The life of Edward Irving

Front matter

n

■I

BScrBw u/o^tUo A^3

Preface

It seems necessary to say something, by way of excusing myself for what I feel must appear to many the presumption of undertaking so serious a work as this biography. I need not relate the various unthought-of ways by which I have been led to undertake it, which are my apology to myself rather than to the public ; but I may say that, in a matter so complicated and delicate, it appeared to me a kind of safeguard that the writer of Edward Irving' s Life should be a person without authority to pronounce judgment on one side or the other, and interested chiefly with the man himself, and his noble courageous warfare through a career encompassed with all human agonies. I hoped to get personal consolation amid heavy troubles out of a life so full of great love, faith, and sorrow ; and I have found this life so much more lofty, pure, and true than my imagination, that the picture, unfolding under my hands, has often made me pause to think how such a painter as the Blessed Angelico took the attitude of devotion at his labour, and painted such saints on his knees. The large extracts which, by the kindness of his surviving children, I have been permitted to make from Irving's letters, will show the readers of this book, better than any description, what manner of man he was ; and I feel assured that to be able thus to illustrate the facts of his history by his own exposition of

V1U PREFACE.

its heart and purpose, is to do him greater justice than could be hoped for from any other means of interpretation.

My thanks are due, first and above all, to Professor Martin Irving, of Melbourne, and to his sister, Mrs S. E. Gardiner, London, who have kindly permitted me the use of their father's letters ; to the Eev. James Brodie and Mrs Brodie, of Monimail, and Miss Martin, Edinburgh ; to J. Eergusson, Esq., and W. Dickson, Esq., Glasgow, nephews of Irving ; the Eev. Dr Grierson, of Errol ; Patrick Sheriff, Esq., of Haddington ; Mrs Carlyle, Chelsea; the Eev. Dr Hanna ; M. N. Macdonald Hume, Esq. ; James Bridges, Esq. ; Eev. D. Ker, Edinburgh ; Eev. J. M. Campbell, late of Eow ; J. Hatley Erere, Esq., London ; Eev. A. J. Scott, of Manchester ; Dr G. M. Scott, Hampstead; Eev. E. H. Story, of Eosneath; and other friends of Irving, some of them now beyond the reach of earthly thanks — among whom I may mention the late Henry Drummond, Esq., of Albury, and Mrs Wm. Hamilton — who have kindly placed letters and other memoranda at my disposal, or given me the benefit of their personal recollections.

The present Edition has been carefully revised, and an Index added with the view of giving further completeness to the work.

M. O. W. OLIPHANT.

. 385

XIX. 1834 — The End

. 404

. 429

CHAPTEE I.

HIS PAKENTAGE AND CHILDHOOD.

In the autumn of the eventful year 1792, at the most singular crisis of the world's history which has arisen in modern times, — when France was going mad in her revolution, and the other nations of Christendom were crowding in, curious and dismayed, to see that spectacle which was to result in so many other changes, but far away from all those outcries and struggles, in the peaceful little Scotch town of Annan, Edward Irving, the story of whose life is to be told in the following pages, was born. He was the son of Gavin Irving, of a long-established local kindred, well known, but undistinguished, who followed the humble occupation of a tanner in Annan, and of Mary Lowther, the handsome and high-spirited daughter of a small landed proprietor in the adjacent parish of Dornoch. Among the Irving forefathers were a family of Howys, Albigenses, or at least French Protestant refugees, one of whom had become parish minister in Annan, and has left behind him some recollections of lively wit worthy his race, and a tombstone, with a quaint inscription, which is one of the wonders of the melancholy and crowded churchyard, or rather burying-ground ; for the present church of the town has left the graves behind. The same dismal enclosure, with its nameless mounds, rising mysterious through the rugged grass, proclaims the name of Irving on every side in many lines of kindred ; but these tombstones seem almost the only record extant of the family. The Lowthers were more notable people. The eldest brother, Tristram, whom Edward characterizes as " Uncle Tristram of Dornoch, the wilful," seems to have been one of the acknowledged characters of that

