From the year 1870 he engaged in little regular work, though he undertook interesting and valuable researches into Celtic philology. His closing years were--through ill-health and age--a period of financial reverses, but the gloom was brightened by the presence of the pet child of his adoption. He worked on till the last, being engaged during the very week of his death in writing two articles, one for _Blackwood’s Magazine_, the other for _The Nineteenth Century_.
When his adopted daughter’s somewhat brief school-days were over, she returned home well fitted to assist Dr. Mackay in his literary work. She was already on familiar terms with his study and his books. A good many of the baby days were spent in the Doctor’s study, and as an infant there were evidences that the mind of the little one was of a thoughtful and inquiring bent. She was considered almost too inquiring by those governesses who guided her earliest lessons, religious subjects always having a peculiar attraction for her. “Little girls must be good and try to please God,” one governess impressed upon her; and the child’s wondering reply was: “Why of course; everybody and everything must try to please God, else where would be the use of living at all?”
Babies--when they are good--always seem somewhat akin to angels, and the “Rosebud”--as Mackay called his adopted girl--always had a perfect belief not only in their existence, but in their near presence. The poet especially encouraged her faith in them. The “Rosebud” always believed angels were in her bedroom at night, and on her once saying that she could not see the angel (whom she fully expected) in her room, the Doctor answered: “Never mind, dearie! It is there, you may be sure; and if you will behave just as if you saw it, you will certainly see it some day.”
Passed chiefly in the country and abroad, the first ten years of Marie Corelli’s life went by pleasantly enough. Some hours daily were devoted to lessons; others to play, and most of these amongst the flowers that she has always loved. And as much time was spent, not over lesson books, but over those works of a nature to be understood by a child which she found in the Doctor’s library, and listening to stories, witty and wise, of Dr. Mackay’s former friends and literary associates. Many, indeed, had been these friends--Dickens and Thackeray, Sir Edwin Landseer and Douglas Jerrold, to name but a few. He had known many men of light and leading in his day, and to the little girl who played in his study he delighted to recount reminiscences of them. Through him she learned to love some of his old friends as if she had known them personally.