Story of My Life Part 3

"_Oct. 17._--After dinner to-day, on being told to thank G.o.d for his good dinner, he would not do it, though usually he does it the first thing on having finished. I would not let him get out of his chair, which enraged him, and he burst into a violent pa.s.sion.

Twice, when this abated, I went to him and tried, partly by encouragement, partly by positively insisting on it, to bring him to obedience. Each time I took him up from the floor, he writhed on the floor again with pa.s.sion, screaming as loud as he could. After a while, when I had left him and gone into the drawing-room, he came along the walk and went back again two or three times as if not having courage to come in, then at last came and hid his face in my lap. I carried him back to the dining-room and put him in his chair and talked to him about his dinner, did not he love G.o.d for giving him so many good things, and I knelt by him and prayed G.o.d to forgive him for being so naughty and to take away the naughty spirit. All the time he was struggling within himself, half-sobbing, half-smiling with effort--'I can't say it'--and then, after a time, 'Mama thanks G.o.d for Baby's good dinner.' 'No,' I said, 'Baby must do it for himself.' Still he resisted. At length on getting down from the chair he said, 'Kneel down under table'--and there at last he said, 'Thank G.o.d for Baby's good dinner,' and in a minute all the clouds were gone and sunshine returned to his face. The whole struggle lasted I suppose half-an-hour. In a few minutes after he was calling me 'Mama dear'

and as merry as ever."

"_Stoke Rectory, Nov. 26._--Baby asks 'Who made the dirt? Jesus Christ?' It is evident that he has not the slightest notion of any difference between the nature of G.o.d and any man, or between Heaven and London or any name of a place. Perhaps in this simplicity and literality of belief he comes nearer the truth than we in the sophistications and subtilties of our reasonings on such things: but the great difficulty is to impress awe and reverence for a holy and powerful Being, and to give the dread and serious sense of being under His eye, without a slavish fear and distance.

"He always asks when he sees my Bible--'Mama reading about Adam and Eve and Jesus Christ?'--a union of the two grand subjects, very unconsciously coming to the truth."

"_Jan. 16, 1837._--Time is as yet a very indistinct impression on Baby's mind. Going round the field, he gathered some b.u.t.tercups. I said, 'Leave the rest till to-morrow.' When we returned the same way, he asked, 'Is it to-morrow now?' ... After a violent pa.s.sion the other day he looked up--'Will Jesus Christ be shocked?' He comes often and says--'Will 'ou pray G.o.d to make little Augustus good?' and asks to 'pray with Mama.'

"The other day he said--'My eyes are pretty.' 'Oh yes,' I said, 'they are, and so are Mama's and Na's.'--'And Grandpapa's and Grannie's too?'--'Yes, they are all pretty, nothing so pretty as eyes.' And I have heard no more of it.

"'Look, Mama,' he says, 'there is a bird flying up to G.o.d.'--'Where have you been to, Baby?'--'To a great many wheres.' He visits all the flowers in Grannie's garden, quite as anxiously as if they were living beings, and that quite without any hope of possessing them, as he is never allowed to gather any. He puts the different flowers together--and invents names for them--Hep--poly--primrose, &c. He also talks to animals and flowers as if they were conscious, and in this way creates constant amus.e.m.e.nt for himself: but the illusion is so strong he hardly seems to separate it from fact, and it becomes increasingly necessary to guard against the confusion of truth and error."

Children are said seldom to remember things which happen when they are three years old; but I have a distinct recollection of being at my mother's early home of Toft in Cheshire during this spring of 1837, and of the charm, of which children are so conscious, of the Mrs. Leycester ("Toft Grannie"--my mother's first cousin) who lived there. I also recollect the great dog at Alderley, and being whipped by "Uncle Ned"

(Edward Stanley) at the gate of the Dutch garden for breaking off a branch of mezereon when I was told not to touch it. Indeed I am not sure whether these recollections are not of a year before, in which I distinctly remember a terrible storm at Lime, when Kate Stanley was with us, seeing a great acacia-tree torn up by the roots and hurled against the drawing-room window, smashing all before it, and the general panic and flight that ensued. Otherwise my earliest impressions of Hurstmonceaux are all of the primroses on the Lime bank--the sheets of golden stars everywhere, and the tufts of pure white primroses which grew in one particular spot, where the bank was broken away under an old apple-tree. Then of my intense delight in being taken in a punt to the three islets on the pond--Mimulus Island, Tiny and Wee; and of the excessive severity of Uncle Julius, who had the very sharpest possible way of speaking to children, even when he meant to be kind to them.

