The Spell of Scotland Part 11

There are teashops which invite you in, when the wind sweeps too harshly, or the rain beats itself into more than a Scotch mist, or even when the sun shines too hot. There is a garden tea place on top of a high hotel which confronts the Castle. Even in this Far North there is much open air dining, and more especially open air tea-ing. I am not certain that Dr. Johnson would have much cared for this modern tea room, where he might review the world. It seems that he drank much tea when he was the guest of Boswell, especially when he was the guest of Mrs.

Boswell, in James Court the other side the Gardens. "Boswell has handsome and very s.p.a.cious rooms, level with the ground on one side of the house, and the other four stories high." And Boswell says of Johnson, "My wife had tea ready for him, which it is well known he delights to drink at all times, particularly when sitting up late." From this roof tea garden one can see James's Court at the top of the Mound, although the Boswell lodgings are burned down. And one can almost see Holyrood, where tea was introduced by James VII.

After you have shopped and had your tea, and the past retakes possession, you will return to the green valley of the Gardens, to forget the clang of the tram cars, to look up at the great Castle Hill, green until it meets the buff-coloured stone and the buff-coloured buildings that seem to grow out of the stone, if it is a clear day; while the ramparts seem temporarily to have blossomed with red geraniums, if red coats are leaning over the edge.

A clear day in Edinburgh is possible. I have spent a month of such days, and have longed for the mists, a touch of them, that the castle might turn to a purple wonder, and the deep blue shadows sink over it, and the gray precipice of the High Street look higher than ever. Gray is in truth the colour of Edinburgh, "the gray metropolis of the North." But it is never a dreary gray, never a heavy gray like London. There the gray is thick, charged with soot; one can rub it from his face. In Edinburgh the gray is luminous, a shifting playing colour, with deep shadows turning to deep blue, with rifts or thinnings of the cloud, through which yellow and brown glimmers make their way.

Above all, Edinburgh is never monotonous. That is perhaps its charm, a something that every feminine city knows; Edinburgh is feminine, and Paris, and Venice, and New Orleans.

And there hangs the castle, sometimes in midair--

"Hast thou seen that lordly castle, that castle by the sea?

Golden and red above it the clouds float gorgeously."

Sometimes standing stalwart and stern, a challenge to daring, a challenge to history. That farther edge of the Castle Hill as it is silhouetted against the west sky--if you walk around on Lothian Street you can see the full face of the Rock--has invited many an adventurer, both from within and without.

It was down that steep hill that the sons of Margaret carried their queen mother, when the hosts of Donalbane were besieging the place, and a Scotch "haar" rolling in from the sea and shutting off the castle enabled the little procession to pa.s.s safely with its precious burden, and swiftly down to the Queen's ferry, and across to Dunfermline.

Up the face of that Rock when The Bruce did not hold this stronghold there stole in the night of a thirteenth century winter--it must have been much colder, even in Edinburgh, in the thirteenth century--a picked band of men; picked by Randolph afterward Earl of Moray, and led by Frank, who, years before when he had been a soldier in the castle garrison and night leave was forbidden, used to make his way down this cliff to visit a bonnie la.s.sie in the West Bow. Now, on a wind-swept night, which can be very windy around that castle profile--the wind has not abated since the thirteenth century--Frank led the remembered way. I wonder if he remembered the la.s.sie. But his footing was sure. Once, it is true, the sentinel seemed to have discovered them. But it was only the boast the sentinel makes to the night when he makes his last round.

The men huddled against the face of the Rock. Then they moved onward.

The ladders were too short to reach the rampart. Two were bound together. The men over, the cry "A Moray!" rings in the castle. Scotland has won it again.

Another century, and James III is king. This least royal of the Stewarts, jealous of his more royal brother, locked the Duke of Albany in the castle, and felt secure. But the Duke had friends. A French clipper came into Leith. It brought wine to Albany, and the wine cask contained a rope. Inviting his guardians to sup with him, he plied them with heated wine, perhaps drugged wine, then, the dagger. Albany's servant insisted on going down the rope first. It was short, he fell the rest of the distance. Albany hurried back for the sheets from his bed, made his safe way down. He carried the servant man all the way to Leith--he had just "whingered" the guard--found the boat, and safety, and France.

Up the Rock, in Covenanting days, stole Claverhouse, the Bonnie Dundee, to a secret conference with the Duke of Gordon, hoping to win him away to Stewart loyalty and the North.

I cannot remember that any of Scott's characters went this way. He thought it "scant footing for a cat." But Stevenson knew the way.

