Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me;
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form.
Then I have reason to be fond of grief."
What variations cannot love play on this one string!
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 waxwork. 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 was 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 let me out at the New Year, I will be quite
contented.' I asked her 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.
The year before she died, when in Edinburgh, she was at a Twelfth Night
Supper at Scott's, in Castle Street. The company had all come,--all but
Marjorie. Scott's familiars, whom we all know, were there,--all were
come but Marjorie; and all were dull because Scott was dull. "Where's
that bairn? what can have come over her? I'll go myself and see." And
he was getting up, and would have gone; when the bell rang, and in came
Duncan Roy and his henchman Tougald, with the sedan chair, which was
brought right into the lobby, and its top raised. And there, in its
darkness and dingy old cloth, sat Maidie in white, her eyes gleaming,
and Scott bending over her in ecstasy,--"hung over her enamored." "Sit
ye there, my dautie, till they all see you"; and forthwith he brought
them all. You can fancy the scene. And he lifted her up and marched to
his seat with her on his stout shoulder, and set her down beside him;
and then began the night, and such a night! Those who knew Scott best
said, that night was never equalled; Maidie and he were the stars; and
she gave them _Constance's_ speeches and "Helvellyn," the ballad then
much in vogue, and all her _répertoire_,--Scott showing her off, and
being ofttimes rebuked by her for his intentional blunders.
We are indebted for the following to her sister: "Her birth was 15th
January, 1803; her death, 19th December, 1811. I take this from her
Bibles.[3] 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.
[Footnote 3: "Her Bible is before me; _a pair_, as then called; the
faded marks are just as she placed them. There is one at David's lament
over Jonathan."]
"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 Dr. Johnstone rewarded her submissiveness with a sixpence, the
request speedily followed that she might get out ere New Year's day
came. When asked why she was so desirous of getting out, she
immediately rejoined, 'O, I am so anxious to buy something with my
sixpence for my dear Isa Keith.' Again, when lying very still, her
mother asked her if there was anything she wished: 'O 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 her 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."