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MR GARDINER and Mary had
removed to a house in the Fort in Rampart Row, where they were engaged
in packing up their effects, having determined on going home to England.
We were all distressed at this strange resolution; he was in good
health, she no worse in India than at home, and the child was thriving,
so that to throw up the service when he was so near the top seemed a
pity. However, they had decided on going; they took their passage in a
small Liverpool merchantman, three hundred tons, and waited only to see
me married. The last week of their stay, having sold all they did not
mean to carry home, they removed to the Retreat, which I was glad of for
all their sakes.
Ten days before our
marriage, news arrived of the death of my Colonel's brother, which made
him possessor of the Irish estate, then valued at £I2oo a year. My
Colonel wished me to put on mourning for his brother on reaching Satara,
so my wardrobe had no addition with the exception of three pretty new
gowns sent out luckily by the London dressmaker for me, with a pelisse
and hat and feathers for my mother, which she, not fancying, made over
to me.
My father gave me twenty
gold mohurs on my wedding morning, and as uncle Edward had also given me
a present, I felt rich for the first time in my life; and I never felt
poor again, and though circumstances reduced our future income
infinitely below our expectations, we so managed it that we have never
owed what we could not pay, nor ever known what it was to be pressed for
money.
My Colonel was married in
his staff uniform, which we thought became him better than his cavalry
light grey. There was a large party of relations, a few friends, and the
good Bishop, then only Mr Carr, married us. My mother, who had become
reconciled to my choice, outraged all propriety by going with me to the
Cathedral; both she and I wished it, as I was to proceed across the bay
immediately after the ceremony. So it all took place, how, I know not,
for with the awfulness of the step I was taking, the separation from my
father and mother, and the parting for an indefinite time from dear
Mary, I was bewildered all that morning, and hardly knew what I was
doing till I found myself in the boat sailing away among the islands,
far away from every one but him who was to be in lieu of all to me for
evermore.
In the month of October,
asthma, to which for many years my husband had been subject, attacked
him seriously. Night after night he spent In an easy chair smoking
stramonlum and appearing to suffer painfully. As the fit became worse
instead of better, Dr Bird, who had returned to his duties, advised
change of air, not to Poonah but to Bombay, to leave the high ground at
once and descend to the coast for a while. He told me privately the
stomach and liver were deranged from long residence in a tropical
climate and that our best plan would be to return home. This neither of
us wished, and we suggested the Neilgherrles; he said they were only a
makeshift, present ease, but no remedy. So we proceeded to Bombay, where
we took up our residence with my father and mother.
Colonel Smith felt better
for a day or two, and then he got ill again. Dr Eckford recommended a
consultation, so Dr M'Adam and Dr Penny were called in, and they decided
for a voyage home. Whether they were right or wrong, who can say? They
were so uneasy about him that they asked for a private interview with
me, and told me he was in serious ill-health, had been too long in that
climate, that another season could not but go very hard with him, that a
stay in the Neilgherries was only a palliative, not a cure, and that, in
short, were he not to sail for England they could not answer for the
consequences.
My father was unwilling
to lose us from India. He went again to Dr M'Adam, and on returning told
me there was nothing for it but the voyage home. I must own I was very
sorry. We had made up our minds to remain three years longer, and this
sudden retirement from place and pay was a disappointment.
After many inquiries,
visits to many ships in harbour, and careful search as to their
commanders, we decided to sail in the Childe Harold, a new, swift vessel
beautifully fitted up, commanded by Captain West, an old experienced
lieutenant in the Royal Navy. He was to make a coasting voyage, which
was particularly recommended for my husband.
This settled, we
furnished one of the poop cabins without much cost, as my father made
over to us a good deal of our former cabin furniture. The small cabin
next ours was taken for little Willy Anderson and his maid, who was to
act as mine. The Colonel engaged a native male attendant, as when a
violent fit of asthma attacked him he was totally helpless. The small
cabin opposite was taken by Dr Eckford, who had resolved to pay a short
visit to the Cape. We had thus prepared for as much comfort as a
homeward voyage admits of; it is rarely as pleasant as a voyage out,
for, in general, health and spirits are wanting to those who are leaving
their occupation behind them.
My last sight of my
father was in the cabin of the Childe Harold, where he and my mother
left me late on the evening of the 4th of November; he lingered behind
her one moment to fold me to his heart again, neither of us speaking,
and then he vanished from my sight for ever. Long I sat listening to the
stroke of the oars which carried them back in the darkness to their
desolate home. It was a dreary parting.
Very early in the morning
of some day towards the end of April 1830 we anchored in the roads off
Portsmouth. Most of the gentlemen called boats and went ashore. Captain
West returned with delicious things for breakfast, fresh eggs, butter,
cream, fine bread; how we enjoyed the feast I It gave us strength for
our preparations.
Our two servants
bestirred themselves; Malek was to remain on board in charge of our
heavy luggage; Mary, with the trunks selected, was to land with us. The
Colonel was the difficulty; for a week past he had not been able to move
hand or foot without bringing on a spasm. They had said at Bombay that
he would not live to reach home. They said at sea that he would die on
the voyage. It seemed this last day as if we should never get him safe
ashore.
