to a steward attended by his clerk," the famous Rent Day, -says, "It is impossible to predict to what a height he may rise"; but he shrewdly adds, "He seems, however, to produce his pictures with great labour to himself; he has been on this about three months' hard work already; the heads are mostly portraits from from nature." good old cockney fellow, who In London even then he found more Scotsmen than in Edinburgh. "Everybody says so; and I am satisfied the fact is so. There is scarcely one baker in London who is not Scottish, nor one gardener in the whole neighbourhood. Curious, however, different trades and professions are occupied by the different nations: the butchers and postilions, &c., all English; chairmen and porters all Irish; milk-women almost all Welsh; sugar-bakers all Germans; dealers in gold and jewels all Jews; swindlers in bad pictures and prints, looking-glasses, weather-glasses, &c., all Italians; traitors and spies all French; booksellers are almost all idiots." Most of the booksellers were thin student-of-divinity-lookstill of the eighteenth-century ing lad, who wears a white type, though they were in the handkerchief over his boot, for first decade of the nineteenth, a splint or spavine, I suppose and quaint. Creech, Burns's -a very bad sign." Willie Creech, was a picturesque figure. Dressed in black silk breeches, with powdered hair, and full of humorous talk, his habit was to stand on the steps of his shop in the Luckenbooths in converse with his customers, mostly of the Parliament House. He was an author too, but as Dr Smiles says, that was the least of his merits. John Bell had a facetious turn of mind, particularly, it is said, when associated with a few friends of an evening. Duty, and we suspect inclination, frequently led Hunter to throw over a fashionable party that he might dine with a bookseller. A dinner at Johnson's, St Paul's Churchyard, put him "very much in mind of Smollett's Dinner of Authors in Peregrine Pickle.' Fuseli the painter, "the most conceited, self-sufficient quiz I ever saw, but clever and well read," defied and despised all opinions; Johnson, himself, was "very like an old dominie and a true conceited Hunter never loses sight of "the shop." In his letters business always comes comes first. But he knew how to relax, no one better. At Inveraray he could not get a sight of an Edinburgh newspaper-"the greatest of all earthly enjoy Edinburgh eleven years after Shakespeare's] death-a unique book. Of the Marine Society's dinner he says, " Horrible guzzling of the Londoners, and no drinking a most unwholesome plan." In his opinion the banquets in London were not to be compared with the " great feeds " of Edinburgh. He thought the English had no proper genius or turn for that sort of thing, and that this applied also to Scotsmen who had been long in England, both being much more taken up with the eating than the drinking and fun. ་ ments to an Edinburgh bookseller " - until passing the the prison one of the prisoners read it to him through the grating. He saw Old Q, the dissolute Duke of Queensberry, peeping out at his window "in a state of mere existence apparently, a good picture of a debauched old man who has enjoyed everything this world can produce, so far as money can purchase." At Levenside, Mr Stirling's great bleachfield, Mrs Stirling could not read his letter of introduction without spectacles. She managed, however, to make out the two first lines, which happened to mention "Hunter of Blackness,' when she almost took him in her arms, and said it did not signify what else was in the letter that he should not on any account go from her house that night, nor next day, if she could help it, as she had formerly been in love with his father, and the intimate friend of his two aunts. He went to see the house in which his father lived when with Benjamin Burton, the Governor These years of Hunter's coof the Bank of England, and partnery with Archibald Confound the identical nail stick- stable were the happiest of his ing in the wall to which, when life, and of Constable's. No two out late at night, "the Bailie " men were ever more equally used to fix a string connecting yoked. This perfect partnerwith the great toe of another ship was nearing an end, and of their people. Nate lads his own course was all but run, they had been in those days when he lost his father in is his comment. On a visit October 1809. If it were needto the author of "Caledonia,' Caledonia," ful to prove that Hunter was he lovingly handled an imper- a man of high character, his fect copy of Shakespeare's letters at this juncture would 'Venus and Adonis,' the do it. I felt it a very sore title-page entire, printed at thing yesterday to go to the Their literary men, too, were inferior, "at present at least." This last a wise reservation. He writes after a dinner at the elder Disraeli's, and young Benjamin, aged two, was in the nursery! Here he met some of the leading lights, and was surprised to find that he could hold his own with them. "If this be not vanity it says the less for the talents of the party, as indeed I mean to do." 66 churchyard with Maule to mark ... off the new ground. . . . I did not cry, however, though it made my throat d-d sore trying to keep it in." He had never met anything, he says, to equal Mr and Mrs Maule's behaviour. "Had our family been a part of their own, I do not know any material difference that could have been made." Before the funeral, and before he knew what his father's settlements might be, he tells Constable that he had decided "that this family remain here precisely on their present establishment in all respects till Whitsunday. After that they will either