very evening when 
 he left Ireland behind him. The agents of a gang 
 of assassins were on the watch at Westland Row, 
 ready to communicate with their principals at 
 Kingston. But Forster, as it chanced, had gone 
 down before to dine quietly in the Kingston Hotel, 
 and slipped unobserved on board the steamer at 
 the last moment. 
 
 In that select company of the corner were often 
 to be found Lord Monk and another brilliant Irish- 
 man, Sir William Gregory, who had made his 
 political d^but by boldly facing the Liberator on 
 the Dublin hustings, and who had attained to the 
 blue ribbon of the Colonial Office as Governor of 
 Ceylon. A warm-hearted Irishman he was, and a 
 staunch friend. The only time there was any bitter- 
 ness between us was when I impeached the hospi- 
 tality of Sir Philip Crampton, our ambassador in 
 Madrid, who always kept open house for Gregory. 
 It was in that corner Sir Robert Morier commented 
 one evening on the penny-wise policy of the Foreign 
 Office, in refusing to ratify his bargain with the 
 
204 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 Portuguese Government for the purchase of Lorenzo 
 Marquez for some £^o,ooo. We had reason to 
 remember his words of wisdom when we went to 
 war with the Boers. 
 
 Kinglake and Hayward, habitual convives, though 
 not always the most talkative, were the radiating 
 lights. The best of friends, they delighted in sly 
 digs at each other, and the subtle challenge was 
 readily accepted. When they got on their reminis- 
 cences, they were like rival gamecocks, and the 
 rush of social and political anecdote was incessant. 
 The historian of the Crimean War had been the 
 arbiter of many heated disputes and the Rhada- 
 manthus of challenged reputations ; I happen to 
 know that men in the highest positions had stooped 
 to depths of servility in courting him. He weighed 
 his judgments as deliberately as he wrote his his- 
 tory. One day I had dropped in upon him in his 
 rooms looking out on Hyde Park ; the table, as 
 usual, was piled with documents, and like Issachar, 
 the strong ass was stooping between two sacks 
 of papers. He was painfully mastering the Bala- 
 klava case — Lucan against Cardigan. Grievous 
 trouble he caused his publishers and their printers, 
 with his perpetual rectifications of the narrative 
 and corrections of the proofs. A kindly man, and 
 specially genial to young literary aspirants, he 
 dearly loved an epigrammatic sneer. One saying 
 of his Sir Edward Hamley delighted to quote. 
 Looking at Mr. Villiers, the veteran free-trader, 
 
MORE RECOLLECTIONS 205 
 
 then father of the Commons, as VilHers stood con- 
 templating the dinner carte, Kinglake remarked 
 with his meditative drawl : ' A clever man, a very 
 cl-ayver man, before he softened his brain by read- 
 ing the newspapers.' With the sole exception of 
 Sir Edward Bunbury — a very treasury of recollec- 
 tions and miscellaneous knowledge of all kinds, 
 when he could be drawn in a quiet tHe-a-tete over 
 the dinner-table — Kinglake lingered on, the last of 
 that company. It was sad to see him in his solitary 
 seat, in the nook which had for so long been the 
 centre of sociability ; to stand at the old man's 
 shoulder and to speak to him loudly and in vain. 
 
 Hay ward had gone some years before ; though 
 close allies, they were great contrasts. Hayward, 
 although he could make himself extremely agree- 
 able, was acidulated and inclined to be cynical. He 
 took fancies at first sight, and his prepossessions 
 were as strong as his prejudices. I first met him at 
 a dinner at Delane's, where George Venables put 
 him on his mettle, and they set to capping stories 
 and repartees, while the host looked on and laughed. 
 Our next meeting was at Chenery's, where, seated 
 next each other, we had much talk, and it was 
 then I really made his acquaintance. On fine 
 nights he always walked home to his rooms in St. 
 James's Street or to the Athenaeum, and then, as 
 with Meredith and Chenery, I had a happy oppor- 
 tunity. We walked together from Norfolk Crescent 
 to the club : I forget what subject had engrossed 
 
2o6 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 us when we got into the drawing-room, but I know 
 Hay ward was so animated when I had subsided 
 into a chair, that he stepped gradually between my 
 legs to bring it forcibly home to me. That was 
 characteristic of the man, and the matter was pro- 
 bably political. Though always a staunch supporter 
 of Chenery's, he never quite forgave him for the 
 independent line he took in editing. * I thought 
 we could count upon him,' he once complained ; 
 ' I introduced him to Lady Waldegrave, and 
 
 now ! ' Chenery, who cared nothing for the 
 
 fashionable world, was not to be seduced by the 
 blandishments of the sirens. To the last Hay- 
 ward went on with literary work, though in an easy 
 dilettante fashion by which his readers lost nothing. 
 Latterly, as he told me, he confined himself to his 
 four annual articles for the Quarterly and his old 
 friend, Dr. Smith. He stuck to the Quarterly, 
 although he had changed his politics, having taken 
 his name off the Carlton many years before. Per- 
 haps we may gather from his Art of Dining, that 
 gastronomical considerations had something to do 
 with that, for there he says that the once famous 
 cookery at the Carlton was declining, and that of 
 the Athenaeum coming on. Since then, he might 
 have had reason to change his opinion. He was 
 less finically fastidious about his proofs than King- 
 lake, but he had a strong objection to his text or 
 style being tampered with. I have seldom seen 
 him more bitter than when he complained that in 
 
MORE RECOLLECTIONS 207 
 
 the Cervantes which he had been writing for Black- 
 wood's ' Foreign Classics,' the Edinburgh readers 
 had been changing his 'shalls' into wills.' 
 
 Chenery, like Delane, was fond of touring, and 
 loved to take his recreation abroad on flying trips. 
 He sought out objects of historical interest, but 
 could amuse himself as well with the dolce far 
 niente when nothing more exciting was to be had. 
 He was a bon vivant and a connoisseur of the 
 French cuisine. I had rooms one spring at the 
 Brighton at Boulogne, where I was agreeably 
 surprised by an early call. He had crossed by the 
 night boat and was putting up at the Bains. The 
 chef oi the Brighton was an artist, and Chenery 
 thoroughly appreciated my daily breakfast of a 
 sole fresh from the Channel with a single squeeze 
 of lemon and a creamy omelette aux anchois. 
 When he broached the object which had brought 
 him over, he was somewhat disappointed, for 
 much as I should have enjoyed it, I could not 
 accompany him on a visit to the battlefields of 
 Cressy and Agincourt. But he was soon resigned, 
 and made himself perfectly happy in lounging 
 on the pier and strolling about the historical 
 neighbourhood. 
 
 He ought to have been his own Paris corre- 
 spondent ; and had such been his fortune, his days 
 would have been prolonged. A Barbadian by 
 birth, he was a Parisian by taste and inclinations, 
 and life on the boulevards was genuine luxury 
 
2o8 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 to him. His interests were various as his 
 amusements. He was as much in his element 
 when prowling about the bookstalls on the Ouai 
 D'Orsay, or collating Arabic manuscripts in the 
 National Library, as when breakfasting at Bre- 
 bants, dining at Philippe's, or laughing in the 
 stalls at a blood and thunder melodrama at the 
 Porte St. Martin. For, on the whole, he preferred 
 sensation or the humours of the Bouffes or the 
 screaming and somewhat scandalous farces of the 
 Palais Royal to the classical art of the Fran9ais. 
 When the morning was specially fine, he was all 
 on the alert for some excursion. One of our 
 pleasantest was to St. Germain, where, on the 
 terrace with the outlook on the forest, and over a 
 recherchdX\\.\\& dinner in the Pavilion Henri Quatre, 
 he became volubly eloquent on memories of the 
 wars of religion and the shadowy court of the 
 exiled Stuarts. Unfortunately, unlike Morris or 
 Delane, he could never leave that weary paper 
 of his behind him. Eagerly he tore the Times 
 open, to smile or frown, as the case might be. 
 The morning of a happy day at Fontainebleau was 
 overcast by something absolutely trivial as to a 
 pork corner at Chicago which could have affected 
 no living soul except speculators immediately con- 
 cerned. But the clouds passed with a forest drive, 
 and Richard was himself again when we were being 
 promenaded through the palace, with its wealth 
 of tragical and pathetic associations. 
 
MORE RECOLLECTIONS 209 
 
 Blowitz had then become a Power, and we saw 
 a great deal of him. His principles may have 
 sometimes been subordinated to his journalistic 
 ambitions, but he was in strong sympathy with the 
 Republican regime when he succeeded Hardman 
 as recognised Times correspondent ; and assuredly 
 no journalist had a keener ^^oXilxo^X flair or exerted 
 greater political influence. He made no idle boast 
 when he said in his Memoirs that he had saved 
 France from a second and more disastrous in- 
 vasion. His friend, Frederick Marshall/ wrote 
 me in 1878 — he and Blowitz used to meet every 
 morning — that they never went out for a stroll 
 and cigar, without seeing the Prussians passing 
 again under the Arc de Triomphe. So he was 
 stirred to take decided action in the interests of 
 peace. I had personal proof of the weight he 
 carried with the French ministers. I had men- 
 tioned casually to him that an English governess, 
 in whom my family were interested, had married 
 a French revenue officer, and was bored to death 
 in dull quarters on the frontiers of Lorraine. A 
 few weeks later that official was transferred to a 
 lucrative post at Lille. I told Blowitz as a strange 
 instance of human discontent, that the lady was no 
 happier at Lille, where she objected to the murky 
 atmosphere. The lady was promptly shifted to 
 the sunnier climate of the Gironde. In still later 
 days, the levee in his little antechamber was 
 
 ' Marshall died after this was written. 
 O 
 
2IO DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 crowded, and he was then more difficult of access 
 to outsiders'. He liked to give his busy brain 
 some rest, or was absorbed in the pregnant medi- 
 tations which flowed fast from his ready pen. 
 Hurrying through Paris with a commission for 
 some letters for the Times from the Riviera, I 
 called to ask for political introductions to Nice. 
 He snatched at my hand, said he was too hard at 
 work thinking to talk, and scribbled off two lines 
 on a couple of cards for the Prefet and the British 
 Consul. From both the dignitaries I had all the 
 assistance I could desire. Great was Blowitz's pride 
 in the first and only journal, of which he would 
 have said maxima pars fui. His dinner hour 
 coincided with the Times delivery, and one even- 
 ing, after a tete-a-tHe we had adjourned for coffee 
 to his den. He opened the paper eagerly as if he 
 had never seen it since Oliphant showed it him for 
 the first time when offering an engagement. He 
 spread it out voluptuously on the table, saw two 
 columns of his telegraphed letter, clasped his 
 hands, threw up his eyes, and ejaculated, * Isn't it 
 beautiful ? ' 
 
 Next to John Delane, there is no one to whom 
 I have been more indebted, from the literary point 
 of view, than John Blackwood. In all my relations 
 with many editors, never did the element of strong 
 personal attachment enter so largely as with him. 
 Frank to a fault, you could always trust him, and 
 when you had once won his friendly regard, it 
 
MORE RECOLLECTIONS 211 
 
 never failed. As I knew from second-hand know- 
 ledge, he would stand the trying financial strain on 
 which so many fast friendships have made ship- 
 wreck. A contributor for whom he had a special 
 affection had an awkward habit of outrunning the 
 constable. Once, as he told me, being excep- 
 tionally hard up he bowed his pride to appeal to 
 Blackwood. He put it playfully : he said that the 
 greatest writers had always been in the habit of 
 making their publishers their bankers, and he 
 asked a very considerable advance on the faith of 
 unearned increment. He had put it playfully, but 
 he awaited the answer in fear and trembling ; for 
 he dreaded a refusal, and the rupture, which he 
 would have regretted far more. I saw the reply, 
 and it was a model letter. There was a wise and 
 well-deserved warning as to the imprudence of a 
 young man discounting the future by exceeding a 
 sufficient income. Then the sting was taken out 
 of the kindly reproof by the enclosure of a cheque 
 for the amount requested, with an intimation that 
 future drafts of the kind might possibly be 
 honoured. The editor knew his man, and knew 
 that no form of remonstrance could be more 
 effective. 
 
 That was the genial charm of essential kindliness 
 which bound men to him ; and slight bonds with 
 longer acquaintance were forged into links of steel. 
 I doubt if any editor ever knitted together in 
 close fellowship so select a band of sworn brothers. 
 
212 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 Though indeed that literary sociability had been 
 the tradition of ' Maga ' since North, Tickler, and 
 the Ettrick Shepherd held their high jinks in the 
 blue parlour at Ambrose's. It was his business 
 and pleasure to make his contributors acquainted 
 with each other. He was accused, with some 
 truth, of being neglectful of the communications 
 of promising outsiders. He was a busy man, with 
 lighter avocations and interests than his business 
 concerns ; and unlike his friend Delane he never 
 studied brevity in his letters. But no one in the 
 inner ring could make such a plaint, and he ever 
 incited them to fresh effort by judicious encourage- 
 ment. The appreciative criticism of one contributor 
 on an article was forwarded to another ; so when 
 strangers met in Randolph Crescent or at Strath- 
 tyrum, they came together on the footing of 
 familiars. Not a few of my best friendships, I 
 owe to introductions through ' Maga.' In playing 
 his kindly role, Blackwood had exceptional advan- 
 tages. The publisher and editor were doubled 
 with the golfer and country gentleman : he 
 delighted in the practice of discriminating hos- 
 pitality. At Strathtyrum he kept open house, and 
 guests who took to their host and to each other 
 could never wear out their welcome. An enthusi- 
 astic golfer, before golfing had become a southern 
 craze, he had found a mansion to his mind on 
 the Bay of St. Andrews, the storm-tossed Biscay 
 of Eastern Scotland. The old episcopal city with 
 
MORE RECOLLECTIONS 213 
 
 its twin colleges had attractions alike for the 
 antiquarian, the man of letters, the golfer, and 
 the fox-hunter. Principals Tulloch and Shairp 
 were magnets in themselves who attracted many 
 writers of distinction. Tulloch, with his portly 
 figure and beaming face, a frequent contributor 
 to the Magazine, was the best type of the enlight- 
 ened and advanced Presbyterian divine. He had 
 a large spirit of toleration, and when he filled a 
 pulpit he filled a church. On a Sunday evening I 
 had dined with him in Randolph Crescent, when 
 he was preaching a series of sermons in great St. 
 George's to overflowing congregations. To my 
 shame be it said, when Blackwood and he threw 
 away their cigars to go, I made excuse. Tulloch 
 spoke no word of reproach, but somehow there 
 was something in his wistful look that put my 
 conscience on hot coals for the rest of the evening. 
 I repented again when shortly afterwards I heard 
 him of a week-day in Westminster Abbey. We 
 had lunched at the Athenaeum and he asked with 
 hesitation whether I would care to come with him. 
 I jumped at the offer and had no reason to regret 
 it. He preached at Dean Stanley's request, and 
 the face of the Dean was beaming through a dis- 
 course on breaking down middle walls of partition, 
 which reflected his own fervid liberality. 
 
 So the visitors attracted by such men as Tulloch 
 and Shairp always had welcome at Strathtyrum, 
 where there was a piquant mixing of the social 
 
214 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 elements. They met the golfers who were habituis 
 of the jovial club at the headquarters of the ancient 
 and royal game : hard-riding gentlemen who fol- 
 lowed the Fife hounds, hunted by Anstruther 
 Thomson, the heavy-weight, who, like Asheton 
 Smith, had learned how to fall soft, and had made 
 a brilliant reputation in the shires, having hunted 
 with every pack in the islands ; lights of the Par- 
 liament House ; African and Indian travellers, 
 popular novelists, soldiers and seamen. The 
 editor loved to oscillate between town and country 
 when St. Andrews was less accessible than now ; 
 but there was one grand advantage of the sojourns 
 in the country — the leisure gave ample opportunity 
 for discussion and direction. On the round of the 
 links or the chat in the smoking-room, the author 
 could draw on the editor's experiences, and the 
 editor could thrash out some thorny political 
 question or excite himself over the primeurs of an 
 explorer's daring adventures. It was at Strath- 
 tyrum that Speke wrote his Nile travels, or at least 
 licked them into form and shape. It was there that 
 Laurence Lockhart — it was said maliciously that 
 when he and the editor got together business came 
 to a standstill — secluded himself for three days to 
 throw off the Volunteers of Strathkineham^ founded 
 on reminiscences of his own, and over which the 
 editor shouted. It was there that the indefatig- 
 able Mrs. Oliphant, a frequent guest, excited her 
 experienced host's surprise by the amount of work 
 
MORE RECOLLECTIONS 215 
 
 she accomplished, when, like Scott at Abbotsford, 
 she seemed to be always idling. Many other 
 literary memories associate themselves with the 
 house which will never see such gatherings again. 
 
 There were few things I looked forward to with 
 greater pleasure than Blackwood's annual visit to 
 London. He came with a breath of invigorating 
 air from the north, and the exuberance of his quiet 
 enjoyment was contagious. Neither painting nor 
 photography could hit off the face when he met 
 you ; the twinkle in his eye ; the wrinkles on the 
 forehead, implying the reverse of care ; the smiles 
 that flickered round the corners of the mouth. See 
 him sitting face to face with some valued crony 
 like Hamley, and they reminded you of two 
 amiable dogs, getting ready for a game at romps. 
 Whether he had quartered himself at the Burling- 
 ton Hotel or in Arlington Street, where * Henry 
 understood and anticipated his wants, there was 
 often a small muster at breakfast and almost invari- 
 ably at luncheon. Like the snail travelling with 
 his house, he carried a workshop about with him, 
 and the side-tables were strewed with books and 
 pamphlets, proofs, and articles. Almost always 
 there was a half-finished letter at his elbow, for 
 he was a leisurely correspondent of the Horace 
 Walpole school. But, like the Ettrick Shepherd, 
 who found any excuse fair enough for a caulker, he 
 found any excuse fair enough to throw down the 
 pen. Some of these off-hand meetings were, as 
 
2i6 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 Laidlaw said of the night with Scott and Davy, 
 'most superior occasions.' I remember Chesney 
 dropping in on the first flush of the success of 
 the Battle of Dorking, when pubHsher and author 
 chuckled over the exchange of congfratulations. 
 And I remember the glorification over the first 
 instalment of Middlemarck, and the pride with 
 which an early copy was handed to me for the 
 solace of a railway journey. With good reason he 
 associated himself with the triumphs of his proteges. 
 Few men had a keener eye for faults and beauties, 
 when a piece of promising work was submitted to 
 him in manuscript — for the beauties rather than 
 the faults — and most of the affiliated were ready to 
 acknowledge that they had profited by his shrewd 
 counsels. 
 
 There was nothing more enjoyable than a tete- 
 a-tete dinner for one versed as I was in memories 
 of the Magazine. The famous novelists he had 
 enlisted or floated since he took up the reins 
 suggested endless subjects — George Eliot, Lytton, 
 Lever, Trollope, Mrs. Oliphant, Charles Reade, 
 Laurence Oliphant, Blackmore, and many another. 
 Most of them had been his guests ; he had gossiped 
 with all, and had much to say about their idiosyn- 
 crasies, their whims, and their methods of working. 
 Nor was it only for sound business reasons that 
 the ' Maga ' of that time enveloped some of her 
 most brilliant contributors in mystery and care- 
 fully guarded her secrets. The editor loved the 
 
MORE RECOLLECTIONS 217 
 
 fun of listeninof to saoe oruesses or to random 
 shots which often were wofully wide of the mark. 
 The Parisians caused an exceptional sensation. 
 So far as I know, no one attributed it to Lord 
 Lytton, though the author oi Eicgene Aram, Zanoni, 
 and My Novel could change his style and dress 
 like any music hall topical singer. Many people 
 gave it to Laurence Oliphant, from the Piccadilly- 
 like social touches and the intimate knowledge of 
 Parisian life. Blackwood would smile and say 
 nothing. 
 
 Like all publishers or astronomers, he had the 
 ambition of discovering new stars, and sometimes, 
 though seldom, his foresight failed him. Although 
 he hesitated long, he hoped great things of the 
 author of the 'Cheveley Novels,' who, I believe, 
 has remained anonymous. The work, like the 
 Comddie Humaine, was conceived on a vast scale, 
 and the first instalment was floated in shilling 
 monthly parts, folio size, with illustrations. He 
 did me the honour of consulting me about the 
 manuscript, and my impression was, that if the 
 author showed no little dramatic talent, the blue 
 fire was overdone, and the beginning was pitched 
 in too high a key to be sustained. That seemed 
 to be the opinion of the public, and the issue came 
 to an abrupt termination. 
 
