Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  This Dryburgh belongs now to the Earl of Buchan, having been bought by him from a family of the name of Haliburton, ancestral connections of Scott, who, in his autobiography, seems to lament certain mischances of fortune which prevented the estate from coming into his own family, and gave them, he said, nothing but the right of stretching their bones there. It seems a pity, too, because the possession of this rich, poetic ruin would have been a mine of wealth to Scott, far transcending the stateliest of modern houses.

  Now, if you do not remember Scott’s poem, of the Eve of St. John, you ought to read it over; for it is, I think, the most spirited of all his ballads; nothing conceals the transcendent lustre and beauty of these compositions, but the splendor of his other literary productions. Had he never written any thing but these, they would have made him a name as a poet. As it was, I found the fanciful chime of the cadences in this ballad ringing through my ears. I kept saying to myself —

  “The Dryburgh bells do ring,

  And the white monks do sing

  For Sir Richard of Coldinghame.”

  And as I was wandering around in the labyrinth, of old, broken, mossy arches, I thought —

  “There is a nun in Dryburgh bower

  Ne’er looks upon the sun;

  There is a monk in Melrose tower,

  He speaketh word to none.

  That nun who ne’er beholds the day,

  That monk who speaks to none,

  That nun was Smaylhome’s lady gay,

  That monk the bold Baron.”

  It seems that there is a vault in this edifice which has had some superstitious legends attached to it, from having been the residence, about fifty years ago, of a mysterious lady, who, being under a vow never to behold the light of the sun, only left her cell at midnight. This little story, of course, gives just enough superstitious chill to this beautiful ruin to help the effect of the pointed arches, the clinging wreaths of ivy, the shadowy pines, and yew trees; in short, if one had not a guide waiting, who had a bad cold, if one could stroll here at leisure by twilight or moonlight, one might get up a considerable deal of the mystic and poetic.

  There is a part of the ruin that stands most picturesquely by itself, as if old Time had intended it for a monument. It is the ruin of that part of the chapel called St. Mary’s Aisle; it stands surrounded by luxuriant thickets of pine and other trees, a cluster of beautiful Gothic arches supporting a second tier of smaller and more fanciful ones, one or two of which have that light touch of the Moorish in their form which gives such a singular and poetic effect in many of the old Gothic ruins. Out of these wild arches and windows wave wreaths of ivy, and slender harebells shake their blue pendants, looking in and out of the lattices like little capricious fairies. There are fragments of ruins lying on the ground, and the whole air of the thing is as wild, and dreamlike, and picturesque as the poet’s fanciful heart could have desired.

  Underneath these arches he lies beside his wife; around him the representation of the two things he loved most — the wild bloom and beauty of nature, and the architectural memorial of by-gone history and art. Yet there was one thing I felt I would have had otherwise; it seemed to me that the flat stones of the pavement are a weight too heavy and too cold to be laid on the breast of a lover of nature and the beautiful. The green turf, springing with flowers, that lies above a grave, does not seem, to us so hopeless a barrier between us and what was warm and loving; the springing grass and daisies there seem, types and assurances that the mortal beneath shall put on immortality; they come up to us as kind messages from the peaceful dust, to say that it is resting in a certain hope of a glorious resurrection.

  On the cold flagstones, walled in by iron railings, there were no daisies and no moss; but I picked many of both from, the green turf around, which, with some sprigs of ivy from the walls, I send you.

  It is strange that we turn away from the grave of this man, who achieved to himself the most brilliant destiny that ever an author did, — raising himself by his own unassisted efforts to be the chosen companions of nobles and princes, obtaining all that heart could desire of riches and honor, — we turn away and say, Poor Walter Scott! How desolately touching is the account in Lockhart, of his dim and indistinct agony the day his wife was brought here to be buried! and the last part of that biography is the saddest history that I know; it really makes us breathe a long sigh of relief when we read of the lowering of the coffin into this vault.

