Homes and Haunts of the Most Eminent British Poets Part 25

One can not, however, see this Arcadian scene, this sort of Sabine farm, so well calculated for the "_otium c.u.m dignitate_" of the poet, without feeling one's heart wrung at the idea that it was a vain gift--a haven of peace only offered to a struggling and doomed swimmer; and that the foul exciseman craft, and the degrading dipstick, and the whisky-firkin were in the rear. The very next neighbors of Burns were Mr. Miller, of Dalswinton, and Mr. Riddell, of Friars' Ca.r.s.e. There he went to meet, and dine, and revel with distinguished guests. Heavens! why should he not have been able to go there as the honest British farmer, and not as the exciseman? Could he feel that he was a poet, and fit society for the wealthy, the refined, and the learned, and that he was not degraded? He was glorious--and an exciseman. Here he wrote Mary in Heaven, and mounted his jaded steed and trotted off to the h.e.l.l of whisky distilleries and whisky dram-shops. He wrote here, in one day, Tam O'Shanter, in a fever of laughter and excitement, and perhaps the next day would repeat the lines to the rude and fuddled rabble of a "public,"

where he was in the way of his business and his ruin. There is something so anomalous in the genius and the grade, in the magnificent endowments and the bare necessities of Robert Burns, that one can not now conceive how they could have been permitted to occur by his fellow-men, or tolerated by himself. To think of him here, in his own white farm-house, like a dove's nest, amid its green and overshadowing leaves, and hung over the pure lapsing waters; and then of him in that little dirty house in Dumfries, in that street of tramps and beggars, living degraded, despised, and persecuted, and dying the poorest exciseman and greatest poet of his country! In the hour of his death the soul of his country awoke with one great throb to the consciousness of who and what he was; what a pity that the revelation did not come a little sooner! And this I say not to taunt his country with it. The sense of the national treatment of Robert Burns has been expressed with such manly eloquence by his countrymen, Lockhart, Wilson, and Allan Cunningham, that it needs not us English to cast a single stone, who have the memory of Chatterton among us. All great nations have similar sins to answer for. Scotland does not stand alone; but there is something so peculiarly strange in the fate of Burns, and that comes over one as we tread the ground that he had chosen for his home, and the floor of the house that he built, that it has forced me involuntarily to follow my own feelings instead of my descriptions.

The farm, as I have said, is a very pleasant one. Burns is supposed to have chosen the particular situation of his house not only for its fine situation on the banks of the river, and overlooking the vale and country round, but on account of a beautiful spring which gushes from the slope just below the house. The ground-plan of his house is very much like that of most Scotch farms. The buildings form three sides of a quadrangle. The house and buildings are only one story high, white, and altogether a genuine Scotch steading. The house is on the lower side, next to the river. Burns's bed-room has yet two beds in it, of that sort of cupboard fas.h.i.+on, with check curtains, which are so often seen in Scotch farm-houses. The humble rooms are much as they were in his time.

Near the house, and running parallel with the river, is a good large garden which he planted. The side of the farm-yard opposite to the house is pleasantly planted off with trees. The farm is just as it was, about one hundred acres. By places it exhibits that stony soil which made Burns call it "the riddlings of creation," and say that when a plowed field was rolled it looked like a paved street; but still it carries good crops. Burns had it for 50 a year, or ten s.h.i.+llings an acre. I suppose the present tenant pays three times the sum, and is proud of his bargain. He observed it was an ill wind that blew n.o.body any profit.