 There was a grand parade of contributors when 
 Mrs. Oliphant, on one of the editor's birthdays, 
 gave a great picnic on Magna Charta Island. 
 
2i8 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 The lady was then at the zenith of her popularity 
 as a fluent and prolific novelist. Blackwood made 
 a telling speech which surprised and fetched us all, 
 with graceful allusions to the mistress of the revels. 
 That bright summer day recalls some of his closest 
 friends, with others, unavoidably absent, who were 
 not forgotten in his speech. Then I made personal 
 acquaintance with Blackmore. He got into the 
 train at Clapham, appositely equipped with a 
 superb bouquet of hot-house flowers as an offering 
 to his hostess. Plain to simplicity in dress, and 
 somewhat stolid of aspect, the author of Lorna 
 Doone was not the man I had expected to see. 
 I had corresponded with him before as to a 
 critique of mine upon his semi-savage parsons of 
 the Maid of Sker. I found him as unaffected in 
 manner as in costume. We drifted into conversa- 
 tion, and he good-naturedly gratified my curiosity 
 as to the Doone Valley and the wild traditions of 
 Exmoor. Then I could understand the inception 
 and finished execution of that masterpiece of 
 romantic realism. The gifts of imagination had 
 not tempted the writer to dispense with the most 
 conscientious study of scenes and authorities, 
 
 Chesney had come down from the college on 
 Cooper's Hill, and Hamley was there from the Staff 
 College. No more notable representatives could 
 have been found of the succession of soldier con- 
 tributors who have been recruited for ' Maga ' since 
 the day of O'Dogherty down to the campaigning in 
 
MORE RECOLLECTIONS 219 
 
 South Africa and the Far East. Chesney never 
 did anything by halves, though his interests were 
 divided between arms and letters. In India he 
 had spared neither toil nor trouble, and he always 
 felt that his services as military secretary had been 
 ignored or indifferently acknowledged, when he 
 devoted his study to the scientific fortification of 
 the North- Western Frontier. It was a case, as he 
 considered, of a superior carrying off the honours. 
 Chesney ran some brilliant novels through the 
 Magazine, but, like many a novelist, he put his 
 best work in his first. I know nothing more 
 vividly descriptive of events of the Mutiny than 
 the chapters on the siege in The Dilemma. As he 
 told me, they were dashed off at red-hot speed. 
 
 Of Hamley I speak with greater dififidence, 
 for our close friendship may suggest doubts as to 
 my impartiality. If his enmities were lasting, his 
 friendships were deeper and as enduring ; he 
 grappled his intimates to him with hooks of steel ; 
 and the more intimately he was known, the more 
 you admired the range of his powers and the readi- 
 ness of his humour. To borrow an observation of 
 Johnson on himself, it took a long time to travel 
 over Hamley's mind. He was of more martial 
 figure and sterner aspect than Chesney. In repose 
 the face was stern, but when the heart was touched 
 or the humour tickled, it would break into the 
 smiles which seemed so natural to all who knew 
 him. At that time the gallant chief of the Staff 
 
220 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 College, the brilliant writer of poetry and fiction, of 
 essays and war literature of European authority, 
 was not under the shadow of a wrong which was 
 never to be righted. No one admired him more 
 than Chesney. A strong partisan but a capable 
 judge, he declared that Hamley's treatment had 
 been 'abominable — abominable!' If the Battle 
 of Dorking carried Chesney to fame on a springtide 
 of ephemeral popularity, I should say that ' Shake- 
 speare's Funeral ' was Hamley's masterpiece, and 
 as the theme was an Immortal, the charm is per- 
 ennial. It gives the measure of the man's rare 
 fancy and inspiration, for it shows he had much of 
 Shakespeare's undefinable power of identifying 
 himself with the most varied human types, of 
 thinking their thoughts and speaking with their 
 voices. He shone in the short story, sparkling 
 with drollery. He only wrote a single novel, but 
 the lightness of touch in Lady Lees's Widowhood 
 made me often implore him for another of the 
 same. He rather rose to the suggestion, but 
 unfortunately it never took shape. 
 
 Though habitually abstemious, he was a con- 
 noisseur in cookery ; he liked a good dinner and 
 detested indifferent wine. His cook at the Staff 
 College was a cordon bleu, and he paid her high 
 wages. One of the most lively dinners I remem- 
 ber was when I met him by appointment one 
 Christmas — of all days in the year — at the Athe- 
 naeum, to pronounce on some canvas-back ducks, 
 
MORE RECOLLECTIONS 221 
 
 sent him by an American friend. By the way, 
 the refrigerated ducks were a failure as usual, 
 but that signified nothing, for there was store of 
 Christmas cheer in the deserted dining-room. The 
 only other diner was Herbert Spencer. The ducks 
 suggested America ; Hamley, in his youth, had 
 served in Canada, and the philosopher, prompted 
 by him, came out in a fashion that astounded us. 
 He donned the dress of a Noel Guisard and 
 went in for high jinks and drolleries. It was a 
 novelty to hear Transatlantic manners, Red Indian 
 customs, and the very habits of amorous Indian 
 dogs discussed with the profundity of omniscience 
 and the rollicking fun of a Toole. But Hamley 
 had the rare endowment of dignified familiarity and 
 the knack of ' drawing ' the reserved with an off- 
 hand manner which never offended. As he would 
 never have tolerated a shade of impertinence 
 himself, so no one could have suspected him of 
 intending a liberty. If he chaffed a learned pro- 
 fessor or a grave divine over the club billiard 
 table, they seemed flattered rather than otherwise ; 
 possibly they were somewhat in dread of the 
 sarcastic sting. The sting might be there, but he 
 never stung in malice. He had the artist's pride 
 in his literary work, and there never was a more 
 conscientious workman. When Scott was pressing 
 Canning for a Quarterly article, he begged him to 
 'break the neck of it' by dining on a boiled 
 chicken. That was Hamley's way. When pulling 
 
222 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 himself together for an effort, he put the muzzle 
 on, and then like Chesney he wrote at a white 
 heat. He wrote from a well-stored mind, for 
 he was always reading and reflecting. When 
 the very legible manuscript was despatched, his 
 thoughts were still with it, and even Kinglake 
 scarcely gave more trouble to publishers and 
 printers. If he worried others, he never spared 
 himself. With some hesitation, and tempted per- 
 haps by the ^200, he had arranged with Messrs. 
 Seeley for a book on the Crimean War. Doubt- 
 less the proposal was suggested by the admirable 
 volume on the Sebastopol campaign, reprinted 
 from Blackwood. The rough and unstudied letters 
 from the camp, penned in the worst hardships of 
 the winter investment, had been reprinted verbatim. 
 Yet fifty years later they read as freshly as ever, 
 and the facts had never been disputed. Drawing 
 freely on his former work, the task he had under- 
 taken would have been light. Preoccupied by his 
 parliamentary duties, he hesitated. Friends advised 
 that he might do so honourably, for the ' Letters ' 
 were still authoritative and inimitably graphic 
 and picturesque. But in his high conception of 
 duty he put it aside. Each line of the later volume 
 was rewritten. In a letter to me, Sir Archibald 
 Alison pronounced it ' the most charming and able 
 book that Hamley ever wrote . . . with all the 
 breadth and justice of his deep military thought.' 
 Among all the guests at Magna Charta Island, 
 
MORE RECOLLECTIONS 223 
 
 perhaps no one would have been more missed by 
 the editor than Laurence Lockhart. He was one 
 of the two ' Lauries ' who were house-pets, the 
 other being Laurence OHphant. Lockhart in his 
 younger days was the incarnation of exuberant 
 spirits and the delight of his jovial Highland 
 regiment. But those who had known him long 
 and well, loved and admired him most when he 
 rose superior to heavy trouble, and was carrying 
 a load of ill-health with placid heroism and 
 cheerful resignation. I have been with him when 
 he went for ' the cure,' which never cured him, to 
 Schwalbach and Kissingen ; I have listened from 
 the next room to the hacking cough that followed 
 a broken night, and seen him at the springs and 
 the breakfast table apparently in the brightest 
 spirits. There never was a more buoyant or 
 sunny temperament — in that he much resembled 
 his brother, Sir William, Commander-in-Chief in 
 India — and those high spirits of his overflowed in 
 his maiden novel, Dotibles and Quits. The zest 
 for fun, translated into dramatic performance, had 
 sometimes landed him in awkward situations. He 
 could get himself up to play a part like a Monsieur 
 Lecocq or a Sherlock Holmes. His most perilous 
 escapade was at Gibraltar, when the ensign, dressed 
 as an admiral, called on the commandant and was 
 embarrassed by an invitation to dinner. He fre- 
 quently figured as an old general at London 
 dinners, growling with a gruff voice over a 
 
224 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 starched necktie ; and as a successful impostor 
 must have a clever confederate, the confederate 
 was Lady Charlotte Locker, the sister-in-law of 
 Dean Stanley, and the first wife of Locker 
 Lampson. Lockhart had a profound belief in 
 Blackwood's literary judgment, but much mis- 
 trusted his love of humour and his predilection for 
 a joyous companion. ' Blackwood likes anything 
 that makes him laugh,' he used to say, but he 
 did not care to be admired in the role of the 
 mountebank. He rose nearer to his aspirations 
 in Fair to See ; and in Mine is Thine he could 
 honestly congratulate himself on having ' fetched 
 them,' as he confided to me one day in the gardens 
 at Baden. The latter novel may have owed 
 something of inspiration to having been penned 
 on the very table at Ashestiel on which Scott had 
 written Waverley. By the way, I have sometimes 
 wondered whether I did not make a fatal mistake 
 in not buying No. 39 Castle Street, as I had the 
 chance of doing, when I went back to Edinburgh 
 from continental wanderings to walk the Parlia- 
 ment House. Fancy sitting down to write in the 
 sanctum of the wizard, looking out on the very back- 
 garden where Camp had been laid to rest! But 
 then I had never dreamed of turning my thoughts 
 to scribbling, and in the magician's glorious career 
 there were no omens of success at the Bar. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 FRIENDS OF THE ATIIEN^iUM 
 
 The Athenaeum is a mausoleum of memories ; 
 a place haunted by the phantoms of good friends 
 or bright acquaintances who have flitted away. 
 It echoes with the familiar voices ; you see the 
 spectres of the past in their familiar seats. Among 
 those memories the club brings to my mind the 
 Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews. With the 
 death of Henry Reeve a portly figure disappeared. 
 A martyr to gout, latterly he moved with measured 
 steps, and the silver-headed stick was ever at his 
 hand, even when presiding at his own dinner table. 
 His was a noticeable face and not to be passed 
 unregarded. The eye, with a dash of the dis- 
 dainful, the full mouth and somewhat heavy jaw, 
 all indicated character and determination. He 
 was a strong man who loved his own way, and 
 for the most part he had succeeded in getting it. 
 When he took a liking, he was eminently com- 
 panionable. Gout is no emollient of the temper, 
 and when you drop in upon an elderly gentleman 
 with a leg swathed in flannels, you are ready to 
 make allowances. But some of the pleasantest 
 hours of literary and political converse I have 
 
 p 
 
226 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 passed have been in calling upon Reeve when his 
 enemy had laid him by the heels. He welcomed 
 fresh breaths from the outer world ; and he was one 
 of the few literary editors who from the catholicity 
 of his likings kept himself abreast of all the litera- 
 ture of the latest hour. His surroundings were 
 in keeping, for the collections in his well-stored 
 libraries were miscellaneous, and the volumes were 
 handsomely bound. He did not, like the famous 
 bibliomaniac Heber, buy in duplicate or triplicate, 
 and his sorrow was that his books were divided. 
 Half were in London, the other half in his Hamp- 
 shire home at Christchurch. He did his best by 
 separating them in some sort of classification, and 
 the admirable collection of French memoirs was 
 set aside for lighter reading in the country. No 
 one had a shrewder flair in new books, or a surer 
 instinct in pronouncing off-hand judgment. In 
 him the Longmans lost an adviser on whom they 
 absolutely relied. It was not only that in a few 
 pregnant lines he could indicate the merits and 
 shortcomings of a manuscript, but he would say 
 shrewdly whether the book was likely to sell and 
 how far it would hit off the taste of the hour. 
 Arranging with his contributors, his ordinary rule 
 was to ask if they had reviewed the book else- 
 where. He feared repetitions, and hated richauffds. 
 Nevertheless, in special cases, he would stretch a 
 point, and he grudged what he considered a clever 
 article, when it had gone astray and he had missed 
 
FRIENDS OF THE ATHENAEUM 227 
 
 his chance by over-punctiliousness. Most editors 
 worth their salt are on the search for rising talent. 
 Reeve was platonically on the watch, simply because 
 he was charmed by a book of talent, and rejoiced 
 in the promise of the writer's future. 
 
 Reeve died an octogenarian, in full intellectual 
 vigour. Almost to the last he had written the 
 political articles in his Review, In fact, foreign 
 politics were his favourite study, and he had 
 always been in closest touch with leading French 
 and German Liberals. Cradled in literature he 
 had been launched in politics as a lad. He 
 sprung from an East Anglian literary stock, when 
 Norwich was a centre of letters. He was sent 
 abroad in his teens, with introductions from his 
 aunt, Mrs. Austin, the second of the ' Three 
 generations of Englishwomen.' He spoke French 
 like a native, and wrote German so fluently and 
 correctly, that for years he was a regular con- 
 tributor to Prussian and Bavarian periodicals. 
 Barely of age, he had been enlisted on the staff 
 of the Times, and he has told me how very many 
 thousands of pounds he had been paid for his 
 labours. For forty years he had been autocrat of 
 the Edinburgh ; but on accepting the appointment 
 he had made it a stipulation that his connection 
 with the Times should not determine. As editor 
 of the great Whig organ and historical quarterly, 
 he had exceptional qualifications, and not the least 
 were his foreign connections. Cosmopolitan as he 
 
228 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 was, his sympathies were French, and before the 
 fall of the Empire he was ami de la maison at the 
 Embassy in Albert Gate. Not that he was by 
 any means a partisan of the Emperor. St. Hilaire, 
 Thiers, Guizot, Victor Cousin, De Remusat, and 
 De Broglie were among his habitual correspondents. 
 Yet he never permitted the most intimate relations 
 to influence his conduct ; and there is a letter from 
 Mrs. Austin to M. St. Hilaire, deprecating his un- 
 bridled indignation at an article by Reeve himself 
 on the Suez Canal. For as to that Reeve agreed 
 with Lord Palmerston, foreboding disastrous con- 
 sequences to England. He was in constant 
 intercourse with the Orleans princes, especially 
 with the Due d'Aumale, who had submitted to 
 him the Memoirs of the Condds for revision. The 
 last of his many crossings of the Channel was on a 
 visit to the Duke at Chantilly. He lunched often 
 at the Athenseum, almost always in the upper 
 corner, between fire and window, and invariably 
 on a Sunday after service in the Temple. Then 
 after a descent to the smoking-room, he would 
 start on what he called his giro, a round of after- 
 noon calls. Walking with Reeve up St. James's 
 Street was like riding with Delane in Rotten Row. 
 It was a perpetual lifting of the hat or waving of 
 the hand. 
 
 As Registrar of the Privy Council, he was in 
 touch with Cabinet ministers, from whom, when 
 the Liberals were in power, he was in the way of 
 
FRIENDS OF THE ATHEN/EUM 229 
 
 obtaining early if not exclusive information. His 
 friend Greville, the 'Cruncher,' Clerk of the 
 Council, had paid him the handsome and lucrative 
 compliment of bequeathing him the Memoirs in 
 manuscript with carte blanche as to the editing. 
 The legacy, though financially profitable, was per- 
 haps prejudicial to his official career. The publica- 
 tion of the memoirs relating to the reign of Queen 
 Victoria, with their unreserved frankness and 
 frequent revelations, naturally gave rise to heated 
 discussions. They had the honour of a debate in 
 the Commons, when the late Sir William Fraser, 
 something of a snarler like the * Cruncher ' himself, 
 was epigrammatically severe. I remember talking 
 them over with Lord Houghton and with Delane. 
 Lord Houghton thought that Reeve had done the 
 delicate work with creditable discretion and tact. 
 Delane said that if two or three pages had been 
 cancelled there was nothing to which fair exception 
 could be taken. I fancy Reeve cared little for 
 unfriendly criticism. He had confidence in his 
 own judgment, and was persuaded, moreover, that 
 excessive suppression and mutilation would have 
 been a betrayal of his trust. 
 
 Dr. William Smith, the editor of the Quarterly, 
 was, when I knew him, a benignant-looking old 
 gentleman, albeit with something of a leonine 
 aspect. Nevertheless there was much shrewdness 
 in the face, and when he fixed you with his smiling 
 eyes they searched you. 'The old doctor,' that 
 
230 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 was his familiar appellation in Albemarle. Street, 
 was very regular in his habits. The mornings 
 were passed in his library in Westbourne Terrace, 
 a spacious and luxurious apartment, with three 
 lofty windows looking out on the little back-garden. 
 In the north-western corner was his writing-table, 
 with its handsome appointments. Each yard of 
 the walls was padded with volumes in rich or 
 severe bindings. Like Reeve or Lord Houghton 
 at Fryston, his selections seemed to have been 
 made from what was readable rather than abstruse. 
 The room would have been a paradise for the 
 omnivorous reader with carte blanche to range the 
 shelves at will. Dr. Smith had as many irons in 
 the fire as most folk, and was necessarily a busy 
 man with a large correspondence. Yet it struck 
 one pleasantly that he never objected to being 
 interrupted, and he was certainly always ready to 
 talk, especially when it was a question of some 
 article that interested him. In those days there 
 was more actual reviewing of individual books, 
 and the editor was liberal in sending the con- 
 tributor any volumes that bore upon the subject. 
 In the afternoon his carriage was always to be 
 seen drawn up before the door of No. 50; and 
 so many standard works that he had edited were 
 so constantly passing through the press, that he 
 invariably found something to occupy him. When 
 he left Albemarle Street, he was set down at the 
 Athenaeum. He paid the penalty of advanced age. 
 
FRIENDS OF THE ATHENyEUM 231 
 
 and latterly was much of an invalid. To the last, 
 his cheerfulness never failed. Folkestone was a 
 favourite resort of his as of mine, and many an 
 instructive chat 1 have had with him as I walked 
 alongside of his bathchair on the Lees. In his 
 more active days he had known the neighbourhood 
 well, and he was the most learned and intelligent 
 of all directors to anything that was worth seeing 
 within walkinor or driving- reach. It was at Folke- 
 Stone that he was surprised by the announce- 
 ment that Lord Salisbury had recommended him 
 for a knighthood. Had he been consulted before- 
 hand, he would have declined ; as it was he 
 hesitated, but it was delicate and invidious to back 
 out. So he accepted the honour and died Sir 
 William. 
 
