Chapter 7
I have already spoken; her oddities were endless. We had and still have a dear friend,--"Cousin Susan" she is called by many who are not her cousins--a perfect lady, and, though hopelessly deaf, as gentle and contented as was ever Griselda with the full use of her ears; quite as great a pet, in a word, of us all as Duchie was of ours. One day we found her mourning the death of a cat, a great playfellow of the Sputchard's, and her small Grace was with us when we were condoling with her, and we saw that she looked very wistfully at Duchie. I wrote on the slate, "Would you like her?" and she through her tears said, "You know that would never do." But it did do. We left Duchie that very night, and though she paid us frequent visits, she was Cousin Susan's for life. I fear indulgence dulled her moral sense. She was an immense happiness to her mistress, whose silent and lonely days she made glad with her oddity and mirth. And yet the small creature, old, toothless, and blind, domineered over her gentle friend--threatening her sometimes if she presumed to remove the small Fury from the inside of her own bed, into which it pleased her to creep. Indeed, I believe it is too true, though it was inferred only, that her mistress and friend spent a great part of a winter night in trying to coax her dear little ruffian out of the centre of the bed. One day the cook asked what she would have for dinner: "I would like a mutton chop, but then, you know, Duchie likes minced veal better!" The faithful and happy little creature died at a great age, of natural decay.
* * * * *
But time would fail me, and I fear patience would fail you, my reader, were I to tell you of CRAB, of JOHN PYM, of PUCK, and of the rest. CRAB, the Mugger's dog, grave, with deep-set, melancholy eyes, as of a nobleman (say the Master of Ravenswood) in disguise, large visaged, shaggy, indomitable, come of the pure Piper Allan's breed. This Piper Allan, you must know, lived some two hundred years ago in Cocquet Water, piping like Homer, from place to place, and famous not less for his dog than for his music, his news and his songs. The Earl of Northumberland, of his day, offered the piper a small farm for his dog, but after deliberating for a day Allan said, "Na, na, ma Lord, keep yir ferum; what wud a piper do wi' a ferum?" From this dog descended Davidson of Hyndlee's breed, the original Dandie-Dinmont, and Crab could count his kin up to him. He had a great look of the Right Honorable Edward Ellice, and had much of his energy and _wecht_; had there been a dog House of Commons, Crab would have spoken as seldom, and been as great a power in the house, as the formidable and faithful time-out-of-mind member for Coventry.
JOHN PYM was a smaller dog than Crab, of more fashionable blood, being a son of Mr. Somner's famous SHEM, whose father and brother are said to have been found dead in a drain into which the hounds had run a fox. It had three entrances: the father was put in at one hole, the son at another, and speedily the fox bolted out at the third, but no appearance of the little terriers, and on digging, they were found dead, locked in each other's jaws; they had met, and it being dark, and there being no time for explanations, they had throttled each other. John was made of the same sort of stuff, and was as combative and victorious as his great namesake, and not unlike him in some of his not so creditable qualities. He must, I think, have been related to a certain dog to whom "life was full o' sairiousness," but in John's case the same cause produced an opposite effect. John was gay and light-hearted, even when there was not "enuff of fechtin," which, however, seldom happened, there being a market every week in Melrose, and John appearing most punctually at the cross to challenge all comers, and being short legged, he inveigled every dog into an engagement by first attacking him, and then falling down on his back, in which posture he latterly fought and won all his battles.
