Story of My Life Part 7

1843-1848

"The more we live, more brief appear Our life's returning stages: A day to childhood seems an year, And years like pa.s.sing ages."

--THOMAS CAMPBELL.

"Oh if, in time of sacred youth, We learned at home to love and pray, Pray Heaven that early Love and Truth May never wholly pa.s.s away."

--THACKERAY.

My mother took me to Harnish Rectory on July 28, 1843. The aspect of Mr.

Kilvert, his tall figure, and red hair encircling a high bald forehead, was not rea.s.suring, nor were any temptations offered by my companions (who were almost entirely of a rich middle cla.s.s), or by the playground, which was a little gravelled courtyard--the stable-yard, in fact--at the back of the house. The Rectory itself was a small house, pleasantly situated on a hill, near an odd little Wrenian church which stood in a well-kept churchyard. We were met at Harnish by Mrs. Pile, who, as daughter of an Alton farmer, was connected with the happiest period of my mother's life, and while I was a prey to the utmost anguish, talking to her prevented my mother from thinking much about parting with me.

One miserable morning Mr. Kilvert, Mrs. Pile, and I went with my mother and Lea to the station at Chippenham. Terrible indeed was the moment when the train came up and I flung myself first into Lea's arms and then into my mother's. Mrs. Pile did her best to comfort me--but ... there _was_ no comfort.

Several boys slept in a room together at Harnish. In mine there was at first only one other, who was one of the greatest boy-blackguards I ever came across--wicked, malicious, and hypocritical. He made my life indescribably miserable. One day, however, whilst we were wearily plodding through our morning lessons, I saw a pleasant gentleman-like boy come through the gate, who was introduced to us as Alick MacSween.

He was thirteen, so much older than any of the others, and he was very good-looking, at least we thought so then, and we used to apply to him the line in our Syntax--

"Ingenui vultus puer ingenuique pudoris."

It was a great joy to find myself transferred to his room, and he soon became a hero in my eyes. Imagination endowed him with every grace, and I am sure, on looking back, that he really was a very nice boy.

Gradually I had the delight of feeling a.s.sured that Alick liked me as much as I liked him. We became everything to each other, and shared our "lockers" in school, and our little gardens in play-hours. Our affection made sunshine in the dreariness. My one dread was that Alick would some day like another boy better than he liked me. It happened. Then, at ten years old, life was a blank. Soon afterwards Alick left the school, and a little later, before he was fifteen, I heard that he was dead. It was a dumb sorrow, which I could speak to no one, for no one would have understood it, not even my mother. It is all in the dim distance of the long ago. I could not realise what Alick would be if he was alive, but my mind's eye sees him now as he was then, as if it were yesterday: I mourn him still.

Mr. Kilvert, as I have said, was deeply "religious," but he was very hot-tempered, and slashed our hands with a ruler and our bodies with a cane most unmercifully for exceedingly slight offences. So intense, so abject was our terror of him, that we used to look forward as to an oasis to the one afternoon when he went to his parish duties, and Mrs.

Kilvert or her sister Miss Sarah Coleman attended to the school, for, as the eldest boy was not thirteen, we were well within their capacities.

The greater part of each day was spent in lessons, and oh! what trash we were wearisomely taught; but from twelve to one we were taken out for a walk, when we employed the time in collecting all kinds of rubbish--bits of old tobacco-pipe, &c.--to make "museums."

_To_ MY MOTHER.

"DARLING MAMA,--I like it rather better than I expected. They have killed a large snake by stoning it, and Gumbleton has skinned it, such nasty work, and peged it on a board covered with b.u.t.ter and pepper, and layed it out in the sun to dry. It is going to be stuffed. Do you know I have been in the vault under the church. It is so dark. There are great big coffins there. The boy's chief game is robbers. Give love and 8 thousand kisses to Lea and love to the Grannies. Good-bye darling Mama."

"Frederick Leuis has been very ill of crop. Do you know what that is? I have been to the school-feast at Mr. Clutterbuck's. It was so beautifull. All the girls were seated round little round tables amongst beds of geraniums, heltrope, verbenas, and balm of Gilead.

We carried the tea and were called in to grapes and gooseberries, and we played at thread-the-needle and went in a swing and in a flying boat. Good-bye Mamma."

