The Poetical Works of Walter C. Smith :: :: University of Virginia Library

That night, though the storm was still raging,
Austen and Paul went forth,
Arm in arm, braving the rain, and the chill roaring wind from the North;
It was nine on the Minster-clock as they knocked at a staring green door,—
Grass-green it of the brightest,—and a big brass plate on it bore
The name, Andrew Downie, Esquire, in letters readable, large,
All staring out of the panel, shining and big as a targe.
Yet he was kindly and human, a plump, little man by the fire,
Slippered and cheery, drawing the wine and the walnuts nigher,
Not without kettle on hob, not without spirit-case too,
For an easy bachelor evening, lonely, with nothing to do:
Prosy and garrulous he, and his face brightened gladly to see
Paul and his student friend come to give him their company.

ANDREW DOWNIE, Esq.

Try the port, sir; it ought to be good,
It cost me a mint of money;
It's been twenty years out of the wood,
With a taste of the olives it should
Go down just like new milk and honey.

I bought it in, let me say,
When we sold up old Drumkeller;
He was famed for his wines in his day,
And the Duke carried half away,
But the rest came to my poor cellar.

It was I that wound up his affairs,
And a pretty mess they were in:
He had gone on 'Change, and the bears
Turned his acres quickly to shares;
They'd have robbed him soon of his skin.

He was bit with the railways first,
And then he went in for mines,
Wheal-Bwbl, Wheal Dydl, Wheal Wuhrst,—
I lost a big thing when they burst;
But they smashed him clean off the lines.

We sold him up for a song
To a stupid stocking-weaver;
I always thought we were wrong:
And he did not hold out long—
Heart, they said—but it was his liver.

Had we waited, instead of a loss,
He might have been good for a million;
There was shale in those acres of moss,
The laird and his pony would cross,
With his wife sticking fast to the pillion.

I told them to wait; peats may blaze,
But they don't fly away in a hurry:
But money was tight in those days,
And the Banks took to watching your ways,
So we sold, like fools, in a flurry.

Well, I bought in his port, as I said,
And it's sound every bottle as yet,
Every cork with a wig on its head,
And a bouquet might quicken the dead,
Or savour a bailie with wit.

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But you sip it as if you were stung;
You'd prefer it perhaps with more body?
Old port for old fellows; the young
Like the smack of the wood and the bung,
Or even the flavour of toddy.

Not drink! and a man in your line!
Well, I don't set up for a teacher,
But a lad that don't take to his wine
Will not do for a learnèd divine,
Or a popular, orthodox preacher.

All the sound, solid parsons, I wist,
Drink their port with a kindly good will;
But your cold water dulls them like mist,
Or they get some heretical twist,
And go on, like the clack of a mill.

Oh, you're not in the preaching way;
You have come here about the newspaper;
But these Editor fellows, they say,
Must be soaked, like a wick, half the day
Ere they light up their evening taper.

Well; I'd not have believed it before
That so many men of ability
Could be standing about by the score,
Looking out for an open door,
And a job with a little gentility.

Look there, at that huge pile of letters:—
And that's not the half I am sure:—
All scholars, sir, greatly my betters,
All versed in political matters,
And Science and Literature.

What a wealth of brains there must be
In this fine old country of ours,
Which nobody ever can see,
Till he advertises like me
For a man of “original powers.”

One has written reviews for the Times,
One, paragraphs for the Spectator,
One encloses a copy of rhymes,
And another, he rings the chimes
On an “Own Correspondent's” letter.

And there's none of them but would as soon
Criticise the Almighty as not,
And see that the angels kept tune,
And watch that the sun and the moon
Do not squander the light they have got.

Clever fellows, Sir, wonderful clever!
But I want an original mind;
And these run in the same rut for ever,
Differing only in state of the liver,
And amount of lungs for wind.

You see, I have nothing to do:
I made a bit money, and stopt,
Then I tried this and that, with a view
Of getting some happiness too,
Ere my blossom of life was cropt.

I had hard lines, most of my days,
Rose just, as they say, from the gutters,
Knew little of children's plays,
Or country-folk and their ways,
Since I learnt how to take down the shutters.

We are all of us self-made here;
So is every one worth his meat;
And I don't know I ever was near
So happy and proud as the year
That I swept the rooms tidy and neat.

Then I thought myself something. I'd stop
And laugh, 'mid the dust right out,
Looking down on the boys in a shop;
And oh what a glory of Hope
Seemed floating then all round about!

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Well, I made some money, and then
I thought I would travel a while;
That enlarges the mind of men;
So they say, but nine out of ten
Might as well sit and swing on a stile.

