Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451

Mrs Lawson, the widow, was a mild, lady-like person, whose face bore the marks of recent affliction, and whose whole appearance and manners were those of a loving, gentle, unenergetic, and helpless woman, whom sorrow could well crush beyond all power of resistance. The boy was a tall, thin youth, with a hectic flush and a hollow cough, eyes bright and restless, and as manifestly nervous as his mother was the reverse in temperament—anxious and restless, and continually taxing his strength beyond its power, making himself seriously ill in his endeavours to save his beloved mother some small trouble. They seemed to be very tenderly attached one to the other, and to supply to each all that was wanting in each: the mother's gentleness soothing down her boy's excitability, and the boy's nervousness rousing the mother to exertion. They were interesting people—so lonely, apparently so unfit to 'rough it' in the world; the mother so gentle in temper, and the son so frail in constitution—two people who ought to have been protected from all ill and all cares, yet who had such a bitter cup to empty, such a harsh fate to fulfil.

They were very poor. The mother used to go out with a small basket on her arm, which could hold but scanty supplies for two full-grown people. Yet this was the only store they had; for no baker, no butcher, no milkman, grocer, or poulterer, ever stopped at the area gate of Miss Rebecca Spong; no purveyor of higher grade than a cat's-meat-man was ever seen to hand provisions into the depths of Number Nineteen's darkness. The old maid herself was poor; and she, too, used to do her marketing on the basket principle; carrying home, generally at night, odd scraps from the open stalls in Tottenham Court-Road, which she had picked up as bargains; and dividing equally between herself and her fagged servant-of-all-work the wretched meal which would not have been too ample for one. She therefore could not help her lodgers, and they all scrambled on over the desolate places of poverty as they best might. In general, tea, sugar, bread, a little rice, a little coffee as a change, a scrap of butter which no cow that ever yielded milk would have acknowledged—these were the usual items of Mrs Lawson's marketing, on which she and her young son were to be nourished. And on such poor fare as this was that pale boy expected to become a hearty man? The mother could not, did not expect it. Else why were the tears in her eyes so often as she returned? and why did she hang over her son, and caress him fondly, as if in deprecation, when she brought him his wretched meal, seeming to lament, to blame herself, too, that she had not been able to provide him anything better? Poor things! poor things!

Mrs Lawson seemed at last to get some employment. She had been seeking for it long—to judge by her frequent absences from home, and the weary look of disappointment she wore when she returned. But at last the opening was found, and she set to work in earnest. She used to go out early in the morning, and not return until late in the evening, and then she looked pale and tired, as one whose energies had been overtasked all the day; but she had found no gold-mine. The scanty meals were even scantier than before, and her shabby mourning was getting shabbier and duller. She was evidently hard-worked for very little pay; and their condition was not improved, only sustained by her exertions. Things seemed to be very bad with them altogether, and with little hope of amendment; for poor Mrs Lawson had been 'brought up as a lady,' and so was doubly incapable—by education as well as by temperament—of gaining her own living. She was now employed as daily governess in the family of a city tradesman—people, who though they were kindly-natured enough, had as much as they could do in keeping their own fortunes afloat without giving any substantial aid to others, and who had therefore engaged her at the lowest possible salary, such as was barely sufficient to keep her and her son from absolute want.

The boy had long been very busy. He used to sit by the window all the day, earnestly employed with paper and scissors; and I wondered what fascinating occupation he had found to chain him for so many hours by those chinks and draughts; for he was usually enveloped in shawls, and blankets were hung about his chair, and every tender precaution taken that he should not increase his sickness by exposure even to the ordinary changes in the temperature of a dwelling-room. But now, in spite of his terrible cough, in spite of his hurried breathing, he used to sit for hours on hours by the dusky window, cutting and cutting at that eternal paper, as if his very life depended on his task. But he used to gather up the cuttings carefully, and hide all out of sight before his mother came home—sometimes nearly caught before quite prepared, when he used to shew as much trepidation as if committing a crime.