A chair was prepared, he
was carried out to it, laid on it, lowered to the boat, lifted up and
settled among cushions. We were about half an hour rowing in, and we
landed by the same steps on the same quay, and we had secured rooms at
the same hotel looking on the harbour, from which I had started two
years and a half before for India. The captain had taken the rooms in
the morning as the nearest to the water and so the most convenient for
the poor Colonel. What was our amazement when the boat struck, to see
him rise unassisted, walk up the steps, and along the quay in his large
cloak, and seat himself in the little parlour without a gasp! We ordered
what seemed to us the most luxurious of repasts, tea, bread and butter,
and muffins; we even played whist, and when we went to bed, the Colonel
lay down and slept till morning, the first time he had ventured on such
an indulgence for six weeks. I was too happy to sleep.
Next day I walked about
the town with my colonel and found it piercingly cold on the Ramparts.
Before going out I had written to Jane to say we should be with her next
day. Dear Jane, she was watching at the gate when we reached Malshanger.
The party assembled at
Maishanger consisted of Mary, her husband, and two children, Tom having
been born the previous January, William, aunt Bourne, and her
stepdaughter, Henrietta. Aunt Bourne had been at Maishanger all along;
her rich and happy marriage had ended in a second widowhood, and she was
left the charge of a stepdaughter, who was to her all that her own
daughter could have been. Henrietta was particularly attractive in looks
and manners, and took to us all. Poor little Willy Anderson, who cried
bitterly on leaving his "auntie," was to be delivered to Miss Elphick in
Kensington; she had given up the governess line, having her mother to
provide for, and was trying to establish a sort of infant
boarding-school, which, poor soul, she never succeeded in making a
profitable speculation.
The Gardiners had taken a
cottage at a pretty village three miles off down the hill, surrounding
the parish church which we attended; they took it for six months. It was
an old, good-sized farm cottage, with a porch, and a draw-well, and
latticed windows, and a new front, with large rooms, and large windows
looking on a flower-garden. Their voyage in that little boat had been
very boisterous; they escaped shipwreck by a mere chance; instead of
landing at Liverpool they were stranded on the coast of Galloway, landed
in boats, started with half their luggage for London, in postchaises,
and after a London lodging took a house at Ham, to be near Mr Gardiner's
aunt, Miss Porter; then they tried Cheltenham, and at last responded to
Jane's proposal of this cottage. A few days sufficed to settle them most
comfortably. They were very happy there, always cheerful, everything
nice about them, the children merry, dear little things. Jane and I
often drove in the basket-carriage with "Goody," and while she wandered
through the village visiting the poor people who shared her bounties, I
sat by Mary's work-table in the window opening on the garden, where Mr
Gardiner delighted in being busy, little Janie in her white frock and
blue sash trotting about the room, and baby Tommy on my knee.
All parties were anxious
that my Colonel and I should settle in that neighbourhood; there was a
desirable place, Tangier, to be let, but we could not take it. The sharp
air disagreed with him, and besides, duty and his early attachments
recalled him to his own green isle. In London he was comparatively well;
asthma attacked him directly he returned to us. It was plain he could
not stay at Maishanger, so he left us for Dublin.
My sisters and I had a
subject of anxiety in William's engagement to Sally Siddons; about this
time she came on a visit to Mary, her sister Elizabeth followed to
Maishanger; William, of course, was with his affianced. The news of
their engagement had not reached Bombay when we sailed. I met it in
England, I must say, with dismay. I feared my mother would give way to a
violence of disapproval that would make all concerned very
uncomfortable, and that would upset my father. Very anxiously we all
awaited our Indian letters, Jane, Mary, and I were grave, William in a
fever, Sally calm. Mrs Siddons had written to my father detailing the
progress of the attachment, which she would not sanction without his
consent. She touched on William's faults of character, but believed them
to have been redeemed by the way in which he had supported adversity.
William was keeping his terms at the Temple, Lord Gleneig having
obtained permission for him to proceed as a barrister to Bengal. The
last paragraph of Mrs Siddons' letter did probably no harm; it stated
that Sally's fortune would be at least ten thousand pounds.
My father received this
letter alone, and alone he determined to consider it before venturing to
inform my mother. He passed a sleepless night, and when at dawn he made
up his mind to rouse his sleeping partner with the news, he found he
might have saved himself all perturbation; my mother had heard nothing
for a long while that had given her so much pleasure! A most cordial
invitation to William and his wife accompanied the consent to the
marriage; Jane gave a grand dinner, Colonel Pennington produced
champagne, and an evening of happy family cheerfulness followed.
On the 3rd of July my
baby girl was born. I had a peep of my husband on his way from Dublin to
London, and he returned only to take me away, being ordered by his
doctor to Cheltenham for a course of the waters. He came back in a
pretty britchka that he and William had chosen for me; Annie N— and
these two travelling together in it. After a few days we packed up and
packed off', and then indeed I felt I was gone out from among my own
kindred, and had set up independently—a husband—a baby—an end indeed of
Eliza Grant. |
