Book: Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2

J >> John Wilson >> Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2




Ay--ay--thou too art gone, WILLIAM STANLEY ROSCOE! What years have flown
since we walked among the "alleys green" of Allerton with thee and thy
illustrious father! and who ever conversed with him for a few hours in
and about his own home--where the stream of life flowed on so full and
clear--without carrying away impressions that never seemed to be
remembrances--so vivid have they remained amidst the obscurations and
obliterations of Time, that sweeps with his wings all that lies on the
surface, but has no power to disturb, much less destroy, the record
printed on the heart.

We are all of us getting old--or older; nor would we, for our own
part--if we could--renew our youth. Methinks the river of life is nobler
as it nears the sea. The young are dancing in their skiffs on the
pellucid shallows near the source on the Sacred Mountains of the Golden
East. They whose lot it is to be in their prime, are dropping down the
longer and wider reaches, that seem wheeling by with their sylvan
amphitheatres, as if the beauty were moving morn-wards, while the
voyagers are stationary among the shadows, or slowly descending the
stream to meet the meridian day. Many forget

"The torrent's smoothness ere it dash below,"

and are lost in the roaring whirlpool. Under Providence, we see
ourselves on the river expanded into a sea-like lake, or arm of the sea;
and for all our soul has escaped and suffered, we look up to the stars
in gratitude--and down to the stars--for the water too is full of stars
as well as the sky--faint and dim indeed--but blended by the pervading
spirit of beauty, with the brighter and bolder luminaries reposing on
infinitude.




OUR WINTER QUARTERS.


BUCHANAN LODGE--for a few months--farewell! 'Tis the Twelfth of
November; and for the City we leave thee not without reluctance, early
in March by the blessing of Heaven again to creep into thy blooming
bourne. Yet now and then we shall take a drive down, to while away a
sunny forenoon among thy undecaying evergreens, to breathe the balm of
thy Christmas roses, and for one _Gentle_ bosom to cull the earliest
crocuses that may be yellowing through the thin snows of Spring.

In truth, we know not well why we should ever leave thee, for thou art
the Darling of all the Seasons; and Winter, so churlish elsewhere, is
ever bland to thee, and, daily alighting in these gardens, loves to fold
and unfold, in the cool sunshine, the stainless splendour of his
pale-plumaged wings. But we are no hermit. Dear to us though Nature be,
here, hand-in-hand with Art walking through our peaceful but not
unpeopled POLICY, a voice comes to us from the city-heart--winning us
away from the stillness of solitude into the stir of life. Milton speaks
of a region

"Above the stir and smoke of this dim spot,
Which men call earth;"

and oft have we visited it; but while yet we pursue the ends of this our
mortal being, in the mystery of the brain whence ideas arise, and in the
mystery of the heart whence emotions flow--kindred and congenial
all--thought ever blending with feeling, reason with imagination, and
conscience with passion--'tis our duty to draw our delight from
intercommunion with the spirit of our kind. Weakest or wickedest of
mortals are your soul-sick, life-loathing, world-wearied men. In
solitude we are prone to be swallowed up in selfishness; and out of
selfishness what sins and crimes may not grow! At the best, moral
stagnation ensues--and the spirit becomes, like "a green-mantled pool,"
the abode of reptiles. Then ever welcome to us be living faces, and
living voices, the light and the music of reality--dearer far than any
mere ideas or emotions hanging or floating aloof by themselves in the
atmosphere of imagination. Blest be the cordial grasp of the hand of
friendship--blest the tender embrace of the arms of love! Nay, smile
not, fair reader, at an old man's fervour; for Love is a gracious
spirit, who deserteth not declining age.

