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.
“Thank you a thousand Times, thank you for your Letter, which I have this moment received. I would thank you more at large if I could delay in an hour, in which I am much engaged, to thank you, but that I cannot persuade myself to do.
“I have done my best to defeat this disastrous measure. If I am wrong God forgive me! if I am right God forgive others, if He can! Lady Eldon, Bessy Surtees, sends her Love to you with that of,
Yr obliged and affectionate Friend,
Eldon.
Mary Lady Clarke,
100 Princess Street,
Edinburgh.”
The second letter is written, on the 29th of June in the same year “as Lady Eldon’s Secretary” to thank Lady Clerk for a present of jewellery.
“... After the Lapse of so many years to be remembered by one whom we remember, I can most sincerely say, with Respect and affection, is perhaps the most gratifying circumstance that could have happened to either of us. I feel the Value of your kindness to her ten thousand Times more than any that could have been shown to myself. She will wear the Ornaments from you and the Grampians as in Truth the most valuable she has, as long as she lives, and we shall both take some Pains to secure its being, in the possession of those who follow after us, an heir Loom. I know not why we search the World over for Diamonds, when the Grampians can furnish what equals, if it does not surpass them, in beauty and brilliancy.
“How often have Lady Eldon and I—distant as we are from your Habitation—fancied that we have been looking at Molly Dacre, and listening to ‘Auld Robin Gray’ sung exquisitely by her? eyes and ears alike highly gratified. Excuse this—remember that it comes from one, who, in his last Letter, expressed a wish that he had been The Elder Brother.
“With Lady E’s Thanks and affectionate Regards,
Yr
Dear Madam,
Eldon.
Eliz: Eldon.”
The allusion at the close of the first letter is to the Catholic Relief Bill which Lord Eldon so strenuously opposed. Only four days before the date of the note his name had headed the protest of the Peers against the measure.
The Lord Stowell referred to is the Chancellor’s elder brother, Judge of the High Court of Admiralty. He was born in the same year as Mary Dacre, and, curiously enough, his birth also was associated with the presence of the Pretender’s army. As in the other case there are varying versions of the story. One tradition asserts that the town of Newcastle being fortified and closed in anticipation of the approach of the Jacobites, who were then in possession of Edinburgh, it was thought that his mother should be removed to a quieter place, in anticipation of her confinement; and that this was effected by her being lowered in a large basket into a boat in the river and conveyed to Heworth, a village four miles distant. The other version assigns the perilous descent to Dr. Hallowel, her medical attendant, who was let down from the top of the town wall of Newcastle in order to be present at Heworth at the critical moment.
The remaining letters afford even a more curious glimpse of the fascination which Rosemary Dacre exercised upon those who came within the circle of her influence. The first is addressed to her husband’s nephew and successor the Right Hon. Sir George Clerk, and is dated—
“Chitton Lodge,
3 June 1830.
“My dear Sir George,—Enclosed I send you Capt. Morris’s verses which I mentioned to you. The circumstances which occasioned them were the following. Lord Stowell, Lord Sidmouth, and Capt. Morris, with some other Friends, were dining with me last Spring, when Lord Stowell remarked that although Capt. Morris was the same age as himself he was much more active and elastic. Capt. Morris attributed this to his having been ardently in Love for the whole of his Life; and on being pressed to disclose the object of his passion confessed that it was Lady Clarke, who at the age of sixteen won his affection, and that although he had been since married she had never ceased to exercise an influence on his heart, and be a source of animation. Lord Stowell immediately acknowledged that by a remarkable coincidence he also had been enamoured of Lady Clarke, and at the same age of sixteen, and that although twice married, the recollection of her charms had not been effaced from his mind. This of course gave rise to much mirth among the company, Lord Sidmouth particularly laughing at the Lovers, who at the age of eighty-four declared that their passion was undiminished towards a Lady who had attained the same age,
I am,
My dear Sir George,
Yours truly,
John Pearse.”
Then follows a copy of the enclosure from Captain Morris of the Life Guards, who, it may be remarked, was a well-known politician and popular song-writer, and a boon companion of the wits at Brooks. His portrait, engraved by Greatbach, is given in an early volume of “Bentley’s Miscellany,” and another portrait, painted by James Lonsdale, was recently acquired by the National Portrait Gallery, London.
“No. 1 Thornhaugh St.
Bedford Sq.
May 29, 1829.
My dear Sir,—Looking in my Scrap Book to-day, I find a few Stanzas, on my deathless Passion for my first love, written in my latter days, and as such an extraordinary and singular coincidence on that subject occurred at your table on Wednesday, I take the liberty of enclosing them to you, the more so as Lady Sidmouth is a correspondent, and perhaps might have no objection to honour them with a perusal; if you think so, and will let her Ladyship see them, I beg permission to commit them to your care, and I remain,
My dear Sir,
Most gratefully and faithfully
Yours,
Chas. Morris.”
“I beg leave to add that it is sixty-eight years since I lived in Carlisle with my Father and mother. Lady Clark will of course have no recollection of my Boyish adoration, but to recall it, if possible, to her memory, I would wish her to know that it is Chas. Morris, son of Col. Morris, of the 17th Regt., who lived with my mother at Carlisle, and with whom Lady Clark and the Dacre Family were acquainted.”
Then follows the brave old jingle of rhyme which the ever-faithful lover had made in praise of his lady:—
“Though years have spread around my Head
The sober Veil of Reason,
To close in Night sweet Fancy’s light,
My Heart rejects as Treason;
A spark there lies, still fann’d by Sighs,
Ordained by Beauty’s maker,
And fix’d by Fate, burns yet, tho’ late,
For lovely Molly Dacre.
Oh! while I miss the days of Bliss
I pass’d in rapture gazing,
The Dream impress’d still charms my breast
Which Fancy ever raising.
Tho’ much I meet in Life is sweet,
My Soul can ne’er forsake her,
And all I feel, still bears the Seal
Of lovely Molly Dacre!
Whene’er her course in chaise or horse
Conveyed her to our city,
How did I gaze, in bliss’d amaze
To catch her smile of pity;
And round her door the night I wore,
Still mute as any Quaker,
With hope-fed Zeal, one glance to steal
From lovely Molly Dacre.
When rumour dear proclaimed her near,
Her charms a crowd amazing,
How would I start with panting Heart
To catch her eye when passing.
When home she turned, I ran, I burned
O’er many a distant Acre,
To hope by chance one parting glance
From lovely Molly Dacre.
I’ve often thought the happy lot
Of Health and Spirits lent me,
Is deem’d as due to faith so true,
And thus by Fate is sent me.
While here she be there’s life for me,
And when high Heaven shall take her,
Alike last breath, I’ll ask of Death
To follow Molly Dacre.
M.”
Surely it was with true significance that Rosemary Dacre’s seal—the seal which always descends to her name-child in the house of Penicuik—was engraved with the sign of a single star, shedding a benign and steadfast light over a pathless vastitude of air and a fluctuating waste of sea; for the Lady’s memory seems to have shone with an ideal light through many human lives.