From Convivial Caledonia, Inns and Taverns of Scotland, and Some Famous People Who Have Frequented Them, by Robert Kempt, London: Chapman and Hall, LD., 1893; pp. 114-134.
CHAPTER VII.
SIR WALTER SCOTT’S LANDLORDS AND LAND-
LADIES.
Get up, gudeman, it is fu’ time,
The sun shines frae the lift sae hie;
Sloth never made a gracious end, —
Gae, tak’ your auld cloak about ye.
. . . . .
Bell, my wife, she lo’es nae strife,
But she would guide me if she can;
And to maintain an easy life,
I aft maun yield, though I’m gudeman.
OLD SONG.
AMONGST the thousand-and-one characters which he has immortalized, Sir Walter Scott’s landlords and landladies stand out in bold relief as life-like portraits. Though these worthies, depicted so graphically by the great novelist, are of the “old school,” and as we have said are now nearly extinct, a good many specimens of the class survived Scott’s day, and have left pleasant 115 memories with not a few of us who have reached or passed the meridian. Reference has already been made to “Tibbie Shiel,” and to her son and successor at St. Mary’s Loch, characters, it may be said with truth, after Sir Walter’s own heart. Nor could there be found anywhere, some forty years ago, two worthier hostesses than Mrs. Clark, the innkeeper at Castleton of Braemar, and Mrs. Cook of the “Huntly Arms,” Aboyne. They conducted their houses with that quiet dignity, and treated their guests with that simple respect which so characterized Mrs. Richardson. The landlord of Auld Lang Syne was, as a rule, a jovial, rubicund, farmer-like personage, always at hand and ever ready with a good-humoured welcome to all comers, for, as a matter of course, he had ever an eye to the main chance, which was to “draw custom,” nor did he miss an opportunity to commend his liquors, “as in duty bound,” in his own interest. No one laughed so lustily as the landlord at a jest, however poor, whether uttered 116 by himself or by one of the company, and while he treated his more valued customers with a certain familiarity, and, at the same time, respect — after the manner in which Mackitchinson, the landlord in “The Antiquary,” addressed Monkbarns — he could be short-tempered enough with such persons as were “no good” to the house, and whose room, therefore, he deemed preferable to their company. He would not permit ribald language in his tavern, but he could not refrain from giving vent to a good round oath himself, when, say, a servant carelessly left a tap running. The landlord of old was generally honest and just, if not generous, and we do not believe that he knew how to dilute an adulterate his liquors — a knowledge acquired since by some of his successors. A social custom observed in former times by innkeepers in some parts of the country has, so far as we know, completely died out. The innkeeper constituting himself a private host on Sundays invited the guests that might be staying under his roof to 117 take part of his family dinner. Those who complied with the invitation, in return for the hospitality, called for a bottle of wine to drink the landlord’s health, which was deemed sufficient recompense. Of course there were landlords good, bad, and indifferent, in bygone times, as there are in the present year of grace.
In the novel of “Old Mortality,” we have the portraits of two innkeepers, neither of them a very admirable personage, but both characters in their way, and types of publicans we fancy that may still occasionally be met with. First there is the landlord of the “Wallace Arms” at Gandercleuch, the sign of which was a majestic head of the Scottish hero, from the brush, as will be recollected, of the famous Dick Tinto, who subsequently further distinguished himself by painting portraits at a guinea a head in the parlour of the inn itself. The landlord himself is not mentioned by name, which circumstance, by-the-way, is contrary to Scott’s usual habit, and who confesses (in “Guy 118 Mannering”) that he “likes to be particular.” He is, however, described as “a pleasing and a facetious man, acceptable unto all the parish of Gandercleuch, excepting only the Laird, the exciseman, and those for whom he reused to draw liquor upon trust.” The Laird disliked the landlord — an very naturally since he encouraged poaching; and the exciseman, because he strongly suspected him of encouraging illicit distillation — a failing, it may be remarked, by no means confined to publicans of that period, it pertained to many other sinners.1 “Concerning those who came to my landlord for liquor,” says the sapient Jedediah Cleishbotham, “and went thirsty away for lack of present coin, or future credit, I cannot but say it has grieved my bowels as if the case had been 119 mine own.” Sympathetic Jedediah! he, at all events, had no great reason to speak well of this Boniface, whose real character comes out further on. “Nevertheless, my landlord considered the necessities of a thirsty soul, and would permit them, in extreme need, and when their soul was impoverished for lack of moisture, to drink to the full value of their watches and wearing apparel, exclusively of their inferior habiliments, which he was uniformly inexorable in obliging them to retain, for the credit of the house.” We are given to understand that there were still to be found accommodating publicans who will act the part of pawnbrokers in what may be called cases of emergency. An impecunious individual, for instance, may readily obtain drink (at the bar, say, “The Tappit Hen,” ) on condition that he leaves some article of value such as a bit of jewellery, or an umbrella as a pledge with the landlord. In redeeming the article the obliged customer is expected to “stand a drink” to the landlord by way of interest — and a 120 very high rate of interest it usually comes to before the transaction is at an end. Jedediah admits that he was never refused at the “Wallace Arms,” “that modicum of refreshment with which he was wont to recruit nature after the fatigues of his school,” without tendering payment, but he adds, feelingly, that he never remembers ever having received any fee or remuneration for his labours in instructing the landlord’s five sons in English, Latin, writing, and bookkeeping, “with a tincture of mathematics,” as well as giving his daughters lessons in psalmody. Cleishbotham was evidently of opinion that the landlord had the best of the bargain.
