Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (2223 page)

Leaving London, and ranging over provincial England and Scotland, we discover all sorts of distinguished and undistinguished people swarming in clusters on the new Hat Peg, and publicly humming together to their hearts’ content. Sometimes we find the most benevolent sentiments hung up to be aired, as it were, at the memory of Burns. At Glasgow, for example, we discover, to our unspeakable gratification, that our friend Sir Archibald Alison does not think the worse of Burns because he was a Radical. There is something affecting in this. It does honour to Tory human nature. Very interesting, also, is Sir Archibald’s account of how Burns came by his fame. Towards the close of the eighteenth century, Nature, it appears, had
 
a passport to immortality to dispose of; and she seems to have set about her work, as our English government has generally set about its work, by carefully going to the wrong place, and looking for the wrong man. She sets out to look for Burns in the halls of princes; and doesn’t find him there. She tries the senates of nobles; and doesn’t find him there. She wanders into the forums of commerce; and doesn’t find him there. She looks for him at last, where she ought to have looked for him at first, in her own solitudes under her very nose, so to speak and pounces on him at the plough, with his eye fixed on the mountain daisy.

At Newcastle-on-Tyne, a refreshing originality appears to have characterised the proceedings. Here the Burns Hat-Peg seems to have given way altogether early in the evening, and to have been skilfully replaced by local and living hat-pegs. Here, we learn from an after-dinner orator, that one of the grand characteristic merits of the Northumbrian peasant is his “looking with an eye of suspicion on the questionable sentimentality of the present day.” This singularly clear and intelligible tribute to local virtue having been offered in the words just quoted, an appropriate living commentary on the observation. of the speaker was presented in the shape of a new pitman-poet, who typified, we presume, that unquestionable sentimentality which Northumbrians look on with an eye of approval; for he contrived to get all the surplus cash of the company, after paying the expenses of the meeting, laid out in the purchase of copies of his poems.

We have reserved the demonstration at Edinburgh for the last, because the Festival at the Music Hall is the only one of the Burns Festivals which has, in any single respect, produced a favourable impression. We are not disposed to single out this particular assembly on account of anything that was done at it. One thing, indeed, was done at it, the taste of which seems to our mind rather questionable. Relics of Burns were exhibited, of course, at all the Commemorations. His hair, his toddy-ladle, his wife’s hair, his snuff-box, his pistols, his punch-bowl, and even a print over which he is reported to have once shed tears, were all displayed at different places. But the Edinburgh Gathering went a step farther, and exhibited a living relic, in the shape of a poor old man, who had lived one hundred years in this weary world, and who at that great age was hung up in public on the Hat-Peg, because he had been brought, as a carrier, into personal contact with Burns, as an exciseman. It seems scarcely consistent with the respect and the consideration which are due to great age to make a show of this old man; and, when one assembly had done staring at him, to pass him on to another.

The claim of our Edinburgh friends to be singled out for favourable distinction, arises, in our estimation, from the circumstance that one man happened to be present, who has done something for the memory of Burns besides talk about it. Among the list of toasts and speeches, we find just two lines, reporting that the company drank, ‘The Biographers of Burns,’ and that Mr. Robert Chambers acknowledged the toast. What Mr. Robert Chambers said for Burns, on this occasion, is not mentioned in the report we read. The infinitely more important question of what he has done for Burns, we are in a position to answer without referring to reports. About seventeen years ago, a grateful country had left Burns a sister, Mrs. Begg and her daughters, in the most impoverished circumstances; and Mr. Robert Chambers set on foot a subscription for them. The result of the appeal thus made, and of a solemn Branch-Burns Commemoration, got up in Ayrshire, was a subscription amounting to something less than four hundred pounds; of which the Queen and Court gave sixty-four. As much was done with this pittance as could be done; and it was sunk in an annuity for the three poor souls to live upon.

Mrs. Begg and her daughters were settled in a cottage in Ayrshire. Mr. Robert Chambers then went bravely to work with his own hands and brains to help Burns
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s kindred for Burns’s sake. After devoting admirable industry and research to the task, he produced The Life and Poems of Burns, in four volumes; published the work in eighteen hundred and fifty-one; and devoted the first proceeds of the sale, two hundred pounds, to the necessities of Mrs. Begg and her daughters
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thus giving from his own individual exertion more than half as much as the entire sum which all Scotland had given. We hope Mr. Robert Chambers will forgive us for filling up an omission in the newspaper history of the twenty-sixth of January, and mentioning, by way of contrast, the nature of his tribute to the memory of Burns.

If there be a brighter and better side to the Burns centenary picture than we have discovered, there happens, at any rate, as circumstances at present exist, to be one easy means of showing it to us. In the Times’ report of the Crystal Palace Festival, a document is printed, with names attached, which asks help for the only surviving daughter of Burns; and the plain question is put below it, whether that daughter would derive any benefit from the proceedings of the day, so far as the Palace at Sydenham was concerned. To our knowledge, that question has not been answered yet. We looked carefully at the reports of all the Dinners in England and Scotland, and found no reference made to the subject anywhere. Everywhere, the company sang, and took tea and coffee, and admired the relics with the tenderest curiosity; but we can find no instance in which the hand of the company is reported to have entered the pocket of the company with a view to Burns’s daughter, at the close of the evening. Until we are favoured with some satisfactory explanation of this singular circumstance, we can only repeat the question in the Times; putting it, in our case, not to the Crystal Palace Company only, but to every other company, small and large, which commemorated the anniversary of the twenty-fifth of January last. What has this grand outburst of enthusiasm done for the last surviving daughter of Robert Burns?

