Читать книгу The Life, Travels, and Literary Career of Bayard Taylor - Russell H. Conwell - Страница 15

Visit to the Home of Burns.—The Poet’s Cottage.—The Celebration.—Walks and Rides in the Rain.—Edinburgh.—Its Associations.—The Teachings of History.—Home of Drummond.—Abbotsford.—Melrose.—Jedburgh Abbey.—Newcastle-on-Tyne.

Bayard’s visit to Ayr was the first of a long series of like visitations to the homes of celebrated poets, and being then a novel experience was doubly enjoyed. It may be that the similar occupation, and like inspiration, which characterized both himself and Burns, made the spot more attractive. Had they not both followed the plough through the thick sward? Had not both milked the cows; drove the horses to the water; planted the corn; dug up the weeds; cut the hay, and all the while sang and recited original verses? Had he not been ridiculed by his playmates, and sneered at by his neighbors, in common with that great poet of Scotland? To look over the farm on which Burns toiled; to be shown the spot on which it is claimed Burns overturned—

“That wee bit heap o’ leaves and stibble,”

the home of the “mousie,” and to be shown the cottage he was born in, and the scenes which inspired his songs, interesting as they are to the writer of prose, must have been peculiarly satisfactory to him. He does not speak of it, however, with the enthusiasm one would expect, and it is quite probable that he was not yet wholly inured to the inconveniences of a wet climate, and could not think or muse in a crowd as satisfactorily as when dry and alone. When he arrived in the town, the streets were filled by an immense throng, and there could have been little satisfaction in trying to fall into poetical dreams. It is a great satisfaction to those of Bayard’s friends who have loved him, and put their faith in him, to know that he put himself on record in some of his early letters, in no light terms, as having an unutterable disgust for the drunken brawling which went on in the name of Burns that day in Ayr. He felt, with great keenness, the disgrace which every American feels that it is to Scotland, that the old cottage, so sacred for its associations as the birthplace of Burns, should be occupied as a drinking-saloon, and be crowded with intoxicated vagabonds. It seemed like making a dog-kennel of a chapel in St. Paul’s. Anything but genius, intellect, or wit characterizes the crowd that usually frequent Burns’ Cottage on such days; and it is said to have been, in 1844, the resort of a more beastly class than are those wretches who get intoxicated there now, and, naturally, on such a great day as that on which Bayard visited it, every Scotsman who indulged at all became furiously drunk. Besides that inconvenience, the trustees of the monument, on the day when so many thousands came to see it and its treasures, voted to lock it up; and Bayard, with the others, was shut out from its interesting collection of relics and mementoes. Still further, it was so arranged by the marshals of the occasion, that the grand stand, with its literary feast and the ceremonies appurtenant to the occasion, were shut out from the populace to whom the poet sang, and Bayard being only a strange boy, with no more of a title than Robert Burns had, was obliged to content himself with a seat on the ridge of the “brig o’ Doon.” He did see old Alloway kirk, and heard its bell. He saw within its ruined walls the rank weeds, and without, the graves of the poet’s ancestry. He did have a cheerful pedestrian tour; for the home of Burns, with Alloway kirk and the bonnie Doon, are three miles from the city of Ayr in open country. He saw the sister and sons of the poet. He heard the assembled thousands sing, “Ye banks and braes’ o’ bonnie Doon.” He saw a grandson of Tam O’Shanter. He had to walk the three miles, returning through mud and rain, and he had to stand in an open car, exposed to a driving rain-storm, throughout the two hours’ ride by railroad to Glasgow. How different his reception then, as a boy and unknown, from that which he received in his riper age, after his fame was secured, at the home of Germany’s greatest poet.

We follow Bayard in his first tour in Europe with greater detail than we shall do with other journeys, because in this he developed so much of that character which made him famous. History being written, not for the dead, but for the instruction and encouragement of the living, should show clearly how a great life was attained, as a guide for similar genius in the days to come. In a volume of hasty sketches like this, we cannot hope to do the work as thoroughly as we should so much love to do it; but as far as can be done at this early day, we give those events which had the greatest effect upon his life as a writer of prose and poetry.

