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THE Rapers are an old
Buckinghamshire family of Norman descent, as their name anciently spelt
Rapier attests. Where they came from, or when they came, or what they
were, I really do not know, but so strong a leaven of Puritanism
pervaded the Christian names of the family, that I cannot but think they
were known in the days of the Commonwealth for more stirring deeds than
suited them in after-times; they descended to us as scientific men,
calm, quiet, retired, accomplished oddities. How any of them came to
settle in Hertfordshire was not explained, but it so happened that two
brothers established themselves in that county within a mile of one
another; Matthew at Thorley Hall, John at Twyford. Matthew never
married, John took to wife Elizabeth [Hale, daughter of Elizabeth]
Beaumont, descended in the direct line from Sir John Beaumont, the
author of Bosworth Field and the elder brother of the dramatist. I
remember mentioning this with no little pride to Lord Jeffrey, when he
answered quietly he would rather himself be able to claim kindred with
Fletcher; and soon after he announced in one of his reviews that
Beaumont was but the French polish upon the fine sound material of
Fletcher—or something to that effect; which may be true, though at this
distance of time, I don't see how such accurate division of labour could
be tested; and what would the rough material have been unpolished? I
myself believe that Beaumont was more than the varnish, he was the
edge-tool too, and I am proud of such parentage, and value the red bound
copy of Bosworth Field with my great [great] grandmother's name in it,
and the little silver sugar- basket with the Lion of England in the
centre of it, which she brought with her into the Raper family.
She must have been a
person of acquirements too, for her death so affected her husband that
he was never seen out of his own house afterwards. I do not know how he
managed the education of his only child, my grandmother; for she was
well educated in a higher style than was common then, and yet he lived
on at Twyford alone almost, except for visits from a few relations.
His horses died in their
stables, his carriages decayed in their coach-houses, his servants
continued with him till their marriage or death, when the
supernumeraries were not replaced, and he lived on year after year in
one uniform round of dulness till roused by the arrival of his
grandchildren.
Aunt Lissy did not remain
long with him, but my father was his charge till his death. He did not
appear to have devoted himself to him, and yet the boy was very
constantly his companion within doors, for all the old man's queer
methodical ways had impressed themselves vividly on his grandson's mind.
When altering the house my father would permit no change to be made in
the small room on the ground-floor of the hail, which had been his
grandfather's dressing-room, and which was now his own.
We often attended on my
father towards the end of his toilet, on the third ringing of that
bell—a sound that acted through our house like the "sharp" in the royal
palaces, sending every one to his duty in all haste—and there we found
the same oddly contrived wardrobe which had been made so many years ago.
Two or three broad shelves were below, and underneath the lowest one a
row of small pegs for hanging boots and shoes on; at the top were a
number of pigeon-holes, employed by my father for holding papers, but
which in Raper days had held each the proper supply of linen for one
day; shirt, stock, stockings, handkerchief, all along in a row, tier
after tier. My great-grandfather began at No. i and went regularly
through the pigeon-holes, the washerwoman refilling those he had
emptied. This methodical habit pervaded all his actions; he walked by
rule at stated times, and only in his garden, and for a definite period;
so many times round the formal parterre, bounded by the yew-tree hedge.
He did not, however, interrupt his thoughts to count his paces, he
filled a pocket of his flapped waistcoat with so many beans, and each
time that he passed the door he dropped a bean into a box placed upon
the sill of the window for the purpose of receiving them; when the beans
had all been dropped the walk was done.
He was a calm and placid
man, and acted like oil on waves to the impatient spirit he had to deal
with, Some baby fury had excited my father once to that degree, he took
a fine handkerchief that had been given to him and threw it angrily upon
the fire, then seeing the flames rise over it, he started forward as
suddenly to rescue it, "No, Jack," said his grandfather, "let it burn,
the loss of a handkerchief is little, the loss of temper is much; watch
it burning and try to remember what irremediable mischief an
uncontrolled temper works." My father said this scene often recurred to
him and checked many a fit of passion, fortunately, as his Highland maid
Christy and others did their best to spoil him.
