He looked always fresh, with that abounding silvery hair, and
his young, almost infantine face, but he was worn to a shadow,
and his hands wasted as if by eighty years.
his young, almost infantine face, but he was worn to a shadow,
and his hands wasted as if by eighty years.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v04 - Bes to Bro
"
Still harping on the Newgate Calendar!
"Braehead is extremely pleasant to me by the companie of
swine, geese, cocks, etc. , and they are the delight of my soul. "
"I am going to tell you of a melancholy story.
A young
turkie of two or three months old, would you believe it, the
father broke its leg, and he killed another! I think he ought
to be transported or hanged. "
"Queen Street is a very gay one, and so is Princes Street,
for all the lads and lasses, besides bucks and beggars, parade
there. "
"I should like to see a play very much, for I never saw one
in all my life, and don't believe I ever shall; but I hope I can
be content without going to one. I can be quite happy without
my desire being granted. "
Some days ago Isabella had a terrible fit of the toothake,
and she walked with a long night-shift at dead of night like a
ghost, and I thought she was one. She prayed for nature's
sweet restorer - balmy sleep - but did not get it a ghostly
figure indeed she was, enough to make a saint tremble. It made
me quiver and shake from top to toe. Superstition is a very
mean thing, and should be despised and shunned. "
Here is her weakness and her strength again:-"In the love-
novels all the heroines are very desperate. Isabella will not
allow me to speak about lovers and heroins, and 'tis too refined
for my taste. " "Miss Egward's [Edgeworth's] tails are very
good, particularly some that are very much adapted for youth (! )
as Laz Laurance and Tarelton, False Keys, etc. , etc. "
-
"Tom Jones and Gray's Elegey in a country church-yard are
both excellent, and much spoke of by both sex, particularly
by the men. ” Are our Marjories now-a-days better or worse,
because they cannot read Tom Jones' unharmed? More better
than worse; but who among them can repeat Gray's 'Lines on a
Distant Prospect of Eton College' as could our Maidie ?
Here is some more of her prattle: "I went into Isabella's
bed to make her smile like the Genius Demedicus [the Venus
-
## p. 2451 (#657) ###########################################
JOHN BROWN
2451
de' Medicis] or the statute in an ancient Greece, but she fell
asleep in my very face, at which my anger broke forth, so that
I awoke her from a comfortable nap. All was now hushed up
again, but again my anger burst forth at her biding me get
up. ”
She begins thus loftily,-
"Death the righteous love to see,
But from it doth the wicked flee. "
Then suddenly breaks off (as if with laughter),—
"I am sure they fly as fast as their legs can carry them! "
"There is a thing I love to see,
That is our monkey catch a flee. "
"I love in Isa's bed to lie,
Oh, such a joy and luxury!
The bottom of the bed I sleep,
And with great care within I creep;
Oft I embrace her feet of lillys,
But she has goton all the pillys.
Her neck I never can embrace,
But I do hug her feet in place. "
How childish and yet how strong and free is her use of
words! "I lay at the foot of the bed because Isabella said I
disturbed her by continial fighting and kicking, but I was very
dull, and continially at work reading the Arabian Nights, which
I could not have done if I had slept at the top. I am reading
the Mysteries of Udolpho. I am much interested in the fate
of poor, poor Emily. "
Here is one of her swains:
"Very soft and white his cheeks,
His hair is red, and gray his breeks;
His tooth is like the daisy fair,
His only fault is in his hair. "
This is a higher flight:-
## p. 2452 (#658) ###########################################
2452
JOHN BROWN
DEDICATED TO MRS. H. CRAWFORD BY THE AUTHOR, M. F.
"Three turkeys fair their last have breathed,
And now this world forever leaved;
Their father, and their mother too,
They sigh and weep as well as you;
Indeed, the rats their bones have crunched,
Into eternity theire laanched.
A direful death indeed they had,
As wad put any parent mad;
But she was more than usual calm:
She did not give a single dam. "
This last word is saved from all sin by its tender age, not to
speak of the want of the n. We fear "she" is the abandoned
mother, in spite of her previous sighs and tears.
-
"Isabella says when we pray we should pray fervently, and
not rattel over a prayer · for that we are kneeling at the foot-
stool of our Lord and Creator, who saves us from eternal dam-
nation, and from unquestionable fire and brimston. "
She has a long poem on Mary Queen of Scots:-
"Queen Mary was much loved by all,
Both by the great and by the small,
But hark! her soul to heaven doth rise!
And I suppose she has gained a prize;
For I do think she would not go
Into the awful place below.
There is a thing that I must tell-
Elizabeth went to fire and hell!
He who would teach her to be civil,
It must be her great friend, the divil! »
She hits off Darnley well:
――――――
"A noble's son, a handsome lad,
By some queer way or other, had
Got quite the better of her heart;
With him she always talked apart:
Silly he was, but very fair;
A greater buck was not found there. "
-
"By some queer way or other": is not this the general case
and the mystery, young ladies and gentlemen? Goethe's doc-
trine of "elective affinities" discovered by our Pet Maidie!