 Albemarle Street had sustained a greater loss in 
 the previous year by the death of John Murray, 
 the second of the dynasty. No one would have 
 suspected a few weeks before that the end was 
 near. Seemingly in full vigour of his faculties, 
 that death broke the last link with the grolden a^e 
 of our literature in the first half of the nineteenth 
 century. Murray's memories went back to Byron 
 and Scott, Campbell, Crabbe, Coleridge, and 
 Southey, who had all been his father's familiars. 
 As a youth he had himself been a guest at Abbots- 
 ford, when he impressed his host as a singularly 
 favourable specimen of English education. Three 
 remarkable events he remembered in especial. He 
 
232 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 had been present at the burning of the Byron 
 manuscripts in the Albemarle dining-room, by 
 which, as Scott observes in his Journal, Tom 
 Moore lost ^2000, through generous but some- 
 what misplaced susceptibility. Gifford and Lord 
 John Russell had pronounced them * in parts too 
 gross for publication ' ; for Byron, as Scott ex- 
 pressed it, ' embellished his amours and was le 
 fanfaron de vices quil n avail pas.' As Murray said, 
 the manuscripts might have been expurgated and 
 the treasure preserved. Again, looking over the 
 balustrades, he had seen the two lame poets — 
 Byron and Scott — going down the stairs in close 
 confabulation. And by a happy chance he had 
 been present at the memorable theatrical banquet 
 in the Waterloo Rooms in Edinburgh, when Scott 
 confessed to the authorship of the novels. In a 
 letter to his father he had given Scott's speech, 
 almost verbatim, from memory. In the letter he 
 records a literally dramatic incident. Scott had 
 proposed the health of Mackay, who had played so 
 inimitably the part of the Bailie. By the way, u 
 I may be forgiven the digression, I have seen the 
 veteran both in the Bailie and in Peter Peebles, 
 and the latter role, with its grim but homely 
 humour, struck me as the more masterly interpre- 
 tation of the two. You shook with laughter 
 through the scenes, and yet were suddenly sobered 
 and saddened by the grotesque pathos, when Peter 
 comes down from glorying in ' the height of earthly 
 
FRIENDS OF THE ATHENv^UM 233 
 
 grandeur,' as the hero of ' a gangin' plea,' to sigh- 
 ing over the missing the daily meal which came 
 so regularly when he was a decent burgess ; and 
 never was more humour thrown into a single 
 sentence, than when he ejaculated to the Quaker, 
 ' The Lord mend your eyesight, neighbour, that 
 disna ken grey hairs frae a tow wig.' But the 
 mention of Mackay has carried me across from the 
 Waterloo Rooms to the Theatre Royal, which used 
 to confront them on what is now the site of the Post 
 Office. The actor's health had been duly honoured, 
 when there came a voice from the other end of the 
 hall, * Ma conscience, if my father the Bailie ' (a slip 
 for Deacon) ' had been alive to hear that my health 
 had been proposed by the author of Waverley \ ' 
 
 The standard works published by Murray are 
 not to be numbered. To name a few of the 
 authors, there were, Hallam, Lord Stanhope, 
 Layard, Lord Campbell, Livingstone, Schliemann, 
 Darwin, Dean Stanley, Smiles, Dean Milman, 
 and Sir Henry Maine. We are indebted to him 
 for the Speakers Cormnentmy and Sir William 
 Smith's Dictionaries and volumes of reference. 
 He had inherited the traditional liberality of 
 the house. Once, under pecuniary pressure and 
 against his advice, an author parted with the 
 copyright of a manuscript for £^00. As the 
 publisher had foreseen, the book had a sensational 
 success, and the sale realised over ^3000. The 
 author received a further cheque for ;^2000. Like 
 
234 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 John Blackwood, Murray was seen at his best 
 when presiding at his own table, and drawn on 
 insensibly to indulge in recollections suggested by 
 the genius loci. The portraits of the dead on the 
 walls were still speaking — the once famous African 
 travellers, Denham, Clapperton, and Lander, with 
 Basil Hall, Barrow of the Admiralty, who aided 
 Croker in editing the Quarterly after Gifford's 
 death, and who caused Scott some anxiety by 
 objecting to Lockhart's succession. Last but not 
 the least was Lavengro, whose adventures had 
 been in England, Ireland, Spain, and wild 
 Wales. If the men of action were in evidence 
 below stairs, poetry and romance were in the 
 atmosphere of the drawing-room. For there the 
 host would bring forth the cherished manuscripts 
 of Childe Harold and the minor poems, with others 
 that had come from Ashestiel or Abbotsford. 
 
 The portraits in the Albemarle dining-room 
 suggest the African travellers I have met at the 
 Athenaeum. Sir Richard Burton was a man who 
 must have fixed attention anywhere. I think his wife 
 says in her biography that some people called his 
 expression diabolical. Though I did not, like her, 
 fall in love with him at first sight, it never struck 
 me in that way. It was severe, stern, saturnine if 
 you like, but not in the slightest degree repulsive. 
 On the contrary, in animated conversation it bright- 
 ened up, and the smile when he put you straight 
 on some vexed geographical point was winning 
 
FRIENDS OF THE ATHEN/EUM 235 
 
 and almost sweet. Before I met him in the flesh, 
 I had remarked to Lord Houghton that the 
 gratuitous aggressiveness of his books rubbed me 
 up the wrong way. Lord Houghton, who was fond 
 of fighting his own battles, said, ' If the man is in 
 the right, why should he not be aggressive ? ' And 
 undoubtedly Burton, like Sir Charles Napier, was 
 a man of strono- will and stronoer animosities ; he 
 never could get on smoothly either with rivals or 
 superiors. He won me to share his resentment to 
 the full, at his not having been named Consul- 
 General in Morocco in succession to Drummond 
 Hay, for no man seemed better fitted for such a 
 post. Since his Biography was written by the wife 
 who adored him, I have reconsidered that opinion. 
 But when there was nothing to irritate and you 
 only sought to learn, he would roar you as softly 
 as any sucking dove. At the club he lunched 
 alone, and generally with a book before him. 
 When he dived to the smoking-room for coffee 
 and cigar, then came your opportunity. Then he 
 would talk unreservedly enough about the lands he 
 had visited and the perils he had escaped. Then 
 he would discuss the devious wandering-s of the 
 Israelites in the desert, expatiate on the treasures 
 of the mines of Midian which he had been sent to 
 prospect, or revert to his stormy consulate at 
 Damascus, when there were troubles in ' the Moun- 
 tain,' and he was generally in hot water. 
 
 There was one delicate subject I never ventured 
 
236 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 to approach, and that was Central Africa and the 
 Nile Sources. I had heard too much about it from 
 Colonel Grant, who was the devoted friend of 
 Speke, and necessarily the bitter aversion of 
 Burton. Indeed, there was no love lost between 
 them. Grant I knew intimately, and the more he 
 was known the better he was liked. With his tall, 
 muscular figure — decoupld, as the French phrase 
 it — he looked the athlete for the ' walk across 
 Africa.' With that commanding form and pleasant 
 but determined face, he was the very man to 
 smooth his way among savages without falling 
 back on firearms. After all he had accomplished, 
 there was no blood-guiltiness on his conscience. 
 When he had married a lady of fortune and taken 
 up house in Grosvenor Street, he was the most 
 hospitable of entertainers, and gathered hosts of 
 congenial friends around him. Naturally he took 
 a deep interest in the Geographical Society, and 
 was a regular attendant at the dinners, to which 
 he generally invited a guest. The most kindly of 
 men and absolutely trustworthy, you should have 
 given implicit credence to anything he said. Yet 
 I confess I have been staggered by circumstantial 
 stories, relative to Burton's relations with Speke, 
 and though I have had them confirmed subse- 
 quently on independent authority, I hesitate still 
 to do more than hint at them. The traveller 
 was interested in other things than the problem 
 of the Nile Sources. Little as you might know 
 
FRIENDS OF THE ATHENvEUM 237 
 
 of botany, nothing was more agreeable than to be 
 taken into his back drawing-room and den to turn 
 over the portfolios of Central African flora, with 
 running commentaries on the circumstances in 
 which the plants had been gathered. 
 
 One day, stopping to speak to Grant at his 
 luncheon-table in the club, he introduced me to 
 a sun-burned, sun-dried, careworn man, sitting 
 opposite him. Unfortunately I did not catch the 
 name, and after some casual remark passed on, 
 though Grant in his cordial way asked me to join 
 them. Only afterwards I learned to my regret 
 that it was Stanley, just returned from his melan- 
 choly march for the relief of Emin Pasha. So I 
 had but a single glimpse of another Pasha — Sir 
 Samuel Baker — standing on the steps of Shep- 
 heard's Hotel at Cairo, the African explorer whose 
 fascinating literary style has always given his 
 books an exceptional charm for me. Cairo was 
 then full of notorieties, for the gaieties at the open- 
 ing of the Suez Canal were in full swing, and most 
 of the visitors paid some attention to the toilet. 
 Baker was got up in rough tweeds and knicker- 
 bockers, as if he were turning out for a day's 
 shooting. I was hurrying off to catch a train, and 
 had scarcely time to take a second look. So I had 
 but a vague impression of the broad chest and 
 massive build which he declared to be of inestim- 
 able value to the explorer, when he knocked the 
 ringleader of the mutineers out of time in the 
 
238 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 scrimmage at the start from Khartoum for the 
 Nile fountains. 
 
 I dined with Professor Palmer at the Athenaeum 
 on the eve of his leaving for Arabia on the mys- 
 terious missions which have never been altogether 
 explained. I owed that pleasure to his intimacy 
 with Chenery, for their common interest in oriental 
 studies drew them closely together. As to the 
 objects of these missions, he was naturally reserved. 
 It was understood that the first and chief one was 
 to treat with the desert sheiks and assure the Suez 
 Canal from their raiding when Arabi had raised 
 the standard of revolt. On landing at Port Said 
 Palmer changed his costume, and was riding 
 through the Sinaitic Peninsula in Syrian robes, 
 lavishing magnificent gifts. That first mission 
 was so successful, that arriving at Suez, he per- 
 suaded the Admiral and Lord Northbrook that 
 with ;^20,ooo at his disposal he could easily raise 
 50,000 Bedouins. He set off again, with ;^30oo in 
 gold in his saddlebags, professedly to purchase 
 camels : rather, perhaps, for the confidential inter- 
 view with the leading chiefs, for which he had 
 prearranged. On the way to that meeting he was 
 ambushed and murdered. 
 
 Palmer, with his placid face, his keen, bright 
 eyes and soft-flowing beard, was admirably fitted 
 to assume the disguise of the Bedouin, with whose 
 habits and speech he was familiar. He was san- 
 guine as to results, and would probably have 
 
FRIENDS OF THE ATHEN^UM 239 
 
 succeeded, but for an intervention which no 
 Englishman could possibly have foreseen. I 
 should be loath to give credence to that sinister 
 rumour, had it not been confirmed to me by a 
 keen-witted editor, the reverse of credulous, on 
 evidence he accepted as absolutely truthful. It 
 was said that a countryman closely lU with some 
 of the Arab chiefs had warned them of the envoy's 
 second journey and its objects, intimating besides 
 that his camels would be weighted with gold. But 
 no shadow of the impending tragedy rested upon 
 Palmer that night. His spirits rose high over the 
 excitement of the journey ; the talk was rather 
 retrospective than regardful of the future ; and I 
 sat in silence, listening to the animated conversa- 
 tion, enriched by stores of recondite learning. 
 Then the old friends shook hands and parted for 
 the last time. 
 
 Were I to launch out on personal recollections 
 of the Athenaeum it would be endless. I must 
 content myself with random allusions to some 
 men who specially won my affection or admiration. 
 I see them now as they lived and moved. Going 
 far back, there is Lord Colonsay, President of the 
 Court of Session and Lord Justice-General, who 
 proposed me for the club. With his sage aspect, 
 broad forehead, and the shaggy grey eyelashes 
 thatching the hanging eaves of the eyebrows, you 
 might have said of him, as was said of Lord 
 Thurlow, that no man could possibly be so wise 
 
240 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 as he looked ; yet you would have been wrong. 
 When he came south, he left behind him in Scot- 
 land an unrivalled reputation as a civil and criminal 
 judge, and his judgments carried great weight in 
 Scottish cases in the Lords. With young beginners 
 in the law he was most affable and condescending, 
 and the dignified old man wasted much good 
 advice on me when I passed at the Scottish Bar. 
 His habits were simple, and his fare was Spartan. 
 I often dined with him tete-a-tHe at the Carlton, 
 when he generally contented himself with a couple 
 of mutton chops. He had much to say about the 
 politicians he saw sitting at other tables ; but he was 
 a genuine Highlander, and never so happy as when 
 you got him away to the Western Isles and his pic- 
 turesque home on lonely Colonsay. And that was 
 the case with his brother. Sir John. One winter 
 Sir John came to see us, when we had apartments 
 in the Villa Rupe at Sorrento. A voracious reader, 
 he was full of Greg's Political Problems, which he 
 had been studying in the carriage from Castellamare. 
 I have the volume now, with his autograph on the 
 title-page. From English politics I changed the 
 subject to Central Asia and Persia, hoping to get 
 some lights on those countries from the English- 
 man, who perhaps knew them best. He talked 
 with great animation on the subject, deploring the 
 ascendency of Russia in the Court of the Shah. As 
 on one of the few bright days in a Sorrento winter 
 we were climbing the hill crowned by the Deserta, 
 
FRIENDS OF THE ATHEN^UM 241 
 
 when turning, he saw Capri floating in a sunny 
 haze at its moorings off the mouth of the Bay, of 
 all places in the world it reminded him of surf- 
 beaten Colonsay. I forget whether it was before 
 that or afterwards that he bought the island from 
 his brother. 
 
 There could be no stronger contrast to Lord 
 Colonsay than Lord Morris, ex-Chief- Justice of 
 Ireland and a more recent acquaintance. Morris 
 shone, sparkled, and bubbled over with Irish 
 humour in the society that Lord Colonsay shunned. 
 I fancy he prided himself on the rich Irish brogue 
 which gave piquancy to his ready repartees and 
 excellent stories. He was equally at home with 
 all sorts and conditions of men, and dealt with 
 criminals in as summary a manner as Lord Bramwell, 
 but with a geniality which for the moment almost 
 reconciled them to their fate. On the Bench and 
 in the Senate common sense predominated. He 
 had a strong sympathy with the erratic statesman- 
 ship of Lord Randolph Churchill and a great 
 admiration for the man. He used to quote with 
 a chuckle Lord Randolph's illustration of the ab- 
 surdities of the extremists who advocated women's 
 rights. It was the story of a well-known champion 
 of feminine claims who got into an omnibus, found 
 all the seats occupied, and stood scowling at the 
 man in front of her. ' I believe you are Mrs. So- 
 and-So,' he quietly remarked, * and go in for the 
 rights of women.' *I do,' the lady said uncom- 
 
 Q 
 
242 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 promisingly, and the response came sharp, ' Well, 
 stand up for them, then.' That was characteristic 
 of his humour, as well as of his strong native sense. 
 So he had a natural antipathy to the statesmen 
 who stood on their dignity and would not unbend. 
 He could never have ranked among the obsequious 
 followers of the elder or younger Pitt. He had 
 a high regard for a noble politician who had made 
 a firm stand against Home Rule, and had drawn a 
 large following after him, when Chamberlain was 
 making sure of the Midlands. Yet, as he said, 
 that nobleman was never cut out for a premier in 
 a democratic country, and a reminiscence of his 
 own served as proof. He was walking homewards 
 from the House of Lords late one evening with a 
 well-known peer, a staunch Liberal Unionist, when 
 
 his friend said, ' There 's ahead of us, let us go 
 
 on and join him.' 'Better not,' said Morris; but 
 his companion would not be bidden, and hurried for- 
 ward. In a couple of minutes he came back ; meta- 
 phorically with his tail between his legs ; the great 
 grandee had hardly deigned to answer him. * Can 
 you wonder,' said Morris, 'that he never was 
 premier, nor ever will be ! ' For himself, though 
 he had a strong backbone there was no starch 
 about him ; he could drop his judicial dignity, 
 and accommodate himself to his surroundings. He 
 was as popular at his wild home of Spidal as in 
 the London clubs or at the Castle, where his chaff 
 of the lady of a Liberal Lord Lieutenant is still 
 
FRIENDS OF THE ATHENv^UM 243 
 
 remembered ; and his influence won the seat at 
 Galway for his son, when no other Conservative 
 had a chance outside of Ulster or DubHn. Another 
 Irishman of something the same type and much 
 the same convictions was Sir WilHam Gregory, 
 who was likewise a Galway landlord, yet never 
 lost his popularity. I made his acquaintance on 
 board the Delta, when we were on our way 
 to the opening of the Suez Canal. Among 
 the other passengers were Lord Houghton, the 
 Hon. Tom Bruce, Hawkshaw, and Bateman, the 
 engineers, Simpson of the Illustrated News, and 
 many another. But no one of them was more 
 agreeable or more instructive than Gregory, with 
 the manifold recollections of a wide knowledo-e of 
 
 o 
 
 the world. He won golden opinions as Governor 
 of Ceylon, and left a sad blank when we lost him 
 at the Athenseum. 
 
 Many a literary man owes a debt of gratitude to 
 Sir Richard Quain. He may be said to have 
 constituted himself physician-in-ordinary to the 
 literary guild. But there were two objections to 
 turning to him in your troubles. The first was 
 that he would take no fee, which made you shy of 
 looking him up in Harley Street. The second, 
 that when you did go, he was so interested in 
 current events, that he would talk about anything 
 rather than the object of your visit. Sometimes, 
 en revanche, he sent you away brightened up, for 
 his buoyant temperament was contagious. A 
 
244 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 great crony of Delane's, he was specially concerned 
 about the leaders of the Times and the men who 
 wrote them. There was no possibility of mistaking 
 his nationality ; like Morris and Gregory he hailed 
 from West Ireland. But in him the brogue had 
 toned down into a mere souvenir of his native 
 Mallow, which, like his brother the judge, he held 
 in fond affection. I had come back from making 
 an Irish tour as Times commissioner, and my regret 
 was that I had not interviewed him as to Mallow 
 before starting, he had so much to say of the 
 romantic little town and its singularly picturesque 
 environs. Ouain was a sportsman and emphati- 
 cally a cosmopolitan. He loved to take his 
 holidays in the Hungarian plains or the Car- 
 pathians, and many a boar's head and hure came 
 to his table from the Magyar friends who had 
 entertained him in their castles. A busy man, 
 he was seldom to be seen in the Athenaeum, and 
 then the carriage would draw up at the door, and 
 he would drop in late. You would be roused with a 
 touch to find him perching on the elbow of your 
 chair, eager as any citizen of old Athens to hear 
 or to tell any new thing. If he had another fault 
 as a physician, it was that in the flow of anecdote 
 he was inclined to be indiscreet as to the celebrated 
 patients who had consulted him. When years had 
 gone by, he was not over-scrupulous as to the 
 incognita which anonymous princes and veiled 
 queens had jealously sought to guard. If he came 
 
FRIENDS OF THE ATHEN^UM 245 
 
 seldom to the Athenaeum, he knew the wines 
 of the cellars better than any one. At a dinner of 
 strangers there, he was sitting next to me, and 
 when the claret was circulating he turned to me to 
 recommend a special tap of port. It was a vintage 
 which by a whisper to the butler, without consult- 
 ing the host, he had summoned from the vasty 
 deep, and then recommended to the general atten- 
 tion of the company. When the Lafitte had not a 
 chance. As a notable bon vivant, his practice 
 clashed with his preaching. I consulted him once, 
 and he imperatively ordered a strict rdginie for 
 a week or so ; then as I was leaving the room he 
 asked off-hand, ' Are you going to the Sahirday 
 Review dinner to-morrow at Greenwich ? ' ' How 
 can I,' I answered ruefully, 'after your absurd 
 orders ? ' ' Oh, never you mind ; go all the same, 
 and sit opposite to me ; I '11 raise my finger to my 
 lips if there is anything specially unwholesome.' 
 And that at a banquet where there was everything 
 rich and indigestible, from the calipash and calipee 
 to the dressed crab and the camembert. How man- 
 fully he faced the painful disease which killed him, 
 I know well, for I was sometimes admitted to his 
 sick-chamber. There was always the same cordial 
 welcome ; always the same cheery alertness as to 
 the things which were passing in the outer world, 
 with a touchino- resiofnation to the end he foresaw, 
 and which speedily came as a relief. 
 
 A man I regretted much was Sir Frederick 
 
246 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 Pollock. Member of a distinguished and brilliantly 
 successful family, famous alike in law, literature, 
 and arms, he inherited the talent and the bonhomie 
 of his race. Once a week there was a day when 
 he used to lunch regularly at the Athenaeum, before 
 attending the Board of an Insurance Company. 
 As a friend of his son, then editing the Saturday 
 RevieWy I seldom missed one of these weekly 
 meetings ; indeed the temptation to come to town 
 was irresistible. The courtly Queen's Remem- 
 brancer had an endless store of reminiscences ; he 
 published them afterwards in a lively little volume. 
 His gentle manner and deliberation of speech 
 made the story or the bon mot all the more telling. 
 Sir Frederick had a slight stoop, but his brother, 
 Sir Richard — known in the family as ' Uncle Trim ' 
 — carried himself like a soldier and straight as a 
 lance, seemed the incarnation of evergreen activity. 
 Though he seldom volunteered anything as to his 
 own services as soldier and political resident in the 
 North Western Provinces, he was an invaluable 
 source of information as to comrades and illustrious 
 contemporaries of the fighting days when the 
 frontier of the Indus seemed trembling in our 
 fingers. I was greatly indebted to talks with 
 him when writing the biography of John Jacob of 
 Jacobabad ; and his sudden and unexpected death 
 came as a startling shock. 
 
