A clergyman of venerable appearance, our only visitor, was my guide and companion in a journey of considerable length; and in the charge of another elderly man, substituted in his place, I know not how or why, I completed my journey to Scotland and this is all I recollect.
I repeat the little history now, as I have a hundred times before, merely because I would wring some sense out of it. Turn, then, thy sharp, wire-drawing, lawyer-like ingenuity to the same task make up my history as though thou wert shaping the blundering allegations of some blue-bonneted, hard-headed client, into a condescendence of facts and circumstances, and thou shalt be, not my Apollo QUID TIBI CUM LYRA? but my Lord Stair, [Celebrated as a Scottish lawyer.] Meanwhile, I have written myself out of my melancholy and blue devils, merely by prosing about them; so I will now converse half an hour with Roan Robin in his stall the rascal knows me already, and snickers whenever I cross the threshold of the stable.
The black which you bestrode yesterday morning promises to be an admirable roadster, and ambled as easily with Sam and the portmanteau, as with you and your load of law-learning. Sam promises to be steady, and has hitherto been so. No long trial, you will say. He lays the blame of former inaccuracies on evil company the people who were at the livery-stable were too seductive, I suppose he denies he ever did the horse injustice would rather have wanted his own dinner, he says. In this I believe him, as Roan Robins ribs and coat show no marks of contradiction. However, as he will meet with no saints in the inns we frequent, and as oats are sometimes as speedily converted into ale as John Barleycorn himself, I shall keep a look-out after Master Sam. Stupid fellow! had he not abused my good nature, I might have chatted to him to keep my tongue in exercise; whereas now I must keep him at a distance.
Do you remember what Mr. Fairford said to me on this subject it did not become my fathers son to speak in that manner to Sams fathers son? I asked you what your father could possibly know of mine; and you answered, As much, you supposed, as he knew of Sams it was a proverbial expression. This did not quite satisfy me; though I am sure I cannot tell why it should not. But I am returning to a fruitless and exhausted subject. Do not be afraid that I shall come back on this well-trodden yet pathless field of conjecture. I know nothing so useless, so utterly feeble and contemptible, as the groaning forth ones lamentations into the ears of our friends.
I would fain promise you that my letters shall be as entertaining as I am determined they shall be regular and well filled. We have an advantage over the dear friends of old, every pair of them. Neither David and Jonathan, nor Orestes and Pylades, nor Damon and Pythias although, in the latter case particularly, a letter by post would have been very acceptable ever corresponded together; for they probably could not write, and certainly had neither post nor franks to speed their effusions to each other; whereas yours, which you had from the old peer, being handled gently, and opened with precaution, may be returned to me again, and serve to make us free of his Majestys post office, during the whole time of my proposed tour. [It is well known and remembered, that when Members of Parliament enjoyed the unlimited privilege of franking by the mere writing the name on the cover, it was extended to the most extraordinary occasions. One noble lord, to express his regard for a particular regiment, franked a letter for every rank and file. It was customary also to save the covers and return them, in order that the correspondence might be carried on as long as the envelopes could hold together.] Mercy upon us, Alan! what letters I shall have to send to you, with an account of all that I can collect, of pleasant or rare, in this wild-goose jaunt of mine! All I stipulate is that you do not communicate them to the SCOTS MAGAZINE; for though you used, in a left-handed way, to compliment me on my attainments in the lighter branches of literature, at the expense of my deficiency in the weightier matters of the law, I am not yet audacious enough to enter the portal which the learned Ruddiman so kindly opened for the acolytes of the Muses. VALE SIS MEMOR MEI. D. L.
PS. Direct to the Post Office here. I shall leave orders to forward your letters wherever I may travel.
LETTER II
ALAN FAIRFORD TO DARSIE LATIMER
NEGATUR, my dear Darsie you have logic and law enough to understand the word of denial. I deny your conclusion. The premises I admit, namely, that when I mounted on that infernal hack, I might utter what seemed a sigh, although I deemed it lost amid the puffs and groans of the broken-winded brute, matchless in the complication of her complaints by any save she, the poor mans mare, renowned in song, that died
A mile aboon Dundee.
[Alluding, as all Scotsmen know, to the humorous old song:
The auld mans mares dead,
The puir mans mares dead,
The auld mans mares dead,
A mile aboon Dundee.]
