Guy Mannering.
(Groundwork of the Novel.)
ir Robert Maxwell of Orchardston, in the county of Galloway, was the descendant of an ancient Roman Catholic family of title in the south of Scotland. He was the only child of a religious and bigoted recluse, who sent him, while yet very young, to a college of Jesuits in Flanders, for education—the paternal estate being, in the meantime, wholly managed by the boy’s uncle, the brother of the devotee, to whom he resigned the guardianship of the property, in order that he might employ the remainder of his days exclusively in acts of devotion. In the family of Orchardston, as, indeed, in most great families of that day, the younger branches were but ill provided for, and looked to the inheritor of the family estate alone for the means of supporting their rank in society: the liberal professions and the employments of trade were still considered somewhat dishonourable; and the unfortunate junior, nursed with inflated ideas of consequence and rank, was doomed in after-life to exercise the servility and experience the mortification of an humble dependant. In this case, the culpable negligence of the father had transferred the entire management of a large estate to his younger brother, who was so delighted in the possession, that he resolved to retain it, to the exclusion of the rightful heir. He consequently circulated a report that the boy was dead; and on the death of the old baronet, which took place about this period, he laid claim to the title and estate. In the meantime, our young hero was suffering (very reluctantly) the severe discipline of the Jesuits’ college, his expenses being defrayed by occasional supplies sent him by his uncle, which were represented to him as the bounties of the college—a story which he could not discredit, as he had been placed there at an age too young to know distinctly either who he was or whence he came. He was intelligent and docile; and was deemed of sufficient capacity to become hereafter one of their own learned body, with which view he was educated. When at the age of sixteen, he found the discipline and austerities of a monastic life so ill suited to his inclination, that, on a trivial dispute with the superior of his college, he ran away, and enlisted himself in a French marching regiment. In this situation he sustained all the hardships of hunger, long marches, and incessant alarms; and, as it was in the hottest part of the war between France and England, about the year 1743, it may easily be imagined that his situation was by no means enviable. He fought as a foot-soldier at the battle of Dettingen; he was also at the battle of Fontenoy; and landed, as an ensign in the French troops, at Murray Frith, during the rebellion of 1745. He joined the rebels a little before the battle of Prestonpans, marched with them to Derby, and retreated with them to Scotland. He was wounded at the battle of Culloden, and fled with a few friends to the woods of Lochaber, where he remained the greater part of the summer 1746, living upon the roots of trees, goats’ milk, and the oatmeal and water of such peasants as he durst confide in. Knowing, however, that it would be impossible to continue this course of life during the winter, he began to devise means of effecting his return to France—perfectly unconscious that, in the country where he was suffering all the miseries of an outcast criminal, he was entitled to the possession of an ample estate and title. His scheme was to gain the coast of Galloway, where he hoped to get on board some smuggling vessel to the Isle of Man, and from thence to France. The hardships which he suffered in the prosecution of this plan would require a volume in their description. He crept through by-ways by night, and was forced to lie concealed among rocks and woods during the day. He was reduced almost to a state of nudity, and his food was obtained from the poorest peasants, in whom only he could confide. Of this scanty subsistence he was sometimes for days deprived; and, to complete his misfortunes, he was, after having walked barefooted over rocks, briars, and unfrequented places, at length discovered, seized, and carried before a magistrate near Dumfries. As his name was Maxwell, which he did not attempt to conceal, he would have suffered as a rebel, had not his commission as a French officer been found in the lining of his tattered coat, which entitled him to the treatment of a prisoner of war. This privilege, however, only extended to the preservation of his life. He was confined in a paved stone dungeon so long, that he had amused himself by giving names to each stone which composed the pavement, and which, in after-life, he took great pleasure in relating and pointing out to his friends. An old woman, who had been his nurse in childhood, was at this time living in Dumfries, where he was a prisoner; and having accidentally seen him, and becoming acquainted with his name, apparent age, etc., felt an assurance that he was the rightful Sir Robert Maxwell. The indissoluble attachment of the lower orders in Scotland to their chiefs is well known; and, impelled by this feeling, this old and faithful domestic attended him with almost maternal affection, administering liberally to his distresses. After an interview of some weeks, she made him acquainted with her suspicion, and begged leave to examine a mark which she remembered upon his body. This proof also concurring, she became outrageous with joy, and ran about the streets proclaiming the discovery she had made. This rumour reaching the ears of the magistrates, inquiry was made, the proofs were examined, and it soon became the general opinion that he was the son of the old baronet of Orchardston. The estate lay but a few miles from Dumfries; and the unlawful possessor being a man of considerable power, and of a most vindictive disposition, most people, whatever might be their private opinion, were cautious in espousing the cause of this disinherited and distressed orphan. One gentleman, however, was found, who, to his eternal honour, took him by the hand. A Mr. Gowdy procured his release from prison, took him to his own house, clothed him agreeably to his rank, and enabled him to commence an action against his uncle. The latter was not inactive in the defence of his crime, and took every pains to prove his nephew to be an impostor. Chagrin and a consciousness of guilt, however, put an end to his existence before the cause came to a hearing; and Sir Robert was at length put into possession of an estate worth upwards of ten thousand pounds a year. He now began to display those qualities and abilities which had been but faintly perceptible in his former station. He now discovered an ingenuous mind, an intellect at once vigorous and refined, and manners the most elegant and polished. His society was courted by all the neighbouring gentry; and, in the course of time he married a Miss Maclellan, a near relation of the family of Lord Kirkcudbright; with this lady he lived in the most perfect happiness for many years. He joined in the prevalent practice of farming his own estate, and built a very elegant house on an eminence overlooking the Nith. An imprudent speculation in the bank of Ayr, however, compelled him to abandon the seat of his ancestors. He had reserved a small pittance, on which he and his lady lived the latter part of their days. This calamity he bore as became a man familiar with misfortune; and he continued the same worthy open-hearted character he had ever been. The reduction of his fortune served only to redouble the kindness and cordiality of his friends. He died suddenly in September, 1786, whilst on the road to visit one of them—the Earl of Selkirk. He left behind him no issue; but his name is still remembered with ardent attachment.”—New Monthly Magazine, June, 1819.
