Story of My Life Part 5

It was in the spring of 1839 that I had my first a.s.sociations with death. Often, in my earliest childish days, had I seen the sweet and charming Lady Parry, who, as Bella Stanley, had been one of the dearest friends of my mother's youth. While our dear cousins Charlotte and Emma Leycester were at Lime, the news came of her death, and I remember how they and my mother sate over the fire crying, and of gradually understanding the cause, and of tears being renewed for several mornings afterwards, when details were received from Sir Edward Parry and old Lady Stanley.

_From_ MY MOTHER'S JOURNAL.

"_Lime, June 18, 1839._--During a week spent in London, Augustus was part of every day with his brothers and sister. Their first meeting was at Sheen. Augustus was much excited before they came, and when he saw his brothers, threw himself on my neck and kissed me pa.s.sionately. They were soon intimate, and he was very much delighted at playing with them, and was not made fretful by it.

There seemed to be a strong feeling of affection awakened towards them, unlike anything he has shown to other children. I have begun to teach Augustus to draw, but it is wearisome work from his inattention.... His delight in flowers and knowledge of their names is greater than ever, and it is equally necessary to control his gratification in this as in other pleasures. The usual punishment for his impatience over dressing is to have no garden flowers.

"In all the books of education I do not find what I believe is the useful view taken of the actual labour of learning to read--that of forcing the child's attention to a thing irksome to it and without interest. The task is commonly spoken of as a means to an end, necessary because the information in books cannot otherwise be obtained, and it is to be put off till the child's interest in the information is excited and so made a pleasure to him. Now it seems to me to be an excellent discipline whereby daily some self-denial and command may be acquired in overcoming the repugnance to doing from duty that which has in itself no attraction. In the first struggle to fix the attention and learn that which is without interest, but which _must be done_, a habit is gained of great importance. And in this way nothing is better suited to the purpose than the _lesson_ of reading, even though little progress may be made for a long time.

"I find in giving any order to a child, it is always better not to _look_ to see if he obeys, but to take it for granted it will be done. If one appears to doubt the obedience, there is occasion given for the child to hesitate, 'Shall I do it or no?' If you seem not to question the possibility of non-compliance, he feels a trust committed to him to keep and fulfils it. It is best never to repeat a command, never to answer the oft-asked question 'why?'

"Augustus would, I believe, always do a thing if _reasoned_ with about it, but the necessity of obedience without reasoning is specially necessary in such a disposition as his. The will is the thing that needs being brought into subjection.

"The withholding a pleasure is a safe punishment for naughtiness, more safe, I think, than giving a reward for goodness. 'If you are naughty I must punish you,' is often a necessary threat: but it is not good to hold out a bribe for goodness--'If you are good I will give you such a thing.'"

In the autumn of 1839 we went for the first time to Norwich and spent Christmas there, which was most enchanting to me. The old buildings of Norwich gave me, even at five years old, the intense and pa.s.sionate pleasure with which I have ever since regarded them. No others are the same. No others come back to me constantly in dreams in the same way.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RUIN IN THE PALACE GARDEN, NORWICH.]

How I revelled in the old Palace of that time, with its immensely long rambling pa.s.sages and carved furniture; in the great dining-room with the pictures of the Christian Virtues, and the broad damp matted staircase with heavy banisters which led through it towards the cathedral, which it entered after pa.s.sing the mysterious chapel-door with its wrought-iron grille, and a quaint little court, in which a raven and a seagull, two of the many pets of my uncle the Bishop, usually disported themselves! Then, in the garden were the old gateway and the beautiful ruin of the first bishop's palace, and, beyond the ruin, broad walks in the kitchen-garden, ending in a summer-house, and a grand old mulberry-tree in a corner. Outside the grounds of the Palace, it was a joy to go with Lea by the old gate-house over the Ferry to Mousehold Heath, where delightful pebbles were to be picked up, and to the Cow Tower by the river Wensum: and sometimes Aunt Kitty took me in the carriage to Bramerton, where my kind old uncle taught me the names of all the different fossils, which I have never forgotten to this day.

