Heroines That Every Child Should Know Part 23

He slept until late the following morning, so late, indeed, that Miss Macdonald went into Kingsburgh's room, and urged him to rouse the Prince, and depart with him, lest a party of militia should arrive, and make it impossible to leave the house.

Kingsburgh, however, would by no means consent to disturb the weary outcast he had so generously sheltered. "Let the poor boy sleep after his fatigues," he said. "As for me, I care little if they rake off this old gray head, ten or eleven years sooner than I should die in the course of nature." Saying these words, he turned again to his pillow, and was asleep in a moment.

Toward afternoon the party again set forward, but previously Kingsburgh had provided the Prince with a new pair of shoes, his own being completely worn out. "Look," said this enthusiastic Jacobite, holding up the old ones, "I shall faithfully keep these shoes until you are comfortably settled at St. James. I will then introduce myself by shaking them at you, and thus put you in mind of your night's entertainment and protection under this roof."

"Be as good as your word, my friend," replied the Prince: "whenever that time arrives I shall expect to see you."

It was judged better that, as Flora had come with a female servant, she should take one away with her; so Charles waited to alter his dress until they reached a little wood upon the road to Portree, when he again a.s.sumed his male attire, exchanging his petticoat and ap.r.o.n for a tartan coat and waistcoat, a philibeg and short hose, plaid and bonnet. Kingsburgh here bade adieu to the Prince, who, with Mackeckan, was to walk a distance of fourteen miles to Portree, while to avoid suspicion, Flora proceeded thither by another road. Arriving at Portree, Flora detained him no longer than to bid him an earnest, though agitated, farewell. Charles thanked her, in the most animated terms, for all the heroism she had shown in his cause.

"Ah! madam," he said, with emotion, "for all that has happened, I hope we shall meet in St. James's yet."

This was the last time Charles ever saw his generous protectress. They hurried him away to the vessel, while Flora, with a heavy heart, turned her steps toward the house of her mother at Sleat. She had effected all in her power, she had used her best exertions to secure the safety of this, the last unfortunate scion of the old Stuart line, and to Heaven she commended the rest. What vicissitudes the wretched Charles encountered, how he lay, pinched with hunger, and failing in health, in cowsheds, in caves and among bushes and underwood until, three months after, he was able to embark from Lochnanuagh, the very spot where he had landed, and to effect his escape to France, is well known in history. It is probable that, after the part she had taken, after the dangers she had boldly confronted in the endeavour to secure his escape, Flora Macdonald's thoughts were with the fugitive constantly; nor is it to be supposed she ever enjoyed a moment of actual peace of mind until the news of his safe arrival in Brittany reached her.

Flora Macdonald, after quitting the Prince, proceeded to the house of her mother. Upon her arrival, she checked the confidence which she would otherwise have gladly made, relative to her late employment, fearing to involve others in the danger she herself had incurred. She considered it better, if inquiries were made, that they should be able to declare nothing had been known to them of the Prince's escape. That such inquiries would arise, Flora felt a.s.sured; and the result proved how correct was her antic.i.p.ation. It was only a day or two before she heard that the boatmen, on reaching the island whence they had conveyed the fugitives, had been intimidated into revealing the place where they had left her. A Captain Ferguson, a Government emissary, obtaining the description of "Betty Burke's" appearance, sailed at once for Skye, and finding no "tall female" had been seen there with Miss Macdonald, followed upon the latter's track to Kingsburgh, where he soon discovered from the servants, that the supposed Irish domestic had reappeared, and been accommodated with the best bedchamber in the house. The good old Kingsburgh refusing to give further information, was laid in durance, and threatened with no punishment short of death; while the attendance of Miss Macdonald was commanded without loss of time. In opposition to the advice of her family, Flora wisely determined to obey the summons. On her way she met her stepfather, but was almost immediately after seized by a party of soldiers, and taken to the vessel of the Captain Ferguson named above. Meeting on board General Campbell, she frankly confessed to him the truth of the statement made by her boatmen, and quietly resigned herself prisoner.

