Allan Ramsay Part 2

From 1707 until 1711, during the dreary depression of the time immediately succeeding the Union, when Scotsmen preferred apathy to action, Ramsay sought surcease from his pangs of wounded patriotism by plunging into studies of various kinds, but princ.i.p.ally of English poetry. In a letter, hitherto unpublished, addressed to his friend Andrew Gibb, who appears to have resided at or near West Linton, he remarks: 'I have rowth of good reading to wile my heart from grieving o'er what cannot be mended now,--the sale o' our unhappy country to the Southron alliance by a wheen traitors, who thought more o' Lord Somers'

gold than Scotland's rights. In Willie Shakspeare's melodious numbers I forget the dark days for trade, and in auld Chaucer's Tales, and Spenser's 'Queen,' in John Milton's majestic flow, in Giles and Phineas Fletcher, in rare Ben and our ain Drummond, I tine the sorrows o' the day in the glories o' the days that are past.'

That we may accept Ramsay's account of the studies of Patie, the Gentle Shepherd, as a type of his own is warranted by something more than tradition. The internal evidence of his works throws a strong colour of probability over the theory. When Sir William Worthy, who as a Royalist had been compelled to flee into exile during the times of the Commonwealth, inquires what were the books his son, whom he had committed to the care of Symon, his shepherd, to be reared as his own child, was in the habit of reading, the honest old servant replies--

'When'er he drives our sheep to Edinburgh port, He buys some books o' hist'ry, sangs, or sport; Nor does he want o' them a rowth at will, And carries aye a poochfu' to the hill.

Aboot ane Shakspeare--an' a famous Ben, He aften speaks, an' ca's them best o' men.

How sweetly Hawthornden an' Stirling sing, An' ane ca'd Cowley, loyal to his king, He kens fu' weel, an' gars their verses ring.

I sometimes thought he made owre great a phrase About fine poems, histories, and plays.

When I reproved him ance, a book he brings, "Wi' this," quoth he, "on braes I crack wi' kings."'

By the side-light thrown on Ramsay's life from this pa.s.sage we gain some idea of his own studies during those years of germination. To the poets more exclusively Scottish, whether writing in the current literary medium of the day or in the vernacular of the country; to Robert Sempill's _Life and Death of the Piper of Kilbarchan_; to William Cleland's _Highland Host_--in addition to Drummond and the Earl of Stirling, mentioned in the pa.s.sage quoted above; to William Hamilton of Gilbertfield's verses, _The Dying Words of Bonnie Heck_, and to others of less note, he seems to have devoted keen and enthusiastic attention.

Lieutenant Hamilton it was (as Ramsay admits in the poetical correspondence maintained between them) who first awakened within him the desire to write in the dialect of his country--

'When I begoud first to cun verse, And could your "Ardry Whins" rehea.r.s.e, Where Bonny Heck ran fast and fierce, It warm'd my breast; Then emulation did me pierce, Whilk since ne'er ceast.'

There was, however, another influence at work, quite as potent, stimulating his poetic fancy. Amid the beauties of the 'Queen of Cities'

he lived, and the charms of his surroundings sank deep into his impressionable nature. In whatever direction he looked, from the ridgy heights of the Castlehill, a glorious natural picture met his eye. If to the north, his gaze caught the gleam of the silvery estuary of the Forth, with fertile reaches of green pasture-land intervening, and the little villages of Picardy, Broughton, and Canonmills peeping out from embosoming foliage, while beyond the silver streak, beautified by the azure enchantment of distance, glowed in the sunshine the heath-clad Lomonds and the yellow wealth of the fields of Fife. Did the youthful poet turn eastward, from yonder favourite lounge of his on Arthur Seat, the mouth of the n.o.ble Firth, dotted with sail, was full in view, with the shadowy outlines of the May Island, peeping out like a spirit from the depth of distance, and nearer, the conical elevation of North Berwick Law and the black-topped precipitous ma.s.s of the Ba.s.s; while seemingly lying, in comparison, almost at his feet, was the magnificent semicircular sweep of Aberlady Bay, with its sh.o.r.e-fringe of whitewashed villages gleaming like a string of glittering pearls, behind which stretched the fertile ca.r.s.e of East Lothian, rolling in gently undulating uplands back to the green Lammermoors. Or if he gazed southward, did his eye not catch the fair expanse of Midlothian, as richly cultivated as it was richly wooded, extending before him like a matchless picture, dotted with homesteads, hamlets, and villages, past Dalkeith--'which all the virtues love,' past La.s.swade, past Roslin's castled rock, past Dryden's groves of oak, past caverned Hawthornden, until earth and sky seemed to meet in the misty horizon line of the Moorfoots? And westward, was not the eye guided by the gra.s.sy grandeur of the Pentland Range, until beauty was merged in indefiniteness across the wide strath lying like a painted scroll from Edinburgh to Linlithgow?

