MARJORIE FLEMING, THE WONDERCHILD
Marjorie has been in her tiny grave a hundred years; and still the tears fall for her, and will fall. What an intensely human little creature she was! How vividly she lived her small life; how impulsive she was; how sudden, how tempestuous, how tender, how loving, how sweet, how loyal, how rebellious, how repentant, how wise, how unwise, how bursting with fun, how frank, how free, how honest, how innocently bad, how natively good, how charged with quaint philosophies, how winning, how precious, how adorable--and how perennially and indestructibly interesting! And all this exhibited, proved, and recorded before she reached the end of her ninth year and “fell on sleep.”
Geographically considered, the lassie was a Scot; but in fact she had no frontiers, she was the world’s child, she was the human race in little. It is one of the prides of my life that the first time I ever heard her name it came from the lips of Dr. John Brown--his very own self--Dr. John Brown of Edinburgh--Dr. John Brown ofRab and His Friends--Dr. John Brown of the beautiful face and the sweet spirit, whose friends loved him with a love that was worship--Dr. John Brown, who was Marjorie’s biographer, and who had clasped an aged hand that hadcaressed Marjorie’s fifty years before, thus linking me with that precious child by an unbroken chain of handshakes, for I had shaken hands with Dr. John. This was in Edinburgh thirty-six years ago. He gave my wife his little biography of Marjorie, and I have it yet.
Is Marjorie known in America? No--at least to only a few. When Mr. L. MacBean’s new and enlarged and charming biography[17]of her was published five years ago it was sent over here in sheets, the market not being large enough to justify recomposing and reprinting it on our side of the water. I find that there are even cultivated Scotchmen among us who have not heard of Marjorie Fleming.
She was born in Kirkcaldy in 1803, and she died when she was eight years and eleven months old. By the time she was five years old she was become a devourer of various kinds of literature--both heavy and light--and was also become a quaint and free-spoken and charming little thinker and philosopher whose views were a delightful jumble of first-hand cloth of gold and second-hand rags.
When she was six she opened up that rich mine, her journals, and continued to work it by spells during the remainder of her brief life. She was a pet of Walter Scott, from the cradle, and when he could have her society for a few hours he was content, and required no other. Her little head was full of noble passages from Shakespeare and other favoritesof hers, and the fact that she could deliver them with moving effect is proof that her elocution was a born gift with her, and not a mechanical reproduction of somebody else’s art, for a child’s parrot-work does not move. When she was a little creature of seven years, Sir Walter Scott “would read ballads to her in his own glorious way, the two getting wild with excitement over them; and he would take her on his knee and make her repeat Constance’s speeches inKing Johntill he swayed to and fro, sobbing his fill.” [Dr. John Brown.]
“Sobbing his fill”--that great man--over that little thing’s inspired interpretations. It is a striking picture; there is no mate to it. Sir Walter said of her:
“She’s the most extraordinary creature I ever met with, and her repeating of Shakespeare overpowers me as nothing else does.”
She spent the whole of her little life in a Presbyterian heaven; yet she was not affected by it; she could not have been happier if she had been in the other heaven.
She was made out of thunderstorms and sunshine, and not even her little perfunctory pieties and shop-made holiness could squelch her spirits or put out her fires for long. Under pressure of a pestering sense of duty she heaves a shovelful of trade godliness into her journals every little while, but it does not offend, for none of it is her own; it is all borrowed, it is a convention, a custom of her environment, it is the most innocent of hypocrisies, and this tainted butter of hers soon gets to be as delicious to the reader as are the stunning and worldly sinceritiesshe splatters around it every time her pen takes a fresh breath. The adorable child! she hasn’t a discoverable blemish in her make-up anywhere.
Marjorie’s first letter was written before she was six years old; it was to her cousin, Isa Keith, a young lady of whom she was passionately fond. It was done in a sprawling hand, ten words to the page--and in those foolscap days a page was a spacious thing:
“My Dear Isa--
“I now sit down on my botom to answer all the kind & beloved letters which you was so so good as to write to me. This is the first time I ever wrote a letter in my life.
“Miss Potune, a lady of my acquaintance, praises me dreadfully. I repeated something out of Deen Swift & she said I was fit for the stage, & you may think I was primmed up with majestick Pride, but upon my word I felt myself turn a little birsay--birsay is a word which is a word that William composed which is as you may suppose a little enraged. This horid fat Simpliton says that my Aunt is beautifull which is intirely impossible for that is not her nature.”
