Penelope's Progress Part 4

"I wonder why they named it 'Fotheringay' Crescent," mused Francesca.

"Some a.s.sociation with Mary Stuart, of course. Poor, poor, pretty lady! A free queen only six years, and think of the number of beds she slept in, and the number of trees she planted; we have already seen, I am afraid to say how many. When did she govern, when did she scheme, above all when did she flirt, with all this racing and chasing over the country? Mrs. M'Collop calls Anne of Denmark a 'sad scattercash'

and Mary an 'awfu' gadabout,' and I am inclined to agree with her. By the way, when she was making my bed this morning, she told me that her mother claimed descent from the Stewarts of Appin, whoever they may be. She apologized for Queen Mary's defects as if she were a distant family connection. If so, then the famous Stuart charm has been lost somewhere, for Mrs. M'Collop certainly possesses no alluring curves of temperament."

"I am going to select some distinguished ancestors this very minute, before I go to my first Edinburgh dinner," said I decidedly. "It seems hard that ancestors should have everything to do with settling our nationality and our position in life, and we not have a word to say.

How nice it would be to select one's own after one had arrived at years of discretion, or to adopt different ones according to the country one chanced to be visiting! I am going to do it; it is unusual, but there must be a pioneer in every good movement. Let me think: do help me, Salemina! I am a Hamilton to begin with; I might be descended from the logical Sir William himself, and thus become the idol of the university set!"

"He died only about thirty years ago, and you would have to be his daughter: that would never do," said Salemina. "Why don't you take Thomas Hamilton, Earl of Melrose and Haddington? He was Secretary of State, King's Advocate, Lord President of the Court of Sessions, and all sorts of fine things. He was the one King James used to call 'Tam o' the Cowgate.'"

"Perfectly delightful! I don't care so much about his other t.i.tles, but 'Tam o' the Cowgate' is irresistible. I will take him. He was my--what was he?"

"He was at least your great-great-great-great-grandfather; that is a safe distance. Then there's that famous Jenny Geddes, who flung her fauld-stule at the Dean in St. Giles's,--she was a Hamilton, too, if you fancy her!"

"Yes, I'll take her with pleasure," I responded thankfully. "Of course I don't know why she flung the stool,--it may have been very reprehensible; but there is always good stuff in stool-flingers; it's the sort of spirit one likes to inherit in diluted form. Now whom will you take?"

"I haven't even a peg on which to hang a Scottish ancestor," said Salemina disconsolately.

"Oh, nonsense! think harder. Anybody will do as a starting-point; only you must be honorable and really show relations.h.i.+p, as I did with Jenny and Tam."

"My aunt Mary-Emma married a Lindsay," ventured Salemina hesitatingly.

"That will do," I answered delightedly.

"'The Gordons gay in English blude They wat their hose and shoon; The Lindsays flew like fire aboot Till a' the fray was dune.'

You can play that you are one of the famous 'licht Lindsays,' and you can look up the particular ancestor in your big book. Now, Francesca, it's your turn!"

"I am American to the backbone," she declared, with insufferable dignity. "I do not desire any foreign ancestors."

"Francesca!" I expostulated. "Do you mean to tell me that you can dine with a lineal descendant of Sir Fitzroy Donald Maclean, Baronet, of Duart and Morven, and not make any effort to trace your genealogy back further than your parents?"

"If you goad me to desperation," she answered, "I will wear an American flag in my hair, declare that my father is a Red Indian, or a pork-packer, and talk about the superiority of our checking system and hotels all the evening. I don't want to go, anyway. It is sure to be stiff and ceremonious, and the man who takes me in will ask me the population of Chicago and the amount of wheat we exported last year,--he always does."

"I can't see why he should," said I. "I am sure you don't look as if you knew."

"My looks have thus far proved no protection," she replied sadly.

"Salemina is so flexible, and you are so dramatic, that you enter into all these experiences with zest. You already more than half believe in that Tam o' the Cowgate story. But there'll be nothing for me in Edinburgh society; it will be all clergymen"--

"Ministers," interjected Salemina.

--"all ministers and professors. My Redfern gown will be unappreciated, and my Worth evening frocks worse than wasted!"

"There are a few thousand medical students," I said encouragingly, "and all the young advocates, and a sprinkling of military men,--they know Worth frocks."

"And," continued Salemina bitingly, "there will always be, even in an intellectual city like Edinburgh, a few men who continue to escape all the developing influences about them, and remain commonplace, conventional manikins, devoted to dancing and flirting. Never fear, they will find you!"

This sounds harsh, but n.o.body minds Salemina, least of all Francesca, who well knows she is the apple of that spinster's eye. But at this moment Susanna opens the door (timorously, as if there might be a panther behind it) and announces the cab (in the same tone in which she would announce the beast); we pick up our draperies, and are whirled off by the lamiter to dine with the Scottish n.o.bility.

VI

It was the Princess Dashkoff who said, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, that of all the societies of men of talent she had met with in her travels, Edinburgh's was the first in point of abilities.