The DROSKY is at the door--and, my eye! what a figure is Peter! There he
sits, like a bear, with the ribbons in his paws--no part visible of his
human face or form divine, but his small red eyes--and his ruby nose,
whose re-grown enormity laughs at Liston. One little month ago, the
knife of that skilful chirurgeon pared it down to the dimensions of a
Christian proboscis. Again 'tis like a wart on a frost-reddened Swedish
turnip. Pretty Poll, with small delicate pale features, sits beside him
like a snowdrop. How shaggy since he returned from our last Highland
tour is Filho da Puta! His mane long as his tail--and the hair on his
ears like that on his fetlocks. He absolutely reminds us of Hogg's
Bonassus. Ay, bless these patent steps--on the same principle as those
by which we ascend our nightly couch--we are self-deposited in our
Drosky. Oh! the lazy luxury of an air-seat! We seem to be sitting on
nothing but a voluptuous warmth, restorative as a bath. And then what
furry softness envelopes our feet! Yes--Mrs Gentle--Mrs Gentle--thy
Cashmere shawl, twined round our bust, feels almost as silken-smooth as
thine own, and scented is it with the balm of thy own lips. Boreas blows
on it tenderly as a zephyr--and the wintry sunshine seems summery as it
plays on the celestial colours. Thy pelisse, too, over our old happy
shoulders, purple as the neck of the dove when careering round his mate.
Thy comforter, too, in our bosom--till the dear, delightful, delicious,
wicked worsted thrills through skin and flesh to our very heart. It
dirls. Drive away, Peter. Farewell Lodge--and welcome, in a jiffy, Moray
Place.

And now, doucely and decently sitting in our Drosky, behold us driven by
Peter, proud as Punch to tool along the staring streets the
great-grandson of the Desert-born! Yet--yet--couldst thou lead the
field, Filho, with old Kit Castor on thy spine. But though our day be
not quite gone by, we think we see the stealing shades of eve, and, a
little further on in the solemn vista, the darkness of night; and
therefore, like wise children of nature, not unproud of the past, not
ungrateful for the present, and unfearful of the future, thus do we now
skim along the road of life, broad and smooth to our heart's content,
able to pay the turnpikes, and willing, when we shall have reached the
end of our journey, to lie down, in hope, at the goal.

What pretty, little, low lines of garden-fronted cottages! leading us
along out of rural into suburban cheerfulness, across the Bridge, and
past the Oriental-looking Oil-Gas Works, with a sweep winding into the
full view of PITT Street (what a glorious name!) steep as some straight
cliff-glen, and an approach truly majestic--yea, call it at once
magnificent--right up to the great city's heart. "There goes Old
Christopher North!" the bright boys in the playground of the New Academy
exclaim. God bless you, you little rascals!--We could almost find it in
our heart to ask the Rector for a holiday. But, under him, all your days
are holidays--for when the precious hours of study are enlightened by a
classic spirit, how naturally do they melt into those of play!

"Gay hope is yours, by fancy fed,
Less pleasing when possest;
The tear forgot as soon as shed,
The sunshine of the breast;
Yours buxom health, of rosy hue,
Wild wit, invention ever new,
And lively cheer, of vigour born;
The thoughtless day, the easy night,
The spirits pure, the slumbers light,
That fly th' approach of morn."

Descending from our Drosky, we find No. 99 Moray Place, exhibiting
throughout all its calm interior the self-same expression it wore the
day we left it for the Lodge, eight months ago. There is our venerable
winter Hat--as like Ourselves, it is said, as he can stare--sitting on
the Circular in the Entrance-hall. Everything has been tenderly dusted
as if by hands that touched with a Sabbath feeling; and though the
furniture cannot be said to be new, yet while it is in all sobered, it
is in nothing faded. You are at first unaware of its richness on account
of its simplicity--its grace is felt gradually to grow out of its
comfort--and that which you thought but ease lightens into elegance,
while there is but one image in nature which can adequately express its
repose--that of a hill-sheltered field by sunset, under a fresh-fallen
vest of virgin snow. For then snow blushes with a faint crimson--nay,
sometimes when Sol is extraordinarily splendid, not faint, but with a
gorgeousness of colouring that fears not to face in rivalry the western
clouds.

