Old Woman's Gossip

IX.

I WAS coming home one day from a tramp towards Cramond Beach, and was just on the brow of a wooded height looking towards Edinburgh and not two miles from it, when a heavy thundercloud darkened the sky above my head and pelted me with large drops of ominous warning. On one side of the road the iron gate and lodge of some gentleman’s park suggested shelter, and, the half-open door of the latter showing a tidy, pleasant-looking woman busy at an ironing table, I ventured to ask her to let ine come in till the sponge overhead should have emptied itself. She very good-humoredly consented, and I sat down while the rain rang merrily on the gravel walk before the door, and smoked in its vehement descent on the carriageroad beyond.

The woman pursued her work silently, and I presently became aware of a little child, as silent as herself, sitting beyond her, in a small wicker chair; on the baby’s table which fastened her into it were some remnants of shabby, broken toys, among which her tiny, wax-white fingers played with listless unconsciousness, while her eyes were fixed on me. The child looked wan and wasted, and had in its eyes, which it never turned from me, the weary, wistful, unutterable look of “ far away and long ago ” longing that comes into the miserably melancholy eyes of monkeys, to suggest the dismal doom of their descent from us, rather than Mr. Darwin’s more cheerful theory of our ascent from them.

“ Is the baby ill? ” said I.

“ Ou na, mem; it’s no to say that ill, only just always peaking and pining like,’’ and she stopped ironing a moment to look at the little creature.

“Is it your own baby?” said I, struck with the absence of motherly tenderness in spite of the woman’s compassionate tone and expression.

“ Ou na, mem, it’s no my ain; I hae nane o’ my ain.”

“ How old is it? ” I went on.

“Nigh upon five year old,” was the answer, with which the ironing was steadily resumed with apparently no desire to encourage more questions.

“Five years old!” I exclaimed, in horrified amazement; its size was that of a rickety baby under three, while its wizened face was that of a spell-struck creature of no assignable age, or the wax image of some dwindling life wasting away before the witch - kindled fire of a diabolical hatred. The tiny hands and arms were pitiably thin, and showed under the yellow skin sharp little bones no larger than a chicken’s; and at her wrists and temples the blue tracery of her veins looked like a delicate map of the blood, that seemed as if it could hardly be pulsing through her feeble frame; while below the eyes a livid shadow darkened the faded face that had no other color in it.

The tears welled up into my eyes, and the woman, seeing them, suddenly stopped ironing and exclaimed eagerly, “ Ou, mem, ye ken the family, or maybe ye’ll hae been a friend of the puir thing’s mither!” I was obliged to say that I neither knew them nor anything about them, but that the child’s piteous aspect had made me cry.

In answer to the questions with which I then plied her, the woman, who seemed herself affected by the impression I had received from the poor little creature’s appearance, told me that the child was that of the only daughter of the people who owned the place; that there was “something wrong” about it all, she did not know what, — a marriage illpleasing to the grandparents perhaps, perhaps even worse than that; but the mother was dead, the family had been abroad for upwards of three years, and the child had been left under her charge. This was all she told me, and probably all she knew; and as she ended she wiped the tears from her own eyes, adding, “I’m thinking the puir bairn will no live long itsel’.”

The rain was over and the sun shone, and I got up to go; as I went, the child’s dreary eyes followed me out at the door, and I cried all the way home. Was it possible that my appearance suggested to that tiny soul the image of its young lost mother?

The other incident in my rambles that I wish to record was of a far pleasanter sort. I had gone down to the pier at Newhaven, one blowy, blustering day (the fine Granton Pier Hotel and landing-place did not yet exist), and stood watching the waves taking their mad run and leap over the end of the pier, in a glorious, foaming frenzy that kept me fascinated with the fine uproar, till it suddenly occurred to me that it would be delightful to be out among them (I certainly could have had no recollections of seasickness), and I determined to try and get a boat and go out on the frith.

I stopped at a cottage on the outskirts of the fishing town (it was not much more than a village then) of Newhaven, and knocked. Invited to come in, I did so, and there sat a woman, one of the very handsomest I ever saw, in solitary state, leisurely combing a magnificent curtain of fair hair, that fell over her ample shoulders and bosom and almost swept the ground. She was seated on a low stool, but looked tall as well as large, and her foam - fresh complexion and gray - green eyes might have become Venus Anadyomene herself, turned into a Scotch fish-wife of five-and-thirty, or “thereawa.” “Can you tell me of any one who will take me out in a boat for a little while? ” quoth I. She looked steadily at me for a minute, and then answered laconically, “ Ay, my man and boy shall gang wi’ ye.” A few lusty screams brought her husband and son forth, and at her bidding they got a boat ready, and, with me well covered with sail cloths, tarpaulins, and rough dreadnaughts of one sort and another, rowed out from the shore into the turmoil of the sea. A very little of the dancing I got now was delight enough for me, and, deadly sick, I besought to be taken home again, when the matronly Brinhilda at the cottage received me with open-throated peals of laughter, and then made me sit down till I had conquered my qualms and was able to walk back to Edinburgh. Before I went, she showed me a heap of her children, too many, it seemed to me, to be counted; but as they lay in an inextricable mass on the floor in an inner room, there may have seemed more arms and legs forming the radii, of which a clump of curly heads was the centre, than there really were.

The husband was a comparatively small man, with dark eyes, hair, and complexion, but her “boy,” the eldest, who had come with him to take care of me, was a fair-haired, fresh-faced young giant, of his mother’s strain, and like her looked as if he had come of the Northern vikings, or some of the Niebelungen Lied heroes.

When I went away, my fish-wife bade me come again in smooth weather, and if her husband and son were at home they should take me out; and I gave her my address, and begged her, when she came up to town with her fish, to call at the house.