This went on for some time, and at last he went out. It was fortunately a fine day—a clear, cold, January day; but he had no sooner breathed the brisk frosty air than a terrible fit of coughing seemed to threaten his frail existence. He did not turn back though; and I watched him slowly pass down the street, holding on by the rails, and every now and then stopping to take breath. I saw a policeman speak to him in a grave, compassionating way, as if—seeing that he was so young and feeble, and so much a stranger that he was asking his way to Oxford Street, while going in a totally contrary direction—he was advising him to go home, and to let some one else do his business—his father perhaps; but the boy only smiled, and shook his head in a hopeful way; and so he went from my sight, though not from my thoughts.

This continued daily, sometimes Herbert bringing home a small quantity of money, sometimes only disappointment; and these were terrible trials! At last, the mother was made acquainted with her son's new mode of life, by the treasured 5s. which the poor boy thrust into her hand one evening, with a strange shy pride that brought all the blood into his face, while he kissed her with impetuosity to smother her reproaches. She asked him how he had got so much money—so much! and then he told her how, self-taught, he had learned to cut out figures—dogs and landscapes—in coloured paper, which he had taken to the bazaars and stationers' shops, and there disposed of—for a mere trifle truly. 'For this kind of thing is not fashionable, mother, though I think the Queen likes them,' he said; 'and of course, if not fashionable, I could not get very much for them.' So he contented himself, and consoled her, for the small payment of sixpence or a shilling, which perhaps was all he could earn by three or four days' work.

The mother gently blamed him for his imprudence in exposing himself as he had done to the wet and cold—and, alas! these had told sadly on his weakened frame; but Herbert was so happy to-night, that she could not damp his pleasure, even for maternal love; so she reserved the lecture which must be given until to-morrow. And then his out-door expeditions were peremptorily forbidden; and Miss Spong was called up to strengthen the prohibition—which she did effectually by offering, in her little, quick, nervous way, to take Herbert's cuttings to the shops herself, and thus to spare him the necessity of doing so. Poor Mrs Lawson went up to the little woman, and kissed her cheek like a sister, as she spoke; while Miss Spong, so utterly unused as she had been for years to the smallest demonstration of affection, looked at first bewildered and aghast, and finally sank down on the chair in a childish fit of crying. I cannot say how much the sight of that poor little old maid's tears affected me! They seemed to speak of such long years of heart-loneliness—such loving impulses strangled by the chill hand of solitude—such weary familiarity with that deadness of life wherein no sympathy is bestowed, no love awakened—that I felt as one witnessing a dead man recalled to life, after all that made life pleasant had fled. What a sorrowful house that Number Nineteen was! From the desolate servant-of-all-work at her first place from the Foundling, to the half-starved German in the attics, every inmate of the house seemed to have nothing but the bitter bread of affliction to eat—nothing but the salt waters of despair to drink.

And now began another epoch in the Lawson history, which shed a sad but most beautiful light over the fading day of that young life.

A girl of about fourteen—she might have been a year or so younger—was once sent from one of the stationer's shops to conclude some bargain with the sick paper-cutter. I saw her slender figure bound up the desolate steps with the light tread of youth, as if she had been a divine being entering the home of human sorrow. She was one of those saintly children who are sometimes seen blooming like white roses, unstained by time or by contact. Her hair hung down her neck in long, loose curls, among which the sunlight seemed to have fairly lost itself, they were so golden bright; her eyes were large, and of that deep, dark gray which is so much more beautiful, because so much more intellectual, than any other colour eyes can take; her lips were fresh and youthful; and her figure had all that girlish grace of fourteen which combines the unconscious innocence of the child with the exquisite modesty of the maiden. She soon became the daily visitor of the Lawsons—pupil to Herbert.

