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JOHN DUNCAN'S story now
enters on a sad chapter, which darkened more or less all the rest of his
days, and might have wrecked his life, if he had not possessed the strength
of character and capacity for higher pursuits that raised him above its
deteriorating influences.
Like most well-regulated,
affectionate men, John wished to have a home of his own, "a dearer, sweeter
spot than all the rest," blessed by the tender offices of love, to which to
retire from the colder world without.
Shortly after coming to
Aberdeen, his attention was taken by a good-looking smart young woman, named
Margaret Wise, whom he had seen at a print-field there. They became
acquainted, and an affection, real at least on his part, sprung up between
them. The young man, however, found that, some months before he knew
Margaret, she had borne a child to another. Nevertheless, with the
impetuosity of youth, and under the glamour of first love, which seems to
have been very strong in one of his quiet but ardent temperament, prudence
was thrown to the winds; and they agreed to be married. They were united in
1818, two years after his coming to the city, and the ceremony was performed
by the able and eccentric Dr. Kidd, one of the most popular and peculiar
clergymen that ever lived in Aberdeen, about whom hundreds of remarkable
stories are still current.
John furnished a house,
determined to do all he could to make a pleasant home for all of them. The
future, in the circumstances, did not look very auspicious, but might have
been happy, as it has proved even in worse cases. Here it turned out
disastrous. His wife seems to have been radically ill-conditioned in tone,
and unsettled in disposition and habit, with strong inclinations towards
those indulgencies that had made her a mother too soon. From the first, she
was not very kind or considerate to him, and, ere long, began to exhibit
tendencies that rendered domestic peace impossible. Quarrels ensued, and she
was accustomed to exclaim in rage, that when her boy was old enough, she
would ask him to thrash her husband's back for him. This child, whose name
was Andrew Durward, though occasionally called Duncan, stayed with them,
being kindly adopted by John, as his wife's son.
In time, two daughters were
born to them, the eldest, Mary, on the 10th of July, 1821, more than two
years after marriage, and the second, Elizabeth, or Beattie, on the 22nd of
December, 1823. These double pledges of affection should have consummated
their true union, and restored peace and happiness, if anything could. It
was in vain. Matters grew worse. Her natural proclivities only became more
pronounced. She began more or less openly to "take up" with other men; and
when women "yoke that way," as her husband sadly said long after, "they
winna bind. When they dinna hae the richt side o' that question, they're
fairly thro'."
It is a sad story, and should
be quickly told. Remonstrance became useless; unhappiness increased ; till
one day the crisis came. John, coming home from work at an unexpected hour,
found a man where no man should be. That was the end. She left the house
alone, abandoning her husband and children. Even then, his old affection
reasserted itself and he made overtures for her return, offering to let "the
dead past bury its dead," if she would only promise even yet to amend. All
was useless, and they parted for ever.
The house was broken up. She
took with her her own boy, and John retained the daughters. Had he been a
richer man, he would have sought and obtained divorce. Being very poor, he
had to remain united in name and law with a worthless woman. She joined her
fortunes with those of her new fancy, to be discarded in time; and, after
passing through various lower experiences, ended in becoming a wanderer over
the country, selling small trinkets and at last begging her bread. She tried
to annoy her husband when she could, endeavouring on one occasion to father
a child upon him, and bringing him to court, of course in vain. She used
also to visit him, to extort money, when she knew where he lived. At all
times, John treated her with kindness, and without recrimition or reference
to the past. Before she died, she was subject to St. Vitus' dance, and
became a poor miserable creature, draining the last drops of bitterness from
the cup she had mingled for herself, and dying in the west of Aberdeenshire,
unknown to her husband, a nameless object, more than twenty years after she
had ruthlessly wrecked her home.
