CHAPTER III

HADDINGTON.

IRVING entered upon this second chapter of his youthful life in the summer of 1810. He was then in his eighteenth year-still young enough, certainly, for the charge committed to him. Education was at a very low ebb in Haddington, which had not even a parish school to boast of, but was lost among "borough" regulations, and in the pottering hands of a little corporation. The rising tide, however, stirred a faint ripple in this quiet place; and the consequence was, the establishment of that school called the mathematical, to which came groups of lads not very much younger than the young teacher, who had been stupefied for years in such schools as did exist, and some of whom woke up like magic under the touch of the boy-student, so little older than themselves. Coming to the little town under these circumstances, recommended as a distinguished student by a man of such eminence as Sir John Leslie, the young man had a favorable reception in his new sphere. "When Irving first came to Haddington," writes one of his pupils, "he was a tall, ruddy, robust, handsome youth, cheerful and kindly disposed; he soon won the confidence of his advanced pupils, and was admitted into the best society in the town and neighborhood." Into one house, at least, he went with a more genial introduction, and under circumstances equally interesting and amusing. This was the house of Dr. Welsh, the principal medical man of the district, whose family consisted of one little daughter, for whose training he entertained more ambitious views than little girls are generally the subjects of. This little girl, however, was as unique in mind as in circumstances. She heard, with eager childish wonder, a perennial discussion carried on between her father and mother about her education; both were naturally anxious to secure the special symrpathy and companionship of their only child. The doctor, recovering from his disappointment that she was a girl, was bent upon educating her like a boy, to make up as far as possible for the unfortunate drawback of sex; while her mother, on the contrary, hoped for nothing higher in her daughter than the sweet domestic companion most congenial to herself. The child, who was not supposed to understand, listened eagerly, as children invariably do listen to all that is intended to be spoken over their heads. Her ambition was roused; to be educated like a boy became the object of her entire thoughts, and set her little mind working with independent projects of its own. She resolved to take the first step in this awful but fascinating course on her own responsibility. Having already divined that Latin was the first grand point of distinction, she made up her mind to settle the matter by learning Latin. A copy of the Rudiments was quickly found in the lumber-room of the house, and a tutor. not much farther off in a humble student of the neighborhood. The little scholar had a dramatic instinct; she did not pour forth her first lesson as soon as it was acquired, or rashly betray her secret. She waited the fitting place and moment. It was evening, when dinner had softened out the asperities of the day: the doctor sat in luxurious leisure in his dressinggown and slippers, sipping his coffee, and all the cheerful accessories of the fireside picture were complete. The little heroine had arranged herself under the table, under the crimson folds of the cover, which concealed her small person. All was still; the moment had arrived: "Penna, penney pennavm i" burst forth the little voice in breathless steadiness. The result may be imagined: the doctor smothered his child with kisses, and even the mother herself had not a word to say; the victory was complete. After this pretty scene, the proud doctor asked Sir John Leslie to send him a tutor for the little pupil who had made so promising a beginning. Sir John recommended the youthful teacher who was already in Haddington, and Edward Irving became the teacher of the little girl. Their hours of study were from six to eight in the morning-which inclines one to imagine that, in spite of his fondness, the excellent doctor must have held his household under Spartan discipline-and again in the evening after school hours. When the young tutor arrived in the dark of the winter mornings, and found his little pupil, scarcely dressed, peeping out of her room, he used to snatch her up in his arms, and carry her to the door, to name to her the stars shining in the cold firmament hours before dawn; and when the lessons were over, he set the child up on the table at which they had been pursuing their studies, and taught her logic, to the great tribulation of the household, in which the little philosopher pushed her inquiries into the puzzling metaphysics of life. The greatest affection sprang up, as was natural, between the child and her young teacher, whose heart at all times of his life was always open to children. After the lapse of all these years, their companionship looks both pathetic and amusing. A life-long friendship sprang out of that early connection. The pupil, with all the enthusiasm of childhood, believed every thing possible to the mind which gave its first impulse to her own; and the teacher never lost the affectionate, indulgent love with which the little woman, thus confided to his boyish care, inspired him. Their intercourse did not have the romantic conclusion it might have been supposed likely to end in, but, as a friendship, existed unbroken through all kinds of vicissitudes, and even through entire separation, disapproval, and outward estrangement, to the end of Irving's life. When the lessons were over, it