She was a splendid specimen of her tribe, climbing the steep Edinburgh streets with bare white feet, the heavy fish - basket at her back hardly stooping her broad shoulders, her florid face sheltered and softened in spite of its massiveness into something like delicacy by the transparent shadow of the white handkerchief tied hoodwise over her fair hair, and her shrill sweet voice calling “Caller haddie!” all the way she went, in the melancholy monotone that resounds through the thoroughfares of Edinburgh, and is the only melodious street cry (except the warning of the Venetian gondoliers) that I ever heard,

I often went back to visit my middleaged Christie Johnstone, and more than once saw her and her fellow fisher-women haul up the boats on their return after being out at sea. They all stood on the beach clamoring like a flock of sea-gulls, and, as a boat’s keel rasped the shingles, rushed forward and seized it; and while the men in their sea clothes, all dripping like huge Newfoundland dogs, jumped out in their heavy boots and took each the way to their several houses, their stalwart partners, hauling all together at the rope fastened to the boat, drew it up beyond water-mark, and seized and sorted its freight of fish, and stalked off each with her own basket full, with which she trudged up to trade and chaffer with the “ gude wives ” of the town, and bring back to the men the value of their work. It always seemed to me that these women had about as equal a share of the labor of life as the most zealous champion of the rights of their sex could desire.

The men took, it is true, the risk and peril of the sea for their part, but I doubt if their positive toil was harder than that of their helpmates, though the latter escaped the exposure to life and limb of the fishing itself; it seemed to me a very fair division, for the women bore and nursed the children that swarmed in all directions, the elder bairns “ minding ” the younger, and Heaven minding them all.

I did not indulge in any more boating expeditions, but admired the sea from the pier, and became familiar with all the spokes of the fish-wife’s family wheel; at any rate enough to distinguish Jamie from Sandie, and Willie from Johnnie, and Maggie from Jeanie, and Ailsie from Lizzie, and was great friends with them all.

When I returned to Edinburgh, a theatrical star of the first magnitude, I took a morning’s holiday to drive down to Newhaven, in search of my old ally, Mistress Sandie Flockhart. She no longer inhabited the little detached cottage, and divers and sundry were the Flockhart “wives” that I “ speired at” through the unsavory street of Newhaven, before I found the right one at last, on the third flat of a filthy house, where noise and stench combined almost to knock me down, and where I could hardly knock loud enough to make myself heard above the din within and without. She opened the door of a room that looked as if it was running over with live children, and confronted me with the unaltered aspect of her comely, smiling face. But I had driven down from Edinburgh in all the starlike splendor of a lilac silk dress and French crape bonnet, and my dear fish-wife stared at me silently, with her mouth and gray eyes wide open; only for a moment, however, for in the next she joyfully exclaimed, &38220; Eeh, sirs! but it ’s yer ain sel’ come back again at last! ” Then seizing my hand she added breathlessly, “ I’se gotten anither ane, and ye maun come in and see him; ” so she dragged me bodily through and over her surging progeny, to a cradle where, soothed by the strident lullabies of its vociferating predecessors, her last-born and eleventh baby lay peaceably slumbering, an infant Hercules.

The old Newhaven pier was once the scene of a pretty piece of rough-andready gallantry, of which a young lady relation of mine was the object, and which I think deserves recording. On a stormy day she and a girl companion had walked out to the end of the pier, fascinated, I suppose, as I had been, by the fine aspect of the sea; when they turned to retrace their steps they were suddenly assailed by a furious gust of wind, that alarmed them by almost blowing their clothes over their heads. My friend, who was an extremely timid, shy, feminine girl, was either too slow in her movements or too frightened to keep pace with her companion (who had rushed back along the pier), and, struggling against the wind in her endeavors to follow her, became so perfectly helpless with apprehension that she stopped short in the middle of the blast, against which she could make no head, vainly endeavoring in an agony of distress to hold her clothes down. A rough sailor who was on the lookout on the pier, and who saw the poor girl’s trouble, came straight to her, spread his arms over the fluttering, rebellious garments, furling them dexterously round her figure towards her feet, and lifting her up in his arms carried her rapidly off the pier and set her down out of reach of the insolence of “rude Boreas;” and, without saying a word to her, returned to his station at the pier-head.

Sir Walter Raleigh could not have done better, and such an adventure could hardly have befallen a woman of more natural delicacy and modesty than the lassie who was the heroine of it, —

sweet and low voiced, with a carriage of the utmost refinement and reserve; so that the painful position from which she was rescued by this kind-hearted man could hardly, I think, have affected any one more terribly.

A curious little incident illustrative of her extreme constitutional shyness occurs to me at this moment. She had been persuaded one evening to play on the piano, and sing, which she did very sweetly, to a small circle of very intimate friends; and as she rose to resume her gloves after her performance, an old gentleman, with the rather demonstrative gallantry of his earlier day, took her hand, saying, “ Ah, do not put on that glove yet! ” The hand, which was a peculiarly pretty, soft, white, dimpled hand, blushed, to the taper finger-tips as it was thus made an object of observation, and in spite of the kindly smile which the delicate little sensitive hand excited, I felt quite a painful sympathy with the confusion which overwhelmed its owner, as she hastily drew it away and hid it in her glove.

Among Mrs. Harry Siddons’s intimate friends and associates were the remarkable brothers, George and Andrew Combe, the former a lawyer by profession, but known to the literary and scientific world of Europe and America as the Apostle of Phrenology, and the author of a work entitled The Constitution of Man, and other writings, whose considerable merit and value appear to me more or less impaired by the craniological theory which he made the foundation of all his works, and which to my mind diminished the general utility of his publications for those readers who are not prepared to accept it as the solution of all the mysteries of human existence.

