IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) i,\^ <- 1.0 1.1 11.25 U& Ui2 12.2 1 1.4 6" V 7 r ^^'^"^V > ?>:) ^ PhotDgraphic Sciences Corporation ^N^ \ ■ for t^nv^tc Clrculattcn ■i.- ■ /•' -A; ■ ■ ;■ ■•:.'•■*■ '■ ';•">;■■ ■. '..V't''.; ■•■If ■■•■,: ^-' I IVilliani Nelson A MEMOIR BY SIR DANIEL WILSON, LL.D., F.R.S.E., President of the University of Toronto. prfnte^ for private Circulation. T. Nelson and Sons, Edinburgh, iSSq. TO mts. VOiHiam Hclson THIS MEMOIR OF HER HUSBAND IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED BY HIS OLD FRIEND AND SCHOOLMATE FOREWORD. ' THE volume here produced for the eye of friends is the memorial of one whose life presented a rare example of simplicity, of thoroughness in work- ing up to a high standard in all that he undertook, and fidelity in his responsible stewardship as a man of wealth and a captain of industry. The friendship between us extended in uninterrupted union, with the maturing estimation of years and experience, from early boyhood till both had passed the assigned limits of threescore years and ten. It would have been easy to swell the volume into the bulky proportions of modern biography : for William Nelson keenly enjoyed the communion of friendship ; and his correspondence furnishes many passages calculated to interest others besides those who knew and loved him as a friend. But the aim has been simply to present him "in his habit as he lived ;" and thus to preserve for relatives, Foreword. personal friends, and for his fellow -workers of all ranks, such a picture as may pleasantly recall some reflex of a noble life ; and record characteristic traits of one of whom it can be so truly said : " To live in hearts of those we love is not to die." D. W. Univeusity op Touonto, September 26, 1889. t .1 CONTENTS. ; I. INTRODUCTORY, II. HAUNTS OF BOYHOOD, III. SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMATES, IV. THE CASTLE HILL, ... V. HOPE PARK, VI. EGYPT AND PALESTINE, VII. CHURCH — MARRIAGE, VIII. SALISBURY GREEN, ... IX. GLIMPSES OP TRAVEL, X. HOLIDAYS ABROAD, ... XI. PARKSIDE, ... XII. CIVIC INTERESTS, XIII. HOME HOLIDAYS, XIV. PROJECTED TRAVEL — THE END, 13 26 41 61 77 87 108 121 1.37 156 173 194 213 228 4 f William Nelson, CHAPTER I. INTRO D UCTOR K IN the early years of the present century the Scot- tish capital retained many features of its ancient aspect still unchanged; but among all the old-world haunts surviving into modern times, the most notable, alike for its picturesque quaintness and its varied asso- ciations, was the avenue from the Grassmarket to the upper town. The West Bow, as this thoroughfare was called, derived its name from the ancient bow, or archway, which gave entrance to the little walled city before the civic area was extended by the Flodden wall of 1513. But the archway remained long after that date as the entrance to the upper town — the Temple Bar of Edinburgh — at which the ceremonial welcome of royal and distinguished visitors took place. The West Bow had accordingly been the scene of 14 William Nelson. many a royal cavalcade of the Jameses and their queens ; as well as of such representative men as Ben Jonson and his brother-poet Drummond of Hawthorn- den, of Laud, Montrose, Leslie, Cromwell, and Dundee. Among its quaint antique piles were the gabled Temple Lands, S^. Jctmes's Altar Land, and the timber-fronted lodging of Lord Ruthven, the ruthless leader in the trao-edy when Lord Darnley's minions assassinated Rizzio in Queen Mary's chamber at Holyrood. There, too, remained till very recent years the haunted house of the prince of Scottish wizards, Major Weir; and near by the Clockmaker's Land, noted to the last for the ingenious piece of workmanship of Paul Remieu, a Huguenot refugee of the time of Charles II. Nearly opposite was the dwelling of Provost Stewart, where, in the famous '45, he entertained Prince Charles Edward, while Holyrood was for the last time the palace of the Stuarts. The alley which gave access to the old Jacobite provost's dwelling bore in its last days the name of Donaldson's Close ; for here was the home of one of Edinburgh's most prosperous typographers, James Donaldson, who bequeathed the fortune won by his craft to found the magnificent hospital which now rivals that of the royal goldsmith of James I. Such were some of the antique surroundings amid which the subject of the present memoir passed his youth, and which no doubt had their influence in t Introdttctory. 16 I •t developing an archaeological taste, and that reverence for every historical feature of his native city, which bore good fruit in later years. But his more intimate associations were with the singularly picturesque timber-fronted dwelling at the head of the West Bow, with another fine elevation toward the Lawnmarket, which, till 1878, stood unchanged as when the Flodden king rode past on his way to the Borough Moor. A painting of the old house adorned the walls at Salis- bury Green in later years ; and when at last the vener- able structure was demolished, some of its oaken tim- bers were secured by William Nelson and fashioned into antique furniture for himself and his friends. This picturesque building was the haunt of an old Edinburgh bookseller, the founder of the well-known printing and publishing house of Thomas Nelson and Sons, Mr. Thomas Nelson, the father of the subject of the present memoir, and the originator of the great publish- ing firm, recurs to the present writer in the memories of his own early years as a fine example of the old Scottish type of silent, indomitable perseverance and sterling integrity. The traditions of the race are thus set forth in a memorandum in William Nelson's hand- writing : — " The Nelsons of our branch resided at Throsk, a few miles east from Stirling, not far from the field of Bannockburn. There was a tradition r- IG William Nelson. \ -. among us that some of our race lived there at the time the battle was fought, and as a boy I was willing to believe it." There, at any rate, the Nelsons are known to have been for four or five generations ; and Thomas Nelson was born at Throsk in 1780. His grandmother had seceded with the Erskines from the National Church ; and the spirit of that elder race of Scottish nonconformists was inherited by their chil- dren. They joined a congregation of Reformed Pres- byterians, or Covenanters, at Stirling; and the boy grew up on his father's farm under all the influences of that earnest, unwavering religious faith, which has so often seemed the fitting complement to the rugged- ness of the Scottish character, while it has, in not a few instances, furnished the best preparation for a suc- cessful career in business. His father led a retired life on his carse farm, with Stirling sufficiently near to admit of his enjoying the privilege of regular wor- ship with the devout little band of Presbyterian non- conformists there. So little was he affected by the enterprise of younger generations that he could not be persuaded to turn to profitable account a small pottery on the land he occupied. He was content with the humble career of a small farmer. But the monotony of farm-life was varied by long journeys, staff" in hand, in which the boy accompanied his father, to attend the great gatherings at the sacramental seasons. 4 Introdtictory. 17 In the persecuting times the devout adherents of the Covenant had been wont to assemble in some secluded glen to enjoy in safety the privileges of the communion service, and their descendants continued the practice in more peaceful times. Under such training the boy reached his sixteenth year, when, after a brief experi- ence as a teacher, some chance report of prosperous adventure in the West Indies tempted the youth with its illusive visions. Bidding his friends and home fare- well, his father accompanied him for some miles on the road to Alloa, giving his best counsel and advice to the lad by the way. When they reached the place of parting, his father said to him, " Thomas, my boy, have you ever thought that where you are going you will be far away from the means of gi'ace ? " " No, father," said he, " I never thought of that, and I won't go." Thus abruptly the scheme was abandoned. They re- traced their steps to the old farm, and the boy found employment for a time at Craigend, near Stirling. There he formed the acquaintance of Symington, whose steam-engine was first applied to navigation, and sailed with him in some of the earliest trial -trips on the Carron Water. The pottery which his father had neglected was started on a neighbouring farm, and young Nelson was anxious to get the management of it. But the scheme appears to have been distasteful to his father, whose secret desire probably was that 2 18 William Nelson. V. T « ! his boy should follow his own example, and so escape the world's trials and temptations. But the son's am- bition aimed at something- more advantageous than the homely career of a lowland farmer ; and so, by-and- by, he betook himself to London, entered the service of a publishing house there, and began the training which ultimately begot the great publishing firm that bears his name. The young Scottish Covenanter did not forget his early training, amid the temptations of the great metropolis. Along with a few other Scotchmen of his own age, he established a weekly meeting for religious fellowship ; and it is told of one of the little band, who was employed at the dock -yard, that he forfeited his situation rather than work on the Sabbath day. But he had already won the favourable opinion of Lord Melville, who, on learning of his dismissal, severely re- buked the officials, and soon after advanced him to a higher post. From London, Thomas Nelson made his way to Edinburgh with what little capital his frugality had enabled him to accumulate, and there he started his first book-store, stocked chiefly with second-hand books, but from which ere long he began the issue of cheap reprints of the " Scots Worthies " and other popular religious works, in monthly parts. He had to proceed cautiously in this new venture, for his capital was small; but he had the courage to shape out a Introductory, 10 course of his own. With sagacious foresight he over- leapt the intermediate stages of publishing and book- selling, and grafted on to the traffic of the mediajval fairs some of the most modern usages of free trade. The full results of this bold step are even now only partially developed, though its ultimate advantages are beginning to be generally recognized, and to force themselves on the attention of the great publishing houses, accustomed hitherto to cater only with small editions of costly volumes for the libraries of the wealthy, supplemented in recent years by the expedient of lending libraries. The removal of Mr. Thomas Nelson's book-store to the picturesque tenement at the Bowhead marks the tirst progressive step of the young innovator. The venerable timber - fronted land projected with each successive story in advance of the lower one, after the fashion of that obsolete civic architecture in vogue before Newton had revealed his law of gravitation. The first story above the paving rested on substantial oak piers, forming a piazza opening on to the Bow, within which stood the exposed book - stall of the primitive trader. Behind this was the stone-vaulted buith, or shop, as in the old luckenbuiths alongside of St. Giles's Cathedral. The north fa9ade fronted on the Lawnmarket, a wide thoroughfare, where at certain seasons the dealers in linens and woollens set up their i ! 20 Williaju Nelson. It ; il stalls, much after the fashion which the poet Dunbar describes them hampering the High Street before the Flodden wall was built. Already at that early date the printing-press of Walter Chepman, the Scottish Caxton, was at work; and before long the craft had its representatives among the traders' buiths. In a later century Allan Ramsay began his prosperous career as a seller of his own metrical " broadsides ; " and Dr. Johnson's father, the respected bookseller and magistrate of the cathedral city of Lichfield, was wont to set up his book-stall on market days in the neigh- bouring towns. Here then, at the Bowhead, with its north front to the Lawnmarket, stood within our own recollection the well-stored book-stall, the nucleus and germ of the great Parkside printing establisliment, with its hun- dreds of workmen in every branch of the trade. The busy scene of a market day in the old locality, as it could still be seen sixty-five years ago, is graphically depicted in Turner's view of the High Street, engraved in 1825 for Sir Walter Scott's " Provincial Antiquities." The book-trade, as prosecuted by Mr. Thomas Nelson, depended in no inconsiderable degree on the application of the stereotyping process to the production of cheap editions of popular works of established repute. He wac a pioneer in the production of literature for the million; but he catered for the taste of an age very A* 4 Introductory. 21 different from our own, in his effort to put standard works, already stamped with the approval of the wise and good, within reach of the peasant and the artisan. " The Pilgrim's Progress " was already an English classic ; and with this were issued such works as Baxter's "Saints' Rest," Booth's "Reign of Grace," " MacEwan on the Types," and other works of a like class. To those were by-and-by added Jeremy Taylor, Leighton, Romaine, and Newton, the old Scottish and Puritan divines, and Josephus, all produced by means of stereotype plates, which admitted of a limited issue adapted to the demand of the market. With the development of the business in later years, the issues of the publishing house embraced an ampler and much more varied range. But William carefully treasured his father's private library. The spirit of the biblio- maniac developed itself in this special line, and the collection of old theological works included many choice specimens and rare editions of his father's favourite divines. They were latterly treasured in a cabinet at Hope Park, along with other relics on which William Nelson set a high value ; and their loss on the destruction of the Hope Park Works in 1878 by fire was one of his greatest causes of regret. From his own choice collection of theological works, Mr. Thomas Nelson made his first selections ; but after a time he realized the necessity of catering for the tastes of other 22 William Nelson. classes of readers ; and so by-and-by there were added to them " Robinson Crusoe," " Rasselas," " The Vicar of Wakefield," Goldsmith's " Essays," his " Deserted Vil- lage," and other poems, along with popular favourites of a like class. Thus prosecuted, the business gradu- ally expanded until the Bowhead establishment was no longer sufficient for the accommodation required. But free trade in books was in conflict with the ideas inherited from the privileged guilds of elder centuries. Competition had hitherto been restricted within narrow limits; and the daring innovator was regarded by the regular trade with all the disfavour of a revolutionist, against whom every effort was to be employed to thwart the sale of his publications. He had accordingly to find other channels of trade. Peri- odical visits were made to the smaller towns, over the country, north and south, and beyond the Scottish bor- der. Thus a safe and extended business was gradually established, destined ultimately to revolutionize the book-trade. By its means was inaugurated a system of supply of popular literature, at prices within reach of the masses, long before other publishers of this class entered into competition on the same field. The influences of early training are traceable through- out the whole of Mr. Thomap Xelson's career, and have left their impress on the business which owed its origin to his patient assiduity. He remained to the last f Introductory. 23 faithful to the Covenanting Presbyterian Church, which maintained a stern adherence to the principles for which the martyrs of the Covenant had witnessed a ffood confession alike on the battlefield and the scaffold. His career in business had been an arduous struggle under many disabilities. As I remember him in my own boyhood, he was a grave, silent, yet not un- genial man; but one who seemed preoccupied with thoughts and cares in which a younger generation could claim no share. He had married, somewhat late in life, a bright young wife, by whom he had a family of four sons and three daughters ; of whom the eldest son, the subject of this memoir, was born on the 13th of December, 181G. On Mrs. Nelson the care and training of the young family devolved, as the successful prosecution of the business necessarily required the frequent and pro- longed absence of their father. Yet his intcrf^st in them was not less fervent. An incident illustrative of this has also its bearings in relation to a characteristic feature of the devout faith of the old Covenanting fathers. He dreamt that a terrible accident had be- fallen his younger son John, then a youth of ten years of age, who was absent at Pettycur in Fife. He set off on the following morning, and crossed the Forth, burdened with foreboding visions of death. On his arrival, he learned that his boy had fallen into the 24 William Nelson. sea, and been brought back apparently lifeless ; but he had been revived, and then lay asleep after the ex- haustion of this vital struggle. It fully accorded with the devout piety of the old Covenanter to recognize in his dream a divine message and proof of providential interposition. Of Mrs. Nelson, Dr. John Cairns, who knew her intimately, refers, in his "In Memoriam" address on the death of this younger son, to her look of bright intelli- gence and winning affectic n, as indelibly impressed on the memory of all who were familiar with her. She possessed the happy mixture of tender, motherly guid- ance with an unusual amount of firmness and decision of character; and exercised great influence in the train- ing of her son, who was passionately devoted to her. She was in perfect sympathy with her husband in his religious opinions, and venerated the memories of the confessors and martyrs of the Covenant ; so that their sons and daughters were reared in strict conformity to the devout faith of Cameron, Peden, Cargill, and other fathers and confessors of that old Scottish type. Few men were more liberal-minded in later years than William Nelson; but the influence of early training survived through life, begetting some familiar traits of the best type of Scottish character evolved from that elder generation which so impressed the mind of the poet "Wordsworth : — \ Introductory. 25 " Pure livers were tliey all, austere and grave, And fearing God ; the very children taught Stem self-respect, a reverence for God's Word, And a haVntual piety, maintained With strictness scarcely known on English ground." Some characteristic manifestations of the results of such early training will come under review in the narrative of later years. CHAPTER II. HAUNTS OF BOYHOOD. THE curious ancient thoroughfare, the scene of early bookselling and publishing operations, has been described in the previous chapter: for many youthful recollections of William Nelson are associated with the West Bow. In those years Edinburgh was still the romantic town described by Scott in his " Marmion," piled steep and massy, close and high, along the ridge between the Cowgate and the Nor' Loch. Since then nearly all the antique historical mansions of the Castle Hill and the adjoining Bowhead have disappeared. An extensive range was swept away about 1835 in clearing the area for Johnston Terrace and the Assembly Hall of the Scotuish Church. The famous old palace of Mary of Guise has given place to the rival Assembly Hall and the New College of the Free Church ; and a broad highway now sweeps round the Castle rock where in early years antique lands, closes, and wynds, once the abodes of the Hatmts of Boyhood. 27 Scottish gentry, were crowded together on the slope reaching to the Grassmarket. The fine timber-fronted tenement at the corner of the Bowhead, constructed mainly of oak, was a choice example of the burghers' dwellings in Old Edinburgh, with their trading booths opening on the street. Similar front lands in the High Street were the abodes of the merchants and traders. The " Gladstone Land " still stands near by in the Lawnmarket, bearing the initials of Thomas Gladstone, a merchant of Edinburgh in the days of Charles I. and Cromwell, to whose gifted de- scendant the restoration of the City Cross is due. The old nobles and landed gentry, judges and advocates, preferred the retirement of the closes and wynds, some of which still retain the names of patrician occupants. In one of those antique dwellings, in Trotter's Close, near the Bowhead, w^ith its wainscotted chambers, painted panels, and other traces of older generations, the Nelson family resided in William's youth. The narrow approach to it admitted of no other carriage than the old-fashioned sedan chair ; but the house itself was commodious, though with curious com- plexities of internal adaptation to its confined neigh- bourhood. One large chamber was shelved round, and stored with the surplus productions of publishing enterprise for which the Bowhead establishment had no room; and its miscellaneous contents furnished a l! I i^ : 1: 28 William Nelson. tempting resort for explorations into some strange fields of literature not ordinarily lying within the range of youthful studies. When at length the West Bow was invaded by civic reformers, the Nelsons removed to a more commodious house, the dwelling in an elder century of Lady Elizabeth, Duchess of Gordon, while the duke held the Castle for James II. The Gordon House on the Castle Hill was a fine example of the town mansions of the sixteenth century ; and, owing to its elevated site, commanded a beautiful view from its southern windows, looking across the Grassmarket to Heriot's Hospital, the Greyfriars' Churchyard, and the distant range of the Pentland Hills. On its demoli- tion, in 1887, William Nelson secured sundry inter- esting relics, including a landscape by James Norie, which filled a panel over the mantlepiece in the duchess's drawing-room. He also carried off the stone gargoils, fashioned in the shape of cannons, which pro- jected from under the south parapet; and they now adorn the river wall of the garden at St. Bernard's Well, the restoration of which, as will be seen here- after, constituted one of the public-spirited works on which he was engaged when his life drew to a close. The stirring scene that the Grassmarket presented on certain days, as a regular horse-fair, may be seen in a fine engraving after Calcott in "The Provincial Antiquities of Scotland;" and is still more graphi- Hatmts of Boyhood. 