miles northward from the "auld town of Ayr." Her parentage was of the
humblest, her father being a sailor before the mast, and the poor
dwelling which sheltered her was in no way superior to the meanest of
those we find to-day on the narrow streets of her village. From her
birthplace we see, across the Firth of Clyde, the beetling mountains of
the Highlands, where she afterward dwelt, and southward the great mass
of Ailsa Craig looming, a gigantic pyramid, out of the sea. Mary was
named for her aunt, wife of Peter McPherson, a ship-carpenter of
Greenock, in whose house Mary died. In her infancy her family removed to
the vicinage of Dunoon, on the western shore of the Firth, eight miles
below Greenock, leaving the oldest daughter at Ardrossan. Mary grew to
young womanhood near Dunoon, then returned to Ayrshire, and found
occupation at Coilsfield, near Tarbolton, where her acquaintance with
Burns soon began. He told a lady that he first saw Mary while walking in
the woods of Coilsfield, and first spoke with her at a rustic
merry-making, and, "having the luck to win her regards from other
suitors," they speedily became intimate. At this period of life Burns's
"eternal propensity to fall into love" was unusually active, even for
him, and his passion for Mary (at this time) was one of several which
engaged his heart in the interval between the reign of Ellison
Begbie--"the lass of the twa sparkling, roguish een"--and that of
"Bonnie Jean." Mary subsequently became a servant in the house of
Burns's landlord, Gavin Hamilton, a lawyer of Mauchline, who had early
recognized the genius of the bard and admitted him to an intimate
friendship, despite his inferior condition. When Hamilton was persecuted
by the kirk, Burns, partly out of sympathy with him, wrote the satires,
"Holy Willie's Prayer," "The Twa Herds," and "The Holy Fair," which
served to unite the friends more closely, and brought the poet often to
the house where Mary was an inmate. This house--a sombre structure of
stone, little more pretentious than its neighbors--we found on the
shabby street not far from Armour's cottage, the church of "The Holy
Fair," and "Posie Nansie's" inn, where the "Jolly Beggars" used to
congregate. Among the dingy rooms shown us in Hamilton's house was that
in which he married Burns to "Bonnie Jean" Armour.
[Sidenote: Personal Appearance]
[Sidenote: Betrothal and Parting]
The bard's niece, Miss Begg, of Bridgeside, told the writer that she
often heard Burns's mother describe Mary as she saw her at Hamilton's:
she had a bonnie face, a complexion of unusual fairness, soft blue eyes,
a profusion of shining hair which fell to her knees, a _petite_ figure
which made her seem younger than her twenty summers, a bright smile, and
pleasing manners, which won the old lady's heart. This description is,
in superlative phrase, corroborated by Lindsay in Hugh Miller's
"Recollections:" she was "beautiful, sylph-like," her bust and neck were
"exquisitely moulded," her arms and feet "had a statue-like symmetry and
marble-like whiteness;" but it was in her lovely countenance that
"nature seemed to have exhausted her utmost skill,"--"the loveliest
creature I have ever seen," etc. All who have written of her have
noticed her beauty, her good sense, her modesty and self-respect. But
these qualities were now insufficient to hold the roving fancy of Burns,
whose "susceptibility to immediate impressions" (so called by Byron, who
had the same failing) passes belief. His first ephemeral fancy for Mary
took little hold upon his heart, and the best that can be said of it is
that it was more innocent than the loves which came before and after it.
