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 indicate 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 remember 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 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 during 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 parlor. It was Sabbath evening, and after tea. My father,
who idolized this child, and never afterwards in my hearing mentioned
her name, took her in his arms; and while walking up and down the room,
she said, 'Father, I will repeat something 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 intelligence, that darling
child; Lady Nairne's words, and the old tune, stealing up from the
depths of the human heart, deep calling 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
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."