Part 3

which he sent, screwed up in a flute to Susanna Kennedy, afterwards the celebrated Countess of Eglintoune, to whom Allan Ramsay dedicated his “Gentle Shepherd,” and of whom Clerk was a lover in his youth, at the time when, as he tells us, he suffered from his father’s “attempts” to find him a wife, and especially to wed him to a lady—whose name he honourably suppresses—“not to my taste, and indeed it was happy for me to have stopt short in this amour, for she proved the most disagreeable woman I ever knew, tho’ otherways a wise enough country woman.” There also exist in MS. “Some Poetical Ejeculations on the Death of my dear wife, Lady Margaret Stuart,” that “choice of my own,” who became his first wife, “a very handsome woman, for the most part bred up in Galloway, a stranger to the follies of Edinburgh,” “the best Woman that ever breathed Life.”

The earliest of the portraits of the Baron preserved at Penicuik House hangs in the dressing-room of the present Baronet. It is a small, carefully finished pencil-drawing; an interesting memorial of Sir John’s student days at Leyden. The figure is portrayed to the waist, clad in a loose gown, and with a voluminous cravat wrapped round the neck. The hands are not shown. The hair is long and curling. The face full, beardless, and youthful, set in three-quarters to the right, is modelled with excellent thoroughness, and very crisp and incisive in the touches that express the lips and the dimple at the corner of the mouth. The background is dark to the left, and to the right appears a wall decorated with pilasters. The drawing is inscribed on the background “Ætatis 19,” and beneath “My picture done at Leyden, Jo. Clerk”; while on the back is written “My picture done at Leyden by Francis Miris,” the two latter inscriptions being in the handwriting of the Baron himself.

A comparison of the dates leads to some dubiety as to who was the actual draughtsman of this portrait. There were three well-known Dutch painters of the name of Mieris—Frans Van Mieris, the pupil of Gerard Dow, born at Delft in 1635, died at Leyden 1681; Willem Van Mieris, his son, born at Leyden 1662, and died there, 1747; and his son, Frans Van Mieris, the younger, born at Leyden 1689, died there in 1763. The year in which the drawing was executed must have been 1695, consequently it cannot be the work of the elder Frans; nor can it have been done by his grandson, the younger Frans, who was then only six years of age. A solution of the difficulty seems to be afforded by a comparison of the “Travels” and the “History” of the Baron. In the former, a journal written at the time, he states that he was instructed in art at Leyden, by “Miris,” but in the latter, compiled from the former many years afterwards, he states that “Francis Miers, a very great painter,” was his teacher, the Christian name being apparently added from memory, which, in the present case, seems to have played him false. There can be little doubt that the portrait was drawn by Willem Van Mieris, who at the time of Clerk’s residence at Leyden was forty-one years of age, and in full practice as an artist. As corroborating this supposition, we may notice that in the account of the Clerks of Penicuik contributed by Miss Isabella Clerk to the “Life of Professor James Clerk Maxwell,” and “chiefly derived from a book of autograph letters which was long kept at Glenlair, and is now in the possession of Mrs. Maxwell,” it is stated that the Baron was a pupil of _William_ Mieris in drawing; and further, that a drawing of two men’s heads similar in style to the present portrait, preserved in the Penicuik Drawing-room, is inscribed in the Baron’s hand, “Originall by William Van Miris, 1696,” indicating that about the date he must have been in communication with this artist.

Three oil portraits, showing the Baron in later life, hang in the Dining-room. In the first, by Sir John Medina, he appears still as a young man, seen to the waist, clad in a bright blue coat and a crimson cloak—a combination of primary colours in which the painter frequently indulged. His right hand is laid on a book, which rests on an unseen table in front to the right. He wears a long yellowish wig, with powdered curls, and the blue eyes and the alert mouth are full of activity and energy. Probably this portrait was executed at the time of his marriage, in 1700, for there is a companion picture of his first wife, Margaret Stewart, daughter of the third Earl of Galloway, and grand-daughter of James, Earl of Queensberry, painted by Aikman. As was to be expected in so early a work of the artist’s—he must have been under twenty when he painted it, for the lady died in 1701—this latter is full of faults, stiff in pose, with little suggestion of the figure under the draperies of white and blue: still it conveys the idea of a charming and attractive personality, fitting as that of the lady for whom the Baron—as shown in the “History of his Life,”—mourned so truly.

