The Book-Hunter, John Hill Burton [essential reading TXT] 📗
- Author: John Hill Burton
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Such blanks in his life were short, and ever shorter and fewer. He found necessary excitement in his work, and, when he joined his family, needed no particular encouragement or inducement to lead him to talk either about what he was doing or something else. As he advanced in years his family learned more and more to leave the choice of subjects of conversation entirely to him. Any subject not chosen by himself was apt to prove irritating. Sometimes even his own did. Often his irritations were amusing. If his wife, or some one else, chose to affect a ludicrous degree of ignorance on some of his special subjects, they might probably elicit a volley of information which would not have been vouchsafed to them in answer to a serious question. Old reminiscences sometimes led on to those laughable sayings in which Dr Burton's talk was rich. For instance,—He had once rented an old inn at Pettycur as summer quarters, and a favourite amusement, both at the time and afterwards, was to imagine and describe the visitors who might have called on him there in ignorance of the changed destination of the house. He would imagine and mimic the tones of a drouthy Highland drover demanding refreshment,—which, by the way, he would have been sure to get had he so applied to Dr Burton; of an entirely drunk Lowlander, persisting in representing himself as a bonâ fide traveller; of a highly Conservative old nobleman, posting up to town with his carriage-and-four in spite of railways: this story ended with, "A wicked and perverse generation shall come seeking a Sign, and no sign shall be given them."
He delighted in a sort of practical bull, or confusion of ideas, such as—"One may never have a widow all his life."
A favourite story was of a too hospitable elder in a country parish, who invited his minister to sup and spend the night in his house without his wife's consent. The wife sees a male figure in the darkish entrance of the house, and in her anger deals him a violent blow on the head with the family Bible, ejaculating, "That's for asking him to stay a' nicht." The husband, from an inner room, exclaims, "Eh, woman, ye have felled the minister!" On which the virago says to her victim, "My dear, I thocht it was yersel'!"
Ministers and clergy of all denominations are often the text of jokes.
Another story referred to an Episcopal clergyman, who was frequently too late in reaching his church, and whose curate on such occasions began to read the morning service instead of him, and had reached in one of the lessons the well-known verse, St John xiv. 6, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life," when his ecclesiastical superior, panting with exertion, reaches the reading-desk, pushes his curate from his place, and intones, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life," adding a strictly private aside to his curate, "You the way, and the truth, and the life, indeed!"
Another minister arriving at church drenched with rain, and claiming sympathy from his wife, is told by her to "Gang up into the pu'pit; ye'll be dry eneuch there."
A story in a different spirit, said to have been reported to him by Lord Cockburn, is ascribed to a Scotch shepherd. A set of gentlemen were imprecating the prevailing east wind, and asked the shepherd if he could in any way defend that prevalent evil of his country. "Ay, sirs," said he; "it weets the sod, it slocks the yows [i.e., quenches the thirst of the ewes], and it's God's wull."
Many Aberdeenshire stories are valueless without Dr Burton's Aberdeen accent, which he could intensify at pleasure.
A reminiscence of college days at Aberdeen was of one of the professors there trying to discipline his unruly class, who came tumbling in while the professor was opening proceedings by reciting the Lord's Prayer in Latin, according to custom, and wound up his "In secula seculorum, amen," with "Quis loupavit ower the factions [Aberdeen for forms or benches], ille solvit doon a saxpence."
Two neat little mots relate, the one to the familiar subject of London eggs, the other, to the name of his youngest son. London grocers—as all Londoners know—label their eggs Fresh Eggs, and New-laid Eggs, only the respective prices of the different sorts or hard-bought experience pointing to the signification of the two appellations. Dr Burton on hearing this, said, "Oh, of course the New-laid Eggs become Fresh in time."
The writer wished to bestow the name of David on her youngest son, in addition to that of Cosmo, in memory of her husband's young brother David, whom she had heard described as an interesting child at the time of his early death. Dr Burton opposed this wish, not desiring to diminish the compliment to the child's grandfather and name-father, Cosmo Innes. The child was ultimately christened Cosmo Innes—thus, as his father said, remaining entirely Cosmetic.
Two legal stories were told respectively of Lord ——and Lord Corehouse:—
Lord —— is pronouncing sentence on an assassin who had stabbed a soldier: "You did not only maliciously, wickedly, and feloniously stab or cut his person, thereby depriving him of his life, but did also sever the band of his military breeches, which are her Majesty's."
Lord Corehouse is listening to the pleading of an advocate who describes some performance which, as he says, "could be done as easily as your Lordship could leap out of your breeches." Lord Corehouse interrupts: "Mr ——, the saltatory feat which you are pleased to ascribe to me is not one which I have ever attempted, and I do not feel sure that if I did I could perform it with any of that ease which you suppose."