## p. 2453 (#659) ###########################################
JOHN BROWN
2453
SONNET TO A MONKEY
"O lively, O most charming pug:
Thy graceful air and heavenly mug!
The beauties of his mind do shine,
And every bit is shaped and fine.
Your teeth are whiter than the snow;
Your a great buck, your a great beau;
Your eyes are of so nice a shape,
More like a Christian's than an ape;
Your cheek is like the rose's blume;
Your hair is like the raven's plume;
His nose's cast is of the Roman:
He is a very pretty woman.
I could not get a rhyme for Roman,
So was obliged to call him woman. "
This last joke is good. She repeats it when writing of James
the Second being killed at Roxburgh:-
―
"He was killed by a cannon splinter,
Quite in the middle of the winter;
Perhaps it was not at that time,
But I can get no other rhyme! "
Here is one of her last letters, dated Kirkcaldy, 12th October,
1811.
You can see how her nature is deepening and enrich-
ing: · -
"MY DEAR MOTHER-You will think that I entirely forget
you but I assure you that you are greatly mistaken. I think of
you always and often sigh to think of the distance between us
two loving creatures of nature. We have regular hours for all
our occupations first at 7 o'clock we go to the dancing and come
home at 8 we then read our Bible and get our repeating and
then play till ten then we get our music till I when we get
our writing and accounts we sew from 12 till I after which I
get my gramer and then work till five.
till 8 when we dont go to the dancing.
scription. I must take a hasty farewell to her whom I love,
reverence and doat on and who I hope thinks the same of
At 7 we come and knit
This is an exact de-
"MARJORY FLEMING.
"P. S. An old pack of cards (! ) would be very exceptible. "
## p. 2454 (#660) ###########################################
2454
JOHN BROWN
This other is a month earlier:
"MY DEAR LITTLE MAMA-I was truly happy to hear that
you were all well. We are surrounded with measles at present
on every side, for the Herons got it, and Isabella Heron was
near Death's Door, and one night her father lifted her out of
bed, and she fell down as they thought lifeless. Mr. Heron said,
'That lassie's deed noo'-'I'm no deed yet. ' She then threw
up a big worm nine inches and a half long. I have begun dan-
cing, but am not very fond of it, for the boys strikes and mocks
me. I have been another night at the dancing; I like it better.
I will write to you as often as I can; but I am afraid not every
week. I long for you with the longings of a child to embrace
you to fold you in my arms. I respect you with all the respect
due to a mother. You don't know how I love you. So I shall
remain, your loving child,
M. FLEMING. "
-
What rich involution of love in the words marked! Here are
some lines to her beloved Isabella, in July, 1811:-
-
"There is a thing that I do want
With you these beauteous walks to haunt;
We would be happy if you would
Try to come over if you could.
Then I would all quite happy be
Now and for all eternity.
My mother is so very sweet,
And checks my appetite to eat;
My father shows us what to do;
But I'm sure that I want you.
I have no more of poetry;
O Isa do remember me,
And try to love your Marjory. "
In a letter from "Isa" to
-
"Miss Muff Maidie Marjory Fleming,
favored by Rare Rear-Admiral Fleming,"
she says:
"I long much to see you, and talk over all our old
stories together, and to hear you read and repeat. I am pining
for my old friend Cesario, and poor Lear, and wicked Richard.
How is the dear Multiplication table going on? are you still as
much attached to 9 times 9 as you used to be? "
But this dainty, bright thing is about to flee, to come
"quick to confusion. " The measles she writes of seized her,
---
## p. 2455 (#661) ###########################################
JOHN BROWN
2455
and she died on the 19th of December, 1811. The day before.
her death, Sunday, she sat up in bed, worn and thin, her eye
gleaming as with the light of a coming world, and with a trem-
ulous, old voice repeated the lines by Burns, - heavy with the
shadow of death, and lit with the fantasy of the judgment-seat,
-the publican's prayer in paraphrase:-
"Why am I loth to leave this earthly scene? "
It is more affecting than we care to say to read her mother's
and Isabella Keith's letters, written immediately after her death.
Old and withered, tattered and pale, they are now: but when
you read them, how quick, how throbbing with life and love!
how rich in that language of affection which only women and
Shakespeare and Luther can use,-that power of detaining the
soul over the beloved object and its loss.
In her first letter to Miss Keith, Mrs. Fleming says of her
dead Maidie:-"Never did I behold so beautiful an object. It
resembled the finest wax-work. There was in the countenance
an expression of sweetness and serenity which seemed to indi-
cate that the pure spirit had anticipated the joys of heaven ere
it quitted the mortal frame. To tell you what your Maidie said
of you would fill volumes; for you were the constant theme of
her discourse, the subject of her thoughts, and ruler of her
actions. The last time she mentioned you was a few hours
before all sense save that of suffering was suspended, when she
said to Dr. Johnstone, 'If you will let me out at the New Year,
I will be quite contented. ' I asked what made her so anxious
to get out then. 'I want to purchase a New Year's gift for Isa
Keith with the sixpence you gave me for being patient in the
measles; and I would like to choose it myself. ' I do not re-
member her speaking afterwards, except to complain of her
head, till just before she expired, when she articulated, 'O
mother! mother! >»
Do we make too much of this little child, who has been in
her grave in Abbotshall Kirkyard these fifty and more years?