What can I say of PUCK[6]--the thoroughbred--the simple-hearted--the purloiner of eggs warm from the hen--the flutterer of all manner of Volscians--the bandy-legged, dear, old, dilapidated buffer? I got him from my brother, and only parted with him because William's stock was gone. He had to the end of life a simplicity which was quite touching. One summer day--a dog-day--when all dogs found straying were hauled away to the police-office, and killed off in twenties with strychnine, I met Puck trotting along Princes Street with a policeman, a rope round his neck, he looking up in the fatal, official, but kindly countenance in the most artless and cheerful manner, wagging his tail and trotting along. In ten minutes he would have been in the next world; for I am one of those who believe dogs _have_ a next world, and why not? Puck ended his days as the best dog in Roxburghshire. _Placide quiescas!_
[6] In _The Dog_, by Stonehenge, an excellent book, there is a woodcut of Puck, and "Dr. Wm. Brown's celebrated dog John Pym" is mentioned. Their pedigrees are given--here is Puck's, which shows his "strain" is of the pure azure blood--"Got by John Pym, out of Tib; bred by Purves of Leaderfoot; sire, Old Dandie, the famous dog of old John Stoddart of Selkirk--dam, Whin." How Homeric all this sounds! I cannot help quoting what follows--"Sometimes a Dandie pup of a good strain may appear not to be game at an early age; but he should not be parted with on this account, because many of them do not show their courage till nearly two years old, and then nothing can beat them; this apparent softness arising, as I suspect, _from kindness of heart_"--a suspicion, my dear "Stonehenge," which is true, and shows your own "kindness of heart," as well as sense.
DICK
Still lives, and long may he live! As he was never born, possibly he may never die; be it so, he will miss us when we are gone. I could say much of him, but agree with the lively and admirable Dr. Jortin, when, in his dedication of his _Remarks on Ecclesiastical History_ to the then (1752) Archbishop of Canterbury, he excuses himself for not following the modern custom of praising his Patron, by reminding his Grace "that it was a custom amongst the ancients, _not to sacrifice to heroes till after sunset_." I defer my sacrifice till Dick's sun is set.
I think every family should have a dog; it is like having a perpetual baby; it is the plaything and crony of the whole house. It keeps them all young. All unite upon Dick. And then he tells no tales, betrays no secrets, never sulks, asks no troublesome questions, never gets into debt, never coming down late for breakfast, or coming in through his Chubb _too early_ to bed--is always ready for a bit of fun, lies in wait for it, and you may, if choleric, to your relief, kick him instead of some one else, who would not take it so meekly, and, moreover, would certainly not, as he does, ask your pardon for being kicked.
Never put a collar on your dog--it only gets him stolen; give him only one meal a day, and let that, as Dame Dorothy, Sir Thomas Browne's wife, would say, be "rayther under." Wash him once a week, and always wash the soap out; and let him be carefully combed and brushed twice a week.
By the bye, I was wrong in saying that it was Burns who said Man is the God of the Dog--he got it from Bacon's _Essay on Atheism_.
_QUEEN MARY'S CHILD-GARDEN._
If any one wants a pleasure that is sure to please, one over which he needn't growl the sardonic beatitude of the great Dean, let him, when the Mercury is at "Fair," take the nine A.M. train to the North and a return-ticket for Callander, and when he arrives at Stirling, let him ask the most obliging and knowing of station-masters to telegraph to "the Dreadnought" for a carriage to be in waiting. When passing Dunblane Cathedral, let him resolve to write to the _Scotsman_, advising the removal of a couple of shabby trees which obstruct the view of that beautiful triple end window which Mr. Ruskin and everybody else admires, and by the time he has written this letter in his mind, and turned the sentences to it, he will find himself at Callander and the carriage all ready. Giving the order for the _Port of Monteith_, he will rattle through this hard-featured, and to our eye comfortless village, lying ugly amid so much grandeur and beauty, and let him stop on the crown of the bridge, and fill his eyes with the perfection of the view up the Pass of Leny--the Teith lying diffuse and asleep, as if its heart were in the Highlands and it were loath to go, the noble Ben Ledi imaged in its broad stream. Then let him make his way across a bit of pleasant moorland--flushed with maidenhair and white with cotton grass, and fragrant with the _Orchis conopsia_, well deserving its epithet _odoratissima_.
