the higher classes; my mother, very willingly allowed me to attend it. The class was very full. I was not taught to draw, but looked on while Nasmyth painted; then a picture was given me to copy, the master correcting the faults. Though I spoilt canvas, I had made some progress by the end of the season.20 Mr Nasmyth, besides being a good artist, was clever, well-informed, and had a great deal of conversation. One day I happened to be near him while he was talking to the ladies Douglas about perspective. He said, ‘You should study Euclid’s Elements of Geometry; the foundation not only of perspective, but of astronomy and all mechanical science.’ Here, in the most unexpected manner, I got the information I wanted, for I at once saw that it would help me to understand some parts of Robertson’s Navigation; but as to going to a bookseller and asking for Euclid the thing was impossible! Besides I did not yet know anything definite about algebra, so no more could be done at that time; but I never lost sight of an object which had interested me from the first.
I rose early, and played four or five hours, as usual, on the piano, and had lessons from Corri°, an Italian, who taught carelessly, and did not correct a habit I had of thumping so as to break the strings; but I learnt to tune a piano and mend the strings, as there was no tuner at Burntisland. Afterwards I got over my bad habit and played the music then in vogue: pieces by Pleyel, Clementi, Steibelt, Mozart, and Beethoven, the last being my favourite to this day.21I was sometimes accompanied on the violin by Mr Thomson°, the friend of Burns; more frequently by Stabilini°; but I was always too shy to play before people, and invariably played badly when obliged to do so, which vexed me.
The prejudice against the theatre had been very great in Scotland, and still existed among the rigid Calvinists. One day, when I was fourteen or fifteen, on going into the drawing-room, an old man sitting beside my mother rose and kissed me, saying, ‘I am one of your mother’s oldest friends.’ It was Home°, the author of the tragedy of Douglas. He was obliged to resign his living in the kirk for the scandal of having had his play acted in the theatre in Edinburgh, and some of his clerical friends were publicly rebuked for going to see it. Our family was perfectly liberal in all these matters. The first time I had ever been in a theatre I went with my father to see Cymbeline. I had never neglected Shakespeare, and when our great tragedians, Mrs Siddons° and her brother, John Kemble°, came for a short time to act in Edinburgh, I could think of nothing else. They were both remarkably handsome, and, notwithstanding the Scotch prejudice, the theatre was crowded every night. It was a misfortune to me that my mother never would go into society during the absence of my father, nor, indeed, at any time, except, perhaps, to a dinner party; but I had no difficulty in finding a chaperone, as we knew many people. I used to go to the theatre in the morning, and ask to see the plan of the house for the evening, that I might know which ladies I could accompany to their boxes. Of course I paid for my place. Our friends were so kind that I saw these great artists, as well as Charles Kemble°, Young°, and Bannister°, in Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, Coriolanus, The Gamester, &c.22
It was greatly to the honour of the British stage that all the principal actors, men and women, were of excellent moral character, and much esteemed. Many years afterwards, when Mrs Siddons was an old woman, I drank tea with her, and heard her read Milton and Shakespeare. Her daughter told us to applaud, for she had been so much accustomed to it in the theatre that she could not read with spirit without this expression of approbation.
My mother was pleased with my music and painting, and, although she did not go to the theatre herself, she encouraged me to go. She was quite of the old school with regard to the duties of women, and very particular about her table; and, although we were obliged to live with rigid economy, our food was of the best quality, well dressed, and neatly served, for she could tell the cook exactly what was amiss when anything was badly cooked. She thought besides that some of the comfort of married life depended upon the table, so I was sent to a pastrycook for a short time every day, to learn the art of cookery. I had for companions Miss Moncreiff, daughter of Sir Henry Moncreiff Wellwood°, a Scotch baronet of old family. She was older than I, pretty, pleasing, and one of the belles of the day. We were amused at the time, and afterwards made jellies and creams for little supper parties, then in fashion, though, as far as economy went, we might as well have bought them.
On returning to Burntisland, I played on the piano as diligently as ever, and painted several hours every day. At this time, however, aMr Craw came to live with us as tutor to my youngest brother, Henry. He had been educated for the kirk, was a fair Greek and Latin scholar, but, unfortunately for me, was no mathematician. He was a simple, good-natured kind of man, and I ventured to ask him about algebra and geometry, and begged him, the first time he went to Edinburgh, to buy me something elementary on these subjects, so he soon brought me Euclid and Bonny-castle’s Algebra, which were the books used in the schools at that time. Now I had got what I so long and earnestly desired. I asked Mr Craw to hear me demonstrate a few problems in the first book of Euclid, and then I continued the study alone with courage and assiduity, knowing I was on the right road. Before I began to read algebra I found it necessary to study arithmetic again, having forgotten much of it. I never was expert at addition, for, in summing up a long column of pounds, shillings, and pence, in the family account book, it seldom came out twice the same way. In after life I, of course, used logarithms for the higher branches of science.
I had to take part in the household affairs, and to make and mend my own clothes. I rose early, played on the piano, and painted during the time I could spare in the daylight hours, but I sat up very late reading Euclid. The servants, however, told my mother, ‘It was no wonder the stock of candles was soon exhausted, for Miss Mary sat up reading till a very late hour;’ whereupon an order was given to take away my candle as soon as I was in bed. I had, however, already gone through the first six books of Euclid, and now I was thrown on my memory, which I exercised by beginning at the first book, and demonstrating in my mind a certain number of problems every night, till I could nearly go through the whole. My father came home for a short time, and, somehow or other, finding out what I was about, said to my mother, ‘Peg, we must put a stop to this, or we shall have Mary in a strait jacket one of these days. There was X., who went raving mad about the longitude!’
In our younger days my brother Sam and I kept various festivals: we burnt nuts, ducked for apples, and observed many other of the ceremonies of Halloween, so well described by Burns, and we always sat up to hail the new year on New Year’s Eve. When in Edinburgh we sometimes disguised ourselves as ‘guisarts,’ and went about with a basket full of Christmas cakes called buns and shortbread, and a flagon of ‘het-pint’ or posset, to wish our friends a ‘Happy New Year.’ At Christmas time a set of men, called the Christmas Wakes, walked slowly through the streets during the midnight hours, playing our sweet Scotch airs on flageolets. I remember the sound from a distance fell gently on my sleeping ear, swelled softly, and died away in distance again, a passing breeze of sweet sound. It was very pleasing; some thought it too sad.
My grandfather was intimate with the Boswells° of Balmuto, a bleak place a few miles to the north of Burntisland. Lord Balmuto, a Scotch judge, who was then proprietor, had been a dancing companion of my mother’s, and had a son and two daughters, the eldest a nice girl of my age, with whom I was intimate, so I gladly accepted an invitation to visit them at Balmuto. Lord Balmuto was a large coarse-looking man, with black hair and beetling eyebrows. Though not vulgar, he was passionate, and had a boisterous manner. My mother and her sisters gave him the nickname of the ‘black bull of Norr’ away,’ in allusion to the northern position of Balmuto. Mrs Boswell was gentle and lady-like. The son had a turn for chemistry, and his father took me to see what they called the Laboratory. What a laboratory might be I knew not, as I had never heard the word before, but somehow I did not like the look of the curiously-shaped glass things and other apparatus, so when the son put a substance on the table, and took a hammer, his father saying, ‘Now you will hear a fine report,’ I ran out of the room, saying, ‘I don’t like reports.’ Sure enough there was a very loud report, followed by a violent crash, and on going into the room again, we found that the son had been knocked down, the father