 Frederick Locker Lampson used to remind me 
 of Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, as Scott describes 
 
FRIENDS OF THE ATHEN^UM 247 
 
 him. A fastidious dilettante, delighting in the 
 society of men of letters, he prowled about the 
 purlieus of literature, occasionally hazarding an 
 inbreak. In poetry Praed was his model ; and he 
 was a charming writer of society verse, polishing 
 with infinite care. Hamley, with whom he was on 
 the closest terms of friendship, always in corre- 
 spondence addressed him as * My dear poet,' with, 
 possibly, a faint touch of irony. And he used 
 sincerely to condole with Locker in his provincial 
 exiles, when in later years he had a charming 
 country seat in Sussex, and had built himself a 
 commodious mansion on the wind-blown cliffs of 
 Cromer. The keen north wind touched a sensitive 
 liver, and the country had few attractions for a 
 man who delighted in intellectual company, in 
 book shops, print shops, and repositories of curios. 
 When in town. Locker was a regular attendant at 
 the midnight meetings of the Cosmopolitan, and 
 took no little trouble in beating up for eligible 
 members. And he prided himself, with excellent 
 reason, on having filled for many years the hono- 
 rary ofiice of treasurer to the Literary Society, 
 perhaps the most select fellowship in England. 
 The members, like the French Academicians, are 
 limited to forty, and a single black ball excludes. 
 On the lists are the names of archbishops and 
 lords chancellors, statesmen, diplomatists, famous 
 travellers, and many of the immortals in letters 
 and the arts. In fact, they are rolls of fame and 
 
248 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 of all that has been most distinguished since the 
 first year of the last century. 
 
 I felt exceptional regret for the death of Sir 
 Frederick Bramwell as a near and hospitable 
 neighbour in the Kentish Weald. His was a 
 rarely versatile intellect, and to the last he showed 
 his irrepressible vitality. A great man of science, 
 and in incessant and lucrative employment as a 
 practical engineer, his other interests were mani- 
 fold. His brother, the Baron, is said to have said 
 of him, ' He knows as much law as myself and 
 all other things.' He was a voracious and 
 miscellaneous reader ; no one was better versed in 
 the best contemporary fiction. He was deeply 
 concerned in all the scientific inventions which 
 could be turned to popular and profitable account. 
 His services and great authority were constantly 
 retained on arbitrations and commissions of inquiry. 
 He was constantly putting in an appearance at 
 scientific gatherings in the provinces, from the 
 British Association downwards. I have often seen 
 him sitting crumpled up of a bitter morning on 
 the platform of his railway station, and read on the 
 following morning a brilliant speech delivered at 
 Leeds or Liverpool. But he never bored the 
 uninitiated with transcendental talk; he had a play- 
 ful humour and a happy wit. One day he professed 
 to grumble at the charming country place of which 
 he was both fond and proud, as being down in a 
 hollow amid damp meadows. I remarked that 
 
FRIENDS OF THE ATHENAEUM 249 
 
 he was fortunately situated in a most picturesque 
 and interesting neighbourhood. * So your idea of 
 happiness,' he retorted, ' is a place from which you 
 are always glad to get away.' In an obituary 
 notice in a New Jersey journal, his great friend, 
 Monsignor Doane, told a characteristic story of a 
 speech of Sir Frederick's at a scientific dinner at 
 Cambridge. It was very late when he got upon 
 his legs, and he said the only thing that occurred 
 to him in connection with applied science at that 
 hour, was the striking of a lucifer match and 
 applying it to a bedroom candle. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 RAMBLES WITH ROD AND GUN 
 
 No recollections are more pleasant or more varied 
 than those associated with the rod or the gun. 
 They carry you back into all manner of scenes, 
 from the forest and the moor to the fields and the 
 coverts, from the birch-fringed Highland loch to 
 the breezy down, the swamp, and the seashore. 
 Moreover, they lead you into strange countries, 
 among men of rude manners and unfamiliar speech. 
 Wonderfully fresh they are too, and the fresher the 
 further you go back, at least so I find them. I 
 conjure up the spot where I shattered the head of 
 my first rabbit, with a heavy double-barrel I could 
 hardly bring to my shoulder, as he sat under a 
 spruce bough. It was not much of a performance, 
 for the range was little over a couple of yards, but 
 the thrill of sanguinary satisfaction that ran through 
 the veins surpassed that when I whipped the first 
 trout out of the burn with a worm on a string and 
 a hazel rod. Boys are neither bloodthirsty nor 
 deliberately cruel, but, when healthy and country- 
 bred, they take naturally to sport as the young 
 spaniel or terrier. And in spite of all the senti- 
 mentalist or humanitarian can say, it is a law of 
 
 250 
 
RAMBLES WITH ROD AND GUN 251 
 
 beneficent nature that the passion should grow on 
 them. As I have said somewhere else, the man 
 with the gun is the friend of the weak and the 
 protector of the helpless. But qui s excuse s accuse, 
 and it is idle arguing a case which has long since 
 been satisfactorily settled by experience, conscience, 
 and common sense. The first rabbit and the first 
 trout were followed in due course by other moments 
 of rapture and hours or minutes of intense excite- 
 ment. The first sight of the distant deer in his 
 native wilds — not as I had seen them before, from 
 the top of a stage coach, deliberately crossing the 
 road in advance, conscious apparently that they 
 were out of season and safe. The first mad rush 
 of the first salmon ; the fall of the first woodcock 
 in the coppice, when I snapped at him, haphazard, 
 through the boughs of an oak tree ; the dropping 
 of the first snipe after a multitude of discreditable 
 misses, etc. etc. 
 
 Looking back upon changes in the country and 
 the revolution in shooting methods, the laudator 
 temporis acti makes melancholy moan. Shooting is 
 far less of a sport and much more of a business asso- 
 ciated with social functions. I am inclined to agree 
 with old Donald, Frederick St. John's keeper and 
 constant companion, that agricultural advance and 
 the progress of reclamation have been playing sad 
 havoc with everything. I see oat crops waving 
 now over the snipe bogs, which one could only 
 tread at peril of immersion to the armpits. Fields 
 
252 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 on the home farm have been drained, where you 
 were sure to find any number of hares squatting 
 under the tufts of rushes. Though to be sure that 
 scarcity is very much owing to the late Sir WilHam 
 Harcourt's exterminating Act, passed just at the 
 moment when tenants were dictating terms to the 
 landlords. Even on tolerably well-watched estates 
 there used to be but a rough kind of preserving, 
 and the rheumatic old head keeper would never 
 dream of leaving the blankets to keep a chilly out- 
 look for possible poachers. Indeed, unless he had 
 set his snares for hares or rabbits, there was little 
 to tempt the poacher to nocturnal raids. Then the 
 youth could walk the woods through the shooting 
 season, seeking anything that offered a shot from 
 rabbit or weasel to hawk or wood-pigeon. Now 
 the home coverts, with carefully tended undergrowth, 
 perhaps with dummy birds on the branches and 
 bell-wires stretched over the ground, are strictly 
 tabooed. The protected haunts of the hand-fed 
 pheasant are held over for two or three big shoots ; 
 and even if you are privileged to join in the fun, 
 such as it is, it is concentrated and comparatively 
 tame. 
 
 When Colonel Hawker travelled down to Scot- 
 land, on his several shooting trips, he seems to 
 have lighted from the coach where he pleased, put 
 his gun together and gone out trying his luck. 
 When St. John, many years later, kept house at 
 Invererne and elsewhere in Moray, he tramped the 
 
RAMBLES WITH ROD AND GUN 253 
 
 surrounding country for days, for anything- from 
 deer and ptarmigan down to duck and snipe. His 
 wanderings included those famous moors of The 
 Mackintosh, which now, with the system of scientific 
 driving and strategical butts, are rich in record 
 bags. I never was privileged to take such roving 
 liberties, and those prehistoric experiences were 
 before my time. But I remember that when out 
 with the gun, we were nowhere over particular 
 about marches, and trespassers, after brief and 
 benevolent expostulation, often arranged to club 
 for luncheon with the aggrieved. 
 
 But I do remember the startling boom, when 
 Scottish landowners realised the value of sporting 
 property. It was the railway which in the first 
 place brought it about. When the Southerner had 
 to travel north by * Defiance ' or Royal Mail, Loch- 
 aber or Badenoch, to say nothing of Sutherland 
 or the Ord of Caithness, lay altogether beyond 
 the ordinary experiences of Piccadilly or Pall Mall. 
 The favoured few brought up reports of the grand 
 days to be enjoyed in such regularly patrolled 
 forests as Braemar, Athol, or the Blackmount. The 
 Great North Railway ran to Aberdeen and Inver- 
 ness, and afterwards the Highland line was opened. 
 Impoverished Highland lairds had struck a gold 
 mine ; but the most sanguine were slow to believe 
 in the prospective value of their solitudes. To 
 take a single example of the rapid rise. In 1854, 
 to their bitter subsequent regret the Mackenzies 
 
254 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 parted with their hereditary wastes of Applecross. 
 They were sold to the Duke of Leeds for ^135,000. 
 On the death of the Duke, a few years afterwards, 
 the property came into the market in three lots and 
 it fetched ^206,000. Further subdivisions brought 
 successive startling advances. The same thing has 
 been going on everywhere, though latterly there 
 has been a reaction. Sheep were swept from the 
 hills, as the black cattle had vanished before the 
 sheep ; forests were subdivided at fancy rents and 
 enclosed with wire-fencing like a Queensland cattle 
 run or an Argentine estancia. When you run up 
 against wire-fencing in the wilds of Ross or Inver- 
 ness you are reminded of the barbed hedges in the 
 Vale of Harrow and of the villa cockney dom of 
 Tooting or Balham. And apropos to villadom, the 
 primitive but comfortable shooting-lodges have 
 been replaced by the Gothic castle or the Italian 
 mansion. There are house parties and motor cars 
 and French cooks and ladies' maids, where in your 
 little pine-panelled den, like the state cabin of an 
 old paddle steamship, you used to be awakened by 
 the crow of the grouse to take a header in the loch 
 under the window. You might turn out in your 
 night-dress or mpuris naturalibtis without the fear 
 of scandalising anybody. Travelling the winding 
 mountain road from Dingwall to Loch Maree not 
 long ago, I passed the site of one of those familiar 
 forest lodges. There was not even a sign of the 
 ruins that mark the sites of Babylon or Nineveh. 
 
RAMBLES WITH ROD AND GUN 255 
 
 But opposite glared a many-storied structural 
 edifice, of the most florid Corinthian order of 
 architecture. The old grouse or ptarmigan hills 
 — no great extent as deer forests go in the High- 
 lands — had been enclosed, and, as I saw by a 
 paragraph in a local journal the other day, the new 
 proprietor had killed one hundred stags last season. 
 Naturally the round number was suspicious ; but if 
 he had done anything like that amount of butchery 
 in the limits, he might as well have been browning- 
 broods of chickens in his poultry yard. 
 
 Some forty years ago, a man satisfied with 
 moderate sport, and who did not mind hard walk- 
 ing, could have a shooting of his own for a com- 
 parative trifle. I knew an ofificer of the coast-guard 
 who rented half a great parish on the bleak shores 
 of Buchan from Lord Seafield for ^12. There 
 was fair partridge shooting, some shreds of grouse 
 moor, and any quantity of duck and snipe ; as for 
 the rabbits they swarmed on the sandhills. He did 
 not squander money on keepers, but engaged the 
 farmers in his interests by gifts of game. Another 
 friend paid little more for a most picturesque and 
 accessible shoot on the banks of Loch Lomond, 
 where the early woodcocks sought favourite lying ; 
 where roe and black game abounded, with a sprink- 
 ling of wild pheasants. I ought to remember 
 the place, not only for the glorious views looking 
 down on the archipelago of the Loch, but because 
 I had a narrow escape from the fate of Mr. 
 
256 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 Fawcett. I still carry between the eyes a pellet 
 that made a close shave of the eyeball. 
 
 The Highlands and the remoter Lowlands were 
 more primitive then, and, to my mind, infinitely 
 more enjoyable. Even if a man is no misanthrope, 
 as I certainly was not, for I would have gone any 
 day a hundred miles for a dance, there are times 
 when he loves to commune with nature in her 
 solitudes, and to play with some parody of the spirit 
 of adventure. Then away from the great high- 
 roads there was any extent of backcountry, practi- 
 cally trackless and unexplored. Even in the 
 immemorial passes through the hills, the ways 
 were little frequented, except by the keepers or 
 occasional drovers. There was no great exaggera- 
 tion in the old story of the stonebreaker, asked by 
 a southern tourist whether there was ever any 
 traffic. * Oh, ay, it's no ill for that,' was the 
 answer ; * there was a packman body passed yester- 
 day, and there's yoursel' the day.' Once I was 
 myself taken by one of the natives for a packman 
 body. Knapsack on shoulder, I was walking 
 across from Braemar to Glen Tilt after a Braemar 
 Gathering. Half way across I was stopped by an 
 old wife in mutch and red roquelaure, who sighted 
 me from afar and rushed out of her turf-roofed 
 hovel to ask ' if I was sellin' things.' That walk, 
 by the way, illustrated some of the perils of field 
 and flood that might beset the guideless wayfarer. 
 You crossed many a streamlet, shrivelled up in its 
 
RAMBLES WITH ROD AND GUN 257 
 
 dry bed in a droughty summer, but which might 
 come down at any time in raging flood after some 
 waterspout in the hills. Rivers like the Tilt or 
 the Bruar were regularly bridged, though the 
 bridges, then as in Scrope's days, would be as 
 regularly washed away in winter, to be brought 
 back and rebuilt in the spring. But the smaller 
 burns were only spanned by a pine stem, and as 
 they could generally be stepped across, they had 
 to await their turn for the restoration of com- 
 munications. That walk of mine came off on a 
 glorious day, but the burns were still half-bank 
 high, after a week of unprecedented downpour. 
 You had to cast about to find a practicable fording 
 place, and then it was gingery work on the slippery 
 pavement, stemming the swift rush, knee-deep or 
 up to mid-thigh. The rather that some croaking 
 ravens took an ominous interest in your proceed- 
 ings. The worst was that you were thrown out 
 of the track and had to regain it through bog 
 and boulder, and, though being benighted in moun- 
 tain mists was no novel experience, I was glad 
 enough to strike on the road at last and to reach 
 the Atholl Arms as the last lights were being 
 extinguished. 
 
 With all the undeniable drawbacks those pedes- 
 trian rambles were delightful when you were 
 exulting in health and youth. All the impedimenta 
 were a light waterproof and a short trouting-rod 
 strapped to a knapsack almost as light. It only 
 
258 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 held a change of flannels and nether raiment, 
 slippers, and the indispensable toilette necessaries. 
 It was no use counting over much with the climate, 
 especially on the romantic western coast, unless the 
 flood-gates of heaven were actually opened. The 
 grouse and the sheep were your weather-glasses, 
 and even they sometimes spoke with uncertain 
 sound. The boots awoke you according to orders 
 at what ought to have been sunrise, but had it not 
 been for the tumbler of rum and frothing milk, 
 possibly you could hardly have summoned resolu- 
 tion to rouse yourself. Everything is wreathed in 
 volumes of fleecy vapour. You hear the muffled 
 bell of the early steamer at the little pier some- 
 where out of black, dreary space. But the grimmer 
 the day, the more you are set upon keeping mov- 
 ing, so you sling your knapsack and hope for the 
 best. The drizzle thickens and your spirits go 
 down. But the West Highlands, like West Ireland, 
 is a land of enchanting surprises, and suddenly 
 there are rifts in the watery clouds which quickly 
 lighten and brighten. Then the sun breaks out 
 in his strength, rejoicing as a strong man to run 
 a race, and the vapours vanish before him, rolling 
 up into nooks and corners of the valleys. By this 
 time you have scaled a commanding height, and a 
 glorious prospect to seaward opens before you; 
 you look down a winding sea-arm with sea-wrack- 
 strewn shores to islands floating between the sea 
 and the sky, decked out in all the colours of the rain- 
 
RAMBLES WITH ROD AND GUN 259 
 
 bow. In the foreground are the brown sails of the 
 fishing-boats, gHttering like burnished gold. But 
 your path lies landward, across the moors. For 
 long miles you have met no human being, and you 
 are in a solitude with no sign of habitation. All 
 the same it is a sensational walk for a naturalist 
 and sportsman. It is solitary but not silent. On 
 all sides is the clamouring of the winged tenants 
 of the wastes ; the cheery crow of the grouse cock 
 contrasts with the shrill whistle of the ' whaup ' or 
 curlew, and the melancholy wailings of the lapwings 
 who swoop down over your shoulders. As you 
 track the course of the mountain burn, you hear 
 the wild, sweet song of the ring ousel — the moun- 
 tain blackbird — as you turn a sharp bend in the 
 brawling streamlet, there is the quack of alarm of 
 the mallard and his mate. And forty years ago, 
 when the war of extermination against the winged 
 'vermin' had scarcely begun, you sighted many 
 species of the picturesque raptores. The hawks 
 were there, from the peregrine winging his flight to 
 the distant sea-cliff, stooping at some startled brood 
 of grouse in sheer wantonness, never stopping to 
 pick up his stricken victim, to the pretty little 
 merlin nesting sociably among the moorfowl, but 
 never scrupling to take toll of them all the same. 
 
 Moorland it might be and no deer forest ; never- 
 theless in that forest-skirted country you might 
 happen upon outlying deer, jumping out of the 
 moss pit where they had been bathing, and canter- 
 
26o DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 ing away within easy gunshot, with blackened and 
 dripping hides. Not infrequently on these occa- 
 sions the long- Highland miles drew out into leagues, 
 and when you stumbled across some gillie or stray 
 shepherd, you learned that you were pretty sure 
 to be belated. As the gloaming came on, you heard 
 the bark of the prowling dog fox, and perchance 
 caught a glimpse of the marauder. There was 
 nothing of the sneaking gait of his persecuted Low- 
 land congener. On the contrary, with his pads on 
 his native heath, he carried himself with the stride 
 and spring of the mountaineer. Other night 
 prowlers there were none, for neither badger nor 
 otter are given to show themselves, and I seldom 
 chanced to see a genuine wild cat. The gloaming 
 had come on and the shadows were falling. If 
 there was a silvering of moonlight, it only confused 
 you when trying to puzzle out the doubtful path. 
 Should you once fairly lose it, the best plan was to 
 seek the friendly burn again, and follow it, though 
 it ran down through rough heather into tangled 
 copsewood. In such circumstances, if you knew 
 vaguely the lie of the land, the hooting of the night 
 owls was a cheery sound, for you knew you were 
 near the pine woods which must be threaded. In 
 these it was easy walking, for there is little under- 
 growth beneath the silver firs, and you trod softly 
 on a crackling carpet of pine needles. But the 
 flickering moonbeams cast a sinister light through 
 the dark foliage, and superstitious fancies were apt 
 
RAMBLES WITH ROD AND GUN 261 
 
 to steal over you. You recalled wild legends of 
 the Lham Dearg, who haunted Rothiemurcus 
 glades, and the tale of Wandering Willie, when 
 his forbear fell in with the black horseman who 
 led him to the scene of infernal revelry. It was 
 a decided relief, and worth going through much 
 more, to emerge at last on the open strath, and, 
 like Bailie Nicol Jarvie, to welcome the lights of 
 the clachan below you. 
 