  What force does all this give to the passage in his diary in which he records his estimate of life!—”What is this world? a dream within a dream. As we grow older, each step is an awakening. The youth awakes, as he thinks, from childhood; the full-grown man despises the pursuits of youth as visionary; the old man looks on manhood as a feverish dream. The grave the last sleep? No; it is the last and final awakening.”

  It has often been remarked, that there is no particular moral purpose aimed at by Scott in his writings; he often speaks of it himself in his last days, in a tone of humility. He represents himself as having been employed mostly in the comparatively secondary department of giving innocent amusement. He often expressed, humbly and earnestly, the hope that he had, at least, done no harm; but I am inclined to think, that although moral effect was not primarily his object, yet the influence of his writings and whole existence on earth has been decidedly good.

  It is a great thing to have a mind of such power and such influence, whose recognitions of right and wrong, of virtue and vice, were, in most cases, so clear and determined. He never enlists our sympathies in favor of vice, by drawing those seductive pictures, in which it comes so near the shape and form of virtue that the mind is puzzled as to the boundary line. He never makes young ladies feel that they would like to marry corsairs, pirates, or sentimental villains of any description. The most objectionable thing, perhaps, about his influence, is its sympathy with the war spirit. A person Christianly educated can hardly read some of his descriptions in the Lady of the Lake and Marmion without an emotion of disgust, like what is excited by the same things in Homer; and as the world comes more and more under the influence of Christ, it will recede more and more from this kind of literature.

  Scott has been censured as being wilfully unjust to the Covenanters and Puritans. I think he meant really to deal fairly by them, and that what he called fairness might seem rank injustice to those brought up to venerate them, as we have been. I suppose that in Old Mortality it was Scott’s honest intention to balance the two parties about fairly, by putting on the Covenant side his good, steady, well-behaved hero, Mr. Morton, who is just as much of a Puritan as the Puritans would have been had they taken Sir Walter Scott’s advice; that is to say, a very nice, sensible, moral man, who takes the Puritan side because he thinks it the right side, but contemplates all the devotional enthusiasm and religious ecstasies of his associates from a merely artistic and pictorial point of view. The trouble was, when he got his model Puritan done, nobody ever knew what he was meant for; and then all the young ladies voted steady Henry Morton a bore, and went to falling in love with his Cavalier rival, Lord Evandale, and people talked as if it was a preconcerted arrangement of Scott, to surprise the female heart, and carry it over to the royalist side.

  The fact was, in describing Evandale he made a living, effective character, because he was describing something he had full sympathy with, and put his whole life into; but Henry Morton is a laborious arrangement of starch and pasteboard to produce one of those supposititious, just-right men, who are always the stupidest of mortals after they are made. As to why Scott did not describe such a character as the martyr Duke of Argyle, or Hampden, or Sir Harry Vane, where high birth, and noble breeding, and chivalrous sentiment were all united with intense devotional fervor, the answer is, that he could not do it; he had not that in him wherewith to do it; a man cannot create that of which he has not first had the elements in himself; and devotional enthusiasm is a thing which Scott never felt. Nevertheless, I believe that he was perfectly sincere in
saying that he would, “if necessary, die a martyr for Christianity.” He had calm, firm principle to any extent, but it never was kindled into fervor. He was of too calm and happy a temperament to sound the deepest recesses of souls torn up from their depths by mighty conflicts and sorrows. There are souls like the “alabaster vase of ointment, very precious,” which shed no perfume of devotion because a great sorrow has never broken them. Could Scott have been given back to the world again after the heavy discipline of life had passed over him, he would have spoken otherwise of many things. What he vainly struggled to say to Lockhart on his death bed would have been a new revelation, of his soul to the world, could he have lived to unfold it in literature. But so it is: when we have learned to live, life’s purpose is answered, and we die!

