The Life of a Scottish Probationer: Being a Memoir of Thomas Davidson, with His Poems and ...

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Preface To The First Edition

When Thomas Davidson died, in 1870, the wish was expressed by many of those who had enjoyed the privilege of his friendship, that his poems and a selection from his letters should be published. Circumstances, which it is unnecessary to explain, led to unexpected delay in giving effect to this wish. Last year, at a meeting of such of Davidson's more intimate friends as could be brought together in Edinburgh, the present Editor was requested to undertake the responsibility of preparing the desired memorial. He would have hesitated to accede to this request, which he deemed it a high honour to receive, had he expected that more would be required than editorial supervision and the previ PREFACE.

paration of a short prefatory record of the facts and dates of Davidson's brief career. But, when the necessary material came into his hands, and had been submitted to friends on whose judgment in literary matters he could rely, he was induced to attempt the preparation of such a biography as might serve, not only for a memorial of Davidson, but for a picture of the life of a Scottish Probationer. The Editor is deeply sensible of how imperfectly he has realised the idea he has had before him^ but he has seen no reason to regret that the idea was suggested. The remarkable poems, and still more remarkable letters, which it is his privilege to introduce to the public, will, he ventures to hope^ be read with the greater interest that they are embedded in the biography of their author, whose life all who knew him believed to be more beautiful than anything he ever wrote. And the records of the individual life need be none the less valuable to those who seek a memorial of that life, that the form in which they are presented is intended to awaken interest in the toils and trials of a class of men to whom the Church owes much, but whom.

PREFACE. vii

it is to be feared, she often treats with some measure of coldness, if not of neglect.

In harmony with the primary purpose of the book, which is the publication of Davidson's literary remains, the Editor has sought in every case, where it was possible, to unfold the biography, alike in the outward facts and in the development of the inner life, by means of the poems, the letters, and the journals. This has involved the publication — especially in the earlier chapters — of some letters which have a biographical rather than a literary value.

In determining what poems should be published, the Editor has been to a large extent relieved from responsibility. In the last year of his life Davidson copied into a note book such of his verses as he deemed worthy of preservation. Almost all the pieces given on the following pages are included in that MS. volume.

The Editor has to express his thanks to Davidson's friends and correspondents for the help they have given him, and specially to Mr. James Elliot, for invaluable aid in the revision of proofs.

viii PREFACE,

It seems fitting, also, that he should express, in behalf of the friends whom he represents, gratitude to Mr George Gilfillan of Dundee, and to Dr. Alex-, ander MacLeod of Birkenhead, for their generous and appreciative notices of such of Davidson's poems as have come into their hands.

St. James' Manse, Paisley, 29th November, 1876.

Preface To Third Edition

In the earlier editions the name of the correspondent to whom many of the most interesting letters in this volume were addressed, was at her own request withheld. Through the kindness of her two brothers the Editor is now permitted to reveal the fact that Miss Alison Hay Dunlop, — ^joint author of the book on " Old Edinburgh," published in connection with the Exhibition of 1886, and author of the charming story " When the Century was Young," in the " New Amphion," written for the Fancy Fair in

PREFACE, ix

behalf of the Edinburgh Students' Union, and of a succession of papers in the Scotsman on the Archaeology of Edinburgh, which attracted wide attention, — was she whose love was one of the most ennobling influences in Thomas Davidson's life. She was the Editors most efficient helper in the original preparation of this book. She was deeply interested in its publication, and greatly gratified by the kindness with which it was received. " It was," her brother writes, "the last book she had in her hand before she went to bed never to rise again. She got up a portion of every day, and had herself put into a cab for a drive, by sheer force of will, till the third day before her death. She could read for a few minutes only, owing to weakness and narcotics. As she went out to her room on the evening I refer to, she carried the * Probationer ' with her, and murmured as she passed me 'The lovQ I loved sae weel, sae lang ago.' I think she felt her weakness very much that night, and that she thought she would not be up again." It was on 3rd December, 1888, that she passed away, to join him to whose memory she remained loyal to

X PREFACE.

the end. The fact that she had during recent years attained no insignificant place in our local Scottish literature seems to justify the publication of her name.