There is a neat little character-sketch of one of the regular customers of the inn, who is also described as one of the most honoured inhabitants of Gandercleuch. This was Sergeant More M‘Alpin, whose right and title to occupy the great leathern chair on the cosiest side of the chimney, in the common room of the inn, on a Saturday evening, no one thought of disputing. The 121 reason for this deference paid to the soldier was not altogether a disinterested one. “It must not be denied that when the day of securing his dividends came round, the Sergeant was apt to tarry longer at the ‘Wallace Arms’ of an evening than was consistent with strict temperance, or indeed with his worldly interest; for, upon these occasions, his compotators sometimes contrived to flatter his partialities by singing Jacobite songs, and drinking confusion to Bonaparte, and the health of the Duke of Wellington, until the sergeant was not only flattered into paying the whole reckoning, but occasionally induced to lend small sums to his interested companions.”
In “Old Mortality,” we have Neil Blane, town piper and innkeeper, depicted in the most graphic manner. Blane was the landlord of the “Howf,” the principal change house in Tillietudlem. He had won the heart of its hostess, a jolly widow, “He was a good-humoured, shrewd, 122 selfish sort of fellow, indifferent alike to the disputes about Church and State, and only anxious to secure the good-will of customers of every description.” Owing to the troubled state of the country — Claverhouse and the Covenanters were coming to close quarters — the inn was full of soldiers, and Blane is initiating his daughter, a girl of about eighteen, “in those cares which had been faithfully discharged by his wife, until about six months before, when the honest woman had been carried to the kirkyard.” Says the landlord, —
“Jenny, this is the first day that ye are to take the place of your worthy mother in attending to the public; a douce woman she was, civil to the customers, and had a good name wi’ Whig and Tory, baith up the street and down the street. . . . For yoursell, Jenny, you’ll be civil to a’ the folk, and take nae heed o’ ony nonsense and daffin’ the young lads may say t’ye — folk in the hostler line maun put up wi’ muckle. Your mither — rest her saul! — 123 could put up wi’ as muckle as maist women, but aff hands is fair play; and if onybody be uncivil, ye may gie me a cry. Aweel, when the malt begins to get above the meal, they’ll begin to speak about government in Kirk and State, and then, Jenny, they are like to quarrel. Let them be doing, anger’s a drouthy passion, and the mair they dispute, the mair ale they’ll drink; but ye were best serve them wi’ a pint o’ sma browst — it will heat them less, and they’ll never ken the difference.”
“But father,” said Jenny, “if they come to bounder ilk ither, as they did last time, suldna I cry on you?”
“At no hand, Jenny; the redder gets aye the warst lick in this fray. If the sodgers draw their swords, ye’ll cry on the corporal and the guard; if the country folk tak the tangs and poker, ye’ll cry on the bailie and town officers; but in nae event cry on me, for I am wearied wi doudling the bag o’ wind a’ day, and I am gaun to eat my dinner quietly in the spence. And now I think on’t, the Laird 124 of Lickitup (that’s him that was the laird) was speering for sma’ drink and a saut herring — gie him a pu’ by the sleeve and sound into his lug I wad be blithe o’ his company to dine wi’ me; he was a gude customer anes in a day, and wants naething but means to be a gude ane again — he likes drink as weel as e’er he did. And if ye ken ony puir body o’ our acquaintance that’s blate for want o’ siller, and has far to gang hame, ye needna stick to gie them a waught o’ drink and a bannock — we’ll ne’er miss’t, and it looks creditable in a house like ours. And now, Jenny, gang awa’, and serve the folk, but first bring me my dinner, and twa’ chappins o’ yill and the mutchkin stoup o’ brandy.”
