Sixty years ago, as a student in Glasgow, I spent many hours in second-hand bookstores looking for “bargains”. I remember one shop in Cowcaddens run by a woman, a right Glasgow character if there was one, occasionally aided by her brother. The hours of the shop were erratic and its stock was so disorganized that it was more by good luck than any methodical purpose that something of interest might be found. I spent so much time there that on occasion I would fetch “twenty Embassy” and “a quarter-bottle of Bell’s” for the good lady in charge. I never did find much of interest in that bookshop, but it instilled in me a strong fascination for collecting printed material on Glasgow and its culture that had remained with me over the intervening years.
One consequence is that I have delved into the short-lived art and cultural magazines that abounded in Glasgow and the West of Scotland during the early 1800s, particularly those that feature the local vernacular. The stories of Glasgow’s characters and their exploits have always made me smile. They can add a perspective on the conditions current at the time of their writing that is hard to glean from any other sources. One such magazine was “The Ant,” sold on Saturdays in fortnightly issues from the winter of 1826 and into the summer of 1827, and published as a collective work in 1827. I have no idea when and where I acquired my copy but I am sure it has passed through many appreciative hands in its nearly two-hundred years of existence. One of the advertisements at the back of the book is for “Swan’s Views of Glasgow,” with a note that a companion volume, “Swan’s Views of the Clyde” was in preparation, and I have used engravings from my copy of the latter as illustrations. I thought that these descriptions of the Steam-boat Quay by “Alexis”, and the watering places by the “Hermit of the West”, might be of interest.
The steamboat quay (Swan)
The Steam-boat Quay. (The Ant, Saturday, 7th April, 1827.)—It was on one of the balmy days which sometimes occur at the end of March in our climate, but look so premature, and so out of place, preceded and followed as they always are by companions of more surly temper, that I dare hardly venture to congratulate myself on the return of Spring and sunshine, merely from their appearance—that notwithstanding some misgivings which induced me to carry an umbrella with me, I found myself seated upon, or rather leaning against, the massy, if not elegant, lamp-post and freestone basement which stands near the termination of the breast-work of the Glasgow harbour, now a place for taprooms and ship-chandlers, fishermen and coal-agents, ship-brokers and burden-carriers, mariners, &c. but, judging from its name, once a range of bonny broom-covered knowes, by the side of the then limpid waters of the pastoral Clyde.
The steam-boats which, like swallows, make very few and very short journeys in Winter, began to exhibit symptoms of reviving activity. Some lay in the stream under repair, receiving additions to their mechanical power, or having their embellished and ornamental parts “re-polished and re-touched,” like the speech of a young county member’s father, which his tutor fits up and puts in a state for re-delivery by altering dates and references.
The sound of the shrill horns, blown by rival cabin-boys, announced that more than one was on the eve of starting.Though, from my time of life and other circumstances, no great traveller, I yet think few amusements more pleasing than to watch the setting off of coaches and steam-boats, to note the personages who fill them, and endeavour from their features to judge of their characters and the motives which induce their departure from this great city.—“Haste ye, mither, what a’ ye clavering wi’ Lucky Dreighdraw yet for? Oddsake, I might hae been here an hour syne but for you, an’ no been bursten wi’ rinnin’ ne’ther,” were the first words I could distinctly hear, as a straggling party advanced. They proceeded from a rosy Gourock lass, who had accompanied her mother to Glasgow, to counsel and assist her in the selection andpurchase of certain necessary replenishments of “towels, blankets, crockery, and counterpanes,” preparatory to the annual immigration of “saut-water fock” thither. Mrs. Lampetleg seemed, however, little discomposed by the querulous and reproachful tone in which they were uttered. She was labouring on, as well as her size and the weight “o’ crockery and ither groceries,” as she called them, which she carried, and the deeply interesting peroration of the discourse she had been laying off to her crony all the way down from the Brunt Barns to the Broomielaw, would permit. “An’ tell Mysie, as I said afore, no to forget the pattern for the mutch she spoke o’, nor the body o’ Kate the randy’s black spencer. Gin ye hear ony mair o’ Leezie Tamson’s misfortune wi’ lang Sawny, let me ken by ony body that comes our way in Simmer. Gude-sake, did ye min’ the brown sape and black ashes? we’ve sax pair o’ blankets to scour afore the preachens. D’ye think we wad na ha’e time to get a bottle o’ yill? I’m like to choke wi’ drouth and sweatin’?”—rapidly uttered the gaucy guidwife, as she neared and passed the place where I stood. I was not fortunate enough to catch the replies of the other interlocutor in full, but “lang-toung’d hizzy—’deed have ye—its in yer blue kist,” &c. met my ears, as the “Lucky” examined the various accumulations which her daughter had received orders to see packed and stowed away in the steerage of the Rothsay Castle.
They were broken in upon, however, by the hoarse voice of the captain calling out, “Ashore, ashore,”—at which mandate the loving cronies had to separate, with thirst unslaked, and stories innumerable yet untold; but as the last words of Mrs. Lampetleg and her daughter died away on my ear, while they accompanied them with expressive waves of the hand, each of which at once plainly said “farewell,” and “welcome,” I heard her kimmer grumble out as she retraced her steps up thedusty quay, “Devil choke the woman—she havered awa’ the time for nae ither end but just to save her birling o’ the bawbee. But I’ll ha’e my mends. She’s get eight days o’ me in hairst, when the herrin’ ’s in, an’ I’ll hunger, mysel’ a fortnight afore, just to get revenge upon her pantry.”