In this Edition one letter and two poems have been added to those previously published.

Chapter I

Birth and Parentage — Influence of the Church — Quiet Beauty of Birth-place — First School — Early Companions — Corbet House — Early Reading — Woodhead — Ancrum School — Scott's Novels — Nest Academy — Ancrum Studies — Early Letters and Poetry — Road to Jedburgh — White Lady — Desire to Travel, . . I--2Q

Chapter II

Peculiarities of Scottish Universities — Wonders of Edinburgh — Life in Lodgings — Odours of Home — " Apple Tart " — Influence of Ballads — Echoes of Border Minstrels — Song of the Fay — Association with Fellow-Students — The "Order" — Professor Aytoun's Class — "Ariadne" — Thackeray — Translation from Sophocles — Close of Arts Curriculum, 21 — 42.

xii CONTENTS.

Chapter III

Early Consecration to the Ministry — Entrance Examination — Opening of Divinity Hall — Tutorship at Forres— Correspondence — First Experience of Teaching — Longings for Home — ** Presbytery-gripes " — " r ve Passed " — School Examination — ' * Maj esty of Silence" — First Sermon — Bankend — Associations and Surroundings of Jedburgh — Hall Again — What is a Song? — Auld Ash Tree — Mr. Scott Riddell — Trials of a Teacher — More Poems — Rejection by Presbytery — License, .... 43 — 78

CHAPTER IV. %}xt ^tobationer

Position of a Probationer — Romance of Wandering Life — Old Probationer — First Sermon — Stomoway — Sermon-making — England — Glasgow — Dublin — CuUybj^ckey — Larry M *Kie — Reading the Line — Sixtowns — Aldershot — Sermon-making again — "In the Fair Spring Weather" — Otterburn — Gairney Bridge — Orkney — A Night Walk across the Moor — Sandwick — Kirkwall — Shapinshay — Pierowall — A Probationer's Week in an Orkney Station — Pitrodie— " A Love Song in Winter "—The " Yang-tsi-Kiang " — Wishaw — Black-day — Hymns and Church-building — Howgate-^ Winter Journey to the North—** The Last Straw "—A Doctor's Verdict — Last Sermon, 79 — 178

CONTENTS. xiii

Chapter V

Return to Jedburgh — Close of Diary — Attack of Cold, Bile, and the Family Doctor — Auchterarder — Queen's Visit to Jedburgh — Sonnets — Visit to Edinburgh — ** Love is a Rose " — Great Heat — " Love's Last Suit "—Submission—" To Cupid, Slayer of Friends"—" In Redesdale "—A Notable Visitor—" A Rogue of a Cold "—A Level Life — Sunday Occupations — Change of Feeling about the "Last Incident "—" April"— " On a Certain Premature Report"— Boston's Fourfold State— "There will I be buried "—Visit to Edinburgh— "A Cottage in the Air"— "To Amanda "—Visits to Loch Ranza and Rothesay — Autumn Trip on the Border — Beginning of the End — " A Doggerel Allegory of Hemoptysis " — His Last Poem — Death of Tombie— His Last Letter — The End,

179—315

PAGE

Song of the Fay, 29

Ariadne at Naxos, 35

The Greatness of Man (Translated from Sophocles), ... 40

The Auld Ash Tree, 66

On the Cheviots, 72

Primroses, 74

Jedwater, 75

A Love Song in Winter, 146

The Yang-tsi-Kiang, 149

A Sick Man to the Earliest Snowdrop, . . .. . .215

The Course of Feigned Love never did run Smooth, . . 222

Love's Last Suit, 225

The Restoration, 229

To Cupid, Slayer of Friends, . . . . . . . 232

April, 253

On a certain Premature Report, 256

"And there will I be buried," 265

A Cottage in the Air, 267

To Amanda, who has achieved her First White Hair, . 269

Jed in October, 276

A D<^gerel Allegory of Hemoptysis, 282

His Last Poem, 287

THE LIFE

OF A

SCOTTISH PROBATIONER.