The Thorley brother,
Matthew, was quite as eccentric as my great-grandfather; they were much
together, and he it was who built the observatory at Twyford, that when
he dined there and took a fancy to consult the stars, he need not have
to return home to spend an hour with them. He was a true lover of
learning; he had built a large room to hold his books at Thorley. The
best of those we loved so much at the Doune came from thence, and the
maps and prints and volumes of rare engravings, coins, mathematical
instruments, and curiosities.
He played on both violin
and violoncello. Our poor cousin George Grant took possession of the
violoncello, on which he was a proficient. The violin was lent to Duncan
Macintosh, who enlarged the sound-holes, as he thought the tone of this
Cremona too low for the proper expression of Highland music!
There was an observatory
at Thorley too, from whence my great-uncle surveyed the earth as well as
the heavens; a favourite occupation of his being the care of some grass
walks he was very particular in defending from the feet of passengers.
He had planted a wood at
a short distance from his house, laid out a kind of problem in action;
an oval pond full of fish for centre, and gravel walks diverging from it
at regular intervals towards an exterior square; the walks were bordered
by very wide turf edging, and thick plantations of young trees were made
between. It was a short cut through this mathematical plantation from
one farmhouse to another, and in rainy weather the women in their
pattens destroyed the grass borders when they disobeyed the order to
keep to the gravel path.
From his tower of
observation Matthew Raper detected every delinquent, and being provided
with a speaking-trumpet, no sooner did a black gipsy bonnet and red
cloak beneath it appear on the forbidden edge, than "Of with your
pattens" echoed in rough seaman's voice to the terror of the sinners.
These two old brothers,
the one a bachelor, the other a widower, had their hearts set upon the
same earthly object, the only child of the one, my grandmother. To judge
of her from the fragments of her journals, her scraps of poetry, some
copied, some original, her pocket-books full of witty memoranda, her
receipt-books, songs, and the small library, in each volume of which her
name was beautifully written, she must have been an accomplished woman
and passing clever, with rather more than a touch of the coarseness of
her times.
She had a temper! for
dear, good Mrs Sophy used to tell us, as a warning to me, how every one
in her household used to fly from her presence when it was up, hiding
till the brief storm was over. She was not handsome, short in figure,
with the Raper face, and undecided complexion; but she had lovers. In
early youth a cousin Harry figured in her private MS., he must have been
the Admiral's father; and after came a more serious business, an
engagement to Bishop Horsley; there was an illness, and when the heiress
recovered she married her Doctor!—my grandfather—whether with or without
the consent of her family I do not know; it certainly was not with their
approbation, for they looked on my grandfather as a mere adventurer, and
did not thoroughly forgive my grandmother for years; not till my
great-uncle Rothie, with his graceful wife, came to London to visit
their brother the Doctor, when the Raper connection was relieved to see
that the honour of the alliance was at least mutual.
Although my grandfather
lived to get into great practice as a physician, his income at the time
of his marriage was not considerable; the Raper addition to it was
extremely welcome. Her father allowed Mrs Grant a guinea a day, paid
punctually to herself in advance on the first of the month in a little
rouleau of gold pieces; as I understood, this was never promised, but
never failed. The uncle at Thorley, too, kindly assisted the
housekeeping. On New Year's Day he regularly gave or sent his niece a
piece of plate and a hundred pounds, so regularly that she quite
reckoned on it, unwisely; for one day the uncle, talking with her
confidentially upon the Doctor's improved ways and means, trusting
matters were really comfortable; "Oh dear, yes," replied she ; "fees are
becoming plenty, and the lectures bring so much, and my father gives so
much, and then, uncle, there is your hundred pounds." "True, niece,"
answered the odd uncle, and to the day of his death he never gave her
another guinea! He saved all the more for my father, little thinking all
his hoards were destined for that odious S— G-- and the electors of
Great Grimsby.
My grandfather and
grandmother were married twelve years before they had a child, then came
my father, and four years after, in giving birth to my aunt Lissy, her
mother died. The Highlanders saw the hand of a rewarding providence in
the arrival of these children to a lonely home, my grandmother having
signally approved herself in their eyes by her behaviour on a memorable
occasion; I don't know how they accounted, on the same principles, for
her early death in the midst of these blessings.
