THE GREATEST OF SCOTTISH SONG-COLLECTORS.•
THE pertinacious and patriotic, if also rather wooden-headed, clerk to the Board of Trustees in Edinburgh, who was born • George Thomson, the Friend of Burns: Ms Life and Correspondence. By J. Cuthbert Redden. London; John C. Biome. 110s. 08.1
two years before Burns—with whose name his is too generally and too absolutely associated—and survived him for more than half a century, who reproduced, and in a sense re- created, Scotch melody, certainly deserved such a considerable and judicious biography as is here presented by Mr. J. Cuthbert Hadden. George Thomson was the correspondent not only of Barns, but of Scott and of Campbell, of Haydn and Beethoven, of Mozart, Weber, and Bishop. There never has been anything quite like his collection of Scotch melodies, which extended to six volumes, and which he supplemented by two of Irish and three of Welsh songs. When the musical compositions associated with these were published they were pronounced by the magazine which was then the leading organ of opinion in Scotland as "unrivalled for originality and beauty." And yet George Thomson was anything but a hero, —anything, indeed, but a critic of poetry, or even of music. Strong in his belief, in his self-assumed function as editor, he freely criticised all his poetical and musical contributors, from Barns, to whom he gave £5, to Beethoven, to whom he gave £550 :—
" His criticisms," writes his candid biographer, " are mainly of a niggling sort, many of them being wholly without justification, and springing either from a defective ear, a deficient imagination, or an exaggerated sense of propriety. He wishes to substitute all-telling' for descriving,' which Burns properly remarked would spoil the rusticity of the stanza. Resting on the infallible authority of Johnson's Dictionary, he tells Joanna Baillie that light' is obsolete, and suggests that ' vestment' is a better word than mantle' for a nun's dress. All these are simply prosaic, and it is not at all surprising that Miss Baillie retorts somewhat sharply, though not perhaps very felicitously, that a measure of obscurity is allowable in poetry."
Thomson carried his sense of delicacy to the verge of sheer prudery, which made Burns, the most faithful of all his corres- pondents, play more than one practical joke upon him ; he saw something " wrong " in " Comin' Thro' the Rye." And although Scott sent him such poor lines as-
" What yonder glimmers so white on the mountains, Glimmers so white where yon sycamores grow ? Is it wild swans around Vaga's fair fountain, Or is it a wreath of the wintry snow ? "
the fact hardly justified Thomson in lecturing the author of The Border Minstrelsy in this " elementary " fashion : "I need not observe to you that each stanza of a national song should be constructed in the same form with the first stanza, and there should not be the least deviation in regard to the measure or to the situation of the single or double rhymes." And yet the reader of the letters which constitute the bulk of this book—it should never be forgotten that if Thomson's correspondents had a good deal to bear from him, he had not a little to tolerate from them—must allow that, in spite of what his biographer mildly terms his " passion for the normal," he was in his own way and according to his own lights a worthy and well-meaning man with a mission.
The greatest of Scottish song-collectors had a long, blame- less, uneventful, and happy life. The son of a Fifeshire schoolmaster, who became a messenger-at-arms in Edin- burgh, he obtained in 1780, and at the age of twenty- three, the post of junior clerk to the Board of Manu- facturers at a salary of £40 a year. He remained in this department of the public service for sixty years, and indeed survived till 1851. As has been said, there was nothing notable in his life, though it may be mentioned that one of his granddaughters, the daughter of George Hogarth, who from being a lawyer in Edinburgh became a musical critic in London, married Charles Dickens. It was in 1792 that Thomson, who from a very early period in his life had been an enthusiastic lover of music, took the first steps towards the publication of a collection of Scottish national song, and began that " friendship " with Burns on which he so much
prided himself, and with good reason, as the poet was his most loyal and fervid ally. It seems very doubtful, however, whether the two men ever met, in spite of a very positive assertion by Thomson that they did in the shop of an Edin- burgh bookseller. The most notable incident, indeed, in the relationship between Burns and Thomson is the charge made against the collector after the poet's death—indeed as late as 1838, and almost with brutality, by Christopher North—of having been very shabby in his money dealings to his chief contributor. As a matter of fact, he sent Burns twice a present of £5 ; on the second occasion the poet wrote imploring it, and from his deathbed. Mr. Hadden makes a very good, though somewhat lengthy, defence of Thomson, which he summarises thus :—
" Burns—ill and trying to get along on half his salary as an exciseman, threatened by a lawyer on account of a paltry tailor's bill of £7 9s.—wrote in despair to his cousin, James Burners, and to Thomson. He asked £5 from Thomson, and Thomson sent that sum at once. He has been blamed for not sending more. But let us remember his position at the time. He was only a clerk with a salary of £100 a year. Moreover, whatever Thomson ex- pected his collection to become, the work was at this time all outlay and all risk. The outlay was undoubtedly beyond his means, and at the most only small sums could have come in to cover his large expenditure. That expenditure was growing, and came to be enormous, especially on the musical side, so as almost, in the words of Lord Cockburn, to justify Thomson's friends in impeaching his prudence with having anything to do with it."