  This is the sum and substance of some conversations held while rambling among these scenes, going in and out of arches, climbing into nooks and through loopholes, picking moss and ivy, and occasionally retreating under the shadow of some arch, while the skies were indulging in a sudden burst of emotion. The poor woman who acted as our guide, ensconcing herself in a dry corner, stood like a literal Patience on a monument, waiting for us to be through; we were sorry for her, but as it was our first and last chance, and she would stay there, we could not help it.

  Near by the abbey is a square, modern mansion, belonging to the Earl of Buchan, at present untenanted. There were some black, solemn yew trees there, old enough to have told us a deal of history had they been inclined to speak; as it was, they could only drizzle.

  As we were walking through the yard, a bird broke out into a clear, sweet song.

  “What bird is that?” said I.

  “I think it is the mavis,” said the guide. This brought up, —

  “The mavis wild, wie mony a note,

  Sings drowsy day to rest.”

  And also, —

  “Merry it is in wild green wood,

  When mavis and merle are singing.”

  A verse, by the by, dismally suggestive of contrast to this rainy day.

  As we came along out of the gate, walking back towards the village of Dryburgh, we began, to hope that the skies had fairly wept themselves out; at any rate the rain stopped, and the clouds wore a sulky, leaden-gray aspect, as if they were thinking what to do next.

  We saw a knot of respectable-looking laboring men at a little distance, conversing in a group, and now and then stealing glances at us; one of them at last approached and inquired if this was Mrs. Stowe, and being answered in the affirmative, they all said heartily, “Madam, ye’re right welcome to Scotland.” The chief speaker, then, after a little conversation, asked our party if we would do him the favor to step into his cottage near by, to take a little refreshment after our ramble; to which we assented with alacrity. He led the way to a neat, stone cottage, with a flower garden before the door, and said to a thrifty, rosy-cheeked woman, who met us, “Well, and what do you think, wife, if I have brought Mrs. Stowe and her party to take a cup of tea with us?”

  We were soon seated in a neat, clean kitchen, and our hostess hastened to put the teakettle over the grate, lamenting that she had not known of our coming, that she might have had a fire “ben the house,” meaning by the phrase what we Yankees mean by “in the best room.” We caught a glimpse of the carpet and paper of this room, when the door was opened to bring out a few more chairs.

  “Belyve the bairns cam dropping in,”

  rosy-cheeked, fresh from school, with satchel and school books, to whom I was introduced as the mother of Topsy and Eva.

  “Ah,” said the father, “such a time as we had, when we were reading the book; whiles they were greetin’ and whiles in a rage.”

  My host was quite a young-looking man, with the clear blue eye and glowing complexion which one so often meets here; and his wife, with her blooming cheeks, neat dress, and well-kept house, was evidently one of those fully competent

  “To gar old claes look amaist as weel as new.”

  I inquired the ages of the several children, to which the father answered with about as much chronological accuracy as men generally display in such points of family history. The gude wife, after correcting his figures once or twice, turned away with a somewhat indignant exclamation about men that didn’t know their own bairns’ ages, in which many of us, I presume, could sympathize.

  I must not omit to say, that a neighbor of our host had been pressed to come in with us; an intelligent-looking man, about fifty. In the course of conversation, I found that they were both masons by trade, and as the rain had prevented their working, they had met to spend their time in reading. They said they were reading a work on America; and thereat followed a good deal of general conversation on our country. I found that, like many others in this old country, they had a tie to connect them with the new — a son in America.

  One of our company, in the course of the conversation, says, “They say in America that the working classes of England and Scotland are not so well off as the slaves.” The man’s eye flashed. “There are many things,” he said, “about the working classes, which are not what they should be; there’s room for a great deal of improvement in our condition, but,” he added with an emphasis, “we are no slaves!” There was a, touch, of the

  “Scots wha ha’ wi’ Wallace bled”

  about the man, as he spoke, which made the affirmation quite unnecessary.

  “But,” said I, “you think the affairs of the working classes much improved of late years?”