His writings are all upon subjects of the greatest importance and universal interest, and full of the soundest moral philosophy and the most enlightened humanity, and their only drawback, to me, is the phrenological element which enters so largely into his treatment of every question. Indeed, his life was devoted to the dissemination of this new philosophy of human nature (new, at any rate, in the precise details which Gall, Spurzheim, and he elaborated from it), which, Combe believed, if once generally accepted, would prove the clew to every difficulty, and the panacea for every evil existing in modern civilization. Political and social, religious and civil, mental and moral government, according to him, hinged upon the study and knowledge of the different organs of the human brain, and he labored incessantly to elucidate and illustrate this subject, upon which he thought the salvation of the world depended. For a number of years I enjoyed the privilege of his friendship, and I have had innumerable opportunities of hearing his system explained by himself; but as I was never able to get beyond a certain point of belief in it, it was agreed on all hands that my brain was deficient in the organ of causality, i. e., in the capacity of logical reasoning, and that therefore it was not in iny power to perceive the force of his arguments or the truth of his system, even when illustrated by his repeated demonstrations.

Of the general accuracy of some part of the phrenological theory I feel quite convinced, and have no doubt whatever that the outward conformation of the whole skull indicates with considerable precision, and with no more frequent exceptions than go to the proving of every rule, the general tendency of the character and disposition. I believe that the deep, broad forehead indicates intellectual power; the finely-arched and elevated crown of the head, a preponderating moral element; and the thick and heavy back head and neck, predominating animal propensities and passions.

In the minute division and subdivision of the brain into separate chambers for every conceivable quality to which a specific name or place could be assigned, I do not believe.

But by far the most important element in the system, in my opinion, was the weight attached by George Combe and his disciples to the general original organization and temperament of each individual. This, indeed, seemed to me very often to modify so much the effect of cerebral development, according to them, that it really rendered the deductions drawn from observations of the skull of very little reliable utility, and was the ready refuge to which my phrenological friends invariably betook themselves to account for the frequent discrepancies between their theory and manifest facts which contradicted it.

The conformation of the head might be such as to warrant certain conclusions, which not being corroborated, however, by the characteristics exhibited in the subject of observation, his or her temperament was then considered answerable for the disagreement; and of course if any such cause was always actively affecting the very substance of the brain itself, as well as its functions, no conclusion drawn from the separate organs and their demonstrations could be of any value either for observation, education, or any purpose whatever. Latent insanity, or even insanity in the family to which an individual belonged, scrofula, or any physical cause affecting unfavorably the tissue of the brain itself, rendered any deductions from the development quite fallacious; and I know one instance in which a very over-average cerebral endowment was adjudged by Mr. Combe to a person whose conduct and character tallied so little with the phrenological report of the organs, that the fact of two severe attacks of brain fever undergone in youth, and afterwards mentioned to Mr. Combe, was, he said, quite sufficient to account for the discrepancy between his verdict as to the brain and what he subsequently learned of the individual.

But this seemed to me to reduce the “ infallible ” mode of judging, from people’s heads, of people’s characters, below even the measure of accuracy which the uninitiated achieve by dint of mere common observation, aided by commonsense. And I am bound to say that my cousin Cecilia Combe had quite as much trouble with her household, her lady’smaids were quite as inefficient, her housemaids quite as careless, and her cooks quite as fiery-tempered and unsober, as those of “ordinary Christians,” in spite of Mr. Combe’s observation and manipulation of their bumps previous to engaging them.

The scrutiny to which one was liable from these phrenological professors was not a little comical, and it might be some comfort to know that they were not infallible in their estimate of one’s organs. I remember, once, when I was sitting to Lawrence Macdonald for my bust, which was one of the first he ever executed, before he left Edinburgh to achieve fame and fortune as the most successful marble portrait-maker in Rome, an absurd instance of Mr. Combe’s insight into character occurred at my expense.

Macdonald was an intimate friend of the Combes, and I used to see him at their house very frequently, and Mr. Combe often came to the studio when I was sitting. One day while he was standing by, grimly observing Macdonald’s absorbed manipulation of his clay, while I, the original clay, occupied the “bad eminence ” of an artist’s studio throne (of all seats but a dentist’s chair surely the most miserable), my aunt came in with a small paper bag containing raspberry tarts in her hand. This was a dainty so peculiarly agreeable to me that, even at that advanced stage of my existence, those who loved me, or wished to be loved by me, were apt to approach me with those charming three-cornered puff paste propitiations.

As soon as I espied the confectioner’s light paper bag, I guessed its contents, and, springing from my dignified station, seized on the tarts as if I had been the notorious knave of the nursery rhyme. “ There now, Macdonald, I told you so!” quoth Mr. Combe, and they both began to laugh; and so did I, with my mouth full of raspberry puff, for it was quite evident to me that my phrenological friend had impressed upon my artistic friend the special development of my organ of alimentiveness, as he politely called it, which I translated into the vulgate as bump of greediness. In spite of my reluctance to sit to him, from the conviction that the thick outline of my features would turn the edge of the finest chisel that “ ever yet cut breath,” and perhaps by dint of phrenology, Macdonald succeeded in making a very good bust of me; and some time after, to my great amusement, having seen me act in the Grecian Daughter, he said to me, “ Oh, but what I want to do now is a statue of you.”

“Yes,” said I, “and I will tell you exactly where — in the last scene, where I cover my face.”

“ Precisely so! ” cried my enthusiastic friend, and then burst out laughing, on seeing the trap I had laid for him; but he was a very honest man, and stood by his word.

