THAT part of the old estate of Middlebie which remained to the heirs of Maxwell was situate on the right or westward bank of the Water of Orr, or Urr, in Kirkcudbrightshire, about seven miles from Castle-Douglas, the market-town, ten from Dalbeattie, with its granite quarries, and sixteen from Dumfries. It consisted chiefly of the farm of Nether Corsock, and the moorland of Little Mochrum. But, before building, Mr. Clerk Maxwell by exchange and purchases had added other lands to these, including the farm of Upper Glenlair. The site chosen for the house was near to the march of the original estate, where a little moor-burn from the westward falls into the Urr. The two streams contain an angle pointing south-east, opposite the heathery brae which hides the village of Kirkpatrick Durham. There, on a rising ground above the last descent towards the river and the burn, a mansion-house of solid masonry, but of modest dimensions, had been erected. It was built of dark-gray stone, with a pavement and a “louping-on-stane” of granite before the front door. On the southward slope, towards the burn, was a spacious garden-ground and a plantation beyond it, occupying the den or dingle on either side the burn, and coming round to westward of the house and garden, where it ended in a shrubbery, by which the house was approached from the north. On the eastward slope, towards the Water of Urr, was a large undivided meadow for the “kye” and the ponies. To the northward was a yard with a duck-pond, and some humble “offices” or farm-buildings, which were displaced by the new erection of 1843. At the foot of the meadow, near the mouth of the burn, was a ford with stepping-stones, where the bridge was afterwards to be built, and the regular approach to the completed house was to be constructed. But this was far in the future, for in his building projects the laird would not trench upon the resources that were needed for the land. At the foot of the garden a place was hollowed out in the bed of the burn, which has often proved convenient for bathing. The rocky banks of the Urr, higher up, were fringed with wood, and on the upland, on either side the moor, there were clumps of plantation, giving cover to the laird's pheasants, and breaking the force of the winds coming down from the hill of Mochrum (N.W.). Glenlair was the name ultimately appropriated to the “great house” of Nether Corsock.

Every detail of these arrangements had been planned by the laird himself, and may be said to have been executed under his immediate supervision. The house was so placed and contrived as to admit of enlargement; but, in the first erection of it, space was economised as in the fitting up of a ship. And while it was building, the owners were contented with still narrower accommodation, spending one if not two whole summers in what was afterwards the gardener's cottage. For the journey from Edinburgh was no light matter, even for so experienced a traveller as John Clerk Maxwell. Coming by way of Beattock, it occupied two whole days, and some friendly entertainment, as at the Irvings of Newton (his mother's half-sisters),[22] had to be secured on the way. Carriages, in the modern sense, were hardly known to the Yale of Urr. A sort of double-gig with a hood was the best apology for a travelling coach, and the most active mode of locomotion was in a kind of rough dog-cart, known in the family speech as a “hurly.” A common farmer's cart has been seen carrying the laird to church, or to a friend's hall-door.

Glenlair was in the parish of Parton, of which the kirk is by Loch Ken. Mr. Clerk Maxwell was one of the elders there. (The little church of Corsock, about three miles up the Urr, was not yet thought of; for it was built in 1838, and not completely endowed until 1862.) About seven miles of hilly road lead from the Urr to Loch Ken and the Dee, which is reached at a point near Cross-Michael, about half-way between New Galloway in one direction and Kirkcudbright and St. Mary’s Isle[23] in the other. On the high ground between the Urr and the Dee is Loch Roan, a favourite point for expeditions from Glenlair.

In a letter dated “Corsock, 25th April 1834” (the Boy being then aged two years and ten months), Mr. Clerk Maxwell writes to Jane Cay, his sister-in-law, in Edinburgh:—

Instead of attempting to paraphrase a mode of speech which must be studied in and for itself, I will now give the continuation, written on the same sheet of paper by the “abler pen.”

Not much dragging was needed, either then or afterwards, to get Mr. Clerk to explain any mechanism to “boy,” and “show him how it doos.” Henceforward this was the chief pleasure of his life, until the order was reversed, and the son took hardly less delight in explaining Nature’s Mechanics to the father.

Before seeing this letter, I had been told by his cousin, Mrs. Blackburn, that throughout his childhood his constant question was, “What’s the go o’ that? What does it do?” Nor was he content with a vague answer, but would reiterate, “But what’s the particular go of it?” And, supported by such evidence, I may hope to win belief for a reminiscence which I might else have shrunk from mentioning. I distinctly remember his telling me, during his early manhood, that his first recollection was that of lying on the grass before his father’s house, and looking at the sun, and wondering. To which may be added the following anecdote, which has been communicated to me by Mrs. Murdoch,[27] the “Meg” of the preceding letter. “When James was a little boy of two years and a half old, I had given him a new tin plate to play with.

