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WE were now to travel back
to London in the sociable, rather cold work in cold autumn weather. We
had to drive unicorn, for one of the grey horses was gone; the other
therefore had the honour of leading, a triangular style not then common,
which ensured us an abundant amount of staring during our journey, a
long one, for we made a round by the west country in order to pay two
visits. My uncle Leitch had bought a pretty place near Glasgow, and made
a handsome house out of the shabby one he found there by adding to the
front a great building in very good taste. We two were quite astonished
at the first aspect of Kilmerdinny. Large, wide steps led to a portico,
a good hall, and then a circular saloon the height of the house, out of
which all the rooms opened, those on the upper floor being reached by a
gallery which ran round the saloon. Fine gardens, greenhouse, hothouses,
hot walls, plenty of fruit, a lake with two swans on it—and butler at
our breakfast—made us believe ourselves in Paradise! There was a
beautiful drawing-room and a sunny little parlour, and a window
somewhere above at which our handsome aunt appeared and threw out pears
to us. We were sorry to go away, although there were no children to play
with. The house was full of company, but they did not interfere with us,
and when we did see any of these strangers they were very kind to us.
But the day of departure came, the sociable was packed, and we set off
for Tennochside in Lanarkshire, near the Clyde, near Hamilton, and about
eight miles from Glasgow.
Uncle Ralph, my mother's
second brother, had been bred to the law; he had entered the office of a
friend, Mr Kinderley, an attorney of repute in London, but he never
liked the business, and on one of his visits to aunt Leitch, an
acquaintance of old standing with the heiress of Tennochside suddenly
blazed up into a love- fit on her side, which he, vain and idle, could
not resist, and they were married. My poor aunt Judy, a good excellent
woman, not the very least suited to him, plain in person, poor in
intellect, without imagination or accomplishment, had not money enough
to make up for the life of privation such a man had to lead with her. He
was certainly punished for his mercenary marriage. Still, in an odd way
of their own they got on, each valuing the other, though not exactly
agreeing, save in two essential points—love for Tennochside and for
their two children. Eliza, the elder, was at this time exactly five
years old, Edmund, still in arms, a mere baby. Here we had no fine
house, but a very comfortable one, no finery, but every luxury, and the
run through the woods or by the river-side was something like our own
home to us. We did not like our cousin Eliza, though she was a pretty
child, and seemingly fond of us; she was so petted, and spoiled and
fretful, that she teased us. The night that I danced my Shean Trews—in a
new pair of yellow (!) slippers bought at Perth on our way—.-she cried
so much because she could not do the same, that she had to be sent to
bed. Next day therefore I was sent for to help my aunt Judy in the
storeroom, where she made the sweet things for the second course at
dinner, and she had a great cry again; a lesson that did neither of us
any good, for I was conceited enough without any additional flatteries,
and she only ran away to the old parlour where her great-aunt old Miss
Jopplin always sat, who petted her up into a sort of sulky good humour
again. We did not leave Tennochside with as much regret as we had
quitted Kilmerdinny.
Aunt Mary and our two
little sisters were in Lincoln's Inn Fields to receive us; how we flew
to them! Jane and William were in ecstasies; they had always been
inseparable play-fellows, and were overjoyed to be together again. Mary
did not know us, at which I cried. She was amazingly grown, quite a
large child, almost as tall as Jane and stouter, quiet, silent, and yet
loved by all of us. Jane and William had a deal to say; she really was a
boy in all her tastes; she played top, bat, leap-frog, fought, climbed
trees, rode astride on the rocking-horse, and always put on her spencers
and pinafores the wrong way to make believe they were jackets. I was
forced to turn to Mary, who understood my quiet plays with my doll, her
dress, and meals, and visitors. I daresay we were as happy as were our
more boisterous companions, who, indeed, sometimes tamed down to
associate with us. We were loving and happy children.