We may of her cleverness, not of her affectionateness, her
nature. What a picture the animosa infans gives us of herself,
her vivacity, her passionateness, her precocious love-making, her
passion for nature, for swine, for all living things, her reading,
her turn for expression, her satire, her frankness, her little sins.
and rages, her great repentances! We don't wonder Walter Scott
—
## p. 2456 (#662) ###########################################
2456
JOHN BROWN
carried her off in the neuk of his plaid, and played himself with
her for hours.
We are indebted for the following — and our readers will be
not unwilling to share our obligations to her sister:-"Her
birth was 15th January, 1803; her death 19th December, 1811.
I take this from her Bibles. I believe she was a child of robust
health, of much vigor of body, and beautifully formed arms, and
until her last illness, never was an hour in bed. She was niece
to Mrs. Keith, residing in No. 1 North Charlotte Street, who
was not Mrs. Murray Keith, although very intimately acquainted
with that old lady.
.
-
"As to my aunt and Scott, they were on a very intimate
footing. He asked my aunt to be godmother to his eldest
daughter Sophia Charlotte. I had a copy of Miss Edgeworth's
'Rosamond' and 'Harry and Lucy' for long, which was 'a gift
to Marjorie from Walter Scott,' probably the first edition of that
attractive series, for it wanted 'Frank,' which is always now
published as part of the series under the title of 'Early Lessons. '
I regret to say these little volumes have disappeared. "
Sir Walter was no relation of Marjorie's, but of the Keiths,
through the Swintons; and like Marjorie, he stayed much
at Ravelstone in his early days, with his grand-aunt Mrs.
Keith.
We cannot better end than in words from this same pen:
"I have to ask you to forgive my anxiety in gathering up the
fragments of Marjorie's last days, but I have an almost sacred.
feeling to all that pertains to her. You are quite correct in
stating that measles were the cause of her death. My mother
was struck by the patient quietness manifested by Marjorie dur-
ing this illness, unlike her ardent, impulsive nature; but love and
poetic feeling were unquenched. When lying very still, her
mother asked her if there was anything she wished: 'Oh yes!
if you would just leave the room door open a wee bit, and play
'The Land o' the Leal,' and I will lie and think, and enjoy
myself' (this is just as stated to me by her mother and mine).
Well, the happy day came, alike to parents and child, when
Marjorie was allowed to come forth from the nursery to the par-
lor. It was Sabbath evening, and after tea. My father, who
idolized this child, and never afterwards in my hearing men-
tioned her name, took her in his arms; and while walking up
and down the room, she said, 'Father, I will repeat something
## p. 2457 (#663) ###########################################
JOHN BROWN
2457
to you; what would you like? ' He said, 'Just choose yourself,
Maidie. ' She hesitated for a moment between the paraphrase
Few are thy days, and full of woe,' and the lines of Burns
already quoted, but decided on the latter, a remarkable choice
for a child. The repeating these lines seemed to stir up the
depths of feeling in her soul. She asked to be allowed to write
a poem; there was a doubt whether it would be right to allow
her, in case of hurting her eyes. She pleaded earnestly, 'Just
this once; the point was yielded, her slate was given her, and
with great rapidity she wrote an address of fourteen lines, To
her loved cousin on the author's recovery,' her last work on
earth:
――――――
'Oh! Isa, pain did visit me,
I was at the last extremity;
How often did I think of you,
I wished your graceful form to view,
To clasp you in my weak embrace,
Indeed I thought I'd run my race:
Good care, I'm sure, was of me taken,
But still indeed I was much shaken.
At last I daily strength did gain,
And oh! at last, away went pain;
At length the doctor thought I might
Stay in the parlor all the night;
I now continue so to do;
Farewell to Nancy and to you. '
She went to bed apparently well, awoke in the middle of the
night with the old cry of woe to a mother's heart, 'My head,
my head! ' Three days of the dire malady 'water in the head'
followed, and the end came. "
"Soft, silken primrose, fading timelessly! "
It is needless, it is impossible to add anything to this; the
fervor, the sweetness, the flush of poetic ecstasy, the lovely and
glowing eye, the perfect nature of that bright and warm intelli-
gence, that darling child; Lady Nairne's words, and the old
tune, stealing up from the depths of the human heart, deep call-
ing unto deep, gentle and strong like the waves of the great sea
hushing themselves to sleep in the dark; the words of Burns
touching the kindred chord; her last numbers, "wildly sweet,"
traced with thin and eager fingers, already touched by the last
## p. 2458 (#664) ###########################################
2458
JOHN BROWN
enemy and friend,- moriens canit,- and that love which is so
soon to be her everlasting light, is her song's burden to the
end.