  “O, certainly,” said the other; “since the repeal of the corn laws and the passage of the factory bill, and this emigration to America and Australia, affairs have been very much altered.”

  We asked them what they could make a day by their trade. It was much less, certainly, than is paid for the same labor in our country; but yet the air of comfort and respectability about the cottage, the well-clothed and well-schooled, intelligent children, spoke well for the result of their labors.

  While our conversation was carried on, the teakettle commenced singing most melodiously, and by a mutual system of accommodation, a neat tea table was spread in the midst of us, and we soon found ourselves seated, enjoying some delicious bread and butter, with the garniture of cheese, preserves, and tea. Our host before the meal craved a blessing of Him who had made of one blood all the families of the earth; a beautiful and touching allusion, I thought, between Americans and Scotchmen. Our long ramble in the rain had given us something of an appetite, and we did ample justice to the excellence of the cheer.

  After tea we walked on down again towards the Tweed, our host and his friends waiting on us to the boat. As we passed through the village of Dryburgh, all the inhabitants of the cottages seemed to be standing in their doors, bowing and smiling, and expressing their welcome in a gentle, kindly way, that was quite touching.

  As we were walking towards the Tweed, the Eildon Hill, with its three points, rose before us in the horizon. I thought of the words in the Lay of the Last Minstrel: —

  “Warrior, I could say to thee,

  The words that cleft Eildon Hill in three,

  And bridled the Tweed with a curb of stone.”

  I appealed to my friends if they knew any thing about the tradition; I thought they seemed rather reluctant to speak of it. O, there was some foolish story, they believed; they did not well know what it was.

  The picturesque age of human childhood is gone by; men and women cannot always be so accommodating as to believe unreasonable stories for the convenience of poets.

  At the Tweed the man with the skiff was waiting for us. In parting with my friend, I said, “Farewell. I hope we may meet again some time.”

  “I am sure we shall, madam,” said he; “if not here, certainly hereafter.”

  After being rowed across I stopped a few moments to admire the rippling of the clear water over the pebbles. “I want some of these pebbles of the Tweed,” I said, “to carry home to America.” Two hearty, rosy-cheeked Scotch lasses on the shore s
oon supplied me with as many as I could carry.

  We got into our carriage, and drove up to Melrose. After a little negotiation with the keeper, the doors were unlocked. Just at that moment the sun was so gracious as to give a full look through the windows, and touch with streaks of gold the green, grassy floor; for the beautiful ruin is floored with green grass and roofed with sky: even poetry has not exaggerated its beauty, and could not. There is never any end to the charms of Gothic architecture. It is like the beauty of Cleopatra, —

  “Age cannot wither, custom, cannot stale

  Her infinite variety.”

  Here is this Melrose, now, which has been berhymed, bedraggled through infinite guide books, and been gaped at and smoked at by dandies, and been called a “dear love” by pretty young ladies, and been hawked about as a trade article in all neighboring shops, and you know perfectly well that all your raptures are spoken for and expected at the door, and your going off in an ecstasy is a regular part of the programme; and yet, after all, the sad, wild, sweet beauty of the thing comes down on one like a cloud; even for the sake of being original you could not, in conscience, declare you did not admire it.

  We went into a minute examination with our guide, a young man, who seemed to have a full sense of its peculiar beauties. I must say here, that Walter Scott’s description in the Lay of the Last Minstrel is as perfect in most details as if it had been written by an architect as well as a poet — it is a kind of glorified daguerreotype.

  This building was the first of the elaborate and fanciful Gothic which I had seen, and is said to excel in the delicacy of its carving any except Roslin Castle. As a specimen of the exactness of Scott’s description, take this verse, where he speaks of the cloisters: —

  “Spreading herbs and flowerets bright,

  Glistened with the dew of night,

  Nor herb nor floweret glistened there,

  But were carved in the cloister arches as fair.”