Those French fellows gabbled so fast
I could not make out what they said,
And they shrugged and smiled, and went past,
When I spoke their own tongue, till at last
I was well-nigh losing my head.

So I wearied of big empty Kirks,
And cafés and pictures and shows,
And the old German towns with their Storks,
And Rome with its wonderful works,
And the Alps with their guides and snows.

Enlarge my mind, did you say?—
Not a bit, Sir; I came as I went!
It was six months of wearisome play,
And some photographs got by the way,
And food, like a long fast in Lent.

After that, I bought an estate,
Running still in a rut like the rest;
I had better have bought a bad debt,
For my money ran down like a spate,
And my bogs grew an absolute pest.

Rural life, lads, is all a mistake,
Seeing nothing but grass fields and botany,
And sleek, stupid cows half awake;
And the birds your morning sleep break,
And weary you with their monotony.

I used to go sauntering round,
And stare at my turnip drills,
Or watch the old crows as they found
Twisting worms in the fresh-ploughed ground,
Or the shadows flit over the hills.

But what human soul could exist
On a vision of shadows and crows,
And the trailing of clouds and mist,
Or the thought of the worms as they twist
Where the turnip or mangold grows?

So I filled with fish-tackle red books,
Sticking flies round my hat out and in;
But the trout picked the bait from my hooks,
And sniffed at my flies in their nooks,
Though they jumped to a boy's crooked pin.

Well, of all stupid sports that I know
The absurdest is catching your fish,
Getting tired as you walk to and fro,
Getting wet, too, for nothing, although
A sixpence would get you a dish.

As to shooting, no bird would remain
For a good steady shot; but as fast
As the pointers would point, they were fain
To be off, and I peppered in vain
As they rose with a whir, and flew past.

No; the country is stupid, or worse;
The mice would get drowned in the cream,
And then—no butter of course,
Or something went wrong with your horse,
Or the eggs vanished off like a dream.

In the country I never could get
What the country is meant to produce;
But I got in a hank of debt,
Till I advertised it to let,
Or to go, if it must, to the deuce.

Ah! the town, lads, for me! I don't care
Though I never see grass or tree,
Nor leave the old market square,
For there's true life and motion there,
Just to stand on the pavement and see

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Rural women with butter on blades,
Fisher-women with loaded creel;
How they chaffer with wives and maids!
How they storm through the varying shades
Of the passion they feign to feel!

You should see the gardeners too,
With their carrots and nosegays red:
Their gardens always do—
And there's nothing you want but you
Shall find there, living or dead.

Then on Fair-days and hiring-days—Ah!
It's as good as a play to be there,
As the ploughman jogs up with a straw
In his hat, and the lasses guffaw
At the jokes that are rife in the Fair.

Or on great days, just to see
The trades all out in procession,
The man who is armed cap-à-pie,
And Adam and Eve, and the Tree,
And the Serpent, and all the Temptation!

Oh, life, lads, there's nothing like life,
The stir and crush of the folk,
The bargaining, beering, and strife,
And the small boys with trumpet or fife,
And the gingerbread and the rock!

They talk of the fine country air,
But it never agreed with me;
I'm a town-bird, you see, and don't care
For the daisies and butter-cups there,
As I do for the dulse and the sea.

As for walks—what walk could you take
Like a stroll to the point of the pier,
To watch how the long tangles shake,
And the gull and the kittiwake
Dive and bob till your dinner hour's near?

But the Newspaper! well, here am I
In the town, and with nothing to do,
And I hear it is going to die
Of a Radical scamp who must try,
Forsooth, a halfpenny Review.

Now, the paper is part of the Town;
It would not be the same place without it;
I'd as lief the kirk-steeple fell down:
Let it cost me a plack or a crown,
We'll print it, sir, never you doubt it.

It was always here, as I say,
Coming out every week like the Sunday;
Quite enough too; I can't see a way
To have accidents fresh every day,
Or eclipses each Friday and Monday.

But business is business, and so
We must make it pay, if we can,
And I want one whose pen will not go
In a rut of set phrases, you know,
But a real original man.

As to politics, them I don't mind;
They go round and round like a jig;
I'm a Tory myself, but I find
Nothing pays so well as a kind
Of steady respectable Whig.

You may gird at the parsons a bit,
They've got Sunday all to themselves,
And don't spare their hearers a whit,
But I won't have an infidel wit,
Like that fellow Voltaire on the shelves.

I'm not pious—I never had time,
Though I learned all the Proverbs at school,
And some of the Psalms too in rhyme,
And I know that Isaiah's sublime,
And the Parables beautiful.

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You must let religion alone;
I'll have nought of the infidel kind,
We must write in a sound moral tone,
And not like that halfpenny drone,
But with fresh original mind.