Frank? Yes, Marjorie was that. And during the brief moment that she enchanted this dull earth with her presence she was the bewitchingest speller and punctuator in all Christendom.
The average child of six “prints” its correspondence in rickety and reeling Roman capitals, or dictates to mamma, who puts the little chap’s messageon paper. The sentences are labored, repetitious, and slow; there are but three or four of them; they deal in information solely, they contain no ideas, they venture no judgments, no opinions; they inform papa that the cat has had kittens again; that Mary has a new doll that can wink; that Tommy has lost his top; and will papa come soon and bring the writer something nice? But with Marjorie it is different.
She needs no amanuensis, she puts her message on paper herself; and not in weak and tottering Roman capitals, but in a thundering hand that can be heard a mile and be read across the square without glasses. And she doesn’t have to study, and puzzle, and search her head for something to say; no, she had only to connect the pen with the paper and turn on the current; the words spring forth at once, and go chasing after each other like leaves dancing down a stream. For she has a faculty, has Marjorie! Indeed yes; when she sits down on her bottom to do a letter, there isn’t going to be any lack of materials, nor of fluency, and neither is her letter going to be wanting in pepper, or vinegar, or vitriol, or any of the other condiments employed by genius to save a literary work of art from flatness and vapidity. And as for judgments and opinions, they are as commodiously in her line as they are in the Lord Chief Justice’s. They have weight, too, and are convincing: for instance, for thirty-six years they have damaged that “horid Simpliton” in my eyes; and, more than that, they have even imposed upon me--and most unfairly and unwarrantably--an aversionto the horid fat Simpliton’s name; a perfectly innocent name, and yet, because of the prejudice against it with which this child has poisoned my mind for a generation I cannot see “Potune” on paper and keep my gorge from rising.
In her journals Marjorie changes her subject whenever she wants to--and that is pretty often. When the deep moralities pay her a passing visit she registers them. Meantime if a cherished love passage drifts across her memory she shoves it into the midst of the moralities--it is nothing to her that it may not feel at home there:
“We should not be happy at the death of our fellow creatures, for they love life like us love your neighbor & he will love you Bountifulness and Mercifulness are always rewarded. In my travels I met with a handsome lad named Charles Balfour Esge [Esqr.] and from him I got offers of marage--ofers of marage did I say? nay plainly [he] loved me. Goodness does not belong to the wicked but badness dishonor befals wickedness but not virtue, no disgrace befals virtue perciverence overcomes almost al difficulties no I am rong in saying almost I should say always as it is so perciverence is a virtue my Csosin says pacience is a cristain virtue, which is true.”
She is not copying these profundities out of a book, she is getting them out of her memory; her spelling shows that the book is not before her. The easy and effortless flow of her talk is a marvelous thing in a baby of her age. Her interests are as wide and varied as a grown person’s: she discusses all sorts of books, and fearlessly delivers judgment upon them;she examines whomsoever crosses the field of her vision, and again delivers a verdict; she dips into religion and history, and even into politics; she takes a shy at the news of the day, and comments upon it; and now and then she drops into poetry--into rhyme, at any rate.
Marjorie would not intentionally mislead anyone, but she has just been making a remark which moves me to hoist a danger-signal for the protection of the modern reader. It is this one: “In my travels.” Naturally we are apt to clothe a word with its present-day meaning--the meaning we are used to, the meaning we are familiar with; and so--well, you get the idea: some words that are giants to-day were very small dwarfs a century ago, and if we are not careful to take that vast enlargement into account when we run across them in the literatures of the past, they are apt to convey to us a distinctly wrong impression. To-day, when a person says “in my travels” he means that he has been around the globe nineteen or twenty times, and we so understand him; and so, when Marjorie says it, it startles us for a moment, for it gives us the impression thatshehas been around it fourteen or fifteen times; whereas, such is not at all the case. She has traveled prodigiously forherday, but not for ours. She had “traveled,” altogether, three miles by land and eight by water--per ferryboat. She is fairly and justly proud of it, for it is the exact equivalent, in grandeur and impressiveness, in the case of a child of our day, to two trips across the Atlantic and a thousand miles by rail.