Every evening, like clockwork, he appeared at six to dine with my mother, and walked home after coffee at eight. How many of their conversations, which I was supposed neither to hear or understand, have come back to me since like echoes: strange things for a child to remember--about the Fathers, and Tract XC., and a great deal about hymns and hymn-tunes--"Martyrdom," "Irish," "Abridge," &c.; for an organ was now put into the church, in place of the band, in which the violin never could keep time with the other instruments. Sir George Dasent has told me how he was at Hurstmonceaux then, staying with the Simpkinsons.

Arthur Stanley was at the Rectory as a pupil, and he asked Arthur how he liked this new organ. "Well," he said, "it is not so bad as most organs, for it does not make so much sound." Uncle Julius preached about it, altering a text into "What went ye out for to hear."

A child who lives much with its elders is almost certain to find out what it is most intended to conceal from it. If possible it had better be confided in. I knew exactly what whispers referred to a certain dark pa.s.sage in the history of the Rectory before Uncle Julius's time--"il y avait un crime"--and I never rested till I found it out. It was about this time that I remember Uncle Julius going into one of his violently demonstrative furies over what he considered the folly of "Montgomery's Poems," and his flinging the book to the other end of the room in his rage with it, and my wondering what would be done to me if I ever dared to be "as naughty as Uncle Jule."

_From_ MY MOTHER'S JOURNAL.

"_Lime, June 20, 1837._--Augustus was very ill in coming through London.... Seeing Punch one day from the window, he was greatly amused by it, and laughed heartily. Next day I told him I had seen Punch and Judy again. 'No, Mama, you can't have seen Judy, for she was killed yesterday.' On getting home he was much pleased, and remembered every place perfectly. Great is his delight over every new flower as it comes out, and his face was crimsoned over as he called to me to see 'little Cistus come out.' At night, in his prayers he said--'Bless daisies, bluebells,' &c.... I have found speaking of the power exercised by Jesus Christ in calming the wind a means of leading him to view Christ as G.o.d, which I felt the want of in telling him of Christ's childhood and human kindness,--showing how miraculous demonstration is adapted to childhood."

I have a vivid recollection of my long illness in Park Street, and of the miserable confinement in London. It was just at that time that my Uncle Edward Stanley was offered the Bishopric of Norwich. His family were all "in a terrible taking," as they used to call that sort of emotion, as to whether it should be accepted or not, and when the matter was settled they were almost worse--not my aunt, nothing ever agitated her, but the rest of them. Mary and Kate came, with floods of tears, to tell my mother they were to leave Alderley. My Uncle Penrhyn met Mary Stanley coming down our staircase, quite convulsed with weeping, and thought that I was dead.

When I was better, in the spring, we went to my Uncle Penrhyn's at East Sheen. One day I went into Mortlake with my nurse Mary Lea. In returning, a somewhat shabby carriage pa.s.sed us, with one or two outriders, and an old gentleman inside. When we reached the house, Lea asked old Mills, the butler, who it was. "Only 'Silly Billy,'" he said.

It was King William IV., who died in the following June. He had succeeded to the sobriquet which had been applied to his cousin and brother-in-law, William Henry, Duke of Gloucester, who died in 1834.

John Sterling had been living at Hurstmonceaux for several years as my uncle's curate, and was constantly at Lime or the Rectory. I vividly recollect how pleasant (and handsome) he was. My mother used to talk to him for hours together and he was very fond of her. With Mrs. Sterling lived her sister Annie Barton, whom I remember as a very sweet and winning person. During this summer, Frederick Maurice, a Cambridge pupil of my uncle's, came to visit him, and confessed his attachment to her.

There were many obstacles to their marriage, of which I am ignorant; but my mother was always in favour of it, and did much to bring it about. I recollect Annie Barton as often sitting on a stool at my mother's feet.

On our way to Stoke in the preceding autumn, we had diverged to visit Frederick Maurice at his tiny curacy of Bubnell near Leamington. With him lived his sister Priscilla, for whom my mother formed a great friendship, which, beginning chiefly on religious grounds, was often a great trial to her, as Priscilla Maurice, with many fine qualities and great cleverness, was one of the most exacting persons I have ever known. I am conscious of course now of what fretted me unconsciously then, the entire difference of cla.s.s, and consequent difference in the measurement of people and things, between the Maurices and those my mother had been accustomed to a.s.sociate with, and of their injurious effect upon my mother herself, in inducing her to adopt their peculiar phraseology, especially with regard to religious things. They persuaded her to join in their tireless search after the motes in their brother's eyes, and urged a more intensified life of contemplative rather than active piety, which abstracted her more than ever from earthly interests, and really marred for a time her influence and usefulness.