"MY DEAR MAMMA,--The boys have got two dear little rabbits. They had two wood-pigeons, but they died a shocking death, being eaten of worms, and there was a large vault made in which was interred their bodies, and that of a dear little mouse who died too. All went into mourning for it."

"MY DEAR MAMMA,--We have been a picknick at a beautiful place called Castlecomb. When we got there we went to see the dungeon.

Then we saw a high tower half covered with ivy. You must know that Castlecomb is on the top of an emense hill, so that you have to climb hands and knees. When we sate down to tea, our things rolled down the hill. We rambled about and gathered nuts, for the trees were loaded. In the town there is a most beautiful old carved cross and a church. Good-bye darling Mamma."

"_Nov. 11._--I will tell you a day at Mr. Kilvert's. I get up at half-past six and do lessons for the morning. Then at eight breakfast. Then go out till half-past nine. Then lessons till eleven. Then go out till a quarter-past eleven. Then lessons till 12, go a walk till 2 dinner. Lessons from half-past three, writing, sums, or dictation. From 5 till 6 play. Tea. Lessons from 7 to 8.

Bed. I have collected two thousand stamps since I was here. Do you ever take your pudding to the poor women on Fridays now? Goodbye darling Mamma."

As the holidays approached, I became ill with excitement and joy, but all through the half years at Harnish I always kept a sort of map on which every day was represented as a square to be filled up when lived through. Oh, the dreary sight of these s.p.a.ces on the first days: the ecstasy when only one or two squares remained white!

_From_ MY MOTHER'S JOURNAL.

"When I arrived at Harnish, Augustus was looking sadly ill. As the Rectory door was opened, the dear boy stood there, and when he saw us, he could not speak, but the tears flowed down his cheeks. After a while he began to show his joy at seeing us."

The Marcus Hares were at Hurstmonceaux all the winter, and a terrible trial it was to me, as my Aunt Lucy was more jealous than ever of any kind word being spoken to me. But I had some little pleasures when I was at Hurstmonceaux Place with the large merry family of the Bunsens, who had a beautiful Christmas-tree.

There is nothing to tell of my school-life during the next year, though my mind dwells drearily on the long days of uninstructive lessons in the close hot schoolroom when so hopelessly "nous suyons ? grosses gouttes," as Mme. de S?vign? says; or on the monotonous confinement in the narrow court which was our usual playground; and my recollection shrinks from the reign of terror under which we lived. In the summer I was delivered from Hurstmonceaux, going first with my mother to our dear Stoke home, which I had never seen before in all its wealth of summer flowers, and proceeding thence to the English lakes, where the delight of the flowers and the sketching was intense. But our pleasure was not unalloyed, for, though Uncle Julius accompanied us, my mother took Esther Maurice with her, wishing to give her a holiday after her hard work in school-teaching at Reading, and never foreseeing, what every one else foresaw, that Uncle Julius, who had always a pa.s.sion for governesses, would certainly propose to her. Bitter were the tears which my mother shed when this result--to her alone unexpected--actually took place. It was the most dismal of betrothals: Esther sobbed and cried, my mother sobbed and cried, Uncle Julius sobbed and cried daily. I used to see them sitting holding each other's hands and crying on the banks of the Rotha.

These scenes for the most part took place at Foxhow, where we paid a long visit to Mrs. Arnold, whose children were delightful companions to me. Afterwards we rented a small damp house near Ambleside--Rotha Cottage--for some weeks, but I was very ill from its unhealthiness, and terribly ill afterwards at Patterdale from the damp of the place.