“In the love novels all the heroins are very desperate Isabella will not allow me to speak about lovers and heroins, and tiss too refined for my taste a loadstone is a curous thing indeed it is true Heroic love doth never win disgrace this is my maxum and I will follow it forever Miss Eguards [Edgeworth] tails are very good particularly some that are very much adopted for youth as Lazy Lawrence Tarelton False Key &c &c Persons of the parlement house are as I think caled Advocakes Mr Cay & Mr Crakey has that honour. This has been a very mild winter. Mr Banestors Budget is to-night I hope it will be a good one. A great many authors have expressed themselfs too sentimentaly.... The Mercandile Afares are in a perilous situation sickness & a delicante frame I have not & I do not know what it is, but Ah me perhaps I shall have it.[18]Grandure reigns in Edinburgh.... Tomson is a beautifull author and Pope but nothing is like Shakepear of which I have a little knolegde of. An unfortunate death James the 5 had for he died of greif Macbeth is a pretty composition but awful one Macbeth is so bad & wicked, but Lady Macbeth is so hardened in guilt she does not mind her sins & faults No.
“... A sailor called here to say farewell, it must be dreadful to leave his native country where he might get a wife or perhaps me, for I love him very much & with all my heart, but O I forgot Isabella forbid me to speak about love.... I wish everybody would follow her example & be as good aspious & virtious as she is & they would get husbands soon enough, love is a parithatick [pathetic] thing as well as troublesome & tiresome but O Isabella forbid me to speak about it.”
But the little rascal can’tkeepfrom speaking about it, because it is her supreme interest in life; her heart is not capacious enough to hold all the product that is engendered by the ever-recurring inflaming spectacle of man-creatures going by, and the surplus is obliged to spill over; Isa’s prohibitions are no sufficient dam for such a discharge.
“Love I think is the fasion for everybody is marring [marrying].... Yesterday a marrade man named Mr John Balfour Esg [Esq.] offered to kiss me, & offered to marry me though the man was espused [espoused], & his wife was present & said he must ask her permission but he did not, I think he was ashamed or confounded before 3 gentleman Mr Jobson and two Mr Kings.”
I must make room here for another of Marjorie’s second-hand high-morality outbreaks. They give me a sinful delight which I ought to grieve at, I suppose, but I can’t seem to manage it:
“James Macary is to be transported for murder in the flower of his youth O passion is a terible thing for it leads people from sin to sin at last it gets so far as to come to greater crimes than we thought we could comit and it must be dreadful to leave his native country and his friends and to be so disgraced and affronted.”
That is Marjorie talking shop, dear little diplomat--to please and comfort mamma and Isa, no doubt.
This wee little child has a marvelous range of interests. She reads philosophies, novels, baby books, histories, the mighty poets--reads them with burning interest, and frankly and freely criticizes them all; she revels in storms, sunsets, cloud effects, scenery of mountain, plain, ocean, and forest, and all the other wonders of nature, and sets down her joy in them all; she loves people, she detests people, according to mood and circumstances, and delivers her opinion of them, sometimes seasoned with attar of roses, sometimes with vitriol; in games, and all kinds of childish play she is an enthusiast; she adores animals, adores them all; none is too forlorn to fail of favor in her friendly eyes, no creature so humble that she cannot find something in it on which to lavish her caressing worship.
“I am going to-morrow to a delightfull place, Braehead by name, belonging to Mrs. Crraford [Crauford], where there is ducks cocks hens bobblyjocks 2 dogs 2 cats and swine which is delightful. I think it is shocking to think that the dog and cat should bear them and they are drowned after all.”
She is a dear child, a bewitching little scamp; and never dearer, I think, than when the devil has had her in possession and she is breaking her stormy little heart over the remembrance of it:
“I confess I have been very more like a little young divil than a creature for when Isabella went up stairs to teach me religion and my multiplication and to be good and all my other lessons I stamped with my foot and threw my new hat which she had made on the ground and was sulky and was dreadfullypassionate, but she never whiped me but said Marjory go into another room and think what a great crime you are committing letting your temper git the better of you. But I went so sulkily that the devil got the better of me but she never never never whips me so that I think I would be the better of it & the next time that I behave ill I think she should do it for she never does it.... Isabella has given me praise for checking my temper for I was sulky even when she was kneeling an whole hour teaching me to write.”
