Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands Volume I Part 10

After the return of the party from Hamilton Park, we sat down to an elegant lunch, where my eye was attracted more than any thing else, by the splendor of the hothouse flowers which adorned the table. So far as I have observed, the culture of flowers, both in England and Scotland, is more universally an object of attention than with us. Every family in easy circ.u.mstances seems, as a matter of course, to have their greenhouse, and the flowers are brought to a degree of perfection which I have never seen at home.

I may as well say here, that we were told by a gentleman, whose name I do not now remember, that this whole district had been celebrated for its orchards; he added, however, that since the introduction of the American apple into the market, its superior excellence had made many of these orchards almost entirely worthless. It is a curious fact, showing how the new world is working on the old.

After taking leave of our hospitable friends, we took to our carriages again. As we were driving slowly through the beautiful grounds, admiring, as we never failed to do, their perfect cultivation, a party of servants appeared in sight, waving their hats and handkerchiefs, and cheering us as we pa.s.sed. These kindly expressions from them were as pleasant as any we received.

In the evening we had engaged to attend another _soiree_, gotten up by the working cla.s.ses, to give admission to many who were not in circ.u.mstances to purchase tickets for the other. This was to me, if any thing, a more interesting _reunion_, because this was just the cla.s.s whom I wished to meet. The arrangements of the entertainment were like those of the evening before.

As I sat in the front gallery and looked over the audience with an intense interest, I thought they appeared on the whole very much like what I might have seen at home in a similar gathering. Men, women, and children were dressed in a style which showed both self-respect and good taste, and the speeches were far above mediocrity. One pale young man, a watchmaker, as I was told afterwards, delivered an address, which, though doubtless it had the promising fault of too much elaboration and ornament, yet I thought had pa.s.sages which would do honor to any literary periodical whatever.

There were other orators less highly finished, who yet spoke "right on,"

in a strong, forcible, and really eloquent way, giving the grain of the wood without the varnish. They contended very seriously and sensibly, that although the working men of England and Scotland had many things to complain of, and many things to be reformed, yet their condition was world-wide different from that of the slave.

One cannot read the history of the working cla.s.ses in England, for the last fifty years, without feeling sensibly the difference between oppressions under a free government and slavery. So long as the working cla.s.s of England produces orators and writers, such as it undoubtedly has produced; so long as it has in it that spirit of independence and resistance of wrong, which has shown itself more and more during the agitations of the last fifty years; and so as long as the law allows them to meet and debate, to form a.s.sociations and committees, to send up remonstrances and pet.i.tions to government,--one can see that their case is essentially different from that of plantation slaves.

I must say, I was struck this night with the resemblance between the Scotchman and the New Englander. One sees the distinctive nationality of a country more in the middle and laboring cla.s.ses than in the higher, and accordingly at this meeting there was more nationality, I thought, than at the other.

The highest cla.s.s of mind in all countries loses nationality, and becomes universal; it is a great pity, too, because nationality is picturesque always. One of the greatest miracles to my mind about Kossuth was, that with so universal an education, and such an extensive range of language and thought, he was yet so distinctively a Magyar.

One thing has surprised and rather disappointed us. Our enthusiasm for Walter Scott does not apparently meet a response in the popular breast.

Allusions to Bannockburn and Drumclog bring down the house, but enthusiasm for Scott was met with comparative silence. We discussed this matter among ourselves, and rather wondered at it.

The fact is, Scott belonged to a past, and not to the coming age. He beautified and adorned that which is waxing old and pa.s.sing away. He loved and worshipped in his very soul inst.i.tutions which the majority of the common people have felt as a restraint and a burden. One might naturally get a very different idea of a feudal castle by starving to death in the dungeon of it, than by writing sonnets on it at a picturesque distance. Now, we in America are so far removed from feudalism,--it has been a thing so much of mere song and story with us, and our sympathies are so unchecked by any experience of inconvenience or injustice in its consequences,--that we are at full liberty to appreciate the picturesque of it, and sometimes, when we stand overlooking our own beautiful scenery, to wish that we could see,

"On yon bold brow, a lordly tower; In that soft vale, a lady's bower; In yonder meadow, far away, The turrets of a cloister gray;"

when those who know by experience all the accompaniments of these ornaments, would have quite another impression.

Nevertheless, since there are two worlds in man, the real and the ideal, and both have indisputably a right to be, since G.o.d made the faculties of both, we must feel that it is a benefaction to mankind, that Scott was thus raised up as the link, in the ideal world, between the present and the past. It is a loss to universal humanity to have the imprint of any phase of human life and experience entirely blotted out. Scott's fictions are like this beautiful ivy, with which all the ruins here are overgrown,--they not only adorn, but, in many cases, they actually hold together, and prevent the crumbling ma.s.s from falling into ruins.