For the next three years
we lived entirely in England; my father went north during this time
once, if not twice, to look after various matters; none of us went with
him. Our winters were passed in Lincoln's Inn Fields, our summers at
Twyford, which place my father rented of my aunt Lissy, having let his
own, Thorley. We were also one spring at Tunbridge Wells for my mother,
whom I never remember well for long together. It must have been often
dull for her. When she was well enough she diversified her sober life by
taking us to the play, and me to the Hanover Square and other concerts.
She very rarely went out to private parties. Once I remember sitting up
to help her toilette on a grand occasion—a rout at the Duchess of
Gordon's; the hours were then more rational than they are now, she was
dressed and off by nine o'clock, very little later than my bedtime. Her
appearance has often recurred to me, for she was very lovely; her gown
was white satin trimmed with white velvet, cut in a formal pattern, then
quite the rage, a copy from some of the Grecian borders in Mr Hope's
book; she had feathers in her hair and a row of pearls round her neck,
from which depended a large diamond locket; the gown was short-waisted
and narrow-skirted, but we thought it beautiful; a touch of rouge
finished matters; and then Mrs Lynch, taking a candle, preceded her lady
downstairs. My mother stooped to kiss me as she passed, and to thank me
for holding the pins so nicely. The candle carried away, there remained
another lit, which had been moved to a small table close to the wardrobe
where Mrs Lynch had been searching for something wanted; a book lay near
it, I took it up. It was the first volume of the Letters of Lady
Hertford and Lady Pomfret, the old edition, good-sized print and not
over many lines on the octavo page. I read a line, some more lines, went
on, sat down; and there, Heaven knows how long afterwards, I was found
tucked up in the arm-chair absorbed in my occupation, well scolded of
course—that followed as a matter of necessity for wasting the candle
when every one supposed me to he in bed; why my nurse did not see that I
was safe there she did not explain. I was half afraid to allude to my
book in the morning, but finding no complaints had been made, took
courage and asked permission to read it, which being readily granted,
many a happy hour was spent over those delightful volumes. They were
read and read again, and my father, finding I understood them, and could
give a good reason for preferring Lady Hertford's charming way of
telling her home news to the more exciting letters of her travelling
correspondent, gave me Lady Mary Wortley Montague. We were also
introduced this spring of 1805 or 6, I am not sure which, to Miss
Edgeworth's Parent's Assistant, and the Arabian Tales. I somehow mix up
the transactions of these three years, recollecting only the general
progress we made and confusing the details; the three winters in London
are all jumbled up together, the summers stand out more prominently.
Our principal London
pleasure was the play, to which we went frequently, generally to Covent
Garden, which we soon learned to consider as more decidedly our house.
We had the Duke of Bedford's private box, sometimes meeting the Duchess
of Gordon there, which we liked above all things, for then we had ices,
fruits, and cakes in the little ante-room adjoining. In spite of all
these amusements, the first note of preparation for the country caused a
sort of delirium in our nursery; it was as if we had been prisoners
expecting freedom, so much more natural to the young are green fields
and shady lanes than the confinement of a city.
In the spring of 1805 we
went for a few weeks to Tunbridge Wells, while some of the servants were
getting Twyford ready. We lodged in a gloomy house near the Pantiles,
with no garden, only a courtyard before it, which got very slippery in
showery weather; but M. Beckvelt, our good old French master, was with
us, and took us long wandering walks over the heath, and to the rocks,
and up to Sion Hill, as happy as we were ourselves, as much a child too.
He laughed and chattered French, and ran and climbed and gathered
flowers as we did, always in the tight nankins, with the snuff-box and
the powdered hair. I know not what he had been before the Revolution in
his own country—only a bourgeois he told us—but he was a dear, kind old
man, like the good fathers or tutors we read about in L'Arni des Enfants.
He brought some Contes de Fées down with him to Tunbridge, with which we
got on very quickly; we made, however, greater progress in Le Boulanger,
which we danced on the heath like witches, screaming out the chorus like
possessed things; the people must have thought us crazy when any passed
our magic circle.