It was a bright sunny day; he held it to the sun, and the reflection went round and round the room. He said ‘Do look, Maggy, and go for papa and mamma.’ I told them both to come, and as they went in James sent the reflection across their faces. It was delightful to see his papa; he was delighted. He asked him, ‘What is this you are about, my boy?’ He said, ‘It is the sun, papa; I got it in with the tin plate.’ His papa told him when he was a little older he would let him see the moon and stars, and so he did.” Methinks I see the laird in those happiest days, standing on some moonlit night on the pavement at the door, pointing skywards with one hand, while the small astronomer is peering from a plaid upon the other arm, and the glad wife is standing by.[28]

In Mr. Dyce’s picture of the mother and child we see this open-eyed loving intercourse with the visible universe already begun. And in the accompanying woodcut (p. 30), taken from a contemporary sketch of a “barn ball” at the Harvest-home of 1837, the boy of six years old (instead of looking at the dancer) is totally absorbed in watching the bow of the “violino primo” unshakably determined to make out “the go of that” some day or other. The spirit which afterwards welcomed the acoustic discoveries of Helmholtz was already at work.[29]

In still earlier childhood, when he returned from walking with his nurse, she had generally a lapful of curiosities (sticks, pebbles, grasses, etc.) picked up upon the paths through the wood, which must be stored upon the kitchen dresser till his parents had told him all about each one. In particular, she remembers his interest in colours—“that (sand) stone is red; this (whin) stone is blue.” “But how d'ye know it's blue?” he would insist. He would catch insects and watch their movements, but would never hurt them. His aunt, Miss Cay, used to confess that it was humiliating to be asked so many questions one could not answer “by a child like that.”

But the child was not always observing, or asking questions. Ever and anon he was engaged in doing, or in making, which he liked better still. And here his inventiveness soon showed itself.

He was not long contented with “tossing his hat about,” or fishing with a stick and a string (as in an early picture of Miss Cay's); but whenever he saw anything that demanded constructive ingenuity in the performance, that forthwith took his fancy, and he must work at it. And in the doing it, it was ten to one but he must give it some new and unexpected turn, and enliven it with some quirk of fancy. At one time he is seated on the kitchen table, busily engaged in basket-making, in which all the domestics, probably at his command, are also employed. At another he is “making seals”[30] with quaint devices, or improving upon his mother’s knitting. For he must early have attained the skill, of which an elaborate example still exists, in “Mrs. Wedderburn’s Abigail,” which will be described in the next chapter, and was worked by him in his twelfth year.

Of his education in the narrower sense during this period little is known, except that his mother had the entire charge of it until her last illness in 1839, and that she encouraged him to “look up through Nature to Nature’s God.”[31] She seems to have prided herself upon his wonderful memory, and it is said that at eight years old he could repeat the whole of the 119th Psalm. His knowledge of Scripture, from his earliest boyhood, was extraordinarily extensive and minute; and he could give chapter and verse for almost any quotation from the Psalms. His knowledge of Milton also dates from very early times. These things were not known merely by rote. They occupied his imagination, and sank deeper than anybody knew.

But his most obvious interests were naturally out of doors. To follow his father “sorting” things about the farm, or “viewing” recent improvements; by and by (at ten years old) to ride his pony after his father’s phaeton; to learn from the men “how to pickfork the sheaves into the cart,”[32] to witness a ploughing-match, to slide on the Urr in time of frost (January 7, 1841), to leap ditches, to climb trees “of sorts,” to see them felled and “have grand game at getting upon them when falling,”[33] to take wasps’ nests on hot days in July;[34] to blow soap bubbles and marvel at their changing hues; to scramble up the bed of the eddying stream that “flowed past the smiddy to the sea,” and mark the intricate tracery of holes and grooves which, in rolling the shingle, it had worn and carved in the hard rock; or to watch the same river in a “spate” rushing and whirling over those “pots” which it had wrought, and piling up the foam into mimic towers, like the cumuli of the sky; or to gaze into the wan water when in a milder mood, and drink in the rich brown colour tinged with green reflections from the trees;—such were some of his delights, as, I may confidently infer from what he loved to show me afterwards. For in that constant soul the impression once made was that which remained and went on deepening—“as streams their channels deeper wear.” I well remember with what feeling he once repeated to me the lines of Burns—