It was a sad and terrible
experience, which would have blasted the life of most, of all but a strong
man. To John Duncan, it was a life-long grief, a secret sore that might have
drained out all vitality or driven him to questionable relief. His home was
despoiled, his dream of domestic happiness cruelly dissipated. Better far,
better a thousand fold, had she died. But no, she lived, a blight and a
blame. For years, he removed from place to place, to escape her presence and
the curse of her connection; and he never again took a holding of his own
till she had passed away. The subject was ever present to him as a hidden
anguish, a thing to be proscribed in speech, and to be breathed to no man,
not even to his dearest friends. To none of these did he speak of it, not
even to Charles Black, his second self, during their many years of closest
intimacy.
But it is vain to think of
hiding such secrets from the world. They haunt even the most innocent, like
crime, and, at the best, become a source of misunderstanding with the most
kindly. His friends knew the tale, and rumours of it floated amongst the
people, the very indefiniteness of their knowledge being a means of
exaggeration and cruel surmise. It was only his singular modesty and
unimpeachable uprightness that preserved him from being condemned. With his
friends, it was a forbidden topic, restrained by their affection for the man
and their respect for his action in the unhappy circumstances. To one alone
who admired him have I ever heard that he voluntarily entered on the
subject, and that was when it became unavoidable by his wife seeking him
out; and even then he spoke, without passion or hard words, of the miserable
cause of his woe, and only entered a mild defence of his conduct, which
gained full consent., When another sympathetic friend had occasion to
mention that he had known it for forty years, the old man, who thought him
quite ignorant of it, fairly broke down, as if stabbed to the heart. To the
last, he could never refer to it without the acutest pain. When, in talking
to him of his history shortly before his death, I delicately referred to his
unhappy domestic life, he touched on the subject with difficulty, saying,
amongst other things, that " when a man has a bad nec'bor, that will listen
to nothing, he's glad to get clear o' her." Referring to her death, he said
it caused him grief even after all that had happened; and the memory of the
bitter past reviving as he spoke, he turned away with tears in his eyes,
deprecating further reference to it. by saying, "But ye see, that's a' by
noo!"
These distressing experiences
in the tenderest relations, which touch the deepest springs of our being
with strange power, might have had disastrous effects, at least on his
temper and disposition. That they did not vitiate his habits by driving him
to excess in search of consolation is highly honourable to his moral power.
They might, however, have made him ill-tempered and more or less
misanthropic and morose, and it speaks volumes in the man's favour that they
did not; though his temperament was naturally keen and sensitive, and felt
such troubles to the very core.
What rendered the grief under
which he suffered the harder to bear, was the fact that it was not dead—that
its heartless cause lived so long and, for more than twenty years, wandered
in the very district in which he dwelt, before the public eye and with no
guarded tongue, in a guise disreputable to herself and intolerable to him,
and under conditions that might at any moment seriously compromise his
social respect. It was an ever-present, inexorable fate, through which none
but the most depraved would wish their worst enemy to pass. But it was
endured daily for more than a score of years, with all its painful
possibilities, by this simple weaver, in silence and dignity, without
vituperation of its cause, and with no loss of his own self-respect or the
esteem of society ; the man himself being strong enough, throughout the long
and wasting trial, to preserve his equanimity and calmness, and in time to
regain his natural brightness and humour. No doubt, the necessity for hiding
from his fellows this skeleton of the heart would increase his native
reserve and make him more retiring, mistrustful, and self-absorbed. But the
man passed through the bitter ordeal, if not unscathed, at least
undeteriorated; and undoubtedly, in many respects, raised and broadened,
through the sanctity of conquered sorrow. This was largely owing to his own
moral balance and strength of character and will. But it was also in great
part due to the measures he wisely took for relief, in moving about the
country, in working all the harder at his trade, in seeking variety of
employment, and, chief of all, in sedulously prosecuting the higher pursuits
to which he now increasingly devoted himself.
His two daughters were
boarded out by their father, with poor people to whom their labour was of
some value, and were in this way carefully brought up, though they were a
drain upon his slender resources. In time, they grew to womanhood, and
became domestic servants to several of John's friends and relations. They
did well, preserving their good name, though thus nurtured without the
advantages of a virtuous home. They would seem to have been truly attached
to their father, and letters still exist from both of them, addressed to him
by his affectionate daughters, which prove the pleasant relations that
subsisted between them. The fact that they could use the pen so creditably
as they did, shows that their education had not been neglected.
