BY GEORGINA FRASER NEWHALL.
"While thy wings aspire are heart and eye Both with thy nest upon the
dewy ground." —WORDSWORTH.
IT is not true that up to the time J when she
dawns upon the poetic f vision of her lover and becomes the inspiration of
his song that the Scottish woman leads a species of tadpole existence.
Strange though it may appear there is such a thing as the Scottish female
child. True she is unknown to literature; she is never seen on canvas; she
is not met in hotel corridors nor in newspaper scraps, but she exists.
Somewhere among the empurpled and everlasting hills, shy and fleet of foot
as the hare that, bounding, shakes the dew from the heart of the wild
rose; where the mavis springs on startled wing from out the golden gorse;
among the hazels and the tasseled birks; with the limpid glint of the
mountain tarn in her clear eye, with a flush on her cheek caught from the
rose that paints the dingle-side, the hues of the sun-embrowned bracken in
her hair, you find the Scottish woman-child.
It may be she gathers blaeberries among the heather. It may be she tends
the sheep "Upon the cauld hillside." It may be she lies proneand dreaming
upon the slopes by grey Dunnolly, where placid Oban gazes forth upon the
sea. Mayhap she wakes a thousand echoes where Bothwell Ha' inoulders to
dust, and silver Clutha winds. She may be the Janet of the lone shieling
on the misty island or the Jean of the cot, the like of which the Lowland
poet has immortalized, but from some source, whether from that suggestion
of infinitude which comes from the ocean, or the hint of aspiration
whispered by mountain; whether from the free screaming of the eagle or the
blythe trilling of the lark; from sad, ruined palace or smiling cot, she
gathers, gathers, as she grows, and enshrines within herself all those
qualities of dignity and endurance, intellect and perseverance, art and
fancy, courage and reserve which make her more fitted, after her long,
slow period of mental gestation is past, to be the mother of sons, than
any other race of women in the world.
There are, as I have said, no tales of the Scottish woman-child. She has
been ignored even by the men of her own race. Perhaps because she has no
easy prattle. She has none of that piqueing precocity which is, however,
too often the precursor of an ineffective maturity. Yet
her mind teems with sights and sounds, perceptions and reflections for
which speech is inadequate, even sacreligious. Some day, breaking the
floodgates of reserve, they steal upon the world through the silent medium
of the pen. For it is by that cheap implement the Scottish woman most
frequently hews her way up the steep heights of Fame until greatness lies
close to, yea, within her own very volition.
A thousand poets rise to greet her entrance into
womanhood. Beauty or no beauty, and this is always debateable ground, what
woman of any other nationality has been so lauded for personal charm, and
one might add has been so slighted for mental capacity by her fellow
countrymen!
"Not the swan on the lake Not the foam on the shore
Can compare with the charms Of the maid I adore."
These are the Ossianic utterances of the Gaelic poet.
"She's backit like the peacock, She's breistit like
the swan,"
sang Douglas of his fair unresponsive Annie Laurie. And
having drifted first to this question of doubtful Scottish beauty Jet me
repeat what some one less enamoured than Douglas, and therefore more to he
trusted, says of this woman's claims to physical perfection. She was tall,
her historian says, slim and graceful, oval-faced, with delicately cut
features, dark eyes and hair, rosy cheeks and lips, and he concludes
somewhat slightingly, rather winsome than handsome. For my part I. think
the catalogue of her charms compares very favourably with that of even a
Langtry; commit each alike to unflattering paper and which shall we say is
in the ascendant, the Scottish or the English beauty.
But I am not going to occupy space descanting upon the
Bonnie Jeans, bewildering Nannies and piquante Kates of Scottish song in
order to prove that female beauty exists in Scotland. I shall not even
linger over the authentic Grecian fairness of Highland Mary or of that
Royal Mary whose beauty wrought to her downfall. I shall not pause to more
than remind you of the beautiful Moncrieffe giris of recent history,
because to me, I will confess, Scottish beauty has never seemed to consist
so much in fineness of feature as in that indefinable quality, which for
lack of a better definition I shall call charm. And what is charm but the
halo with which intellectuality gilds and elevates the materialism of
physical comeliness. I believe it was to this quality Burns referred when
he spoke of Highland Mary's "sparkling glance." He might have said her
"smiling glance." But there is a difference apparent to the least
perspicacious between a smiling glance and a sparkling glance, the
difference which exists between the common sheen of glass and the
scintillation of the diamond, the difference between the lack and the
possession of a valuable individuality. Here is another hint of the same
characteristic from the same penetrating judgment:
"If thou hast heard her talking, And thy attentions
plighted, That every other person but her By thee is slighted;
O, that's the lassie of my heart, My lassie ever
dearer; That's the queen of womankind, And ne'er a ane to peer
her."
