James Playfair

“ James had had full experience of that spirit before he left Scotland; and, when he mounted the English throne, was known, frequently, to exclaim against presbytry, as the enemy of monarchy. He, as was very natural, thought that the difference of religion caused the superior love of freedom in Scotland, for he was not sensible of the different effects produced by the calm, steady, and dignified deportment of Elizabeth, and the unsteady conduct of his unhappy mother, Mary. ”

“ He met James standing at the little luncheon-bar, like a pelican in the wilderness of the galleries, bent over a sandwich with a glass of sherry before him. The spacious emptiness of the great central hall, over which father and son brooded as they stood together, was marred now and then for a fleeting moment by barristers in wig and gown hurriedly bolting across, by an occasional old lady or rusty-coated man, looking up in a frightened way, and by two persons, bolder than their generation, seated in an embrasure arguing. ”

“ In a letter to his agent, John Harpur, this nobleman writes forewarning him of the expected honour, and, [10] after bidding him see to horses being in readiness, adds, as postcript: "I will not refuse anie fatt capons and hennes, partridges, or the like, yf the King come to me". We find that James left Edinburgh on the fifth of April, 1603, and reached Worksop on the twentieth, after leaving the High Sheriff of Yorkshire at Bawtry, and being met and escorted by his brother of Nottinghamshire. ”

“ In the year 1800, he resigned his lease to the poet, having taken another farm on the occasion of his marriage. James now established himself, along with his parents, at Ettrick-house, the place of his nativity, after a period of ten years' connexion with Mr Laidlaw of Blackhouse, whose conduct towards him, to use his own words, had proved "much more like that of a father than a master." It was during the course of a visit to Edinburgh in the same year, that an accidental circumstance gave a wider range to his poetical reputation. ”

“ That when their men came to us, they should leave their bows and arrows behind them, as we should do our pieces when we came to them.
Lastly, that doing thus, King James would esteem of him as his friend and ally.
All which the king seemed to like well, [87] and it was applauded of his followers; all the while he sat by the governor he trembled for fear. In his person he is a very lusty man, in his best years, an able body, grave of countenance, and spare of speech. ”

“ In the meanwhile Sir James went on living very quietly in a small service flat in George Street, waited on by a faithful servant, a man named Ruggles, whom he had known for years. Every day he would stroll round to Sackville Street to look at his treasure and to talk to one or two friends. At six o'clock the exhibition would be closed, and Sir James would himself deposit all the gems into the safe, lock up the premises, and take the keys back with him to his flat. He went out very little in society, and only occasionally to his club. ”

“ The father had not profited sufficiently by his studies either in law or philosophy to recognise the folly of a man in disgrace [Pg 96] venturing to measure swords with one of fortune's favourites. And Sir James at the time of his quarrel with Claverhouse was in disgrace. At the close of 1681 he had been dismissed from the office of President of the Court of Session for refusing the Test Act; and for some while previously he had been coldly regarded for his advocacy of gentler measures than suited Lauderdale and his creatures. The Dalrymples were strict Presbyterians ”

“ To Miss Pauline Goldmark. Silver Lake, N. H., Sept. 14, 1901.
Dear Pauline,—Your kind letter (excuse pencil—pen won't write) appears to have reached London after our departure and has just followed us hither. I had hoped for a word from you, first at Nauheim, then on the steamer, then at Cambridge; but this makes everything right. How good to think of you as the same old loveress of woods and skies and waters, and of your Bryn-Mawr friends. May none of the lot of you ever grow insufficient or forsake each other! ”

“ But it soon appeared that he was not prepared immediately to come to blows, and the Parliament and the monopolies. Commons, voting a small sum as a token of their loyalty, passed to other matters. Indolent in his temper, James had been in the habit of leaving his patronage in the hands of a confidential favourite, and that position was now filled by George Villiers, marquess and afterwards duke of Buckingham. The natural consequence was that men who paid court to him were promoted, and those who kept at a distance from him had no notice taken of their merits. ”