He will see from the turn of the hill-side the Blair of Drummond waving with corn and shadowed with rich woods, where eighty years ago there was a black peat-moss; and far off, on the horizon, Damyat and the Touch Fells; and at his side the little loch of Ruskie, in which he may see five Highland cattle, three tawny brown and two brindled, standing in the still water--themselves as still, all except their switching tails and winking ears--the perfect images of quiet enjoyment. By this time he will have come in sight of the Lake of Monteith, set in its woods, with its magical shadows and soft gleams. There is a loveliness, a gentleness and peace about it more like "lone St. Mary's Lake," or Derwent Water, than of any of its sister lochs. It is lovely rather than beautiful, and is a sort of gentle prelude, in the _minor_ key, to the coming glories and intenser charms of Loch Ard and the true Highlands beyond.
You are now at the Port, and have passed the secluded and cheerful manse, and the parish kirk with its graves, close to the lake, and the proud aisle of the Grahams of Gartmore washed by its waves. Across the road is the modest little inn, a Fisher's Tryst. On the unruffled water lie several islets, plump with rich foliage, brooding like great birds of calm. You somehow think of them as on, not in the lake, or like clouds lying in a nether sky--"like ships waiting for the wind." You get a coble, and a _yauld_ old Celt, its master, and are rowed across to _Inchmahome, the Isle of Rest_. Here you find on landing huge Spanish chestnuts, one lying dead, others standing stark and peeled, like gigantic antlers, and others flourishing in their _viridis senectus_, and in a thicket of wood you see the remains of a monastery of great beauty, the design and workmanship exquisite. You wander through the ruins, overgrown with ferns and Spanish filberts, and old fruit-trees, and at the corner of the old monkish garden you come upon one of the strangest and most touching sights you ever saw--an oval space of about 18 feet by 12, with the remains of a double row of boxwood all round, the plants of box being about fourteen feet high, and eight or nine inches in diameter, healthy, but plainly of great age.
What is this? it is called in the guide-books Queen Mary's Bower; but besides its being plainly not in the least a bower, what could the little Queen, then five years old, and "fancy free," do with a bower? It is plainly, as was, we believe, first suggested by our keen-sighted and diagnostic Professor of Clinical Surgery,[7] _the Child-Queen's Garden_, with her little walk, and its rows of boxwood, left to themselves for three hundred years. Yes, without doubt, "here is that first garden of her simpleness." Fancy the little, lovely royal child, with her four Marys, her playfellows, her child maids of honor, with their little hands and feet, and their innocent and happy eyes, pattering about that garden all that time ago, laughing, and running, and gardening as only children do and can. As is well known, Mary was placed by her mother in this Isle of Rest before sailing from the Clyde for France. There is something "that tirls the heartstrings a' to the life" in standing and looking on this unmistakable living relic of that strange and pathetic old time. Were we Mr. Tennyson, we would write an Idyll of that child Queen, in that garden of hers, eating her bread and honey--getting her teaching from the holy men, the monks of old, and running off in wild mirth to her garden and her flowers, all unconscious of the black, lowering thunder-cloud on Ben Lomond's shoulder.
[7] The same seeing eye and understanding mind, when they were eighteen years of age, discovered and published the Solvent of Caoutchouc, for which a patent was taken out afterwards by the famous Mackintosh. If the young discoverer had secured the patent, he might have made a fortune as large as his present reputation--I don't suppose he much regrets that he didn't.
"Oh, blessed vision! happy child! Thou art so exquisitely wild; I think of thee with many fears Of what may be thy lot in future years. I thought of times when Pain might be thy guest, Lord of thy house and hospitality. And Grief, uneasy lover! never rest But when she sat within the touch of thee. What hast thou to do with sorrow, Or the injuries of to-morrow?"
You have ample time to linger there amid
"The gleams, the shadows, and the peace profound,"
and get your mind informed with quietness and beauty, and fed with thoughts of other years, and of her whose story, like Helen of Troy's, will continue to move the hearts of men as long as the gray hills stand round about that gentle lake, and are mirrored at evening in its depths. You may do and enjoy all this, and be in Princes Street by nine P.M.; and we wish we were as sure of many things as of your saying, "Yes, this _is_ a pleasure that has pleased, and will please again; this was something expected which did not disappoint."