It will be remembered that Charles's friend, and ardent admirer--his only follower, indeed, at that time--was Captain O'Neil, the one who had first, from some slight acquaintance with Flora, suggested her aid, and, succeeded in gaining it. On board the ship to which, after twenty-two days Flora was sent, she found this generous and lively young Irishman also a prisoner, and going straight up to him, she tapped him gently with her hand, and said laughingly, "To that black countenance, it seems, I am to owe all my misfortunes." He replied earnestly: "Ah! do not regard as a misfortune what is the brightest honour; only go on as you have begun; neither repent nor be ashamed of what will yet redound to your greatest praise and advantage." This exhortation must have been needless to one of our heroine's temperament.

Owing to the courtesy of those in authority, Flora experienced as well in the ship of Commodore Smith as on board the _Bridgewater_, her next prison, the greatest kindness and indulgence. She was permitted to land and bid her mother farewell, to engage a Scotch attendant, the only girl who could be induced to accompany her, and to secure a portion of her wardrobe, she having been some time deprived of a change of clothing. On arriving at Leith she remained nearly two months in harbour, and was allowed to receive visitors on board, though she was not allowed to leave the ship. The simple-minded country maiden suddenly discovered that she had been transformed into a heroine. The fame of her courage had gone far and wide; everybody was anxious to see her. Many brought presents, and one a Bible and Prayer Book, together with sewing materials, which she joyfully received. It is related that Lady Mary Cochrane paid her a visit, and upon the wind freshening a little, pretended fear of returning to sh.o.r.e, in order that she might, as she said, be able to say she had spent the night with Miss Flora Macdonald.

Arrived in London, Miss Macdonald was placed in the house of a gentleman, where she could scarcely be said to be put under restraint of any disagreeable nature. Here she remained for several months, and upon the pa.s.sing of the Act of Indemnity, in July of the year, 1747, was set at liberty without the ceremony of a trial. Public opinion was wholly in her favour, and many in power, Frederick, Prince of Wales, father of George III, among the number, made no secret of their approbation of her conduct under the affecting circ.u.mstances in which the unhappy Charles Edward had sought her aid.

Shortly after her return home, on November 6, 1750, she was married to young Macdonald, the son of the generous Kingsburgh, and became the mother of five sons, more or less remarkable for the courage and intrepidity enn.o.bling their ancestry on both sides.

When Dr. Johnson went with Boswell to the Hebrides, in the year 1773, he was warmly received by the husband of Flora, then himself possessor of the family mansion in which Charles Edward had been successfully hidden. "Kingsburgh," says Boswell, in his account of the great moralist's tour, "is completely the figure of a gallant Highlander, exhibiting the graceful mien and manly looks which our popular Scotch song has justly attributed to that character. He had jet black hair which was tied behind, and was a large, stately man, with a steady, sensible countenance." Flora herself he describes as a woman of middle stature, soft features, gentle manners, and elegant presence. She was, at this time, fifty-three years old. Lady Kingsburgh spelled her name not "Flora," but "Flory" Macdonald.

The year following this visit of the doctor, the Kingsburghs emigrated to North Carolina, in the hope of effecting a comfortable settlement in America. Their journey was not a fortunate one. The husband of Flora, who appears to have been as brave as ever in the cause he embraced, joining the 84th Royal Highland Emigrant Regiment, was imprisoned by the provincial force; but he was soon set at liberty, and he then joined the North Carolina Highlanders, serving in Canada.

Upon the conclusion of the war he returned to Scotland, probably wearied of the incessant hara.s.s he had experienced in the New World, and yearning for a sight of his native land. During their homeward voyage the ship was attacked by a French privateer. It would scarcely be in character to suppose our heroine a silent or impa.s.sive spectator of the combat. While standing on deck near her husband, and boldly animating the sailors by spirited words and gestures, which even in her old age seemed to have lost nothing of their power, she was thrown down with such violence that the shock broke her arm. In allusion to this accident and the circ.u.mstances of it, she is said to have remarked with great coolness, that "she had now suffered a little for both the houses of Stuart and Hanover."