“ The failure of the Popham colony had discouraged the Plymouth Company, and it was not until Jamestown was a flourishing village that a permanent settlement was made in the northern part of the region which King James had granted to the Virginia Company. Those years had been years of strife and sorrow in England. The king in the narrow bigotry of his ecclesiastical views, had declared that if any refused to conform to the rules of worship prescribed by the established Church of England, he would “harry them out of the land,” and King James had kept his word. ”

“ Besides being upon the worst terms with Halifax, in whom alone, of all his ministers, James was likely to find any bias in favour of popular principles, he was, both from prejudice of education, and from interest, inasmuch as he had aspired to be the head of the Tories, a great favourer of those servile principles of the Church of England which had been lately so highly extolled from the throne. ”

“ Not so good a one as you are, to be sure. But it is no time now to think of your goodness. Well! what do we stand here for? When a thing is to be done, the sooner it is done the better. Shake hands before you go.”
Mr. Cleghorn put into James’s hand a fifty pound note, and a letter of recommendation to a Liverpool merchant. James left the house without taking leave of Miss Cleghorn, who did not think the worse of him for his want of gallantry. ”

“ Many letters have been written in sympathetic ink, and then exposed to fire or the action of acids. However, something can be made out, but not why he concealed his movements even from his banker, even from his household, Oxburgh, Kelly, Harrington, and Graeme. It is certain that he started, with a marriage in his eye, from Avignon on February 28, 1749, accompanied by Henry Goring, of the Austrian service. There had already been a correspondence, vaguely hinted at by James’s secretary, Edgar, between Charles and the Duke and a Princess of Hesse-Darmstadt. ”

“ When James, in his utmost need, had summoned a council of the Peers to ask their advice, in passing to the council chamber he met the Earl of Bedford, father of Lord Russell, who had offered a hundred thousand pounds for his son’s life—a sum which James, then Duke of York, had persuaded his brother to refuse. James, reflecting upon the probity and influence of the Russells, and catching, in his hopeless state, at any straw which could arrest his ruin, said to the Earl, “My lord, you are a good man; you have much interest with the Peers ”

“ The fact that James was a bold rider, in spite of this serious disqualification for athletic exercise, should be borne in mind when he is accused of having been a coward.
The circumstances surrounding him in boyhood were not favourable to the development of his character. His immediate guardian or foster-father, the earl of Mar, was indeed an honourable man, and the countess, who had charge of the nursing of the king, discharged her duty so as to win his lasting confidence. James afterwards entrusted her with the care of his eldest son, Henry. ”

“ The great privileges conferred upon the monopoly caused indignation among James' subjects, but nevertheless the council made numerous grants to settlers in New England.
Meanwhile, dissatisfaction in England increased; in 1625 James was succeeded by his son, Charles I; at Plymouth the Pilgrim colony was struggling for existence; at home the Puritans chafed under the growing despotism of Charles. Out of this unrest came the movement leading to the larger emigration to New England which Palfrey, the New England historian, describes. ”

“ And what about Eric Sanders? Besides he grudged an easy triumph for the oily Boyce. He would like to upset his apple-cart.
The scent of the flowers and a cool breeze were delightful after London. He wandered round the house like a nocturnal cat, and came to the dining-room window. He stopped dead. Yes; he would have another look, while the others were busy.
Returning to the house he went to the dining-room and turned on the electric light. Sir James was staring down at him from over the mantelpiece. He lit a cigarette and sat on the edge of the table, gazing keenly at the portrait. ”

“ In this state of mind he joined the party for Canada.
James was another associate passenger, and the best-looking "article" in the party; few slaves showed a greater degree of intelligence and shrewdness. He had acquired the art of reading and writing very well, and was also a very ready talker. He was owned by Mrs. Maria Hansford of New York. When he was quite small he remembered seeing his mistress, but not since. He was raised with her sister, who resided in Norfolk, the place of James' servitude. ”

