FREEDOM--RELIGIOUS EDUCATION--JEDBURGH.
[My mother remained at school at Musselburgh for a twelvemonth, till
she was eleven years old. After this prolonged and elaborate
education, she was recalled to Burntisland, and the results of the
process she had undergone are detailed in her "Recollections" with
much drollery.]
* * * * *
Soon after my return home I received a note from a lady in the
neighbourhood, inquiring for my mother, who had been ill. This note
greatly distressed me, for my half-text writing was as bad as possible,
and I could neither compose an answer nor spell the words. My eldest
cousin, Miss Somerville, a grown-up young lady, then with us, got me out
of this scrape, but I soon got myself into another, by writing to my
brother in Edinburgh that I had sent him a bank-_knot_ (note) to buy
something for me. The school at Musselburgh was expensive, and I was
reproached with having cost so much money in vain. My mother said she
would have been contented if I had only learnt to write well and keep
accounts, which was all that a woman was expected to know.
This passed over, and I was like a wild animal escaped out of a cage. I
was no longer amused in the gardens, but wandered about the country.
When the tide was out I spent hours on the sands, looking at the
star-fish and sea-urchins, or watching the children digging for
sand-eels, cockles, and the spouting razor-fish. I made a collection of
shells, such as were cast ashore, some so small that they appeared like
white specks in patches of black sand. There was a small pier on the
sands for shipping limestone brought from the coal mines inland. I was
astonished to see the surface of these blocks of stone covered with
beautiful impressions of what seemed to be leaves; how they got there I
could not imagine, but I picked up the broken bits, and even large
pieces, and brought them to my repository. I knew the eggs of many
birds, and made a collection of them. I never robbed a nest, but bought
strings of eggs, which were sold by boys, besides getting sea-fowl eggs
from sailors who had been in whalers or on other northern voyages. It
was believed by these sailors that there was a gigantic flat fish in the
North Sea, called a kraken. It was so enormous that when it came to the
surface, covered with tangles and sand, it was supposed to be an island,
till, on one occasion, part of a ship's crew landed on it and found out
their mistake. However, much as they believed in it, none of the sailors
at Burntisland had ever seen it. The sea serpent was also an article of
our faith.
In the rocks at the end of our garden there was a shingly opening, in
which we used to bathe, and where at low tide I frequently waded among
masses of rock covered with sea-weeds. With the exception of dulse and
tangle I knew the names of none, though I was well acquainted with and
admired many of these beautiful plants. I also watched the crabs, live
shells, jelly-fish, and various marine animals, all of which were
objects of curiosity and amusement to me in my lonely life.
The flora on the links and hills around was very beautiful, and I soon
learnt the trivial names of all the plants. There was not a tree nor
bush higher than furze in this part of the country, but the coast to the
north-west of Burntisland was bordered by a tree and brushwood-covered
bank belonging to the Earl of Morton, which extended to Aberdour. I
could not go so far alone, but had frequent opportunities of walking
there and gathering ferns, foxgloves, and primroses, which grew on the
mossy banks of a little stream that ran into the sea. The bed of this
stream or burn was thickly covered with the freshwater mussel, which I
knew often contained pearls, but I did not like to kill the creatures to
get the pearls.
One day my father, who was a keen sportsman, having gone to fish for red
trout at the mouth of this stream, found a young whale, or grampus,
stranded in the shallow water. He immediately ran back to the town, got
boats, captured the whale, and landed it in the harbour, where I went
with the rest of the crowd to see the _muckle fish_.
There was always a good deal of shipbuilding carried on in the harbour,
generally coasting vessels or colliers. We, of course, went to see them
launched, which was a pretty sight.
* * * * *
When the bad weather began I did not know what to do with myself.
Fortunately we had a small collection of books, among which I found
Shakespeare, and read it at every moment I could spare from my domestic
duties. These occupied a great part of my time; besides, I had to _shew_
(sew) my sampler, working the alphabet from A to Z, as well as the ten
numbers, on canvas.
My mother did not prevent me from reading, but my aunt Janet, who came
to live in Burntisland after her father's death, greatly disapproved of
my conduct. She was an old maid who could be very agreeable and witty,
but she had all the prejudices of the time with regard to women's
duties, and said to my mother, "I wonder you let Mary waste her time in
reading, she never _shews_ (sews) more than if she were a man."
