Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 726

THE INN AT BOLTON

When I was a little boy – I am now an old man of sixty – 'Aunt Oliver,' as we used to call my father's widowed sister, was in the habit of paying long visits at my father's house. She had not long been a widow; and though past the meridian of life, was still a beautiful woman. But what made her so exceedingly popular with all my father's children was her repeated kindnesses, displayed to us in the shape of various useful and ornamental gifts, carefully chosen to suit our several ages and characters; but above all, her wonderful condescension in giving up her own pursuits on many a winter's night, that she might recount to us, as we sat grouped around the nursery fire, some of the incidents of her varied and eventful life. She had been a great traveller in her day, having been to Rome, and even visited the Holy Land; and what is more, she had written a book of travels! a circumstance which caused us to regard her with a strange curiosity almost amounting to awe; a feeling on our part which, but for her uniform kindness, might have detracted from that universal love we one and all bore towards her. One of my aunt's adventures made a strong impression on my youthful mind, and is even now, after a lapse of half a century, still fresh in my recollection. Thinking it might serve to divert those who have a fancy for the humorous, I have gathered up the threads of the story from the storehouse of my memory, and now present it in narrative form, under the foregoing title.

My uncle, Mr Oliver Brown, was in the iron trade; and in connection with his business, which was a very large one, was in the habit of paying periodical visits to the manufacturing town of Bolton, near to which his principal iron-works were situated. He usually paid these visits alone; but on the occasion of which I am about to speak he was accompanied by my aunt, who deemed it her duty to be with her husband, as it was winter-time and he had only just recovered from a severe illness. It was late in the evening of a bleak November day that the coach which conveyed Mr and Mrs Oliver Brown from their comfortable country-seat, distant some fifty miles from Bolton, entered the noisy ill-paved streets of that bustling town, and proceeded to what at that period was the principal inn of the place. Both travellers were tired by their journey, and after a hasty dinner, were glad to retire to rest.

'Did you say number twenty-seven, second floor?' inquired Mrs Oliver, addressing the lady at the bar, as she took a chamber candlestick from her hand and proceeded to mount the stairs.

'Twenty-seven, second floor,' responded the landlady with an affirmative nod and a gracious smile.

'Twenty-seven, second floor,' repeated my uncle as he followed in the wake of his more active and enterprising helpmate, who, threading her way up the spiral staircase and along a labyrinth of corridors and passages, had already arrived at the dormitory in question. Mr and Mrs Oliver were soon in bed; and there we will leave them, whilst we look in at number twenty-nine on the same floor, and make the acquaintance of Mr and Mrs Wormwood Scrubbs, the occupants of that apartment. They, like their neighbours at number twenty-seven, were in comfortable circumstances, and like the latter, not much given to travelling for pleasure's sake on a cold raw day in November; but an affair of business which demanded their presence at Bolton had compelled them to sacrifice their ease and comfort, and come to that town on this bleak November day. Mr Scrubbs had long been subject to attacks of gout in the foot; and as he had heard of this disease having a tendency sometimes to shift its seat to the brain or the stomach, when it was apt to assume a more serious type, he had made it a rule to carry about his person in the daytime, and to place under his pillow at night, a certain medicine which an eminent physician had assured him would speedily arrest any such erratic tendency on the part of the malady from which he suffered.

Now, on this particular night, whether from over-exertion, exposure to cold, or some other cause I know not, Mr Scrubbs happened to be visited with certain premonitory symptoms of an approaching attack of gout, whereupon he instinctively felt under his pillow for the valuable specific I have referred to. He then remembered he had inadvertently left it in the pocket of his greatcoat, which he had thrown upon the sofa in the private sitting-room into which Mrs Scrubbs and himself had been ushered on their arrival at the inn; whereupon, being unwilling to disturb his better-half, who was in a profound sleep, he let himself quietly out of bed, and throwing his dressing-gown over his shoulders, proceeded to light his candle. Having done this, he gently opened the door and sallied forth, leaving the door slightly ajar, in order that he might the more easily find the room on his return.