The attitude he wished to represent in a statue was that when, having stabbed Dionysius, I raised the dagger towards heaven with one hand, and drew my drapery over my face with the other. For my notion of heroic women has always been, I am afraid, rather base, — a sort of “ They do not mind death, but they cannot bear pinching;” and though Euphrasia might, could, would, and should stab the man who was about to murder her father, I have no idea that she would like to look at the man she had stabbed. “ O Jupiter, no blood! ” is apt to be the instinct, I suspect, even in very villainous feminine natures, and those who are, and those who are not cowards alike shrink from sights of horror.

When I made Macdonald’s acquaintance I was a girl of about seventeen, and he at the very beginning of his artistic career; but he had an expression of power and vivid intelligence which foretold his future achievements in the exquisite art to which he devoted himself.

My second visit to Edinburgh was made when I was about twenty, immediately after my first season in London. I returned to Scotland in a sort of blaze of notoriety, which contrasted very drolly with the school-girl appearance, character, and deportment under which my friends had known me during my previous stay among them. I found Macdonald already successfully launched in his career, having executed some excellent busts and achieved considerable reputation in Edinburgh as an artist of great power and promise. To the innate consciousness of genius he had now added the proof which compels acknowledgment from others; his conversation, always original and vivid, had acquired ease, his manner had lost its early roughness, and he was altogether a striking and interesting person. We always had a great deal to say to each other, generally in the shape of lively discussion, for I dissented from most of his notions, and we were both of us vehement rather than courteous disputants. Byron was an especial theme of disagreement between us, Macdonald knowing no bounds to his enthusiasm for him, while I qualified my admiration for the poet’s genius with a youthful and femininely severe expression of moral disapprobation.

When next I met Macdonald, it was after a long lapse of time, in 1846, in Rome. Thither he had gone to study his divine art, and there he had remained for a number of years in the exercise of it. He was now the Signor Lorenzo of the Palazzo Barberini, the most successful and celebrated maker of busts, probably, in Rome, having achieved fame, fortune, the favor of the great, and the smiles of the fair, of the most fastidious portion of the English society that makes its winter season in Italy. He dined several times at our house (I was living with my sister and her husband); under his guidance we went to see the statues of the Vatican by torchlight; and he came out once or twice in the summer of that year to visit us at our villa at Frascati.

I returned to Rome in 1852, and saw Macdonald frequently, in his studio, in our own house, and in general society; and shortly before leaving Rome I met him at dinner at Mrs. Archer Clive’s (the authoress of Paul Ferrol). I had a nosegay of snowdrops in the bosom of my dress, and Macdonald, who sat next me, observed that they reminded him of Scotland, that he had never seen one in all the years he had passed in Italy, and did not even know that they grew there.

The next day I went to the gardener of the Villa Medici, an old friend of mine, and begged him to procure a pot of snowdrops for me, which I carried to Macdonald’s studio, thinking an occasional reminiscence of his own northern land, which he had not visited for years, not a bad element to infuse into his Roman life and surroundings. Macdonald’s portraits are generally good likenesses, sufficiently idealized to be also good works of art. In statuary he never accomplished anything of extraordinary excellence. I think the Ulysses recognized by his Dog, his best performance in sculpture. His studio was an extremely interesting place of resort, from the portraits of his many remarkable sitters with which it was filled. Not only the beauty of our English female nobility was worthily represented in the countless exquisite heads, shoulders, and profiles, but all the eminent men who during the last thirty years have distinguished themselves, or been distinguished by genius or station, were gathered round its walls. It was one of the most interesting galleries of celebrities that could be seen.

I remember among the beautiful casts in his studio one of Lady Walpole’s feet, which were in purls naturalibus, and admirably formed, moreover; on a cushion of clay reposed another pair of wonderfully exquisite feet, duly clothed in stockings and slippers, which were Lady Coventry’s beautiful extremities. Macdonald was an intimate friend of hers, and, during her residence in the Palazzo Barberini, constantly spent his evenings there, and on one occasion when she was indisposed, and lying on her sofa, he copied her feet exactly as they rested on the cushion of her couch; they certainly were very lovely.

I met dear old Macdonald in the winter of 1873, creeping in the sun slowly up the Pincio as I waddled heavily down it (Eheu!), his snow-white hair and mustache making his little-altered and strongly-marked features only more striking. I visited his studio and found there, ardently and successfully creating immortal gods, a handsome, pleasing youth, his son, inheriting his father’s genius and, strange to say, his broadest of Scotch accents, though he had himself never been out of Rome, where he was born.

When my sister and myself visited Mr. Combe in Edinburgh, not long after his marriage to my cousin, Cecilia Siddous, I took that occasion to endeavor to prevail with her to alter her fashion of wearing her hair, which all her family thought ugly and unbecoming. She brushed it so smooth, and fastened it back so tight, that she looked as if she had a brown satin skull-cap on. The morning after we arrived in Edinburgh, as she was plastering her hair upon her head after her usual fashion, I reminded her of the opportunity she was giving our host of ascertaining at a glance every peculiarity of her character and disposition. Terrified at this suggestion, she declared she would go down-stairs disheveled, she would put on a cap, she would wear a wig, all of which I repeated to Mr. Combe, to his great amusement. “ But,” said he, very quietly, “tell your sister not to take the trouble to alter her headdress. I had an admirable opportunity of observing her development yesterday evening when you arrived, as soon as she took off her bonnet.” So the mischief was done, and she continued to wear her brown satin skull-cap. On one occasion Mr. Combe was consulted by Prince Albert with regard to the royal children, and was desired to examine their heads. He did not, of course, repeat any of the opinions he had given upon the young princes’ developments, but said they were very nice children and likely to be capitally educated, for, he added (though shaking his head over cousinly intermarriages among royal personages), Prince Albert was well acquainted with the writings of Gall and Spurzheim, and his own work on the constitution of man. Prince Albert seems to have known something of everything that was worthy of a wise man’s knowledge.