The Maurice sisters were the first of the many so-called "religious"

people I have known, who did not seem to realise that Christianity is rather action than thought; not a system, but a life.

It must have been soon after this that Frederick Maurice moved to London, and our visits to London were henceforth for several years generally paid to his stuffy chaplain's house at Guy's, where, as I could not then appreciate my host, I was always intensely miserable, and, though a truly good man, Frederick Maurice was not, as I thought, an attractive one. What books have since called "the n.o.ble and pathetic monotone"[14] of his life, which was "like the burden of a Gregorian chaunt," describes him exactly, but was extremely depressing. He maundered over his own humility in a way which--even to a child--did not seem humble, and he was constantly lost mentally in the labyrinth of religious mysticisms which he was ever creating for himself. In all he said, as in all he wrote, there was a nebulous vagueness. "I sometimes fancy," "I almost incline to believe," "I seem to think," were the phrases most frequently on his lips. When he preached before the University of Cambridge to a church crowded with dons and undergraduates, they asked one another as they came out, "What was it all about?" He may have sown ideas, but, if they bore any fruits, other people reaped them.[15] Still his innate goodness brought him great devotion from his friends. Amongst those whom I recollect constantly seeing at Guy's, a man in whose society my mother found much pleasure, was John Alexander Scott, whom Mrs. Kemble describes as being mentally one of the most influential persons she had ever known.

Priscilla Maurice henceforward generally came to Lime soon after our annual return from Shropshire, and usually spent several months there, arriving armed with plans for the "reformation of the parish," and a number of blank books, some ruled in columns for parochial visitation, and others in which the names of all communicants were entered and preserved, so as to make the reprobation of absentees more easy at Hurstmonceaux.

As she established her footing, she frequently brought one of her many sisters with her: amongst them Esther Maurice, who at that time kept a ladies' school at Reading. Priscilla, I believe, afterwards regretted the introduction of Esther, who was much more attractive than herself, and in course of time entirely displaced her in my mother's affections.

"Priscilla is like silver, but Esther is like gold," I remember my mother saying to Uncle Julius. Of the two, I personally preferred Priscilla, but both were a fearful scourge to my childhood, and so completely poisoned my life at Hurstmonceaux, that I looked to the winters spent at Stoke for everything that was not aggressively unpleasant.

Little child as I was, my feeling about the Maurices was a great bond between me and my aunt Lucy Hare, who, I am now certain, most cordially shared my opinion at this time, though it was unexpressed by either.

Otherwise my Aunt Lucy was also already a frequent trial to my child-life, as she was jealous for her little Marcus (born in 1836) of any attention shown to me or any kindness I received. I felt in those early days, and on looking back from middle life I know that I felt justly, that my mother would often pretend to care for me less than she did, and punish me far more frequently for very slight offences, in order not to offend Aunt Lucy, and this caused me many bitter moments, and outbursts of pa.s.sionate weeping, little understood at the time. In very early childhood, however, one pleasurable idea was connected with my Aunt Lucy. In her letters she would desire that "Baby" might be allowed to gather three flowers in the garden, any three he liked: the extreme felicity of which permission that Baby recollects still--and the anxious questionings with himself as to which the flowers should be.

_From_ MY MOTHER'S JOURNAL.

"_Lime, July 24, 1837._--Augustus continually asks 'Why,' 'What is the reason.' If it be in reference to something he has been told to do, I never at the _time_ give him any other reason than simply that it is my will that he should do it. If it refers to something unconnected with practical obedience, it is right to satisfy his desire of knowledge as far as he can understand. Implicit faith and consequent obedience is the first duty to instil, and it behoves a parent to take care that a child may find full satisfaction for its instinctive moral sense of justice, in the consistency of conduct observed towards him; in the sure performance of every promise; in the firm but mild adherence to every command.

"He asks, 'Is G.o.d blue?'--having heard that He lived above the sky."

"_Stoke Rectory, Jan. 1, 1838._--On Christmas Day Augustus went to church for the first time with me. He was perfectly good and kept a chrysanthemum in his hand the whole time, keeping his eyes fixed on it when sitting down. Afterwards he said, 'Grandpapa looked just like Uncle Jule: he had his shirt (surplice) on.'

"He has got on wonderfully in reading since I began to teach him words instead of syllables, and also learns German very quickly.

"Having been much indulged by Mrs. Feilden (Mrs. Leycester's sister), he has become lately what Mary (Lea) calls rather 'independent.' He is, however, easily knocked out of this self-importance by a little forbearance on my part not to indulge or amuse him, or allow him to have anything till he asks rightly.... There is a strong spirit of expecting to know the reason of a thing before he will obey or believe. This I am anxious to guard against, and often am reminded in dealing with him how a.n.a.logous it is to G.o.d's dealing with us--'What thou knowest not now, thou shalt know hereafter.' Now he is to walk by faith, not by sight, not by _reason_."