"She set as sets the morning star, which goes
Not down behind the darkened west, nor hides
Obscured among the tempests of the sky,
But melts away into the light of heaven. "
THE DEATH OF THACKERAY
From Spare Hours>
WE
CANNOT resist here recalling one Sunday evening in
December, when he was walking with two friends along
the Dean road, to the west of Edinburgh,—one of the
noblest outlets to any city. It was a lovely evening,— such a
sunset as one never forgets: a rich dark bar of cloud hovered
over the sun, going down behind the Highland hills, lying bathed
in amethystine bloom; between this cloud and the hills there was
a narrow slip of the pure ether, of a tender cowslip color, lucid,
and as if it were the very body of heaven in its clearness; every
object standing out as if etched upon the sky. The northwest
end of Corstorphine Hill, with its trees and rocks, lay in the
heart of this pure radiance, and there a wooden crane, used in
the quarry below, was so placed as to assume the figure of a
cross; there it was, unmistakable, lifted up against the crystalline
sky. All three gazed at it silently. As they gazed, he gave
utterance in a tremulous, gentle, and rapid voice, to what all
were feeling, in the word "CALVARY! " The friends walked
on in silence, and then turned to other things. All that evening
he was very gentle and serious, speaking, as he seldom did,
of divine things,-of death, of sin, of eternity, of salvation; ex-
pressing his simple faith in God and in his Savior.
There is a passage at the close of the 'Roundabout Paper'
No. 23, 'De Finibus,' in which a sense of the ebb of life is very
marked; the whole paper is like a soliloquy. It opens with a
drawing of Mr. Punch, with unusually mild eye, retiring for the
night; he is putting out his high-heeled shoes, and before disap-
pearing gives a wistful look into the passage, as if bidding it and
all else good-night. He will be in bed, his candle out, and in
## p. 2459 (#665) ###########################################
JOHN BROWN
2459
darkness, in five minutes, and his shoes found next morning at
his door, the little potentate all the while in his final sleep. The
whole paper is worth the most careful study; it reveals not a
little of his real nature, and unfolds very curiously the secret of
his work, the vitality and abiding power of his own creations;
how he "invented a certain Costigan, out of scraps, heel-taps,
odds and ends of characters," and met the original the other day,
without surprise, in a tavern parlor. The following is beautiful:
"Years ago I had a quarrel with a certain well-known person
(I believed a statement regarding him which his friends imparted
to me, and which turned out to be quite incorrect). To his
dying day that quarrel was never quite made up. I said to his
brother, 'Why is your brother's soul still dark against me?
is I who ought to be angry and unforgiving, for I was in the
wrong. " Odisse quem læseris was never better contravened. But
what we chiefly refer to now is the profound pensiveness of the
following strain, as if written with a presentiment of what was
not then very far off:-"Another Finis written; another mile-
stone on this journey from birth to the next world. Sure it is a
subject for solemn cogitation. Shall we continue this story-telling
business, and be voluble to the end of our age? " "Will it not
be presently time, O prattler, to hold your tongue? " And thus
It
he ends:
"Oh, the sad old pages, the dull old pages; oh, the cares, the
ennui, the squabbles, the repetitions, the old conversations over
and over again! But now and again a kind thought is recalled,
and now and again a dear memory. Yet a few chapters more,
and then the last; after which, behold Finis itself comes to an
end, and the Infinite begins. "
He had been suffering on Sunday from an old and cruel
enemy. He fixed with his friend and surgeon to come again on
Tuesday, but with that dread of anticipated pain which is a com-
mon condition of sensibility and genius, he put him off with a
note from "yours unfaithfully, W. M. T. ” He went out on
Wednesday for a little, and came home at ten. He went to his
room, suffering much, but declining his man's offer to sit with
him. He hated to make others suffer. He was heard moving,
as if in pain, about twelve, on the eve of —
## p. 2460 (#666) ###########################################
2460
JOHN BROWN
-
"That happy morn
Wherein the Son of Heaven's eternal King,
Of wedded maid and virgin-mother born,
Our great redemption from above did bring. "
Then all was quiet, and then he must have died-in a moment.
Next morning his man went in, and opening the windows found
his master dead, his arms behind his head, as if he had tried
to take one more breath. We think of him as of our Chalmers,
found dead in like manner: the same childlike, unspoiled, open
face; the same gentle mouth; the same spaciousness and softness
of nature; the same look of power. What a thing to think
of, his lying there alone in the dark, in the midst of his own
mighty London; his mother and his daughters asleep, and, it
may be, dreaming of his goodness. God help them, and us all!
What would become of us, stumbling along this our path of life,
if we could not, at our utmost need, stay ourselves on Him?
Long years of sorrow, labor, and pain had killed him before
his time. It was found after death how little life he had to live.
He looked always fresh, with that abounding silvery hair, and
his young, almost infantine face, but he was worn to a shadow,
and his hands wasted as if by eighty years. With him it is the
end of Ends; finite is over and infinite begun. What we all
felt and feel can never be so well expressed as in his own words
of sorrow for the early death of Charles Buller:-
"Who knows the inscrutable design?
Blest He who took and He who gave!
Why should your mother, Charles, not mine,
Be weeping at her darling's grave?