Fairer scene never nurtured poet in 'the fine frenzy of his art'; and in long excursions during his spare hours, amidst the silent glens and frowning _cleughs_ of the Pentlands, amidst the romantic scenery clothing the banks of both the Esks, by Almond's gentle flow, and by the wimpling waters of the Water of Leith, our Caledonian Theocritus fed his germing genius on food that was destined to render him at once the greatest and the most breezily objective of British pastoral poets.

From 1707 to 1711 thus did Allan Ramsay 'live and learn,'--a youth whose nature, fired by the memories of Scotland's greatness in years gone by, already longed to add something of value to the cairn of his country's literature. Such, too, were the facts of which, at his request, the worthy lawyer, Mr. James Ross, was placed in possession when he was called on to decide whether his friend, the 'poetically-minded wigmaker,' should be regarded as a _persona grata_ from the point of view of a prospective son-in-law. That the 'pedigree' of the young aspirant was accepted as satisfactory may be regarded as certain from the fact that the marriage of Allan Ramsay and Christian Ross was celebrated during the New Year festivities of 1712. A woman, at once of considerable personal attractions, sound common sense and practical knowledge of the world, a capital housewife withal, and though not devoid of a certain modic.u.m of literary appreciation, by no means a blue-stocking, such, in brief, was the lady who for thirty years was to be the faithful partner of Ramsay's fortunes, rejoicing with him in success, sympathising with him in reverse--one who merited to the full the glowing lines wherein he described her. The song of 'Bonny Chirsty'

was written after nearly seven years of wedded life. The sentiments therein expressed speak better than comment as to the happiness of Ramsay's marriage. One verse of it may be quoted--

'How sweetly smells the simmer green!

Sweet taste the peach and cherry; Painting and order please our een, And claret makes us merry: But finest colours, fruits, and flowers, And wine, though I be thirsty, Lose a' their charms and weaker powers, Compared wi' those of Chirsty.'

About a year before his marriage, Ramsay had left the shop in the Gra.s.smarket, where he had commenced business in 1707, and had established himself in the High Street in premises already described, and which exist to this day. There, under his sign of the 'Flying Mercury,' he toiled and sang, and chatted and cracked jokes with all and sundry, from sunrise to sunset, his wit and his humour, and, as time rolled on, his poetic genius, bringing many customers to his shop.

Verily, a sunny-souled man, in whom 'life with its carking cares' could never extinguish his cheery _bonhomie_ and self-confidence.

CHAPTER IV

THE EASY CLUB; EARLY POEMS; EDINBURGH OF LAST CENTURY--1712-16

Ramsay's marriage was the turning-point of his career. To him, as to every man who realises not alone the moral but the social obligations he a.s.sumes when undertaking the holy charge of rendering a woman's life happier and brighter than ever before, the responsibilities of his new relation crystallised into the mould of definite effort the energies. .h.i.therto diffused throughout numberless diverse channels. Seldom has the philosophy of wedded bliss been more felicitously stated than in his _Advice to Mr. ---- on his Marriage_. He remarks, as though drawing on the fund of his own experience--

'Alake! poor mortals are not G.o.ds, And therefore often fall at odds; But little quarrels now and then, Are nae great faults 'tween wife and man.