I learn, however, since, from the douce dame of the Brunt Barns, that although she physicked herself for an appetite before her trip, and trusted to a “saut-water acquaintanceship, and a shake-hand invitation,” she might have perished for want, but for an advance of ready money upon her well-known credit from Captain ——, and would have been “made a fool o’, for haeing naething forenent room rent for the eight days o’ the invitation but that it, after paying M‘Farlane the baker, and Widow M‘Garrack the egg-wife, afforded eight shillings for its settlement, and a few over to pay her cabin fare, and a tass o’ brandy on her way up, with which she drank—”Wet weather, west wun’, and empty awmries to saut-water gentry.”—Alexis.
A steam-boat of the Castle Company sailing past Dunoon (Swan)
Gourock (Swan)
The Watering-Places.—Gourock (The Ant, Saturday, 23d June, 1827).—The term which I have taken as the title of my series of sketches, is one of those fashionable phrases which are as wide in their meaning as that part of Archy ——’sdress, which, in reality, is usually described by a delicate periphrasis. It embraces every place to which visitors of every grade, mental, moral, and monied, resort for a more unrestrained use of the element of water than they permit themselves to indulge in at home, either in looking at it, drinking of it, sailing on it, eating from it, or plunging in it. Moffat, Innerleithen, Pitcaithley, and Dumblane, are now equally embraced in its comprehension, with every bay that has a house built on its margin, from Crawford’s-dyke, on the one side, and the Hill of Ardmore on the other, to the Mulls of Kintyre and Galloway,—speaking only of the firth of Clyde, let alone of the pan-tilled, and smoke-dried, and tide-deserted, and scroggy-downed, and rabbit-warrened, and eastwind bit “wee townies” of the Forfar, Fife, and other eastern coasts. In England, its signification has even a wider range, which we of Scotland little wot of;—coach stands, and places of call for John the driver, and Tom the guard, where good ale and pretty bar-maids are kept, being so dignified in appellation.
The field, then, upon which I have chosen to expatiate, is wide enough. But I will disinterestedly abridge my own scope, and, marvellous sacrifice in an author! narrow my arena of observation. The Watering-Places of the West shall be my theme; a few—a favoured few of them only—my immediate topic; and, without even a hint that I could have written a prelude on the physical history of saline influence on the human mind or body, proceed at once to the scratching in my sketch-book a few pencil lines—and Gourock shall be the subject.
It is Saturday evening, reader, and we are just turning the point upon which stands the idle battery that, like some officers of the guards, wears the trappings of war, without ever having known any thing of its perils. Look how beautifully the bay now stretches out in almost a perfectly semicircular form, and note the lofty bastions of nature which guard both its points. These hills have as many names as from their summits are diversified, but all-beautiful, landscapes to be seen stretched out below. The breast-work, as it were, of lower elevation, which, gradually swelling up behind the village, connects these two extreme points, you perceive is covered with verdure of the loveliest hue; and note where it bends a little in-wards, where the belt of “planting” encircles a residence whose situation, at least, might make any one envy thelordship of that manor, of which its possession was once the symbol. That beautiful cottage which we now pass, with thegarden before it, where so many happy and healthy children are disporting, is the property of a Glasgow merchant, whose flag-staff, planted in the rear of his house, very often salutes the pennon of its master’s vessels, as they glide past it to their haven.
But we are rapidly approaching the shore, although the state of the tide will not permit us to be landed at the quay. That group of gentlemen who are just wiping the sweets of cold punch from their lips, and preparing to appear exceedingly domestic and anxious to get ashore to their families, consists of Glasgow manufacturers and tradesmen, whose week of solitary labour finished, now anticipate a brief time of participation in those benefits and pleasures which they cheerfully allow to their families for an uninterrupted period every season. And there, Sir, are these very classes seated on the weather-beaten stones of the worm-eaten looking pier, and lining the landing place for the boat into which you perceive the married gentlemen have all stepped in before us. There is the matron of fifteen years standing, far up the beach, butdoubtless very happy to see her husband. Farther down are those who have been ten, five, and three years married; but these gay creatures with the brightest hues of the rainbow in their costume, and the watches which they wish to have some one believe they have done nothing but look at for an hour, at their side, or in their hands—are the married of yesterday, and the betrothed of some not distant day. As for those young ladies who have not troubled themselves to descend from the pier, they are all doubtless very happy to see their fathers and brothers, but would not for the world have it supposed that they feel any anxiety as to the arrival of any one of the many other white-hatted and spruce-looking youths, who have been adjusting their collars, arranging their cravats, and smoothing the creases of their nankeen namelessnesses ever since the boat left Greenock quay. We are ashore. Now the men and women of good sense give each other a quiet pressure of the hand, or a slight bow of the head. Now the would-be fond shake, and squeeze, and scrape, and grin; and now, the amount and kind of cargo being known, M‘Glashan and Mrs. Main begin to reckon how many beds are likely to be wanted till Monday; and now, each taking some one under his arm—yours, if you please Ma’am?—moves off, as shall we to our respective lodgings. In a short time I will rejoin your party, and—my bed secured—be happy to obey your commands. The hermit of the west.
It is eight o’clock—and the month is June. The sun of course has not yet set behind these hills which his flaming glories already diadem with gorgeous lustre. In many of those apartments, which, on ground and other floors, by open windows and smart screens, indicate the residence of the migrative tribes, the tea has been sipped, and the most striking parts of the gossip of Glasgow disburthened, and the ladies are adjusting their shawls and tying their bonnets; and now every “land” from the Hope Walk to Kempuck, “M‘Farlane’s and all,” is pouring out its promenaders, while the servant lasses are unpacking the commissariat baskets, laying aside the lamb and quartern loaves, or, when unexpected visitors have arrived, beating up the bakers’ and the butchers’ quarters, and “shaking down” feather beds in the barrack department. The tide of beauty sets to the westward; and while some premeditate, by the speed of their gait, a walk to the Clough, others are obviously inclined to go no farther than Hunger’emout, Mr. Rankine’s, or, perchance, as the evening is not sultry, to M‘Inroy’s Point.