Blane is as garrulous as Mrs. Quickly herself when she is telling Falstaff how much money he owed her, but he is altogether a much better specimen of a host than he of the “Wallace Arms.” The novelist sums up Blane’s character by saying that “he lived to a good age, drank ale and brandy with guests of all persuasions, 125 played Whig or Jacobite tunes as best pleased his customers, and died worth as much money as married Jenny to a cock-laird.”
Scott’s landladies form a curious and highly interesting group. They are, for the most part, remarkably shrewd, business-like deems, outspoken to a degree, women who are “deevlishly independent,” and who will stand no nonsense, pawky gossips, hasty-tempered, and kind-hearted withal; one or two of them not over tidy as regards personal appearance. There is Med Dods’s namesake, Jenny Dods, who kept the inn at Howgate, and was “unmatched as a slattern,” unless perhaps by Widow MacAlpine, whose hovel, called an inn, at Aberfoil, was the scene, in “Rob Roy,” of the laughable scuffle in which Bailie Nicol Jarvie and the Dugal were the chief-actors. The landlady is described as a weird-looking woman, a very Hecate, “whose soiled and ragged dress, though aided by a plaid or tartan screen, barely served the purposes of decency, and 126 certainly not those of comfort.” Francis Osbaldistone with Andrew Fairservice puts up at Luckie Flyter’s inn, which was located close by the Bailies residence in Glasgow, but we have no portrait of that dame and no record of her sayings. She is the one colourless character in the list. A hostess of a very different stamp is Mrs. MacCandlish, of the “Gordon Arms” at Kippletringan, associated with the fortunes of Harry Bertram in “Guy Mannering.” “Long habit had given her an acute tact in ascertaining the quality of her visitors, and proportioning her reception accordingly, —
To every guest the appropriate speech was made,
And every duty with distinction paid;
Respectful, easy, pleasant, or polite —
“Your honour’s servant! — Mister Smith, good
night.
In the notes to “Waverley” there is a capital story of one Scotch Dame Quickly. “A jolly dame, who, not ‘sixty years since,’ kept the principal caravansary at Greenlaw, in Berwickshire, had the honour to receive under her roof a very worthy 127 clergyman, with three sons of the same profession, each having a cure of souls.” Be it said, in passing, none of the reverend party were reckoned powerful in the pulpit. After dinner was over, the worthy senior, in the pride of his heart, asked Mrs. Buchan whether she ever had had such a party in her house before. “ ‘Here sit I,’ he said, ‘a placed minister of the Kirk of Scotland, and here sit my three sons, each a placed minister of the same Kirk — confess, Luckie Buchan, you have had such a party in your house before.’ The question was not premised by an invitation to sit down and take a glass of wine or the like, so Mrs. Buchan answered, drily, ‘Indeed, sir, I cannot just say that I ever had such a party in my house before, except once in the forty-five, when I had a Highland piper here with his three sons, all Highland pipers, and deil a spring they could play amang them.’ ”
Another noteworthy guidwife in the “public line” is Luckie Macleary. Her hostelrie at Tully-Veolan, readers may 128 remember, was the scene of the sudden rencontre between the young Laird of Balmawhapple and the Baron of Bradwardine, and which was like to have proved a sanguinary affair but for the timely intervention of Waverley and the landlady. The Baron’s guests, after having indulged, under his mahogany, in more wine than was good for them, agreed that they should further indulge in a Deoch an Doruis at the village inn, where their horses were stabled — the Baron, out of politeness, accompanying them. A heated discussion on a point of politics led to a fracas, the Baron and the Laird drawing their swords. Luckie Macleary (who had been sitting quietly beyond the hallan, “with eyes employed on Boston’s Crook in the Lot, while her ideas were employed in summing up the reckoning”) “suddenly rushed into the room, with the shrill expostulation — ‘Wad their honours slay ane anither there, and bring discredit on an honest widow woman’s house, when there was a’ the lee-land in the country to 129 fight upon?’ a remonstrance which she seconded by flinging her plaid with great dexterity over the weapons of the combatants.” But Luckie Macleary was not without a sympathetic corner in her heart; for when the Baron of Bradwardine, a staunch Jacobite, was in hiding in the vicinity of his own house — he having lost his estate after Culloden, where he had fought — she found the way to convey, by a friendly hand, a grey-beard of brandy for his comfort and solace. There is also Sir Walter’s old friend, Mrs. Hall, at Ferrybridge, who distinguished herself in the cooking of veal cutlets, as did Mistress Margaret Dods in the preparation of cock-a-leeky, and savoury minced collops.
Without doubt the most entertaining and original of all Scotch landladies on record is Meg Dods, the hostess at the “Cleikum Inn,” Auldtoun of St. Ronans.
