An Edinburgh Eleven Part 3

Mr. James Payn, who never forgave the Scottish people for pulling down their blinds on Sundays, was annoyed by the halo they have woven around the name "professor." He knew an Edinburgh lady who was scandalized because that mere poet, Alexander Smith, coolly addressed professors by their surnames. Mr. Payn might have known what it is to walk in the shadow of a Senatus Academicus could he have met such specimens as Sellar, Fraser, Tait, and Sir Alexander Grant marching down the Bridges abreast. I have seen them: an inspiriting sight. The pavement only held three. You could have shaken hands with them from an upper window.

Sellar's treatment of his students was always that of a fine gentleman.

Few got near him; all respected him. At times he was addressed in an unknown tongue, but he kept his countenance. He was particular about students keeping to their proper benches, and once thought he had caught a swarthy north countryman straying. "You are in your wrong seat, Mr. Orr." "Na, am richt eneuch." "You should be in the seat in front. That is bench 12, and you are entered on bench 10." "Eh? This is no bench twal, [counting] twa, fower, sax, aucht, ten." "There is something wrong." "Oh-h-h, [with sudden enlightenment] ye've been c.o.o.ntin' the first dask; we dinna c.o.o.nt the first dask." The professor knew the men he had to deal with too well to scorn this one, who turned out to be a fine fellow. He was the only man I ever knew who ran his medical and arts cla.s.ses together, and so many lectures had he to attend daily that he mixed them up. He graduated, however, in both faculties in five years, and the last I heard of him was that, when applying for a medical a.s.sistants.h.i.+p, he sent his father's photograph because he did not have one of himself. He was a man of brains as well as sinew, and dined briskly on a s.h.i.+lling a week.

There was a little fellow in the cla.s.s who was a puzzle to Sellar, because he was higher sitting than standing: when the professor asked him to stand up, he stood down. "Is Mr. Blank not present?" Sellar would ask. "Here, sir," cried Blank. "Then, will you stand up, Mr.

Blank?" (Agony of Blank, and a demonstration of many feet.) "Are you not prepared, Mr. Blank?" "Yes, sir. _Pastor quum traharet_----" "I insist on your standing up, Mr. Blank." Several students rise to their feet to explain, but subside. "Yes, sir. _Pastor quum traharet per_----" "I shall mark you 'Not prepared,' Mr. Blank." (Further demonstration, and then an indignant squeak from Blank.) "If you please, sir, I am standing." "But, in that case, how is it? Ah, oh, ah, yes; proceed, Mr. Blank." As one man was only called upon for exhibition five or six times in a year, the professor had always forgotten the circ.u.mstances when he asked Blank to stand up again.

Blank was looked upon by his fellow-students as a practical jest, and his name was always received with the prolonged applause which greets the end of an after-dinner speech.

Sellar never showed resentment to the students who addressed him as Professor Sellars.

One day the professor was giving out some English to be translated into Latin prose. He read on--"and fiercely lifting the axe with both hands----" when a cheer from the top bench made him pause. The cheer spread over the room like an uncorked gas. Sellar frowned, but proceeded--"lifting the axe----" when again the cla.s.s became demented.

"What does this mean?" he demanded, looking as if he, too, could lift the axe. "Axe!" shouted a student in explanation. Still Sellar could not solve the riddle. Another student rose to his a.s.sistance.

"Axe--Gladstone!" he cried. Sellar sat back in his chair. "Really, gentlemen," he said, "I take the most elaborate precautions against touching upon politics in this cla.s.s, but sometimes you are beyond me.

Let us continue--'and fiercely lifting his weapon with both hands----'"

The duxes from the schools suffered a little during their first year, from a feeling that they and Sellar understood each other. He liked to undeceive them. We had one, all head, who went about wondering at himself. He lost his bursary on the way home with it, and still he strutted. Sellar asked if we saw anything peculiar in a certain line from Horace. We did not. We were accustomed to trust to Horace's reputation, all but the dandy. "Eh--ah! professor," he lisped; "it ought to have been so and so." Sellar looked at this promising plant from the schools, and watered him without a rose on the pan. "Depend upon it, Mr.--ah, I did not catch your name, if it ought to have been so and so, Horace would have made it so and so."

Sellar's face was proof against wit. It did not relax till he gave it liberty. You could never tell from it what was going on inside. He read without a twitch a notice on his door: "Found in this cla.s.s a gold-headed pencil case; if not claimed within three days will be sold to defray expenses." He even withstood the battering-ram on the day of the publication of his "Augustan Poets." The students could not let this opportunity pa.s.s. They a.s.sailed him with frantic applause; every bench was a drum to thump upon. His countenance said nothing. The drums had it in the end, though, and he dismissed the cla.s.s with what is believed to have verged on a smile. Like the lover who has got his lady's glance, they at once tried for more, but no.

