Kitabı oku: «The Provost», sayfa 6
CHAPTER XIX – THE VOLUNTEERING
The volunteers began in the year 1793, when the democrats in Paris threatened the downfall and utter subversion of kings, lords, and commons. As became us who were of the council, we drew up an address to his majesty, assuring him that our lives and fortunes were at his disposal. To the which dutiful address, we received, by return of post, a very gracious answer; and, at the same time, the lord-lieutenant gave me a bit hint, that it would be very pleasant to his majesty to hear that we had volunteers in our town, men of creditable connexions, and willing to defend their property.
When I got this note from his lordship, I went to Mr Pipe, the wine-merchant, and spoke to him concerning it, and we had some discreet conversation on the same; in the which it was agreed between us that, as I was now rather inclined to a corpulency of parts, and being likewise chief civil magistrate, it would not do to set myself at the head of a body of soldiers, but that the consequence might be made up to me in the clothing of the men; so I consented to put the business into his hands upon this understanding. Accordingly, he went the same night with me to Mr Dinton, that was in the general merchandising line, a part-owner in vessels, a trafficker in corn, and now and then a canny discounter of bills, at a moderate rate, to folk in straits and difficulties. And we told him – the same being agreed between us, as the best way of fructifying the job to a profitable issue – that, as provost, I had got an intimation to raise a corps of volunteers, and that I thought no better hand could be got for a co-operation than him and Mr Pipe, who was pointed out to me as a gentleman weel qualified for the command.
Mr Dinton, who was a proud man, and an offset from one of the county families, I could see was not overly pleased at the preferment over him given to Mr Pipe, so that I was in a manner constrained to loot a sort a-jee, and to wile him into good-humour with all the ability in my power, by saying that it was natural enough of the king and government to think of Mr Pipe as one of the most proper men in the town, he paying, as he did, the largest sum of the king’s dues at the excise, and being, as we all knew, in a great correspondence with foreign ports – and I winkit to Mr Pipe as I said this, and he could with a difficulty keep his countenance at hearing how I so beguiled Mr Dinton into a spirit of loyalty for the raising of the volunteers.
The ice being thus broken, next day we had a meeting, before the council met, to take the business into public consideration, and we thereat settled on certain creditable persons in the town, of a known principle, as the fittest to be officers under the command of Mr Pipe, as commandant, and Mr Dinton, as his colleague under him. We agreed among us, as the custom was in other places, that they should be elected major, captain, lieutenants, and ensigns, by the free votes of the whole corps, according to the degrees that we had determined for them. In the doing of this, and the bringing it to pass, my skill and management was greatly approved and extolled by all who had a peep behind the curtain.
The town-council being, as I have intimated, convened to hear the gracious answer to the address read, and to take into consideration the suggesting anent the volunteering, met in the clerk’s chamber, where we agreed to call a meeting of the inhabitants of the town by proclamation, and by a notice in the church. This being determined, Mr Pipe and Mr Dinton got a paper drawn up, and privately, before the Sunday, a number of their genteeler friends, including those whom we had noted down to be elected officers, set their names as willing to be volunteers.
On the Sunday, Mr Pittle, at my instigation, preached a sermon, showing forth the necessity of arming ourselves in the defence of all that was dear to us. It was a discourse of great method and sound argument, but not altogether so quickened with pith and bir as might have been wished for; but it paved the way to the reading out of the summons for the inhabitants to meet the magistrates in the church on the Thursday following, for the purpose, as it was worded by the town-clerk, to take into consideration the best means of saving the king and kingdom in the then monstrous crisis of public affairs.
The discourse, with the summons, and a rumour and whispering that had in the mean time taken place, caused the desired effect; in so much, that, on the Thursday, there was a great congregation of the male portion of the people. At the which, old Mr Dravel – a genteel man he was, well read in matters of history, though somewhat over-portioned with a conceit of himself – got up on the table, in one of the table-seats forenent the poopit, and made a speech suitable to the occasion; in the which he set forth what manful things had been done of old by the Greeks and the Romans for their country, and, waxing warm with his subject, he cried out with a loud voice, towards the end of the discourse, giving at the same time a stamp with his foot, “Come, then, as men and as citizens; the cry is for your altars and your God.”
“Gude save’s, Mr Dravel, are ye gane by yoursel?” cried Willy Coggle from the front of the loft, a daft body that was ayefar ben on all public occasions – “to think that our God’s a Pagan image in need of sick feckless help as the like o’ thine?” The which outcry of Willy raised a most extraordinary laugh at the fine paternoster, about the ashes of our ancestors, that Mr Dravel had been so vehemently rehearsing; and I was greatly afraid that the solemnity of the day would be turned into a ridicule. However, Mr Pipe, who was upon the whole a man no without both sense and capacity, rose and said, that our business was to strengthen the hands of government, by coming forward as volunteers; and therefore, without thinking it necessary, among the people of this blessed land, to urge any arguments in furtherance of that object, he would propose that a volunteer corps should be raised; and he begged leave of me, who, as provost, was in the chair, to read a few words that he had hastily thrown together on the subject, as the outlines of a pact of agreement among those who might be inclined to join with him. I should here, however, mention, that the said few words of a pact was the costive product overnight of no small endeavour between me and Mr Dinton as well as him.