I shall rest me a while on this green knoll, and watch the current of human happiness as it glides past me, said I to myself, as I sat down by the wayside, a little beyond the tall city-looking building, with the ominous name, and clumsy seaward-turned outside turnpike, that looks as if it had been lifted for the season from the Saltmarket, and was to be carried back in September; and as the peristrephic panorama passed before me, I fell into one of those reveries where it is not easy to distinguish between what is really passing before the eye of the body and that of the imagination. It appeared to me, as if much of beauty and something of folly had marshalled themselves and passed successively in review; and I only wish that I had fixed down in my portfolio the fleeting impressions of the one and of the other, that interspersed themselves, ever and anon, with the placid yet elevated delight which a summer’s sunset always affords me, in a scene like that by which I was on each hand surrounded. That young lady in a black dress, which her own eyes far out-jet, seems as bright-spirited as she is beautiful—but yet it appears to me as if the fire of that eye flashed every thing in turn, rather than habitually beamed intelligence. These are surely sisters habited in the delicate and airy robes of gossamer-like muslin, in which the beauty of the butterfly’s wing is inscribed on the tissue of Arachne’s web. There is a good-will in their gait, a good-nature in their look, and a warm-heartedness in their mien, that might make that youth at his ease, who is acting the amiable beside them, in spite of his starched cravat and tightly strapped calf-covers. Cherry-coloured ribbons do become even amatron—but I doat upon light blue round the hair of little sparklers! Will these gentlemen never allow the ladies to hear the sound of their own voices—or is it the tumbler that still speaks within them? That fellow cannot surely have seen a lady for a week, that he pours out such a torrent of tittle tattle. But the cheery merriment of a group of misses—too old to be called children, and too young to be grave as “women”—of fifteen, is a music that repays the jarring of the by-gone group. This grave coterie is made up of old stagers, who have never missed a season at Gourock for twenty years, andhave a by-sight acquaintance with every pebble between this and Kempuck stone. These reckless looking youths, already tipsy, of whom no one apparently knows any good, since no one recognises them, have escaped the punch dissipation of Glasgow, to plunge into the sea and whisky toddy one, of two sleepless nights, at what is not a watering, if an inspiriting, place to them. The bankrupt master and the broken-down clerk are there, and their motto is the Epicurean’s, “Live while you live,”—however briefly, they might add.
The sun is now behind the Cowal hills: the noble foreground of the Peninsula, which separates the Holy Loch from Loch Long, is shrouded in shadow; and these arms of the giant sea are folded up in the slight vesture of a night which is hardly dark. The groups have returned: the neat supper and comfortable tumbler ’waits me, which the skilful management of a pattern of wives has prepared for her husband’s guests. The wearied old boatmen hare crept to their summer truckle-beds in outhouses and barns—the younger ones have stolen to the wells of the village to meet the city servant lasses. Granny M‘Kinlay, who yet was never a mother, and so little of a wife as to insert her maiden name upon her sign-board, is complaining that she has been “splushphemed up hill and down dale,” by some one “who cursed her tyled dyke,” and telling any one who will listen as secrets what every body knows. Bauldy Bain is snoring almost as loud now as he will do at every pull he gives the church bell to-morrow, which hardly out-echoes him as it summons the Genteels, the So-Sos, and all other subdivisions of summer society in Gourock, to that service which is impressive and touching, from the singular mixture its auditory exhibits of a city, a sea-faring, and an agricultural population, in all their varieties of age, manner, expression, and costume, crammed within a building little better than, and not so large as, a barn, and with a floor not so well swept, nor benches so conveniently placed as those at harvest home, to hear a pious worthy man, who is as miserably paid as the chapel is kept, while yearly hundreds of opulent individuals avail themselves of the decency of attending his ministrations.
I am tired—my bed is ready—my sketch is finished; and to-morrow will be a day of silent happiness and holy enjoyment, amid the impressive grandeur of nature’s loveliest combination of sea and land.
Monday morning, half-past four.—The horn blows—I am not half slept. M‘Glashan’s high charges for poor accommodation are paid,—and again on the way to Glasgow, along with many other tired seekers for enjoyment and variety, is the wearied Hermit of the West.
The Cloch Lighthouse (Swan)
The Watering-Places.—Ardentinny (The Ant, Saturday, 4th August, 1827.)—Spirit of gentle and all-noiseless beauty, which, hovering o’er the lonely Glenfinart, descends upon its peaceful bosom in mild dews, nurturing sunshine, and revivifying airs, could any invocation of mine win thee to visit me even in thy ethereal person, I would bid thee hail! But unto the solitudes of a city cell thou permeatest not, save through the subtile channels of the memory, which hath been stamped with deep devotion to thy majesty and loveliness, even in the thrilling presence of thyself. It is to remembrance, then, that I turn, and with the hasty and dim lines of a rude pencil, sketch, or try to imagefaintly out some of the ’witching features of thy many beauties, Ardentinny!