(Counsellor Pleydell.)
We feel no little pleasure in presenting the original of a character so important as the facetious Pleydell. He is understood to be the representative of Mr. Andrew Crosbie, who flourished at the head of the Scottish bar about the period referred to in the novel. Many circumstances conspire to identify him with the lawyer of the novel. Their eminence in their profession was equally respectable; their habits of frequenting taverns and High Jinks parties on Saturday nights was the same, and both were remarkable for that antique politeness of manner so characteristic of old Scottish gentlemen. It may be allowed that Pleydell is one of the characters most nearly approaching to generic that we have attempted to identify with real life; but it is nevertheless so strenuously asserted by all who have any recollection of Mr. Crosbie, that Pleydell resembles him in particular, that we feel no hesitation in assigning him as the only true specific original. We therefore lay the following simple facts before the public, and leave the judicious reader to his own discrimination.
Mr. Crosbie was in the prime of life about the middle of the last century, and, from that period till the year 1780, enjoyed the highest reputation in his profession. He came of a respectable family in the county of Galloway—the district, the reader will remember, in which the principal scenes of the novel are laid, and probably the shire of which Paulus Pleydell, Esq., is represented (vol. ii. chap, xvi.) as having been, at an early period of his life, the sheriff-depute.
The residence of Mr. Crosbie, in the early periods of his practice, exactly coincides with that of Pleydell, whom, if we recollect rightly, Colonel Mannering found in a dark close on the north side of the High Street, several storeys up a narrow common stair. Mr. Crosbie lived first in Lady Stair’s Close, a steep alley on the north side of the Lawnmarket; afterwards in the Advocate’s Close, in the Luckenbooths; and finally in a self-contained and well-built house of his own, at the foot of Allan’s Close, still standing, and lately inhabited by Richard Cleghorn, Esq., Solicitor before the Supreme Courts. All these various residences are upon the north side of the High Street, and the two first answer particularly to the description in the novel. The last is otherwise remarkable as being situated exactly behind and in view of the innermost penetralia of Mr. Constable’s great publishing warehouse,[10]—the sanctum sanctorum in which Captain Clutterbuck found the Eidolon of the Author of “Waverley,” so well described in the introduction to “Nigel.”
At the period when Mr. Crosbie flourished, all the advocates and judges of the day dwelt in those obscure wynds or alleys leading down from the High Street, which, since the erection of the New Town, have been chiefly inhabited by the lower classes of society. The greater part, for the sake of convenience, lived in the lanes nearest to the Parliament House—such as the Advocate’s Close, Writer’s Court, Lady Stair’s Close, the West Bow, the Back Stairs, the President’s Stairs in the Parliament Close, and the tenements around the Mealmarket. In these dense and insalubrious obscurities they possessed what were then the best houses in Edinburgh, and which were considered as such till the erection of Brown’s Square and the contiguous suburbs, about the beginning of the last king’s reign, when the lawyers were found the first to remove to better and more extensive accommodations, being then, as now, the leading and most opulent class of Edinburgh population. This change is fully pointed out in “Redgauntlet,” where a writer to the signet is represented as removing from the Luckenbooths to Brown’s Square about the time specified—which personage, disguised under the name of Saunders Fairford, we have no doubt was designed for Sir Walter Scott’s own father, a practitioner of the same rank, who then removed from the Old Town to a house at the head of the College Wynd, in which his distinguished son, the Alan Fairford of the romance, was born and educated.