Matthew Arnold, then a very handsome young man, was always excessively kind to me, and I often had great fun with him and his brothers, but he was not considered then to give any promise of the intellectual powers he showed afterwards. From Foxhow and Rotha Cottage we constantly visited Wordsworth and his dear old wife at Rydal Mount, and we walked with him to the Rydal Falls. He always talked a good deal about himself and his own poems, and I have a sense of his being not vain, but conceited. I have been told since, in confirmation of this, that when Milton's watch--preserved somewhere--was shown to him, he instantly and involuntarily drew out his own watch, and compared, not the watches, but the poets. The "severe creator of immortal things," as Landor called him, read us some of his verses admirably,[32] but I was too young at this time to be interested in much of his conversation, unless it was about the wild-flowers, to which he was devoted, as I was. I think that at Keswick we also saw Southey, but I do not remember him, though I remember his (very ugly) house very well. In returning south we saw Chester, and paid a visit to an old cousin of my mother's--"Dosey (Theodosia) Leigh," who had many quaint sayings. In allusion to her own maiden state, she would often complacently quote the old Cheshire proverb--"Bout's bare but it's yezzy."[33] While at Chester, though I forget how, I first became conscious how difficult the having Esther Maurice for an aunt would make everything in life to me. I was, however, at her wedding in November at Reading.

The winter of 1844-45 was the first of many which were made unutterably wretched by "Aunt Esther." Aunt Lucy had chastised me with rods, Aunt Esther did indeed chastise me with scorpions. Aunt Lucy was a very refined person, and a very charming and delightful companion to those she loved, and, had she loved me, I should have been devoted to her.

Aunt Esther was, from her own personal characteristics, a person I never could have loved. Yet my uncle was now entirely ruled by her, and my gentle mother considered her interference in everything as a cross which was "sent to her" to be meekly endured. The society at the Rectory was now entirely changed: all the relations of the Hare family, except the Marcus Hares, were given to understand that their visits were unwelcome, and the house was entirely filled with the relations of Aunt Esther--old Mr. and Mrs. Maurice; their married daughter Lucilla Powell, with her husband and children; their unmarried daughters--Mary, Priscilla, and Harriet[34]--Priscilla, who now never left her bed, and who was violently sick after everything she ate (yet with the most enormous appet.i.te), often for many months together.

With the inmates of the house, the whole "tone" of the Rectory society was changed. It was impossible entirely to silence Uncle Julius, yet at times even he was subdued by his new surroundings, the circle around him being incessantly occupied with the trivialities of domestic or parochial detail, varied by the gossip of such a tenth-rate provincial town as Reading, or reminiscences of the boarding-school which had been their occupation and pride for so many years. Frequently also the spare rooms were filled by former pupils--"young ladies" of a kind who would announce their engagement by "The infinite grace of G.o.d has put it into the heart of his servant Edmund to propose to me," or "I have been led by the mysterious workings of G.o.d's providence to accept the hand of Edgar,"[35]--expressions which Aunt Esther, who wrote good and simple English herself, would describe as touching evidences of a Christian spirit in her younger friends.

But what was far more trying to me was, that in order to prove that her marriage had made no difference in the sisterly and brotherly relations which existed between my mother and Uncle Julius, Aunt Esther insisted that my mother should dine at the Rectory _every_ night, and as, in winter, the late return in an open carriage was impossible, this involved our sleeping at the Rectory and returning home every morning in the bitter cold before breakfast. The hours after five o'clock in every day of the much-longed-for, eagerly counted holidays, were now absolute purgatory. Once landed at the Rectory, I was generally left in a dark room till dinner at seven o'clock, for candles were never allowed in winter in the room where I was left alone. After dinner I was never permitted to amuse myself, or to do _anything_, except occasionally to net. If I spoke, Aunt Esther would say with a satirical smile, "As if you ever _could_ say anything worth hearing, as if it was ever _possible_ that any one could want to hear what you have to say." If I took up a book, I was told instantly to put it down again, it was "disrespect to my Uncle." If I murmured, Aunt Esther, whose temper was absolutely unexcitable, quelled it by her icy rigidity. Thus gradually I got into the habit of absolute silence at the Rectory--a habit which it took me years to break through: and I often still suffer from the want of self-confidence engendered by reproaches and taunts which never ceased: for a day--for a week--for a year they would have been nothing: but for _always_, with no escape but my own death or that of my tormentor! Water dripping for ever on a stone wears through the stone at last.

The cruelty which I received from my new aunt was repeated in various forms by her sisters, one or other of whom was always at the Rectory.

Only Priscilla, touched by the recollection of many long visits during my childhood at Lime, occasionally sent a kindly message or spoke a kindly word to me from her sick-bed, which I repaid by constant offerings of flowers. Most of all, however, did I feel the conduct of Mary Maurice, who, by pretended sympathy and affection, wormed from me all my little secrets--how miserable my uncle's marriage had made my home-life, how I never was alone with my mother now, &c.--and repeated the whole to Aunt Esther.