In sailing up Loch Long, just as your vessel may be said to leave the waters of the Clyde behind its wake, and comes fairly within the shadow of the hills which swell up gently on the east, but spring more abruptly out of the western shore of the Lake, you come to a miniature Dumbarton Rock—a promontory, that whilst it juts out distinctly from the shore, yet has its seaward face of a shelving character, which prevents its ruggedness of substance from giving it an aspect of sternness. Indeed, its height is not such as to impart any thing of the terrible to its look; but yet it forms a natural bastion which the hand of man would in vain essay to surpass in strength as in durability. Behind the shelter of this rock spreadsinward the silver stranded bay—and backward from it rises the modest range of sylvan cots, school-house and all,—of Ardentinny.
Perhaps my readers will not recognise in this not unmusical name—to me it is full of sweetness—the more euphonous Aranteenie of Tannahill, who, even without the sanction of popular abridgment, took upon him to alter the name of the place to what he thought had a sweeter sound. To me the transformation appears somewhat lack-a-daisical and maudlin; but perhaps it was needed by the rhythm or the rhyme of the delightful song in which he introduces it. At all events, had the liberty taken been even greater, he and his kindred coadjutor, Mr. R. A. Smith, who has married it to such sweet sounds, have more than repaid it by the celebrity this lovely lay has conferred upon a spot which else had been but known to the few devoted lovers of nature who seek out its most sequestered nooks to worship in—until steam-boats were invented—and it became, although still, thank heaven, only so by some licence of interpretation, a Watering-Place.
When Tannahill visited it, he went as I first did—a disinterested admirer of its beauties, and prepared to suffer much fatigue and inconvenience in searching out and paying homage to them. It was not the luxury of a sail under the awning of a gaily painted galley which cleaves through the calm waters, unruffled by a breath of wind, that first tempted us to explore the sequestered glen of the Finart. No, no! the enjoyment of such conveniences may not now detract from the feeling of lofty and enthusiastic enjoyment with which I still can thread its mazes, but it was the simple love of nature, in its sweet and untainted solitudes alone, that first wooed me there.
Tannahill, with a similar feeling, had penetrated into the dell ere steam-boats were, and, overtaken by a day of comfortless drizzle, which, it must be confessed, does occasionally make even this spot disagreeable, found a Highland lassie, the daughter of the innkeeper, whose kindness and spirit within her father’s house, more than compensated to the bard the want of warmth and sunshine without. In one of these moments of generous and unhesitating enthusiasm, which minds consituted like his ever and anon give way to, he composed this beautiful song, “The Lass o’ Aranteenie.” Common individuals are apt to think that such bursts of sentiment, untamed by the experience of past disappointments in the estimates made of individual character, whether they are expressed in verse or the warm language of compliment and praise, are but the result of hypocritical, or, at best, worthless complaisance. They little know how much sincerity is often felt in giving expression to sentiments they think exaggerated, sometimes because they are conscious of being unworthy of them; or how much pain the revulsion of feeling occasions, when he who has uttered them discovers how greatly their fervency was beyond the merit of the object. It was so with the bard of Renfrewshire. He came back to Ardentinny; but he discovered, on his second visit, that its “flower” was, although a mountain daisy, but a common-place specimen of her class—indeed, a very woman.
But let me resume. The etymology of Ardentinny, I believe, there are sundry grave speculations concerning; but as I never trouble myself about Celtic derivatives, I certainly shall not annoy my readers at this time by transcribing any of them.
A ferry has been long established here across to the isthmus of Roseneath, and from thence there is one to the mainland of Dumbartonshire, and hence the existence of an inn, and of a road leading up the glen. Let us follow it. Above the inn there is a little tangled copse-wood of dwarf oak and birch, springing up from the roots of trees long since cut down, and through its umbrage a wall of rock is seen to peer, from the top of which there is obtained, rather from its site than altitude, a pretty view of the bay and hills which hem it in. But let us descend to the beach—so pebbly, yet so smooth. Beneath the shelter of a line of trees, there stand the humble dwellings of contentment—at least, of health, and, judging by their aspect, of some degree of comfort. Nets are on the beach, and boats beside them. Fishing, then, is the avocation of some of the inhabitants, and the six fresh herrings you could, and I did eat to breakfast, reader, bear testimony to their skill. The boatmen, whose labour is when we sleep, are in bed; but the stillness of noon is not made deeper from that, for see that swarm of kilted urchins escaping with almost winged glee from the neat little school-house, which yet the rogues hold to be a prison in this fine weather; and there, in tartan coat, is the worthy dominie of the district. We shall salute him. Hail and good-bye are past, and onward up the glen go we, till we come to that part of the road where the o’erarching trees make shadowy the path. How cool on the ear the sound of dropping water comes, in such a grateful seclusion. Here is the silver ribband of its fall into the sculptured basin taste has placed to receive the cordial drops that wearied thirst,without its treasuring aid, might long wait for; and there, from out its caverned reservoir, runs on the limpid streamlet, hastening to dally with the flowery meads that wait to fondle it before its brief but happy course is ended in the loch below. It passes close to the house of “her, the lady of the glen,” as Rogers has prettily called the lady Susan Hamilton, sister to the Duke of that name, and wife to the Earl of Dunmore, the owner of these hills and this sweet valley. It is like its noble mistress, beautiful in its simplicity, dignified in its seclusion, happy-like amid the happiness it spreads around it.These walks, those arbours, every climbing plant that wreathes the garden front, bespeak the taste that planned, as much as does the comfort and cleanliness of the village, and the happy intelligence and decent clothing of its children, the benevolence which wastes not all the sweet sympathies that the nurturing of nature’s inanimate creations excite, in merely tending these, but can turn the stream of kindliness that rises, as it were, amid the solitudes of its beauties, towards the habitations of the children of men—gladdening and refreshing them.