We bow to heaven that willed it so,
That darkly rules the fate of all,
That sends the respite or the blow,
That's free to give or to recall. ”
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Please return promptly.
## p.
Still harping on the Newgate Calendar!
"Braehead is extremely pleasant to me by the companie of
swine, geese, cocks, etc. , and they are the delight of my soul. "
"I am going to tell you of a melancholy story.
A young
turkie of two or three months old, would you believe it, the
father broke its leg, and he killed another! I think he ought
to be transported or hanged. "
"Queen Street is a very gay one, and so is Princes Street,
for all the lads and lasses, besides bucks and beggars, parade
there. "
"I should like to see a play very much, for I never saw one
in all my life, and don't believe I ever shall; but I hope I can
be content without going to one. I can be quite happy without
my desire being granted. "
Some days ago Isabella had a terrible fit of the toothake,
and she walked with a long night-shift at dead of night like a
ghost, and I thought she was one. She prayed for nature's
sweet restorer - balmy sleep - but did not get it a ghostly
figure indeed she was, enough to make a saint tremble. It made
me quiver and shake from top to toe. Superstition is a very
mean thing, and should be despised and shunned. "
Here is her weakness and her strength again:-"In the love-
novels all the heroines are very desperate. Isabella will not
allow me to speak about lovers and heroins, and 'tis too refined
for my taste. " "Miss Egward's [Edgeworth's] tails are very
good, particularly some that are very much adapted for youth (! )
as Laz Laurance and Tarelton, False Keys, etc. , etc. "
-
"Tom Jones and Gray's Elegey in a country church-yard are
both excellent, and much spoke of by both sex, particularly
by the men. ” Are our Marjories now-a-days better or worse,
because they cannot read Tom Jones' unharmed? More better
than worse; but who among them can repeat Gray's 'Lines on a
Distant Prospect of Eton College' as could our Maidie ?
Here is some more of her prattle: "I went into Isabella's
bed to make her smile like the Genius Demedicus [the Venus
-
## p. 2451 (#657) ###########################################
JOHN BROWN
2451
de' Medicis] or the statute in an ancient Greece, but she fell
asleep in my very face, at which my anger broke forth, so that
I awoke her from a comfortable nap. All was now hushed up
again, but again my anger burst forth at her biding me get
up. ”
She begins thus loftily,-
"Death the righteous love to see,
But from it doth the wicked flee. "
Then suddenly breaks off (as if with laughter),—
"I am sure they fly as fast as their legs can carry them! "
"There is a thing I love to see,
That is our monkey catch a flee. "
"I love in Isa's bed to lie,
Oh, such a joy and luxury!
The bottom of the bed I sleep,
And with great care within I creep;
Oft I embrace her feet of lillys,
But she has goton all the pillys.
Her neck I never can embrace,
But I do hug her feet in place. "
How childish and yet how strong and free is her use of
words! "I lay at the foot of the bed because Isabella said I
disturbed her by continial fighting and kicking, but I was very
dull, and continially at work reading the Arabian Nights, which
I could not have done if I had slept at the top. I am reading
the Mysteries of Udolpho. I am much interested in the fate
of poor, poor Emily. "
Here is one of her swains:
"Very soft and white his cheeks,
His hair is red, and gray his breeks;
His tooth is like the daisy fair,
His only fault is in his hair. "
This is a higher flight:-
## p. 2452 (#658) ###########################################
2452
JOHN BROWN
DEDICATED TO MRS. H. CRAWFORD BY THE AUTHOR, M. F.
"Three turkeys fair their last have breathed,
And now this world forever leaved;
Their father, and their mother too,
They sigh and weep as well as you;
Indeed, the rats their bones have crunched,
Into eternity theire laanched.
A direful death indeed they had,
As wad put any parent mad;
But she was more than usual calm:
She did not give a single dam. "
This last word is saved from all sin by its tender age, not to
speak of the want of the n. We fear "she" is the abandoned
mother, in spite of her previous sighs and tears.
-
"Isabella says when we pray we should pray fervently, and
not rattel over a prayer · for that we are kneeling at the foot-
stool of our Lord and Creator, who saves us from eternal dam-
nation, and from unquestionable fire and brimston. "
She has a long poem on Mary Queen of Scots:-
"Queen Mary was much loved by all,
Both by the great and by the small,
But hark! her soul to heaven doth rise!
And I suppose she has gained a prize;
For I do think she would not go
Into the awful place below.
There is a thing that I must tell-
Elizabeth went to fire and hell!
He who would teach her to be civil,
It must be her great friend, the divil! »
She hits off Darnley well:
――――――
"A noble's son, a handsome lad,
By some queer way or other, had
Got quite the better of her heart;
With him she always talked apart:
Silly he was, but very fair;
A greater buck was not found there. "
-
"By some queer way or other": is not this the general case
and the mystery, young ladies and gentlemen? Goethe's doc-
trine of "elective affinities" discovered by our Pet Maidie!
## p. 2453 (#659) ###########################################
JOHN BROWN
2453
SONNET TO A MONKEY
"O lively, O most charming pug:
Thy graceful air and heavenly mug!