was a rule that the young teacher should leave a daily report of his pupil's progress; when, alas! that report was pessima, the little girl was punished. One day he paused long before putting his sentence upon paper. The culprit sat on the table, small, downcast, and conscious of failure. The preceptor lingered remorsefully over his verdict, wavering between justice and mercy. At last he looked up at her with pitiful looks: "Jane, my heart is broken!" cried the sympathetic tutor; "but I must tell the truth;" and, with reluctant pen, he wrote the dread deliverance, pessima! The small offender doubtless forgot the penalty that followed, but she has not yet forgotten the compassionate dilemma in which truth was the unwilling conqueror. The youth who entered his house under such circumstances soon became a favorite guest at the fireside of the doctor, who, himself a man of education and intelligence, and of that disposition which makes men beloved, was not slow to find out the great qualities of his young visitor. There are some men who seem born to the inalienable good fortune of lighting upon the best people —" the most worthy" according to Irving's own expression long afterward-wherever they go. Irving's happiness in this way began at Haddington. The doctor's wife seems to have been one of those fair, sweet women whose remembrance lasts longer than greatness. There is no charm of beauty more delightful than that fragrance of it which lingers for generations in the place where it has been an unconsciously refining and tender influence. The Annandale youth came into a little world of humanizing graces when he entered that atmosphere, and it was only natural that he should retain the warmest recollection of it throughout his life. It must have been of countless benefit to him in this early stage of his career. The main quality in himself which struck observers was-in strong and strange contradiction to the extreme devotion of belief manifested in his latter years-the critical and almost skeptical tendency of his mind, impatient of superficial "received truths," and eager for proof and demonstration of every thing. Perhaps mathematics, which then reigned paramount in his mind, were to blame; he was as anxious to discuss, to prove and disprove, as a Scotch student fresh from college is naturally disposed to be. It was a peculiarity natural to his age and condition; and as his language was always inclined to the superlative, and his feelings invariably took part in every matter which commended itself to his mind, it is probable that this inclination showed with a certain exaggeration to surrounding eyes. "This youth will scrape a hole in every thing he is called on to believe," said the doctor; a strange prophecy, looking at it by that light of events which unfold so many unthought-of meanings in all predictions. In the mean time he made himself popular in the town, and, apart from the delightful vignette above, appears in all his natural picturesque individuality in other recollections. The young master of the mathematical school commended himself to the hearts of those whose sons he had quickened out of dunces into intelligent prize-winning pupils. He was young and poor, and in a humble position still, but he attracted the warm admiration of the boys, and that enthusiasm which only young creatures in the early blush of existence can entertain for their elders. The means by which he won the hearts of those lads is simple and apparent enough. Though he was severe and peremptory in school-" a sad tyrant," somebody says-out of doors he had just that delightful mixture of superior wisdom, yet equal innocence-that junction of the teacher and the companion, which is irresistible to all generous young people. Enthusiastic in his mathematical studies as he had come from Edinburgh, and loving the open air as became an Annandale lad of eighteen, he contrived to connect science and recreation in a social brotherly fashion quite his own. "Having the use of some fine instruments," says one of his pupils, Patrick Sheriff, Esq., of Haddington, " he devoted many of his school holidays to the measuring of heights and distances in the surrounding neighborhood, and taking the altitudes of heavenly bodies. Upon such occasions he was invariably accompanied by several of his pupils." When the state of the atmosphere, or any other obstacle, interrupted the particular object of the day's excursion, the young teacher xeadily and joyfully diverged into the athletic games in which he excelled; and with the scientific instruments standing harmless by, enjoyed his holiday as well as if every thing had been favorable for their use. Another picturesque glimpse of the boy-philosopher follows: "About this time Mr. Irving frequently expressed a wish to travel in Africa in the track of Mungo Park, and during his holiday excursions practiced, in concert with his pupils, the throwing of stones into pools of water, with the view of determining the depth of the water by the sound of the plupge, to aid him in crossing rivers;" a species of scientific inquiry into which, I have no doubt, the Haddington boys would enter with devotion. This idea of travel, not unnatural to the schoolfellow of Hugh Clapperton, seems to have returned on many occasions to Irving's mind, and to have displayed itself in various characteristic studies, as unlike the ordinary course of preparation for a journey as the above bit of holiday science. His great bodily strength and dauntless spirit made the idea congenial to him, and he had no very brilliant prospects at home; indeed, this thought seems to run, a kind of adventurous