"_Lime, May 14, 1838._--Yesterday being Good Friday, I read to Augustus all he could understand about the Crucifixion. He was a little naughty, and I told him of it afterwards. 'But I was good all yesterday, won't that goodness do?' His delight over the flowers is as excessive as ever, but it is very necessary to guard against greediness in this."

"_August 10._--Being told that he was never alone, G.o.d and Jesus Christ saw him, he said, 'G.o.d sees me, but Jesus Christ does not.'--'But they are both one.'--'Then how did John the Baptist pour water on His head, and how could He be crucified?' How difficult to a child's simple faith is the union of the two natures![16]

"Two days ago at prayers he asked what I read to the servants, and being told the meaning of the Lord's Prayer, he said, 'I know what "Amen" means. It means, "It is done."'

"_June 11._--Having knocked off a flower on a plant in the nursery, Lea asked how he could have done such a thing--'What tempted you to do such a thing?' He whispered--'I suppose it was Satan.'

"Yesterday he told us his dream, that a beast had come out of a wood and eat him and Lea up; and Susan came to look for them and could not find them; then Mama prayed to G.o.d to open the beast's mouth, and He opened it, and they both came out safe.

"One night, after being over-tired and excited by the Sterlings, he went to bed very naughty and screamed himself asleep. Next morning he woke crying, and being asked why he did so, sobbed out, 'Lea put me in bed and I could not finish last night: so I was obliged to finish this morning.'

"Going up to London he saw the Thames. 'It can't be a river, it must be a pond, it is so large.' He called the sun in the midst of the London fog 'a swimming sun:' asked if the soldiers in the Park were 'looking out for the enemy.' 'Does G.o.d look through the keyhole?'

"Two days ago, having been told to ask G.o.d to take away the naughtiness out of him, he said, "May I ask Jesus Christ to take away the naughtiness out of Satan? then (colouring he said it, and whispering) perhaps He will take him out of h.e.l.l.'

"On my birthday he told Lea at night, 'They all drank her health but Uncle Jule, and he loved her so much he could not say it.'"

I was now four years old, and I have a vivid recollection of all that happened from this time--often a clearer remembrance than of things which occurred last year. From this time I never had any playthings, they were all banished to the loft, and, as I had no companions, I never recollect a game of any kind or ever having played at anything. There was a little boy of my own age called Philip Hunnisett, son of a respectable poor woman who lived close to our gate, and whom my mother often visited. I remember always longing to play with him, and once trying to do so in a hayfield, to Lea's supreme indignation, and my being punished for it, and never trying again. My mother now took me with her every day when she went to visit the cottages, in which she was ever a welcome guest, for it was not the lady, it was the woman who was dear to their inmates, and, when listening to their interminable histories and complaints, no one entered more into George Herbert's feeling that "it is some relief to a poor body to be heard with patience." Forty years afterwards a poor woman in Hurstmonceaux was recalling to me the sweetness of my mother's sympathy, and told the whole story when she said, "Yes, many other people have tried to be kind to us; but then, you know, Mrs. Hare _loved_ us." Truly it was as if--

"Christ had took in this piece of ground, And made a garden there for those Who want herbs for their wound."[17]

Whilst my mother was in the cottages, I remained outside and played with the flowers in the ditches. There were three places whither I was always most anxious that she should go--to Mrs. Siggery, the potter's widow, where I had the delight of seeing all the different kinds of pots, and the wet clay of which they were made: to "old Dame Cornford of the river," by which name a tiny stream called "the Five Bells" was dignified: and to a poor woman at "Foul Mile," where there was a ruined arch (the top of a drain, I believe!) which I thought most romantic. We had scarcely any visitors ("callers"), for there were scarcely any neighbours, but our old family home of Hurstmonceaux Place was let to Mr. Wagner (brother of the well-known "Vicar of Brighton"), and his wife was always very kind to me, and gave me two little china mice, to which I was quite devoted. His daughters, Annie and Emily, were very clever, and played beautifully on the pianoforte and harp. The eldest son, George, whose Memoirs have since been written, was a pale ascetic youth, with the character of a medi?val saint, who used to have long religious conversations with my mother, and--being very really in earnest--was much and justly beloved by her. He was afterwards a most devoted clergyman, being one of those who really have a "vocation," and probably accomplished more practical good in his brief life than any other five hundred parish priests taken at random. Of him truly Chaucer might have said--

"This n.o.ble sample to his sheep he gave, That first he wrought, and afterwards he taught."