The visit that the Laird
and the Lady of Rothiemurchus had paid to Doctor and Mrs Grant at their
large house in Lime Street was to be returned, but, after repeated
delays, his professional business preventing the Doctor from taking such
a holiday, his wife was to go north without him, but with his younger
brother, Alexander the clergyman, who was then curate at Henley, where
he had been for some time with his wife and her sister Miss Neale.
Besides his clerical duties, he at this time took pupils, who must have
been at home for the holidays, when he could propose to take his wife
and his sister-in-law to the Highlands.
My great-uncle Rothic was
unluckily living at Elgin, his delicate wife having found the mountain
air too keen for her, but the object of the journey being principally to
see Rothiemurchus, the English party proceeded there under the charge of
their cousin, Mr James Cameron, of Kinrara, Kinapol, and latterly, in my
remembrance, of the Croft.
My grandmother rode up
from Elgin on a pillion behind Mr Cameron. She wore high-heeled,
pointed- toed shoes, with large rosettes, a yellow silk quilted
petticoat, a chintz sacque or fardingale bundled up behind, and a little
black hat and feather stuck on one side of her powdered head. She sang
the Beggar's Opera through during the journey with a voice of such power
that Mr Cameron never lost the recollection of it. One of the scenes
they went to view was that from the churchyard; the old church is
beautifully situated on a rising ground in a field not far from the
house of the Doune, well backed by a bank of birch wooding, and
commanding a fine prospect both up and down the valley of the Spey. My
grandmother looked round in admiration, and then, turning to Mr Cameron,
she lamented in simple good faith that the Laird had no son to inherit
such a property. "Both a loss and a gain," said Mrs Alexander in a
blithe voice, "the parson and I have five fine sons to heir it for him."
Poor woman I she outlived them all, and the following year my
grandmother produced the delicate boy, whose birth ended their
expectations.
The Doctor and his rather
eccentric true Raper wife lived happily together, save for a slight
occasional coolness on his part, and some extra warmth now and then on
hers. From the time of her death, Mrs Sophy told us, he never entered
her drawing-room, where all remained precisely as she had left it; her
harpsichord on one side of the fireplace, and her Japan cabinet on the
other, both remained locked: her bookcases were undisturbed; a small
round table that held a set of egg-shell china out of which her favoured
guests had received their tea, had been covered with a cambric
handkerchief by his own hand, and no one ventured to remove the veil.
All her wardrobe, which was rich, and her trinkets, were left as she had
left them, never touched till they were packed in chests when he left
London, which chests were not opened till aunt Lissy came of age, and
then the contents were divided between her and my father.
More than all, he laid
aside his violin: they had been long married before she knew he played.
She had seen the violin in its case, and wondered what it did there. At
last she asked, and was surprised and pleased to find him no mean
performer. How very odd, how individualised were the people of those old
days! On the death of her whom he had never seemed to care to please, he
laid aside the instrument he had really loved, nor ever resumed it till
he retired to the Doune, when my father remembered his often bringing
sweet music from it in an evening. I can't tell why, but I was always
much interested in those old-world days.
My father never liked
speaking of his childhood, it had probably not been happy; he was
reserved, too, on matters of personal feeling. Not till I had nearly
grown up did I hear much from him of his boyhood, and even then it was
drawn from him by my evident pleasure in the answers this
cross-questioning elicited. He had only one recollection of his mother,
seeing her in long diamond earrings on some company occasion, and
sleeping with her by an accident when, tired out with his chattering (my
silent father!), she invented a new play—a trial of who should go to
sleep first. Her voice, he said, was like aunt Lissy's, low and sweet.
Aunt Lissy was a Raper, and she loved Twyford, and after her marriage
tried to live there, but before the railway crossed the orchard, the
distance was great from chambers for so complete a man of business as
uncle Frere.
