It was a place in that time like no other: the garden cut into provinces by a great hedge of beech5, and over-looked by the church and the terrace of the churchyard, where the tombstones were thick, and after nightfall “spunkies” might be seen to dance at least by children; flower-plots lying warm in sunshine; laurels6 and the great yew7 making elsewhere a pleasing horror of shade; the smell of water rising from all round, with an added tang of paper-mills; the sound of water everywhere, and the sound of mills — the wheel and the dam singing their alternate strain; the birds on every bush and from every corner of the overhanging woods pealing8 out their notes until the air throbbed9 with them; and in the midst of this, the manse. I see it, by the standard of my childish stature10, as a great and roomy house. In truth, it was not so large as I supposed, nor yet so convenient, and, standing where it did, it is difficult to suppose that it was healthful. Yet a large family of stalwart sons and tall daughters were housed and reared, and came to man and womanhood in that nest of little chambers11; so that the face of the earth was peppered with the children of the manse, and letters with outlandish stamps became familiar to the local postman, and the walls of the little chambers brightened with the wonders of the East. The dullest could see this was a house that had a pair of hands in divers12 foreign places: a well-beloved house — its image fondly dwelt on by many travellers.
Here lived an ancestor of mine, who was a herd13 of men. I read him, judging with older criticism the report of childish observation, as a man of singular simplicity14 of nature; unemotional, and hating the display of what he felt; standing contented15 on the old ways; a lover of his life and innocent habits to the end. We children admired him: partly for his beautiful face and silver hair, for none more than children are concerned for beauty and, above all, for beauty in the old; partly for the solemn light in which we beheld16 him once a week, the observed of all observers, in the pulpit. But his strictness and distance, the effect, I now fancy, of old age, slow blood, and settled habit, oppressed us with a kind of terror. When not abroad, he sat much alone, writing sermons or letters to his scattered17 family in a dark and cold room with a library of bloodless books — or so they seemed in those days, although I have some of them now on my own shelves and like well enough to read them; and these lonely hours wrapped him in the greater gloom for our imaginations. But the study had a redeeming18 grace in many Indian pictures, gaudily19 coloured and dear to young eyes. I cannot depict20 (for I have no such passions now) the greed with which I beheld them; and when I was once sent in to say a psalm21 to my grandfather, I went, quaking indeed with fear, but at the same time glowing with hope that, if I said it well, he might reward me with an Indian picture.
“Thy foot He’ll not let slide, nor will
He slumber22 that thee keeps,”
it ran: a strange conglomerate23 of the unpronounceable, a sad model to set in childhood before one who was himself to be a versifier, and a task in recitation that really merited reward. And I must suppose the old man thought so too, and was either touched or amused by the performance; for he took me in his arms with most unwonted tenderness, and kissed me, and gave me a little kindly24 sermon for my psalm; so that, for that day, we were clerk and parson. I was struck by this reception into so tender a surprise that I forgot my disappointment. And indeed the hope was one of those that childhood forges for a pastime, and with no design upon reality. Nothing was more unlikely than that my grandfather should strip himself of one of those pictures, love-gifts and reminders25 of his absent sons; nothing more unlikely than that he should bestow26 it upon me. He had no idea of spoiling children, leaving all that to my aunt; he had fared hard himself, and blubbered under the rod in the last century; and his ways were still Spartan27 for the young. The last word I heard upon his lips was in this Spartan key. He had over-walked in the teeth of an east wind, and was now near the end of his many days. He sat by the dining-room fire, with his white hair, pale face and bloodshot eyes, a somewhat awful figure; and my aunt had given him a dose of our good old Scotch28 medicine, Dr. Gregory’s powder. Now that remedy, as the work of a near kinsman29 of Rob Roy himself, may have a savour of romance for the imagination; but it comes uncouthly30 to the palate. The old gentleman had taken it with a wry31 face; and that being accomplished32, sat with perfect simplicity, like a child’s, munching33 a “barley-sugar kiss.” But when my aunt, having the canister open in her hands, proposed to let me share in the sweets, he interfered34 at once. I had had no Gregory; then I should have no barley-sugar kiss: so he decided35 with a touch of irritation36. And just then the phaeton coming opportunely37 to the kitchen door — for such was our unlordly fashion — I was taken for the last time from the presence of my grandfather.
