Читать книгу The Modern Athens - Robert Mudie - Страница 3

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THE AUTHOR AND THE KING ARE INDUCED TO VISIT THE MODERN ATHENS.

“Ego et Rex meus.”—Wolsey.

The renown of the Scottish Metropolis,—that city of wonders and of wisdom, of palaces and of philosophy, of learned men and of lovely women, had sounded so long and so loudly in their ears, that toward the close of summer 1822, the Author of these pages and the Sovereign of these realms, were induced to pay it a visit, each in that state and with that pomp and circumstance which was becoming his station in the world. The one, in that unmarked guise which is fitting for one who lives more for the glory of others than of himself, and who sets more value upon the single sentence which preserves his memory when he is no more, than upon all that he can possess or enjoy in this world. The other, in that glow and grandeur, which gains in intensity what it stands some chance of losing in duration,—which is the grand idol of its day; and which, when that day has closed, is gathered to the sepulchre of its fathers, to make room for another—and the same.

The Author of these pages must not be blamed, or deemed disloyal, for having given his own name the precedence of that of his Sovereign. Every man in reality prefers himself before all the sovereigns in the world; and wherefore should not one man state this preference in words? The courtier declares that all his services are devoted to his king,—but he devotes them no longer than that king can afford to pay for them: the soldier swears that he will die in defence of the crown,—but he never dies till he is compelled by the superior strength or skill of another. Even upon general grounds, therefore, there is candour if not courtesy in this order of precedence.

But, when the specialities of the case are considered,—when it is borne in mind that the monarch, all-gracious and polite as he is, visited the Athens, as well to dazzle the Athenians by his grandeur, as to delight them by his bounty,—that the native luminaries of that centre of many twinkling lights were shorn of their beams by his overwhelming radiance,—that this instance of kingly condescension taught the ΔΕΜΟΣ of Athena to regard as haply something less even than men, those whom they had formerly looked upon as possessing some of the attributes of divinity; and when, on the other hand, it is taken into the account that the author of these pages made his visit solely with a view of seeing with his own eyes, hearing with his own ears, and proclaiming with his own lips, the truth of those reports which had come to him through so many channels, and of which the fruition had proved so much more delectable than the foretaste: then, assuredly, ought Athena herself, from all the castles of her strength, the halls of her wisdom, the drawing-rooms of her beauty, and the alleys of her retirement, to confess that she owes to the author of these pages more than kingly gratitude.—The King noticed but a few of her people, enriched not many, and ennobled almost none: those pages are intended to enwrap the whole in one pure and perennial blaze of glory.

It was on the evening of the same day that the Monarch took shipping at Greenwich amid the shouts of assembled multitudes, and the Author took his seat on the top of the Edinburgh mail, amid piles of tailors’ boxes, each containing a courtier’s habit, in which some fond, and fawning, and fortune-desiring son of Caledonia was to bend the supple knee in the presence of Majesty, within the ancient palace of the Holyrood. The voyages of kings, and the velocity of mail-coaches, are already known and appreciated; and thus there needs no more to be said, than that here also the Author had by several days the precedence of the King.

The jolting of the wooden cases of my courtly neighbours, together with forty-eight hours’ exposure to drought by day and damp by night, prepared me, in spite of all my burning anxiety to see the far-famed city, for the enjoyment of several hours of repose; and, as Athena was at this time too much excited for permitting me to enjoy this till towards morning, the sun had risen high before I left my chamber.

Upon hurrying into the street,—into that Princes’ street, which, as I afterwards learned, is at certain seasons of the year the favourite lounge of the Athenian dandies, and at certain hours of the day the favourite haunt of the Athenian fair, who resort thither as the clock strikes four, to feast their fair and anxious eyes upon the self-important forms of dashing advocates, the more dapper and pursey ones of pawkie writers to his Majesty’s signet, or the attenuated striplings of the quill—the future Clerks and Jefferys, who at that hour are returning from the harvest of law and profits to such feast as awaits them in ample hall or elevated cock-loft, according to their talents, their connexions, or their purses;—upon hurrying into that street, in the expectation of feasting my eyes upon the natural and architectural glories of the city, I found that those glories were in the mean time veiled in the maddening preparations of a whole people, who had come from every portion of the main land, and from the remotest isle of Thulè, to wonder at and to admire that mightiest marvel of human nature—a king.