Let no man have two houses with one set of furniture. Home's deepest
delight is undisturbance. Some people think no articles fixtures--not
even grates. But sofas and ottomans, and chairs and footstools, and
screens--and above all, beds--all are fixtures in the dwelling of a wise
man, cognoscitive and sensitive of the blessings of this life. Each has
its own place assigned to it by the taste, tact, and feeling of the
master of the mansion, where order and elegance minister to comfort, and
comfort is but a homely word for happiness. In various moods we vary
their arrangement--nor is even the easiest of all Easy-chairs secure for
life against being gently pushed on his wheels from chimney-nook to
window-corner, when the sunshine may have extinguished the fire, and the
blue sky tempts the _Paterfamilias_, or him who is but an uncle, to lie
back with half-shut eyes, and gaze upon the cheerful purity, even like a
shepherd on the hill. But these little occasional disarrangements serve
but to preserve the spirit of permanent arrangement, without which the
very virtue of domesticity dies. What sacrilege, therefore, against the
Lares and Penates, to turn a whole house topsy-turvy, from garret to
cellar, regularly as May-flowers deck the zone of the year! Why, a
Turkey or a Persian, or even a Wilton or a Kidderminster carpet, is as
much the garb of the wooden floor inside, as the grass is of the earthen
floor outside of your house. Would you lift and lay down the greensward?
But without further illustration--be assured the cases are kindred--and
so, too, with sofas and shrubs, tent-beds and trees. Independently,
however, of these analogies, not fanciful, but lying deep in the nature
of things, the inside of one's tabernacle, in town and country, ought
ever to be sacred from all radical revolutionary movements, and to lie
for ever in a waking dream of graceful repose. All our affections
towards lifeless things become tenderer and deeper in the continuous and
unbroken flow of domestic habit. The eye gets lovingly familiarised with
each object occupying its own peculiar and appropriate place, and feels
in a moment when the most insignificant is missing or removed. We say
not a word about children, for fortunately, since we are yet unmarried,
we have none; but even they, if brought up Christians, are no dissenters
from this creed, and however rackety in the nursery, in an orderly-kept
parlour or drawing-room how like so many pretty little white mice do
they glide cannily along the floor! Let no such horror, then, as a
_flitting_ ever befall us or our friends! O mercy! only look at a long
huge train of waggons, heaped up to the windows of the first floors,
moving along the dust-driving or mire-choked streets with furniture from
a gutted town-house towards one standing in the rural shades with an
empty stomach! All is dimmed or destroyed--chairs crushed on the
table-land, and four-posted beds lying helplessly with their astonished
feet up to heaven--a sight that might make the angels weep!

People have wondered why we, an old barren bachelor, should live in such
a large house. It is a palace; but never was there a greater mistake
than to seek the solution in our pride. Silence can be had but in a
large house. And silence is the chief condition of home happiness. We
could now hear a leaf fall--a leaf of the finest wire-wove. Peter and
Betty, Polly and the rest, inhabit the second sunk story--and it is
delightful to know that they may be kicking up the most infernal
disturbance at this blessed moment, and tearing out each other's hair in
handfuls, without the faintest whisper of the uproar reaching us in our
altitude above the drawing-room flat. On New-Year's Day morning there is
regularly a competition of bagpipers in the kitchen, and we could fondly
imagine 'tis an Eolian Harp. In his pantry Peter practised for years on
the shrill clarion, and for years on the echoing horn; yet had he thrown
up both instruments in despair of perfection ere we so much as knew that
he had commenced his musical studies. In the sunk story, immediately
below _that_, having been for a season consumptive, we kept a Jenny ass
and her daughter--and though we believe it was not unheard around Moray
and Ainslie Places, and even in Charlotte Square, we cannot charge our
memory with an audit of their bray. In the sunk story immediately below
that again, that distinguished officer on half-pay, Captain Campbell of
the Highlanders--when on a visit to us for a year or two--though we
seldom saw him--got up a _Sma' still_--and though a more harmless
creature could not be, there he used to sit for hours together, with the
worm that never dies. On one occasion, it having been supposed by Peter
that the Captain had gone to the East Neuk of Fife, weeks elapsed, we
remember, ere he was found sitting dead, just as if he had been alive,
in his usual attitude in his arm-chair, commanding a view of the
precipice of the back court.