Most of us had Humanity our first year, which is the year for experimenting. Then is the time to join the university library. The pound, which makes you a member, has never had its poet. You can withdraw your pound when you please. There are far-seeing men who work the whole thing out by mathematics. Put simply, this is the notion. In the beginning of the session you join the library, and soon you forget about your pound; you reckon without it. As the winter closes in, and the coal-bunk empties; or you find that five s.h.i.+llings a week for lodgings is a dream that cannot be kept up; or your coat a.s.sumes more and more the color identified with spring; or you would feast your friends for once right gloriously; or next Wednesday is your little sister's birthday; you cower, despairing, over a sulky fire. Suddenly you are on your feet, all aglow once more. What is this thought that sends the blood to your head? That library pound! You had forgotten that you had a bank. Next morning you are at the university in time to help the library door to open. You ask for your pound; you get it. Your hand mounts guard over the pocket in which it rustles. So they say. I took their advice and paid in my money; then waited exultingly to forget about it. In vain. I always allowed for that pound, in my thoughts. I saw it as plainly, I knew its every feature as a schoolboy remembers his first trout. Not to be hasty, I gave my pound two months, and then brought it home again. I had a fellow-student who lived across the way from me. We railed at the library-pound theory at open windows over the life of the street; a beautiful dream, but mad, mad.

He was an enthusiast, and therefore happy, whom I have seen in the Humanity cla.s.s-room on an examination day, his pen racing with time, himself seated in the contents of an ink bottle. Some stories of exams.

have even a blacker ending. I write in tears of him who, estimating his memory as a leaky vessel, did with care and forethought draw up a crib that was more condensed than a pocket cyclopaedia, a very Liebig's essence of the cla.s.sics, tinned meat for students in the eleventh hour.

Bridegrooms have been known to forget the ring; this student forgot his crib. In the middle of the examination came a nervous knocking at the door. A lady wanted to see the professor at once. The student looked up, to see his mother handing the professor his crib. Her son had forgotten it; she was sure that it was important, so she had brought it herself.

Jump the body of this poor victim. There was no M.A. for him that year; but in our gowns and sashes we could not mourn for a might-have-been.

Soldiers talk of the Victoria cross, statesmen of the Cabinet, ladies of a pearl set in diamonds. These are pretty baubles, but who has thrilled as the student that with b.u.mping heart strolls into Middlema.s.s' to order his graduate's gown? He hires it--five s.h.i.+llings--but the photograph to follow makes it as good as his for life. Look at him, young ladies, as he struts to the Synod Hall to have M.A. tacked to his name. Dogs do not dare bark at him. His gait is springy; in Princes Street he is as one who walks upstairs. Gone to me are those student days forever, but I can still put a photograph before me of a ghost in gown and cape, the hair straggling under the cap as tobacco may straggle over the side of a tin when there is difficulty in squeezing down the lid. How well the little black jacket looks, how vividly the wearer remembers putting it on. He should have worn a dress-coat, but he had none. The little jacket resembled one with the tails off, and, as he artfully donned his gown, he backed against the wall so that no one might know.

To turn up the light on old college days is not always the signal for the dance. You are back in the dusty little lodging, with its battered sofa, its slippery tablecloth, the prim array of books, the picture of the death of Nelson, the peeling walls, the broken clock; you are again in the quadrangle with him who has been dead this many a year.

There are tragedies in a college course. Dr. Walter Smith has told in a poem mentioned elsewhere of the brilliant scholar who forgot his dominie; some, alas! forget their mother. There are men--I know it--who go mad from loneliness; and medallists ere now have crept home to die.

The capping-day was the end of our springtide, and for some of us the summer was to be brief. Sir Alexander, gone into the night since then, flung "I mekemae" at us as we trooped past him, all in bud, some small flower to blossom in time, let us hope, here and there.

MR. JOSEPH THOMSON.

IX.

MR. JOSEPH THOMSON.

Two years hence Joseph Thomson's reputation will be a decade old, though he is at present only thirty years of age. When you meet him for the first time you conclude that he must be the explorer's son. His ident.i.ty, however, can always be proved by simply mentioning Africa in his presence. Then he draws himself up, and his eyes glisten, and he is thinking how glorious it would be to be in the Masai country again, living on meat so diseased that it crumbled in the hand like short-bread.