“ Also he talked of the Frenchmen, bidding us not to suffer them to come to Narraganset, for it was King James his country, and he also was King James his man. Late it grew, but victuals he offered none, for indeed he had not any, being he came so newly home. So we desired to go to rest. He laid us on the bed with himself and his wife, they at the one end and we at the other, it being only planks laid a foot from the ground, and a thin mat upon them. Two more of his chief men, for want of room, pressed by and upon us, so that we were worse weary of our lodging than of our journey. ”

“ On the east side the most important building is [Pg 65] the Junior United Service Club, erected in 1852 by Nelson and James.
Market Street and St. James's Market recall the market held "west of the Haymarket, mid-way between Charles and Jermyn Street." This originated in a fair held in St. James's Fields, before the square was built, and from which Mayfair partly derives its name. This fair was suppressed on account of disorder in 1651, but revived again, and was not finally stopped until the end of Charles II.'s reign. ”

“ That was saying the best for them, as he always said it for everything; but it was the sense of their being “bands of competing minstrels” and their camp being only a “measure and check,” in a society too sparse for a synthesis, that kept him from wishing to don their uniform. This was after all but a misfitting imitation of his natural wear, and what he would have liked was to put that off—he did not wish to button it tighter. He said the best for his friends of the Dial, of Fruitlands and Brook Farm, in saying that they were fastidious and critical ”

“ During the years of moving about Europe, during the quiet years in Newport, the family was thrown upon its inner social resources. The children were constantly with their parents and with each other, and they continued all their lives to be united by much stronger attachments than usually exist between members of one family.
William James never acknowledged himself as feeling particularly indebted to any of the numerous schools and tutors to whom his father's oscillations between New York, Europe, and Newport confided him. He was sent first to private schools in New York City ”

“ James's, where he played, on 18 Jan., the hero of ‘Self-made,’ his own adaptation of ‘Le Chevalier de St. Georges,’ and on 8 March Mr. Union in ‘Friends or Foes,’ adapted by Horace Wigan from ‘Nos Intimes.’ At the Princess's on 24 June 1863 he was Mercutio to the Juliet of Stella Colas. He was the first Richard Goldsworthy in Watts Phillips's ‘Paul's Return’ (15 March 1864) . In quick succession he was one of the Antipholuses in a revival of the ‘Comedy of Errors’ by the Brothers Webb; Philip II, an original part in Oxenford's ‘Monastery of St. ”

“ There are two factions in the dispute about de la Cloche. The former (including the late Lord Acton and Father Boero) believe that James adhered to his sacred vocation, while the second James was a rank impostor. The other party holds that the frivolous and secular James was merely the original James, who suddenly abandoned his vocation, and burst on the world as a gay cavalier, and claimant of the rank of Prince of Wales, or, at least, of the revenues and perquisites of that position. ”

“ As James grew up he became well-nigh the most eminent of royal and noble authors, and that strange mixture of erudition, folly, wisdom, and simplicity which marks him as one of the oddest characters in history. He was great in nicknames and phrases, and the nicknames stuck and the phrases are remembered. “Tam o’ the Coogate” for the powerful Earl of Haddington; “Jock o’ the Sclates” for the Earl of Mar, because he, when James’s fellow-pupil, had been entrusted by George Buchanan with a slate thereon to note James’s little peccadilloes in his tutor’s absence ”

“ The colour deepened in Irene's face; and James watched her suspiciously.
"Perhaps you don't quite understand Mr. Bosinney," she said.
"Don't understand him!" James hummed out: "Why not?—you can see he's one of these artistic chaps. They say he's clever—they all think they're clever. You know more about him than I do," he added; and again his suspicious glance rested on her.
"He is designing a house for Soames," she said softly, evidently trying to smooth things over.
"That brings me to what I was going to say," continued James; "I don't know what Soames wants with a young man like that ”

“ From 1 892 to 1 895 he acted as attorney-general of the Duchy of Cornwall to King Edward VII, then Prince of Wales, with whom he had formed a close intimacy. In 1892 he was made hon. LL.D. of Cambridge. On 22 April 1893 James spoke at great length against Gladstone's home rule bill, and in Feb. 1895 he, on behalf of the Lancashire cotton spinners, led the opposition to the liberal government's proposal to reimpose duties on cotton imported into India. ”