Now, follow who will the lovely road which inward leads to where you climb the hill that looks down upon Loch Eck—pass the romantic bridge, or pause and sketch its picturesque outline if you please—I must return, for I have promised to take an early dinner with the only resident family visitor at Ardentinny, and whose presence alone confers on it a title to the hackneyed name of Watering-Place. Its beauties are yet unprofaned by the vulgar throng—but it has all the comforts of the place of most crowded resort—and what without a dinner would be even the cell of the Hermit of the West.
Largs (Swan)
The Watering-Places.—Largs (The Ant, Saturday, 11th August, 1827.)—“Out of the world and into Largs.”—Old Saw.—The metropolis of Scotland is, perhaps, more happily situated than any other large city in Britain, in regard to the picturesque beauty of its immediate vicinity. The noblest attributes of an imposing landscape hem it around, nay, almost form part of itself; and the walks in its neighbourhood are not more interesting from their classical and historical associations, than from their intrinsic beauty, as portions of that great combination of charms which entitle Scotland, however rugged its climate may be, to rank next to Switzerland, Italy, and Greece, in the estimation of the lovers of the unadorned beauties of external nature. Roslin, Laswade, Hawthornden, and the hills of Pentland and of Braid, are all within the compass of an evening’s walk from Edinburgh. Glasgow is less happily situated. The lovely villages of Govan and Cathcart are close to its suburbs, but Camlachie and Shettleston are closer still. Fine as is the public Green of the one, it is not to be compared, as a landscape feature, with the Calton Hill of the other; and if we can hardly be too proud of the majestic Clyde, that washes the ancient city walls of Balclutha, and also divides, into nearly equal portions, the modern Glasgow, we must not forget that the mighty sea may be seen in all its summer beauty, or its sterner grandeur, within five minutes’ walk of the Post Office of Edinburgh, and that its glorious bosom may be clasped by the man who, fifteen minutes after, shakes hands with you in Prince’s-Street.
But if you come to compare the advantages the rival queens possess in the tracts of country, which, at a greater distance, are still easily accessible, within the compass of a day’s excursion to their inhabitants, the amazing difference in favour of the western lady will be obvious in one moment. Where can the Solicitor to the Supreme Courts bestow himself on a fine Saturday afternoon, like the Maker of Mulled Muslins? He may eat his dinner at “The Hunter’s Tryst,” or measure the longitude of a degree in the streets of Kirkaldy; but what are these enjoyments to a sail along the whole extent of the finest lake in Europe—a ride to near the source of the noblest stream in Scotland—a pilgrimage to the summit of one ofthe hundred hills which lift up their green heads around us—a voyage and portage to Inverary by Loch Eck, or Loch Goil—or a trip to Helensburgh—an escape to Gourock—a navigation to Rothsay—a disembarkation at Dunoon—or a descent on the sunny and smiling shore of Largs!
Whether or not the associations of boyhood’s happiness, with the first draughts of that deep love for nature which I there inhaled, make me partial to Largs, I will not examine, but, at all events, I am sure its charms stand in need of no such alliance. To those who have not seen it, it would not be easy to convey an idea of the universality of a beauty which is so distributed that no feature of it detracts from the effect of the rest; and to those who have, it would be needless to remind them of what, if they can forget, they would feel but little pleasure in having recalled.
When last I visited it, evening was closing in, as, gently restraining rather than urging the speed of the horse of a friend whose kindness does not stop at that point where so much profession abruptly terminates—namely, at “——but I never lend my mare or dennet,”—I silently descended from the elevated plateau which comes so close to the sea, as to leave only a stripe of land beneath its precipitous supporting-wall, and gives occasion to the poetical exaggeration of my proverbial motto. The solemn and gloomy beauty of the woods that skirt its base, and even climb through the crevice of its glen, as if ambitious of crowning its very summit, filled my mind with a pleasing melancholy, little akin to the feelings most people experience in approaching to one of fashion’s favourite haunts. The prospect first obtained farther up, but now obscured, where, upon the ample bosom of a bright green hill, the dark woods of Kelburn are studded in batallia-like array, and the singular but picturesque bartizans of Lord Glasgow’s mansion peep out, while beyond them stretches the frith, whereon, at evening, the Cumbrae Isles seem, like vast galleys, to ride at anchor, the hills of Bute to float like clouds, and the lofty, truncated, and serrated peaks of Arran’s frowning mountains appear guardian genii of the scene, had elevated my spirits into buoyant fervency for a brief space; but as night closed in, and told, in its rapid encroachment, that autumn was at hand and winter would follow, I felt a sedateness which not even the glitter of signal lights from the yachts at anchor in the bay, that shortly became visible, could dispel or illuminate. It was in this mood I went to bed,—but withthe cheerful morn I rose a cheerful man; and its earliest beams beheld me once more placed upon my favourite seat—the summit of that partly artificial mound which stands close to the Gogar burn, and, from its perpetual verdure, without reference to the astronomical pillars on its top, is endearingly termed “The Green Hill.”
This place has always been agreeable to me. It is seldom visited—it is easily reached—it commands a completepanoramic view, not only of the village and the coast, but of all that stripe of level ground which lies at the mouth of that opening, that has Brisbane House so beautifully situated in its centre, and is called “Largs Glen.”
Seated, then, here, and soothed by the murmur of the rapid Gogar rushing past, there can be few enjoyments more congenial to a Hermit of Society, than while his visual ken takes in so much of what is beautiful in nature, and that is comfortable and elegant for the use of man, to figure out to himself a series of pictures, the living groups of which he places, as suits his fancy, upon the different positions beneath his eye, peopling these with the realities he may have seen in the society of the village beneath him, or in the world at large, and concentrating circumstance to a point which may attain effect without sacrificing probability. I am fond of this sort of creative and animated landscape painting, and often like better to arrange the crowds that throng scenes like this, in such a manner, than to mingle in their bustle.