Enough, perhaps, of such reminiscences, which, written, may fail altogether of their effect when spoken.
The writer recollects vaguely an immense number, of which confused images present themselves. Crocodiles with their hands in their breeches-pockets. Persons throwing off their coats and waistcoats like Newfoundland dogs. A master and man sleeping; master on the boards a-top, and the man in the bed; master remarking in the morning he would have preferred the lower station, but for the concetty o' the thing.
Coming down early one morning in great spirits at the prospect of a long day's outing with his son, he said to the boy—
As you may surmise, sir;
But when I'm on a ploy, sir,
I feel just like a boy, sir."
No chance rhyme or pun, bad, good, or indifferent, was let slip, however much taking it up might interrupt the subject under discussion.
The following childish little poem seems worth preservation now. It was presented to his daughter Matilda on the death of her little dog. She happening to visit a relative, who was physician in a lunatic asylum, and showing the little poem, it was printed in the 'Asylum Magazine,' from which it was copied into the 'Animal World:'
LAMENT FOR FOXEY.
With your coaxy
Little way,
You're gone for aye.
I'll no longer hark
To your garrulous bark,
See the fleeching grimace
Of your comical face,
Nor be touched by your yelping
When you get a skelping.
You had no orthodoxy
Poor Foxey,
Nor a commanding spirit,
Nor any great merit.
The reason for sorrow, then, what is it?
Just that you're missed,
And that's all
That shall befall
The rest of us,
Even the best of us.
An empty chair
Somewhere,
To be filled by another
Some day or other.
Sick cur or hero in his prime,
It's a matter of time.
The world is growing, growing,
The blank is going, going,
And will be gone anon.
CHAPTER VI. LITERARY LIFE (continued).
Illness—Resignation of office—Sale of Craighouse—Morton—Domestic life—'Queen Anne'—Letters about ballad-lore—Singular incident connected with it—Letters from abroad.
In the end of the year 1877 Dr Burton had the first severe illness of his life. On the 18th day of December of that year, Mrs Cunningham, widow of Lord Cunningham, died at Morton House, which had been the summer home of her twenty years of widowhood, and at which illness had detained her during the winter of 1877. The editor of the 'Scotsman' applied to Dr Burton for an obituary notice of Mrs Cunningham—an old friend of his, and still older of his wife. He was then too ill to be applied to on any subject, or to be told of his old friend's death.
For several days at that time he was alarmingly ill from bronchitis, accompanied by unusually high fever. This passed off but slowly. The bodily health and strength appeared to be fully restored at the end of a few weeks, but there was an undefinable change. Shortly after this illness, though not in consequence of it, Dr Burton resigned his office of Prison Manager. He retired on an allowance of two-thirds of his former salary, remaining chairman of the Board of Prisons and Statistics, of which he was an honorary member.
He had not fully regained strength when, to the unspeakable sorrow of its inmates, they learned that Craighouse was sold to the Committee of the Lunatic Asylum, was to be immediately adapted to the purposes of an asylum, and that they must quit it at Whitsuntide.
They had held it first on a lease, then on a second short lease, but afterwards had merely rented it from year to year, not imagining that any other tenant would covet it with all its pretty heavy responsibilities. Dr Burton had, from his natural irritability, sometimes said he would prefer to be elsewhere; but when it came to finding some other place which would hold his books—some place not too far to move them to—to the abandonment of his own carpentery, &c.,—he lamented the departure as much as others. His one proviso as to the new abode was, that it was not to be in the town, or nearer the town than Craighouse.
The whole spring Dr Burton's family sought in all directions for a suitable abode, and at last pitched on that left vacant by Mrs Cunningham's death as most nearly combining all the various requisites. On the 20th of May 1878 the flitting from Craighouse to Morton was completed. Morton is fully two miles farther from Edinburgh than Craighouse, the approach to it from the town being a continuous ascent on to a shoulder of the Pentlands. Its situation is pretty and entirely rural, but with nothing of the unrivalled beauty of that of Craighouse, which commanded a view extending from North Berwick Law to Ben Lomond, yet lay well sheltered among its lovely hills and splendid trees. The great drawback of Morton House, for Dr Burton's family, lay in the greater distance from the town. The time spent in travelling the up-hill road was a serious loss, to say nothing of the fatigue. Dr Burton never would allow this to be a disadvantage, so far as he was concerned, but the writer is persuaded it was seriously prejudicial to his health.
During the summer of this year Dr Burton was invited to Oxford to receive the honour of a D.C.L. degree. He went, and was highly delighted
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