Читать книгу Famous Persons and Places - N. P. Willis - Страница 12

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DEPARTURE FROM GORDON CASTLE—THE PRETENDER—SCOTCH CHARACTER MISAPPREHENDED—OBSERVANCE OF SUNDAY—HIGHLAND CHIEFTAINS.

The days had gone by like the “Days of Thalaba,” and I took my leave of Gordon castle. It seemed to me, as I looked back upon it, as if I had passed a separate life there—so beautiful had been every object on which I had looked in that time, and so free from every mixture of ennui had been the hours from the first to the last, I have set them apart in my memory, those days, as a bright ellipse in the usual procession of joys and sorrows. It is a little world, walled in from rudeness and vexation, in which I have lived a life.

I took the coach from Elgin, and visited the fine old ruins of the cathedral, and then kept on to Inverness, passing over the “Blasted Heath,” the tryst of Macbeth and the witches. We passed within sight of Culloden Moor, at sunset, and the driver pointed out to me a lonely castle where the Pretender slept the night before the battle. The interest with which I had read the romantic history of Prince Charlie, in my boyhood, was fully awakened, for his name is still a watch-word of aristocracy in Scotland; and the jacobite songs, with their half-warlike, half-melancholy music, were favorites of the Dutchess of Gordon, who sung them in their original Scotch, with an enthusiasm and sweetness that stirred my blood like the sound of a trumpet. There certainly never was a cause so indebted to music and poetry as that which was lost at Culloden.

The hotel at Inverness was crowded with livery-servants, and the door inaccessible for carriages. I had arrived on the last day of a county meeting, and all the chieftains and lairds of the north and west of Scotland were together. The last ball was to be given that evening, and I was strongly tempted to go, by four or five acquaintances whom I found in the hotel—but the gout was peremptory. My shoe would not go on, and I went to bed.

I was limping about in the morning with a kind old baronet whom I had met at Gordon Castle, when I was warmly accosted by a gentleman whom I did not immediately remember. On his reminding me that we had parted last on Lake Leman, however, I recollected a gentlemanlike Scotchman, who had offered me his glass opposite Copet to look at the house of Madame de Stael, and whom I had left afterward at Lausanne, without even knowing his name. He invited me immediately to dine, and in about an hour or two after, called in his carriage, and drove me to a charming country house, a few miles down the shore of Loch Ness, where he presented me to his family, and treated me in every respect as if I had been the oldest of his friends. I mention the circumstance for the sake of a comment on what seems to me a universal error with regard to the Scotch character. Instead of a calculating and cold people, as they are always described by the English, they seem to me more a nation of impulse and warm feeling than any other I have seen. Their history certainly goes to prove a most chivalrous character in days gone by, and as far as I know Scotchmen, they preserve it still with even less of the modification of the times than any other nations. The instance I have mentioned above, is one of many that have come under my own observation, and in many inquiries since, I have never found an Englishman, who had been in Scotland, who did not confirm my impression. I have not traded with them, it is true, and I have seen only the wealthier class, but still I think my judgment a fair one. The Scotch in England are, in a manner, what the Yankees are in the Southern States, and their advantages of superior quickness and education have given them a success which is ascribed to meaner causes. I think (common prejudice contradicente) that neither the Scotch nor the English are a cold or an unfriendly people, but the Scotch certainly the farther remove from coldness of the two.

Inverness is the only place I have ever been in where no medicine could be procured on a Sunday. I did not want indeed for other mementoes of the sacredness of the day. In the crowd of the public room of the hotel, half the persons at least, had either bible or prayer-book, and there was a hush through the house, and a gravity in the faces of the people passing in the street, that reminded me more of New England than anything I have seen. I had wanted some linen washed on Saturday. “Impossible!” said the waiter, “no one does up linen on Sunday.” Toward evening I wished for a carriage to drive over to my hospitable friend. Mine host stared, and I found it was indecorous to drive out on Sunday. I must add, however, that the apothecary’s shop was opened after the second service, and that I was allowed a carriage on pleading my lameness.