* * * * *
There is another garden of Queen Mary's, which may still be seen, and which has been left to itself like that in the Isle of Rest. It is in the grounds at Chatsworth, and is moated, walled round, and raised about fifteen feet above the park. Here the Queen, when a prisoner under the charge of "Old Bess of Hardwake," was allowed to walk without any guard. How different the two! and how different she who took her pleasure in them!
Lines written on the steps of a small moated garden at Chatsworth, called
"QUEEN MARY'S BOWER.
"The moated bower is wild and drear, And sad the dark yew's shade; The flowers which bloom in silence here, In silence also fade.
"The woodbine and the light wild rose Float o'er the broken wall; And here the mournful nightshade blows, To note the garden's fall.
"Where once a princess wept her woes, The bird of night complains; And sighing trees the tale disclose They learnt from Mary's strains.
"A. H."
_PRESENCE OF MIND, AND HAPPY GUESSING._
"_Depend upon it a lucky guess is never merely luck--there is always some talent in it._"--MISS AUSTEN, _in Emma._
Dr. Chalmers used to say that in the dynamics of human affairs, two qualities were essential to greatness--Power and Promptitude. One man might have both, another power without promptitude, another promptitude without power. We must all feel the common sense of this, and can readily see how it applies to a general in the field, to a pilot in a storm, to a sportsman, to a fencer, to a debater. It is the same with an operating surgeon at all times, and may be at any time with the practitioner of the art of healing. He must be ready for what are called emergencies--cases which rise up at your feet, and must be dealt with on the instant,--he must have power and promptitude.
It is a curious condition of mind that this requires: it is like sleeping with your pistol under your pillow, and it on full cock; a moment lost and all may be lost. There is the very nick of time. This is what we mean by presence of mind; by a man having such a subject at his finger ends; that part of the mind lying nearest the outer world, and having to act on it through the bodily organs, through the will--the outposts must be always awake. It is of course, so to speak, only a portion of the mind that is thus needed and thus available; if the whole mind were forever at the advanced posts, it would soon lose itself in this endeavor to keep it. Now, though the thing needed to be done may be simple enough, what goes to the doing of it, and to the being at once ready and able to do it, involves much: the wedge would not be a wedge, or do a wedge's work, without the width behind as well as the edge in front. Your men of promptitude without genius or power, including knowledge and will, are those who present the wedge the wrong way. Thus your extremely prompt people are often doing the wrong thing, which is almost always worse than nothing. Our vague friend who bit "Yarrow's" tail instead of "the Chicken's," was full of promptitude; as was also that other man, probably a relative, who barred the door with a boiled carrot; each knew what was needed--the biting the tail, the barring the door; both erred as to the means--the one by want of presence of mind, the other by lack of mind itself. We must have just enough of the right knowledge and no more; we must have the habit of using this; we must have self-reliance, and the consentaneousness of the entire mind; and what our hand finds to do, we must do with our might as well as with it. Therefore it is that this master act of the man, under some sudden and great unexpected crisis, is in a great measure performed unconsciously as to its mental means. The man is so _totus in illo_, that there is no bit of the mind left to watch and record the acts of the rest; therefore men, when they have done some signal feat of presence of mind, if asked how they did it, generally don't very well know--they just did it; it was, in fact, done and then thought of, not thought of and then done, in which case it would likely never have been done. Not that the act was uncaused by mind; it is one of the highest powers of mind thus to act; but it is done, if I may use the phrase, by an acquired instinct. You will find all this in that wonderful old Greek who was Alexander the Great's and the old world's schoolmaster, and ours if we were wise,--whose truthfulness and clear insight one wonders at the longer he lives. He seems to have seen the human mind as a bird or an engineer does the earth--he knew the plan of it. We now-a-days see it as one sees a country, athwart and in perspective, and from the side; he saw it from above and from below. There are therefore no shadows, no foreshortenings, no clear-obscure, indeed no disturbing medium; it is as if he examined everything _in vacuo_. I refer my readers to what he says on {Anchinoia} and {Eustochia}.[8]