Turning, then, to the eastward, there rise, steeply, but without abruptness, those lovely pastoral hills which hem in the vale of Largs. No living thing, save the peaceful croppers of the sward, is seen upon their summit. This is as it should be. Their velvet carpeting, verdant to their ridge as the floor of Titania’s palace hall, should not be trod by any but the lonely lover of the spirit of silent Beauty, who can climb the steep at earliest dawn to meet that mountain nymph. But this is to be a landscape with figures, so let me seek for level ground to place them on—even, perhaps, on that flat terrace just beneath the hill, where the fantastic architecture of what is to be the “offices” of an anticipated Mansion, serves all the purposes of that, meantime, while the proprietor rests satisfied with the grandeur he means to lavish upon his horses and poultry, discovering, perhaps, that a very large house would be worse even than a very large stable. There is a pleasure party disporting about that pavilion, so prettily placed upon another terrace, just o’erarching the garden which shelters itself and seeks for sufficient depth of soil in this odd corner of half hidden land, that the burn has, with lover-like inconstancy, forsaken for a far less beautiful meander. It would not make a picture equal to Watteau’s, this garden scene; but still the bird’s eye view of the groups descending the sloping bank to pillage the tiny hot-house, would make a pretty enough scene. I know not whether the Tea and Toast pavilion be tastefully fitted up, but I trust there are no ship-head figuresplaced to adorn it, as seems to be the case in the garden, whose centre figure of a Flora or a nymph has something about it like that which was once the pride of a ship-carpenter’s building-yard. Even if that bower be beautiful, however, it could never seem to me so much so as the grotto which is hid among the trees, more to the southward, and upon the face of the steep, before the little but sweetly situated house of Hailey. That was indeed, to my boyish fancy, the very palace of the Nereids, with its rocky walls, and roof of purple shells, and glimpse of the broad sea beyond it. It is desolate now; and the taste of its fair contriver has turned to the embellishment of another Quarter, which she has made more beautiful in theabstract, although it can never seem so lovely to my eye as that which first gave me a faint idea of the stately beauty of the old style of laying out the grounds around the mansion of a gentleman.
Following the line of the Hills to the north, we shall next see, on the slope where the level swells up to meet these as they sink to kiss it, another mansion—beautifully placed—but bare and unornamented. Here is space for twenty villas, and as yet there is but one erected; while nearer to the shore, but with a more circumscribed view of the sea, houses are huddled in the close contact of city companionship. Onward and the vale narrows, for the lofty shoulder of the Knock Hill, with its cairn-topped peak, shoots forward, and guards the opening of the pass. Beneath it, and upon a little eminence above the brawling but beautiful burn, named from that mountain, sits the broad and lofty front of Brisbane House, commanding afine southward sea view, and of the whole manor of its Lord, and surrounded by woods which climb to the very top of the hills. It is a lovely scene all around it, whether you lean over the parapet of the bridge you must cross to reach its doorway, or wind up the water side to Whytlaw Burn or the singular and insulated mound where, probably, the ancestors of its master had their former home, although the fortalice must have been a small one, from the name it still bears of “Castle Hill.”
Returning, by the Gogar’s course, to the mouth of the glen, the shore, and the large and lofty bridge, which strides the burn just before it ceases to have existence, is close to us. When I first crossed its waters, it had to be by fording; but now, stepping-stones are out of the fashion. The road that crosses it to the north-west, winds beneath an apparently perpendicular face of rock and soil, clothed with trees of recent growth, yet, even from this point, a keen eye may discover the little rustic temple placed by the before-named lady in a prominent point of those delightful walks she has scooped out along that brow of the eminence upon which is placed, in a commanding site, her father’s mansion, oddly termed “The Quarter.” To wander there, and look down upon the surging sea, would be a delight that makes me wish itwere my quarters now and then. That fog-covered hut is a true hermit’s cell: I believe it contains an album. When last I travelled the walks, it was, however, closed; but, the fit being on me, I scribbled some lines suggested by the spot, and left them there. It was a balm to my vanity to be afterwards told that they had been transcribed into the book within.
Following the circle, which must bring me to the point from which I set out, I next notice a low neck of land stretching far out, and having a rude hut at its extremity. It is a fisher’s hovel—once a fisher’s cottage. I remember, when a boy, that its mistress had the most extraordinary propensity for one in her situation that could be imagined. She was the most insatiate devourer of novels, or “novells,” as she termed them, that ever I met with, and heaven only knows where she then procured them, for Largs, in these days, had no library! Be that as it may, “The Mysterious Mother,” and “The Monk,” “The Mask,” and “The Murderer,” et hoc genus omne, would there be found in close contact with a basket of salmon, or a string of whitings. Her cottage is deserted now; and I know not whether she be alive, still in idea to breathe the air of palaces amid the smoke of a Scottish cothouse. But the distant Towart faintly seen, Mount Stewart half-hid in the rich glow of sunshine, I come now to the beach of Largs—once the field where Haco was defeated—now the arena of fashion and display—the place of exhibition for summer costume and pretty ancles—the field of flirtation—the centre of gossip,—the point of landing—and, alas! too—the scene of departure, often in the drizzle of clouds and eyes that weep in sympathy.