Chapter I

Birth and Parentage — Influence of the Church — Quiet Beauty of Birth-place — First School — Early Companions — Corbet House — Early Reading — Woodhead — Ancrum School — Scott's Novels — Nest Academy — Ancrum Studies — Early Letters and Poetry — Road to Jedburgh — White Lady — Desire to Travel.

Thomas Davidson was born on 7th July, 1838, at Oxnam Row, a large farm lying along the bank of Oxnam Water, a tributary of the Teviot, about four miles from Jedburgh. Though thus born on Scottish ground, he was of English extraction. His father, who was a shepherd, belonged to the neighbourhood of Wooler, and his mother to Belford. They were married in England, but after the birth of their eldest child they migrated to the northern side of the Border.

This migration did not involve much change. The aspect of the pastoral country on both sides of the dividing line between the two kingdoms is the same. There is little difference in the habits of life, and in the case of the Davidsons there was no change of church, or of the forms of religious thought and worship. They had been born in the Communion of the Scottish Secession, which, having from the earliest days of its history a firm hold of the population of the Border counties of Scotland, had passed over into England and taken root in many of the towns and villages of Northumberland. When Jonah Davidson settled on Oxnam Water, he found himself in the midst of traditions which tended to confirm his attachment to the principles of Presbyterian Dissent. The Oxnam Parish Church, which stands picturesquely on a height overlooking the road to Jedburgh, was the scene of the ministry of the younger Boston, who, in 1757, left his snug retreat to go to the relief of the patronageoppressed parishioners of Jedburgh, and was one of the associates of Thomas Gillespie of Carnock in founding the Synod of Relief, which, in 1847, joined with the older Secession to form the United Presbyterian Church. The stalwart shepherd, accustomed to his daily rounds on the hill, found intervening miles no obstacle in the way of continued adherence to the church of his birth. He connected himself with the Blackfriars Secession congregation in Jedburgh, then under the ministry of the late Dr. Nicol, who was well known in that district, and beyond it, as an accom-

/ INFLUENCE OF THE CHURCH, 3

< plished scholar and gentleman. This denominational / attachment on the part of the father had an important influence in determining the career of the son. It is unquestionable that in Scotland the Church is to be credited with much of the literary, as well as the religious life of the nation. The distinctive type of teaching in the Scottish Church — for the preservation of which the Seceders contended with peculiar zeal — has been such as to stimulate thought. The recognised position of the laity under the Presbyterian order, encourages a lively interest on the part of the humblest members of the church in those high questions lying on the border-land between philosophy and theology, which are formulated in the Church's creed. Especially in those districts where the occupations of the people are such as neither to produce great bodily fatigue, nor unduly to engross the mind, these questions are much pondered and keenly debated. Among the pastoral population of the rural districts, as well as among hand-loom weavers in the smaller manufacturing towns, the Church has been instrumental in keeping alive an intellectual activity, which has often borne fruit in other directions than those she would have wished. The fact that Scotland has produced from the ranks of her peasantry so many men distinguished not only in theology, but in literature and science, is to be traced in large measure to the influences of her church life, which, though in some directions professedly narrow, are in others wide and most truly catholic. It has been in the barn-like edifices where our fathers worshipped, and through the long and, in some aspects of them, dreary services in which they delighted, that many a young soul, whom narrowing circumstances would otherwise have cramped and kept in obscurity, has had his first glimpses into the world of thought, and been stirred with his first intellectual ambitions. And the wisdom of the founders of our Scottish Church placed within reach of the lowliest the means of nurturing the intellectual life thus awakened. Not only in every hamlet, but even by lonely waysides among the hills, there stood the school, whose " Dominie," oftenest a student struggling through his long course of training for the pulpit, or perchance a "stickit minister," who had lacked the gift of utterance necessary to command a popular election, or the social influence necessary to secure a presentation, was always ready to welcome a pupil who showed any aptitude for the higher branches.

