William Nelson A Memoir 13

William Nelson A Memoir 13

Here, in this bright home, William Nelson dwelt, surrounded by wife and

children, with an ever-welcome circle of friends; and also with other

objects of his kindly consideration--his pet cockatoo, his peacocks, his

children’s rabbits, etc., for his sympathetic nature displayed itself

strongly in his love for the lower animals. His favourite dogs made him

subservient to their caprices, for he could not bear to see an animal

neglected. The birds that frequented Salisbury Green were a source of

constant delight, and any injury done to them excited his pity. He

mourned over the disappearance of the larks, after a succession of wet

seasons, as a personal loss; and an ill-timed jest about larkpies seemed

to give him acute pain. The reappearance of the birds in the spring, and

their pairing and building, were a source of ever-renewed pleasure. But

no one entered more heartily into the humorous aspect of things, even

when the laugh was at his own expense; and an occasion of this kind

transpired during one of my later visits to Salisbury Green. He had been

greatly charmed by the appearance of a pair of herons that remained day

after day stalking about the lawn, wading in the pond, and seemingly

well contented to make themselves at home in the grounds. The household

was warned not to disturb the graceful strangers; but after a time they

disappeared, and then some stray fish-bones on the margin of the pond

revealed the secret of their visit. They had only left when the last of

its gold-fish had been disposed of!

 

The tenderness of William Nelson for the lower animals was shown in many

ways. A companion of his boyhood recalls an incident of those early

years. A party of boys at Kinghorn were off in a boat. They had obtained

the prized loan of a gun, and each in his turn was to have a shot at the

sea-gulls. William eagerly waited his chance; loaded and pointed his gun

at a gull within shot; then, after a pause, he quietly laid it down,

with the remark, “No, no! let the poor thing live!” One of the foremen

at Hope Park furnishes an incident of later years. Walking down Preston

Street, on his way to the office, Mr. Nelson saw a poor little sparrow,

just fledged; and having with some difficulty caught it, he gave a boy

sixpence to take it to Salisbury Green, and set it free among the trees.

Another incident I glean from one of Mrs. Nelson’s letters. “One day,

when we were walking together in the grounds, he stooped down and lifted

up so tenderly a worm which was on the gravel walk, and laying it on the

lawn, he said, ‘I cannot bear to see worms trampled upon; but this one

will be safe here.’” This is a specific instance of what was a

characteristic trait. In some manuscript “Recollections of the late

William Nelson,” noted down by Mr. Dalgleish, the superintendent of the

literary department of the publishing work for many years, the same

familiar trait is thus referred to:--“The birds were his constant and

most familiar friends. In the veranda of his beautiful house at

Salisbury Green he had quaintly-fashioned rustic boxes hung up for the

birds to build their nests in. It is a simple matter of fact that, not

once or twice, but many times, when walking round his garden after a

shower, he lifted a worm from the path, and laid it daintily on the

grass.” The tenderness that spared the gull, and cared for the worm on

his garden path, went even beyond this. He could not bear to see a

mousetrap set, and nothing pleased him more than when his children gave

evidence of a like sympathy. “None of us,” writes Mrs. Nelson, “will

ever forget the delight he was in one morning when he learned from Alice

that she, unknown to any one, had been cutting the string with which the

spring of a trap set in the nursery was held, so that no mice might be

caught. The servant, on her morning visits to the room, was mortified at

the failure of her plans to entrap the intruders, and only after a good

deal of questioning found out the delinquent.” Yet such are the curious

inconsistencies of human nature, no such thoughts seem to have intruded

to mar the enjoyment of his favourite pastime of fishing.

 

He was _en rapport_ with living nature in that peculiar way that seems

to distinguish an exceptional class of men. Dogs manifested for him an

instinctive sympathy, and he was perfectly fearless with regard to them.

When travelling with me in the Muskoka Lake district in Canada, a

backwood farmer shouted a warning as he approached the kennel of a

half-breed wolf-dog, such as are common with the Indians. But the

animal, though ordinarily fierce, responded to his caresses. His own

favourite dog, Leo, a fine Italian greyhound, watched for him, and

contended with the children for a share of his attention. He would coax

and whimper to be allowed to accompany him to the counting-room, where

his favourite corner was behind his master in his chair at the writing

table, to the manifest inconvenience and satisfaction of both. In a

retired nook in the grounds the visitor would come unexpectedly upon the

mound, with its little marble pillar, that marked the grave of canine

favourites of earlier years, and especially of poor Bronté, whose memory

was a source of bitter self-reproach to his master. William Nelson was

in the habit for many years of going down to the neighbouring sea-coast

before breakfast to bathe. This he did summer and winter, leaving early

in the cold dark mornings, accompanied by his faithful companion,

Bronté, a large Newfoundland dog. They travelled together in the train

to the Chain Pier. But when Mr. Nelson was absent from home, Bronté

missed his master, and setting off at the usual early hour, took the

train and went off to the beach in search of him. The fact only became

known when an account was presented from the railway company for

Bronté’s travelling expenses. He and his master were well known to the

railway officials, and so Master Bronté, as it proved, had regularly

journeyed for his morning bath in a first-class carriage! But the span

of life runs within straitened limits for our canine favourites, and ere

the close it had become a burden to poor Bronté. The feeling associated

with his death, which had long secretly preyed on his master’s mind,

found utterance when, in subsequent years, old age once more rendered

life a burden to another household pet. A fine large tom cat had passed

from kittenhood to extreme old age, and was nursed till its condition of

helplessness became so pitiable that some one suggested the

administration of poison as an act of mercy. “No, no! don’t give it

poison!” exclaimed Mr. Nelson; “you would never forget it. I have never

forgiven myself for allowing poor Bronté to be poisoned. It haunts me

still. I shall never forget it as long as I live.” So poor Tom was left

to die a natural death two days later.