One might make the same remark to-day, perhaps, and not depart widely from the truth. One does not find, however, as many noted names as are a.s.sociated with the annals of the Cape and Poker Clubs or the Crochallan Fencibles, those famous groups of famous men who met for relaxation (and intoxication, I should think) at the old Isle of Man Arms or in Dawney's Tavern in the Anchor Close. These groups included such s.h.i.+ning lights as Robert Fergusson the poet, and Adam Ferguson the historian and philosopher, Gavin Wilson, Sir Henry Raeburn, David Hume, Erskine, Lords Newton, Gillies, Monboddo, Hailes, Kames, Henry Mackenzie, and the Ploughman Poet himself, who has kept alive the memory of the Crochallans in many a jovial verse like that in which he describes Smellie, the eccentric philosopher and printer:--

"Shrewd Willie Smellie to Crochallan came, The old c.o.c.ked hat, the grey surtout the same, His bristling beard just rising in its might; 'Twas four long nights and days to shaving night;"

or in the characteristic picture of William Dunbar, a wit of the time, and the merriest of the Fencibles:--

"As I cam by Crochallan I cannily keekit ben; Rattlin', roarin' Willie Was sitting at yon boord en'; Sitting at yon boord en', And amang guid companie!

Rattlin', roarin' Willie, Ye're welcome hame to me!"

or in the verses on Creech, Burns's publisher, who left Edinburgh for a time in 1789. The "w.i.l.l.i.e.s," by the way, seem to be especially inspiring to the Scottish balladists.

"Oh, Willie was a witty wight, And had o' things an unco slight!

Auld Reekie aye he keepit tight And trig and braw; But now they'll busk her like a fright-- Willie's awa'!"

I think perhaps the gatherings of the present time are neither quite as gay nor quite as brilliant as those of Burns's day, when

"Willie brewed a peck o' maut, An' Rob an' Allan cam to pree;"

but the ideal standard of those meetings seems to be voiced in the lines:--

"Wha last beside his chair shall fa', He is the king amang us three!"

As they sit in their chairs nowadays to the very end of the feast, there is doubtless joined with modern sobriety a _soupcon_ of modern dullness and discretion.

To an American the great charm of Edinburgh is its leisurely atmosphere: "not the leisure of a village arising from the deficiency of ideas and motives, but the leisure of a city reposing grandly on tradition and history; which has done its work, and does not require to weave its own clothing, to dig its own coals, or smelt its own iron."

We were reminded of this more than once, and it never failed to depress us properly. If one had ever lived in Pittsburg, Fall River, or Kansas City, I should think it would be almost impossible to maintain self-respect in a place like Edinburgh, where the citizens "are released from the vulgarizing dominion of the hour." Whenever one of Auld Reekie's great men took this tone with me, I always felt as though I were the germ in a half-hatched egg, and he were an aged and lordly c.o.c.k gazing at me pityingly through my sh.e.l.l. He, lucky creature, had lived through all the struggles which I was to undergo; he, indeed, was released from "the vulgarizing dominion of the hour;"

but I, poor thing, must grow and grow, and keep pecking at my sh.e.l.l, in order to achieve existence.

Sydney Smith says in one of his letters, "Never shall I forget the happy days pa.s.sed there [in Edinburgh], amidst odious smells, barbarous sounds, bad suppers, excellent hearts, and the most enlightened and cultivated understandings." His only criticism of the conversation of that day (1797-1802) concerned itself with the prevalence of that form of Scotch humor which was called _wut_, and with the disputations and dialectics. We were more fortunate than Sydney Smith, because Edinburgh has outgrown its odious smells, barbarous sounds, and bad suppers, and, wonderful to relate, has kept its excellent hearts and its enlightened and cultivated understandings. As for mingled _wut_ and dialectics, where can one find a better foundation for dinner-table conversation?

The hospitable board itself presents no striking differences from our own, save the customs of serving sweets in soup-plates with dessert-spoons, of a smaller number of forks on parade, of the invariable fish-knife at each plate, of the prevalent "savory" and "cold shape," and the unusual grace and skill with which the hostess carves. Even at very large dinners one occasionally sees a lady of high degree severing the joints of chickens and birds most daintily, while her lord looks on in happy idleness, thinking, perhaps, how greatly times have changed for the better since the ages of strife and bloodshed, when Scottish n.o.bles

"Carved at the meal with gloves of steel, And drank their wine through helmets barred."

The Scotch butler is not in the least like an English one. No man could be as respectable as he looks, not even an elder of the kirk, whom he resembles closely. He hands your plate as if it were a contribution-box, and in his moments of ease, when he stands behind the "maister," I am always expecting him to p.r.o.nounce a benediction.

The English butler, when he wishes to avoid the appearance of listening to the conversation, gazes with level eye into vacancy; the Scotch butler looks distinctly heavenward, as if he were brooding on the principle of coordinate jurisdiction with mutual subordination. It would be impossible for me to deny the key of the wine-cellar to a being so steeped in sanct.i.ty, but it has been done, I am told, in certain rare and isolated cases.

As for toilets, the men dress like all other men (alas, and alas, that we should say it, for we were continually hoping for a kilt!), though there seems to be no survival of the finical Lord Napier's spirit.

Perhaps you remember that Lord and Lady Napier arrived at Castlemilk in Lanarks.h.i.+re with the intention of staying a week, but announced next morning that a circ.u.mstance had occurred which rendered it indispensable to return without delay to their seat in Selkirks.h.i.+re.

This was the only explanation given, but it was afterwards discovered that Lord Napier's valet had committed the grievous mistake of packing up a set of neck-cloths which did not correspond _in point of date_ with the s.h.i.+rts they accompanied!

The ladies of the "smart set" in Edinburgh wear French fripperies and _chiffons_, as do their sisters everywhere, but the other women of society dress a trifle more staidly than their cousins in London, Paris, or New York. The sobriety of taste and severity of style that characterize Scotswomen may be due, like Susanna Crum's dubieties, to the _haar_, to the shorter catechism, or perhaps in some degree to the presence of three branches of the Presbyterian church among them; the society that bears in its bosom three separate and antagonistic kinds of Presbyterianism at the same time must have its chilly moments.