A Garden of Girls; Or, Famous Schoolgirls of Former DaysConcannon, Thomas, Mrs.
History
A Garden of Girls; Or, Famous Schoolgirls of Former Days
Concannon, Thomas, Mrs.
Catholic Church -- Education; Girls -- Biography; Women -- Education -- History
Among the cheers none were louder than those of little Pam, though one
wonders very much if she knew what they were about. There she stood in
the “Garden of Beaumarchais,” and waved her dainty handkerchief, and
hurt her pretty throat with cheers for Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!
Did she know, I wonder, that in the street, there among the crowd of
enthusiasts for Liberty, was a handsome young Irishman who had given up
his title to throw his lot in with the people, and live up to its new
doctrine of Equality? Did she know, I wonder, how she herself was to wear
that title, and wear it as a crown set by a stranger people’s love?
Perhaps not. It was some months later that Lord Edward first saw the girl
in the shadow of Madame de Genlis’ box at the opera. She reminded him of
a dead lady whom he had loved with a boy’s romantic passion, and he asked
for an introduction to Madame de Genlis.
A few days later Madame de Genlis was obliged to take Mademoiselle
d’Orléans to Tournay. Lord Edward and an English friend accompanied them.
Lord Edward, being much in charming Pamela’s society, lost his heart to
her and proposed for her. Madame de Genlis stipulated for the consent of
his mother, the Duchess of Leinster, and this being obtained, they were
married at Tournay in 1793.
MARJORIE FLEMING
Sir Walter Scott’s “Pet Marjorie”
Room now in our “rosebud garden of girls” for the dear little Scottish
lassie, Marjorie Fleming. For more than a hundred years she has been
sleeping under the plain white marble cross in the graveyard of
Abbotshall. Above her is the record of her life in length of years—of
which the ninth was not complete: Marjorie Fleming. Born 1803; died 1811.
Then, on the plinth, the name by which Sir Walter’s love has made her
famous: Pet Marjorie. And yet none of the little girls whose stories
I have told you is so well remembered as nine-year-old Marjorie, and
none of them has counted so many distinguished men of letters for her
admirers. Sir Walter Scott is only the first of a long list of great
writers who have loved the little maid, though he was the only one of
them who heard her voice repeating his ballads, and carried her proudly
on his shoulder to set her at the head of his supper-table as Queen of
the Revels. But seventy years after her death, Dr. John Brown (the
Charles Lamb of Scotland) fell a victim to her fascinations, and wrote
on her “the best book about a child that ever was written”; and when she
was more than ninety years dead—she that had not lived nine—Mr. William
Archer contributed a paper on her to the _Pall Mall Gazette_; Mr. Leslie
Stephen has written a sketch of her life for the _Dictionary of National
Biography_; while for the centenary of her birth (January 15, 1903) the
_Story of Pet Marjorie_ was retold by L. MacBean.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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