Penelope's Experiences in Scotland

  ‘Wi’ a hundred pipers an’ a’, an’ a’,   Wi’ a hundred pipers an’ a’, an’ a’,   We’ll up an’ gie them a blaw, a blaw,   Wi’ a hundred pipers an’ a’, an’ a’!’

Susanna ushered in Mr. Macdonald and Dr. Moncrieffe as the last ‘blaw’ faded into silence, and Jean Dalziel came upstairs to say that they could seldom get a quiet moment for family prayers, because we were always at the piano, hurling incendiary sentiments into the air,—sentiments set to such stirring melodies that no one could resist them.

“We are very sorry, Miss Dalziel,” I said penitently. “We reserve an hour in the morning and another at bedtime for your uncle’s prayers, but we had no idea you had them at afternoon tea, even in Scotland. I believe that you are chaffing, and came up only to swell the chorus. Come, let us all sing together from ‘Dumfounder’d the English saw.’”

Mr. Macdonald and Dr. Moncrieffe gave such splendid body to the music, and Jean such warlike energy, that Salemina waved her paper-knife in a manner more than ever sanguinary, and Susanna, hesitating outside the door for sheer delight, had to be coaxed in with the tea-things. On the heels of the tea-things came the Dominie, another dear old friend of six weeks’ standing; and while the doctor sang ‘Jock o’ Hazeldean’ with such irresistible charm that we all longed to elope with somebody on the instant, Salemina dispensed buttered toast, marmalade sandwiches, and the fragrant cup. By this time we were thoroughly cosy, and Mr. Macdonald made himself and us very much at home by stirring the fire; whereupon Francesca embarrassed him by begging him not to touch it unless he could do it properly, which, she added, seemed quite unlikely, from the way in which he handled the poker.

“What will Edinburgh do without you?” he asked, turning towards us with flattering sadness in his tone. “Who will hear our Scotch stories, never suspecting their hoary old age? Who will ask us questions to which we somehow always know the answers? Who will make us study and reverence anew our own landmarks? Who will keep warm our national and local pride by judicious enthusiasm?”

“I think the national and local pride may be counted on to exist without any artificial stimulants,” dryly observed Francesca, whose spirit is not in the least quenched by approaching departure.

“Perhaps,” answered the Reverend Ronald; “but at any rate, you, Miss Monroe, will always be able to reflect that you have never been responsible even for its momentary inflation!”

“Isn’t it strange that she cannot get on better with that charming fellow?” murmured Salemina, as she passed me the sugar for my second cup.

“If your present symptoms of blindness continue, Salemina,” I said, searching for a small lump so as to gain time, “I shall write you a plaintive ballad, buy you a dog, and stand you on a street corner! If you had ever permitted yourself to ‘get on’ with any man as Francesca is getting on with Mr. Macdonald, you would now be Mrs.—Somebody.”

“Do you know, doctor,” asked the Dominie, “that Miss Hamilton shed real tears at Holyrood the other night, when the band played ‘Bonnie Charlie’s noo awa’?’”

“They were real,” I confessed, “in the sense that they certainly were not crocodile tears; but I am somewhat at a loss to explain them from a sensible, American standpoint. Of course my Jacobitism is purely impersonal, though scarcely more so than yours, at this late day; at least it is merely a poetic sentiment, for which Caroline, Baroness Nairne, is mainly responsible. My romantic tears came from a vision of the Bonnie Prince as he entered Holyrood, dressed in his short tartan coat, his scarlet breeches and military boots, the star of St. Andrew on his breast, a blue ribbon over his shoulder, and the famous blue velvet bonnet and white cockade. He must have looked so brave and handsome and hopeful at that moment, and the moment was so sadly brief, that when the band played the plaintive air I kept hearing the words—

  ‘Mony a heart will break in twa,   Should he no come back again.’

He did come back again to me that evening, and held a phantom levee behind the Marchioness of Heatherdale’s shoulder. His ‘ghaist’ looked bonnie and rosy and confident, yet all the time the band was playing the requiem for his lost cause and buried hopes.”

I looked towards the fire to hide the moisture that crept again into my eyes, and my glance fell upon Francesca sitting dreamily on a hassock in front of the cheerful blaze, her chin in the hollow of her palm, and the Reverend Ronald standing on the hearth-rug gazing at her, the poker in his hand, and his heart, I regret to say, in such an exposed position on his sleeve that even Salemina could have seen it had she turned her eyes that way.