In spite of my inability to accept his science of human nature, and my impertinent practice, which he always laughingly resented, of calling organs by the unvenerable name of bumps, Mr. Combe was always a most kind and condescending friend to me. He was a man of singular integrity, uprightness, and purity of mind and character, and of great justice and impartiality of judgment; he was extremely benevolent and humane, and one of the most reasonable human beings I have ever known. From first to last my intercourse with him was always delightful and profitable to me. Of the brothers, however, the younger, Dr. Andrew Combe, was by far the most generally popular, and deservedly so. He was one of the most excellent and amiable of men; his countenance, voice, and manner were expressive of the kindliest benevolence; he had none of the angular rigidity of person and harshness of feature of his brother; both were worthy and distinguished men, but Andrew Combe was charming, which George Combe was not, at least to those who did not know him. Although Dr. Combe completely indorsed his brother’s system, he was far less fanatical and importunate in his advocacy of it; nor are his writings, like his brother’s, so completely saturated with the theory of phrenology as to detract from their general interest and utility. Indeed, his works upon physiology, hygiene, and the physical education of children are of such universal value and importance that no parent or trainer of youth should be unfamiliar with them. Moreover, to them and their excellent author society is indebted for an amount of knowledge on these subjects which has now passed into general use and experience, and become so completely incorporated in the practice of the present day that it is hardly remembered to whom the first and most powerful impression of the importance of the “ natural laws,” and their observance in our own lives and the training of our children, is due. I knew a school of young girls in Massachusetts, where taking regular exercise, the use of cold baths, the influence of fresh air, and all the process of careful physical education to which they were submitted, went by the general name of Combeing, in honor of Dr. Combe.

Dr. Combe was Mrs. Harry Siddons’s medical adviser, most trusted friend, and general counselor: the young people of her family, myself included, all loved and honored him, and the gleam of genial pleasant humor (a quality of which his worthy brother had hardly a spark) which frequently brightened the gentle gravity of his countenance and demeanor made his intercourse delightful to us; and great was the joy when he proposed to take one or other of us in his gig for a drive to some patient’s house, in the lovely neighborhood of Edinburgh. I remember my poor dear mother’s dismay when, on my return home, I told her of these same drives. She was always in a fever of apprehension about people’s falling in love with each other, and begged to know how old a man this delightful doctor, with whom Mrs. Harry allowed her own daughters and my mother’s daughter to go gigging, might be. “ Ah,” replied I, inexpressibly amused at the idea of Dr. Combe in the character of a gay gallant, “ ever so old! ” I had the real school-girl’s estimate of age, and honestly thought that dear Dr. Combe was quite an old man. I believe he was considerably under forty. But if he had been much younger, the fatal disease which had set its seal upon him, and of which he died, — after defending his life for an almost incredible space of time from its ultimate victory (which all his wisdom and virtue could but postpone), — was so clearly written upon his thin, sallow face, deep-sunk eyes, and emaciated figure, and gave so serious and almost sad an expression to his countenance and manner, that one would as soon have thought of one’s grandfather as an unsafe companion for young girls. I still possess a document, duly drawn up and engrossed in the form of a deed by his brother, embodying a promise which he made to me jestingly one day, that when he was dead he would not fail to let me know if ever ghosts were permitted to revisit the earth, by appearing to me, binding himself by this contract that the vision should be unaccompanied by the smallest smell of sulphur or flash of blue flame, and that instead of the indecorous undress of a slovenly winding-sheet, he would wear his usual garments, and the familiar brown greatcoat with which, to use his own expression, he “ buttoned his bones together ” in his life. I remembered that laughing promise when, years after it was given, the news of his death reached me, and I thought how little dismay I should feel if it could indeed have been possible for me to see again, “in his image as he lived,” that kind and excellent friend. On one of the occasions when Dr. Combe took me to visit one of his patients, we went to a quaint old house in the near neighborhood of Edinburgh. If the Laird of Dumbiedikes’s mansion had been still standing, it might have been that very house. The person we went to visit was an old Mr. M-, to whom he introduced me, and with whom he withdrew, I suppose for a professional consultation, leaving me in a strange, curious, old-fashioned apartment, full of old furniture, old books, and faded, tattered, old nondescript articles, whose purpose it was not easy to guess, but which must have been of some value, as they were all protected from the air and dust by glass covers. When the gentlemen returned, Mr. M—— gratified my curiosity by showing every one of them to me in detail, and informing me that they had all belonged to, or were in some way relics of Charles Edward Stuart. “ And this,” said the old gentleman, “ was his sword.” It was a light dress rapier, with a very highly cut and ornamented steel hilt. I half drew the blade, thinking how it had flashed from its scabbard, startling England and dazzling Scotland at its first unsheathing, and in what inglorious gloom of prostrate fortunes it had rusted away at last, the scorn of those who had opposed and the despair of those who had embraced its cause. “ And so that was the Pretender’s sword!” said I, hardly aware that I had spoken until the little withered, snuff - colored gentleman snatched rather than took it from me, exclaiming, “ Wha’ did ye say, madam? it was the prince’s sword!” and laid it tenderly back in the receptacle from which he had taken it.

As we drove away, Dr. Combe told me, what indeed I had perceived, that this old man, who looked like a shriveled, russet-colored leaf for age and feebleness, was a passionate partisan of Charles Edward, by whom my mention of him as the Pretender, if coming from a man, would have been held a personal insult. It was evident that I, though a mere chit of the irresponsible sex, had both hurt and offended him by it. His sole remaining interest in life was hunting out and collecting the smallest records or memorials of this shadow of a hero; surely the merest “royal apparition” that ever assumed kingship. “ What a set those Stuarts must have been! ” exclaimed an American friend of mine, once, after listening to Bonnie Prince Charlie, “ to have had all those glorious Jacobite songs made and sung for them, and not to have been more of men than they were! ” And so I think, and thought even then, for though I had a passion for the Jacobite ballads, I had very little enthusiasm for their thoroughly inefficient hero, who, for the claimant of a throne, was undoubtedly un très pauvre sire. But in 1828 it was not a little curious to find still warm and breathing this antique loyalty for a cause so long dead, if it ever had anything but a mere galvanized appearance of life. Talking over this with me, as we drove from Mr. M——’s, Dr. Combe said he was per-

suaded that at that time there were men to be found in Scotland ready to fight a duel about the good fame of Mary Stuart.