My Aunt Kitty was deeply interesting, but also very awful to me. I could always tell when she thought I was silly by her looks, just as if she said it in words. I was dreadfully afraid of her, but irresistibly attracted to her. Like my mother, I never differed from her opinion or rebelled against her word. She was pleased with my attempts to draw, and tried to teach me, drawing before me from very simple objects, and then leaving me her outlines to copy, before attempting to imitate the reality.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CHAPEL DOOR, NORWICH.]

My cousins, Mary and Kate, had two rooms filled with pictures and other treasures, which were approached by a very steep staircase of their own.

I soon began to be especially devoted to Kate, but I thought it perfect rapture to pay both of them visits in their rooms and "make waxworks"

with the little bits of coloured wax off the taper-candles which they collected for me. Besides, in her room Kate kept a wonderful little live owl. My cousin Arthur Stanley was also very attractive to me. He was quite young at this time--had not taken his Oxford degree, I think--and had a very charming and expressive countenance. If it had not been for this, and his winning smile, I suppose that in manners (certainly in dress) he would have been thought very wanting. He scarcely ever spoke to strangers, and coloured violently when spoken to. His father he was most piteously afraid of. I do not think he was quite comfortable and at home with any one except his two sisters. But he noticed me a good deal as a child, and told me stories out of the History of England, which I liked immensely. Hugh Pearson, afterwards my dear friend, recollected how, on overhearing him and Arthur in the chapel talking about the inscription on the tomb of Bishop Sparrow, who wrote the "Rationale," I exclaimed, "Oh cousin Arthur, _do_ tell me about Bishop Sparrow and the Russian lady." I used to play with the children of Canon Wodehouse, who, with his charming wife, Lady Jane, lived close to the Palace. With their two youngest daughters, Emily and Alice, I was great friends, and long kept up a childish correspondence with them, on the tiniest possible sheets of paper. Emily had bright red hair, but it toned down, and after she grew up she was very much admired as Mrs. Legh of Lyme. On the way to the Ferry lived Professor Sedgwick, who was always very kind to me.

He once took me with him to a shop and presented me with a great ill.u.s.trated "Robinson Crusoe."

_From_ MY MOTHER'S JOURNAL.

"_Stoke, Feb. 12, 1840._--Augustus's chief delight of late has been stories out of the History of England, and the 'Chapter of Kings'

is a continual source of interest and pleasure. His memory in these things is very strong and his quick apprehension of times and circ.u.mstances. I should say the historical organ was very decided in him, and he seems to have it to the exclusion of the simple childlike view of everything common to his age. In reading the account of the flood yesterday he asked, 'What books did Noah take into the Ark? he must have taken a Bible.'--'No--the people lived after his time.'--'Then he must have had one of Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel.'--'How dreadful it must have been for Noah to see all the dead bodies when he came out of the Ark.'

"'How much ground there will be when we all die!'--'Why so?'--'Because we shall all turn to dust.'

"There is a strong predominance of the intellectual over the moral feeling in him, I fear, and it must be my endeavour always to draw out and encourage the love of what is good and n.o.ble in character and action. His eyes, however, always fill with tears on hearing any trait of this kind, and he readily melts at any act of self-denial or affection, so that his talking little of these things must not perhaps be dwelt upon as a sure sign of not estimating them."

"_August 5._--There is just the same greediness in Augustus now about books that there used to be about flowers, and I have to restrain the taste for novelty and excitement. Reading of a little girl who was fond of her Bible, he said, 'I should not have been so. I like my fat Yellow Book much better, but I like the Bible far better than the Prayer-Book: I do not like that at all.'"

In this year of 1840, Uncle Julius accepted the Archdeaconry of Lewes, which wrought a change in our quiet life from the great number of clergy who were now constant guests at the Rectory and the greater frequency of clerical subjects of discussion at Lime. Once a year also, we went regularly to Hastings for a night before my uncle gave his charge to the clergy, driving back late afterwards through the hot lanes. I always liked this expedition and scrambling about with Lea on the mile of open common which then intervened between St. Leonards and Hastings: but it was dreadfully tantalising, when I was longing to go to the sea on the second day, that I was expected to remain for hours in the hot St.

Clement's Church, while the sermon and charge were going on, and that the charge, of which I understood nothing except that I hated it, sometimes lasted three hours!