Just as quiet are the Attics. They, too, are furnished; for the feeling
of there being one unfurnished room, however small, in the largest
house, disturbs the entire state of mind of such an occupant, and when
cherished and dwelt on, which it must not unfrequently be, inspires a
cold air of desolation throughout the domicile, till "thoughts of
flitting rise." There is no lumber-room. The room containing
Blue-Beard's murdered wives might in idea be entered without distraction
by a bold mind.--But oh! the lumber-room, into which, on an early walk
through the house of a friend on whom we had been sorning, all
unprepared did we once set our foot! From the moment--and it was but for
a moment, and about six o'clock--far away in the country--that appalling
vision met our eyes--till we found ourselves, about another six o'clock,
in Moray Place, we have no memory of the flight of time. Part of the
journey--or voyage--we suspect, was performed in a steamer. The noise of
knocking, and puffing, and splashing seems to be in our inner ears; but
after all it may have been a sail-boat, possibly a yacht!--In the Attics
an Aviary open to the sky. And to us below, the many voices, softened
into one sometimes in the pauses of severer thought, are sometimes very
affecting, so serenely sweet it seems, as the laverock's in our youth at
the gates of heaven.

At our door stand the Guardian Genii, Sleep and Silence. We had an ear
to them in the building of our house, and planned it after a long summer
day's perusal of the "Castle of Indolence." O Jemmy Thomson! Jemmy
Thomson!--O that thou and we had been rowers in the same boat on the
silent river! Rowers, indeed! Short the spells and far between that we
should have taken--the one would not have turned round the other, but
when the oar chanced to drop out of his listless hand--and the canoe
would have been allowed to drift with the stream, unobservant we of our
backward course, and wondering and then ceasing to wonder at the
slow-receding beauty of the hanging banks of grove--the cloud-mountains,
immovable as those of earth, and in spirit one world.

Ay! Great noise as we have made in the world--our heart's desire is for
silence--its delight is in peace. And is it not so with all men,
turbulent as may have been their lives, who have ever looked into their
own being? The soul longs for peace in itself; therefore, wherever it
discerns it, it rejoices in the image of which it seeks the reality. The
serene human countenance, the wide water sleeping in the moonlight, the
stainless marble-depth of the immeasurable heavens, reflect to it that
tranquillity which it imagines within itself, though it never long dwelt
there, restless as a dove on a dark tree that cannot be happy but in the
sunshine. It loves to look on what it loves, even though it cannot
possess it; and hence its feeling, on contemplating such calm, is not of
simple repose, but desire stirs in it, as if it would fain blend itself
more deeply with the quiet it beholds! The sleep of a desert would not
so affect it; it is Beauty that makes the difference--that attracts
spirit to matter, while spirit becomes not thereby materialised--but
matter spiritualised; and we fluctuate in the air-boat of imagination
between earth and heaven. In most and in all great instances there is
apprehension, dim and faint, or more distinct, of pervasion of a spirit
throughout that which we conceive Beautiful. Stars, the moon, the deep
bright ether, waters, the rainbow, a pure lovely flower--none of them
ever appear to us, or are believed by us to be mere physical and
unconscious dead aggregates of atoms. That is what they are; but we
could have no pleasure in them, if we knew them as such. There is
illusion, then, of some sort, and to what does it amount? We cannot well
tell. But if there is really a love in human hearts to these distant
orbs--if there is an emotion of tenderness to the fair, opening,
breathing blossom that we would not crush it--"in gentleness of heart
touch, for there is a spirit in the leaves"--it must be that we do not
see them as they are, but "create a soul under the ribs of death." We
could not be touched, or care for what has no affinity to ourselves--we
make the affinity--we animate, we vivify them, and thenceforward,

"Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus,
Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet."

Now you do believe that we do love Silence--and every other thing worthy
to be loved--you and yours--and even that romp, your shock-headed Coz,
to whom Priscilla Tomboy was an Imogen.