So novel and so varied were the costumes, so unexpected and so singular were the features and expressions, and so uncouth and Babylonish were the voices, that the eye and the ear were confounded, the judgment could not understand, and the memory could preserve no record. Here you might see some brawny and briefless barrister—the younger son of a loyal family, with a pedigree at least twice as long as its rental, with trowsers and jacket à la Robin Hood, and huge blue bonnet adorned with the St. Andrew’s cross and a turkey-cock’s feather—looking for all the world like a chimney-sweep’s Jack-o’-the-Green, or a calf dressed entire and garnished with cabbage-leaves; while close by him trotted a loyal toast-composing crown-lawyer, with his hinder end cased in a phillibeg, a feathered bonnet, at least a third of his own height, an iron-hilted sword somewhat more than the whole, and a dirk that might have served for a plough-share, puffing and blowing under the weight of his own importance, and the accoutrements of the Celtic society. In close juxtaposition with these was a genuine Glhuine dhu, plaided, plumed, and whiskered, and looking as if all the kings of the earth were nothing to that swaggering chieftain, of whose tail he formed no inconsiderable portion. In another place you could catch the broad face and broader bonnet of a lowland farmer of the old school, cased in one uniform garb of home-made blue, with brass buckles to his shoes, a brass key suspended to his watch by a tough thong of black leather, greasy enough,—holding solemn colloquy with that reverend member of the Scottish Kirk, to whom he acted in the capacity of ruling elder, about the danger of compromising the interests of the Whig or high-flying part of that establishment, during the avatar of so many Tories. The reverend gentleman himself was no bad sight. His general-assembly coat and et cetera’s were duly kept at home,—that is to say, in his two-shillings-a-week apartments, up seven pair of stairs, in College-street, or haply in the house of that town acquaintance with whom he had found cheaper board,—till the eventful days should arrive. Thus he was habited in his parson’s grey, the breast of which, where it projected beyond the perpendicular, bore testimony to the fall, both of broth and of punch, while his inferior regions were shaded and shielded by dark-olive velveteens, a little tarnished, worsted hose furrowed as neatly as the turnip-division of his glebe, and cow-skin shoes of the most damp-defying power, which borrowed no part of their lustre from Mr. Robert Warren. Still the good man was clean in his linen; his chin was shorn like a new-mowed field; his visage beamed forth gratitude for “a competent portion of the good things of this life;” and his plump and ruddy hands slumbered with much orthodox ease in the capacious pockets of the velveteens. Anon, a highland laird, whose tail comprised only his lady and half a dozen of daughters, and who seemed to be meditating upon the roofless castle and ill-stored larder, to which the expense of parading full thirty-six feet of female charms before the King would subject him, during the weary moons of the Highland winter, hurried past, not at all at his ease.

