My brother Sam lived with our grandfather in Edinburgh, and attended the High School, which was in the old town, and, like other boys, he was given pennies to buy bread; but the boys preferred oysters, which they bought from the fishwives, the bargain being, a dozen oysters for a halfpenny, and a kiss for the thirteenth. These fishwives and their husbands were industrious, hard-working people, forming a community of their own in the village of Newhaven, close to the sea, and about two miles from Edinburgh. The men were exposed to cold, and often to danger, in their small boats, not always well-built nor fitted for our stormy Firth. The women helped to land and prepare the fish when the boats came in, carried it to town for sale in the early morning, kept the purse, managed the house, brought up the children, and provided food and clothing for all. Many were rich, lived well, and sometimes had dances. Many of the young women were pretty, and all wore – and, I am told, still wear – a bright-coloured, picturesque costume. Some young men, amongst others a cousin of my own, who attempted to intrude into one of these balls, got pelted with fish offal by the women. The village smelt strongly6 of fish, certainly; yet the people were very clean personally. I recollect their keeping tame gulls, which they fed with fish offal.
Although there was no individual enmity between the boys of the old and of the new or aristocratic part of Edinburgh, there were frequent battles, called ‘bickers’, between them, in which they pelted each other with stones. Sometimes they were joined by bigger lads, and then the fight became so serious that the magistrates sent the city guard – a set of oldmen with halberds and a quaint uniform – to separate them; but no sooner did the guard appear, than both parties joined against them.
Strings of wild geese were common in autumn, and I was amused on one occasion to see the clumsy tame fat geese which were feeding on the Links rise in a body and try to follow the wild ones.
As the grass on the plot before our house did not form a fine even turf, the ground was trenched and sown with good seed, but along with the grass a vast crop of thistles and groundsel appeared, which attracted quantities of goldfinches, and in the early mornings I have seen as many as sixty to eighty of these beautiful birds feeding on it.
My love of birds has continued through life, for only two years ago, in my extreme old age, I lost a pet mountain sparrow, which for eight years was my constant companion: sitting on my shoulder, pecking at my papers, and eating out of my mouth; and I am not ashamed to say I felt its accidental death very much.
Before the grass came up on this plot of ground, its surface in the evening swarmed with earthworms, which instantly shrank into their holes on the approach of a foot. My aunt Janet, who was then with us, and afraid even to speak of death, was horrified on seeing them, firmly believing that she would one day be eaten by them – a very general opinion at that time; few people being then aware that the finest mould in our gardens and fields has passed through the entrails of the earthworm, the vegetable juices it contains being sufficient to maintain these harmless creatures. [1D, 13: They are admirably constructed for their manner of life; for as the underside of each ring the worm has four pairs of glassy crooked rods or feet on which it can crawl rapidly by pushing them out and in; and when it makes its burrow it forces its snout and adjacent rings into the ground and having fixed them with its hooked feet, it draws up the rest of its body and having secured it to the mouth of its hole it pushes its snout further into the earth and continues the process till the burrow is deep enough. Its walls are lubricated with mucus from the skin of the worm to prevent the earth from falling in.]
My mother was very much afraid of thunder and lightning. She knew when a storm was near from the appearance of the clouds, and prepared for it by taking out the steel pins which fastened her cap on. She then sat on a sofa at a distance from the fireplace, which had a very high chimney, and read different parts of the Bible, especially the sublime descriptions of storms in the Psalms, which made me, who sat close by her, still more afraid. We had an excellent and beautiful pointer, called Hero, a great favourite, who generally lived in the garden, but at the first clap of thunder he used to rush howling in-doors, and place his face on my knee. Then my father, who laughed not a little at our fear, would bring a glass of wine to my mother, and say, ‘Drink that, Peg; it will give you courage, for we are going to have a rat-tat-too.’ My mother would beg him to shut the window-shutters, and though she could no longer see to read, she kept the Bible on her knee for protection.
My mother taught me to read the Bible, and to say my prayers morning and evening; otherwise she allowed me to grow up a wild creature. When I was seven or eight years old I began to be useful, for I pulled the fruit for preserving; shelled the peas and beans, fed the poultry, and looked after the dairy, for we kept a cow.
On one occasion I had put green gooseberries into bottles and sent them to the kitchen with orders to the cook to boil the bottles uncorked, and, when the fruit was sufficiently cooked, to cork and tie up the bottles. After a time all the house was alarmed by loud explosions and violent screaming in the kitchen; the cook had corked the bottles before she boiled them, and of course they exploded. For greater preservation, the bottles were always buried in the ground; a number were once found in our garden with the fruit in high preservation which had been buried no one knew when. Thus experience is sometimes the antecedent of science, for it was little suspected at that time that by shutting out the air the invisible organic world was excluded – the cause of all fermentation and decay.
I never cared for dolls, and had no one to play with me. I amused myself in the garden, which was much frequented by birds. I knew most of them, their flight and their habits. The swallows were never prevented from building above our windows, and, when about to migrate, they used to assemble in hundreds on the roof of our house, and prepared for their journey by short flights. We fed the birds when the ground was covered with snow, and opened our windows at breakfast-time to let in the robins, who would hop on the table to pick up crumbs. The quantity of singing birds was very great, for the farmers and gardeners were less cruel and avaricious than they are now – though poorer. They allowed our pretty songsters to share in the bounties of providence. The shortsighted cruelty, which is too prevalent now, brings its own punishment, for, owing to the reckless destruction of birds, the equilibrium of nature is disturbed, insects increase to such an extent as materially to affect every description of crop. This summer (1872), when I was at Sorrento, even the olives, grapes, and oranges were seriously injured by the caterpillars – a disaster which I entirely attribute to the ruthless havoc made among every kind of bird.
My mother set me in due time to learn the catechism of the Kirk of Scotland, and to attend the public examinations in the kirk. This was a severe trial for me; for, besides being timid and shy, I had a bad memory, and did not understand one word of the catechism. These meetings, which began with prayer, were attended by all the children of the town and neighbourhood, with their mothers, and a great many old women, who came to be edified. They were an acute race, and could quote chapter and verse of Scripture as accurately as the minister himself. I remember he said to one of them – ‘Peggie, what lightened the world before the sun was made?’ After thinking for a minute, she said – ‘ ’Deed, sir, the question is mair curious than edifying.’
Besides these public examinations, the minister made an annual visit to each household in his parish. When he came to us, the servants were called in, and we all knelt while he said a prayer; and then he examined each individual as to the state of his soul and conduct. He asked me if I could say my ‘Questions’ – that is, the catechism of the Kirk of Scotland – and asked a question at random to ascertain the fact. He did the same to the servants.
[1D, 11: One Sunday I was surprised to see the Sexton bring a low stool and place it before the pulpit after the sermon. There was a great stir and excitement in the church, everyone rising from curiosity when a man stood upon it, and after being severely reprimanded was restored again to the privileges of the Kirk. This was probably the last instance of the cutty stool.7 My mother had no small difficulty in evading my questions.]
When I was between eight and nine years old, my father came home from sea, and was shocked to find me such a savage. I had not yet been taught to write, and although