I was coming home one day from a tramp toward Cramond Beach, and was
just on the brow of a wooded height looking towards Edinburgh and not
two miles from it, when a heavy thunder-cloud 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 me 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 carriage-road 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-like 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.
"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 any thing 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
ill-pleasing to the grandparents perhaps, perhaps even worse than that;
but the mother was dead, the family had been abroad for upward 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 sea-sickness), 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 center, 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--the only melodious street-cry (except the warning of the
Venetian gondoliers) that I ever heard.
I often went back to visit my middle-aged Christie Johnstone, and more
than once saw her and her fellow fish-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 basketful, 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.
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
Sandy, 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, "Ech, 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.
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 my power
to perceive the force of his arguments or the truth of his system, even
when illustrated by his repeated demonstrations.
I am bound to say that my cousin Cecilia Combe had quite as much trouble
with her household, her lady's-maids 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.
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, 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 toward 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 can not 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.
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 statutes
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 any thing 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.
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 moustache 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.
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 every thing that was worthy of a Wiseman's knowledge.
In spite of my inability to accept his science of human nature, 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 lass fanatical and importunate in his
advocacy of it. 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 daughters 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 great-coat 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 Dumbiedike'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_. Talking over this with me, as we
drove from Mr. M----'s, Dr. Combe said he was persuaded 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.
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.
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 McLaren,
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 luster 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
Theater, 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 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 un-frequent 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 learned 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 learned 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 song-writers, with a power and a pathos inferior only to
his. The older ballads, with the exquisite monotony of their burdens
soothing and relieving the tragic tenor of their stories, like the
sighing of wind or the murmuring of water; the clarion-hearted 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.
On one occasion 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 theater, 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 toward 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
Bellona) 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 Princess 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 any thing 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 pre-eminent for musical and dramatic genius--alone and unapproached,
the muse of tragic song.