Perhaps not actually, but he sent more than one of his characters up or down the Rock--St. Ives with a rope that was long enough to reach.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOHN GRAHAM OF CLAVERHOUSE, VISCOUNT DUNDEE.]

_Calton Hill_

Perhaps the best view of Edinburgh--only perhaps, for each view differs, and you have not seen the whole city unless you have seen it from the various vantage points--is that from the Calton Hill. For a very good reason. The Hill itself is negligible enough, although it is impossible to understand Edinburgh, to understand Scotland, unless you have looked on the architectural remnants on this Hill, and considered them philosophically. But, as Stevenson said--"Of all places for a view, the Calton Hill is perhaps the best; since you can see the castle, which you lose from the castle, and Arthur's Seat, which you cannot see from Arthur's Seat." An excellent reason, which also places the castle and Arthur's Seat.

Calton Hill does not tower so high over the city as these other two points; one may still look up to Arthur's Seat, one may look across to the castle. Yet, the city lies near. Yet, the country rolls out to the Firth, and out to the Pentlands. Perhaps a gray-sea haze dulls the far edge of the far Kingdom of Fife. Perhaps a blue haze hangs over the Pentlands. Perhaps a smoke-cloud makes a nearer sky for the town itself, this Auld Reekie. Not only perhaps, but very probably. There are clear days in Edinburgh. They are to be treasured. There is no air more stimulating in all the world. October sometimes slips into the other months of the year, fills the air with wine, clears the air of filament.

But, not often, not often for the tourist from beyond seas who makes Edinburgh in the summer. But still it is possible from Calton Hill to catch the farthest glory of the encircling hills, and the near glory of the ever glorious city.

The Hill itself is a place of monuments, and a very pretentious place.

Also, very absurd. I suppose it is possible to be of two minds about the remnant of the Parthenon which stands so conspicuously on the highest plateau, a construction dating back to that royal time when George the Fourth came to this northern capital, and was--alas!--received as though he were Bonnie Prince Charlie himself; and was received--again alas!--by Sir Walter clad in a Campbell plaid, and as loyal to the Regent, the florid Florizel, as he had been to Prince Charles in the "Waverleys."

Because of all these loyalties this never finished monument, with its twelve columns and architrave spread above, looks sufficiently pathetic, and sufficiently absurd. "A very suitable monument to certain national characteristics," said a later Scots writer, who perhaps never ceased being a Jacobite.

There are monuments; one to Dugald Stewart, and the visitor not philosophical is apt to ask, Who was Dugald Stewart? There is a memorial to Burns whose friend Willie that brewed a peck o' malt lies in the Old Calton burying ground near by. Hume lies there, too, and Dr. John Brown, and Stevenson's dead.

"There on the sunny frontage of a hill, Hard by the House of Kings, repose the dead, My dead, the ready and the strong of word.

Their works, the salt-encrusted, still survive; The sea bombards their founded towers; the night Thrills pierced with their strong lamps. The artificers One after one, here in this grated cell, Where the rain erases and the dust consumes, Fell upon lasting silence."

There is a monument to Lord Nelson. And looking as though he belonged there is a bronze figure of Abraham Lincoln.

All this lies about, with casual sheep cropping the gra.s.s.

But, there lies the city. And there lies the country.

To the south rises Arthur's Seat, the lion. The much castellated jail, is beneath you, another absurd elaborate building, a castle after castle-days. Farther a-city lies Holyrood, with the ruined abbey, the Queen Mary wing, and the scarlet patch of the sentinel moving to and fro and guarding all this vanished greatness. Nothing more appeals than this sentinel-watch of the ghosts of the past.

Turn but a little and the Old Town lies before you, the castle splendid, still the guardian, the long ridge of the High Street with its jagged buildings that from here rise almost to the purple edge of the hilly Pentland background, with the spire of the Tolbooth and the crown of St.

Giles breaking against the sky. And down at the foot of the vantage Hill stretches Princes Street with the Scott monument rising athwart the haze of city and sky.

From the north edge of Calton there is a more empty panorama, but still significant. Now it is bound in with tenements high and thick, but in the golden days it was a steep hillside leading down to a jousting ground. Tradition has it that Bothwell launched his horse down its almost-precipice, and so entered the tilting ground, while ladies'

bright eyes rained influence and gave the prize; but most glowing were the eyes of Mary.

Beyond, the suburbs fill in the two miles that stretch to Leith, and to the Firth, glittering out to the far sea.