A truly wonderful character is Meg. There she is, with her hair “of a brindled colour, betwixt black and grey, which was apt to escape in elf-locks from 130 under her mutch when she was thrown into violent agitation; long, skinny hands terminated by stout talons; grey eyes, thin lips, a robust person, a broad, though flat chest, capital wind, and a voice that could match a choir of fisherwomen.” Her more favoured customers, we are told, were wont to praise the inn as “the neatest and most comfortable old-fashioned house in Scotland, where you had good attendance and good cheer at moderate rates; while others, less fortunate, could only talk of the darkness of the rooms, the homeliness of the furniture, and the detestable bad humours of the landlady.” We can see Meg, with her refractory humours, as she waits upon the members of the Killnakelty Hunt — venerable, grey-headed sportsmen, who had sunk from fox-hounds to basket-beagles and coursing, and who made an easy canter on their quiet nags a gentle induction to a dinner at Meg’s. “A set of honest, decent men they were,” said Meg, “had their sang and their joke — and what for no? Their bind 131 was just a Scot’s pint over head, and a tappit-hen to the bill, and no man ever saw them the waur o’t.” Or again, we see her serving the ranting blades from Edinburgh, who composed the Helter-Skelter Club, “formed for the express purpose of getting rid of care and sobriety,” and who occasioned “many a racket in Meg’s house, and many a bourasque in Meg’s temper.” Margaret Dods was fiery, but she had her gentle moods. As she said of herself, her bark was worse than her bite. And so, though she often called the rough customers of the Helter-Skelter “drunken neer-do-weels and thoroughbred High Street blackguards,” she allowed no other person to speak ill of them in her hearing. “They were daft callants,” she said, “and that was all — when drink was in, wit was out — ye could not put an auld head upon young shouthers — a young cowt will canter, be it up hill or down — and what for no?” was her uniform conclusion. Her contempt for “the stinking well yonder,” which 132 Meg could not help regarding as being to some extent at least a rival establishment, was only equalled by the indignation she felt when the grand Tontine was erected in St. Ronans. “They maun hae a hottle, maun they? — and an honest public canna serve them! They may hottle that likes; but they shall see that Luckie Dods can hottle on as lang as the best of them — ay, though they had made a Tamteen of it,” exclaimed the offended mistress Margaret Dods. The word “hôltel” was first introduced into Scotland during Sir Walter Scott’s childhood, and pronounced “hottle” by the lower classes. The “Cleikum Inn” is described by the novelist as being the deserted family mansion of the Mowbrays of St. Ronans. It had “a huge sign, representing on the one side St. Ronan catching hold of the devil’s game leg with his episcopal crook, as the story may be read in his veracious legend, and on the other the Mowbray Arms. It was by far the best frequented public-house in the vicinity; and a thousand stories were told of the 133 revels which had been held within its walls, and the gambols achieved under the influence of its liquors.” The late Miss Ritchie of the “Cross Keys Inn,” in the Northgate of Peebles, is believed to have been the prototype of the doughty Meg. The house, a very quaint-looking edifice, still standing, dates from about the middle of the seventeenth century. It was originally the town mansion of the Williamsons of Cardrona, the last of whom served as the hero of James Hogg’s amusing song, “The Drunken Laird of Lamington.” Formerly known as the Yett (from its old-fashioned gateway), the building was turned into an hostelrie, and occupied as such by Miss Ritchie’s father at least as early as the year 1769. It descended to that worthy woman herself, who reigned without a rival until 1808, when the present “Tontine Hotel” was erected in Peebles by the gentlemen of the county. “Of the new and fashionable establishment,” remarks a local guide-book, “Miss Richie always spoke with that 134 ineffable scorn which Scott ascribes in similar circumstances to Meg Dods. With her eccentricities and rough independence of manner, it is something, at all events, to say of this landlady of the olden time, that in the management of her tavern affairs she always displayed a conscientious regard for the interests of her customers; so that after a certain, and, as she thought, adequate, quantity of liquor had been consumed, no persuasions could induce her to furnish means for fresh potations; and when gentlemen were disposed to sit rather late — not an uncommon event sixty years since — she very unceremoniously told them that they had had enough, and ordered them to “gang awa hame to their wives and bairns.”
We may fittingly close this chapter with Sir Alexander Boswell’s benison, —
Gude night, and joy be wi’ you a’,
Your harmless mirth has cheer’d my heart;
May life’s fell blasts out ower ye blaw,
In sorrow may you never part!
Footnote
1 About a century ago Lord Duffus, we are told, clandestinely imported fifty hogsheads of claret to Barrogill Castle, he being guardian to the Earl of Caithness. Forty-eight hogsheads his Lordship hid in a peat stack, two he put in his own house; he then wrote an information against himself to the revenue officer, and when he came showed him the two, said they were scarcely worth saving, and hoped he would share the last drop with him.