29 cally depicted in one of Geikie's humorous etchings. Here accordingly was a favourite resort of the boys from the neighbouring Bow. The Castle E,splanade at certain hours afforded a freer playground. At other times it offered the tempting attractions of military parade and drill. But Edinburgh has also within its civic bounds the royal park of Arthur's Seat, the Salisbury Crags, and Duddingston Loch, looking as though a choice framnent of the Highlands had been transported thither to form an adequate pleasure- ground for the Scottish capital. Hither flocked the city boys alike from the closes and wynds of the old town and from the new town crescents and squares. There was room for all, and a choice of sport for every age. Here is a reminiscence of a very youthful pastime, recalled in 1883, in a letter to Mr. James Campbell, one of William Nelson's old West Bow playmates : — " You will, I have no doubt, recollect a long, smooth stone near Jeanie Deans' House, in the Queen's Park. This stone was associated with my earliest recollections, as it was a great enjoyment for boys and girls to slide down it ; and many a time, when I was a little boy, have I had this enjoyment. Well, the stone was in existence till only a few weeks ago, when some rascally fellows blew it to pieces with dynamite. The act is much to be regretted, as the stone, in addition to its being a source of enjoyment for little folks in the way 80 William Nelson. I have stated, was extremely interesting to geologists as one of the finest illustrations near Edinburgh of the polish produced by glacial action." While the boys were disporting themselv- ^ on the Castle Hill and Arthur's Seat, without a care for the future, their father was grappling with the first diffi- culties inevitable to the innovator on the prescriptive usages of the book-trade. But whatever may have been the obstacles encountered by him, there was no grudging expenditure in the Ci. national advantages provided for his sons. At the school of Mr. William Lennie, and subsequently at that of Mr. George Knight, then second to none in Edinburgh, and afterwards at the High School, William Nelson pursued his earlier studies; and there, too, some of the friendships were formed which he cherished with all the warmth of his sympathetic nature to the close of life. It was in those early days, at Mr, Knight's school, that the friend- ship was formed with his present biographer, along with George Wilson, subsequently Professor of Technology in the University of Edinburgh, with Dr. Philip Mac- lagan, and with William and James Sprunt, two young West Indians, the former of whom will reappear as British Consul in North Carolina. Of the more romantic career of the latter an account is happily preserved in the notes of an address by William Nelson at one of the gatherings of old schoolmates in later years, which Haunts of Boyhood. 31 wcve so congenial to his tastes. After telling of James '' Sprunt's first settlement in the island of St. Vincent among a dissolute set of West Indians, his quitting it for New Orleans, and being lost sight of for years, he thus proceeds : — " He had landed penniless ; but when his old father and mother got their first letter from him, it was an invitation for them to join him there and share his good fortune. He next appears as rector ' of a classical academy at Wilmington, North Carolina, where he became a clergyman and pastor of the Pres- byterian Church ; and when the war broke out between the North and South, he cast in his lot with the latter, marched with the Wilmington brigade into action, and^ as an army chaplain, under General Stonewall Jackson, went through the terrible scenes of strife and carnage in that bloody civil war, utterly regardless of danger, and even ready to face death at the call of duty. His popularity with his Wilmington congregation was not lessened, it may be believed, when he returned to re- sume his pastoral charge at the close of the war." Of ^ other boys of those first school-days may be noted Dr. J. A. Smith, in later years an active member of the Royal Society, and Secretary of the Society of Anti- quaries of Scotland ; Dr. John Knight, the son of our ^ old teacher; the Rev. James Huie of Wooler, North- umberland, and others, who formed themselves into " The Juvenile Society for the Advancement of Know- 32 William Nelson. . !! ■I >W account the Memoir of ledge," of which George Wilson by his sister. The High School, a venerable civic institution dating from the sixteenth century, still occupied the site of the Blackfriars' Monastery, at the east end of the ridge from which the ruined Kirk-of-Field was displaced by the newly-founded university in Queen Mary's time. The modern policeman had not yet superseded the old city watch. The High School Wynd, a singularly picturesque alley of timber-fronted lands, at the foot of which stood the palace of Cardinal Beaton, gave access to the Cowgate, a plebeian haunt, the young roughs of which maintained a hereditary feud against the "puppies" of the High School. A stray High School boy, especially if he was a "guite" or fresh- man, venturing into that Alsatia, incurred all the risks of a wanderer into an enemy's lines ; and from time to time a bicker, or pitched battle with sticks and stones, between the "puppies" of the High School and the "blackguards" of the Cowgate, came off by mutual understanding on a Saturday in the Hunter's Bog or on the Links. The school numbered upwards of seven hundred boys. The Yards, as the playground was called, presented the busy scene characteristic of simi- lar juvenile gatherings. But there was then less of re- straint either by masters or police than under the new regime of school boards and " peelers." Out of school i 1 a 5 I ! Haunts of Boyhood. 88 boys settled their own affairs, and righted their own wrongs, with results that seem to me on the whole to have tended to develop manliness and self-restraint. In the general sports, as well as in organized bickers or raids into the enemy's quarters, after some Cowgato encroachment upon the amenities of the school, all were one; but the acquaintance even with the boya of our own class was partial. They naturally formed into little groups of kindred spirits, the beginnings in some cases of life-long friendships. Dr. Philip Maclagan, referring to those early school-days, says : " I was one of the original members of the Juvenile Society for the Advancement of Know- ledge. The society met on Friday evening; papers were read by the members in rotation, and questions previously started were debated. I remember some of them — ' Whether the whale or the herring afforded the more useful and profitable employment to mankind ? ' ' Whether the camel was more useful to the Arab or the reindeer to the Laplander?' and similar puzzles for youthful ingenuity." As yet political and social questions were unheeded; and the Saturday rambles, for which Edinburgh offers such rare advantages, fur- nished materials for subsequent discussion in diverse geological, botanical, and antiquarian subjects of interest. Those excursions extended to Cramond ; to Royston Castle, picturesquely crowning a rock near the sea- 3 34 William Nelson. shore ; to Newhaven, Leith, or Portobello ; or landward, to Craigmillar Castle, Corstorphine, Colinton, the Esk ; and to the Braid or Blackford Hill : a stolen pleasure, since we were at that time liable to pursuit and ejec- tion as trespassers. The Arthur's Seat as w^ell as the Blackford Hill of those days, if less adapted for the proprieties of a city park, were more to the taste of youthful explorers while still in a state of nature. It was the Blackford of young Walter Scott — " Oil whone uncultured breast, Among the broom, and thorn, and whin, A truant boy, I .sought the nest ; Or Hstened, as I lay at rest. While rose on breezeB thin The murmur of the city crowd." Already, when Scott penned his " Marmion," the agri- culturist and the builder were working havoc on the scene. How much more may survivors of that younger circle now say, — " O'er the landscape, as I look. Nought do I see unchanged remain. Save the rude cliffs and chiming brook. To me they make a heavy moan Of early friendships past and gone." But such feelings found no place in the thoughts of the eager truants. Close at hand were the never-fail- Haunts of Boyhood. 35 ing Calton Hill, or Arthur's Seat and Duddingston, with charm enough for a pleasant ramble, but also utilized, along with more extended excursions, for collecting specimens to furnish material for subsequent discussion in their Juvenile Society, as well as contributions to the museum which was already in course of formation. The sea-shore had then, as in later years, a peculiar charm for William Nelson. To the very close of his life an excursion in company with some favourite com- panion to Newhaven, or to North Berwick, and off in one of the fishermen's boats to fish for haddock or whitings, furnished one of his most prized recreations. But it was at Kinghorn, his mother's birthplace, on the opposite shore of the Firth of Forth, that his choicest holidays were spent. In a letter written in long sub- sequent years to his old schoolmate and friend, the Rev. Dr. Simpson of Derby, when an event, here- after referred to, brought him anew into intimate relations with the place, he thus recalls the mem- ories of his early boyhood: — "My connection with Kinghorn has been very close ; and my love for it, as my mother's birthplace, and the place where I spent many very happy days in my earliest years, and during my school holidays afterwards, is very great. I was exceedingly fond of fishing, both from the rocks on the sea-shore and at Kinghorn Loch ; and happier days were never spent by any youngster than were those '1' i 1 ; 1^ IB . Ill' !l'' t; h' r t ' hi i .1 36 William Nelson. days of mine at Kinghorn. I knew every rock on tlie coast from Pettycur onwards to Seafield Tower on East the Braes, which is not far from the ' lang toon of Kirkcaldy;' and a finer sea-coast for grand rocks there is not anywhere on the northern coast of the Firth of Forth. I was as happy as I could be from morninfif till nisfht. I remember the talks, too, in those early days by the old folks, which were principally about Paul Jones's visit to the Firth, my grandmother having seen his ship from the little hamlet of Glass- mount, about two miles from Kinghorn, where she was born, and where her parents stayed at that time. " Another favourite subject of talk was the ' windy Saturday,' a tremendous day of wind, when only one vessel, it was said, out in the Firth of Forth, was able to face the stormy blasts without coming to grief. A third subject of talk with the old folks was the mis- chief that steam-boats had done to the town, as, before they began to run, there were big boats to carry pas- sengers ; and as they started only at particular times of the tide, and did not go during the night, passengers had generally to stay some time in the town till the boats were ready to start — that is, for Leith, as there was no Newhaven in those days. What a good this did to the town ! ' and, ' What a mistake it was to upset the quiet, easy way of taking things, as they were in those good old days, by the introduction of Haunts of Boyhood. 37 steam-boats ! ' My mother's uncle, John Macallum, was the captain of the first steam-boat, or, at all events, one of the first, that sailed on the Firth of Forth, its name being the &iv William Walkice. It unfor- tunately was wrecked on some rocks near Burnt- island. " I could enlarge upon such themes to a great extent, and upon my companions of those early days; but, alas ! those companions have all passed away, with two exceptions — namely, Henry Darney, a worthy citizen of Kinghorn, and Major Greig, now of Toronto, Canada. My connection with Kinghorn came to a close about 1836, when my grandmother died ; but such a liking have I for the place, that I have paid it a short visit almost every year since that time." His more intimate relations with Kinghorn, as he states, terminated with the death of his grandmother ; but his fondness for it remained through life. In 1885 his eldest sister, Mrs. George Brown, returned from Canada, and I am indebted to her for some interesting early reniiniscences recalled by more than one visit made in his company to their mother's birthplace. " It was there," she writes, " he spent all his holidays as a boy ; and so eager was he to get to the place that the very afternoon of the breaking up of school often saw him on board the ferry-boat on his way across the Forth, fishing-rod in hand and fishing-basket on back. 38 William Nelson. For fishing he had a perfect passion. At Newhaven, Kinghorn, Crail, North Berwick, and Oban, he was well known and greatly liked by all the fishermen, although frequently their patience must have been pretty well put to the test when they were taken out in rough weather by William, and they knew there were no fish to be had. " When a boy at Kinghorn, late and early he might be seen either putting his tackle in order, or down on the beach digging for bait, or on the rocks, now on one and now on another, according to the state of the tide, contented to spend hours and hours together so that he only caught fish or even got what he called good nibbles. On many occasions he was so successful that he was able to keep the poor pretty well supplied with fish during his visits. " It was not only during the holiday months that William occupied himself in fishing or in preparation for it. All through the winter he and his brothers spent a good deal of their time in manufacturing lines for the next summer's campaign. It is amusing to remember where materials for these fishing-lines some- times came from. There was an old piano in the house which had seen better days, and the strings of it aftbrded a good supply of wire for fastening the hooks on the lines ; the tail of any horse unfortunate enough to come in the way was put under contribution for a supply of Haunts of Boyhood. 30 hair. To the end of his life, his interest in and his love for Kinghorn never waned ; and by the occasional visits he continued to pay, his acquaintance with the few remaining companions of his boyhood was kept up. " The second last visit he paid was in 188G. My sister Jessie and I were with him. Leaving Edinburgh early in the day, we crossed to Burntisland ; and getting a carriage there, we drove to Pettycur. His recollections were all of his boyhood. He showed us a part of the beach where he used to dig for cockles and sand-eels, and the rocks where he and his companions made a fire to roast potatoes. He pointed out the place where Alexander III. is said to have been killed ; and re- called the old times of pinnaces and open boats before steamers were heard of. Leaving Pettycur, we drove to the loch, a lovely, sequestered place, where William caught his first pike. To show his love for fishing, my brother Tom recalls the fact that on one occasion, when the holidays were over and the day had come for William to return to Edinburgh, after he had fin- ished his preparations for starting, he looked at the clock, and saying he had still time to run up to the loch before the boat sailed, rushed ofi" with his fishing- rod. Whether he came back with an empty basket or not tradition does not say. From the loch we made our way to the beautiful sandy beach ; then up to the 40 William N'elson. Braes, where he used to scamper about, and on which there still stands an old hawthorn tree, by the side of which, he told us, he fired his first shot. He loved evidently to linger in memory over these days and recall his friends and playmates, the remembrance of whom brought tears to his eyes." CHAPTER ]II. SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMATES. WILLIAM NELSON was a pupil in the High School of Edinburgh when one great cycle in its history was completed. It had occupied the site of the old Blackfriars' Monastery for upwards of two hundred and seventy years. In 1555 the town house of Cardinal Beaton, at the foot of the Blackfriars' Wynd, which continued to be one of the most interest- ing historical buildings in Edinburgh till its demolition in 1871, was rented by the city for the use of the Grammar School, while a building for its permanent occupation was " being biggit on the east side of the Kirk-of-Field," the scene, a few years later, of Lord Darnley's mysterious assassination. Its rector was David Vocat, a prebendary of the neighbouring col- legiate church of St. Mary-in-the-Field ; and under his rule the cloisters of the Dominicans, built for them in / 1230 by Alexander II., gave place to the halls and play- ground of the High School boys. But it was a turbu- lent age, and before the century closed the Yards became 42 Williain Ne/son. the scene of a tragic event which retained a prominent place among the traditions of the school so long as it remained on the old site. In 1598 Bailie Macmoran, one of the city magistrates, was shot in a barring out of the schoolboys by William Sinclair, a son of the Chancellor of Caithness. The contemporary diarist, Birrel, notes that " there was ane number of scholaris, being gentlemen's bairns, made a mutinie ; " and on the poor bailie interposing, the schoolboy revolt ended in dire tragedy. Great as were the changes that time had wrought on the locality where the old monastery of the Black Friars gave place to the City Grammar School, a flavour of historic antiquity pervaded it to the last. The episcopal palace of the Beatons, where the school work had been carried on for a time, still stood at the foot of the High School Wynd ; and near by was the site of that of Gawain Douglas, who, while still provost of St. Giles's collegiate church — " In a barbarous age Gave to rude Scotland Virgil's page." It was probably due to the vicinity of their lodgings that the poet interposed on behalf of the militant arch- bishop when, after the famous street feud of " Cleanse the Causeway," Beaton had vainly sought sanctuary behind the altar of the Blackfriars' Church, and, but Schools and Schoolmates. 43 for the interposition of the poet, would have been slain. His vigorous translation of the iEneid into the Scottish - vernacular was a favourite with William Nelson in later years. But the associations of the locality in his school days were for the most part of more recent date. The High School Yards had been the playground of Hume, Robertson, Erskine, Horner, Jeffrey, Cockburn, Biougham, and Scott, and of many a notability before them. The memory of its gentle, scholarly rector, Dr. Adam, author of " Roman Antiquities " and other works, was still fresh ; and the old school seemed a link between past generations and the living age. But neither the site, with its picturesque surroundings, nor the building, accorded with the ideas of civic re- formers who had organized a crusade against whatever was out of keeping with the brand-new town. The age had not then reverted to the medifeval models which have since come into vogue. Classic art was regarded as most suited to academic requirements ; and so a beautiful Grecian building — the finest specimen of Thomas Hamilton's architectural skill, in the designing of which his artist friend, David Roberts, was under- stood to have contributed valuable aid, — had been erected on the southern slope of the Calton Hill, as a more fitting home for the city Grammar School. The migration from the antiquated building at the U 44 William Nelson. head of the Higli School Wynd to this splendid edifice in the New Town was an important change in many ways besides the mere removal to more commodious and sightly halls. It brought to an end a host of old customs and traditions; and, among the rest, to the hereditary feud between the Cowgate "blackguards" and the High School " puppies." A grand civic cere- monial marked this transfer of the school to its new domicile. On the 23rd of June 1829— a bright, auspicious day — William Nelson, the head boy of his class, with his schoolmates, under the leadership of the rector and masters, walked in procession, each bearing an osier wand, with music, military escort, and all the civic glories that the Lord Provost and magistrates could command, to do honour to the occasion. It was a memorable epoch in schoolboy life. But it seemed to the old boys as though they never were quite at home in their stately New Town quarters. Old "Blackie," with her famous "gib" or toffy stall, was out of place there ; and as for Brown's famous subterranean pie-shop in the old High School Wynd, it necessarily tarried behind, to the inevitable ruin of a once flourishing business. Not the building only, but the entire scholastic system carried on within its walls, soon after underwent a complete revolution ; and the work of the venerable Grammar School of Prebendary Vocat, the classic arena of Adam, Pillans, and Carson, Schools and Schoolmates. 45 has since devolved on Fettes College, a creation of the present century. But the old classic system still prevailed in William Nelson's time ; and, notwithstanding some glaring de- fects, was turned by him to good account. As to the school itself, it must be owned that it stood in need of reform. The class of Mr. Benjamin Mackay, under whose training William Nelson remained for four years, numbered upwards of a hundred boys. Those in the two front forms worked with more or less per- sistency under a somewhat coercive system ; the re- mainder idled in the most flagrant fashion, and not a few of them looked back in later years on those dreary hours with an indignant sense of wasted time. But William Nelson was foremost among the studious workers. The same quiet, resolute perseverance which marked his later career in business characterized him as a schoolboy. Ho maintained his place as the dux of his class, carried off* the chief prizes of the school, and , at the close of his course under the rector, Dr. Carson, , he passed to the university with the highest honours, as classical gold medalist. Among the carefully preserved papers of his early years are a bundle of old letters from schoolmates, en- closed in an envelope addressed to his mother, with an endorsation begging her to see to their safe keeping. They furnish pleasant glimpses of the affectionate rela- 40 William Nelson. tions already established with more than one of the friends of later years. The solemn protest of the learned Principal, Dr. Lee, against "that most ob- jectionable and pernicious practice of makin*,' balls of snow," is humorously commented on, along with graver matters, such as pertained to the themes and discussions of the Juvenile Literary Society, and the more ambi- tious debating societies of the university. His own sense of humour found free play both in early and later years; but above all, his youthful letters are full of pleavsant gossip of the old sailors of Kinghorn, who told him yams of the victories in which they had shared in the great French war, and the pranks they indulged in when Hush with prize-money. Old Charlie Mac- kenzie had been in the Mari^ in her action with the Hercules, one of the bloodiest naval conflicts of the war. Another of the Kinghorn story-tellers — Orrock, who died in 183G, upwards of ninety years of age — claimed to have known the man who acted as drummer at the Porteous mob, and to have learned from him some details of the burning of the doors, and so gaining admission to the Tolbooth. The intense feeling of local attachment which such reminiscences reveal manifested itself in later years in the interest he took in improve- ments at Kinghorn, as well as in the more costly resto- rations in his native city. But one of the first fruits of his intercourse with the old pensioners of Kinghorn, Schools and Schoolmates. 