Living as they did so near the Parliament House, it was the custom of both advocates and senators to have their wigs dressed at home, and to go to court with their gowns indued, their wigs in full puff, and each with his cocked hat under his arm.[11] About nine in the morning, the various avenues to the Parliament Square used to be crowded with such figures. In particular, Mr. Crosbie was remarkable for the elegance of his figure, as, like his brethren, he emerged from the profundity of his alley into the open street. While he walked at a deliberate pace across the way, there could not be seen among all the throng a more elegant figure. He exhibited at once the dignity of the counsellor high at the bar and the gracefulness of the perfect gentleman. He frequently walked without a gown, when the fineness of his personal appearance was the more remarkable. His dress was usually a black suit, silk stockings, clear shoes, with gold or silver buckles. Sometimes the suit was of rich black velvet.
Mr. Crosbie, with all the advantages of a pleasing exterior, possessed the more solid qualifications of a vigorous intellect, a refined taste, and an eloquence that has never since been equalled at the bar. His integrity as a counsel could only be surpassed by his abilities as a pleader. In the first capacity, his acute judgment and great legal knowledge had long placed him in the highest rank. In the second, his thorough and confident acquaintance with the law of his case, his beautiful style of language, all “the pomp and circumstance” of matchless eloquence, commanded the attention of the bench in no ordinary degree; and while his talents did all that could be done in respect of moving the court, the excelling beauty of his oratory attracted immense crowds of admirers, whose sole disinterested object was to hear him.
It is recorded of him that he was one day particularly brilliant—so brilliant as even to surprise his usual audience, the imperturbable Lords themselves. What rendered the circumstance more wonderful was, that the case happened to be extremely dull, common-place and uninteresting. The secret history of the matter was to the following effect:—A facetious contemporary, and intimate friend of Mr. Crosbie, the celebrated Lord Gardenstone, in the course of a walk from Morningside, where he resided, fell into conversation with a farmer, who was going to Edinburgh in order to hear his cause pled that forenoon by Mr. Crosbie. The senator, who was a very homely and rather eccentric personage, on being made acquainted with the man’s business, directed him to procure a dozen or two farthings at a snuff-shop in the Grassmarket—to wrap them separately up in white paper, under the disguise of guineas—and to present them to his counsel as fees, when occasion served. The case was called: Mr. Crosbie rose; but his heart not happening to be particularly engaged, he did not by any means exert the utmost of his powers. The treacherous client, however, kept close behind his back, and ever and anon, as he perceived Mr. C. bringing his voice to a cadence, for the purpose of closing the argument, slipped the other farthing into his hand. The repeated application of this silent encouragement so far stimulated the advocate, that, in the end, he became truly eloquent—strained every nerve of his soul in grateful zeal for the interests of so good a client—and, precisely at the fourteenth farthing, gained the cause. The denouement of the conspiracy took place immediately after, in John’s Coffee-house, over a bottle of wine, with which Mr. Crosbie treated Lord Gardenstone from the profits of his pleading; and the surprise and mortification of the barrister, when, on putting his hand into his pocket in order to pay the reckoning, he discovered the real extent of his fee, can only be imagined.
Within the last forty years, a curious custom prevailed among the gentlemen of the long robe in Edinburgh—a custom which, however little it might be thought of then, would certainly make nine modern advocates out of ten shudder at every curl just to think of it. This was the practice of doing all their business, except what required to be done in the court, in taverns and coffee-houses. Plunged in these subterranean haunts, the great lawyers of the day were to be found, surrounded with their myrmidons, throughout the whole afternoon and evening of the day. It was next to impossible to find a lawyer at his own abode, and, indeed, such a thing was never thought of. The whole matter was to find out his tavern, which the cadies upon the street—those men of universal knowledge—could always tell, and then seek the oracle in his own proper hell, as Æneas sought the sibyl. At that time a Directory was seldom applied to; and even though a stranger could have consulted the celebrated Peter Williamson’s (supposing it then to have been published), he might, perhaps, by dint of research, have found out where Lucky Robertson lived, who, in the simple words of that intelligencer, “sold the best twopenny;” or he might have been accommodated, more to his satisfaction, with the information of who, through all the city, “sett lodgings” and “kept rooms for single men;” but he would have found the Directory of little use to him in pointing out where he might meet a legal friend. The cadies, who, at that time, wont to be completely au fait with every hole and bore in the town, were the only directories to whom a client from the country, such as Colonel Mannering or Dandie Dinmont, could in such a case apply.
The peculiar haunt of Mr. Crosbie was Douglas’s tavern in the Anchor Close, then a respectable and flourishing house, now deserted and shut up. Here many revelries, similar to those described in the novel, took place; and here the game of High Jinks was played by a party of convivial lawyers every Saturday night. The situation of the house resembles that of Clerihugh, described in “Guy Mannering,” being the second floor down a steep close, upon the north side of the High Street. Here a club, called the Crochallan Corps, of which Robert Burns was a member when in Edinburgh, assembled periodically, and held bacchanalian orgies, famous for their fierceness and duration.