The beauties of his mind do shine,
And every bit is shaped and fine.
Your teeth are whiter than the snow;
Your a great buck, your a great beau;
Your eyes are of so nice a shape,
More like a Christian's than an ape;
Your cheek is like the rose's blume;
Your hair is like the raven's plume;
His nose's cast is of the Roman:
He is a very pretty woman.
I could not get a rhyme for Roman,
So was obliged to call him woman. "
This last joke is good. She repeats it when writing of James
the Second being killed at Roxburgh:-
―
"He was killed by a cannon splinter,
Quite in the middle of the winter;
Perhaps it was not at that time,
But I can get no other rhyme! "
Here is one of her last letters, dated Kirkcaldy, 12th October,
1811.
You can see how her nature is deepening and enrich-
ing: · -
"MY DEAR MOTHER-You will think that I entirely forget
you but I assure you that you are greatly mistaken. I think of
you always and often sigh to think of the distance between us
two loving creatures of nature. We have regular hours for all
our occupations first at 7 o'clock we go to the dancing and come
home at 8 we then read our Bible and get our repeating and
then play till ten then we get our music till I when we get
our writing and accounts we sew from 12 till I after which I
get my gramer and then work till five.
till 8 when we dont go to the dancing.
scription. I must take a hasty farewell to her whom I love,
reverence and doat on and who I hope thinks the same of
At 7 we come and knit
This is an exact de-
"MARJORY FLEMING.
"P. S. An old pack of cards (! ) would be very exceptible. "
## p. 2454 (#660) ###########################################
2454
JOHN BROWN
This other is a month earlier:
"MY DEAR LITTLE MAMA-I was truly happy to hear that
you were all well. We are surrounded with measles at present
on every side, for the Herons got it, and Isabella Heron was
near Death's Door, and one night her father lifted her out of
bed, and she fell down as they thought lifeless. Mr. Heron said,
'That lassie's deed noo'-'I'm no deed yet. ' She then threw
up a big worm nine inches and a half long. I have begun dan-
cing, but am not very fond of it, for the boys strikes and mocks
me. I have been another night at the dancing; I like it better.
I will write to you as often as I can; but I am afraid not every
week. I long for you with the longings of a child to embrace
you to fold you in my arms. I respect you with all the respect
due to a mother. You don't know how I love you. So I shall
remain, your loving child,
M. FLEMING. "
-
What rich involution of love in the words marked! Here are
some lines to her beloved Isabella, in July, 1811:-
-
"There is a thing that I do want
With you these beauteous walks to haunt;
We would be happy if you would
Try to come over if you could.
Then I would all quite happy be
Now and for all eternity.
My mother is so very sweet,
And checks my appetite to eat;
My father shows us what to do;
But I'm sure that I want you.
I have no more of poetry;
O Isa do remember me,
And try to love your Marjory. "
In a letter from "Isa" to
-
"Miss Muff Maidie Marjory Fleming,
favored by Rare Rear-Admiral Fleming,"
she says:
"I long much to see you, and talk over all our old
stories together, and to hear you read and repeat. I am pining
for my old friend Cesario, and poor Lear, and wicked Richard.
How is the dear Multiplication table going on? are you still as
much attached to 9 times 9 as you used to be? "
But this dainty, bright thing is about to flee, to come
"quick to confusion. " The measles she writes of seized her,
---
## p. 2455 (#661) ###########################################
JOHN BROWN
2455
and she died on the 19th of December, 1811. The day before.
her death, Sunday, she sat up in bed, worn and thin, her eye
gleaming as with the light of a coming world, and with a trem-
ulous, old voice repeated the lines by Burns, - heavy with the
shadow of death, and lit with the fantasy of the judgment-seat,
-the publican's prayer in paraphrase:-
"Why am I loth to leave this earthly scene? "
It is more affecting than we care to say to read her mother's
and Isabella Keith's letters, written immediately after her death.
Old and withered, tattered and pale, they are now: but when
you read them, how quick, how throbbing with life and love!
how rich in that language of affection which only women and
Shakespeare and Luther can use,-that power of detaining the
soul over the beloved object and its loss.
In her first letter to Miss Keith, Mrs. Fleming says of her
dead Maidie:-"Never did I behold so beautiful an object. It
resembled the finest wax-work. There was in the countenance
an expression of sweetness and serenity which seemed to indi-
cate that the pure spirit had anticipated the joys of heaven ere
it quitted the mortal frame. To tell you what your Maidie said
of you would fill volumes; for you were the constant theme of
her discourse, the subject of her thoughts, and ruler of her
actions. The last time she mentioned you was a few hours
before all sense save that of suffering was suspended, when she
said to Dr. Johnstone, 'If you will let me out at the New Year,
I will be quite contented. ' I asked what made her so anxious
to get out then. 'I want to purchase a New Year's gift for Isa
Keith with the sixpence you gave me for being patient in the
measles; and I would like to choose it myself. ' I do not re-
member her speaking afterwards, except to complain of her
head, till just before she expired, when she articulated, 'O
mother! mother! >»
Do we make too much of this little child, who has been in
her grave in Abbotshall Kirkyard these fifty and more years?