To-morrow we are going to have a sail on the Clyde.

LETTER V.

April 17.

MY DEAR SISTER:--

To-day a large party of us started on a small steamer, to go down the Clyde. It has been a very, very exciting day to us. It is so stimulating to be where every name is a poem. For instance, we start at the Broomielaw. This Broomielaw is a kind of wharf, or landing. Perhaps in old times it was a haugh overgrown with broom, from whence it gets its name; this is only my conjecture, however.

We have a small steamer quite crowded with people, our excursion party being very numerous. In a few minutes after starting, somebody says,--

"O, here's where the Kelvin enters." This starts up,--

"Let us haste to Kelvin Grove."

Then soon we are coming to Dumbarton Castle, and all the tears we shed over Miss Porter's William Wallace seem to rise up like a many-colored mist about it. The highest peak of the rock is still called Wallace's Seat, and a part of the castle, Wallace's Tower; and in one of its apartments a huge two-handed sword of the hero is still shown. I suppose, in fact, Miss Porter's sentimental hero is about as much like the real William Wallace as Daniel Boone is like Sir Charles Grandison.

Many a young lady, who has cried herself sick over Wallace in the novel, would have been in perfect horror if she could have seen the real man.

Still Dumbarton Castle is not a whit the less picturesque for that. Now comes the Leven,--that identical Leven Water known in song,--and on the right is Leven Grove.

"There," said somebody to me, "is the old mansion of the Earls of Glencairn." Quick as thought, flashed through my mind that most eloquent of Burns's poems, the Lament for James, Earl of Glencairn.

"The bridegroom may forget the bride Was made his wedded wife yestreen; The monarch may forget the crown That on his head an hour hath been; The mother may forget the child That smiles sae sweetly on her knee; But I'll remember thee, Glencairn, And a' that thou hast done for me."

This mansion is now the seat of Graham of Gartmor.

Now we are shown the remains of old Cardross Castle, where it was said Robert Bruce breathed his last. And now we come near the beautiful grounds of Roseneath, a green, velvet-like peninsula, stretching out into the widening waters.

"Peninsula!" said C----. "Why, Walter Scott said it was an island."

Certainly, he did declare most explicitly in the person of Mr.

Archibald, the Duke of Argyle's serving man, to Miss Dollie Dutton, when she insisted on going to it by land, that Roseneath was an island. It shows that the most accurate may be caught tripping sometimes.

Of course, our heads were full of David Deans, Jeanie, and Effie, but we saw nothing of them. The Duke of Argyle's Italian mansion is the most conspicuous object.

Hereupon there was considerable discussion on the present Duke of Argyle among the company, from which we gathered that he stood high in favor with the popular mind. One said that there had been an old prophecy, probably uttered somewhere up in the Highlands, where such things are indigenous, that a very good duke of Argyle was to arise having red hair, and that the present duke had verified the prediction by uniting both requisites. They say that he is quite a young man, with a small, slight figure, but with a great deal of energy and acuteness of mind, and with the generous and n.o.ble traits which have distinguished his house in former times. He was a pupil of Dr. Arnold, a member of the National Scotch Kirk, and generally understood to be a serious and religious man. He is one of the n.o.blemen who have been willing to come forward and make use of his education and talent in the way of popular lectures at lyceums and athenaeums; as have also the Duke of Newcastle, the Earl of Carlisle, and some others. So the world goes on. I must think, with all deference to poetry, that it is much better to deliver a lyceum lecture than to head a clan in battle; though I suppose, a century and a half ago, had the thing been predicted to McCallummore's old harper, he would have been greatly at a loss to comprehend the nature of the transaction.

Somewhere about here, I was presented, by his own request, to a broad-shouldered Scotch farmer, who stood some six feet two, and who paid me the compliment to say, that he had read my book, and that he would walk six miles to see me any day. Such a flattering evidence of discriminating taste, of course, disposed my heart towards him; but when I went up and put my hand into his great prairie of a palm, I was as a gra.s.shopper in my own eyes. I inquired who he was, and was told he was one of the Duke of Argyle's farmers. I thought to myself, if all the duke's farmers were of this pattern, that he might be able to speak to the enemy in the gates to some purpose.

Roseneath occupies the ground between the Gare Loch and Loch Long. The Gare Loch is the name given to a bay formed by the River Clyde, here stretching itself out like a lake. Here we landed and went on sh.o.r.e, pa.s.sing along the sides of the loch, in the little village of Row.