But, to describe the individuals, strongly marked as they were, would be altogether out of the question; and, indeed, to give any thing like even a sketch of the groups and classes and knots of men, women, and children, in all habits, of all ages, and in almost every variety of shape, would bankrupt even a German vocabulary, although in that language one be allowed, for clearness sake, to lump a score of sentences into a single epithet. The cry was still “they come,” and Caledonia, from fertile plain and far mountain,—from toiling city and tiresome wilderness,—from rock, and glen, and river,—upon the wings of the wind, urged on by steam, drawn in coach, chaise, waggon, cart, and hurdle, riding upon horses, mules, and donkeys, and running upon feet, shod and unshod,—came scudding and smoking, and creaking and crashing, and reeking and panting, in one conglomerating cloud, and one commingling din, to distract the attention from the attic glories of Edinburgh, and for a time drown her classic sounds in the discordant and untunable din of all the provinces. Here you had the broad shoulders and bold bearing of the borderer, delving an elbow, of the size and substance of a sirloin of beef, into the skinny ribs of an Aberdonian professor of humanity, who all the time kept squeaking like a sick fiddle, in response to the bellow of the other, which reminded you of a bull confined in the vaulted hall of an old castle. There grinned the fat face of an East Lothian farmer, between a Perth baillie on the one hand, and a Stonehaven scribe on the other, like a ram’s tail between the blades of a shepherd’s sheers. And, yonder gaped and wondered the great face of a Glasgow negro-driver, like a Gorgon’s head—not upon the shield of Minerva. Still there was something interesting in the mighty and motley throng: it put one in mind of Noah’s ark, which contained “clean beasts, and beasts that are not clean, and fowls, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth.”

The most delectable part of the gathering was the combined clans and the burgh corporations. The former belted like warriors and bellied like weasels, and tricked out for the occasion in their respective tartans of their names, each bearing a sprig of the symbolic tree in his bonnet, a huge claymore in the one hand, and a relay of brogues and stockings in the other, with a great horn snuff-mull thrust into his sporran—open and ready for action—hurried along at the pas de charge to their headquarters for the time-being, where they were instantly dispersed into the crowd, thence to reassemble when the bagpipe should frighten the last shadow of night.

The corporation-men came in less military but more important guise. Glasgow, the queen of the west, Aberdeen, the glory of the north, Dundee and Perth, the rival empresses of the centre, with Cupar-Fife, Crail, and a hundred others, each charged with a loyal and dutiful address, which had been composed by the town-clerk, revised in the spelling by the schoolmaster, and was to be discharged at the King, in a manner so powerful and point-blank, as to procure knighthood if not earldom for such candle-selling provost, breeches-manufacturing baillie, or other chief magistrate “after his kind,” came on with a splendour and an importance that Scotland never before witnessed.

Glasgow, as became her purse and her pride, came blazing like the western star—or rather like a comet whose tail would have girdled half the signs of the zodiac. The van was led by the magistrates, in a coach which previously knew every street and lane of the city, but which was relackered for the occasion, had the city arms emblazoned upon it as large as a pullicate handkerchief, and was drawn by eight grey horses of the genuine Lanarkshire breed,—the thunder of whose feet as they dashed along shook the kirk of Shotts, and had nearly laid Airdrie and Bathgate in ruins. The clatter which they made along Princes’ Street was astounding; the crowd collected in thousands at the din; some cried it was the king himself; but the final opinion was, that it was “naebody but the magestrates o’ Glasgow.”

In the train of this goodly leading, there followed full fifty thousand,—or to speak by measure, as number was quite out of the question, full forty-four miles of merchants and makers of muslin; and the vehicles which carried the car-borne part of them were more strange and varied than ever appeared at the triumph of a Roman emperor upon his return from smiting the barbarous nations, and carrying themselves and all their utensils captive. Here you would see the equipage of a rich dealer in turmeric or tobacco, fashionable enough except in its contents; there you were presented with a Glasgow Noddy, squeezing forward its lank form like a tile, and dragged by a steed with three serviceable legs, and one eye the worse for the wear; in another place you would meet with a hearse, with a tarpaulin over it to hide the death’s head and the bones, and crammed full of the saints of the Salt-market laid lengthways for the convenience of stowage; while the rear was brought up by an enormous tilted waggon, which, though it was at first conjectured to contain Polito’s collection of wild beasts, was, upon examination, found to be charged very abundantly with that more important and polished matter—the ladies and gentlemen of Paisley and Greenock.