Gatelaw-bridge Quarry, in Dumfriess.h.i.+re, is famous for Old Mortality and Thomson, the latter (when he is at the head of a caravan) being as hardheaded as if he had been cut out of it. He went to school at Thornhill, where he spent great part of his time in reading novels, and then he matriculated at Edinburgh University, where he began to acc.u.mulate medals. Geology and kindred studies were his favorites there. One day he heard that Keith Johnston, then on the point of starting for Africa, wanted a lieutenant. Thomson was at that time equally in need of a Keith Johnston, and everybody who knew him saw that the opening and he were made for each other. Keith Johnston and Thomson went out together, and Johnston died in the jungle. This made a man in an hour of a stripling. Most youths in Thomson's position at that turning-point of his career would have thought it judicious to turn back, and in geographical circles it would have been considered highly creditable had he brought his caravan to the coast intact.

Thomson, however, pushed on, and did everything that his dead leader had hoped to do. From that time his career has been followed by every one interested in African exploration, and by his countrymen with some pride in addition. When an expedition was organized for the relief of Emin Pacha, there was for a time some probability of Thomson's having the command.

He and Stanley differed as to the routes that should be taken, and subsequent events have proved that Thomson's was the proper one.

Thomson came over from Paris at that time to consult with the authorities, and took up his residence in the most overgrown hotel in London. His friends here organized an expedition for his relief. They wandered up and down the endless stairs looking for him, till, had they not wanted to make themselves a name, they would have beaten a retreat.

He also wandered about looking for them, and at last they met. The leader of the party, restraining his emotion, lifted his hat, and said, "Mr. Thomson, I presume?" This is how I found Thomson.

The explorer had been for some months in Paris at that time, and France did him the honor of translating his "Through Masailand" into French.

In this book there is a picture of a buffalo tossing Thomson in the air. This was after he had put several bullets into it, and in the sketch he is represented some ten feet from the ground, with his gun flying one way and his cap another. "It was just as if I were distributing largess to the natives," the traveller says now, though this idea does not seem to have struck him at the time. He showed the sketch to a Parisian lady, who looked at it long and earnestly. "Ah, M.

Thomson," she said at length, "but how could you pose like that?"

Like a good many other travellers, including Mr. Du Chaillu, who says he is a dear boy, Thomson does not smoke. Stanley, however, smokes very strong cigars, as those who have been in his sumptuous chambers in Bond Street can testify. All the three happen to be bachelors, though; because, one of them says, after returning from years of lonely travel, a man has such a delight in female society that to pick and choose would be invidious. Yet they have had their chance. An African race once tried to bribe Mr. Du Chaillu with a kingdom and over eight hundred wives--"the biggest offer," he admits, "I ever had in one day."

Among the lesser annoyances to which Thomson was subjected in Africa was the presence of rats in the night-time, which he had to brush away like flies. Until he was asked whether there was not danger in this, it never seems to have struck him that it was more than annoying. Yet though he and the two other travellers mentioned (doubtless they are not alone in this) have put up cheerfully with almost every hards.h.i.+p known to man, this does not make them indifferent to the comforts of civilization when they return home. Du Chaillu was looking very comfortable in a house-boat the other day, where his hosts thought they were "roughing it"--with a male attendant; and in Stanley's easy-chairs you sink to dream. The last time I saw Thomson in his rooms in London he was on his knees, gazing in silent rapture at a china saucer with a valuable crack in it.

If you ask Thomson what was the most dangerous expedition he ever embarked on, he will probably reply, "Crossing Piccadilly." The finest thing that can be said of him is that during these four expeditions he never once fired a shot at a native. Other explorers have had to do so to save their lives. There were often occasions when Thomson could have done it, to save his life to all appearance, too. The result of his method of progressing is that where he has gone--and he has been in parts of Africa never before trod by the white man--he really has "opened up the country" for those who care to follow him. Civilization by bullet has only closed it elsewhere. Yet though there is an abundance of Scotch caution about him, he is naturally an impulsive man, more inclined personally to march straight on than to reach his destination by a safer if more circuitous route. Where only his own life is concerned, he gives you the impression of one who might be rash; but his prudence at the head of a caravan is at the bottom of the faith that is placed in him. According to a story that got into the papers years ago, M. de Brazza once quarrelled with Thomson in Africa, and all but struck him. Thomson was praised for keeping his temper. The story was a fabrication, but I fear that if M. de Brazza had behaved like this, Thomson would not have remembered to be diplomatic till some time afterward. A truer tale might be told of an umbrella, gorgeous and wonderful to behold, that De Brazza took to Africa to impress the natives with, and which Thomson subsequently presented to a dusky monarch.

The explorer has never shot a lion, though he has tracked a good many of them. Once he thought he had one. It was reclining in a little grove, and Thomson felt that it was his at last. With a trusty native he crept forward till he could obtain a good shot, and then fired. In breathless suspense he waited for its spring, and then when it did not spring he saw that he had shot it through the heart. However, it turned out only to be a large stone.