When he had thus made his motion, Mr Dinton, as we had concerted, got up and seconded the same, pointing out the liberal spirit in which the agreement was drawn, as every person signing it was eligible to be an officer of any rank, and every man had a vote in the preferment of the officers. All which was mightily applauded; and upon this I rose, and said, “It was a pleasant thing for me to have to report to his majesty’s government the loyalty of the inhabitants of our town, and the unanimity of the volunteering spirit among them – and to testify,” said I, “to all the world, how much we are sensible of the blessings of the true liberty we enjoy, I would suggest that the matter of the volunteering be left entirely to Mr Pipe and Mr Dinton, with a few other respectable gentlemen, as a committee, to carry the same into effect;” and with that I looked, as it were, round the church, and then said, “There’s Mr Oranger, a better couldna be joined with them.” He was a most creditable man, and a grocer, that we had waled out for a captain; so I desired, having got a nod of assent from him, that Mr Oranger’s name might be added to their’s, as one of the committee. In like manner I did by all the rest whom we had previously chosen. Thus, in a manner, predisposing the public towards them for officers.
In the course of the week, by the endeavours of the committee, a sufficient number of names was got to the paper, and the election of the officers came on on the Tuesday following; at which, though there was a sort of a contest, and nothing could be a fairer election, yet the very persons that we had chosen were elected, though some of them had but a narrow chance. Mr Pipe was made the commandant, by a superiority of only two votes over Mr Dinton.
CHAPTER XX – THE CLOTHING
It was an understood thing at first, that, saving in the matter of guns and other military implements, the volunteers were to be at all their own expenses; out of which, both tribulation and disappointment ensued; for when it came to be determined about the uniforms, Major Pipe found that he could by no possibility wise all the furnishing to me, every one being disposed to get his regimentals from his own merchant; and there was also a division anent the colour of the same, many of the doucer sort of the men being blate of appearing in scarlet and gold-lace, insisting with a great earnestness, almost to a sedition, on the uniform being blue. So that the whole advantage of a contract was frustrated, and I began to be sorry that I had not made a point of being, notwithstanding the alleged weight and impediment of my corpulence, the major-commandant myself. However, things, after some time, began to take a turn for the better; and the art of raising volunteers being better understood in the kingdom, Mr Pipe went into Edinburgh, and upon some conference with the lord advocate, got permission to augment his force by another company, and leave to draw two days’ pay a-week for account of the men, and to defray the necessary expenses of the corps. The doing of this bred no little agitation in the same; and some of the forward and upsetting spirits of the younger privates, that had been smitten, though not in a disloyal sense, with the insubordinate spirit of the age, clamoured about the rights of the original bargain with them, insisting that the officers had no privilege to sell their independence, and a deal of trash of that sort, and finally withdrew from the corps, drawing, to the consternation of the officers, the pay that had been taken in their names; and which the officers could not refuse, although it was really wanted for the contingencies of the service, as Major Pipe himself told me.
When the corps had thus been rid of these turbulent spirits, the men grew more manageable and rational, assenting by little and little to all the proposals of the officers, until there was a true military dominion of discipline gained over them; and a joint contract was entered into between Major Pipe and me, for a regular supply of all necessaries, in order to insure a uniform appearance, which, it is well known, is essential to a right discipline. In the end, when the eyes of men in civil stations had got accustomed to military show and parade, it was determined to change the colour of the cloth from blue to red, the former having at first been preferred, and worn for some time; in the accomplishment of which change I had (and why should I disguise the honest fact?) my share of the advantage which the kingdom at large drew, in that period of anarchy and confusion, from the laudable establishment of a volunteer force.
CHAPTER XXI – THE PRESSGANG
During the same just and necessary war for all that was dear to us, in which the volunteers were raised, one of the severest trials happened to me that ever any magistrate was subjected to. I had, at the time, again subsided into an ordinary counsellor; but it so fell out that, by reason of Mr Shuttlethrift, who was then provost, having occasion and need to go into Glasgow upon some affairs of his own private concerns, he being interested in the Kilbeacon cotton-mill; and Mr Dalrye, the bailie, who should have acted for him, being likewise from home, anent a plea he had with a neighbour concerning the bounds of their rigs and gables; the whole authority and power of the magistrates devolved, by a courtesy on the part of their colleague, Bailie Hammerman, into my hands.