Mr. John Na.s.sau Simpkinson[23] was now curate to my uncle, and lived in "the Curatage" at Gardner Street with his sister Louisa and her friend Miss Dixon, whom we saw constantly. They persuaded my mother to have weekly "parish tea-parties," at which all the so-called "ladies of the parish" came to spend the evening, drink tea, and work for the poor, while one of them read aloud from a Missionary Report. I think it was also at the suggestion of Miss Simpkinson that my mother _adopted_ a little Hindoo girl (whom of course she never saw), putting her to school, paying for her, and otherwise providing for her.

A little excitement of our quiet summer was the marriage, in our old church, of my half-uncle Gustavus Hare, then a handsome young officer, to a pretty penniless Miss Annie Wright. It was a most imprudent marriage, and would probably have been broken off at the last moment, if my mother had not been melted by their distress into settling something (?1200 I think) upon them. I remember that it was thought a good omen that a firefly (one had never been seen at Hurstmonceaux before) perched, with its little lamp, upon the bride on the evening before the marriage. Mrs. Gustavus Hare proved an admirable wife and a good mother to her army of children. They lived for some time in Devonshire, and then in Ireland: whence, in 1868, they went to Australia, and afterwards pa.s.sed entirely out of the family horizon, though I believe many of the children are still living.

In the autumn, a great enjoyment was driving in our own little carriage, with "Dull," the old horse (mother, Uncle Julius, Lea, and I), to spend a few days with the Penrhyns at Sheen, sleeping at G.o.dstone and pa.s.sing through Ashdown Forest. In those days, however, by starting early and posting, the journey from Lime to London could be accomplished in one day, but our annual journey from London to Stoke (in Shropshire) occupied three days. My mother and I used to play at "gates and stiles,"

counting them, through the whole journey. Unluckily the swinging motion of our great travelling chariot always made me so sick that I had a horror of these journeys; but we had pleasant hours in the evenings at the old posting-inns, with their civil old-fashioned servants and comfortable sitting-rooms with the heavy mahogany furniture which one so seldom sees now, and sometimes we arrived early enough for a walk, which had all the interest of an expedition into an unknown territory. Well do I remember certain fields near the comfortable old inn of Chapel House, and the daisies which Lea and I used to pick there. After my Aunt Kitty gave me my first taste for antiquities when showing me, at Stoke, the picture of Old Time in the frontispiece of Grose's "Antiquities," these journeys had a fresh interest, and greatly did I delight in the glimpse of Brambletye House, as we pa.s.sed through Ashdown Forest, and the little tower of Stafford Castle at the top of its wooded hill. Once also we slept at Peterborough and saw its cathedral, and on the way to Norwich it was always an ecstasy to see and draw Thetford Abbey.

On the third day from London, when evening was drawing to a close, we began to reach familiar scenes--the inn of "the Loggerheads," with the sign of the two heads and the motto--

"We three Loggerheads be."

Market-Drayton, paved with round pebbles, over which the carriage jolted violently, the few lamps being lighted against the black and white houses at the dark street corners: Little Drayton shabbier still, with the gaudy sign of the Lord Hill public-house, then of "The Conquering Hero," with the same intention: Stoke Heath, at that time a wild pine-wood carpeted with heather: some narrow lanes between high hedgerows: a white gate in a hollow with river-watered meadows: a drive between steep mossy banks with beech-trees, and a glimpse of an old church and tufted islands rising from the river in the flat meadows beyond: then the long windows and projecting porch of a white house with two gables. As we drove up, we could see through the windows two figures rising hastily from their red armchairs on either side the fire--an ancient lady in a rather smart cap, and an old gentleman with snow-white hair and the dearest face in the world--Grannie and Grandpapa.

[Ill.u.s.tration: STOKE RECTORY--THE APPROACH.]