After her return to Skye, Flora never again left it. She lived to be quite an old woman, and her body was followed to the grave by about three thousand persons, friends and retainers, amongst whom many had been recipients of her bounty, and most were capable of estimating the fine qualities of heart and mind which rendered her death a public loss. Besides her sons, all of them officers in the army or navy, Flora Macdonald had two daughters, who were married to gentlemen following the same profession as their brothers. One of the sons, anxious to perpetuate the remembrance of the spot where so heroic and devoted a mortal was buried, sent a marble tablet, commemorative of his mother, to be placed upon her tomb in the churchyard of Kilmuir; but this having been broken by accident, tourists took the opportunity to carry off pieces and, at the present time the grave of Flora Macdonald remains undistinguished within the rude inclosure that holds the dust of so many of the brave Kingsburgh family.

X

MADAME ROLAND

In the year 1754 there was living in an obscure workshop in Paris, an engraver by the name of Gratien Phlippon. He had married a very beautiful woman, whose placid temperament and cheerful content contrasted strikingly with the restlessness of her husband. The comfortable yet humble apartments of the engraver were over the shop where he plied his daily toil. He was much dissatisfied with his lowly condition in life, and that his family, in the enjoyment of frugal competence alone, were debarred from those luxuries which were profusely showered upon others. Bitterly and unceasingly he murmured that his lot had been cast in the ranks of obscurity and of unsparing labour, while others, by a more fortunate, although no better merited destiny, were born to ease and affluence, and honour and luxury.

Phlippon was a philosopher. Submission was a virtue he had never learned, and never wished to learn.

Madame Phlippon was just the reverse of her husband. She was a woman in whom faith, and trust, and submission predominated. She surrendered her will, without questioning, to all the teachings of the Church. She was placid, contented and cheerful, and undoubtedly sincere in her piety. In every event of life she recognised the overruling hand of Providence, and feeling that the comparatively humble lot a.s.signed her was in accordance with the will of G.o.d, she indulged in no repinings.

Of eight children born to these parents, one only, Jeanne Manon, or Jane Mary, survived the hour of birth. Her father first received her to his arms in 1754, and she became the object of his painful and most pa.s.sionate adoration. Both parents lived in her and for her. She was their earthly all. Even in her infantile years she gave indication of a most brilliant intellect--and her father repined that she should be doomed to a life of obscurity and toil, while the garden of the Tuileries and the Elysian Fields were thronged with children, neither so beautiful nor so intelligent, who were reveling in boundless wealth, and living in a world of luxury and splendour which, to Phlippon's imagination, seemed more alluring than any idea he could form of heaven.

By nature Jane was endowed with a soul of unusual delicacy. From early childhood, all that is beautiful or sublime in nature, in literature, in character, had charms to rivet her entranced attention. She loved to sit alone at her chamber window in the evening of a summer's day, to gaze upon the gorgeous hues of sunset. Books of poetry and descriptions of heroic character and achievements were her especial delight. "Plutarch's Lives," that book which, more than any other, appears to be the incentive of early genius, was hid beneath her pillow, and read and re-read. Those ill.u.s.trious heroes of antiquity became the companions of her solitude and of her hourly thoughts. She adored them and loved them as her own most intimate personal friends.

Her character became insensibly moulded to their forms, and she was inspired with restless enthusiasm to imitate their deeds. When but twelve years of age her father found her, one day, weeping that she was not born a Roman maiden.

It was, perhaps, the absence of playmates, and the habitual converse with mature minds which, at so early an age, inspired Jane with that insatiate thirst for knowledge which she ever manifested. Books were her only resource in every unoccupied hour. From her walks with her father, and her domestic employments with her mother, she turned to her little library and to her chamber window, and lost herself in the limitless realms of thought.

In a bright summer's afternoon she might be seen sauntering along the boulevards, led by her father's hand, gazing upon that scene of gaiety with which the eye is never wearied. A gilded coach, drawn by the most beautiful horses in the richest trappings, sweeps along the streets--a gorgeous vision. Phlippon takes his little daughter in his arms to show her the sight, and, as she gazes in infantile wonder and delight, the discontented father says:

"Look at that lord and lady, and child, lolling so voluptuously in their coach. They have no right there. Why must I and my child walk on this hot pavement, while they repose on velvet cushions and revel in all luxury? A time will come when the people will awake to the consciousness of their wrongs, and their tyrants will tremble before them."