2 THE IRVINGS AND LOWTHERS.

characteristic country. He lived and died a bachelor, saving, litigious, and eccentric ; and, determined to enjoy in his lifetime that fame which is posthumous to most men, he erected his own tombstone in Dornoch churchyard, recording on it the most memorable of his achievements. The greatest of these were, winning a lawsuit in which he had been engaged against his brothers, and building a bridge. It appears that he showed true wisdom in getting what satisfaction he could out of his autobiographical essay while he lived ; for his respectable heirs have balked Tristram, and carried away the characteristic monument. Another brother lives in local tradition as the good-natured giant of the district. It is told of him that, having once accompanied his droves into England (they were all grazier farmers by profession), the Scottish Hercules, placid of temper, and perhaps a little slow of apprehension, according to the nature of giants, was refreshing himself in an old-fashioned tavern — locality uncertain — supposed to be either the dock precincts of Liverpool, or the eastern wastes of London. The other guests in the great sanded kitchen, where they were all assembled, amused themselves with an attempt to "chaff" and aggravate the stranger ; and finding this tedious wTork, one rash joker went so far as to insult him, and invite a quarrel. G-eorge Lowther bore it long, probably slow to comprehend the idea of quarrelling with such antagonists ; at last, when his patience was exhausted, the giant, grimly humorous, if not angry, seized, some say a great iron spit from the wall, some a poker from the hearth, and twisting it round the neck of his unfortunate assailant, quietly left him to the laughter and condolences of his comrades till a blacksmith could be brought to release him from that impromptu pillory. Gravin Irving'swife was of this stout and primitive race. Her activity and cheerful, high-spirited comeliness are still well remembered by the contemporaries of her children ; and even the splendour of the scarlet riding-skirt and Leghorn hat, in which she came home as a bride, are still reflected in some old memories.

The families on both sides were of competent substance and reputation, and rich in individual character. ISTo wealth, to speak of, existed among them : a little patriarchal foundation of land and cattle, from which the eldest son might perhaps claim a territorial designation if his droves found prosperous market across the border ; the younger sons, trained to independent trades, one of them, perhaps, not disdaining to throw his plaid over his shoulder and call his dog to his heels behind one of these same droves, a sturdy noviciate to his grazier life ; while the inclinations of another might quite as

LIFE IN ANNAN. 3

naturally and suitably lead him to such study of law as may be necessary for a Scotch " writer," or to the favourite and most profoundly respected of all professions, " the ministry," as it is called in Scotland. The Irving and Lowther families embraced both classes, with all the intermediary steps between them ; aud Gavin Irving and his wife, in their little house at Annan, stood perhaps about midway between the homely refinement of the Dumfriesshire manses and the rude profusion of the Annandale farms.

Of this marriage eight children were born, — three sons, John, Edward, and George, all of whom were educated to learned professions ; and five daughters, all respectably married. All the sisters seem to have left representatives behind them ; but John and George both died unmarried before the death of their distinguished brother. The eldest, whom old friends speak of as " one of the handsomest young men of his day," and whom his father imagined the genius of the family, died obscurely in India on Edward's birthday, the 4th of August, in the prime of his manhood, a medical officer in the East India Company's service. He was struck down by a jungle fever, a sharp and sudden blow, and his friends had not even the satisfaction of knowing fully the circumstances of his death. But henceforward the day, made thus doubly memorable, was consecrated by Edward as a solemn fast-day, and spent in the deepest seclusion. Under the date of a letter, written on the 2nd of August some years after, he writes the following touching note : — "4 August, Dies natalis atque fatalis incidit" translated underneath by himself "The day of birth and of death draweth nigh." The highest art could not have reared such a monument to the early dead.