The paper-cutting was not wholly laid aside though; in the early morning, and in the evening, and often late into the night, the thin, wan fingers were busy about their task; but the middle of the day was snatched like an hour of sleep in the midst of pain—garnered up like a fountain of sweet waters in the wilderness; for then it was that little Jessie came for her Latin lesson, which she used to learn so well, and take such pleasure in, and be doubly diligent about, because poor Herbert Lawson was ill, and vexation would do him harm. Does it seem strange that a stationer's daughter should be so lovely, and should learn Latin? And there those two children used to sit for three dear hours of the day; she, leaning over her book, her sweet young face bent on her task with a look of earnest intellectuality in it, that made her like some sainted maid of olden time; and he watching her every movement, and listening to every syllable, with a rapt interest such as only very early youth can feel. How happy he used to look! How his face would lighten up, as if an angel's wing had swept over it, when the two gentle taps at the door heralded young Jessie! How his boyish reverence, mixed with boyish care, gave his wasted features an expression almost unearthly, as he hung over her so protectingly, so tenderly, so adoringly! It was so different from a man's love! There was something so exquisitely pure and spiritual in it—something so reverential and so chivalrous—it would have been almost a sin to have had that love grow out into a man's strong passion! The flowers she brought him—and seldom did a day pass without a fresh supply of violets, and, when the weather was warmer, of primroses and cowslips, from her gentle hand—all these were cherished more than gold would have been cherished; the books she lent him were never from his side; if she touched one of the paltry ornaments on the chimney-piece, that ornament was transferred to his own private table; and the chair she used was always kept apart, and sacred to her return.

It was very beautiful to watch all these manifestations: for I did watch them, first from my own window, then in the house, in the midst of the lonely family, comforting when I could not aid, and sharing in the griefs I could not lessen. Under the new influence, the boy gained such loveliness and spiritualism, that his face had an angelic character, which, though it made young Jessie feel a strange kind of loving awe for the sick boy, betokened to me, and to his mother, that his end was not far off.

He was now too weak to sit up, excepting for a small part of the day; and I feared that he would soon become too weak to teach, even in his gentle way, and with such a gentle pupil. But the Latin exercises still held their place; the books lying on the sofa instead of on the table, and Jessie sitting by him on a stool, where he could overlook her as she read: this was all the change; unless, indeed, that Jessie read aloud more than formerly, and not always out of a Latin book. Sometimes it was poetry, and sometimes it was the Bible that she read to him; and then he used to stop her, and pour forth such eloquent, such rapturous remarks on what he heard, that Jessie used to sit and watch him like a young angel holding converse with a spirit. She was beginning to love him very deeply in her innocent, girlish, unconscious way; and I used to see her bounding step grow sad and heavy as, day by day, her brother-like tutor seemed to be sinking from earth so fast.

Thus passed the winter, poor Mrs Lawson toiling painfully at her task, and Herbert falling into death in his; but with such happiness in his heart as made his sufferings divine delights, and his weakness, the holy strength of heaven.

He could do but little at his paper-cutting now, but still he persevered; and his toil was well repaid, too, when he gave his mother the scanty payment which he received at the end of the week, and felt that he had done his best—that he had helped her forward—that he was no longer an idler supported by her sorrow—but that he had braced the burden of labour on to his own shoulders also, weak as they were, and had taken his place, though dying, among the manful workers of the world. Jessie brought a small weekly contribution also, neatly sealed up in fair white paper; and of these crumpled scraps Herbert used to cut angels and cherubs' heads, which he would sit and look at for hours together; and then he would pray as if in a trance—so earnest and heartfelt was it—while tears of love, not grief, would stream down his face, as his lips moved in blessings on that young maiden child.

It came at last. He had fought against it long and bravely; but death is a hard adversary, and cannot be withstood, even by the strongest. It came, stealing over him like an evening cloud over a star—leaving him still beautiful, while blotting out his light—softening and purifying, while slowly obliterating his place. Day by day, his weakness increased; day by day, his pale hands grew paler, and his hollow cheek more wan. But the love in his boy's heart hung about his sick-bed as flowers that have an eternal fragrance from their birth.

Jessie was ever a daily visitor, though no longer now a scholar; and her presence had all the effect of religion on the boy—he was so calm, and still, and holy, while she was there. When she was gone, he was sometimes restless, though never peevish; but he would get nervous, and unable to fix his mind on anything, his sick head turning incessantly to the window, as if vainly watching for a shadowy hope, and his thin fingers plucking ceaselessly at his bed-clothes, in restless, weary, unsoothed sorrow. While she sat by him, her voice sounding like low music in his ears, and her hands wandering about him in a thousand offices of gentle comforting, he was like a child sinking softly to sleep—a soul striving upward to its home, beckoned on by the hands of the holier sister before it.