The remainder of this
summer, and the two summers following, 1806 and 1807, we spent entirely
at Twyford, the winters in London, as I said before, never all this time
going near the Highlands. My father took a run to the north when he
thought it necessary, but my mother was glad to remain quiet with her
children In the south, which part of the world, I think, she had begun
to prefer to her more romantic home, now that the novelty of her
Highland life had worn off a little.
Twyford was one of the
most comfortable, modernised old residences that any one need wish to
live in. It was ugly enough on the outside, a heavy, square, red brick
building with little windows and dumpy chimneys; a small, squat dome
upon the top, within which was a great church clock, and an observatory
stuck up at one end like an ear, or a tall factory chimney, ending in a
glass lantern. In front was a small bit of shrubbery hardly hiding the
road, and beyond a short double avenue of lime trees stretching across a
green field; behind was a more extensive shrubbery and flower-garden,
divided by a light railing from pretty meadows dotted over with fruit
trees. On one side was a walled garden and the farm offices, on the
other the kitchen court, stables and stable-yard, and an immense flour
mill, all upon the river Stort, a sluggish stream moving along, canal
fashion, close to the premises. Barges heavily laden plied all day long
backwards and forwards on this dingy water, and as there was a lock just
underneath the laundry windows,. scenes as merry as those in the broom
island took place on the flat banks of the lazy Stort among the
bargemen, the dusty millers, and the men and maids of the kitchen court.
To the elder part of the family all this commotion must have been a
nuisance, to us children such noisy doings were a delight. We had a post
of observation contrived by ourselves in the middle of the wide yew
hedge which bounded the back shrubbery on the riverside, and there, from
what we called our summer parlour, we made many more observations than
were always agreeable to the observed. There was a large establishment
of servants, and no very steady head over them, for Lynch had married
Mackenzie, and they had gone to keep the inn at Aviemore, a melancholy
change for us little people; but we had to bear a worse.
In the summer of 1806
aunt Lissy married. Her particular friend was a Miss Susan Frere, who
had been her favourite companion at the school in Queen's Square where
she had been educated. Miss Frere's father, a gentleman of consideration
in the county of Norfolk, had seven sons, and it was his fourth son,
George, who was lucky enough to gain the heart of one of the best of
women. The courtship had begun by means of letters through the sister;
it had been carried on at the Hanover Square concert rooms at rare
intervals, for no one was aware of the progress of this seldom-noticed
lover till the engagement was announced. My mother thought the pair had
met in Wimpole Street, and Mrs Raper was sure he visited at Lincoln's
Inn Fields, and both houses felt amazed at such an affair having been
managed unknown to either. The first time that I became aware of what
was going on was one day in the spring before our removal to Twyford in
1806. I was sitting near an open window in the front drawing-room beside
my aunt Lissy, who had been ill, and was only sufficiently recovered to
be nursed up carefully. Some humble friend had called to see her, and
while they were conversing on their charity affairs, I was amusing
myself watching the progress along the dead wall which supported the
terrace walk of the Lincoln's Inn gardens, of the tall Mr Frere who had
lately begun to come among us, and whose nankins always attracted me. As
I expected, he was lost to sight for a moment only to emerge the
brighter, for he soon appeared round the corner of the Griffin Wilsons'
garden, and across our courtyard up to the door. His knock brought the
colour into my aunt's pale face; she also dismissed the humble friend,
and then, forgetting me, she rose briskly to receive Mr Frere, and told
him laughing how she had sent away an inconvenient third. Of course my
turn soon came, but I was so busy arranging all my conjectures that they
had to tell me twice to run away and play before I recollected to obey.
