The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth Volume II Part 10

We dined with the dear good Alisons. Mr. Alison met me at the drawing-room door, took me in his arms and gave me a hearty hug. I do not think he is much altered, only that his locks are silvered over. At this dinner were, besides his two sons and two daughters, and Mrs.

Alison, Mr. and Mrs. Skene. In one of Scott's introductions to _Marmion_ you will find this Mr. Skene, Mr. Hope, the Scotch Solicitor-General (it is curious the Solicitor-Generals of Scotland and Ireland should be Hope and Joy!), Dr. Brewster, and Lord Meadowbank, and Mrs. Maconachie, his wife. Mr. Alison wanted me to sit beside everybody, and I wanted to sit by him, and this I accomplished; on the other side was Mr. Hope, whose head and character you will find in _Peter's Letters:_ he was very entertaining. Sophy sat beside Dr. Brewster, and had a great deal of conversation with him.

Next day, Sunday, went to hear Mr. Alison; his fine voice but little altered. To me he appears the best preacher I have ever heard. Dined at Scott's; only his own family, his friend Skene, his wife and daughter, and Sir Henry Stewart; I sat beside Scott; I dare not attempt at this moment even to think of any of the anecdotes he told, the fragments of poetry he repeated, or the observations on national character he made, lest I should be tempted to write some of them for you, and should never end this letter, which must be ended some time or other. His strong affection for his early friends and his country gives a power and a charm to his conversation, which cannot be given by the polish of the London world and by the habit of literary conversation.

_Quentin Durward_ was lying on the table. Mrs. Skene took it up and said, "This is really too barefaced." Scott, when pointing to the hospital built by Heriot, said, "That was built by one Heriot, you know, the jeweller, in Charles the Second's time."

There was an arch simplicity in his look, at which we could hardly forbear laughing.

_June 23_.

I remember, my dearest aunt, how fond you used to be of the song of Roslin Castle, and how fond my father used to be of it, from having heard you sing it when you were young. I think you charged me to see Roslin if ever I came to Scotland; this day I have seen it with Walter Scott. It is about seven miles from Edinburgh, I wish it had been twice as far; Scott was so entertaining and agreeable during the drive there and back again. The castle is an ugly old ruin, not picturesque, but the chapel is most beautiful, altogether the most beautiful florid Gothic I ever saw. There is infinite variety in the details of the ornaments, and yet such a unity in the whole design and appearance that we admire at once the taste and the ingenuity of the architect. I wished for you, my dear aunt, continually during parts of the walk by the river and through the woods--not during the whole, for it would have been much too long.

How Walter Scott can find time to write all he writes I cannot conceive, he appears to have nothing to think of but to be amusing, and he never tires, though he is so entertaining--he far surpa.s.ses my expectation.

Mr. Lockhart is reserved and silent, but he appears to have much sensibility under this reserve. Mrs. Lockhart is very pleasing; a slight elegant figure and graceful simplicity of manner, perfectly natural.

There is something most winning in her affectionate manner to her father: he dotes upon her.

To MISS LUCY EDGEWORTH.

CALLANDER, _June 20, 1823_.

Here we are! I can hardly believe we are really at the place we have so long wished to see: we have really been on Loch Katrine. We were fortunate in the day; it was neither too hot, nor too cold, nor too windy, nor too anything.

The lake was quite as beautiful as I expected, but that is telling you nothing, as you cannot know how much I expected. Sophy has made some memorandum sketches for home, though we are well aware that neither pen nor pencil can bring before you the reality. William [Footnote: William, one of Miss Edgeworth's half-brothers, had joined his sisters at Edinburgh.] says he does not, however, fear for Killarney, even after our having seen this. Here are no arbutus, but plenty of soft birch, and twinkling aspen, and dark oak. On one side of the lake the wood has been within these few years cut down. Walter Scott sent to offer the proprietor 500 for the trees on one spot, if he would spare them; but the offer came two days too late; the trees were stripped of their bark before his messenger arrived. To us, who never saw this rock covered with trees, it appeared grand in its bare boldness and in striking contrast to the wooded island opposite. Tell f.a.n.n.y that, upon the whole, I think Farnham lakes as beautiful as Loch Katrine; as to mere beauty, perhaps superior: but where is the lake of our own, or any other times, that has such delightful power over the imagination by the recollections it raises? As we were rowed along, our boatman, happily our only guide, named to us the points we most wished to see; quietly named them, without being asked, and seemingly with a full belief that he was telling us plain facts, without any flowers of speech. "There's the place on that rock, see yonder, where the king blew his horn." "And there's the place where the Lady of the Lake landed." "And there is the Silver Strand, where you see the white pebbles in the little bay yonder."