Within a stone's-throw of Mary dwelt Jean Armour, and when the former
returned to Coilsfield, he promptly fell in love with Jean, and solaced
himself with her more buxom and compliant charms. It was a year or so
later, when his intercourse with Jean had burdened him with grief and
shame, that the tender and romantic affection for Mary came into his
life. She was yet at Coilsfield, and while he was in hiding--his heart
tortured by the apparent perfidy of Jean and all the countryside
condemning his misconduct--his intimacy with Mary was renewed; his
quickened vision now discerned her endearing attributes, her trust and
sympathy were precious in his distress, and awoke in him an affection
such as he never felt for any other woman. During a few brief weeks the
lovers spent their evenings and Sabbaths together, loitering amid the
"Banks and braes and streams around
The castle of Montgomery,"
talking of the golden days that were to be theirs when present troubles
were past; then came the parting which the world will never forget, and
Mary relinquished her service and went to her parents at Campbeltown,--a
port of Cantyre behind "Arran's mountain isle." Of this parting Burns
says, in a letter to Thomson, "We met by appointment on the second
Sunday of May, in a sequestered spot on the Ayr, where we spent the day
in taking farewell before she should embark for the West Highlands to
prepare for our projected change of life." Lovers of Burns linger over
this final parting, and detail the impressive ceremonials with which the
pair solemnized their betrothal: they stood on either side of a brook,
they laved their hands in the water and scattered it in the air to
symbolize the purity of their intentions; clasping hands above an open
Bible, they swore to be true to each other forever, then exchanged
Bibles, and parted never to meet more. It is not strange that when death
had left him nothing of her but her poor little Bible, a tress of her
golden hair, and a tender memory of her love, the recollection of this
farewell remained in his soul forever. He has pictured it in the
exquisite lines of "Highland Mary" and "To Mary in Heaven."
[Sidenote: Mementos]
In the monument at Alloway--between the "auld haunted kirk" and the
bridge where Maggie lost her tail--we are shown a memento of the
parting; it is the Bible which Burns gave to Mary and above which their
vows were said. At Mary's death it passed to her sister, at Ardrossan,
who bequeathed it to her son William Anderson; subsequently it was
carried to America by one of the family, whence it has been recovered to
be treasured here. It is a pocket edition in two volumes, to one of
which is attached a lock of poor Mary's shining hair. Within the cover
of the first volume the hand of Burns has written, "And ye shall not
swear by my name falsely, I am the Lord;" within the second, "Thou shalt
not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths." Upon
a blank leaf of each volume is Burns's Masonic signet, with the
signature, "Robert Burns, Mossgiel," written beneath. Mary's
spinning-wheel is preserved in the adjoining cottage. A few of her
bright hairs, severed in her fatal fever, are among the treasures of the
writer and lie before him as he pens these lines.
[Sidenote: Coilsfield--Plans of the Lovers]
A visit to the scenes of the brief passion of the pair is a pleasing
incident of our Burns-pilgrimage. Coilsfield House is somewhat changed
since Mary dwelt beneath its roof,--a great rambling edifice of gray
weather-worn stone with a row of white pillars aligned along its facade,
its massive walls embowered in foliage and environed by the grand woods
which Burns and Mary knew so well. It was then a seat of Colonel Hugh
Montgomerie, a patron of Burns. The name Coilsfield is derived from
Coila, the traditional appellation of the district. The grounds comprise
a billowy expanse of wood and sward; great reaches of turf, dotted with
trees already venerable when the lovers here had their tryst a hundred
years ago, slope away from the mansion to the Faile and border its
murmuring course to the Ayr. Here we trace with romantic interest the
wanderings of the pair during the swift hours of that last day of
parting love, their lingering way 'neath the "wild wood's thickening
green," by the pebbled shore of Ayr to the brooklet where their vows
were made, and thence along the Faile to the woodland shades of
Coilsfield, where, at the close of that winged day, "pledging oft to
meet again, they tore themselves asunder." Howitt found at Coilsfield a
thorn-tree, called by all the country "Highland Mary's thorn," and
believed to be the place of final parting; years ago the tree was
notched and broken by souvenir seekers; if it be still in existence the
present occupant of Coilsfield is unaware.
