Читать книгу Queen Of Science - Somerville Mary - Страница 12

FIVE

First Marriage (1804) – Widowhood – Studies – Second Marriage

[Mr Samuel Greig was a distant relation of the Charters family. His father°, an officer in the British navy, had been sent by our government, at the request of the Empress Catherine, to organise the Russian navy. Mr Greig came to the Firth of Forth on board a Russian frigate, and was received by the Fairfaxes at Burntisland with Scotch hospitality, as a cousin. He eventually married my mother: not, however, until he had obtained the Russian consulship, and settled permanently in London, for Russia was then governed in the most arbitrary and tyrannical manner, and was neither a safe nor a desirable residence, and my grandfather only gave his consent to the marriage on this condition. My mother says:—]

MY cousin, Samuel Greig, commissioner of the Russian navy, and Russian consul for Britain, came to pay us a visit, and ultimately became my husband. Fortune I had none, and my mother could only afford to give me a very moderate trousseau, consisting chiefly of fine personal and household linen. When I was going away she gave me twenty pounds to buy a shawl or something warm for the following winter. I knew that the President of the Academy of Painting, Sir Martin Archer Shee°, had painted a portrait of my father immediately after the battle of Camperdown, and I went to see it. The likeness pleased me, – the price was twenty pounds; so instead of a warm shawl I bought my father’s picture, which I have since given to my nephew, Sir William George Fairfax. [1D, 53: I never repented, though I suffered for it. My husband had a gig which he drove to the City where he was engaged the whole day, and on coming home late in the evening used frequently to take me to drive. On these occasions I suffered severely from the cold as winter came on having only a small scarf; for although I could ask money for the household, I could not ask it for myself.] My husband’s brother, Sir Alexis Greig°, who commanded the Russian naval force in the Black Sea for more than twenty years, came to London about this time, and gave me some furs, which were very welcome. Long after this, I applied to Sir Alexis, at the request of Dr Whewell°, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and through his interest an order was issued by the Russian Government for simultaneous observations to be made of the tides on every sea-coast of the empire.