Stories of Childhood Part 12

"Some days ago Isabella had a terrible fit of the toothake, and she walked with a long night-s.h.i.+ft at dead of night like a ghost, and I thought she was one. She prayed for nature's sweet restorer--balmy sleep--but did not get it--a ghostly figure indeed she was, enough to make a saint tremble. It made me quiver and shake from top to toe.

Superst.i.tion is a very mean thing and should be despised and shunned."

Here is her weakness and her strength again: "In the love-novels all the heroines are very desperate. Isabella will not allow me to speak about lovers and heroins, and 'tis too refined for my taste." "Miss Egward's (Edgeworth's) tails are very good, particularly some that are very much adapted for youth (!) as Laz Laurance and Tarelton, False Keys, etc.

etc."

"Tom Jones and Grey's Elegey in a country churchyard are both excellent, and much spoke of by both s.e.x, particularly by the men." Are our Marjories nowadays better or worse because they cannot read Tom Jones unharmed? More better than worse; but who among them can repeat Gray's Lines on a distant prospect of Eton College as could our Maidie?

Here is some more of her prattle: "I went into Isabella's bed to make her smile like the Genius Demedicus" (the Venus de Medicis) "or the statute in an ancient Greece, but she fell asleep in my very face, at which my anger broke forth, so that I awoke her from a comfortable nap.

All was now hushed up again, but again my anger burst forth at her biding me get up."

She begins thus loftily,--

"Death the righteous love to see, But from it doth the wicked flee."

Then suddenly breaks off as if with laughter,--

"I am sure they fly as fast as their legs can carry them!"

"There is a thing I love to see,-- That is, our monkey catch a flee!"

"I love in Isa's bed to lie,-- Oh, such a joy and luxury!

The bottom of the bed I sleep, And with great care within I creep; Oft I embrace her feet of lillys, But she has goton all the pillys.

Her neck I never can embrace, But I do hug her feet in place."

How childish and yet how strong and free is her use of words!--"I lay at the foot of the bed because Isabella said I disturbed her by continial fighting and kicking, but I was very dull, and continially at work reading the Arabian Nights, which I could not have done if I had slept at the top. I am reading the Mysteries of Udolpho. I am much interested in the fate of poor, poor Emily."

Here is one of her swains:--

"Very soft and white his cheeks; His hair is red, and grey his breeks; His tooth is like the daisy fair: His only fault is in his hair."

This is a higher flight:--

"DEDICATED TO MRS. H. CRAWFORD BY THE AUTHOR, M.F.

"Three turkeys fair their last have breathed, And now this world forever leaved; Their father, and their mother too, They sigh and weep as well as you: Indeed, the rats their bones have crunched; Into eternity theire laanched.

A direful death indeed they had, As wad put any parent mad; But she was more than usual calm: She did not give a single dam."

This last word is saved from all sin by its tender age, not to speak of the want of the _n_. We fear "she" is the abandoned mother, in spite of her previous sighs and tears.

"Isabella says when we pray we should pray fervently, and not rattel over a prayer,--for that we are kneeling at the footstool of our Lord and Creator, who saves us from eternal d.a.m.nation, and from unquestionable fire and brimston."

She has a long poem on Mary Queen of Scots:--

"Queen Mary was much loved by all, Both by the great and by the small; But hark! her soul to heaven doth rise, And I suppose she has gained a prize; For I do think she would not go Into the _awful_ place below.

There is a thing that I must tell,-- Elizabeth went to fire and h.e.l.l!

He who would teach her to be civil, It must be her great friend, the divil!"

She hits off Darnley well:--

"A n.o.ble's son,--a handsome lad,-- By some queer way or other, had Got quite the better of her heart; With him she always talked apart: Silly he was, but very fair; A greater buck was not found there."

"By some queer way or other"; is not this the general case and the mystery, young ladies and gentlemen? Goethe's doctrine of "elective affinities" discovered by our Pet Maidie.