The wise Isabella, the sweet and patient Isabella! It is just a hundred years now (May, 1909) since the grateful child made that golden picture of you and laid your good heart bare for distant generations to see and bless; a hundred years--but if the picture endures a thousand it will still bring you the blessing, and with it the reverent homage that is your due. You had the seeing eye and the wise head. A fool would have punished Marjorie and wrecked her, but you held your hand, as knowing that when her volcanic fires went down she would repent, and grieve, and punish herself, and be saved.
Sometimes when Marjorie was miraculously good, she got a penny for it, and once when she got an entire sixpence, she recognized that it was wealth. This wealth brought joy to her heart. Why? Because she could spend it on somebody else! We who know Marjorie would know that without being told it. I am sorry--often sorry, often grieved--that I was not there and looking over her shoulder when she was writing down her valued pennyrewards: I would have said, “Save that scrap of manuscript, dear; make a will, and leave it to your posterity, to save them from want when penury shall threaten them; a day will come when it will be worth a thousand guineas, and a later day will come when it will be worth five thousand; here you are, rejoicing in copper farthings, and don’t know that your magic pen is showering gold coin all over the paper.” But I was not there to say it; those who were there did not think to say it; and so there is not a line of that quaint precious cacography in existence to-day.
I have adored Marjorie for six-and-thirty years; I have adored her in detail, I have adored the whole of her; but above all other details--just a little above all other details--I have adored her because she detested that odious and confusing and unvanquishable and unlearnable and shameless invention, the multiplication table:
“I am now going to tell you the horible and wretched plaege [plague] that my multiplication gives me you can’t conceive it the most Devilish thing is 8 times 8 & 7 times 7 it is what nature itself cant endure.”
I stand reverently uncovered in the presence of that holy verdict.
Here is that person again whom I so dislike--and for no reason at all except that my Marjorie doesn’t like her:
“Miss Potune is very fat she pretends to be very learned she says she saw a stone that dropt from the skies, but she is a good christian.”
Of course, stones have fallen from the skies, but I don’t believe this “horid fat Simpliton” had ever seen one that had done it; but even if she had, it was none of her business, and she could have been better employed than in going around exaggerating it and carrying on about it and trying to make trouble with a little child that had never doneherany harm.
“... The Birds do chirp the Lambs do leap and Nature is clothed with the garments of green yellow, and white, purple, and red.
“... There is a book that is called the Newgate Calender that contains all the Murders: all the Murders did I say, nay all Thefts & Forgeries that ever were committed & fills me with horror & consternation.”
Marjorie is a diligent little student, and her education is always storming along and making great time and lots of noise:
“Isabella this morning taught me some French words one of which is bon suar the interpretation is good morning.”
It slanders Isabella, but the slander is not intentional. The main thing to notice is that big word, “interpretation.” Not many children of Marjorie’s age can handle a five syllable team in that easy and confident way. It is observable that she frequently employs words of an imposingly formidable size, and is manifestly quite familiar with them and not at all afraid of them.
“Isa is teaching me to make Simecolings nots of interrigations periods & commas &c. As this is SundayI will meditate uppon senciable & Religious subjects first I should be very thankful I am not a beggar as many are.”
That was the “first.” She didn’t get to her second subject, but got side-tracked by a saner interest, and used her time to better purpose.
“It is melancholy to think, that I have so many talents, & many there are that have not had the attention paid to them that I have, & yet they contrive to be better then me.
“... Isabella is far too indulgent to me & even the Miss Crafords say that they wonder at her patience with me & it is indeed true for my temper is a bad one.”
The daring child wrote a (synopsized) history of Mary Queen of Scots and of five of the royal Jameses in rhyme--but never mind, we have no room to discuss it here. Nothing was entirely beyond her literary jurisdiction; if it had occurred to her that the laws of Rome needed codifying she would have taken a chance at it.
Here is a sad note:
“My religion is greatly falling off because I dont pray with so much attention when I am saying my prayers and my character is lost a-mong the Breahead people I hope I will be religious again but as for regaining my character I despare of it.”
When religion and character go, they leave a large vacuum. But there are ways to fill it:
“I’ve forgot to say, but I’ve four lovers, the other one is Harry Watson, a very delightful boy.... James Keith hardly ever Spoke to me, he said Girl!make less noise.... Craky hall ... I walked to that delightfull place with a delightful young man beloved by all his friends and espacialy by me his loveress but I must not talk any longer about him for Isa said it is not proper for to speak of gentalman but I will never forget him....