The pride of the north had been more than usually upon the qui vive. The Provost had been attitudenizing before a great mirror for a week, and getting his pronunciation translated into English by Mr. Megget, of the Academy, for at least a fortnight; the town-clerk had been drudging at “steps” in private with Mr. Corbyn for a month, and the learned Mr. Innes had been applied to, to cast the nativity of the city; and, from the horoscope—Saturn in conjunction with Mars, and Venus lady of the ascendant, it was sagely inferred by the clubbed wisdoms of King’s and Mareschal that the Provost “wad get a gryte mickle purse o’ siller, for the gueed o’ the ceety, forby a triffle to himsel’;” and that, if not a duke, the town-clerk would be a goose at any rate, if both eschewed during their sojourn that hankering after the sex which was portended by the lady Venus being in the middle house. Those polite and philosophic preparations having been made, the state coach, with two cats (the emblems of bon accord) the size of a couple of yeanling lambs, gilt with Dutch fulzie, and spotted with coffin black, “all for the sparin’ o’ the cost,” rattled along the bridge of Dee at the tail of six hardy shelties from the Cabrach, “which could mak’ a shift to live upo’ thristles, or fool strae, or ony thing that they cou’d pyke up at a dykeside.” Still, however, this mighty magisterial meteor streamed across Drumthwackit, along the “how o’ the Mearns,” and adoun Strathmore, like an aurora borealis flashing from the pole to the zenith, flickering and crackling, and smelling of brimstone. While its tail drew the third part of the wilie natives of the city; the other two-thirds took their way in barks and steam-boats, because it was “cheaper by the tae half.”

But what words can describe the grand array of the municipal authorities of Perth: Perth, the centre and heart of Scotland—the capital of the Picts, the delight of the Romans, who tumbled down in ecstasy when they first beheld it from the summit of Moncrief Hill, and, fancying that they saw in its green inches, its sweeping river, and its ample size, the Campagna, the Tiber, and the Eternal city, shouted in one voice “Ecce Tiber! Ecce Campus Martius!”—Perth, which looks upon Aberdeen as dry stubble, and Glasgow as the dust of the earth; and which has received within its halls and palaces more kings and mighty men, than the compass of these pages could hold, or the sages of its own Antiquarian society could number.

To pay due honour to the decorum, the sagacity, and the harmony of such a city, it is worth while to pause and learn a little, before speaking of the equipage. Well, what, gentle reader, shall we learn? Why that the same gentleman who sat in that splendid equipage as chief ruler of the city, put to the proof, as touching his Celtic or Sarmatian origin, no less a personage than the Grand Duke Nicholas, brother to the autocrat of all the Russias—the arbiter for the time being of all the legitimate monarchs upon the continent of Europe. The fame of the city of Perth being, of course, well known upon the banks of the Neva, and the Kremlin at Moscow having been burnt as the first portion of the funeral pile of Buonaparte, there was no place where the magnanimous Alexander could find a fit pattern after which to build the restored Kremlin, except this fine and far-famed city of Perth. The Grand Duke Nicholas, from his well-known architectural and other tastes, was deputed upon this important mission; and, having taken London, the Athens, and a few such places of inferior note in his way, he arrived at the city of all beauty; and was received by a bowing magistracy, and a gaping populace. During his stay at the George Inn, the superiority of the Tay salmon and “Athol brose,” over the caviere and quass of his own country, worked the imperial clay to the temperature of a very Vesuvius. He applied to the Lord Provost in his need. The Lord Provost convened his council. Their words were wise, and their faces were wiser; but they could determine nothing; and so they handed the case over to the ministers and elders of the kirk. These shut their eyes and opened their mouths; and having done so for a due season, they found that as the Grand Duke Nicholas was not in communion with their church, the Grand Duke Nicholas might, in all matters bodily or ghostly, do as the said Grand Duke Nicholas felt inclined. This response delighted the municipal authorities, and they hurried to the inn to communicate with their own lips this plenary indulgence. Provost Robertson hemmed, stroked his beard, and led off in words wherein the Saxon and the Celtic so perfectly neutralized each other, that the whole was as smooth as oil. But, though the Grand Duke Nicholas understood many single languages, the mouth even of a magistrate delivered of twins, was as new to him as it was incomprehensible. It was clear, from his lack-lustre eye, that he did not understand one word of what was said; and he tried to convey as much in Latin, French, German, Russ, and no one knows how many other outlandish tongues; but as the Grand Duke Nicholas could not ascend to a double language, so neither could the Provost of Perth descend to a single one; wherefore the mighty mountaineer, who during the Athenian display acted Perth, brushed up to him, tumbling down half a dozen of splay-foot councillors and ricketty deacons, and exclaiming, “Try her o’ the Gaelic, my Lord Provost! try her o’ the Gaelic!”