He landed us just at the spot where the lady

From underneath an aged oak, That slanted from the islet rock,

shot her little skiff to the silver strand on the opposite side. When William asked him if the king's dead horse had been found, he smiled, and said he only knew that bones had been found near where the king's horse died, but he could not be sure that they were the bones of King James's good steed. However, he seemed quite as clear of the existence of the Lady of the Lake, and of all her adventures, as of the existence of Benledi and Benvenue, and the Trossachs. He showed us the place on the mountain of Benvenue, where formerly there was no means of ascent but by the ladders of broom and hazel twigs, where the king climbed,

with footing nice, A far-projecting precipice.

At the inn the mistress of the house lent me a copy of the _Lady of the Lake_, which I took out with me and read while we were going to the lake, and while Sophy was drawing. We saw an eagle hovering, and, moreover, Sophy spied some tiny sea-larks flitting close to the sh.o.r.e, and making their little, faint cry. Returning, we marked the place where the armed Highlanders started up from the furzebrake before King James, when Roderic Dhu sounded his horn, and we settled which was the spot at

Clan Alpine's outmost guard,

where Roderic Dhu's safe conduct ceased, and where the king and he had their combat. I forgot to mention a little incident, which, though very trifling, struck me at the moment. As I was walking on by myself on the road by the river-side leading to the lake, I came up to a Highlander who was stretched on the gra.s.s under a bush, while two little boys in tartan caps were playing beside him. I stopped to talk to the children, showed them my watch, and, holding it to their ears, asked if they had ever seen the inside of a watch. They did not answer, but they did not seem surprised, nor were they in the least shy. I asked the man if they were his children.

"Mine! oh no! they are the sons of Glengyle--the Laird of Glengyle, he who lives at the upper end of the lake yonder--McGreggor, that is, _the_ McGreggor, the chief of the McGreggor clan."

Rob Roy and his wife and children rose up before my imagination. Times have finely changed. It may be a satisfaction to you, and all who admire Rob Roy, to know that his burial-place is in a pretty, peaceful green valley, where none will disturb him; and all will remember him for ages, thanks to Walter Scott, a man he never kenned of, nor any of his second-sighted seers. By the bye, Harriet on our journey read _Rob Roy_ to me, and I liked it ten times better than at the first reading. My eagerness for the story being satisfied, I could stop to admire the beauty of the writing: this happens to many, I believe, on a second perusal of Scott's works.

FINISHED AT TYNDRUM.

Very good inn at Callander, and another at Loch Katrine--both raised by the genius of Scott as surely and almost as quickly as the slave of the lamp raises the palace of Aladdin. We spent one day and part of another at Callander and Loch Katrine, and yesterday went to, and slept at, Killin, along a very beautiful, fine, wild, romantic road. At Killin took a very pretty walk before tea, of about two miles and a half, and back again, to see a waterfall, which fully answered our expectations: you see, I am very strong. I had taken another walk in the morning to see the Bridge of Brackland, another beautiful waterfall, with a six-inch bridge over a chasm of rocks, which looked as if they had been built together to imitate nature.

We are reading _Reginald Dalton_, and like it very much, the second volume especially, which will be very useful, I think, and is very interesting. I am sure Mr. Lockhart describes his own wife's singing when he describes Ellen's.

We hope to reach King's House to-night, and at Inverness we hope to find letters from home. We are all well and happy, and this I am sure is the most agreeable thing I can end with.

To MISS RUXTON.

INVERNESS, BENNET'S HOTEL, _July 3, 1823_.

I sent a shabby note to my aunt some days ago, merely to tell her that we had seen Roslin; and Sophy wrote from Fort William of our visit to Fern Tower: good house, fine place; Sir David Baird a fine old soldier, without an arm, but with a heart and a head: warm temper, as eager about every object, great or small, as a boy of fifteen. He swallows me, though an auth.o.r.ess, wonderful well.