And thus he died—in the bright spring-time of the year, in the bright spring-time of his life. Love had been the cradle-song of his infancy, love was the requiem of his youth. His was no romantic fable, no heroic epic; adventures, passions, fame, made up none of its incidents; it was simply the history of a boy's manful struggling against fate—of the quiet heroism of endurance, compensated by inward satisfaction, if not by actual happiness.

True, his career was in the low-lying paths of humanity; but it was none the less beautiful and pure, for it is not deeds, it is their spirit, which makes men noble, or leaves them stained. Had Herbert Lawson been a warrior, statesman, hero, philosopher, he would have shewn no other nature than that which gladdened the heart of his widowed mother, and proved a life's instruction to Jessie Hamilton, in his small deeds of love and untaught words of faith in the solitude of that lodging-house. Brave, pure, noble then, his sphere only would have been enlarged, and with his sphere the weight and power of his character; but the spirit would have been the same, and in the dying child it was as beautiful as it would have been in the renowned philosopher.

We have given this simple story—simple in all its bearings—as an instance of how much real heroism is daily enacted, how much true morality daily cherished, under the most unfavourable conditions. A widow and her young son cast on the world without sufficient means of living—a brave boy battling against poverty and sickness combined, and doing his small endeavour with manful constancy—a dying youth, whose whole soul is penetrated with love, as with a divine song: all these are elements of true human interest, and these are circumstances to be found in every street of a crowded city. And to such as these is the divine mission of brotherly charity required; for though poverty may not be relieved by reason of our inability, suffering may always be lightened by our sympathy. It takes but a word of love, a glance of pity, a gentle kiss of affection—it takes but an hour of our day, a prayer at night, and we may walk through the sick world and the sorrowful as angels dropping balm and comfort on the wounded. The cup of such human love as this poured freely out will prove in truth 'twice blessed,' returning back to our own hearts the peace we have shed on others. Alas! alas! how thick the harvest and how few the reapers!

VISIT TO A SPOT CONNECTED WITH THE BIOGRAPHY OF BURNS

Having occasion to spend a few days of the beautiful July of the present year in the lower part of Nithsdale, I felt tempted to bestow a forenoon upon an effort to discover and examine a particular spot in the district connected with the history of the poet Burns, but respecting which a doubt has till lately existed. The subject was the more excitingly placed before me, by my seeing every morning, from my bedroom windows, the smiling farmstead of Ellisland, which the poet built, and where he spent more than four years of his life. Daily beholding his simple home, and the fields he had tilled, I felt a revived interest in his sad history and everything associated with it.

All the readers of Burns are of course acquainted with his extravagant Bacchanalian lyric, beginning—

O Willie brewed a peck o' maut,And Rab and Allan cam to prie;Three blither hearts that lee-lang nightYe wadna find in Christendie.

It was well known that the affair described was a real one—that the Willie who gave the entertainment was Mr William Nicol, a master in the High School of Edinburgh—Rab, the poet himself—and Allan, a certain Mr Masterton, likewise of the Edinburgh High School: three merry-hearted men, of remarkable talents and many other good properties, but who, unfortunately, were all of them too liable to the seductions of the 'barley-bree.' That such was the scene, and such the actors, we had learned from Burns himself, who thus annotated the song in a musical collection: 'This air is Masterton's; the song mine. The occasion of it was this: Mr William Nicol, of the High School, Edinburgh, during the autumn vacation being at Moffat, honest Allan—who was at that time on a visit to Dalswinton—and I went to pay Nicol a visit. We had such a joyous meeting, that Mr Masterton and I agreed, each in our own way, that we should celebrate the business.' That is to say, Burns undertook to compose a song descriptive of the merry encounter, while Mr Masterton, who was an amateur musician, should compose an appropriate air. So far there seems to be little obscurity about the matter. The locality pointed out is the well-known spa village of Moffat, situated among the hills of Annandale, about twenty miles from Ellisland. Nicol had had a lodging there, in which to enjoy his few weeks of autumn vacation; Burns and Masterton—the one from Ellisland, the other from Dalswinton—had journeyed thither in company; and there, probably in some small cottage room, had the strength of the peck o' maut been tried. Most likely, as Moffat is so far on the way from Dalswinton to Edinburgh, Mr Masterton would part with his two friends next day, and proceed on his way to the city, while Burns returned to his farm, lone-meditating on the song in which he was to make the frolic immortal.