The happiest days of my childish years were all condensed in the five months which we annually spent at Stoke (away from Uncle Julius, Aunt Georgiana, and the Maurices). Grandpapa did not take much notice of my existence, but when he did it was always in kindness, though I believe he had rather resented my adoption. Grannie (who was only my mother's stepmother but married to Grandpapa when she was quite a child) was tremendously severe, but also very good to me: she never "kept me at a distance," so, though she often punished me, I was never afraid of her--"Better a little chiding than a great deal of heart-break."[24]

The quaint old house was also suited to my imaginative disposition, and I thought the winding pa.s.sage in the older part quite charming, and never observed that my bedroom had no carpet, and that the fender, which was the whole height of the mantel-piece, shut in all the warmth of the fire. A dark back-staircase with a swing door and a heavy bolt, which I thought most romantic, led hence to the offices.

In memory I can still see dear Grannie coming downstairs in the morning, with her little fat red and white spaniel Rose (it had belonged to her sister Rosamund) barking before her. She used to make Grandpapa read prayers in the study, a little long room close to the offices, which had a white bookcase along one side full of old books in white paper covers, and on the other a number of quaint old pictures of Switzerland.

Square green baize cushions were put down in front of each of the "quality" for them to kneel upon, and were taken away as soon as the performance was over. I had my breakfast in the little room of Mrs.

Cowbourne, my Grannie's dear old maid, which was through the kitchen, and deliciously warm and comfortable. I always remember the three glazed green flower-pots which stood in the window of that room, and which held respectively a double geranium, a trailing hop, and a very peculiar kind of small fuchsia, which one never sees now, with very small flowers.

Sometimes I went in to see the men and maids have their breakfast at the long table in the servants' hall: the maids had only great bowls of bread and milk; tea and bread and b.u.t.ter were never thought of below the housekeeper's room.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Rev. Oswald Leycester

From a portrait in his 86th year]

I did my lessons in my mother's room upstairs, which, as she always brought with her a picture of the four Hare brothers, and certain books from home in familiar covers, suggested a salutary reminiscence of Uncle Julius. Spelling and geography were always trials, the latter because the geography book was so dreadfully uninteresting: it told us how many inhabitants there were in the States of Lucca and Modena. I never had any playthings at Stoke: my amus.e.m.e.nt was to draw on all the bits of paper I could get hold of; but I only drew two subjects, over and over again--the Day of Judgment, and Adam and Eve being turned out of Paradise: these were of inexhaustible interest. Sometimes I was allowed to have the little volumes of "Voyages and Travels" to look at (I have them now), with the enchanting woodcuts of the adventures of Columbus, Cortes, and Pizarro: and there were certain little books of Natural History, almost equally delightful, which lived on the same shelf of the great bookcase in the drawing-room, and were got down by a little flight of red steps.

I scarcely ever remember Grannie as going out, except sometimes to church. She was generally in one extreme or other of inflammation or cold; but it never went beyond a certain point, and when she was thought to be most ill, she suddenly got well. Grandpapa used to walk with my mother in the high "rope-walk" at the top of the field, and I used to frisk away from them and find amus.e.m.e.nt in the names which my mother and her companions had cut on the beech-trees in their youth: in the queer dark corners of rock-work and shrubbery: in the deliciously high sweet box hedge at the bottom of the kitchen-garden; and most of all in the pretty little river Clarence, which flowed to join the Terne under a wooden bridge in a further garden which also belonged to the Rectory.

But, if Grandpapa was not with us, we used to go to the islands in the Terne, reached by straight paths along the edge of wide ditches in the meadows. Two wooden bridges in succession led to the princ.i.p.al island, which was covered with fine old willow-trees, beneath which perfect ma.s.ses of snowdrops came up in spring. At the end was a little bathing-house, painted white inside, and surrounded with cupboards, where I used to conceal various treasures, and find them again the following year. I also buried a bird near the bathing-house, and used to dig it up every year to see how the skeleton was getting on. My mother had always delightful stories to tell of this island in her own childhood, and of her having twice tumbled into the river: I was never tired of hearing them.

Another great enjoyment was to find skeleton-leaves, chiefly lime-leaves. There was a damp meadow which we called "the skeleton-ground" from the number we found there. I have never seen any since my childhood, but I learnt a way then of filling up the fibres with gum, after which one could paint upon them. Our man-servant, John Gidman, used to make beautiful arrows for me with the reeds which grew in the marshy meadows or by "Jackson's Pool" (a delightful place near which snowdrops grew wild), and I used to "go out shooting" with a bow.