From this time Aunt Esther resolutely set herself to subdue me thoroughly--to make me feel that any remission of misery at home, any comparative comfort, was as a gift from her. But to make me feel this thoroughly, it was necessary that all pleasure and comfort in my home should first be annihilated. I was a very delicate child, and suffered absolute agonies from chilblains, which were often large open wounds on my feet. Therefore I was put to sleep in "the Barracks"--two dismal unfurnished, uncarpeted north rooms, without fireplaces, looking into a damp courtyard, with a well and a howling dog. My only bed was a rough deal trestle, my only bedding a straw pallia.s.se, with a single coa.r.s.e blanket. The only other furniture in the room was a deal chair, and a washing-basin on a tripod. No one was allowed to bring me any hot water; and as the water in my room always froze with the intense cold, I had to break the ice with a bra.s.s candlestick, or, if that were taken away, with my wounded hands. If, when I came down in the morning, as was often the case, I was almost speechless from sickness and misery, it was always declared to be "temper." I was given "saur-kraut" to eat because the very smell of it made me sick.

When Aunt Esther discovered the comfort that I found in getting away to my dear old Lea, she persuaded my mother that Lea's influence over me was a very bad one, and obliged her to keep me away from her.

A favourite torment was reviling all my own relations before me--my sister, &c.--and there was no end to the insulting things Aunt Esther said of them.

People may wonder, and oh! how often have I wondered that my mother did not put an end to it all. But, inexplicable as it may seem, it was her extraordinary religious opinions which prevented her doing so. She literally believed and taught that when a person struck you on the right cheek you were to invite them to strike you on the left also, and therefore if Aunt Esther injured or insulted me in one way, it was right that I should give her the opportunity of injuring or insulting me in another! I do not think that my misery cost her nothing, she felt it acutely; but _because_ she felt it thus, she welcomed it, as a fiery trial to be endured. Lea, however, was less patient, and openly expressed her abhorrence of her own trial in having to come up to the Rectory daily to dress my mother for dinner, and walk back to Lime through the dark night, coming again, shine or shower, in the early morning, before my mother was up.

I would not have any one suppose that, on looking back through the elucidation of years, I can see no merits in my Aunt Esther Hare. The austerities which she enforced upon my mother with regard to me she fully carried out as regarded herself. "Elle vivait avec elle-m?me comme sa victime," as Mme. de Sta?l would describe it. She was the Inquisition in person. She probed and a.n.a.lysed herself and the motive of her every action quite as bitterly and mercilessly as she probed and a.n.a.lysed others. If any pleasure, any even which resulted from affection for others, had drawn her for an instant from what she believed to be the path--and it was always the th.o.r.n.i.e.s.t path--of self-sacrifice, she would remorselessly denounce that pleasure, and even tear out that affection from her heart. She fasted and denied herself in everything; indeed, I remember that when she was once very ill, and it was necessary for her to see a doctor, she never could be persuaded to consent to it, till the happy idea occurred of inducing her to do so on a Friday, by way of a penance! To such of the poor as accepted her absolute authority, Aunt Esther was unboundedly kind, generous, and considerate.

To the wife of the curate, who leant confidingly upon her, she was an unselfish and heroic nurse, equally judicious and tender, in every crisis of a perplexing and dangerous illness. To her own sisters and other members of her family her heart and home were ever open, with unvarying affection. To her husband, to whom her severe creed taught her to show the same inflexible obedience she exacted from others, she was utterly devoted. His requirement that she should receive his old friend, Mrs. Alexander, as a permanent inmate, almost on an equality with herself in the family home, and surround her with loving attentions, she bowed to without a murmur. But to a little boy who was, to a certain degree, independent of her, and who had from the first somewhat resented her interference, she knew how to be--oh! she was--most cruel.