Jean Dalziel broke the momentary silence: “I am sure I never hear the last two lines—

  ‘Better lo’ed ye canna be,   Will ye no’ come back again?’

without a lump in my throat,” and she hummed the lovely melody. “It is all as you say, purely impersonal and poetic. My mother is an Englishwoman, but she sings ‘Dumfounder’d the English saw, they saw’ with the greatest fire and fury.”

Chapter XIII. The spell of Scotland

“I think I was never so completely under the spell of a country as I am of Scotland.” I made this acknowledgment freely, but I knew that it would provoke comment from my compatriots.

“Oh yes, my dear, you have been just as spellbound before, only you don’t remember it,” replied Salemina promptly. “I have never seen a person more perilously appreciative or receptive than you.”

“‘Perilously’ is just the word,” chimed in Francesca delightedly; “when you care for a place you grow porous, as it were, until after a time you are precisely like blotting-paper. Now, there was Italy, for example. After eight weeks in Venice, you were completely Venetian, from your fan to the ridiculous little crepe shawl you wore because an Italian prince had told you that centuries were usually needed to teach a woman how to wear a shawl, but that you had been born with the art, and the shoulders! Anything but a watery street was repulsive to you. Cobblestones? ‘Ordinario, duro, brutto! A gondola? Ah, bellissima! Let me float for ever thus!’ You bathed your spirit in sunshine and colour; I can hear you murmur now, ‘O Venezia benedetta! non ti voglio lasciar!’”

“It was just the same when she spent a month in France with the Baroness de Hautenoblesse,” continued Salemina. “When she returned to America, it is no flattery to say that in dress, attitude, inflection, manner, she was a thorough Parisienne. There was an elegant superficiality and a superficial elegance about her that I can never forget, nor yet her extraordinary volubility in a foreign language,—the fluency with which she expressed her inmost soul on all topics without the aid of a single irregular verb, for these she was never able to acquire; oh, it was wonderful, but there was no affectation about it; she had simply been a kind of blotting-paper, as Miss Monroe says, and France had written itself all over her.”

“I don’t wish to interfere with anybody’s diagnosis,” I interposed at the first possible moment, “but perhaps after you’ve both finished your psychologic investigation the subject may be allowed to explain herself from the inside, so to speak. I won’t deny the spell of Italy, but I think the spell that Scotland casts over one is quite a different thing, more spiritual, more difficult to break. Italy’s charm has something physical in it; it is born of blue sky, sunlit waves, soft atmosphere, orange sails, and yellow moons, and appeals more to the senses. In Scotland the climate certainly has nought to do with it, but the imagination is somehow made captive. I am not enthralled by the past of Italy or France, for instance.”

“Of course you are not at the present moment,” said Francesca, “because you are enthralled by the past of Scotland, and even you cannot be the slave of two pasts at the same time.”

“I never was particularly enthralled by Italy’s past,” I argued with exemplary patience, “but the romance of Scotland has a flavour all its own. I do not quite know the secret of it.”

“It’s the kilts and the pipes,” said Francesca.

“No, the history.” (This from Salemina.)

“Or Sir Walter and the literature,” suggested Mr. Macdonald.

“Or the songs and ballads,” ventured Jean Dalziel.

“There!” I exclaimed triumphantly, “you see for yourselves you have named avenue after avenue along which one’s mind is led in charmed subjection. Where can you find battles that kindle your fancy like Falkirk and Flodden and Culloden and Bannockburn? Where a sovereign that attracts, baffles, repels, allures, like Mary Queen of Scots,—and where, tell me where, is there a Pretender like Bonnie Prince Charlie? Think of the spirit in those old Scottish matrons who could sing—

  ‘I’ll sell my rock, I’ll sell my reel,   My rippling-kame and spinning-wheel,   To buy my lad a tartan plaid,   A braidsword, durk and white cockade.’”

“Yes,” chimed in Salemina when I had finished quoting, “or that other verse that goes—

  ‘I ance had sons, I now hae nane,     I bare them toiling sairlie;   But I would bear them a’ again     To lose them a’ for Charlie!’

Isn’t the enthusiasm almost beyond belief at this distance of time?” she went on; “and isn’t it a curious fact, as Mr. Macdonald told me a moment ago, that though the whole country was vocal with songs for the lost cause and the fallen race, not one in favour of the victors ever became popular?”

“Sympathy for the under dog, as Miss Monroe’s countrywomen would say picturesquely,” remarked Mr. Macdonald.

“I don’t see why all the vulgarisms in the dictionary should be foisted on the American girl,” retorted Francesca loftily, “unless, indeed, it is a determined attempt to find spots upon the sun for fear we shall worship it!”