Early in November 1807 we
removed to town, and before the end of the month my brother John was
born, the youngest, and most talented of us all. He was a small, thin,
ugly baby, and he remained a plain child, little of his age for many
years, no way remarkable. In the spring of 18o8 William was sent to
Eton, not ten, poor child! very unfit for the buffetings of that large
public school, where the little boys were utterly neglected by the
masters, and made mere slaves and drudges by the elder boys, many of
whom used their fags unmercifully. William was fortunate in this
respect, his first master was the present Duke of Leinster, a very
good-natured lad; his dame, too, Mrs Denton, was kind to all her boys in
a sort of way; but poor William was far from happy, he told us in
confidence at midsummer, though it would have been incorrect to allow
this publicly. We were proud of having a brother at Eton then, now I
look back with horror on that school of corruption, where weak
characters made shipwreck of all worth.
We passed a very happy
winter. My mother was more out in society than usual, having Harriet to
introduce. We had hardly any lessons except such as we chose to do for
our masters, M. Beckvelt, Mr Thompson, and Mr Jones, which very often
was little enough; we were a great deal in Brunswick Square with uncle
and aunt Frere, we had the two babies to play with, John Frere and our
own Johnnie, and we had now a large acquaintance in the Square. We had
great games of "Tom Tiddler," "Thread the Needle," "Follow the Leader,"
"Hen and Chickens," and many more, our merry laughter ringing round the
gardens, where we were so safe, so uncontrolled, and so happy, though we
were not among the elite of our little world. An elder set kept itself
quite distinct from the younger ones, and a grander set walked in
stately pride apart from either. Sir John Nicholls' daughters and Mr
Spencer Perceval's never turned their exclusive looks upon meaner
neighbours, while Justice Park's, with Daniels, Scarletts, Bennets, and
others growing up, would only smile upon the children they passed
occasionally. We, all unknowing and equally uncaring, romped merrily on
in our gleesome play-hours, Tyndales, Huttons, Grants, Williams, Vivians.
Besides, we had a grade or two below ourselves with which on no account
were we to commingle; some coarse-shoed, cotton-gloved children, and a
set who entered with borrowed keys, and certainly appeared out of their
proper place. Home was quite as pleasant as the Square, the baby made us
so merry. I worked for him too; this employment was quite a passion with
me; from very early days down to this very hour generations of little
people might have thanked my busy fingers for their outfit. My box of
baby clothing has never been empty since I first began to dress my doll.
Many a weary hour has been beguiled by this useful plain work, for there
are times when reading, writing, or more active employments only
irritate, and when needlework is really soothing, particularly when
there is an object in the labour. It used as a child to give me a glow
of delight to see the work of my fingers on my sisters and brothers, and
on the Rothiemurchus babies; for it was only for our own poor that I
busied myself, everybody giving me scraps for this purpose, and
sometimes help and patterns. My sisters never worked from choice; they
much preferred to the quiet occupations, the famous romps in Brunswick
Square, where, aunt Lissy having no nerves, her tall brothers-in- law,
who were all uncles Frere to us, made perfect bedlam in her
drawing-room, and after dinner made for us rabbits of the doyleys, cut
apples into swans and wells, and their pips into mice.
Uncle John, the
ambassador, was rather stately; but uncle Bartle, his secretary, was our
grand ally; William, the sergeant, came next in our esteem; Edward was
quieter; the two younger, Hatley and Temple, were all we could wish. The
two sisters we hardly knew, Lady Orde was in the country, and Miss Frere,
my aunt's friend Susan, was generally ill. There was a friend, however,
Sir Robert Ainslie, whom we thought charming, and a Lady Laurie and her
brother, Captain Hatley, who were very likeable. We were pretty well off
for friends at home; Captain Stevenson and his brother Colonel Barnes
were famous playfellows, and our cousin Harry Raper, and the old set
besides. Also we helped to dress my mother and Harriet Grant of
Glenmoriston, my father's ward, for their parties, and had once great
fun preparing them for a masquerade, when, with the assistance of some
friends, they all went as the country party in the Journey to London, my
mother being such a pretty Miss Jenny. Another time Harriet went as a
Highland girl, in some fantastic guise of Miss Stewart's invention, and
meeting with a kilted, belted, well-plumed Highlander, had fun enough to
address him in Gaelic, and he, not understanding one word of what should
have been his native tongue, retreated confounded, she following, till
he turned and fled, to the delight of the lookers-on who somehow always
seem to enjoy the discomfiture of a fellow-creature. It was Harriet's
last exploit in London. She went north to some of her Highland aunts, in
company with her brother Patrick the laird this spring.