Our Highland tour has afforded me and my companions great pleasure; Sophy has enjoyed it thoroughly. William has had a number of objects in his own line to interest him. From Fort William, which is close to Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in Britain, we went to see a natural or artificial curiosity called the Parallel Roads. On each side of a valley called Glenroy, through which the river Roy runs, there appear several lines of terraces at different heights, corresponding to each other on each side of the valley at the same height. These terrace-roads are not quite horizontal; they slope a little from the mountains. The learned are at this moment fighting, in writing, much about these roads. Some will have it that, in the days of Fingal, the Fingalians made them for hunting-roads, to lie in ambush and shoot the deer from these long lines. Others suppose that the roads were made by the subsiding of a lake, which at different periods sank in this valley, and at last made its way out. The roads, however made, are well worth seeing. We had a most agreeable guide, not a professed guide, but a Highlander of the Macintosh clan, an enthusiast for the beauties of his own country, and, like the Swiss Chamouni guides, quite a well-informed and, moreover, a fine-looking man, with an air of active, graceful independence; of whom it might be said or sung, "_He's clever in his walking._" He spoke English correctly, but as a foreign language, with _book_ choice of expressions; no colloquial or vulgar phrases. He often seemed to take time to translate his thoughts from the Gaelic into English. He knew Scott's works, _Rob Roy_ especially, and knew all the theories about the Parallel Roads, and explained them sensibly; and gave us accounts of the old family feuds between his own Macintosh clan and the Macdonalds, pointing to places where battles were fought, with a zeal which proved the feudal spirit still lives in its ashes. When he found we were Irish, he turned to me, and all reserve vanis.h.i.+ng from his countenance, with brightening eyes he said, as he laid his hand on his breast, "And you are Iris.h.!.+ Now I know that, I would do ten times as much for you if I could than when I thought you were Southerns or English. We think the Irish have, like ourselves, more spirit." He talked of Ossian, and said the English could not give the _force_ of the original Gaelic. He sang a Gaelic song for us, to a tune like "St. Patrick's Day in the Morning."

He called St. Patrick Phaedrig, by which name I did not recognise him; and our Highlander exclaimed, "Don't you know your own saint?" Sophy sang the tune for him, with which he was charmed; and when he heard William call her Sophy, he said to himself, "Sophia Western."

The next day we took a beautiful walk to the territory and near the residence of Lochiel, through a wood where groups of clansmen and clanswomen were barking trees that had been cut down; and the f.a.ggoting and piling the bark was as picturesque as heart could wish.

This day's journey was through fine wild Highland scenery, where rocks and fragments of rocks were tumbled upon each other, as if by giants in a pa.s.sion, and now and then by giants playing at bowls with huge round bowls. These roads--some of them for which we "lift up our eyes and bless Marshal Wade," and some made by Telford, the vast superiority in the laying out of which William has had the pleasure of pointing out to his sisters--beautifully wind over hill and through valley, by the sides of streams and lakes. We saw the eight locks joining together on the Caledonian Ca.n.a.l, called Neptune's Stairs; and at another place on the ca.n.a.l William, who had been asleep, _instinctively_ wakened just in time to see a dredging machine at work: we stopped the carriage, and walked down to look at it: took a boat and rowed round the vessel, and went on board and saw the machinery. A steam-engine works an endless chain of buckets round and round upon a platform with rollers. The buckets have steel mouthpieces, some with quite sharp projecting lips, which cut into the sand and gravelly bottom, and scoop up what fills each bucket. At the bottom of each are cullender holes, through which the water drains off as the buckets go on and pa.s.s over the platform and empty themselves on an inclined plane, down which the contents fall into a boat, which rows away when full, and deposits the contents wherever wanted. If you ever looked at a book at Edgeworthstown called _Machines Approuves_, you would have the image of this machine. It brought my father's drawings of the Rhone machine before my eyes.

The whole day's drive was delightful--mountains behind mountains as far as the eye could reach, in every shade, from darkest to palest Indian-ink cloud colour; an ocean of mountains, with perpetually changing foreground of rocks, sometimes bare as ever they were born, sometimes wooded better than ever the hand of mortal taste clothed a mountain in reality or in picture, with oak, aspen, and the beautiful pendant birch.