He must have feasted in Edinburgh. Richest storehouse in Scotland, for all such as follow letters! There was the monument to Scott, suggestive of the most beautiful in art, but so insignificant as a reminder of him, while the walls of Salisbury Crags, and the dome of Arthur’s Seat, frown beyond and above it. There was Holyrood Palace, with its stains of blood, the couch of the beautiful queen, and the collections of historical relics. No place but the Tower of London has received such attention from gifted and famous literary men. Historians, poets, philosophers, educators, preachers, and lawyers have written and discoursed upon it. There was Calton Hill, with its monuments to great men. There was the great University, and there was the old Castle, that sat like a crown on the head of the city. All had been described by the most facile pens. All were full of living interest, and when Bayard tried to describe them, he found himself attempting to compete with the greatest essayists of the English-speaking world. The Grass Market, where Porteous was executed; Cowgate Street, with its aristocratic associations; St. Giles’ Church, with its memories of John Knox and the Heart of Mid-Lothian, were described by him, about which it is a kind of literary sacrilege to speak in other than classic language. It was a school that included every other, and Bayard was an apt and diligent scholar.

A short distance from Edinburgh, the pedestrians saw the birthplace and hermitage of Drummond. It is a delightful, sequestered chateau, called “Hawthornden,” and in it the poet wrote nearly all his elegant sonnets, and it was there that old Ben Jonson, after a walk from London, was entertained by Drummond, and Drummond was in turn entertained by Jonson. Going by the way of Galashiels and Selkirk, the party visited Abbotsford and its environs, where the immortal Scott lived and wrote. In the beautiful mansion which Scott built, and in which he wrote his most popular works, they read his manuscripts; sat at his desk; wandered in his gardens; gazed intently over the wide lawn and the distant Tweed; scrutinized the enormous variety of relics which had been collected by that antiquarian, to whom kings and queens were glad to become tributary. Thence they walked along the hard and smooth highway to old Melrose.

Ruins they would see in the near England, and on the distant continent, which would enclose a dozen abbeys such as this; Gothic arches they would enter which would make those of Melrose seem as a toy; and ivy and carving and chancels would be noticed, so much more rich and beautiful, that these would suffer sadly if put in comparison. But nowhere else in all the wide world would they find a locality made more interesting than this. The associations are almost everything. And to the initiated, the great magician, Scott, still speaks in the groined arches, flowering pillars, old clock, and willow-like windows. Melrose Abbey is a marked illustration of the power of a master-mind to give influence, life, and interest to inanimate things. Bayard felt this truth and mentioned it. He read “The Lay of the Last Minstrel” in the shadow of the arches, and imagined how the ruins glowed when the grave of the wizard opened and the book was revealed. Who knows but it was there, in the presence of those stirring associations, that he first conceived the plan which led him to make classic in poetry and fiction the fields, hills, and Quakers of his native county. Had he lived ten years longer than he did, his loved Kennett might have been as classic in song and story as Abbotsford itself.

From Melrose the young pedestrians walked to Jedburgh, omitting the delightful excursion to Dryburgh, but passing the home of Pringle, who had been the founder of “Blackwood’s Magazine,” and who had been also a poet and wanderer like Bayard. While passing the Cheviot Hills, the party met an excursionist in a carriage, fast asleep, which appeared to amuse Bayard very much. Probably he afterwards saw more amusing scenes than that, wherein travellers did not appreciate their privileges. The writer, as late as the summer of 1878, saw an American who had worked most industriously to lay up the funds to visit Switzerland, ride up the entire ascent of the glorious Alps at St. Gothard, on the top of a coach, fast asleep. Such marvels does the world of humanity contain. Bayard did not sleep when anything of interest called upon him for investigation, nor when the beauties of nature were to be enjoyed. They crossed the border between Scotland and England, over the battle-fields of the Percys, and by streams that were often, in days past, actually swollen with blood. There, “Marmion,” with all its tales historical, and legends mythical, was quoted and lived as only the cultured traveller can live it. There was instruction in every scene, every stranger, and every inn. How well Bayard availed himself of their lessons, is illustrated in all his excellent letters on foreign travel, and in his books compiled from them. At Newcastle he noticed a group of miners begging in the streets, and when he heard how they had struck for higher wages, because they could not longer exist on the pittance allowed them, and how they and their families were turned out upon the streets to starve, his indignation was very great, and in his book he utters a prophecy that soon that murmur from the oppressed people would increase to a roar, and be heard “by the dull ears of power.” From Newcastle he went by boat to London, reaching that city in the early morning near the end of August.