Between Ourselves

by Donald Smith

  We have driven out the blue devils, as Fergusson would have it. Just mild indisposition, and the bottle has been set aside by Bob’s decree. Now my whole mind can concentrate on the aching knee. No crutches today, but how long am I confined to this miserable room four floors removed from Mother Earth?

  I sent out to have a set of Bible sheets bound for reading. Read through I mean like Tristram Shandy or Tom Jones. Let’s see if this directory of texts still adds up to a book.

  How to reply to Mrs McLehose?

  First, I must confess to romantic weakness – my heart may have strayed. Second, is it a crime to be moved when you meet an unfortunate woman – one deserted by those who should protect, comfort and cherish? Especially when she is lovely of form and nimble in mind. This last addition might be pruned back. Third, she upbraids me. God rot the third. I need Betty’s gruel, my pot, and some more sleep.

  Later. Why is the poet wasting time on this letter when he should be practical? It will have to do as it is. I can command respect from long practice, but what will she make of it, the fair Nancy? I cannot somehow figure her clearly after all this epistolary guddling. Who knows what may chime? I could incorporate all my tacks into a fair copy in sequence – then she can choose the paragraph and style that please her best. I have no one to guide me here since even my journal rarely replies. Editing songs is easier than this flummery. Dispatch and be damned.

  Have taken tooth and nail to the Bible. Got through the five books of Moses and half of Joshua by broth time. It really is a glorious book – and that before reaching the Psalms or the sublime chanting of Isaiah. Everything in life is here from the highest to the lowest: the faith of Abraham and the rape of Dinah, steadfast Noah and deceiving Jacob. Humanity as much as Divinity. Even Milton cannot command the epic sweep from Creation to Apocalypse. The Bible rehearses and reconciles us to the variorum of existence. The day passes sans longueur.

  Hobbled to the window. Snow driving across the firth and shrouding Calton Hill.

  Up in the morning’s no for me

  Up in the morning early

  When aa the hills are covered wi snaw

  I’m sure its winter fairly

  Where did that come from? Perhaps someone sang it ower my cradle. Somebody’s singing it still by the banks of Doon or Ayr. Give it a verse.

  The burds sit chitterin in the thorn

  A day they fare but sparely

  And lang’s the nicht frae e’en tae morn

  I’m sure its winter fairly

  I have been neglecting Johnson and his second volume; time to make amends.

  That desolate hill reminds me of ‘The Love Sick Maid’. The woman’s lover has been hung at the Curragh of Kildare and she is left desolate. Summer is coming but her heart is wintry.

  The winter it is past, and the summer comes at last,

  And the small birds sing on every tree.

  The hearts of these are glad, but mine is very sad,

  For my lover has parted from me.

  All you that are in love and cannot it remove,

  I pity the pains you endure.

  For experience makes me know that your hearts are full of woe,

  A woe that no mortal can cure.

  This has promise – more stanzas perhaps and it would do Johnson. She has the true and tender note that lassie of Kildare. Nature’s beauty with the heart’s lament. We must not neglect the Irish melodies.

  What was the song Jean used to sing – ‘The Northern Lass’.

  Stay my charmer, can you leave me

  Cruel, cruel to deceive me.

  Can you go… can you go.

  It’s a Cumberland air, ‘She Raise and Loot me in’, but sung in Scotland and deserving some fresh words.

  Have worked up my list. Completed seven by the time Betty brought me supper. I tried her out on ‘The Northern Lass’ but she threatened to turn skittish. Nae fule like an auld fule.

  Judges, Samuel, Chronicles, Kings. Bloody tyrannies and righteous revolts. And old King David, he who slew Goliath and whom Jonathan loved, now chilled in life and limb, takes a virgin lassie to his bed. Anything to drive away the crawling spectre on his breast – death and judgement. In his mind’s eye he sees Bathsheba in all her naked loveliness bathed, anointing her body with oils and perfumes.

  O Prince’s daughter, the joints of thy thighs are like jewels,

  Thy navel like a round goblet that wanteth not liquor.