There were living companions of his solitude, besides those at home, for no live thing escaped his loving observation. And chief among these was that “child of the mossy pool,” the frog,—nay, humbler still, the tadpole. The marvel of that transformation has engrossed many a child; but in none, unless in some great naturalist, has it awakened such a keen, continuous interest. And it may be here observed, as a trait not to be dissociated from his intimacy with Nature, as one of her familiars, that Maxwell never had a “horror” of any creature. “Clean dirt” was a favourite expression, though no one was ever more cleanly. He would pick up a young frog, handle him tenderly, as loving him (not “as if he loved him!”), listen for his scarcely audible voice (“hear him squeak!” he would say), put him into his mouth, and let him jump out again! The movements of the frog in swimming were long a favourite study, and to jump like a frog was one of the pranks with which he astonished his companions, when he “put an antic disposition on” at school; but of these there will be a time to speak hereafter. It was also at a later time that he was told of Galvani’s discoveries; but the recital had the more vivid interest for him because of this childhood fancy.

With eminent “judiciosity,” Mr. Clerk Maxwell had furnished his son with a leaping-pole. This long staff, which appears in many of the early drawings, had at least one excellent effect. Few civilised men have had such perfect use of hands and arms as Maxwell always had.—His hand was the model of a hand, at once effective and refined-looking.—Thus equipped, he went across country anywhere and everywhere, with an eye for all he saw, and pluck enough to meet any emergency. One who knew him as a child, and who is fond of animals, says that he was extraordinarily “game.” His endurance, both physical and mental, was always most remarkable.

He was sometimes taken to share in the simple daylight festivities of the neighbourhood (perhaps also to the New Year's gathering at Largnane, where the gifts were dispensed by a Fairy from her grotto), and it is still remembered, how at an archery picnic,[36] when an elaborate pie from Glenlair was being opened by the member of another house, the sturdy scion of Middlebie, who had not yet learned the meaning of Erănos,[37] and had doubtless been at the making and baking, bounded over the cloth just laid upon the turf, and laid his hand upon the dish, crying eagerly, “That's oor’s!” “That’s oor pie!”

His resources on wet days were—first, reading voraciously every book in the house, except what his mother kept out of his reach; and secondly, drawing, which was begun at a very early age. Not that he ever showed the highest order of artistic talent (though his young performances are full of spirit); but he had great accuracy of eye, and any singular arrangement either of form or colour had always a fascination for him. Besides his mother’s knitting, already mentioned, his Aunt Jane’s Berlin-wool work, and her landscape drawings, early set him inventing curious patterns and harmonising colours. And there were two other frequent visitants at Glenlair, whom it is now time formally to introduce. These were Mr. Clerk Maxwell’s sister Isabella, the widow of James Wedderburn, Esq., at one time Solicitor-General for Scotland, and her daughter Jemima, who was still a young girl, though somewhat older than her cousin.

Mrs. Wedderburn had been an ornament of Edinburgh society in the days of her youth, combining beauty of an elegant and piquant kind with great sprightliness and originality, and the staunchest loyalty to her kin. In spite of her early widowhood and of some long illnesses, she retained much of her spirit, together with her erect, lightsome figure, to the last, and danced a reel at James’s wedding with the utmost sprightliness though at the age of seventy. Her daughter, now Mrs. Hugh Blackburn, was only eight years older than her cousin James; but her rare genius for pictorial delineation, especially of animals, was already manifest. It is obvious how this companionship of genius must have influenced the child’s indoor pursuits.

A scientific toy had recently come into vogue, an improvement on the thaumatrope, called variously by the names “phenakistoscope,” “stroboscope,” or “magic disc.” Instead of turning on its diameter, as in the thaumatrope, it was made to revolve on a transverse axis, before a mirror, at which the eye looked through apertures cut at equal distances near the rim of the disc. And the figures drawn upon it were so contrived, by being placed in carefully graduated positions, as thus to produce the impression of a continuous movement.[38] This was a source of endless amusement to the two cousins, the younger generally contriving, and in part executing, the elder giving life and spirit to the creatures represented. Through Mrs. Maxwell’s kindness, I have in my possession some of these early works, in which the ingenuity of the contriver is everywhere manifest, the hand of the artist only here and there. The cow jumping over the waxing and waning moon, the dog pursuing the rat in and out of his hole, the circus horse, on which the man is jumping through the hoop, have the firmness and truth of touch, the fulness of life, familiar to the many admirers of J. B. The tumbler under the horse’s feet; the face in which the pink and white, drawn separately, are made to blend; the tadpole that wriggles from the egg and changes gradually into a swimming frog; the cog-wheels moved by the pendulum, and acting with the precision of clockwork (showing, in fact, the working of an escapement);—these display, with less power of execution, the quaint fancy and observation, and the constructive ingenuity of the young Clerk Maxwell. There are also intricate coloured patterns, of which the hues shift and open and close as in a kaleidoscope. I would not venture to affirm that all these belong to the very earliest period.[39] But I believe that the magic disc was in full operation before 1839, and that it has a real connection not only with the “wheel of life,” but also with the “colour-top” of after years.