As for the woman whose rank was that of queen, I
believe it was more by her musical talent,—she was an accomplished
musician,— more by her poetic mind,—she wrote graceful poetry in French,—
more by a gratifying mentality than by mere perfection of face and form
that Mary Stuart enslaved the hearts of men. Yet, lest the blood which
flows in my veins should have made me in any degree a partial critic, let
us turn to what some English people, and surely there are none less liable
to err from enthusiasm, have said of the Scotch woman. It is, indeed, to
the thoughtful Southern that we are chiefly indebted for a just estimate
of the quality of attractiveness which I claim for Scottish women. The
thoughtful Southern I say. There are foreigners, you know, to whom Scotch
women will never be other than big, raw-boned and ugly, just as there are
people to whom even the brilliancy of halo surrounding a Saviour's head
would be invisible, who would pass through life unobservant of a Milky
Way, unaware of the magical phenomena of an Aurora Borealis. I quote from
one of these thoughtful foreigners, Wordsworth, words addressed to the
Highland Maid, to which my poor utterances in her behalf are at least
kindred in meaning:
"For never saw I form or face In which more plainly
I could trace Benignity and homebred sense Ripening in perfect
innocence."
Miss Mulock calls these women "comfortable," that is
satisfying, contenting (I think their own word "comely "is better and more
prettily expressive), but she also speaks of "that wonderfully noble
beauty, not prettiness but actual beauty in its highest physical as well
as spiritual development, which is not seldom found across the Tweed."
But enough of beauty. Handsome is as handsome does. Let
us pass to things more lasting.
I have said that it was chiefly by this use of the pen
that Scottish women have climbed again and again so near to the temple of
Fame that it needed but the stretching forth of their own hands to enable
them to clasp in theirs the elusive fingers of the presiding goddess. Let
me tell you why it was more by the use of the pen than in any other way,
it was the cheapest path to the summit. Pencil and paper lay within the
means of even the poorest peasant of an impoverished country. There was
never any means in the family of the cottager for the education of the
daughter of the house; what there was to spare was hoarded to make a
minister of the son. The girl, therefore, found an outlet for her poetic
and artistic instincts only in the use of the pencil. Scribbling,
scribbling, pouring out upon paper all those impressions and judgments,
sentiments and fancies which I have pictured her as gathering in her
childhood. Scribbling one of them, Joanna Baillie, to such good effect
that she was daily spoken of as second only to Shakespeare. Scribbling, if
you will let me call it so, plays for the famous Siddons, some say with
the forcefulness of a man, as Mrs. Fawcett says "certainly with force of
mind, but with a purity which was essentially feminine." Scribbling
herself into a fame that was for a time unparalleled and sinking at last,
from the narrowness of her domesticity, into an oblivion borne with the
fortitude of which Scottish mental equipoise is. alone capable.
There is another of these scribblers, Janet Hamilton.
At eighteen years of age the author of twenty religious poems. Then love
came to her, wooed, won her, and withholding her hand, as not she alone
but scores of her countrywomen have done, from that clasp which while it
intoxicates the brain never warms the heart she turned her back on Fame
choosing rather that walk in life which lies on higher ground, whose paths
have joys more intense, griefs more profound and successes nearer to
Heaven— the path of motherhood.
Did I tell you she was blind? Blind and groping her way
through life, educated ten children; taught herself writing at fifty-nine
years of age and became a contributor to the magazines, sounding a clarion
note for Garibaldi and freedom. Oh trilling lark and screaming eagle,
deep-buried in the heart of the child, how loud you speak from the mind of
the woman!
After the Reformation, Charles Mackay tells us, the
mantle of poesy which had up to that time been the appanage of princes,
fell upon the shoulders of the people. And well did women as well as men
avail themselves of its mystic influences, contributing alike to Scottish
poesy
Tender songs, Loyal, royal, mirthful, sad,
Songs that for their burden had Love or War; Drinking, dancing,
wooing, sped Some whose words were tears unshed Deepest woe.
What Scottish heart, what heart, indeed of any
nationality, does not melt over Lady Ann Lindsay's. "Auld Robin Gray,"
with its pathetic picture of enduring love and equally enduring virtue?