When I reached the nursery I announced without more ado the impending
marriage, which soon after was officially proclaimed. Both bride and
bridegroom set about the preparations for their change of condition in a
quiet, straightforward, business-like manner that much amused my mother
and my aunt Mary. Mr Frere took a house in Brunswick Square, which aunt
Lissy went with him to see. After due consideration they decided on
buying all the furniture left in it by the late proprietor, to which my
aunt added a great deal belonging to her from the stores at Twyford of
beautiful Indian wares, and all that she had gathered together for her
own comfort while her home was with us. Her bedroom looked very bare
when all in it belonging to her had left it; and the back drawing- room
we always lived in, deprived of pictures, flower- stands, bookcases,
china and other pretty things, with a really nice collection of books,
was nearly empty, and it never quite recovered the loss, for my mother
had no turn for adornments; she kept a clean house, a good table, a tidy
room, always putting in the stitch in time, but she did not care for
knick-knacks, at least she did not care to buy them; parting with them
was a different affair; she was angry at the loss of what she had been
used to see around her, and while my imperturbable aunt Lissy day by day
continued her dismantlings and her careful packings, my mother's
surprise grew to indignation, as Jane and I were quick enough to find
out by means of certain mysterious conversations between her and aunt
Mary. They fancied that the low tone in which they spoke and the curious
language they employed effectually veiled the meaning of their gossip;
instead, therefore, of sending us away when they had private
communications to make, they merely bid us go to some other part of the
room, while they tried to conceal the subject of their whisperings by
the ingenious addition of "mis" to every word they spoke, as "Didvus
youvus evervus hearvus ofvus," etc. At first
we supposed this was another continental language different from French,
which we were ourselves learning, but the proper names sometimes used
instead of hevus shevus gave us a clue to the cypher,
which soon enabled us to translate it.
Our first summer at
Twyford had been very happy, both our aunts, Mary and Lissy, were with
us, and cousin James Griffith, who was a great favourite. The queer old
house particularly pleased us; there was the long garret under the roof,
a capital place for romping, and such hiding-places!—the great clock
chamber, turrets and turret stairs, observatory and crooked corners, and
odd closets, all charming! then such a yew hedge! a famous gravel-walk
beside It, a garden so well stocked, such an orchard, fruits hardly
known by more than sight showering down their treasures when we shook
the trees. Another amusement of that first year was bat-hunting; the
house had been so long shut up, so little looked after, that the cellars
and even the kitchen offices were actually swarming with bats; they hung
down from the rafters in hundreds, and were infinitely more hard to
dislodge than the mice in the Highlands. We were so used to them
flapping about our ears within and without after dark, that even the
servants gave up complaining of them, and only that they were unpleasant
to the sense of smell, vigorous war would hardly have been waged against
them. We had merry walks, too, through the fields, a firm pathway, and
stile after stile all the way to Bishop's Stortford; and in the autumn
such nutting parties, the hedges full of blackberries, sloes, nuts, and
bullaces; and then the walnuts! we were stained to the colour of
gipsies. The second summer was even happier, for good M. Beckvelt came
for a month or more. He took us long walks all over the country, to
Thorley Wood and Thorleyhurst, and among the pretty shady lanes
abounding in every direction. We prefered him to the nursery-maids, for
he really had no pleasure but ours.
The peasantry were
uninteresting so after a few cottage visits we gave up any attempt at
acquaintance in that sphere, but the fields were charming. We went to
church at Thorley always, sitting in the old Raper pew, and so pretty
was that old church, so very pretty the old Raper Hall in which my
father's tenant Mr Voules lived, that we used to wonder we did not live
there ourselves. Mr Frere came frequently to see us, and sometimes a
tall brother with him. These were our gala days, for they played bat and
ball, battledoor and shuttlecock, cricket, hunt the slipper, puss in the
corner, and a hundred other games, which they had the knack of making
every one, young and old, join in out on the lawn in the back shrubbery,
under the shade of a fine chestnut tree. They seldom came either without
a cargo of presents for the children; the clan Frere therefore was so
much in favour that we hardly regretted the parting from our kind aunt,
little understanding then how much our childish happiness had depended
on the little quiet woman who seemed to be of no account.
