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THE school did nothing for
John Duncan; as far as scholastic matters were concerned, the man was
totally unlettered. He was never inside a school door, except the few
evenings he took in the night school at Drumlithie, when about twenty, after
he had made some progress in reading under the tuition of the kindly women
that first taught him the letters. His disadvantages in this respect were
the greatest possible, and sadly affected his progress throughout life, in
spite of his indomitable will and ceaseless industry to remove them, making
even reading a constant and trying toil. But these early losses only make
his after triumphs in study all the more remarkable, and raise them near to
the rank of genius. Think of a lad brought up alone with an unwedded mother,
whose poverty was so extreme as barely to supply the simplest needs of both,
and whose living had to be eked out by her little boy selling rushlights;
[One fact is a striking proof of their extreme poverty. His mother, not
being able to afford to buy vegetables for dinner, used to send Johnnie to
the roadsides and hedges to gather the young shoots of the stinging nettle (Urtica
wrens) to make "nettle broth," then more common than now among the indigent;
but, what was very unusual, he also brought home the leaves of the Mugwort
(Artemisia vulg-aris) aromatic and bitter (being a sister species of
wormwood (Arlemisia fzbsintkizem) and of " Southernwood "), to make "muggart
kail" for their daily use—a broth surely requiring long training to relish,
and even then being "gey fale," or considerably bitter, as John said.] left
of necessity, like a city arab, to run wild about the streets, while she was
absent earning a needed pittance ; sent at ten to work for his own living,
at a service in which he was treated with exceptional cruelty; not knowing a
single letter till his sixteenth year, and unable to put pen to paper till
nearly thirty; so extremely shortsighted that the page had to be held
absurdly close to his face and to be readjusted at the beginning of every
Line—a defect that necessarily impeded scientific investigation; even, at
his best, able to read with difficulty and to the last requiring to spell
out many words in every page, for, as William Mortimer phrased it, "he took
a terrible time to read onything;" having to read and read again all he
deciphered, in a way that raised the risibility, while it excited the
admiring astonishment, of even the ignorant amongst whom he dwelt :—and yet,
in spite of all these extraordinary difficulties, hard to realise by those
who have not known them, reading so extensively as he did, conquering so
thoroughly and permanently all he studied, and achieving marked success in
several departments of inquiry, and eminence at least in one science crowded
with technicalities above most subjects, the very look of which to his
unlettered eyes must have seemed a terrible array of angry bayonet points
sufficient to deter all but the determined, of the stuff that only such as
he are made of. Yet these are the simple facts in the life of our weaver,
and these were the results.
The disabilities which his
early want of education imposed upon him throughout life were keenly felt by
the man himself, though so bravely combated and so splendidly overcome. At
one of his later visits to James Taylor, several botanical friends called
while he was there for a field day among the flowers, all well educated and
most of them college-bred. In speaking afterwards to James Black of this
meeting, John thus expressed himself, " Oh, had I only had learnin' and
youth, I cu'd hae followed the best o' them. Even as it was, I saw and
understood a hale field lyin' afore me. Oh, what a loss is the want o'
learnin', man! I only see its full scope beside men like thae. I'm like—like
the single leaf o' the plantain, they like the thousand-leaved yarrow; I'm
like the Hart's-tongue, they're like the Maidenhair; I'm like the ping-ping
o' hailstanes, they're like the searchin', penetratin', giddy whirl o' blue
drift! My ilka effort has been slow an' laborious"—and here he drew his
finger zigzag across the table at which he was seated, in illustration of
the process—"unwieldly like the gambols o' an elephant, as compared wi' the
free and easy motions o' a fine dancer!" That put his own case at once
justly, forcibly and poetically.
His love of knowledge was
intense and insatiable, the genuine appetite of the born scientist, and, as
far as his opportunities lay, omnivorous; and his acquirements, in the
circumstances, were remarkable for amount and breadth. At first, this desire
to know was a strong, unregulated longing, drinking up all that came in its
way, and appropriating even the doubtful quackery of Astrology. But it
gradually developed into a true philosophical thirst, especially after
entering on Systematic Botany with Charles Black, satisfied only with
scientific truth based on scrupulous investigation and rigorous induction.
In producing and cultivating this scientific spirit and these scientific
habits of study, his pet subject, Botany, is capable of doing admirable
service, above many others, from its remarkable exactness of characteristics
and classification and its unusually copious and precise nomenclature. Its
educative value in this respect should be more realised in the training of
our children, being combined as it is with the physical exercise, the
intercourse with nature, practical work in the field, and orderly
neat-handedness which its real study gives its students—all which, and much
more, it richly did for John Duncan.