Early in the summer of
i8o8, we all started together for the Highlands. The greater part of the
furniture had been sent from Twyford to the Doune, where, truth to say,
it was very much wanted. The servants all went north with it by sea,
excepting those in immediate attendance on ourselves. A new barouche
landau was started this season, which served for many a year, and was a
great improvement upon either the old heavy close coach or the
leather-curtained sociable. Four bays in hand conducted us to Houghton,
where after a visit of a few days my father proceeded on his circuit,
and my mother removed with the children to Seaham, a little bathing
hamlet on the coast of Durham, hardly six miles from Houghton. She had
often passed an autumn there when a child, with some of her numerous
brothers and sisters, and she said it made her feel young again to find
herself there once more, wandering over all the ground she knew so well.
She was Indeed in charming spirits during the whole of our sojourn at
this pretty place. We lived entirely with her, she bathed with us,
walked with us, we gladly drove in turn with her. We took our meals with
her, and she taught us how to make necklaces of the seaweed and the
small shells we found, and how to clean and polish the large shells for
fancy works she had done in her own childhood, when she, our grave,
distant mother, had run about and laughed like us. How very happy
parents have it in their power to make their children! We grew fat and
rosy, required no punishments, hardly indeed a reprimand; but then Mrs
Millar had left us, she had gone on a visit to her friends at Stockton,
taking the baby with her, for as far as care of him was concerned she
was quite to be trusted.
We lived in a little
public-house, the only inn in the place. We entered at once into the
kitchen, bright and clean, and full of cottage valuables; a bright "sea-
coal" fire burned always cheerily in the grate, and on the settle at one
side generally sat the old grandfather of the family, with his pipe, or
an old worn newspaper, or a friend. The daughter, who was mistress of
the house, kept bustling about in the back kitchen where all the
business went on, which was quite as clean, though not so handsomely
furnished, as the one where the old man sat. There was a scullery
besides for dirty work, such as baking, brewing, washing, and preparing
the cookery. A yard behind held a large water-butt and several
outhouses; a neatly-kept flower-garden, a mere strip, lay beneath the
windows in the front, opening into a large kitchen garden on one side.
The sea, though not distant, could only be seen from the upper windows;
for this and other reasons we generally sat upstairs. Roses and woodbine
clustered round the lattices, the sun shone in, the scent of the
flowers, and the hum of the bees and the chirp of the birds, all entered
the open casements freely; and the polished floors and furniture, and
the clean white dimity hangings, added to the cheerfulness of our suite
of small attics. The parlour below was dull by comparison. It could only
be reached through the front kitchen; tall shrubs overshaded the window,
it had green walls, hair- bottomed chairs set all round by them; one
round table in the middle of the room oiled till it was nearly black,
and rubbed till it shone like a mirror; a patch of carpet was spread
beneath this table, and a paper net for catching flies hung from the
ceiling over it; a corner cupboard full of tall glasses and real old
china tea-cups, and a large china punch-bowl on the top, and a
corner-set arm-chair with a patch-work cover on the cushion, are all the
extras I remember. We were very little in this "guest-chamber," only at
our meals or on rainy days. We were for ever on the beach, strolling
along the sands, which were beautiful; sitting on the rocks or in the
caves, penetrating as far into them as we dared. When we bathed we
undressed in a cave and then walked into the sea, generally hand in
hand, my mother heading us. How we used to laugh and dance, and splash,
and push, anything but dip, we avoided that as much as possible; then in
consideration of our cold bath we had a warm tea breakfast and felt so
light. It was a very happy time at Seaham. Some of the Houghton cousins
were often with us, Kate and Eliza constantly. We had all straw bonnets
alike, coarse dunstables lined and trimmed with green, with deep
curtains on the neck, pink gingham frocks and holland pinafores, baskets
in our hands, and gloves in our pockets. We did enjoy the seashore
scrambles. On Sundays we were what we thought very fine, white frocks
all of us; the cousins had white cambric bonnets and tippets, and long
kid gloves to meet the short sleeves. We had fine straw bonnets trimmed
with white, and black silk spencers. My mother wore gipsy hats, in which
she looked beautiful ; they were tied on with half-handkerchiefs of
various colours, and had a single sprig of artificial flowers inside
over one eye. We went to church either at Seaham or Houghton, the four
bays carrying us quickly to my uncle Ironside's, when we spent the
remainder of the day there always, our own feet bearing us to the little
church on the cliffs when it suited my mother to stay at home.