The manse passed, we come to a range which looks more like an infantry barracks than a crescent at a watering-place, and reach a lodging where waves a silken pennon on a flag-staff. This is the sign that its occupier is a member of the Yacht Club, several of whose fantastically rigged vessels are at anchor in the bay, with their masts at all angles, and their stock of signals strung up, resembling a painted alphabet. They are, like their owners, in a state of repose to-day; but the movements of the one, and blue jackets and nautical airs of the other, as well as the admirable use to which the national and delightful amusement that they addict themselves to, may tend, are well worthy of a separate notice, forming as they do, in the meantime, no part of Largs, but a very great ornament to its beauty, and addition to its gaiety. The parish church is a pretty enough object at this point. Perhaps the gentlemen of the Regalia, as the Regatta has been more than once called in my hearing, are listening to their burly chaplain, not its stated pastor, within its walls, expatiating on the wonders of the deep, and wishing, with Tom Bowling, that their “souls may go aloft.”
There is enough of attraction to sermon in the church of Largs for even the most listless, I should think, were it only for the many lovely faces there to be weekly seen—that one that marred my devotion last week, for example, whose owner was arrayed in silk attire, as varied in its hues as the play of her own sweet Saxon features,—without making it necessary to call in extraordinary talent or novelty to attract an auditory. I shall not have time, I fear, to sketch one of the groups of Gentlemen who are wearing checked shirts and channel pumps, nor even single out any one of the throng who may be sovain of blistered hands, as to cut a travelling companion whom he may meet there, after having traversed the solitudes of the north in apparent cordiality with him, because he was not down at the racing-match. These can be fancied lounging at Underwood’s coach-house, or lolling at Strahan’s door, in blue jackets, straw hats, and wide trowsers, by any one who knows the localities, more easily than I can describe them. I would much rather cross that wooden bridge, and ascend that terrace which so much resembles the parades of English watering-places, and, as I walked along the front of its scattered,but, excepting the pye-crust-battlemented castle, pretty lodgings—though they are not yet in the true crescent bend—delineate that beautiful group of six or seven fine little fellows disporting in their sailor costume. They are all in blue—from the boy of three to him of thirteen, and with a father whose delight and pride seems only to be to make them happy. But, omitting even the assemblage on “The Green,” overlooking the group at “Captain Morris’s door,” and the party who are stationed beside the few frail sticks and spars they call a “wharf,” though its timber would not make a comfortable fire, I must hasten down to a call which all obey, at one time of the day or other, namely, to breakfast, which is indispensable even to the Hermit of the West.
Helensburgh (Swan)
The Watering-Places.—Helensburgh (The Ant, Saturday, 25th August, 1827.)—It is singular, but true, that the very discoveries which ingenious men make, or are the first practically to develope, are often the means of individual injury to them in almost the same ratio that they may benefit mankind. Morton was decapitated by the Maiden; Guillotine fell by the instrumentality of the machine that immortalized his name, if it shortened his corporeal existence; Schwartz was blown up by his own gun-powder; Crompton ruined by his own jennies; and Henry Bell impoverished by the general introduction of steam in river navigation.
This remark may, to some, seem somewhat out of place, as introductory to a sketch of the Watering-Place of Helensburgh; to those who are familiar with the history of that village, however, it will appear sufficiently obvious, upon their stepping ashore from a “Steamer,” and walking from the pier-head strait across to Mr. Napier’s Tontine Inn, instead of proceeding for half a mile to the eastward, and bespeaking a bed-room from the indefatigable Mrs. Henry Bell, at “The Baths.”
The name of that lady’s husband is as inseparably connected with the history of Helensburgh, as it is with the introduction of steam-boats into the river Clyde. When that place was one, and the most fashionable, of the only three Watering-Places then frequented on the western coast, with a spirit and enterprise which he has always shown, if he has not been always able to regulate, he built, at the eastern entrance, or Glasgow end, what was then reckoned a splendid hotel, and suite of baths, for the use of visitors. It was so placed as to intercept the equestrian or vehicularly transported throngs, which, in these days, came by land from Glasgow to this coast. Many years after this he built a steam-boat—others followed his example—and now nobody comes to the place but by these conveyances; when the temptation is, of course strong, to resort to the inn nearest to the place of landing, the existence of the other, indeed, being unknown to many passengers; and thus, certainly without making a fortune by steam navigation, he has lost the chance he otherwise would have had of realizing a competency. Those who know Mrs. Bell, however, will cheerfully walk half a mile, even although it be to the homeward point of the compass, to be under the care of so worthy a hostess. At least, this, without a moment’s hesitation, we did upon stepping ashore from the Clarence steamer, on a fine Saturday evening, not above a twelvemonth since.