Inverness is a romantic looking town, charmingly situated between Loch Ness and the Murray Firth, with the bright river Ness running through it, parallel to its principal street, and the most picturesque eminences in its neighborhood. There is a very singular elevation on the other side of the Ness, shaped like a ship, keel up, and rising from the centre of the plain, covered with beautiful trees. It is called, in Gaelic, Tonnaheuric, or the Hill of the Fairies.

It has been in one respect like getting abroad again, to come to Scotland. Nothing seemed more odd to me on my first arrival in England, than having suddenly ceased to be a “foreigner.” I was as little at home myself, as in France or Turkey, (much less than in Italy,) yet there was that in the manner of every person who approached me which conveyed the presumption that I was as familiar with every thing about me as himself. In Scotland, however, the Englishman is the “Sassenach,” and a stranger; and, as I was always taken for one, I found myself once more invested with that agreeable consequence which accompanies it, my supposed prejudices consulted, my opinion about another country asked, and comparisons referred to me as an ex parte judge. I found here, as abroad, too, that the Englishman was expected to pay more for trifling services than a native, and that he would be much more difficult about his accommodations, and more particular in his chance company. I was amused at the hotel with an instance of the want of honor shown “the prophet in his own country.” I went down to the coffee room for my breakfast about noon, and found a remarkably fashionable, pale, “Werter-like man,” excessively dressed, but with all the air of a gentleman, sitting with a newspaper on one side of the fire. He offered me the newspaper after a few minutes, but with the cold, half-supercilious politeness which marks the dandy tribe, and strolled off to the window. The landlord entered presently, and asked me if I had any objection to breakfasting with that gentleman, as it would be a convenience in serving it up. “None in the world,” I said, “but you had better ask the other gentleman first.” “Hoot!” said Boniface, throwing up his chin with an incredulous expression,—“it’s honor for the like o’ him. He’s joost a laddie born and brought up i’ the toon. I kenn’d him weel.” And so enter breakfast for two. I found my companion a well-bred man; rather surprised, however, if not vexed, to discover that I knew he was of Inverness. He had been in the civil services of the East India Company for some years (hence his paleness,) and had returned to Scotland for his health. He was not the least aware that he was known, apparently and he certainly had not the slightest trace of his Scotch birth. The landlord told me afterward that his parents were poor, and he had raised himself by his own cleverness alone, and yet it was “honor for the like o’ him” to sit at table with a common stranger! The world is really very much the same all over.

In the three days I passed at Inverness, I made the acquaintance of several of the warm-hearted Highland chiefs, and found great difficulty in refusing to go home with them. One of the “Lords of the Isles” was among the number—a handsome, high-spirited youth, who would have been the chivalrous Lord Ronald of a century ago, but was now only the best shot, the best rider, the most elegant man, and the most “capital fellow” in the west of Scotland. He had lost every thing but his “Isle” in his London campaigns, and was beginning to look out for a wife to mend his fortune and his morals. There was a peculiar style about all these young men, something very like the manner of our high bred Virginians—a free, gallant, self-possessed bearing, fiery and prompt, yet full of courtesy. I was pleased with them altogether.

I had formed an agreeable acquaintance, on my passage from London to Edinburgh in the steamer, with a gentleman bound to the Highlands for the shooting season. He was engaged to pay a visit to Lord Lumley, with whom I had myself promised to pass a week, and we parted at Edinboro’ in the hope of meeting at Kinrara. On my return from Dalhousie, a fortnight after, we met by chance at the hotel in Edinboro’, he having arrived the same day, and having taken a passage like myself for Aberdeen. We made another agreeable passage together, and he left me at the gate of Gordon castle, proceeding north on another visit. I was sitting in the coffee room at Inverness, pondering how I should reach Kinrara, when, enter again my friend, to my great surprise, who informed me that Lord Lumley had returned to England. Disappointed alike in our visit, we took a passage together once more in the steamer from Inverness to Fort William for the following morning. It was a singular train of coincidences, but I was indebted to it for one of the most agreeable chance acquaintances I have yet made.