I learned a good deal about the Baxter ménage during the next few weeks, from various sources.
First the Rector, whom I encountered one day paying a parochial call at Twenty-One, The Common. We walked home together.
"He's a strange old fellow," said my companion, "and most of his characteristics are derived from imitations, conscious or unconscious, of a stranger old fellow still."
"The late lamented?"
"Exactly. Old Belford was a bachelor, and lived alone among his books in his house in the Close for nearly forty years. His only companions were an aged cook-housekeeper and Adam Baxter. He died fifteen or twenty years ago, before I came here. He was nearly ninety, I fancy."
"What was Baxter's exact status in the household?"
"By his own account, he was the old man's confidential secretary, amanuensis, and librarian. My own belief is that he cleaned the Archidiaconal boots. Of course he may have been allowed to dust the books in the library too. Anyhow, during his period of service in that household he contrived to amass an enormous quantity of more or less useless book-learning. He is regarded hereabouts as quite a savant. His erudition makes him respected by those who have none, and his library of miscellaneous rubbish gives him the status of a man of property."
"It's not all rubbish. He has a Shakespeare and a Southey, at least. He has Jowett's Thucydides too, he tells me."
"You're right: I retract that part. But his library is rubbish, in the sense that it's an unclassified rag-bag of odds and ends. Still, he's an enlightened old chap in his way. When he settled down in that little house after old Belford's death and began to set up as a sort of provincial Socrates, his conversation and library were mainly classical, as you might expect, considering their origin. He would pull down a Homer, or a Herodotus, or a Vergil, and spout to his audience some favourite passage of his late employer."
"You mean to say he translated from the original Latin and Greek?"
"Ah! That's what nobody knows. The peculiar thing about Baxter is that, though he will read or quote from any book in his library for your delectation, he practically never permits any one to take the book out of his hands. No human eye, for instance, has ever fallen upon the printed pages of Baxter's Homer. If it did, I suspect it would find that page printed in good plain English. Pope's translation, probably."
"You think he is a fraud, then?"
"Oh, bless you, no! I think he is a genuine book-lover, and values—in fact lives on—the respect which his literary eminence earns for him in this extremely unliterary township. But candidly I think most of his classical works are common cribs. I have known less pardonable forms of hypocrisy. But I was saying just now he was enlightened. Of late years he has supplemented his Latin and Greek and his Poets and Historians by scientific and technical literature. People go and consult him about all sorts of modern developments and tendencies now."
"Adenoids, for instance?"
"Precisely. Well, I turn off here. I am going to pay a call upon a gentleman who made a large fortune out of Civilian War Work of National Importance. He has acquired a library, too—quite recently and all at once—beautifully bound in morocco and tree calf. But I doubt if he could quote a single line from a single volume therein. Baxter for me, every time! Good-afternoon."
Secondly, from McAndrew.
"Yon auld felly, Baxter," he suddenly remarked to me one day while driving me home from a professional round, and passing the door of Number Twenty-One; "he's real respeckit in the toon. In Scotland, of course, he would be naebody, for every one's educatit there. But here there's men making as much as seeven pound a week at the Phoenix Linoleum Works, on the south side, that has read naething since they passed through school but the Sabbath newspapers. They look on Baxter as a kin' o' Cyclopedy. But—I was in there the other nicht for a bit crack, and I asked him what he thought of Rabbie Burns. He'd never heard tell of him! There's your Oracle!"
"Mr. Baxter is a self-made man of letters," I said. "He got most of his learning second-hand from the Archdeacon. Perhaps the Archdeacon was not a student of Burns, either."
The enormity of this suggestion quite paralyzed McAndrew for a while. Presently he recovered sufficiently to resume: "Yon Archdeacon was a doited sort of body. He lived all alone in yon dreich-lookin' house in the Cathedral Close nigh fufty year. He had naething aboot him but books, and naebody aboot him but an auld wife, Mistress Corby, and Baxter. She's deid now, but her dochter married on the ironmonger in High Street. It was her was telling me. Mistress Corby did the beds and the cooking, and Baxter did everything else. He redd up the library, and dusted the books. He carried the coals and sorted the garden as weel. And where do you think the Archdeacon got him?"
"Baxter?"
"Aye, Baxter. Singin' in the street! There's few fowk in this toon ken that, or mind it. But Baxter just drufted into the place one wet day, with the toes stickin' oot of his boots, and the Archdeacon found him standin' in the rain and took him intil the hoose and kept him. Twenty-five shillin' a week he got, with two suits of clothes a year and a bit present at Christmas. He bided there thirty years, and the Archdeacon never repented of his bargain. Good servants is scarce."
McAndrew paused impressively, to allow this last truth to sink in, and continued.