We are ashamed to confess that, lingering over the iced claret, the discussion of which followed that of as fine a dinner as any hotel in Glasgow could produce—albeit though the waistcoat of the steward was none of the cleanest—and seated in the cool room of that beautiful boat, we were at Helensburgh not only before we were aware, but before we wanted to be. The proprietors must either make their boats sail slower, or their dinners and wines less inviting, and the companies whopartake of them every Saturday afternoon at half-past four, less good-humoured. Two hours and a half is positively too little time to swallow a fair share of the one, or enjoy the companionship of the other. But ashore we are, and Mr. Breingan’s well-known visage is smiling a welcome from his own shop-door as we advance up the slippery and sedge-festooned foot-trap which they call a pier, where manorial lords have no peers, to induce a wholesome rivalry in well-doing. Imagine the complacency with which, as we passed the residences of the happy triumvirate of brothers who supply Helensburgh in the district of Lennox with the comforts of life, and the means of preserving the body and keeping up the spirits, we heard that the handsome first floor of the best of these tenements was to be, next year, the residence of a friend of ours, whose hospitality is proverbial. Here was a vision of dinners! and this reminded us of supper. But before we eat it—your arm, reader—we shall take a stroll along the village green,—westward, perhaps, as far as “Lord John’s Gate.” Helensburgh, you perceive, is unlike either Gourock or Rothsay, in that it is built on a flat line of coast, indented by no bay, and has in rear of it a considerable extent of plain. On the eastward side, this level is bounded by the nobly swelling breast of Ben-a-Bowie, or the Yellow Hill. This eminence is so named, as some will have it, from the quantity of broom which flourishes on its Plantagenated side, but, as I am more inclined to believe, from the bright and golden hue which, at sun-set, the refraction of the departing rays of the luminary of day, from behind the wild peaks ironically termed “Argyle’s Bowling- Green,” diffuses over the summit, and even spreads far down upon the lawn before the white-washed mansion, whose name is corrupted into “Camis Eskan,” brightening, with contrasting radiance, its grass-grown walks, brier-tangled paths, decaying bridges, and neglected trees, the only evidence of which being cared for is the presence here and there of placards posted upon them with the ominous words “Notice” and “Law,” in characters of prominency. From certain points of view, the serrated and truncated peaks of which I have spoken, appear, with the majestic Ben-Arthur or the Cobbler in their rear, to form the westward boundary of the vale, so gradually do the heights, which, in contrast to them, can only be termed eminences, rise up from the level, having Ardenconnel on their side, and the Row Church and Ardencaple Bay on the one hand, and Shandon Lodge on the other, at their base, while the blue and beautiful expanse of the Gare Loch separates the hills on the Helensburgh side from those of the lovely peninsula of Roseneath. The greater part of the housesof the village are built in a line with the shore, but in those unpaved openings, here and there, which lead the eye at once into a field of oats or barley, incipient streets are to be traced which have existed, together with other ones parallel to the shore line, for the last twenty years—upon paper. For aught I know, indeed, the ground-plan may have laid down a Colouhoun Crescent, or a Dixon Row, even round the disputed nook of ground that John Grant the mason’s wife used to embellish and tend with a taste so much above her station, or to three miles up the vale, where commences the strath of Glen Fruin which bends its silent beauty forwards towards Loch Lomond, rather than lets its limpid waters seek the sea-weed-tangled shore of Helensburgh.
But let us not forget that it is Saturday night. Indeed it will not be easy for us to be oblivious on that head, for at every door we pass there are symptoms of preparation for a day when much is consumed, and nothing edible can be replaced. The neatly apparelled and obliging widow, in whose clean though crowded shop the quartern loaves of Glasgow and the quarto volumes of the Helensburgh library are equally accommodated, is quite in a bustle, handing Miss Lavinia Languishlong’s servant the catalogue of a selection which has hardly any trash in it, and therefore nothing for her mistress—and yet, just because all its volumes are of such well-known merit, absolutely unreadable to such as me, even upon a wet day—which Miss Lavy dreads to-morrow will turn out to be; and her assistants are dispensing London bottled porter and rolls of fresh butter to the emissaries of those families whose heads have unexpectedly brought a tail of guests along with them to share to-morrow’s roast mutton and cold punch. Every shop, saving that of the ingenious Craig, is in a bustle, and his would be so too if he sold snuff as well as his own beautiful snuff-boxes. Mrs. ——’s little establishment at the corner there, whose tiny window presents an epitome of her dignified stock, in “Sweeties, Shorter Catechisms, and Dunlop Cheese,” is crowded to the very door, where a randy quean is delighting the giggling girls that wait their turn to be served, with a melancholy ballad, screeched out in the voice of a Stentor, about a “true love who did die,” and which begins,
“ ’Twas on a winter day, when fast fell down the snow,—And many stormy tempests did very loudly blow.”
The latest boat not having yet arrived, although tea can be no longer postponed, several groups are parading the green in front of the quay—either to enjoy the evening breeze, exhibit their latest summer-striped gown, or tight strapped trousers, or show the intensity of their matrimonial, filial, or fraternal affections. In those houses where the expected have arrived, as where these beautiful children are caressing their fond father in the very wildness of glee, the muslin curtains will soon be drawn—the telescope removed from the window—the urchins, their weekly gift of fruits and sweetmeats from papa demolished, sent to bed, and Mr. and Mrs. will find themselves seated alone, or nearly so, while Miss devours “The Ant” of the day, and young Master hesitates whether he shall try if Lockhart has fitted him with his drab bombasin trowsers, or make up for a week’s idleness by reading both the Times and Free Press at the same instant. By-and-bye they will slyly withdraw to ask Peggy, who comes down with the master every Saturday to wait the table, if she has brought no letters with her; and their thrifty mother will hint to Mr. Worthywight, that a five pound note would not inappropriately fill up both a gap in the discourse and her pocket-book. Two of them are given, and, in the good humour of the hour, the tumblerof toddy being finished at a gulp, man and wife recollect that they must go to Row Church to-morrow early,—and move up stairs to their bed-room; while we, the terrace now deserted, turn to the supper Mrs. Bell has, no doubt, ready for us. The morning will be fine: if we can possibly get depth of water enough at Jura’s Steps, without wading half across to Greenock, we must be afloat in ten feet water by seven o’clock, so will not mix up more than one tumbler, and then for No. 22.
If we durst sketch upon a Sabbath, the pictures we could make of the groups moving to a church whose distance, in fine weather, serves only to attract, would animate and relieve our delineation of the Italian beauty of the peninsula and palace opposite it, and of the sunny shore below; but in the little modest church where Reuben Butler preached, and the manse where Jeanie Deans presided—whither we mean to go to-morrow—thoughts, and feelings, and aspirations, I trust, will occupy and animate us, of another kind than the merely picturesque and graphic—at least such is the present devout resolution of the Hermit of the West.