The house where Thomas Davidson first saw the light was the shepherd's cottage attached to the farm steading of Oxnam Row. It has been swept away, and its site, marked by a young sapling, is now part of the lawn of a new farm-house. It had a pleasant outlook across a holm of good corn land through which the Oxnam flows, to a long green hill from which the farm takes its name of " The Row.*' In the distance to the right you catch glimpses of the range of the Cheviots rising beyond their outliers, which form the foreground of the view. To the left, looking down the stream, there is the wooded

QUIET BEAUTY OF BIRTH-PLACE. 5

• height on which Oxnaim Church peeps out from among the trees. All who knew Davidson, with his quiet reserve of manner, all who listen to the quiet music of his verse, will recognise a harmony between his mental characteristics and the scene where he spent his earliest years. There is nothing in the green valley to bid the traveller pause, but there is a gentle beauty in the grassy slopes, with occasional gleams of light where the water of the winding stream is seen glancing in the sun. Over all there broods a delicious stillness, hardly broken by the murmur of the water, the bleating of the sheep, or the fitful sounds of the quiet labour of the farm. Tom gave early evidence of that love of nature which became a passion as life advanced. When only four years old, he used to accompany his father on his rounds among the hills. If the way proved too long for the little feet, his father would leave him by the side of some whin-bush with strict charge not to stir from it till he returned to fetch him. There he would sit for hours hearing

" The hum of bees in heather bells, And bleatings from the distant fells."

Only on one occasion does his father remember to have found him crying on his return. The absence had been longer than usual, and the sense of loneliness had for once overpowered the little dreamer. His education in the direction in which he was destined most to excel, really began in these rambles and watchings on the hill. That lonely hill-side was the young poet's first school. But book-learning was not neglected. About a mile further up the stream than The Row, there is a little wayside school to which Tom, when he was only five years old, was sent with one of his sisters. A school-fellow, who was, indeed, his chosen companion, still lives hard by. All who knew Davidson in later years were aware of a power which was peculiarly his own, of attaching to him his friends and companions with a deep and lasting affection. That power must have been early developed. This companion of his childhood seldom saw him after the family left Oxnam Row, fully thirty years ago, yet he speaks of him with tenderness, as of one whose friendship once enjoyed is a possession for ever. His account of their companionship gives us a pleasant glimpse of Scottish boy-life. " They used to dook thegither, and rin races naked to dry themselves." It seems that " dooking " was in the case of both a forbidden pleasure indulged in secretly, but often discovered at home, when bed-time came, by the fact that strings and buttons were all awry, and not as careful mothers' hands had fastened them in the morning.

When Tom was eight years old, the family removed to Corbet House, on the Kale Water, in the neighbourhood of Morebattle, and close to Gateshaw Brae, where the first Secession Ordina-

Ej4RL y readings. 7

tion took place in 1739. In about a year there was another migration in the nomadic shepherd life. They went to the farm of Riccalton, on the upper reaches of Oxnam Water, near Carter Fell, and about twelve miles south of Jedburgh. The shepherd's cottage belonging to the farm was called Strip-end, and was their home for two years. Both church and school were distant, but the father ungrudgingly made the twelve miles journey every Sunday to worship in Blackfriars, and Tom found his way daily in summer — less regularly in winter — to Hindhope school, about half the distance. It was here that the boy's love of reading came to be remarked. He had already devoured every scrap of child's literature that he could lay hands on. Jack the Giant Killer and Whittingion and his Cat had been mastered. At six years old he was familiar with Blind Harry, and, even before he could read, his mind was filled with a mass of Border traditions and ballads. The resources of the country side in the matter of books adapted to a boy of his age were not great, and his appetite for knowledge was keen. His father took in the Kelso Chronicle, a weekly print of some standing in these Border districts. On the day when it was due, Tom used to wander far out to meet the messenger, and, having got the paper, found his way into some quiet corner, never emerging till he had read every line of it It is a touching picture — the country-bred boy

8 THE SCHOOI^BOY.

dreaming among the hills^ listening csLgeAy to the echoes of the great world as they came to him through the medium of the Kelso ChronicU.