Duncan avoided one great
danger connected with such physical studies—the narrowing, purely
intellectual tendencies they arc apt to engender. He wisely co-ordinated
them with wider social and religious subjects possessing humanitarian
relations. He also constantly sought to make his studies serviceable in
daily life, as when he utilised Astronomy in dial-making, and Botany in the
cure of disease ; for this practical side of John's intellectual work was a
marked characteristic that pervaded all he did. Moreover, these broader
moral inquiries, combining with his investigation into the plants and stars,
gave him views of the philosophy of things, and an insight into the wonders
and beauties of nature greatly, hidden from the mere narrow physicist, which
he would otherwise have lost and to which he frequently gave expression, in
his higher moments, to intimate friends. On these occasions, he became
impressive and uttered himself in unwonted strains of philosophy, such as
found vent on his death-bed a little before the close, when exhorting John
Taylor to the, earnest study of science: "the wonders o' the secrets o'
nature are such as nae man wu'd believe till he sees them wrocht oot!"—that
is, it is only intimate scientific knowledge of the operations of nature
that reveals their incredible wonderfulness, a truth echoed by all deep
investigators. This humble, unlettered weaver did obtain, in no mean degree,
some of those far-reaching glimpses into the problems of the universe with
which Nature always rewards her deeper students, and by which she enables
them to "see into the life of things," and to feel
"A presence that disturbs them
with the joy
Of elevated thoughts."
Then, like all true students
of Nature, after all his lifelong enthusiastic searchings after truth, he
came at the end to the deep-felt conviction of how little he knew; all that
he had achieved only enabling him to realise how much remained unknown, and
how, like the best, he had only been picking up a few pebbles on the shore
of the boundless ocean. In speaking to James Black, a year or two before his
death, of the pleasures of knowledge, of which Botany had given him such
exquisite taste, he said that his eyes were now beginning to open up to new
fields of investigation into plant-life—plants living and growing on plants
in myriads! He had gathered many a plant, and was only then beginning to
perceive that, instead of having one plant in his hand, as he had so long
thought, he had a whole bundle! He now began, he said, to see and understand
a new great field of inquiry, and God alone knew where it all ended; he only
saw it was big. That was a true glimpse of the Great Vision of knowledge and
existence. Then, filled with gratitude for the past and this new insight
into the future, he solemnly exclaimed: "But my day is done. I hae tried
hard and done little. But oh! I am glad o' what I ken, and glad o' what I
now begin to learn!"
John Duncan's life furnishes,
in this connection, another marked proof of the vital significance of early
influences, those " impressions before letters," as Hood facetiously but
truly calls them:
"Before with our A B C we
start,
Those things in morals, as well as art,
That play a very important part."
As we have seen, the
circumstances and environment under which John was reared deeply coloured
his whole existence. The cliffs of Kincardine and the pile of Dunnottar,
with its wonderful story and powerful impressions, towered grandly over his
career, and were lost sight of only in death. It was there, during his
filial solitary wanderings for rushes, nettles and inugwort, and his early
sports and explorations, that he imbibed the dominating influences of his
life—his healthy frame, his keen observation, his love of flowers, his
delight in nature, his self-contained resources, and his deep religiousness.
This furnishes another proof
of how tenderly solicitous we ought to be, to surround our children in their
infancy and youth with the breezy freshnesses of nature. It should once more
impel us to take all earnest measures to make their nurture generous and
natural, and their memories sweet and pure; so that the aroma of early days
may rise like a perfume throughout their lives, and that, though turning out
but "common earth," they may, like the clay in the Eastern parable, carry a
fragrance with them for ever, from having "once lived with the rose."
Could anything have surpassed
the serene contentment of Duncan's lot, and the genuine happiness he drew
from what would seem to most of us poor and meagre if not quite inadequate
elements ? Think of the poverty-stricken conditions under which his whole
life was spent, from his branded birth in a lodging on Stonchaven pier to an
honoured tomb in Alford churchyard—the hard and scanty comforts his
ceaseless but ill-requited toil afforded him all his days ; his wrecked home
from which he expected so. much, and his living thenceforth by alien
firesides, from which he was often forced to seek refuge by quieter and more
comfortable hearths; the astonishingly ill-lighted, unventilated,
ill-conditioned cribs in which from first to last he had to sleep; the
ancient garments in which he was obliged for the greater part of his life to
clothe himself,. making him an oddity and a wonder to his neighbours,. from
his sheer inability to renew them through want of the requisite means. And
then think of the deep and perennial pleasures, the real riches of life, he
was able to extract from such unpromising and seemingly antagonistic
elements! It argues in the man "a benign simplicity," a rare wisdom, for
which he is truly to be envied, and for which most men would barter all they
have. And his happiness did not arise from dull, unfeeling acquiescence in
these poor materials, or from an incapacity of soul for higher things, like
the phlegmatic insensibility and low content of too many of our poorer
population. His spirit was keen, sensitive, aggressive, unsatisfied with
common husks, and filled with a divine discontent that urged to higher
things.