Also, in one of the lumber-rooms I found an old spinning-wheel, upon which I used to spin all the wool I could pick off the hedges: and there was a little churn in which it was enchanting to make b.u.t.ter, but this was only allowed as a great treat.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PETSEY.]

I always found the Shropshire lanes infinitely more amusing than those at Hurstmonceaux. Beyond the dirty village where we used to go to visit "Molly Latham and Hannah Berry" was a picturesque old water-mill, of which Grandpapa had many sketches. Then out of the hedge came two streamlets through pipes, which to me had all the beauty of waterfalls.

Close to the Terne stood a beautiful old black and white farmhouse called Petsey. The Hodnet Lane (delightfully productive of wool), which ran in front of it, led also to Cotton, a farmhouse on a hill, whither my mother often went to visit "Anne Beacoll," and which was infinitely amusing to me. At the corner of the farmyard was a gigantic stone, of which I wonder to this day how it got there, which Grandpapa always told me to put in my pocket. But I liked best of all to beguile my mother in another direction through a muddy lane, in which we were half swamped, to Helsh.o.r.e, for there, on a promontory above the little river, where she remembered an old house in her childhood, the crocuses and polyanthuses of the deserted garden were still to be found in spring under the moss-grown apple-trees.

My grandparents and my mother dined at six. The dining-room had two pillars, and I was allowed to remain in the room and play behind them noiselessly: generally acting knights and heroes out of my ballad-books.

At Hurstmonceaux I should have been punished at once if I ever made a noise, but at Stoke, if I was betrayed into doing so, which was not very often, Grannie would say, "Never mind the child, Maria, it is only innocent play." I can hear her tone now. Sometimes when "Uncle Ned" (the Bishop of Norwich) came, he used to tell me the story of Mrs. Yellowly, cutting an orange like an old lady's face, and "how Mrs. Yellowly went to sea," with results quite shocking--which may be better imagined than described. In the dining-room were two framed prints of the death of Lord Chatham (from Copley's picture) and of Lord Nelson, in which the mult.i.tude of figures always left something to be discovered. At the end of the room was a "horse"--a sort of stilted chair on high springs, for exercise on wet days.

In the evenings my mother used to read aloud to her old parents. Miss Strickland's "Queens of England" came out then, and were all read aloud in turn. If I found the book beyond my comprehension, I was allowed, till about six years old, to amuse myself with some ivory fish, which I believe were intended for card-markers. Occasionally Margaret, the housemaid, read aloud, and very well too. She also sang beautifully, having been thoroughly well trained by Mrs. Leycester, and I never hear the Collect "Lord of all power and might" without thinking of her.

Grannie was herself celebrated for reading aloud, having been taught by Mrs. Siddons, with whom her family were very intimate, and she gave me the lessons she had received, making me repeat the single line, "The quality of Mercy is not strained," fifty or sixty times over, till I had exactly the right amount of intonation on each syllable, her delicate ear detecting the slightest fault. Afterwards I was allowed to read--to devour--an old brown copy of "Percy's Reliques," and much have I learnt from those n.o.ble old ballads. How cordially I agree with Professor Shairp, who said that if any one made serious study of only two books--Percy's "Reliques" and Scott's "Minstrelsy"--he would "give himself the finest, freshest, most inspiring poetic education that is possible in our age."

My mother's "religion" made her think reading any novel, or any kind of work of fiction, absolutely wicked at this time, but Grannie took in "Pickwick," which was coming out in numbers. She read it by her dressing-room fire with closed doors, and her old maid, Cowbourne, well on the watch against intruders--"elle prenait la peine de s'en divertir avec tout le respect du monde;" and I used to pick the fragments out of the waste-paper basket, piece them together, and read them too.

Sundays were far less horrid at Stoke than at home, for Grannie generally found something for me to do. Most primitive were the church services, very different indeed from the ritualism which has reigned at Stoke since, and which is sufficient to bring the old grandparents out of their graves. In our day the Rectory-pew bore a carved inscription--

G.o.d prosper y^{e} Kynge long in thys lande And grant that Papystrie never have y^{e} vper hande,

but the present Rector has removed it.