There was also a tavern in Writer’s Court, kept by a real person, named Clerihugh, the peculiarities of which do not resemble those ascribed to the tavern of the novel, nearly so much as do those of Douglas’s. Clerihugh’s was, however, a respectable house. There the magistrates of the city always gave their civic dinners, and, what may perhaps endear it more in our recollections, it was once the favourite resort of a Boswell, a Gardenstone, and a Home. We may suppose that such a house as Douglas’s gave the idea of the tavern described by our author, while Clerihugh being a more striking name, and better adapted for his purpose, he adopted it in preference to the real one.
The custom of doing all business in taverns gave that generation of lawyers a very dissipated habit, and to it we are to attribute the ruin of Mr. Crosbie. That gentleman being held in universal esteem and admiration, his company was much sought after; and, while his celibacy gave every opportunity that could be desired, his own disposition to social enjoyments tended to confirm the evil. An anecdote is told of him, which displays in a striking manner the extent to which he was wont to go in his debaucheries. He had been engaged to plead a cause, and had partially studied the pros and cons of the case, after which he set off and plunged headlong into those convivialities with which he usually closed the evening. His debauch was a fierce one, and he did not get home till within an hour of the time when the court was to open. It was then too late for sleep, and all other efforts to cool the effervescence of his spirits, by applying wet cloths to his temples, etc., were vain; so that when the case was called, reason had scarcely reassumed her deserted throne. Nevertheless, he opened up with his usually brilliancy, and soon got warm into the argument; but not far did he get leave to proceed with his speech, when the agent came up behind, with horror and alarm in his face, pulled him by the gown, and whispered into his ear, “What the deevil! Mr. Crosbie! ye’ll ruin a’! ye’re on the wrang side; the very Lords are winking at it; and the client is gi’en’ a’ up for lost.” The crapulous barrister gave a single glance at the exordia of his papers, and instantly comprehended his mistake. However, not at all abashed, he rose again, and “Such my lords,” says he, “are probably the weak and intemperate arguments of the defender, concerning which, as I have endeavoured to state them, you can only entertain one opinion, namely, that they are utterly false, groundless, and absurd.” He then turned to upon the right side of the question, pulled to pieces all that he had said before, and represented the case in an entirely different light; and so much and so earnestly did he exert himself in order to repair his error, that he actually gained the cause.
Some allusion is made to Mr. Crosbie’s propensity to wine, in a birthday ode, written in his honour by his friend, Mr. Maclaurin (afterwards Lord Dreghorn), and set to music by the celebrated Earl of Kelly. We there learn that, at his birth, Venus, Bacchus, and Astrea, came and contended for the possession of his future affections, and that Jove gave a decision to this effect:—
It was indeed his favourite dose, and proved at last a fatal one. But, before we relate the history of his end, it will be necessary to notice a few particulars respecting his life.
Towards the conclusion of the American war, when Edinburgh raised a defensive band, and offered its services to government, Mr. Crosbie interested himself very much in the patriotic scheme, and was appointed lieutenant-colonel of the regiment. About the same period, he also interested himself very deeply in a business of a different description, namely, the institution of the Scottish Antiquarian Society, which was first projected by the Earl of Buchan. Mr. Crosbie was one of the original members, and had the honour to be appointed a censor. Honourable mention is made of him in his friend Boswell’s Tour to the Hebrides, being one of the northern literati who were introduced to Dr. Johnson when he passed through Edinburgh. In the life of Johnson, also, it will be found that the barrister visited the great lexicographer in London, shortly after the Doctor had returned from his northern excursion. The conversations which took place on both these occasions are curious, but not sufficiently interesting to be extracted into this work.
In the course of a long successful practice, the original of Pleydell acquired some wealth; and, at the time when the New Town of Edinburgh began to be built, with an enthusiasm prevalent at the period, he conceived the best way of laying out his money to be in the erection of houses in that noble and prosperous extension of the city. He therefore spent all he had, and ran himself into considerable debt, in raising a structure which was to surpass all the edifices yet erected, for making the design of which he employed that celebrated architect, Mr. James Craig, the nephew of Mr. Thomson, who planned the New Town on its projection in 1767. The house which Mr. Crosbie erected was to the north of the splendid mansion built by Sir Lawrence Dundas, which subsequent times have seen converted into an excise-office; and as the beauty of Mr. C.’s house was in a great measure subservient to the decoration of Sir Lawrence’s, that gentleman, with his accustomed liberality, made his tasteful neighbour a present of five hundred pounds. Yet this bonus proved, after all, but an insufficient compensation for the expense which Mr. Crosbie had incurred in his sumptuous speculation; and the unfortunate barrister, who, by his taste, had attracted the wonder and envy of all ranks, was thought to have made himself a considerable loser in the end. While it was yet unfinished, he removed from Allan’s Close, and, establishing himself in one of its corners, realized Knickerbocker’s fable of the snail in the lobster’s shell. He lived in it for some time, in a style of extravagance appropriate to the splendour of his mansion; till, becoming embarrassed by his numerous debts, and beginning to feel the effects of other imprudencies, he was at last obliged to resort to Allan’s Close, and take up with his old abode and his diminished fortunes. About this period his constitution appeared much injured by his habits of life, and he was of course unable to attend to business with his former alacrity. An incipient passion for dogs, horses, and cocks, was another strong symptom of decay. To crown all, he made a low marriage with a woman who had formerly been his menial, and (some said) his mistress; and as this tended very much to take away the esteem of the world, his practice began to forsake, and his friends to neglect him.
