which will be found in Johnston’s “Musical Museum,” but were first published anonymously, in 1751, in “The Charmer”; and by the lines beginning
“Harmonious pipe, how I envye thy bliss
When pressed to Sylphia’s lips with gentle kiss,”
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.)