 There was nothing like such a walk as that to 
 make you appreciate the comfort of the inn. I had 
 considerable experience of the Highland inns, before 
 they developed into hotels, and were swamped with 
 southern tourists. If it was not there you found 
 your warmest welcome, at least the good folk were 
 glad to see you. If you were not exacting and did 
 not hurry them, they were sure to do their best. 
 When you came in dripping and muddy they looked 
 at you askance ; you might be a sturdy beggar 
 or a ' sorner ' who hoped to sponge on them. The 
 rod and the knapsack disabused them, and then 
 they were all kindness and hospitality. In the 
 change house, which answered to the Spanish venta, 
 the only fire was in the kitchen. The warm glow 
 of the peat and bog-oak was as exhilarating as the 
 odours which, if not refined, were refreshing. Venti- 
 lation they did not go in for. The prevailing scent 
 was 'bannocks and brose,' with a strong suffusion 
 of whisky. But a brood hen or two, who shared 
 the common sitting-room, showed there were eggs 
 
262 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 forthcoming, and mutton hams and flitches, and 
 possibly kippered salmon, were swinging from the 
 blackened rafters. Never have I enjoyed supper 
 more than on these occasions, though indulgence 
 to satiety has sometimes been followed by night- 
 mares and broken dreams, rehearsing the long day's 
 incidents. Especially before experience had warned 
 me against being lured into the good woman's spot- 
 less sheets. Latterly I always preferred a shake- 
 down of fragrant meadow hay in the outhouse. 
 
 With the better class of inn in small towns or 
 big villages, I established frequent and friendly 
 relations. In many of them the simple old Scottish 
 cookery was to be had in perfection, at least when 
 you could give them a day's warning. In soups 
 they excelled, and in light and simple sweets. In 
 many of these inns the venerable waiter, profoundly 
 interested in the prosperity of the house, was an 
 institution. I fondly remember old Malcolm at 
 Braemar, bowed with years, but active as ever, 
 and an encyclopaedia of Highland folk-lore. Also 
 another veteran at Forfar, who coached me up for 
 a visit to Glamis, with its haunting memories and 
 mysterious secret chamber. No one of them ever 
 tempted me into trying their wines, but Glenlivet 
 or Talisker was always forthcoming according to 
 the latitudes ;, or at the worst, the more potent 
 spirit from illicit stills, strong of the peat-reek, 
 though mellowed by age. 
 
 But for the real enjoyment of the Highlands, one 
 
RAMBLES WITH ROD AND GUN 26 
 
 o 
 
 ought to be temporarily at home in them, with 
 headquarters in a wild country with a variety of 
 game. Flat moorland brings brief sport: heavy 
 bags for a week or two, if the season and the weather 
 are favourable ; then birds packing, with weary and 
 profitless walking, and a precipitate departure for 
 the South. In the wilder districts rents are gener- 
 ally lower, and if you are keen on shooting of any 
 sort, you get infinitely more value for your money. 
 In Wester Ross, for example, the birds will sit in 
 genial days till well on in November ; then with the 
 coming of the black frosts, they are everywhere more 
 approachable. But it is not to the grouse alone you 
 devote your attentions : on the beats you may come 
 across anything and everything, from ptarmigan 
 and blue hares to wild-duck, snipe, and plover. 
 
 I spoke of a familiar forest lodge, and no shoot- 
 ing quarter brings back more agreeable memories. 
 Moorland it was, rather than * forest,' though sur- 
 rounded on all sides by sanctuaries sacred to the 
 deer. It stood high, though sheltered, on the 
 western slope of the watershed between the 
 North Sea and the Atlantic. To the north was a 
 winding lake, bordered beyond by a line of cliff 
 and cairn, peopled by a colony of wild cats seldom 
 seen. As we sat of an evening in the porch, we 
 could hear their melancholy wailings borne over 
 to us on the breeze, mingled with the twitter- 
 inof of the swallows, which built under the low 
 rafters of the lodge. On drizzly days when the 
 
264 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 walking was bad, we used to troll for trout or net 
 the bays for pike, and thither we repaired for the 
 morning header. Sleeping with open windows, 
 one was generally wakened by the crow of the 
 grouse cock, and the first impulse was to look out 
 for signs of the weather. If it promised fairly, the 
 dogs seemed to know it, and there was no chance 
 of going to sleep again, with the impatient chorus 
 from the kennels. 
 
 The quarters were cramped, but comfortable. 
 The bedrooms were so many small cabins, panelled 
 with pine, and the fittings were as compactly ad- 
 justed as in the old-time sea-going steamer. The 
 low-roofed sitting-room was relatively spacious, 
 communicating by a door and short passage with 
 the kitchen. There were pervading scents of 
 homespun and waterproofs in course of drying, 
 and of savoury cookery. We fared well with the 
 produce of gun and rod, the mountain mutton, and 
 supplies from the Dingwall butcher and Morell's 
 branch establishment at Inverness. Whatever the 
 temperature, the peat was generally kept smoulder- 
 ing on the broad hearth, to be blown into a blaze 
 of an evening, when the kettle was kept boiling for 
 the toddy. There were dull days, no doubt, when 
 remorseless rain was plashing against the windows, 
 for though there was room enough to stretch the 
 legs, the provision of literature was scanty, and we 
 were fain to fall back on cleaning spotless guns, or 
 playing with the young dogs in the kennels. 
 
RAMBLES WITH ROD AND GUN 265 
 
 Though, on the whole, we set rough weather at de- 
 fiance, and sought recreation abroad in one shape 
 or another. And when the sun broke through the 
 mists with glorious promise, and when the waters 
 had had some short time to subside, all was for- 
 gotten. The transformation scene was often 
 magical. You had done your dressing half in the 
 dark, and now the atmosphere was so clear as to 
 be strangely deceptive. Looking out from the 
 porch, across the rolling and broken expanse of 
 brown, green, and purple, the hills that skirted it 
 — haunts of the ptarmigan and eagle — seemed 
 so near, that you fancied you might have dis- 
 tinguished with the naked eye the sheep pasturing 
 in the corries. It was stiff walking before you 
 reached them, as you knew by experience, with 
 rather risky rock work to follow. 
 
 There was many a record of mixed bags in the 
 game book, though none of very bloody days, 
 except when there were musters for the massacre 
 of the hill-hare. First, in the swampy meadows in 
 the river vale, where the hay crop was precariously 
 stocked towards the middle of October, were 
 coveys of the small hill-partridge. Then came the 
 grouse, of which nothing is to be said, save that on 
 those moors there was a blessed immunity from 
 disease. The sweep of the epidemic used to be 
 as sharply defied as the passage of the cholera 
 through an Indian cantonment. There were few 
 firs, and it was not much of a country for black 
 
266 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 game, yet there were mossy and brackeny bits 
 skirted by alders and birches, where you were 
 Hkely enough to stumble on a brood. Mallards 
 there were on the river and its tributary burns, and 
 often when one was walking listlessly, you were 
 brought sharply to attention by the rise of drake 
 and duck from some velvet-covered moss-pot. 
 Occasionally there were more sensational sur- 
 prises. The shooting, as I said, was forest- 
 enclosed, and in spite of the wandering shepherds 
 and their sheep-dogs, outlying deer were tempted 
 by the sweet grazing in the hollows. So I have 
 seen hart and hind spring out of the moss within 
 half-gunshot, and of course go away scatheless, for 
 it would have been cruel to pepper them with 
 smallshot. Next came the range of the mountain 
 hares, leading up to their rocky refuges in the 
 home of the ptarmigan, and there I once had 
 another very exceptional experience, more unusual 
 than walking up the wary deer. In a dense mist, my 
 cheek was almost brushed by the wing of a golden 
 eagle. To judge by his scream of consternation, 
 as he shot up into the fog, he was the more taken 
 aback of the two. Snipe were to be picked up 
 anywhere; there were frequent flights of the golden 
 plover, circling round the gun in crescent forma- 
 tion, and giving chances for deadly raking when 
 they settled in line on some low peat bank. With 
 September came the first cocks of the season, lying 
 half-exhausted in the heather, and, for the most 
 
RAMBLES WITH ROD AND GUN 267 
 
 part, wofully out of condition. And there were 
 many birds to interest the naturalist, from hawks 
 on the hover, encouraged in the neighbouring deer 
 forests, to the ring ousel of the rocky rills, with his 
 plaintive song, and to the short-winged grebes that 
 had found their way thither somehow from the sea, 
 to rear happy families in lonely tarns. 
 
 That lodge was a resort of mine for successive 
 seasons, but in earlier years I had the rare privi- 
 lege of being more than once the guest of Horatio 
 Ross, the old deer-stalker. The most lovable and 
 kindly of men, I gratefully reverence his memory. 
 When I was absent on the Continent, and likely to 
 lose my election at the New Club in Edinburgh — 
 I had neglected to replace a seconder who had 
 died — he stepped into the breach. When I was 
 coming up for the Carlton, I chanced to meet 
 him in Pall Mall, and he took infinite trouble in 
 canvassing the committee. In his Highland home 
 he was the most genial of hosts, and Othello was 
 not in it with him in the multiplicity of his sporting 
 reminiscences, from steeplechasing and the hunt- 
 ing field to deer-stalking and pigeon matches at 
 the Red House. He had been hand in glove with 
 all the most famous sportsmen, and, when he had 
 pitted himself against them for heavy bets, had 
 rarely overrated his powers. His most remark- 
 able feats have become matters of history. What 
 impressed me most was his story of how he won 
 what seemed an impossible bet as to the number 
 
268 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 of swallows he would kill with a pistol before a 
 nine-o'clock breakfast. It showed his shrewdness 
 as well as his skill. He posted himself at the 
 corner of the house, fluttered a white handkerchief 
 as the bird swept round, and dropped it when it 
 poised. Temperate, though no ascetic, taking his 
 two hours' exercise daily almost up to the last, he 
 was always in high condition. He might have 
 rivalled his old friend Captain Barclay in pedes- 
 trianism, and it scarcely taxed his strength when 
 he walked from Blackball on Deeside to Inverness, 
 as umpire in the match between two friends who 
 were dining with him. They made the bet over 
 the decanters, made the start from the dinner- 
 table, and Captain Ross, as he told me, did not 
 even change his evening shoes. 
 
 When I visited him in Ross-shire, he rented 
 Gledfield and Dibidale. Gledfield House was on 
 the banks of the Carron ; Dibidale was a narrow 
 deer-forest stretching northwards, and marching 
 with Mr. Mathieson's Ardross. In the Carron I 
 caught my first salmon by a marvellous and most 
 undeserved stroke of luck. It was an awkward 
 river for a tyro to fish ; the trees on the pools 
 hanging low over the water, so that much of the 
 casting had to be underhand. Moreover, there 
 had been an unprecedented spell of drought, and 
 for days not a fish had been risen by the experts. 
 Wearied and disgusted, I had been whipping away 
 listlessly, when throwing the heavy rod back over 
 
RAMBLES WITH ROD AND GUN 269 
 
 my shoulder, I had a glimpse of the head and 
 shoulders of a salmon ; the casting-line snapped, 
 and circles of horse-hair festooned themselves round 
 the top joint. My feelings may be imagined. 
 But the very next day I hooked an eight-pound 
 grilse in the ' Lady's Pool,' silvery as if he were 
 fresh run from the sea. A hard fight I had, with 
 my heart in my mouth, for there were birches 
 behind and something like a cataract below, but 
 under the experienced directions of the veteran 
 keeper, the grilse was triumphantly cleiked, when 
 the gut was fretted to a shred. 
 
 The lodge at Dibidale was in a wilderness of 
 heath and hills, on a brae sloping down to a burn 
 that murmured or brawled with the chang-es in the 
 weather. That burn is always associated in my 
 mind with 'watching the passes.' There was rich 
 grazing in Dibidale, and the deer would shift 
 southwards with the dawn from Ardross. You 
 were roused in the dark, to dress by candlelight. 
 A glass of rum and milk with a biscuit, and you 
 emerged from the door to go groping down the 
 brae in Egyptian darkness. The old keeper led 
 the way, swinging a lantern, and a long-legged 
 subaltern followed with a rifle under either arm. 
 You forded the burn on slippery stepping-stones, 
 and 'set the stout heart to the stey brae.' It was 
 an awkward scramble, and I know I used to be 
 pretty well pumped out, before we crested the 
 ridge and separated for our posts in the passes. 
 
270 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 But when the sun showed a fiery ball over the 
 mountain to the west, the sights and surroundings 
 in themselves richly repaid you for the climb. 
 There was no snow and less sublimity, but I have 
 never seen more glorious sunrises from the Rigi 
 or the Faulhorn. Then the excitement ! Of 
 course it does not come up to the tremulous ' buck 
 fever,' when the novice is almost within rifle-shot 
 of a mighty hart, nearly collapsing after the long 
 and heart-wearing stalk. Yet the suspense of 
 waiting in hopeful expectation is intense. Each 
 deceptive sound tells on the nerves, and excite- 
 ment culminates when you hear the unmistakable 
 hoof treads, with the slipping of the foot on gravel 
 or shingle, and the occasional pause of suspicious 
 hesitation. It may not be the highest kind of 
 sport, but perhaps it is the most sustained strain 
 of the senses. 
 
 The worst was, that unless you were in the 
 hardest conditions, it took it out of you for the 
 rest of the day. There was always a resource in 
 the burn, where there was good trouting or 
 'guddling,' and the family kept their hands in at 
 rifle shooting, at which the practice was wonderful. 
 The hand of the old stalker was steady as ever, 
 and four of his five sons were crack performers. 
 Edward, as is well known, was the first winner 
 of the Queen's prize at Wimbledon, and Hercules, 
 the second brother, had a memorable record in 
 potting rebel sepoys in the Indian Mutiny. 
 
RAMBLES WITH ROD AND GUN 271 
 
 It was most comfortable being quietly at home 
 in your own lodge with your own friends, where 
 everything could be ordered to your own liking. 
 But I never passed a pleasanter August and 
 September than when we were quartered in the 
 village inn. The shooting had hung on the 
 market ; it had gone ridiculously cheap at the 
 last moment, and the mansion with the partridge 
 ground had been reserved. As to the quarters 
 first appearances were unpromising enough. There 
 was nothing poetical or romantic about the village 
 street, and the whitewashed, two-storied hostel 
 was prosaic in the extreme. But those first im- 
 pressions were deceptive. It is true the -horse- 
 hair furniture of the sitting-room was the reverse 
 of luxurious ; the window sashes worked badly, 
 and in the bedrooms were stuffy box-beds. But 
 as we were out on the moors most of the day, and 
 came home tired, these slight drawbacks did not 
 greatly signify. The landlord proved the best of 
 good fellows, and catered for us in sumptuous style. 
 With the profusion of game — for we had made a 
 capital bargain — we might have dispensed with 
 the attentions of a butcher. But each evening the 
 table groaned under saddles and sirloins, and when 
 they went down to the kitchen, the landlord and 
 the keepers seemed to keep a free supper-table 
 for all and sundry. Naturally we trembled for the 
 mativais quart cVheure, but the bills were most 
 mysteriously moderate. I think the tame dreari- 
 
272 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 ness of the village gave a keener zest to the breezy 
 freshness of the moor, and the charms of the semi- 
 Highland scenery. Changing the paving-stones 
 for the spring of the heather, the spirits went 
 up automatically. Wild it was on the western 
 horizon, where you looked up to the quaintly 
 named hills, famous alike in history, legend, and 
 song, the Tap O'Noth and the Buck of the 
 Cabrach. Below them, cornfields and copses ran 
 up into the heather, and the snipe bogs were inter- 
 spersed with oases of green rushes, where the dogs 
 were sure to come to a stand over broods of black 
 game. There were crystal springs where v/e made 
 our midday halts, and at one of them, the Well of 
 Correnie, a madcap prank brought me once to 
 humiliating grief. The luncheon basket used to 
 come out on a lively young cob who had scarcely 
 been broken to the shafts or the saddle. One 
 day it came into my head to make a shooting pony 
 of him, so I mounted and blazed off a barrel. In- 
 continently he bolted. Trying to hold to the gun, 
 I was shot off into a moss-pot. I emerged half- 
 choked but little the worse, though recovering the 
 gun gave us infinite trouble. As for the cob, 
 like the scapegoat of the Pentateuch, he went off 
 into the wilderness, and after a long chase a gilly 
 came back with him, 'baith o' us sair forfoughten,' 
 as he sadly declared, before recruiting with a 
 ' caulker ' and a heavy supper. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 KEEPERS AND HILL SHEPHERDS 
 
 Not a few of my most enjoyable days have been 
 passed in company of keepers and simple-minded 
 hill shepherds. They were intelligent, companion- 
 able, and instructively conversable when they came 
 to know you well. As for the old keepers, they 
 taught me anything I know in the way of sport 
 or natural history. Their knowledge was great, 
 and their methods were eminently practical. The 
 first of my tutors was a veteran, who, I am sorry 
 to remember, was something of a scamp. He took 
 his duties easily ; but that was the fashion of the 
 time, or the neighbourhood. He never thought of 
 leaving the blankets to look out for poachers, and 
 he lay in bed the better part of the Sunday, for he 
 held that if a man kept sober through the week, he 
 was entitled to get drunk of a Saturday night. 
 Old Craigie was well paid but not pampered, and 
 all his habits were in the rough. He shared a loft 
 at the ' barn yards ' with two or three of the 
 ploughmen, and his couch with a couple of his 
 favourite terriers. He made no pretensions and 
 gave himself no airs. When I knew him he may 
 
 s 
 
274 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 have been sixty, though he looked considerably 
 more, and his wish seemed to be to slip through 
 the world and the woods unobserved. Death on 
 the vermin, a deadly enemy of hawk, polecat, or 
 weasel, he trod the soft carpet under the firs and 
 the crackling leaves in the beech woods with the 
 stealthy step of the Red Indian. His weather- 
 bleached velveteens, much the worse for wear, 
 blended well with the foliage and the withering 
 bracken. His keen, grey eyes were roving every- 
 where, reading * sign ' like print on each scrap of 
 soft ground. He and his terriers had an abiding 
 feud with the otter, and loved nothing better than 
 tracking the nocturnal marauder to his holt, and 
 marking him down for sport with some couples of 
 crossbreeds. His constant companions were a 
 pair of rough terriers, never more or less, who 
 shadowed him at his heels and answered to a 
 crook of his little finger. They had frequent 
 opportunities of showing their stuff. The estate 
 he had in special charge — there were two others 
 within walking distance and also under his 
 guardianship — had been little cared for through 
 a long minority. The woods were untrimmed, 
 and where the ground was damp, undergrown 
 with almost impenetrable thicket ; the ill-drained 
 meadows grew luxuriant tufts of rushes, where 
 hares, ' maist as big as lambs,' as he said, used 
 to squat ; and the gravel banks and loose stone 
 dikes were honeycombed with subterranean pass- 
 
KEEPERS AND SHEPHERDS 275 
 
 ages, and literally swarming with rabbits. The 
 tenants protested they were 'just devoured with 
 the beasts.' 
 
 As trapper and vermin-killer, with an eye for 
 nests of all sorts, Craigie was the most fascinating 
 of companions for a boy. Shooting of some sort 
 was going on all the year round, for rabbits and 
 wood pigeons must be killed down, and there was no 
 nursine of the covers for bio- autumn shoots. The 
 hawk would glance off the nest among the topmost 
 spruce boughs ; the flash of the gun and down he 
 would come, perchance with broken wing, fighting- 
 still on his back with beak and talons, while up I 
 would hurry, hand over hand, to make prize of the 
 eoro's or the savaofe nursling^s. 
 