SONNET TO A MONKEY.

"O lively, O most charming pug!

Thy graceful air and heavenly mug!

The beauties of his mind do s.h.i.+ne, And every bit is shaped and fine.

Your teeth are whiter than the snow; Your a great buck, your a great beau; Your eyes are of so nice a shape, More like a Christian's than an ape; Your cheek is like the rose's blume; Your hair is like the raven's plume; His nose's cast is of the Roman: He is a very pretty woman.

I could not get a rhyme for Roman, So was obliged to call him woman."

This last joke is good. She repeats it when writing of James the Second being killed at Roxburgh:--

"He was killed by a cannon splinter, Quite in the middle of the winter; Perhaps it was not at that time, But I can get no other rhyme!"

Here is one of her last letters, dated Kirkcaldy, 12th October, 1811.

You can see how her nature is deepening and enriching:--

"MY DEAR MOTHER,--You will think that I entirely forget you but I a.s.sure you that you are greatly mistaken. I think of you always and often sigh to think of the distance between us two loving creatures of nature. We have regular hours for all our occupations first at 7 o'clock we go to the dancing and come home at 8 we then read our Bible and get our repeating, and then play till ten, then we get our music till 11 when we get our writing and accounts we sew from 12 till 1 after which I get my gramer, and then work till five. At 7 we come and knit till 8 when we dont go to the dancing. This is an exact description. I must take a hasty farewell to her whom I love, reverence and doat on and who I hope thinks the same of

"MARJORY FLEMING.

"P.S.--An old pack of cards (!) would be very exeptible."

This other is a month earlier:--

"MY DEAR LITTLE MAMA,--I was truly happy to hear that you were all well.

We are surrounded with measles at present on every side, for the Herons got it, and Isabella Heron was near Death's Door, and one night her father lifted her out of bed, and she fell down as they thought lifeless.

Mr. Heron said, 'That la.s.sie's deed noo,'--'I'm no deed yet.' She then threw up a big worm nine inches and a half long. I have begun dancing, but am not very fond of it, for the boys strikes and mocks me.--I have been another night at the dancing; I like it better. I will write to you as often as I can; but I am afraid not every week. _I long for you with the longings of a child to embrace you,--to fold you in my arms. I respect you with all the respect due to a mother. You dont know how I love you. So I shall remain, your loving child,_--M. FLEMING."

What rich involution of love in the words marked!

Here are some lines to her beloved Isabella, in July, 1811:--

"There is a thing that I do want,-- With you these beauteous walks to haunt; We would be happy if you would Try to come over if you could.

Then I would all quite happy be _Now and for all eternity_.

My mother is so very sweet, _And checks my appet.i.te to eat_; My father shows us what to do; But O I'm sure that I want you.

I have no more of poetry; O Isa do remember me, And try to love your Marjory."

In a letter from "Isa" to

"Miss m.u.f.f Maidie Marjory Fleming, favored by Rare Rear-Admiral Fleming,"

she says: "I long much to see you, and talk over all our old stories together, and to hear you read and repeat. I am pining for my old friend Cesario, and poor Lear, and wicked Richard. How is the dear Multiplication table going on? Are you still as much attached to 9 times 9 as you used to be?"

But this dainty, bright thing is about to flee,--to come "quick to confusion." The measles she writes of seized her, and she died on the 19th of December, 1811. The day before her death, Sunday, she sat up in bed, worn and thin, her eye gleaming as with the light of a coming world, and with a tremulous, old voice repeated the following lines by Burns,--heavy with the shadow of death, and lit with the fantasy of the judgment-seat,--the publican's prayer in paraphrase:--

"Why am I loth to leave this earthly scene?

Have I so found it full of pleasing charms?-- Some drops of joy, with draughts of ill between, Some gleams of suns.h.i.+ne 'mid renewing storms?

Is it departing pangs my soul alarms?