But credit me, Darsie, the sigh which escaped me, concerned thee more than myself, and regarded neither the superior mettle of your cavalry, nor your greater command of the means of travelling. I could certainly have cheerfully ridden with you for a few days; and assure yourself I would not have hesitated to tax your better filled purse for our joint expenses. But you know my father considers every moment taken from the law as a step down hill; and I owe much to his anxiety on my account, although its effects are sometimes troublesome. For example:
I found, on my arrival at the shop in Browns Square, that the old gentleman had returned that very evening, impatient, it seems, of remaining a night out of the guardianship of the domestic Lares. Having this information from James, whose brow wore rather an anxious look on the occasion, I dispatched a Highland chairman to the livery stable with my Bucephalus, and slunk, with as little noise as might be, into my own den, where I began to mumble certain half-gnawed and not half-digested doctrines of our municipal code. I was not long seated, when my fathers visage was thrust, in a peering sort of way, through the half-opened door; and withdrawn, on seeing my occupation, with a half-articulated HUMPH! which seemed to convey a doubt of the seriousness of my application. If it were so, I cannot condemn him; for recollection of thee occupied me so entirely during an hours reading, that although Stair lay before me, and notwithstanding that I turned over three or four pages, the sense of his lordships clear and perspicuous style so far escaped me, that I had the mortification to find my labour was utterly in vain.
Ere I had brought up my lee-way, James appeared with his summons to our frugal supper radishes, cheese, and a bottle of the old ale-only two plates though and no chair set for Mr. Darsie, by the attentive James Wilkinson. Said James, with his long face, lank hair, and very long pig-tail in its leathern strap, was placed, as usual, at the back of my fathers chair, upright as a wooden sentinel at the door of a puppet-show. You may go down, James, said my father; and exit Wilkinson. What is to come next? thought I; for the weather is not clear on the paternal brow.
My boots encountered his first glance of displeasure, and he asked me, with a sneer, which way I had been riding. He expected me to answer, Nowhere, and would then have been at me with his usual sarcasm, touching the humour of walking in shoes at twenty shillings a pair. But I answered with composure, that I had ridden out to dinner as far as Noble House. He started (you know his way) as if I had said that I had dined at Jericho; and as I did not choose to seem to observe his surprise, but continued munching my radishes in tranquillity, he broke forth in ire.
Ere I had brought up my lee-way, James appeared with his summons to our frugal supper radishes, cheese, and a bottle of the old ale-only two plates though and no chair set for Mr. Darsie, by the attentive James Wilkinson. Said James, with his long face, lank hair, and very long pig-tail in its leathern strap, was placed, as usual, at the back of my fathers chair, upright as a wooden sentinel at the door of a puppet-show. You may go down, James, said my father; and exit Wilkinson. What is to come next? thought I; for the weather is not clear on the paternal brow.
My boots encountered his first glance of displeasure, and he asked me, with a sneer, which way I had been riding. He expected me to answer, Nowhere, and would then have been at me with his usual sarcasm, touching the humour of walking in shoes at twenty shillings a pair. But I answered with composure, that I had ridden out to dinner as far as Noble House. He started (you know his way) as if I had said that I had dined at Jericho; and as I did not choose to seem to observe his surprise, but continued munching my radishes in tranquillity, he broke forth in ire.
To Noble House, sir! and what had you to do at Noble House, sir? Do you remember you are studying law, sir? that your Scots law trials are coming on, sir? that every moment of your time just now is worth hours at another time? and have you leisure to go to Noble House, sir? and to throw your books behind you for so many hours? Had it been a turn in the meadows, or even a game at golf but Noble House, sir!
I went so far with Darsie Latimer, sir, to see him begin his journey.
Darsie Latimer? he replied in a softened tone Humph! Well, I do not blame you for being kind to Darsie Latimer; but it would have done as much good if you had walked with him as far as the toll-bar, and then made your farewells it would have saved horse-hire and your reckoning, too, at dinner.
Latimer paid that, sir, I replied, thinking to soften the matter; but I had much better have left it unspoken.
The reckoning, sir! replied my father. And did you sponge upon any man for a reckoning? Sir, no man should enter the door of a public-house without paying his lawing.
I admit the general rule, sir, I replied; but this was a parting-cup between Darsie and me; and I should conceive it fell under the exception of DOCH AN DORROCH.