 Craiofie was on the best of terms with the 
 tenants, for he had carte blanche to supply them 
 liberally with rabbits and so far stop their grumb- 
 ling. When we crossed the thresholds without 
 the ceremony of a knock, the whisky bottle was 
 produced as a matter of course. Nevertheless, 
 there was a standing cause of quarrel with the 
 good wives, whose cats would mysteriously dis- 
 appear. Not that there was really much mystery 
 about it, for those stravaiging cottage cats were 
 the most mischievous of poachers. Naturally, 
 Craigie never pled guilty to many an unhallowed 
 burial in a fox-hole or rabbit burrow, but there were 
 always the notorious proclivities of his shadows, 
 invariably named Rory and Mark. Sometimes 
 
276 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 there was what the Scottish Law Courts call hame- 
 sucken, when the cat was slaughtered on its own 
 premises. Mark would fly straight at the throat ; 
 Rory had a deadly knack of cracking the spine. 
 It was sharp if not happy despatch, and in the 
 woodlands that was the invariable finish of a 
 scrambling, yelping chase, when the quarry had 
 been treed and brought down crippled. Since 
 then I have had many a feline friend and favourite 
 who confidingly shared the hearth-rug with the 
 dogs, but I confess with shame that, in those 
 boyish days, there was nothing I found more ex- 
 citing than the cat chase. Craigie, though he took 
 things easily, had a method of his own with 
 poachers. On the home estate he had little 
 trouble ; his vagabond neighbours had a kindly 
 regard for him and sought their pleasure or profit 
 elsewhere. But one of the outlying properties, 
 although almost unpreserved, somehow always 
 showed hares and partridges in plenty. Yet, like 
 the Morayshire of old times, it was a border 
 territory where all men took their prey. One year, 
 on the Castle farm, there was a covey of white 
 partridges. The young laird was much interested, 
 and old Craigie was extremely anxious to save 
 them. The man he was most afraid of was a 
 miller, who, renting a small shooting, made it an 
 excuse for raiding all around. So, as Craigie told 
 me, ' I took Watt to the inn ; I gave him all the 
 whisky and porter he could drink and gat his 
 
KEEPERS AND SHEPHERDS i:]^ 
 
 promise to spare the birds.' The covey dis- 
 appeared ; it must have been netted bodily. Watt 
 was more indionant than Craigfie. Poachers had 
 been poaching on the poacher's privileges of chase. 
 He had accepted blackmail for the albinos and 
 his honour was in question. He ran the offenders 
 down at considerable trouble, scandal, and expense, 
 and handed them over to justice. 
 
 Craigie fell latterly on somewhat evil days, for 
 he had trouble with his minister and the kirk 
 session. Consequently his popularity declined 
 with the tenant folk, who were zealous kirk-goers, 
 and the whisky tap was turned off at his favourite 
 resorts. Moreover, he was falling into the sere 
 and yellow leaf, his eyes were growing dim, and 
 his joints were stiffening. He could no longer 
 leap the ditches or fly the tottering- dikes. Sooner 
 or later the rheumatism must inevitably come up 
 with the rustic who has set weather at defiance 
 and seldom changed his clothes. Craigie was to 
 be retired on a pension, and consented after much 
 grumbling. For he had to confess, and it showed 
 his constitutional reticence, that he was to have 
 a home with a son who had made money in 
 Australia, and had the grace not to be ashamed 
 of a letterless father who had never corresponded 
 with him for the best of reasons. He had all 
 possible comforts in his closing years : how far 
 he was happy is another question. When super- 
 annuated judges or bishops stick to their benches. 
 
278 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 often the mere love of lucre has little to do with 
 their reluctance to retire. 
 
 M'Intyre — that was not his real name — suc- 
 ceeded Craigie retired. He was a man of very- 
 different type and temper. Though of Highland 
 breed he had migrated young, and to all intents 
 was a Lowlander. It is five-and-forty years since 
 I began the long and lasting friendship, and I re- 
 member when I saw him first, how I was impressed 
 by his fine presence and air of simple dignity. 
 He stood well over six feet, and among the 
 beaters at a battue he looked like a noble deer- 
 hound in the scratch pack of the Highland fox- 
 hunter. With his advent there was introduced a 
 new system of preserving and regular night-watch- 
 ing. He had a couple of aides sent out on outpost 
 duty, and he drilled them thoroughly. You felt 
 that M'Intyre was your equal — your superior in 
 many things — and soon he was the valued friend 
 of the family. The dogs and the boys took to 
 him naturally. He had little trouble in breaking 
 the dogs, for his methods were kindness and gentle 
 firmness. One sharp word of command would 
 check the wildest youngster in a mad burst, or 
 bring the most self-v/illed old ruffian to heel. The 
 boys of the house, through successive generations, 
 came to look up to him and love him as a father, 
 and the most anxious of mothers could safely trust 
 him with their morals. The kennels and his cot- 
 tage were a quarter of a mile from the mansion, the 
 
KEEPERS AND SHEPHERDS 279 
 
 path leading through the flower-gardens and the 
 Httle coppice, with the Holy Well commemorating 
 the site of an old hermitage, where a brown- 
 speckled trout kept solitary state. If a boy was 
 missing after breakfast, it was at the kennels he 
 was sure to be found, somewhere between the 
 ferret hutches and the row of beehives. Out of 
 the shooting season a long stroll through fields 
 and woods with M'Intyre was intoxicating joy. 
 There was endless excitement in the bird-nesting 
 in the fields and fallows, in brake and coppice ; in 
 the hunting up the teal or waterhen in the sedges, 
 or the quest after pheasant eggs in spinney or 
 hedgerow in the springtime, when the trouble was 
 to elude the watchful rooks. Our guide could tell 
 all about their habits ; and there was seldom a 
 migrant he could not recognise, or a skulker he 
 could not identify by the note. 
 
 His master had grown up with him, and they 
 were close companions. Of the two, the keeper 
 was scarcely the less welcome guest when they 
 went the round of neighbouring houses in the 
 shooting season. When he had organised the 
 autumn shooting parties at home, it was pleasant 
 to hear the hearty greetings of the gentlemen and 
 to see the cordial clasp of the hands. No doubt 
 he had handsome largesses in his time, for with 
 frugality he left a snug little fortune. But his 
 beloved master died before him and he never 
 altogether got over it. In fullest mental power 
 
28o DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 the laird suddenly succumbed to an insidious brain 
 attack. For weeks he lay between life and death ; 
 though the end was certain it was long deferred. 
 M'Intyre revolutionised all his habits. The man 
 who only breathed freely in the open air, shut 
 himself up in the sick chamber and became the 
 assiduous nurse. He slept in the dressing-room, 
 and through the day he was treading softly on 
 stocking-soles or stooping tenderly over the sick 
 pillow ; nor had he ever the satisfaction of being 
 recognised, for the patient was in a stupor of 
 unconsciousness. The watching, the worry, and 
 the grief told on that strong constitution. He fell 
 ill himself, and passed many a weary day in 
 hospital, though his attentions were gratefully 
 repaid and everything was done for his comfort, 
 till at last he was carried home to pass from his 
 cottage to the churchyard. 
 
 Old Peter of Strathtay comes in somewhere 
 between Craigie and M'Intyre. Like M'Intyre 
 he was a familiar of the household, and had taken 
 the exact measure of his old master's foot ; like 
 Craigie he had the primitive habits and something 
 of the stealthy gait of the savage. His back was 
 bowed with bearing burdens of game, for he loved 
 long solitary rambles and would sleep out of a 
 night in a haystack or under a gravestone. His 
 passion was night wandering ; his methods were 
 those of the poacher, and his dogs had been 
 broken to them. The old fellow took a fancy to 
 
KEEPERS AND SHEPHERDS 281 
 
 me, so sometimes I was privileged to accompany 
 him ; and well I remember those sensational 
 nights with the lessons to be learned from the 
 wild book of nature. The nights, as he chose 
 them, were generally starry, with fair moonlight, 
 and the moon might be wading in watery clouds, 
 with the sough of a sighing wind that threatened 
 to bring up a rain burst. One night the moon 
 was suddenly eclipsed ; half the heavens were 
 overcast with what seemed the wings of some 
 monstrous sea-fowl in rapid flight. Peter, like 
 Craigie, had his inseparable attendants. The 
 one-eyed old otter-hound gave a mournful growl, 
 the limping terrier whimpered and tucked his tail 
 between his legs. *It's likin' to be an ill night,' 
 said Peter ; ' but God be praised, we 're no that far 
 from shelter, for the auld kirk is hard by.' Though 
 reputed to be haunted, it was one of Peter's 
 favourite refuges, and there we sheltered, while 
 the rain came down in torrents, in a low out- 
 building, where the parishioners in former days 
 used to keep watch against the resurrection men, 
 when villains like Burke and Hare were driving 
 their nefarious trade. There, making himself com- 
 fortable with pipe and whisky flask, he curdled 
 my blood with his soul-thrilling ghost stories, 
 till when the storm had passed as Peter had 
 foretold, my nerves were strung to a pitch that 
 made me exceptionally impressionable. Yet it 
 was a cheery change to emerge into starlight and 
 
282 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 moonlight from the gloom and the ghoulish 
 tales ; though all the night watchers and the 
 night walkers seemed to have been roused into life 
 and action. The bats that had been clinging to 
 the kirk rafters in the daytime came flapping 
 across our faces, and swooping down on my white 
 collar like gulls on a winged companion. The 
 kirk owls were vociferous, and then we came 
 across their silken-winged congeries in the sylvan 
 glades we threaded. We heard the bark of the 
 wandering fox ; but that is one of the most 
 common of nocturnal sounds. Sometimes it was 
 answered by the bay of the watch dog at the 
 homestead or the yelping of the cottage cur. 
 
 Once — it was not on that night, but on another — 
 I remember Peter laying his hand on my arm. We 
 paused and listened ; then I heard the surly grunt as 
 of a pig or pigling : it was in a mossy glade, honey- 
 combed with rabbit holes and bestrewed with beech- 
 nuts. Then emerged from a bramble thicket a 
 family party, looking much what I should imagine 
 a train of South American peccaries to be. A 
 venerable dog badger headed the procession, 
 grunting stertorously and industriously grubbing. 
 The dogs, hushed by an uplifted hand, were 
 trembling with excitement. His abstraction was 
 complete, when he suddenly got a whiff of our 
 wind, sniffed, snorted, and would have scuttled, 
 but Peter's gun was at his shoulder and the grey 
 patriarch rolled over. Peter opined * that the beast 
 
KEEPERS AND SHEPHERDS 28 
 
 :> 
 
 was no that hurtful, though he had a keen nose for 
 the eggs o' pheesan or palrtrick ' ; but Peter, Hke 
 his grizzled otter hound, was death on anything- in 
 the shape of vermin from fox or marten cat to 
 the generally innocuous hedgehog. 
 
 Peter, though bearing a Highland name, and 
 domesticated on the Highland border, was Lowland 
 born and bred. The genuine Highland keepers, 
 guardians of the wild deer-forests and solitary 
 wastes, were of a different stamp. They were 
 generally reserved and seldom garrulous, save 
 when under the influence of good fellowship and 
 fiery toddy. Though they might discourse in 
 the Saxon fluently, it was a foreign tongue ; for 
 the most part they thought in the native Gaelic, 
 and lisped with an accent of which they were shyly 
 self-conscious. Some of them had ^ot so used to 
 self-communion in the solitudes, that they had 
 acquired a habit of thinking aloud, which they 
 could not always repress. Black John had found 
 a landward berth in a forest on the marches of 
 Ross and Sutherland, though he had been bred a 
 fisherman in the Lewis and had always a craving 
 for the sea. He had come, as many others of the 
 gillies, from the herring fishing to take service on 
 the hill for a single season ; but unlike most of the 
 islesmen be became a fixture, always protesting his 
 intention to flit. The fact was, he had got into 
 trouble poaching on the Long Island, and the 
 poaching virus was in his blood. His master soon 
 
284 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 learned his worth, for he had the eye of a falcon, 
 the scent of a sleuth-hound, an instinct for the 
 wiles and strategy of the deer, with the weather 
 knowledge of a black-faced ram or an old grouse 
 cock. He was a far safer guide than the glass as 
 to what the morrow was likely to bring forth. 
 There that prescience was of exceptional impor- 
 tance, for the forest was much mixed up with those 
 surrounding it. Dogs were seldom or never used ; 
 partly because the lessees were deadly shots, 
 principally because they could not afford to scare 
 the deer. The forest was full of fine feeding in 
 sheltered corries, and many a herd would migrate 
 thither to stuff to repletion. 
 
 John was habitually silent, seemingly sullen, but 
 there were times when he would become expansive. 
 As when a difficult stalk had been triumphantly 
 accomplished, when the deer had been gralloched 
 and admired, and the flasks had gone round with 
 compliments and congratulations. Keeping house 
 alone through the winter in the deserted lodge he 
 was given to brooding, but he had the rude piety 
 of the fervid Celtic temperament, and his mind was 
 a dark reservoir of legends and superstitions. 
 Once the floodgates were opened ever so little, 
 they came with a rush. A Catholic by creed, he 
 was something of a pagan. Professing unbelief 
 in them, he would weave weird fancies and tell 
 strange tales of the monsters said to lurk in the 
 depths of bottomless lakes, of witches — probably 
 
KEEPERS AND SHEPHERDS 285 
 
 skeins of wild geese — flitting overhead with un- 
 earthly screeches on the wings of the storm, and of 
 corpses of notorious evil livers which had played 
 blood-curdling cantrips when the door of the 
 deathchamber had been left ajar and the due pre- 
 cautions against the powers of hell had been 
 neglected. When I have heard him croaking 
 them out, I have been reminded of Southey s soul- 
 thrilling ballad of ' The Old Woman of Berkeley.' 
 Once wound up the way to keep him going 
 was a liberal supply of whisky. He was a hard 
 drinker, but could carry any quantity of liquor 
 discreetly, and as his comrade Donald used 
 enviously to remark, 'John was never a hair the 
 waur.' John was a confirmed mysogynist ; he 
 delighted in a dance, but it was he who emphati- 
 cally expressed the conviction, that it was * the 
 weemen that aye spiled a ball.' John sulked and 
 smoked over the peat-fire through the winter. 
 Donald, who lived with his wife in a snug cottage 
 on the high road, was scandalously neglectful of 
 his domestic ties. Of a winter evening, and too 
 often in the summer time, he was to be found 
 either at the old toll bar, a chartered gossip shop, 
 where his habitual crony was a convivial road- 
 mender, or at the inn, a couple of miles down the 
 strath, a favourite stopping-place of drovers and 
 pedlers. John would only come out with his stories 
 on occasions ; Donald was always to be drawn. 
 He came of a sporting race of lax principles and 
 
286 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 predatory habits. His father, who had been head- 
 keeper and henchman of the laird in the savage 
 Torridon district, where the bastions and but- 
 tresses of granite have been worn into rifts and 
 caves in course of ages by the Atlantic surges, 
 could tell of the times when the king's warrant 
 scarcely ran there. He had been at the making of 
 the first road, not much more than seventy years 
 before, which first opened up communications. 
 That revolutionary improvement was far from 
 welcome to men who eked out a precarious subsist- 
 ence by smuggling, poaching, and illicit distilling. 
 It brought the sheriff, the revenue officer, and the 
 ofaupfer to their doors. As a child Donald had sat 
 at the feet of a orandfather who could tell of the 
 golden age. The son of the second generation 
 had been half-reclaimed when taken into the laird's 
 service, but the patriarch had used to go out with 
 the bands of free shots, who roamed the wastes in 
 such strength that the most daring of foresters dared 
 not mell or meddle with them. They lay out in their 
 plaids, they levied contributions on the shepherds, 
 or bartered muirfowl and venison for meal and 
 mutton. 
 
 Likely enough Donald embroidered romances 
 that had lost nothing in the relation. An inimit- 
 able raconteur, he had the fire and flow of the 
 Neapolitan improvisators Probably he was never 
 strictly veracious when he recounted adventures of 
 his own ; but at least he gave them an air of vivid 
 
KEEPERS AND SHEPHERDS 287 
 
 realism, as he struck the attitudes and rehearsed 
 the scenes. He told of marvellous escapes when 
 lost in the mists or blinding snow-drift — but these 
 are frequent experiences of all hillmen. Of how he 
 was most nearly brought to death's door when a 
 cairn of loose stones came down in a landslip — he 
 called it an earthquake — where he lay for four-and- 
 twenty hours with a broken ankle, hearing at last 
 the shouts of a search party, but fearing that his 
 own response was too feeble to attract their atten- 
 tion. It was only when he was silenced, and in the 
 depths of despair, that a far-ranging collie smelt 
 him out. But the tragedy that brought tears to his 
 eyes was the fate of a favourite dog. The poor 
 brute in eager pursuit of a wounded fox, had got 
 ' rock fast ' on the ledge of a precipice where there 
 was no turning back ; and Donald, after being 
 fruitlessly lowered over the beetling cliffs, had to 
 abandon the helpless Bran to his fate, and to listen 
 day after day to piteous appeals, becoming fainter 
 and fainter as strength ebbed away. 
 
 Donald's stories carry me south to very different 
 scenes in the Isle of Purbeck. Burdon, hereditary 
 keeper on a broad Dorsetshire estate, stretching 
 seaward to the chalk downs and St. Alban's Head, 
 had many a tale to tell, handed down from his 
 fathers, of smugglers and wreckers, of signal lights 
 flashing out from solitary homesteads or the hovels 
 of half-savage squatters, of trains of horses with 
 clanking chains, winding up on the chalk-tracks 
 
288 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 throuo-h the Combes, and of wrecks of noble 
 merchantmen like the Halsewell, East Indiaman, 
 when the countryside from far and near turned out 
 to save life or look out for salvage. Burdon was 
 the type of the portly English yeoman, broad in 
 the shoulders and broader in the beam ; the brass 
 buttons of his coat behind were shining oases in 
 a vast expanse of weather-worn velveteen. Seen 
 from the front his corporation was Falstaffian, and 
 he had taken life luxuriously from the cradle. His 
 cottage, sheltering under a clump of pines, was such 
 a combination of old English quaintness and snug- 
 ness as Birkett Foster delighted to paint. The 
 incessant yelping from the adjacent kennels — they 
 included a boisterous little pack of dwarf beagles 
 which would have sent Carlyle into a lunatic 
 asylum in a week — was music to his accustomed 
 ears and lulled him peacefully to sleep. Not that 
 he needed lulling, for his constitution was somnifer- 
 ous. He has been seen to drop off to sleep on his 
 sturdy legs after a solid luncheon, as he was 
 watching the dogs working in the turnips, and when 
 he sat of a Sunday under his master, a squire- 
 parson, had he not been privileged, his stentorian 
 snores would have scandalised the small congrega- 
 tion. His cottage showed every sign of free 
 housekeeping — huge, home-baked loaves in the 
 cupboard, flitches in the chimney corner, a cask of 
 strong home-brewed ale from the Hall always on 
 strike. The living-room, decorated in sylvan 
 
KEEPERS AND SHEPHERDS 289 
 
 fashion, was in excellent taste. Dressed skins did 
 duty for carpet and hearthrug. These could be 
 taken up and shaken, when he came stumping in 
 with muddy boots. Guns, traps, and game-bags 
 adorned the walls, and on the shelves were such 
 zoological and ornithological curiosities as silvered 
 pheasants, pied badgers, and phenomenal pikes. 
 On the gable and on the pollarded elm, hard by, 
 were mouldering Montfaucons of gibbeted vermin. 
 Burdon, with all his love of ease, had not been 
 averse to a rough and tumble in his youth, but 
 latterly he had devolved the duties of night watch- 
 ing on his deputies. Besides the corpulence and 
 shortened wind which made it a stiff business at 
 the best of times to breast the chalk hills, he went 
 with a halting limp, the souvenir of an affair with 
 poachers. He had been pitched down a chalk-pit, 
 where he was left for dead, and dead he nearly was 
 when picked up some twelve hours afterwards. 
 
