The lady’s portrait is even a more beautiful and fascinating old picture. Here the figure is turned to the left; the face, seen in three-quarters, is rather pallid in its flesh-tints, as was usual with the painter, a characteristic which appears also in the male portrait. The eyes are of a neutral grey-blue; the yellow-brown hair is worn flat on the top, and bound with a string of pearls, from beneath which it flows in carefully arranged ringlets. The dress, of plain white satin, with voluminous sleeves, is cleverly handled and excellently expressive of the texture and sheen of the material; and a brooch of pearls and dark stones is set at the breast, clasping a scarf of faint blending blue and yellow tints, which floats over the lady’s right shoulder, and flows freely behind.
Of James Clerk of Wrightshouses, the second son of the first John Clerk of Penicuik, and brother of the first Baronet, we have an imposing three-quarters length painted by Sir Peter Lely. He appears standing, robed in a rich crimson gown, which shows its orange-tinted lining, with an elaborate lace cravat, and ruffles appearing at the hands, one of which is laid gracefully against his side, while his right arm rests on a stone parapet to the left. The face is of a man of between thirty and forty, with handsome regular features and the rounded, oval cheeks and small, ripe, red-lipped mouth which the painter loved to depict, and with much individuality and character in the firm clear-cut line of the nose. A dark curtain appears behind the figure, and a low-toned, wintry-looking distance of landscape.
The companion picture of Mary Ricard, “a French lady,” wife of James Clerk of Wrightshouses, also shows the figure standing and in three-quarters length. She is clad in a low-breasted, short-sleeved dress, richly brocaded with crimson, yellow, and green flowers, and with a simple string of large pearls round the neck. She has brown eyes, light brown eyebrows, moderately arched, and dark brown curling hair, one curl lying isolated on her white shoulder. She is arranging flowers in a yellow brown pot decorated with Cupids’ heads, which stands on a table to the left, and behind the figure is a wall with a pilaster, a red curtain, and a glimpse of landscape with blue mountain peaks, which may very well be the southern slope of the familiar Pentlands as seen from Penicuik House.
VI.
Of the first Baronet’s eldest son, Sir John Clerk, second Baronet, and one of the Barons of Exchequer, several portraits are preserved at Penicuik; but even a more complete picture of this stout old gentleman, perhaps the most potent and memorable figure that appears in this family history, may be gathered from the voluminous diaries in his hand that are preserved in the Charter-room, and from that “History of my Life,” which he himself compiled from these, and which the present Baronet has placed at the disposal of the Scottish History Society for publication; a manuscript affording a clear narrative of the events of the Baron’s life, and throwing curious and valuable side-lights upon the manners and public occurrences of the time, while, in almost every line of its pages, it gives a vivid, if unconscious, picture of the quaint, masterful personality of its writer.
He was born, as he tells us, on the 8th of February 1676—not in 1684, as stated by his biographers; studied at Penicuik School and Glasgow University; and, at the age of nineteen, went to Leyden to be instructed in law by “a very learned man, Philippus Bernardus Vitrianus.” Here he boarded with a German who taught mathematics, philosophy, and music, and he applied himself to all of these studies as well as to law, having previously, as he remarks with proper pride, “played tolerably on the harpsicord, and since I was 7 I touched the violin a little.” Nor do these exhaust the list of his pursuits, for “among other things I learned to draw from Francis Miers, a very great painter; this proceeded partly from inclination, and partly from the advice I had from some of my Dutch friends, for all their young Folks learn to draw from their being 7 years of Age, and find it vastly useful in most Stations of Life.” His great friend at Leyden was Herman Boerhaave, then a man of twenty-six, afterwards world-famous as a physician, and he gives a curious account of his being treated by the young doctor with a “chymecal medicine he had discovered which would carry off the smallpox before they came any length,” and which was successful at the time, though the malady returned in full force three months afterwards, when Clerk had gone to Rome. “We not only lived like brothers while I studied in Leyden, but continued a correspondence together while he lived”; and forty-four years afterwards Boerhaave bequeathed to the Baron a collection of his books, which still forms part of the Library at Penicuik House.
After leaving Leyden Clerk visited Germany, Italy, France, and Flanders, and the two large MS. volumes of his “Travels” during this period—not only descriptive of the various places that he saw, and very particularly of the antiquities of Rome, but also giving an account of the laws manners, and customs of the several countries that he visited—prove how diligent and observant the youth had been during the whole time. At the end of these volumes he sums up the results of his residence abroad, as follows:—
“N.B.—My improvements abroad were these:
“I had studied the civil Law for three Winters at Leyden, and did not neglect it at home, by which means I passed Advocate, by a privat and publick examination some months after my return, with great ease and some credite.
“I spoke French and Italian very well, but particularly Dutch, having come very young into Holland, and kept more in the Company of Hollanders than those of my own country.