You think yourself a wit, said my father, with as near an approach to a smile as ever he permits to gild the solemnity of his features; but I reckon you did not eat your dinner standing, like the Jews at their Passover? and it was decided in a case before the town-bailies of Cupar-Angus, when Luckie Simpsons cow had drunk up Luckie Jamiesons browst of ale while it stood in the door to cool, that there was no damage to pay, because the crummie drank without sitting down; such being the very circumstance constituting DOCH AN DORROCH, which is a standing drink, for which no reckoning is paid. Ha, sir! what says your advocateship (FIERI) to that? EXEPTIO FIRMAT REGULAM But come, fill your glass, Alan; I am not sorry ye have shown this attention to Darsie Latimer, who is a good lad, as times go; and having now lived under my roof since he left the school, why, there is really no great matter in coming under this small obligation to him.
As I saw my fathers scruples were much softened by the consciousness of his superiority in the legal argument, I took care to accept my pardon as a matter of grace, rather than of justice; and only replied, we should feel ourselves duller of an evening, now that you were absent. I will give you my fathers exact words in reply, Darsie. You know him so well, that they will not offend you; and you are also aware, that there mingles with the good mans preciseness and formality, a fund of shrewd observation and practical good sense.
It is very true, he said; Darsie was a pleasant companion-but over waggish, over waggish, Alan, and somewhat scatter-brained. By the way, Wilkinson must get our ale bottled in English pints now, for a quart bottle is too much, night after night, for you and me, without his assistance. But Darsie, as I was saying, is an arch lad, and somewhat light in the upper story I wish him well through the world; but he has little solidity, Alan, little solidity.
I scorn to desert an absent friend, Darsie, so I said for you a little more than my conscience warranted: but your defection from your legal studies had driven you far to leeward in my fathers good opinion.
Unstable as water, he shall not excel, said my father; or, as the Septuagint hath it, EFUSA EST SICUT AQUA NON CRESCAT. He goeth to dancing-houses, and readeth novels SAT EST.
I endeavoured to parry these texts by observing, that the dancing-houses amounted only to one night at La Piques ball the novels (so far as matter of notoriety, Darsie) to an odd volume of TOM JONES.
But he danced from night to morning, replied my father, and he read the idle trash, which the author should have been scourged for, at least twenty times over. It was never out of his hand.
I then hinted, that in all probability your fortune was now so easy as to dispense with your prosecuting the law any further than you had done; and therefore you might think you had some title to amuse yourself. This was the least palatable argument of all.
If he cannot amuse himself with the law, said my father, snappishly it is the worse for him. If he needs not law to teach him to make a fortune, I am sure he needs it to teach him how to keep one; and it would better become him to be learning this, than to be scouring the country like a land-louper, going he knows not where, to see he knows not what, and giving treats at Noble House to fools like himself (an angry glance at poor me), Noble House, indeed! he repeated, with elevated voice and sneering tone, as if there were something offensive to him in the name, though I will venture to say that any place in which you had been extravagant enough to spend five shillings, would have stood as deep in his reprobation.
Mindful of your idea, that my father knows more of your real situation than he thinks proper to mention, I thought I would hazard a fishing observation. I did not see, I said, how the Scottish law would be useful to a young gentleman whose fortune would seem to be vested in England. I really thought my father would have beat me.
Dye mean to come round me, sir, PER AMBAGES, as Counsellor Pest says? What is it to you where Darsie Latimers fortune is vested, or whether he hath any fortune, aye or no? And what ill would the Scottish law do to him, though he had as much of it as either Stair or Bankton, sir? Is not the foundation of our municipal law the ancient code of the Roman Empire, devised at a time when it was so much renowned for its civil polity, sir, and wisdom? Go to your bed, sir, after your expedition to Noble House, and see that your lamp be burning and your book before you ere the sun peeps. ARS LONGA, VITA BREVIS were it not a sin to call the divine science of the law by the inferior name of art.
So my lamp did burn, dear Darsie, the next morning, though the owner took the risk of a domiciliary visitation, and lay snug in bed, trusting its glimmer might, without further inquiry, be received as sufficient evidence of his vigilance. And now, upon this the third morning after your departure, things are but little better; for though the lamp burns in my den, and VOET ON THE PANDECTS hath his wisdom spread open before me, yet as I only use him as a reading-desk on which to scribble this sheet of nonsense to Darsie Latimer, it is probable the vicinity will be of little furtherance to my studies.