For some time before, there had been an ingathering among us of sailor lads from the neighbouring ports, who on their arrival, in order to shun the pressgangs, left their vessels and came to scog themselves with us. By this, a rumour or a suspicion rose that the men-of-war’s men were suddenly to come at the dead hour of the night and sweep them all away. Heaven only knows whether this notice was bred in the fears and jealousies of the people, or was a humane inkling given, by some of the men-of-war’s men, to put the poor sailor lads on their guard, was never known. But on a Saturday night, as I was on the eve of stepping into my bed, I shall never forget it – Mrs Pawkie was already in, and as sound as a door-nail – and I was just crooking my mouth to blow out the candle, when I heard a rap. As our bed-room window was over the door, I looked out. It was a dark night; but I could see by a glaik of light from a neighbour’s window, that there was a man with a cocked hat at the door.
“What’s your will?” said I to him, as I looked out at him in my nightcap. He made no other answer, but that he was one of his majesty’s officers, and had business with the justice.
I did not like this Englification and voice of claim and authority; however, I drew on my stockings and breeks again, and taking my wife’s flannel coaty about my shoulders – for I was then troubled with the rheumatiz – I went down, and, opening the door, let in the lieutenant.
“I come,” said he, “to show you my warrant and commission, and to acquaint you that, having information of several able-bodied seamen being in the town, I mean to make a search for them.”
I really did not well know what to say at the moment; but I begged him, for the love of peace and quietness, to defer his work till the next morning: but he said he must obey his orders; and he was sorry that it was his duty to be on so disagreeable a service, with many other things, that showed something like a sense of compassion that could not have been hoped for in the captain of a pressgang.
When he had said this, he then went away, saying, for he saw my tribulation, that it would be as well for me to be prepared in case of any riot. This was the worst news of all; but what could I do? I thereupon went again to Mrs Pawkie, and shaking her awake, told her what was going on, and a terrified woman she was. I then dressed myself with all possible expedition, and went to the town-clerk’s, and we sent for the town-officers, and then adjourned to the council-chamber to wait the issue of what might betide.
In my absence, Mrs Pawkie rose out of her bed, and by some wonderful instinct collecting all the bairns, went with them to the minister’s house, as to a place of refuge and sanctuary.
Shortly after we had been in the council-room, I opened the window and looked out, but all was still; the town was lying in the defencelessness of sleep, and nothing was heard but the clicking of the town-clock in the steeple over our heads. By and by, however, a sough and pattering of feet was heard approaching; and shortly after, in looking out, we saw the pressgang, headed by their officers, with cutlasses by their side, and great club-sticks in their hands. They said nothing; but the sound of their feet on the silent stones of the causey, was as the noise of a dreadful engine. They passed, and went on; and all that were with me in the council stood at the windows and listened. In the course of a minute or two after, two lassies, with a callan, that had been out, came flying and wailing, giving the alarm to the town. Then we heard the driving of the bludgeons on the doors, and the outcries of terrified women; and presently after we saw the poor chased sailors running in their shirts, with their clothes in their hands, as if they had been felons and blackguards caught in guilt, and flying from the hands of justice.
The town was awakened with the din as with the cry of fire; and lights came starting forward, as it were, to the windows. The women were out with lamentations and vows of vengeance. I was in a state of horror unspeakable. Then came some three or four of the pressgang with a struggling sailor in their clutches, with nothing but his trousers on – his shirt riven from his back in the fury. Syne came the rest of the gang and their officers, scattered as it were with a tempest of mud and stones, pursued and battered by a troop of desperate women and weans, whose fathers and brothers were in jeopardy. And these were followed by the wailing wife of the pressed man, with her five bairns, clamouring in their agony to heaven against the king and government for the outrage. I couldna listen to the fearful justice of their outcry, but sat down in a corner of the council-chamber with my fingers in my ears.
In a little while a shout of triumph rose from the mob, and we heard them returning, and I felt, as it were, relieved; but the sound of their voices became hoarse and terrible as they drew near, and, in a moment, I heard the jingle of twenty broken windows rattle in the street. My heart misgave me; and, indeed, it was my own windows. They left not one pane unbroken; and nothing kept them from demolishing the house to the ground-stone but the exhortations of Major Pipe, who, on hearing the uproar, was up and out, and did all in his power to arrest the fury of the tumult. It seems, the mob had taken it into their heads that I had signed what they called the press-warrants; and on driving the gang out of the town, and rescuing the man, they came to revenge themselves on me and mine; which is the cause that made me say it was a miraculous instinct that led Mrs Pawkie to take the family to Mr Pittle’s; for, had they been in the house, it is not to be told what the consequences might have been.