Our dear aunt Lissy had
never interfered with the baby, little Mary. She was now at three years
of age Mrs Millar's principal charge and my mother's pet. We three elder
ones had been her care, and how she had managed us we only found out by
comparing it with the mismanagement that followed. Having few lessons
and no employment but such as we contrived for ourselves, our play-hours
were so many as to tire us, our tempers suffered, and Mrs Millar, not
possessing the best herself, sadly annoyed ours. I was active, pert,
violent, Jane indolent and sulky, William impracticable, never out of
humour, but quietly and thoroughly self- willed. One mode was applied to
all; perpetual faultfinding, screams, tears, sobs, thumps, formed the
staple of the nursery history from this time forward. We were as little
upstairs as we could help, though we were not always much better off
below, for If my mother or aunt Mary were not in the vein for hearing
our lessons, they had little patience with our mistakes or our
questions; my mother would box our ears with her pretty white hand, and
aunt Mary had a spiteful fillip with the thimble-finger which gave a
painful sting; bursts of crying, of course, followed, when the
delinquents were despatched to dark closets, where they were sometimes
forgotten for hours. There was no kind Mrs Lynch to watch us, steal to
our prison door and carry us off to her room to be employed and kept
from mischief. She was as great a loss as aunt Lissy, in one
particular—a serious matter to me, my breakfast —a greater. Our nursery
breakfast was ordered, without reference to any but Houghton customs, to
be dry bread and cold milk the year round, with the exception of three
winter months, when in honour of our Scotch blood we were favoured with
porridge; the meal came from Scotland with the kegs of butter and
barrels of eggs and bags of cheese, etc., but it was boiled by the
English maids in any but north country fashion. Had we been strong
children this style of food might have suited us, many large healthy
families have thriven on the like; but though seldom ailing, we
inherited from my father a delicacy of constitution demanding great care
during our infancy. In those days it was the fashion to take none; all
children alike were plunged into the coldest water, sent abroad in the
worst weather, fed on the same food, clothed in the same light manner.
From the wintry icy bath aunt Lissy had saved us; our good nurse Herbert
first, and then Mrs Lynch, had always made us independent of the hated
milk breakfast; but when they were gone and the conscientious Mrs
Millar, my mother's "treasure," reigned alone, our life was one long
misery, at least to William and me who were not favourites. In town, a
large, long tub stood in the kitchen court, the ice on the top of which
had often to be broken before our horrid plunge into it; we were brought
down from the very top of the house, four pair of stairs, with only a
cotton cloak over our night-gowns, just to chill us completely before
the dreadful shock. How I screamed, begged, prayed, entreated to be
saved, half the tender-hearted maids in tears beside me; all no use,
Millar had her orders (so had our dear Betty, but did she always obey
them?). Nearly senseless I have been taken to the housekeeper's room,
which was always warm, to be dried; there we dressed, without any
flannel, and in cotton frocks with short sleeves and low necks. Revived
by the fire, we were enabled to endure the next bit of martyrdom, an
hour upon the low sofa, so many yards from the nursery hearth, our books
in our hands, while our cold breakfast was preparing. My stomach
entirely rejecting milk, bread and tears generally did for me, a diet
the consequences of which soon manifested themselves. From being a
bright, merry, though slight, child, I became thin, pale and peaky, and
woefully changed in disposition, slyness being added to my natural
violence, as I can recollect now with shame. William told fibs by the
dozen, because he used to be asked whether he had done, or not done, so
and so, and did not dare answer truthfully on account of the severity of
the punishments to which he was subjected. We began all our
ill-behaviour soon after aunt Lissy's marriage. On my father's return
from his canvass in Morayshire he received bad accounts of our
misconduct. The recapitulation of all our offences to my father drove us
to despair, for we loved him with an intensity of affection that made
his good opinion essential to our happiness; we also dreaded his
sternness, all his judgments being a la Brutus, nor did he ever remit a
sentence once pronounced. The milk rebellion was crushed immediately; in
his dressing-gown, with his whip in his hand, he attended our
breakfast—the tub at this season we liked, so he had no occasion to