"Mr. Burns," said he, "had the farm on lease for ninety years, and had he not thrown it up, I should not have been here now." The farmer seemed a very sensible man, and though he was just mounting his gig to go on business to Dumfries, he stopped, and would go over the farm and house, and point out every thing to me. He said what Lockhart and Cunningham say, that Burns had so many servants that they ate and drank all that came off the farm. "The maids baked new bread, and the men ate it hot with ale." But it is said, too, on the spot, that most of these servants were relatives, and that presents of whisky and other good things were sent from far and near to Burns, and that, while he was absent on his excise rounds, they sat in the house and drank, and ate to it, instead of being at work. Burns once observed to his neighbor, the next farmer, that he wondered how it was that the farm left no surplus for rent; and the farmer said, "Why, Mr. Burns, it would be a wonder if it did, for your servants can not eat it and leave it for rent too." It is said, also, that being once invited to dinner at Dalswinton House, and not coming, the guests asked how he was getting on. Mr. Miller said he hoped very well, "for," added he, "I think I have set him up." This being repeated to Burns, is said to have hurt his proud feelings extremely, and to have induced him to remark that he did not like to live on the estate of a man who thought he had set him up. Long he did not live there--more's the pity. The good-will of his haughty landlord had gone before.

It was here, too, that the story is told of his being found by two Englishmen fis.h.i.+ng in the Nith. "On a rock that projected into the stream, they saw a man angling. He had a cap of foxskin on his head, a loose great-coat fixed round him by a belt, from which hung an enormous Highland broadsword: it was Burns." The story is likely enough. The banks of the Nith here are steep, and full of wild thickets; and one may very well imagine Burns not being over particular in his toilet while pursuing his amus.e.m.e.nt in this solitude.

It was one of his delights to range along these steep river banks; and it was along them, between the house and the fence at the bottom of the field, down the river, that he paced to and fro as he composed Tam O'Shanter. Mrs. Burns relates, "that observing Robert walking with long, swinging strides, and apparently muttering as he went, she let him alone for some time. At length she took the children with her, and went forth to meet him. He seemed not to observe her, but continued his walk. On this," said she, "I stepped aside with the bairns among the broom, and past us he came, his brow flushed, and his eyes s.h.i.+ning; he was reciting these lines:

'Now Tam, O Tam! had thae been queans A' plump an' strapping, i' their teens; Their sarks, instead o' crees.h.i.+e flannen, Been snaw-white seventeen hunder linnen!

Thir breeks o' mine, my only pair, That ance were plush, o' gude blue hair I wad hae gi'en them aff my hurdies, For ae blink o' the bonnie burdies.'

I wish ye had but seen him! He was in such ecstasy that the tears were happing down his cheeks." He had taken writing materials with him, and, leaning on a turf fence which commanded a view down the river, he committed the poem to paper, walked home, and read it in great triumph at the fireside. The remains of this turf fence may be seen to this day in the shape of a green bank, close above the river, under the shade of a narrow plantation of larches which bounds the field. The farmer said that Professor Wilson, when he visited the spot, rolled himself on the bank, saying it was worth while trying to catch any remains of genius and humor that Burns might have left there.

The farmer said--what, indeed, Allan Cunningham states--that when Burns came the farm was all open; "there were no dikes," walls, or fences.

That he introduced the first dairy of Ayrs.h.i.+re cows, all splendid cattle, some of them being presents from such friends as the Dunlops, &c. Presents or no presents, poor Burns laid out on the farm, in his first year, all the proceeds of his Edinburgh edition of his poems, and never saw them again.

The view from the house is very charming. The river runs clear and fleet below, broad as the Thames at Hampton Court, or the Trent at Nottingham, and its dark trees hang far along it over its waters. Beyond the stream lie the broad, rich meadows and house of Dalswinton, a handsome mansion of red freestone aloft amid its woods, and still beyond and higher up the river rise still bolder hills. The very next residence upward on the same side of the river is Friar's Ca.r.s.e, the seat of Burns's friend, Mr.

Riddell, into whose grounds he had a private key, so that he could enjoy all the beauty and solitude of his woods at pleasure, or take the nearest cut to the house. Up the valley, about two miles or so, is the farm-house belonging to his friend Nicol, of the High School, where

"Willie brewed a peck o' malt, And Rob and Allan cam to see."

Friar's Ca.r.s.e deserves a few more words before we s.h.i.+ft to the last sad scene, Dumfries. It is a beautiful estate, which you enter from the Glasgow road by a neat lodge, and advance a quarter of a mile, perhaps, along a carriage drive, one side of which is planted with shrubs and flowers, and the other consists of the steep, wild bank of a fine wood.