  But the pintle lies shrunken below his belly like a wilted flooer. And the auld bear Saul rages and beats in his head, till he cries out for the balm of music and a girl’s soft warm flesh. Jehovah and Jehoshaphat, those texts were rarely taken up in Mauchline’s kirk. Old age slavering and pawing in his stews – bit close to home.

  And what of me stuck in this den for ever, with only old Betty to attend me? Gloomy Psalms of repentance for my reading. Am I in hibernation that none visits or writes?

  A king is served and flattered even in his dotage, but a poet is patronised and then shunned by fleeting fashion.

  Poor Johnson is the honourable exception. He still attends in motley and collects his dues in song. My contributions to his second volume are mounting up.

  Though mountains rise and deserts howl

  And oceans roar between;

  Yet dearer than my deathless soul

  I still would love my Jean.

  Wearying in the solitary state of the Old Testament, I dipped into the New. Man of Sorrows – more brother than Saviour.

  I have been in perpetual war with these doctrines of our reverend priesthood, that we are born slaves of iniquity wholly inclined to what is evil. Heirs of perdition, without spiritual filtration, the purgative chemistry of effectual calling, the oily medicine of sanctification – we cannot attain to virtue.

  I hold the opposite, and conscience is my vindication. We come into the world ready to do good, until mixed with the alloy of selfishness, often disguised as prudence, the precious metal of our souls turns base currency. And that is why the gentler sex makes a more elegant impression of purity, goodness and truth than barbarian man.

  Moreover a Benevolent Being broods over our earthly existence wishing the best for each and every one of us. Even Satan is of his party in the end. And that is why beyond our stinted bourne there is an immortal realm. If we lie down in the grave like a piece of broke machinery so be it – at least there is an end to pain and sorrow. But if that thing in us called mind or soul survives, then a mortal man conscious of acting an honest part among his fellows has nothing to fear, granting even that at times he may have been the sport of passions and instincts.

  We go out to a great Unknown Parent who gave us these passions, and well knows their force. What other purpose in the giving? O Man of Sorrows, acquainted with grief. If not, then we are the playthings of cruel fate.

  They brought the children to Jesus that he might bless them. She who stands to me in dear relation, who calls me Father, Daddy. Will her voice not be heard in the presence of that Being, author of our lives and breath? Some are already at his knee, abandoned in the helpless innocence of infancy.

  Behold thou desirest truth in the inward parts

  And in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.

  Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean

  Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.

  Sober and composed to rest.

  Christmas Day. I stumbled down the stairs supported on both sides to family dinner. Happy scene as each returned from daily labour to gather round a welcoming hearth. Prayers offered up, warm fellowship, bright candlelight and savoury smells to enrich the appetite.

  When will I have a hearth to call my own again – a place to gather my loved ones around me at peace, secure in a father’s love? Composed a suitable reflection and then early to bed with little pain. Giving thanks for the child born in a stable, laid in the manger like an orphaned lamb in the cruel depths of winter.

  Interleaved, a prayer.

&nbs
p; O thou great unknown Power, thou almighty God who has lighted up reason in my breast and blessed me with immortality, how often have I wandered from that order necessary for the perfection of thy works. Yet thou hast never left me nor forsaken me.

  Almost asleep when Bob and Willie arrived last night fully uproarious. They were marking the season and set on unstinting celebration of my recovery. I felt a sudden release from hermetic melancholy. Instead, I embraced joyful salutes to Yule, rodomontade unrestrained. Nothing can better the full, frank fellowship of men, Wassail, wassail.

  Inconsolable by morning. Tremore prostratus. Lay inert till the short day sank once again into peaceful dark. Betty was hovering on the edge of vision. When I sat on the bed and sprayed my pot, there was an acid stink of cow piss.

  By evening though I was on the mend and mobile. A letter arrived unannounced from Mrs McLehose. She now proposes a formal literary correspondence in which I will be Sylvander, the shepherd swain, and she Clarinda, a woodland nymph. This pastoral exchange will free us from tiresome carpings. Does the grime of daily existence constrain us? Then let us adopt the liberty of actors in a stage play.