possibility, through a great part of his life, changing in aspect as his own projects and feelings changed, and to have afforded his mind a refuge from the fastidious intolerance of youth when that came upon him, or when cross circumstances and adverse persons drove him back at bitter moments upon himself. " Being an excellent walker," continues the gentleman already quoted, "all his excursions were made on foot. Upon one occasion, when Dr. Chalmers, then rising into fame, was announced to preach in St. George's, Edinburgh, upon a summer week-day evening, Irving set out from Haddington after school-hours, accompanied by several of his pupils, and returned the same night, accomplishing a distance of about thirty-five miles without any other rest than what was obtained in church." The fatigue of  this long walk was enlivened when the little party arrived at the church by a little outbreak of imperious pugnacity, not, perhaps, quite seemly in such a place, but characteristic enough. Tired with their walk, the boys and their youthful leader made their way up to the gallery of the church, where they directed their steps toward one particular pew which was quite unoccupied. Their entrance into the vacant place was, however, stopped by a man, who stretched his arm across the pew, and announced that it was engaged. Irving remonstrated, and represented that at such a time all the seats were open to the public, but without effect. At last his patience gave way; and, raising his hand, he exclaimed, evidently with all his natural magniloquence of voice and gesture, "Remove your arm, or I will shatter it in pieces!" His astonished opponent fell back in utter dismay, like Mrs. Siddons' shopman, and made a precipitate retreat, while the rejoicing boys took possession of the pew. Thus, for the first time, Irving and Chalmers were brought, if not together, at least into the same assembly. The great preacher knew nothing of the lad who had come nearly eighteen miles to hear him preach, and sat resting his mighty youthful limbs in the seat from which he had driven his enemy. Such glimpses are curious and full of interest, especially in remembrance of other days which awaited Chalmers and Irving in that same church of St. George. To return to fladdington, however: Irving not only established his place as a warm and life-long friend in the house of the doctor, but made his way into the homes and society of many of the worthy inhabitants of the little town. Among those who had children at the Mathematical School and opened his house to the teacher was Gilbert Burns, the brother of the poet, with whom he is said to have had some degree of intimacy; and though the humble position of dominie did not give him a very high place in the social scale, and restricted his friendships within the circle of those whose sons he educated, there were a sufficiently large number of the latter to make their young preceptor known and received at most of the good houses in lHaddington. "Social supper-parties," says Mr. Alexander Inglis, once a resident in Haddington, who has kindly furnished me with some recollections of this period, "were much the custom at this time in Haddington, and the hospitalities generally extended far into the night. At these social meetings Irving was occasionally in the habit of broaching some of his singular opinions about the high destinies of the human race in heaven, where the saints were not only to be made'kings and priests unto God,' but were to rule and judge angels. Dr. Lorimer (the senior minister of the town) used to hint that there were many more profitable and useful subjects in the New Testament for a divinity student to occupy his thoughts about than such speculations; but Irving was not to be put down in this way.'Dare either you or I deprive God of the glory and thanks due to his name for this, exceeding great reward?' cried the impetuous young man, according to the report of his old friend: the good doctor's reply was,'Well, well, my dear friend, both you and I can be saved without knowing about that."' Here Irving also made the acquaintance of Mr. Stewart, then minister of Bolton, afterward Dr. Stewart of Erskine, who was himself the subject of a sufficiently romantic story. This gentleman had been a medical man, and in that capacity had cured the daughter of a Scotch nobleman of supposed consumption. The physician and patient, after the most approved principles of poetical justice, fell in love with each other and married, and the former changed his profession, and becoming a minister, settled down in the parish of Bolton, and became doubly useful to his people and the neighborhood in his double capacity. He too had been able to discern in some degree those qualities of mind and heart which, despite his vehement speech and impatience, and love of argumentation, showed themselves in the young schoolmaster. In this manse of Bolton Irving was in the habit of spending his Saturdays, along with a young fellow-student of his own, Mr. Story, afterward of Rosneath. Nor was he without society of his own age and standing. In those days, when long walks were habitual to every body, Haddington was within reach of Edinburgh-perhaps more distinctly within reach than now, when, instead of the long pleasant summer afternoon walk, costing nothing, the rapid railway, with inevitable shillings and sixpences, and fixed hours of coming and going, does away with distance, yet magnifies the walk into a journey. On Saturdays and holidays there was no lack of visitors. A tide of eager young life palpitated about the teacher-student even in that retirementlife of a wonderfully different