A person of this calibre, and having buttoned within his waistcoat the chief honour of a town of this fame, could not choose but exhibit a corresponding exterior. Accordingly, the coach was the size of a fly van; the horses would have done credit to Whitbread’s heaviest dray; and, in very deed, had a sportsman of the land of Cockaigne seen the emblazoned arms, pop would have gone Joseph Manton right and left at the displayed eagle of silver-white, as at a goose of kindred obesity, and fit for the Michaelmas board.

Of those civic exhibiters, Dundee must close the muster: Dundee, after these, was “filthy Dowlas.” The wig of her chief magistrate, (which seemed as though he had exchanged it with the Perth coachman, as they had been taking a groats-worth of swipes and thrippeny blue at Luckey Maccarracher’s Hotel, down three flights of stairs, in Shakspeare’s Square,) did not contain as much sand-coloured hair as would have stuffed a pincushion; and, as for the poll itself, not a barber in Petticoat-lane would have shown it in his window. Their equipage, which had once belonged to a celebrated radical, was whitewashed for the occasion, had two green salamanders marked upon it, as lank as though they had fed upon smoke—as much as to say that the lading within was proof against fire and brimstone. Four experienced cattle, which had been rescued or borrowed from the dogs’ meat-man, dragged forward the heavy and heartless array; and the brawling burghers took shipping at their new harbour; but Æolus was adverse, and so they who had hoped to see George the Fourth saw Holland, got fuddled with Scheidam gin, bought a cargo of flax, and returned, not much the wiser—that had been impossible.

This, and much more after the same fashion, was enough and more than enough to distract the attention from all the Athenses that ever were built or blazoned in story. But this, and much more like this, was not all: there was also much very unlike it,—so unlike, that when you turned from the one to the other, you felt as if seas had been crossed; ay, as if the very poles of the earth had been reversed, or as if you had passed from the depth of folly to the height of wisdom in the twinkling of an eye. There were the whole assembled people of Scotland,—of that people who, girt with no ill-suited authority, and tricked out with no incongruous and tawdry pomp, had come in the fullness of their hearts and the abundance of their curiosity, to look upon their liege lord the King. The magistrates in their coaches were senseless pomp; the Highland chiefs with their tartans and their tails, were a useless, and, in many instances where they had commanded the small farmers to leave their scanty crops to be scattered by the winds or rotted by the rains, a cruel parade; but the people,—the free and independent people who assembled of their own will, at their own cost, and for their own pleasure, formed a solemnity at which the eye could not fail to be delighted, and over which the heart could not fail to exult with the most ample and the most exquisite joy. To the hundred thousand inhabitants of Athens, there were added full twice as many strangers, all in their best array; and yet, among the whole there was nothing taking place at which either law or delicacy could be offended. Religious and political animosity had been laid aside, oppression had been forgiven, and meanness forgotten; the people seemed to compose but one family, and they spoke as if animated with only one wish,—namely, that the King should come: or if they had another, it was that his coming might be speedy and safe. Whatever other men may think of Edinburgh—of Scotland, as a place to be visited, it is a glorious place for being visited by a king; and, it will be no proof of wisdom in the future monarchs of Britain, if they allow the crown to pass to a successor without paying it a visit. Kings reign the more happily and the more secure, the more freely and frequently that they show themselves to their subjects.