Among the cheers none were louder than those of little Pam, though one wonders very much if she knew what they were about. There she stood in the “Garden of Beaumarchais,” and waved her dainty handkerchief, and hurt her pretty throat with cheers for Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!
Did she know, I wonder, that in the street, there among the crowd of enthusiasts for Liberty, was a handsome young Irishman who had given up his title to throw his lot in with the people, and live up to its new doctrine of Equality? Did she know, I wonder, how she herself was to wear that title, and wear it as a crown set by a stranger people’s love?
Perhaps not. It was some months later that Lord Edward first saw the girl in the shadow of Madame de Genlis’ box at the opera. She reminded him of a dead lady whom he had loved with a boy’s romantic passion, and he asked for an introduction to Madame de Genlis.
A few days later Madame de Genlis was obliged to take Mademoiselle d’Orléans to Tournay. Lord Edward and an English friend accompanied them. Lord Edward, being much in charming Pamela’s society, lost his heart to her and proposed for her. Madame de Genlis stipulated for the consent of his mother, the Duchess of Leinster, and this being obtained, they were married at Tournay in 1793.
MARJORIE FLEMING
Sir Walter Scott’s “Pet Marjorie”
Room now in our “rosebud garden of girls” for the dear little Scottish lassie, Marjorie Fleming. For more than a hundred years she has been sleeping under the plain white marble cross in the graveyard of Abbotshall. Above her is the record of her life in length of years—of which the ninth was not complete: Marjorie Fleming. Born 1803; died 1811. Then, on the plinth, the name by which Sir Walter’s love has made her famous: Pet Marjorie. And yet none of the little girls whose stories I have told you is so well remembered as nine-year-old Marjorie, and none of them has counted so many distinguished men of letters for her admirers. Sir Walter Scott is only the first of a long list of great writers who have loved the little maid, though he was the only one of them who heard her voice repeating his ballads, and carried her proudly on his shoulder to set her at the head of his supper-table as Queen of the Revels. But seventy years after her death, Dr. John Brown (the Charles Lamb of Scotland) fell a victim to her fascinations, and wrote on her “the best book about a child that ever was written”; and when she was more than ninety years dead—she that had not lived nine—Mr. William Archer contributed a paper on her to the Pall Mall Gazette; Mr. Leslie Stephen has written a sketch of her life for the Dictionary of National Biography; while for the centenary of her birth (January 15, 1903) the Story of Pet Marjorie was retold by L. MacBean.
What is the secret of her charm? I think it is this: that Marjorie is “a little child” in all the strange and beautiful connotation of the word. All the poetry Wordsworth has taught us to find in childhood goes to the making of Marjorie—with something more added:—