Wedderburn

“ For the most part he had Wedderburn in focus—a fact that Miss Haysman never suspected. She told Hill (for in the comparative privacy of the museum she talked a good deal to him of socialism and Browning and general propositions) that she had met Wedderburn at the house of some people she knew, and “He’s inherited his cleverness; for his father, you know, is the great eye-specialist.”
“My father is a cobbler,” said Hill, quite irrelevantly, and perceived the want of dignity even as he said it. But the gleam of jealousy did not offend her. She conceived herself the fundamental source of it. ”

“ He looked straight up the laboratory and saw all five girl students grouped in their places, and Wedderburn, the once retiring Wedderburn, leaning rather gracefully against the window, playing with the blind tassel and talking, apparently, to the five of them. Now, Hill could talk bravely enough and even overbearingly to one girl, and he could have made a speech to a roomful of girls, but this business of standing at ease and appreciating, fencing, and returning quick remarks round a group was, he knew, altogether beyond him. ”

“ The Hill-Wedderburn quarrel, for in his unostentatious way Wedderburn reciprocated Hill’s ill-veiled rivalry, became a tribute to her indefinable charm. She was the Queen of Beauty in a tournament of scalpels and stumpy pencils. To her confidential friend’s secret annoyance, it even troubled her conscience, for she was a good girl, and painfully aware, from Ruskin and contemporary fiction, how entirely men’s activities are determined by women’s attitudes. And if Hill never by any chance mentioned the topic of love to her, she only credited him with the finer modesty for that omission. ”

“ Another of his elegiac compositions was his contribution to the ‘Funerals,’ or memorial verses on Patrick Forbes of Corse, bishop of Aberdeen, published in 1635. The council records of Aberdeen contain many entries of payments made to Wedderburn for poems and on account of his grammar. Wedderburn was reckoned one of the foremost latinists of his day. Eight of his Latin poems are included in Scot's ‘Delitiæ Poetarum Scotorum.’ Besides those poems mentioned above, there are an elegy, epitaph, and apotheosis of Professor Duncan Liddel of Aberdeen, and an ode to Calliope. ”

“ It was expected, after the death of James V, that the governor Arran would be favourable to the protestants, but this hope was not realised, and several acts of parliament were passed forbidding the publication of these ballads, which were known as ‘the Dundee Psalms.’ Wedderburn was in Dundee in the early part of 1546, but was forced to flee to England in that year to avoid prosecution, and he died there in exile in 1556. ”

“ A little volume published in England and to be found in some of the libraries in America contains an account of the proceedings and gives a large part of Wedderburn’s speech. He has been most abundantly abused in America and by Whigs in England as an unprincipled office-seeker and a shallow orator, with no other talent than that of invective. That he was successful in obtaining office and rising to high distinction as an ardent Tory cannot be denied, and in this respect he did not differ materially from others or from the Whigs themselves when they had their innings. ”

“ Home of Wedderburn, who burned to avenge the death of his chief, drew De la Bastie towards Langton, in the Merse. Here he found himself surrounded by his enemies. In attempting, by the speed of his horse, to gain the castle of Dunbar, the warden plunged into a morass, where he was overtaken and cruelly butchered. Wedderburn himself cut off his head; and, in savage triumph, knitted it to his saddle-bow by the long flowing hair, which had been admired by the dames of France.—Pitscottie, Edit. 1728, p. 130. Pinkerton's History of Scotland, Vol. ”

“ For cool, and sustained declaration he stood unrivalled in Parliament, and his readiness in debate was universally acknowledged. In social life, in the company of the wits and writers of his day, his faculties seemed to desert him. He was not only dull, but the cause of dulness in others, and even Alexander Carlyle confesses that in conversation his illustrious countryman was “stiff and pompous.” In Wedderburn’s character ambition banished all rectitude of principle, but the love of money for money’s sake was not among his faults. ”

“ Of the men, two went down the laboratory to their places, one a pallid, dark-bearded man, who had once been a tailor; the other a pleasant-featured, ruddy young man of twenty, dressed in a well-fitting brown suit; young Wedderburn, the son of Wedderburn, the eye specialist. The others formed a little knot near the theatre door. One of these, a dwarfed, spectacled figure, with a hunchback, sat on a bent wood stool ”

“ Sir George Home of Wedderburn was son and successor of the Merse gentleman described under 1574, and a sketch of him, drawn by the perhaps partial hand of his brother, David of Godscroft, is well worthy of preservation. He was now twenty-eight years of age; he had been trained to pious habits by his parents, and completed his education at the Regent’s court, in company with the young Earl of Angus. ”

“ Patrick Wedderburn, than whom no man was more respected in Edinburgh, a W.S. of the first eminence, learned in the law, and a favourite everywhere. He belonged, it need scarcely be said, to a good Scotch family, and was any man’s equal in Scotland, though he acted as a “man of business” to many of his friends. He was one of the dearest friends of Robert Dalyell of Yalton, and was a more constant visitor than any other of the many familiar associates who called the laird of Yalton “Bob,” and knew him and his affairs to the finger-points. ”

“ Davenal's, and found him just come home from the consultation, to attend which he had hurried away before the reading of the will. Mr. Wedderburn told him the news.
"Left to me?" exclaimed the doctor. "Her money left to me! Nonsense!"
"It is indeed," affirmed Mr. Wedderburn. "After the legacies are paid you take everything--you are residuary legatee."
"You are joking," said the doctor. "What have I to do with the money? I have no right to it."
With some difficulty Dr. Davenal was convinced that he, and he alone, was named the inheritor. It did not give him pleasure. Quite the contrary ”