 Punctually each morning he went through the 
 ceremony of going to the gun-room for the orders 
 he seldom got and never desired. As punctually 
 he adjourned to the servants' hall to share a 
 tankard with the old butler. He had two pro- 
 mising lads who were being brought up to the 
 ancestral calling. Both were keen sportsmen and 
 quick shots. But while Samuel was told off to 
 superintend the marking and signalling — indis- 
 pensable in that country of meadow and moor, 
 chequered with copses and crossed by chalk- 
 
 T 
 
290 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 ridges — Garge's business was to follow hard on 
 the guns, with a greybeard of the home-brewed 
 slung to his shoulders. Ascetic athletes assure us 
 that cold tea is the best thing in the world to 
 walk on. It may be so, but for myself, in the 
 North, I have always stuck to spring water laced 
 with whisky, and though I should not recommend 
 strong Dorsetshire ale as a liquor to train on, 
 I never found it throw me much out of condition. 
 Anyhow Burdon had flourished on it, and in the 
 days of one's youth, with a superabundance of 
 exercise, you could venture safely on any liberties. 
 There was nothing we liked better than to turn 
 into the keeper's cottage, when homeward bound 
 after a long day in the coverts, and gratify his good 
 lady by reckless indulgence in tea with the richest 
 of Dorsetshire cream and with the golden butter 
 steaming on the cakes she brought us hissing hot 
 from the griddle. We left the dinner to take care 
 of itself, nor was the confidence often misplaced. 
 Peace to the memories of that kindly couple : they 
 sleep under the yew trees outside the little church 
 where Burdon was used to snore and slumber. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE SHEPHERDS AND THE POACHERS 
 
 I HAVE made friends with sundry Highland shep- 
 herds, and have a great regard for them, and much 
 sympathy with their hard and sohtary hves. The 
 sweetest of tempers would ^e apt to turn sour 
 in the lonely shealing, isolated from all human 
 companionship, with its manifold cares and respon- 
 sibilities, with the ceaseless strain on the nerves. 
 As a rule the shepherds hasten to get married, but 
 imagine the lot of the celibate, with no company 
 but his collies. His evensong as he goes home 
 in the gloaming, is the scream of the eagle or the 
 croak of the raven, and through the nights those 
 dogs of his are baying the moon or answering the 
 challenge of the prowling fox. Weary and soaked 
 to the skin, he has to do his own cooking, and as 
 he has neither leisure nor energy to ' shift his 
 clothes,' no wonder rheumatics steals upon him 
 early. He knows the lie of the land well, but 
 many a time when belated in darkness or mists, 
 he has to sleep out in some cleft of the rock, on 
 a couch of damp heather shoots with his plaid for 
 a coverlet. He is answerable for the sheep, which 
 
292 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 are periodically mustered and numbered. Reading 
 the weather like a book, in late autumn he sees the 
 signs of a 'breeding storm,' and whistling to his 
 dogs he wanders forth to head back the sheep from 
 the heights to the hollows. The sea-fowl with 
 wild cries are drifting landward, the grouse are 
 restless, and, surest symptom of all, the fox with 
 light bounds is hurrying to his home in the cairn, 
 stopping from time to time to prick his ears and 
 listen. The storm bursts and the rain descends 
 in torrents : all the more reason for the shepherd 
 going forward, for he knows that on the morrow 
 there will have been drownings in the strath, and 
 that eagles and ravens will be battening on the 
 'braxie.' He does what may be done before dark- 
 ness settles down, and then if it be possible, he 
 would get back to his fireless fireside. But each 
 burn and rill is rising in spate, and the stream from 
 which he fills his water-butt is half breast high and 
 raging furiously when he gropes his way to the 
 post that marks the ford and the stepping-stones. 
 Within a gunshot of supper and the box-bed, he 
 may have to curl up in the moss flow, with his 
 whimpering dogs, famished and shivering. 
 
 Yet that is a trifle to being abroad in the winter 
 blizzards, when the flock may be smothered in the 
 snowdrifts. The bitter wind pierces through the 
 thickest clothing, and he is likely enough to get 
 lost in the blinding snowflakes. A slip on the 
 rocks may sprain an ankle, or treading carefully as 
 
SHEPHERDS AND POACHERS 293 
 
 he may, he may fall into a treacherous snow- 
 wreath. Once caught to the armpits, there is 
 slight chance of extrication. All things considered, 
 it is wonderful that the casualties come so seldom, 
 and that, save in exceptional cases and in the 
 lambing season, so few of the sheep are missing. 
 These sheep are extraordinarily hardy, and seldom 
 succumb to anything but suffocation. There is 
 little to choose between the Highland black-faced 
 with the ' snuff-mull ' curled horns and the aliens 
 of southern breed. Both wear warm under-vests 
 of close wool, with shaggy overcoats as impervious 
 as Irish frieze. They can exist for days on starva- 
 tion fare, and like the deer have an instinct for 
 scraping among the snow, where they are likely 
 to get at the coarse but nutritious herbage. Where 
 the shepherd's strength is taxed to the utmost, is 
 in such a storm as is described on Exmoor in 
 Lorna Doone, and in the Highlands he has to go 
 far further afield than Jan Ridd, to dig into the 
 drifts and save the survivors. 
 
 The shepherd has other enemies to fight than 
 the snow and the rain floods. I do not believe 
 foxes or eagles do much harm to the old sheep, 
 but they are terribly destructive in the lambing 
 season. All the more, that since the extension of 
 the deer forests, the eagles have been generally 
 strictly preserved, which is gratifying from the 
 picturesque point of view. But if a sheep is 
 crippled or ailing, the eagle is always on the look- 
 
294 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 out, guided by the ravens and hooded crows. For 
 the eagle is the most voracious of gluttons, and the 
 best chance of the shepherd taking his revenge, is 
 when he weathers on him when o-oroed to the beak 
 with drowned mutton. Then the prince of the air 
 and the mountains may be knocked senseless with 
 the staff. It is not so easy to circumvent the fleet 
 and wily fox, who does infinitely more harm. He 
 has his lair in the recesses of the half-impregnable 
 cairn, laughs at the comparative lumbering of the 
 swiftest collies, and is only to be forced from his 
 hold by varmint terriers. Consequently none of 
 his rare visitors is more welcome to the shepherd 
 than the professional fox-hunter with his mixed 
 pack. With the * tail ' of his professional dogs 
 come keepers and gillies, each with his own canine 
 attendants ; and then dens are stormed, and there 
 may be merciless slaughter of prolific vixens with 
 their bloodthirsty litters. 
 
 The keepers should be as welcome as the fox- 
 hunter, and so they often are and always ought to 
 be. Any sensible man must come to that con- 
 clusion when he sees the refuse of the fox's larder 
 on the stone-slip from the cairn or on the ledge of 
 the cliff. There is a blending of feathers, fur, and 
 wool — sometimes, even the relics of sea-trout and 
 salmon. The fox is the common enemy who 
 should bring keeper and shepherd together ; but 
 though the keeper may have as much at stake, it is 
 the shepherd who commands the situation. With 
 
SHEPHERDS AND POACHERS 295 
 
 the forest he has no concern, but on the moor he 
 is practically master. So a diplomatic and smooth- 
 spoken head-keeper is invaluable, for if he once 
 gets to feud with the guardian of the sheep, it is a 
 very one-sided affair. The shepherd is out early 
 and late, with his keen-scentinsf dog-s ranofing- 
 before him. He knows the nesting-place of each 
 brood of grouse or blackgame, and can net the 
 young coveys, if so disposed. Should he scorn 
 to make a profit of the quarrel as is often the 
 case, if 'his back has been set up,' he can mali- 
 ciously smash the eggs. A good deal of netting of 
 the heather goes on in the second week of August, 
 when the birds are smuggled to the South which 
 are sold at the poulterers' on the Twelfth. Nor- 
 wegian they are called : credat Judceus, for the 
 British Isles have a monopoly of the red grouse. 
 Too often, it is matter of certainty that the shep- 
 herds must be in league with the poachers, for they 
 are the best of all watchers, when you enlist their 
 friendly assistance. 
 
 And that is very easily done, for, take them all in 
 all, they are an honest and self-respecting set of 
 men. Many a weary league from the kirk, their 
 Sunday reading is often the Bible and the Pilgrims 
 Progress. The shepherd with his trials and 
 troubles is naturally short in the temper. If he is 
 misanthropic, it is because he so seldom sets eyes 
 on a fellow creature. But only take him in the 
 right way, and he is the most kindly of hosts and 
 
296 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 the most friendly of companions. The diplomatic 
 keeper drops in with a whisky bottle in the game- 
 bag, and the latest copies of the county paper in 
 his pocket. He brings the freshest gossip from 
 market or kirkyard ; he discusses the price and 
 prospects of wool, and professes to have at his 
 finger ends the last quotations for ewes or wethers 
 from the sale-yards of Aberdeen or the Falkirk 
 Tryste. A morning call is especially welcome, and 
 in confidential chat on questions of heather burn- 
 ing, the keeper can twist his host round his finger, 
 much to their mutual advantage. 
 
 But the day to be marked with a white stone in 
 the shepherd's calendar is when the shooting lessee 
 — stranger though he may be — who has previously 
 established himself in favour, graces the shealing 
 with his presence. On the first visit the host was 
 probably as 'stand-off' as his dogs, who jumped 
 up on the turf-sodden roof to yelp savagely at the 
 sportsman's setters. But when the shepherd finds 
 that his visitor pulls off his stalking cap as he 
 stoops under the lintel and shows no shadow of 
 condescension, he meets him with the frank 
 cordiality of a gentleman ; and when one of these 
 solitaires gets into a flow of talk, it would be 
 hard to find a more entertaining companion. 
 Condemned in ordinary to silence they meditate 
 the more ; they surprise you with startlingly 
 original sentiments, and the commonplaces and 
 ordinary incidents of their daily lives are matter 
 
SHEPHERDS AND POACHERS 297 
 
 for thrilling romances. The morning call is all 
 very well, but I must say it is somewhat trying to 
 accept a night's quarters. Once I taxed the 
 hospitality of Angus Chisholm, a special friend, 
 and I never cared to repeat the experiment. 
 Angus was capital company, but he was a 
 bachelor and no hand at cookery. The slices of 
 the mutton ham were scorched and impregnated 
 with peat smoke ; the braxie he pressed on me as 
 a special delicacy was diabolically ' green ' ; it took 
 all my wit and tact to pass it down to the retriever 
 at my feet ; and the spirits which were his pride, if 
 I was not greatly mistaken, had come fresh from an 
 illicit still. When it came to turning in, the sheets 
 on the bed he insisted on resigning had not even 
 the delusive purity of the cottage where there is a 
 housewife. I knew well that the vermin would be 
 on the rampage, and there I drew the line, at the 
 risk of hurting his feelings. As it was, after the 
 whisky I had a troubled night on the settle, en- 
 veloped in plaids and sheepskins. 
 
 Angus was a magnificent fellow, but he went 
 with a limp, the souvenir of a terrible experience. 
 In an iron frost he slipped — fortunately near his 
 own door — and broke an ankle. The cold was 
 intense, the pain was severe, the limb swelled to 
 portentous size, he was miles away from help of 
 any kind, and twenty or more from a doctor. For 
 three days and nights he lay untended, his body 
 racked with pain, and his mind with anxiety for 
 
298 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 the flock left shepherdless. He dragged himself 
 out to the peat stack for fuel ; he repeatedly re- 
 kindled the smouldering peats, ' slooking ' handfuls 
 of meal in lukewarm water. Sometimes he slept, 
 and occasionally he swooned, not knowing how 
 long he had lain in unconsciousness. Giving him- 
 self up for lost he made a manful fight, and rescue 
 came when it could be least expected. A belated 
 poacher tried the door and found Angus in a 
 ' dwam,' with a collie stretched on top of him. He 
 was a handy rascal ; put things shipshape as far as 
 possible, fomented the limb, fed the patient, applied 
 the whisky freely — externally and internally — and 
 with daybreak hurried off to seek for the surgeon. 
 Angus's grand constitution stood him in good stead, 
 and except for that limp, as he said himself, 'he 
 was never a hair the waur.' 
 
 The shepherds of the olden time and the hill 
 crofters, for fear, favour, or kinship, used to stand 
 in with the poachers. Like the scattered keepers 
 they had little choice when the country was terror- 
 ised by roving bands, or by athletic stalkers of 
 local fame who preferred to work singlehanded. 
 It was in the cottage of a weather-beaten veteran, 
 who by the way could tell another thrilling story 
 of a wife lying unburied for a fortnight in a 
 memorable snowstorm, that I was privileged to 
 ' become acquent ' with big Duncan Mackay. 
 Duncan Mohr, as he was called, had been a 
 mighty man of mark and muscle. Though 
 
SHEPHERDS AND POACHERS 299 
 
 advanced in years, no two of the agents of the 
 law would have much cared to tackle him. He 
 had always been generous of gifts which cost him 
 nothing but powder and shot, and many a bless- 
 ing was invoked on his head by the widows, the 
 orphans, and the ailing. I doubt not he kept his 
 good friend the shepherd well supplied with muir- 
 fowl, hill-hares, and shoulders of venison. Had 
 there been elections for parish councils in those 
 days he would have walked in easily at the head 
 of the poll. For there was no denying that 
 Duncan was the most munificent of poachers. His 
 story is typical of hill society as it once was. He 
 might have lived happy in the universal respect of 
 his neighbours, but with Duncan, as with all men, 
 there was a rift in the lute. Partly from fear and 
 partly from good fellowship the keepers of the 
 chief never 'steered ' him. It is true they had to 
 watch many a league of hill and many a mile of 
 half-hidden salmon water, and, as Duncan had 
 small difficulty in dodging them, his sport became 
 unpalatably tame. Sometimes when Satan got the 
 upper hand, he would actually throw himself across 
 their path, but his friends were blind, or deaf to 
 the gun-reports, and Duncan was far from a well- 
 contented man. 
 
 Highland property rose in the market and the 
 chieftain was tempted to sell. Duncan heard the 
 news with sorrow, and indeed his lamentations 
 were so loud that his motives were suspected. 
 
300 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 The ungrateful hill folk declared that the old 
 stalker was grieving at the prospects of a stricter 
 rule. It was rumoured that the Southerner who 
 had bought the estates was to begin with sweeping 
 chano'es. He went about the revolution orener- 
 
 o o 
 
 ously enough. The ancient keepers were to be 
 pensioned, but they were to be replaced by a corps 
 of zealous strangers. As the ill news spread, 
 Duncan brightened up. His chance had come 
 and he might sate himself with risks and adven- 
 tures. No need now to thrust himself on the 
 keepers' notice ; the game was all the other way. 
 His cottag-e was watched and his outofoinofs were 
 shadowed. With all his native gifts on the alert, 
 he found it hard to keep his own larder supplied 
 with game ; his pride was hurt and necessarily his 
 benefactions were restricted. It was the latter 
 trouble he felt most acutely. Many a night he 
 slept out on the heather in his plaid, for fear of 
 compromising his friends by seeking shelter in 
 some secluded bothy. He even took to reducing 
 his charges of powder, thereby increasing the 
 trouble of his stalking, and — what he regretted still 
 more — the suffering of the wounded deer. 
 
 He grumbled, of course, but on the whole he 
 enjoyed it. Now there was no lack of sensation ; 
 there was the double zest of hunting and being 
 hunted. Then, to cut the story short, came an 
 incident which again changed the course of his 
 career. The new proprietor, though a novice at 
 
SHEPHERDS AND POACHERS 301 
 
 the deer -stalking, was as zealous on sport as 
 himself and as free handed. Duncan could not 
 help admiring him, for like the last Glengarry of 
 famous memory though lacking his forest craft, he 
 would go on the deer path for a day or more, alone 
 and unattended. Naturally, he generally came 
 home empty handed, which, as Duncan explained, 
 was the more to his credit. One dark autumn 
 evening Duncan had actually gone astray in the 
 gathering gloaming and drifting mists. He 
 deemed himself lucky when he struck a torrent 
 bed in a corrie which must lead him down to the 
 strath. Among treacherous land-slides and rugged 
 boulders, with the bit burn he could not see 
 murmuring guidance in the blackness, he heard 
 groans and uncanny speech, as of some wandering 
 soul in pain. It was a mischancy place, Duncan 
 was superstitious, and more than inclined to take 
 to the hill again. But like Rab Tull in The 
 Antiquary, he kept a Highland heart, said a bit of 
 a prayer, and held forward. In the burn bed he 
 picked up the new proprietor, who had had an 
 ugly fall and was badly hurt. Duncan, who played 
 the Good Samaritan, made light of the rescue, but 
 the grateful Saxon thought otherwise. And his 
 gratitude took the unwelcome form of giving per- 
 emptory orders that his preserver was to have free 
 licence and liberty. Duncan was a saddened man 
 when I met him. He seldom cared to take down 
 rifle or rod : he had gained flesh but fallen off in 
 
302 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 spirit and sinew. Yet he liked the new lord of the 
 soil so well, that shortly afterwards he conde- 
 scended to ask a favour. It was a small loan to 
 help him to emigrate to join a kinsman in North 
 Western Canada, which he faithfully promised to 
 repay. So the old poacher when well on in the 
 seventies left his native glen, simply because 
 agreeable poaching had become impossible. 
 
 Duncan Mohr had his counterpart in Kerry. In 
 West Ireland, where the law was even weaker, 
 there were fewer temptations. On the stretches 
 of barren hill the grouse were kept down by the 
 hawks and the hooded crows. On the wide moor- 
 lands with their quaking bogs, there was little to, 
 be shot save duck and snipe. Though the red 
 deer still ranged the Kerry hills, there were no 
 regular forests. Moreover the lawless occupants 
 of lonely cabins were seldom rich enough to buy 
 a fowling - piece or pay for powder and shot. 
 Dragging a salmon pool or spearing the fish by 
 torchlight was another matter. Yet many a law- 
 less poacher has been bred in the far West, and 
 the Irish Celt has an insinuating impudence of 
 his own, to which his graver Gaelic cousin can 
 make no pretension. A Kerry landlord was sorely 
 troubled in that way by a veteran dependent for 
 whom he had a real esteem. Mister Spillane — he 
 was no kin to a well-known Killarney guide — 
 had been born on the estate and engaged as a 
 supernumerary on the keeper's staff, before he 
 
SHEPHERDS AND POACHERS 303 
 
 listed. With a regiment in India his sporting 
 aptitudes recommended him to a notable regi- 
 mental Nimrod who took Spillane for his servant 
 and constant attendant in shooting expeditions. 
 No Zouave was more resourceful in foraging for the 
 camp kettles. Spillane came back to his ancestral 
 glens with a pension and settled in a cottage near 
 the Castle. He was grateful for free quarters and 
 the run of the Castle kitchen. And he showed his 
 gratitude by killing salmon, when there were any 
 to be caught, and leaving them at the back door of 
 the big house with compliments and kindly wishes. 
 In vain the master expostulated, swore, argued, 
 and even entreated. He pointed out that his best 
 water was often spoiled for himself and his guests. 
 Spillane was smiling, good-natured, and agreeably 
 obtuse. ' Sure, your honour, if I knew that you or 
 any of the company were to be out, it 's always 
 glad and willin' I would be to lave the pools for 
 ye.' At last the good-natured baronet gave him 
 up as hopeless, and, being loath to resort to 
 eviction, resigned himself to grin and bear it. 
 Now the last of that generation of wild free-shots 
 is gone, and we shall never look upon their like 
 again. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE LAST OF THE ROAD 
 
 I SAW the last of the road before it was superseded 
 by the rail. Each year the pace has been growing 
 faster ; flying Scotchmen and flying Irishmen with 
 few stoppages have been accelerated ; now you 
 may take your meals leisurely in Pulman dining- 
 cars, and the blood horse, the pride and boast of 
 England, is giving way to the motor car, the 
 abomination of the road. I have been gradually 
 converted from a progressive Conservative into a 
 reactionary old Tory. The pace has been getting 
 too fast to last, and must surely result in crash and 
 catastrophe. Telegraph, telephone, and wireless 
 telegraphy have intensified the hard struggle for 
 life, while Krupp and Whitehead, Vickers, Maxim 
 and Company, with all the inventors of explosives, 
 scattering mutilation broadcast, have added im- 
 measurably to the horrors of death. But I grow 
 rhapsodical and sentimental. Nevertheless, senti- 
 ment will come in, when I recall, in the rose- 
 coloured lights of old memories, the glories of the 
 old coaching days. As * Nimrod ' remarks in his 
 famous Quarterly article, roads and coaching had 
 come to perfection just as the latter ceased to exist. 
 