These help right often to improve His understanding, and her love.

If e'er she take the pet, or fret, Be calm, and yet maintain your state; An' smiling ca' her little foolie, Syne wi' a kiss evite a tulzie.

This method's ever thought the braver Than either cuffs or _clish-ma-claver_.

It shows a spirit low an' common That wi' ill-nature treats a woman.

They're of a make sae nice and fair They maun be managed wi' some care; Respect them they'll be kind an' civil, But disregarded, prove the devil.'

But for another reason the year 1712 is as interesting to us as students of his career as it was important to him. In the early months of it he was introduced to the 'Easy Club,' one of those politico-convivial societies that sprang into existence early in the century, and were conspicuous features in the social customs of the period, until its eighth and ninth decades, when, consequent upon the expansion of the city north and south, the tavern conviviality of 1740 was succeeded by the domestic hospitality of 1790.

At the time of which we write, the capital of Scotland was virtually represented by the one long street called the High Street, or 'Edinburgh Street,' which crowned the summit of the ridge extending from the Castle to Holyrood Palace, the ancient home of the Stuarts. From this main artery of traffic, smaller veins, in the shape of narrow darksome closes, branched out, leading to a second artery in the Cowgate, and to yet a third one in the Gra.s.smarket. During the panic that prevailed after the Battle of Flodden, a wall of defence was drawn around the town. By it the area of Edinburgh was grievously circ.u.mscribed. Only what might be termed the heart of the city was included, all lying beyond falling within the anomalous designation of _suburbs_. For two hundred years this seemingly impa.s.sable girdle sternly checked the natural _overflow_ of the city's life. To reside outside the _ports_ or gates was not only considered dangerous--it was unfashionable. And as there was not accommodation for a tenth part of the inhabitants in the houses of two, or at most three, storeys which prevailed about the time of the Reformation, the architects of the Restoration period commenced the erection of those towering tenements, or _lands_,--twelve, fourteen, and even sixteen storeys high,--for which Edinburgh has been celebrated among the cities of Europe. Thus the families of the Scottish metropolis were packed together, one on the top of the other, like herrings in a barrel, in those quaint old houses, with their grim timber fronts, their crow-stepped gables and dormer windows, that remain even until to-day to show us the circ.u.mstances under which our fathers lived and loved.

In circ.u.mstances such as these, domestic comfort and the sweet seclusion of home were out of the question. So criminally overcrowded was the town that well-born gentlemen and their households were content with two or three rooms, wherein all the manifold duties of social and domestic life had to be performed. Robert Chambers, in his charming _Traditions of Edinburgh_, relates how the family of Mr. Bruce of Kennet, a leading lawyer, afterwards raised to the Bench, lived in a house of three rooms and a kitchen--a parlour, a consulting-room for Mr. Bruce, and a bedroom. The children, with their maid, had beds laid down for them at night in their father's room, the housemaid slept under the kitchen dresser, and the one man-servant was turned at night out of the house.

Even a more striking example of the lack of accommodation was to be found in connection with the household arrangements of Mr. Kerr, the eminent goldsmith of Parliament Square, who 'stowed his _menage_ in a couple of small rooms above his booth-like shop, plastered against the wall of St. Giles Church; the nursery and kitchen, however, being in a cellar under the level of the street, where the children are said to have rotted off like sheep.... The town was, nevertheless, a funny, familiar, compact, and not unlikable place. Gentle and semple living within the compa.s.s of a single close, or even a single stair, knew and took an interest in each other.'

Such was the kind of home to which Allan Ramsay brought his bride. Two rooms, with a closet and a kitchen, for many a long year were the extent of their household accommodation. Such a state of things was not favourable to the development of the virtues purely domestic. Hence with Ramsay, as with other men, tavern life was accepted as a subst.i.tute for those comforts the sterner s.e.x could not get at home. As Grant remarks in his _Old and New Edinburgh_: 'The slender house accommodation in the turnpike stairs compelled the use of taverns more than now. There the high-cla.s.s advocate received his clients, and the physician his patients--each pract.i.tioner having his peculiar _howff_. There, too, gentlemen met in the evening for supper and conversation, without much expense, a reckoning of a shilling being a high one--so different then was the value of money and the price of viands.'