superintend the bathing—but that disgusting milk! He began with me; my
beseeching look was answered by a sharp cut, followed by as many more as
were necessary to empty the basin; Jane obeyed at once, and William
after one good hint. They suffered less than I did; William cared less,
he did not enjoy this breakfast, but he could take it; Jane always got
rid of it, she had therefore only hunger to endure; I, whose stomach was
either weaker or stronger, had to bear an aching head, a heavy, sick
painful feeling which spoilt my whole morning, and prevented any
appetite for dinner, where again we constantly met with sorrow. Whatever
was on the table we were each to eat, no choice was allowed us. The
dinners were very good, one dish of meat with vegetables, one tart or
pudding. On broth or fish days no pudding, these days were therefore not
in favour; but our maigre days, two in the week during summer, we
delighted in, fruit and eggs being our favourite dishes. How happy our
dinner hour was when aunt Lissy was with us! a scene of distress often
afterwards. My mother never had such an idea as that of entering her
nursery, when she wanted her children or her maids she rang for them;
aunt Mary, of course, had no business there; the cook was pretty sure of
this, the broth got greasy, the vegetables heavy with water, the
puddings were seldom brown. Mrs Millar allowed no orts, our shoulders of
mutton—we ate all the shoulders —were to be cut fair, fat and lean, and
to be eaten fair, a hard task for Jane and me. The stomachs which
rejected milk could not easily manage fat except when we were under the
lash, then indeed the fat and the tears were swallowed together; but my
father could not always be found to act overseer, and we had sometimes a
good fight for it with our upright nurse, a fight ending in victory as
regarded the fat, though we suffered In another way the pains of defeat,
as on these occasions we were deprived of pudding; then, if I were
saucy, or Jane in a sulky fit, the scene often ended in the dark closet,
where we cried for an hour or more, while William and little Mary
finished the pudding.
This barbarity lasted
only a short time, owing to my ingenious manufacture of small paper bags
which we concealed in our laps under the table, and took opportunities
of filling with our bits of fat; these we afterwards warily disposed of
at Twyford through the yew hedge into the river, in town elsewhere.
Another serious grief we
had connected with our food. We could refuse nothing that was prepared
for us; if we did we not only got nothing else, but the dish declined
was put by to appear again at the next meal, and be disposed of before
we were permitted to have what else there was. Jane greatly disliked
green vegetables, spinach or cabbage in particular; it was nature
speaking (poor nature I so unheeded in those times), for these plants
disagreed with her, yet she must eat them. I have known a plate of
spinach kept for her from dinner one day to supper the next, offered at
each meal and refused, and not even a bit of bread substituted all those
long hours, till sheer hunger got the better of her dislike, and she
gave herself a night of sickness by swallowing the mess. Fancy a young
child kept thirty hours without food and then given poison ! the
dungeons of feudal times were In their degree not more iniquitous than
these proceedings.
Of course under this
régime the rhubarb bottle became a necessity in the nursery. I had my
French beans antipathy, and it was to be overcome in the same way,
followed by the same cure for its effects. In addition to the dose of
rhubarb, nauseous enough in itself, our breakfast on medicine mornings
was water gruel—I can see it now, unstrained, thick, black, and seasoned
with salt; this frightful bowl gave me an obstinate fit in Jane's style,
from which I suffered in the same way; breakfast, dinner, and supper
passed, and the cold gruel remained untouched; faint from hunger I lay
down in the evening on the floor of the closet where I had passed the
summer's day, and sobbed out that I wished to die I One of the
housemaids on her tour of window-shutting, a Hertfordshire girl named
Sally Withan, whom I remember with gratitude to this hour, unturned the
key which kept me prisoner, and threw beside me some red-streaked
apples. I have loved apples ever since. Good-humoured, rosy-cheeked
Sally Withan I She said if she could find that nasty gruel, it should
not plague her sweet young lady no more, she'd answer for it! I was not
slow to give the hint, and certainly on being called to bed, whither I
went without a kiss or a good-night or even appearing downstairs, fresh
gruel, better it seemed to me, warm at any rate, and a slice of bread,
were thankfully received after the miserable day of fasting.