“ Every drop of blood, they say, was taken out of him by the jungle-leeches. It may be that very plant that cost him his life to obtain."
"I think none the better of it for that."
"Men must work though women may weep," said Wedderburn with profound gravity.
"Fancy dying away from every comfort in a nasty swamp! Fancy being ill of fever with nothing to take but chlorodyne and quinine—if men were left to themselves they would live on chlorodyne and quinine—and no one round you but horrible natives! ”

“ There is, perhaps, the most flagrant example of young Wedderburn in the Scottish Court of Session, when with dramatic effect he threw off his gown and declared he would never enter the Court again; but he rose to be Lord Chancellor of England. Scarcely less disrespectful (but not said openly to the Bench) was young Edward Hyde when hinting that the death of judges was of small moment compared with his chances of preferment. "Our best news," he wrote to a friend, "is that [Pg 8] we have good wine abundantly come over; our worst that the plague is in town, and no judges die." ”

“ But Wedderburn did not come in for his tea.
"He is worshipping that horrid orchid," she told herself, and waited ten minutes. "His watch must have stopped. I will go and call him."
She went straight to the hothouse, and, opening the door, called his name. There was no reply. She noticed that the air was very close, and loaded with an intense perfume. Then she saw something lying on the bricks between the hot-water pipes. ”

“ Returning to Edinburgh, he pursued his studies, and was enrolled as advocate on 29 June 1754. He first won distinction as a debater in the general assembly of the kirk of Scotland, taking his position there as an elder when only twenty-one years old, and it was his task to defend David Hume from church censure and John Home, the author of ‘Douglas,’ from deposition from his ministerial office. At this time he was associated with a number of the Edinburgh literati in founding the Select Society, in which Wedderburn, though youngest member, had a prominent place. ”

“ They say he’s been steward of the J. C. R. for fifty years.”
“Thirty-two years,” corrected Wedderburn in his voice of most reverberant certitude. “Venner’s is practically a club. You aren’t elected, but somehow you know just when you can go in without being stared at. There’s nothing in Oxford like that little office of Venner’s. It’s practically made St. Mary’s what it is.”
All the freshmen, sipping their port and lolling back in their new gowns, looked very reverent and very conscious of the honor and glory of St. ”

“ A charge of heresy was brought against him, but he escaped to France, and established himself as a merchant at Rouen or Dieppe, where he lived unmolested until his death in 1553, although attempts were made by the Scottish community there to bring further charges against him.
John Wedderbum graduated M. A. at St Andrews in 1528. He took priests' orders and appears to have held the chaplaincy of St Matthews, Dundee, but in March 1539 he was accused of heresy, apparently for having, in conjunction with his brothers, written some anti-Catholic ballads. ”

“ In every nation the same struggle goes on between progress and autocracy, between enlightenment and obscurantism ; and it is well for India that her destiny is linked with England ; and not with Russia, where the spirit of the people is crushed by a dull and deadly bureaucratic despotism. In England, the ancient home of freedom, those who trust in Russian methods can only prevail for a season ; and for India's future we may well share in Allan Hume's assured Hope that though sorrow may endure for a night, joy will come in the morning. ”

“ Hume rebuked the rulers, no less faithfully did he deliver his message to the people, warning them against the sins which most easily beset them. This he did from a compelling sense of duty, speaking "as a father parting for ever from his children that he loves, and whose future he fears for." " I am an old man," he said, " I have lived my life amongst you, and perhaps know as much of India as a whole as any one living ; but for all that I do not pretend to dogmatize — I only tell you what I who love you believe to be essential to your ultimate success." ”

“ Believe me, it would be not only to inflict on your country an irreparable loss — for there is no other single man whose services she could less easily spare — but it would be a sin against your own soul, like his who hid his talent in the napkin. ”

“ Hume loved India passionately, as every one who knew him could testify, and he loved justice and freedom also passionately. Thus it was that, after the close of a distinguished official career, he came forward to devote his great gifts to guiding India along the path of justice and freedom and self-respect. He came forward to teach Indians to walk nobly along the path of nationhood. ”

“ Hume worked in sickness and in health for the political advancement of the people of India with a self-sacrificing zeal and a single-mindedness of purpose which will enshrine his memory in the affections of the people, and will entitle him to the deepest gratitude of the most distant generations of Indians. ”

“ At present the greatest impediment to all progress here appears to me to consist in a general failure to realize the essential unity of the cause of reform. You find earnest men whose eyes appear to be closed to everything but the material wants of the people, and to whom the poverty of our population appears to be the one sole evil against which it is necessary to concentrate all efforts. You find equally devoted enthusiasts who see in the ignorance of the masses the source of all their sufferings and in their intellectual elevation a panacea for all woes. ”

“ Indians deeply mourn the death of Allan Hume. In him the country has lost its most sincere and sympathetic friend, the Uke of whom it may never see again, and the Congress its most beloved and esteemed founder. ”

“ With unexampled energy, great perseverance and unfaltering faith he had striven amidst good report and evil to promote the social and political welfare of the people and had lived to see the firstfruits of his noble and unceasing efforts. Though it is impossible that Indians can ever repay the debt of obligation they owe to him for his righteous and dis- interested service, the name of Mr. Hume will be remembered with affection and gratitude by generations to come as that of a sterling Englishman of deep and abiding sympathy with their most cherished aspirations. ”

“ If you, the picked men, the most highly educated of the nation, cannot, scorning personal ease and selfish objects, make a resolute struggle to secure greater freedom for yourselves and your country, a more impartial administration, a larger share in the management of your own affairs, then we your friends are wrong, and our adversaries right ; then are Lord Ripon's noble aspirations for your good fruitless and visionary; then, at present, at any rate, all hopes of progress are at an end, and India truly neither lacks nor deserves any better government than she now enjoys. ”