It was particularly unfortunate that, about this time, he lost the habit of frequenting one particular tavern, as he had been accustomed to do in his earlier and better years. The irregularity consequent upon visiting four or five of a night, in which he drank liquors of different sorts and qualities, was sufficient to produce the worst effects. Had he always steadily adhered to Clerihugh’s or Douglas’s, he might have been equally fortunate with many of his companions, who had frequented particular taverns, through several generations of possessors, seldom missing a night’s attendance, during the course of fifty years, from ill health or any other cause.
It is a melancholy task to relate the end of Mr. Crosbie. From one depth he floundered down to another, every step in his conduct tending towards a climax of ruin. Infatuation and despair led him on, disrespect and degradation followed him. When he had reached what might be called the goal of his fate, he found himself deserted by all whom he had ever loved or cherished, and almost destitute of a single attendant to administer to him the necessaries of life. Bound by weakness and disease to an uneasy pallet, in the garret of his former mansion, he lingered out the last weeks of life in pain, want, and sickness. So completely was he forsaken by every friend, that not one was by at the last scene to close his eyes or carry him to the grave. Though almost incredible, it is absolutely true, that he was buried by a few unconcerned strangers, gathered from the street; and this happened in the very spot where he had been known all his life, in the immediate neighbourhood of hundreds who had known, loved, and admired him for many years. He died on the 25th of February, 1785.
Mr. Crosbie’s clerk was a person named Robert H——, whose character and propensities agreed singularly well with those of Mr. Pleydell’s dependant, Driver. He was himself a practitioner before the courts, of the meaner description, and is remembered by many who were acquainted with the public characters of Edinburgh, towards the end of last century. He was frequently to be seen in the forenoon, scouring the closes of the High Street, or parading the Parliament Square; sometimes seizing his legal friends by the button, and dragging them about in the capacity of listeners, with an air and manner of as great importance as if he had been up to the very pen in his ear in business.
He was a pimpled, ill-shaven, smart-speaking, clever-looking fellow, usually dressed in grey under-garments, an old hat nearly brushed to death, and a black coat, of a fashion at least in the seventh year of its age, scrupulously buttoned up to his chin. It was in his latter and more unfortunate years that he had become thus slovenly. A legal gentleman, who gives us information concerning him, recollects when he was nearly the greatest fop in Edinburgh—being powdered in the highest style of fashion, wearing two gold watches, and having the collar of his coat adorned with a beautiful loop of the same metal. After losing the protection of Mr. Crosbie, he had fallen out of all regular means of livelihood; and unfortunately acquiring an uncontrollable propensity for social enjoyments, like the ill-fated Robert Fergusson, with whom he had been intimately acquainted, he became quite unsettled—sometimes did not change his apparel for weeks—sat night and day in particular taverns—and, in short, realized what Pleydell asserted of Driver, that “sheer ale supported him under everything; was meat, drink, and cloth—bed, board, and washing.” In his earlier years he had been very regular in his irregularities, and was a “complete fixture” at John Baxter’s tavern, in Craig’s Close, High Street, where he was the Falstaff of a convivial society, termed the “Eastcheap Club.” But his dignity of conduct becoming gradually dissipated and relaxed, and there being also, perhaps, many a landlady who might have said with Dame Quickly, “I warrant you he’s an infinite thing upon my score,” he had become unfortunately migrative and unsteady in his taproom affections. One night he would get drunk at the sign of the Sautwife, in the Abbeyhill, and next morning be found tipping off a corrective dram at a porter-house in Rose Street. Sometimes, after having made a midnight tumble into “the Finish” in the Covenant Close, he would, by next afternoon, have found his way (the Lord and the policeman only knew how) to a pie-office in the Castlehill. It was absolutely true that he could write his papers as well drunk as sober, asleep as awake; and the anecdote which the facetious Pleydell narrated to Colonel Mannering, in confirmation of this miraculous faculty, is also, we are able to inform the reader, strictly consistent in truth with an incident of real occurrence.