The way winds on, and here and there you have an old stone gray cross, or old picturesque saint, or such thing, which has a good effect. At last you emerge in an open meadow, surrounded by fine hills and woods, and at the head of which, on a green and graceful esplanade, stands a good, though not very large house. In the meadows, which are of great extent, roves a numerous herd of as fine cattle as ever roamed the meads of Asphodel, and much finer, I suspect, for they are Ayrs.h.i.+re cows of the most splendid description; and some very fine trees rear their heads to beautify the ground. As you approach the house, it is along the foot of a beautiful slope enriched by n.o.ble old trees. Behind the house there is a green and airy sort of table-land, on which flower-stands of rustic work, filled with roses and geraniums, stand, and down which money-wort, with all its golden blossoms, streams, and then the ground sinks rapidly into a deep dell full of tall trees, and containing a garden of the old pleached walk kind, and which, through the latticed gate, gives you such a peep at its beauties as enchants you.

In this house used to live Mr. Riddell. Here the Whistle was caroused for, and here the original copy of Burns's poem on the subject is kept still. Pity it was that the lady of the house, a young widow, Mrs.

Crichton, was just bowling out at her lodge gates as I walked in, or I would have made bold to call and request the favor of a sight of this paper. But the butler a.s.sured me that there it was; and in the pine wood, on the side by which you enter, are the remains of the hermitage where Burns wrote the well-known lines on the window. The pine wood has grown; there are silver firs that need not shame to claim kindred with those of the Black Forest; but the hermitage is gone down. A single gable, a few scattered stones, and a ma.s.s of laurels that have grown high and hidden it, are all that remain of the hermitage, which I only found by dint of long traversing the dusky wood.

But Burns is gone; Miller of Dalswinton is gone; Riddell of Friar's Ca.r.s.e is gone; their estates are in other families; and it is to be hoped that the exciseman's gauging-stick is gone too. I do not see it hung aloft in any hall. I dare say the sons of Burns have not preserved it, as the walking-stick of Sir Walter Scott now hangs aloft in the study at Abbotsford. But the memory of the poet and his friends lives all over these walks, and meadows, and woods, more livingly than ever.

It is the quick spirit of the place. Poetry is not dead here. It is the soul and haunting shadow of these fair and solemn scenes, and a thousand years hence will startle young and beating hearts as the wood-pigeon dashes out through the magic hush of the forest, and the streamlet leaps down the mossy stone, and laughs and glitters in the joyous glance of the sun. The exciseman's stick is turned into the magic wand of nature, and there will be bitter satire, and deep melancholy, and wonder and love, as it waves a thousand times self-multiplied in the bough of the pine-tree, and the bent of the gra.s.s, while the heart of man can suffer or enjoy. You see that already in every thing. Burns no longer walks on one side of the market-place of Dumfries, solitary and despised, while the great and gay crowd and flutter on the other; but as the daily coach rolls on its way, the coachman, pointing with his whip, says softly, "That is the Farm of Ellisland!" And every man and woman, every trade-traveler and servant-maid says, "Where?" All rise up and look, _and there is a deep silence_.

For that silence, and the thoughts that live in it, who would not have lived, and suffered, and been despised? It is the triumph of genius and the soul of greatness over the freaks of fortune, and even over its own sins and failings. It is something to have walked over the farm of Ellisland; it is still more to have stood on the spot in his farm-yard where the heart of Burns rose up in a flame of hallowed affection to Mary in Heaven--a more glorious shrine than the mausoleum of Dumfries.