  My estimate of Agnes McLehose, nay, Clarinda, continues to soar. I must rise to this new challenge as Sylvander without totally surrendering Robert Burns. She takes me at my own value while at the same time setting the terms of our engagement. Has the poet met his match? A star has risen in Potterrow and I must go and worship, as long as I am detained in Edinburgh at least.

  Fell asleep last night over Clarinda’s poems, feeling that some supportive yet amending remarks might be well received. Rather tepid today, so sent a holding note – copying out her verses among my most valued pieces and so forth. Sylvander will write soon.

  Is it not strange that someone of such great worth and natural gifts should be so unhappy? She is planning to leave town for a few days to visit in the country.

  Gaining strength now every day, though still leaning on my crutches. I am invited to dine next door on Monday but can hardly venture out for the intense cold. As soon as I can get into a coach, I will call on Clarinda. Tomorrow I will lay the keel of a matchless epistolary vessel.

  Much troubled with wind and relieved to sink back into a soothing daze.

  Professor Gregory came round, genial and much concerned about my knee. Knowing his literary tastes, I gave him a sample of Clarinda’s verse without revealing the author. He was very complimentary, but did he think they were mine? What an excellent fellow Gregory is – tall, generous, vigorous, and a true scholar. If only Edinburgh were full of his like.

  Sat down seriously to the First Epistle. I was fluent, masterful, accomplished and could have gone on forever. But Betty came in with the soup.

  By evening a hurried response arrived with a messenger from Potterrow. She writes in haste on the eve of departure. Took it to bed with me to mull over.

  Interleaved: first letter to Clarinda, some loose pages.

  I beg your pardon, my dear Clarinda, for the fragment scrawl I sent you yesterday. I really don’t know what I wrote. A gentleman for whose character and abilities I have the highest regard called in just as I had begun the second sentence and I did not want the porter to wait.

  I read several of my bagatelles to this much respected friend, and among them your lines which I had copied out. He began some criticisms on them all, yours included, when I informed him that they were the work of a young lady in this town. That I assure you made him stare and he protested that he did not believe any young woman in Edinburgh capable of such lines.

  If you know anything of Professor Gregory you will doubt neither his ability nor his sincerity. I do love you, if possible, still better for having so fine a taste and talent for poetry. There, I have gone wrong again in my usual unguarded way, but you may erase the word and put esteem, respect or any other tame Dutch expression you please in its place.

  You cannot imagine, Clarinda, (I like the idea of Arcadian names in a commerce of this kind), how much store I have set by your future friendship. I don’t know if you have a just idea of my character, but I wish you to see me as I am. I am, as most people of my trade are, a strange will o wisp being, the victim of much imprudence and many follies. My great constituent elements are pride and passion. The first I have tried to humanise into integrity and honour, the second makes me a devotee to the warmest degree of enthusiasm in love, religion or friendship.

  It is true that I have only seen you once, but how much I formed upon that moment! Do not think I flatter you, or have a design upon you, Clarinda – I have too much pride for the one and too little cold contrivance for the other. But of all God’s creatures you struck me with the deepest, strongest and most permanent impression. And I say ‘most permanent’ knowing both my prepossessions and my powers.

  Why are you so unhappy, Clarinda? And why are so many of our fellow creatures, unworthy to belong to the same species, blest with all they can wish? You have a hand open to give – why were you denied the pleasure? You have a heart formed for all the most refined luxuries of love – why was that heart ever wrung?

  O Clarinda, shall we not meet in some yet unknown state of being, where the hand of plenty will minister to the highest wish of benevolence? And where the chill north wind of Prudence will never blow over the flowery fields of enjoyment? If we do not then human kind was made in vain. I deserve most of the unhappy hours that linger over my head; they are the wages of my labour. But what unprovoked demon, malignant as hell, stole upon the confidence of over trusting fate, and dashed your cup of life with undeserved sorrow?