There is a second bust-portrait of the Baron by Sir John Medina, a low-toned picture, executed with care if with considerable hardness. Here the costume is a lilac gown, with a long curled wig, and a white cravat; the body seen turned to the right, and the face in three-quarters to the left.

The finest, however, of the portraits of the second Baronet, is the three-quarters length by his cousin, William Aikman. Here he appears robed in his black gown as Baron of the Exchequer, worn over a yellow-brown coat. Long white hanging bands appear at the breast, and lace ruffles at the wrists; and the grave face, with its strongly marked features, is surmounted by a long curled wig. His left hand hangs down in front fingering among the folds of his gown, and the right rests upon a red-covered table. The whole is relieved against a plain brown background, with a low-toned space of crimson curtain to the left. It is an excellent example by the painter, well arranged, dignified, firmly handled, and manifestly faithful to the personality portrayed. A bust-portrait similar in costume and wig to this one, but with some difference in the features, was engraved, in line, by D. Lizars, “from a portrait in the possession of John Clerk of Eldin, Esq.”

Of Sir James, the third Baronet, the architect of the present house of Penicuik, we, unfortunately find no adequate portrait. The only effigy of him that is here preserved is a small silhouette in white paper, relieved against a black background, marked as cut two years after his death by Barbara Clerk, his fifth sister, and as being considered very like by those who knew him. It shows a small face, looking a little downwards, with a high forehead, beneath the wig, impending over the delicate features. (_See_ Note at page 69.)

In the Dining-room there hangs another picture by Aikman, marked in the Baron’s writing, “My eldest son, John Clerk, by Lady Margaret Stuart, born 1701, died 1722, painted by Mr. Aikman.” The figure is seen nearly to the waist; the costume, a long curled grey wig, and a lilac-grey gown, lined with blue. The small eyes are of a blue colour; the face pale, refined, and delicate-looking. This was “the most accomplish’d Son,” of “bright aspiring mind,” whose birth cost the life of the Baron’s first wife, and whose own death, some twenty-one years later, was mourned by Ramsay in the verses addressed to the bereaved father, which may be read in his works. On another wall hang three pictures, portraying, in pairs, the Baron’s six daughters by his second wife.

Near the portrait of his son is a half-length by Aikman, rather hard in execution, showing a gentleman, with face turned to the left, in a purple-grey coat, the end of his white cravat being thrust through one of its button-holes. This is Dr. John Clerk, grandson of the first Baronet of Penicuik, whose father, Robert Clerk, was a physician in Edinburgh, and a close friend of Dr. Pitcairn. The son, born 1689, died 1757, was a personage of greater mark. For above thirty years he was the most eminent physician in Scotland; on the institution of the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh in 1739, he was elected a Vice-President, an office which he held till his death; and from 1740 to 1744, he was President of the Royal College of Physicians, in whose Hall in Edinburgh another smaller portrait of him is preserved. He purchased the lands of Listonshiels and Spittal in Mid-Lothian, and founded the family of the Clerks of Listonshiels. His name appears in the list of subscribers to the collection of Ramsay’s poems, published in 1721, and he is believed to have contributed songs to the “Tea-table Miscellany.” The portrait of his second son, Colonel Robert Clerk, in a red military uniform, is also preserved in the Penicuik Dining-room.

Two other works by Aikman may here be mentioned, two drawings in red chalk upon blue paper, which hang in a passage near the Library door. They evince more of an ideal aim than any other of the productions of this painter with which we are acquainted. Evidently they are companion works, and the female portrait is dated 1730, the year before the artist’s death. This shows a girl’s head in profile to the left, a young attractive little face, with the faintest half-smile playing round the tiny mouth, and the short hair decorated with a chaplet of leaves, or of leaf-like ribbons. It is a portrait of Jean Clerk, the Baron’s third daughter, who married James Smollet of Bonhill, one of the Commissaries of Edinburgh.