47 who, as he says, " were great fishers for podlies from certain rocks on the sea-shore," was the capture of a crab with a double claw, a Iuhuh naiurce, which fur- nished a novel subject for discussion at a meeting of the Juvenile Literary Society. His contributions to its collections and learned discussions were generally of the same clas.s — algre, shells, or other marine curiosities, the fruits of his last holiday ramble by the sea. Amono' strav waifs that have survived from those old days is a letter, bearing date February 20, 1829, addressed to the secretary of the Juvenile Society by the elder brother of one of its members. With all the condescension of an undergraduate placing his mature knowledge at the service of schoolboys, the writer sets forth " the very great pleasure I take in hearing of the proceedings of your society, and my unqualified approbation of your plan of keeping a journal as a sort of record of your proceedings." He proceeds : " I dare- say you are unaware that the duties of a student of medicine are of a very arduous nature." But, as he goes on to state, he had laid before the Plinian Society in the previous summer a paper on certain " Discoveries made behind Edinburgh Castle in digging the founda- tion of the new bridge," — part of the terraced road which involved the destruction of Trotter's Close and the Nelson homestead, — and this, he says, " I shall copy out in a style which I hope will prove interesting to 48 William Nelson. my young friends, and which may, perhaps, form a contribution to their journal." The writer, whose seni- ority, by Lhe years that separate the College student from the High School boy, entitled him thus conde- scendingly to address his brother Philip and the other juvenile savants, is now Sir Douglas Maclagan, the genial veteran Professor of Medical Jurisprudence in his own university ; and, it may be added, the author of some of the most popular of a younger generation's student-songs. At a later stage the juvenile debaters awoke to an interest in the stirring questions of the day. Mr. Alexander Sprunt, writing from Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1859, says: " During the period of our High School curriculum, questions were occupying the public mind, and startling events taking place in Europe : the final struggle of the Poles, the French ' Three Days of July,' the reform movement, etc. The subject of the immediate or gradual emancipation of the negro slaves in the colonies was also keenly discussed about that time. Some of us, being related to families of the colonists, were familiar with the arguments for a gradual aboli- tion of slavery." William Nelson took up the question warmly, and was an uncompromising advocate for im- mediate emancipation. As to the oft-renewed struggle in France between Bourbon Royalists, Imperialists, and Red Republicans, it was forcibly brought home to the I Schools and Schoolmates. 49 realization of the young debaters by the presence of the exiled Cliarles X. and his little court at Holyrood ; and by the occasional sight of the royal refugee as he passed the High School Yards on foot, in company with one or two of his suite, to enjoy the magnificent pano- rama from the Calton Hill. The fruits of those early experiences could be dis- cerned in later years. The boy's education was pro- gressing under other teachings besides those of the schoolmaster. It was altogether alien to the unobtru- sivoness of William Nelson's sensitive nature to take, in later years, a prominent share in political life ; but his generous support was extended in the most prac- tical form to all philanthropic movements. He mani- fested the keenest interest in all questions of liberal politics : in the emancipation of the slaves ; in the pro- longed controversies which led to the disruption of the Scottish Church ; and in the more recent struggle be- tween the Slave and Free States in the great American Civil War. Most of those questions belong to periods long subsequent to the time when James and Alex- ander Sprunt were the champions of the West Indian planters, and William Nelson and other juvenile de- baters maintained the cause of the enslaved negro. But the members of the Literary Society, as already noted, had their field-days as well as their Friday night sessions; and in pursuit of material for their papers, 50 William Nelson. r t as well as in the free use of the Saturday and other holidays, the schoolmates had many an exciting ramble. In spite of its uncertain climate, Edinburgh presents an unequalled variety of choice holiday excursions ; and as to the rain, it required a good deal more than an ordinary shower to put a stop to any projected ex- cursion. In walking, climbing, and all the ordinary feats of healthy boyhood, William Nelson was unsur- passed. To make our way to the summit of Salisbury Crags by the famous Cat-Nick, or outrival each other in the attempt to scale Samson's Ribs, and sit supremo on some overhanging ledge of the basaltic columns, were among the most favourite pastimes. Or a leisurely climb along the slopes to the summit of Arthur's Seat, and a survey of the magnificent landscape spread out to view, were a prelude, at the word, to a dash down the hill, scrambling like so many goats over the western cliffs and the rough slope below, and so by the Hunter's Bog, for the first draught at St. Anthony's Well. In all such feats William Nelson was a match for any schoolmate. His coolness equalled his courage, and he had a love for daring feats such as those who only knew him in later years will hardly realize. When the old home at the Bowhead was displaced by the Assembly Hall, and its lofty spire was in process of erection, he made friends with the contractor, and I accompanied him in more than one ascent. A steam Schools and Schoolmates. 51 hoist carried us up the main portion of the way ; and then came the trying ordeal on the ladders. But as the tapering spire approached completion, it was no longer possible to reach the summit from within ; and I still recall with vividness the composure with which, all unconscious of dangci-, he walked out on the narrow plank, over a depth of upwards of two hundred feet, and stood at tlie extreme end of it, noting and com- menting on the various objects spread out below. A future career for life was as yet unthought of. But while aiming solely at pleasure, and rejoicing in a holiday's escape from school, the boy was unconsciously educating himself. Already the botanical box and the geological hammer were in vogue. Not, indeed, the luxurious appliances with which amateur naturalists are now furnished. Any hammer sufficed for getting at a coveted fossil ; and as for our hortus siccus, an old candle-box was appropriated by the botanical collector. But the archjeological tastes in which more than one of William Nelson's schoolmates sympathized, and to which he gave such practical expression in later years, were already in process of development. The pleasur- able associations with historic scenes and picturesque ruins found ample scope in those holiday rambles. Craigmillar Castle was close at hand ; and within easy distance was old Roman Cramond, with chances of a numismatic prize to the fortunate explorer, and with i i 1 52 William Nelson. the sculptured eagle of the legionaries of the second century still visible on the cliff at the mouth of the ^ river Almond. This had a special charm for boys fresh from their Csesar and Tacitus, giving a sense of reality to those forgotten centuries. It was an object-lesson, better even than the Koman altar dedicated to the goddess Epona — de^e epon^e — which Dr. Carson, the , Rector of the High School, produced to his class, and won their attentive admiration us he pointed to the focus in which the Roman horse-jockey had poured a libation; and adduced passages from the Satires of Juvenal in confirmation of his theme. Farther afield lay Woodhouselee, Seton and Roslin chapels; Niddry, Borthwick, and Crichton castles; Pres- ton Cross and Tower ; and many another storied ruin associated with familiar historic events. Pinkie Cleugh, { Carberry Hill, Lasswade, Dalkeith, and Prestonpans, were each linked with song or story. Maclagan was an ardent collector of plants and insects ; geology divided with botany the interest of George Wilson ; John A. Smith had already begun the collection of coins; and William Nelson was forming the tastes which manifested themselves in later years in his love for every venerable nook of his native city, and in his zeal for the preservation of its historic memorials. The change from school to college life is in every case an important one. With the majority it involves Schools and Schoolmates. 53 emancipation, in a large degree, from enforced and dis- tasteful studies, and their exchange for congenial pur- suits. The youth begins for the first time to estimate knowledge at its real worth, and to shape out plans of study for himself. But the novel arena is no less im- portant as that in which the companionships of the playground give place to that discriminating choice of congenial associates in which life-long friendships have so often originated. It is the joyous season in which the springtide is just merging into life's early summer ; when youth is animated by all generous aspirations, and hope's rainbow arch spans the horizon. The period of William Nelson's admission as an undergraduate of the University of Edinburgh was in some respects a brilliant one in its history; and even more so in relation to its students than its pro- fessors. Dr. John Lee, the learned Church historian and black-letter scholar, was principal, and Dr. Chalmers occupied the chair of divinity ; the chair of natural philosophy was successively occupied by Sir John Leslie and by James D. Forbes. Before the abrupt close of William Nelson's academic career, Sir William Hamilton had assumed the lead in its school of mental science ; and the fame of John Wilson, its professor of moral philosophy, under his pseudonym of " Chris- topher North," attracted many to his class-room for whoui his professed theme would have had no charm. 54 William Nelson. But in the department of classics, for which all William Nelson's previous training had been specially directed, the faculty was imperfectly equipped. Dunbar, a poor representative of Hellenic scholarship, had then filled the Greek chair for upwards of a quarter of a century. On the other hand, the professor of humanity was James Pillans, an elegant scholar, and, in the words of Sir Alexander Grant, " a born teacher and educator ; " though latterly more prone to dwell on little critical niceties than to give himself up to the drudgery which was indispensable for the training of his large and often inadequately prepared class. Among other traits that his old pupils will recall was the never-failing protest at the opening of a new session, which reminded the class that he enjoyed the dubious fame of being pilloried by Byron in his " English Bards and Scotch Reviewers." The irate bard, in his indiscriminate furor, had characterized the professor of humanity as "Paltry Pillans;" and William Nelson used to quote this incident of his own experience in justification of the title : — He had an essay to give in on a certain day, and not having finished it till late on the previous night, instead of walking to the professor's remote residence at Inverleith Row, he dropped his manuscript into the nearest post-box. Next day, when the class assembled, the first intimation from the professor was, " I will thank Mr. William Nelson to hand twopence to Schools and Schoolmates. 55 the janitor for the postage of his essay !" Notwith- standing some amusing eccentricities, Professor Pillans was held in great esteem by his old pupil as an apt and painstaking enthusiast in his profession ; and the good feelinj; was mutual. William Nelson was a favourite pupil, in whose progress he took a lively interest, and it was in spite of his most urgent remonstrances that the classic muse was abandoned at the call of filial duty. But it was the fortune of William Nelson, in those happy days of student life, to find himself among a rare band of undergraduates, many of whom subse- quently won a name for themselves in ampler fields. Edward Forbes was then a zealous volunteer on the staff of the University M 62 Williain Nelson. Johnson gave him his first large order for books. Ho had already succeeded in overcoming the prejudices oi the regular trade, and fixed a scale of prices which dis- armed their antagonism. The books, as aiready stated, were for the most part reprints from standard and popular works beyond the range of copyright restrictions. Their paper-covered boards and imperfect printing were in .striking contrast to the choice typography, paper, and binding, and tho tasteful illustrations, which characterized the works issued by the firm in later days. Yet the germ even of this was already discernible in the engraved frontis- pieces and vignette titles introduced to catch the eye and cater for the popular taste. So earlj' as 1829, Mr. Thomas Nelson, senior, had aimed at the extension of his business by engaging a commercial traveller to push the sales of his publica- tions with the trade, Mr. James Macdonald was first despatched on this mission ; but as Ourwen states, in his " History of Booksellers," owing to the stigma attached to the unwonted nature of the business, his mission was a failure. "At Aberdeen the booksellers rose up in arms, and only one had the courage to give him an order." To him succeeded, ere long, Mr. James Peters, a more successful agent, and a faithful (ittaclie of the house through all its later fortunes till his death. But Cur- wen says: "It was not until Mr. William Nelson, the The Castle Hill. 63 eldest son of the founder, took to the road that the trade business was really consolidated, not only in Scotland, but also in the chief towns of the United Kingdom. In fact, it may be said that Mr. William Nelson was the real builder of the business, working upwards from a foundation that was certainly narrow and ciicumscribed. Mr. Thomas Nelson, the younger brother, soon after this admitted to the firm, un- dertook the energetic superintendence of the manu- facturing department, and was the originator of the extensive scries of school books." William Nelson's taste in literature was refined, and his reading extensive. His mind was stored with the fruits of years of liberal study ; and when stimulated by the sight of beautiful scenery, or moved by some unusual occurrence, he sometimes surprised strangers by his apt and lengthened quotations from favourite poets. Soon after the removal to the Castle Hill establish- ment, Mr. Duncan Keith, — the son of an old friend of Mr. Nelson, with whom William had spent at Glasgow a brief period of initiation into the mysteries of trad- ing, — w£us welcomed as a member of the West Bow home-circle, and took his place among the busy corps on the Castle Hill. He was the junior of William Nelson by some years, and thus writes : " My evenings were chiefly spent in the society of the younger branches of the family ; but I have a distinct remem- 64 William Nelson. brance of William reading aloud from Horace and Virffil in a manner that showed an intimate accjuaint- ance with the language, and an appreciation of the poetry in the original. Though a High School dux myself, it was far above me ; and, so far as my later observation goes, above most people." But it was only amongst intimate friends that he gave; free play to his literary sympathies. Nothing was more remote from his character than any effort at display ; and men of culture who, in their intercourse with him, had long regarded him only as the man of business, were some- times startled by an unexpected betrayal of his famili- arity with classical and general literature, as well as by his sound judgment on questions of critical discussion. With a taste thus matured, his feeling for art was refined, and he directed his efforts, with ingenious skill, to render the works issued from the firm attractive. Novel methods of illustration were introduced. Wood- cuts were printed with tinted grounds and relieved lights. Chromo-lithographs vied in effect with the original water-colour drawings. A late series of repro- ductions of Landsoer's pictures, though designed only for a child's book, constituted a valuable memorial of the great animal painter. Inventive ingenuity was directed to the production of fresh novelties in binding and illustration, many of which were eagerly copied by the trade. William Nelson's appreciation of artistic The Castle Hill. 65 excellence seemed to be innate and instinctive. "A thing of beauty " was a joy to him wholly apart from his own share in its production. His admiration for a well-got-up book, or for illustrations of unusual ex- cellence, found as hearty utterance in reference to the publications of another firm as of his own ; and hence he was always open to fresh hints, and prepared for improvement on his most successful efforts. He was, indeed, too easily beguiled by good looks both in books and men. This characteristic passage occurs in a letter to an old friend : " I had a call two days ago from a most fair-spoken English clergyman, who wanted help to build a ragged school in Sheffield. He insisted that you had introduced him to me, and that I had taken him over the works and given him a book, which was likely enough ; though, as I told him, I had no recollection of it. He was most plausible, and very good-looking. A good-looking outside takes my fancy in anything. I always find myself expecting the best of a good-looking book ; and I am apt to believe pleasant things of good-looking people also. He assured me he was a great friend of yours ; and he had such a friendly look that I gave him what ho wanted. Do you know anything of this Dr. Pike ? I have had my suspicions of him that he is a plausible lunubug," — which, as in many a similar case, proved to be only too well founded. 5 I. ( 66 William Nelson. A writer in the Scottish Typographical GircuUir remarks: "Mr. Nelson was often popping in and out amonir artists and enrjravers wlio did work for liim, giving them new ideas and further suggestions. He did not grudge trouble or expense if he got things nice and to his mind. He rejoiced in beautiful typography, and displayed great artistic taste in the wood-cuts and illustrations." He was indeed a familiar visitor in the studios of London and Paris, as well as of Edinburgh ; and during his frequent Continental tours derived in- tense pleasure from his visits to the galleries both of ancient and modern art. His eye was quick to discern the merits of a painting, and his judgment was prompt and decided. He was indeed sensitive to any mani- festation of bad taste ; and the unsightly disfigurement of the buildings or thoroughfares of his native city by placards or signboards, excited his anger to a degree that sometimes startled the offender. His remonstrance on such occasions was apt to be expres.sed with a blunt sincerity that could not be misunderstood. The same severe standard of taste was applied in his own bus- iness, and made its influence felt in every department of typography, illustration, and binding. A memorandum, found among his papers after his death, preserves an incident in the first stages of the inexperienced but energetic reformer's proceedings. His father had acquired a set of stereotype plates of The Castle Hill. 07 Drink water's " Siege of Gibraltar," and had a portrait of its author engraved for the frontispiece. A i eprint of it being in progress, the plate was intrusted to the engraver for retouching ; and he undertook to get the autograph of the old soldier, to be added as an attrac- tive feature. The new and illustrated edition was issued accordingly, and found a ready sale. But some years afterwards a venerable^ military-looking gentle- man waited on Mr. Nelson, and asked where he liad obtained the signature. Colonel Drinkwater, who was supposed to have been long since dead, was himself the questioner ; and, as William Nelson notes, the signature was subsequently identilied as in the handwriting of the deceased manager of Mr. Lizar's engraving estab- lishment. But only in the first stage of transition from student life to the counting-house and the pub- lisher's office could such a proceeding have eluded his vigilance. A copy of the engraving is attached to the memoi'andnm, and contrasts very markedly with the illustrations of later years, when William Nelson's critical taste, conjoined with his experience in adapting the issues of his publishing-house to popular demand, won for the productions of the firm a character for great attractiveness in outward aspect and illus- tration. At a later date, the "Chronicles of the Schonberg-Cotta Family" constituted the first of a highly popular series of books by the same author. '1 i ^ : ' ! ! 