The stormy firmament under which these children were born, and all the commotions going on in the outside world, scarcely seem to have fluttered the still atmosphere of the little rural town in which they first saw the light. There the quiet years were revolving, untroubled by either change or tumult : quiet traffic, slow, safe, and unpretending, sailed its corn-laden sloops from the "Waterfoot, the little port where Annan Water flows into the Solway ; and sent its droves across the border, and grew soberly rich without alteration of either position or manners. The society of the place was composed of people much too well known in all the details and antecedents of their life to entertain for a moment the idea of forsaking their humble natural sphere. The Kirk lay dormant, by times respectable and decorous, by times, unfortunately, much the reverse, but very seldom reaching a higher point than that of

4 UNIVERSAL FRIENDLINESS.

respectability. Politics did not exist as an object of popular interest. The " Magistrates " of Annan elected their sixth part of a member of Parliament dutifully as his Grace's agents suggested, and gleaned poor posts in the Customs and Excise for their dependent relations. The parish school, perhaps of a deeper efficiency than anything else in the place, trained boys and girls together into stout practical knowledge, and such rude classic learning as has established itself throughout Scotland. High Puritanism, such as is supposed to form the distinguishing feature of Scotch communities, was undreamed of in this little town. According to its fashion Annan was warmly hospitable and festive, living in a little round of social gaieties. These gaieties were for the most part tea parties, of a description not now known, unless, perhaps, they may still linger in Annan and its companion-towns, — parties in which tea was a meal of much serious importance, accompanied by refreshments of a more substantial kind, and followed by a sober degree of joviality. The families who thus amused themselves grew up in the closest relations of neighbourship ; they sent off sons into the world to gain name and fame beyond the highest dreams of the countryside, yet to be fondly claimed on coming back with an old affection closer than fame, as still the well-known John or Edward of all their contemporaries in Annan. Nothing could contrast more strangely with the idea which, looking back, we instinctively form of the state of matters at that stirring epoch, than this little neutral-coloured community, dimly penetrated by its weekly newspaper, living a long way off from all startling events, and only waking into knowledge of the great commotions going on around, when other occurrences had obliterated them, and their interest was exhausted. Nor was there any intellectual or spiritual movement among themselves to make up. The Kirk, the great mainspring of Scottish local life, was dormant, as we have said, — as indeed the Church was at this era in most places throughout the world. The Annan clergyman was one whom old parishioners still can scarcely bear to blame, but who in his best days could only be spoken of with affectionate pity ; a man whose habitual respect for his own position made him " always himself," in the pulpit — a quaint and melancholy distinction— and who never would tolerate the sound of an oath even when constantly frequenting places where oaths were very usual embellishments of conversation. Religion had little active existence in the place, as may be supposed ; but the decorum which preserved the minister's Sundays in unimpeachable sobriety kept up throughout the community a certain religious

TRADITIONS OF THE DISTRICT. 0

habit, the legacy of a purer generation. Household psalms still echoed of nights through the closed windows, and children, brought up among few other signs of piety, were yet trained in the habit of family prayers. This was almost all the religion which existed in Puritan Scotland in these eventful French [Revolution days ; and even this was owing more to the special traditions of the soil in such a region as Annandale, than to any deeper impulse of faith.