The other drawing shows a male face in three-quarters to the right, with flowing hair over the shoulders, and a heroic expression on the high-arched brows, the raised eyes, and the rippling lips; the dress thrown carelessly open at the throat. This is Patrick Clerk, the Baron’s third son. His life-record is a brief one, as given in the Baronage along with that of three of his brothers: “Patrick, Henry, Matthew, and Adam, died abroad, in the service of their country.” We learn from the Baron’s MS. that he died at Carthagena in 1744.

VII.

We now come to consider the prime artistic treasure in Penicuik House, the largest and finest of the three Raeburns that hang in the dining-room, that admirable group of Sir John Clerk, the fifth Baronet, and his wife Rosemary (so she signed her name) Dacre. It is an oblong picture, showing the two life-sized figures almost to the knees, and turned towards our right. Nearly one-half of the picture, that to the left, is occupied with a landscape of undulating country, diversified by darker passages afforded by tree-masses, with flashes of light playing over the grass in points where it is quickened by the radiance of the setting sun, and with still sharper flashings which mark the course of the “classic Esk.” To our extreme right an elm-tree raises its great forked stem, and throws out a slenderer branch, bearing embrowned leafage. This is carried over the upper edge of the picture, across nearly its whole extent, repeating, by its mass of dark against the sky, the arm of the male figure standing beneath, which is extended, dark against the distant expanse of dimly-lighted landscape background. The sky, against which the heads of the figures are set, is filled with the soft mellow light of a sunset after rain, struggling with films of fluctuating misty clouds,—a sky in the treatment of which Raeburn has used a portrait-painter’s licence, making it lower in tone than would have been the case in such a natural effect. The figure furthest to our right is that of the lady, clad in white muslin, a dress utterly without ornament, but “adorned the most” in the absolute simplicity of its soft overlapping folds, delicate and full of subtlest gradation as a pile of faintly yellow rose-leaves. The waist is girt with a ribbon of a more definite yellow, though this too is subdued, taking grey tones in shadow. The light comes from behind the figures, and the edges of the dress, catching its brightness, are the highest tones of the picture. The lady’s face is one of mature comeliness and dignity, the hair brown and slightly powdered, the light touching and outlining sharply the rounded contours of cheek and chin, and the edge of the throat, which rises from the masses of pure soft muslin—itself still purer and more delicate in tone and texture. Her left hand hangs down by her side, fingering a little among the folds of the dress and compressing its filmy fabric; and her right hand rests on her companion’s left shoulder, its hand, an admirable piece of draughtsmanship and foreshortening, hanging over, loose from the wrist, which is circled by a sharply struck band of black ribbon. The Baronet stands by her side, with his left arm—on whose shoulder the lady’s hand rests—circling her waist, and his right relieved against the background as it stretches across the canvas, pointing, over the river, to the mansion of Penicuik,—which is manifestly visible to the pair in the distance, though unseen to the spectator of the picture. He wears a soft felt hat, broad-brimmed, low-crowned, and Quaker-like in fashion, with an oval metal clasp set in front in its band. His coat is low-toned greyish yellow in its lights, and low-toned olive green in shadow, the vest and breeches showing a lighter tone of the same; and a white cravat and ruffles appear at throat and wrists. His face is a well-conditioned face of middle life, small-mouthed, with cheeks plumply rounded, and a nose delicately aquiline. He stands, quietly expectant, looking into the lady’s face, which is gazing right onward into the background.

There is in this group none of the strong, positive, insufficiently gradated colour, which is sometimes rather distressing in Raeburn’s work. It is far quieter and more delicate than is altogether usual in his art, full of tenderness and subtlety; the faces exquisitely lit by reflected light, their half-shadows softly luminous and delicate exceedingly, never sinking with a crash into blackness and opacity. The artist has seldom produced a finer or more artistic group, has seldom given us a more fascinating portrayal of well-born manhood and of female loveliness.