The neighborhood of Dumfries, to which the last scene of our subject leads us, is very charming. The town is just a quiet country town, but the Nith is a fine river, and runs through it, and makes both town and country very agreeable. The scenery is not wild and rocky, but the vale of the Nith is rich, and beautiful in its richness. The river runs in the finest sweeps imaginable; it seems to disdain to go straight, but makes a circle for a mile, perhaps, at a time, as clean and perfect as if struck with compa.s.ses, and then away in another direction; while on its lofty banks alders and oaks hang richly over the water, and fine herds of cattle are grouped in those deep meadows, and salmon-fishers spread their nets and are busy mending them on the broad expanse of gravel that covers here and there the bends of the river; while high above the lapsing waters, your eye wanders over abroad extent of fresh, rich meadow country, with scattered ma.s.ses of trees, and goodly farms, and far around are high and airy hills cultivated to the top. A more lovely pastoral country, more retired and poetical, you can not well find. This is the scenery to which Burns, during his abode in Dumfries, loved to resort. "When he lived in Dumfries," says Allan Cunningham, "he had three favorite walks: on the dock-green by the river side, among the ruins of Lincluden College, and toward the Martingam Ford, on the north side of the river. The latter place was secluded, commanded a view of the distant hills and the romantic towers of Lincluden, and afforded soft greensward banks to rest upon, and the sight and sound of the stream. As soon as he was heard to hum to himself, his wife saw that he had something in his mind, and was quite prepared to see him s.n.a.t.c.h up his hat and set off silently for his musing ground."

About three miles up the river we came upon the beautiful ruins of the abbey of Lincluden, standing on an elevated mound overlooking the junction of the Cluden and the Nith, and overlooked by a sort of large tumulus covered with larches, where the monks are said to have sat to contemplate the country, and where the country people still resort to loiter or read on Sundays. A profound tranquillity reigns over all the scene--a charm indescribable, which Burns, of all men, must have felt.

For myself, I knew not where to stop. I advanced up the left bank of the river, opposite to the ruins, now treading the soft turf of the Nith's margin, now pent in a narrow track close on the brink of the stream among the alders, now emerging into a lofty fir clump, and now into a solemn grove of beech overhanging the stream. Further on lay the broad old meadows again, the fisher watching in his wooden hut the ascent of the salmon, the little herdboy tending his black cattle in the solitary field, old woods casting a deep gloom on the hurrying water, gray old halls standing on fine slopes above the Nith, amid trees of magnificent size and alt.i.tude. The mood of mind which comes over you here is that of unwritten poetry.

When one thinks of Burns wandering amid this congenial nature, where the young now wander and sing his songs, one is apt to forget that he bore with him a sad heart and a sinking frame. When we see his house in Dumfries, we are reminded pretty forcibly of these things. We have to dive at once into a back street in the lower part of the town, and turn and wind from one such hidden and poor street to another, till, having pa.s.sed through a sufficient stench of tan-yards, which seem to abound in that neighborhood, you come to a little street with all the character of the abode of the poor, which is honored with the name of BURNS-STREET.

The house is the first you come to on the left hand. There is the thatched one on the opposite side, and I set it down at once to be the poet's; but no; at a regularly formal poor man's house, of a dingy white-wash, with its stone door and window frames painted of a dingy blue, a bare-legged girl, very dirty, was was.h.i.+ng the floors, and went from the bucket and showed me the house. On the right hand of the door was the kitchen, in which the girl informed me that there was nothing left belonging to the Burnses except two bells, which she pointed out, and a gas-pipe which Mr. Burns had put in. On the left hand was the sitting-room, furnished very well for a poor man, with a carpet on the floor. The girl said her father was an undertaker, but when I asked where was his shop, she said he was an undertaker of jobs on railroads and embankments. Up stairs there was a good, large chamber unfurnished, which she said was the one occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Burns, and where both of them died. Out of the other chamber a little closet was taken, including one front window, and here, she said, Burns wrote, or it was always said so. There were two garrets; and that was the poet's, or, rather, the exciseman's house. It was just about suited to the income of an ordinary exciseman, and had no attribute of the _poet's_ home about it. Mr. Robert Chambers, in his Picture of Scotland, calls it a neat little house. Unfortunately, at my visit it was any thing but neat or clean, and its situation in this miserable quarter, and amid the odor of tan-yards, must give to any foreigner who visits it an odd idea of the abodes of British poets. I wonder that in some improvement the Dumfriesians don't contrive to pull it down.