1 I 68 William Nelson. The charming authoress M'ho writes under tlie initials A. L. C). E., tlie late Mary Howitt, Mrs. Traill, R. M. Ballantyne, and other writers, figured on their list of authors. The charming series of "Art Gift Books," from tlie French of M. Jules and Mme. Michelet, and M. Arthur Mangin— " The Insect," " The Bird," " The Mysteries of the Ocean," and " The Desert World," as well as other works of the same class — are illustrated in the best style of art. But it was as caterers for the people, in an abundant supply of pure, high-toned popular literature, and not as rivals of the great pub- lishing; houses throu<;h which the most eminent writers appeal to select classes of readers, that the Nelsons achieved their greatest success. In the tribute paid to the worth of William Nelson by the Rev. Dr. Alison when his life-work was finished, it is said : " His in- tiuence, and that of the firm of which he was the head, has gone forth healthfully to the ends of the earth. Religious principle, no less than skill and taste and enterprise, has been in all their work as publishers of literature. No man can measure the good which that incessant stream of excellent books issuing from their press has done for the world. To a large extent the}- have been for the multitude, rather than for the learned few." But this was the summing up of the work of a lifetime. Much had to be achieved in its progress, step by step, ere such results could even be aimed at. The Castle Hill. 69 Under the energetic management of the young pub- lisher tlie picturesque tenement at the head of the West Bow, which had sufficed for his father's bookselling operations, soon proved inadequate for the growing business. A neighbouring " land," — as an entire pile of ])uilding in the Old Town of Edinburgh is still called, — situated at the head of Blyth's Close, Castle Hill, with the palace ui ilary of Guise in its rear, was secured ; and there the first steps were taken which ultimately developed into the great establishments of Hope Park and Parkside. Machinery was brought into use wherever available ; and a well -organized division of labour was introduced, until at length nearly every process, from the initial type-setting to the final issue of the bound and illustrated volume, was executed on the premises. The locality where this new departure was made, preparatory to the great works at Hope Park, with its hundreds of work- people, and its wholesale branches at London and New York, is one rich in literary associations. Near by, on the northern slope of the Castle bank, is the house of Allan llamsay, poet and bookseller ; Blair's Close, long noted among the most ancient nooks of the Castle Hill, was the abode of Alison Cockburn, authoress of "The P'lowei's of the Forest," and of other plaintive as well as humorous Scottish songs. To St. James's Court, on the east side, James Boswell brought Dr. Samuel John- 70 William Nelson. ^5on, and entertained him in tlie house where he had succeeded to the historian David Hume. There was an old-world literary flavour about the place that gave a certain piquancy to the start of the young adven- turer deserting the classic grove for the prosaic haunts of commerce. The Rev. Dr. Simpson of Derby, already noted as an old schoolmate and a life-long friend, refers in one of his letters to the lectures and social entertainments pro- vided at a later date for the numerous workers in the Hope Park establishment, in which he was an active labourer. But the interest taken by William Nelson in his employes was manifested at an earlier stage. Lectures and social recreations had already been in- stituted before the transfer of the works to Hope Park, in some of the earliest of which the present writer bore a part. But with increasing numbers, and more ample room, those instructive entertainments were organi/.ed on an extensive scale, and are described in a memor- andum of Dr. Simpson, by whom many of the later lectures were given. His account of them may find a fit place here, though in some points it anticipates the narrative of later years. "The deep interest," he re- marks, "which Mr. Nelson felt in his work-people, and his desire to promote their well-being in every sense, conspicuously appear in the entertainments which were from time to time got up for them. At first these The Castle Hill. 71 were chiefly in the nature of banquets or suppers, to which all were invited, when they were regaled with the good things of this life in a judicious but liberal manner. Along with this, however, he was careful to combine moral and religious instruction, by securing addresses by one or two clerical friends. By-and-by he provided for them occasional lectures on subjects of varied interest. For those he got up, at considerable expense and trouble, a series of illustrations which were shown on a screen by the oxy -hydrogen light, the lecturer describing each picture while it was before the eyes of the audience. This was, I believe, the first introduction of this form of lecture, which has since become so common. The pictures were reproduced from engravings by the photographer of the establish- ment, Mr. Sinclair, and then hand-coloured with much care and skill by Mr. Rnmage, who devoted himself to the art-work connected with the extensive business of the firm. " The first of those illustrated lectures was on the transfer of Napoleon's remains from St. Helena to Paris. The second was on Garibaldi's invasion of Sicily and Italy, ending with his meeting with Victor Immanucl, and hailing him as king of Italy. After- wards a new departure was made, and the lectures were chiefly devoted to the genius and works of cele- brated artists; the illustrations being transcripts of 72 IVi/iiam Nelson. \i the artists' principal works. The first subject of this class was David Scott, R.S.A., in connection with his illustrations of Coleridge's 'Ancient Mariner,' subse- quently reproduced by Messrs. Nelson in a tasteful edition of the poem. The next lecture was devoted to the works of Landsecr ; and to this succeeded similar illustrations of Hogarth, Wilkie, Harvey, Leech, etc. Tho.se lectures were greatly appreciated ; the large hall at Hope Park, in which they were given, being always crowded to excess by the employes, their wives and families, supplemented by friends invited by Mr. Nelson, including some who took an active part in this generous effort for the social elevation of the working- classes, such as Dr. Guthrie and Dr. Hannah ; and their artist friends. Sir George Harvey, D. O. Hill, James Drummond, and others. For each of those lectures Mr. Nelson had prepared from twenty to thirty slides, which were arranged in partitioned cases made for their safe keeping." But they perished, along with much more valuable property, in the disastrous fire of 1878. But only the initial steps towards the full develop- ment of the Hope Park works, with their ingeniously devised machinery and systematic division of labour, were possible at the Castle Hill establishment. Its accommodation, though a great step in advance of that at the Bowhead, was inadequate for such plana, and The Castle Hill. 78 the numbers employed were correspondingly limited. But the workmen were carefully selected ; and from the first the relations between them and their employer were characterized by mutual respect and confidence. They recognized in him one whose interest in their welfare was generous, and his sympathy that of a friend. But his own attention to business extended to the minutest det^iils, and anything indicative of mere eye-service or sloth was intolerable to him. An anec- dote highly characteristic of liim is thus narrated on the authority of one who had been long in his employ- ment : — " Two navvies were engaged one day at Hope Park turning a crank when Mr. William Nelson was passing. He paused for a moment and looked at the men, who seemed to go about their work rather leisurely. He then came forward to them, and asked, in a grutf manner, if they could not work a little harder and turn the crank quicker. They answered at once ' they could not ; it was a stiff job, and very fatiguing.' * Nonsense,' he replied ; ' let me try.' Seizing one of the handles, he did try ; but, after giving the handle two or three turns, desisted, for it made the perspiration pour from him. Then he remarked, ' Ay, just go on as you've been doing;' and, putting his hand into his pocket, added, 'There's half-a-crown between you.' Many similar anecdotes might be told. He liked smart, active workmen ; but he did not willingly drive or unduly 11 74 Williavi Nelson. pross any one. He would at once rebuke any of his euiploye's if he considered they deserved it; but if afterwards he foutul he had acted hastily or wrongly, he would apologize, even to the humblest worker, and almost invariably with the apology there came a gift. " It is not surprising that the relations between such an employer and his workmen were something closer than those of the mere hireling. The workmen who liad sliared in his first efforts in the Ca.stle Hill estab- lishment followed him to Hope Park. Some of them, by their fidelity and skill, contributed to the success of later years ; and the veteran survivors of that original staft' were regarded by William Nelson to the last as objects of exceptional favour. Among those who thus migrate Scotland. He said he had no objections, and it was arranged that his passage back should be paid. When the day came for his leaving, some of the New York men came down to the steamer to see him off, and they gave him five dollars for pocket-money dur- ing the voyage, and a sum of ten dollars to give to his wife, whom he had left behind in Edinburgh. And so he left the shores of America. The story of the other man is still more strange. He took work in an office in which there was a strike ; but after being there for a week, he foumi his position so uncomfortable from annoyance from the men who had left, that he went and told his master he would have to leave on account of this. But what was his surprise when his master told him that he need not allow this state of matters to continue, as he had just to put a ball through one of the fellows, and there would be an end of it ; and that the utmost that would be done to him in the way of punishment would be a day or two's confinement in the police office or jail. He then handed him a revolver I 86 William Nelson. and said, ' Take this and make good use of it, and you'll liavc a quiet life for the future.' This pistol 1 have now in my possession, and it is worth havinj,' as a curiosity." At an earlier date the mischievous effects of a strike extended to the Hope Park works, endin<;' in the places of some of the strikers being supplied hy other appli- cants. But the victiuis learned by experience that tliey never appealed in vain to the sympathy of William Nelson, even when their share in the revolt had been characterized by ingratitude or brcacli of faith. It was sufficient that they were impoverished. " Poor fellow !" he would say, "he brought it on himself; but what of that ? " And the liberal aid was given only too readily ; for the plea was discovered to be one to which he most promptly responded, and was resorted to frequently by impostors who pi'eyed on his kindly sympatliy. What, indeed, the Rev. Dr. Alison remarked of him after his death, when lie said : " He simply could not turn from distress of any sort without doing something to relieve it," was no more than an echo of the sentiment wliieh experience had rendered familiar to many. I I CHAPTER VI. EGYPT AND PALESTINE. THE excursions of early years, and the longer holiday rambles of student life, for which the environs of Edinltur<>h and the neii^hbouring shores of Fife afibrded so many attractions, were exchanged for a time for the prosaic rounds of the commercial traveller and book -agent. But this duty was transferred ere long to trustworthy subordinates ; and so soon as prosperity rewarded the intelligent labours of the young adven- turer, the spirit that prompted earlier excursions re- vived. This was further stimulated by that keen de- sire to see and judge for himself in reference to all matters of general interest which manifested itself through life. The occurrence of any unusual event, or the opening up of some new region, was sufficient at any time to awaken the desire to explore a scene rendered interesting by its novelty, or by the excep- tional circumstances which attracted his notice. When the first Pacific Railway was completed, he crossed the Atlantic in company with Mrs. Nelson, travelled to ^< ^ ^ ^.^5 ^^>.^. IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) //X4^>, i !.0 I.I 11.25 kit2A 12.5 ■ii Ui& |Z2 1^ £f U£ 1.4 1^ 6" & ^A ^ 4^ ^ > 4 Photographic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEB&rER,N.Y. UStO (716)872-4S03 r/ r^^^ r 3 <> v^o i\ \^^ ^'^ ^ 88 William Nelson. l^ ■;l;t : is % San Francisco, visited the Yellowstone Region and the Mariposa Valley, and returned through Canada to re- new his intercourse with old friends there. While in the Mariposa Valley, Mrs. Nelson was presented with one of the giant Sequoia, or Wellingtonia, which now bears, on a marble tablet attached to it, the name of "Auld Reekie," then bestow^ed on it. At Salt Lake City a Scotsman addressed Mr. Nelson by name, and begged him to convey his respects to his old clergyman, the Rev. W. Arnot of Edinburgh ; but in mentioning this, Mr. Nelson dryly added that the Free Churchman of Salt Lake City seemed to take very kindly to its spiritual wives! He visited Paris in 1851, and ex- posed himself to its dangers at the time of the famous coup d'etat by which the Third Napoleon made him- self emperor. Twenty years later he hastened again to the French capital in the perilous outbreak of the Commune i and when the Christmas season of 1879 was overclouded by the disastrous fall of the Tay Bridge, immediately on learning of the event he made his way to Dundee to see for himself the ruins and to investigate the cause. He succeeded in finding a man who had watched the lights of the train as it swept on in the profound darkness, and was startled by their being suddenly extinguished. The bridge had given way ; and the train, with all its passengers, was pre- cipitated into the Tay. In like manner he set out for Egypt and Palestine, 89 the Scilly Islands on the occasion of the wreck of the Schiller ; travelled to Ischia after the occurrence of the earthquake of 1881, in which the town of Casamicciola was almost totally destroyed ; and when, in the follow- ing year, the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act led to a violent popular outbreak in Connemara, he crossed over to Ireland, that he might visit the disturbed district and judge for himself of the merits of the conflict. The amount of preparation for even the longest journey was amazingly trifling. William Nelson would start almost at a day's notice for an extended tour ; and this course of procedure, so characteristic of his equa- nimity, conjoined with calm, resolute endurance, was curiously exemplified in his first extended journey. In 1849 he left home with the intention of spending a six weeks' holiday in the south of Europe. He was in Leg- horn when a letter reached him which showed that all was going on satisfactorily in the business. He there- upon decided to make an extended journey to the East. But his funds were exhausted, and it was before the days of railways or telegraphs. With a faith in human nature characteristic of him through life, he stepped into the counting-house of Messrs, Henderson Brothers, the leading British merchants in Leghorn. He was a total stranger, with no introduction. He told them his story, and asked them to cash a draft on Edinburgh for 90 William Nelson. w £300. They looked at him, and after a pause told him to draw the cheque, and gave him the money. The strangers became friends in later years; and one day, when Mr. Kobert Henderson was dining at Salisbury Green, William Nelson asked him how it was that he and his brother had ventured to give a stranger so large a sum. "Well," said Mr. Henderson, "in plain truth, it was just your Scotch tongue and honest Scotch face, and nothing else ! " The friendship which originated in this novel introduction lasted with their lives. There was, in truth, something singularly winning in his open, handsome countenance ; and its influence on strangers was anew illustrated at a later date, when Mrs. Nelson accompanied him in a tour through the Black Forest. They were overtaken by a thunder- storm when in Baden-Baden, and taking refuge in the nearest shop, they found it devoted to articles of virtu. A woman in charge, who spoke English fluently, received them courteously, and responded to Mr. Nelson's in- quiries in a way that greatly interested him. On leav- ing he expressed his grateful thanks, and said he would have liked to make some purchases, but unfortunately his remaining funds were not more than sufficient for his journey home. The reply was : " Take whatever you please, sir. No one could look in your face and distrust you." He did accordingly carry off some Egypt and Palestine. 91 choice objects of virtu, always a temptation to hini; the money for which, it is scarcely necessary to add, was duly remitted on reaching England. Provided, on such novel security, with funds re- quisite for a prolonged tour in the East, he was ab- sent upwards of ten months, and turned the time to account with characteristic assiduity. The late Presi- dent of Queen's College, Belfast, the Rev. Dr. J. Leslie Porter, who, as a traveller in Palestine, was familiar with the scenes embraced in Mr. Nelson's tour, and repeatedly conversed with him on points of mutual interest, remarks: — "He did not as a rule enter into detailed descriptions of the localities he had visited. His chief desire apparently was to elicit from those with whom he talked the fullest information, as if to add to or correct his own impressions. One thing particularly struck me : his questions were all pertinent and exactly to the point. He showed a talent in obtaining exactly the information he wished such as I have never known equalled, except in the case of one person. He could glean a wonderful amount of know- ledge in a very brief period. He had himself been a close and accurate observer. He knew exactly the points which, from want of time or opportunity, he had not been able perfectly to grasp, and he put his ques- tions in a form that brought out every particle of in- formation the person he addressed could give. 92 William Nelson. Ji! y. " Of Damascus Mr. Nelson spoke with great en- thusiasm. 'Yes/ he said, 'richness, beauty, and fer- tility are there. Where,' he asked, ' was the scene of Paul's conversion ? Was it near the east gate, where tradition has located it ? ' I pointed out that this could scarcely be, as Paul was on his way from Jerusalem, and the road from the Holy City approaches Damascus from the opposite side. He next inquired whether there was still any tradition of Abraham ; and he was very much interested when I told him that a few miles to the north there is still a shrine, at the foot of the hills, called the prayer -place of Abraham. 'Is not that,' he said, ' a proof of the tenacity with which even the oldest traditions cling to the country ? ' There was much in this ; and he seemed to feel, as others have felt, that it may be used as an argument in favour of the truth of the early Christian traditions regarding the holy places of Jerusalem and other cities in Palestine. He asked much about the leprosy. ' Did any tradition of it exist in Damascus V I remember well how deeply he seemed to be impressed when I told him that a short distance outside the east gate there were the remains of a very ancient building, called Naaman's House, and that a portion of it was still used as a leper hospital. He said to me, 'I looked for the Straight Street, mentioned in connection with the conversion of St. Paul, but could see no trace of it.' Then I told him Egypt and Palestine. 93 the results of more recent researches ; how they had brought to light the position and character of that great street which ran through the city from the east to the west gate, and had on each side a double row of columns, fragments of which can still be seen in the houses and courts adjoining." But he had a no less keen eye for the modern Damascus, with its motley population, its narrow streets and thronged bazaars, all full of strange Eastern life and habits. " The mean, dirty thoroughfares, worse," as he says, " than an Old Town Edinburgh close, run between low, shabby -looking houses ; and nothing surprised me more than when I was taken through a long dark passage, to suddenly find that the shabby street -front concealed a beautiful court, laid out in garden fashion, with a fine fountain in the centre, and flower-beds and orange trees, and round this the chambers, brightly furnished with cushions and mat- ting, etc., all opening on to it, like a scene from the Arabian Nights' Entertainments." Nevertheless the predominant thought in his mind was the Damascus of Roman and New Testament times; the city to which Saul the persecutor was journeying when he was arrested on the way, and commissioned to go far hence to proclaim the gospel of glad tidings to the Gentile world. Having gratified his intelligent curiosity, in seek- I 94 Williain Nelson. \ ing to discover the ancient localities of Damascus as- sociated with Scripture history, he proceeded by way of Lebanon to Jerusalem. The associations of the city of Zion, of Nazareth, the Jordan, the Syrian desert, and the Dead Sea, were replete with int'rest to a mind trained from earliest childhood in devout familiarity with every incident of sacred story. The novel scenes of Eastern life were, moreover, explored with peculiar zest in this his first escape from the restraints of homely Western civilization into that strange old East where the customs and ideas of an ancient past still survive. In referring to this visit to Jerusalem he remarks : — " I was there before any guide-book was written ; and so I had to consult my Bible, and occa- sionally Josephus, on a point of history. After these I found Robinson's 'Biblical Researches' the most thorough and useful. Robinson seemed to me to write, and study, and investigate as a scholar. Perhaps he paid rather too little regard to tradition ; but this was natural in a place like Jerusalem, which absolutely swarms with the most absurd legends. He lays down on the whole a firm basis of biblical and historical facts; then he leads one on in a logical and critical manner to the truth regarding the exact sites of the great events of the Gospel narrative : the site of the Temple, of the Palace of David, of the Hall of Judgment in which Pilate sat, of the old walls and gates of the Egypt and Palestine. 