remain in Angus or remove to Edinburgh, as they shall decide; and I am resolved to sacrifice everything reasonable to render them all comfortable and happy. I rather think my mother has decided to come to Edinburgh amongst her own friends, and to be near Annie and me, and this plan I like by far the best myself. They can then come out to Loretto when they choose, and I shall have a home in their house in Edinburgh. This surely would be both natural and proper-don't you think so... All this I am saying in the belief that Eskmount is left to me by my father's settlements; but the truth is, I would do nearly the very same thing for my dear brother Thomas in case it were left to him-a measure for which I should not blame my father, although I rather think it is not." His changed circumstances -all the land was left to him -were to make no difference in his relations with Constable. "I do not know how it is, but my mind is even more with our business than it was." As time went on, however, he found this to be impossible. His health failed, and the management of the estates called for his whole time and attention. Their "magnitude, extent, and value" astonished him. "I have perambulated the properties of Balskelly, Cottside, and Cowbyres, which are all separate and distinct. It took two entire days to go round them-Cowbyres alone being more than three miles in a straight line. I was every now and then seeing some place belonging to myself, which I had never before heard of." The golden age for landed proprietors had set in. What were known as improvements, with new methods of cultivation, had enhanced the value of land, and rents were rising. He makes an estimate of what his income is likely to be, and concludes that in ten years, as leases expired, it would exceed £7000. In less than two years he was dead. Hunter retired early in 1811, but to the last his interest in "the shop" was unabated. Quite voluntarily, to please Constable, he called on Scott and presented him with an old print of Glamis Castle, which he knew Scott wanted. And business with, "to serve the shop." At Loretto he entertained their supporters, and everything went famously." Jeffrey was to be out very soon again. "I have not given up the society of our literary friends, or rather they have not given up me. . . . In short, my present life is so happy a one, that I am only alarmed seriously that it cannot last at this rate else it would be too good for this world." In writing this last sentence Hunter, it would seem, for the moment, had forgotten Forfarshire. Only a fortnight earlier he had written from Eskmount, "This is a confused and hurried letter, but we have had very wet weather here-upwards of three bottles overhead to six, besides the supper drink." And the year previous, with his accustomed good-humour, he had chronicled his first attack of gout. "Here end the comforts and commence the troubles of A. G. H." A visit to Pitcaithly Wells three months before presupposes disquieting symptoms. But his spirits were unaffected. Constable had proposed to meet him there. "What d-d fools those people are who weary living alone. I am as happy by myself as I shall be with any others I am likely to get here, excepting always your own sweet self, my good sir, whom I expect to dinner on Thursday or Friday. You ought to bring Bill Laing with you; and if you will do a good and charitable action, bring Bob Miller; it will make a nice short trip for him, and assure him I shall procure some ladies for him to sing to. Do not on any account bring the DrinkerGeneral, he would ruin the Well." Alarge-hearted man, thoughtful for and considerate of others. He had written to Constable early in their connection, Since my last long one to you I have received no more of yours-that is, I have got one only since I left you; and only one from you and one from my wife in so long a time. This makes me weary most amazingly. I could scarcely live without both of you, I now am almost satisfied. There's puff, and yet it is truth." Of his wife he writes after his father's death, "the longer I live I think the more of her. In one respect I shall follow the instructions of the Bible without difficulty-' to leave father and mother, and brothers and sisters, and cleave to my wife.'' And at the end of the partnership, he takes leave of Constable in these words: "If I were only quite well in body again, I think I shall be as happy and comfortable as most people I know of; if I be not, I must be a most ungrateful wretch indeed, and the fault wholly my own." He seems never to have harboured a mean thought. There is not a line in his letters that one could wish blotted. Only once had he a disagreement with Constable they differed in opinion about the business capa city of his younger brother, who was a junior partner in their London house-and this was the result: "Our late fracas (which I trust no one save ourselves will ever know a word of) has endeared you, my dear sir, much more to me than ever. So much good arises from a connexion with a man of sense, honour, and probity." His appreciation of goodness in others was unstinted. "It puts me sadly out of conceit with my own stupid self, to think of such men as Gibson and Cathcart Robert Cathcart of Drum, Writer to the Signet, his successor at "the shop." "But then where are two other such men to be found? Many people come through this world, and live long in it too, without either ever seeing or knowing such men. Let us thank God, my good friend, that we have known both so intimately, as I trust we shall continue to do to the end of the chapter-this shall at least be my anxious study and endeavour." All that, and more, might be said of himself. |