Sir Walter Scott told me that when the Scottish regalia was discovered, in its obscure place of security, in Edinburgh Castle, pending the decision of government as to its ultimate destination a committee of gentlemen were appointed its guardians, among whom he was one; and that he received a most urgent entreaty from an old lady of the Maxwell family to be permitted to see it. She was nearly ninety years old, and feared she might not live till the crown jewels of Scotland were permitted to become objects of public exhibition, and pressed Sir Walter with importunate prayers to allow her to see them before she died. Sir Walter’s good sense and good nature alike induced him to take upon himself to grant the poor old lady’s petition, and he himself conducted her into the presence of these relics of her country’s independent sovereignty ; when, he said, tottering hastily forward from his support, she fell on her knees before the crown, and, clasping and wringing her wrinkled hands, wailed over it as a mother over her dead child. His description of the scene was infinitely pathetic, and it must have appealed to all his own poetical and imaginative sympathy with the former glories of his native land. I suppose there are people born with their heads set, as one may say, retrospectively, hind part before, on their shoulders. Dante has made it a punishment in the other world; it is not unfrequently a cause of persecution in this, though it seems to me rather an agreeable deformity than otherwise, and pleasant, upon the whole, to its possessors. It is certain that nothing either in the past or future can be commonplace ; that must be the especial property of “ things present,” which these amiable people who live backwards, as it were, avoid. If I had my choice, however, I would rather live forwards, that is, have my head in my hand (martyr fashion, which is an allegorical representation of what befalls people with a propensity for living before their time), and carry it a little in advance of my body. Neither fashion is altogether safe, however, the majority of people are so prejudiced in favor of the stupid, common usage, and so ill-natured towards those who depart from it, by either peculiarity; but more especially by the one that I should prefer.

My mother’s anxiety about Dr. Combe’s age reminds me that my intimacy with my cousin, Harry Siddons, who was now visiting his mother previous to his departure for India to begin his military career, had been a subject of considerable perplexity to her while I was still at home and he used to come from Addiscombe to see us. Nothing could be more diametrically opposite than his mother’s and my mother’s system, if either could be called so, of dealing with the difficulty, though I have my doubts whether Mrs. Harry perceived any in the case; and whereas I think my mother’s apprehensions and precautions would have very probably been finally justified by some childish engagement between Harry and myself, resulting in all sorts of difficulties and complications as time went on and absence and distance produced their salutary effect on a boy of twenty and a girl of seventeen, Mrs. Harry remained passive, and apparently unconscious of any danger; and we walked and talked and danced and were sentimental together after the most approved cousinly fashion, and Harry went off to India with my name engraved upon his sword, —a circumstance which was only made known to me years after, by his widow (his and my cousin, Harriet Siddons), whom he met and loved and married in India, and who made me laugh, telling me how hard he and she had worked, scratched, and scrubbed together to try and efface my name from the good sword, which, however, being true steel, and not inconstant heart of man, refused to give up its dedication. I should have much objected to any such inscription, had I been consulted; for if the sword was to see service (as it undoubtedly would, if Harry Siddons had lived till the Indian mutiny), I should have thought with horror of my name being plunged into some wretch’s heart, though the blade that bore it was avenging English men and women on Hindoo savages. My cousin Harry’s wife was the second daughter of George Siddons, Mrs. Siddons’s eldest son, who through her interest was appointed, while still quite a young man, to the influential and lucrative post of collector of the port at Calcutta, which position he retained for nearly forty years. He married a lady in whose veins ran the blood of the kings of Delhi, and in whose descendants, in one or two instances, even in the fourth generation, this ancestry reveals itself by a type of beauty of strikingly Oriental character. Among these is the beautiful Mrs. Scott-Siddons, whose exquisite features present the most perfect living miniature of her great-grandmother’s majestic beauty. In two curiously minute, highly-finished miniatures of the royal Hindoo personages, her ancestors, which Mrs. George Siddons gave Miss Twiss (and the latter gave me), it is wonderful how strong a likeness may be traced to several of their remote descendants born in England of English parents.

To return to Edinburgh; another intimate acquaintance, or rather friend, of Mr. Combe’s whom I frequently met at his house was Duncan McClaren, father of the present member of Parliament, the able editor of The Scotsman. Between him and the Combes all matters of public interest and importance were discussed from the most liberal and enlightened point of view, and it was undoubtedly a great advantage to an intelligent girl of my age to hear such vigorous, manly, clear expositions of the broadest aspects of all the great political and governmental questions of the day. Admirable sound sense was the characteristic that predominated in that intellectual circle, and was brought to bear upon every subject; and I remember with the greatest pleasure the evenings I passed at Mr. Combe’s residence in Northumberland Street, with these three grave men. Among the younger associates to whom these elders and betters extended their kindly hospitality was William Gregory, son of the eminent professor of chemistry, who himself has since pursued the same scientific course with equal success and distinction, adding a new lustre to the honorable name he inherited.