From this abode of the living poet I adjourned to that of the dead one.

This is situated in St. Michael's church-yard, not far from the house, but on an eminence, and on the outside of the town. The _lane_ in which the _house_ is, is just one of the _worst_. It looks as though it were only inhabited by keepers of lodging-houses for tramps, and, I believe, mainly is so. It is a sort of Tinker's Lane. The church-yard, though not more than two hundred yards off, is one of the most respectable, and the poet's house _there_ is the very grandest. One naturally thinks how much easier it is to maintain a dead poet than a living one.

A church-yard in this part of the country has a singular aspect to an English eye. As you approach the Scottish border you see the headstones getting taller and taller, and the altar-tombs more and more ma.s.sive. At Carlisle, the headstones had attained the height of six or seven feet at least, and were deeply carved with coats of arms, &c., near the top, but here the whole church-yard is a wilderness of huge and ponderous monuments. Pediments and entablature, Grecian, Gothic, and nondescript; pillars and obelisks, some of them at least twenty feet high--I use no exaggeration in this account--stand thick and on all sides. To our eyes, accustomed to such a different size and character of church-yard tombs, they are perfectly astonis.h.i.+ng. I imagine there is stone enough in the funeral monuments of this church-yard to build a tolerable street of houses. You would think that all the giants, and, indeed, all the _great_ people of all sorts that Scotland had ever produced, had here chosen their sepulture. Such ambitious and gigantic structures of freestone, some red, some white, for dyers, iron-mongers, gardeners, slaters, glaziers, and the like, are, I imagine, nowhere else to be seen. There are vintners who have tombs and obelisks fit for genuine Egyptian Pharaohs; and slaters and carpenters, who were accustomed to climb high when alive, have left monuments significant of their soaring character. These far outvie and overlook those of generals, writers to the signet, esquires, and bailiffs of the city.

Your first view of the church-yard strikes you by the strange aspect of these ponderous monuments. A row of very ancient ones, in fact, stands on the wall next to the street. Two of them most dilapidated, and of deep red stone, have a very singular look. They have Latin inscriptions, which are equally dilapidated. Another one to Francis Irving fairly exhausts the Latin tongue with his host of virtues, and then takes to English thus:

"King James the First me balive named; Dumfries oft since me provost claimed; G.o.d has for me a crown reserved, For king and country have I served."

Burns's mausoleum occupies as nearly as possible the center of the farther end of the church-yard opposite to the entrance, and a broad walk leads up to it. It stands, as it should do, overlooking the pleasant fields in the outskirts of the town, and seems, like the poet himself, to belong half to man and half to nature. It is a sort of little temple, which at a distance catches the eye as you approach that side of the town, and reminds you of that of Garrick at Hampton. It is open on three sides, except for iron gates, the upper border of which consists of alternating Scottish thistles and spear-heads. A couple of Ionic pillars at each corner support a projecting cornice, and above this rises an octagon superstructure, with arches, across the bottom of which again run thistle-heads, one over each gateway, and is surmounted by a dome. The bas.e.m.e.nt of the mausoleum is of granite. The building is inclosed by an iron railing, and that little gate in front of the area is left unlocked, so that you may approach and view the monument through the iron gates. The area is planted appropriately with various kinds of evergreens, and on each side of the gate stand conspicuously the Scottish thistle.

In the center of the mausoleum floor, a large flag, with four iron rings in it, marks the entrance to the vault below. At the back stands Turnarelli's monument of the poet. It consists of a figure of Burns, of the size of life, in white marble, at the plow, and Coila, his muse, appearing to him. This is a female figure in alto-relievo on the wall, somewhat above and in front of him. She is in the act of throwing her mantle, embroidered with Scotch thistles, over him, according to his own words: "The poetic genius of my country found me, as the prophetic bard Elijah did Elisha, at the plow, and threw her inspiring mantle over me."