As we were walking along a carriage came up after us, in which were two ladies. A bunch of primroses, thrown from this carriage, fell at my feet. I picked it up, and then the carriage stopped, and the ladies requested to know if I was Mrs. Stowe. On answering in the affirmative, they urged me so earnestly to come under their roof and take some refreshment, that I began to remember, what I had partly lost sight of, that I was very tired; so, while the rest of the party walked on to get a distant view of Ben Lomond, Mr. S. and I suffered ourselves to be taken into the carriage of our unknown friends, and carried up to a charming little Italian villa, which stood, surrounded by flower gardens and pleasure grounds, at the head of the loch. We were ushered into a most comfortable parlor, where a long window, made of one clear unbroken sheet of plate gla.s.s, gave a perfect view of the loch with all its woody sh.o.r.es, with Roseneath Castle in the distance. My good hostesses literally overwhelmed me with kindness; but as there was nothing I really needed so much as a little quiet rest, they took me to a cozy bedroom, of which they gave me the freedom, for the present. Does not every traveller know what a luxury it is to shut one's eyes sometimes?

The chamber, which is called "Peace," is now, as it was in Christian's days, one of the best things that Charity or Piety could offer to the pilgrim. Here I got a little brush from the wings of dewy-feathered sleep.

After a while our party came back, and we had to be moving. My kind friends expressed so much joy at having met me, that it was really almost embarra.s.sing. They told me that they, being confined to the house by ill health, and one of them by lameness, had had no hope of ever seeing me, and that this meeting seemed a wonderful gift of Providence.

They bade me take courage and hope, for they felt a.s.sured that the Lord would yet entirely make an end of slavery through the world.

It was concluded, after we left here, that, instead of returning by the boat, we should take carriage and ride home along the banks of the river. In our carriage were Mr. S. and myself, Dr. Robson and Lady Anderson. About this time I commenced my first essay towards giving t.i.tles, and made, as you may suppose, rather an odd piece of work of it, generally saying "Mrs." first, and "Lady" afterwards, and then begging pardon. Lady Anderson laughed, and said she would give me a general absolution. She is a truly genial, hearty Scotch woman, and seemed to enter happily into the spirit of the hour.

As we rode on we found that the news of our coming had spread through the village. People came and stood in their doors, beckoning, bowing, smiling, and waving their handkerchiefs, and the carriage was several times stopped by persons who came to offer flowers. I remember, in particular, a group of young girls brought to the carriage two of the most beautiful children I ever saw, whose little hands literally deluged us with flowers.

At the village of Helensburgh we stopped a little while to call upon Mrs. Bell, the wife of Mr. Bell, the inventor of the steamboat. His invention in this country was about the same time of that of Fulton in America. Mrs. Bell came to the carriage to speak to us. She is a venerable woman, far advanced in years. They had prepared a lunch for us, and quite a number of people had come together to meet us, but our friends said that there was not time for us to stop.

We rode through several villages after this, and met quite warm welcome.

What pleased me was, that it was not mainly from the literary, nor the rich, nor the great, but the plain, common people. The butcher came out of his stall, and the baker from his shop, the miller, dusty with his flour, the blooming, comely, young mother, with her baby in her arms, all smiling and bowing with that hearty, intelligent, friendly look, as if they knew we should be glad to see them.

Once, while we stopped to change horses, I, for the sake of seeing something more of the country, walked on. It seems the honest landlord and his wife were greatly disappointed at this; however, they got into the carriage and rode on to see me, and I shook hands with them with a right good will.

We saw several of the clergymen, who came out to meet us, and I remember stopping, just to be introduced to a most delightful family who came out, one by one, gray-headed father and mother, with comely brothers and fair sisters, looking all so kindly and home-like, that I would have been glad to use the welcome that they gave me to their dwelling.

This day has been a strange phenomenon to me. In the first place, I have seen in all these villages how universally the people read. I have seen how capable they are of a generous excitement and enthusiasm, and how much may be done by a work of fiction, so written as to enlist those sympathies which are common to all cla.s.ses. Certainly, a great deal may be effected in this way, if G.o.d gives to any one the power, as I hope he will to many. The power of fict.i.tious writing, for good as well as evil, is a thing which ought most seriously to be reflected on. No one can fail to see that in our day it is becoming a very great agency.

We came home quite tired, as you may well suppose. You will not be surprised that the next day I found myself more disposed to keep my bed than to go out. I regretted it, because, being Sunday, I would like to have heard some of the preachers of Glasgow. I was, however, glad of one quiet day to recall my thoughts, for I had been whirling so rapidly from scene to scene, that I needed time to consider where I was; especially as we were to go to Edinburgh on the morrow.

Towards sunset Mr. S. and I strolled out entirely alone to breathe a little fresh air. We walked along the banks of the Kelvin, quite down to its junction with the Clyde. The Kelvin Grove of the ballad is all cut away, and the Kelvin flows soberly between stone walls, with a footpath on each side, like a stream that has learned to behave itself.