“Quite so, quite so!” returned the Reverend Ronald, who has had reason to know that this phrase reduces Miss Monroe to voiceless rage.

“The Stuart charm and personal magnetism must have been a powerful factor in all that movement,” said Salemina, plunging hastily back into the topic to avert any further recrimination. “I suppose we feel it even now, and if I had been alive in 1745 I should probably have made myself ridiculous. ‘Old maiden ladies,’ I read this morning, ‘were the last leal Jacobites in Edinburgh; spinsterhood in its loneliness remained ever true to Prince Charlie and the vanished dreams of youth.’”

“Yes,” continued the Dominie, “the story is told of the last of those Jacobite ladies who never failed to close her Prayer-Book and stand erect in silent protest when the prayer for ‘King George III. and the reigning family’ was read by the congregation.”

“Do you remember the prayer of the Reverend Neil M’Vicar in St. Cuthbert’s?” asked Mr. Macdonald. “It was in 1745, after the victory at Prestonpans, when a message was sent to the Edinburgh ministers, in the name of ‘Charles, Prince Regent’ desiring them to open their churches next day as usual. M’Vicar preached to a large congregation, many of whom were armed Highlanders, and prayed for George II., and also for Charles Edward, in the following fashion: ‘Bless the king! Thou knowest what king I mean. May the crown sit long upon his head! As for that young man who has come among us to seek an earthly crown, we beseech Thee to take him to Thyself, and give him a crown of glory!’”

“Ah, what a pity the Bonnie Prince had not died after his meteor victory at Falkirk!” exclaimed Jean Dalziel, when we had finished laughing at Mr. Macdonald’s story.

“Or at Culloden, ‘where, quenched in blood on the Muir of Drummossie, the star of the Stuarts sank forever,’” quoted the Dominie. “There is where his better self died; would that the young Chevalier had died with it! By the way, doctor, we must not sit here eating goodies and sipping tea until the dinner-hour, for these ladies have doubtless much to do for their flitting” (a pretty Scots word for ‘moving’).

“We are quite ready for our flitting so far as packing is concerned,” Salemina assured him. “Would that we were as ready in spirit! Miss Hamilton has even written her farewell poem, which I am sure she will read for the asking.”

“She will read it without that formality,” murmured Francesca. “She has lived and toiled only for this moment, and the poem is in her pocket.”

“Delightful!” said the doctor flatteringly. “Has she favoured you already? Have you heard it, Miss Monroe?”

“Have we heard it!” ejaculated that young person. “We have heard nothing else all the morning! What you will take for local colour is nothing but our mental life-blood, which she has mercilessly drawn to stain her verses. We each tried to write a Scottish poem, and as Miss Hamilton’s was better, or perhaps I might say less bad, than ours, we encouraged her to develop and finish it. I wanted to do an imitation of Lindsay’s

  ‘Adieu, Edinburgh! thou heich triumphant town,   Within whose bounds richt blithefull have I been!

but it proved too difficult. Miss Hamilton’s general idea was that we should write some verses in good plain English. Then we were to take out all the final g’s, and indeed the final letters from all the words wherever it was possible, so that full, awful, call, ball, hall, and away should be fu’, awfu’, ca’, ba’, ha’, an’ awa’. This alone gives great charm and character to a poem; but we were also to change all words ending in ow into aw. This doesn’t injure the verse, you see, as blaw and snaw rhyme just as well as blow and snow, beside bringing tears to the common eye with their poetic associations. Similarly, if we had daughter and slaughter, we were to write them dochter and slauchter, substituting in all cases doon, froon, goon, and toon, for down, frown gown, and town. Then we made a list of Scottish idols,—pet words, national institutions, stock phrases, beloved objects,—convinced if we could weave them in we should attain ‘atmosphere.’ Here is the first list; it lengthened speedily: thistle, tartan, haar, haggis, kirk, claymore, parritch, broom, whin, sporran, whaup, plaid, scone, collops, whisky, mutch, cairngorm, oatmeal, brae, kilt, brose, heather. Salemina and I were too devoted to common-sense to succeed in this weaving process, so Penelope triumphed and won the first prize, both for that and also because she brought in a saying given us by Miss Dalziel, about the social classification of all Scotland into ‘the gentlemen of the North, men of the South, people of the West, fowk o’ Fife, and the Paisley bodies.’ We think that her success came chiefly from her writing the verses with a Scotch plaid lead-pencil. What effect the absorption of so much red, blue, and green paint will have I cannot fancy, but she ate off—and up—all the tartan glaze before finishing the poem; it had a wonderfully stimulating effect, but the end is not yet!”