For outside this comfortable prosaic world was a world of imagination and poetry, never to be dissevered from that border country. Strange difference of a few centuries ! The Annandale droves went peaceably to the Southern market, past many a naked peelhouse and austere tower of defence on both sides of the border ; but the country, watched and guarded by these old apparitions, had not forgotten the moss-troopers : and far more clearly and strongly, with vision scarcely sufficiently removed from the period even to be impartial, the district which held the Stones of Irongray, and enclosed many a Covenanter's grave, remembered that desperate fever and frenzy of persecution through which the Kirk had once fought her way. I recollect, at a distance of a great many years, the energy with which a woman-servant from that countryside told tales of the " Lag," who is the Claverhouse of the border, till the imagination of a nursery, far removed from the spot, fixed upon him, in defiance of all nearer claims, as the favourite horror, — the weird, accursed spirit whom young imaginations, primitive and unsentimental, have no compunctions about delivering over to Satan. This old world of adventurous romance and martyr legend thrilled and palpitated around the villages of Annandale. The educated people in the town, the writer or the doctor, or possibly the minister, all the men who were wiser than their neighbours, might perhaps entertain enlightened views touching those Covenanter fanatics whom enlightened persons are not supposed to entertain much sympathy with ; but in the tales of the ingleside — in the narratives heard by the red glow of the great kitchen fire, or in the farm-house chimney corner — enlightened views were out of court, and the home-spun martyrs of the soil were absolute masters of all hearts and suffrages. And perhaps few people out of the reach of such an influence, can comprehend the effect which is produced upon the ardent, young, inexperienced imagination by those familiar tales of torture endured, and death accomplished, by men bearing the very names of the listeners, and whose agony and triumph have occurred in places of which every nook and corner is familiar to their eyes. The impression made is such

6 BIRTH OF EDWARD.

as nothing after can ever efface or obliterate ; and it has the effect — an effect I confess not very easily explainable to those who have not experienced it — of weaving round the bald services of the Scotch Church a charm of imagination more entrancing and visionary than the highest poetic ritual could command, and of connecting her absolute canons and unpicturesque economy with the highest epic and romance of national faith. Perhaps this warm recollection of her martyrs, and of that fervent devotion which alone can make martyrs possible, has done more to neutralise the hard common sense of the country, and to preserve the Scotch Church from over-legislating herself into decrepitude, than any other influence. "We too, like every other Church and race, have our legends of the Saints, and make such use of them in the depths of our reserve and national reticence as few strangers guess or could conceive.

It was in this community that Edward Irving received his first impressions. He was born on the 4th of August, 1792, in a little house near the old town-cross of Annan. There he was laid in his wooden cradle, to watch with unconscious eyes the light coming in at the low, long window of his mother's narrow bedchamber ; or rather, according to the ingenious hypothesis of a medical friend of his own, to lie exercising one eye upon that light, and intensifying into that one eye, by way of emphatic unconscious prophecy of the future habit of his soul, all his baby power of vision — a power which the other eye, hopelessly obscured by the wooden side of the cradle, was then unable to use, and never after regained ; an explanation of the vulgar obliquity called a squint, which I venture to recommend to all unprejudiced readers. The stairs which led to Mrs Irving' s bedchamber ascended through the kitchen, a cheerful, well-sized apartment as such houses go ; and in the other end of the house, next to the kitchen, was the parlour, a small, inconceivably small room, in which to rear a family of eight stalwart sons and daughters, and to exercise all the hospitalities required by that sociable little community. But society in Annan was evidently as indifferent to a mere matter of- space as society in a more advanced development. The tanner's yard was opposite the house, across the little street. There he lived in the full exercise of his unsavoury occupation, with his children growing up around him ; a quiet man, chiefly visible as upholding the somewhat severe discipline of the schoolmaster against the less austere virtue of the mother, who, handsome and energetic, was the ruling spirit of the house. It is from Mrs Irving that her family seem to have taken that somewhat solemn and dark type of beauty which,

PEGGY PAINE S SCHOOL. 7

marred only by the intervention of the wooden cradle, became famous in the person of her illustrious son. I do not say that she realized the ordinary popular notion about the mothers of great men ; but it is apparent that she was great in all that sweet personal health, force, and energy which distinguished her generation of Scottish women ; and which, perhaps, with the shrewdness and characteristic individuality which accompany it, is of more importance to the race and nation than any degree of mere intellect. " Evangelicalism," said Edward Irving, long after, " has spoiled both the minds and bodies of the women of Scotland — there are no women now like my mother." The devotedest evangelical believer might forgive the son for that fond and filial saying. It is clear that no conventional manner of speech, thought, or barrier of ecclesiastical proprieties unknown to nature, had limited the mother of those eight Irvings, whom she brought up accordingly in all the freedom of a life almost rural, yet amid all the warm and kindly influences of a community of friends. To be born in such a place and such a house, was to come into the world entitled to the familiar knowledge and affection of " all the town" — a fact which may be quaintly apprehended in the present Annan, by the number of nameless quiet old people, who, half admiring and half incredulous of the fame of their old school-fellow, brighten up into vague talk of" Edward" when a stranger names his name.