"We took but ae kiss and we tore ourselves away."
What heart with any tinge of that Jacobite sentiment
which dies not out with years, but only mel-lows to a tender melancholy,
does not revel in the thrilling impassioned Jacobitism of Lady Keith,
Baroness Nairne and Mrs. Cockburn.
But Time has changed all this. In those new fields
which hav& opened for women, even in Scotland, she is still well to the
front.. Word-writing which she invariably elevated to the more complex
task of word-painting is no longer the only alternative of the Scottish
woman. She is taught wood-carving now, in some of the schools, and it is,
said the artistic manifestations are marvellous. Not that the purely
artistic gift is a thing of recent years. On the contrary, as far- back as
1737, we hear of Elizabeth Blackwell liberating her husband from a debtors
prison by her own exertions with the brush. Thrown upon her own resources
after his imprisonment, she began to make drawings of flowers for
publication. In that year she published a large folio volume of two
hundred and fifty plates,followed two years later by a second of the same
size, the whole five hundred plates having been not only drawn and colored
by herself, but also engraved.
Another Scotchwoman, Margaret Gillies, made a name for
herself in London, as a miniature artist. Charlotte and Anne Naysmith have
left many small, but exquisite proofs of their skill. Nor must I omit to
mention that other notable artist, Mrs. Fanny Mclan.
It is true that Scottish women have not been
distinguished for histrionic ability, although it has been said that the
great Mrs. Kendal is of Scottish parentage, but I hold that this failure
is not so much from lack of power, for a certain amount of dramatic
element is absolutely necessary to the satisfactory rendering of every
Scottish song, as from the religious and moral aversion which they have
always entertained towards the stage. To give a Scotch comic song with
accessories of gesture and imitation, to play upon their hearers' feelings
with all the vengefulness necessary to the singing of a "MacGregor's
Gathering" or with the pianissimo effects of the "Land o' the Leal" was to
the Scottish mind entirely correct. But "playacting" was different.
When they have overcome their prejudice in this respect
I believe that Scottish women will lead the world upon the operatic stage.
As it is, Margaret Maclntyre, "our own Margaret" they call her in
Inverness, is singing in Italy the passionate songs of the Italians as,
they say, they have never yet been interpreted by foreigner ; and should
we be surprised, knowing the intensity of Scottish emotion and the general
knowledge of melody which prevails among the poorest classes in that land
of mmtrelsy and romanticism. For me you may take your Patti with allthe
perfect mechanism of her throat if you will let me.
"Smile, when I am wae and weep when I am glad."
with the hundreds of Maggie Barrs. and Jeannie Hardys
who star even the less pretentious walks of Scottish vocalism.
Modjeska says of her Polish countrywomen that above all
other claims, even those of love, they place the thought of country.
Admirable patriotism I but, while the Scottish women lives, scarcely yet
unique. The literature of Scotland teems with tales of woman's loyalty.
"The women's tongues," said the young Chevalier, "had done more for him
than the men's swords.' There is the story of the gentlewoman, who
flinging her fan to her vacillating husband—vacillating because he knew
failure meant not only death to himself, but probable loss of rank and
wealth for his dearest—asked for his sword in return that she, at least,
might wield it in the cause of Jacobitism. And was it in the glory, the
panoply, the triumph of war that she was alone brave? A thousand times no.
Do you remember girlish Grizel Bailie, enduring all the torments of the
superstitious, going night after night for weeks through the graveyard,
which her imaginative soul peopled with horrors, to convey food to the
father upon whose head there was a price. For if these women were brave in
upholding- their gallant Prince in the flood- time of his fortunes were
they not equally enduring when place and power had vanished and calamity
gloomed with equal vengeance upon them all. What Polish woman outranks in
gallantry a Flora Macdonald? And does not the story of Grizel Baillie's
mingled patriotism and filial love recall that other story in which Sir
David Baird's mother was heroine. In the days -of the Indian Mutiny Baird
was taken prisoner and, report said, subjected to the cruelty of being
-chained to another. The news was broken tenderly to the old mother, much
apprehension, you may be sure, being felt for the effect of the
ill-tidings. Her only comment came as a surprise. 'The Lord,,, :said she,
her mind reverting to the lively, restless Davy of boyhood, "help the
chiel that's chained to oor Dauvit." What could you have expected? God and
country had been the text of this woman's utterances all the days of her
life, a shibboleth that never fails beside the Scottish hearth. And when
her country summoned and she gave her all, self-abnegation and joy
renunciation had been coincident with her giving. He was hers but more her
country's, most of all her God's. The pang of separation was past. It was
not. could not have been a sudden pang. One cannot preach doctrines like
these without -a daily contemplation of the result. And what transcendant
bravery is this which first measures and then dares! Let success and joy
or defeat with suffering and death wait upon his sword, he was her
ungrudging gift to her country. Somewhere back in the past he had been
hers, hers by all the unforgettable pangs of motherhood, but what was that
to the travail of her country. Mind of heroic mold this! Of the same mind
Scotland's Maiden Martyrs; of the same stuff Jennie Geddes flinging her
stool at the heads of the Dean and Bishop of Edinburgh to show her
unbounded opposition to anything that savored of Popery. Of exactly the
same stuff the Scottish colonist kneading her bread upon a towel stretched
from peg to peg upon the ground, whittling her spoons from scraps of the
logs hewn to form a shelter for her head in the grim wilderness, nursing
her babe with calmness at her breast in oft-recurring solitude while the
wild cat yowls and moans upon the roof and even silence holds a thousand
terrors. Glorious stuff this! Godsend us much of it in this our beloved
land!