  Let me know how long you will be out of town: I shall count the hours till you inform me of your return. Cursed propriety forbids you seeing me now, and as soon as I can walk I must bid Edinburgh adieu. All this winter – these three months past – what luxury of intercourse I have lost. Lord, why are we born to meet with friends whose company we cannot enjoy, miseries that we cannot relieve.

  I am interrupted. Adieu, my dear Clarinda!

  SYLVANDER

  Sleepy today again and lazy. No business in hand, no Creech in sight, and Clarinda in rural retreat. I lay in bed and reviewed her letter once again.

  She spurns my heartfelt sympathy since she is not unhappy but unfortunate. She still has her children, her friends, a modest competence, and freedom from guilt. Note a certain emphasis on the last. Would that the poet had half her resilience.

  Religion has been her balm in every woe. Instead of scorning her tenets I should fall down and reverence even the shadow of true faith. She has me marked for an infidel – but when did I scorn? Is someone pouring Edinburgh’s poison in her ear?

  She will write again at her leisure. Who is she staying with in the country? And why has she not informed me?

  Sweet sermoniser, mouthing delicious remonstrance. There is something in her tone revives my natural instinct. I want to hear her whisper cheek to cheek, lip to ear.

  Postscript – I entreat you not to mention our correspondence to anyone on earth. Hence no forwarding address. Though her innocence is conscious, her situation is delicate. Never a truer word, Clarinda. Though my lips are sealed, my upright member tells a different tale.

  O toppled towers of Ilium, your history began in such a moment. O gods, delirium amoris! Down, Hector, down.

  Tomorrow is a dinner amidst distinguished company to mark the birthday of Prince Charles Edward Stewart. Loyalty to the true line of Scottish kings continues strong, and only this month His Royal Highness recognised Charlotte, his natural daughter by Clementina Walkinshaw, as Duchess of Albany. So he will not die without issue – the last of the blood is no longer the last – and all because of one glance across the candelabra at Bannockburn House as the Bonnie Prince led his army south. Thus history is made. I visited Bannockburn House in the summer and now I have made a song for Clementina’s lovely daughter.

  My heart is wae and unco wae

  To think upon the raging sea

  That roars between her gardens gr
een

  And the bonnie lass o Albanie

  Today’s task was a Birthday Ode for the dinner. Possibly the worst I have ever written. It creaks with the stage machinery of sentiment but it will serve, after the toasts have gone round and round again.

  Only the Muse of song still attends me. I cannot write in Edinburgh without curbing passion, which is the wellspring of poetic impulse. Will anyone at this dinner draw a sword for Charlie?

  The injured Stewarts line are gone

  A race outlandish fill their throne

  An idiot race to honour lost

  Who knows them best despises most.

  The defeat of despots and the overthrow of blind tyranny should be the objects of our study. Scotland may be a client kingdom now, but the instinct for liberty still pulses through our veins. One day the flame of freedom will once more burst forth with unrestrained fervour. Let the great ones beware – they know who they are – for the day and the hour will come – ‘some blackened pride still burns inside this shell of bloody treason’.

  Descended the stairs unaided and crutched round to the dinner. Oliphant of Gask, Lady Nairne’s son, was in the company.

  Toasts unbounded; Ode redounded.

  On my return, faithful Betty tacked out from the kitchen and oxtered me back upstairs. Convivial salutes to ‘Him Wha’s Awa’ sound in my ears like salvos of ordnance. Head clear as the frosty night beneath a maze of stars. Yet legs and ankles mutinous. Glad to regain quarters uncapsized. Recumbent, end night.

  Woke late and lay feverish, listening to my heart beat and my blood pound like a hammer on the brain. Mouth dry and rancid. Suddenly I wanted to be at Mossgiel, or even Lochlea, up on a frosty morning and out into the yard to feed, milk and fodder. On Ne’erday, however hard the season, there’s an extra handful to every beast with a blessing for the year ahead.

  Decided to prepare a statement for Nancy setting out my follies along with the wisdom towards which I am still honestly striving. This would be a revision of my letter to John Moore laying my sum of experience before a benevolent friend and judge. But could not warm to the task; my pen scratched, stuttered to a halt.