[Sidenote: Burns's Regard for Mary--Her Death]
At the time of his parting with Mary, Burns had already resolved to
emigrate to Jamaica, and it has been supposed, from his own statements
and those of his biographers, that the pair planned to emigrate
together; but Burns soon abandoned this project and, perhaps, all
thought of marrying Mary. The song commencing "Will ye go to the Indies,
my Mary?" has been quoted to show he expected her to accompany him, but
he says, in an epistle to Thomson, that this was his farewell to her,
and in another song, written while preparing to embark, he declares that
it is leaving Mary that makes him wish to tarry. Further, we find that
with the first nine pounds received from the sale of his poems he
purchased a single passage to Jamaica,--manifestly having no intention
of taking her with him. Her being at Greenock in October, _en route_ to
a new place of service at Glasgow, indicates she had no hope that he
would marry her then, or soon. True, he afterward said she came to
Greenock to meet him, but it is certain that he knew nothing of her
being there until after her death. During the summer of 1786, while
she was preparing to wed him, he indited two love-songs to her, but
they are not more glowing than those of the same time to several
inamoratas,--less impassioned than the "Farewell to Eliza" and allusions
to Jean in "Farewell, old Scotia's bleak domains,"--and barely four
weeks after his ardent and solemn parting with Mary we find him writing
to Brice, "I do still love Jean to distraction." Poor Mary! Possibly the
fever mercifully saved her from dying of a broken heart. The bard's
anomalous affectional condition and conduct may perhaps be explained by
assuming that he loved Mary with a refined and spiritual passion so
different from his love for others--and especially from his conjugal
love for Jean--that the passions could coexist in his heart. The
alternative explanation is that his love for Mary, while she lived, was
by no means the absorbing passion which he afterward believed it to
have been. When death had hallowed his memories of her love and of all
their sweet intercourse,--beneficent death! that beautifies, ennobles,
irradiates, in the remembrance of survivors, the loved ones its touch
has taken,--then his soul, swelling with the passion that throbs in the
strains of "To Mary in Heaven," would not own to itself that its love
had ever been less.
Mary remained at Campbeltown during the summer of 1786. Coming to
Greenock in the autumn, she found her brother sick of a malignant fever
at the house of her aunt; bravely disregarding danger of contagion, she
devoted herself to nursing him, and brought him to a safe convalescence
only to be herself stricken by his malady and to rapidly sink and die, a
sacrifice to her sisterly affection. By this time the success of his
poems had determined Burns to remain in Scotland, and he returned to
Mossgiel, where tidings of Mary's death reached him. His brother relates
that when the letter was handed to him he went to the window to read it,
then his face was observed to change suddenly, and he quickly went out
without speaking. In June of the next year he made a solitary journey to
the Highlands, apparently drawn by memory of Mary. If, indeed, he
dropped a tear upon her neglected grave and visited her humble Highland
home, we may almost forgive him the excesses of that tour, if not the
renewed _liaison_ with Jean which immediately preceded, and the amorous
correspondence with "Clarinda" (Mrs. M'Lehose) which followed it.
Whatever the quality or degree of his passion for Mary living, his grief
for her dead was deep and tender, and expired only with his life.
Cherished in his heart, it manifested itself now in some passage of a
letter, now in some pathetic burst of song,--like "The Lament" and
"Highland Mary,"--and again in some emotional act. Of many such acts
narrated to the writer by Burns's niece, the following is, perhaps, most
striking. The poet attended the wedding of Kirstie Kirkpatrick, a
favorite of his, who often sang his songs for him, and, after the wedded
pair had retired, a lass of the company, being asked to sing, began
"Highland Mary." Its effect upon Burns "was painful to witness; he
started to his feet, prayed her in God's name to forbear, then hastened
to the door of the marriage-chamber and entreated the bride to come and
quiet his mind with a verse or two of 'Bonnie Doon.'" The lines "To Mary
in Heaven" and the pathetic incidents of their composition show most
touchingly how he mourned his fair-haired lassie years after she ceased
to be. It was at Ellisland, October 20, 1789, the anniversary of Mary's
death, an occasion which brought afresh to his heart memories of the
tender past. Jean has told us of his increasing silence and unrest as
the day declined, of his aimless wandering by Nithside at nightfall, of
his rapt abstraction as he lay pillowed by the sheaves of his
stack-yard, gazing entranced at the "lingering star" above him till the
immortal song was born.
[Sidenote: Her Grave]
Poor Mary is laid in the burial-plot of her uncle in the west kirk-yard
of Greenock, near Crawford Street; our pilgrimage in Burnsland may fitly
end at her grave. A pathway, beaten by the feet of many reverent
visitors, leads us to the spot. It is so pathetically different from the
scenes she loved in life,--the heather-clad slopes of her Highland home,
the seclusion of the wooded braes where she loitered with her
poet-lover. Scant foliage is about her; few birds sing above her here.