All our ceilings are deadened--we walk ankle-deep in carpeting--nobody
is suffered to open a door but ourselves--and they are so constructed,
that it is out of their power to _slam_. Our winter furniture is all
massy--deepening the repose. In all the large rooms two fireplaces--and
fires are kept perpetually burning day and night, in them all, which,
reflected from spacious mirrors, give the mansion quite the appearance
of a Pandemonium. _Not gas always._ Palm-oil burns scentless as
moonlight; and when motion, not rest, in a place is signified, we
accompany ourselves with a wax candle, or taper from time immemorial
green. Yet think not that there is a blaze of light. We have seen the
midnight heaven and earth nearly as bright, with but one moon and a
small scatter of stars. And places of glimmer--and places of gloom--and
places "deaf to sound and blind to light" there are in this our mansion,
known but to ourselves--cells--penitentiaries--where an old man may sit
sighing and groaning, or stupified in his misery--or at times almost
happy. So senseless, and worse than senseless, seems then all mortal
tribulation and anguish, while the self-communing soul is assured, by
its own profound responses, that "whatever is, is best."

And thus is our domicile a domain--a kingdom. We should not care to be
confined to it all the rest of our days. Seldom, indeed, do we leave our
own door--yet call on us, and ten to one you hear us in winter chirping
like a cricket, or in summer like a grasshopper. We have the whole range
of the house to ourselves, and many an Excursion make we on the Crutch.
Ascending and descending the wide-winding stair-cases, each broad step
not above two inches high, we find ourselves on spacious landing-places
illumined by the dim religious light of stained windows, on which
pilgrims, and palmers, and prophets, single or in pairs or troops, are
travelling on missions through glens or forests or by sea-shores--or
shepherd piping in the shade, or poet playing with the tangles of
Neaera's hair. We have discovered a new principle on which, within narrow
bounds, we have constructed Panoramic Dioramas, that show splendid
segments of the great circle of the world. We paint all of them
ourselves--now a Poussin, now a Thomson, now a Claude, now a Turner, now
a Rubens, now a Danby, now a Salvator, now a Maclise.

Most people, nay, we suspect all people but ourselves, make a point of
sleeping in the same bed (that is awkwardly expressed) all life through;
and out of that bed many of them avow their inability to "bow an eye;"
such is the power of custom, of habit, of use and wont, over weary
mortals even in the blessing of sleep. No such slavish fidelity do we
observe towards any one bed of the numerous beds in our mansion. No one
dormitory is entitled to plume itself, in the pride of its heart, on
being peculiarly Ours; nor is any one suffered to sink into despondency
from being debarred the privilege of contributing to Our repose. They
are all furnished, if not luxuriously, comfortably in the extreme; in
number, nine--each, of course, with its two dressing-rooms--those on the
same story communicating with one another, and with the parlours,
drawing-rooms, and libraries--"a mighty maze, but not without a plan,"
and all harmoniously combined by one prevailing and pervading spirit of
quietude by day and by night, awake or asleep--the chairs being
couch-like, the couches bed-like, the beds, whether tent or canopy,
enveloped in a drapery of dreams.

We go to bed at no stated hour--but when we are tired of sitting up,
then do we lie down; at any time of the night or the day; and we rise,
neither with the lark, nor the swallow, nor the sparrow, nor the cock,
nor the owl, nor the sun, nor the moon, nor the stars, nor Lucifer, nor
Aurora, but with Christopher North. Yellow, or green, or blue, or
crimson, or fawn, or orange, or pinky light salutes our eyes, as sleep's
visionary worlds recede and relapse into airy nothing, and as we know of
a certainty that _these_ are real web-and-woof damask curtains, _that_
flock palpable on substantial walls.