It is not at all in originality of general conception that the greatness of Raeburn’s portraiture usually lies, in the novel groupings of its figures, or in any suggestion of story in their combinations. Some other painters have contrived to throw a hint of narrative into works which, in first and main aim, were mere likenesses; but Raeburn was a portraitist in the strictest and most exclusive sense; and he simply adopted the accepted poses of the figure that were current in the Scottish portraiture of his day, though to these his original genius gave a finer grace, catching from Nature an added ease. But in the grouping of this picture, and in its lighting—so abnormal in arrangement—we certainly have as definite a departure as could well be imagined, from the stock traditions that have guided the art of portraiture from time immemorial; and some other reason than a purely technical one is suggested by the marked originality of the work, in both conception and treatment. Was this strange and most unusual distribution of light in the picture a mere artistic experiment in chiaroscuro? Did the painter devote half of his canvas to an extended landscape vista, merely in honour of the Baronet’s ancestral acres; and was that pose of regardant countenance and interlacing arms selected only because it made for a graceful flow of changeful line? Hardly was all this the case, one fancies.

May it not, then, be conceivable that when the portrait had been commissioned, and while its details and way of treatment were being discussed by the pair—painter and baronet—as they sat together, in quiet after-dinner hour over their wine, in this very room where the completed picture now holds its place,—is it not just conceivable that Sir John, in some such time of genial heart-expansion, as he poised his glass to catch the last warm gleam of summer evening light that streamed across the darkening woods,—that the childless man, beginning now to verge gently towards age, may have been stirred by ancient memories, and have told the artist of some bygone scene to which these ancestral woods were once the witness? Is it a walk of plighted lovers that the painter hints at on his canvas, and has the bride just caught first sight of her future home? Or, can the scene be one tenderer still? The middle-aged lover looks—calmly, earnestly expectant, waiting for an answer that will not come from the lady’s lips, that will certainly not be given by their _words_—at the noble face of the mature and stately beauty by his side, into her dear grey eyes that never meet his, but gaze right on into the distance—into the future is it? Has the painter then meant to show us one of those strenuous, delicately-poised moments that come in mortal lives, when “words are mere mistake,” when

“A lip’s mere tremble, Looks half hesitation, cheeks just change of colour,”

at once crystallise intensest emotion and afford its fullest expression, and sign and seal a human soul with final impress of success or failure? Is—in briefest English—the man waiting for the sign that will make him accepted or rejected lover?

This portrait, the chief treasure of Penicuik House, would surely possess enough of interest from the power of its artistry, and the romantic associations with which our fancy may possibly invest it; but its interest is deepened, and it gathers a yet more intimate charm when we have heard the beautiful old-world story connected with the lady’s birth.

Of this curious episode there are varying versions extant, which are given and fully discussed by Ellen K. Goodwin, in a pamphlet (Kendal, 1886) reprinted from the “Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmoreland Antiquarian and Archæological Society.” There is a puzzling difference between the date of 15th November 1745, given by Lady Clerk as the day of her birth, and that of 3d November which appears in the register of Kirkliston parish as the day of her baptism; but this discrepancy—we may suggest—would be lessened to within a single day, if her Ladyship has calculated according to New Style, introduced in Scotland in 1600, and the register has estimated by Old Style, current in England till 1752; while the presence of the Highlanders at Carlisle at the time would be accounted for if they crossed the border on “the 7th or 8th of November,” New Style.

