And From The Places Employed In Its
Illustration, Which Are All In The Immediate Neighbourhood Of A
House Then Occupied
By my father, I am able, to date it before the
seventh year of my age, although it was probably
Earlier in fact.
The 'pastures green' were represented by a certain suburban
stubble-field, where I had once walked with my nurse, under an
autumnal sunset, on the banks of the Water of Leith: the place is
long ago built up; no pastures now, no stubble-fields; only a maze
of little streets and smoking chimneys and shrill children. Here,
in the fleecy person of a sheep, I seemed to myself to follow
something unseen, unrealised, and yet benignant; and close by the
sheep in which I was incarnated - as if for greater security -
rustled the skirt, of my nurse. 'Death's dark vale' was a certain
archway in the Warriston Cemetery: a formidable yet beloved spot,
for children love to be afraid, - in measure as they love all
experience of vitality. Here I beheld myself some paces ahead
(seeing myself, I mean, from behind) utterly alone in that uncanny
passage; on the one side of me a rude, knobby, shepherd's staff,
such as cheers the heart of the cockney tourist, on the other a rod
like a billiard cue, appeared to accompany my progress; the stiff
sturdily upright, the billiard cue inclined confidentially, like
one whispering, towards my ear. I was aware - I will never tell you
how - that the presence of these articles afforded me encouragement.
The third and last of my pictures illustrated words:-
'My table Thou hast furnished
In presence of my foes:
My head Thou dost with oil anoint,
And my cup overflows':
and this was perhaps the most interesting of the series. I saw
myself seated in a kind of open stone summer-house at table; over
my shoulder a hairy, bearded, and robed presence anointed me from
an authentic shoe-horn; the summer-house was part of the green
court of a ruin, and from the far side of the court black and white
imps discharged against me ineffectual arrows. The picture appears
arbitrary, but I can trace every detail to its source, as Mr. Brock
analysed the dream of Alan Armadale. The summer-house and court
were muddled together out of Billings' Antiquities of Scotland; the
imps conveyed from Bagster's Pilgrim's Progress; the bearded and
robed figure from any one of the thousand Bible pictures; and the
shoe-horn was plagiarised from an old illustrated Bible, where it
figured in the hand of Samuel anointing Saul, and had been pointed
out to me as a jest by my father. It was shown me for a jest,
remark; but the serious spirit of infancy adopted it in earnest.
Children are all classics; a bottle would have seemed an
intermediary too trivial - that divine refreshment of whose meaning
I had no guess; and I seized on the idea of that mystic shoe-horn
with delight, even as, a little later, I should have written
flagon, chalice, hanaper, beaker, or any word that might have
appealed to me at the moment as least contaminate with mean
associations.
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