The name of the old
Rector of Seaham I cannot recollect; he was a nice kind old man, who
most good- naturedly, when we drank tea at the parsonage, played chess
with me, and once or twice let me beat him. He had a kind homely wife
too, our great ally. She had many housekeeping ways of pleasing
children. The family, a son and two or three daughters, were more
aspiring; they had annual opportunities of seeing the ways of more
fashionable people, and so tried a little finery at home, in particular
drilling an awkward lout of a servant boy into a caricature of a lady's
page. One evening, in the drawing-room, the old quiet mamma observing
that she had left her knitting in the parlour, the sprucest of the
daughters immediately rose and rang the bell and desired this attendant
to fetch it, which he did upon a silver salver; the thick grey woollen
stocking for the parson's winter wear, presented with a bow—such a bow!
to his mistress. No comments that I heard were made upon this scene, but
it haunted me as in some way incongruous. Next day, when we were at our
work in the parlour, I came out with, "Mamma, wouldn't you rather have
run down yourself and brought up that knitting?" "You would, I hope, my
dear," answered she with her smile—she had such a sweet smile when she
was pleased—"you would any of you."
Except the clergyman's
family there was none of gentle degree in the village, it was the most
primitive hamlet ever met with, a dozen or so of cottages, no trade, no
manufacture, no business doing that we could see: the owners were mostly
servants of Sir Ralph Milbanke's. He had a pretty villa on the cliff
surrounded by well-kept grounds, where Lady Milbanke liked very much to
retire in the autumn with her little daughter, the unfortunate child
granted to her after eighteen years of childless married life. She
generally lived quite privately here, seeing only the Rector's family,
when his daughters took their lessons in high breeding; and for a
companion for the future Lady Byron at these times she selected the
daughter of our landlady, a pretty, quiet, elegant-looking girl, who
bore very ill with the public-house ways after living for weeks in Miss
Milbanke's apartments. I have often wondered since what became of little
Bessy. She liked being with us. She was in her element only with refined
people, and unless Lady Milbanke took her entirely and provided for her,
she had doneher irremediable injury by raising her ideas beyond her
home. Her mother seemed to feel this, but they were dependants, and did
not like to refuse "my lady." Surely it could not have been that modest
graceful girl, who was "born in the garret, in the kitchen bred"? I
remember her mother and herself washing their hands in a tub in the
back-yard after some work they had been engaged in, and noticing sadly,
I know not why, the bustling hurry with which one pair of red, rough
hands was yellow-soaped, well plunged, and then dried off on a
dish-cloth; and the other pale, thin delicate pair was gently soaped and
slowly rinsed, and softly wiped on a towel brought down for the purpose.
What strangely curious incidents make an impression upon some minds!
Bessy could make seaweed necklaces and shell bags and work very neatly.