The following is the interesting version of the story, communicated by Lady Clerk herself to the Editor of “Blackwood’s Magazine”:—

“... The incident occurred November 15th, 1745. My father, Mr. Dacre, then an officer of His Majesty’s Militia, was a prisoner in the Castle of Carlisle, at that time in the hands of Prince Charles. My mother (a daughter of Sir George le Fleming, Bart., Bishop of Carlisle) was living at Rose Castle, six miles from Carlisle, when she was delivered of me. She had given orders that I should immediately be privately baptized by the Bishop’s chaplain (his Lordship not being at home) by name of Rosemary Dacre. At that moment a company of Highlanders approached headed by a Captain Macdonald, who having heard there was much plate and valuables in the Castle came to plunder it. Upon the approach of the Highlanders, an old grey-headed servant ran out and entreated Captain Macdonald not to proceed, as any noise or alarm might cause the death of both lady and child. The Captain enquired where the lady had been confined. ‘Within this house,’ the servant answered. Captain Macdonald stopped. The servant added, ‘They are just going to christen the infant.’ Macdonald, taking off his cockade, said, ‘Let her be christened with this cockade in her cap, it will be her protection now and after if any of our stragglers should come this way: we will wait the ceremony in silence,’ which they accordingly did, and they went into the coachyard, and were regaled with beef, cheese, and ale, then went off without the smallest disturbance. My white cockade was safely preserved and shown me from time to time, always reminding me to respect the Scotch, and Highlanders in particular. I think I have obeyed the injunction by spending my life in Scotland, and also by hoping to die there.

ROSEMARY CLERK.

* * * * *

“_EDINBURGH, April 21, 1817._”

In memory of the event, Lady Clerk always wore the cockade, along with a white rose, upon her birthday. It has been said that she presented it to George IV. on the occasion of his visit to Scotland, and its existence, unfortunately, cannot now be traced: but a still living connection of the family informs us that she had seen the relic in the possession of Lady Clerk, at a more recent date than that of the royal progress.

It will be remembered that Scott, to whom in his youth Sir John and Lady Clerk had been kind, with his keen and appreciative eye for the picturesque, has seized upon this incident and turned it to excellent account in the opening chapter of “The Monastery.”

That white cockade, the symbol of a cause so full of poetry and romance, seems to have brought a benison with it to the babe Rosemary Dacre, to have dowered her with beauty, and gifted her with an unusually magnetic attractiveness. As she grew into fairest womanhood she had many lovers, declared and undeclared, and in the hearts of those who failed to win the lady her memory seems to have lingered tenderly with no touch of bitterness; to have been, to some of them, a kind of lifelong inspiration, evoking gentle wistful feelings, such as Dante Rossetti has so exquisitely recorded in one of the finest of his earlier poems, his “First Love Remembered.”

Some curious records, some strange hints of the potent part which the lady of the white cockade, and the memory of her, played in the lives of certain men whom she never wedded are preserved at Penicuik, casketed in the dainty little Chippendale workbox that once was hers, among other personal relics,—her long black gloves, with a space of black lace inlet from palm to top; her cap edged with delicate lace; a long tress of her dark brown hair, marked “June the 6th, 1794, aged 48”; and her silhouette, cut in black paper, showing a strong dignified profile, beneath a tall hat, wound round with a veil.

Two of the interesting letters preserved in this quaint old workbox are from Lord Chancellor Eldon, who in his youth, as they clearly indicate, had been a lover of Rosemary Dacre; though the impression can hardly have been overwhelmingly deep or very permanent, for he was only twenty-one when he eloped with Bessy Surtees, a step which entailed the loss of his Oxford fellowship, closed his hopes of preferment in the Church, and obliged him with “a most kind Providence for my guide,” as he says, to take to the study of law, one of his earliest legal efforts being the delivery, as Deputy-Vinerian Professor for Sir Robert Chambers, of a lecture on “the statute of young men running away with maidens.” But in his youth the future Lord Chancellor was, as he used to confess, “very susceptible.” “Oh,” he would say, “these were happy days; we were always in love then.”

The first letter of the old man of nearly eighty runs as follows:—

“_14 April 1829._

“DEAR MARY DACRE,—Pardon my use of a name, which belonged to you when I first knew you. I can sincerely assure you that I have often, often thought of the person who bore that name when I knew her, with, may I say, sentiments of most sincere affection? If I had been Lord Stowell, her name now might neither have been Molly Dacre, nor Mary, Lady Clarke.