Queen Of Science - Somerville Mary Canongate Classics

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herself for a moment alone, became bewildered and could not tell the chairmen where to take her. They were from Edinburgh and as soon as she told her name they declared that they would carry her all over London till they saw her in safety; being no longer afraid, she remembered her address. It was during this visit that she met with her future husband Dr Thomas Somerville, minister at Jedburgh, who was in London about the repeal of the Test and Corporation Act.1] My grandmother was exceedingly proud and stately. She made her children stand in her presence. My mother, on the contrary, was indulgent and kind, so that her children were perfectly at ease with her. She seldom read anything but the Bible, sermons, and the newspaper. She was very sincere and devout in her religion, and was remarkable for good sense and great strength of expression in writing and conversation. Though by no means pretty, she was exceedingly distinguished and ladylike both in appearance and manners.

      My father was constantly employed, and twice distinguished himself by attacking vessels of superior force. He captured the first, but was overpowered by the second, and being taken to France, remained two years a prisoner on parole, when he met with much kindness from the Choiseul° family. At last he was exchanged, and afterwards was appointed lieutenant on board a frigate destined for foreign service. I think it was the North American station, for the war of Independence was not over till the beginning of 1783. As my mother knew that my father would be absent for some years, she accompanied him to London, though so near her confinement that in returning home she had just time to arrive at the manse of Jedburgh, her sister Martha Somerville’s house, when I was born, on the 26th December, 1780. My mother was dangerously ill, and my aunt, who was about to wean her second daughter Janet, who married General Henry Elliot, nursed me till a wetnurse could be found. So I was born in the house of my future husband, and nursed by his mother – a rather singular coincidence.

      During my father’s absence, my mother lived with great economy in a house not far from Burntisland which belonged to my grandfather, solely occupied with the care of her family, which consisted of her eldest son Samuel, four or five years old, and myself. One evening while my brother was lying at play on the floor, he called out, ‘O, mamma, there’s the moon rinnin’ awa.’ It was the celebrated meteor of 1783.

      Some time afterwards, for what reason I do not know, my father and mother went to live for a short time at Inveresk. [1D, 7: my only recollection of that period is being caught in the act of plucking a guinea fowl for its spotted feathers. About this time I was with my mother on a visit to her father in Edinburgh when my uncle Thomas Charters an officer in the Indian army then on leave, amused himself by teaching me to swear. One day walking with my maid in the High Street a lady asked my name and I answered, ‘What’s your business you damned B—.’ The lady said, ‘You’re a bonny bairn but weel awat ye hae an ill tongue.’ My maid was so much ashamed that she caught me up in her arms and ran home.

      As all my mother’s sisters were now married except the youngest who lived in Edinburgh with my grandfather, the house at Burntisland became our permanent home.]

      [This place, in which my mother’s early life was spent, exercised so much influence on her life and pursuits, that I am happy to be able to give the description of it in her own words.]

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      Burntisland was then a small quiet seaport town with little or no commerce, situated on the coast of Fife, immediately opposite to Edinburgh. It is sheltered at some distance on the north by a high and steep hill called the Bin. The harbour lies on the west, and the town ended on the east in a plain of short grass called the Links, on which the townspeople had the right of pasturing their cows and geese. The Links were bounded on each side by low hills covered with gorse and heather, and on the east by a beautiful bay with a sandy beach, which, beginning at a low rocky point, formed a bow and then stretched for several miles to the town of Kinghorn, the distant part skirting a range of high precipitous crags.

      Our house, which lay to the south of the town, was very long, with a southern exposure, and its length was increased by a wall covered with fruit-trees, which concealed a courtyard, cow-house, and other offices. From this the garden extended southwards, and ended in a plot of short grass covering a ledge of low black rocks washed by the sea. It was divided into three parts by narrow, almost unfrequented, lanes. These gardens yielded abundance of common fruit and vegetables, but the warmest and best exposures were always devoted to flowers. The garden next to the house was bounded on the south by an ivycovered wall hid by a row of old elm trees, from whence a steep mossy bank descended to a flat plot of grass with a gravel walk and flower borders on each side, and a broad gravel walk ran along the front of the house. My mother was fond of flowers, and prided herself on her moss-roses, which flourished luxuriantly on the front of the house; but my father, though a sailor, was an excellent florist. He procured the finest bulbs and flower seeds from Holland, and kept each kind in a separate bed.

      The manners and customs of the people who inhabited this pretty spot at that time were exceedingly primitive.

      Upon the death of any of the townspeople, a man went about ringing a bell at the doors of the friends and ac-quaintances of the person just dead, and, after calling out ‘Oyez!’ three times, he announced the death which had occurred. This was still called by the name of the Passing-bell, which in Catholic times invited the prayers of the living for the spirit just passed away.

      There was much sympathy and kindness shown on these occasions; friends always paid a visit of condolence to the afflicted, dressed in black. The gude wives in Burntisland thought it respectable to provide dead-clothes for themselves and the ‘gude man’, that they might have a decent funeral. I once saw a set of grave-clothes nicely folded up, which consisted of a long shirt and cap of white flannel, and a shroud of fine linen made of yarn, spun by the gude wife herself. I did not like that gude wife; she was purse-proud, and took every opportunity of treating with scorn a poor neighbour who had had a misfortune, that is, a child by her husband before marriage, but who made a very good wife. Her husband worked in our garden, and took our cow to the Links to graze. The wife kept a little shop, where we bought things, and she told us her neighbour had given her ‘mony a sair greet’ – that is, a bitter fit of weeping.

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