With so explicit a statement from the poet, we never should have had occasion to feel any doubt about the circumstances referred to in 'Willie brewed a peck o' maut,' had not Dr Currie, the editor of the posthumous collection of Burns's works, inserted therein a note, stating that the merry-meeting 'took place at Laggan, a farm purchased by Mr Nicol in Nithsdale, on the recommendation of Burns.' Currie, proceeding upon the undoubted fact of Nicol having purchased such a farm, seems to have imagined that the meeting was what is called in Scotland a house-heating, or entertainment given to celebrate the entering upon a new domestic establishment, Laggan itself being of course the scene. To add to the perplexity thus created, Dr Currie's assumptions were taken up by a subsequent editor, who ought to have known better—the late Allan Cunningham. He gives the whole affair with daring circumstantiality. The song, he says, 'was composed to commemorate the house-heating—as entering upon possession of a new house is called in Scotland. William Nicol made the brewst strong and nappy; and Allan Masterton, then on a visit at Dalswinton, crossed the Nith, and, with the poet and his celebrated punch-bowl, reached Laggan "a wee before the sun gaed down." The sun, however, rose on their carousal, if the tradition of the land may be trusted.' Thus, as Laggan is on the right bank of the Nith, while Dalswinton is on the left, we have Masterton crossing the river to join Burns at Ellisland, which is the converse of the procedure necessary on the supposition of Moffat being the locality. A place called Laggan, about two miles from Ellisland, being further assumed as the seat of Nicol, we have the poet marching along to it bearing his punch-bowl as an essential of the frolic!—a particular which this biographer would have probably suppressed, if he had known that the real Laggan of William Nicol is eight or nine miles from Ellisland, in a part of the country naturally so difficult of access, that a visitor might be glad to get there himself without any such nice burden as a punch-bowl to carry.

In a more recent edition of the poet's life and writings—where at length an effort is made to illustrate both, by documentary and other exact evidence1—the affair is set in such a light as to throw a ludicrous commentary on such testimony as the 'tradition of the land.' It appears, from a letter of Burns in which two verses of the song are transcribed, that it was written before 16th October 1789; while it equally appears that Mr Nicol did not purchase Laggan till March 1790: ergo, the maut was not brewed at Laggan; Masterton did not cross the Nith; and the punch-bowl is a myth, which most likely originated in editorial fancy.

Laggan is, nevertheless, a remarkable place, for Burns and Nicol must have been there together in some fashion, if not a Bacchanalian one, since it was upon the recommendation of the former that the latter became its proprietor. There are, however, two Laggans—one in Dunscore parish, about two miles from Ellisland; the other in Glencairn parish, a comparatively remote situation; and the latter was the Laggan of Nicol. Mr M–, of A–, who now lives near Ellisland, remembers, while living in his father's house, Laggan of Dunscore—the place erroneously assumed by Cunningham—that Burns and Nicol came there rather late one evening, and induced his father to accompany them to the town of Minniehive, whence he did not return home till next day at three o'clock. Laggan of Glencairn being on the way to Minniehive, and near it, and there being no other imaginable reason for Nicol going to such an out-of-the-way place, it seems a very reasonable supposition, that the pair of friends were on their way to see the property which Nicol thought of purchasing; and that Burns, knowing Mr M– to be well skilled in land, had thought of asking his advice on its value. The junior Mr M– adds a reminiscence, too characteristic, we fear, to be much doubted, that Burns and Nicol on that occasion were for a whole week engaged in merry-making.