The first appearance which Edward Irving made out of this house with its wooden cradle, was at a little school, preparatory to more serious education, kept by " Peggy Paine," a relation of the unfortunate tailor-sceptic who in those days was in uneasy quarters in Paris, in the midst of the revolution. An old woman, now settled for her old age in her native town, who had in after years encountered her great townsman in London, and remaining loyally faithful to his teaching all her life, is now, I suppose, the sole representative in Annan of the religious body commonly called by his name, remembers in those old vernal days how Edward helped her to learn her' letters, and how they two stammered into their first syllables over the same book in Peggy Paine's little school. This was the beginning of a long friendship, as singular as it is touching, and which may here be followed through its simple course. When Edward, long after, was the most celebrated preacher of his day, and Hannah, the Annan girl whom he had helped to learn her letters, was also in London, a servant struggling in her own sphere through the troubles of that stormier world, her old school-fellow stretched out his cordial hand to her, without

HANNAH DOUGLAS.

a moment's shrinking from the work in which her hand was engaged. It was natural that all the world about her should soon know of that friendship. And Hannah's " family " were ambitious, like everybody else, of the acquaintance of the hero of the day. He was too much sought to be easily accessible, till the master and mistress bethought themselves of the intercession of their maid, and sent her with their invitation to back it by her prayers. The result was a triumph for Hannah. Irving gratified the good people by going to dine with them for his school-fellow's sake. I am not aware that anything romantic or remarkable came of the introduction so accomplished, as perhaps ought to have happened to make the incident poetically complete ; but I cannot help regarding it as one of the pleasantest of anecdotes. Hannah lives at Annan, an old woman, pensioned by the grateful representative of the family whom she had faithfully served, and tells with tears this story of her friend ; and stands a homely, solitary pillar, the representative of the " Catholic Apostolic Church " in the place which gave its most distinguished member birth.

The next stage of Edward's education was greatly in advance of Peggy Paine. Schoolmasters must have been either a more remarkable race of men in those days, or the smaller number of them must have enhanced their claim upon popular appreciation. At least it was no uncommon matter for the parishes and little towns of Scotland to fix with pride upon their schoolmaster as the greatest boast of their district. Such was the case with Mr Adam Hope, who taught the young Irvings, and after them a certain Thomas Carlyle from Ecclefechan, with other not undistinguished men. There were peculiarities in that system of education. People below the rank of gentry did not think of sending their daughters to what were called boarding-schools ; or at least were subject to much derisive remark if they ventured on such an open evidence of ambition. The female schools in existence were distinctively sewing schools, and did not pretend to do much for the intellect ; so that boys and girls trooped in together, alike to the parish-school and the superior academy, sat together on the same forms, stood together in the same classes, and not unfrequently entered into tough combats for prizes and distinctions, whimsical enough to hear of now-a-days. Of this description was the Annan Academy, at which Edward does not appear to have taken any remarkable position. He does not seem even to have attained the distinction of one of those dunces of genius who are not unknown to literature. Under the severe discipline of those days he sometimes came home