Open war was declared at length between Aunt Esther and myself. I had a favourite cat called Selma, which I adored, and which followed me about at Lime wherever I went. Aunt Esther saw this, and at once insisted that the cat must be given up to her. I wept over it in agonies of grief: but Aunt Esther insisted. My mother was relentless in saying that I must be taught to give up my own way and pleasure to others; and forced to give it up if I would not do so willingly, and with many tears, I took Selma in a basket to the Rectory. For some days it almost comforted me for going to the Rectory, because then I possibly saw my idolised Selma. But soon there came a day when Selma was missing: Aunt Esther had ordered her to be ... hung!

From this time I never attempted to conceal that I loathed Aunt Esther.

I constantly gave her the presents which my mother made me save up all my money to buy for her--for her birthday, Christmas, New Year, &c.--but I never spoke to her unnecessarily. On these occasions I always received a present from her in return--"The Rudiments of Architecture," price ninepence, in a red cover. It was always the same, which not only saved expense, but also the trouble of thinking. I have a number of copies of "The Rudiments of Architecture" now, of which I thus became the possessor.

Only from Sat.u.r.day till Monday we had a reprieve. The nearness of Lime to the school which my mother undertook to teach on Sundays was the excuse, but, as I see from her journal, only the excuse, which she made to give me one happy day in the week. How well I remember still the ecstasy of these Sat.u.r.day evenings, when I was once more alone with the mother of my childhood, who was all the world to me, and she was almost as happy as I was in playing with my kittens or my little black spaniel "Lewes," and when she would sing to me all her old songs--"Hohenlinden,"

"Lord Ullin's Daughter," &c. &c.--and dear Lea was able to come in and out undisturbed, in the old familiar way.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE VESTRY, HURSTMONCEAUX.]

Even the pleasures of this home-Sunday, however, were marred in the summer, when my mother gave in to a suggestion of Aunt Esther that I should be locked into the vestry of the church between the services.

Miserable indeed were the three hours which--provided with a sandwich for dinner--I had weekly to spend there; and though I did not expect to see ghosts, the utter isolation of Hurstmonceaux Church, far away from all haunts of men, gave my imprisonment an unusual eeriness. Sometimes I used to clamber over the tomb of the Lords Dacre, which rises like a screen against one side of the vestry, and be stricken with vague terrors by the two grim white figures lying upon it in the silent desolation, in which the scamper of a rat across the floor seemed to make a noise like a whirlwind. At that time two grinning skulls (of the founder and foundress of the church, it was believed) lay on the ledge of the tomb; but soon after this Uncle Julius and Aunt Esther made a weird excursion to the churchyard with a spade, and buried them in the dusk with their own hands. In the winter holidays, the intense cold of the unwarmed church made me so ill, that it led to my miserable penance being remitted. James II. used to say that "Our Saviour flogged people to make them go out of the temple, but that he never punished them to make them go _in_."[36] But in my childhood no similar abstinence was observed.

It was a sort of comfort to me, in the real church-time, to repeat vigorously all the worst curses in the Psalms, those in which David showed his most appalling degree of malice (Psalm x.x.xv. 7-16, Psalm lix., Psalm lxix. 22-29, Psalm cxl. 9, 10, for instance), and apply them to Aunt Esther & Co. As all the Psalms were extolled as beatific, and the Church of England used them constantly for edification, their sentiments were all right, I supposed.

A great delight to me at this time was a cabinet with many drawers which my mother gave me to keep my minerals and sh.e.l.ls in, and above which was a little bookcase filled with all my own books. The aunts in vain tried to persuade her to take away "some of the drawers," so that I might "never have the feeling that the cabinet was wholly mine." When I returned to school, it was some amus.e.m.e.nt in my walks to collect for this cabinet the small fossils which abound in the Wiltshire limestone about Harnish, especially at Kellaway's quarry, a point which it was always our especial ambition to reach on holidays. At eleven years old I was quite learned about Pentacrinites, Bellemnites, Ammonites, &c.

It was often a sort of vague comfort to me at home that there was always one person at Hurstmonceaux Rectory whom Aunt Esther was thoroughly afraid of. It was the faithful old servant Collins, who had kept his master in order for many years. I remember that my Uncle Marcus, when he came to the Rectory, complained dreadfully of the tea, that the water with which it was made was never "on the boil," &c.--"they really must speak to Collins about it." But neither Uncle Julius nor Aunt Esther would venture to do it; they really couldn't: he must do it himself. And he did it, and very ill it was received.