Poor H—— was one of those happy, thoughtless, and imprudent mortals, whose idea of existence lies all in to-day, or to-morrow at farthest,—whose whole life is only a series of random exertions and chance efforts at subsistence—a sort of constant Maroon war with starvation. His life had been altogether passed in Edinburgh. All he knew, besides his professional lore, was of Edinburgh; but then he knew all of that. There did not exist a tavern in the capital of which he could not have winked you the characters of both the waiters and the beefsteaks at a moment’s notice. He was at once the annalist of the history, the mobs, the manners, and the jokes of Edinburgh—a human phial, containing its whole essential spirit, corked with wit and labelled with pimples.
H—— was a man rich in all sorts of humour and fine sayings. His conversation was dangerously delightful. Had he not unhappily fallen into debauched habits, he possessed abilities that might have entitled him to the most enviable situations about the Court; but, from the nature of his peculiar habits, his wit was the only faculty he ever displayed in its full extent—pity it was the only one that could not be exerted for his own benefit! To have seen him set down “for a night of it” in Lucky F——’s, with a few cronies as drowthie as himself, and his Shadow (a person who shall hereafter be brought to light), was in itself a most exquisite treat. By the time that the injunction of “another half-mutchkin, mistress,” had been six times repeated, his lips, his eyes, and his nose, spoke, looked, and burned wit—pure wit! “He could not ope his mouth, but out there flew a trope.” The very sound of his voice was in itself a waggery; the twinkle of his eye might have toppled a whole theatre over into convulsions. He could not even spit but he was suspected of a witticism, and received the congratulation of a roar accordingly. Nay, at the height of such a tide as this, he would sometimes get the credit of Butler himself for an accidental scratch of his head.
His practice as a writer (for so he is styled in Peter Williamson’s Directory) lay chiefly among the very dregs of desperation and poverty, and was withal of such a nature as to afford him the humblest means of subsistence. Being naturally damned, as he himself used to say, with the utmost goodness of heart, he never hesitated at taking any poverty-struck case by the hand that could hold forth the slightest hope of success, and was perfectly incapable of resisting any appeal to his sense of justice, if made in forma pauperis. The greater part of his clients were poor debtors in the Heart of Midlothian, and he was most frequently employed in cases of cessio, for the accomplishment of which he was, from long practice, peculiarly qualified. He had himself a sort of instinctive hatred of the name of creditor, and would have been at any time perfectly willing to fight gratis upon the debtor’s side out of pure amateurship. His idle and debauched habits, also, laid him constantly open to the company of the lowest litigants, who purchased his advice or his opinion, and, in some cases, even his services as an agent, for the paltriest considerations in the shape of liquor; and, unfortunately, he did not possess sufficient resolution to withstand such temptations—his propensity for social enjoyments, which latterly became quite ungovernable, disposing him to make the greatest sacrifices for its gratification.
Yet this man, wretched as he eventually was, possessed a perfect knowledge of the law of Scotland, besides a great degree of professional cleverness; and, what with his experience under Mr. Crosbie, and his having been so long a hanger-on of the Court, was considered one of the best agents that could be employed in almost any class of cases. It is thought by many of his survivors that, if his talents had been backed by steadiness of application, he might have attained to very considerable eminence. At least, it has been observed, that many of his contemporaries, who had not half of his abilities, by means of better conduct and greater perseverence, have risen to enviable distinction. Mr. Crosbie always put great reliance in him, and sometimes intrusted him with important business; and H—— has even been seen to destroy a paper of Mr. Crosbie’s writing, and draw up a better himself, without incurring the displeasure which such an act of disrespect seemed to deserve. The highest compliment, however, that could be paid to Mr. H——’s abilities, was the saying of an old man, named Nicol,[12] a native of that litigious kingdom, Fife, who, for a long course of years, pestered the Court, in forma pauperis, with a process about a dunghill, and who at length died in Cupar jail—where he had been disposed, for some small debt, by a friend, just, as was asserted, to keep him out of harm’s way. Old John used to treat H—— in Johnnie Dowie’s, and get, as he said, the law out o’ him for the matter of a dram. He declared that “he would not give H——’s drunken glour at a paper for the serious opinions of the haill bench!”