Even poor little Mary did
not escape the Spartan rules of my father's discipline; for her baby
errors she had to bear her punishment. She used to be set on the lowest
step of the stair at "naughty times," and not be allowed to move from
there till permission was given. One night my father forgot her, so, I
suppose, had every one else, for on ringing for wine and water at
midnight, the footman who brought it up found the poor little thing
lying there asleep. She had sat there since dinner. We used to comfort
one another in our troubles when we could manage it, and many a "goody"
the good children secreted and carried to be given with kisses and hugs
to the poor desolate culprit, who all the time believed him or herself
to be disgracefully guilty.
This is the dark side of
the picture; we had very happy hours as well; despotically as we were
ruled in some respects, we were left in other ways to our own devices.
We disposed of our time very much according to our own fancies, subject
to certain rules. We were always to appear at the breakfast-table of our
father and mother some time between ten and eleven o'clock; the last of
the three regular ringings of my father's dressing-room bell was our
signal for leaving our plays; we ran off to brush our hair, wash our
hands, and seize our books, with which provided we repaired to the
breakfast-room, where our duties were to run messages; in summer to
amuse ourselves quietly till called upon to stir; in winter to make the
toast. Breakfast over, we said our few lessons to my mother, and read in
turns. I was supposed to have practised the pianoforte early. If we were
wanted again during the day we were sent for, though frequently we spent
the whole morning in the drawing-room, where we employed ourselves as we
liked, provided we made no noise. The prettily-wound cotton balls had
already superseded the skeins, so that we were saved that piece of
business. In the hot summer days aunt Mary often read to us fairy tales,
or bits from the Elegant Extracts, latterly Pope's Homer, which with her
explanations we enjoyed extremely, all but the Shield of Achilles, the
long description of which I feared was never to end. When my father was
away my mother dined with us early, and in the evenings we took long
drives in the open landau and four. When he was at home, and the late
dinner proceeded in full form —and what a tedious ceremony it was!—we
all appeared at the dessert, or rather at the second course, in full
dress like the footmen. We sat in a row—we four, little Mary and all, on
four chairs placed against the wall—trained to perfect quiet; we were to
see and to smell, but to taste nothing, to hear and not to speak; but on
the dessert appearing we were released, called forward to receive a
little wine, a little fruit, and a biscuit, and then to have our game at
romps; the riot generally forced our nervous mother to retire, and then
quite at ease, in good earnest began the fun.
Sometimes my father was
an ogre groping about for little children, whom he caught and tickled
nearly into fits; sometimes he was a sleeping giant whom we besieged in
his castle of chairs, could hardly waken, and yet dreaded to hear snore.
Whatever the play was it was always charming, and redeemed all troubles.
We looked forward to this happy hour as to a glimpse of heaven; milk,
cabbage, fat, rhubarb, and gruel were all forgotten, and the whippings
too; he was no longer the severe master, he was the best of
play-fellows. We dreaded hearing of his absence, as all our joy went
with him; we hailed his return as our chief blessing. He soon found out
that no punishment had such effect upon any of us as exclusion from the
romping hour. Once or twice it was my fate to remain upon my chair in
that row against the wall, while the romp went on around me; to be told
to remain there as unworthy of my share in the fun. I don't think I ever
needed a third lesson, although the faults had not been very heinous;
the most flagrant was my having provided myself with a private store of
apples, gathered only from underneath the trees, but concealed in one of
the queer little triangular cupboards scattered up and down the turret
stairs, and intended to furnish out our play banquets up in the haunted
attic. The summer of 1807 was the last we spent at Twyford.