95 Holy City, etc. Then Robinson seemed to me to prove that the Holy Sepulchre could not have been where it is now located." The controverted questions about the topography of Jerusalem, which have since received such abundant elucidation, were all familiar to him, and were dis- cussed with keenest interest when he met with any one who had either visited the sacred city, or made its historical details a subject of research. The scenes of the nativity, the crucifixion, and the holy sepulchre, of the agony in the garden, and the ascension, were all investigated by him with critical care. Dr. Porter furnishes the following memoranda of their conversa- tion on those subjects : — "He asked me my views as to the true site of Calvary. Was I convinced that it was not — or, as Robinson affirms, could not have been — within the compass of the present walls ? If not, then where was it ? He several times said, as if by way of suggestion, that it was either on the north side of the modern city, or to the east, on the brow of the Kidron Valley. ' Did you ever consider,' he asked me, ' the statement of the evangelist to the effect that the women, as if afraid to approach, viewed the awful tragedy from afar ? ' He was pleased when I suggested that possibly the true site of Calvary was not far south of St. Stephen's Gate, where two public roads passed a short distance off — I f i 96 William Nelson. ^i% ;;.t ' one leadinff north to Samaria and Galilee, the other east, over the Kidron and Olivet, to Jericho and the Jordan. ' Yes,' he said ; ' and the women would then have a clear view of the whole scene, from a safe dis- tance, on the side of the Mount of Olives, beyond the deep and narrow valley.' " To this succeeded discussions on the value of the local traditions in reference to the scenes latterly associated with so much superstition and deceit; and the possibility of identifying them with the help of local topography and the sacred narrative. " ' Where,' he asked me, ' would you locate the scene of the ascension? Was it, or could it have been, on the traditional spot at the Church of the Ascension on the summit of Olivet? If you adopt this tradition, then how,' he asked, ' do you explain the words of the evangelist : " He led them out as far as to Bethany " ? ' My reply was, ' I do not admit the reality of the tradi- tional site.' He said this impressed himself very deeply when he crossed over the Mount of Olives to Bethany. He felt convinced that the scene of that wonderful last interview with the disciples was some spot near the village. ' I think,' he said, 'our Lord took the disciples to a retired place, not in view either of Jerusalem or of the village of Bethany. Then,' he added thoughtfully, 'was there not some analogy between this scene and that of the transfiguration on a high mountain apart ? Egypt and Palestine. 97 Would not the solitude impress the disciples more forcibly with the glory of the appearance of the angels, and of his own close and immediate intercourse with the hosts of heaven ? ' The thoughtf ulness and depth of many of Mr. Nelson's remarks upon the events of the life and death of Jesus often struck me. His visit to Palestine was brief ; but he grasped in a very short time the most interesting and important points, and he connected them, with a kind of intuitive readiness and accuracy, with the events of the sacred narrative. He spoke on several occasions of the noble and yet very peculiar site of the Holy City, different in many respects from his previous ideas; but the moment ho saw it, more deeply fixing in his mind the truth of the Psalmist's words: 'Beautiful for situation is Mount Zion.' The view from the top of Olivet, and that from the old road which winds round and along its side from Bethany, was, he told me, to him by far the most in- structive. ' I read,' he said, ' the words of Jesus, when he looked on and wept over the city, with a feeling of their reality and wonderful vividness such as I had never experienced before.' Another thing he observed more than once : ' I was disappointed in the scenery of Palestine. I did not see, and I could not fully under- stand, the glowing descriptions in some parts of Scrip- ture of its fertility and beauty. When I thought of England and Scotland, and compared their fertile low- r- 98 William Nelson. V' i t:f 15 A lands and magnificent highlands with the bare plains and rocky hills of Judah, I felt much difficulty in divesting my mind of the idea that even the sacred writers indulged in exaggeration. But/ he added, 'I suppose my Western ideas were entirely different from theirs as to what are the elements of richness and grandeur.' I reminded him of the words of Scripture : ' A land of corn and wine and oil olive.' ' Yes/ he said ; ' most probably an Eastern would despise even the best parts of Scotland because they want the vines and the olives/" The experiences of this visit to the sacred scenes of Bible story left an enduring impression on William Nelson's mind ; and their special character in asso- ciation with his own early training justify some detail in reference to researches otherwise only possessed of personal interest. As a traveller, he made no pretension to geographical exploration or scientific re- search ; and unless when in company with one from whom he could derive information, he rarely referred to his experiences while abroad. His longest journeys were regarded by himself as only extended holiday rambles. But they were carried out with character- istic zeal; and some of the incidents which may be gleaned from them have their biographical value in so far as they disclose traits of personal character. He made his way by the desert route from Palestine to ligypt and Palestine, 99 E HOLIDAYS ABROAD. A JOURNEY through unfamiliar scenes had at all times a special fascination for William Nelson; and had circumstances favoured the devotion of his early years to exploration in strange, unknown regions, it was a work that would have proved peculiarly con- genial to his tastes. He had some of the most needful characteristics of an observant traveller ; and his acute- ness and keen desire for the thorough investigation of whatever came under notice, would have secured re- sults of permanent value. But as it was, his later travels, even when out of the beaten track of the tourist, were necessarily the mere holiday rambles of a man escaping from the engrossing cares of business. Yet even such rambles furnish some interesting glimpses of character. From among William Nelson's varied experiences of foreign travel in later years I select his trip to the Baltic in 187S, the incidents of which are familiar to me as his companion on the journey. More correctly. Holidays Abroad. 157 lie accompanied me, starting at a few hours* notice with that indifference to elaborate preparation so characteristic of him as a traveller. We sailed from Leith on the 4th of July by the steam-ship Buda, bound for Copenhagen. The North Sea gave us a rough shake ; but I was seasoned for the voyage by fresh Atlantic experiences, and William Nelson was a good sailor in all weathers. He was at home among the sailors on the deck or in the forecastle, and found, as usual, some objects of practical sympathy there. The first subject of curious investigation was the famed castle of Helsingor — Hamlet's Elsinore. But it is better seen through Shakespeare's eyes, and is much too modern and prosaic to awaken any associations with Hamlet the Dane. Our traveller, who was apt to be amusingly literal on such occasions, protested against the contemptible escarpment which it offered in lieu of " Till! dreadful miiiiinit of the cliff That bi'otleti u'er Inn base into the sea." But Copenhagen had much to interest him; and among the rest, the recurrence of his own name, under slight modifications, suggesting the possible descent of the Covenanting farmers of the Carse of Stirling from some rough old Baltic viking. The Thorwaldsen (jlalleries were explored with keen interest. Then, too, I was fortunate in an early personal acquaintance with il 158 William Nelson. I the eminent Danish archieologist, Worsaae, which subse- quent correspontlence on subjects of mutual interest had ripened into friendsliip. He was then chamberlain to the king. So under his guidance a charming day was passed in the Rosenborg Slot, where, in addition to the choice cabinet of coins, the famous silver drinking-horn of Oldenburg, and other ancient relics, a succession of state apartments are arranged with historical portraits, arras, jewels, and furniture of the royal Danish line. Illustrated as they were by the fascinating commentary of our guide, they charmed William Nelson beyond measure. " It was," he said, " like walking down the centuries into the present time." Another day was spent, under the same instructive guidance, inspecting the richly-stored cabinets of the Prindst-ns Palais, where the Runic slabs from Greenland — memorials of the Northmen's pre - Columbian discovery of America — excited the liveliest interest. On I'eturning to our hotel on the latter occasion, we found unusual stir and excitement. We had not been aware that the Prince Imperial of France was a guest at the hotel — come to Copenhagen, as was reported, to sue for the hand of a Danish princess ; and here was his Danish majesty's carriage awaiting the prince to take him to dine at the palace at the fashionable hour of 5 P.M. William Nelson remarks in a letter of the following July : — " You would see the sad fate of the Holidays Abroad. 159 Prince Imperial ; though one cannot help asking wliat business he had there, fighting the poor Zulus who had done him no wrong, and bringing discredit on British officers who were there on duty, whatever we may think of such duty. It seems hard to blame them for bolting — every man for himself. But you remember the little prince as we saw him at Copenhagen ; he did not seem very fit to fight Zulus or anybody else, poor fellow." The Frue Kirke occupies a prominent place among the attractions of Copenhagen, and is now associated in my mind with a chai'acteristic little incident. The travellers had visited the church, the decorations of which, from the chisel of Thorwaldsen, constitute the main source of its interest. On the morninjr of the Sunday following they attended tiie English service ; iintl in the afternoon his companion announced his intention to go to the Frue Kirke, and invited William Nelson to accompany him. But he refused, protesting that they should not understand a word of the service, and pronouncing the procedure to be a .- 1 more tlioiouglily. It broke out about three o'clock on the morning of Wednesday, the 10th inst., and in little more than an lioiir the whole building was in flames. I was aroused about a (juarter past four, and I hurried as fast as 1 could to the scene ; but I found when I arrived that the roof all round haeyond the Atlantic, " that it may keep yon in mind of the dear old city." Hence the ahrupt close of the Hope Park epoch, an^ ^W' '> 7 IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 Ik y£ 1^ I.I ■ 2.2 ■u u« Mil u lit lU ■ii 11.25 UUU 6" Photographic Sciences Corporation A »*% \ ^^ SJ \\ 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. MSM (716) •72-4S03 \ii Jl! li ■ 182 William Nelson. yond me, and had to tell him so. I expected a scolding, and instead received a cheque ' in pay- ment for what you have done of the book.' What I had done was merely to indicate the lines upon which the book might run. A fortnight before his death he sent me a copy of the book I ' was to have written,' with a very kind note, which I value much. The publisher's office is a terrible place to a not- confident lady-writer. Sometimes I have had to wait while Mr. Nelson was ' interviewing,' directing, correct- ing, and so forth ; and my courage has not been strengthened by the spectacle of faulty work being overhauled in a most careful manner, and ruthlessly condemned or sharply criticised. Yet I have always gone out of that office with a light heart. Some kindly word about my children or my old home, some chat about the foreign lands he had visited, the gift of a book, a tatherly caution ' not to work too much ' — these made me feel that Mr. Nelson took his large heart into the publisher's office. Would that all publishers did like him." But the critical sharpness, and the abrupt manner of the man of business, preoccupied with the responsi- bilities of so large an establishment with endles j claims on its directing head, all disappeared so soon as he had satisfied himself that his instructions were being rightly carried out. The new Parkside Works were within Parkside. 183 easy distance of Salisbury Green ; and the claimants on his ever-ready charity speedily learned to know the time when he could be waylaid in his walk to or from the counting-room, and beguiled with a piteous tale. Mr. Gray, for many years the faithful head of the financial department, thus writes : " To old servants in the works he opened his purse freely. Women who had been employed in early days at the Castle Hill were held by him in special favour, and I have often seen him give them a pound note, sometimes when it was doubtful if they would make the best use of it. The plea that they had worked at one time at Hope Park was a frequent claim of beggars ; and many is the silver piece that has been given away to such folks. One adept at begging came to him, her tatters soaked and leaky shippers dripping with rain. She told a piteous tale, and pleaded she was the widow of a ma- chineman in the firm's employment thirty years before. The plea was irresistible; but the voluble manner in which the woman overacted her part aroused his sus- picions after he had responded to her appeal. ' What sort of a man was your husband ? ' asked he. ' Oh, a good, a very good man ! ' ' Ay; was he tall or short ? — as tall as that man?' pointing to a man about six feet high who had just entered. ' Yes ! ' responded the woman, * he was a braw, tall man.' ' Give me back the money ! ' he exclaimed with unwonted severity of tone, 184 William Nelson. PI i; I: as he recalled the fact that the old machinist was much below the ordinarj^ stature ; and the impostor was ordered to the door." His unstinted liberality in all philanthropic and missionary work was wholly unaffected by denomina- tional or party limits; and hence he was liable to be preyed upon by genteel foreigners claiming to be in temporary pecuniary distress, and still more by cler- ical impostors. When he had reason to think he was imposed upon, he would search into the matter with the utmost keenness ; though rather, as it seemed, with a desire to satisfy himself of the truth, than with any purpose of stinting his liberality in the future. One morning, as the family sat at breakfast, a servant came into the room, and alarmed Mrs. Nelson by whis- pering to her that there were two detectives at the door who wished to see her. Her manner must have betrayed her apprehensions, for one of them laughed and said, " Don't be frightened, Mrs. Nelson ; we have only come to ask you to use your influence with your husband, and try to get Mr. Nelson to give up giving money to respectable-looking beggars. There is a re- gister kept by a man in the High Street of all the ' giving people ' in Edinburgh. That is the first resort of this class of beggars. By paying half-a-crown, they are allowed to take a note of the names and addresses, and Mr. Nelson's stands at the head of the list!" He Parkside. 185 undertook to look more sliarply after the smooth- tongued gentry in black, though, it is to be feared, with only partial success. He manifested a sensitive repugnance to wealthy people whose riches were of no use to any one but themselves ; but he protested, to the amusement of his friends, that he strongly disapproved of promiscuous charity. He had his own rules of action. A maimed or deformed person, the blind, the deaf-mute, or any one incapacitated in the struggle for life, he conceived could never be wrongly helped. A poor widow, an old employe, or the widow or orphan of any of his old work-people, had an irresistible claim on his liberality ; and other pleas were readily forth- coming to justify the deed of charity to his conscience. But he took pains to search out genuine objects of com- miseration; and many of his charities were unknown even to members of his own family. One Saturday afternoon, when walking home with Mrs. Nelson, he asked her to wait while he went in to a humble dwell- ing. When interrogated as to the object of his visit, it was ascertained that he had been giving a poor widow money to pay her rent; and on further in- quiry it turned out that he had been paying it regu- larly for years. Nor was this a solitary case, as became known when death closed the liberal hand that had so often made the widow's heart leap for joy. Charity was in him a spontaneous impulse of kindly sympathy % 186 William Nelson. which, while exercised not only unobtrusively but with a sensitive shrinking from recognition, was carried out on too great a scale to escape observation. The diffi- culty of his biographer is to select from the varied instances at his disposal. " I saw him once," writes a lady, " as he was walking along Clerk Street, pause at a confectioner's window, where a poor little ragged urchin was standing gazing wistfully at the cakes in- side. One kindly hand was laid on the boy's shoulder ; the other took a silver piece from his pocket. A few words were spoken, and Mr. Nelson passed on, while the boy darted into the shop ; and I had the pleasure of seeing him come out a moment later already devour- ing one of the cookies of which he had become the delighted possessor." He was never known to refer to such acts. They were, indeed, of too frequent occur- rence to seem to him worthy of note. The poor and needy had learned to regard him as their unfailing resort ; and if his charity was abused, he would say in reply to prudent remonstrants that it was better a few impostors should succeed, than one genuine claim be rejected. The traders on his benevolence were wont, as already noted, to watch for him on his way to Parkside ; and Mr. Gray notes of such claimants : " Mr. Nelson would sometimes say to me, ' The printing trade must be in a dreadful state,* for in his walk thither he had been Parkside. 187 met by half-a-dozen printers pleading for help. He inquired at times into the state of the trade, with the view, I suppose, to guide him in his charities; for it offended his guileless trustfulness in others to find he had been imposed upon, though it never led to any stint in his liberality." Another who had been many years in his service writes : " He had an almost child- like confidence in some folks; but if his suspicions were once aroused as to anything wrong, he ferreted out the matter to the bottom, and in case of any betrayal of trust, he would speak of it with a keen sense of wrong. But if you responded with any denunciation of the offender, his manner changed, and he generally found some apology or some reason for pitying the delinquent. Nor did the fact that a claimant had wronged him affect his consideration of the case if it proved to be a necessitous one, especially if he had a wife and chil- dren." When an action was raised by the contracting engineer who undertook the repairs of the machinery, against the widow of his predecessor, to enforce the completion of some work for which her late husband had been responsible, William Nelson opposed it, de- claring that no good ever came of prosecuting a widow, and he ultimately repaid £130 of law expenses incurred in the suit. Under the system which such a spirit naturally de- veloped, the relation between master and servants i 188 Wiiiiajn Nelson. ^ assumed a very different aspect from that of the mere hireling. The workers in his employment cordially sympathized in his success, and took a pride in con- tributing to the prosperity of the firm. A gentleman, whose intimate relations with it lor many years made him familiar with its internal economy, thus writes: " The claims of his own work-people at Hope Park or Parkside were never disregarded. He had, as the firm still has, a host of pensioners : aged employe's, and the widows and children of former workmen, who were mainly dependent on his charity for their daily bread. Groups of them, or of their representatives, still as- semble in the entrance hall at Parkside on the pay-day, by whom his name is revered. They tell their own tale of satisfaction and gratitude." The charity which thus began at home did not end there. The difficulty, indeed, is to select from the examples communicated to me. One characteristic instance I owe to a fellow- traveller, who found himself in company with William Nelson in an Italian town during a festive season. It was a scene of holiday rejoicings; but it did not escape Mr. Nelson's notice that Avhile the mass of the people were enjoying themselves, there were a number of uncared-for poor whose misery was made the more apparent by the festive scenes that surrounded them. This so impressed him that he forthwith made arrange- ments with a hosteller for the entertainment of the 11 ^ Parkside. 189 ragged lazaroni. Another gentleman who passed some weeks with him at one of the German spas tells this story: — "At the little English church there was a clergyman stationed, entirely dependent on the free- will offerings of the ever-changing congregation. There were no resident members to act as churchwardens or vestrymen; so, after the service, the poor clergyman himself went round and collected the offertory. This was too much for Mr. Nelson. He volunteered his ser- vices, which were accepted. To the clergyman's agree- able surprise, the collection increased amazingly; and he only learned where the increase came from by a re- turn to the old scale after Mr. Nelson's departure." It was a curious study to note the guilelessness and child-like simplicity which William Nelson retained unchanged to the close of his life, along with rare shrewdness and sagacity as a man of business. When- ever any transaction assumed a business aspect, how- ever trifling might be the amount involved, he was prompt, clear-sighted, and acute, detecting and with quiet firmness resisting any attempt at overreaching or fraud. On one occasion, when I was his fellow-trav- eller, a knavish newsboy to whom he had intrusted a sixpence decamped without returning the change. This breach of faith provoked a display of indignation so en- tirely disproportionate to the value of the loss, as obvi- ously suggested to our wondering fellow-travellers in the 190 William Nelson. railway carriage that they witnessed another Shylock bemoaning his lost ducats. They little knew that the rogue, by the invention of a pitiful tale, might have transmuted the stolen coppers into gold. This trans- parent naturalness of character revealed itself equally in his intercourse with high and low. Alike at home and abroad he was often brought into familiar relations with men of rank and distinction, and his engaging manners and wide culture made him a welcome addi- tion to any company. But there was no change in his manner towards the nobleman or the skilled artisan. An old friend notes of him what many will recall : — " Reverence was part of his nature. However intimate he might be with a friend, he scarcely ever addressed him, personally or by letter, except by full name as Mr. or Dr.; and it was the same with his own em- ployds. The Dick or Tom of his fellows in the work- room was Richard or Thomas, if not Mr. , when spoken to by him." His circle of friends included men of the most dissimilar social positions ; and his inter- course with some of his old workmen whose integrity and worth had been proved by long experience was of the most intimate and confidential nature. No wonder that he was faithfully served. He practically demon- strated his belief that, — " The rank is but the guinea's stamp ; The man's the gowd for a' that." Parkside. 