The young Scotchman sometimes thinks of the tremendous effect it would have had on the natives had he been the possessor of a complete set of artificial teeth. This is because he has one artificial tooth.

Happening to take it out one day, an awe filled all who saw him, and from that hour he was esteemed a medicine man. Another excellent way of impressing Africa with the grandeur of Britain was to take a photograph. When the natives saw the camera aimed at them, they fell to the ground vanquished.

When Thomson was recently in this country, he occasionally took a walk of twenty or thirty miles to give him an appet.i.te for dinner. This he calls a stroll. One day he strolled from Thornhill to Edinburgh, had dinner, and then went to the Exhibition. In appearance he is tall and strongly knit rather than heavily built, and if you see him more than once in the same week you discover that he has still an interest in neck-ties. Perhaps his most remarkable feat consisted in taking a bottle of brandy into the heart of Africa, and bringing it back intact.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

X.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

Some men of letters, not necessarily the greatest, have an indescribable charm to which we give our hearts. Thackeray is the young man's first love. Of living authors, none perhaps bewitches the reader more than Mr. Stevenson, who plays upon words as if they were a musical instrument. To follow the music is less difficult than to place the musician. A friend of mine, who, like Mr. Grant Allen, reviews 365 books a year, and 366 in leap years, recently arranged the novelists of to-day in order of merit. Meredith, of course, he wrote first, and then there was a fall to Hardy. "Haggard," he explained, "I dropped from the Eiffel Tower; but what can I do with Stevenson? I can't put him before 'Lorna Doone.'" So Mr. Stevenson puzzles the critics, fascinating them until they are willing to judge him by the great work he is to write by and by when the little books are finished. Over "Treasure Island" I let my fire die in winter without knowing that I was freezing. But the creator of Alan Breck has now published nearly twenty volumes. It is so much easier to finish the little works than to begin the great one, for which we are all taking notes.

Mr. Stevenson is not to be labelled novelist. He wanders the byways of literature without any fixed address. Too much of a truant to be cla.s.sified with the other boys, he is only a writer of fiction in the sense that he was once an Edinburgh University student because now and again he looked in at his cla.s.ses when he happened to be that way. A literary man without a fixed occupation amazes Mr. Henry James, a master in the school of fiction which tells, in three volumes, how Hiram K. Wilding trod on the skirt of Alice M. Sparkins without anything's coming of it. Mr. James a.n.a.lyzes Mr. Stevenson with immense cleverness, but without summing up. That "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"

should be by the author of "Treasure Island," "Virginibus Puerisque"

by the author of "The New Arabian Nights," "A Child's Garden of Verses"

by the author of "Prince Otto," are to him the three degrees of comparison of wonder, though for my own part I marvel more that the author of "Daisy Miller" should be Mr. Stevenson's eulogist. One conceives Mr. James a boy in velveteens looking fearfully at Stevenson playing at pirates.

There is nothing in Mr. Stevenson's sometimes writing essays, sometimes romances, and anon poems to mark him versatile beyond other authors.

One dreads his continuing to do so, with so many books at his back, lest it means weakness rather than strength. He experiments too long; he is still a boy wondering what he is going to be. With Cowley's candor he tells us that he wants to write something by which he may be forever known. His attempts in this direction have been in the nature of trying different ways, and he always starts off whistling. Having gone so far without losing himself, he turns back to try another road.

Does his heart fail him, despite his jaunty bearing, or is it because there is no hurry? Though all his books are obviously by the same hand, no living writer has come so near fame from so many different sides.

Where is the man among us who could write another "Virginibus Puerisque," the most delightful volume for the hammock ever sung in prose? The poems are as exquisite as they are artificial. "Jekyll and Hyde" is the greatest triumph extant in Christmas literature of the morbid kind. The donkey on the Cevennes (how Mr. Stevenson belabored him!) only stands second to the "Inland Voyage." "Kidnapped" is the outstanding boy's book of its generation. "The Black Arrow" alone, to my thinking, is second cla.s.s. We shall all be doleful if a marksman who can pepper his target with inners does not reach the bull's-eye. But it is quite time the great work was begun. The sun sinks while the climber walks round his mountain, looking for the best way up.

Hard necessity has kept some great writers from doing their best work, but Mr. Stevenson is at last so firmly established that if he continues to be versatile it will only be from choice. He has attained a popularity such as is, as a rule, only accorded to cla.s.sic authors or to charlatans. For this he has America to thank rather than Britain, for the Americans buy his books, the only honor a writer's admirers are slow to pay him. Mr. Stevenson's reputation in the United States is creditable to that country, which has given him a position here in which only a few saw him when he left. Unfortunately, with popularity has come publicity. All day the reporters sit on his garden wall.