She could understand our books too, and was very grateful for having
them lent to her. My mother never objected to her being with us, but our
Houghton cousins did not like playing with her, their father and mother,
they thought, would not approve of it; so when they were with us our
more humble companion retired out of sight, giving us a melancholy smile
if we chanced to meet her. My mother had no finery. She often let us,
when at Houghton, drink tea with an old Nanny Appleby, who had been
their nursery-maid. She lived in a very clean house with a niece, an
eight-day clock, a chest of drawers, a corner-set chair, and a quantity
of bright pewter. The niece had twelve caps, all beautifully done up,
though of various degrees of rank; one was on her head, the other eleven
in one of the drawers of this chest, as we counted, for we were taken to
inspect them. The aunt gave us girdle cakes, some plain, some spiced,
and plenty of tea, Jane getting hers in a real china cup, which was
afterwards given to her on account of her possessing the virtue of being
named after my mother. There were grander parties, too, at Houghton,
among the aunts and the uncles and the cousins. At these gayer meetings
my great-aunts Peggy and Elsie appeared in the very handsome headgear my
mother had brought them from London, which particularly impressed me as
I watched the old ladies bowing and jingling at the tea-table night
after night. They were called dress turbans, and were made alike of
rolls of muslin folded round a catgut headpiece and festooned with large
loops of large beads ending in bead tassels, after the most approved
prints of Tippoo Sahib. They were considered extremely beautiful as well
as fashionable, and were much admired. We also drove in the mornings to
visit different connections, on one occasion going as far as Sunderland,
where the iron bridges so delighted Jane and me, and the shipping and
the busy quays, that we were reproved afterwards for a state of
over-excitement that prevented our responding properly to the attentions
of our great-aunt Blackburn, a remark- ably handsome woman, though then
upwards of eighty.
It was almost with sorrow
that we heard circuit was over; whether sufficient business had been
done on it to pay the travelling expenses, no one ever heard, or I
believe inquired, for my father was not communicative upon his business
matters; he returned in his usual good spirits. Mrs Millar and Johnnie
also reappeared; aunt Mary packed up; she took rather a doleful leave of
all and started.
At Edinburgh, of course,
my father's affairs detained him as usual; this time my mother had
something to do there. Aunt Mary had been so long rusticating at
Houghton—four months, I think—that her wardrobe had become very
old-fashioned, and as there was always a great deal of company in the
Highlands during the shooting season, it was necessary for her to add
considerably to it. Dressmakers consequently came to fit on dresses, and
we went to silk mercers, linen-drapers, haberdashers, etc. Very amusing
indeed, and no way extraordinary; and so we proceeded to Perth, where,
for the last time, we met our great-uncle Sandy. This meeting made the
more impression on me, not because of his death soon after, for we did
not much care for him, but for his openly expressed disappointment at my
changed looks. I had given promise of resembling his handsome mother,
the Lady Jean Gordon, with her fair oval face, her golden hair, and
brilliant skin; I had grown into a Raper, to his dismay, and he was so
ungallant as to enter into particulars—yellow, peaky, skinny, drawn up,
lengthened out, everything disparaging; true enough, I believe, for I
was not strong, and many a long year had to pass before a gleam of the
Gordon beauty settled on me again. It passed whole and entire to Mary,
who grew up an embodiment of all the perfection of the old family
portraits. Jane was a true Ironside then and ever, William ditto, John
like me, a cross between Grant and Raper.
They did not understand
me, and they did not use me well. The physical constitution of children
nobody thought it necessary to attend to then, the disposition was
equally neglected, no peculiarities were ever studied; how many early
graves were the consequence! I know now that my constitution was
eminently nervous; this extreme susceptibility went by many names in my
childhood, and all were linked with evil. I was affected, sly, sullen,
insolent, everything but what I really was, nervously shy when noticed.
Jealous too, they called me, jealous of dear good Jane, because her
fearless nature, fine healthy temperament, as shown in her general
activity, her bright eyes and rosy cheeks, made her a much more
satisfactory plaything than her timid sister. Her mind, too, was
precocious; she loved poetry, understood it, learned it by heart, and
expressed it with the feeling of a much older mind, acting bits from her
favourite Shakespeare like another Roscius. These exhibitions and her
dancing made her quite a little show, while I, called up on second
thoughts to avoid distinctions, cut but a sorry figure beside her; this
inferiority I felt, and felt it still further paralyse me. Then came the
unkind, cutting rebuke, which my loving heart could ill bear with. I
have been taunted with affectation when my fault was ignorance, called
sulky when I have been spirit-crushed. I have been sent supperless to
bed for not, as Cassius, giving the cue to Brutus, whipped by my father
at my mother's representation of the insolence of my silence, or the
impudence of the pert reply I was goaded on to make; jeered at as the
would-be modest, flouted as envious. How little they guessed the depth
of the affection thus tortured. They did it ignorantly, but how much
after- grief this want of wisdom caused; a very unfavourable effect on
my temper was the immediate result, and health and temper go together. |