Whereupon I was sent to the village school to learn plain needlework. I
do not remember how long it was after this that an old lady sent some
very fine linen to be made into shirts for her brother, and desired that
one should be made entirely by me. This shirt was so well worked that I
was relieved from attending the school, but the house linen was given
into my charge to make and to mend. We had a large stock, much of it
very beautiful, for the Scotch ladies at that time were very proud of
their napery, but they no longer sent it to Holland to be bleached, as
had once been the custom. We grew flax, and our maids spun it. The
coarser yarn was woven in Burntisland, and bleached upon the links; the
finer was sent to Dunfermline, where there was a manufactory of
table-linen.
I was annoyed that my turn for reading was so much disapproved of, and
thought it unjust that women should have been given a desire for
knowledge if it were wrong to acquire it. Among our books I found
Chapone's "Letters to Young Women," and resolved to follow the course of
history there recommended, the more so as we had most of the works she
mentions. One, however, which my cousin lent me was in French, and here
the little I had learnt at school was useful, for with the help of a
dictionary I made out the sense. What annoyed me was my memory not being
good--I could remember neither names nor dates. Years afterwards I
studied a "Memoria Technica," then in fashion, without success; yet in
my youth I could play long pieces of music on the piano without the
book, and I never forget mathematical formulæ. In looking over one of my
MSS., which I had not seen for forty years, I at once recognised the
formulæ for computing the secular inequalities of the moon.
We had two small globes, and my mother allowed me to learn the use of
them from Mr. Reed, the village schoolmaster, who came to teach me for a
few weeks in the winter evenings. Besides the ordinary branches, Mr.
Reed taught Latin and navigation, but these were out of the question for
me. At the village school the boys often learnt Latin, but it was
thought sufficient for the girls to be able to read the Bible; very few
even learnt writing. I recollect, however, that some men were ignorant
of book-keeping; our baker, for instance had a wooden tally, in which
he made a notch for every loaf of bread, and of course we had the
corresponding tally. They were called nick-sticks.
My bedroom had a window to the south, and a small closet near had one to
the north. At these I spent many hours, studying the stars by the aid of
the celestial globe. Although I watched and admired the magnificent
displays of the Aurora, which frequently occurred, they seemed to be so
nearly allied to lightning that I was somewhat afraid of them. At an
earlier period of my life there was a comet, which I dreaded
exceedingly.
* * * * *
My father was Captain of the "Repulse," a fifty-gun ship, attached to
the Northern fleet commanded by the Earl of Northesk. The winter was
extremely stormy, the fleet was driven far north, and kept there by
adverse gales, till both officers and crew were on short rations. They
ran out of candles, and had to tear up their stockings for wicks, and
dip them into the fat of the salt meat which was left. We were in great
anxiety, for it was reported that some of the ships had foundered; we
were, however, relieved by the arrival of the "Repulse" in Leith roads
for repair.
Our house on one occasion being full, I was sent to sleep in a room
quite detached from the rest and with a different staircase. There was
a closet in this room in which my father kept his fowling pieces,
fishing tackle, and golf clubs, and a long garret overhead was filled
with presses and stores of all kinds, among other things a number of
large cheeses were on a board slung by ropes to the rafters. One night I
had put out my candle and was fast asleep, when I was awakened by a
violent crash, and then a rolling noise over my head. Now the room was
said to be haunted, so that the servants would not sleep in it. I was
desperate, for there was no bell. I groped my way to the closet--lucifer
matches were unknown in those days--I seized one of the golf clubs,
which are shod with iron, and thundered on the bedroom door till I
brought my father, followed by the whole household, to my aid. It was
found that the rats had gnawed through the ropes by which the cheeses
were suspended, so that the crash and rolling were accounted for, and I
was scolded for making such an uproar.
Children suffer much misery by being left alone in the dark. When I was
very young I was sent to bed at eight or nine o'clock, and the maid who
slept in the room went away as soon as I was in bed, leaving me alone in
the dark till she came to bed herself. All that time I was in an agony
of fear of something indefinite, I could not tell what. The joy, the
relief, when the maid came back, were such that I instantly fell asleep.
Now that I am a widow and old, although I always have a night-lamp, such
is the power of early impressions that I rejoice when daylight comes.
* * * * *
At Burntisland the sacrament was administered in summer because people
came in crowds from the neighbouring parishes to attend the preachings.
The service was long and fatiguing. A number of clergymen came to
assist, and as the minister's manse could not accommodate them all, we
entertained three of them, one of whom was always the Rev. Dr. Campbell,
father of Lord Campbell.