Mr. Logie Robertson, in his graphic and admirable introduction to the _Poems of Allan Ramsay_ in the Canterbury Series, adds: 'Business lingered on all over the town to a much later period than is customary now, but by eight o'clock every booth was deserted and every shop closed, and the citizens for the most part gave themselves up to cheap conviviality and pastime for the next hour or two. Almost every tradesman had his favourite place in his favourite tavern, where, night after night, he cracked a quiet bottle and a canny joke before going home to his family. It was first business, then friendship; and the claims of family after that.'

Out of this general spirit of conviviality arose those numberless Clubs wherein, upon the convivial stem, were graffed politics, literature, sport, science, as well as many other pursuits less worthy and less beneficial. No custom, no usage, no jest, in fact, seemed too trivial to be seized upon as the pretext to give a colour of excuse for founding a Club. Some of them were witty, others wise, others degrading. Such designations as the _Cape Club_,--so called from doubling the Cape of Leith Wynd, when half-seas over, to get home to the burgh of Low Calton, where several of the members lived; the _Pious Club_, because the brethren met regularly to consume pies; the _Spendthrift Club_, because no _habitue_ was permitted to spend more than _fourpence halfpenny_, and others, were harmless in their way, and promoted a cheap _bonhomie_ without leading the burghers into disgraceful excesses. But the _h.e.l.l-fire Club_, the _Sweating Club_, the _Dirty Club_, and others of a kindred order, were either founded to afford an opportunity for indulgence in riot and licence of every kind, or were intended to encourage habits as disgusting as they were brutal.

Not to be supposed is it that Ramsay had lived six-and-twenty years of his life without having practised, and we have no doubt enjoyed, the widespread conviviality of the period. Hence, though the Easy Club was the first of the social gatherings wherewith he actually informs us he was connected, we have no reason to doubt he had been a.s.sociated with several of them before. In fact, in that poetical 'Essay' of his which stands first in the chronological order of composition, though not of publication, the _Elegy on Maggy Johnston_, who died anno 1711--an alewife whose little farm and hotel were situated in the village of Morningside, just beyond the Bruntsfield Links,--he seems to imply that a club of some kind met there. The third stanza runs as follows--

'And there by dizens we lay down; Syne sweetly ca'd the healths aroun', To bonny la.s.ses, black or brown, As we loo'd best: In b.u.mpers we dull cares did drown, An' took our rest.'

But to the Easy Club[1] must be a.s.signed the honour of having stimulated the nascent genius of the poet to achieve something that would convey to its members the fact that it was no ordinary tradesman who solicited admission into the charmed circle of the Society. James Ross, whose zeal for the poetic young wigmaker's social recognition was now materially increased, used all his influence to obtain for his son-in-law an _entree_ into the Club of which he was himself a member. Questionable, indeed, it is, when we consider the exclusive character of the a.s.sociation in question, the high social position of its members, and their avowed Jacobitical tenets, if even the influence of James Ross, powerful though it was, would alone have secured for Ramsay admission.

But an inspiration, as happy as it was original, prompted him to embody his pet.i.tion for admission into the Club in a poetical address. Such a course was of itself sufficient to recommend him to men like Dr.

Ruddiman and Dr. Pitcairn. The poem, addressed to 'The Most Happy Members of the Easy Club,' proceeded, in a felicitous strain of gentle satire, blended with genial humour not unlike Gay at his best, to plead his own cause why he should be admitted as 'an _Easy_ fellow.' His application was successful, and he was duly enrolled as a member. The following lines extracted from it will exhibit the character of the piece, which takes rank as the earliest of his published poems--

'Were I but a prince or king, I'd advance ye, I'd advance ye; Were I but a prince or king, So highly I'd advance ye!

Great wit and sense are ever found Among ye always to abound; Much like the orbs that still move round, No ways constrained, but easy.

Were I but, etc.

