THE COMPLETE TALES OF MY LANDLORD (Illustrated Edition). Walter Scott
the Fourth, mingles in the revels of his master, Justice Shallow. He ran down to the cellar at the risk of breaking his neck, to ransack some private catacomb, known, as he boasted, only to himself, and which never either had, or should, during his superintendence, renden forth a bottle of its contents to any one but a real king’s friend.
“When the Duke dined here,” said the butler, seating himself at a distance from the table, being somewhat overawed by Bothwell’s genealogy, but yet hitching his seat half a yard nearer at every clause of his speech, “my leddy was importunate to have a bottle of that Burgundy,”—(here he advanced his seat a little,)—“but I dinna ken how it was, Mr Stewart, I misdoubted him. I jaloused him, sir, no to be the friend to government he pretends: the family are not to lippen to. That auld Duke James lost his heart before he lost his head; and the Worcester man was but wersh parritch, neither gude to fry, boil, nor sup cauld.” (With this witty observation, he completed his first parallel, and commenced a zigzag after the manner of an experienced engineer, in order to continue his approaches to the table.) “Sae, sir, the faster my leddy cried ‘Burgundy to his Grace — the auld Burgundy — the choice Burgundy — the Burgundy that came ower in the thirty-nine’— the mair did I say to mysell, Deil a drap gangs down his hause unless I was mair sensible o’ his principles; sack and claret may serve him. Na, na, gentlemen, as lang as I hae the trust o’butler in this house o’Tillietudlem, I’ll tak it upon me to see that nae disloyal or doubtfu’ person is the better o’ our binns. But when I can find a true friend to the king and his cause, and a moderate episcopacy; when I find a man, as I say, that will stand by church and crown as I did mysell in my master’s life, and all through Montrose’s time, I think there’s naething in the cellar ower gude to be spared on him.”
By this time he had completed a lodgment in the body of the place, or, in other words, advanced his seat close to the table.
“And now, Mr Francis Stewart of Bothwell, I have the honour to drink your gude health, and a commission t’ye, and much luck may ye have in raking this country clear o’whigs and roundheads, fanatics and Covenanters.”
Bothwell, who, it may well be believed, had long ceased to be very scrupulous in point of society, which he regulated more by his convenience and station in life than his ancestry, readily answered the butler’s pledge, acknowledging, at the same time, the excellence of the wine; and Mr Gudyill, thus adopted a regular member of the company, continued to furnish them with the means of mirth until an early hour in the next morning.
13 A Highland laird, whose peculiarities live still in the recollection of his countrymen, used to regulate his residence at Edinburgh in the following manner: Every day he visited the Water-gate, as it is called, of the Canongate, over which is extended a wooden arch. Specie being then the general currency, he threw his purse over the gate, and as long as it was heavy enough to be thrown over, he continued his round of pleasure in the metropolis; when it was too light, he thought it time to retire to the Highlands. Query — How often would he have repeated this experiment at Temple Bar?
14 Wooden Mare. The punishment of riding the wooden mare was, in the days of Charles and long after, one of the various and cruel modes of enforcing military discipline. In front of the old guard-house in the High Street of Edinburgh, a large horse of this kind was placed, on which now and then, in the more ancient times, a veteran might be seen mounted, with a firelock tied to each foot, atoning for some small offence.
There is a singular work, entitled Memoirs of Prince William Henry, Duke of Gloucester, (son of Queen Anne,) from his birth to his ninth year, in which Jenkin Lewis, an honest Welshman in attendance on the royal infant’s person, is pleased to record that his Royal Highness laughed, cried, crow’d, and said Gig and Dy, very like a babe of plebeian descent. He had also a premature taste for the discipline as well as the show of war, and had a corps of twenty-two boys, arrayed with paper caps and wooden swords. For the maintenance of discipline in this juvenile corps, a wooden horse was established in the Presence-chamber, and was sometimes employed in the punishment of offences not strictly military. Hughes, the Duke’s tailor, having made him a suit of clothes which were too tight, was appointed, in an order of the day issued by the young prince, to be placed on this penal steed. The man of remnants, by dint of supplication and mediation, escaped from the penance, which was likely to equal the inconveniences of his brother artist’s equestrian trip to Brentford. But an attendant named Weatherly, who had presumed to bring the young Prince a toy, (after he had discarded the use of them,) was actually mounted on the wooden horse without a saddle, with his face to the tail, while he was plied by four servants of the household with syringes and squirts, till he had a thorough wetting. “He was a waggish fellow,” says Lewis, “and would not lose any thing for the joke’s sake when he was putting his tricks upon others, so he was obliged to submit cheerfully to what was inflicted upon him, being at our mercy to play him off well, which we did accordingly.” Amid much such nonsense, Lewis’s book shows that this poor child, the heir of the British monarchy, who died when he was eleven years old, was, in truth, of promising parts, and of a good disposition. The volume, which rarely occurs, is an octavo, published in 1789, the editor being Dr Philip Hayes of Oxford.
Chapter 10
Did I but purpose to embark with thee
On the smooth surface of a summer sea,
And would forsake the skiff and make the shore
When the winds whistle and the tempests roar?
Prior.
While Lady Margaret held, with the high-descended sergeant of dragoons, the conference which we have detailed in the preceding pages, her grand-daughter, partaking in a less degree her ladyship’s enthusiasm for all who were sprung of the blood-royal, did not honour Sergeant Bothwell with more attention than a single glance, which showed her a tall powerful person, and a set of hardy weather-beaten features, to which pride and dissipation had given an air where discontent mingled with the reckless gaiety of desperation. The other soldiers offered still less to detach her consideration; but from the prisoner, muffled and disguised as he was, she found it impossible to withdraw her eyes. Yet she blamed herself for indulging a curiosity which seemed obviously to give pain to him who was its object.
“I wish,” she said to Jenny Dennison, who was the immediate attendant on her person, “I wish we knew who that poor fellow is.”
“I was just thinking sae mysell, Miss Edith,” said the waiting woman, “but it canna be Cuddie Headrigg, because he’s taller and no sae stout.”
“Yet,” continued Miss Bellenden, “it may be some poor neigbour, for whom we might have cause to interest ourselves.”
“I can sune learn wha he is,” said the enterprising Jenny, “if the sodgers were anes settled and at leisure, for I ken ane o’ them very weel — the best-looking and the youngest o’ them.”
“I think you know all the idle young fellows about the country,” answered her mistress.
“Na, Miss Edith, I am no sae free o’ my acquaintance as that,” answered the fille-de-chambre. “To be sure, folk canna help kenning the folk by head-mark that they see aye glowring and looking at them at kirk and market; but I ken few lads to speak to unless it be them o’ the family, and the three Steinsons, and Tam Rand, and the young miller, and the five Howisons in Nethersheils, and lang Tam Gilry, and”—
“Pray cut short a list of exceptions which threatens to be a long one, and tell me how you come to know this young soldier,” said Miss Bellenden.
“Lord, Miss Edith, it’s Tam Halliday, Trooper Tam, as they ca’ him, that was wounded by the hill-folk at the conventicle at Outer-side Muir, and lay here while he was under cure. I can ask him ony thing, and Tam will no refuse to answer me, I’ll be caution for him.”
“Try,