Just before leaving town
we had seen our dear aunt Lissy's little boy, poor John Frere, a fine
plain, healthy baby, when as a secret I was told to expect a little
brother or sister shortly at home, for whose arrival many preparations
were making. Jane hemmed some new soft towels for it—very badly—and I
made all the little cambric shirts so neatly, that I was allowed to
begin a sampler as a reward, and to go to Bishop's Stortford to buy the
canvas and the coloured worsteds necessary.
My father had been in the
north. Parliament had been dissolved, and he had set up for Morayshire;
his opponent was Colonel Francis Grant, the second son of his Chief, who
had all the Tory interest and a deal of clannish help besides; feudal
feeling being still strong in the Highlands, although personally there
was no doubt as to the popularity of the two candidates My father ran up
to within two votes of his cousin; all the consolation he had for
setting the county in a flame, losing his time, wasting his money, and
dividing irremediably the House of Grant against itself. Years before he
had canvassed Inverness, Sir James giving all his Interest to the East
India Director, Charles Grant, who to secure his seat promised my father
unlimited Indian appointments if he would give in. This was the secret
of my father's Indian patronage, through which he provided ultimately
for so many poor cadets. How much each of such appointments cost him
unluckily he never calculated. He was very little cast down by his ill
success.
My father turned the
remainder of his time in the Highlands to farming account, for he was
exceedingly interested in agriculture, particularly anxious to open the
eyes of the Hertfordshire people, who at that time pursued the most
miserable of the old-fashioned English systems. The first year we went
to Twyford he had established a Scotch grieve there; he built a proper
set of offices, introduced rotation crops, deep ploughing, weeding, hay
made in three days, corn cut with a scythe, and housed as cut, cattle
stall-fed; and I remember above all a field of turnips that all, far and
near, came to look and wonder at—turnips in drills, and two feet apart
in the rows, each turnip the size of a man's head. It was the first such
field ever seen in those parts, and so much admired by two-footed
animals that little was left for the four-footed. All the lanes in the
neighbourhood were strewn with the green tops cut off by the
depredators. The Scotch farming made the Hertfordshire bumpkins stare,
but it produced no imitators during the short period it was tried by us.
The speculation did not enrich the speculator. We ate our own mutton,
poultry, and vegetables in town, as well as in the country, the
market-cart coming to Lincoln's Inn Fields weekly with all supplies; we
had a cow, too, in the London stables, changed as required. But Mr Reid
got to drink too much gin, Mrs Reid lay in bed in the mornings and saw
company In the evenings. The laundry-maids also entertained a large
acquaintance with the dairy produce, for they united the two conditions;
so that though we lived in luxury we paid well for it, made no friends,
and were cheated by our servants, for besides the liberal way in which
they helped themselves they neglected their master's business.
My father had gone to the
Trysts after losing Moray, and bought a large drove of fine young black
cattle, for no small penny. These were sent south under the care of two
Highland drovers. The fine field of turnips during the winter and the
rich grass of the Hertford- shire meadows being expected to feed such
beef for the London market as, to say the truth, the English people of
that day had little notion of. There were above a hundred head; they
were put to rest in the small paddock between the orchard and the river
bordered on the shrubbery side by the yew hedge. Poor beasts! I forget
how many survived; it was heart-breaking to see them next day lying
about the field dying from the effects of the poison.
This unfortunate business
disgusted my father with his English improvements; at least after this
summer we never saw Twyford again. He sold Thorley Hall to Lord
Ellenborough for £20,000, I have heard, £10,000 of which bought Kinloss
near Forres, the remainder helping off the accounts of the Morayshire
canvass. |