191 He entertained at his table the publishers, booksellers, and others with whom he had business relations. Mr. David Douglas thus notes his recollections of him and of his kindly hospitalities : " He was the one to whom any of us would have gone in difficulties or doubtful trade questions, feeling sure that he would not only give sound advice but kindly sympathy. Many such cases occur to me. He used to gather round his table annually the various members of the printing and pub- lishing trades ; and I used to admire his true hospi- tality in making every one, from the youngest guest to the oldest, as much at home as possible, gently draw- ing out their best stories, and exchanging with genial humour some pleasant talk with all." In his Saturday visits to the Castle of Edinburgh in connection with his restorations, referred to in a subsequent chapter, the most eminent archaeologists, artists, and literary men, along with his choice personal friends, responded to his welcome invitations. At times the company included such distinguished additions as Lord Rose- bery or Lord Napier and Ettrick, who took a special interest in the work. But it would never occur to him that any spirit of social caste could influence such a gathering, and his own list of friends always included some of his trusted workmen from Parkside. A lady whose services as an authoress brought her into frequent contact with Mr. Nelson, after noting 192 William Nelson. i his liberality in all business transactions with herself, adds a little incident of her personal experience. His love of dogs has already been noted ; but it might have been assumed that however welcome their com- panionship might be at Salisbury Green, the intrusion of stranger dogs into his room at Parkside in business hours could hardly fail to be resented. Her own experience, however, is thus narrated : " I had taken my dog with me one morning ; a large brown spaniel, Rovci by name. He is not a general favourite among my friends, being rather boisterous in his greetings, to say nothing of his muddy paws in wet weather. His place therefore was generally without, and his intrusion into Mr. Nelson's room was undesigned on my part. Contrary, however, to his usual experience, Rover obtained a most cordial reception. A messen- ger was sent out for biscuits for him ; and I rarely afterwards received a note from Mr. Nelson asking me to call which did not end with the invitation, ' Please bring doggie when you come.' It was no wonder therefore that Rover soon learned to feel himself at home there, and never willingly passed the door when we walked in the direction of Parkside." After noting acts of kindness and liberality to herself, she thus proceeds : " My intercourse with Mr. Nelson was only that of a business acquaintance, yet I can truly say, when I saw him carried to his grave that September Parkside. 193 day, I felt that I had lost a iVieml. And this, I am sure, was no rare feeling among those thus brought into business relations with him. One trait often struck me — the kindly manner in which he always spoke of his large staff', as one name or another might come up in conversation. 'The right man in the right place,' he would say, or some other hearty term of apprecia- tion ; and it was evidently no taskmaster who was over them, but rather a sort of patriarch dwelling among his own people, sure of their loyalty and affection." Testimonies of a like kind have reached me from very diverse sources, all pointing to kindly relation- ships between this true captain of industry and his employes, such as seem, without exaggeration, to have realized in these days of mere trading rivalry some- thing akin to the fealty of knightly service in the olden time. The golden rule of ever doing the right was carried out with unconscious simplicity. Mr. Gray, who, as cashier at Hope Park and Parkside, was familiar during many years with all the financial details of the business, thus sums up his testimony to the habitual business life of his old master and friend : " He was eager to avoid anything that could possibly bear the aspect of sharp practice, or allow the faintest breath of suspicion of unfairness or shabby dealing; and his generous, large soul won for the place a reputation of uprightness and honour." 13 : m m h k I '- CHAPTER XII. C/V/C INTERESTS. AS a citizen William Nelson was ever ready to for- ward whatever appeared calculated to promote the public welfare ; and his faith in the Divine maxim that righteousness exalts the nation knew no limits in its practical application. He judged his fellow-men, moreover, by his own high standard of rectitude ; and, with his faith in humanity, he was prepared to favour the largest popular concessions. In politics accordingly he heartily sympathized with the Liberal party, and frankly gave expression to his opinions on all the great questions of the day. His numerous letters to his friends abound in discussions showing the keenest in- terest in all the events and movements that engaged public attention : the scientific discussions and religious controversies ; the triumphs of engineering skill ; the fascinating novelties of geographical exploration; or again, the Crimean War, the Indian Mutiny, the great American Civil War, the Franco -German War, the Eastern question in all its phases, and the no less Civic Interests. 195 momentous issues of party strife at home. In a letter, for example, of May 13th, 1886, addressed to his fellow- traveller. Major MacEnery, in which he gives him the latest information about their poor old dragoman, Abdallah, he thus writes: "I earnestly hope that there will soon be an end of the turmoil that there is at present in regard to Old Ireland, by letting her people have Home Rule to the fullest extent. There can be no harm in this ; and we who are north of the Tweed will be a great deal the better too of having the management of our own affairs a great deal more in our own hands, as it is absurd that we should have to apply to Parliament for its sanction for many things that it knows little or nothing about; and a deal of money would be saved were applications to Parliament for them not to be necessary. The bill for the sewage of a district, for instance, in the south part of our city had to be got through Parliament lately; and what can that august body know about this odoriferous subject? We are much more familiar with it our- selves." His appeal in such questions was apt to be to common sense; and when practical aid was needed, his purse v.'as ever available. His sympathy with the working -classes found its most fitting expression in his dealings with those in his own employment. When the works at Hope Park were in flames, more than one onlooker reported overhearing the remark by ii I 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 H 1 pi i \ ik 196 Willia7n Nelson. some of his work-people, that they were sure he would feel it as much for their sakes as his own. A lady- visiting a poor woman in the neighboui-hood of the Hope Park works, whose husband was ill, was told by her: "He works for Mr. Nelson; and they dinna let their men suffer when they canna work." Another told her that the aged and the crippled or maimed were found employment at the Parkside Works, "for Mr. Nelson can aye find a job to suit a' sorts." The evils of improvidence and the misery resulting from the drinking habits that prevailed among the lower classes were constant subjects of thought. He systematically exerted himself to devise innocent pastimes, and to stimulate the working -classes to more refined tastes and intellectual sources of enjoyment. His New-Year's letters to friends always included some reference to the midnight gathering around the Tron Church in the High Street of Edinburgh for the " first-footing," with its customary excesses, at the inauguration of the New Year ; and every symptom of improvement was hailed with delight. The movement accordingly for dis- placing the taverns by " workmen's homes " and coffee shops met with his heartiest encouragement. A Glasgow paper-maker mentioned to a friend that he had not seen Mr. Nelson for many years, when on the occasion of a visit to Edinburgh he went into one of the places then being established under the name of Civic Interests. 197 " British Workmen's Houses " for the supply of non- intoxicating refreshments. To his surprise he found Mr. Nelson seated there in company with one of his daughters. On his expressing some surprise, Mr. Nelson said he had come to see how things were served ; and that really he thought the coffee very good, and indeed, he said in his hearty way, he thought the milk quite as good as what they got at home from his own cows. He was not without a hope that one of the results of his reviving the popularity of St. Bernard's Well, hereafter referred to, would be the promotion of the same good end. It is not therefore to be wondered that Mr. Nelson's services were sought for in public life, and his fellow-citizens repeatedly manifested the high esteem they entertained for him by urging his acceptance both of civic and parlia- mentary honours. But few men ever shrank more sensitively from publicity, and only when the impor- tance of the question under discussion overpowered his natural reserve could he be induced to take any part in a public meeting. Such, however, was the hifjh sense of his services as a citizen that he was selected by her Majesty for the honourable distinction of Deputy- Lieutenant of the County of Edinburgh. But his appreciation of the antique beauty and historical associations of his native city overcame all his retiring dread of publicity whenever they were i'ii i- i ■i 198 William Nelson. endangered ; and the same regard for the amenities of civic architecture, and the dread of the destruction of whatever is associated with the memorable events of bygone times, repeatedly find expreasion in his critical notes from abroad. In 1873 he writes to Mr. Camp- bell from Vienna, describing a two months' Continental tour, in which he was accompanied by Mrs. Nelson and his daughters Eveline and Meta. He passed from Paris and Geneva to Italy ; spent some time in Florence and Venice; travelled as far as Naples; and then returned to Rome. " I need not say," he writes, " that Rome, which is really the capital of the world for art and archsBological interest, detained us much longer than any of the other places. I was there twenty-three years ago, and though great works are now in progress, I may say that there has been as yet no veiy great change since that time. The city, however, is now under Italian government, and in a few years Rome will be completely altered. There are large buildings in course of erection near the railway station, which are understood to be the commencement of an entire new city in that quarter ; and in many of the streets throughout the city are marks on the houses, indicating that they are either to be wholly or partially demolished for improvements, or for the widening of the streets. But I must say that from what I have seen of the new buildings recently erected in Rome the i::: Civic Interests. 199 architecture is of about as poverty-stricken a kind as can well be imagined. They are constructed of brick, which is plastered over, and the plaster gets a coating of size of a pink hue very much like that of blot- sheet; and the effect is anything but cheering. The windows have nothing round them but plain mouldings, and these are painted gray. There is not the slightest attempt at architectural ornament externally in any of the new buildings that I happened to see. If this sort of thing goes on to any great extent, the fine mediaeval feeling that there is about Rome as it now exists will be in a great measure done away with, and it will present in many parts a smooth-shaven and very unattractive appearance. The main things notable in the way of change, besides the new buildings to which I have referred, since I was in Rome formerly, are the excavations in the Forum and the Palace of the Ceesars, the Baths of Caracalla, and the changes caused by the occupation of the city by the Italian troops, and the disappearance from the streets of the religious processions, which are not now permitted. We hurried on to Rome in order to be there at Easter week, expecting to see something of the religious ceremonials for which that week has been famous for ages; but though we were in Rome the greater part of it, we found it nothing more than an ordinary week, as far as religious ceremonials are concerned. The Pope and his council are in the sulks, and as processions in the streets are not allowed, they have taken care that the curiosity of strangers shall not be gratified by any great ceremonial in the churches. It would interest you much to see the ruins of the Palace of the Csesars, now that they have been cleared out, especially that part of them which is known to have been the court house. The wall all round still exists to some extent, as do also portions of the mosaic floor, and the place where the emperor or the judge sat is still to be seen. There is in front of it a portion of the marble balus- trade that extended across this part of the court ; and Dr. Philip, missionary to the Jews in Rome, who acted as guide to us in our wanderings through these immense ruins, said there can hardly be a doubt that Paul stood before that very balustrade and pleaded his cause before Nero as his judge. The guard-rooms of the soldiers of what is called the Palace of Tiberius are quite entire, and on the walls of them are several very interesting scratchings made by the occupants of those rooms in ancient days. One is of a Roman galley in full sail ; another is an outline portrait said to be of Augustus Caesar; another is a caricature likeness of Nero; and another a very clever comical figure of a fellow with a tremendously long nose. What a living reality they seem to give to those old times! In a room at a little distance there is a Civic Interests. 201 remarkably clever scratching of a donkey with a mill on its back, with the words below : ' If you labour as I do, you shall not want bread.' How little things of this kind carry us back to the far bygone past ! " In like manner, in a letter to Dr. Simpson, he thus records the impression which his visit to St. Petersburg in 1884 left on his mind : " We were very much dis- appointed with St. Petersburg, as it occupies a site that is very flat and very unhealthy ; and it is a city of pure sham, so far as the architecture of it is concerned. The principal buildings, as a rule, are of plaster or cement, and are painted in a style that is perfectly barbaric. Even the celebrated Winter Palace is not an exception. It is of Roman architecture; and it is besmeared with paint of a yellowish-brown colour which is sufficient to make one shudder. The building, moreover, is of great extent, and it is all the more repulsive on this account." But if the disfigurement of the modern city of Peter the Great on the Neva, or the effacement of the historic antiquities of Rome, offended his taste, and gave rise to unavailing regrets, every movement of a like kind affecting his native city roused him not only to vehe- ment protest, but to vigorous action to avert as far as possible the threatened mischief. Under such stimu- lus, all reserve disappeared, and he stood forth as the resolute defender of his city and its historical memo- 202 William Nelson. I 1 rials. Hia letters to old schoolmates, whose lot had been cast far from those favourite haunts of early years, are frequently devoted to a notice of the rescue of some threatened antique building, or a wail over the irrevocable destruction of some historic pile in the alleys or closes of Old Edinburgh. The old Bowhead land had an interest of its own, apart from its singular picturesqueness as an example of the civic architecture of older centuries. When its demolition could no longer be averted, he rescued from the wreck some of its substantial oak timbers, and had them fashioned into antique furniture as memorial gifts to absent friends. In 1883, another of the venerable survivals of older generations, immediately adjoining the former Castle Hill establishment, was demolished ; and he thus records the event in a letter to myself : — " I sent you a Scotsman, with an account of the demo- lition of one of the old houses that you will remember on the Castle Hill. It stood in front of Milne's Court, looking down the West Bow, and presented a very picturesque front, both to the street and to the court behind. Two stone-vaulted shops faced the street, standing some feet back from the pavement. It was thought that the main walls of the house went straight up all the way, and that the timber front, projecting story by story farther into the street, was an addition of later date ; but this was a mistake, for the original Civic Interests. 203 liacl beams extended riglit over the pavement. The like- lihood is that there was an open veranda on each flat, though it had been closed in with lath and plaster in course of time. On the second flat, when the plaster was removed, it was interesting to see a neatly-carved oaken balustrade, that had been covered up probably for centuries, where one could fancy the good folks of the house sitting in their balcony enjoying tho fresh air and having their gossip on the great events of the day. They could look down the Lawnmarket and the West Bow and up the Castle Hill ; and it must have been a choice place on great occasions, when a royal cavalcade came up the Bow, or when some poor rogue went down it for the last time." (In allusion to the old site of the gallows in the Gmssmarket.) "I see, on turning to your ' Memorials of Edinburgh in the Olden Time,' that it belonged to a worthy old citizen, Bartholomew Somerville, a liberal benefactor to our University in its early days." The sympathetic interest thus manifested in every ancient feature of the special haunts of his boyhood extended to whatever contributed to the picturesqueness and beauty of his native city. One who was very familiar with his indefatigable exertions for the con- servation of whatever pertained to its historical antiquities — Mr. D. Scott Moncrieff"— thus writes in reply to a request for information relative to the share ■ ( 11 I borne by Mi*. Nelson in recent efforts on that behalf :— " It is no easy matter to do this, for Mr. Nelson for many years took an active interest in every movement having for its object the enhancement of the beauties of his native city. As you are aware, he was long a member, and latterly one of the council, of the Cockburn Association, founded in 1875, for promoting the improve.nent of Edinburgh and its neighbourhood ; and as convener of the council I had frequent oppor- tunities of hearing his views upon such questions. His interest was much engaged, in particular, in the im- provement of Edinburgh Castle, the Meadows, and other public parks, the encouragement of a higher style of architecture, and the frustration of mean and tasteless designs, vulgar advertisements, and the de- praved habit of painting stone work. He strove to obviate the necessity for unsightly v/orkshops and tall chimneys, for which in his own extensive works there was found no place." But he soon discovered that mere criticising, remonstrating, and suggesting im- provements were of little avail ; and as Mr. Scott Moncrieff adds : " His interest in the work of the Association was not confined to attending meetings and expressing his views. Every citizen of Edinburgh may well feel proud and grateful that amongst them there was one gifted, not only with an exquisite taste for all that w&s beautiful, but with an enthusiasm in Civic Interests. 20i having his aspirations given expression to, and also with the means of carrying his ideas into effect." One of those practical demonstrations of his public-spirited liberality has a history of its own. The circular panel of the finely-carved mantle-piece in the council room of Heriot's Hospital is filled with a painting which perpetuates the tradition that the medicinal spring of St. Bernard's Well, on the Water of Leith — resembling in character the famed Harrogate springs — was discovered by a party of Heriot boys while sporting on the bank of the stream. A more dubious legendary tale assigns the origin of the name to the occupation of a cave on the neighbouring slope by the saint still associated with its healing waters; but its medicinal virtues are noted for the first time in the Scottish Magazine for 17G0, at which date the water seems to have been in great repute. The old Scottish judge, Lord Gardenstone, an eccentric va- letudinarian, having derived much benefit from the medicinal waters, in 1789 erected over the healing fountain a fine Doric temple, designed as a reproduction of the famous Sibyl's Temple at Tivoli. A colossal plaster statue of Hygeia was placed within the columns, over the vaulted chamber of the well. Thus enshrined, it has ever since been a favourite morning resort ; and William Nelson continued for many years to be one of its most faithful frequenters. But the picturesque and 206 Wiiliam Nelson. richly-wooded valley of the Lcith, to which the Heriot boys resorted in the eighteenth century, lias long been invaded by the extended new town. The temple had fallen into disrepair, and the boys of the neighbouring village of Stockbridge had defaced and mutilated the statue, till it presented some of the most familiar characteristics of a genuine antique. The amenities of the spot had suffered in all ways, and the proposed erection of a public laundry on the adjacent area threatened the final ruin of the well, when in 1885 Mr. Nelson interposed, purchased it and the grounds in its vicinity, restored and beautified the well, and commissioned Mr. Stephenson to execute a marble statue of Hygeia, to replace the mutilated goddess of earlier days. The surrounding grounds were tastefully laid out, under the directions of a skilled landscape gardener, and the whole finished at a cost of £5,000, and presented to the city. He did not live to see the fine statue placed on its pedestal ; but his letters to his friends frequently refer to it, along with others of the various works of restoration which so largely occupied his thoughts and engaged his active sympathy in his later years. Writing to Captain Chester in January 1886 he says : " I send you the last report of the Cockburn Association, from which you will see that I have in hand the restoration of several ancient buildings in the Castle, and of the mineral well on the Water of Leitli Civic Interests. 