She lies by the wall; narrow streets hem in the enclosure; the air is
sullied by smoke from factories and from steamers passing within a
stone's-throw on the busy Clyde; the clanging of many hammers and the
discordant din of machinery and traffic invade the place and sound in
our ears as we muse above the ashes of the gentle lassie.
For half a century her grave was unmarked and neglected; then, by
subscription, a monument of marble, twelve feet in height, and of
graceful proportions, was raised. It bears a sculptured medallion
representing Burns and Mary, with clasped hands, plighting their troth.
Beneath is the simple inscription, read oft by eyes dim with tears:
Erected Over the Grave of
HIGHLAND MARY
1842.
"My Mary, dear departed shade,
Where is thy place of blissful rest?"
BRONTE SCENES IN BRUSSELS
_School--Class-Rooms--Dormitory--Garden--Scenes and Events of Villette
and The Professor--M. Paul--Madame Beck--Memories of the Brontes--
Confessional--Grave of Jessy Yorke_.
We had "done" Brussels after the approved fashion,--had faithfully
visited the churches, palaces, museums, theatres, galleries, monuments;
had duly admired the windows and carvings of the grand cathedral, the
tower and tapestry and frescos and facade of the Hotel de Ville, the
stately halls and the gilded dome of the Courts of Justice, and the
consummate beauty of the Bourse; had diligently sought out the naive
boy-fountain, and had made the usual excursion to the field of Waterloo.
[Sidenote: The Park--Heger Mansion]
This delightful task being conscientiously discharged, we proposed to
devote our last day in the Belgian capital to the accomplishment of one
of the cherished projects of our lives,--the searching out of the
localities associated with Charlotte Bronte's unhappy school-life here,
which she has so graphically portrayed. For our purpose no guide was
needful, for the topography and local coloring of "Villette" and "The
Professor" are as vivid and unmistakable as in the best work of Dickens
himself. Proceeding from St. Gudule to the Rue Royale, and a short
distance along that thoroughfare, we reached the park and a locality
familiar to Miss Bronte's readers. Seated in this lovely
pleasure-ground, the gift of the Empress Maria Theresa, with its cool
shade all about us, we noted the long avenues and the paths winding amid
trees and shrubbery, the dark foliage ineffectually veiling the gleaming
statuary and the sheen of bright fountains, "the stone basin with its
clear depth, the thick-planted trees which framed this tremulous and
rippled mirror," the groups of happy people filling the seats in
secluded nooks or loitering in the mazes and listening to the music; we
noted all this, and felt that Miss Bronte had revealed it to us long
ago. It was across this park that Lucy Snowe was piloted from the bureau
of the diligence by the chivalrous Dr. John on the night when she,
despoiled, helpless, and solitary, arrived in Brussels. She found the
park deserted, the paths miry, the water dripping from the trees. "In
the double gloom of tree and fog she could not see her guide, and could
only follow his tread" in the darkness. We recalled another scene under
these same trees, on a night when the gate-way was "spanned by a flaming
arch of massed stars." The park was a "forest with sparks of purple and
ruby and golden fire gemming the foliage," and Lucy, driven from her
couch by mental torture, wandered unrecognized amid the gay throng at
the midnight concert of the Festival of the Martyrs and looked upon her
lover, her friends the Brettons, and the secret junta of her enemies,
Madame Beck, Madame Walravens, and Pere Silas. The sense of familiarity
with the vicinage grew as we observed our surroundings. Facing us, at
the extremity of the park, was the palace of the king, in the small
square across the Rue Royale at our right was the statue of General
Beliard, and we knew that just behind it we should find the Bronte
school; for "The Professor," standing by the statue, had looked down a
great staircase to the door-way of the school, and poor Lucy on that
forlorn first night in "Villette," to avoid a pair of ruffians, had
hastened down a flight of steps from the Rue Royale and had come, not to
the inn she sought, but to the _pensionnat_ of Madame Beck. From the
statue we descended, by a series of stone stairs, into a narrow street,
old-fashioned and clean, quiet and secluded in the very heart of the
great city, and just opposite the foot of the steps we came to the wide
door of a spacious, quadrangular, stuccoed old mansion, with a bit of
foliage showing over a high wall at one side. A bright plate embellished
the door and bore the name Heger. A Latin inscription in the wall of
the house showed it to have been given to the Guild of Royal Archers by
the Infanta Isabelle early in the seventeenth century. Long before that
the garden had been the orchard and herbary of a convent and the
Hospital for the Poor.