From the earliest age I heartily detested Hurstmonceaux Rectory, because it took me away from Lime, to which I was devoted, and brought me into the presence of Uncle Julius, who frightened me out of my wits; but to all rational and unprejudiced people the Rectory was at this time a very delightful place. It is situated on a hill in a lonely situation two miles from the church and castle, and more than a mile from any of the five villages which were then included in the parish of Hurstmonceaux; but it was surrounded by large gardens with fine trees, had a wide distant view over levels and sea, and was in all respects externally more like the house of a squire than a clergyman. Inside it was lined with books from top to bottom: not only the living rooms, but the pa.s.sages and every available s.p.a.ce in the bedrooms were walled with bookcases from floor to ceiling, containing more than 14,000 works.

Most of these were German, but there were many very beautiful books upon art in all languages, and many which, even as a child, I thought it very delightful to look at. The only s.p.a.ces not filled by books were occupied by the beautiful pictures which my uncle had collected in Italy, including a most exquisite Perugino, and fine works of Giorgione, Luini, Giovanni da Udine, &c. I was especially attached to a large and glorious picture by Paris Bordone of the Madonna and Child throned in a sort of court of saints. I think my first intense love of colour came from the study of that picture, which is now in the Museum at Cambridge; but my uncle and mother did not care for this, preferring severer art. Uncle Julius used to say that he constantly entertained in his drawing-room seven Virgins, almost all of them more than three hundred years old. All the pictures were to me as intimate friends, and I studied every detail of their backgrounds, even of the dresses of the figures they portrayed: they were also my constant comforters in the many miserable hours I even then spent at the Rectory, where I was always utterly ignored, whilst taken away from all my home employments and interests.

Most unpleasant figures who held a prominent place in these childish years were my step-grandmother, Mrs. Hare Naylor, and her daughter Georgiana. Mrs. H. Naylor had been beautiful in her youth, and still, with snowwhite hair, was an extremely pretty _pet.i.te_ old lady. She was suspicious, exacting, and jealous to a degree. If she once took an impression of any one, it was impossible to eradicate, however utterly false it might be. She was very deaf, and only heard through a long trumpet. She would make the most frightful tirades against people, especially my mother and other members of the family, bring the most unpleasant accusations against them, and the instant they attempted to defend themselves, she took down her trumpet. Thus she retired into a social fortress, and heard no opinion but her own. I never recollect her taking the wisest turn--that of making the best of us all. I have been told that her daughter Georgiana was once a very pretty lively girl. I only remember her a sickly discontented petulant woman. When she was young, she was very fond of dancing, and once, at Bonn, she undertook to dance the clock round. She performed her feat, but it ruined her health, and she had to lie on her back for a year. From this time she defied the Italian proverb, "Let well alone," and dosed herself incessantly.

She had acquired "l'habitude d'?tre malade;" she liked the sympathy she excited, and henceforth _preferred_ being ill. Once or twice every year she was dying, the family were summoned, every one was in tears, they knelt around her bed; it was the most delicious excitement.

Mrs. Hare Naylor had a house at St. Leonards, on Maize Hill, where there were only three houses then. We went annually to visit her for a day, and she and "Aunt Georgiana" generally spent several months every year at Hurstmonceaux Rectory--employing themselves in general abuse of all the family. I offended Aunt Georgiana (who wore her hair down her back in two long plaits) mortally, at a very early age, by saying "Chelu (the Rectory dog) has only one tail, but Aunt Georgie has two."[18]

On the 28th of June 1838, the Coronation of Queen Victoria took place, when a great f?te was given in the ruins of Hurstmonceaux Castle, at which every person in the parish was provided with a dinner. It was in this summer that my father brought his family to England to visit Sir John Paul, who had then married his second wife, Mrs. Napier, and was living with her at her own place, Pennard House, in Somersetshire. In the autumn my father came alone to Hurstmonceaux Rectory. I remember him then--tall and thin, and lying upon a sofa. Illness had made him very restless, and he would wander perpetually about the rooms, opening and shutting windows, and taking down one volume after another from the bookcase, but never reading anything consecutively. It was long debated whether his winter should be pa.s.sed at Hastings or Torquay, but it was eventually decided to spend it economically at West Woodhay House, near Newbury, which Mr. John Sloper (nephew of our great-uncle--the husband of Emilia Shipley) offered to lend for the purpose. At this time my father's health was already exciting serious apprehensions. Mrs. Louisa Shipley was especially alarmed about him, and wrote:--