In 1849 there was yet another removal Mr. Davidson found employment on the farm of Woodhead in the parish of Ancrum. One of a row of labourers' cottages on the side of a country road was assigned to the shepherd^ and was the home of the family till i860 — ^from Tom's twelfth to his twenty-third year. There is nothing specially romantic in the humble cottage, but in the farreaching view which it commands there was much to nourish Tom's peculiar tastes. Looking down the Ale he could see the heights of Ruberslaw and Minto Crags, the latter the residence of Miss Elliot, whose touching version of "The Flowers of the Forest" it was his delight in after years to sing. Eildon Hills on Tweedside are visible from the rising ground behind. Looking to the left he had a view of Teviotdale and of the monumentcrowned height of Penielheugh, with a far-stretching expanse of wood and stream, terminated in the distance by the Cheviots. In the immediate foreground is the richly-wooded valley in which the Ale makes pleasant music, and on the other side of which lies the pretty village of Ancrum. The path by which he went to the village school was through this valley, and to tread that path morning and evening for five or six years was no unimportant part of a poet's education. Descending from the high-

JVA V TO ANCRVM SCHOOL, ■ 9

way and crossing a field, it strikes the high bank of the stream, which is seen gleaming through the leaves of overhanging trees. It follows the course of the river for some distance, till it crosses it by a quaint old bridge, at the end of which stands the Parish Church, with the aisle in which the Scotts qf Ancrum lie buried under their white marble tombstones. The footpath then turns down the river brink till it reaches the end of one of those splendid cliffs of Old Red Sandstone, so common in that district. In this cliff there is a large deep cave called ** Maggie Dun's Cove,** which has of course the usual traditions attaching to such places to deepen the mystery of its vaulted recesses. It was Tom's delight to climb into the cave, which doubtless his young imagination peopled with other forms than those visible in the light of common day. The footpath to Ancrum ascends along the summit of the cliff, on the giddy edge of a sheer precipice which is so covered with trees that the river, the gentle murmur of which comes up from far below, is almost hidden. The village itself is quaint and picturesque. Lying round a threecornered green, skirted with trees and having a cross in the centre, it has a thoroughly English aspect, not unbefitting the fact that it is very near the border, and on the debateable land where the peculiarities of the two countries shade off into each other. Along this sweet path Tom trudged day by day, drinking in its beauty, to the little school where he contrived to pick up a respectable knowledge of Latin and Greek lO THE SCHOOL.BOY.

from a succession of well-qualified teachers, one of whom confesses that he had "considerable difficulty in keeping out of his way/' But he had other teachers than the Ancrum schoolmasters. His love for books was fast developing into a passion. At the farm on which his father served there resided two grandchildren of Dr. M'Crie, the biographer of John Knox. They were lads about his own age, and a close friendship existed between him and them. They had the command of books which would otherwise have been inaccessible to him, and he drew largely on their stores. It could not be but that, with the border-land stretched out before him, he should become a student of Sir Walter Scott. When his daily lessons had been mastered, he would sit far into the night reading his novels and his minstrelsy. They have a story in the family that one night when the Magician had led him into dreamland, on his way to bed he trod on some lucifer matches, which exploded under his feet, and that the house was awakened by the cry, "Oh, mother, mother, there's fire flying from my heels." The anxious mother answered him, "Oh, laddie, laddie, if ye dinna stop reading Walter Scott he'll turn your heid." But his reading was not confined to what he calls " the literature of levity." The M*Crie library at the farm furnished heavier food for his boyish appetite. His letters of this period contain such scraps as the following — " I'm reading Redhead's Revolutions, They're splendid both in point of description and of composition. Some of his passages

'J ^ V

NEST ACADEMY, 1 1

are peculiarly grand : he sometimes soars into the regions of sublimity," etc. " IVe read M^Crie's Review of Old Mortality' ; he gives him what you would call a reddin' up." " I am at present reading John Knox's History of the Scottish Reformation^ a ponderous volume, but withal full of good solid information, written in an old quaint style, but relieved here and there with pieces of humour, which, although pretty coarse-looking to a reader of the nineteenth century, still tend to enliven it a piece: for you know that a whin-bush would look as well in the desert of Sahara as the rose of Sharon in the vale of Temp^."