Now I often wonder what I have inherited from this old minister. I must suppose, indeed, that he was fond of preaching sermons, and so am I, though I never heard it maintained that either of us loved to hear them. He sought health in his youth in the Isle38 of Wight, and I have sought it in both hemispheres; but whereas he found and kept it, I am still on the quest. He was a great lover of Shakespeare, whom he read aloud, I have been told, with taste; well, I love my Shakespeare also, and am persuaded I can read him well, though I own I never have been told so. He made embroidery39, designing his own patterns; and in that kind of work I never made anything but a kettle-holder in Berlin wool, and an odd garter of knitting, which was as black as the chimney before I had done with it. He loved port, and nuts, and porter; and so do I, but they agreed better with my grandfather, which seems to me a breach40 of contract. He had chalk-stones in his fingers; and these, in good time, I may possibly inherit, but I would much rather have inherited his noble presence. Try as I please, I cannot join myself on with the reverend doctor; and all the while, no doubt, and even as I write the phrase, he moves in my blood, and whispers words to me, and sits efficient in the very knot and centre of my being. In his garden, as I played there, I learned the love of mills — or had I an ancestor a miller41? — and a kindness for the neighbourhood of graves, as homely42 things not without their poetry — or had I an ancestor a sexton? But what of the garden where he played himself? — for that, too, was a scene of my education. Some part of me played there in the eighteenth century, and ran races under the green avenue at Pilrig; some part of me trudged43 up Leith Walk, which was still a country place, and sat on the High School benches, and was thrashed, perhaps, by Dr. Adam. The house where I spent my youth was not yet thought upon; but we made holiday parties among the cornfields on its site, and ate strawberries and cream near by at a gardener’s. All this I had forgotten; only my grandfather remembered and once reminded me. I have forgotten, too, how we grew up, and took orders, and went to our first Ayrshire parish, and fell in love with and married a daughter of Burns’s Dr. Smith — “Smith opens out his cauld harangues44.” I have forgotten, but I was there all the same, and heard stories of Burns at first hand.
And there is a thing stranger than all that; for this Homunculus or part-man of mine that walked about the eighteenth century with Dr. Balfour in his youth, was in the way of meeting other Homunculos or part-men, in the persons of my other ancestors. These were of a lower order, and doubtless we looked down upon them duly. But as I went to college with Dr. Balfour, I may have seen the lamp and oil man taking down the shutters45 from his shop beside the Tron; — we may have had a rabbit-hutch or a bookshelf made for us by a certain carpenter in I know not what wynd of the old, smoky city; or, upon some holiday excursion, we may have looked into the windows of a cottage in a flower-garden and seen a certain weaver46 plying47 his shuttle. And these were all kinsmen48 of mine upon the other side; and from the eyes of the lamp and oil man one-half of my unborn father, and one-quarter of myself, looked out upon us as we went by to college. Nothing of all this would cross the mind of the young student, as he posted up the Bridges with trim, stockinged legs, in that city of cocked hats and good Scotch still unadulterated. It would not cross his mind that he should have a daughter; and the lamp and oil man, just then beginning, by a not unnatural49 metastasis, to bloom into a lighthouse-engineer, should have a grandson; and that these two, in the fulness of time, should wed50; and some portion of that student himself should survive yet a year or two longer in the person of their child.
But our ancestral adventures are beyond even the arithmetic of fancy; and it is the chief recommendation of long pedigrees, that we can follow backward the careers of our Homunculos and be reminded of our antenatal lives. Our conscious years are but a moment in the history of the elements that build us. Are you a bank-clerk, and do you live at Peckham? It was not always so. And though today I am only a man of letters, either tradition errs51 or I was present when there landed at St. Andrews a French barber-surgeon, to tend the health and the beard of the great Cardinal52 Beaton; I have shaken a spear in the Debateable Land and shouted the slogan of the Elliots; I was present when a skipper, plying from Dundee, smuggled53 Jacobites to France after the ‘15; I was in a West India merchant’s office, perhaps next door to Bailie Nicol Jarvie’s, and managed the business of a plantation54 in St. Kitt’s; I was with my engineer-grandfather (the son-inlaw of the lamp and oil man) when he sailed north about Scotland on the famous cruise that gave us the Pirate and the Lord of the Isles55; I was with him, too, on the Bell Rock, in the fog, when the Smeaton had drifted from her moorings, and the Aberdeen men, pick in hand, had seized upon the only boats, and he must stoop and lap sea-water before his tongue could utter audible words; and once more with him when the Bell Rock beacon56 took a “thrawe,” and his workmen fled into the tower, then nearly finished, and he sat unmoved reading in his Bible — or affecting to read — till one after another slunk back with confusion of countenance57 to their engineer. Yes, parts of me have seen life, and met adventures, and sometimes met them well. And away in the still cloudier past, the threads that make me up can be traced by fancy into the bosoms58 of thousands and millions of ascendants: Picts who rallied round Macbeth and the old (and highly preferable) system of descent by females, fleers from before the legions of Agricola, marchers in Pannonian morasses59, star-gazers on Chaldaean plateaus; and, furthest of all, what face is this that fancy can see peering through the disparted branches? What sleeper60 in green tree-tops, what muncher61 of nuts, concludes my pedigree? Probably arboreal62 in his habits . . . .
And I know not which is the more strange, that I should carry about with me some fibres of my minister-grandfather; or that in him, as he sat in his cool study, grave, reverend, contented gentleman, there was an aboriginal63 frisking of the blood that was not his; tree-top memories, like undeveloped negatives, lay dormant64 in his mind; tree-top instincts awoke and were trod down; and Probably Arboreal (scarce to be distinguished65 from a monkey) gambolled66 and chattered67 in the brain of the old divine.