"I jalouse the way Baxter got an so weel with the Archdeacon was the interest he took in the library. He was never oot of it, unless he was pitten oot. It wasna so much that he would read the books as worship them. He would take them oot and hold them in his hands by the hour, or sit back on a chair and glower at their backs on the shelves. So Mistress Corby's dochter that married on the ironmonger tellt me."
"By the way, when did Mr. Baxter's granddaughter appear on the scene?" I inquired.
"That was long after the old man died. He left Baxter an annuity, with two bookcases and a wheen books to start a library of his ain. Mistress Corby's dochter says he left him fufty, and Baxter pinched other twenty-five. That was the nucleus, you'll understand. The rest he has been collecting for himself for many a year."
"And the granddaughter?" I inquired gently.
"Oh, aye; I was coming to her. She came along aboot five years ago, long after the old man had settled into yon wee hoose where he stays now. She just appeared. Naebody could ever find oot where from, although Mistress Corby's dochter asked Baxter to tea in her own hoose twice and called on him herself three times. Baxter is as close as an oyster, and as for the lassie"—McAndrew shuddered slightly—"she has an ill tongue tae provoke."
Thirdly, chez Baxter.
As already indicated, it was the old gentleman's custom of an evening to receive visitors in the front room and discourse to them on literature, poetry, history, and science. Light refreshments—very light refreshments—were handed round by Miss Weeks; but these were a mere appendage to the literary provender supplied. I formed the habit of joining this symposium upon one evening every week—at first out of idle curiosity (and perhaps with the pardonable desire of indulging in one of the few forms of advertisement open to a struggling physician), but subsequently through sheer interest in the academy itself and the amazingly sure touch with which the master handled his disciples.
They were a motley crew. There were socially ambitious young shop-assistants, anxious to acquire a literary polish likely to impress the opposite sex. There were artisans who wished to advance themselves in the technique of their profession. There were heavy-handed, heavy-shouldered, rather wistful men, with muscles made lusty by hard physical labour, conscious of minds grown puny and attenuated for lack of intellectual nourishment. There were humble folk with genuine literary leanings, who came to consult Mr. Baxter's poems and essays, and sometimes shyly proffered compositions of their own for perusal and comment. There were men—uneducated men—dimly conscious of the fact that they possessed immortal souls, who had waded into the deep waters of theological speculation, and got out of their depth. For each and all Mr. Baxter had a word of welcome and counsel.
"I am very happy to see you, Mr. Wright. And your friend, Mr.—? Mr. Dennis. Thank you. We are going to read and discuss a passage from 'The Tempest' presently. Shakespeare, you know. Be seated, and my granddaughter will offer you a little refreshment.... I have been consulting various authorities on statical electricity for you, Mr. Armitage. I have marked a few passages in my Encyclopædia, Volume Twenty in my library, which seem to me to treat the subject most lucidly. You might also derive some information from the life of Mr. Faraday—Volume Eighteen. My granddaughter will look up the passage for you presently.... Ah, Mr. Jobson! How are they down at the factory to-day? You are just in time. We are about to read and discuss a passage from 'The Tempest.' Shakespeare, of course. Be seated, pray.... For me to read, Mr. Penton? Thank you: that indeed will be an intellectual treat. I will peruse your manuscript at leisure, and comment upon it at our next meeting.... The Agnostics still bothering you, Mr. Clamworthy? Well, I am no theologian; but for sheer old-fashioned common sense I don't think you can beat Paley's 'Evidences of Christianity.' The late Archdeacon used to say that he always came back to Paley in the end. Ada, my dear, that passage I marked in Volume Forty-Seven! Now friends, 'The Tempest'!"
After that the Presentation Shakespeare would be opened, and Mr. Baxter would declaim selected passages. His voice was mellow, and his manner ecclesiastical; plainly his whole deportment was moulded, to the last gesture and inflexion, on one unvarying model. A discussion would follow—a quite naïve and rather pathetic discussion, sometimes. Ultimately Mr. Baxter would sum up, generally with extracts from other Shakespearian passages, which he turned up with great readiness and dexterity, rolling them from off his tongue with obvious relish. Occasionally he would ask Ada for some other volume, and read from that. There were great moments when he would actually call for Homer or Horace and, with apologies for rusty scholarship, offer to our respectful ears a quite coherent rendering of some famous passage.
Finally, at a moment selected by herself, the vigilant Ada Weeks would terminate the proceedings with the curt announcement that her grandfather was tired. The precious volumes were locked in the library again, and we were bidden, without ceremony, to say good-night to our host and not to bang the street door. Both of which commands we obeyed promptly and reverently, and departed homeward.