What then was the source of
this strange peace, what the hidden spring of his felicity?
This question would take long
to answer in full, for life is a twisted cable of many cords; but there are
always some main strands that run through every man's history and give it
its special character. Let us unwind a few of these in the rope of John
Duncan's story. They are not difficult to unloose.
The secret lay, primarily, in
the possession and constant cultivation of pure and simple tastes in regard
to the daily needs of life. His appetites were satisfied with the plainest
substantial fare. It is surprising how very plain may be the food we need,
in both eating and drinking, if only it is good and wholesome—a fact that
science, now that it has condescended to study the relation of our tables to
our stomachs, increasingly demonstrates. The more we act on the real
scientific wisdom of plainness in these things, the healthier and happier we
shall be. "Can a man," wisely asks good Jeremy Taylor, "quench his thirst
better out of a river than a full urn, or drink better from the fountain
which is finely paved with marble than when it wells over the green turf?"
But in spite of such
demonstrations towards plainness, we are all of us, even the poorest,
suffering from the insidious growth of luxury, attendant on the general
increase of material wealth. We are forgetting how little man really
requires for health, and we are losing the capacity of enjoying the plain
and good in food, dress, house and "comforts." Thus are we constantly
requiring to be reminded, by living examples, of the true facts of the case,
the really homely conditions of human happiness. To these John Duncan's life
should once more recall us, and thereby do good service. By his narrow
possessions and narrower bounds, his "plain living and -high thinking," are
we not reminded of the hut of the old slave-philosopher at Nicopolis, with
its straw pallet, its one lamp, and its sublime contentment? Not that we
should follow the extreme bareness of either the freedman or the weaver.
That is scarcely possible, and would not be desirable. But it would be well
for us to perceive, believe, and act on the belief of how much healthier and
happier we should be if we imitated more their severe and rational
simplicity.
John Duncan's style of life,
its uncommon bareness and satisfaction with lowly things, were a surprise
even to his poor neighbours, who pitied and in many cases laughed at him in
consequence ; and it is to be feared that many of us will be amongst the
pitiful—though not the scornful,, let us hope—even after all we have read.
But to such he might have replied, in the words of Epictetus—he certainly
acted on them—"I secretly laugh at those who pity me. I am poor, but I have
right principles concerning poverty. What is it to me, then, if people pity
me for my poverty? I am neither hungry, nor thirsty, nor cold; but because
they are hungry and thirsty for superfluities, they suppose me to be so
too."
Another part of the secret of
John's happiness undoubtedly consisted, like that of the good Epictetus, in
subordinating the "externals," the things without us, our surroundings, and
keeping and using them in their due place and rank; and in cultivating the
"internals," the things within us, of the head and heart—knowing, as Marcus
Aurelius, the imperial disciple of the philosophic slave, explains, that
"the external things reach not the soul, but stand without, still and
motionless, and that all our perturbation comes from inward opinions about
them." John Duncan followed this true principle of selection in seeking his
pleasures, and used the lower things, which most of us are so apt to value
too much and for themselves, as materials for higher joys. This seems a
commonplace in morals, but none the less is it the only means of becoming
possessed of that highest alchemy "that turns all it touches into gold," and
by which, as Dryden sings, " all great souls still make their own content."
Duncan seemed to deny himself very much that most think necessary even for
comfort; but it was for better gains, which he certainly won. There lies the
whole problem in a nutshell—in selection, in the wise choice of our
pleasures.