“The Scythians tribe live very coarsely for a Gluton Introduced to Arsaces the Captain of the Army, 1 man who Dressed hair & another man who was a good cook but Arsaces said that he would keep 1 for brushing his horses tail and the other to fead his pigs....
“On Saturday I expected no less than three well-made bucks, the names of whom is here advertised. Mr. Geo. Crakey [Cragie], and Wm. Keith and Jn Keith--the first is the funniest of every one of them. Mr. Crakey and I walked to Craky-hall [Craigiehall] hand and hand in Innocence and matitation sweet thinking on the kind love which flows in our tender hearted mind which is overflowing with majestic pleasure no one was ever so polite to me in the hole state of my existence. Mr. Craky you must know is a great Buck and pretty good-looking.”
For a purpose, I wish the reader to take careful note of these statistics:
“I am going to tell you of a melancholy story. A young turkie of 2 or 3 months old, would you believe it, the father broke its leg, & he killed another! I think he ought to be transported or hanged.”
Marjorie wrote some verses about this tragedy--Ithink. I cannot be quite certain it is this one, for in the verses there are three deaths, whereas these statistics do not furnish so many. Also in the statistics the father of the deceased is indifferent about the loss he has sustained, whereas in the verses he is not. Also in the third verse, themother, too, exhibits feeling, whereas in the two closing verses of the poem she--at least it seems to be she--is indifferent. At least it looks like indifference to me, and I believe itisindifference:
“Three turkeys fair their last have breathed,And now this world forever leaved;Their father, and their mother too,They sighed and weep as well as you;Indeed, the rats their bones have cranched.Into eternity theire launched.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.”
“Three turkeys fair their last have breathed,And now this world forever leaved;Their father, and their mother too,They sighed and weep as well as you;Indeed, the rats their bones have cranched.Into eternity theire launched.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.”
“Three turkeys fair their last have breathed,And now this world forever leaved;Their father, and their mother too,They sighed and weep as well as you;Indeed, the rats their bones have cranched.Into eternity theire launched.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.”
“Three turkeys fair their last have breathed,
And now this world forever leaved;
Their father, and their mother too,
They sighed and weep as well as you;
Indeed, the rats their bones have cranched.
Into eternity theire launched.
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.”
The naughty little scamp! I mean, for not leaving out thelin the word “Calm,” so as to perfect the rhyme. It seems a pity to damage with a lame rhyme a couplet that is otherwise without a blemish.
Marjorie wrote four journals. She began the first one in January, 1809, when she was just six years old, and finished it five months later, in June.
She began the second in the following month, and finished it six months afterward (January, 1810), when she was just seven.
She began the third one in April, 1810, and finished it in the autumn.
She wrote the fourth in the winter of 1810-11, and the last entry in it bears date July 19, 1811, and she died exactly five months later, December 19th, aged eight years and eleven months. It contains her rhymed Scottish histories.
Let me quote from Dr. John Brown:
“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 a long poem by Burns--heavy with the shadow of death, and lit with the fantasy of the judgment seat--the publican’s prayer in paraphrase, beginning:
“‘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 sunshine ’mid renewing storms.’
“‘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 sunshine ’mid renewing storms.’
“‘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 sunshine ’mid renewing storms.’
“‘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 sunshine ’mid renewing storms.’
“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.”
Fifty years after Marjorie’s death her sister, writing to Dr. Brown, said:
“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. Johnstonerewarded 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: ‘Oh, 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: ‘Oh yes, if you would just leave the room door open a wee bit, and play theLand o’ the Leal, and I will lie andthinkand 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 afterward 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 for 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 of 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 my loved cousin on the author’s recovery.’”
The cousin was Isa Keith.
“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.”
17.Marjorie Fleming.By L. MacBean. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, publishers, London and New York.Permission to use the extracts quoted from Marjorie’s Journal in this article has been granted me by the publishers.
17.Marjorie Fleming.By L. MacBean. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, publishers, London and New York.
Permission to use the extracts quoted from Marjorie’s Journal in this article has been granted me by the publishers.
18. It is a whole century since the dimly conscious little prophet said it, but the pathos of it is still there.
18. It is a whole century since the dimly conscious little prophet said it, but the pathos of it is still there.