ΤΗ

HOUGH written in 1810, Marriage was considerably revised, and did not come out till 1818. Blackwood paid Miss Ferrier £150, and the success of her novel was so decided that in 1824 he was willing to give £1000 for The Inheritance. Scott undertook the financing of Destiny, which was dedicated to him, and secured £1700 from Cadell for it in 1831.

*

Miss Ferrier afterwards sold her copyrights to Mr Richard Bentley, who brought out an edition in 1841, illustrated with a frontispiece and vignette to each novel (J. Cause pinxt. W. Greatbatch sc.), which was reprinted, for the first time with the author's name, in 1851. He also published a library edition (1881, 1882), which was reprinted from the first editions, and contained a "Memoir" † with Miss Ferrier's Recollections of visits to Ashestiel House and Abbotsford. Marriage was translated into French, and The Inheritance was dramatised, but it had only a very short run at Covent Garden.

The text of the 1841 edition was revised by the authoress, and has therefore been adopted in the present reprint.

The frontispiece is from a miniature by Thorburn, which was taken in 1836, at the age of fifty-two. Miss Ferrier, however, told the artist to paint her as if she were thirty years younger, and he seems to have con

* These illustrations were rather caricatures, and Miss Ferrier never liked them.

+ Reprinted from Temple Bar, and written, I believe, by Mr John Ferrier, great-nephew of Miss Ferrier and of Professor John Wilson.

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scientiously made the attempt. It was twice injured and touched up by inferior hands but, in its present condition, is said to be an admirable likeness, though Miss Ferrier never cared for it herself. She was Thorburn's first patron, and doubtless assisted in his advancement. In 1836 she wrote to her sister, Mrs Kinlock, "I have taken much to a young artist and must bespeak your patronage for him also. He is from Dumfries, has been studying here this three years, is not yet eighteen, and is going to push his fortune in London. I think him a prodigy of genius, though quite a simple Scotch laddie, and as artless and unpretending as a child. Better judges than I think much of his talents, and a few years most likely will see him at the top of his profession-he has so much taste and feeling." The miniature is now in the possession of Mrs Tennent, Miss Ferrier's niece, who has kindly given me permission to have it reproduced. The bust, which was taken after death, is in the possession of Mrs Ferrier of Fulford, and has been reproduced, with her kind permission, from a photograph belonging to Mr John Ferrier.

For information on these matters, and for many personal impressions, I am indebted to Mr John Ferrier, who has most generously put at my disposal the manuscripts and anecdotes which he has been for many years collecting. The letters, here printed, have been selected from his collection of originals and copies, which includes twenty-eight to Miss Clavering, forty-eight to Mrs Connell, one to Lady Charlotte Bury,* and a few others. Those remaining are either family letters of no general interest, or quasi-humorous effusions of an inferior kind. Her style of wit is always the same, and becomes wearisome by too much repetition. R. B. J.

*The only one hitherto printed, except those in the "Memoir." It appeared in the Diary Illustrative of the Times of George the IVth., by Lady C. B. and Miss Sheridan.

SUSAN EDMONSTONE FERRIER.

N°

O more than the barest outlines of Miss Ferrier's life are on record, and, despite her intimacy with men of note, the gaps cannot be filled in from other memoirs. We learn that, as a child, she had a great power of mimicry, and in the diary of Sir W. Scott, that repertoire of generous testimonials, she is described as "a gifted personage, having, besides her great talents, conversation the least exigeante, of any female author at least, whom I have ever seen among the long list I have encountered; simple, full of humour, and exceedingly ready at repartee, and all this without the least affectation of the blue-stocking."

There is a charming anecdote of her in Lockhart's Life of Scott, which is the more valuable as the only personal reminiscence hitherto printed.

During her last visit to Abbotsford, Scott

"would begin a story as gaily as ever, and go on, in spite of the hesitation in his speech, to tell it with highly picturesque effect; but before he reached the point, it would seem as if some internal spring had given way. He paused and gazed round him with the blank anxiety of look that a blind man has when he has dropped his staff. Unthinking friends sometimes gave him the catch-word abruptly. I noticed the delicacy of Miss Ferrier on such occasions she affected to be troubled with deafness, and would say, 'Well, I am getting as dull as a post, I have not heard a word since so and so,' being sure to mention a circumstance behind that at which he had really halted. He then took up the thread with his

habitual smile of courtesy, as if forgetting his case entirely in the consideration of the lady's infirmity.'

Miss Ferrier could treat old age with tact and sympathy, but she seems to have been little in touch with her host's real character. The following description and comment is very typical of her attitude towards life in general :

"Every day Sir Walter was ready by one o'clock to accompany us either in driving or walking, often in both, and in either there was the same inexhaustible flow of legendary lore, romantic incident, apt quotation, curious or diverting story; and sometimes old ballads were recited, commemorative of some of the localities through which he passed. Those who had seen him only amidst the ordinary avocations of life, or even doing the honours of his own table, could scarcely have conceived the fire and animation of his countenance at such times, when his eyes seemed literally to kindle, and even (as some one has remarked) to change their colour and become a sort of deep sapphire blue. Yet I must confess this was an enthusiasm I found as little infectious as that of his antiquarianism. On the contrary, I often wished his noble faculties had been exercised on loftier themes than those which seemed to stir his

very

soul."

*

There are, indeed, some signs of priggishness and pedantry in her novels, for the literary conversations of her heroes and heroines are as self-conscious as, though less amusing than, the inanities which she has satirised at Mrs Bluemit's tea-party. But she was a citizen of "the modern Athens," and breathed an atmosphere of preciosity in which she learnt to speak of her friends as- "The Wizard of the North," "The Man of Feeling," ," "The Ploughman Poet," "The Monk," or "Crusty Christopher;" and of her own nephew as "the last of the metaphysicians."

Miss Ferrier was born in Edinburgh, Sep. 7, 1782, being the youngest daughter of James Ferrier, Writer

* From the extremely dull "Recollections" of her two visits to Scott, formerly mentioned.