207 called St. Bernard's Well, a chroiuo-lithograph of which I enclose. I am glad that it has fallen to my lot to do something ere I be ' called lience to be no more/ for the beauty and interest of mine own romantic town." The shrine of his favourite healing fountain had been restored to far more than its pristine beauty, and the generous benefactor to whom the work was due had himself been " called hence," when the convener of the Cockburn Association wrote : " What Mr. William Nelson undertook he did well and thoroughly ; and so long as Edinburgh citizens look down upon the valley of the Water of Leith, his work at St. Bernard's Well will keep his memory green in their hearts." But, as his letters show, other and still more exten- sive and costly restorations engaged William Nelson's practical liberality, and continued to be objects of deepest interest to him till the close of his life. So early as 1847, attention had been recalled, in the " Memorials of Edinburgh in the Olden Time," to the fact that the ancient hall of the palace in the Castle still existed, though so defaced and overlaid by later transmutations as to have passed out of knowledge of the living generation. But the matter was once more forgotten till near the close of 1883, when Lord Napier and Ettrick published in the Scotsman an account of his explorations above the modern ceiling of the hospital ward, where, " on creeping up a ladder, through a trap- ■«- 208 William Nelson, door, he found himself in a maze of mighty beams, on which the dust of centurie^j lay thick and soft." It was the fine old open timbered ceiling, of carved chestnut, of the great hall of the Castle. Public attention was now keenly awakened to the interest of this historic relic. Here was the aula Castri, or great hall of the Castle, where there is little doubt the Scottish Par- liament assembled in 1437 to inaug-urate the reign of the young king, James II. Here, too, if the legend is to be accepted as a verity, only two years later Chan- cellor Crichton had the fatal symbol of the bull's head served up for the Earl of Douglas. It was here that Charles I. held his coronation banquet in 1C33, and that Argyle entertained the Lord Protector Cromwell in 1650. Of the historic worth of the ancient hall there could be no question ; and not only its degradation to the purposes of a garrison hospital, but the general neglect and disfigurement of the Castle, had long been a subject of public complaint. The council of the Cockburn Association followed up the letter of Lord Napier with a memorial to the Marquis of Hartington, then Secretary of State for War, complaining of the misappropriation and deface- ment of the ancient hall, and urging its restoration. But the wonted formalities and circumlocution of official correspondence ensued, with little prospect of any satisfactory result, " when," as Mr. Scott Moncrieif Civic Interests. 209 writes, " we were still hoping that the building might be rendered available for uses more in harmony with its history and associations ; and while the matter was still under the consideration of the authorities, Mr. Nelson, knowing the well-nigh insurmountable obstacles in the way of Government dealing effectively, timeously, and reasonably, in affairs of the kind, in the most generous and patriotic way offered at his sole expense to undertake the restoration, not only of the old Parliament Hall, but also of two other most interesting and picturesque features of the Castle, the Argyle Tower and St. Margaret's Chapel. The little oratory of St. Margaret had been a subject of interest to him from the time when it was anew brought under notice, in 1845, as a long-forgotten historical relic ; and as for the Argyle Tower, it was associated in his mind with the reverence due to the martyrs of the Covenant. The fine old Edinburgh cemetery, the Greyfriars' Churchyard, was only sepa- rated from the West Bow by the Grassmarket, where in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the public gallows was erected, for the execution not only of degraded criminals, but of many of the victims of intolerance in Covenanting times, to whom a common grave was assigned in the neighbouring cemetery. There, accordingly, in happier days the Martyrs' Monument was erected, with its tribute to the memory of " about a 14 210 William Nelson. hundred noblemen and gentlemen, ministers, and others, noble martyrs for Jesus Christ/' all executed at Edin- burgh, "from May 27th, 1061, that the most noble Marquis of Argyle was beheaded, to the I7tli February 1688, that Mr. James Renwick suffered." It was but a step from the early home in the West Bow to the Greyfriars' Churchyard, where the Martyrs' Monument had been an object of veneration to William Nelson from his youth. The same spirit of reverent piety which led to the erection of the Martyrs' Monument on the spot selected, as a mark of ignominy, for the graves of the victims of Stuart persecution, associates the name of Argyle with the tower in the neighbouring fortress in which Archibald, Earl of Argyle, was imprisoned before his execution in 1685. He had gone up to London to pay his homage to Charles II., relying on the indemnity which had been granted, as far as England was concerned. But Scotland was still a separate kingdom ; and as a prominent leader of the Scottish Covenanters, Argyle was regarded with special antipathy. He was accordingly arrested, cast into the Tower, and from thence transferred to the state prison in the Castle of Edinburgh. It was from that prison chamber that the earl addressed to his friends letters marked by a rare spirit of calm Christian resignation, including the simple far-well note to his own son, written immediately before his execution. Of the latter Civic Interests. 211 William Nelson had a facsimile made. Still more, according to current belief, it was in the same prison chamber that a member of the council, on coming to interview him, was startled at finding the victim of intolerance calmly asleep immediately before he walked with quiet composure to the scaffold. The scene associated with such memorable occurrences appealed to William Nelson's religious no less than to his ar- chaeological sympathies ; so that the restoration of the Argyle Tower was for him, in a very special sense, a labour of love. The work thus generously undertaken proceeded slowly, amid endless official routine and red-tape for- malities. Plans were prepared and submitted to the critical revision of his colleagues in the council of the Cockburn Association before asking official approval. But hospital accommodation had to be found elsewhere; and the patience he manifested, and the calm persever- ance with which he overcame the m% inertice of the Circumlocution Office, were a source of admiration to his friends and of amusement to himself. His unostenta- tious liberality, along with the taste and judgment he displayed, naturally gave weight to his opinions ; and, notwithstanding his instinctive reserve, he was induced on more than one occasion to remonstrate with the authorities on plans that had received official approval. In 1887 the sketch of a tasteless design for a new 212 William Nelson, entrance gateway, to form the main approach to the Castle, had been exhibited without attracting public attention. The working plans had been withheld ; and it was about to be proceeded with, on the plea, stated in an official letter, that "every reasonable facility had been afforded for criticism." A respectful letter of remon- strance was forwarded by him to the Marquis of Lothian. Its style of formal courtesy would suggest that it had been drawn up more probably by some legal member of the council of the Cockburn Association, and sent to him for signature. But having done so, his own simple and plain-spoken style is unmistakably manifest in the postscript he has added : " The proposed designs, I can assure you, will give great dissatisfaction. They are not at all in keeping with the grand old Castle." CHAPTER XIII. HOME HOLIDAYS. THE recreations of each summer's holiday alter- nated between foreign travel through unfamiliar scenes, and a sojourn in some choice centre of Scottish scenery and historical associations. But it was indis- pensable for William Nelson's full enjoyment of either that it should be shared with Mrs. Nelson and his children. Indeed, the hints that occasionally transpire in his letters, of the pleasure with which he exchanged their summer resort for Salisbury Green and Parksidc, show that he had been thinking far more of their happiness than his own. He liked his children to travel, and while they were still young repeatedly sent them abroad, either with a tutor and governess, or under the care of some trusted friend. He had a strong prejudice against Continental boarding-schools, and instead of sending his daughters to one, he preferred arranging for their spending successive winters abroad in charge of a friend, where they had the advantage of masters who came daily to them. The same feeling I I ' 214 William Nelson. animated him in later years, alike in his plans for foreign travel, and in the choice of a summer haunt among favourite Scottish scenery. Of the latter, pleasant memories come back to me of many a ramble by the Tweed and its tributaries the Ettrick, the Leader, the Yarrow, and other haunted streams; and by St. Mary's Loch, which has wooed alike the poets of elder and of modem times. A mere residence in the country, however attractive the scenery might be, speedily proved irksome to William Nelson. His active mind required constant occupation ; and the physical impediments which increasing obesity, accom- panied by a retarded action of the heart, interposed in the way of long pedestrian excursions, only led to a change in the methods of attaining the same end. He was ever on the look-out for some fresh and unfamiliar scene. In the' summer of 1879 he made his way to St. Kilda, a curious little, outlying, ocean-girt rock of the Hebrides, the only one of a lonely group that is in- habited — " Nature's last limit, hemmed with ocean round." Its population numbered in all seventy -f ve, j, decrease from the previous year; for, as one of them said, "they had lost a foine woman, the only one who coot speak Enklish." The rude little hamlet, with its primitive stone dwellings, each of two apartments, attracted Mr. Nelson's curious study ; and beyond it a Home Holidays. 215 no less primitive bit of masonry incovered the Tober Childa Chalda, or St. Kilda's Well, by the village. But this visit to St. Kilda is noticeable here for an incident associated with one of William Nelson's peculiarities that bordered on eccentricity. Though a business man of punctual habits, and exacting habitual punctuality in others, he never carried a watch, and indeed, I believe, never possessed one. He had some inexplicable way of guessing the time, and could tell it generally with wonderful approach to accuracy. He never missed a train, or failed to keep an appointment, and could not see what people wanted with watches. He said he did perfectly well without one. But this St. Kilda trip furnished an occasion when, for once, he deplored the want of a timepiece. Immediately on landing on the island the party were met by the minister, who eagerly inquired if any of them had a watch, to tell him what o'clock it was. It turned out, on inquiry, that the minister's watch, which was the only one on the island, had been sent away for repair six months before ; and if William Nelson had been the fortunate possessor of one, here was an opportunity for its useful disposal. The following summer was passed at Philiphaugh, rich in memories of Montrose and Leslie ; of Alison ' Rutherford, the songstress ; of Scott, sheriff, as well as poet and novelist ; of Hogg, Wordsworth, and all the legends of the Dowie Dens of Yarrow. The river i 216 William Nelson. famed in song and story flowed by near the house, with " the Duchess's Walk," a charming wooded path on the opposite bank of the river, leading through the grounds of Bowhill to Newark Castle. Kirkhope Tower, Branksome Hall, Melrose Abbey, and many an- other hoary pile, were within reach. William Nelson's memory was stored with passages from his favourite poets ; and as the associations of the scene called them to remembrance, he would repeat long pieces suggested by the locality or adapted to it. It is the centre of old traditions of the Flodden men ; and many a spot along the Tweed and its tributaries tempted us each new day to wander through scenes that told everywhere of the Last Minstrel and his Lay. In a letter to Mr. Campbell he says : " I write this at Philiphaugh, a mansion that we have taken for sum- mer quarters. It is about two miles from Selkirk, the scene of the defeat of the Marquis of Montrose. The estate is still owned by the Murrays of Philip- haugh, the same family who have held it since the old times of the Border raids and the Debatable Land. A cairn near the house, now overgrown with ivy, is said to mark the spot where the Highlanders were surprised by Leslie, and the Marquis turned and fled. A stone on the cairn is inscribed, ' To the memory of the Covenanters who fought and fell on the field of Philip- haugh, and won the battle there, a.d. September 13, Home Holidays. 217 1C45.' The grounds and woods are extensive and fine ; and there is good fishing for Fred, as the Yarrow and the Ettrick are close at hand ; and there will be good shooting for him when the time comes We had Dr. and Mrs. Wilson and their daughter with us lately. ' We enjoyed their visit much ; and oh ! how fond Dr. Wilson is of Auld Reekie and its associations, though, alas, there is but little left now of the ancient city." Again, in the summer of 1883 came a concise mes- sage by ocean cable, followed by the ampler invitation : " I have taken Cowdenknowes for the summer. Come and let us have a look at its surroundings ; do not fail. Cowdenknowes, I may tell you, is an old mansion, his- torically interesting, which is situated in one of the most lovely districts in the south of Scotland. It is about five miles from Melrose ; and the remains of the castle of Thomas the Rhymer, which consist of very picturesque ivy -covered walls, are on the property. The Leader passes through the grounds, and it is an excellent trouting- stream. It has already been laid under contribution in this way by Professor Annan- dale and Fred, whenever the water was in a good state for the rod." Here, as at Philiphaugh, some fresh ramble was planned each morning ; while the evenings were beguiled with pleasant converse, and apt quota- tions germane to the scenes of that land of romance. The ruined castle of Thomas of Ercildoim has already 218 William Nelson. been noted as close by. In a neighbouring valley was Oakwood Tower, of old the dwelling of the wondrous Michael Scott, — " A wizard of such dreaded fame, That when in Salamanca's cave Him listed his magic wand to wave. The IhjUs would ring in Notre Dame." The Eildon Hills, the tokens of his power, and Melrose, where his bones were laid " on St. Michael's night," are only a few miles off. Ibn picturesque ruin of Smailholme Tower, where the later minstrel spent the happiest days of his childhood, was within reach ; Abbotsford, the Fairy Dean, and the Rhymer's Glen, Dryburgh, and the vale of Tweed, haunted at every winding with some old tale or song, all wooed us by turns. So each day had its excursion, its legend of some sort to investigate, its ruin to explore. It was with William Nelson on the Tweed as on the Nile: he was indefatigable in the pursuit of information con- cerning every minutest object of interest, and never was satisfied till he had seen for himself, and questioned and sifted all available evidence. The memories of many a pleasant day, with the incidents of kindly in- tercourse and genial humour that added fresh sunshine to the scene, would furnish material enough to add many a chapter over which old friends would not readily tire. But such reminiscences can only be glanced at Home Holidays. 219 hero. I select, therefore, from among those home holi- days the latest of all : a summer at Glenfeoehan. Glenfeochan is a romantic glen of the West High- lands, through which the Feochan finds its way to the sea. Oban is only six miles off, and so steamers and boats and all the attractions of the sea are at hand, such as ever had a fascination for William Nelson. For he guessed, as has been seen, that could the pedigree of the Nelsons of Throsk be followed up, they might prove to be of the stock of old Danish rovers, the sons of Thor, whose home was on the sea ; and so he welcomed the hint at an etymology of the Bannockburn farm from the Thor of the Vikings. Unquestionably he possessed not a little of their steady hardihood and love of adventure, softened though it was by trans- mission through a sober race of Covenanters, who tilled the carse where Bruce had triumphed, and, when needs were, could emulate him in sturdy resistance to the tyrant. Glenfeochan House is beautifully situated at the foot of the glen. It lies low — perhaps a little too low — nestling among the hills, with glens and lochs on every hand. The drawing-room windows looked across the river to the sea; and when the curtains were drawn, and a fire was found not unpleasant in the cool autumn evenings, the emotional delight with which William Nelson welcomed the songs of Scotland, or some of his 220 William Nelson. favourite hymns, was infectious. His taste in music was simple, but it yielded him intense pleasure, and not infrequently moved him to tears. But such even- ing relaxations were generally the close of a busy day ; for Oban is a choice centre for the explorei*. It afforded means of access to the fiords or sea-lochs of Argyleshire, and to the outlying Hebrides. There were lona and Staffa, Glencoe and Mull, with the ruined keep of Duart Castle, the Lady Rock, and the legend of " Fair Ellen of Lome," which is perpetuated in Campbell's ballad of "Glenara." There was the vitrified fort of Dun MacUisneachan at Loch Etive to explore ; and on the opposite side of the loch, Dunstaffnage, the home of the Dalriadic kings, where of old was held in safe keep- ing the I'lah fhail, or stone of destiny, now enshrined in the coronation chair in Westminster Abbey. The unique cairn or serpent-mound of Loch Nell, another object of special curiosity, was visited more than once, in the hope of arriving at some definite idea of its actual character. For the fact of a huge saurian mound, like some of those in the valley of the Ohio, lying there in a secluded nook between the hills of Lome that form ^the steep escarpment of Glenfeochan, was a thing too exceptional for William Nelson to allow to pass with- out some attempt at a solution of its mysteries. But the choicest of that summer's explorations was a day on Eilean Naombh, or Holy Island. Our High- Home Holidays. 221 land boatmen called it Oil Tsiach n'an Naombh (the College of the Holy People), if we understood rightly ; for we had a good deal more Gaelic than tended to our illuniination. Our party was pleasantly augmented by the addition of the Rev. Dr. Walter Smith ; and William Nelson's sense of humour was keenly excited by his report of a dialogue between two of the High- landers, who, happily for us, spoke in English. " James," said the younger of the two, " I have been told that when the deceiver tempted our mother Eve, it was in Gaelic that he spoke." — " Well, Donald, I should think it not at all improbable. The Gaelic is a very sweet and persuasive language, particularly when well spoken ! " The idea that the Devil's Gaelic must necessarily be of the best, was a subject of much mirthful comment. Holy Island, the southernmost of the Garvelloch Isles, lies opposite Scarba, with the famous whirlpool of Corryvrechan between. The landing is in a deep cove, where the first object of attraction is St. Columba's Well, a clear fountain of fresh water bubbling out of the living rock on the margin of the sea. A flight of steps leads up from the sacred pool ; and on a level area a short way above stands the chapel of St. Columba, a little ruined cell of only twenty-one feet long. It is of the most primitive Celtic type. A narrow, square- headed opening in the east end, deeply splayed exter- nally, constitutes the cast window ; under which is the 222 William Nelson. simple altar-slab of slate, still entire. On a neighbour- ing height a rude enclosure, marked by an upright stone with an incised cross, is traditionally known as the grave of St. Eithne, the mother of St. Columba, But the special objects we were in search of were a pair of bee-hive houses, which we found not far from the chapel. They are built of unhewed slabs, without cement, conjoined like a figure 00, rude as any Hot- tentot kraal, and old, probably, as the days of the sainted missionary's first sojourn among the pagan Celts. The little island is uninhabited, and out of the reach of ordinary tourists, so that time and weather are the only injurers of its curious relics. The day at Holy Island was one of rare enjoyment to all, but especially to William Nelson, whose intelligent inquisi- tiveness and love of adventure were equally gratified. Within more easy reach of Glenfeochan, in a seques- tered nook among the hills, lies the ancient cemetery of Kilbride, with its ruined church, its holy well, and moss-grown sepulchral memorials. Hf'rc, among others of note in the district, lie the Macdougals of Lome, whose castle of Dunolly stands at the mouth of Oban Bay, with their more modern mansion near by, where is still preserved the famous Brooch of Lome. But here, above all, lies prostrate, in three detached pieces, a singularly beautiful sculptured cross, with a figure of the crucifixion, and the traces that show where Home Holidays. 