True wisdom soon accommodates itself even to involuntary or inevitable
change--but to that which flows from our own sweet will, however sudden
and strong, it instantly moulds itself in a novel delight, with all its
familiar and domestic habits. Why, we have not been in 99 Moray Place
for a week--nay, not for two days and nights--till you might swear we
had been all our life a Cit, we look so like a Native. The rustic air of
the Lodge has entirely left us, and all our movements are metropolitan.
You see before you a Gentleman of the Old School, who knows that the
eyes of the town are upon him when he seeks the open air, and who
preserves, even in the privacy of the parlour, that dignity of dress and
demeanour which, during winter, befits his age, his rank, and his
character. Now, we shave every morning; John, who in his boyish days
served under Barbarossa, lightly passes the comb through our "sable
silvered;" and then, in our shawl dressing-gown, we descend about ten to
our study, and sit, not unstately, beside the hissing urn at our
protracted breakfast. In one little month or less, "or ere our shoes are
old," we feel as if we had belonged to _this_ house alone, and it to us,
from our birth. The Lodge is seen to be standing in its stillness, far
away! Dear memories of the pensive past now and then come floating upon
the cheerful present--like birds of fairest plumage floating far inland
from the main. But there is no idle longing--no vain regret. This, we
say, is true wisdom. For each scene and season--each pleasure and
place--ought to be trusted to itself in the economy of human life, and
to be allowed its own proper power over our spirit. People in the
country are often restless to return to town--and people in town unhappy
till they rush away into the country--thus cheating their entire
existence out of its natural calm and satisfaction. Not so we. We give
both their due--and that due is an almost undivided delight in each
while we live under its reign. For Nature, believe us, is no jealous
mistress. She is an affectionate wife, who, being assured of his
fidelity, is not afraid to trust her husband out of her sight,

"When still the town affairs do call him thence,"

and who waits with cheerful patience for his return, duly welcomed with
a conjugal shower of smiles and kisses.

But what is this we see before us? Winter--we declare--and in full fig
with his powdered wig! On the mid-day of November, absolutely snow! a
full, fair, and free fall of indisputable snow.

Not the slightest idea had we, the day before, that a single flake had
yet been formed in the atmosphere, which, on closing of our shutters,
looked through the clear-obscure, indicative of a still night and a
bright morning. But we had not seen the moon. She, we are told by an
eyewitness, early in the evening, _stared_ from the south-east, "through
the misty horizontal air," with a face of portentous magnitude and
brazen hue, symptomatic, so weatherwise seers do say, of the approach of
the Snow-king. On such occasions it requires all one's astronomical
science to distinguish between sun and moon; for then sister resembles
brother in that wan splendour, and you wonder for a moment, as the large
beamless orb (how unlike Dian's silver bow!) is in ascension, what can
have brought the lord of day, at this untimeous hour, from his sea-couch
behind the mountains of the west. Yet during the night-calm we suspected
snow--for the hush of the heavens had that downy feel, to our
half-sleeping fancy, that belongs to the eider-pillow in which
disappears our aged, honoured, and un-nightcap'd head. Looking out by
peep of day--rather a ghostlike appearance in our long night-shirt,
which trails a regal train--we beheld the fair feathers dimly descending
through the glimmer, while momently the world kept whitening and
whitening, till we knew not our home-returning white cat on what was
yesterday the back-_green_, but by the sable tail that singularly shoots
from the rump of that phenomenon. We were delighted. Into the cold
plunge-bath we played plop like a salmon--and came out as red as a cut
of that incomparable fish. One ply of leather--one of flannel--and one
of the linen fine; and then the suit of pepper-and-salt over all; and
you behold us welcoming, hailing, and blessing the return of day. Frost,
too, felt at the finger and toe tips--and in unequivocal true-blue at
the point, Pensive Public, of thy Grecian or Roman nose. Furs, at once,
are all the rage; the month of muffs has come; and round the neck of
Eve, and every one of all her daughters, is seen harmlessly coiling a
boa-constrictor. On their lovely cheeks the Christmas roses are already
in full blow, and the heart of Christopher North sings aloud for joy.
Furred, muffed, and boa'd, Mrs Gentle adventures abroad in the blast;
and, shouldering his Crutch, the rough, ready, and ruddy old man shows
how widows are won, whispers in that delicate ear of the publication of
bans, and points his gouty toe towards the hymeneal altar. In the
bracing air, his frame is strung like Paganini's fiddle, and he is felt
to be irresistible in the _piggicato_. "Lord of his presence, and small
land beside," what cares he even for a knight of the Guelphic order? On
his breast shines a star--may it never prove a cross--beyond bestowal by
king or kaisar; nor is Maga's self jealous or envious of these wedded
loves. And who knows but that ere another November snow sheets the
Shotts, a curious little Kit, with the word North distinctly traceable
in blue letters on the whites of his eyes, may not be playing antics on
his mother's knee, and with the true Tory face in miniature, smiling
upon the guardian of the merry fellow's own and his country's
constitution?

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