It so chanced just about the time Mr Wormwood Scrubbs was proceeding on the above mission, that Mrs Oliver Brown, who was too fatigued to sleep, suddenly recollected that she had left her reticule with her purse inside it on the table in the room where she and Mr Brown had had their dinner; and wisely considering that it would not be prudent to leave it there till morning, she resolved to descend to the sitting-room and recover the bag at once; accordingly slipping out of bed, she struck a light, and opening the bedroom door, stepped into the corridor into which it led. She then proceeded to assure herself by a reference to certain figures that were painted over the door-frames of the several dormitories that the room she had just quitted was number twenty-seven and no other; and having satisfied her mind on this point, she left the door ajar, and gliding swiftly along the different passages and down the cork-screw-shaped staircase, soon reached the sitting-room, whence, having found the bag she was in search of, she retraced her steps in the same rapid way, exercising her memory as she went along by repeating the number of the room to which she was returning.

Now Mrs Oliver Brown, who, by the way, had an undoubted bump for localities, had formed an idea – and a very correct idea it was – that number twenty-seven was the second room on the left-hand side of the corridor; but on her return, finding the door of this chamber closed, whilst that of the one adjoining it was open, she not unnaturally supposed she might have made a mistake in regard to the position of number twenty-seven; but in order to set all doubt at rest upon this point, she was about to refer to the number on the door-frame, when a sudden gust of wind sweeping along the whole length of the passage extinguished the candle, leaving her in utter darkness. Thus situated, Mrs Oliver Brown did what most ladies (and gentlemen also, I think) would have done under the circumstances: she groped her way along the passage till she came to the open door of number twenty-nine, went softly in, shut the door in the same quiet way, and got into bed, where, being greatly fatigued with all she had undergone, she soon fell fast asleep.

In the meantime, Mr Wormwood Scrubbs having repossessed himself of his gout mixture, had also returned to the corridor, where seeing a door ajar precisely as he had left his own, he at once went in, closed the door, blew out his candle, and popped into bed, where my excellent uncle was still sleeping as peacefully as a baby, and utterly unconscious of the recent migratory movements of Mrs Brown, which were destined to produce such an unlooked-for disturbance in the domestic arrangements of the two families occupying respectively numbers twenty-seven and twenty-nine.

Mr Wormwood Scrubbs, however, though now quite easy both in body and mind, was unable to sleep, and lay awake, first thinking of one thing and then of another, till he was suddenly recalled to the stern realities of life by hearing his wife's voice proceeding apparently from the adjoining room. In a state of immense perplexity, he struck out with his sound leg in the direction of the sleeping figure at his side, when having come in contact with a plump warm body corresponding to that of his amiable helpmate, he paused, and suspending all further investigation for the present, calmly awaited the issue of events. Nor had he very long to wait.

Mrs Wormwood Scrubbs was a lady of a highly nervous and excitable temperament, with whom, when once roused, it would be about as useless and dangerous an experiment to attempt to argue as with a tigress surrounded by a litter of famished cubs. She had just waked up from her first sleep, when happening to put her hand upon that part of the connubial couch where her Wormwood's head was wont to rest, she found it brought in contact with a lace nightcap, and a profusion of long curls that had escaped from beneath it.

'Why, what's this, Scrubbs? What tomfoolery's this you're after? What's this, I say?' tagging, as she spoke, at the head-dress of her supposed husband. 'Why, goodness gracious, it isn't Scrubbs after all!' – as starting up in bed, my aunt in gentle but startled accents implored her to be quiet.

'But who are you? and what are you doing in number twenty-nine?'

'Number twenty-nine! Surely this is not twenty-nine, but twenty-seven,' doubtingly returned my aunt, as the idea suddenly flashed upon her that she might have mistaken the one room for the other. 'I think I can explain it all.'

'Explain it all! Of course you'll explain it all, and something more than that, before I've done with you, you good-for-nothing impudent hussy that you are!'

'For heaven's sake, be calm, my good woman, or you'll rouse the whole house,' expostulated my aunt in the gentlest manner possible.

'Don't "good-woman" me!' shouted Mrs Scrubbs at the top of her voice, as springing from the bed, she seized the bell-rope and pulled at it with a violence that threatened to carry everything with it. Amid this terrific uproar, Mr Scrubbs and his bedfellow Mr Brown, who had been vainly trying to make themselves heard from the adjoining room, suddenly appeared candle in hand upon the scene.

As oil cast upon the troubled sea will instantly reduce that element to a state of the profoundest calm, so did the sudden appearance of Mr Scrubbs act as if by a charm to allay in one moment all the angry feelings of Bella Scrubbs, and where only a few moments before all was violence and discord, there now reigned perfect peace and good-will.