And the main thing after all,
Must be always the Town's affairs—
How the Provost keeps up the ball,
And the names the Town-Councillors call
Each other, and nobody cares.

Then the shipping, and harbour dues,
And what's to be done with the bar,
And the kirks with their empty pews,—
Oh, there's plenty of capital news
For the paper, without going far.

Then there's accidents, railway smashes,
And how the poor shareholder smarts,
And the folk struck by fierce lightning-flashes,
And now and then mercantile crashes,
Or children run over by carts:

There's the Circuit-Courts, and the Member,
And the soirees wound up with a dance,
And the College, of course, in November,
And the woman the Queen will remember,
With her three little babies at once.

There's the stocking-trade, and the police,
The catch of herrings and whales,
And the cost of the wool in the fleece;
Who cares about war or peace
When our fishers have stormy gales?

If you like, you may give us a claver
About folk of the Town long ago,
Or a song with some body and flavour,
Though I don't deny that I never
Read poems, unless I don't know.

What we want is the news of the Town
To know all about ourselves clearly;
Now, I like your looks, I own,
And I don't care although I come down,
With a hundred-and-fifty yearly.

There, I'm tired of these long-winded scrawls;
Each harder to read than the other;
Oh, they're all of them Peters and Pauls,
Apostles of Wisdom that calls
In the streets, always making a pother.

But you have some sense, for you can
Be silent while others are speaking;
Now, I've told you all of my plan,
Only mind, it is always a man
Of original powers I am seeking.

When they came out to the street, Austen burst into a shout
Of such riotous, loud laughter, which he strove to check in vain,
That neighbours to the windows came with curious peering out,
As peal on peal rung, echoing, till the mirth grew very pain,
And when he would have ceased, it only louder rose again.

Why, Paul, he said, at length, you'll kill me with that solemn look:
Don't you know, man, I'm an editor, and real “original”—
A respectable Whig Editor, with a right to bring to book
The Provost and the parsons and the halfpenny Radical,
And to freely criticise all the local and the small?

Original powers of mind, Paul, to tell the catch of herrings,
And the nosegays of red carrots, and the current price of wool,
To describe the hiring markets, and the lasses, and their fairings,

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And profound examinations of our learned grammar school,
And the doings of the Councillors who call each other fool?

Was there ever luck like mine?—and I just come from playing tinker!
Oh the fresh thoughts I shall utter about the whaling ships!
If the Bailies only knew that a true original thinker
Was to criticise their speeches, and their little snacks and trips!
And how that halfpenny Radical shall sink in dark eclipse!

There's my destiny at last found, in this queer Universe,
To play respectable Whig on a hundred-and-fifty a-year;
A man of powers original paid duly to rehearse
The condition of the weather and the Provost, who, I hear,
Is a man of no condition, and a brewer of small beer.

Well, we come into this world, wrapt up in superfine cocoon,
Soft and silky, and our business is to reel it off again,
And to know ourselves but worms, and care for nought beneath the moon,
But to look about for what will eat, and eat it there and then,
And get rid of all fine feelings, and high dreams of gods and men.

I've been winding my cocoon off quite rapidly of late,
And am very nearly naked, and ready to devour
All that I can set my teeth too—and I am not delicate—
Heaven and earth, they say, shall pass away, like fading autumn flower,
But my heaven is gone, and earth alone has gript me with its power.

Is it worth while living longer after you have reached the stage
When life at last is possible, and you are purged of all
The nobler thoughts you cherished, and the hopes of a great age,
Coming with diviner visions to reverse the early Fall,
And the soul is fairly harnessed to the local and the small?

Ah! if one could only leave it, ere all higher dreams have left!
Could but die before the death of that which is our life indeed!
Could cease to be or ever one is utterly bereft
Of that gleam of something better, which may chance to be the seed
Of a hope for human hearts, when ours shall cease to beat and bleed!

Nay, I do not rave and maunder; I am not a love-sick boy
Whose life is all washed out, while he is whining through his teens;
But there's that has come upon me, which has taken all the joy
From my being; and when one has lost the staff on which he leans—
Well, he finds that he is lame, and maybe knows not what it means.

Perhaps I'll tell you more, Paul, on some day by and by.
Perhaps I'll keep my sorrow to myself —I cannot tell;
I know that I can trust you; but then I know not why
I should bind upon your spirit that which binds me like a spell,
Or lay on you my crushing burden, crushing you as well.

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I am weary, oh how weary! of all beneath the sun;
There's no nature in my laughter, and no sweetness in my thought,
I seem to have no Faith or Hope; my lights have one by one
Died out, and left an evil smoke: God help me, I am not
Good company this evening; better leave me to my lot.