Before morning the riot was ended, but the damage to my house was very great; and I was intending, as the public had done the deed, that the town should have paid for it. “But,” said Mr Keelivine, the town-clerk, “I think you may do better; and this calamity, if properly handled to the Government, may make your fortune,” I reflected on the hint; and accordingly, the next day, I went over to the regulating captain of the pressgang, and represented to him the great damage and detriment which I had suffered, requesting him to represent to government that it was all owing to the part I had taken in his behalf. To this, for a time, he made some scruple of objection; but at last he drew up, in my presence, a letter to the lords of the admiralty, telling what he had done, and how he and his men had been ill-used, and that the house of the chief-magistrate of the town had been in a manner destroyed by the rioters.
By the same post I wrote off myself to the lord advocate, and likewise to the secretary of state, in London; commanding, very properly, the prudent and circumspect manner in which the officer had come to apprize me of his duty, and giving as faithful an account as I well could of the riot; concluding with a simple notification of what had been done to my house, and the outcry that might be raised in the town were any part of the town’s funds to be used in the repairs.
Both the lord advocate and Mr Secretary of State wrote me back by retour of post, thanking me for my zeal in the public service; and I was informed that, as it might not be expedient to agitate in the town the payment of the damage which my house had received, the lords of the treasury would indemnify me for the same; and this was done in a manner which showed the blessings we enjoy under our most venerable constitution; for I was not only thereby enabled, by what I got, to repair the windows, but to build up a vacant steading; the same which I settled last year on my dochter, Marion, when she was married to Mr Geery, of the Gatherton Holme.
CHAPTER XXII – THE WIG DINNER
The affair of the pressgang gave great concern to all of the council; for it was thought that the loyalty of the burgh would be called in question, and doubted by the king’s ministers, notwithstanding our many assurances to the contrary; the which sense and apprehension begat among us an inordinate anxiety to manifest our principles on all expedient occasions. In the doing of this, divers curious and comical things came to pass; but the most comical of all was what happened at the Michaelmas dinner following the riot.
The weather, for some days before, had been raw for that time of the year, and Michaelmas-day was, both for wind and wet and cold, past ordinar; in so much that we were obligated to have a large fire in the council-chamber, where we dined. Round this fire, after drinking his majesty’s health and the other appropriate toasts, we were sitting as cozy as could be; and every one the longer he sat, and the oftener his glass visited the punch-bowl, waxed more and more royal, till everybody was in a most hilarious temperament, singing songs and joining chorus with the greatest cordiality.
It happened, among others of the company, there was a gash old carl, the laird of Bodletonbrae, who was a very capital hand at a joke; and he, chancing to notice that the whole of the magistrates and town-council then present wore wigs, feigned to become out of all bounds with the demonstrations of his devotion to king and country; and others that were there, not wishing to appear any thing behind him in the same, vied in their sprose of patriotism, and bragging in a manful manner of what, in the hour of trial, they would be seen to do. Bodletonbrae was all the time laughing in his sleeve at the way he was working them on, till at last, after they had flung the glasses twice or thrice over their shoulders, he proposed we should throw our wigs in the fire next. Surely there was some glammer about us that caused us not to observe his devilry, for the laird had no wig on his head. Be that, however, as it may, the instigation took effect, and in the twinkling of an eye every scalp was bare, and the chimley roaring with the roasting of gude kens how many powdered wigs well fattened with pomatum. But scarcely was the deed done, till every one was admonished of his folly, by the laird laughing, like a being out of his senses, at the number of bald heads and shaven crowns that his device had brought to light, and by one and all of us experiencing the coldness of the air on the nakedness of our upper parts.
The first thing that we then did was to send the town-officers, who were waiting on as usual for the dribbles of the bottles and the leavings in the bowls, to bring our nightcaps, but I trow few were so lucky as me, for I had a spare wig at home, which Mrs Pawkie, my wife, a most considerate woman, sent to me; so that I was, in a manner, to all visibility, none the worse of the ploy; but the rest of the council were perfect oddities within their wigs, and the sorest thing of all was, that the exploit of burning the wigs had got wind; so that, when we left the council-room, there was a great congregation of funny weans and misleart trades’ lads assembled before the tolbooth, shouting, and like as if they were out of the body with daffing, to see so many of the heads of the town in their night-caps, and no, maybe, just so solid at the time as could have been wished. Nor did the matter rest here; for the generality of the sufferers being in a public way, were obligated to appear the next day in their shops, and at their callings, with their nightcaps – for few of them had two wigs like me – by which no small merriment ensued, and was continued for many a day. It would hardly, however, be supposed, that in such a matter anything could have redounded to my advantage; but so it fell out, that by my wife’s prudence in sending me my other wig, it was observed by the commonality, when we sallied forth to go home, that I had on my wig, and it was thought I had a very meritorious command of myself, and was the only man in the town fit for a magistrate; for in everything I was seen to be most cautious and considerate. I could not, however, when I saw the turn the affair took to my advantage, but reflect on what small and visionary grounds the popularity of public men will sometimes rest.