The mutual explanations that ensued, it is needless to say, were perfectly satisfactory to all the parties concerned; and after a readjustment of partners, the two families once more took possession of their respective chambers, where I need hardly say they were not again molested during the remaining part of that memorable November night.

ROCKBOUND

Of the thousands of tourists who flock every year from all parts of the civilised world to gaze upon the picturesque beauties of the Highlands, to muse among the ruined aisles of Iona, or to listen to the diapason of the sea, as it sinks and swells through the pillared caves of Staffa, few, comparatively speaking, care to go so far north as the Shetlands; yet these islands, though generally bare, have a beauty of their own – the breezy, ever-changeful beauty of the sea.

The scientific tourist will not fail to find something to interest him in Shetland. There are bold headlands, wide reefs of black crags, and a flora which, although neither rich nor varied, has charms for the botanist. There are broad stretches of sandy beach, not so sterile as they look, but affording, in hidden nooks and crannies, no bad hunting-ground for a naturalist out for a summer holiday. If you are a member of the Alpine Club, there are here no mountains for you to climb, but there are cliffs such as might well appal the most practised mountaineer; and in summer there is the sun, shining in a cloudless sky nearly all through the four-and-twenty hours. There in summer, midnight is not like the midnights of more southern climes, but is permeated by the rays of a sun, set indeed, but so soon about to rise, that there is scarcely any absence of light.

If you are a painter, you may have sea-views in abundance. You may choose your own time and place and grouping; early morning if you will, with the white mists rolling in over the shimmering sea, and the clamorous gulls hovering above skerries that are crusted all over with dense clinging masses of sea-weed. Or you may wait till the ascending sun rolls back the curtain of mist, and the sea gleams out before you a wide sheet of burnished gold, spangled with the rocky islets of a storm-swept archipelago. The waves roll in at your feet – long majestic ridges of water, dappled with lines of foam; the wide swell of the Atlantic sweeping in from the far shores of Labrador; while from far inland some tiny streamlet tumbles down to the sea through a natural copsewood of dwarf ash and birch and hazel.

Bold points and headlands stand like brave sentinels far out to sea, sheltering little natural harbours where the fisherman's boat rides in safety. Tiny fiords run inland into deep glens, with here and there a fisherman's hut or a crofter's cottage. Perhaps, however, you may have a fancy for foul weather, when the sky darkens like a pall over the sea, and the storm-fiend rouses himself from his ocean lair, and the tempest-tossed waves scud along in wreaths of foam to break in hoarse thunder upon the shore, or hurl themselves in impotent rage against the face of the steep headland. In Shetland you have grand alternations of calm and storm.

It is perhaps, however, for the student of human nature that Shetland has the greatest attractions. Here he will find a simple, kindly, primitive set of people, of Norwegian descent, but now anglicised in language and usages. They are, however, fond of old legends and stories. Mrs Saxby, the authoress of Rockbound, a Story of the Shetland Isles, in a pleasantly told narrative introduces us to this primitive people. We have for the scene of the story an island called Vaalafiel, five miles long, and a little over two in width, with a tiny harbour, and gray old mansion-house set in a strip of scraggy pine-wood. Vaalafiel, Mrs Saxby tells us, 'is coiled upon the sea much in the way a kitten rolls itself together on the hearth-rug – the creature's paws being represented by the narrow belts of land overlapping each other and forming the arms of our voe (fiord), whose crags are very suggestive of claws. Rising abruptly from the shores of this harbour, the island becomes a hill, whose eastern side is a precipice dipping into the German Ocean. The north point terminates in a bold headland, from whence the hill slopes gradually southwards, until it ends in a beautiful stretch of sand, kissed white by the broad waves of the Atlantic. The neighbouring islands cluster north and south, leaving deep narrow channels, where the two great seas keep up a perpetual warfare; and he is a daring sailor who ventures to cross those tideways when their "dark hour" approaches.'