Another element in John's
happiness was the special nature of the higher pleasures lie pursued—his
study of Natural Science. The cultural and educative value of the sciences
connected with external nature, when rightly studied, is surpassed by none ;
they exercise, so healthily and fully, such a wide range of the perceptive
and reflective faculties, and, where broadly studied, the moral and
aesthetic, while energising and strengthening the physical,, in a way that
promotes general mental and bodily health and imparts a high degree of deep
and quiet enjoyment. In John Duncan's case, delight in these pursuits rose
to an intense and beautiful enthusiasm, if not to the absorbing power of a
passion. Nothing could excel the pure devotion with which he followed the
study of flowers amidst penury and misunderstanding, enduring unusual
privation, undertaking remarkable self-imposed toil, and traversing for
their sake the whole country, in a way which brought him into contact with
strange society but which was as wise as it was rare. Beyond doubt, Duncan
found from sweet experience, as he wrote in one of his own essays, "a sort
of spell or charm about flowers, independent of fashion or the pleasures of
sight and smell, which tended to soothe the spirits and compose the mind.
From their study, he extracted the very elixir of life, and sipped the honey
of existence.
As a whole, it seems only the
simple truth, that notwithstanding the sorrows he felt and the hardships he
passed through, few men have lived a happier life than poor John Duncan; for
his joys and renovations were ever present and perennial, and always
satisfying. He appears to have come very near Emerson's "rich and royal
man," inasmuch as he "knew what sweets and virtues are in the ground, the
waters, the plants, the heavens, and how to come at these enchantments."
And the happiness of John
Duncan is open to most of us, if not more or less to all, if we will but
seek it where he found it—that is the comforting, the blessed thought.
Whatever our daily bread-winning work, be it weaving or book-making, if we
will only go out into Nature, and intelligently and earnestly study and feel
her wonders, beauties and serenities, his secret will become ours. For
there, as the same philosophic poet truly urges: "The knapsack of custom
falls off our backs with the first step we make into these precincts. There
is sanctity which shames our religion, and reality which discredits our
heroes. We have crept out of our close and crowded houses into the night and
morning, and we see what majestic beauties daily wrap us in their bosom. How
willingly we would escape the barriers which render them comparatively
impotent, escape the sophistication and second thought, and suffer nature to
embrace us! The tempered light of the woods is like a perpetual morning, and
is stimulating and heroic. The uncommunicable trees begin to persuade us to
live with them and quit our life of solemn trifles."
But why, why, while we are
immersed in beauty and surrounded by such ever-present, ever-open sources of
purest pleasure, solaces in our sorrows, health-givers amidst our
intermittent sicknesses, physical and mental; why is it that we do not seek
them?
It arises mainly because "our
eyes have no clear vision." "God has introduced us," Marcus Aurelius tells
us, "as spectators of himself and his works, and not only as spectators but
interpreters of them," and yet we pass away without having once caught a
glimpse of their beauties and sanctities. "You take a journey," he pleads
with his Roman readers, and through them with us, "to Olympia to behold the
work of Phidias (the Olympian Jove), and each of you thinks it a misfortune
to die without. a knowledge of such things; and will you have no inclination
to understand and be spectators of those works for which there is no need to
take a journey, but which are ready and at hand?"
And why have we no clear
vision? Chiefly because our eyes have never been opened to see such things;
our education has been thus far neglected with most of us; we have never
been introduced to Science in our youth, when our faculties were clear and
ductile. The responsibility for this general blindness lies primarily at the
door of our schools, with their narrow curriculum. As one of John's friends,
writing of the misunderstandings to which John was subjected, says: "Most of
us knew only the weaver. We did not know the botanist and the student,
because we did not know and love the flowers. Nor can we be blamed. Flowers
in school would have seemed sadly out of place. We therefore grew up
ignorant of their secrets. The uninitiated cannot be expected to read
Flora's richly illuminated book. Hence the charm Duncan felt in conning it
over, line by line, was wholly unfelt by us."
There lies the chief source
of our blindness—"Flowers in school would have seemed sadly out of place!"
Surely it is now time that this past reproach should be removed. Surely we
have crossed the threshold of a better day, when flowers will not only daily
adorn the teacher's desk and smile in every window, but, along with other
natural things, be taught and understood in every school in the land ; till
they are loved and sought for in after life, and till they become a means of
deeper joy and higher education that will lead our people more and more out
to "the breezy common" of nature and natural studies.
Such are some of the elements
of the rare happiness, self-helpfulness, and peace achieved by this Iowly
scientific weaver, with a keen temperament, amidst extraordinary
disabilities, and under the most unlikely conditions; and his story will not
have been written in vain, if it should help any of us to become what
Crashaw celebrates, what every one sighs and seeks to be, however
erroneously and blindly, and what John Duncan greatly was-
"A man all his own wealth,
His own music, his own health;
A happy soul, that all the way
To heaven hath a summer's day." |