I come at last to the true greatness of Scottish women.
I have told you that scores of Scottish women having
tapped at the portals of Fame, have turned their backs upon the
wide-opening doors, choosing rather to become the mothers of greatness
than to embody it themselves, believing in the profundity of the wisdom
which said the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. I have related
to you the story of Janet Hamilton, not because of its singularity, but
because it is, with the exceptional point of her blindness, the history of
many. Because I wished to show you that, climbing from such ignorance as
may be the unavoidable re-suit of her humble and poverty- stamped
environment towards that knowledge which is power—the Scottish woman has
been quick to discover that there are two pinnacles to the Mountain of
Greatness, to either of which intellectual womanhood may climb. One low-
lying, within the ken of men, all glare and glitter, and for women
unutterable loneliness; one higher, so high that Heaven's mist-like
obscurity descends upon it, and its triumphs are within only the vision of
the angels ; and the lower is called by men a deathless Fame and the
higher—only motherhood.
It was, this keen-eyed woman saw, but letting go of
Fame a little while to have it come back a more glorious thing when hand
in hand with filial love. It was, she knew, but banking for a time, the
treasures of her mind to lay them, principal and interest, within the
possession of the child of her bosom. Do you think it cankered the heart
of the mother of a Carlyle that she was obscure and he was a "ruler of
men"? Do you think the mothers of such men as a Byron or a Burns, a Norman
McLeod or a Barrie, weep that their children are great and they are
unknown? And yet, if it be as Science tells us, it was to their mothers
these men owed their talent for greatness. But do you remember what token
of his high favor the Almighty conferred upon Sarah of old? Was it that
she personally, should be famed for her wisdom, lauded throughout the ages
for her beauty or her intellect ? Not so. He who created the perfect
woman's heart knew best how to reward its wise, warm, loving, self-
sacrificing greatness. He made her a mother—the mother of nations— the
fountainhead from which came "kings of people."
Surely Scottish woman is the Sarah of all nations. For
though Respect and Honor may wait upon the talent of a Bonheur, Intellect
bows its proud head before the mind of a George Eliot, Music herself pause
to listen to a Patti, all the treasures of man's mind with Love which is
king of all" rulers of men" pour at the feet of the Scottish woman saying,
"These I owe to my Scottish mother.
This is the greatness of Scottish women.
IN a certain district of Scotland there is a farmer who is very
tall and very fat, and by reason of his weight perhaps finds existence
somewhat of a burden. Nor does he suffer in silence; the chief
entertainment which he provides for his friends is the. description of
his very latest affliction. The other day a neighbour who had just
parted from him, after listening to his tale of woe, met the farmer's
son on the road. "Ye're faither's no verra weel the day," he remarked.
"H'm," grunted the hopeful. "There's owre muckle
o' my faither for him to be a' weel at wance."
AT one time the Clyde was only navigable near Glasgow for
small vessels of a very light draught. A skipper, navigating his way
up the river, stuck in the mud, and was not sparing in his grumbling
at the delay to which he was subjected. While waiting for the rise of
the tide he espied a young girl approaching the river, with a pail to
fetch some water. This was too much for the poor skipper, so, leaning
over the bulwarks of his vessel he thus addressed the lassie, "Noo gin
ye tak' ae drap of water oot o' here till I get afloat again, I'll hit
ye wi' a boathook.
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