Sunday was wont to be a very precious day to H——,—far too good to be lost in idle dram-drinking at home. On Saturday nights he generally made a point of insuring stock to the amount of half-a-crown in his landlady’s hands, and proposed a tour of jollity for next morning to a few of his companions. These were, for the most part, poor devils like himself, who, with few lucid intervals of sobriety or affluence—equally destitute of industry, prudence, and care for the opinion of the world—contrive to fight, drink, and roar their way through a desperate existence, in spite of the devil, their washerwoman, and the small-debt-court—perhaps even receiving Christian burial at last like the rest of their species. With one or two such companions as these, H—— would issue of a Sunday morning through the Watergate, on an expedition to Newhaven, Duddingstone, Portobello, or some such guzzling retreat,[13]—the termination of their walk being generally determined by the consideration of where they might have the best drink, the longest credit, or where they had already least debt. Then was it most delightful to observe by what a special act of Providence they would alight upon “the last rizzer’d haddock in the house,” or “the only hundred oysters that was to be got in the town;” and how gloriously they would bouse away their money, their credit, and their senses, till, finally, after uttering, for the thousand and first time, all their standard Parliament-House jokes—after quarrelling with the landlord, and flattering the more susceptible landlady up to the sticking-place of “a last gill,”—they would reel away home, in full enjoyment of that glory which, according to Robert Burns, is superior to the glory of even kings!
Nevertheless, H—— was not utterly given up to Sunday debauches, nor was he destitute of a sense of religion. He made a point of always going to church on rainy Sundays—that is to say, when his neckcloth happened to be in its honey-moon, and the button-moulds of his vestments did not chance to be beyond their first phase. He was not, therefore, very consistent in his devotional sentiments and observances; for the weather shared with his tailor the credit of determining him in all such matters. He was like Berwick smacks of old, which only sailed, “wind and weather permitting.” When, however, the day was favourably bad, he would proceed to the High Church of St. Giles (where, excepting on days of General Assembly, there are usually enow of empty seats for an army), and, on observing that the Lords of Session had not chosen to hold any sederunt that day, he would pop into their pew. In this conspicuous seat, which he perhaps considered a sort of common property of the College of Justice, he would look wonderfully at his ease, with one threadbare arm lolling carelessly over the velvet-cushioned gallery, while in the other hand he held his mother’s old black pocket Bible—a relic which he had contrived to preserve for an incredible number of years, through a thousand miraculous escapades from lodgings where he was insolvent, in memory of a venerable relation, whom he had never forgot, though oblivious of every other earthly regard besides.
Mr. H——’s Shadow, whom we mentioned a few pages back, however unsubstantial he may seem from his sobriquet, was a real person, and more properly entitled Mr. Nimmo. He had long been a dependant of H——’s, whence he derived this strange designation. Little more than the shadow of a recollection of him remains as materiel for description. He bore somewhat of the same relation to his principal which Silence bears to Shallow, in Henry IV.,—that is, he was an exaggerated specimen of the same species, and exhibited the peculiarities of H——’s habits and character in a more advanced stage. He was a prospective indication of what H—— was to become. H——, like Mr. Thomas Campbell’s “coming events,” cast his “shadow before;” and Nimmo was this shadow. When H—— got new clothes, Nimmo got the exuviæ or cast-off garments, which he wore on and on, as long as his principal continued without a new supply. Therefore, when H—— became shabby, Nimmo was threadbare; when H—— became threadbare, Nimmo was almost denuded; and when H—— became almost denuded, Nimmo was quite naked! Thus, also, when H——, after a successful course of practice, got florid and in good case, Nimmo followed and exhibited a little colour upon the wonted pale of his cheeks; when H—— began to fade, Nimmo withered before him; by the time H—— was looking thin, Nimmo was thin indeed; and when H—— was attenuated and sickly, poor Nimmo was as slender and airy as a moonbeam. Nimmo was in all things beyond, before, ahead of H——. If H—— was elevated, Nimmo was tipsy; if H—— was tipsy, Nimmo was fou; if H—— was fou, Nimmo was dead-drunk; and if H—— persevered and got dead-drunk also, Nimmo was sure still to be beyond him, and was perhaps packed up and laid to sleep underneath his principal’s chair. Nimmo, as it were, cleared the way for H——’s progress towards destruction—was his pioneer, his vidette, his harbinger, his avant-courier—the aurora of his rising, the twilight of his decline.
Nimmo naturally, and to speak of him without relation to the person of whom he was part and parcel, was altogether so inarticulate, so empty, so meagre, so inane a being, that he could scarcely be reckoned more than a mere thread of the vesture of humanity—a whisper of Nature’s voice. Nobody knew where he lived at night: he seemed then to disappear from the face of the earth, just as other shadows disappear on the abstraction of the light which casts them. He was quite a casual being—appeared by chance, spoke by chance, seemed even to exist only by chance, as a mere occasional exhalation of chaos, and at last evaporated from the world to sleep with the shadows of death,—all by chance. To have seen him, one would have thought it by no means impossible for him to dissolve himself and go into a phial, like Asmodeus in the laboratory at Madrid. His figure was in fact a libel on the human form divine. It was perfectly unimaginable what he would have been like in puris naturalibus, had the wind suddenly blown him out of his clothes some day—an accident of which he seemed in constant danger. It is related of him, that he was once mistaken, when found dead-drunk in a gutter, on the morning after a king’s birth-day, for the defunct corpse of Johnnie Wilkes,[14] which had been so loyally kicked about the streets by the mob on the preceding evening; but, on a scavenger proceeding to sweep him down the channel, he presently sunk from the exalted character imputed to him, by rousing himself, and calling lustily, “Another bottle—just another bottle, and then we’ll go!” upon which the deceived officer of police left him to the management of the stream.