Most of what's hid from vulgar eye, Even from earth's centre to the sky, Your brighter thoughts do clearly spy, Which makes you wise and easy.

Were I but, etc.

All faction in the Church or State, With greater wisdom still you hate, And leave learn'd fools there to debate,-- Like rocks in seas you're easy.

Were I but, etc.

I love ye well--O let me be One of your blythe Society; And like yourselves I'll strive to be Aye humorous and easy.

Were I but, etc.

The benefits received by the self-confident young poet were not alone of an intangible character. Praise is an excellent thing of itself, but a modic.u.m of pudding along with it is infinitely better. To Ramsay the Easy Club was the means of securing both. The _role_ of his literary patrons was at once a.s.sumed by its members. They printed and published his _Address_ at their own expense, appointed him, within a few months'

time, their 'Poet Laureate,' and manifested, both by counsel and the exercise of influence, the liveliest interest in his welfare. No trivial service this to the youthful poet on the part of his kindly club brethren. How great it was, and how decisive the effect of their generous championship in establishing Ramsay's reputation on a sure basis, will best be understood by glancing for a moment at the character of the Easy Club and the _personnel_ of its membership.

Originally founded, under a different name, as a means of frustrating, and afterwards of protesting against, the Union, the Club, after its reconstruction in 1711, became a Jacobite organisation pure and simple.

As Ramsay himself stated in after years: 'It originated in the antipathy we all of that day seemed to have at the ill-humour and contradiction which arise from trifles, especially those which const.i.tute Whig and Tory, _without having the grand reason for it_.' The grand reason in question was the restoration of the Stuarts. To give a _soupcon_ of mystery to their proceedings, as well as to veil their ident.i.ty when thus plotting against the 'powers that be,' each member a.s.sumed a fict.i.tious name, generally that of some celebrated writer. The poet, as he himself relates, at first selected Isaac Beckerstaff, suggestive of Steele and the _Tatler_. Eventually, however, he altered his _nom-de-guerre_ to Gawain Douglas, one more in accordance with his patriotic sentiments.

The membership was limited to _twelve_, but at the time when Ramsay made his application we only know the names of five of those who belonged to it. Hepburn of Keith, in East Lothian, an antiquarian of no mean standing; Professor Pitcairn, late of Leyden, but at that time in the enjoyment of one of the largest practices as a physician in the Edinburgh of the period; Dr. Patrick Abercrombie, the eminent historian and antiquarian, author of _The Martial Achievements of the Scottish Nation_; Dr. Thomas Ruddiman, philologist, grammarian, printer, and librarian of the Advocates' Library,--one of the few Scottish polymaths over and above the Admirable Crichton and George Buchanan,--and James Ross the lawyer. Tradition has stated that Hamilton of Gilbertfield was also one of the 'Easy fellows,' as they dubbed themselves, but no confirmation of this fact could be discovered.

We reach now the commencement of Ramsay's literary career. For four years--in fact, until the breaking up of the Society after the Rebellion of 1715--all he wrote was issued with the _imprimatur_ of the Easy Club upon it. That they were proud of him is evident from the statement made by Dr. Ruddiman in a letter to a friend: 'Our Easy Club has been increased by the admission of a young man, Ramsay by name, _sib_ to the Ramsays of Dalhousie, and married to a daughter of Ross the writer. He will be heard tell o' yet, I'm thinking, or I am much out of my reckoning.'

The next pieces which our poet read to his patrons were two he had written some time previous--to wit, a little Ode on the preservation from death by drowning of the son of his friend John Bruce, on August 19, 1710; and the _Elegy on Maggy Johnston_, the alewife, to which reference has already been made. The first of these bears evident traces of youth and inexperience, in both the esoteric and exoteric or technical mysteries of his art. For example, when referring to the danger wherein the lad and his companions had been placed, he remarks--

'Whilst, like the lamp's last flame, their trembling souls Are on the wing to leave their mortal goals';

and he conjures up the following extraordinary spectacle of angelic gymnastics, whereby the rescue of the lads was effected--

'Angels came posting down the divine beam To save the helpless in their last extreme.'