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1
drowsy
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| adj.昏昏欲睡的，令人发困的 | |
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eddies
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| （水、烟等的）漩涡，涡流( eddy的名词复数 ) | |
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3
steering
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| n.操舵装置 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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beech
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| n.山毛榉；adj.山毛榉的 | |
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laurels
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| n.桂冠，荣誉 | |
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yew
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| n.紫杉属树木 | |
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8
pealing
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| v.（使）（钟等）鸣响，（雷等）发出隆隆声( peal的现在分词 ) | |
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9
throbbed
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| 抽痛( throb的过去式和过去分词 )； （心脏、脉搏等）跳动 | |
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stature
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| n.（高度）水平，（高度）境界，身高，身材 | |
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chambers
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| n.房间( chamber的名词复数 )；（议会的）议院；卧室；会议厅 | |
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12
divers
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| adj.不同的；种种的 | |
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13
herd
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| n.兽群，牧群；vt.使集中，把…赶在一起 | |
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14
simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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15
contented
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| adj.满意的，安心的，知足的 | |
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16
beheld
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| v.看，注视( behold的过去式和过去分词 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟 | |
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17
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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18
redeeming
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| 补偿的，弥补的 | |
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gaudily
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| adv.俗丽地 | |
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depict
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| vt.描画，描绘；描写，描述 | |
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21
psalm
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| n.赞美诗，圣诗 | |
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22
slumber
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| n.睡眠，沉睡状态 | |
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23
conglomerate
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| n.综合商社，多元化集团公司 | |
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24
kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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25
reminders
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| n.令人回忆起…的东西( reminder的名词复数 )；提醒…的东西；（告知该做某事的）通知单；提示信 | |
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26
bestow
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| v.把…赠与，把…授予；花费 | |
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27
spartan
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| adj.简朴的，刻苦的；n.斯巴达；斯巴达式的人 | |
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28
scotch
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| n.伤口，刻痕；苏格兰威士忌酒；v.粉碎，消灭，阻止；adj.苏格兰(人)的 | |
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29
kinsman
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| n.男亲属 | |
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30
uncouthly
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31
wry
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| adj.讽刺的；扭曲的 | |
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32
accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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33
munching
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| v.用力咀嚼（某物），大嚼( munch的现在分词 ) | |
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34
interfered
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| v.干预( interfere的过去式和过去分词 )；调停；妨碍；干涉 | |
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35
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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36
irritation
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| n.激怒，恼怒，生气 | |
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opportunely
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| adv.恰好地，适时地 | |
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isle
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| n.小岛，岛 | |
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39
embroidery
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| n.绣花，刺绣；绣制品 | |
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40
breach
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| n.违反，不履行；破裂；vt.冲破，攻破 | |
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41
miller
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| n.磨坊主 | |
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42
homely
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| adj.家常的，简朴的；不漂亮的 | |
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43
trudged
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| vt.& vi.跋涉，吃力地走（trudge的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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44
harangues
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| n.高谈阔论的长篇演讲( harangue的名词复数 )v.高谈阔论( harangue的第三人称单数 ) | |
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45
shutters
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| 百叶窗( shutter的名词复数 )； （照相机的）快门 | |
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46
weaver
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| n.织布工；编织者 | |
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47
plying
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| v.使用（工具）( ply的现在分词 )；经常供应（食物、饮料）；固定往来；经营生意 | |
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48
kinsmen
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| n.家属，亲属( kinsman的名词复数 ) | |
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49
unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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50
wed
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| v.娶，嫁，与…结婚 | |
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51
errs
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| 犯错误，做错事( err的第三人称单数 ) | |
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52
cardinal
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| n.(天主教的)红衣主教；adj.首要的，基本的 | |
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53
smuggled
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| 水货 | |
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54
plantation
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| n.种植园，大农场 | |
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55
isles
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| 岛( isle的名词复数 ) | |
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56
beacon
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| n.烽火，（警告用的）闪火灯，灯塔 | |
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57
countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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58
bosoms
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| 胸部( bosom的名词复数 )； 胸怀； 女衣胸部（或胸襟）； 和爱护自己的人在一起的情形 | |
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59
morasses
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| n.缠作一团( morass的名词复数 )；困境；沼泽；陷阱 | |
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60
sleeper
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| n.睡眠者，卧车，卧铺 | |
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61
muncher
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62
arboreal
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| adj.树栖的；树的 | |
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aboriginal
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| adj.（指动植物）土生的，原产地的，土著的 | |
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64
dormant
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| adj.暂停活动的；休眠的；潜伏的 | |
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65
distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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66
gambolled
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| v.蹦跳，跳跃，嬉戏( gambol的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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chattered
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| （人）喋喋不休( chatter的过去式 )； 唠叨； （牙齿）打战； （机器）震颤 | |
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