 

Brighter associations connect themselves with a scene in the

drawing-room of Salisbury Green which transpired in recent years. On a

lovely Sabbath morning, when the windows were open on to the lawn, and

all were assembled for family worship, as William Nelson was reading a

chapter from the Bible, a starling flew into the room. It alighted and

kept hopping about his chair, till all knelt down; when, instead of

being startled, it perched on his shoulder, remaining quietly there all

the time of prayer. When the family rose from their knees, it was

thought that the bird would fly away; but it refused to quit its novel

perch. He walked with it on his shoulder up to the nursery, where a

large bowl of water was placed upon the table, when “Charlie,” as their

pet starling was subsequently named, hopped down to enjoy the luxury of

a bath. A cage was procured; but Mr. Nelson would not hear of its being

shut in. Ultimately, Charlie was housed in a large open cage in the

laundry, with free access to the garden. There he made himself entirely

at home, and became a great favourite; but after some time he flew off

into the garden and did not return. One evening, at a later date, when

the family were seated on the lawn, a starling--possibly

Charlie--perched on one of the children’s shoulders; and that was the

last they ever saw of their little visitor.

 

There was a rare naturalness and simplicity in William Nelson. He was at

ease in any company, and equally accessible to poor as to rich. Yet,

with all this, he was singularly undemonstrative. As one of his old

friends writes, “he was no hand-shaker;” so that a stranger could never

have guessed the deep sympathies that lay concealed under his quiet

manner. Yet when his pity was excited his emotion was extreme, and he

betrayed the tender sensitiveness of a woman, his tears flowing

unrestrained. When his mother, to whom he was passionately attached, lay

dying, he shrank from entering the room, where the sight of her

suffering overpowered him. But he lingered about the door of the

apartment, and could not stay away. When moved with apprehension of the

safety of those most dear to him--as on one occasion which I recall,

when in deep anxiety about the safety of his son--his emotion was even

painful to witness. But his capacity for enjoyment was equally great,

and retained in it to the last much of the freshness of childhood. A

“Punch and Judy,” especially with a group of children enjoying the show,

never lost its charm for him. Another kindly trait of unsophisticated

naturalness was the pleasure he derived from street music. He would wait

to listen to a ballad-singer, and after a liberal gift, ask to have the

song over again. A blind bagpiper was irresistible, though more, I

suspect, as an object of charity than for the charm of his music. A

cornopean player and sundry German bands came regularly to his office

window, and “the Rhine Watch” was sure to call forth half-a-crown.

After his death, the comment of an old Parkside workman on the changes

that his absence had created was summed up with the remark, “The beggars

on the Dalkeith Road and the bands of music have ceased to come now.”

 

The pleasure which he derived from music was intense. It was, indeed, no

uncommon thing to see him moved to tears under its influence. But much

of this, doubtless, was the pleasure of association: as in the plaintive

national airs of Scotland, the songs and ballads familiar to him from

childhood, and the sacred music linked to hymns, many of which have

become part of the national psalmody, and entered into the religious

life of the whole English-speaking race.

 

In art his taste was pure. He delighted to have artists about him,

criticised their works with frank sincerity, and at times with an

unconventional bluntness that was a little startling. Sir George Harvey,

James Drummond, Sir Noel Paton and his brother Waller, Sir Daniel

Macnee, Keeley Halswell, Alfred H. Forrester (Alfred Crowquill), with

Doré, Giacomelli, and other foreigners, were all among his

artist-friends; and to those must be added Mrs. D. O. Hill, William

Brodie, Stevenson, and other sculptors, to whom the charms of his

tasteful home and its beautiful surroundings were familiar. His

remarkably fine and expressive head was a model they prized to work

from. His feelings in regard to artists and their works find __EXPRESSION__

in his letters from time to time, as he notes his sense of the loss

created by their death.

 

William Brodie, a self-taught artist of great simplicity and true

genius, whose fine statue of Lord Cockburn holds its place in the old

Parliament Hall of Edinburgh alongside of Roubiliac’s Forbes of

Culloden, Chantrey’s Lord Melville, and Steel’s Lord Jeffrey, was

engaged in 1881 on a marble bust of William Nelson. He had been

commissioned to execute for Toronto a bronze statue of Mr. Nelson’s

brother-in-law, the Hon. George Brown, leader of the Liberal party in

Upper Canada in its protracted struggle for constitutional government.

His death, after long suffering, by the pistol-shot of an assassin,

created a wide-spread sympathy in Canada, and awakened in the mind of