fashion from that which issues from English Universities; confined to limits much more narrow, and bound to practical necessities; a world more hard and real. Among these comrades there were perhaps scarcely two or three individuals whose studies were not professional, and among the professional students only a small number who were not, like Irving himself, taxing their youthful strength to procure the means of prosecuting their studies. With theological students in particular this was almost the rule, for few were the fortunate men who were rich enough to spend their eight long years entirely in study. Doubtless this fact gave a certain individual character to the little groups who came to share the liberal boyish hospitality of the young schoolmaster, and filled with much clangor of logic and eager Scottish argumentation his little rooms. Some youthful wits among them took pleasure in aggravating the vehement temper of their young host, and stirring him into characteristic outbreaks-the language which afterward became so splendid being then, it is evident, somewhat magniloquent, and his natural impetuosity warm wvith all the passion of youth. But the names of them have passed away, or live in merely local recollection; some became teachers of some distinction in Edinburgh; others, and not a few, went abroad and died off in colonial chaplaincies; some, the most fortunate, settled down into respectable parish ministers. But who knows any thing about those Browns and Dicksons now? Irving was also a member of a local literary society, which he helped to originate among young men native to the burgh. The fashion of their meetings seems to have been an excellent one. They were in the habit of setting out together to some place of interest near them, often to dainty Dirleton, that pretty artificial village which is one of the boasts of East Lothian, and, after the walk and talk of the road, holding their seance there-a method which no doubt made their essays and discussions more reasonable, so far as reason was to be expected. It was thus not without activity of mind, cultivated, so far as that was practicable, and kept in constant stimulation by contact with his compeers, that this period of his life was passed. He seems to have taught most things common to elementary education in his mathematical school, with Latin of course, the unfailing representative of higher knowledge and key to advancement, as it has been long considered in Scotland; and to his more advanced and more congenial pupils, the same who carried his instruments after him afield, and threw stones with him in zealous devotion, unfolded the mysteries of mathematics. His life must have been sufficiently laborious to need all the relaxations possible to it. Starting at six in the morning-not always in winter mornings, certainly, though the idea instinctively recalls the icy chill of those starry hours before dawn to the unheroic hearer-to conjugate Latin verbs with the little maid, who perhaps did not apprehend all that her ambition was to bring upon her; then returning to his fifty boys, to school them in all the different fundamentals of plain, unembellished knowledge (and the teacher himself was not always immaculate in his spelling); with again another private lesson after the fifty had gone to their sports-those sports in which the eighteen-year old lad was scarcely above joining-close exercise for the youthful brain and athletic developing form, to which some counterbalance of strenuous physical exertion was necessary. His independence seems now to have been complete. In his humble Haddington lodgings he was no longer indebted even for his oatmeal and cheese to the home household, but had set out manful and early on the road of life for himself. Henceforward Edward's expenses did not rank among the cares of the Annan home. At seventeen and a half the young man took up his own burden without a word or token of complaint, and ever after bore it courageously through all discouragements and trials, never breaking down or falling back upon the love which, notwithstanding, his stout heart always trusted in. Neither genius, nor that temperament of genius, impassioned and visionary, which he possessed to a large extent, weakened his performance of this first duty which manifested itself to his eyes; and he seems to have accepted his lot with a certain noble simplicity, neither resenting it nor quarreling with those whom circumstances made temporaily his superiors. Either people did not ill-use him, or he had some secret power of endurance which turns ill-usage aside. At all events,'it is certain that the agonies of the sensi. tive, not sufficiently respected tutor, or the commotions of the indignant one, have no place whatever in Irving's youthful life. When the Haddington corporation, not likely to be the most considerate masters in the world, afflicted their young schoolmaster, it is to be supposed that he blazed up at them manfully, and got done with it. At least he has no complaints to make, or old slights to remember; nor does it seem that he ever sulked at his humble position or close labors at any time in his life. Irving remained two years at Haddington, during which time he began that singular grave pretense of theological education which is called "partial" study in the Divinity Hall. From the little iaddington school he was promoted, always with the good offices of Sir John Leslie, who seems to have had a sincere kindness for him, to the mastership of a newly-established academy in Kirkealdy, in which he spent a number of years, and decided various important matters deeply concerning his future life.