Mr. William Murray, my dear Mrs. Harry’s brother, was another member of our society, to whom I have alluded, in speaking of the Edinburgh Theatre, as an accomplished actor; and sometimes I used to think that was all he was, for it was impossible to determine whether the romance, the sentiment, the pathos, the quaint humor, or any of the curiously capricious varying moods in which these were all blended, displayed real elements of his character or only shifting exhibitions of the peculiar versatility of a nature at once so complex and so superficial that it really was impossible for others, and I think would have been difficult for himself, to determine what was genuine thought and feeling in him, and what the mere appearance or demonstration or imitation of thought and feeling. Perhaps this peculiarity was what made him such a perfect actor. He was a very melancholy man, with a tendency to moody morbidness of mind which made him a subject of constant anxiety to his sister. His countenance, which was very expressive without being at all handsome, habitually wore an air of depression, and yet it was capable of brilliant vivacity and humorous play of feature. His conversation, when he was in good spirits, was a delightful mixture of sentiment, wit, poetry, fun, fancy, and imagination. He had married the sister of Mrs. Thomas Moore (the Bessie so tenderly invited to “ fly from the world ” with the poet, and who, having done so, was left in her little Sloperton nest, while the poet flew back to the world alone), and I used to think that he was like an embodiment of Moore’s lyrical genius: there was so much pathos and wit and humor and grace and spirit and tenderness, and such a quantity of factitious flummery besides in him, that he always reminded me of those pretty and provoking songs in which some affected attitudinizing conceit mingles with almost every expression of genuine feeling, like an artificial rose in a handful of wild flowers.

I do not think William Murray’s diamonds were of the finest water, but his paste was; and it was difficult enough to tell the one from the other. He had a charming voice and sang exquisitely, after a fashion which I have no doubt he copied (as, however, only original genius can copy) from Moore; but his natural musical facility was such that, although no musician and singing everything only by ear, he executed the music of the Figaro in Mozart’s Nozze, admirably. He had a good deal of his sister’s winning charm of manner, and was (but not, I think, of malice prepense) that pleasantly pernicious creature, a male flirt. It was quite out of his power to address any woman (sister or niece or cookmaid) without an air and expression of sentimental courtesy and tender chivalrous devotion, that must have been puzzling and perplexing in the extreme to the uninitiated; and I am persuaded that until some familiarity bred — if not contempt—at least comprehension, every woman of his acquaintance, his cook included, must have felt convinced that he was struggling against a respectful and hopeless passion for her.

Of another acquaintance of ours in Edinburgh, a Mrs. A——, I wish to say a word. She was a very singular woman; not, perhaps, in being tolerably ignorant and silly, with an unmeaning face and a foolish, commonplace manner, an average specimen of vacuity of mind and vapidity of conversation, but undoubtedly singular in that she combined with these not unfrequent human conditions a most rare gift of musical and poetical interpretation, — a gift so peculiar that when she sang she literally seemed inspired, taken possession of, by some other soul, that entered into her as she opened her mouth and departed from her as she shut it. She had a dull, brick-colored, long, thin face, and dull, pale green eyes, like boiled gooseberries; but when in a clear, high, sweet, passionless soprano, like the voice of a spirit, and without any accompaniment, she sang the old Scotch ballads which she had learnt in early girlhood from her nurse, she produced one of the most powerful impressions that music and poetry combined can produce. From her I heard and learnt by ear The Douglas Tragedy, Fine Flowers in the Valley, Edinbro’, and many others, and became completely enamored of the wild beauty of the Scotch ballads, the terror and pity of their stories, and the strange, sweet, mournful music to which they were told. I knew every collection of them, that I could get hold of, by heart, from Scott’s Border Minstrelsy to Smith’s six volumes of National Scottish Songs with their Musical Settings, and I said and sang them over in my lonely walks perpetually; and they still are to me among the deepest and freshest sources of poetical thought and feeling that I know. It is impossible, I think, to find a truer expression of passion, anguish, tenderness, and supernatural terror, than those poems contain. The dew of heaven on the mountain fern is not more limpid than the simplicity of their diction, nor the heart’s blood of a lover more fervid than the throbbing intensity of their passion. Misery, love, longing, and despair have found no finer poetical utterance out of Shakespeare; and the deepest chords of woe and tenderness have been touched by these often unknown archaic songwriters, with a power and a pathos inferior only to his. The older ballads, with the exquisite monotony of their burthens soothing and relieving the tragic tenor of their stories, like the sighing of wind or the murmuring of water; the clarionhearted Jacobite songs, with the fragrance of purple heather and white roses breathing through their strains of loyal love and death-defying devotion; and the lovely, pathetic, and bewitchingly humorous songs of Burns, with their enchanting melodies, were all familiar to me, and, during the year that I spent in Edinburgh, were my constant study and delight. For their sake I love the memory of S——, in spite of the dull days I occasionally spent there, and of the picture, forever framed in them, of Mrs. A—— sitting in the midst of her children, and, when they baaed at her anything more than commonly foolish, turning upon them the maternal tenderness of her sheep’s face and bleating back at them, at the rate of a syllable a second, “ Eh, my lammie! ”