OUT-DOOR EDUCATION. V

from school with his ears " pinched until they bled," to his mother's natural resentment ; but found no solace to his wounded feelings and members from his father, who sided with the master, and does not seem to have feared the effect of such trifles upon the sturdy boys, who were all destined to fight their way upward by the brain rather than the hands. The only real glimpse which is to be obtained of Edward in his school days discloses the mournful picture of a boy "kept in," and comforted in the ignominious solitude of the school-room by having his "piece" hoisted up to him by a cord through a broken window. However, he showed some liking for one branch of education, that of mathematics, in which he afterwards distinguished himself. It was the practice in Annan to devote one day of the week specially to mathematical lessons, an exceptional day, which the boys hailed as a kind of holiday. The little town, however, was not destitute of classical ambition. Tradition tells of a certain Blind John who had picked up a knowledge of Latin in the parish school, chiefly from hearing the lessons of other boys there ; and had struggled somehow to such a height of latinity that his teaching and his pupils were renowned as far as Edinburgh, where awful professors did not scorn to acknowledge his attainments. It is probable that Edward did not study under this unauthorized instructor ; and the orthodox prelections of the Academy did not develope the literary inclinations of the athletic boy, who found more engrossing interests in every glen and hillside. Eor nothing was wanting to the perfection of his education out of doors. There were hills to climb, a river close at hand, a hospitable and friendly country to be explored ; and the miniature port at the "Waterfoot, where impetuous Sol way bathed with tawny salt waves the little pier, and boats that tempted forth the adventurous boyhood of Annan. Early in Edward's life he became distinguished for feats of swimming, walking, rowing, climbing, all sorts of open-air exercises. The main current of his energy flowed out in this direction, and not in that of books. His scattered kindred gave full occasion for long walks and such local knowledge as adventurous school-boys delight in ; and when he and his companions went to Dornoch, to his mother's early home, where his uncles still lived, it was Edward's amusement, says a surviving relative, to leap all the gates in the way. This fact survives all the speculations that may have been in the boy's brain on that rural, thoughtful road. His thoughts, if he had any, dispersed into the listening air and left no sign ; but there can be no mistake about the leaping of the gates.

10 SOLWAY SANDS.

In this early period of his life he is said to have met with an adventure, sufficiently picturesque and important to be recorded. Every one who knows the Solway is aware of the peculiarities of that singular estuary. When the tide is full, a nobler firth is not to be seen than this brimming flood of green sea-water, with Skiddaw glooming on the other side over the softer slopes of Cumberland, and Criffel standing sentinel on this, upon the Scotch sea-border ; but when the tide is out, woeful and lamentable is the change. Solway, shrunk to a tithe of its size, meanders, gleaming through vast banks of sand, leaving here and there a little desert standing bare in the very midst of its channel, covered with stake-nets which raise their heads in the strangest, unexpected way, upon a spot where vessels of considerable burden might have passed not many hours before. The firth, indeed, is so reduced in size by the ebbing of the tide, that it is possible to ride, or even to drive a cart across from one side to the other ; a feat, indeed, which is daily accomplished, and which might furnish a little variation upon the ancient romantic routine of Gretna Green, as the ferryman at the Brough was in former times equally qualified with the blacksmith at the border toll, and not without much patronage, though his clients were humbler fugitives. "When, however, Solway sets about his daily and nightly reflow, he does it with a rush and impetuosity worthy of the space he has to fill, and is a dangerous playfellow when " at the turn." One day while they were still children, John and Edward Irving are said to have strayed down upon these great sands, with the original intention of meeting their uncle, Greorge Lowther, who was expected to cross Solway at the ebb, on his way to Annan. The scene was specially charming in its wild solitude and freedom. In that wilderness of sand and shingle, with its gleaming salt-water pools clear as so many mirrors, full of curious creatures still unknown to drawing-room science, but not to school-boy observation, the boys presently forgot all about their immediate errand, and, absorbed in their own amusement, thought neither of their uncle nor of the rising tide. While thus occupied, a horseman suddenly came up to them at full gallop, seized first one and then the other of the astonished boys, and throwing them across the neck of his horse, galloped on without pausing to address a word to them, or even perceiving who they were. When they had safely reached the higher shingly bank, out of reach of the pursuing tide, he drew bridle at last, and pointed back breathless to where he had found them. The startled children, perceiving the danger they had escaped, saw the tawny waves pursuing almost to where