We may of her cleverness, not of her affectionateness, her
nature. What a picture the animosa infans gives us of herself,
her vivacity, her passionateness, her precocious love-making, her
passion for nature, for swine, for all living things, her reading,
her turn for expression, her satire, her frankness, her little sins.
and rages, her great repentances! We don't wonder Walter Scott
—
## p. 2456 (#662) ###########################################
2456
JOHN BROWN
carried her off in the neuk of his plaid, and played himself with
her for hours.
We are indebted for the following — and our readers will be
not unwilling to share our obligations to her sister:-"Her
birth was 15th January, 1803; her death 19th December, 1811.
I take this from her Bibles. I believe she was a child of robust
health, of much vigor of body, and beautifully formed arms, and
until her last illness, never was an hour in bed. She was niece
to Mrs. Keith, residing in No. 1 North Charlotte Street, who
was not Mrs. Murray Keith, although very intimately acquainted
with that old lady.
.
-
"As to my aunt and Scott, they were on a very intimate
footing. He asked my aunt to be godmother to his eldest
daughter Sophia Charlotte. I had a copy of Miss Edgeworth's
'Rosamond' and 'Harry and Lucy' for long, which was 'a gift
to Marjorie from Walter Scott,' probably the first edition of that
attractive series, for it wanted 'Frank,' which is always now
published as part of the series under the title of 'Early Lessons. '
I regret to say these little volumes have disappeared. "
Sir Walter was no relation of Marjorie's, but of the Keiths,
through the Swintons; and like Marjorie, he stayed much
at Ravelstone in his early days, with his grand-aunt Mrs.
Keith.
We cannot better end than in words from this same pen:
"I have to ask you to forgive my anxiety in gathering up the
fragments of Marjorie's last days, but I have an almost sacred.
feeling to all that pertains to her. You are quite correct in
stating that measles were the cause of her death. My mother
was struck by the patient quietness manifested by Marjorie dur-
ing this illness, unlike her ardent, impulsive nature; but love and
poetic feeling were unquenched. When lying very still, her
mother asked her if there was anything she wished: 'Oh yes!
if you would just leave the room door open a wee bit, and play
'The Land o' the Leal,' and I will lie and think, and enjoy
myself' (this is just as stated to me by her mother and mine).
Well, the happy day came, alike to parents and child, when
Marjorie was allowed to come forth from the nursery to the par-
lor. It was Sabbath evening, and after tea. My father, who
idolized this child, and never afterwards in my hearing men-
tioned her name, took her in his arms; and while walking up
and down the room, she said, 'Father, I will repeat something
## p. 2457 (#663) ###########################################
JOHN BROWN
2457
to you; what would you like? ' He said, 'Just choose yourself,
Maidie. ' She hesitated for a moment between the paraphrase
Few are thy days, and full of woe,' and the lines of Burns
already quoted, but decided on the latter, a remarkable choice
for a child. The repeating these lines seemed to stir up the
depths of feeling in her soul. She asked to be allowed to write
a poem; there was a doubt whether it would be right to allow
her, in case of hurting her eyes. She pleaded earnestly, 'Just
this once; the point was yielded, her slate was given her, and
with great rapidity she wrote an address of fourteen lines, To
her loved cousin on the author's recovery,' her last work on
earth:
――――――
'Oh! Isa, pain did visit me,
I was at the last extremity;
How often did I think of you,
I wished your graceful form to view,
To clasp you in my weak embrace,
Indeed I thought I'd run my race:
Good care, I'm sure, was of me taken,
But still indeed I was much shaken.
At last I daily strength did gain,
And oh! at last, away went pain;
At length the doctor thought I might
Stay in the parlor all the night;
I now continue so to do;
Farewell to Nancy and to you. '
She went to bed apparently well, awoke in the middle of the
night with the old cry of woe to a mother's heart, 'My head,
my head! ' Three days of the dire malady 'water in the head'
followed, and the end came. "
"Soft, silken primrose, fading timelessly! "
It is needless, it is impossible to add anything to this; the
fervor, the sweetness, the flush of poetic ecstasy, the lovely and
glowing eye, the perfect nature of that bright and warm intelli-
gence, that darling child; Lady Nairne's words, and the old
tune, stealing up from the depths of the human heart, deep call-
ing unto deep, gentle and strong like the waves of the great sea
hushing themselves to sleep in the dark; the words of Burns
touching the kindred chord; her last numbers, "wildly sweet,"
traced with thin and eager fingers, already touched by the last
## p. 2458 (#664) ###########################################
2458
JOHN BROWN
enemy and friend,- moriens canit,- and that love which is so
soon to be her everlasting light, is her song's burden to the
end.