[8] As I am now, to my sorrow and shame, too much of a mediate Grecian, I give a Balliol friend's note on these two words:--"What you have called 'presence of mind' and 'happy guessing' may, I think, be identified respectively with Aristotle's {anchinoia} and {eustochia}. The latter of these, {eustochia}, Aristotle mentions incidentally when treating of {euboulia}, or good deliberation. _Eth. Nic._ bk. vi. ch. 9. Good deliberation, he says, is not {eustochia}, for the former is a slow process, whereas the latter is not guided by reason, and is rapid. In the same passage he tells us that {anchinoia} is a sort of {eustochia}. But he speaks of {anchinoia} more fully in _Ana. Post._ i. 34:--'{Anchinoia} is a sort of happy guessing at the intermediate, when there is not time for consideration: as when a man, seeing that the bright side of the moon is always turned towards the sun, comprehends that her light is borrowed from the sun; or concludes, from seeing one conversing with a capitalist that he wants to borrow money; or infers that people are friends from the fact of their having common enemies.'" And then he goes on to make these simple observations confused and perplexing by reducing them to his logical formula.
"The derivation of the words will confirm this view. {Eustochia} is a hitting the _mark_ successfully, a reaching to the end, the rapid and, as it were, intuitive perception of the truth. This is what Whewell means by saying, 'all induction is a happy conjecture.' But when Aristotle says that this faculty is not guided by reason ({aneu te gar logou}), he does not mean to imply that it grows up altogether independent of reason, any more than Whewell means to say that all the discoveries in the inductive sciences have been made by men taking 'shots' at them, as boys at school do at hard passages in their Latin lessons. On the contrary, no faculty is so absolutely the child of reason as this faculty of happy guessing. It only attains to perfection after the reason has been long and painfully trained in the sphere in which the guesses are to be made. What Aristotle does mean is, that when it has attained perfection, we are not conscious of the share which reason has in its operation--it is so rapid that by no analysis can we detect the presence of reason in its action. Sir Isaac Newton seeing the apple fall, and thence 'guessing' at the law of gravitation, is a good instance of {eustochia}.
"{Anchinoia}, on the other hand, is a _nearness of mind_; not a reaching to the end, but an apprehension of the best means; not a perception of the truth, but a perception of how the truth is to be supported. It is sometimes translated 'sagacity,' but readiness or presence of mind is better, as sagacity rather involves the idea of consideration. In matters purely intellectual it is ready wit. It is a sort of shorter or more limited {eustochia}. It is more of a natural gift than {eustochia}, because the latter is a far higher and nobler faculty, and therefore more dependent for its perfection on cultivation, as all our highest faculties are. {Eustochia} is more akin to genius, {anchinoia} to practical common sense."
My object in what I have now written and am going to write, is to impress upon medical students the value of power and promptitude in combination, for their professional purposes; the uses to them of nearness of the {Nous}, and of happy guessing; and how you may see the sense, and neatness, and pith of that excellent thinker, as well as best of all story-tellers, Miss Austen, when she says in _Emma_, "Depend upon it, a lucky guess is never merely luck, there is always some talent in it." Talent here denoting intelligence and will in action. In all sciences except those called exact, this happy guessing plays a large part, and in none more than in medicine, which is truly a tentative art, founded upon likelihood, and is therefore what we call contingent. Instead of this view of the healing art discouraging us from making our ultimate principles as precise, as we should make our observations, it should urge us the more to this; for, depend upon it, that guess as we may often have to do, he will guess best, most happily for himself and his patient, who has the greatest amount of true knowledge, and the most serviceable amount of what we may call mental cash, ready money, and ready weapons.