Burns stands with his left hand on one of the plow stilts, and with the other holds his bonnet to his breast, while, with an air of surprise and devotion, he gazes on the muse or genius of his poetry. He appears in a short coat, knee breeches, and short gaiters. The execution is so-so.

The likeness of the poet is by no means conformable to the best portraits of him; and Nature, as if resenting the wretched caricature of her favorite son, has already begun to deface and corrode it. The left hand on the plow is much decayed, and the right hand holding the bonnet is somewhat so too. At his feet lies what I suppose was the slab of his former tomb, with this inscription: "In memory of Robert Burns, who died the 21st of July, 1796, in the 37th year of his age. And Maxwell Burns, who died the 25th of April, 1799, aged 2 years and 9 months. Francis Wallace Burns, who died the 9th of June, 1808, aged 14 years. His sons.

The remains of Burns received into the vault below, 19th of September, 1815. And his two sons. Also, the remains of Jean Armour, relict of the Poet, born Feb., 1765, died 26th of March, 1834."

The long Latin inscription mentioned by his biographers, a manifest absurdity on the tomb of a man like Burns, and whose epitaph ought to be intelligible to all his countrymen, is, I suppose, removed, for I did not observe it, and the above English inscription, of the elegance of which, however, nothing can be said, subst.i.tuted.

The gates of the mausoleum itself are kept locked, and the monument again inclosed within a plain railing.

Some countrymen were just standing at the gate, with their plaids on their shoulders, making their observations as I arrived at it. I stood and listened to them.

_1st Man._ "Ay, there stands Robin, still holding the plow, but the worst of it is, he has got no horses to it."

_2d Man._ "Ay, that is childish. It is just like a boy on a Sunday, who sets himself to the plow, and fancies he is plowing when it never moves.

It would have been a deal better if you could have seen even the horses'

tails."

_3d Man._ "Ay, or if he had been sitting on his plow, as I have seen him sometimes in a picture."

_1st Man._ "But Coila is well drawn, is not she? That arm which she holds up the mantle with is very well executed."

_2d Man._ "It's a pity, though, that the sculptor did not look at his own coat before he put the only b.u.t.ton on that is to be seen."

_3d Man._ "Why, where is the b.u.t.ton?"

_2d Man._ "Just under the bonnet; and it's on the wrong side."

_1st Man._ "Oh! it does not signify if it be a double-breasted coat; or perhaps Robin b.u.t.toned his coat different to other folks, for he was an unco' chiel."

_2d Man._ "But it's only single-breasted, and it is quite wrong."

The men unb.u.t.toned and then b.u.t.toned their coats up again to satisfy themselves, and they decided that it was a great blunder.

I thought there was much sound sense in their criticism. The allegorical figure of the muse seems too much, and the absence of the horses too little. Burns would have looked quite as well standing at the plow, and looking up inspired by the muse without her being visible.

The plow rests on a rugged piece of marble, laid on a polished bas.e.m.e.nt, in the center of which is inscribed, in large letters,

BURNS.

I had to regret missing at Dumfries the three sons of Burns, and the stanch friend of the family, and of the genius of the poet, Mr.

M'Diarmid. Mr. Robert Burns, the poet's eldest son, resides at Dumfries, but was then absent at Belfast, in Ireland, where I afterward saw him, and was much struck with his intelligence and great information. Colonel and Major Burns had just visited Dumfries, but were gone into the Highlands with their friend, Mr. M'Diarmid. The feelings with which I quitted Dumfries were those which so often weigh upon you in contemplating the closing scenes of poets' lives. "The life of the poet at Dumfries," says Robert Chambers, "was an unhappy one; his situation was degrading, and his income narrow." Reflecting on this as I proceeded by the mail toward Moffat, the melancholy lines of Wordsworth recurred to me with peculiar effect:

"My former thoughts returned; the fear that kills; And hope that is unwilling to be fed; Cold, pain, and labor, and all fleshly ills; And mighty poets in their misery dead."