Under the old house of Vaalafiel and the cliffs adjacent to it were wide underground caverns, such as in the 'good old smuggling times' were no uncommon adjuncts to country houses, and even manses, if they happened to be conveniently near the shore. This smugglers' cave was the scene of a tragedy, such as was of no unfrequent occurrence among desperate men in these lawless days. A hasty blow struck in sudden passion hurried one rash soul to its last account, and darkened as with the brand of Cain the lives of many others. There is an old nurse, full of well-nigh forgotten Norse superstitions, and a little lonely child, the heiress of the rockbound islet, whose dearest pleasure was to watch the sea on the serene summer evenings when the sky became like a poet's dream, and earth and sea put on the glory of the clouds. Mrs Saxby describes 'the Shetland summer night as not dark at all; it is merely a twilight, which is prolonged sufficiently to assume a character of its own. Not dark, not light, not a brief uncertain mingling of both, but a quiet earnest period of rest, when Nature dreams but does not sleep, and yet is not awake. We call it "the dim," and you can discern objects quite clearly while it broods over the earth.' The wild winter nights have a grand storm-driven beauty of their own, when the Aurora Borealis shoots forth a fitful light, and the nursling of the gray North 'catches glimpses of the beauty dwelling in colour.' The solitary child Inga, bearing in her brave little heart the burden of her father's dimly realised crime, yet cleaving to him, because he loves her, with an affection far stronger than that which binds her to her cold unloving mother, develops into a healthy spirited girl. Lonely and prosaic as her life was, it was not, however, without a salutary admixture of holidays and holiday amusements. The lady of Vaalafiel, although a somewhat stern disciplinarian, was wise enough to recognise the truth of the axiom, that 'all work and no play make Jack a dull boy,' and so upon birthdays and such kindred anniversaries she somewhat relaxed the rigidity of her rule. A fat bullock was killed in honour of the young heiress, and Miss Inga's favourite Newfoundland dog (evidently desirous of contributing his share to the feast) went off one night to the hills and ran down half-a-dozen sheep. It was found that he had performed the service of a butcher in a perfectly scientific manner; so the animals were carried home and added to the larder.'

With such a superabundance of pièces de resistance, even the crustiest old bachelor in the world might have found a picnic tolerably enjoyable; and Miss Inga and her young friends had a most delightful day of it in their sweet northern Arcadia, clad as it then was in all its witching garb of summer. 'The sun,' she says, 'rose in cloudless glory, and everything was dipped in sunshine of another kind as well; for Aytoun' (a divinity student quite as fascinating as The Modern Minister) 'had returned for the midsummer vacation, and that would have been gladness enough for me. There were with him some of his college companions, who made sparkling speeches, sang hearty songs, assisted in distributing prizes to the winning boats, and then challenged the islanders to a football match. Which played best is an undecided question to this day, for each side had a method of its own, and did not comprehend that of its opponent. Then the people were gathered on a smooth meadow near our house, and the plaintive Foula Reel called upon old and young alike to join in the graceful and truly poetic dance of Shetland. The natural good breeding of the islanders allowed us to remove every restriction on their pleasure, which was characterised by a hearty enjoyment without the slightest approach to excess.'

As unlike as possible to a heroine of romance, the child reared in this homely fashion is yet sweet enough to carry blessing and love wherever she goes; to heal old wounds with her simple beauty and goodness; to carry peace into the unforgiving relentlessness of her mother's heart; and to efface the blackness of her father's crime (justifiable homicide, a soft-hearted jury would resolve it into) with tender penitential tears. Miss Inga is in truth a very lovable character, innocent, simple, and yet intelligent; gentle and winning in her ways, although she can be spirited and resolute upon occasion; full of affectionate respect for her stern mother, and of deep romantic devotion for her father, for whose sake she marries without love, which no properly constituted heroine of romance ever does or can do, but which many a good woman has done, to find, as she did, peace and household joy and contentment at a good man's hearth.

Many of the descriptive passages in Rockbound are written with considerable vividness and effect, as for instance the storm, through whose agency a crisis in the plot of the tale is worked out. 'A tempestuous morning was breaking, and sea and wind were uttering wrathful warnings of what might befall the unwary fishers who were out on the deep, and I looked out with eyes which scarcely saw – with a mind on which impressions seemed lost. As if still in a dream, I beheld the furious waves come rolling majestically from the far deep and break with thundering sound upon the rocky arms of our voe. As I gazed, there suddenly appeared round a point of the high land a little vessel with closely reefed sails struggling in the sea between Vaalafiel and its neighbouring island. Her hull was partially concealed from my view by the arms of our voe, but very soon I seemed to know that it must be the Seamew, and that she was attempting to enter the harbour; and a thought occurred to me which was suggestive of peril at once: Why do they try to pass through so narrow and dangerous a strait when the storm is at its worst? As if in answer to my thought, the vessel hoisted a flag of distress, probably with a forlorn hope that some wakeful eye might see it, and then she lay to, as trying to advance in the very teeth of the gale. My father, everything, was forgotten in that breathless moment, as I watched my tiny ship thus turn, pause, and enter the rocky path beset by death. She was evidently being driven by cruel necessity to dare so hazardous a piece of navigation, and I soon discerned that she was no longer manageable. Just then a gust of wind still more furious than before caught her at a critical moment, and in less time than I say the words in, she was tossing among some detached rocks at the entrance to the harbour, a total wreck, and likely to go down every instant.