Of course there was a chorus of laughter when the young wretch exhibited my battered pencil, bought in Princes Street yesterday, its gay Gordon tints sadly disfigured by the destroying tooth, not of Time, but of a bard in the throes of composition.

“We bestowed a consolation prize on Salemina,” continued Francesca, “because she succeeded in getting hoots, losh, havers, and blethers into one line, but naturally she could not maintain such an ideal standard. Read your verses, Pen, though there is little hope that our friends will enjoy them as much as you do. Whenever Miss Hamilton writes anything of this kind, she emulates her distinguished ancestor Sir William Hamilton, who always fell off his own chair in fits of laughter when he was composing verses.”

With this inspiring introduction I read my lines as follows:—

AN AMERICAN GIRL’S FAREWELL TO EDINBURGH

The muse being somewhat under the influence of the Scottish ballad

   I canna thole my ain toun,     Sin’ I hae dwelt i’ this;   To bide in Edinboro’ reek     Wad be the tap o’ bliss.   Yon bonnie plaid aboot me hap,     The skirlin’ pipes gae bring,   With thistles fair tie up my hair,     While I of Scotia sing.   The collops an’ the cairngorms,     The haggis an’ the whin,   The ‘Staiblished, Free, an’ U.P. kirks,     The hairt convinced o’ sin,—   The parritch an’ the heather-bell,     The snawdrap on the shaw,   The bit lam’s bleatin’ on the braes,—     How can I leave them a’?   How can I leave the marmalade     An’ bonnets o’ Dundee?   The haar, the haddies, an’ the brose,     The East win’ blawin’ free?   How can I lay my sporran by,     An’ sit me doun at hame,   Wi’oot a Hieland philabeg     Or hyphenated name?   I lo’e the gentry o’ the North,     The Southern men I lo’e,   The canty people o’ the West,     The Paisley bodies too.   The pawky folk o’ Fife are dear,—     Sae dear are ane an’ a’,   That e’en to think that we maun pairt     Maist braks my hairt in twa.   So fetch me tartans, heather, scones,     An’ dye my tresses red;   I’d deck me like th’ unconquer’d Scots,     Wha hae wi’ Wallace bled.   Then bind my claymore to my side,     My kilt an’ mutch gae bring;   While Scottish lays soun’ i’ my lugs     M’Kinley’s no my king,—   For Charlie, bonnie Stuart Prince,     Has turned me Jacobite;   I’d wear displayed the white cockade.     An’ (whiles) for him I’ll fight!   An’ (whiles) I’d fight for a’ that’s Scotch,     Save whusky an’ oatmeal,   For wi’ their ballads i’ my bluid,     Nae Scot could be mair leal!

I fancied that I had pitched my verses in so high a key that no one could mistake their burlesque intention. What was my confusion, however, to have one of the company remark when I finished, ‘Extremely pretty; but a mutch, you know, is an article of WOMAN’S apparel, and would never be worn with a kilt!’

Mr. Macdonald flung himself gallantly into the breach. He is such a dear fellow! So quick, so discriminating, so warm-hearted!

“Don’t pick flaws in Miss Hamilton’s finest line! That picture of a fair American, clad in a kilt and mutch, decked in heather and scones, and brandishing a claymore, will live for ever in my memory. Don’t clip the wings of her imagination! You will be telling her soon that one doesn’t tie one’s hair with thistles, nor couple collops with cairngorms.”

Somebody sent Francesca a great bunch of yellow broom, late that afternoon. There was no name in the box, she said, but at night she wore the odorous tips in the bosom of her black dinner-gown, and standing erect in her dark hair like golden aigrettes.

When she came into my room to say good night, she laid the pretty frock in one of my trunks, which was to be filled with garments of fashionable society and left behind in Edinburgh. The next moment I chanced to look on the floor, and discovered a little card, a bent card with two lines written on it:—

  ‘Better lo’ed ye canna be,   Will ye no’ come back again?’

We have received many invitations in that handwriting. I know it well, and so does Francesca, though it is blurred; and the reason for this, according to my way of thinking, is that it has been lying next the moist stems of flowers, and unless I do her wrong, very near to somebody’s warm heart as well.

I will not betray her to Salemina, even to gain a victory over that blind and deaf but much beloved woman. How could I, with my heart beating high at the thought of seeing my ain dear laddie before many days?

   Oh, love, love, lassie,     Love is like a dizziness:   It winna lat a puir body     Gang aboot his business.’