He continues his walk in moody silence, brooding over his sense of injustice. They return to their home.

Jane wishes that her father kept a carriage, and liveried servants and outriders. She thinks of politics, and of the tyranny of kings and n.o.bles, and of the unjust inequalities of man. She retires to the solitude of her loved chamber window, and reads of Aristides the Just, of Themistocles with his Spartan virtues, of Brutus, and of the mother of the Gracchi. Greece and Rome rise before her in all their ancient renown. She despises the frivolity of Paris and her youthful bosom throbs with the desire of being n.o.ble in spirit and of achieving great exploits. Thus, when other children of her age were playing with their dolls, she was dreaming of the prostration of n.o.bles and of the overthrow of thrones.

The education of young ladies, at that time in France, was conducted almost exclusively by nuns in convents. The idea of the silence and solitude of the cloister inspired the highly imaginative girl. Her mother's spirit of religion was exerting a powerful influence over her, and one evening she fell at her mother's feet and, bursting into tears, besought that she might be sent to a convent to prepare to receive her first Christian communion in a suitable frame of mind.

The convent of the sisterhood of the Congregation in Paris was selected for Jane. She subsequently wrote:

While pressing my dear mother in my arms, at the moment of parting with her for the first time in my life, I thought my heart would break; but I was acting in obedience to the voice of G.o.d, and I pa.s.sed the threshold of the cloister, tearfully offering up to him the greatest sacrifice I was capable of making. This was on the 7th of May, 1765, when I was eleven years and two months old. The first night I spent in the convent was a night of agitation. I was no longer under the paternal roof. I was at a distance from that kind mother, who was doubtless thinking of me with affectionate emotion. A dim light diffused through the room in which I had been put to bed with four children of my own age. I stole softly from my couch and drew near the window, the light of the moon enabling me to distinguish the garden, which it overlooked. The deepest silence prevailed around, and I listened to it, if I may use the expression, with a sort of respect. Lofty trees cast their gigantic shadows along the ground, and promised a secure asylum to meditation. I lifted up my eyes to the heavens; they were unclouded and serene. I imagined that I felt the presence of the Deity smiling upon my sacrifice, and already offering me a reward in the hope of a celestial abode. Tears of delight flowed down my cheeks. I repeated my vows with holy ecstasy, and went to bed again to taste the slumber of G.o.d's chosen children.

Two years after this she was taken to pa.s.s a week at the luxurious abodes of Maria Antoinette. Versailles was in itself a city of palaces and of courtiers, where all that could dazzle the eye in regal pomp and voluptuousness was concentred. Most girls of her age would have been enchanted and bewildered by this display. Jane was permitted to witness, and partially to share, all the pomp of luxuriously spread tables and presentations, and court b.a.l.l.s, and illuminations and the gilded equipages of amba.s.sadors and princes, but this maiden, just emerging from the period of childhood and the seclusion of the cloister, undazzled by all this brilliance, looked sadly on the scene.

The servility of the courtiers excited her contempt. She contrasted the boundless profusion and extravagance which filled these palaces with the absence of comfort in the dwellings of the over-taxed poor, and pondered deeply the value of that despotism which starved the millions to pander to the dissolute indulgence of the few. Her personal pride was also severely stung by perceiving that her own attractions, mental and physical, were entirely overlooked by the crowds which were bowing before power. Disgusted with the frivolity of the living, she sought solace in companionship with the ill.u.s.trious dead. She chose the gardens for her resort, and, lingered around the statues which embellished scenes of almost fairy enchantment.

"How do you enjoy your visit, my daughter?" inquired her mother.

"I shall be glad when it is ended," was the characteristic reply, "else, in a few more days, I shall so detest all the persons I see that I shall not know what to do with my hatred."

"Why, what harm have these persons done you, my child?"

"They make me feel injustice and look upon absurdity," replied this philosopher of thirteen.