[Sidenote: Characters of Villette]
[Sidenote: The Hegers]
We were detained at the door long enough to remember Lucy standing
there, trembling and anxious, awaiting admission, and then we too were
"let in by a _bonne_ in a smart cap," apparently a fit successor to the
Rosine of other days, and entered the corridor. This was paved with
blocks of black and white marble and had painted walls. It extended
through the entire depth of the house, and at its farther extremity an
open door afforded us a glimpse of the garden. We were ushered into the
little _salon_ at the left of the passage, the one often mentioned in
"Villette," and here we made known our wish to see the garden and
class-rooms, and met with a prompt refusal from the neat portress. We
tried diplomacy (also lucre) without avail: it was the _grandes
vacances_, M. Heger was engaged, we could not be gratified,--unless,
indeed, we were patrons of the school. At this juncture a portly,
ruddy-faced lady of middle age and most courteous of speech and manner
appeared, and, addressing us in faultless English, introduced herself as
Mdlle. Heger, co-directress of the school, and "wholly at our service."
In response to our apologies for the intrusion and explanations of the
desire which had prompted it, we received complaisant assurances of
welcome; yet the manner of our entertainer indicated that she did not
share in our admiration and enthusiasm for Charlotte Bronte and her
books. In the subsequent conversation it appeared that Mademoiselle and
her family hold decided opinions upon the subject,--something more than
mere lack of admiration. She was familiar with the novels, and thought
that, while they exhibit a talent certainly not above mediocrity, they
reflect the injustice, the untruthfulness, and the ingratitude of their
creator. We were obliged to confess to ourselves that the family have
reason for this view, when we reflected that in the books Miss Bronte
has assailed their religion and disparaged the school and the characters
of the teachers and pupils, has depicted Madame Heger in the odious duad
of Madame Beck and Mdlle. Reuter, has represented M. Heger as the
scheming and deceitful Pelet and the preposterous Paul, Lucy Snowe's
lover; that this lover was the husband of Madame Heger, and father of
the family of children to whom Lucy was at first _bonne d'enfants_, and
that possibly the daughter she has described as the thieving, vicious
Desiree--"that tadpole Desiree Beck"--was this very lady now so politely
entertaining us. To all this add the significant fact that "Villette"
is an autobiographical novel, which "records the most vivid passages in
Miss Bronte's own sad heart's history," not a few of the incidents being
transcripts "from the darkest chapter of her own life," and the light
which the consideration of this fact throws upon her relations with
members of the family will help us to apprehend the stand-point from
which the Hegers judge Miss Bronte and her work, and to excuse a natural
resentment against one who has presented them in a decidedly bad light.
How bad we realized when, during the ensuing chat, we called to mind
just what she had written of them. As Madame Beck, Madame Heger had been
represented as lying, deceitful, and shameless, as "watching and spying
everywhere, peeping through every key-hole, listening behind every
door," as duplicating Lucy's keys and secretly searching her bureau, as
meanly abstracting her letters and reading them to others, as immodestly
laying herself out to entrap the man to whom she had given her love
unsought. It was some accession to the existing animosity between
herself and Madame Heger which precipitated Miss Bronte's departure from
the _pensionnat_. Mrs. Gaskell ascribes their mutual dislike to
Charlotte's free expression of her aversion to the Catholic Church, of
which Madame Heger was a devotee, and hence "wounded in her most
cherished opinions;" but a later writer plainly intimates that Miss
Bronte hated the woman who sat for Madame Beck because marriage had
given to _her_ the man whom Miss Bronte loved, and that "Madame Beck had
need to be a detective in her own house." The death of Madame Heger had
rendered the family, who held her only as a sacred memory, more keenly
sensitive than ever to anything which would seem by implication to
disparage her.
[Sidenote: Recollections of the Brontes]