I always have a night-lamp, such is the power of early impressions that I rejoice when daylight comes.
At Burntisland the sacrament was administered in summer because people came in crowds from the neighbouring parishes to attend the preachings. The service was long and fatiguing. A number of clergymen came to assist, and as the minister’s manse could not accommodate them all, we entertained three of them, one of whom was always the Rev. Dr Campbell, father of Lord Campbell.
Thursday was a day of preparation. The morning service began by a psalm sung by the congregation, then a prayer was said by the minister, followed by a lecture on some chapter of the Bible, generally lasting an hour, after that another psalm was sung, followed by a prayer, a sermon which lasted seldom less than an hour, and the whole ended with a psalm, a short prayer and a benediction. Every one then went home to dinner and returned afterwards for afternoon service, which lasted more than an hour and a half. Friday was a day of rest, but I together with many young people went at this time to the minister to receive a stamped piece of lead as a token that we were sufficiently instructed to be admitted to Christ’s table. This ticket was given to the Elder on the following Sunday. On Saturday there was a morning service, and on Sunday such multitudes came to receive the sacrament that the devotions continued till late in the evening. The ceremony was very strikingly and solemnly conducted. The communicants sat on each side of long narrow tables covered with white linen, in imitation of the last supper of Christ, and the Elders handed the bread and wine. After a short exhortation from one of the ministers the first set retired, and were succeeded by others. When the weather was fine a sermon, prayers, and psalm-singing took place either in the church-yard or on a grassy bank at the Links for such as were waiting to communicate. On the Monday morning there was the same long service as on the Thursday. It was too much for me; I always came home with a headache, and took a dislike to sermons [1D, 25: which continues to this day and in after life I could no longer believe in the gloomy doctrines of Calvinism, but I have always kept up my early habit of reading the Bible. In youth I liked it for its sublime poetry, later in life it has been my only consolation in severe affliction.]
Our minister was a rigid Calvinist. His sermons were gloomy, and so long that he occasionally would startle the congregation by calling out to some culprit, ‘Sit up there, how daur ye sleep i’ the kirk.’ Some saw-mills in the neighbourhood were burnt down, so the following Sunday we had a sermon on hell-fire. The kirk was very large and quaint; a stair led to a gallery on each side of the pulpit, which was intended for the tradespeople, and each division was marked with a suitable device, and text from Scripture. On the bakers’ portion a sheaf of wheat was painted; a balance and weights on the grocers’, and on the weavers’, which was opposite to our pew, there was a shuttle, and below it the motto, ‘My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, and are spent without hop job.’14 The artist was evidently no clerk.
My brother Sam, while attending the university in Edinburgh, came to us on the Saturdays and returned to town on Monday. He of course went with us to the kirk on Sunday morning, but we let our mother attend afternoon service alone, as he and I were happy to be together, and we spent the time sitting on the grassy rocks at the foot of our garden, from whence we could see a vast extent of the Firth of Forth with Edinburgh and its picturesque hills. It was very amusing, for we occasionally saw three or four whales spouting, and shoals of porpoises at play. However, we did not escape reproof, for I recollect the servant coming to tell us that the minister had sent to inquire whether Mr and Miss Fairfax had been taken ill, as he had not seen them at the kirk in the afternoon. The minister in question was Mr Wemyss, who had married a younger sister of my mother’s. [1D, 25 verso: He was a rigid Calvinist and by no means refined yet he was heir to a very ancient baronetcy though he never assumed the title; his son, my cousin, did but as he died unmarried the title is extinct. The Scotch clergy were of higher descent at that time than they are now.]
[1D, 26: verso: My uncle William had given my brother Sam a gold watch and chain of which he was very proud and used to beat his watch against my piano, but the watch was often in the hands of the watchmaker: now he broke the minute hand; then he let it fall – the string snapped and uncoiled with a whirr; at last he let it fall into the sea while catching small fish called bodles [?]15 in the harbour at Burntisland. I laughed at him and when he got it back again my mother said she hoped he would get no more presents for she had paid nearly as much as it was worth to the watchmaker.]
When I was about thirteen my mother took a small apartment in Edinburgh for the winter, and I was sent to a writing school, where I soon learnt to write a good hand, and studied the common rules of arithmetic. My uncle William Henry Charters, lately returned from India, gave me a pianoforte, and I had music lessons from an old lady who lived in the top storey of one of the highest houses in the old town. I slept in the same room with my mother. One morning I called out, much alarmed, ‘There is lightning!’ but my mother said, after a moment, ‘No; it is fire!’ and on opening the window shutters I found that the flakes of fire flying past had made the glass quite hot. The next house but one was on fire and burning fiercely, and the people next door were throwing everything they possessed, even china and glass, out of the windows into the street. We dressed quickly, and my mother sent immediately to Trotter the upholsterer for four men. We then put our family papers, our silver, &c., &c., into trunks; then my mother said, ‘Now let us breakfast, it is time enough for us to move our things when the next house takes fire.’ Of its doing so there was every probability because casks of turpentine and oil were exploding from time to time in a carriage manufactory at the back of it. Several gentlemen of our acquaintance who came to assist us were surprised to find us breakfasting quietly as if there were nothing unusual going on. In fact my mother, though a coward in many things, had, like most women, the presence of mind and the courage of necessity. The fire was extinguished, and we had only the four men to pay for doing nothing, nor did we sacrifice any of our property like our neighbours who had completely lost their heads from terror. I may mention here that on one occasion when my father was at home he had been ill with a severe cold, and wore his nightcap. While reading in the drawing-room one evening he called out, ‘I smell fire, there is no time to be lost,’ so, snatching up a candle, he wandered from room to room followed by us all still smelling fire, when one of the servants said, ‘O, sir, it is the tassel of your nightcap that is on fire.’
On returning to Burntisland, I spent four or five hours daily at the piano; and for the sake of having something to do, I taught myself Latin enough, from such books as we had, to read Cæsar’s Commentaries. I went that summer on a visit to my aunt at Jedburgh, and, for the first time in my life, I met in my uncle, Dr Somerville, with a friend who approved of my thirst for knowledge. During long walks with him in the early mornings, he was so kind, that I had the courage to tell him that I had been trying to learn Latin, but I feared it was in vain; for my brother and other boys, superior to me in talent, and with every assistance, spent years in learning it. He assured me, on the contrary, that in ancient times many women – some of them of the highest rank in England – had been very elegant scholars, and that he would read Virgil with me if I would come to his study for an hour or two every morning before breakfast, which I gladly did.
I never was happier in my life than during the months I spent at Jedburgh. My aunt was a charming companion – witty, full of anecdote, and had read more than most women of her day, especially Shakespeare, who was her favourite author. My cousins had little turn for reading, but they were better educated than most girls. They were taught to write by David Brewster°, son of the village schoolmaster, afterwards Sir David, who became one of the most distinguished philosophers and discoverers of the age, member of all the scientific societies at home and abroad, and at last President of the University of Edinburgh. He was studying in Edinburgh when I was at Jedburgh; so I did not make his acquaintance then; but later in life he became my valued friend. I did not know till after his death, that, while teaching my cousins, he fell in love with my cousin Margaret. I do not believe she was aware of it. She was afterwards attached to an officer in the army; but my aunt would not allow her to go to that outlandish place, Malta, where he was quartered; so she lived and died unmarried. Steam has changed our ideas of distance since that