223 a crown of bronze, or other more precious metal, sur- rounded the Saviour's head. Its inscription was conned and puzzled over in repeated visits. Rubbings were taken of it, and the legend at length deciphered, show- ing that it was erected in 1616 by the lord of the neighbouring manor, Alexander Campbell of Laeraig. The Cross of Kilbride had at this time an unwonted interest, for William Nelson was already enlisted in the project of erecting at Kinghorn a memorial cross to Alexander III., the last of the Celtic kings, in the suc- cessful accomplishment of which, as will be seen here- after, he took an active part. But, meanwhile, some of the Glenfeochan experiences of a more special char- acter are worth noting. A letter that followed me to Canada, written in the middle of October, supplies the details. " Our stay at Glenfeochan," he writes, " is fast drawing to a close, Fred only remaining behind till the end of the week, unless great success with his rod should tempt him to stay longer. The sight of Loch Nell on Friday last made his teeth water, as salmon were leaping in it at the north end in great numbers ; he is sure he saw at least forty of them so engaged. He was not rewarded, however, with even a rise from any of them, and he had to be contented with bringing home nothing but a single sea-trout, which, however, was a very respectable one as to size, and in splendid condition There was very nearly 224 William Nelson. being a terrible tragedy here, the story of which is this. We had staying with us a son of Mr. Keeley Halswell, the artist, a boy of eleven years of age. He made friends with the son of the gardener, a boy about eight ; and the two went one day to the loft over the stable to catch mice, they being accompanied by Bertram's little dog, Gip. There is in the loft a large chest for holding grain for the horses, but it was empty at the time ; and what did the two little fellows do ? They lifted up the lid and got into the chest, in order that they might not be seen by the mice ; and down came the lid, the catch took hold, and they were imprisoned like poor Ginevra of Rogers's ' Italy,' — * When a spring-lock that lay in ambush there Fastened them down,' but happily not for ever. They made what noise they could, and Bertram heard this ; but he thought it was just the boys amusing themselves, and so he paid no attention to it. Thus it went on, and the poor little fellows so suffered from want of fresh air that they could not speak to each other, and were getting very faint. Young Halswell had a dreadful headache; when at what would have been in all likelihood their last effort, they tried the lid of the chest, and found to their surprise that it opened, and they were free, after a confinement that must have lasted about three hours. Home Holidays. 225 For their release they were indebted to the little dog Gip. After the lid came down they heard the little creature running round the chest and leaping on it in a state of great excitement, as if conscious that there was something wrong. His leaps were continued for a long time ; and they are sure that in one of them he must have pushed his nose at the hasp of the lid and opened it, and hence their release. Well done, Gip ! Nothing could have been more extraordinary or more unex- pected than this." In the same letter he refers to a robbery that had just taken place at Parkside, by which about £250 had been carried off out of the safe. The police seemed to think that the robbery might have been committed by some one in the works. It was amusingly characteristic of the writer to find him in a subsequent letter seemingly deriving much satis- faction from the fact that the rogue had not been convicted ! His recreations, as already stated, alternated between such pleasant rambles among the beauties of nature and objects of historic and archaeological interest in his own country as have been glanced at here, and a journey through novel scenes in foreign lands. The previous summer had been devoted to the tour in the Baltic and Russia, which has furnished some brief notes for a previous chapter. Writing to his friend, Major MacEnery, soon after his return, Mr. Nelson thus in- 15 226 William Nelson. dicated the plans he was already maturing for another season : " We went over a good many thousand miles in our late journeyings. The only breakdown was that of Florence, at Moscow, which came in the way to prevent our all going to the Volga, and seeing some of the strange sights that are to be witnessed there, especially at the great fair of Nijni-Novgorod. So we had to leave our visit to that part of the world till another opportunity ; and when I go next to Moscow, which I hope will be in the course of next summer or autumn, if all's well, I will not be satisfied unless I go down the Volga to Astrakhan, at the extreme north of the Caspian Sea, and sail down that sea to Baku, wdiere the cele- brated oil wells are, and take the railway then across to Batoum on the Black Sea, and go thence to the Crimea, and so find my way home by Greece and Vienna : and this will be a glorious journey." With such visions of future journeyings in strange lands the year 1884 had drawn to a close. The " break- down at Moscow," referred to above, though it so far balked the plans of the travellers, does not appear to have materially lessened the pleasure of their trip. In a letter of Mr. Simon Fraser MacLeod, I find allusions only to " our visit to this delightful and picturesque old city of Moscow." The view of it from the Kremlin sur- passed in its novel and singularly picturesque aspect anything ever seen by them before. They saw also Home Holidays. 227 a no less novel illustration of sacred art, thus described by the same young traveller : " The Church of the Assumption is a golden pile assuredly ; and besides the head of a nail from the true cross, and a portion of the Virgin's mantle, it contains a sacred painting by St. Luke, the beloved physician. He may have excelled in his latter professiou ; but prepared as we were to find any merits in his painting of the holy mother, we could not discover even the lines of a face or any pretence of a likeness possible through the rawness of the colours used by the evangelist in those early and primitive days of art. Mr. Nelson, by the aid of a candle dimly burning, thought at one time he had dis- covered something resembling a beautiful face ; but on my suggesting that it was but the reflection of his own expressive features that he saw, we came to the conclu- sion that such was the actual state of the matter." All was novel, interesting, and delightful ; for the tour was to prove for two bright young members of the party the prelude to their joining hand in hand to enter together on the journey of life. They shared in the Glenfeochan holiday of the following summer, where their own final arrangements were settled, to the satis- faction of all ; and so with pleasant memories and brightest hopes the family gathered once more round the cheorful hearth of Salisbury Green. CHAPTER XIV. PROJECTED TRAVEL— THE END. THE route from Oban to Edinburgh passes througli some of the most beautiful and romantic scenes of Scottish landscape: by the Pass of Brander, Loch Awe, St. Fillans, and Doune Castle, to Stirling ; and then by Bannockburn, the Strath of Falkirk, and the old Nelson homestead of Throsk, to " the gray metro- polis of the north." After a few days or weeks of zealous exploration around Glenfeochan, or off to neigh- bouring islands and more distant glens, in the fashion already described, a run into Edinburgh was a welcome change. There William Nelson was equally at home when making a pleasure of business or a business of his most favourite pleasures. The city, built on the picturesque heights surround- ing the Castle Rock, embosomed among hills, and look- ing out on the sea, has a singular fascination for its citizens; and with William Nelson it was a passion, like that of the old Hebrew for Jerusalem, or the Athenian for the City of the Violet Crown. The Projected Travel — The End. 229 Cockburn Association, which has already been referred to, takes its name from Lord Cockburn, the friend of Scott, of Brougham, and Jeffrey ; the enthusiastic advo- cate of whatever tended to protect the historical re- mains and to preserve the beauty of their native city ; and the mantle of the genial old judge seemed to have been bequeathed to William Nelson, with a double portion of his spirit. As an active member of the council of the association, his zeal in protesting against every piece of tasteless vandalism was unremitting. But his enthusiasm would not allow him to be content with mere wishes or denouncements. He had the means as well as the will, and when civic officials and Government functionaries dallied and disputed over needful reforms, he took them in hand himself, on a scale of liberality all the more admirable from the genuine modesty which repelled all public recognition. And yet evidence survives to show how far his aims exceeded even his own comprehensive liberality. With the fancy that begot for Edinburgh in the heyday of its literary glory the name of the Modern Athens, there grew up in the minds of a past genera- tion the idea of rearing en the Calton Hill, as a modern Acropolis, a reproduction of the Parthenon, with, it is to be presumed, the sculptures of some Scottish Phidias as its final adornment. It was to con- stitute a sacred Pantheon, in special commemoration of 230 Willia^n Nelson. those to whom the nation owed the welcome boon of an honourable peace after the protracted strife of the Napoleonic wars. In old school-boy days it had been a matter of liveliest interest to watch the process of construction that promised the accomplishment of this ambitious scheme. One after another, the lofty Doric columns rose to the number of twelve; and then the work stopped. The builders had neglected the wise maxim to sit down first and count the cost, whether they had sufficient means to finish it. The funds had given out at that early stage. The boys that had watched the first efforts of its builders grew gray with years ; and the abortive Parthenon — a monument of ambitious folly — became familiar to the eyes of a new generation, till they ceased to realize its absurdity. There were indeed men of taste whom it continued to ofTend. David Roberts, himself a native of Edinburgh, and with the keen eye of an artist for architectural effect, was loath to abandon the dream of a new Parthenon. The late D. R. Hay, the ingenious author of " The Laws of Harmonious Colouring " and " The Natural Prin- ciples of the Harmony of Form," united with James Ballantyne, the poet, and a little band of kindred spirits, in a vain effort to revive the scheme. But the later Renaissance had died out. The taste of the age had reverted once more to. mediaeval art, and their exertions proved fruitless. William Nelson thoroughly appreci- projected Travel — The End. 231 ated the absurdity of this gigantic failure. With grim mirth he satirized tlie builders who had made such a beginning and were not able to finish. But he did not despair of seeing even that huge blot erased ; and in May 1887, while busy with his Castle and other restorations, he thus wrote in a letter intended for his friend Dr. Field, but which was found among his papers, unfinished, after his death : " Here is a matter that I have been thinking of for some time ; and in ca.se you may think that I am off the rails in regard to it mentally, I have to say, ' I am not mad, most noble Festus ; I speak the words of truth and soberness.' You will be aware that it was intended, a great many years ago, that there should be a building on the Calton Hill here, which would be a facsimile of the Parthenon at Athens, and twelve pillars which were intended for the portico of the building were erected. But there were no funds to go further ; and the pillars in conse- quence stand, as it were, a monument of Scottish folly. Now it would be a grand thing, not only for Edin- burgh, but for Scotland generally, if the building were completed, and were made a Walhalla for statues and busts of Scotchmen who have distinguished themselves in the service of their country and otherwise ; and it would be all the better if the completion of the building were to be made an international object. Now I know that your worthy brother, Cyrus Field, likes to do 232 it William Nelson. things that are international, and I will take it kind if you will have a talk with him on this subject ; and if he will open his purse and give a grand contribution towards the completion of what would be a truly noble building, I would get the matter started." He then goes into a calculation of the cost. He had consulted with an architect, who estimated the necessary sum as not less than £150,000. He then goes on to say: "I send you a photograph of the poor shivering pillars that have been erected ; and I hope that there is spirit enough among moneyed men in America and Scotland not to allow them to stand much longer in their solitary condition." A blank in the letter shows that some estimated item had yet to be ascertained ; and so the letter lay unfinished and unsent. It is thus apparent that there were scarcely any limits to his ideal of the Edinburgh of the future. The main- tenance of his native city in unblemished honour and beauty was the source of many a fascinating dream, and took form at times in the union of such idealizations with his practical liberality. Hence the desertion of the Highlands for the city was no exchange of the poetry of life for mere prosaic realities. Edinburgh was rich in all the materials wherewith to fashion an ever-new romance : a thing of beauty to be preserved or to be made more beautiful. There the landscape gardener, the architect, and decorator, were all busily at work on Projected Travel — The End. 233 his plans for renovating St. Bernard's Well. The sculp- tor's studio had to be visited to learn of the progress of the new statue. Then, too, official formalities and ob- structions had at length yielded to his quiet persistency, and the plans were in progress for restorations, not only on the great hall of the Castle, but also on the Argyle Tower, and the venerable little oratory known as St. Margaret's Chapel. With the latter object in view, more than one excursion had been made to lona, where the little Norman structure styled the Chapel of St. Oran is affirmed to have been built by St. Margaret, the queen of Malcolm Canmore. Hence it was assumed to furnish the fittest model for a design to replace the somewhat commonplace modern restoration of the original door- way. A photograph of it was accordingly secured, and placed, for that purpose, in the architect's hands. The Argyle Tower, of old the state prison, was to be freed from manifold incongruities of modem bar- barism, as has since been done in the best taste. But William Nelson's sympathies were not narrowed within the bounds of his native city, and a special occasion now invited his practical co-operation elsewhere. The approaching anniversary of the death of the good king Alexander III., last and best of Scotland's Celtic kings, was to be signalized by the erection of a memorial cross to mark the scene of that fatal event of six centuries before, the fruits of which are bewailed in the fine old 234 William Nelson. fragment of native elegy preserved for us in Wyntoun's Chronicles, the earliest known lyric in the Scottish lan- guage. The old chronicler pictures the prosperity of the nation under the rule of him that led Scotland in love and loyalty ; and then he says, — '* This faiI6d fra he died middenly ; This sang was made of him furthi : When Alexander oar king waw dead, That Scotland led in love and lea, Away weH Hiina of ale and bread, Of wine and wax, uf gaming and glee ; Our gold waH changed into lead. ChriHt, bom into virginity. Succor Scotland and reniede That 8tad is in jierplexity." Kinghom, the birthplace of William Nelson's mother, and the scene of many of the happiest days of his own childhood and youth, was the place historically associ- ated with the national disaster. When he carried off his sisters to revisit the old scenes, it will be remem- bered that one of the special spots pointed out to them was "The King's Crag," as the point is called which tradition assigns as the actual cliff over which, when his horse stumbled, Alexander III. was precipitated. The event was thus associated with many of William Nelson's earliest recollections ; and the proposal to mark it with a suitable monument was responded to by him with hearty enthusiasm. From its initiation his Projected Travel — The End. 23i zeal never flagged. First came his subscription, the most liberal of all ; then correspondence and delibera- tions as to the design, the inscription, the most durable and best material. He writes to the Rev. Charles Shaw from Glenfeochan in October 188G, in reference to the appeal for subscriptions : — " Let me know as soon as you can what is the result, and I will then see what I can do to make up the sum." In December he discusses the details of the design and material. He fears, from its exposed site on the highroad from Burntisland to Kinghorn, that the monument will be liable to injury ; has "tailed the architect Mr. Blanc's attention some time ago to this circumstance, and that he ought not to forget it in making his finished drawings." Again he writes in the following February: — "Mr. Blanc says that the memorial cross ought decidedly to be of Peter- head granite ; and you will please hold me responsible for whatever shortcoming there may be in consequence." Then comes an equally characteristic passage : " I don't think there is any occasion for you or Dr. Rogers telling the committee of what you call my handsome offer. If this were done, the matter would, I have no doubt, be blazoned forth in the newspapers, and I would not like that at all." The next proposition was that he should unveil the monument, in the erection of which he had manifested so practical an interest. But that he would not hear of, and suggested the Ekrl of Elgin as Lord Lieutenant of the county, and a good man to boot. " Failing him, you should apply to Lord Napier and Ettrick, or Lord Rosebery." When at length the memorable day arrived, there was not only the beautiful memorial cross to unveil, but a new public park and golfing ground to open. The authorities of the ancient burgh would not be balked of their wish to mark in some way their sense of Mr. Nelson's generous co-operation in the work, so Lord Elgin and he were both admitted to all the hon- ours and privileges of burgesses of Kinghorn. The speech of the latter, in reply to the provost's address in handing to him his burgess ticket, is too replete with characteristic feeling and personal reminiscences to be omitted here. He was no orator, and indeed shrank with instinctive reserve from all public appearances; but the simple utterances of genuine feeling are the best of all oratory. " Fortunately for myself," he said, " and perhaps still more fortunately for those who hear me, I am not often in circumstances which call upon me to speak in public. On the present occasion, when there has been conferred on me the high honour of being made a burgess of the royal burgh of Kinghorn — an honour which I never ex- pected, and which I do not feel that I have done any- thing to merit — for this, gentlemen, I thank you most sincerely. It is an honour which shall ever be held by Projected Travel — The End. 237 nie, and by those who come after me, in the highest esteem. There are many things which make Kinghorn a place of much interest to me, and which give a peculiar value to any mark of respect which comes from its town council or its inhabitants. For one thing, it was the birthplace of my mother, and we all know what that means. But it must not be supposed that my attachment to Kinghorn is solely on this account. I love it for its own sake, for its quaint and picturesque old character as a royal burgh ; and I love it also for its fine coast-scenery, with its beautiful sands, its bold rocks, and its many advantages for bathing, fishing, and even for those who think they perform their whole duty at the seaside when they merely saunter along it and inhale its health-giving breezes. But I love it still more — perhaps most of all — for the sunshine with which it filled my early years, making my holidays holidays indeed. 1 stayed always with my grandfather and grandmother, whose kindness was very great and unceasing. So strong was the impression made upon me at that early period of my life, that I never allow a season to pass without visiting Kinghorn, and renewing my acquaintance with the rocky scenery of the coast, which must be admitted to be exceptionally fine. So great is my familiarity with the coast here that I know every rock of any consequence that it contains ; and I may add that there are few places more richly endowed 238 William Nelson. , i. with all the amenities which health-seekers are in quest of and value. It ought to be one of the most popular of the health-resorts on our shores. Another thinjj which took a hold of me in my early years, and which I still remember well, was the talk of the old folks. They had some themes on which they never ceased to descant. One of these was Paul Jones's piratical visit to the Firth of Forth, which was looked upon as a very formidable event by the small towns on the coast of Fife, but which happily turned out a scare. My grand- mother saw the big ship of the pirate from near the hamlet of Glassmount, about two miles from King- horn. And there is good news for strangers who may come now-a-days to the old place for summer quarters. They need not be afraid for another Paul Jones coming to alarm them, as there is now a strong fortress on the Pettycur road, under the shadow of whose wings they may rest in perfect safety. But there was another matter quite as engrossing, and that was the injury which steam-boats had done or would do to the town. Before these began to ply there were big, ordinary boats which carried passengers; and as these boats started only at particular times of the tide, passengers had generally to stay some time in the town : more to the delight of the innkeepers and others, we should imagine, than to that of the strangers thus detained, in order to have the opportunity of leaving a little of their money Projected Travel — The End. 239 behind them. We know better now ; and I am sure that the inhabitants of Kinghom would not be inclined to go back, on any terms whatever, to those good old ways, so easy in all that belonged to them. Such retro- spects, while both interesting and instructive, are not without an infusion of sadness. In my case, early com- panions in and about Kinghorn have all disappeared but two: namely; Henry Darney, a worthy citizen of the town, and Major Greig, now of Toronto, Canada. It is a touching thought, and brings to my remembrance the tender and beautiful verses of Delta, with which I conclude : — ' Where are the iilaymates of those years ? Hills arise and oceans roll between. Wo call, but scarcely one appears ; No more shall be what once has been. ' Yet, gazing o'er the bleak green sea, O'er snow-capiwd cliffs and desert plain, Mirrored in thoiight methinks to nie The si>ectral i)a8t returns again. ' Once more to retrospection's eyes, As 'twere to present life restored. The perished an