First published in
Household Words
12 February 1859

AT the close of a recent article, entitled “Burns Viewed As A Hat Peg,” we put this question, in reference to the centenary commemorations:”What has this grand outburst of enthusiasm done for the last surviving daughter of Robert Burns?” As we expected, the grand outburst, so far as it was reported, has done nothing. But as we learn with great pleasure from a letter printed below the working men of Glasgow (who were not thought worth reporting, probably because they were not connected with the great idea of the Hat Peg) have not been forgetful of the claims of Burns’s kindred on the grateful remembrance of Burns’s posterity. We gladly give insertion to this letter. It does honour to the writer, to those who have acted with him, and to the great city in which they live. Let Glasgow flourish! It is well known to be a liberal and generous place; and the more it flourishes, the better for Burns’s last descendant, and the better for the interests of civilised mankind.

[Probably only this first paragraph is by Collins.]

“Your article, Burns Viewed as a HatPeg, so truly delineates the spoiling of our national jubilee, that the most irascible Scot must forgive the occasional ‘skelp’ in the castigation meant specially for simulated enthusiasm. Your eulogium on Mr. Robert Chambers we fully appreciate; and for our late excessive outburst of real feeling, we plead national temperament, really the most ardent and impulsive, though usually considered the most cautious and sordid in Europe: in spite of our past history in daring adventure, or the present of this very city, which-apart from its late reckless speculation-whether pestilence was in the land, our brave soldiers rotting in the Crimea, or our fellow-citizens pining in foreign dungeons, has for years stood first in the nation when money was needed. The victims of continental despotism can also assure you that they have not been coldly received in cool, calculating Scotland.

“Why, then, you will repeat, has the only surviving daughter of Burns been so long neglected, and residing in our neighbourhood? Simply because a modest feeling, shared by her husband, kept them so retired in their humble condition, that only a very few knew that she existed; and the independent spirit of the honest old couple would have spurned any common charity, even when they were past work. Our greatest difficulty now is to divest our enterprise of the obtrusive assertion of charity; though, as you will see by the enclosed list, that we have realised considerably over one hundred pounds in small sums, and expect to treble it, when our Masonic Brethren and others are made fully aware that Mrs. Thomson of Pollockshaws exists at all. You may rest assured we will act up to the spirit of your article.”

From
Household Words
26 February 1859

A BREACH OF BRITISH PRIVILEGE

SIR, I occasionally see your journal at the houses of my friends, and I am told that it occupies a highly influential and prominent position among the periodicals of the present time. For my own part, I carefully abstained from subscribing to you, when you started. I didn’t like the look of you, then; and I don’t like the look of you, now. You are not English to the back-bone. You have more than once set up the foreigners the jabbering, unwashed, unshaved foreigners, who live on kickshaws and sour wine as examples to US. I doubt whether you really believe that one Englishman is equal to two Frenchmen, and six of any other nation. I doubt whether you know your Rule Britannia as you ought, and whether you sincerely feel that we are the “dread and envy” of every foreign community on the face of the earth. No, sir, you won’t do for me it may be disagreeable to you to know it but you won’t.

Why do I write to you, then? For three reasons. First, and foremost, to see whether you can be fair enough to both sides to print something which is not written by one of your own set. Secondly, to perform an entirely new literary feat, in the character of correspondent to a journal, by writing a letter to an Editor which doesn’t begin by flattering him. Thirdly, and lastly, to show you the results to which your precious modern principles have led, and will continue to lead, by quoting the last new example of the invasion of the execrable foreign element, as now exhibited every night, not far from you, at the West End of the Strand. There are my reasons; and here is my letter. Listen to the first, if you can. Print the last, if you dare.

I have been, for some time, prepared for a great deal in the way of desertion of national principle. When beards (which you recommended) began to grow on British faces-when shoeblacks (whom you encouraged) began to ply in British streets when the word “entree” appeared among the chops and steaks of British taverns; and when foreign opera companies could sing at playhouse prices on the British stage, and not be hooted off it, I was proof, as I fondly imagined, against any additional feeling of surprise at any additional foreign innovation. But, I was mistaken; and I don’t mind acknowledging it. Much as I was prepared for, I was not prepared, sir, for MR. BENJAMIN WEBSTER’S NEW ADELPHI THEATRE.

I shall probably be very severe in the course of this letter; but I will endeavour to be reasonable and just at the same time. In writing of Mr. Webster’s Innovation (for in the good old English sense of the word it is not a Theatre at all), I will bear lightly on the architect, Mr. T. H. Wyatt. I will assume that when he received his commission, it was saddled with certain conditions, which he was bound to fulfil, and did fulfil, as an honest man. I will even endeavour to write of Mr. Webster himself more in sorrow than in anger, when I come to the personal part of the subject, so far as he is concerned. First of all, however, I must take care to be general, before I become particular (there are people out of your literary set, sir, who understand the art of writing, though they seldom care to practise it) I must establish my principle and state my case; using a new paragraph for the purpose, and making it a short one. You see I know all about it, although, I thank Heaven, I am not a literary man.