At Fort Augustus the house was painting, and the beds looked wretched; but all was made plausible with the help of fires and fair words, and we slept as well, or better, than kings and queens. As to any real inconvenience at Highland inns, we have met with none; always good fish, good eggs, good b.u.t.ter, and good humour.

Next day we had another delightful drive: saw the Fall of Foyers: fine scrambling up and down to a rock, and on this rock such huge tumbledown stones, like Druids' temples, half-fallen, half-suspended. The breath was almost taken away and head dizzy looking at them above and the depth below; one could hardly believe we stood safe. Yet here we are safe and sound at Inverness, the Capital of the North, as Scott calls it. This Bennet's Hotel, where we are lodged, is as good as any in London or Edinburgh, and cleaner than almost any I ever was in, with a waiter the perfection of intelligence. We are going to see a place called the Dream, the name translated from the Gaelic.

I forgot to tell you that, when at Edinburgh, we went to see Sir James and Lady Foulis's friends, the Jardines, who were also friends of Henry's. They are in a very pretty house, Laverock Bank, a few miles from Edinburgh. We "felicity hunters" have found more felicity than such hunters usually meet with.

_To_ MISS LUCY EDGEWORTH.

KINROSS, _July 23, 1823_.

I left off in my yesterday's letter to my mother just as we were changing horses at Dunkeld, at six o'clock in the evening, to go on to Perth; but I had in that note arrived prematurely at Dunkeld, and had not time to fill up the history of our day. Be pleased, therefore, to go back to Moulinan, and see us eat luncheon; for, in spite of Mr. Grant's contempt of these _bon-vivant_ details, habit will not allow me to depart from my Swiss, Parisian, and English practice of giving the bill of fare.

First course, cold: two roast chickens, better never were; a ham, finer never seen, even at my mother's luncheons; pickled salmon, and cold boiled round.

Second course, hot: a large dish of little trout from the river; new potatoes, and, as I had professed to be unable to venture on new potatoes, a dish of mashed potatoes for me; fresh greens, with toast over, and poached eggs.

Then, a custard pudding, a gooseberry tart, and plenty of Highland cream--_highly_ superior to Lowland--and b.u.t.ter, ditto.

And for all this how much did we pay? Six s.h.i.+llings.

Our drive in evening suns.h.i.+ne from Moulinan to Dunkeld was delightful, along the banks, no longer of the dear little, sparkling, foaming, fretting Garry, but of the broad, majestic, quiet, dark bottle-green coloured Tay; the road a perfect gravel walk; the bank, all the way down between us and the river, copsewood, with now and then a clump of fine tall larch, or a single ash or oak, with spreading branches showing the water beneath; the mountain side chiefly oak and alder, a tree which I scarcely knew till Sophy _mentioned_ it to me; sometimes the wood broken with glades of fern, heath, and young _stubble_ oaks, all the way up to white rocks on the summit; the young shoots of these stubble oaks tinted with pink, so as to have in the evening sun the appearance of autumn rich tints; and between these oaks and the green fern and broom a giant race of foxglove, which I verily believe, from the root to the spike, would measure four good feet, all rich in bells of brightest crimson, so bright that they crimsoned the whole bank.

All these ten miles of wooded road run, I understand, through the territory of the Duke of Athol. Now I see his possessions, I am sure I do not wonder the lady left her lack-gold lover in the lurch for "Athol's duke." Along the whole road he has raised a footpath, beautifully gravelled. Oh! how I wish our walks had one inch off the surface of this footpath, or that the African magician, or the English equally potent magician of steam, could convey to my mother's _elbow_ in the Dingle one yard of one bank of the gravel which here wastes its pebbles on the mountain side! How in a trice she would summon round her her choice spirits, Briny Duffy, Micky Mulheeran, and Mackin, and how they would with shovel and loy fall to!

Through the wood at continual openings we saw glimpses of beautiful paths or gravelled walks, which this munificent duke has made through his woods for the accommodation of the public. I forgive him for being like an over-ripe Orleans plum, and for not saying a word, good or bad, the day we met him at Mr. Morrit's.

At Dunkeld, alas! we bade adieu to the dear Highlands. I have not time now to tell you of Killiecrankie and Dundee's Stone.