'I had stood terror-bound till then; but the sight of figures clinging to the spars stirred me to action, and I flew to arouse our servants. They were soon hurrying to the neighbouring cottages, in hope of assistance from any men who chanced to be at home; and I ran along the shore until I reached the crags opposite where the disabled yacht lay. I was soon joined there by numerous women and a few old feeble men, who shook their heads and groaned when I frantically implored them to launch a boat and go to the rescue. "There's no an able-bodied man in the island wha kens hoo to handle an oar," they cried; "oor men are a' at the haaf" (deep-sea fishing). "The Lord preserve them this awfu' hoor."'

Then for a touch of simple pathos, take the neglected child's scanty recollections of her unloved childhood: 'One of the few things I remember is that I always wore a black frock. This circumstance is impressed on my mind, because I had, and still have, a perfect passion for rich gorgeous colours. Nature in the gray North seldom gave my eyes a feast of radiant hues; no brilliant butterflies and flowers clothing the earth in the garments of heaven; no winter clusters of red berries and wreaths of evergreen. There were some old pictures in the house in which scarlet shawls and purple curtains played a prominent part, and I spent a large portion of the time usually devoted to sleep by sensible children in admiring these, and conjuring up fantastic histories of each portrait.'

Altogether, the book is sweet, fresh, tender-hearted, like a whiff of the foaming ocean spray, quite out of the hackneyed round, and yet sufficiently realistic to impress the reader with a conviction that it is the record of a life which has been lived, which, if not the highest aim of the novelist's art, is yet an indispensable adjunct to it. We have only to add that Shetland is now easily reached by regular steamers plying between Granton (Edinburgh) and Lerwick, the capital of the islands; while we believe a small steamer plies from Lerwick for local accommodation. A summer cruise in a yacht would, however, be the perfection of voyaging for the purpose not only of seeing Shetland, but Orkney and various intermediate islands, such as Fair Isle and Foula, which are out of the way of general traffic. To visit these distant fragments of land in the north, forming the scene of Scott's vivid romance of The Pirate, would furnish a new sensation never to be forgotten.

THE MONTH: SCIENCE AND ARTS

The Report of the meeting of the British Association held last year at Glasgow has just been published in a goodly volume of more than three hundred pages. Among its contents are Reports of Committees, of which it may be said that the more widely they are known the better; and bearing in mind recent disasters at sea, the Investigation of the Steering Qualities of Ships by Professor Osborne Reynolds of Owens College, Manchester, appears the more interesting. 'The experiments of the Committee on large ships,' he remarks, 'have completely established the fact, that the reversing of the screw of a vessel with full way on, very much diminishes her steering power, and reverses what little it leaves; so that where a collision is imminent, to reverse the screw and use the rudder as if the ship would answer to it in the usual manner, is a certain way of bringing about the collision.' This is an important fact, for it is well known that collisions have been occasioned by the very means made use of to avoid them. And Professor Reynolds says further: 'It appears that a ship will turn faster, and for an angle of thirty degrees, in less room when driving full speed ahead, than with her engines reversed, even if the rudder is rightly used. Thus when an obstacle is too near to admit of stopping the ship, then the only chance is to keep the engines on full speed ahead, and so give the rudder an opportunity of doing its work. These general laws are of the greatest importance, but they apply in different degrees to different ships; and each commander should determine for himself how his ship will behave… It is also highly important that the effect of the reversal of the screw should be generally recognised, particularly in the law courts; for in the present state of opinion on the subject, there can be no doubt that judgment would go against any commander who had steamed on ahead, knowing that by so doing he had the best chance of avoiding a collision.'