 304 
 
THE LAST OF THE ROAD 305 
 
 Some forty years ago, when shooting in Stafford- 
 shire, I remember being struck by a vast range of 
 empty stabling, with an imposing pile of Georgian 
 building, which had once been a busy posting 
 centre, giving occupation to hundreds and enrich- 
 ing the farmers far and near. A small tenant 
 lived in a corner of the old mansion, the roofs of 
 the stabling were falling in, though owned by one 
 of the most liberal of noblemen, and silence reigned 
 in the weed-grown yard, which used to be voci- 
 ferous with the shout of ' first pair out.' Almost 
 as pathetic are the memories of the old London 
 coaching houses. Where and what are the hostel- 
 ries now, whence coaches scattered in all directions? 
 The Bull and Mouth, with its long galleries of 
 subterraneous stabling, associated of old with the 
 despatch of the mails, has been swallowed by the 
 General Post Office. The Saracen's Head, Mr. 
 Squeers's house of call, vanished with the construc- 
 tion of the Holborn Viaduct. The Belle Sauvage, 
 where old Mr. Weller used to put up, is the head- 
 quarters of an enterprising publishing firm. Tempora 
 mutantur. The Gloucester Coffee-house is gone, 
 where coaches on the western roads would spare 
 half a minute to pick up west-end passengers, and 
 Hatchett's, the White Horse Cellar, has changed 
 character and been fashionably transmogrified 
 out of all knowledge. I used to know Hatchett's 
 well, in the interval between the demise of the 
 professional coaching and the birth of the amateurs. 
 
 u 
 
3o6 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 When bachelor hotels were scarce in London, you 
 got a comfortable and tolerably cheerful bedroom 
 there. There was less to be said — I have said it 
 already — in favour of the coffee-room, yet I liked 
 it for its associations with the romance of the past. 
 You thought of the scrambles before break of day, 
 when waiting travellers hustled for a place at the 
 fire, bolting the scorched toast and choking over 
 scalding coffee. Or of the evenings when, chilled to 
 the bone, they were helped "down by the ladder, to 
 feel their frozen feet, and find a lumbering hackney 
 coach to reach distant quarters in a December fog. 
 It is a blessed thing that, in recalling the past, 
 we are inclined to ignore the discomforts and only 
 remember the pleasures. The walls of many a 
 country coffee-room and parlour are still adorned 
 with Fore's admirably graphic sporting sketches. 
 In these both sorrows and joys are reflected. You 
 see the mails loading for the night journey in the 
 yards of the Swan with Two Necks or the Bull 
 and Mouth, the passengers, in top hats and the 
 tightest of overcoats, nerving themselves for the 
 ordeal they regard with apprehension. You see 
 with sympathetic exhilaration the coachman spring- 
 ing his lively team of bays, with glistening coats 
 and sinews like whipcord, over Hartford Bottom to 
 get a few spare minutes in hand against casualties. 
 You see the up-and-down ' Quicksilvers,' keeping 
 time to the minute, exchanging flying salutations 
 as they cross in the deep cutting, illuminated by 
 
THE LAST OF THE ROAD 2>oi 
 
 the reflected blaze of the side-lamps. Then you 
 have the grimmer side of the pictures, the hard- 
 ships, the hazards, and the spice of veritable peril. 
 The coach has charged an unopened turnpike in 
 the fog, for the guard has got astray in his bearings, 
 or the turnpike man has been deaf to the horn. 
 The leaders are down in the shivered timber, one 
 of the wheelers is plunging on the top of them, and 
 we can fancy the feelings of the nervous passenger 
 on the box seat who is screaming in chorus with 
 the old lady inside. Or we see in the memorable 
 storm of 1836, both Holyhead mails half buried in 
 the snow, a chariot with luckless ladies within 
 being steadily submerged in the drifts, and the 
 coachman of the up-mail, who has rashly jumped 
 down, engulphed to his armpits, and helplessly en- 
 cumbered with innumerable box-coats. The euard, 
 with prompt decision, is going off with the other 
 wheeler and the post bags, but what must the 
 shivering passengers go through before they are 
 again in blissful communication with fire, food, 
 and civilisation } 
 
 As for the disagreeables, perhaps the most un- 
 pleasant of all was that unholy hour of the early 
 start. Things were not quite so bad as in the times 
 of Colonel Hawker. The colonel, indefatigably 
 energetic, though suffering from an old wound and 
 much of a inalade imagmaire, curious in pills and 
 patent medicines, is always being called at 4 a.m., 
 or taking a hurried header into damp sheets, before 
 
3o8 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 beinof roused aoain to re-establish connections. 
 But they were bad enough, even in my boyhood. 
 In winter the outsider started thoroughly chilled, 
 and had never a chance of getting- warm. Our 
 grandfathers, going on the principle of the survival 
 of the fittest, had taken neither luxurious nor reason- 
 able precautions against cold, and we of another 
 generation, bred in their Spartan school, were 
 following the fashion. Ulsters and railway rugs 
 had not been invented, and the first of the looser 
 and more comfortable innovations were the Inver- 
 ness cape and the South American poncho. The 
 burly coachman might envelop himself in coats and 
 capes till he was guaranteed against any ordinary 
 upset, though helpless if he were pitched head fore- 
 most into snow. The ordinary traveller wore no- 
 thing beyond the everyday winter walking clothes. 
 The Duke of Beaufort, by an exceptional instance 
 of astuteness, once brought a horse rug, to the envy 
 of his fellow-passengers, when travelling as a lightly 
 clad schoolboy from Brighton to Badminton. Tom 
 Brown was a type of the traveller of those days, 
 and Tom was the son of a wealthy squire and the 
 darling of a doting mother. He had nothing where- 
 with to fight the cold but a tight-buttoned Peter- 
 sham : and so I have fought frost and bitter North 
 Sea breezes myself, when sitting crumpled up and 
 crouchinof behind the coachman's back on the roof 
 of Royal Mail or * Defiance.' Serious smashes were 
 comparatively rare, but drowsiness was a danger 
 
THE LAST OF THE ROAD 309 
 
 difficult to guard against. The outsiders on the 
 seats behind the coach-box or facing the guard were 
 hanging between earth and heaven. One foot was 
 on the slippery straw on the footboard, the other 
 often dangling in space. Even when wide awake, 
 a lurch might prove awkward ; and there were sharp 
 corners in the narrow streets of many an antiquated 
 borough town, where the top-heavy vehicle took a 
 perilous swing. When you began to nod towards 
 nightfall, or dropped into a snooze in the small 
 hours, you were sitting in the very shadow of Death. 
 On the box you were somewhat safer, for you were 
 under the eye of the experienced coachman. In 
 later days when going north for salmon-fishing 
 or grouse-shooting, travelling outside through the 
 night from Aberdeen, I used to catch at Inverness 
 the northern mail for Tain or Dingwall. One 
 glorious spring morning I scrambled up beside the 
 driver, an old acquaintance. Had I refreshed my- 
 self with laudanum instead of rum and milk, I could 
 not have felt more sleepy. It is a grand bit of gallop- 
 ing ground that skirts the firth, and my friend put 
 his horses along. The ocean ozone, laden with the 
 intoxicating fragrance of the sea-wrack, might have 
 lulled a victim of chronic insomnia, and if the 
 driver's elbow had not been kept continually in my 
 ribs, I should certainly have been a subject for the 
 coroner, had there been coroners' inquests to the 
 north of the Tweed. 
 
 In winter or rough weather there was a choice of 
 
3IO DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 discomforts, but, perhaps, on the whole the inside 
 may have been preferable, though it was a case of 
 tight packing in mixed company. You might have 
 the agreeable society of the most fascinating of her 
 sex. But it was much more likely that luck would 
 be against you, with a corpulent lady by your side 
 and a gouty gentleman opposite. I remember one 
 bloated land agent, notorious for good living and 
 always on the road in Kincardine and Angus. He 
 had the consideration to pay for two places, yet 
 his portentous bulk made his advent a terror to his 
 opposites. Difficulties would always arise about 
 dovetailing the legs, to use a familiar Americanism, 
 and any movement to get at the pocket-handker- 
 chief would provoke sulks and scowls or shrill 
 remonstrances. You ran the ascending scale in 
 sensations of discomfort,' from pins and needles in 
 the legs to agonising cramps. There might be the 
 man with the hacking cough or the mother with the 
 squalling baby, with an unpleasant habit of being 
 coach sick. The nets suspended from the roof 
 were bulging with loose parcels and umbrellas. 
 The space below the seats was encroached upon 
 with the fore and hind boots, for each cubic inch 
 had been economised. The side pockets were 
 stuffed with bottles and packets of cakes and 
 sandwiches. There was a prevailing odour of spirits 
 and peppermint drops, and the loose straw that 
 carpeted the bottom was fusty and often damp. It 
 was not the accommodation of a Pullman dining- 
 
THE LAST OF THE ROAD 311 
 
 car, and yet it was then regarded as comparatively 
 luxurious. For the price of an inside seat was 
 half as much again as that of an outside place. 
 
 When I was a boy the last of the coaches were 
 still in their glory. Excepting Chester, perhaps, 
 no town in the kingdom could make such a show 
 as Aberdeen. At three in the afternoon, groups 
 would gather before the Royal Hotel in Union 
 Street to see half a dozen coaches or more draw up 
 before the door. The Post Office was round the 
 corner, and the mails, timed everywhere sharp to 
 the minute, were specially well horsed and appointed. 
 The guards in their gold-laced scarlet made a 
 grand show, and as they climbed to their tripod, a 
 fragile-looking seat on iron supports, when the 
 coachman had gathered up the reins and the 
 helpers had swept the clothes from the horses, 
 they woke the street echoes with music, more or 
 less melodious. Some were content with a simple 
 performance on the ' yard and a half of tin ' ; others, 
 with a finer ear for symphonies, played popular airs 
 on the key-bugle. The last of the mail bags was 
 pitched into the boot, and all the teams were away 
 to the chime of the church clocks. The mails were 
 admirably horsed, but they were rivalled or excelled 
 by the southern ' Defiance.' It was owned by 
 Captain Barclay of Ury and Watson of Keillor, a 
 wealthy gentleman farmer. In spite of hilly roads 
 and the poorer horse provender of the North, it 
 ran the Shrewsbury ' Wonder * or the Devonport 
 
312 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 * Quicksilver ' hard. Moreover there was less Hmit 
 to luggage than on the mail. Yet summer and 
 winter, including stoppages for meals and the 
 passage of a stormy ferry with change of coaches, 
 it punctually did its ten miles an hour. Lavishly 
 horsed as it was, the wear and tear of horse-flesh 
 was considerable. In those days I made no 
 pretensions to the box seat ; I did not court such 
 snubs as gave David Copperiield his first fall in 
 life. But I had generally a place immediately 
 behind, for I had been recommended to guards and 
 coachmen by a relation — an old ally of Barclay's — 
 mentioned in Nimrod's Northern Tour as having 
 sold Lord Rodney a Tilbury horse for the unprece- 
 dented price of seven hundred guineas. It was glory 
 to travel by the ' Defiance,' but the great draw- 
 back was that early start. It did not go off in the 
 afternoon, but at 5 a.m. A few minutes previously 
 you were stretching yourself on the pavement 
 before the Royal, having swallowed a cup of boiling 
 coffee and bolted a crust. ' Up you get,' said the 
 friendly guard ; and there you were, with a tight 
 overcoat and a flimsy plaid by way of leg wrapper. 
 The first two stages were about the bleakest drive 
 in bleak north-eastern Scotland. With a bright 
 dawn there were magnificent sea-views, but I 
 thought of nothing but the jolly breakfast at the 
 Mill Inn, Stonehaven. Regularly as the coach 
 pulled up at seven, the ' captain ' was to be seen on 
 the steps. He was always there to inspect his 
 
THE LAST OF THE ROAD 
 
 3^0 
 
 teams, and he regularly dined early, in order to meet 
 the down coach. What he wanted was horses that 
 would go the pace ; and his coachmen were selected 
 for his own qualities — strong arms, cool judgment, 
 and iron nerve. One memorable morning I had the 
 honour of being presented to him by my father, an 
 old neighbour of his in the ' Howe of the Mearns/ 
 and I well remember what struck me most in the 
 old athlete was the twisted cordage of muscle on 
 the back of the hands that had dealt so many a 
 knock-down blow and mastered so many a team of 
 queer ones. His tastes and traditions survived. 
 If any county gentleman had a vicious rogue of 
 blood with some substance, he was passed on to the 
 ' Defiance ' and very soon brought to his bearings. 
 One day, with Barclay himself on the box seat, we 
 ran a reckless race with his neighbour Hepburn of 
 Riccarton, who was driving a blood mare in a light 
 dogcart. We were passed and repassed, but the 
 heavy-weight was out of the running, and the 
 captain was much disgusted when beaten on the 
 lonof stao-e. With such horses we were not un- 
 frequently on the brink of grief. There was a 
 changing place on the North Esk, with an awk- 
 ward slope to an ugly bridge, and there by some 
 fatality we often had trouble. One time our 
 leaders were a kicker and a bolter ; the one was 
 plunging in the traces, while the other was lashing 
 out over the bars. Or on another occasion there 
 would be a sullen brute who cast himself down, 
 
314 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 after having an old set of harness thrown under 
 his hoofs *to let him dance on the leather,' and 
 then could only be persuaded to get up by firing 
 an armful of straw under his belly. By that time 
 the three yokefellows were all on end, like so 
 many unicorns rampant. When the coachman 
 could ease the straining wrists, they must have 
 nearly torn his arms out of the sockets. It amazes 
 me now that accidents were so rare, and the 
 smashes and capsizes were far from frequent. 
 
 Another marvel is how, even in these easy-going 
 days, the coaches sufficed for the traffic. From 
 end to end you must book in advance, in defiance 
 of ulterior arrangements or the elements. At 
 intermediate stations all was haphazard, especially 
 on side roads served by a single 'daily.' Rivals 
 were put on the roads, but they generally were 
 driven into bankruptcy. At one country house, 
 which was very much my home in early days, we 
 were lucky in having a blacksmith's forge to wait 
 at. Often have I sought shelter by the glow of 
 that smithy fire when Vulcan was hammering a 
 horse-shoe or fastening a ploughshare. When the 
 ' Earl of Fife,' sarcastically criticised by ' Nimrod,' 
 was sighted rising the brow of the hill, you specu- 
 lated anxiously on the roof load and strove to 
 count the heads of the passengers. But even if it 
 were crowded, by favour of the guard, an active boy 
 could generally bestow himself precariously on the 
 top of the luggage. Guards and coachmen exer- 
 
THE LAST OF THE ROAD 315 
 
 cised a despotism, tempered by tips. Proprietors 
 who could not control them in details, left a great 
 deal in their power. By tacit understanding, if they 
 gave a friend a lift, they might pocket the douceur ; 
 all that was expected of them was, that they should 
 not be found out. They made a good thing of 
 the delivery of letters and small parcels, never 
 entered in the way bill. The fore boot was under 
 the legs of the coachman, as the letter-bags in the 
 mails were under the feet of the guard. But on 
 the stage coaches the hind boot was a locker opened 
 from beneath, and the burly guardian was to be 
 seen balancing himself on the back step, extracting 
 or tossing in parcels without the coach slackening 
 its speed. 
 
 The coachman was wont to get handsome 
 perquisites by handing the reins over to aspiring- 
 amateurs. The arrangement did not always come 
 off so smoothly as might be desired, when there 
 were fractious travellers with nerves. I recollect a 
 gay young gentleman foolishly taking the driver's 
 seat before the start and gathering up the reins 
 with a flourish. One of the insides protested in 
 vain, till he announced himself as a well-known 
 and litigious local lawyer, declaring that unless 
 driven by the coachman, he would get out and 
 take a postchaise and four at the expense of the 
 proprietors. The young Jehu had to knock under 
 and climb down ; but he was a youth of resource 
 and a part owner to boot, so he forthwith 
 
3i6 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 took out a licence as 'extra coachman,' entitling 
 him to peril lives and limbs at his discretion. 
 
 Naturally, with so much in their power, guards 
 and coachmen were courted on the road. Nor 
 was it altogether out of gratitude for favours to 
 come, for it was their business and interest to 
 make themselves agreeable, and they were recom- 
 mended to their masters by their social qualities. 
 I made a memorable night-journey from Inverness 
 to Aberdeen on the northern ' Defiance.' It was 
 the last professional trip of a popular guard. At 
 every stage, friends already * well on ' as Tam 
 O'Shanter, were sitting up to give him a ' send- 
 off': jovial allies scrambled on to the roof to 
 convoy him to the next stage : raw whisky and 
 hot toddy flowed like burn water : the night owls 
 were roused with song and catch ; and when I 
 was dropped in the morning at Inverury, the 
 ' Defiance,' usually regulated like clock-work, was 
 a full hour behind her time. The most remarkable 
 tribute to the merits of the guard was that 
 neither he nor the coachman were called over the 
 coals. 
 
 Borrow makes a savage onslaught on the crack 
 coachmen of his time ; but Borrow, with the per- 
 versity of his very original talent, was always 
 * contrairy ' or in extremes. So far as my ex- 
 perience goes, like Mark Twain's quartz mining 
 cast, ' I think different.' I found them capital 
 fellows, and kindly protectors of unsophisticated 
 
THE LAST OF THE ROAD 317 
 
 innocence. I knew they were welcome guests in 
 many a sporting mansion, cordially invited to the 
 dinner-table when the cloth was drawn. One 
 instance I recollect, when the rubicund coachman, 
 though modestly seated on the edge of the chair, 
 joined in the talk with respectful independence, 
 but firmly declined a third bumper of old port — 
 not that he or his colleagues made a practice of 
 temperance elsewhere, and it was marvellous the 
 amount of strong liquor those seasoned vessels 
 could carry soberly and discreetly. For they were 
 hand-in-glove with each jolly landlord down the 
 road, and had a fatherly or loverlike smile for every 
 blooming barmaid. Yet they lasted well, dying 
 for the most part in a green old age. Talking of 
 talks with them, I recall another veteran, crippled 
 with complications of gout and rheumatism, who 
 was persuaded by a friend of mine to cross 
 Burntisland Ferry in surveillance of a pair of 
 young cobs who were to be broken to harness. 
 It was a bachelor household, and he was per- 
 suaded to dine with us. He had driven in South 
 England as well as the far North, and when he 
 dropped into vein of reminiscence, he engrossed 
 the conversation. He not only was eloquent on 
 experiences of his own, and some of them were 
 sensational enough, but he had the traditional 
 episodes of the southern flyers at his finger ends, 
 in fog, snowstorm, and blizzards. The habitual 
 performances of some of the long-distance drivers 
 
3i8 DAYS OF THE PAST 
 
 might almost surpass in dogged strength of en- 
 durance the performance of their great patron 
 Captain Barclay, when he walked the thousand 
 miles in the thousand hours. He told of the 
 notable guards who were at least as tough. Like 
 the coachmen they were well conditioned men, who 
 had matured and hardened in the service. But 
 whereas the coachman could envelop himself in 
 box-coats and horse-cloths, the equally bulky 
 guard had to face the elements in lighter garments. 
 The very tripod on which he perched himself 
 seemed to have been devised by the authorities to 
 chill his legs and keep him wakeful. The sensa- 
 tional days of Bagshot Heath and Epping Forest 
 had gone by, when he had an arms' chest with 
 blunderbuss and horse-pistols in front of him. 
 Nevertheless, no corpulent elderly gentleman in 
 the islands more habitually put limbs or life in 
 peril. I have referred to the risk in picking up 
 parcels, and playing the acrobat over the hind 
 boot on a coach in rapid motion. Wrists and 
 arms were under the wheels, when he was putting 
 on or taking off the drag at a declivity. Or a 
 trace would snap to the startling of the team, and 
 then he would be down among lively heels in the 
 dark to repair damages with the rope he had 
 ready for such contingencies. In black fog or 
 blinding snow-drift, it was he who had the re- 
 sponsibility of guiding the coach, when bearings 
 were lost and landmarks obliterated. He stuck 
 
THE LAST OF THE ROAD 319 
 
 to the craft so long as steerage was any way 
 practicable, but when the stranded ship must 
 be abandoned, it was his charge to get forward 
 with the mails, even if passengers were left to be 
 starved or frozen. Deaf to appeals, he unhar- 
 nessed the leaders, mounting barebacked on the 
 one, and loading the bags on the other. Then 
 the heavy weight started to ride postillion over 
 perhaps a hundred miles or so of snow-shrouded 
 country, where all trace of a highway was lost, 
 and which might have puzzled an Arctic explorer. 
 Some of the deeds of those men who came in 
 to be lifted out of their seat, fainting and frost- 
 bitten, deserved the Victoria Cross. I may wind 
 up with my own recollection of a comparatively 
 trivial incident which happened in my nursery 
 days. A guard who was livid with chill, and 
 racked with rheumatic pains, came at late day- 
 break to the laird's hospitable halls, to seek neither 
 a warm bed nor a doctor, but a remount from 
 the stables. The horse he had been riding had 
 foundered. In fact it had slipped a leg down the 
 chimney of a cottage, buried out of sight in the 
 snow-fall of one terrible night. 
 
 Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty 
 at the E'Jinljurgh University Press