Another playmate and partaker of his whims must be remembered here. This was a terrier of the “Mustard” kind, called Toby, Tobin, Tobs, or Tobit, according to the moment’s humour. Toby was always learning some new trick (performed for his wages of home-made biscuit after dinner), and neither he nor James were ever tired of repeating the old ones. To mention this is not mere trifling, for his power over animals and perception of their ways[40] was a permanent characteristic, and he found a scientific use for it at a later time in inspecting the eyes of dogs with a view to certain optical investigations.[41]

He does not seem to have been particularly fond of riding at an early age, though in later life it was his favourite recreation; but at ten years old, as has been said, he used to ride his pony behind his father's “phaeton.”

Lastly, amongst the constant surroundings of the boy's early years, the “vassals” must not be forgotten. Davie M'Vinnie and his family—Sandy Fraser the gardener, and his—the Murdochs, who were the kindred of Maggie, James's nurse,—were the objects of a continuous kindly interest and friendly companionship, which had a genial effect on the heart of the child. And by those of them whom I have been able to see, he is still remembered, notwithstanding many years of inevitable silence, with undoubting affection. The very names of the places where they lived are suggestive of quaintness and singularity, as were most things in the Galloway of that day, where it was supposed that the devil had come after the Creation, with the riddlings of the universe, and had begun “couping his creels” at Screels, till creel and all fell at Criffel. Tor-holm, Tor-knows, Tor-brae, Paddock Hall, Knock-vinney, the Doon of Urr, High Craigs of Glenlair—such were some of the immediately surrounding names, sorting well with the homely, yet unusual scenery, and with the picturesque Gallowegian dialect, which, like everything that struck the boy's fancy, laid a strong and lasting hold upon his mind.

In speaking of his own childish pursuits, it is impossible not to recall the ready kindliness with which, in later life, he would devote himself to the amusement of children. There is no trait by which he is more generally remembered by those with whom he had private intercourse; and, indeed, in this also it appears that the boy was father to the man. Behold him at the age of twelve, with his father's help, good-naturedly guiding the constructive efforts of a still younger boy.[42]

As the months went on after Mrs. Maxwell's death, the question of education began to press. The experiment of a tutor at home, which had been tried in the autumn preceding that event, was continued until November 1841, but by that time had been pronounced unsuccessful. The boy was reported slow at learning, and Miss Cay after a while discovered that the tutor was rough. He was probably a raw lad, who having been drilled by harsh methods had no conception of any other, and had failed to present the Latin grammar in such a way as to interest his pupil. He had, in short, tried to coerce Clerk Maxwell. Not a promising attempt! Meanwhile the boy was getting to be more venturesome, and needed to be—not driven, but led. And it may be conceded for the tutor’s behoof that, when once taken the wrong way, his power of provocation must have been, from a certain point of view, “prodigious.” A childhood without some naughtiness would be unnatural. One evening at Glenlair, just as the maid-servant was coming in with the tea-tray, Jamsie blew out the light in the narrow passage, and lay down across the doorway.

There is one of Mrs. Blackburn’s drawings, which throws a curious light on the situation at this juncture. Master James is in the duck-pond, in a wash-tub, having ousted the ducks, to the amusement of the young “vassals,” Bobby and Johnny, and is paddling himself (with some implement from the dairy, belike), out of reach of the tutor, who has fetched a rake, and is trying forcibly to bring him in. Mr. Clerk Maxwell has just arrived upon the scene, and is looking on complacently, though not without concern. Cousin Jemima has been aiding and abetting, and is holding the leaping-pole, which has probably served as a boat-hook in this case.

The achievement of sailing in the tub was one in which James gloried scarcely less than Wordsworth's Blind Highland boy in his tortoise shell. It is referred to in the following letter, written by the boy of ten years old to his father, who had gone for a short visit to St. Mary's Isle:—

The episode of the tutor was not a happy one. I would omit the fact, as well as the name, were I not convinced that this first experience of harsh treatment had effects which long remained,—not in any bitterness, though to be smitten on the head with a ruler and have one’s ears pulled till they bled might naturally have operated in that direction,—but in a certain hesitation of manner and obliquity of reply, which Maxwell was long in getting over, if, indeed, he ever quite got over them.

The young Spartan himself made no sign that his relations with his tutor were otherwise than smooth. But something awakened the suspicions of his aunt, Miss Cay,[45] and the discovery was then made. It was this, I believe, which finally roused Mr. Clerk Maxwell to carry into effect what had been for some time in debate, viz. to take his son to Edinburgh and put him to school.