Chapter XIV. The wee theekit hoosie in the loaning

  ‘Now she’s cast aff her bonny shoon     Made o’ gilded leather,   And she’s put on her Hieland brogues     To skip amang the heather.   And she’s cast aff her bonny goon     Made o’ the silk and satin,   And she’s put on a tartan plaid     To row amang the braken.’Lizzie Baillie.

We are in the East Neuk o’ Fife; we are in Pettybaw; we are neither boarders nor lodgers; we are residents, inhabitants, householders, and we live (live, mind you) in a wee theekit hoosie in the old loaning. Words fail to tell you how absolutely Scotch we are and how blissfully happy. It is a happiness, I assure you, achieved through great tribulation. Salemina and I travelled many miles in railway trains, and many in various other sorts of wheeled vehicles, while the ideal ever beckoned us onward. I was determined to find a romantic lodging, Salemina a comfortable one, and this special combination of virtues is next to impossible, as every one knows. Linghurst was too much of a town; Bonnie Craig had no respectable inn; Winnybrae was struggling to be a watering-place; Broomlea had no golf-course within ten miles, and we intended to go back to our native land and win silver goblets in mixed foursomes; the ‘new toun o’ Fairlock’ (which looked centuries old) was delightful, but we could not find apartments there; Pinkie Leith was nice, but they were tearing up the ‘fore street’ and laying drain-pipes in it. Strathdee had been highly recommended, but it rained when we were in Strathdee, and nobody can deliberately settle in a place where it rains during the process of deliberation. No train left this moist and dripping hamlet for three hours, so we took a covered trap and drove onward in melancholy mood. Suddenly the clouds lifted and the rain ceased; the driver thought we should be having settled weather now, and put back the top of the carriage, saying meanwhile that it was a verra dry simmer this year, and that the crops sairly needed shoo’rs.

“Of course, if there is any district in Scotland where for any reason droughts are possible, that is where we wish to settle,” I whispered to Salemina; “though, so far as I can see, the Strathdee crops are up to their knees in mud. Here is another wee village. What is this place, driver?”

“Pettybaw, mam; a fine toun!”

“Will there be apartments to let there?”

“I cudna say, mam.”

“Susanna Crum’s father! How curious that he should live here!” I murmured; and at this moment the sun came out, and shone full, or at least almost full, on our future home.

“Pettybaw! Petit bois, I suppose,” said Salemina; “and there, to be sure, it is,—the ‘little wood’ yonder.”

We drove to the Pettybaw Inn and Posting Establishment, and, alighting, dismissed the driver. We had still three good hours of daylight, although it was five o’clock, and we refreshed ourselves with a delicious cup of tea before looking for lodgings. We consulted the greengrocer, the baker, and the flesher, about furnished apartments, and started on our quest, not regarding the little posting establishment as a possibility. Apartments we found to be very scarce, and in one or two places that were quite suitable the landlady refused to do any cooking. We wandered from house to house, the sun shining brighter and brighter, and Pettybaw looking lovelier and lovelier; and as we were refused shelter again and again, we grew more and more enamoured, as is the manner of human kind. The blue sea sparkled, and Pettybaw Sands gleamed white a mile or two in the distance, the pretty stone church raised its curved spire from the green trees, the manse next door was hidden in vines, the sheep lay close to the grey stone walls and the young lambs nestled beside them, while the song of the burn, tinkling merrily down the glade on the edge of which we stood, and the cawing of the rooks in the little wood, were the only sounds to be heard.

Salemina, under the influence of this sylvan solitude, nobly declared that she could and would do without a set bath-tub, and proposed building a cabin and living near to nature’s heart.

“I think, on the whole, we should be more comfortable living near to the innkeeper’s heart,” I answered. “Let us go back there and pass the night, trying thus the bed and breakfast, with a view to seeing what they are like—although they did say in Edinburgh that nobody thinks of living in these wayside hostelries.”

Back we went, accordingly, and after ordering dinner came out and strolled idly up the main street. A small sign in the draper’s window, heretofore overlooked, caught our eye. ‘House and Garden To Let Inquire Within.’ Inquiring within with all possible speed, we found the draper selling winceys, the draper’s assistant tidying the ribbon-box, the draper’s wife sewing in one corner, and the draper’s baby playing on the clean floor. We were impressed favourably, and entered into negotiations without delay.

“The house will be in the loaning; do you mind, ma’am?” asked the draper. (We have long since discovered that this use of the verb is a bequest from the Gaelic, in which there is no present tense. Man never is, but always to be blessed, in that language, which in this particular is not unlike old-fashioned Calvinism.)