I am reminded, by contrast with Mrs. A——, of another of our Edinburgh friends, a delightful original woman, humorous, funny, witty, and withal a grande dame of the old school — Miss ——, whose name will remind every one who had the good fortune of her acquaintance of one of the most entertaining persons they have ever known. Miss —— was the descendant of John Grahame of Claverhouse, the Dundee of Scottish history and ballad poetry and Scott’s novels; and there was a great deal in her character and manner to warrant this heroic strain. She was more like a gentleman than a lady; I don’t mean more like a man than a woman, for there was nothing masculine about her; but she was a gallant lady, frank, fearless, prompt, active, energetic, a little impatient, a little imperious, with that sort of high-bred air and manner which Jules Janin has so admirably discriminated in his essay on La grande Dame and La Femme comme il faut. She showed blood, as used to be said formerly of such a person, and I think that element in her must have been a kind of justification and protection to her in some of the freaks she was seduced into by her singular faculty of dramatic personation. This peculiar gift perpetually suggested to her the perpetration of practical jokes upon her friends, which she carried out with the most wonderful power of assumption, presence of mind, and ludicrous success. There is extant a small book recording her curious feats in this kind, and recounting, among other comical incidents, her taking in Lord Jeffrey, who was intimately acquainted with her, and had defied her skill to deceive him in any disguise or by any assumption of character, and before whom she nevertheless presented herself as an old huckster woman, who came with an appeal to him about some paltry matter of traffic in which her interests were concerned, and loudly and garrulously remonstrated with him until he dismissed her, without entertaining the remotest suspicion of her identity. She was for many years a kind friend of mine, and I seldom visited Edinburgh without renewing my agreeable intercourse with her. The last tidings that reached me from Scotland of this valiant old gentlewoman (now upwards of ninety years of age) were of her driving into Dundee from her country residence, to launch and christen a new ship.

On one occasion when I had the honor and pleasure of dining with her, I sat by Robert Chambers and heard him relate some portion of the difficulties and distresses of his own and his brother’s early boyhood (the interesting story has lately become generally known by the publication of their memoirs); and I then found it very difficult to swallow my dinner, and my tears, while listening to him, so deeply was I affected by his simple and touching account of the cruel struggle the two brave lads — destined to become such admirable and eminent men—had to make against the hardships of their position. I remember his describing the terrible longing occasioned by the smell of newly baked bread in a baker’s shop near which they lived, to their poor, half-starved, craving appetites, while they were saving every farthing they could scrape together for books and that intellectual sustenance of which, in after years, they became such bountiful dispensers to all English-reading folk. Theirs is a very noble story of virtue conquering fortune and dedicating it to the highest purposes. I used to meet the Messrs. Chambers at Mr. Combe’s house; they were intimate and valued friends of the phrenologist, and I remember when the book entitled Vestiges of Creation came out, and excited so great a sensation in the public mind, that Mr. Combe attributed the authorship of it, which was then a secret, to Robert Chambers.

Another Edinburgh friend of ours was Baron Hume, a Scottish law dignitary; a charming old gentleman, of the very old school, who always wore powder and a pigtail, knee breeches, gold buckles, and black silk stockings; and who sent a thrill of delight through my girlish breast when he addressed me, as he invariably did, by the dignified title of “ madam; ” though I must sorrowfully add that my triumph on this score was considerably abated when, on the occasion of my second visit to Edinburgh, after I had come out on the stage, I went to see my kind old friend, who was too aged and infirm to go to the theatre, and who said to me as I sat on a low stool by his sofa, “ Why, madam, they tell me you are become a great tragic actress! But,” added he, putting his hand under my chin and raising my face towards him, “ how am I to believe that of this laughing face, madam?” No doubt he saw in his memory’s eye the majestic nose of my aunt, and my “ visnomy ” under the effect of such a contrast must have looked comical enough, by way of a tragic mask. By the bye, it is on record that while Gainsborough was painting that exquisite portrait of Mrs. Siddons which is now in the South Kensington Gallery, and which for many fortunate years adorned my father’s house, after working in absorbed silence for some time he suddenly exclaimed, “Damn it, madam, there is no end to your nose! ’ ’ The restoration of that beautiful painting has destroyed the delicate charm of its coloring, which was perfectly harmonious, and has as far as possible made it coarse and vulgar: before it had been spoiled, not even Sir Joshua’s Tragic Muse seemed to me so noble and beautiful a representation of my aunt’s beauty as that divine picture of Gainsborough’s.

Two circumstances occurred during my stay in Edinburgh which made a great impression upon me: the one was the bringing of the famous old gun, Mons Meg, up to the castle; and the other was the last public appearance of Madame Catalani. I do not know where the famous old cannon had been kept till it was resolved to place it in Edinburgh Castle, but the event was made quite a public festival, and by favor of some of the military authorities who presided over the ceremony we were admirably placed in a small angle or turret that commanded the beautiful land and sea and town, and immediately overlooked the hollow road up which, with its gallant military escort of Highland troops, and the resounding accompaniment of their warlike music, the great old lumbering piece of ordnance came slowly, dragged by a magnificent team of horses, into the fortress. Nothing could be more striking than the contrast presented by this huge, clumsy, misshapen, obsolete engine of war, and the spruce, trim, shining, comparatively little cannon (mere pocket-pistols for Bollona) which furnished the battery just below our stand, and which, as soon as the unwieldy old warrioress had occupied the post of honor reserved for her in their midst, sent forth a martial acclaim of welcome that made the earth tremble under our feet, and resounded through the air, shivering with the strong concussion more than one pane of glass in the windows of Princes Street, far below.

Of Madame Catalani, all I can say is that I think she sang only God save the King and Rule Britannia, on the occasion on which I heard her, which was that of her last public appearance in Edinburgh. I remember only these, and think had she sung anything else I could not have forgotten it. She was quite an old woman, but still splendidly handsome. Her magnificent dark hair and eyes, and beautiful arms, and her blue velvet dress with a girdle flashing with diamonds, impressed me almost as much as her singing; which, indeed, was rather a declamatory and dramatic than a musical performance. The tones of her voice were still fine and full, and the majestic action of her arms as she uttered the words, “ When Britain first arose from the waves,” wonderfully graceful and descriptive; still, I remember better that I saw, than that I heard, Madame Catalani. She is the first of the queens of song that I have seen ascend the throne of popular favor, in the course of sixty years, and pretty little Adelina Patti the last; I have heard all that have reigned between the two, and above them all, Pasta appears to me preëminent for musical and dramatic genius, alone and unapproached, the muse of tragic song.

Frances Anne Kemble.