Thursday was a day of preparation. The morning service began by a psalm
sung by the congregation, then a prayer was said by the minister,
followed by a lecture on some chapter of the Bible, generally lasting an
hour, after that another psalm was sung, followed by a prayer, a sermon
which lasted seldom less than an hour, and the whole ended with a psalm,
a short prayer and a benediction. Every one then went home to dinner and
returned afterwards for afternoon service, which lasted more than an
hour and a half. Friday was a day of rest, but I together with many
young people went at this time to the minister to receive a stamped
piece of lead as a token that we were sufficiently instructed to be
admitted to Christ's table. This ticket was given to the Elder on the
following Sunday. On Saturday there was a morning service, and on Sunday
such multitudes came to receive the sacrament that the devotions
continued till late in the evening. The ceremony was very strikingly and
solemnly conducted. The communicants sat on each side of long narrow
tables covered with white linen, in imitation of the last supper of
Christ, and the Elders handed the bread and wine. After a short
exhortation from one of the ministers the first set retired, and were
succeeded by others. When the weather was fine a sermon, prayers, and
psalm-singing took place either in the churchyard or on a grassy bank at
the Links for such as were waiting to communicate. On the Monday morning
there was the same long service as on the Thursday. It was too much for
me; I always came home with a headache, and took a dislike to sermons.
Our minister was a rigid Calvinist. His sermons were gloomy, and so long
that he occasionally would startle the congregation by calling out to
some culprit, "Sit up there, how daur ye sleep i' the kirk." Some
saw-mills in the neighbourhood were burnt down, so the following Sunday
we had a sermon on hell-fire. The kirk was very large and quaint; a
stair led to a gallery on each side of the pulpit, which was intended
for the tradespeople, and each division was marked with a suitable
device, and text from Scripture. On the bakers' portion a sheaf of wheat
was painted; a balance and weights on the grocers', and on the weavers',
which was opposite to our pew, there was a shuttle, and below it the
motto, "My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle, and are spent
without _hop job_." The artist was evidently no clerk.
My brother Sam, while attending the university in Edinburgh, came to us
on the Saturdays and returned to town on Monday. He of course went with
us to the kirk on Sunday morning, but we let our mother attend afternoon
service alone, as he and I were happy to be together, and we spent the
time sitting on the grassy rocks at the foot of our garden, from whence
we could see a vast extent of the Firth of Forth with Edinburgh and its
picturesque hills. It was very amusing, for we occasionally saw three or
four whales spouting, and shoals of porpoises at play. However, we did
not escape reproof, for I recollect the servant coming to tell us that
the minister had sent to inquire whether Mr. and Miss Fairfax had been
taken ill, as he had not seen them at the kirk in the afternoon. The
minister in question was Mr. Wemyss, who had married a younger sister of
my mother's.
* * * * *
When I was about thirteen my mother took a small apartment in Edinburgh
for the winter, and I was sent to a writing school, where I soon learnt
to write a good hand, and studied the common rules of arithmetic. My
uncle William Henry Charters, lately returned from India, gave me a
pianoforte, and I had music lessons from an old lady who lived in the
top story of one of the highest houses in the old town. I slept in the
same room with my mother. One morning I called out, much alarmed, "There
is lightning!" but my mother said, after a moment, "No; it is fire!" and
on opening the window shutters I found that the flakes of fire flying
past had made the glass quite hot. The next house but one was on fire
and burning fiercely, and the people next door were throwing everything
they possessed, even china and glass, out of the windows into the
street. We dressed quickly, and my mother sent immediately to Trotter
the upholsterer for four men. We then put our family papers, our silver,
&c., &c., into trunks; then my mother said, "Now let us breakfast, it is
time enough for us to move our things when the next house takes fire."
Of its doing so there was every probability because casks of turpentine
and oil were exploding from time to time in a carriage manufactory at
the back of it. Several gentlemen of our acquaintance who came to assist
us were surprised to find us breakfasting quietly as if there were
nothing unusual going on. In fact my mother, though a coward in many
things, had, like most women, the presence of mind and the courage of
necessity. The fire was extinguished, and we had only the four men to
pay for doing nothing, nor did we sacrifice any of our property like our
neighbours who had completely lost their heads from terror. I may
mention here that on one occasion when my father was at home he had been
ill with a severe cold, and wore his nightcap. While reading in the
drawing-room one evening he called out, "I smell fire, there is no time
to be lost," so, snatching up a candle, he wandered from room to room
followed by us all still smelling fire, when one of the servants said,
"O, sir, it is the tassel of your nightcap that is on fire."