The letters from which these extracts are made were written when he was sixteen. They were addressed to Mr. Scott, one of his teachers at Ancrum, who had removed from the district. On the suggestion of the Rev. Dr. Nicol, who, on a pastoral visitation, had discovered the remarkable ability of the shepherd's son, Tom was enrolled in the summer of 1854 as a pupil in the Nest Academy in the town of Jedburgh. This involved a walk of five miles each way, but the enthusiastic student reckoned the toil a cheap price to pay for the superior advantages of a secondary school. It was a new world to him, and he entered with enthusiasm into the work prescribed and the competitions with the town boys. His letters to Mr. Scott gave expression to his unaffected wonder at the ways of the new school. The English pronunciation of the Latin greatly amazes him, but he congratulates himself that his pronunciation of

{ I

French is more satisfactory than that of his classfellows — "for they give the nasals the real broad ongs and angs." He notes for the benefit of his former teacher some rules to guide him in this matter which he has recently acquired. "We get," he says further, *' tremendous drillings in history and geography : they have the dates of all the kings that have reigned or battles that have been fought in England ; nevertheless, if I am put down at a date, I generally retake my position at the relation of facts." We can gather from the account he gives of his work that it must have been a thoroughly well-taught school. His first teacher there was Mr. Miller, to whom he soon became warmly attached, and whose sudden death in February, 1855, he characterises as "decidedly a calamity." There is touching simplicity in his description of the last he saw of him. " The last day he was in the school he seemed as hale and as healthy as ever he was. I only noticed that he sometimes put up his hand and pressed his brow as if he felt pain in his head ; and sometimes he never seemed to hear what was going on. The last thing he did was giving us a lesson on Virgil's Eighth Eclogue, which we translated, and a great part of it I think he didn't hear at all. We just finished the translation of it at ten o'clock, so he took up his hat, saying, ' We'll resume this in the afternoon,' but he never came in again. . . . He just spoke to me on the Tuesday of learning German, which he said he wished me to begin, for he would f

ANCRUM STUDIES. 13

make no charge. I was quite delighted with this, but what I've got to do now I know not ; I'm at my wit's end." His letters express impatience for the appointment of a new teacher, his disanoointment in the man first chosen, and his gratifiv .on when he made way for one more to his mind, " a nice, careful, painstaking, cheerful sort of a chap of tremendous stature and volume." Under the new teacher he seems to have gone through a fair amount of work in Latin, Greek, French, and Mathematics. Among his books there is a prize gained by him as " dux '• in Euclid, ist August, 1855. But the school reading did not satisfy him. ** I have begun," he says, April 7th, 1855, "to read Mr. Homer's Iliad on my own account. I find it grand and even peculiarly interesting, so much so, indeed, that I frequently take him to Jedburgh with me to while away the road in coming out. Some of his epithets are very fine. . . . Indeed when I happen to take him up before I begin to my lessons, I generally have to postpone them till the next morning. I fell in with Hamilton the other night, and got from him the works of Thomas Reid, D.D., edited by Sir William Hamilton, to read. It's a metaphysical book of tremendous volume and gravity, consisting of some 1,000 pages or so, closely printed, and as large as your Imperial Dictionary!* April 24th — "Your brother Tom is down to-night, and he is going to bring me some of Macualay's Essays. There's Hamilton's Philosophy [his edition of Reid, it may be presumed] lying before me, every time I look at it it makes my blood run cold. It is, in fact, a terrible eyesore." May 14th — ^^ I have still Reid's Philosophy, at which I take a spell occasionally. It's very curious ; it requires an effort to make me attack him, and another to lay him down again. A more readable book, however, is the Life of Sir Walter Scott by Lockhart, which also belongs to Mr. Hamilton, and upon which I am also engaged ; it abounds with interest and anecdote. I have only got it for two months, as he lifts at the end of that time, and I have had it for a fortnight now nearly." July 2nd — " I am really very much pleased with Lockhart's Life. He contrives to be so minute and yet so interesting that one can't help being taken up with him. I regret, however, that I won't be able to finish it, as I am not half through, and have scarcely another month, for Hamilton will be away in that time."