As a matter of fact, Thomson had to borrow the second £5 he sent to Burns. Thomson was parsimonious, or, as the Scotch would prefer to say, " near." But there is no evidence that he was consciously either mean or unjust.
Burns left out of consideration, that portion of Mr. Hadden's book which deals with Thomson's dealings with men of letters is not nearly so satisfactory as that which deals with his relations to musicians. He applied to Scott, Hume, Byron, Hogg, Lockhart, Joanna Baillie, Sir Alexander Boswell (of the too neglected "Jenny Dang, the Weaver "), and others to help him, but their letters are not interesting. Scott really did very little. But he showed himself in this correspondence, as, indeed, always, a shrewd man of business. Thomson proposed that Scott should produce an ode on Nelson's victory and death at Trafalgar. Scott bargained : —"Should I be successful" (in producing the desired song, which he was not), "I will exchange the musical property of the song against a copy of Ducange's Glos- sary now in Laing's shop, I retaining the literary pro- perty,—that is, the exclusive right of printing the words when unconnected with music. The book may be worth about ten or twelve guineas." Scott did nothing of real value for Thomson, and the poor collector said of his rather troublesome correspondent, with more critical judgment than he usually commanded : "Song-writing is not Sir Walter Scott's forte; for once that be succeeds, he far more frequently fails." Hogg did his best in his com- fortably conceited fashion, with what success in Thomson's eyes may be gathered from his declaration that "Scott has not a jot of the true relish and feeling for elegant music, nor Hogg, nor any other poet on this side of the Tweed." Thom- son tried to get contributions from Byron, Moore, Campbell, and Southey, but obtained nothing. Byron admitted his inability to write a song, though he said :—" It is not a species of writing which I undervalue. On the contrary, Barns in your country and my friend Moore in this, have shown that even their splendid talents may acquire additional reputation from this exercise of their powers. You will not wonder that I decline writing after men whom it were difficult to imitate and impossible to equal." After Burns, Thomson's best contributor was Sir Alexander Boswell, who wrote twenty-four songs for the collection. Boswell was indeed Burns's greatest disciple, in the department at all events of homely humour, and would probably have done something really notable in Scotch vernacular literature had he not perished in a miserable political duel.
Thomson, with a view to securing the beat equipment of music for what he regarded as the best Scotch songs, entered into correspondence with such Continental composers as Pleyel, Kozeluch, Haydn, Beethoven, and Weber. "To put it frankly," says his candid biographer, " it was the acme of absurdity to go to these eminent Continental composers for accompaniments to Scottish airs. Such airs require intimate treatment if any ever did ; and although Thomson could not be brought to realise the fact, it was far more likely that his despised native musicians should do them justice than his much-vaunted Apollos." This is quite true; but although Thomson did not get much that was really valuable in the way of music from his Continental acquaintance, he got occa- sionally a revelation of character. Beethoven in particular—. it should be remembered he was struggling at the time—
proved that he was a remarkably good hand at making a bargain. He had an idea—a mistaken idea to all appearance —that Thomson was paying Haydn at a higher rate than that offered to him, and so he wrote in this peremptory fashion :—" I ask the sum of £120 sterling, or 240 ducats of Vienna in cash. You offered me £60 sterling, and it is impossible for me to give you satisfaction for such a remuneration (we are living here in a time (1811) when terribly high prices are asked for everything; we are paying about three times what we used to pay), but if you agree to the sum I ask, I will serve you with pleasure." Nor would be allow Thomson to meddle with his work, or do so himself. " I am not accustomed to tinker my compositions. I have never done so, being convinced of the truth that every partial modification alters the whole character of the com- position. I am grieved that you are out of pocket through this, but you cannot lay the blame on me, for it was your business to make me most fully acquainted with the taste of your country and the meagre abilities of your performers." Haydn contributed two hundred and thirty-two airs to Thom- son, and received in all 2291 for them. But the correspond- ence between the two was not especially remarkable. Thomson once provoked a slight coolness by sending a handkerchief to Frau Haydn, who had been dead three years !
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