Soon after this Jane entered her fourteenth year and her mother, conscious of the importance to her child of a knowledge of domestic duties, took her to the market to obtain meat and vegetables, and occasionally placed upon her the responsibility of the family purchases. The unaffected dignity with which the imaginative girl yielded herself to these most prosaic avocations was such, that when she entered the market, the fruit women hastened to serve her. It is quite remarkable that Jane, apparently, never turned with repugnance from these humble avocations of domestic life. It speaks most highly in behalf of the sound judgment of her mother, that she was enabled thus successfully to allure her daughter from her realms of romance to those unattractive practical duties which our daily necessities demand. At one hour this ardent maiden might have been seen in her little chamber absorbed in studies of deepest research. The highest themes which can elevate the mind of man claimed her delighted reveries. The next hour she might be seen in the kitchen, under the guidance of her mother, receiving from her judicious lips lessons upon frugality, and industry, and economy. The white ap.r.o.n was bound around her waist, and her hands, which, but a few moments before, were busy with the circles of the celestial globe, were now occupied in preparing vegetables for dinner. There was thus united in the character of Jane the appreciation of all that is beautiful and sublime in the world of fact and the world of imagination, and also domestic skill and practical common sense. She was thus prepared to fascinate by the graces of a refined and polished mind, and to create for herself, in the midst of all vicissitudes, a region of loveliness in which her spirit could ever dwell; and, at the same time she possessed that sagacity and tact, and those habits of usefulness, which prepared her to meet calmly all the changes of fortune, and over them all to triumph. With that self-appreciation which with her was frankness rather than vanity she subsequently writes:

This mixture of serious studies, agreeable relaxations and domestic cares, was rendered pleasant by my mother's good management, and fitted me for everything. It seemed to forebode the vicissitudes of future life, and enabled me to bear them. In every place I am at home. I can prepare my own dinner with as much address as Philopoemen cut wood; but no one seeing me thus engaged would think it an office in which I ought to be employed.

As years pa.s.sed on through the friendship of a family of n.o.ble rank, Jane was often introduced to the great world. The family became much interested in the fascinating young lady, and her brilliant talents and accomplishments secured her invitations to many social interviews.

This slight acquaintance with the n.o.bility of France did not, however, elevate them in her esteem. She found the conversation of the old marquises and antiquated dowagers who frequented the saloon of Madame De Boismorel more insipid and illiterate than that of the tradespeople who visited her father's shop, and upon whom these n.o.bles looked down with contempt. Jane was also disgusted with the many indications she saw, not only of indolence, but of dissipation and utter want of principle. Her good sense enabled her to move among these people as a studious observer of human nature, neither adopting their costume nor imitating their manners. She was very unostentatious and simple in her dress, and never, in the slightest degree, affected the mannerism of mindless and artless fashion.

Madame De Boismorel, at one time eulogising her taste in these respects, remarked:

"You do not love feathers, do you, Miss Phlippon? How very different you are from the giddy-headed girls around us!"

"I never wear feathers," Jane replied, "because I do not think that they would correspond with the condition in life of an artist's daughter who is going about on foot."

"But were you in a different situation in life, would you then wear feathers?"

"I do not know what I should do in that case. I attach very slight importance to such trifles. I merely consider what is suitable for myself, and should be very sorry to judge of others by the superficial information afforded by their dress."

M. Phlippon now began to advance rapidly in a career of dissipation.

Jane did everything in her power to lure him to love his home. All her efforts were unavailing. Her situation was now painful in the extreme. Her mother, who had been the guardian angel of her life, was sleeping in the grave. The father was daily becoming more neglectful and unkind to his daughter. Under these circ.u.mstances, Jane, by the advice of friends, had resort to a legal process, by which there was secured to her, from the wreck of her mother's fortune, an annual income of about one hundred dollars.

In these gloomy hours which clouded the morning of her day, Jane found an unfailing resource and solace in her love of literature. With pen in hand, extracting beautiful pa.s.sages and expanding suggested thoughts, she forgot her griefs and beguiled many hours, which would otherwise have been burdened with wretchedness.