eck," their feelings were
strong. It was, indeed, as strange a reverse as ever was made by
fortune's fickle wheel. "He had left them," to quote the words of
Lockhart, "comparatively unknown, his tenderest feelings torn and
wounded by the behaviour of the Armours, and so miserably poor that he
had been for some weeks obliged to skulk from the sheriff's officers
to avoid the payment of a paltry debt. He returned, his poetical fame
established, the whole country ringing with his praise, from a capital
in which he was known to have formed the wonder and delight of the
polite and the learned; if not rich, yet with more money already than
any of his kindred had ever hoped to see him possess, and with
prospects of future patronage and permanent elevation in the scale of
society, which might have dazzled steadier eyes than those of maternal
and fraternal affection. The prophet had at last honour in his own
country, but the haughty spirit that had preserved its balance in
Edinburgh was not likely to lose it at Mauchline." The haughty spirit
of which Lockhart speaks was reserved for others than his own family.
To them we hear of nothing but simple affection. His youngest sister,
Mrs. Begg, told Chambers, "that her brother went to Glasgow, and
thence sent home a present to his mother and three sisters, namely, a
quantity of _mode_ silk, enough to make a bonnet and a cloak to each,
and a gown besides to his mother and youngest sister." This was the
way he took to mark their right to share in his prosperity. Mrs. Begg
remembers going for rather more than a week to Ayr to assist in (p. 063)
making up the dresses, and when she came back on a Saturday, her
brother had returned and requested her "to put on her dress that he
might see how smart she looked in it." The thing that stirred his
pride and scorn was the servility with which he was now received by
his "plebeian brethren" in the neighbourhood, and chief among these by
the Armours, who had formerly eyed him with looks askance. If anything
"had been wanting to disgust me completely with Armour's family, their
mean, servile compliance would have done it." So he writes, and it was
this disgust that prompted him to furnish himself, as we have seen he
did, with a pocket copy of Milton, to study the character of Satan.
This fierce indignation was towards the family; towards "bonny Jean"
herself his feeling was far other. Having accidentally met her, his
old affection revived, and they