The eldest, Mary, was a
good-looking brunette, "a gae setting sort o' lassie," as they say in
Aberdeenshire, and her father's favourite. For years, she drove a milk-cart
into Aberdeen, selling her master's milk, and being much liked for her
pleasant, cheerful manners. She at last married a shoemaker called Smart, in
Aberdeen, where they lived long in the Gallowgate, and where her father used
to visit them.
The younger, Elizabeth,
married John Cormack, who made his living by travelling over the country,
selling broom and heather besoms and other articles of natural produce, and
who was hence universally known as "besom Jock," or "heather Jock." This man
was somewhat of a character, a great humorist, and an inveterate talker; but
he was an honest man even in public repute—a rare merit in such a life—and
was generally respected. His wife becoming paralyzed, like her mother,
Cormack got a "coach," or hand-carriage for her, in which she used to sit
along with the articles he sold, and in which she was driven by him
ungrudgingly all over the country. This single fact reveals a volume of
kindliness in the man, which in the whole circumstances is almost poetic in
its tenderness, for he was, as everybody acknowledged, "partik'lar gwveed"
to his helpless mate.
John Duncan kept up
correspondence with both daughters to the last. They paid visits to each
other, and he frequently assisted them in their poverty, in various ways. As
was natural and pardonable in a father, he wished his second daughter had
married some one of higher social standing than a hawker, and was
considerably ashamed of the connection—a foible that even the most
philosophical could scarcely rise above in connection with a daughter,
however honourable in character the lowly husband might be.
When he wished to meet the
Cormacks to give them the assistance he regularly did, he used to appoint
some more or less secluded place for the purpose. On one occasion, after
seeing them on a hill in Tullynessle, in the Vale of Alford, he called on a
friend who had a farm at its base, and complained of the disgrace it was to
be connected with such people, relatives though they were of his own. His
friend tried to soothe his wounded feelings by reminding him that Cormack
was an honest, much-respected man. John replied that he knew that, but that
surely he might get something more respectable to do than making heather
besoms; for that occupation is irretrievably associated in Scotland—in which
social status and respect stand high, amongst even the poorest—with tinkers
and their disreputable life, with which Cormack had not the remotest
connection or sympathy. But it is in vain to reason against such feelings,
and it shows John's true kindliness of heart that, possessing them so
strongly, he still treated their subjects so kindly, as he continued to do
till they passed away. Both daughters have long since died, along with their
husbands and children, so that no representative of John Duncan now
survives, if we except his half-brother, his mother's second son, already
mentioned.
His wife's son, Andrew
Durward, or "Durratt," as the name is popularly called and as he himself
spelled it, seems to have grown a respectable, kindly man, though brought up
under the untoward circumstances in which he had been. He became a soldier,
and letters of his, written to his sister Mary, from Colombo in Ceylon, in
1842, still exist, full of religious feeling. In one of these, he wished to
know how his father, John Duncan, was getting on—a proof that he retained a
kindly remembrance of the man in whose house he had been sheltered for six
years; and promised to send his mother ten shillings a month, if he knew how
to do so. He returned to this country after obtaining his discharge,
married, and made a living, in addition to his small pension, by traversing
the country with various wares, and was known as " an honest creature."
Unfortunately, like his mother and sister, he at last became paralytic, and
had to be supported by his wife. She is still remembered by many as a clean,
tidy woman, selling wares from a basket which she carried about. He at last
died, in October, 1867, in the poor-house of Clatt, in Aberdeenshire, to
which he and his wife had then come in their wanderings, and where she
remained till her death. An attempt was made, by the Parochial Board there,
to prove John Duncan to be his father, which of course failed, but which
caused him some trouble and expense. A son of Durward's, a strong vigorous
young man, walked a long distance from the farm at which he was engaged, to
attend John's funeral, and helped, as a relative, to lower him into the
grave. |