Besides serving Mr. H—— in the character of clerk or amanuensis, he used to dangle at his elbow on all occasions, swear religiously to all his charges, and show the way in laughing at all his jokes. He was so clever in the use of his pen in transcription, that his hand could travel over a sheet at the rate of eleven knots an hour, and this whether drunk or sober, asleep or awake. Death itself could scarcely have chilled his energies, and it was one of his favourite jokes, in vaunting of the latter miraculous faculty, to declare that he intended to delay writing his will till after his decease, when he would guide himself in the disposal of his legacies by the behaviour of his relations. We do not question his abilities for such a task; but one might have had a pretty good guess, from Nimmo’s appearance, that he would scarcely ever find occasion, either before or after death, to exercise them.
These sketches, from the quaint flippancy of their style, may be suspected of fancifulness and exaggeration; yet certain it is, that out of the ten thousand persons said to be employed in this legal metropolis in the solicitation, distribution, and execution of justice, many individuals may even yet be found, in whom it would be possible to trace the lineaments we have described. Such persons as H—— and Nimmo dangle at the elbows of The Law, and can no more be said to belong to its proper body than so many rats in a castle appertain to the garrison.
H—— continued in the course of life which we have attempted to describe till the year 1808, when his constitution became so shattered, that he was in a great measure unfitted for business or for intercourse with society. Towards the end of his life, his habits had become still more irregular than before, and he seemed to hasten faster and faster as he went on to destruction, like the meteor, whose motion across the sky seems to increase in rapidity the moment before extinction. After the incontestable character of the greatest wit and the utmost cleverness had been awarded to him,—after he had spent so much money and constitution in endeavouring to render his companions happy, that some of them, more grateful or more drunken than the rest, actually confessed him to be “a devilish good-natured foolish sort of fellow,”—after he had, like certain Scottish poets, almost drunk himself into the character of a genius,—it came to pass that—he died. A mere pot-house reveller like him is no more missed in the world of life than a sparrow or a bishop. There was no one to sorrow for his loss—no one to regret his absence—save those whose friendship is worse than indifference. It never was very distinctly known how or where he died. It was alone recorded of him, as of the antediluvian patriarchs, that he died. As his life had become of no importance, so his death produced little remark and less sorrow. On the announcement of the event to a party of his old drinking friends, who, of course, were all decently surprised, etc., one of them in the midst of the Is it possibles? Not-possibles! and Can it be possibles? incidental to the occasion, summed up his elegy, by trivially exclaiming, “Lord! is Rab dead at last! Weel, that’s strange indeed!—not a week since I drank six half-mutchkins wi’ him down at Amos’s! Ah! he was a good bitch! (Then raising his voice) Bring us in a biscuit wi’ the next gill, mistress! Rab was ay fond o’ bakes!” And they ate a biscuit to his memory!
It is somewhat remarkable that the deaths of Crosbie and H—— should have been produced by causes and attended by circumstances nearly the same, though a period of full twenty years had intervened between the events. Both were men of great learning and abilities,—they were drawn down from the height in which their talents entitled them to shine by the same unfortunate propensities,—and while, in their latter days, both experienced the reverse of fortune invariably attendant upon imprudence, they at length left the scene of their notoriety, equally despised, deserted, and miserable.
Both cases are well calculated to illustrate the lesson so strenuously inculcated by Johnson,—that to have friends we must first be virtuous, as there is no friendship among the profligate.
Mr. Crosbie’s death presents the more trite moral of the two—for in it we see little more than the world forsaking an unfortunate man, as crowds fly from the falling temple, to avoid being crushed in the ruins. But the moral of Mr. H——’s death is striking and valuable. In him we see a man of the brightest genius gradually losing that self-respect, so necessary, even when it amounts to pride, for the cultivation and proper enjoyment of superior mental powers,—becoming in time unsettled in his habits, and careless of public estimation,—losing the attachment of friends of his own rank, and compensating the loss by mixing with associates of the lowest order:—next, become incapable of business, we see him dejected and forlorn as poverty itself, by turns assuming every colour and every aspect of which the human countenance and figure is susceptible, till the whole was worn down to a degree of indiscriminate ruin—the ne plus ultra of change:—at length, when every vulgar mode of enjoyment had been exhausted, and when even the fiercest stimulants had grown insipid, we see him lost at once to sensibility and to sensation, encountering the last evils of mortality in wretchedness and obscurity, unpitied by the very persons for whom he had sacrificed so much, and leaving a name for which he expected to acquire the fame of either talent or misfortune,