* * * * *
On returning to Burntisland, I spent four or five hours daily at the
piano; and for the sake of having something to do, I taught myself Latin
enough from such books as we had, to read Cæsar's "Commentaries." I
went that summer on a visit to my aunt at Jedburgh, and, for the first
time in my life, I met in my uncle, Dr. Somerville, with a friend who
approved of my thirst for knowledge. During long walks with him in the
early mornings, he was so kind, that I had the courage to tell him that
I had been trying to learn Latin, but I feared it was in vain; for my
brother and other boys, superior to me in talent, and with every
assistance, spent years in learning it. He assured me, on the contrary,
that in ancient times many women--some of them of the highest rank in
England--had been very elegant scholars, and that he would read Virgil
with me if I would come to his study for an hour or two every morning
before breakfast, which I gladly did.
I never was happier in my life than during the months I spent at
Jedburgh. My aunt was a charming companion--witty, full of anecdote, and
had read more than most women of her day, especially Shakespeare, who
was her favourite author. My cousins had little turn for reading, but
they were better educated than most girls. They were taught to write by
David Brewster, son of the village schoolmaster, afterwards Sir David,
who became one of the most distinguished philosophers and discoverers of
the age, member of all the scientific societies at home and abroad, and
at last President of the University of Edinburgh. He was studying in
Edinburgh when I was at Jedburgh; so I did not make his acquaintance
then; but later in life he became my valued friend. I did not know till
after his death, that, while teaching my cousins, he fell in love with
my cousin Margaret. I do not believe she was aware of it. She was
afterwards attached to an officer in the army; but my aunt would not
allow her to go to that _outlandish_ place, Malta, where he was
quartered; so she lived and died unmarried. Steam has changed our ideas
of distance since that time.
My uncle's house--the manse--in which I was born, stands in a pretty
garden, bounded by the fine ancient abbey, which, though partially
ruined, still serves as the parish kirk. The garden produced abundance
of common flowers, vegetables, and fruit. Some of the plum and pear
trees were very old, and were said to have been planted by the monks.
Both were excellent in quality, and very productive. The view from both
garden and manse was over the beautiful narrow valley through which the
Jed flows. The precipitous banks of red sandstone are richly clothed
with vegetation, some of the trees ancient and very fine, especially the
magnificent one called the capon tree, and the lofty king of the wood,
remnants of the fine forests which at one time had covered the country.
An inland scene was new to me, and I was never tired of admiring the
tree-crowned scaurs or precipices, where the rich glow of the red
sandstone harmonized so well with the autumnal tints of the foliage.
We often bathed in the pure stream of the Jed. My aunt always went with
us, and was the merriest of the party; we bathed in a pool which was
deep under the high scaur, but sloped gradually from the grassy bank on
the other side. Quiet and transparent as the Jed was, it one day came
down with irresistible fury, red with the débris of the sandstone
scaurs. There had been a thunderstorm in the hills up-stream, and as
soon as the river began to rise, the people came out with pitchforks and
hooks to catch the hayricks, sheaves of corn, drowned pigs, and other
animals that came sweeping past. My cousins and I were standing on the
bridge, but my aunt called us off when the water rose above the arches,
for fear of the bridge giving way. We made expeditions every day;
sometimes we went nutting in the forest; at other times we gathered
mushrooms on the grass parks of Stewartfield, where there was a wood of
picturesque old Scotch firs, inhabited by a colony of rooks. I still
kept the habit of looking out for birds, and had the good fortune to
see a heron, now a rare bird in the valley of the Jed. Some of us went
every day to a spring called the Allerly well, about a quarter of a mile
from the manse, and brought a large jug of its sparkling water for
dinner. The evenings were cheerful; my aunt sang Scotch songs prettily,
and told us stories and legends about Jedburgh, which had been a royal
residence in the olden time. She had a tame white and tawny-coloured
owl, which we fed every night, and sometimes brought into the
drawing-room. The Sunday evening never was gloomy, though properly
observed. We occasionally drank tea with acquaintances, and made visits
of a few days to the Rutherfurds of Edgerton and others; but I was
always glad to return to the manse.
My uncle, like other ministers of the Scottish Kirk, was allowed a
glebe, which he farmed himself. Besides horses, a cow was kept, which
supplied the family with cream and butter, and the skimmed milk was
given to the poor; but as the milk became scarce, one woman was
deprived, for the time, of her share. Soon after, the cow was taken ill,
and my uncle's ploughman, Will, came to him and said, "Sir, gin you
would give that carline Tibby Jones her soup o' milk again, the coo
would soon be weel eneugh." Will was by no means the only believer in
witchcraft at that time.