"She set as sets the morning star, which goes
Not down behind the darkened west, nor hides
Obscured among the tempests of the sky,
But melts away into the light of heaven. "
THE DEATH OF THACKERAY
From Spare Hours>
WE
CANNOT resist here recalling one Sunday evening in
December, when he was walking with two friends along
the Dean road, to the west of Edinburgh,—one of the
noblest outlets to any city. It was a lovely evening,— such a
sunset as one never forgets: a rich dark bar of cloud hovered
over the sun, going down behind the Highland hills, lying bathed
in amethystine bloom; between this cloud and the hills there was
a narrow slip of the pure ether, of a tender cowslip color, lucid,
and as if it were the very body of heaven in its clearness; every
object standing out as if etched upon the sky. The northwest
end of Corstorphine Hill, with its trees and rocks, lay in the
heart of this pure radiance, and there a wooden crane, used in
the quarry below, was so placed as to assume the figure of a
cross; there it was, unmistakable, lifted up against the crystalline
sky. All three gazed at it silently. As they gazed, he gave
utterance in a tremulous, gentle, and rapid voice, to what all
were feeling, in the word "CALVARY! " The friends walked
on in silence, and then turned to other things. All that evening
he was very gentle and serious, speaking, as he seldom did,
of divine things,-of death, of sin, of eternity, of salvation; ex-
pressing his simple faith in God and in his Savior.
There is a passage at the close of the 'Roundabout Paper'
No. 23, 'De Finibus,' in which a sense of the ebb of life is very
marked; the whole paper is like a soliloquy. It opens with a
drawing of Mr. Punch, with unusually mild eye, retiring for the
night; he is putting out his high-heeled shoes, and before disap-
pearing gives a wistful look into the passage, as if bidding it and
all else good-night. He will be in bed, his candle out, and in
## p. 2459 (#665) ###########################################
JOHN BROWN
2459
darkness, in five minutes, and his shoes found next morning at
his door, the little potentate all the while in his final sleep. The
whole paper is worth the most careful study; it reveals not a
little of his real nature, and unfolds very curiously the secret of
his work, the vitality and abiding power of his own creations;
how he "invented a certain Costigan, out of scraps, heel-taps,
odds and ends of characters," and met the original the other day,
without surprise, in a tavern parlor. The following is beautiful:
"Years ago I had a quarrel with a certain well-known person
(I believed a statement regarding him which his friends imparted
to me, and which turned out to be quite incorrect). To his
dying day that quarrel was never quite made up. I said to his
brother, 'Why is your brother's soul still dark against me?
is I who ought to be angry and unforgiving, for I was in the
wrong. " Odisse quem læseris was never better contravened. But
what we chiefly refer to now is the profound pensiveness of the
following strain, as if written with a presentiment of what was
not then very far off:-"Another Finis written; another mile-
stone on this journey from birth to the next world. Sure it is a
subject for solemn cogitation. Shall we continue this story-telling
business, and be voluble to the end of our age? " "Will it not
be presently time, O prattler, to hold your tongue? " And thus
It
he ends:
"Oh, the sad old pages, the dull old pages; oh, the cares, the
ennui, the squabbles, the repetitions, the old conversations over
and over again! But now and again a kind thought is recalled,
and now and again a dear memory. Yet a few chapters more,
and then the last; after which, behold Finis itself comes to an
end, and the Infinite begins. "
He had been suffering on Sunday from an old and cruel
enemy. He fixed with his friend and surgeon to come again on
Tuesday, but with that dread of anticipated pain which is a com-
mon condition of sensibility and genius, he put him off with a
note from "yours unfaithfully, W. M. T. ” He went out on
Wednesday for a little, and came home at ten. He went to his
room, suffering much, but declining his man's offer to sit with
him. He hated to make others suffer. He was heard moving,
as if in pain, about twelve, on the eve of —
## p. 2460 (#666) ###########################################
2460
JOHN BROWN
-
"That happy morn
Wherein the Son of Heaven's eternal King,
Of wedded maid and virgin-mother born,
Our great redemption from above did bring. "
Then all was quiet, and then he must have died-in a moment.
Next morning his man went in, and opening the windows found
his master dead, his arms behind his head, as if he had tried
to take one more breath. We think of him as of our Chalmers,
found dead in like manner: the same childlike, unspoiled, open
face; the same gentle mouth; the same spaciousness and softness
of nature; the same look of power. What a thing to think
of, his lying there alone in the dark, in the midst of his own
mighty London; his mother and his daughters asleep, and, it
may be, dreaming of his goodness. God help them, and us all!
What would become of us, stumbling along this our path of life,
if we could not, at our utmost need, stay ourselves on Him?
Long years of sorrow, labor, and pain had killed him before
his time. It was found after death how little life he had to live.
He looked always fresh, with that abounding silvery hair, and
his young, almost infantine face, but he was worn to a shadow,
and his hands wasted as if by eighty years. With him it is the
end of Ends; finite is over and infinite begun. What we all
felt and feel can never be so well expressed as in his own words
of sorrow for the early death of Charles Buller:-
"Who knows the inscrutable design?
Blest He who took and He who gave!
Why should your mother, Charles, not mine,
Be weeping at her darling's grave?
We bow to heaven that willed it so,
That darkly rules the fate of all,
That sends the respite or the blow,
That's free to give or to recall. ”
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