At night, if you have no fear of hobgoblins or of hooligans, Calton Hill is an experience. It is a still place, the silence the greater because the city lies so near, and looks so busy with its twinkling lights. A gulf of gloom lies between. The night is velvet black, a drop curtain against which is thrown the star-p.r.i.c.ked map of the city. One can well believe how the young Stevenson, in those romantic days when he carried a lantern under his jacket, used to climb this hill venturesomely, and with the dog in "Chanticler," exclaim, "I shall never forget the first night I lapped up the stars." It is something to lap stars from the black pool which is Edinburgh by night.

If you have, happily, lived in a high city, Boston, Seattle, Duluth, Denver, St. Paul, San Francisco, with water and land combined, you, too, have lingered upon a heaven-kissed hill on such a night as this, and Edinburgh seems native.

Scott, of course, must have known Calton Hill, although Salisbury Crags under Arthur's Seat, with its more feasible promenade, better appealed to him when he was writing the "Waverleys." There is an American who has written of the Hill, a young inland American whom the G.o.ds loved to an early death. I remember hearing Arthur Upson talk of days and nights on the Calton, and his sonnet catches the note--

"High and alone I stood on Calton Hill Above the scene that was so dear to him Whose exile dreams of it made exile dim.

October wooed the folded valleys till In mist they blurred, even as our eye upfill Under a too-sweet memory; spires did swim, And gables, rust-red, on the gray sea's brim-- But on these heights the air was soft and still, Yet, not all still; an alien breeze will turn Here, as from bournes in aromatic seas, As round old shrines a new-freed soul might yearn With incense of rich earthly reveries.

Vanish the isles: Mist, exile, searching pain, But the brave soul is freed, is home again."

CHAPTER V

THE KINGDOM OF FIFE

From Edinburgh as I looked out on the Forth from every vantage point, I was conscious of the hills of Fife ever backing in the prospect. And I kept repeating to myself the old rhyme of the witches--

"The Thane of Fife had a wife, Ah, where is she now!"

I determined to set sail and find not the wife, but the kingdom.

It is a continuing splendour, this name--the Kingdom of Fife. Than the thing nothing could be less royal, more democratic. For Fifeshire is given over to farm lands and coal fields and treeless stretches, and the fringe of Fife is made up of fishing villages "a hodden gray plaid wi' a gowden fringe," said a King Jamie. It lies there, separate from Scotland, although very Scottish, between the firths of the Forth and the Tay, with the Ochil hills a barrier on the landside. The separating firths are now connected with Scotland by great bridges, over which the trains pa.s.s with reluctance. And the wind is always blowing in Fife, a cold, stern, relentless, Calvinistic wind, off the North Sea. Not by every wind of doctrine but by a disciplining Calvinistic wind is this Kingdom swept into conformity.

There is no end of castles and of historic memories lying like pebbles upon the seash.o.r.e of the Firth. Pick up any sea sh.e.l.l--I do not remember seeing any, so combed have these beaches been from the memory of man--and it will whisper a tale in your ear.

But there is for me but one pilgrimage to be made in Fifeshire, to Kirkcaldy; to the place, not of Ravenscraig Castle, nor because Adam Smith and political economy were here born twins, nor because Carlyle taught here for two years, nor because Edward Irving preached here; their dwellings and schools and graves can be seen. But because Marjorie Fleming was born here, pa.s.sed to and fro, from Granton to Burntisland, in those brief beautiful nine years that were granted to her, and to us, and lies buried in the old kirkyard of Abbotshall.

Perhaps you do not know Marjorie. She was the friend, the intimate friend of Sir Walter Scott. And I can but think how large and void the world was a century ago, in that Charles Lamb was living in London when Marjorie was living in Kirkcaldy, and was dreaming of his "Dream Children," when he might have known this most precious child, fit to be the friend of Lamb as she was of Sir Walter.

Other men who have loved her with a tenderness which can belong but to the living child, immortally living, are Dr. John Brown who wrote the wonder book about her fifty years ago, through which most of us have claimed Marjorie as our own, and Mark Twain, who only a month before he died--and joined her--wrote as tenderly and whimsically of her as he ever wrote of any child or any maid. Among such august company we almost hesitate to enter, but surely at this distance of time we may lay our love beside that of the great men who found Pet Marjorie one of the most precious human treasures the world has ever held.

She was but a little girl, and only nine years all told, when the last day came to her a hundred and more years ago, December 19, 1811. The first six years she lived in Kirkcaldy, "my native town which though dirty is clene in the country," Marjorie wrote this from Edinburgh a little patronizingly, and Marjorie was never strong on spelling. The next three years she lived with her aunt in the Scottish capital, where she wrote those journals and letters which have kept her memory warm to this day. In July of 1811 she returned to the town by the North Sea, and in December she was gone.